The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle) (11 page)

Horatio Lyle looked up and smiled faintly. ‘My lord?’

‘You and your . . . companions . . . may stay here for as long as it takes you to resolve this situation. I will ensure that there are guards outside your friend’s door, and my son’s - no harm can come to them. I will help you make right whatever it is that is wrong, I give you my word.’

Lyle bowed. ‘Thank you, my lord.’

 

And so Tess goes to her room, a larger one than she has ever seen before, where a steaming bath awaits her, and hot food has been brought in on a tray. The window is twice her height, and the carpet is so thick she thinks it’ll reach to her knees. The bed is so big she could roll in it like an ant across a dune and, at her door, a footman keeps guard with a poker, lest any stranger should venture upstairs.

In the kitchen of the Elwick house, Tate lolls in a basket lined with an old eiderdown, while the women servants coo over him and brush his coat and scratch him behind his ears and tickle under his chin and rub his belly, until even Tate has to admit he’s having a very pleasant evening, before rolling over in front of the stove, kept warm all night and all day, to sleep in a dry, peaceful bed.

In the living room, Thomas Edward Elwick stands opposite Horatio Lyle, who is gently steaming in the blasting heat of the fireplace, and says, ‘Mister Lyle?’

‘I’m sorry about this, Thomas.’

‘About what?’

‘Coming here in this way. I know it’s not what you wanted.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘I should explain. Havelock . . .’

‘Miss Teresa explained.’

‘Did she?’ Lyle raises an eyebrow, then shrugs. ‘Well then. Havelock. He means the threats he makes, Thomas. I know this from experience.’

‘How do you know him?’

‘Oh,’ Lyle smiles uneasily and turns to dry another side of his clothing in the warmth of the fire. ‘You can’t help but notice men like Havelock, particularly when they’re climbing to the top. I will do what I can to make amends for this situation, Thomas.’

‘There’s no need, Mister Lyle.’

‘I think there probably is.’

‘No! There isn’t.’ Thomas smiles, and finds he means it. ‘I chose this, Mister Lyle. I chose to help when we first met; so did Miss Teresa. It’s for the best.’

Lyle seems to deflate a little in the firelight. ‘You’re getting old, lad.’

‘Only in a good way, Mister Lyle.’

Lyle pats Thomas absently on the shoulder. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You may be right.’

 

Later, upstairs, Lady Elwick kisses her son goodnight on the cheek. Lord Elwick stands uncomfortably in the doorway, before moving forward and patting his son on the shoulder and saying, ‘Sleep well,’ in a stiff voice, and wondering if his son isn’t too old after all to be tucked in. Afterwards Thomas crosses his bedroom, pulls open the bottom drawer by his desk, lifts up its false bottom, and takes out some papers. Numbers and pictures and lines of force and letters and ideas race across the paper in thick, scrawly lines. Having considered them by the light of the candle, he doesn’t put them back, but leaves them on the floor like an artist’s greatest work, to be admired by anyone who might now decide to look. At various places outside his door wait a valet with a sabre, the head groom with a shovel, three footmen with candlesticks, and one of the gardeners with a crowbar, just in case someone should even
think
about approaching his room at night.

At the back of the house, above a rear parlour, Horatio Lyle yawns, scratches at the dry shirt and pants the second under-gardener lent him, being the only person in the household whose clothing seemed to fit, and which smell slightly of loam. He turns the handle of the door to his small, gloomy room, and steps inside.

Three things meet his senses. The first is the smell of smoke, sharp, from the wick of a candle just extinguished. Second is the faint sound of something moving through the air, silk rippling. Third is a flash of green, implausibly bright in the darkness - no, two flashes of green, a pair of eyes rising out of nowhere, locking themselves into his. They are the only things there to focus on, the only things to see, and thus the only things he looks at, to find he cannot look away. He opens his mouth to call out, and a hand is over his mouth. Something, someone, slams him back against the wall, and there are the eyes, filling his world. The hand over his mouth is small and neat and has the strength of a blacksmith’s, and wears a black silk glove. And a soft voice like the distant sound of wind chimes whispers, ‘Don’t speak, don’t move, Mister Lyle. They put guards on every door except yours - you didn’t expect someone to come for you. Just relax.’

He tries to look away, sees emerald and the colour of spring leaves with the sun overhead and . . .
and
. . .

‘You did not need to lose your followers by the bridge, Mister Lyle. When everything else is taken from you, where are you going to come, except here? I only had to wait.’ . . . just needs to close his eyes and fight, kick, struggle, raise a fist, bite, anything except look and sink and drown in warm greenness and . . .

‘No magnet, Mister Lyle. You left it in your coat on the end of the bed. No iron either. Time to fall asleep.’

. . .
no no no no no NO NO NO
. . .

‘Just fall asleep, Horatio Lyle. I promise you’ll be all right.’

. . .
please no
. . .
please
. . .

And finally, Horatio Lyle closes his eyes, and lets his head loll, and obeys. He falls asleep in the Tseiqin’s arms, without a word or a sound, while she carries him to the window.

CHAPTER 6

Flashes of a journey, nothing more. Frozen glimpses. A carriage window, green eyes opposite, a moment. Hyde Park - sleep, Mister Lyle, just sleep. Park Lane - a glimmer of street lamp and lamplighter with his ladder; sleep, Mister Lyle, you have nothing to fear. A nightmare; the mansions of Mayfair - wake cold and sweating, did they come and there they are, a waking nightmare, dream made real, green eyes, black silk hand reaching out and brushing eyelids shut again; you must trust us, Mister Lyle, sleep until we ask for you. Sleep.

This time, he was ready for the awakening. Rather than open his eyes, he lay still and waited for every other sense to report in, to confirm by the ache in his shoulders that this was not a dream. Lyle didn’t dare to move or look, although every second wilfully blind was an agony, not knowing what could be out there.

Smell of wood burning in a fireplace, some coal too. A taste of lavender on the air, and soot as well, a chimney that hadn’t been swept for a while. The feel of padding and silk beneath him, the undergardener’s warm, dry clothes still itching at the back of his neck, and a new itch, rope around his wrists, thick, almost like a piece of ship’s rigging, wedging his fists together and making the ends of his fingers numb. A crackle from the fireplace, and somewhere, near by, laboured breathing - not threatening, but wheezing: a long-drawn-out whistle on the way in, that rattled on the way out. With every other sense describing all it could, he did what he’d dreaded to do, and opened his eyes.

The room was a bedchamber and, more to the point, his kind of place. The walls were lined with books, and above the fireplace hung a painting that caught Lyle’s eye and didn’t let it go. From the corner of the room, somewhere behind the sofa on which Lyle had been ungracefully deposited, the voice with the wheeze spoke, with a sound like sandpaper across rough stone: ‘Turner.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The painting. Turner.’ The voice managed to imply without so much as changing tone that if Lyle didn’t know exactly what this meant and who Turner was, then he was clearly an idiot.

Lyle eased himself up, waiting for the blood to settle in his head and his thoughts to pick up speed. At length he risked standing. He turned, his back to the fire, and looked in the direction of the voice.

In a giant bed there was a man. He was old, of that there was no doubt, but somehow his face seemed to have aged unevenly. His skin was lined and leathery. But his hair was such a pure white that its colour didn’t look like a consequence of aging, and his eyes sparkled bright green. He was sitting up in the bed, wearing a long nightrobe and an undignified nightcap with a bobble on it, and seemed oblivious of the rattle of his own breath. Around him stood or sat a group of five or six other people of various indeterminate ages, all with the same bright green eyes. Their silence suggested deference to the old man in the bed.

Finding that he felt neither hypnotized nor threatened, Lyle looked at the man and murmured, ‘Who are you?’

‘At present I go by the name of Joseph Turner. I like that artist’s work, although perhaps you think it is arrogance to steal his name? I am also known, among my own kind, as Old Man White. You may call me whichever you think more appropriate.’

‘You’re Tseiqin.’

‘And for you to notice, we only had to hypnotize you and carry you halfway across the city.’

‘I’m sorry; it was more an exclamation of surprise than a question.’

‘In that case, you are welcome. We are Tseiqin.’ Old Man White put his head on one side and, smiling faintly, said, ‘Does that alarm you?’

Lyle’s laugh came too fast for him to control it: fear overrode all other instincts. He felt his ears burn red. ‘Yes, God damn it,’ he choked.

‘Why?’

‘Angel-demon people with hypnotic green eyes, white blood and an allergy for all things magnetic? And me, here among you? I can’t imagine how it might end well.’

‘We haven’t hurt you.’

‘
Well
. . .’ Lyle raised his bound wrists accusingly.

Old Man White shrugged. ‘You are Horatio Lyle. You destroyed the Fuyun Plate in a blast of lightning; you fought Selene, who was once one of us, tooth and claw; you were there when her blade was shattered into a thousand pieces; you build machines that hurt us - unintentionally, perhaps. But the iron is in your blood; you can’t help what you are. You can’t help but uproot the land that we loved, to build your new, strange, iron world. That does not make you any less dangerous.’

‘As I said, it can’t end well.’

‘Mister Lyle, you miss the point. You have encountered the full wrath of my people, and survived. This is something few humans have achieved. Are you surprised that there are some here who fear you?’

‘You’re scared of
me
?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Really? In that case I’ll just be going, wouldn’t want to cause trouble, always dangerous, me . . . please?’

Old Man White looked sceptical. ‘
How
you survived, Mister Lyle, always strikes me as something of a mystery. Please come here.’

Too late, Lyle tried to look away. But there were the eyes, already filling his mind. He’d let his guard down and
damn damn damn
. . . He felt his legs jerk, moving him forward; he bit his lip until he tasted blood as he tried to fight it - and perhaps, for an instant, there was resistance, that taste of iron on his tongue, the tang of salt. For a second he stopped, tried to twist his head away, to shut his eyes and . . .

‘Please, Mister Lyle.’

The voice and the eyes were overwhelming; he could feel his vision narrowing to a pinprick of green and heard the sound of the fire receding. There was no arguing with that voice. He staggered like a drunkard the last few paces across the room, the other Tseiqin moving out of his way. He could feel their eyes on the back of his neck as they watched him obey, kneel down at the bedside, shuddering and drawing in deep breaths. At last Lyle found himself released from the Tseiqin’s influence. His muscles ached from the strain of trying to resist. A long, cold hand, almost as white as the old man’s hair, reached out and pulled Lyle’s chin up until he stared into those green eyes once more. Lyle nearly whimpered.
Of all the ways to die
. . .

. . .
I’m so sorry
. . .

‘Tell me. What do you know of the Machine?’

‘What Machine?’

The green eyes narrowed; filled his world again. ‘Tell me, Horatio Lyle. Did Augustus Havelock ask you to build the Machine?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know what it is?’

‘No.’

‘Very good. Do you know where Berwick is?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know what the Machine is?’

‘
No
.’

‘Why did you go to the Elwick house? Tell me the truth.’

He felt the words rising and tried to bite down on them, but it was like trying to give up breathing. ‘Scared!’ he blurted. ‘Havelock will hurt them, he will, I know he will, he’ll hurt them and I can’t stop him, had to get Tess to safety, had to make sure Thomas was all right, had to keep them safe and . . .’

‘You’ve been threatened?’

Another half-bitten-off choke of laughter scratched Lyle’s throat. ‘There are smarter questions,’ he mumbled, ‘considering the circumstances.’