The Equivoque Principle (29 page)

‘You’re as stubborn as ever!’ Renard said, thrusting his palm
hard towards Quaint’s jaw, sending the conjuror skidding across the roof.

Quaint landed with a painfully unceremonious thump onto the large fender of the carriage’s rear wheel. He was inches from the wheel, and the constant buffeting against the small of his back was sheer torture. Just as he reached for a handhold on the roof, the carriage hit a large bump in the road, and Quaint was cast aside, bouncing with the ricocheting vehicle. The vibrations of the wheel against the hard stone cobbles reverberated through his body, shaking the very teeth in his gums. His head was less than six inches from the whitewashed Thames wall and, with one last spurt of strength, Quaint reached out with all his body’s remaining effort. His fingertips brushed against the luggage rack affixed to the roof, and the man clung on with all his might. Quaint threw his other arm up, gripping onto the rail, just as the Frenchman threw his weight towards him. Both men tumbled over the side of the transport onto the rear luggage rack in a jumble of awkward limbs. With a jab of his elbow towards Renard’s throat, Quaint regained a handhold. The cobbled stone streets streaked past, inches from both Renard’s and Quaint’s heads. All it would take was one minor graze at that speed, and the flesh would burn off to the bone. With a well-placed punch to his foe’s solar plexus, Quaint managed to gain the upper hand, and clambered back up onto the carriage’s rooftop.

‘Now it’s your turn to beg, Renard,’ hollered Quaint, holding on desperately by his left hand. ‘Call a halt to this insane plan of yours now—before it’s too late!’

‘Cornelius, you self-righteous old fool…it’s no good appealing to my conscience,’ Renard said. ‘I don’t have one.’

Renard swiftly produced his pistol from underneath his body. Quaint’s eyes widened. As the Frenchman pulled the pistol’s trigger,
his face was briefly illuminated in a glare of amber light. The bullet struck his shoulder…The shoulder of the arm attached to the hand that held the fingers that gripped the roof rack of the carriage…and Cornelius Quaint fell. He fell clumsily, and he fell hard.

Seeing the lifeless figure of his fallen enemy lying in the middle of the street, Renard saluted. ‘A valiant effort, Cornelius…but in the end, was there ever any doubt as to which of us would be the victor?’

T
HE FREEZING WIND
chilled the cobbled stone gound, and as Cornelius Quaint tried to lift his battered and wounded body, its surface clung to his cheek. Wincing in agony as he put weight upon his shoulder, he slowly pulled himself up off the ground, like pulling a bandage from an open wound. Quaint lost his balance, and crashed back down onto the wet stones. After what seemed like an immeasurable amount of time, he finally managed to force his body to obey his commands, and he rose to his feet.

It had been precious seconds since Renard had shot him, but the dull ache barely even registered. It was the endgame, and he only hoped that he could make it in time to prevent Renard from fulfilling his plan. Pushing the physical pain to the back of his mind, he continued the pursuit, making good use of his determined, single-minded ability to focus upon his quarry.

‘You’re going to pay for the pain you have wrought, Renard,’ Quaint said, as he picked at his tattered and ripped clothes with a limp hand. ‘Or, at the very least, you’ll pay for my bloody suit.’

After an arduous quarter-mile hobble, Quaint was less than fifty yards from the now battered and beaten carriage, when he saw Melchin tying up the coach’s horse outside the huge Weir House. A bemused Quaint felt a small semblance of energy creep back into his body at the sight. The conjuror’s unconquerable doggedness might just give him the edge he needed.

Sneaking as low as he could, Quaint scuttled through the long dark shadows and grabbed Melchin by his collar, dragging him to the ground. The man was flustered and cowardly, but Quaint was in no mood to play nice.

‘Please don’t hit me,’ Melchin yelped. ‘I don’t want no bother, sir! I’m just a driver!’

‘Run,’ Quaint sneered, his face up close to Melchin’s. The poison was evident now on his face, the excited blood vessels creating red blotches on his cheeks, and he had rims around his eyes, accentuating his rage in a truly demonic fashion. ‘As fast, and far away as you can,’ Quaint thrust his face closer to the quivering driver. ‘Go!’

Melchin scrambled to his feet, and did as Quaint had ordered. He ran as if his life depended on it down the street, his footsteps echoing into the distance like castanets.

Quaint painfully removed his overcoat, and pulled his handkerchief from his pocket. He folded it into a square swab, and pressed it hard onto the bullet wound on his shoulder. Feeling the nub of the iron projectile just beneath his flesh, he winced. He was loathe to scream—he would not give Renard the pleasure. Quaint wiped a trickle of blood from his nose with his cuff, and stared towards the Weir House as if it were the Devil’s residence itself.

‘That’s the
hors-d’oeuvres
done with…now for the main course,’ he said.

The outside of the Weir House building was a completely different affair than inside. It was essentially a large, warehouse-like containment building, with tall, vertical windows set high into the walls, and huge wooden struts that ran the length of the white building, leading down to the elongated jetty that ran parallel. Inside the building were housed over twenty mechanical weirs; small, metal plates with V-shaped notches cut into them, designed to measure and regulate water depth at certain times of the year. Each plate was fitted to spiralling metal domes housed in the water. The noise both within and without was tremendous; small wonder then that the only tenement buildings located nearby were one step shy of Cheapside, London’s fleapit not too far up the river, a haven for users and abusers of opiates, absinthe, petty crime and prostitution.

Quaint made his way to the rear of the building and climbed the wall up to one of the church-like windows, peering cautiously inside. A giant, cog-powered metal construct could be seen clearly, and standing on an observation platform at the rear of the building was Renard. He was scouring the weirs as if he’d lost something, searching for the optimum place to tip the poison. From the weirs, it would mix with the main-flow of the water and be dragged down the length of the Thames. Feeling the acidic rush flow over him again, like a million tiny red ants scuttling under the surface of his skin, he was suddenly appreciative of the weapon’s power.

With his back pressed hard against the rear wall of the Weir House, Quaint mouthed silently and counted upon his fingers. Renard had surely emptied that pistol of his by now…but had he reloaded it? He would be gambling with his life if he just strolled in through the front door. Quaint looked up at the roof of the
building, but his pulsating left shoulder screamed against him doing anything even remotely strenuous, so an aerial entrance was out of the question. Quaint knew that a frontal assault was his best option…it was probably the last thing Renard would expect and, truth to tell, Cornelius Quaint did so love a good gamble.

Inside the Whitehall Weir House, Renard held the small glass vial in the palm of his hand. Not much bigger than a fountain pen, the deadly liquid looked harmless to the naked eye, and even Renard himself had questioned its potency, until he had watched the Bishop’s veins implode as the acidic parasitic liquid devoured him from the inside out. That was just the latest image in a long line of nightmarish scenes that the man had seen—and caused -during his adult life. This current plot would certainly be his most ambitious, but the only drawback was him not being able to see for himself the deaths that it would surely cause. He usually enjoyed seeing the fruits of his hard labour blossom in front of his eyes, but it was an acceptable loss.

Renard was lost in this world of his. Above the din of the swirling weirs, he was oblivious to the sight of Cornelius Quaint stumbling into the Weir House through the two large wooden doors behind him.

The circus-owner—come opportunist, come sometime conjuror—took advantage of his foe’s fascination with the swirling waters. His face knotted into a grim mask of fury, Quaint slammed his sizeable bulk into the wiry Frenchman. Both men crashed to the metal floor of the house’s observation platform. Quaint’s shoulder lanced a spark of acidic fire as he hit the ground. Every molecule of his body cursed him, but still he pressed onwards, his fists flailing
wildly as he pummelled the French mercenary with rapid, powerful punches.

‘Quaint? Alive?’ Renard yelled. ‘You’re signing your own death warrant.’

‘No, Renard,’ Quaint said. ‘I’m signing yours.’

‘And what about my mother, hmm? You just left her to rot?’ Renard said, trying to twist his body from under Quaint. He punched Quaint’s wounded shoulder, and the conjuror screamed with an uncommon wail of agony.

‘There’s more at stake here than just one life—even Destine’s -what you propose is mass slaughter, Renard!’ shouted Quaint, a spray of spittle forming between his clenched teeth. ‘You’re planning on killing hundreds of people.’

‘Actually, our analysts predict
thousands.’
Renard pulled at Quaint’s coat, and kicked him aside. Getting to his feet, Renard towered over Quaint’s hunched form. ‘Do you really think you have it in you to stop me, Cornelius? Look at you—lying there…half-dead. You’re a washed-up, middle-aged, has-been conjuror…fit enough only to run a bloody circus!’

‘Better what
I
am than what
you
are, Renard.’ Quaint lunged with his fist towards Renard’s face, but the Frenchman easily avoided it.

Quaint gripped onto the metal railings of the platform and hoisted himself up to his feet. The worrying thing was that Renard was right. Quaint was practically running on fumes, his energy reserves depleted.

‘You know, it’s funny,’ laughed Renard. ‘You tell everyone that you’re a magician…but in all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never actually seen you
do any
magic tricks,’ Renard lashed out with his fist, catching Quaint another blow square in his wounded shoulder. ‘You had a chance! You had a chance to
save
your precious
Madame Destine…and you have squandered that chance. Now, both of you will die.’

‘You know me better than most, Renard,’ said Quaint, glaring menacingly at his foe as he nursed his bloodied shoulder. Red trickles of blood oozed between his fingers. ‘You know I’ll stop you…even if it costs me my life.’

‘Well, you’ve got about five minutes, if you last that long; I’ve seen lepers who look more healthy.’ Renard stepped closer and looked Quaint up and down. ‘If you could only see yourself, Cornelius, you are nothing but a husk. A mere shadow of your former self,
monsieur!
It is almost unsporting of me; I think that maybe I should shoot you like the lame old nag you are,
non?’
Renard reached into his mud-stained jacket, and pulled out the revolver. ‘You may have got lucky before, but at this range, even
you
can’t pull a vanishing trick.’

‘I won’t
have
to if I’ve counted correctly,’ said Quaint dryly.

‘Enough pithy conversation, Cornelius,’ Renard said.
‘Au revoir.’

Renard pulled the pistol’s trigger.

An empty snap sounded out around the Weir House.

He squinted at Quaint, and then the gun. He pulled the trigger, again and again. The pistol’s hammer struck nothing but an empty chamber. Quaint’s gamble had paid off—luckily for him. Renard threw the gun furiously at Quaint, who side-stepped out of the way. His legs almost gave way beneath him, his muscles still unsteady. He gripped onto the railings for balance.

‘You are a tired old man, and I hardly need a gun to finish you off,’ Renard said, edging slightly closer to Quaint. ‘It looks to me as if you are
already
dead.’ Renard crossed his arms, and a smug grin emerged on his gaunt face. ‘That poison’s not eating away at your insides already, is it? I told you this was potent stuff.’ He removed a vial of the poison from his pocket, and waved it in the
air. Quaint clutched at it drunkenly, miles off target, and Renard snatched it from his flailing grasp. ‘You’re lucky that poison you consumed wasn’t mixed with water, Cornelius, or it would be ten times as strong. You will soon have a front row seat to watch its effects!’

‘You monster…I’ll stop you!’ said Quaint.

‘How,
mon ami?
Look at you! Look at your hands. You are shaking like a leaf in autumn.’

Quaint stared down at his quivering hands. Renard was right. They were gradually shifting from side to side, blurred into nightmarish mutations, replaced by mirror images of multiple hands, each one seeming to emanate from his wrists. This was the poison inside of him, transfixing his vision, betraying his eyes. His stubbornness alone had battled its effects so far, but now, in his weakened state, the poison was gaining the upper hand. It was reaching a crescendo inside of him, and his strength had finally given up the ghost. It was pointless to fight a battle you could not win…

He collapsed onto his knees, trying desperately to decipher what was reality and what was illusion. His mind was feeding his eyes falsehoods. His ears were hearing non-existent sounds all around him. Up was down and down was up, and the room was spinning like a feather in a hurricane. The more he tried to focus, the more blurred his sight became.