The Fall of the House of Cabal (39 page)

The smile faded. She looked out into the lacerated corpse of dead London. ‘Tell yourself what you like. It is my will that we are here.' She dropped the sheaf of unpinned reports to the floor, where they scattered. Doing his best to maintain some dignity, General Fischer gathered them up. ‘Now tell
me,
what has happened in London in the last twenty-four hours?'

‘I shall find out immediately.' He strode to the pearl-handled electrical voice pipe and cranked the handle. ‘This is General Fischer. Bring me all patrol and intelligence reports submitted for the London area—'

‘Central London. I am only interested in central London.'

‘Correction, specifically central London in the last twenty-four hours. Deliver them to the queen's study immediately. No, not ‘in an hour',
now,
damn you, or do you want to explain your testudinal slowness to Her Majesty yourself? I thought not. Get on with it!'

The reports arrived hastily crammed into a file box twenty minutes later in the hands of a pale and sweating adjutant who dared not look at Ninuka as he handed it over to Fischer. For her part, she amused herself by crossing her arms and staring at the young officer until he backed out of her presence, bowing and saluting and ultimately falling over when he was exiting the room.

She laughed at that, and there was a startling innocence that startled the general. Then it was gone, and she was holding out her hand. ‘First report.'

He followed her around the room as she studied report after report, rarely doing more than briefly scanning the first page before dropping it to the floor and holding out her hand for the next. Back and forth they promenaded, a thickening spillage of intelligence in their wake. Then she stopped so abruptly that he almost walked into her.

‘What's this?'

He took it from her and quickly read it. ‘The National Gallery. Foot patrol discovered six male corpses, drained of bodily fluids … Surely
nosferatu,
Majesty?'

‘Read on.'

He did so. ‘Webs? Some sort of giant spider? I can only guess it is one of your … one of the abominations the curse visited upon the city.'

‘No, General. I am very aware of what my curse visited upon London, and giant spiders were not invited.' She put the report on her desk, an impressive white structure trimmed with gold, and yet largely constructed from board and aluminium to keep its weight down, presenting an air of
faux
solidity due to a thick desktop and bolts holding it to the deck. ‘The next report now.' He handed it over and they continued their short, repetitive walk punctuated by littering.

Fischer was not surprised by her second halt as they were at the bottom of the box. All that remained was a short handwritten memo apologising to Her Gracious Imperial Majesty, but a patrol shadowing one of the aeroship sweeps was overdue and therefore its report was not available. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked off to one side. ‘They were supposed to be cleaning up after the MIAS
Lammasu
. They last exchanged signals'—she went to the window and pointed—‘just down there. I saw the
Lammasu
open fire just beyond the perimeter. But that was hours ago.' She looked into the darkness again. Fischer could see little more than their own reflections in the glass, but Queen Orfilia's gaze seemed to drive out deep into the city's decaying heart. Perhaps it was. ‘Where are you?' Fischer thought she was talking to him for a moment, but she was only thinking out loud. But those thoughts confused him. ‘Why are you taking so long? Hardly the first time you barged into my home.' She noticed the general watching her in the glass and smiled at him. ‘I am expecting visitors, General. Four of them. They will attempt entry to this vessel, and they may even succeed. Do not underestimate the ingenuity of their leader.'

‘I will double the guard and put them on a high state of alert immediately, Your Majesty!'

‘No, you will not. I want them alive—ideally—but I want them in my grasp. Particularly their leader; a pale man with blond hair who habitually wears black. Oh, and he will almost certainly have a leech with him, a rather handsome man with light brown hair. You may have to destroy him; equip the men accordingly. As for the other two, I cannot guess. They are of lesser importance in any case.'

‘How do you—' began Fischer, but he saw her smile fade instantly and the question faltered to an untidy death in his throat. ‘Yes, Your Majesty. It will be done.'

He hurried from her presence, propelled by urgency and relief at being dismissed.

She hardly cared. She placed a hand on the glass and looked out once more, seeing the corpses, the chaos, and the gutted city for what they were—stage props for a final confrontation. She would keep Johannes Cabal alive only as long as she was sure that she might need him. Once that time was gone, she would be happy to kill him herself. Her father's pistol was in the drawer of her desk, awaiting the moment of revenge.

She saw the reflection of her father's funerary urn in its place in a case mounted safely upon the wall where she could see it as she worked. ‘Good girl.' She could hear his voice in her imagination, or perhaps the urn spoke. It hardly mattered which.

Cabal was out there. Soon he would be hers, the game would be over, and she would have the prize. She whispered to the night, ‘My will be done.'

*   *   *

‘Isn't this the same plan as we had before?' Zarenyia was down to two legs again and resenting the loss, temporary though it was.

‘Not quite.' The remnants of the Mirkarvian patrol were now represented by only the lieutenant and a single private who walked with a slight hunch in an attempt to hide his possession of a bust. The borrowed medical officer's uniform was in too poor a state to go without drawing attention long before the plan required it, so Horst had returned for his own clothes, and seemed the happier for it. He was not with their little pretence of two soldiers bringing in a brace of prisoners. Instead he was off trying his best to be a general of the undead and Lord of the Dead without bursting into either tears or laughter. ‘Now,' said Johannes Cabal, ‘we have a reserve force.'

‘Doesn't that make us the main force?' Miss Smith had cheered up a little on finding an umbrella shop that she had looted of a nicer black lace parasol than its predecessor, which was showing signs of combat fatigue. ‘Johannes, there are four of us. What sort of main force consists of four people, three women and a man. Well, two women, something fairly like a woman, and a man?'

‘Are you being cheeky, darling?' Zarenyia smiled delightedly at Miss Smith. ‘I love it when people are cheeky with me. Sometimes I don't even kill them for it. Usually, but not always.'

‘Dibs, madam,' said Cabal, trying to bring the ribaldry under control before things became any stranger than they already were. ‘You gave dibs to ensure the safety of the whole party.'

‘Technically, not for Smithy here,' Zarenyia pointed out, ‘but don't worry. I was just teasing.' She leaned her head towards Miss Smith and whispered, ‘I'm sure you love being teased, don't you?'

Miss Smith looked straight ahead and did so with a notably fixed expression. ‘I'm not even sure why I'm here any more. If Ninuka really is the fifth part of this … what would you call it? A ritual? Then what business is it of mine? I'm risking my life for nothing here.'

‘Your situation is complicated, I admit,' said Cabal, ‘but if you require some degree of self-interest, then your isolation from the Dreamlands is surely sufficient. If you stay with us, things may improve for you. If you do not, they will surely deteriorate.'

‘Thanks, Cabal. Knew I could depend on you to bolster morale and supply pep. You've really put a new spring in my step.'

Her step remained resolutely unspringy.

They were closing on a checkpoint set up some hundred yards from the end of the Mall where it bifurcated into Constitution Hill and Spur Road when a complication arose. Horst suddenly halted as if hearing a loud sound, looked over to his right, and said in horror, ‘Minty!'

‘What?' Cabal looked to the space where he assumed the child to be. ‘What's amiss?'

‘She's burning!'

And, to those that could see her, she was indeed aflame. She struggled back, vaporous wisps of cold blue fire wrapping around her. To those who could hear her, she was screaming, high-pitched and terrified.

‘It 'urts! It 'urts!' She was sobbing. When all sensation has been annulled and is merely a memory, it seemed unusually cruel that its return should be of such a violent flavour.

Horst danced around in an agony of his own, seeing her, hearing her, yet unable to help directly. ‘Get on the floor! Roll around! Put it out!'

She tried, but the flame would not be diminished by such a mundane trick. She rolled hopelessly around, her screams shrill and unending, but the immolation continued regardless.

Until the flames suddenly winked out.

Cabal looked at Horst's astonished expression, the moment marked by the cessation of his dance of anxiety. ‘What has happened? Is the girl…?' He almost said ‘dead', but hesitated for reasons of accuracy as much as tact.

‘They went out,' said Horst. ‘They just … went out.'

Minty climbed back to her feet and examined her hands that, moments before, had been burning like dry sticks. To her obvious confusion, they were unmarked. ‘I was all on fire, I was,' she said. ‘All alight like a Chrissmus tree.'

‘She's unharmed, Johannes. What happened?'

Cabal thought about it for a moment, and then said, ‘Ask her to walk towards the palace slowly, with one hand extended. If anything happens, she should step back immediately.'

Horst turned to relay the command, but Minty was already doing it, shying away from her own pointing index finger as if it was made of dynamite. That was perhaps not such a bad simile, as—a few cautious palaceward shuffles later—it exploded.

‘Ahhhhhhhhhh!' screamed Minty, with permissible dismay. She fell backwards, and the finger was instantly extinguished and rendered unmarked. This Horst dutifully relayed to Cabal.

‘The area is warded,' he replied. ‘Difficult to extend against the corporeal, but against an ethereal entity such a ghost, easy enough to cover a substantial area if you have the resources.'

‘Ninuka fears ghosts?' said Leonie. ‘But why?'

‘Not ghosts. Miss Minty's discomfort is a corollary effect. The warding is doubtless to prevent certain arcane forms of surveillance, scrying and the like.'

‘She doesn't want to be spied upon?'

‘Yes. But, in all modesty, the number of persons within the ruins of London that might be expected to carry out such a practise would reasonably be considered as none. Not a one.'

‘This is for you?'

‘For
us
. Yes.'

*   *   *

They moved on shortly afterwards, leaving Minty in their wake. Horst looked back more than once, seeing her standing alone at the edge of the warded area, daring to come no closer, yet loath to walk away. She started to once, but dithered and came back. She watched them until they were lost from sight.

*   *   *

They approached the checkpoint. ‘Let me do the talking,' said Cabal, as if anyone else was keen to. ‘I can do a passable Mirkarvian accent.'

‘I can do a perfect one,' said Zarenyia, ‘but nobody let me dress up as a soldier.'

‘You would call the sentry a “poppet”, and that would be the end of the subterfuge.'

‘True, I probably would, but that might not be such a disaster as you suppose. That's the thing with terribly manly men, darling: I bet they get up to all sorts of shenanigans after lights out in the barracks. Just imagine.'

‘I would rather not.'

‘Oh, go on.' After a moment she added absently, off in a fancy of her own, ‘Baby oil…'

*   *   *

They reached the checkpoint, and it took a herculean effort by Cabal to address the sergeant there as ‘Sergeant' and not ‘poppet'. He had been preparing a detailed explanation of why he was reporting to the wrong outpost, why his patrol was so sadly depleted, and how he had come into possession of civilian prisoners, but the sergeant was uninterested, simply pointing the way to the remains of Buckingham Palace's northern corner for full debriefing. Thus, relieved at getting past the first trial of what threatened to be quite a gauntlet of them, yet dismayed that his rehearsed answers would go unheard, at least for the moment, they moved on.

‘We're in trouble,' muttered Leonie Barrow.

‘We're in the ruins of a monster-haunted London occupied by Mirkarvian troops. You've only just noticed that means trouble?' said Cabal.

‘Guard duty is for privates. One of the privileges of being a non-commissioned officer is delegating jobs like that to squaddies. I come from a family with a lot of police and a lot of armed services people in it. Believe me, I know.'

‘So why was a sergeant in sole command of a checkpoint?' said Miss Smith.

‘Exactly. Unless the job was not just to be watching it, but watching for who comes through it and not making a mess of it when somebody specific approaches. Is there any way Ninuka might be expecting us, Cabal?'

‘Of course she's expecting us. I confess I was not expecting her attentiveness to be quite so prescient. You are right, Miss Barrow. We are probably detected.'

‘Phew!' Zarenyia sighed a melodramatic sigh of relief. ‘Oh, good. I do so hate all this shilly-shallying. May I get all leggy and start killing people now?'

‘You may not, madam, but that time is drawing close.'

She nodded sagely. ‘Deferred gratification. I've heard about that. So this is what it feels like. Hmmmm.' She considered this new sensation. ‘It's slightly irritating.'