by A. C. Cobble
“Tell me, Oliver,” said Raffles, assuming the same friendly tone he always did, only the quick breaths in between words showing any effect of the beating he’d just given Oliver. “Where is the girl, and what does she know? Tell me who else you’ve told, and we can end this quickly. I have no personal vendetta against you, boy. Don’t drag it out.”
Oliver spit another mouthful of blood and growled, “You want to know what we know? We know everything, Raffles. We know about your dark betrayal. We know about the sacrifice, the terrible bargain you and your partners agreed to. Thousands of souls, Randolph. An entire city! Sacrificed for nothing more than power?”
“Power?” scoffed the director. “There is nothing more— How did you know about our sacrifice, Oliver? How did you learn about Middlebury?”
Oliver gapped at the larger man. Middlebury. What was he talking about, sacrificing Middlebury?
Raffles reached out and clutched the back of Oliver’s hair, tugging his head up. “How did you find out about Middlebury? We just made those plans, boy. The material isn’t even in place yet. Did one of those two… No, no, that could not have been it. How do you know, Oliver? Are you working directly with the other?”
Oliver blinked at the director. The man looked fuzzy through vision already clouded by a swelling right eye. Middlebury? The other? What the frozen hell was Raffles talking about?
Studying Oliver’s expression, Raffles shook his head and let go of Oliver’s. “You don’t know what that means, do you? You don’t know anything about the other, but you know of our plan to sacrifice Middlebury. How do you know that, boy?”
Oliver clambered to his feet, his head reeling with dizziness and pulsing with waves of dull pain.
“How do you know about Middlebury, Oliver?” asked Raffles, his voice quiet with menace. “We’ll find the girl, eventually. I do not need to torture you for that information, but Middlebury… I’m afraid I have to know. How did you find out about the sacrifice?”
A cold chill passed through Oliver’s body. Middlebury, why was Raffles speaking of a sacrifice in Middlebury? Oliver had meant Northundon, but… but that wasn’t what Raffles had thought. Raffles, his associates, they had something planned for Middlebury. Another sacrifice. They were going to sacrifice Middlebury!
“Normally in a situation like this,” pondered the director, looking at Oliver, “I would push your face through the shroud to the underworld. I would show you a vision of that cold and terrible place, but you’ve already seen it, haven’t you? You visited Northundon on the other side. You’re not affrighted of that place, though you should be. What then? Pain, suffering, threats against your family? I can cause unceasing agony. I could send a shade after your beloved brother and kill him in his bed right now. I will do it, Oliver. You know that about me, that I’ll do what I have to. You may not know that I’ve been responsible for the deaths of hundreds, so many I don’t bother to count any longer. Do you understand, I no longer count how many people I’ve killed? It does not keep me up at night thinking about the souls in Middlebury who will pay my passage to breach the barrier. There is nothing I will not do to you, boy, and it is just a matter of time before you break under my ministrations. Save me and yourself. Tell me how you found out about the sacrifice, and I will kill you quickly. I will send your soul safely to the other side.”
“The taint of the dark trinity isn’t on you,” muttered Oliver, shaking his head to clear it. “He lied to us. The old man… we followed the taint to you, but…”
Raffles laughed. “The dagger, of course. You followed the blessing on the dagger to us. We had it the entire time, you fool. Yates has been holding it in Westundon right under your nose. How did you find it, was it the priestess?”
Oliver grimaced, ready for the director to pounce, but the man did not. Raffles stood there calmly, waiting for an answer.
“Yates. That’s where the girl is?” guessed Raffles. “You came looking for the blessing and saw I had the dagger. You followed me to the meeting with the churchman. That’s why you surprised us in the Oak & Ivy, to confirm your hunch. Let me guess, the girl is going after Bishop Yates tonight? You thought to ambush us both?”
Oliver wiped a streamer of blood from his chin and did not respond.
“She is.” Raffles nodded. “You’d want to surprise us, take us both down at the same time. What is her plan, sneak up on the churchman and put a knife in his back? Well, Oliver, he has a surprise for her. Your girl will die just as you will. She’s not coming to your aid, but that still does not explain how you knew of our plans in Middlebury. Tell me, boy, before I have to get nasty. Did you overhear us speaking, somehow? Did the shades in your vision of Northundon tell you something? I must know.”
“Your guesses and conjecture are nowhere near the mark,” muttered Oliver.
Raffles sneered. “They’re right on the mark.”
“What will you gain from the sacrifice?” demanded Oliver, attempting to draw himself up, but the pain in his mid-section where Raffles kicked him left him hunched over, grasping his stomach.
“I am the one asking the questions,” scoffed Raffles. He paused. “That sounds like it is out of some trashy pulp novel, does it not? You want to know what I hope to achieve, what this is all for? Immortality, my boy. Immortality and power you cannot imagine. I will bind the dark trinity, and with its might, nothing can stand in my way, not even death. If it had been you instead of us who’d stumbled across the trove that we did, would you have turned away, or would you have pursued it as avidly as I? I think you would have walked the path, Oliver. You’ve never been one to turn from a challenge.”
Oliver looked up at the director and met his gaze. “Rot in hell.”
He flung himself at the other man.
The director, assisted by his sorcerous bindings, ducked, caught Oliver in the midsection with his shoulder, and pitched the duke over his head.
Crashing to the floor, Oliver groaned. Then, he was hauled up again and tossed across the room, landing on his brother’s giant desk, sliding across it, bouncing off his brother’s chair, and thumping to the floor beyond. Scrambling, he tried to get up, but Raffles was there, grabbing him, slamming him against the wall, and then slinging him again into the air where he smashed into his brother’s hutch, crushing decanters half-full of wine and scattering a dozen broken wine glasses, the crystal shards embedding painfully into his arm.
He snatched up an unbroken one and hurled it at Raffles, who was quickly advancing on him. The director fended it off, but Oliver threw two more decanters behind the first. The heavy, liquid-filled crystal thudded against Raffles’ body.
The old man was aided in speed and strength by his sorcery, but Oliver saw he could be damaged. Raffles was touching a bleeding cut on his forehead from where one of the decanters had struck him. He looked at Oliver with murder in his eyes.
Oliver grabbed the broken neck of a bottle. Raffles rushed him, and Oliver swung the broken bottle at the older man’s head. The director blocked the blow and chopped down on Oliver’s arm, numbing the hand. Dead fingers let the broken crystal slip to the carpet. Raffles punched Oliver in the stomach again and hurled him across the room.
Oliver, tumbling across the floor, knew he couldn’t last much longer. None of the blows he sustained were crippling individually, but the director was too strong and too fast. Raffles was losing his temper, and there was no certainty he would be able to control his rage. The moment he wanted to, the director could end the fight. Fist to fist, Oliver knew he was no match for the other man’s unnatural prowess. If the director bothered to use more of the tricks he certainly had up his sleeve, then it would only get worse. The questions Oliver wanted to ask the man, the plan to goad Raffles into revealing what he knew of Lilibet, was falling apart. But Middlebury…
He shook his head, Middlebury... It wasn’t what he’d tried to learn, but now that he knew, he had to tell Sam. They had to stop it. It was time to end the fight. Oliver stood and raised his fists.
>
“You’re a fool, boy,” said Raffles.
Then, he charged, raining a flurry of blows on Oliver, backing him up toward the double doors that led to the veranda.
Between panting breaths, Raffles insisted, “You cannot fight me, Oliver. Tell me how you know our plans!”
“You told me, Randolph,” cried Oliver, shouting between forearms that he’d raised to absorb the older man’s strikes. “You told me everything.”
Snarling, Raffles reared and kicked Oliver in the chest, propelling him back, smashing through the doors to the patio in a hail of glass and broken wood.
Oliver skidded across the tiles outside, his body sliding across the cold stone and broken glass. He looked up and saw Raffles standing in the doorway.
“Forget it. Tell me, or don’t tell me. I’ve lost my patience,” muttered Raffles. The director stepped forward but stopped, his foot hanging mid-air. He extended the foot and tried to force his body forward but could not. “What is this?”
“I wasn’t sure that would work,” said Oliver, flopping onto his side and forcing himself up. His body ached, and his head felt like it had been rolled over by a mechanical carriage, but he was alive.
Raffles glared at him, confused, trying to raise an arm but finding it stuck.
“I appreciate your help, kicking me through that doorway,” continued Oliver. “I was worried I was going to have to figure a way to knock through it myself and have you chase after me.”
Tugging at his left arm with his right hand, Raffles tried to move it away but found it stuck. The director began to panic. He strained forward and fell, his arms glued together, his legs tangled with invisible threads.
“Glae worm filament,” explained Oliver, taking a step forward to look at the director’s predicament. “My man Winchester placed glae worm pods around the door frame a turn of the clock before I came in with your shades on my heels. When I crashed through the door, they exploded, shooting a web across this space. You walked right into it. The fresh filament is invisible and sticky as anything. It’s nearly unbreakable. In a turn of the clock, it will dry, and you would be able to wiggle your way out without it clinging to you, but I’m afraid you won’t have that much time, Director.”
“Let me go!” snapped Raffles, thrashing with his arms, straining with his fingers. Each movement only caused more of the fresh filament to stick to him, and in seconds, he was completely immobilized. Helplessly, he tried to stretch his hands down his body, but he couldn’t move them. He was completely stuck. “I-I…”
“Can’t reach your sorcerous triggers? Can’t direct your shades to attack?” asked Oliver mockingly. “Now is the time when you offer me the keys to your storeroom, an airship, or some other ludicrous bribe, but you know that won’t work on me.” His split lips curled into a painful smile. “No, Director, there is only one thing you can offer that might change what is to happen next.”
Speechless, Raffles stared at him, tugging futilely against the invisible strands of sticky filament that held him in place.
“Where is my mother?” asked Oliver.
“You’re… what?” replied Raffles. “She’s dead. You want me to find her on the other side? I—”
Oliver interrupted, “It was not you, then. Another hand was responsible for the sacrifice of Northundon? The shaman lied. Did he do it for revenge or because he somehow knew what you were planning? Was it your partners?”
Raffles gaped at him.
“Immortal, you said you would become?” questioned Oliver. “The spirits able to stop you from aging, preventing even the blood from leaving your body? We weren’t sure how far you’d progressed, weren’t sure if you’d already achieved some level of indestructibility. I wonder, could this dark trinity of yours stop red saltpetre munitions from incinerating you?”
“No!” shrieked Raffles. “You don’t understand. We’re so close! If you kill me, the spirits—”
“I do understand,” replied Oliver, moving to the edge of the patio where he recovered a canvass bag. He pulled out a paper-wrapped tube and a striker. “I understand, and that’s why I’m doing this.”
He lit the striker, showering sparks onto the paper tube. It caught, flaring a three-yard long blast of bright white sparks and billowing smoke. Holding the flare, Oliver glanced at Raffles. The director was thrashing angrily, his portly filament-wrapped body doing an uncanny impression of a struggling worm.
“Sorcery is an art of preparation, is it not?” asked Oliver. “Well, I came prepared.”
Above him, he heard the creak of rope on wood and the swish of giant canvass sweeps clawing at the air.
He asked Raffles, “Any last words?”
The old man, prone on the stone floor, laughed bitterly. “I tried and failed. I have no regrets about that. Remember this, and know your own regrets. I will see you again in hell. I have friends there, and I can’t wait to introduce you to them.”
A rope net thumped onto the tiles behind Oliver, and a voice called out, “Hurry up, m’lord! It ain’t easy to hold an airship steady in these winds.”
Oliver held the flare low, looking for a long cord on the tiles. When he saw the cord, he held the flare to it, and it ignited. The cord had been soaked in lamp oil, and it burned bright and fast, illuminating the struggling director as the sizzling flame passed beside him, his face lit by the fire, angry and awful.
Oliver dropped the flare and spun, running to catch the hanging rope net, lifting away as the Cloud Serpent rose above him. He was a dozen yards above the patio when the flame on the wick vanished inside his brother’s study, finding the casks of red saltpetre munitions that Winchester had hidden there.
They exploded violently.
Fire burst out of the doorway, taking a storm of debris and broken stone with it. Every window in the room shattered and a stout section of stone wall blasted away, mortar and rocks scattering across the patio, smashing into the balustrade and raining down below.
Oliver grimaced, hoping no one in the courtyard at the base of the palace was hit. And he tried not to think how much his brother was going to charge him to fix the mess.
Raffles, or what had once been the director, was lost in the fire and the smoke. It was, perhaps, a bit overkill, but they hadn’t known if the man had some sort of sorcerous connection which could preserve him. Oliver and Sam had both figured the best bet was to make sure there was nothing left to preserve. Watching the billow of flame below, Oliver was certain they’d done the job. Director Randolph Raffles was dead.
He wondered if they would be able to recover the body or if there even was a body left. It would be unrecognizable, after such a blast, but he and Sam would know who it had been. It would give them some comfort, seeing the charred remains.
Sam. He hoped her role in the evening was going as smoothly as his. Wiping a sticky trail of blood from his chin with one hand, the other hand wrapped secure in the rope net, he thought that maybe it could have gone a little bit smoother.
Below him, the city of Westundon sparkled like moonlight on the sea. All of his thoughts turned to the priestess who was down there, somewhere.
The Priestess XIX
Feet stomped up the solid wooden stairs. The scent of rosemary and lemon proceeded the man as he stood outside of the door, testing it then opening it. Light spilled into the room, a wedge of yellow widening as the door swung, illuminating a wardrobe, a bed, a pair of knee-high boots, and then Sam, sitting in a chair, her feet up on the bed.
“Hello, Raymond.”
The man in the doorway put his hand on his dagger, his eyes darting from Sam to the long, narrow lump in the center of the bed.
“It is what you think it is,” confirmed Sam.
“Your work?” he asked coldly.
“No,” responded Sam. “Bishop Yates.”
“Bridget and I came here to kill you,” said Raymond, still in the doorway. “Bishop Yates is the one who brought us. If he wanted Bridget or I dead, he could have done it on the airship over h
ere. Nice try, Samantha.”
Sam let her boots fall to the floor. “I thought you came to Westundon because of the letter I sent to Bishop Constance. Did she get it?”
Raymond frowned at her.
“I’ve identified the sorcerer Duke Wellesley and I were looking for,” she continued. “Remember, the one I’d asked for your help with? Bishop Constance did not believe me, but now, I have proof. The sorcerer is Bishop Yates.”
“That’s a rather bold accusation, don’t you think?” said Raymond, his eyes darting about nervously. “You want me to believe the man who brought us to Westundon to stamp out sorcery is, himself, a sorcerer? A bishop of all people? Come, now, Samantha. That is too convenient. I’m a fop, not a fool.”
She saw his gaze settling on the long, sheet-covered lump on the bed. “Do you want to see her? I’ll take the sheet off myself so you do not think I am staging a trap.”
“A trap,” he muttered suspiciously.
“If I meant to ambush you,” she said, “I would have done it the moment you opened the door. You would have caught shot from both barrels of a twin blunderbuss. You’re experienced enough at this game, Raymond. Killing you isn’t my goal.”
He grunted. “I know you don’t want to kill me, yet. What is it you do want?”
Ignoring the question, she stood slowly, keeping her hands up. Carefully, she reached down and grabbed the corner of the blankets. She peeled them back, tugging to rip the linens from Bridget’s face where they’d gotten stuck from the drying blood.
Lying on her back, the dead Knife was naked. Her body was unmarked, except for her face where the skin had been delicately removed. Red flesh and white bone shone in the light from the open door.
Raymond au Clair looked like he might become sick. “Why would…”
“Why would I do this?” Sam finished for him. “I wouldn’t, Raymond. I know you two were set on my trail by the bishop, but what purpose would this mutilation serve? If I thought I needed to kill you, I would, but I would do it efficiently. If that’s what I wanted, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you.”
