The Jade Queen

by Jack Conner

  He nodded, and soon she brought him his dinner. It was greasy, hot and delicious, the best meal he’d had since the war. Something about action fired the blood, made his taste buds more receptive, more alive. As he was finishing up, sucking on his fingers loudly, he detained the waitress yet again when she came to refill his glass of brandy.

  “Ever heard of someone called the Lady?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “She might be a guest at the Queen’s Arms.”

  “I’m not acquainted with all the guests at the Arms, now am I?” She paused, then admitted, “There are some strangers stayin’ there, I know that much.”

  “Strangers at a hotel -- not so unusual, surely.”

  “I don’t mean that. Not like regular guests. Like people coming and going, but they all know each other, or seem to. Some stay for longer. And it’s been goin’ on for a while now, not like for a convention. I’ve served several of ‘em lunch and dinner in the last few months. They don’t talk to me much -- unlike some people -- but they seem real important-like. Like they’re lords or somethin’. People ‘round here don’t like ‘em, I can tell you that!”

  Intrigued, he finished his glass, paid his tab and left. The wind blew even colder than it had when he’d arrived, sweeping down from the ruin-covered hills, and he huddled his shoulders as he stalked through the cobbled streets, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the stone buildings around him. No street lights lit the way, but he made for a tower of light, the tallest building in town, and when he drew near he saw a bold sign proclaim THE QUEEN’S ARMS. These words were printed above and below the depiction of a coat of arms. Lynch frowned when he saw it: a man’s naked hand clutched a blazing, stylized sun, as if about to crush it, or perhaps steal it. Above the sign reared the grand, baroque immensity of the hotel. Lynch did not know when it had been built, but if it had been built especially for the silver boom then the silver boom had occurred long ago. Wind howled off squatting gargoyles and screamed off peaked gables and cornices.

  Squaring his shoulders, Lynch stepped inside.

  The warm air blasted him and for some reason made him shudder. The lobby was old-fashioned, full of overstuffed furniture, floral wallpaper with fanciful, overripe scrollwork, a massive fireplace of heaped stone big enough for several men to stand in with room to wear bowlers, and a smiling receptionist behind a mahogany counter. A gold-framed mirror hung on the wall behind the middle-aged man, right next to another depiction of the strange coat of arms.

  “Room for one, please,” Lynch said. He slipped some cash across the desk for use as a deposit.

  “What name will you be checking in under?”

  Lynch hesitated, then smiled. “Lars Gunnerson.” That would get their attention. Then, as the receptionist wrote something into a ledger, Lynch asked, “That coat of arms -- what is it?”

  “Why, it’s the Queen’s, of course.”

  Lynch smiled. “I rather think I know what the Queen’s coat of arms looks like -- the scepter and stag.”

  The man smiled at Lynch as though Lynch were simple. He had a thin face and very long sideburns, much longer than were fashionable. Perhaps they were stylish locally. “You are not familiar with local lore, I take it.”

  “Take away.”

  “Well, legends say this is where she lived. In her final days.”

  “Who?”

  Irritation entered the man’s voice. “The Queen!”

  It had been a long day and Lynch was in no mood to hear about whatever ancient hag had lived here. It had obviously been from a previous era, involving a different royal family with a different coat of arms. Whatever, it was merely something for the locals to take pride in and perhaps bring in the occasional tourist. He was sure the tourist shops were full of ceramic crowns and ginger bread scepters.

  “Just the room, please.”

  The receptionist sniffed, as if it were about time Lynch said something sensible. He took a key off the rear wall, passed it to Lynch. “Room 314, sir. Normally we would carry your bags up, of course, but it is late -- “ he said this somewhat accusingly -- “and I see you have no bags in any case.” He said this even more accusingly.

  Lynch tipped an imaginary hat. “You missed your calling. You should have been a detective. They could do with a few smart chaps like you. I know.”

  The receptionist glowered, and Lynch, feeling lighter, started to leave. Then he remembered the other reason he’d come to the Arms. “A friend of mine is staying here, or so I heard. An old family friend. Perhaps you’ve had a lady of quality check in?”

  The man eyed him narrowly. “I highly doubt you’re familiar with the Lady. And we do not give out our guests’ room numbers.”

  “Perhaps you could pass a note to her for me.”

  A long sigh escaped the receptionist’s lips, but he passed across pen and paper and said, “Do make it brief. I would not want to impinge upon her time. She is quite busy, always coming and going.”

  “Quite.”

  Lynch scrawled Meet me for tea. 10 a.m. Signed: L. G.

  One way or another he would get their attention. He folded the paper and gave it to the receptionist, who said, “I will see that she gets it. Is there anything further?” From his tone it was obvious that if there were anything further it would be a great imposition.

  Lynch made his way toward the richly carpeted stairs. He noted the lift, situated not far from the stairs. It not only went up but down, as if into the basement. Strange. It was odd enough that a lift would have been built into this old hotel to begin with, but that it should delve belowground Lynch found exceedingly peculiar. He took the stairs. It would not do to get trapped in a cage, especially now that he had put his enemies on alert.

  He found his room. The key turned in the lock and the thick oak door swung open to reveal a dark suite, bureaus and cabinets looming like minotaurs in the darkness. He switched on a few lamps, mapped the rooms in his head -- the foyer, the drawing room, the bedroom, the sliding doorway to the large balcony -- then found the bar and poured himself a nice stiff glass of port. Sighing, he collapsed into an overstuffed chair and drank.

  Lamp-light gleamed off the scrollwork on the chair and the rest of the furniture, scrollwork that matched that of the door frames and walls. Crimson cushions provided the seats to chairs and couches, and crimson sheets with gold threading covered the immense oaken bed. It really was all quite posh and Lynch delighted in the luxury. It occurred to him that he should be spending his last remaining Crowns more wisely. Then again, this affair would probably kill him. Why not enjoy it while he could?

  He looked about for tin containers of cocaine or other fresheners but, regrettably, the hotel did not supply such comforts. He supposed they were extra. Female companionship would be extra, too, he mused, and for a moment he lingered on the idea. He really was in an indulgent mood. It had been too long since his last hit of opium, and his veins burned for the need of it. He needed something to take its place. Would that he had a pinch of the precious powder! In his heart he knew it would only addle his brain, though, and get him killed all the quicker.

  “Ah, well,” he muttered. “To the business at hand.”

  The suite contained many pillows, and he gathered several of them now, ripped the sheets off the bed, arranged the pillows into the vague shape of a man, then replaced the sheets, shaking them loose and wrinkling them as he did so. After turning down the lights, he appraised the bed. Still not quite right. He beat the sheets out, disarranging them even further, then stepped back. Yes, that was about right. He placed a near-empty bottle of whiskey near where his hand would be for added authenticity and decided the mock-Lynch was as good as it was going to get.

  That done, he stepped out onto the balcony and slid the door shut. He opened it, shut it again -- testing how well it functioned. It made little noise and was relatively light. He could get in and out quickly and without much notice. It would do.

  Cold wind ble
w across the terrace, and he huddled his shoulders against it. He lit a cigarette, one of Sullivan’s last, leaned against the wrought-iron balustrade and began his vigil. He kept to the shadow, the drapes half-blocking him, virtually invisible to anyone inside.

  Unless they came through the balcony. Unnerved, he glanced upward, half-expecting some vampire-like form to slither down the façade toward him, fangs bared, cape fluttering.

  “Keep it together, Lynch old boy,” he muttered. He blew columns of smoke up toward the sky, at the sliver of a moon that vanished, then reappeared again behind drifting clouds, then vanished again as if teasing him. The nicotine hit his bloodstream and revitalized his brain, but he wanted more. Something stronger. His fingers almost trembled for it.

  He sucked on the cigarette till it was expended, then flung it away into the night. Started to light another but held himself back. The light would be visible to anyone watching. He should have thought of that earlier.

  Irritated, he settled in to wait.

  Hours passed. Despite the nap earlier, the temptation to sleep stole over him. He resisted. He crouched in the shadows, shifting his position only infrequently. Under the constant wind, he lost feeling in his earlobes, his fingers.

  He blinked. Had he fallen asleep? His nostrils flared. Sniffed.

  He smelled something sharp, acrid. Instantly his head swam. He shook it, moved back, away from the glass door. The smell thinned, torn by the wind. Whatever caused it issued within from the suite.

  He stared into the shadows of the bedroom. He had left several lamps on so that he could see, and by their soft light he noted movement. No person moved in the suite, no flesh and blood enemy. The air itself stirred. Some sort of gas, vapor, poured from the vent above the bed. Mist-like, it cascaded over the mock-Lynch and spilled throughout the expensive room, over the rich carpets and over-stuffed chairs, even curling toward the sliding glass door of the balcony. The cloud completely enveloped the shape on the bed.

  A narrow lance of light spilled into the bedroom. A moment later the glow backlit two figures as they stepped into the room. Their gas-masks lent them an alien, demonic appearance.

  They stalked toward the bed. Both wore the uniform of the security company the Society used, and both carried carbines with bayonets attached. As they neared the bed, the lead figure ripped away the bedding while the second coiled his weapon, raising it oto bring the long, gleaming bayonet blade down into the sleeping shape’s chest.

  Lynch took a deep breath and opened the door. Quiet as a cat, he slipped inside.

  His joints were stiff from the cold, and he was not as alert as he should have been. Instantly the poisonous vapor wrapped around him -- he could feel it probing his skin, his nostrils, his eye -- but he held his breath and crept up behind the soldier who had raised his rifle to spear him in his sleep. As he moved, Lynch raised his own gun, Meyers’s pistol. The stench of the vapor grew stronger; Lynch smelled it even though he dared not breathe.

  One of the thick carpets of the room tangled his lead foot. It created only a small sound, but it was enough. The trooper spun --

  Lynch clubbed him over the head. The impact jarred his fist. The crunch of metal on bone quickened his blood. The trooper fell away, eyes rolling up in his head.

  The other trooper leveled his gun.

  Lynch leapt.

  The trooper thrust his bayonet, but Lynch dashed the blade aside with his hook and brought the butt of his gun down at the trooper’s face.

  The trooper’s left forearm blocked the blow, and the trooper put some strength behind the effort, shoving him back. Lynch felt the heel of his rear foot strike the fallen man. His lungs burned. His chest felt like it was about to explode.

  He reversed the swing of his hook, sliced it back toward the trooper’s midsection. He felt the familiar rasp of torn fabric, perhaps even a bit of flesh, but he hadn’t been able to put much strength behind the blow.

  The trooper’s rifle was free, but the quarters were too tight to use it. He brought his knee up at Lynch’s groin. Lynch twisted, blocked the blow with his thigh. He smashed his fist across the trooper’s face but only struck the alien-like gas mask, like the head of a monstrous mosquito, proboscis extended to drink Lynch’s blood.

  The blow dislodged the gas mask, just a bit, and Lynch heard the man wheeze even as he struck Lynch in the jaw with a large fist. Lynch stumbled back under the blow, sprawled over the body of the first trooper. His back hit the floor. The last of his air exploded from his lungs. Desperate, he almost sucked in a gulp. Spots wheeled before him.

  The trooper repositioned his mask. He stepped forward, raising his gun for a shot. So far neither had been willing to fire their weapons and thus rouse the occupants of the hotel, but that time had ended.

  Lynch aimed his own gun, leveling it just a split second before the trooper. Lynch fired, the shot a great crash in the silent room. Gagging and disoriented, Lynch’s aim proved off. The shot struck the trooper high in the left chest, flung him back, directly onto the bed.

  Lynch climbed to hands and knees and crawled out of the bedroom. The gas had stopped issuing from the vent but the cloud had spread throughout the suite, dissipating as it went but still likely potent enough to do whatever it did. Fortunately the troopers had left the suite door open. A rectangle of light framed Lynch’s route to freedom.

  Just before he blacked out, he reached the door, hurled himself over the threshold, and slammed it behind him. He sucked in a great lung-full. The sudden release nearly caused him to faint. He sucked in another breath, and another. The spots retreated.

  Only then did he notice the figure standing in the hall.

  The troopers had left one of their number behind to guard the door. Or -- no -- this was the one who had dispatched them, their leader, coming along with them to oversee the operation and make sure their quarry did not escape.

  Gasping, wheezing, Lynch stared up at the supple, shapely figure of a lady. Even this late at night she wore an elegant blouse, black and ruffled, and though she wore pants, not a skirt, they showed elevated quality and softness, stuffed into the tops of high black boots, shiny and leather. Auburn hair with glinting highlights had been pulled back into a bun, and by the muted lights of the hallway Lynch saw her face -- her pale, beautiful face -- the red bow of her lips and the hazel of her eyes, brownish with flecks of gold. This, then, was the Lady.

  She was also something else. Someone else.

  For, even as she leveled her pistol at him, he recognized her clearly as Lady de Courtenay, the love of his life.

  He gasped, sure that he had died, or that the poison gas had caused him to hallucinate.

  For it was her. It could be no one else.

  “Eliza . . . ”

  Chapter 6

  Her eyes widened. “Lynchmort!” she said. The word came out in a sort of gasp.

  Her surprise gave him just enough time to raise his own pistol, aim it at her chest. At her sweet, delectable chest. Thoughts tumbled through his brain too fast and strange to make sense of. “Eliza -- ” The sound ended on a choke.

  Shaking his head, feeling the world tilt around him, he staggered to his feet, still keeping his gun trained on her. She seemed to blur before him, become two, then join again into one. Her wide hazel eyes stared at him. Her beautiful pale face paled even further.

  “Lynchmort . . .”

  They stared at each other. Had the earth quaked? Had it trembled and torn open demons to torment him? Surely he had died! The gas . . .

  He stepped further away from the door, feeling the gas’s effects as a thin wisp of it curled under the door. Probably too thin to be harmful, but he could not take the chance. Indeed, he saw Eliza herself -- if it was she -- had a gas-mask slung around her neck, her pretty, slender neck, like that of a swan. How he had loved to trace it with his fingers when she had been alive. Now that ugly, bug-like mask hung there, glistening, black and repulsive.

  He blinked at her, overcome. “You’re dead.”r />
  She seemed to have recovered her cool. “Clearly I’m not. But you should be.”

  “I don’t poison that easily.”

  She shook her head. “The gas isn’t poison. It’s a sleeping agent.”

  He sniffed. “Then why did your boys try to bayonet me in my sleep if you didn’t plan on killing me?”

  “I’m sure they were just making sure you were out -- prepared in case you weren’t.”

  “Ah, then you still want me alive. To question me. Find out what I know, who I’ve told. That’s why you thought I’d be dead, because the cops that were taking me to you never showed up. There must have been a fight, you’d think, and there is no way that I, a mere cripple, unarmed and at the mercy of two gun-toting goons, could survive.” He laughed, his head still spinning. All of this was quite surreal. He felt like he had fallen into one of his opium dreams, one of his dreams about Eliza. She had finally taken his hand, led him into oblivion and the doorway of reality had closed behind them. Now they would walk through gardens with tinkling fountains and the sound of a lute drifting across hedges shaped like palaces, just as he had always hoped.

  But no, she did no such thing.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. Her voice was nearly a whisper.

  “Why are you? Why are you part of this . . . Society?”

  “What do you know of it?” she said.

  “They’re killers -- madmen. And women, apparently.”

  Their guns wavered as they pointed them at each other.

  Slowly, she shook her head. The bun her hair was tied into did not jiggle. “You know nothing. You do not even know our name, do you?” She almost smiled, and it was a sad almost. “The Society of Mars,” she said. “There. A gift.”

  He mouthed the name. “Mars? What’s that, a joke? Are you an astronomer now? Or . . . “ He smiled. “Is it little green men?” He laughed. “That’s what it is, isn’t it? A society of madmen who think the little green men are coming.”