The Black Rose

by James Bartholomeusz

  “I don’t know, but we can go back and ask him in a bit. Maybe…”

  Jack was aware of the door opening and someone stepping inside. He and Ruth looked up, surprised.

  In the doorway stood a sailor or, rather, the exact caricature of a sailor, with a heavily woven jumper, a thick raincoat and boots, a flat cap, and even a pipe, which protruded from his bearded face.

  “Who are you?” Ruth demanded.

  “For Davy Jones’s sake, it’s me,” the figure replied, fumbling with the hat and beard. A moment later, Sardâr’s face emerged. “I’ve clearly got a little too into character.” His gaze moved to Jack, who was feebly crouched on the bed. He grunted in annoyance. “I’ve spent a week undercover in the presence of some of the slyest and sharpest men I’ve ever met, and meanwhile you’ve been drinking yourselves into a stupor! Come on, both of you, next door. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  There was, it seemed, little work to be done in the goblin camp during the long haul of the winter season. With all the provisions collected and stored during the summer and autumn, the goblins were mainly preoccupied with keeping warm and vigilantly protecting their home. From slender wooden towers raised sporadically among tents, sentries held watch every night, always returning chilled to the core by the piercing wind.

  For the most extreme climate Lucy had ever found herself in, the time they were spending there was frustratingly dull. She and varying combinations of the other Apollonians took excursions around the encampment, but, with little to occupy their attention other than what there was to see in Maht’s tent, she always returned fairly soon afterwards. The matriarch, it seemed, dwelt in almost continual solitude, enshrined within her fur nest, pondering her ring of candles.

  The one occupation Lucy found was when Maht’s daughter, Doch, was awake. Appearing only five or six years old, she had wide blue eyes and an even wider mouth. Not remotely intimidated by the discovery that she now shared her home with four strangers, she had made a point of introducing herself to each of them. She had fixed Lucy with an expansive stare before announcing phonetically: “My name’s Doch. What’s yours?”

  “Hi. I’m Lucy. Doch—that’s a funny name.”

  “No, you’ve got a funny name. Loo-see.”

  Wandering around the encampment, Lucy became aware of a difference in Maht’s household. Every other family she saw had either a father or an elder son, mostly in the service of the guards. During the winter months not having a man around probably didn’t matter much, she supposed, but Maht must have had a hard time during the sowing and harvesting seasons.

  She asked the goblin about it one evening. “Doch’s father… What happened to him?”

  Maht was sewing at this point. She pushed the needle through the fabric and took her time pulling the thread to its full length. “He left. It’s not usual for the men here to leave, but that didn’t stop him. He went to seek his fate elsewhere and left her… and me.”

  Lucy felt a rush of affection for the woman. “Have you ever thought of finding someone else?” The question sounded stunted, even cruel.

  Maht looked up from her sewing and smiled. “The women of my tribe are famously strong. We do not need men to command our lives. I can raise Doch by myself. The men can come and go, but we remain.”

  As the affection mingled with pride, Lucy returned the smile.

  Later, when the goblins were asleep, the group of Apollonians were crouched around the circle of candles. There had been little to talk about, so they had said little. Now, with no prospect of developments ahead of them, Lucy decided to find out more about their situation. “So who are the Cultists we’re up against this time? Phaedra and Paethon?”

  To Lucy’s slight surprise, it was not Hakim, the fountain of knowledge, but Vince who answered. “They’re twins. Girl and boy.”

  “How do you know about them?”

  Vince took a hefty swig from the wooden cup clutched in his fingers and put it to one side, rubbing his hands in front of the flames. “They’re the reason I got involved with the Apollonians in the first place. My elder sister and I grew up on a council estate in Scotland, and she sometimes had to go away for days at a time. Then, one time, she disappeared.”

  “She didn’t come back?”

  Vince’s expression tautened. “Oh, she came back. She came back in a shoe box. That’s when I met Isaac. He came and explained what had happened. She’d been on a humanitarian aid mission to a world ravaged by the Cult when they mounted a second attack. Those two—Phadrea and Paethon—were leading it, and they set fire to the land. My sister was burnt alive.”

  He let out a long, low breath, shadows of candle flames flickering across his face. “They murdered her because she was trying to help the people they wanted to conquer. She did nothing to them. That’s why I’m here, on this particular mission. I’ve wanted the chance to come face-to-face with them ever since I found out what they did. I want to make them pay.” Vince finished, his eyes glazed over.

  Adâ and Hakim looked despondent. Lucy grimaced, wishing she hadn’t asked.

  Chapter VIII

  lady osborne

  “I’ve finally got some idea of what’s going on,” Sardâr said. He had taken to his usual pacing before the fireplace, his shadow twisting in and out over the uneven wooden floor. The flickering light of a street lamp shone through the window. The other three Apollonians were crowded onto the bed, Bál still in his nightclothes.

  “So where’ve you been this week?” Ruth asked.

  “Undercover. I’ve been a courier, a clerk, a porter, a pickpocket, a debt collector, a sailor—and you have no idea how much criminal activity is going on under the surface of this city. I’ve chased up several leads which have turned out to be parts of completely separate undertakings, not relevant to the Cult at all, and I’ve been very tempted to intervene. Robberies, smuggling, fraud, blackmail, embezzlement—but we’re here for a purpose, so I’ve let things lie. And now I think I’ve got enough evidence to give us an idea of how things stand.”

  He stopped pacing, staring intently at the three of them. The reflection of flames from the fireplace shimmered across the left side of his face.

  “As it turns out, by apparent chance, your workplaces have been linked with this. The prime object of my investigations”—he turned to Ruth—”has been your employer, Lady Osborne. She is a new presence in the city, who is apparently married to a very successful businessman. She has been in contact with several of the major manufacturing firms, one of which is”—he now turned to Jack and Bál—”your employer, Mister Goodwin of Goodwin Construction Limited—who, I might add, would fit very comfortably into the criminal underworld if he didn’t have a family reputation to safeguard.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised,” Bál snorted, “given the way he treats his workforce.”

  Jack grimaced, all too aware that his one day off was swiftly drawing to a close.

  “So you think this woman—my boss—is somehow connected to the Cult?” Ruth said.

  “Yes, the timing of her arrival works out alongside the Cult’s. Lady Osborne, whether or not that is her real name, seems to be overseeing the construction of something. What it is, exactly, I do not know. No one I have spoken to, even when their tongue has been loosened by a few drinks, could tell me anything about it. All I know, thanks to a cooperative dockside clerk I happened to come across, is that its eventual destination is upriver.” He fell silent.

  The three on the bed exchanged looks. Jack was struck suddenly by how dirty they all were, having spent over a week in a smog-soaked city without washing properly. He thought he and Bál had looked bad, but Sardâr looked as if he’d been dragged through the countryside during an autumn thunderstorm. He had exchanged his sailor garments for some more generic ones, but these were barely cleaner.

  “So I presume you want me to find out more, then?” Ruth prompted him.

  “Yes. We have an advantage in that Lady Osborne has no idea who you really are, so
you could be an ideal spy in the household. Be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary—well, out of the ordinary for Albion—and report back. I think we can safely assume the Cult hasn’t got its hands on the Third Shard yet; otherwise they wouldn’t be undercover. The top priority at the moment is to find out what is being made and where they’re planning to take it. That might give a clue as to where the Shard is.”

  Jack, Bál, and Ruth nodded. Despite the situation in which they and Sardâr found themselves increasingly submerged, Jack smirked. They had a direction and a purpose again.

  Not so far away, across the misty streets in which drunkards stumbled, gangs loitered, and the homeless huddled, the Osborne household was dark except for one room. Although the curtains facing the street below were pulled shut, hints of orange light sifted outwards, beckoning attention to the plotting within.

  Frost gripped the furnishings. Nimue reclined on her throne of ice, her twelve companions standing in a semicircle before her. Moments earlier, they might have formed a tableau of Albion society, a cross section of the class strata from newly inherited earl to forgettable workhouse resident. Now, however, like their mistress’s, their parochial garb had faded into the swishing of twelve hooded black cloaks. Behind Nimue’s seat stood the mirror, the dark-skinned girl still frozen in its depths.

  “All the components are ready, then?”

  “All of them, madam. They have been sourced from different firms so as to not arouse suspicion, and all have had the appropriate alchemical adjustments.”

  “Excellent. Then we shall begin assembling them this very night. Bring them to the cellar beneath this house. It links to a subterranean canal which emerges onto the river. We will then make our move tomorrow night.”

  The twelve figures nodded in unison.

  “And what is our plan once we reach the forest?” one inquired, but Nimue held a finger to her mouth. She turned her head towards the door and flicked her palm. The lock clicked and the wooden frame sprang open, a middle-aged woman in servant clothes tumbling onto the carpet. She pulled herself up, eyes wide with fright, scanning the ice, the mirror, and the collection of dark figures before her.

  Her mouth opened in a scream but, after another flick of Nimue’s palm, nothing emerged but a frost-clouded breath. The door slammed behind her, and the lock clicked. The maid was hoisted off the floor by her throat and flung across the room, dropped hard before the mistress’s throne.

  “Listening in, were we?” Nimue whispered, her jaw set in a cold smirk. “Now that wasn’t very polite, was it? I don’t expect a provincial type like yourself to understand the magnitude of what we are attempting, but even so, whispers might find their way to the wrong ears…”

  The maid’s gaze was fixed on Nimue, but she became aware of something shifting behind her. The shadows thrown by the lamplight were congealing, rising off the floor and twisting upwards. Nimue’s smirk broke into a tinkling laugh as the shadow reared and leapt. The maid’s scream was never heard.

  Jack, Bál, and Ruth returned to work the following morning unenthusiastic but energized. Jack still found the duration, fatigue, and hot conditions of the factory work nearly unbearable, but at least he knew their group would’ve progressed closer to their goal by the time he returned to The Kestrel’s Quill. Now that he knew of his employer’s association with Lady Osborne, the metal poles he and the other men were shaping intrigued him. Could these have some part in the Cult’s plan, whatever it was? He saw an opportunity to delve a little deeper when he found himself on a workstation next to the uncommonly amicable boy he had exchanged a few words with on the first day. The boy evidently recognized him too because he smiled—highly unusual in the factory environment.

  “How’d your pay stretch the other day, then?” the boy asked in the thick Cockney accent Jack had become used to over the last week.

  “Not very far at all.” Jack laughed. “But I managed to get drunk off it last night.” He didn’t try too hard to keep the boasting edge out of his voice.

  “Well, that’s something at least. I saved up for a Sunday roast—definitely worth it.” The boy grinned. “I’m Dannie, by the way.”

  “Jack.” They shook hands. “You don’t have any idea what we’re making, do you?”

  “None at all.” Dannie shook his head, glancing at the contraption before him in bewilderment. “Apparently this Goodwin fellow’s a nasty piece of work though. Forbids any trade union membership among his employees, owns a big stake in the workhouses, and has his fingers in some very rotten pies from what I’ve heard…”

  Ruth, meanwhile, had thought through her plan on the way to work. She needed an excuse to get into the upstairs drawing room, where Lady Osborne met all her associates and likely kept her documents. She found her alibi when Matron Flint fervently allocated to her the dusting on the first floor. Ruth made sure to do a particularly thorough job around the doorway of the drawing room until, as soon as no one was around, she twisted the handle and slipped inside.

  Even by the standards she had become used to in this house, the room was ridiculously decorated. Seemingly every surface rippled with some kind of design in motion: an erratic diamond-patterned carpet, fleur-de-lis-encrusted wallpaper, floral cushions and upholstery, lamps carved and smelted in the shape of forest beasts, and an absurdly decorous mahogany table on the opposite wall. A dank portrait of a stout old man hung on the wall behind the desk. The panels of dusty light falling from the windows lent the contemporary room the impression of being already very outdated.

  Ruth made sure no one was about and then shuffled quickly over to the desk. A few papers were scattered over its surface. She riffled through them—bills, invoices, a couple of letters—nothing substantial in the way of evidence. She tried one of the hefty drawers, but it was stuck. She tried again, gripping the handle through her apron, but nothing. She glanced around for something to pick the lock with and stopped dead.

  A girl was sitting on one of the sofas opposite her, so embalmed in beauty products that Ruth had initially taken her to be part of the ludicrously patterned furniture. But what was more unsettling was that the girl didn’t seem to have registered Ruth’s arrival at all. She was staring into the middle distance, porcelain face entirely blank of expression. In fact, she could have been a statue—her hands were folded in her lap in a formal fashion, and she didn’t even appear to be breathing.

  Ruth allowed herself to exhale and released the edge of the desk, which she had instinctively gripped. She shook her head, slowly walking around the desk and the obstacle course of furniture to stand in front of the girl, who still didn’t react. Ruth stooped and waved inches in front of her face. Nothing.

  “Are you alright?” she said loudly, touching the side of the girl’s head.

  Ruth immediately cried out and pulled away. The girl was evaporating before her eyes, skin and cloth vanishing. Within seconds there was nothing to suggest the girl had ever been there.

  There was a crackling sound behind her.

  Heart pounding, Ruth spun around and staggered back, almost collapsing over a footstool. The grubby painting had disappeared. In its place, a full-length mirror hung, its surface perfectly smooth and unscratched. Frost clouded the insides, but through the mist Ruth could clearly see the figure of the porcelain girl hanging above the ground, expressionless face staring directly at her.

  Chapter IX

  dark alchemy

  Alex screamed as the flames scorched his flesh, incinerating layers of skin. He almost passed out, and, in his struggle to remain conscious, he felt suddenly adrift. He could see everything that had happened since his arrival.

  Despite the Emperor’s apparently magnanimous gesture to release him from prison, not much had really changed. He was no longer chained, but he had been confined to the Cathedral and allocated a room somewhere high in one of the towers. It was excessively simple: circular, the floor space the size of an elevator shaft, with only a small bed and an alchemically barred window. Constr
ucted entirely of stone, it was freezing, but at least he could now use alchemy. Most of his energies were spent keeping a fire burning.

  He had considered trying to escape, but his ventures to the building’s outer doors confirmed that black cloaked Cultists guarded every entrance. His only view beyond the Cathedral was his small window, and that was hardly comforting: a sprawl of lights from clustered houses and mighty skyscrapers; beyond that, churning ocean, sporadically illuminated by crunching lightning.

  By day, his overwhelming emotions were of boredom and depression, but by night he found himself on the edge of a sea of fear. He knew of the unspeakable acts that went on in Nexus, directed at those captured in invasions or dissenters from the autocratic government and religion. He was woken from uneasy sleep by screams rising out of the darkness, wailing and begging for relief, for the torment to end by any way possible.

  The Emperor had visited him several days after their talk in the throne room. Alex initially had reacted with incredulity, then with angered stubbornness, at his suggestion. “You want to teach me Dark alchemy? Are you crazy?”

  The Emperor had merely smirked and led the way from Alex’s tower to the throne room.

  “I’m never using Dark alchemy,” Alex had said firmly as he took up the allocated position on one side of the crossing. The Emperor had faced him, his robes rippling slightly in the gale rattling the stained glass windows.

  “We shall see about that.” And he had raised his arms. The hundreds of candles beside the throne had leapt up and combined into a single indigo-black pillar, sweeping across the chamber and striking like a gargantuan cobra. Alex’s conjured diamond of protective light had shattered like brittle glass under the inferno’s intensity.

  He rolled onto his back, panting heavily. The dark fire was still there, now more like a shark, circling overhead. Gasping with pain, he tried to reach for the alchemical power again.