The Fire Cage

by Scott Hungerford

  “That we do,” Davin said with just a touch of pride, earning a nod from Rajon.

  “Come now, my master,” Rajon said to Davin, with a touch of a smirk on his lips. “Let’s get these fiends out of here and make arrangements with our coach. Then we’ll see who comes to call for this final shipment of goods come morning.”

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time Davin and Rajon returned to the Lane House in the steam carriage, the sun was already arching up into a clear blue morning sky. Exhausted, nearly stumbling out of the cab, Davin led Rajon into the rooming house, more than ready to find Mrs. Spindlethorn and the way to his bed. But the plump, matronly keeper was already waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, standing in her patterned green apron-dress with a letter and three keys in hand.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said, greeting them as they came in the door.

  “Good morning,” Rajon said to her. “My name is Rajon. This is my friend, Davin. We are sharing a set of rooms with my daughter, Verona and our coachman.”

  “I already know who you are,” she replied, “by the description that young Verona gave of you before she left. She knew you would be coming in late from your gaming, and she asked me to give you this note before you retired for the day.”

  “Might I ask where she is now?” Davin asked, trying to keep any sound of worry out of his voice.

  “Your young lady is off to morning tea at Aston House. The Lady Aston came by for some of my sweet apples for breakfast, and graciously offered Verona a ride to the social.”

  “Good, good,” Rajon said, accepting the note and the set of keys. Our rooms are upstairs, yes?”

  “Up to the landing and to the right. The three of you are in rooms six, seven and eight, with Verona at your nine. I very much hope they are to your liking, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Rajon said, and gave a little bow.

  “You’re welcome,” she replied, and even blushed and curtsied before bustling off to her kitchen. “Have a lovely morning.”

  “Everything seems on the up and up,” Rajon said on the way up the stairs, having already torn one end off the envelope in order to read the note. “She had an uneventful evening, and went to the social as planned.” Turning at the top of the stairs, he used the key to let them into room number eight and then closed the door behind them. The simple room featured a quilted bed, a dresser with a small vial of posies atop it, and a slightly worn white wicker chair set by a window overlooking the street.

  “Well, that was a long night,” Davin said as he flopped down on the bed, looking up at the cracks in the ceiling plaster above them. Back at the warehouse on Butcher’s Lane, the appearance just after dawn of a long line of prison guards, horse-drawn carts and twin lines of ankle-chained prisoners from Stonegate had been a strange thing to observe. While it took less than half an hour for the carts to be loaded, the guard’s consternation at finding the warehouse unguarded led to a thorough search of the nearby terrain. But with Davin and Rajon secreted high above in one of the standing sugar oaks, they were able to watch the entire strange affair with little danger of being discovered.

  “A long night, but well worth it,” Rajon replied as he took a careful look out the window to the street below, to make sure they hadn’t been followed. Out beyond the single row of houses, fields and trees ran down to the edge of a little pond frequented by fluttering white ducks. He then went over to the bed, lifted up a corner, and retrieved Davin’s package from where Verona had hid it.

  “So, the Warden at Stonegate is in on it for sure,” Davin surmised. “It’s all starting to come together now. Whatever they are building, whatever they need the screws for, that must be the place.”

  “I would agree,” Rajon replied. “I initially thought that the plot would be unfolding at Vermeni’s old estate, which is across the river and a good mile or more from the prison. But with the workload and the space and privacy required for assembly, Stonegate would make for an exceptional workshop.”

  “So, do we call in the authorities?” Davin asked.

  “At this point, the opposition has the final load of materials,” Rajon replied. “So whatever scheme they are hatching, it won’t be long before they play their hand. We’ll need to gather solid evidence of wrongdoing in order to breach the Warden’s influence.”

  Davin sighed. Shrugging off his ruined coat and setting it aside, Davin took a few moments to unwrap the package. Taking his father’s old brown jacket out of the wrappings, he shook it out once and put it on, happy for the fact that it fit him, and he could feel the slight weight of the package inside the lining against his side.

  Going through his old coat pockets, Davin transferred his few possessions from old to new. While he’d abandoned all the snake parts save for its metal heart, he’d kept the metal butterfly on his person out of fascination. As he stood by the bed, he perched the pretty thing gently on his fingertip, where it balanced precariously on its tiny little metal feet for a few seconds. It stayed there for a moment until it started flexing and un-flexing its wings anew, before it took flight up into the open air, beginning a fluttery tour of the tiny room.

  “So, what now?” Davin asked.

  “Now, we wait for Verona to return and tell us what she learned. You sleep first, while I stand watch, and then we’ll switch in a few hours.”

  “That sounds fine to me,” Davin said, as he reached back and tucked a starch-scented pillow beneath his head. For a moment, the smell reminded him of his mother, but did his best to banish the melancholy thought. “I hope Verona is going to be all right.”

  “She can handle herself,” Rajon said as he watched the butterfly loop its way around the room, its wings casting delicate shadows on the sun-lit walls. “When she gets back tonight, we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”

  .oOo.

  From out by the duck-pond, a curious figure stood crouched in the morning shadows. Dressed in slightly out-of-date country gentleman’s clothes rather than clerical attire, Altius sat motionless behind a tree, watching the Lane House with an extending telescope. Moving carefully so as not to catch a stray glint of morning sun on the lens, he observed as the steam-carriage pulled around back to the stables, and the coachman disembarked from the driver’s seat to attend to the horse’s stoking.

  Scanning the windows visible over the rooftops of two separate Coventon shops, Altius scanned the building carefully, from left to right, until he saw something that drew his attention. Two gentlemen, one younger, one his own age, had just entered into one of the rooms on the upper floor. He watched them through the windows for a bit as they talked, and then as the younger one changed his coat. But after a few more minutes he was certain; it was the two men from the Abbey, including the young one who had swindled Guiseppe’s whistle right out from beneath Altius’s nose.

  But what truly struck his attention was a small wisp of color, a dancing yellow butterfly perched on the young man’s finger. Gasping, he cycled the lenses, getting better focus upon the young man’s hand as the butterfly’s wings flexed, up and then down. He cycled the lenses to their narrowest extent and confirmed for certain, that it was indeed a mechanical butterfly — and he would bet a fortune that it was one of Mercuri’s as well!

  Standing, elated at what he’d learned, the old man scurried his way back through the grass, then back through a stand of trees to where his horse awaited, grazing in the morning sunlight. Stowing the telescope carefully in the saddlebags, he freed his horse’s bindings, swung himself up into the creaking leather saddle, then whipped the horse’s head around and spurred the beast into a gallop. Riding out of the clearing, Altius whipped the horse with the lash, making the best possible time for the road!

  .oOo.

  “Thank you so much for offering me a carriage seat,” Verona said, even as she smoothed down the skirts of her blue travelling dress with her palms. “My father was off playing cards all night, and I was afraid he wasn’t going to return in time to take me to th
e social.”

  “Don’t you worry,” said the older woman sitting across from her in the carriage. The Lady Aston, resplendent in her rose-red morning dress, matching embroidered travelling cloak, and an elegant white curled wig seemed all the mark of country grace. “It was the least I could do. Martha’s apples are some of the best in the county, and I woke up this morning with a hankering for something fresh to cut my appetite with. I’m just glad you have the patience to sit with me through all these extra stops and errands. It’s a pleasure to have some brisk company for a change.”

  “It’s no trouble at all,” Verona replied. Between the visitations and the stops at a number of shops and estate houses, she’d been in the carriage with Lady Aston for nearly two hours. “I haven’t had a tour of the countryside in some time, and I haven’t seen a chicken in a hen’s age.” Looking out the window of the vintage wooden coach, Verona appreciated the sight of the green trees basking in the morning sunlight, and the serpentine turn of Thorny Stream, just a few miles upriver of where it connected with the vastness of the rushing Dob.

  “We don’t get a lot of visitors,” Lady Aston told her, even as she adjusted her wig a bit. “A lot of people from the city think that living this far out of town is uncivilized. But I think that they’re missing a lot by staying within those stacks of sooty cobbles. My Henry lived in the city for nearly all his life, before we married and came out here, into the proverbial wilds.”

  “Your Henry?” Verona asked, trying to draw a little more information out of the woman.

  “Henry Aston. We’ve been married for a little over ten years now. While it hasn’t been the easiest of unions, he’s a good man, and I’m mostly a good woman.” She smiled a wicked little smile, and chewed on her lower lip a little. “With him working away from home so often, I’ve been tempted to teach some young man the arts of love. But so far I’ve restrained myself — though just barely.”

  Verona fully blushed, as the woman’s comments got her thinking of Davin right away.

  “Oh, I see you’ve been thinking of the same thing,” Lady Aston said with a wink. She leaned forward intimately, as so the driver up top wouldn’t hear. “Is he handsome?”

  “Umm,” Verona said, now feeling herself blushing all the way down to her toes. “Yes. Quite. I think so anyway.”

  “Is he honest?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Verona said a bit faster than she would have liked. “I suspect he’s fully honest. And he has a good heart.”

  “Well, that’s what counts,” Lady Aston replied, smiling cheekily, leaning back into her seat once again. “Amongst other things.”

  Verona suddenly had to brace herself as the carriage bumped its way into the shadowy confines of a covered bridge. As the wheels rolled over the planks with a rattling, staccato sound, for a moment the interior of the vibrating, rocking carriage was only lit by stray dashes of sunlight shining in through cracks in the sheltering walls. But after only a few seconds, the horse pulled the cart up and over the lip, back onto solid ground and into the warmth of the morning sunlight.

  “I do hate that,” Lady Aston said, adjusting her white wig a bit, tucking in a loose curl of red hair back where it belonged. “Are you all right, dear?”

  “I’m fine,” Verona said, quite honestly.

  “I really do hope they fix that rickety old thing someday. I’m on the edge of having Henry send down a few of his men to fix the bridge slats. It wouldn’t take all that much to put a couple of runners down the middle, to make it a much more pleasant experience.”

  “It is quite unpleasant,” Verona said as a solid fact. “So, how much further do we have to go?” Verona asked.

  “Not far now,” Lady Aston said. “We’ll be pulling into Aston lane any minute now, and I suspect that even with the tours, we’ll be the first to arrive. But that’s no bother. It just gives us a bit more time to get acquainted. Do you knit?”

  “A few stitches,” Verona replied, praying to the Saints that she wouldn’t have to knit anything today. “What does your Henry do?”

  “Oh, he’s a very important man,” she replied. “He’s the Warden down at the prison, with a nice fat pay schedule and a great deal of responsibility.”

  “That sounds interesting,” Verona said, taking mental notes for herself.

  “Not really,” Lady Aston replied. “But it does keep him out of the house and lets ladies like ourselves get on with being a bit social now and then. Now, is there anyone else you know in the county, that might joining us today?”

  “Apart from my father and the Lady Tweedy, not a soul,” Verona replied.

  “Well,” Lady Aston said. “We’ll have to get acquainted, then, your father and I. With such a bright flower of a daughter like you, he must be quite the man, gambler and all.”

  “That he is,” Verona said, wondering about how they were doing, and wondering how soon she could get out of the hen’s nest and back to Davin’s side.

  After a few more minutes, after a bit of dizzying conversation about knitting, tea, garden bulbs and the tumultuous nature of the weather of late, the carriage finally turned up into a long gravel drive, leading up the lane to where a monstrous white house sat at the end of the path. Verona, leaning a bit over so she could see, was astonished by the outright size of the place. Aside from the sprawling manse itself, the place also featured horse barns, guest houses, and even an ivy-covered gazebo filled with a dozen tiny tables and chairs.

  When the handsome young driver hopped down and opened the carriage door, Verona stepped out onto the gravel and just stared up at the majestic three-story house with a stunned look on her face. Framed by sugar oaks, laurels, and a host of other majestic trees she didn’t know the names of, the big white house looked right out of a museum painting, right down to the puffs of smoke idyllically drifting out of one of the red brick chimney tops. Down at the water’s edge at the base of the lawn, an old water-wheel quietly churned in place, occasionally creaking and squeaking as the Thorny drove it round.

  “It’s… beautiful,” Verona said.

  “It’s truly a beautiful home,” Lady Aston said, as she climbed out of the carriage beside her. “Do you know anything about the local history?”

  “Not much,” Verona said.

  “This house once belonged to the inventor, Mercuri zan DeLorenzo.”

  “Are you serious?” Verona exclaimed before she could help herself. “I mean,” she said, covering her mouth, trying to gain some form of composure. “That’s quite a fascinating fact.”

  “While the house was totally stripped down when we bought it, right down to the chairs and tubs, I’ve always wondered if there is some secret invention tucked away in the walls that might make us rich as kings. But so far, apart from one of Mercuri’s tea-kettles that I found abandoned in a flowerbed behind one of the gardening sheds, I haven’t found anything quite that fantastic yet. But it does make a cranky pot of tea,” she tittered, “even after all these years.”

  “Well, I know a number of folks who would love to see this house,” Verona said. “I’ve never seen the like.”

  “Few people have from the city,” Lady Aston said, as she took Verona by the hand and began to lead her towards the majestic front steps. “Mercuri was as much an architect as an inventor. He was partly responsible for the creation of the automatons, as well as so many other inventions that the Empire thrives on today.”

  Walking up the porch stairs, arm in arm with the older woman, Verona caught a whiff of rose perfume off of her neck, a sweet, delicate scent that smelled very expensive, and quite lovely.

  “I’m so very glad to have made your acquaintance,” Verona said. “And I’m glad I could be here today for the social.”

  “As am I, Miss Verona,” Lady Aston said, as she let go of the girl and beckoned her to go ahead and open the front doors. “It’s unlocked. You go first, as it’s quite the impressive sight.”

  More than pleased to do a little exploring, Verona stepped up to the twin fro
nt doors, grabbed the handles, and pushed the doors inward, swinging the portals open with a great sweep of her arms. Inside, the two-story chandeliered greeting room was monstrous, big enough to hold a hundred people, and the wooden floor beneath her feet was mirror polished without a trace of imperfection. To either side spread a sizable dining room, with a polished table and racks of silver candelabras, and a sitting room, with lovely plush couches encircling a majestic looking grand harpsichord. But what most attracted her attention was the stunningly handsome young butler waiting for her in the exact center of the room, dressed to the teeth as would a gentleman from a century ago. With bows and buttons and a steam-crisped collar, his black tailored suit marked him back as a product of a different age.

  “May I take your cloak, my lady?” he asked, approaching.

  “Absolutely,” Verona said. She turned, and nearly blushing, let him take the cloak off the back of her shoulders, shivering when his fingertips brushed the back of her neck. Then she looked up and saw Lady Aston’s façade drop, and a haughty sneer come across her face.

  “What’s this?” Verona said, even as she felt the butler prick the point of a very sharp knife right into the small of her back.

  “Not a word,” Lady Aston said, as she tugged off her wig, revealing a tumbling waterfall of red curls that poured all the way down to her shoulders.

  “Blast,” Verona said. “You’re Charette.”

  “And you’re Rajon’s daughter,” Charette replied, “you stupid little toy.” Tossing the wig, the butler behind Verona caught it with a free hand, chuckling deep in his throat with an animalistic, menacing tone “Now, it will be just a matter of time before your adoptive father comes to call, and we’ll tie all this mess up neatly with a bow.”

  “You’ll never beat him. He’s better than you.”

  “I don’t mean to beat him,” Charette purred. “I mean to kill him, and you’re just the bait I’ve been looking for.”