Cold Stone & Ivy Book 2: The Crown Prince (The Empire of Steam)

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Her fiancé, Prince Braganza of Portugal, has declined to comment.

  Regarding the debacle at the Hofburg, police are continuing to investigate

  ***

  The annex was dark, the vault dripping with condensing steam. Even so far from the hydraulic lift, the place hummed like an engine.

  “Jackie,” came a voice. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  Dr. John Williams grimaced. He hadn’t even heard the footfall on the grated floor. He had been assured the annex was vacant, guarded only by CHARLES, the Club’s automaton. He forced a smile and turned.

  “Just popped down to admire the collection, Bookie,” he said. “That locket has made it damnably fine.”

  “Indeed, Jackie,” said William Crookes, chemist and physicist and chairman of the Ghost Club. “She has indeed, although she hasn’t made a peep since you brought her here last month. Not one bloody peep. Are you certain you’ve given us the right device?”

  Williams studied the trim man in white beard and labcoat. Hidden beneath his bushy white brows, his eyes looked like pebbles in the snow.

  “It is identical to the one young Remy had these last months and according to the letter, it was pulled out of the Thames after the incident at St. Katharine’s Docks. I have no reason to believe it to be a fraud. Do you?”

  Crookes smiled a little before turning his gaze to the object in the glass and lead vault. The inside was gleaming with a faint gold sheen.

  “None whatsoever. I must get that thing into my lab post haste.”

  “Old Vic has strict orders—”

  “I know, I know, old boy. But what Old Vic doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Besides,” he raised a bushy brow. “Don’t you want to know what makes her tick?”

  “Did you see what she left of the docks?”

  “Oh come now, where’s your scientific spirit, Jackie? Don’t tell me that bloody heart shook you like a sapling? You used to be made of sterner stuff.”

  “Past tense, Bookie,” said Williams. “I have retired from practice.”

  “One never retires from the Ghost Club, Jackie.”

  “Too true. Perhaps one day I’ll take you up on it.”

  Crookes narrowed his pebbly eyes.

  “You’re afraid.”

  “Petrified, old boy. We’ve awakened forces beyond our control.”

  “Spirits?”

  “Worse, Bookie. Much worse.” Williams grunted and clasped his hands behind his back. “Royals.”

  The men turned and left the dark annex. From the subterranean vault of the Ghost Club, the locket called Ghostlight sprang to life, flashing light and colour like the birth of a star.

  ***

  Accompanied by two squads of Silver Hussars, they rode back to the Sacher in silence.

  There was nothing to say. Ivy could think of nothing at all. Christien was sitting across from them once again, arms folded across his chest, his face a porcelain mask. For his part, the Mad Lord just sat, arms limp, head low. But his eyes were brown once again and for that, Ivy was grateful.

  Finally, the carriage rattled to a halt outside the hotel, as did the Imperial coaches before and behind. Hussars streamed out, flanking the carriage and Christien sprang from the cab. Ivy thought he would disappear but he swung back and leaned in on the door.

  “I don’t care where you go, Bastien,” he said quietly. “I don’t care what you do. You have no place in my life, now or ever. You are dead to me. Once we get to England, I will take ownership of Holbrook and you can go to Hell or Lasingstoke. Wherever you belong.”

  And he disappeared into the hotel foyer, leaving the carriage door open. She could see the soldiers lining the way and her heart tightened in her chest, remembering Rupert’s words. Remembering Marie Jeanette’s. Remembering her own. Bad ideas all around.

  Ivy looked at Sebastien. She wondered if he knew what was going on, if he’d heard anything his brother had said or if he was locked in a world of dead and dying and otherworldly lockets. But there was no frost; there was no ice. That, she reckoned, was a good thing.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Savage,” he said finally and he dropped his face into his hands. “I don’t know why I do these things. I just don’t know.”

  She sighed. There were no words for a night like tonight, no apology, no excuse. Truth be told, she was as responsible as he.

  She slipped her arm through his, leaned her face on his shoulder. But still, she had no words for him. Her throat was too tight and the Hussars too terrifying.

  “I’m a greedy, greedy man,” he continued. “I want so many things but can’t have any of them. I wish I could die. I have tried. God knows I’ve tried. It doesn’t take and I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means you’re meant to live.”

  “Why? So the dead can have an avenger? Is that all there is for me? Death for the dead?”

  “No,” she said. “There is more for you than that. I know there is.”

  “I belong in Hell with the damned.”

  “No,” was all she could say but it sounded feeble, even to her.

  “I’ll leave first thing in the airship. You can stay longer in Vienna with Christien, I mean with Remy. I mean…” He sighed. “I don’t know anymore. But you can stay if you wish. The Sacher will take good care of you and you can come home when you wish.”

  “I go when you go. Do you understand? I go with you.”

  He released a deep breath, then another, wiped his cheeks with his palms. He looked up and smiled.

  “Thank you, Miss Savage. You are a good friend.”

  For some reason, that cut to her heart.

  “The doorman will see you to your room. I think I need to walk.”

  “Not bloody likely, Sebastien. Do you see those soldiers? They’re not about to let you go walking the streets of Vienna tonight. Not on your own.”

  “They won’t give me any trouble. I just need to be moving.”

  “Sebastien—”

  “Locked up actually, but for now moving shall suffice.”

  “They won’t let you.”

  “Good night, Miss Savage. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  And he leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek, silencing her long enough to slip out of the cab. There were words in German, footfall but no shouting, no gunshots and soon, nothing but the sounds of blackness and the snow.

  She sat in the carriage a while longer, realizing that for the first time, the world was colder without him.

  ***

  New Vienna Daily: Second Special Edition - Graveyard Horror

  According to an eyewitness, vandalism of a most horrific nature has occurred in the graveyard of St. Marx Cemetery. It involved the removal of long-dead corpses from their resting places and the scattering of the body parts throughout the grounds. The method of removal of these bodies is not known, as the graves themselves were opened with neither spade nor shovel. Rather it appears as though they were dug by hand from beneath the ground. It is rumoured to be a gruesome farce on the part of medical students from the Vienna General Hospital. Many of the bodies are reported half-in, half-out of the frozen earth and the bones are impossible to move without shattering them entirely.

  Police are continuing to investigate.

  ***

  He sat on the edge of the bed, moonlight streaming in through the frosted window. The white tie, shirt, vest and black tails were discarded on the floor and while he hadn’t bothered lighting a fire, he wasn’t cold. He wasn’t warm. He was nothing at all, just a shell. A pretty porcelain shell, and even that wasn’t pretty anymore.

  He stared down at his hand, moved the fingers one by one, felt the tug of the cables on the tendons of his upper arm. His flesh had finally stopped chafing under the metal brace as if growing weary of the fight, and scar tissue was building up along the stump. He had been instructed not to remove it for at least six months to allow the flesh to incorporate the brace as part of its healing, but he often found himself wondering
what would happen if he simply disconnected it and chose to live one-handed. It was a macabre thing, this clockwork arm. Life without it couldn’t be much more so.

  He willed it and the dagger sprang up, the same as on the airship earlier. He had killed with a dagger such as this. Couldn’t remember but it didn’t much matter. He was guilty, a murderer, the London Ripper no less. He’d been a fool to think he could leave it all behind and find redemption in Vienna. Neither life nor Sebastien worked that way.

  He twisted the blade, catching the moonlight and watching it reflect in circles across the dark walls. A swift stab up and into his heart would be painless and clean, but he didn’t deserve either. A severing of the carotid artery would be a better fate. That’s how he had killed in the back streets of London. He himself had attended the necroscopies, remembered them vividly. It would be poetic justice. A part of him yearned for such a symmetrical, symbolic end.

  “That is a remarkable device,” said a voice and he looked up to see a woman silhouetted in the bedroom doorway. “You could be an assassin with an arm like that.”

  “Valerie,” he breathed. “How did you get in? I bolted the door.”

  “I have many skills, Remy. All the Habsburg women have them.”

  “Are you a Black Swan too?”

  “If I tell you, I will have to kill you.” But she slipped over to sit on his bed, brushed his cheek with her fingers. “And that would be bad, yes?”

  She was joking but he had lost his sense of humour long ago. Cut out like his arm and his heart.

  Slowly, he folded the dagger back into the shafts of his wrist.

  “What else do you have in there?” she purred.

  He stared at her a long moment before looking back down.

  “A screwdriver, a flint, a wrench, a fountain pen.”

  “So dangerous.” She nuzzled his neck. “What else?”

  “I have an attachment for a pistol.”

  “That,” she kissed his throat. “Is very dangerous. When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Your father made that perfectly clear.” He gazed at her. “Come with me.”

  “I might. It depends.” She bit her lip. “Have you ever made love to a Swan?”

  “Your father would have me killed.”

  “Then maybe I would have to kill him too.”

  And she pushed him down onto the bed, covering him with her feathers.

  ***

  She sat in the most beautiful room in the hotel, alone.

  The Silver Hussars had accompanied her and somehow her legs had managed to hold up until she closed the door behind her. Then they failed and she slid down the wall to sit in a pile of red lace, arms around her knees, eyes fixed on the window and the moonlight through the glass.

  She was numb.

  One day, one night and everything was gone, changed, shattered like those damned orbs of light in the ballroom. Rupert had been right. She should have listened, she should have stayed and she derided herself for being so weak. A part of her had wanted the madness, she knew it in her bones. A part of her welcomed the chaos that was Sebastien de Lacey and she wondered what part of her it was. Certainly not ‘the good girl.’ No, Trevis Savage’s good girl was long gone. It was someone else entirely, someone who was living with two unmarried men in the wild north country of Lancashire and loving it.

  The moon was bright tonight. It looked cold. It looked like those damned orbs, if she was honest, or like his eyes made white after the Stallburg’s ghost horse. As if seeing the dead weren’t bad enough, now he was dealing with flaming hooves and manes of arrows. And Sophie, eerie, otherworldly Sophie, the clockwork princess in her porcelain mask. The world was ghost horses, clockwork corsets and shattered mirrors now. Just another Penny Dreadful in the making.

  She blinked slowly, wondering where he was, her Mad Lord of Lasingstoke and if he was as incomplete as she at the moment. Funny that, and she cursed Christien once again for his perception. She had always been needed. By her father, by her mother, by her brother and now, it seemed, by Sebastien. Maybe she needed him just as much. She would never admit it. She would rather die than become just another simpering girl, smitten by a dashing smile or a tortured soul. She was made of tougher stuff. She would be a Criminologist if it killed her.

  But if she was honest, she did need him. She couldn’t afford the Sorbonne so if she went, it would only be because of Sebastien’s deep pockets. He was good that way. So very good.

  She raised her chin, dreading the tightening of her chest, fighting the war of want inside her.

  The Sorbonne or Lasingstoke. Her fate would be sealed when the airship touched down and she needed to decide where that would be, how that would look. One path would be alone, pursuing a career independent of Sebastien, sharpening her mind and her skills and her writing in the process. The other, well, the other path would be Sebastien, as his right hand, his moral compass, and if Christien were to be believed, his bedfellow.

  All of nineteen in three weeks and if tonight was any indication, she had lost all hope for even a kiss.

  She wiped the tears from her eyes, cursed herself for being so weak.

  The moon had moved across the window, tracing icy fingers along the glass and illuminating the door to the suite’s only bedroom. Only one bed. She hadn’t thought it out, hadn’t thought it through. Not surprising for Sebastien, but for her, it was uncharacteristic. And in Victoria’s world of steam and stigma, it was scandalous. But then again, she was living in the north with two men. Perhaps she was making choices after all.

  So here she was in a room with one bed, finally wondering about that kiss, that chaos that was Sebastien de Lacey, and she was sitting on the floor, alone.

  And so she curled up on that floor, wrapping herself in borrowed lace and waiting for the morning or for Sebastien, and unsure of which she wanted more.

  ***

  The sun is beginning to rise over the hunting lodge known as Mayerling. The snowdrifts glisten with slick crusts, the branches are heavy with ice, the windows are frosted like sugar cake. Ravens and crows perch in the trees, feathers ruffed to keep in the warmth. Black smoke drifts quietly into the pink sky, and servants are only starting to rise for morning duties. It is a picture of rural Austria – cold, severe, austere. Lived entirely on the inside.

  A shot inside the lodge shatters the quiet and sends the crows flying up with the smoke, as Death comes to Mayerling.

  Chapter 6

  Of Imperial Escorts, Russian Roulette and Iron Maidens in the Sky

  “But how did he do it, Penny?” asked her father, Chief Inspector Charles Dreadful. “We were in the ballroom the entire night!”

  “Alexander Dunn is a wily fellow,” said Penny and she stroked her chin with a manicured finger. “I’m still not sure if he took it right out from under our very noses, or if he waited until later that night…”

  “Are we sure it was Dunn?” asked Julian. “We were keeping an eye out for him but what if he had an accomplice?”

  Penny spun around, eyes wide.

  “Oh Julian, that is brilliant! You will make Criminologist someday!”

  “I’m content with my barrister’s calling, Penny,” purred Julian. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “However, I believe you to be completely wrong.” Penny swung back to the floor, where she was examining a footprint with her magnifying lens. “It was Dunn alright. Only he would have the audacity to pull off a caper this outrageous. No, this has his signature all over it.”

  “Of course, you’re right, Penny,” said Julian.

  He smiled to himself and reached for his cigarette.

  ***

  Ivy glanced around as she stepped out of the steamcab at the Südbahnhof Station. It was the morning of the thirtieth and she wondered if she had just set a record for shortest trip to Vienna. She shouldn’t have been surprised. The Mad Lord of Lasingstoke hadn’t returned to the hotel that night and with this many Silver Hussars hovering, she was lucky not
to be in claps.

  “Remy, wait!” she called as Christien began to disappear in the crowds. “Can we please wait?”

  “Why Ivy?” He swung around, arms wide. “He’s not here, is he?”

  “But he said he’d come. We can’t leave!”

  “Oh we can and we will. By all means, stay behind and look for him if you wish. But I’m taking the airship back this morning, with or without you. Your choice.”

  And slipping the top hat onto his head, he turned and strode off, quickly disappearing into the crush of travellers. A row of mechanical porters clanked after him, bags rolling along on track-wheeled carts. She had one bag only, the carpet bag with the red dress, and she clutched it to her chest as she scanned the crowds for a flash of golden hair. Nothing. Only the mirrored-faced stares of six Silver Hussars assuring her departure. She sighed, hiked the bag and followed the top hat toward Airship Tower C.

  She lost him on the catwalk and had to ask an automated steward who was assisting passengers to the docks. He confirmed the mooring and she was relieved to find Castlewaite running through departure protocols with three small automatons at the Chevalier’s gate.

  “Ahoy there, Miss Ivy,” he said, grinning his gap-toothed grin and reaching for her bag. “Tha’ were a short trip, weren’t it?”

  “Oh Jerry, you have no idea. But we have to wait for Sebastien. Please, we can’t leave without him!”

  “’is Lordship is onboard, miss.”

  “But…” She gaped at him. “But, but when? And how?”

  “Walked, far as Ah know,” and the copper eyepiece clicked once. “Came on sometime this mornin’, ‘e did.”

  “Escorted?”

  “Alone, far as Ah could see.”