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

by H. Leighton Dickson

  He looked back down at the Archduchess wrapped in her coat of luxurious sable. Her hair was spilling from the coif at the nape of her neck and her expression was colder than the air in the compartment. He resisted the urge to kiss her. She’d probably hit him and every muscle in his body ached.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “For not gouging my eyes out while I slept.”

  “I am your prisoner,” she said and he could see her breath frosting at her lips. “It would not be helpful.”

  “You’re not my prisoner.”

  “And there is still tomorrow.”

  He reached into a pocket, slipped out a handkerchief and lifted it to her throat. She hissed as he dabbed the wounds he had made with his dagger. There was no fresh blood, but still.

  Her eyes had not left his face.

  “My mother raised me,” she said as he tended her. “My grandmother raised Sophie and Gisela and Rudolf, but my mother raised me.”

  “Your mother is a remarkable woman.”

  “She is a very good mother. When I would fall from my horse or prick my finger with a needle or stumble on the path at Schonbrunn, she would kiss the petit injury with a fairy kiss and it would heal like a miracle.”

  She lowered her eyes, her lashes the colour of honey.

  “No matter what the petit injury was, a fairy kiss would make it better.”

  He stared at her for a moment.

  “You might break my neck like a dog,” he said.

  “Not today,” she said.

  “And there is still tomorrow.”

  And he leaned in to kiss her throat with fairy kisses and she pulled the sable coat over them both.

  ***

  white horses with manes of arrows, red horses with hoofs of flame, pillars of angels calling the dead from their graves, hands pushing from beneath the earth, decayed corpses walking the streets, Death towering over the people, sickle raised, setting the world on fire while a small, bearded man rushes into the room

  Sebastien awoke, heart thudding to the rhythm of the train. It was dark and he lay very still as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Across the floor, someone was moving under a fur and he remembered that he was in fact in the baggage compartment of a train bound for Vienna and that Christien was hopelessly in love with a very dangerous woman and that there was someone breathing at the back of his neck.

  Sophie.

  No, he realized with relief, not the terrifying child-woman with the mask of porcelain and the clockwork heart. He breathed in deeply, thankful for the scent of rosehips and leather and his heart thudded once again as he saw the hand draped across his chest.

  Ivy. She had asked him to call her by name. Ivy.

  He lay terribly still, desperate not to disturb her. His side was cold but his back was warm because of her and he never wanted this moment to end.

  “I remember what it is like to be dead,” Sophie had said. “Beautiful, calm and quiet.”

  Did he remember what it was like to be dead? He had been dead so many times. Even now, there were dead watching him from the walls of this compartment and he wondered how that could be. It was a train. People weren’t murdered on trains, surely. He sighed and concentrated on the feeling of her breath on his neck.

  Breathing, he thought, was a precious gift. He was glad he was still doing it.

  He wondered what it might be like if he rolled over toward her. He would be able to see her sweet face and the freckles on her nose but other parts of her as well. He felt the heat in his cheeks and cursed himself for being such a greedy man, so he didn’t.

  And so he lay very still, unwilling to move as the train rocked onward to Vienna with Ivy at his back.

  ***

  The train was as beautiful as she had expected, and she gazed out the etched windows as the trees and mountains of the Black Forest rattled past. In fact, she had been gazing out at the scenery since setting foot onboard. It was infinitely safer, she reckoned, than gazing at her companion.

  “Have you enjoyed your dinner, Penny?” asked international jewel thief and rogue Alexander Dunn. “Only the finest on the Orient Express.”

  She raised a flute of champagne to her lips but still did not look.

  “The oysters were cold, the turbot meely, the coq a-la-chasseur weak and the chateau potatoes over-mashed. The chocolate pudding was tolerable.”

  “Penny,” he grinned. “Do you honestly hate me so?”

  “I am your prisoner, sir,” she countered. “It was only for appearances that you cut my bonds. I’m surprised you didn’t have me tossed in the baggage compartment like a carpet.”

  “I had thought of it,” he said. “But carpets are much more useful when they’re underfoot.”

  “Useful,” she said and now, she did look at him. “Is that all I am to you?”

  Here, on this luxury train speeding to cities such as Vienna, Belgrade and Istanbul, he was at home as his other self, Alexandre Gavriel St. Jacques Lord Durand, Baron of Greystoke, Yorkshire. His hair was tamed, his suit dapper with a white carnation in the lapel. No one had ever suspected his altar ego as international jewel thief Alexander Dunn. No one, until her.

  “No Penny,” he said and he reached a hand across the table to brush her gloved fingers. “I find you intoxicating, enchanting, fascinating, infuriating, beguiling, bewitching…”

  He sat back, raised his flute.

  “AND useful.”

  She sniffed and turned back to the window.

  “I suppose that is what you say to your French paramour, Antoine Marionette, oui?”

  “Antoine is not my paramour.”

  “Of course she isn’t.”

  He rose to his feet and reached for her.

  “Come. I’ll show you.”

  Reluctantly, she took his hand, bade farewell to the rushing forests and mountains of Germany and followed him to their compartment. The aisle was polished cherry wood and very narrow, and when they stopped at the door, he was forced to lean across her to open the latch. She held her breath, bound to master her racing heart. No rogue would ever get the better of Penny Dreadful, Girl Criminologist. Certainly not one as blatantly seductive as Dunn. But as he pushed open the door, revealing the narrow bunks, she couldn’t help but wonder if she might need to teach him that lesson before the case was well and truly solved.

  She was frankly surprised when a voice came from behind the door.

  “Alexandre? Est-ce vous?”

  “Oui,” he said. “Et Penny.”

  “Ooh Penny!”

  Antoine stepped into the centre of the room and Penny’s breath caught in her throat.

  With only a wire crinoline for clothing, Antoine was an automaton with clockwork arms, cable-length torso and pistons for legs. The back of her skull was open and Penny could see the tiny gears ticking as they ran her Analytical and Difference programs. Her heart hissed steam into mechanical lungs and her eyes were astrolabs housed in wrought iron. The rest of her face however was almost completely human, with fleshly cheeks, painted lips and flawless skin.

  Alexander smiled at her.

  “Antoine is not my paramour,” he said. “She is my sister.”

  ***

  It had all started with Christien wanting a cigarette.

  He had been without one since the last morning on the Chevalier, and had lost his case in the crash. Without warning, Sebastien rose to his feet and knelt beside one of the steam trunks, placing his hands over the drawbolts and closing his eyes. His lips moved and the deadwind had picked up and soon ribbons of white frost ran the length of the metal clasps. The Archduchess watched with disbelief when he kicked with the heel of his boot and the steam trunk shattered into a hundred pieces across the floor.

  Methodically, he distributed the contents of the trunk – blankets, jumpers, scarves and coats, including a silver case of colonial cigarettes for his brother and a box of Turkish Delights wrapped in parchment for Ivy. He slipped one particularly sharp metal piece into his boot before gathering the
shattered trunk into a mound in the centre of the car and pulling a paper from his greatcoat pocket. Ivy recognized it as the train schedule from Strasbourg Station.

  “That was clever,” he said to her. “Strasbourg to Vienna. An express train.”

  “The Orient Express,” said Valerie, eyes still fixed on the Mad Lord. “I usually ride in a first-class double compartment, not like this.”

  “Welcome to Lasingstoke,” Christien grumbled.

  He leaned forward and raised his clockwork arm, bringing hers along with it and lighting the schedule with a flint attachment buried in the cables. Sebastien stuffed it under the mound and soon, a small fire was crackling in the baggage compartment of the Orient Express.

  “Where did Castlewaite go, then?” he asked and Ivy hugged her knees. The Turkish delights were making her teeth stick together.

  “He booked passage on the night train to Paris. Under Christien’s name.”

  “A red herring. Well done. And the airships? That was an airship explosion, wasn’t it? It looked to me rather like a horse.”

  Ivy laughed.

  “No Sebastien, not a horse. Castlewaite had told me that an automaton could easily fly an airship, so when we reached the station, we commandeered the use of one of the ships, told the personnel that all drinks in town were on the Kaiser and programed the docking steward to take it out.”

  “Valerie had the Imperial codes,” said Christien. He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply to make it catch. “No one would question her orders and no one did.”

  Sebastien looked at Ivy. “Did you program the ‘bot to release the trip-masts too?”

  “I did. I only thought it might cause some extra chaos and allow us to catch this train. I didn’t expect everything to explode the way it did. I am a calamity.”

  “Well,” said Christien and he released a long stream of smoke through his lips. “I expect they’ll think we’re dead now or in Paris. Either one.”

  “Death,” said Sebastien, “Is the last, best master.”

  “Sebastien?” asked Ivy.

  “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The Carriage held but just Ourselves and Immortality.”

  They all stared at him. He shrugged.

  “Well I’m glad it was an exploding airship, then and not a fiery horse. I couldn’t abide the site of a horse on fire.”

  “You are mad,” said Valerie in a quiet voice. “Just like Sophie.”

  “Death does that to a person.”

  They sat in silence for a moment longer, each staring into the flames and occupied with their own thoughts. The Turkish Delights had suddenly grown bitter and Sebastien slipped the candies into his pocket.

  “This is the Orient Express,” muttered Ivy and she looked up. “Would there be a telegraph on board?”

  “Of course,” said Valerie. “The Express has all the modern conveniences. But we won’t need it. We should be in Vienna by dinner.”

  “Well, I think we should get off before Vienna,” said Ivy. “We’re still fugitives.”

  “So why are you going, then?” Valerie’s eyes glittered like steel as she reached for one of Christien’s cigarettes. He lit it for her and she inhaled deeply. “If you insist you’re innocent, you must realize that you are going to your deaths.”

  “We are innocent,” said Ivy. “Sebastien didn’t kill Rudolf. We have to prove it.”

  “By kidnapping an Archduchess?”

  Ivy grinned. “In for a penny…”

  “Arclight killed Rudolf,” said the Mad Lord. “Arclight and love. That’s what Sophie said.”

  “Sophie?” asked Ivy.

  “When did you speak with Sophie?” asked Valerie.

  “In the cathedral. She shewed me an orb, a memory of when she was dead.”

  “Never speak of my sister,” growled Valerie.

  “Then kindly tell her never to speak to me,” he said. “Who was her doctor? The man who gave her life.”

  “I don’t know,” said the Archduchess. “It was years before I was born.”

  Ivy leaned forward. “And what about Arclight, Sebastien?”

  “What is this Arclight?” asked Valerie and she blew out a stream of smoke. So very like Christien, Ivy thought. “Is it the locket?”

  Suddenly the swingdoor into the compartment flew open on a steward in brown cap and uniform. He froze, very much surprised.

  “Blast,” said Ivy.

  The steward turned back to the corridor.

  “Sicherheit! Eindringlinge! Zigeuner!”

  The four of them bolted to their feet.

  “Christien,” said Sebastien as the temperature in the baggage compartment began to drop. “Open the cargo door, if you will.”

  The steward raised a baton but Sebastien caught it in his hand, shattering it into a hundred tiny pieces. Those were instantly sucked out of the train as Christien hauled the cargo door to the side revealing a snowy landscape. Trees, bluffs, snow and riverbank, all rushing by at breakneck speed.

  “Jump!” Ivy cried over the roaring of the winds.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” snapped the Archduchess. “I will tell them who I aaaa—”

  Christien leapt out of hurtling car, taking her with him.

  “Sebastien!” called Ivy, looking over her shoulder. “Come now!”

  “Verdammt Zigeuner!” barked the steward and he grabbed the Mad Lord’s coat. Sebastien swung around to catch him by the throat, forcing him back against the wall. Immediately, the steward’s face drained of colour and he opened his mouth in a silent scream.

  “Let him go!” Ivy shouted. “We have to jump!”

  She could see frost running up the wall beneath the steward, even as the edges of his clothes glowed like cinders. Flames leapt up the Mad Lord’s sleeves, across his shoulders and down his arms, but they did not burn. The steward’s uniform caught however, and the compartment filled with the smell of burning cloth.

  “Sebastien, no! We have to jump!”

  Steam hissed as frost met flame and the steward began to convulse violently under Sebastien’s hand.

  “Laury, no!” she screamed. “Let him go! Now!”

  With a growl, Sebastien shoved the steward out the entry door and closed it, running a palm along the frame and sealing it shut with a slick of ice. He strode across the compartment and took her hand and she caught one look at his face before they leapt from the train.

  His eyes were as red as the flames.

  ***

  Over and over and over and over and over she went, head over heels over head over heels down the steep snowy side and it was impossible to stop, impossible to grab hold, impossible to get her feet underneath as her feet went over her head over her heels through the snow. Ribs, legs and back and shoulders thudding for a heartbeat, replaced by shoulders and back and legs and ribs and then suddenly for a moment, a brief terrible eternal moment, there was nothing but air around and above when below she saw a river, realized it was the Danube and that it was indeed beautiful and blue and coming at her very quickly and then she hit.

  It slowed her fall but barely. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find the way to up, to the surface and air and life and she thrashed wildly but she began to sink, her coat and boots too heavy, her legs leaden, her arms numb. It was so cold, freezing and dark and she tried to hold her breath but her chest ached, swelled with pressure until finally it burst out with the rush of bubbles then a tide rolling in, panic and burn and terror giving way to thick and distorted and quiet and finally still. In a vague distance she could feel the ripple of another splash, the tug of her arm and then floating, ever-so-slowly, like a balloon over Piccadilly, like a feather on a westerly breeze, up to a dappling grey light and silence.

  It was remarkably like the crash of an airship.

  Suddenly, pain in her chest again and pain in her throat and she began to cough and gag as water bolted from her mouth and air flooded back in its wake. She was kneeling in the snow, coughing and retching and try
ing desperately to breathe as much as she could, as quickly as she could. The cold was biting every inch, stabbing with many sharp daggers. She tried to become very small but there were arms moving across her back, trying to rub the feeling back into her body and the hands were very warm. Her breathing grew steady, her shaking less pronounced. After a while, she raised her head to see Sebastien, clearly worried, hands running over her limbs as if looking for breaks. He lifted her chin, hands cupping her face.

  “Are you alive, Miss Savage? Please tell me you’re still alive!”

  “I th-th-think so. D-do I l-l-look d-dead?”

  “Everyone looks dead now. I can’t be sure.”

  In snowy gorse once again, her feet cold, her cheeks frozen. Somehow she managed to smile at the thought.

  “Y-y-you were r-right.”

  “Right? About what?”

  “My w-w-womanly wiles?”

  “Miss Savage?”

  “I w-would have you comp-ple-pletely at a disad-v-vantage,” she chattered. “I-if only I could f-find my p-pistol.”

  He froze, hands still cupping her face and he blinked at her, eyes thankfully brown, before he did a most unusual thing.

  He kissed her.

  It was sweet and completely unexpected and her breath caught in her throat from the surprise. He pulled back.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Savage,” he gasped. “Please forgive me. I’m so relieved that you’re alive and that was out of turn. I’m so very sorry.”

  The Danube was dripping from his hair, off his forehead and down his cheeks and she couldn’t imagine a world without such a fantastical man. She could go to the Sorbonne in Paris, she could go to balls in Vienna and chase down criminals in London and sell all her books to grand publishing houses in New York but without the Mad Lord of Lasingstoke, it would be for nothing. There could be no adventure without his adventure, no mystery, no plot, no storyline. He had ruined her. There was no way back to normal from him.

  She fell headlong into his arms, pushing him down into the snow and pinning him with her body. Her mouth found his, delighting in the river taste of him, the feel of his lips as they moved to discover hers, his breath filling her lungs.