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

by H. Leighton Dickson

  And with that, he turned to the minor prince called Franz.

  “Did you say there was tea?”

  “Writer girl!” came the voice from coach. “Come now!”

  And for the first time she could remember, Christien laughed. It was a bitter, cynical bark of a laugh and the three men turned to head into the palais, leaving her to climb into the carriage alone.

  ***

  Vienna Daily News

  Vienna

  We are shocked to report that the offices of our sister newspaper, Illustrated Grazer Special Edition, have been raided and looted overnight, their presses damaged and across the city, newsstands burned. It is rumoured that the Grazer broadsheet was publishing falsehoods and slander regarding the unfortunate death of beloved Crown Prince Rudolf but state police have denied any involvement in these acts of vandalism. They have also assured other presses that as long as they continue to print the truth, they should fear no public backlash or private retribution on behalf of outraged citizens or vandals.

  State police are continuing to investigate.

  ***

  Obviously Archduke Franz’s circle of friends didn’t include many lunatics or madmen, judging from the look on his face. The prince had been pleasant as he led them through the grand city palais, with both footman and valet at their heels, but all had changed the moment they entered the guest suite next to the courtyard. The footman turned up the gaslight and suddenly, the guestroom was transformed into an exotic place with leafy jungles and fantastical creatures painted over walls and ceiling. Smiling in wonderment, Sebastien stretched out on the floor, fingers laced across his middle to study it.

  Christien didn’t smile. He didn’t even try.

  “Thank you,” he did say to the prince. “This is very generous.”

  “You are friends of Marie-Valérie,” said Franz. “That is enough for me.”

  “You might find yourself in a world of trouble on our account.”

  “Well then, we will face it like Austrians. With a stiff drink and a large cigar.”

  He gestured to the footman, who moved around the Mad Lord to the fireplace. It was painted to look like a jungle volcano. He began to prod it with a poker and embers gleamed, erupting as the fire finally roared to life.

  “These are quite remarkable,” said Sebastien from the floor. “Much better than most frescoes I’ve seen.”

  “The Bohemian, Bergl,” said Franz. “He painted rooms in the Hofburg and Schoenbrunn, as well as the Abbey of Melk. Have you ever been to Melk?”

  “No,” Christien lied.

  “I don’t like Melk,” said Sebastien. “No tea. Only saints.”

  Franz looked at Christien.

  “Your room is the door opposite. But before I show you,” he held up three cigars. “Would you care to join me in the smoking room? You and your brother are fascinating company and these Havanese are too rich for an idle smoke.”

  Christien studied the man, his military posture, his bright eyes, the eager way he carried himself. There was something about him, however, and for Christien, trust was not a thing easily lent.

  “Delighted,” he said after a moment.

  “And the Miracle Man? Will he join us, yes? Marie-Valérie told me of the relics, how he made them come to life.”

  “Is there a tea trolley?” asked Sebastien from the floor.

  “Surely not when we have Grüner Veltliner and Muskateller in the cellar?”

  “Bastien will stay here, won’t you Bastien?”

  “I’ll stay here,” said Sebastien.

  Christien turned.

  “Might you give us a moment? I do need to speak with him.”

  “Of course. The valet will wait outside and will show you to the smoking room when you’re ready.”

  And with that, the prince, his valet and footman left the room to the de Lacey brothers – one on his feet, one on the floor.

  There was silence, only the hiss of gaslamps and the crackle of the hearth. The painted walls gleamed with firelight.

  “You will stay in this room, Bastien. Promise me you won’t get into any trouble.”

  “Why? Are there skeletons here too?”

  “There are skeletons everywhere, Bastien, most of them well and truly buried. Would that stop you?”

  “It’s not me.”

  “Well, it’s not anyone else, is it? How the bloody hell did you do that? And don’t tell me they did it themselves. I don’t believe it.”

  Sebastien slid a hand into his greatcoat pocket, pulled out the bag of Turkish Delights he had stolen from the train. He popped one in his mouth and held up the bag.

  “They’re sweeter than cigars,” he said.

  Christien grunted and snatched the bag, reached in with a pick attachment rather than a finger. The candy was delicious and stuck to his teeth.

  “You’re looking for horses, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you see any?”

  “None on the ceiling,” said Sebastien. “But two on the walls. At least they’re only white. I was curious about those brown things in that corner but I realized that they have humps so I think they’re camels. Did you see the elephants?”

  “I see painted elephants, Bastien. What type did you see?”

  “Why, painted elephants of course. What other kinds are there in a Viennese palais?” Sebastien sighed. “I would love to ride an elephant.”

  Christien plucked another Delight before tossing the bag back to his brother. Even from the floor, Sebastien caught it easily and slipped it back into his coat.

  “I’m going for a smoke. You are staying here.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “No chasing horses through the palais. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, completely.”

  “I’m serious, Bastien. I don’t care if all the horses in the world come calling, you will not go after them. Is that clear?”

  “Why do you hate me so, Christien?”

  Because you’re laying on the floor looking for horses. Because you see the dead and call skeletons from their graves. Because I was chased out of Vienna’s halls and Valerie’s bed on account of you. Because I lost everything to your damned lockets and your damned ghosts and grew up in your mad shadow and because you were a terrible brother and because of you, our father killed himself and I’ve hated you since I was born. Is that enough for you to chew on, or do you need more damned Turkish Delights?

  “Because you don’t keep your word,” he said flatly. “And then, you don’t think about the consequences.”

  “Hm. You may have something there. Might you bring tea after your cigar?”

  Christien sighed.

  “Only if you promise to be here when I get back.”

  “I promise.”

  “Do you hear yourself? You are promising to stay here, even if there are horses.”

  “Yes, I hear myself.”

  With that, he turned and headed out through the painted doors toward the steps when he heard his brother’s voice call after him.

  “But what if the horse is black?”

  He closed the door behind him.

  ***

  Ivy could see flashes of limestone between the narrow streets, covered in fresh snow and illuminated by streetlamps. It was very dark now, but not late. Winter did that to a place. In winter, the sun was a welcome commodity, like sugar or plums.

  She was warm now, her red corset under blouse and shawl, her breeches and boots hidden under the long dark skirt of Melk. It served not only to keep her warm, but disguised her rather unorthodox wardrobe. On this trip, she was to be unremarkable, unmemorable, forgotten.

  Easily done, she reckoned, when travelling with an Archduchess.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” she said as the coach rattled down the cobbled streets.

  Valerie didn’t look at her. It was impossible to guess the thoughts that ran through her head.

  “Were you close then?” Ivy asked. “You and Rudo
lf?”

  “No,” was all she said.

  “Still,” said Ivy. “I am sorry for your loss. After all of this, I am truly sorry.”

  “Rudolf is ten years older than me. I rarely see him. Saw him. I rarely saw him.”

  The Archduchess turned her face now. It was as much a mask as Christien’s.

  “Do you have a brother?”

  “Yes, Davis. He’s almost sixteen.”

  “What is he like, your brother?”

  Ivy smiled. “Wild, clever, stubborn. Resourceful. Currently besotted with a maid-girl at Lasingstoke. I miss him.”

  “Rudolf was clever,” Valerie said. “And resourceful. Perhaps he was stubborn but he hid it well. We all do. It is how one survives as a Habsburg.”

  “How so?”

  The woman’s eyes were like cold steel and Ivy tried her best not to feel small.

  “When you are born Habsburg, you have one role and that is to perpetuate the Gilded Empire. For men, you learn the art of war. You learn strategy, diplomacy, tactics and politics. You travel and make allegiances, break alliances, placate the barons and please the church. You marry whom they tell you to marry, produce an heir and chart the best course for the Empire.”

  “And for women?”

  “You marry whom they tell you to marry and produce an heir.”

  They were birds, Ivy thought, beautiful birds in gilded cages. She had once thought that about Christien but now anyone would be hard pressed to cage him.

  “You are very fortunate,” Valerie continued. “You have none of this weighing on you. You write your little books and live a life of freedom. You may marry whomever you wish to marry and have children, or stay a spinster and have none. You may go to school or bake bread all your days. You have your will and your life goes as your choices, for good or ill. Not so, a Habsburg.”

  Through the window, distant sights of the Ringstrasse rolled by. The Opera House, the Parliament Building, the Museum of Natural History. No longer regal or imposing, she thought, just sad.

  “So why aren’t you married?” she asked. “I would have thought that a princess of your status would have dozens of suitors by now.”

  “I was betrothed at Christmas,” said Valerie. “To my cousin.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Franz.”

  “Franz? The minor prince Franz?”

  “Archduke Franz Salvator Maria Joseph Ferdinand Karl Leopold Anton von Padua Johann Baptist Januarius Aloys Gonzaga Rainer Benedikt Bernhard of Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia.” She sighed. “My cousin. He is a physician in the Gilded cavalry.”

  Ivy gaped, at a loss for words.

  “Does, does Christien know?”

  “Why should he know?”

  “He loves you!”

  “I’m sure he does,” she said. “But I am a Habsburg and a Habsburg does not marry for love.”

  “Oh my,” sighed Ivy and she sagged against the carriage seat. “Oh my.”

  “First you, then me. Our Remy does not choose his women well, I think.”

  If you do get the sense that you’re being duped, leave her. Find a safe place and lay very low.

  She’d never run from anything in her life. Not likely to start now.

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “What is a Black Swan?”

  The Archduchess looked away.

  “Remy said you were a Black Swan,” Ivy pressed. “What is that?”

  “Remy talks too much.”

  “Why am I going with you in the Hofburg?”

  The woman smiled and Ivy felt a rush of cold sweep down from her ears.

  “You are here to help me find who murdered my brother,” she said. “And if not, you will die in front of an Imperial firing squad for treason and murder.”

  The carriage rattled to a halt.

  “Well then,” said Ivy. “We’d best get started.”

  And the coach door swung open on the marble arches and Silver Hussars of the Hofburg.

  ***

  Sebastien rose from the floor as the fire sputtered in the hearth. Even though the room was painted like a jungle, the many windows conducted the winter air like an icebox. He was relieved to have found the hearth loaded with wood. There was a set of clockwork bellows and an ornate pot that must have been used to boil water. For tea, he thought glumly. Not that he would get some anytime soon but Christien had promised and Christien was a man of his word.

  He sighed and looked at the frescoed walls. Camels, elephants, baboons and tigers, cockatoos, parrots and peacocks with tails that dragged on the ground. People too, from far-away lands with turbans on their heads and sarongs across their hips. Palm trees and ferns and oranges, mountains and rivers and deep jungle vines. The hearth itself was painted like a volcano, seams of red gleaming along the marble. It was a world of coloured fantasy, utterly unnatural yet serene as a dream.

  He popped another Turkish Delight in his mouth, chewed slowly as he studied the baboons, thinking them a refreshing change from the cherubs and saints of Strasbourg or Melk. He’d never seen a baboon or an elephant, but then again, he’d never seen a cherub either. Saints, he reckoned, were a littler trickier to spot.

  There was a flash outside one of the many windows and he moved to peer out at the courtyard. Nothing. Not a brother bearing teapots or a Girl Criminologist who had somehow become his whole world. Only snowy cobblestone, gaslamps and steamcars. In the distance, the gothic spire of St. Stephan’s as it towered over the city. And the dead.

  There were so many and he missed his dark lenses. Even inside this room, there were easily a hundred, rising up the walls, hovering across the ceiling, pressed on each other like a tapestry, becoming a part of the Bergl frescoes themselves. They were staring at him as if waiting and he would have turned away if there weren’t more outside.

  There again – a flash of arrows and this time he saw it, tossing its mane as it pranced though the courtyard, a horse as white as the snow with eyes like burning embers. It was a beautiful horse, he realized. A Lipizzaner but he remembered his promise and ran his hand across the glass of the window, causing frost to crawl across the pane and turning it opaque within seconds. Arrows shattered into another window, then another, and he followed, frosting each and every one until his breath hung in the air like crystal. But he had promised Christien and now he couldn’t see the horse.

  Suddenly from the hearth, there was a boom like the cannons of the Stahl Mädchen and smoke billowed out from the box. Slowly, he stepped toward it, heart racing like the horse outside when an unearthly squeal shattered the silence and the fire roared in its wake. The red horse, he knew, trying to reach him from the fireplace. He had been a fool to let them light it. Live coals rained down from the chimney and embers spewed across the floor. Smoke boomed again and he knelt down next to the hearth, took a deep breath before reaching a hand up into the firebox to close off the flue. His shoulder pushed against the hot marble and he called the frost to combat the sizzle of his sleeve and the puckering of his flesh. His fingers brushed against the damper, catching it in his palm. He tugged once, twice, but it was wedged, so he threw his weight behind it, yanking with all his strength. It came free and soot spilled out like a river.

  In his hand was a sword.

  He stared at it, not fully believing. It was a beautiful sword, the hilt old gold, the blade a folded Damascus red when suddenly, the blade burst into flame, burning blue and yellow and white. He threw it to the floor and it shattered instantly, leaving an outline of ash on the tile. From the chimney, the red horse squealed again.

  He rolled to his knees and reached up again, this time closing his eyes and calling the dead. He could feel them moving to him, into him, freezing the life from him as they moved into the hearth. The fire inside sizzled and sputtered and finally died, plunging the painted room into semi-darkness. He sagged back and studied the box, the Bergl volcano now sealed within a massive block of ice.

  Even for him, it was unnatural.

 
He sat for a long moment, concentrated on the breath entering and leaving his body, marveled at the mechanics of breathing, when as if from a great distance, he heard a sound.

  “Christien?” he called. “Christien, is that you?”

  It was like the boom of cannon fire and it echoed through the corridors of the palais, bouncing off walls and ceiling and floor. There was a second boom and a third, shaking the very foundation with each pulse.

  Slowly, he rose to his feet to stand in front of the doors that led to the hall.

  “Is that the footman, sir? Are you bringing tea?”

  The Bergl room boomed again and the doors shook and he peered through the keyhole, praying he might catch a glimpse of someone with a trolley on the other side of the door.

  What he saw was the chest and shoulder and flaming eye of a black horse.

  ***

  Neueste Nachrichten

  Munich, Empire of Blood and Iron

  Headline: MARY VETSERA!!

  CENSORED by order of His Imperial Majesty, Wilhelm II

  Chapter 16

  Of Black Wax, Red Ice and a Fatal Pronouncement

  Valerie lived in a residential apartment in the Amalienburg wing of the Hofburg, attached to her mother’s suites by antechambers that could have housed entire families. They had entered through the Guard’s Gate, up several sets of stairs and Ivy’s chest had tightened with each step. Surely she would be recognized if either Sisi or Gisela set eyes on her and that, she reckoned, would not bode well for sleuthing.

  Valerie opened her suite by punching a code into a keypad on the door. Steam hissed and the door groaned open, gaslight glowing along the walls to reveal a very beautiful apartment papered in blue crewel. It was surprisingly feminine and Ivy wondered if Valerie had been allowed to choose her own furnishings or if they had been handed down over six hundred years of Gilded rule. While they could kill with a look, it seemed that for the most part, Habsburg women did what they were told.

  Closing the door, Valerie pushed past her and tossed the sable onto the bed.