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

by H. Leighton Dickson

He ignored it, pushed on the door, felt it as solid as brick. Damn Sebastien and his ghosts.

  “He’s sealed it from the inside,” he said. “Is there by chance another door?”

  “Down the hall,” said Franz. “But it is for the guests’ servants. The door is always locked and the key is inside.”

  “I can unlock it.”

  Franz nodded, leaving the frozen door and moving east down the corridor to a second very small door. Franz rattled the handle but shook his head.

  “No one has used this in months,” he said. “It was for the servants, for refilling the firewood.”

  Christien held up the clockwork hand, pressing down the flint and punching a key on his wrist. An iron digit popped up.

  “Skeleton key,” Christien said and leaned in to the door, inserting the key into the lock. His wrist spun once, twice, three times and the door clicked open. He took a deep breath and pushed his way in.

  It was like nothing he had ever seen before and immediately his breath frosted from his lips. The Bergl jungle had been transformed into a cavern of polar glass. Walls of ice curved into the frescoed ceilings, swept across the tiled floors like a frozen lake. Every inch of wall was coated so thickly he could barely see the paintings beneath. In fact, the fantastical animals were distorted, transformed into creatures of horror and myth with eyes too large and teeth too fierce. The ceilings were the same, as exotic jungle birds took on predatory airs, beaks and talons like blades under the refraction of the ice.

  He was in an antechamber, he realized, unlit but flickering from the fire in the room beyond. Smoke was hovering like a blanket and Franz followed him carefully as he made his way across the floor. Even under his shirt, the cold ran down the metal brace to bite the flesh of his upper arm. He wondered how the fire could have no effect on the ice, or if ghost ice could even melt, but the questions left his mind when he spied the first of the blood.

  Red in frozen stalactites from the ceiling, red in horrific scratches along the walls, red in icy rivers across the floor. The Bergl room of Archduke Franz Salvatore was a cavern entirely of red and in the middle, his brother knelt, flames dancing across his shoulders, arms in tattered ribbons at his sides.

  “Mein Gott,” breathed Franz.

  “Bastien?” he asked, his voice echoing through the foyer and he moved carefully across the icy tile. He spied the blanket, discarded on the floor and he scooped it up, laid it across his brother’s shoulders causing the flames to hiss and die beneath its weight. He knelt down, careful not to shatter anything into a thousand pieces. With Sebastien, one never knew.

  “Bastien?” he asked again and he raised an eyelid. Pupils wide and unfocused, tiny blood vessels had ruptured in the sclera. Not surprising given the blood loss and the violent manner in which he had likely lost it. His carotid pulse next, weak and thready, his breaths shallow and quick. The cheeks were sunken, his colour grey but he was alive. Christien realized that he was supposed to be grateful, but he wasn’t. Sad state, all things considered.

  “Hypovolemic shock,” said Franz. “I will call for more blankets.”

  “No,” said Christien. “They won’t help.”

  He reached down now, took one of his brother’s hands, turned it over to study the wounds. Likely an attempt to write those damned Latin prayers but he had not stopped at his palms, and the slices traveled up his wrists and across his forearms. Both forearms, and he remembered that his brother was proficient with both right and left hand. Perfect for killing oneself, if only one would die.

  His brother was insane, it was evident now. Not merely troubled, not odd or eccentric or even mad. Violent and paranoid schizophrenia was the first of many on the tip of his tongue, and that would be a fitting diagnosis if this were any other man. It didn’t explain the ice and frost, didn’t explain the winds and the ghosts and the walking dead, couldn’t explain the supernatural landscapes through which his brother moved. Insanity came the closest, but even insanity couldn’t explain all this.

  Truth be told, he wasn’t sure anything could.

  Slowly, Sebastien raised his head.

  “I didn’t leave,” he said in a very small voice. “I tried to write the ligaturae spiritus but it was too slippery and I made a mess. But the horse didn’t get in and I didn’t leave. I am trying, Christien. I am, honestly.”

  Yes, insanity was far too easy a diagnosis.

  Christien sighed, slipped an arm under his brother’s. Franz joined him and together they helped him to his feet.

  Chapter 17

  Of Bohemian Skulls, Biblical Woes and the Surprising Skillset of a Swan

  It didn’t matter that it was late and dark – she would have been lost anyway. Narrow passages, steep marble steps, doors behind doors. The Hofburg was a labyrinth with every wing telling a different story as six hundred years of history played out in furnishing, fabric, and frame.

  Under normal circumstances, she would have been delighted. Now she was terrified. Now she was numb. Now there was nothing else but Rudolf.

  Finally, the Archduchess stopped at a door, turned her elegant face toward Ivy.

  “Rudolf’s private apartments,” she said. “No one but Loschek was allowed.”

  “He didn’t live here?”

  “In another wing, with his wife and daughter. But he spent much time here.”

  She pressed a code into the panel. No steam this time but the sound of grinding gears as the door slowly swung open. As she turned up the gaslight, Ivy was surprised to see a suite very different than anything she would have expected in the Hofburg. It was a strange room, a sad room and it was distinctly Bohemian.

  Fabric of burgundy velvet draped the walls, Persian rugs atop Oriental rugs atop Berber, two black fireplaces at opposite ends of the room. Candles and Geisler tubes and stargazing telescopes and all manner of animal skeletons. Encyclopedias crammed in every shelf, cork frames with butterflies pinned, crystal decanters and cigar trays and clockwork spinning gadgets and Hungarian-embroidered cushions and strange bulbs with copper filaments. Atop an elaborate writing desk, a human skull watched everything with empty eyes.

  It was the room of a thinker, an inventor, a reader, a man of reason and philosophy and science, a sharp mind filled with modern ideas and the natural world. A liberal, as Valerie had put it, though not by any stretch of the imagination, a Habsburg.

  Of all the times she needed to be sharp, Ivy Savage felt like stone.

  “This was his room?” she asked as she moved to the windows, darkened with black sashes.

  “His bachelor’s apartments,” said Valerie. “He lived here before his wedding.”

  “But that was years ago.” She paused at the desk. The skull grinned up at her, cynical, taunting. “He was a writer.”

  “Histories and treaties, studies of environments and the ways of men upon the land.”

  She lifted a stack of letters. Envelopes with names such as Tesla, Edison, Clemenceau and Szeps. One from Edward, Prince of Wales and she knew they had been friends, although it was a vague remembrance from a headline or broadsheet long ago. No letters from Mary Vetsera, no mystical stamps of swans in black wax, no ‘smoking pistol’ as the term went. Nothing to assist her and she had to admit, with a man of this status and his sheer breadth of domestic and foreign affairs, she was completely out of her depth.

  One thing was clear to her, however. The Prince of the Gilded Empire was very much a bird in a gilded cage. And if his mother was to be believed, this same man – heir to the Habsburg dynasty and half the known world, had blown his own head off in a rural hunting lodge.

  No wonder the room felt heavy.

  “He loved these rooms,” Valerie sighed. “He spent more time here than in his home these last months.”

  “Unhappy marriage?”

  “Habsburg marriage.”

  Ivy replaced the letters, ran her fingers across the dome of the skull.

  “What about the lodge? What was it called again?”

  “Mayerling
. For a town in the Vienna Woods.”

  “Is that far from here?”

  “Twelve miles or so. Why?”

  “Did he spend much time there?”

  “It was his escape. Away from the mire that is the Hofburg.”

  “Vienna Woods.” She looked up. “Is that where the German hunting party was staying? Your mother said Gisela was attending them.”

  “What would that matter?”

  “Well, is it customary for foreigners to stay so close to a royal residence?”

  “With an Imperial guest, yes. Very. But if not, then no. It is odd.”

  “Hm. The hunting party was at the Hofburg that night and saw everything that happened. We need to talk to them. We need to find out why they were there.”

  “I will ask Taaffe about this. He will have names.” Valerie crossed the floor to stand near the dark window, pulled the sash with the tip of a finger. “I want him back.”

  The sentence of death upon your head.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Does it make sense to you, what your mother said?”

  “About?”

  She bit her lip, not wanting to say the word. Valerie looked away, tears welling behind the steely eyes.

  “My brother was not a happy man. He was being stifled politically and domestically. He and Father would always argue over the course of the Empire and our choice of allies. Rudolf wanted stronger ties with France but Father wanted none of it. We all hate Wilhelm but he is Kaiser of Blood and Iron and we are Germany’s first and dearest friend.”

  “Empires have come and gone since the beginning of time,” said Ivy. “Princes generally wait for their turn to take the throne, not kill themselves as a means to avoid it.”

  “Rudolf was not a normal prince.” She smiled sadly. “He was the people’s prince. They loved him so very much, but they were unhappy, so he was unhappy.”

  Ivy looked around at the wild décor, more befitting a poet than a prince.

  “He was a romantic,” she said.

  “An Austrian romantic,” Valerie shrugged. “If such a thing can exist. We are a proud people, a pragmatic people. We are known for our quiet passions. But new Vienna has embraced this Bohemian fascination with truth, beauty, freedom and death. It started with the revolutions in France but the philosophies have swept across all of Europe. Here in the city, at least a dozen young men and women kill themselves each week.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Terrible and romantic. A terrible, romantic illusion. My father refuses to think about it. He says it is the foolish and destructive pursuit of a foolish and destructive age. He rejects the notion, but along with it, the age.”

  She sighed, peered out the window again.

  “It was the first thing I thought when Maman told me he was dead. But then I heard Mary was with him. That made no sense.”

  “To die with your lover?” asked Ivy. “But it’s the ultimate romance isn’t it? A love that lasts beyond death? It’s Romeo and Juliet.”

  “There is no love beyond death. There is only death. And Mary Vetsera was no Juliet.”

  Outside, the snow had turned to sleet, wet slicks sticking to the glass and sliding down like icy tears. The moon flickered in and out as clouds, turned silver and black, moved across its face.

  “Pick something,” said Valerie.

  “Sorry?”

  “You said Remy’s brother needed something of his. Pick something.”

  She looked down at the desk. There was a gleam from inside the skull’s empty eyes and she lifted it to reveal a simple band of gold.

  “A wedding ring?” She held it up in the dim light. “He leaves his wedding ring under a skull?”

  “As I said, Habsburg marriage.”

  “This should do then.” She slipped it over her thumb. “And may I take these letters?”

  “They might be important state documents. You could be shot for that alone.”

  “If you want me to figure out why he died, there may be clues, motives, suspects hidden in these pages.”

  “You don’t read German.”

  “But you do.” Ivy picked up the letters, flipped them through her hands. “Tesla and Edison – they are inventors, but these?”

  “Politicians and liars,” said Valerie.

  “The Prince of Wales?”

  “A friend.”

  “Why has no one gone through these?”

  “They are personal.”

  “They are evidence.”

  Valerie took the letters, slipped them inside her bodice.

  “They will tear this room apart after the funeral but they will not find the pistol.”

  “Is there actually an investigation being conducted or am I it?”

  “It will be dealt with the way any Habsburg scandal is dealt with. By ritual cleansing. He will be erased from our history.”

  “Erased? How?”

  “After the funeral, his name will never be uttered again. Stability, Strength, Holiness, Order. It is the Gilded way.”

  There is nowhere you can run that the Gilded arm of the Habsburgs cannot reach.

  Valerie crossed the room to a bookshelf. She pressed a beam of wood and it creaked aside, revealing a hidden door and long dark flight of stairs. Ivy peered down. It smelled of dust and grease and six hundred years of secrets.

  The Archduchess paused, swept one last look around the room of her brother, Crown Prince and heir to half the known world. He would be erased, she had said, from the political arena of nations, erased from the history of a dynasty extending back over centuries. Erased from the landscape of Gilded politics and policies and dreams. But as Ivy looked at Valerie - younger by ten years - she wondered if he could ever be erased from the heart of his little sister.

  No wonder she wanted him back.

  With one last glance, Ivy left the strange sad room of a Crown Prince and the all-knowing gaze of the Bohemian skull.

  ***

  He measured the opium in careful drops, stirred the teaspoon into the wine and watched it change from red to inky brown. He was amazed that Franz had given Sebastien another room, let alone wine. Apparently, the man was fascinated by the arcane and believed Sebastien a miracle sent by God. Now, when they had nowhere else to go, Christien was not about to dissuade him.

  They were in a room far removed from the Bergl jungle, with arched ceilings, crystal chandeliers and shelves filled with very old books. There were two beds draped in green brocade, club chairs and a porcelain chiminea for warmth. After the jungle of fire and ice, it felt like heaven.

  Christien passed the glass to his brother.

  “Here, drink this.”

  “Is there cinnamon?”

  “No Bastien. No cinnamon.”

  “Nutmeg?”

  “We’re lucky to get the wine, otherwise your laudanum would consist of one hundred percent opium. Believe me, that would be worse.”

  Sebastien sighed and reached for the glass. Both hands and forearms were bandaged and the blood had finally stopped seeping afresh into the linen. He looked terrible, with dark circles under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks. His shirt had been stained beyond repair and the prince had arranged for another from his own personal wardrobe. It was military grey linen but better than counting all of his ribs.

  “Drink.”

  Sebatstien obeyed, slowly, unhappily and made a face before tossing it back.

  “Swallow.”

  He did, stuck out his tongue in displeasure. Handed back the glass.

  “Right,” said Christien. “Look at me again.”

  Christien examined his eyes, brown for now, pupils dilated, sclera ribboned with red.

  “So,” he said. “The black horse.”

  Sebastien looked away. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

  “Why are these horses coming for you, Bastien? Do you know? Is it something you’ve read in a story somewhere?”

  “Crown Prince Rudolf is dead,” he said. “And so is the gi
rl. It’s my fault.”

  “There’s no mention of the girl in the papers.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Did you see her die?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Did you see her die?”

  “There were Germans in the forest.”

  “Germans?”

  “Germans and ravens and Arclight and her…”

  “Her? The girl?”

  Slowly, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small white shape, clutched it tightly in his wrapped hand.

  “Blood of my blood,” he said. “Bone of my bone.”

  “God, Bastien…”

  “I need to think,” he said. “I need to remember. Because I can’t fight. There are too many arrows and a sword. Why a sword? I don’t use swords. Bullets weren’t invented but surely God must have known about bullets.”

  “Bastien, you’re making no sense.”

  “The crowns, Remy. The Crown Prince gets the crown. They want to give me the crown and I don’t want it. I don’t want any of them.”

  Christien sighed, watched his brother sink back into the pillows, eyes growing glassy and dull. Laudanum was one of the few things that kept Bastien controlled. Arvin Frankow had introduced it years ago when Bastien was barely fourteen. It was remarkable how his brother wasn’t an addict. He’d seen the effects of overuse in hundreds of patients, of the euphoria that gave way to depression, the relief that quickly became a horror all its own. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even his brother.

  He rose from the bed, taking the bottle of wine with him as he strolled over to the door. Sebastien was not to leave the room, nor was he to be left alone – those were Franz’s two conditions. Not until the Archduchess came back and knowing Valerie, it could be a very long time.

  He wondered if a locked door would stop a ghost horse?

  And he shook his head. Delusions, clearly. While there were many, many things about his brother he couldn’t explain, that was an easy one.

  Still, he dragged a walnut chair and propped it under the knob, just in case.

  He sank into one of the club chairs and stared out the window at the night sky. The world outside was black, cold rain now freezing against the pane like icicles. He wondered what Valerie and Ivy were doing, if they were in the Hofburg, if they had been discovered and if so, how it would have played out.