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

by H. Leighton Dickson

  “You are disgusting.”

  Christien grinned to himself. She was completely right. Under the pretense of helping the butcher he’d nicked a potato sack and, while Valerie had distracted him, he’d cut a section of sausage links using the snips he’d had in his prosthetic hand. They had subsequently fled the scene but the trail of evidence was not terribly hard to follow if one still had a nose.

  The crowds near St. Stephen’s were pressing – some moaning, some praying, some literally genuflecting on the streets. There was a mob around the main doors but she led him around the southeast corner to a set of stone steps that went down below the street. She paused at a small iron door, pressed a code into a keypad and stood back to wait.

  “Zugriff verweigert,” buzzed the lock.

  “Denied?” Valerie frowned, entered the code again.

  “Zugriff verweigert.”

  “That is impossible. It is an Imperial code.”

  “Your father’s been busy,” said Christien.

  He pushed the sack into her arms and raised his clockwork hand. The skeleton key replaced the snips and he raised a brow at her.

  “I think I’m beginning to enjoy this. I wonder what other parts would be better off clockwork?”

  And he slipped the key into the lock. The wrist spun several times until there was a clank and the tiny door swung open, the odor of damp stone hitting them like a wall.

  “At least it smells better than this,” and she shoved the sausages back into his arms.

  Valerie went first, ducking low as she went in and he followed, watched as she dipped a finger into a bowl of water on the side and curtsied, making the sign of the cross.

  “The Bishops’ Crypt,” she whispered. “The Ducal Crypt is this way. But there will be security. The Silver Hussars, most likely.”

  “Are Rudolf’s viscera on display yet?”

  “As of two days ago, yes.”

  “Then there will be mourners as well as Hussars. This could be problematic.”

  They passed rows of simple caskets, some made of wood, others made of copper, and the subterranean walls were whitewashed stone. Cogwheel lights ran along wire tracks and he mapped them with his eyes as an idea began to form.

  The hum of voices, low and chanting, and in a corridor ahead of them, a wall of people flowing like a river. Pressed three and four deep, they were shuffling down a tunnel toward a distant, circular antechamber. Beyond that, Christien could see the glint of Silver Hussars.

  Valerie ducked back, pulling him to her and the sack dropped to the floor.

  “The Hussars,” she gasped. “They cannot see me. They have face recognition algorithms. If we are caught, Papa will disown me.”

  “But he will kill me. How equitable.”

  “We have Maman. She understands the spirit world. She believes your brother can do this. She believes with all her heart. Like you, she still has hope.”

  “Hope,” he grunted, “Is not a word in my vocabulary. However…”

  Her body was warm in this cold cavern, her eyes – usually so sharp, were wide, trusting. He wasn’t certain, but he thought his heart skipped a beat.

  “Yes, Remy? However?”

  “I think I might have a plan. You’ll need these.”

  And he raised the clockwork arm once again, called the snips and they popped up. With his human hand, he began to work the tiny screws that held them in place and soon, they came free in his grasp. He pressed them into her hand.

  “Here,” he said.

  She took them but did not let go and his heart thudded at the touch of her fingers. She raised the prosthetic to her lips, began to travel along the copper with her mouth, all the while, her steely eyes locked with his.

  “Hardly proper behavior from a woman engaged to be married,” he said.

  “Habsburgs,” she murmured as she kissed his cabled palm, “Do not marry for love.”

  “Come away with me, then. We don’t have to do this. We can go and never be found.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. We can.”

  And he leaned in to kiss her, tasting the salt of her tears, the sweetness of her skin. Brandied peaches forever on his tongue.

  He leaned his forehead against hers.

  “We can do anything we want, empires be damned.”

  “And your brother? Your writer girl?”

  “They can take care of themselves, believe me. I have nothing back home for me. Nothing at all. That’s why I came.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  He wiped her tears with his fleshly fingers, studied her eyes, her blushing complexion, her perfect lips. She was so beautiful, complicated, elusive. Everything he had ever wanted or could ever want. He could lose himself in her forever.

  He froze.

  “By god.”

  “Remy?”

  “By god, you’re playing me.”

  Straightened. Stepped back.

  “You’re playing me. You’re saying what you think I want to hear so I’ll perform, so I’ll do what you want and steal those damned urns and patch up your brother. God, what a fool I am.”

  “No Remy, it’s not like this.”

  “I can’t believe I fell for it.”

  “Remy, please.”

  “Wait ten minutes then cut the wire to the cogwheel lights. Anywhere along the track, it doesn’t matter. I’ll have those viscera for you and we can move on to the heart. Perhaps I can give Rudolf mine. It was cut out long ago.”

  And he pushed away and left her standing, to lose himself in the crush of the crowds flowing toward the Ducal Crypt.

  ***

  He was utterly lost but following the orb and the tunnels alternated low and smooth with narrow and rocky. It seemed that some of the tunnels were old cellars – evident from the petrified barrels lining the walls. Others were storm sewers that ran deep beneath the city, slick with ice now in winter. Others were older, almost Romanesque and then there were the catacombs – mile upon mile of intersecting caverns that connected the churches from underground. Vienna was a city of many, many churches. They buried a lifetime of dead.

  He had no idea how far he had come, nor where beneath the city he might be. Bones littered the floors and with each piece, he released the dead attached to it. Here and there, an ossuary pit going deeper, utterly black in the catacombs but with his new eyes, utter blackness was simply a matter of perspective. The release was becoming progressively easier as well, and he found the ash of bones as sweet as water in a desert. He breathed it in and he wondered if he were still alive or something else entirely.

  Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me.

  Arclight was so close now. He could feel her drumming his heart, pulsing his blood. Her voice was music – hypnotic, intoxicating music and he longed to drink her in. High above somewhere, Ghostlight sang with her, and the harmonies were sweet and deadly. Snow and flame, fire and ice. He knew that once he had both, he could amplify their song, releasing the re obscura and the city would shatter into a thousand thousand pieces. The re obscura would consume everything in its path, city by city, until the world itself was a hole, one large gaping black hole in a universe of stars.

  The Carriage held but just Ourselves and Immortality.

  Immortality. Life forever and ever and ever, world without end, except it would end but he wouldn’t and he would have everything and nothing and all things would be his to control.

  But not Ivy.

  The orb was hovering near another dead end stacked with gruesome, grinning bricks. At least twelve feet long and seven feet high, a wall of skulls blocked his path. Most of them were here because of the plagues that had swept the continent over the centuries. The Black Death, it was called. The Black Death had sent them here and now, as he stood with soot raining from his hands and mouth and eyes, it was only fitting that the Black Death would release them.

  He laid his palms atop two skulls and suddenly, hundreds of orbs appeared, spinning and
flashing, lighting up the cavern like the lights of Carnival. He could see the faces, the twisting of the mouths, the last late flicker of life in the eyes. He closed his own and whispered in Latin. One by one, the skulls disintegrated and the wall disappeared in a rush of ash and soot.

  Once again, the earth rumbled and all around him, stones and chunks of earth dropped to the floor, threatening to bring the tunnel down on his head. He didn’t mind. Burial was only a temporary solution. It had stopped him before but not now. He wondered if there was anything that could.

  As the dust settled, he could make out a figure standing where the wall had been, porcelain mask a beacon in the darkness.

  “Bruder,” said Sophie.

  And around her neck, Arclight flashed like a lighthouse, calling him home.

  ***

  It took seven minutes to shuffle with the mob to the subterranean burial chamber known as the Ducal Crypt. Two minutes to fall into line before waiting his turn at the pedestal and the copper urn containing imperial intestines. Two Silver Hussars standing on either side, sabre-arms held at attention, mirrored faces seeing all. One minute to go and his heart was racing as he counted the seconds. Thirty now as he knelt before the urn. Ten now as he made the sign of the cross like every other mourner before him.

  Three as he laid the sack on the ground, clasping his hands as if to pray.

  Two as he closed his eyes.

  One.

  Zero.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Cog-wheeled lights still on, crackling overhead with old wire.

  The old woman behind him coughed.

  He opened his eyes, certain his heart had now well and truly stopped.

  “Move,” hissed the old woman. “You’ve had your turn.”

  As one, the Hussars turned their silver heads toward him.

  “Move,” growled the man behind the old woman.

  As one, the Hussars lowered their sabres, took a step forward.

  He staggered to his feet, released a long-held breath. Swallowed, made the sign of the cross once again. Glanced around for Valerie.

  Nothing.

  “Move,” said the Hussars, with one voice.

  There was no word for hope in his vocabulary.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned, preparing to take his place in the mob of mourners shuffling out of the Ducal Crypt.

  “Your bag,” hissed the old woman. “Take it! It smells like dead cats.”

  Slowly, robotically, he turned back, bent down to pick it up, when suddenly, the earth began to rumble and the Ducal Crypt was plunged into darkness.

  ***

  “Oh look,” said the Prince of Wales. “There’s another one. Damned quakes. I hear Nippon’s a bugger for ‘em! Ah ha! Ah ha!”

  The crystal clinked in their chandeliers and the cups rattled in their saucers. Soon, the rumble died down and Ivy looked up at the big bearlike man in the chair opposite.

  “Not many quakes in Lancashire, I hear,” he said, smiling.

  “Getting back to our conversation, sir…”

  “Dashitall. I was rather hoping you’d forget.”

  “Never,” she said. “I don’t understand why would you get Mary Vetsera to steal Arclight for you? Surely Ghostlight is deadly enough.”

  “Rule Britannia, m’dear,” he said. “Anything that gives you an advantage…”

  “Is to be used to your advantage,” she finished.

  “Bully, girl! I see Laury has been teaching you a thing or two.” He sat back, dropped the cigarette to the carpet and crushed it under his toe. “He’s an asset, that boy. If only he’d do what he’s told.”

  Her green eyes flashed. She was smarter after all.

  “He has been teaching me, sir,” she said. “And one of the things I know is how to get that locket to work.”

  “What’s that?” He sat forward. “What’s that you say?”

  “There’s no power in these lockets in and of themselves. Look at it. It’s just lying there like a regular pocketwatch. Oh yes, it can make snow. Oh yes, it can flash like a kaleidoscope. It can even spin rooms into gold. The elements that make it up are wondrous and new but seriously, sir? If you needed more gold, you’d just expand into Africa or India or Arabia. But that’s not really what you’re after, is it? Not really.”

  He grunted, raised his arm, proceeded to light another cigarette.

  “You would make a bloody good spy, you know that?”

  She nodded, knowing it to be quite true.

  He sat back again, blew smoke into the air, studied her with eyes that changed like the wind.

  “Simple fact is, little Cymry, I don’t want my nephew to get it. Nothing more than that. He’s a willful, dangerous young man, hell bent on proving he’s better than all of us, that he knows better. Not at all like his father, God rest his soul. Not like his mother, either. She’s a good girl, our Vicky.”

  Vicky or Victoria, Princess Royal, oldest child of Victoria and Albert. Edward’s older sister and wife of Frederick III, the liberal Kaiser who ruled for less than a year.

  “Nine months was far too short for Freddie,” the Crown Prince said. “I can’t believe Willie had his father poisoned. I simply can’t. But I don’t know, do I? Willie wants what Willie wants, and he’s been a spoiled ruffian all his life.”

  He blew smoke again, watched it as it swirled and changed.

  “He’s building war machines, you know. And not just airships and iron clads.”

  She swallowed, remembering them well.

  “If he gets his hands on that locket, not only will he fund a war against the Republic, Steel, the damned Turks and us, he’ll have his chemists and physicists working on it night and day until they take it apart and discover its secrets. Believe me, the power they will have will reshape the world. And, little Cymry, that is something I’m just not ready for. In fact, I am convinced the world is not ready for it.”

  She looked at Ghostlight. It was a beautiful, deadly piece with her kaleidoscope colours and pretty snowflakes and she hated it with everything inside her.

  “Sometimes, little Cymry,” he said finally. “Part of being a leader is knowing when to act, and when to prevent an act. Arclight will be much safer in a vault in the Tower of London, along with her sister here.”

  “That’s quite true,” she said. “So why did you bring her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if Ghostlight is safer for everyone in the Tower of London, why did you bring her here?”

  “I…” He frowned. “Well, that’s obvious…”

  “Yes?”

  He stared at her.

  “By God, I don’t know. It just seemed like the thing to do.”

  Ivy reached forward, picked up the locket gingerly as if holding a snake. Ghostlight’s rings spun like a top, happily, merrily, innocently. Just as she had when floating through the ice and steam of the Thames.

  “Of course it did,” she said. “Like Wilhelm, the locket wants what the locket wants. Ghostlight wants Sebastien. And look. She’s just crossed an ocean and is currently in Vienna, where he is.”

  “By jove…”

  “The lockets need to be destroyed, sir,” she said. “And destroyed completely, or once together, they will destroy the world and use Sebastien to do it.”

  ***

  The rumble of the earthquake died away and the Ducal Crypt of St. Stephen’s Church was plunged into utter darkness.

  For several seconds, there was absolutely no sound. Not a cough, not a question. Even the Hussars were silent. It was as if the entire world was holding its breath.

  “It’s the judgment!” Christien shouted in German and his voice echoed through the shadows. “The judgment of God!”

  He waited in silence, until the old woman.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “The holy judgment of God our Father…”

  “God has sent the plague of famine!” He grew bolder. “Then the plague of earthquakes! And now the plag
ue of darkness!”

  More murmuring from the crowd.

  “Cease and desist,” said the two Hussars as one.

  “Rudolf was firstborn and now he is dead! We must repent and flee this city of wickedness!”

  “Vienna is Ninevah!” shouted a voice in the darkness.

  “Berlin and London are Sodom and Gomorrah!” came another.

  “Repent or we will all be destroyed!”

  And as suddenly as they had gone out, the cog-wheeled lights sputtered back on. But it was a dim glow, a pale shadow of the original. Generators, he thought. Should have known.

  “Mein Gott! A sign,” breathed the old woman, and she pointed at the pedestal. “A sign from God!”

  On the pedestal, there was no urn. Rather, a pile of intestines that resembled molding sausages.

  And from deep within the Ducal Crypt, a woman who sounded suspiciously like Valerie von Habsburg screamed. The crypt erupted in chaos.

  Chapter 23

  Of International Politics, Imperial Holiness and the Face Behind the Mask

  The crowds carried him up and out of the catacombs to the street, scattering a screaming mob in all directions and allowing him to slip unnoticed down an alley between the shops.

  The rain had stopped but he could see his breath like white plumes in the grey afternoon. His limbs were a twitching mess as the adrenalin left his body, and he leaned against an old brick wall. He slid down to sit, dropping his arms across his knees and trying to control his breathing. He closed his eyes.

  He had done it.

  He had stolen the Holy Roman viscera, right out from under their bloody noses.

  His heart was still trying to beat its way out of his chest and he looked down at the sack, the shape of the urn rounded and smooth. It was heavier than the sausages. Certainly less smelly.

  A black shadow swept past him in the alley.

  “Follow me,” she said but did not stop, her skirts sweeping the snow from the cobbles like brooms.

  He shook his head but pushed to his feet, threw the sack over his shoulders. But for once, did as he was told.

  ***