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

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Valerie held up a sheet of paper that was illustrated on one side.

  “What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Something about horses.”

  “No, not that. This.”

  She showed him the list, the last point crossed off.

  He stared at her flatly, but truth be told, he was too exhausted to look any other way.

  “Do I love Valerie von Habsburg?” she read. “That’s what it says.”

  “I crossed it off.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s no longer a question.”

  “What is the answer?”

  “That is none of your concern,” he said. “You’re engaged to another man.”

  “But if I weren’t?”

  His heart had been cut out when he was still a boy.

  “Then the answer would still be no,” he said. “I am my father’s son, my life bought and sold with blood. I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone or anything. I never have. Just like him.”

  She looked down at the list. He could have sworn tears fell, smudging the ink.

  “Christien!”

  Ivy’s wail broke the stillness of the courtyard.

  And without a second glance, Christien rose to his feet, leaving the Archduchess Marie Valerie von Habsburg with only a slip of paper in the night.

  ***

  “He’s not waking up,” she moaned. “Why isn’t he waking up?”

  “Ivy,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking but that’s not true. He dies all the time and comes back. He does. Honestly, he does. So…”

  She looked back down at the Mad Lord. He looked like a broken statue, his face ashen, his eyes empty, cheeks and mouth stained with soot. He was entirely drained of all colour. Like Vienna in winter, a monochrome of grey and black.

  “So why doesn’t he wake up?”

  He sighed.

  “It’s over, Ivy.”

  “No, not this way. Not Sebastien.”

  She reached down to brush the hair from his forehead.

  “There’s more to him than that. There always is.” She smiled sadly. “He’s like a cat. That’s what Bertie said. Been dead more times than a cat.”

  “Ivy.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Ivy, it’s over.”

  She felt rather than saw the shadow of three people standing over her. She would not look up.

  “Thank you,” said the Emperor. “You have restored my son. It is beyond belief.”

  Slowly, elegantly, Sisi knelt down beside her. She gathered Ivy’s hands in hers.

  “Dear Sebastien,” she said. “I cannot express how thankful I am.”

  “Don’t, please,” said Ivy and she shook her head. “It would sound false.”

  “I know him,” said Rudolf and he bent down beside his mother. “I remember him as if from a dream.”

  Still, Ivy couldn’t look at him.

  “He asked me to come home,” the Crown Prince continued. “I didn’t want to but I could not refuse him. He spoke with authority and kindness, but…he did not use words. I can’t explain it.”

  He shrugged.

  “He was a good man, I think.”

  She looked up now, eyes flashing.

  “Then be a good king,” she said. “Don’t do this. Don’t rule like this.”

  And she swept her arm over the courtyard, across the destruction and the flames, the iron men and the silver.

  “Justo Armas,” said Rudolf. “Right weapons. Just causes.”

  He reached over, took her hand and she couldn’t stop the tears from welling. She blinked them away.

  “Keep the locket. It belongs to the house of de Lacey, not the Holy Roman Empire. Or any empire, for that matter.”

  “Bury the lockets with him,” said Sisi. “Perhaps they will bring him back one day, like they brought back my son.”

  And the Imperial family left her alone with Christien in the middle of the Chapel Commons. He squeezed her shoulder.

  “I’m bleeding, Ivy.”

  She blinked up at him.

  “It’s nothing, but I do need to get it looked at. We’ll take one of their airships and get the hell out of here as soon as I’m done.”

  She nodded and he left, Valerie following him like a shadow.

  She sighed, reached down to pry open the Mad Lord’s hands. The lockets rolled out onto the grass like pebbles. She picked them up, studied them for a long moment.

  “These are wicked, wicked devices and I should throw them far, far away. But the world is filled with greedy people and I fear I could never throw them far enough so that someone would not find them.”

  She gazed out at the faces of soldiers and politicians, the steely glint of the Eisenmänner, the Hofburg fires quenched by Swiss Guards with water hoses. The sun was beginning to streak the dark sky with pink. She looked back down at the Mad Lord.

  “They are wicked and full of dread, but you are not. You, with your life spent on the dead and the dying, you are the master of these accursed things. You redeem them and make them good. You make everything good.”

  The lockets were quiet in her palms. No flash of colour, no gleam of light. Just intricate metalwork over pieces of cold stone.

  “People put pennies on the eyes of the dead. I don’t know why. Maybe to pay the ferryman for their trip through the river, maybe to bribe the saint at the gates of heaven. I think it’s to deter the crows from taking the eyeballs but that’s me. I’m a morbid creature, a real-life Penny Dreadful.”

  She leaned forward, tenderly kissed each lid before placing the lockets over them.

  “So take these because the only pennies I can give you, are dreadfuls.”

  Beneath her knees, the earth began to move.

  Chapter 28

  Of Angels in the Turf, Bones in a Wall and the Rider of the Pale Horse

  The Cistercian Monastery Graveyard,

  Heiligenkreuz, Vienna Woods

  The young police constable, Helmut Mansel, looked up from his reading and glanced around the small room. It was a horrible night, the only warmth provided by a few hand-dipped candles. Apparently, the monastery cultivated their own bees, using the wax for candles and the honey for mead. While he was enjoying the fruits of the wax, he knew a little mead would take the chill even better.

  “What is that noise?” he asked.

  “Probably those macabre journalists,” his companion groaned. “Gawkers and gossips, all of them.”

  Helmut grinned. Brother Georg was not an open-minded man. He had likely never read a broadsheet or newspaper in his long, holy life.

  “But listen. It’s coming from inside the yard.”

  Georg frowned, closed his Bible.

  “It sounds like a woman,” said Helmut.

  “As I said, gawkers and gossips.”

  Helmut grinned again.

  “Regardless,” he said. “I have to investigate. Gorup left specific instructions.”

  “Vile desecraters. You have your pistol?”

  “I do.”

  “I am a man of peace,” said Georg. “Still…”

  He rose to his feet and reached for a spade.

  “I’m sure I can help them rest in peace.”

  With lantern and spade and pistol in hand, both men left the warmth of the shelter and headed out into the night. The graveyard of the Heiligenkreuz monastery was a simple one and they made their way through the row of bare trees and headstones to a fresh, unmarked grave. The ground was frozen, the pit hastily dug and it was covered only in a light dusting of snow. There were no looters, no reporters, no gawkers nor gossips. The sounds were coming from the ground, however, from inside a makeshift coffin and they were unmistakable.

  “Rudy! I’m sorry, Rudy! Let me out!”

  The screams of a woman, muffled and dull. The banging of fists and boots on cheap wood.

  “Rudy! It wasn’t my fault! It was Wales! Please let me out!”

  They exchanged gla
nces before Helmut snatched the spade and leapt into the pit. The impact of his boots caused the voice to scream more loudly and with three good blows of the spade, the cheap wood shattered. A girl with lustrous hair pushed her way out of the snow.

  “Rudy!” she cried. “Rudy, where are you, my love?”

  “Who are you?” breathed Brother Georg.

  Brilliant eyes, wicked and sharp, flashed at him.

  “I am Baroness Marie Alexandrine von Vetsera, Black Swan and lover of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austro-Hungary! You will take me to him at once or I will have you both shot!”

  Helmut blinked slowly.

  “Crown Prince Rudolf is dead, Baroness…”

  She stared at him, her eyes the largest things in the entire world.

  “Oh no! Oh no. They will come for me next…” She grabbed his sleeves. “Please, my handsome lord, take me far, far away from here!”

  And with that, the Turf Angel of Fredenau and Baden Baden collapsed into Helmut’s waiting arms.

  ***

  In graveyards throughout Vienna, the earth tore itself apart, pushing caskets and coffins up from the frozen depths, shattering them open to spill bodies across the snow. In backyards and courtyards and other areas not set aside for burials, the earth still split open, forcing bones from centuries past up to the surface. People screamed and fled into their homes, counting it as yet another symptom of the curse that had befallen all the Gilded Empire, a curse which had begun with the worst of all possible beginnings – the death of the Crown Prince.

  It would prove to be nothing compared to his resurrection.

  ***

  “Another earthquake!” someone shouted as the ground began to rumble beneath their feet. The sea of politicians and soldiers rippled like a tide and a collective murmur rose as something passed through the crowd under the Swiss Gate.

  Christien whirled and tore the page from Valerie’s hand. He held the illustration up to see it in the light of the chapel fires.

  “What is this?” he shouted over the roar of the earth. “What the hell does this mean?”

  “It’s a prophecy,” she shouted back. “From Revelation, the last book in the Bible.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  There was a sound like the booming of cannons and they both turned to the Gate, to the crowd gathered across the courtyard. The mob was moving, rippling aside like a tide as something large pushed its way through.

  Christien staggered back.

  It was a horse.

  “By god,” he said.

  “The pale horse,” breathed Valerie.

  “By god,” he said again. “He was right.”

  It was the largest horse Christien had ever seen. The largest and the strangest. Its colour was not white, not yellow, not quite green, and he could see the bones and muscles working beneath its translucent skin. Both mane and tail dragged on the ground, and looked to be ribbons of tendon and cobwebs. The earth thundered and the stone cracked with every hoofbeat. The air grew heavy with the smell of death and as it passed by him, he could see the eye, milky and white.

  “I heard the voice of the fourth living creature,” said Valerie. “And it said “Come.” I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

  It continued past them and Christien knew where it was going.

  “Death,” he said. “The rider of the fourth horse is Death.”

  “Yes,” said Valerie. “He is Death.”

  “I understand. It makes sense. God, I’ve been an idiot.”

  “What is it, Remy?”

  “That’s what Sophie meant. That’s what she wanted all along.”

  “Remy?”

  Christien turned. The sun was peaking over the rooftops of the Hofburg, painting everything in strokes of gold. In the middle of the courtyard, Ivy knelt over the body of his brother, unaware and unknowing. The horse was moving like an arrow toward them.

  “He won’t stay dead,” he said. “The horse will bring him back.”

  And the realization struck him like a dread fist.

  “Whatever happens, we can’t let Bastien get on that horse!”

  ***

  A great horse was standing above her.

  She could feel it more than see it, her skin tingling with its presence, her nose reeling from its stench. It tossed its great head and foam dripped from its tongue, ran down its iron legs. It lowered its head, the forelock spreading across Sebastien’s face. It nudged him but he did not move.

  “No,” she said. “Go away. You can’t have him.”

  It raised a hoof, the rough surface clear so she could see the triangular bone beneath it. The ground thundered when it brought it down.

  She bolted to her feet, hands curling into fists at her sides.

  “I said no!”

  It snorted at her, the force almost blowing her off her feet, but she stood firm.

  “Go away! He’s not yours!”

  She pushed against its shoulder with the palms of her hands. It did not move but rather pawed at the Mad Lord’s body with its hoof, rolling him over to lie face down on the stone.

  “I said go!”

  And she struck it with both hands. It was like striking a whirlwind.

  The horse reared, its squeal shattering the glass in every window and a new quake sent her toppling backwards. The earth erupted beneath her feet, roaring as it split open and she flailed against it, clinging to the stones so as not to be swallowed. Beneath and beside and all around her, she could see bones rising from the depths and she clawed her way up with them, fighting the bite of cold underground and frost above it, the choke of dirt in her lungs, the taste of it on her tongue.

  When she managed to pull herself out of the pit, what she saw caused her heart to stop dead in her chest.

  Sunlight streaming from the dome of the Hofburg and dappling the horse with light, skeletons stood like a fence, like a wall. An army of bones, some white, some yellowed, some stringy with decayed flesh. All across the courtyard, an army of the dead assembled on swaying legs. Skulls watching, bones missing, some with scraps of clothing, others with strands of spidery hair. It was just like in Melk when the relics had crossed the floor, dropping stones as they went. Utterly and completely unnatural.

  A human Hussar swung with his sabre, striking one of the corpses and it clattered to the stone, bones shattering as they hit. A Swiss Guard next, pulling his pistol and blowing a hole in a skull as large as a fist. The skeleton did not collapse, however, and lurched toward him with extended arms.

  Chaos erupted in the courtyard as soldiers fired and spectators fled and from high above, the remaining Eisenmann fired its rockets into the dead, bits of bone raining into the crowds along with pebbles and dust. But with every skeleton that shattered, another rose up from the earth and they swarmed the iron giant with sheer, unstoppable numbers, climbing over the arms, pushing at the torso and finally pulling it to crash in pieces across the courtyard.

  It was war, she realized, between the living and the dead, and she had no idea who would win, nor in fact, who should.

  Suddenly, both colour and orbs burst into life across the sky, silencing the chaos and causing all living eyes to look up in wonder. It was a terrifying sight, their empty eyes, their dislocated jaws, most missing arms or ribs but taking position around her like an undead army. She didn’t know what to think anymore, whether they were protecting her or preparing to tear her limbs from her body.

  Christien was trying to push his way through the wall of standing bone, but it was like stone. Like cold, grey stone.

  The Chapel courtyard was silent and still.

  “Ivy!” he cried. “Ivy, don’t let him get on that horse!”

  Numb and disoriented, she looked down at Sebastien. He was dead. He would never get on a horse ever again and sh
e felt the last of her heart disintegrate at the thought.

  She looked up at the creature, marveled at the unnatural, translucent sheen of its skin and coat, its milky eye almost hidden by stringy forelock. It took a step closer, lowering its head once again and covering the Mad Lord’s body with its mane. It breathed out a long, cold, ashen breath.

  The earth rumbled one last time.

  Suddenly, Sebastien’s mouth flew open and his back arched violently as if breaking the wrong way. Soot rained from his hair, from his eyes, from his mouth as he pushed to his hands and knees, the tendons straining in his neck like iron cables. The blanket fell across his face like a hood and Ivy could hear the drum of his lungs filling with ash and smoke.

  “Sebastien,” she whispered.

  He did not look at her. In fact, it seemed he did not even hear.

  “No, Sebastien,” she moaned. “Don’t listen. Don’t do this.”

  She watched his grey fingers wrap around a length of tangled mane, twisting it round his palm and the horse stepped back, its massive haunches engaging to haul him to his feet. He leaned into it, swaying on unsteady legs and pressed his forehead into its translucent neck.

  “Don’t let him get on!” Christien shouted again.

  “Fight, Sebastien!” she gasped as she too staggered to her feet. “Please fight!”

  But there was no fight. Rather, his fingers moved in and out of the cobweb mane, along the sticky neck, caressing the creature as though it were a dog. It let out a sound that rumbled in its chest like thunder.

  “So beautiful,” he said, his voice echoing and hollow. “You are the most magnificent horse I’ve ever known. I will name you Ash.”

  He turned slightly toward her now, eyes and forehead hidden in shadow so she couldn’t see his face. Somehow, at some time, the blanket had been transformed into a cowl. He looked like all the statues of Death she had ever seen. Death in a grey tattered hood and greatcoat.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Savage,” he said. “But there is nothing to fight.”

  “Good,” she snapped, chin rising. “Then you come over here and tell me all about it. And we’ll go home on an airship and have tea and see all our friends and your dogs at Lasingstoke. That’s what we’re going to do right now. Do you understand?”