Lord Bobbins and the Romanian Ruckus (A TeslaCon Novel Book 1)

by Sean Little

  Clarke crept around the edge of the great hall, moving into Chef’s pantry and the large kitchen. The kitchen was nearly dark. There was a low, red flame in the embers of the pot-bellied cook-stove that cast some glow through the vent slats. One of the worktables in the kitchen had been flipped unceremoniously onto its side, metal bowls and other assorted cookware were scattered next to it. Clarke walked to the wall where the table had been and ran his hand over it. He knocked on it. It was supposed to be stone, but it knocked hollow. A false wall; an extremely detailed false wall, just like the one in the caves. There had to be a hidden switch to open it, and whoever was in there probably knew where it was, but Clarke didn’t have time to figure it out. He bent his leg, braced himself against the flipped table, and kicked hard into the wall. The old, dry wood splintered beneath his assault. Four more good kicks and his leg went straight through the wall.

  A narrow, spiral staircase was hidden behind the wall. It was old and infested with cobwebs. The stairs themselves were made of rough-hewn stone and they did not suffer from the smoothness and warping the heavily used staircase of the keep possessed. They clearly were little used and constructed within the last two or three decades. The staircase had a smell of old stone and rot. Clarke pressed his back to the outer wall and moved around the spiral.

  It was nearly pitch-black in the tunnel. Clarke moved slowly, feeling out the edges of the steps with his feet. After two spins around the spiral, the stairs ended and he found himself in a narrow tunnel carved out of the rock beneath the castle. Like the tunnel where he’d found Shun, in the distance was a dim yellow glow of a globe bulb, and another one installed fifty yards past the first. It gave just enough light to see. The large wooden beams installed to support the tunnel showed no signs of rot or wear. They’d been installed within the last ten years, maybe even the last five. The tunnel descended at a thirty-degree angle and the sound of muffled voices and tools were echoing somewhere down the corridor.

  The tunnel opened into a large, circular cavern. The cavern was clearly man-made, lacking any features that would have designated it as natural. It was lit with the Yablochkov globes that hummed and cast sickly yellow light. The cavern had two wooden wheelbarrows. Each contained a sizable amount of what could only be nethercrystal.

  A trio of zeppelin crewmembers stood by the wheelbarrows. They wore black leather jackets with thick white sheepskin collars and black jodhpurs and boots. Each held a sawed-off shotgun similar to the lupara that Brother Paschal had carried. Clarke had to assume they were all Pinkers, too. The crewmembers surrounded Chef and Sandsworth. Both men were sweating and dirty, working hard to load more nethercrystal into the carts. They had to do it gently. Each piece had to be lifted from a bucket and placed into the wheelbarrow with a minimum of clinking. A crack in one of the crystals would likely be fatal to everyone in the room.

  A fourth man in a zeppelin coat was busy at a small wooden table. His back was to Clarke. He was clearly a dwarf, maybe four feet tall. He was manipulating some sort of machine on the table. Clarke didn’t know its purpose, but it was the work of two seconds to ration out that it probably wasn’t good. Clarke didn’t even need a slate and a pencil to figure that.

  A sizable chunk of dingy silver metal was fastened onto the side of the dwarf’s head. It had a few wires and an antenna on it. It was awkward-looking, unbalanced and lacking the grace the wolf-mechs possessed, but if Clarke had to guess, he thought it was some sort of sound amplifier similar to a mechanical ear-horn but more advanced. Was the dwarf Enwright? Strange that no one in town mentioned it earlier, if he was. If it were a mechanical sound-enhancement device, it would help explain how Enwright was such a genius in the field of sonic communications.

  Clarke pressed to the rock wall of the tunnel, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible in the shadows. He was exposed, but given that the zeppelin crew’s attention was trained on the two men loading the wheelbarrows, he was relatively safe, provided he didn’t move.

  The easiest thing would be to clutch off three quick shots. At the distance he was from the zeppelin crew, he could easily get three shots off on the Colt before they could even triangulate his position. That would only leave the dwarf. Clarke was confident he could fight the dwarf, if necessary. Of course, he’d been confident going into other fights and had his proverbial ass handed to him, so perhaps he shouldn’t get cocky about throwing fists with someone who was a head-and-a-half shorter than he.

  Clarke’s stomach filled with a black dread. He hadn’t killed a man in years. He didn’t really want to go off the wagon on that sort of evilness. He didn’t see much of a choice, though. A trio of Pinkers would turn him, Chef, and Sandsworth to ash in the blink of an eye. Bile tried to climb the back of his throat, but Clarke fought it back down. Sometimes, there wasn’t an answer that would make everyone happy. Sometimes, guns were the answer as much as he hated to admit it.

  Clarke eased the hammer of the Colt back with his thumb. When it locked, he took a deep breath and leapt out of the shadows. In the span of a second, three shots popped from the Colt’s barrel. The three crewmembers stared at each other for a second, mouths hanging trout-like in surprise. Then, like dominoes, all three dropped in succession.

  The dwarf slapped his hands to the sides of his head, covering his one good ear and the mechanical device. He spat a string of curses in German. When he turned, Clarke saw that the device actually covered a large portion of this face, too. A single, perfectly round blue light stared at him from the spot where there should have been an eye. The dwarf’s other eye was hard and black, narrowed in anger and rage. “What is the meaning of this?” he spat.

  “Dr. Enwright, I presume?” said Clarke. He still had three shots in the Colt. He kept it trained on the dwarf. “I expected someone taller.”

  The dwarf twisted a dial on the side of the contraption. He regained his composure. “You can only be the fabled Nicodemus Clarke,” he said. His voice low and his accent thickly German. “It is good to finally meet you. I’ve heard many good stories about you over the years, even that horrible mess in Madagascar. You defeated my wolves. Very good. I am impressed.”

  “I had help on that.”

  “Humble, too. Excellent.”

  “I have to admit, I’m impressed by some of your tricks, too.” Clarke moved into the room, taking careful steps. “That fear spray or ‘Ghost Mist’ or whatever you call it—a masterpiece. I know men who would pay handsomely for the recipe.”

  Enwright waved his hand dismissively. “A trifle, a mere parlor trick—nothing more. It is easy enough to confuse the feeble minded. A little chemical nudge and I can make them see whatever I wish them to see, remember what I wish them to remember.”

  “You’re done here,” said Clarke. “Let’s go. You have a lot to explain.”

  “Mr. Clarke,” Sandsworth grunted. His eyes were wide. “Please. Leave.”

  Clarke tuned toward the butler. “Are you serious?”

  “I’m afraid he’s quite serious,” said Enwright. He reached for his pocket and Clarke dropped back the hammer on the Colt.

  “I have no gun, Mr. Clarke. I find them distasteful things, blunt and inelegant—the sledgehammers of the killing world, really. Tools for cavemen. I prefer something with more intelligence and class.” Enwright withdrew a small, rectangular box. It pulsed with blue light. “This is a remote control. It’s wired into my body, as well as theirs.” He nodded toward Chef and Sandsworth. “If I die, they die. If I feel like killing them, they die. If I push one of these buttons, they die. Do you understand?”

  Clarke looked at Chef and Sandsworth. Both were pleading with their eyes. Clarke lowered the hammer on the Colt and holstered it. “So we’re at an impasse, then. I’m not keen to let you leave.”

  “You will if you want your friends to survive.”

  “They’re not my friends. They’re employees of my employer.”

  Enwright laughed. “Semantics, Mr. Clarke. You’re not the type of man to heartlessl
y let innocent men die, are you? Even geriatrics such as these?” He smiled pleasantly at Clarke. The blue light where his eye used to be pulsed and flashed rhythmically. “I will assume from your silence that you are not.”

  “What’s the big plan, then? What are you doing?”

  “Why don’t you drop your weapon before I tell you?”

  Clarke pulled the Colt and tossed it to the stone in front of Enwright. He knelt and picked it up. The Colt’s barrel was longer than the dwarf’s forearm.

  “Excellent! You’re an intelligent, thinking man, aren’t you, Mr. Clarke?”

  “Some would argue that I’m not,” said Clarke. “Actually, most would argue that I’m not. I’m more of the cavemen type that you alluded to earlier.”

  Enwright leaned back on the table next to him. “What do you think is going on here? Enlighten me with your brilliance. Tell me what you know.”

  Clarke crossed his hands over his chest. There was a long, unblinking stare between him and Enwright. Finally, Clarke acquiesced. “You found nethercrystal here years ago. You didn’t know what it was or what it does.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then Slazenlaw happened. You realized you were on a goldmine beyond your wildest dreams.”

  “Also correct,” said Enwright. “You are much smarter than you give yourself credit for.”

  “You spent years figuring out how to harness the power of the crystals, neglecting everything else in your life in pursuit of it. When you finally figured it out, the town had reclaimed your lease on the castle and the caverns beneath it, thus limiting your ability to mine the crystal.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So you needed a way to keep the town from interfering in your mining of the crystal. You needed the miners to stay home and the woodsmen to stay out of the forest. You preyed upon their fears with your chemical sprays to get them seeing strigoi and other scary things, and when that wouldn’t keep them home, you found Shun and made him develop the werewolves, powering them with nethercrystal. When people got too close, you captured them and locked them away.”

  Enwright smiled. “Very good. It was never my intent to hurt anyone, Mr. Clarke. If your Lord Bobbins hadn’t felt the need to interfere, I would have left the town at peace and none the wiser when my tasks were complete. But, I digress. Do go on.”

  The story was becoming clearer to Clarke as he talked through it. “When Bobbins bought the castle, you feared losing your ability to get any of what you mined, so you needed to get him away from the castle for a night so you could bust in here with your Dark Runner airship and haul off what you’ve collected. This amount of nethercrystal wouldn’t survive the jostling of a coach or a wagon or a horse without wrapping each individual crystal in cotton and you don’t have that kind of time, so you have to fly it out.”

  “Brilliant!” said Enwright. He clapped his hands together in a mocking applause. “And that’s just what I intend to do. Be so kind as to start walking one of those wheelbarrows back to the stairs. Since you killed my men, I’ll need you to help do some of the heavy lifting.”

  “This much nethercrystal is a danger to the very world, man! Think about what you’re doing!” Clarke implored him.

  Enwright shook his head in a pitying fashion. “Mr. Clarke, you have limited vision. This much nethercrystal is what will save the world. This much to the highest bidder? They will become the world power. Singular. With only one world power, the rest of the world will have no choice by to accept the peace of that country. I’m going to save the planet!”

  “You’re insane if you think that’s how it will go down.”

  “I’m a genius, Mr. Clarke. Questionable sanity is part of the character flaw. Now, please pick up one of those wheelbarrows and help me get these to my ship.”

  “What makes you think I’m going to help you?”

  “I told you, I will kill your friends—sorry, your fellow employees.”

  “I can’t. You are endangering the globe.”

  Without hesitation, Enwright flicked a button on the remote. There was a loud pop and a spray of blood. Sandsworth’s mid-section exploded. He fell dead at Clarke’s feet.

  “Because I’ll kill the other man, too.”

  Clarke was stunned. The butler’s face was frozen in a look of horror, eyes wide and vacant. “No. This is too much nethercrystal for one man. It’s too dangerous. Kill Chef if you have to. Kill me, too. You’re not getting this out of here.”

  Enwright walked to the mouth of the tunnel back to the castle. He leaned on a small cane as he did, favoring the same side of his body as the hearing device. “Come now, Mr. Clarke. Do you really think your new chum Lord Bobbins wouldn’t do the same as I would? He might gift the crystal to the Crown of England, but it would go the same way as I intend to do with it. He would make a tidy profit and suddenly we’re at the dawn of a new age. Weapons. Fuel sources. More weapons. Machines to control and threaten. People living in fear. The Union Jack flying above every world capital. It ends the same, regardless. The only thing that will be different is that I will be rich, and not your friend Bobbins.”

  Clarke wanted to argue with him, but he didn’t know Bobbins well enough. There were many stories about him, and it was impossible to tell fact from fiction. Was the old madman a profiteer? In Clarke’s experience, people with fortunes like Bobbins came into them either illegally or unethically. Somewhere along the line, Bobbins probably had to have metaphorically cut a few throats and severed some friendships to make the money he had, and if he hadn’t someone in his family had. Would Bobbins help the Crown ascend to the level of world emperor? It’s not as if the Brits hadn’t been trying to do that before the discovery of nethercrystal.

  “If the life of your friend the chef isn’t enough to motivate you, Mr. Clarke—please understand that I’m the type who prepares for all eventualities. This box here. Do you see it?” Enwright gestured to the other box he carried, the one he’d been tinkering with when Clarke entered.

  “I see it.”

  “It is wired to blow the entire town of Cărbunasatul. I have isolated a frequency that will vibrate all the nethercrystal in and around the town and force them to explode. Hundreds dead—no, thousands. I don’t know how far the frequency will resonate. Now, be a lamb and wheel the cart back to the stairs.”

  “It will kill you, too.”

  “So be it,” said Enwright. There was something evil in his pleasant little smile. “I’m prepared to die. Look at me, Mr. Clarke: I’m Short. Stunted. Deformed. Ugly. I lost part of my face and crippled my near-useless body even further in an explosion. I’ve already seen the black void beyond this world; it doesn’t frighten me. I’m ready to go if I cannot live the life I want. Are you? Would you make that decision for all the children in Cărbunasatul? They will never grow up. Never know love. Never have children of their own. The entire population of the town will die and in five years, not a single person on this earth will even be able to speak one of their names. I will erase them from history, Mr. Clarke. They will be a footnote. Certainly, with your method there will be no world power, no nethercrystal threat. And maybe that is good. However, if you place some trust in my methods, then perhaps everyone in the village lives to grow old and bounce their grandchildren on their knees? It’s your choice, Mr. Clarke. Are you ready to play god, Mr. Clarke? Are you ready to declare who lives and who dies? I suppose you can take cold comfort in knowing that they will never feel the pain of death and you won’t live long enough to feel the guilt of killing them, but really: The choice is yours. Please, choose.”

  There was a long moment of silence. It was a call or fold moment, and Clarke didn’t have the cards. He folded. It was not in him to kill more people like he had in Madagascar. The people of that town did not deserve his mistakes.

  Without a sound, he moved to the wheelbarrow Sandsworth where had been working and began to walk it down the tunnel to the stairs.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Morse You Know

&nbs
p; Clarke and Chef had to work together to carry the wheelbarrow up the stairs and into the kitchen. Then, they had to go back to get the second one. Neither one was too full, each only carrying perhaps a small bucket’s worth, but it was more than enough to do whatever evils Enwright wished with it. Behind them, Enwright supervised while holding both remote boxes in his hands at all times.

  They wheeled the carts to through the great hall, where Vasile was still unconscious, and into the bailey. The winds had picked up and tiny snow grains like airborne razors were flying. They bit into the flesh with stinging cold. Bobbins was in the bailey, supporting Dolly Shaw. He was buttoning his polar jacket to his neck to ward against the bitter cold. Shaw was draped with a heavy wool blanket; it hung from her head like a nun’s habit. When Clarke and Chef emerged into the yard, Bobbins blew out a sigh of relief. “It’s about time. It’s gotten bloody cold and we were starting to worry—” He stopped talking when Enwright emerged behind them.

  “Lord Hastings Robert Bobbins—meet Dr. Sigwald Enwright,” said Clarke.

  “Ah, Dr. Enwright. A pleasure, I’m sure.” Bobbins gave him a formal bow.

  “Not so much,” said Enwright. “Step back, Mr. Bobbins.”

  “Lord Bobbins,” Bobbins corrected.

  “Mr. Bobbins,” Enwright reiterated. “Your cheaply boughten title means nothing to me.”

  “Boughten?” Bobbins was mortified. “I will have you know this is an earned title granted by the British Crown and passed down for generations amongst Bobbins men.”

  “I am High Commander Bigwig and Chief Rump-kicker of the Eastern-Northern Plains,” said Enwright. “Do you see how stupid that sounds? It is no different from your silly title. We’re not in England, and I’m not going to play your silly game.”