by Lavie Tidhar
She turned to Colonel Xing. "Shall we?" she said.
"It would be my pleasure, please," he said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Goblin Factory
She was not happy about the old woman's involvement – not happy about the direction the investigation was taking. She had a feeling she was being used, and she didn't like that either. She had the feeling she should shoot someone, but she resisted it, for now. Colonel Xing, at least, had good manners.
They did not take the elevator down this time. Instead he led her through another corridor and through a secure door and suddenly she was standing in a vast, cathedral-like space, and all around her were the goblins.
They were not the creatures of European folklore. They were… she wasn't sure what they were.
In the middle of the great open space of the factory stood a large pool filled with boiling, liquid metal. Figures moved down there, human-shaped and small, and she suddenly realised just how large the building was, how high above the ground they were on this level.
And the pool was very large.
There were machines down there, enormous machines, the sound of their engines filling up the space, blocking all other sound. Steam and smoke rose through enormous metal pipes all the way to the ceiling above her head.
When she looked down she could see a heap of arms.
There was another one, of legs.
Hanging from the walls, on every available space, were the goblins.
They were mute, unmoving. They came in many different shapes. Some looked almost human. Some looked aquatic, some avian, and several looked very much like…
Like royal lizards.
Down below, a human figure flicked a giant switch and sudden lightning flashed in the great hall of the building. Milady shivered. The lightning caught between two giant balls of metal and continued to pass back and forth between them, growing in intensity all the while. She looked away from it.
A hand touched her, gently, on her arm. Wordlessly, Colonel Xing motioned for her to follow him. She did, over to an observation platform jutting from the side of the surface they were on. When they had stood inside it, it began to descend.
She watched the goblins – the automatons – if that was what they were. She wasn't sure. She had never seen so many, and there was something about them that did not recall to mind those few beggars in the catacombs, or even those ancient beings on the Quiet Council. These had a definite… martial feel to them.
The makeshift elevator took them down slowly.
Past faces staring out – not the rubber-flesh skin of humanlike automatons, not the crude machine faces, like a caricature of the human, such as belonged to the truly old ones.
No. These were smooth, smooth masks and faceless, making no pretence, no attempt to deceive as to what they were. Here was a silent army of machines, and as they went down she could see more being made, down on that vast factory floor, where human shapes in masks and protective clothing moved along a moving belt, assembling parts…
Did the Council know about this?
Colonel Xing led her through the floor. She felt the heat rising from that pool of toxic metal and, skirting it, saw an area set aside that resembled Viktor's place in the under-morgue – surgical tables, bright lamps, refrigeration units, scalpels… She turned away from it and a moment later they were outside.
The night's air was cool, wonderfully cool after being inside. She felt as if she had been trapped inside the belly of a giant monster and had at last been spat out. She had been sweating, she realised. The doors, when they closed behind them, had shut out the constant sound of the engines, but she could still feel them under her feet, tiny tremors in the ground.
And now she understood the smoke that was constantly, endlessly belching out of the chimneys. She said, her voice too loud in her ears, "What are they for?"
"You know what they are for."
"Whose?" she said, and he began to smile, then stopped. "Anyone who'd pay," he said, as if the question surprised him – as if it were evident.
"Does she own it?"
He looked surprised, again. "No," he said. "The Shaw brothers bought it from the Gobelin line, years ago. They did the conversion. It's their factory now."
She didn't ask who the Shaw brothers were. She was just happy for the silence.
"I hope we meet again," Colonel Xing said, and smiled. He smelled nice, she thought suddenly. "I will see you again, please."
She said, "What will you do now?"
"Wait," he said. "See."
"See if I find what you're all looking for?"
"Unless we find it first," he said.
"Where have you been looking?"
He said, "There is a large community from Asia in this city. Chung Kuo, Siam, Kampuchea… Perhaps some of our own people are involved. Many of the –" he used a word she didn't know, realised it, said, "the secret societies, they operate here too. Wudang, Shaolin, the Beggars' Guild… they too are searching, I think."
"Have you been keeping an eye on the British agent?" she said, and he looked at her, alert now, and said, "Yes, that too."
"Where is he staying?"
He told her. Then, very formally, he shook her hand. Then he grinned and, unexpectedly, kissed her on the cheek. "Goodbye, Milady," he said.
She nodded, and he smiled again, and disappeared back into the building.
She touched her hand to her cheek.
She didn't know what to think.
She walked away, into the night and the streets of Chinatown.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Unfortunate Demise of Tom Thumb
There was a body floating in the Seine and it was Tom Thumb's.
There was a metal taste in her mouth. She stared at the small corpse. Tom's eyes were open, staring up at the stars. The current carried him gently. Milady said something – she wasn't sure, later, what it was. Tom had been slashed open with a knife. Grey swirls were forming on his skin, moving disconcertingly, at odds with the current.
She ran down to the embankment, pushing people out of her way.
She fished the little man out of the water.
Tom Thumb lay dead on the stones, a pool of red water forming around his body. Milady knelt beside him.
Backtrack.
Connect the dots.
She'd left the Goblin factory and had been thinking as she walked.
Some things did not ring true in Fei Linlin's account.
For instance, who had attacked her in Montmartre?
She remembered the tattoos on their arms.
She remembered back to the under-morgue:
The Hoffman automaton took the sketch from her and studied it.
"Imperial assassins," it said.
What?
"So she is after it too," it said, the voice low, barely above a murmur.
She had thought, at the time, he had meant Victoria. But what if he meant the Empress-Dowager? And yet now, as she thought about it, it seemed unlikely. Another Asian faction, then? It was getting hard to keep count.
"The secret societies," Colonel Xing had said. "They operate here too. Wudang, Shaolin, the Beggars' Guild… they too are searching, I think."
Yet she had spoken to those from Shaolin and Wudang, and they seemed to have the same objective as the others. Everyone wanted the missing object – or almost everyone…
What, she thought, if there were other factions, other secret societies at work? For all she knew there were hundreds of factions in that huge, secretive empire of Chung Kuo. And some might have a different agenda – and she wondered again what this object was, what its importance really was – and why it was sent to Paris, and for whom.
The lizards. And it occurred to her the one faction not looking for the missing object was the one which had already, so it seemed, seen it. She decided she needed to have a word with the fat man from across the Channel, this mysterious Mycroft – and soon.
And she was still thinking when she found herself along the river
and, looking down, discovered her one-time friend floating face-up in the dirty water of the Seine, dead eyes staring at her accusingly.
Tom Thumb looked very, very dead.
And now that she was crouching beside him she felt the press of the crowd lessen, and two small figures appeared by her side–
"Milady de Winter," the girl said.
"Mistress Yi…"
"Milady," the boy said, dipping his head.
"Ip Kai… I wondered when you two would show up."
She felt tired, and angry, and she looked down at Tom Thumb's dead face, remembering him from all those years before, from the circus, the shared times – knowing he was a rascal and a rogue but liking him nevertheless – losing touch, as one does, hearing he had gone off to England, had become involved in revolutionary politics – being surprised to see him here in Paris, but knowing he was still involved, still walking on the wrong side – a short but busy man, a short but busy life, leading to–
She almost screamed.
The grey circles along Tom's body moved more rapidly. It was almost as if a storm was picking up across his skin. And now the corpse blinked.
She stared into Tom Thumb's eyes, and saw broiling grey clouds forming.
She felt rather than saw the two beside her step away. They didn't speak. She said, softly, "Tom, can you hear me?"
There was something behind those dead eyes. But she wasn't sure it was Tom – and the sudden realisation was chilling.
The eyes focused, and that was eerie. They looked at her face. And now the mouth opened, and a wet, bloated tongue licked wet lips, the gesture strangely obscene.
Then it spoke.
The word came out with a whisper of foul-smelling air. "Waiting…" it said. The body was crawling with grey spirals, currents washing over the corpse. Milady moved back from the body and her hand twitched on the handle of her gun.
Though what use was a gun against something that was already dead?
"Soon…" the voice whispered, and the lips formed into something resembling a smile. Then the eyes closed, and grey activity ceased, and it was only Tom Thumb lying there, and his throat had been cut with a very sharp knife, and Milady stared and thought, my, how the corpses are piling up.
She knew the killer must be close. She was disturbed by this grey plague that seemed to be slowly creeping up everywhere, something alien and strange and disturbing, but it had not killed Tom Thumb. Someone had, and she meant to find him.
TWENTY-NINE
The Grey Ghost Gang
"Yes," Ip Kai said, sounding surprised. He was looking at the sketch of the men's tattoos. "There are opposing factions to us. The Five Poisons Cult, the Sharks Sect, the Blood Sabre, the Ancient Tomb Sect, the Demonic Cult… but this I have not seen." His lips curled in a grimace. "Its meaning is clear, at least," he said, with evident distaste. "They seek that which lies beyond the gate."
Milady grimaced too, at that. It'd been another long night, she had another death on her hand, and was no closer to locating the missing object – nor did she feel much inclined to, any more.
Tom Thumb's death had made it personal.
She didn't know where the object was but she knew a killer was out there, hunting down everyone who had come near it. A killer who knew her, and wanted to send her a strong, clear message when he dumped Tom Thumb in the Seine, ensuring the corpse would float past her at the right time. He could be out there right now, in the shadows of Chinatown, watching her, waiting…
She needed a way to kill something that couldn't be easily killed.
There were several options.
But now she sat with Mistress Yi of Shaolin and her companion, Ip Kai of Wudang, in a small but comfortable tea room decorated with spread-open fans printed with images of the Great Wall and the Forbidden City and so on, and lanterns, and it was empty apart for them, and the old woman who seemed to run the place brought her a coffee, not tea, without being told.
And so things were looking up – though not, admittedly, for Tom Thumb.
And not for Milady's peace of mind, either.
"I have seen this before," Mistress Yi said, examining the sketch, and her face was troubled. "It is the emblem of the Grey Ghost Gang. But they have not been seen for many–"
Her eyes widened.
She was looking past Milady.
Milady knew something was wrong–
She felt the window explode a split second before the glass burst.
She ducked and glass fragments showered her, and she could feel a sudden pain in her cheek, a shard of glass cutting her–
She swore, a burning fury rising inside her, and coupled with it was a wild, unconstrained joy.
She was finally going to shoot someone.
"The Grey Ghost Gang!" Mistress Yi said, and followed it with something in Chinese that sounded like a curse.
When Milady looked up the gun was in her hands and dark shapes were streaming into the room. She fired and watched the first one drop to the floor, a flower of blood spreading on his chest. They were dressed in black, of course they were dressed in black, and she knew with absolute certainty that, if she only looked, she'd find a grey tattoo on the man's arm.
Mistress Yi leaped into the air. Milady had never seen someone move the way she had. She bounced off the wall and spun and kicked, and her foot connected with one of the attackers' heads and knocked him out flat. She landed but it only lasted a fraction of a second and she was airborne again, spinning, her legs catching two more of the attackers–
And Ip Kai had joined her, moving like a ghost, appearing behind two more attackers – there was something in his hands – like tiny needles – both went in simultaneously, into the men's necks–
And they both fell. Milady fired, and again, and watched another man fall.
How many were there?
"Get out!" Mistress Yi shouted, suddenly very close. She threw a metal star, lightning-fast, and another man dropped down. The small tea room was fast filling up with the dead. "The back door! We'll hold them!"
Milady said, "Later," and rose. She had a second gun strapped to her leg and now it was in her hand and both her hands were full and both her guns were loaded and she fired, left, right, left, turning with each shot, moving forward to catch as many of them as she could–
A kick connected with her legs and swept her down to the floor and she roared, the guns forgotten as she found her feet and rushed her assailant, grabbing his head with her arms and she twisted–
There was a sickening sound–
She reached for the Peacemaker on the floor, the other gun lost, and held it by the barrel and used it as a club and bashed a man's head in–
Something cut her arm then, deeply–
Ip Kai was flying through the air and his bare hands were weapons–
But there were so many of them, so many more coming in to replace the fallen–
"Get out, damn it!"
And then Mistress Yi was there again and somehow the small girl was dragging the much larger woman, away from the fighting, towards the back of the room–
"We'll. Hold. Them. Off!"
And threw her through the kitchen door.
The desire to fight left her suddenly. She scrambled to her feet (noticing the kitchen was empty, the door to the back open wide) and went through the door, fast.
Behind, a dark alleyway that was very empty.
Why would they be chasing her?
She didn't have the key.
A key. A key to what? None of it made any sense. She thought of what the girl, Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, had told her. What she saw in the room at the end of the corridor, at the Clockwork Room…
Shadows flickering on a wall, light and shades, moving shapes. "Like a camera obscura."
A projection. Not a key, but a – what?
And she thought – perhaps it was showing what is behind the door.
She had to find the fat man.
And she had to talk to Viktor again.
/> And to the Council.
But first, she needed a new gun.
THIRTY
The Toymaker
She was not pursued and she was thankful for that. She sensed her time in Chinatown was coming to an end and was not unpleased. Her arm still stung from the cut it had sustained, but she was fine otherwise. She hoped Yi and Ip Kai would be, too. She needed to go down to the catacombs and there was a way down nearby, a way that would lead her under the river, and luckily – or perhaps not, depending how you felt about it – it was through the Toymaker's shop.
