Imperial Clock (The Steam Clock Legacy)

by Appleton, Robert

  Something distracted her, and she threw a wave across the garden. “If you’ll excuse me, ladies. I’m needed elsewhere. Promise I shan’t be long.” She climbed the shallow slope toward a group of elderly women near the slow-moving buffet tables on circular tracks.

  Which left Meredith and Sonja with their enemies, unsupervised, for the first time.

  Sonja glanced over her shoulder to the pavilion roof. She would give her signal to the boy very soon—phase two of their revenge would be the showstopper all right, and no one would ever forget it, least of all the Sorensens. So what if it marred Father’s big night. He’d already delivered his presentation, received his great honour, and the visit had been a resounding success. His star shone brightly tonight and would continue to do so. They’d strategically waited till the final hours to get even. And anyway, no one could prove they were to blame for phase two, not unless the boy talked, and he would be implicating himself.

  No, this would only destroy three reputations. Just as they’d inflicted unforgettable wounds three years ago, the Sorensens had to suffer. And the time was now.

  “Meredith, Sonja, on behalf of my cousins and I,” Brigitte opened her shawl in surrender, “we would like to offer our sincerest apologies for how we treated you on your last visit. It was unforgivable.”

  Wait. What?

  Meredith and Sonja shared a quizzical glance. The bitterness froze in her chest. She lost all recollection of where she was, what she was doing. Then she remembered, and cringed. Hell, what if they went through with this and the Sorensens were genuinely contrite? Their apology was an honest one?

  “Yes, it was unforgivable.” Sonja set her fists on her hips.

  “Truly it was.” A grave bow by the eldest cousin softened the tension a fraction, and she looked up at Sonja with doe eyes, the vulnerability a little overdone. The V of her eyebrows lifted suddenly...

  There! Brigitte sneaked a hand behind her back, as if to take something from her cousin standing behind.

  “Move—” Meredith opened her parasol and jabbed it in front of Sonja. A split-second later, dark liquid exploded on it, peppering the side of Meredith’s face and the shoulder of her gown. She instinctively sidestepped a second ink bomb thrown by Freya. That one burst on the lawn behind her, its rubber balloon pieces gurgling in a dark frothy streak.

  For a moment, seagull cries and the rumble of distant waves were the only sounds in Niflheim.

  Sonja balled her right fist, fingered the cap off the point of her bracelet, and darted for Brigitte Sorensen. “Have some of this!” She struck in precisely the right place, the side of her neck, injecting a dose of the paralytic solution. Instant drowsiness.

  The plan had been to prick the cousins’ hands, one by one, surreptitiously, as they ventured close during the heated argument, but there wasn’t time for that now. Meredith sprang at Freya, ignoring her scream, and pricked her jugular. Lastly, Sonja ducked Helga’s wild slap and injected her cheek—a reckoning for the personal humiliation heaped upon her by the youngest troll three years ago.

  A giddy flush of triumph overcame Meredith as she stalked around her sluggish prey. She gave a whoop of delight, then she and Sonja skipped away together, pretending to curious partygoers that they were batting away a swarm of angry mosquitoes. A nice touch—Sonja’s, invented the night before. It would spread a faux explanation for the Sorensens’...strange reaction.

  Dozens of guests flocked to the now-mute trio, whose drunken stumbling elicited a glorious smattering of laughter from around the garden. Positively glorious.

  Ah, sweet, sweet revenge.

  Phase one was a resounding success.

  Meredith rubbed her hands together. “All right, now we hammer the nail in. Give the signal.”

  ***

  A stunned silence gripped the garden party. It was by now several score strong—almost everyone had ventured outside to witness the commotion. A large white projection screen unfurled from the upper balcony of the manor house. It droned and then whumped taut, its stiff frame patting the gothic stone balcony.

  Sonja blanked out the voice in her head telling her this was cruel overkill, that they’d had their revenge on the Sorensens. She’d almost said as much when Merry had first floated this plan, but tonight was not as clear-cut as the dictates of her own conscience. No, only she knew Merry’s pain. Only she’d had to endure those long, fractured nights, looking helplessly on, pretending not to notice the endless tossing and turning, the tormented groans, the sickly odour of sweat-soaked sheets. For months, years now. That awful humiliation of three years ago had traumatized Merry more than anyone knew.

  Perhaps Sonja’s youth—thirteen at the time—and her lack of social awareness had made her more resilient to the shock, whereas Merry, who’d been on the threshold of romance and courtship and that raw self-consciousness all teenaged girls are cursed with, had had nowhere to retreat to. The dashing young Viking men whose attentions she’d caught, even commanded, had watched on as she’d been exposed, helpless and humiliated.

  Sonja looked across at her big sister. That same torment broiled inside Merry now, pursing her lips to the size of a halfpenny. It blazed with anticipation from her wide eyes as she fixed on the moonlit projection screen. Her balled fists trembled at her sides.

  Sonja sucked in a breath, let the vicarious venom flush through her, and gave William the wave.

  This was not for her, it was for Merry.

  The beam from the pavilion roof brightened until the projection screen shone brilliantly silver-white. Borrowing the screen and the steam-powered moving image projector from Professor Sorensen’s conference hall had been a nice coup—William had helped. A strange lad, shy but determined. He was the professor’s ward, an orphan from Northwest England, and didn’t seem to fit in here or anywhere else for that matter. But he’d taken their part admirably this past week.

  A chorus of outraged gasps sounded from around the garden as the moving images flickered on the twenty-foot screen. Sonja flinched, not wanting to look but she had to. This was Merry’s—and her—collection of a debt. But something told her it would not close the account. No, there would inevitably be a reckoning for this reckoning.

  To hell with them.

  The Sorensens, au naturel, frolicked in the lake for all of Norwegian high society to see. The glimpses of their immodesty were brief and partial, but the moving images left little to the imagination. One middle-aged woman fainted near the gazebo, while raised voices competed in their outrage, demanding the movie be stopped immediately.

  Sonja smirked as William, having climbed down on the far side of the pavilion, tiptoed into the shadows behind an overgrown bower. Slick as a knock-off artist. Whatever the cousins had done to tick him off, he’d settled that debt as well.

  Outrage among the partygoers fell away to morbid fascination as the scene played out, the wide open mouths of many guests almost matched in size by their bulging eyes. Especially the so-called gentlemen. The Sorensens sobbed onto the shoulders of gallant saviours who carried them back into the house, away from this humiliation. Damn. The end of the show. Merry had only taken a few minutes of film from her hiding place in the bushes behind the lake, using Father’s dynamo camera.

  The image crackled and then flickered out, leaving the blank screen to flap in a sudden gust. Men who’d climbed the pavilion roof disabled the projector, and the tattling began around the now noticeably colder garden.

  Sonja shivered. She tugged the sleeve of Merry’s gown, flashed her a grin. In reply, her sister clamped her teeth on her lower lip and flicked her eyebrows up in delight. Good, tonight had been everything she’d expected. A complete and utter victory, worthy of Nelson on the Nile or Nemo in the Atlantic. Whatever happened next, Merry would always have this to look back on, to hopefully negate the nightmares.

  Sonja puckered her lips and whistled silently as gazes burned into her back. She linked arms with her sister and marched over to the yellow cloudberry plants, where it was poor
ly lit. Here they shared a giggle of relief and a hug, and Sonja loved the sound and feel of Merry’s long, relaxing sigh against her.

  “So it’s over.” Merry juddered as she lifted free. “We showed them, didn’t we.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “They still don’t know what hit them, I’ll bet. Rotters, bombing us with ink, of all things.” Merry spread her fingertips on her temples. “The nerve! After what they did last time, and they still weren’t satisfied. My God, if ever revenge were justified, I mean—they just handed it to us on a silver platter. All this time, and the bitches only got bitchier. Tell me we’ve hit them where it hurts.”

  Sonja clicked her heels to attention, hoping to lighten the mood. “Aye, Captain. We raked ‘em, for certain.”

  “Raked?”

  “Yes, that’s when you hit their stern with a broadside and your shots travel lengthways along their decks. Maximum damage.”

  “Ooh, I like that. We raked ‘em and watched ‘em get dragged to port. And now I think it’s time we made ourselves scarce. Come on—” she pulled Sonja toward the greenhouse abutting the empty conservatory, “—let’s find your mystery boy. We both owe him a kiss.”

  Sonja wasn’t normally one for lollygagging, but her feet suddenly dragged like anchors over the gravel. Kissing William?

  That had better be a joke. Never mind three years—a lifetime of embarrassment awaited her if she had to go through with that.

  Chapter Two

  Dark Salt

  They crept around the exterior of the north wing by the brilliant light of a gibbous moon, peering in through every open window. Pale servants scurried hither and thither fetching blankets and smelling salts and jugs of water and other cautionary measures to the drawing room, where the vanquished cousins were no doubt licking their wounds, milking the attention.

  Boo-hoo! What a to-do. Partygoers invaded by the score to enquire after the trollops—ooh, what a horrible reaction to insect bites—my word, they’d never seen the like this time of year—ah, at least there was no swelling—it was likely shock that rendered them mute for the present—cluck-cluck, cluck-cluck, etcetera. Meredith and Sonja hadn’t had such a fuss made over them three years ago, and they’d been much younger, genuinely inconsolable.

  “Father will be all right, won’t he?” Her young sister’s concern made Meredith swallow too, but she didn’t want to dwell on it. This victory was still too raw, too invigorating. The end of an era. Let her have this one night to celebrate without repercussion—the consequences could roll over her tomorrow and forever on for all she cared.

  A sugary rush gummed her insides and left her tingly. Warm tears welled in her eyes. The resulting shiver filled her with sublime satisfaction, as though the world could end right now and she could happily make her peace.

  “Ah, there you are, Miss McEwans...Misses McEwan...I mean Miss and Miss McEwan.” The boy stopped blathering long enough to hang his head in shame. “Someone please kill me now,” he muttered into his bowtie.

  “Gladly.” Meredith went to wipe her eyes with the heels of her hands, but Sonja stopped her in time.

  “One prick is all it takes, remember.” Sonja unclasped both their bracelets, then carried them carefully, one in each hand, between forefinger and thumb. She rolled her eyes at the boy’s awkwardness. “William, may I introduce my sister, Meredith. Meredith, this is William Elgin, our silent accomplice.”

  “Charmed.” It might have been easier to mask her impatience had the lad possessed the manners to acknowledge her in any way at all. Instead he simply gawped, his broad masculine face bunched into a disoriented scowl, as though he were a rugby player stuck with the ball and had no recollection of what he should be doing with it. “Well, do you speak or don’t you?”

  “Sshh.” Sonja elbowed her. “Don’t be evil. He’s a bit shy around you.”

  “We’re obliged to you for your assistance, Mr. Elgin.” Mister? Master? It was hard to tell his exact age in the moonlight—he could be anything from a grizzled thirteen to an impish eighteen. “Tell me—I’m curious—have you some personal grudge against the Sorensen cousins? Being the professor’s ward, I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to side with a couple of strangers against his nieces like that.”

  “They ‘ad it comin’. I were after makin’—” He checked himself, straightened his slouch, and looked down at his hands in his pockets. “I mean they had it coming. I wanted to make up for something that happened a while back.”

  The lad’s cryptic answer intrigued her, made her want to quiz him some more. His successful attempt to switch accents, from broad Lancashire to neutral Queen’s English, was also surprising. He might be a pauper playing at a prince, but he seemed to be caught in two minds: defy his stuffy new guise—by keeping his hands in his pockets—or try to impress her and Sonja.

  Meredith liked the idea that he didn’t belong here, or anywhere else for that matter. It made him a puzzle, as no doubt she and her sister were to him. “I see. Walk with us then, Mister Elgin.”

  Sonja cocked an eyebrow in surprise at the invitation. “This has to be the strangest night Niflheim has ever seen. I can’t wait to see what happens next. So what’s the news, William?”

  He walked behind them at first, but when Meredith swivelled her head to glance back one way, then the other, mocking his reserve, he soon scurried to Sonja’s side. A predictable choice—he was clearly less intimidated by her.

  “The professors are chewing the furniture a mile a minute,” he said, making them both chuckle. It seemed to egg him on. “They all twigged who did it, quick as shit off a shov—I mean quick as lightning. Sorry.”

  “Ha! Shit off a shovel—that’s good. I like that.” Sonja was never this relaxed around strangers, let alone young men. But she seemed pally rather than smitten with him. She was talking and behaving in exactly the manner she did with her big sister.

  William snorted. “But it don’t seem right when girls swear.” The Lancashire accent again. He looked across to Meredith. “You know I have not heard anyone else swear since...since Tangeni left.” Back to Queen’s English. Hmm, a pattern was emerging.

  “Who’s Tangeni?” she asked. The name was vaguely familiar.

  “My friend—I mean our friend from...from Africa. Used to be in the British Air Corps stationed in West and Central Africa. He visits us now and then. A right good bloke, Tangeni. I’ve learned a lot from him.” He shut his eyes, puckered his lips and mouthed the word shit to himself. “Sorry, did I say Tangeni. I meant Simeon. Don’t listen to me.”

  Cagier and cagier.

  “It’s okay. We’re none of us in our right minds tonight. We’d be automatons if we were. Right, Merry?”

  “True. So how did they wrong you, William? The cousins, I mean. You said you were getting even with them for something that happened. Pray tell.” If it were juicy enough, it might complete her sense of victory tonight.

  “I can’t tell you everythin’. Let’s just say they made me do the worst thing I’ve ever done, an’ I’ve hated ‘em ever since.”

  “Um, I think you mentioned it to me a couple of days ago, William.” Sonja didn’t sound too sure.

  “No, no I didn’t. I could never. See, they used me for their own ends—even they don’t know how I did it, only that I did it. An’ I’ll never say any more than that on the subject.”

  He didn’t, and they barely shared more than a stray word during the remainder of their circumnavigation of the house.

  Though the season of perpetual night hadn’t yet arrived, Niflheim saw no more than a few hours of full sunlight in the day. The presiding twilight, darker than what was commonly referred to as the gloaming in Britain but just as magical, silhouetted the mountain peaks and the steep walls of the fjords, while spreading a dusky cloak of almost-colour over the lake and sloping countryside below the Sorensen Estate. A niggling breeze spread the scents of awakened flowers over the now empty garden. Guests had retired inside, no doubt overcome by the shoc
king events.

  As they passed the servants clearing the supper buffet from the circular tracks in the centre of the garden, Sonja stopped. Hunched her shoulders. She hooked Meredith and William by the arms and hurried them to one side. “Quick, hide! It’s Father...and the professor. They’re on the hunt.”

  “Those bushes at the far end, behind the fountain.” William pointed the way, while Meredith and Sonja hiked their dresses a few inches in order to run with him. It felt absurd to be fleeing from the inevitable, but Sonja giggled in her brash, infectious manner, and it was suddenly the perfect capper to an altogether satisfying evening. Hiding from the finger pointing and wagging tongues. Ha! Let them cluck.

  They’d almost descended the shallow slope which led to the fountain and the site of phase one—had only minutes passed since then?—when a strong gust hit her full in the face. A few specks of dust lodged in Meredith’s eyes. Sharp, annoying. She stopped to rub them out. Vinegary tears leaked down her cheeks as she blinked and rubbed and then peeled at her eyelids.

  “What...what on Earth is that?”

  “Eh?” Meredith heard only the high-pitched caws of seabirds over a distant rumble. She blinked like crazy, finally accepting William’s handkerchief to gouge the pesky bits out once and for all. “Much obliged. Thank you.” She went to hand it back but he wasn’t there. He’d stepped away and now appeared transfixed by...something out to sea. They both did.

  Another gust hit as Meredith looked. She shielded her face, but through her fingers the population of stars began to diminish...rapidly, as though they were being swallowed from beneath.

  What in God’s name?

  The rumble grew to a bellowing roar—partly a ferocious wind, partly the crashing of terrific waves thrust up by the sea. She shouted to her sister but the words were lost to the furore. All at once a dark swell lifted behind the walls of the fjord and continued to rise, as though the ocean bed itself was being flung up from its roots, toward the heavens.