by Dan Abnett
Louis Cedarn smiled appreciatively, and sipped the first of many cups of wine. Unseen by him, on the far side of the wings, Gaumont watched him with narrowed, dangerous eyes.
THE TWELVTH CHAPTER.
"Of course I'm worried," said Uptil. He sat back in Rupert Triumff's chair in the Solar of seventeen, Amen Street, put his hands behind his head and managed to look anything but.
Doll sat glumly on the bench seat nearby, and toyed distractedly with the lace trim of her gloves.
"You don't seem very worried," she said. "He could be dead."
"He could be," remarked Uptil smoothly. "He could be dead drunk. You know what he's like." Uptil stretched and looked out at the damp evening that pressed itself against the Solar windows. The third quarter of eight had just chimed from St Ozzards, and it was turning into a soggy, unattractive night.
"I must say," said Agnew, sipping peppermint tea in a dim alcove on the other side of the room, "that on this occasion, I share Mistress Taresheet's concern. It has been my" Agnew paused and rummaged mentally for just the right word. He gave up.
"honour to serve Sir Rupert for more years than might be considered sensible. For all his failings, his one admirable quality is his ability to survive. He does it on wild oceans, leagues from land; he does it in battle; he does it in taverns when the drinks go down and the knives come out. I've seen him. Often. Too often, perhaps. But what with Lord Gull, and the business at the Baths yesterday, I truly feel he has sailed too far over the dangerous side of common sense. Today, this house has had more than the usual number of visits from the Militia and the Guild Officers, even by Soho standards. There is a price on his head. One would assume that is the result of misdeeds that we have yet to learn about. Whether by his own hand or another's design, Sir Rupert is in grave circumstance."
"I keep thinking I should go back to Paternoster Lane, in case he turns up there," murmured Doll.
"Didn't you say the Militia had it staked out?" asked Uptil.
Doll nodded.
"They left a man watching the house after they searched my rooms this morning," she said. "I think he was meant to be inconspicuous, but you can't help standing out with a halberd."
"There's no point going back, then. If Rupe's rolled up at your place, in whatever state, the Guard will have him," Uptil said, boinging a letter-opener experimentally on the side of the desk. Doll shivered despite herself. That was something Rupert used to do. The spring-bounce noise made him laugh every time. Right now, it was the saddest sound she could have heard.
"After all, what can we do?" Uptil went on. "Go out looking for him?"
"We could."
"Oh, right. And if every investigator and blood-hound in the City can't find him, what hope do we have?" Uptil said.
Doll was about to answer, but she was interrupted by a loud knocking at the downstairs door.
Agnew rose.
"I'd better get that," he said, brushing out his sleeves in a businesslike way and heading for the stairs.
"The Ploy," Doll squeaked at Uptil, who had almost forgotten.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he grumbled, dropping off the chair and scurrying into the corner of the room.
Agnew led Lord Gull into the Solar a moment later. Raindrops twinkled like diamonds on his coal-black cloak.
"All his known associates in one place. How convenient," mused Gull. "Good evening, Mistress."
"Lord Gull. Twice in one day. A lady could get the wrong idea."
"Let's hope not," said Gull, looking around. "So, he still hasn't returned?"
Doll took a step closer to the lean soldier.
"Lord Gull, I want to know, why are you so desperate to find him?" she said.
"Treason," answered Gull succinctly.
There was a pause.
"Remind me again when you last saw him," Gull said.
"During the early Flirtacious Period," Doll replied.
"When?"
"First thing this morning before he left."
There was a second loud rapping from the downstairs door.
"No rest for the domestic," muttered Agnew, and disappeared again.
A distinct chill greeted his return.
"The Divine Jaspers," he announced.
Jaspers stalked into the Solar, glancing around at those present with hooded eyes. He put down his ebony cane, and
removed his kid gloves with elaborate slowness.
"Gull."
"Divine, our investigations cross again."
"What a busy day we're all having. There's nothing like an abominable crime to make everyone pull together," Jaspers said, wandering over to the desk and helping himself to a glass of claret. "I take it you've ascertained that the traitor has not returned to these lodgings?"
"If he had, Divine, he would be under Militia arrest. There is no reason to detain you."
Jaspers looked at him with one raised eyebrow.
"We're turning London on its head looking for this vile man," he said. "I do hope that when he's found all the representative bodies will be allowed to question him."
"After due process," Gull replied. Doll could see that the guard captain was stiff and tense. He clearly liked the Magickian as little as she did.
"He will be found, and this treason laid to rest," Jaspers said, turning to smile at Doll. "You must find yourself a new amore, my lady. Triumff's life as a free man is over. In fact, his life is over, full stop."
Doll turned away.
Gull straightened his collar and turned to go.
"I'll take my leave," he said. "I care little for the company here."
That was brave, thought Doll. Lord Gull certainly had courage.
"Do you anticipate a swift closure of this affair, my lord?" asked Jaspers, toying with his wine glass.
Gull turned at the door and faced down the adept with a confident stare.
"The Militia received, this night, a warrant of permission from the Privy Council to conduct a Cantriptic postopsy on two knifemen killed whilst trying to slay Triumff, yesterday," he said. "Their bodies are in our custody. The affair is just now underway at the College of Westminster. I am certain of some advancement before the night is older."
Jaspers put the glass down roughly, spilling some wine. "The College is going to question the dead on your behalf?" he asked.
"Praetor Enoch himself," answered Gull. "It is all agreed. Those two dead ruffians are potential sources of information as to Triumff's private doings. If we can establish who meant to kill him, we might close on his present whereabouts. It has taken us all day to get the Council's permission."
"I" began Jaspers. "I have things to attend to." He strode out, brushing past Lord Gull. The temperature in the room rose several degrees. Doll felt her goosepimples dissipate.
"That man puts the 'un' in funny," she said.
Gull turned to her.
"Lord Gull," she said, "I know you hold Rupert in very low regard, but I care about him. I would like to be informed of any developments in this matter."
Gull looked at her for a moment.
"I will see that you are, Mistress," he said, in a tone that was almost kind. Then he was gone.
"Rupe's in it up to his neck," said a voice from behind the drapes.
Doll looked across at the emerging Uptil, anxiously.
"He most certainly is," she admitted.
Jaspers emerged from Triumff's house onto the darkened Amen Street, and threw himself into the saddle of his waiting horse. It reared up, and he forced it down and around, and set off towards Westminster at a full gallop.
From a nearby alley, feline eyes watched him go. Feline eyes that were six feet off the ground.
An hour earlier, as the sun began to set on the choppy waters of the western Mediterranean, a voice from the crow's-nest of the Bright Ducat, a sturdy brigantine flying a bloody ensign, sang out, "Sail!"
Torquil Lapotaire looked up from the binnacle, and wandered over to the rail. Lapotaire was a small man, smaller by far than his g
rand piratical reputation. His beard was banded out in black ribbons, like the tail of a kite.
"Ahhrrr," he said softly, then added for good measure, "where?"
The sail was pointed out, a dull square adjacent to the dimming horizon: a caravela redonda, making good speed. Lapotaire rubbed his hands together, and thought of coffers of moidores. He ordered them to come about and cut off the vessel. The tang of gunpowder filtered into the night breeze as the guns made ready. Lapotaire freed his sabre in its scabbard, and took out his spyglass. The Battista Urbino, read the plate on the approaching caravel.
Lapotaire was about to say something buccaneerish when he noticed the glow around the caravel's wheel house. He trained the spyglass in. There was something wrong with the ship.
Then Lapotaire realised that the caravel was racing towards them under full sail against the wind. Corposant crackled around the ratlines, and St Elmo's Flame bloomed from the masthead. Lapotaire watched with grim fascination, and saw something vile and unearthly clinging to the rigging of the phantom ship. It looked back at him with a grin.
"Break off! Break off!" he yelled, and the Bright Ducat heaved to as the caravel shot across its bows like a rocket, its sails glowing luminously.
"Bugger that," said Torquil Lapotaire. There were far easier ways of earning a dishonest living.
Night cloaked the London Road. The whole world was abed, and a mighty comfortable one at that.
Mother Grundy had no time for sleep. She didn't stop as, step after determined step, she marched on for London.
THE NEXT MOST CHAPTER.
Athwart a Cedarn cover.
Big Ben struck nine. One hundred yards north of the clock tower, the College of the Church Guild shone with candlelight from its leaded panes.
Waiting nervously outside the praetor's chambers in the Seminary, Neville de Quincey heard the last stroke of nine peal away into the evening air. He didn't like this sort of business.
The screen door to his left clicked open, and Praetor Enoch emerged, dressed in the full regalia of a Guild ceremony.
"It is all prepared," he told the physician. "Thank you for waiting."
"Not at all, praetor," said de Quincy. "There's just a docket to sign, and you can get on with it. Receipt of bodies, that sort of thing. Just to keep the morgue files straight."
Enoch nodded and signed the document on de Quincey's clipboard.
"You will probably feel more comfortable if you withdraw and return in, say, two hours, after I have completed my work. I can furnish you with my findings then. Otherwise, you might find the atmosphere accompanying the postopsy unnerving."
De Quincey nodded gratefully.
"I'll pop back at eleven, then?" he said.
Enoch showed him out. "One last thing, doctor. Their names?"
"Oh," said de Quincey, "William Pennyman and Peter Petre. Do you need to know any other details?"
The praetor shook his head.
"Return at eleven," he said.
De Quincey hurried away into the night, heading for the nearest brandy-serving tavern. Enoch strolled back through the apartments to the lead-lined chamber behind the collegiate hall. He muttered a short prayer, and blessed the vestments as he placed them around his neck.
The bodies lay on catafalques carved from Egyptian basalt. They had been stitched up and cleaned, but the welts of their wounds spoke of miserable deaths. One had drowned, his face broken by the heavy impact of visor driven into bone. The other had been battered facially and then ripped open. The stink of medicinal alcohol hung in the close air.
Enoch began.
The State Magick was not black. It was a dour, industrial grey, a plain, functional, even terse process. There was no room for fancy poetic flourishes, and experience had taught the Guild elders that the excesses of Goetic black practice only ended in tears.
Enoch's incantation was as rudimentary and unexciting as a reading from the instruction manual for an ironing board. Cantriptic energy oozed through the chamber. The Praetor cracked his knuckles.
"I am Enoch, praetor of the Guild College of Westminster, Divine of the Lore. I have recited the Massachrondic Litany in order that I might speak with you, you being William Pennyman and Peter Petre. Do you understand what I have told you?"
The electrical polarity of the chamber switched. The air tasted of wet iron. Ectoplasmic dew sheened the metal surfaces of the walls.
"Do you understand?" he asked again.
A smashed jawbone moved, grinding.
"Yeth," said a breathless voice.
"Good. To whom do I speak? State your name."
"Wiwiam Peggyman, thir," replied the corpse.
"Tell me what you sense."
"My faith it'th all cwacked up. It'th a meth. I'm dead, ain't I?"
"You are," said the praetor. "I will not hold you here long, William." Enoch circled the bodies and looked down into Pennyman's ruined face. The open eyes were glazed like buckets of milk, and showed no spark of consciousness. With a ghastly crackle of ricted muscles, the mashed mouth moved.
"Whad'you wan tho know?" asked the dead man.
"I make my enquiry on behalf of Her Majesty's Government," said Enoch. "I have a signed authorisation, to wake you, from the Privy Council. Arbuthnot himself has inscribed the wax with his ring. Do you want to see?"
"Naaahh," replied the corpse, brokenly. "I caanth wead anywayth."
"Yesterday at six, you and your accomplice attempted to slay one Rupert Triumff at the Dolphin Bath House. On whose instruction?"
Psychometric mist rose and shimmered in the chamber.
"Thome fat geether came to uth in the Cockthpur Tawern down Sheapthide. Didn't git hith name," said the corpse.
"Can you describe him?" asked the praetor.
"Rich, thmart clotheth an awithtocwat like you, thir," William answered. "Let'th thee, he 'ad a pinky wing marked with a thmall 'n' thape."
"The letter 'n'?" Enoch asked, frowning. Then a thought burst through his jumbled mind like a tackling prop forward. "Perhaps, William, it wasn't an 'n'. Perhaps it was a trilithion. A pair of sarcen stones with a capstone across the top."
"Come again, thir?" asked William.
"Have you seen pictures of the old Druid stones on Salisbury Plain?"
There was a slow, lingering silence.
"My mother uthed to thow me engwavingth of 'em when I wath a lad," said William, his airless voice subsiding into silence. Enoch looked down and saw a single tear rolling down the dead man's cheek.
"Thir? I don' like being dead," added William Pennyman.
Enoch took a deep breath. The corpse had already entered the second stage of awareness. It would take all the praetor's skills to keep him together long enough to finish the questions.
