The Iscariot Sanction

by Mark Latham

Dresden looked from Sir Arthur to Lillian. ‘Hardwick?’ he croaked.

  ‘My father would not come all the way out here in person,’ said Lillian, masking her annoyance at the name-dropping. ‘But we do have the power to summon a constable, and take you to him. If we do that, Mr. Dresden, he will have his Majestics help you remember. It would be a great help if you were to comply with them, but it is not without… risks.’

  ‘Mercy!’ Mrs. Dresden whispered, and sat down at once on a kitchen chair.

  ‘Wait… wait,’ Dresden said. ‘I think it’s coming back to me. When I picked ’im up, the lamplighters had just done their rounds. I think I did catch sight of his face in the light, just the once.’

  ‘And?’ Lillian prompted.

  ‘Tall chap. Thin, too. Little black beard and skin pale as you like. Funny spectacles, he wore.’

  ‘Funny how?’

  ‘Coloured glass, like. Red… or maybe purple. The kind you sometimes see blind folks wearin’. But he weren’t blind.’

  ‘And you’re sure he was a gentleman?’ Arthur asked.

  ‘Aye, sure as I can be. He spoke all proper, like yourself, sir, only more so, if you take my meaning. And the girl…’ He paused.

  ‘What about her?’ Lillian snapped.

  ‘She… she called him “my lord”.’

  Lillian looked to Sir Arthur, who frowned. It could have been an affectation, a term of flattery between a bang-tail and her fare; but if not… it was a clue.

  ‘Where you last saw this man, and the girl he was with?’ Lillian said pointedly.

  Dresden paused. His wife prodded him sharply in the ribs.

  ‘Seven Dials,’ he said at last, sullenly. ‘I dropped ’em at Little Earl Street, and they headed up the alley behind the chandler’s shop.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell us?’

  ‘No, miss. I swear that’s all I know. I came straight home, and that was that.’

  ‘You did not take the man anywhere else, except between the Ratcliff Highway and Seven Dials?’

  Dresden froze for a moment. Lillian saw something in his eyes—fear, she thought. ‘No miss.’

  ‘You are quite sure?’

  ‘Yes miss.’

  Sir Arthur handed his card to the cabbie. ‘Mr. Dresden, you have been most helpful. If you remember anything else that may be of use—any detail, no matter how small—please do send a message to my club. If we have further questions… well, you’ll hear from us, in due course.’

  Dresden twitched at that. As he took the card, his fingertips brushed against Sir Arthur’s. Lillian noticed that Arthur had removed his gloves, which he rarely did. Dresden flinched as he took the card, as though some electrical charge had passed between the two men. He looked momentarily frantic, eyes skittish.

  Arthur turned, and looked towards the back of the room, at an open door through which Lillian could see a poky hall.

  ‘Arthur?’

  Arthur said nothing, but marched through the door immediately. By the time Dresden and his wife mustered a protest, Arthur’s footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Dresden rushed after him, Lillian close behind, the man’s wife hesitantly bringing up the rear.

  Lillian followed Dresden into a small bedroom. The man had stopped, half-blocking the doorway, and so Lillian pushed past him, and saw that he was gawping at Arthur, dumbfounded.

  Arthur held a large box. By his feet, a rug had been thrown back, and two loose boards removed. Sir Arthur Furnival was like a one-man divining rod at times.

  ‘Now, what do we have here?’ Arthur said, opening the tin and rifling through the contents. ‘Calling cards, gentleman’s gloves, a silver watch, and… this.’ He held up a small handkerchief, and then winced as some premonition came over him.

  ‘How did you—’ Dresden started.

  ‘I warned you about my father’s Majestics,’ Lillian said. ‘Now, what’s all this?’

  ‘Nothing… much,’ he gulped. ‘A few keepsakes, s’all. Dropped in the cab, like, and never claimed.’

  ‘And what does the cabman’s code say about lost items, Mr. Dresden?’

  ‘I… um…’ Dresden was defeated. Even if his crimes were small, he had become embroiled in a bad business, and now crumbled beneath the hard stares of two agents of the Crown, not to mention his formidable wife.

  ‘Lillian,’ Arthur said. ‘This was hers. And the man she was with that night… he is not a man to be trifled with. I can feel it.’

  * * *

  ‘Well, he was lying when he said he took the gentleman nowhere else,’ Arthur said, as he and Lillian walked along Butcher Row, attracting nervous and curious glances from the impoverished denizens.

  ‘Really, Arthur, I don’t require your powers to see that. The real question is, why? I’d wager he was paid more than a few extra shillings for his silence.’

  ‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t believe it was out of loyalty to a paymaster; he was frightened.’

  ‘Our man threatened him, then.’

  ‘Perhaps, though I sense it was something more. Maybe we’ll find our answers in Seven Dials. Or maybe we’ll have to follow through on your threat and bring Dresden in.’

  Lillian winced inwardly. She would betray no weakness to Arthur, but she did not relish the thought of condemning Dresden to the attentions of the Nightwatch. The Order’s cabal of pet Majestics were different from Arthur; they would take a man like Jeremiah Dresden apart, piece by piece, until his secrets—his soul—were laid bare. Whether they would successfully put him back together again was another matter entirely.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t mention my father during these interviews,’ Lillian said at last. ‘It was unnecessary.’

  ‘My apologies. It seemed the more expedient method.’

  ‘It was, but I’d rather you didn’t, all the same.’ She thought of her brother. John lived in their illustrious father’s shadow just as she did, but he had managed to forge a reputation in his own right, despite his youth. John would never use the Hardwick name to further his own ends. He wouldn’t have to.

  Sir Arthur softened, and held out his arm. Lillian smiled, and took it.

  ‘I am yours to command, dear lady,’ he said.

  ‘Very good. Then hail us a cab, and we shall away to the Dials.’

  * * *

  John felt himself falling before he even knew that his legs had been taken from under him. He hit the wooden floor of the gymnasium hard, forcing the air from his lungs. The familiar, single clap of hard hands punctuated his dismay.

  ‘No, no. Again!’

  John turned his head with a groan, to see Mrs. Ito staring disapprovingly at him. The diminutive Japanese woman was a curiosity and a terror in equal parts, and John was only thankful that she was not his sparring partner today.

  He sat up with no small effort, and pushed himself back to his feet to watch Lillian, just nineteen years old, a head shorter than him and considerably lighter, skipping away on bare feet, looking jolly pleased with herself. He was meant to be teaching her to fight, not the other way around.

  ‘No laughing!’ Mrs. Ito snapped at Lillian, her harsh accent cutting the air of what she called her ‘dojo’. Lillian straightened her face at once. The other agents sitting around the perimeter of the chalk circle fared less well. Agents Smythe and Hanlocke soon stopped their private joke when Mrs. Ito’s bundle of bamboo canes rapped down hard at their feet, causing them to jump back in shock.

  ‘Hurry up. Again!’ Mrs. Ito commanded.

  They said Mrs. Ito was a hundred years old. They said she had been smuggled out of Japan by Lord Elgin after she had saved the diplomat’s life from a government-sanctioned assassination attempt. They said she had killed three samurai that day with nothing more than a walking stick. But then again, John mused, they said many foolish things at the academy.

  He bowed to Lillian, who returned the gesture, never taking her eyes off him. He had got the better of her in all their previous matches, but those defeats had awoken
a determination in his little sister that he could barely understand. She trained relentlessly, spending many hours alone. She had no confidant in the academy, so far as John knew, and no one whom she trusted enough to form a sincere partnership with during field tests. However, in just three short months she had gone from timid girl to the best fighter in the class. Smythe had almost had his shoulder dislocated the last time he had sparred with her. She practised the oriental arts of fighting day and night, when she was not improving her marksmanship, that was. But John was no slouch—he had been one of the best before Lillian had become Mrs. Ito’s favourite, and he intended to reclaim his status, beginning today.

  The Japanese woman signalled for the round to begin. Lillian struck quickly, as she always did—she knew no restraint, only attack. John parried three swift punches, and knew she would follow with her favoured front-kick, doubtless expecting him to dodge aside into her feint. He did not.

  He caught her leg as she kicked, twisting her around and over into a submission hold, but released her at once. In his eagerness to win the round and use his strength, he had been clumsy, and Lillian’s face hit the floor with a thud, causing her to cry out in pain. John released her and stooped to check on her at once. She held a hand to her mouth; her hair had come loose and covered her face.

  ‘My God, Lillian, I am sorry,’ he said, softly so that others would not overhear and think him weak. ‘Dear sis, I didn’t mean to hurt you. But you are too reckless, and rely too much on aggression. Remember, even if you are the best fighter in England, you’re never alone in the field. The day will come when even you cannot stand alone. But on that day, I shall stand with you. Count on that.’

  He smiled at her warmly, and squeezed her shoulder. She looked up at him through strands of tousled hair. He had said that to her many times before; a pet piece of brotherly advice that she had at first loved, but now he thought she sometimes resented.

  ‘Thank you for that, brother, but today is not that day,’ she whispered. ‘And this round is not over.’

  She stood quickly, taking John’s hands away from her and spinning her brother around so fast he did not altogether understand how he came to be upright and looking in the wrong direction. His confusion did not last long.

  Lillian kicked John’s legs from beneath him for a second time that afternoon. The last thing he saw before his head cracked upon the boards once more was Mrs. Ito’s look of utmost disapproval…

  * * *

  John groaned, and touched his fingers to the back of his head, wincing at the sticky fluid he felt there. It was cool—he hoped the bleeding had stopped.

  He forced himself upright, stifling a cry as pain flashed through his body. In his groggy state he swore he could still feel where Lillian had kicked the back of his legs; but he dismissed the fancy almost at once and realised his present injuries were all too real. But he moved; his limbs responded, and he slowly dragged himself to his feet. He hadn’t broken an arm or leg, he was sure, though the pain in his ribs made him certain he hadn’t entirely escaped fractures.

  His primary concern now, however, was the darkness. The hatch through which he had fallen was gone, covered over or closed. In any case, John could see no light, not even the reddish glow of the sky, and that was a worry. Had he been moved somewhere else while unconscious? Or had he been sealed in here? The former was the lesser of two evils. John had escaped worse scrapes, he was sure. But if he had been locked in… why would anyone do that? Leaving an agent of Apollo Lycea to his own devices, even if half dead, was a mistake more than one villain had found costly in the past.

  John cleared his thoughts, focusing past the stabbing pain and throbbing of his head. He could smell damp earth and mould, and the faintest whiff of coal-smoke from the smelters. In fact, now he concentrated, he could hear the distant reverberation of machinery. He reached out until he touched a wall—rough stone, cold and slick from slime and calcium deposits. He was sure he was underground. He searched himself—the spring-loaded concertina device that held his knife was still flapping about his wrist, broken, but the knife was gone. He unhooked it and cast it aside. He still had his wallet, a few of the papers he had taken from the office—though some had been dropped during the fight—a concealed derringer and four bullets, his lockpicks and, mercifully, his matches.

  There was no way he would have been captured and not searched. So they had left him where he had fallen, and sealed him in. To confirm this suspicion, he struck a match. Squinting in its sudden flare, he saw a rough-hewn passage stretching into gloom in both directions, and the splintered wooden hatch above him, now covered with something black and solid-looking. Metal brackets were embedded in the wall beneath it, suggesting that a ladder had once led into the tunnels from the hatch above, in the manner of a tavern cellar; but there was no ladder there now.

  John saw that there were lights set into the vaulted ceiling of the long corridor—many of them covered in cracked and dirty glass, and each connected by lengths of thick cabling. Electric? If this was a delivery tunnel for the warehouse, then it wouldn’t be unheard of, yet he could see no switch.

  As the match began to die down, John saw its light glint off something metallic nearby, and stooped quickly to snatch up his knife. As he did so, the match went out.

  The returning darkness heralded something altogether more worrying. A distant screech echoed through the corridor, carried on the foul breeze. John’s blood ran cold. He lit another match, and in its yellow flare he saw a grey-painted box on the wall nearby, with a wooden handle jutting from it. He limped to the box, and threw the lever, giving no heed to caution. Better to know the danger, and to face it head on, than to be attacked in the dark.

  The junction box fizzed and hummed. There were a few loud pops and a faint smell of burning, which John guessed were fuses overloading, but whatever circuits survived buzzed to life. Along the corridor, which John now realised was far longer than he’d thought, at least half of the lights that adorned the vaulted ceiling flickered with a dull yellow glow. Some grew brighter, while others flickered intermittently, throwing sections of the passage into brief illumination and then into pitch dark. One grew painfully bright for a few seconds, until finally it went out with a loud bang, showering the corridor briefly in orange sparks. John shielded his eyes.

  The great dream of the Intuitionists…

  He started.

  Something moved in the distance. Concealed by the cascade of sparks—or perhaps startled by it—a pale form scurried away, spider-like, into the shadows at the far end of the corridor. The scratching sound came again, this time from the other direction. John wheeled to meet it. There was nothing there but a hundred yards of tunnel.

  He wheeled again as a bestial hiss echoed from the opposite direction. This time a long, gangrel shadow slipped across the far wall momentarily, before melding into the embrace of a dark tunnel and vanishing altogether. More clicks, snarls and hisses ebbed and flowed from all around, at first jarringly near, and then more distant.

  Yes, the only reason any villain would leave an agent of Apollo Lycea down here was if there were something even worse waiting in the darkness.

  * * *

  ‘This is not a place to linger at night,’ Arthur said.

  The Dials were alive with colourful characters and more colourful language, and the stench of beer was strong in the air. Sir Arthur and Lillian attracted more than the odd queer look as they squeezed through the press of bodies congregating outside taverns and doss-houses.

  ‘We’re not lingering,’ said Lillian. ‘We’re here with purpose—and no man may hinder agents of the Crown.’

  ‘Tell them that,’ muttered Arthur, trying his best not to make eye contact with three burly ne’er-do-wells as he sidestepped between them and the two brawling women who they were jeering at. He hurried after Lillian, thankful that the sharp exchange of hard slaps between gin-addled wenches provided more entertainment than a toff in a fine suit, for now at least. As a rule, he knew, the
lower orders would not accost a gentleman, nor a lady so long as she was chaperoned. But with each passing hour such conventions were less assured. As surety against inconveniences such as pickpockets and hawkers, Arthur formed an idea deep in his mind, focusing on it until it became a talisman, projecting outwards until its influence took hold of the folk who scurried back and forth on their low business.

  I am no one. I am invisible.

  It was a charm, a simple one. It was enough to allow Arthur and Lillian to pass by the dullest of wits without drawing too much attention, and to allow them to vanish into the crowds before a light-fingered urchin could attempt to dip into their pockets. It was not enough, however, to attract the other kind of attention that Majestics often inspired; the predations of the things beyond the veil. Or, at least, Arthur hoped it was not.

  Lillian led the way confidently, as though the seven indistinguishable roads of the Dials, with their spider-web of passages and side-streets, were as familiar as her home in Kensington. Sir Arthur did not wish to know how; rumours persisted that Lillian trained for her missions ceaselessly, risking life and limb alone on dangerous streets, often in disguise, to keep her reflexes and awareness sharp. She would stop at nothing to prove herself the equal of her more celebrated brother, and even her father.

  They hurried past boarded-up shops with signs proudly proclaiming ‘rag and bone’, ‘first-rate ironmongery’, ‘fine kitchen wares’ and ‘live birds and rabbits for sale’, outside which haggard old sots lifted their skirts for passing strangers while wiry louts brawled on the cobbles. The air was ripe with the sour stench of urine; of days-old silted gutters; a dog’s corpse so far lost to the rot that even the snipes hadn’t touched it.

  Finally, thankfully, they came upon the chandler’s shop, closed for the night. Under the gaily painted candle-shaped sign, in the doorway, a pair of shameless souls fumbled about beneath a tattered overcoat. Lillian did not stop to pass judgement, instead making her way up the narrow alleyway to the left of the shop. A sallow-faced drunk, urinating while whistling ‘Sally in my Alley’, was quickly moved on by Lillian’s best withering glare, the tune dying on his lips.