It All Ends Here: A Steampunk Novella Series (The Crimson Blade Book 3)

by Ed Zenith

  A quick intake of breath told her that Berkley was awake. Sandy didn’t think about what to do next, as instinct took over.

  As a surprised look came over Berkley’s face, Sandy started to sprint. She knew Berkley would be too fast for her and even if she made it to the office door, the great oaf would somehow catch up with her. Although every bone in her body knew it was madness, she had decided not to run away anymore. Her instincts had turned from flight to fight.

  Sandy ran at full speed directly towards Berkley. She put both hands on either arm of the office chair and began to push with all her strength. Berkley, shocked, did not move. The castor on the bottom of the chair began to squeak and rotate and soon a momentum had built up. Straining, but pushing with a singular determination, Sandy forced Berkley and the weighty chair through the glass door, shattering the pane, tiny shards of glass raining down on them both. Berkley tumbled backwards out of the chair and down the spiral staircase, grunting with every bump and sharp step.

  Sandy knew she could not rest, not yet. She stepped out of the door and sat on the banister, sliding down the polished wood and landing at speed next to a shocked and sore Berkley, who was beginning to collect himself. Sandy kicked him in the gut for good measure, winding him further and she took off into the maze of boxes.

  She ran through the corridors of packing crates, briefly wondering where this spurt of self-preservation had come from. She suspected it came from a sudden influx of adrenalin and she wasn’t sure what to do when it wore off.

  She could hear Berkley behind her now, running clumsily with what sounded like a limp. She risked a glance back and saw the lumbering giant on her tail. She stopped and used what little strength she had left to pull some boxes down off a shelf. It had the required effect, sending Berkley crashing into them and falling to the ground in the aisle.

  Sandy could not help but turn and smile at her handiwork. The light of the morning was shining through some dirty windows, guiding her out of the warehouse, into the city. She turned back and ran off again toward the light and found ahead of her the door marked exit.

  Breathless but grinning, she reached the door and opened it wide. Darting through the opening without looking, she bumped straight into a figure dressed in black.

  “Oh dear. Our little chick seems to have flown the nest too soon.”

  Milbury Heath stood serenely in the doorway, looking for all the world like he had been waiting there all along. Fear paralysed Sandy once more as Milbury reached to her with a handkerchief in his hand. An unmistakable smell of chloroform overwhelmed her and she felt her legs buckle. Milbury’s malevolent grin was the last thing Sandy saw as she slipped into unconsciousness.

  “Come now. Time to sleep.”

  7.

  The Great Western Home for the Unruly and Damned was rather a disappointment to Fitz, nowhere near as great as its name suggested. Firstly there was the large hole in the roof and the charred cadaver of the Providence Engine at its centre. Then there was the rather pathetic defence of its perimeter by the green-suited guards. Fitz had been expecting to mount a small assault on the Home, allowing his boys to exercise a little of their training. As it was, he had to order non-lethal tactics on the poor saps, as the first guard they encountered nearly disgraced himself all over the carpet below, when Hayden Wick sliced his pneumatic truncheon in two with a short sword.

  A slew of guards attempted to defend the Home against the invasion, each left clutching wounds or lying unconscious in the corridors. To kill the poor amateurs just wouldn’t have been sporting, Fitz considered. Rather like a mighty lion taking down a feeble and weak baby gazelle. Yes, all in all the day had been a bit of a let-down.

  Still, thought Fitz. There’s a nice interrogation to look forward to.

  *****

  It soon became clear that Bishop Cannings was not at home. That was unfortunate, but not unexpected and KRUM set about interviewing anyone who might know where he was. The guards all knew nothing, as expected, but questioning them kept the Privates busy while Fitz and Meysey dealt with a snotty thin man with a pinched expression.

  Dilton Marsh was tied to a chair in the Bishop’s office, shards of the broken window lying on the floor about him.

  “So where’s the Bishop, Dilton?” said Meysey, friendly and smiling. Dilton said nothing, just stared at them with disdain. “Come on old chap, we know you know. It’d be better to come clean and be on your way.”

  Nothing. Meysey looked to Fitz, who was supposed to soften Marsh up with some scary, rough tactics. Fitz picked up a pair of leather gloves from the desk and slapped Marsh around the face with them, hard. He nodded to Meysey.

  “Your turn.”

  Meysey nodded and went back to his gentle persuasion.

  “Why are you protecting him Dilton? You could have a shining career in government, or be a right hand man to an archbishop if you wanted, but you choose to hang around with a murdering toad. You don’t owe him anything.”

  Marsh could hold his tongue no longer.

  “Bishop Cannings is a valuable member of the church and I will serve him until my dying day.”

  Fitz leant into Marsh’s ear and growled:

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that may very well be today.”

  Dilton shivered and gulped.

  “You people disgust me,” he said, his voice shaking. Fitz smiled and leant back.

  “Come again?”

  “Committing violent, depraved acts in the name of your monarch, who you last saw…when? When did you last even see the Queen in public?”

  “That’s treacherous talk Mr Marsh. I’d advise you to stop prevaricating and-“

  “Let him speak, Lieutenant,” said Fitz. Marsh continued.

  “The royal family is outmoded. The country is no longer ruled by a monarch, just a system of equerries and civil servants. The Queen is an ancient relic, worthy of a museum, not a palace.”

  Meysey rubbed the bridge of his nose and rose from his chair. He left the room quietly.

  “Where’s he gone?” asked Marsh.

  “Outside. So he can’t report me for using unnecessary force…”

  Fitz rose and grabbed Marsh by the nose. Shocked and afraid, Marsh’s tongue suddenly loosened.

  “No! Wait! I’ll tell you where he is!”

  “Excellent. Won’t do you any good though,” said Fitz, his hand tightening on Marsh’s thin nose.

  “Why?” shuddered Marsh.

  Fitz lowered his face to his prisoner and looked him in the eye. As he spoke, barely louder than a whisper, Marsh could swear he could see the caged wild animal behind his eyes.

  “Because no one, especially not a weedy little scrag like you, insults my Queen.”

  *****

  Outside, Marston Meysey leant up against the door, cleaning his fingernails as screams emerged from the Bishop’s office that rivalled the explosion of the Providence engine in volume. The screams stopped and Meysey stepped away as Fitz walked out of the room, cleaning his hands on a bloody rag.

  “Let’s go,” he said, not stopping.

  “Where to, Captain?”

  “York. Full steam ahead.”

  8.

  Brittany, International Celtic Alliance, 1898.

  The Englishman had blustered into the small Breton village the day before, dressed as a priest, but fooling no one with his broken French. At first the locals were wary of him, but the fat man seemed in good humour and bought drinks for all at the village tavern. They grew to like him that night and answered his many questions about the area.

  The next day however, the man’s demeanour had changed, obviously tired of the gentle approach to his quest. He demanded to know the whereabouts of a knife. He knew it was around the village somewhere, but had to loosen a few tongues first. He staged a one-man siege on the village residents, killing five, wounding many. Eventually, a farmer’s wife took him to the woods, where the blade had been hidden for decades. It had proven too powerful for the old w
oodsman, who had died whilst worshipping it years before. His daughter had discovered the blade and, appalled by its power, had boarded up the barn it lived in. The English killer took the boards off with his bare hands.

  “Take it,” she said to the Englishman. “Take it and its curse far away from here.”

  “Oh, I shall, my dear,” said Bishop Cannings, wiping the blood from his priest’s robes. “I shall…”

  9.

  The Horton sped through the countryside, her engine sending a plume of white smoke up into the air. They were somewhere around Leicester, heading north at a speed deemed unsuitable by the English Railway Corporation, but all were aware that time was of the essence and that rules were not something to be minded at this particular moment.

  Frampton was at the controls, using all his experience to push the tiny engine to her limits. Ash had joined him and unusually, so had Acton. Under normal circumstances he would have lounged in the carriage, but this journey was far from normal. Bishop Cannings had been granted the carriage for their trip north and no one had wanted to spend the journey in his company, attempting polite conversation with a known murderer. This made for a rather crowded footplate and meant that old Studley had been consigned to the tender, the open-topped coal store behind the cab. He didn’t seem to mind and just lay on the coals sleeping, oblivious to the winds whipping over him. Frampton kept his eyes on the track, but made his qualms about their passenger clear.

  “I don’t trust the bugger,” he yelled over the noise of the engine.

  “Of course you don’t trust him. He’s a lunatic,” said Acton.

  “At least he’s a stupid lunatic,” said Ash. “Or we’d have never got him on board. He fell for your story, hook, line and sinker!”

  “Why wouldn’t he? It’s the truth.”

  Ash thought he must have misheard Acton in the cab and needed clarification.

  “What do you mean? We’re not going to actually let him have the belt are we?”

  “Why not? It’s none of our business what happens to the blasted thing, or the knife. He can have it. Him or the Heaths, makes no odds to me.”

  Ash was dumbfounded.

  “But, but…he doesn’t deserve it!”

  “Nor do the Heaths and nor do we!” Acton laughed. “We’re all scoundrels and thieves, every one of us, all in our own individual ways. We’re all as undeserving as the next. I don’t care what happens to the belt, or the knife. I need to see that girl safe. I promised her.”

  Ash was about to protest, but saw that Acton had changed. The old Acton cared only about money and his own gain. If a jewelled knife had fallen in his lap a few weeks ago, he would have fought to keep it and betrayed anyone who stood in his way. Now he chose honour over gold and as Ash looked at him now, he could see that any pain on his face was not from his beating, or his night in shackles, but from desperate concern over what was happening to Sandy Lane.

  *****

  In the carriage behind, Bishop Cannings lay on Acton’s once ornate chaise longue, eating from a can of food he had found in the supplies. He had not had much time to prepare for the long journey, as Acton and Ash had stated the need to leave that very moment. He had returned to his office to pack the knife and a few essential supplies. He rose from the seat and threw his can into the already messy compartment.

  He sat again at the desk and pulled his bag close to him. He opened it and lifted out the knife. He marvelled at it once more. The blade was shined to a clear finish and when he looked at it he could see his own reflection tinged with a red hue, as though he were looking through a stained glass window. He placed it carefully down on the desk. However beautiful it seemed to him, it was not the crimson blade that interested him at this point in time. He reached into his bag and pulled out a purse full of poppy heads and a small glazed crock. He smiled in anticipation at his elixir of choice.

  *****

  Acton paced nervously in the cab, which was no mean feat, as it was rather crowded with the four of them there. He kept consulting the small pocket route map he had stashed in his waistcoat pocket, shaking his head and willing the engine to go faster.

  “We’re not going to make it,” he said and Frampton saw not only frustration on his face, but fear too.

  “We’ll make it,” said Frampton reassuringly, but it was the wrong thing to say to Acton at this time.

  “Of course we won’t! We’ve got just hours to go and we’re not even past Derby! We’d have to pelt it through the Peak District to make it back to York in time!”

  Frampton stayed silent, knowing it would be unwise to fool themselves into thinking they would be successful. They had wasted time back at the Home, they all knew it. Now they were stuck with a mad Bishop in their carriage and the short life of Sandy Lane on their conscience.

  Ash shook his head sadly and then noticed something out of the corner of his eye. It was a crudely-welded lever, one which Ash hadn’t seen used yet in his brief time on the footplate. He recalled his first lesson on the Horton and how Frampton had boasted of ‘making a few adjustments’.

  “What about that?”

  “Don’t touch that! It’s for emergencies only.”

  “But what does it do?”

  Even at this crucial time, Frampton couldn’t resist a boast.

  “Something I invented. The welly lever. Stops the tank overboiling by discharging the steam into a secondary piston set I fitted to the undercarriage.”

  Ash and Acton shared a confused look.

  “In English, you toothless idiot!” shouted Acton. Ash tried to calm the tension in the cab.

  “Hold on. Frampton, are you saying that if we pull this lever, a load of extra power can be released, making us go faster?”

  “Arr.”

  “How much faster?”

  Frampton sucked his remaining teeth.

  “Reckon we could get her up to ninety, maybe. As long as we were going top whack to start with and had the fire stoked real good.”

  Acton couldn’t believe it.

  “What are we waiting for you fool? We can make it!”

  “Now, this is all hyper-pathetical mind. Never had cause to try it and there's no telling what might happen to the engine. Could blow her completely, or could make her fly like an angel. Bit risky see? But she’s your engine Master Acton. If you want to give it a go, it’s your decision.”

  Ash now saw what a bind Acton was in. Did he risk his beloved Horton and save Sandy? Or play it safe and risk putting Sandy into the murderous hands of the Heath brothers? Ash thought Acton would deliberate long and hard over this, but he had already made his choice.

  “Get that fire going.”

  *****

  Bishop Cannings lay on the chaise longue, the laudanum drifting through his veins, dulling his senses, clouding his judgement.

  The knife was humming. It had been for some time now. Had his mind been clear he would have written it off as a stray grasshopper in the carriage or a previously unnoticed tone from the engine, but in his drug-addled mind it was there, a dull continuous hum. His strength had left him for the moment but he could see the blade sticking out of his bag, across the room on the desk.

  Hummmmm…

  He recalled his research on the knife. ‘It’s cursed’ they had said. Stuff and nonsense, of course. ‘All who possess the knife die a horrible death’. Rubbish.

  Hummmmmmmm…

  Lord Hungerford had died of course, he reasoned. That was well documented. He had perished in the North African heat due to blood poisoning. The weapon maker had survived however, but he had never really owned it. He just passed it on to the guards who were to take it through Europe.

  Hummmmmmmmmmm…

  The guards died also. They transported it all the way to Brittany, but it was then that they lost the knife and belt. Attacked and robbed, most said, but Cannings knew better. He had interviewed and interrogated many people to find out the truth and location of the knife and he had discovered the truth about the guards. One
had become obsessed by the knife, forever pausing their journey to look at it and stroke its hilt. Each killed the other in a mad rage and there the knife lay for years, covered in leaves under a tree in Brittany.

  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmm…

  It was discovered by a Breton woodsman and there followed decades of fear. Cannings didn’t believe the stories though. He had tracked the knife down to a French village and went there with the sole purpose of bringing it back to present to the Queen. The village he took it from seemed scared of the knife and it had been hidden away in an old barn, far from their homes. They had held it there for years and not been harmed, Cannings reasoned.

  Until he arrived.

  “I killed five men that day.”

  His own words echoed back at him. The knife is cursed, in its own way, he thought. It inspires wonder and envy in all those who hold it, which soon turns to greed and paranoia. His mind was made up. He was cursed too now, but he would break the spell by returning the knife and the belt to Her Majesty, their rightful owner.

  Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

  He looked over at the knife now in a new light. He feared it. The hum grew louder and the light flickered faster on the blade as the train gained speed. It wanted him, Cannings thought. It wanted to claim his soul, just as it had done with so many others.

  The laudanum took its hold over him and he drifted once more into unconsciousness.

  *****

  Acton and Ash were working furiously, throwing coal onto the fire and stoking it until the flames licked out of the firebox door. Frampton kept an eye on the track and monitored their speed.

  “Fifty miles an hour! Bit more!” he yelled.

  Acton dug his shovel into the coal store with renewed energy, a fierce determination in his eye as he threw the coal into the fire. Ash barely had time to get out of the way after depositing his coal before Acton flung another few lumps of coal his way.