Black Mercury (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by Charlotte E. English

“That’s tomorrow,” said Clara.

  “It certainly is.”

  She blinked. “That’s… impossibly fast.”

  “Apparently it isn’t impossible,” Cas said, looking up briefly. “You know Max. Once he decides to do something, it’s done.”

  “Why do I have one of these?” Lukas interjected.

  Cas lifted an eyebrow at him. “Because you’re invited?”

  Lukas looked speakingly at his broken leg.

  “Never mind that,” Cas said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “But it’s a ball. The whole point is to dance.”

  “And drink, and socialise. You can do those other two.”

  Lukas tossed his ticket onto the dust-covered surface of a nearby cupboard and turned away. “I can think of few things less interesting than being a cripple at a ball. You’re taking Clara, Cas.”

  “I am not!” said Cas.

  “I’m not going with him!” Clara said at the same time.

  Lukas studied them both in mild surprise, his dark eyes appraising. “Oh? Why not?”

  “If I turn up with Cas, it’ll be taken as confirmation of a certain report.” Seeing from Luk’s mystified expression that he had no idea what she was talking about, she collected the discarded newspaper article from the floor and handed it to him. “That report.”

  Clara watched Lukas’s face as he skimmed through the article. His lips tightened briefly and a scowl flickered across his face; then he gave a rather forced grin.

  “That’s a good one,” he said, chuckling. “You shouldn’t be influenced by rumours, though, Clara.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she said darkly. “But besides that… I want to go with you.”

  Lukas just shook his head. “You look done in,” he said in a softer tone. “Come on. To sleep.”

  He took her arm, and Clara allowed herself to be led away. But a distant thought occurred to her before she was quite through the doorway and she paused. “Cas. Why are you wearing glasses?”

  “Oh, they aren’t real.” He took off the polished metal frames he was wearing and poked an illustrative finger through the left eyehole. “No lenses, see?”

  She stared. “Why would you be wearing glasses without lenses in?”

  “I thought they looked good.” He gave the frames a quick polish on his sleeve, then put them back on and beamed at her. “It’s the scholarly look. I’m reading, see.”

  Clara shook her head. “There just… aren’t words.”

  “It’s fun. What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s pointless.”

  Cas’s head tilted curiously. “No… fun is the point. Haven’t you ever done anything just for fun?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh? When was the last time?”

  Clara turned her back on him. “I’m going to bed.”

  “All right,” Cas said mildly. “Sleep well.”

  ***

  Lukas had been decent about Cas’s sudden appearance on his doorstep, packed case in hand. He’d given him space to sleep for a few days, and even made a bit of room for him in his own wardrobe.

  And Cas was grateful, though the one thing he hadn’t taken into account was Clara. It had occurred to him, belatedly, that he might be in her way if she was planning to sleep at Lukas’s house; but she had made no move towards the spare room. She’d gone with Lukas instead, quite comfortably, as though it was a regular arrangement.

  Presumably it was a regular arrangement.

  Cas had tried to sleep, but restlessness had prevented him from achieving more than an uncomfortable doze. He’d given up after a couple of hours and gone back to his armchair. But the charm of the Casparites’ letters had unaccountably worn off, and he spent most of the pre-dawn period staring pointlessly into space.

  Clara left again before eight o’clock, still looking tired, still protesting that she wouldn’t go anywhere near the Goldstein Ball with Cas. Lukas surfaced rather later, still objecting to the idea of going to the ball at all.

  Cas washed his hands of the whole issue, having a much more pressing problem on his hands. Somewhere partway through the long afternoon, he found himself staring at the largely empty section of Lukas’s wardrobe that had been designated as his, searching fruitlessly for his formalwear.

  But of course, it was still in his dressing room at home.

  He frowned. No… not in his dressing room; he didn’t have a dressing room anymore. His formalwear, along with most of his other possessions, had been hurriedly packed into boxes and stuffed into the back of the autocarriage parking garage that stood next to the house. Just until he found somewhere to remove them to, his father had been quick to stipulate. That probably meant he had about a week before Max gave his new tenants permission to throw everything out.

  Well, he would rescue his best clothes right now. They wouldn’t take up much room in Luk’s house, and he had an excuse. Nobody would expect him to go to a ball in his day clothes, would they? They couldn’t possibly.

  He donned his favourite maroon-coloured coat and quietly left the house. The weather was really too fine for such a heavy garment; he was greeted with sparkling golden sunshine and a soft breeze cutting through the heat of the afternoon. But wearing the coat made him feel better; like he was still one of Eisenstadt’s most popular autocarriage drivers, even if Max had lopped off his career. So he kept it on.

  Soon he was glad of its weight and thickness, for the Drift lay over the east of the city. The Drifting Isle’s shadow cut off the warmth of the sun and the temperature dropped as soon as he stepped into it. He shivered and walked faster. This spreading patch of darkness in the middle of the afternoon was unnerving, and he always hated having to walk through it. He’d chosen his house—his former house—because it was fairly close to the track, but it lay far enough to the south to avoid the current path of Inselmond’s shadow. He used to charter one of his father’s chauffeured autocarriages when he wanted to visit Lukas—or failing that, he used the aerial trains.

  But now the carriage was no longer at his disposal, and he didn’t have money for the train. He hurried through the darkness, trying not to imagine all manner of unnatural shadows reaching for him from doorways and alleys that should have been drenched in sunlight.

  But was he imagining it? Footsteps sounded behind him, loud in the midday quiet, and he whirled around. A distant figure was hurrying down the street towards him, his head down, holding the collar of his dark coat closed around his throat. The man’s posture suggested all the same feelings Cas experienced when he found himself in the Drift, and he felt momentarily better. Some might consider it unmanly to be unnerved, but it wasn’t an uncommon reaction after all.

  Those good feelings vanished again as he turned away from the other man. He had paused next to the open mouth of an alley, only faintly illuminated by the light from a nearby electric lamp. Was that a patch of deeper shadow just inside? As he stared, the pale gleam of eyes blinked back at him.

  He shuddered and all but ran away from the alley. Thieves perhaps, or worse… all manner of unsavoury types followed the passage of the Drift across the city, or so he’d heard. Clara had always scoffed at the idea, but Cas found it all too plausible; it was another reason why he avoided the shadow when he could.

  But even these comforting ideas evaporated when, near the termination of the Drift, he saw that quick flash of eyes once again, and a ripple of movement in the darkness. Could somebody be following him?

  Ridiculous. He dismissed that notion instantly, drawing a cloak of scepticism around himself. If Clara were here, such ideas would never have occurred to her practical mind. He pretended he was Clara—sensible, rational and unperturbed—and marched on.

  But he did march on very quickly, and if he breathed a sigh of relief once he passed back into the sunlight, well… nobody need know but him.

  His father’s new tenants had wasted no time moving in; but then, Max would have engineered it that way. To be obliged to ring the d
oorbell of the house that had been his home until a mere few days ago; to stand and wait for someone to answer and graciously allow him access to his own possessions; these things rankled. But it would never do to show it. Cas smothered his anger and his humiliation, summoning his usual easy smile as he waited at the door.

  Minutes ticked past and no one answered. Cas rang the bell again, then knocked loudly.

  The door swung gently inwards under the pressure of his knuckles.

  Cas stared at it, disconcerted. The door wasn’t even latched, let alone locked. “Um. Hello?” he called. When no answer came, he gave the door a gentle push and let it swing all the way open.

  The passageway beyond, so familiar in its decor, was uncharacteristically empty. Doors hung open all the way along, and as he stepped into room after room he found the same thing: utter chaos. Items of expensive furniture, so newly placed, were pulled from their allotted positions and, in some cases, overturned. Shelves and cupboards stood empty, their contents scattered across the floor. Cas had to tread carefully to avoid inflicting further damage on the new tenants’ possessions, some of which were already broken beyond repair.

  A quick tour of the house confirmed that the property was empty: the inhabitants were absent. Probably a blessing, he judged, given the ruthlessness with which the house had been torn apart.

  The question was, why? He noted several items of considerable value as he wandered from room to room. They lay in the midst of the mess, largely untouched, scattered with no apparent interest. An odd kind of robbery, Cas thought.

  He made his way through to the autocarriage garage with a growing sense of foreboding. The whole house had been attacked, no room left untouched—even the little guest’s hat cupboard had been divested of its limited contents. What were the chances that his own boxes had been left undisturbed?

  Nil, he reflected, for on switching on the overhead lights he found a similar scene. All his boxes had been wrenched open and every item he owned lay strewn over the ground. Some of his best silk shirts had fallen into a patch of motor oil, judging from the unsightly black stains seeping through the fine fabric. His books, gloves, boots, driving goggles, jewellery and everything else had been piled in a haphazard mountain next to a heap of discarded boxes.

  The mess was considerable, but a speedy search turned up nothing missing. As far as he could tell, all of his personal effects—the only things he’d been able to reserve to himself out of a house full of furniture and ornaments—were still there.

  He began picking everything up and packing it back into the boxes, but paused before he’d more than half filled the first one. How would it look if the whole house had been turned upside down, but his things appeared untouched? Abruptly it occurred to him that he was standing in a property no longer his own, without invitation, and with reason to bear a grudge against the new occupants of his former home. Being discovered here when they came back could be… inconvenient.

  Cas had a strong natural appreciation for neatness, and it offended his sensibilities to leave all of his beautiful things lying in the muck and oil of the garage floor. But he steeled himself to extract only the few things he would need for the ball, and then leave. He made his way quickly back through the house, careful to avoid altering anything. He felt horribly exposed as he stepped back into the sunny street, but it was not yet evening and the roads remained quiet. Hoping that no reports of his visit would reach his father’s new tenants—or any investigating police—Cas made his way quickly back in the direction of Lukas’s house.

  It was difficult to fathom why his former residence had been so thoroughly ransacked, and without any apparent desire to rob the place. A few possibilities occurred to him.

  One was that the crime had been levelled at the new tenants, in which case it had nothing to do with him and it was simply unfortunate that his possessions had also been there.

  But the house had been his home for years, and he had only vacated it a mere few days ago. Furthermore, he reasoned, the lack of general thievery implied that whoever had conducted the break-in had been searching for something, not bent on making a profit. He could think of only one thing he possessed that was of sufficient value and rarity to inspire that kind of greed.

  Nobody was supposed to know that he had taken black mercury from Hans Diederich’s property, but what if someone did? What if someone had seen him? If so, it might well have taken them a day or two to learn his identity and his address.

  If any of those suppositions were correct, well… thank goodness he’d thought to take the fuel away with him. But his new (albeit temporary) residence wouldn’t stay secret for long, not if somebody really was interested in his particular supply.

  He remembered the pale gleam of eyes in the darkness of the Drift, and shivered.

  Maybe he was crazy. The properties of the black mercury weren’t common knowledge yet, and it was something of a stretch to imagine that someone who knew of its uses had just happened to see him take the stuff from Hans’s warehouse.

  But on the other hand… what if he was right? What if the ransacking had been aimed at him, and what if someone had followed him through the Drift?

  He needed to get back to Lukas’s as quickly as possible, and find a way to smuggle out the black mercury. It ought to be hidden somewhere else, somewhere that couldn’t be easily traced back to him.

  And just in case he was right and not merely paranoid, he had better do it fast.

  Chapter Nine

  Cas arrived at the Goldstein Ball on foot, his clothes rather hastily donned, his hair at least a little bit out of place, and with no one on his arm.

  Of everything that had happened in the past few days, this circumstance really made him feel his abrupt change of status. He was supposed to arrive in a chauffeur-driven autocarriage, immaculately attired, perfectly groomed and in company with Miss Clara Koh.

  But by the time he’d finished relocating his black mercury supply, he’d begun to run out of time to prepare—and he no longer had his staff to help him with the arrangement of his hair and his clothes.

  By the time he was ready, Clara had already left. That, he thought, seemed like an unnecessary show of stubbornness.

  Still, his disappointment soon faded once he arrived. Despite the last-minute nature of the preparations, his father had managed to secure a great many of Eisenstadt’s brightest and greatest for his event, and the city’s Grand Assembly Rooms were packed with colour and gaiety. As he’d expected, several reporters were camped outside the entrance, ensuring that tomorrow’s publications would be full of the glamour of high society. Cas paused to be photographed, hastily combing his wind-dishevelled hair back into place with his fingers.

  The first thing he saw on making his way inside was his aunt Hildy. She had taken over the space right inside the door and to the left and she was, to all appearances, holding court very successfully. A crowd had gathered around her, including at least one minister that he could see, plus one or two higher-ups from the University of Eisenstadt and several wealthy entrepreneurs. Hildy was fielding questions like a professional, managing to bestow just enough attention on everyone without appearing to favour—or exclude—anybody. Where did she learn to do that, he wondered? She’d been a virtual recluse for almost as long as he’d known her. She looked terrific in a ballgown of dark gold silk, her greying hair bound up and some suitably expensive jewels around her neck and wrists. Her smile was dazzling; her enjoyment of the evening couldn’t be more obvious.

  Max had honoured the essence of Clara’s idea, then, and ensured that Hildy received the attention she deserved. In light of that knowledge—and his aunt’s evident happiness—Cas felt a little of his resentment against his father drain away.

  Only a little, mind. His eye soon fell on Max himself, holding court in only slightly lesser style not far away. Cas gave this second knot of guests a wide berth and joined the crowd around Hildy. It took a little time to weave his way through her admirers to her side, and then
he had to repeat her name twice before she noticed him.

  “Cas!” she said in delight, abandoning decorum in favour of bestowing a motherly hug upon him. “You’re late, you awful boy. What have you been doing?”

  “One or two things. Nothing important,” he lied. He swept her his most extravagant bow. “I came to pay due homage to the queen of the evening.”

  Hildy laughed. “You’re a good chap, Cas.” Her smile faded, and she hesitated, eying him uncertainly. “I heard about…” She glanced around and shrugged. “You know what I’d say.”

  Her eyes strayed to her brother, and he realised she was speaking of his recent ‘change of circumstances’ courtesy of Max.

  “All will be well,” he said to Hildy with a smile. “I’m working on it.”

  She nodded and looked ready to say something more, but just then the orchestra struck up a new air and her attention turned to the enormously tall man standing silently at her side. “Oh, Til, this is one of my favourites.”

  The giant smiled and offered her his arm. Hildy blew Cas a kiss as she was borne away to the dance.

  “Hild!” he called. “Where’s Clara?”

  She waved a hand vaguely, apparently meaning to encompass the entire room. “Somewhere,” she called back before she disappeared into the crowd.

  A sigh escaped him as he scanned the crowd without catching any glimpse of her. A girl with chestnut-brown hair and a bright blue gown approached him; the daughter of a friend of his father’s, he vaguely recollected, though he didn’t remember her name. She said something complimentary, obviously angling for a dance, but Cas didn’t quite hear. Was that a glimpse of black hair and caramel skin he saw out of the corner of his eye? No; not Clara.

  “Who are you looking for?” said the girl.

  He blinked at her, then remembered to smile. “No one in particular.”

  That attempt at dissembling was greeted with silence and raised brows.

  “Um, all right,” he amended. “Clara Koh?”

  The girl looked mystified for a moment, then comprehension dawned. “She was in the papers recently, wasn’t she? Miss Goldstein’s associate.”