The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  I shrugged a little sheepishly. “You gotta go with what works.”

  She shook her head, then moved to where Robert was lying. He scrambled to get back away from her, but her progress was inexorable.

  “S . . . stay away from me. Demon.”

  “Robert you’re being irrational.” Her voice was calm, and she reached out one hand to touch him. He tried to flinch away, but that demonic presence gave her strength that was otherworldly. He let out a low wail. “And dangerous. To yourself and others. You need to rest now.”

  “Bitch!” he screamed. “You took it and it was meant for ME!”

  I tilted my head, several pieces slotting into place. “Ah. Now we come to the crux of the matter.”

  Arietta looked back at me. “He was a completely unsuitable host.”

  “You’re telling me.” I fished my phone out and started dialling the local police station. They usually had at least one wizard on staff at all times, especially since most crimes like this happened late at night.

  “Granville Police.”

  “Jill Foster here; I’ll be in your files. I’ve got a suspect in custody . . . ”

  Arietta moved more quickly than I thought was possible, the phone was in her hand and she was shaking her head at me. “No,” she said. “This is over. We don’t need to involve the police.”

  “Ms Paine, he’s dangerous. He’s untrained. He’s stupid. Not a combination you want anywhere near any kind of magic.”

  “I’ll take care of him.”

  I frowned. Then I took a deep breath. “And what do you think, Fiducia?”

  The demon managed to sound completely sincere yet entirely unenthusiastic. It really was like a marriage, I guessed. “She wants this. I promise to make sure she does not regret it.”

  I cocked an eyebrow, then shook my head. “Fine. Find your own way home, and my bill will be in the mail.” I held out my hand. “Phone, please.”

  Arietta placed it gently in my hand. “I promise you’ll be generously compensated, Ms Foster.”

  I nodded. “Good. But don’t think I’m not going to keep my eye on you.” I looked hard at the now slumped figure of Robert. “All of you. If there’s any suspicious demon activity or inexplicably bad spells getting thrown about by dangerous amateurs with no training and less sense you’re the first people I’m blaming.”

  Arietta’s lip twitched. “You will have no cause for complaint, I give you my word.”

  “I think I’ve mentioned how much I trust the word of demons before.” I sighed, looking at them both, then shrugged. “Can you find your own way back or do you need a lift?”

  “You may go, Ms Foster.”

  I left.

  * * *

  Two weeks later I was going through the final shortlist of apprentice applicants (there were three—who was I kidding? There had only been three in the first place) when the office buzzer went off. Walk in clients were rare, but not unheard of, so I answered.

  “Ms Foster?”

  I recognised her voice. It was, after all, a very nice voice. “Come up, Ms Paine.”

  She was wearing a business suit and heels. I hadn’t really been looking at the time (Gloria was giving a barista course in Melbourne this weekend, so I tended to forget about things like dinner and the fact I had a bed) but it was pretty late for any kind of visitor, and I wondered if it was just what she wore all the time or if she actually had business at this time of the night.

  I’d never actually asked her what her job was.

  “Ms Foster. I thought I’d bring you your payment in person.” She handed me an envelope. I was professional enough not to open it, or look too surprised. I had specified I wanted to be paid by direct deposit. Cheques went missing too often on my desk.

  “That’s kind of you,” I said. “How’s your guest . . . how are your guests, I should say?”

  “Fiducia is as she always is. Robert is steadily improving. I suspect in time he will become a competent adept.”

  I doubted that but held my tongue. “He’s not giving you any more trouble?”

  “No. And he will not.” A small smile played on her lips. I wasn’t going to ask.

  “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “Fiducia has an offer,” she said.

  I swallowed, putting the envelope down. “I’m guessing it’s not one that I’m going to like.”

  She smiled, then stood, smoothing her hands over her skirt. “That’s for you to decide. At any point. We are very patient.”

  Ms Paine walked out. I opened the envelope. There was cash—quite a lot more of it than I’d charged—I’d have to buy Gloria some flowers. And a small card, like the recipe cards my mother had used, back before we had iPad apps for that sort of thing.

  A summoning. A demon name. A short, beautifully handwritten note at the bottom. One of my colleagues would like to discuss terms.

  It would have been very easy to call forth a small fire spell and watch it burn, but instead I put it in the top drawer of my desk and got back to work.

  I still needed an apprentice, after all.

  1884

  Michael Grey

  It was all Tesla’s fault. Or his kindness, depending on your discretion.

  Nikola Tesla was the most dangerous man on Earth, but only those few who had read the most deeply of all could have known. Desperate to prove the safety of his alternating current, he undertook increasingly drastic public demonstrations. The grandest of all was the floating battery-barge The Future. It was an unfortunately apt name.

  The world’s press and assorted dignitaries gathered at Liverpool docks to listen to the genius describe his latest creation. The boat was to harvest the potential energy of an entire storm front, hold its captured electricity for a while in its locomotive-sized cells, and then harmlessly discharge all that unfathomable power into the ocean.

  The demonstration was an incredible success, according to an attending reporter who wired his editor from the boat. An hour later though, The Future was gone, sunk in calm seas, cause unknown. With it went Tesla and fifty-six journalists, industrialists, and crewmen.

  In the aftermath an odd spree of coastal abductions and impersonations barely caused a stir. A few days later, Her Imperial Majesty the Queen Victoria announced subtle amendments to her titles and honours—and, it was noted, to her voice and manner. The Future, such as it had been, was quietly forgotten.

  * * *

  Martin Fisher was thinking about the girl again. The little match-seller had worked at the junction of Dockins Row and Fletcher Street. She could not have been older than nine, and had done nothing more unlawful than stand on the wrong street on the wrong day.

  It had been his first arrest for Dissent, under one of a slew of new laws brought in since Her Most Ancient and Imperial Majesty had assumed that title. What was to have been a quiet affair turned into a brawl when the man he tried to arrest bolted into the streets. Fisher gave chase, finally tripping him on the corner of Dockins Row, just yards from the match-stick girl, and held him there until the wagon arrived.

  Those wagons were another sign of change, painted matt black, windowless and devoid of ornamentation—bar the Queen’s new coiled seal, done in silver on the door. The Agency’s men, the Black Hoods, jumped wordlessly from their ride. They took custody of the dissenter, pulling him from Fisher’s embrace on the ground and forcing him towards the wagon. He fought them and screamed wild accusations the whole way. What he shrieked, Fisher could not remember. His attention had been on the girl, drawn by the force of some cruel prescience.

  The Hoods waited until the man was by the wagon, already shivering from its cold miasma, before they opened the door. The sunlight couldn’t touch the utter darkness of its interior, yet the girl stared into it, fixated. The man was thrown in, and the door slammed. The carriage rocked in time with his muted shouts once, twice, then it fell still and silent.

  That was when the girl started screaming.

  Fisher had watched the c
olour seep from her face as she looked into the carriage. Her utter terror had kept her silent, denied her dread a voice. Why could she not have held on?

  If she’d lasted thirty seconds more, the carriage, the Black Hoods, and their unfortunate passenger would all have gone. But . . . she’d failed. The Hoods turned, first staring at the girl, then looking at each other. Body language gave away their uncertainty, and for a moment, Fisher thought he might be able to save her. Pick her up, and carry her away. Then the man climbed down from the driver’s bench.

  Fisher didn’t know his name. It was the first time he had seen him, but even so he knew one of Them when he saw one.

  The man moved oddly, walking as if unused to just two legs. While the others all wore those black hoods, he was undisguised, his face bare. It was all the more chilling that this fellow, so otherwise undistinguished, would allow everyone to see his face and know what he did, whom he served. What he was.

  He walked to the girl, still screaming, still staring, and reached down to take her hand.

  “What are you doing?” asked Fisher, somehow finding his voice.

  The man looked at him. His expression was enigmatic, but gave the faint impression of confusion—as if at dinner a bowl of stew had quietly asked not to be eaten.

  “The gi-rl saw.” His voice was like his gait, staggered and ungainly.

  “She has done nothing,” Fisher said. He forced himself to step between them and the wagon.

  “The gi-rl saw,” he said again. “She will come.”

  “No.” Fisher shook his head. The girl had fallen silent, but she still stared at the ominously still wagon.

  “She will come. Or you will come, Officer Fi-sher.”

  It was the way the bare-faced man had said his name, rather than the fact that he knew it at all. God help him, but he’d stepped aside and let the man go. Let her go.

  He’d visited that corner every week since, and every week he stood there alone for an hour before wandering home. The rest of his free time, he attempted to remain in drunken oblivion.

  “Officer Fi-sher.”

  Fisher flinched and looked up from the table. Silence had replaced the regular hubbub of the inn around him. The bare-faced man stood above him, towering over the table and its empty gin bottles. He didn’t know how the man had found him, and didn’t ask. They’d have found him wherever he was. “What?” He laid his head back down on his arms to ease the painful thumping.

  “Officer Martin Fi-sher. You are wanted.”

  The memory was still too raw for him to summon much concern. “Yes? And what am I wanted for?”

  “You are wanted at the Pa-lace, Officer Fi-sher.”

  His eyes snapped open. “Why?”

  “You are wanted at the Pa-lace, Officer Fi-sher. Tomorrow. Nine o’clock.” The man turned and walked away.

  The noise of the inn returned by degrees, reassuring him that the man had gone.

  He’s not truly gone, Fisher thought. They never will be.

  * * *

  France was mobilising, according to the Times. ‘The rest of Europe watches the second rise of the British Empire with jealousy,’ it declared. With fear seemed the more likely truth. Britain truly ruled the waves, and continental fleets had been sunk, or just gone missing. So France prepared to defend her shores with her old war machines. The tractor-pulled basilics with their flame throwing cannon, the repeating rifles of the Grande Armée, even the almost legendary Earthmovers.

  “My great-grandad fought against the Earthmovers,” Fisher overheard one old man say to another as he walked by St James’s Park.

  “He never did. He’d be dead, and you’d not be here.”

  “He did too. He were at Waterloo. Said there were four of ’em, and had his Generalship not had his agents fix ’em before, the battle would’ve gone the other way. Like moving castles he said they were, with cannons the size of barges.”

  They won’t help, Fisher wanted to say. The biggest guns in the world can’t help you when it only takes one in an army, just a single one of them to reach one of your officers, and then it’s all over.

  He kept his mouth shut. Either one of them could have been an informer or a Black Hood. The Hoods were everywhere, with and without their black hoods, becoming the everyday people of the street. The man behind you at the pie stall, a woman in the crowd at the playhouse . . . or one of a pair of old men, leaning against a wall swapping tales, listening to what they heard around them and remembering every name and face.

  He found it hard to despise the Hoods. They were just people, like him, caught in times where you did what you had to do if you wanted to survive. But even if he couldn’t find hate for them, he still guarded his words and his actions. It was madness not to.

  So he went on his way, leaving the two old men to their stories.

  The frightening thing about Buckingham Palace, the most insidious arrogance, was how much it had not changed. The Scots Guard arrayed themselves around the gates, but it was otherwise the same. It told London that They were not frightened of the people—‘We do not have to defend ourselves from you.’

  The only notable difference to the Palace was the state of the telegraph towers. Steepling wooden poles, they had connected the Queen to the airdock towers at Greenwich. The telegraphs had fallen into disrepair now, the wires dangling useless and the poles split with rot. The palace had no use for them, not since the continental governments cut communications. As for the airdocks themselves, They hated anything which took them further away from water.

  He presented himself to the gate. The guard there snapped his heels and asked Fisher to follow, marching off to a side door. Fisher did so, and was led through ante-chambers and narrow halls, into a book-lined study and out, and finally to a gallery with high ceilings and windows, and an unlit hearth at its centre.

  The guard left, after instructing him to wait. And wait he did, standing in the spot he’d been left, fearing that being discovered out of place would earn a punishment rooted him to the spot.

  But minutes passed, and then tens of minutes, until boredom more than bravery sent him over to look at the paintings along the wall. There were so many, and so large. The first was a seascape, featuring a battle of a hundred ships. He recognised HMS Victory in the fray, and surmised that the artist had depicted Trafalgar. He admired the bold strokes and fine detail. Everything was captured through the smoke and movement of battle.

  He moved onto the next, and found himself at a loss. It showed a land battle, although he couldn’t identify the regiments, or even the armies. Two sides fought in a barren landscape, under a red sky. Not the red of sunset, either. Fisher got the impression of a sky deliberately and perpetually crimson, with black clouds sailing over the ruined scenery. The men who fought did so not with an appearance of determination or pride, but with the wild delight of zealots. Even those caught in the blasts of cannon or pierced with bayonets seemed to have no regrets, no sadness. It was as if they would gleefully die or kill for their cause, and welcomed either with equal relish.

  “Magnificent, are they not?”

  He caught himself, suppressed the urge to spin, and managed to turn calmly. A man walked towards him, slim and unassuming, dressed well but sombrely. He was pale, too. What Fisher had first taken for a powdered wig of the old style was in fact a shock of grey hair, and the man’s cheeks weren’t rouged, but bore the redness found under the rimmed eyes of someone who had not slept well in a long time.

  “They are,” he said, keeping his voice agreeable.

  “These,” the man pointed to the Trafalgar painting and its neighbours, “were originally hanging in the National Gallery.” He waved past the last painting Fisher had looked at. “These others were . . . Well, I’m not exactly sure where they came from, but her Majesty desired them hung.”

  Fisher’s glance followed the man’s gesture. He saw more of the paintings of the latter sort. The next in line was dominated by the livid greens of rainforest. Vines and grass crept u
p a statue which hurt his eyes when he tried to focus. He blinked, and looked back at the man. “Sorry sir, I am at a disadvantage,” he said.

  “Of course, my apologies. My name is Benjamin Disraeli. I have the good fortune to be the Prime Minister for Her Most Ancient and Imperial Highness, may she live forever.”

  Fisher recognised the man then—what he had become, anyway. Disraeli had been Prime Minister before Tesla’s demonstration, and had remained so. There was never a question of elections being held. But the man bore little resemblance to the illustrations in newspapers and posters. It occurred to him that Disraeli’s portrayal in the newssheets had not altered with time. The fellow you could see in the papers today was years past his date, and bore little resemblance to the withered, hunted man before him.

  “May she live forever,” Fisher echoed.

  Disraeli smiled, as if he were pleased to hear him repeat the phrase. “And you would be Officer Martin Fisher. I am glad you could make it at such short notice. Your reputation precedes you. Not many individuals have worked to make the Empire safe as you have.”

  “I do my duty as best I can, sir.”

  “Quite, quite.” Disraeli turned and began to walk down the gallery, arms crossed behind his back, shoulders a little slumped. Fisher accompanied him. “I presume you were told nothing about why you were called?”

  Fisher shook his head, careful not to look at any of the paintings on either side.

  “Such are the ways of some of our, hm, people. We require a service of you, Mister Fisher. Something beyond your usual remit. Tell me, do you know much about your great-grandmother?”

  That gave him pause. “Do you mean Joanna Fisher?”

  “The very same.”

  “She caused some stir in her day. She hunted ghosts and spirits, sir, and advocated suffrage for women.”

  “She did that, yes. But I’m referring to her marriage.”

  “She was married?” Fisher was surprised enough to stop.