The Iron Assassin

by Ed Greenwood

Venetta unlaced her stays as she strode down the passage, and the moment she was inside her own room, off her maid’s wear came, to be flung into the bottom of the first wardrobe as she wrenched open the door of the second one.

  And stopped to wince at the pain that movement brought her. The scars across her shoulders and back from her own most recent whipping were still fresh and raw.

  Yet she’d endure far worse to get back to England. Where they were somewhat slower in indulging any zeal to “haff people vipped.”

  * * *

  The beagle carriage rattled teeth-shakingly over some bad cobbles. Chief Inspector Standish flung up an arm to guard his head from slamming against its insides and indulged himself in a gusty specimen of the sigh of a man who’s seen entirely too much of what he was going to look at. And knew he would see plenty more.

  A beagle had brought urgent word that Chief Inspector Standish must “come see something,” and he suspected he knew all too well what that meant. So he’d taken one of the faster steam-driven carriages to the worst of London’s slums, Old Nichol. With the shutters down over the windows to protect them—and him—from the worst of what would be hurled at it from the shadows. The carriage rattled again, even more loudly, then started to slow.

  Standish peered ahead, over the driver’s shoulder. They were coming to a stop in a back alley, where a cluster of heavily armed beagles were standing over a sprawled corpse. There was a lot of spreading blood at one end of him. Head bashed in.

  Standish clambered out, almost absently raising a riot shield, out of long habit, to intercept a bucket’s worth of chamber-pot emptyings that came hurtling down from a window at his head.

  The dead man had dropped a box he’d been carrying. A wooden box that had spilled some of its contents. Bottles.

  Standish nodded at the gathered beagles, then peered down at labels. “Oil of earthworms, everlasting pills … pharmacist’s runner, then?”

  “Perhaps, sir, but what I called you for was to see this.” The beagle pointed at what someone had drawn on the cobbles in the dead man’s blood.

  A circle with wavy tentacles protruding from it in all directions.

  “And this.”

  The beagle had already pulled off the dead man’s left boot; he now turned the foot so Standish could see a toe ring, then turned the ring itself, on the toe, until its device came uppermost.

  An oval etched with tentacles.

  “Ah,” Standish said grimly. “You did right to call me. So it’s begun. Those of the Order are killing each other now.”

  * * *

  The tea Jenkins had brought was the best Rose had ever tasted.

  And that was a good thing, for she was sipping it in uneasy company. Jack—Lord Tempest—to her left, Hardcastle on her right, and Bentley Steelforce, the Iron Assassin himself, directly across the table from her.

  And it was a small round table of the sort best suited to two conspiratorial ladies. They were sitting and taking tea, trying to befriend the Iron Assassin, put him at his ease, and find out—without being overly pushy in their questioning—what he wanted and needed. Not to mention what he intended to do.

  Surprisingly, he was countering with questions of his own. “First,” he rasped, “I’d like to know what you do.”

  “Well,” Tempest said smoothly, “Lady Harminster is a doctor, Hardcastle here is—”

  “No,” Steelforce interrupted flatly. “What do you Sworn Swords do that Marlshrike and those he works with want all of you dead so fervently?”

  “Ah. Well.” Tempest seemed unperturbed. “As the Empire flowers, new inventions building upon new inventions, it is a time of great opportunities, advances, and excitement—but some of that excitement is anger at being bested or at changes that shatter long-cherished livelihoods and customs. We battle those clever enough to bottle their anger, control it, and use it wisely. The beagles, the soldiery, the navies all across the Empire—they deal with all the angry men who can’t take it anymore and erupt.”

  “I should remind you,” Rose heard herself saying softly, “that there’s something more savage smoldering in the Empire than angry men. Something unleashed only at great peril.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Angry women, gentlemen. Angry women. They have been bottling ire for far longer and under the goads of more cause—and when they erupt, God help anyone who gets in the way.”

  The Iron Assassin’s eyes flickered. “I believe,” he announced grimly, “I know how they feel.”

  OCTEMBER 14

  “A splendid morning, sir,” Whipsnade announced, setting the neatly folded newspapers down beside his master’s tankard of steaming broth.

  Uncle looked up in some amusement. “You managed to convey an unmistakable and even resounding ‘but’ in those three words, Whipsnade,” he observed. “Pray elucidate.”

  “My lord, Hollander just came to the pantry door to report that the maid who serves as eyes for the Dowager Duchess has just arrived in London. She came on the fastest, most expensive airship from Hamburg, too.”

  “Ah,” Uncle said delightedly, “so the old crow’s grown impatient, has she? Good. This will serve our ends admirably. Let her learn of the perfidy of Lady Constance Roodcannon—and we’ll watch her react accordingly.”

  * * *

  “How can you know where he’s going?” Hardcastle asked curiously. “He refused to tell us one word on the matter!”

  “And thereby told us all we need to know, old friend. My Iron Assassin has set out to find his wife and children. I’ll wager he doesn’t intend to reveal himself to them, but rather wants to see for himself that they’re safe and well—and precisely where they are and how they’re being treated.”

  “Understandable,” Rose put in.

  “Indeed. He must know their location and situation so as to ascertain what will be involved in hastily snatching them away to somewhere else. For if he must, ah, cross the authorities in future—and he will—he anticipates someone thinking to use them as a means of influencing or outright controlling him.”

  Hardcastle frowned. “Yet when first we spoke of this, you said it all ‘hardly mattered.’ Why?”

  “Marlshrike still has the use of the Order’s merry band of dirigible-riding masked men. They’ll pounce on him before he gets far. That’s why I took care to tell him we’d be leaving for Foxden, directly.”

  “But—but then we’ll have to stop him all over again! Why didn’t you stop him going out that door?”

  “Bleys, sometimes … d’you recall disobeying your pater, when you were young? And how you came a cropper, just as he’d said you would, and you learned from that, and didn’t do whatever it was again?”

  “Yes. Oh. Oh.”

  “Indeed. Besides, this way we shall see more of Marlshrike’s intentions. He’s the greatest potential threat, you know. Get him out from under the shadow of Lady Roodcannon and his helpless lust for her, and you’ll see a foe too brilliant to read and too subtle to be easily influenced.”

  “Like you,” Rose observed dryly.

  Tempest looked at her. “Oh, I’m not out from under my own controlling shadow yet.” He held up a hand to forestall the obvious question and said, “Hand me the spyglass, will you? I believe this is our sinister dirigible already. Cads; they might have let him at least get past the duck pond.”

  * * *

  The first masked man lunged like a flamboyant swordsman on an East End stage, thrusting a glowing-tipped rod at the Iron Assassin.

  Steelforce slapped it aside and landed a blow to the side of the man’s head that sent the Order agent sprawling, brains spewing from his mouth—but the second man from the dirigible held a glowing rod, and the third and fourth, too.

  As he caught hold of one rod, the other two rapped his exoskeleton—and the surge of searing pain that rocked him back on his heels coincided with his exoskeleton’s going rigid, the joints smoking in a fit of spitting sparks worse than he’d ever experienced before. He toppled he
lplessly to the turf, and ungentle hands rolled him over on his face in a trice.

  He felt the door in the back of his head tugged open and something put inside, settling into the square niche and—

  His world went gray again.

  “Sir? We’ve installed it successfully, sir!” The slam of the door seemed almost an afterthought.

  “Good, good,” purred the satisfied voice in his head—and spilling out of his head, thinner and fainter but clear enough. “Let go of him and stand back, and I’ll test this. Oh, did you use the rods on him?”

  “Yes, sir. Worked a dream, they did.”

  “Then work his joints for me. Two of you to his shoulders, two to his elbows, and two to his wrists. Just back and forth, gently but firmly, the way you would a real person. Then the same for his legs.”

  A real person, hey?

  Steelforce seethed, silently and helplessly. Marlshrike’s orders were carried out, albeit with several gasps and groans from his masked molesters, as more sparks spat and snapped. The exoskeleton responded as the charge that had left it tinglingly rigid ebbed.

  “Well done! Now get back, all of you. Well back. The Iron Assassin is again under my command and is about to undertake his most important mission: the killing of Jack Straker, Lord Tempest. His creator. And when he is done, the Ancient Order shall be triumphant—and I, Mister Norbert Marlshrike, will be the only master of assassins in all the world!”

  Bentley Steelforce felt himself rolling over and clambering clumsily upright. Masked men cowered warily back from him as he lurched around to face Foxden.

  Gleeful gloating, he decided, sounded no better when coming out of your own head.

  * * *

  They saw each other only at the last instant, but they were both agile men.

  So Whipsnade and Grimstone didn’t quite crash into each other.

  They twisted, striking shoulders in a glancing manner and snatching out weapons … and ended up each facing back the way he’d come—and facing each other—on a game track in the woods outside Foxden.

  The branches they’d disturbed swayed and danced around them. Both men looked each other up and down, each ascertaining the other was armed to the proverbial teeth.

  Whipsnade managed to grin first, and Grimstone to speak first.

  “I believe it most prudent,” he said, “to ask you what you’re doing here. I promise to tender a reply as complete and truthful as I receive.”

  “I accept your terms. I’ve come here on my own, to try to kill the Prince Royal.”

  “As have I. I cannot help but notice, however, that you said nothing whatsoever as to why you’ve undertaken this … endeavor.”

  “So long as we’re being brutally honest … to either head off the infighting in the Ancient Order I can clearly see coming—or to establish myself as a credible candidate to head the Order, in the event that said infighting takes down the current leaders.”

  “Blunt candor, indeed. In the same spirit, I freely admit to precisely the same reasoning. My alternative, in the event that the Prince is beyond reach, is to capture Lord Tempest. Thereby furnishing the Order with an alternative to Marlshrike and so weakening the influence of the Lady Roodcannon.”

  “That scheme was my fallback, too,” Whipsnade agreed. “So, then, does it strike you as prudent to work togeth—”

  He broke off abruptly at a distant sound in the underbrush. The two men stared at each other, listening hard and hearing smaller noises of disturbance grow steadily nearer, then with one accord ducked off the trail, to crouch behind several shrubs and saplings whose foliage afforded a little cover.

  A lone man came through the trees, lurching along in as straight a line as the forest would permit, skull-headed and all too familiar in his exoskeleton. It took only a few seconds to see that the Iron Assassin was headed for Foxden.

  “Off to kill the Prince Royal,” Grimstone whispered.

  “Again,” Whipsnade whispered back.

  As still as two crouching stone lions, they watched the grotesque animated man dwindle into the distance. It was only after he had gone from view over a rise that Grimstone spoke again.

  “Well?”

  “Why don’t we follow? To work around the edges, so to speak? While they’re all battling the Iron Assassin, we can take advantage of matters to try to accomplish the Prince’s death, Tempest’s capture, and the killing of as many important beagles, Investigators Royal, and courtiers as we can.”

  Grimstone’s smile came slowly, but it was wide and genuine. “We do think alike. Lead on, loyal Tentacle of the Order.”

  * * *

  Full night had fallen. Grimstone lowered his spyglass regretfully.

  “If the Lord Lion is anywhere near a window,” he announced, “I can’t see him.”

  “He won’t be,” Whipsnade replied, not bothering to get out his own spyglass. “They’re not unacquainted with firearms, you know. As it happens, I know exactly what he’s doing, though which particular inner room he’ll be doing it in…” He shrugged.

  “Oh?” Grimstone asked, a little resentfully. “I suppose you know her name, too?”

  “You misunderstand me. Right now, the Prince Royal is not entertaining any of his minxes. Rather, he’ll be reviewing the latest cost estimates for bridges designed by Mister Isambard Kingdom Brunel and giving his approval to invest Royal Treasury funds in their building, to lower the cost if Parliament balks at the price tags.”

  Grimstone blinked. “Uncle?”

  “Uncle.”

  Grimstone nodded. “I wonder where Tempest’s assassin has gotten to? Or were we wrong about who he’s after? He was certainly headed here.”

  “Marlshrike was up to something—in his tinkering, I mean. Aiming to have Steelforce on a tighter leash, to be more biddable than a hound set loose. I’d not be surprised if he’s been testing him. Fetch this, move that from there to there … that sort of thing. Waiting until the time is right. And being as Steelforce is not indestructible, and Marlshrike’s control key even less so, I strongly suspect he won’t come right up to the front doors this time and try to wade through all the defenders and everything they can fire at him. That’s why I led the way around here, to overlook this side of the house. I think we’ll see him try for yon windows.”

  “Up those creepers? They’ll never hold him.”

  “Something he’ll no doubt discover the hard way. I—there he is. Look.”

  Grimstone looked. The Iron Assassin had come striding out of the darkness, up to the back doors of Foxden this time.

  The kitchen and pantry doors, on either side of the walled kitchen garden. They were locked, of course.

  Steelforce stepped back and stood for a moment in thought, then went to the wall where the creepers clung most heavily and started to climb, heading for a shuttered window above.

  Shots cracked out of the night; beagles, stationed downslope from Whipsnade and Grimstone, closer to the house.

  The gunshots attracted attention; more beagles could be seen now, moving inside the walled garden and along the outside walls of Foxden, converging on the climbing man.

  Whipsnade and Grimstone exchanged glances and nods, leaned over, took careful aim, and shot down the beagles below them.

  The shutters of the window Steelforce was climbing toward swung open, and those of an adjacent window, too. Beagles leaned out to peer down—so Whipsnade and Grimstone shot them, too. Beagles collapsed limply over the sills, and one toppled out to crash heavily to the ground, his own fellows shooting at him as he fell.

  Grimstone took down a beagle in the walled garden, and Whipsnade picked off the nearest one creeping along the walls of Foxden toward the assassin.

  More shots told them that the surviving beagles were getting nervous, but none of them seemed to hit the Iron Assassin—who’d slipped twice as creepers tore off the wall but had evidently found a trellis that could support his weight, and was now … yes, over the sill and through that upper window.

 
; Whipsnade and Grimstone reloaded and looked at each other.

  “So?” Grimstone asked.

  “Every beagle down helps the Order,” Whipsnade replied. “Let’s sew a little mayhem.”

  They shot at every beagle they could still see and then rushed the house, to rifle all of their fallen victims for weapons.

  Vastly reinforced, they tossed a statuette over the garden wall, then scaled the wall on the other side of the walled garden and gunned down the beagles who’d rushed to the distraction. Which left just one constable they knew of, still making his cautious way around the outside of the house.

  They waited for him lying flat on the ground, and when he came around the last corner fired as one, their bullets lifting the man off his feet to crash onto his back and lie still.

  Dead, they found, as they relieved him of his pistol. Then they set off around the house on a tour of their own, shooting in through every ground-floor window they encountered, to provide the Iron Assassin with a distraction and to kill as many of the Prince’s defenders as possible.

  “Every beagle down helps the Order,” Grimstone said, grinning, as they fired a volley into their most recent window and heard an answering cry of pain from inside Foxden.

  Above them, voices rose in panic, the last sentence ringing out clearly. “Well, do it, man!”

  As they flattened themselves against Foxden’s outside wall, well to one side of that upper window, a panicked beagle inside shot a firework up into the night.

  “Distress signal,” Whipsnade murmured.

  “Reinforcements urgently needed,” Grimstone muttered back. The firework burst overhead, lighting up the night in a bright conflagration that briefly put the stars to shame, and its last dying sparks had barely faded before the bells of the Bishop’s Bottom church started to toll.

  “My, my,” Whipsnade murmured. “Let’s go back to the height again for a bit, while we see what sort of reinforcements come. If any.”

  “Oh, there’ll be some,” Grimstone replied, setting back off up the slope. “This is the Crown, remember?”

  As he spoke, lanterns kindled at the Royal Mail yard, reflecting palely off the curved white underbelly of a mail airship moored there for the night. By the time they regained their vantage point and crawled in under bushes that might cloak them from anyone peering down from an arriving airship, the still-tolling bell had lured the mail sorters out into the night, to peer curiously in the direction of Foxden.