The Iron Assassin

by Ed Greenwood

  She wanted to be alone as she brought The Steel Kiss around in another sweeping turn, its sleek and mighty bulk cleaving the chill dawn air over London, to gloat not in front of servants, but to herself.

  This would be her victory, her triumph. Hers alone.

  She’d been circling London for some time now, waiting for the tardy Prince to rise from his bed of doxies and hurry into her trap.

  And now, with the sun rising to shortly light the city of so many stacks and mooring masts and plumes of smoke beneath her, he was on his way at last. This was it at last. The opportunity she’d waited so long for, the small but necessary achievement finally brought about by her manipulations.

  At long last, despite the stern security precautions and the coolness between severe and ailing mother and young, wayward son, the Queen and the Prince Royal would be together, in one spot.

  Whereupon her fireship would swoop down …

  By now, the Mary Rose was an aerial bomb, in the air and crossing London. If anything flew to intercept it, she herself would deal with them.

  At her signal—once royal mother and son were both in the Tower—the explosives-laden ship, set afire at the last moment, would dive down into the explosives-stuffed Tower of London and crash into it.

  Eliminating a tiresome queen and the heir to the throne and leaving her own child the sole legitimate surviving heir to the Empire of the Lion.

  The new wine was here at hand, chilled and ready.

  She uncorked it with a practiced slice of the very sharp knife she always carried these days, poured herself a glass, and murmured, “To the New Lion.”

  Then she downed it. It was magnificent.

  She poured herself another glass, brought the great airship under her smoothly out of its turn, sat down again in her high-backed captain’s throne with glass in hand, and settled back to watch the fun.

  * * *

  “Those gates look more than a little sturdy,” Rose murmured, gazing up at welded iron bars that rose in a small-windowed lattice three times the height of her head, bars thicker than her wrist that bore very little rust indeed and ended in uprights topped by sharp arrowhead-like points the size of spears. “Just how are you going to get in?”

  Nor was the Bishop’s Bottom Royal Mail yard unguarded. Not far away on the other side of the large lock plate they were approaching, a bored-looking uniformed mail guard was beginning to look less bored and more concerned and was heading their way with a frown.

  “I’m a tinkerer, remember?” Lord Tempest produced a worn-looking leather pouch from within his waistcoat, undid a catch and flipped it open, and bent to peer into the keyhole and straightened again all in one smooth movement. Selecting one slim metal instrument from a row of similar gleaming tools, he thrust it into the keyhole and probed delicately. Only to withdraw it almost immediately, replace it in the pouch array, select another, and explore the keyhole with bold confidence.

  “Hoy, there!” the mail guard snapped, “what’re you up to?”

  The tinkerer noble made no reply but probed more deeply, acquiring a frown of his own. He looked exactly like a surgeon Rose had once watched, who’d been puzzled by what he found in a wound.

  Then he spun around, thrust his open pouch into Rose’s hands, murmured, “Hold it open, please,” and, the moment she had hold of it, used his freed hand to slip out another lockpick, slide it into the keyhole alongside the first he was still holding deeply inside, and turn it. Then he arched an eyebrow, withdrew it a trifle, and turned it in the opposite direction—and nodded in satisfaction.

  The lock gave forth a loud click.

  “Here, now,” the guard snarled, trying to reach his hands through the bars and grab Tempest’s arm. “I’ll have the law on you, I will!”

  Tempest removed both picks, turned and replaced them in the pouch, clapped it closed, then breezily turned and stuffed his pouch down Lady Rose’s bodice.

  The guard gaped at her in astonishment, then transferred his stare with obvious effort to Jack Straker.

  Who gave him a broad smile, thrust the unlocked gate open with a firm hand, in the process ramming it into the man’s face, and strode purposefully through it with Bleys Hardcastle right behind him. Hardcastle was putting his shoulder against the bars and leaning with each step, bracing himself to prevent the man from shoving the gate closed again.

  As it happened, that strongman tactic wasn’t necessary; the man fell back and grabbed for a whistle swinging from a fine chain around his neck.

  The foremost of the three intruders snatched it out of the air with his fist and announced, “We are the law. Lax, my man, lax; you really should keep gates like this locked, you know!”

  “B-but—”

  “Surprise mail inspection,” the smiling man whose fist was still closed around his whistle informed him. “I am Jack Straker, Lord Tempest, and these are my associates, who hold such lofty Crown ranks that I shan’t bore you with them at this time of night. Suffice it to say that we dine and jest and play at cards with the Prince Royal himself. Now, if you’ll just tell me what this is, down here…”

  A long, patrician, and imperious finger indicated one of the rusty dog-spikes set into the ground to prevent the opened gate from swinging too far and crashing into a lamppost beyond.

  “You’ve never seen a dog-spike before?” the guard managed to ask, battling through incredulity as far as audibility.

  “No, no,” Tempest said rather testily. “Not the spike, sirrah, but this mark on it, here!”

  The guard bent obediently to peer, the chain for the whistle was whipped up from around his neck in an ear-numbing instant, and he found himself sprawling on his face in the dust of the yard under the prodding of a firm shove on his shoulder.

  “Follow me,” his ungentle questioner murmured over one shoulder, and set off at a brisk pace across the well-lit yard to the foot of the mooring-mast stairs. The man’s two associates followed.

  The guard wallowed, scrambled up, drew breath for an angry shout of alarm—and found himself sneezing helplessly.

  “Dust!” Tempest bellowed happily back at the man, from most of the way up the first flight of steps. “If you kept things clean, man, this wouldn’t happen!”

  The mail yard was by no means asleep or deserted at this hour. The sorting sheds were a hastening hive of activity, the tied and labeled sacks being transported in open hoppers up covered chute ways by strong men working winches in pairs to a platform under a rain roof, where sweating men were loading the deck bins of the Woolwich Windolphin, an unlovely but sturdy mail airship typical of her “cutter” type. The bags had to be securely tied in clusters by destination to a common harness of air balloons secured across the boards by swiveling deck hooks. Thus, they could be easily freed in midflight, weights hung on them according to local winds, and dropped into fenced mail paddocks en route.

  Tempest climbed briskly past several mail guards and aboard the Windolphin.

  “About done, then?” he asked the guards overseeing the deck crews jovially. The decks did look to be almost covered.

  “Near as—hey, and who the deuce might you be?” the nearest guard replied.

  “New Crown mail inspector,” Tempest replied promptly, smiling as he turned to Hardcastle, extended open hands, and murmured, “Two of my bags, please.”

  “What?” the guard asked disbelievingly. “Mail inspector? Since when did they start appointing inspectors young enough to not yet be in their dotage? Old Alf could be your great grandfather! So who are you, really?”

  Tempest, pistol out, saw the man behind the guard reaching for a gun and thus accepted the two bags from Hardcastle, adding a nod of encouragement upon seeing Hardcastle hefting the remaining pair of bags, and then turned back to the guard and dashed the pistol from his hand with one bag, letting him have it with the second bag across the chin.

  The man stumbled back into his fellow guard before that worthy could raise his gun, and Tempest sprang after him, introducing each of
his bags to a face.

  Hardcastle was right behind him, and before Rose could step around them all to deal with the last guard, men were going down and their guns clattering to the decks. Leaving just one guard to flee after the deck crews.

  Someone sounded an alarm, a steam horn that wailed like a mournful ox in pain. Tempest winced at the sound but, through its din, turned to Rose and asked, “Get to the helm and hold the wheel steady, will you?”

  She nodded and ran for the helm. As Hardcastle and Tempest sprang to untie mooring lines, the alarm rose in pitch and volume, and men scurried in a dozen directions in the yard below, some shouting threats and orders, and others calling to each other in fearful bewilderment.

  They were still at it when the Windolphin lifted unsteadily, Tempest slashing the last line with a knife.

  In their haste, none of them noticed the few guards on the platforms below who’d found rifles: they had all been flung aside like rag dolls without managing to get off a shot. Their assailant was a lone, skull-headed, lurching man who moved like a ruthless and vengeful wind—and he sprang aboard at the last possible instant to lie still among all the mail sacks and balloons as Tempest hurried to the helm.

  The Lady Harminster had never steered an airship before, still less dealt with a gusty rising crosswind, and the ship was tilted alarmingly thanks to that persistent last mooring line, and unevenly loaded besides.

  Yet she managed to turn the Windolphin in the right direction, even before Tempest got to the wheel.

  “Where has this been all my life?” she laughed to the wind—an instant before her hair came unbound and swirled almost blindingly around her face.

  * * *

  The river mists were racing along the Thames like fleeing ghosts as the horses clattered up to the Tower of London at full gallop.

  And were greeted by withering gunfire that swiftly emptied saddles all round the Prince Royal, who rode at their head, face afire with anger.

  Drake’s men had strict orders not to shoot the Lord Lion, but if the heir to the Empire rode into the Tower of London alone, that would be just fine.

  He almost did. No more than a handful of men were still with him, horses shrieking and falling all around them as Drake’s men opened up in a last-moment attempt to eliminate everyone but the Prince, whose party got in through the gate that had been left open for them, stormed through doors that should have been guarded but weren’t, and descended to the tunnels that would take them into the White Tower itself.

  Down in dimly lit stone passages and hurrying, they never saw the Mary Rose show up in the sky.

  * * *

  A wind had arisen, and the Windolphin was riding it like a skittish pony, dancing along on the gusts almost playfully—and slipping sideways with each one. When Tempest took the helm, Rose relinquished it gratefully.

  “Whereabouts will we land?” she asked. “I don’t recall any masts near the Tower, and there certainly isn’t open space anywhere to…”

  “We won’t be landing,” Tempest told her grimly, pointing into the brightening sky ahead. “We’ll be ramming.”

  Rose looked at him sharply. “And dying?”

  Jack pointed at the mailbags and balloons laid out across the deck. “Bailing, not dying.”

  “One hopes,” Rose sighed, strolling back to look at one mail array after another. Byfleet, Chertsey, Lightwater … “In my admittedly brief experience of derring-do thus far, things never seem to work out according to even the most cunning of plans. You, however, seem to be a better planner than mo—”

  At that moment there was a queer thudding sound behind her, and she spun around in time to see Bleys Hardcastle sprawled senseless across several mailbags and the Iron Assassin charging from him straight at Tempest.

  “Jack!” she shrieked, starting to sprint but already left behind by the man in the exoskeleton. God, but he was fast!

  Tempest turned from the ship’s wheel in time to face his creation—but that was all he had time to do before one of the hard fists that had felled Hardcastle struck his jaw with force enough to whip his head around and smash him clear off the deck.

  He fell on his back on bulging mailbags, with the Assassin on top of him and raining solid punches. Rose didn’t even have time to scream, let alone reach Steelforce, before Jack was lolling limp and senseless—and the man in the exoskeleton was turning and rising to clutch at Rose.

  Fingers as cold and hard as iron brushed her throat as she twisted desperately aside, but that desperate evasion and the speed of her charge left her stumbling over mailbags and falling.

  A hand closed around her right leg, just above her knee, dragged her, then lifted her as though she weighed nothing, turning her and setting her down face-to-face with Bentley Steelforce.

  His face looked more like a skull than ever, only a few wisps of hair still clinging to the graying flesh. His eyes …

  Heart in her throat, barely able to breathe, she stared at him.

  He pointed at her bodice.

  “S-sorry?” she gasped. He’d let go of her, but she stood within his reach, and there was nothing she could do against his strength. Nothing. She’d seen him fight his way through a hail of bullets …

  He pointed at her bodice again.

  “Y-you … you want me?” she whispered, reaching reluctantly for the thin fabric that covered her … her …

  “Key,” he growled at her, scowling.

  “Oh,” she almost moaned, and clawed down into her bodice for the little leather pouch. She fumbled the key forth, her fingers grazing the vial of pepper as she did so. But if she tried to use the pepper, what good would it do? They were on a canted deck in midair, and it wouldn’t blind him forever …

  She left the pepper where it was and held out the key. Her arm was trembling violently.

  His hand came nearer, and nearer … Rose bit her lip to keep from screaming and fought to loosen her fingers, to let the little box Tempest had made shift from her palm to her fingertips … she would have to touch him …

  His hand slid under hers and opened wide, like a great bowl.

  “Drop the key,” he growled. “Into it.”

  She did that, and his hand closed around it into a fist that shook briefly in a rippling spasm of crushing strength, and then opened again. Flattened fragments of key spilled from it.

  He could tear her limb from limb at any moment, with casual ease …

  He pointed at a mailbag.

  She stared at him.

  He pointed again.

  “Sorry?” she whispered. “I don’t understand.”

  “Sit,” he growled at her, looming up over her. She sat.

  “Don’t move,” he ordered, then thrust his face down close to hers and glowered. “Try nothing.”

  Rose managed to nod. “N-nothing,” she echoed.

  The Iron Assassin pointed at her eyes, then at himself, and then stalked to where Hardcastle lay. He tore open the nearest large mailbag, dumped its contents out into the wind, stuffed the unconscious man into it, tied its cord around one of his shoulders, then did the same with his other shoulder and another mailbag. Then he unclipped the rest of the mailbags from the balloons, turned the hooks that freed the whole assembly from the deck, carried Hardcastle to the nearest edge of the deck, planted one foot on the rail there, and tossed man and balloons into the sky.

  Hardcastle fell away behind the Windolphin, hanging limply but descending slowly, not plummeting.

  The Assassin stalked back to Tempest and repeated the process. He stared long and hard into his creator’s slack face, and Rose feared he was about to do something to the man she … she …

  But he didn’t. Lurching into an abrupt turn, he went to the rail and gave Jack Straker to the sky.

  Then the man in the exoskeleton came back to Rose and pointed again at the mailbag she was now sitting on.

  “You mean to serve me … the same way?” she asked, unable to keep the fear entirely out of her voice.

  He nodd
ed.

  “You won’t … kill me?”

  He gave her a look of disgust and shook his head.

  She closed her eyes and gave into shuddering until she could breathe and think again. Whereupon she stood up, tried to smile, and said, “Then do it. I don’t know what you’re up to, but you deserve your freedom, after all Jack … and everyone else … has put you through. Godspeed.”

  They were nose to nose again. The Iron Assassin’s sudden smile startled her. He bowed and extended a hand to her, as if to gallantly escort her.

  Rose took it. His fingers were hard and ice-cold. She managed to suppress another shudder as he led her to a large mailbag, undid it, shook out its contents, and gestured to her to get inside.

  Sinking down beside it, the Lady Harminster eyed the sack of thick, dirty canvas. It would only come up to about her waist, but she was slender and supple, and if she curled up … she clambered in, slid down, and curled up. Only her head and shoulders were out of the bag.

  The Iron Assassin reached in and drew her right arm out, as tenderly as a mother might arrange a child, then tied the sack up around that shoulder. Then he guided her hand to the thick rope that led to the balloons, clasped it there, and patted it in a clear signal to keep holding on. Then he slid his other hand into the sack and felt around to make sure she could move her left hand.

  “Guarding the Empire your work now,” he growled.

  And he bent and kissed her on the cheek.

  She froze, and was still tense and fighting down fear as he carried her across the deck, adding into her ear, “Tell Straker I’m grateful.”

  And dropped her over the side.

  The Windolphin seemed to leap away from her as she sank. She was falling through the air, like Hardcastle and Tempest—where was he? Oh, there! But the balloons were slowing her descent to a gentle drift.

  The Iron Assassin waved to her, then bent and busied himself along the deck. Cluster after cluster of mail joined her in the sky, a small flotilla of balloons descending in eerie silence.