The Fall of the House of Cabal

by Jonathan L. Howard

  ‘But there are five of us.’

  ‘There are, but you are not the fifth point of the pentagram of forces that circle around the prize. She lies less than a mile away, over the ruin of Buckingham Palace.’

  Cabal looked at his comrades. ‘We find ourselves drawn into a trap. Ninuka meant for me to find The One True Account of Presbyter Johannes by His Own Hand. Ever was she the student of human nature. Even mine; a thought that distresses me in a variety of ways.’

  ‘She read you like a book, Cabal.’

  ‘I believe I intimated as much just this moment, Miss Barrow.’

  ‘Played you for a fool.’

  Cabal’s face darkened, but it was no more than the truth. ‘We have unwittingly performed a great and dangerous ritual for her, and now she enters it at the end with overwhelming forces at her command with the intention of claiming the prize for herself.’

  ‘Overwhelming, you say?’ Zarenyia gave an insouciant toss of her hair.

  ‘Superior, then—at least numerically. Now, however, we have shocking troops.’ He gestured at the vampires. ‘My mistake. Shock troops.’ He studied Horst’s stolen uniform, now sadly the worse for wear thanks to repeated journeys through furniture. ‘We shall have to find you something more fitting for the coming battle. A general’s uniform, perhaps. Or perhaps there’s still something ermine-trimmed in the cloakroom here suitable for a lord.’

  ‘Do shut up, Johannes.’

  ‘To think that we would one day have a peer in the family. I am quite filled with emotion.’

  And so, bickering, they settled down to plan the assault on the floating palace of the Red Queen, Orfilia Ninuka.

  The Fifth Way: RUBRUM IMPERATRIX

  General Klaus Fischer did not enjoy the daily briefings he was obliged to supply Her Majesty. She rarely gave the slightest impression that she was listening; more than once she had been reading while he supplied the gloss overviews of the vast number of reports that were submitted, analysed, and rendered from mere information into valuable intelligence. He would say that he was wasting his time for the vanity of a woman who liked to pretend that she maintained a finger upon the pulse of the incorporation of the British Isles. (It was always an ‘incorporation’, according to all documentation and newspapers, never something as crude and uncalled for as an ‘invasion’. After all, Britain no longer had a functional government, or anything approaching one. It was now green and pleasant real estate, available for whosoever had the means to take it.) He would say that, but for her unnerving ability to look up from her book and ask a deep question based on the meanings between the lines, or to demand that new data be ascertained and brought to her as soon as was humanly possible.

  The general was a lifelong warrior and had been the right hand of Count Marechal, the Queen’s late and—by her at any rate—lamented father. Marechal had been an ambitious man, and his plans to pincer Senza, the hated northern neighbour of Mirkarvia, with an unexpected airborne assault from the loathsome but useful allied state of Katamenia might well have worked. Fischer had been left to damp down the remains of one of Mirkarvia’s occasional little outbreaks of civil disobedience while Marechal travelled to Katamenia to make sure the assault was properly prepared.

  The plan never reached fruition, and Marechal returned as an urn full of ashes in the arms of what had turned out to be the count’s greatest creation—his daughter. General Fischer did not enjoy the briefings because he, a broad-shouldered man standing six feet and two inches in his stockinged feet, was afraid of Orfilia Ninuka.

  She had once merely been wilful, but now she was a monster. Nobody called her mad, for she was possessed of vanity and vengefulness. Nobody called her mad, for she maintained a diffuse and effective secret police that, with the abetment of eavesdroppers, informants, and even the occasional loyal citizen, seemed to know every unguarded word. Nobody called her mad but for she herself, and surely a touchstone for true insanity was that the lunatic does not realise his or her state?

  Nobody called her mad, for was she not the Red Queen who dealt in blood and abomination? Did she not hold a small army of Katamenian cut-throats in her thrall, who would die for her as eagerly as they would kill? Was she not a necromantrix, so that even death was no release for those who died in her prisons and interrogation cells and the awful glass oubliettes in which humans were observed in their faltering mortalities even as an insect may be left to die in a test tube?

  With the fall of Senza, the Mirkarvian military gained easy access to Western Europe in general and the Mediterranean in particular. The fleet of warships and troopships culled from the vanquished surface navies of Senza and Poloruss sailed out towards the Atlantic. Commentators and terribly clever civil servants concluded that this was merely the new regime showing off. After all, with no clear lines of logistics it seemed incredible that there might be a brutally military point to all this. As is so often the case with commentators and terribly clever civil servants, they had failed to understand with exactly whom they were dealing.

  The surface ships, after all, were not the only examples of useful materiel that had fallen into Mirkarvian hands. Poloruss’s aerofleet was justly famous. Indeed, a new flagship was midway through being fitted out prior to its commissioning voyage, when disaster struck the country. Whatever it was going to be called hardly mattered to anyone except military historians; what it was called now and its new function were far more important: the Rubrum Imperatrix, personal ship and mobile palace for the Red Queen herself.

  From this flying aerie, Queen Orfilia had headed a shadowy fleet over misty northern climes and through clouded skies, unseen and unsuspected. No storms or bad weather troubled the fleet, nor did the cloud ever break to betray it to ground-based observers. Meteorologists would regard this as an unusual combination, but perhaps Her Majesty simply had the luck of the Devil on her side.

  In any case, she and her ships arrived over the grey skies of Britain just as the surface fleet passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and, under the curious eyes of the Spanish and then the Portuguese, turned to the north.

  By the time the invasion fleet arrived at the English south coast, the war—an inaccurate term, but ‘slaughter’ seems overly emotive—was already over. Ninuka had rained hell and damnation down upon London, cursing the metropolis using magics only whispered of since the days of the Assyrians, who had wisely never used them.

  The Rubrum Imperatrix remained in London while the rest of the fleet dispersed to bring havoc down upon a country abruptly decapitated. Scattered battles and last-ditch defensive engagements still raged, but it was only a matter of time. Orfilia Ninuka sat in her study and gave orders as easily as she might once have offered chitchat at a soirée. She didn’t seem very much like the sort of person who might have soireés any more.

  Fischer watched in silence as Ninuka now took up the gloss of incoming reports and read down the list, wafting herself slowly with a Chinese fan in her off hand. She paced languidly about her study-cum–throne room, once the intended day office of a flag admiral. She walked by the two great panes of thick glass joined at the prow line by a supporting girder. She would insist on doing this, parading around where anyone might see her. The glass would stop anything short of a close range shot from an elephant rifle, but such weapons and those with the skill and will to use them might very well be out there in this wounded city caught in a never-ending cycle of dusk, night, dawn, and then dusk again.

  ‘I see nothing of London itself here, General.’ Ninuka spoke suddenly, breaking him from his reverie. ‘Is there no new intelligence? No news?’

  The general thought for a moment before speaking. ‘Your Majesty, may I be so impertinent as to ask why you remain so interested in this place? It may have been interesting enough before our arrival, but now it feels like taking residence in the rotting skull of a dead empire. The rest of the country is not yet pacified, whereas London is, if anything, overly so.’ He saw the tightening of her jaw that had led directly to the de
aths of good men before his very eyes and hastened to explain himself. ‘I do not criticise, ma’am. I only seek to clarify my understanding of your strategy.’

  ‘My strategy.’ The idea seemed to amuse her. ‘Ah, General, if I told you exactly the point of all this you would not give it a moment’s credence. Worse, you would think me mad even if you were sensible enough to keep that thought to yourself. I will tell you this much; the pivotal act that this entire invasion was predicated upon shall occur in this city, and it will happen soon. You are a career soldier, Klaus. I know you have been wondering what possible goal can there be in bringing down an imperial power that has never shown our country anything but polite disinterest, a country that is so far from the fatherland that holding the territory would be next to impossible, especially with the army already stretched in our new Senzan and Polorussian conquests. Well, it was never about gaining territory. The Irish and French can fight over it when we leave. Oh, yes.’ She smiled at the general’s inability to hide his surprise. ‘We are not staying longer than necessary. If you must have political reasons for us being here, perhaps it was to create instability in the perceived world order from which we may profit, or perhaps it was simply to demonstrate the invincibility of our forces and our fearlessness to engage. Perhaps it is all about fear.’

  The smile faded. She looked out into the lacerated corpse of dead London. ‘Tell yourself what you like. It is my will that we are here.’ She dropped the sheaf of unpinned reports to the floor, where they scattered. Doing his best to maintain some dignity, General Fischer gathered them up. ‘Now tell me, what has happened in London in the last twenty-four hours?’

  ‘I shall find out immediately.’ He strode to the pearl-handled electrical voice pipe and cranked the handle. ‘This is General Fischer. Bring me all patrol and intelligence reports submitted for the London area—’

  ‘Central London. I am only interested in central London.’

  ‘Correction, specifically central London in the last twenty-four hours. Deliver them to the queen’s study immediately. No, not ‘in an hour’, now, damn you, or do you want to explain your testudinal slowness to Her Majesty yourself? I thought not. Get on with it!’

  The reports arrived hastily crammed into a file box twenty minutes later in the hands of a pale and sweating adjutant who dared not look at Ninuka as he handed it over to Fischer. For her part, she amused herself by crossing her arms and staring at the young officer until he backed out of her presence, bowing and saluting and ultimately falling over when he was exiting the room.

  She laughed at that, and there was a startling innocence that startled the general. Then it was gone, and she was holding out her hand. ‘First report.’

  He followed her around the room as she studied report after report, rarely doing more than briefly scanning the first page before dropping it to the floor and holding out her hand for the next. Back and forth they promenaded, a thickening spillage of intelligence in their wake. Then she stopped so abruptly that he almost walked into her.

  ‘What’s this?’

  He took it from her and quickly read it. ‘The National Gallery. Foot patrol discovered six male corpses, drained of bodily fluids … Surely nosferatu, Majesty?’

  ‘Read on.’

  He did so. ‘Webs? Some sort of giant spider? I can only guess it is one of your … one of the abominations the curse visited upon the city.’

  ‘No, General. I am very aware of what my curse visited upon London, and giant spiders were not invited.’ She put the report on her desk, an impressive white structure trimmed with gold, and yet largely constructed from board and aluminium to keep its weight down, presenting an air of faux solidity due to a thick desktop and bolts holding it to the deck. ‘The next report now.’ He handed it over and they continued their short, repetitive walk punctuated by littering.

  Fischer was not surprised by her second halt as they were at the bottom of the box. All that remained was a short handwritten memo apologising to Her Gracious Imperial Majesty, but a patrol shadowing one of the aeroship sweeps was overdue and therefore its report was not available. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked off to one side. ‘They were supposed to be cleaning up after the MIAS Lammasu. They last exchanged signals’—she went to the window and pointed—‘just down there. I saw the Lammasu open fire just beyond the perimeter. But that was hours ago.’ She looked into the darkness again. Fischer could see little more than their own reflections in the glass, but Queen Orfilia’s gaze seemed to drive out deep into the city’s decaying heart. Perhaps it was. ‘Where are you?’ Fischer thought she was talking to him for a moment, but she was only thinking out loud. But those thoughts confused him. ‘Why are you taking so long? Hardly the first time you barged into my home.’ She noticed the general watching her in the glass and smiled at him. ‘I am expecting visitors, General. Four of them. They will attempt entry to this vessel, and they may even succeed. Do not underestimate the ingenuity of their leader.’

  ‘I will double the guard and put them on a high state of alert immediately, Your Majesty!’

  ‘No, you will not. I want them alive—ideally—but I want them in my grasp. Particularly their leader; a pale man with blond hair who habitually wears black. Oh, and he will almost certainly have a leech with him, a rather handsome man with light brown hair. You may have to destroy him; equip the men accordingly. As for the other two, I cannot guess. They are of lesser importance in any case.’

  ‘How do you—’ began Fischer, but he saw her smile fade instantly and the question faltered to an untidy death in his throat. ‘Yes, Your Majesty. It will be done.’

  He hurried from her presence, propelled by urgency and relief at being dismissed.

  She hardly cared. She placed a hand on the glass and looked out once more, seeing the corpses, the chaos, and the gutted city for what they were—stage props for a final confrontation. She would keep Johannes Cabal alive only as long as she was sure that she might need him. Once that time was gone, she would be happy to kill him herself. Her father’s pistol was in the drawer of her desk, awaiting the moment of revenge.

  She saw the reflection of her father’s funerary urn in its place in a case mounted safely upon the wall where she could see it as she worked. ‘Good girl.’ She could hear his voice in her imagination, or perhaps the urn spoke. It hardly mattered which.

  Cabal was out there. Soon he would be hers, the game would be over, and she would have the prize. She whispered to the night, ‘My will be done.’

  * * *

  ‘Isn’t this the same plan as we had before?’ Zarenyia was down to two legs again and resenting the loss, temporary though it was.

  ‘Not quite.’ The remnants of the Mirkarvian patrol were now represented by only the lieutenant and a single private who walked with a slight hunch in an attempt to hide his possession of a bust. The borrowed medical officer’s uniform was in too poor a state to go without drawing attention long before the plan required it, so Horst had returned for his own clothes, and seemed the happier for it. He was not with their little pretence of two soldiers bringing in a brace of prisoners. Instead he was off trying his best to be a general of the undead and Lord of the Dead without bursting into either tears or laughter. ‘Now,’ said Johannes Cabal, ‘we have a reserve force.’

  ‘Doesn’t that make us the main force?’ Miss Smith had cheered up a little on finding an umbrella shop that she had looted of a nicer black lace parasol than its predecessor, which was showing signs of combat fatigue. ‘Johannes, there are four of us. What sort of main force consists of four people, three women and a man. Well, two women, something fairly like a woman, and a man?’

  ‘Are you being cheeky, darling?’ Zarenyia smiled delightedly at Miss Smith. ‘I love it when people are cheeky with me. Sometimes I don’t even kill them for it. Usually, but not always.’

  ‘Dibs, madam,’ said Cabal, trying to bring the ribaldry under control before things became any stranger than they already were. ‘You gave dibs to ensure the
safety of the whole party.’

  ‘Technically, not for Smithy here,’ Zarenyia pointed out, ‘but don’t worry. I was just teasing.’ She leaned her head towards Miss Smith and whispered, ‘I’m sure you love being teased, don’t you?’

  Miss Smith looked straight ahead and did so with a notably fixed expression. ‘I’m not even sure why I’m here any more. If Ninuka really is the fifth part of this … what would you call it? A ritual? Then what business is it of mine? I’m risking my life for nothing here.’

  ‘Your situation is complicated, I admit,’ said Cabal, ‘but if you require some degree of self-interest, then your isolation from the Dreamlands is surely sufficient. If you stay with us, things may improve for you. If you do not, they will surely deteriorate.’

  ‘Thanks, Cabal. Knew I could depend on you to bolster morale and supply pep. You’ve really put a new spring in my step.’

  Her step remained resolutely unspringy.

  They were closing on a checkpoint set up some hundred yards from the end of the Mall where it bifurcated into Constitution Hill and Spur Road when a complication arose. Horst suddenly halted as if hearing a loud sound, looked over to his right, and said in horror, ‘Minty!’

  ‘What?’ Cabal looked to the space where he assumed the child to be. ‘What’s amiss?’

  ‘She’s burning!’

  And, to those that could see her, she was indeed aflame. She struggled back, vaporous wisps of cold blue fire wrapping around her. To those who could hear her, she was screaming, high-pitched and terrified.

  ‘It ’urts! It ’urts!’ She was sobbing. When all sensation has been annulled and is merely a memory, it seemed unusually cruel that its return should be of such a violent flavour.