“Your friend, then?”
“Yes.” The answer could have meant Steppan’s love of her or Asa’s love of him. Both would be true.
“You have saved me,” Zelanie said softly, smiling her beatific smile.
“I did.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Actually, yes. I like being clever, and I got to be very, very clever. So that part was nice at least.”
She made a pleased hum and shifted forward. Her hair smelled of the river. Her mouth was soft and tasted of copper and dirt. When her hand slipped under Asa’s clothes, the feeling of skin against skin was like pouring water on a burn. The longing to be touched—at first by Steppan but eventually by anybody—that had lain ignored so long rose up like the heat of summer. When Asa pulled back, she brought their twined fingers to her mouth.
“You’re drugged.”
“I am a bit, aren’t I?”
“You aren’t yourself.”
“I’m not someone else.” She lay back on the slate table, pulling them together as she did. Her hands tugged at the stays of Asa’s cloak. “Anyway, how would you know who I am?”
“I’m … Before you do that. I may not be quite what you’re expecting.”
Her tongue—pink as pearls now—showed its tip between her teeth. “No? Let’s find out.”
A half dozen possible replies wrestled in Asa’s mind—Please stop and This is a terrible mistake and All right. The stays came loose. Her hand moved gently. Asa’s eyes closed.
“All right. Let’s.”
“You bedded her?” Steppan said. His eyes were wide, his mouth slack. His cheeks were actually gray with shock and horror.
It wasn’t the only answer he could have made. Asa could think of at least a dozen other. Did you enjoy it? and I’m so happy for you, and, best wished for, Wait for me next time. But the prince’s shock was profound and unfeigned. This was a thing he could never have imagined happening, though compared to a thousand other events in Sovereign North Bank in the last week alone, it was common as mud. All Asa’s dreams and hopes vanished in that moment as if they had never been, a bubble popping. The beautiful man, desperate and noble and romantic, was a naive little boy, disgusted by anything he didn’t expect. The pain was less powerful than the relief.
The cruel response floated on the back of Asa’s tongue. She’s no more a virgin now than when you saw her the first time, you dunce.
“Of course I didn’t. I was joking.”
“You were …” Steppan said, and let out a long, stuttering breath. Color came back to his cheeks in two flaming circles of scarlet. They both laughed, but unknown to Steppan, they didn’t laugh together.
“She’s waiting at the Temple. The apothecary says she may be weak for a time. Days at least.”
“We can bring her here,” Steppan said. “Watch over her while she recovers.”
Asa suppressed a grin. There was a terrible idea.
“I think not. There’s another problem. One I hadn’t foreseen. The priest knows who you are.”
“How?” Steppan asked.
“Couldn’t say. He slipped, and I pretended not to notice, but if he knows, others may also. Sovereign North Bank isn’t safe for you. Not anymore. You and Zelanie have to flee, and tonight’s better than morning.”
Steppan’s expression was solemn. He put a hand on Asa’s shoulder. “Will you come with us?”
“Better that I do not. We’re known companions. And in truth, my place is here.”
“Then thank you, my friend, for all you have done. I will remember you.”
After Steppan left to reclaim his blade and introduce himself to his lover, Asa lit a fire in the little tin brazier. Through the thin walls, the sounds of voices filtered in as if from a thousand miles away. Someone was playing a mandolin. On the other side of the small room, the empty mattress still held the shape of Steppan’s body. Asa rose, hauled it over, and stacked them. They were more comfortable that way.
Morning found Asa on the rooftops eating hot almonds from a rag pocket. To the east, the bridges of Nevripal went slowly dark as the night’s torches were doused in anticipation of the dawn. Carriages lumbered down the riverside streets, the clatter of hooves and wheels barely audible across the water. One by one, the stars faded, giving way to blue. The sluggish breeze stank of coal smoke and rotting plants. Nearer in, the Salt was busy with bodies in rest or motion. The rope bridges teemed with people going from one place to another within Sovereign North Bank, as if the change of a few hundred yards would make any difference. The little city within a city didn’t care, and it didn’t judge, and of all its thousand aspects, that was what made Asa love it most of all.
Somewhere out there, Prince Steppan Homrey, fugitive heir of Lyria, and his beloved stranger Zelanie were likely fleeing his stepmother’s assassins. Asa could only hope Zelanie was competent enough to see them through it. The sky was beautiful regardless.
Rouse’s footsteps were slow, plodding, and unmistakable. He cleared his throat.
“Good morning, Chancellor.”
“Friend Asa.” The priest walked over and sat at Asa’s side, squinting into the growing light. “I trust you’re well.”
“I don’t know.”
“No?”
Asa chuckled and held out the rag pocket. Rouse took a small handful of nuts and chewed them placidly. The poisoner unafraid of poisons after all.
“In the past few days, I have stolen a girl from the workhouses by killing her, hauling her body out of the river, and bringing her back to life; worked with an acknowledged mass murderer, no offense—”
“None taken.”
“—to poison and enslave two agents of the law; and performed glorious if intoxicated sexual acts with my dearest friend’s lover on a corpse table.”
“Busy.”
“It has occurred to me that I may not be a good person.”
“I have no insight to offer on the question.”
For a long moment, they were silent with their private thoughts.
“Love,” Asa said, “is like a pigeon shitting over a crowd.”
“How so?”
“Where it lands hasn’t got much to do with who deserves it.”
The priest made a deep sound in his throat, and frowned. “I think you may be confusing love with a different kind of longing,” he said, and Asa barked out a laugh. “You know why I’ve come.”
“Your share of the workhouse money,” Asa said, holding out a small purse. It clinked in Rouse’s hand.
“You won’t take offense if I count it,” Rouse said.
“With me, friend? You’d be a fool not to.”
Paul Cornell
The fast-paced and rather strange story that follows is one of a series of stories that Paul Cornell has been writing about the exploits of spy Jonathan Hamilton in the Great Game between nations in a nineteenth-century Europe where technology has followed a very different path from that of our own timeline, exploiting the ability to open and manipulate multidimensional folds in space—stories that read like Ruritanian romances written by Charles Stross, as Hamilton battles to prevent disaster in a flamboyantly entertaining fashion reminiscent of the adventures of James Bond, or, better, of Poul Anderson’s Dominic Flandry, who may be his direct ancestor.
In this adventure, Hamilton finds himself locked in a life-or-death struggle with someone every bit as clever and dangerous as he is—himself.
British author Paul Cornell is a writer of SF and fantasy in novels, comics, and television, one of only two people to have Hugo Award nominations for all three media. His urban fantasy novel London Falling is out from Tor, and the sequel, The Severed Streets, was released in December. He’s written Doctor Who for the BBC, and Batman and Robin for DC Comics. He’s currently the writer of Marvel Comics’ Wolverine. He’s had short stories published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Interzone, and many anthologies.
A BETTER WAY TO DIE
Paul Cornell
&
nbsp; Cliveden is one of the great houses of Greater Britain. It stands beside the Thames in Buckinghamshire, at the end of the sort of grand avenue that such places kept and made carriages fly up, when carriages were the done thing. In the extensive forests, a Grand Charles tree from the Columbian colonies has been grown into the shape of a guesthouse. The yew-tree walk leads down to a boathouse that has, painted on its ramp, dated, descending notches of where the water once rose, taken at the flood. The ramp has twice now been extended to reach the river. From the house itself, one can look out over the parterre to a 180-degree horizon of what were once flood meadows, now seamless farmland. The view of the other half of the world is that which one would expect of a hunting estate. There is a smooth, plunging hill, kept clear to present targets on the horizon, with trees either side, towards which the game can break. There are hides for beaters. There is a balcony that looks down on the yard, from which favors can be thrown and bloods scored. At certain times of the year you will hear the reports of guns, the calling of the hounds, and the sohos of those on the chase, unimpeded by fence or ditch. The gutters of the forecourt are there to catch the blood.
Hamilton often worked out of uniform, so he knew the great estates. They were where royalty risked a social life outside of their palaces, still requiring careful eyes beside them. They were where those individuals who had lost so much of their souls in the great game that they had actually changed sides were hauled. Houses like this were where such wretched people would be allowed to unburden themselves, their words helping to reset the balance that their actions had set swinging. Houses like this were also where officers like himself were interviewed following injury or failure. And finally, always finally, they were places from where such as he sometimes did not return. They were the index that ran alongside the London and abroad half of an out-of-uniform man’s life, the margin in which damning notes were made. Such buildings were the physical manifestation of how these things had always been done, the plans of them a noble motto across the English countryside. Those words could be read even if your face was in the mud. Especially then. In the circumstances in which Hamilton now found himself, that thought reassured him. But still, he could not make himself ready to die.
He’d found the invitation on his breakfast table: the name of the estate and a date which was that same day. The handwriting was in the new style, which meant that no hand had been near it, that it had been spoken onto the card as if by God. He could not decide anything based upon it. Except that the confidence of this gesture indicated that, despite everything, those who had power over him still did not doubt who they were and what they could do.
He had picked it up with none of the anticipation he might once have felt, just a dull, resigned dread. This was the answer to a question he hadn’t put into words. He had started to feel a deeper anger, nameless, useless, than any he had felt before. He knew what he was owed but had become increasingly sure he wouldn’t receive it. The fact of his being owed it would be seen now as an impertinent gesture on his part, a burden on those who had invested elsewhere. He had one request now, he’d decided, looking at the card in his numb fingers: he would ask to be sent to contribute to some hopeless cause. But perhaps those were only to be found in the blockade now, and if they didn’t want him, they especially wouldn’t want him there. Still, he’d held on to that thought through dressing appropriately and packing for the country. But then even that hope had started to feel like treachery and cowardice. The condemned man must not have anything to ask of the executioner. That was the beginning of pleading.
And yet hope stayed with him. It played on him. His own balance ate at him as he prepared. A fool, he told himself, would assume he was on his way to Cliveden to be given what he was owed. To at least be thanked for all these years and given a fond farewell. He made sure he was not hoping for that.
Now he watched from the carriage as it swung down towards the avenue that led to Cliveden. He saw nobody in the grounds, not a single worker on the fields. That was extraordinary. Normally, they would be out there in numbers, waving to any carriage from their enormous harvesters and beaters and propulsion horses. Hamilton had no idea how many servants it took to maintain an estate like Cliveden, but it must be numbered in the hundreds. There would traditionally be too many, in fact, “a job for every man and several of those jobs are lounging about just in case” as some wag had put it. On the two occasions when he’d seen an officer die in such places, it had been done (in one case like an accident, in another, and that was a scene he’d take to his grave, like a suicide) in the grounds, away from the eyes of the help. You didn’t need to clear them all out. But no, he stopped himself: surely this was just the larger version of what he’d seen at Keble? He was making new horrors for himself with no new evidence.
The carriage settled onto the end of the drive, and Hamilton stepped down onto the gravel. His knee spasmed and he nearly fell. Getting old. He wondered if they were watching this, and killed a thought that he didn’t care. He did. He must. It had been an affectation to take a carriage, he realized, when, in moments, these days, he could have walked down a tunnel from his rooms in London. And he’d brought a valise, as if he were unwilling, should he need to dress for dinner, to return there in the same way to do so. He was silently making statements with these actions. Stubborn statements. Like he’d made, as if with the intention of ending his service, that night at Keble. This new realization angered him more than anything else had. Only fools and criminals didn’t know why they did things. It seemed that he was no longer strong enough to hold that fate at bay. To arrive here as someone who bowed to the command of those other voices within one, to pain or desire or selfishness, to have allowed those threats to the balance to have grown within oneself, and to only realize it on this threshold … it was an invitation to the powers in this house to strike him down. And they would be right to do so.
He allowed himself to smile at the relief of that thought. They would be right to do so. If he could accept that, all would be well. He had brought the valise. He would not balk and desperately fly to return it, like a panicked undergraduate. If he suddenly did, or said, or hinted at anything not of his own volition, but that had come out of the other half of him that should be under his control, then the balance could still be restored at the cost of his life. He didn’t have to worry about that.
But the thought still came to him: those with his life in their hands didn’t seem to value the balance so much these days, did they?
That thought was like a far greater death that lay in wait.
If the world was tempting him into plucking at his own house of cards, it was because that was all everyone seemed to be doing now. He was hesitating on this drive, actually hesitating. He had seen his life as a house of cards.
Perhaps the world was dying too.
Perhaps everyone his age felt that.
But surely nobody had ever felt it in circumstances like these?
The carriage finally moved off. He made himself step forward, looking down at the valise now inescapably in his hand.
He found he had orders in his eyes. He wasn’t to go into the house but into the forest.
He made his way down a winding path to the edge of the woods. It was overcast, but the shadows from inside the forest were slanting at impossible angles, as if somewhere in there someone was lighting a stage.
He walked into the forest.
The path took him past fallen trees, not long ago cut down, by a logger who was now absent. He stopped to listen. The sounds of nature. But no sawing, no distant echo of metal on wood, no great machines. Strange that the effect could be so complete.
He came to the edge of a clearing. Here was where the strange light was coming from. It seemed to be summer here because the light was from overhead. The air was warmer. Hamilton kept his expression steady. He walked slowly into the center, and saw the trees that shouldn’t be here. He wanted to follow etiquette, but that was difficult when those one was addressing had aband
oned propriety. It was as if they had grabbed the ribbon of his duty and then leapt down a well. He felt like bellowing at them. He felt awful that he felt like bellowing at them.
He addressed the tallest of the trees. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
It had been just a few weeks ago that he’d been invited to meet Turpin at Keble. His commanding officer had been a guest of the Warden, and had asked Hamilton to join him at High Table. This had seemed at the time the most natural thing in the world, Keble being where Hamilton himself had been an undergraduate. He’d driven down to Oxford as always, had the Porters fuss over the Morgan as always. He’d stopped for a moment outside the chapel, thinking about Annie, the terrible lack of her. But he could still look at the chapel and take pleasure in it. He’d been satisfied with his composure, then. At that time he’d already been on leave for several weeks. He should have realized that had been suspiciously long. And before that he’d been used for penny-ante jobs, sent on them by junior officers, not even allowed to return to the Dragoons, who were themselves on endless exercises in Scotland. He really should have understood, before it had been revealed to him, that he was being kept away from something.
It had been in the Warden’s rooms at Keble that Turpin had first appeared in his life, all those years ago, had first asked him about working out of uniform. To some people, he’d said, the balance, the necessary moment-by-moment weighing and shifting of everything from military strength to personal ethics that kept war from erupting between the great nations and their colonies right across the solar system, was something felt, something in the body. This had been a couple of years before the medical theologians had got to work on how the balance actually was present in the mind. Hamilton had recognized that in himself. Turpin had already been then as Hamilton had always known him, his face a patchwork of grown skin, from where he’d had the corners knocked off him in the side streets of Kiev and the muck-filled trenches of Zimbabwe.
But on entering the Warden’s rooms on this later occasion, after decades of service, Hamilton had found himself saluting a different Turpin. His features were smooth, all trace of his experience removed. Hamilton had carefully not reacted. Turpin hadn’t offered any comment. “Interesting crowd this evening, Major,” he’d said, nodding to indicate those assembled under the Warden’s roof. Hamilton had looked. And that had been, now he looked back to it, the moment his own balance had started to slide dangerously towards collapse.
Rogues Page 44
