The Fruit of the Poisonous Tree: Stoker & Bash, #2

by Selina Kray

  There was only one way to find out: eavesdrop.

  After a fortifying sip of his neglected coffee, Hiero listened for the fade of their voices down the corridor. He poked his head out in time to see them disappear down the back stairs, Han behind them. What they wanted in the kitchens remained to be discovered. Assuring himself Aldridge had returned to his duties, Hiero toed off his shoes, then slunk after them.

  He made himself small, which was to say the height of an average-sized man, as he crept down the back stairs. When the kitchen hall became visible, he lowered himself to hands and knees on the step and peered into the room. Not a soul was in sight, not even Minnie supervising the loaves of baking bread. Hiero inhaled deep of the cozy scent, considered stretching out for a nap like his feline forebears.

  A loud crack reminded him of his mission. Where had they got to? And what business could Kip and a strange man possibly have in his basement? The point of snooping, of course, was to uncover things, so Hiero padded down the last of the steps into the vast, empty kitchen. Two rows of mini meat pies cooled on a rack. His lunch-skipping stomach gave a lurch. Stealing a dishcloth and one of the pies—venison with mushrooms and ale, unspeakably delicious—he surveyed all the adjoining doors he never paid any mind. All closed.

  Brushing a few crumbs off his lapel, he discovered the shadowed entrance to a small corridor at the far end of the hall, hidden behind the washtub. Hiero stuffed the last of the pie in his mouth. If the Daughters craved knowledge of the truly divine, they should learn the recipe to Minnie’s crust. He licked the corners of his lips as he tiptoed past the tub.

  And froze. Not due to the misty wafts of air pouring out of the cold room, but realization. Of the reason for Kip’s visit and the stranger’s possible identity. Of the fact that no one had bothered to mention Little Bean’s body was being stored beside the carcasses from last month’s hunt, or what sort of scene he would be intruding upon. The venison pie threatened to reappear, but he measured his breaths until the feeling passed.

  Then he heard the strangled gasp the stranger tried and failed to swallow, and he couldn’t keep away. Sneaking past the half-open door, Hiero pressed against the outside of the frame and craned his head around. An awkward vantage, but one from which he could disappear with ease. The man—and thankfully, the butcher’s block that served as an examination table—were beyond his view, but Kip wasn’t. He hovered near his companion. His formal stance and controlled mien indicated it was the only sort of comfort the man would accept. Hiero read concern, trepidation, caution, and also intimidation in his expression.

  One out of four wouldn’t do.

  “He is mine,” the stranger declared, every syllable underscored by ache despite his dispassionate tone. “The picture of his mother.”

  “With the greatest respect for your instinct, sir, I fear we must have proof.” This from Kip, and Hiero saw how much it took from him to counter the man’s opinion. “If there are others, if there’s a pattern, those responsible must be brought to justice.”

  “Justice,” the man sneered, and Hiero had to agree. “All my life I’ve fought to uphold the laws of this land, of morality, and look...” Hiero saw Kip reach, and quickly withdraw, a consoling hand. “Look what I’ve done to my only boy.”

  Hiero blinked rapidly, caught unawares by sympathy. Kip had the good sense to remain silent. Long minutes stretched by. Hiero could imagine all too well what was transpiring in the room beyond, so much so he almost wanted to gouge out his eyes. He considered leaving but couldn’t risk disturbing them.

  “In your honest opinion, DI Stoker,” the man asked, his voice raspier and harder than before, “can you resolve this matter to everyone’s satisfaction? Do I need to involve the Yard?”

  “Sir, your reputation—”

  “Is done.” The man wrestled with a shuddery breath. “As am I. I will resign my office as soon as I watch whomever’s responsible for this hang.”

  “That would be a great pity. And a victory for the villain that’s done this.”

  “They took advantage of what I set in motion. I could have kept them both. I could have married her. My pride wanted this. My hunger for status and reputation. This villain will pay for their crimes, but so must I. I ask again, are you confident you can bring me this fiend?”

  “I can, sir, and I will.”

  “Good.” Hiero sighed in relief, but the man continued in a growl. “Because if you fail me in this, if you let my son be buried unavenged... we’ll both be done. Do I make myself clear, DI Stoker?”

  “As crystal, sir.”

  The rustling of a sheet warned Hiero of their imminent exit. He sank back into the dark at the far end of the corridor, held his breath as the two men escaped the room. The grieving stranger strode toward the kitchen without a second look. Kip turned to lock the door... and saw him. An eye-roll preceded a staying hand before he pursued his companion out.

  Hiero counted to twenty before making his retreat. He slipped past a stern-looking Minnie counting pies, dashing up the stairs in time to watch the front door close behind them.

  Or so Hiero thought. He reentered the study to find Han and Kip frowning over the box, the latter grumbling under his breath. Hiero slowly started to back out of the room when his shoes betrayed him. By his tumbling over them.

  A snickering Han helped him back to his feet. Once standing, Hiero was confronted by Kip’s tormented expression as various factions within him warred for dominance. Annoyance, as was its wont, won out. Hiero rushed to take charge of the moment.

  “Your client, I presume?”

  “An easy deduction, given your attempt at spycraft. You might have asked for an introduction.”

  “Would I have been given one, I wonder?”

  Kip let out a heavy sigh, not bothering to answer. He indicated the box.

  “Why am I only learning of this now?”

  Hiero’s gaze strayed over to the drinks tray. Han shoved his now-cold cup of coffee into his hands. Hiero feigned a sip, set it on the desk.

  “Shall I ring for more?”

  “Once you’ve answered my question.”

  Hiero shrugged. “It was hardly the moment—”

  “To alert me to the fact your cover is blown, you’ve stolen a potentially priceless item from the subjects of our investigation, and they at this moment might be plotting against you while your ward, her mother, and her nurse are trapped on their compound, you mean? You thought that cause for a seduction, did you?”

  Hiero fought against the urge to cower, Kip’s face aflame with a force of anger he’d never seen before.

  “I-I hadn’t slept.”

  “So fatigue dulled your wits. I see. And after?”

  “We needed rest. To forget awhile.”

  “Do not pretend to speak on my behalf when only one of us was in possession of all the facts. As ever.” Kip hissed a breath, fighting to rein in his temper. “The man who just left... My client. I know you understand the profundity of his loss. I know of your echoes, and your exhaustion, and the existence of things you will not speak of. But I must do everything in my power to prevent what happened to his boy from happening to anyone else. And if you impede me in any way...”

  He didn’t want to say the words. But Hiero heard them all the same, and they cut him to the quick.

  “I understand.”

  Kip stared at him, still furious, still at war within until whatever he saw in Hiero’s face satisfied him.

  “I pray so.” He turned back to the box, unable to mask his curiosity despite his lingering irritation. “Genuine or imposter?”

  “Impossible to say,” Han replied with a supportive glance Hiero’s way. “If the contents are genuine, then they are fools to chance their exposure. If they prove unmemorable, then it could be a fake meant to ward off thieves.”

  “Or Mother Rebecca’s secrets might not be so priceless after all,” Hiero noted, forcing himself back into the moment.

  “Either way,” Han concluded,
“there’s no way of knowing until we open the box.”

  “They’ve gone to an awful lot of bother making an impenetrable nothing if it proves to be an imposter,” Kip said. “I wager there’s something to be found within. Whether that’s worth any value...”

  “One man’s treasure is another man’s tripe.” Hiero clapped his hands, joining them by the box. “Such is the way of the world. The present mystery—”

  “—is how to open it.” Kip lifted it, gave it a shake. “It does feel rather solid.”

  “The world’s most enigmatic paper weight.”

  Kip replaced the box with a dull thud. “What do you make of it, Han?”

  Hiero forgot his troubles when he spotted the glint in his old friend’s eye. Acquaintances often mistook Han’s calm and quietude for reserve. In truth, he’d learned to share himself only with those who bothered to look deeper. And those who mined deep enough uncovered a trove of intelligence and a wealth of personality, and even a slight flair for the dramatic.

  Han straightened to his fullest height, pressing the tips of his fingers to the far edge of the box’s lid. After shutting his eyes, he hummed a low note. With painstaking slowness, he smoothed his fingertips along the length of the lid. He repeated the gesture along all four sides. Hiero struggled not to laugh, remembering the technique from their days with Erskine. How the audience would crane forward just as Kip did now, so focused they ignored the real trick being prepared all the while.

  Han had known the solution from the first.

  “Here.” Han gestured for Kip’s hand to replace his in the center of opposite sides of the box. “Hiero, come.” He guided Hiero’s hands to the lower edge of the front and back panels. “Gentlemen, lift very, very gently. Do not let your fingers stray from their spots.” They did so. Han slotted his hands to the right of the top and bottom sides. “And now... push!”

  With their communal effort, bars broke out of the seamless sides of the box. The rectangular shape morphed into something jagged and menacing. Hiero resisted the urge to toss it into more capable hands as Han pried out a bar, which he jammed into one of the other spaces. A flick of his wrist, a turn of the screw, and a lid within the lid popped open to reveal...

  “DI Stoker,” Han asked, “would you care to do the honors?”

  Kip’s rapt features betrayed not a trace of his earlier aggravation as he reached into the box. Hiero shivered, thought of those mythic faces carved into walls, inviting you to test your mettle by sticking a hand in the god’s mouth and risk it being bit off.

  “How very Mother Rebecca to insist we penetrate her most sacred orifice in order to find her treasure.” His audience ignored him, too concentrated on their discovery for double entendres. Hiero sighed as Kip pulled a sheaf of papers from the box. “Now what have we here? Gunpowder plot or plodding dissertation?”

  “Revelation, more like.” Kip flashed them the title of the unfinished treatise. “As in Book of.” He flipped through the pages. “With chapters on the Final Preparations, the Seven Signs, the Lord’s Judgment, the Advent of the Messiah, the Mother’s Return, and the Opening of the Garden. We’ve happened upon Rebecca’s apocrypha.”

  “Nothing else?” Han asked.

  “Just this.” Kip dug back in and pulled out a scroll, which he unfurled across the desktop.

  They pored over a map entitled Eve’s Tomb. An apple marked her gravesite, with a nest of tunnels snaking out from there, color coded red and green. These connected to three other areas, one with a castle symbol, one with a gate, and one simply marked with an X. No legend, not even a compass point, hinted at the real-life location. At least not to Hiero’s underwhelmed eyes.

  “A subterranean labyrinth,” Han said. “But to what end? The Daughters hardly need to sneak around their compound.”

  “Agreed.” Kip laid books around the edges of the map to mimic the walls of the compound. “I can see the use of the cellar at Castleside—here—perhaps to store their most valuable or prized possessions, but the rest... Why not simply travel aboveground? The perimeter walls conceal everything from the street.”

  “Perhaps they are remnants from an earlier time. A papist enclave in the Jacobean era?”

  “Quite possibly. And for our purposes, another avenue of investigation.” Kip pulled out a ruler from Jove knew where—Hiero didn’t recall purchasing any sort of geometric equipment—and began to measure different lengths on the map. “Supposing Eve’s Tomb is indeed under the tree...”

  “... this could be how the boy’s body appeared without anyone noticing,” Han finished.

  “Or where others are being kept.” Kip slammed his fist on the desktop, a very un-Kip-like demonstration. Hiero fought the instinct to lay hands on him, knowing they wouldn’t be welcome. “I need unrestricted access to the Daughters’ ledgers. There must be some way to account for any babes who have gone missing besides Little Bean.”

  “This opens a new avenue of investigation,” Han reminded him. “Who had access to the tunnels and the opportunity to use them on the day the body was found?”

  “About which I’m certain the Daughters will be just as forthcoming.” Kip tapped an impatient tattoo on one of the books as he scrutinized the map. “But yes, we’ll have to connive a way of searching them.”

  Hiero shrunk away from the desk, the thought of spending hours underground quickening his heartbeat and cinching his breath. He grabbed for the coffee Aldridge had ghosted into the room a few minutes earlier, scalding his tongue on his first sip. Still, he continued to pour the hot liquid down his throat.

  “This here.” Kip pointed to the area represented by the gate symbol. “Beneath the farmhouse, do you think? That’s near the side gate.”

  Hiero barely stopped himself from choking with a violent cough, spitting coffee all over his fist. A tunnel beneath the farmhouse gave new meaning to the skitters and squeaks that had plagued him in the night. His days of bedding down with vermin of animal and human persuasion were well behind him.

  “The barn. Less intrusive.” Han bent over to follow Kip’s measurements. “Your theory is we could access the tunnels without disturbing the Daughters?”

  “A last resort, but yes. I’d like to take another crack at Sister Nora—”

  Angus’s much louder interruption caught their attention.

  “Mr. Han, sir. One of your lads came calling, stationed at DI Stoker’s lodgings.”

  He handed the note to Kip, who all but ripped it open. Hiero would never tire of watching the play of intrigue and amazement across his face in such moments.

  “Another of Sister Juliet’s missives,” Kip announced. “‘Dear Serpent. We’ve discovered the bad seeds you planted among us.’” He frowned as he read the rest. “She proposes an exchange. The box for Calliope and Miss Kala.”

  Han tore the note from his grasp. After reading it for himself, he crumpled up the note in his fist and launched it at the chalkboard. “We must go to them at once.”

  Kip nodded. “Angus, if you would be so good as to ready the carriage.”

  He was already halfway out the door.

  Hiero couldn’t believe his was the voice of reason. “You’re charging into a trap of their making without accounting for... accountable things.”

  “And well I know it.” Kip retrieved the balled-up note, smoothed it into legibility. “But if we’re to press the Daughters to the breaking point, we must remove any leverage they have against us. Otherwise we’re at their mercy.”

  Han, his upset sharpened into piercing resolve, rejoined their group.

  “Callie’s insights into the Daughters’ ways would be more valuable before we answer their summons.”

  Kip sighed. “I concur. But their part in our gambit has somehow failed, and we must assure no harm comes to them. Besides, I do not think the Daughters bold enough to act against an officer of the law, no matter who counts among their benefactors.”

  Hiero snorted. “You mean to wager your safety against their respect for h
igher offices? The pantheon is the only authority they acknowledge. You’re not even a demigod.”

  “They spotted your false prophetess with ease and turned her against us, so I hardly think you’re in a place to judge.”

  “I thought you knew better than to feed yourself to the lions.”

  “The only martyr here is your sense of self-preservation.”

  “Control yourselves!” Han barked. “This isn’t the time for a lovers’ spat.”

  “Correct,” Kip acknowledged. “It’s time for action.” He turned back to the desk, cutting Hiero out. “We’ll need a copy of the map and the box restored. The most likely location for the exchange is Sister Juliet’s office. Han, might you manage to infiltrate Sister Nora’s vault and search her files whilst I have them preoccupied?”

  He nodded. “We’ll devise some means of distraction along the way.”

  “Have Angus at the front, ready for a swift getaway. I might remain to continue my inquiries, so as soon as Calliope and Miss Kala and, if we are lucky, Mrs. Pankhurst emerge, spirit them away.”

  Hiero cleared his throat. “And what of myself? You know of my allergy to omnibuses.”

  A chill silence fell.

  “I will confront them alone.” Kip foisted his bitter green gaze on Hiero. Still angry, then, and worse, disappointed. “There will be no negotiation if I return with the very scoundrel who stole their sacred texts. And given how the discomfiting echoes of being at Castleside affect you... it would be best if you held the fort. One never knows who might come calling.”

  At Hiero’s weak nod, they set about their preparations with diligence and determination. He strayed over to the far side of the study, his absence unremarked upon. He clutched his coffee cup with both hands, blocking out the siren call of the drinks tray like Odysseus lashed to the mast.

  Hiero stood beneath Apollo’s portrait, admiring his benefactor’s kind eyes and silvery mane. They had loved one another as befit their stations and something more beyond that. Rewriting their history in light of his relationship with Kip was of no interest to Hiero, but he had become aware of its limitations. Of his limitations. Of the challenge caring for Kip presented—to want more for himself, to be more for others.