Chapter Two

“The Shadow of the Brass Brute”

1.

IT LAY SPLAYED ON the tattered remains of an old horse hide. The men had set up torches around the broken repulsive thing but they only served to catch the shadows in the recesses of that eviscerated torso—mottled red flashes of organs torn by the beaks of vultures, the ragged strips where the carrion had been stripped from underneath the skin. The eyes were holes surrounded by a hardened black ring that looked like tar. Both legs appeared to be missing and the skin was jaundiced so badly the only thing Bedford could think of as he looked at it was a buttercup. Several of the men and Annabelle stood around it, not daring to speak. Squaws grouped in a frightened huddle around the largest tent, holding their children to them or warning them away from what lay on the ground by the fire.

This torn and wretched soul had been encased in a rough brass frame, its sheen dulled by the sandpaper scraping of the desert winds. The frame was bulky and inelegant, salvaged from the detritus of copper mines and broken down railway engines. In some places it was bolted together, in others strapped together with wood. One or two joists were even held together by rough twine wrapped in bandages. The whole frame was asymmetrical and it looked as if this poor devil had been jammed inside, his right arm twisted gruesomely where the thick cuffs bolted into the bones of his wrists. His hands were surmounted by small pistons, which in turn fed into cloudy rubber tubes that ran back up the arms and directly into the cavities of his chest. Within them a milky-green solution could be seen, with more in a crude array of syringes that was bolted to this horror’s metal ribs.

And four of them had seen it all before.

It could not be argued that this was a superior example to their previous encounter with such gruesome perversions of the very flesh of man, and for those who had borne witness to Potsdam the Brute this was a blessed relief. The brute had been a hideous experiment into the very lengths the curious properties of the mineral known as aleksandrite could be pushed—the last surviving specimen of a doomed procedure that could only have been born in the mind of a madman. Fed an aleksandrite solution that gave him incredible strength but no will of his own, the brute had been tasked to guard Klopstock, a devious bomb-maker with few scruples and even less spine. The pair had terrorised Professor Stone and Mister Cahalleret before killing an innumerable number of citizens with a bomb in Dublin, then returned in the slums of Calcutta to once more wreak their particular brand of havoc. Bedford, Annabelle, Enderby and Bert had all seen what the brute could do close up, and it was only through the bravery and street-smarts of Tally that the beast had been slain. Klopstock, true to form, ran like a rat so he might simper another day.

No; this pitiful creature did not have the might of Potsdam. It was a weak and cowardly copy, the work of men who knew nothing of engineering but merely sliced and twisted their work into shape. Whoever was doing this had to be stopped, and whatever horrors were being built had to be caught and killed. There was no other way.

“That settles it,” said Enderby. “I stay in Arizona.”

2.

HE’D ONLY MET HIM once, very briefly, over a month ago. You couldn’t even call it a meeting, really. Arnaud had been wheeled past him on a stretcher, strapped down and ranting incoherently, while Tally was nursing a broken arm and trying, in however small way he could, to stop the ship from losing control and plummeting headlong into the surface of Luna.

Doctor Arnaud Fontaine did not look as if he had recovered much from that day. The low light of the day room did nothing for his complexion; he had red cracks around the edges of his eyes and lips that stood out like lightening against the whiteness of his skin. The rings beneath his eyes were grey and dusty, and his lank dark hair had not seen a comb in some time. He sat upright in bed, wearing blue striped pyjamas, looking nervous even as he tried to help.

“On my life, Mister Cahalleret,” he said. “I haven’t heard a word. Letters I’ve sent, of course. Care of the Admiralty. Nothing back, not as yet. Though I don’t really trust them here. The nurses, the doctors. All of them.”

“Well the last time I saw him, Doctor Fontaine, he went to great lengths to assure me that I’d pass on his own assurance that you were getting the best possible care. I know it may seem a bit heavy-handed from time to time, but you’ve been through a lot. Just between you, me an’ the garden gate, Arnaud, I was sat at the back on a couple of meetings and there were those who were up for having you worse than hanged. Count yer blessings, once in a while, eh?”

“I suppose.”

“Either way, what with him makin’ a point of it I reckoned that you, if anyone, would be the person he’d be getting in touch with.”

“Well, I’m sorry Mister Cahalleret…”

“Please, call me Tally.”

“Tally,” Arnaud repeated, and seemed to linger over the word for a second. “Tally, I really can’t help you. I only wish I could. Trust me.” And here he breathed out heavily, and it somehow made him look more ill than before. “I more than anyone would dearly love to hear from him. Indeed, it was half of my hopes that you’d come here with some sort of letter for me.”

Tally nodded slowly. He hated to be the bearer of bad news, and though his visit here was meant to be one of intelligence gathering, it seemed now that he would be leaving Doctor Fontaine in significantly damper spirits than those in which he found him. Tally did not feel proud of this. If anything the doctor needed some cheering—Tally had read his file and had picked up information piecemeal on the occurrences in the engine room as Sovereign had hobbled back from its sabotaged pursuit of Imperator.

It was Arnaud himself who had caused this sabotage, shooting a drive plate with a pistol as the engines were being tested to their limits. It was a disaster; six men were killed and over a dozen injured, most of them seriously. He had been treated leniently thanks to the intervention of Nathaniel, who vouched for his character, but there were other circumstances that mitigated the ill-fated Frenchman’s guilt. Due to the treason of an overlooked and spiteful junior agent in the employ of the Secret Service Bureau, Arnaud had been held captive by the treacherous Cyrus Grant and force-fed a cocktail of pernicious intoxicants that had ravaged his body and mind. The professor had suggested some sort of post-hypnotic suggestion, and if the days of agony that Arnaud had fought through were any indication, the strain of purging those poisons from his system was not one easily play-acted. Even if he had got off lightly, he was persona non grata at the Admiralty and even the Bureau boys had been warned to keep their distance. Tally wondered if he might not have been taking a bit too much of a risk. He was, after all, not long into the job.

He took some letters from Arnaud to post and bid farewell to the slouching, broken man. When Tally closed the door softly behind him he noticed through the glass of the window that the young geologist hadn’t moved his position a single inch, and he was still staring vacantly ahead with his arms on top of the blanket. Jaysus, what he must have been through.

3.

THE CONVALESCENCE HOME WAS out in Kent, where the flat, long views and country air were meant to help bring a little peace to troubled minds. As Tally stepped out into the cold he felt it bite him and he clapped his hands together, wincing when a twinge ran down the bone towards his wrist. He was inclined to believe Arnaud was nowhere near being of sound mind when he shot up the engines, having seen the strange and corrosive effects of that mysterious green mineral up close—when faced with a gigantic explosive made from it in a cavern under Phoenix Park, and when he was attacked by a monstrous brute named Potsdam whose whole body and mind had been corrupted by its misuse. It was during that scuffle that he had broken his arm, and though the bone had knitted back with a speed he was thankful for, he didn’t fancy his chances if discussions decayed into the language of the knuckles. It was lucky he had the gift of the gab.

Several weeks had passed since he had last heard from Nathaniel. The Bureau kept him busy, sure enough, no doubt intentionally so he wouldn’t constantly harass the professor. It was only in recent days that Tally had become worried. It was not like Nate to remain out of touch for so long.

Alas, it seemed, he had not even contacted Arnaud—the one person, above all others, Tally would have expected Nathaniel to keep in touch with. It was beyond reason for Nathaniel to not do so. Tally may not have understood it, but he knew of the bond the two men shared. Surely Arnaud’s welfare would be more important than uncovering the secrets of that feckin’ crystal?

The only other person who may have known about Nathaniel’s whereabouts was currently in Arizona, and thus well beyond Tally’s capabilities to reach.

He sighed. What the feck is going on?

4.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING FOUND the chill winds grow quicker, the darker clouds of yesterday still brooding in streaks around distant hilltops in a vast expanse of sky. It had been too late for anyone to do anything besides sleep and mull on the grim discovery. Once or twice the night-time wails of a frightened child set the camp once more on edge. Nobody had slept well, and everyone was sour and sullen; a wide berth was given to the tarpaulin that had been pegged down by the black ashes of the previous night’s fire.

The mood of the camp seemed intensified inside Geronimo’s tent. Annabelle sat to his right with Bedford next to her, and on his left Gopan brooded with his hands clasped before his lips. Bert had sat opposite, but Enderby insisted on standing. He was ceaselessly toying with a small cheroot, rolling it around his fingers but never lighting it. This gesture did not help the tension. Enderby probably knew it. They had invited Quintana but the appearance of the corpse had affected him deeply. He was still dressed, sitting on the floor of his tepee, when Bedford had gone to speak with him, but the Spaniard had admitted he’d have nothing to add to the discussion and didn’t want the memories of that abomination’s appearance returning to him any time soon, if at all.

“You think I do not see,” said Geronimo. He was gazing straight at Enderby, who stopped and turned on his heels towards the old apache.

“I’m sorry?” said Enderby.

“You think I do not see; do not recognise the colour of the residue that flows through that demon’s unnatural veins. I know it, Man of the Bureau. I know what has become of my forefather’s greatest secret.”

“Well it’s not like I asked them to do it.”

“Sir,” began Bert, standing up. Enderby knew he had pushed it and turned his back, starting to pace again. Geronimo watched him through slitted eyes.

“Well we all know what it is,” said Bedford. “And it hardly needs saying that whoever’s been doing this must be linked to the bandits who ransacked the cave. If it isn’t the same people. The question is; where did it come from?”

Gopan, without moving his hands or averting his gaze, mumbled quietly, “I think I know.” Enderby turned back around, but remained silent, waiting for the Indian to finish. “They call it Souptown,” he said. Geronimo rumbled with an extended grunt of disapproval and batted away the notion with his hand. “No, Goyahkla.” Gopan moved his head for the first time to stare coldly at his venerated elder. Geronimo refused to look back at him, every inch the crotchety old man. “It must be. I cannot be from anywhere else.”

“Nothing but a hive for the weak of will and violent. A lawless place, an ugly but thankfully small blot on our lands.”

“It is near where the body was found,” said Gopan, staring back into the centre of the room. “What Goyahkla says is true. It is but a small blot. Drunks and whores gather there, nothing more, in a rotten little huddle of tents and ugly wood buildings that likes to think it is a town. Souptown.”

“Why Souptown?” asked Bedford, somewhat bemused. He gave a start despite himself as Enderby whipped around to face inwards.

“Because it’s run by a rum pair known as the Campbell Brothers. Get it? They’re small-time smut-peddlers, a couple of jumped up pimps. Known as the Soup Twins. Casey and Eustace Campbell, so alike it’s as if they were mirror images, apparently. We keep an eye on them now and again. It pays to. But they’re fleas. Nothing more.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Annabelle, staring into the same mid-distance no-space that had similarly hypnotised Gopan. “It’s where the trail leads. The bandits… We need to go.”

“Of course,” said Enderby. “We’ll start at once.”

“Now look,” said Bedford. He stood up sharply and turned around to face the arrogant agent, who had not yet even taken his darkened glasses off. “This isn’t your land, Enderby. You don’t know it here. Not nearly as well as I do, and I know a damn sight less than Annabelle or anybody else in this room, but I do know it’s hard. And it takes time. We can’t rush this.”

“What are you talking about, man?” Enderby clucked. “All we need do first is to infiltrate this little den of iniquity on the sly. I’m talking Bureau tactics, Commander. None of your usual swashbuckling and bluster. I’ve some suits in the portmanteau we could ruff up a bit in the soil. Won’t take long.”

“Possibly,” Bedford mused, suddenly realising he was unconsciously chewing his knuckle.

“Well what’s the alternative? No offence, but it’s not like we can send one of our native friends in there.” Gopan bristled, and Enderby smirked. “What other choice is there?” He finally lifted the cheroot to his mouth and lit it. As he bit on it and puffed the smoke between his teeth, he reached in to produce another cigar. He tossed it idly to Gopan who caught it in one hand and crushed it. “Shame. Rolled on the thighs of a virgin that one.”

“I can go,” said Annabelle.

“What?” Bedford was sure he misheard. How could she possibly…?

“You know,” she said. “Like a…working girl.”

“Yohana!” Geronimo spluttered.

“Darling, I think it best…”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me, George; you know I won’t be told. I either dress as a harlot or chop off my hair and dress as a man. Which would you prefer?”

“I’ve seen Mrs Bedford shoot,” Enderby said in what could only be described as a purr. “And her presence would indeed be a… Boon?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Rough up those shirts in the portmanteau. You’ll be taking Quintana back to Blighty post-haste and quicker if possible. Gopan? Let’s chat about surveillance.”

5.

QUINTANA WAS SWEATING IN the hot cloth box of the tepee but he didn’t want to go outside again. He’d glanced out earlier, maybe thirty minutes after young Señor Bedford had come to visit. When he’d stuck his head out the sun was still low across the sky, still close in the early of the morning, and the rays struck down on the metal skeleton beyond the grave of the fire; the shadows picked out soft lines of gizzards and the broken metal ribs curling up like buttresses in a church.

He had to get his mind off what he’d seen.

He dusted down the plates he’d taken in the cave, carefully removing them from the calico he’d wrapped them in. He sat down cross-legged before what he’d laughingly had to call a desk (two old fruit crates with two planks sat close on the top of it) and set himself down to study them.

Though the plates themselves were cloudy and uneven, he could still bring the image of that strange skull to his mind’s eye in a moment. He’d studied Drobate skulls so intensely that the stark differences in this brave new specimen were so marked they were easy to see, even from memory. It was not as if the plates on the skull had fused and adapted, curiously, over exactly the same spot he’d hypothesised the sulcus of corpus callosum to be. It was more like the thing had ballooned out and the skull had tried to contain it in what must’ve been agonising infant years. But what was it? A mutant? An ancestor? A divergent strain?

He knew it was useless looking to the cave walls for answers. They had been vandalised, either by the greed of evil men, or forefathers of the apache who’d daubed their fear and offerings onto the past with ox blood and thick tar pastes. It would be fascinating to study. Fascinating! But now was not the time.

He pouted sullenly, witnessed by no-one, annoyed by the fact there was not in the vicinity a mind like Professor Stone’s with whom he could discuss his findings.

The flap to the tent whipped open and in an instant Enderby was at his side. Quintana started. He was not sure if he had been asleep or merely lost in daydreams and wild theories about the strange bulbous growth that ran across the top of the Drobate skull like an ugly half halo. It had to be some innate function, suddenly blossoming, grotesque, but how? Had the brain tried to outgrow itself?

“Quintana,” said Enderby. “You’re well, I trust.”

“Sí, Señor Enderby. I have just been…thinking.”

“Well think about packing. Boon’s to take you back to the Heart of Empire. I’m staying here to deal with this mess. And speaking of which…” Enderby bowed down low, sinking down close to Quintana’s face, and only ever seeming to bend at the waist. “Our little…friend? Out there? The Vulture lunch?” Quintana visibly balked as the memory lurched into his mind again. “Yes,” said Enderby, smoothing a palm onto his back like a matron. “That’s the one. Now, you know we’re very kindly letting you work on Luna, aren’t we, so that you can study the Drobates more up close, eh? You want to continue doing that, don’t you?”

Quintana nodded dumbly.

“Right. Good. And seeing as we’re letting you in on so many secrets, you’ve got keep one of ours. That body? Outside? The one that makes you gag?”

Quintana nodded again.

“Be a good chap and don’t mention it to Stone, eh?” Another nod from the Spaniard, still dumb, still slow. “And that’s a strict instruction, don’t you know? What you might like to think of as an order.”

6.

SHE KNEW IT WAS childish—if not outright mean-spirited—but Annabelle had rather enjoyed George’s shocked protestations regarding her dressing as a lady of the night to infiltrate Souptown. If anything, it would once more reinforce to him the notion that she was no shrinking violet, and if he hadn’t got that into his skull by now there was very little hope for her husband. It infuriated her that, even though he knew her better than any woman on the face of the Earth (and a good few planets beyond it, come to that), he still occasionally viewed her through the lens of unwavering English propriety. In the worst of these moments she felt there was nothing she could do to truly prove herself to him; that she was, and would remain, a mere woman.

Well, she’d just have to do something about that, wouldn’t she?

In all honesty the suggestion of dressing as a fallen woman was only half-serious anyway—where was she to find that sort of dress in the middle of the desert and at such short notice? Taking this into account, there was only one option available to her. When she had left the boys to their scheming and battle tactics, Enderby had been clucking about like a mother hen, eager to get the expedition started as soon as possible, so she knew she had a little time to put her plan into action.

She had always liked to think of herself as handsome, rather than an outright example of feminine beauty, so convincing others she was a young man wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, provided she muddied up her face a bit and people didn’t get too close. George was not all that much larger than her, and a pair of his old trousers would fit her just about right—if they were slightly baggy so much the better, as they would help with the illusion she was just a young down-and-out, as well as disguising the shape of her hips and the awkward outline of her prosthetic leg. The same was true of one of his shirts, and she’d already procured a roll of bandages with which she intended to strap down her chest.

All that remained for her to do was to pick her wardrobe.

George kept an old travelling case in the corner of their tent, which was mostly covered in a woven apache mat and served as a small side table. There was bound to be some of his old clothes floating around in there somewhere, and so she whipped off its cover to delve inside, only to find the blessed thing padlocked. What was that in their wedding vows? Something along the lines of “that which is yours, I give you”, she recalled, or words to that effect. So she felt no guilt when she unsheathed her knife and prised the lock away with a deft flick of her wrist.

Her instincts had been correct; the valise was stuffed with a crumpled mish-mash of old clothes, knick-knacks and items that either through sentimentalism or potential future usefulness had been kept. She rummaged through, discarding any that looked too new or neat or those that had holes in inappropriate places. She suddenly reeled back in disgust! Her hand, buried beneath the swathes of rough fabric, had brushed up against something in the corner of the case. It felt like fur, or hair, and Annabelle shuddered at the thought of a long-dead London rat nestled somewhere in the pile.

She carefully pulled the clothes aside in the corner and made the grim discovery; she saw the lank strands sticking out from where her energetic rummaging had displaced the leather that wrapped it. It was not fur. It was human hair.

She reached down to touch it but pulled her hand back. She recognised that leather, had held it herself some months ago, the way the edges had darkened and become brittle from having wrapped their macabre contents for so long. Inside that small package was a human scalp; the scalp of a malicious and bitter-hearted young brave that had done her a grave injustice many moons ago. She had been presented with this grim memento on her last visit to Arizona, as proof that the tribe had enacted retribution for the heinous crime that she had suffered. But Annabelle had put all that behind her, wanted to forget those painful memories of another life… She had instructed George, very clearly, to destroy the thing. It was clear, however, that he had not.

Fury consumed her. Disgust boiled in her bones, and not even wanting to touch the repulsive artefact she buried it once more under the pile of George’s old clothes. She slammed the case shut and quickly replaced the cover—what clothes she’d already pulled out would have to do—and stormed across to where she’d laid the pair of cast-iron tailor’s scissors on the floor of the tepee. She knelt down and, angrily and without due caution, began to chop away at her black locks.

It was done out of spite as much as necessity; George had deceived her in the most underhand and horrendous way. She would not be lied to. She would not be beholden to him in any way.

She would prove to George Bedford what it cost to cross her.

7.

BACK IN THE MAIN tent Enderby poured over a small sepia-coloured map with Gopan, while Bedford made certain the weapons were in good working order. Boon was busy packing ammo and other supplies into rucksacks—it had been decided not to take horses into Souptown itself, as doubtless they would be stolen as soon as night cast her veil upon the world. Enderby and the Bedfords would ride with Gopan and a small contingent of braves to the outskirts of the rambunctious settlement, and then proceed on foot in order to further their investigation. The braves, meanwhile, would set up a mobile, temporary camp nearby and be on constant watch for the signal—a Verey light. Not long in naval service, this was a single shot, breech-loading pistol with a snub barrel that shot a distress flare several hundred feet into the air. Though the group possessed several of the rounds that fed the ingenious device, they only had one pistol between them, and Enderby was truculent about who should keep it on their person—himself, naturally. Geronimo silently watched the preparations with a grim, disinterested inevitability. He knew no good would come of this.

It was not long before all necessary preparations had been made. Bedford had dressed in his soiled suit, which he topped with his usual hat and was covered with an oilcloth duster that was so ingrained with grime it pretty much creaked when he walked in it. Enderby was similarly decked out, only he jettisoned the wide-brimmed cowboy hat in favour of a scuffed brown bowler, though he still kept his incongruous tinted spectacles, much to Bedford’s chagrin. That aside, when they muddied their faces and strapped on their bandoliers they looked every inch the kind of feckless, itinerant ne’er-do-wells that the west seemed so good at breeding in its less salubrious corners.

“Are we ready?” said Enderby smartly, as he checked his six-shooter was fully loaded and snapped the chamber shut. “We’ve wasted too much time as it is.”

“I’ll go and fetch Annabelle,” said Bedford, and he turned to leave the tent.

“Annabelle isn’t coming,” said a voice from the entrance, one sharp with a spark of spite. “Andy Bell is.”

They turned to see the figure that had addressed them. Bedford was powerless to speak, while Enderby let out a short, low snort of satisfaction.

She had chopped her hair down blindly, and as such it was ragged and uneven. She had let enough remain to cover her face slightly, so that those who gave her a cursory glance would never guess she was a woman, perhaps just a teenage lad who had fallen on hard times and no longer retained interest in keeping his appearance neat. She wore a pair of old brown trousers that were cut off at the legs and tied at the waist with an old bit of twine, along with a collarless shirt buttoned to the very top and a dusty black vest draped over that.

“Annabelle,” stammered George, finally regaining his voice. “Your hair…”

“Don’t like it, George? Well, maybe we both do things that the other does not approve of, then.” Bedford, nonplussed by this unwarranted barb, found himself once more stunned into speechlessness. “You seemed to dislike the notion of me dressing as a whore and so this was the only option left to me. You shouldn’t pout if thoughtless words and actions have unwanted consequences. You only have yourself to blame in the end.”

With that, she snatched up a pistol wrapped in a gun-belt and stormed outside.

“She’s got a point,” said Enderby.

Bedford, shaking himself out of his stupor, turned to him. “Whatever do you mean? I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

“Not her histrionics, Bedford. Your marital life is of no concern to me, and even less interest. We need pseudonyms, just to be on the safe side. I’ll be Lucas. You can be Frank.”

8.

STILL IN A STEELY and sour frame of mind, Annabelle made her way outside to the open space that lay in the middle of the ring of tepees. She refused to allow her emotions to interfere with the importance of their new objective, but that did not mean she had to look at George.

Quintana stood beside a horse, carefully strapping his camera equipment to the saddlebags drooped over the beast’s flanks. Just outside the camp’s borders, eight or nine of the braves who were to make up the surveillance team milled around, awaiting Gopan. As Annabelle strode towards them she heard soft footfalls pad up quickly on the sand behind her—when she felt a hand close around her elbow she wrenched her arm away and spun around.

“Annabelle,” said George. “What’s got into you?”

She stared him down. He was confused—hurt, even—but that did not let him off the hook. “We have bigger things to worry about, George. Keep your mind on our mission. Your blesséd empire comes before all else, after all.”

“What, that? I was just speculating, darling. I had no intention of…”

But she would not listen. She turned around and strode towards the outlying fringes of the encampment. George, still stunned and by now more than a little frustrated, could only watch her go.

Soon, they had all assembled. Bert busied himself with double-checking Orlondo’s rather half-hearted attempts at securing his equipment, while Enderby stood to one side and grilled Gopan on the finer details of his plan, waving a lit cheroot about as he did so. George stood close to him, still feeling admonished by Annabelle’s curt and, to him, inexplicable behaviour. When Bert had finished tightening various buckles and belts he crossed to Annabelle, smiling forlornly as he came.

“Well, Mrs Bed…Annabelle,” he said, correcting himself. “I guess this is goodbye again. At least for the moment. I have to say,” he said, looking her up and down like a mock-disapproving father. “You are full of surprises.”

“Well needs must, Bert. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices.” He’d expected her to come back with some risqué retort, or at least a cheeky dig as his all-too conservative values. Her actual response—cold, somewhat distant, threw him for rather a loop, and suddenly his face was filled with concern.

“Miss Annabelle,” he said, drawing her to one side. “Is everything all right? You don’t seem yourself.”

“It’s not me that isn’t myself, Bert. Sometimes it feels like it’s everybody else.” His face crumpled with worry, his balding brow furrowing like a freshly-ploughed field. Annabelle’s softened in response. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Look,” said Bert, his face still lined with worry. “I know you can you look after yourself, just… Look after yourself.”

“You too, Bert.”

“And Commander Bedford, too. Sometimes, you know, I think he might need you a lot more than you need him. Don’t forget that.”

Annabelle looked down. It was a sentiment she did not currently feel she could reciprocate, even if she understood it to the depths of her heart.

9.

SOUPTOWN WAS A GOOD few hours’ ride away, even at full pelt. Enderby, clearly no stranger to riding, still spurred his steed on more harshly than was strictly necessary. It was making the other riders nervous. Still, his ruthless determination seemed to have the desired result on the other horses who matched the pace of their forerunner whether bidden to or not.

Annabelle, despite herself, was enjoying the ride. Unencumbered by her usual costume, she found the flow of the hot wind refreshing as it rippled through her shirt and made her waistcoat flap back around her shoulders. The feel of the breeze through her shorter hair, even though possessing a mildly irritating habit to whip into her eyes, was a unique and not altogether unpleasant one. She would not be able to keep the style on her return to London—image the scandal!—so she resolved herself to enjoying it while she could. She just hoped she had enough time for it to grow back to a respectable length before her return.

With one purpose the posse thundered through the desert, throwing up a thick cloud of darkened red dust behind them and leaving the occasional desiccated bush tramped in their wake. It was this selfsame cloud that caught up and enveloped them as, with a sharp cry and a yanking of the reins, Enderby pulled his horse up and trotted it around in a semi-circle to face the riders behind him.

“We’re here,” he said, nodding into the distance.

It took a second as the maroon dust began to settle, falling down around them and across their shoulders as a gritty precipitate. When the clouds blew from their sights they found themselves looking down the shallow slopes of a long valley, bordered at the back with a jutting outcrop of red rock cliffs with deep vertical gouges cut down their lengths. These cliffs curled round in a rough U-shape, enclosing the murky blot of Souptown in their embrace.

The town—if it could be called that—was far larger than any of the party had expected. It also bore far more resemblance to a legitimate town than had hitherto existed in their mind’s eye. A main street ran perpendicular from the rocks that backed the town. On its sides stood ramshackle approximations of buildings you might find in any western settlement—a bank, several shops, and a curious-looking blacksmiths. They were built with an amalgam of different materials, a patchwork of wood and bricks ranging in sizes and composition, and some of them leaned precariously, buttressed with huge, black cast-iron pillars. At the very back of this street, looking down it like a lord sitting at the head of the table, was the only decently built dwelling in the place—a large, mansion-style house of white marble muddied to a dull brown by the Arizona soil, a stately dwelling that seemed all the grander when compared to the slapdash and make-do construction of everything else in the town. To the right of this curious abnormality, a large grey hulk of a warehouse stood. It was built of sheets of steel roughly bolted and welded together, with a network of dull copper piping criss-crossing its exterior in a seemingly random and chaotic arrangement. Smoke belched from the top, staining the red of the cliffs behind it to a sooty, greasy black.

“Not exactly Mayfair, is it?” said Enderby, acerbic as ever.

10.

HE HAD BEEN GETTING used to the Serbian climate of Pieter. After so many months in Russia’s most Western city he had begun to embrace its cold, wet winter. So much so, in fact, that as his coach carried him due north through the counties of England, he found himself resenting the gentle breeze on his face. Compared to St Petersburg, it was mild.

It was with quite some level of hate that he returned to England. Nothing good came of it, though that had never given him cause for concern before. All through childhood it was hate that had tried to constrict him, until college when he believed his genius would have a chance to shine. But then the social rules bound him, prevented him from having what he wanted, causing him to go into hiding, his reputation destroyed by the ignorance of a man he once thought of as a friend. All his adult life, his genius hidden behind Thaddeus Wren, a man so pathetic that his own lack of fortitude saw him destroyed by Henry van den Bosch, a lesser man driven to madness by his own fear.

It was a country he had no desire to return to; indeed his only desire was to see it destroyed.

Too many knew him in England, his face too well-known, and so he returned under the cover of darkness, lest his existence be revealed before time. And soon it would be time; time for the empire that had betrayed him to come crashing to his knees, to witness his rise to glory as it crumbled to dust.

It was only because he had to attend business personally that he returned; the task ahead was too important to trust to any of his associates. One such associate had met him from the ship within which he had smuggled himself, bringing him a copy of The Morning Post from London. Said associate now sat atop the carriage, guiding the horse, while he sat safely inside, reading the paper under his specially adapted Edison lamp. He could not help but smile at the words he read; a letter from A Concerned Citizen, unveiling the British Empire’s biggest secret—their ability to create gravity on their military aether flyers. He smiled, enjoying the words that damned the rulers of the British Empire, revealing them for the deceitful worms they truly were.

He found the words familiar because they were his own. It was not the first letter he had written to The Morning Post, the last one throwing a light on the secret construction of an all-new heliograph station and a clandestine alliance between Austro-Hungary and the British Empire, and the mysterious destruction of the station. Unfortunately certain people dealt with that crisis before it had time to ignite a flame, but this time… This time it would be different. This time the alliances between the British Empire and the other powers of the world would collapse.

That was just one game, and not his real reason for returning to England. He would get his revenge on the blighted empire, but first he had just a single life to ruin.

His previous attempt had failed; Doctor Dumba and his cronies had seen to that. Instead that life was elevated, made a hero of the empire, a saviour who would forever remain unknown. But not this time.

Oh no, this time Nathaniel Stone would know what it was to fail; to have his life ruined, every dream crushed, until there was nothing left.

He, Guillaume Le Boeuf, would make sure of it.