Iron Horsemen (2 page)

When I opened my eyes again, a different room lay before me. Gone was my quiet prison. With one henchman dead, the dusty one blinded by blood, and the third running in terror, only the bronze-clad Confederate remained.

“Yer one of
them
, ain't yah?” he asked the Englishman.

“Doesn't matter who I am, what matters is that you're not leaving with the professor.” He whipped his cloak back and kicked the serrated blade into the desk with the heel of his polished boot. The thick blade stuck in the oak, and with a quick flip of his wrist he brought his sword down upon the Confederate's right arm. The blade sliced off the man's sleeve clean and neat, and the fabric slid to the floor in a heap. What remained behind, attached to the man's upper arm, were the gears and wires of a complex animatronic arm.

My eyes bulged out in surprise.

“Colonel Hendrix!” The bloodied henchman cried out in a thick cockney accent. “A Bobbie's whistle!”

I locked on to the rapid high pitched sound. Was help coming?

The colonel snarled. “Get out of here and see where that yellow-belly went!”

Wrenching his blade free from the old oak, Hendrix retracted it back into his arm. With the claw that replaced it, he snatched the desk and threw it at the Englishman.

I screamed and tucked back into a ball. The desk tumbled and slammed into the wall and settled in front of me. The shelf collapsed, pottery smashed all around, and a Bronze Age dagger tumbled blade-down and stuck in the floorboard between my legs with a sharp
snick
.

I yelped and struggled to get to my feet, but the desk was in my way. I could only watch as Col. Hendrix snatched the ancient manuscript with one hand and my father with his mechanical arm. I opened my mouth to cry out but my voice failed, choked by tears.

“Alexander!” my father screamed as the colonel dragged him out the door.

Kicking the desk away, the blue-cloaked Englishman scanned me for injuries, and then ran into the hall. Alone, I climbed over the desk. There, on the floor at my feet, my father's eyeglasses lay atop scattered papers. I picked them up and stared at the warped office through the lenses.

After a few moments, the man in the blue suit returned and reached out his hand. “Professor Armitage's son, I presume. Baron Kensington, pleasure to meet you.”

“Thank you, I'm Alexander.” My chest seized, and I could hardly breathe. Red-stained parchment lay beneath the dead henchman. I'd never seen so much blood, but the baron didn't even notice. I slumped back onto the floor.

“Are you injured?” the baron asked, his hand still extended. I grasped it and he helped me to my feet as
papers still drifted through the air.

“What? No, just confused. Where's my father?”

“They've fled for now.” The baron sheathed his sword in a cane scabbard. “I'm afraid you can't help him at the moment.”

“Who was that, and why did he take my father?” Pain wrenched my gut, worse than any bully's punch. I was alone.

“They won't hurt him, they need him.” The baron kept an eye on the opening where the shattered door used to hang. “Her Royal Highness sent me to retrieve you and your father.”

“The Queen?”
The Queen?
What would she want with my father?

“Yes, gather your possessions, you'll come with me for now.”

I placed my father's glasses in their case, put them in my leather bag, and slung it over my shoulder. The dead man's baton lay at my feet, and I scooped it up and dropped it in the bag, too. Then I grabbed my leather coat from the overturned rack.

The nobleman motioned toward the door. “My carriage is waiting outside.”

As the small bronze dragon flew through the doorway, I clutched my bag to my chest, in some strange sort of defense. I probably should have covered my face, but it was instinct. The dragon landed on the baron's shoulder. The nobleman rubbed the horned nubs on its head and fed the creature a bit of dried meat from a suit coat pocket. I could see now that it was the size of an eagle or a hawk, and watched in wonderment as it wrapped a long tapering tail around the baron's shoulders.

I wondered if it could be a machine, but the eyes held the glimmer of intelligence. “Is that a dragon?”

“His name is Rodin,” he said, ignoring my question and striding forward. I rushed to catch up with the baron. After
a pause, he said, “There'll be plenty of time for questions later.”

A steam-powered carriage waited outside with a squat man atop the driver's perch. He jumped off, opened the door, and the baron climbed inside. I nodded and stepped into the carriage. The driver lifted his cap, revealing long scattered locks of bright orange hair.

I had so many questions to ask, but I fell silent when I caught the shattered window of my father's office out of the corner of my eye. I heard the driver climb atop his perch and release a lever. A loud
chug chug chug
from the back of the carriage made me turn just as the steam engine belched a puff of white smoke, and we lurched forward and started down the cobblestone road.

“Ow.” My shoulder banged into the plush, burgundy-velvet interior and I clung to the carriage's brass handle as we tore around a cobblestone corner on the outskirts of London. The chugging engine behind me roared like a trumpeting elephant. “Does he always drive like this?”

“Finn was thrilled when I converted the carriage. He never liked horses.”

“Oh.” I stared at the baron who sat perfectly centered, with the small dragon perched on his shoulder as though it was a pleasant Sunday drive. The delighted cheers of the mad driver made me wonder if I would lose my dinner before I met the queen.

As we rumbled round a corner, I muscled to remain upright. “What about my father?”

The baron said nothing. He pulled a braided cord which rang a bell beside the driver.

Adults never listened.

The carriage stopped in front of a row house with a large red door carved with a rose motif and inlaid with gold. But this wasn't Buckingham Palace. The Irishman leapt from his perch and opened the carriage, holding his hat to the side as he bowed.

The baron stepped out of the carriage, and I shouldered my bag, jumped out, and ran after him, not wanting to be locked in this death trap any longer. I once saw a steam car in New York, but with Finn as the driver, the baron's steamcarriage was like a train in desperate need of a track.

I followed the baron to a bookcase in the basement. The nobleman twisted the spearhead on the statue of a knight locked in a desperate struggle with a dragon. A click was all I heard, and the shelf slid back to reveal a hidden hallway. “A secret passage,” I gasped.

The damp, musty air drifting in offended my nose. I rushed forward through the narrow tunnel stretching into darkness and saw a sleek, streamlined metal bullet with windows along the side. Metal wires reached to the ceiling like an insect's antenna.

“Why only one train car?” I asked.

“It's an electric trolley, invented last year by your countryman, Thomas Edison.”

My shoulders shrugged up against my cheeks. “Never heard of him.”

“Her majesty has, she wanted a private transport for the royal family and her agents.”

Even though the underground trolley sat still, it looked liked it was moving. I wondered where the train engine connected, and couldn't even see latches for the other cars.

I stepped onto the trolley. Trimmed with gold and decorated with elaborate curled detailing, it was certainly outfitted for royalty. The seats, arranged in two semi-circles, faced either direction and had been covered in plush blue fabric. Now
this
was how someone should arrive at a palace. We sat and the trolley car sped through the circular brick tunnel snaking underneath London.

I scooted back against the velvet cushions. “Where's the driver?”

“A central operator controls them all.”

“Oh.” I wanted to ask more, but then I saw the dust on my uniform. I tried to brush it off, but the dirt was caught in the wool fibers and wasn't coming out anytime soon. “I really wish I could have changed. I'm not dressed to meet Queen Victoria.”

The baron smiled. “You won't be meeting her Highness; she has more important matters that require her attention.”

My gaze shifted to the windows. “Of course.” I tried not to sound disappointed, but I had really wanted to meet the queen. She probably only ever saw aristocrats.

“She did send me to save you, and you should be grateful she did.”

“I am, but my dad wishes you'd gotten there sooner.”
I wish you'd gotten there sooner
. My face pressed against the window as the wall rushed by in a reddish blur. “Where are we going?”

“To my place in London. You'll be safe there.”

The trolley car stopped beside a brick platform. The royal coat of arms–a quartered shield flanked by a crowned lion and a chained unicorn–marked a lone wooden door. I followed the baron through a long hallway lined with nondescript doors. Finally, we stopped in front of one labeled three twenty-one.

Removing a key from an inner vest pocket, the baron unlocked the door. We climbed several flights of dark, cavernous stairs that echoed with every step. The door at the top led to a small cupboard. The nobleman pressed a button on the floor with his boot. The door opened into a kitchen and a false wall slid over the passage.

“Wait for me in the dining room.” The baron pointed across the hall as Rodin flew off his shoulder.

I walked into a lavish room decorated with curled, gilded detailing. An elaborate microscope projector sat on one end of the table and a folding screen on the other. I had only seen this type of equipment in class, and now I wanted
one of my own. The urge to reach out and fiddle with it overtook me, but I hesitated; everything looked expensive and rare. I never liked rooms you weren't supposed to touch.

A man in a fine suit entered carrying a briefcase. His sunken eyes were shadowed by dark circles. He didn't look well, but carried himself like so many in this country–with stern resolve.

The baron said, “Alexander Armitage, may I present Lord Marbury, another agent of Her Royal Highness. We're both Old Etonians.”

That didn't surprise me; it seemed like every nobleman had attended Eton College.

“Thank you, Maximilian.” Lord Marbury set his brown leather briefcase down on the table. He turned to me. “May I say, I am sorry to hear about your father.”

The nobleman leaned over and shook my hand. His weak grip was one my father would have railed him for; he thought a handshake should say something.

“Thank you, but where was he taken and what are you doing to save him?”

Lord Marbury's haunting expression made me wiggle in my skin. The lord turned to the baron. “Were there any issues?”

I dropped onto one of the straight-backed wooden chairs. “I'll say…”

The baron silenced me with a stern gaze. “There were four members of the Knight of the Golden Circle; one of them had an animatronic arm and a bronze-covered face. I believe he was American. They addressed him as Colonel Hendrix.”

“He had a southern accent,” I said.

“That fits the rumors of a former Confederate soldier recently brought over from the states,” Lord Marbury said.

I fell back into the chair and gripped my shoulders. A metal monster and an American. Did my father know him
from before? Is that why we're in England instead of back home?

Lord Marbury unsnapped the brass fittings on his briefcase. He removed old parchment held loose in a thick wooden cover bound by braided leather cords. A heavily worn insignia etched on a bronze plaque sat in the center of the cover. “Do you know what your father was working on?”

“He taught languages, all the dead ones that no one speaks anymore.”

“He also translated for her majesty. That's why he was given the post at Eton.” The baron's stern tone reminded me I was among superiors.

Lord Marbury turned on the microscope projector and adjusted the brass lens housing to its broadest setting. A bright light cast its glow on the unfolded screen. He removed the bronze plaque and braided leather cord, then placed a page under the projector. “Is this what your father was translating?”

Rodin flew in and perched on the table. Bathed in bright light, his dramatic shadow arced across the screen until shooed away by the baron.

I studied the image and the ache in my heart returned. “Yes, he was reading it when I found him after Quiet Hour.”

The baron's tone lowered. “Alexander, your father was kidnapped because there are people who want him to translate those ancient languages. They will keep him safe, which gives us the opportunity to rescue him.” He walked over to the Waterford decanter and poured the amber liquid into a glass. “I assure you, retrieving him is our highest priority.”

I sprang up. “I want to help!”

Lord Marbury snapped his briefcase shut and looked at me with an air of dismissal. “You will return to Eton and continue your studies.”

“So why is this destruction on Malta so important to
you? What was my father doing? What are you involved in?”

The baron choked on his surprise. “You can read that?”

“My father's been teaching me dead languages since I was five.”

Lord Marbury and the baron looked at each other, and I lifted my chin, the pain in my heart subsiding. Maybe they'd let me come along after all.

“This is a copy of the one they stole. It was made in 1581 by an agent of Queen Elizabeth.” Lord Marbury's gaze burned right through me. “Can you finish the translation?”

“Sure.” I walked toward the screen and ran my hand over the image. “This line is about an expedition to colonize the Island of Malta. That's in the Mediterranean Sea, right?”