A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (23 page)

“Glass has unique properties required to maintain a perpetual polar
current in the life cell after its initial charge, m’lady,” Neco said. “The
cell is firmly attached to the inner casing of the steel chest with special
brackets to buffer motion. The design is considered sufficiently robust.”

“Not by my reckoning,” Lily challenged.

“A life cell is replaceable,” Greyston told her. “We’ll get help for
Ana at Cragloden. Duncan created her and from what we saw, his laboratory is
intact.”

Jamie popped his head in through the doorway. “We’ve just turned
inland at the Tay. The tide is out and there’s a sand bank at the mouth wide
enough for us to dock.”

Greyston shook his head at Jamie. “Take us over Cragloden and hover
above the courtyard. We’ll use the inter-ship docking platform to disembark.”

The platform operated on steam hydraulics, tediously lowered from the
stern of the ship on four mechanical arms attached to the ship’s main steam
pump. Precious minutes wasted, but Greyston preferred to keep the ship airborne
just in case. Lady Ostrich had a knack for arriving unexpectedly with
devastating consequences.

He took a moment at Jean’s side on the way out. She was still
breathing, he could hear the faint rattle of each laboured breath.

“I’ll send Ian back in here,” he told William. If she woke from the
opium induced sleep, her heart might well give out from pain and shock.

Hob was stoking the boiler fire in the pump room. Ferdie, the ship’s
engineer and the man who’d invented the unique accelerated steam circuit, was
in front of a control map similar to the one in the Pilot Cabin, but far more
complex.

He turned as Greyston stepped inside. “The power system wasn’t
designed to operate without continuous flow throughout the entire circuit. We
have pressure building in the elevated piping.”

“More ruptures?” he asked.

“If we maintain the current output, yes. I’m redirecting flow as it
builds, but we need to reduce power.”

“Do it,” Greyston said. “There’s a good wind channelling down the
coastline that’ll carry her all the way to Edinburgh once she’s caught the
Aether stream.” He quickly informed Hob and Ferdie of the plan, to which Ferdie
added, “It’s just as well we’re not docking. To re-launch requires a burst of
power that I wouldn’t recommend.”

The others filed in behind him, Neco with Ana slung over his shoulder,
Evelyn with the puppy tucked under her arm and Lily bringing up the rear. He
directed everyone onto the platform at the rear of the pump room, a square
sectioned off by railing that was low enough to step over.

“Sit flat and hold onto the rail,” he instructed the ladies. As soon
as he heard the engines change gear to the oscillatory rotators used for
hovering, he joined them on the platform and depressed the lever to engage the
hydraulic arms.

The platform dropped from the hull of the ship, descending slow inches
with each lurch. Lily gasped at the first lurch and Evelyn made a dry comment
about disembarking in style, but neither of them could muster up much of a
complaint.

By the orange and pink horizon over the ocean and the depth of grey to
which the day had darkened, Greyston judged it to be only somewhere between
half six and seven o’clock. This day felt like the longest in his life and
there was no end in sight.

Below them, Kelan McAllister stood at the top of the steps beneath the
portico, legs braced and arms folded, his face turned up to watch their
descent. Beside him was that other man. “What’s the butler’s name again?” he
asked Lily.

“Armand,” she replied, peering over the rail. “He’s absolutely
demented.”

“He has a rather elegant appearance about him,” Evelyn remarked.

“The Italian?” Lily snorted. “Do you know, he had the gumption to
serve me tea while Kelan McAllister had a vicious blade drawn across Greyston’s
throat.”

Evelyn’s eyes flickered to him. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d allow
such a thing.”

Pride dictated more than the shrug he gave her, but after the losses
he’d taken today, he wasn’t in the mood to deny McAllister could teach him a
move or two.

Once again, even here from above, there was an odd moment where it
felt as if he were passing through thick air, the resistance dragging on his
body so much so that his feet briefly floated above the surface of the
platform. He looked at Lily, to see her come down on her backside hard at the
same time as his boots thudded back onto the platform. The force field was a
dome over the entire estate.

Lily met his eyes, her brows raised. “Apparently the McAllisters
protect themselves from birds as well.”

“What’s that?” asked Evelyn.

Greyston frowned at her. “You didn’t feel the resistance?”

“Sludgy air,” Lily said simultaneously.

“A big bump,” Greyston elucidated at her blank stare.

Evelyn rolled her eyes at him. “I’ve felt nothing but bumps since
stepping onto this platform.”

“Sorry about that. It’s meant for transferring cargo, not people.”
Greyston glanced downward. “Not much further to go.”

Kelan showed no surprise at them dropping in, literally, so soon after
their hasty exit earlier. He greeted them without a single question and invited
the entire troop into his house. Greyston reversed the hydraulic motor to take
the platform up before following at a sedate pace. He stood on the portico,
watching until the docking platform had sealed into the hull and the Red Hawk
had disappeared around the headland cliff.

Just inside the front door, Kelan waited for him. “Armand is seeing
what can be done for Ana. I believe the others have congregated in the
laboratory with him.” He waved a hand for Greyston to walk with him.

Greyston stepped in line, although wary. “We’re going to your uncle’s
laboratory? Just like that?”

“There are no secrets in this house,” Kelan said. “I’ve nothing to
hide.”

“That must be why you built a lake over the top of the laboratory,”
Greyston said dryly.

“Let me rephrase.” Kelan glanced his way. “I’ve nothing to hide from
you and Lily. Knowledge is power and we’re fighting a war. We need all the
combined power we can get. You were always meant to be trained, both in body
and in mind.”

“To fight your demon war.” They passed through a doorway at the end of
the long hallway and then down a flight of steps that branched off to the
right. The door at the bottom of the steps was solid iron and open, although
Greyston noted the series of dead bolts along the edge.

Kelan stopped in the doorway and turned to face him. “It’s not only
our war, Greyston, but it is a war we cannot take to the masses.”

“Why me? Why Lily? What makes us different from the masses?”

“You tell me.” Kelan’s eyes bore into him, navy dark and intense
enough to prick. “What makes you different?”

He doesn’t know.
Greyston broke eye contact. “I have a decent
pair of fists on me. Nowhere near as good as Neco in a brawl, mind you.”

“The celludrones were meant to be the original army,” Kelan said. “It
was only later that my uncle improvised on the plan and involved human
subjects.”

“We’re not rats,” Greyston muttered irritably.

“And you were never caged.” Kelan turned from him and stepped through
the doorway. “You’re not a prisoner here, you know.”

“Neither am I free.” Greyston followed into the passage beyond, the
ceiling low enough to feel oppressive. The walls, floor and ceiling were the
dull grey of iron. Electric current coils looped along the wall like metallic
ropes of light bathing the tunnel. Greyston had heard something of the
scientific forays into electric current. This was the first practical
application he’d seen, but right now he wasn’t inclined to let anything
connected to a McAllister impress him. “Duncan McAllister played with our lives
without any thought to the cost.”

“Anger serves no purpose,” Kelan said coolly.

Greyston’s hands tensed at his side. “So, I should just forget and
forgive my brother’s death?”

Kelan stopped again. The look in his eye was still dark and intense,
but he wasn’t trying to read Greyston this time. “McAllisters are not in the habit
of murdering people.”

“Demons are,” Greyston said, his jaw stiff with reeling emotions.
Anger was the least of them.
Ye brother was all I had left and now ye’ve
taken him too. Ye’ve come home ta claim yer pittance prize and ye can drag
Forleough with ye inta hell fer all I care. The Almighty Lord ken I did my all
ta rid the earth of ye and ye kind. I’ll be received inta Heaven and praise God
that be the one place ye canna follow.
The final words his da had flung at
him, right before leaping to his death.

“How did your brother die?” Kelan put his back to the tunnel wall and
folded his arms.

“Crossing the Atlantic by steam liner.” Aragon was the one person he
hadn’t been able to break completely from, hadn’t been able to set aside. The
last letter his brother had left for him at The Pig and Briar had begged for
his address, with the promise that Aragon only wanted to know his whereabouts
for peace of mind. Greyston should never have conceded, should never have
mentioned
Es Vedra.
He’d always known he was cursed. His da had told him
often enough. Death had trailed his heels often enough. And now he knew that
curse went by the name of Demon. “They said the ship capsized in a storm.”

“Demons have no power over the elements.”

“There were no survivors, no witnesses to testify there was any
storm.”

“You think…?” Kelan shook his head. “Demons are not able to go
anywhere near salt water. That’s exactly how we banish them. There’s the near
impossible task of identifying the demon, the art of surviving any encounter and
the ritual to trap it in place. But once we have a demon, a bucket of seawater
is all it takes to banish its essence back to the dimension it crawled from.”

Some of the weight rolled from Greyston’s shoulders. Not all. If he’d
been able to cut loose from his brother completely, Aragon would be alive. But
this was the truth he’d come searching for, the answer to the one question he
hadn’t been able to keep running from. Perhaps he could start believing nature,
or even God’s hand, had killed Aragon, and not his own.

He leaned against the opposite wall. “What dimension do they crawl
from? Hell?”

“Does it matter?” Kelan shrugged. “We’ve spent two centuries studying
them and what we’ve learnt barely fills a teacup compared to the vast ocean of
what we don’t know.”

“
So it is said that if
you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without
a single loss
,” Greyston quoted from the translated works of
Sun
Tzu
. Not the modern version of
The Art of War
that had been
reproduced around the world, but the
Han Dynasty
copy uncovered four
years ago. The
Han Dynasty
copy proved
Sun Tzu’s
military
strategy had been a nearly complete work as far back as 220AD. That the
Art
Of War
was not, as was commonly thought, a progressive work merely built
upon the foundation of his expertise. Proof that was apparently worth the value
of a small country. Greyston didn’t know about that, but his part in
‘relieving’ the archaeologists of their artefact had certainly bought him a
small island.

He raised a brow at Kelan. “Seems to me, your war is half lost
already.”

“That’s what my uncle was beginning to fear,” Kelan agreed. He pushed
away from the wall and continued on down the tunnel. “If I recall,
Sun Tzu
also proclaims the importance of responding appropriately to rapidly changing
conditions in the environment of war. With you and Lily on our side, our
conditions have just changed for the better. We have a concise strategy that
can finally be put into motion.”

“For all your protests,” Greyston muttered darkly, “you have no
problem reaping the rewards of your uncle’s dubious methods.”

“Families are akin to a deck of cards,” Kelan replied after a short
pause. “You’re stuck with the hand you’re dealt and have no choice but to play
it through.”

“There are always choices.”

“True enough. If the devil himself turns all your logs to gold, you
either freeze to death in front of an empty hearth or use that gold to buy
another source of heat.” Kelan glanced at him. “And that’s not borrowed from
Sun
Tzu
or anyone else.”

Few men were that saintly as to take on the world’s woes without an
ulterior motive, and Greyston doubted the McAllisters were any exception. He
hung back with his own thoughts, walking a pace or so behind Kelan until they
reached the laboratory.

The shelves were crammed with books and loosely bound manuscripts, the
desk shoved to one side in a corner. Steel cabinets lined one wall. The other
walls held shadows slinking into alcoves and beyond. Ana lay upon a work bench.
The celluloid skin had been sliced from armpit to waist and peeled away,
exposing the smooth steel of her chest.

Armand’s head was bent low, his fingers nimbly working to loosen the
row of tiny bolts.

Evelyn had one arm around Puppy and the other draped around Lily’s
shoulders. Neither looked particularly confident with Armand’s efforts so far.
They perked up when Kelan informed them that Armand had been tinkering with
mechanics since childhood and had spent weeks pouring over the original
celludrone schematics and his uncle’s notes.

Curiosity drove Greyston to one of the shadowed alcoves. It wasn’t an
alcove at all, but an archway into a squat room. The only light was a
semi-circle feeding in from the main laboratory and dimming into the recesses,
enough to see the room was an empty shell. Strange markings on the floor caught
his attention. He went down on his haunches, frowning at the intricate tangle
of triangles within a circle carved into the wooden floor. He shuffled around
to inspect the juncture between the segregated rooms. The laboratory floor was
iron, this one was wood. He pushed to his feet and crossed to the next alcove.
Another room, a large space filled with the silhouettes of steel workbenches
and the cylindrical shapes of scientific apparatus.