Accursed (49 page)

“All right,” Lord Blackheath said, nodding. “But you know where we are, should there be anything at all we can do to help.”

“Of course. And thank you, my lord,” William said. Blackheath gave him a firm handshake.

William turned to Haversham. “John, it was an unexpected pleasure.”

The man’s face seemed to have grown a bit pale as the night wore on, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes. William wondered how little sleep John had been getting of late. When they shook hands, he found Haversham’s skin cool, and a bit damp. It was entirely unpleasant.

William turned and made his way back into the main rooms of the Algernon Club, retrieved his coat from the same curmudgeonly servant at the door, and then at last was back out on the street again. He set off at a brisk pace; only when he was out of sight of the club did he step into the dark threshold of another building and call for Byron.

The ghost appeared instantly. “Shall we, then?” the poet inquired.

“Where, precisely?”

Byron propped his hand beneath his chin and described their destination. William had not spent much time around the docks, but that was the advantage of using magic. With that little description, he knew he could trust the translocation spell to get him within yards of the spot.

“The ship is called
Sea Witch,
appropriately enough,” the ghost added.

William nodded, glanced around to be certain he was not observed, and raised his hands.
“Under the same sky, under the same moon—“
he began, intoning a spell that had become almost second nature to him by now, something the William of half a year ago would have been hard-pressed to imagine.

His entire body trembled with the magic that came up from within him, enveloping him in a strange glittering sheath of light. That discordant sound that accompanied powerful magic rang in his ears, rattling his teeth as though the noise were in his own head.

A flash of brilliance blinded him for a moment, and he felt the dislocation that always accompanied this spell, a moment in which he seemed to be floating and sensed around him nothing but unending, unyielding darkness. The ether. And out there in the ether, it felt as though he was not alone. In all the times he had translocated, William had never once tried to determine what else might be there with him, for he feared the answer.

It lasted only a moment, and he was glad.

He felt something solid beneath him, and staggered forward a step, shoes scuffing on wood. He blinked to clear his vision and found himself on the deck of a ship, presumably
Sea Witch.
The sway of the deck forced him to take a moment to adjust, but then he glanced around quickly.

There were other ships moored nearby, and he could hear the voices of sailors coming to him through the night. A light fog had begun to swirl up off the Thames, carrying with it a stink that churned his stomach. But there was no one else close around.

“Tamara?” he said, keeping his voice low.

William walked warily across the deck. In the fog he saw several figures lying there, unmoving, at the base of the main mast. When he drew closer, he realized they were Rakshasa, charred to little more than ragged flesh and bone, one of them decapitated. His mind ought to have been eased by this sight, but it only made him more nervous. The corpses did not steam in the chill night air, so they weren’t exactly fresh. But there might have been others where these came from, and—

“In the hold, dear boy,” came Byron’s voice.

The ghost resolved out of the fog as though he were a part of it, spectral mist from river mist. William had grown quite used to the sight of the wandering spirits of the dead, and Byron himself was a jester and bon vivant . . . yet the poet’s appearance sent a shudder through him.

There was a sound of footfalls to accompany the creaking of the old ship, and William turned to find Tamara emerging from the hold. A smile of relief washed across her face. In the fog he could not tell for sure, but he thought her clothes were torn. Her hair was a wild, unkempt mess.

“I thought I heard you up here. Come on, then, we’ve got work to do, and precious little time.”

William grinned as he strode over to her, feeling absurdly happy to see her. “Haven’t I heard that before? Seems to be a tradition for us.”

There was movement behind her in the fog, and William saw a familiar face appear, the old Indian man who had aided them against the Rakshasa in the streets of Shadwell. Nigel was just behind him, the last to climb from the hold of the ship. When William glanced at Byron, he saw that the ghost of Lord Nelson had materialized in the mist, as well.

“Tipu Gupta, I presume?” William said, nodding toward the old man.

“Indeed,” Tamara said. But her gaze was intense, leaving no room for niceties. “And he has provided all the missing pieces to this terrible puzzle.”

William listened in growing horror, his stomach tightening anxiously as she revealed to him the sinister tale of madness and betrayal that had led to their current circumstances. Their enemy was a young woman no older than Tamara.

“But what is it all for? Creating all these monsters, rallying them to her, she must be building to something. If she truly believes she can destroy the Empire’s hold on India, she must plan some hideous act of rebellion and—”

“Oh, she does,” Nigel said, his voice dark and velvet like the night. He slipped up to William and Tamara in the fog, but then turned to look at Tipu Gupta.

The old man hung his head in shame. “Yes. My daughter’s madness has reached grand proportions. This very night, I believe she will muster her forces and take the final step in her plan. Before midnight, she will assault Buckingham Palace.”

William choked on the cold air and his own horror. “She means to kill the queen?”

“Not merely the queen,” Tamara replied. “If Mr. Gupta is correct, Priya means to kill everyone at the palace, including the queen, her servants, and her entire family.”

“Only together do we have a hope of stopping her,” the old man rasped, leaning now on Nigel for support.

William stood straighter. “Right, then. If that’s how it is.”

The fog thickened and swirled around them, a cloak of stinking gray in the dark of the night. The air was heavy with the weight of the evil they faced, and the grim determination lodged in their hearts.

T
AMARA AND HER
brother sent the ghosts on ahead to survey the palace, and see if there was any sign that Priya Gupta’s scheme was already unfolding. The Swifts could have translocated there as quickly as the ghosts traveled through the ether, but Nigel and Farris were incapable of journeying in that manner, so they retrieved the carriage. And though once it would have been a simple matter for the Protector of Bharath, too much of Tipu Gupta’s innate magic had been leached from him.

Tamara was concerned for the old man, and wondered how well he would hold up in the battle to come. Gupta had been pale and unsteady getting into the carriage, so much so that William had had to give him a hand up. When the time came, she doubted they would be able to count on the old man.

Particularly if they had to kill his daughter.

They made their way west toward Buckingham Palace, and she watched him carefully. Though it was quite late, there were still a few people out and about on that cold, foggy night. Couples walked arm in arm, though most were likely illicit pairings. A pair of peelers argued with a well-dressed gentleman in front of the Temple Bar. They all seemed like wraiths in the mist.

As the carriage rattled along cobblestones, they saw fewer and fewer people. Long stretches were so solemn as to be almost funereal.

What had first seemed to be an ordinary mist coming off the river was proving to be far more. London fog was often thick and gray, choking off light and breath with equal devastation. Smoke from a thousand thousand chimneys had lingered all through the early evening in a heavy blanket over London until it was taken by winds that shifted direction from moment to moment, and swirled into a terrible stew with the stench of the marshlands of Kent and Essex and the rancid, strangling odor of human waste that floated off the river.

Tamara felt as if it were the stink of Hell itself. There was a hint of orange to the gray that only added to the effect.

At first the fog had crept along low to the ground, but by the time they reached the palace that had changed. That crawling mist had become heavy clouds that shrouded entire buildings, giving only brief glimpses of the dark, carved faces of the architecture they passed. It wrapped around lampposts as if hungry for the flames within, muffling and dimming the lights.

None of them spoke of the fog, even in jest. Yet Tamara was sure their thoughts must echo hers: this was no ordinary fog. In the silence of their journey, she contemplated asking William about his evening at the Algernon Club, but such questions seemed trivial at the moment, and Tamara felt that would be worse than no talk at all.

Almost on the heels of this thought, her brother spoke up, just loud enough to be heard over the rattle of the carriage.

“Do you think that in splitting the Protectorship between us, Ludlow did us a disservice?”

Tamara frowned, shifting uncomfortably on the seat of the carriage.

“What do you mean?”

William reached up and removed his tie, opening the collar of his shirt. One of the wheels hit a hole, and the carriage jounced. A moment went by before he continued.

“All due respect to Mr. Gupta, but his daughter’s got most of the power of the Protector of Bharath now. Does that make her more powerful than you or me individually? Are we halves of a whole, or each whole unto ourselves?”

The questions troubled her, and she reached for her brother’s hand, squeezing tightly.

“Don’t turn to me on this. I’ve no idea. If there’s some rule book concerning Protectors and their powers, I’ve never seen it, and I don’t think Ludlow ever did, either.”

The carriage seat creaked as Tipu Gupta leaned forward, his gaze taking in the both of them. “You protect the soul of Albion, my friends. I was charged with the protection of the soul of Bharath, and failed. There are Protectors in every region of the world. Though they may be part of a whole, part of an effort by the spirit and nature of this entire world to protect itself from evil, the attentions of the Protectors are nearly always turned inward. Where there is collected lore, I have found it is almost always about the legacy of the Protectorship of the region, not of the world.”

It took Tamara a moment to digest what he had said. Then she frowned. “All of which is to say, you don’t have an answer for me, either.”

The old man smiled softly, copper skin crinkling around his eyes. “I do not. But I feel certain your grandfather would not have chosen both of you if he thought doing so might place you in danger.”

“Well, that’s a comfort,” Nigel scoffed, trying to peer out the window into the fog, which had begun to seep into the carriage. “Looks like it’s trial by fire once again. You’ll have to find out the answers in the midst of battle.”

Normally there would have been some muttered protest or attempt at humor from William, then, but the situation seemed to have drained him of any such temptations.

Tamara understood. The Crown was at stake. Blood would flow this night, and their only hope was to determine
whose
blood. She felt pity for those who had been victimized by the imperial aspirations of Britain, those who felt that they had been trammeled upon by the march of colonialism.

Yet no matter what offenses her own nation had committed, she could not stand by and allow the sort of retribution that Priya Gupta planned. The girl dreamed of slaughter and conquest, and whatever goddess she prayed to, whatever dark thing influenced her, Tamara felt certain it was no longer merely about vengeance. Inevitably, bloodlust became its own reason and reward.

“Here we are,” Nigel rasped in that throaty growl that always filled his voice when there was blood to be shed.

They rattled to a stop. The fog muffled Farris’s call to the horses, then the carriage tilted to one side as he climbed down from his seat. A moment later, the door opened and he stood aside to let them exit. Nigel did not bother to wait, but popped open the opposite door and leaped to the ground with a clack of leather soles on stone, landing like a cat. There was a spring in his step that made Tamara tremble, though whether from dread or anticipation she was unsure.

The city was like a dream now. A terrible dream. The orange-gray fog enshrouded everything, crawling along the street like the current of a lazy river, while an upper layer seemed not to move at all. Even when the wind picked up, the mass only danced and eddied, but did not drift away. To the west Buckingham Palace emerged, a mythical fortress floating in the clouds. That meant St. James’s Park was just south, so close they must have been a stone’s throw away, but Tamara could make out not a single tree. High windows in the palace gazed down upon them balefully, as though it had been waiting for them.

Foolish girl,
Tamara thought, shaking herself. Here she was ascribing sinister intent to the palace itself, as though it had already been lost to the enemy. It may have stood sentinel above them, jutting from the fog, but ominous as it seemed, the palace was the stronghold of their allies, not their enemies.