Camera Obscura (17 page)

 
 

No one knew much about André-Marie Ampère. In life he had been a scientist, obsessed with the study of electricity. When his wife died he was distressed to the point of confusion. She had once heard Viktor speak of him – in reverence. He was born, had lived, and died – only he hadn't, not quite…

  There were simulacrums in the world, and that was only natural. There were machines that could almost pass for human, and humans who, one thought, too closely resembled machines. It was told the Bookman could remake the dead, reassemble them into living things once again… and perhaps Ampère was one of his creatures, though who could tell? He was born and lived a man, he died – and now he lived, if such a word could be used, alone and undisturbed in the Montmartre Cemetery, in a small stone building beside his very own grave.

  What was he? A copy of a man? A machine? A ghost?

  She did not believe in ghosts. "Did you search the Clockwork Room?" she said. The Gascon nodded. "We found nothing. Whatever meeting was arranged there, they did not leave anything behind."

  She did not suspect that they did. She would confront the fat man soon enough, she thought. But now she had the traces of the killer and she was going to follow them, wherever they may lead.

  "Ampère was one of the Council, once," she said.

  "When he was still living?" the Gascon said.

  "No."

  "Ah."

  She knew he did not like the machines. Few people did, though they accepted them, lived with them, and to a large extent let them decide their lives. And so she said, "I'll go alone."

  He said, "No–" but she knew the fight wasn't in him. "As you said, he won't see you. I have the authority–"

  Knowing that was another thing that made the Gascon unhappy.

 

It had stopped raining, and the night air felt cool and fresh. And she liked cemeteries.

  They were peaceful places. They were humanity's way of acknowledging change, of laying down the past. The dead did not rise again. They were absorbed into the earth, became, in time, something new, the dying bodies recycled and reused. Cemeteries were quiet and filled with a sense of space and quiet purpose.

  Though now she could see one part of it was not so quiet. And it was still raining where she was going, though it was a strange, localised storm…

  The graves rose all around her, elaborate houses for the dead, though the dead could no longer appreciate them. And there – a miniature castle where the storm hovered, lightning flashing, again and again as it hit a metal pole rising from the turrets.

  Gargoyle-faced edifice… And now she saw they were not, as was common, lizardine, but something different. And she wondered what Ampère really knew, and had he ever been east, for they were shaped like grey and faceless ghosts.

  She walked through the drops and reached the door and banged on it. She heard movement inside. She could see how this place would have appealed to the murderer – but she did not expect him to be there. She waited and Ampère opened the door.

  He was dressed in black, as if in mourning. Whoever fashioned him had done a good job. He moved without stiffness, and his eyes looked very life-like. The face was unlined, and she knew it would never age. Though the machine might run down, one day…

  He said, "Milady de Winter?" His voice was scratchy, old, incompatible with the face. It occurred to her he might have built himself, once upon a time, and the machine kept adding new parts but could not change the voice. She wondered if there were jars of moist artificial eyes in his pantry, different colours for different occasions. She wouldn't look – it was altogether too likely.

  "I've been expecting you. Please, come inside." He gestured at the sky, the storm. Lightning flashed above them. "I've been working."

  "I can see."

  She followed him inside. "Though I am retired from the Council my work still concerns–" Then he stopped, and the machine allowed itself a small, wan smile. It looked very natural. "I'm afraid I can't help you," he said.

  And machines could lie so much better than humans ever did…

  "How long have you lived here?" she said.

  "Over fifty years. Ever since I – ever since my predecessor died. He constructed this lab for me and paid for it along with his tomb."

  "You research electricity."

  "I research life," he said, and smiled again. She did not return the smile and the machine she was talking to dropped it. "I study the fundamental powers," Ampère said and she said, only half-listening – "Why here?"

"Why not? It is quiet, isolated. I am seldom disturbed."

  "Until the dead began to rise?" she said, and he didn't move. "When did it begin, two, three years ago? Was it something you noticed, or was it something you made happen? Tell me!"

  "Milady," he said, "your accusations are quite baseless."

  What if there had been another key? Another transaction from the Man on the Mekong, as Fei Linlin had called him? Another fragment offered? She said, "Viktor showed me the corpses. But I don't think they were the only ones."

  "Viktor and I are not in the same line of work," he said.

  "Are you harbouring a killer?" she said.

  "What?"

  "I need to know."

  "What I do," he said, "I do for the Council."

  And now the suspicion she had been trying to avoid voicing resurfaced. She said, "He has to be stopped–" and watched Ampère take a step back, then stand very still. "He is killing the living, now," she said.

  "He always did…" The words were a whisper.

  "Tell me."

  The automaton shook itself awake. "Go," he said. "I–"

  "No."

  Lightning struck the roof, the sound echoing through the dark hall of the miniature castle. "I have to go," he said. "I have to finish the work – come back to see me. I will tell you what you want to know–"

  And now a sound rose from the back of the hall, coming from behind a closed door, and Ampère glanced back and then at her, and moved to push her out. "You must go. Hurry! Come back to see me when the night is deep."

  A growling sound, growing louder. "Go!"

  She took out her gun in one swift motion and put the barrel against his neck. The automaton stood still. "Make sure to be here when I come back," she said. Then the gun was gone, an act of magic, and she stepped out of that dark dead room and into the cool air outside. She had the feeling of unseen eyes watching her. She walked away from the castle and the lightning cracked behind her, filling up the sky with violent blue electricity.

 
 

 
 

And so Milady de Winter went to the ball.

  Out there, beyond the windows of her carriage, the silent watchers watched. She could sense them there, these intrusions into an orderly world. Xiake, Master Long had called her – a follower of Xia, whatever that meant. A code beyond government or law, the way of righteousness.

  She did not feel very righteous. She felt tired, consumed by three days of not eating properly, of running around chasing shadows, of being kidnapped and assaulted and watching people die before her, and not knowing why. Outside the Hotel de Ville there were carriages, hansom cabs, baruch-landaus, liveried footmen and lounging drivers, the usual Parisian crowd gathered to watch festivities to which they were not invited. There were roast chestnut sellers, newspaper boys, booksellers from their little domain by the Seine, beggars, portrait artists, photographers, and the air smelled of the mix of chemicals from the baruch-landau vehicles and the steaming manure of the more traditional horse-drawn cabs. The air smelled of chestnuts and caramelised peanuts; and lightning flashed overhead in silence, the thunder too far away, as yet, to be heard.

  She stepped out of the carriage and the silent driver with his stitched-up face drove away.

  Photographers – and now she recognised one of them. He tried to walk away when he saw her coming. She grabbed him by the arm and saw his face twist with the unexpected pain. She said, "What are you doing here?"

  It was the photographer from the Rue Morgue. The one whose camera she had smashed against the wall. It felt like months ago. It wasn't.

  He didn't speak and the pressure on his arm increased, Milady finding the nerves, her long fingernails driving into the man's flesh. And now he said, "He sent me! Let me go!"

  "D–" no, she would not say his name, "The Gascon sent you? To take pictures of the guests? Why?"

  His face was pale. He did not relish being there. He said, "He thinks… he thinks…"

  She let go of his arm. He rubbed it, shying away from her. "He thinks the killer might make an appearance?" she said, and the man nodded.

  "Clever Gascon…" she whispered, and then she smiled. The photographer melted into the crowd. Very well. She wondered what the Gascon knew, or what he guessed at. She went through the gates and up to the building.

  The Hotel de Ville – municipality building, mayor's house, the beating heart of the urban metropolis of Paris. The Seine was nearby, carrying ferries, rafts, fallen flowers, fish and the occasional human corpse. The smell of it wafted through the air and was replaced, as she stepped through the doors into the Hotel de Ville's ballroom, by the stench of expensive perfumes, canapés, polish, engine oil and something she could not quite discern until she turned and found herself, suddenly and without warning, beside a tall royal lizard.

  Les Lézards. She had never expected that, and it always came as a surprise to her, no matter how many she had met before in the English court: their smell was different. She couldn't quite describe it. The ambassador (for that was who it must be) smelled of the warmth of rocks in the late afternoon, of swamps and – very faintly – of eau de cologne.

  He was tall and – she thought – elderly. He towered above her, green-skinned but for bands of colouration that ran across his body, and his tongue hissed out as if tasting the air. He was dressed in an expensive, understated suit. His tail looked formidable, like a weapon. And now he turned to her and said, "Milady de Winter, I presume?"

  She nodded, trying to remember him from the court and failing. The ambassador took her hand in both of his, bent down gracefully and kissed her – the tongue flicking out again, the touch of it like electricity against her skin. When he straightened up he seemed to be smiling.

  "You were married to Lord de Winter?" he said. "A most charming man. Often we went hunting together at Balmoral."

  The Queen's remote estate, in Scotland – so the ambassador was high up in the lizards' social order. Which wasn't surprising–

  "His death was most unfortunate," the ambassador said.

  "Yes…" Milady said, and the ambassador again seemed to smile. His tongue flicked out again, disappeared back into the elongated mouth. "And so you have returned to the place of your childhood? It must have been a pleasant childhood indeed."

  She thought of the small girl running in the night, of the abandoned houses where predators roamed… "Very," she said, giving him a smile full of teeth. They were playing a game – and she thought it was no coincidence, the ambassador standing just there as she came in. She wondered if he really had known her husband, or whether he was merely reading out of her dossier. Well, perhaps it was both. "Sometimes when I was hungry I'd catch geckos and roast them on the fire – you had to stick a sharpened wood branch into them to stop them wriggling."

  "Indeed." He reared back, looked down on her. And now there was nothing friendly in his face at all. "You have been luckier than your husband, it seems…" he said. "Be careful that your luck doesn't run out."

  She moved her coat aside, just a little, and saw his eyes fasten on the gun. "I'm always careful," she said, and the lizard hissed.

  "Ambassador," a voice said, close by, and she turned, startled, for she had not heard the man approach. "You must meet this absolutely
charming
mechanical–"

  She had not heard the fat man approach. And now she watched him stir the lizardine ambassador away, towards an ancient man-shaped automaton on the other side of the ballroom… She followed him with her eyes and for just a moment the fat man turned back and winked at her.

 
 

 
 

The ballroom was filled with revellers. Metal globes hung from the high ceiling and lightning flashed between them back and forth – a Tesla invention, if she recalled correctly, but one that seemed ill-suited for a night's entertainment. She looked around her and realised something had been missing from her invitation: it was a masked ball.

  She should have expected that.

  The lizardine ambassador, of course, was bare-faced. And the automatons' faces were masks all by themselves – though some, she saw, had joined in the spirit of the event and wore elaborate mechanical masks that changed expressions in a sequence or randomly, it was hard to tell. The humans, most of them, were masked. She saw chieftains from Vespuccia in their elaborate headdresses and what she knew to be war paint, short men armed with decorative shields from the Zulu kingdom accompanying a young woman, Indian rajahs with diamonds in their hats, Aztec priests in their garb – the cream of the diplomatic circle of Paris, all gathered here for the electric ball.

  She looked around for someone from Dahomey but the place was too full and besides, she had left the place too long ago. Her links with the old country had been severed one by one, and now none remained, and she was a citizen of–

  Of what? of the Republic? Of the lizards' court? She belonged to all of these, and none. Perhaps she really was Xiake, a member of the secretive world Master Long had called the Wulin. She didn't know where her loyalties truly lay, but she knew what was right, and she knew what she had to do. What had to be done.

  And the Gascon was right, she thought. Somewhere in the throngs of masked women and men the killer, too, was dancing.

  A band of automatons was providing the music from a dais at the back of the hall, a player piano and a steam-powered orchestra. The lightning crackled overhead without thunder, electricity jumping from one spinning globe to another, casting odd shadows onto the dance floor, like a fractured mirror. And there – dancing together, a handsome young couple, both masked with the faces of some sort of fantastical animals – Mistress Yi and her shadow Ip Kai? She watched them as they circled the room, holding each other, moving fluidly with the dance, and yet – she could sense their awareness, the way they watched the room. And now she thought – there are many watchers here tonight.

  They were not alone.

  Here and there, the Gascon's men, trying and failing to blend, shouting
gendarmes
in the way they stood, the way they watched – the way they drank, for that matter. And now another familiar body waylaid her, and for a second time this evening she was taken aback.

  He was young and very beautiful, with his bare chest and his mask of a tiger, and he swept her up in his arms for a dance. "Remember me?"

  The voice and the physique… "The bartender at the Moulin Rouge?"

  "I hoped we'd meet again. You are very beautiful."

  "So are you," she said, meaning it, and he laughed. "I would like to make love to you," he said. She had to smile. He carried her effortlessly, a born dancer, and she said, "Perhaps when all this is over…"

  "The ball?"

  "Not exactly…" She gently pushed him away and he twirled back and bowed. "At your service, Milady," he said. Then he danced away and into the throng, and was soon engulfed in the arms of another woman.

  … who was familiar, also. A woman who needed no mask, for she wore one as a matter of course. Madame Linlin, who danced with the young man for a minute, then turned to speak with a minister and his entourage – the old lady making an appearance in an official capacity, then? Milady couldn't spot Colonel Xing, which told her nothing. She suspected he, and at least some of his men, where somewhere in the crowd.

  Well, well… this ball was certainly turning out to be more interesting than she'd thought.

  "Milady!"

  She stared at him. "
Viktor?"

  "Wonderful party!"

  The scientist had replaced his habitual smock with evening wear, a jaunty black hat sat at an angle on his head, and his mask was that of her coachman, the stitched-up face of a monster. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Dancing!" the scientist said. "They gave me the night off."

  "The Council?"

  "Shh!" He made an exaggerated sign, finger to his lips. And now she could smell the alcohol. "I'm off-duty."

  "I thought you preferred the company of the dead," she said, and he shrugged. "The dead don't dance, and they seldom drink."

  She let it pass, said, "Who's on in the under-morgue?"

  Viktor smirked. "You think someone's going to rob the morgue?"

  Something cold slid slowly down her spine. Something was wrong, and the Council… She did not trust the Council.

  "Have you seen Tômas?" Viktor asked. There was something a little too casual in the way he said it, and it gave her pause.

  "Tômas?"

  Viktor had told her, hadn't he? Memory returned. Tômas had been in charge of the body-snatching duty, retrieving the grey-infected corpses. Tômas the cruel, the master of disguises, Tômas who they called the Phantom – and now suspicion bloomed. She thought about the Council. What were they planning? And she thought – I am their bait – but who are they hunting?

  "I shall speak with you later!" Viktor said, too brightly and, turning, hurried off after a troupe of green-painted, scantily clad dancers.

  The lightning flashed and flashed overhead. Something in Milady wanted to forget the currents, forget the other world, the murders, the futile chase for a thing that had no right to exist. Drink, she thought, and dance, and be merry – but she wasn't sure she remembered how. Find that beautiful young dancer…

  Then she thought of Tom Thumb lying on the Seine's bank with his throat cut, the grey swirls moving on his skin as if they were alive. Alive and hungry, she thought. And–

  The killer must be amongst the crowd.

  But which one of the masked creatures was he?