Pinion (61 page)

The officer stopped him with a raised hand. Somewhat to Wang’s surprise, Kitchens fell silent. “She has asked these last two years for help from a select few. The Cameron Highlanders were posted here in hopes that a way might be found.”

“Posted?” Kitchens asked, his voice suspicious. “By whom?”

“Gentlemen.” Childress cut them both off. Her voice was cold and miserable. “If the executions are not going to proceed right now, I would prefer an adjournment from this abattoir.”

“No executions, ma’am. Not today.” The officer looked her over. “I am Major Sharpe, of the regiment. Who might you be?”

“The Mask Childress, of the
avebianco
.”

Sharpe glanced at the opened tank. “Here to oversee murder done?” His voice was mild, but he shook with passion. Wang began to wonder anew if they could possibly leave this room alive.

“Here to meet with Government to bring a halt to the war burning in the east,” she snapped. “I did not come for your queen, though I do not dispute Mr. Kitchens’ deeds. It is not murder to finish a death long-delayed. In any case, you shall not end me today with a bullet to the head, for I must meet with the Prime Minister.”

“In that case, your patience will soon be rewarded,” Sharpe said. “Lloyd George hastens even now from London by special train. The entire Oxfordshire lines have been stopped to clear the track.”

“Good,” Childress said. “Then England shall hear how best to sue for peace.” Wang stirred as she pointed to him. “My companion will speak for both China and the Silent Order.”

“I . . .” He fell silent. This was not China, where power was acquired through descent and heavenly mandate. He could beg away this moment and surrender his life to an English prison, or he could claim to be a kô, an agent of both the Dragon Throne and the Silent Order. How would these men know the difference?

She has done no less
.

Wang tried again. “I will treat with your Prime Minister.” His tone was crisp as Childress’, though he told an even greater lie. He wished the monk were here. “There is no need for war.”

How to take the message home? At the first, he would have them intercept
Good Change
at Port Said. Captain Shen would be enraged, but then Captain Shen was always enraged.

“You are a most unlikely ambassador,” Sharpe replied. He and his men bustled the four of them away.

We may live a little longer
, Wang thought. He would have to invent whole new lies, very quickly—large ones he could use to persuade a halt to the war, and thus render himself important enough to survive to go home and deliver the message.

His library seemed so far away now, but the distance mattered less than ever. His own man, Wang had to force himself not to sing as he walked the ruined halls.

He sat on a narrow chair before a massive oaken desk. It had the look of something just now swept from under a furniture drape. A reek of burning tinged the air. The world outside was finally quiet after hours of firefighting noise and the occasional gunshot.

Wang and Childress had been separated from him. Kitchens devoutly hoped the shots had not been for them. He reckoned himself for the noose, unless they chose to make his execution a private and unofficial affair. Something to round out the evening, perhaps.

Minutes ticked by with the rhythms of a long-case clock on the wall to his right. Empty shelves reached fourteen or fifteen feet to the ceiling, except where the windows opened onto a garden. The chandelier was missing, though its mounting hook and gas pipes were visible in the middle of a plaster rosette. Once the last of the daylight faded outside, he would be in the unquiet dark with his ghosts.

The clerk studied his grubby fingernails in the waning light. Blood royal stained the little striations and clung to the corners of each nail. He’d killed almost two entire crews getting here—first
Erinyes
’, then the Chinese sailors following al-Wazir and that insane woman from New England.

Apparently they’d arrived at Blenheim Palace by submarine. Kitchens’ grasp of that was tenuous at best.

Two dead crews. At least a dozen members of the Royal Household dead defending Her Imperial Majesty. That doctor, Stewart. All the men he’d failed down along the Wall under Ottweill’s command.

One queen.

The door opened behind him, then clicked shut again. Footsteps echoed across the uncarpeted room. Kitchens was unwilling to turn and look.

The Prime Minister walked around the desk and sat in the large leather chair. He laid a revolver down.

That riveted the clerk’s attention. “Sir?”

“Mr. Kitchens.” Lloyd George’s voice was slow, careful, lacking his usual witty eloquence. “I see you have returned to England.”

Kitchens watched the pistol, wondering if it would somehow spring to life. In the deepening night, the Prime Minister was little more than a shape with some dimensionality.

“Sir, yes . . . sir.”

“The Mask Childress tells a remarkable tale. As does that, ah, ambassador of hers.”

“Sir.” He could add no wisdom to their story, for he did not know it himself. They had appeared in the company of al-Wazir by the will of
Paolina Barthes, but they might as well have dropped in from the Iroquois Nation for all he could say.

Lloyd George studied his own hand. “I do not suppose it signifies whether Mr. Wang is in fact accredited as a high commissioner. By the time that woman is done with him, they will never admit otherwise in Beijing. This pointless war may yet be over, and our friends in Valetta and Phu Ket can return to their hall-of-mirrors vendettas with each other and the Lord God Almighty.”

“Sir.” That was rapidly becoming a comforting syllable.

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Kitchens?”

“Sir?”

The Prime Minister leaned forward, his suit rustling as his shadowed silhouette bent. “You heard me.”

“Of—of course, sir. Who does not?”

“You might be surprised.” Fingers drummed on the surface of the desk. “I have been strongly advised to allow you to do yourself a fatal mischief. This would save the Crown the bother and expense of a trial, with all its attendant public humiliation at our many failures in protecting Her Imperial Majesty’s life and person.” More drumming, then: “Are you perhaps interested in this option?”

“Sir.”

“I shall take that as a negative. I am quite serious, you know.”

Despite the oncoming chill of evening, sweat poured down Kitchens’ back now. “Sir, yes sir.”

“God ordained the passing of the Queen at her appointed time. Bad science and worse judgment prolonged her life, at the urging of . . . certain elements in Government and society. Even a man in my position, perhaps
especially
a man in my position, is not privy to all decisions. There has been a very quiet argument over the meaning of certain subtle communications emanating from Her Imperial Majesty. You, sir, have resolved what was becoming the most vexing issue of state in modern times, as well as the most direly secret.” Another round of finger drumming. “So, while you are invited to be a suicide, you will not hang. I should not think to describe His Imperial Majesty, recently the Prince of Wales, as grateful for the killing of his mother. Neither is he blind to what has transpired.”

A long silence followed, the two men facing each other in deepest shadow.

Finally Kitchens could not stand the wordlessness. “Wh-where does that leave me, sir?”

“You are free to depart. No one would ever believe your story anyway, but should you choose to repeat it, there is a quite accommodating mad-house
in my home borough from which politically inconvenient lunatics never emerge.” Lloyd George leaned forward. “A necessity of the modern state, I am afraid.”

Summoning his courage, Kitchens shook his head. “She has finished dying, but she asked for her throne to be broken, and for what has been undone to be remade. I would know if her wishes have been carried out.”

“You are also free to stay.” The Prime Minister’s voice grew even more slow and careful. “But your place in Government may be quite different. Few enough will know the truth. Many will never see you as anything but a lunatic.”

What of al-Wazir? Or Ottweill and those unfortunate men slowly breaking through the roots of the Wall
?

“I will bear my ghosts, sir, if I can serve out the terms of Her Imperial Majesty’s desires in this matter. And my commission to the tunneling project remains unresolved.”

“The world spins ever faster, Mr. Kitchens. Men of your . . . unusual . . . experiences shall be quite valuable in the days to come. War or no war. The Wall abides, as you say.”

“Sir.”

Lloyd George stood and walked out without a farewell. The Prime Minister left the revolver behind.

After a while, Kitchens picked the weapon up to check if it was loaded.

. . . so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.          
—John 15:9

They stood along the rail of the Onyx Terrace. When the mists were gone, the view seemed to stretch all the way to the Mediterranean. She knew that was not true; she could do the math on the curvature of the Earth in her head without conscious effort. He knew that was true, for he knew that with the light in his heart, he could see the far side of Creation.

They were both right, and neither was wrong.

An airship slid slowly across the sky well below them. Vertiginous, steep, a sky that fell as sharply as a collapsing stair yet wide open as God’s unblinking eye. They knew from the shape of the gasbag that this one was Chinese, but already two British ships strained at the makeshift masts near the Jade Temple. Plus a third vessel, alien as a shark, familiar as a tooth, risen from the country of the Bone People far into the Southern Earth and come now to this place.

This was not a conference. The Jade Abbot wouldn’t hold with such. Rather, it was a dinner party, involving two librarians, one staying very close to a wounded, one-handed sailor; a very young but retired clock-maker; several veterans of the airship services of both great powers; as well as sundry submariners, denizens of the Wall, Correct People, sorcerers and other, stranger folk from distant lands, including a strange albino named William of Ghent who kept his distance from Hethor.

Should these sundry folk have occasion to speak over dinner, which in all its ramifications would last the better part of a week, so much the better.

Should an angel sweep down from the silver deserts and forests of the moon to pronounce some unknowable benison, so much the better.

Should Paolina and Boaz enter the red-lacquered halls of the Jade
Temple and sit among the assorted princes, admirals, special clerks, and stout-hearted warriors, so much the better.

For now they stood on the sun-warmed terrace and watched the Indian Ocean curve away toward the all-too-round horizon and enjoyed the simple, silent pleasure of one another’s company. Alone, as everyone in this life was, but alone together. That one person complete and whole could multiply another’s whole completeness was nothing short of a miracle.

Her heart thrilled, throbbing in her chest. His mind raced, while the new-brazed seams in his face and body yet ached a bit. Their arms twined, their hands clasped, their heads close as the familiar sound of labored engines drifted from below and a solitary hawk harried the orchards lying to the West. Voices drifted from the temple building, argument mixed with the sizzling scent of cookery and the clink of wineglasses.

“It’s only just begun, hasn’t it?” she said. A warm echo from the Silent World agreed with her.

His hand gripped hers a little more tightly. “It will only ever be beginning.”

She turned into his embrace, kissed him tightly, and marveled once again that a man made entirely of Brass could have such a pounding heart.