The Iron Duke (3 page)

The maid’s eyes widened before she turned to lead Mina out of the ballroom. She could imagine what the girl thought, but Newberry was not the poor bastard.

Whoever had been murdered was.

 

 

They’d put Newberry in a study in the east wing—probably
so the guests weren’t made nervous by his size or his constable’s overcoat. He stood in the middle of the room, his bowler hat in his large-knuckled hands. Mina had to admire his fortitude. Small automata lined the study’s bookshelves. If given more than a few seconds to wait, she couldn’t have resisted winding them and seeing how they performed. She recognized a few of her mother’s more mundane creations that had been sold through the Blacksmith’s shop—a dog that would wag his tail and flip; a singing mechanical nightingale—and felt more charitable toward her hosts. They might not have provided dessert, but they’d unknowingly put food on her table.

Newberry’s eyes widened briefly when he saw her. She’d never worn a skirt in his presence, let alone a yellow satin gown that exposed her collarbone and the few inches of skin between her cap sleeves and her long white gloves.

But he must have known she wouldn’t be in her usual attire, and had apparently stopped at her home. Her overcoat, weapons, and armor were draped over his left forearm. She could have no doubt they were leaving now, and he’d come in such a hurry he hadn’t taken time to shave. Evening stubble flanked the red mustache that drooped over the corners of his mouth and swept up the sides of his jaw to meet his sideburns with his ears. The beard made him appear much older than his twenty-two years, and offered the impression of a large, protective dog—an accurate impression. Newberry resembled a wolfhound: friendly and loyal, until someone threatened. Then he was all teeth.

Not every bounder who returned had a title and a bulging purse. Newberry had come so that his young wife, suffering a consumptive lung condition, could be infected by the bugs and live.

“Report, Newberry.” She accepted the sleeveless, close-fitting black tunic whose wire mesh protected her from throat to hips. Usually she wore the armor beneath her clothing, but she did not have that option now. She pulled it on and began fastening the buckles lining the front.

“We’re to go to the Isle of Dogs, sir. Superintendent Hale assigned you specifically.”

“Oh?” Perhaps this murder touched another she had investigated. The docks east of London weren’t as rough as they’d once been, but she still visited often enough. “Who is it this time?”

“The Duke of Anglesey, sir.”

What?
Her gaze skidded from a buckle up to Newberry’s earnest face. “The Iron Duke’s been killed?”

She had never met the man or seen him in person, and yet her heart kicked painfully against her ribs. Rhys Trahaearn, former pirate captain, recently titled Duke of Anglesey—and, after he’d destroyed the Horde’s tower, England’s most celebrated hero.

“No, inspector. It isn’t His Grace. He only reported the murder.”

Newberry sounded apologetic. Perhaps he hadn’t expected her to feel the same reverence for the Iron Duke that most of England did. Mina didn’t, though her racing pulse told her that she’d taken some of the stories about him to heart. The newssheets painted him as a dashing figure, romanticizing his past, but Mina suspected he was simply an opportunist who’d been in the right place at the right moment.

“So he’s killed someone, then?” It wouldn’t be the first time.

“I don’t know, sir. Only that a body has been found near his home.”

Mina frowned. Given the size of his park, that could mean anything.

When she finished fastening the tight armor, the gown’s lacings pressed uncomfortably against her spine. She slung her gun belt around her hips; one of the weapons had been loaded with bullets, the other with opium darts, which had greater effect on a rampaging bugger. She paused after Newberry passed her the knife sheath. Typically, Mina wore trousers and strapped the weapon around her thigh. If she bound the knife beneath her skirts in the same location, the blade would be impossible to draw. Driving through east London at night without as many weapons as possible would be foolish, however. Her calf would have to do.

She sank down on one knee and hoisted her skirts. Newberry spun around—his cheeks on fire, no doubt. Good man, her Newberry. Always proper. Sometimes, Mina felt sorry for him; he’d been assigned to her almost as soon as he’d stepped off the airship from Manhattan City.

Other times, she thought it must be good for him. In two centuries, the Brits who’d fled to the New World had devolved into prudes. Probably because Cromwell and his Separatists had settled there decades before the others had begun leaving England, and everyone living in Manhattan City hadn’t had the Horde scrub away all but the vestiges of religion. A few curses and traditions remained in England. Not much else did.

Mina tightened the knife sheath below her knee and grimaced at the sight of her slippers. Newberry hadn’t brought her boots—or her hat, but it was probably for the best. She wasn’t certain she could shove it down over the knot of hair the maid had teased into black curls. She took her heavy overcoat from him and turned for the door, stifling a groan as her every step kicked her yellow skirts forward.

A detective inspector turned inside out on top, and a lady below. She hoped Felicity did not see her this way. Never would Mina hear the end of it.

Newberry’s two-seater cart waited at the bottom of the front steps, rattling and hissing steam from the boot, and drawing appalled glances from the attending servants. Judging by the other vehicles in the drive, the attendants were accustomed to larger, shinier coaches, with brass appointments and velvet seats. The police cart had four wheels and an engine that hadn’t exploded, and that was the best that could be said for it.

As it wasn’t raining, the canvas top had been folded back, leaving the cab open. The coal bin sat on the passenger’s side of the bench, as if Newberry had dumped in the fuel on the run.

Newberry colored and mumbled, heaving the bin to the floorboards. Mina battled her skirts past the cart’s tin frame as he rounded the front. She resorted to hiking them up to her knees, and the constable’s cheeks were aflame again as he swung into his seat. The cart tilted and the bench protested under his weight. His stomach, though solid, almost touched the steering shaft.

Newberry closed the steam vent. The hissing stopped and the cart slowly pulled forward. Mina sighed. Though the sounds of the city were never ending, courtesy dictated that one didn’t blast the occupants of a private house with engine noise. Always polite, Newberry intended to wait until after they’d passed out of the drive before fully engaging the engine.

“We are in a hurry, constable,” she reminded him.

“Yes, sir.”

He hauled the drive lever back. Mina’s teeth rattled as the cart jerked forward. Smoke erupted from the back in a thick black cloud, obscuring everything behind them.
Too bad, that.
She’d wanted to see the attendants’ expressions when the engine belched in their faces, but she and Newberry were through the gate before the air cleared.

Wide and smooth, Piccadilly Street held little traffic. The ride became bumpier as they passed Haymarket. Blocks of flats crowded closer together and nearer to the street, their windows shuttered against the noise. The night hid the sooty gray that covered all the buildings in London, and concealed the smoke that created a haze during the day—a haze thickened by the fire that had raged through the Southwark slums the previous week. Though the worst of the blaze across the Thames had burned out, it still smoldered in patches. If the fog came tonight, the gas lamps lining the streets would be all but useless. So would the lanterns hanging above either side of the two-seater’s front wheels.

The rattling of the cart and the noise of the engine made hearing difficult, and conversation became near impossible when Newberry steered onto Viktrey Road, the commercial route the Horde had built from the tower to the docks. The road had once been named after London’s
darga
—but nine years ago, as revolutionaries marched along this route, the road signs bearing the Horde governor’s name had been destroyed. Someone had scratched “Viktrey” in its place, and the route had kept the name. In the past few years, those defaced signs had been replaced with official placards, and the misspelling had remained.

Though not the pandemonium of the day, traffic still choked the roadway. Newberry slowed as a spider-rickshaw cut in front of them. The driver’s feet rapidly pumped the hydraulic pistons that cranked the vehicle’s segmented legs, scuttling over the pocked road like a crab. His passengers kept a white-knuckled grip on the sides of the wheeled cart as the rickshaw darted left, narrowly avoiding a collision with two women riding a pedal buggy. On Newberry’s right, a huge vehicle muscled down the center lane, the back pens full of bleating sheep.

“That lorry has just passed us!” Mina shouted over the noise.

“And no wonder—it has a vent the size of the Castilian queen’s backside!” The louder Newberry became, the less proper he was. Mina enjoyed driving with him. “With enough space between him and the engine that he won’t roast the faster he goes!”

Mina could stand to roast a little more. Her satin dress was fine for a ballroom. But even with the wool overcoat, the moist cold night seeped in. Her dress—purchased at her mother’s insistence, with money that could have been put to a thousand better uses elsewhere—was just like the candles in her mother’s parlor: all show. Beneath it, Mina’s underclothes were patched and threadbare.

“At least it’d be warmer.”

Newberry glanced at her, a question in his eyes. He must have seen her speak, but hadn’t heard her reply.

She shouted, “I’ve a draft up to my pants!”

Even in the dark, Newberry’s blush shone bright.

Farther east, traffic slowed to a crawl. At the edge of Whitechapel, children sold clothes and trinkets along the walks. Deep within the borough, surrounded by thick stone walls, many children still lived within the Crèche, forming their own hierarchy, manufacturing their own goods for sale—and better off than many of the families outside. Mina watched two of the teenaged children, each carrying a length of pipe, stop to chat with the smaller ones selling the wares. The children patrolled their own territory, and human predators didn’t last long near the Crèche. Mina had come to recognize the bludgeon marks left on an adult body when the children exacted their form of justice.

Unsurprisingly, when she questioned the children, no one ever reported seeing anything.

“Have you met His Grace?”

Mina glanced over as Newberry shouted the question. He often looked for impressions of character before arriving at a scene, but Mina had no solid ones to give. “No.”

She’d eaten rice noodles at Trahaearn’s feet, however. Near the Whitehall police station, an iron statue of the duke had been erected at the center of Anglesey Square. Standing twenty feet tall, that statue did not offer a good angle to judge his features. But Mina knew from the caricatures in the newssheets that he had a square jaw, hawkish nose, and heavy brows that darkened his piercing stare into a glower. The effect was altogether strong and handsome, but Mina suspected that the artists were trying to dress up England’s Savior like her mother lighting candles in the parlor.

Perhaps all of him had been dressed up. The newssheets speculated that his parents had been Welsh landowners and that he’d been taken from them as a baby, but nothing was truly known of his family. Quite possibly, his father had pulverizing hammers for legs, his mother fitted with drills instead of arms, and he’d been born in a coal mine nine months after a Frenzy, squatted out in a dusty bin before his mother returned to work.

Twenty years ago, however, his name had first been recorded in Captain Baxter’s log on HMS
Indomitable
. Trahaearn, aged sixteen, had been aboard a slaver ship bound for the New World, and was pressed with the crew into the navy. Within two years he’d transferred from
Indomitable
to another English ship,
Unity
, a fifth-rate frigate patrolling the trade routes in the South Seas. Before they’d reached Australia, Trahaearn had led a mutiny, taken over the ship as its captain, and renamed the frigate
Marco’s Terror
. With the
Terror
, he’d embarked on an eight-year run of piracy—no trade route, no nation, no merchant had been safe from him. Even in London, where the Horde suppressed any news that suggested a weakness in their defenses, word of Trahaearn’s piracy had seeped into conversations. Several times, the newssheets claimed the Horde had captured him. He’d been declared dead twice.

Perhaps that was why the Horde hadn’t anticipated him sailing
Marco’s Terror
up the Thames and blowing up their tower.

“Is he enhanced?”

Mina almost smiled. Even shouting, Newberry didn’t unbend enough to use
bugger
.
Enhanced
had become the polite term for living with millions of microscopic machines in each of their bodies.
Bugger
had been an insult once—and still was in Manhattan City. Only the bounders seemed to care about that, however. Not a single bugger that Mina knew took offense at the name.

Of course, if Newberry called her by the name the Horde had used for them—
zum bi
, the soulless—she’d knock his enhanced teeth out.

“He is,” she confirmed.

“How did he do it?” When Mina frowned, certain she’d missed part of the question, Newberry clarified in a shout, “The tower!”

He wasn’t the first to ask. The Horde had created a short-range radio signal around their tower, preventing buggers from approaching it. Trahaearn
had
been infected, but he hadn’t been paralyzed when he’d entered the broadcast area. Mina’s father theorized that the frequency had changed from the time that Trahaearn had lived in Wales as a child, and so he hadn’t been affected on his return. She’d heard the same theory echoed by other buggers, but bounders preferred to think he hadn’t been infected with nanoagents—despite Trahaearn himself confirming that he’d carried the bugs since he was a boy.