The Iscariot Sanction (48 page)

‘Hardwick! For pity’s sake, are you there?’

The voice was a harsh whisper, and had the urgency of someone who had been trying for some time to attract the attention of another.

‘Smythe?’ John hissed back, craning his neck to look at the small window.

‘Look, we don’t have much time. I’m going to get you out of here, but you need to hold on until help comes, do you understand?’

It occurred to John that he might still be dreaming. It seemed singularly unlikely that Smythe had escaped the vampires back in London, or indeed tracked him down here. But then again, the surgeon was one of the few agents who knew where John was likely to be taken, and if the Order still functioned following the attack, Sir Toby would surely be hell-bent on revenge against the Knights Iscariot.

‘There’s no time, Smythe. Get me out of here now!’ John replied, heedless of whether or not he was whispering to a hallucination.

‘Hardwick, just hold hard. If I break you out now I risk raising the alarm. This place is swarming with guards, and worse. Every vampire in Europe is here tonight. Pickering is escorting a fleet along the coast. When the guns start firing, I’ll come back for you.’

‘I’m not alone down here, Smythe.’

There was a pause. When Smythe replied, it was more cautiously. ‘Who’s with you?’

‘One of those things,’ John said. ‘I don’t know how long I have. I don’t know how long Lillian has.’ It felt somehow wrong to use his sister’s name as leverage against Smythe, but it was true nonetheless.

Another pause. And then, ‘Hold on, someone’s coming.’

John strained his ears, and thought he heard footsteps on gravel, though very far off. When that sound had passed, he spent what seemed like an eternity listening to silence, until he thought Smythe must have either left, or he’d dreamed him up.

‘Hardwick?’

John breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I haven’t gone anywhere. How could I?’

‘I cannot jeopardise the plan, but I can arm you. Do you understand?’

‘I’m not an imbecile, Smythe.’

‘Very well. See if you can’t get loose, and then find somewhere to lie low. Don’t cause a scene. We attack at dawn, and nothing must alert the Knights Iscariot to our plans.’

‘Very well, but please get on with it.’

Chains rattled, and the ghoul’s low growl became a more agitated snarl. John swore. Seconds later, the sound of scraping at the window-ledge overhead was swiftly followed by a dull thud on the floor. Then a second thud, slightly further away.

‘Sorry, old boy, I think that last one went astray. Look now, I have to go. I’ve tarried too long already.’

‘I understand,’ John whispered back.

‘Good luck, Hardwick. See you on the other side.’

Silence descended once more, but for the snarling from somewhere off to John’s left, accompanied by the bobbing of those baleful eyes. John patted the floor around himself for whatever Smythe had thrown. When it was not immediately apparent, he risked moving about as far as his chains would allow, searching desperately in the darkness, alert to every soft clink of chains in case the ghoul should rush at him. Only when his ankle grew raw with the effort of straining at his manacle did John finally get a fingertip to a cloth bundle. He stretched out as far as was possible, holding his breath.

His fingers had scarcely closed around the bundle when the creature sprang from the darkness. Jaws snapped at his face; a claw swept a hair’s breadth from his hand.

John rolled away, pushing himself across the flagstones as the creature strained at its bonds, its growls becoming a pained gargle as its stocks bit into its throat. It let out a shrill cry of frustration, and John heard its chains scrape as it retreated once again.

He relaxed only when he had returned to his original position, his back pressed against the rough stone wall, clutching the bundle in his arms like a baby. That thought made him remember Hetty, and the recollection stung. He had failed the girl, and he could only guess what they had done to her after they had dragged her from the cell. He thought of Lillian, and wondered if her fate would be the same. These things mattered to him more even than his own life.

With numb fingers he unwrapped the bundle. There was another package somewhere else in the darkness, but he could not risk scrabbling around after that just yet, with the beast so near. He half hoped to find a gun. Instead, his hand felt a small knife, a book of matches, and a thin strip of leather, which John unrolled to reveal a set of lockpicks. John flexed his numb fingers and sighed. He slid two picks from the leather roll, took a breath, and set to work.

* * *

Lillian was led by the arm through a vast chamber, where pairs of pale-skinned dancers whirled across a polished floor, never pausing for a moment, and never once impeding her advance towards the large dais ahead. Lillian spotted humans mixing freely with vampires; subservient, letting their blood or bowing and scraping to their monstrous lords. She had grown used to her preternatural senses now; around all the vampires was a dull amber glow, which she had almost come to ignore. This aura was more volatile and colourful around Majestics, while humans emitted no trace of such phenomena.

Even with her heightened senses, or perhaps because of them, the scene was overwhelming. The music was jarring and frantic, played by six skeletal creatures who sat within an alcove balcony, their movements rapid and jerking, their faces hidden behind black veils. Around the edges of the hall, more twisted, ancient creatures stood silent and still, watching intently, their masks not hiding their ugliness. Above them all, overlooking the floor that swarmed with dancers in their clockwork trance, was a high vaulted ceiling painted with a vision of Dante’s hell, from which dozens of still-twitching naked bodies hung from long chains. Lillian saw with growing horror that the incumbent victims—human and vampire alike—groaned and writhed with what could be either pain or pleasure, or both. Drops of blood fell to the floor like rain, staining the gaily coloured costumes of the revellers. The scene was lit by flame rather than gaslight, with great fires burning within iron bowls, sickly sweet incense mingling with the smoke.

They continued through the centre of the room, de Montfort’s arm in hers; Lillian felt hundreds of pairs of eyes upon her. She heard the whispers even over the screeching din of the violins: ‘It is her,’ ‘Heresy!’ ‘The King’s new bride…’ ‘So, it is true, de Montfort thinks himself a god.’ Her escort revelled in the attention, nodding to the assembled courtiers shamelessly.

The dais before them housed a long table, set with finery before thirteen places. Only half of those places were taken, and Lillian fought to hide her disgust at the sight of Prince Leopold. To the prince’s right sat Sir Robert Collins, his face ashen and drawn, looking as though he might be sick at any moment. To the left sat a fawning vampire maid, inhuman of aspect yet attractive compared to the other females in the immense ballroom. Standing behind the prince’s chair, straight-backed, eyes front, was Colonel Ewart. If the Scot was repulsed by the scene before him, he did not show it; Lillian imagined he had long since thrown in his lot with the Knights Iscariot, and was perhaps accustomed to their ways. The maiden whispered something in the prince’s ear, and laughed musically. At this, Leopold—looking vacant and sluggish—turned to look at Lillian, and raised his glass to her.

‘Curtsey,’ de Montfort whispered.

Lillian did as she was bid, at which the prince turned back to the vampire woman and became at once absorbed in conversation with her. Sir Robert tried his best not to so much as glance furtively in Lillian’s direction.

‘What now?’ Lillian whispered.

‘Patience,’ de Montfort said through the side of his mouth.

Trumpets blared abruptly. The music stopped and the dancers froze as if they were figures in a clockwork music box, whose mechanism had wound down. A prancing, spindle-limbed creature in a costume reminiscent of a plague doctor leapt upon the stage, dancing to his own music for a moment before bowing low to the silent audience. Where the creature’s skin was exposed at the hands and throat, it was dark and dry, rustling like crumpled parchment.

‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, in a rasping, throaty voice that projected magically across the hall. ‘The Nameless King bids you welcome to Scarrowfall, the heart of the
wampyr
court and, as you all know, soon to be one of the great royal residences of the British Empire!’

This was met by a ripple of appreciative, yet mirthless, laughter.

‘We welcome to the royal table tonight a very special guest,’ the master of ceremonies went on. ‘A royal prince of England is among us, signalling, we hope, the dawn of a new age of cooperation and prosperity between our two peoples. Please join me in welcoming Prince Leopold to Scarrowfall, and in extending our condolences for the recent, tragic loss of his dear mother, the Queen.’ The creature adopted mock sincerity, and his performance drew further laughter and a ripple of applause from the crowd. The prince was unmoved. Sir Robert looked even more ill, appearing to shrink into his chair until he all but disappeared.

‘We also have a new member of our hallowed ranks, escorted here tonight by Lord Lucien de Montfort. We extend welcome to Lillian Hardwick, who will tonight be inducted into the Nameless Sisterhood. Come, child.’ The grotesque compere beckoned to Lillian.

Go to him.
De Montfort’s voice rang in Lillian’s mind. Though she had no desire to join this mysterious sisterhood, she moved to the side of the dais and ascended a small flight of steps. As she walked past Prince Leopold, drawing a surreptitious glare from Ewart, she looked around at anything she could use to escape. To kill. On the wall behind the stage, flickering torches burned theatrically. Great claymores hung upon the walls in front of tapestries depicting Old Testament scenes of plague and destruction. She wondered if her vampire form gave her the strength to wrest them from their brackets. She saw that Ewart was armed, and presumed therefore that other armed guards would also be present among the Nameless King’s attendants.

‘Come, come,’ said the master of ceremonies, a bony hand outstretched, strange, blackened fingers clacking long fingernails together. The creature smelled of oil and ash, and moved in unnatural, jerking motions as though its bones were fused together and it had to break them anew with each exaggerated sweep of its arms.

‘Our sister is shy!’ the creature proclaimed to the room. ‘Or perhaps she thinks I bear her ill will, for past transgressions. There, there, Lily-white, Snow-white… I hold no grudge for crimes committed in a former life. How could any of us immortals be so petty?’

Lillian did pause now, checking her stride as she came to the grim realisation of the compère’s identity. Though the voice was pained and rasping, it was unmistakeable. Had it not seemed such an impossibility, she would have guessed as soon as the scarecrow-figure took the stage.

‘I see she remembers Sir Valayar Shah at last!’ said the creature, clapping its hands together dramatically. ‘Miss Hardwick was surely destined to become one of us; she remembers not the lives she has taken. No matter! How can I bear any malice towards this creature, for she gave me the greatest gift of all: the gift of exquisite agony, that I shall remember for all eternity.’

At this, Shah removed his mask, and even Lillian, inured as she was to horrors, checked her advance and stifled a gasp. Shah’s flesh was no longer marble-white, but tobacco-brown. His rictus grin, which Lillian was certain had been carved surgically onto his features, was now more grotesque than ever, the electrical energy from the Tesla pistol having burned it back to the bone, the edges blackened like burned paper. His eyes still glittered behind the torn mask of a face.

Shah clacked his fingernails again, bringing Lillian back to her senses. She joined him at the centre of the stage quickly, taking his gnarled, dry hand, her skin crawling as his horribly long, bony fingers curled around hers, cracking as they did so. He began to bow, jerking awkwardly as though his back could hardly bend.

Curtsey.

Lillian heeded de Montfort’s mental instruction, feeling like a marionette in a puppet show, next to a black-clothed Punchinello. From up on the stage, the crowd looked even more ghastly, their smiles almost as grotesque as Shah’s, their forms shifting dizzyingly as glittering costumes reflected the torchlight. Smoke hung in the air above them in a fragrant miasma.

Shah raised Lillian’s hand, and twirled her around as if to display a prize, before passing her over to a human servant, dismissing her as yesterday’s news so that he could continue his address. Lillian was led by the hand around the back of the long table, past a group of three well-dressed vampires who looked at her with a confection of morbid fascination and haughty derision; past the arrangement of swords upon their fixed metal mounts; and was finally seated by yet another servant next to Sir Robert Collins. The comptroller of the prince’s household avoided her gaze diligently. The prince smiled, a vacant expression on his face as though he had already been at the wine for some time. Lillian felt Ewart’s eyes boring a hole in the back of her head.

To her right was the largest seat at the table—a great gilded throne, positioned at the centre of the top table. She felt something in the pit of her stomach, and only slowly came to recognise it as trepidation. The Nameless King would undoubtedly be seated next to her. Her audience with this mysterious creature could not be far away.

In front of Lillian’s seat, she was relieved to find a large silver candelabra blocking her view of the crowd, and theirs of her. Beneath its arms, however, she saw de Montfort being led up the steps at the side of the stage, whereupon he took a place four spaces along the table to Lillian’s right, and was instantly caught in the fawning pull of a hideous, wrinkled vampiress, whose teeth had been filed to points, and whose eyes shone in the candlelight. The creature tossed her head back as she laughed, revealing an ugly red brand upon a saggy, milk-white neck, and while she spoke to de Montfort, her eyes remained fixed upon Lillian, filled with malice.