The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (160 page)

The poor man's eyes rolled up into his head and he followed in the path of many a young lady that evening and fainted dead away behind the desk.

Alexia watched him fall, too dazed to make any effort to help him, and then turned back to her husband, now a wolf, carefully picking up his discarded cloak with his mouth.

“Conall, really, the sun is almost up. Do you think you'll have time…?”

But he was already gone, dashing out the door, nose lowered before him like a scent hound after a fox.

Lord Conall Maccon returned well after sunup. Alexia was coping with an utterly distraught Mrs. Tunstell. She had finally convinced Ivy to take a dram of poppy to quiet her nerves. At which point both Ivy and her nerves became rather floppy and confused.

Ivy managed to raise her head from where it bent low over Percy, asleep in her lap, when Lord Maccon tapped quietly at the door.

Mr. Tumtrinkle, seated facing the door with Alexia's gun in his lap, started violently and fired Ethel at the earl. Lord Maccon, slower than usual after a long evening's run and a good few hours dashing about as a human under the scorching heat of an Egyptian sun, ducked too late, but the bullet missed him.

Alexia tsked at the actor and put out her hand for the return of her pistol. The man handed it over, apologized profusely to Lord Maccon, and resumed his chair in embarrassed silence. Lady Maccon noted, however, that he did take one of the rapiers, tipped for use in stage fights and thus rather useless, and placed it to hand. Alexia supposed he could ferociously poke someone if he tried hard enough.

“Osh, Lord Maccon!” cried out Ivy, head lolling back and eyes rolling slightly. “Ish that you? Hash you any… indigestion… no… information?”

The earl gave his wife a pained look.

“Laudanum,” explained Alexia succinctly.

“Not as such, Mrs. Tunstell. I am very sorry. Wife, if you could spare me a moment?”

“Aleshia!”

“Yes, Ivy dear?”

“We should go dancing!”

“But, Ivy, we're in Egypt and your daughter is missing.”

“But I can't see myself from here!”

Alexia stood up from where she was seated next to her nonsensical friend, experienced some difficulty in convincing Ivy to let go of her hand, and followed her husband out the door.

He spoke in a hushed voice. “I traced Madame Lefoux to the dahabiya docks. A peculiar sort of place. Lost the scent there. I'm afraid she may have boarded a ship. I'm going to go ascertain how Tunstell is getting on with the local authorities. Then I think we might need to notify the consular general. Bad publicity, very bad, a missing British baby on his watch.”

Alexia nodded. “I'll go back to the docks, shall I? See if I can work my womanly charm and discover who accepted Madame Lefoux's fare and where she might be headed.”

“You have womanly charm?” The earl was genuinely surprised. “I thought you simply harangued a blighter until he gave in.”

Alexia gave him a look.

Lord Maccon snorted. “Only one direction to head if one is going by dahabiya.”

“Up the Nile to Cairo?”

“Indeed.”

“Well, they might at least tell a female if a passenger had a baby. They might even be convinced to say if she was chasing after someone.”

“Very well, Alexia, but be careful, and take your parasol.”

“Of course, Conall. I shall require a parasol, as the sun is up. Don't tell me you hadn't noticed.”

“Yes, very amusing, wife.”

Neither of them mentioned sleep, although Alexia was feeling the strain of having been awake since four the previous afternoon. Bed would have to wait; they had a baby to catch and a Frenchwoman to trace.

Biffy awoke before sunset and, after struggling with his hair for a quarter of an hour, returned to the maps he'd laid out of Egypt and the expansion of the God-Breaker Plague. He'd awakened with a certain feeling that he was missing something. He went back to the circles he'd drawn and reviewed notes on times indicating the plague's expansion and general location. He began to extrapolate inward, trying to determine its course. What if the plague had always been expanding, very slowly? What if there was a starting point?

He got so distracted he very nearly missed his appointment with Lady Maccon and the aethographor. He took the maps with him to the receiving chamber to await any missive, studying them carefully.

It was while he was waiting alone in that tiny attic room that he came upon the missing piece of the puzzle. All signs pointed to the fact that the epicenter for the God-Breaker Plague was near Luxor, at one prominent bend in the Nile River close to the Valley of the Kings. His books said very little on the archaeology of the area, but one report indicated that the bend housed the funerary temple of the expunged and vilified Pharaoh Hatshepsut. He had no idea how this might tie into the plague, but he resolved to send Lady Maccon the information, should she contact him that evening.

He was about to creep out and gather together some acid and a metal slate when the receiving chamber activated, the metal particles between the receiver panes shifted about, and a message appeared.

“Ruffled Parasol. Conall upset. Primrose kidnapped. Uproar.”

Biffy recoiled. What interest could Egyptian kidnappers possibly have in Mr. and Mrs. Tunstell's daughter? The child of thespians. How odd. He awaited further information but nothing more came through. He moved next door, dialed in the appropriate frequensor codes, and sent his message back.

“GBP center is Hatshepsut's temple, Nile River, Luxor. Wingtip Spectator.”

Silence met that and after a quarter of an hour, Biffy supposed his message had been received and there was nothing else to relate. He shut down the aethographor, made certain his own missive was tucked securely away, and ate the scrap of paper on which he'd scribbled Lady Maccon's. He'd witnessed Lyall do so in the past with delicate information and figured it was a werewolf tradition he'd better uphold. Then he went to find his Beta, not certain he was authorized to relay either bits of information.

It was in thinking about this, and wondering who might kidnap Primrose and how Lady Maccon might be coping with this new crisis—violently, he suspected—that Biffy came upon another realization. Following that realization to its inevitable, horrible conclusion, he detoured toward the servants' quarters.

Floote was sitting alone at the massive table in the kitchen, polishing the brass candlesticks, a sturdy apron tied about his waist. His jacket was off and draped over
the back of a nearby chair. The moment he saw Biffy, he made a move toward it, but Biffy said hastily, “No, Floote, please don't trouble yourself. I simply had a question.”

“Sir?”

“When Mr. Tarabotti traveled in Egypt, did he visit Luxor?” Biffy came casually over to Floote's shoulder, standing a little too close, pretending to inspect the polishing. He bent down as though particularly interested in one of the candlesticks and with one hand behind his back, quick as any vampire, snaked the tiny little gun out of the inside pocket of Floote's jacket.

Biffy tucked the gun up his own sleeve, wondering that there weren't more werewolf and vampire conjurers; sleight of hand was easy when one had supernatural abilities.

Floote answered him, “Yes, sir,” without looking up from his polishing.

“Well, ahem, yes. Thank you, Floote, carry on.”

“Very good, sir.”

Biffy escaped to his own room where he locked the door and immediately took out the gun.

It was one of the smallest he had ever seen, beautifully made with a delicate pearl handle. It was of the single-shot variety popular some thirty years ago or more, outdated in this age of revolvers. It must be sentiment that urged Floote to keep it, for it wasn't the most useful of weapons. Difficult to hit anything at more than five paces and it probably shot crooked. Biffy swallowed, hoping against hope he wasn't about to find what he predicted. With a twist, he opened and checked the chamber. It was loaded. He tipped the bullet out into his hand. Such a small thing to damn a man so utterly. For that bullet was
made of hardwood, capped in metal to take the heat and caged in silver. It was not quite the same as the modern ones, of course, but still undoubtedly a sundowner bullet.

At first Biffy didn't want to believe it, but Floote
had
been at liberty the night that Dubh was shot—with all his employers out of the house. Floote had access to Lord Akeldama's dirigible, for no drone would comment on Lady Maccon's butler coming and going from Lord Akeldama's house. Floote owned a gun that was loaded with sundowner bullets of exactly the kind with which Dubh was shot. Then later, when Lady Maccon rushed in with the injured man, Floote had been left alone with Dubh, and Dubh had died. Floote certainly had the opportunity. But why? Would the butler really kill to protect his dead master's secrets?

Biffy sat for a long time, rolling the bullet about in his hand and thinking.

A polite knock disturbed his reverie. He stood to open the door.

Floote walked quietly in, his jacket back on.

“Mr. Rabiffano.”

“Floote.” Biffy felt strangely guilty, standing there holding Floote's gun, which was obviously very precious to him, the damning bullet in his other hand.

Biffy looked at Floote.

Floote looked at Biffy.

Biffy knew, and he knew that Floote knew he knew—so to speak. He handed the butler his gun but kept the bullet as evidence, tucking it into his waistcoat pocket.

“Why, Floote?”

“Because he left his orders first, sir.”

“But to kill a werewolf on a dead man's orders?”

Floote smiled the tiniest of half smiles. “You forget what Alessandro Tarabotti was, sir. What the Templars trained him for. What he trained me to help him do.”

Biffy blanched, horrified. “You have killed werewolves before Dubh?”

“Not all werewolves, Mr. Rabiffano, are like you, or Professor Lyall, or Lord Maccon. Some of them are like Lord Woolsey—pests to be exterminated.”

“And that's why you killed Dubh?”

Floote ignored the direct question. “Mr. Tarabotti gave his orders, sir,” the butler repeated himself, “long before anyone else. I was to see it through to the end. That was my promise. And I've kept it.”

“What else, Floote? What else have you been keeping in motion? Was Mr. Tarabotti responsible for the God-Breaker Plague expanding? Is that what he was doing over there?”

Floote only moved toward the door.

Biffy went after him, hand to his arm. He didn't want to use his werewolf strength and was horrified by the idea that he might have to, on a member of Lady Maccon's domestic staff! A longtime family retainer, no less—the very idea!

Floote paused and stared at the floor of the hallway, rather than at Biffy. “I really must see that carpet cleaned. It's disgraceful.”

Biffy firmed up his grip.

“He left me with two instructions, sir—protect Alexia and protect the Mandate of the Broken Ankh.”

Biffy knew from the way the butler's face closed over that he would get no more out of Floote that evening. But Biffy also could not afford to be wrong. Even knowing
that it would disrupt the smooth running of the household, even knowing there was danger both at home and abroad, even knowing that Floote was elderly, even knowing that there would be werewolves traipsing around with badly tied cravats as a result, Biffy stuffed down his scruples. He drew back his fist and with supernatural speed and strength, tapped the butler on the temple hard enough to knock him senseless.

With a very sad sigh, the dandy flipped Floote's limp body easily over one well-dressed shoulder and carried him down to the wine cellar. There he removed the man's guns—there were two, as it transpired—from his pockets, searched for anything else of interest, and locked him in. It was ironic that the wine cellar had originally been fortified as a prison to hold Biffy only two years ago.

Biffy didn't feel victorious. He didn't feel as though he had solved some great mystery. He was simply sad. He was also grateful it would be up to Lyall to sort this mess out. His dear Beta would have to decide whether to tell Lady Kingair or not. Biffy did not envy him that conversation. With the heavy heart of a man burdened with unpleasant news, Biffy went looking for Lyall.

Alexia didn't want to awaken Conall—he was catching up on a few hours of sleep after a very hectic day—but she had news to relate and she was near to dropping from exhaustion herself.

She'd been awake over twenty-four hours with no trace of poor Primrose. No ransom note, no trail, nothing. The sun would set in less than an hour, and Alexia felt like she'd been at her inquiries for an age.

“Conall!”

He snuffled into the pillow.

She reached out to touch his bare shoulder with her bare hand, turning him human. Even that didn't awaken him. He was knackered. Lord knows what he had been up to, gallivanting around angry and then tracing the baby and dealing with politicians. He had probably expended a lot of energy.
And
the sun was very hot and bright in Egypt.

“Conall, really. Wake up.”

The earl blinked tawny eyes open and glared at her. Before she could react, he gathered her in against him in a warm embrace. Always amorous, her husband. Then he seemed to remember that not only was there a crisis, he was still angry over her siding with Professor Lyall.

He pushed her away petulantly, like a small child. “Yes, Alexia?”

Alexia sighed, knowing he needed time to forgive her, if he ever would, but finding it hard not to be able to hold him under such nerve-wracking circumstances. “I've just had a message from Biffy. Or, better said, I remembered at the last minute my standing aethographor appointment. I managed to relay to him the current crisis, not that he could do anything, but I thought home ought to know. He sent a note back. Then I had to stop. The transmitter was booked and they booted me off.
Me!
Now, of all times! You know, I tried to extend the time, but the little old lady behind me in the queue had a terribly important message for her grandson and would not be reasoned with!”