The Parasol Protectorate Boxed Set (167 page)

“You don't look like an Alpha at all!”

“Exactly. Look at Lady Kingair and Lord Maccon—clearly being Alpha plays hell with one's wardrobe!”

Professor Lyall stepped in again. “Stop it, both of you. Channing, you will have to take my word for it. You know
how long it takes to control wolf form, let alone master a second one. Give the pup a chance.”

“Why should I?” The white wolf was petulant.

“Because I said so. And because he might be your Alpha someday. Wouldn't want to get off on the wrong paw, now, would you?”

“As if Lord Maccon would allow any such thing.”

“Lord Maccon is in Egypt. You take your orders from me.”

Biffy had never heard Lyall sound so forceful before. He rather liked it. It worked, for Channing backed down. He was willing to fight Biffy, but not Lyall; that was clear.

“Such an unpleasant fellow, and so attractive; it makes it that much worse,” commented Biffy to Lyall later that night.

“Now, don't you worry about Channing. You'll be able to handle him eventually. Attractive, is he?”

“Not so much as you, by any means.”

“Right answer, my dandy. Right answer.”

Someone was screaming.

It took Alexia a long time to realize it was her. Only then did she stop, turn, and charge across the balloon to Zayed.

“Go back down! We must go back for him!”

“Lady, it is full sun. We cannot go down in daylight.”

Alexia gripped his arm desperately. “But you must! Please, you must.”

He shook her off. “Sorry, lady, there is only up now. He is dead anyway.”

Alexia staggered back as though physically struck. “Please, don't say such a thing! I beg you.”

Zayed only looked at her calmly. “Lady, no one could survive that fall. Find yourself a new man. You are still young. You breed well.”

“He isn't just any man!
Please
go back.” Alexia tried to grab at his hands. She had no idea how the balloon worked but she was willing to try.

Madame Lefoux came to her, pulling her gently off of Zayed. “Come away, Alexia, please.”

Alexia shook Genevieve off and stumbled to the side of the basket, craning her neck to see, but they were rising fast. Soon they would hit the aether currents and then there really would be no going back.

She saw Conall lying in the sand. She saw the gastropod give up chasing the balloon and stop next to her husband. The men in white jumped down and surrounded his broken form.

Alexia opened her parasol. Perhaps it would help if she jumped; perhaps somehow it would catch the air and slow her fall.

She climbed up onto the edge of the basket, parasol open.

Madame Lefoux tackled her and yanked her back inside the basket.

“Don't be an imbecile, Alexia!”

“Someone has to go back for him!” Alexia struggled against her friend.

Zayed left off supervision of the balloon to come and sit on Alexia's legs, immobilizing her. “Lady, don't die. Goldenrod wouldn't like it.”

The Frenchwoman grabbed Alexia by the face, one hand to each cheek, forcing her to look deep into her green eyes. “He's dead. Even if the fall didn't get him, he
was badly wounded, and there was that shot from the smoothbore elephant gun. No mortal could survive both. It'd be hard for a werewolf to survive such a thing and he's no werewolf anymore.”

“But I never told him I loved him. I only yelled at him!” Alexia felt as if there was nothing securing her to reality but Genevieve's green eyes.

Genevieve wrapped her arms about Alexia. “For you two, that
was
loving.”

Alexia refused to believe he was gone. Not her big strong mountain of a man. Not her Conall. The desert warmth surrounded her. The sun shone bright and cheerful. The sensation of repulsion had lifted at last. But she was cold; her face felt sunken in against the hollows of her cheeks, and her mind was blank.

A small, soft hand pressed against her freezing cheek. “Mama?” said Prudence.

Alexia stopped thinking that her parasol might allow her to jump out of an air balloon. She stopped feeling like she was splitting in half, like her soul, if she had had one, was being wrenched down through her feet, a tendril, a tether to the man far below.

She stopped feeling anything at all.

The balloon jerked, catching first the southern current that had brought them to Luxor, and then after a few masterful manipulations from Zayed, floated up into a higher western current, one that, Alexia vaguely heard him say to Genevieve, would connect them to the northern route.

Even though they spoke directly above her head, Genevieve still holding her close, Prudence still cuddled up against her, the little girl's eyes huge and dark and worried
on her mother's face, it all seemed to be occurring far away.

Alexia let it. She let the numbness take over, immersed herself in the lack of feeling.

Five days later, in the darkness several hours before dawn, they landed in Alexandria.

E
verything was still chaos around her, but Lady Alexia Maccon sailed through it all on a sea of profound numbness. She allowed Madame Lefoux to take charge. The French inventor told the acting troupe about Lord Maccon's death. She explained what had happened using scientifically precise language. She also informed them that they had failed to find Primrose.

For ten days, Ivy and Tunstell had waited, with no contact from the kidnappers, their hopes pinned on Alexia and Conall discovering the whereabouts of their daughter. Now Lady Maccon had returned with the earl dead, and Primrose still missing.

And Lady Maccon? Lady Maccon was also missing. Nothing seemed to reach her. She responded to direct questions but softly, quietly, and with long pauses. She was also uninterested in food. Even Ivy was shaken out of her own worry enough to be upset by this.

But Alexia did cope. Alexia was always one to cope.
She did what needed to be done, once someone pointed it out to her.

Ivy, between tears, managed to explain that she had been unable to convince the aethographor to give her Lady Maccon's messages. So Alexia went to bed, slept most of the day away with dreams full of Conall's face as he fell, woke up, dressed automatically, and went to get the messages herself. There were nine of them from Biffy, one for every sunset she had missed. The more recent were merely worried notes of “Where are you?” but the earlier ones told such a depressing truth that Alexia was almost glad she was too numb to be affected by it.

Not Floote.

Not
her
Floote.

Not the man who had always been there for her. Always provided her with the necessary cup of tea and a soothing, “Yes, madam.” Who had changed her nappies as a baby, who had helped her sneak out of the Loontwills' house as a young woman. Not Floote. Yet, it made horribly perfect sense. Who else but Floote would have had all the necessary contacts? Who else but Floote would have the training in how to kill a werewolf? Alexia had seen him take on vampires firsthand; she knew he had the ability.

Lady Maccon returned to the hotel, clutching her stack of messages in one hand, moving like an automaton through the bustling city streets that only a week and a half earlier she had found more friendly and charming than any other. In the hotel, she caught sight of Madame Lefoux and Ivy in one of the private parlors off the reception area. She floated past, not even realizing that she should extend an evening greeting. There was nothing left in her for even the social graces. She felt, in fact, very
absent from herself. Adrift, as if nothing might bring her back again. Not even tea.

But at Madame Lefoux's summoning gesture, she wandered into their private boudoir and, in answer to her friend's polite inquiry as to her health, said, “As it turned out, it was Floote.”

Genevieve looked confused.

Ivy gasped and said, “But he was
here
. Floote was here, looking for you. We sent him down the Nile after you. I thought… Oh, silly me, he isn't with you? I thought he would have caught up. Oh, I don't know what I thought.”

Even that didn't pull Alexia back to the here and now. “Floote was looking for me? He probably wanted to explain himself.”

Madame Lefoux pressed for details. “Explain what, exactly, Alexia?”

“Oh, you know, the God-Breaker Plague. Killing Dubh. That kind of thing.” Alexia tossed Genevieve the little stack of papyrus papers from the aethographor station. “Biffy says…” Alexia trailed off, standing quietly while Madame Lefoux read over the notes.

Ivy said, “Oh, Alexia, do sit down!”

“Oh, should I?” Alexia sat.

Prudence came running in. “Mama!”

Alexia didn't look up.

The little girl grabbed at her hand. “Mama, bad men! Back.”

“Oh, yes? Did you hide under the bed again?”

“Yes!”

The nursemaid came in, clutching Percy to her trembling breast. “They came back, Mrs. Tunstell! They came back!”

Ivy stood, face pale, clutching at her throat with both hands. “Oh, heavens. Percy, is he all right?”

“Yes, madam. Yes.” The nursemaid passed over the redheaded infant to Ivy's clutching embrace. Percy, unperturbed, burped contentedly.

“See,” said Prudence, still trying to get her mother's attention.

“Yes, dear, very wise. Hiding under the bed, good girl.” Alexia was busy staring off into space.

“Mama, see!” Prudence was waving something in front of her mother's face.

Madame Lefoux took it from her gently. It was a roll of heavy papyrus tied with cord. The inventor unwound it and read the missive aloud.

“ ‘Send Lady Maccon for the baby, alone. Tonight, after sunset.' ” She added, “And they provide an address.”

“Oh, Primrose!” Ivy burst into floods of tears.

Alexia said, “I suppose they were waiting for me to return.”

“Do you think they wanted you all along?” Madame Lefoux looked upset.

Alexia blinked. She felt as though her brain were moving like a snail—a real snail, slow and slimy. “That's possible, but then, they kidnapped the wrong infant, didn't they?”

The Frenchwoman frowned in deep thought. “Yes, I suppose they did. What if that's it? What if they were after Prudence? What if they are taking you as a substitute? What if they still think they have Prudence, not Primrose?”

Alexia was already standing and wandering toward the door, her footsteps slow and measured.

“Where are you going?”

“It's after sunset,” said Lady Maccon, as though it were perfectly obvious.

“But, Alexia, be sensible. You can't simply trot to their orders!”

“Why not? If it returns Primrose to us?”

Ivy, trembling, could not speak. She looked back and forth between Alexia and the Frenchwoman. Her hat, a mushroom-puff turban affair with a peacock-style fan of feathers out the back, quivered with a surfeit of emotion.

“It could be dangerous!” protested Madame Lefoux.

“It's always dangerous,” replied Lady Maccon flatly.

“Alexia, don't be a peewit! You can't
want
to die. You're not one for melodrama. Conall is
gone
. You have to keep on going without him.”

“I am going. I'm going right out to find the kidnappers and retrieve Primrose.”

“That's not what I meant! What about Prudence? She needs her mother.”

“She has Lord Akeldama.”

“That's not quite the same thing.”

“No, it's better—mother and father all rolled into one attractive package, and he doesn't look to be dying anytime soon.”

“Oh, goodness, Alexia, please, wait. We must talk about this, devise a plan.”

Alexia paused, not really thinking out her next maneuver.

The hotel clerk came in to the parlor at that moment.

He approached Genevieve. “Mr. Lefoux? There is a gentleman for you. A Mr. Naville. Claims he has some important information to impart.”

Genevieve rose and brushed past Lady Maccon. “Just wait a few minutes, please, Alexia?”

Alexia merely stood, unresponsive. She watched as the Frenchwoman strode across the reception room to a small gaggle of gentlemen. One of them was very young. Another was carrying a leather case stamped with the image of an octopus. She watched Madame Lefoux tilt her head, lift up her short hair, and pull down her cravat and collar, exposing the back of her neck. She was showing them her octopus tattoo. Alexia's brain said,
Those are members of the Order of the Brass Octopus
. Her practical side said,
I hope she doesn't tell them about the preternatural mummies
.
There will be a race to the bodies, to use them in munitions, to shift the balance against immortals
. Her even more practical side remembered that there were men dressed in white willing to defend those mummies to the death. Her husband's death.

The rest of her kept walking, in defiance of Genevieve's request. She had her parasol hanging from its chatelaine at her waist. She had the address of the location on a scrap of paper. She moved across the reception room and out into the street, Genevieve unaware of her movements.

There Alexia hailed a donkey boy and told him the address. The boy nodded eagerly. With very little effort at all, she climbed astride, the boy yelled to his creature in Arabic, and they started forward.

The donkey took her into an unfamiliar sector of the city, a sad and abandoned-looking structure behind the customs house. She slid off the animal and paid the boy generously, sending him away when he would have waited. She climbed the step and pushed through the reed mats of the doorway into what looked to be some
kind of warehouse, possibly for bananas, if the sweet smell was to be believed.

“Come in, Lady Maccon,” said a polite, slightly accented voice out of the dim echoing interior.

With a flitter of speed customary to the breed, the vampire was right up next to her, almost too close, showing his fangs.

“Good evening, Chancellor Neshi.”

“You are alone.”

“As you see.”

“Good. You will explain to me why the child isn't working.”

“First let me see that Primrose is safe.”

“You thought I would bring her here? Oh, no, she is left behind, and she is safe. But I thought the abomination's name was Prudence? You English and your many names.”

“It is Prudence. Did you want my daughter? You got the wrong child.”

The chancellor reeled back and blinked at her. “I did?”

“You did. You got my friend's baby. She has not been happy about that.”

“Not the abomination?”

“Not the abomination.”

There was a long pause.

“So might we have her back, then?” Alexia asked.

The vampire went from confused, to angry, to resolved. “No. If I cannot use the abomination, I will use you. She cannot be let to suffer any longer.”

“Is this about Queen Matakara?”

“Of course.”

“Or should I say Queen Hatshepsut?”

“To use that name, you should say
King
Hatshepsut.”

“What does
your
queen want with
my
daughter?”

“She wants a solution. An easy solution. One that could be smuggled in and then back out with none of the others noticing. But, no, this had to be difficult. There had to be two black-haired English babies, and we got the wrong one. Now I am stuck with you.”

“I am not easy to smuggle.”

“You most certainly are not, Lady Maccon.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Come with me and you will learn why.”

“And Primrose?”

“And we will return to you the useless baby.”

He led her from the building and together they walked toward the hive.

It was a long, quiet walk through the city. Lady Maccon allowed herself to drift on that sea of absence.

Despite this, she found herself eventually thinking about Queen Matakara. Trapped in that chair, her eyes as sad as anything Alexia had ever seen or felt until now. They were the eyes of someone who wanted to die. She could sympathize.

“It's Matakara,” she said into the silent night, stopping in her tracks.

Chancellor Neshi stopped as well.

“She set the God-Breaker Plague originally
and
she started it up again. She and my father.” Alexia talked out her revelations. “They struck a deal.”

The chancellor continued for her. “He broke with the OBO without telling them what he found. He agreed not to tell the Templars either. In return he got to continue the plague's expansion with the certain knowledge that eventually it would take my queen, too.”

“Why not just bring a preternatural mummy into the room with her? Wouldn't that work?” Alexia began walking once more.

The vampire said, exasperated, “Do you think I haven't tried? But your father left iron orders. None of my people ever seem to be able to get to a preternatural body fast enough. It's like they are networked. It's like there is someone in charge who keeps an eye on all the preternaturals in the world. He won't let me break the original agreement, even from the grave.”

Alexia wondered if Floote had done as he said and had her father's body cremated, or if Alessandro Tarabotti was one of those who lay exposed above Hatshepsut's Temple. “Why not simply ask me to do it? I was right there. I would have been happy to touch her.”

“Not in front of the others. They can't know that their queen wants to die. They can't possibly know. Done at the wrong time, they would swarm—swarm without a queen. That is not pretty, Lady Maccon. I could sneak a child in and out easily enough, but you, Lady Maccon, are
not
sneaky. Besides, if Lady Maccon, English, killed Queen Matakara, it would cause an international incident.”

“Why not simply stick with the plan and wait for the plague to expand? It's already reached the edge of Alexandria.”