Shadows of Asphodel (14 page)

Ardis strode through the dark and glittering night. She returned to the train station where Wendel had left her. As if the sky remembered, it began to rain again. She drew Chun Yi and watched raindrops hiss and die on the blade. She touched her fingertip to the steel, but it still felt cool and smooth under her skin.

How much blood did her sword want to devour?

A train’s shrill whistle pierced the air. Ardis shivered and sheathed her sword. Driven by determination, she bought a ticket for the next overnight train from Vienna to Frankfurt. There, she could travel to Brussels, then Antwerp. Her ticket wasn’t first-class this time, though, and Ardis smiled faintly at the memory.

She shared a couchette car with three young German men in school uniforms. They were all very polite to her, though they kept eyeing her sword. She stashed Chun Yi in the crack between her berth and the wall, then kicked off her boots and lay down. Weariness weighting her bones, Ardis stared at the ceiling.

“Chun Yi,” she mouthed to herself.

Wendel’s question echoed in her mind.

And how exactly did Pure Justice happen to fall into your hands?

It had belonged to her mother, and before that, it had been the property of her mother’s husband. He thought of her mother as his property as well, though he treated her even more poorly. At least he knew the value of the sword and kept it safe on the long voyage from China to America. He didn’t think of her mother as breakable.

It was her mother who broke him in the end, and with his own sword.

When he hurt her one too many times, she defended herself. That was what she called it—defense—but her eyes glinted with vengeance every time she told the story. In some way, Ardis took a twisted comfort in knowing both she and her mother had killed with Chun Yi. But she still didn’t know where the sword came from.

The overnight train clattered from Vienna and ventured into the deepening darkness. Ardis let her eyelids close, then fell asleep.

She dreamed of blood, and guns, and smoldering magic.

~

Frankfurt and Brussels passed by in a blur of gray skies and sprints through train stations to make her transfers. When Ardis arrived in Antwerp on Monday morning, she hopped from the train and glanced around with bleary eyes.

So this was the new Antwerp Central Station. She had heard about its impressive arches, ornate stonework, and immense windows that fanned like peacock tails. In America, you didn’t get this kind of fairytale architecture.

Ardis peered at a clock mounted above a gilded molding of Antwerp’s coat of arms.

A quarter past eight.

Damn, she was late. Diesel’s train arrived from Ghent at eight o’clock sharp, and she was supposed to meet him here.

Ardis broke into a run and barreled down the platform. A conductor blew his whistle at her, signaling for her to slow down, but she ignored him. Staggered by the immensity of the entrance hall, she slowed to a jog. She reached into her jacket and took out a photograph of Diesel from the envelope Margareta had given her in Vienna. He wore spectacles over his dark eyes, and had a neatly-trimmed white mustache.

Photograph in hand, she hunted for him in the entrance hall.

There, on a bench, Diesel sat with his hands folded in his lap. He wore an understated suit, but she could tell it was costly from the cut and style of the fabric. He had the same calm expression as his likeness in the photograph. When she walked up to him, he glanced into her eyes. She squared her shoulders and cleared her throat.

“Dr. Rudolf Diesel?” Ardis said.

“Yes?” he said

“My name is Ardis,” she said. “The archmages of Vienna sent me to travel with you.”

“Of course,” he said. “Much as I would rather travel alone.”

A subtle accent sharpened his soft voice. She remembered he had been born in Paris, then lived in London. He was a wanderer, like her.

“Sir?” Ardis said. “Are you ready?”

Diesel stood and bent to grab his luggage. She beat him to it and took his bag for him. He cleared his throat and stepped back.

“Please,” he said, “let me. I don’t require a porter as well as a bodyguard.”

“I insist,” Ardis said, though his bag was heavy.

Diesel sighed. “Very well. Shall we?”

He strolled toward the doors, and Ardis matched his stride. It was awkward to carry the bag with Chun Yi sheathed at her waist, though she managed not to struggle. She didn’t want him to think she was weak—or worse, extraneous.

“I had hoped for a bite to eat,” Diesel said, “unless the archmages wish otherwise?”

“I go where you go, sir.”

Ardis’s stomach rumbled, and Diesel’s mustache didn’t quite hide his small smile. As they stepped from Antwerp Central, the early sunlight slanted down into their eyes. He winced and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“What is it?” Ardis said.

“Oh, it’s nothing. Merely another migraine.”

“Ah.”

That was something she would have to watch out for. Headaches might distract him.

Diesel hailed a taxicab, then helped Ardis load his luggage into the back. When the driver glanced at them in the rearview mirror, his blue eyes met Ardis’s. For some reason, he wrinkled his nose. She stiffened in her seat.

Diesel pinched the knees of his trousers and tugged them straight as he sat in the taxi.

“Driver,” he said, “find us the finest nearby café.”

The driver nodded, but his jaw tightened. He gave the taxi some gas, and they accelerated smoothly away from Antwerp Central. Diesel leaned back in his seat and gazed at the city, but Ardis remained tense.

“Where are you from?” the driver said, and again he glanced at Ardis.

“Ghent,” Diesel said. “I’m here on business.”

“And your friend?”

He said the word like it was a synonym for
prostitute
. As if a lady of the night would ever dress so shabbily, or carry luggage for her client.

“I don’t know,” Diesel said, politely. “We have only just met.”

“I’m from America,” Ardis said to the driver.

The driver shook his head. “What
are
you?”

She leaned forward in her seat, not bothering to disguise her sneer.

“I’m a mercenary. And I’m here to make sure this man gets to where he needs to go as safely and quickly as possible. Understood?”

The driver’s eyes widened, and he gave the taxi more gas. Ardis’s cheeks burned, but she stared steadfastly out the windshield until they pulled up outside of a café. Diesel paid the driver, and they exited the taxi.

Before he shut the door, Ardis overhead the driver.

“Filthy Huns,” he muttered.

She almost laughed. Was he trying to insult her for being half-Chinese, or Diesel for being German? Luckily, Diesel didn’t seem to hear.

“Ardis, was it?” he said.

She nodded.

“I assume you will join me for breakfast?”

She mustered a smile, and followed him into the café. It smelled strongly of coffee and toast inside, and the wood-paneled walls gleamed with newness. They sat by a window and ordered waffles, which were promptly delivered steaming hot, with heaps of whipped cream and syrupy canned strawberries on the side.

“Waffles are essential in Belgium,” Diesel said.

Ardis nodded in reply. She appreciated his friendly chitchat, though this was a mission. She wasn’t here to entertain him.

As he shook more sugar over his waffle, Diesel glanced at her.

“American?” he said.

She nodded and stabbed a strawberry with her fork.

“They seem more interested in beer than in inventions,” he said, with a small shrug.

“Excuse me?”

“I sold the American rights to my engine to Adolphus Busch,” he said, “but he has been too busy with his brewery to profit much from them.”

Ardis cocked her head. “Is there more profit in London?”

Diesel held out his hands as if weighing his options.

“There is more opportunity there,” he said.

“Why not Germany?”

His spectacles flashed. “Are you loyal to America?”

He had a point.

~

At a riverside restaurant, Diesel’s colleagues joined them—two Belgian men, Georges Carels and Alfred Luckmann. From what Ardis could tell, Diesel and Carels were both directors of the Consolidated Diesel Engine Manufacturers. Carels ran a diesel engine factory in Ghent, where Luckmann worked as his chief engineer.

The men chatted in French, with a smattering of German, over their cream of endive soup.

French wasn’t a language that Ardis had mastered, so she sat against the wall and tried to be inconspicuous. Carels kept glancing her way and then laughing to his companions. Luckmann sat farther from her, fidgeting when she looked at him, until finally she pretended he was invisible. Diesel merely ignored her.

Finally, at six o’clock, they left the restaurant and took a taxi to the docks.

They boarded the SS
Dresden
, a gleaming steel steamship, and followed the Scheldt River into the sea. Carels and Luckmann disappeared below deck, but Diesel stood at the railing and watched the sun bleed gold into the water.

Ardis stood behind him, her teeth chattering in the icy sea spray and the wind.

“It must be dinnertime,” she said. “Your friends are waiting for you.”

Diesel sighed, and Ardis saw the darkness shadowing his eyes. He looked tired, so very tired, and older than she had thought.

“I suppose I should spend this one night with them,” he said.

Ardis frowned. “Aren’t they travelling to London with you? For the meeting?”

“They are,” he said.

She edged closer to him, one hand on the hilt of Chun Yi. The deck was nearly deserted at this instant, but soon they would sail outside of the influence of the Hex. Somewhere out on the English Channel, guns could kill again.

“You know why the archmages sent me,” she said quietly. “You aren’t safe out here.”

Diesel shrugged. “I am free to sell my patents to whomever I wish. Even if I sell them to the enemies of the German Empire.”

“Is the profit worth your life?”

He laughed dryly. “Do you honestly think that they will act upon their threats? My inventions are far too valuable to them.”

“Your inventions,” she said, “but you are only their inventor.”

“Only,” he said, and he laughed again.

Diesel looked back to the horizon. The sun had set, and the water was the dark color of a bruise. He shivered and rubbed his forehead.

“My friends are waiting for me,” he said in a distant voice, as if to convince himself.

Ardis touched his elbow, briefly, and walked with him down to the dining saloon. Inside, it felt a bit chilly, but cheery, with white paneling on the walls and electric lights in the chandeliers. Diesel found Carels and Luckmann and joined them at their table. Ardis sat alone nearby, to the obvious curiosity of the waiters.

She ordered a simple dinner—oxtail stew and boiled potatoes—and remained vigilant.

The
Dresden
’s dining saloon was fairly well visited this evening, with perhaps two hundred other passengers dining. None of them looked particularly out of place, but she didn’t expect anyone to attack Diesel in so public of a venue.

If she had been hired to threaten a man into cooperation, she would do it in his cabin.

With that in mind, Ardis waited. She watched Diesel joke and laugh with his companions, the darkness outside almost forgotten. He ordered several courses from the menu, encouraged by the flirtatious blonde waitress. Diesel started with the French onion soup, worked his way through halibut in hollandaise sauce, and finished with a chocolate éclair and coffee. Everything looked delicious from where Ardis sat. She poked at her potatoes broodingly, wishing she hadn’t spent so much money at the swordsmith.

Luckmann fingered a packet of cigarettes. “Shall we go for a stroll?”

Smiling, Diesel folded his napkin and stood. “That sounds like a fine idea.”

Ardis abandoned her oxtail stew and moved to follow them.

“Don’t forget your shadow, Diesel,” Carels teased.

Carels smiled at Ardis, but he was also looking at her like she was an exotic spice to taste. She brought that out in some men.

She followed them above deck, where stars glittered in the sky like shattered glass.

“Cigarette?” Luckmann said.

Diesel shook his head. “No, thank you.”

Luckmann shielded his cigarette from the wind and shared a match with Carels. Diesel leaned against the railing and looked heavenward. They talked together, their voices boisterous, and she wondered how much wine they had drunk.

“Well,” Carels said at last, “I think it time to be in bed.”

Diesel nodded. “We have an important day ahead of us.”

Carels leaned forward to clasp Diesel’s arm, and Ardis smelled a whiff of the wine on his breath. He caught her eye and winked.

“Good night!” he said.

Diesel lingered while his friends disappeared below deck. The
Dresden
plowed through a wave, and he stumbled forward. He staggered against the steamship’s railing. Ardis caught him by the elbow before he could fall overboard.

“Careful!” she said.

“Thank you,” he said, and he mopped his brow with his handkerchief.

“Too much wine to drink, sir?”

Diesel shook his head. “I had no wine, only water and coffee.”

Ardis’s stomach plummeted. He didn’t stink of alcohol like Carels, but he slurred his words. He gripped the railing, his knuckles tight, then lowered himself awkwardly to the deck. With unfocused eyes, he panted for air.

“Diesel,” Ardis said, “I need you to stay awake. Diesel!”

His eyelids closed, and he slumped on the deck. Ardis swallowed down her panic. She couldn’t fight poison with a sword. She leapt to her feet. A blonde woman in a uniform climbed above deck—the waitress from dinner.

“Get help!” Ardis shouted. “He needs a doctor!”

The waitress ran toward them, and then Ardis realized how odd it was for a waitress to be above deck so late, even to sneak a cigarette.

And how easy it would be to slip Diesel poison in his coffee.