Steampunk Omnibus: A Galvanic Century Collection (43 page)

"Aldora has considerable freedom in affairs of the heart, should she choose to indulge. Do not fancy our marriage a barrier to your passions, sir. I certainly do not."

Fuller drew his hand back and stiffened. "Sir, I hardly think that that's appropriate."

"So little that's worthwhile is," Bartleby said. He was disappointed, but not surprised at the Constable's reticence. How... sober of the man. He stood.

The constable was on his feet a moment later. "Back to the estate, sir?"

"Not quite. The foreman mentioned something about missing copper?"

"An inventory error, most likely. I don't see how it's relevant, and we really should be getting back."

"Nothing is inconsequential. Everything is interconnected." Bartleby steadied himself, blinking a few times. "Just one more stop, I promise you."

"Then where, sir?"

"Wherever the copper is stored. I'm close, Fuller."

"Close, sir?"

"Close to working it all out. The disappearances. Trust me, it'll be worth it."

"I hope so, sir." Fuller looked at his pocket-watch with a frown. "I hope so."

***

Sirs,

I must again offer your thanks in allowing me the freedom to serve you. Research progresses well, but I am afraid that we have outgrown our present facilities. I have sent along with this missive a sample of the weapons of war the technicians under my command have been creating. While my predecessor had few successes in this regard, I maintain that it was both a lack of discipline invested in his underlings, and a moral weakness that kept him from more lucrative development paths.

As you will see from the sample I have sent, this minor galvanic application has implications that extend beyond the battlefield. I am certain that, should you allow me greater facilities and resources, what we can turn this technology to is limitless.

To be more specific, I need access to manufacturing facilities, a small and easily contained population of test subjects, and distance from major population centres. I have included several locational candidates. If this meets with your approval, we shall depart Kiev immediately.

As always, your servant,

Talos

Chapter 4

Aldora was less than pleased when she discovered that Alton had left her mother to greet guests by her lonesome.

She'd managed, for the third time, to evade her maids-of-honour. The girls meant well enough, but they were also sticklers for tradition and had been instrumental in keeping her distracted and sequestered away. The entire affair was becoming bothersome; what was, in essence, a simple business transaction had become such an
event
. She couldn't wait for the thing to be over and for all the guests to leave.

She paused by the second floor windows and gazed out over the lawn. It was easy to get a head full of the ebb and flow of the garden party's dynamic from this angle, and her keen eyes tracked individuals as they bowed, curtsied, spoke, and sparred. She should be out there. Down there. Seeing to her interests and building social capital. As much as she needed the time to herself to recover from the events of the last year, she hated being so far removed from things, and while she trusted Alton to handle the manoeuvring...

Wait. Where was her fiancée?

He had a particular graceful way of moving, even when intoxicated, and yet she did not spot him. Were he there he'd be the centre of the party's social flow, directing and using it, but the connections had collapsed into a random series of collisions and interactions. It was organic, unplanned, and inefficient. From its state she judged that he'd been gone for at least an hour.

Her fingers lay along the window's pane as she sought him in vain, brow furrowing, frown deepening.

There was her mother. Standing, leaning against a lawn-table, talking to Brigadier Wilson. By their postures it looked like he was upset, and she trying to placate him. Alton Bartleby was nowhere to be seen.

She might have to hurt him. She hiked up the hem of her wedding gown and stormed down the stairs. Wedding tradition or no, her mother shouldn't have to shoulder hostess duties. Not in her condition.

***

Aldora did her best to ignore the looks of surprise on the faces of her guests. It was a major faux pas for the bride to make an appearance, but not one that was insurmountable. A part of her mind, the part not occupied with concern for her mother or anger at her fiancée, was already hard at work coming up with a strategy to turn her presence from social mistake to avante guarde innovation. Within the month she'd have brides bucking the conventions and hosting their own wedding parties from Southampton to Prague. It was only a matter of the right attitude in the right ears, and thankfully, many of those ears were here at her party.

Concern washed the strategy away and she almost broke into a run when she saw the state her mother was in. The sweat on her brow, the slackness of her lips, the way her shoulders sagged -- none of it had been clearly visible from above. Alton could wait. There'd be plenty of time for recrimination on their honeymoon.

To her surprise, instead of the expression of weary endurance she'd expected, as she drew near she could see that her mother was quite pleased. So pleased, in fact, that when she noticed her daughter approaching there were no words of disapproval at her premature appearance.

"Aldora, look!" Her mother gestured towards the guest she'd been speaking to. "It's Grayson! He managed to make it home for your wedding. Isn't that splendid?"

Time seemed to slow to a molasses pace as Aldora's gaze zeroed in on the face of the man in front of her. As impossible as his attendance was, there was no mistaking her brother. She remembered the shape of his cheekbones, the slight curve to his grin, the deep blue of the eyes that mirrored her own, the noble bearing from the last time she'd seen his face, high above the city of London

She stopped, her heart thundering in her ears. Every instinct screamed that she should run, but all she could do was stare dumbly at the man, unable to comprehend how such a thing could be possible. The world around her funneled itself into a narrow path that lead only to him, the conversation around the pair turning tinny and indistinct.

Grayson regarded her with that cocksure expression that she'd hated while growing up, hat tilted back on his head, long coat buttoned up to mid-breast.

"You look surprised to see me, sister," he said in a tone dripping with subtle mockery.

"You're not here," she whispered. "You can't be here."

"All you all right, dear?" her mother said, taking a step in her direction. "You're not overdoing it, are you?"

Aldora felt as frail as her mother looked. It hit her in a rush, everything she'd endured through since her brother had died a year-and-a-half ago. Facing Grayson aboard his airship and discovering that he, her flesh and blood, was the pirate preying on a blockaded London. Dealing with the death of her long-time lover, Penny's father Henry, at the hands of the Spanish madman Sarsosa in the jungles of Mexico. Her captivity in Istanbul, fooled into falling for a man who only wanted her as a bargaining chip with the European Powers.

"Aldora, dear?"

Her mother didn't know any of it. Her father knew a little of the last, Penny a little of the matter of her father, but nobody -- not even Alton -- knew what toll the magnitude of emotional battering had taken, how much pain she'd been trying to ignore. She hadn't told anyone, she hadn't grieved, she hadn't allowed herself the luxury of that weakness. It wasn't how she'd been raised; it wasn't the Fiske way.

She felt hands gently guiding her to the pavilion tent's shade.

"Alton," she said, turning to the footman escorting her. "Charles, fetch Alton."

Eyes were upon her, sympathetic and concerned. There was no shame in being overcome at the sight of her estranged brother; it was her wedding after all, even though none but Aldora knew Grayson for the horror he represented.

"I say, are you all right, dear sister?"

She ignored the dead man's faux concern, focusing for the moment on her father's footman. "Charles, I need my fiancée. Where's Alton?"

Alton didn't know that Grayson had been the pirate, either. She hadn't told him. She hadn't told anyone.

"I'm afraid I don't know, Miss." Charles said.

"Alton left in the company of John Fuller," Mary said. "Assisting him with some police matter. John's the constable, now, dear. Did you know that? Can you imagine? Little Johnny Fuller, constable?"

"Alton left?" Aldora echoed.

Alton would have known... even without knowing why, he would have known that something was off with Grayson. That this man was an impostor.

She turned, focusing on Grayson. "Who are you?"

"I say, you must be overcome," Grayson said. "It's Grayson, your brother."

The nervousness she had felt was replaced with rage from a very deep and very red well. Part of it was directed at Alton, but he wasn't here. Instead, it was focused on this con-artist, this charlatan, this disgusting creature masquerading as her kin.

The rage drove the weakness from her limbs and she rose, trembling with fury to level a finger at Grayson. "This man is
not
my brother."

"What?" Mary said. "Aldora what are you saying?"

"I don't know what your game is, sir." Strength filled her trembling voice, and the man masquerading as Grayson took a step back as she advanced. "I don't know what you hope to gain here, but I do know that you're not Grayson Fiske. You've done your homework, I'll give you that. You have the voice. The look. The posture."

"What are you saying, sister?" Grayson asked. "I fear you're overcome--"

"You've done very well, but you made one unforgivable mistake."

The garden party, entranced by the dramatic exchange, held its collective breath.

"My brother is dead."

Her mother gasped, eyes darting towards the impostor. Instead of the fear or anger Aldora expected from being revealed, his face acquired a curious slackness as expression left it, as if the man had given up any masquerade of pretending to be her brother at all. His hand slipped into his jacket.

"Charles!" Aldora shouted. "He's got a weapon!"

The valet was in motion before the words had even left her lips, the hors d'oeuvre tray in his hands swinging like a discus towards the impostor's arm. Charles had been with her father for years, ostensibly his manservant, but perhaps he might be seen more accurately as his bodyguard. She'd always admired him a little, since she was but a girl, for his capability and for the fact that he'd taught her how to handle herself in a brawl. He had done some sort of work for the War Department in the past -- what, she wasn't sure -- but Charles was one of the most quietly formidable men she knew.

It was thus a tremendous surprise when Grayson took both the expertly swung tray and the followup jab to the sternum in stride, barely staggering, and giving the man a great shove with his forearms. Charles went sprawling, managing to roll and spring back to his feet, a look of shock on his own face.

He pulled Mary away from the impostor. "Get back, mum. Something's very wrong about--"

He was cut off by screams from the crowd as Grayson spun, tearing his jacket open to reveal the ruin of burnt flesh below. He -- or, as Aldora had to think of him, it -- wore no shirt, displaying the frayed and ragged ends of its flesh almost proudly. Where flesh left off -- almost a quarter of its torso, in rough and jagged patches -- copper took over, both thick fixed and reflective segmented plates. What had once been her brother's corpse -- smashed and burned from the airship crash that had brought him back to earth -- had been reinforced and replaced by some sort of steam and galvanic clockwork.

It lashed out with an arm of brass and flesh, clipping Charles across the face and sending him spinning away.

Aldora grabbed her mother by the arm, running with the stunned woman away from the abomination.

***

What happened next was a confused jumble that, in her shaken state, Aldora could scarcely follow. The dead-Grayson-thing moved faster than her eye could follow, copper ridges along its forearms seeming to blur as it shoved its way through the crowd. Everywhere it shoved against someone up spouted a small geyser of blood, and Aldora realised that the blurriness was caused by small whirling blades set along its arms. Some of the braver men and servants tried to stop it, to get in its way, buying Aldora precious moments to usher her mother back to the house.

The screams and cries of the garden party echoed in her ears as she half-carried her mother through the door. She desperately wanted to go back to help the hapless guests, to punish this thing masquerading as her brother, but her mother's wellbeing came first.

They reached the stairs just as her father descended from above. "I heard a commotion, what's--"

"It's Grayson." Aldora's mother's was breathing in great rasping gasps. "He's here, and oh, Lucian, he's
hurting
people!"

"Grayson?" Her father frowned, starting down the stairs.