Strong Mystery: Murder, Mystery and Magic Books 1-3 (Steampunk Magica) (12 page)

The woman’s face broke into what may have been a smile.

“Have you not? Well, know that I am called
Ching
Shih. Perhaps you have heard of
my
renown?”

Owen bowed to her deeply.

“Everyone has heard of the renown of Ching Shih,
even in distant London.
The Captain of a Thousand Ships
is the most
renowned, ah, free trader in the world.”

Ching Shih laughed out loud at this.

“I am called pirate from Vladivostok to Siam,
Lord Strong. I have no fear of the word, or little else. Still, I thank you for
your manners. Now, please Lord Strong, go with Rodrigo. We shall follow
presently.” Jinhao nodded at Owen.

“It is all right, Owen,” Jinhao said. The Sorcerer
raised an eyebrow at her, but simply nodded. Jinhao knew by the light in his
eyes that there would be questions later.

As the two men went off, escorted by the men
hidden in the shadows, Ching Shih cradled her swords in her arms and regarded
Jinhao.

“You are supposed to be at the Emperor’s Court,
last I heard. Now I find you here with a foreign Sorcerer. Grandfather must be
beside himself.”

Jinhao sheathed her own swords in the scabbards
across her back. She bent to retrieve her night cloak. She examined it, finding
it still wearable.

 “Listen to you,” Jinhao retorted. “As if you
ever cared what Grandfather thinks, O
Pirate Queen
.”  She fastened the
cloak around her shoulders, adjusting it so that she could draw the blades
easily.

“The Emperor is a boy in a man’s body. The
Dowager has seen to that,” Jinhao stated.  “I doubt that there is much I could
do there, as a mere bodyguard and concubine. I have had another idea.
Grandfather will have to come up with something else if he does not agree, as he
always does.”

“True,” Ching Shih sighed. “That is why he is
Grandfather. Still, it is good to see you, it has been too long…” The older
woman shifted her sabers to the crook of one arm, holding out her other towards
Jinhao. “Come, I will take you to Roberet. He has been working on something for
me.” 

Jinhao smiled back, taking her sister’s arm.

“It is good to see you as well, my sister. But
seriously, working with political revolutionaries?”

Ching Shih sighed again as they walked arm in arm.

“It seemed a good idea. But I fear there will
only come trouble from those fools. I will tell you more about it.” The two
women leaned their heads together as they walked towards the hidden entrance.
“But first, tell me more about this foreign Sorcerer,” Ching Shih said.

“Ah, I believe our meeting was guided by Heaven’s
Fortune, and the seed of my idea,” Jinhao replied. “He is most impressive and
agreeable. I have convinced Owen that I must repay a life debt for his saving
me by killing a Demon. I believe it was sent by someone in the Dowager’s
Court.”

“He killed a court Demon? That is impressive,”
Ching Shih agreed. She frowned. “But there is no life debt custom among us, and
certainly not with foreigners.”

“He doesn’t know that,” Jinhao replied blandly.  “He
is a foreigner.” 

The older sister looked at her for a moment in
surprise, and then they both burst out laughing. 

Chapter 10

The Frank Alchemist Roberet droned on and on in his
terrible Anglic
. He waxed on about what prominent Alchemists his
family had been in Paris, how the tragedy of the Austrian invasion had forced
him to flee to this forsaken place, and how impossible it was to find a decent
wine, let alone a good cup of coffee.

Owen pretended to listen to this monologue while nervously
watching the little man bustle from one glowing glass vial to another.

The sky ship captain, de Vega,
had left in a great hurry after depositing Owen in a chair at the Alchemist’s
laboratory. Owen wished he could have gone with him. The little Alchemist,
Roberet, was clearly in the midst of a
working
, moving from one task to
another. Occasionally he would interrupt his own monologue to lift a beaker of
swirling colors, sniff it, and then dump it into a larger container floating
over a blue flame. Owen tugged at his collar nervously. 

Magica was generally divided in
the West into Sorcery and Alchemy. Both required an inborn Talent, but otherwise
they were governed by different principles. While Sorcery required that the
Talented create a blood-bond with an elemental power, and use an external Focus
such as his cane to manifest those powers, Alchemists could use their Talent in
combination with various ingredients to create manifestations that were more or
less permanent.  The manifestations created by Alchemists could then be used by
anyone, whether or not they were Talented themselves. Alchemical elixirs, for
example were in high demand both to cure diseases and improve health.

Others in the Alchemical discipline
had begun branching out, creating new materials, such as the super strong and
light materials that the bigger sky ships were made of.  They even created the
aetheric
fluids that enabled a weapon to shoot an elemental force, rather than depend on
compressed air to fire a projectile.

 Alchemists kept their processes
a closely guarded secret, and shared those secrets only with each other.

Owen knew that Alchemical
Workings
required as much, if not more, concentration as spell work did. He also knew
that disrupting the Will of an Alchemist during a
working
courted
catastrophe. The few times Owen had seen Alchemists at
work
, they had
all been very silent, intensely concentrated and precise. Roberet was not at
all like that.

Roberet splashed another vial
into his floating container, sending glowing globules everywhere. The ugly
little man looked more like a mad baker mixing a cake, than like someone
altering the physical structures of the material world. He could only hope the
Frank wouldn’t combine the wrong things, while talking incessantly, and blow
them sky high or worse. It had been known to happen.

When the door opened again,
Ching Shih,
the
Pirate Queen
as she was called in the broadsheets, entered
side by side with Jinhao. Owen noticed that the two seemed very comfortable
together, as if this was not their first meeting. He filed that information
away for the moment, but he vowed that he and his companion would have words
later.

Roberet looked up at the
intrusion, and slammed a beaker down on his worktable, approaching Jinhao with
a wide grin on his ugly face.

“My little flower,” he
exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. “Don’t touch the apron dear, the mess on it
might turn your skin green,” he warned. Jinhao returned his smile and the two
carefully exchanged kisses on both cheeks.

“Roberet,” Jinhao said lightly,
“It has been too long.”

“It has indeed,” the Frank
replied. “Oh,” he said holding up a gauntleted finger, “Give me a moment to
take this off the boil.” He shuffled back to the work table and glanced into
the floating container.

“Yes,” he muttered to it, “We’ll
just let you cool now for a time” Picking up a pair of tongs he moved it off
the flame, where it continued to float in the air over the table.

“Your
aetheric
fluid
should be ready in a day or so now, Mistress Ching,” he said. “I have created a
new method that will allow me to mix the base into a larger matrix, which
should be enough for that big cannon of yours.”

“Pardon me,” Owen said through a
tightened throat. “Did you just say that you were creating enough
aetheric
fluid to power a
cannon
?”  So far as Owen knew
aetheric
weapons
were limited in size by the amount of
Fluid
they required. While he’d
seen pistols and rifles, common wisdom held that anything bigger was simply too
costly and unstable to fuel. Not even the British Navy had
aether
cannons; Battle Sorcerers had  compressed air cannon, clockwork ballistae and
catapults, but not
aetheric
cannons. The implications were as unsettling
as the monstrous weapons of the Austrians.       

“Oh yes, Mistress Ching Shih had
been most generous in funding the experiment,” Roberet said, peeling off his
heavy gauntlets. “It is only a
Fire
manifestation you know, and that is
only the concentrate there,” he nodded towards the container. “You could simply
load it into a big gun and get nothing more than a burp at the moment.” He
paused, as if realizing the growing silence in the room. “Oh, perhaps I should
not have said anything?”

“It is alright Roberet,” the
Pirate Queen, Ching Shih said, “Although we can talk more of this later.” She
fixed her gaze on Owen. “Jinhao and her friend are not here about that. I am
certain Lord Strong here is aware that one little experiment with one little
gun is not worth mentioning.”

Owen nodded slowly. The British
military would dearly love to know about such a capability he was sure. 

“Perhaps, perhaps not. If you
can answer my condition I can perhaps be a gentleman about it.”

Ching Shih’s lips tightened at
his words.

“You are bold for one whose life
is in my hands.”

Owen smiled at her from where he
sat.

“I’ve been told that before.
Yet, here I am. While I don’t work for Her Majesty’s government, that does not
mean I am not still a loyal subject.”

Ching looked at Jinhao with a
grim smile.

“I may like him, if I do not
kill him first.” Turning back to Owen she frowned at him. “Very well, state
your condition.”

“I want your word that you do not plan to use this thing either
to aid the rebels in disrupting Hong Kong, nor that you plan to use it against
Her Majesty’s armed forces.”

“That is two conditions,” the Pirate Queen corrected. “As to
the first, I have no plans to aid those bumbling fools you met earlier today.
That was a miscalculation I will not repeat. As to the second,” she shrugged.
“I do not plan to ever attack anyone’s Navy. If they are stupid enough to get
in my way, I will fight them however I must. Does that word of a yellow-skinned
woman meet your conditions, Lord Strong?”

Owen bowed in agreement at her
words.

“Then I think I will be a
gentleman about it. That is, if you can trust the word of a pale skinned
foreigner,” he replied archly.

The Pirate Queen threw back her
head and laughed. “I think I will like you and not kill you!” She turned back
to Jinhao, “I leave you to your business.” With that, the woman swept from the
room, leaving the three of them alone.

Roberet motioned Jinhao to take
the other chair in the room.

“Well, that was uncomfortable,”
he remarked with concern. “I hope it does not lose me Mistress Ching as a
client. She pays so well.” He looked at Owen with suspicion. “Are you really
here with this Britisher, little flower?”

“Yes,” Jinhao replied as she
settled into the chair. “We are looking into a number of deaths that we believe
were caused by application of Tesarine oil. I thought you would know which Alchemist
in the city could make something strong enough to do this.” Jinhao described
the nature of the wounds they had found, together with their suspicions.

Roberet stared into space for a
moment, then shook his head.

“No, that makes no sense.
Tesarine is too weak on its own to do what you describe. Mostly it is the by-product
of refining the curie plant from Southern Azteca, which is then sold to
duelists seeking an advantage.” He smiled at them both.

“Alchemists like to squeeze
every drop, so to speak, from everything. The curare plant is both difficult to
obtain and very expensive.” He frowned. “The main product of the plant is
deadly enough when rendered, although it has a short life, and must be entered
into the blood stream to work.” He frowned again, “But, if you have the plant
itself why not simply use that, or pick something else entirely?”

“How would one use this plant
rendering?” Owen asked curiously. Using poisons was forbidden among the various
operatives in the
Great Game of Nations
including his old Order. It was
one of the unspoken agreements that Owen had never really understood; dead was
dead as far as he was concerned. You could kill a target any number of ways,
from Sorcery to a knife, to tricking someone into falling off a cliff. However,
using a poison would call down such retaliation on the agent and their
colleagues that it wasn’t worth it. Owen had not realized that the custom left
such a gap in his knowledge of dealing death.

“The usual means is to dip a
dart or other projectile in the rendered liquid, and then use the implement to
pierce the skin. Poison will not work unless it enters the blood,” Roberet
mused. “The little people of the Azteca rain forests use it this way with their
blow guns. You can put it on a blade, but it does not last long when exposed to
air or water.”

Now it was Owens turn to frown,
“There were no darts or projectiles found either in or near the bodies.”

“Perhaps a needle of some kind,”
Roberet suggested. “Something attached to a ring perhaps?”

“No,” Owen objected forcefully.
“Think about it. Our killer has a very thin needle in his hand which is awkward
enough. They must then either thrust it into the chest,” Owen gestured. “Or if
it is on a ring, they have to do either this,” he made a slapping motion, “or
this,” he punched with a fist. “All the while in public, with no one remarking
on such extraordinary actions. In the case of Sir Hastings, they would not only
have to strike him, but then Sir Hastings carries a courier tube into the foyer,
without raising an alarm, before collapsing. No,” Owen shook his head, “there
is something we are missing here, something clever and diabolical.”

Roberet made a very Frankish
gesture with his hands. “I can tell you that very few private Alchemists could
afford such a substance, and my—sources—would have advised me if they were
bringing any curie plant into the country, if only to see if I would out bid
their original order maker. There is little honor among such people.”

“I presume by sources you are
referring to smugglers,” Owen said.

“Think of them rather as free
traders,” Roberet suggested. “While the trading companies do some—extra cargo—they
do not carry such things, as a rule.”

“Then we are back to the
beginning,” Jinhao remarked.

“Perhaps not,” Owen said.
“Roberet, is there anything that makes this Tesarine oil different from the
more powerful rendering, whatever you call it?”

“In the Frank lands, we call it
curare
,”
the Alchemist replied. His frown turned his ugly features even more demonic.
“Unlike curare, Tesarine can be made into a salt form, as it does not lose
efficiency if you either boil or freeze it, but no one has found a use for the
salts yet.” He shook his head. “That is the only difference I can think of,
besides it being much less potent than curare.” He turned to Jinhao, “I am
sorry I cannot be of more help to you and your friend, little flower.”

Jinhao rose, and Owen followed
her lead, also standing.

“You have helped greatly, old
friend,” she said to him. “I shall come again when I may.”

The answering grin cracked the
ugly mask into something that seemed more humane.

 “You are always welcome here,
little flower, even if you bring the stinking Britisher.” He swiveled towards
Owen. “You think what I do in my experiments with Mistress Ching is evil,
Britisher?”

“I think that we have enough
ways to kill each other in job lots as it is, yes. If you wish to call that evil
then you may do so,” Owen replied.

“You will have cause to thank
Roberet, before long, Britisher,” the Alchemist grimaced. “You think what I do
is evil? You did not see the black Austrians destroy my beautiful Paris. Their
weapons lit the sky day and night, causing such great explosions that whole blocks
were wiped from the ground in the blink of an eye.”

Owen had been in Hong Kong when
the Austrian armies had marched into the Frank lands, supposedly to spread
their Marian faith. Unfortunately for the Franks, that meant you either
accepted their religion, or you died. He’d heard little about it, save what the
regular news sheets reported, which he largely ignored as unreliable.

“Then you are saying that the
Austrians already have these
aether
cannon you are creating,” Owen
ventured.