Strong Mystery: Murder, Mystery and Magic Books 1-3 (Steampunk Magica) (6 page)

Chapter 4

The woman turned onto the dilapidated street at a
brisk walk. Her disguise as a freelance courier allowed her to blend in
perfectly
. No one noticed a courier with a message bag. The
fact had served her as well in her previous exploits as it had tonight. She
climbed the rickety stairs of the building at the end of the street and knocked
on the door.

It was opened by an old man with a shock of white hair.

“So,” he said with a deep accent, “you have returned again. I
trust that the gun worked well?”

She barged her way past him. “Not on the streets, you fool.”
She pulled off her short-waisted jacket to reveal a tube strapped to her arm,
with wires leading to a box on her belt.

“Yes, everything went according to the plan. As of tonight, Sir
Stanley of the Trading Board is no more, and as efficiently as the others.” She
thought back to how, disguised as a courier, she had come up to her targets and
simply appeared to hold out her hand. The silent magnetic gun had fired the
poison bullet so fast that there was no time for them to cry out. 

She held up the arm with the tube.

“I need the gun reloaded for another shot.”

“Another…” the old man said absently. He unstrapped the tube
from her forearm.  He reached inside a small box covered in frost with a thin
pair of pliers. Gingerly taking something from within, he placed it down the
tube and handed it back to her.

“You know,” he said proudly, “no one has ever made such a thing
as that which you hold. Death undetectable given by magnetic gun and frozen
darts of poison is a new thing. Even General Hoffstein should be pleased.”

“Funny that you should mention the General,” she said, as she
finished strapping the tube on her forearm. “He gave me the next target
himself.” She raised her arm as if inviting the old man to shake hands. His
eyes widened in fear. There was a barely audible hiss and the old man clutched
his chest before falling over. She looked down at the corpse.

“Sorry, Hans, old boy,” she said. “The General and I both agree
that you talk too freely. Besides, Alchemists are a penny a dozen in Austria, I
hear.” She raised her arm. “They’ll re-create this.”

She looked around the makeshift laboratory. She would have to
take the remaining frozen bullets, but otherwise there was nothing for her
here. She glanced at the clock on the mantle place. She would just have time to
return home and change for the funeral.

Chapter 5

Owen’s house lay in what was called the Yiban Fanshui
District
. Yiban Fanshui meant literally “halfway” in Mandarin.

Owen was never sure if it referred to the fact that it was
halfway up the side of Government Hill, or that those who lived there were
either halfway up to riches or halfway falling down into the poverty of the
lower city. He suspected that all the meanings were true. The Chinese were
never ones to waste a good metaphor, especially one so apt.

As the day was cloudless but
cool, he had advised Barton that he would take breakfast on the terrace.
Lounging in only a sky blue silk robe, he sipped the strong tea blend he
preferred, and lit the first and best cigarette of the day.

He could see out over the lower
city. It was a bewildering swarm of buildings, from the neat manor houses
nearby, down to the dung fire haze of the crumbling slums that ringed the
warehouses and establishments that served the Port that could be seen off in
the distance. Hong Kong was a deep water port, through which flowed vast sums
of goods and money, some of them even legal.

In the mid-day sun, the teeming
city that had drawn fortune seekers from every corner of the globe for over
three centuries, and continued to thrive with the bustle of modern seekers,
looked so small from his vantage point above the city.

Far from giving him delusions of
grandeur, the view always reminded him of the knife-edge dances of power and
honor that were the city’s true lifeblood. He knew that from farther up the
hill, his own modest dwelling would appear as little more than a dot to be
covered by a thumb, and perhaps as easily crushed, should those who lived up the
hill so wish it.

He wondered idly how it must all
look to the Dragon, Lohan, who ruled the city as his own private territory,
from the top of the hill.     

Owen took another pull of the
cigarette and lay back, lifting his tea cup. He would refuse his more somber
meditations today. Last night had seen the victorious ending of a monster too
obscene to live, not to mention the reunion of one of the most powerful men in
Imperial China with his niece.

On a more personal note, Lily,
from Mrs. Schmidt’s, had been both enthusiastic and skilled. His pleasure of
the evening was followed by a marvelous breakfast from his housekeeper, Mrs.
Han.

Judging from the sounds he’d
heard upstairs, Jinhao was still enjoying her diverting company of the evening,
though what she saw in those muscle-bound Norsemen, he would never know.

Yes, he thought, life was too
good not to savor. He looked down at a small carved stone box on the table.
Should he indulge? The Black Lotus gave opium-like dreams to Magians for hours.
Perhaps later; he still wanted to talk to Jinhao whenever she emerged. 

Barton, his majordomo and
butler, wheeled out onto the terrace. Owen had kept the clank man since his
childhood. Though the alchemical construct might be limited in its abilities,
Barton was one of the few things he had held onto from home. 

“There is someone here with an
urgent message from home, Sir.” Barton’s voice sounded like a wheezing pipe
organ as he made the announcement. Before Owen could respond, a dapper, finely
dressed man with white hair and a trimmed beard breezed onto the terrace behind
the mechanical. Owen froze. Sir Stephen Partridge was the last living man Owen
wanted to see.

“Well, Owen, aren’t you going to
invite an old man to sit with you?” Sir Stephen asked briskly. “Really, your
manners have not improved.” The man looked at Owen while leaning on a wooden
cane with an electrum handle. “Though as it’s nearly noon, I doubt that’s lunch
you’ve just finished. Still keeping to your disgraceful ways, I see.”

Recovering himself, Owen waved
at a chair across the low side table.

“I’d invite you to sit, but I
doubt you’ll be here that long. As for my disgraceful ways, I thought it the
height of rudeness to force your way into someone’s house uninvited.” Owen
raised his eyebrow.

“Nonsense,” Sir Stephen
retorted. “Barton here invited me in.”

“Barton,” Owen asked, his eyes
never leaving Sir Stephen, “who is the person you just admitted?”

The clank man’s body shuddered
as its internal gears turned. “He is a messenger with an urgent message from
home,” Barton piped.

“I see,” Owen pursed his lips.
“And did the messenger first announce himself?”

“He announced himself as Sir
Stephen Partridge,” Barton finally said.

 “And what are the standing
rules about Sir Stephen Partridge?” Owen asked.

“Master is never at home to Sir
Stephen Partridge,” the clank man replied with great firmness. The two men
could hear the cogs turning at a furious pace. “A messenger with news from home
is always to be admitted at once.” The gears ground so loudly, that for a
moment it seemed as if the mechanical man would burst apart. “Master,” Barton
finally asked, “is there a problem with my service?”

“Not at all, Barton,” Owen
reassured the old tinplate. “Would you kindly get another cup for our guest?”

“Of course, Sir,” Barton
replied. He turned his torso around on one wheel and rolled off.

“I would have been very
perturbed if you had hurt him, you know,” Owen said as Sir Stephen sat in the
chair. 

“Really, Owen,” Sir Stephen
protested. “I would never wish to do so. He’s much like the old family retainer,
isn’t he? What do you take me for?”

“A liar, a thief, and a mass
murderer,” Owen replied crisply.

Sir Stephen’s eyes flashed at
that.

“Are your hands so clean,
Strong?”

“You know they aren’t,” Owen
said in a dead voice. “You made sure of that.”

Sir Stephen snorted, his eyes
raking Owen up and down contemptuously.

“And look at you now, gone
native, and wallowing in decadent waste and self-pity. You used to be one of
the best. You took the markings of all five elements at a younger age than
anyone in the history of the Order! And now, I doubt that you even know where
you set your Focus down, gaudy thing that it is. I taught you better than this,
I would have thought!”

A small
aether
gun
appeared in Owen’s hand, its fluid tube glowing balefully in the sunlight.

“I happen to know exactly where my
Focus is, Partridge. But, as you may remember, I am no longer a member of the
Obsidian Order, and I do not follow your rules.”

Sir Stephen’s eyebrows shot up
as he looked at Owen with disdain.

“An
aether
gun, Owen?”
His lip curled slightly. “How positively plebian. Do you really think I have
anything to be afraid of from that pop gun?”

Owen nodded towards the short-barreled
gun in his hand, and fixed Partridge with a steely-eyed glare.

“This little beauty is called the
Ferocious Ferret
. If you knew how much it cost, I believe that even you
would agree it is anything but plebian.” Owen’s eyes held those of his former
mentor. 

“I suspect it gets its name
because its teeth are quite big for such a small thing.” Owen frowned at his
unwelcome guest. “If you could correctly divine the elemental mix it’s charged
with, you might deflect the blast before it blows a large hole in you. But as you
are currently less than four feet from me, it would be an interesting challenge
for your reflexes, don’t you think?” Owen’s smile was as chill as a frigid northern
wind.

The two men stared at each
other, unmoving. Then Sir Stephen chuckled, and slowly raised both hands in
surrender. He tilted his head towards his cane, which was still in his right
hand. At Owen’s silent nod, the old man carefully lowered his elemental focus
to the floor, where it rested.

“My boy, I see you haven’t lost
a thing,” he said, holding up his hands to show that they were empty. Owen kept
the
Ferret
centered on his former mentor’s chest.

“You know,” Owen said casually,
“I have often dreamed of a time like this, when I might end your life with a
flick of the finger.” He was no longer smiling. “And do be careful, Sir
Stephen. I am no longer ‘your boy’ or your anything else for that matter.”

“Do you still blame me for
Balaclava?” Sir Stephen asked quietly. “I admitted to you then that it was a
mistake.”

“I find your use of the term
mistake
interesting when referring to the slaughter of four thousand true Englishmen
and Herne alone knows how many Russians and Persians,” Owen rasped.

“It ended the war,” Stephen insisted. “And not only did we
obtain the super-weapon the Austrians had developed, but the carnage encouraged
its inventor to defect to Britain.”

“Where he promptly built a
weapon for you as the price of your friendship,” Owen shot back.

Sir Stephen lowered his hands,
placing them flat on his thighs. “Of course he did,” he said irritably. “You
know how the Game is played. The Lords of the Planes assured us that it would
put the Austrians in check, as well as curtail any Persian expansion, which it
has.”

“You know,” Owen said mildly,
“you might not place so much faith in your spirit friends as you do.”

Stephen’s face colored red at
this.

“The Lords have had guided the
interests of Britain since the days of Elizabeth the First! When, I might remind
you, the great Dee himself founded our Order. Are you now wiser than him?” he
challenged.

“Oh, I make no such claim,” Owen
said carelessly. “I simply point out to you that the Lords are, by their own
admission, neither human nor Gods. You might consider that their goals are not
Britain’s goals.”

“Nonsense,” Sir Stephen snapped.
The old man peered at Owen. “What happened to you on that mission, Owen? After
the dust settled, so to speak, you appeared with that gaudy electrum cane, and you
simply left us.” Stephen wet his lips. “Where did you get that cane?”

“I received it from a chance
acquaintance,” Owen replied.

Stephen’s brow furled. “And
where did you meet this ‘acquaintance’?”

“Why, on the mission, as you so
cleverly deduced,” Owen’s smile did not touch his eyes.   

“Well, where is this ‘chance
acquaintance’ now?” Stephen asked.

“I gathered that he’s something
of a vagabond,” Owen shrugged, the gun rock-steady in his hand.

Stephen’s eyebrows rose again in
disbelief. “Are you saying that some tattered vagabond just gave you an
expensively crafted elemental focus?”

Owen shrugged again, “I didn’t
say he was a
poor
vagabond.”

Stephen scowled. “Kill me then,
rather than insult my intelligence.”

The gun vanished from Owen’s
hand.

“Oh, I’m afraid that you do not
go to the
barrows
that easily. Curiosity has rather gotten the better of
me. You knew what reception you’d get from me, so now I want to know why you
wanted to talk to me so badly.” He turned his head. “Besides, here comes Barton
with your cup, and hopefully more tea.”

After the clank man was
dismissed, Sir Stephen curtly refused Owen’s offer to pour. Sitting back, the
younger Sorcerer looked at him over his tea cup.

“Well,” Owen said pointedly, “you
can either tell me what you want to talk to me about, or I can kill you, I
suppose.”

“After you left,” Sir Stephen
began briskly, “we kept track of your whereabouts and your doings. There were
those that wanted you removed permanently, you know. I argued against it, and
it was agreed that you should simply be kept under watch. When I discovered
that you had settled here in Hong Kong, and even taken a Chinese woman as a
leman…”

“Yes, yes,” Owen interrupted, “I
grant that the Order pays very efficient spies, and I am not ungrateful that
you called off the dogs, as you probably need them alive. As for the ‘Chinese
woman’ being my leman…” Owen, in turn, was interrupted by a voice from the
entryway.

“Leman is one of your words for lover,
is it not?” Jinhao flowed into the room, her long black hair loose to her
waist. She was barefoot, and flashing plenty of thigh, as her patterned, silk
robe was only fastened by a single tab at the waist. Owen had no doubt that she
was armed in some way, though he couldn’t spot the weapons at first glance. She
perched on the lounge next to Owen, reaching for the empty tea cup. “It is a
most unusual word. Why do you not simply say lover?”

Owen shot her a glance that he
hoped she would take as a warning to be careful what she said. The waters
around Sir Stephen Partridge were always deep.

“In the old days,” Owen said
mildly, “the Wise recognized ten kinds of formal relationship. As time passed,
the forms evolved and changed. Leman indicates an ongoing intimate relationship,
where the partner has no possibility of inheritance of title.”

Jinhao finished making her tea.
“Ah, I see.” She flashed Owen a dazzling smile. “Thank you. And is the word
used only for women, or is it used for both sexes?”

“The word for a male would be limen,”
Owen replied weakly. He wondered what she playing at.