Equal before the blade, p.6
Equal Before the Blade, page 6
Ottilie Wolcott ground her teeth audibly, then nodded and blew out a fierce breath.
“I had hoped…” she said, then lapsed off.
“And I as well,” Augustus agreed. “Now, however, we must withdraw from this room and this building quickly, and hope that the neighbor across the way chooses not to come forward when her body is found, to mention you and a male visitor that seemed to enter the room.”
“Should we invite them ourselves?” Wolcott asked quietly.
“They would have many questions that neither of us would be well suited to answer,” he replied. “Not if we are to see that thing destroyed for what it did to her, and to others.”
“Will you kill it, Derlyth?” she asked.
“Given what it is doing, that is, I think, the least I will do,” he replied, growling such that she recoiled from the vehemence. “There will be debts settled over this. But not now. Not today. I have more pieces, but not enough to solve this puzzle. Police involvement would cause us to be distracted and perhaps held. At the very minimum, it will allow our foe to know that he shares the game board when he might have still thought himself alone. I do not wish to surrender that advantage cheaply.”
“Yes,” she said, moving close enough to close Rachel’s eyes and smooth the terror from her face while Augustus watched.
He cast a quick confusion into the air that would disperse the spoor he and Wolcott had brought in here, then moved to the door and stared as though he could see through both panels to the room across the way.
The Incan ring got emptied entirely of power because he needed to enforce a terrible geas. One more touch of evil done in the name of a greater good, something that he would add to the ledger he was keeping in his head.
One spelled Doom.
Wolcott joined him a moment later, almost as silently as he normally moved, so Augustus nodded companionably at her and went to the door, pushing an invisible arrow of esoteric puissance across the way and gripping that other woman in a giant fist from which she could not escape.
Her words would be sealed until he chose to release her.
If he ever did.
Augustus moved away, growling low in his chest like the predator already hunting these women.
Doom, indeed.
Chapter
Ten
Augustus had returned to his home, Wolcott in tow. He would have liked to have stopped at some restaurant for a nip of something, but there were certain conversations not to be had in public.
Not after you’ve just killed an innocent woman, however accidentally.
Mary had been instructed to bring some food and a stout pot of coffee, thence he had drawn Wolcott into the rear library, seating her, as before, across the chessboard from him, game elsewhere.
Even the door to the room was closed. Mary would know to knock, then wait several seconds before opening. Even she had quailed at the terrible thunder on his face.
Wolcott seemed more phlegmatic.
He assumed she had much experience at hiding her emotions from some angry man, given her former vocation.
Former? So it seemed. Intent on not once letting temptation or bad luck drag her back down, having risen sufficient to see the sun.
“What happened?” she asked in an inquisitive tone, rather than vengeful.
But then, he already knew her to be stronger than most of the women he had met in his life.
“She was, if I had to guess, next on the hunter’s list,” Augustus sighed. “Standing too close to the most recent victim and primed by having been damaged to the point she could not repeat what she saw.”
“How did she die?”
Augustus was surprised. He’d been expecting the rightful accusation of manslaughter. Or perhaps a lesser murder charge, as he hadn’t intended Rachel’s death.
It had still occurred by his hand.
“I pushed her to relive things that were too terrible for her mind,” he admitted. “Not everyone has the fortitude to survive such a thing. She did not, and let go her already tenuous hold on life rather than face it.”
“At least she’s free,” Wolcott observed, further surprising him.
“I suppose so,” Augustus replied. “I would have gone down fighting. I suspect you would have as well.”
“Did you learn enough?” she asked.
“I learned more,” Augustus hedged. “I doubt that it is sufficient, but I must now rely on others who might be able to draw the noose tighter.”
“I thought that you didn’t trust anybody to remain silent,” Wolcott noted.
“I do not,” he nodded. “This one, however, is an ally going back to the turn of the century, though he is retired these days. I have called upon him in previous adventures and he had helped.”
“Are there really that many bad things running around the world?” she pressed.
Augustus hemmed on that for a moment.
“England is a caste-based society,” he offered as a minor deflection. “Birth supersedes wealth, though the wealthiest often merge in laterally to add that veneer and open opportunities for their descendants. Ours is still a nation where the laws tend to apply to the lowest ninety percent, to the extreme benefit of the remainder. Add to that the expense, both in time as well as trainers, for one to learn the esoteric arts, and many of the practitioners I am familiar with tend to be at least of the middle classes and use that to try to elevate themselves higher.”
“And?” she asked, recognizing that he had evaded her question.
“And those with money and power, when combined with such metaphysical training, are often beyond the reach of the law,” he nodded. “At least until they do something so terrible, so public, that the authorities must intervene. There are certain organizations that have quietly arisen, drawing on histories and cultures both English and European, that aim to softly protect the rest of the world, but I rarely see eye to eye with such people. In fact, the Order of Gawain, were they to hear of all this, would no doubt seek to punish me for what I did to poor Rachel, not admitting that I had better intentions than that.”
“How do we stop them?” she asked bluntly.
Augustus noted the use of we instead of you. She was at least as committed as he was.
“There are times where the law fails,” Augustus replied. “When it falls upon men such as myself to stand outside that law and take matters into our own hands. Digby has stood with me at those times, as has Lady Claudette.”
“What if your foe is one of those rich and powerful lords?” she pressed.
“Already this year, I have unLettered a duchy, madam,” he retorted crisply, pausing as she gasped.
Such was the punishment for crossing the Crown and HM’s Government. Letters Patent could be canceled just as easily as they had been issued. The Duchy Dudley would die out with the current holder, childless Valerie, reverting to the crown again. The Star Chamber had given her that much mercy, and not a tot more.
“Further, I have been called upon by HM’s Government to assassinate one of their deadliest foes,” he continued, “because they didn’t know any other way to handle the situation and could rely that I would see things through to whatever messy and bloody ending was necessary. Whoever has summoned this creature had best hope that he manages to die by his own hand before I get to him. He had caused me to kill an innocent here, and there is no higher crime in my eyes. Doubly so when I was asked to protect such women. There will be payment for this, and I will carve it out of his soul slowly with a dull knife.”
Ottilie Wolcott had leaned back from the torrent of his vitriol, for which he was thankful. Augustus himself was surprised at the words. At the same time, he was committed, and that statement had merely spelled out the letter of his intent.
She surprised him by holding out a hand across the chessboard. He took it and felt her squeeze.
Companionship. Nothing more. And yet, it was similar to what Lady Claudette would have done in an identical situation.
Recognition that he was about to do a thing she could not. And supporting it all the same.
That latter was important, as she had the most cause to be angry at him, counting Rachel as a friend.
Augustus could only count Rachel’s death as a personal failure.
Chapter
Eleven
Augustus disliked the sorts of clubs that a man of a certain social strata was expected to belong to. His non-membership in most of them was as much a statement as anything, but most of them were more likely to admit Jews than men like him, so it was a wash, much of the time.
Still, it was necessary for him to engage in certain activities. Thus, he stood on the kerb outside the one known as Exeter Hall and squared his shoulders before ascending the steps and entering.
The weather was more pleasant tonight, with clear skies and a warm, tropical breeze keeping things warmer than one might expect for an early October night. He wore one of his best suits, not for the denizens but for his host, bowler freshly cleaned and wire-rim glasses polished.
Ottilie, Miss Wolcott, he had left at the house. After the affair with Rachel, she had expressed an interest in better learning what he was and what he did, so Augustus had dug up a tome perhaps described as a schoolboy’s primer on metaphysical arts and tucked her into a secured space on the second floor where things outside could not get to her.
Whether she would develop any great power, he could not tell, but it was as much a function of will as heritage, and she struck him as stubborn enough to make progress.
Still, she was a woman, and thus unwelcome in a place like Exeter Hall, unless she were to be hired as a waitress. Or whatever else it was the wealthy and powerful men who did belong might convince or pay her to undertake.
Augustus suspected that she was too smart and too stubborn to be hired thus. The powers inside liked them young, buxom, and not particularly possessed of great intellect.
He thus approached the door with a smile on his face. The manager inside was a man who had Augustus had dealt with previously. Nervous recognition dawned as the man looked up, so Augustus suspected that words had been exchanged while he had been elsewhere.
“Mr. Derlyth,” the man said conservatively, nodding.
Augustus reached into his inner pocket for the engraved invitation.
“I’m here to see Lord William,” Augustus replied, handing it over for a quick—nearly perfunctory—glance before the man snapped his fingers at a nearby redhead with hardly any clothing on. Just enough to cover the front against arrest, and that as well painted on as worn.
Dead eyes, however green, though that comparison might be an unfortunate side effect of spending the last few days working with Ottilie while his request for an invitation to dinner worked its way through social systems.
One such as Augustus could not simply call upon Lord William at his home. Partly, the man was rarely there, what with Lady Violet having more or less retired to their country estate and refusing to return to the city for practically any reason at all. Partly, Lord William would be Earl William one of these days, when his sire finally passed, and thus far beyond the sorts of social interactions a mere tradesman like Augustus portrayed.
Augustus had never met the current Earl to determine if he should be thrilled or saddened on that day. Nor did he much care. He wasn’t here to discuss politics, after all.
The near-automaton redhead led him into the Minotaur’s lair, up and down stairs, winding back and forth, until she knocked at a particular door Augustus remembered.
“Lord William, your guest,” she said after opening it, then stood aside and nodded to Augustus to enter without once flirting.
Had his reputation preceded him, or had she merely determined that he wasn’t the type to call upon her for other needs?
He handed her a pound note as he slipped by, enjoying the look of surprise that managed to break through those eyes, however briefly.
Inside, Lord William rose from a comfortable overstuffed chair set a shade too close to the fire. The years had generally been kind to the man, the lack of his left arm just below the elbow notwithstanding. Still, they’d managed to stop and bind the beast before it had done much more damage than that, and all the other scars Lord William bore were covered by his clothing.
Meeting him on the street, you would think him a chap who had perhaps been injured grievously in the Boer War or some such fiddly nonsense. The hair was thin these days, but the man was in his midfifties now, and the gray that had been a shock before was now viewed as a natural progression.
The eyes had lost nothing, for which Augustus was pleased.
Augustus took the man’s hand, noting how firm the grip remained. Lord William turned to the redhead.
“Draw a bottle of my reserve port, please,” he told her. “Bring menus with you when you return.”
She nodded and curtsied, more by rote than anything, and left them alone.
Lord William gestured him to the side table, and Augustus fixed himself a bit of sherry.
“Sit,” Lord William commanded when he was done.
Augustus did.
Lord William studied him for a long moment.
“I feel like I should suggest you host a small dinner party at your house on some future date,” Lord William grinned. “Partly to test Mary against a wider array of gourmands, but also because it seems like you and I only speak when things have grown dreadful.”
“My own property might not be the safest choice,” Augustus countered. “But I would be happy to reserve a space where a small group might gather to talk shop, as it were. In either case, I might require everyone to arrive in mufti and disguise, lest Whitehall take notice and grow perhaps a touch concerned.”
Lord William laughed warmly. These walls would contain their conversation. Augustus had tested Lord William’s outer defenses a time or two, just to confirm that the man had remained in practice over the past two decades.
He might not be Augustus’s esoteric peer in terms of raw power, but he was not a sluggard, either. And had a variety of contacts that Augustus could tap.
“So, what terrible thing threatens all of humanity this time?” Lord William asked, still grinning.
“Someone with aspirations or delusions of being the Whitechapel Killer,” Augustus replied.
“The Ripper has returned?” Lord William sobered sharply.
Augustus proceeded to walk the man through this past few weeks, starting in Kent and coming down to the present. They had moved on to that special reserve port and ordered food by the time he was done, only pausing while the woman had entered twice.
Lord William was leaned back. And had moved his chair away from the fire some. Augustus wondered if the man spent too much time here, alone reading or entertaining other members of the club, and needed to get out more to get his blood pumping.
Augustus would not suggest it tonight, but perhaps he did need to look into forming some exclusive association. The United Kingdom had a history of such a thing, though he would never aspire to the notoriety of the Hellfire Club or others.
Perhaps merely a sort of drinking and dining club, wherein all the members were both metaphysicians such as himself and proven to be on the right side of things.
Too many got pulled under by the hints of power and fell into the sorts of evil that destroyed them eventually, the only question being how many innocent lives were destroyed first.
As with this situation.
“Willed herself to die?” Lord William asked as they sipped the good port.
“Aye,” Augustus acknowledged. “The terror was too great, and she simply let go of the raft that upheld her sanity, like any drowning victim will eventually.”
Lord William leaned back and considered, his eyes focused on some distance over Augustus’s left shoulder.
“I am not familiar with such a creature,” he finally said.
“They are most likely found in the Polish marshes,” Augustus said. “That’s the largest single area not well colonized by men at the present. However, I have found hints that they do exist in England proper, as well as Eire, so it is likely our foe didn’t have to travel into a revolution to acquire his beast.”
“How do you intend to stalk such a thing?” Lord William asked.
“With subtly and guile,” Augustus replied. “If I could destroy the master, the slave would likely be easy enough to dismiss. Or at least sunder down into the original component parts and returned whence they came.”
“You’ll be hunting a gentleman again,” Lord William observed.
Left unsaid was the risk of such a thing. The upper classes were almost guaranteed do gather round any threatened. At least until sufficient evidence of evil could be presented. The original Star Chamber might have been publicly disbanded, but Whitehall did maintain a lesser version in secrecy, especially for such occasions as esotericists gone utterly rogue.
Augustus had spent decades walking a fine line not to draw their ire in his personal dealings. And destroying their foes had only earned him a bit of credit. Not ever enough, were the truth of his activities to fully come to light.
“How then can I assist?” Lord William pressed.
“I have spent most of this year home,” Augustus nodded. “Save for that one trip to France on semi-official business. Thus, I am aware of many of the players present in London. Something feels off about this one.”
“How so?”
“The power, for one,” Augustus replied. “Such a summoning and controlling requires a significant amount of effort, Lord William. At the same time, preying on prostitutes, even for the thrills, bears the hallmarks of a lack of inhibition.”
“That suggests a distinct narrowing of your field,” Lord William offered. “Someone who recently suffered a loss that either freed them or drove them mad?”
“That, or a young player, previously unsuspected or grown into a new power,” Augustus nodded. “Older actors such as ourselves approach these things with a great deal of care because failure generally results in our death. That, and the desire to live much longer. This has the hallmarks of a young man, Lord William. Possibly newly inherited, if he be a toff. Or at least freshly into his majority and no longer bound by the strictures of his elders, as he had taken upon himself the trappings of adulthood.”
