Джефф Вандермеер - The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

“I’m not trusting you,” Ambrose said to the lantern. Still leaning on the yataghan, he retrieved his shotgun and reloaded it, though this time he did not speak the words. Nellie stayed by his side, her ears up and intent, but she was not growling.

As the sound of a car being driven a shade too fast for the rough track grew louder, Ambrose cautiously opened the door and looked out.

He was not very much surprised to see that the second car was a green Crossley 20/25, the usual choice of the Secret Service Bureau and so also of its even lesser-known offshoot, D-Arc. He even recognized the two men in the front, and could guess at the other two in the backseat. Nevertheless, he kept the shotgun ready as the Crossley skidded to a halt behind the maroon sedan and the men got out. Three of them, two with revolvers by their sides and one with a curiously archaic, bell-mouthed musketoon, stayed close to the car, watching the bothy, the maroon car, and the hillside. The fourth, a man Ambrose knew as Major Kennett, though that was almost certainly not his real name, advanced towards the bothy’s front door. The quartet were dressed for the city, not the country, and Ambrose suppressed a smile as Kennett lost a shoe in the mud and had to pause to fish around for it with a stockinged foot.

“I see we’re a little late,” said Kennett, as he pulled at the heel of his shoe. He was a handsome man, made far less so by the chill that always dwelt in his eyes. “Sorry about that.”

“Late for what?” asked Ambrose.

“Your earlier guests,” answered Kennett. He held out his hand. After a moment, Ambrose balanced the shotgun over the crook of his left arm and shook hands.

“You knew they were coming?” asked Ambrose.

Kennett shook his head. “We knew something was coming. Quite clever really. We’ve been keeping tabs on a private vessel for days, a very large motor yacht owned by our old friend the emir and captained by Vladimir Roop. It docked at Fort William, the car was lowered, and off it went. Nothing . . . unwelcome . . . touched the earth, you see, and it’s a hardtop, windows shut, keeping out all that Scottish air and lovely mist and those who travel with it.”

“Did you know I was here?”

“Oh yes,” said Kennett. He looked past Ambrose, into the simple, single room of the bothy. “Rather basic, old boy. Takes you back, I suppose?”

“Yes it does,” said Ambrose, without rancour. Kennett, like most D-Arc operatives, was from an old and very upper-class family. Ambrose was not. Everything he had achieved had come despite his more difficult start in life. He had taken a long series of steps that had begun with a scholarship to Bristol Grammar at the age of seven, the first part of a challenging journey that had taken him far, far away from the ever-changing temporary accommodations shared with his father, at least when that worthy was not in prison for his various “no-risk lottery” and “gifting circle” frauds.

“Each to his own,” remarked Kennett. “I take it you’ve dealt with the visitors?”

“Yes.”

“We’d best take you away then,” said Kennett. “Lady S wants to have a word, and I expect you’ll need that leg looked at. Demon bite is it?”

“Lady S can go—” Ambrose bit back his words with an effort.

“Quite likely,” replied Kennett. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. But I don’t see the relevance. Lady S wants to see you, therefore you will be seen by her. Unless, of course, you want to stay here and turn into something that will have every Gaelic-speaking entity of wood, air, and river rising up to assail?”

“No,” replied Ambrose. He knew when it was pointless to rail against fate. “I don’t want that. Do we have to go all the way to London? I don’t think I can make—”

“No, not at all,” said Kennett. “Lady S is on a progress through the far-flung parts of the D-Arc realm. She’s in Edinburgh, taking stock of our new medical advisor.”

“New medical advisor?” asked Ambrose. “What happened to Shivinder?”

Kennett turned his cold, cold eyes to meet Ambrose’s gaze, and held it for a second, which was sufficient reply. Whatever had happened to Dr. Shivinder, Ambrose would likely never know, and if he did find out, by some accident of information, he would be best to keep it to himself.

“The new chap is quite the prodigy,” said Kennett. “Oxford, of course, like all the best people.”

Ambrose sighed and limped a step forward towards the car. There were tiny wisps of smoke issuing from under the hieroglyphic bandage, as the small angels of Sekhmet fought the demonic infestation. While it wouldn’t actually catch alight, the pain was quite intense, which was another sign that the demons were winning.

“Spare me the jibes,” he said. “Can we just go?”

“Yes, we should toodle along, I suppose,” said Kennett. “Jones and Jones will stay to secure the place, and they can bring your gear along later and so forth. Do we need to shoot the dog?”

Ambrose bent down, gasping with the pain, and took Nellie by the collar. Turning her head, he looked deeply into her trusting brown eyes, and then ran his hand over her back and legs, carefully checking for bites.

“No, she’s clear,” he said. “She can go back to the big house. Nellie! Big house!”

He pointed to the garden gate as he spoke. Nellie cocked her head at him, to make sure he was serious, yawned, to show her lolloping red tongue, and slowly began to pick her way through the mud.

She had only gone a few yards when Kennett shot her in the back of the head with his revolver. The heavy Webley .455 boomed twice. The dog was shoved into the puddle by the force of the impact, her legs continuing to twitch and jerk there, even though she must have been killed instantly. Blood slowly swirled into the muddy water, steam rising as it spread.

Ambrose fumbled with his shotgun, swinging it to cover Kennett. But it was broken open, and Kennett was watching him, the revolver still in his hand.

“There was demon-taint in her mouth,” said Kennett, very matter-of-fact. “She wouldn’t have lasted a day.”

Ambrose shut his eyes for a moment. Then he nodded dully. Kennett stepped in and took the shotgun, but did not try to remove the yataghan that Ambrose used to lever himself upright.

“You’re all right?” asked Kennett. “Operational? Capable?”

“I suppose so,” said Ambrose, his voice almost as detached as Kennett’s. He looked down at Nellie’s body. Dead, just like so many of his friends, but life continued and he must make the best of it. That was the litany he had learned at Grandway House. He owed it to the dead, the dead that now included Nellie, to live on as best he could.

“Did you do that to test me? Did Lady S tell you to shoot my dog?”

“No,” replied Kennett calmly. “I had no orders. But there was demon-taint.”

Ambrose nodded again. Kennett could lie better than almost anyone he knew, so well that it was impossible to know whether he spoke the truth or not, unless there was some undeniable evidence to the contrary. And there could have been demon-taint. Of course, with the dog’s head shattered by hexed silver fulminate exploding rounds, there was no possible way to check that now.

Leaning on his yataghan, Ambrose trudged to the standard-issue departmental car. He had hoped to avoid any further involvement with D-Arc, but he had always known that this was a vain hope. Even when he had left the section the first time in 1916, escaping to regular service on the Western Front, there had still been occasional reminders that D-Arc was watching him and might reel him in at any time. Like the odd staff officer with the mismatched eyes, one blue and one green, who never visited anyone else’s battalion in the brigade but often dropped in on Ambrose. Always on one of the old, old festival days, sporting a fresh-cut willow crop, a spray of holly, or bearing some odd bottle of mead or elderberry wine. Ambrose’s adjutant and the battalion’s second-in-command called him “the botanist” and thought he was just another red-tabbed idiot wandering about. But Ambrose knew better.