Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

“I thank you for your efforts, gentlemen,” said the prince, but he looked at Evelina. “Will these devices conflict in any way with what you have done?”

“No,” she said. “The devas will override the war machines, no matter who commands them.”

Bucky looked at her with fresh interest, but the prince was already issuing orders. “These need to get to Edgerton and the army to the west. Lieutenant, take a party and see Lord Bancroft and Mr. Penner get through to them safely.”

The lieutenant gave a smart salute and gathered his charges, but her attention was drawn away. Several things were happening at once at the near edge of the battle.

Tobias must have had some of those devices, because all at once several of the Gold King’s battle engines were using their cannons to clear a path for his caterpillar. This had two effects. The rebel army to the west began pushing toward him, but a ripple passed through the Gold King’s lines as a group she hadn’t seen before crashed through.

“Who are they?” Evelina demanded, but no one had time to answer her. Smythe’s cavalry scattered like rain before the onslaught, horses whinnying in terror. Within seconds, she knew why.

Here were some of the missing inmates of Her Majesty’s Laboratories, gathered into a fighting force the likes of which no one had ever seen. They carried no weapons, and rags hung from their gaunt frames, as dirty and bedraggled as the matted ropes of their hair and beards. Like Nellie Reynolds, many were part machine, but where she had kept her personality, these had been turned into something else. Evelina’s guess was that their magic had been ripped from them, or twisted somehow to damage their minds, because there was nothing human left behind. Fearless, they arrowed forward at unnatural speed, snarling with savage, catlike teeth bared.

There were more than a dozen, but just as many guns opened fire. Half went down at once, but half still sprinted toward the prince—and such fast targets were difficult. A second volley took more down, but two still came. One was male—his head and one arm seeming to be the only part left that was flesh. The other was a woman, her left leg and right arm made from a framework of shining steel. Nick aimed and shot the man full in the face, sending him spinning backward, but the woman lunged, clawed hands already reaching for the prince.

They hadn’t come all this way for this to happen. Panicked, Evelina thrust her power forward, willing the tragedy to just stop .

And it did. Time froze.

Panic morphed into bewilderment. Evelina stared around her. Everything was as immobile as if it had been cast in bronze. The half-woman’s long gray hair streamed behind her, the ropey muscle of her calf straining as she launched from the grass, and yet she did not move. The prince’s expression was a mask of wide-eyed revulsion, one arm raised to block her attack. Nick was there beside her, caught in the midst of his weapon’s recoil as his target fell backward, suspended at an impossible angle in the air.

Evelina’s scalp crawled. She’d never done anything like this before! She took a deep breath, relishing how quiet it was with the din of battle stopped. Except it wasn’t silent. Something else besides her was moving around.

She turned toward the noise. It was the giant dog, standing just inside the ring of frozen battle. It really was the size of a small calf, with the huge, square head of a mastiff. The coat was brindled brown and black with a white chest and two massive white paws on its front legs. It might have just been a big dog except for its glowing red eyes and the blue-green slobber dripping from its jaw. A dog that drools aether? Evelina thought. What had the scientists at the laboratories done to the poor creature?

And yet here it was, oblivious to her magic. It started to lollop toward her, a deep baying cry escaping from its chest. Evelina backed away, unsure how to stop it but knowing she must. She gathered her magic—or tried to—but it seemed as immobilized as the scene. She fumbled, her abilities blunted by having used so much power only minutes ago. Had she even cast the freezing spell, or had it been the hound?

The creature sprang for the prince. Evelina leapt to stop it by sheer strength, but her fingers slipped from the sleek fur, the muscled body far too powerful to even flinch at her assault. But it didn’t grab the Schoolmaster in its massive jaws; it savaged his attacker instead. Those huge white paws slammed into the half-human’s sides, bearing her to the ground before snapping her neck with a single, sickening crunch.

Evelina gasped, and the hound turned its head, red eyes like a whirling mass of clouds turned ruby by a spectacular sunset. There was something ancient about them and very uncanine, and something that told her she wasn’t the only magician in the war.

“I saw you at the laboratories,” she said.

An image formed in her mind that made her skin crawl. This was indeed the dog Nellie Reynolds had described—part hound, part clockwork, and part aether engine. But through the magic unleashed during the wreck of the laboratories, the beast had become host to Dartmoor’s spirits—and they were just figuring out the potential of the hound’s internal workings.

“Is this trick of stopping time your magic or something built inside of you?” she asked.

Both , it replied.

The hound’s deep voice startled her tired magic to attention.

“Why did you follow us?” she asked.

Events have been set in motion. The dragon awakes. Magic walks. Crowns rise and fall. No one can stop the wheel from turning now .

The creature’s words chilled her to the core. Her power rose, tingling and ready for a fight, but the creature gave an acknowledging whuff and bounded away. As soon as it had vanished from sight, the racket of the battle resumed with the force of a thunderclap. Nick’s victim fell. The prince gave a surprised cry, blinking as he saw the woman dead on the ground. Evelina slumped into a crouch, her head spinning.

“What the bleeding hell happened?” Nick demanded.

What indeed? Evelina reeled from the suddenness of what she’d just seen. What had Dr. Watson been writing—something about a hound that haunted the Baskerville family?

She thought he’d made it up, but she would bet her last shilling she’d just seen the object of the good doctor’s latest tale.

THE NEXT MOMENT, THE AIRMEN LEAPED INTO ACTION, breaking Evelina’s thoughts.

“Get the prince back inside the ship!” Nick commanded, and his crew sprang to obey.

“No!” said the Schoolmaster. “Others have fought on my behalf long enough.” He unslung the modified rifle he had over his shoulder. “I can’t command what I will not do myself.”

“Pardon, my lord, but you need to stay alive long enough to actually win the day,” Nick broke in, waving a hand. “Otherwise, this has been a colossal waste of time.”

The prince bridled. They might have argued longer, but a roar of cannon made the ground shudder and drowned out anything else they had to say.

Evelina ran for the ladder that led back inside the Athena , but instead of crawling back inside she used it to work her way onto the ship’s backswept wing. A handful of rooks were already there, and they hopped aside to make room for her. Her skirts started to tangle around her ankles as she climbed, but she kicked them aside, no longer worried about the rips and mud along her hems. She finally got to her feet, shading her eyes against the falling angle of the sun. She could sense Athena, who was lost in a swirling, hazy doze despite the chaos all around.

“What do you see?” Nick called up from the ground.