Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

“What does it do?” asked Evelina.

“It’s an elaborate kind of compass,” said the prince. “You tell it your destination, and it points you there.”

“I never figured out how to tell it where I wanted to go,” said Nick.

“I did,” said the prince. “I needed to do something to keep busy on the Athena , at least until people started shooting at us.” He popped the back off the device and began fiddling with the gears.

Curious, Evelina had to hold her hands behind her back to keep from snatching it away for a better look. When the prince finally surrendered it, she could see a series of red arrows pointing to a tiny spot on the painted map of London.

“There are two painted faces for the compass,” said the prince. “One for London and one for England. I switched it to the London map. It’s too small to see a lot of detail, but I told it we were aiming for Wapping across the river. The arrows will tell us which way to go.”

Evelina saw a series of red arrows, all swiveled to point at a single location on the map. She turned to face another direction, and the arrows swayed to keep their points fixed firmly north. “Amazing.” She desperately wanted to take it apart and examine the insides.

While they were setting the device, Nick had been checking the passages, peering carefully at the ground. “This is the way Blue went.”

Soon they were following after, carefully watching for signs of the underground inhabitants. She dreaded encountering more of the shadowy Others like the ones Magnus had kept at his castle. She had even less appetite for encountering Wraiths—the Black Kingdom’s equivalents of the Blue Boys or Yellowbacks. She’d seen them once before and had no desire for a repeat.

Barely speaking, they walked down the side tunnel for some minutes. It branched, and branched again, but they used the device to keep on in the right direction. She could feel Nick growing more and more restless. She didn’t like the place, but she could tolerate the feel of the earth around her. By the way he kept glancing up with a frown, the weight of earth and water above them didn’t agree at all with a magician of the air.

But something about the underground felt familiar to her. She remembered Magnus saying that he had studied in the Black Kingdom for a time, and she recognized a flavor that he had carried in his magic, almost the way a cook will pick up a spice during his travels. The source of that essence was somewhere deep in the earth and it was a magnet to her dark magic. She knew it for the root of power, the same pure essence that she had touched to call the devas of London to her hand. It was the commonality between the folkways of Gran Cooper and Magnus’s sorcery. Somewhere in the Black Kingdom was the origin of everything she was. The touch of it pulsed inside her like a second heartbeat. It lulled her into a dreamlike state, pushing out every other thought.

The prince shuffled to a stop. “I’m losing my sense of direction down here. Where are we?”

Shaking herself awake, Evelina opened the octagon and saw at once that the needles were pointing every which way. “Damnation!” Dismay rolled through her as she snapped the case shut. “If we turn around now, we can still retrace our steps.”

A female voice came from the darkness ahead of them. “Equipment doesn’t work well down here. There’s too much ambient power for anything magnetized to work properly. Of course, we’re the exception.”

Evelina’s breath caught as half a dozen of the half-human victims of Her Majesty’s Laboratories emerged from the shadows ahead. They looked every bit as ragged as the band that had attacked the prince before. All had at least two metal limbs, and one had half a metal face. The leader pushed a few steps ahead of the others, the faint gaslight gleaming on the sculpted strands of metal that made up her forearm. “You do realize, of course, that you’re trespassing? And once you’re in the Black Kingdom, you don’t leave until questioned.”

There was a scuff behind her and Evelina wheeled around, heart hammering. There were another five of the creatures behind them, weapons raised. Even if she tried, she couldn’t raise a spell in time to attack before they fired. They were trapped.

The prince lifted his hat, sketching a polite bow to the woman, whose body seemed to be as much metal as it was flesh. “Then, madam,” he said as easily as if she had announced that tea was in the drawing room, “I expect we shall have the honor of accepting your invitation.”

London, October 16, 1889

OVER LONDON

5:05 p.m. Wednesday

TOBIAS CLAMBERED ABOARD THE SMALL, FLEET DIRIGIBLE that had brought his father and Bucky to the caterpillar. Alice and Poppy were just settling into their seats. Tobias sat beside Alice, grasping her cold hand in his good one. He’d barely been able to stop touching her since Yelland had hauled the two women onto the caterpillar. In that one heart-stopping moment he’d grasped how close he’d come to losing them in the madness sweeping the city.

“What the blazes were you doing in the middle of the fight?” Lord Bancroft exploded, his gaze riveted on Poppy.

“We were looking for Jeremy,” she said stoutly. “Circumstances changed along the way. There were snakes.”

The door slammed shut and the craft lifted. It had set down in the relatively safe zone near the Athena , but there was no wisdom in lingering.

“When I get you home …” Bancroft growled.

“You can’t keep me from helping.” Poppy gave her father a mutinous look. “I’m getting the knack for defying danger.”

Alice flinched. It might have been a stifled laugh, or it might have been chagrin. Tobias had heard most of their tale from Alice, who looked utterly exhausted. He didn’t feel much better, but fondness for his sister made him smile. “It doesn’t matter. We’re getting them out of the battle.”

His father muttered something under his breath, but the sound of the propellers drowned out his words. Bucky looked back from the pilot’s seat. “That’s the thing. We weren’t expecting to find the ladies.”

“What do you mean?” Tobias asked.

Lord Bancroft answered. “We commandeered the aircraft. The Gold King’s forces have split and Keating’s gone north. We came to give the news to the prince but he’s gone after Blue.”

“Have you found my father?” Alice asked, her voice tight.

“We think we know where he’s gone,” Bancroft replied. “And I would very much like to confirm our information.”

Tobias could hear the eagerness in his father’s voice. Gift wrapping Jasper Keating for the new heir to the throne was one of those rare moves that would make a duke out of a viscount.

“He’s put my baby in danger,” Alice said, the pain in her words wrenching Tobias’s guts. “Please don’t hold back because of me.”

The dirigible turned, and Tobias caught a glimpse of the wreckage below. His breath nearly stopped. Fire and smoke billowed up from Covent Garden. Blue-white flame bloomed from an aether cannon, ripping through a line of the Gold King’s machines. The resulting explosion blew a hole in the Royal Opera House. Then several city blocks northwest of there were flattened, mere crumbs of stone left behind. Two of the rolling spheres from the Blue King’s army sat abandoned in the midst of the scene, giving testament as to what had levelled the landscape.

He didn’t quite believe what he saw. These were the streets he’d haunted all his life—the places he’d drank and loved and played. Gone. Destroyed. Lost. It was as if all those memories had been ripped from him and trampled. A wave of hatred turned him cold.