Chapter Five
Rhys wasn’t sorry that Newberry caught up to them, though it meant he wouldn’t be alone with the inspector—and might not be again for a good length of time. Someone had taken Marco’s Terror. Where Rhys went next depended on what Baxter had to tell them. If that destination wasn’t London and Rhys didn’t return with her, Newberry could watch over the inspector until she reached home.
And he wished to hell that he’d realized earlier why the red giant always followed her. Never again would Rhys leave her without protection—and very soon, she’d have more than a constable looking out for her. When he made it common knowledge that Wilhelmina Wentworth was his woman, that connection would protect her better than fifteen constables could. No one would dare touch her.
No one but him.
He sat in the chair across from her as the locomotive gave a loud hollow whistle. The car rattled around them before slowly pulling out of the station. He hated traveling this way. There was no escaping the clacking, the great puffing engine, the vibration of the floors, the sickening rush as the landscape raced past the windows.
He focused on the inspector, instead, though she didn’t want him watching her. But Rhys liked the way she looked, particularly when her expression suggested that she’d prefer to have a gun aimed at his head rather than sit across from him in a private railcar. He liked the severe roll of black hair at her nape, and how the style didn’t conceal any of her face. He liked the line that formed between her black brows when she frowned at him. He liked the angry pinch of her lips, and the anticipation of watching them soften. He liked her small hands, and that she hadn’t hesitated to use them to defend herself in the lift—and he’d liked the feel of her fingers squeezing his cock even more. He liked the snug fit of her trousers when she sat, the way they clung to slender legs that could wrap around his back, holding him tight inside her.
So Rhys watched her, and imagined her riding him all the way to Chatham.
Or he would have, if she hadn’t interrupted his imaginings with her questions, as if she still had a role in this, as if her investigation still mattered.
It didn’t. Someone had taken the Terror. Whoever had killed Haynes belonged to Rhys now. But he answered her questions anyway, because he liked her voice, the full strength of it.
Had he met Haynes? Yes. Why hadn’t Rhys recognized him? The man’s face had been smashed. Where was his ship? It was supposed to be in the Caribbean. What will happen to the crew? That depended on who took the ship.
At that point, Rhys had to force his thoughts back to shagging her—hard and rough. If he dwelt on the Terror being taken and a good captain tossed like rubbish onto his house, he wouldn’t be able to stop his fury from boiling over; it was too hot and too new. But his need to possess the inspector was hot and new, too, so he used it ruthlessly to combat his rage.
They were almost to Chatham when he recalled that her brother was aboard.
Thoughts of the Terror and of shagging receded. For the first time since the Blacksmith had told him who’d landed on his front steps, Rhys looked at her—and he didn’t see anything. No anxiety, no panic. But he remembered her voice when she’d spoken of the boy . . . Andrew. He remembered the softness, the worry, and how he’d been certain that she missed her brother.
She must be terrified. Desperate. But she concealed every bit of it, just as he held back his rage.
Except it didn’t burn so hotly now, and suddenly his anger wasn’t all that drove him. A part of him began to focus on easing her fear. Not just taking the Terror back, not just making someone pay. The inspector needed something, too—to find out what had happened to her brother. Rhys could give her that.
So she still did have a role in this—and he had reason to keep her close.
With a shriek of brakes and another bone-shaking rattle, they drew into the Chatham station. Rhys watched her face as she stepped down from the car, and saw that her first glance was in the same direction as everyone else who journeyed from London—up, where the sun hung high in the brilliant blue sky, rather than shining like a dull coin embedded in a shark’s belly. Her lips parted and her face softened, and Rhys vowed that he would see that expression again.
Preferably when she looked at him, and preferably when she was under him.
Then her focus shifted, and he followed her gaze to the airships tethered over the river. Nearly fifty, and most of them the navy’s rigid dreadnoughts—too slow and too heavily armed to be maneuverable, and with their engines, too loud to have sailed over London unnoticed. But there were others who might have, skyrunners that carried a few passengers or light cargo over short distances.
Rhys knew all of the skyrunners’ captains, however, and all of them would have refused to take on a job that might bring the Iron Duke to their ships. All but one.
Lady Corsair hovered across the Medway. Yasmeen had some balls, tethering her airship at a naval dock. And if the price was right and the gold paid in advance, she’d have dropped a dead man onto Rhys’s house.
But then she’d have climbed down a ladder, shared a drink with Scarsdale, and told them both who’d been fool enough to pay her upfront.
Not Yasmeen, then. But she might have heard something useful.
“Do you recognize any of them?”
He glanced at the inspector, who was still looking over the array of airships. “All of them. But there’s only one that interests me. We’ll talk with her captain after we see Baxter.”
The inspector’s mouth twisted, as if she didn’t want to smile, but couldn’t completely stop herself. “I suspect that you’re a useful man to have around a port, Your Grace.”
He was. “Have you visited Chatham before?”
“I’ve never been farther from London than Dartford before, and that only the once.” A faint blush stole under her skin when Rhys narrowed his eyes at her, when Newberry’s mouth dropped open. She turned toward the platform exit. “And so I’ll let you lead the way.”
Christ. No farther than Dartford. Not that unusual for buggers living in London, Rhys knew. Most never left town, not even the once. But the knowledge put heavier weight on her conversation with the tinker girl. A blacksmith could go anywhere . . . and the inspector never had.
So he’d renew his offer. When she accepted it, he’d take her a hell of a lot farther than a shipyard town in Kent.
Chatham wasn’t a bad start, however. The town had grown in the past five years, since the Royal Navy had begun rebuilding its shipyards in England, and the boom had spilled over almost at their feet. Between the busy railway station and the cabstands, a tent city had sprung up—part market, part carnival. Started by locals taking advantage of sailors passing through, and their numbers increased by Londoners who’d run as far from town as their money would take them, they sold music and sexual favors, clockworks and grilled meats. The inspector would have seen better—and worse—in London, but she hadn’t seen it under blue skies, hadn’t heard it without the noise of engines and traffic. Every color appeared deeper, brighter. Every sound clear and true. Hell, Rhys enjoyed it, too, and so he took the long way around.
Blacksmiths repaired singing birds and steamcarts next to a stall selling live chickens. An old woman in a ragged shawl balanced on a tree stump, proclaiming that the end of the world neared, and their doom rode on the backs of steam-powered horses. Behind her, a miner danced on the pulverizing hammers grafted to his legs. His audience laughed and threw pennies when he activated the pneumatics, juddering and singing through the steps.
The tent barkers pitched their attractions, yelling invitations to look inside tents to see the Human Ape, a result of the Horde’s breeding experiments, to see an old man open up his chest and reveal his clockwork heart, to see the lost sketches from the great Leonardo da Vinci’s pen. Even the stoic Newberry laughed at the last—anyone in possession of a genuine da Vinci sketch wouldn’t be displaying that treasure beneath a tent in Chatham and charging pennies.
He turned to catch the inspector’s reaction, and saw that she’d paused along the path beside the next tent, her head cocked to listen. A crude drawing of a human with misshapen teeth and taloned hands illustrated the sign out front. Rhys drew closer. A garbled hiss from behind the striped walls lifted the hairs at the back of his neck.
He knew that sound too well.
She rubbed her hands against her sleeves, as if she’d suddenly been struck with gooseflesh. “It’s an eerie noise.”
And damned close to the real thing. “Let’s look inside.”
Tired-looking and thin, the blond barker at the tent entrance brightened as he turned her way. When the inspector and the constable came with him, nervousness ticked over the barker’s features before she firmed them with bravado. She widened her eyes and dipped into the exaggerated pose of someone frozen in fear.
“They hunger,” she whispered hoarsely. “They eat the flesh from your bones and drink your marrow. The soulless zombies hunt even the Horde, and you won’t see another anywhere in England or the New World . . . if you’re lucky.”
Rhys hadn’t been. “How much?”
The blond straightened. “A denier each.”
Not English money, but the French currency that ruled the trade routes in the Old and New Worlds. The inspector hesitated and looked to the constable, who shook his head. Probably neither carried anything but pennies. Anything more in London would be an invitation for a pickpocket.
Fortunately, Rhys hadn’t had a purse lifted in years. He paid the barker, who waved the curtain aside with a flourish.
Her dramatic whisper followed him inside. “If you value your life, stay behind the lamps.”
He had to duck beneath the low canvas roof. Two gas lamps sat on the dirt floor, more than an arm’s length from the small cage at the back of the tent, throwing bright light through the iron bars and onto the thing crouched on filthy straw. Nude, its tangled and matted hair ripped out in chunks, it wasn’t as dirty as most zombies he’d seen. Perhaps the barker threw a bucket of water at it every week.
The zombie’s hissing gurgle became a low growl. Ruined lips drew back from sharp teeth. Spit and gore crusted its mouth.
He heard Newberry choke back an oath. The inspector said, “Avert your eyes, constable,” before stopping beside Rhys.
“It was a woman,” she murmured.
Rhys couldn’t read her reaction to it. Fascination? Disgust? His own response was familiar, though: Kill it.
He’d have to use her weapons. While in England, Rhys only carried a dagger in his boot—which was useless against a zombie unless he sawed off its head with the blade. But he wouldn’t risk stepping that near to the thing, anyway.
The zombie threw its shoulder against the bars. The cage rattled. Growling, it clawed the air between them, black eyes fixed hungrily across the short distance.
The inspector turned, looking to the tent barker waiting at the entrance. “It’s illegal to bring them into England.”
“I didn’t bring it in, did I? It was a fat salvage trader who brought that thing in from Europe on his boat.”
The inspector appeared unmoved by that argument. The barker’s defiance vanished. She lifted her hands. “Me and my sisters, we’ve got seven little ones between us. The deniers we earn here barely keep us off the streets . . . and out of them other workhouses.”
With a sigh, the inspector faced the cage again. She tilted her head, as if trying to see better through the bars. “I’ve often wondered if the person is still in there.”
A living hell, if it was. Most of the zombies in Europe were originally the humans who’d been left behind after each nation fled to the Americas, escaping the Horde’s advancing war machines. But the Horde didn’t want to occupy the land; they wanted the resources. Their harvesting machines gathered those, and the Horde infected the remaining humans with nanoagents to prevent the nations who’d fled from returning and fighting for their territory.
But the zombie’s nanoagents weren’t like those infecting the buggers, and weren’t controlled by a tower. They acted like a disease, spread through a bite. The bodies they inhabited only hungered and hunted, never dying unless their brain was destroyed. This zombie could be two hundred and fifty years old, a woman’s mind trapped by the diseased bugs.
“Even during the Frenzies, or when the Horde locked us down and paralyzed our bodies . . . we were aware. We knew we were being controlled.” She paused. “But I suppose you remember how it was.”
Scarsdale had suggested that her mother hadn’t remembered. But Rhys wouldn’t mention that now. He simply said, “No.”
She glanced up at him. “Weren’t you from a crèche?”
“Yes. Caerwys.” When she looked at him blankly, he said, “County Clwyd. There until I was smuggled out of Wales at eight years of age.”
Smuggled out and sold to the Ivory Market, where he’d seen his first zombie in a cage, selling for a few gold sous. But there wasn’t much that couldn’t be bought and sold along that stretch of West African coast. Both a zombie and a boy were on the lowest end of the scale.
“Oh.” The inspector blinked. Her gaze searched his face, as if trying to find pieces of him to put together. Good. He wanted her curious. “Then I suppose you would have been too young to be affected by a Frenzy.”
He wouldn’t have been affected, anyway. He’d never been controlled by his bugs. But he knew what it was to be controlled, and he’d never liked it.
She stepped closer to the cage, standing between the two lamps. Rhys stopped himself from yanking her back. The zombie battered itself against the cage, hissing, growling, biting the bars in fury.
Bending slightly, as if she wanted to look into its eyes, she said, “Some believe that the nanoagents kill the person and use the body. That a zombie is like a steamcoach driven by the diseased bugs. Not thinking, not feeling.”
“If she’s lucky.”
“Yes. And I’ve heard that New World scientists are trying to concoct a cure.”
“Some of them. Some scientists are hoping to concoct immortality—and to sell it.”
She threw him a glance over her shoulder. “Are you familiar with them?”
“I’ve funded research and expeditions.”
“Have they discovered anything? A cure?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’m sorry for this one.”
Stepping back, she drew her gun and aimed it into the cage. Surprise rammed through him. Only a moment ago, Rhys had been certain she’d soon begin weeping over the zombie’s plight, and wondering if he should return later to kill it and save her the distress of witnessing the thing’s death. Confounding woman. He wanted to drag her close and kiss her senseless. He moved aside to give her room, instead.
“No!” The barker shoved past him, rushing in front of the gun. She spread her hands wide, as if to prevent the inspector from shooting around her. “No!”
“Stand aside,” the inspector said. “With one mistake—if someone comes too close, or the cage fails—then your sisters and your children will be dead. All of England will be.”
Panic widened the woman’s eyes. “We’re careful.”
“Stand aside.”
“She’s not real! It’s a feeble-minded woman we found on the street. She pisses on herself. We earn our money.”
“Then step closer to the cage.”
The woman hesitated.
“Step back to the cage, close enough that she can bite you. Or step aside.”
Tears welled up, spilled over. “We’ve got nothing else. If I don’t earn our money here, I don’t bring anything home.”
“I’ll count to three.”
“Please, don’t—”
“One.”
“You can’t—”
“Back to the cage,” the inspector repeated, “or step to the side. Two.”
“—please we need—”
“Three.”
With a shriek, the barker flung herself to the side, falling to her knees beside the gas lamp. The inspector fired. A dark hole exploded open between sunken breasts.
Convulsing against the bars, the zombie raged, spitting blood. Rhys stepped forward. Folding his hand over the inspector’s, he adjusted her aim.
“The head,” he said. “Always the head.”
With a nod, she finished it off.
“And what now, you Horde cunt?” The woman screamed from the floor, pulling at her hair. “We earned the right to that thing, you bloody fucking jade whore! That fat old trader had me and my sisters on our backs. And we earned it.”
The inspector holstered her gun. “Then find that trader and put him in the cage. You’ll make money enough—fat old men in England are almost as rare as zombies.” She looked to Newberry. “See that the body is burned. Then find us at Baxter’s.”
Newberry glanced with some anxiety to Rhys, who reassured the constable with a look before following the inspector outside. Oh, yes, he’d watch over her.
And he wouldn’t let her away from him.
By the starry skies, that thing could not have been a human.
Mina emerged from the tent, lifting her hand against the blinding sun. The air seemed thin and tasteless. A deep breath left her light-headed, sick.
The barker’s screams from inside the tent rose to a higher pitch, driving like a nail into Mina’s head. She started down the path, leaving them behind. Trahaearn would catch up any moment, probably with just two of his absurdly long strides, and she damned well wouldn’t let him see how that thing and that woman’s pleas had shaken her to the core.
And no more of this tarrying about. A cabstand lay beyond all of these tents and stalls, and any driver worth a penny would know how to find the admiral.
Not relishing the thought of being crowded into a tiny seat with the duke, she passed a cheap spider-rickshaw and stopped at a steamcoach with the top folded back. A youngish man with a flop of ginger hair perched on the driver’s bench.
Mina withdrew her purse. “Will you take me to Admiral Baxter’s residence, sir?”
The driver’s eyes narrowed on her, lips curling back in a sneer. For a moment, she thought he’d refuse to let her hire him. Then his gaze shifted beyond her, something like awe passed over his face, and he nodded.
There were days when she found it difficult not to hate everyone in bloody England. Mina choked out her thank-you and clambered into the coach, wishing she could cosh the driver upside the head with her billy club.
And she wished Andrew were here. He’d always had a knack for making her laugh herself out of these moods. But only the stars above knew where Andrew was, and instead she had the damned Iron Duke, and a ramshackle coach that dipped and creaked alarmingly as he stepped inside, as if four men had boarded rather than just one. He seated himself beside her and began watching her again, lord of all he bleeding surveyed—and taking up more room than any man had a right to. Even Newberry didn’t push into her space, and he outweighed the duke by two stone.
Well, he could peer at her all he wanted. She’d stare ahead at the ginger skull she’d like to bash in.
His voice sounded low and alarmingly near her ear. “Thank you, inspector, for saving me the trouble of killing the zombie with my knife.”
She glanced at him sharply. With the sun behind him, his face was all in shadow, but he was smiling. Maybe laughing. Who could tell over the engine’s racket? She lifted her voice. “What would you have used?”
“Your guns. A machete, if I’d thought to carry one to the Blacksmith’s this morning.” His smile faded. “I need something to call you other than ‘inspector.’ ”
“No, sir. You don’t.”
When he shook his head, the tiny gold hoops through the upper curves of his ears glinted through his dark hair. Such a peculiar place for jewelry. But she supposed there were many odd places that a person could pierce their body, if they wished to.
The Iron Duke probably had. Primitive scoundrel.
“I do,” he countered. “And I know your names: Wilhelmina Elizabeth Wentworth. They don’t fit. What do your friends call you?”
“Stubborn.” She glanced away from him when his laughing smile returned. “You may continue to call me inspector.”
“And you may call me Rhys.”
“I won’t.”
“Even when I’m in your bed?”
Mina dropped her hand to her gun.
“I agree. That was too brazen.” He leaned in toward her, taking up so much space she could hardly draw a breath. “I should have said my bed, yes?”
Shaking her head, she looked forward again. Not quite so blood-thirsty, this time. She’d still have liked to give the driver a good whack, but bludgeoning him didn’t seem as necessary now.
On to other things, then—such as whether there would be bludgeoning when they reached the admiral’s house. “How well do you get on with Baxter?”
“He’s been a friend to me for years.”
“No.” Disbelieving, she searched his expression for a lie, and didn’t find one. “But he forcibly conscripted you.”
“Not forcibly. I was on a slave ship bound for the Lusitanian coal mines. Even the Royal Navy is better than a mine shaft.”
“As a slave? No. The newssheets have said you were on that slave ship’s crew. Words quoted from your mouth.”
“Those rags took my words as they saw fit. And they didn’t want a story of a boy enslaved. So they suggest that I was a slaver.”
Mina gaped at him. “And you don’t care?”
He shrugged. “It’s a useful lie. The alternative is giving those who want to destroy me a picture of a weak young boy, chained in a hold.”
“A lie for your enemies.” She shook her head. “I can think of many people who aren’t your enemies, and who would be inspired, picturing you as a weak young boy who rose out of his chains to save us.”
“To save you?” His face hardened. “That is a lie that will never come from me, inspector.”
She looked blindly away from him. Something had grabbed hold of her innards and twisted, hurting from her stomach to her throat. And she’d forgotten why they’d begun speaking of these . . . lies.
“Why do you tell me the truth now?”
“Because you asked me.”
Mina wasn’t certain if she wanted to again. “All right. And so Baxter is your friend. What kind of man is he?”
“A good one, inspector.”
And so she’d be telling a good man that his grandson was dead. “There are many types of good men. Is he soft and kind, a man who easily gives into his emotions? Generous? Strongly principled? I need to know what I can expect.”
The duke nodded and seemed to think it over, as if he didn’t make a habit of nailing his friends down with words. “He doesn’t make rash decisions. Quick, but not rash. And he won’t hold his men to a higher standard than himself, won’t expect more effort from them than he puts in. And he’ll give a man a second chance. But not a third.”
Was this Trahaearn’s idea of a good man, or a good captain?
Perhaps to him, they were the same thing. “So he’s different from the captain you mutinied against when you first took the Terror?”
“Adams wasn’t worth the shit I left him bleeding in. But I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t served under Baxter first.”
Mina doubted that. According to every account of the mutiny she’d read, Adams had been a brutal, murderous despot. Mutiny had been inevitable. If not Trahaearn, then it would have been someone else who’d led the crew against him.
She smiled slightly. “And so that is my answer. Baxter is the type of man who can inspire a young sailor to mutiny on another man’s ship.”
Trahaearn grinned. “Yes, hold Baxter responsible for it. I still do.”
No, he wouldn’t. Not truly. Mina couldn’t admire what the duke had done, but she’d never seen him shift blame to someone else. He owned up to the decisions he’d made, and their consequences.
And why not? He’d got a dukedom out of them.
“Have you been in contact with the admiral recently?”
“Not recently, no.”
“So Haynes’s death probably wasn’t about your connection to Baxter, but the connection to your ship.”
“Most likely.”
“Why not strike at you personally, then? Why use Marco’s Terror ? You’ve given her over to the navy. She’s not yours anymore.”
He tensed beside her. “Make no mistake, inspector. She’s mine.”
Fierce possession loaded his voice. Mina hadn’t expected that. “Why give her over to the navy, then?”
He didn’t answer.
All right. Perhaps that was the wrong question, anyway. Anyone who didn’t know him well would have probably thought the same as she did: Giving the Terror up suggested that he didn’t have a strong attachment to it. “Who else would know that you still think of Marco’s Terror as your ship?”
He stared at her before slowly nodding. “Not many. That will narrow it.”
Good. She took a long breath, feeling the need to steady herself, and wound up light-headed instead. The steamcoach jolted through a rut, jarring her into warm muscles as hard as steel. Quickly, she scooted over again, and though she didn’t see him follow, Mina was certain the duke took up more space than he had before.
She confirmed that an inch of empty seat still lay between them. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how much farther they had to go before they reached Baxter’s. It felt as if they’d driven through these streets for miles.
But if she had a few more minutes, then she had a few more questions.
“Of those who it can be narrowed to, how would they treat the crew? They’ve killed the captain. But what of the rest?”
“Inspector.” Though his response was soft, she heard him over the engine. When she lifted her gaze to his, he said, “Do you want to hear all of the possibilities, or only those that leave your brother alive?”
She hadn’t thought he’d remember. “Dead is dead. So tell me what might bring him home.”
“Most would keep the ship rather than sink her—and if they don’t have a crew, then they don’t have the Terror. They’ll kill the lieutenants and the marines, but not the others, so long as they fall in line. So he would just have to remain aboard until I find him.”
A terrible constriction around her chest eased. Andrew was an intelligent boy. He’d stay alive, keep his head down and follow orders.
“And the Terror is carrying eight men—not much older than boys—all training in the diplomatic corps. Every one of them comes from a merchant family in Manhattan City or London.”
Her heart leapt. “Do you believe the boys will be ransomed?”
“Whoever took the ship would be fools to pass up the money. They’ll ransom anyone with connections—including the younger son of an earl.”
Slowly, her heart fell back into place. Even if her family sold everything they had, would it be enough? “How much would they ask?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’d pay it for you.”
Her laugh was short and hollow. Of course he would. “At what price?”
His eyes narrowed. “Wouldn’t your brother be worth it?”
A man raised in a crèche might not understand how much Mina valued her family. And so she’d forgive him that question, just this once.
But she couldn’t prevent the bitterness from claiming her voice. “Yes, Your Grace, he is. Which means that I would be in your service for a very long time, because Andrew’s worth is a hundred thousand times greater than any man who uses a threat on his life to strong-arm me into bed.”
Amusement touched his hard mouth. “I take my opportunities where I find them, inspector.”
A bitter knot was still lodged in Mina’s chest when they arrived at the admiral’s residence. Newly built in a less ostentatious version of the Gothic-style that the bounders favored in both their homes and their churches, the admiral’s house featured steeply pitched gables and narrow windows that rose into pointed arches. Mina expected a dark and forbidding interior, but a butler led them past light, airy rooms to a study that looked out over a small garden and the river.
At first glance, the man who’d made such an impact on the Iron Duke didn’t appear even half as formidable. He waited at the window with hands clasped behind his back, a thin gray-haired figure in a somber jacket who stood not much taller than Mina. He turned as they entered. A short beard softened his austere features, but couldn’t soften the impression of steel and solid good sense when Mina met his eyes, or the quiet regret that lay behind them.
“Anglesey.” The admiral’s troubled gaze sought the duke. “I’ve just received the gram, yet you are already here. So you must have heard that she is lost—and that I have failed to keep her safe, as I promised you.”
Received the gram? Mina bit back her dismay. Apparently, Hale’s updates had beaten them to Chatham—forwarded to the admiral by some unthinking fool. A wiregram was the poorest way to deliver this sort of news.
Trahaearn frowned. “And you must know that I wouldn’t come to blame you.”
“Only because you have not yet heard the worst.” With a grim smile, the admiral strode to his desk and poured a finger of amber liquid into a snifter. “I not only failed to keep her safe, I sent her into danger. And my grandson with her. God help him, wherever he might be.”
The duke’s brows drew together. He glanced at Mina, and his puzzlement mirrored hers. Wherever he might be? Had the wiregram not told Baxter how they’d known the Terror was lost?
Realization crossed the duke’s expression, and he looked to the admiral again. But he didn’t speak. Perhaps having trouble finding the words to tell him.
Mina could make that easier for him—and more importantly, for the admiral.
“Sir.” Mina stepped forward. “It is my sad duty to inform you that your grandson, Roger Haynes, was found dead in London this past evening.”
“In London?” Mouth open, he glanced to Trahaearn, as if for confirmation. When the duke nodded, he dropped heavily into the chair behind his desk.
Mina sensed that not much shocked the man—and that being informed of Haynes’s death hadn’t surprised him. But the location had. She took a seat facing him.
“Sir, your grandson was supposed to be en route to the Caribbean. Last night, however, his body was delivered to His Grace’s estate. Do you have any idea why?”
He looked to Trahaearn as the duke sat next to Mina. “Delivered?”
“Dropped.”
Trahaearn didn’t soften it—and perhaps he didn’t need to. The admiral appeared to be recovering from his shock.
Baxter’s eyes narrowed. “From Bontemps?”
Bontemps. That infamous airship had been captained by Dame Sawtooth, a pirate with a reputation almost as notorious as the duke’s. The newssheets speculated that she was either dead or in hiding—she hadn’t preyed on any merchant or passenger ships in almost a decade. Not since the Iron Duke had destroyed the tower.
Trahaearn frowned. “The Dame hates me well enough, but she hasn’t flown in years. Why would you think that she took the Terror?”
“This arrived from the Admiralty.” He pushed a half-sheet wiregram message across the desk. Trahaearn leaned forward to retrieve it. “Roger’s name wasn’t listed among the others’, and so I knew.”
A list of ransomed hostages. Her breath locking in her throat, Mina came out of her chair and looked over Trahaearn’s shoulder. She didn’t read the opening message, but scanned the wiregram machine’s heavy type, searching for a name. Then scanned the message again, hoping that she’d simply missed it, but she couldn’t force the words to appear.
No Rockingham. No Wentworth. No Andrew.
Chest aching, she returned to the head of the message and read slowly. By the end of it, her panic had become a dull pain that she shoved to the rear of her mind. She would learn what had become of Andrew and make certain that he was safe. But she couldn’t know now, however much she wished it. Haynes’s murder, however, still lay in front of her, and she could pursue that.
She returned to her seat. According to the message Baxter had received, the ransom demands had been sent from a wiregram station in Dover to the Admiralty building in London at almost the same time that Mina had been boarding the train for Chatham. The ransom payments were to be collected and sailed across the Channel to Calais in two days’ time, and the money left on the beach. When payment had been verified, the boys would be returned to England.
Trahaearn returned the half sheet to Baxter. “An idiot wrote those demands.”
“Why an idiot?” Mina looked from the duke to the admiral. “They seem rather straightforward.”
“They would be, if not for the Dame having lived in Calais for the past eight years. She’d never bring the navy to her doorstep.” Trahaearn shook his head. “She isn’t this foolish.”
“The gram confirmed that Bontemps had been seen near Dover,” Mina pointed out.
“With someone else at the helm, most likely. And if someone botched that ransom demand, she won’t be staying in Calais much longer.” He caught Mina’s gaze and smiled slightly. “So we’ll go and ask her where the Terror is now.”
To Calais? Zombies roamed all of Europe—and what had once been the French coast was no exception.
Mina’s heart thudded and fear worked along her spine, but she nodded. From across the desk, Baxter regarded her with a quiet curiosity, as if he’d just realized that she was in the room, and didn’t know what to make of her presence in the midst of all this. Even as he watched her, however, his gaze seemed to lose focus and the few lines on his face deepened with grief or worry—or guilt.
She recalled his earlier confession about sending the ship into danger. But an admiral did not answer to a detective inspector, and wouldn’t justify or explain to her any commands that he’d given to his ships.
And so she directed her question to the duke, instead. “I’d also like to know where the Terror was supposed to have been.”
With a nod, Trahaearn looked to Baxter. “Tell me.”
The admiral poured another drink first, and offered the same to Trahaearn and Mina. When they refused, he sighed and sank deeper into his chair. “I sent her to join the Gold Coast fleet.”
Though his expression didn’t change, Trahaearn’s fingers clenched. “To the Ivory Market? Why?”
Baxter regarded him for a long moment before turning to Mina. “Inspector—Rockingham’s girl, are you?”
Mina’s heart sank. Whatever the admiral’s reasons, she wouldn’t be hearing them in person. He wasn’t looking at her as an officer of the law now, but a lady. “Yes, sir. Are you acquainted with my father?”
“Only by reputation. He writes a formidable letter.”
Baxter stood. Left with little other choice, Mina rose to her feet with him. Trahaearn’s chair creaked, and a moment later, the duke towered beside her.
“She hasn’t eaten since this morning,” he said.
“We’ll remedy that.” The admiral smiled as he escorted her to the door. “And I promise we will not leave you alone for long.”
Not long after the revolution, when Mina had been still struggling with the emotions that forever seemed to be rising up and exploding out, Mina’s mother had advised her not to waste her anger on things that she couldn’t change. Mina tried, certainly. The problem, however, lay in knowing exactly which things couldn’t be changed. Two hundred years ago, an Englishwoman couldn’t have hoped to become a detective inspector—if such a thing had existed then. Mina had once read that no one escaped the Black Death, and yet when plague had swept through the Horde territories fifty years ago, decimating the Horde military forces occupying England, not a single bugger had succumbed to it. Even death wasn’t certain, though there had to be a better alternative than becoming a zombie.
And so Mina thought that railing against immutable situations could prove more productive than her mother believed. But since she couldn’t imagine a way to change an admiral’s reluctance to speak of naval matters in front of a mere inspector, she took her mother’s advice and let her dismay and frustration go.
The abundant tray of food that the admiral’s staff provided further improved her mood.
Baxter kept his promise not to leave her alone for long. Only a short time passed before Trahaearn appeared at the parlor entrance, wearing his cold detachment like a mask.
Lovely. That was exactly what she’d wanted to see. She would remember to thank the admiral later.
With a sigh, Mina pushed the orange she had saved for Newberry into her overcoat pocket—an orange served as part of an everyday meal; she could hardly comprehend it—and joined the duke in the hallway.
He didn’t appear quite so cold by the time she reached him, and less so the longer his gaze remained on her face. She wished he’d look away from her, but she sensed that if there was one thing on Earth that wouldn’t change, no matter how she railed against him, it was the Iron Duke.
“All set, then?” he said, and she forced herself not to interrogate him there. What had the admiral told him? But she resisted and started for the front door.
A maid was leading another man back to the admiral’s study, a gentle-looking fellow with sandy hair and soft blue eyes. He carried a physician’s bag, which made Mina immediately like him a little better—until they passed each other, and he offered her a smile that said, I accept you, the kind that often accompanied a short bow and a greeting in the Horde language.
She despised that smile even more than she despised the blatant hatred. Condescending yellow-toothed lackwit bounder. She’d lived in this blasted country longer than he had.
Patience suddenly gone, she only waited until the door closed behind them. Spinning to face Trahaearn, she demanded, “What did he—”
Her tongue froze into place. Panic and terror ripped though her mind, spiked through her heart. Blood pounded in her ears, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. Her muscles locked up, and she almost toppled down the stairs and would have if the duke had not leapt forward and caught her rigid body, calling Inspector! and shouting at her to tell him what was wrong but all that Mina could think was The tower has come back, by the starry skies please no no no, not the Horde not the tower again.
From inside the house, a gunshot cracked.
Trahaearn’s head whipped around. For an instant, he stared at the admiral’s door, before gently laying Mina at the top of the stairs. Then he was up, charging through the entrance. She heard his boots pounding down the length of the hallway, a shout—not the duke’s—followed by a crash.
The hold on Mina’s body vanished.
Gasping, she surged to her feet. Beyond the open door, the butler was slowly climbing to his knees. The maid lay sobbing in the hall. Mina sprinted past them, drawing her weapon and bursting into the study.
Baxter lay on the floor, eyes open and unseeing. Blood pooled over the wooden boards beneath his head. Next to him lay the physician’s bag, and a metal box topped by a foot-long spike. Recognition spit through her, cold and sick, but she couldn’t stop to examine it. The window overlooking the garden had been shattered, as if someone had crashed through. Mina rushed to look, and caught a glimpse of Trahaearn’s long overcoat as he disappeared over the garden wall—chasing after the shooter.
Oh, blue heavens. Chasing after a man armed with a gun . . . and the stupid pirate only had a dagger.
She turned and ran, almost barreling into the white-faced butler in the hall. Mina stumbled, recovered, and shouted, “Don’t let anyone into that room!” before racing outside.
Another shot gave her a direction and almost made her heart explode through her ribs. Don’t be dead, Trahaearn, don’t be dead. Leaping over a low stone wall, she skidded on wet grass, then sped around the side of the house. A second gunshot rent the air.
Twenty feet away, the bounder collapsed to the ground, the hand holding his gun falling away from his head. In front of him, still in a dead run, Trahaearn shouted, a roar of frustration and fury. He hauled the dead man up by his jacket, slammed him back to the ground. His fist drew back.
“Trahaearn!” Mina caught his wrist in both hands. He turned on her, eyes blazing with rage. Chest heaving, she managed—“Not the face. Not until he’s identified.”
She let him go and stepped back to catch her breath. Insanity. The man had killed himself rather than be caught.
Trahaearn’s fist fell to his side. Though he still knelt beside the body, battering the dead murderer had apparently lost its appeal.
His breath was as labored as hers, his voice rough as he asked, “Baxter?”
“No,” Mina said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded and faced her. Mina’s stomach dropped through to her knees. He had been shot. Blood poured down the left side of his head. The bullet had dug a furrow beside his temple, deep enough that a flap of skin and dark hair hung loose over his ear.
Oh, smoking hells. Mina steadied herself. “Your head, sir. Are you all right?”
“Yes.” He touched the wound, looked at the blood on his fingers. “I have a hard skull.”
She didn’t doubt it, but he didn’t seem in a hurry to stand up, either. A noise from behind her brought Mina around. A maid stood near the corner of the house, eyes wide.
“You there!” Mina called. “Bring bandages for the Duke of Anglesey. Be quick about it!”
The maid darted back to the house. Mina yanked a handkerchief from her pocket, bent closer to him. His eyes were closed, hands fisted at his thighs.
“Keep still for a minute, now.” She wiped at a little blood, and when he didn’t draw away, asked quietly, “Do you recognize him?”
“No.”
Damn. “Did he say anything before he killed himself?”
“No.” He slammed his fist against his thigh. “He walked past me. Right past me.”
“Right by me, too.”
His head lifted slightly, as if he’d tried to look up at her. She continued cleaning, wincing as slight pressure parted the wound, exposing his gray skull—
Mina stilled. Gray. Not white bone, but dark gray.
Iron gray.
Swallowing, she pressed the cloth against his scalp, holding the flap of skin in place over the furrow. The bleeding had already begun to slow, thanks to his bugs. He’d be completely healed by the time they returned to London.
She heard running steps behind her, heavy enough that she guessed they were Newberry’s. A moment later, the constable appeared beside her, huffing like an engine.
His face paled when he saw Trahaearn. Not the blood, she knew. The Iron Duke had been shot on Mina’s watch. She’d be lucky to walk away with just a reprimand.
“Go into the house, Newberry. Secure the study. If the staff hasn’t notified the locals already, send one of them to locate a constable.”
“Yes, sir.” Newberry immediately turned to go, but halted when Trahaearn said, “Collect the freezing device. We’re not leaving it for the locals.”
So he’d recognized the device, too. Mina stared at him for a moment before nodding. She said to Newberry, “There’s a physician’s bag and a metal block with a spike.” A small tower. Shriveling fear scurried up her spine. She forced it away. “Take care in how you handle it, constable. As soon as you’ve secured the room, bring them here.”
“Yes, sir.”
He trotted off. The admiral’s staff had begun to gather on the lawn, watching from a distance.
Armed with bandages, the maid pushed through the group and ran up. Mina selected a length of linen and turned to the duke. “Hold this handkerchief here. The bleeding has almost stopped, but we’ll wrap a bandage around to keep the skin in place until it heals.”
His hand came up over the handkerchief. Mina sent the maid off for towels, hot water, and a clean shirt, though the chances of her finding the right size were nil.
She began winding the cloth around his head. Around flesh, over an iron skull. In all of her years assisting her father and opening up corpses, she’d never seen that before. Steel prosthetics, yes. Mechanical flesh. But not human flesh and skin that grew over metal as if it were bone.
And that wasn’t all that was different about him. The evidence that he possessed nanoagents lay in that quickly healing gash. But he hadn’t been affected by that device.
“I was frozen,” she said quietly. “So was the butler, the maid—and since we didn’t hear Baxter yell or fight, he probably had been, too. Why weren’t you?”
He glanced up at her. “The device used the wrong frequency.”
Mina was doubtful, but said nothing.
The intensity of his gaze deepened. “Are you all right, inspector?”
“Yes.” Still shaken, but as long as she didn’t think about how the device had stolen her will and her control, she would function. “I’m sorry that the admiral is dead.”
“Me, too.” His voice was grim. “But I’m damned if I know why he is.”
“Perhaps someone in Chatham will identify him.” She looked over his head at the dead man, and a thought struck her. “Could he be one of the Dame’s men?”
“No. This is something else.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.” He stood when she tied off the bandage. “But we’ll ask the Dame about him, too, just to be certain. How long will you be needed here?”
She’d probably have time for a quick examination of the bounder before the local police arrived, followed by the naval authorities. Both would boot her out, and she didn’t want to fight them over this. When they discovered his identity, and if this murder connected to her investigation, she’d step back in then—with the full power of the London force and the Iron Duke behind her, if necessary.
“An hour,” she said. “We’ll have to answer their questions.”
“Only for an hour.” His tone said that if the locals weren’t done with them by that time, he’d leave anyway.
“Yes.” She looked to Newberry as the constable returned, carrying the physician’s bag. She traded him the orange for the bag, feeling the weight of the device inside, and hushed his exclamation of gratitude. “Find the town’s wiregram station and update Hale. The admiral has been murdered. We don’t yet know if it’s connected. We’re pursuing Dame Sawtooth, who likely possesses information regarding Captain Haynes’s murder.”
“Yes, sir—”
Trahaearn cut in. “While you’re at it, send a runner to Lady Corsair . Tell her to expect us in an hour, and to ready for departure.”
The infamous mercenary airship? Mina frowned at him. “Can’t we use another? Surely when the Terror has been taken, the navy can—”
“She’s the fastest of them all, and there’s no better flyer than her captain.”
All right. If he paid for it, then she didn’t care. She turned to Newberry again. “Meet us at the airship in an hour. Inform Hale that we are crossing the Channel on Lady Corsair, but don’t wait for a response.”
Newberry’s brows rose. “Sir?”
“She’ll order us not to board the airship,” Mina said. “But if we never receive a response, we won’t have disobeyed orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mina sighed as he left. The poor man. “He looked rather faint, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Was that amusement in the duke’s voice? She couldn’t tell. But she felt the need to defend her assistant. “He’s a brave man.”
“Yes.”
Still no mocking note, though in Mina’s experience, immoral scoundrels like the Iron Duke held good men like the admiral and Newberry in great contempt. She didn’t know what to make of it.
Disconcerted, she left him for the dead bounder lying on the grass. Hopefully, she would soon know who he was and where he’d come from. But even if she didn’t learn any of those things from his body, she already knew something about him: He hadn’t been a brave man.
This one had been a coward.