Grimm - The Icy Touch
Read Grimm - The Icy Touch Online
Authors: John Shirley
COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS
Grimm: The Chopping Block
by John Passarella (February 2014)
BASED ON THE NBC TV SERIES
TITAN
BOOKS
Grimm: The Icy Touch
Print edition ISBN: 9781781166543
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781166550
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP
First edition: November 2013
Copyright ©2013 by Universal City Studios Productions LLLP
Grimm
is a trademark and copyright of Universal Network Television LLC.
Licensed by NBCUniversal Television Consumer Products Group 2013.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover images © Universal City Studios Productions LLLP.
Additional cover images © Dreamstime
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
TITAN
BOOKS
For all the fans of
Grimm
“Could you tell me whether my bridegroom lives here?” asked the bride.
“Oh you poor child,” the old woman answered. “Do you realize where you are? This is a murderer’s den! You think you’re a bride soon to be celebrating your wedding, but the only marriage you’ll celebrate will be with Death!”
“The Robber Bridegroom”, as per the Brothers Grimm
FRANCE, 1815
Once upon a time, a Grimm embarked on a voyage with an Emperor...
On a cold dawn, on March 1, 1815, six ships arrived together on the Mediterranean coast of France. The flagship of this small fleet was the brig
Inconstant,
carrying the exiled Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his retinue. The vessels dropped anchor in the Golfe-Juan, near the Cape of Antibes, just a 147 miles north of Corsica, where, not much more than forty years earlier, the Emperor’s destiny had begun to unfold.
Johann Kessler waited in the launch for the return of the Emperor of France. Kessler’s tanned, dark-eyed face was impassive, but his heart was troubled because amongst the other seven men waiting in the gently rocking boat with him was one Alberle Denswoz—and Kessler was sitting beside him. The irony fairly tingled in the air: Denswoz was
Hundjager Wesen,
after all. Kessler had only recently discovered the man’s Wesen nature when Denswoz let down his guard, briefly revealing his true bestial form.
Not so long before, the old folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm—tales of witches, wolf-men, dragons, and many others—had become enormously popular. Few readers knew that the creatures described by the Grimms actually
existed.
The brothers themselves had assumed they were only mythology.
But in the dark heart of each fairy tale was something true; something fantastic yet real: the
Wesen.
Some were essentially beast-men, and women, disguised as human; some were more monstrous.
Another ancient line of beings, both human and more than human, sought out the more dangerous Wesen and destroyed them. Lately, in sardonic homage to the compilers of the fairy tales, these secretive hunters were called... Grimms.
As far as Kessler knew, Denswoz was unaware that one of these almost superhuman beings was seated next to him.
Now, the Emperor climbed lithely down to the boat that would take him ashore. Colonel Mallet helped the great man into the stern sheets.
The Emperor was a compact, pale, slightly plump, long-nosed man with deep-set eyes and black hair. He was wearing a long black overcoat, and a white weskit over which slanted his sash; his famous bicorn hat adorned his head. He peered through the streamers of mist rising from a sea the color of his gray-blue eyes; he strove to see if anyone awaited them on the shore. Napoleon would have preferred to take a place in the bow, but Colonel Mallet had begged him to sit in the stern, for fear of hostile sharpshooters awaiting them on the beach. They had escaped easily from Elba, with almost 1,100 grenadiers, while the British and Bourbon ships were away; but the journey to the French coast had been tediously dragged out by contrary winds, so that the Emperor joked that
Inconstant
had lived up to its name. In that time, word may have reached France of the Emperor’s impending return. Enemies could be waiting.
Kessler was half expecting to see Bourbon soldiers on the shore, perhaps a detachment from one of the hostile garrisons in Provence, training cannon on the launch. He had no wish to die in a cannon fusillade, nor did he wish Napoleon’s death. But the Emperor’s own scouts stepped into view on the beach to wave the all clear. Kessler’s spirits rose—and though it was a chill daybreak on a cold sea, everyone in the boat was smiling, their eyes bright. They were back in France after ten months of exile on the island of Elba.
La France!
Johann Kessler was German, but had become a French citizen under Napoleon; Denswoz was Austrian but when Austria had been annexed by Napoleon, he had eagerly sought to advise the Emperor—only recently had he been accepted, on sailing to Elba. In fact, Kessler suspected that Denswoz was in part the cause of the Emperor’s decision to return to France. Denswoz—and the coins. Kessler had only caught a glimpse of the large, curious Greek coins that the Emperor kept in his coat pocket; that he took out from time to time; that seemed to transfer their ancient shine to those gray-blue eyes...
If Kessler’s theory was confirmed, these were no ordinary coins. They were strange and powerful artifacts, created on an island of Greece centuries ago—they’d passed through many hands: Caligula had clasped them lovingly; Nero had caressed them. They had vanished into China, last seen in the Han Dynasty. If they’d reappeared, and if the dark Wesen had given them to the Emperor, it might be that Kessler’s true, secret cause was hopeless.
The coxswain directed the sailors to begin rowing, and the launch set off, as the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte turned to speak to Colonel Mallet.
“Yonder is an olive orchard, Colonel,” he said. “Let us bivouac there until everyone is ashore and organized for the march.”
“Very good, my Emperor.”
* * *
The orchard was barren of olives at this time of year but Napoleon was pleased by it.
“Happy omen!” he said, striding up to his retinue, a sprig from an olive tree in his hand. “The olive is the emblem of peace.”
Kessler stood beside the command tent nibbling a biscuit as Bonaparte arrived. He swallowed a bite of the hardtack with difficulty
“God willing the omen is a true one, my Emperor,” he said. “Peace is always a blessing.”
“I will fire no shot,” Napoleon said. “Except in dire necessity.” He turned to survey his soldiers. Mallet had deployed the grenadiers about the outskirts of the orchard. Over a thousand men milled restlessly there, or leaned against trees, talking in low tones, wondering if they would be shot by royalist troops—or elevated within Napoleon’s army if he succeeded in restoring himself to the throne.
Since he’d first spoken of his return, Napoleon repeatedly vowed that no shot would be fired during his journey to Paris. The Bourbons, who had been installed in his place, would have to order their armies to fire first. And many a French soldier would in fact refuse to fire upon Napoleon. Perhaps the Emperor guessed that the skittish Louis XVIII would fear that the French army would turn upon him if he issued an order to attack their former leader.
The Emperor sat in a camp chair and opened a map of the coast, frowning as his finger traced the roads to Grenoble.
“Do you propose, my Emperor, to take an indirect route to Paris?” Kessler asked, surprised at his own boldness.
Napoleon nodded briskly. “I do. If we’re to avoid unnecessary conflict, we must take the mountain roads that avoid the garrisons. It will be slow. But it will give us time to gather our strength.”
Kessler had been present when Napoleon had told Marshal Pons that he was planning a return from exile, and he’d gathered that the Emperor was counting on a degree of surprise and more than a degree of confusion to make it possible for him to establish himself in France again. “They will be astonished,” Napoleon had said, “and astonishment paralyzes.” During the hoped-for paralysis of the Bourbons, the French people would stand behind him; so Napoleon believed. It was true that all France had been frustrated with Napoleon’s fevered overreaching into Russia; had been appalled at the loss of 700,000 men who’d died in his wars of conquest. But the feeble efforts of the Bourbons to restore France’s economy were not working. The triumph of revolution was fresh in the public memory and the return of an unpopular monarchy was a bitter pill to swallow.
When Josephine died at Malmaison, Napoleon was crushed. Though they were divorced, he still loved her. He had refused to come out of his suite for two days. When at last he emerged his emotional ferment had been apparent—and that’s when the Hundjager, Denswoz, had begun to spend more and more time around the Emperor. Denswoz always seemed to be prodding Napoleon with whispers. And at some point he’d pressed those mysterious coins upon him.
Were they in fact The Coins of Zakynthos—the playthings of Caligula and Nero? Kessler was not yet certain.
Johann Kessler was an envoy to Germany from Napoleon’s “court” at Elba, tasked to find financial support for the Emperor’s return from amongst those German noblemen who were at odds with the Archduke Charles of Austria. It was a task that would never be completed, since Kessler was in fact an undercover agent for Charles. The Archduke hated Napoleon Bonaparte.
Kessler himself had come to admire Napoleon. The genius and vision of “the little general” were beyond dispute—and Kessler preferred he remain safely in Elba. But he’d found out about the escape from Elba too late to stop it. And his genuine friendship with Napoleon had restrained him from taking more ruthless steps.
Napoleon glanced up from the map as Denswoz arrived on horseback accompanied by a balding, babyfaced man whom Kessler had only seen once before: Jean-Baptiste Drouet, the comte d’Erlon and one of Napoleon’s Marshals. Drouet wore a resplendent coat, much decorated with braid and lace.
“General Drouet!” Napoleon said, standing. “You have come! And with horses!”
“More horses are on the way, my Emperor,” Drouet said, dismounting. “And your carriage! But we have not horses for one thousand men, not yet.”