Iron and Blood (24 page)

“Pish,” Nicki said. “It’s all good so long as no one knows—and the curtains of the carriage
are
drawn.”

Jake closed his eyes and leaned back, fighting a monster headache. “My dear Nicki, when have you ever been discreet?”

“Today, actually,” Nicki replied. “Cady McDaniel finished some research I’d asked her to do. I didn’t think it could wait—especially since you were just talking to Dr. Nils. So I decided to meet you here.”

The carriages turned onto Bellefield, heading for Fifth Avenue and home. They were heading along a sparsely developed stretch of land when a volley of gunfire erupted from behind a rocky outcropping. Before Jake could call out a warning to Kovach, he heard an explosion, close enough that it almost rocked the carriage off its wheels and sent the horses into a panic. The air was full of the smell of sulfur and charred wood.

Kovach’s rifle sounded twice before their carriage took off at high speed, throwing them to the floor. They braced their legs against the seats and stayed low, as the coach careened up onto the curb and back down again.

Jake went to steal a glimpse out the window as Rick pulled back the curtain. Nicki grabbed Jake’s collar and pulled him back, sending them both sprawling. “Stay down!”

“I’d like to know what’s going on,” he objected, jerking loose. He moved toward the window again, and once more the carriage veered, throwing him against the seat. The headache that already pounded in his temples threatened to blur his vision, and he felt blood begin to trickle down into his collar again.

“Hold on!” Kovach shouted.

“Now he tells us,” Nicki muttered, gripping the seat cushions for dear life with her left hand, holding a derringer in her right. Rick had also drawn a gun from beneath his jacket. The carriage bumped along the paving stones, taking one sharp corner after another. Nicki swore in French as the coach bounced them hard enough to lift them off the floor.

After a few more harrowing turns, the carriage slowed and finally came to a halt. Hoof beats sounded nearby, slowing from a full gallop to a stop. Jake was feeling every bounce and jostle in his aching bones. Nicki looked as if she had just gone riding, her face decorously flushed and her hair slightly mussed, while Rick looked ready for a fight.

“Are we safe?” Jake murmured, drawing his gun.

Nicki brandished her derringer and produced a pearl-handled shiv from one of the ridges of her corset. “I’m game to find out. How about you two?”

Jake sighed. “And to think, you went to boarding school.”

“Where do you think I learned to shoot?”

“All clear,” Jake heard Kovach call. A moment later, the carriage door opened in the coach port of the Desmet house. “Save the questions until I get you three inside,” he said. All trace of levity was gone from his face. This was Miska Kovach the soldier, sharp-shooter, Army assassin. Jake managed a tired smile, knowing they were in good hands.

“Lead the way,” Rick said.

Kovach brought them into the Desmet house through the servants’ entrance, the better to shield them from prying eyes. Despite the attempt at being discreet, Catherine Desmet was already waiting for them in the kitchen.

“Jake! Rick! Nicki! What happened?” Catherine looked from them to Kovach, with an expression Jake knew well from childhood that meant that his mother would not be denied the full truth.

Jake slumped into a chair as Rick went to the sink. He soaked a cloth in cold water and handed it to Jake. Nicki perched prettily on a high stool and smoothed her chignon, having hidden both the shiv and the derringer somewhere in her full skirts.

“I don’t actually know,” Jake admitted as he tried to wipe the blood from his neck and hair. “Rick and I got into Nicki’s carriage and Miska rode with the driver, then
boom!
The rest is something of a blur,” he said, reaching up gingerly to probe the rapidly swelling goose-egg on the back of his head.

Mrs. James, the family cook, took one look at Jake and bustled off to the ice box, returning with a hand-sized chunk of ice wrapped in a tea towel. “Put this against the lump. It’ll take the swelling down,” she advised, and took the bloodied cloth with disdain, before returning to her work as if nothing were awry.

“We had gone to see Dr. Nils at the museum,” Rick said. “On our way out, someone pushed Jake on the stairs. I had a better grip on the railing,” he said wryly.

“I don’t know who’s behind this—yet,” Kovach said, and Jake heard simmering anger beneath his tone. “But I assure you, I’ll find out.”

“Start right before when things went boom,” Nicki advised. “That’s where it got a bit spotty.”

Kovach grimaced. “We made the turn onto Bellefield. I swear no one was following us, but there’s a lot of open ground. Sent a small mortar shell at the first carriage, blew it to bits.”

“
Mon Dieu
!” Nicki gasped. “What of the
werkman
, and the horses?”

Kovach nodded. “The
werkman
’s fine, although he might have gotten some of his gears bent and a few scratches to show for it. Very glad I’d sent him; it would have killed a living man, no doubt about it.”

“What happened then, Mark?” Catherine asked. She appeared completely unruffled, except for the deadly glint in her eyes. His mother came from sturdy stock.

“Well, there’s likely to be a little talk about that,” Kovach replied. “As if there wouldn’t be, about a mortar hitting the carriage. I’d assigned
werkman
Charles as the driver—he’s one of Farber’s newer models. Able to run a more complex cipher when it comes to responses.” He ran a hand back through his hair.

“Anyhow, Charles got up, shook himself off and started running after the horses, which were still harnessed to the remains of the carriage,” Kovach continued. “He caught them, and rode what was left of the traces like a chariot. I told him to get the stable master to check over the horses, and then come join us here.”

“You think he might have seen something you didn’t?” Catherine asked, arching an eyebrow.

Kovach shrugged. “He’s got a difference engine for brains, binoculars for eyes, and I don’t imagine he broke out in a cold sweat, even when the carriage got shot out from under him. He might have recorded something important while the rest of us were focused on staying alive.”

Mrs. Jones returned with a tray of tea and cookies. “I thought perhaps a brisk cup of tea might help to settle things,” she said, and proceeded to pour for everyone as if such events were an everyday occurrence.

A knock at the door startled them. Charles the
werkman
stood in the doorway. “My presence was requested,” he said in a mechanical monotone.

Charles was average height for a man, with a sturdy build. He was dressed as befitted his station, with a billed cap that hid the lack of hair. His bronze features were pleasant and regular, if expressionless, and he moved with the hum of gears meshing and servomotors toiling. Blue light glinted from his eyes. Gloves hid the mechanical hands. Unless someone were to look Charles straight in the face, no one would realize just from looking at him he was a
werkman
. Few would bother.

“Thanks for your quick thinking today,” Jake said. “You saved the horses.”

Charles touched the bill of his cap and ducked his head. “That’s all right, sir. It’s my job.”

“We were rather distracted when everything was going on,” Kovach said. “What did you see, right before the coach blew up?”

Charles was silent for a moment. It occurred to Jake that the cliché of ‘watching the wheels turn’ was never more apt. “How much detail would you like, sir?”

“Start with everything, and we’ll pare it down from there,” Kovach instructed.

“As you like, sir.” He cleared his throat, an uncannily human sound. “Four squirrels, two rabbits and fourteen birds were in the vacant lot—”

“You noticed that?” Nicki asked, eyes wide.

“I notice everything, ma’am,” Charles replied.

“Skip the wildlife,” Kovach instructed. “I want to know about people, weapons, and anything else dangerous.”

“Very well,” Charles said, and paused again, sifting through reams of information to retrieve the requested details.

“There were six people in sight at the time of the explosion,” Charles said. “And two mechanicals.”

“Stop,” Jake said, sitting forward despite his pounding head. “There were mechanicals? Where?”

“Driving one of the coaches coming from the other direction,” Charles replied.

Jake looked at Kovach. “Damn. I thought we had the only ones Farber supplied.”

“They weren’t my kin,” Charles said, “The first one’s gears sounded wrong. And the other was mostly flesh, with metal parts.”

Rick and Jake exchanged a glance. “You mean, a living man with a metal hand or arm?” Rick asked.

Charles shook his head. “No, sir. A dead man with gears and motors to make him move.”

Nicki muttered a curse under her breath and Catherine covered her mouth in horror. “Are such things even possible?” Catherine asked, appalled.

Rick made a face. “Theoretically, yes. Adam helped a couple of Department agents who were hurt in a bomb blast by fixing them up with mechanical replacement parts—jaw, arm, that sort of thing. He calls them his ‘Midas Men’, after the myth where a man turned people to gold. But that’s just a better version of a wooden leg. Those men were still alive.”

“Clockwork dead men,” Jake mused. “Like mechanical zombies.”

“Adam would never be involved with anything like that,” Rick argued.

“Add that to the list of things to look into,” Nicki said. “Who else is building mechanicals—metal or otherwise—and who are they supplying?”

“Go on,” Kovach instructed. “What happened to the
werkmen
, after the explosion?”

“They drove off, straightaway, without a second glance,” Charles replied.

“Rather cold-blooded after there had been an explosion, but then
werkmen
don’t have emotions,” Catherine observed.

“Could you see where the explosion originated?” Kovach asked.

Again, Charles paused. “It was in the general direction of the other carriage, but it did not come from inside the carriage. The carriage was intact when it pulled away.”

“Which is more than we can say for ours,” Kovach replied with a grimace.

“Could the carriage have been shielding someone with a weapon?” Jake asked. It hurt to think. Sound and light made his temples throb. But there was too much at stake for him to leave the conversation, though he desperately wanted a slug of scotch and a soft pillow.

“It’s possible,” Charles said. “Regrettably, I cannot see through solid objects.”

Remind me to point that out to Farber as a possible improvement,
Jake thought.

“Is there anything else that you might have noticed, anything at all related to the explosion?” Rick said.

This time, Charles hesitated just a bit longer. “There was one thing, sir. But I’m not sure what to make of it.”

“Tell us, and we’ll figure out whether it’s important or not,” Kovach replied.

“Well sir, just before the explosion, I detected an unusual energy signature coming from inside the swale,” Charles said.

“What kind of energy?” Rick asked.

Charles shook his head. “That’s just it, sir. It wasn’t anything on the electro-magnetic spectrum with which I’m acquainted. It was—other.”

“Magic,” Nicki said, looking up. “Which is what I came to warn you about in the first place.”

“That will be all, Charles,” Kovach said. “Go have the mechanic check you over. Thank you for your service today.”

“Pleased to do it, sir,” Charles said with a nod, and left the kitchen. When he had gone, Jake and Rick took turns filling the others in on what Nils had said.

“I’m not surprised at all.”

Everyone’s attention shifted to Nicki.

“Well?” Jake asked.

Nicki gave a dramatic sigh, barely hiding a grin. “As I was about to tell you, before I was rudely interrupted by that awful explosion—Cady McDaniel let me know she had completed the research that I commissioned.”

“And?” Jake prodded, gesturing for her to speed it up.

“I asked Cady to look into the Night Hag—
Nocnitsa
—and Karl Jasinski. And she came through for me.” She grinned. “You can always count on a librarian when it comes to digging up dirt.”

“That’s why you were out in the carriage,” Jake said. “You’d slipped out to see Cady?”

Nicki nodded. “I was going crazy shut up in the house.” She smoothed a lock of hair back into place. “Everything Cady found supports what Renate saw in the vision I told you about. Add to that the fact that Renate recognized the name ‘Marcin’ on your father’s list, and that one of Drogo Veles’s men showed up to tell her to mind her own business—well, I think some of the pieces are starting to come together.”

She took a sip of water before continuing. “Look. Karl Jasinski hasn’t been seen in a while, by the people in his neighborhood, or by Renate’s coven. So is he lying low—or did he disappear?” Nicki met Jake’s gaze. “I think he’s important. Find him, and we might know why someone keeps trying to kill us.”

“N
OT MUCH LEFT
, is there?” Sergeant Finian observed.