Lazarus Machine, The (A Tweed & Nightingale Adventure): 1 (4 page)

“What do you want?”

“You. See, word's got around that someone's been askin’ questions about a certain person, and this certain person don't like it. He's put the word out to his chums on the street—” here Colin smiled and
spread his arms wide—“and I'm one of them—to find out who it is that's so curious about him.”

“And then what?”

“Well, as I understand it, they want to have a little chat with him.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. ‘Ah.’”

“And you are speaking to me…why, exactly?”

“I'm speaking to you because Jennings was kind enough to tell me he was supplying information to a certain person called Songbird, and that he was supposed to meet Songbird here. I say ‘kind enough to tell me,’ but it was all I could do to make out his words. You know, in between all the screaming and crying.”

“I see. You know, it's funny you should mention screaming and crying,” said Octavia.

“Oh? And why's that?”

Octavia whipped out the Tesla gun and Colin lunged toward her. Octavia pulled the trigger, sending a blue-white bolt of lightning straight into his chest. He screamed, then dropped straight to the ground as his muscles stopped working. Octavia waited while the high-pitched whine built up again, then she fired another bolt into Colin's twitching body.

Octavia walked over and prodded him with her shoe. He didn't move. She bent over and felt for a pulse. Still alive.

“That's why, Colin,” she said in her normal voice. “That's why.”

Tweed stumbled along Whitechapel Street, his mind racing over the events of the past few hours.

His father was gone. It hadn't really sunk in yet. It was too vast for his thoughts to encompass. He kept expecting to see Barnaby striding along beside him, greeting an oyster seller, or laughing about some aspect of the job.

Except he wasn't.

Because Professor Moriarty had taken him.

Why? That was the question. What did he want with Barnaby?

Or maybe that wasn't the question at all. Maybe it was rather, “What had Barnaby done?” It was entirely possible Barnaby had gotten himself involved in something he shouldn't have. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

Tweed arrived at the rundown building in which they lived and shoved open the door. He stepped into the dark hallway and let the door close behind him.

The house was silent. He looked down at the pile of coats lying on the warped floorboards. Barnaby had left them there after trying them all on as he searched for the perfect accompaniment to his outfit. Tweed had told him to pick them up, but Barnaby had waved his hand negligently and said he'd pick them up when they got back.

Tweed prodded the pile with his foot. He stared blindly at them for a while then trudged through to the living area, a vast space that took up the whole ground floor of their dilapidated house. The walls that once sectioned off the various rooms had been removed by Barnaby on one of his decorating stints. A single set of stairs was all
that remained of the original floor plan, climbing up to the bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor.

Tweed turned up the gas lamps to fend off the gathering dusk, illuminating the chaos and disorder all around him. Scratched and battered desks had been shoved up against every available wall, all of them covered with a bizarre collection of oddities: automaton parts; gears; cogs; glass valves; old, mildewed books; and costume jewelry. Glass jars contained strange animals in formaldehyde: a two-headed snake; ten rats whose tails had wrapped around each other, tying them together into a massive knot; and a tiny brass skeleton that Barnaby had thought amusing to build.

One desk was the home of four ventriloquist's dummies. Tweed had been absolutely terrified of them as a child, convinced that their glass eyes followed him around as he walked. It got to the point where he'd refused to enter the room unless they were covered up. He found out a few years later that his fears had in fact been entirely justified, thanks to a simple mechanism operated by his father, who thought the whole thing was a hilarious joke.

In the far corner was the empty brass shell of an automaton. Barnaby had built it a year ago, spending months on the project, getting every detail exactly right. Tweed thought it was going to be a prop in some sort of elaborate con, but was disappointed to find out Barnaby simply wanted it for a costume party.

Tweed dropped onto the threadbare couch. His gaze drifted around the empty room. It really
was
empty. The house was draped with a deep silence, as if it knew something was missing, the absence of Barnaby leaving behind a faint echo of wrongness.

If everything had gone according to plan, he and Barnaby would be enjoying a nice supper right about now. They always bought good food after a job. They'd been talking about going to a restaurant.

And now?

Now his father had been kidnapped.

Tweed felt the beginning of anger stir in the pit of his stomach, fighting sluggishly against the shock of what had happened. Just who did Moriarty think he was? What gave him the right to just go around kidnapping people?

Fine, yes. Maybe Barnaby wasn't the best father in world, but nobody was perfect. And he
was
Tweed's father. That was the point. And Tweed would be damned if he was going to let some masked freaks whisk him away in the middle of the night without some kind of reckoning.

Tweed knew he and Barnaby had an odd relationship. More…
friends
than father and son. Teacher and student instead of close family. And that suited Tweed. He was happy with that. He'd read books where fathers showered their children with praise and love, and all the time he'd read he thought,
Really
?
People actually say that kind of thing?
He couldn't imagine Barnaby saying he loved him, or even giving him a hug. A clap on the back, yes, if he'd retained some important piece of knowledge, but that was about it.

Barnaby had always said it was his duty to raise Tweed to be the best man he could be, to make sure he could stand on his own two feet and rely on nobody but himself.

Now it seemed Tweed had a chance to put that to the test.

Another thing Barnaby said was that one of the most important things in any situation was to step back and take emotion out of the equation. Emotion clouded judgment, he said. Calculate. Analyze. Theorize. Never act without thinking.

Barnaby had taught him that lesson in this very room. It was one of Tweed's earliest memories. Barnaby, teaching him to use logic in all things. To analyze any emotions he felt and ignore them. To discard sentimentality and embrace rationality.

Tweed had been five years old at the time.

Tweed stood up and started to pace. First things first. List objectives.

One…get Barnaby back.

Oh, well done, Tweed
, he thought contemptuously.
A truly brilliant analysis of the situation.

How? That was the question.

Two…find out why Moriarty wanted Barnaby.

Better. If he could find that out it would go a long way to answering a lot of questions. In fact—

Three…was it really Moriarty? Maybe someone was making themselves up to look like the enigmatic professor.

Hmm. Annoying. That complicated things. Tweed pondered the possibility, but could go nowhere with the thought. He didn't have enough information. Point two would answer number three. So…discard that one for the moment.

Another possibility occurred to Tweed, freezing him in mid-stride.

What if they had already killed Barnaby?

He held his breath for a second, then let it out. No. Not possible. They took him alive. They killed everyone else, but took Barnaby. That meant they wanted him for something.

That wasn't to say they wouldn't kill him once they were done, but chances were he was still alive.

Barnaby had contingency plans. Just in case, as he'd often said, some elderly widow came after him with a pistol disguised as a walking stick. He'd told Tweed that should anything ever happen to him, Tweed was to take the emergency funds and go to Carter Flair and Jenny Turner, two old friends of his. Carter and Jenny were married thieves, their specialty up market hotels. Tweed liked Carter and Jenny. He'd known them all his life, and they were good people.
Trustworthy
people. That was what he needed right now.

Tweed gathered up the money Barnaby had hidden away beneath the floorboards. He wished Barnaby hadn't been so against weapons. Tweed would feel a lot safer if he had something to protect himself. But Barnaby had always said it was just as likely that you'd be injured by your own weapon as it was you'd injure your opponent. Tweed wasn't sure he agreed, but nothing he ever said could change his father's mind about it.

Tweed took a last look around the room, then turned off all the lights and stepped out into the street once again. It was about an hour before midnight. A faint haze of rain draped the roads and buildings with a dark, reflective sheen, causing oily, soot-scummed puddles to gather on the uneven pavements. Tweed paused on the step and took a deep breath of the damp air, taking in the comforting aroma of oyster barrows, hops, and tobacco: the familiar perfume of their home.

Tweed loved it here. Their house was in East End, on the corner of Goulsten and Whitechapel High Street. There was a saying among the upper classes of London.
If you're tired of life, move to Whitechapel
, they said. But Tweed saw it differently:
If you're tired of Whitechapel you're tired of life
. Because no matter what time of day or night, there was always something going on in the East End.

All right, so the things going on were usually brawling, screaming matches between families, singing and shouting from the pubs, and the constant trundle of hackney coaches pulled along by steam-powered automata. But still, that was life—the human experience laid out for all to see, and Tweed would have it no other way.

It wasn't exactly pleasant. He wouldn't romanticize it that much. But it was familiar. Comfortable.

The new world had tried to make its presence felt here. Tesla Towers dotted the landscape of the East End just as they did everywhere else in London. But the new technology never seemed to work. The towers transmitted energy through radio waves, powering
nearly every piece of new technology that had sprung up in the past fifteen years, sending instructions to the thousands of new-generation automata around the city. But the technology was still in its infancy, the towers having a worrying tendency to break down, especially when it rained. (Or when it was too hot. Or too windy. Or too cold. In fact, the towers were so temperamental, those who lived in the poorer sections of the city used steam as their primary source of power, and if the Tesla Towers actually worked, it was considered a bonus.)

Tweed could see the Tesla Tower half a mile away, towering high above the surrounding buildings. But it was dark, the blinking lights that indicated a working tower dull and lifeless.

Tweed took another deep breath. He felt better now that he had a course of action. He wasn't the kind of person to just sit around waiting for others to solve his problems. He had to be out there doing it himself. It centered him, made him feel calmer.

Tweed pulled his coat tight around his shoulders and set off.

About an hour later Tweed reluctantly turned into an alley that branched off from Berners Street. He was feeling rather annoyed. Things weren't going to plan. He had gone to Carter and Jenny's house only to find it locked up with nobody at home. No help there. That meant he had to pick the next person on Barnaby's list, a man of even more dubious moral certitude than Barnaby, Jenny, and Carter put together.

Harry Banks.

And on the way there, Tweed had nearly walked right into a quicklime spill on George Street. The driver obviously moved the dangerous product around at night, thinking it safer than carting it through the daytime streets. That hadn't stopped the accident,
though. Tweed only just managed to get away before he inhaled the toxic fumes.

He paused in the alley entrance. High walls hemmed him in on both sides. A single gas lamp gave off a weak glow at the far end of the lane, the drizzle forming a glowing halo around the smoky glass.

A figure lounged against the wall about halfway down the alley. He was smoking a rollup, the orange tip flaring to life every time he inhaled.

Tweed cautiously approached, making sure his hands were visible. The man straightened, his arms dropping to his sides. Tweed thought he recognized him. He'd been on the door the last few times he and Barnaby had come here. The man was whippet thin, not much to look at, but Tweed had seen him break a man's arm without dropping the cigarette permanently gripped in his fingers.

Tweed did a quick memory scan. “Marsh, isn't it?” he said.

“Who's askin’?” Marsh squinted through the smoke, studying Tweed's face. “You're Barnaby Tweed's boy, aren't you?” he said, surprised. “What you doin’ here?”

“I need to see Mr. Banks.”

Marsh frowned. “Where's Barnaby?”

“He's hiding behind me—” Tweed clamped his mouth shut when he saw Marsh actually lean to the side to look for his father. He sighed. No point in antagonizing the doorman. “He's not here, Marsh. Something's happened. Something bad. I need to see Harry.”

“I dunno, kid. This isn't the kind of place—”

“Barnaby told me to come here if something ever happened to him.” Tweed straightened up. “You know I'm Harry's godson, don't you?” He wasn't, but Marsh wasn't likely to know either way. “Come on, Marsh. It's important.”

Marsh hesitated, then sighed and opened the door. “In you go, then. But don't blame me if you get your head kicked in, right?”