The Gilded Scarab (37 page)

I would wager a fortune that it did. It gave me none. If I economized drastically on my own spending, perhaps I could increase the repayments to the House and get clear of them sooner. I’d have to do it, if it meant I lived on bread and cheese for the next year. I’d have to learn some fancy footwork, too, if I were to avoid dancing to the old man’s tune. Rather, I’d have to look as if I were dancing while all the while I fended off every Stravaigor advance.

Damn the House. Damn the Houses. They are an unholy nuisance.

He went on, smoothly, and with a smile that I distrusted mightily, “Well, for the moment, that will be all. I will speak to the First Heir, by the way, but John has a long memory for slights and what he perceives as disrespect. You may wish to consider what you can do to mend fences.” His smile broadened. “And to pray for my continued good health. For your own protection.”

Lucky old Odysseus had merely been caught between Scylla and Charybdis, not smashed to smithereens between two ruthless Stravaigors. I nodded my understanding.

“Good. Enjoy the ball, Rafe. Oh, and do be sure to invite Eleanor to dance. She has waxed lyrical ever since Christmas about your prowess on the dance floor and would be disappointed if she doesn’t get at least one dance with you. I would hate you to make enemies of all my children. It would make your life very difficult.”

I’d wager another fortune that it would. Very difficult indeed. Well, I’d played my best shot. There was nothing to do then but bow and leave him.

So that’s what I did.

I thought I had successfully out-Stravaigored the Stravaigor. He had a strong impression he knew what my game with Ned was, did he? I didn’t smile until I closed his door softly behind me.

It was wonderful to manage a barefaced lie while telling nothing but the absolute truth. It takes true skill and leaves one with a powerful feeling of probity and virtue. I must confess my smile grew very broad.

W
E
LEFT
the ball like a pair of Cinderellas, somewhere around midnight. Although we’d originally intended staying until it ended sometime in the early hours, I’d had enough of socializing with my so-called family. At least I had avoided speaking with either John or Peter all evening, although we glared at each other across the crowded dance floor every time we encountered each other. Well, they glared. I was all charming smiles—it infuriated them to see it.

I danced with Miss Eleanor, as directed, and with the bride and each of the bridesmaids. I even took Agnes out for a trot around the ballroom, to find she danced a graceful quadrille.

“I used to love dancing when I was a girl.” Her tone was wistful. I couldn’t imagine a time when Agnes wasn’t overupholstered and didn’t smell of mothballs, but I kissed her on the cheek anyway and complimented her on her light feet. “Get along with you,” she said, but she smiled and tapped my cheek. “You’re a nicer boy than I thought you were, Rafe Lancaster.”

“Of course I am.” I kissed her hand and wandered off to find Ned and exchange another set of glares-answered-with-sweet-smiles with my brother en route.

Ned, thankfully, was willing enough to go. He made his excuses to his hosts, congratulated the groom once again and presented the bride with his very best wishes for her future happiness (having already presented the happy couple with a handsome gift in the form of a silver service), and shook hands with both the Plumassier and the Stravaigor.

Hawkins got into the main cabin with us. He rapped hard on the dividing glass to signal the driver to start and turned to me. “What did the Stravaigor want with you?” he asked, direct as always. “I saw he took you off for a talk. You were gone a considerable time.”

I was astonished he’d noticed, since his attention always appeared to be on Ned. I said so.

He shrugged. “I watch both of you.”

Well, I supposed I should be flattered. “I was soundly abused by my House’s First Heir for having the temerity to make friends without telling him first.” I grinned at Ned. “I can only assume he’s worried about the sort of company I keep, me being such an innocent liable to be led astray.”

Ned snorted. It wasn’t an elegant sound.

I echoed it. “The First Heir considered I’d been deceiving them somehow by not boasting about my aristocratic connections.”

“I would have thought their intelligencers would have told them you’d bought Pearse’s. It should have been easy enough for them to realize that would bring you into contact with Ned… with Mr. Winter, I should say.” Hawkins huffed out a sharp laugh. “I’ll wager most of the Houses know. Collecting intelligence on the other Houses is an industry in itself. I wish I had half the budget our chief intelligencer has!”

“Oh, it’s worse than their intelligencers letting them down. I borrowed part of the purchase price from the House. I think the First Heir’s in trouble for not bothering to ask me what I was buying, and then missing the connection to you, Ned.” The thought of the Stravaigor having a father-son discussion with John was quite heartwarming. “I’m glad he didn’t. They would have clung to me like limpets, trying to catch your eye.”

“Our intelligencers”—and here Ned looked sidelong at Hawkins and smiled—“who are, of course, worth every penny, tell us the Stravaigor isn’t in favor with his Convocation ally at the moment.”

“One shady deal too many probably.” Hawkins could snort just as inelegantly as his master.

I was, of course, bound by the promise I’d made the Stravaigor, so I couldn’t confirm or deny this. I did, however, purse my lips and raise both eyebrows in a manner I hoped conveyed my total agreement with Sam Hawkins. It made Ned laugh, anyway.

“Anyhow, if you’re wondering why I pursue our friendship, my dear Ned, I hinted to the Stravaigor that I was dabbling in selling antiquities. I doubt he has ever cultivated a man for his own sake, for friendship and… and love. He only knows how to turn something to advantage. He bought wholesale my hints I was using you for my own enrichment, I think.” I let my expression show my satisfaction.

Ned smiled at me, his eyes showing fondness and affection. I thought it was my choice of words that pleased him. I hoped so. “I do hope you didn’t make me out to be completely naïve,” he complained. “I’m quite wide enough awake to know the time of day. And spot a Stravaigor out for the main chance.”

“We all have to make sacrifices.” I patted his knee as the autophaeton pulled up at the bottom of Museum Street. “I’m afraid I implied that I was working with Daniel. Any checking they do will reveal I know him, and they should make their own deductions. Do you mind?”

“I do wish Daniel wouldn’t sell artifacts.”

“I can understand it, given his precarious finances, although I don’t like it much, either. If the Stravaigor follows it up, he’ll find that Daniel’s activities there are as I reported. Are you coming in for a nightcap?”

“Of course. Don’t I always these days?”

Hawkins dismissed the landau, telling the driver we’d call for it when wanted. We started up the street arm in arm, Hawkins a couple of feet behind us. We didn’t talk much. It wasn’t a long street, and Lancaster’s Luck was only a few minutes’ walk.

Hawkins had a key for the side door and all the security codes, of course. I inched past him, reaching for the switch for the ionic discharge lights that lit the hallways. Nothing happened. There was enough light from the street to make the long hall a dim place of shifting shadows. Perhaps it was power cut? Or the bulbs had blown.

I took a step inside. “I’ve got a brimstone flashlight in my desk drawer. I’ll get it.”

Hawkins was a step or two behind me. I walked the dark hallway toward the darker blackness of the office door, one hand trailing along the wall to guide me. Hawkins touched my shoulder and inched past me. I let him get a yard or two ahead. He was a cautious one, always. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he had drawn his gun.

It came then, the soft whirring of wings in the darkness. The air near my face stirred, and I caught a glimpse of something darker than the shadow, small and swift and darting toward the staircase. It wasn’t fast enough. I lunged forward, my feet crunching on broken glass, and snatched it out of the air, closing my hand around something hard and cool. It struggled in my grip, wriggling, wings fluttering against my fingers. Tiny feet raked over my palm.

At the same instant, Hawkins pushed open the office door, and the world exploded into a flash of green light.

Chapter 24

I
DON
’
T
think I was unconscious long.

A few minutes, though it felt longer. I drifted in and out of the dark for aeons. Voices waxed and waned, loud and angry or quiet and venomous. Underneath was a dull thudding.

Sometimes, when I was out of the darkness, a figure bent over me, a black silhouette against the painful brightness, and a voice pleaded with me to stay awake. Ned. That was Ned. Ned with a frantic edge to his voice as he called on me or Sam Hawkins. Hawkins didn’t answer either, but someone groaned, a horrible snorting sort of noise. The air smelled harsh and metallic. It smelled of crashing at Koffiefontein and lying in my own blood.

My eyes wouldn’t stay open. The light hurt them. Every time I closed them to rest them, just for an instant, the world faded out again. A drum beat a sharp tattoo inside my skull, like a thin knife behind the eyes. My entire body was pins and needles. I couldn’t move.

“They aren’t badly hurt. Neural disruptors are painful, of course, but the effects are temporary.”

I knew that voice. I’d heard it a hundred times.

“Sam’s bleeding.” Ned again, a note of panic in his voice.

This time I managed to stay awake, sort of, cranking open the lead weights I had instead of eyelids and squinting against the light. I couldn’t move my head. When I tried to lift a hand, I couldn’t move that either. It hurt. Everything hurt. Breathing hurt.

A body lay on the floor a few feet away. Hawkins?

“He hit his head going down,” Daniel said. “It won’t kill him.”

Daniel.

It was Daniel.

“They will be perfectly all right here for the night.” Daniel loomed over me. He nudged me with a foot. “The paralysis will wear off, and you and I will be long gone by then. Now, Ned, please. It really is too dangerous to stay. Dangerous for them, that is. I’ve been here too long as it is.”

A hand closed over mine. Ned. He was there, suddenly, in my little field of vision, the dark silhouette blocking out my view of Hawkins. I wheezed out a noise. “
Uuuunngh
.”

Another thud from somewhere behind me. Faint voices, angry and scared.

A man spoke. No one I knew. “Sorted out their guns, Prof, an’ Parrish called me on the wireless to say he an’ Tom got the Gallowglass men across the road. They’re goin’ up to the museum gate—the pair of ’em can watch the whole street from there. Nothing can get in or out of here without them seein’ it. We’re set to go.”

“Please don’t delay, Ned,” Daniel said. “I won’t hurt Rafe and the others, but I can’t guarantee my clients will be so tolerant. If they come here looking for us, rather than our agreed meeting place, I don’t think they’ll care to have witnesses.”

Ned’s tone was dry as old bones. “And you don’t care about that?”

“My dearest Ned, by dawn I’ll be so far out of reach I really don’t care about you, them, or anyone knowing I got the better of you.”

“
Uuuunngh
.”

“I would remind you,” Daniel said, “that strictly speaking, all I require is your thumb.”

I tried to get a hand to move. A hand, an arm… nothing. I’d been cast from lead and weighed down, pressed against the floor.

Ned said, every word clipped and tense, “Your word that they won’t be harmed.”

“Of course. My word as a gentleman.”

Ned shifted me, and for an instant, as my head lolled against his arm, the huge bulk of the scarab coffee roaster filled the world. The room behind my office, then. Hawkins and I must have been dragged in there. The thudding came from the coffee storeroom off to my left. Ned rolled me carefully onto my side. His hands loomed large in front of me as he removed my spectacles and tucked them into the inside breast pocket of my evening coat. He fitted something over my wrist… one part of a manacle. I couldn’t see what he did with the other handcuff. He leaned down to brush my mouth with his.

“Dear Rafe,” he said quietly, and then he was gone.

I tried to call his name. “
Uuuunngh
.”

“If you would put out your hands, Ned, please. These manacles are useful for more than play, aren’t they? Now, if you’d stand over there for a moment? Thank you.” Daniel leaned down, his face close to mine. The laser pistol in his right hand flashed across my vision, blurred but unmistakable. “I’m sorry, Rafe. But you know, if you hadn’t been so selfish and so determined to use me and not love me, we might have shared tonight’s adventure. Believe me, the profits will be considerable. But no. You betrayed me with Ned, in all those intimate little dinners and discussions. Did you think I didn’t know? You liked to laugh at me, didn’t you, the pair of you? The Divine Daniel, you called me. Remember? And Poor Daniel. Poor, overemotional, dramatic Daniel who likes making scenes. Well, I won’t be poor for very much longer.” Those improbably blue eyes glittered. “Of course, I may still indulge in a little drama.”