The Iron Duke (19 page)

A faint yell sounded from the passageway in front of them. Trahaearn paused. Mina did the same, listening as the yelling continued. Male, young, but not angry or panicked—the shouts had an unmistakably bored and insolent tone.

“That’s the yell of someone looking to make his jailer’s life hell, sir,” Newberry said behind her. “But he doesn’t truly think he’s getting out.”

Her pulse racing, Mina nodded. Andrew hadn’t been named among the boys held for ransom . . . but maybe he’d been left off the list.

She had to hope.

Trahaearn slowed at the mouth of the passageway. Turning, he tossed the blunderbuss to Newberry and drew a machete. “Walk backward, constable,” he said softly. “Watch this end of the corridor, and blow the head off anything that enters.”

The muscles in the back of Mina’s neck tightened. Another scent greeted her as she entered the passageway, more familiar than an opium den—and becoming stronger as they approached the next chamber.

There were dead here.

Trahaearn paused at the end of the corridor. “Inspector.”

She joined him, breathing through her mouth as the odor became overwhelming, and looked into the chamber.
Oh . . . blue heavens.
What had once been a chapel had become a morgue. Four wooden pews had been pushed to the walls, and on the floor lay three rows of sheet-wrapped bodies—fifteen in all.

“Cover me,” she said softly. She crouched next to the first body. Her fingers found the edge of the sheet beneath stiff hair and pulled the linen back from his face. He hadn’t been dead for more than a few days. She pushed aside his collar. Round pustules ringed with crimson had formed a rash beneath his jaw. His swollen tongue was dark red, the vessels in his eyes shot like scarlet starbursts. Unusual, but she’d seen it before.

She covered him and looked to Trahaearn. “Bug fever.”

“And the others?”

Probably not the fever. It wasn’t contagious—and usually only occurred when a severe injury forced the nanoagents to overextend their healing capabilities and to replicate too quickly, burning the body up from the inside.

She pulled the sheet back from the next. Ice slid down her spine. “This one, too.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they were all caught in an explosion, or all injured at the same time.”

Ripping the rest of the sheet away, she looked for blood, bruising, anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing to account for the fever—and nothing on the next body.

“I couldn’t find any evidence of injury on Haynes’s body, either,” she realized.

“Haynes died of bug fever?”

“No. Absolutely no.” She shook her head, looked up at him. “Even frozen, the fever would have left its mark on him.”

Mouth set in a grim line, Trahaearn nodded. Pulling back sheets from faces, he checked each body. A few looked as if they’d only been dead for hours.

“Evans and the Dame aren’t here,” he said. “Fifteen men and women . . . this must be her entire crew.”

And there was nothing to be done for them now. Mina stood. “Let’s keep going.”

Through another chamber that had served as a dining room and parlor, Trahaearn found a short corridor that terminated at a wooden door inset with a barred window. A face peered between the bars. A moment later, cheers and whoops sounded. Mina gestured for them to quiet, to no avail.

Damn and blast.
With Newberry guarding the head of the corridor, Mina approached the cell door and glanced through the bars. Though they appeared tired and hungry, the boys were yanking on boots and shirts, hugging each other—and still yelling. None looked injured. None were young enough to be Andrew.

Three boys crowded the window, fingers wrapped around the bars as they peered through. She tried the door.
Locked.

“Who has the key?”

“The Dame,” one said. “Around her neck.”

Lovely.
Mina gripped the bars and pulled. The door creaked but didn’t give, and earned her a disbelieving snort from one of the boys.

“Do you imagine we didn’t try that?”

Ungrateful toe-rag.
She resisted the urge to bare her teeth at him and to point out that as bounders, they probably weren’t infected—which meant that her strength doubled theirs.

“Inspector.” She felt Trahaearn’s hand against her waist, gently guiding her to the side. He spared a glance for boys. “You’d best stand back.”

Mina waited, heart pounding. Bracing his feet, Trahaearn lowered his shoulder and shoved his weight into the door. Wood cracked like a shot, splintering the jamb. Trahaearn drew back. His great booted foot slammed beneath the lock. The door crashed open to more cheers. Eight boys boiled out, grabbing the duke’s hand to shake, whooping.

She hissed for them to quiet. Half did. She gritted her teeth and looked to Trahaearn.

“Pipe down!” His quiet command snapped like a whip. Silence immediately fell. Some looked to him wide-eyed, and others with dawning realization. Mina stepped forward before they could begin fawning at the Iron Duke—or sneering at His Bastard Grace. With bounders, one never knew.

“Are the Dame and Jasper Evans still alive?”

Nods all around.
All right.
Then she and Trahaearn weren’t leaving yet, but these young men were.

She gestured to Newberry and spoke loud enough for him to hear. “The constable will lead you to our airship. You will not make noise. You will follow his directions without hesitation. Your way out is via a rope. I’m ordering him to climb up first, so that he can haul you up—he’s
not
leaving you down here. Understood?”

More nods.
Good enough.

She led them to the end of the corridor. Still holding the blunderbuss at ready, Newberry looked down at her. She read his reluctance—not to lead the boys out, but to leave her. She reassured him with a glance.

“All set, constable?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll see you on
Lady Corsair
, then. I recommend that you move at a trot.”

She watched his back until the last boy disappeared into the chapel chamber, then looked round. The long dining table at this end of the chamber could have served the Dame’s entire crew. At the opposite end, two striped sofas sat at right angles to each other, facing a playing table surrounded by chairs. The scent of opium was faint here, but had been smoked recently—probably as a restive for those struck by the fever.

Trahaearn listened at one of the adjacent corridors, his head cocked. The smell of opium and sickness thickened as she joined him. Like the cell corridor, this one didn’t open into another chamber, but ended at a door, with several others set off on the sides.

He said softly, “Bedchambers this way.”

They’d hardly taken a step when a side door creaked open. Trahaearn shoved Mina behind him. She barely breathed as they waited, weapons aimed down the corridor.

A woman staggered out, a pistol loosely gripped in her limp hand. Mina’s eyes widened. Wearing only a nightgown, brown hair tangled over her face, she had to be Dame Sawtooth. Serrated blades filled the grin she aimed toward them.

“Trahaearn, finally.” His name emerged as a triumphant whisper from between the blades. “This must be Heaven.”

She tried to lift her gun—and wavered. Stumbling against the opposite wall, she braced herself. A rash of pustules had spread beneath her jaw and underarms. A hoarse laugh burst from her. With bloodshot eyes, she stared at Mina.

“Heaven. So why is a jade here?”

She collapsed in a heap.

“Christ,” Trahaearn said. Striding forward, he kicked the Dame’s gun away from her hand, knelt. He glanced back up at Mina. “Take her feet. And watch her teeth.”

The opium scent surrounded the woman like a cloud. Her skin burned with fever against Mina’s palms. They headed to the sofa, the Dame’s heavy bulk sagging between them.

“Marguerite?”

Mina dropped the Dame’s ankles, whipping around and taking aim. A tall, wiry man stared back at her, a bucket of ice in his hand, his face lined with exhaustion. His shiny bald scalp and the black tufts of hair over his ears made his head seem enormous in comparison to his thin neck.

“Jasper Evans?” she guessed.

“Yes.” His eyes were bright blue, and quick as a bird’s. They darted to Trahaearn, to the corridor where the boys had been held, and back to Mina. “You’ve come to arrest her, then?”

“We have to keep her alive for that. Bring the ice.” Mina turned to the sofa, where Trahaearn laid the Dame lengthwise over the striped pillows. “We have an airship. If we keep her temperature down, she’ll make it across the Channel. We’ll find a physician—or the Blacksmith.”

With a shallow breath, the Dame opened her eyes. Each word was an effort. “That bastard . . . will kill . . . me.”

Trahaearn or the Blacksmith?
Mina didn’t ask. Evans knelt next to the sofa, gently stroking the Dame’s face. She smiled weakly up at him.

Mina reached for the ice. “What happened to you and your men?”

“Big performance,” the Dame whispered. Her eyes rolled back. “Last call.”

Evans put his forehead to hers. “A
brilliant
performance, Marguerite.”

And they were playing out a scene that had Mina’s throat aching. She wrapped ice in a handkerchief, leaned forward to place it against the Dame’s neck.

The Dame jerked her head, snapping her bladed teeth an inch from Mina’s fingers. Yanking her hand back, Mina stared. The Dame laughed hoarsely. Her eyes closed and she rested her head against the pillows again.

Mina gave the handkerchief to Evans to use, instead.

“What happened to your men, then?” Trahaearn repeated Mina’s question. “What happened to the
Terror
?”

When the Dame didn’t—or couldn’t—answer, Evans glanced up at him, eyes shimmering with tears. Mina couldn’t read any malice in that look. Either he didn’t hate the duke as the Dame did, or her condition had rendered him unable to care about anything else.

“Colbert told her that if the ship remained at a distance, the explosion wouldn’t affect them.”

Trahaearn’s expression turned dangerously cold. “An explosion on
my
ship?”

“No.
We
were on the
Terror
, watching the explosion.” Evans wiped his cheeks, leaving streaks of grease and oil. “It was a demonstration. Showing the buyers. Colbert had a little one, and it just needed a generator. The trigger requires an electric current.”

A little
what
?
“A little weapon?”

“Nothing like I’ve seen before. Nothing like I’ve dreamed of.” Evans’s hands shook. “They rowed Haynes out in a launch, all of the oarsmen without bugs. And they took that little one with them. A mile, they said, was that safe distance, so the men rowed a mile and a half. They started up that generator, the sharks came at them, and then they put the little one into the water and—” He flung his hands up and out, mimicking an explosion. “On the
Terror
, we felt it—
thump!
—against our chests. It didn’t blow up big. Only like a cannon, shot into the water. But everything around that launch was dead. They had those giant sharks floating around that little boat. And the oarsmen rowed back—but the captain, he was dead. Without a mark on him.”

Trahaearn lowered to his heels next to Mina. “So you boarded the
Terror
and took her over. You sent Haynes out on a boat with a bomb. And it killed him, but everyone on the
Terror
who felt that thump got bug fever. Except you.”

Those quick blue eyes stared steadily back at him. “I’m not infected, captain. I run machines. They don’t run me.”

Mina began wetting the Dame’s nightgown with ice water, trying to swallow down the sick lump in her throat. Andrew was infected with nanoagents, and he’d been on the
Terror
. But if he came down with the fever, he knew to stay cold . . . if there was anywhere cold to go on the west coast of Africa. He’d find something. She closed her eyes. Wishing couldn’t make it true, but she’d try.

Trahaearn flattened his palm against the small of her back, as if to reassure her. Mina gathered herself. She looked up again as he asked, “The weapon kills any bugs within one mile?”

“The little one did. The one they’re selling at the auction, they say it’ll kill all the zombies and all the Horde in a two-hundred-mile radius.”

Mina’s mouth dropped open.
Sweet blue heavens.
Who
wouldn’t
want that? It could be a devastating attack against the Horde, and a strong first step toward taking back Europe or Africa.

“Someone smuggled this out of Horde territory?” Trahaearn asked.

“Yes, from what I know. Whoever did, the risk will pay off. Starting bid is twenty-five thousand livre.”

Twenty-five thousand?
Astonished, she stared at Evans. Who could possibly pay that much? Certainly no individual person. Perhaps the Lusitanians. The French—though they’d nearly gone bankrupt in their war with the Liberé. The Arabian tribes, if they pooled their resources.

Even the duke appeared taken aback. His mouth opened, but he remained speechless.

Mina finally found her voice. “Why the
Terror
?”

“Colbert owed Marguerite. When he heard
Marco’s Terror
was sailing to the Gold Coast, he made her an offer: He’d give her
Marco’s Terror
, and she’d give him a man for the demonstration.”

Haynes.
“How did he know the
Terror
was coming?”

Evans shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“When you took the ship, how many besides Haynes were killed?”

“Three of our men. All of their steelcoats and lieutenants.”

All of the marines and officers executed.
“Any young boys, fourteen years of age?”

“No.” Evans gave an emphatic shake of his head. “No. A couple of the crew were injured in the fight. But none of those we threw over were that young. Marguerite won’t hold for that.”