Changeless

Page 36

“Temper, Lady Maccon, temper,” remonstrated Lady Kingair.
Alexia narrowed her eyes.
“Why should we do what you say?” Dubh was militant.
Alexia shoved the letter of marque under the Beta’s nose. He left off his grumbling, and the oddest expression suffused his wide, angry face.
Lady Kingair grabbed the paperwork and held it up to the indifferent light of a nearby oil lamp. Satisfied, she passed it on to Lachlan, who appeared the least surprised by its contents.
“I take it you were not informed of my appointment?”
Sidheag gave her a hard look. “I take it you didna marry Lord Maccon purely for love?”
“Oh, the political position was a surprise advantage, I assure you.”
“And one that wouldna have been given to a spinster.”
“So you know the queen’s disposition sufficiently to predict that at least?” Alexia took her marque back and tucked it carefully down the front of her bodice. It would not do for the pack to be made aware of her parasol’s hidden pockets.
“Muhjah has been vacant for generations. Why you? Why now?” Dubh was looking less angry and more thoughtful than Alexia had yet seen him. Perhaps there was brain behind all that brawn and bluster.
“She did offer it to your father,” Lachlan pointed out.
“I had heard something to that effect. I understand he turned it down.”
“Oh no, no.” Lachlan gave a little half-smile. “We filibustered.”
“The werewolves?”
“The werewolves and the vampires and one or two ghosts as well.”
“What is it with you people and my father?”
At that Dubh snorted. “How much time do you have?”
The grandfather clock, locked in the room with Tunstell and his two comatose charges, tolled a quarter ’til.
“Apparently, not enough. I take it you accept the letter as authentic?”
Lady Kingair was looking at Alexia as though a good number of her previous questions about one Lady Maccon had now all been answered. “We will accept it, and we will defer to your authority in this.” She gestured to the closed parlor door. “For the time being,” she added, so as not to lose face in front of the pack.
Lady Maccon knew this was as good as she was going to get, so, in characteristic fashion, she took it and asked for more. “Very good. Next I will need to compose and send a message on your aethographor. While I am doing that, if you would please collect all the artifacts you brought back from Egypt into one room. I should very much like to peruse them as soon as my message has been sent. If I cannot determine which artifact is most likely causing the humanity problem, I shall have my husband removed to Glasgow, where he should return to supernatural and recover with no ill effects.” With that, she headed up to the top of the castle and the aethographor.
She was in for a prodigious surprise. For what should she find on the floor of the aethographor room but the comatose form of the bemused claviger who was caretaker of the machine and every single valve frequensor in Kingair’s library broken to smithereens. The place was littered with glittering crystalline shards.
“Oh dear, I knew they ought to have been locked away.” Lady Maccon checked the claviger, who was still breathing and as fast asleep as her husband, and then picked her way through the wreckage.
The apparatus itself was undamaged. Which made Alexia wonder; if the objective in destroying the valve frequensors was to prevent outside communication, why not take down the aethographor itself? It was, after all, an awfully delicate gadget easily and quickly disabled. Why smash all the valves instead? Unless, of course, the culprit wanted continued access to the aethographor.
Alexia rushed into the transmitting chamber, hoping that the fallen claviger had disturbed the vandal in the act. It looked like he had, for there, still sitting in the emitter cradle, was a unrolled scroll of metal with a burned-through message clearly visible upon it. And it was not the message she had sent to Lord Akeldama the evening before. Oh no, this message was in French!
Lady Maccon was not quite as good at reading French as she should have been, so it took her long precious moments to translate the burned-through metal.
“Weapon here but unknown,” it said.
Lady Maccon was disgruntled that the bloody thing did not read like an old-fashioned ink-and-paper letter, with a “dear so-and-so” and a “sincerely, so-and-so,” thus revealing all to her without fuss. Who had Madame Lefoux sent the message to? When had the message been sent—just before she was shot, or earlier? Was it really the inventor who had also destroyed the valve frequensors? Lady Maccon could not believe that wanton destruction of technology was Madame Lefoux’s style. The woman adored all gadgetry; it would be against her nature to destroy it with such abandon. And, regardless of all else, what had she been trying to tell them right before she was shot?
With a start, Alexia realized it was getting on toward eleven o’clock, and she had best etch her message and prepare it to send right away. Currently, the only concrete action she could think to take was consultation with Lord Akeldama. She did not have the valves to contact the Crown or BUR, so the outrageous vampire would have to do.
Her message read simply, “Floote check library: Egypt, humanization weapon? BUR send agents to Kingair.”
It was a long message for the aethographor to handle, but it was the shortest she could formulate. Lady Maccon hoped she could remember the pattern of movements the young claviger had used the evening before. She was generally good about such things, but she might have missed a button or two. Still, there was nothing for it but to try.
The tiny transmitting room was much less crowded with only one person. She extracted Lord Akeldama’s valve from her parasol and placed it carefully into the resonator cradle. She slotted the inscribed metal into the frame and pulled down the switch that activated the aetheric convector and chemical wash. The etched letters burned away, and the hydrodine engines spun to life. It was easier than she had thought. The director of the Crown’s aethographic transmitter said one needed special schooling and certification to run the complicated apparatus—little liar.
The two needles raced across the slate, sparking as they met. Alexia sat in perfect silence throughout the transmission, and when it was finished, she removed the slate from the cradle. She wouldn’t want to be so careless as the spy had been.
Lady Maccon bustled into the other chamber, which proved far more difficult to operate. No matter how many knobs she twiddled or cogs she turned, she could not get the ambient noise down far enough to receive. Luckily, Lord Akeldama took his sweet time replying. She had nearly half an hour to get the receiving chamber quiet. She did not manage to get it down nearly so low as the claviger had, but it was eventually quiet enough.
Lord Akeldama’s response began to appear inside the black magnetic particulates between the two pieces of glass, one letter at a time. Trying to breathe quietly, Alexia copied down the message. It was short, cryptic, and totally unhelpful.
“Preternaturals always cremated,” was all it said. Then there was some kind of image, a circle on top of a cross. Some kind of code? That was rich! Blast Lord Akeldama for being coy at a time like this!
Alexia waited another half an hour, past midnight, for any additional communication, and when nothing further materialized, she turned the aethographor off and left in a huff.
The house was abuzz. In the main drawing room across from the front parlor, in which remained Tunstell and his charges, a cheery fire burned in the fireplace and maids and footmen bustled about setting out artifacts.
“Good gracious, you did do a little shopping in Alexandria, now, didn’t you?”
Lady Kingair looked up from the small mummy she was arranging carefully on a side table. It appeared to have started life as some kind of animal, perhaps of the feline persuasion? “We do what we must. The regimental pay isna adequate to cover Kingair’s upkeep. Why should we not collect?”
Lady Maccon began looking through all the artifacts, not quite certain what she was looking for. There were little wooden statues of people, necklaces of turquoise and lapis, strange stone jars with animal-head lids, and amulets. All of them were relatively small except for two mummies, both still properly clothed. These were more impressive than the one they had unwrapped. They resided inside curvy, beautifully painted coffins, the surfaces of which were covered in colorful images and hieroglyphics. Cautiously, Alexia moved toward them but felt no overwhelming repulsion. None of the artifacts, mummies included, seemed any different from those she had seen on display in the halls of the Royal Society or, indeed, in the Museum of Antiquities.
She looked suspiciously at Lady Kingair. “Are there no others?”
“Only the entertainment mummy we unwrapped, still upstairs.”
Lady Maccon frowned. “Did they all come from the same seller? Were they all looted from the same tomb? Did he say?”
Lady Kingair took offense. “They are all legal. I have the paperwork.”
Alexia sucked her teeth. “I am certain you do. But I understand very well how the antiquities system works in Egypt these days.”
Sidheag looked like she would like to take umbrage at that, but Alexia continued. “Regardless, their origins?”
Frowning, Lady Kingair said, “All different places.”
Lady Maccon sighed. “I will want to see the other mummy again in just a moment, but first…” Her stomach went queasy at the very idea. It was so uncomfortable, to be in the same room with that thing. She turned to look at the rest of the Kingair Pack, who were milling about looking unsure of themselves, large men in skirts with scruffy faces and lost expressions. For a moment Alexia softened. Then she remembered her husband, comatose in another room. “None of you purchased anything privately that you are not telling me about? Things will go dreadfully ill for you if you did”—she looked directly at Dubh—“and I find out later.”
No one stepped forward.
Lady Maccon turned back to Sidheag. “Very well, then, I shall take one more look at that mummy. Now, if you would be so kind.”
Lady Kingair led the way up the stairs, but once there, Alexia did not follow her into the room. Instead she stood at the door, looking intently at the thing. It pushed against her, so that she had to fight a strange urge to turn and run. But she resisted, staring at the withered dark brown skin, almost black, shrunken down to hug those old bones. Its mouth was slightly open, bottom teeth visible, gray and worn. She could even see its eyelids, half-lidded, over the empty eye sockets. Its arms were crossed over its chest as though it were trying to hold itself together against death, clutching its soul inward.
Its soul.
“Of course,” Alexia gasped. “How could I have been so blind?”
Lady Kingair looked to her sharply.
“I have been thinking all along that it was an ancient weapon, and Conall that it was some plague your pack caught and brought back with you from Egypt. But, no, it is simply this mummy.”
“What? How could a mummy do such a thing?”
Resisting the terrible pushing sensation, Lady Maccon strode into the room and picked up a piece of the mummy’s discarded bandage, pointing to the image depicted on it. An ankh, broken in half. Like the circle on top of a cross in Lord Akeldama’s aethographic message, only fractured.
“This is not a symbol of death, nor of the afterlife. That is the name”—she paused—“or perhaps the title, of the person the mummy was in life. Do you not see? The ankh is the symbol for eternal life, and here it is shown broken. Only one creature can end eternal life.”
Sidheag gasped, one hand to her lips, and then she slowly lowered it and pointed to Lady Maccon. “A curse-breaker. You.”
Alexia smiled a tight little smile. She looked to the dead thing sadly. “Some long-ago ancestor, perhaps?” Despite herself she began to back away from it once more, the very air about the creature driving her away.
She looked to Lady Kingair, already knowing her answer. “Do you feel that?”
“Do I feel what, Lady Maccon?”
“I thought as much. Only I would notice.” She frowned again, mind racing. “Lady Kingair, do you know anything about preternaturals?”
“Only the basics. I should know more, were I a werewolf, for the howlers would have told me the stories that, as a human, I am not allowed to hear.”
Alexia ignored the bitterness in the older woman’s voice. “Who, then, is the oldest of the Kingair Pack?” She had never missed Professor Lyall more. He would have known. Of course he would. He was probably the one who told Lord Akeldama.
“Lachlan,” Lady Kingair answered promptly.
“I must speak with him directly.” Alexia whirled away, almost bumping into her maid, who stood behind her in the hallway.