Cold Stone & Ivy Book 2: The Crown Prince (The Empire of Steam) Read online

  Cold Stone & Ivy

  Book 2: The Crown Prince

  H. Leighton Dickson

  Copyright © 2017 H. Leighton Dickson

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1544111476

  ISBN-10: 1544111479

  To Hawk,

  Bruised, Bandaged, Beleaguered, but never Broken

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Like Cold Stone & Ivy Book 1, this story is inspired by real life events, namely the untimely murder/suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria in 1889. Once again, the timelines are accurate and the characters/locations are for the most part, real. It was a delight doing the research, and even more so in visiting Vienna with my husband Alan. With his camera on silent, he managed to capture the Hofburg, the Stallburg, the Sisi Museum, St. Stephan’s Cathedral and all the places that make this story come to life.

  As you know, life is not ‘a given’ when it comes to Sebastien de Lacey…

  I’d also like to thank Donna White and Micah Pawluk, whose editing in this book was vital and appreciated, although upon presentation of a pair of paperbacks filled with sticky notes, my face may not have reflected my ‘enthusiasm’ at the time…

  And once again, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my armchair linguist, Szabolcs Szterszky. While Canadian, Sisi’s beloved Magyar blood runs hot in his veins.

  In Liebe vereint bis in den Tod.

  (United in love beyond Death.)

  Prologue

  Of Bold Boys and Iron Men

  January 27, 1889

  The disputed border of Alsace-Lorraine, Industrial Republic of France and Reichsland Province, Empire of Blood and Iron, Germany

  The boys slowed as they neared the fence surrounding the distant towers. It was growing dark – the best part of a dare, to be sure – but they could still make out the shapes, tall and angry under an orange sky.

  “Drei?” said Bernd, seeing his breath in the cold of evening. “Three towers? When did they make three towers?”

  “I know!” said Jens. “I swear, Bernd, they weren’t here last month!”

  The third boy, Udo, stomped his boots in the snow. “But they look so old.”

  “This is Reichsland, dummkopf,” grinned Jens. “Everything looks old. Jean-Baptiste says the towers are everywhere along the border, in the towns, in the fields, even in the mountains. And Erhard says they are found in threes. Always in threes.”

  “Are they empty?”

  Jens shrugged.

  “Do you see anyone?”

  Bernd studied the fence in front of them. It was made of wire and rotting wood and looked as if it couldn’t keep out a goat, let alone three curious boys. There were signs clipped to the wire at uneven intervals. Verboten und Kein Einlass. Forbidden and No Entry. The border between the Industrial Republic of France and the Empire of Blood and Iron.

  They studied the towers for a few moments, waiting for a flash of lantern or pocket torch, when Jens removed his coat and swung it against the wire. There was no flash, no crackle, no bark of very big dogs. There were rusty barbs however and they had snagged the wool of his coat tight. He abandoned it, dropping into the snow and rolling under the wire with barely a scratch. He bolted the last stretch across the field, his friends following at his heels.

  They slowed as they approached, could make out plates of weathered aluminium and narrow windows black from within. They were tall towers, at least three stories and the copper lightning rods on the roofs reached for the setting sun. The ground was well packed despite the snow and littered with pipes, bricks and rusted gears. The smell of metal was sharp on the night air.

  Bernd lifted a brick from the ground, tested its weight in his mitten before hurling it through one of the lower windows, sending glass shattering in all directions. The others howled, bolting to the edge of the towers but there was no siren to announce the intruders. Slowly they returned and this time, they needed little encouragement to climb Udo’s shoulders for a look inside. In the centre of the tower, something very large glinted in the darkness.

  “Give me a pebble,” barked Jens.

  “There’s too much snow!”

  “Just do it.”

  Bernd did as asked, digging through the snow to the ground beneath, and all three held their breaths as Jens threw the pebble into the room. The tower echoed with the sound of pinging metal and Jens grinned down at his friends.

  “Boost me higher,” he said. “I’m going in.”

  “This is stupid,” grunted Udo but Bernd grabbed his friend’s boot, pushing so Jens was able to scale the brick. Inside, it was dark and quiet and he straddled the pane, taking a long moment for his eyes to adjust. With a deep breath, he dropped to the stone floor.

  Tall, dark and narrow, the tower’s interior was like a silo, wooden scaffolding hugging the sides of the walls. Gears moved the air as they hummed slowly overhead and cables hung like jungle vines only to disappear into the blackness of the ceiling. It all smelled of petrol and grease and the sharp tang of metal. But in the centre, a dark silhouette stood on twin pillars, gleaming in the moonlight and rising as high as the roof.

  “What is it?” cried Udo, standing on Bernd’s shoulders this time. “Can you see what it is?”

  Jens crept closer, reached out with his hand to rap on the edge of the shape. It echoed like a drum.

  “Hit it again!”

  He did and repeatedly, growing bolder and louder with each strike. He straightened now, walked around the pillars to study the mechanisms that anchored them to the floor.

  “They look like feet,” he muttered to himself. “Like big ugly iron feet.”

  He gasped and staggered backwards, letting his eyes sweep up the pillars to the fulcrum, a girdle of black iron and steel cables. High above his head, a torso as large as a warship hull with clockwork arms hanging from massive shoulders. Almost three stories above him, barely visible in the blackness, a helmet tucked low like a soldier in a bunker.

  “Eisenmänn,” Jens whispered. “An iron man.”

  It was massive, a giant soldier made entirely of metal standing guard in an abandoned tower in a Reichsland field. He climbed on top of the foot for a better look but was dwarfed by the mountain of iron and steel above him. The only sound was his breathing, quick and shallow in the room.

  Suddenly, there was a click and under the helm a single red eye opened, piercing the darkness like a beacon.

  “Get out!” screamed Udo. “Jens! Get out now!”

  With the screech and groan of a hundred grinding gears, the metal giant shuddered and the great helm moved as Jens leapt off the feet and scrambled to the window. There was a flash and the whole world was filled with light.

  Chapter 1

  Of Lost Girls, Misplaced Men and a Lodge called Mayerling

  “Oh Penny, you are a crackerjack shot!” boomed her father, Chief Inspector Charles Dreadful. “Why, I would never have imagined a girl to be so good with a pistol, and a clockwork pistol to boot!”

  “Oh father,” laughed Penny as she blew the smoke from the triple barrels. “One only needs a good eye and a steady hand.”

  “Still, my girl, you took out three of the six tires from that steamcar and caused it to careen into the ditch! Now, we can finally capture that nefarious rogue, Alexander Dunn! Bully for you!”

  Penny smiled and slipped the pistol into the holster at her hip. Breeches, she thought to herself. Marvellous handy for a Girl Criminologist.

  With billy clubs at the ready, the boys in blue ran to the ditch where steam and smoke rose from the upended vehicle. They waited for Penn
y and her father before swinging open the doors. Pearls, diamonds and satchels of gems spilled from within and bags of counterfeit notes flapped out of the windows to be carried away on the breeze.

  But of the elusive driver, international jewel thief and rogue Alexander Dunn, there was no sign.

  The End of Penny Dreadful and a Burglary in Bulgaria

  ***

  January 28, 1889

  Lasingstoke, Lancashire

  There was someone coming for her from the shadows.

  She could feel it in every nerve of her body and she crouched low in the gorse bushes on a hill above the Hall. She had never spent a winter in the north, was amazed at the amount of snow that fell and then stayed. In London, a snowfall was a celebrated thing, in part because of the fact that it melted almost as soon as it hit the streets. Here, in the wild north county of Lancashire, the snow had long outlived its welcome. She hated the feeling of wet feet, even if they were tucked away inside very fine boots.

  There, she heard it again, a soft crunch as another set of boots trod slowly through the drifts. She held her breath. There was a pistol in her hand, a small woman’s iron with a pearl handle and compact stock. It was a clockwork piece, dual chambers holding two balls and she had to admit she was getting pretty good. It helped that she had a crackerjack teacher but still, it would be a long time until she was as proficient as he.

  Didn’t matter. Ivy Savage was certain she was smarter.

  There again, and she grew still. She could feel the little hairs on her neck telling her that he was very near. He was teaching her how to listen to her surroundings, how to feel changes in the air and find signs in the earth. It had been less than two months and she was only beginning to become aware of such clues, let alone read them.

  The wind was strong and sharp and she stayed down, hidden by the thicket of gorse branches. The crunching had stopped and she knew he was likely waiting in the dale below, hoping she’d pop up for a look. The first mistake, he had told her. People were curious creatures. A good hiding place could be compromised by a sneak peek. When every inch of her was itching to do that very thing, she flattened even lower, ears straining to hear something of his boots, his flapping coat, his ghosts.

  Nothing.

  She wondered if they would help him, his ghosts, in something as trivial as this. They did seem to be a capricious sort, looking out for themselves and using him up in their pursuits. She was glad he was setting boundaries. She liked him too much to wish him spent on the dead. Yes, she was beginning to realize she liked him far too much for that.

  She cursed her silly, girlish thoughts. He was her partner, nothing more. The Mad Lord of Lasingstoke was easily the most fascinating man in all of England, having spent most of his life in asylums amongst the mad and churches amongst the dead. Living women hadn’t been a part of his world until she pushed her way into it, breaking that world apart like a child with a new toy. He had given her freedom and she had changed the rules as if it were some sort of great game that she had never been allowed to play. She had brought the house down on both their heads but if she was honest, she was the one who was lost.

  The snow was soaking into her knees but still she would not move. It had been at least five minutes now since she’d last heard anything but she could well imagine him, standing with his head cocked like a dog, growing more like the snowy landscape with each heartbeat—

  Damn. Ivy closed her eyes and sighed.

  Slowly, she lifted her head to see an English Setter not twelve feet away, straight as an arrow, pointing.

  Next, the cocking of a pistol very close to her ear.

  “Good morning, Miss Savage.”

  She looked up slowly to see Sebastien Laurent St. John de Lacey, the Mad Lord of Lasingstoke, standing above her, his clockwork pistol pointing three barrels square between her eyes. His greatcoat was flapping in the wind and he was smiling like the sun.

  “You finally remembered the dogs, did you?”

  “It’s not fair,” she scowled. “I’m quite certain you would not be bringing your dogs into the field to track a murderer.”

  “And there you would be mistaken.” He slipped his pistol behind his back and reached a hand down for her. “I frequently bring them. Dogs are far more sensitive to other worlds than we.”

  Reluctantly she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet.

  “Still,” she grumbled. “It gives you an unfair advantage.”

  “Remember, anything that gives you the advantage…”

  “Is to be used to your advantage,” she finished. As she rose, she swung her small pistol up under his coat, finding a home beneath his heart. “Like this?”

  “Damnation,” he growled. “You see? You posses a great many strategies against which I would be utterly defenseless.”

  “And what would those be, other than a quick hand with a pistol?”

  “Your belligerence, your reason, your pluck.” He shrugged. “Also, I’d say your womanly wiles are quite keen.”

  “My womanly wiles?” she laughed. “Honestly Sebastien, I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “You’re currently holding a pistol to my ribs.”

  “Good point. But I don’t think I would do something like that in the field. It’s beneath me.”

  “I think it’s rather effective.”

  “It shows no cleverness. It’s the ploy of a woman of low character.”

  “You’re not a woman of low character, Miss Savage, but you are a woman. It may serve as an advantage.”

  “I am a woman,” she murmured, her eyes suddenly finding a home on his face. “A grown-up woman. Nineteen in three weeks.”

  “You now have the upper hand, Miss Savage,” he said. “I am entirely at your mercy.”

  “Indeed.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I…I don’t understand.”

  “What do you want to do, Miss Savage?”

  She bit her lip. It was the question, after all.

  There had been no more murders in Whitechapel, no riots on the streets, no mysteries in need of solving. Her mother was awake and picking up the threads of her old life with her father in Stepney. Her brother was happily redesigning the boilers for the great house of Lasingstoke with Lottie Cook for company. There was no one to care for, no dreams to fight for, no chains to break. Here at Lasingstoke, she had been given freedom to chart her own course and she had no idea where to start.

  Three weeks before her nineteenth birthday, Ivy Savage didn’t know who she was or what she wanted and for the first time in her life, she was terrified to ask.

  The wind was playing with his hair, causing his cheeks to grow ruddy with the sharpness. She noticed the beginnings of a beard on his chin, his ever-changing eyes currently as brown as a colt. She could feel his heart thudding beneath the waistcoat and remembered the time he had held her under the pier at St. Katharine’s Dock, the cold of the water and the warmth of his body. She had very much wanted to kiss him then, to throw off the reins of her carefully-ordered life and leap into his chaos with very fine boots. She would have done it that night under the pier. Nothing save a head in the Thames would have stopped her.

  And now that he was here, she couldn’t. Perhaps what she wanted terrified her most of all.

  Slowly, she slipped the pistol out from under his coat. He stepped back, trying to find a place for a smile on his face.

  “Not to worry, Miss Savage,” he said. “I think you’re ready for the field. What say we go back to the Hall and pull a name? I have a house full at Seventh and would dearly love to reduce that number.”

  “Without bullets?” she asked. It came out a squeak.

  “We shall give it our damnedest.”

  “Thank you, Sebastien. You’re a very patient man.”

  “And you’re an apt pupil, Miss Savage. I’m certain you will outgrow my company in no time. There is still that university in Paris, yes?”

  He was giving her a way out. Chivalro
us to the core and her heart broke for him. She was a silly, stubborn, confused girl.

  “The Sorbonne.”

  “Splendid. I will have Rupert send a telegram—”

  She flinched as the crack of a rifle echoed over the fields.

  “Arclight,” said Sebastien. He staggered back, eyes changing from brown to green to brightest blue. “Arcus lux. Ostium ad praeteritum, ad alterum mundum.”

  “Oh no,” Ivy moaned. “Not again.”

  “Archelicht. Licht des Hauses Habsburg. Bedrohung der Hölle.” he said, voice echoing as much as the shot and he dropped to his knees, began drawing in the snow.

  “You are a Pandora’s Box,” she sighed. “If I open you, who knows what will be released. But dashitall if I don’t long to do that very thing.”

  She glanced over at Jo, the English Setter no longer on point.

  “Perhaps he just needs another dog,” she said. “I am so much work and dogs are liberal with their kisses.”

  Jo wagged her tail, smiling as only dogs can smile.

  Another shot echoed over the trees. The Mad Lord sat up, blinked and blinked again.

  “Who’s shooting?” he asked. “Who’s shooting?”

  “I don’t know. Rupert?”

  “Rupert doesn’t own a rifle.”

  “Castlewaite?”

  “Not with one eye. Terrible shot.”

  “Well then. Perhaps we should investigate?”

  “Well said, Miss Savage.” He brightened. “You see? You’ll make Girl Criminologist yet!”

  He rose to his feet, slipped his fingers between his teeth and whistled, and suddenly five other dogs burst out of the gorse, covered in snow and bounding with happy energy. As he dusted his knees, he paused to study his drawing in the snow.

  “Twin eagles?” he asked. “Are those crowns?”

  “As long as they aren’t angels, Sebastien.”