Blameless

CHAPTER TEN


In Which Alexia Meddles with Silent Italians
Lady Alexia Maccon did not, of course, realize that they were Templars until she awoke, and even then there was a lengthy adjustment period. It took her several long moments to discover that she was, in fact, not exactly a prisoner but relaxing in the guest quarters of a lavish residence located in, if the view from the window was to be believed, some equally lavish Italian city. The room had a delightful southern aspect, and a cheerful spray of sunlight danced over plush furnishing and frescoed walls.
Alexia tumbled out of bed, only to find she had been stripped and redressed in a nightgown of such frilliness as might have given her husband conniption fits under other circumstances. She wasn’t comfortable with either the notion of a stranger seeing her in the buff nor the copious frills, but she supposed a silly nightgown was better than nothing at all. She soon discovered she had also been provided with a dressing gown of velvet-lined brocade and a pair of fluffy bed slippers. Her dispatch case and parasol, apparently unmolested, sat on a large pink pouf to one side of her bed. Figuring that any person of refined sensibility would have burned her unfortunate claret-colored gown by now and finding no more respectable attire anywhere in the room, Alexia donned the robe, grabbed her parasol, and stuck her head cautiously out into the hallway.
The hall proved itself to be more of a large vestibule, covered in thick carpets and lined with a number of religious effigies. The humble cross appeared to be a particularly popular motif. Alexia spotted a massive gold statue of a pious-looking saint sporting jade flowers in his hair and ruby sandals. She began to wonder if she was inside some kind of church or museum. Did churches have guest bedrooms? She had no idea. Having no soul to save, Alexia had always considered religious matters outside her particular sphere of influence and therefore interest.
All unbidden, her stomach registered its utter emptiness and the infant-inconvenience sloshed about sympathetically. Alexia sniffed the air. A delicious smell emanated from somewhere close by. Alexia had decent eyesight and adequate hearing—although she had been remarkably capable of tuning out her husband’s voice—but it was her sense of smell that set her apart from ordinary mankind. She attributed this to her oversized nose. Whatever the case, it stood her in good stead this particular day, for it led her unerringly down a side hallway, through a wide reception chamber, and out into a massive courtyard where a multitude of men were gathered about long tables to eat. Imagine that, eating outside and not for a picnic!
Alexia paused on the threshold, unsure. An assembly of masculinity, and her in only a dressing gown. Such a danger as this she had never before had to face. She braced herself against the horror of it all. Here’s hoping my mother never gets wind of this.
The seated masses made for a bizarrely silent assembly. Hand gestures were the main method of communication. Seated at the head of one of the tables, a single somberly dressed monk read unintelligible Latin out of a Bible in a monotonous tone. To a man, the silent eaters were darkly tan and dressed respectably but not expensively in the kind of tweed-heavy country garb young men about the hunt might favor—knickerbockers, vests, and boots. They were also armed to the teeth. At breakfast. It was disconcerting to say the least.
Alexia swallowed nervously and stepped out into the courtyard.
Strangely enough, none of the men seemed to notice her. In fact, none of them registered her existence at all. There were one or two very subtle sideways glances, but, by and large, Alexia Maccon was entirely and utterly ignored by everyone there, and there were at least a hundred assembled. She hesitated.
“Uh, hallo?”
Silence.
True, prior familial experiences had prepared Alexia for a life of omission, but this was ridiculous.
“Over here!” A hand waved her over to one of the tables. In among the gentlemen sat Madame Lefoux and Floote, who, Alexia saw with a profound feeling of relief, also wore robes. She had never seen Floote in anything less than professional attire, and he seemed, poor man, even more embarrassed than she by the informality of the dress.
Alexia wended her way over to them.
Madame Lefoux appeared comfortable enough, although startlingly feminine in her dressing gown. It was strange to see her without the customary top hat and other masculine garb. She was softer and prettier. Alexia liked it.
Floote looked drawn and kept darting little glances at the silent men around them.
“I see they absconded with your clothing as well.” Madame Lefoux spoke in a low voice so as not to interfere with the biblical recitation. Her green eyes glittered in evident approval of Alexia’s informal attire.
“Well, did you see the hem on my gown—mud, acid, dog drool? I cannot say I blame them. Are these the famous Templars, then? Well, Floote, I can see why you do not like them. Highly dangerous, mute clothing thieves. Ruthless providers of a decent night’s sleep.” She spoke in English but had no doubt that at least some of the men around them could entirely understand her language, and could speak it, too, if they ever did speak.
Madame Lefoux went to make room for Alexia, but Floote said firmly, “Madam, you had best sit next to me.”
Alexia went to do so, only to find that the continued complete disregard for her presence extended to offering her a seat on the long bench.
Floote solved this problem by pushing hard against one of his neighbors until the man shifted over.
Alexia squeezed into the space provided to find, once she had settled, that the gentleman nearest her had suddenly found himself needed elsewhere. In an organic manner, and without any obvious movement, her immediate area became entirely vacant of all personnel save Floote and Madame Lefoux. Odd.
No one brought her a plate of any kind, nor, indeed, any other means by which she could partake of the food currently being passed about the tables.
Floote, who had already completed his meal, shyly offered her his dirty trencher. “Apologies, madam, it is the best you’ll get.”
Alexia raised both eyebrows but took it. What an odd thing to have to do. Were all Italians this rude?
Madame Lefoux offered Alexia the platter of sliced melon. “Three nights of decent sleep. That’s how long you’ve been out.”
“What!”
Floote intercepted the melon when Alexia would have served herself. “Let me do that for you, madam.”
“Why, thank you, Floote, but that is not necessary.”
“Oh, yes, madam, it is.” After which he proceeded to serve her anything she wished. It was as though he was trying to keep her from touching any of the utensils. Peculiar behavior, even for Floote.
Madame Lefoux continued with her explanation. “Don’t ask me what they drugged us with. My guess is a concentrated opiate of some kind. But we were all asleep for three full nights.”
“No wonder I am so hungry.” This was rather worrying. Alexia glanced again at the silent, weapon-riddled men around her. Then shrugged. Food first, ominous Italians second. Alexia tucked in. The fare was simple but delicious, although entirely lacking in any meat. In addition to the melon, chunks of crunchy, salted bread, white with flour, were on offer, as well as a hard, sharp yellow cheese, apples, and a pitcher of some dark liquid that smelled like heaven. Floote poured a portion for her into his cup.
Alexia took a tentative sip and was quite overwhelmed by an acute sense of betrayal. It was absolutely vile tasting, a mixture of quinine and burnt dandelion leaves.
“That, I am to assume, is the infamous coffee?”
Madame Lefoux nodded, pouring herself a splash and then adding a good deal of honey and milk. Alexia could not believe a whole hive of honey capable of rescuing the foul drink. Imagine preferring that to tea!
A bell sounded and, in a shifting rustle, most of the gentlemen departed and a new crowd entered. These men were slightly less well dressed and a little less refined in their movements, although they, too, ate in complete silence to the sound of the Bible being read aloud. And they, too, were covered in weaponry. Alexia noticed with annoyance that clean utensils were set before them without bother. But the staff, milling about with platters of food and additional coffee, ignored Alexia with as much thoroughness as the men seated around her. Really, it was beginning to make her feel quite invisible. She attempted a subtle sniff of her arm. Did she stink?
Just to test a theory, and because she was never one to take anything sitting down—even when she was, in fact, sitting down—Alexia scooted along the bench toward her nearest Italian neighbor, stretching out a hand in his direction, pretending to reach for the bread. In a flash, he was up off the bench and backing away, still not exactly looking at her but warily watching her movements out of the corner of his eye. So it wasn’t just that they were ignoring her; they were actively avoiding her as well.
“Floote, what is going on? Do they think I am contagious? Should I assure them I was born with a nose this size?”
Floote frowned. “Templars.” He intercepted another platter that would have bypassed Alexia and offered her some steamed greens.
Madame Lefoux frowned. “I did not know their reaction to a soulless would be quite so extreme. This is bizarre, but I suppose given their beliefs…” She trailed off, looking at Alexia thoughtfully.
“What? What did I do?”
“Something highly offensive, apparently.”
Floote snorted in a most un-Floote-like manner. “She was born.”
For the moment, Alexia decided to follow the Templars’ lead and so ignored them in turn, eating her meal with gusto. The infant-inconvenience and she appeared to have reached an agreement. She was now allowed to eat in the mornings. In return, Alexia was beginning to think upon the little being if not with affection, then at least with tolerance.
At the sound of a second bell, all of the men rose and began filing out of the courtyard, going off about their business without a by-your-leave. Even the Bible reader departed, leaving Alexia, Floote, and Madame Lefoux alone in the massive courtyard. Although Alexia managed to complete her meal before the staff were done cleaning up, no servant took her now-twice-dirty trencher. At a loss, Alexia began to gather up her eating utensils herself, thinking she would take them into the kitchen, but Floote shook his head.
“Allow me.” He picked up the trencher, stood, took three quick steps, and hurled it over the courtyard wall, where it shattered loudly in the city street beyond. Then he did the same with Alexia’s cup.
Alexia stared at him with her mouth open. Had he gone completely mad? Why destroy perfectly good pottery?
“Floote, what are you doing? What has the crockery done to offend?”
Floote sighed. “You are an anathema to the Templars, madam.”
Madame Lefoux nodded her understanding. “Like being one of the untouchables in India?”
“Very like, madam. Anything in contact with a preternatural’s mouth must be destroyed or ritually cleansed.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake. Then why bring me here?” Alexia frowned. “And one of them must have carried me down the Alpine pass and then put me into bed.”
“A professional handler,” answered Floote curtly, as though that were explanation enough.
Madame Lefoux gave Floote a very long look. “And how long did Alessandro Tarabotti work for the Templars?”
“Long enough.”
Alexia gave Floote a stern look. “And how long did you?”
Floote came over all inscrutable at that. Alexia was familiar with that attitude; he got it when he was about to clam up and become his most cagey. She faintly recalled from her nightmare time locked away in the Hypocras Club, some scientist saying something to the effect of Templars using soulless as agents. Had her father really been so bad as that? To work for a people who would have regarded him as not human. No. Could he really?
Alexia did not have an opportunity, however, to try and crack Floote’s hard, curmudgeonly shell, for someone came out into the courtyard and began walking purposefully toward them. A Templar, but this one seemed perfectly capable of looking Alexia full in the face.
The man wore practical middle-class dress twisted into absurdity through the presence of a white sleeveless smock with a red cross embroidered on the front. This absurdity was somewhat mitigated by the sinister presence of a particularly large sword. At his approach, Alexia and Madame Lefoux extracted themselves from the bench seats. Alexia’s nightgown ruffles got caught on the rough wood in a most annoying manner. She tugged them away and drew the robe closed more securely.
Looking down at her attire and then back up at the man approaching, Alexia grinned. We are all dressed for bed.
This Templar also wore a hat of such unsightliness as to rival one of Ivy’s more favored investments. It was white and peaked, boasting yet another red cross emblazoned on the front and gold brocade about the edge.
Floote stood at Alexia’s side. Leaning over, he whispered in her ear, “Whatever you do, madam, please do not tell him about the child.” Then he straightened to his stiffest and most butlerlike pose.
The man bared his teeth when he reached them, bowing slightly. It could not possibly be a smile, could it? He had very straight white teeth, and a lot of them. “Welcome to Italy, daughter of the Tarabotti stock.”
“You are speaking to me?” Alexia said dumbly.
“I am preceptor of the temple here in Florence. You are considered a small risk to my eternal soul. Of course, there will be five days’ cleansing and a confessional after I have terminated contact with you, but until then, yes, I may speak with you.”
His English was simply too good. “You are not an Italian, are you?”
“I am a Templar.”
At a loss over what to do next, Alexia resorted to politeness and proper etiquette. Trying to hide the fuzzy slippers under the frilly hem of her nightgown, she curtsied. “How do you do? Allow me to introduce my companions, Madame Lefoux and Mr. Floote.”
The preceptor bowed a second time. “Madame Lefoux, I am familiar with your work, of course. I found your recent paper on the aerodynamic adjustments needed to compensate for aether currents quite intriguing.”
Madame Lefoux looked neither flattered nor inclined to make small talk. “Are you a man of God or a man of science?”
“Sometimes I am both. And, Mr. Floote, how do you do? I believe I am familiar with your name as well. You are in our records, yes? You have maintained an unwavering connection to the Tarabotti stock. An intriguing display of loyalty not normally engendered by preternaturals.”
Floote said nothing.
“If you would all please follow me?”
Alexia looked at her companions. Madame Lefoux shrugged and Floote appeared only slightly more stiff than usual, but he was blinking apprehensively.
Alexia figured there was nothing for it but to play along.
“With pleasure,” she said.
The preceptor led them through the temple, all the while talking to Alexia in a mild, silky voice.
“And how do you like Italy, My Soulless One?”
Alexia did not like his use of the possessive, but nevertheless tried to answer this question. Since she had not, as yet, seen very much of the country, it was difficult. Still, from what she had glimpsed out of her window that morning, she had formulated one ready opinion. “It is very orange. Is it not?”
The preceptor gave a little chuckle. “I had forgotten how extremely prosaic the soulless are. Here we sit in Florence, the most romantic city on God’s earth, queen of the artistic world, and she finds it orange.”
“Well, it is.” Alexia gave him an inquisitive look. Why should she be the only one on the defensive? “I read somewhere that the Templars have an initiation ritual involving a dead cat and a duck made from a rubber tree. Is that true?”
“We do not discuss the secrets of the brotherhood with outsiders. Certainly not with a soulless.”
“Well, certainly, you would like to keep that a secret.” He looked dismayed but did not rise to the bait. Apparently, he was unable to. He could not refute her statements without discussing the very secrets he hoped to hide. Alexia relished her small victory.
The rest of the temple, as it turned out, was just as richly furnished and religiously decorated as the parts Alexia had already observed. There was a certain sparseness to the design and a complete absence of personal items that gave the place the unmistakable aura of a monastery despite its luxuriousness. This feeling of piety was helped along by the general hush and quiet all about.
“Where have all the other gentlemen gone?” Alexia asked, surprised not to have encountered any of the many men they had seen in the dining courtyard.
“The brothers are practicing, of course.”
“Oh?” Alexia had no idea what their host was talking about, but he clearly believed that she ought to. “Um, practicing what, exactly?”
“The fighting arts.”
“Oh.” Alexia tried a new tactic after that, asking about some of the artifacts on display in an effort to get him to reveal more about his agenda.
The preceptor explained one or two with the same smooth calmness. “Salvaged from the treasury at Outremer,” he said of an entirely unremarkable piece of rock raised in glory atop a marble column, and, “The letter written by Preceptor Terric of Jerusalem to Henry II” of a papyrus scroll yellowed with age.
Madame Lefoux paid attention with the interest of a bluestocking. Alexia was intrigued by the history but mostly mystified; she found religious relics rather dull, so the meaning was generally lost on her. The preceptor failed to reveal any useful secrets despite her cross-examination. Floote strode stoically behind, disregarding the artifacts being described and focusing on the Templar leading them.
Eventually, they ended their tour in a massive library, which Alexia supposed must pass for the relaxation area. The Templars didn’t seem like the type of men to boast a card room. Not that she minded; Alexia had always preferred libraries herself.
The preceptor rang a little hand bell, like those Alexia had seen worn by cows, and within moments a liveried servant appeared. Alexia narrowed her eyes and drummed her fingers. After a rapid conversation in Italian, in which the preceptor did most of the talking, the servant left.
“Did you catch that?” Alexia asked Madame Lefoux in a whispered tone.
The Frenchwoman shook her head. “I do not speak Italian. You?”
“Apparently not well enough.”
“Really? Italian and French?”
“And a little Spanish and some Latin.” Alexia grinned. She was proud of her academic achievements. “We had this fantastic governess for a while. Unfortunately, Mama found out that she was filling my head with useful information and dismissed her in favor of a dance instructor.”
The servant reappeared with a tray covered in a white linen cloth. The preceptor lifted this with a flourish to reveal not tea but a piece of mechanical gadgetry.
Madame Lefoux was immediately intrigued. She apparently preferred such things to tea. There was no accounting for taste.
The preceptor allowed the inventor to examine the device at length.
Alexia thought it looked… uncomfortable.
“Some sort of analog transducer? It bears a passing resemblance to a galvanometer but it isn’t, is it? Is it a magnetometer of some kind?”
The Templar shook his head, face stiff. Alexia realized what it was that bothered her so excessively about this man—his eyes were flat and expressionless.
“You are clearly an expert in your field, Madame Lefoux, but no. Not a magnetometer. You will not have seen one of these before. Not even in one of England’s famed Royal Society reports. Although, you may know of its inventor, a German: Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf?”
“Really?” Alexia perked up at that name.
Both Floote and Madame Lefoux shot her dirty looks.
Alexia backed hurriedly away from any show of enthusiasm. “I may have read one or two of his papers.”
The preceptor gave her a sharp glance out of his dead eyes but seemed to accept her statement. “Of course you would have. He is an expert in your field; that is”—the man flashed her another nonsmile of perfect teeth—“in the field of you, as it were. A remarkable mind, Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf. Unfortunately, we found his faith”—he paused meaningfully—“inconsistent. Still, he did devise this wonderful little tool for us.”
“And what is it designed to detect?” Madame Lefoux was still troubled by her own inability to understand the gadget.
The Templar answered her with action. He cranked a handle vigorously, and the machine whirred to life, humming softly. A little wand was attached to it by means of a long cord. There was a rubber stopper at the wand’s base, which corked up a glass jar in which the end of the wand resided. The preceptor pulled off the glass, exposing the wand to the air. Immediately, the small contraption began to emit a metallic pinging noise.
Madame Lefoux crossed her arms skeptically. “It is an oxygen detector?”
The Templar shook his head.
“A methane detector?”
Yet another shake met that guess.
“It cannot possibly be aether. Can it?”
“Can’t it?”
Madame Lefoux was impressed. “A miraculous invention, indeed. Does it resonate to alpha or beta particles?” Madame Lefoux was a follower of the latest theory out of Germany that divided up the lower atmosphere into various breathable gases and divided the upper atmosphere and its travel currents into oxygen and two types of aetheric particles.
“Unfortunately, it is not that precise. Or, I should say, we do not know.”
“Still, any mechanism for measuring aether ought rightly to be considered a major scientific breakthrough.” Madame Lefoux bent once more over the contraption, enraptured.
“Ah, not quite so important as all that.” The preceptor reined in Madame Lefoux’s enthusiasm. “It is more a device for registering the absence of aetheric particles, rather than measuring their presence and quantity.”
Madame Lefoux looked disappointed.
The Templar elaborated further. “Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf referred to it as an aether absorption counter. Would you allow me to demonstrate its application?”
“Please do!”
Without further ado, the man placed the wand into his mouth, closing his lips about the rubber stopper. No change occurred. The machine continued to emit the same metallic clicking noise.
“It is still registering.”
The preceptor removed the wand. “Exactly!” He carefully wiped the wand down with a small piece of cloth soaked in some kind of yellow alcohol. “Now, My Soulless One, if you would be so kind?”
Eyebrows arched with interest, Alexia took the wand and did as he had done, closing her lips about the end. The wand tasted pleasantly of some sweetened lemony liquor. Whatever the preceptor had used to clean it was mighty tasty. Distracted by the taste, it took Alexia a moment to notice that the clicking noise had entirely stopped.
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Madame Lefoux, perhaps not so wary as she should have been over her use of religious language in the house of Christ’s most devout warriors.
“Merph!” said Alexia with feeling.
“Well, then, it cannot possibly be registering aether. Aether is around and inside of everything, perhaps in more minor quantities groundside than it is up in the aether-atmospheric layer, but it is here. To silence it like that, Alexia would have to be dead.”
“Merph,” agreed Alexia.
“So we have previously thought.”
Alexia was moved by a need to speak and so removed the wand from her mouth. The device began ticking again. “Are you saying the soul is composed of aether? That is practically a sacrilegious concept.” She cleaned the end as the preceptor had done, with more of the yellow alcohol, and passed it to Madame Lefoux.
Madame Lefoux turned the wand about, examining it with interest before popping it into her own mouth. It continued ticking. “Merfeaux” was her considered opinion.
The preceptor’s flat, blank eyes did not stop staring at Alexia. “Not exactly. More that the lack of a soul is characterized by increased absorption of ambient aetheric particles into the skin, much in the way that a vacuum sucks air in to fill its void. Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf has theorized for years that preternatural abilities are the result of a lack of internally produced aether, and to compensate, the preternatural body seeks to absorb ambient aether from the outside. He invented this machine to test the theory.”
Floote shifted slightly from his customary stance near the door, then stilled.
“When it is in my mouth, it detects nothing because I have nothing to detect? Because I am absorbing it all through my skin instead?”
“Precisely.”
Madame Lefoux asked brightly, “So could this device detect excess soul?”
“Sadly, no. Only the absence of soul. And since most preternaturals are registered with the local government, or are at least known, such an instrument is mainly useless except to confirm identity. As I have just done with you, My Soulless One. I must say, your presence presents me with a bit of a conundrum.” He took the wand back from Madame Lefoux, cleaned it once more, and switched the machine off. It let out one little wheeze and then the metallic clicking noise stopped.
Alexia stared at it while the preceptor capped the wand with the little glass jar and then covered the machine with the white linen cloth. It was odd to encounter an instrument that existed solely for one purpose—to tell the world that she was different.
“What do you Templars call that little device?” Alexia was curious, for he had specified that “aether absorption counter” was Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf’s name for it.
The preceptor did not flinch. “A daemon detector, of course.”
Alexia was decidedly taken aback. “Is that what I am?” She turned to look accusingly at Madame Lefoux. “You would tell me if I suddenly developed a forked red tail, wouldn’t you?”
Madame Lefoux pursed her lips provocatively. “Would you like me to check under your skirts?”
Alexia backpedaled hurriedly. “On second thought, I think I should notice such a protuberance myself.”
Floote wrinkled one corner of his nose in a remarkably understated sneer. “You are a daemon to them, madam.”
“Now, gentlemen.” Madame Lefoux leaned back, crossed her arms, and dimpled at them all. “Be fair. The last I heard was that the church was referring to preternaturals as devil spawn.”
Alexia was confused. “But you gave me a bed… and this rather excitable nightgown… and a robe. That is hardly the way to treat devil spawn.”
“Yes, but you can see why none of the brothers would talk to you.” Madame Lefoux was clearly finding this part of the conversation amusing.
“And you understand the nature of our difficulty with your presence among us?” The preceptor seemed to think this fact obvious.
Floote interjected, his tone gruff. “You have found good use for her kind before, sir.”
“In the past,” the preceptor said to Floote, “we rarely had to deal with females, and we had the daemons controlled and isolated from the rest of the Order.”
Floote acted as though the Templar had inadvertently given up some vital piece of information. “In the past, sir? Have you given up your breeding program?”
The man looked thoughtfully at Alessandro Tarabotti’s former valet and bit his lip as if wishing he could retract the information. “You have been gone from Italy a long time, Mr. Floote. I am under the impression that England’s Sir Francis Galton has some interest in expanding our initial research. ‘Eugenics,’ he is calling it. Presumably, he would need a method of measuring the soul first.”
Madame Lefoux sucked in her breath. “Galton is a purist? I thought he was a progressive.”
The Templar only blinked disdainfully at that. “Perhaps we should pause at this juncture. Would you like to see the city? Florence is very beautiful even at this time of year, if a trifle”—he glanced at Alexia—“orange. A little walk along the Arno, perhaps? Or would you prefer a nap? Tomorrow I have a small jaunt planned for your entertainment. I think you will enjoy it.”
Apparently their audience with the preceptor had ended.
Alexia and Madame Lefoux took the hint.
The Templar looked at Floote. “I trust you can find your way back to your rooms? You will understand, it is impossible for me to ask a sanctified servant or brother to escort you.”
“Oh, I understand perfectly, sir.” Floote led the way from the room in what might have been, for him, a huff.
They began the long trek back to their quarters. The Florentine Temple was indeed vast. Alexia would have gotten hopelessly lost, but Floote appeared to know where to go.
“Well, he was certainly very chatty.”
Floote glanced at his mistress. “Too chatty, madam.” Floote’s walk was stiff—well, stiffer than normal—which meant he was upset about something.
“And what does that mean?” Madame Lefoux, who had been distracted by a crude black onyx statue of a pig, trotted to catch up.
“He does not intend to let us go, madam.”
“But he just offered to allow us to explore Florence on our own.” Alexia was getting ever more confused by the highly contrary nature of these Templars and by Floote’s opinion of them. “We would be followed, you believe?”
“Without question, madam.”
“But why would they have anything to do with me? If they see me as some kind of soul-sucking daemon of spiritual annihilation?”
“The Templars couple war with faith. They see you as incapable of salvation but still useful to them. You are a weapon, madam.”
It was becoming evident that Floote had had far more exposure to the Templars than Alexia had previously thought. She had read many of her father’s journals, but clearly he had not written down everything.
“If it is dangerous for me here, why did you agree to the jaunt?”
Floote looked mildly disappointed with her. “Aside from not having a choice? You did insist on Italy. There are different kinds of danger, madam. After all, good warriors take particular care of their weapons. And the Templars are very good warriors.”
Alexia nodded. “Oh, I see. To stay alive, I must ensure they continue to think of me as such? I am beginning to wonder if proving to my bloody-minded husband that he is an imbecile is worth all this bother.”
They arrived at their rooms and paused in the hallway before dispersing.
“I do not mean to be callous, but I am finding I do not at all like this preceptor fellow,” declared Alexia firmly.
“Apart from the obvious, why is that?” Madame Lefoux asked.
“His eyes are peculiar. There is nothing in them, like an éclair without the cream filling. It’s wrong, lack of cream.”
“It is as good a reason as any not to like a person,” replied Madame Lefoux. “Are you quite certain you do not wish me to check for that tail?”
Alexia demurred. “Quite.” Sometimes she found the Frenchwoman’s flirtations unsettling.
“Spoilsport,” said the inventor wryly before retreating into her room. Before Alexia could go into her own, she heard a cry of anger emerge from her friend.
“Well, this is unconscionable!”
Alexia and Floote exchanged startled looks.
A tirade of French outrage flowed out the still partly open door.
Alexia knocked timidly. “Are you quite all right, Genevieve?”
“No, I am not! Imbeciles! Look what they have given me to wear!”
Alexia nosed her way in to find Madame Lefoux, a look of abject horror on her face, holding up a dress of pink gingham so covered in ruffles as to put Alexia’s nightgown to shame.
“It is an insult!”
Alexia decided her best move at this juncture was a retreat. “You’ll let me know,” she said with a grin, pausing on the threshold, “if you need, perhaps, assistance with—oh, I don’t know—the bustle?”
Madame Lefoux gave her a dirty look, and Alexia departed in possession of the field, only to find, across her own bed, a dress of equally layered outrageousness. Really, she thought with a sigh as she pulled it on, is this what they are wearing in Italy these days?
Her dress was orange.
Professor Randolph Lyall had been three nights and two days hunting with very little sleep. The only thing he’d gotten was a lead as to the whereabouts of Lord Akeldama’s stolen item, from a ghost agent in good standing assigned to tail the potentate—if one could use the word “tail” when referring to a vampire.
Professor Lyall had sent Lord Maccon off to explore the lead further, arranging it so that the Alpha thought it was his own idea, of course.
The Beta rubbed at his eyes and looked up from his desk. He wouldn’t be able to keep the earl in England much longer. He’d managed a series of investigative distractions and manipulations, but Alpha was Alpha, and Lord Maccon was restless knowing Alexia was out in the world being disappointed in him.
Keeping the earl active meant that Professor Lyall was stuck with the stationary work. He checked every day after sunset for a possible aethograph from Lady Maccon and spent much of the rest of his time reading through the oldest of BUR’s records. He’d had them extracted with much tribulation from the deep stacks, needing six forms signed in triplicate, a box of Turkish delights to bribe the clerk, and a direct order from Lord Maccon. The accounts stretched back to when Queen Elizabeth first formed BUR, but he’d been scanning through them most of the night, and there were few references to preternaturals, even less about any female examples of such, and nothing at all about their progeny.
He sighed and looked up, resting his eyes. Dawn was imminent, and if Lord Maccon didn’t arrive back presently, he’d be arriving back naked.
The door to the office creaked open, as though activated by that thought, but the man who walked in wasn’t Lord Maccon. He was almost as big as the Woolsey Alpha and walked with the same air of self-assurance, but he was fully clothed and clearly in disguise. However, when Lyall sniffed the air, there was no doubt as to his identity—werewolves had an excellent sense of smell.
“Good morning, Lord Slaughter. How do you do?”
The Earl of Upper Slaughter—commander in chief of the Royal Lupine Guard, also known as Her Majesty’s Growlers; sometime field marshal; holder of a seat on Queen Victoria’s Shadow Council and most commonly known as the dewan—pushed his hood back and glared at Professor Lyall.
“Not so loudly, little Beta. No need to broadcast my presence here.”
“Ah, not an official visit, is it? You haven’t come to challenge for Woolsey, have you? Lord Maccon is currently out.” The dewan was one of the few werewolves in England who could give Lord Maccon a fight for his fur and had reputedly done so, over a game of bridge.
“Why would I want to do a thing like that?”
Professor Lyall gave an elegant little shrug.
“The trouble with you pack types is you always assume us loners want what you’ve got.”
“Tell that to the challengers.”
“Yes, well, the last thing I need is the additional responsibility of a pack.” The dewan fussed with the hood about his neck, arranging it to suit his taste.
The dewan was a man who had taken the curse later in life, resulting in a permanently jowly face, lined about the nose and mouth, with bags under the eyes. He sported a full head of dark hair, with a touch of gray at the temple, and fiercely bushy brows over deep-set eyes. He was handsome enough to have broken hearts in his day, but Lyall had always found the man’s mouth a little full and his mustache and muttonchops quite beyond the limits of acceptable bushiness.
“To what, then, do I owe the honor of your visit at such an early hour?”
“I have something for you, little Beta. It is a delicate matter, and it goes without saying that it cannot be known that I am involved.”
“Oh, it does, does it?” But Lyall nodded.
The werewolf pulled forth a rolled piece of metal from his cloak. Professor Lyall recognized it at once—a slate for the aethographic transmitter. He reached into his desk for a special little cranking device and used it to carefully unroll the metal. What was revealed was the fact that a message had been burned through—already transmitted. The note was short and to the point, each letter printed neatly in its segment of the grid, and, rather indiscreetly, it had been signed.
“A vampire extermination mandate. Ordering a death bite on Lady Maccon’s neck. Amusing, considering she cannot be bitten, but I suppose it is the thought that counts.”
“I understand it is just their turn of phrase.”
“As you say. A death order is a death order, and it is signed by the potentate, no less.” Professor Lyall let out a deep sigh, placed the metal down with a tinny sound on the top of his desk, and pinched the bridge of his nose above his spectacles.
“So you understand the nature of my difficulty?” The dewan looked equally resigned.
“Was he acting under the authority of Queen Victoria?”
“Oh, no, no. But he did use the Crown’s aethographor to send the order to Paris.”
“How remarkably sloppy of him. And you caught him in the act?”
“Let us say, I have a friend on the transmitter-operating team. He swapped out the slates so that our sender there destroyed the wrong one.”
“Why bring it to BUR’s attention?”
The dewan looked a little offended by the question. “I am not bringing it to BUR; I am bringing it to the Woolsey Pack. Lady Maccon, regardless of the gossip, is still married to a werewolf. And I am still the dewan. The vampires simply cannot be allowed to indiscriminately kill one of our own. It’s not on. Why, that is practically as bad as poaching clavigers and cannot be allowed, or all standards of supernatural decency will be lost.”
“And it cannot be known that the information came from you, my lord?”
“Well, I do have to still work with the man.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” Professor Lyall was a tad surprised; it was rare for the dewan to involve himself in pack business. He and Lord Maccon had never exactly liked each other ever since that fateful game of bridge. Lord Maccon had, in fact, given up cards as a result.
With his usual inappropriate timing, Lord Maccon returned from his jaunt at that very moment. He marched in, clad only in a cloak, which he removed in a sweeping motion and flung carelessly in the vicinity of a nearby hat stand, clearly intent on striding on to the small changing room to don his clothes.
He stilled, naked, sniffing the air. “Oh, hello, Fluffy. What are you doing out of your Buckingham penitentiary?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Professor Lyall, frustrated. “Do hush up, my lord.”
“Lord Maccon, indecent as always, I see,” snapped the dewan, ignoring the earl’s pet name for him.
Now, bound and determined to remain nude, the earl marched around Lyall’s desk to see what he was reading, as it clearly had some connection with the unexpected presence of the second most powerful werewolf in all of Britain.
The dewan, showing considerable self-restraint, ignored Lord Maccon and continued his conversation with Professor Lyall as though the earl had not interrupted them. “I am under the impression the gentleman in question may have also managed to persuade the Westminster Hive to his line of thinking, or he would not have sent that order.”
Professor Lyall frowned. “Ah, well, given—”
“Official extermination mandate! On my wife!”
One would think, after twenty-odd years, Professor Lyall would be used to his Alpha’s yelling, but he still winced when it was conducted with such vigor so close to his ear.
“That lily-livered, bloodsucking sack of rotten meat! I shall drag his sorry carcass out at high noon—you see if I don’t!”
The dewan and Professor Lyall continued their conversation as if Lord Maccon weren’t boiling over next to them like a particularly maltreated porridge.
“Really, by rights, preternaturals,” Lyall spoke coldly, “are BUR’s jurisdiction.”
The dewan tilted his head from side to side in mild agreement. “Yes, well, the fact remains that the vampires seem to think they have a right to take matters onto their own fangs. Clearly, so far as the potentate is concerned, what that woman is carrying is not preternatural and thus no longer BUR’s jurisdiction.”
“That woman is my wife! And they are trying to kill her!” A sudden deep suspicion and sense of betrayal caused the Alpha to turn upon his Beta in accusation. “Randolph Lyall, were you aware of this and yet didna tell me?” He clearly didn’t require an answer. “That’s it; I’m leaving.”
“Yes, yes, well, never mind that.” Professor Lyall tried unsuccessfully to calm his Alpha down. “The question is, what do they think she is carrying?”
The dewan shrugged and pulled his cloak back up over his head, preparing to leave. “I rather think that is your problem. I’ve risked enough bringing this to your attention.”
Professor Lyall stood, reaching over his desk to grasp the other werewolf’s hand. “We appreciate you giving us this information.”
“Just keep my name out of it. This is a domestic matter between Woolsey and the vampires. I wash my fur of the entire debacle. I told you not to marry that woman, Conall. I said no good could possibly come of it. Imagine contracting to a soulless.” He sniffed. “You youngsters, so brash.”
Lord Maccon began to protest at that, but Professor Lyall shook the dewan’s hand firmly in the manner of pack brothers, not challengers. “Understood, and thank you again.”
With one last mildly offended look at the naked, red-faced, sputtering Alpha, the dewan left the office.
Professor Lyall, drawing on long years of practice, said, “We have got to find Lord Akeldama.”
Lord Maccon sobered slightly at that abrupt change in subject. “Why is that vampire never around when you need him, but always around when you don’t?”
“It is an art form.”
Lord Maccon sighed. “Well, I canna help you find the vampire, Randolph, but I do know where the potentate has his object stashed.”
Professor Lyall perked up. “Our ghost overheard something significant?”
“Better, our ghost saw something. A map. I thought we might just go steal the object back, before I leave to fetch my wife.”
“And you still haven’t told me where you sent Channing.”
“It’s possible I was too drunk to remember.”
“It’s possible, but I think not.”
Lord Maccon took that as an opportunity to get dressed, leaving Professor Lyall in possession of the field but not the information.
“So, about this theft?” Lyall was always one to cut his losses and move on when necessary.
“It should be fun.” Lord Maccon’s voice emerged from the little changing closet.
When the Alpha reemerged, Professor Lyall wondered, not for the first time, if gentlemen’s garb was not made complex through vampire influence as a dig at werewolves who, by their very nature, were often in a tearing hurry to get dressed. He himself had mastered the art, but Lord Maccon never would. He stood to go around his desk and help his Alpha rebutton a lopsided waistcoat.
“It should be fun, you said, this reacquisition operation, my lord?”
“Especially if you like swimming.”