If the Queen must be helped to die, it would be he who committed the ultimate treason of regicide.
Kitchens began flipping toggles, trying to release the port. There must be a larger opening, a way to crack the entire chamber so Her Imperial Majesty’s person could have been laid in the fluid bath in the first place.
The little hatch popped loose. He tore it free, sending it clattering to the floor. A bloated, pale face, still familiar from a lifetime of coinage and posters and duty and loyalty, stared up at him with a gelid, unblinking gaze.
“Your Highness,” Kitchens said, a moment of cold fear stabbing his heart. “I am here to remake what has been undone. I can break your throne if I can help you finish dying. Is this truly your will?”
Bubbles popped from her lips.
He raised the razor still slick and scarlet from the death of Dr. Stewart.
Another bubble, then a long, slow blink.
Would he be a regicide, a name to be condemned through the ages? Or was he an angel of mercy?
“I am but a clerk, my Queen,” Kitchens whispered, filled now with dread of the enormity of what he contemplated. “This is not my place.”
Her head shook slowly. Voices called outside, demands for surrender, fearful shouts in place of the angry pursuit they had met before. Another red bubble popped from her lips.
Kitchens believed for a moment that he could see desperation in her eyes.
He reached down with the razor.
Queen Victoria tilted back her chin and smiled.
With a firm movement of Kitchens’ wrist, history ended and began anew.
TWENTY-THREE
And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. —Revelation 21:14
BOAZ
His eyes opened again. This time he had some sense of his body. The ceiling was still above him, in the strange view of only one eye.
The Brass lay quietly and listened for the voices in his head.
They did not shout at him, but somehow they were there. Threads within his own mind, as the Paolina–al-Wazir voice had already mostly become before everything went so wrong. The blood and thunder of the Seal were there as well, now submerged in his own thoughts.
Someone cleared their throat.
Boaz found he could turn his head. An old man in saffron sat next to him. The Jade Abbot.
“Welcome once again.” His deep brown eyes twinkled with some emotion Boaz could not read. “I do not think you are Brass anymore. Your thoughts are divided, complex. I believe you have become human.”
“Why would I want to be human?” Boaz asked.
“Why does anyone want to be human? To love a woman, in your case.” The Jade Abbot smiled. “You will not be free to walk about for a while, but I have done work to make you more comfortable. I am afraid you may be here some time.”
“What of Paolina?” Boaz realized he did want to be human, if being human meant being with Paolina. The thought of going on without her was too much to bear. They could not lie together as husband and wife, in the way of monkey men. Too much had already passed for any innocence to remain to their love.
He would give anything for her to be back with him.
“That is up to the girl,” the Jade Abbot said. “She knows she has a place here.”
“Atop the Wall, between the earths.”
“The earths are coming together. I believe she may be the joining between them.”
“Here at the hinge of Heaven.” Boaz closed his eyes. “I am lost, sir.”
He felt the hand on his face again, a gentle touch that brushed softly then slipped away. “We are all lost, my Brass friend. We are born alone, we die alone, and if we are lucky, we find a path of the spirit that carries us through life in pleasing company.”
His eyes burned. Tears? That was not possible. “Can you bring her here?”
“Only she can bring herself here. You cannot call her to you, no matter how great your love. Only she can choose to come to your side.”
Boaz realized he had no choices, only desires. She knew how he felt; she knew how to find him. All was on Paolina.
The threads within his mind were a chaotic stir, not unpleasant, but not simple. He tried to listen, to pick out what they were saying, but just as he’d wanted them quiet before, now he wanted them to speak out.
Was this what it meant to be human? To wish for the impossible, to never clearly hear the tenor of one’s own thoughts?
If that was the price of love, he was willing to pay it.
GASHANSUNU
The Silent World seemed much brighter now. Lives burned like bonfires around her, so many spirits guttering away even as she looked toward them.
A greater fire burned nearby. Gashansunu followed it.
As she approached, she saw a familiar light. Paolina, the girl who’d come from beyond the world. Her color and texture was clear even in this place. Gashansunu came close to the comforting glow.
The greater light rose beyond, like the oldest of house priests in the Silent World, great power and potential and the paths of history and story and love and hate bounded together in a swirling knot. A chief with a golden crown lay here in state, ready to release her energy to form a new generation of might in the Shadow World.
She slipped into Paolina’s light and felt a comfortable settling in. Like her own wa had come home.
No, Gashansunu realized. She was the wa.
The great light spilled open, a thousand snakes trailing bright-smeared into the wider extents of the Silent World, leaving behind glowing spoor. Some leapt into Paolina, some into others of the spirit-lights around Gashansunu’s host, but most sought their destinies beyond.
Someone cried out, and a silent bell the size of the world began to toll.
CHILDRESS
The Queen shrieked once, then burbled. Kitchens turned away from his butchery with a crimson spray across his chest and face. His eyes shone with bright madness.
The blinded maid on the floor drummed her heels and howled like a kennel bitch at the death of her master.
Wang stood up from behind the end of the tank. “There are tubes here for oil, blood, spiritual aether and pulmonic fluid. Also electrickal mains. If you wish this work to be done beyond recovery, we should cut these.”
“I have slain her.” Kitchens’ voice was brittle.
Paolina stepped forward and stared into the tank. She seemed graver, more settled somehow, here at the death of everything.
“Now that you have finished, I want to go to Boaz.” Her tone was distant, a marked contrast to Kitchens’.
“Can you take the survivors with you?” Childress asked.
Paolina’s gaze was far away. The stemwinder was already in her hands. “Yes. Who will come?”
“Not I,” Childress replied. “I must stay and face whoever comes. I am here for the avebianco. In truth, for Admiral Shen as well.”
“I’m an Englishman,” said the old pilot. “I shall face English justice.”
Kitchens nodded. “As will I.”
Wang spoke up. “I should stay with the Mask Childress. I am set to a task that cannot be parted from her.”
Paolina looked to al-Wazir, the one man she would have taken if she could. He was touching his right side, fingers scarlet with blood. “I do not think I should be going anywhere, Miss Barthes. You see, I am mortal wounded.”
The seven of Leung’s sailors who survived looked confused. Childress spoke to them in their language. “The girl is leaving for the Wall by magical means. I strongly suggest you accompany her, for while these English may negotiate with us, you will be slain as mortal enemies.”
The old cook, Lao Mu, was one of the remnant. “May we gather as many of the wounded as we can?”
“Paolina,” Childress said, “these should leave with you, but they wish to claim the fallen. The hallway is almost certainly too dangerous now, though.”
“I shall take them with me, and reach
outside for those who still live,” she replied. “Good luck to you all.”
PAOLINA
She set the stemwinder to follow Boaz, wherever he was. Whether they would emerge into empty air was no worry to her now. Gathering the sparks of the sailors and the wounded in the hall outside, she simply stepped, pushing off sufficiently so as not to further devastate Blenheim Palace in her wake.
From one moment to the next, she was surrounded by an orchard shrouded in mist. The hour was late here, so she had moved farther east. A building in the Chinese style loomed nearby, an ornamental pond before it. Something vast towered beyond as a formless gray presence in the fog.
The monk walked out of the mist as if she had not been there even a moment before.
“Welcome. You were expected.”
“Where is Boaz?” Paolina demanded. “I should have reached him.”
The men crowded around her began gathering up the wounded in order to help them toward the building. Al-Wazir groaned among them.
“You have,” said the monk. “This is the Jade Temple, which cannot be passed within so easily. This is where he and I came, when you sent us. You are atop the Wall, close as you can reach to your lover by the ways you followed.”
Atop the Wall. She’d been to the top once before, when passing over with Ming on her journey after the death of the Nanyang fleet. It had just been a place, an obstacle to be crossed. She’d never considered its true meaning, nor the idea that there were places in the Shadow World she could not walk.
Had Gashansunu understood that?
Her crew shuffled past her. Paolina longed to rush after Boaz. Only the monk’s words held her.
“The top is different,” she said. “Neither Northern Earth nor Southern.”
The monk shrugged. “Where a river meets the sea, to whom does the water belong?”
“This is more important,” Paolina replied. “This is the world. God’s Creation. Each side with its own path. Even a mockery of one another. Angels to the North, winged savages to the South. Farms and factories on the one side, jungled Eden on the other. Industry against magic. Separate but not inviolate. A bit of each passes over to the other.”
The monk nodded, grinning her encouragement.
Paolina followed the thought toward its logical conclusion. “The world is divided much as the human mind, filled with contradiction, with logic and imagination, with image and word. Like the human mind, it works best when those contradictions are blended.”
“Do you now know what the Golden Bridge is?”
“Yes.” In that moment it was all so obvious. “The Wall itself. It is not a division; it is the joining of the two halves of the Earth, as the dreaming mind of God awakens to the thoughts of what might come next.”
“The Wall,” the monk said. “And you. Every bridge has a keeper.”
“A troll,” Paolina replied with a laugh. “And here is where the free will Hethor spoke of begins. From the middle of the bridge between faith and reason.” It almost made sense to her now, in a way that promised more, once she’d had time to consider the problem. Years. “The gleam belongs here, in neither world. A fountain of free will.”
“Yes.” The monk’s face was tight and fierce.
“Now where is my beloved Boaz?”
“Let me take you to your Brass.” The monk extended an arm. “He is in the care of the Jade Abbot, a monk even older than I am, which is something of a trick, I can tell you.”
They followed the last of the stumbling wounded through the forest, watching drizzle curtain the world in wide swaths. “This Jade Abbot . . . I hope he is not so much of a fool as so many I have met.”
“Who do you think has kept the Wall this long?”
Her feet were wet, her body aching, and she did not care. Boaz waited, and with him perhaps a destiny within the shelter of a power old and great enough not to covet her stemwinder. Something whispered in the back of her mind. Alien, familiar. Gashansunu?
Not the sorceress, she realized. Or not just Gashansunu. Paolina’s wa had found her.
WANG
A handful of Englishmen in patterned skirts peered into the room. Only four of them remained—Kitchens, the old English sailor, the librarian and Wang.
The soldiers burst in with rifles swinging, but they did not fire. A tired officer was among them, narrow bodied with a brush moustache. He tugged at the hair above his lip as he surveyed the carnage.
“It is done, I see.”
“This thing is done,” the clerk said. “Bernard Forthright Kitchens, special clerk to Admiralty. Her Imperial—”
The officer stopped him with a raised hand. Somewhat to Wang’s surprise, Kitchens fell silent. “She has asked these last two years for help from a select few. The Cameron Highlanders were posted here in hopes that a way might be found.”
“Posted?” Kitchens asked, his voice suspicious. “By whom?”
“Gentlemen.” Childress cut them both off. Her voice was cold and miserable. “If the executions are not going to proceed right now, I would prefer an adjournment from this abattoir.”
“No executions, ma’am. Not today.” The officer looked her over. “I am Major Sharpe, of the regiment. Who might you be?”
“The Mask Childress, of the avebianco.”
Sharpe glanced at the opened tank. “Here to oversee murder done?” His voice was mild, but he shook with passion. Wang began to wonder anew if they could possibly leave this room alive.
“Here to meet with Government to bring a halt to the war burning in the east,” she snapped. “I did not come for your queen, though I do not dispute Mr. Kitchens’ deeds. It is not murder to finish a death long-delayed. In any case, you shall not end me today with a bullet to the head, for I must meet with the Prime Minister.”
“In that case, your patience will soon be rewarded,” Sharpe said. “Lloyd George hastens even now from London by special train. The entire Oxfordshire lines have been stopped to clear the track.”
“Good,” Childress said. “Then England shall hear how best to sue for peace.” Wang stirred as she pointed to him. “My companion will speak for both China and the Silent Order.”
“I . . .” He fell silent. This was not China, where power was acquired through descent and heavenly mandate. He could beg away this moment and surrender his life to an English prison, or he could claim to be a kô, an agent of both the Dragon Throne and the Silent Order. How would these men know the difference?
She has done no less.
Wang tried again. “I will treat with your Prime Minister.” His tone was crisp as Childress’, though he told an even greater lie. He wished the monk were here. “There is no need for war.”
How to take the message home? At the first, he would have them intercept Good Change at Port Said. Captain Shen would be enraged, but then Captain Shen was always enraged.
“You are a most unlikely ambassador,” Sharpe replied. He and his men bustled the four of them away.
We may live a little longer, Wang thought. He would have to invent whole new lies, very quickly—large ones he could use to persuade a halt to the war, and thus render himself important enough to survive to go home and deliver the message.
His library seemed so far away now, but the distance mattered less than ever. His own man, Wang had to force himself not to sing as he walked the ruined halls.
KITCHENS
He sat on a narrow chair before a massive oaken desk. It had the look of something just now swept from under a furniture drape. A reek of burning tinged the air. The world outside was finally quiet after hours of firefighting noise and the occasional gunshot.
Wang and Childress had been separated from him. Kitchens devoutly hoped the shots had not been for them. He reckoned himself for the noose, unless they chose to make his execution a private and unofficial affair. Something to round out the evening, perhaps.
Minutes ticked by with the rhythms of a long-case clock on the wall to his right. Empty shelves reached fourteen or fifteen fe
et to the ceiling, except where the windows opened onto a garden. The chandelier was missing, though its mounting hook and gas pipes were visible in the middle of a plaster rosette. Once the last of the daylight faded outside, he would be in the unquiet dark with his ghosts.
The clerk studied his grubby fingernails in the waning light. Blood royal stained the little striations and clung to the corners of each nail. He’d killed almost two entire crews getting here—first Erinyes’, then the Chinese sailors following al-Wazir and that insane woman from New England.
Apparently they’d arrived at Blenheim Palace by submarine. Kitchens’ grasp of that was tenuous at best.
Two dead crews. At least a dozen members of the Royal Household dead defending Her Imperial Majesty. That doctor, Stewart. All the men he’d failed down along the Wall under Ottweill’s command.
One queen.
The door opened behind him, then clicked shut again. Footsteps echoed across the uncarpeted room. Kitchens was unwilling to turn and look.
The Prime Minister walked around the desk and sat in the large leather chair. He laid a revolver down.
That riveted the clerk’s attention. “Sir?”
“Mr. Kitchens.” Lloyd George’s voice was slow, careful, lacking his usual witty eloquence. “I see you have returned to England.”
Kitchens watched the pistol, wondering if it would somehow spring to life. In the deepening night, the Prime Minister was little more than a shape with some dimensionality.
“Sir, yes . . . sir.”
“The Mask Childress tells a remarkable tale. As does that, ah, ambassador of hers.”
“Sir.” He could add no wisdom to their story, for he did not know it himself. They had appeared in the company of al-Wazir by the will of Paolina Barthes, but they might as well have dropped in from the Iroquois Nation for all he could say.