2. Unexpected Guests

Holly stared at the doctor, unable at first to form a coherent thought out of the miasma of confusion swirling in her head. Impatiently, he rapped his cane against the wall of the covered portico. “Miss Autumnson! Time presses!”

“What do you mean, my brother has –“

“Your late brother was not killed by hostiles,” the stranger said curtly. “His death was a murder by men in civilized dress, in point of fact; and his killers are very likely coming here next, and they are unlikely to believe you are wholly ignorant as you seem.” He took a deep breath, and before Holly could protest his extraordinary behavior, he lifted the smoked laboratory goggles from his face; intense dark blue eyes, the shade of the ocean depths, pierced her own mild brown ones. “Miss Autumnson, I implore you: if ever you loved your brother, do not allow his murderer to plunder his discovery as well as his life.”

Holly hesitated. The lamps were being lit, urchins with spindly ladders trotting along the chilling cobbles just past the gates. Dr Vonken blinked as the wind ruffled the thick-leaved maple branches, light from the street below playing across their faces a moment. This simple, involuntary reaction made him seem less intimidating suddenly. Holly stepped back, lifting one hand to cover her mouth so he couldn’t catch what she whispered, allowing the protective wards to part for him. Vonken strode directly in, retaining his cane, looking around with a quick, dismissive frown. “Where is it?” he demanded.

Drawing herself taut to her full height, she was still a head shorter than him. She shut the door and tried to regain some sense of control in her own home; the intruder swung himself around the stout balustrade, his long legs taking the stairs two at a time. “Dr Vonken! What exactly are you talking about? My brother was slaughtered by savages in the Wastelands, and if there were any new species discovered during his expedition, his notes have been tragically lost!” she called after him, hauling up her skirts to chase after the impertinent stranger. He was nowhere to be seen at the first landing, but from the library she could hear furniture being shoved across the parquet. “Dr Vonken! What are you doing? I must protest this...” Her voice trailed off as she reached the doorway to the library and saw the chaos he’d wreaked in a few short minutes. “Oh St Howard Philip,” she breathed. Books spilled off shelves, desk drawers had been wrenched open – even the locked one – the heavy oaken desk knocked askew in the struggle to force it to give up its secrets.

Vonken whirled, frustrated, gesturing at her with a thick book. “It’s not here! He bade me look in the usual place, but it is not here!” He punctuated the last three words by thumping the head of his cane on the cover of the book.

Holly forced herself to speak slowly, firmly, lowering her tone. “Doctor, if you do not explain yourself this instant I will summon the Watch.”

“The Watch don’t tangle with me,” he growled, but then calmed himself. Unbidden, he sank into a chair at the desk her brother had used when he was home. “We really don’t have time for this,” he sighed, glanced up at her imperious glare again, and squared up his shoulders. “Miss Autumnson. Did Mikael send you anything from this latest excursion? A packet, a letter, anything at all?”

“It was not his custom,” Holly replied, puzzled. “He often traveled where there were no express messengers. You’d be aware of this if you knew him, Dr Vonken.” She regarded him suspiciously, thinking Perhaps summoning the Watch anyway is a prudent idea, but the surgeon shook his head, ignoring the long straight locks which slid over his left eye at the gesture.

“We were...engaged in a business venture together. I wasn’t a close friend. Yet just a day ago I received a letter by Carrier from your brother, instructing me to fetch...fetch something he had sent to his sister, which he feared would cause you great harm.” His voice had softened somewhat; Holly couldn’t place his accent, but it was definitely Eastern, the sharp edges of the tenor voice modulated more carefully as he explained his purpose here. “I have the letter with me, if you wish to examine it.”

“I very much wish to,” she said. The doctor nodded once and unbuttoned the top of his green tunic, revealing a more ordinary shirt. “My brother never mentioned you,” she continued. “I find it highly unlikely he would place his trust in a total...strange...” She lost her words again at the brief glimpse of bare, smooth skin when he unbuttoned his shirt as well to retrieve a folded sheet of foolscap. He handed the paper to her, and she saw one edge was ragged. This had been torn from a cheap journal, the same sort Mikael favored for his note-taking when “out in the field,” as he’d persisted in calling his dangerous ventures.

“I created the Dust-powered prosthesis your brother wore. I operated on him during his tenure at All Souls,” Vonken said quietly. He indicated the book he still held. “I gave him this.” He flipped open the cover to reveal the title page, turned toward Holly: Treatise on the Uses of Horse-Shoe Chitin in Manufacturing Prosthetic Limbs, by Dr Darius Vonken, EMOK, PhD DC. Holly wouldn’t admit it aloud, but she was momentarily impressed at the initials signifying this man was not only an Emeritus of the Munificent Order of Krampf but held a doctorate in DustCrafting as well. The book, however, sounded dry as a Wasteland stream and unlikely to have been on Mikael’s favorite-reading list. Perhaps anticipating this idea, Vonken gave her a sardonic smile, and said, “Trace the degrees with your little finger of the left hand.”

Curious, Holly came two steps closer to do so, though she glanced twice at Vonken, mistrustful. When she completed the soft passing of her finger over the intaglio letters, the book’s pages flipped themselves to a spot in the middle, revealing a hidden chamber cut into the tome. A secret charm! She’d read of such things, but had never seen one used. Why would Mikael have need of such a silly legerdemain? “It’s empty,” she pointed out.

Vonken’s face fell even as his glare intensified. “And he told me you were the scholar of the family. Hmf.” Holly flushed hotly, but he didn’t apologize. “Yes it’s empty! And yet Mikael instructed me to look here for whatever he sent back, because he realized...” He broke off, lunging to his feet again and pacing the library, removing books from shelves at random, peering into the dark spaces behind dusty encyclopediae volumes. “Nothing in his letter sounds familiar?”

Holly realized she hadn’t even unfolded the letter yet. The handwriting was unmistakably Mikael’s, his terrible penmanship as distinctive as the finest French cursive. She read it swiftly, silently:

Vonken,

I have made a mistake. Sent the largest sample of new element to my sister Holly at Autumn Hill for safekeeping, but I fear consequences I hadn’t anticipated. V seems obsessed with it & will do anything to claim all of it for NPA. Suspect his intentions not as stated. I am being watched & can’t say more now but will explain my theories when I return. Please retrieve the element from my home in the usual place & keep at your lab until I

Nothing more. Holly looked up in alarm. “What is he talking about? What ‘element’? He didn’t send me anything! Where’s the rest of this letter?”

Vonken snatched the paper from her, refolded it and tucked it back within his shirt, swiftly rebuttoning his clothing. “There is no more. The Carrier who brought this to me was badly damaged, and collapsed into bolts and scrap the instant I confirmed my identity to her.”

Holly felt a shiver of ice pass across her shoulders. The birdlike constructs, Dust-powered like all modern marvels since the Cataclysm had scattered the mysterious essence of distant stars across the face of the planet, were built to withstand tempests and attacks by wild creatures in their flying rounds. “A Carrier...damaged beyond operation? What on earth could...” She realized something else: He referred to it as a ‘her’. As though it had life like a creature of blood. How odd.

“What indeed,” he agreed grimly. “Miss Autumnson, I beg you, speak only truth. Did your brother send you anything since he departed in June? Even a simple postal card could be significant.”

Holly shook her head. “No. No, not a word. He left and then two weeks ago I...” A catch in her throat. Swallowing past it, she finished simply, “I learned of his death.”

“Damn,” Vonken sighed. He passed his hand over the book, reversing the charm, making it appear ordinary again, and set it on the desk as though laying down a hope. “Perhaps that Carrier was also waylaid.” He straightened again, his lips set in a firm line beneath his moustache; he stroked one tip of it thoughtfully. “I suppose there is some consolation in knowing Villard’s goons didn’t find it either.”

“Henry Villard?”

Vonken gave her that same sardonic look again. That expression was really beginning to irritate her. “I trust the scholar of the Autumnson clan at least knows who her brother was employed by?”

“My brother was Mr Villard’s most esteemed researcher,” Holly snapped, pride for Mikael enflaming her; she saw Vonken’s eyes flick to her raised bosom, angering her further. “Mr Villard built our city, Dr Vonken! I don’t know what forsaken Eastern town you came from, but even before the Cataclysm, Mr Villard was forging paths out here! He oversaw the building of every rail track from here to California and up into the Yukon wilds, expanded the steam shipping routes upriver from the coast, personally funded each of my brother’s expeditions –“

Vonken waved a hand dismissively. “Maryland, Miss Autumnson, where we were quite familiar with rails, canals, and steam power when your fine city was a collection of fishing huts along the estuary!”

Feeling defensive, Holly returned in a voice rising with scorn: “Then you ought to be more respectful of what Mr Villard and his company have accomplished! He was the first entrepreneur to think of harnessing the kraken for transport! If it weren’t for his vision, we would never –“ Struck by what Vonken had said as much as by his glower now, she stopped to ask, “Did you say Maryland?” Vonken grimaced. “But...but wasn’t that the first to...”

“History is dead,” the doctor snapped. “Give me your hand and swear to me you know nothing of any of this!” He didn’t wait for her consent, grabbing her left hand in his larger black glove, turning it palm-up. Holly choked out a protest, but from some unseen pocket Vonken had produced a tiny needle; he pricked the center of her palm, making her cry out. She tried to pull away, but he held her firmly, long fingers closed around her delicate wrist. “I am sorry, Miss Autumnson, I truly am, but this is crucial,” he murmured. Holly raised frightened eyes to his, feeling a sickening wave of cold coursing like mercury up her arm. To her surprise, his expression was regretful, almost kind. He locked his gaze on hers, and she found herself frozen. Strange words escaped his lips; she thought she recognized the tongue he spoke, but her mind seemed slow to react. “Did you receive anything at all from Mikael since he traveled east in June?” Vonken said, enunciating each word carefully. Part of her was glad he did, as he seemed to be trying to speak through a curtain of ice-water. She found herself slowly shaking her head No. “Have you had any word from him, or from anyone claiming to speak for him?”

“Only...only you,” Holly murmured.

“All right. There, there...I’m sorry, my dear.” Vonken paused, seeming lost, stroking his moustache again. Holly trembled, wavering on her feet. As if snapping himself from his own thoughts, Vonken looked sharply at her, then muttered something else in that strangely familiar tongue, all glottals and clicks. Holly blinked. The library came into focus once more. The doctor released her, and she quickly stepped back, even though she felt ill and liable to fall over her own feet.

“You...you wretched brute,” she hissed. Never, never had anyone dared assault her like that! “Get out. Get out of my home this instant!”

The doorbell rang. Holly managed not to jump out of her skin, though it took every bit of will she possessed. “Ah, that’ll be the Watch,” she proclaimed, though she hadn’t summoned them. Yet. “You’d best be on your way, you pathetic excuse for a surgeon! Using some sort of veracity serum on an innocent young woman! I’ll have your license!”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he growled, advancing on her, but even as she looked around to find something she could use as a weapon to defend herself, he pointed toward the door to the second-story hallway. “You will go at once to the door and let the gentleman you find there into your parlor. At once, as if everything is normal!”

“What?” She gaped at him. The very nerve of this monster! How dare he! “That’s the Watch, I tell you! You’re in for it now, you, you –“

“Save the insults for after I save your life, you ungrateful, sheltered little spinster-in-waiting,” Vonken snapped, striding past her without a backward glance. “The Watch, hell! That’ll be Villard himself come to pry out of you the element you don’t even have!”

Shocked, Holly had to remind herself to take a step, to get her feet to move. She followed him, seeing him racing down the stairs, heading toward the back of the first floor. “It’ll do you no good running out the back!” she shouted, “That’s warded too!”

Vonken’s sharp voice traveled back to her despite the distance he was putting between them in the spacious house. “I’m not running, blast it, woman! I’m starting tea!”

Tea??

Holly cautiously descended the stairs. The bell rang twice more. Hoping it perhaps actually was one of the Constable’s men just stopping in, checking on a bereft young lady on her own, she tried to smooth down her hair, adjusted her skirt, and went to answer the door. When she pulled the massive, carven front entry open, her mind froze again at seeing Henry Villard himself in the yellow light of the portico lamp. The old man’s cheeks lifted briefly in a consoling sort of smile. “Good evening, Miss Autumnson. I apologize for dropping by at zis hour...I hope I am not inconveniencing you.” The slight German accent, the twinkling eyes, the white walrus-moustache and shining, balding head were impossible to mistake.

Holly tamped down the shock in her voice, doing her best to appear composed. “Why...not at all, Mr Villard. To what do I owe the honor?”

“I wished to stop by personally to offer my condolences for your brutter,” Villard said. He smiled sadly, and gestured with his bowler hat. “Please. May I come in for a moment?”

How did Vonken know? Why did he refer to Mr Villard’s men as ‘goons’? What game is all this? She heard the whistle of a kettle. Dumbly, she stepped aside, whispered the passwords to the wards, and watched with growing unease as Henry Villard, founder and patron of the city of Concordia – and indeed the most important man in all of Columbia Pacifica, bar none – walked in accompanied by his usual escort of two burly gentlemen in boiled-wool suits. One of them had a steam-levered arm, a massive thing surely too unwieldy for anything but punching holes in things. The other’s eyes shifted immediately over everything in the foyer, one red lens extending and contracting again like a camera illumina, focusing on the staircase in particular. Holly wondered what sort of terrible accidents had necessitated these alterations...and then shivered at the thought: or perhaps they WANTED their bodies augmented for some other purpose.

Augmentations, she remembered, that Dr Vonken, with his list of degrees and honors, specialized in at All Souls Hospital.

Unsure what to think anymore, Holly mutely gestured toward the parlor. Villard grandly indicated she should precede him. Trying not to betray her worries with any awkward movement, she walked with her head up along the short hall to the interior rooms, past the darkened dining room and the swinging door to the kitchen, where a light showed. When she swung her gaze to the chairs by the small but lovely cast-iron mantel, she had to repress a start. Dr Vonken sat comfortably upon the high-backed loveseat, pouring tea from her finest dragonware pot. Upon seeing her, he stood, straightening his formal tunic, and executed a perfect bow to Mr Villard. “Well! An honor, sir. Your timing is excellent; the tea is only just being poured.”

Villard gave a grave nod in reply, and took the largest chair by the hearth, where a small fire crackled. Holly hadn’t lit one yet. She gave Vonken a frown; how had he managed to brew tea, light a fire, and yet appear so composed in barely four or five minutes since he’d darted down the stairs? Remembering her duty as a hostess, she noticed only two cups sat upon the low table. “Mr Villard, do please let me offer you and your associates some tea and...would you like cake? I may have...”

“Nonsense, dear girl,” Villard said, watching Vonken as the doctor resettled himself on the loveseat, crossing one ankle over the other and taking up his cup and saucer as though completely at peace with the world. “I know you’ve been doing without; ve may, at some more private time, discuss such matters. For now, vy don’t you allow Herbert and Russell to fetch things for you. Russell’s mutter was my housekeeper for many years; I am sure he knows his way around a kitchen.” Brusquely, the old man waved away his men. At a loss, Holly stood a moment undecided. Then Dr Vonken patted the empty half of the loveseat next to himself.

“My dear, the good Founder is absolutely correct. You are the one in grief; allow us to tend to you. Come sit down again, and we’ll have some bright conversation now that our eminent patron is present, I’ll wager.” Vonken’s smile lifted the corners of his moustache, but the look in those dark blue eyes said plainly: sit down and play this game if you value your life. When Villard shifted his gaze from Holly to the doctor, the man’s slender, gloved fingers held his teacup delicately to his lips, pinky curled in the finest Eastern manner. The other cup steamed on the table directly in front of the empty section of the loveseat. With smile still firmly pasted on, Vonken held his free hand out toward the table. “As you see, my dear, I’ve already taken the liberty of pouring for you. Do you take lemon?”

Reluctantly, Holly moved to the loveseat, and sat stiffly next to the doctor. Henry Villard’s eyes narrowed, only a fraction of a moment, but Holly saw it, and when the Founder of Concordia stretched his arms along the chair, she understood something very dangerous was indeed going on right here in her parlor. Something she didn’t comprehend at all yet. “Ah, thank you, Russell,” Villard said, and Holly started; the red-eyed man had been utterly silent re-entering the room with another cup and saucer for his master, and just as silently retreated into the darkened hall. Where are they? Why are these men even in my house, any of them? What in all the kraken-soaked oceans of Hades is going on?

Villard smiled at Vonken, who lounged against the back and arm on his side as if he’d visited the Autumnson house many times as a favored guest. “Vell now, zis is quite a cozy house. Vat exactly brings you here, Herr Doctor?”

Vonken stroked his moustache curls and smiled. Holly nearly jumped when a log sparked in the fireplace. She had the frightening sensation that she’d never been so threatened in her life, but the men kept smiling at each other. Smiling, she thought, like hoarwolves about to fight over a rabbit.

“I may have some brandy, if you gentlemen would prefer,” she piped up, and wished they might say yes so she’d have a polite excuse to take a long drink herself.