(A Charm of Magpies 1)The Magpie Lord (21 page)

“What are they likely to do, any idea?”

“I imagine they’re going to use you as a live conduit for the power of Piper. That would add enormously to the effect of what they’re doing. I’m surprised they offered you an alternative, to be honest.”

“It wasn’t an attractive alternative. Stephen, can you strip me?”

“Lucien—”

“I mean it. I don’t want to be a live conduit. I’d rather be a dead nuisance. I’d rather die at your hands than theirs. And I’d rather give you a fighting chance. If you do it—”

“I know,” Stephen said rawly. “I know. Don’t. I can—try and kill you. If you like.”

“I would very much prefer you to live. I think those maniacs have plans that need scotching. Lady Bruton talked about their rightful place in ruling the country. She wanted me to speak in the Lords for them.”

“Did she, by God.” Stephen’s hand twitched against Crane’s. The drying blood felt tacky, bonding their fingers lightly together. “I don’t know, Lucien. I don’t know if I could do it, I’ve got iron on my wrists. And even if I could, I don’t know if I
can
.”

Crane started to object, stopped himself, and let the breath out on a long hiss. “Oh, the devil. I don’t know. Use your judgement, God knows that’s your role in life. I put myself in your hands when this whole ridiculous mess began, and I don’t regret that so…do as you think best.” He paused. “I just wish I’d had you in my bed, that’s all.”

Stephen’s fingers tightened on his, and Crane felt the quiver of pain. “So do I. I’d have liked more time with you.”

“A lot more time. Stephen, you’re the only spark of light I’ve encountered in this whole vile country. You’re extraordinary. You’re valuable. And I don’t want you to die because of me.”

“Lucien…” Stephen took a very deep breath, fingers grasping Crane’s hard. He gave a little gasp. “Lucien!”

“Listen.”

Footsteps, approaching, up at the top of the stairs. The door swung open, sending light spilling down the stairs, making Crane blink. He felt Stephen’s hands tighten convulsively on his own, as if grabbing for something that wasn’t there. Then Bruton and Baines marched down the stairs, and Bruton’s fists closed on Crane’s jacket, dragging him up, and Stephen’s hands were torn from his grasp.

Chapter Eighteen

They were marched, blinking, into the garden, near the Rose Walk. The sky was blue and cloudless, the enclosing greenery lush, the scent of roses almost unbearably sweet. Magpies chattered and screeched in the surrounding trees, but none came close.

There was a thing on the old stone pedestal. Crane squinted at it, unable to make it out, the shape making no sense, a mass of brown and yellow and clay colours and angular forms. As they approached, it began to resolve itself into something recognisable, and Crane said, “
Jesus Christ
.”

“He won’t help you now.” Baines shoved Stephen down, onto his knees. He gave a yelp of pain as he hit the ground. Forewarned, Crane was already bending at the knee as he was forced down next to the smaller man, so that he kept his balance, even with his eyes locked on the thing on the pedestal.

“Stephen. What the fuck is that?”

“The charnel posture,” said Stephen in a thin, painful voice. “I can see Ruth Baker. Your brother’s head. The baby.”

“But they’re posed like they’re—”

“I know,” said Stephen. “The degradation of the bodies makes it easier to tap the power, they say. Actually, I think they just like to do it.”

Mr. Haining, standing behind the pedestal, fixed him with a malevolent look and opened his mouth, but Lady Thwaite elbowed him sharply. His bald head was reddened with burns and he had no eyebrows left. He glared resentfully at Stephen. Next to him, Helen Thwaite was staring sulkily at Crane.

“Miss Thwaite’s a warlock,” Crane observed, almost beyond surprise.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Stephen dismissively. “No—she’s a flit. The runt of the litter. Virtually powerless. Just about enough talent to know what she’s missing. It won’t work, you know,” he told Lady Thwaite.

“Of course it will.” She and Helen were both looking at Stephen with loathing.

“It really won’t. She’ll get a taste of true power while you run the charnel posture but it won’t unlock her potential, if that’s what it’s supposed to do, because she hasn’t got any. It’ll just drive her mad because for the rest of her life she’ll fully understand what she’ll never have.”

“Don’t listen, Muriel,” said Lady Bruton.

“She’ll be in the bedlam within three years, if she’s still breathing,” Stephen went on. “She’s here to make up the numbers, nothing more, and the taste of power it gives her will destroy her. If they told you otherwise, they lied.”

“Make him be quiet,” Lady Bruton snapped, and Baines lashed out, catching Stephen on his temple, knocking him sideways. He gave a cry of pain.

“Heroic,” Crane told Baines contemptuously. “Old women, idiot children, bound men, you’ll take on all comers. There’s a three-legged stray dog hangs around the lanes here. Perhaps some day you could work up to kicking that.”

Bruton walked over and backhanded him across the mouth, his ring splitting Crane’s lip open. “Shut up. Everyone, in position.”

Crane licked the blood off his lip, breathing deeply, and sat back on his heels as the six warlocks spaced themselves in a circle round the foul display. He and Stephen were surrounded, bound, helpless, and even he could feel a subliminal throb in the air, a sense of brooding, intensifying power. The six looked alive, vivid, as if more real than everything around them. Haining’s burns already appeared less angry, and Helen Thwaite’s wonderful hair glowed, so lovely to look on it almost hurt.

Bruton began to murmur. The obscene mess of death on the pedestal seemed to quiver, to move, and Crane looked at it with horror.

“They’re drawing down the power,” said Stephen softly.

Crane turned and looked at him properly for the first time. Stephen’s face was swelling, one eye half closed, blood dried around his nose. He looked pale and shaky and sick, and very intent.

The warlocks shuffled forward, closing their circle round the filthy tangle of bones and skin. Bruton took out a long knife and tested the edge, turned slowly and looked over at the two kneeling men with relish.

Hell and the devil
, thought Crane. After all he’d seen and done, everywhere he’d been, this was the end, at last, and it had to be here, in bloody Piper. “Stephen…”

“Who are you going to kill first?” Stephen asked, with not quite enough bravado.

Sir Peter and Lady Bruton glanced at one another.

“Kill Crane,” said Helen pettishly. “He’s horrid.”

Baines gave her a look of contemptuous dislike. “We kill the justiciar first. Get rid of him now.”

“I want to make the pansy watch,” said Lady Bruton.

“Which one?” asked Haining with a smirk, and there was a ripple of laughter.

“Day.” She was talking to her husband. “Kill Crane and make Day watch. I want you to see his face when his boy friend screams for help, when he knows he’s failed before he dies. For you, and for Thomas.”

Bruton swept her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “My dear. Perfect.”

“
Lucien
,” said Stephen, and as Crane turned, he lunged awkwardly sideways, intent unmistakeable, and Crane met his mouth with his own. Their lips hit painfully, and Crane moved to cover Stephen’s mouth with his own in one last, desperate kiss, and felt the other man’s teeth sink viciously into his torn lip.

It was excruciatingly painful. He jolted, but Stephen was pulling as he bit, and sucking hard, dragging Crane’s bloody lip into his mouth, and chewing on it, even as Bruton’s fist hit the side of his head, so Crane’s flesh tore again as they lurched apart.

“Degenerates,” said Bruton with disgust. He grabbed Crane’s arm, hauled him to his feet. “I’m glad you’re dying today.”

Crane looked round, bewildered, betrayed, mouth aflame with pain. Stephen was hunched over, head down, shoulders rounded, a small, defeated heap.

Bruton pushed Crane forward a step towards the obscene altar and the knife.

“Wait.” Stephen was still staring at the ground. “Stop. Please. Just…one moment. One.”

Bruton turned, face twisted with contempt. “Go on, Day. Beg.”

“One,” the little man whispered. “One…”

“One
what
?”

Stephen looked up. His lips were red with Crane’s blood, and his eyes were wide black pits ringed with molten gold.

“One for sorrow,” he said, and there was a soft clink as the iron at Crane’s wrists fell away and hit the grass by his feet.

Stephen blinked, and a flutter of black and white danced across his eyes.

“Two for joy.” He spread his chainless arms wide, and something that wasn’t there, something black and white with a flash of metallic blue, seemed to unfurl beneath them.

“Peter!” screamed Lady Bruton.

“Day!” roared Bruton.

“Five thousand for justice,” said Stephen, and the magpies of Piper rose off the trees around them in one huge, terrible, boiling cloud of black and white and glittering blue that blotted out the sun.

Then the birds descended.

Bruton bellowed something and grabbed Crane’s arm. He felt a sudden awful suction, like the way the candles had bent towards Stephen but in his own body, and the instant realisation that Bruton was trying to strip him was matched by an equally instant physical reflex as he spun, snapped his skull forward and broke Bruton’s nose with a crunch.

It was a dogfight after that. Crane didn’t try to see what was going on, in the swirling mass of beaks and claws and feathers, the clouds of dust that the wingbeats raised from the dry ground, the endless, awful screaming. He didn’t look to Stephen. He simply tried to keep Bruton busy.

Aside from his powers, the man was close to Crane’s height and much bulkier, a little younger, much less tired. He had every advantage except one: he fought like a gentleman, not a Shanghai dock rat.

Crane went for eyes, ears and testicles, using teeth and nails and knees. The magpies screamed and clawed and stabbed around them, and Crane hit and twisted and ripped, and the two men rolled on the ground together, Bruton desperately trying to fend off Crane’s vicious assault, Crane equally desperate to keep the man occupied, until, with a grunt of effort, Bruton gathered the shreds of his strength and an invisible force pushed Crane violently away and flung him onto his back on the earth, knocking the breath out of him. Magpies rose away from the ground in a cloud.

Bruton roared something incoherent through bloody lips, rising, pulling his hand back to strike, and there was a sharp, loud retort that echoed off the stonework around them. Bruton jolted, a stunned expression on his face, and fell forward. Crane looked down at the shattered bloody mess of his skull, and up at Merrick, standing a few yards away, holding a smoking pistol.

“I thought I told you to go to London,” Crane said.

“Yeah, well.”

There was a hoarse shriek from the other side of the Rose Walk. Merrick turned and sprinted and, instinctively, Crane followed. They both vaulted benches and dodged through thorny growth, and skidded to a halt, seeing Miss Bell, features distorted with effort, both hands out, as if trying to push away the scratched, bloody form of Lady Thwaite.

“Oi!” bellowed Merrick.

Lady Thwaite looked round and gave a cry of fury. She pushed hard at Miss Bell, who staggered back, her face twisting.

“Put down the gun! I’ll kill her!” Lady Thwaite crooked her hands in a clawing gesture, threatening, but there were tears running down her cheeks.

“Step away from her,” said Crane. His mouth was agony as he spoke. “You’ve already lost.”

Lady Thwaite turned on him with a tear-stained face full of hate, and stopped abruptly.

“One chance.” Stephen’s voice came from behind Crane. “No mercy. Down or die.”

Lady Thwaite’s eyes darted from side to side. She looked again at Stephen, gave one suppressed sob, and made a sudden lunge towards Crane, which stopped almost instantly. She shook for a second, a gout of blood erupted from her mouth, and she fell forward.

There was no question in anyone’s mind but that she was dead before she hit the ground.

“What the hell was that?” said Merrick.

“Judgement,” said Stephen.

He walked forward, five feet tall, and Crane knew that even the most lethal killers of his past would have shrunk back to let this man go by at this moment. His eyes were their normal tawny colour again, but every time he blinked, a flutter of black and white and blue danced across them. Magpies pecked and jumped around him, and gathered silently in the bushes and trees around them. There was a heavy thump as one landed for a moment on Crane’s shoulder.

Stephen looked intensely solid, almost vibrating with energy. His face was dirty and spattered with drying blood, but he didn’t look beaten, and his fingers weren’t raw and crooked, and he no longer moved like a man in pain.

He glanced down at the woman he had just killed, and up again.

“Miss Bell. And Mr. Merrick. What, exactly, are you doing here?”

Merrick shrugged defensively. Crane tried to remember the last time his henchman had felt the need to justify himself. “Went up to Miss Bell’s place, we had a little chat, reckoned we might do more good here than on a train. So we come over. Got here about five minutes before they brought you out. Miss Bell had her eye on the brown-haired lady, and I had a gun on the big sod the whole time. I was just about to take the shot when—” He made a gesture with his hands, fingers fluttering upwards and outwards. “Didn’t realise you had it under control, sir, beg your pardon.”