The Magpie Lord Read online

  Crane felt a cold prickle run down his spine. “Yes,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Or, at least, bitter green leaves. Strongly. And, ah…the very first time I felt it, the room smelled of the same thing. Stank of it.”

  “Yes, it would. What did you bring back from Piper?”

  “Bring back?”

  “An object. A box. Furniture. A coat with something in its pockets. Something came from the library at Piper on or after your last visit and it is here now. What is it?”

  Crane looked blankly around the room. The mansion flat was a self-contained set of rooms in one of the new buildings on the Strand. He, or rather Merrick, had hung the walls with scrolls and paintings brought back from China. But he’d had no furniture and, although he hadn’t been poor for years and was now very rich indeed, Piper was full of unused items, and careful habits were hard to break. The room was full of ancient dark wooden pieces, vaguely familiar, not worth noticing.

  “Most of the furniture is from Piper,” he said. “The chests, the table—”

  “Since your last visit down?” Day interrupted.

  “Some of it, I think. I’m not sure. I don’t pay a lot of attention to these things. But I know a man who does. You might as well come in,” Crane went on without raising his voice.

  Merrick opened the door with some dignity. “My lord,” he said. “We brought back a number of items on our most recent return, Mr. Day. That picture was, I believe, in the library at Piper.” Day leapt up to inspect it, running his fingers over the frame, ignoring the image. “There were also a number of books, sir. They have been placed on these shelves.”

  “Together?” asked Day, staring at the crowded shelves that covered an entire wall.

  “No, sir.”

  “Blast.”

  Day moved over to the shelf and spread his hands out over the spines of several books, fingers twitching slightly. “Nothing is leaping out at me. Lord Crane, I suggest you leave before it happens again and let me try to find it on my own.”

  “Find what? Do you know what’s happening to me?”

  “It’s a Judas jack.” Day turned a thick book over in his hands. “No question about that. We’re looking for something about the size of an apple. Wooden. You brought something back with this thing in it, and it’s in this room somewhere. Now, Mr. Merrick, please take Lord Crane out of this building, and keep him away for a couple of hours. He should not be here in the evening till I find this thing, and it’s nearly eight already.”

  Crane and Merrick glanced automatically at the clock. Merrick said, hesitantly, “My lord, that ain’t the library clock from Piper, is it?”

  Crane’s brows drew together. “It looks like it. Ugly thing. But you brought it, you should know.”

  “I didn’t bring it. It turned up here. I thought you brought it.”

  “No,” said Crane carefully. “No, I don’t recall doing that.”

  Day looked at the carriage clock that stood on the mantelpiece. It showed one minute to eight. He flexed his hands before reaching out and picking it up.

  “The back’s locked,” he observed. “It’s big enough. And…a clock, and it happens at the same time… Lord Crane, leave. Get out. Mr. Merrick, get rid of him now.”

  “Yes, sir—oh shit,” said Merrick as the clock began to strike and Crane took a horrible, sucking breath.

  Chapter Three

  The greyness came on Crane harder and faster than before. He could taste the ivy in his mouth now, feel the assault on his mind, almost hear, somewhere outside hearing, a whispering of voices.

  damned

  worthless

  die

  He wasn’t aware he was going for a knife. He only vaguely heard Day bellow, “Hold him!” There was a pain, and for some reason his knees buckled, and some force was stopping him from getting the knife that meant sweet oblivion, release, the fresh flow of blood he owed. He thrashed and kicked, and heard the shouts and thumps as though they were happening a long way away, even the yell of alarm right in his ear, and suddenly the greyness receded, and he was face down on the drawing room rug, with both arms twisted behind his back and a heavy weight pinning him to the ground. The breathy flow of whispered Shanghainese obscenities identified his assailant as Merrick.

  “I’m all right,” he said, muffled. “I’m all right. Get off me, you lump.”

  “Don’t,” Day said from the end of the room. “Keep him down.”

  Crane angled his neck uncomfortably. Day was also on the floor, kneeling by the fireplace. His left hand was held rigid, just above the floor, its fingers contorted into splayed claws. Under it was something Crane couldn’t quite see. Day had the abstracted look again, his lips were slightly drawn back from his teeth, and from where Crane lay, his eyes seemed to be pure darkness with a ring of white.

  “Let me up,” Crane snapped.

  “Don’t let him up,” Day repeated. “Don’t let him move. Break his arms if you have to.”

  “Day—”

  “I’m having a certain amount of trouble holding this thing.” Day’s voice had a slight tremor of tension to it. “And I need it held, but the nodes… I’m making this too complicated. This is craft. Wood, blood and birdspit. Where’s my bag?”

  “By the door,” said Merrick.

  Day looked over at the bag, several feet away, and let out a hiss of annoyance. He sat back slightly, stretching out his right hand, and something leapt from the bag, hit the ground with a clang and a rattle, and rolled towards the clerk-like man, stopping within his reach.

  “Oh my Gawd,” said Merrick.

  Day picked it up. It was a pack of metal knitting needles. He pulled one out with his mouth and discarded the pack, holding the long needle in his free hand. His face tightened, a man trying to work out an irritating puzzle.

  He put the sharp end of the needle back between his lips, and pulled at the other end, and the metal stretched, elongating in sudden jerks, thinning like pulled toffee, twisting and writhing.

  “Tsaena,” hissed Merrick and Crane, simultaneously obscene.

  Day kept working, face intent, his other hand steady in its clawed position over the floor. Finally he took the distorted needle out of his mouth. It was bizarrely corkscrewed, and obviously sharply pointed.

  “That’s iron,” whispered Merrick.

  Day wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. There was a faint smell of scorched metal in the air. “Tin,” he said. “If I could do that with iron, it would be impressive. Right. I’m going to pull this thing’s teeth. It isn’t going to be pleasant.” He shifted position, and suddenly the feelings were back, pounding into Crane’s skull, waves of misery wracking his entire body. He wanted to curl up in a corner, howl, die.

  “The thing is,” said Day in a hatefully calm voice, “I need to bring it closer to you to see what I’m doing, and take off the hold I’ve got on it. And that’s going to make it quite a lot worse. Can you bear it?”

  Crane shut his eyes, bit at the carpet. No, he couldn’t. It couldn’t be worse. He would rather die than have it worse. He just wanted it all to be over.

  “He can take it,” said Merrick.

  Day hesitated.

  “I know what he can take.” Merrick’s tone brooked no argument. “Do it. Now. Sir.”

  “Get on with it, damn you,” Crane added violently, because he had to force the words out through the overwhelming misery that clogged his throat.

  “Very well. Mr. Merrick, are you capable of holding him down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Don’t let him move.” Day paused, and added stiffly, “You have my assurance that I will make this as quick as I can.”

  He moved awkwardly forward, without rising. He was, Crane saw, pushing the thing along the floor, but pushing apparently without touching it, his fingers still clawed above it.

  It came closer, and the hairs were standing on Crane’s arms. The air was feeling greasy and dry and dirty and foul, like a filthy old sheepskin. He tried to recoi
l, and was held down hard.

  “Don’t move, now,” muttered Merrick.

  Day had the thing in front of Crane’s face.

  It was gnarled wood, carved in a roughly humanoid shape, riddled with holes. It seemed to be pulsing slightly. It looked as though it would feel oily. It was on some indefinable level utterly obscene, and Crane was overwhelming, painfully frightened of it. He pulled his head back.

  “Steady,” whispered Merrick. “Come on, Vaudrey, you’ve done worse.”

  But he hadn’t, nothing worse than this, because as Day moved his hand away, the malevolence of the thing poured out in a flood of foul cancerous air that flooded into Crane’s nose and mouth and eyes. He knew he was screaming and thrashing, he could feel Merrick’s grip putting pressure on his elbows and knees, but he couldn’t bear it, couldn’t stand another second. The malignancy was all-consuming, shrivelling his soul to a single point of unbearable pain, and he was fighting Merrick hard, and Day was simply sitting there, probing the device with the twisted needle. Crane cursed him, the fucking vicious ginger dwarf, what the hell had he ever done to him, and Merrick, whose fucking fault this was, and himself, in the foulest language at his command, crying, begging, until Day spoke, in a voice that he could hardly hear through the filthy miasma around him.

  “This will hurt.”

  The agony came like a knife, pulsed through Crane’s chest and back and arms and upper thighs like screaming burning fire…

  And then it didn’t.

  Stephen sat back on his heels and wiped his forehead as Lord Crane slumped forward, boneless. The manservant Merrick straddled his back, white and sweating, blood drooling from his nose where Crane had landed a blow earlier. He glared down at his master and over at Stephen with a murderous look.

  Stephen dropped the gnarled piece of wood to the ground and took a very deep breath.

  “You can get off him. It’s done.”

  “My lord?” said Merrick, releasing Crane’s arms. “My lord?”

  There was a sort of muffled sobbing from where Crane’s face rested in the carpet. His body was shaking.

  Merrick clambered off his back and peered down. “My lord? You all right?” He looked up at Stephen, eyes full of lethal promise. “What did you do to him?”

  Crane made a grunting noise, lifted his head, pushed himself up onto his knees. There were tears in his eyes, and a huge grin on his face.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “Oh my God, it’s gone. It’s gone. Oh God, Merrick.” He lunged forward and grabbed the startled manservant, hugging him hard. “You bloody genius, getting a shaman. Pulled my arse out of the fire, again. I love you. And you,” he said to Stephen. “You’re a god-damned magician. Well, exactly, that’s what you are, a magician! Oh my God, a shaman, and it worked. It’s amazing. Do you know, I never noticed what a beautiful room this is. Just look at that carpet! You need to see it close up to appreciate it, of course. Lie on it, that’s the dandy.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” demanded Merrick.

  Stephen rose. He felt drained. “Nothing’s wrong. It’s just euphoria. He’s been fighting that thing very hard for a long time, and he’s gone the other way. He’ll calm down.”

  Crane bounced to his feet, grabbed Stephen’s hand, gave a startled jolt, and shook it vigorously. “You’re wonderful. And your hands are wonderful. Merrick, you should try this, they’re like…lots of little bubbles. Champagne! Hands like champagne! Do you know, Day, there’s a house in Shanghai where they import champagne and what they do, they pour it over your—”

  “The shaman does not want to hear about that,” Merrick put in hastily. “Sir—”

  “Fresh air,” Stephen said firmly. “Is there a garden?”

  They wrestled Crane’s coat on and walked him down the back stairs, to avoid notice, and round to the private garden of the mansion block. It was a stunning April night, still warm, with a large yellow moon hanging over the London sky. There were a few shadowy figures moving around, fellow residents taking the air. Completely oblivious to them, Crane leapt onto a bench and began to declaim in what sounded to Stephen like Chinese.

  “What’s that?” he asked the manservant.

  “Poem about the moon. He doesn’t do poems till the third bottle, mostly. How long’s this going to last, sir?”

  “Not long,” Stephen assured him. “It’ll do him no harm. In fact, I imagine he’s having a marvellous time. Is that still about the moon?” he added. He didn’t understand a word, but Crane’s tone transcended language.

  “Not that bit, sir, no. Gawd, I hope nobody round here speaks Shanghainese. Oi, you, my lord, get down from there.”

  “Look at the lovely flowers, Lord Crane,” Stephen suggested. Merrick gave him an incredulous look, but Crane leapt down from the bench and began to investigate the flowerbeds with enthusiasm. Magician and manservant fell into step behind him.

  “I thought we were in trouble there,” said Merrick. “You saved his life, sir.”

  “Probably.” Stephen sounded no more enthusiastic than he felt. He jammed his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. “Mr. Merrick…in what capacity do you serve Lord Crane? What do you actually do?”

  “Manservant,” said Merrick.

  “Everything!” Crane span round, arms wide. “Factotum, man of all work, business partner, bodyguard. My second self. He speaks with my voice. Or do I speak with his voice? Which way round is it?”

  “You speak a lot of rubbish,” said Merrick. “Go on, look at the pretty flowers. Something to say, sir?”

  Stephen rubbed his chin. “The Judas jack didn’t happen by accident. Someone made that thing to kill. It’s a murder weapon.”

  Merrick gave him a long, level look. “A shaman murderer. After his lordship.”

  “Yes.”

  “Going to have to do something about that, then.”

  “Yes. I need to think. And to talk to him when he’s not so…exhilarated.”

  Crane looked round to see the two men staring at him. He flashed Merrick a gleeful grin. “Are you talking to the shaman? Has he cheered up yet? If I had hands like that, I’d be cheerful all the time.”

  “I bet you bloody would,” Merrick told him. “Shut up.”

  “You should smile more,” Crane added to Stephen. “You’d be quite pretty if you weren’t so miserable.”

  Merrick made a stifled noise and started talking in rapid Chinese.

  Stephen propped his back against a tree trunk and flexed his hands, stretching the tendons, watching master and man. Crane, tall and lean, was standing on one leg, face alight with glee, pale blond hair shining silver in the moonlight. Merrick, shorter, grizzled and bright-eyed, was shaking his head but grinning.

  Euphoria was like drunkenness in some ways. In vino veritas. Stephen had no idea what Crane was saying, but it didn’t map onto how he imagined Hector Vaudrey in the grip of euphoria, if the man had been capable of it at all.

  Stephen closed his eyes and cursed internally. It would be a great deal easier to walk away if Lucien Vaudrey was cast in the same mould as his brother Hector, and he wanted to walk away, very badly.

  He needed to clear his mind. He listened to the Chinese syllables for a few moments more as he calmed his breathing, the distorted vowels sliding up and down the tonal scale in a deeply alien way. Then he stretched out his hands and let his fingers do the hearing.

  The etheric flow rushed past, tingling through his nerve endings. Crane’s effervescent, unnatural hilarity bubbled through the ether, whisking away the remnants of the jack’s stain. Merrick was a solid presence, earth to Crane’s air, blocking the flow. The tide was coming in up the Thames, not far away, and he sensed salt water rippling, the surge of boats, wet wood and sailcloth, the quiet throb of the garden around him, but mostly he could feel Crane, sharp and silver, standing out from the surrounding world like a knife in a drawer full of wooden spoons.

  Champagne hands, he thought, as he fell into the ether.

  “Mr. Day?
”

  Stephen blinked himself out of his reverie and glanced at the moon. He wasn’t sure how long he had been there, pulling strength from the etheric flow that ran through him, but he felt rather better. There was a distinct chill in the night air, and Crane was looking at him, slightly puzzled, and definitely sober.

  “Yes,” he said. “I beg your pardon, I was thinking. How are you feeling, Lord Crane?”

  “Normal. Not consumed by misery. Not going mad. My arms hurt like blazes, and I’m embarrassed to recall that I said a variety of offensive things to you, but otherwise I’ve never felt better. I’ve spent the last two months under a shadow, and I’m only realising how dark it was now it’s lifted. I owe you a very great deal, Mr. Day. I understand your repugnance at my family name, but…”

  He held out his hand. Stephen hesitated, but forced himself to take it. He watched Crane’s face as bare skin touched and saw no repulsion there, just startled interest.

  “That’s still remarkable, even when I’m in my right mind. What is it?”

  “Hard to explain.” Stephen had no intention of explaining. “I work with my hands.”

  “It’s…magic?”

  “Could we go inside? If you’re not too tired, there are some things I think we need to discuss.”

  Chapter Four

  The Judas jack was lying on the floor where Stephen had dropped it. It looked like a piece of gnarled old wood, nothing more. Crane prodded it with the toe of his shoe.

  “Don’t touch it,” Stephen told him. “I’ll get rid of it.”

  “Thank you,” said Crane. “You know, I feel in need of a drink. I don’t suppose that would be acceptable?”

  “Ah… Yes. Thank you.”

  Crane hesitated. “I’ve no idea what we have other than wine, whisky, brandy and port. Water?”

  “Wine, thank you.”

  “You drink wine? Really?”

  “Yes…why not?”

  “Shamans don’t,” said Crane. “Yu Len would storm out of the room leaving curses in his wake if I defiled his spiritual purity with this particularly good Burgundy.”