“No!” Burton managed to gasp. “Don't stop!”
A jagged line of bright blue fire lashed out from a splintering facet of the Eye and enveloped him. It yanked him into the air and held him there. He convulsed helplessly. Capillaries haemorrhaged beneath his skin. The etheric lightning jerked and he was thrown up and slammed into the ceiling then dropped to the floor, where he lay in the grip of a seizure as the fizzling energy snapped away from him.
Pushed beyond the threshold of endurance, his mind seemed to disassociate, and awareness of his physical pain left him. It was no relief. His consciousness was rent by a mortal shriek of anguish-the Mad Monk's death throes as the fracturing diamond tore him to pieces.
It was too much for the king's agent. The world overturned, slid away, grew dark, and was gone.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was dead.
He knew it because he could feel nothing.
There was no world, there were no sensations, there was nothing required, there was nothing desired, there was no past, there was no future.
There was only peace.
A metal finger poked him in the ribs.
He opened his eyes expecting to see, as ever, orange light flickering over a canvas roof.
He saw snow.
He sat up.
No, not snow-flakes of dead ectoplasm falling from the library ceiling, vanishing before they touched the floor.
He pushed himself to his feet, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the blood from his face.
With a loud crack, Madam Blavatsky's corpse dropped. It crashed onto the plinth, which disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Burton turned away from the sight of her crushed skull and horribly folded carcass and found that Herbert Spencer was standing at his side. The brass man held out his cupped hands. The king's agent looked into them and counted.
“Seven fragments. Is that all of them?”
Spencer nodded.
“Good. Hold on to them, will you? The bloody things give me a headache. Let's get out of here. And Herbert-”
The brass head regarded him.
“Thank you.”
Burton recovered a chair from a crumbling and fast-disappearing mound of ectoplasm and used it to smash his way through the calcifying substance blocking the door and corridor beyond. The mediumistic material was fading from existence with increasing rapidity, and by the time he and his mechanical companion had descended to the Venetia's ground floor, nothing of it remained to be seen.
They stepped out into the fogbound Strand. It was strangely silent.
Burton swayed, struck by a wave of dizziness, and clutched at his companion's arm for support.
“Give me a moment,” he muttered.
The next thing he knew, he was looking up at the anxious faces of Algernon Swinburne and Detective Inspector Trounce.
“Did I pass out?”
“Pillock!” screeched Pox from the poet's shoulder.
“Evidently,” Trounce said. “Lord Nelson carried you out of the fog. How's our enemy?”
“Dead. The show is over. And he's not Lord Nelson. Give me a hand, would you?”
Looking perplexed, Trounce reached down and hauled Burton to his feet.
“Not Nelson? Is it a different device?”
Pox hopped from Swinburne to the clockwork man's head and whistled: “Beautiful sweetheart!”
“No,” Burton said. “It's our mutual friend Mr. Herbert Spencer.”
Trounce frowned. “What?”
“There's no time to explain, old man. Suffice it to say that Sir Charles Babbage was a genius.”
“No time? I thought you said Blavatsky is dead?”
“She is, and so is Rasputin. I have to go. There's someone I need to see before I collapse onto my bed to sleep for a week.”
“Shall I come with you, Richard?” Swinburne asked, with a trace of anxiety in his voice.
“No, Algy. I have to do this alone.”
He turned to the brass philosopher. “Hand me a couple of the diamonds, would you?”
Spencer dropped two stones into the explorer's waiting palm.
Burton slipped them into his waistcoat pocket, turned, and staggered off into the fog.
“Hey!” called Trounce after the fading figure. “Who the dickens is Rasputin?”
“Give Herbert a pen and paper,” came the receding reply. “He'll write you an explanation!”
Trounce scratched his head and mumbled: “By Jove! If he's just defeated the Blavatsky woman and brought all this nonsense to an end, you'd think he'd look a mite happier about it!”
The fog thickened.
Burton picked his way through corpses and debris, gave a curt greeting to the constables he encountered, left the Strand, made his way along Haymarket, and passed through Piccadilly Square.
It was maybe five or six in the morning-he was waiting for Big Ben to chime-and there was a faint glow overhead as dawn struggled to penetrate the murk. The city was absolutely silent.
He walked along Regent Street, passing broken windows and gutted shops. He couldn't shake the feeling that the world was crumbling around him.
The riot was over. Blavatsky was dead. Rasputin's mind had been shredded and the present was free of his sinister influence.
Yet something was deeply, deeply wrong.
The vapour swirled around him, muffling his footsteps, as he entered Oxford Circus and turned left.
A weighty despondency was settling over him, exactly like that he'd experienced in Aden after returning from Africa's Lake Regions. It was the notion that, despite his every effort, a job had not been completed.
“What is it?” he muttered. “Why do I feel that I've failed?”
He came to Vere Street and stopped outside a narrow building sandwiched between a hardware shop and the Museum of Anatomy. It had a bright yellow door and a bay window, behind which a deep blue curtain hung.
Taped against the inside of the window there was a notice that read: The astonishing COUNTESS SABINA, seventh daughter, CHEIROMANTIST, PROGNOSTICATOR, tells your past, present, and future, gives full names, tells exact thought or question on your mind without one word spoken; reunites the separated; removes evil influences; truthful predictions and satisfaction guaranteed. Consultations from 11 A.M. until 2 P.M. and from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. Please enter and wait until called.
Burton looked at his reflection in the glass. His fierce countenance was a patchwork of red and purple bruises.
“None of this is your doing,” he said, “but Chance has put you in the thick of it. Now you have to play the game to the finish.”
His eyes moved to the notice.
Prognosticator.
He leaned forward and rested his forehead against the cold glass.
The African Eye will be found.
He was suddenly short of breath and started gulping in mouthfuls of air.
Found by you.
“Bismillah,” he gasped. “Bismillah. It's all gone to hell.”
An early-morning cafe had opened across the street. Burton took a moment to even out his breathing then walked over to it, entered, and asked for a coffee.
“You're the first bloomin’ customer I've had in days,” the proprietor grumbled, glancing curiously at the explorer's battered features. “You fancy a round of buttered toast? It's on the house, mate.”
“That would be very welcome,” Burton answered. “Thank you.”
He sat quietly, sipping coffee and eating toast until a light came on and glowed through the fog from the upper window of the building opposite. He gave it forty minutes or so, then left the cafe, crossed the road, and knocked on the door.
He waited, and, after a few moments, knocked again.
The countess opened the door. She wore a long, shapeless midnight-blue gown.
“Countess Sabina,” he said. “My apologies. I know it's early.”
“Captain Burton. My goodness, what has happened to you? Were you run over by one of those dreadful omnipede things?”
He managed a wry grin. “Something like that, yes. I require your talents. It's a matter of great importance.”
She gazed at him silently for a moment, her eyes unfathomable, then nodded and stepped aside.
He entered and followed her along a short passageway, through a doorway hung with a thick velvet curtain, and into the room beyond. It smelled of sandalwood. Wooden chairs stood against its undecorated walls.