“This is rapid?”
“By comparison to the norm. Be patient, there are only three more to be knighted, then we’ll depart.”
One of the palace footmen gave them an uncompromising glare. They stopped their whispering.
Burton ran his forefinger around his collar. It was too tight. He’d forgotten how uncomfortable a freshly laundered army uniform could be.
Wearily, he endured the pomp and protocols.
Forty minutes later, in the reception hall, the foppishly attired Lord Palmerston approached him and drawled, “My dear Sir Richard, may I be the first to congratulate you.”
“On what, sir?”
“Your title, man! Your title!”
“Ah. Thank you, Prime Minister.”
“I’ve read your report. The Mystery of the Malevolent Mediums. Do you intend to give all your accounts such lurid titles?”
“I felt it appropriate. It was a dramatic affair.”
“I can’t disagree with that. Is it really over?”
“Nietzsche is dead, sir—in our time, in his own, and across all the other versions of history.”
Burton couldn’t shake a curious sensation of unfamiliarity. The environment felt unutterably askew. Even the words that came out of his mouth felt wrong.
“And the future war?” Palmerston asked.
“That rests with you. Now we know it’s coming, you have the opportunity to develop policies that will steer us along another course. There’s no need for the conflict to erupt in 1914. We have fifty-four years in which to prevent it.”
Palmerston rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Hmm. Or fifty-four years in which to prepare. Perhaps it would be better to spend that time undermining Prussia and the Germanic states rather than indulging them.”
“That might send us into battle earlier.”
“Nietzsche told you the conflict is inevitable. If that’s the case, better we strike hard and when least expected than not at all.”
Burton shrugged and murmured, “As the premier, it’s your choice to make. I don’t envy you.”
Palmerston hemmed and hawed.
“I have to go,” Burton said. “There’s business to take care of at the Department of Guided Science.”
“The what?”
“The—the—I’m sorry, I meant to say, at the Federation of Mechanics.”
“A rather unusual slip of the tongue.”
“It’s this uniform. It’s too tight. I’m hot and uncomfortable. Can’t think straight.”
“Hmm. So what are the Empire’s boffins up to? Anything I should be aware of?”
“No, sir, I don’t think so.”
The prime minister nodded distractedly and waved him away.
Burton returned to Monckton Milnes, who was flirting—fruitlessly, as usual—with Nurse Florence Nightingale.
“I’ll see you at Bartolini’s at eleven.”
“The Cannibal Club convenes,” Monckton Milnes confirmed. “I’ll be there.”
Burton made for the exit but was intercepted by Detective Inspector Krishnamurthy, a handsome young Scotland Yard man of Indian extraction who was sporting a shiny new medal on his jacket.
“It’s done, sir.”
“All of them?” Burton asked.
“Yes. Countess Sabina and Isabella Mayson killed the last at two o’clock this morning. It was hunting Sergeant Honesty through the British Museum.”
“Bismillah! Is he all right?”
“Unharmed. The countess has confirmed that not a single berserker remains.”
“Good show. What of Trounce?”
“His eye can’t be saved, but he’ll pull through.”
“Thank you, Maneesh. I’m sorry about Shyamji. Your cousin was a good man.”
“Yes, sir, he was. A brave one, too.”
Burton left the chamber and stepped out of the palace into thick London fog. He stopped, frowned, and tried to identify whatever it was he appeared to have forgotten. Nothing occurred to him, but the sense that something vital had been misplaced didn’t go away. He snapped his fingers irritably and walked on, passing along the edge of the parade ground to the Royal Mews.
He came to the stables. His mechanical horse raised its head as he approached. It whirred, “You need to wind me up. My spring is slack.”
“Hello, Orpheus. Slack? Have you been gallivanting? I told you to stay still.”
“I know, but I felt restless. You’ve been in there for ages. I needed to stretch my legs.”
Pulling the key from its housing in the horse’s side, Burton inserted it into the hole beneath the steed’s decorative tail and began to rotate it. Speaking over the loud ratcheting, he said, “Your legs are metal. They can’t be stretched.”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
“I shall have words with Babbage. I’m not sure a mechanical horse should know how to employ metaphors.”
“While you’re at it, you could ask Isambard Kingdom Brunel to completely redesign me.”
“You say that every single time I wind you up.”
“Because it’s humiliating.”
“You don’t possess emotions.”
“Having a key shoved up my arse on a regular basis appears to have instilled them in me.”
“And you become ever more bothersome each time your spring is tightened.”
“If you want a dumb steed, buy a fleshy one. You’ll find its maintenance a far less convenient affair. Hay must be shoved into one end, and it emerges rather messily from the other. I assure you, in our relationship, I’m the one that suffers.”
“You never stop reminding me.”
Having fully rewound the horse, Burton clicked the key back into its bracket and hoisted himself up onto the saddle. “Take me to Battersea Power Station.”
“Walk, trot, or gallop?”
“A brisk walk, please.”
Orpheus headed toward the palace gates. “I didn’t include a brisk walk among the options. In my book, it qualifies as a trot.”
“Just be quiet and try not to get lost.”
“I can’t get lost. The route is engraved into my memory. I could navigate it blindfolded.”
“How about gagged?”
“Well! Really!”
They left the palace and proceeded along Buckingham Palace Road in the direction of Chelsea Bridge. The fog was so thick that when Burton extended an arm his fingertips disappeared into it. Sounds were muffled and darkness hung over the city, penetrated here and there by nebulous balls of orange light that may have been street lamps, windows, or distant suns; it was impossible to tell.
There were very few people out and about. The weather wasn’t solely to blame; the recent invasion of berserkers had terrified the entire city. People weren’t yet convinced the danger had passed.
The stench of the Thames assaulted his nostrils. Bazalgette’s new sewer system promised to solve the problem, but the tunnels had only been in operation for a few days, and it would take many months before the river’s water ran clear. The fog always made the stink worse, too.
Five minutes later, Orpheus clip-clopped over the bridge, passed a patch of wasteland, turned onto a path that skirted the edge of the Royal Battle Fleet Airfield, and arrived at the gates of the power station. The many windows of the Mechanics’ headquarters lit up the vapour, making of the illumination a physical mass that swirled around Burton as he dismounted.
“Wait here,” he ordered.
“In the cold?” Orpheus complained. “It’s bloody freezing.”
“You can’t feel cold.”
“I’ll get bored again.”
“You’ll wind down before that happens.”
“Ugh. I hate entering the void. Even worse, I hate waking from it with that bloomin’ key stuck up my whatsit. You’re very mean to me.”
“I might swap you for a velocipede.”
Burton knocked on the door set into the massive station gates.
“Wheels!” Orpheus exclaimed. “Unstable. You’ll fall off and crack your head. Deservedly so.”
The door opened, and an oil-stained engineer ushered Burton in. “Hello, sir,” she said. “They’re waiting for you in the workshop. Follow me, please.”
The woman led the king’s agent across the courtyard to the tall inner gates, which, after manipulating a complex combination lock, she pushed open. They entered and crossed the vast floor space to the central area of workbenches.