The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man

  She turned until she was facing the Rake sitting on Burton's left. Her eyes were jet black, glinting in the smoke like gemstones.

  Lady Mabella. The murderer of Sir Alfred Tichborne.

  “Travel through the astral plane, my child, and—”

  She paused.

  Her eyes swivelled to Burton and fixed upon him.

  “You!”

  He jerked back in his chair and gasped, tried to stand but couldn't. Pain gripped the back of his head as if a cold hand had clamped down on his brain.

  “Intruder! Spy!”

  She had not spoken aloud. Her voice was now inside his skull.

  The host twitched and choked as the ectoplasm continued to flow from his mouth. The two men whose astral bodies had departed sat blank-eyed and motionless. The three other men turned their heads and regarded Burton. One of them said something but no sound emerged. There was no sound in the room at all; a profound, unnatural silence had fallen.

  Everything slowed and became motionless. Only the ghostly woman moved.

  Something wormed its way into Burton's mind.

  “Who are you?” she hissed.

  He flinched and fought against her intrusive probing. Get out of my head!

  “My! How resistant! I am impressed! You have willpower! No matter, your defences are nothing to me. Your name is Richard Burton. Ah. I see you have a reputation. A scholar, an explorer, and—an irritant!”

  Withdrawing into himself, the king's agent visualised the mental chambers and structures he'd established through self-mesmerism. His knowledge of Edward Oxford—and of a future that had been destined but which was now cut loose and replaced—he set aside. He devalued all the routes to it and made them seem so entirely insignificant that they would, he hoped, be overlooked. At the same time, he strengthened the mental walls surrounding his more personal and sensitive memories and tried to make them impenetrable.

  He was using his own insecurities to entice her away from the information he needed to protect.

  It worked.

  “No, no, malchik moi! There is no hiding!”

  The words were like a blade, running him through.

  Who the hell are you? Don't try to fool me with that Lady Mabella nonsense!

  A cruel chuckle echoed in his skull.

  “Ah yes, the unfortunate Tichborne clan and their silly curse! How convenient that was!”

  His walls were breached.

  Stop!

  “My, a complicated little thing, aren't you? What is this? You are in the employ of the king himself! So I was right! You are a spy!”

  The beady black eyes bored into his. He struggled and failed to look away.

  He tried to distract her: For all your hokum, you're nothing but a murderer and thief. You killed Jean Pelletier, didn't you?

  “Pah! I simply appeared before him and he dropped dead from fright, the weak fool.”

  You took his diamonds. And then the François Garnier Choir Stones.

  “Yes, yes. I lifted them through the solid metal of a safe just as I could pull your brain from your skull without breaking the skin of your scalp.”

  And replaced them with onyx crystals. Why? Did you think to delay investigations into the matter?

  “Yes. I see that it didn't work. How did you discover my little deception? Let us find out.”

  He felt her burrowing deeper and deeper, and he allowed the intrusion, for as she penetrated his mind, he found that he was able to stealthily enter hers.

  “Bozhe moi! Brunel and Babbage! So, the detestable Technologists have an interest in the diamonds, too!”

  Babbage had plans for the stones. Your intentions, though, seem rather more nefarious, and to achieve those ends, you've made unwitting pawns of the Rakes, have you not?

  “Unwitting? More like witless. The vacant-headed fools! Becoming the leader of their pathetic clique was child's play to one such as I.”

  The woman's weakness was obvious: she possessed overweening vanity. She was supremely confident in her abilities and, having no knowledge of his Sufi training, vastly underestimated him. However, in order to inveigle information from her, he had to keep her occupied, and the only way to do that was to sacrifice the deeper reaches of his own mind—to give her access to his insecurities, sorrows, and regrets.

  It was agony.

  Burton felt his heart tighten as she infiltrated the grief he associated with the Berbera expedition—but he pushed through the pain and surprised her with a question: Who is Arthur Orton?

  His unexpected probe was so forceful that the answer flared in her mind before she could stop it. Burton saw confirmation that the Tichborne creature and Orton the butcher were one and the same. The man had been chosen for her scheme because he possessed a peculiarly well-developed ability to project coercive mental energy, though he was oblivious to this talent. He'd been using it unknowingly in Wagga Wagga to attract customers to his shop, and they had come, despite fearing and loathing him due to his disgusting appetite for raw meat. Implanting the Choir Stones beneath his scalp had greatly enhanced the ability.

  The woman's invasive presence assaulted Burton with greater intensity.

  “Very clever, Gaspadin Burton! But I shall get far more from you than you can get from me! Already I am deep inside your memories. I see poor Lieutenant Stroyan there. You killed him. How careless of you!”

  Still she misjudged him, and while she dug her claws into his painful memories, she also exposed much more of herself than she realised. He felt a sense of triumph blazing through the woman. She gloried in the fact that Britain's labourers were falling under the spell of her great deception, eagerly swallowing the story of a lost aristocrat who'd returned home to find himself snubbed by the society that produced him simply because he'd worked as a commoner. It was the perfect means to rouse their sleeping passions.

  How valuable the Tichbornes had been! Her faux prodigal not only gave her the means to disseminate her evil influence among the working classes, but had also secured for her the South American diamond.

  Burton, gathering information, struggled to resist her taunts. He remembered his friend's courage, and told her: Stroyan died as he would have wished—a brave man performing his duty.

  “Nonsense! You killed him! The guilt eats away at you!”

  Again, he tried to surprise her into revealing more: Tell me, madam, where did you find out about the Eyes of Nāga?

  He felt her reel at the question.

  “Dorogoi!” she exclaimed. “You know too much!”

  This time, however, an answer did not inadvertently enter her thoughts. Instead, Burton detected the presence of an impassable barrier, as if part of the woman was—was—

  He couldn't define what he sensed.

  “How I learned of the Eyes is of no consequence. All that matters is that I employ them to open the minds of the poor and the downtrodden. You see how I clear the blinkers from their eyes?”

  You speak as if you are performing some manner of social service, but that is not your intention, is it? Tell me the truth. What do you hope to achieve?

  “Revolution.”