The Transference Engine (16 page)

I knew I should have just taken my chances and shot him, then run all the way back to London proper.

However, he'd thrown out the possibility that somehow, Lord Byron had found a way to transfer his soul out of a body into some kind of storage vessel, or a temporary and imperfect body. He wanted Lady Ada and me to rebuild his transference engine; the one I had destroyed. I knew it worked. Mary Godwin and I had used it to save the soul of her new lover before breaking the gears and steam pipes and electrical connections into hundreds of pieces and pieces of pieces.

I needed to learn all I could to keep Lord Byron from coming back to life and corrupting more innocents. Was his spirit, or his fanatical followers, behind the disappearance of so many innocents in the last week?

This dwarf seemed the only tutor in the vicinity. And he appeared to be Greek. Lord Byron had died in Greece assisting freedom fighters against the Turks.

Not that he cared for the Greeks' freedom. He cared only for glory. And got the reverence he desired, but in my mind never deserved.

“What are you intending to do with the transference engine, if you can replicate it?”

“The master is a genius, a master of arcane arts, and deserving of a new body. However, my need for one is more critical,” the man said. He squinted his eyes as he surveyed my form. “Yours will do for now if I cannot find another.”

“No way in hell!” I drew and loosed both weapons as I dove for the ground.

“That can be arranged,” the dwarf ground out through clenched teeth. He drew the metal star from his shoulder.

A gush of blood followed. I stared in fascinated horror at the brightness of the red, so much brighter than the crimson of my gown. My mind wandered wondering why modern dyes could never quite match . . .

My mind snapped into focus again as pain lanced my side. I grabbed the offended area, not truly surprised to find it warm and sticky with my own blood, contained only by the tightness of my stays. Damnation! I hadn't thought to change into the bulletproof corset as well as stouter shoes. Chill coursed through my veins like electricity, followed by debilitating heat to my face.

I heard shouts, then more yelling in a language that brushed past my understanding. Darkness pushed inward from my periphery.

Then a snort of disgust (my own?) and I lost my fragile grasp on consciousness.

Chapter Fifteen

A
GREAT ROARING
in my ears that pulsed with the rhythm of a heart. My heart, perhaps. It faded enough for me to realize I hurt. All over. More so on my right side. My gown tangled with my body, binding tightly and restricting. I needed to move, to straighten myself and my garments. But I couldn't quite figure out how.

Voices intruded on my pointless ruminations that looped and swirled like a tangle of ribbons. Rough voices that sounded like a person with a sore throat gargling. Not quite Germanic. Not quite anything familiar.

Then I remembered the dwarf pretending to be Romany who practiced necromancy. Greek.

Were the male and female voices around me speaking Greek?

Possibly. I kept my eyes closed as my awareness increased and listened intently to tone, striving for something that sounded familiar. Something, anything, to cling to and set to rights in my scrambled mind.

No words, just garbled sounds. But the tone . . . urgency, anger, fear. The sound of sorting and discarding metal tools. Fine metal clattering into a metal bowl and resonating. My eyes snapped open. I'd heard steel on steel.

Suddenly the constrictions made sense. Not a tangle of garments. The secure binding of heavy leather at wrist, ankle, and brow. I lay spread-eagle and naked upon a hard bed. Not a favorite position even with a skilled lover. A light sheet covered me from chin to toe.

I shivered in the warm room. A fire behind me seemed to be the heat source. It roared and crackled as someone threw new fuel into it with a thud and crunch. The smell of alcohol, lots of it and not good Scotch or fine wine either. A raw grain distillation that had become popular in some schools of medicine for cleaning a wound or a room.

Absolute cleanliness is a must for working any kind of necromantic spell
 . . . A quote from the book on Persian necromancy. Had every soul-stealing necromancer in Europe read the damn book?

My eyes were open but not focusing well. Was the thickness at the back of my throat a residue from my wound—I don't think it still bled—or from dousing me with strong drink to reduce pain? Or worse, drugs on the blade that had penetrated my corset?

I couldn't turn my head, only blink rapidly to force my eyes to add to my information gathering.

Then a face loomed into the center of my field of vision. Female, olive-skinned, with hair like fine jet reflecting light in silver shafts. She appeared middle-aged with refined features and smelled of exotic flowers beneath the nearly overwhelming odor of the alcohol. A white smock covered a simple black dress that matched the plain chignon in color and style. No ornamentation, not even jet beads. A governess or a widow?

“You must tell me how,” she demanded in excellent, but accented English.

“How to do what?” I choked around a thick tongue and still muddled thoughts.

“To put a soul into another body.”

Oh, God!

“We know how to capture a departing soul and store it. But it diminishes when stored. I need to transfer one soul directly to a new body. That requires the machine you demolished.”

Oh, that again.

“Tell me! Or I put you in a jar to wane and ponder your stupidity.” She shook her right fist at me. A curious scar ran from the base of the thumb to disappear into her sleeve. An old wound. I wondered about the nature of her injury.

“Who will you push into my body against my will?” Those words came a little easier, a little less slurred. My hands and feet ached from the restrictions. If I could stall just a bit longer, I might regain the use of my faculties. I had to think and think fast.

“Not important. You will be beyond caring.”

“I will care. This body is mine. Not yours. Not Lord Byron's. And certainly not the ugly dwarf's.”

I tested my restraints for any weakness I could exploit. Useless. The leather bindings while soft and supple with raw wool padding, were also thick and strong.

“He is more than a dwarf!” the woman protested angrily. “He was not always ugly.”

Emotions I understood and could manipulate. Sometimes. Strong emotions could rob a person of logic and sense. “I take it his body is dying.”

If she honestly thought I'd willingly die to allow another soul to inhabit my body, she was either stupid or a true fanatic. Only one person I knew of could inspire that kind of loyalty. Lord Byron.

Maybe Napoleon Bonaparte, but I doubted he had enough drive left to seize a new body and raise an army to conquer Europe again. He had no other purpose.

“I need your name before I attempt to rebuild the machine,” I said around a lump of trepidation. Would she buy my cooperation long enough to let me escape? “And the name of the man I allow to replace me? For you know the transfer must be voluntary on my part, or it will not work. Insanity for certain, in both. At best, you will wind up having two warring souls in the same body who will fight each other until both die. In that case you will have lost everything to haste and desperation.” I made that up. No one truly knew what happened during this arcane process. I knew of only one instance where it had worked. Just before I destroyed the machine.

“I . . . I am Stamata.” She looked elsewhere as if in shame.

“A Greek name.”

She nodded.

Petite and dark, she was of an age and type to have been one of Byron's last mistresses before he died the first time.

Circumstantial evidence at best. But I had learned over the years of wanderings that circumstances form patterns and the pattern will lead to true evidence.

“And the person I give my body to?”

“You know.”

“The dwarf said that Lord Byron's genius deserved a new body, but he has greater need.”

“Yes, he is the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. We do not know how he managed a transfer into that body. Probably the first one handy when he drowned but refused to die. We know there must be a connection between the two souls for the transfer to last. You were intimate with Shelley. Your body will accept his soul as once it accepted his manhood.”

Accepted is not the word I'd use. I was too frightened of losing my place in the villa, and the money they paid me. Money that I must take to my father every week or face a beating.

“We know you have worked long and hard to foil my lord's plans. The dwarf is only a temporary housing for Shelley. And now that body dies. My lord must wait and rest, for not much longer. Time in the jars is limited.”

“Why should I cooperate now?” Was that a little bit of wiggle in the leather around my left wrist? I flexed my hand muscles and tugged.
Yes!
The buckle shifted a tiny bit. Not enough to free myself, but a step forward. I rested my arm a bit so Madam Stamata would not notice and grow suspicious.

“Quickly. You must help me save him.” Stamata looked anxiously over her shoulder. “Shelley is important. If necessary, a test case for my lord. The poet king is the love of my life. The only man I can love unconditionally, as he loves me. We will be together again.”

Not likely. From what I knew of George Gordon Byron, she'd passed being attractive the day she hit her eighteenth birthday. He'd lived with and lusted after older women, true, but only loved the very young while they were still young. The same with Shelley.

The leather strap across my forehead prevented me from seeing the source of her anxiety, or anything else but the whitewashed rough timber ceiling.

Whitewash again.

“Did I shoot the dwarf?” The throwing star he yanked out of his shoulder wouldn't inflict a mortal injury.

“Yes, you have nearly killed him. You will pay for that with your life. Now tell me the secret. What must I do to force his soul into your body and yours out! How does the crystal work? Tell me!”

“No.” Crystal? That was a new wrinkle in this game.

“Then you will die without hope of transferring to a new body.” She showed me a wicked double-edged knife of blued steel, at least a foot long. She demonstrated by pricking the inside of my left arm just above the elbow. Hardly any sensation, but warm blood trickled from the tiny cut.

As she bent over me, I noted a huge purple crystal pendant set onto a thick gold chain that dangled between her breasts. It scintillated in the light, sending prisms against the white surroundings.

“One eighth of an inch lower and to the right and I will slice the vein. You will feel the life draining from you. I have no Leyden jar ready to receive your spirit.”

I licked dry lips and thought hard. My only tool was to stall.

“Electricity,” I mumbled.

“What was that?” She leaned closer to hear. I wanted to spit in her face but couldn't rouse enough moisture around my fear.

“Electricity,” I repeated a little clearer. “Giovanni Aldini reanimated the corpse of an executed prisoner . . .”

“Electricity? Of course!” she nearly sprang away from me, taking the wicked knife with her. A snap of her fingers brought the sound of shuffling feet across the floor. “My lord never said anything about electricity. How do I know I can trust you?” Her face loomed over mine once more with the knife held much too close to my neck.

“If you bleed me dry, then the new resident in this shell cannot live,” I reminded her.

More footsteps and the suggestion of shadows moving around the room, quietly, without words, back and forth between Stamata and the dwarf.

Damn the restraints! How could I plot anything without information?

Use your other senses
, the voice of Dr. Ishwardas Chaturvedi whispered through my memory.
The eyes can be deceived. Add sound and scent, the taste of the air, and the feel of it against your skin. Know your surroundings through your entire being
.

I took a deep lungful of air and exhaled slowly, closing my eyes and absorbing information through my pores as he'd taught me. Five sets of feet, each tread slightly different. The smell of unwashed male. Garlic. Horse. Woodsmoke. Wind through the pines.

They reminded me of the open road.

My eyes flew open. I scanned as far right and left as my restraints allowed.

“How do I create a generator for the electricity?” Stamata demanded.

“A stick of amber rubbed with wool felt,” a familiar male voice said from right behind her. She whirled to face the speaker. “Who dares invade my laboratory?”

Other hands worked on my wrist restraints.

“The corpses of your death-loving minions litter the path to this basement room,” said Jimmy Porto, my rescuer. “It seems they only lust after the death of others, not themselves.”

One hand loose, I attacked the buckle close to my left temple while the unseen hands worked upon my ankle straps.

Fumble. Fumble. My fingers didn't want to move after being idle for so long. They didn't like to work on their own without the guidance of my eyes. I'd learned my lesson in observing through other senses. Slow down, concentrate, feel the shape of the buckle, the metal tang, the holes in the strap, the leverage point.
Yes
. I yanked my wrist to loosen the tang's grip on the hole and pulled it free.

I turned my head toward Stamata too quickly and lost focus to sudden dizziness.
Breathe,
I reminded myself. I could do most anything if I just breathed.

Jimmy stood eye to eye with my captor, preventing her from reaching the shrouded figure of the dwarf on a table similar to my own resting place, though without restraints. A maze of different colored wires was attached to a metal band that encircled his head. The wires connected to a large ceramic pot with white glaze and the distinctively Greek keyhole design worked in purple around the shoulder and base. I had no doubt the jar contained the proper fluids and thin copper sheets. With a steady pulse of electrical sparks from the chemicals reacting with the copper, it contained and preserved the essence of whoever resided in the dwarf's body. The linen-covered chest did not rise and fall with breath.

“Let me pass!” Stamata demanded. “He's dying.” She pushed at Jimmy.

He held out his arms to keep her away from the dwarf. I knew he'd never strike her. Abuse toward women—the bearers of life—was against everything the Rom believed. Of course they did confine and keep their women illiterate and naïve—as much for control as protection.

With my feet and arms finally free, I sat up, dragging my shroud with me.

I did not have the same constraints about protecting women as Jimmy and his fellow rescuers. With all my might, I balled my right fist and slammed it into Stamata's temple.

She reeled. The knife clattered against the floor. Jimmy's little brother, who had worked so well at releasing my restraints, leaped to encase her right hand in the leather strap that had recently captured mine. Her head lolled as she sank to the floor.

“We must hurry,” Jimmy said, averting his eyes from where the sheet slipped away from my bosom.

I hastily draped it around me, toga style, and flung the loose end over my left shoulder. Not secure, but it would do until I found my clothes.