Three Kings Page 16

  Sebastian’s eyes brightened. ‘Oh, excellent. That means now’s a good time.’ He bit his lip, and then said, ‘I wanted to ask you – you know how I’ve been selling some of my herbal concoctions online? The artisanal vinegars and oils?’

  ‘I know. They’re lovely.’ They didn’t need the money, but it made Sebastian happy to write his handmade labels and send the packages off in the mail. It was sweet, really.

  Sebastian glanced down, and then looked up again, gazing straight into Alan’s eyes. He asked, ‘You don’t think there’s any chance of a royal endorsement, do you?’

  Alan couldn’t help frowning. Really? How could his husband ask this of him, put him in this position? ‘I don’t know, Sebastian …’

  Sebastian’s eyes were dark, pleading. ‘It would mean the world to me. You don’t usually trade on your royal connections, and I wouldn’t ask, but it would really set me up. Maybe then I could retire from the gardening work, just as you wanted.’ Sebastian reached out, placed a hand on Alan’s arm. ‘You could make an exception? For me? You and Richard are such good friends …’

  Guilt stabbed through Alan. ‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask,’ he said reluctantly.

  Sebastian grinned and squeezed his arm before releasing it. ‘Wonderful. Thank you, love. Does Richard like tea?’

  Alan admitted, ‘He’s an absolute tea fiend.’

  Sebastian said, ‘Perfect. I have a new blend that I’m dying to have him try. Thank you, thank you!’ He bent forward and brushed a kiss across Alan’s forehead. ‘Best of husbands.’

  Alan managed a smile. ‘Anything for you, love. But I really ought to get back to work …’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I’m going to go and work on the tea some more – I want it to be perfect!’ Sebastian bustled away, smiling, and let the door shut behind him.

  Alan settled in again, but almost immediately, the screen blinked to something new. His pulse raced as he read the results. One of his searches had finally borne fruit – Adelbert Boyd-Brackenbury! A DNA match, tracing his ancestry back to Queen Victoria; Margaret had been right after all. Alan’s heart fluttered at the discovery. This could change everything.

  Now, for the good of England, Alan Turing had to make a decision.

  How fascinating. Turing of the brilliant mind. Swift-thinking Turing. A man with computer circuits threaded so finely through his brain – or so Badb had once heard – that had he wanted them gone it would have killed him to take them out … And yet, even he committed his thoughts to paper.

  He had printed and then annotated the findings of his search and by the time Sebastian, who’d left the window open, had shooed the crow out of the house and tidied up the documents it had scattered, it was all too late. The news was already moving out into the world.

  And what news! It could hardly be better. The Green Man’s lieutenant, Seizer, had royal blood in every part of his treacherous frame.

  Badb spread the information to her contact in Italy. All the better if the news that the rumours were true were to appear abroad first, as though it were being hidden from the British public. Which, of course, it was. To add extra spice, she kept the name to herself for now. Waiting for that second penny to drop would madden the authorities.

  And then, although the pain was great, she opened blood-sticky eyes and waited.

  The Fists were on high alert since the attack. The Green Man had them running constant patrols around their new hideout. They stepped over her in the corridor where she lay, gingerly avoiding the dribbles of blood that had escaped her bandages and making no mention of the smell.

  The goddess waited patiently. She would live forever, after all. She flicked her attention from one crow to another, all over the city, keeping them at their tasks. But every second heartbeat brought her back to her own body, watching, always watching, until the right person appeared. Maven. Seizer’s own daughter.

  She was the only nat here, but she burned with revolutionary fervour. Badb didn’t even need to start the conversation as she had planned. It was Maven who came to her. She knelt, uncaring of the stench or the fact that the knees of the combat fatigues on her stocky frame were soaking up blood.

  ‘Are you well, comrade?’ she asked. Maven’s northern English vowels couldn’t have been further from her father’s aristocratic bombast. She’d run away from her mother to join him. ‘We should look after you better. You’re a woman of talents, I heard. The Cause needs you.’

  The goddess hung her head. ‘The Cause’. How satisfactory. A woman such as this might make a most … nutritious martyr.

  ‘You are too kind to me,’ said Badb. ‘The visions take a lot out of me and rarely are they of any use.’

  ‘You had one just now?’ Maven looked genuinely sympathetic. She might not have been a wild card, but she had two extraordinary powers of her own: the strength to fire a gun and the fortitude to face one too, her formidable chin raised high.

  How best to kill her? Badb wondered. Although there were others here who might do just as well.

  ‘They take my strength,’ the goddess said, ‘and deliver only nonsense in return … I keep … I keep hearing a name. A silly thing, or so it seems.’

  ‘I thought your visions were real. You did incredible work to get the Green Man away last time.’

  ‘Oh, yes, child. They are always real, but not … not always useful, you understand? Who ever heard of a joker with a name like Adelbert Boyd-Brackenbury? It sounds made up, doesn’t it? And who cares if … if the Silver Helix think he’s the true king? It can’t help the likes of us here and—’

  Maven’s plain features were frozen in shock. Great warrior though she was, she fell back on her bum and staggered to her feet.

  ‘Sorry, sister. I’ll … I’ll send somebody to help you clean up … I must … I have to …’

  She was off, straight to her father, presumably. And later, when reports drifted in from Italy of DNA pointing to a joker match, why, then he’d know who he was. What he was. It was only a matter of time before he acted on it.

  All that remained was to put in place a different soldier pawn with a high-powered rifle.

  Saturday

  March 7th

  AT 7A.M. IN THE morning, the highest bar in Western Europe was emptied of all but two white men, gazing out over the city through an immense fifty-second-floor window.

  Both were middle-aged. Both had the blood of innocents on their hands, but it was the shorter one, his brown hair flecked with grey, who was by far the more dangerous.

  Badb knew only his first name – Noel – from her days in Army Intelligence. She knew too he was an ace of some kind, but what his exact powers were she had yet to determine. Nor could she work out how he had arrived up here. He certainly hadn’t made use of the lifts.

  Noel waited until the bodyguard began to shift from foot to foot and then, in an accent that in this country indicated ‘education’, he said, ‘You are remarkably well-informed for a foreigner.’

  The Serbian jumped, but didn’t make the mistake of speaking.

  ‘What is your source of information, exactly?’

  The bodyguard straightened his shoulders. ‘I sell knowledge, not my source. Fifty thousand and I tell you about that very special baby.’

  ‘How about five pounds and nobody ever finds out you’re a war criminal?’ He must have been guessing, but still, Badb was impressed. She would try to keep tabs on this one too. It was already difficult to track all the players on the board. The goddess had not had time to eat and she hadn’t even opened her own body’s eyes in over twenty hours.

  Somehow, the bodyguard held his nerve under that cold blue stare.

  ‘Make it a tenner and you have deal.’ When Noel shrugged, he continued. ‘Let me tell you about ship. The Queen Mary …’

  In truth the bodyguard was a much more useful tool than Badb had at first realized. Perhaps if she killed his wife and child she would keep him on permanently. Most satisfactory.

  Gr
een Man’s new hideout was a definite step down from the last one but he had a feeling there was still plenty of room to fall yet. A knock at the door, not Wayfarer’s, snapped him from his brooding. This cannot be good, he thought. A new development?

  He put on his mask hastily. ‘Come in.’

  The door opened, and Finder came slowly into the room, each foot placed with deliberate care and effort. She was wearing clean white bandages but he knew they would not stay fresh for long. He gestured to the chair opposite his desk but she waved the offer away. ‘No time for sitting.’ She glanced over her shoulder and then shut the door, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. Green Man found himself leaning forward instinctively. ‘There is a woman who lives on the Queen Mary. A joker. Old, like us. She was there in 1948 and I suspect she knows what happened to our prince.’

  ‘That’s excellent news.’ Green Man stood up. ‘And I can find her there now?’

  ‘Yes. You must find her. Henry and his allies are looking too. They’ve dispatched an agent to get her.’

  Something about the way she said it made a chill run down Green Man’s spine. ‘What are you not telling me?’

  ‘I don’t know anything, but I fear.’

  ‘Fear what?’

  ‘I fear Henry already knows the truth.’

  Green Man nodded grimly and walked around the table. ‘You don’t think they’re trying to find out what she knows. You think they mean to silence her.’

  ‘I cannot say for certain, but … I … yes. You know how they operate.’

  ‘All too well,’ he replied.

  She opened the door for him as he strode out.

  The Docklands stank of fish, fetid water and old mud that had sucked down more relics and bodies than could be counted. The old ship, once elegant, now like a blowsy woman going to seed, squatted on the Isle of Dogs. Signs in breathless capital letters urged people to VISIT HISTORY! RECALL THE BRAVERY AND TRAGEDY OF THE FINAL VOYAGE! CAFÉ AND GIFT SHOP ON BOARD.

  Noel had actually never visited the ship. It wasn’t his history. He had drawn a straight flush when it came to the wild card and for all the talk of wild card unity there really wasn’t any. Class, as in so much of British society, was everything, and by any objective standard as well as simple bigotry being an ace was a damned sight better than being a joker.

  As for the Serbian protection officer, his oblique advice to look at the Queen Mary was not all helpful. Noel would have made his way here eventually for information on the lost joker prince, and perhaps he would be lucky and the old pensioner had decided to retire to live out his days on the floating mausoleum but he doubted he would be that lucky.

  He headed up the gangplank, stopped at the entry kiosk and bought a ticket from the young man in the booth. His deformities were not visible on his face. Only the odd way his shoulders bulked beneath his jumper hinted at any abnormality.

  Don’t want to frighten off the tourists at the first go, Noel thought as he sauntered onto the deck of the old ship. Not that there were many. The March weather, and a brisk wind carrying the effluvia off the river, not to mention the tragic story of the ship, would discourage all but the most hearty or heartless of visitors. Noel wrinkled his nose and headed inside, hoping to escape the stink.

  There was only a handful of tourists touring the exhibits. Pictures of the crew and passengers before the disaster had struck, and pictures of the survivors after the virus had reached the ship. There was a man with three heads, a preternaturally handsome man, a man who had stretched his body to enormous heights, but Noel was drawn to the black-and-white photos of Brigadier General Kenneth Foxworthy as he had been before his transformation into Captain Flint. The images showed him working among the survivors during those first chaotic days. A later photo showed him in his knave form. When did we stop being heroes and start being bastards, he wondered? He looked around for a tour guide who might be able to give him a bit of history and point him towards any old timers, but there were none in evidence. He spotted signs guiding him towards the café and the gift shop. Often the people hired for the shops knew a bit more than the average person so he headed that way. As he walked past the photos and memorabilia he thought about that night in ’48.

  A normal man walking onto this ship of monsters carrying a newborn. What did he say? Were any questions asked or did they just assume he was the father and was abandoning his child?

  Noel remembered all those little fertilized eggs that had been rejected because his and Niobe’s child would have likely died at birth or been a joker. There was no possibility that he and his wife could ever have a nat child, given that they were both wild cards, and therefore Noel had decreed that only a viable ace embryo would be implanted. Niobe having suffered as a joker agreed and hence … Jasper. But what if the doctors at the jokertown clinic had slipped up and thetheir child had been a joker? Would he have abandoned that baby? Or handled it? Uncomfortable questions. Noel shook them off.

  The story of the Queen Mary was a tragic one, and Green Man knew it well. Back in 1946, the year that everything changed, the Queen Mary had been en route to New York with a full complement of passengers. They’d received a warning to turn back at the last minute but it had come too late. By the time the ship was making its way home, spoors had already found their way on board. And by the time it reached British waters, the wild card virus was taking effect.

  With most of the crew dead or dying, the Queen Mary had finally limped as far as the Isle of Dogs and run aground, where she had remained until the present day. Of course that was only the start of her story. Since then, she’d had a long career, first as a prison and then as a home for the jokers created on her decks. Most of the original jokers were dead now, but something of the community remained, and the Queen Mary continued to make a living, albeit a more modest one, as a museum.

  The van he was in pulled to a stop, and the side door was yanked open by Wayfarer. ‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked. ‘It’s the middle of the day.’

  He was already jumping out as he answered. ‘It’s now or never.’

  ‘Do you want back-up?’

  ‘No. Just be ready to get us out of here.’

  She nodded. ‘One of our drivers is ready if we need to switch vehicles.’ He gave Wayfarer a nod and set off towards the gangplank. ‘I’ll keep the engine running,’ she called after him, her voice betraying more nerves than usual.

  Are things getting to her? he wondered. Or is she picking up on my own misgivings?

  If King Henry had come to the same conclusions that he’d reached, namely that there was another prince, an older one with a superior claim to power, then it stood to reason that he’d want that prince out of the picture. Green Man had no doubt that Henry would be willing to break the law to see that through.

  He glanced around, alert for trouble, but the sky was resolutely cheery, and there were no sounds of violence. Sunlight picked out the fresh red-and-black paint on the stacks. Green Man knew that the vessel was in need of serious structural repair, with corrosion riddling its heart. Nobody had been able to raise the hundreds of millions required, but they always seemed to find the money for new paint. And so it had gone on, year after year, covering its cracks from the public while rotting inside.

  There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

  He knew the jokers and nats that lived here, and they knew him by sight. The ones on the door let him aboard with a nod. They didn’t charge him an entrance fee and he didn’t offer anything, though he did put a donation in the box, his haste briefly defeated by habit.

  It was hard to rush, though. Everything just seemed so … normal. He could see a few people moving at a tourist’s amble, their eyes and smartphones darting from one detail to the next.

  Among them was a familiar face, a young joker called Moseley. The virus had given him extra arms, all of them dead and useless, as if someone had surgically grafted the upper limbs of a baby Tyrannosaurus rex to his chest. Moseley hid them under a baggy jumper
and jacket. He’d once asked Green Man for the money to have them removed, but hadn’t been able to provide any favours of sufficient value to qualify. They’d not spoken since.

  Judging from the way he was pressing his back to the wall, he didn’t seem pleased to see Green Man again. ‘We don’t want no trouble.’

  ‘I’m not here for you.’ He tried to think about the jokers that lived here that would meet Finder’s description. It didn’t take long. ‘Is Dorothy still here?’

  ‘Dotty? Yeah, she’s minding the shop. What’s going on?’ Green Man narrowed his eyes, and Moseley gulped. ‘On you go, chief.’

  The smell of wet wool, tea and pasties accompanied Noel through the café. He stepped into the gift shop, and closed the door after. He wanted no interruptions for his questioning. The joker behind the counter looked up. She had a thick slug-like body with an elderly woman’s head perched incongruously on top.

  ‘Please, sir, the door needs to remain open. Don’t want to discourage any shoppers.’ It was said sweetly, but there was a flare of alarm in her eyes. Probably to be expected in any encounter between a nat and a joker, but his actions had made it more fraught.

  ‘I was hoping,’ Noel began, but the rest of the sentence was cut off when a neat, dark hole appeared in the centre of the woman’s forehead.

  Simultaneously he heard the crack of a bullet breaking the speed of sound as it created its own little sonic boom.

  It was easy to follow signs for the shop. Green Man went down one level, down several empty corridors, then up again, emerging into what had once been a grand lounge but was now a small café and shop area. A few older couples sat drinking tea and talking quietly to one another. He ignored their discreet stares as he strode past. His feet thudded heavily on the polished wooden floor, like a slow, rhythmic, but enthusiastic drummer. Perhaps because of this, he nearly didn’t hear the muffled sound of a bullet being fired. Instinct made him duck, but the sound was too far away for him to be the target. The shot had come from somewhere on the other side of the door ahead of him.