The Black Rose.

James Bartholomeusz.

PART III.

"Surely some revelation is at hand.

Surely the Second Coming is at hand"

"The Second Coming"

W. B. Yeats.

Chapter I.

a tale of two cities.

There came a knock at the door. The woman took a last look out of the window at the street below and, in the most refined way, seated herself on the high sofa. Beside her, a girl sat fluttering a willow-patterned fan. She was slight with Middle Eastern features, and though her face was encased in many layers of makeup, she appeared underfed and ill. Like a fragile porcelain doll, she wore an absurdly curved corset of ivory and teal and similar dainty gloves. Her eyes, unfocused, stared into the middle distance, seemingly unaware of anything around her.

"Enter," the woman called.

The double doors opposite the sofa swung open.

A butler, clothed from head to foot in an ornate tailcoat, waistcoat, trousers, s.h.i.+rt, and cravat, cleared his throat. "A Mister Frederick Goodwin, of Goodwin Construction Limited, madame."

"Bring him in."

The butler bowed and backed out.

The woman took a moment to ensure everything was in order. The floral wallpaper clashed horribly with the decorated drapes. The carpet, so detailed with diamonds and leaves, offended any possible sense of aesthetics. Behind her hung a dull portrait of an austere old man, barely discernible against a muddy backdrop. A gla.s.s of water, three-quarters full as if the occupant had actually been drinking, occupied a small wooden table to the porcelain girl's left. Yes, everything was in order.

The doors opened a second time, now to reveal an enormous middle-aged man. The butler held out his hands and received a face full of hat and traveling cloak as the guest strode in. His cane, alabaster white, clipped the carpet with every step he took towards the armchair. Receiving a nod of invitation from the woman, he seated his vastness upon the overstuffed cus.h.i.+ons and laid his cane on the table next to him.

"Lady Osborne, so glad that we could finally meet face-to-face." By the manner in which he leaned forward, he evidently expected her to offer her hand. When she did not move, he reached into one of his pockets and produced a pack of papers. From another pocket he drew a monocle, which he affixed to one eye. He leafed through the doc.u.ments. "I must confess, Your Ladys.h.i.+p, I was surprised at your letter. The components you have requested are, ahem, quite unusual."

"As I explained in my letter, Mister Goodwin, His Lords.h.i.+p was explicit in his instructions."

"Yes... have you any idea when Lord Osborne is due to return?"

The woman pursed her lips. "No, I am afraid not, Mister Goodwin. He may be indisposed for quite some time."

Mister Goodwin found the correct doc.u.ment and pulled it out of the stack, placing it on the low coffee table. He set a fountain pen next to it, indicating the s.p.a.ce she was meant to sign. "I must ask again, Your Ladys.h.i.+p, if it is not too much of an impertinence, whether you require these very specific components..."

"Yes, Mister Goodwin," the woman replied coldly, scribbling her signature on the line.

He took back the sheet, giving her a long, appraising look. "Very well," he said finally, tucking the sheet and pen into the pack and replacing them in his pocket. He popped his monocle out, slipped it into his waistcoat, and cleared his throat fussily. "Again, if it is not too much of an impertinence, I must ask if you intend to extend your visit here-"

"It is too much of an impertinence, Mister Goodwin." The woman rose. "And besides, my daughter and I are late for an important engagement. Nicolas"-the butler reappeared at the door-"please show our guest out."

Mister Goodwin stood as well. He did not attempt to kiss his hostess's hand this time but nodded at her coolly. "We shall contact you once the bank has accepted the payment, and we then may proceed."

She returned his nod.

He glanced at the girl. She had heeded neither his arrival nor his presence during the entire visit, her gaze fixed firmly in the middle distance. Mister Goodwin did not quite know what to make of this engagement. In his professional experience, Lord Osborne was not the kind of man to take on an immigrant ward. Mister Goodwin had not even known His Lords.h.i.+p was married.

Clearing his throat yet again, he retrieved his alabaster cane from the table and marched out. The door swung shut behind him.

The woman waited for the footsteps to recede down the hallway, then sagged into her seat. Her concentration ebbed, and she let out a sigh that misted as it entered the air.

The temperature of the room was dropping rapidly. Claws of frost grasped at the wallpaper, the sofas, and the tables-every particle of moisture solidified. The contents of the gla.s.s froze within seconds. A moment later the gla.s.s itself had cracked. The slab of ice shattered on the tabletop.

The signee had also changed. Gone were the ridiculous frills and neurotically patterned flowers. She now wore a black cloak curved to fit her body. Her hair, freed from that ridiculous bun, now hung freely, slanted over one eye. Gone too was the stuffed sofa; she now reclined on a throne of carved ice. Released from the sensory illusion, various arcane devices were now positioned in symmetry around the room, all humming dimly with Dark energy.

She glanced over her shoulder. The painting had vanished, and in its place stood a tall, thin mirror in a gothic arch. The gla.s.s was frosted, distorting the reflection of the room and the woman. Only one thing was completely visible. Ghostlike on the other side of the gla.s.s, the dark-skinned porcelain girl stared into the middle distance.

The Emperor decided that he was to lead the midnight prayers himself that night, a rarity in itself. As sunlight no longer visited Nexus, the concept of midnight was somewhat defunct, but the times of day were observed nonetheless.

Having blessed the congregation, he left the nave via the screen and proceeded to the crossing. He moved between the pews, gazing upwards at the dark stone archways of the vaulted ceiling. The stained gla.s.s windows set high into the walls each depicted a religious scene in candle-reflecting crimson. His boots clicked on the marble floor, the ma.s.sive rose pattern at the center scattering ornamental thorns into every corner of the room. Incense wavered on the breeze, and the austere notes of the organ resounded behind him like a funeral march.

The imperial throne was mounted on a pedestal behind the altar, flanked by ranks of flickering candles. It was here that the boy had been commanded to wait and, to the Emperor's amus.e.m.e.nt, he had done exactly this.

The leader of the Cult of Dionysus settled upon the throne and, placing his ceremonially robed arms upon the wings, regarded the figure before him. Even after cleanup the boy looked dishevelled: unruly dark hair spread over his scalp, and red welts marked his limbs and neck from where he had been chained. Nevertheless, he had been given an acolyte's tunic to wear, and those emerald eyes were alive and fierce with resistance.

"Would you consider yourself a religious man, Mister Steele?"

Alex narrowed his gaze but said nothing.

"I take it, then, that you do not."

The boy swallowed and leaned back on the altar. His feet ached from standing up for so long. "I've seen alchemy work. I've seen Light and Darkness battle each other across the universe. I've even seen into the Darkness. But no, I haven't seen anything to suggest a G.o.d at work."

The Emperor smirked, and Alex thought he saw grey smoke wisp across those yellowed teeth.

"But you lot wors.h.i.+p a dragon, don't you?"

The Emperor followed Alex's gaze. The wall against which his throne was mounted was indeed a stone carving of a t.i.tanic black dragon, colossal wings spread symmetrically, flames pluming from its mouth, clawed feet planted either side of the seat.

"The Dragon is the essential representation of Darkness: amongst the fluid collective, a single anchor point. Despite our pretensions, this world is still part of the Light-scarcely. Wors.h.i.+ppers need a tangible individual icon to focus on." The Emperor grinned. "And incidentally, you have seen nothing of the Darkness. Yet."

Alex exhaled, dragging his gaze from the stone dragon's face to the malevolent humanoid one upon the throne. "So why am I here? What's this 'offer'?"

"I am not going to conceal my aims for you, Mister Steele. By the time we are done, you will have changed sides in this war."

"What?" Alex scoffed, equally amazed and amused. "You think you can make me abandon the Apollonians and join the Cult?" At this point, he actually laughed, for the first time since he'd arrived on this planet.

"What makes you think there are only two sides?"

Again Alex thought he saw grey smoke trace about the Emperor.

"I'm a prisoner of war. You're the one keeping me here. Why should I help you?"

The Emperor raised himself from the chair and turned to ponder the candles. "Because I know you better than you do. You are in denial about your past. You've convinced yourself that you belong as a minor agent for a group of vigilantes. I can show you your true potential."

Alex leaned back farther, skeptical. He wasn't about to trust this creature, the leader of the organization he'd spent over a year fighting, and he certainly wasn't taken in by the talk about destiny. But back in the cell, the Emperor had known something he'd never disclosed to anyone still living. If nothing else, he needed to discover how the Emperor knew so much. And he might come across information important to the Apollonians in the process. He would be a double agent, just not the sort the Emperor had in mind. "Okay, I'll humor you. What were you thinking?"

The Emperor smirked and took Alex by the shoulder, steering him around the altar and onto the main flooring of the crossing. They pa.s.sed under the vaulted arches and over the black rose, the organ music echoing high above.

Chapter II.

reflections and nightmares Jack awoke with a start. He was, as he now knew he had been all through the nightmare, in his claustrophobic cabin aboard The Golden Turtle. His bunk took up an entire wall, raised to accommodate shelves and drawers underneath. An empty square table occupied a corner, and the only other fitting in the room was a tall wardrobe on the opposite wall. A small porthole near his head showcased only the deep gloom of the underwater world they traversed.

He clambered off his bed, his arms easily reaching the ceiling of the cabin. He sagged onto the carpeted floor, stretching out his neck.

Had he not been here, but perhaps back on Earth, he may well have dismissed the last month as some kind of mental breakdown. As it was, traveling in the company of two people who were, unequivocally, an elf and a dwarf made this considerably harder. In these last six weeks, he had been caught up in a sorcerer's attack on his hometown of Birchford, had been transported to another world, had come into contact with races of beings he'd thought existed only in myths and fairy tales, and had twice fought and defeated a giant demon lobster. And his newfound abilities to, amongst others, set things on fire, levitate objects, and generate light from nowhere ended any attempt to explain away his current predicament. He still couldn't quite understand how or why he, a fairly ordinary British teenager, had got into this situation.

When he'd finally been given an explanation for all this madness, it hadn't been disappointing in its magnitude. As far as he could tell, a war was currently being fought between the Apollonians, defenders of the Light, and the Cult of Dionysus, who were in the process of constructing a Dark alchemical superweapon called the Aterosa. Both sides were racing to discover the whereabouts of the Shards of the Risa Star, an extremely powerful object which, if reunited, seemed capable of shaping the outcome of this conflict.

In the times when he hadn't been working around the vessel or in conversation with Bal the dwarf and Sardar the elf about the Apollonians' plans, four people had chiefly occupied Jack's thoughts. The first, of course, was his closest friend, Lucy. She, out of all who'd become caught up in this war, had been the most constant in her support of him. Their last parting had been heartfelt, and, ever since, he had been staving off the feeling that they should have stayed together. She was now on a parallel but separate journey, in search of a Shard of the Risa Star, alongside two other Apollonians, Hakim and Ada, both elves, though how near or far away they had gone he did not know. He thought of her mostly because the two of them, if no one else, shared this situation: they had been brought from Earth against their will, had been flung into a world they didn't understand, and both faced the horrors of the Cult. And they had survived, which was no mean feat. There was also the fact that the two hadn't spent over a week apart in the last year. He missed her most of all and could be fairly certain she felt the same way.

Second was, until a few weeks ago, his only other friend, Alex. He had known Alex since his arrival at the orphanage when Jack was seven and he was ten, and the two had remained firm friends ever since. Alex had reappeared the night of the Cult's attack, having been absent from Birchford without explanation for eighteen months. As Jack and Lucy had later discovered, he had been gone not only from their town but from their planet, working with the Apollonians in their battle against the Cult. Barely hours back on Earth, Alex had been stabbed and kidnapped by the Cult and was now presumably held captive on the organization's elusive base world of Nexus.

In a solid third place was the captain of The Golden Turtle, Ruth Sparrow. Jack had met Ruth minutes after he had left Earth; it was she who had carried him and Lucy as pa.s.sengers on her s.h.i.+p to an Apollonian base. That voyage had lasted only three days, and yet they had connected immediately. They were both orphans as far as they knew: he due to his mother's abandonment, she due to amnesia and imprisonment. Ruth was, right now, somewhere else on this world-traversing submarine, probably sleeping. That thought gave him an unusual amount of comfort.

Finally, with these three as miniature suns lighting the inside of his head, the fourth lurked in the shadows behind. Jack had so far met two priests of the Council of Thirteen, which governed the Cult of Nexus: Iago, an old enemy of Sardar's who had joined the Cult to secure domination of their mutual home world of Tabesh; and Icarus, about whom Jack now realized he knew next to nothing. It had been Icarus who had led the attack on Birchford, attempted to sacrifice Lucy to release a powerful demon, and kidnapped Alex. He had seemed to recognize Jack, and Jack remembered a feeling of deja-vu when seeing him, as if of someone he had met but never really got to know. And after a brief glimpse into the Cult's plans, he knew the Emperor had a.s.signed Icarus to find another Shard. This couldn't bode well for the Apollonians.

Jack rubbed his eyes. They were beginning to close again. The sweat had faded, and now he was getting cold. He clambered into his bunk. The conditions at his orphanage hadn't been great, considering the spa.r.s.e funding, but they were considerably better than this.

He lay down and closed his eyes.

Ruth was falling into Darkness, suffocating. She twisted around. Behind her, she glimpsed where she had come from, a back alley constructed entirely from alchemical piping and stone slabs. Several windows high above glimmered with artificial light. The sky was wrought with the perpetual storm of this place, lightning splintering the billowing clouds. A portal of dark energy enwrapped her, some invisible force pulling her backwards through it. The image of the alleyway was disappearing, becoming smaller and smaller as if at the end of a telescope. Her senses were gradually shutting down: she could see nothing, barely breathe, hear only the stifling silence of the Darkness...

Ruth gasped and sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. She, too, was in a cabin of The Golden Turtle, though as captain she had considerably bigger quarters than Jack's. She swung her legs over the bed and dropped down, seating herself at the table bolted to the floor in the center of the room. She pressed a key on the table leg, and an overhead lamp cast an orange hue across the room.

She lay her forearm on the table, palm upwards. A tattoo, a stylized lion in black ink, was woven into her skin just below the elbow. This and the nightmare were the only remnants from her life before The Golden Turtle.

Five years previously, she had awoken aboard the s.h.i.+p with no memory of her former life or how she had arrived there. The captain, Ishmael, had told her she'd been hauled out of the sea, unconscious, close to drowning. With nowhere to return to, she had been enlisted in the s.h.i.+p's crew and eventually adopted by Ishmael. It was only later, when she had come into contact with the Cult of Dionysus, that her recurring nightmare began to make sense. She had been imprisoned on Nexus but had somehow fallen or escaped into the Darkness and ended up in another world.

Ruth sat back and gazed up at the lantern's fiery pattern crisscrossing the metal ceiling. Jack, she knew, had had a similar family experience but without a parental figure like Ishmael as a guiding beacon at the end of it. She presumed Jack wanted to return to his home world, but she was secretly glad he was unable to for the time being. Her first proper talk with him, the night he had arrived on The Golden Turtle, had been the only time she had opened up to anyone but Ishmael. She considered seeing if he was awake now but dismissed the idea immediately. He wouldn't want to be disturbed at this time.

She stood, turned off the light, and went back to bed.

Jack awoke properly to a knock on the door a few hours later. It was Aonair, a crew member he vaguely knew.

"Sardar wants you to get to the command deck. We're nearing our destination."

Jack washed quickly, changed into new clothes, and made his way across the s.h.i.+p to the command deck. There was obviously no natural lighting here, as they were underwater, but soft lamps lining the wood-panelled corridors mimicked the cycle of day and night. He pa.s.sed various crew members and eventually came to the double doors emblazoned with a golden turtle symbol.

This room was a large gla.s.sy dome, the head of the turtle, against which the dank water of their current pa.s.sage pressed on all sides. Futuristic navigational machines lined the walls, operators sitting before the humming screens. In the center, on a lower level, a large oak table was bolted down, with a plethora of maps pinned to it. Three people stood around it. Ruth, adorned with her signature bandana, was directly opposite him; the elf Sardar, Middle Eastern in complexion and wearing a tunic, studying one of the maps; and Bal the dwarf stood a little back from the others, distinctly out of place in his traveling gear.

Bal's first reaction to The Golden Turtle had been a mixture of wonder and gruffness. He came from a world, Thorin Salr, which roughly resembled Earth's Dark Ages. This ultrasophisticated technology had baffled Jack, so he could only imagine how Bal felt.

"Jack." Sardar gestured for him to join them at the table. "We're due to arrive at Albion tomorrow."

Jack dropped to the level of the table, smiled at Ruth, and got a look at the maps. The one on top, which Sardar had been examining, showed a city with a river weaving through its center.

"So where is this place?" Bal asked, leaning closer. "What is Albion?"

"It seems to be a city-state, which governs the surrounding lands," Sardar said. "It is in a stage of rapid development-Jack, roughly in line with your nineteenth-century Europe-so there's an increasing urban population."

"Do we have any idea where the Shard is?" Ruth asked.

"Not at the moment. We don't know if it's even in the city, though that would seem the most likely place. We'll need to get there and make some inquiries to find out."

"And the Cult?"

"They will be on the same trail. We've got to keep on our guard. As we saw through the black mirror, the Emperor has dispatched Archbishop Nimue to discover the Shard, and she is probably significantly closer than we are."

"So what do we need in the way of disguises? And weapons? And alchemy?" Jack looked around. The only world other than Earth he had visited had been Thorin Salr. As the local population of dwarves had seen only elves and goblins, he and Ruth had been disguised as elves with The Golden Turtle's technology. Those disguises had been reverted as soon as they'd returned to the s.h.i.+p, and he was still getting used to his human body. He wasn't too keen on transforming again anytime soon. "How are we going to stop drawing attention to ourselves?"

"From what we know, the local population is human-so, Jack, you're fine."

Jack breathed an inaudible sigh of relief.

"Bal, you and I are going to need some alchemical disguising."

The dwarf grimaced. Not alone amongst his fellows, he had reacted with a strong distaste to alchemy when the Apollonians and then the Cult had brought it to his home world. Though his experience with the First Shard had changed that somewhat, he was still none too keen on the idea.

"What about me?" Ruth put in. "I mean, I look human, but from what I know about the history of Jack's world, I'm not going to fit in very well with this skin color."