"Bang bang bang!"
Suddenly, urgent knocking at the door — and along with it, Leonard's hurried voice: "Klein, are you home?"
Klein went quickly to the door. "What's wrong?"
Leonard stood on the threshold, his expression grave. "Old Neil — he's gone. He slipped away through the Chaniuse Gate."
!!!
...
Backlund. The Grayling family's opulent villa.
Stephen sat leaning against the front entrance, listening to the sound of clinking glasses drifting from the reception room behind him, and lazily let the sunlight fall on his face.
A few days of company had given him a fairly solid read on Miss Hall: for all that she claimed to be constantly worried about running into danger, it did nothing to stop her going out every other day regardless. Boldly timid and timidly bold summed it up rather well.
So he'd driven her here, cheerfully humming a sea shanty along the way, dropped her off at the salon organised by Viscount Grayling, and settled in to wait for the end of his shift.
He casually lifted a glass of champagne from a passing footman's tray, took a sip — and then noticed an elderly man making his way over. He had the look of an old man in excellent shape: a crisply pressed suit, sharp eyes, the bearing of a proper gentleman, only the face that wore the years.
Stephen nearly choked on his champagne. Wait — what is this old man doing here?
The elderly gentleman had also recognised him by now. His eyes went wide, and he called out uncertainly: "Young master?!"
"Mr. Philip!"
The old gentleman came over at a quick pace, his eyes visibly reddening. "Young master — you've finally come back?"
"Ah..." Stephen scratched his head, genuinely perplexed. "Mr. Philip, what are you doing here?"
"Oh." The old man straightened his collar. "I applied for the Grayling family's butler position a few days ago. Got the job."
"But — but aren't you our butler?"
Philip looked at him steadily. "Young master, do you really think the Gloucester family needs a butler anymore? Who am I even managing? The old house, which is half falling down? The handful of maids that are left? Besides — if I don't go out and find work soon, I'll starve."
"But I've been sending you money every month, haven't I?"
The old man's voice rose with indignation. "The money you send doesn't even cover the upkeep and repairs on the old house, let alone anything else. Everything I had saved over the years has already gone into it."
"But none of that matters to me — none of it!"
Philip's voice climbed further, his expression one of profound, aggrieved betrayal: "I've given my whole life to Gloucester. I've long since counted myself as part of this family. What I cannot bear — what I simply cannot bear — is watching the Gloucester line die out before my eyes! I've failed your grandfather. I've failed your parents. I've failed every ancestor of Gloucester who came before them!"
Stephen: "..."
It's not that serious, really, Mr. Philip. Truly.
It took considerable effort to eventually soothe the long-suffering old man and see him off, with a promise to come home and have a look that evening. It was, Stephen felt, harder work than a full naval engagement.
"Ah, I already miss the open sea."
Right — finish out this week, then straight back to the Dawn. No matter what price Miss Hall offered, the answer was no. Gold has a price; freedom does not.
Still... Audrey really was lovely. Not in the least inferior to Her Majesty.
Hmm. Was there any chance of developing something with her — something along the lines of that novel Emperor Roselle wrote, "The Peerless Bodyguard of the Noble Lady," with all its grand entangled passions and dramatic twists?
If he could become the Halls' son-in-law, Mr. Philip's worries would be solved, and he'd have enough money to keep the Dawn properly supplied.
"What's on your mind?"
A familiar voice nearby.
Stephen straightened at once and looked over. "Your Majesty — you're here?"
"Something came to mind. Tell me about that solicitor Derlin again — as much detail as you can."
"Oh — right."
He wasn't sure why, but he dutifully went through the whole evening again from start to finish: how they'd set out, how they'd entered the tomb, how the evil spirit had appeared, and how at the end of it all the solicitor had pressed the letter into Stephen's hands with his dying breath.
"Did he say at any point why he'd wanted to explore your family tomb?"
Stephen nodded and then shook his head. "His explanation, before we went in, was that it was a curiosity to satisfy before he left Backlund. He said the Gloucester tomb was connected to some history from the Fourth Epoch that he'd been researching."
"What history?"
"That he didn't say."
"About the Moses Ascetic Order — beyond the letter, did he say anything else?"
"Nothing."
"When is his replacement due to arrive?"
Stephen thought for a moment. "It should be soon — otherwise he wouldn't have been in such a hurry about things. But I don't know the exact timing." He added: "I've been keeping an eye on the solicitor's office these past few days. The other staff have reported his disappearance to the authorities by now, and the office is temporarily closed."
"All right. Take me to your family tomb."
...
A small chapel on Williams Street in Backlund. Bernadette and Stephen emerged from the spirit world there, into a place that had long since fallen into disrepair — most of the structure had crumbled over the years, dead vines covering what walls still stood, grey stone scattered everywhere underfoot.
Directly adjoining the ruined chapel was a small graveyard.
Stephen walked briskly to the centre of the burial ground, where a large stone slab, cracked in half, lay partially upright. The inscription on it was faded and barely legible, though it was clearly not in Loenese.
"This is it. It looks like just a headstone, but the entrance to the tomb chamber is underneath."
The ground around the slab still showed traces of digging from not long ago. He continued: "After I confirmed the evil spirit couldn't follow me out, I filled the earth and rubble back in — to stop anyone else stumbling in accidentally and getting themselves killed."
Bernadette stepped forward slowly and pressed her palm to the stone slab, reaching for her divination ability — but everything about the stone, the graveyard, this entire place seemed blanketed by some force. Nothing came through.
She raised an eyebrow, then drew Stephen with her as she dissolved into a bubble and sank through the earth.
Below: a pitch-black corridor stretching far into the dark.
Snap.
She clicked her fingers softly, and a scattering of starlight appeared from nothing, shooting forward along the passage, illuminating everything in its path.
The corridor was nearly a hundred metres long, with candelabra hanging from the walls at intervals, and stone columns rising at regular intervals between them, leading all the way to the far end — where a great bronze door stood.
Standing inside, the space had a strong quality of wrongness. After a careful study, Bernadette determined that the wrongness came from the asymmetry of the corridor — a deliberate, considered asymmetry on either side.
If she recalled correctly, the architectural style of the Fourth Epoch Solomon period was precisely like this.
So this is a Solomon-era underground tomb?
Bernadette looked at Stephen. "You're certain this is your family's burial ground?"
He pointed ahead. "The Gloucester family crest is on those bronze doors."
The two of them walked slowly forward through the corridor, their footsteps echoing steadily in the silence.
Before long they stood before the bronze door. Carved on either side was a black laurel-wreath emblem — and it was indeed the same as the crest Bernadette had seen in Stephen's possession.
The first time she had seen that crest, she had idly speculated that Stephen's ancestors might be traceable to some king or emperor — the black laurel in particular conjured thoughts of the "Black Emperor," the Solomon Emperor of the Fourth Epoch. Later it had been confirmed that Stephen carried no Solomon bloodline — the King of the Five Seas, Nast, who was a widely acknowledged Solomon descendant himself, had said so directly.
"This door is the true entrance to the tomb chamber. Under normal conditions it cannot be opened — even crossing through the spirit world doesn't work." Stephen produced a slender dagger. "All it takes is a little of my blood to activate it."
Bernadette asked: "Your blood, or the 'solicitor's' blood?"
Stephen paused. "According to Derlin, it only needed a 'solicitor's' blood to open. But that was his account."
As he spoke, he cut his finger and let the blood fall against the bronze door.
In an instant the blood was absorbed into the metal and spread outward as a thin film of dark red, radiating swiftly in all directions until the whole door was covered. Then, with a low resonant hum, the bronze parted slowly to either side, and an endless darkness bled outward from the seam, carrying with it the heavy smell of rot and damp and a deep, penetrating cold.
Bernadette had already wrapped both of them in the Emperor's New Clothes, making their figures ghostly and indistinct — as though something that did not quite exist — allowing them to be immune to most forms of harm.
Snap.
She lit the starlight again, driving back the darkness near the entrance.
"The body's gone."
To be continued…
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