The God of the Hive Read online

  Snatched from him, at the very peak of the Preparation. The sacrifice had turned and summoned fire—the lamp, that was it. Damian had managed to fling out his arm and smashed the lamp. But what followed was unclear: noise and confusion and hot billows of flame, and … others? The impression of others—two of them?—and then a boom and a giant’s fist smashing his chest, and nothing until he had wakened to the smell of sea and smoke.

  Who could they have been? Enemies? Demons? Figments of his imagination? Not that it mattered: They had robbed him of Transformation. The Great Work lay shattered. A waste of years. His hand twitched with the urge to strangle someone.

  And the child? She who was to have been his acolyte, his student, the daughter of his soul? Had the two demons stolen her? Or was she still in that burnt-out place where he had taken refuge?

  Mid-day: She would be awake. Sooner or later, she would find her way out, and be seen. He had to get away before they came looking for him.

  “Gunderson?” he whispered.

  “He’ll be here tomorrow morning.” This was a man’s gravelly voice.

  “MacAuliffe.”

  “That’s right, Reverend Brothers. You know what happened to you?”

  With an effort, Brothers got his eyes open, squinting into the smokey light. “Shot?”

  “Aye.” The man grinned and reached down to whittle a slice from the sausage on the table, popping it between his yellow teeth and chewing, open-mouthed. “Only thing that kept you from the pearly gates was that book in your chest pocket. Weren’t for that, the lead would’ve gone straight into your heart. As it is, we dug the thing out of your shoulder. Can you move your fingers?”

  The wounded man looked down and saw a hand arranged atop a thick gauze pad covering his chest. The fingers slowly closed, then opened.

  “There you go,” MacAuliffe said, whittling off another slab of meat. “You’ll be right as rain in no time.”

  “Is that my knife?”

  The hired man held up the curved blade. “This yours? Wicked thing, nearly cut my thumb off with it.”

  “Give it!” The command came out weak, but MacAuliffe obeyed, wiping the grease on his trousers, then turning it so his sometime employer could take the ivory haft.

  “I found it on the ground next to that altar thing, nearly stepped on it before I saw the handle. Didn’t know for sure it was yours, but I didn’t want to leave it behind.”

  Brothers’ good hand slipped around the familiar object, his thumb smoothing its blade, the cool metal that had been given him on the very hour of his birth. He felt a pulse of temptation, to plunge the Tool into MacAuliffe’s hateful belly, but he was not strong enough to do without assistance. Not yet. Not until he could summon The Friend.

  Instead, he tucked the knife under his weak hand, as if the Tool’s strength might transfer to flesh. “I need you to send a telegram to London.”

  Chapter 4

  When we reached the coastal track and turned towards Kirkwall, the light strengthened with every step. Earlier, I had been forced to choose between the dangers of blind speed and the threat of being seen. Now I hitched the child up on my hips and leant forward into a near-jog. Her light body rocked against mine, and her own arms had to be getting tired, but she did not complain.

  Half a mile down the road, I spotted a farmer coming out of a shed, to climb onto a high-sided cart. A tangle of shrubs marked where the farmyard lane entered the road; I let Estelle slip to the ground behind them, stifling a groan as my shoulders returned to their proper angle. I hunkered beside her (my knees, too, having aged a couple of decades in the past hours) and said in a low voice, “We have to wait until this man has gone by, and I don’t want him to notice us. We need to be very quiet, all right?”

  “Can we ask him for a ride?” she said in her loud, hoarse, child’s whisper.

  “No, we can’t,” I said. “Now, not a word, all right?”

  I felt her nod, and put my arm around her tiny body.

  The metallic sounds from the cart indicated milk canisters, and as I’d feared, it was headed towards town: We should have to wait until he was some distance down the road before we followed. This was clearly a daily ritual, since the reins were nearly slack and the cart was controlled less by the farmer than by his nag. Who was in no hurry—its pace was no faster than our own, and the high sides … I stared, then pushed aside the branches to see.

  The cart was a purpose-built creation with a flat-bedded base on which had been fastened a large crate, some five feet on a side, tipped with the open top facing backwards. The dairyman sat in front, feet dangling, back leaning against what would originally have been the crate’s bottom.

  The only way he could see inside the cart would be if he were to walk around and look inside. Better yet, he had no dog.

  I snatched up the child, warning her again to silence, and trotted forward, grateful now for the blustering gusts that concealed my footsteps. Aiming at the rattling cans and hoping for the best, I tossed the child into the shadows and hopped in beside her. As the noise had suggested, the cans came nowhere near to filling the space, and there was room for us to creep around behind them. The road was rough enough that the driver took no note of the shift our boarding caused, and if the horse noticed our weight, he did not complain.

  Estelle snuggled against me. The milk cans rattled; the waking island scrolled past the rear of our transport. We dozed.

  The cart slowed, and stopped. I wrapped my arms more securely around the child, placing my finger across her lips. The farmer’s boots crunched to the road, the cart jerking as his weight left it. I followed the sound of his footsteps, braced for sudden flight, but the steps continued away from us a few feet, paused, then returned, moving more slowly and with a hitch in their gait. A figure suddenly loomed at the back of the cart, and another canister of milk swung inside. He added a second, then climbed back onto his seat and chirruped the horse into motion.

  He repeated the milk pickup half a mile down the road. Once we were moving, I worked my way towards the back, to ease the heavy canisters to one side. The road was smoother here, which meant that our sudden exit would be difficult to conceal. I waited for a rough patch, but before one came, I caught a faint odour of distillery, and knew we had run out of time.

  I gathered the child in my arms and more or less rolled off the back to the road. The horse reacted, but by the time the startled driver had controlled the animal and reined it to a halt, Estelle and I were squatting behind a wall.

  The man would have seen us, had he got down and walked back, but to him the jerk of the cart must have felt like a result of the horse’s shy, not the cause of it. After a moment, I heard him repeat the noise between his teeth, and the music of milk cans retreated down the road.

  I rose to get my bearings, and found that we were a scarce half-mile from where Captain Javitz had set us down.

  “Can you walk for a bit, Estelle? We’re nearly there.”

  In answer, she slipped her hand into mine and we set off up the road. It took two tries to find the correct lane, but to my relief, the ’plane was there, in a long field surrounded by walls and a hedgerow. Lights shone from the adjoining house, and I led my charge in that direction.

  I stopped outside the gate to tell the child, “My friend Captain Javitz, who drives the aeroplane, may be here. There’s also a nice lady and her son. But, we don’t want to talk to them too much. We’ll only be here for a few minutes.”

  “And then we’ll go in the aeroplane? Into the air?”

  “That’s right,” I said, adding under my breath, “God help us.”

  I knocked on the door.

  It opened, to a man pointing a gun at my heart.

  Chapter 5

  At noon, the air began to stink of herring. Soon they came to Wick, dropping anchor inside the crowded harbour. Damian was pale, but the dressings remained brown.

  Holmes picked a woollen Guernsey, much-mended and reeking of fish, from the pile atop Damian, pulli
ng it on in place of his overcoat. He added a cap in similar condition, then took the glass from the oil lamp and ran a finger over the inside, washing his hands and face with a thin layer of lamp-black.

  When he glanced down at Damian, the lad’s eyes were watching him, and the bearded face twitched in a weak smile. “You look the part.”

  “Aye,” Holmes said. “I’m rowing into the town to find a medical person who can pull that bullet out of you. Best if we do it here, rather than toss you in and out of a dinghy.” His voice had taken on the flavour of the north, not a full Scots but on the edge.

  “Still think you should’ve done it yourself.”

  “I might yet have to. Gordon will stay here with you.”

  “I’d kill for a swallow of tea.”

  “I’ll let him know. Lie still, now.” He turned to go.

  “Er, Father?”

  “Yes, son?” They had known each other less than three weeks: Both men still tasted the unfamiliar words on their tongues.

  “Do you think—”

  “Your daughter is safe. Without question. Russell will guard the child like a mother wildcat.”

  “And my …” He was unable to say the word.

  “Your wife? Yolanda died, yes. I saw her body. No question.”

  “You are certain it was Hayden? Back at the Stones?”

  “Yes.” This was not the first time he’d answered the question.

  Damian swallowed, as if to force down the information. “If I’m here, then … Her funeral?”

  “Mycroft will take care of it.” Which Holmes hoped was true—surely his brother’s inexplicable tangle with Scotland Yard would be a temporary state of affairs?

  “Would you,” Damian said, his left arm working under the cloth mound. “—my pocket?”

  Holmes pulled away the covers and felt Damian’s pockets, coming out with a leather note-case.

  “There’s a picture,” Damian explained.

  Not a photograph, but an ink drawing he had done of his wife and small daughter, intricate as the shadings of a lithograph. There were headless nails in the rough wall near Damian’s head; Holmes impaled the small page on one that lay in Damian’s line of sight. A woman with Oriental features and a cap of black hair sat with a not-so-Oriental child with equally black hair: Damian had captured a look of wicked mischief on both faces.

  Holmes stood.

  “I’m sorry,” Damian said. “About … everything.”

  The apology covered a far wider span than the preceeding three weeks, but Holmes kept his response light. “Hardly your doing. It’s a nuisance, having the police after us, but it’s not the first time. Once we patch you up, I’ll deal with it.”

  “Hope so.”

  “Rest easy,” Holmes said, and went up the ladder.

  Twelve minutes later, a final hard pull on the oars ran the dinghy up on a sandy patch at the edge of the harbour. Holmes tied the painter to a time-softened tree trunk above the reach of the tide, then tugged at his cap and set off for the town, walking with the gait of the sailors around him. When he saw a police constable strolling in his direction, he raised his pipe and a cloud of concealing smoke, giving the PC a brief nod as he passed.

  At the first chemist’s shop, a bell tinkled when Holmes stepped inside, but the customers took little notice: Stray fishermen were a commonplace. On reaching the counter, Holmes asked for sticking plasters, a box of throat lozenges, and a tube of ointment for Persistent Rashes and Skin Conditions. Picking the coins from his palm, he then said, “M’lad on the boat picked up a baddish slice, mebbe should have a coupla’ stitches. There a doctor in the town?”

  “There was, he took ill. Got a locum, though. His cousin.”

  “He’ll do,” Holmes grunted, and asked for directions. The chemist grinned as he gave them, but it wasn’t until the door to the surgery opened that Holmes realised why. The doctor’s locum tenans was a she: a short woman in her late twenties with hair the red of new copper and the colouration that went with it: pale and freckled, with eyes halfway between green and blue set into features that might have been pretty had they not been pinched with the anticipation of his response.

  “Yes,” she said tiredly, “I’m a girl, but yes, I’m a qualified doctor, and no, my cousin won’t return for two weeks or more, so unless you want to take your problem to Golspie or Inverness, I’m your man.” Her accent was Scots, but not local. St Andrews, he decided, or Kirkcaldy—although she’d spent time in London and much of her youth in … Nottingham?

  The analysis ran through his mind in the time it took him to draw breath. “Can you stitch a cut?”

  She cocked her head at him, considering his matter-of-fact tone. “I said I was a doctor, didn’t I? Of course I can stitch a cut. And deliver a bairn or set a leg or remove an appendix, for that matter.”

  “Well, I dinna require obstetrical care or major surgery, but I’ve a lad needing attention, if you’d like to bring your bag.”

  Her surprise made him wonder how many times she’d watched would-be patients turn away. “Amazing,” she said. “And he hasn’t been bleeding quietly for a week before you decided I’d have to do?”

  “Just since midnight.”

  She shook her head, donned her hat, picked up her bag, and followed him out onto the street.

  “Where is the cut?” she asked, half-trotting to compensate for his longer stride.

  “Over the ribs.”

  “How did he come by it?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll see when you get there.”

  “And where is ‘there’?”

  “Fishing boat. Moving him starts up the bleeding, I thought it best to have you look at it where he lies.”

  “If there’s much motion, we’ll have to bring him to shore.”

  “We’ll face that if we have to. Come, the dinghy’s along there.”

  “Can’t you bring the boat up to the docks?”

  “Not worth hauling anchor, it’s nobbut two minutes out.”

  He led the doctor down an alleyway, around the back of a herring shed, and through mountains of precisely stacked whisky barrels, which was hardly a direct route but he’d spotted the PC down the lane, and didn’t want to risk a second encounter. By the time they hit the small beach, the doctor was scurrying to keep up, and Holmes had become aware of a helmeted presence behind them.

  He strode ahead of the diminutive doctor and had the boat untied and floating free before she caught him up. “Are we—” she started to say, but he seized her shoulders to lift her bodily in over the last bit of mucky sand, letting go before she was fully balanced. She plopped onto the seat with a squeak of protest; he stepped one foot inside and shoved off with the other, nearly toppling her backwards as the small craft shot away from the land and rotated 160 degrees. Two quick pulls of the oars completed the turn-about, and they were soon beyond shouting distance, leaving a puzzled PC on the shore, scratching the head beneath his helmet.

  The doctor, with her back to the town, noticed nothing apart from her escort’s haste. She straightened her hat, tucked her black bag underneath the seat, and scowled at the man working the oars. “As I was about to ask, are we in a hurry?”

  “Tide’s about to turn. I didn’t want to risk losing the dinghy, but we’re all right now. I hope you’ll be having a scalpel in that bag of yours?”

  “Of course. But why should I require a scalpel to stitch a cut?”

  “Ah, about that. There is a hole in the lad’s epidermis, all right. Unfortunately, there’s a small lump of lead as well.”

  “A lump of—do you mean a bullet?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What have you dragged me into?” At last, she sounded uneasy. High time, thought Holmes sourly, and allowed the Scots to leave his diction.

  “In fact, you’re walking on the side of the angels, although I’d recommend in the future that a person who barely clears five feet might do well to ask a few more questions before she goes off with a strange man. Our s
ituation here is … complicated, but all I need is for you to cut out the bullet and patch up the entrance hole, and we’ll set you back safe and sound on firm land.” Although I fear, he added to himself, some distance from where you began.

  She gaped at him, then turned about as if to see how far she might have to swim to reach safety. The constable was still visible, but his back was turned, and she’d have needed a megaphone against the sharp breeze. When she faced Holmes again, she was angry beyond measure, and the flush in her fair skin made her eyes blaze blue.

  “I don’t know what you’re about, but kidnapping is a felony.”

  “You’re merely making a house call. Or, boat call,” he amended. “I intend to pay you, generously. I swear to you, neither I nor the wounded man have done anything remotely illegal.” Yet.

  She studied his face, and the anger in her own subsided with her fear. “If you’ve done nothing illegal and yet he’s been shot, why not go to the police?”

  “As I said, the situation is delicate at present. A misunderstanding. And being far from home, difficult to clear up.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Manchester,” he said promptly, and then they were at the boat, and Gordon was reaching down to help the doctor aboard.

  “Captain,” Holmes said before the fisherman could speak, “this is Doctor Henning. However, I think it may be best for everyone if we leave our names out of this. If she does not know our names, she need not worry about the consequences of speaking freely.”

  Gordon stared at the petite figure at the other end of his arm. “This is a doctor?”

  Chapter 6

  The Reverend Thomas Brothers, seated before the peat fire in the Orkney cottage, smiled freely at the wording of the telegram MacAuliffe had brought him: