“That was splendidly done,” the prince told me as he landed next to me. Stoker had dropped him none too gently, but he took it like a proper man of spirit. “What now?”
Stoker landed next to him, his boots striking with a thud. “Did you come with a carriage?”
“My good man, I hardly think so,” the prince told him with a touch of reproof. “I hired a hackney and sent it away when I arrived.”
“Hell and damnation,” Stoker muttered. “We shall have to find another. Come on, then.”
We hurried around the outside of the wall, skirting it until we came to the corner, where Stoker lifted his middle finger and thumb to his mouth, giving the sort of sharp, distinctive whistle known to drivers around the city. As we waited, Stoker stripped off his vast black cloak.
“You cannot go abroad in that,” he advised the prince. His Royal Highness quickly removed the pink gown, thrusting it into my arms. He wore trousers underneath but no shirt. Its absence was quickly concealed by Stoker’s enveloping cloak. Somewhere in our flight, the prince had dropped his tiny paste crown, and now he flung away the earrings that matched it. He tugged off his blond wig and pitched it into the bushes, using the veil to wipe away the worst of the face paint.
“Not respectable enough by half, but it will have to do,” I said. “At least now you are not likely to be arrested by any passing bobby.”
A hackney clattered up to the curb with a driver perched atop, muffled to the cheeks against the rising chill.
“Thank God,” I muttered.
No sooner had the words left my mouth than I heard footsteps approaching, quickly, pounding hard on the pavement. They came at us from two sides. I half turned to look, and as I did so, my arm was clasped tightly. I felt a prick in the soft flesh inside my elbow. I cried out—more in rage than in pain—just as I saw another figure bring a hand to Stoker’s upraised arm, plunging a hypodermic into his shoulder. The prince gave a cry, but he crumpled at once as one of our assailants drove a needle into his arm. I saw the driver of the hackney leap down to open the door and shove the prince inside as my knees felt suddenly boneless, unable to hold me up, folding like paper.
My eyes rolled heavenwards and darkness gathered at the edges of my vision, clouding closer until all I saw was a tiny pinprick of light and at the center several dark shapes.
“At last,” a voice said. And that was the last I heard for many hours.
* * *
• • •
I woke not with a start but with a gradual lightening of the darkness pressing against me. There was a sense of coming back into my own body, as if my consciousness had flown elsewhere whilst my body remained tethered to the earth, but try as I might, I could retrieve no memory, form no impressions of where I had been or what had been done to me.
After several minutes, I was able to determine that I was sitting upright. There was an odd floating quality to my awareness, as though my head were only nominally attached to my body and might drift away if I let it. I could not yet open my eyes, so I merely sat, composing myself and stretching out my consciousness like the quivering antennae of an Atlas moth to learn about my surroundings.
I felt a dampness in the air, the cold chill just before dawn, I thought. And I smelt something riparian, not the fresh river water of the countryside but the heavy, muddy musk of the Thames. I shifted slightly, scraping my slipper on the floor. It was stone, and cold through the satin of my shoe. The tiny noise echoed for a moment—a large room, then, situated not far from the waterside. A warehouse? There was no sense of anything near to my head, so I guessed the ceiling was high, the floor obviously uncovered, the damp stone giving off a particular scent of its own.
My arms and legs were bound, and a blindfold had been secured imperfectly over my eyes. The fabric was soft, a handkerchief perhaps. There was a mildly sore spot on my arm where the needle had penetrated, but otherwise my only complaint was the woolly feeling in my head. I assessed my circumstances with some relief. My clothing felt intact, and there was no telltale soreness about my person to indicate that I had been abused or violated in any fashion save the means of sedation administered by the needle.
The chair upon which I sat was wooden and sturdy, and I realized after a moment that it was situated with its back to another chair. I pulled forwards slightly and felt the ropes about my chest catch. A deep groan answered, and I was seized by a rush of joy so heady I very nearly collapsed.
“Stoker,” I said, testing out my voice.
For an agonizing moment, there was no reply. At last, an answering growl.
“What in the name of the oozing wounds of Christ is happening?”
“It appears,” I said slowly, “we have been abducted. Are you injured?”
“My head feels as though I were on the third day of shore leave,” he said bluntly. “You?”
“I am perfectly fine except for a curious lightheadedness.”
“The sedative,” he told me. “The effects should wear off soon. Faster if we had a stimulant.”
“You mean like coffee or brandy?”
“Or a nice solution of cocaine,” he said, reminding me that he had once before roused me from a stupor using just such a method.
I turned my head and scraped my face along the shoulder of my gauzy dress. The gesture was enough to catch the handkerchief, dragging it free. I shook my head and the handkerchief dropped to the ground. I blinked against the sudden glaring light, but a moment’s respite showed that the light was feeble, a single oil lamp situated in the corner, far away from where we were. A narrow bed stood next to it, and atop it, the slender form of the prince, his mouth open and emitting gentle snores. The fact that we had played a role in the abduction of the future king was a good deal more than I could readily comprehend at present, so I made a note of his presence and his regular, even breathing and decided to worry about him later.
Stoker and I were sitting on wooden chairs, back to back, each of us bound individually and then roped together to keep us upright. If I turned my head as far as possible, I could just make out the edge of Stoker’s body, clothed in his trousers and shirt, his boots gone along with his weapons, I had no doubt. I wriggled a little before letting out one of Stoker’s oaths under my breath.
“Weapons?” Stoker asked.
“They’ve taken them,” I replied. “Yours?”
He paused a moment, shifting in his chair. “I had only the picklocks in my sash,” he reminded me. “Gone, as best I can tell.”
“And the jewel?” I asked. But I already knew the answer.
“Also gone.” He gave a little sigh that might have been resignation.
“Well, it will require all of our ingenuity to escape from this,” I said firmly.