WILLIAM DAVEY
Steamships are not sailing vessels: they obey the tides but not the winds, and tend to travel in straighter lines. They are also made of metal rather than wood—something that might have played a part in the events that unfolded on the ocean a few days later, and which helped fix the path of my journey through the subcontinent.
We left Aden under deep blue skies and burning sun, but within a week, the sky had clouded and our vessel was beset with rain. It might have daunted a sailing ship, which might have changed course to avoid the storm—but a steamship is not a sailed one. We stayed the course.
The weather worsened: not gradually but in stages, as if the storm were descending and enveloping us. Rain and fog cloaked the ship and cut visibility so that it seemed that we were adrift and alone upon the ocean.
Belowdecks was decidedly claustrophobic. Those who had enough patience and temerity ventured on deck, staying under cover as much as possible, but making their constitutionals in oilcloth gear or under stout umbrellas. I stayed on deck but briefly, though I was less affected than some. It was colder and more raw than the passage aboard Malabar Princess, but no worse than the rain of a British autumn. Nonetheless, there was something unsettling about this storm. My senses were dulled belowdecks, but out in the rain I could acutely feel that wrongness. It was something I could not explain—and I had thus far failed to locate the other mesmerist.
Two nights into the storm, I was sitting at a first-class dining table enduring the pitch and roll of the ship (in better form than most of my fellow passengers, I should hasten to admit) and I was suddenly aware of a presence: not the unusual power of a mesmerist’s aura, such as I had felt as we departed Aden, but that of a stoichios of some sort, an elemental spirit with significant power.
It would not do to disturb the others at my table. Pleading an unsettled stomach, I retired from the dining room and made my way as quickly as I could to my cabin. I bundled myself in an oilcloth coat and hat and made my way up on deck.
“This is not a fit place, sir,” one of the deck officers said to me as I came up through the hatch. “It’s surely not safe.”
“I need the air,” I answered.
The man looked dubious, but gave me a salute. “Best stay away from the railings, Reverend. The deck will be slick and we don’t want to lose you.”
“I’d prefer that myself, sir.”
He turned away to his duties, leaving me to the miserable scene. I waited for a moment, trying to orient myself. The sensation I had experienced belowdecks was redoubled above, and I found myself turning toward the bow. I tried to stay under cover as much as possible, but the rain battered me fiercely as I made my way forward of the second great smokestack. I was presented there with a singular sight.
Out in the rain, I could see a single figure—a young woman, neither dressed for the weather nor protected by an umbrella. The rain that crashed from the sky seemed to part around her, never touching her body or clothing.
Most unusually of all, she looked terribly, frighteningly familiar. Her profile conveyed her identity, and a crash of lightning showed her face.
It was Eliza Weatherhead Esdaile.
Except that it was not: it was a chthonic spirit, a fairly powerful one, in Eliza’s shape. Only one chthonios could possibly be so expert at mimicking that image: the one that had possessed Eliza for nearly eight years.
And now she was aboard Malabar Princess.
“Reverend Davey,” she said. “You are here at last.”
“You know who I am.” It seemed pointless to deny it or to attempt to conceal myself—if I could perceive her, she could perceive me.
“You are the reason my hunger is unrequited.”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“I shall enlighten you,” she said, stepping forward. I braced myself and raised my hands in a warding gesture, unsure whether it would have any effect. To my surprise, it did: she seemed to hesitate, either unwilling or unable to advance further.
“Please do.”
“There was an arrangement,” she said. “I was chosen to protect one of your servants—James Esdaile. He was to be mine when his life ended—but you induced him to commit suicide.”
“I did nothing of the kind. I do not condone such an act, and was appalled when it happened.”
“You did not look appalled at the time.”
If I needed any further confirmation of the being’s identity, this was it.
“I cannot account for my expression. I was surprised.”
“You drove him to this, William Davey. You threatened James Esdaile. You made him conceive of this evil plan to break his contract. As you have done this to me, I shall do this to you.”
“Without negotiation.”
“I am not interested in negotiation,” she spat out. “I am not interested in discussion.”
I wondered, much later, what my fate would have been if she had possessed the time-dilating abilities of Mehmet Nour or the Levantine. I concluded that it would have been quite unpleasant.
“You will forgive me for not immediately acceding to your request,” I said, backing away. As I retreated, she advanced; I did my best to keep good footing, but found the deck slippery and treacherous, particularly moving backward.
I had to use one hand to brace myself while leaving the other in a warding gesture. The spirit—Fi—seemed to draw strength from this, and was also emboldened by a manifestation that I could see behind her, looming over the bow of the ship, illuminated by further flashes of lightning.
It was a nereic spirit—a power of the water. Unlike Fi, or even the Levantine, and disturbingly like the beings I had seen on Malta and beyond Mehmet Nour’s villa, it seemed enormous and extremely powerful.
I wondered if she had offered to share the meal with this being.
The distance between us narrowed. What had been fifty or sixty feet was now no more than thirty as I retreated along the starboard side of the ship, attempting to keep my feet and stay away from the rails. Crew on deck had come to realize that something was happening—but I suspected that they could not see Fi, nor the malevolent nereic being that was crashing over the foredeck.
No one tried to stop me as I backed away, still holding my hand up in a warding gesture: it was if I were all alone on the storm-lashed deck—
Until I suddenly heard a voice speak my name.
“Reverend Davey,” the voice said loudly and firmly—female, an older voice I thought I recognized but could not place. “Position yourself in the center of the ship.”
I dared not look away, but tried to edge toward its sound. “Why?” I shouted.
“You foolish man,” she shouted. “Do as I say. The two smokestacks—” A crash of water on the deck drowned out her words.
The two main smokestacks of Malabar Princess were located equidistant from fore and aft, thus dividing the ship into thirds. Unfortunately, the rough center of the ship—as the voice had described it—required me to climb a ladder to an upper platform, even more exposed to the weather. It also meant that I would have to completely abandon my warding gesture, allowing Fi to come as close as she was able.
I might be able to hold off a chthonic spirit such as Fi. I was certain that the nereic being was simply beyond my ability to withstand.
And the weather was on its side.
I let go of the handle with my left hand and made a swift mesmeric pass with both hands extended partway, thumbs pointing down, then sweeping them out to my right and left. Fi had been moving confidently forward and was caught unawares—or else she was less powerful than I even imagined: she was sent sprawling. As the ship undertook a significant roll to starboard, she slid sideways to her left, slamming up against an upright stanchion.
I could hear her cursing in a most unladylike fashion; but I had already turned and begun climbing the ladder directly behind me.
“There had best be a plan,” I said over the din of the storm. A peal of thunder crashed through the air directly after I had said it, as if to punctuate my words.
When I reached the top rung, a gloved hand grasped under my forearm and helped me up on the slippery deck, pulling me into the lee of an overhang that at least took me out of the rain for a moment.
I found myself facing a woman, dressed for the weather as I was. She was older, my age at least: she also seemed to be taking a moment to assess what she saw. I did not know her, but her face seemed slightly familiar—and then, despite the inclement conditions, I recognized it with a sudden rush.
I had seen her in Blackwell—and helped her remove her bags from the train. But she had been in disguise then as an older lady in a veiled hat.
And she had dismissed me with a casual mesmeric gesture.
I had seen her on the dock, and at Suez as well, and possibly on the gangway in Aden. She had clearly been on the scene since I had left Egypt—and was also clearly a practitioner of the Art.
“We have to reach the center of the ship,” she said. “The two smokestacks function like magnetic nodes—similar to the water towers at the Crystal Palace. In the exact center, the chthonic being will be severely diminished in power—long enough for us to deal with her.”
“‘Us’?”
“Yes, Mr. Davey. Us. We will need to get the cursed thing overboard into the ocean and let that”—she gestured toward the bow, where we could clearly see a distorted something at least thirty or forty feet in height athwart the steamship’s prow—“that being deal with it.”
Fi began to climb after us.
My unknown benefactor moved quickly along the side of the overhang, which ended in a dozen feet, after which we would be exposed again.
My mind raced as I scrambled after her out into the open, the wind blowing rain in my face, managing handholds on the deck as we moved, hands and knees, across the metal plates. Her plan was sound enough: position ourselves between the smokestacks where Fi’s power would supposedly be diminished. If this were true it would further explain the Crystal Palace phenomenon—the original site had not been a barrier to mesmeric power, but it had not had the two large round water towers present at the current one. The smokestacks would function the same way.
Presently we stopped. She braced herself, peeled back one glove with her fingers and withdrew a coin which she placed on edge; it rolled a short distance and fell. She tried again, some inches away, with the same effect.
I turned and saw that Fi had reached the top of the ladder and was now making her way across to us. In the stuttering light of the storm her face wore a triumphant expression.
There was no point in asking for an explanation. My fellow mesmerist placed her coin once more; it seemed not to move quite as far, but its behavior did not please her, and she said something almost inaudible, and likely unladylike, under her breath.
“Madam,” I said at last, “I do not think we have time for any further experiments.”
“Just a moment,” she said, placing the coin an inch or two to the left. Remarkably, it did not move. She snatched it up, slid to the place where it had been, and raised her free hand in a gesture. I managed a warding as well, but Fi continued to move toward us.
“What you did down below,” the woman said very softly to me. “You must do it again.”
“And?”
“And I will do the rest. But wait until she is almost upon us, because her own power will be the weakest.”
“What will you do?”
“I must convince the nereic being that this creature would be more tasty than you. Clearly the chthonios is hungry: the nereis is no doubt hungry as well. Let us take your threat away, and sate it at the same time. Are you ready, sir?”
“Have I a choice?”
“Of course not.”
“Then I am ready.” I slid the toe of my boot into the nearest handle and propped myself on one knee. Then, with Fi less than six feet away, I took a deep breath and performed the same mesmeric pass as I had done below.
Perhaps the desperation of the circumstances strengthened me; perhaps my new companion’s estimate of Fi’s weakness was more accurate than I had expected.
And perhaps I was just more skilled than I had any right to expect, given the storm, the presence of a powerful elemental force and the pitching of the vessel. Fi’s feet went out from under her and she slid once again, this time to port.
There was a flash of lightning that suddenly revealed the entire scene in stark detail—the rain-washed deck, the smokestack ahead, the tableau of my companion, Fi and the terrible nereic being—and for just a moment, another figure: a nearly naked man in a turban and brief kilt, crouching beneath the overhang from which we had emerged. A moment later, he was gone.
The mysterious woman beside me stood up fully, bracing her own foot as I had done, and began to sing.
It was no tune I could identify, and no language I understood, but it chilled me to hear it.
Her sinuous hand gestures, curving up and down, gestured toward Fi, who was holding on to a short metal loop embedded in the upper deck. The chthonic spirit’s expression of grim satisfaction changed to one of surprise and then horror, as she glanced at her hand and watched her grip loosen: first the thumb, then each finger in turn—four, three, two and then finally the last finger—and my companion’s hands came together in a clap!
And Fi, in the shape of Eliza Weatherhead Esdaile, lost her grip and was flung off the upper deck and into the storm. I would have expected her to be hurled downward toward the main deck; for some reason, however, she was buoyed upward. The huge nereic being abandoned its post over the bow and moved at impressive speed to the port side of the ship. Fi’s body was pulled into it, and then the being and its new captive were drawn down, down, down into the ocean.
The woman knelt—or, rather, dropped to her knees. I reached out to steady her, nearly losing my own purchase.
“That was well done,” I managed, “though it uses no discipline I recognize.”
“I am not surprised, Reverend Davey. I learned it in Benares.”
“I am significantly in your debt, madam. I regret to say that I do not know your name.”
“I doubt whether it would be one you know, sir.”
“Without knowing the name, I am in no position to judge.”
“Very well,” she said, wiping rain from her face as best she could, and straightening herself in her kneeling position. “My name, sir, is Georgiana Shackleford.”