The Romulus Equation Read online

  ‘Ruby?’ repeated Quaint.

  ‘Ja, it was a sad day when she decided to leave my tutelage, but still… a life travelling the roads of Europe in a cramped caravan with an old bore like me was hardly one for a young woman! She was my greatest pupil, and I trust that she still is – or has your drab circus dulled the keenness of her blade?’

  For Quaint, everything suddenly clicked into place. Not that it made much sense once it had got there.

  ‘Viktor?’ he gasped. ‘Viktor Dzierzanowski?’

  The German took a bow. ‘The greatest knife thrower in all of Europe at your service!’ he bellowed, with the pride of a man obviously used to announcing himself with such grandeur. ‘But do not tell Ruby I said that.’

  ‘Viktor, what the hell are you doing here?’ asked Quaint, disbelieving his eyes.

  ‘Apart from saving your neck all day?’

  ‘My what…?’

  ‘First in the alley when those fiends tried to rob you, and then next with that fellow you were trying to throw out of a window at your hotel, and then there was that whelp that soaked his undergarments just now.’ Viktor snorted. ‘In Rome less than twenty-four hours and already three people have tried to kill you. Cornelius… that is impressive even for you.’

  ‘The night’s still young,’ said Quaint. ‘But… what brings you to Rome? I thought you were the darling of Germany’s performance circuit, making a small fortune from what I’d heard.’

  ‘Alas, mein Freund, I had to postpone my tour on account of an old pain that has returned to plague me once more,’ replied Viktor, mournfully.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Where is it?’

  ‘Stood right in front of me!’ boomed the German. ‘Your former governess is an astounding woman, I must say!’

  ‘Governess? You mean Destine?’

  ‘Unless you have any other governesses that I am not aware of?’ asked Viktor. ‘I see that her wondrous gifts have not wavered. As I slept, I was plagued with dreams that you were going to get yourself in hot water, and I felt strangely compelled to come to Rome immediately. My nephew works down at the port, so I told him to keep an eye out for you. You were not hard to spot. There is no man quite like Cornelius Quaint!’

  ‘I hear that a lot,’ Quaint said.

  ‘It seems the Madame’s psychic message was correct, for without my intervention just now, you would be nothing but a mess on the street, ja?’ Viktor poked at Quaint’s silver-white curls with his finger. ‘It has been a long time, Cornelius… you have aged not so well, I think.’

  ‘You’re one to talk,’ noted Quaint, poking the German’s portly stomach. ‘Still a slave to the ale, I see?’

  ‘Ah, but what a mistress she is!’ beamed Viktor. ‘She keeps me company on the cold winter nights, sends me straight to sleep and is gone by the morning. Just how I prefer my mistresses. So… you will tell me about our plan now, eh?’

  ‘Plan? What do you mean?’ enquired Quaint.

  ‘Come now, Cornelius! I came all this way to help you out, do you really expect me to let you do this alone?’ asked the knife thrower.

  ‘What exactly did Destine’s psychic message say?’

  ‘Everything, and were I in your shoes I would also wish to seek out my parents’ killer and rip his arms off.’

  ‘I just need to know why he killed them,’ said Quaint, ‘… and then I’ll rip his arms off. But first I’m seeking a man by the name of Romulus who might be able to give me some information, so I thought I’d come here and snoop about a bit.’ Quaint pointed over his shoulder. ‘That’s where I can find the man I seek, but the problem is, from what I’ve heard he’s probably just as dangerous as the real enemy.’

  ‘You should pick your foes more carefully, eh?’ said Viktor. ‘I see you are the same old Cornelius – never thinking things through!’

  ‘Actually, you’re wrong,’ said Quaint. ‘Normally whenever I improvise I only end up running into a few snags, so this time I promised myself that I’d consider all my options carefully before I act.’

  ‘And what have you come up with?’

  ‘Marginally less than when I improvise,’ said Quaint. ‘It seems that in return for him leaving them alone, the locals give some sort of payment to Romulus every week at the cathedral, so I thought I’d take a look and see what’s what.’

  Viktor stroked his bushy moustache warily. ‘Skulking around an enemy’s stronghold is never a wise idea, Cornelius… especially at night and especially on your own. You could run into trouble before you know it.’ He slapped a thick hand onto Quaint’s shoulder. ‘It’s a good thing that now you have me to watch your back, ja?’

  Quaint frowned. ‘You mean you want to come along?’

  ‘Why not? I have nothing else planned for tonight.’

  ‘You mean… you’re not going to try to talk me out of it?’ asked Quaint.

  ‘Why would I want to talk you out of it? It sounds like fun!’ The bombastic German thumped his fists upon his chest like an ape. ‘Fear not, Cornelius, my formidable skills with a blade are at your disposal and now we shall be twice as impervious to harm!’

  ‘Or twice as many targets,’ said Quaint. ‘You know, I’m not exactly sure this is what Destine had in mind when she sent you that message.’

  ‘She asked me to keep an eye on you, and where better to do it from than by your side, eh?’ asked Viktor.

  ‘It’s that sort of skewed reasoning that I’ve always admired about you, Vik,’ grinned Quaint, his poise suitably buoyed by the German’s mass. ‘And now that you’re onboard, I think I’ve just thought of an excellent plan!’

  Chapter XIII

  The Undercurrent

  ‘I must have wax in my ears,’ said Viktor, as he and Quaint crouched behind a low wall opposite San Vincentine’s Cathedral. ‘Tell me this plan of yours again?’

  ‘I’m going to get myself caught,’ said Quaint.

  ‘On purpose?’ asked Viktor.

  ‘If my luck runs true to form it’ll happen eventually, so at least it’ll save time.’

  ‘But I fail to see what you’ll gain.’

  ‘Ground,’ replied Quaint. ‘Once I’m apprehended, where do you think I’ll be taken?’

  ‘To a wooden box in a hole in the ground?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Quaint, ‘but there’s an equal chance that they’ll take me to their master instead. Romulus employs a bevy of drones eager to do his bidding, so a little bit of my trademark bluster and they’ll take me right to him.’

  ‘That is quite a gamble, Cornelius. And a dangerous one too.’

  ‘I thought you said that we’re impervious to harm?’

  ‘To harm yes, but not to sheer stupidity!’ snorted the German.

  ‘This has worked for me before, all right?’ insisted Quaint. ‘You just bark orders and don’t give them any time to question your authority. Now… I’m going to be counting on you to save my hide should I get into any bother, so stay right here, and most importantly… don’t make a sound!’

  ‘That will not be difficult with my stomach in my mouth,’ muttered Viktor.

  Quaint grabbed the German’s shoulder and pulled him down behind the cathedral wall. ‘There are some of Romulus’s men patrolling the grounds. It’s now or never!’

  Viktor watched as Quaint hopped over the brick wall into the cathedral’s graveyard. ‘It is a wonder that man has lived so long,’ he whispered to himself.

  Quaint melted into the darkness as he weaved his way through the headstones and grave markers towards the cathedral. Two guards armed with long-barrelled muskets stood around the side of the building and Quaint had to strain his ears to hear their words more clearly.

  ‘This is the easiest money I have ever earned,’ said one, a shabby individual with a twisted scar across his cheek. ‘Romulus has no need of guards! No one dares to come snooping around this place. His reputation is enough to make people think twice.’

  ‘Have you heard the rumours? About the boss, I mean,’ s
aid his colleague, a young man barely out of his teens. ‘Is it true what they say?’

  ‘Romulus has built a vast empire,’ replied the other guard. ‘He has riches beyond your wildest dreams, yet he does not spend it. He is saving it for something. No one knows what.’

  ‘No, I meant about the… other thing,’ said the nervous guard.

  His colleague looked uneasily up at the night sky. ‘Oh. That. That is true. I have seen it with my own eyes and it was a sight I shall never forget. And believe me, I have tried.’

  Quaint smiled. Romulus had carved a reputation for himself by breeding fear, and it was prevalent within his own men too. But fear was nothing but an illusion. Quaint had met the type before. No leader of a criminal empire reached his position by getting his hands dirty. They were usually cowards, hiding behind an army of minions short on morals.

  Quaint whistled, wishing to draw attention to himself, and the two men peered through the darkness towards him, their hands darting to their muskets. Quaint knew exactly how to play the scene, just as he had done many times before and it always worked out well for him. As a conjuror, he knew all the tricks.

  ‘Buona sera, chaps, I’m just—’

  A musket’s butt slammed into his forehead and he collapsed to the ground.

  The two guards picked up his ankles and dragged his body through a side door, into the cathedral proper.

  ‘Wundervoll, Cornelius,’ groaned Viktor from his hiding place. ‘Great plan!’

  Climbing over the graveyard wall, he pounded his heavy feet towards the door through which Quaint had been taken. He pressed an ear against the wood. He could hear footsteps. And they were getting louder. Closer too. The sound of gravel crunching underfoot. He frowned. Gravel? Inside a cathedral?

  ‘Halt!’ snapped a curt voice, directly behind him. ‘Turn around!’

  ‘Get your arms up!’ snapped another, equally as curt.

  Wisely, Viktor did as he was told.

  ‘Thank the stars!’ he said to the guards in his best Italian (which was just as bombastic as his English). ‘I was just passing and I saw an intruder enter this way. A frightening sort with wild eyes. You must inform Romulus at once!’

  The two guards held an unheard but brief conversation and bustled past Viktor, pushing him aside. Viktor took a few moments to digest what had just happened.

  ‘Unglaublich! Cornelius was right. It actually works!’

  Viktor felt a sudden compulsion to get inside the cathedral and he did not fight it. Taking the same entrance that the guards had gone through was obviously not a good idea. Looking up, he saw a stained glass window above the doorway. The cathedral was dilapidated and its brickwork façade was crumbling in places, and it was easy for the bulky German to step up from the door’s handle onto its awning, manoeuvre himself onto the ledge fixed above the entrance and reach the glass. His strong fingers burrowed themselves into the pliable lead and gradually his fingernails prised the glass from its frame.

  ‘Stay alive, Cornelius,’ he whispered. ‘If you die, your French governess will never let me hear the end of it.’

  ‘I promise you, Romulus will want to see me!’ insisted Quaint to his two captors as they dragged him into the main cathedral. ‘Did you hear me? I said he’d want to see…’

  His voice trailed off as his eyes met a huge black shape stood before the altar, silhouetted in the murky gloom. As he was jostled closer, the shape grew into the structure of a man – and a very big one, at that. A throaty growl echoed around the cathedral’s cold walls as Romulus turned, and Quaint suddenly had an appreciation for the man’s fearful reputation, for it was not solely founded upon myth. Romulus grew in detail (and not to mention size) as he walked between the rows of wooden seats towards the captured (and not to mention captivated) conjuror. He was well over seven feet tall, even walking with a stoop as he did. Tendrils of matted, long grey hair draped down across his shoulders and tobacco stains tainted the corners of his moustache into the thick coarse beard that covered most of his face.

  ‘Whoever you are, you have disturbed my thoughts.’ Romulus’s voice was restrained, as though he was fighting a great urge to lash out. ‘This causes me great pain.’

  ‘I’m not sure whether to recommend a doctor or a veterinary surgeon,’ Quaint said.

  ‘Do you wish me to kill him, sir?’ asked one of Quaint’s captors.

  Romulus glared at the man. ‘Kill him? Certainly not!’

  ‘What did I say?’ said Quaint, triumphantly. ‘I told you he’d want to see me!’

  ‘I will kill him myself,’ snarled Romulus.

  Quaint gulped as the look in the bestial crime-lord’s yellowed eyes gave his every word credence. ‘Perhaps we’ve got off on the wrong foot. The thing is, Romulus, I need your help.’

  ‘I am not a resource frequently plundered for help, stranger.’ Romulus took a step closer to the conjuror and bared his teeth. They were dripping with stringy saliva. He bathed his tongue over them and Quaint was affronted by the stench of garlic on the Italian’s breath. ‘I do not know who you are, or what has brought you here… but you chose the wrong night to trespass on my property.’ He grunted towards his two men. ‘Take him down to the crypt. The Specialist can have his way with him.’

  ‘Specialist? In what field, might I ask?’ Quaint cocked an eyebrow as the two thugs dragged him down the aisle towards the cathedral’s crypt.

  Seemingly, he was about to find out…

  ‘Wait! Just give me a minute of your time!’ said Quaint over his shoulder as he was dragged down a flight of stone steps and away from the altar. ‘I wanted to ask you a question! I wanted to ask you about the Hades Consortium!’

  But it was too late. Romulus was out of earshot, and as Quaint mulled over his imminent fix, he wondered if he would ever get a chance for a second impression.

  Chapter XIII

  The Second Impression

  San Vincentine’s crypt held little in the way of artefacts of worship. They had all long since been plundered for the crime-lord’s needs. Instead, it housed a strange machine; a tall device with a glass dome encasing all manner of filaments and copper coils. A single metal chair was positioned in the centre of the room, and on the walls were shelves full of an assortment of coloured powders and liquids, and on the bureau at the far end were a tortoiseshell box and a pair of thick rubber gloves.

  Quaint’s captors pushed him into the crypt so roughly that his shoulder smashed into one of the stone columns supporting the low ceiling. They laughed at his misfortune as they tore his overcoat from his back, pushing him into the chair.

  Within moments, his wrists had been bound to the iron supports, and for some bizarre reason his captors had removed his boots and socks. The two guards then turned and exited through the arched doorway like mechanisms on a Swiss clock returning to their positions. Hearing the scuffling of light feet, Quaint looked up as a small man entered the crypt; hunch-backed and with a misshapen head as if several brains were trying to occupy his skull at the same time. This was the Specialist – and exactly what field the man was a specialist in, Quaint was about to find out.

  ‘Do I just call you “the Specialist” or do you have a first name?’ asked Quaint.

  ‘You speak my language?’ said the Specialist. ‘Yet you are not Italian.’

  ‘English, actually,’ replied Quaint.

  ‘Oh? You have my respect then! The English are usually such a lazy breed when it comes to learning other tongues. Might I enquire as to how many languages you do speak?’

  ‘Six, fluently. Three, I can get by in,’ answered Quaint. ‘Look, what’s this all for?’

  ‘What is this all what for?’ enquired the Specialist.

  ‘The small talk,’ replied Quaint.

  The Specialist cackled to himself. ‘I was merely asking how many languages you speak so that when I remove your tongue, I will know exactly how much it will pain you to never speak them again.’

  ‘I see,’ said Quaint.


  ‘You see, I relish being able to remove accoutrements from my patients,’ continued the Specialist. ‘I like to strip them away, bit by bit, deconstructing their souls one little piece at a time.’

  ‘Job satisfaction is so hard to come by these days,’ said Quaint.

  ‘A comedian, eh? It has been some time since I practised on a comedian. If I recall, I poured gunpowder into his eyelids and forced him to stare into the fire. Died of shock in the end, the poor blind wretch. A bit of a shame really. We were just beginning to get along.’

  ‘Look, you can dispense with all the theatrics,’ said Quaint. ‘I’ll tell you exactly why I’m here and whatever else you want to know.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ said the Specialist, with a disapproving wag of his finger. ‘That is not how this game works at all. If you spill your guts so soon, it is hardly worth my time making you bleed, is it?’

  ‘Sorry to be a bother,’ said Quaint. ‘In any case, I need some information and that’s why I came here seeking Romulus. Sadly, I didn’t get the chance to tell him that. So, now that you know, you can just run along and tell your boss, all right?’

  Ignoring Quaint completely, the Specialist opened the tortoiseshell box on the bureau and removed a pair of metal clamps. The deformed man was merrily going about his business – business that involved plugging two long wires into the ends of the clamps. He pulled on the rubber gloves, and then bustled over to the large machine in the corner of the room that was oscillating with a low hum.

  Quaint stared at the goblin of a man. ‘What does that thing do?’

  ‘Cause great suffering, predominantly,’ replied the Specialist.

  Quaint gulped. ‘I thought you might say that.’

  ‘This cathedral was constructed on top of a river,’ said the Specialist. ‘It runs beneath the entire building. I chose the crypt for my workplace because of it, in fact. Not only do I find the sound of rushing water quite calming, it makes for such an interesting accompaniment to the pain… but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.’ He pulled a lever affixed to the wall and a wooden sluice gate opened directed in front of Quaint’s chair, making his feet drop into rushing water. The cold bit into the conjuror’s flesh and he winced in discomfort as the chill crawled up his legs.