“You got stabbed by a table?”
“No. Well… yes. But that’s hardly the point. The smiff, Watson! We made a smiff! And I’ve come to believe Moriarty has a smiff, too.”
“How do you come by this knowledge?” I asked.
My tone must have been somewhat doubtful, for Holmes gave a little huff. “We didn’t all get to spend half a year gadding about as Hall Pycroft! While you were away, Moriarty’s empire came back into full swing. Several attempts have been made on my interests and even my life. Each time it happens, there is this funny feeling. It feels rather like the time I got slapped around by our Christmas turkey.”
“Goose, Holmes.”
“And we all know who that turkey was, don’t we?”
“Moriarty. And goose,” I said. “So you can feel whenever an evil action is attributable to Moriarty? That might prove useful.”
“Oh, hardly,” Holmes laughed. “I know him so well and there are so few magical masterminds running around that there’s seldom much doubt. The useful bit comes as a strange side effect: I can always sense that fear, even when he’s not attacking me. It’s hard to detect if I’m distracted, but on quiet evenings I can feel it. Many is the night I’ve spent on London’s rooftops, gazing to the southeast.”
“Holmes?”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve been doing magical things on people’s rooftops?”
“What of it?”
“People don’t mind a dark-clad, sometimes-green-fire-eyed stranger bumping about on their roof?”
“Well occasionally they do. Shots have been fired. But the main point, Watson, is that I can feel a hole in our world. It never moves, so I don’t think it’s Moriarty himself. I think I’m feeling a source of demonic power to which Moriarty and I are intimately tied.”
I shook my head. “I just don’t know… From what you tell me, Moriarty was an intensely careful man and never used great quantities of magic. Can you see him creating a smiff?”
“Ah! That’s just the thing, Watson! I can! In fact, I can envision the exact moment he might have done it!”
“Oh? When?”
“Think, Watson! Think! When was that careful man at his most desperate—a desperation I had just caused, by the way?”
“Oh! When you killed him!”
“Just so, Watson! No living thing can withstand the touch of Melfrizoth! There he stood, with my burning blade right through his chest, with only seconds to save himself. It must have been then! A great, panicked burst of power, expended as a last resort, with none of his usual caution! That would also explain why I can feel it—if it’s my soul-blade that helped cause the thing.”
“And you think you can move against Moriarty by finding this smiff?” I asked.
Holmes shrugged. “Possibly. It seems as if something was keeping him alive all the time he was just a disembodied thought. Something was giving him enough power to mesmerize people and take over their bodies.”
“But, Holmes, we both know you can’t close a smiff, not even your own.”
Holmes shrugged. “I could try binding it to me—try to suck up all the energy so Moriarty can’t have any. There’s no chance he’s got a minion with enough magical knowledge to handle such a delicate matter, so he’d have to come himself.”
“Are you trying to force a personal confrontation?”
“I think I must. He keeps trying to kill me. None of the attempts has gotten too close, really, but he still has the advantage because I cannot strike back at him. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know who he is. He might be a disembodied rune, still. Or he might have possessed the prime minister. Maybe he’s a yak, I don’t know.”
“A yak, Holmes?”
“The turkey didn’t work, so who knows what he’ll try next? The point is, Watson, whenever it comes to a confrontation between Moriarty and me, I am in danger of being outsmarted and he is in danger of being overpowered. I must find a way to effect the latter before he enacts the former.”
I gave a nod. “Your thinking seems sound, Holmes.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” he sighed. “Because Grogsson and Lestrade helped me with another stratagem and I fear it worked a little too well.”
“Oh? So you didn’t banish them to some unknown planet beginning with the letter ‘D’?”
“No. Happy news, there: Devonshire Place.”
“The street?”
“Indeed.”
“But that’s…”
“Hardly 500 yards from 221B. Got rather lucky on that. Double lucky, really, because they were able to bring me news that Moriarty’s gang has been sniffing around rather vigorously after Montevbello Goosh’s nine foci.”
“So was my butler,” I mused. “I don’t know if I told you, Holmes, but in one of my mystic dreams, I learned that Moriarty used to hold the Heart—the focus for love. Now, so far as I know, it is in the possession of Irene Adler along with the Cruciator—the symbol of pain. We also know the Coin is at the bottom of the Thames, the Crown at Hurlstone Manor and the Fasces is at 221B.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Holmes, drawing a small wood-and-lead box from the folds of his overcoat. “I have it here. As soon as I heard Moriarty was hunting foci, I had Lestrade let word slip at Newgate Prison that I had taken to keeping this always on my person. The inmate population has close ties with Moriarty’s gang, you see, and I thought it wouldn’t be long until word reached him.”
“Brilliant!” I crowed. “That ought to do it.”
“Oh, it did. Not two hours later, bullets started coming at me from every which way. An hour after that, I was at your front door. And now, here we are. What do you think we ought to do?”
“Don’t worry, Holmes, I can help.”
When we at last reached Helsinki (and—thank whatever gods may be—an actual hotel) I went
