“We'll have to wait until the gypsy caravan leaves,” Edgar said.
Bigby looked up from the table. Edgar was still staring out of the window, his face stoic.
“Why the gypsies?”
“If there's anyone that could hide you,” Edgar replied, turning to face Bigby, “it would be them.”
Edgar returned to the table and settled into the seat. He picked up the tea and looked at it with a grimace. Without sipping it to test, he set the cup of cooled tea back on the table.
“We have to figure out how much the government knows,” Edgar said.
“You think they're behind this?”
“Most assuredly,” Edgar replied. “Summit City has been sending out officials for weeks. Most of them are agents in disguise, but they're sending recruits or rookies. They're too green to blend in. Seems they’re contracting out now, too, eager to make a man rich by serving up the head of another.”
Bigby sighed. More than ten years he had felt safe, even under the watchful gaze of the government; they hadn’t been so hellbent on uprooting the “common man” then, seemingly unaware of him and others like him. More than ten years he hadn't had to run from anyone, and now he could only count that as an option. So much had changed since Holwake. Cattledung, bug-eyed anarchists! I’ve got no need to overthrow the government, he mused. Just want to profit off their leavings, from time to time.
If he stayed here, Edgar was right: one of the government men would catch him—or more likely, the Boerners would do him in. It was no secret that torture was something of a talent of theirs.
“Where is the gypsy camp?”
Edgar looked up at Bigby. “Just outside of town,” he said. “I imagine they are eager to leave, but the government men have been harassing them all week. They keep claiming the gypsies are smuggling things out of town, but they can't seem to find anything.”
“Not likely they will,” Bigby said. “They've likely got their supply buried farther out of town.”
“Precisely,” Edgar said, “but they've been using the Trail, same as you, and there's government folk all over there now, patrolling it like regular.”
“Then I’ve got to find another way out,” Bigby said.
Chapter 2, or, “Montrose: See the Town On Foot! Enjoy Our Fine Hospitality!”
Bigby had been stuck inside Edgar's apartments for nearly a week before he was able to procure a new disguise appropriate enough to slip out into the crowded streets and get some fresh air. With a wide-brimmed hat, he was able to keep away the brash sun; he wore light colors—a beige shirt, one of the new machine-made kind, and a plain undershirt—with canvas trousers, and thick-soled, leather boots. He felt entirely foreign in dress, given his preponderance for flashy colors and loose-fitting clothes. He had stopped Edgar at the side whiskers and beard, though, which his friend had suggested he shave to more fully blend in.
Bigby had been coming to Montrose for at least a decade. Over the years, it had changed significantly and now it seemed quaint—almost backward in its strides, considering the leaps Montrose had made—to remember the old ways with any fondness. It hadn’t been the town, though, that brought him. It was an old rumor—a legend, really—of how a long dead alchemist in the region had bequeathed his things to a group of early settlers. Among the dead alchemist’s possessions was a cache of finely attuned metals, the likes of which were said to be difficult to create by even the most modern alchemical practices. The metals had been cast into mundane forms—knives, belt buckles, locks, and keys—and distributed among the ignorant settlers to seemingly no end. At the time, Bigby had been intrigued, and for no better reason traveled in vain to find objects like those hidden in towns like Montrose.
Steam vehicles rolled leisurely through the town, having replaced horse-drawn carriages for the most part, and individuals weaved through the walking crowd on bicycles both foot-powered and steam. It was a bumpy ride, though, given that the technology for transportation had outpaced the technology for roads: dirt roads prevailed in most sections of the town, though there were—here and there—macadam roads that divided the town on the major thoroughfares. Bigby chose to walk; his feet were more reliable than some driver’s ability to coax a coal engine to cooperate.
The sounds of the town—whistles, axes, bellows, voices—washed over him.
“I hear tell there's a bit of a rash of vagrants and criminals being ferreted out from the old slave trail.”
Bigby stopped in front of a store front to look at the goods on sale. Two women stood in contemporary dress looking at the sale window at the store next door. They faced each other, engaged in the conversation, and ignored the stealthy eyes of Bigby Dolan.
“They've always been there Pris,” the other woman said. “Now the government is just finally doing something about them.”
“Well that's good, then. Terrible trouble they are. Taking up the festival grounds and fouling up the air with their filth. Ugh!”
The other woman laughed at Pris. Bigby turned and pretended to take interest in the dog across the street that was chasing a giggling group of children. Pris was a plain woman, dressed in a simple cotton dress of manufactured make, in solid summer tones and a button-up blouse. The other woman, the one Bigby was much more interested in, was more out-of-place than Bigby imagined she assumed she was. She wore a factory-made dress, that was certain, but it had an intricate pattern that betrayed the money that had been spent on it; her blouse was silk, and Bigby knew from personal experience that there was as much chance of acquiring silk in Harmonia or Keystone as there was in shaking the hand of an honest politician. He wondered if she were part of the government contingent that Edgar had warned him about. They had their fair share of watchers—people who worked for the favors that the government rarely doled out—hoping that they would help catch the bad guys in the world.
“They're not after the gypsies,” the other woman said.
“They should be, Poppy. They're a terrible mess. I swear.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well,” Pris replied, “my Jonathan went to their camp to see about getting some of our ironware tended to, what with all the dents and the like that have happened over the years, and he said—and mark my words, I wouldn't speak of none that don't rightly deserve it—he said that they smelled like a pasture, Poppy. I swear by my mother's grave, he said that.”
Bigby watched with a small sense of pleasure as the woman, Poppy, looked at her friend with a well-masked but still visible look of disdain.
“Pris,” she said, “one shouldn't be so judgmental. It's not quite the proper manner for a lady.”
Pris opened her mouth to say something, but she closed it quickly. Bigby grinned and turned his attention back to the store window, and then walked away, wanting to see more of the town.
He was greeted, as he turned around, by a family of yokels dressed in garish fox fur greatcoats. There was a determined, dangerous glint in their eyes. Bigby turned away from them quickly and strolled as nonchalantly as he possibly could past Pris and Poppy, sneaking between them and the store window they were still arguing in front of. Poppy turned just as Bigby passed her, shoulder lightly bumping into hip: Bigby turned and looked at her, grabbing the tip of his hat out of habit and bowing his head.
“Terribly sorry, madam,” he said.
She looked at him and smiled. Her eyes met his with a gaze that was hard, calculated, and knowing; Bigby stared at her for a brief moment longer than propriety deemed appropriate. Over her shoulder, Bigby saw the family approaching, each member’s neck tied with a red kerchief marked by a black dot, clearly visibly now as they opened their coats to retrieve something from inside. The Boerner clan. There was no doubt in Bigby's mind, and they were looking directly at the unfortunate gnome below the woman's shoulder. His heart jumped. He gave the woman another nod, and then turned to walk briskly down the street.
Behind him, Bigby heard someone shout, "Move!" but he did not turn to look. Further do
wn the street, he saw a cart alley and picked up the pace to reach it ahead of his pursuer. Bigby moved to turn down the alley, and the facing exploded into a shower of brick and mortar. Bigby was blown back from the blast and landed hard on his side. Around him he heard screams from the crowd as they dispersed. Groggy, his head swimming from the din of the blast, Bigby stood and looked over his shoulder to see a male Boerner standing at the end of the street with a heavy, metal-and-wire hand cannon that was buzzing loudly with electricity. Bigby stared at the man glaring powerfully, then turned on his heels and rushed headlong under a pair of carriages.
When Bigby emerged on the other side, he quickly scampered past the alley, hoping to confuse the Boerner as to which direction he had gone, before the rank bully could get off another shot. As he rounded the street corner of the brick building, he broke into a run, glad the snug fit of the canvas trousers didn’t impede his freedom of movement. He was only halfway down the adjoining street when the crate next to him burst into splinters.
“Raging cattledung!” Bigby swore.
That time Bigby looked over his shoulder. A teenage Boerner stood, hand cannon resting on her extended arm and aimed straight at Bigby. The sound of the cannon warming up, gathering static and charging from the surrounding air echoed off the mortar brick walls of the buildings. Without wondering further about it, Bigby turned his attention to the task at hand: getting the hell out of the way of those blasted volt guns! As he reached the end of the street, Bigby heard a volt gun power-up to a high whine, and he jumped across a metal drainage gutter and onto his belly. The bricks above his head burst into shards and rained down on top of him. Several close bystanders were nearly blown off their feet. Bigby got to his feet, teeth chattering from the quaking gutter beneath him, and looked over his shoulder. A trio of bystanders, stunned faces transfixed, cowered under a grocer’s awning. Not pausing to blink, Bigby ran the rest of the way down the street.
He reached the other side and turned left without looking back again. Bigby made it half a block or so before he felt a hand grip his arm and pull him into a doorway. An opposing hand went over his mouth before he could yell in protest. The door behind him opened, and he was sucked into darkness just as a man in a red kerchief ran past.
* * *
Bigby had been dragged into a dark hallway, and into the inner reaches of some run-down lightless house in Montrose before being escorted into a small room with a wood-burning stove and pushed harshly into a chair. His eyes burned with the stink of the cloying smoke of the stove and even more so when his captor brought the room to life with a stuttering array of carbide lights on the walls. Bigby blinked in the light and rubbed his eyes.
The view that presented itself to Bigby was one of unexpected mirth. Poppy—the woman who had held his gaze in obvious interest—stood with soot-covered boots and her simple dress stained with oil and what looked like marmalade.
"You're a terribly difficult fellow to keep track of," she said.
Bigby felt small, his legs dangling in the tallman-sized chairs, and looked through half-closed lids at the woman he knew as Poppy. When he did not answer, she crossed the room and knelt in front of him.
"I saved your hide, little man."
"Granted," Bigby said, "but I don't owe you anything for it."
"I think you do," she replied. "Eventually, they'll catch you. Do you know what the sentence for smuggling illegal alchemies is these days?"
Bigby was silent.
"Ten years in a Gardenian mine prison. I'm sure you know what it's like to be kept prisoner for someone."
Bigby felt his heart race. Who was this woman? How did she know who he was?
"Fine," she said. "You go back out there and see how long you last. I could help you if you'd suck up your pride and trust someone for once. I'm not with them; I guarantee you that."
"I'll take my chances outside," Bigby said.
Bigby slid off the chair and started for the door. The woman grabbed his arm and held him firmly. Bigby turned and looked at her.
"Think hard," she said. "Before you reach that door, think about what they might do to you if they catch you. Summit City is after us lowly types in force. Just consider what they might do."
Bigby wrenched his arm free of her grasp and pulled open the door cautiously, peering out to check the scene. When it looked clear, he ducked into the street without turning back to look at the woman. He merged with the traffic on the thoroughfares of Montrose and dodged his way through back alleys and side streets to Edgar's apartments.
* * *
Bigby watched nervously as Edgar paced. First Edgar had ranted, throwing insults and angry remarks at Bigby, which he had later rescinded; then he had walked out of the apartments and wandered the town for nearly two hours before returning well after dark. Now he barely said more to Bigby than, "I have to think—we have to think." As Edgar paced, Bigby watched him with lazy eyes, sipping his tea and waiting for his friend to speak.
Edgar stopped and slipped into the chair opposite Bigby.
"Those weapons you said they carried: government issue," Edgar said. "That does not bode well. I knew the Boerners weren’t afraid of harming someone to get to you—or anyone else on their list, for that matter—but on the government’s dollar? That’s a new low."
Bigby remained silent. He watched as Edgar picked up his mug of cold tea, set it down, lift it to his lips again, and then slam it down on the table.
"Tell me again about this woman," he said.
"What more can I say? One moment I saw her having some inane conversation with a woman on the street; the next thing I know she's pulling me through a door to save my hide from that destructive maniac."
"Who is she?"
Bigby did not answer. Edgar had a way of asking questions, sometimes rhetorical, sometimes merely thinking out loud, and Bigby knew not to even say anything.
"Bigby," he continued, "I don't know what sort of enemies you’ve made, but it seems they’re truly out to get you.”
"I am frankly quite aware of that, Edgar. I believe I was the one getting shot at this afternoon.”
"I'm sorry," Edgar said. "I didn't mean to insult.”
“Nevermind."
Edgar was silent again, looking deeply into the cold dregs of tea leaves in the half-empty mug, still untouched over the past hour. He picked it up, seemed to contemplate drinking from it, and then set it back down yet again. Bigby handled his own cold tea but was not nearly as opposed to it: long trips on the road with little time for fires when you were trying to outpace the Boerners on the Abolition Trail meant you dealt with cold drinks, if it was the only liquid you had.
"We have to get you out of the town tonight.”
"Tonight?" Bigby swallowed hard on the mouthful of liquid and nearly coughed at the strain.
"Yes, Bigby, tonight. Boerners crossed the line. Summit City’ll be sending bigger guns to straighten this out. Soon they'll be hounding me and the rest of the town searching for you.”
"Where am I supposed to go?”
"I'll figure it out," Edgar replied.
* * *
The streets of Montrose sat silent. The town slept now—save for the odd pair of midnight revelers stumbling drunkenly out of orange-lit taprooms into the streets—as most of its citizens had given up their carousing and passed out. Bigby stood quietly behind a stack of crates, hidden completely, and breathed to calm his nerves. Edgar had outfitted him with a new pair of canvas trousers, a woolen undershirt, and a sweater of fine make; as well he had given Bigby a new pair of fine, leather boots with rubber heels and reinforced toes.
Bigby heard a sharp whistle behind him, and ducked his head out. Edgar stood at the intersection of the alley and the road; he motioned for Bigby to join him. The gnome shuffled over to the tallman and looked up at him with fierce resignation.
"We have to head across town," Edgar whispered. "We have to be quick, though; I'm certain I saw a light on in one of the Boerner hideouts, so they must be keeping
a vigil. Can you run with the pack?”
Bigby shifted the heavy pack that Edgar had given him, pulling hard on the straps to secure it tightly against his back.
"I'm fine, Edgar.”
The tallman leaned down and patted Bigby on the shoulder. They exchanged a look then. Bigby felt a lump in his throat and his heart lurch in his chest. Why are you sacrificing this for me? Bigby thought. Before he could answer the question for himself, Edgar turned and darted into the night, and Bigby followed closely behind.
The town remained quiet, the two men's boots making little sound as they raced along the narrow backstreets of Montrose. Many of the buildings here were converted warehouses and tall bunk houses all tightly packed to conserve space for the mine fields which had given rise to the town’s growth. Such tight architecture wouldn’t allow one to safely navigate the carts and steam buggies in the streets if one weren’t careful. Edgar did not speak his directions, merely pointed when they were about to turn ahead; Bigby could tell the man had not lost his training from his younger days in the Ulleran Army. Bigby had only ever explored the twenty-or-so blocks surrounding Edgar's shop, and though he had known that it was a town of sizable proportions—especially compared to the settlements of coterage dwellings his people, the Folk, were accustomed to—he had never had to run through it. It was substantially larger than its population of ten thousand might suggest.
They reached an intersection and paused. Edgar ducked his head around the corner of the four-story building looking first north then south. He motioned for Bigby to join him, and they darted across the street. Before they reached the other side of the broad avenue, a flash of yellow and orange burst from their left. Bigby looked just as the air exploded around him: he fell forward into the dirt, as the street exploded behind him. Refusing to look, Bigby stood and rushed to the opposite side of the street where Edgar stood dazed, standing against the wall of the building. The ground rumbled like a giant cat was purring just down the street.
The Alchemist's Run Page 2