Thunderer

by Felix Gilman

  T hey followed Heady at a distance. At Olympia’s suggestion, they put their arms around each other so that they looked like a couple out for a walk. She was warm; Arjun suddenly missed their former intimacy very badly.

  Heady was not alone. Outside the pub’s door, a second man met him, a big man, heavy shoulders under a long dark coat. Heady nodded to him, and said, “All right then? No rest for the wicked, eh?” The second man followed Heady silently, at a couple of paces behind.

  While his bodyguard waited, Heady stopped in another pub to give a similar speech, and a similar promise: “Guns. That’s what you need. Good lads. You have friends, you know.” He was very slick, very ingratiating. Arjun felt a certain respect.

  Heady and his bodyguard left, and walked east, and down through the docks, and onto a street of warehouses in the shadow of the Jaw. Heady’s bodyguard carried a lantern; Arjun and Olympia followed in darkness. Heady approached an iron gate in a chain-link fence, unlocked it, and walked through a rubble-strewn yard and into one of the warehouses. After a moment, Arjun followed them up to the fence, crouching, and tested the gate.

  “It’s locked. Can we climb this, do you think?” he asked.

  “Are you mad? Someone will hear us, and then we’ll be trapped on the other side.”

  “Ah. I suppose you’re right.”

  “We should go.”

  “Wait. There’s someone at the window. I can hear them. If you’re quiet.”

  Olympia crouched behind Arjun as he leaned against the fence and listened, filtering out the city’s noise, honing in on Heady’s voice, by the window, saying, “…you can expect maybe a dozen men tomorrow morning. Another dozen may, may not.”

  “Wait your turn, Mr., ah, Healey, is it? There’s other business to be done.”

  “Oh, no, of course, I understand, sir, it’s Heady, by the way, I’m sure it’s good work that you’re doing, sir, but it’s just that it’s late, sir, and it’s dangerous work, sir, round here, these days, and I’d like to be paid, if you don’t mind.”

  “When they turn up, Heady. Not until. There’s no money for promises. You can hang on here a day longer. Go home now.”

  Heady’s voice tailed off, mumbling. The other man, the one Heady had been speaking to, started to talk to someone else, who had apparently been suborning a disaffected member of the Countess’s own militia: “He’s nearly ready. He wants to help us, he just doesn’t know it yet. Give me a little more time.”

  “They’re preparing for something,” Arjun said.

  Olympia leaned over him, and stared across the dark yard at the lamp-lit window. She gasped and dropped down, with her back against the fence. “That man at the window, the blond man, is that the one who’s talking, who’s in charge?” Arjun nodded. “Then we shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t see this. Get down.”

  “Who is it?

  “Marius Vittellan. One of Chairman Cimenti’s personal secretaries. A distant relation. I’ve argued cases against him.”

  “He’s a lawyer?”

  “Yes. No. An agent. He arranges things for the Chairman. If he’s here…These riots, the Chairman’s using them. Feeding them. Gods, maybe he started the bloody thing. Maybe he’s the one who had that bastard version of The Blessing set loose. He could have had his agents do it, and make it look spontaneous. To make people hate her, then to force her hand, right? Against us. And then he sent his agents out, and he hired people, like this Heady, and they angered everyone up, he brought guns in for them, too, convinced them how much they loved us, gave them courage, so all this would burst back in her face. And there’s nothing her Thunderer can do about it; no fortress to attack. No leader to kill. The whole bloody city’s an army against her now. Maybe he’s behind Silk, that’s why the streets are full of escapees…Gods, maybe that’s why they let Nicolas go. Cimenti could have secured his release with nothing but a wink. So he’d be there, to push us too far, only that monster killed him…or so that he’d be there, to die with the rest of us when she turned against us, to get rid of him once and for all.”

  “Maybe Cimenti’s just taking advantage of the riots to humiliate her. You don’t know he started all this.”

  “Don’t be fucking naïve. This is him, this is all him. He made this. Remember there was an explosion in the crowd, on the Heath, on that first day, and you were sure the Thunderer never fired? He made us into a weapon, against her, so she would have to destroy us, and destroy herself doing it. Oh gods.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I’ll tell you what I fucking know. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We shouldn’t know this. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know we were tools. We have to get away.”

  She stood into a half-crouch, and stepped away from the fence. As she stood, the gate opened, and Heady and his bodyguard stepped through. Olympia froze as the bodyguard said, “Night, Mr. Heady. Go careful on your way home.”

  Heady took a few steps in Olympia’s direction, then stopped and shouted, “There’s someone there!”

  The bodyguard yelled, “Who…?” and lunged for Olympia, who turned and ran. He caught her arm quickly.

  Arjun stepped away from the fence, drew his gun and aimed at the bodyguard, who dropped his lantern and pulled Olympia in front of himself as a shield. Heady ran for it, without a word.

  J ack had entered the warehouse through an upper window, and settled among the dusty and cobwebbed rafters. The room below was stacked with boxes, among which men moved purposefully, by the light of shuttered lamps. The tall man he had followed had come in by a back door, talked to a blond man by the window, been given a pouch of coins or possibly bullets; it was hard to see and impossible to hear. Jack tried to get closer. He heard a lot of talk about weapons, explosives, movements of the guard, coordination of activities, who was sound and who was not. It was exciting; for a moment he considered revealing himself to them, offering them his leadership.

  One of the men—a greasy little person with his greying hair combed over his head, hardly Jack’s idea of a revolutionary, but still—was leaving, followed by a big man in a coat. Jack decided to follow. He hopped from rafter to rafter to a grey window, scattering pigeons. He waited for the pigeon-noises to settle, then creaked the window open, very carefully, and stepped out into the night.

  There was some kind of altercation in the street. The big man was holding a woman in a grey dress. He had a gun to her head. Jack did not like to see her held and struggling. A young man was standing a few paces away, holding a gun of his own, trying to get a clear shot. Jack made his decision quickly. He shot down from the roof and scored his knife across the bodyguard’s arm, and snatched the gun from his stunned fingers.

  More men ran outside to see what the noise was. Jack grabbed the woman’s arm, and pulled her away, calling to the young man, “I can take you to safety. Don’t just stand there!”

  A s the boy ran down the dark street away from Arjun, light from a window-lamp fell on him for a moment and his bright clothes glittered; Olympia, pulled behind him, was almost rushing off her feet, and her grey skirt billowed. Arjun followed, thinking he would never catch them—they were dwindling so fast—but he found himself somehow keeping pace. Lightly, effortlessly. It was something in the strange boy’s wake; it was like the way music had come to him so easily while he was within the echoes of the Voice. The shouts of their pursuers echoed distantly, then vanished. They were far away into the city’s maze when the boy stopped and let go of Olympia’s arm, and Arjun staggered to a halt, and leaned against a wall, feeling something leaving him.

  They were in the courtyard of a temple of Orillia, spirit of the lights; an apron of glass-stained firelight welled out into the night from the temple’s windows, green and gold. In that light, the boy was a patchwork of bright colors. He looked them up and down, shrugged, and said, “You’ll be all right here.” He turned as if to go, then said, “Why did those men in the warehouse attack you? Were you with them, or against them?”


  Olympia said, “I don’t know. I think we have an enemy in common, at least. Jack—are you Jack?—were you watching them? Are you with them or against them?”

  Jack shook his head. “Same enemy as them, maybe, same as you. I don’t know.” He stared at her. “You don’t need to look frightened of me. You can go home.”

  Olympia began to protest, but the boy was already turning to go. Arjun tore himself away from the wall, reached out for the boy’s sleeve, and said, “Jack, wait. Please. Don’t go just yet. We need your help. We’ve been looking for you for a long time. Just hear us out.”

  Met with a sharp glare, he dropped the boy’s sleeve and stepped back, holding up his hands.

  “Just give us a few minutes,” Olympia said. “We’re on your side. We know things. Help us and we can help you.”

  Jack stared at them for a long moment. Then he shook his head, and launched himself up and instantly out of the halo of light cast by the temple’s lamps and into the night. Arjun could not stop himself from reaching pointlessly up as if to catch him. He and Olympia looked at each other in shock and despair.

  Then they heard the bolts on the inside of the church door scraping back. The doors opened and Jack stepped out. “They never lock the upper windows.” He smirked. “They’re still never ready for me. Come on, then: we’ll talk inside. Make it good.”

  O lympia disliked this arrogant boy. He frightened her. His power frightened her. It was not entirely under his control. It rode him. She did not know what he might do. Apart from the face, that strange face, he did not remind her very much of Arjun. But she swallowed her dislike easily. She was used to negotiating with dangerous and disagreeable people.

  “They say you rescue people from the gaols. You and your Thunderers. We’ve read about you, we’ve heard all the songs and the plays. We represent an organization that tries to do something similar. We want to bring freedom to people; to break them out of prisons of ignorance and confusion. We represent the Atlas. Have you heard of it?”

  “It’s blasphemous,” Jack said. “That’s all they ever told me.” He sat cross-legged on the altar. He had sat there with exaggerated casualness, as if he chose that seat because it was comfortable, not because it was shocking and dramatic. Olympia had not been fooled, but had not commented.

  The room was full of candles, lamps, colored glass, and mirrors. During the service, the room would burst with light, like the city at night, seen from a hill. For now it was dark.

  Olympia said, “Some people call it blasphemous. But the same people call you a criminal, and—”

  “I don’t care if it’s blasphemous. Why should I?”

  “Ah, right. Well, we’ve been looking for you. We want to help you. There are a great many of us, famous scholars, journalists, printers, playwrights. Arjun here is the composer of the music for The Blessing. Do you know it? We can tell people what you’re doing, and why. But we need your help first. Our leader is a man called Professor Holbach, and he—”

  “I know who he is.”

  “Right, then you must know that he would support you if he could. But he’s been taken prisoner. We don’t know where. By order of the Countess Ilona. I know you’ve freed a lot of her prisoners. We need you to free one more. That’s all, Jack.”

  Jack looked at her skeptically. Arjun said, “The Professor is the creator of the Thunderer. You know that, don’t you? The thing from which you take your name. Why did you do that?”

  “No reason you’d understand. I don’t owe him anything, or the Countess, or you. I took the Thunderer’s name. He didn’t make it for me. I don’t have to do anything for him or for you.”

  “But perhaps he could make something for you,” Olympia said. “Or he can help you with this power you have.”

  “I don’t think you know how your own power works,” Arjun said. “Or what to do with it. Do you? I can tell. Holbach can help. If you free him.”

  “Gods, there’s no reason not to,” Olympia said. “It’s what you’ve done for hundreds of prisoners, all over the city. We know you don’t owe Holbach anything, or us. You don’t have to refuse to help just because someone’s asking.”

  Jack jumped down off the altar. “All right. That’s enough. We’ll do it. Why not? We need to get away from here, though. We need to find a place to talk about this. Where are you staying?”

  T hey walked back to the room at the docks. Hoxton was pacing nervously outside; when he saw them return, with Jack following, he said, “Bloody hell, is that him? Is that you? Gods, you really are young. An honor, Mr. Silk. Will he help, Miss O.?”

  They went inside, and tried to tell Jack everything they might know about where Holbach might be held. They could not be sure; there were many gaols the Countess might have used for him. “Perhaps I can find out,” Olympia said. “There are still people I know who might have an idea. They might not want to help me, but they probably won’t turn me in. I can try, anyway.”

  Jack left in the morning, when everyone but him was ready to drop. “There are people waiting for me,” he said. “I have to be there when they wake. I’ll come back here soon. Wait for me.”

  J ack went back to the factory where the Thunderers waited on foot. The streets were silent in the cold dawn. Arjun and Olympia had told him what they had seen and heard in the warehouse; that the rioting, and the causes of the rioting, might all be some ploy of Cimenti’s, some subtle strike against the Countess. He didn’t know whether he believed it or not. He felt out of his depth. It was dirty, and he needed to believe that everything was pure of purpose. He decided he would not mention it to the others, and put it from his mind.

  It got hot and stinking around noon, and the boys were drenched with sweat as they chased the white robes away from Amber Street. In the afternoon, Jack followed the Thunderer, from rooftop to rooftop, keeping a careful distance, watching the great ship cast its shadow on the crowds below. There was a distant crack and a tiny puff of muzzle-smoke from up on the edge of the deck, and a chimney pot not twenty feet away from Jack exploded. A good shot! Eventually Jack got bored and let the ship go on its way. He sat on a flat roof among empty wire pigeon-coops and watched the sun go down.

  And in the evening, he decided that it was time to help them, if he was going to. He told Namdi to lead the boys back to the factory, and he began to visit the prisons of Shutlow and Fourth Ward, watching from the sky, darting through the shadows, looking for Holbach or some sign of his trail.

  A rlandes heard the crack of the rifle through the locked door to his quarters. He heard the men cheering. He did not get up. He was busy writing a letter to the Countess urging—with all due respect and humility—that she consider permitting him to make full and unrestrained use of the Thunderer against the rioters and criminal conspiracies and seditious vermin in the streets below.

  For weeks the Thunderer had been idle, useless, drifting like a sullen cloud. The Countess’s attention was focused on her own noisily crumbling territories, and she had no time to threaten and bully and poke and jab at her rivals’ districts. And there was nothing for the Thunderer to do at home in Shutlow or Barbary or Fourth Ward: what good was a weapon like that against rioters, and stone-throwers, and slogan-chanters?

  At least, that was what the Countess said. With a brittle and cold smile, she’d ordered Arlandes to keep the Thunderer’s guns in check; she cautioned patience and dreamed her people would learn to love her again.

  And now she would not talk to Arlandes at all. Three days ago Arlandes had received orders, by messenger, and not even under her signature, but under that of her cousin Sir Brice, commanding him to return the Thunderer to drydock at the palace on Laud Heath, and to abandon his pointless patrols of the sky. Arlandes had complained and Brice had explained that it sapped the Thunderer of its menace, its authority, for it to be seen to be ineffective against the rioters. Arlandes had continued regular patrols anyway, and Brice had said nothing further.

  Above Arlandes there was a general breakdown in
order and will. Below him, too, discipline decayed. There had been desertions and defections even among the sounder men: Bradley, at least, and possibly Yager, had left their red coats folded on their bunk beds and gone over to the rioters. Or gone to hide in some shabby hole with their wives, which was, to Arlandes’ mind, an equal dereliction of duty.

  And the plague had killed Lieutenant Duncan two weeks ago; he’d choked and puked and curled up and died, and they’d thrown his body over the Thunderer’s edge, somewhere over the River, for fear of infection. Dautry had gone the same way. Their bodies, rotten before they were even dead, had dropped and spattered like birdshit from the warship’s arse. Bad times all round.

  And so the remaining men, with nothing better to do, had made it into a sport to take potshots with their rifles over the edge of the deck whenever they saw, far below on the rooftops, one of those unholy children in the robes or ribbons or what-have-you. They were yet to claim a scalp, the distances being what they were.

  Arlandes let the men be. His attention was absorbed by his letter—in which he urged the Countess to consider, with all respect et cetera, that perhaps things would not get better, that her people would not learn to love her again, that everything might be irretrievably ruined and broken and poisoned, and that therefore the best option might be to unleash whatever fire they still had at their command and damn the consequences. Of course he wouldn’t send it, any more than he had sent any of his previous drafts. But it sickened him to see the great weapon reduced to impotence; so much had been sacrificed for it.