Gaslit Revolution

by Jason Gilbert

  “So you know about him?”

  Antonia shrugged.

  “Been known. Figured it, really. Can’t tell nobody, though. No one to tell, and too much risk of bringin’ more trouble to my house than I already done had.” Antonia sat back in her chair, her eyes still on Kane. “He ordered Charleston burned. He sent the Special Forces after you. That bastard killed my baby. But I know you, Kane. I know you take responsibility for things ain’t your fault. Let it go. You didn’t kill my baby. That snake in the grass did it.”

  Kane felt guilty for the relief that Antonia’s words gave him. He still felt that he’d put Anderson in harm’s way, even though she’d done so herself. Anderson had been a bullheaded woman, strong-willed and fierce like her mother. Even if Kane hadn’t been forced to make the decision, been tricked by the Spirits Wilhelmina followed so fanatically, Anderson likely would’ve still gone for Gentry. Kane couldn’t stop thinking that he could’ve done something to save her. The real truth was that Gentry was powerful. Maybe even more powerful than Jonesy had been. A Magician’s power grew with age. Jones had been more powerful than Kane, though Kane was no slouch.

  Then again, Jones had revealed that he was far older than Kane had realized. It begged the question: did Magicians age slower?

  Kane looked at Antonia sighed.

  “Now what?”

  Antonia shrugged again.

  “That’s up to you. You got choices, Kane. Make ‘em.”

  “Frostmeyer is the head of the snake, here,” Kane said. “What happened? How did he become President?”

  “Happened overnight,” Antonia said. She grunted. “Damned snake ain’t a lie. No election, no nothin’. We woke up one mornin’, and that no-good sonofabitch was President. Probably paid a lot of money for it. Probably not. Could’ve been just put there by the other money-men runnin’ things.”

  Kane shook his head.

  “So much for Democracy,” he said.

  Antonia nodded.

  “There’s supposed to be a conference in a few days,” she said. “Frostmeyer plans to talk to the public. Some big news he’s got.” She eyed Kane again. “But it’s gonna be bad, Kane. For the people. For the city. People here are tired. They’re makin’ noise. They’re plannin’ to protest. Make a lot of noise. Especially with what happened yesterday at the shipyards.”

  Kane leaned forward again, the memory of Bill’s ship flying in over the scorched earth that’d once been a thriving shipyard playing in his mind.

  “What happened?”

  “I only saw shadows,” Tabitha said.

  “Yeah,” Kane said, looking at her, then back at Antonia. “Tabitha had a vision and said something about two hundred men and fire. I’m guessing there was an incident that ended that shipyard up like Charleston?”

  “Revolt,” Antonia said. “Rebellion, plain and simple. Men got tired of being hammered, got tired of the Special Forces bein’ there and hasslin’ them. We’re already oppressed here in Hidden Valley. Can’t afford to eat, can’t afford bills, nothin’. A group of labor-boys got together last night, rallied the rest. Took out a few of the Special Forces troops, went after the yard bosses. The police got called. Next thing they knew, one of them Battle Cruisers came through and rained fire down on the yard. No one survived. Not one worker, not one member of the Special Forces, nobody. If they were on the ground, they burned in Hellfire.”

  “Christ,” Kane breathed after a brief pause. He needed a second. The Special Forces had eradicated a yard, killed two hundred men, even a group of their own. All to stop any form of uprising. The insanity boggled him, knocked the wind out of him. So much life lost, all for the sake of maintaining control over the people. But, above all else, the most bothersome fact wasn’t the depravity of the Oligarchy and their private army. It wasn’t the horror of their reaction to a small group making noise.

  It was the fact that none of it surprised him.

  “You two need rest,” Antonia said, standing. “Y’all done heard a lot to night. Lot to take in. Take that room y’all was in last time you was here. Door’s fixed up. And Kane, don’t you go bleedin’ on my carpet again.” Kane stood as Antonia approached him. She hugged him, then did the same to Tabitha. “So glad to have my babies back.” She looked at Kane. “People look up to you. Look at you as a leader. And I know you’ve never wanted that. Better suck it up. Better take that responsibility. Or you gonna watch everyone die. Them gloves is off. It’s not quiet anymore. This is war.”

  The bed was soft, the sheets freshly laundered and the pillows perfectly stuffed with feathers. They bathed quickly, both longing to get into bed, both commenting on how tired they were.

  It was the first time since Charleston they’d been in an actual bed, and the first time they’d been somewhere both of them felt relatively safe.

  Even though Kane knew that the safety was fleeting.

  Kane had never seen Antonia shaken, unnerved. Unsure. She was too mighty a woman, too formidable. But being who she was, she was now a target. All someone had to do was accuse her, or anyone that made noise, of being a Magician.

  Open season on Magicians in New Chicago. Again, Kane found himself not even remotely surprised.

  Disgusted was probably a better word.

  Tabitha was fast asleep by the time Kane got out of the tub and dried off. He’d changed into a fresh shirt Antonia happened to have in the closet. She always kept a fresh set of men’s clothing in each room as a courtesy. One never knew if one’s shirt might get ripped or stained in the heat of passion. And she believed that a man should always leave the way he came in: clean and kept. It was the sign of a gentleman.

  Kane sighed as he lay down next to Tabitha. She didn’t move, didn’t change the pace of her slow breathing. She was out cold.

  He closed his eyes, tried to let himself drift off, but his mind was loud, still processing everything Antonia had told them earlier. Going over the events in Charleston a hundred times, trying to find a way he could’ve saved his friends. Anderson. Farnsworth. Wilson. All of them dead. All because of him. They’d died making sure that he and Tabitha lived. Antonia was wrong. The Revolution was done. It didn’t exist anymore. But they still fought. The attack at Jimmy Catch’s plantation, the Haven, was for no other reason than to make sure that he and Tabitha escaped and got back to the North. Farnsworth, Wilson, and Benson died to ensure that Kane and Tabitha lived.

  Kane rolled onto his side, staring off into the dark room. There you go again, Shepherd, he thought to himself. Trying to make sense of the senseless.

  A shout echoed up from the street. Kane sat straight up, looked toward the window. Tabitha stirred, opened her eyes.

  “Wha—” she said, still groggy.

  Kane shushed her, cutting her off. Another shout. Someone talking. Someone else responding.

  Begging.

  Kane tuned his hearing, activated his amulet and cast his sight spell as he got out of bed and went to the window. The street lamps glowed low, the light barely enough to see a homeless man backing away from a figure in the shadows, his too-many clothes torn and dirty. Kane’s vision went to Ethereal just as the gun report echoed in the street, the sound loud in Kane’s ears as Tabitha moved up beside him. The homeless man fell backwards, his head laying in a pool of blood and surrounded by bits of skull and brain matter. Tabitha turned away, buried her face in Kane’s chest. Kane tried to focus on the gunman, but the figure had vanished. Only his aura lingered as a police searchlight shone down on the area. The dead homeless man’s body was well within the light. Kane waited, held his breath as the searchlight lingered.

  It finally moved away as the police patrol ship continued its search over Hidden Valley.

  Nothing. They’d done nothing. A man lay dead in the street, murdered, and the police had done nothing.

  “Don’t matter who you are anymore,” Antonia had said. “Don’t even have to be a cop. Don’t even have to have proof. You accuse someone of bein’ a Magician, you can kill ‘em dead.
That old law got reworked the day Frostmeyer sat his ass in the President’s seat.”

  Tabitha wept into Kane’s chest. He wiped his amulet clean, killing his sight spell, and put his arm around her.

  “We could’ve helped him,” she said through her sobbing. “We…we could’ve stopped it.”

  Kane pulled her away, looked into her eyes.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Kane said. “But no, we couldn’t have. There was nothing we could’ve done. Not without risking ourselves, Antonia, everyone.”

  Tabitha looked at him, her face showing disbelief, anger, and sadness all at once.

  “Kane,” she whispered. “How…how could you?”

  “We’re fugitives,” Kane said. “If we’d have failed, if that gunman had gotten away, or if the wrong person saw us stop him, the Special Forces would burn Hidden Valley to the ground. We’ve got to play this smart.” Tabitha shook her head, more tears flowing down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Kane…”

  Kane put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Besides,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. “The gunman disappeared. He’s gone. It’s like he was never there. I saw the aura he left behind, but that’s it.”

  Tabitha wiped the tears off her face.

  “You don’t think it’s another magic user, do you?”

  Kane shook his head.

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that I have a lot more questions for Antonia now.”

  How many people had died? That was the first question he planned to ask Antonia. And was there another Magician in New Chicago besides the three he knew about?

  He wondered if the figure had been Gentry, himself. Highly unlikely. Gentry wasn’t one to get his hands dirty. Someone working for him?

  Or another wild card.

  Damn.

  Gentry would be at the police department later that day. The sun would be up in an hour or two. Kane could go there, confront him in his own office. Get answers. Kill him. End this.

  And then the Special Forces would step in. A Battle Cruiser would show up, hover over Hidden Valley, cast its shadow over the lower class. Hidden Valley would be bathed in fire and would meet the same end as Charleston. Thousands would die.

  Kane swallowed his fury, fought down the urge to punch walls, break things. It was an hour before he went to sleep, his dreams plagued with nightmares of being trapped in a room, forced to watch death all around him while he stood helpless and broken.

  Chapter Three

  “Twenty?!” Kane said, dropping his spoon into his cheese grits.

  Antonia stared at him from the other side of the table.

  “Kane, you been gone for weeks,” she said. “Don’t act so surprised that you don’t know what’s been goin’ on here.”

  Kane and Tabitha had come down for breakfast after a few more fleeting hours of sleep. Sandra had roused them to make sure they made it on time. Antonia didn’t mess around with the house schedule. Everyone downstairs for breakfast by seven. If you missed it, you didn’t eat until lunch. Antonia prepared the meals in the house, and kept her girls healthy on what she called “good, Southern homecookin’”. Kane and Tabitha came downstairs to be welcomed by the savory smell of breakfast. She’d set the table for six. A large plate of bacon sat on the table next to a basket full of biscuits covered by a cloth. Two serving bowls sat beside the biscuits, one full of scrambled eggs and the other full of grits with cheese stirred into them. Antonia made everyone wait until Kane and Tabitha were in the room. Six girls sat at the table, including Sandra. Each were dressed and clean, though no one wore evening attire. Antonia didn’t open for business until after five, so the girls were allowed to dress down for the day’s chores.

  “Kane and Tabitha, I done made your plates already,” Antonia had said. “We eatin’ outside. I know you got questions for me.”

  Kane overheard the girls at the table talking about the murder in the street last night as Antonia lead them out.

  “Miss Antonia found him! How awful!”

  “Another one. The police cleaned it up, kept it quiet.”

  “I didn’t even hear anything.

  “He got shot in the head.”

  Antonia turned to the girls, clearing her throat with a loud “a-hem!”

  All of the girls snapped to attention.

  “Now you all listen here,” she’d said, one hand on her hip, the other hand shaking a disapproving finger at the group. “I do not care that I’m dining on the porch with our guests. I ain’t gonna tolerate no talk of murder and ugliness at my table. You keep that talk outta my dining room. Y’all hear?”

  The girls spoke in unison. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. You girls say the blessin’ and eat up. Got a lot of work today. House is a damn mess.”

  Kane and Tabitha looked at each other. The house looked spotless. Kane wagered he could probably eat his breakfast off the floor and not feel bad about it.

  Antonia led them to the porch. Her wicker table had been set already, their plates made. Each plate had a small bowl of white, homemade gravy next to it for the biscuits. Tabitha clapped her hands rapidly, grinning as she sat down at the table. Antonia poured three cups of coffee and sat.

  “Don’t ask me about my mornin’, Kane,” she said, motioning him to sit. “You already know how my mornin’s been. Gon’ find a dead body on the curb in front of my house. Hmph!”

  Kane sat as Antonia held her hands out. Kane dutifully took her hand, put his other hand in Tabitha’s. Tabitha looked at him, bewildered, but took Antonia’s other hand.

  Antonia closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  “Lord, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. In Jesus’s name we pray. A-men.”

  “Amen,” Kane echoed.

  Antonia opened one eye and peered at Tabitha.

  “You gonna praise Odin, girl?”

  Tabitha’s eyes widened.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s a long prayer. I said it to myself. Let’s eat!”

  Antonia used her fork to cut her eggs, not looking up as she spoke to Kane.

  “Go ahead and ask me, Kane. I done already found a body and had to deal with the police showin’ up here. Again.”

  “I’d love to know how they cleared it so fast,” Kane said. “We only got back to sleep a few hours before sunrise.”

  “They move quick, these days,” Antonia said. “Quiet. Keep it all hushed. You ain’t gonna read about these murders in the paper. All but a few of the newsies don’t report much anymore. The ones that do get a nice piece of money from the Oligarchs to report only certain things. Guess what they ain’t gonna report? Ain’t nobody in New Chicago gonna know about a dead homeless black man in front of a whore house in Hidden Valley.”

  Kane glanced at Tabitha. She’d poured the gravy over her entire plate and was eating hungrily. He looked back at Antonia.

  “What did the police say?”

  “Nothing important. Nothin’ at all, really. Now we wait.” Antonia sighed. “With that press conference comin’ up, things will start getting even crazier. People are stirrin’ up. Lot of Revolution talk.”

  Something sounded off in the distance. Kane stopped eating, tuned his hearing in the direction of the noise. Clockworks, loud clops on the ground. Wheels turning.

  Shit.

  Kane pulled his hearing in and looked at Tabitha just as her eyes turned completely white. She was having a vision. She looked at Kane in panic.

  “Kane,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “I know.”

  Antonia looked from one to the other.

  “What are you two waitin’ on?” she snapped. “You had to know they’d be comin’. Inside! Now!”

  Kane dropped his fork, got to his feet as Tabitha’s eyes went back to normal. She got up as Antonia called for Sandra and another girl named Chloe to come outside and sit with her. Kane led Tabitha inside, through the foyer and up the stairs to the bedroom they’d shared the night bef
ore. Kane was about to turn the knob when another idea came to mind.

  “Tabitha,” he said, turning to her. “Can you take us across the street? That old house. The empty one that faces this place.”

  Tabitha squeezed his hand as she pulled her amulet out of her pocket and activated it.

  “Draugalega Ferðast!”

  Kane felt the chill from the cold wind only for a second before his eyes were adjusting to the dark, the dank air in the abandoned home thick and musty. He went to the front window, peered out through the cracks in the boards. The police coach pulled up to the curb in front of Antonia’s home, the clockwork horses stopping, steam belching from their noses. The carriage shook, the telltale grunt of someone large moving to get out, stepping down onto the sidewalk.

  “Aspectu aethereo.”

  Kane focused his enhanced vision, moved past the carriage, stopped just behind a large man in a trench coat, his hat rammed down on top of his thick head, tendrils of cigar smoke wafting from in front of him and trailing behind. Kane kept it steady as Lieutenant Charles Danwood grunted again, stopping at the foot of Antonia’s front steps. Two officers walked up behind him, stood on either side of him as if protecting him from attack.

  Knowing Antonia’s temper, he needed the backup.

  He nodded to Antonia, Sandra, and Chloe as the three looked up from their breakfast. Antonia scowled at the man.

  “Danwood,” Kane breathed. “Great.”

  “Why is he here?” Tabitha asked, her voice a whisper.

  “Standard procedure,” Kane said, not looking at her. “There was a murder. He has to talk to the person who found it. Even Danwood can’t get around that. Probably here for a follow-up interview.”

  “Morning, Boudreaux,” Danwood said, his graveled voice harsh in Kane’s enhanced hearing.

  Antonia sucked her teeth at him.

  “Can I help you, officer?”