Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  Gideon bowed his head. “Your hospitality is most welcome, Governor. We would be delighted to join you.”

  As Lyle and his soldiers led the way across the apron toward the huge residence, Gideon looked up at the soaring towers where gas and oil lamps were flickering into life against the encroaching darkness.

  * * *

  Bent poked with a carving knife at the carcass at the center of the oval mahogany table as he suppressed a belch. “Damn fine bird you served up there, Lyle. What do you call it?”

  Lyle sat back in his chair, deftly unfastening the top button on his breeches. “That’s a turkey, sir. We generally have it for Thanksgiving, in November, and at Christmastime. I thought I’d have one cooked early, for my important visitors.”

  “Can’t beat a plump goose at Christmas,” said Bent, holding up his glass for the waiter to refill with wine. “But that wasn’t a bad spread at all.”

  Lyle smiled. “I am gratified it met with your approval, Mr. Bent.”

  The wood-paneled room, brightly lit with gas sconces on the walls, had a large window looking out into the dark gardens of the Governor’s Residence. Beyond, pinpricks of light picked out the black pillars that rose into the deepening violet sky. Lyle caught Rowena gazing out at the towers.

  “Skyscrapers, we call ’em, Miss Fanshawe. They say New York is the city that never sleeps. Those lights will burn all night in some quarters.”

  “Why do you build upward, Mr. Lyle?” asked Rowena. “One thing you’re not short of in America is space.”

  Bent chuckled and quoted, “‘And they said, Go to, let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.’”

  Lyle smiled. “Is your knowledge of history and geography as broad as your grasp of Scripture, sir?”

  Bent waved his glass. “I get by. I daresay Mr. Smith here would benefit from a recap. You know young’uns today; don’t know what they teach them in schools.”

  Lyle pushed back his chair and hauled himself up. Behind him on the wood paneling a furled Union Flag and a portrait of Queen Victoria flanked a large chart of the American territories. He took up a cane and pointed at the East Coast.

  “New York, also known as the Empire State ever since Queen Victoria graced us with her presence back in ’sixty-six.” He tapped a little way to the north. “Of course, Boston is the official capital of British America, but down here in Manhattan is where the real work is done, where you’ll find the real America. They come from all over the world to New York. Italians we have, and Bohemians. Irish. Germans. They come here looking for a new life. They get to New York and stop. So we build upward, to accommodate them all. We even have a few French.” He smiled. “The Frenchies backed the wrong horse back in 1775, of course. Had the rebels won, America would look a very different place today, I daresay.”

  “But they didn’t win, of course,” said Gideon. “America remains British.”

  Lyle tapped a forefinger on his full lips. “Are you named for Gideon, the great American mystery man?”

  “I don’t think so. My mother was a churchgoer.”

  “Quite. But it was Gideon, I’m sure you’ll remember from school, Mr. Smith, who foiled the rebels. He took down the terrorist Paul Revere, stopped him alerting the revolutionaries to the arrival of the British forces. April 18, 1775—British troops marched into Lexington and Concord and arrested the ringleaders of the rebellion. You can go to Boston if you wish and see the pickled heads of Samuel Adams and John Hancock.”

  “Think we’ll give that a miss,” said Bent.

  Lyle said, “And America, as you say, remains British. At least here on the East Coast.”

  Lyle swept the cane across the broad expanse of the map. “Over here, on the West Coast, that’s Japanese territory. Or rather, the Californian Meiji. The son of the old emperor, tired of waiting for his old man to die, set up shop here in ’sixty-eight. The Spanish used to hold it, but not very well. We were making inroads into settling when the Japs turned up. We’d a small town, San Francisco, which we’d taken from the Spaniards. The Japs took it from us. Nyu Edo they call it now.”

  He circled the middle of the map. “This? Empty land. Up for the taking. The land of the free, you might say. We have settlers out there, pioneering families trying to establish British American interests in the wilds, but it’s a dangerous life.”

  “I’d been given to understand there were already people there,” said Bent. “The Indians?”

  “Well, yes.” Lyle coughed. “But I’m talking about civilized peoples, Mr. Bent.”

  “And do the Japanese have designs on this free land?” asked Gideon.

  “We all have designs on expansion, Mr. Smith,” said Lyle. He pointed the cane to the far south. “Except for New Spain, maybe. Their perpetual war with the French back in Europe means they’re pulling resources out of the Americas, not putting them in.” The cane danced northward. “Up here is Canada, where we’re making small gains. But it’s an unforgiving territory that’ll take a lot of taming. Which is why we’re concentrating on expanding our borders westward.”

  Lyle tapped the eastern coastline far below New York and ran the cane across the map to just below Nyu Edo. “And this is British America’s greatest feat of engineering. The Mason-Dixon Wall. Two thousand miles of brick, stone, and mortar, stretching clear across the continent. Back in 1833 when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed, the southern states didn’t like it, not one bit. So they seceded and formed the Confederacy. At first London wanted us to take the land back, it being cotton-rich country. But advances in air travel meant we could get cotton from India, so we let ’em be. Besides, London wouldn’t send us more troops and resources, and we just couldn’t get embroiled in a war that could last decades. So we cleared out good, decent folk from points south, and brought them into British America properly. And Queen Victoria decided in 1838 that if British America couldn’t reclaim the southern lands, then we’d build a wall to keep them out.”

  The cane swept westward. “And over here, we have French Louisiana. Louis the Sixteenth fled here after the British punished the French for their part in the failed American Revolution. They say he fell in with witches. They say he’s still alive, presiding over a hellish city-state of black magic and fornication.”

  “Sounds right up my street,” said Bent, chuckling.

  Lyle leveled a serious stare at him. “I doubt you’d say that if you had the misfortune to find yourself in New Orleans, sir. The spies we’ve sent down … well, they never came back.”

  “Can’t say I blame ’em—all that effing fornication.”

  Lyle moved on. “And then we have Texas. It was always wild country down there. The warlords started off as British governors, but a few of them got together after the Wall was built, decided they didn’t want to pay their taxes and didn’t want to be beholden to a London that had cut them off with the Confederacy and French Louisiana. Neither did they like being told they couldn’t keep slaves. They didn’t want any part of the Confederacy, though; they wanted to live their own way. They’re godless, violent slavers, Mr. Smith, who will stop at nothing to ensure their anarchic, lawless way of life is preserved. They’re killers, ravishers. They make their own rules, and they aren’t the rules of civilized men. They take what they want and murder anyone who tries to stop them.”

  Lyle fell silent, and Gideon asked, “Mr. Lyle, how much do you know about our mission?”

  Lyle looked around the table. “You all have the necessary clearances?”

  “Of course. You can speak freely here. I would trust Mr. Bent and Rowena with my life. Have done, many times.”

  Lyle nodded, though he still seemed cautious. “I received a full briefing, of course, about what you’re doing here. From the highest authority.”

  “Oh, get on with it, Lyle,” said Bent. “You can say his name. He won’t magically appear behind you. Walsingham gave you the full rundown, did he?”

  Lyle appeared to relax. “Yes, Mr. Walsingham. He tol
d me that you had secured from Egypt an ancient weapon, a fabulous brass dragon that flies and shoots fireballs, powered by unknown machinery.” Lyle shook his head. “What a marvel. What a thing. Imagine what uses such an infernal device could be put to.”

  “That’s the problem, Mr. Lyle,” said Gideon. “We do imagine what it could be used for. That’s why we have to get it back. And, more than that, Maria…”

  Lyle nodded. “The automaton.” He had been thoroughly briefed, then. “The thing that flies the dragon.”

  Gideon narrowed his eyes. “Maria isn’t a thing, Mr. Lyle.”

  Lyle met his gaze. “Yes, Walsingham briefed me on that, as well.” He shrugged. “To each his own, Mr. Smith.”

  Bent jabbed at a rogue potato with his fork. “Do you have a wife yourself, Lyle? Or are you one of those who’s married to the job?”

  Lyle glanced down at his plate. “Everything I do, Mr. Bent, I do for my wife, Clara, and my son, Alfie.” He looked up to meet Bent’s eyes. “Everything, Mr. Bent.”

  “Then you’ll know that love is blind, Lyle, and not be so judgmental,” admonished Bent sharply. “I daresay that as much as you love ’em, your wife and kid aren’t actually perfect.”

  Lyle’s eyes flashed, and Gideon murmured, “Aloysius…”

  The governor sighed. “No. Mr. Bent is right. Who is perfect? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, and all.” He gazed into the distance—into the far-off past, it seemed to Gideon. “No, they are not perfect.” He shook his head and pulled himself back to the room. “Mr. Walsingham also tells me that one Louis Cockayne made off with your brass dragon and your automaton.”

  “Effing pirate,” said Bent.

  “Cockayne is known to me.” Lyle nodded. “He is somewhat famous in America. A master gunman, an adventurer—and yes, Mr. Bent, a pirate. Louis Cockayne goes where the money is, buys low, sells high, and gets out of town fast.”

  “So where is the money?” asked Gideon. “Here in New York? Boston? Perhaps the Japanese settlements in the West, or New Spain?”

  Lyle gave a humorless smile. “Possibly, and Louis Cockayne’s done business in all of those places. But something like your brass dragon, that’s going to be difficult to sell. If he goes to Nyu Edo, or Ciudad Cortes, he risks stirring up a diplomatic incident once the new masters of the dragon unveil their prize. No, he knows his markets, Louis Cockayne, and he’s going to take the dragon to people who have pots of money and don’t much care for the provenance of what they’re buying.”

  Bent said, “Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I can see what’s coming next.”

  Lyle smiled thinly again. “I’m afraid Mr. Bent is quite correct.” He turned back to the map and tapped the region below the Mason-Dixon Wall with the cane. “Mr. Smith, Texas is where you will need to go to find your dragon and your mechanical girl.”

  * * *

  After dinner, Rowena excused herself and retired, the stresses of the flight having finally caught up with her. Lyle told Gideon and Bent that he often took a cigar in the gardens after his meal, inviting them to join him.

  “America is more … complicated than I thought,” said Gideon as they walked around the walled garden, steering a course between the pools of pale light thrown by the gas lamps strung along the gravel path.

  “It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun being Governor of New York,” added Bent, puffing on one of Lyle’s huge cigars.

  The governor paused for a long moment, and Gideon listened with him to the sounds of the darkness: close up, the gentle song of night birds, and farther away, the constant hum of the city, a symphony of steam exhalations, clanking machinery, distant shouts, and snatches of music on the breeze that spoke of the approaching change of season.

  “The things that delight and dismay are often one and the same,” Lyle said eventually. “There are one and a half million souls crammed into these five boroughs, living alongside and above and below one another, but without them I would feel so very, very alone. Mr. Bent, over dinner you quoted from Genesis, did you not? You alluded to the tower of Babel? All the scattered diaspora of humanity is here on one island, a babbling cacophony of voices … but it is the differences between us that highlight our oneness. We are surrounded on all sides by hostile territory, hostile people, but that only serves to unite us in the pursuit of survival and happiness. To answer your question, Mr. Bent—no, being Governor of New York is not often fun. But it is the most rewarding position I could ever hope for on this vast earth, and I am privileged to curate this most wonderful of cities.”

  Gideon noticed that Bent was scribbling rapidly with the worn stub of a pencil in a notebook he had pulled from one of the many pockets of his crumpled but voluminous overcoat. “Smashing stuff, this,” said Bent. “It’ll make great copy when I write this up.”

  Lyle raised an amused eyebrow. “However…”

  Gideon invited the governor to continue.

  He said, “I know you gentlemen are agents of the Crown, but may I be presumptuous enough to hope we can speak freely, as friends?”

  “Speak away, Lyle,” said Bent, pocketing his notebook. “You’re off the record, as it were.”

  Lyle nodded and looked out into the darkness. “London is so very far away, gentlemen. It is difficult convincing some parties here that it is in our best interests to remain so closely tied to the Empire.”

  “There are those who counsel rebellion?” said Gideon.

  “No, no, of course not,” said Lyle. “But you must understand … the taxes here are greater than those you pay in London; they have to be. The lion’s share is sent back to Britain, with a small portion retained for municipal spending. From that, city governors such as myself must pay the army to keep order, the public works department, teachers, hospital workers, the sanitation sector … why, if I told you how much it cost to build and maintain the Mason-Dixon Wall alone, it would make your eyes water, sirs! But Queen Victoria desired a defense greater than the Great Wall of China, a structure that could be seen from the very moon, should mankind ever set foot upon it.”

  “It was taxes that caused the last revolution,” said Bent. “You think that could happen again?”

  “Not on my watch,” said Lyle. “But there are those who wonder whether America could not survive—indeed, thrive—away from the influence of the Empire. We have all the resources we require here. All we need is the money to get to them, and to keep the Japanese, the Texans, and the Spanish at bay. The Frenchies keep themselves to themselves, thank God. There are enough people eyeing up the unclaimed lands, and you wouldn’t believe how much coal a city like New York runs on.”

  “Where do you get it?” asked Bent.

  Lyle shrugged. “We have coalfields to the south, in Pennsylvania. But it’s hard, dangerous work getting it out. Much of it we import. We have to keep the machine moving. If we stop, we die.”

  As Gideon digested Lyle’s words, something flickered at the corner of his eye. He turned around and peered into the darkness beyond the gas lamps, at the edges of the walled garden where tall trees softened the border. He relaxed. A bird, nothing more. But then he heard the lightest of thumps from the other side of the garden and a skittering in the gravel.

  Bent had heard it, too, and he murmured something just as Gideon saw what seemed to be a shadow detaching itself from the tree ahead of him.

  Lyle swore.

  “What is it?” asked Gideon, turning around to see another black shadow, and another, dropping from the trees before and behind them. He circled on the spot; there were three figures, dressed from head to toe in black, save for slits in their hoods that showed narrow eyes glinting in the moonlight.

  “Ninja,” said Lyle softly. “Japanese assassins.”

  “Where are those effing soldiers?” Bent demanded, then hollered, “Help! Help in the garden!”

  Gideon slid his hand inside his jacket, where his Webley & Scott British Bulldog revolver sat snugly in its leather pouch. “Back,” he his
sed, stepping in front of Lyle and Bent. Two of the ninja were approaching, crouched, from the north and west, thin blades glinting in their hands. Gideon sensed that the third must be behind him, and he whirled quickly, throwing his gun arm over Bent’s shoulder.

  “Stop, or I shoot!”

  “Just effing get on with it,” said Bent. “Didn’t you hear him? They’re effing assassins.”

  Despite his training, Gideon had yet to kill a man in cold blood. He could feel his hands shaking, as they had never done on the shooting range. But there he had fired at wooden targets; here were living, breathing, flesh-and-blood men approaching.

  “Governor?”

  The appearance of a young soldier at the French windows broke the spell. The ninja approaching from the rear whirled around, his hand suddenly extended, his fingers splayed. The soldier’s eyes widened as a sharpened star thudded into his windpipe, and then he crumpled to the ground, gasping and spraying blood in red-black gouts. Gideon let loose the first of his bullets, hitting the ninja in the chest, the impact spinning the assassin around and into the trunk of a young cypress tree.

  “Gideon…” said Bent.

  He turned to see the two ninja running silently across the gravel toward them, and he fired again, throwing the one to the right off his feet. But Gideon had only winged the ninja’s arm, and he rose again, the glint of one of those deadly throwing stars in the palm of his gloved hand. Gideon unleashed the Bulldog again, this time aiming for the assassin’s head. His earlier hesitation cost him, though, because the final ninja was upon them, his long, thin blade slashing at Gideon’s gun hand.

  Gideon pushed Bent backward, knocking his friend off his feet and landing on top of him; he could hear the breath knocked out of Bent as he absorbed Gideon’s weight. Lyle staggered and the ninja seeped over him like a shadowy ghost, pulling the governor’s arm behind his back and holding the blade across his throat.

  Stalemate. Gideon got carefully to his feet, just as three more soldiers appeared at the French doors. He held up his hand. “Wait! Stay back!” he shouted. To the assassin he said more calmly, “What do you want?”