Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  The man’s eyes were wide behind his mask, swiveling between Gideon, the soldiers in the doorway, and the corpses of his compatriots. Something felt … not right. For a trained assassin, the man seemed very nervous, almost terrified. Gideon said again, softly, “What do you want?”

  The man muttered something in a language utterly foreign to Gideon, and Lyle said through gritted teeth, “Isn’t it obvious? He wants to kill the Governor of New York.”

  Lyle’s words seemed to galvanize the ninja, and he stood a little straighter, steadying his blade at Lyle’s neck. “Do something,” pleaded the governor.

  “Put down the weapon or I shoot,” said Gideon.

  The ninja pressed his blade into the folds of fat at Lyle’s throat.

  Behind him, Gideon was aware of more movement in the doors of the building. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the ninja, but sensed Rowena’s presence all the same; the commotion had woken her.

  “Stay back, all of you,” said Gideon quietly. “You, too, Rowena.”

  “Gideon…” he heard her say.

  “Back,” he ordered. The ninja’s eyes were swiveling beneath his mask. He was panicking. Lyle’s eyes bulged as the blade tightened at his throat.

  “You don’t want to do this,” said Gideon.

  Lyle closed his eyes. “He’s right. You don’t want to do this.”

  The attacker didn’t seem to know what he wanted, anymore. He was a skittish thing, for an assassin, thought Gideon. The man muttered something, presumably in Japanese, and Gideon saw a thin line of dark blood appear at Lyle’s throat.

  Before Gideon knew what he was doing, the Bulldog barked in his hands. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the ninja went slack, a curtain of red blood fell across his eyes, and he slumped backward onto the gravel path.

  Lyle stepped forward, rubbing the blood away from what Gideon saw was only the slightest scratch on his neck, as the soldiers ran into the garden and approached the fallen assassins. “Mr. Smith,” Lyle said. “You have saved my life.”

  A cavalry officer pulled the mask from the face of the first assassin Gideon had felled. He was swarthy, with narrowed eyes, and a tattoo crawled up his neck—what Gideon supposed was some Japanese symbol or script. Bent appeared at his shoulder, his notepad in his hand.

  “Jap all right,” said the soldier, pulling the mask back down.

  Lyle laid a hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “Mr. Smith, I am forever in your debt. I think a calming brandy is called for.”

  Gideon stared dumbly at the fallen bodies as Rowena rushed to his side. She embraced him, tangling her fingers in his hair. He felt suddenly sick.

  “Ssh,” she whispered. “I know. I know what it’s like. You had to do it.”

  “Yes,” he said, numb. “I had to do it.”

  * * *

  In the dining room, their dinner things cleared away, Lyle poured each of them a generous measure. Gideon said, “Is this a regular occurrence? Attacks by assassins?”

  “Thankfully, no,” said the governor. He had been cleaned up, a bandage applied to the slight wound on his neck. “This is the first time the Japanese have been so bold.” He paused, staring into the swirling, golden heart of his brandy. “I wonder what made them carry out such a direct attack, at the heart of British America. What has forced their hand? Why have they become so bold?”

  “Anybody’d think they wanted an effing war,” said Bent.

  “The Californian Meiji will deny this attack, of course, but nevertheless this is a most disturbing development. If the Japanese really do want war, Mr. Bent, we can ill afford it.”

  Gideon stood before the large map, drinking in the unfamiliar names. The distance those assassins must have had to cross, from Nyu Edo to New York, made his head spin. “But why would they want war? Isn’t America big enough for everyone?”

  Lyle laughed. “The world isn’t big enough for everyone, Mr. Smith, though it might seem a vast and often uncharted place. The desire of the human race to own and control should never be underestimated.”

  “Bloody good job we were here,” said Bent.

  Gideon turned from the map as Rowena said, “Yes, wasn’t it? I must say, Mr. Lyle, I’d have thought you’d have been … better protected.”

  Bent slapped the table. “She’s right, Lyle. Your cavalry were about as much use as an effing butter fireguard! But for Gideon here they’d have cooked your goose.” He paused. “Or your turkey, I suppose.”

  “I am indeed lucky.” Lyle nodded. “And I shall forever be in your debt, Mr. Smith. As to my security, Mr. Bent, you can rest assured that under normal circumstances the men under my command are exemplary soldiers. But the world’s changing, and we are facing threats we never anticipated. Black-clad assassins armed with swords and knives, as silent and invisible as the wind? We couldn’t legislate for that, Mr. Bent. But, as they say, everything that does not kill us makes us stronger. We shall not be caught out in that way again. Of course, the Japanese will probably have more tricks up their sleeves.…” Lyle bit his lip. “I probably shouldn’t say too much, but … well, I’ve had information that they’ve got a weapon, the Japs. Something that could destroy New York in a day.” He sat back and shook his head. “Secret weapons. Brass dragons. Silent assassins. I swear to God, what a world we live in.”

  Gideon turned back to the map, his finger trailing down from New York to the vast emptiness beneath the thick line of the Mason-Dixon Wall. And somewhere down there was Maria, and the dragon, and Louis Cockayne.

  As if reading his thoughts, Edward Lyle appeared at his elbow and pointed to a dot on the map, just below the Wall. “If I were a gambling man, I’d put money that your Mr. Cockayne is there.”

  Gideon leaned forward and read the name. “San Antonio.”

  Lyle grunted. “That’s the name the Spaniards gave it. These days it’s mostly known south of the Wall as Steamtown.”

  7

  THE KING OF STEAMTOWN

  Thaddeus Pinch liked to boast that he was more machine than man, which was only fitting for the self-styled King of Steamtown. Louis Cockayne had once asked him if that included his dick. That had been at a card game very much like the one he was embroiled in now, late at night in a spit-and-sawdust saloon bar in San Antonio, as Cockayne faced off against the grotesque figure of Pinch. The King of Steamtown’s assembled cronies had collectively gasped; no one spoke to Thaddeus Pinch like that. No one, that was, except for Louis Cockayne. Charm and—yes, pun intended—a pair of brass balls went a long way with a man like Pinch, and he’d guffawed long and hard, steam hissing from the pistons and valves around his steel jaw.

  That time, Cockayne had been playing for a stack of chips that bought him three nights in the company of the best whores in the best whorehouse in the whole of Steamtown.

  Now, though, his charm seemed to have failed him. He hoped his fabled luck didn’t do the same.

  Because this time, Louis Cockayne was playing for his life.

  Pinch’s left arm, a thick brass cylinder snaking with thin pipes and hydraulic pistons, reached out for the glass of whisky on the worn green baize table between him and Cockayne. With his fleshy right hand he slapped the toggles on his metal forearm and his jointed fingers, mottled with verdigris, closed around the glass with a sigh of escaping steam. He raised the whisky to his mouth and sucked hard on the wooden straw, rivulets of golden liquid dribbling down the square, steel lower jaw, fixed with huge bolts through the festering, swollen flesh of his drawn cheeks.

  The King of Steamtown liked to tell how he lost each limb, each body part, and how Steamtown’s scientists—some of whom had come to San Antonio of their own free will, drawn by the freedom of the Texan warlord’s burgeoning city-state, others who had been kidnapped and set to work for Thaddeus Pinch whether they liked it or not—had replaced and repaired them. Cockayne had heard the stories many, many times before. Pinch’s jaw had been blown off by a gunslinger who came to San Antonio to try to earn the bounty the governors back
east had put on Pinch’s head. The sun-bleached bones of the would-be assassin still swung in a rusting gibbet in the town square. Pinch’s left arm had been bitten off by a coyote. His right leg had to be amputated below the knee after Pinch, loaded on whisky and peyote, had crashed one of Jim Bowie’s Steamcrawlers into a cactus while racing around the desert one full-mooned night. If Pinch really had lost his dick, it would doubtless have been to the clap. The only women in Steamtown were the whores who were forced to work the city’s many brothels, and ex-whores who had been bought out of their enforced service by San Antonio’s menfolk who decided that their days of paying for sex were over, and they wanted to take a wife.

  Not many of those men and their unshackled wives started families. Steamtown was no place to raise children. Besides, when Thaddeus Pinch decided he needed to boost the population of San Antonio, he simply sent his slavers out to get more people: men to work the coal mines and ranches, and women for the brothels.

  It was a big old world, and there was no shortage of bodies. And no shortage of those who made their own way to Steamtown, drawn by the lure of the only truly free city in America, probably even the world.

  Of course, Louis Cockayne wished he were just about anywhere else on the globe rather than sitting in front of Thaddeus Pinch playing poker.

  “It’s time to put up or shut up, Cockayne,” lisped Pinch through his steel maw. His new teeth were cruel, jagged spikes, at shiny odds with the tobacco-browned stumps of his top row. He took another dribbling sip of whisky through his wooden straw and with his good hand laid his cards down on the table.

  Six of hearts. Seven of clubs. Eight of hearts. Nine of spades. Ten of diamonds.

  “Straight,” said Pinch.

  Cockayne chewed on the cheap cigar Pinch had gifted him and finished off his own whisky quickly. Pinch’s mob was behind the King of Steamtown, his trusted lieutenants and cronies; a more unlikeable bunch of rapists, thieves, and murderers you never hoped to meet down a dark alley. Closest to Pinch was Inkerman, a fat, pug-nosed, rat-eyed bastard with appetites that apparently ran the gamut from children to grandmas, and all points in between. Word was, a ride didn’t actually have to be alive for Inkerman to saddle up. Word was, that was how he liked it best.

  Cockayne didn’t like Inkerman at all, never had. Now that the fat bastard was wearing Cockayne’s best leather gun belt, complete with his pearl-handled revolvers, he liked the man even less.

  “I’m waiting,” said Pinch.

  Cockayne laid down his cards. Two, four, five, eight, queen. Of spades.

  “Flush,” he said, breathing a silent prayer to lady luck.

  Pinch banged his brass arm on the table, roaring a spittle-flecked laugh. His hangers-on quickly joined in. Cockayne allowed himself a crooked smile.

  “You’re one lucky bastard, Cockayne,” said Pinch when he recovered. His eyes narrowed. “Fourteen straight wins. You’re not holding out on me, are you, Louis? Not cheating?”

  Cockayne stood slowly, his hands flat on the table, never taking his eyes off Pinch, even when a volley of clicks accompanied the swift drawing of pistols and rifles, all pointed in Cockayne’s direction, from the King of Steamtown’s unruly court.

  “I may be a thief, I may be a killer, I may be a wanted man on three continents,” said Cockayne levelly. “But I never in my life cheated at cards.”

  Pinch appraised him for a moment. “You’re one cool motherfucker, Cockayne,” he said. “You could do well in Steamtown. I’ve always got an opening for a man like you. A real good opening, right by my side.”

  Cockayne cast an eye at Inkerman, who grunted uncomfortably. Cockayne tipped him a wink as Pinch continued, “All you have to do is talk, Louis. Talk to me.”

  “I’ve told you all I can, Thaddeus.”

  Pinch sighed. “Take him back to the pen.”

  Inkerman and three of the thugs waved their guns at Cockayne, and he moved ahead of them to the swing doors that let out on to the dusty street, illuminated by oil lamps and ringing with the sounds of the coal mines that surrounded the center of San Antonio working into the night.

  Pinch said, “Same time tomorrow. If you lose, I will kill you, you know.”

  Cockayne shrugged. “No you won’t. Not while you think I know something.”

  Pinch turned away from him. “Don’t be too sure, Louis. Just tell me everything you know about that goddamn dragon before it’s too late.”

  * * *

  The pen was a single-story stone building on the edge of town, nestled between two strip-mining sites where slaves toiled day and night to bring up the coal that powered Steamtown. It was one big cell, windowless, with iron bars dividing it from a thin office. Inkerman was the nominal sheriff of San Antonio, but since the former governor had driven Steamtown’s secession from British America along with the other Texas townships back in ’fifty, law in the town had been a brutal, ad hoc affair. Justice was delivered swiftly and mostly without ceremony, at the end of a gun or a rope, and often at the whim of Pinch (who’d taken over the family business from his daddy), Inkerman, or one of the revolving cadre of deputies. As a result, the pen was rarely in use—imprisonment not often being a sentence passed down by Steamtown’s law enforcers—and Louis Cockayne was currently its sole guest.

  Inkerman chewed on a strip of beef jerky and regarded Cockayne with his little rat eyes, leaning his fat ass on the corner of the desk in the office. The door leading outside was tantalizingly open, the sounds of the Steamtown night drifting in on the warm breeze, but the cell gates were locked resolutely tight. As if to drive home the fact, Inkerman twirled the metal ring jangling with half a dozen keys around his pinky, then clipped it to his gun belt—from which Cockayne’s revolvers hung.

  “I have a very long shit-list these days, Inkerman, and you’re right at the top of it,” said Cockayne quietly, glaring through the bars.

  The sheriff snorted. “Pinch’ll get your dragon to fly with or without you, Cockayne. The best you can hope for is a quick death.” He stroked his battered holsters. “Might even use your own guns on you.”

  Cockayne patted his pockets—not for weapons, since he’d been summarily stripped of anything he might use against Pinch or his men—but for his cigarillos. He located one and beckoned to Inkerman. “Light?”

  Inkerman grunted, but Cockayne had heard full well Pinch telling the fat idiot that Cockayne might be a prisoner, but he was an old friend of Steamtown, and had to be treated with a bit of respect … as long as he was alive. Inkerman pulled out a box of matches and said, “You know the drill.”

  Cockayne raised an eyebrow then pushed his face, the cheroot between his teeth, into the gap between the bars. He raised his hands backward, fingers splayed, so Inkerman could see he wasn’t hiding anything. Inkerman struck a match and held it at arm’s length while Cockayne puffed on the cigarillo, then backed off again.

  “You’re still scared of me,” said Cockayne through a cloud of bluish smoke.

  “I ain’t a cretin.” Inkerman shrugged.

  Cockayne watched him through narrowed eyes for a moment then turned away. Inkerman said, “I’m going back to the saloon. There are three boys outside who would love to blow your nuts off. Best just go to sleep, Cockayne, and think of how you’re going to make your dragon fly.”

  * * *

  The dragon flew, all right. From London to the Gulf of Mexico it flew, in one seamless journey. It was faster than a dirigible, but the trip was still a long one. Cockayne had forced himself to stay awake because he didn’t know whether his control over the dragon’s strange pilot would hold if he fell asleep, and he didn’t fancy waking up to find himself falling down to the dark Atlantic far below.

  How the damned thing flew, well, that was quite a different matter. Cockayne had watched from the banks of the Nile as the Rhodopis Pyramid had collapsed and the magnificent brass dragon, its wings glowing in the Egyptian sun, rose from the ruins. He’d pursued it in the Yellow Rose to London, where mad old John R
eed planned to blow Queen Victoria and all in Buckingham Palace to kingdom come. He’d watched Gideon Smith, that spunky hick from the sticks, try to clean Reed’s clock for him … and nearly get his ass handed to him on a plate until Lucian Trigger took matters into his own hands.

  And he’d spotted an opportunity—he was Louis Cockayne, after all! That was what he did!—to take control of the brass dragon they called Apep and ride off into the sunset, sitting on what he knew was a winged, fire-breathing gold mine.

  He just didn’t have a clue how the goddamn thing stayed up in the air. Within the head of the dragon was a cockpit, fashioned by the hands of ancient Egyptian craftsmen two millennia ago. The cockpit contained one seat in age-faded cowhide before an instrument panel with five recesses. As far as Cockayne understood it, the thing had remained dormant until John Reed and his undead guardians obtained the five lost artifacts that fit those holes: a roughly hewn figure from ancient Egypt called a shabti; a ruby ring that had sat in the coffers of the British Royal Family for who knew how long; a small box inlaid with jewels and gems that had been buried by smugglers on the North Yorkshire coast; a golden scarab, latterly in the vaults of Castle Dracula in Transylvania; and an amulet that Reed had discovered (and which had set him on the path toward his damnation) around the neck of a mummy being studied in Boston. These were the things that somehow powered the dragon.

  All that was needed to fly it was Maria.

  Cockayne had to admit that even he had felt a pang of doubt right at the moment he’d stolen Apep from under the noses of the others. Maria was integral to the flying of the thing—an automaton, but damn near a real woman. Beautiful, too. She was a clockwork girl with the living brain of a murdered prostitute, but that wasn’t all that was in her head, by all accounts. The key to the whole mess that had left Reed and Trigger dead was the Atlantic Artifact, a doohickey from God knew where that was somehow connected to Maria’s brain by the scientist Hermann Einstein and was responsible for bringing both Maria and Apep to life.