by Ginn Hale
The guard shrugged, looking a little shy.
“I used to imagine that it meant something,” The guard said after a moment. “That the ivory gun came to me.”
“Sure. Maybe it did,” Jack replied. Or maybe Peter finally found a proxy to get past that slavering ghostly mastiff and pull the ivory gun from between her skeletal jaws.
Jack moved carefully, reaching into the pocket of his coat to bring out a lighter and a cigarette. The guard watched him intently as he lit the cigarette and blew out a cloud of thin blue smoke.
“The smoke, that really is part of your Way, isn’t it?” The guard’s gaze followed the smoke as it curled and sank to ring Jack’s scarred right hand. “It’s not just from the films.”
“It’s part of my Way,” Jack acknowledged. Lightning flickered between his fingers as he twisted the smoke into rings.
The guard watched Jack’s hand with an expectant expression, as if he were waiting for Jack to preform a trick. Turn smoke into a dove, or a dozen gray roses.
Jack exhaled another coil of smoke. If he killed the guard now he might never find the ivory gun. That was if the guard wasn’t lying about having taken it. Jack studied the young man. Dark hair, nice build, ears a little big, smile a little too easy.
“So how has the ivory piece held up?” Jack stepped past, striding to the remains of the monument. The dirt beneath him felt dumb. That smoldering fury beneath had at last slipped away into sleep. Neither the bitch nor the gun answered when Jack reached the granite and blew a long trail of blue smoke over the ragged stone.
“It looks the same as in the old photos.” The guard watched Jack but not with the measured gaze of an assassin taking aim. “Though it sort of…” The guard frowned, seeming to weigh his words for the first time. “It stinks pretty bad.”
Jack laughed despite himself.
“Yeah, they never put that in the films, do they?” Nothing could lift the rotten stench from infants’ bones and teeth that Beadle had crafted into the gun. The thing reeked of rot and shit. That had been half the reason Amelia always wore gloves, to keep the stink off her fingers.
“So, why are you here now?” Jack asked.
The guard’s smile faded. His gaze slipped back to the craggy remnants of the statue. Granite flowers curled around the remains of a stone paw.
“I’ve always wanted to meet you…I guess a lot of people say that. But after what happened at the sanatorium, I thought you might need help. Maybe I could help you.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s uncommonly big-hearted of you. And after what I did, do you really think you want to help me?” Jack crushed out his cigarette against the monument and watched the guard. He looked young, earnest and a little excited. Like so many other young men Jack had put in the ground.
“You were set up. I heard the nurses reporting your arrival and calling in the strike forces when they thought I was dead on the ground. You were set up to take the blame for killing Rachael Keys.” The guard spoke with certainty. And he wasn’t wrong, though Jack doubted that he knew that it had been Rachael herself who’d used him for her own assassination.
“Maybe I deserved it,” Jack suggested.
“No.” The guard shoved a strand of hair back from his eyes. “Everyone in the Ministry of Security knows that she and Minister Tyber were at odds.”
Strange to think of Peter and Rachael as Security Minister Tyber and Security Secretary Keys.
“They always flared up like kerosene and matches,” Jack admitted.
“That’s what everyone said. But after the shooting on Redding Terrace, it was pretty clear that Secretary Keys really did intend to bring the Minister up on charges for breach of public trust. Maybe even have him held responsible for the murders.” The guard’s expression grew troubled. He scowled down at the chapped red knuckles of his bare hands.
A group of striking miners gunned down behind the bar where they regularly met, was all Jack recalled of the Redding Massacre. He’d figured it for a Ministry assassination but hadn’t had it in him to feel anything but disgusted and resigned at the time. Hell of a thing, when the Shadow of Death cared more about murder and corruption than he did.
“Rachael really made a stink about it?” Jack asked.
“She was furious.” The guard’s expression briefly lit with admiration then dimmed. “But then she suddenly disappeared and we were all told she’s sick, but we knew…. We knew. Some of the men were happy about it. But most of us…were just cowards, afraid of ending up like the Secretary ourselves….”
Had he still been the fifteen-year-old delinquent who’d rushed into a revolution, Jack would have sneered at the idea of such caution, but he’d since witnessed the ruin that rolled in the wakes of brash men of action. Often as not, friends, lovers and family suffered and died because some ass needed to feel he was a hero. Often as not, that ass had been Jack.
“Yeah, well you’re none of you wizards, so what were you going to do to a fucker like Gold-Spike Peter?” Jack replied. “And on top of that he has half the ministry guns behind him, doesn’t he?”
“He does.” The guard nodded but for some reason he seemed cheered. “But it wasn’t the Gold-Spike who defeated the Tyrant. That was you, Jack Swift. And I just want to say that it would be an honor to help you in any way I can.”
“I’m not the guy from the movies,” Jack said. “I’m nothing like that.”
“I know. I can see that. But you’re….” The guard cocked his head to glance sidelong at Jack but then turned his gaze down to the frost glinting over the withered patches of weeds. “I always thought…. There were those rumors….”
The guard lapsed into silence and Jack took a moment to consider that jumble of words and awkward pauses. He understood right away what the young man hinted and stammered at. How much of it he believed, he wasn’t certain. It seemed so very unlikely that Peter wouldn’t have already laid far more than his eyes on the young man and screwed him well past playing bashful. So was this flustered fumbling an act for Jack’s benefit? But what would be the point? Jack hadn’t ever gone for coy types.
The guard dropped his gaze from Jack’s face and ran a hand over his brow with the disheartened expression of a boy who’d lost his first job.
“I’m not normally like this,” he muttered. “It’s just you’re….”
“Yeah I know who I am.” Jack cut him off. “How about you tell me who you are.”
The guard’s head came up quick with a painfully hopeful expression.
“Finch. Owen Finch. Security, First Division.” He didn’t salute but Jack could tell it had taken an effort not to. “I’m registered to the Bone Ledge, like you were. But I volunteered for security after the floods.”
“Volunteered?” That didn’t sound like any Bone Ledge boy Jack had ever known, but then he’d always run with a rotten crowd.
“I was seventeen and I needed secure work,” Finch said, shrugging.
“You like it?” Jack asked.
“Does anybody like work?” Finch asked back. “Up until now, it’s been an honest job. Beats scavenging off corpses on the Bone Ledge, doesn’t it?”
“Suppose it does.” Steady employment wasn’t unknown to Jack but certainly didn’t come easy. The same day in and day out felt unnatural and ominous after years of surviving on the run. What career he’d managed to make for himself—machine work mostly—hadn’t come with gold epaulettes or a private airplane.
Not that he wouldn’t have screwed it up if it had. He knew that much of his own character. He couldn’t keep things nice, not even his own life.
Jack frowned at Finch’s happy expression.
“So, what you said earlier, those rumors about me? That’s something we have in common, is it?”
Finch flushed red all the way to his ears and at the same time Jack caught that look of hunger. He wasn’t feigning just to flatter Jack into a back room where he could blow his brains out. Though that didn’t mean this pink-cheeked guard wouldn’t murder Jack
after he’d gotten his rocks off.
Still, there was something touching about that blatant look of longing. The mix of desperation and tenderness made Jack too aware of how lonely he’d been these last years. And it made him resent the knowledge a little as well.
“Where’s the ivory gun?” Jack demanded.
“At my flat,” Finch replied. He answered so easily, just the way he smiled. As if there could be nothing to hide, no reason for him to fear that Jack might reach out and with a flick of his smoke-ringed fingers burn his heart to ash. After that Jack could just take his keys, find his registered address in his wallet and have the ivory gun in his ugly hands before sundown. He could do it in an instant.
He’d be no better than Peter after that but he wasn’t certain that being better ever meant much to him. He wasn’t some gullible boy who believed the moral fables that had been made out of his early bloody exploits. He’d been faster than the Tyrant but no less murderous, no less cruel. He could claim to have killed for a cause but then causes were easy to acquire if you were already intent upon murder.
He had one now.
“You shouldn’t have just told me that, you know,” Jack said.
“Why not?” Finch asked.
“Because now I’ve got no reason not to kill you, have I?”
Finch stared at him appearing nearly too surprised to be afraid. Then his expression turned disappointed. Likely he’d expected more of his childhood hero.
Well, hadn’t they all?
Jack extended his smoke-ringed hand but Finch didn’t balk. He stood his ground and met Jack’s gaze like he meant to burn Jack’s image into his eyes. And Jack couldn’t do it. Once he would have scorched Finch’s heart to gristle without a second thought—but somewhere in the slow passage of years since he’d been a boy, he’d grown soft and sympathetic toward people kinder than himself.
He brushed the shoulder of Finch’s coat, then drew his hand back and stuffed it in a deep pocket.
“Well, let’s go to your flat then, shall we?” Jack said at last.
Finch grinned, relief and happiness lending radiance to his nice features. Jack wanted to ignore that affectionate expression but he felt it like sunlight warming his skin despite the surrounding frost.
“It’s not too far,” Finch assured him.
Jack allowed himself to be led from the frigid courtyard down to the sheltered platforms where battered red funiculars whisked couples and families six thousand feet down worn tracks back to the narrow lanes of brick apartment blocks, crowded diners and rundown theatres of the Salthollow ledge.
Chapter Five
Finch didn’t take him straight up to his flat. Instead he bustled Jack past a crowd of raucous off-duty maids into a small, busy diner. Afternoon light spilled long yellow shafts through the narrow windows and lit up the haze of steam and smoke hanging in the air. Sizzling oil, cheap beer, lively conversations and the snappy tenor of a radio newscaster washed over Jack like an atmosphere. Finch swiveled and turned between the packed tables and hurried waitresses. He tucked his machine gun close to his body but no one gave it or Finch undue interest. He was familiar with this place and to these people.
Jack hung back, half-listening to Finch’s conversation with the rawboned old woman at the battered register, while also contemplating the clusters of customers coming and going.
A working class crowd, for the most part. Though the profusion of missing fingers, feet, eyes and ears made Jack guess that veterans of the revolution numbered largely among the diner’s clientele. At one table, a group of weathered women in their forties shared a platter of fried onions and rice, while discussing the merits of the various hooks and clamps that served as their hands.
Nearer Jack, two men sat nursing beers and sorting political leaflets. The younger of the two stared past Jack with one milky, spell-blinded eye while the elder massaged the stump of his right knee. The glossy black foot of his artificial leg jutted out from under the tablecloth at the odd angle of an optical illusion or a bad joke.
“Nobody’s come sniffing around yet.” The gray-haired woman at the register spoke softly to Finch but her gaze moved constantly over the room. Jack pitied the idiot who tried to dine-and-dash at this joint. Despite her age, the woman stood nearly as tall as Finch and looked tough enough to beat a mule to death with her bare fists.
She scratched the white gash of the scar running across her chin. Jack noticed another scar just rising above the flower-patterned choker the woman wore around her throat. Neither her delicate wedding ring nor the prayer bracelets adorning her wrists diminished the masculine strength of her muscular, crossed arms. Her fingernails gleamed like scarlet razor blades.
Years before, a woman very like this lady had treated his injuries and hidden him from the Tyrant’s Fireguard. Despite her glower, Jack warmed to Finch’s landlady.
She, on the other hand, glanced over Finch’s shoulder to Jack with the expression of a woman who knew a bad apple when she saw one. Her white brows creased and then flattened to the same hard line that made up her thin mouth.
“Thanks for watching for me, Linda,” Finch said.
“No problem.” The old woman’s expression softened for Finch. “Do you think you’ll still be able to collect signatures for the Redding petition, next week?”
“Absolutely,” Finch replied and Jack didn’t miss the warmth of his smile. He obviously adored this tough, old gray-hair and Jack supposed that the old woman was fond of Finch, as well.
“I’ll send beer and supper up for you boys later, shall I?” The woman’s assessing gaze settled again on Jack. This time he felt certain that she recognized him, but she said nothing and turned her attention back to Finch. “Make sure to light the shrine before you go up.”
“We will,” Finch said. Then he gestured for Jack to follow him back behind the woman and through a steel door and into a busy kitchen. Heat billowed over Jack like breath, pungent with spiced oil and onions.
Six burly cooks dressed in little more than aprons and slotted shoes sweated over old-fashioned soot-flame stoves and steamers. They swore and laughed while grease spattered and flames briefly erupted from their huge pans. A gangly youth clanged dishes and pots through the sudsy gray water of a wash sink. Two of the cooks called out greetings in passing to Finch but otherwise no one paid him or Jack any particular attention.
At the back of the kitchen an iron-rung ladder rose from a dark basement and reached up to the second floor. In the shadow of the steps, stood a small, stained table, which supported three gaudy brass incense burners. Taped to the wall just behind the burners was an aged propaganda poster. One of the simple ones printed just after the Revolution.
THEY FOUGHT
FOR OUR FREEDOM
The bold block letters at the center of the poster had faded to gray suggestions, and a patina of kitchen grease dulled the stark white paper to yellow. As they drew closer, Jack made out the halo of twelve red-framed photos that encircled the faint words.
Jack picked out Rachael’s face at the very top of the circle easily, then scowled at Peter’s imperious portrait. Blond and bright, he’d been as highborn as Amelia and even more bitter about his rejection; his own folks had tried to put him down with a pillow over his face. Jack wondered suddenly if murdering his own father to escape had somehow twisted Peter even more than any of them had realized.
He’d never been kind and his Way—those dramatic golden spikes and silver knives that he employed to drain the souls and lives from his enemies—placed the very worst of his character on display. He’d meant to terrify and he did. The Tyrant’s people tried to dismiss Peter, comparing him to a mosquito. Only his delicate limbs and ferocious appetite were built into a limber body standing six feet tall, and he left his victims impaled and screaming.
But he hadn’t been a remorseless monster, at least not back then.
Jack even remembered one night, after they’d pulled off a brutal series of assassinations, hearing Peter gagging and s
obbing. Killing women had often made him sick but that night it had been worse than just puking. Peter had cried like he was dying. Beadle had been the one to go to him, creeping into the stinking cramped bathroom.
Beadle had soothed him by showing Peter how to keep himself separate from the anguish of the wizards whose Ways he’d devoured.
Jack vividly recalled crushing his ear against the flimsy door and listening while Beadle whispered gentle confessions to Peter. He had told Peter about his Way and how he’d learned to hide himself in mirrors while the men at the brothel did what they would with his little body. Then one day he’d realized that he didn’t have to be the one locked away in a reflection; he could trap, punish, and even kill his tormentors in the mirrors. He’d even confessed that he’d stolen the Way of crafting bones from another wizard—the first man he’d captured in a whorehouse mirror. Beadle had teased Peter that he could catch him in the reflection of the toilet water, and that at last had won a laugh from Peter.
After all that, Jack had been sure that Peter had been head over heels for Beadle. He’d been certain that he’d recognized complete adoration on Peter’s face each time he glanced in Beadle’s direction.
How wrong he’d been… about so much.
Jack passed a dismissive eye over his own young, wild grin. He’d been such a jackass back then. It embarrassed him that his image could claim any place in this shrine. He hadn’t fought for anyone’s freedom. He’d just been an angry shit, spoiling for a brawl.
Then he took in the other small gray portraits: Cricket, Moon, Timmy, Amelia, Haddad, Pip, Fishy, Grant… They all looked so young to him now.
It seemed wrong that all he remembered about most of them was how grotesquely they’d died. Especially Moon. The Tyrant had released flashy footage of her torture, and slow execution as a newsreel. It’d played twice a day in every theater for months. Jack stared intently at the grainy image of fourteen-year-old Moon, smiling shyly from beneath the shadow of her thick black braids. He wanted to remember her like that, not naked and bleeding to death on the end of an executioner’s lance.