Driftmetal II

by J. C. Staudt

Thomas pouted. “Is money the only thing you love?”

  “Money is the only thing a lot of people love, but not me. What I love is motivating people. And the more money I have, the more people I can motivate.”

  “You’ll be able to motivate many people if you accept my offer. The job isn’t long-term, you see. It’s a singular task whose brevity is only matched by its secrecy. It won’t take you any longer than it takes you to brush your teeth… if you’re a participant in that sort of thing.”

  I gave him a dry look. “Fine, Tom. You’ve piqued my interest enough that I won’t shut you up just yet. I’ve got nothing better to do, so go on and describe your little job.”

  Thomas cleared his throat. “Your assessment of my letter to Gretchen was in the vicinity, but it wasn’t… exactly correct.”

  “You mean you don’t know a secret about her?”

  “Oh, I most certainly do. But you see, there’s far more to it than that.”

  I raised the clinkers and shifted our course to match Kilori’s bluewave signal, then let him continue.

  “I had already been working as an adviser in the Wilshire household for quite some time before the Archduchess and I began to fall in love. Our love was of the sort that grew slowly, over a period of several years. It was a love forbidden by not only the Archduchess’s marriage to her husband, but also by the social boundaries that exist between servant and master. A love—”

  “Let me stop you right there,” I said. “Since I’m the only one listening, I think I speak for everyone here when I say no one cares. Get past the mushy-gushy love stuff and move on to the part where something interesting happens.”

  For a second, Thomas looked as if he was about to burst like a rainstorm, but he choked it down. “One day, the Archduke died. Is that interesting enough?”

  I waved a hand. “Go on.”

  “In the wake of her husband’s death, Gretchen began to cling to her son and grow more distant from me. I had envisioned her reaction being quite the opposite, but alas. Things grew distant and strained between us. For a long time, they were not the same as they had been. Then one night, I discovered a packet of seeds in her late husband’s room. I spirited them away to be analyzed, and I found, to my great surprise and confusion, that they were poisonous. I confronted Gretchen about the seeds. That was the night I gave her my ultimatum. Once she knew I was onto her… once she knew what I was planning…”

  The words from Thomas’s letter rushed back into my head. I patted my coat pocket to make sure it was still there. I will bleed out into the world the seedling of your love’s bloom. “Holy Leridote in the heavens,” I said. “You weren’t threatening to tell Gretchen’s secret in that letter. You were threatening to kill her son.”

  Thomas looked out across the sky, tears welling at the corners of his eyes.

  “You didn’t just threaten it, either. You were very specific. You were planning to kill the Archduke in the same way Gretchen killed her husband.”

  “I always thought we would be together after the former Archduke’s death. As it turns out, Gretchen murdered her husband more out of a general dislike for the man than due to her love for me.”

  “Have you ever considered that maybe the Archduchess seduced you out of boredom, and that now that her husband is dead, she has better things—and by things, I mean men—to occupy her time?”

  “Of course I have. I’ve considered everything. Don’t you know the ravages cultivated by a broken heart? The endless cycle of torment the mind puts itself through when faced with utter isolation and rejection?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t say I do. I’ve been betrayed though, and I imagine the feeling of having your guts ripped out through your throat can’t be too different from having a broken heart.”

  “It is very much like that, yes.”

  “So then, if you made threats on the young Archduke’s life and ran off, what’s all this nonsense about going to Darigal?”

  Thomas’s face went a shade paler. “That’s where you come in. Or where someone else came in, before I became aware that I was in the company of the great Mulroney Francis Jakes.”

  I cringed at the sound of my middle name. “That was unnecessary. So you were headed for Darigal to hire someone to kill the Archduke for you, since you were too much of a namby-pamby to slip some powder into his tea when you had the chance.”

  “More or less, I suppose. But now I want to hire you.”

  “To kill the Archduke? That doesn’t sound too hard. Fifteen-year-old kid. What’s he got, a manor house and a few dozen guards?”

  “Thereabouts. And as it happens, I know every door and passage through the place.”

  “So you want me to make good on your threat. Sneak in and poison the kid’s apple juice?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “Here’s the thing about murder, Tommy. I’ve killed lots of nobodies. I’ve killed more people without fame or social status than I can count on my fingers and toes. But killing someone famous… killing someone who’s got an important seat in the Regency… that’s a whole different hairball, my friend. The Archduke of Finustria is about ten untimely deaths away from becoming Regent of this whole miserable world. He dies, people are going to notice.”

  “I believe Gretchen planned for that very thing when she poisoned her husband. The seeds she used to do the deed came from an otherwise-benign plant called the Angarellium. Common name, Silver Lace. The signs of its use are often untraceable.”

  “You’ve lost me. I wouldn’t know a tulip if it bit off my nose.”

  “Angarellium is harmless in primitives, but it causes severe internal hemorrhaging when ingested by techsouls. I’m not sure of the science behind it; something about a genetic weakness of ours the substance exploits.”

  “I didn’t realize any substance like that even existed. Something that can do more damage to us than to primitives? We’d better not let any primies find out.”

  Thomas gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Seems a horrible way to go, doesn’t it?”

  “Not in the least. If I’m gonna die, I’d rather it be quick and sudden. Who wants to pick the music for his own funeral?”

  Thomas shrugged. I could see how hopeful he was that I’d help him. “So… will you do it?” he asked.

  “Absolutely not,” I said.

  His expression wilted. “Is there nothing I can do to change your mind?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I have to spring an old guy out of a jail run by the largest and most advanced technology corporation in the world. Also, I’ve got the Civs to contend with. Not finding myself with a whole lot of free time these days.”

  “Let me help you.”

  “Um… no. I am going to take you to Darigal, though. It’s what Sable would’ve wanted, since she doesn’t know about your plot to kill the Archduke. She’s very against death and killing people and all that. She would’ve wanted me to see you safely to your destination. I’m sure there’s a friendly amateur assassin there who’s willing to work for free and take orders from a man with the common sense of a toad.”

  “Sable was correct. You really are quite cruel,” said Thomas, looking hurt.

  “That is true. But I’m not letting you help me, Tom. You’re not cut out for it. I do things every day that would make a decent person like you quail. I might not think very highly of your decision-making skills, but I do like your perseverance. Perseverance is not going to help much when the chips are down, though. You’re in over your head, Tommy.”

  “Perseverance matters a lot more than that, Mr. Jakes. Give me one good reason why you think I won’t find it within myself to rise to the occasion and make a go of this.”

  “Let’s see… do I have to keep it to one? You’re obsessed with a noblewoman who’s at least two decades older than you. You accept questionable gifts from strangers. You can’t operate a weapon to save your life. You get airsick. You cry… All. The. Time.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Thomas said, slumpi
ng. “I should give up on everything. On this. On you. On Gretchen.”

  “What ever happened to the supposed urgency of your mission? You’re so ready to deviate from your own path just because the great Muller Jakes won’t help you? That sounds like quitting to me.”

  “If I’m quitting, it’s because you’ve given me reason to,” said Thomas, on the verge of tears again. “You’ve called attention to my shortcomings and made me see things as they are. I’m a hopeless cause.” He sat down on the deck and rested his face on his knuckles.

  Maybe I’d been too harsh on him. I did feel a little bad about it, but at the same time, I was proud of myself. After all, I’d accomplished the difficult task of separating a fool from his folly. “Tom. Listen to me. I don’t know much about love, but outing this woman as a murderer and then killing her son doesn’t strike me as a very effective way to make her come around. You do love her, don’t you?”

  “Yes of course, but… when I wrote that letter, I was at the end of my rope. Some desperate voice within made me certain it was the only way. As I’ve told you, I hardly considered sending it. But I suppose I’ve quite ruined things by now, haven’t I?”

  “You haven’t sent the letter yet, Tom.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “I, in my infinite wisdom, kept you from doing that. Remember? Just say the word and I’ll rip this up and toss it to the winds. Nobody besides you and me ever has to know you’ve threatened the life of an aristocrat. It’s not too late to retract those thoughts you had in your darkest hour and find a better way.”

  “I’ve always suspected you had a sensible streak in you,” Thomas said, wiping his eyes. “You are a true friend, Muller Jakes.”

  “Don’t you call me that. If you want to be with this mariticidal adulteress, that’s none of my business. I just don’t want you throwing your life away for nothing. You’ve already sabotaged yourself plenty for this woman. The truth is—and don’t go getting all soft on me again for saying this—she doesn’t deserve someone as devoted and persistent as you are. And furthermore, you have no right to be so devoted to a woman like her.”

  Thomas smiled through the tears. “Tear it up,” he said. “Rip it apart and throw it to the winds.”

  I tore the letter to shreds and set them free. Together we watched the tatters of envelope and stationery swirl away on the breeze and flee across the endless sky.

  “You’re a weepy mess,” I said. “Go below and take a nap, or something. Be careful. Nerimund was in Sable’s cabin last time I saw him, but that little bugger could be anywhere. Don’t scare each other to death down there. I’m going to need both of you.”

  Thomas went below, smiling a little and wiping snot on his sleeve as he did.

  9

  Kilori was a rathole. There was a massive junkyard situated next to a big airfield with a long landing strip for prop planes and jets, the only airborne vehicles that needed that much room to take off. Kilori’s crow’s nest doubled as an air traffic control tower. Next to that was a run-down village with about as much charm as the junkyard. I didn’t understand why anyone needed a junkyard when our world came fitted with a built-in garbage dump called the Churn, but I wasn’t complaining about the camouflage it offered the Galeskimmer when we landed in the middle of it.

  I brought the boat to rest between tall piles of engine parts and dented body panels. I had done most of the flying for the last several days, and I was plum tuckered out. I’d only let Thomas steer when he wasn’t busy heaving his lunch over the side railing. I was always there watching him whenever he was feeling well enough to be at the helm, and I had forbidden him to touch the clinkers or the throttle unless I gave him express permission. I slept only in the thickest cloud cover, or when the night folded in around us so deeply that I was sure the Civs had lost sight of us.

  I’d known they were following us from the start, but I only got glimpses of their sloops in the shadows of clouds or when their hulls blotted out patches of stars in the night sky. They were tracking us—or at least watching us, hoping we’d lead them to either the money, the gravstone, or the person I had in mind to sell it to. It would be days before they discovered I’d already gotten rid of it, if they even hit Trudy’s warehouse quickly enough to catch its scent at all.

  We needed fuel for the turbines, so I paid the nice man at the airfield and filled the Galeskimmer’s tanks. Then I considered trying to camouflage the boat using a bunch of the junk around us, but I didn’t foresee that doing much good. If the Civs were here, they’d find the Galeskimmer, no matter how well-concealed it was.

  “So Sable’s grandfather lives on this driblet of a floater, huh?” I said.

  “Not on it, exactly. Underneath.”

  “I’ve seen floaters like that before. How do we get there, a rope ladder?”

  “Sable said there was… a ferry.”

  “I haven’t seen anything around here that looks like a ferry.”

  “There’s a man in the village, she said.”

  Thomas and I headed into the village proper, where I watched my back and my coinpurse with equal vigilance. The people who lived here weren’t streamboat builders. These were grimy, blue-collar mechanics and tradesmen—old-timey folks who tinkered with steam locomotives and gasoline engines, and even a few electric motors. Kilori was an island of lower-class citizens. Now that I was wealthy, I didn’t like the way it smelled.

  There are certain places where you can feel your discomfort crawling all over you like worms under your skin. I had no fear of being mugged or pickpocketed; my only fear was that I’d kill anyone who tried, and it wouldn’t be helpful to Sable’s cause if a horde of angry villagers drove us out of town before we’d found her grandfather.

  A boat like the Galeskimmer is no good at sailing beneath things on account of its mast. That was why we needed to find this ferry Sable had mentioned. For the first time in a long time, I let one of my companions accompany me through town as we searched. Thomas was quiet and observant. I was disguised. And the man who ran the ferry service, as we soon found out, was too old by a few days.

  It didn’t take long to find the information we were looking for. All the while I was looking over my shoulder, trying to pick out any plainclothes constables and watching for Civs brazen enough to show themselves to me in their Red-and-Tans. I almost wanted them to; people who lived in places like this had no love of the Regency or its agents.

  “Are you aware of a ferry service that runs to locations beneath Kilori?” I asked a passing boy who I suspected was a cutpurse. I figured talking to him was the best defense against his thievery, aside from punching him in the neck.

  “Yeah. Was Mr. Devane’s. Mr. Devane ain’t ‘round no more though.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Got hisself dead.”

  “Nobody’s been running the ferry since he died? Didn’t he have any competitors?”

  “No other ferries, mister. Died two day’ ago now, no time for anyone taking up the ferry yet. He ain’t had no sons or daughters, Mr. Devane ain’t.”

  “So who gets his stuff?”

  “Baron get all the things.”

  “Take me to this Baron fellow, will you?”

  The boy glowered at me, bright blue eyes gleaming beneath a mop of unkempt blond.

  “There’s five chips in it for you,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes, then turned and darted off into the crowd.

  I ran after him.

  “I don’t believe the lad wants us following him,” Thomas said, trying to keep up.

  “If I did what people wanted, I’d have a lot more friends and a lot less money,” I said.

  We managed to keep pace with the boy as he scampered through town, though his ability to squeeze through the tiniest of spaces between bodies and beneath open legs gave him a solid lead.

  Just as I was getting sure I’d lost the kid, we emerged from the crowd to find ourselves standing before a looming manor house in carved redwood, gilded in the most detailed ornamentat
ion I’d ever seen. The intricate gabled roofline hung over the house like a heavy brow, the sun casting shadows in its deep eaves and pediments. Pristine hedgerows dominated the grounds and flanked the gravel walkway.

  The boy was standing there with his hand thrust out. I dropped a five-piece into his open palm and hardly noticed his footfalls on the gravel as they faded away. I was partly in awe at finding such an architectural specimen in a place like this, and partly shocked at how much nicer the place looked than every other building in town. I felt like I’d just walked into a horror novel.

  Thomas was reluctant. “This is the barony’s estate. If we arrive uninvited, we may not be received well.”

  I wasn’t listening. I was walking toward the front door. Thomas did his best to convince me that my conduct was not in good taste. What did I know about proper conduct? He was the one who’d been working in an Archduke’s mansion for a decade. I came from more humble stock. The rules of the Regency’s elite didn’t apply to me.

  I jogged up the steps onto the huge wrap-around porch and gave the door a loud rapping. A rigid man dressed in his coat and tails answered. He looked at me, then at Thomas, then lowered the corners of his mouth as though he smelled something bad.

  “Hi there,” I said, smiling.

  The balding butler was unamused. “How may I be of service?”

  “I’m here to see a Mr. Baron. I’m told he can be of service to me.”

  “The Baron is presently occupied. Perhaps I might deliver a message on your behalf?”

  “Oh, excuse me… the Baron. My associate here didn’t inform me that the steward of this household was a member of the Regency. No, a message won’t be necessary. I’ll speak to him myself.” I shoved past the startled butler and waved Thomas in after me. Thomas didn’t budge from his timid stance beside the porch’s lowest step. “Fine. Stay out there and work on your sunburn.”

  I found myself standing in a palatial foyer wrapped in wood as dark and detailed as the manor’s exterior. A grand staircase spilled down from the gallery above. I started up the steps, taking in the high ceilings and curving banisters as I went. The butler was fuming; sputtering and stuttering around me like a finch trying to stop a boulder by tweeting at it. He kept talking about rules and etiquette—like what Thomas had been saying, but with an extra helping of snobbery on top.