The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by Lewis, Joseph Robert

  There was no answer.

  Arjuna leveled his coilgun at the lumpy shadow in the distance. “Do I have to count to three? I personally find that exercise a bit childish, but sometimes people respond to it.”

  A twig snapped and Arjuna spun left, and a small hand grabbed his wrist, stopping him from bringing his gun to bear. He blinked.

  The woman in black was standing directly in front of him, gently holding his gun at arm’s length with one hand while she removed her mask with the other to reveal a pale face that nearly glowed in the dark shadows. She looked young, surprisingly young, with soft pink cheeks that said she might be less than sixteen.

  Wait. She’s too short. It’s another one!

  “You…!”

  The girl shook her head. “I’m not your quarry, detective.” And then she twisted his wrist and pulled the trigger on his coilgun. The weapon discharged silently and its sedative-laced needle hissed through the air and into a pool of shade less than ten paces to his right.

  As his coilgun whined and its capacitor recharged, another woman in black stumbled out of the shadows, out of nowhere at all, and fell face down on the ground.

  The girl in black smiled. “There she is.”

  Arjuna yanked his gun free of her and backed away.

  “Are you using lethal rounds?” the girl asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Ah.” She pulled her own, identical coilgun from within her cloak and fired at the prone figure. “There. Now she’s dead.” Her gun whined as she slipped it back inside her cloak.

  “No! Why did you kill her? I needed her alive.” Arjuna glared at the girl as he knelt beside the woman to check for a pulse. He found none. He rolled the body onto its side and took the mask away, revealing the face of a middle-aged woman framed in silvery hair.

  “Yes, well, I needed her dead,” the girl said. “Actually, the senior partners wanted her dead a long time ago. They aren’t terribly patient with Shadows of the female persuasion, you know, and Lorelei has been an unstable element in our ranks for quite some time now. I had a crow watching her, hoping to prove she was worth keeping alive, but when I discovered that she was being pursued by the Ministry of Justice, I knew it was time to end her little escapades. We are professionals, Mister Rana, just like you. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “It’s our business to know. And there aren’t many Dumastrans in the civil service here, are there? Though if you are anything to judge by, then there should be.” She smiled as her eyes traveled over him. “You are quite… striking.”

  He sighed and narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

  “Just another humble Shadow, of course.”

  “No name? Just another Nacht?”

  She paused. “Angelika. Angelika Nacht, at your service. Not literally, of course. Unless you’re paying, that is.”

  He stood up slowly. “And you were watching the inn? Where were you? How did you so conveniently show up here on Barbecue Island at just the right moment?”

  “There was nothing convenient about it,” the girl said. “As I said, we have been watching Lorelei, waiting to see whether she needed to be dealt with. My crow was at the inn, and I was on a steamer a quarter of a league from here.” She pointed off through the trees, as though she could see the ship in question. “Fortunately for me, my crow reached me just as the shadow of the ship was growing long enough to reach this island, so it only took me a moment to arrive in person.”

  “Shadow. Right.” Arjuna looked from the girl to the body and back again. “I don’t suppose you would care telling me exactly how that works?”

  The girl smiled. “Of course I won’t, detective. I will, however, tell you what you came here to learn about Mister Kaiser.”

  “And why would you do that?” he asked.

  “Because Mister Kaiser’s private enterprise is not in the best interests of my organization, so I would consider it a personal favor to me if you were to stop him.”

  “You need me to catch Kaiser for you?” He frowned. “From what I’ve just seen, you don’t have any trouble finding people, or killing them. Why don’t you just kill Kaiser yourself?”

  “If my people simply killed everyone who ever caused us the slightest inconvenience, there would be nothing left in Eisenstadt now but rotting corpses and fat crows.” The girl shrugged. “It would be best for all concerned if you were to return Mister Kaiser to his cell in Torghast as quickly as possible.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “If push comes to shove, detective, you can be assured that we will shove back,” she said. “Let’s just hope for the sake of everyone in the city that it never comes to that.”

  He grimaced and put his gun away. “All right. I suppose we can table that discussion for the moment. Where’s Ranulf Kaiser? What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know where Mister Kaiser is at this very moment, but I do know where he is going. He hired our dearly departed Lorelei here to provide him with detailed information about a certain location, the workshop of one Hildegard Goldstein. Lorelei in turn subcontracted the job to a crow of hers.”

  “Ripper. Yes, we know about him.”

  “Good for you. Our taxes are hard at work, I see.” She smiled at him with laughing eyes. “Miss Goldstein’s workshop is in the Rockwell industrial park near Goldstein Industries, but she doesn’t work inside the factory facilities themselves.”

  “Goldstein?” Arjuna peered back toward the beach to check for curious children or drunken sailors. “You mean she’s…?”

  “She’s the younger sister of Maximilian Goldstein, yes. And if you were paying attention to the radio or newspapers yesterday, then you will know that she is also the first person ever to set foot on the drifting isle, thanks to that ingenious flying machine of hers.” The girl narrowed her eyes, no longer smiling.

  “The autogyro?” Arjuna nodded. “So Kaiser wants to steal the autogyro?”

  The girl circled around him and began dragging the body of Lorelei Nacht through the underbrush. “If I were you, detective, I’d be a little less concerned about Mister Kaiser stealing the flying machine and a little more concerned about what he intends to do with it. Because from what my crow tells me, he’s not planning to sell it. He’s planning to use it, and that is something that no one wants.”

  “Kaiser wants to fly to Inselmond?” Arjuna’s eyes widened. “Why would a thief want to go to a ball of rock floating in the sky? You think he wants to loot the drifting isle?”

  The girl shrugged. “You know as much as I know, now. But I recommend you hurry along, Mister Rana. The sun is setting, and I suspect Mister Kaiser doesn’t intend to wait much longer.”

  “Tonight?” Arjuna nodded. “Makes sense. He breaks out of prison just hours after Goldstein lands on Inselmond, and now he’s trying to get there as soon as possible, before anyone else. He must know of something worth stealing up there.”

  “I don’t know, detective, and I don’t care,” the girl said as she dragged the body up against a tree and leaned it down in a dark pool of shadows. “I’ve told you all I know. But I will say this. We would consider it a favor to us if you kept Mister Kaiser from ever setting foot on Inselmond.”

  “And if he does?”

  “Then we would consider it a favor to us if you got him off again as quickly as you can. Or else we may have to stop being so discreet.” She smiled thinly.

  “Right.” He paused. “Do you need help with that?” He nodded at the body.

  “No. We have a place for things we don’t want found.” She carefully placed her long-nosed, glass-eyed mask over her face, transforming her appearance from that of a pretty little girl to an ugly avian crone. “Good bye, detective.”

  A bit of silver gleamed in her gloved hand, and the girl and the body faded into the darkness. Arjuna came over to the spot in the shadow of the tree and stomped through the underbrush and kicked the tree itself, but he found nothing. Everyth
ing was quite solid and ordinary, and still.

  He hesitated a moment longer to peer into the darkening woods and to listen to the sounds of wealthy people laughing on the beach, but there was nothing else left on the island. So he trudged back through the trees to the sand, stole a bratwurst from an untended plate on a chair, and shoved his little row boat back into the water, hopped in, and started rowing.

  By the time he bumped up against the little wooden dock across the lawn from the Aelhingen Arms, his shoulders were aching and his back was twitching.

  Not as young as I used to be, apparently. Either that or need to resume my old training regimen. Or at least stop eating so much. If the criminals and the filthy air don’t kill me, then the restaurants in this city definitely will.

  He climbed out of the boat and shuffled down the dock to the grass where he found his wife sitting quite primly on a small stone bench beneath a cherry tree. In the shadows her elegant violet dress was nearly black, leaving her pale gloves and face to hover in the darkness with an otherworldly elegance.

  What a strange and beautiful creature she is. Wrapped up so tightly in those clothes, so dark and serious, always wearing one mask or another to shield herself, hiding behind so much armor from judgment and ridicule and rumor. And yet, beneath all that armor, there is a searing pale flame crying out for… for what? For me? For freedom? For some other life?

  I wonder if everyone in this city is so complicated, trapped between their cold, rigid traditions and their true, passionate natures. I wonder if she suspects that I find that contradiction in her so… arousing.

  She sat with both hands resting on the top of her cane in front of her and she gazed at him steadily as he sat down beside her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And Miss Nacht?”

  “Not all right at all. She’s quite dead. Killed right in front me by yet another, and much younger, Miss Nacht.” Arjuna rubbed his shoulder. “Apparently, our original Miss Nacht didn’t play well with her friends, or something to that effect. The younger Shadow, who showed up out of nowhere to kill her associate, told me that Ranulf Kaiser is going to steal the Goldstein autogyro and she would very much appreciate it if we were to stop him.”

  “He’s going to steal the what?”

  “The autogyro!” He looked at her, incredulous. “We just talked about this last night. It was all over the news. The pilot who flew all the way up to Inselmond?”

  “Oh, that.” She sighed. “I told you, I’ll believe it when we have more than the testimony of an over-excited mechanic and a handful of farmers who are oh-so-certain they saw something flying over their fields.”

  “Well, Ranulf Kaiser believes it. He hired the old Shadow, who hired Ripper, to help him break into the Goldstein workshop so he can steal the autogyro. And my new Shadow friend says that he doesn’t want the gyro itself. He wants something up there on the drifting isle.”

  “And you believe her? A Shadow who killed her own comrade right in front of you?”

  “She made enough veiled threats to make me think she isn’t leading us into a trap,” he said. “Whatever her motives are, she definitely wants Kaiser stopped, and she’d prefer if we were the ones to put him back in prison.”

  Bettina nodded, and stood up with a slight wince. “Well, I don’t particularly care what she would prefer, but if her information is correct, then we may have very little time left. Where is this workshop, exactly?”

  Arjuna stood beside her, turned her to face the water, and pointed across the dark waves of Lake Sherrat. He rested his chin on her shoulder and whispered in her ear, “Right about there. The big smoke stacks. The Rockwell industrial park.” He kissed her neck, and though she didn’t move, he could feel the heat and tension in her skin.

  She tastes like peaches today. Soft, sweet peaches bound in tight, oiled leather.

  “Then we have a long drive ahead of us, all the way around the lake. It will probably take more than an hour, especially at this time of the evening.”

  He kissed her neck again, harder, and he heard her breath quicken. Her lips parted. He smiled and said, “Then I guess we should hurry.”

  She turned to him with a stern look. “No, Arry. Oster will be driving, so Oster will have to hurry. You, darling, will be in the carriage with me, and you will take your time, or I’ll make you start all over again.” She smiled wickedly at him, and strode off across the lawn toward the inn and the driveway where their car awaited.

  Arjuna grinned and hurried after her.

  For a genius, she can be so wonderfully predictable.

  Chapter 8. A Violent Introduction

  The drive across the city, around the Lake Road, over the General Elkin Bridge, and through the downtown business district took nearly an hour and a half as they crawled through the evening rush of thousands of weary porters, shopkeepers, secretaries, accountants, engineers, tradesmen, and nouveau riche industrialists pouring out of their shops, factories, and skyscrapers onto the streets of Eisenstadt to go home for the day. But Bettina paid no attention to the world outside the autocarriage.

  She stretched across the upholstered seat of the carriage, clutching the handrails, and gazing up at the steam-filmed windows as her flesh burned and shivered. Arjuna’s heavy breathing seemed to roar in the otherwise silent cabin, and she moved her hands to his hot bare skin, clutching him tighter and tighter, urging him on faster and faster as she bit her lip to hold back the scream that would no doubt bring all traffic for a mile around to an absolute standstill if she gave it her voice.

  Their foreplay had been briefer than she would customarily allow, but the following ecstasy was not. It rippled on and on, cascading through her hot skin as she crushed her husband’s muscular flesh between her thighs. They shuddered together in silence, biting and grasping one another, trying desperately to consume one another, to become a single living creature of unending carnal bliss.

  When the autocarriage finally emerged from the city center and crossed into the industrial parks, the streets were nearly empty, the sky was black, and Bettina Rothschild lay back in her seat staring dreamily out at the stars as her husband lay stretched out on the seat opposite her, snoring.

  I could do that forever.

  She smiled.

  But could he?

  The car slowed and stopped with a slight squeak of the brakes and Bettina sat up, straightened her jacket and smoothed her skirts one last time. She patted her husband on the shoulder. “Arry, darling? It’s time.”

  He blinked, gave her a confused one-eyed look, and then sat up and began clawing his hair back down into a semblance of order. “What time is it?”

  She snapped open her pocket watch. “Just past eight.”

  He nodded. “All right then.”

  They emerged together from the carriage and stepped down onto a concrete slab that stretched from the edge of the road over a drainage ditch and into a small compound of warehouses. A rusty old sign claimed the address to be the home of Eberstark Coachmakers.

  “This is it?” Arjuna asked. “Eberstark Coachmakers? I think this is the wrong place.”

  “Sorry sir, but there’s nothing in the Rockwell industrial park that says Goldstein,” Oster said. “I did a loop around the whole place, and this is the only building where I saw a light on.”

  Arjuna glanced up at the tiny sliver of light escaping from between the large doors on the nearest warehouse. “Good eye, Oster.”

  “Let’s be cautious,” Bettina said, peering at the building. “We don’t know anything about this place, and we’re here on questionable intelligence.”

  “My intelligence is no more questionable than it was yesterday,” her husband said with a grin. “But point taken.” He strode past the sign toward the building casting thin blades of light across the gravel yard.

  A flap of black wings heralded the arrival of their raven comrade. Scratch landed with a thump on the roof of the carriage where he paused t
o tilt his head and stare at the dark buildings. Then he took wing again and perched on the roof of the warehouse that Arjuna was approaching. “Here,” he croaked. “This one.”

  “Yes, we saw the light. Thank you for your invaluable help,” Bettina said.

  “Crows have been here,” the raven replied. “Scat on the roof.”

  She and her husband hurried toward the doors of the warehouse and pressed their ears to the wall. After a moment, she heard the clank and clatter of a metal tool falling on the hard floor.

  “That could be anyone,” she said. “Including the rightful owner of this place. What’s-her-name, Goldstein.”

  “Or it could be Kaiser.” Arjuna tugged her away from the door, jiggled the handle and found it locked, and then reared back to slam his foot against the door.

  Bettina deftly caught his boot with the hooked head of her cane and nudge him off balance so that he stumbled to one side. She held up her lock picks. “Now is not the time for violent heroics. We have him. We go in quietly and carefully.”

  Arjuna shrugged. “All right, but if they escape while you’re fiddling with the lock, I’m telling the Minister on you.”

  Bettina cast him a snooty-yet-flirtatious flick of her nose, fluttering her lashes at him ever so briefly, and then went to work on the lock. It clicked open a few seconds later, and the door swung inward. Arjuna rushed inside and darted to the right, out of sight. Bettina raised her weapon and slipped inside, moving to the left, thumping her cane as softly as possible on the bare concrete floor.

  Looking around, she saw that the warehouse was in fact a workshop. She was standing behind the first of many rows of shelves piled high and thick with boxes of every size, some closed and some open, many with tufts of straw poking up between piles of steel rods, brass cogs, spools of wire, bolts, nuts, screws, nails, joints, rivets, pipes, valves, and other bits of errata lost in the shadows and gloom. On one side she saw the sleek lines of a racing autocarriage under a tarp. Farther away stood the steel cage and beams of an electric elevator. There seemed to be only a handful of lights inside the building, and they were all clustered away from the small door they had entered, leaving her in shadow.