The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by Lewis, Joseph Robert

  “And I put an arrow through her shoulder a few hours ago, so I doubt she’ll be in racing form right now,” her husband said.

  “So we’ll keep going and looking.” Bettina sighed and frowned as she studied the banks of the Dorrein, watching for some trace of her missing thieves.

  We had them. Last night we had them standing right in front of us, right between us on the road! But I wasn’t ready for them. My coilgun was in my bag, and Arjuna was fooling about with that bow. We could have had them. We should have had them!

  A woman’s scream echoed across the water, bouncing off the hard brick faces of the riverfront warehouses and docks.

  “Was that Strauss?” Bettina asked.

  “No.” Arjuna rowed faster.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I shot her through the shoulder and she barely flinched,” her husband said. “I sincerely doubt there is a person or a weapon that could make her scream. At least, not in that key.”

  Bettina rose up with one knee on her rough cushion as she craned her neck, squinting up into the bright reflections of the waterfront windows and dark chasms of the open doorways.

  Where did it come from?

  A wooden crash boomed across the Dorrein. It was the roar of planks snapping and tumbling from a great height onto a hard floor, bouncing and clattering for several moments.

  “There!” Bettina pointed. “The west bank!”

  Half a dozen white gulls took wing from the bank, racing up and away from a tall building whose intact windows gleamed white in the morning light.

  Where are we now?

  She glanced about quickly trying to spot some signs of the businesses nearby. They were now well within the city limits, though still some distance from Lake Sherrat.

  This isn’t the Low Water district anymore. We’re past all that now. No, this must be… this is Edgewater! And that building there in the distance is the opera house. Yes, now I know exactly where we are.

  Another wooden crash and a brief flurry of shouts echoed from an alleyway just up ahead.

  They’re on foot, trying to get through the morning markets. But the crowds are slowing them down, and Strauss must be getting desperate. Crashing about like a rabid animal. We have them now!

  “Arry! Bring us up to that dock there, just ahead.” She pointed to the landing in question. “We’ll go along the waterfront on foot and cut them off at the square in the front of the opera house. With any luck, we’ll have them in irons in ten minutes!”

  Arjuna grimaced. “Luck!”

  Their little rowboat rushed across the black and brown waters and thumped into the dock, where Arjuna deftly lifted his wife up onto the creaking wooden planks and then leapt up beside her.

  “Go, go!” She shooed him away. “The plaza! Go!”

  He nodded and dashed away with his cumbersome steel bow slung over his shoulder and his three deadly arrows in his fist. His tattered jacket remained, forgotten, in the boat.

  Bettina raised a critical eye at the discarded jacket, but there was no help for it now. The boat was already floating back out into the river. Swinging her cane smartly at her side, she strode up to the old stone walkway above the slimy river wall, and followed the hard path behind the ancient but stately hotels and waterfront restaurants toward the soaring bell towers and white dome of the Mueller Opera House.

  By the time she reached the plaza in front of the theater, the entire place was in chaos. Fruit carts lay overturned, their contents strewn across the cobblestones and laughing children ran every which way, snatching up the runaway apples and pears and plums. Baffled and breathless housewives and shopkeepers stood in the lanes, babbling and pointing and exclaiming about “ruffians” and “madness” and “police.”

  The detective coolly inspected the scene and noted that the path of destruction and rumor snaked around the central fountain and then plunged straight into the open front doors of the opera house itself. Of her husband and his archaic weapon, there was no sign. She did not pause to question the witnesses. There was no need. Their expressions and shouts were all that she needed.

  Stepping carefully over the fallen produce, tin wares, gloves, flowers, and other odds and ends, Bettina approached the gaping maw of the opera house, and plunged into its dark interior with her coilgun charged and ready in her hand.

  Chapter 19. A Dramatic Exit

  Bettina paused just inside the theater’s doors to let her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. The foyer and atrium were quite empty, and she glanced over at the broken splinters of wood around the open doors.

  Strauss kicked their way inside. The building is probably deserted at this hour. So why can’t I hear them running about in here?

  As her weary eyes began to pick out the finer details of the shadowed side tables, chandeliers, and mirrors, her ears began to pick out faint echoes that might have been footsteps, or even voices. Frowning a bit deeper, she raised her gun and continued inside.

  The reception hall spread out before her, long tables stripped of their usual cloths and settings, and upholstered chairs stacked carefully along the walls. The hall curved forward on both sides, and many double-door entrances stood open to the vast inner theater of the opera house. But the soft echoes weren’t coming from the tiers of seats, or the balconies, or the stage. The sounds came to her from the side, from the far doors at the top of the narrow stairs.

  Backstage. Dressing rooms. Props. Arjuna, where are you?

  Leaning heavily on her cane, she ascended the narrow stair at the side of the reception hall and stepped through the single doorway into the back corridor. It was a claustrophobic passageway, the plaster walls bare and in need of paint, the wooden floor bare and in need of polish. Exposed electric bulbs hung from short chains in the ceiling, and every third bulb flickered, threatening to snap and die.

  The right-hand wall had nothing to offer but a few very narrow windows that allowed one to look down on the neighboring alleyway and the wall of an aging hotel. The left-hand wall, however, presented a dozen narrow doors, all closed and none marked in any way.

  Frowning, Bettina opened the first door and found a closet of tools and cleaning supplies. The second door revealed a closet of linens. The third presented a closet of boxes, whose labels listed candles, matches, light bulbs, snuffers, and other light-related items. She leaned back and paused to listen.

  No, the voices are too far away. They’re not up here at all.

  She closed the closet door and continued past the other doors to the far end of the hall where she found, to her immense dismay, a tightly spiraling iron stair that swirled down into the shadows below her feet. Gripping her cane and the handrail, she descended.

  At the bottom of the stair she peered about the darkness and discovered she was standing just backstage at the edge of the theater’s enormous red curtains. Levers for trap doors stood in proud, polished rows and ropes for pulleys and lights and weights were lashed to cleats and hooks behind her. Beyond the ropes were boxes of props (wooden swords and muskets, it seemed), and beyond the boxes was a broad hallway reaching even deeper into the bowels of the opera house. The muffled voices were much louder now.

  Arry, where have you run off to now? They’re right here!

  She sighed.

  Very well then. I’ll do it myself.

  Raising her coilgun, she strode down the hallway, passing alternately through light and shadow beneath the bare bulbs, and she soon arrived at the door from which the voices came. The sign on the door said, “Diederich.” And above the sign the wood was scratched and scored badly.

  Bettina’s eyes widened as she stared at the scratches.

  Can it be? It almost looks like the cosmic clock design again. So the Shadows are here as well! I knew they were behind this. This could be where they arranged to meet with Kaiser after he got his Inselmond treasure. I can catch them all at once!

  She placed one gloved hand carefully on the door knob.

  From the sound of things, th
ey’re standing well back from the door. If I can get inside quickly enough I can simply shoot Strauss and then strike Kaiser with my cane. Yes, that should do. Enter, shoot, strike. Simple.

  She tried to turn the knob, and it rotated silently in her grasp.

  Bettina shoved forward, hurling the door inward and striding in with her gun raised, sweeping across the room in search of the muscular blonde woman. A flash of blonde hair drew her aim to the right and she squeezed the trigger even as she realized she was aiming at a tall, willowy woman with shoulder-length tresses and wearing a floor-length skirt.

  With a twist of her wrist, Bettina managed to send her tranquilizer needle whistling through the blonde lady’s hair without nicking her skin. The woman gasped and stumbled back even as her companion lunged at the detective.

  The man was tall and his thick brown hair was in singular need of a comb. He leapt at Bettina with a fair amount of grace, but very little conviction and she could see the intense fear in his wide eyes as he fell toward her. She yanked her hand back just before he could snatch the gun from her fingers, and he stumbled past her.

  Bettina’s eyes flashed around the room but there was no sign of the wiry Kaiser, the powerful Strauss, or any of the hideously masked Shadows.

  Or perhaps it was only a scratched door and not a cosmic clock design at all.

  The man straightened up dramatically and fixed her with a commanding stare as he placed his body between the two women and said, “Who the devil do you think you are? Put that thing away before you hurt someone! Do you know who this woman is? Do you know who I am? What are you doing here? Who let you in?”

  Bettina smiled thinly as she held back the lapel of her violet jacket to display her badge. “I’m an officer of the law, sir. And I apologize for the interruption, but I am here on official business.”

  “Business? What business?” The man made several angry and indignant expressions as though trying each on before deciding which to wear for the remainder of their encounter. “I am Simon Ritter, and this angelic creature behind me is Johanna Diederich. THE Johanna Diederich!”

  “Oh, that Johanna Diederich. Thank you for the clarification. I do so often confuse the most famous soprano in Eisenstadt for my local fishwife.” Bettina sighed. A cursory glance around the room found an open wardrobe filled with elaborate dresses in various states of assemblage, a row of wooden stands supporting a row of baroque wigs rising and falling in thick curls and satin ribbons. Countless jars of makeup stood in neat lines beneath the huge vanity mirror, which was ringed in bright white light bulbs. “I heard raised voices.”

  “It was nothing,” Mister Ritter pronounced.

  “Just an artistic disagreement,” Miss Diederich added softly.

  Bettina had little time or interest, and even less energy to spare, but she did pause to look over the gentleman’s shoulder and take a better look at the singer’s face to make certain the disagreement had remained merely verbal. The young lady appeared unharmed and unafraid, although a bit shaken. “It’s rather early in the morning for opera, isn’t it? A disagreement about what, exactly?”

  “Our work!” Mister Ritter strode across the room and gestured to a pile of papers on the corner of the desk. “Operas do not compose themselves, no matter what the critics say, and perfection is a matter of practice, not talent, no matter what the people say. We are working, Miss Whatever-your-name-is.”

  “Please don’t be rude, Simon,” the singer said. “I’m sure she’s only doing her duty. And it isn’t as though she interrupted something terribly important. Isn’t that right?”

  Mister Ritter made a small show of straightening his tie and tugging on his cuffs as his face relaxed into an air of detachment and apathy. “Quite right, my love, quite right. I apologize for my earlier outburst. I’m merely… anxious about the performance.”

  The soprano smiled a polite but unconvincing smile. “Of course you are.”

  He looked at her sharply. “That’s what I said,” he said icily.

  Bettina looked again at Miss Diederich, who nodded wearily. The detective nodded back. “That’s fine, and I’ll be out of your way as soon as I can find my missing associates. Have you seen or heard anyone else in the building in the last few minutes?”

  Mister Ritter paused and for a moment he looked genuinely thoughtful. “No, I don’t believe so. Who exactly are you looking for? It’s not the press, is it? Some vigilante reporter sneaking about, trying to glimpse something unsavory, no doubt. They’re always looking for news, particularly bad news. It sells more papers, I’m told.”

  “Yes, so I hear.” Bettina turned back to the door and studied the empty hallway. She could hear something in the distance, elsewhere in the opera house. It was a wooden sort of thumping, as though furniture was being moved hastily and clumsily. She glanced back at the agitated couple. “Thank you for your time. Please stay in this room and do not answer the door for anyone for any reason.”

  Without giving them time to object or to ask when they could open the door, the detective slipped out, shut the door, and hurried on down the hall in search of the thumping sounds. The halls grew narrower and darker as she moved farther from the stage. Doors were marked with chalk scrawls that might have meant anything, or nothing, and the floor transitioned abruptly from scuffed wooden planks to uneven stone tiles.

  The darkness ahead was almost absolute, except for the pale blue slivers of light slipping through the cracks in the old doors.

  These doors must lead outside, perhaps near the docks or a side road to bring supplies and workers inside.

  A chair clattered on a stone floor.

  There!

  Bettina darted down the hall, plunging into the deep shadows, and a pair of strong arms wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides. A hand shot down and closed on her coilgun, and a second hand shot up to cover her mouth. Hot breath wafted over her naked ear as a male voice whispered, “Calm down, it’s only me!”

  She relaxed, and the hands holding her relaxed, and she turned to look at her husband. “Where have you been?”

  “Outside, locking them in,” he said with a grin. “I circled around in front of them and jammed some old planks and oars across the doors outside. And now we have them trapped.” He placed one of his steel arrows on the string of his steel bow.

  “Nicely done.” Bettina gently pushed the ancient weapon a bit farther from herself, and held up her coilgun. “After me, if you please.”

  She swung the old freight door aside and saw a small storage room before her. Moldy boards and bits of old barrels lay in the corners, and two dark figures stood at the far end of the room. They were working at the rear door with broken sticks, or whatever else they had scavenged off the floor. No electric bulbs illuminated the space, but a dozen white blades of sunlight sliced through the gaps in the outer doors, revealing the outlines of the thieves.

  They were struggling at the doors, and struggling to stay quiet as they hissed orders and insults at each other. But both fell still and silent when the inner door opened and the detectives stepped inside. Kaiser froze in his crouched pose, a curved bit of metal clutched in his hands. Beside him, Magdalena Strauss straightened up slowly and instantly the makeshift wooden lever in her hand became a splintery bludgeon, gripped tightly in one shadowed fist.

  “Lady, gentleman.” Bettina took two steps inside and stopped, her gun pointed at Strauss’s chest. “The merry chase is at an end. On your knees now, if you please.”

  Ranulf took a nervous step back from the door and dropped the bar in his hand. “Well done, detectives,” he wheezed. He swept the thin graying hair back from his forehead. “You’ve made this little adventure quite intolerable, every step of the way. My hat is off to you, so to speak.”

  “Knees,” Bettina repeated.

  Ranulf looked at the floor and sighed, but did not move.

  Strauss raised her weapon a bit. Arjuna raised his.

  “If you can’t manage getting down on your knees,
I’ll accept getting down on your faces.” Bettina smiled just a little.

  “You’ll have to do more than ask, little girl.” Strauss broke into a sudden stride as her arm came up and back, ready to unleash a devastating backhand blow.

  Bettina fired. The needle whisked unseen through the dark, straight at the charging woman’s heart, but Strauss swung her broken board and the long flat piece of wood caught the tiny needle, batting it aside.

  The slow whine of the coilgun sounded like a shriek in the confines of the storage room.

  Strauss yelled as she swung her board again, hacking at Bettina’s face as though she was chopping meat with a cleaver. But in that same moment, a low creak echoed through the room and then a deep thrum thundered through the air. Arjuna’s steel arrow screamed past his wife’s ear and smashed through Strauss’s swinging board, which burst into a shower of splinters and shards that rained against the outer doors.

  The shock of the bow’s power sent Bettina stumbling to her right, away from the buzzing sound in her ear, and she only barely saw the blonde woman barrel past her and slam into her husband, sending them both tumbling back into the corridor. She glanced down at the electric pistol in her hand.

  Did it charge? I couldn’t hear… It must have.

  She looked sharply at Kaiser, but Ranulf Kaiser was gone.

  Arjuna’s arrow had done more than destroy the board in Magdalena’s hand. It had carried on into the outer doors and shattered the old iron hinge holding the bottom of the door against the stone wall, and now the door hung at a precarious angle as the mid-morning sunlight poured into the storage room.

  Damn.

  She dashed across the room and crouched down to shuffle crab-wise through the jagged opening. Her boot caught on a loose brick in the floor and she fell to all fours, her cane rolling away into the corner. As her foot began to ache and the cold of the floor seeped into her hands and knees, she crawled out into the blinding light and stood up with her scuffed and scratched pistol at the ready. To her right she saw the slender form of Ranulf Kaiser sprinting down the riverfront stoneworks. He was already a full building-length away, but she aimed and fired all the same.