The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles)

by Lewis, Joseph Robert

  “It’s insane,” Arjuna muttered.

  “It’s brilliant.” Bettina waved frantically, but the passing carriage trotted on by.

  “But the Schmidt Act is an archaic law,” he said. “And the island is home to thousands of people. Kaiser can’t possibly think he’ll be granted legal ownership of occupied land!”

  “My darling, you forget who you are talking about. The aristocracy of Eisenstadt is a collection of the most avaricious and cold-blooded reptiles to ever walk upright,” she said, making rude gestures at a passing buggy. “Slavery may have been outlawed, but indentured servitude made for a convenient loophole here for centuries. And the proof is in the Schmidt Act. How did you put it? The person who makes a successful salvage claim will become the legal owner of the island and all its holdings. In traditional law, holdings include people.”

  Arjuna stared at her, again adjusting his heavy bow to prevent the steel string from cutting into his shoulder. “But that’s… that’s insane! You seriously think the Senate will let Ranulf Kaiser enslave all the people of Inslemond?”

  “Well, look at it this way,” she said. “Ranulf Kaiser clearly believes they will, and Ranulf Kaiser, whatever his faults may be, is a rather brilliant attorney. So for the moment, I believe the prudent course is that we proceed with the assumption that if Mister Kaiser is able to report his salvage claim, he will indeed enslave thousands of innocent people. We need to get to city hall and stop him from filing his claim!”

  A ferocious glare darkened Arjuna’s face and he strode out into the street, his tattered white shirt fluttering in the breeze and hinting at the iron musculature beneath it. He raised his arcane steel bow and shining silver arrows and planted himself squarely in the path of an approaching horse. The animal whickered with annoyance and stopped short, jostling its rider.

  A well-dressed gentleman with a sleek green suit and matching top hat peered down through his gold-rimmed spectacles at the obstacle in his path. “Excuse me!” he cried shrilly. “Excuse me! Yes, you there! Out of the way, if you please. Out of the way!”

  Arjuna strode up to the side of the horse, took hold of the rider’s wrist and belt, and gently dragged the man, still shouting and offering some feeble physical resistance, down from the saddle and onto the sidewalk.

  The man stumbled free of his captor and straightened up sharply as he hurried attempted to right his jacket and hat and glasses. “I say now! You ruffian, you can’t go about, and just, you won’t, and I!” he sputtered on incoherently.

  Arjuna leapt effortlessly into the saddle and reached down to his wife. Bettina looked up at her tall, powerful husband astride the snorting horse, and she saw the man’s hair and torn shirt flying in the wind and the shining weapon in his grip. She smiled wickedly and took his hand.

  He pulled her up and sat her on the horse’s rump behind himself. “Hold on to me!”

  She complied without comment.

  I can’t believe I was ever seriously considering a desk job!

  “Hya!” Arjuna threw the horse into a sudden gallop and they plunged down the center of the road. Pedestrians and porters dove out of their path, and within moments they were racing freely down the avenue past startled taxis and bewildered housewives and cheering children.

  “To city hall!” she cried as she tightened her arms around her husband’s firm belly.

  The horse’s iron shoes thundered on the cobblestones and they all three leaned as one body as they swung around the tight corners of the city streets. Up ahead Bettina noted a small jam of wagons in the intersection and she pointed to the narrow side street to their left. Arjuna nodded and angled for the dark gap between the two tall shops. They galloped into the cool shadows, and suddenly the horse reared up on its hind legs, screaming. Bettina clutched her husband’s sides to keep from tumbling off the horse’s back, and Arjuna yelled at the horse to go down, Down!

  But the horse went on shrieking and shaking, and staggering backward on two legs. Bettina twisted around her husband to see what had terrified the animal so, and there in the middle of the dark alleyway she saw a dark figure wearing a long-beaked mask.

  The Shadows!

  Chapter 21. A Dark Detour

  Bettina clung to her husband as he wrestled the panicking horse under control and finally put all four hooves back down on the cobblestone lane. The clattering horseshoes echoed down the narrow confines of the alley, and the horse whickered and snorted as it shimmied and shied from side to side.

  The cloaked figure stepped forward and removed the long-beaked mask to reveal the pale features of a young woman, a very young woman, who stared up at them with coldly defiant eyes. “Mister Rana.”

  “Miss Nacht.” Arjuna glanced over his shoulder. “This is the Shadow Angelika Nacht, who killed her associate near the Aehlingen Arms yesterday.”

  “Ah.” Bettina looked down at the girl in the black cloak. “What do you want? We’re in a hurry. Please let us through.”

  “I thought I made myself clear yesterday, Mister Rana.” The Shadow handled her bird-like mask between her gloved hands. “Ranulf Kaiser was not to set foot on the drifting isle, nor was Magdalena Strauss, and nor were you and your wife.”

  “Yes, I know,” Arjuna said casually. “But then they stole a flying machine and sort of flew away. But not to worry. We chased them down and scared them off within a few hours. They only spoke to one old gentleman and didn’t steal a single thing of value.”

  “You’re quite lucky that my little crow died before he could report back to me,” Miss Nacht said. “If I had learned of your failure last night, you wouldn’t have lived long enough to give chase, in the sky or otherwise.”

  “Now, now, there’s no need for threats,” he replied. “There’s no harm done and I know you don’t want to attract any official attention by harming two Ministry detectives in the middle of a criminal investigation.”

  “No harm done?” The pale girl tilted her head to one side, almost like a bird herself, and gazed up at him with her wide, icy eyes. “And what exactly is that I see on your back? It looks rather like a bow, but it can’t be a bow because detectives carry coilguns and not bows, or isn’t that so?”

  Arjuna paused, glanced away and sniffed the air, and then looked back down at her. “I lost my old weapon. I found a new one. As I said, no harm done. Now please get out of our way or I’ll just go back out to the street.”

  Bettina looked back to check their escape route and while the narrow lane was quite deserted the sounds of feathers and clicking talons drew her gaze upwards and she saw at least a dozen crows perched on the window ledges and clothes lines above them.

  I’ve seen the bodies of people killed by birds. All sorts. Rogue vultures, man-eating eagles… I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone killed by crows, and I don’t believe I’m in any hurry to do so now.

  “Hand over the bow, Mister Rana,” the Shadow instructed. “And maybe I’ll let you live long enough to see whether your incompetence last night truly warrants your deaths.”

  “What? This bow?” Arjuna unslung the weapon from his shoulder and gripped the riser in his left hand. One of the steel arrows hung idly from the fingers of his right hand. “Are you sure? It has an awfully heavy draw. I doubt you’d be able to use it yourself.”

  “That’s none of your concern.” The pale assassin held out her hand. “The bow. Now.”

  “Thank you, no, I’d rather keep it. Good day, Miss Nacht.” Arjuna nudged their mount and the horse began shuffling backward and sideways to return to the street.

  The crows flapped their black wings and cawed their wordless cries. One of them dove down and slashed past Bettina’s face, and she flinched away from its filthy talons just in time to save her cheek from being gouged apart. Arjuna swung his bow at the retreating crow, missing by quite a margin, and stopped the horse again.

  “This is your last chance, Mister Rana,” Miss Nacht said. “I’ll have that bow and those arrows now, or the crows will have your flesh
. And I promise you there will be nothing left for the police to find when the birds are done with you.”

  “Why would you want this bow so badly?” Arjuna said. There was a smile in his eyes and a mocking tone in his voice.

  “You don’t know what you’re holding,” the Shadow said.

  “It’s just a steel bow, with a steel string, and some steel arrows,” he said innocently. “Just an old fashioned weapon that can shoot holes in solid stone and iron.”

  “It’s not common steel, obviously,” said Miss Nacht. “It’s one of many things on the drifting isle that are not meant for you or anyone else in this city.”

  “But they are meant for you?” Bettina asked. “What is your interest in Inselmond?”

  “Private. And my patience has expired.” The Shadow drew a slender coilgun from within the folds of her cloak.

  Bettina was faster. Her weapon flew out like a striking mongoose and fired its gleaming needle before the assassin had even taken aim. The needle struck the pale girl in the arm, just above her hand. Miss Nacht looked down at the steel splinter standing in her flesh and then looked up at them as her hand began to shake. “You miserable little…”

  Bettina smiled thinly.

  In someone so small and slender, the tranquilizer will work twice as fast as usual.

  The Shadow leaned against an empty rain barrel and blinked slowly at them. “We’ll kill you both and leave… the…”

  “No more time for small talk, sweetheart.” Arjuna snapped the reigns and kneed the horse in its ribs, and the animal bolted forward, either having forgotten its terror from the moment before or simply so well-trained that it responded on instinct alone. But as they charged down the alley past the reeling assassin, a tiny hand snaked out and grabbed Bettina’s flying skirt and clung to it with an iron grip.

  Her world yanked itself apart as the horse and her husband surged forward and the alley walls stood perfectly still. The crows screamed as the breath caught in her throat and Bettina fell backward off the charging animal and crashed down onto the sharp bony frame of Angelika Nacht.

  There followed several long seconds of frantic kicking and pushing and rolling as the two women disentangled their limbs and clothing, and from the chaos two figures emerged, standing just two paces apart, gasping for breath.

  Bettina saw Arjuna still galloping down the alley, and she felt the naked emptiness in her right hand.

  No coilgun. No partner. No horse. This could get worse before it gets better.

  “I have no quarrel with you, Miss Nacht,” she said. “If you let me leave, I’ll return the favor in kind.”

  “Stop posturing!” The assassin raised her weapon, revealing a coilgun with a smashed and twisted coil, a dripping battery case, and a handful of slender needles spilling from the grip. “Damn it!”

  “They are fragile, aren’t they?” Bettina remarked with an arched eyebrow. With her cane she indicated her own broken weapon lying several feet away.

  “I never liked coilguns anyway,” Miss Nacht said. “So cold, so impersonal. Cowardly, even.”

  “I rather like them.” Bettina countered. “Precise, predictable.”

  “But they have no soul, no artistry.” The assassin smiled as she played with her beaked mask, which had somehow survived their bodily collision intact.

  “They have elegance and brilliance,” Bettina answered. “Science is the perfect expression of truth and power, both the beauty and the terror of the natural world.”

  Miss Nacht shrugged. “I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

  “I suppose.” Bettina glanced down the alley again and saw her husband wrestling with his mount, struggling to get the huge animal to turn around in the narrow confines of the alley.

  The assassin followed her gaze, and she smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry, detective, but your handsome husband won’t be able to save you.”

  “I rather think he will. He’s the only one of us with a working weapon.”

  “No, he isn’t.” The Shadow pressed her mask to her face, once again transforming herself into a hideous avian demon with glassy eyes and features carves in bone. With her other hand she took a small silver watch from her pocket, and the timepiece flashed with a strange half-light glow.

  Bettina frowned and took a step back. And then another.

  That watch. That’s it! That’s how they do it. That’s how they…

  “Time to die.” The Shadow rushed forward and wrapped her thin arms around Bettina’s waist and propelled her back into the dark brick wall.

  Bettina flinched as the girl grabbed her, and she started to swing her cane as she felt herself being thrust backward. She steeled herself for the impact with the wall, an impact that might well give her a concussion or blast the air from her lungs, but the impact never came.

  The bright ribbon of sky above them contracted into a river of smog and the dim walls vanished into utter blackness. But she barely noticed the darkening of the world as all of the frail warmth in the air evaporated like a mist under the rising moon, and all the pulsating heat in her own skin, flush with the adrenaline-charged chase and armed confrontation, all the blazing hot energy in her blood, was drained from her body.

  The icy sensation cut into her flesh like a thousand stinging knives, from her scalp to her eyes, from her fingers to her toes. Everything hurt, everything burned, everything twisted and screamed up and down her frozen nerves, forcing her muscles to shudder and constrict painfully against her will.

  The half-breath of air still lingering in her chest began to writhe and thrash in her lungs, but she didn’t dare exhale. This dark, frozen world had already slipped its icy talons into her ears and nostrils, and pierced her aching eyes. She wouldn’t let it invade her any further.

  She tightened her grip on her cane and with her free hand she sank her fingers into the neck of the girl who still had her arms wrapped around Bettina’s waist. Locked together, they seemed to fall sideways, racing across the skin of the city from one pool of darkness to another, sliding through the slender trickles and trails of shadow cast by lampposts and children and gutter weeds. Their feet moved as though dancing in a dream, sidestepping and running and tripping, and always moving faster and faster sideways and backward, but never forward.

  Bettina felt her chest on fire as her skin screamed with frost burns.

  Five seconds and I’ll have to breathe, five more seconds and she’ll have me, five more seconds and I’ll be dead…

  She brought her cane down on the Shadow’s head twice, and then brought her elbow down with the last of her flagging strength across the front of the girl’s face and felt the long-beaked mask jostle free of the girl’s grip.

  Instantly the world became a blinding inferno. The sky screamed with dazzling blues and golds, the storefronts blazed with unnatural reds and greens. And the heat! The unbearable, unearthly heat rolled across Bettina’s skin like living fire, making her every pore expand and swell. The shock of the transition from the world of the Shadows back to the world of heat and light and air was too much, and the detective opened her mouth and gasped.

  Air, sweet warm air, rushed into her lungs, bringing with it the stinging odor of horse droppings, burnt oil, rotting fruit, and dead leaves.

  Bettina lay on the ground, eyes wide, with a mad smile on her lips.

  That’s twice. Twice I’ve been into their secret hell, and twice I’ve come out of it still breathing… more or less.

  A mule shrieked, and Bettina turned her head to see an unshod hoof about to stomp on her unprotected face. She swung her cane and the blow partly forced the mule aside and partly shoved herself back, and the animal stumbled past, braying fiercely as the two wicker baskets lashed to its flanks shook and their contents clinked softly. Blinking rapidly, she realized she was lying in the middle of a busy street, a street she didn’t quite recognize except that it didn’t appear to be anywhere near the alley where she fell into the shadow.

  “Betty!” Arjuna called out, his d
istant voice echoing dimly over the noise of the busy street.

  Bettina found two middle-aged gentlemen suddenly at her sides and helping her up to her feet, which were still tingling from the frozen shadow realm. Another fellow, quite a bit younger than the detective’s helpers, was kneeling by Angelika Nacht and helping the woozy girl to sit up.

  The tranquilizer has almost knocked her out. If she’s going to tell us anything, it has to be now!

  Bettina thanked her saviors and politely shooed them away, and then she knelt down by the young man tending to the assassin. Slipping easily into a country accent, she said, “Thank you ever so much. My sister and I tripped and pulled each other down. She hasn’t been well, and I really need to get her to bed. But I see my husband is nearly here with our horse.”

  The young man looked where she pointed, and a moment later Arjuna emerged from the press, cutting across the lanes of traffic to the anger and frustration of countless porters and commuters who had to pause to let him pass.

  “Betty! What happened?” Arjuna slipped off the saddle and stood over them, his shredded shirt flapping in the breeze and his massive bow once again slung over his shoulder and across his back.

  “Oh, it’s nothing darling, but poor little Gertie has had one of her little fainting spells and just toppled me right over into the street,” Bettina said in her breathless, lisping accent. “We need to get her home right away.”

  Arjuna raised a weary eyebrow and nodded. He scooped the assassin up in his arms and the helpful young man appeared satisfied that all was in hand, so he left the detectives standing on the sidewalk with the semi-conscious girl and the snorting horse.

  “Quickly! She’s almost asleep.” Bettina grabbed the reins of their stolen horse and led her husband across the street to a small grassy park drenched in sunlight. Only a few small trees dotted the lawn, so the shadows were few and far between. Arjuna set the Shadow girl down on a wooden bench in the warm light, partly propping her upright with his own body as he sat beside her. Bettina sat down on her other side and took the girl’s hand. She dug her fingernails into the assassin’s palm and felt the girl jerk slightly.