“Miss Nacht, we only have a few moments,” Bettina said softly. “I couldn’t help but notice that you keep attacking us, and not Ranulf Kaiser, and that leads me to suspect that you don’t really mind that he went to Inselmond at all. So I’ll ask you plainly. Did you hire Kaiser to go to the drifting isle? Is he working for you? Did you break him out of Torghast?”
“No, you idiot,” the drowsy girl slurred. “I attacked you because you’re easy to find. The Shadows have had dealings with Kaiser in the past, and now he knows how to avoid us.”
“Really? How?” Arjuna asked earnestly.
“Arry, this isn’t the time,” Bettina said. “Miss Nacht, please focus, because this next part is very important. My husband and I know your little secret. Your delightful little trick.” She patted the girl’s pocket where the silver watch rested. “Now, we don’t want any trouble from you, but if you try to make us or anyone else conveniently disappear, you will regret it. By the end of the day, we will have dozens of sealed envelopes sent to various contacts in the government and the press to be opened in the event of our deaths, and those sealed letters will identify you and your comrades, the true nature of your ability, and your interest in the drifting isle, along with any other inconvenient half-truths we feel like inventing. Do you understand?”
“Mmm.” The assassin sighed.
“Miss Nacht.” Bettina took the girl’s chin in her hand and peered into her slitted eyes. “Kill us, and the entire city will come after you. Do you understand?”
“…yessss…”
“Good.” Bettina rose to her feet and her husband followed suit.
The Shadow slumped over on the arm of the bench and began to breathe very loudly through her open mouth.
The detectives turned back toward the street where their horse waited, tied to a lamppost.
“Do you really think we’ll be safe from them?” Arjuna said, glancing back at the girl sleeping in the mid-day sun.
“Not very. But it will probably improve our chances if we can get to Ranulf Kaiser before he claims ownership of the island and enslaves its entire population.” Bettina gripped the saddle and swung up onto the horse’s back in a graceful motion, and hooked her leg around to sit in a modified side-saddle fashion. She held out her hand to her husband. “Come along, darling. We have a country to save.”
Chapter 22. A Furious Exchange
“If Kaiser isn’t working for the Shadows, then who?” Bettina wondered aloud. She had to raise her voice considerably to be heard over the thundering of the horse’s hooves, the voices of the pedestrians, and the horns and bells of the bicycles, coaches, and autocarriages crawling through the busy downtown streets.
“Maybe he isn’t working for anyone,” Arjuna said. “Maybe he really is that smart. He broke out of prison, drummed up some petty cash, put together a crew, and pulled off a daring heist complete with obscure legal wrangling. In a strange way, it has his signature all over it. Doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps. It still feels wrong to me.”
Bettina frowned into the sluggish mass of people and vehicles gridlocked across the broad avenues between the aging steel monuments to commerce and the aging steel monuments to industry. The windows still shone and the statues wore fresh paint, the clocks kept perfect time, and doormen wore immaculate uniforms, but there was no way to hide the cracking stone or the rusting iron of the skyscrapers of Eisenstadt.
Eventually, even the mightiest buildings will fall. Time rots everything. Even steel.
Bettina kept her lips tightly closed to avoid unleashing a thousand tiny suggestions to her husband.
Turn here. There’s a short cut. Get in front of that wagon. Just go, go!
But she left the horse in his capable hands and trusted that the traffic that kept them from reaching city hall was proving just as inconvenient to Ranulf Kaiser.
It was just past noon when they turned the corner and finally saw the soaring classical façade of the city hall building. Not as grand as the state courthouse, where the press often gathered to interrogate the popular criminals and lawmen of the day, nor as elegant as the Ministry of Justice which still retained some of its aristocratic charms, the city hall was merely a collection of offices and storage rooms where hard-working bureaucrats shuffled and stamped the papers that kept the city of steel running.
The detectives were still some distance from the building when Bettina took her husband’s hand and slid gently down the horse’s flank to the street below. “We’ll go in separately and search for Kaiser. And remember dear, he could still have one last friend or two here to help him. A guard, a clerk, anyone. Even a pigeon.”
“Yes, darling, but what will you do if you find him?” he called to her as she stepped up onto the sidewalk and began moving down the street toward city hall faster than his gridlocked horse. “You’re not even armed!”
“I’ll make do,” she called back. It only took her a few more minutes to reach the broad white marble steps of the hall and she stomped up them quickly and strode through the old wooden doors into the grand foyer. It was a small chamber compared to the one at the Ministry, and the tiled floor was covered in people all standing in lines as they waited to speak to the clerks seated at the small desks along the walls. Brass signs on the walls identified the clerks as recipients and issuers of licenses, bills, permits, and payments of all sorts.
Yet another swamp of humanity. Too many people, too many faces…
Bettina strode through the lines as swiftly and politely as possible as she scanned for both the lean figure of Ranulf Kaiser and the clerk who might be unfortunate enough to process maritime salvage claims for a living.
* * *
Arjuna shook the reins, trying to goad the weary horse into slipping through this or that gap in the traffic, but the noise and heat of the bodies and machines overwhelmed them both, leaving them trapped between a wagon of cabbage and an old carriage taking two elderly bankers to lunch. The bankers were practically shouting to each other over the noise of the street.
“…and that’s why women from Oshen, to this day, refuse to wear hats with antlers in them,” the gentleman with the prodigious sideburns proclaimed.
“Fascinating!” exclaimed his mustachioed companion. “I always suspected just such a thing to be the case. But do you know why young men from Haebern are known for their exceptionally large—”
“Excuse me,” Arjuna barked. “Are either of you fellows in the business of acquisitions?”
“Why yes, as a matter of fact, I am,” said the man with the bushy jowls.
“Great. Here’s a horse.” Arjuna tossed the banker the reins to his stolen horse as he slipped down from the saddle and dashed away on foot. He climbed over a stalled autocarriage, jumped into a cart of rolled silks, and shoved past a bored-looking mule to get up onto the sidewalk. In the distance he could just see his wife stepping through the front doors of city hall. The steel string of his bow was biting into his shoulder so he unslung the weapon and instantly the press and flow of pedestrians around him contracted, as though the entire crowd was flinching away from him, or from the weapons in his hands.
Racist sons of…
He gave the wide-eyed women and nervous men a slow look, and then glanced at his shredded shirt and the gleaming arrows in his fist.
Yeah, all right, I’ll give them this one.
He took off at a dead sprint, plunging through the crowd faster than it could part to let him through, and he heard a stream of gasps and cries from the startled businessmen as they turned and saw him. When he reached the building he took the stairs three at a time and darted through the open doors.
Something tells me I won’t be particularly welcome in a government building looking like this. Ah well, these are the days…
Arjuna burst into the foyer and quickly determined that Bettina was not in the hall. A pair of red-tailed hawks shrieked from their perches high in the corners, and instantly four guards armed with bludgeons and coilguns leapt up from
their seats in the corners of the room and charged toward him, shouting, “Freeze! Don’t move! Put the weapons down!”
Arjuna grinned and broke into his sprint again, flashing through the lines of weary permit-seekers and shouting back at the guards, “Official ministry business! Nothing to see here!”
The guards, apparently unconvinced by his argument, continued after him through the lines and past the desks toward the bank of elevators at the end of the hall.
If by some miracle this day ends at all well, I’m definitely going to have to take Betty to that bed and breakfast.
Arjuna ducked low as he zigzagged across the room.
Everyone’s staring at me, but not a single person is stepping out of line. Really, folks? An armed chase right in front of you, but you’re not willing to lose your places in line?
He dove under a small velvet rope, sliding across the cold tiles on his knees and hopped to his feet right in front of the elevators. Two young boys in matching gray uniforms stared at him from inside the two open lifts, and then at the same instant they both ran away across the room, leaving their posts vacant.
Arjuna dashed into the closest elevator and stared at the small panel of switches, buttons, and levers.
Crap. I’ve ridden in these things for years and never noticed how the operators work them. Not even a little.
As he stood there staring at the panel in a cold sweat, two needles pinged on the back wall of the elevator just to the side of his head, and out in the hall there came the telltale whines of coilgun capacitors recharging.
Stairs!
Arjuna bolted from the elevator and found one of the guards directly in his path with a gun raised to fire. The detective swiped at the man’s head with his fistful of arrows, making sure to swing high, and the guard ducked and flinched out of the way. With an awkward twist of his arm, he hooked the steel string of his bow under the guard’s chin and yanked back on it, making the poor man gasp and choke. Arjuna quickly clamped his slender arrows between his teeth and snatched the coilgun from the guard’s hand. Then he wrenched his bow off the man’s neck and bolted up the stairs leading to the second floor.
“Stop him! Shoot him!” The other guards’ shouts echoed across the hall, and the men and women still standing in their lines gasped and murmured. “Everyone out of the way!”
“Wait, where’s my gun? He’s got my gun!”
“No, he has my gun!”
Arjuna ducked low as he stormed up the steps and then he hunched below the balustrade and fired a lone needle at the guard crouched at the bottom of the steps. Just as the man hissed and grabbed his arm, the front doors of the city hall foyer slammed shut. The detective looked up and saw a knot of large, poorly dressed men standing just inside the doors, and behind their brawny arms and crude bludgeons Arjuna saw a familiar whip of a man in a crumpled gray suit with a fistful of papers.
Kaiser! I’ve got you now, you miserable little rat.
Arjuna dashed up to the second level, an open walkway that overlooked the main hall on one side, and he jammed the guard’s coilgun into his pocket.
“Everyone on the floor, now!” one of the thugs roared, waving his nail-studded club over his head. “This is a robbery. We want purses, wallets, jewelry, and watches. Hand them over or we beat you bloody and then we take them anyway. You got that?”
More gasps and wails and stammers rippled through the crowd, and the startled civilians began dropped to their knees as they pulled out their wallets, tugged off their watches, and held out their purses to the big bruisers who began wading through the crowd with empty pillow cases and burlap sacks.
Nice cover job, Ranulf. Seven big targets to take everyone’s attention off of little old you. So what happens now?
As Arjuna peered over the handrail of the upper balcony, a haggard Ranulf Kaiser strode through the middle of the kneeling crowd and headed straight for the elevators. The pair of red-tailed hawks remained at their posts near the ceiling, screaming the alarm and calling for the police. From Arjuna’s vantage point, he could see two of the armed guards hiding behind a large potted plant beside the elevators and peeking out from the leaves as they tried to aim their coilguns at the robbers.
Oh, hell. This is going to end badly.
Arjuna rose to his feet, nocked a silvery arrow, and drew back his mighty steel bow. The limbs creaked and groaned with the stress on the ancient metal, but the weapon held together. He sighted down on the robber closest to the guards, but then he saw Kaiser only a few steps away from the right-hand elevator.
No, you don’t.
He loosed the arrow and the steel missile screamed across the vast hall and smashed into the edge of the elevator’s open door, ripping and bending the old brass doors and popping several of the inner panels free of their fittings. Screws and buttons rained down on the elevator floor as sparks flashed and flew from the shattered panel.
Kaiser tumbled backward and fell on his rear as he shielded his face from the flying bits of metal and electric sparks. The two guards drew back for a moment, but they recovered faster than the thugs. While the robbers were still pointing up at Arjuna and trying to decide which of them would go upstairs and beat him to death, the guards popped up and fired. One of the robbers swore and grabbed at his chest, but three more of them spotted the guards and tore across the room with their bludgeons raised to strike.
There are too many, too fast, and too far apart.
Arjuna drew his second arrow and searched for a target, but shooting any one of the robbers would still the leave the guards a second away from a violent death at the hands of the others. And then his aim traveled upward.
That looks fragile.
He raised his weapon and fired high. Again the arrow screamed across the hall, this time shrieking through the garish old electric chandelier hanging above the doors of the elevators. The huge array of lamps exploded as all the tiny copper chains holding the chandelier together shattered and two dozen enormous bulbs and fixtures pelted the charging robbers. The men roared and screamed as the glass shards and rusty metal shavings shredded the skin of their hands and faces.
The three robbers fell to their knees, their hands shaking as they exchanged horrified looks with each other as the blood ran in countless tiny streams across their faces.
Go on, cry, you big babies.
Arjuna ran back across the balcony and slid to a stop at the top of the stairs where he had a clear view of the wreckage and carnage in front of the elevators. Out in the grand foyer, the civilians were screaming and crying, and those near the front doors were streaming out into the street in a panicking stampede. Elsewhere men were shielding women, and women were shielding children, and robbers were shouting over the din.
Three left. I can handle three.
Arjuna charged down the stairs with his bow raised and his last arrow drawn back to kiss his cheek. One of the robbers stood in the center of the room with a bulging sack of wallets and watches in one hand as he gestured to his comrades with the nail-studded club in his other hand. As the detective dashed down the steps, his angle of fire shifted rapidly until his shot came into focus and he hollered from the bottoms of his lungs, “Everybody, freeze!”
Everybody did freeze and turned to look at him, and he plucked his fingers from the steel bow string and sent the shining arrow flashing across the room. Tiny dust motes spiraled violently in the air as the missile sliced by them, and a high-pitched whine followed in the wake of the relic’s bronze fletching.
The arrow smashed through the first robber’s shoulder and the man dropped to the floor without making a sound. He merely spun to his side as a thin plume of blood misted into the air, and he was down. But the arrow flew on and an instant later it slammed into the drooping sleeve of a second robber, drilling deep into the marble and nailing him to the wall. This man also fell, but only to his knees since his pinned arm would not come free, and he hung there clutching his shoulder and pulling uselessly at the heavy fabric that had twisted itse
lf deep into the wall.
Just one left.
Arjuna started forward as something bit into the meat of his leg. He looked down to see the glimmer of a tiny needle in the back of his thigh. Behind him he saw one of the guards behind the potted plant with his whining coilgun in hand, his face pale with fear.
“Hey!” Arjuna yanked the needle out as the first trickle of numbness caressed his knee. He hurled the needle in the vague direction of the guard. It didn’t come close to the man, but he flinched back all the same. “I’m on your side!”
The guard stared at him for a moment, and then crept back behind the plant again.
The detective spun back to face the last robber on the far side of the room, and he plunged into the sea of cringing, cowering civilians. He wove around them and vaulted over them, all in a mad dash to reach the seventh and final ruffian. But with each step his leg grew duller and heavier, tingling as though it was no longer a leg at all but a wooden box filled with tiny buzzing bees.
“You!” he yelled at the robber. “Surrender now! Get down, now!”
The last thick-necked bruiser cast his eyes over his fallen comrades, most of them painted in blood and lying unconscious, and he dropped his pillow case of stolen goods. Arjuna’s lips parted in a thin snarl.
Run away. I dare you!
And the man reached down to grab the arm of an elderly man kneeling just beside him. As the thug tried to yank his hostage up, he raised his rusty iron rod in a threatening gesture. “I’ll do it! I’ll kill him! Stay back or I’ll—”
Arjuna leapt over two crouching women in threadbare jackets as he swung his bow at the thug, just as the man began to swing his rod. The long curved limb of the bow neatly snagged the descending iron rod and forced the crude weapon straight up into the ruffian’s face. Iron struck bone with a ringing crack and the man tumbled over backward in a daze, the hostage instantly freed from his grasp as the iron rod flew up above their heads.
The Kaiser Affair (The Drifting Isle Chronicles) Page 21