The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  “What did he want?”

  “Same as usual: the border is only wire and wood, he says. But he’s refined his plans. He wants us to lay explosive charges. Take down three sections of the fence, all in the same moment. One frontal assault directly into Lewiston. Two more units outflanking, north and south. He’s drawn a map. We put the automatic guns behind the town. When their men start to run…” The king gestured, the same flick of the hand with which he’d dismissed his servants.

  “It’s an old plan,” Edwin said. “Changing details doesn’t make it new.”

  “He says we should go in on changeover day. That way we’ll capture all the men of the garrison. And all the men of the relief garrison. Or kill them. What do you think to that?”

  That was new. And it was a good idea. If they took the entire border regiment in one go, it would take months for the enemy to regroup.

  “But then what?” Edwin asked.

  “Ransom them,” the king said. “Or kill them. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter!”

  “Be careful, Edwin.” That warning note.

  “I’m sorry, sire. But it’s the plan I’m against. Not you. If I can’t speak my fears, I’ll be of no use. Janus’s scheme would work. We’d take Lewiston. With our weapons against theirs, it would be quick. And we could kill all their men. But it’s what comes after that should worry you.”

  The king smiled. “That’s why you’re so useful to me, my dear Edwin. Janus covets your place on my right hand. He shows your weakness and you show his. So tell me about his plan.”

  “Where would Janus send your army after Lewiston?”

  “Onwards.” The king gestured vaguely towards the south-east. “City to city. Staying ahead of the snow. We destroy their means of production, distribution and exchange. Those are his words. He has marked a route. We don’t try to hold the land. Not enough men for that. Instead we destroy. Everything. We plunder. We create chaos. Just like the chaos that once ruled here. And we… I… this kingdom… will spread out into that fertile soil, just as we’ve always done, since the time of my fathers.”

  A chill ran over Edwin’s skin. The king’s words had been animated by the force of vision. An imagined future. Hoped for. It was Janus’s future.

  “You will have all this,” Edwin said. “And more.”

  “Then you agree at last?”

  Instead of answering, Edwin said, “Do you know what happened to Napoleon when he marched his army into Russia? His soldiers were veterans, well-trained, seasoned in battle. Nothing could stop them. They advanced from city to city, doing just as Janus says. Destroying. Pillaging. But in the end, Russia was too big. Their supply lines were too long. Most of his army died of cold and disease on the way back home to France.”

  “We’re not attacking Russia.”

  “We’re attacking the Gas-Lit Empire. Russia is only a speck within it. We can throw this continent into chaos. I do agree with that. But how long would it take for your kingdom to grow out into it? How long before we’d be strong enough to farm the land we’ve harrowed? And most important – how long before we’re able to face the armies of the rest of the world? While we push out across America, mile by mile, year by year, they’ll be gathering a mighty army from Africa and Europe and Asia and Australia. Before our job is a fraction done, they’ll be landing. Our ships will protect the Pacific coast. So they’ll land in the east. In their millions. Our guns outmatch theirs. But their forces will outnumber us by thousands to one. Tens of thousands. We could start Janus’s war. But we could never win it.”

  Janus’s war. It was a good phrase: one to be used again. The king’s soldiers dying in Janus’s war.

  The king turned to stare out of the window, resting one hand on the brass barrel of the telescope. Edwin waited. Each time Janus had the king’s ear, it seemed that everything needed to be laid out again. And each time it was harder to convince.

  “Their losses would be terrible,” the king said, perhaps to himself.

  “They’ve sworn to defend their Empire.”

  “But they’re soft. They don’t know war. They don’t remember it. Not like we do.”

  “They’d learn. And quickly. They might lose a million men. But there are tens of millions more for them to call up.”

  “But the shock they’d feel… Janus says it would break them. They’d sue for peace.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Edwin watched as the king pushed open the window glass. A breeze shifted the wall hangings. There was a smell in the air of decaying leaves. Already the trees on the far side of the valley were turning to gold. Soon Mount Hood would be white with snow.

  “Janus believes it,” the king said. “Is he a fool?”

  “Ambition blinds him. Would you risk your kingdom on the toss of a coin?”

  “I might.”

  “But there’s no need. If you first control the Atlantic, this whole continent will be yours. And all its people. And all its resources. Within ten years you’ll have built a war machine so big that it’ll be you invading them. You’ll send your forces across the water. Take Australia first. Then Asia. Then march into Europe and Africa. You’ll be the king of the whole planet. Greater than Napoleon ever dreamed to be. Greater than Alexander.”

  “Ten years is a long time,” the king said. “But you are a good servant to me.”

  Edwin knelt. “Then please, sire, will you spare the ox?”

  “Not that again! Why should I call it off?”

  “If I read the entrails and see health and long life for you and for your child, and if I say it for all to hear…”

  “What?” The word had been spoken quietly. But the resonance of the king’s voice made it somehow fill the room.

  “All Janus will need to do is harm your consort. A sprinkle of poison. I’ll be proved wrong. They’ll throw me from the battlements. It’s what he wants.”

  “You push too far!”

  Edwin didn’t know why the king trusted Janus so much. Perhaps it was the blindness of arrogance. “I’m afraid for her. For your child.”

  “You’re afraid for yourself. And your imagination runs away with you.” Then louder, as his anger grew: “Janus would never do such a thing! He wouldn’t dare!”

  “I’m sorry, sire. But I beg you–”

  “That is enough!”

  The king sighed then, as if weary of the argument. He placed a hand on Edwin’s brow and stroked the long dark hair. “Slaughter the ox. Do it for me.” The voice was kindly now. That paternal tone again. “Use all your powers and read the future. If the auguries say my child will be healthy and safe, then so it shall be. All will be well. And I will have both of my servants.”

  There were guards on the stairs and courtiers in the corridors. Some stared as Edwin passed. The observatory was too high in the tower for the king’s anger to have been overheard by any of them. Perhaps they were reacting to the shock in Edwin’s face, the realisation, for the first time, that for all his collaboration in trickery, the king too believed in magic.

  CHAPTER 13

  But for the border, Lewiston might have been a scenic town. The Snake River had a certain grandeur cutting a wide curve between low hills. The sky seemed immense, though Elizabeth reasoned that it couldn’t be of any different size. On the final descent towards the air terminus, she’d seen a rolling landscape of brown grass with clusters of trees around small creeks.

  And the fence.

  It cut the land from horizon to horizon, somehow obscene, as if a line had been drawn on a map with a ruler, and that line had then been constructed from wire and wood. Disembarked, and with the bag of her possessions weighing down one arm, she found herself staring at the border. Whilst the town faded away in other directions, to the west it ended abruptly. She saw now that the fence itself was in fact two fences, running a few feet apart, each twice the height of a man. A tangle of barbed wire curled through the space between. A dirt road ran next to the fence for as far as she c
ould see.

  “It took twelve years to build. Three hundred and eighty-five workers. Forty-five of them had to be replaced during its construction due to death or serious injury.” It was Colonel Martinshaw speaking, the top hat back on his head. “The border regiment carries out general repairs. But from time to time sections need to be renewed. Then we bring in contractors. Keeping the Gas-Lit Empire safe. Noble work.”

  From one of the bars along the edge of the airfield drifted the sound of a piano, painfully out of tune, and singing, even more so. Groups of men were everywhere along the street front. Off-duty guardsmen, she thought. There were no women, but for a painting of one on the wooden front of another building, lifting her red skirts to show white petticoats and booted feet. The painted smile made Elizabeth shudder.

  “Are you here to join the border regiment?” Colonel Martinshaw asked.

  “Perhaps,” Elizabeth said, relieved when he stepped away towards the porters.

  Conway chuckled. “What comes next, do you think? Will we learn about the construction of luggage and the life habits of crocodiles?”

  “Can you recommend a boarding house?” Elizabeth asked.

  “You might be in trouble there. It’s changeover week for the regiment. We’ve twice the guardsmen as usual. But you can stay with me if you’d like, in exchange for your story. Might be easier in any case, given your secret.” This last part, he spoke in a whisper.

  “Where do you live?”

  He nodded towards the river. “Over the other side.”

  The oarsman cut a diagonal line against the current. When they landed, Elizabeth offered to pay, but Conway wouldn’t hear of it.

  “You’re my guest,” he said, and placed a coin on the oarsman’s palm.

  There were a few shacks on the riverside, but beyond the first rise Lewiston began to peter out and the path became little more than a goat track. Conway’s hospitality hadn’t concerned her at first, but with the last houses left behind, she began to think about her pistol, stowed deep in the bag. The old man seemed too friendly for a border town. Too easily pleasant. And he had seen through her male disguise.

  At least she’d put the river between herself and the regiment. And Mrs Arthur would be somewhere near, with her husbands. From the newspaper article it seemed she might be businesswoman enough to entertain a proposition. Elizabeth would offer some of Agent Winslow’s money in exchange for information about the Oregon Territory and where best to cross the fence.

  “How come you’re dressed as a man?” Conway asked, when they were beyond any chance of overhearing.

  “I’m running away,” she said, allowing her voice to rise to its natural pitch.

  “From who?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It might.”

  “From the law, then.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I saved my friends.”

  “Loyalty’s a crime now?”

  “Apparently.”

  The road curved its dusty way around a low ridge. The bright river was lost. All around lay a brown valley under a blue sky.

  “Why Lewiston?” he asked. “Not an easy place for a woman to hide.”

  “Where would you have gone?”

  “It’s not me needs hiding. Most folk who come here are concerned with the fence. They come to guard it. Or to cross it. One or the other. You don’t look like the guarding type.”

  The bag bumped against her leg with every other step. She’d packed the pistol right at the bottom, against the chance the porters might rummage her things for valuables. Now she wanted to feel it in her hand. Conway’s questioning had become uncomfortably focused.

  “Is it far?” she asked.

  “Just beyond the next hill.”

  “Why do you live all the way out here?”

  “I don’t much like crowds.”

  She stopped, dropped her bag, as if exhausted.

  “That’s the other thing that gave you away,” he said. “Worker’s clothes. But not worker’s hands.”

  “I need something,” she said, then unbuckled the bag and delved inside. Her fingers closed around the pistol stock. But Conway had slipped his own hands into his pockets. She caught the outline of something through the fabric of his coat, a straight edge that might have been a short-barrelled handgun. When she stood, she was holding a small pot of whale grease. She dabbed a smear on her lips and put it back. His tension eased. He’d been ready for her.

  He was quiet after that, which brought some relief, though she had many questions still in want of answers. As the track crowned a rise, a house began to emerge in the cleft of the valley ahead, and a small barn next to it. She’d seen no sight of crops growing and the grass would surely be too thin to fatten cattle.

  “What does a man who doesn’t like crowds do for a living?” she asked.

  “Business,” he said. “What does a runaway hope to do out west?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  He chuckled. “You can’t fool an old man.”

  “Do many live over this side of the river?” she asked.

  “Passing few.”

  “You know them all, then?”

  He looked at her, as if she’d revealed a secret. “Everyone knows everyone.”

  “I was reading in the newspaper…”

  “You’re going to ask about Mrs Arthur,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “I saw you reading it.”

  “Can you introduce me?”

  “I can. And I will.” He put back his head and called out in a carrying voice: “Mrs Arthur!”

  A woman stepped out onto the porch of the house below and waved.

  Mrs Arthur was short as a child but there were wrinkles on her face and a grey strand in her hair. Her steely gaze suggested long experience. She sat in a rocking chair as if it was a throne, one arm on each rest. A man stood to either side of her, hands loose, pistols holstered. One seemed hardly older than Elizabeth. The air in the shack smelled of woodsmoke from the stove.

  “Why bring her?” Mrs Arthur asked.

  “Seems like she’s got a story to tell,” Conway said. “And on the airship she was asking questions about you.”

  “Walks like a man. Wouldn’t have known but for the voice.”

  “She can talk like a man too.”

  “Can she now?” Mrs Arthur sucked her teeth.

  Trying to control her panic, Elizabeth snatched a glance around the room. It was a rickety old place for a family of gold smugglers. The window frame would break easily enough if she dived through it. But there was nowhere to go and she’d not be able to outpace their guns.

  “Why’ve you been using my name, girl?”

  Elizabeth swallowed. “I want to offer a deal. I’ll pay if you show me how to get across the fence.”

  The men laughed. Mrs Arthur frowned. “You think I can be bought?”

  “I think you’re a woman of business.”

  “I can take your money, if you’ve got any. Bury you where not even the coyotes will look.” She snapped her fingers and pointed to Elizabeth’s bag on the floor. The younger man was on it in a moment, pulling out clothes, casting them to the boards.

  “She’s running from something,” Conway said.

  “What might that be, girl?”

  “The law.” She needed time to think. To work things out. But everything was coming in a rush.

  “She said she broke the law rescuing friends.”

  It almost sounded as if Conway was on her side. The young man rummaging her things held up a pair of bloomers. His grin was cut short by a glare from Mrs Arthur.

  There was no way out and Elizabeth could think of no lie that might get the old woman to see her differently. She made a decision and was speaking in the same moment: “The Patent Office is after me.”

  Everyone froze.

  “Ach! You’ve brought us poison,” Mrs Arthur said.

  Conway held up his hands. “I didn’t know. She said the law,
that’s all.”

  “They’ll come looking,” Elizabeth said, pressing on. Everyone was afraid of the Patent Office. But here the name had triggered something more. “If you kill me, they’ll find out.”

  “No they won’t,” Mrs Arthur hissed. She turned to Conway. “Take her across the fence. Patent Office can’t go there. Bury her deep. And her things. Even if it’s money. I’ll have all trace gone!”

  Elizabeth made to run, but Conway’s hand shot out and grabbed her arm, his grip tight enough to hurt.

  The younger man had stood. Only now she saw that her pistol was in his hand.

  “Where did you steal that?” Mrs Arthur demanded.

  “I didn’t!”

  Conway squeezed harder. “Best say the truth.”

  She twisted her arm but he just shifted his grip.

  “It’s mine!” she cried.

  Mrs Arthur stood and advanced towards her. “You can die slow,” she hissed. “Or you can stop your lies.”

  “My father gave it to me. It’s why I need to cross the border.”

  Conway released her. Mrs Arthur stiffened.

  “What did she say her name was?”

  “Said it was Edwin.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell? You didn’t think to say that first?”

  “No, ma’am. Thought it must be a common name in England.”

  “Will you look at the face on her! And the name. Both together. And then the gun! She’s kin to him. Sure as sure. Tell me girl, what are you to the Magician of Crown Point?”

  CHAPTER 14

  The marvellous deer had been the pet of an old woman, living in a cave far from the beaten track. Others might have thought the patterns of its coat a curiosity: brown to the right-hand side, white to the left. But Edwin’s mind, trained in conjuring, had seen the possibility of an illusion. He’d paid the woman with gold: for the animal, and to look after it until it was needed, and to keep it from other people’s eyes.

  When he explained his plans for the trick, the king had readily agreed. Two servants would be hidden in the wooded gully. One to untether the animal. The other, a marksman, ready to shoot it. The rifle would be mounted on a tripod to guarantee the kill.