by Неизвестный
“But they are not doing this alone. Those materials are not inexpensive, and the children need to eat. Who is supporting them?”
His smile was both mysterious and infuriating.
“Certainly not I.”
“It is the Merdeka Group, is it not? The freedom movement.” I grabbed his hand. “Tell me.”
He laughed, delighted. “You really are a lot more impulsive than I give you credit for. All in good time, Lady Admira. Come have tea with me tomorrow afternoon. I will be in the Arab Quarter, as usual.”
I let him go. When he had completely vanished amid the chaos of the dock, Ying melted out of the shadows.
“How did you fare?” she asked, without preface.
I recounted what I had seen, in all its madness. “Now the resistance movement is involved and there are children, too. I do not like it. I cannot get them involved.”
“That is hardly your fault.”
“Were we followed again?” I asked her.
“Indeed. It is as we suspected: his first mate follows him wherever he goes. The captain may be a madman but he is not a fool.”
“Perhaps the first mate simply intends to keep Bells out of trouble,” I mused.
Ying’s gaze flicked briefly over her shoulder and her impatience showed. “We should remove him from the equation,” she said. “I would find it no trouble to dispatch him.”
“I do not wish to hear talk of dispatching anybody,” I said sharply. “Now is not the time.”
“Then when would it be?” She took my hand and squeezed it imploringly, leaning in close to whisper to me. “My serum will not last another week and we will not receive our payment until we deliver something of value to Lord Louis.”
This hit me hard. No, I had not forgotten. How could I, when the payment – the serum – was the very thing that kept her alive, without which her organs would fail?
“We shall follow him for another week,” I promised her, “and then I will report to Lord Louis with our findings. Our discoveries should please him enough to convince him to part with more serum.”
I could see that Ying was not satisfied with my answer. She nodded, nevertheless. I wondered if I was indeed risking too much to satisfy my curiosity.
*
I continued to meet regularly with Bells during the following week: in the mornings for breakfast, and sometimes in the afternoons as well. We had tea. He did not bring me to see any more illegal devices, but we did talk. He was, as always, an endless source of inane trivia telling me about the speed of a laden swallow or the sights he had seen on his journeys with his airship-state. I listened politely. He had the mannerisms of a child, truly, given to verbosity and frank exaggeration. His eyes sparkled as he rattled off his tales. He waved and gesticulated and, very memorably, once knocked a cup of tea off the table in his enthusiasm.
Yet for all his immaturity he had wisdom hidden deep within him which showed in random flashes during our conversation, like a fossil lost within the reflecting facets of a crystal, visible only from certain angles.
“You mustn’t blame Lord Louis, you know,” he said once. “As the new consul to this region he’s under immense pressure from the Royal Palace. Very large shoes to fill. The poor man wants a prize to present to the Emperor in hopes that he’ll avoid the fate of the last consul here. I pity him, more than anything.”
On another day he asked me, “Why do you keep working for the Empire? I can tell that you dislike it.” I did not answer him.
“You must think I’m a madman,” he finally said, over Thursday’s milk tea and naan with masala. He had his chin in his hands and a boyish expression on his face.
“Doing what I do, goading the Royal Empire for no reason at all.”
“I do not think you are a madman,” I said. “I have come to realize that the actions you take are not as random as they seem. You have a reason for toying with Imperial ambitions, but it is not a reason that I can understand. Something in your past, perhaps?”
He smiled at my attempt to get him to disclose more about his murky history. “I think you and I are more alike than we seem. After all, you too have your reasons for working as the Empire’s bloodhound, don’t you?”
“What are you saying?” I asked, eyes narrowing.
“I notice that your partner has stopped trailing us in the past few days. Howie, my first mate, told me that she seemed ill when he last saw her.” He leaned forward and took my hand in a sudden, urgent movement. “I know how the Empire changed her. She relies on their sufferance to survive, doesn’t she?”
I jerked my hand from his grasp, shocked. How dare he? This was a private matter. “You do not know what you speak of!”
“Yet she must consume the serum they provide or her metabolism will fail.” His manner was suddenly intense, deadly serious. “I can help her, Admira. I know the formula that she needs.”
I jumped to my feet. My heart was beating so hard I thought I might die. Ying’s secret was sacred to us, a condition whose true nature was never to be referred to in public. Who did this interloper into our lives think he was, to speak of it like that? Did he think that my confidence could be so easily won, bartered like a vulgar bag of grain?
“You,” I snarled, “have turned out to be as dangerous as they said.”
“Who is more dangerous,” he asked, “an unfettered wild-card like me or the Empire that keeps you on a leash?”
I turned on my heel and left the scene. I felt betrayed, angry and frightened all at the same time. I had allowed myself to get too close to my target at the expense of the one I loved. I had risked too much and that was unacceptable.
I returned to our rented shophouse still shaken, only to find Ying sitting on the bed, her back to me as she gazed out of the window. Her hands were cold and her expression distant as I knelt next to her. “How do you feel?”
“We’ve run out of serum,” she said. “The rationing was not effective enough.”
“Then it is decided,” I said, now entirely convinced of my decision. “We will end this tomorrow. I will bring the captain to our taskmaster.” But not, I decided, the Lees. They did not need to be a part of this.
“You will have to go alone,” Ying said. “In this state, I will be of little help.”
I could not meet her eyes. “Ying, I am sorry. I have caused you suffering.”
She stroked my hair, even if her movements were slow. “Be careful,” she said, even though she knew that I always was.
The next day I dressed in my fighting gear – subtle differences that only the trained eye would notice – outfitted it with both weapons and the poison vial. I examined myself in the mirror: my demeanour gave away nothing unusual. I was ready for the hunt.
Bells was not where I expected to find him on a Saturday. Nor was he anywhere to be found in the port area, as I methodically combed through the sinuous length of the river. It was as if he had read my thoughts beforehand and had vanished from the surface of the island. Frustrated, I stared up at the sky, at the striped brass-and-canvas confection that was Bell’s ship, floating serenely and, as I fancied, uncaringly out of reach.
“Do not hide from me like a coward,” I said, shouting up to the airship as if there was a chance that he might hear me.
Someone tapped on my arm. It was the young girl from the godown, Uncle Lee’s granddaughter. She was carrying a bouquet of bird-of-paradise and handed the flowers to me.
“From our friend,” she said, with a girlish smile.
“Wait,” I said, impulsively taking her arm to stop her from running off.
She simply looked at me curiously.
“Is your family with the Merdeka Rebellion?” I asked. She gave me an un-amused mask that was older than her years, and did not answer.
I pressed on. “Why are you doing this? Aren’t you afraid it’s dangerous? Lord Louis will arrest your family if he finds out what you are up to.”
She straightened up stubbornly. “Ye-ye says we shouldn’t stop making m
achines because the Empire says we cannot, because that would be stupid. And
they won’t find out because nobody will tell them. That’s why it’s a secret.”
I let her go. She knew so much, yet so little. It was disheartening. The bouquet she’d given me felt cumbersome and ludicrous in my hands, the distinctive bright-red flowers visible from half a street away. I felt an unreasonable anger at Bells, both for putting the girl in such a dangerous position and for stranding me with such unpleasant choices.
Something within the fleshy red folds of the bird of-paradise caught the light and I extracted it. It was a small tile of reader-glass, the sort used by portable transmissible-code devices to store messages. I vindictively threw it into a drainage gutter. There was nothing Bells could say that would interest me now.
I returned to the shophouse, intending to rethink my strategy. But there was a terrible stillness in the house when I entered. Fearing the worst, I rushed into the bedchamber to find Ying curled upon the bed, barely breathing.
“Ying,” I exclaimed, shaking her by the shoulders, but she responded to neither my touch nor my voice. For the first time in my adult life I found myself trembling, unable to think clearly. I had run out of time.
*
The Imperial Palace sprawled across the top of the small hill that faced the sea port; a lumbering, solid-walled colossus guarded day and night by the Empire’s mechanical men. Lord Louis’ receiving chamber was right in the middle of the complex, a massive, high-ceilinged room supported by rows of forbidding white pillars, with Lord Louis’ seat on a raised platform inside. The marble floor was cold to my bent knees. It was absolutely deathly silent save for the muted clanks of the metal men patrolling outside, the soft clicks of Lord Louis’ nails on the edge of his chair and the sound of my blood rushing in my ears.
“I am so very, very disappointed with your lack of progress,” he drawled. He had a small and petulant voice, a pinched face and a slight build dwarfed by the grandiosity around him. As he tapped the heavily ringed fingers of one hand on the armrest of his chair, his other hand toyed with a clear bottle of serum that Ying so badly needed.
“I was told that you were the Empire’s best in this region, but it seems that information was less than accurate. Maybe I should send for someone from the homeland who would be better suited to the job, hmm?”
“Please,” I said – nay, begged, “we have our reasons for the delay. Give us a week more and we will have him as you asked.”
Lord Louis smiled, a curved little thing that did not reach his eyes. He tilted the bottle of serum back and forth. “And can your partner survive another week without this, hmm?”
I did not know what else I could say. Our taskmaster was obviously bent on withholding the serum until he received some information he found valuable.
“We found proof that the captain is indeed conspiring against the Empire,” I said. “We have uncovered links he has to the Merdeka Group.”
“Oh?” Lord Louis leaned forward, suddenly and vividly interested. “Tell me more.”I hesitated. What other choice did I have? Eyes fixed on the bottle of serum Lord Louis held, I began.
“There is a family of machinists living in a godown on the north side of the river ... ”
*
That night I lay awake wrapped in Ying’s embrace, listening to her breathing smoothly and evenly. The warmth of her body and the sweet smell of her skin might have brought me solace on other nights but not this one. The windows of our rented shophouse opened over the river and an awful racket punctuated the night – the shouts of men and the sounds of explosions. I could see a red tint reflected on the clouds: somewhere along the river a godown was burning.
“You could always leave,” Ying said, mumbling into the skin of my shoulder.
“What sort of foolish notion is that?”
I felt her shift her weight as she leaned a soft cheek against the plane of my shoulder blade. “You are not shackled to the Empire as I am. You could leave to find more amenable employers.”
“I will not leave.” I gripped her hand and turned to face her. “To remain with you is my choice.”
Her returning smile did not extend further than her lips and left the sorrow in her eyes untouched. In the background the fires of conquest burned. I did not sleep that night.
*
The sun had barely risen the next morning when the pounding on the door started. “Let me deal with this,” I told Ying, short staff in hand as I headed towards the door.
I had barely cracked it open when Bells barged through and spun around on me.
“What have you done?” he demanded.
I whipped the short staff up and pointed it at his throat. “Come no closer,” I said, “or I will discharge it.”
“They arrested Uncle Lee’s family and burned down their home,” he exclaimed. “Everyone, including the children!”
“They were breaking the laws of the land. It was to be expected.”
He had his goggles on but I didn’t need to see his eyes to know how he felt. “You betrayed us. I thought better of you than that.”
“I am a bounty hunter tethered to the Crown,” I spat. “The Empire’s bloodhound, as you so eloquently put it. What were you expecting me to do?”
“You seemed an honourable person to me. I thought I saw that in you.”
“Then you saw wrong!”
With my back to the door and Bells facing it, he had failed to see Ying creeping up on him from behind. Something glinted in her hand: the poison vial, its needle ready.
“Honour means less to me than Ying’s survival.”
“I told you I could help her,” he said. “Did you not read the message I sent?”
He did not get any further. Ying chose that moment to attack, leaping at him from behind. He tried to fight her, but her hold on him was too firm.
“Ying, no!” I shouted to warn her but I was too late. With a single move she struck, stabbing the point of the needle into his neck.
He cried out and fell to his knees. I grabbed him as he collapsed. His cap had been knocked off in the scuffle and I pulled off his goggles to check his condition. His eyes were glassy and his pupils were dilated as he stared up at me, looking more confused than terrified.
“Whhh,” he slurred, unable to form words.
“A mild paralysing toxin,” I told him. “Its effects are temporary.”
But even as I said this I knew it was a lie, for the dosage in the vial had been far too much. His heartbeat was slowing and his eyes fluttered shut.
“Bells?” I asked. There was no response. “Bells!”
Ying had vanished out of a window after the attack and she leapt back in, quick and silent and deadly. “He was not followed this time. What happened?”
“He was overdosed,” I said, cradling his head in my hands. “He is dying.”
Ying knelt beside me and studied his prone form for a moment, and I thought I saw regret in her. Bells looked so small suddenly, lying on the floor of the cavernous shophouse.
“We have to take him to Lord Louis,” she said. “The palace will have the antidote.”
“No,” I said, even though I could not explain why I felt this way.
Her hand closed over mine. “He will die here otherwise.”
I shut my eyes. Ying was right but thinking of it caused a heavy sinking feeling in my chest, as though a stone had been hurled at it and was even now vanishing into its depths.
Ying slipped an arm under Bells’ shoulders.
“Come on,” she said, “help me.”
And I did, for there was nothing else I could do.
*
That evening I watched the sun set over the river, studying the yellow patches of light that shifted in chaos. The docks seemed somehow quieter today, subdued and sombre, as though a vital piece of their vibrancy had been taken. Above them still bobbed the fantastic airship that had belonged to Bells. I wondered what was happening on the ship’s deck at that moment. We
re they wondering what had happened to their captain and their president? Or did they already know? Were they planning something?
Ying came to stand by my side.
“They will execute him at dawn tomorrow,” I said.
“Along with Uncle Lee and his family.”
“The justice of the Empire is swift and brutal. We know this.”
“Tell me we did the right thing,” I implored of her. Ying did not answer immediately. She seemed to be in great thought, troubled. Finally she said, “We completed the job we were tasked with.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“And I do not think I can answer it.” Ying gazed over the horizon and did not meet my eyes. “Matters of right and wrong are subjective and I prefer to deal with fact. The fact is that we have finished the job we were tasked with and our role in the matter is over.”
I stared at her. I had not imagined that she could be so cold.
“It is also fact,” she continued, “that, in the eyes of the Empire, it would be none of our concern and none of our doing if the captain and his conspirators were to somehow escape from their cells tonight.” She turned to me, and in her I caught a glimpse of hope burning wild and fierce
A slow smile spread across my face. “Do you think so?”
“Most definitely.”
“Then perhaps it is time we planned for events that are none of our concern.”
Beneath the indolent sprawl of the Imperial Palace lay the holding cells, the interrogation rooms, the laboratoriums, all the varied instruments essential to the Empire. They were connected by a series of narrow tunnels that opened out onto the side of the hill, each entrance guarded by a pair of mechanical men. These sentries were taken out with a touch of my ring: one tap for each of the brass contraptions and they fell in a mass of shorted circuits.
Ying and I ran down the tunnel, heading inwards until we reached the first branching point, two narrow paths leading to separate sections of the dungeon. Far off, I could hear the sounds of a tiny, familiar instrument.