Merciless Reason

by Oisin McGann

  “For what? You know Oliver hasn’t stolen Siren. Gerald has spirited the thing away to his hidden lair.”

  “Of course I know that,” Tatty replied tartly. “I’m looking for whatever I can find. What are you doing here so early in the morning?”

  “I’ll explain later. Do you want to join me, or would you prefer to carry on with what you’re doing?”

  Tatty thought about it.

  “I can come back and look tomorrow,” she reasoned, and rose to her feet to follow Daisy.

  Inside the property office, which occupied nearly half a floor of the building, most of the wall space was taken up with wooden filing cabinets. The family owned a lot of property. Daisy traced her fingers over the labels on the cabinets until she found the one she wanted. Unlocking it, she yanked open the drawer, rifled through the files and pulled one out, holding it up for Tatty to see. She flipped open the cover to make sure she had everything she needed, and took a deep breath.

  “Time to start burning some bridges. God forgive me for this sin,” she sighed. She slammed the drawer shut. “Because Gerald won’t.”

  XVII

  GUNSMOKE IN LIMERICK

  IT WAS EARLY EVENING as Nate and Clancy rode north along the last stretch of road towards the city of Limerick. Nate had driven the horses on at a punishing pace, and the beasts had slowed to a steady walk now, lathered with sweat, their breathing heavy as the buildings rose up on the dimming skyline, shrouded in a thin cloak of smog. They were fine animals, the best that could be had at short notice, but they had reached their limits.

  Clancy was showing his exhaustion too. They had covered nearly a hundred miles in two days, much of it on tracks and rough roads, and the aging man had not spent much of his life in the saddle. Even Nate was showing the strain; there had been few opportunities to ride during his travels as he had spent much of his time as a laborer. The lack of practice was telling on him. Their pursuers had been lost from sight for much of the journey, but that afternoon they had appeared again on horseback and were gradually closing the gap.

  Nate pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. As he sweated, the spectacles with their green-tinted lenses kept slipping down his nose every time he dropped his head. He had hoped that these, along with his beard and the cap pulled low over his brow, would prevent people from seeing his face. Even here, miles from anyone who should know him, there was always a chance that someone might recognize him from all the pictures that had appeared in the papers.

  With their weary heads hung down, Nate and Clancy did not notice the shape in the sky at first. The round black object passed overhead, flying at a height of about sixty or seventy feet, following the road towards Limerick. The two men looked up in time to see the spider-fly well enough to make out its legs spinning almost silently around the base of its circular body like a propeller. Nate squinted up into the green-tinted sky, letting out a tired sigh.

  “Now that’s just damned unfair,” he muttered.

  They were under no illusions as to what that sight meant. Spider-­flies were extremely rare, very valuable, and sightings could not be a common occurrence in the poverty-stricken south-west. Their pursuers were even better resourced than Nate had feared. Unable to catch up with their quarries, the bounty hunters­ had used the flying engimal to leapfrog them, sending the creature ahead with news of their impending arrival. Somebody in Limerick would soon receive the message and would no doubt set about preparing a welcome.

  “Damned unfair,” Nate said again.

  Clancy did not reply. His eyes were fixed on the smoggy skyline, as if trying to gauge where the threat might show itself. They were due to meet a man on Georges Street in the center of the city, where they would hand over the horses and find lodgings for the night. But it was still a few miles into town. There was nothing for it but to keep their appointment. Both men checked the weapons they wore as they rode, and reached into their packs to supplement them. Two pistols instead of one, plus a small four-shot pepperbox revolver each, tucked into the boot, a knife slid into the belt.

  This route did not show Limericks best aspect. The railway line to Cork ran alongside the road, and beyond it, off to their left, they could see a large factory and, further west, the forbidding walls of a military barracks. On their way in along the road, the usual scattering of farm laborer’s cabins gave way, as they approached town, to larger, squarer brick and stone houses. The uneven mud road became more level and urban, turning away from the railway line but leading them through an area of goods yards and warehouses. The sounds of steam engines could be heard, a train’s whistle and the hard metallic sounds of men at work in the trainyard. The acrid taint of smoke hung in the air and blurred distant buildings with its haze. Soon, the road was starting to look more like a street, lined with some houses on either side, and then a school.

  Clancy’s face lifted a little as they made their way further and further into his home town. He had been taken from this place when he was still a young boy, and raised in Wildenstern Hall to be one of the loyal and multi-skilled personal servants to that family—it had been over a decade since he’d passed through here. Most of his family was dead or had emigrated. He wouldn’t recognize the younger ones now. But there was still a part of his heart that recognized this place as home.

  Nate realized that he and his loyal manservant had far more in common than they once did. Not for the first time, he wondered why Clancy had never married or had children of his own. Perhaps life with the Wildensterns had put him off the idea. Having children left you exposed—made you vulnerable. They could be used against you. Unless you were Edgar Wildenstern, and you didn’t give a damn about them. Or you were his son Nathaniel, and you simply deserted them by running to the far side of the world.

  “We’re just passing the county gaol, sir,” Clancy said. “You can see it there next to the lunatic asylum over on your right-hand side. Not too far at all now, sir.”

  Nate nodded, but his nerves were on edge. He pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose and started whistling to himself. It was getting dark now, and there weren’t many streetlamps in this area. There was another barracks further up the road, and all these high walls and fences, coupled with the network of narrow streets ahead, looked like dangerous ground to him. Holding the reins with one hand, he kept the other under his jacket, resting on the butt of one of his Colt 44 revolvers. There were children playing on the road nearby, grimy little bare-footed scuts in short trousers and ill-fitting caps, shouting raucously and chasing each other round. From an open doorway off to one side, he heard someone playing a harmonica. There was a group of women in shabby dresses with shawls over their shoulders, exchanging gossip on one side of the street. An older couple walked down towards them on the opposite side.

  Nate and Clancy surveyed the rooftops, checking windows and corners. Surely, they thought, no one would make a move this close to a British Army barracks? Unless the army itself was involved. Gerald could certainly wield that kind of influence. After all, hadn’t he sent a ship of the British Navy to find Nate in America? If the army were involved, they would be visible on the streets, but Nate’s instincts, honed from years of living in Wildenstern Hall, had the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He tried to relax the tension tightening up his body, but he could almost hear his heart thumping against his lungs.

  Four men strode out from an alleyway, walking at right angles to Nate and Clancy’s path some twenty yards ahead. They were led by a middle-aged cove with squinting eyes and a wide, Slavic-looking­ face ridged with wrinkles. Dressed in a long tan-colored duster coat and a wide-brimmed fur-felt American cowboy hat, he looked damned odd on that Limerick street. He was playing a mournful tune on a harmonica he held to his mouth with cupped hands.

  The four men came to a halt so that they were evenly spaced across the roadway, blocking the way. The man took the mouth organ away from his face and gav
e a grim smile, then slipped it into his pocket. The two riders reined in their horses, waiting for what came next.

  Nate looked to his right and saw that Clancy had taken off his hat and was using it to cover the pistol he had drawn from its shoulder holster. The men in front of them were all armed—Nate could tell by the shapes under their jackets—but had not drawn their weapons. He kept his hand on the butt of the ’44, but did not pull it out yet. He glanced behind him, and saw that three more men had stepped out onto the street about thirty yards back. All seven men looked like proper hard cases.

  The women standing on the side of the road were frantically calling the children in off the street. Some of the little brats were reluctant to go, but their mothers’ shrieks broke their will and brought them running. Shouts of alarm went up and onlookers sought cover wherever they could find it. Nate and Clancy still did not move. Off in the distance, the whistle of a train blew again.

  “Do I have the pleasure of addressing Nathaniel Wildenstern?” the cowboy asked, speaking with a mid-western American accent.

  “That’s his Grace, the Duke of Leinster to you,” Clancy growled. “As well you know it, or you wouldn’t ask. What do you mean by blocking our path?”

  “His Grace is wannet for murder, both here and back Stateside,” the American replied. “Me an’ ma boys are here to bring him in.”

  “You’ve been had, you Yankee idiot,” Clancy told him. “He’s committed no murder. It’s his family who want him—and they’ve got you running round as their errand boys. What authority do you have here to—”

  “Let’s not bother with the formalities,” Nate interrupted him, loud enough for the men behind to hear. He pulled off his glasses and lifted the peak of his cap so they could get a look at his face, and so that he could get a better view of the roofs around him. “Clearly, we are none of us concerned with keeping up appearances. Move aside, or do what you’ve come to do—but either way, stop wasting my bloody time.”

  All four men in front whipped their jackets back and drew pistols. The one furthest to the right was spun on the spot, dropping his weapon as Clancy’s first shot took him in the shoulder. Nate drew both his Colts, turned sideways on the horse, arms raised, one to the front, one to the rear. He fired two shots from each gun. The shots to the front missed, but sent two men diving to the ground, while one of the shots to the rear hit a man in the stomach. A bullet buzzed past his ear and another came close enough to pluck at his saddlebag. Nate steered the horse round with his knees, intent on pointing it towards the alleyway, hoping to get clear of the street. He swiveled his body again, firing another pair of shots behind, then bringing both guns round to the front, loosing two more shots into the men there and hitting one more in the chest. A third was lying dead in the mud, one of Clancy’s rounds buried in his head.

  Clancy had turned to charge his horse back at the men behind them. Three gunshots in quick succession struck his horse and killed it outright, the animal toppling forwards and to the side. Clancy couldn’t get his feet out of the stirrups in time, and he let out a cry as he went down with it, his left leg trapped beneath it. Nate had one shot left in each pistol. There was one attacker still standing in front of them, another two behind, and he could see another man on the gabled roof of a shed on one side of the alleyway, aiming down at the street with a rifle,

  Nate was caught in the open.

  Pulling his feet from the stirrups, he was about to slide out of the saddle and put the horse between himself and two of the men, when a rope whipped down out of nowhere, looping over his head. Before he could react, a noose jerked tight around his neck. Dropping the revolver in his left hand, he got his fingers in under the rope just as it constricted his breathing, but he was wrenched off the horse’s back. He hit the ground hard, the impact badly jolting his left shoulder and ribs and knocking the last of his breath out of him. The noose closed with crushing pressure around his throat as he was dragged across the road.

  Looking up, he saw the rope extending up into the sky, attached to the base of the spider-fly they had seen earlier. The thing had obviously been trained to hunt. Nate scrabbled with his legs, trying to dig his heels in and hold himself still, but he couldn’t get a grip. Even with his left hand trying to pull the rope away from his throat, the pressure in his head was almost unbearable and his vision was blurring. Spider-flies were quick and maneuverable, but they weren’t powerful. It couldn’t lift him off the ground. Dragging him along like this was probably taking all its strength. He had one shot left in his remaining pistol. One shot.

  Taking a bead on the small dark shape in the sky, he pulled the trigger. He missed. Bloody hell. Bloody hell! He was starting to black out. The gun fell from his limp fingers. A bullet smacked off the ground beside him, and then another hit the wall near his head as he was dragged into the alleyway. Someone was still shooting at him. There was a cart with a broken wheel in the alley and he jammed his foot into the spokes, pulling the engimal up short. Now the pressure around his neck was unbearable, but Nate was able to brace himself, grab the rope over his head and pull hard on it, relieving the pressure. He struggled to get the noose off his neck. Two men were running down the alley towards him. The spider-fly jerked on the rope, nearly pulling it out of his hand. Nate was choking now, barely conscious. He didn’t have the strength to fight the creature …

  The snake-like thing inside him writhed and shivered, making him feel sick, but then his head cleared and the strength came back into his arms. Reefing the rope down, he looped the slack around one of the broken spokes of the wheel. The release in tension let him work the noose loose and pull it over his head. The spider-fly was desperately trying to get away, but was now tied to the broken cart. Nate couldn’t take the chance of it attacking him again. He drew the pepperbox revolver tucked into his boot and fired two shots at the creature. They hit it dead center and it let out a horrible screech, wobbling in the air and then crashing down onto the slates of the roof over Nate’s head and tumbling into the alleyway. It lay on the ground, twitching weakly and making a metallic gurgling sound.

  Nate felt something like a white-hot poker plunge through his left shoulder and he was knocked to the ground again. On the roof above him, the man with the rifle was lining up for a final shot. Nate put a bullet through his neck with the pepperbox and the man fell flailing from the roof. His body hit with a bone-breaking thud and he lay still beside the crippled spider-fly.

  A foot stamped on Nate’s gun-hand, making him cry out. The foot kicked his gun away across the alley and then jammed its boot-heel into the bullet-wound in his shoulder. Nate screamed out, and in a moment of weakness he opened himself up to the thing inside him. Just the slightest release of his hold over it—just the tiniest loosening of the mental grip that held it in check. In seconds, it soaked up the pain, surging power through him. He grabbed the booted foot with his right hand and slammed the heel of his left hand in just below the man’s knee. The man let out a cry of pain as his kneecap dislodged and he fell, but his other foot caught Nate across the head. Nate recovered quickly, rising up on his knees to go for a ground-hold … and then the twin barrels of a sawn-off shotgun leveled at his face. The man with the ridged face and the squinting eyes stared up at him.

  “There’s better money for you alive,” he rasped, his face pale with pain. “But I’m willin’ to forego the bonus for the sake of convenience. Git yourself face down on that there ground, your Grace, or I let you have both barrels.”

  Nate took a deep breath, staring intensely at the American. He was in a fighting rage now, liable to try for that gun for the sheer hell of it. But a shotgun blast at this range would destroy most of his head. And with the spread of shot from that short barrel, the man didn’t have to be very accurate to score a hit. Nate breathed out slowly and backed away, keeping his eyes on his enemy.

  “Face down. I won’t tell you again. I don’t need your head. There are other parts can be
used to identify you if needs be.”

  Nate lay face down on the ground. He wondered where Clancy was—the fact that he was not here did not bode well, and Nate didn’t want to think about why Clancy wasn’t here. The billowing rush of emotion and energy that was flowing out of the engimal coiled in his gut was threatening to overwhelm him. He should never have loosened his control over it. He felt a panic-inducing fear that had nothing to do with the shotgun pointed at his head. The creature was trying to seize another chance to turn the tables on him—to take over his mind again. He couldn’t let that happen. Better that he die in a shotgun blast than let that happen.

  Then the cocking of hammers on pistols and rifles clacked from either end of the alley.

  “Drop the gun, Harmonica,” a familiar voice called out, though it was not Clancy’s. “Wildensterns going to be walking out of here and you’re going to let him. There’s no need for you to die to make it happen—but there’s no real reason for you to live either.”

  There were men at both ends of the alley, all with weapons aimed at Nate and his attacker. The American hesitated, a low snarl escaping his lips. One of the other men came forward, a dark-skinned man with black hair and a black beard. He looked more Mediterranean or Arabic than Irish. Perhaps one of those black Irish from the west, who had Spanish blood in their veins. In the drab middle-class clothes and with the new beard and his longer hair, Nate might not have recognized the man if not for his voice. Lieutenant William Dempsey, formerly of the British Navy. Cathal Dempsey’s father.

  “There are soldiers on their way down the street,” he said to the American, who was putting on a defiant air, his gun still leveled at Nate’s head. “Somebody must have told them to turn a blind eye, but you’ve caused a right commotion with your little Wild West show, Harmonica, so even they couldn’t ignore it. Somehow, I don’t think you want to run into them any more than we do.”