“What have you done to him? Where are they taking him? Matthew, no!” Eliza tried to pry one of the guard’s fingers from Matthew’s arm as they lifted him to carry him from the room, but he ignored her and kept moving.
“Now, now. Never fear, Miss Hardison, he’s in no immediate danger.”
She rounded on Orm. “Never fear? Never fear? Matthew was right, this is all a game to you, isn’t it?”
“Matthew, is it? That’s useful information to me. You’ve just tipped your hand. Tipped your hand, Miss Hardison, you see? I’ve used your little game metaphor against you, just as I might now use Mr. Pence against you if I needed to persuade you of something. Ah, well, perhaps you’ll appreciate it later. Perhaps not, as ‘later’ is a dwindling resource for you. Which is a shame, because you’re quite lovely, objectively speaking, and I do like pretty things. If I were a different sort of man, I would ruin you and force you to marry me in an instant. The irony would be superb.
“I am not, however, that sort of villain. My assessment of you is purely aesthetic, not prurient in the least. But your beauty has value, because it will make the story—my move in the game, if you will—that much stronger.” He sipped his tea calmly, still smiling, for all the world as if they really were simply chatting over a nice cup.
Eliza could hear her heartbeat thumping in her ears, feel the tempo of its pressure against her stays. She sat again and forced herself to breathe out fully and slowly, to trick her body out of doing what panic dictated. Ignoring the content of Orm’s words, she looked around the room, playing his game of host and guest. “Your home is spectacular, Lord Orm. I particularly enjoyed the staircase.”
This space was half study, half drawing room. There was a wide window to which she saw no opening, and a vast desk in front of it in some rough-textured ruddy wood she didn’t recognize. It didn’t quite fit the fussy details she had seen thus far. It was serving its purpose, though, strewn with documents and supporting what appeared to be an architectural model of a factory, minus the exterior walls. The seating and tea table were straight from another child’s story, low and ornate, with Mediterranean motifs in keeping with the overall theme of the palace.
“Thank you, my dear. I’m quite fond of this place. The staircase is but one of many wonders it holds. But the real treasure is out there.” He waved toward the window. From Eliza’s vantage point she could see mostly poppy fields and the rising mountains beyond under the clear afternoon sky. Orm rose and beckoned her closer to the window, gesturing with more specificity once she drew near enough to see what he was actually pointing at.
The courtyard she’d arrived by was directly below them, the ugly factory facing them across its expanse. From here in the heights of the castle, Eliza could see beyond the surrounding wall, and what she saw filled her with sinking dread.
“Breathtaking, isn’t it? It’s like that in all directions. As far as the eye can see, and more. And all of it belongs to me. No middleman, no negotiation with the Chinese or some potentate with delusions of power. The Chinese have all but stopped trying to sell opium on the black market in the Dominions now. That market is now mine. And soon I’ll have just as much control over legal sales, undercutting not only the Chinese but also the British East India Company. This, everything you see out there, is my treasure. My hills paved with gold.”
“Your El Dorado,” she supplied meekly.
“Precisely.”
“They’re not all gold, though,” she pointed out. “Some are red and pink, and I saw some white patches when I was flying in. Do the different varieties have different applications? If you don’t mind my asking.” The dastardly villains in bad novels always explained these things at some length when they planned to kill a character, so she thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
“Ask away, my dear child. After all, you won’t live to tell anyone.” He was quite cheerful about this, and she began to grasp just how insane Orm must truly be. “The golden poppies are my own creation, a special hybrid created specifically to thrive in this environment. It has the hardiness of the native flowers of this region and parts south of here, and all the potency of the varieties one finds in Asia. And some other very nice qualities I find useful.”
Gathering herself, pretending it was a game, she smiled in what she hoped was an encouraging way. “Such as?”
“It quells anxiety without necessarily putting the user to sleep. Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy we all know and love so well, is primarily useful as a sedative. The drug made from the common opium varieties slows the user down, system by system. Respiration, digestion, the nerves. Really, they’re all but useless once they’re under. Might as well be dead. But my poppy keeps them up, keeps them moving. They still feel little pain, and I gather things are rather dreamlike for them most of the day. Quite a bad dream, I suppose, for these poor creatures here.” He pointed again, this time at another line of ragged, trudging workers. “But it works out so very well for me. They have practically no appetite, they’re content with gruel, which is an excellent delivery method for the tincture, and they’re incredibly biddable. Dose them a bit more heavily for their off shift—I’m not a monster, after all, they do need their rest—and they’ll sleep like babies.”
“Babies who’ve been dosed with laudanum.”
“Yes, yes. And the best part is, while it’s certainly as brutally addictive as any of its better known cousins, my hybrid can be used for much longer before the effects are noticeably reduced. Users don’t build up a tolerance nearly as quickly, especially at low, steady doses. Why, some of these workers last for years before they wear out and need replacing.”
The quick look he flashed her was all too sane. He knew exactly what he was saying, and the effect it was likely to have on her. Determined not to give him the satisfaction of being right, Eliza said the opposite of what was on her mind.
“So it’s practical as well as brilliant. Why the secrecy, then? It seems as if you’d want people to know about your discovery.”
“Oh, you were doing so well, girl, but you overplayed your hand there. Obviously people can’t know. Trade secrets, for one thing. And for another, drug magnates are not known for their open and sharing dispositions. We’re all mad as hatters and quite, quite paranoid. Besides, as you pointed out yourself, there are factors of practicality to consider. Who do you think benefits most from the continued lack of viable commercial land and air travel from New York to San Francisco?”
Terrified as she was, Eliza tried to think, focusing on the logic rather than the setting. If people can’t travel or ship goods by land or air they must use other means, and the only current means was—“Companies who run cargo and passenger ships along the southern passage.”
“Very good!” He tapped her nose with one finger as though she were a child. “Right on the nose!”
“And you also have a financial interest in one or more of those companies.”
“Smarter and smarter, this girl. I do indeed.”
This is far too big for me to handle. There it was, plain and simple. Eliza knew her limitations, and this was beyond them. She was only twenty-three and other than Vassar this was her first extended trip away from home. She was good with machines and high-toned rhetoric about workers’ rights, she enjoyed daring fashions and she probably wanted to marry Matthew Pence. The last thought struck her with painful clarity, now that it was too late. When she was utterly truthful with herself, with no time left for pretenses, one of the few things on her mind was Matthew and how she wanted to spend her life with him. Losing him would be one of her greatest regrets, because he simply mattered more to her than all the things she’d thought so important back in New York.
But it was hardly the time for introspection. While at least one of these thoughts about herself was a surprise and a revelation, none of them suggested she should be able to single-handedly defeat a multinational drug lord who also owned an impo
rtant shipping concern.
In a way, coming to this realization was a relief. The die was cast, and she simply couldn’t do anything about her fate other than face it calmly and bravely, with whatever dignity she could muster.
“One last question, before you kill me?”
“Oh, that won’t happen until tomorrow or so. Plenty of time. One more question before I have you bundled away into a cozy cell for the night, let us say.”
“I still don’t understand why you would fund a temperance society. They fight against the very business you depend on, and raise the public’s awareness about the dangers of opium addiction. Shouldn’t that sort of organization be the last thing you’d want to contend with?”
He grinned and clapped his hands together, clearly thrilled with her final topic. “Oh, my dear ladies of perpetual indignation. Nothing amuses me so well as writing the quarterly pamphlet for distribution. I have the pirates airdrop copies over the outlying farms, sometimes. Can you really not guess the benefit to me? How disappointing. It’s the simplest thing of all, Miss Hardison. Free advertising. If I establish a new opium house in some town with a branch of the Temperance Society in it, I can count on my ladies to broadcast its location to everyone in that town within days, sometimes hours. Nobody is better at sniffing out moral turpitude than a self-righteous biddy. And do you know, they never once consider their very lamentable success rate? Of course the ladies came in handy for opposing the rally, as well. Fringe benefit. And all at minimal cost to me. A few handbills four times a year, and some trumped-up charter documents and cheap brass pins, and I have a ready-made force of thousands of women who will help me to promote pretty much whatever I like. It pays for itself a hundred times over.”
“A fine return for your investment, sir.”
“Yes. And now, Miss Hardison, I must send you along with these gentlemen.” He waved to the guards by the door, and they flanked Eliza instantly. “Tomorrow you will begin the final chapter in this story, and you should know it will be greater than you imagined. You’ll be dead by the time it ends, by slow poison most likely, but that shouldn’t be too painful and I suspect you’ll lose consciousness before the worst parts. You see, I plan to put you in your airship and send you along to San Francisco, per your original plan. Sadly, you won’t have quite enough fuel to make it there. And when the investigators find your body in the wreckage, you will appear to have died from the infamous toxic gases these mountains are known to emit. Or so the medical examiner will conclude. Your name will be famous the world over. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the whole episode ended up immortalized in song. And the same fate for poor little Cantlebury, though I think I’ll send him back in the direction of Colorado Springs and his lady love. A little romance is always good to punch up the emotional response, don’t you think?”
She had no answer for him. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to expect one.
TWENTY-ONE
MATTHEW HAD THROWN up at some point. He knew that, sadly, because of the taste.
“I didn’t eat a thing, I’m not that stupid,” he insisted, to no one in particular.
Cantlebury answered him. “Shut up, Pence, you’re raving again. If you talk about the lemon biscuits again I’ll have to beat you fully unconscious.”
“You’ll have to do what?”
“What? Wait, are you awake?”
Apparently he wasn’t, because a period of dull darkness followed, and then he woke again to the sound of Cantlebury muttering something about his wife and Lavinia Speck.
“Should’ve insisted, you know? Meggie wouldn’t even have to know. I’m not sure she’s even aware we’re married as it is. And I know Lavinia’s family would get used to the idea in time. I’m charming, right? I could charm them into accepting me.”
“You’re a silver-tongued devil,” Matthew confirmed in a hoarse, parched rattle.
“Ye gods, your breath is foul, Pence. Here, have some water. It seems to be merely water. A shame. I wouldn’t have turned down a spot of opium right now.”
Matthew drank, limiting himself to small sips until he was certain his stomach would accept the offering.
“What time is it?”
“No idea. One of those henchmen nicked my pocket watch when he relieved me of my pistol. It’s nearly dark, though. Why the bloody hell did you eat the lemon biscuit, Matthew? You must have known it would be drugged.”
“I didn’t,” Matthew insisted. “Didn’t I tell you already? Look, you see?” He pulled his shirt askew to reveal one shoulder, where a puncture wound was clearly visible.
“They shot you up?”
“I felt a sting when we got out of the lorry, but I thought it was just a spike of that hemp rope poking into me. I suppose I was lucky they didn’t hit a vein. It went into the muscle so it took longer to kick in. I lasted all the way up to Orm’s office before I keeled over.”
“And you never even got to try the lemon biscuits.”
“A tragedy. From what little I recall they looked quite promising. So what have you learned during your stay in this delightful place? Anything useful?”
Cantlebury rolled his eyes. “Yes, my vast network of spies has informed me that this is one of many similar cells in a large building that smells rank beyond belief. It seems to be a dormitory for those poor bastards in rags, as well as their keepers. They tried to feed me some of the slop they give those drugged chaps, but as I didn’t actually want to become one of those chaps despite my earlier jesting, I dumped it down the privy. Which, as you can no doubt tell by following your nose, is that hole in the corner.”
“Have you tried the window?”
“Sadly, the bunk is bolted to the wall, and they didn’t see fit to provide me with a ladder.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. Let me.” He slid from the bottom bunk where he’d slept off his unwanted opium dose, and tried to stand. Unsuccessfully. “In a bit. I’ll try it in a bit.”
“Take your time, I’m not going anywhere.” Cantlebury had liberated a rough, grimy-looking blanket from the bunk and folded it into a pad. He sat on it against the wall farthest from the privy, arms resting on his knees.
On his third try, Matthew managed to stand and make his way to the window wall, reaching as high as he could and feeling his way along the bottom for a latch. Then he climbed to the top bunk and studied the window from that vantage, discovering that the latch was quite simple but located on the outside of the window, presumably to keep the occupants from doing exactly what he was attempting to do.
“I don’t suppose you have a hairpin or anything like that?”
“Fresh out,” Cantlebury replied.
“If I had something long and thin I could pop the latch and boost you out, then climb out after you.”
“That’s a wonderful plan. Except for the part where it requires something long and thin, which we don’t have.”
The door rattled and two guards entered. One of them held a syringe, and the other was very, very large.
“Now lad,” the one with the needle said to Matthew. “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this Bob’s way. This here’s Bob.”
“I gathered as much.”
Matthew sighed and slid down from the bunk. It was shaping up to be an unpleasant night. He wasn’t sure whether to be glad he would sleep through most of it.
• • •
IT WAS SO simple, Eliza was concerned it was a trap. Any child with a pocket knife could have sprung that window, which was why she waited a solid hour before even attempting it.
When she finally got up the nerve, leaning over to the window from the top bunk in a feat of acrobatics, the latch slid smoothly to one side with a simple nudge of her knife blade. She let it fall back into place, stowed the knife back in her boot, and returned to the bunk to consider her options.
From what she’d seen on her limited tour through the building, men an
d women were thrown in together indiscriminately, eight or ten to a room. They appeared to rotate workers on staggered shifts every few hours, though she had no idea whether that continued through the night. All the rooms appeared to be full; workers exited, and more entered to fill it.
Eliza’s cell, with its two bunks, was down a side hallway that sported mostly open doors and an odor that was generally less appalling. Some of the rooms held what appeared to be personal belongings. Guards’ rooms, it seemed. Hers was definitely a cell, with its floor privy and no bed linens other than scratchy, flea-ridden blankets. Perhaps the guards simply liked to keep the troublemakers close, or perhaps this was the only available space, but the reason didn’t matter. If Matthew and Cantlebury had also been lodged in one of these it should be easy enough to find them. The trick would be avoiding the guards—and if the men were drugged or incapacitated, perhaps they wouldn’t warrant two guards outside their door as Eliza had.
Around sunset, a bowl of gruel and a glass of water were offered to her through a slot in the door. She took both and placed them carefully on the floor, wishing the gruel were edible. She’d managed to suppress her hunger and thirst until she actually had food and drink in front of her, but now she wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to resist. The water, perhaps? It looked clean and clear, and she smelled nothing suspicious. Deciding the risk was worth it, she took a drop on her finger and tasted it. Nothing. No sweet, cloying taste of laudanum or the bitterness of other opiate tinctures, just . . . water. For a moment she considered Orm’s threat of a slow poison, but the timing of that had sounded important to him. Surely he wouldn’t hang that on whether or not she chanced a drink of water. She risked a sip, waited a few minutes for ill effects, then took another mouthful when she was fairly sure it was untainted. It was the best thing she had ever tasted.
Night had fallen while she worried over how and when she was to be poisoned. She could go now, when the path under the window was clear but her movements would stand out against the wall, or she could wait until a crowd of drugged workers were shuffling by, but risk being spotted by one of their guards.
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