Brown River Queen

by Frank Tuttle

  I sat upon our vast expanse of new feather bed and watched as Darla fussed with this or made oohing and ahing noises over that.

  The first thing I noticed about being on the Queen was the motion. Or rather, the lack thereof. I’d been expecting to feel some slight pitch and roll because even tied at her private and heavily guarded dock, she was floating on the lazy, muddy waters of the Brown River.

  But try as I might, I couldn’t feel even the smallest hint of motion.

  “I believe Evis mentioned something about sorcerous motion control,” said Darla, plopping down suddenly beside me.

  I hadn’t said a word.

  “You were holding your breath.” She lay back, stretching and yawning. “I’m exhausted. Let’s take a nap.”

  “You go ahead. I’m not sleepy.”

  “Liar.” She sat up and put her chin on her fists. “What are you going to do, sneak around? Evis said he’d be back later to give us the grand tour.”

  “A good finder never sneaks, my dear. We amble. We stroll. We peruse, and we do it all out in the open because we have every right to be right wherever we are.”

  “So you are going to sneak. I’m coming with you.”

  “What about your nap?”

  She grinned and rolled off the bed. “Time for that later. I’m learning how to be a finder. I assume you’re going to bathe and shave?”

  I kicked off my shoes. “Can’t impress the crew like this.”

  “I’ll find something scandalous, then.”

  I bathed and shaved and bled from my gut wound until we managed to get a fresh dressing wrapped around it. Even though I had to keep my torso out of the water, the hot bath and the rich man’s soap felt good.

  One thing about Darla—she can make herself presentable, as she calls it, in a hurry. I’d managed to put a decent knot in my necktie and find one of my shoes when she emerged from the bedroom, dressed and ready to face the world.

  I whistled. She’d opted for a long black dress that covered everything from ankle to throat. It wasn’t tight enough to stop traffic, but it wasn’t so loose you couldn’t tell her gender. She’d buttoned the slit on the side all the way down, but even so I caught a glimpse of silk-covered leg through it when she walked.

  A tiny black pillbox hat trimmed with black lace completed the look. She winked at me from beneath the lace and grinned.

  “I was aiming for distracting without being obvious,” she said.

  I stood there with one shoe on and made noises with my mouth.

  “Come on,” she said, laughing. “Let’s go see the things Evis wouldn’t want us to see.”

  I finished dressing and we set out to explore.

  The first thing I realized was exploring the Queen would require days—not hours—of steadfast, determined poking about.

  I’d listened to Evis as he bragged about her, but admittedly I was distracted by more pressing matters involving Lowland Sweet cigars and refills of beer. Darla, on the other hand, could recite the wonders of the Queen with considerable precision.

  “She is four hundred and sixteen feet long and ninety-seven feet wide,” said Darla in a near-perfect imitation of Evis. We made our way down the darkened grand staircase that led down to the casino deck. “She has one hundred twenty-one crew, and will carry four hundred twenty-five passengers, including one over-priced finder.”

  “Evis should hire you as a purser.”

  “He should. What’s a purser? Do they blow the steam whistles?”

  “Probably.”

  We rounded the gentle sweep of the final curve, and the darkness gave way to the blues and greens and golds of the daylight streaming through the stained-glass windows.

  A pair of wary-eyed Avalante day folk hurried toward us. Neither wore a sword, but from the tell-tale bulges beneath their jackets I knew they didn’t need to.

  “I’ll have a beer,” I said as soon as they were in earshot. “The lady will have a glass of red wine. Is that suitable, Lady Markhat? Red wine?”

  “Oh certainly,” said Darla, with much batting of her eyes. “Now, what are your names, gentlemen? Mr. Prestley said we’d be met, but he didn’t say by whom.”

  I grinned and hoped the shadows hid most of it.

  “Trokes, ma’am,” said the taller of the two.

  “Meyer,” proclaimed the other after a glance at his partner and a frown at me.

  “You’re Captain Markhat?”

  “Indeed I am. This is Mrs. Markhat, although you can call her the Duchess if you want. She’s never been one to insist on the strictest rules of propriety. Isn’t that right, dear?”

  “Quite right.” She aimed a smile at Trokes.

  “We weren’t told—” began Meyer.

  Trokes cut him off. “We knew you were coming aboard, Captain, Mrs. Markhat,” he said. “Didn’t expect to see you out and about until after supper. A beer, was it? And a glass of red wine?”

  “If you’d be so kind.”

  “You heard the Captain, Meyer,” said Trokes. “Have the wine steward pick out something nice.”

  Meyer glared but turned and stomped away.

  “Nice boat you’ve got here,” I said. I nodded toward the empty gambling hall and the sheet-covered gambling tables that waited like sleeping ghosts in the dark. “She going to be ready to get underway on schedule?”

  The man’s chest expanded with sudden injured pride.

  “Oh yes sir! We’ll be underway in a week, no doubt about it. They’ll get the pistons sorted out. Put in new reach rods yesterday. That will put things right. No doubt about it.”

  “Ah yes, well, of course, the pistons.” I made a dismissive gesture as I spoke, as though the matter of the pistons was old news. “I’ve heard all about that. No. It’s the other matter that concerns me.”

  Darla nodded, her smile gone, her eyes grave. “Yes. Deeply troubling, that.”

  Trokes leaned in and spoke in a whisper. “Well, sir, Lady, I don’t mind telling you I think it’s so much nonsense, and that’s a fact. Nothing to it at all. Accidents happen, that kind of thing. Lesson to be learned, I say.”

  “Oh, I quite agree,” I said, pulling a cigar from my jacket pocket and clipping off the end like a Lord of the Realm. “Bunch of superstitious nonsense. I’m glad we see eye-to-eye.”

  “Oh, we do, Captain! People just shouldn’t get in a hurry. You get in a hurry, you step where you shouldn’t, or you fall down a shaft. That’s all there is to it. A curse? Bah.”

  “Bah, indeed.” I produced a match and, with flourish appropriate to a man of my station, I lit my cigar. “Educated men have no cause to embrace such backward beliefs.”

  “Are you sure, dear?” asked Darla, her eyes wide. “After all, there have been so many accidents!”

  “Only a dozen, Mrs. Markhat,” said Trokes. “All easily explained. No doubt about it. Carelessness, and nothing more.”

  Meyer came trotting back, my beer in one hand and Darla’s wine glass in another. Behind him scurried a small man in a white apron, and behind him was a boy pushing a silver cart bearing half a dozen wine bottles.

  “Ah, refreshments,” I said, beaming. I took my beer and sipped it. Meyer wanted to glare at me but couldn’t quite work up the nerve so he glared at Trokes instead. “Wine, my dear?”

  The cart rolled to a stop. The wine steward took his place behind it and began a detailed description of each of his bottles. Darla feigned interest and I motioned Meyer and Trokes aside.

  “Thank you, gentleman, for your attention.” I shook hands with each, passing them a pair of heavy coins as I did so. Meyer’s glare vanished when he saw the first glint of Old Kingdom gold.

  “Anything you need, sir, you just call for us!”

  “Oh, I shall. Good day, gentlemen.”

  Meyer was faster on the uptake. He took Trokes’s elbow and led him quickly away.

  The wine steward had launched into a lecture on the relative soil acidity of the respective vineyards proffered. Darla was taking
it all in with a perfect imitation of rapt attention, and if the little man’s chest puffed out any farther I feared he would soon burst.

  “Mr. Lavit tells me the red Quinton Hollow is his favorite, dear,” she said, grinning. “But he notes that many prefer the fruitier aftertaste of the rather excellent Diamond Black. Which would you suggest?”

  “Oh, I always trust my wine steward. If Mr. Lavit prefers the Quinton Hollow, that’s the one I’d try.”

  Mr. Lavit allowed himself the smallest of smiles. Darla nodded, and with a practiced flourish the steward held up the bottle for inspection, waited for Darla’s approving nod, and then opened and poured.

  “I surmise Sir is a beer man,” he said as he handed Darla her glass. “It so happens I have a special stock of a very rare beer on hand, in the ice room. Copeland Dark. Shall I have a barrel sent up to your room, later? I believe Sir will enjoy it.”

  “I’ve never met a beer I didn’t like,” I said. A gold coin appeared on the man’s cart. “Thank you.”

  A clean silken hanky made a pass across the spotless top of the cart. The coin vanished.

  The little man grinned.

  “I prefer beer myself,” he said, his voice a whisper. “And don’t let them serve you Elvish Garden. It’s swill—I don’t care what anyone says.”

  “Duly noted.” Darla wandered off, pretending to inspect the ornate wood trim on the walls.

  “So I hear the Queen is cursed,” I said.

  He didn’t flinch or scoot suddenly away.

  “So some say, sir.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I do not.” He lifted his hands toward the deck and the empty casino. “She is a thing of wood and glass. Beautiful, yes. She has no power to kill.”

  “Still. A dozen fatal accidents? How do you explain that?”

  “I do not, sir. But if anything beyond carelessness and misadventure killed these men, it wasn’t the Queen. Good day, sir. I trust you will enjoy your stay.”

  And then he bowed a stiff little bow and he motioned his terrified young assistant out of the shadows and together they hurried away.

  Darla joined me as they vanished into the dark.

  “Did you hear all that?”

  “Oh, yes. He sounded like a man with a lot to say.”

  I took another draught of beer. It was dark but smooth and rich. If I was drinking Copeland Dark I was going to need more than one barrel.

  “So, wife of mine, what have we learned from our little walk?”

  “Well, the Arkham vineyards use far too much ash on their south-facing grapes, for one,” she said. “And the buyers at Second Palace are skimping by using cheap casks, which give the vintage a bitter tone.”

  “Fascinating. Anything else?”

  “Evis forgot to mention a dozen deaths and a mysterious curse.”

  “Oh, he didn’t forget to mention anything.” I motioned toward the stage at the far end of the casino and we began to weave our way toward it through sheet-covered gambling tables. “He simply didn’t think it was relevant. Any construction project, even boat-building, can be dangerous. Evis dismissed the rumors as nonsense, not even worthy of mention.”

  Darla nodded. “I suppose Evis would think that way.”

  “Which is why we’re poking around without him. Even an honest client isn’t always going to give you the whole story, because they themselves don’t see it all.”

  “So you think she’s really cursed?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t think anything just yet.”

  “So where do we go next?”

  I pointed toward the first door I happened to see. “Out there. And then down. Something has to move this boat, and someone has to feed it coal, and it won’t be men in suits who’ve been warned what to say and what not to say.”

  “Coal, you say?”

  “Coal, my dear. Or wood, or old boots, for all I know. Let’s go and see.”

  She put her empty wineglass on a sheet-covered table. I put my empty beer bottle next to it and offered her my arm.

  “Let’s go see the Ogres, Duchess.”

  “Certainly,” she said, taking my arm.

  And with that, we sought out ways down into the dark.

  Chapter Eight

  I was right about the coal and the Ogres.

  Coal moves the Queen. It’s shoveled into three massive iron tanks called boilers by teams of Ogres that work in half-hour shifts. There is a fourth boiler tended by a pair of wand-wavers that requires no coal at all. One of the wand-wavers, a skinny lad barely out of his hundreds, tried to explain the magical heating process to me but he kept getting excited and lapsing into wizard-speak, and all I came away with from the conversation was that the single magical boiler could run the whole works in a pinch.

  The Ogres were less talkative. Two dipped eyes at me, which might have meant they were Hoogas who knew my name or they were annoyed by my mere presence, and the sawdust was making them blink. I don’t speak enough Ogre to ask any questions, let alone understand the answers, so I just dipped my eyes in return and kept a respectful distance.

  Keeping distance wasn’t hard above the engine deck. Up there, spacious and airy were the orders of the day. But down here, with the Ogres and the wand-wavers and the engineers and the boiler-men, Avalante hadn’t seen fit to trim the walls or even keep the ceiling at a safe height. I bumped my head half a dozen times, much to Darla’s quiet amusement.

  “Where do they keep the coal?” she asked as we walked in a crouch toward another cluster of gleaming but incomprehensible machinery.

  “I think Engineer Bartles mentioned something about a storage room at the fore.” I dodged another beam and wondered how the towering Ogres fared in the semi-dark maze.

  “Bartles? He kept staring at my bosom. I don’t believe he leaves his post very often. And fore means front, I assume?”

  “It does. Fore is front, port is left, starboard is right, and aft is where the big wheel turns.”

  “Why don’t they just say left, right, front, and back, then?”

  “Ask Bartles. Maybe he knows.”

  “I’m not quite that curious. Although I am curious about one thing. When you mentioned the accidents, neither Bartles nor the other man seemed to know what you were talking about. Were they lying?”

  I stopped at the face of the machine, which was a polished brass cabinet festooned with dials and levers and tiny red lamps that twinkled and shone in some pattern I couldn’t fathom.

  “They weren’t lying,” I said. “They just didn’t know. They stay down here in the dark and they tend to their machines and what happens up there might as well happen way out west, for all they care.”

  “You’d think the people living in the dark would be the ones most frightened by curses and the like.” She joined me in watching the blood-red lamps pulse and glow. “What in Heaven’s name does all this do?”

  “This station allows the operator to oversee temperatures and pressures in every section of the Queen’s machinery,” said Evis, who simply stepped out of the shadows and joined us before the banks of lights and dials. “It’s one of three such stations. The gentleman who mans this position is called the lamp man. I trust your tour of the Queen has proven informative?”

  Evis wasn’t wearing his dark-tinted spectacles down here in the shadows. The glow from the lamps gave his pale, angular face a devilish red hue and turned his white eyes into pulsing wells of fire.

  He grinned, perfectly aware of his appearance.

  Gertriss darted up to his side. “Hiya, boss, Darla,” she said. Then she reached up and yanked Evis’s ear. “You promised you wouldn’t make spooky eyes at people down here, didn’t you?”

  The dapper little vampire chuckled, pulled his tinted spectacles from his coat pocket, and shrugged as he put them on.

  “Consider it chastisement for starting the grand tour without me,” he said. “So, uncover any dastardly plots yet? You could say yes and save me a fortune, you know.” />
  I nodded gravely and dropped my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It seems you’re foisting at least one unacceptable wine upon the drinking public, Mr. Prestley. I shall be forced to report this at once to the proper authorities.”

  “So you’ve met Mr. Lavit. I might have known you’d start your inquiries at the nearest beer tap. Shall we head to the upper decks? I suspect a lavish meal is being prepared.”

  “They’re using us as training for the kitchens,” added Gertriss cheerfully. She was wearing grey today—grey long skirts and grey blouse with just a hint of white at the neck. She laid an arm possessively on Evis’s shoulder and I wondered if she realized she did or just let the action slip. “They’re pulling out all the stops, as sort of a practice run for the cruise. It’ll be quite a feast, isn’t that right, Mr. Prestley?”

  Evis nodded wordlessly. Gertriss laughed and removed her hand.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” I said. Darla said something to Gertriss and they paired off, whispering in the dark as Evis gestured toward the next bank of dim lights in the shadows.

  “After you,” I said. “Warn me about low hanging beams, won’t you? My head has a tender spot.”

  “Right between your ears,” offered Evis before he glided ahead. The last glimpse I saw of his face showed the visage of a man deep in thought.

  I grinned and hurried after, Darla and Gertriss giggling and whispering in my wake.

  Even the halfdead, it seemed, had doubts and conflicts about matters of the heart.

  True to his word, Evis took us on a long, detailed tour of the Queen’s many niceties.

  He started off by exchanging a few quiet words with the workmen still toiling frantically away on the casino deck. Satisfied, he led us to the stage, caused the curtains to be raised, and then he bade us to gaze out on the darkened room before motioning toward someone my mortal eyes couldn’t pick out of the shadows.

  The massive chandeliers that hung above the casino floor flared slowly to life.