“Well, Mr. Kipsey, perhaps I can simplify the choice between Mr. Sawyer and myself by removing him from the equation.”
I sprang from the shrubs, tightly gripping the gun. “Stop! You need him. He’s the best tink in the land. You won’t kill him.”
The metal boot hovered above Sawyer as Montague responded, “Ah, so the noble Thorogood Kipsey comes to the rescue. So predictable, so trite. It’s true, Sawyer here is probably the best tink for many leagues, definitely the best on Addleton Heights. But this game grows tiresome, and I’m done playing. Is your answer that you’ll enlist in my service and we’ll start fresh, leaving all the messiness of the last few days behind?”
I took a few steps forward to free myself from the brush and line up a shot. “I can’t let you flood the people in the Under. I can’t allow you to kill Commissioner Davenport and others with the mechanicals.”
The look on his face was unsettlingly placid, as if I’d simply declined to join him for dinner. “Can’t let me, huh? Can’t allow me? I’m offering you something here, boy. Don’t be hasty.”
I clicked the hammer back.
His foot hovered dangerously close to crushing Sawyer.
“If you shoot me, I’m certain to accidentally crush your tink friend on my way down, and you saw what happened to Berkeley,” the old man said. “I think you should reconsider my offer.”
“Are you serious? What is it with you anyway, Mr. Montague? Why is it so important that I join you?”
“You impress me, Mr. Kipsey.”
“Shoot him, Detective!” Sawyer shouted from beneath Montague’s swaying foot. “I’d consider it an honorable way to go.”
Montague and I yelled in unison, “Sawyer, shut up!”
We stared at each other in surprise a second before Montague continued. “Mr. Kipsey, I’ve offered you wealth, power over others, even fame through a highly visible position on the Commonwealth. And yet you remain steadfast. I must know—why?”
I took a step forward. “Because it’s not right.”
“Right?” He scoffed. “I am doing what’s right. What’s right for Addleton Heights. Don’t become entrenched in such fickle concepts. It’s beneath you.”
“No, right is right and doesn’t change.”
He pursed his lips. “T. H. Kipsey, well, you certainly live up to your namesake of Thorogood. I guess you have your parents to blame for that.”
He shook his head. “Very disappointing, but not really a surprise. I’d hoped that you would come to see what’s truly at stake here, that you would’ve found a way to be more pliable for the city’s cause, able to suspend your juvenile and simplistic notions of what was just, thereby embracing the harder choice of what was necessary for Addleton Heights. I withdraw my offer of friendship . . . Kip.”
“Friendship? You’re delusional.”
He abruptly scooped Sawyer from the ground and spun around. He ran toward the back panel of the glass enclosure with all his force and crashed through the glass wall. The temperature instantly dropped as brisk January air rushed in through the jagged hole.
For a second, I stood there confused as he tromped across the snowy courtyard.
Was this three to four chess moves ahead? What was he doing? The sky ferry was the other direction, on the other side of the mansion.
I was still trying to figure out the game as I heard Janae’s suit approaching from behind.
“Kip, I did it. We’re ready. Where’s Mr. Sawyer?” Before I could answer, she pointed to Montague running across the snow. “How did you get him to retreat?”
“He’s not retreating,” I said, carefully maneuvering through the jagged opening. “And he still has Sawyer!”
“That’s all I need to know,” Janae said, speeding up and leaving me in her wake.
Sawyer hit the ground, free. At first, I believed that Sawyer had miraculously broken loose, but then I realized that Montague had thrown him down.
Montague ran a few feet farther to a small box on a pole.
A klaxon alarm sounded.
Janae jumped on Montague’s back, and he stumbled forward.
He reached behind to grab her, but she dropped to the ground first.
I raced to Sawyer. I had to get him inside to the communication tower while Montague was occupied with Janae. The tink staggered a bit as he got to his feet. I grabbed the lapel of his jacket to steady him. “What’s the alarm?” I shouted over the painful blaring sound.
He shook his head in defeat, his face terrified.
I shook him. “What is that? Tell me!”
“He just summoned every Charon within fifteen miles of this place!”
Thirty-Three
Sawyer’s revelation felt like the devil ringing the dinner bell, and we were to be the main course.
The alarm droned on.
“How long do we have?” I shouted, gripping his arm.
Snowflakes as fine as wedding lace softly landed atop his shoulders.
“I . . . I don’t know, it depends on where each of them is on their patrols.” He shook his head as I released him. “Detective, our only hope is to get inside. They can’t fly their skiffs in there—the ceilings are too low!”
I shot a look at Janae and Montague, whose clash had moved them closer to the edge of the courtyard. There wasn’t a lot of time. I remembered the sentry patrolling beneath the floating compound, the one Hennemann and I had seen on the night of my first visit. He’d be here at any minute.
“I’ve gotta warn her,” I said.
“We have to hurry and get inside. They’ll have gaff coil rods.”
“The skiff poles?” I asked.
He nodded. “They’re electrically amplified, not unlike Janae’s device.”
Though he didn’t say it, I knew the shock was intended to subdue the target long enough to bring the spear end of the staff around.
I ran to Janae, and Sawyer followed. The fight had a new desperation to it, an ugliness that had boiled up to the surface.
“Janae!” I yelled as Sawyer and I got within range. “We’ve got to get out of here! Charon are coming!”
I hadn’t thought it through, and my warning made Janae pause to look in our direction. Montague made Janae pay with a roundhouse kick to the midsection of her suit. She fell and slid backward across the snow like an out-of-control sled.
The knee joints of Montague’s suit emitted dual blasts of steam, lifting him ten feet in the air. He came down on Janae as she came to a stop. The impact of his metal boots on her chest shook the ground.
“Oh, that isn’t even fair,” I said to Sawyer as I tried to line up a clear shot at Montague. “He can fly?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw the master tink shrug. “Not fly, just a jump burst. It’s a better suit. Prototypes are always inferior to the finished design.” As if a consolation, he added, “It’ll take a moment to build up the pressure for him to do it again.”
Now that we were closer, every dent and scrape on Janae’s battered suit reflected the midday sun. It was a wonder that it still worked at all.
“Janae, he’s gonna try it again in a minute!” I warned.
She didn’t look at me this time. Instead, she clamped onto the calf of one of his legs just as he lifted off. The extra weight on that side pulled his trajectory into an angle. At the right moment, Janae released her hold and fell back into the snow. Montague’s suit spiraled unevenly away from us, allowing Janae valuable time to get upright.
“Charon are coming?” she yelled between blares of the klaxon.
“The alarm, Miss Nelson, it called them,” Sawyer answered.
Montague returned to his feet in the distance.
I fired at him, but the shot deflected off his raised hand.
Janae ran to the alarm box and uprooted the pole with ease. She smashed it into the ground.
The blaring screech of the alarm stopped.
I turned to Sawyer. “Now that she knows, we should head back inside. I had her break through
the metal door, so you should be able to make it to the control area.”
“She’ll probably beat us there,” Sawyer said as we ran in the direction of the mansion.
We hadn’t made it very far before we saw the sentry sail over the edge of the compound. I glanced at the shattered glass opening of the arboretum. The jagged crystal shards looked like a toothy dragon’s mouth mocking us in the distance.
“We’ll never make it there in time,” I said as my heart beat wildly. Being that we were a lot closer than Janae, we were the most logical targets of the approaching single-person craft. “Sawyer, get behind me,” I said, stopping and raising the pistol. “We need you alive to take us to the tower and shut down the mechanicals.”
A tall, dark-skinned man gripped the wheel with one hand while twirling his gaff coil rod, presumably to charge it. There was barely enough room between the motorized plank he balanced on and the bottom of the gas-filled bladder above his head. If the balloon were three feet lower, he’d risk slicing it open with the spear’s edge.
I gauged the attacker’s speed of descent. The growing sound of the vessel’s propellers sounded like a swarm of angry bees.
I tried my best to sound calm, though my hand was shaking. “Sawyer, on the count of three, I want you to make yourself as flat in the snow as you can. One—”
When he scooted back to give us room, I knew he understood.
“Two—”
I had to time it just right. Everything depended on it.
As I yelled “three,” he fired the coil. The brilliant pulse of blue lightning leapt from the rod at us. In the same instant, I fired my weapon and dropped flat into the wet slush.
The cold bit at my cheeks as I pressed downward. The sound of the engine buzzing overhead let me know the tactic had worked.
“Sawyer, are you all right?” I asked, wiping my face with my sleeve.
“Yes, Detective, but he’s circling around for us,” he answered as we made it to our knees. “I doubt he’ll be tricked by that again.” Suddenly, his voice changed. “Dear, sweet Jesus!”
I spun around expecting the worst, something with Janae.
“Detective, look!” Sawyer pointed at something in the snow.
Luckily, it was nothing to do with Janae. She and Montague still went at it in the distance. She swung at him with the alarm stand like a battle-axe.
“Detective Kipsey, you shot it right out of his hand!” Sawyer said in elation as he ran past me.
I could hardly believe it. The gleaming gaff coil rod sticking up at an angle from the snow looked as beautiful as Arthur’s Excalibur. Sawyer lifted it above his head like a trophy.
“The shock coil is broken, but he’s defenseless,” he said.
The sentry had begun his return to us. I hardly considered an attacker on a motorized skiff defenseless—a skilled driver could mow down someone on foot even without a skiff weapon.
I was skeptical that I’d shot the rod out of his hand. If I had, it wouldn’t have landed in the snow behind us. I doubted the sentry was used to being fired upon by his prey, and he’d probably been startled and dropped it.
The sentry passed by Sawyer first. The damned fool waved the rod at the sentry in defiance. It was certainly a transformation from the cowering tink I’d first met in Montague’s study on New Year’s.
“Sawyer, look out!”
With two hands on the wheel, the driver maneuvered with greater skill and managed a well-timed swoop. He dove at a sharp angle in hopes of striking Sawyer with the bottom of the craft.
Had I not seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed what happened next. Sawyer threw the coil rod, and it twisted in the space between them like a pinwheel sailing through the air.
There wasn’t enough time for the rider to adjust the pitch of the vessel to avoid the impact. It connected with him dead on, knocking the large man off the back of the skiff in a move that would have made any circus acrobat envious. It truly was a one-in-a-million shot, and Sawyer was just as surprised.
“Duck!” I yelled as the pilotless skiff skimmed over us. It crashed into the snow with a crunch.
Adrenaline blasting through my veins, I rushed to Sawyer and helped him up. He was still confounded by what he’d done. “Detective, I did it—I knocked him off.”
“I know, but we’re not out of this yet.” I pointed to the sentry on his back a few yards from us. “He’s still conscious.”
Sawyer immediately snapped to, and we rushed to him.
With gun in hand, I shouted, “How many more are coming?”
He lifted his head a few inches above the crater he’d made in the snow. The Charon-issue eyepiece glowed red as he scoffed. “All I know is that I’m looking at a dead man.”
“Answer me!” I demanded. “How long do we have? How many are coming?”
He lowered his head and laughed. “Doesn’t matter. Ten, twelve, twenty. All of the skiffs have the wireless. They all got the notice, same as me. They’re all coming.” He propped himself on his elbows. “It won’t be long until they’re here.”
The sound of the skiff pole hitting the ground behind me caught my attention. As I turned, Sawyer snatched the pistol from my hand.
Before I could stop him, Sawyer unloaded the gun’s remaining two bullets into the man. The bitter scent of gunpowder filled my nostrils. Vapor trails of heat left the man’s body through the duo of fresh bullet holes.
The snow was falling harder now, and I watched flakes glide down to the dark red puddle seeping out from beneath him. The tiny rivers of blood eagerly lapped at the edges of my boots, forcing me to step backward.
“It had to be done,” Sawyer said apologetically as he handed the empty weapon back. “A little barbaric, I know, but these types don’t surrender to being prisoners—doing so dishonors their code.” He picked up the rod and examined the bent tip of the spear. “Given the chance, kill any Charon that come up here—male or female, it doesn’t matter. They’re all loyal to Mr. Montague to the end. They worship power.”
Letting the gun fall to the snow, I bitterly stated the obvious. “Those were the last of the bullets. You used them all up on him, and now we have an army of Charon racing towards us.”
“I know where we can get an army of our own.”
Before I could respond, he picked up and tossed the broken gaff coil rod to me.
Sawyer trotted to where the unmanned skiff buzzed idle in the snow. Without a second glance in my direction, he backed it out of the embankment, accelerated, and then disappeared over the far edge of the compound.
Thirty-Four
With Sawyer gone, there was nothing I could do to stop the mechanicals being set into motion. Maybe Janae would be able to figure out how to carry out Sawyer’s plan. Either way, I couldn’t leave her to Montague’s mercy. I ran toward them.
Montague and Janae’s clash had sent them to the opposite edge of the courtyard from Sawyer and me. Janae swung her makeshift weapon of the alarm stand with furious vigor. I could tell it was clunky to use, but it kept Montague at bay. She only needed to connect with his unprotected skull once, and it’d all be over. Even he knew this and maneuvered carefully while blocking thrusts to his head. They moved in a slow, wide circle, both intensely studying the other, waiting for a misstep.
I decided to take advantage of their unbroken concentration. I just needed to get close enough to them. The skiff rod was beat to hell, but it was better than nothing, and I had to do something to help her.
I advanced, careful to stay out of the old man’s line of sight. Making use of the courtyard’s landscape, I hid behind one of the topiaries, a large elephant balanced on a ball.
I cursed Sawyer for using the pistol. If only he’d left me one bullet in the chamber. I had a clear shot at Montague, and Janae’s lunges at his head were pushing him backward toward me.
If only I had a weapon—and then it hit me. I remembered the conversation with Olsen in the bar.
I’d been stupid to forget it.
Dropping the skiff rod to my side, I batted at the tall shrub before me, knocking accumulated snow onto my face. Pressing through the icy vegetation, my hand connected with cold steel—glorious steel. If what Garrett Olsen had said was true, the gun would be loaded and ready.
I dropped to my knees in the damp frost and felt around the base of the topiary for a button or release trigger. My near-numb fingers found a small turn wheel. The metal was painfully cold, but I twisted it counter-clockwise with all my might.
The elephant above my head split at the top, and the halves spread further apart with each frantic rotation. A fine green cord weaved between the two sections of the bush, growing tighter as the halves pulled apart. I stood and broke the binding with a few tight jerks, freeing the shrub to open fully.
Sunlight sparkled off the center tube aimed at the heavens. Though it was different in design, the weapon most closely resembled a tink-modified stationary Gatling gun.
I heard a sound on the wind, a faint buzzing.
Montague was now only forty feet away, his back to me. Each footfall of the massive suits made the two sides of the oversized shrub bounce, releasing more fine particles of snow.
Stepping into the center of the two halves of the shrub, I latched the harness around my waist, slid my boots into the stirrups, lowered the cylinder, gripped the biting-cold handles, and swiveled the gun around to its target. He was less than fifteen feet away.
The buzzing noise grew.
Careful not to risk a ricochet hitting Janae on the other side, I pointed the turret downward as much as it would allow and aimed at the lower half of Montague’s suit. Rounds erupted like water from a fire hose. The gun shook me so hard, it felt as if my teeth were going to rattle out of my head.
Montague stumbled forward into Janae. His legs buckled and he collapsed to his knees.
I couldn’t risk hitting her. I released the triggers, although my hands continued to vibrate. Through the wisps of steam coming off the end of the gun, I saw him look back in surprise at me. Our eyes met, and he seethed.
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