Murder on the Titania and Other Steam-Powered Adventures

by Alex Acks

  It shook alarmingly as they climbed, squealing and rattling in a way Simms hoped was entirely for show and masked by the noise of the street. A few bolts rained down onto the alley below.

  At the fourth floor, Simms broke in the pane of a window with his elbow and in they climbed to what Captain Ramos insisted was the proper apartment. The curtains were drawn, letting in only a thin bit of yellowed light, but that was enough to reveal a scene of chaos. Furniture had been overturned, cabinets left open, plates and books strewn across tables, shelves and floor.

  “Left in a hurry,” Simms said.

  “Yes…” Captain Ramos pulled on a pair of gloves and carefully sifted through the wreckage of a meal left moldering on a plate. “And then subsequently given a hasty search.” She picked up a book from the floor, fanned through the pages, and looked at the cover.

  “Oh?”

  “Things lifted up and replaced a bit off, like this cup, moved off the ring it originally left on this book…so that then the book could be given a look through.” She moved farther into the little apartment.

  “So they were looking for papers?”

  “Or a thin little book, like the one I took from the man’s belongings. Though if that is a cipher book, it’s one of the strangest I’ve ever seen.”

  Simms paused as paper crackled underfoot. He frowned, stepping back and lifting aside a carelessly thrown tea towel. “There’s newspaper all scattered over the carpet here.” The source was, he thought, probably the overturned wastepaper basket that had also hidden under the towel.

  “And?” Captain Ramos didn’t even glance up from where she bent over a pile of discarded clothing.

  He stirred at the mess with his fingers. “It’s a bit odd, this. All shredded into strips.”

  “Packing material, perhaps.” The Captain straightened. “Grab a bit of it, though.”

  Simms had just gathered up a handful when a knock came at the door.

  “Mr. Smith? Mr. Smith? Inspector’s here, says he wants a word with you.” The muffled voice belonged to a woman, perhaps the landlady.

  Simms hastily shoved the newspaper into his jacket pocket and caught the Captain’s eye. She jerked her head toward the window.

  “I told you, he’s not here,” the woman said.

  “Yes, I know that,” a man answered, rather impatient. The voice made Captain Ramos’s eyebrows jump up. “He’s been murdered. Now open the door or I’ll have it broken down.”

  “All right, all right, let me just…” Keys jangled.

  Captain Ramos scrambled out of the window, Simms on her heels. The fire escape creaked a warning that haste might not be an option.

  Simms hissed at the Captain and flattened himself against the rusty fire escape as he heard the door open. She immediately went still.

  “Rather dark in here—”

  Simms squeezed his eyes shut, as if that would somehow render him invisible, and then hastily opened his eyes again as he realized that he really ought to be watching what happened. The man who was undoubtedly the Inspector in question jerked the curtains open. “The window’s broke— You!”

  Simms looked up at a man with light brown hair and a neatly trimmed officer’s mustache, one hand raised with a straight wooden cane in it. Captain Ramos gave the man an utterly horrifying grin right before she jumped up and down on the fire escape twice in quick succession.

  With a metallic scream, the rusted bolts of the fire escape gave way, and it crumpled majestically away from the building, rather like a tall, thin woman collapsing into a faint.

  Simms clutched the railings and didn’t scream as gravity yanked them toward the alley, though it was a near thing. Crash—and he almost lost his footing as they struck the wall of the building next door, metal screeching as they dragged down the bricks, but it slowed their descent.

  They stopped with a gentle bounce and another shrill creak, just above the first floor.

  “Stop! By order of the Grand Duke!” the man shouted.

  Captain Ramos dove over the railing; Simms launched himself after her without hesitation and broke into a run as soon as he landed, protesting knees or no. An outraged shout followed them down the alley.

  “Someone you know?” Simms gasped out as they dodged around the elderly person with the cart again.

  Captain Ramos laughed, the sound alone telling him more than he really wanted to know. “That was the Grand Duke’s Chief of Security, Simms. Colonel Douglas.”

  Simms groaned, the effect ruined when he skidded on a bit of—oh he didn’t want to think about that—and had to catch himself on a wall.

  “If he’s in on this, it’s just become very interesting.”

  Simms didn’t have the breath to groan again.

  Two days later, ‘interesting’ had failed to materialize, much to Simms’s relief. The Captain had vanished into her work room once more, the scraps of newspaper Simms had scraped up off the carpet in the dead man’s apartment firmly in hand.

  Amelia caught him in one of the long hallways, formerly a main shaft for the mine but now lit with faintly buzzing electrical lights, spaced out a little too far for the comfort of anyone who felt at all paranoid about the dark. “Simms!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Elijah’s been agitating to go out to the hot springs. Think we can do it?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “You checked with the Captain?”

  She suddenly seemed to find the air over his left shoulder very interesting. “She’s been awful busy, hasn’t she?”

  “…worse than my daughter, the lot of you.” He sighed. “I’ll ask her. But I think there might be a train coming through tomorrow or day after. I doubt she’ll want you gone that long.” Actually, he knew that to be true. But he’d begun to cotton to the fact that in their bizarre little pseudo-family, Captain Ramos had somehow become “Dad” and he’d been stuck firmly in the role of “Mum.” “Go into town for a bit instead? We still need to drop off the last cargo at the fences, at any rate.”

  Amelia looked a little glum, but nodded. “Be nice to get out even for that. Perhaps ask her when we could plan a trip? Elijah…”

  Simms grinned at her. “Just Elijah wants it, right?”

  She stuck her tongue out at him, and he went to locate Captain Ramos. As he’d suspected she was bent over her workbench, slips of paper strewn around her.

  “Sir? We were thinking about going in to town for the evening. Thought you might like to come along.”

  She waved one hand at him lazily, an invitation to enter. “Which town?”

  “Silverthorn, we were thinking. Can drop the last of the cargo off there, and then go for a bit of…ah…relaxation in the brewery.”

  The Captain paused for a moment, head tilting back. “What, not Berthoud? Oh, right. The lemonade incident.”

  “Right. We’re not taking Gregory along, but I think they just sort of blamed…all of us.”

  “Burn down a few buildings…” She sighed, her breath sending strips of newspaper scattering. “Are you going to start up that tiresome line about fresh air, Simms? I can all but feel it radiating off of you.”

  “You have been down here since we got back.”

  “It hasn’t been so long.” She pulled her watch from her pocket. “Just a few hours.”

  “Two days, sir.”

  “Oh. More like fifty-one hours then.” Captain Ramos sat back and sighed, stretching her arms out. “These bits of paper you found are a pretty problem, Simms, make no mistake. I doubt you noticed when you picked them up, but they’ve all had holes punched through them, quite precisely at that.” She picked up the thin little book she’d brandished before, taken from the now-dead spy’s trunk. “I’m certain it’s something to do with this, but I haven’t found a correlation to speak of yet.”

  Reluctant but curious, he moved forward to take up one of the little strips, turning it in his fingers. He caught the word sausage on it, only the u, g, and e had a pattern of pinpricks shot through them.
“All right, I’ll give you that. It’s a bit odd.”

  “The question is how, and why. To what end?” A wave of her hand scattered more paper strips. He saw another curl up with the words ascending Saturn on it.

  “It might have all come like that.”

  The look she gave him was a most eloquent one.

  “You’ve been at it two days, sir. Come back to it in a bit with fresh eyes. We need to deliver the cargo to our man anyway.”

  “Eyes don’t go bad like mangoes,” she said acerbically as she leaned back and shook her head. “But you are right about the cargo. And the news stand in Silverthorn ought to have some of its old papers left over…perhaps finding out the dates on these will offer some insight.” She slid off her stool and began to put on her coat. “Have Mister Cavendish start preparing Diabola. She’s the one that put you up to this, right?”

  “Couldn’t say.” Simms hid his little sigh of relief with a careful cough.

  “It’s not too late to go to the springs,” Elijah Masterson said, for what had to be at least the tenth time as they moved out of the thinning trees and onto the main road, Silverthorn laid out before them.

  Captain Ramos had parked Diabola on some supposedly abandoned track to the south of the town; while it meant they’d have to run if they needed to make a quick getaway, it was still better than risking the engine getting stuck at the station in case of some unfortunate event. They’d run and fought their way free over longer distances, and the woods near Silverthorn, while not surrounded by an electrical fence, were kept free of Infected by regular patrols. The few younger men they’d brought along had nearly sprinted from the engine, likely headed for the questionable delights of the town’s one bordello. The cabin crew had hung back with the captain, taking the path at a less desperate pace.

  Lucius Lamburt laughed, revealing a mouth full of teeth better left hidden. “We parked, sonny, ain’t no goin’ back ’til you’re carryin’ me.”

  “If you didn’t want to come, why are you here?” Amelia shoved Elijah’s arm.

  He grinned at her. “Still better than being halfway under a mountain, right? Look at that lovely sky…somewhere behind all the smoke.” The sound of an engine’s whistle, three long blasts, was sharp even in the noticeably thick air.

  Silverthorn was a tiny town of mining and basic industry, nestled in the mountains and criss-crossed with rail lines. It was the first stop for much of the ore that came from the mines deeper in the Rockies, and the first and last stop for much of its coal, keeping the smelting furnaces burning along and the smokestacks belching out thick gray clouds. Depending on the source of the coal, sometimes the air even stung with the smell of sulfur, a fact not lost on more superstitious city folk, who had dubbed the place (among other things) “Devil’s Mouth.”

  Silverthorn, in Marta’s opinion, was a much prettier but far less interesting name. She watched her crew bicker with the sort of benign amusement often seen in parents, quickly tuning out the words so she could instead watch the street. She knew the rhythms of the little town well, the general comings and goings of its be-aproned smelters and dust-grimed stevedores.

  Something seemed off, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. But different was, while not always good, at least interesting.

  “If you’re just going to be at the Rat’s Tail, I’ll go take care of the shopping,” Simms offered.

  “Quartermaster gave you your marching orders before we left, then?” Marta asked, tone idle. It was for form rather than function. Simms had two modes: teetotaler and rotted alcoholic, though he’d managed to maintain the former and avoid the latter since they’d rescued his daughter Dolly from a workhouse and brought her home to the mountains nearly two years ago. Simms had remained Marta’s right-hand man even after the arrival of his daughter; Dolly was quiet and serious for a girl her age, and there were more than enough quasi-responsible adults about at the Roost to make certain she didn’t get caught in the machinery when he was away. Stockton, the rotund and intimidating cook, had a particular fondness for the girl.

  Normally Marta enjoyed having a good poke at Simms over his enmity with drink for the sheer pleasure of watching him squirm, but her attention was taken instead by a sudden influx of loaders heading away from the station instead of toward it. “Hm?”

  “I said yes, Captain. Even if it’s a shorter list than normal, Stockton’ll have my ears for a necklace if I come back without any vanilla. And that’s a direct quote. Something about not being able to flavor cakes with engine parts.”

  “How rude of us to not knock over the bakery train,” she said dryly. “Go along. You know where to find us.” Simms departed with a sardonic wave.

  “Mister Simms gone along to run errands for mummy like a good boy?” Elijah asked a little mockingly once Simms was safely out of earshot.

  Marta had a feeling he was trying to either impress her (unlikely, the men knew better by the time she let them near one of the engines) or Amelia. She raised an eyebrow. “Watch your tone, Mister Masterson. If word reaches the ears of the Quartermaster, you might not like what ends up in your rations.”

  “Is good advice, that,” Lucius noted. “There’s three women you should never anger, boy: your wife, your laundry woman, and your cook.” He glanced at Marta. “Did I say three? I meant four. Shouldn’t get on your captain’s bad side neither, not if you ever want to see the right side of a sunset again.”

  “That’s…that’s not what I meant,” Elijah said hastily.

  Amelia giggled and patted him on the arm, which seemed to mollify him a bit.

  “Please, Mister Masterson. Navigate us to the Rat’s Tail so we can stop your mouth up with a pint before you say something else ill-considered.”

  The saloon was the same as always, wooden floor gone an uncertain sticky brown from years of drinking in spilled beer and even less noble spirits, chairs and tables nearly the same color and texture. Questionable looks aside, the saloon also brewed its own beer, and that more than made up for having to pry one’s feet from the floor.

  As the man who’d been foolish most recently, Elijah was sent up to get the first of what was guaranteed to be many rounds. Most of the other patrons were off-duty workers, tired and dirty and content to keep their eyes mostly on their own beers and own business. Captain Ramos’s crew, while not quite an installation at the Rat’s Tail, was well known and reasonably liked. Pit bosses might not like pirates all that much, but the common laborers were happy to turn a blind eye to those who tweaked the noses of the high and mighty.

  It was Marta’s practice to drink perhaps half a beer every other round. The others knew by now to not twit her about it. She leaned back in the slightly wobbly wooden chair, long legs stretched out in front of her, and simply listened to the background chatter with half an ear. As usual, rumblings about wages being too low, liquor prices too high, and which supervisors were the unfortunate union of a wild pig and one of the Infected out in the woods. More interesting, though, was the talk of overtime, complaints of exhaustion flavored with avarice at the extra wages, poor as those were. A large order for steel, it seemed, something in its own way far more precious than gold or silver, and all of it coming from the Grand Duke himself.

  Interesting, that, though not terribly helpful. Trying to capture trains on the downhill slide from the divide to the grand duchy so far below was a tricky proposition and required extensive reward to justify the risk. But Marta liked to have her finger on the pulse of the duchy, and it beat out a fascinating rhythm indeed.

  Oh, and there was the gratifying talk that someone’s brother’s cousin had been in the telegraph relay office, and there was news of a robbery—someone had made off with a safe worth of jewelry, some of which had belonged to the Dowager Duchess of Provo and what a delightful scandal that was. Oh yes, and the bastards had taken a bunch of steel and engine parts too, not the most glamorous sort of loot, wasn’t that puzzling?

  Marta smirked into her beer.

  All
thought of smugness fled as a clatter from the street reached such a pitch that it cut over the normal noise of the saloon. It was difficult to see more than shadow and light through the rather murky front windows, which had not been cleaned at any point in recent memory, but around the half-doors at the front Marta could see a small forest of highly polished boots and trousers of a particular bottle green. That color Marta knew well as the uniform for the Grand Duchy of Denver’s army. The exodus of loaders from the station, she realized now, had been the sign of the army regiment’s arrival, the workers fleeing ahead of potential trouble.

  She stood abruptly, chair scraping over the floor. Amelia looked at her with wide eyes and Lucius managed a more-slurred-than-normal “Wha…?” as she turned, picked up her chair, and flung it at the most soggy of the tables within range. It knocked aside a card game, quite a few coins, and two beers, before striking a rather ugly man with a massive red beard in the face.

  The forceful introduction of the chair to the alcohol-soaked chemistry of the taproom had the desired effect. The man rose to his feet with a roar, flipping the table up for effect, and charged at her. She grabbed up Elijah’s half-finished pint and flung it over her shoulder toward another table before darting back. Lucius caught her intention quickly at least. He flung his own chair at another table with one hand and yanked Amelia to her feet with the other. Marta caught his eye, jerking her chin back toward the door that led to the brewery.

  Marta dove under a punch, came up under another table, and shoved it over. That was the tipping point. Chaos spread from there with gratifying speed.

  It was into that chaos the saloon doors were flung open, a man in a bottle green jacket to match his trousers, gold braid lining cuffs and collar, and an officer’s mustache making his rank of captain clear enough, standing in the doorway. He roared to be heard over the din. “You will cease at once! Cease this at once! We are here to arrest Captain Ramos but I’ll throw the lot of you into the Evergreens!”

  The threat of such punishment—the Evergreens being the misleadingly picturesque name of the Grand Duke’s most unpleasant prison and nothing so innocent as trees—cowed those nearest the guard captain.