by Andrew Post
“Kylie? Anoushka? Russ?” Zuther’s voice had changed. It used to have a smooth cadence but now was scratchy and sounded painful for him to use. Possibly from disuse, House of the Loving Flame’s oath of silence and all. “What’re you guys doing in there?”
“Doesn’t matter. We just need out.”
“Yeah, sure, of course.” Zuther went shuffling among the desks, checking drawers. He went over to their pile of leather gun belts and bags and ammunition purses. He noticed some of Sharona’s blood splashed across Lodi’s satchel. “What did you guys do? I’ve been here for hours, just walking around.”
“This one killed somebody,” Kylie-Nae said, thumbing toward Lodi.
Zuther’s searching hands froze. “Look, guys, I don’t want any trouble. I came because I thought you needed my help. I mean—help, like for a mission. Not this . . .”
“Did you see Joan at the train station?” Anoushka blurted, hoping nostalgia was as present in Zuther as in herself and the others. She was willing to wager it was, if he’d left the monastery and was standing here now.
“Yeah,” he said, a toothy smile emerging. “She’s parked right across the way.”
“And how did she look?”
He’d stopped his retreat to the door. “Good. Real good. Shiny.”
“I hate to be a shit,” Anoushka said, “but, well, it’s either you help us or you’re on your own. I’ve heard the Loving Flame doesn’t do take-backsies.”
“They don’t,” he said.
“Then help us.”
“Okay, all right.” He filled his hand with one of their confiscated pistols from the desk, snapped it open, closed, and approached the cell door.
“No, we have to be quiet,” Anoushka said.
“You want out or not? Could try picking it, but we’d probably be here ’til next month.”
“All right,” she said, stepping back. “Do it.”
Despite being mere inches away, Zuther pointed at the cell lock as if trying to draw a bead on something a half mile off.
Those within shrank away, but there was little protection in the cell besides each other.
One eye closed and tongue out, Zuther fired. Loud inside such tight confines. Anoushka gave the door an exploratory shove; the smoking lock crumbled. As they rushed to get their things, Kylie-Nae gave Zuther a hug. He tried giving her back the gun but made his fingers curl its wooden grip. “I have others.”
“Thanks,” he said and smiled.
“No problem.”
“How’ve you been?” he said.
“Not bad. You?”
“Better.”
“What happened to your face?”
Lodi, hiking the satchel strap on her shoulder, said, “She got her ass kicked.”
Outside in the brisk night, the soldiers and townsfolk—and even the drunks leaning against each other on the saloon’s front porch—were looking for the direction of the shot. It was made clear when the small mob rushed out of the sheriff’s office strapping on reclaimed gun belts. But with little time to try to feign innocence, they splashed through the muddy street and into the dark alley behind the clock tower. Anoushka struck matches to light their way.
They’d nearly reached the other end when a ringing bell clamored.
Someone bolted past the alley’s end—a young man in muddy dungarees with a hand clamped on his shit-kicker. “Anybody seen the sheriff? We need the sheriff!”
The deputy.
Anoushka pinched her match out.
Everyone held their breath when the young man stopped and peered into the alley. He was looking right their way. He approached; one step in, another. Close enough for Anoushka to smell the newness of his leather chaps. Another step. She could’ve flicked him on the nose. Possibly not keen on venturing into the dark without the sheriff near to hold his hand, the deputy turned and bolted, spurs jangling, screaming again for his boss. Once confident he was gone, Anoushka led them around the corner. The bells kept ringing. Everyone rushed about, getting into their homes, drawing their shutters.
In the square, the fruit stand owner dropped his canopy over his goods.
The gunsmith threw his wares into the back of his cart and snapped the reins and raced out through the front gates.
Anoushka didn’t run. She let the stream of people passing every which way work as camouflage. She overheard many saying there’d been a breakout at the sheriff’s office. Not knowing her group were those who’d just been sprung, more than one Yarnigradian suggested they hole up until the sheriffs tracked down the good-for-nothings.
“Thanks for the advice,” Anoushka said and feigned being just as harried—and led her group around to the front of the watch tower. The door was unlocked.
They entered, guns drawn. A mind-boggling network of ropes and pulleys and chains and pendulums. And all this engineering and steel and stone, simply to spare the townsfolk the inconvenience of asking anyone the time.
Layer after layer of wooden platforms above, a rickety staircase connecting them. The clock tower began issuing a prolonged whine of cables going tight, ending with eardrum-puncturing clangs. Then another and another. In total, eight tooth-loosening pounds.
Once it was through, uncovering her ears, Lodi began to ascend, making abundant use of the handrail.
Behind her, Anoushka followed, ears ringing.
Lodi was short—she could fire over the wizardess’s head if need be.
Kylie-Nae, Russell, and Zuther followed.
The noise of their climb on the metal stairs was mostly eaten by the clock tower’s racket.
Anoushka was unsteadied. While hidden by the noise, they might be able to get the drop on Lyle in his temporary host, but he could just as easily use it the same way. Everything around them was in motion. Shadows were thrown one shape before being rearranged—each, at first, looked like a person.
The first platform: empty.
The next: same.
At six levels up, Lodi said, “The repeater . . . would need . . . to be higher than this.” She readied an elixir with the hand that wasn’t locked around the railing.
Below, a gunshot rang out.
“All right, nice and easy, climb on back down,” came a whisper through the noise. “I don’t know how y’all got out of there, but it doesn’t much matter. We got the tree all ready for ya. Come on, make it easy on yerselves.”
“Go,” Anoushka shouted, shoving Lodi forward.
They rounded the stairs up to the highest platform. Lit pale by a moonbeam passing through the clock tower’s glass, a man aimed a long-barreled six-gun straight down. Anoushka shoved Lodi down and fired over her. The hasty shot sparked off a turning gear, just left of the dapper corpse’s head.
Keeping to his target, Mister Swindler shot—and promptly fell in a heap, despite not having received a wound of his own.
Anoushka rushed to the railing. The sheriff was running back down the steps. He passed out through the kicked-in front door, leaving only his ventilated ten-gallon and a red splash on the wall. “Shit.” Anoushka wheeled and shoved past the others still making their way up. “He’s in the sheriff.”
Lodi was about to join her in the chase, but Anoushka halted her. “Find the device.”
Zuther stumbled and fell on the stairs, blocking their path.
Anoushka swung herself up and over the railing. The wind of the fall whistled past her ears. She dropped into a roll, stumbled, and chased him outside.
The sheriff—the back of his head a wreck of exposed brain and blood-clotted hair—pushed through the townsfolk, leaving a trail of gasps in his wake.
Anoushka followed, shouldering through the current of bodies.
Ahead, spotting his boss, the deputy came running.
“Sheriff! Sheriff!”
Anoushka tried warning that it wasn’t him, but over the terrified hollering of Yarnigrad’s citizens, the young man couldn’t hear her.
As the deputy reached the sheriff, he barely had time to goggle at how
bloody his boss was before Lyle fired.
The momentary distraction had slowed the hijacked sheriff enough for Anoushka to catch up. Shoving through the last of the crowd, she aimed and fired into the sheriff’s back—hoping to catch his leg. But while the mammoth-killer definitely packed a wallop, it only served to knock him momentarily off-kilter. It didn’t matter; he’d apparently reached what he was after: the parked Associated Bards’ caravan.
Making the dead sheriff adopt a slunk-back, hips-forward pose, Lyle fanned the six-gun’s hammer and drew a line down the caravan side. Anoushka stopped short when the sheriff spun to face her.
He raised his weapon.
She did the same.
The sheriff’s eyes were serious but held a certain warmth required of men of the law. He loved his town and his townspeople. But now his eyes were cold.
“Hangin’ is at sunup,” he said, drawl heavier than before. A smirk as detached as his gaze came to his suns-beaten face. “I recommend you mosey on back to your cell, little lady.”
Anouska remained put, didn’t lower, didn’t holster.
His finger was on the trigger—but his gaze flicked up, to something behind Anoushka.
Broken glass rained into the square in flashing shards. In the clock tower’s face, between the five and six, Lodi stood holding a hodgepodge of tubes and crystals wrapped in copper wiring. Casting it out, the repeater ended its tumble upon the flagstones, scattering apart on impact.
In sharp pulses, the unnatural glimmer in the sheriff’s eyes began to fade. He fought to raise his six-gun.
The caravan door shot wide, a mountainous obsidian creature stepped down its back step—the caravan momentarily lifting its front wheels off the ground. The mass of black steel clattered and clanked as it approached, clutching a freshly whetted battle-ax in two enormous gauntleted hands. Managing to make the sheriff pop a single shot, Lyle only scuffed Peter’s shiny new breastplate. The berserker brought the ax about, swinging it high before dropping into a squat leading the blade low.
Lyle didn’t dodge the sheriff clear. Catching the chop’s brunt to the shoulder, the stolen corpse was halved where it stood. Dropping to its knees, the sheriff split; guts tumbled onto the flagstones, a gush of dark blood rapidly filling the gaps between the hoof-smoothed road stones.
The clock tower ticked and tocked, marking the passage of otherwise silent seconds . . .
The fruit sellers peeked out from under their dropped canopies.
Peter thumbed aside the helm’s grille. His dark beard, having been stuffed into the helm, was like a mane around his wan features and sunken, dark eyes. He estimated his handiwork—entrails, clean-split bone, unrecognizable bits and bobs. “That him?”
“Yes and no,” Anoushka said. She noticed along Peter’s flank, the armor now bore a few shallow dents; Ruprecht hadn’t skimped outfitting his protagonist.
The others joined her in the square, under the staggered watch of Yarnigrad’s people, who kept their distance and shielded their children’s eyes from the gore pile their sheriff had become.
Lodi pushed through, moving slow, relying greatly on her cane.
Zuther, coming up next to Anoushka, faltered when he saw the bifurcated sheriff. “Yep. Just like old times,” he said, trying to pass his gagging off as a hard man’s gallows chuckle.
Squatting by the broken repeater, Kylie-Nae picked out one of the crystals that’d survived the fall, tightly cocooned in copper wire. “So it’s safe now?”
“Yarnigrad maybe,” Lodi said. Shaking something free of broken clock tower glass, she approached Anoushka with a steaming glass tube. The trapped gas inside refracted the streetlight in such a way the tube appeared to be full with tiny spinning ghosts. “His line of devices is like a leaky hose; he might get reach, but the farthest point will be weak. Closer to the source, the stronger.”
Not liking the sound of that but unable to do much about it, Anoushka turned to Peter, who was still eyeing the divided sheriff. “Where’s Ruprecht?”
“Moving pictures.” Peter closed his helmet’s grille.
The townspeople kept their distance but were on tiptoes to look over one another’s shoulders. The berserker never liked being stared at.
“So he decides to go kick up his feet while we’re dealing with all this?” Anoushka snapped.
“Bad news,” the berserker said. Stepping to the shot-up caravan, he reached in and brought something to Anoushka. Seeing the familiar canary-yellow carbon paper crushed in his grasp, she knew it was a telegram.
She read by the nearest lamppost’s blue gaslight:
C R O W N I N T E L L I G E N C E
T E L E G R A M S E R V I C E
--Confidential Materials, Do Not Copy--
ENA, w1166858 a55981
C/O = RUPRECHT LEFEVRE II
NEW KAMBLEBURG UNDER ENEMY OCCUPATION STOP ADVISORY BOARD SCRYERS BELIEVE MAGICK IN USE AND LYLE EICHELBERGER RESPONSIBLE STOP UNTIL YOUR TEAM LEARNS TRUE LOCATION OF LYLE EICHELBERGER STOP IF NOT NK THEN ASSOCIATED BARDS PUBLISHING TO RETAKE NK WITH BLACKIRON BLAGGARDS PRESS AND CROWN FORCES STOP MOVE QUICKLY TO NK STOP CROWN FORCES TO DISPATCH VIA LOCOMOTIVE STOP DUE TO ARRIVE IN NK TWO MONTHS FROM TODAY STOP FAILURE TO APPEAR CONSIDERED ACT OF TREASON STOP GODSPEED STOP
Anoushka balled the telegram again. “Shit.”
* * *
The aggravation that had propelled Anoushka across town to the theater slid away immediately when she paid for her ticket and entered the dark room.
Everything was washed under a flickering light pitched by a clattering machine in the back. The far wall caught a thrown image—a moving image. It was like a window into a juddering gray-scale world where everything moved a hair too fast. It felt like the room itself had been mounted onto the cowcatcher of a speeding train. Anoushka felt herself leaning and needing to catch a chair back for balance. There was no steady chugging of a steam engine, no piercing whistle, but she still heard them.
Ruprecht sat alone in the front row in the blacksmiths-turned-theater, and a piano player pounded out a jaunty tune in the dark.
Nothing broke his focus, neither her boots’ thuds nor the pointy-eared silhouette growing large on the screen as she limped near.
She sat beside him, her shadow sinking out of the projection. “We found Lyle’s repeater and disabled it. We need to get some leads on where he is. Otherwise, we’re gonna have to go to New Kambleburg.”
“I know. I read the telegram.”
“I’m not thrilled about retaking NK,” Anoushka said. “Especially since going means passing through the Scorch.”
They wouldn’t be able to load Joan on packet steamer to go around it like they used to, not with every port here east under evacuation. And passing through the Scorch by locomotive, quick, was equally impossible—with this new development, every engine would be busy moving more troops northeast, to Wheeling, to speed up the attempt to stop the tunneling under Burned Mountain.
Skivvit had shown his hand, a two-pronged tactic to make the Ma’am’s fighters scramble, confused. Anoushka’s group’s appointment to New Kambleburg said a lot. Its challenge was the tougher of the two—one worth shoving expendable contractors at.
One shiny fleck in the shit pile, though: Joan, as Zuther said, had arrived. Anoushka had only a moment to see how gorgeous Joan was; in better form than she’d ever seen her. Anoushka instructed the others to get strapped in and get the tension-engine wound while she went to collect the bard. She hated missing the reunion, especially if it meant sitting in a dark room explaining to Ruprecht things that should’ve been obvious.
“In ten years’ time,” the bard murmured, “or maybe less, the written word will be dead. This will be what everyone wants. The market will be cornered; all stories will be told with moving pictures.”
“Worry about it later.” Anoushka stood, her shadow returning on the screen. “Come on.”
“Markus would’ve loved this.”
Her frustration softened a little. Maybe it�
�d been how Ruprecht said it; he’d not shown Markus’s death affecting him, but perhaps, like her, he covered the wound to prevent it from catching air and stinging more.
She sat again.
A jarring splice, the film looped, and the same length of coastline was traveled again—threading through trees and dynamite-gutted mountains.
“I’m sure he would’ve,” Anoushka said, with more care than the bard deserved.
“I meant what I said on the road this morning,” Ruprecht said. He looked over at her next to him, wet eyes shining with the projector’s false, flickering light. “If you try to undermine me, I will deet the tsarina and tell her everything.”
Anoushka glanced to the piano player’s back. If he’d heard, it hadn’t made him miss a note.
“Really listen to me here,” she told Ruprecht. “I’m trying to stay in line. I’m trying to give you a good story, but here you are, ass glued to a chair, holding us up. You wanna find Lyle? You, at this moment, are only giving him more distance. What if this other contractor group, Mann O. Mahan, finds him first? This will all be for nothing.”
It was like he didn’t hear her. “I need you. And Peter. And the others too. We need to make this a good story, the best we can. It’s likely my last chance before this”—he threw a sneer at the gray-scale world—“takes everyone away from me.” He wiped his nose. “I . . . I lied to you, Miss Demaine.”
“Forgive me if I don’t fall out of my chair. But what about?”
“I implied I do this often: accompanying contractors. In truth, this is my first time. I had to. I couldn’t stay in Darvin. I owe people. And this was my only way to stay out of town. Getting your tank repaired, the advances to you and your team, and what I used to buy the donkeys and provisions in Crescentcliff account for the entirety of my savings.