Reciprocity

by Sean M Locke

  “Okay. Okay, that’s good.” I guided her toward the stairs with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Please remember to put that iron away.”

  “Oh, Kaeri, I’m old, not simple. Of course I’ll put it up.” She fixed me with a stern glare, her weathered face tightening into a frown. “I’m trusting you now, young lady. Greet our guests politely, and be hospitable.”

  “Yes, mevrouw.” I watched as she made her slow way up the stairs, using the shotgun as a walking stick. It wasn’t until she got to the top of the stairs that I released the breath I was holding. That old gun didn’t look too reliable, and I didn’t guess it would have surprised me if it had gone off while she was hobbling around with it.

  I stepped into the front hallway and foyer and nudged aside the lacy curtain on the narrow window that sat next to the front door. I couldn’t see too much—mostly just the front garden and the flagstone pathway. The lamppost on the sidewalk lit up a sullen yellow circle around the wrought-iron gate at the front of the property, and a few feet of the waist-high stone wall that stretched to either side. Everything else was a dim and quiet gloom.

  After a few minutes of this, a grape-sized circle of orange chemical light flashed at me twice from across the street. Felix, maybe, signaling something to me. Half a minute later, a heaving child-sized figure appeared at the wrought-iron gate. Lewis squinted at the address, looked over his shoulder the way he came, and pushed the gate open. He didn’t bother to close it behind him, just hustled up to the front door.

  I opened the door to see Lewis stretching to his full height to reach the door knocker. His eyes got huge as I hauled him inside and shut the door behind me.

  “You!” he cried.

  “Shut up,” I whispered hoarsely. “Old ladies are trying to sleep.”

  “That acolyte you brought to my shop—” he started to say.

  “Shut up and give me that dingus. I don’t need you legging it again.”

  “But Kasper—”

  “You keep talking.” I rapped him on top of the head with the back of my fist and yanked the satchel off his shoulders. He whimpered as I dragged him into the drawing room and pushed him toward one of the wingback chairs. It wasn’t too courteous, but other guests were bound to show up any second. I set the satchel on the mantelpiece, out of his reach.

  The bay window of the drawing room looked out onto the front garden. I inched the curtains aside again and saw Wolfgang charge through the opened gate. He stopped, hauled a pistol from his jacket, and pointed it back the way he’d come. Maria had lagged behind and only now came into view by the lamppost. She saw the gun and ducked behind the wall, out of my sight. I slapped the window urgently, and Wolfje’s gaze twitched over to me. Jurgen was right—he did have a jaw like the business end of a sledgehammer, and his hat shaded his heavy-lidded eyes. I could see the hook-shaped scar that ran from the corner of his left eye down to the middle of his cheek. He showed his teeth and walked slowly backward to the door, his pistol still pointed at the gate.

  The front door opened and slammed against the foyer wall. “Kaeri, gods damn us to the poorhouse,” Wolfgang began.

  “Shut up and come into the drawing room,” I said.

  He hurried inside and pressed against the wall, away from the window. He was breathing hard, and the scar by his eye was a stark white as he looked from me to Lewis and back again. “How come I’m not surprised to see you here? You best explain yourself, or I will absolutely run you in this time.”

  “I’ll explain, but first will you put up that gun? Maria will be in here any second, and I don’t need you shooting each other.”

  “I won’t. If she comes in here blazing, I’m going to shoot back.”

  “Wolfje, please.”

  He flinched at my use of his childhood name but stood firm. “Forget it.”

  I thought about begging him further, but I heard the front door close and feet shushing in the carpeted hallway of the foyer. I couldn’t tell if Maria heard us talking or saw anything else in the room; she only had eyes for the satchel sitting on the mantelpiece, and her eyes seemed to be all pupil and nothing else. She stepped with a purpose toward the fireplace. The girl was a mess—her skirt was off completely, leaving just the beaded leggings I’d admired so much only a few hours before. For a wonder, the gun-garter was still on her leg, but it was empty.

  The gun sat cold in her hand, and it was pointed at the ground.

  Maria saw the satchel on the mantelpiece but didn’t see Wolfgang standing between her and the fireplace. Wolfgang saw Maria coming toward him but didn’t see that Maria wasn’t looking at him in the slightest. He raised his gun.

  “Freeze it,” he called to her.

  She didn’t. She took two more steps. Wolf’s pistol never wavered. If Maria tripped, she’d poke her eye out on it.

  Wolf pulled the hammer back on his revolver, and the evil clicking it made was the loudest thing in the world. I shouted something, maybe; I didn’t know.

  Maria blinked hard and seemed to see Wolfgang for the first time. She moved then, fast, like in her hotel room. Wolfgang’s pistol bellowed at the same time Maria moved her free hand like shooing a fly away. Her casual gesture brushed Wolfgang’s revolver aside a few centimeters, enough that the bullet cracked past her ear instead of blowing a crater through the back of her skull. Maria’s gun hand came up minutely and she fired from the hip, the sharp snapping sound different from Wolfgang’s but equally loud. He anticipated her; he twisted his hips, and the bullet plucked at his jacket. Brick and mortar from the fireplace shattered.

  My heart and guts froze up in that moment, and my legs quit moving. My ears sang from rushing blood and from the gunshots, and I couldn’t see or breathe too much on account of the smoke. What I could see was the two of them wrestling, or maybe dancing. They stood as close as lovers, each trying to bring a gun to bear on the other, neither having much success. A big, scarred hand holding a revolver would come up, and a delicate olive-skinned hand would knock it away. Maria’s angular repeater pistol would thrust forward, and Wolfgang’s scooping block would deny her the target. Parry, feint, thrust, stamp-cut-stamp. There was no sound apart from their rhythmic breathing, the thump of limbs colliding, the occasional clack of pistols touching. Her agility and speed were a match for his strength and size, and I knew they would go on like this until someone got tired, and someone made a mistake. And then someone would be dead.

  Then Wolfje played a dirty trick, one he’d learned from me. While they were playing with their hands and their guns, Maria wasn’t paying attention to his feet. He feigned a stumble and kicked her in the ankle, the same one that she had banged up while rolling over the car.

  Maria fell, gasping, and landed heavily on the fainting couch. Her shoulders struck the single cushioned arm of the couch hard, but she managed to bring her pistol up anyway. Wolfgang stood at the same moment, looming over the reclining Maria with his revolver trained on her head. Their dance was over, and the dancers were far enough apart now to shoot each other.

  “Stop it!” Whatever had seized up my legs evaporated. I stood in the small space between their guns and faced my brother. “Damn you both to hell. Stop!”

  Neither one budged, and it was getting harder to see, what with the tears in my eyes, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Maria’s gun pointed somewhere near my kidney, and Wolfgang’s bumped into my collarbone. I didn’t care at all. I only wanted them to stop.

  Wolfgang cursed and moved his gun up, like he wanted to point it at Maria again. I grabbed his wrist without thinking, forced the barrel back down, and stopped it right in front of my sternum.

  “Kaeri—” he started.

  “No,” I snapped. “No, Wolfgang Wilbert Romijn Hawen, shut your word-hole and listen for once. I’m not letting you do this.”

  “Let me go, Kay,” he said through gritted teeth. “I have work to do.”

  “Shut up, Wolfje,” I yelled. “Maria saved my life twice today. She’s a good person.”


  “She’s armed, and she’s interfering with regulator business.”

  “Oh, hang your business! Did it occur to you for one damned minute that you and her might be after the same thing?”

  The pressure in my back let up as Maria pointed her gun elsewhere, and cloth rustled behind me. Wolfgang’s frown deepened as he looked over my shoulder. He tried pulling the gun away from me again, but I wasn’t about to let him.

  “Meneer Inspector Hawen,” Maria said, sounding a little choked up. Or winded, I couldn’t tell. “I propose a truce, inspector. For now. For your sister’s sake, let us not kill each other tonight. I implore you, meneer.”

  “Toss that gun over here, and I’ll think about it.”

  I could have screamed at him, but Maria kept up her polite, even talking. “I will not, meneer. I don’t know if you will try to shoot me, but I give my word that I will not shoot you tonight. If you decide to kill me anyway, I will at least die under arms. My honor demands nothing less. And then you will be a murderer, but that is a matter for your own conscience.”

  “Wolfje, please,” I begged, and I hated myself for begging. “She means every word of this noble chivalry honor dogshit. She gave her word, and that means something to her kind.”

  “What do you know about her?” he sneered.

  So much, and not nearly enough.

  “You know how nobles are. Have you ever known one to go back on their word once they give it? You know how rarely they make promises? She said she wouldn’t try to kill you tonight, so maybe you can go back to killing each other tomorrow.” I chanced letting go of his wrist with one hand so I could scrub tears from my eyes. “But right now we need to talk some stuff through.”

  His lips tightened into a thin line. I could tell he didn’t like a bit of it, but he couldn’t say I was wrong, either. His face softened, just a little, and he finally lowered the hammer on his revolver. I let go of his wrist and dropped my chin. Wolfgang was a mean son of a bitch sometimes, but I knew he’d play along for now.

  Behind me, Maria sighed in relief, and I heard the retention snap on her holster close. She squeezed my shoulder. The next breath I took felt a little lighter.

  I looked back up at Wolfje, and he looked like someone had suddenly thumped him on the forehead with a stick. His eyes went from me to Maria, and then to Maria’s hand on my shoulder. I let him see a small frown, and I shook my head minutely. He got his face back together quick and managed to look like a hard-assed cop again.

  “Right,” I said, regarding Lewis, who was still sitting stiffly in the wingback chair, staring at all of us as if we were crazy. “We should probably take Lewis and that little dingus and go somewhere quiet. People are gonna come sniffing around here after the gunshots, and poor Mevrouw Penders—”

  Wolfgang interrupted me with a silent fist by his ear, signaling quiet.

  The front door opened. If it had been a quiet sort of entrance, I would have thought it was Felix, come to check on his partner. But it wasn’t a quiet sort of entrance at all.

  * * *

  Familiar voices spoke from the foyer and front hallway.

  “Weird. Door’s unlocked,” a woman sleepily. “Why’s the door unlocked?”

  “Maybe the old bird was expecting us,” said Milan’s voice, grunting under the weight of some load. “Who cares? Come on, Jeanne, help me with this guy.”

  “Why did we take him with us, anyway?” rumbled Bart.

  “It’s a little present for Kasper.”

  “Weird,” said Sleepy Jeanne again. “You smell gunpowder?”

  “It’s just your clothes. Why would old lady Penders’ place smell like —”

  They stopped in the doorway of the drawing room and saw us standing there like we stole something. Milan and Jeanne supported an unconscious man between them. In the hallway I could dimly see Bart’s face. Even in the bad light I could see Milan’s eyes get really big.

  A lot of things happened at once just then. Milan, who was always quick-minded, glanced at the revolver in Wolfgang’s hand and shoved the unconscious fellow at him. Jeanne stepped to her right and backed into the north wall, her hand clawing at the gun inside her coat. Wolf raised his hand, but the sapped Rademaker man landed on him and fouled his aim. The gun barked, and her shot went wide.

  Maria turned away from me to face the soldaten she pushed at my chest with her foot, knocking me on my ass and out of the line of fire. The fireplace bricks kissed the back of my head, dazzling my vision with stars.

  Milan crouch-walked inside the room, gun in hand, keeping his back to the east wall, near the doorway to the foyer. Jeanne was on the north wall, too close to the kitchen doorway. They’d done this before—covering the room in a perpendicular cross-fire while keeping the exits close at hand.

  Milan’s eyes widened when he saw me, but if he thought anything about me being there, I couldn’t tell. Jeanne drew a bead on someone and fired, but something I couldn’t see nudged her at the last second and her shot poked a hole in the ceiling. I thought briefly about Mevrouw Penders catching a stray bullet, but there wasn’t anything I could do for her now.

  There was a double thump, exactly like two heavy valises hitting the ground. It was barely audible in the racket of all the shooting, and in strolled Bart, mean as you please, a pistol in each fist. He started throwing bullets around the room. I screamed then and covered my ears with my fists and drew my knees up to my chin. Maybe if I screamed loud enough, I wouldn’t hear the shot that killed me.

  When I next took a breath, I could hear more shooting. The rest of it was just flashbulbs of things I saw: Maria standing tall as a statue and leaning forward, into the hail of bullets, her lips pressed together tight. I saw her right arm drawn across her body, her left hand cupping the right, and her pistol speaking death. I saw Wolfgang crouched, revolver in one hand jerking in mid-recoil, the flash from the muzzle illuminating his grimly focused face.

  I saw Bart rock back on his heels, his pistols falling from limp hands, a tidy hole punched into the middle of his forehead, his mouth frozen in an “O” of eternal surprise. I saw Jeanne holding one shattered hand in the other. Some fingers were missing, and she made the same face when she stared into the bottom of an empty bottle, wondering aloud where all the rum had gone. I saw Milan suspended in a halo of shattered glass as he dove through the bay window.

  Through the infernal ringing in my ears, I heard Wolfgang shouting “Cease fire, cease fire,” though I don’t think anyone else was shooting. That was the last thing I heard for a little while.

  * * *

  Bad, familiar dreams of gunfire and broken bodies thumped inside my skull, like pom-bombs on snowy theater steps. I fought like hell, even though I knew I’d be slow, too slow to change the way it ended.

  A few minutes or a few hours later, boiled cat piss scorched through my nose. I lashed out to smack whatever it was away from my face. My eyes opened. I couldn’t see anything but the insides of my hands.

  “Yep. If she’s trying to slap the hell out of you, then she’s all right,” Wolfgang said from somewhere far away.

  A hand stroked my hair, and my shoulders tensed up. I fought the urge to lash out again, and instead I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and pressed the worst of the tears away.

  Maria knelt next to me, a worried frown darkening her eyes. She saw me looking at her, and her face softened into a smile. Someone had laid me out on the antique fainting couch like I was some blushing debutante. My ears rang like hell, and gunsmoke still choked the air. I heard the faint murmuring of people in the drawing room.

  “Are you well, Kaeri? You were thrashing about for a little while.”

  “I’ll keep,” I said, choking a bit.

  She touched my cheek with her thumb and wiped a tear away. “Smelling salts are awful, aren’t they?”

  “Gods, wasn’t I damned useless just now. Wait, are you all right?” I asked. “Milan and Jeanne and Bart, they were shooting at you.”

  Maria’s ey
es got big, and her voice dropped to a whisper. “You know them? You ought to keep that fact to yourself. The police are here, and so is the other trade regulator, Meneer Bonaventure. I am fine; not a scratch. Never you worry.”

  Anger boiled up in my throat and I got up onto my elbow. “Felix. Where the hell was he? Felix, you worthless bum-boy, come here!”

  “Yep,” Wolfgang said from somewhere behind me. “Right as rain. Felix, debrief the sleeping beauty over here. I’ll get these local bulls sorted out and talk to the old lady.”

  I sat up fully and my head swam from the smelling salts, or something else. Felix sat next to me on the couch and looked from me to Maria, and then back again.

  “Quite a little party you threw in here, Kaeri,” he said, pleasantly enough.

  I took my hands away from my head and grabbed him by his immaculate lapels. “Where in the cold and penniless hell were you?”

  His smile broadened. “Right where I needed to be, darling.”

  “You could have come in when Maria and Wolf tried to shoot each other. You had to have heard that.” Felix tilted his head left and right, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, his maddening smile inviting me to smash his nose with my forehead. “You didn’t even come in when,” I swallowed to avoid saying their names. “When those gangsters walked in.”

  “To be fair, Kaeri, I don’t need to explain myself. I’m be debriefing you, remember?” He looked down at where my knuckles were turning white against his collar. “Would you mind terribly?”

  I shoved him backwards and sat. I folded my hands in my lap.

  “Thank you. Now, I should ask Miss Cantabile to leave, but you are clearly distraught,” he said, raising his eyebrows a millimeter or two. “So if it comforts you to have her here, I can permit it.”

  I nodded, knowing that I was playing into his hands and hating him for it. From where she knelt, Maria saw it too. She clenched her jaw and stared at Felix for a moment before inching closer to me. Her knees pressed against my left foot, and she laid a hand atop mine.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You mentioned ‘those gangsters.’ Were you acquainted with them?”