Reciprocity

by Sean M Locke

  “You’re right, Kaeri. That is a bit of a jump,” Maria said, a frown pulling at her lips. “There are many awful plaid carpetbags in the city, surely.”

  “Surely. Maybe even a lot of awful plaid carpetbags that are a little torn, and a little stained with blood. But I don’t like this many coincidences lining up together. Do you?”

  Maria hugged her arms a little tighter around herself. A streetlight haloed behind her head, making her into a pretty picture. If I knew how to paint or anything like that, I’d have done it. As it was, I’d just have to remember it for as long as I could.

  “I don’t.” Maria started walking again, looking pale and shaken. I had to hurry to keep up with her long legs.

  “Josef wants to get Henriette and the carbine out of Lange hands, right? He would do anything to get them both home and safe.”

  “He would burn this city to the ground.” She sounded miserable. I wished I had better news for her. I didn’t want to take her down this road, but she had to know.

  “So he plays both families against each other. He traffics in aker toward Rademaker with Piet as his supplier, and then double-crosses them by feeding Lange enough information to keep them interested. Say he plans to eventually either sell out Piet to Lange, which ought to be a big enough prize to buy Henriette’s freedom and get them out of the Lower. But then your sister steals the carbine, and Kasper makes a huge racket with it, and the stakes get higher for Josef, right? Now he has to get Henriette and the carbine out somehow.”

  “He needs a bigger prize to offer to Hendrik. The ultimate source of the aker.” Her forehead creased in thought. “Do you suppose Hendrik would honor an agreement to forgive Henriette’s debts, and let Josef leave with the carbine?

  “Oh gods no. Whatever Josef has planned, it won’t work. Hendrik has been around too long to get played by someone like Josef.” In a nearby alleyway, a handful of limpets clustered together under their filthy rags, their unseeing eyes turned in every direction. ”

  I don’t know exactly what he would plan on doing with your brother and sister, or how he would plan to keep them in his pocket. But I do know that he isn’t doing anything to stop how cozy Kasper is getting with Henriette. You might have noticed that at the club, earlier.”

  She shook her head. “No, he cannot mean it. He cannot mean to ally his family with mine by marriage. He wouldn’t. Would he?”

  I pulled at my earlobe and thought about it. “It’s unorthodox, but it makes sense. If he could weasel his way into an upper-crust marriage, he could get a foothold in the Middle Terrace and start peddling his business to the nobility. It would give us a leg up against Rademaker, that’s for sure.”

  “Us?” she said, raising an eyebrow at me.

  I clucked my tongue. “Sorry. Habits die hard. Anyway, it would be one sure way to keep two nobles and a fancy new gun in his back pocket. Your brother may not be too familiar with how business works in these circles, but once Lange or Rademaker decide they want you, they will aim to keep you by any means they can.”

  “You got away,” she reminded me.

  “I haven’t gotten away yet.”

  “Then I will help you get away.”

  I looked aside at her to see if she was playing with me, but she stared straight ahead. Conviction set a small frown on her lips, and her eyebrows drew inward.

  Maybe she was serious, after all.

  * * *

  It was nearly two in the morning when we got to the place I kept on Pioneer. Maria was nearly dead on her feet, so I only apologized for the elevator not working and led her up the stairs to the third floor. Maria nodded and dragged herself up the stairs after me.

  She leaned against the wall and watched me through sleepy eyes while I pulled the bed out of the wall and straightened the sheets out. Any other night and I might get a little excited about that, but all I wanted was sleep.

  “What is it you said you kept this place for?”

  “I didn’t.” I fluffed up the flattened pillows, for all the good it would do. “I guess my break with Lange has been a long time coming. I started renting this dump out a couple months after Donatella had her stroke.”

  “Perhaps you always knew you’d have to leave Lange someday.”

  “I guess today’s the day. Uh, look,” I said, gesturing to the bed. “It’s ready. I’ve got some stuff in the wardrobe you can sleep in. Those clothes are wrecked.”

  A sleepy grin pulled at one side of her mouth. “There isn’t much room for anything but the bed, when it’s out of the wall like that. Is this the part where I am supposed to ask where you will sleep?” She made her eyes wide and innocent for me then, but I could have sworn her grin looked hungry.

  “Any other day, sister, and I would be feeding you chocolate and charming those glittery pants off you. But not tonight. How about I promise to keep my hands to myself, and we get some sleep?”

  She rifled through the wardrobe, and I couldn’t see her face.

  “Shall I also promise to keep my hands to myself?” she asked airily.

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to not sound startled. “Don’t play around like that. I’m delicate.”

  “Of course you are.” She turned with an old nightgown in one hand. “Might I have some privacy to change?”

  I nodded and made my way to the bathroom without tripping over any furniture or my own words. Off went my second-best suit, and I didn’t much care where things wound up. On went the oversized crew shirt that hung on the door hook. Fatigue made every movement slow, uncertain. The reflection in the mirror didn’t look too good either, not with the bloodshot eyes and hair going every which way. A couple double handfuls of tepid water splashed into my face didn’t make things much better. Twenty-six wasn’t old, but I felt damned old just then.

  Maybe two or three years ago I could have charmed a noble girl and taken her to bed. Maybe back then I could have kept her up until dawn, let her take me to breakfast, and then give the rest of the day a quarter effort while I recovered. The weight of the day, a single day, reminded me that there was zero sense in doing something like that now.

  Tomorrow wasn’t the kind of day where a quarter effort would do the trick. We’d meet with Wolfgang and Felix, cook up some kind of plan to get the carbine away from Lange, and avoid getting our noses shot off. On top of all that, Rademaker was bound to come after Lange with every gun blazing, and we had to avoid that too. It was all damned impossible, but we had to do it anyway.

  I heard a thump and a creak of bedsprings from the main room, and I was out the door before I realized what I was doing. My fists were out, and I was ready to clobber whoever was in my flop, but I stopped and lowered my hands. Maria was face down on the thin pillow, asleep within moments of collapsing on the bed. She was a good deal taller than me, so my old nightgown rode a little high on her thighs.

  I surprised myself by not stopping to admire the view. Instead, I pulled the sheets up to the middle of her back, and then settled into the armchair in the corner of the room. Maria was definitely used to nicer digs than these, in bigger beds than I had. Judging by the way she sprawled, she was also used to sleeping alone in those big beds. There wasn’t any way I was getting in there without someone getting the wrong idea.

  There might have been a smile on my face when I sat down in the armchair, propping my feet on a corner of the bed that didn’t have some part of Maria in it. I laid my baton across my lap, pulled my hat over my eyes, and fell asleep.

  Chapter 13

  The morning came quickly, and I couldn’t say I felt too rested. The stench of blood and gunpowder gave way to the smells of a stuffy apartment and a pair of unwashed bodies. The gunfire ringing in my ears had mostly disappeared, and all I heard were the Russos upstairs, arguing again, and Maria’s soft snoring. Dawn’s light smudged the walls through greasy windows.

  I rubbed the sand out of my eyes and sat forward in the lumpy chair. That dream. That dream of Prospera and the theater hadn’t haunted my nights in awh
ile. Hashing it all over again in my head at Donatella’s bedside probably put it front and center in my brain. Moping about a long-dead sweetheart and making friends with a bottle of gin sounded like a fine way to spend the day, but it would have to wait. First thing was first: a shower and a clean shirt, and then a pot of coffee with breakfast.

  The corner store had been open for a little while by the time I got down there, but I still had my pick of freshly baked broetchen, a little basket of blackberries, and a half dozen eggs. After a moment’s thought, I decided half a kilo of ham was worth the coin, and got that too. Saving a guilder only mattered if you lived to spend it later.

  While I waited for the man to cut and wrap the meat, I felt eyes on me. I wasn’t going to get anywhere staring at the man with the slicing machine, so I turned in place, casual-like, as if I was looking for something I’d forgotten.

  A mook in a rumpled brown suit was sitting at the sandwich counter, a newspaper open in front of him, but his eyes weren’t reading. Another guy that could have been his twin was leaning against the door frame, his ankles crossed in front of him. He pulled his hat brim low over his eyes and shook a cigarette out of the packet. The dame standing behind me in line with the shopping basket over one forearm darted her eyes away from me and back to the pulp romance she was reading. She didn’t have anything in there but a chocolate bar and a packet of dried shrimp crisps. Not the strangest breakfast I’d ever seen, but it was pretty close.

  When the man was done, I paid up and hustled out of there. I felt or imagined their eyes on me as I left. None of them were Langes I’d ever met, and I didn’t recognize enough Rademakers to be sure. Or maybe they were cops in plain clothes. Or private dicks, hired by persons unknown. A girl could go batty, thinking everyone was out to get her.

  I got upstairs and started the percolator, but Maria didn’t really stir until the hubcap of ham started to sizzled on the pan. She made some waking-up noises that sounded only a little like a basket of kittens getting up from a nap. I worked my tongue around the insides of my cheeks to keep from smiling too much.

  “Good morning, Kaeri,” she said, slow and sleepy. “What magic are you performing?”

  “Just breakfast. You sleep okay?”

  “Tolerably well, thank you, though I could stand for another couple hours of it.” Maria yawned. “I thought we were meeting your brother and Felix for breakfast?”

  “Brunch, Felix said. Dunno about you, but I’m hungry now, and I doubt Wolfgang is gonna be too generous with his expense account.”

  “Ah, Kaeri, listen,” she said, and I was suddenly glad to be facing away from her. “I was very tired last night, and I may have said some things I shouldn’t have.”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid,” I said. “There’s some clothes in the wardrobe that might fit you okay, and if you hurry there’ll still be hot water for the shower.”

  “Yes,” she said, not too loud. “Of course.”

  After half a minute of small noises behind me, she glided away. As soon as the water started up, I regretted sending her off. Chit-chat with Maria might have been a little awkward, but it was a damn sight better than replaying last night’s dream in my head, and wondering why my brain decided to dredge that all up. Was it supposed to mean something? Was my brain hinting about things going wrong, and wrong in a big way?

  I stabbed the pork harder than I needed to and flipped it over. It sizzled and popped in its own fat.

  * * *

  We finished breakfast without too much chatting, and started legging it to Drie Appels. We weren’t in a very big rush, and it was a pretty day out, so walking there didn’t seem like a terrible idea, at the time.

  A girl ran into us, not older than ten, a bog standard urchin with dirt on her cheeks. I guess she tried to squeeze into the space between Maria and me, but misjudged how close we were walking. She bounced backwards a pace and fell on her backside, her skirts spilling out everywhere. Wide brown eyes darted back and forth between us in uncomprehending fright. She had the wide cheeks and freckles and ruddy curls of a Santuar barbarian, but her skin was as olive as any Leemte native. Her dress had small rips everywhere, and blood showed in places. Her chin sported what looked like a nasty scrape and a bruise, but tiny shards of glass in her skin told me a different story.

  The girl looked over her shoulder with a gasp; a gang of four other kids had caught up with her. The biggest one was not too much smaller than me and had a slingshot out—a fancy one with a folding brace for the forearm. He reached into a pouch at his belt, loaded something shiny in the slingshot, and aimed at the girl.

  The girl scrabbled to her feet, turned her back to us, and held a hand out at the boy and called for him to stop.

  Maria bent her head down to mine and said, “Does this not look a little familiar? She even looks like you must have, as a little girl.”

  “Aren’t you funny?”

  “Shouldn’t we put a stop to it?”

  “Well,” I replied, and gestured to the slingshot the girl had tucked into her sash, and the pouch at her hip. “She might —”

  The girl shrieked and ducked as the bully boy loosed his projectile, and the hollow glass marble shattered on my hip. Fresh little rips appeared on my third-best suit jacket.

  “Watch where you’re shooting, little beggar,” I called out.

  “Don’t stand where I’m shooting, you Santuar cow,” he yelled back. His cronies crowed and slapped his back.

  The girl hurried to me and said, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and brushed her hands at the spot where the glass ball hit me.

  “Don’t be sorry, girl, just watch it.”

  The boy’s next glass ball shattered against the back of the urchin’s head. She groaned and stumbled into me as the little gang erupted into jeers and cheers. Maria touched the back of the girl’s head, and her fingers came away bloody. Her eyes went wide and she looked at me.

  “Kaeri, this cannot stand.”

  The girl pushed away from me and turned in a clumsy half circle to face her attackers again. One hand groped for the slingshot at her back, and she said a few spectacularly unprintable things at them. Hers was a crude model—not much more than a split stick and a rubber band. Homemade, but decent for all that. The girl tottered on her feet, and I thought she might fall again, but she had the slingshot out all the same.

  The boy loosed again, and the glass ball exploded on the back of her hand in a spray of glass and blood. She screamed and fell to her knees.

  Maria surged next to me, and I had a feeling she would pistol-whip every one of those brats. I laid a hand on her wrist and shook my head at her, and then knelt next to the girl. She was on her knees and bleeding and tears streamed down her face, but her teeth were out and she was staring daggers at the little gang. I took a handful of glass projectiles out of her pouch before standing.

  “So,” I said, as reasonably as I could. “You like shooting at little girls with slingshots? Makes you feel like a tough guy?”

  “What’s it to you?” he squeaked, thrusting his chin at me.

  I made a show of studying him through the little glass ball. Ten, maybe eleven grams, I decided, and him not more than five meters away. Easy money.

  “Maybe you want to try for me? I’m more your size.” I shook the baton out of my sleeve and hit the button that sprung the slingshot forks and rubber band.

  He sneered at me and flexed a pudgy hand near the pouch on his belt, but I saw fear flicker in his eyes. I blew a bit of imaginary dust off my glass ball and waited. The boy made his move.

  Too slow by half.

  I heard the creaking of wood, the stretching of the rubber band. He loosed his bullet, and I let mine go too. A measurable fraction of a second later, glass snapped and a glittering of fragments and dust puffed in the space between us.

  I allowed myself a little smirk at the face those boys made, and then reloaded.

  The fat one recovered quickly and snap-shot another glass ball at me, but I was read
y for him. Glass exploded between us again.

  Maria murmured something—it might have been my name or something else, but just then I only had eyes for the fat kid and his slingshot.

  “You nearly had me that time, my son.” I smiled at him. “Do you want to try again?”

  He snarled, showing crooked yellow teeth. Pointing the forks of his slingshot at me, he said, “Get her, boys!”

  For a split second I thought I was having deja vu. One idiot bully sending his boys to clobber me. This time, though, the other boys didn’t move, didn’t go for the slingshots at their belts. One of them nudged the fat one with his elbow. “You’re nuts, man. Did you see what she just did?”

  “Idiot,” he hissed back. “She can’t shoot everyone’s balls down.”

  “Are you quite certain?” Maria said primly. Fabric rustled, and she was either crossing her arms and smirking, or tugging her borrowed jacket open to pull her piece. The kids didn’t run screaming, so I guessed it wasn’t that.

  The smart one slapped the fat one on the shoulder and jerked his chin in my direction. The fat one’s eyes got big for a moment, and then he gave me an evil smile. He turned on his heel and stalked off, giving us the universal rude gesture over his shoulder as he went. The other boys followed.

  I let out a breath, and felt myself smile.

  “Kaeri,” Maria said, breathless.

  “I know,” I said, a grin pulling at my face. “Pretty impressive, huh?”

  “The word you are looking for is impossible.”

  “Oh, quit buttering my toast.” I folded the slingrod up and stuffed it back into my sleeve.

  Her eyes were wide with something like awe. “No, Kaeri. That was a . . . a bloody miracle of marksmanship.”

  I stopped smiling and turned to face the little girl. “Yeah, well.”

  “No, truly. If you were to ever earn your way into the peerage, you could —”