by Sean M Locke
Hendrik picked up the pistol again and flicked the barrel toward Milan. I’d nearly forgotten about him, but after that moment I wouldn’t ever forget him again.
“Boss, no. No, don’t —”
The revolver roared and flashed, and I threw my hands up to protect my hearing. It was too late, of course; needles of pain stung in my ears, and a pillow of hot gases warmed my skin. I heard the meaty smack of a bullet hitting flesh, and then of a body hitting the cheap rugs under my feet.
Somehow I kept my eyes open, though they stung fierce. I looked down at poor Milan, at the neat hole in his chest, at the glassy look of surprise on his face. Thank the gods he landed on his back; the exit wound would be the size of a man’s fist, bloody and ragged.
My brandy glass rolled and touched Milan on the leg. Clumsy me, I’d dropped the damned thing, and now I’d stained Hendrik’s carpet with brandy. I took a breath and nearly coughed on the acrid stink of gunpowder and butcher shop and outhouse, and I thought I ought to open a window, but then I thought Hendrik wouldn’t like me to move from that spot, because I was supposed to be paying attention to a lesson. What was the lesson? What —?
The doors banged open, and someone was there with a gun. One of the secretaries. Whoever stood there didn’t say anything. Hendrik did all the talking, and it was fast and sure, the way a leader ought to be. Strong and gentle hands took me by the shoulders and moved me away from Milan and into the anteroom. And then I saw one secretary called the other one in because it was safe and they were rolling Milan up in the cheap rug and Hendrik was telling me something.
I looked at him but my eyes were stinging and I couldn’t see him too good. Whatever it was, he didn’t repeat it, and then he turned away. I watched him wind up his phonograph again. He started writing something in a ledger, so I knew it was time for me to go.
* * *
Time passed. Someone tapped my shoulder and said something, and I nearly crushed the sandwich I held. I blinked, set it down on the plate, and brushed the crumbs from my hand with a napkin. The clink of silverware on plates and the scrape of a chair on the floor brought me back to the bar in the Exedra Arms.
“Well?” said a girl’s voice. She said it like she was used to people answering her.
I looked over at Henriette in a fashionable green and black number with a knee length skirt. She had taken the stool next to mine, and was leaning backward, elbows resting against the bar, the long line of her bodice on display for anyone to gawk at. So gawk I did; I made a show of taking her in from the beads on her hat to the rhinestones on her slippers and back again.
A bite of pastrami and mozzarella and grilled onions sat in my mouth. I had thought I’d be sick from that business upstairs, but when I got a noseful of what the kitchen was doing for lunch, my stomach must have decided otherwise. I took a swallow of wine before answering her. “Beg pardon, my lady?”
Henriette sighed and turned to face me fully. “I said, what on earth is all the hubbub?”
“Hubbub?”
“Are you thick? I heard a gunshot from upstairs somewhere, and the hotel is all in an uproar, or didn’t you notice? Kasper ran off, Josef has been with Hendrik since lunch, and no one will tell me anything.”
I looked around the restaurant, and didn’t see too many soldaten around. Those present talked in low tones with their heads together, or scowled at the affiliat fretting away at the edges. The bartender was dutifully drying a wine glass, but he was looking at us out of the side of his eyes.
I took another bite of my sandwich and talked around it. “I don’t know if I’d call it an uproar.”
“But I heard a gun go off! And now the place is practically deserted, and I saw you come out of the elevator a few minutes ago, looking pale as a ghost. You must have seen what happened.”
I picked up my glass again and put my nose in it, the way I imagined Maria would. “This is one of yours, you know. Cantabile ‘33, Sangue Di Giuda. What do you think of it?”
Henriette blinked rapidly. “What?”
“I guess you would have been seven or eight years old when this got bottled.” Another sip; it was bitter and sweet at the same time. I wasn’t any kind of expert on wines, but maybe I could learn to be. “I bet it was fun, smashing the grapes in the big tub and everything.”
She shook her head again. “You’re joking. We have people for that.”
“All right.”
“Now,” she said, composing herself and straightening her back. “Give me the news.”
I raised a finger at the bartender. “Eduardo, can I get some mustard over here?”
She pulled my wrist down and gave it a good squeeze. Her sword callus ground against my skin, and her grip was no joke at all. “Stop being impossible.”
I smiled at her and let my eyes go all sleepy. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know, milady. And maybe you didn’t hear, but the Boss and Kasper don’t exactly love me. I don’t drink brandy with them every day and hear their intimate thoughts.”
Henriette let me go and made a growling noise in her throat. “Honestly. You are perfectly useless.”
“Maybe not entirely. I know a thing or two about distractions.”
She gave me the side-eye and released my wrist. “Distractions?”
“Yep. When the whole house is in an uproar, like you say, I like to find somewhere else to be. Someplace with a different kind of excitement.” I made a show of looking around to make sure no one was listening. “If you’re game, I might show you.”
Ugly little lights glittered in her eyes. “What do you have in mind?”
“I heard about some fights down in the Gristle. Mostly bare-knuckle boxing, but sometimes there’s dog fights and caiman-baiting.” I shrugged. “I was thinking about getting out of here.”
She slapped her palm on the bar and grinned like a carnosaur. “That sounds like my kind of fun.”
“I don’t know. The stakes are pretty small for someone of your . . .” I made a vague gesture at her clothes and face. “. . . means. And the place will be full of tough guys. Completely unsuitable for a lady.”
“I like a lively crowd.”
It seemed impossible that this girl and Maria grew up in the same house. Then again, a trade regulator and a career criminal were once siblings under the same roof, a long time ago. I rubbed my thumb along my jawline and looked at her sideways.
“I couldn’t guarantee your safety.”
“I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do that,” she said with a silvery laugh, and I bit the side of my tongue to keep from wincing at the sound. “Oh, do wait for me. I will just need to change into something more sporting.”
“All right, if you say so,” I murmured behind my sandwich. “Meet me round back. No sense raising eyebrows.”
“Nonsense,” she replied, thrusting her chin at me. That gesture I recognized. “We will leave by the front door.”
“What, do you want Kasper or your brother to know you just wandered off with me?”
A small smile parted her lips. “By all means.”
I’d finished my lunch and had another glass of the Cantabile red for dessert by the time Henriette came back down. She’d changed into some kind of hunter’s getup made mostly out of carmine velvet. Her black felt hat had a red ribbon around the crown, and the precisely tailored red jacket was trimmed in black at the cuffs and collar. A froth of white lace at her throat drew the eye, just as it was supposed to. The red piping on her black trousers ended at mid-calf, where it disappeared into a pair of stunning black boots with steel buckles. Her sword and pistol hung from a black leather belt resplendent in silver studs; the belt alone could have kept me in wine and sandwiches for a month, easy.
Henriette held another sheathed sword and belt in one hand; I couldn’t guess what that was for.
I stood and let her see my eyes get bigger at the sight of her, but I stopped just short of whistling. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a fantastic outfit, if I said she didn’t look good
in it. I’d feel damned good about wearing something like that, if I had the scratch for it. Damn shame that the girl wearing it was such a terrible human being.
I was surprised to notice that no part of me wanted her. The girl was poison, and nothing but.
I smiled at her and offered my arm, since it seemed like the thing to do. She gave me an amused smirk and handed me the sword instead. The intricately wired brass basket hilt looked like something I’d seen before.
“Put this on first.”
“All right. Can I ask why?”
“You said it was a rough crowd. My bodyguard should be armed, should she not?”
I strapped it on, and saw a spot where the leather was worn and frayed from the buckle. Whoever wore this thing had a slimmer waist than mine. I let my thumb linger on that worn spot and ground my teeth. “Didn’t I tell you I couldn’t look after you?”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said airily. “It’ll make me feel better if you have that, all the same. Besides, I’ve got a funny story about that sword; I’ll tell you on the way.”
I offered my arm again, and fought down the wine and meat that wanted to come back up.
“I can’t wait. Shall we?”
Chapter 15
The Gristle was the major meatpacking district in the Lower Terrace, filled with slaughterhouses and packing plants, its streets all threaded with rail lines to move squalling, stamping animals in and processed meat out. The coppery tang of constant slaughter hung thick in the air with the afternoon heat.
I paid the driver and helped Henriette out of the cab. She was still chattering away about something, but I wasn’t listening too good. Mostly I was giving the alleys and the people a once-over. I ignored anyone who looked like they were actively working, manhandling cattle into chutes or hauling crates of squawking chickens and domesticated pedpenna lizards. Anyone with their head up, looking a little too alert was bound to be trouble. Out of long habit, I glanced up at the police aerostats, but they were few and far between in the Gristle.
Henriette acted like we were on a stroll through the park, on our way to play croquet or tenpins with her posh friends. She looked a little pale, and her grip on my forearm was tight, but she had her shoulders back and a cheery smile on her face.
I let go of her and put an arm’s distance between us. When she stopped talking and looked a question at me, I said, “Just in case you or I need to draw, milady. I don’t want your sword to get fouled up because I’m too close to you.”
“Ah. That’s sensible. Oh, speaking of swords, I meant to tell you about the one I gave you.” She tittered behind her hand. “Do you know where I got it?”
I could have guessed but just shook my head. I knew something nasty would come out of my mouth if I opened it.
“That sword actually belongs to my sister. Well, it was my father’s sword from his cavalry days, but he gave it to her as a birthday present when she turned sixteen. I didn’t want it anyway,” she said, waving her hand dismissively. “Boring old thing, hardly any filigree to speak of, and not a single gemstone anywhere. But then I found out that she was in town, looking to drag me and Josef back to Bacigalupi Tower. I mean, just because she won’t have any fun with you dashing rogues doesn’t mean she can take us away, right?”
“Right.” My jaw hurt from grinding my teeth.
“Anyway, I don’t like to talk about her much, because she is such a stick-in-the-mud and has many other undesirable qualities I won’t speak of.”
My forehead prickled with sweat, and the heat on the back of my neck had little to do with the muggy afternoon. “What’d she say about you taking her sword?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know. I got a couple of Kasper’s boys to get it for me from this horrifically pedestrian hotel where she was staying. It didn’t take much extra to have them wreck the room, too. I knew hotel staff would ask her to leave, and then she’d be too distracted to bother me about coming back home.” That ugly glint appeared in her eye again. “Aren’t I just terrible?”
“Simply awful.” I grinned back at her, wanting nothing more than to sock her in the eye. “Did your brother like your little trick?”
“I haven’t told him,” she said airily. “He would probably say something disapproving about how a lady should act. Like he would know.”
She was saying other things about her brother, things I should have listened to, but hot blood boiled in my ears and I couldn’t hear anything. If it hadn’t been for Henriette’s bitter mischief, Maria would have been able to stay at the Mercure. If she’d stayed at her hotel, those Rademaker mooks casing me at the corner store couldn’t have grabbed her, too. As much as I liked kicking myself for letting us get snatched, Maria’s vicious idiot sister also got to hold some blame.
“Well?” Henriette was saying.
“Sorry. Thought someone was peeping at us from an alley.”
“Are we nearly there?” she asked, consulting her silvered pocket watch.
I looked around and saw we were just across the street from a shuttered building called Abby’s Abattoir. No livestock squealed in the chutes, and no lorries waited outside to carry butchered meat away. Compared to the whine of steam saws and the lowing of cattle elsewhere, Abby’s was relatively quiet. A couple guys and one woman were having a smoke by the front door. “Here.”
“Oh,” she said, her fingers to her lips. “How positively gruesome. But where are the crowds?”
“Inside.”
One of the Rademakers saw us and nudged another; that one ducked inside the front door. The others went back to their smokes and stared at us.
“Shall we go in?” Henriette asked.
“No. We’ll wait for one of them to signal to us.” I took out my own cigarette case and offered one to her. So much for quitting. “It’s just how it works. That one will be letting someone know that we’re out here. You’re dressed like you’ve got money. It won’t be long.”
“I see.” She took a smoke, and I lit up for both of us. Her fingers only shook a little.
“My lady, can you be honest with me about something?”
“Oh, probably,” she said, and blew out a stream of smoke. “If it suits me to. What do you want to know?”
“Do you suppose you’ll marry Kasper? If he asked you, I mean.”
“Oh!” Henriette coughed against the tobacco smoke in her lungs, and her cheeks lit up like fireworks. “Gracious, Kaeri. I didn’t expect that question.”
“You don’t have to answer, of course.” I studied the ember on my cigarette, pointedly not looking at her. “I’m not asking to be nosy, for what it’s worth. He’s going to be the head of the family one day.”
“Ah, I see,” she said, a twinkle in her eye. “And you’re looking out for yourself.”
“Maybe just a little.” I let her see a small half-smile. “You would do the same, I think, if you were in my shoes.”
“I would pick much better shoes than those.” Henriette nudged me with her elbow.
She wanted to kid around, be at ease with someone who wasn’t Kasper. I allowed myself to sympathize, just a hair. Palling around with Kasper might be good fun if you were a certain kind of girl, but it had to get lonely sometimes. The other Langes, they kept her at a respectful arm’s length—maybe she was jolly, but she was also a noble, and she was Kasper’s sweetheart. She could have probably used a friend, the kind who would listen to her, the kind who wasn’t interested in leveraging her.
I couldn’t be that friend. Not for her, not in a thousand years, not after how she betrayed Maria. But I’d let her think so. And maybe I’d even feel rotten about it, but that was a problem for Future Kaeri.
“That’s fair,” I said, with as genuine a smile as I could muster. “Maybe I could stand to take a few fashion lessons from you. I’ll need to know what to wear on the big day.”
“And I’ll need someone to help me with the preparations. Not to mention what must come after.” Her face darkened in worry. “I will have to rely on som
eone’s wisdom, for a while.”
I remembered that she was all of eighteen, and had grown up sheltered, far away from the city and families like Lange and Rademaker. Her swagger and cruel streak couldn’t hide all the things she didn’t know, couldn’t hide her uncertainty.
It made what I had to do next a little harder. But not impossible.
“I reckon we can be friends, my lady, if you’re willing.”
“Please, Henriette will do.”
“Henriette, then,” I said, and offered my arm.
She took it, and was content to smoke in silence for a few minutes. That was fine by me. I could only take so much lying through my teeth before I’d get sick about it. The Rademaker mooks across the way didn’t say anything—just stared at us with impassive, disinterested postures. Sweat prickled on my lower back from the afternoon heat, and everything stuck to everything else.
“Do you suppose you’ll invite anyone from your family? I dunno about anyone else, but your brother seems to be in your corner.”
“Oh. Josef . . . he means well, and I do love him, but he loves to meddle. He knows what’s best for me, of course.”
“Big brothers are like that,” I replied with a knowing nod. “Let’s never introduce him to mine.”
“You know about that . . . that weapon I took from Father. The one Kas used at the warehouse.” Henriette looked at me sidelong, and I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to say much about that. “I had thought that Josef would try to fight Kas or Hendrik. Take it and me back to Bacigalupi Tower, by force. But I think he knows that wouldn’t work—even if Kas and Hendrik would duel him, the rest of Lange wouldn’t let us leave. They’d want vengeance.”
“That’s partially right. A duel would never happen. Josef would have to commit murder, and that’s not his style.”
“Certainly not.”
“And even if it was, he’d have to shoot his way through the rest of us. It wouldn’t work, and even if it did, it would look bad for your family.”
“An understatement, surely.” Henriette sighed, exasperated. “And so he tolerates my spending time with Kas, or he seems to. Mostly wants to keep the weapon a secret, which I suppose is sensible.”