by Sean M Locke
“But if you’re dead, and Maria’s dead, and Josef’s standing there with just one bullet in his gun, what do you think will happen? They’re gonna give him the bum’s rush. He’ll kill one or two of them, but he’ll get swamped and will probably die.
“See, the Rademakers want that repeating carbine your father invented. It’s sitting just there.” I tilted my head at the violin case without breaking eye contact with Henriette. “They’ll take it, they’ll figure out how to make more of them, and they’ll rule the Lower Terrace. All three Cantabile children will lie dead in a muddy amusement park on Grannis Island, and filthy criminals will possess your father’s invention. They’ll drag your name through the dirt.
“But maybe none of that matters to you. Maybe you’re going to shoot me anyway. You’ll put a bullet through my brain, and you’ll get your revenge on me for putting you in Rademaker hands for a few hours. If that’s the most important thing to you right now, then kill me quick before the tension does my heart in.”
Henriette’s upper lip was pulled up from bottled rage, and I saw the barest hint of a quiver in the barrel of her gun. “You don’t know what’s important to me.”
“Oh, I think I do.” I let my hands drop, and then I pointed at Kasper, still whimpering and moaning on the ground next to the corn dog cart. “I think he’s important to you, and he’s hurt right now.”
Henriette looked at Kasper for what might have been the first time that night and let out a little cry of her own. She rushed over to him and knelt, planting her knees in the mud and blood without a care. Henriette bent her head over him and patted his hair and said quiet, comforting things into his ear.
Josef bared his teeth at the sight of it and took a step toward them, but didn’t advance. Maria stood to my right, kept her distance. I looked up into the unreadable coolness of her face. If she felt anything about what I’d done to her sister, she didn’t show it. For now, she only had eyes for Josef.
“Kaeri,” Henriette croaked, eyes slick with tears, her feud with me forgotten, “what happened? Who did this to him?”
“Rademaker,” I lied, jerking my head toward Vedette and her little band, creeping slowly our way. “He was holding them off with the carbine, and they threw a bomb over here, and it exploded in his face.”
A half-drunk cop would see through that story in a minute, but Henriette wasn’t too keen on critical thinking just then. She leaned into Kasper, murmured something soft, and then stood up. Her revolver hung heavy in one hand. She drew a sword from somewhere I hadn’t noticed before.
Maria tensed, and Josef said, “Henriette, don’t,” but that wasn’t going to stop her. The younger Cantabile sister threw a wild look over her shoulder at Josef before vaulting the corn dog cart, her gun in front of her and looking for someone to kill. I heard her fire two shots, and then it was just the sound of cold steel clashing on whatever weapons Rademaker had at hand. I wanted to look. I wanted to see Henriette cut down Vedette Sforza. But me looking at it wouldn’t change the outcome, and anyway Josef was looking at me with murder on his face.
Maria must have seen it, too. From the corner of my eye, I saw her body shift subtly, ready to leap into action in one direction or another.
I ached to close the distance between us, to hold her hand. I had no idea whether she hated me for what I did to Henriette, but I figured I deserved it. Either way, standing closer to Maria was a bad move. Josef had two shells in that gun, and he’d be able to ventilate both of us. Maybe that’s why she’s way over there, some optimistic part of me piped up. She’s cutting off Josef’s options.
His glare could have burned holes in my forehead. “Henriette wanted your life, but thanks to you, she is currently distracted. I’m sure she will forgive me if I indulge myself now.”
I tilted my head at him. “Why are you killing me, again? This would have all gone wrong even if I was never here. Henriette and her debts, Kasper and the gun, and your ham-fisted attempt at fixing things by using Rademaker and Piet.” I smiled inwardly at his indignant gasp; throwing insults wasn’t terribly smart, but they certainly hit home. “The only people who know what kind of business you’re in right now are either dead, dying, or just don’t matter anymore. The only exception is Piet, and he’s creeping around here somewhere. If you were smart, you’d be hunting him down, not me.”
“He will be next, I assure you.”
“You’ll just kill everyone, is that it? And you think you’ll go back to Bacigalupi Tower tomorrow, and the country manor after summer is over, and everything will be fine? You’ll be the same Josef, Maria will continue to be meek and quiet, and Henriette will go back to being just a mischievous little brat? None of it’s going to be right, no matter who you kill or how many.
“And you don’t need to kill me, Josef. I don’t want your family’s name trashed. I want to see that Maria is happy and prosperous. If that means she’s gotta go away awhile and help you fix things back home,” I said, sliding a look over to Maria, “then that’s all right. So long as she’s happy and her family is set right.”
“Your very existence is an affront to my family,” Josef hissed at me, and he raised his pistol.
His pistol barked and flashed, but I didn’t see it. The world tilted crazily to the right as Maria shoved me with all of her weight and followed me down, and then I was skidding through the muck for a meter or more. Atop me, I heard Maria hiss in pain and she said a half dozen impressively unprintable words.
“Gods. Gods, Maria, are you hit?” I tried to look everywhere on her, but I could only see her face.
“Just a scratch, a graze.” Maria grimaced, her small teeth gleaming white and even. She struggled to get up, tangled as she was with me. Her eyes didn’t, couldn’t settle on my face. “I’m going to kill him.”
“You’re not going to kill him.”
“No, I suppose I won’t.” She kept her body interposed between Josef and me, a grim reminder of the safe house the night before. “Don’t waste time; get that violin case and escape. Run!”
She stood then, tall and fierce like the statue of a goddess, a dark red stain coursing down the sleeve of her gun arm, her other hand reaching for the saber at her hip. I scrabbled backward like some rat caught in a cellar, helpless and useless.
I got a meter or so away from her, watching her advance on her brother, and my fingers touched the butt of Hendrik’s gun, lying in the mud. The nameless Rademaker soldat’s hand was still holding it, so I pried the fingers off as I watched Maria and Josef circle each other.
A gunshot snapped the air around me, making me gasp despite myself. I only caught the tail end of what happened. Maria did some kind of gorgeous, desperate, pinwheeling thing to avoid the bullet. Josef took advantage of her wild pirouette and pierced her thigh with his rapier. She cried out, stumbled, but managed to stay on her feet well enough to parry his cut-stamp-cut. They locked swords, leaning into each other and struggling.
Hendrik’s pistol quaked in my hand. Maybe I was a “miracle of marksmanship” like Maria said, but then again, maybe I wasn’t. Nerves jangled and sang in my head and all down my arms, and I watched the spreading dark red stain soak Maria’s legging. The great muscle of her leg shook as she strained against her brother. I fought to keep the barrel steady, but it was a starving, half-frozen alley cat, quaking in my hands.
I raged at myself for a coward. To just pull the trigger.
I knew I wouldn’t do it. If I accidentally killed Maria, I might as well turn the gun on myself. If I killed Josef, Maria would hate me forever, and that was just the same as eating a bullet. If I missed them both, the noise would distract Maria in the worst way and she’d get run through. My hands and the gun fell into my lap.
Above the grunts and hisses of their grappling, I heard a mechanical click, the kind Maria’s gun made when she pulled the trigger. She held it at her hip, inches away from Josef’s belly. The end of the barrel was blackened from firing the bad ammunition. If she’d been firing the right kind
of cartridges, if I could have given her the right ammunition, Josef would have a ragged hole in his back right now.
Maria cursed and chopped the grip of the pistol up into Josef’s floating ribs once, twice. He grunted and twisted in place, driving his knee into the wound in Maria’s thigh. They separated with gasps of effort and pain and managed to give each other little slashes as they disengaged. Josef got a cut across the cheek, which might give him a dashing scar if he lived through the night. Maria got a cut across the forehead, and some of her blue-black locks fluttered down in front of her eyes.
Shallow cuts to the head always looked worse than they were. Maria wouldn’t bleed out, but the sheet of blood in her eyes would probably get her killed from the blow she couldn’t see. I struggled to my feet and readied myself to charge Josef with my empty hands.
Maria had bought this time for me. She’d meant for me to run away. But I’d be damned if I was going to let her die on Josef’s blade just so I could save my own sorry skin.
I got one step in before an invisible hand knocked me on my ass again. Maria and Josef both covered their faces with their arms, and then they were out of sight entirely as the brutal steel bulk of Mantikor put itself between me and them. Over the whirring of magnets and the creaking of control rods and wires, I heard a single gunshot, and a body hitting the ground.
I stood again and ran around the hovering bulk of Wolfgang’s ornithopter to Maria’s side, relieved beyond accounting that she was still standing up. Her skin was pale and spotty from blood loss, and she wavered on her feet. I draped her gun arm over my shoulder and tucked my shoulder under her armpit. I brushed my thumb across her brow and looked a question at her. She only nodded, panting and shaking in my grasp. A quick glance showed me Josef laid out flat on his back, a tiny wisp of smoke at his chest.
“Kaeri,” Wolfgang called, a business-like urgency in his voice. He still straddled his ornithopter. “You all right?”
“Good enough,” I called back over the ornithopter’s noise. “Late to the party, aren’t you?”
“You try commandeering an Air Corps frigate and see how long it takes.”
I didn’t see the huge airship or any of its skiffs or fighters, but that didn’t really matter just then. I had to trust that when Wolfgang brought the cavalry, he really brought the cavalry.
“You gotta get her out of here, get her and this damned carbine to Bacigalupi Tower,” I said. “Can you do that?”
He looked at Maria and pressed his lips tight. I couldn’t see his eyes on account of the goggles, but maybe I didn’t want to, either. Finally he nodded and shot a quick look at the leather seat behind him.
I made a rough pressure bandage for her leg out of the sleeve of my jacket. We hobbled to the ornithopter, and I helped her mount it She didn’t fight me when I stowed her weapons in the panniers. I whispered nice things to her, told her she was safe, that she’d be going home, that she got what she came for. That everything would be all right.
After she settled into the seat, she rested her head on Wolfgang’s back. Her eyes, glassy with pain and shock, met mine for just a moment. Something in me surged with hope, and immediately something else tamped it down. The night wasn’t over yet.
“Don’t screw me, Wolfje,” I said. “Get her to her family.”
“You’ll owe me.”
I bared my teeth. “I know. I don’t care. You want me to stool-pigeon for you after this—”
“No, Kaeri. I mean you’ll owe me a new jacket and getting this ‘thopter cleaned and detailed. Your girl is bleeding all over the place.”
I smiled. Possibly the first warm smile I’d given him in a while.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Chapter 19
Before he left, Wolfje gave me a flare gun and said to find someplace to hole up, wait ten minutes, and then send up a signal. The frigate would have air crew on the lookout and would send skiffs full of Marines to arrest anyone who would surrender and mop up anyone who would not. They knew to regard me and a few others as friendly, though Wolfje wasn’t too specific about who that was.
I wanted to thank him for coming to Maria’s rescue, for arranging all the troops and hardware to come pull our teakettles from the fire, but I didn’t. Wolfgang had his own reasons for doing things. It just so happened that what he wanted and what I wanted clicked into place, and Maria was going to be safe.
I peeked over the corn dog cart and saw Henriette stomping back toward me, her sword broken, her revolver holstered, and blood on her face and hands. From the way she was walking, none of it was hers. Bodies lay in her wake, all ajumble and cooling. She fixed empty eyes on me, and I knew there wasn’t any hiding from her. I stood tall and flexed my hands around Hendrik’s pistol in one hand and the flare gun in the other.
“You can put those away, Kaeri,” she said, her voice hollow and soft, almost childlike. “I’ve had enough of fighting for today.”
“Okay,” I said, but I kept my hands full. “Did . . . did you get her?”
“No. She got away. It was just the two of us because all the others died or ran off. Then that ornithopter came in low, and the wind knocked us both over. I think I hit my head on something, and when I came to, Vedette was running away.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Next time. Next time I’ll get her good.” Henriette looked around like something was missing. “Did they take Maria away?”
I licked my lips. “Yes. She got hurt, so they took her away. But Kasper is still here.” I inclined my head toward him; he was lying in a ball, now, crying softly. “He was asking for you. Maybe you should . . .”
“Yes. Of course, my poor Kasper.” She dropped her useless sword and turned to Kasper. When she knelt and cradled his head in her lap, she moved with a dreamlike slowness. I wanted to get away quick and quiet, and I still had a while before I could signal the heirlooms. Henriette suddenly looked up at me. “How did my brother do?”
I gestured lamely over my shoulder. “He . . . died, too. Maria didn’t do it. The police got him. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, tilting her head. “Josef isn’t dead.”
“Honey, I’m sorry.” Pity for poor, crazy Henriette snuck up on me from somewhere. I didn’t like how my voice got soft and sympathetic, but it happened anyway. “I saw him take a pill to the heart, and he fell down dead.”
“But I can see him. He’s just fine.” Henriette was looking past me now, and I couldn’t help but turn around. Josef was getting up, blinking and groaning, but the hole in his chest didn’t look all that bad after all. I must have blubbered something, because Henriette answered me. “He’s such a rogue, isn’t he? You’re not supposed to wear madill hide under your clothes, but he’ll do it sometimes. Cheeky.”
Josef wasn’t bothered with any of the fine legalities of his sartorial choices. Not now, not even with one mother of a bruise on his chest. He got to his feet unsteadily and coughed up a gobbet of blood. He raised his pistol and started to say something.
If life was a movie or a pulp novel, this would be the part where I’d raise Hendrik’s pistol in turn. We’d have words and then shoot at each other. The wounded villain versus the plucky heroine. The deadly marksman versus the rank novice.
I was no plucky heroine. I dropped the pistol and bolted.
I ran a serpentine path, not convinced it would matter. Would Josef shoot a fleeing woman? Did that fit in his twisted sense of honor and chivalry? My skin itched between my shoulder blades, like it was waiting for one of those oversized hunting rounds to come scratch it. I ignored it and snatched up a closed violin case as I ran.
It would take time for Josef to get up and running after the knock he took, but I wasn’t running too good, either. I was bruised and sore, and my body was sick with terror, and I hated everything I was doing tonight. Maria hurt, Felix hurt, Hendrik dead, Donatella betrayed. Everything in my life scattered like a kicked-over apple cart. On top of all that, something pinched and ached in my
foot, like I’d gotten something stuck in my shoe.
It was always something.
The great spindly mass of the Ferro wheel loomed in front of me, still turning at a leisurely pace. To the right wandered a pack of either Rademaker or Lange gangsters still spoiling for a fight; to the left was the air gun shooting gallery, and I didn’t want to get caught in there. Josef might have gotten his gun sorted out, and the irony of dying inside a shooting gallery was too much to bear.
I thanked the absent Ferro wheel attendants for leaving the thing running and jumped aboard the next open-air gondola to sweep by. The wheel creaked and groaned, and my gondola swept up above the remaining wisps from Pino’s smoke bombs. I stood in the gondola, set the violin case on the bench seat in front of me, and looked over the edge, staring and hoping that Josef wouldn’t come up after me.
No such luck—I could see someone moving on the gondola behind mine. A light flashed, a gun barked, and the white-washed wooden railing of the gondola exploded into flinders. I sat down hard on the opposite bench, cursing and staring at my splinter-riddled hand; the world tipped and turned as the gondola swung on its hinge. The gondola’s floor didn’t have anything I wanted, just crushed, soggy popcorn and cigarette butts. My pockets felt empty, too. I still had my slingrod, so that was something.
That pinch in my shoe announced itself to me once more, and I had to get it out of there. I pulled off my shoe and tipped it over, and the empty casing of a 40-bore cartridge fell into my opened palm. Better if it was a full cartridge, and better if I’d had a gun to shoot it with. Then again, “better” would have been anywhere but Grannis Island that night. “Better” would have been fast asleep, back in my flop on Pioneer Boulevard.
I set my teeth together and stood, planting one foot on the shot-up railing, my slingshot loaded.
The other man was taking his time to aim, and thank the gods for that. My own shot was tricky, too, but gravity was on my side as our gondolas swung up through their arc.