“My hopes aren’t high,” she said, “but if you could knock up a performance like last night, that would be peachy. Some kind of whirlwind, random explosions—anything violent, really. I’m not fussy.”
His smile was rueful. “I can’t, Scarlett.”
“Surely you could send Calloway flying down the Fissure? She’s only small.”
He flinched. “Oh, I could never dare— No, it’s no good, Scarlett. I expended too much energy on the raft. She knows it, too. I’m nothing.”
“She’s not that confident about it, or else she’d have just got her men to grab you. Didn’t you see how they all kept their distance?”
He considered this, then shook his head. “I can’t, anyway. The energy’s—”
“Gone. Yeah, I know. I’m not surprised after last night. What you did there…” Scarlett exhaled sharply. It wasn’t the time. It was never the time. “OK, in which case bring me the biggest basket you can find. The one with the thickest chains.”
That perked him up; he was pleased to change the subject. Scarlett watched him as he went about his task: doing it without apparent unease, happily rummaging amongst the stores. That serenity flowing off him, soothing and irritating her in equal measure. What was it about Albert? He seemed to live almost entirely in the present, able to cut himself off from the unpleasantness of the past and the perils of even the most imminent future. Sure, it kept him in more or less constant danger of death, but it was not the least of his talents. Scarlett, on whom certain aspects of the past weighed heavily, found that she envied it greatly.
He picked out a basket, dragged it over to her. “Here we are.”
“This the best you could get?” She inspected the woven construction grimly. The basket was lightweight, probably made of dried seaweed or something, maybe only two feet wide. The chains were not especially thick. They were linked at the top to a small wheeled harness that could be attached to a rope. She unclipped the harness quickly, tried to fix it to the rope that hung from the central pulley wheel. “Gods, I don’t know how this thing locks in,” she growled. “Where’s this bit go?”
Albert was observing with polite interest. “It looks rather flimsy.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it. This clip…do you just loop it over and let it hang, or what?”
“Scarlett, I just heard a thud on the door. Low down.”
“What kind of thud?”
“The ominous kind. And there was some scraping and whispering.”
“Here comes the gelignite. No, it’s no good—this’ll have to do. Come here.”
“Certainly, Scarlett.”
“Step into the basket.”
Only now did the implication hit him. He gazed at her. “You’re not saying—”
“That’s right, I’m not. Because we haven’t time. Stand in it, opposite me. Hold the chains and brace. Just keep your head clear of the rope or it’ll be sliced off on the way down.”
“Ah, no…I don’t think I can do this. Where does the rope lead?”
“Not a clue. That’s part of the interest in all this. Take hold of me—come on.”
“There’s not enough room. Your boots are so big! I can barely get my feet in!”
“Just do it!”
He stood in the basket, grappled her about the waist. Scarlett gripped the chains. She stuck out a leg, shoved at the stonework. The basket scuffed a few inches closer to the edge. Below them was darkness, endless space. She heard a shout beyond the door. She pushed again. As the chains took the weight of the basket, the rope went suddenly taut. The base of the wheel stay jerked. A bolt popped loose. Albert wailed. The basket lurched down and forward, swung out above the Fissure—and halted.
Gritting her teeth, Scarlett gave a final frantic kick at the lip of stone.
The wheels began rolling down the rope.
The door blew into splinters. A fireball expanded into the room.
A red cloud passed out across the parapet, scorching the air, ballooning outward over their heads.
They were already below it, falling.
Whether or not the first part of the drop was completely vertical, Scarlett couldn’t tell. It was certainly as near as made no odds. She was too busy holding on to take a look, too busy hearing Albert scream directly in her ear, hearing the squealing of the wheels on the rope, feeling her stomach concertina inward to become a flatbread halfway up her throat. Albert’s hair was in her face, heat spat against her cheek; she knew that sparks were leaping from the harness as the wheels strained with the extra load, knew that the emptiness below was rising up to claim her….
All she could think about was clinging on to Albert and the chains.
There was a crash, a screech of tearing metal. Scarlett’s body swung up and sideways, weightless and free….
A judder, an impact, a sudden reversal. Then nothing.
Her stomach looped the loop, fell back to join her.
She had stopped moving.
She blinked her eyes open. She was wedged at forty-five degrees against a mangled pulley mechanism in a room on the far side of the Great Fissure. The basket had half split; wisps of smoke rose from the harness. Albert was on top of her, his weight settling gently like a bony blanket. He was still yelling wetly in her ear.
Scarlett slapped her hand over his mouth. She waited, took it away. The yell resumed at precisely the same volume.
“Will you stop that?”
He stopped abruptly: “Am I dead?”
“Not yet. There’s still that possibility if you deafen me again.”
A few bullets whined and cracked against the walls above them. Scarlett rolled herself out from under Albert, took the revolver from her belt. She opened it, checked, reloaded it with the last of her cartridges. She stepped to the edge and glanced up along the curve of the rope. A distant layer of smoke hung out across the void at the level of the parapet they had left. Two men were standing in it, firing frantically down. Scarlett raised the gun, killed them with as many shots; one tumbled forward into the Fissure, flashed past her, and was gone. She stalked back to where Albert was still struggling to extricate himself from the wreckage of the pulley.
“What’s with your trousers?”
“I don’t know. I think it was the sheer velocity.”
“Pull them up and let’s find the boats. We’ve got a chance now. I’ve dealt with all the operatives, and we must be miles ahead of her.”
* * *
—
In the event, they had dropped even farther through the tower than Scarlett guessed. Four flights of stairs were all that were needed to reach the level of the sea.
They came out in a hall that felt more like a cavern. The original walls had long been lost behind a buildup of rust, algae, and chemical deposits, giving them a soft, organic quality. Striplights hung from the ceiling between ranks of white-brown stalactites. The inhabitants of the isle had fled, but the hall was filled with gutting tables and stacked baskets of fish.
To the left was a pair of open doors with sunshine spilling through them. Looking out, Scarlett saw a tapering bridge stretching away across the water of the lagoon.
“Do we take that?” she asked.
Albert paused. “I don’t think so. That leads to their fishing grounds. It’s a dead end.”
“In that case, the boats must be moored”—her voice trailed off—“over there….”
At the far side of the hall, the floor tipped downward into shallow water. A pontoon supported by yellow floats led to a pair of closed metal doors set in a wall of welded iron that sliced the space in two. Beyond the wall, Scarlett could hear the washing of the waves: presumably, this was the boathouse of the island.
If so, they couldn’t reach it. Dr. Calloway was standing at the doors.
One side of her black coat was hanging loose, with a jag
ged tear where the harpoon had struck. That was her only concession to recent events; otherwise she looked no different from before. The bag over the shoulder, the velvet band across her hair, the pale, cool face—all were present and correct. Her arms hung loosely at her sides. She seemed entirely relaxed and not at all out of breath.
Scarlett heard Albert give a soft, sad sigh. It was a valid response, but not the one she favored. She raised the gun and shot the woman four times, head-on. This time she wasn’t distracted; this time she didn’t have the islanders blocking the line of fire.
She didn’t miss. But the bullets didn’t hit Dr. Calloway either. They struck an invisible obstacle in front of her and ricocheted away.
Scarlett stood staring, dumbfounded, openmouthed.
“It’s no good,” Albert said. His voice trailed off. “It’s never any good….”
It is death to go near her. She will laugh in your face as you spin and burn.
Dr. Calloway’s hands moved. Something struck Scarlett in the chest like a sledgehammer. The force was so strong, it lifted her off her feet, sent her thrashing away across the hall. Pain coursed through her as she flew; her eyes saw only brightness. She was already losing consciousness before she collided with something hard and landed on her back.
Pain. White light. Nothingness for an unknown time…
A touch. A presence. A small hand placed in hers.
Someone waiting in the light.
“Thomas?” she said.
She jerked awake. Her eyesight flowered. A chubby, straw-haired little girl was gazing down at her. She was looming very close, all breath and eyes and big pink cheeks, chewing methodically on a piece of bread and staring.
“Ettie?” Scarlett croaked. “Ettie…”
The hand was withdrawn; the child grinned stickily, stood up, and stepped away, revealing her grandfather crouched beyond.
“Shake a leg,” Joe said. “This isn’t the time for a doze.”
Scarlett blinked at him, struggled to rise. There was sharpness in her chest. Yes, the force of that blow: it had cracked a couple of ribs for sure. And all Calloway had done was—
“Might want to speed it up some,” the old man remarked. “Someone’s got to get after them, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me.”
Getting unsteadily to her feet, Scarlett discovered she had been lying across the remnants of a table, amid a pile of shattered wood and fish. Joe and Ettie stood beside her. Otherwise there was emptiness in the hall. A silence. The pontoon was deserted. The doors to the boathouse were as before. Not far off, her revolver lay shattered on the floor.
Scarlett looked toward the other exit, to its cone of sunlight. To the bridge.
Yes. Albert would want it to take place outside. He would have run that way.
“I happen to have your bag,” Joe said. “Don’t know if you’ve got anything usefully murderous tucked away in it? Bombs? Garroting wire? I expect a girl like you has a bit of everything.”
Scarlett rubbed the back of her neck. Her whole body ached; it felt like every bone had been jostled out of true. “You know, I think I’m just out of all those,” she said. She glanced aside at the broken gun. “Anyway, I’m not sure they’d do much good.” She looked at him, at the little girl. “Wait here,” she said. “I won’t be long.”
She limped out of the door into an explosion of brightness and clean air. Ahead of her, a wooden footbridge stretched away above the lagoon toward two tilted concrete towers.
So, then: Where was Albert?
There. At the far end of the bridge, a flight of steps wound round the side of the nearest tower. A tiny, dark-haired form was stumbling up it, closely pursued by a swift-moving figure in black.
Scarlett cursed, hobbled out along the bridge after them, forcing herself to run.
The towers were tipped toward each other like a pair of drunken giants. Albert had been right: they were the fishing ground for the people of the isle. As she approached, she could hear the waters booming and roaring in the crack between the concrete cliffs. The sea there was a milk-white froth, a frenzy of rushing foam. Ragged nets arced like upturned rainbows into clouds of spray. Seabirds were thin flecks swooping through the mist.
The bridge finished at the stairs, and the stairs finished at the top of the tower. It was a dead end, as Albert had said. He would be trapped up there.
Scarlett scaled the steps three at a time.
The top was a broad expanse, rectangular and slightly tilted. A set of low railings, no more than waist height, had been fixed to the perimeter. On the one side were lobster pots and racks with carefully folded nets drying in the sea winds. On the other, the railings terminated and there was a blank space, facing the twin tower across the channel. A great number of ropes spanned the gulf, and there were winches and locking mechanisms fixing them in position.
Scarlett saw Albert. He had run right across to the gap in the railings at the far side. She could see him bending outward, staring down into the water, looking at the drop.
He straightened, turned slowly around.
The woman was advancing toward him, taking neat little steps in her neat black shoes.
Scarlett opened her mouth, but no words came out. The effort of breathing sliced her lungs. Her bones felt raw. She began running across the top of the tower.
She was not yet halfway over when she saw the woman raise her hand. An invisible force enveloped Albert, plucked him upward off the tower. His body arched, his chin rolled skyward, his trainers kicked frantically to and fro. He hung there a moment in midair, quivering, transfixed. The force shook him side to side, like a ragged stick being worried by a dog.
The force slowed. Albert hung still. The woman lowered her hand. He dropped to the floor again.
Dr. Calloway had halted a little distance from him. Glancing back, she saw Scarlett coming. A hand waved. Scarlett was struck sideways; she went rolling and tumbling across the tower. Coming to a halt, she paused, half stunned and breathless. The woman no longer regarded her. She had taken the mind restraint from her bag and was watching Albert Browne get slowly to his feet.
“Alive or dead,” Dr. Calloway said. “Either way, this is the end. You can come back, or I can kill you here. Two options. I’ll give you ten seconds to choose.”
It wasn’t as if it was the first time Scarlett had seen Albert standing at a precipice. On the cliff above the river, he’d been detached, then terrified. This time he just seemed calm and a little sad. He stood at the edge of the slab, upright and at ease, lit by the afternoon sun. He was half turned toward the woman. His black hair was flapping at his face. The sleeves of his baggy jumper were flapping frantically too, but other than that, he looked quite good.
His eyes met hers. All at once, her heart clenched.
“Well?” Dr. Calloway was holding out the band to him. “Which is it to be?”
Albert smiled. “There is one other option.”
And he threw himself over the edge.
For a few heartbeats, there was just the sunlight on the tower. The sunlight, the empty concrete, the roar of the waters rushing below. And two women gazing at something that was no longer there.
A seabird passed above, tilting against the westering sun. Its shadow ran along the stone between them. Dr. Calloway moved.
“Well,” she said. “That was a waste. But perhaps, after all, it’s for the best.”
She opened the brown leather shoulder bag, stowed the circlet, clipped it neatly shut. Then she adjusted the bag’s position, smoothing down her jacket where it had slightly rucked. She pushed a strand of hair behind one ear and turned to Scarlett.
“Now,” she said, “there’s you.”
Scarlett had also moved. For her part, she’d stooped and picked up a piece of rusted railing that lay near the balustrade. The rails nearby were broken, sagging in their s
ockets. She took a piece that was long enough to use as a club, straightened stiffly, stood there waiting.
Dr. Calloway walked toward Scarlett unhurriedly, the leather bag swinging at her side. The blackness of her dress gleamed like a pelt. The velvet band kept her hair scraped back from her brow, where there was a single vertical line, suggesting mild annoyance. Her eyes did not blink. Her lips were drawn a little too tight, like the mouth of a string bag.
Scarlett stayed where she was, one hand loosely clasping the piece of railing. She wasn’t under any illusions how she looked. Her face was haggard, her complexion greenish, her clothes ragged, stiff, and salty. Her hair was crusted and hung in matted cords. If she was no longer hobbling, it was probably because the limps in each leg canceled each other out. Physically, she was failing. But her thoughts were ablaze with life.
The woman came to a halt. They regarded one another across the strip of concrete floor.
“A piece of pipe,” Calloway said. “Is that the best you can do?”
Scarlett glanced at it. “I’m improvising. Credit me for perseverance, at least.”
“Shilling said you were practically a child, but you’re even younger than I expected. How old are you, bank robber? Eighteen?”
“In all honesty,” Scarlett said, “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Not in the slightest. As for your name…Albert Browne did mention it, but in the heat of the moment…” Calloway gave the faintest shrug. “You’re an outlaw. I expect you’ve got a pack of aliases, each as worthless as the rest.”
Scarlett smiled, drew herself up. “I do, yeah. But my true name is Scarlett Josephine McCain. I’m wanted by the militias of twenty Surviving Towns. I’ve robbed banks across Wessex, Mercia, and Wales. I’ve crossed the Anglian Fens alone; I’ve dug to the seventh level of the Buried City. I’ve been a slave. I’ve been a Faith House Mentor, if only for a day, and that under false pretenses. I’ve prospected for gold in the Menai Hills; I killed the outlaw Black Carl Nemaides and chopped off the head of his dire-fox too. In short, Doc, I’ve been around. And one other thing I’ve done: I’ve been the partner and traveling companion of Albert Browne for twelve days now. And let me tell you something: I didn’t bust a gut getting him out here, putting up with all his endless pratting about, just to have you kill him the moment he arrives. Hence this piece of broken piping. Do I make myself clear?”
The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne Page 30