Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon (9 page)

Gideon slid his hand inside his jacket, where his Webley & Scott British Bulldog revolver sat snugly in its leather pouch. “Back,” he hissed, stepping in front of Lyle and Bent. Two of the ninja were approaching, crouched, from the north and west, thin blades glinting in their hands. Gideon sensed that the third must be behind him, and he whirled quickly, throwing his gun arm over Bent's shoulder.

“Stop, or I shoot!”

“Just effing get on with it,” said Bent. “Didn't you hear him? They're effing assassins.”

Despite his training, Gideon had yet to kill a man in cold blood. He could feel his hands shaking, as they had never done on the shooting range. But there he had fired at wooden targets; here were living, breathing, flesh-and-blood men approaching.

“Governor?”

The appearance of a young soldier at the French windows broke the spell. The ninja approaching from the rear whirled around, his hand suddenly extended, his fingers splayed. The soldier's eyes widened as a sharpened star thudded into his windpipe, and then he crumpled to the ground, gasping and spraying blood in red-black gouts. Gideon let loose the first of his bullets, hitting the ninja in the chest, the impact spinning the assassin around and into the trunk of a young cypress tree.

“Gideon…” said Bent.

He turned to see the two ninja running silently across the gravel toward them, and he fired again, throwing the one to the right off his feet. But Gideon had only winged the ninja's arm, and he rose again, the glint of one of those deadly throwing stars in the palm of his gloved hand. Gideon unleashed the Bulldog again, this time aiming for the assassin's head. His earlier hesitation cost him, though, because the final ninja was upon them, his long, thin blade slashing at Gideon's gun hand.

Gideon pushed Bent backward, knocking his friend off his feet and landing on top of him; he could hear the breath knocked out of Bent as he absorbed Gideon's weight. Lyle staggered and the ninja seeped over him like a shadowy ghost, pulling the governor's arm behind his back and holding the blade across his throat.

Stalemate. Gideon got carefully to his feet, just as three more soldiers appeared at the French doors. He held up his hand. “Wait! Stay back!” he shouted. To the assassin he said more calmly, “What do you want?”

The man's eyes were wide behind his mask, swiveling between Gideon, the soldiers in the doorway, and the corpses of his compatriots. Something felt … not right. For a trained assassin, the man seemed very nervous, almost terrified. Gideon said again, softly, “What do you want?”

The man muttered something in a language utterly foreign to Gideon, and Lyle said through gritted teeth, “Isn't it obvious? He wants to kill the Governor of New York.”

Lyle's words seemed to galvanize the ninja, and he stood a little straighter, steadying his blade at Lyle's neck. “Do something,” pleaded the governor.

“Put down the weapon or I shoot,” said Gideon.

The ninja pressed his blade into the folds of fat at Lyle's throat.

Behind him, Gideon was aware of more movement in the doors of the building. He didn't dare take his eyes off the ninja, but sensed Rowena's presence all the same; the commotion had woken her.

“Stay back, all of you,” said Gideon quietly. “You, too, Rowena.”

“Gideon…” he heard her say.

“Back,” he ordered. The ninja's eyes were swiveling beneath his mask. He was panicking. Lyle's eyes bulged as the blade tightened at his throat.

“You don't want to do this,” said Gideon.

Lyle closed his eyes. “He's right. You don't want to do this.”

The attacker didn't seem to know
what
he wanted, anymore. He was a skittish thing, for an assassin, thought Gideon. The man muttered something, presumably in Japanese, and Gideon saw a thin line of dark blood appear at Lyle's throat.

Before Gideon knew what he was doing, the Bulldog barked in his hands. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the ninja went slack, a curtain of red blood fell across his eyes, and he slumped backward onto the gravel path.

Lyle stepped forward, rubbing the blood away from what Gideon saw was only the slightest scratch on his neck, as the soldiers ran into the garden and approached the fallen assassins. “Mr. Smith,” Lyle said. “You have saved my life.”

A cavalry officer pulled the mask from the face of the first assassin Gideon had felled. He was swarthy, with narrowed eyes, and a tattoo crawled up his neck—what Gideon supposed was some Japanese symbol or script. Bent appeared at his shoulder, his notepad in his hand.

“Jap all right,” said the soldier, pulling the mask back down.

Lyle laid a hand on Gideon's shoulder. “Mr. Smith, I am forever in your debt. I think a calming brandy is called for.”

Gideon stared dumbly at the fallen bodies as Rowena rushed to his side. She embraced him, tangling her fingers in his hair. He felt suddenly sick.

“Ssh,” she whispered. “I know. I know what it's like. You had to do it.”

“Yes,” he said, numb. “I had to do it.”

*   *   *

In the dining room, their dinner things cleared away, Lyle poured each of them a generous measure. Gideon said, “Is this a regular occurrence? Attacks by assassins?”

“Thankfully, no,” said the governor. He had been cleaned up, a bandage applied to the slight wound on his neck. “This is the first time the Japanese have been so bold.” He paused, staring into the swirling, golden heart of his brandy. “I wonder what made them carry out such a direct attack, at the heart of British America. What has forced their hand? Why have they become so bold?”

“Anybody'd think they
wanted
an effing war,” said Bent.

“The Californian Meiji will deny this attack, of course, but nevertheless this is a most disturbing development. If the Japanese really do want war, Mr. Bent, we can ill afford it.”

Gideon stood before the large map, drinking in the unfamiliar names. The distance those assassins must have had to cross, from Nyu Edo to New York, made his head spin. “But why would they want war? Isn't America big enough for everyone?”

Lyle laughed. “The
world
isn't big enough for everyone, Mr. Smith, though it might seem a vast and often uncharted place. The desire of the human race to own and control should never be underestimated.”

“Bloody good job we were here,” said Bent.

Gideon turned from the map as Rowena said, “Yes, wasn't it? I must say, Mr. Lyle, I'd have thought you'd have been … better protected.”

Bent slapped the table. “She's right, Lyle. Your cavalry were about as much use as an effing butter fireguard! But for Gideon here they'd have cooked your goose.” He paused. “Or your turkey, I suppose.”

“I am indeed lucky.” Lyle nodded. “And I shall forever be in your debt, Mr. Smith. As to my security, Mr. Bent, you can rest assured that under normal circumstances the men under my command are exemplary soldiers. But the world's changing, and we are facing threats we never anticipated. Black-clad assassins armed with swords and knives, as silent and invisible as the wind? We couldn't legislate for that, Mr. Bent. But, as they say, everything that does not kill us makes us stronger. We shall not be caught out in that way again. Of course, the Japanese will probably have more tricks up their sleeves.…” Lyle bit his lip. “I probably shouldn't say too much, but … well, I've had information that they've got a
weapon,
the Japs. Something that could destroy New York in a day.” He sat back and shook his head. “Secret weapons. Brass dragons. Silent assassins. I swear to God, what a world we live in.”

Gideon turned back to the map, his finger trailing down from New York to the vast emptiness beneath the thick line of the Mason-Dixon Wall. And somewhere down there was Maria, and the dragon, and Louis Cockayne.

As if reading his thoughts, Edward Lyle appeared at his elbow and pointed to a dot on the map, just below the Wall. “If I were a gambling man, I'd put money that your Mr. Cockayne is there.”

Gideon leaned forward and read the name. “San Antonio.”

Lyle grunted. “That's the name the Spaniards gave it. These days it's mostly known south of the Wall as Steamtown.”

 

7

T
HE
K
ING
OF
S
TEAMTOWN

Thaddeus Pinch liked to boast that he was more machine than man, which was only fitting for the self-styled King of Steamtown. Louis Cockayne had once asked him if that included his dick. That had been at a card game very much like the one he was embroiled in now, late at night in a spit-and-sawdust saloon bar in San Antonio, as Cockayne faced off against the grotesque figure of Pinch. The King of Steamtown's assembled cronies had collectively gasped; no one spoke to Thaddeus Pinch like that. No one, that was, except for Louis Cockayne. Charm and—yes, pun intended—a pair of brass balls went a long way with a man like Pinch, and he'd guffawed long and hard, steam hissing from the pistons and valves around his steel jaw.

That time, Cockayne had been playing for a stack of chips that bought him three nights in the company of the best whores in the best whorehouse in the whole of Steamtown.

Now, though, his charm seemed to have failed him. He hoped his fabled luck didn't do the same.

Because this time, Louis Cockayne was playing for his life.

Pinch's left arm, a thick brass cylinder snaking with thin pipes and hydraulic pistons, reached out for the glass of whisky on the worn green baize table between him and Cockayne. With his fleshy right hand he slapped the toggles on his metal forearm and his jointed fingers, mottled with verdigris, closed around the glass with a sigh of escaping steam. He raised the whisky to his mouth and sucked hard on the wooden straw, rivulets of golden liquid dribbling down the square, steel lower jaw, fixed with huge bolts through the festering, swollen flesh of his drawn cheeks.

The King of Steamtown liked to tell how he lost each limb, each body part, and how Steamtown's scientists—some of whom had come to San Antonio of their own free will, drawn by the freedom of the Texan warlord's burgeoning city-state, others who had been kidnapped and set to work for Thaddeus Pinch whether they liked it or not—had replaced and repaired them. Cockayne had heard the stories many, many times before. Pinch's jaw had been blown off by a gunslinger who came to San Antonio to try to earn the bounty the governors back east had put on Pinch's head. The sun-bleached bones of the would-be assassin still swung in a rusting gibbet in the town square. Pinch's left arm had been bitten off by a coyote. His right leg had to be amputated below the knee after Pinch, loaded on whisky and peyote, had crashed one of Jim Bowie's Steamcrawlers into a cactus while racing around the desert one full-mooned night. If Pinch really had lost his dick, it would doubtless have been to the clap. The only women in Steamtown were the whores who were forced to work the city's many brothels, and ex-whores who had been bought out of their enforced service by San Antonio's menfolk who decided that their days of paying for sex were over, and they wanted to take a wife.

Not many of those men and their unshackled wives started families. Steamtown was no place to raise children. Besides, when Thaddeus Pinch decided he needed to boost the population of San Antonio, he simply sent his slavers out to get more people: men to work the coal mines and ranches, and women for the brothels.

It was a big old world, and there was no shortage of bodies. And no shortage of those who made their own way to Steamtown, drawn by the lure of the only truly free city in America, probably even the world.

Of course, Louis Cockayne wished he were just about anywhere else on the globe rather than sitting in front of Thaddeus Pinch playing poker.

“It's time to put up or shut up, Cockayne,” lisped Pinch through his steel maw. His new teeth were cruel, jagged spikes, at shiny odds with the tobacco-browned stumps of his top row. He took another dribbling sip of whisky through his wooden straw and with his good hand laid his cards down on the table.

Six of hearts. Seven of clubs. Eight of hearts. Nine of spades. Ten of diamonds.

“Straight,” said Pinch.

Cockayne chewed on the cheap cigar Pinch had gifted him and finished off his own whisky quickly. Pinch's mob was behind the King of Steamtown, his trusted lieutenants and cronies; a more unlikeable bunch of rapists, thieves, and murderers you never hoped to meet down a dark alley. Closest to Pinch was Inkerman, a fat, pug-nosed, rat-eyed bastard with appetites that apparently ran the gamut from children to grandmas, and all points in between. Word was, a ride didn't actually have to be alive for Inkerman to saddle up. Word was, that was how he liked it best.

Cockayne didn't like Inkerman at all, never had. Now that the fat bastard was wearing Cockayne's best leather gun belt, complete with his pearl-handled revolvers, he liked the man even less.

“I'm waiting,” said Pinch.

Cockayne laid down his cards. Two, four, five, eight, queen. Of spades.

“Flush,” he said, breathing a silent prayer to lady luck.

Pinch banged his brass arm on the table, roaring a spittle-flecked laugh. His hangers-on quickly joined in. Cockayne allowed himself a crooked smile.

“You're one lucky bastard, Cockayne,” said Pinch when he recovered. His eyes narrowed. “Fourteen straight wins. You're not holding out on me, are you, Louis? Not cheating?”

Cockayne stood slowly, his hands flat on the table, never taking his eyes off Pinch, even when a volley of clicks accompanied the swift drawing of pistols and rifles, all pointed in Cockayne's direction, from the King of Steamtown's unruly court.

“I may be a thief, I may be a killer, I may be a wanted man on three continents,” said Cockayne levelly. “But I never in my life cheated at cards.”