Karen Memory (29 page)

Merry’s eyes got big. She stuck out a finger and touched it, gave it a little fingertip push. “That’s better than sledgehammers.”

Anybody who believes in stoic Indians or inscrutable Orientals never saw those two grinning at each other like a couple of rattlesnakes over a nest of baby bunnies. They was having so much fun I hesitated to interrupt, but Priya grabbed my hand and tugged at it. “Let’s do this.”

We crept through the door into a butler’s pantry with a long breakfront along one side. It was full of crystal and silver plate and God knows what, sparkling in the faint light from outside. We paused at the mouth of it, realizing that the dining room—it was a dining room—beyond was lined with grand windows. But the house alongside was dark as well, and I figured what with more light outside than in, there weren’t much chance of anyone seeing us.

Now we just had to blow up the machine without killing ourselves—or, by preference, any of Bantle’s house servants, who—after all—just worked there. According to the Marshal, one stick of dynamite wasn’t going to cause much collateral damage and it wouldn’t—shouldn’t—take the house down.

Priya gave my hand another squeeze and dropped it. “I know where Bantle’s study is,” she murmured. “You keep on. I’ll get out the back.”

She was gone, back through that door to the hall before any of us could so much as snatch at her shirt cuff. She moved soft as a cat, and I was just about to lunge after her when Tomoatooah caught my right elbow and Merry Lee caught my left.

“You’ll get her caught!” Merry whispered.

I shook myself in frustration, but she was right. I didn’t hear Priya climbing the servants’ stair, but I knew she must be. And I imagined her sneaking past Bantle’s bedroom and God knows what all else … maybe that Bruce Scarlet son of a bitch slept here.

The idea of him with his hands on Priya made me cold. What the hell could be so important in Bantle’s study? Papers? Plans? Did it matter?

Yes. If Priya thought it was worth risking her life … it mattered a lot. I decided to trust her, even if the deciding hurt, and I wanted nothing so bad as to argue myself out of it. But the Marshal had let me come in here, and I imagined the look on his face then weren’t too different from the one I was wearing now.

“We go on,” Tomoatooah said. “We blow up the front of the house, she sneaks out the back.”

I looked at him with respect.

He winked again, and this time I saw it clear. “Not my first raid.”

Evidently.

We snuck into the front parlor through an open doorway big enough to carry two coffins through side by side. I guessed you had to get the piano into the parlor somehow. It was guarded by a heavy velvet drape, and once we brushed past that we was suddenly in more light than I’d expected.

Bantle’s infernal machine cast its own glow, you see.

We’d caught that green spark through the pocket doors, and I’d expected … I don’t know, some sort of hissing arc or a bottle of lightning.

It weren’t nothing like that. Just a peaceful shining, green and orange in different places, like a chemical flame. Except without any sparking or flashing. It gilded the whole outline of the apparatus, and a complicated gadget it was. I expected … moving parts, I suppose, but the only one I saw was a cloth belt with a single twist in it. That ran between two rollers and a couple of tension rods, for all the world like the belt on a sewing machine except it was made of cloth—raw silk, I’d guess, if I was sewing it—instead of India rubber. The only sound was a whispery whirring from the thing running.

All around it was a forest of tall, narrow glass bell jars, each with some kind of component inside ’em. Little things, the size of my pinky nail, and I couldn’t see much in the slow except they seemed to be intricately soldered with white and yellow and copper metal wires.

Some of those vacuum jars glowed with the green, and some glowed with the orange.

Merry leaned toward the thing, but not too close. “Static,” she said, and suddenly I understood what that silk belt was doing. Well, maybe not what it was
doing
doing. But at least what it was doing, if you understand the difference. “Is that a Möbius band?”

“Don’t touch it,” I said. I remembered a machine I’d seen on a mountebank’s wagon stage when I was a girl, a kind of metal sphere on a stick with one of those cloth ribbons stretching down beside it. He’d been able to lay his hand on it and shoot tiny tamed lightning from his fingertips.

His hair had stood on end. Just as Merry Lee’s was starting to do, under the brim of her bowler hat. Mine was long and braided back, and so was most of Tomoatooah’s.

Above us, a floorboard creaked. I jumped; Merry glanced over her shoulder; Tomoatooah looked up incuriously. He had dropped to his hands and knees and was inspecting the lower parts of the apparatus. Looking, no doubt, for a place to slide his dynamite.

So to speak.

Or, well, literally and not so to speak at all. Old habits die hard. I’m … mostly sorry.

Yeah, I’m trying to avoid telling you what happened next.

I was watching Tomoatooah and I probably should of been watching his back. So I was wrong about that, but it turns out I was right about the pocket door. When it rattled back, sharp and sudden, it made a noise like the whole front of the house falling off.

A newfangled electric light flared in that foyer, arc white, and when I blinked the glare from my eyes it was to see Peter Bantle strut into the room, flanked by Horaz Standish on one side and a short broad fellow with colorless hair, wearing overalls and a grayish complexion. I made a bet with myself that was that Bruce Scarlet, and I mostly ain’t the betting type. There was three thugs behind ’em. One of those was my old friend Bill.

I didn’t like one bit of the look he was giving me.

Bantle had that damned glove on, the harsh light sparking off its metal fittings. He had it balled up into a fist and was tapping it lightly against the palm of the leather range glove he wore on the opposite hand. Standish weren’t carrying no weapon, but the man I thought was Scarlet had a big old wrench, and Bill had an ax handle. I couldn’t see what the other two was carrying.“Oh, dear,” Bantle said. “It seems somebody miscalculated.”

Tomoatooah came up off the floor like a splintercat heading face-first for a redwood tree. He didn’t make a sound, and he didn’t do nothing to indicate he was about to lunge. He just went for Bantle with the directness I would of liked to have been able to muster, if I hadn’t been losing a fight with panic. I was like a horse in a burning barn, the opposite of how calm and prepared I’d felt on the roof. I got stuck, unable to hear myself thinking over the pounding of my heart, which made it hard to decide what to do.

Tomoatooah, though—he acted. Practice, I guess, and Merry Lee was right on his heels. Tomoatooah barreled into Bantle and Bantle went down in a heap. Merry Lee had picked up a fireplace poker, and she went forward swinging. Sparks flew when Scarlet parried her forehand. My first thought was a spike of worry about the dynamite, but I couldn’t see where it had gone. I hoped Tomoatooah had tucked it somewhere safe.

Tomoatooah kicked Bantle where it would keep him down and drove a fist into my old friend Bill’s breadbasket. Merry was still fencing with Scarlet and keeping Horaz at bay with a pistol in her off hand. I hadn’t even realized she was heeled.

Right about then, it started to sink in that maybe I should be doing something to help besides standing on the nice knotted rug staring like a strangled calf.

I should of borrowed Effie’s gun.

There was a chair beside the fire, though—a mahogany Chippendale with a brocade seat cushion. Thought grieved my heart a little; I remembered the unkind fate of the striped silk settee and seized it up, rushing forward and swinging high. Bill was doubled over, having by now been relieved of his hatchet handle. How it was that that man stayed employed I’ll never know, but Tomoatooah was swinging the handle ferociously at the next bruiser.

But the third one was coming up beside the Comanche, and he had a crowbar cocked over one shoulder. I saw him coming. And he didn’t seem to see me.

I whirled that chair around and smashed it at him as hard as I could. It was well built and the wood was sound: it cracked at the joints and the caning broke under the cushion but didn’t shatter or come apart. So I swung it again, and again connected.

This time I was left holding the back. And staring over into the stunned face of Tomoatooah, who was swaying slowly back and forth, staggering, hands out for balance in a way that might of seemed right comical if I’d seen a vaudevillian doing it on the opera stage.

I looked at the chair and I looked at the Indian, and I couldn’t quite connect one to the other, though I’d apparently done it twice already. And then, that sick twist of understanding back in my gut like an in-law you can’t get rid of and can’t stand, I looked down at Peter Bantle.

Bantle was still curled up on the floor holding himself with his ungloved hand. But he was looking right at me over his
fucking
electric glove. And he was laughing silently, like a dog, while Tomoatooah fought him.

All the hesitation must of gotten burned up, because I slung that chair back up and whaled it at Bantle like I was swinging for a goose’s stretched neck with an ax.

And Tomoatooah stepped right into the swing.

This time he went down—in a heap, and not even on top of Bantle where he might of done some good, but right beside him. Bantle grabbed his throat with the glove, and Tomoatooah arched up like a bronc trying to scrape a saddle off.

I screamed and scrambled back. Merry was still fighting, but now there was three on her, and I could see she was starting to get tired. It hadn’t been
that
long ago Crispin and Miss Lizzie had cut the bullets out of her, no matter what she wanted to think—

Somebody big and soft bellied with hands like iron straps grabbed my arms from behind. I kicked for his crotch and got thigh. I caught a glimpse when he picked me up and shook me. My old friend Bill. Then Bantle was on his feet, staggering slightly but walking toward me, the glove outstretched.

Those other thugs had gotten their hands on Merry. She kept twisting, fighting silent like a coyote, but she was too outnumbered and outsized for it to do much good. I yanked at Bill, trying to go to her assistance, but he gave my upper arms a squeeze and I quit, gasping in pain.

Bantle sighed theatrically as he inspected me. “You’re that same damned whore that confounded me the other time, aren’t you? I do admit, I hoped you and some of your sisters might get a bit burned up in that fire, but you crawled out pretty well unscathed. Pity, but that can be fixed.”

I tried to remember to breathe, because forgetting was making me dizzy. And was likely to set off another coughing fit, the way my chest was hurting.

“There weren’t no pleasure in that,” Bantle said, jerking his head at Tomoatooah. I didn’t follow his eyes. I was too afraid I would see Tomoatooah dead on the floor. I’d rather look at Bantle, and I didn’t want to look at Bantle at all.

“This, though,” he said, “you ought to be charging me for.”

He snapped his fingers, making a heavy blue spark hang in the air. Then he reached out for me with the glove. I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t of been more scared if he was holding out an angry rattlesnake—

“Wait, Peter.”

I jerked my eyes away from the glove as if somebody had cut a rope. Horaz Standish had his hand on Bantle’s shoulder. He wasn’t holding him back, just … cautioning him, like.

And for a second, Bantle seemed to be listening. He turned toward Horatio.

“There just ain’t time tonight, Peter,” Horaz said. “Not to do a proper job of it. Not with the meeting and all.”

Bantle’s eyes caught the light all slick and gleaming—like they was extra-wet, somehow. “You gotta be fucking kidding.”

“Put her away,” Standish said. “Play with her when we get back. Let her think about it for a while.”

I tried to catch Horaz’s eye, to see if he was trying to do me a favor. But he kept his gaze on Bantle. His expression was all calm and reasonable. Bantle’s hand started to sag.

Then Scarlet stepped up to Merry and without giving no warning at all slugged her in the belly as hard as he could. All his shoulder behind it, and hip. Merry made a sound like a squashed kitten and would of doubled up, except for the side of beef holding on to her arms. Her feet came off the floor, and the side of beef took a half step back.

She wheezed and puked all over the floor. She missed Scarlet, more’s the pity. He’d stepped to the side like a pro.

“Cunt,” he said conversationally. “What were you going to do to my Mesmeric Engine?”

He lifted her head up by the hair—her bowler hat had gone flying. With his other hand he fingered his belt, and I felt a chill. Even if Horatio talked Bantle off me, who was going to step in for Merry? I imagined one of my frail sisters tripping over Merry when she went to take the trash out, and I nearly puked, too.

“Fuck, Scarlet,” Bantle said. “Mind the fucking carpet.”

He turned around and slapped me hard across the face.

Bill must of got a lot of practice, because he let go of my arms and stepped back in the instant before Bantle connected. I ducked—I tried to duck—but it didn’t work. There was a savage light, and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the rug, looking up at everyone from right beside the engine.

“Parshiviy!” Scarlet said. “Careful of the tubes!”

My ears rang. I smelled piss. A molar rocked in its socket and I tasted blood. Bantle stalked toward me. I wanted to scramble away, but I couldn’t make my arms or legs twitch. There was a thin soft sound in the room.

I thought,
Priya. Run.

Bantle stood over me, wrinkling his nose. “Well, that should lower your prices,” he said. He crouched and grabbed my throat, squeezed. Not enough to make the world swim—just enough to make it go black at the edges. That thin, soft whine cut off. A moment later, I realized I had been making it.

He shocked me again. Not as much as last time, I thought. It hurt, and I smelled something burning, but I didn’t fly across the room. I don’t know how long he kept it up for.