Karen Memory (30 page)

Not long. Because when he let go—my head bounced on the rug—and my vision swam clear, I was looking right at the infernal machine. And from down here, I could see the long fuse on the dynamite Tomoatooah must of shoved up underneath it fizzing along, steady and slow.

I gurgled and tried to point. My hand didn’t move, though my heel kicked feebly against the carpet. A second later, I thought better of it. Because Bantle was going to kill us all anyway. So why not let the dynamite do the job for him? It’d be faster, and it’d take him, too.

“What was that about the rug?” Scarlet scoffed from a long way away.

“My rug,” Bantle answered. He sniffed. “You smell burning?”

“Yeah,” Bill answered. “That little whore you just cooked.”

“No,” Bantle replied. He stood, and I cheered silently. There was no way he was going to spot the dynamite from up there.

Just to be sure, though, I made myself look away from the fuse. I could move my eyes, if not my head. I strained ’em after Bantle.

In time to see Tomoatooah pull his arms under him and get his hands flat on the floor. Nobody else had noticed—nobody else was looking at him. And I felt a horrible surge of hope that was like to bust my chest. I swear it hurt worse than the burns on my face—or the burns on my hands.

They’d all stepped over Tomoatooah. And now nobody was between him and the door.

I willed him to get up, knock over anybody who went for him, grab Merry Lee, and get out. That left me in the soup—dynamite soup—but so be it. There was less than an inch of slow match left.

I made myself look away from Tomoatooah, too. All the interesting things going on, and I didn’t dare look at any of them in case someone should notice. You wouldn’t expect that kind of irritation to get inside a girl’s shoe when she’s making her final peace, but apparently there’s no cease in the world to petty frustrations.

My eye was drawn to Scarlet, anyway. He’d done hurting Merry for the time being, and he was stepping over me—fastidiously, so as not to soil his shoes—in his rush to get to his infernal engine and make sure we hadn’t hurt it none.
Don’t crouch down,
I prayed.
Start looking at the other end.

But damned if he wasn’t headed more or less for that stick of dynamite.

I tried to think of a distraction. I wondered if I could make a noise or heave a limb around to get him to come over and stomp on me some, and buy that fuse a precious few more seconds to burn. And I tried like hell not to look at Tomoatooah, nor the dynamite.

So because I was trying not to stare, I didn’t see a damned thing when Priya stepped out of the shadows like an avenging angel and clubbed the big fool holding Merry over the head with something heavy enough that it didn’t make a hollow melon thump but more of a wet thud. I did see him go down, though—you don’t miss a noise like that—and I did see Priya straight-arm heave the heavy thing straight at Bill’s head.

It didn’t hit him, for a pity. He caught it—he’d turned because of the thud, too, I suppose. It was a cast-iron boot scraper—maybe she’d picked it up by the door?—and I have no idea how on earth a skinny thing like Priya managed to throw it hard enough that catching it knocked him two steps backward, though sadly not clean over.

Tomoatooah must of been biding his time, because he came up off the floor like he had springs for sinews, and I didn’t even see what he did to old Bill except when it was over he was standing over the body with Priya’s sledgehammer in his hands, the head dripping nasty. I must of lost track of Horaz, too—or maybe he skedaddled—because all of a sudden the only bad guys upright in the room were Scarlet and Bantle, and they was glancing one at the other like they didn’t understand how the odds had changed so quickly.

Then Tomoatooah and Merry and Priya was side by side, black haired and wild like furies. Tomoatooah had that sledge, and Merry had picked up that iron poker she’d been waving around earlier—and in her other hand she had Tomoatooah’s Colt.

Being a practical sort, she gave the fire iron to Priya and kept the shooter herself.

I managed to get my elbows under me as they came forward. Bantle checked the odds and ran like a bat out of Hell for the door into the dining room.
Damn,
I thought.
It’s only one stick. He’ll be out of range.

“Get out,” I croaked.

I don’t know if they heard me. Because Merry aimed that Colt right at Scarlet’s midsection and she told him, “You take a step, I drill you.”

He stopped.“Drop the wrench.”

It thudded to the carpet. I hadn’t even seen he was still carrying it.

“Priya,” Merry said. “You get Karen.”

Priya was the obvious choice. Merry was still hunched over from that pounding, and Tomoatooah was listing a bit to one side. But I couldn’t let them slow down enough to bring me. Not with the match—

Tomoatooah gave Priya a little shove with the side of his hand when she hesitated, obviously torn between going to me and looking out for Standish or Bantle coming up behind them. He turned to watch the hall.

Well, Tomoatooah knew about the dynamite, and he sure had a damn sight more experience with nitroglycerine than I did. If he weren’t worried, I weren’t worried.

“Hurry,” he barked when Priya wavered another half second.

Okay, maybe I was a little worried after all.

But I’d delay her longer by putting up a fight than by helping. And honestly, I didn’t want to die by being blown to bits with Bantle’s infernal machine. So I did what I could, and she got me up, though I was the next thing to deadweight.

Reader, I fainted on the way out the door—Tomoatooah and Priya half-carrying and half-dragging me; Merry walking backward with that Colt level in her hand. I woke up three hundred feet down the street when the sky started raining glass behind us, as the Marshal reined Dusty in from a dead run just ahead.

Chapter Nineteen

I don’t remember much of meeting up with Effie or the Marshal or of the ride back to Merry’s place, except I did it on Dusty, with Marshal Reeves holding me into the saddle. I remember him asking about Bantle and about Scarlet. I’m not sure what he got told.

They got me up three flights of stairs, and Merry made a complicated knock to get us in. You’d think she’d have a key to her own door, but I heard the rattle of bolts and chains and then Aashini was peeking through the crack, frowning.

The door shut, there was more rattling, and then it was yanked wide open. We must of tumbled into the room like a shivaree, because she went jumping backward with a yelp, then scrambled up to slam the door after us. More rattling and bolts thrown, and the Marshal laying me very gently on a much-patched yellow couch. I heard cups clinking, and before I knew it I was holding a china cup with a mismatched saucer full of hot tea laced with sugar and rum. I didn’t know if rum was the best thing for electrocution, but it looked like Tomoatooah had one, too, and he was only slowed down in drinking it by the steam coming off.

Effie was clucking over my face with cool cloths, and Priya was holding on to my hand. And all I wanted to do was forget the last hour … but I didn’t think I could.

And I didn’t dare ask Effie how bad my face was. I could tell from the way it hurt that there was going to be a scar. Or a lot of little scars, round like the ones on Priya’s arms.

Well, I’d meant to get out of the seamstressing business sooner or later. I guess now was as good a time as any. And I kept telling myself that over and over, like it was going to make a dent in the hollow scared feeling inside me if I thought it often enough.

I wondered if I had enough money saved to get any kind of a start in gentling. If Priya still had my savings, I mean.

If she’d give it back to me.

Well, she was there now, and she was holding my hand. That was something promising. And we’d blown up Bantle’s infernal machine. And maybe the man who built it, too, if we got lucky.

There.
That
made a dent in the hollow scared. Or maybe Priya rubbing between my shoulder blades was what did it.

Oh Christ, it hurt so much to cough.

I was thinking about that in a kind of not-too-discontented haze when my nose started working again. I tried to jump up, and Priya and Effie pushed me back into the couch. I wasn’t in no shape to fight ’em.

“Oh Christ, Merry, your couch! I’m…”
soaked in piss
.

“It’s seen worse,” she answered, and brought me another cup of tea. Less rum in this one. I thought about Bantle’s concern for his fancy rug, and Merry—who didn’t have nothing—and how little she cared for what she did have when a friend was hurt.

Well, Bantle’s rug was blowed up now.

And then I realized that I’d thought of myself as Merry’s friend. Smiling made my cheek hurt like the skin was cracking leather.

Hell, maybe it was.

I realized I’d lost track of the men and lifted my head enough to see that the Marshal had gotten Tomoatooah into a battered armchair, his feet on an ottoman. He was fussing over the Indian and the girls was fussing over me. I started to spiral down that sucking hole of scared again, but Priya kissed my forehead and I remembered that my scars—whatever they turned out to be—weren’t nothing on hers. We’d be fine. If she was sticking with me we couldn’t not be fine.

I patted her hand and tried to sit up. When I did, Aashini was there. She didn’t talk much, but I was getting the idea that she didn’t miss much, neither. Because she had a pile of fabric in her hands, and when she shook it out I could see it was a man’s loose flannel trousers and a check shirt and a knit wool cardigan.

She set them on the table beside the sofa. A moment later, she came back with a basin of steaming water and a clean, soft cloth. “Clean up?” she asked.

My heart about stopped at the kindness.

Her English wasn’t as good as Priya’s, which was a little reassuring. Or maybe it would of been easier to deal with a whole family of creepy geniuses. It’s hard to tell which way that would go. And it wasn’t like Aashini ain’t just as smart as Priya in her own way, though I didn’t find that out for a few minutes. It’s just that Priya’s got that gift for languages.

“Thank you,” I said.

Having the Marshal and Tomoatooah in the room bothered me—the Marshal turned his back ostentatiously and Tomoatooah never even glanced over, but I guessed maybe his people didn’t fuss so much about hiding what preachers might call their shame, not being Christians and all. But all those months in a whorehouse and I was still self-conscious about stripping off in front of Priya.

Maybe she realized it, because when Merry and Effie started peeling my clothes down, Priya stepped off. She went into the coat she’d been wearing—she’d tossed it over the chair by the door in just the manner that would of made Mama chew her ear off—and started pulling stacks of papers she’d rolled and squashed into tubes out of the pockets and the sleeves. She turned around before Effie was quite done sponging me off—Aashini and Merry was holding one arm apiece to keep me standing—and I was too interested in what she was holding on to to remember to blush.

“Those from Bantle’s desk?”

She nodded. “Everything from on top, and the top drawer.” She settled down on the ottoman beside Tomoatooah’s legs and started reading.

Those flannel trousers were the warmest and most comfortable thing I’ve ever put on. I suddenly understood why Priya might want to wear men’s clothing all the time. Effie and Aashini let me sit back down again while they put the shirt over my arms, which was a good thing. They’d been doing more and more of my standing for me.

“It’s safe,” I told the Marshal, and he turned back around.

Effie took the dirty clothes and that basin of water away. I was warm and—aside from the bruises and burns—I was comfortable and didn’t stink anymore. But something was still niggling at me. “Horaz said a meeting. What meeting?” I asked—Priya, mostly, as she had the pile of papers in her lap.

Priya, still flipping papers, frowned. “I don’t think you’re going to like the answer to that.”

Merry looked like she already didn’t like it, and she hadn’t even heard it yet. “Tell us.”

“There’s a note here that probably relates,” she said. She waved part of her pile with her left hand. “And a whole sheaf of sheets of figures I can’t make head nor tail of—”

Aashini stepped over to her and lifted the papers from her hand. I caught a flash of red and black ink on creamy paper. She squatted down on her heels—close to the same chairside lamp Priya was using—and started flipping through them. Her hair fell forward across her face, her brow wrinkling in concentration behind it.

Merry said, “Tell me more about this meeting.”

Priya continued, “I don’t know where this is. Baskerville?”

“North,” I said. “It’s a logging camp by the Quaker River. They load the barges there and float ’em down to the Sound. And us. Or the port, anyway. They’re always talking about building a seaport there—the river’s deep enough, I reckon?—and skipping Rapid City entire, but it ain’t happened yet. And there’s already a seaport here, so the papers all say why spend the money?”

The Marshal snorted. “And the papers are owned by the same people as own the Rapid shipping, right?”

I shrugged, in the sort of way as allowed as he was probably right, but I didn’t rightly know.

Priya pursed her lips. “Well, that’s where we need to get to.”

“Wait,” I said. “What?”

She tapped the papers, seeming not to notice that we was all staring at her. “Bantle is meeting with some other person—Bantle calls him or her Nemo—at dawn. I get a sense that this person is foreign. Bantle has a note to bring a translator.”

She made a helpless little gesture. That cold whirl was still inside me, but a kind of spark kindled in it. Curiosity—satisfaction? The satisfying excitement of a problem solved—or at least the solution glimpsed.

“Nemo,” I said. I shook my head, but it wasn’t from being confused. “From
Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
and
L’Île mystérieuse
!? He’s the Indian submersible captain fighting the British by destroying their warships with the powerful drill mounted on the nose of his ship!”