Karen Memory (37 page)

The next thing I knew she had checked me over and sat me down and I was clutching a mug of sweet, milky tea between hands now wrapped in fresh (and freshly blood-spotted) bandages, trying to figure out how to work it past my chattering teeth. It was still damned cold inside the gondola from the hatches being open to effect our rescue, but just being out of the wind made all the difference and I figured if I could stop shivering long enough to get some of that tea inside me while it was still hot I might just be able to manage not to die.

Hugging the tea—and Priya leaning against my arm, sharing the same wool blanket—helped enough that I eventually managed to sip some. That done, I had enough control of my voice to ask, “How’d you find us?”

The Marshal slurped his own tea. “We tracked his exhaust pipe. We were trying to figure out how to force him to surface when you girls did that for us.”

Colony, at the controls, shook his head. “I wish we could have got to him before he got to that ship.”

We was all silent for a minute, and then I said, “Yeah.”

Then I realized who I hadn’t seen on the
Os’minog
. “Did you get Scarlet?”

Reeves shook his head.

Priya and me filled ’em all in real quick on what had happened, and that Standish was Reeves’ man rather than Scarlet.

“Pity,” Reeves said. Then he shrugged. “Well, I done harder things than get Horatio Standish back to Oklahoma. And you ladies done thwarted their cholera plan.”

“For now,” Merry said. She looked grim.

The Marshal said, “Before they captured you, they had to have planned on some other means of getting it into the city.”

“If it were me,” Priya said, “I’d get it into the water supply on a ship headed north.”

“Or the expedition food,” Merry Lee agreed. “Get it right out into the mining camps.”

We was silent for a minute, contemplating that. It took some of the sting out of what might happen to Rapid … but it didn’t lessen the threat to Anchorage and the Yukon none.

I finished my tea. It would do me more good inside than out, no matter how turned my stomach was. I was just running a finger around the inside to get the last of the sugar when Captain Colony called from the front of the bridge.

“There’s worse news.”

We’re not cowards, none of us. But not a one of the three of us wanted to ask.

“He’s gotten that thing under way again. And it’s steaming for Rapid City.”

When I shook my head, my hair slapped wetly on my ears. “I gotta get to my sewing machine.”

Chapter Twenty-four

We didn’t have no trouble beating the submersible back to Rapid—turns out there’s some advantages to airships—and I’d like to say it was a pleasant flight, but in all honesty I don’t remember a damned thing about it. Priya and me lay down on the couch for just a minute, watching the gray outside the window all featureless as fog. Which I guess it was, after a fashion. Or rather, fog is clouds.

And the next thing I knew, Merry was crouched down beside me and Priya, shaking us both awake. It was still daylight and the windows was still gray, but there was some texture to it now. As I watched—as we dropped lower, I guessed—the gray broke into streamers and billows across the top of the window, and then we was low enough to see the dirty cotton-wool texture of the cloud bellies up close. I wanted to reach out and touch ’em. They looked solid as ice, but I knew if I put a hand out it’d be just mist and cold between my fingers.

“We’re landing,” Merry said, somewhat unnecessarily, and left us with a pot of coffee while we rubbed our eyes and sorted ourselves. There was clothing laid out, all of it for a man twice my size, but beggars can’t be choosers and there was a hank of cord to use for belts. I tied on a pair of Captain Colony’s trousers over my wind- and rope-shredded bloomers and felt much better, all in all.

I’d fallen asleep with the Marshal’s silver dollar in the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Priya’s. It was turning into a kind of talisman for me, and I tucked it back into my bindings—but not before sneaking it a little kiss. Priya saw, I noticed when I turned around, and I felt a little apprehension knot in my breast, but she just winked and smiled and went back to struggling a comb through her hair.

We had time. When I looked out the window now, I saw Rapid all spread out below us—ragged buildings and people small as ants—and so I led her to the window so we could both watch while I combed her hair. I braided it good and tight—a French braid—and then she did mine in a five-strand weave that used up most of the length and got it right up out of my way. Comfortable—and pretty, too.

By then the Marshal was awake, and Merry came back with sandwiches and cookies. The cookies and the bread was stale; the meat was potted; there weren’t no green but pickles. I ate it like I’d never seen food before.

Amazing what sleep and food will do for you. By the time the little cigar and matchboxes below turned into proper houses and shops and men was running out on to the airfield to lash Captain Colony’s airship down, I felt almost human again.

“You think Bantle’s back here already?” Priya asked me.

I bit my lip. “Probably came back with Scarlet. I think we might have seen him, if he was on that
Octopus
.”

*   *   *

We hired a wagon to bring us back to the mayor’s house—Priya and me might have been able to walk it, but it wouldn’t have been pretty—and it turned out to be a good thing, too. Because when we got up there, we could tell right away that something was wrong. There was constables going in and out of the front door, which was standing open, and neighbors finding any sort of excuse at all to be out in the street twisting one another’s ears off with gossip. Marshal Reeves touched the teamster on the shoulder, showed him his badge, and asked him to keep driving. The teamster shook the reins over his mules and didn’t speak a word.

Men are polite when you slip them a whole silver dollar for a twenty-cent job.

We kept rolling past, and I was proud of myself for managing not to scream when a man and a woman walked up beside the cart as if it was something they did every day and swung up beside us. A second later, and I was glad I hadn’t disgraced myself, because it was Crispin and Miss Francina. Miss Francina was in the plainest dress I’ve ever seen her in, and Crispin was dressed like a laborer in flannel and a canvas coat. They settled in, and the cart kept rolling.“We hoped you’d come back,” Crispin said before I could ask. “Things is bad, Miss Karen.”

I looked at Miss Francina. She nodded, mouth and eyes tight under her bonnet. “Madame’s in jail,” she said. “The mayor too. Miss Lizzie and Miss Bethel.”

“Who puts the mayor in jail?!” I asked.

I knew, though. Even before Crispin turned his head and spat. “Peter Bantle.”

“He’s declared martial law,” Miss Francina said. “He’s declared himself mayor.”

“We broke his machine!” I felt betrayed by the whole damn universe. People were supposed to come back to
our
side when Bantle wasn’t running their thoughts for ’em no more.

“I think he paid off the constables,” Miss Francina said.

“Shit,” I answered. “All that time we spent under one or another of those ungrateful bastards. You’d think it’d count for something.”

She laughed—the sweet, girlish giggle that took ten years off her. “How do you think I got away?”

“The others?” I asked. Merry Lee and Priya were tucked back under the canvas cover, but I could see them leaning forward out of the corner of my eye, straining after every word.

“Beatrice, Effie, and Pollywog are all safe,” Miss Francina said. “We’ve been taking it in turns to watch for you.”

“Where are they?”

“We’ve been staying—well, the Professor knew somebody. He said I was hiding from a mean drunken husband.” She held up her ring finger. A tiny diamond glittered there. “Crispin’s my groom, and Effie and Pollywog are my daughters. We told the Professor’s friend I had another daughter, too, and I was trying to get her away from my husband.”

“What about Bea?”

“Well, that’s my little girl,” Crispin drawled affectedly. “She’s a right fine lady’s maid and don’t you forget it!”

Gravel gritted under the cart wheels. His face fell. “I don’t know how long we can stay there. And I don’t know where Tomoatooah got off to, begging your pardon, Marshal.”

“He got away?” Reeves’ shoulders maybe eased a little under his salt-stained black canvas coat.

“Yessir.”

“Then I ain’t worried about him.”

I was worried, though. “What about Signor?”

“Bea ain’t let him out of her sight.” Crispin nodded, satisfied. “But”—his face creased with worry again as he glanced over his shoulder—“I don’t know what we’re going to say about Priya, if we bring her back.”

“Priya can stay with me,” Merry said.

Marshal Reeves gave the teamster another dollar.

Miss Francina picked at the fingertip of one of her gloves. “We need to start thinking about how to get out of the city. And how we’re getting Madame out of jail.”

“We thought of making for Vancouver,” Crispin said. “We could bail her, but I don’t know if Madame would agree to jump bail.”

“She won’t,” I said.

Miss Francinca nodded, of course. “Madame never ran from anything this side of a Kodiak bear.”

It was the right thing to say. I remembered that damned barn cat and what I’d decided on the
Octopus
. And I remembered that if we ran there wasn’t nobody to stop Bantle and Standish and Nemo from doing whatever the hell they liked.

And I remembered that the man paying off the teamster was a duly sworn and appointed lawman of the United States and Territories and that he hadn’t revoked his deputizing of me yet. Which made me a duly appointed lawwoman, of sorts.

“The jail they got ’em in. It’s the one in Chinatown?”

“Bantle’s turf,” Crispin said. “Of course.”

“Not just his turf,” replied Merry Lee.

“Ain’t none of us gonna run,” I said. “We’re gonna fight.”

*   *   *

The thing that stumped me most was what we were going to do to get the sewing machine back. But once Priya and Merry Lee and the Marshal and me explained the complex of problems to the others—this was after we paid off that teamster and left him behind, not anywhere close to anything that might be construed as a destination, and Merry Lee led us through byways to a room in Chinatown where she said nobody on earth was likely to bother us—everybody was agreed that we had to bring the fight to Bantle. And not just to bust Madame out of jail.

“How long do you think it’ll take this submersible to reach us?” Miss Francina asked.

Marshal Reeves huffed through his mustache. “That’d be a question for Captain Colony, I’m afraid. I ain’t no expert on steamship velocities, underwater or otherwise.”

“Is the ship like to be a real problem?” I asked. “I mean, I figure they got the cholera on board, probably in drums of water, right? But all we gotta do is stop those from being shipped to Anchorage.”

“What if they decide to release it here after all?” Crispin asked. “They could just dump it in a cistern down by the docks. Or at one of the cribhouses. Hell, Bantle’s cribhouse. The sailors would cart the infection off to Anchorage inside their intestines, if what you say about them having some kind of … dormant and hibernating … variety is true.”

I bit my lip. They could. And would. And no one the wiser until people started dying in droves.

Priya said, “If their plan needed Bantle to be mayor, then it wasn’t ready to spring yet anyway. We might have rushed them by crashing their party.”

“There’s too much we ain’t privy to,” said Marshal Reeves. He hunkered down under his hat, elbows on knees. In his black duster, he could have passed for a raven skinchanged into a man and none too happy about it. “But that’s the way of it. So we work from what we do know.”

In the pregnant silence that followed, the careful tap on the door of the room that no one was supposed to be tapping on sounded like shotgun blasts. I jumped so high I near came down next to my pants.

The Marshal flicked his duster back from his pistols, but Merry laid a gentling hand on his elbow and he settled some. “If it were the constables,” she said, “they would just have kicked in the door. Besides, I know that knock.”

She was right, it turned out. Because when she unbarred the door and opened it, beyond was Aashini and Tomoatooah. They sidled in, and Merry barred the door once more.

It was getting damned close in that windowless closet, and we had long since run out of places to sit. But after Priya and Aashini had finished hugging each other until I thought their ribs would crack, it transpired that the newcomers had brought a passel of steamed Chinese buns—chicken and vegetables—and a salty sharp sauce to slather on ’em. And they’d brought news, too, though that waited a minute.

I never did find out how Merry got word to Aashini where we were. But I hadn’t understood a single word she said to her countrymen on the way in, neither, so that ain’t too much of a mystery.

We settled again—cheek by jowl, at this point, and wishing for a breeze—and had recommenced arguing about whether to take on Peter Bantle direct like, and how to get our hands on Standish when he was somewhere under the Sound with the Russian Nemo, and whether we should just go bust Madame out of jail with dynamite five minutes ago.

That was when Tomoatooah started telling us about what he’d seen in the last day or so, which he’d spent spying on Bantle. Namely, that as of an hour previous when he’d tracked down Aashini at Merry’s other safe house, he’d just come from Bantle’s temporary lodging, where he was receiving visitors. To wit, Horaz Standish and an older white man, well dressed, answering the description of the Russian Nemo. They must have rushed right there as soon as the
Octopus
made it into the harbor—and it had to have made better time than Captain Colony thought possible, too.

Tomoatooah’d been with Aashini when the runner had come from Merry Lee informing her of our whereabouts. They had sensibly decided that the best plan was for us to regroup and share information.