FOUNDRYSONG Chapter 10: Justice

It was fitting, Dolora thought, that everything should end where it began. She’d had some time to return to herself, to become herself again after that flight from Cinder Plaza. She was rested now (though her knee was utterly destroyed) and able to focus (although her head was throbbing). She moved much more stiffly and had to rely almost entirely on the cane. It had taken some doing, but Slim eventually convinced her, through much arguing, to take a few drops of something he called “smoother.” She could smell the siren in it. It had leveled her out and allowed her to ignore the insistent hammering on her knee. At first she had balked at taking more. She didn’t want to be dependent on it, she told herself, but then she realized that, after this evening, it would hardly matter what she was dependent on.

The plan was simple: Aniello “Uncle Neil” Marcone had put a parly call in with MacTavish and the Development Council with the threat that he had a cache of documents that would bring them down. MacTavish knew the documents existed, since he’d nearly died as a result of his confrontation with Miles. He would have to come. Marcone had boldly offered to sell MacTavish the files and Dolora. The idea was for the former-MP to think he could wipe the slate clean. To make it so attractive for him that he literally couldn’t help but fall into the trap.

They set Krashnikol’s as the meeting place. It seemed fitting. Besides, it was within Marcone’s zone of influence, which meant he could send backup. She and Slim got there late in the afternoon, when the late spring sun was already dipping beneath the curve of the Umwelt. She’d feared the ferry ride, but the smoother made certain her knee didn’t do much more than tickle somewhere in the middle distance, even when they slammed into a wave and the engine chugged and gurgled as the ship twisted in the channel.

Marcone’s men beat them there. Four autowagons of bruisers were milling about in the macadam parking lot. Their driver parked Slim’s autowagon, a Black Blitz, in the rear corner of the lot, beneath the crook of the building.

There was an eery silence in the yard. Like the first time she’d been here, the hammers were silent. The doors to Krashnikol’s were locked with heavy chains. The windows were boarded up. Krashnikol’s sign overhead had been draped with a cloth banner that read “WOODWARD IRON AND STEELWORKS, NEW MANAGEMENT.” Dolora spit.

The other Marcone toughs weren’t joking. They were weighed down with weaponry.  She saw Atla Cuitlachs with their heavy drum magazines, two Sage and Hoenecker Red Wyrms, and a Leviathan with its huge bore muzzle. He killed Miles, she reminded herself. He killed Marguerite. I’m wanted now. There is no justice. This is justice.

Slim clapped her on the back. “Getting cold feet, Spade?”

“No. You think we can really arrest ‘em?”

“Fuck no, girl.” He laughed. “They’ll have hands of their own. You think they’re coming here alone? This is a showdown.”

“What was the point of all this, then? I thought Dotti was going to bring my last copies of the evidence.”

“You did not,” Slim chastised. “You know you didn’t. If you had, you woulda asked more questions like, who would ever prosecute MacTavish, and how are we gonna get him to the Juridicium. You know damn well what we’re doing. We lured them into a trap, and now we’re gonna spring it.”

Dolora flinched. That was all true. She knew well that this was the end of the line: for the Development Council as well as for her. She didn’t have the suction, didn’t have the power to bring them down through the courts. No one did. There were just too many of them. She might have nailed MacTavish and gotten him for his part in the corruption, but that was before Longstreet had jumped to his death. We should have waited longer. She should’ve trusted Kit, and not pushed her. Now, Kit was being punished for being Dolora’s lover as Blues camped out at her apartment, and Dotti was in the wind. She was left with no one. Its what I deserve, she told herself. Couldn’t be faithful, in her heart, to Kit-first it was the job, then the war, then Dotti. She didn’t deserve her.

So what was left? When you can’t turn to the law, you have to take things into your own hands. That’s what Dotti and the commonists had taught her. They wouldn’t be able to march until the Council was rounded up. This was a bigger matter altogether. This was a matter of justice. And how do you get justice? There was really only one way. The barrel of a strummer. Or, in this case, maybe the lance-tip of a fire-spouting kraftger like the Red Wyrm.

She’d seen kraftger like that in operation during the war. Wyrms were like strompistols, but bigger, heavier, and instead of lightning they spat lances of fire. Not the kind of slow-spray fire a flamensoldat puked, with high-test giantsblood to ignite, but rather a pure beam of the stuff, a ray of superheated air that burned and smoked. It could punch holes in brick, leaving the clay molten hot and running.

She wondered if she could do that to MacTavish’s head.

“Can’t have you toting one of those,” Slim said. “They’d see it a mile away. As it is boys, it’s time to take up positions!”

A big ogre growled, “We’re waitin’ on someone to bring us some bolt cutters so as we can get inside.”

“You’re big enough, Don, you can’t tear those chains off?”

The ogre gave Slim a level you’ve gotta be shitting me look. “They’d rip my hands apart first. This isn’t some radio drama, Slim.”

Slim raised his hands. “Ok, ok, ok, that’s fine. So look. I think you should be out front, Spade. They’ll be looking for you. They might leave if they don’t see you. So you stand out here and act as bait. Then, once they get out of their autos, you hit the deck.”

Dolora didn’t like this at all. “I’m not mobile.” She knocked on the brace around her knee, which made a hollow clanking. “I’m not gonna stand out here and get my head blown off.” That made her think about Lusky again, which made her think of the war. This, in many ways, was the war. It had never ended, just come home with her. MacTavish was the same kind of evil shit heel that had run the Aonrijk. So what if he wasn’t a magician like the Rijkmasters? He had them in his pay. He did what they did. He wanted what they wanted: submission, profit, to stuff himself on the misery of others.

She’d stuff him, all right.

“No, I’m going inside with your boys. And I want a Wyrm.”

 

The first Development Council auto arrived well past midnight. Dolora expected nondescript black Junckers. Maybe they would be the newest design, sleek and quiet, with brilliant headlamps and round djinn-cases projecting from the hood with the telltale red-eye glow of containment spells. These rich sons-of-bitches couldn’t be bothered to travel in disguise. The first auto that pulled into the lot was a Juncker De-Luxe White Lightning with running boards and red-wall tires.

Dolora and the chopper squad were crouched behind the brick ledge that lined the roof. Dolora had a Red Wyrm couched between her hands. For the first time since the war, she was completely without pain. She knew, academically, that her knee was ruined and would never recover. She’d been helped up to the roof by the ogre, Don. Now she was propped in place, essentially unable to dislodge herself.

Why had Marcone sent all this muscle, she wondered, as she watched Slim wave the occupants of the White Lightning toward the door. He said something that she couldn’t quite make out. Maybe “Good evening,” or something corny like that. The big man in the auto groaned as he spilled out of the seat, then headed toward the foundry door. That must be Theodore Woodward, she realized. He’s got the key. The meeting was going to take place inside.

“Don,” she whispered to her new ogre friend, “what the fuck? If they go inside, how do we shoot ‘em?”

Don shrugged. “I guess when MacTavish gets here, just open fire.”

It was MacTavish in particular that Marcone wanted iced. She’d pop him good. How many fire-lances could he take? Not much more than one. Flambeaux, she whispered to herself giddily. That smooth is really doing the trick. But back to Marcone. He had to have some kind of plan. She understood why Adelaide set everything up: he wanted to kill the people who’d killed his beau. No, the people who made Longstreet tie himself up in knots and betray everything he believed in. That, she understood. She wished Kit felt the same. No, not back there again. That’s dangerous territory. Best avoided. She wouldn’t let herself fall down that hole again. Nothing would change Kit, not Dolora, not Miles dying, not even what she was about to do to MacTavish. Kit would always be Kit.

She’s probably wondering why I didn’t change for her.

Two stubborn assholes, she guessed.

Woodward vanished inside. She wondered what Slim had actually said to him. He took a pair of private button men on either side. Security. She cursed herself for not realizing Longstreet wasn’t part of the same crowd. His pathetic ersatzmenn, strong as they might be, were more charity than anything else. How had she missed it?

A few more showed up, coming singly and in pairs. Slim glanced at the roof when they were all inside, raised his eyebrows comically, did a little dance. A light rain began to fall. It was warm, and tasted of summer. The moon came out, much to Dolora’s chagrin, and she pressed herself closer to the curb. Best not to give them anything at all they might see. A single hat or strummer-barrel could spoil the whole, carefully orchestrated plan.

When MacTavish’s auto finally pulled up, Dolora was almost too ready. She was suddenly giddy. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. Years, she had imagined this. Oh, sure, not quite like this, not with a Red Wyrm from the rooftop of some Foundrytown steel mill. In her mind’s eye she had killed MacTavish in his mansion. Or was it in the Rijkland? Some strange half-memory connected Sergeant Lusky to MacTavish, her dead friend to the murderer she was about to kill.

Don leaned in close and whispered to her. “Now’s yer chance. Before he goes inside.”

Dolora knew, of course, but… “I’ve never fired one of these before.”

“It’s not hard. It’s a strummer. Point and pull the trigger.”

Well, of course, and yet… She closed one eye and stuck out her tongue. She lined the sight with MacTavish. She had never been a sniper. She’d never fired a rifled strummer with that level of care. For the most part, she’d blasted away as she crossed no-man’s-land, jabbed with her bayonet in the trenches, and popped a desperate and beaten Rijkland rearguard on her way through the Aonic forests.

Correis, she thought before she took the shot, every part of me has been touched by that Fabricator-damned war. Then, she fired.

The Wyrm bucked like a real serpent in her hands. The kraftger charge seared down the pronged barrel and erupted from its tines as a blazing spear of liquid flame. The fire whirled through the empty air faster than a strombolt and passed through MacTavish’s shoulder. He staggered back and ejaculated a single word of angry terror. Lead shot shattered the windows of his auto as his choppers unloaded their repeating strummers. Slim threw himself behind a stanchion as slugs whined off the facade of the building.

Don grumbled. “Yeah, it does kick though,” he said as he unlimbered his own chopper and stood to unload it.

Foundrytown was suddenly a battleground. MacTavish had fallen onto his ass and was trying to drag himself backward without touching his injured shoulder. The fire-lance had burned straight through it, searing his charcoal suit to ash around a quarter-sized hole in his body. Dolora stood and took aim again. This shot went wide, scorching blacktop and turning a streak of asphalt into a bubbling ribbon of tar. “Damn it!” she shrieked, prizing herself up on the lip of the building.

The sound of strummer-fire redoubled as her side poured shot down into the parking lot. The toughs and goons of all the assembled Development Council bigwigs joined in. Autowagons began peeling out of their spots, strummers blazing from their windows. Chips of brick and masonry stung Dolora’s cheeks and exposed neck. The heat from the choppers and the shot pinging and bouncing off the building washed over her as she aimed the Red Wyrm one more time. She put aside the thunderous clatter of the strummers and the shouting from inside Krashnikol’s. Energy sizzled from the tip of her weapon and blew through the hood of MacTavish’s Blue Phantom.

She was just trying to disable it, so he couldn’t flee, but she must have struck the djinnstone housing. The autowagon erupted in a crackling fireball. Sparks and lightning played around the blossom of smoke and burning ash. Dolora could see a face in it: the djinn, as it escaped its magical prison. It flung MacTavish forward onto his face and sent him skidding across the asphalt. Even Slim, across the yard and half behind a girder for shelter, was blown off his feet. For a stunned moment, the strummers were silent. Then, one of the other autos screeched in front of MacTavish and howled out of the parking lot at top speed.

Dolora gaped. “He… He’s getting away!”

“No he ain’t,” Don growled, throwing an arm around Dolora’s waist. “C’mon, Spade, we got a wagon waiting.” He sprinted for the back edge of the roof. Dolora thought he was going to throw her off, and for a horrific moment she thought this had all been a setup and Marcone and Adelaide had come together to kill her the way Longstreet had died: hurled from the roof. Instead, Don leapt from the top of Krashnikol’s and landed on a fire-escape landing below. He sprinted down and hollered, “Warm ‘er up!”

“What about Slim?” she asked, breathlessly. The firefight had resumed on the far side of the building.

“Uncle Niel’s about to become the only power left on Iron Island. If Slim gets out of there alive, he’s gonna be the capo of the only big boss left.”

Dolora wasn’t sure how the other bosses on Iron Island fit into this night of slaughter. Maybe there were squads of button men ready to nix them, as well, already firing on storefronts and Sacramentalist churches. Whatever the answer was, she didn’t care. There was only one thing that mattered now: MacTavish.

 

The auto ripped through Foundrytown, blasting down the streets like a luftlighter under full power. The engine screamed. The djinn was being pushed to its limit. They took a hard corner and the wagon went up on two wheels, pivoting around Don like he was an anchor. The tires shrieked in protest and the suspension groaned. “Correis!” Dolora gasped, clutching at the door while trying not to fumble the bulky Red Wyrm in her lap. “Slow down!”

“If I slow down, we lose ‘em,” said the tough from the front. He spun the wheel with wild abandon, holding onto it like a life raft. Dolora pulled herself upright and balanced the weapon on her knees.

The Juncker Brightbolt was careening just as wildly ahead. It slewed past a stop sign as its headlights raked the side of a grain truck. MacTavish’s auto narrowly avoided collision. “If we can just stay on their tail…” said the buttonman in the driver’s seat.

“Better get that thing out the window,” Don said, gesturing to Dolora’s borrowed weapon.

As Dolora rolled down the side window, the auto cabin was filled with a deafening blast. Shards of glass sprayed across the seats as the sound of crank-sirens boomed off the midnight shopfronts and factory walls. Don grumbled, “Blues.” The rear window had been blown out. He thrust his upper torso through the gap and started plugging away at the Blues following them. His repeater burped and coughed. Dolora heard more tires complaining on the road surface. “Gonna be a hell of a toll to pay when this is done.”

“Yeah?” she asked, now leaning out into the teeth of the wind. “What’s your boss got to gain from all this?”

“Everything!” Don thundered back over the sound of fire.

The Brightbolt was level with them for half a block. Dolora tried to take aim, but every motion of the autowagon sent the pronged fork of the Wyrm barrel wavering. She pulled the trigger only once in that stretch and closed her eyes when she realized she’d struck the side of a building. Brick bubbled and ran like wax.

They rounded another corner and Dolora felt the fluid in her stomach slosh back as the wagon took a sharp left turn. The Brightbolt hove into view again, but the wheels on her side of the wagon were still hovering about the blacktop. A slug ripped by her and thudded into the tarmac, spattering asphalt. The wheels touched the ground again. “Don, they’re still shooting at us!”

“I know that!” Don growled. His whole upper body was hanging out of the back of the autowagon, flopped on the trunk. Curls of smoke rose from the barrel of his chopper. “Give me a fucking second!”

She swung the Red Wyrm around. “No time,” she said as the lead Blue squadwagon barreled around the corner. This one, she could hit. The Red Wyrm made that zipping, sizzling noise again and the beam of flames leaped across. The Bluebells had traded their fleet of horses ages ago and replaced them all with bottom-of-the-line Juncker rattletraps. This one was no match for the beam of a Sage & Hoenecker kraftger.

The lance of fire blew through the hood and the cabin, leaving gobbets of molten metal in its wake. The driver, a Blue in a cap, jolted backwards, shocked by the beam of power that etched through his ribs and stomach. “Oh shit,” Dolora said. She hadn’t meant to kill anyone, although she had to admit she knew there was a possibility when she pulled the trigger. Don hauled her into the wagon again as it took another turn. Her last glimpse of the Blue in the chasing vehicle was his face twisted in shock and horror as he lost control of the wagon and sent it careening into one of the autos behind him.

Don sat back with a huff. “Nearly lost yer head there on the corner.” He thumbed at a sign behind them, still swinging on its post. Dolora wiped her brow and tried not to look beyond it at the pileup of Blues and other traffic as the autowagons smashed into one another. “Bought us some time, though. Good work. How many shots you have in that thing?”

Dolora brought the stock up for Don to examine. A glass tube of giantsblood on the side indicated how full the reservoir was. Small kraftger used special pellets packed with mystic propellant, but a big weapon like the Wyrm used the straight goods: giants or wyrmsblood. “Still three or four good ones in there,” he said.

“You have more giantsblood?”

“In the auto?” he shook his head. “We don’t carry that kind of ammo in wagons. Too dangerous. You saw what happened to the autowagon you shot. Imagine, letting our djinn lose in here.” Don chuckled. “We’d be cinders and ash.”

“Hey, quit your jawing,” their driver growled, “because here they are!”

The Brightbolt was ahead of them again, weaving in and out of the light traffic of late-night Foundrytown. These were mostly large trucks packed high with goods. These towers of palettes and crates transformed the road into a stream of floating islands, blocking out the view of what was ahead. The mob driver kept on the gas, sticking close to the tail of the Brightbolt. This prompted button men inside to turn and ready pistols for firing.

Dolora shot the woman who popped out of the right-hand window through her forehead. The heat of the Red Wyrm shot was so intense that the wound cauterized before it had a chance to bleed, a simple char-hole through her brow. She tumbled onto the street. More squealing and shrieking noises, clang of impacting metal, erupted from behind as the trucks tried to avoid her corpse and failed, mangling it into a bloody mess.

The Brightbolt suddenly slewed to one side and Dolora shouted “MacTavish! You coward!”

To her surprise, MacTavish poked his head out of the passenger-side window and leveled a pistol at her. She didn’t flinch: the wagons were weaving too much for him to get a good shot, and his meaty frame was jounced this way and that, sending the slugs every-which-way. If there was one thing about shooting that she’d learned in the war, it was to stay calm and take aim. She did.

The bolt went through MacTavish’s chest. He sank back into the wagon, which suddenly careened to one side of the street and plowed into the front of a grain warehouse. For all the lumpings it had taken over the past few weeks, Dolora’s heart suddenly soared.

That’s when her autowagon cannoned into a truck.

 

Dolora was not, all things considered, doing well. She woke in a cell. Her entire body was a single, massive, bruise. Her knee, which hadn’t been bothering her thanks to Slim’s “smooth,” was now an apocalyptic wasteland. It was the pit of a meteor-strike. Her head had never hurt more. Her neck was twisted, and her back felt like it had utterly collapsed. Were those vertebrae she could feel when she settled down into the hard cot beneath her? She hoped not. Everything, everything, everything hurt. But she was still alive. That was the important thing. She was alive, and John MacTavish was not.

A quick survey of the walls and door told her what she needed to know: she was in the Pen. This was a solitary cell, saved for the worst prisoners or those most in danger of being murdered. She wondered if she would have to fight off the warden or any of his gray-clad guards. If she was going to be offed, more likely than not it’d be someone from Commissioner Wilder’s office. But, no, she doubted that. Why would they kill her? They had her right where they wanted her. Maybe this had been Marcone’s plan all along. A former Blue, obsessed with icing MacTavish, finally caught in the act, and his chopper squads got to walk because they couldn’t be fingered. Meanwhile, Marcone took over Iron Island and Cory Adelaide got to have his revenge on the Development Council.

A neat bow around everything. And the present, the topper, was Dolora. Hog-tied and delivered to the Juridicium for a swift trial and punishment. She’d probably be executed. Would she get the chair? Veteran coursed with fulminating power after murderous rampage. It would make a good headline.

The last thing she remembered was seeing the bed of the truck coming straight for the side of the autowagon. She didn’t know if Don survived. There was a moment where the wagon left the asphalt again and started to roll, but that was all she could recall. Whatever had happened after was completely unknown to her. She wasn’t sure if she’d been awake or not. She must have passed through the Sanitorium, because she was swathed in gauze and wrappings. She felt like an Oeonotrian mummy.

Dolora could not tell how much time was passing, or had passed. It was daylight, but whether it was the day following her murder of John MacTavish or not, she had no way of knowing. No one answered her call. There was only the silence of the cell. Her voice fell flat, and her eyes crackled with pain. She decided to give in. It wasn’t worth the struggle. She had been struggling for her entire life, and never accomplished anything. Let them come. Let the judge send her to the chair. Let her die, having done only one good thing.

She lay back down on the cot and fell asleep.

 

“Wake up Spade, you’re going to the courthouse!” Dolora rose groggily. Her body fought her every step of the way. “Get up, bitch!” There was a clang, as of a club striking metal. She forced her eyes open. “Your ship’s come in.”

“What?” She struggled to rise from the bed. Her frame groaned like an early luftlighter, all canvas and guylines. She creaked and shivered against the pain. They obviously weren’t medicating her, or the medication had worn off.

A rough pair of hands hauled her up. “The papers, the papers, you’re in the papers, Spade.” The guard, who she could smell but not see, was wet cotton and brass buttons. The crinkly newsprint was thrust before her as she was dragged to her feet. DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL SCANDAL! KILLER SPADE INVOLVED! A front page expose on the great moneyed interests of the city. But how?

Her brain was fuzzy. It felt like she’d been drinking too much. No, it felt like after she’d been drinking, it felt like the dreaming, drunk-dreaming. Nothing made sense. Nothing connected to anything else. She was disjointed, torn apart into ten thousand fragments. Dotti. The name floated up through the layers of pain. She must have gotten the attention of the papers.

She could imagine, sort of, in that fragmented way, what it must have been like on the first night, before the Stadtprasident turned up dead. Dotti, arguing with city editors about the value of the evidence she had, screaming over the parly or in person in their offices, tearing the walls down. Then, last night, when news of the massacre broke… they must have come back to her, begging to see what she had. The Foundrytown Massacre. She was famous.

The guard dragged her to the door, barely taking care to make sure her knee didn’t bang into the frame. Famous, and going before the judge.

 

Dolora’s life was over. She knew that. She was ready for that. She’d prepared for that in the hours leading up to the shootout. She had traded her life for MacTavishes, and it was a good trade. She was paying him back not just for Miles, but for Hadrada, for Tyrsis, for Marguerite, for the unknown and unnamed others he had hurt, crushed, maimed or killed. She was content with that.

So, it was with a placid look of acceptance that she faced the judge. The court was packed with reporters and observers. Commissioner Wilder was in the gallery. She wondered if Father Adelaide was also. Dotti Freeman was there. Hi Dotti. She gave a little wave, but Dotti pretended not to see her. Cold.

Nothing was working right in her mind, although some parts were coming back to life. It was like a graveyard where half the bodies had been interred while they were still alive. She had been appointed an attorney, some shark-looking woman in a blue pinstripe suit with a red pocket square. Dolora couldn’t hear what she was saying, probably because she didn’t want to. It was a sort of buzz in the middle distance, like an eisenbahn running on its tracks.

The prosecution, the City, was represented by none other than Ansel Williams, the pencilneck who’d threatened her what seemed like years ago. When her appointed attorney stopped, Williams began gesticulating and shouting at the judge. Dolora ignored it all and saw Kit in the crowd. Kit raised a lace-gloved hand and wiggled her fingers sadly. Dolora smiled. Was Kit crying?

She didn’t hear what the judge said. “What?” she asked her lawyer.

“Held without bail for multiple murders and conspiracy,” the woman whispered. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Stay calm.”

The court marshals frog-walked her out. As they passed Dotti, it seemed that the lawyer and the commonist exchanged a look. What’s that? her fuzzy brain wondered. Maybe the commonists were paying for her defense. Ha! That would be nice. Or would it? Maybe not, if the lawyer was appointed. This was all too complicated for the whirling thoughts in Dolora’s broken mind. Her muscles were ringing every alarm bell in her body. All she had to do was hang on until the threw her in the cell. Then she could go back to sleep. Someday, someday soon, she might be able to sleep forever.

 

The streets were in a ferment. Thousands of people were crammed outside the courthouse, pressed up against each other like they were packed in crates. Dolora blinked at the light, which stabbed through her like hot needles. Her eyes revolted from the sunlight. The bay glittered with ships between Silver City and Parliament Island. She blinked through the pain and saw they were hauling wreckage from the Argus across the water. Sea birds wheeled above but their calls were lost over the sound of the crowd.

Fabricators! what a crowd! Combine banners snapped in the summer air. There was a general stink, the smell of the rot in the city sewers and the salt in the south sea air, the oil, gas, and sweet-sour giantsblood of the autowagons blustering by, the smell of the unwashed, unshaven, untamed crowd. Wild eyes and broken voices cried out at the appearance of Dolora in the frame of the courthouse doors and a ragged cheer went up among the people. She tried to shade her face, but the marshals ripped her hands away so she could not. Black powder flashed and crackled as the photostat machines snapped their stats.

“Misses Spade, can you give a comment?”

“Care to say something about your case, Misses Spade?”

Her lawyer interposed herself at the top of the steps, sucking up the attention and spitting it back down into the crowd. “Miz Spade has nothing to say to you right now. She’s fighting for her life. She’s been involved in uncovering one of the most heinous conspiracies ever to beset this city, and it’s likely we’ll still be uncovering the true depth of the corruption that infested the Peninsula and the New Territories long after Ms. Spade is acquitted of the charges the state has brought against her here today.

“And I want to be clear. Ms. Spade is only being seen as a pariah because of her shamus work in exposing the city’s darling sons and their graft. Who should be on trial here today? Not Ms. Spade, but the clique of war profiteers who steered the government under Boss Harker, who held Heward Longstreet hostage, and who planned to eradicate the Alstat and move its entire citizenry to the New Territories to work in labor camps and company towns like they had before the Slave War. Who is the real enemy of the people here? Not Ms. Spade, who has devoted her entire life to the pursuit of justice, which this city’s Juridicium has shamefully forgotten, but those now lying dead at the other end of a mobster’s gun on Iron Island.

“They worked with the mob hand in glove to make their power play. Should we shed tears for them now that they’ve received their just desserts at the hands of the very people they were in bed with? Who knows what prompted Aniello Marcone to liquidate his co-conspirators? Maybe they owed him money. Maybe he decided he didn’t need them anymore and he could run the city himself. But don’t forget that the Bluebells were in the pocket of those developers. No further questions. Excuse us. Excuse us! Make a path. There is a Penitentiary transport waiting for my client. Yes, she is still being held, despite the fact that she poses no flight risk and was willing to reside under monitor. Yes. Thank you.”

Dolora could finally follow what was being said, and was floored by the argument her attorney was making. She could barely believe it, so that when the marshals nudged her to walk down the steps she needed more than one push. The brass of this woman to say that she was the hero! But the crowd seemed to believe it! She, the battered shamus wrapped in bandages, stuttering with her cane and useless left leg, was the hero of the story. Ha!

The crowd surged. Chants went up that she couldn’t make out. They sounded like the thunder of the sea. When she reached the bottom of the steps, she could see the rest of Silver City laid out in its grid of interconnecting streets, trolly-tracks, and fulminating power lines. The streets were lined with combines. Not just the local steelworkers, but the teamsters, longshoremen, power workers, trollyline combine, and even the Fiddish Baker’s Combine were out on the streets. The notoriously conservative Bricklayer’s Combine was harassing the crowd somewhere up the way, hurling insults and brandishing bats, protected by a line of Bluebell officers all lined up to make sure the other combines couldn’t reach them.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

Her attorney glanced over her shoulder and looked her dead in the eyes. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Just sit tight.”

The crowd was chanting “Down with the Council!” as she approached the Pen wagon.

She had been transported to court in an enormous iron-clad autowagon that looked half a tank. The Pen guard posted on top scrambled down to unlock it as the marshals handed the driver the juridicial mittimus remanding Dolora into the custody of the warden. Her wrists were shackled to her ankles, which drew a resounding boo from the crowd. It’s not like it was even necessary. She could barely walk.

The guards heaved her into the back of the wagon and closed the doors. Her last sight was of the sunlight on the water and her attorney (whose name she did not know) watching grimly as the dark took her.

The wagon grumbled to life. Its djinn snarled and spat as the engine turned over. Outside, the crowd became more restive. Dolora could hear them pounding on the sides of the wagon. She was frightened of the violence of their reaction. They might be on her side, but what would happen if they overturned the truck? She would probably be jounced to death against the walls, unable to even raise her hands to break her fall. The chains had been bolted to the bench, and kept her in place.

The wagon began to move. Through the thick iron plates, she could hear the guards shouting for people to stay clear. The shot of a strummer-rifle discharged from the roof of the wagon drew momentary silence. The wagon revved and leaped forward into that momentary silence. Dolora squeezed her eyes shut against the pain that coursed through her every time the wagon sped up or slowed down. She just had to hang on long enough to get back to her cell. Maybe they’ll send someone to kill me the way they did to Tyrsis Trist.

At least Dotti had been there, in the gallery, even if she hated Dolora now. What reason did she have for anger? Dolora wracked her memory for something, but turned up empty. Maybe it was something she’d done but forgotten.

A jag of guilt reminded her that Kit had been there too, and unlike Dotti she had actually waved, had tried to make a connection, had cared, and Dolora felt her heart crack.

At nearly the same time, there was a thunderous sound outside. The wagon jarred. She heard what sounded like shattering glass on the armor plating. The guards were yelling at one another. Shots cracked from the wagon. Multiple shots. Another low, basso rumble shook the sides. Dolora closed her eyes and put her head in her hands. She was jarred to the floor as the wagon was struck by some huge force and hurled. She felt that dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach that told her the thing was turning end over end in the air. It stopped with a horrible crash and the grind and shriek of metal on asphalt.

The doors, now facing sideways, popped open with a sizzle. Dotti Freeman, face obscured by a red scarf and wearing a combine steelworker’s overalls, stood in the door. Magic crackled and spat from her fingertips. She gestured, and Dolora’s chains snapped free. Behind her, Dolora could see the squat shape of O, the commonist contact from the Cog countries, blasting into the crowd with a long strummer.

“Get up,” Dotti called.

Dolora struggled to her feet.

“You’ve done a service for the international revolution, and the revolution ever serves the people!” replied her savior. Dotti’s eyes were wide, fanatic. She was grinning fiercely underneath that scarf, and she wrapped one arm around Dolora’s waist to pull her from the wreck.

 

It was going on forty-eight hours in that tiny basement when O came in unannounced to greet her prisoner. Well, she kept insisting that Dolora wasn’t a prisoner, that she could leave any time she wanted. “But if you do, be prepared. The whole city is up in arms after you.”

Dolora sat up, tried to straighten her hair, and frowned when the commonist came down the steps.

“We have a way to get you out.”

“Out?” Where would she go? She was wanted by every authority in the New Territories, and she had been rescued by a commonist gang.

“The city is on fire. With the whole council wiped out, military command is taking control of the government. The generals are meeting on Parliament Island. It’s time to go.”

“Where? Where am I going to go?” She laughed, but it was the burnt laugh of defeat.

O smirked. “To a place where you can start again.”

“What, some shack in the New Territories?”

“No, Dolora. The New Territories belong to the people your Cinder City killed and drove across the continent. They belong to the Giants, and their children, and all the orcs, men, dwarves, and elves who lived here before you came from over the sea.”

“Then where?” None of this made any sense.

“Somewhere free.” O extended her hand.

This was a cruel lie. “There’s nowhere free in the whole Umwelt, and you know it.”

“That’s not true,” O insisted, “there is one place. The eisenbahn leaves in a few hours and we’ll take it to the Treaty Territories. The Giants have given us permission to land a ship on their shores, and we’ll take you from there to the luft-run where you’ll board a leighner crossing to safety.” She held out a bidi for Dolora to take. Gingerly, Dolora accepted it. “In a day or two, you’ll be safe behind the Dvangar border. In the COG.”

Dolora stuck the bidi in her teeth and O lit it with a flick of magic. Were all these commonists sorcerers?

 

The City dwindled behind her as the cars clacked on the tracks. The commonists were up front in a luxury dining car while she was packed into the luggage like a crate of apples. It smelled of sawdust here. Between the slats, she could see the City burning against the horizon. There were flags everywhere. At the station, there had been screams and the sounds of strummer-fire. Everything was in chaos. The world no longer made sense. Miles was dead and Dolora was… alone. Alone for the first time in she didn’t know how long. Her ruined leg ached, but she finally felt like she had gotten enough sleep. There was little else to do while under the commonists’ care, and a crawling depression had clawed its way up her back.

The car door opened and let in the rush of the eisenbahn’s thunder. Wind howled through the stacks of crates and Dolora Spade flattened herself against the wall of the car. The commonists had given her a little COG strummer to defend herself with, which she now pulled from her jacket. She closed her eyes. No more death, she breathed. No more killing.

When the figure came around the stacks, she leveled the strummer.

“Gonna plug me after all we’ve been through, Spade?” asked Dotti Freeman.

Dolora dropped her arms. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Dotti,” she confessed, and big tears formed in her eyes. “I’m lost.”

“Don’t worry,” said the revolutionary. She came toward Dolora slowly, as though afraid she might pull the strummer on her again. “Don’t worry. It will be alright.”

“But it’s not my home!” Dolora said.

Dotti nodded, and now she was very close, and the sawdust smell was overwhelmed by the mellow floral scent of Dotti’s perfume. “Your home is gone, Dolora. But we, all of us, are going to make a new one.” Dolora let Dotti fold her arms around her shoulders and hold her close.

Back to the Table of Contents.

FOUNDRYSONG Chapter 9: Wanted

 The news of the Stadtprasident’s death was joined in the papers by the wreck of the Argus. “Heroic former Parliamentarian John MacTavish Escapes Blaze Caused by Spade Accomplice” could be found just beneath “Stadtprasident Longstreet Murdered by Rogue Shamus Spade!” or some variation on the same on the front page before the fold on each of Cinder City’s three major papers. The entire Bluebell Watch gathered for the death of the Stadtprasident in front of One Cinder Plaza. Businesses were closed all the following day as a solemn blue and white parade marched through Silver City. Even the residents of Alstat came out in mourning for their fallen prince, their own Alstat Stadtprasident.

The coffin processed atop an enormous catafalque of black with long black streamers. Pipes and horns clashed and thundered along with the march of the innumerable Blue constables. Luftleighners hung low over Silver City and Regensburg, trailing black crepe paper and mournful flags. “Today the city has lost a father,” Cory Adelaide wept from the rostrum. “Today it has lost its leader, its first citizen, and the only man who cared about the poor.” Commissioner Wilder glared from his place on the bandstand, his eyes firing murderous shot at the priest.

The combines held a moment of silence before their meetings for the fallen prasident, but no more than that. For them, the day was consumed with frantic planning. When and where and how to march? The city was leaderless, rudderless, about to descend into chaos. What could be done? What should be done? Lee Finster pushed hard for the Steelworkers to take the streets with their brothers in arms. “Now, and only now, can we finally force the big business interests to take us into consideration. The prasident is dead. Will we let them replace him with some Boss Harker clone?”

The only Blues not on duty at the parade were in the Alstat serving eviction papers. Credit Mobilier, that mysterious foundation that had apparently sprung up out of nowhere a year and a half ago, was not taking the day lying down. Before anything else, they would ensure their plan moved forward. Who was giving the orders? Not MacTavish, who was recovering in a Regensburg hospital, cozy and safe, protected by pistoleros and a handful of Blues, but then again, did MacTavish ever give any of the orders? Or did he simply design the plans and hand them off for someone else to carry out the dirty work?

Varda Ovirov cried in the kitchen. Hadrada dead, and for nothing. What was left in this accursed city for her? The eviction notice was limp in her hands.

 

For Dolora, the few hours of night between the death of the Stadtprasident and the rising sun were a morass of confusion and pain. Her knee was ruined, truly ruined this time. She had pushed it beyond any reasonable boundary to get Longstreet. When his weight was off her shoulders and dropping to the pavement below she collapsed in agony and found herself unable to move for several long minutes. She clutched at her knee. No massage would bring it back from this brink. No brace could steady it. She knew she had to leave, had to get up and limp to the stairs, get down from the roof, get away from the scene of the crime before the Blues swarmed the building and arrested everyone and anyone within, but she couldn’t stand, let alone hop. There were shards in there, shards not just of metal, but of bone, too, and every time she shifted her weight she could feel them moving.

This was it then. She would never have mobility in that leg again. Like Kit, she’d given it up to get the bad guy. Who was now, she reminded herself, a smear on the pavement at the bottom of One Cinder Plaza. A fitting end for Heward Longstreet, the slime.

She dragged herself across the concrete surface of the rooftop. The sirens were getting louder. When she reached the stairs she clung to the railing. That helped, but it was still an enormous amount of effort to scramble down. She stopped in Longstreet’s office, fearing every minute that a Blue squad would burst through the doors and throw her in cuffs. She needed her cane, and she found it amongst the charred down and scorched leather.

The elevator motors were running, a loud hum from the corridor outside. Dolora struggled back to the rear staircase. She couldn’t risk running into the Blues in the hall, or take the gamble of being trapped in an elevator. Instead, she used her cane to brace her descent down the back stairway, clanking every step of the way. At some point, somewhere above, she heard the Blues battering open the door from the Stadtprasident’s office. They poured into the stairwell above, a thunderous clatter of boots. Someone shouted, “The roof! He was pushed from the roof!”

She went on with her descent, moving slowly enough to still the noise from her cane. Each step down threatened to betray her anew. Don’t let them come down, she thought, clenching her teeth as tight as she could to keep the hiss of pain brought on by each fresh jolt or jar locked safely behind them.

Dolora knew the lobby would be crawling with Blues from all over Silver City. When she reached the lobby door, she was relieved to find stairs kept going down. She followed. Throughout the descent she ticked over the people who knew she had been in One Cinder Plaza during the night. Kit, but she would never say anything. The ersatzmenn, but their testimony would be treated as bunk as long as there weren’t any corroborators. You couldn’t trust a giantsblood junkie, could you, much less one with a djinn whispering in his ear. There was… whoever she’d called on the parly to get through to Longstreet, and… had there been a secretary when she came in? Her mind was so scrambled by the events of the evening that she couldn’t remember. She had talked to someone, hadn’t she? For her sake, she hoped Longstreet didn’t keep an appoint book with entries for blackmail meetings.

The stairs came to an end at a basement door, which she took with care. The room beyond was hot, dark, and big; somewhere off to her right there burned a massive incinerator or furnace, a story high, shedding menacing red light. Just beyond the door was a kind of work station for services staff. A few were there sitting around a table, muttering, laughing, eating cold sandwiches. They stared as she emerged from the stairwell. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and make out the Cog banner draped from the blank brick wall nearby.

“You’re the one who was upstairs,” a flabby janitor said.

An Alkebulan engineer in coveralls flashed a grin of predatory teeth. “You know how long we’ve been trying to get something like that going? And here, this one does it one night.”

A third man—no, woman, a tough woman in a cap and coveralls like the Alkebulan—spit into a coffee tin. The smell of old nasvy rose from the table as bidis burned on lips or in ash trays. “You best get out to the street. You have somewhere to go?”

“I’ll be fine,” Dolora muttered. Who were these people? Commonists, a voice inside told her. Instinctively, another whispered Don’t trust them. But would she be fine? Where would she go? Correis, she’d exhausted every last ounce of Kit’s good will, she couldn’t go back there. Even if she could, she wouldn’t want to put Kit in danger. It was as sure as signing a warrant for her that if she went back to Kit’s place, the Blues would eventually catch up to her there and figure out the connection between Kit and Miles on the luftleighner. The luftleighner.

The enormity of what had happened slammed into her like a loading crane packed with granite. Miles was dead. MacTavish was likely dead, too. She would discover her mistake only later, when she got a look at the papers, but then in that basement room she had no reason to doubt it. Stadtprasident Longstreet was dead. That wasn’t enough to stop the evictions, or change the course of Credit Mobilier’s plan. There were still people who would benefit from the forced sale and relocation of the Alstat residents. The plan was proceeding with or without them: the emptying of the Alstat, the gutting of its homes, and its colonization and transformation, the way the New Territories had been colonized and transformed by Continentals. It was the same story all over again: money to be made.

How had she thought so romantically of the New Territories before? She couldn’t understand any of it. The whole history of the city appeared different to her now, changed. It wasn’t a brash young explorer in the wild. The New Territories hadn’t been wild. They had been vibrant and full of life. The giants whose bodies were mined for the precious giantsblood had been the gods of the New Territories. Before the Closure, hundreds of thousands of Continentals had poured over from Ae Vira and Aere, Etoille and Leovic, Aon and every other land beyond the Closed Sea. Miles had said something about it once, about the slaughter in the Territories, and Dotti had reminded her of the Slave War, which Dolora had honestly forgotten until that day on the docks. So much of the history of the city was forgotten.

There were no statues dedicated to the Slave or Sugar wars in the city. The Territorial Wars, however, got big honor in the city. Why, right on Cinder Plaza there was a brass giant, kneeling, surrounded by Cinder City troops in iron. This monument made up the heart of the streetwagon exchange, around which all public transportation in Silver City turned.

She hobbled by the servicepeople and burst out onto the streets. Where will I go? Black autowagons with Bluebell shields painted on them were still pulling up to the front of One Cinder Plaza. The horizon was pink with the rising sun. A crowd had gathered on the far side of the building to see the remains of the beloved Stadtprasident Longstreet. Patrol lighters buzzed the top of the building, and the streets were filled with chaos.

Dolora swam upstream, away from the crowds, limping and resting heavily on her cane.

 

The Kowalski house was a few blocks north of the Sanitorium in Alstat, a block from the elevated streetwagon that bent east into Centrum. It was a little building from the last century, with a porch and a yard. An unpainted picket fence marched along the edge of the tiny yard, hemming the grass away from the road. The Kowalskis had an autowagon and a converted stable—Miles said they used to have a horse and buggy for his tata’s sewing business to go door to door, but they sold it when the Juncker Autoworks put out their Standard Model, the cheap black wagon that every household could afford on a payment plan.

Dolora didn’t reach it until mid-morning. She debated other places: should she go to Dotti? To her apartment? The Blues might be hunting for her already. Best to do without everything at home and avoid any potential run-ins. She had dropped her new Firedrake off a streetwagon going through Shipston and watched it smash to pieces on the street below. The Blues might recover it, but they’d never get any information from it. The way the barrel shattered, it was unlikely they would even be able to use toolmarks to confirm it was the pistol that shot at Longstreet.

Nor will they find any slugs in Longstreet’s body. The whole damn thing was his fault. If he’d come in peacefully, or even offered to cooperate in exchange for leniency… but he knew better than that. That had been a suicide, plain and simple. He couldn’t face the forces in control of the city knowing full well they would grind him up and crush him. If it hadn’t been Longstreet, it would have been someone else. Boss Harker, maybe, or some Kirk stooge. It didn’t absolve him, but it did put him in a certain light.

She struggled to reach the door. The porch creaked under her heavy footsteps. Rather than ring the bell, she rapped with the head of her cane, then collapsed into the rocking chair beneath the window. Alte Kowalski answered, gasping when she saw the condition Dolora was in. “Oh no, my poor little one,” she said, bustling outside. “Moshe! Moshe! Come out here! It’s Ms. Spade!”

“It’s who?” came a voice from within.

“Dolora Spade! Bogomiles’ partner! Oh, darling,” she said softly to Dolora, “you look like you’ve been through the other side and back.”

Dolora knew she was bedraggled. Her suit was torn, her knee bloody and oozing, her hair singed by krafger fire. She smiled weakly. “I’m sorry Mrs. Kowalski,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“Is it true?” Alte asked, kneeling by Dolora’s side. “Is it true what they said about our Bogomiles on the radio?” Dolora’s heart broke at the pain in Alte’s eyes. She smelled of paprika, butter, and flour.

Dolora turned away, sucking in a hitching breath. “I don’t know, Mrs. Kowalski… but I think so. I saw the ship go down. He was on it.” I put him on it. I sent him after MacTavish. I killed Miles.

 

In the late afternoon, Johnathan MacTavish got on the radio and assured everyone in Cinder City he was still alive. Dolora sat up from the chair in the Kowalski’s living room where she’d been recovering and turned up the volume. Alte and Moshe came in from the adjoining rooms where they’d been cooking and working respectively. Moshe wore a long prayer shawl and had written Fiddish letters on his arms with charcoal. Dolora raised her eyebrows but thought better of asking. Alte observed her husband’s new garb with scorn.

“The Argus was destroyed as a result of a terrorist attack by the commonist Bogomiles Kowalski.” Dolora bristled. She recognized that smarmy, mealy-mouthed voice. It was MacTavish, alright, just as he’d sounded back in his Iron Island days. She imagined him with a mouthful of oatmeal, sputtering his vile lies onto the microphone.

Alte exploded. “Commonist!” she spat. Moshe only moaned and shook his head. Dolora missed the next few seconds as Alte began to rant. “Our Bogomiles was not a commonist! He was a good boy!”

“Restrain yourself, Fidene harridan!” Moshe groaned, “I want to hear!”

“…planned this well in advance, together. It’s no coincidence that Kowalski was on the Argus at the same time his accomplice, Dolora Spade, was in the Stadtprasident’s office shooting at him. The city itself is under attack, and until these two are brought to justice there will be no safety for any citizens of Cinder City or anyone living on the peninsula.”

“I know this woman, Spade. She was thrown off the Bluebell Watch for her single-minded quest to destroy me personally. I don’t know what she has against me, except that I’ve been successful. That’s really the thing that gets these commonist dogs more than anything else: they can’t stand someone who’s managed to accomplish something in life. Kowalski and Spade were both wash-outs, failures, Alstat scum. Now, we’ve had a Stadtprasident who promised to take care of the gutter-scum in Alstat and see how grateful they were? It’s time to reconsider the city’s policy toward that slum. We need to get someone in the Stadtprasident’s office who knows how to control the orcs, the ogres, and the foreign elements with a firm hand.”

The radiograph man broke in. “Does that mean you’re going to run for Stadtprasident, Mr. MacTavish?”

There was a pregnant pause. Dolora leaned forward, her mind awash with fire. “I don’t know, to be honest. Maybe it does.”

“You heard it here first, folks. Johnathan MacTavish, Chief Officer of Cinder City Consolidated, is considering a run for the highest office in the land!”

Alte snapped the radio off.

 

“It’s only a matter of time,” Alte said. “Girl-child, you know I love you and I know you are not responsible for Bogomiles’ death,” she went on, while Dolora thought But I am - I sent him there. It should have been me in that airship, “but you cannot stay here. Your Blue watch will be here any time. Your name is all over the radio and will be in the papers.”

“We can hide the girl, just you see,” Moshe replied. Dolora didn’t even have a chance to speak. “There are ways. Just like back in Vaclav.”

Alte clucked. “You think you are some big hero revolutionary. You aren’t commonist. Bogomiles wasn’t commonist. We are just two poor foreigners at the mercy of the city.”

“Foreigners!” Moshe thundered, stomping around the room like an angry bear. “Foreigners? Have I not slaved and worked for these people half a lifetime? We raised a boy here! We forgot our home here to become ‘Cinder City’ like everyone else. What foreigners? I am no more foreigner than Mr. MacTavish or Heward Longstreet! None of us belong in this place. You know that as well as I. Who are the people not foreigners in this land? The giants, dead, the Unspoken Name bless their tormented souls. The Territorians, dead or slaves, the Unspoken Name bless them. But now we have the chance to do good, to finally show that we are not cowards, and you say pfaugh!”

Alte took Moshe by the arm and led him slightly away from Dolora, across the threadbare carpet, to the window. She supposed that Alte didn’t want her to hear the hissing remonstrations, but Dolora could hear every word. “I did not say we can’t help her, Moshe, you old fool. I said we couldn’t hide her here. The Blue watch will come poking and prying and opening everything. Like the Coemniks, you understand? You’ve lived here long enough to know. Miles told us enough that you should not be surprised.”

“Then what are you saying, you old woman?” he asked.

Alte rolled her eyes and look heavenward for assistance. “We will keep her here for now, but any minute the Bluebell boys will come battering down our door. So, you should hurry to the church and find Father Gornisht.”

Moshe nodded vigorously, suddenly simpatico. Dolora didn’t know who Father Gornisht was, or understand what was going on between them, but Moshe was all of a sudden full of life. “You wait here, maydl child, and I will be back fast as a tinker’s piss. If your old friends in the double-breasted uniform come, up to the attic with thee.” He nodded, clearly content with himself, and started to the door.

“Moshe,” Alte said, in warning.

Moshe paused, laughed, then took the shawl from his shoulders and smudged the markings on his arms. He rolled down his sleeves. “Of course, of course. All these years, I had forgot.”

“You didn’t forget. You wanted to go out with that on. You were testing me.” From the way Alte said it, Dolora would have thought Moshe was a divine punishment.

“Testing you? Woman, I have no need to test you. I tried you already, and found you bitter!” Moshe said, grabbing his cap and hopping through the door before Alte could spit a rejoinder.

 

Ivar Gornisht chewed thoughtfully on the long stem of his pipe. He was seated in the kitchen of the Kowalski house, bouncing his knee and drawing the occasional thin stream of nasvy-smoke into his mouth. He was tired. He had been tired for a long time. His first memories were of the Kreuzemperor Hanz Drang being deposed at home in Aon. Like many Colsci, his family had lived in the borderlands between Aon and Dvangar, that lowland of forests and tidal valleys through which armies had marched since the beginning of history. He’d moved to Vaclav as a young man, in part to escape the generation-long war rippling out of Aon. When he was twenty-one, the Dvangar commonists overthrew the Autokrator, leaving Vaclav in the contested region between Aon and the new Commonwealth of the Guilds, the Cog.

He was a staunch Colsci Sacramentalist, and the commonists at first drove the priests out of their churches. Ivar had trained for the priesthood in Aon-occupied Colsci until the age of twenty. He wore the long black frock of an Oenotrian Sacramental priest and managed to get himself a posting at the Great Cathedral of Vaclav. He’d helped print and distribute commonist literature for the Vaclav revolt, and even though the commonists closed the churches for thirty years, he still supported them. Why? Because unlike the hierophant Salsmarg, the commonists actually helped the people they said they would. They brought food to Vaclav’s starving. They brought guns to those who no longer wanted to live under the personal union of Hanz Drang’s Aon and Avendin.

When the Aonik forces came to crush the Vaclav revolt, Ivar escaped the city on an eisenbahn headed west. The interim government of Aon was permissive, but not progressive. The commonists were occasionally permitted to run in the Aon parliament, the Ratsberg, and occasionally terrorized by government death squads. He did what he could to help. When he was thirty-five, the Ratsberg was bombed and the elvish nobility joined with the owners of Stromkrupp and the other big Aon consortia to crush the combines and usher in a renewed age of war. That’s when he applied to Oeonotrios for a transfer to Cinder City and left the Continent under suspicion of being a commonist.

In those days, the Cinder City postings were for ethnic minorities. He was sent to Little Colam, in the Alstat, just at the edge of the hills. He got to know his community there, comprised in large number of crypto-Fids hiding from their past. He knew it well. He had been in Vaclav during the repression, had seen the Aon interim government, even before it was the hated Aonrijk, get its military officers involved in the murder of Fids. This was an old shell game on the Continent. Whenever something went wrong, there were always the little communities of the Fids to blame. Wealthy, insular, looking out for themselves, the Fids had been the target of every repression since the reign of King Clotar.

It was in this capacity that he met Moshe and Alte. He was about ten years their younger. They had come before him, and had spent years living in the New Territories when he first arrived. The Fiddish community came to him to ask that he protect these Colsci Fids as much as he could. “No one knows, you see,” they told him, and it was true, or mostly true. Very few people knew. And it wasn’t as if the anti-Fid sentiment had been left behind on the Continent. No, indeed, for the Peninsula had been settled by Ae Virans and Aons. It showed in every name in the New Territories: that Aonik burr.

“Explain it to me one more time,” he said slowly to Moshe, “just so I can be sure I understand.”

“The poor girlchild is running from the authorities. We don’t know how long we have,” Moshe said sorrowfully. “She and Bogomiles were trying to indict the Stadtprasident. She went to confront him, but he wouldn’t go easy. Miles…” his voice trailed off.

“You could say they’re freedom fighters, in a sense,” Father Gornisht prompted.

Moshe nodded. “Yes. My son. A freedom fighter.” Uncontrolled tears streaked his face. Father Gornisht put his hand on Moshe’s.

“Don’t worry, Moshe. We can take care of her.” He wondered if the Little Colam church were the best place for her. He could make parly calls once she was safely out of the Kowalski’s living room, maybe. The church had many connections.

 

The church in Little Colam, Saint Wenceslawius, was a cramped construction of brick with a high steeple of the same material. Instead of a belfry, there was a rounded dome in the north-eastern Continental style that Dolora had always thought was distinctively Dvangrish. The bricks were two tones, making course after course of zig-zagged stripes. Father Gornisht took her to the rectory in the back of his wagon. The church didn’t have enough money for an autowagon. “We don’t need one,” Gornisht said as he and the Kowalskis secured her in Miles’ back yard. Father Gornisht had her lie down in the bed of his wagon and covered her with a tarp.

Please, Correis and all the Fabricators, let him be trustworthy. She had never met the old fraud before, but the Kowalskis seemed to trust him with their lives. To Dolora, he had seemed the consummate dissembler: from his little clay pipe to the devilish twinkling in his eyes, from his thick black leather Colsci boots to his heavy outer coat, he looked like the very incarnation of the Dvangar con-artist. She half-expected him to offer to sell her bootblack.

The cart was hell on her back and knee, both of which had been playing up since the flight from Cinder Plaza the previous day. She felt like she could weep blood, so long had it been since she had proper sleep. The Kowalksis had helped, letting her nap in their sitting room and feeding her with warm noodle soup to keep up her strength and replenish a system depleted by giantsblood wine, stress, and anxiety, but with the splintery wood beneath her back all the good the afternoon had done slipped away. Autowagons had springs. Hell, even coaches had springs. Father Gornisht’s cart had nothing to absorb the impacts of every bump and jolt. She could feel each pothole, dip, or twist in the road and the uneven clopping of the pony was fit to drive her insane. Not to mention that the bed of the cart smelled of old hay, and that she had to stare up at the underside of a canvas sheet the entire trip.

“Good thing we’re on our way,” Father Gornisht said to her after a little while. She estimated they were passing beneath the elevated streetwagon line, given the rumble.

“Why?”

“Blue autowagons coming up. Probably searching the neighborhood for you. Hsst, quiet now.” She heard an autowagon engine, then Gornisht grunting, “Officer,” and then the pony clopped on.

When they arrived at Saint Wenceslawius, the tarp was drawn back to reveal the rectory stable. Father Gornisht helped her out before setting about the tending of the pony and the cart. An ogre Colsci woman ducked through the door from the rectory house and Gornisht babbled to her in Colsci. Explaining who I am, Dolora reckoned. The ogre rushed to her side and helped her through the tiled kitchen and into a little dining room.

She was lowered into a luxuriously soft cushioned chair and promptly and peacefully fell asleep.

 

Uneasy dreams troubled her. At first she dreamt that Gornisht had turned her over to Commissioner Wilder. She was hauled before the Juridicium to swear she hadn’t killed Longstreet in front of a judge’s podium. She dreamt of the Penitentiary and solitary confinement, but in the cell she discovered her flesh was the flesh of Tyrsis Trist. She was inhabiting the elf’s body, or had become the elf, or was remembering his life. She wasn’t sure which. The dream ended, or rather slipped into deeper dreaming, when a Pen guard in his gray woolen coat opened the cell door to kill her. In the dream she shrieked as the heavy club crashed on her skull. In the rectory, she whimpered, and her bad leg twitched spasmodically. Father Gornisht covered her with a blanket.

In the dream that followed, she was back in the war. This was the magnetic lodestone. She could not escape it. Everything revolved around it. It had become her polestar. This time, in her dreams, she was running from her crimes. She signed up under an assumed name and took a ship to the Continent. Instead of army camp and training, which she had really done in the New Territories, she was shipped straight to Etoille.

In her dream, the trenches cut right through Saint-Denis. Aonrijk troops were shelling the Cathedral of the Lord Ascended, and Ae Viran snipers fired from the rooftops at Avandin columns moving along the Rue de Marche. Sergeant Lusky was alive again and with her. She hadn’t dreamed of Lusky’s unshaven face in months. It was a shock to see him again, full in the flesh, toting his stromrifle and big Ae Viran pistol.

“We have to go to the front, girlchild,” he said. That was not how Lusky spoke, but he spoke that way in the dream, with the voice of Moshe Kowalski.

Dolora tried to argue. “We’re at the front! The Rijklanders are here! Inside Saint-Denis!”

“Not this front, the other one,” he growled. That was Lusky’s voice again: hard, to the point, but reassuring. Somehow, they got into a luftlighter from the top of the Cathedral of the Lord Ascended, as though it were a tower in downtown Silver City. Lusky fired the propellers. The djinn in the engine glowed and hissed at her back, and then they were off.

Some time later, she didn’t know how long, they were over the Rijkland forest where Lusky had died. Schloss Harbau stood at the top of its gentle hill, surrounded by overgrown gardens and waist-high walls. Stromkanon artillery was squatting on the flagstones behind, occasionally belching a scorching line of lightning deep behind the allied lines. Triple Alliance soldiery swarmed up through the trees.

“That’s where you’re going, private.”

The lighter hung in place, even though that was impossible. Every time the stromkanon glowed and growled she was filled with the sudden fear that they’d been spotted and were about to be blasted out of the sky, but the stroke never fell on them. It was as though they were invisible.

“Down there? That’s where you died, Sergeant.”

Lusky gave her a look to kill a viper. “You think I don’t know that? But you’re going down there. I may be dead, but you aren’t, Spade. You know who’s down in Schloss Harbau?” He paused, as though she might respond. He searched her face with his eyes. “John MacTavish and all his cronies. You aren’t going to let them get away with this are you?” And there, suddenly, was the hole in Sergeant Lusky’s forehead again. Brain matter and blood leaked from it. She hadn’t heard anything, hadn’t seen him shot. He simply was, dead, again. “You’re not going to let me die for nothing, are you? I took sniper fire for you, Spade. And you came right back to Cinder City and started working with those Rijkland murderers again. But this is your chance. Your chance to put it right.”

She looked down at the schloss. It wasn’t a fortress, had never been intended to repel an invasion. It was a pleasure house, a hunting lodge. It wasn’t impermeable, even bristling with weapons as it was. She just needed the right plan of attack.

 

Dolora was woken some time after dark. Father Gornisht stood in the doorway, little more than a glowing bead of embers with shoulders. She smelled the sweet nasvy of his pipe. “Did I fall asleep…?” she asked as the dreams fell from her like snow from a windblown pine.

“There’s someone you should talk with, I think,” Gornisht said. “It’s night, now. We can give you some dinner, perhaps.” He turned to look behind, into the pool of light spilling from the kitchen

An unfamiliar voice replied. “Perhaps best if I talk to her first,” it said. “Then you can eat, and after that we’ll decide what to do.”

Dolora didn’t like this. It was all too ominous. The Kowalskis trusted Gornisht, but should she…? She half-rose from her seat as the other figure stepped into the room. He was a tall man, slender, with a Sacramentalist’s black cassock and high collar. “Dolora Spade?” he asked, approaching her. “Cory Adelaide.” He pulled a chair from the nearby table and sat it next to her. When he folded into it, his legs spread akimbo and he placed his elbows on his knees. “Tell me what happened.”

The priest!

Well, obviously he’s a priest, kid, just look at what he’s wearing. You’re in a church, ain’tcha?

Yeah, but not just any priest. This is the campaign architect, the man behind the man when it came to Heward Longstreet. “You don’t have to worry about Father Adelaide,” Gornisht said.

Adelaide nodded. “You could call me the reform candidate.”

“The Holy Father was wrong about Dvangar,” Gornisht added, “and about the Commonwealth countries. But Arkhangelo is gone, now. We have a new Holy Father.”

“Admittedly one who isn’t much better,” Adelaide said darkly. “But you can trust me. It’s Dunsane you have to look out for. I’m on your side.” He drew a small red leather patch from his pocket and showed it to Dolora. A golden cog-wheel was embossed on the surface. Beneath that, a scythe of gold with strange Dvangrish lettering along its handle.

Commonist trappings; not just commonist, but Cog. How was this strange priest related to the commonists? Did he know Dotti? Dolora tried to lean forward to get a better look. The room was swathed in shadow as the sun westered on the far side of the rectory garden. She reached out. Adelaide didn’t stop her from running her fingertips over the leather. Can I trust this priest?

On the one hand, Adelaide was the man who’d arranged the vote-dumping scheme. On the other, Miles had seemed impressed by him. On the other, Longstreet said Adelaide was in love with him. If he thought Dolora had been the one to kill his beloved Heward, he might turn her over just for that. But on the other hand (how many damn hands did she have) what choice did she have? Adelaide was here. She could be cagey, but she was wanted. The entire Bluebell Watch was either out to get her or would soon be. Would it help to lie to the priest? Probably not. Might as well tell him the truth.

“It’s alright,” Adelaide said, right as she was making up her mind to talk. He leaned back in his chair, affecting a relaxed attitude that seemed like it would be more at home on a Dragon gambler than a priest seeking high ecclesiastical office. It was so incongruous on him that Dolora nearly laughed. She could see why the lanky priest drew people to him. There was something about him that she couldn’t put her finger on. He had a sort of charismatic gravity. “Come, lets have some of Mrs. Wozniak’s stew and cabbages.” Adelaide smiled, the natural and unforced grin of a man on the corner sharing a bidi with a friend.

That decided it. As Gornisht and Mrs. Wozniak (she assumed that was the name of the ogre housekeeper) brought the stew and candles in for supper, Dolora started the story. It was going to take a long time to disclose, so she might as well begin. Over toasted bread and butter, she explained first the trail that led her and Miles to the Marcone mob, Tyrsis Trist, and the church. Adelaide listened attentively, correcting here or there when he knew the answer to questions Dolora still had. “The ersatzmenn were Heward’s. He employed them because he didn’t trust the Development Council. They came to us very early. It was on election night, if you can believe it, as the ballots were being tallied. They realized we were going to win, I guess. The next week we started hiring the ersatzmenn for protection.”

When she got to Trist and her suspicions that he’d been killed to protect the ballot-dumping so Trist would join Hadrada in hell, Adelaide nodded. “I don’t doubt it. But it didn’t come out of Longstreet’s office. It was to protect him, but it wasn’t his people. I mean, I could be wrong, but… You said it was a Blue who got Hadrada, and at first it was a Marcone mobster in the Pen, and then a guard. We don’t have connections with those people. The Development Council does. They were protecting their investment in the office.”

“Why? Wouldn’t they rather have someone pliable, someone already in their pocket, like Harker?”

Adelaide shook his head. “No, because it would delay everything for Heward to founder on an election scandal. They couldn’t go forward with the plan if the prasidency were being contested. They needed stability.”

So the murders hadn’t come from the Stadtprasident’s office. At least, according to Adelaide. But how could she trust him? Longstreet said he would do anything to protect him. Even now, perhaps. Especially now, maybe, to protect his memory. But everything he said made sense. It fit with what Dolora knew. That was more reliable than personal credentials, any day. Anyone could lie, for any reason, but if their reports lined up with real evidence, that was something else.

The afternoon grew long in the rectory dining room, until Cory at last convinced Dolora that she should come to the city cathedral. “It’ll be safer there. Farther away from the Kowalskis, and we can go in my auto.”

Dolora wondered. There must still be some way to get MacTavish for what he’d done… and perhaps Adelaide was the key.

 

It was late when Cory entered his office. The moon hung fat over the peninsula. He’d carried Dolora Spade out of Little Colam under disguise and dodged Bluebell barricades the whole way. The woman was brighter than she looked, although still lacked the good sense not to go sticking her nose into meat grinders. But that might work out in Cory’s favor. It might just. She was sleeping now, safely away from Father Dunsane’s prying eyes, in the basement of the Cathedral. There was a locked storeroom to which Cory confidently carried the only key. He’d moved some things for the steelworkers, the longshoremen, and the teamsters through there before and Dunsane had never found. It seemed natural to squirrel Spade away down there. When Gornisht called, he’d dragged the spare bed in, and made it up. It was almost nice down there.

The giantsblood whisky swirled in his cocktail glass. Back in Aere and Ae Vira, people in his position drank wyrmsblood. Here, across the Closure, it was too expensive even for men of the cloth to take casually. He held it up to the lamp and looked through the ruby red contents of his glass. Wyrmsblood was the same color, albeit a little darker. He’d had it on a few occasions when he was dining with the Vesco. If everything went as he expected, he would be breaking into the smoky wyrmsblood soon.

Dragons and Giants. Creatures of the vanished past. Brought to heel, those godlings, by the force of Continental arms. Cory folded up into rocking chair and closed his eyes. The bulb in his lamp blinked out, then on, then out again for a long moment, before the fulminating power was restored. Fucking MacTavish, he cursed, and all the Development Council pricks. This was their doing. This constant pressure on the fulmination lines, the drive to build a new station, everything. They had ruined every plan Cory had laid before he laid it. The commonists had told him it would happen. They were always so down about Longstreet’s chances. But Cory had known - hadn’t he? - That Heward could win.

And now look at him. A mark on the pavement. His beautiful Heward.

Unbidden, a tear began to bud in his right eye. He rubbed it away vigorously before it had the chance to fall. To hell with Heward. He had never appreciated the lengths Cory went through for him.

The Spade woman had swallowed the balony about Tyrsis Trist, too. That meant she might be willing to work with the Marcone mob again. How she hadn’t seen it, he didn’t know. She wasn’t as attentive to detail now that she was on the run, maybe. Hadrada Varnag had been offed by the Development Council through Leon Krasky, but Cory had been scrambling when Varnag died. He couldn’t risk the details of the election getting in the paper. Trist had been his doing, first through Marcone, and then through the Pen guards themselves.

A sudden jolt of anger surged up from the subterranean reservoir beneath him. It manifested in a strangled cry that burbled out of his lips, hauling his body to his feet, and hurling the snifter from him. Giantsblood, thick and sweet, spilled from it and splattered the carpet. The glass struck the floor with a thud and rolled under a chair.

Heward! You ungrateful bastard! How dare he die. How dare he! And if the Spade woman was to be believed, he did it to himself. Why? Rather than face the truth. Rather than face what we worked for. I would have helped you! I would have saved you! Suddenly, Cory wasn’t just angry at the world for taking Heward, but angry at Heward himself. A coward! A coward! The silent simmering was silent no longer. The glass wasn’t enough, the startled and stillborn shriek wasn’t enough. His eyes burned as though he stood over an open oil fire. He moved without his will, his frame acting without any direction from above. Before he knew it, his fist was striking the doorframe. His knuckles cracked and a streamer of pain ran up his arm. It left no mark on the wood, but his hand throbbed.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear the church apart stone by stone until there was only an open pit in its place. He wanted to mount the ladder of heaven and go to war with the Godhead itself, to overthrow it and cast it into the sea, to claim Heward from the afterlife with his bloodied hands and demand his fealty. Coward! I would have done anything for you. I would have killed—! I have killed. God, I have destroyed myself for you, and your cowardice took you away from me.

Suicide was only the beginning, or rather the final and horrific end, of things. We could have had everything. We could have conquered the world. But you, Heward, were too scared to admit it. You kept your wife, your precious house, your prospects, because you couldn’t be honest. You fucking coward. Just like that, the morning eulogy and the long afternoon of talking to Spade fell away like they were nothing. The only thing that was left was the white hot iron of his anger, his absolute fury at the way Heward had shied away at every turn.

On election night, when the results were announced, they’d been alone in Longstreet’s office in the Alstat. They embraced. They’d embraced! Heward would have kissed him, had that damn dwarf Itzak not walked in right at that moment. Fuck you, Heward. He wasn’t seated by the side of the Godhead in heaven. He was in hell, which is where Cory was going. But if he was going, he would at least make it worth while.

The real enemy was the Development Council. They waited until he took office to descend on him like the vultures they were. No one in the campaign had ever heard of them before that day. Heward had barely settled into his chair when a Cinder Plaza secretary apologized and said there were people there to see him. Cory and Heward had thought nothing of it: ward bosses and Kirk luminaries had been coming to pay homage all day. Cavaliers who wanted to work with the new administration were coyly delivering their greetings. Even the Unionists, those right-madmen who wanted to dispel the Closure and rejoin Ae Vira, came to see the face of the Alstat merchant who’d won the prized Stadtprasidency.

Cory had been excited for the Kirk Members of Parliament who would have to swallow their pride at Heward’s win. Cory had run against the mainstream Kirks, without their permission. He had that power. The church was behind him. Vesco Donovan had backed him. Heward was the only candidate who gave a single fuck about the poor, and it was still part of the Oenotrian creed to care for the disenfranchised, and there were no more disenfranchised than the people of Alstat, Iron Island, Shipston. With Donovan backing him and Heward as the candidate, Cory had opposed the entire party. The Kirks were supposed to be against Continental interests, unlike the Cavaliers, to watch out of the New Territories for the citizens of the New Territories.

Did that mean, in order to win, that Cory had courted the commonists? Maybe so! So what if the Harker administration had outlawed political discourse with the representatives of the Cog? The combines were behind him, and the Cog money came through their strange, cagey representatives. Harker hadn’t known it (or maybe he had?) but the attack ads he ran on the radio were true: Heward Longstreet had the help of the Cog commonists backing him.

They were everywhere, these commonists. They pretended to care about the poor, too, which put them nominally on Cory’s side. But the reality was they were trying to overthrow, undermine, break apart, and destroy everything that made Cinder City itself. Cory didn’t wan to see the city flying Cog banners or closing the churches. He wanted to right the keel of the wayward ship, not sink it. Still, you took help from the places you could. Heward needed money and he’d needed the combines to back him, and the commonists could deliver. At least in Alstat.

On Iron Island, things were different. Cory didn’t know if there were commonists cells there, but if there were they were meaningless. The power on Iron Island was split between CCCG&S and the factions of the mob. Cory and Heward had gambled on Marcone, and had won.

But that afternoon, it wasn’t the mob who came calling. It was the Development Council. MacTavish and eleven of the other biggest industrialists and business owners in Cinder City filed into the office to lay out to Cory and Heward just how things were going to be. Heward had sat, chastened, sinking into his chair, while Cory watched slack-jawed. These men talked not like the constituents he’d known them to be, but like the owners of Cinder City itself. There were no questions. They did not ask. They told. When Heward said he was going to get his revitalization plan passed anyway, they warned him that they could hold up every vote, turn the entire Parliament on him, cripple his prasidency, and call for a no-confidence re-election within two years.

When they left, Heward was silent. They had given him an option out: to claim the revitalization package and still go forward with their plan for Credit Mobilier to throw out the residents of downtown Alstat, to make it a victory for both sides. And Heward would get to line his own pocket-book with the redevelopment money, sharing in a morsel of the fat that went to the Development Council. Cory hadn’t seen a way out, and for that, Heward was dead.

Heward was a coward, but Cory knew that it was his own fault for failing to find a road out of the labyrinth of graft. If I could have extracted us from that, he would still be here. He died because he trusted me and I failed. The sting of it would never leave. The taste of bile would always sting his mouth.

MacTavish and the Development Council were at the root of it all. Heward could have been a good Stadtprasident. He could have been the best prasident the city had ever seen. He was hemmed in by the graft and corruption of old Kirk leaders and Cavalier businessmen. He was hamstrung by things beyond his control. The levers of power were never in his hands at all. They’d been stolen by the consortium interests long ago. How could he have helped anyone with the Council breathing down his neck? Yes, Cory decided, it was the Development Council who killed him.

With that out of the way, his next steps were clear. The Spade woman had been there when Heward died, had been the efficient cause that threw him from the rooftop of One Cinder Plaza, so he was disinclined to be kind to her. He could use her, though. Besides, she might even like the plan he was brewing. Fragments clung together in his mind as he poured himself a new drink. Marcone still owed him a favor, and if anyone hated MacTavish as much as he and the Spade woman did, it was the boss of Iron Island. Spade had the evidence that would get the Development Council to a meeting. Marcone had the firepower to end it.

No more cowardice, he told himself as he lifted the parly-horn and asked the operator to connect him with the boss.

 

In the morning, the search for Dolora was on. The Blues had scrambled the afternoon after Longstreet’s death to see if they could catch her. Eyes had been posted at the eisenbahn stations and the ferry terminals. No one reported seeing her leave the city, which meant she was still within their grasp. The peninsula was vast, and there were many places to search. Her apartment had already been ransacked, and Kit Winter dragged in for questioning.

She hunkered down in the little storage space beneath the cathedral. She could hear the organ for morning mass, the shuffling of many feet, and the drone of song rising up toward the Hieratic god. She, being a Fabricationist, was made mightily uncomfortable by the presence of so many Oeonotrian rites. It gave her the creepy-crawlies.

When she wasn’t listening to the Oeonotrian hymns, she was thinking about MacTavish and how he’d escaped the exploding wreckage of the Argus while her partner, her friend, Miles Kowalski had plunged to a fiery death. She needed a strummer. She’d tossed her last replacement after the encounter on the rooftop with the Stadtprasident. Not that it had done much good - her coming and going was now known well enough that the Blues were out to get her. MacTavish was all over the news and radio blathering about how he’d been attacked by Miles on the luftleighner, and how he’d narrowly escaped by taking one of the planes. No one could yet explain how the djinn had been freed, but twelve Academic magicians were flown into Parliament Channel to combat and dispel it.

If only getting rid of the Development Council were that easy. Djinn were an evil not native to this world, called here by the lure of giantsblood and magic. The Development Council were an all-too-worldly evil, men warped by the greed that grew in their hearts like weeds. She paced, she fretted, she alternately decided they deserved little more than public execution and then that instead they should be dragged before the press and defamed.

The news did not mention any of her evidence. That meant Dotti had lied, kept it hidden, and so her last ace card had evaporated. Dotti had what were likely the only remaining copies of the proof. The set in the tower was already in Wilder’s office, certainly; the copy Miles took with him was destroyed in the crash. The set in Dolora’s apartment was likewise already in the hands of the Blues. Even now, MacTavish might be in his office on Iron Island destroying the originals. They are slipping out of my grasp! And meanwhile she was confined to this basement, this dusty room of thirty square feet.

Come lunch, Father Adelaide unlocked the door and gave her a tray of stew and coffee. He sat and talked with her a while, but seemed distracted. He barely listened to what she had to say, and instead kept looking through the narrow window by the ceiling, at the garden above. When she quietened down, her nervous chatter settling in so she could eat something, he turned to her. The expression on his face was one she’d not seen him wear before: one of quiet intensity. He pursed his lips and drew a strummer from his frock. For a moment, she thought he meant to shoot her. His hand trembled as he produced the weapon. He lay it on the bed at her side.

“I’ve spoken to Marcone. He sent this. And a friend.”

Father Adelaide looked toward the door. Dolora’s eyes followed him. Slim, in his slouch hat and cream-colored suit, was lounging in the cramped hall beyond. He smelled of peppermint, a sharp distinction from the incense and organ grease of the basement. “Ms. Spade,” he said, tipping his hat.

“Mr. Solomon,” she replied, surprised.

Slim smiled. “This here Father Adelaide told you what he wants of you yet?”

Cory shook his head. Dolora raised her eyebrows and let her fingers trace the etched Sage & Hoenecker maker’s mark on the barrel. “I can guess.” If Longstreet was to be believed, Adelaide was his unrequited lover. Could a priest want her to get the vengeance she so justly sought on MacTavish? He’s not like the Rijklanders though. This isn’t a war.

“Someone has to make them pay,” said Father Adelaide.

Dolora shrugged.

“They’re bad folks,” Slim said, “you know that. You told Mr. Marcone. That MacTavish is a murderer himself. And a rapist, if you’re right. And he killed your partner. Ain’t that enough to do what needs to be done?”

“It’s not a war,” she said softly, repeating her thoughts aloud. “He’s not like a Rijkland soldier.”

“Yeah?” Slim’s brows shot up. “Ain’t he? Or, no, I guess you’re right. He’s more like those board room pricks over there on the Continent that got everything started. Sure, he’s not like the boys in helmets who were excited to go out and shoot a dwarf, or an orc, or a black Alkebulan.” He sneered self-depreciatively. “But I guess he’s not so much different from the people that sent those boys out to do the killing. And what happened to them?”

“They were tried and executed,” Dolora said.

Adelaide clicked his tongue. “Some of them where. They died for the sins of the rest.”

“The rest they brought over here, or left to run things there. That’s the kind of cockroach MacTavish is. I remember when he was just a petty ward boss on the Island.” Something gleamed in Slim’s eyes. Something dark. “So, come on. Pick up that strummer.” He rolled his shoulder, revealing the pistol beneath his coat. “I’ll even let you plug MacTavish yourself.”

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