FOUNDRYSONG Chapter 8: All the Way to the Top

Leon Krasky sighed. He was tired. His bones hurt. He was slung across the front seat of the autowagon, his back aching from the stake-out. He’d been assigned to watch Krashnikol’s foundry and watch it he would. He was good at that, the watching. He really liked the other parts of the job much more, but he was best at the watching. That was what had originally set him apart from the others. Krasky had been on the Watch for decades, but it was his careful and patient attention to detail when there was someone to intimidate that first gave the big-wigs notice.

He closed his eyes and shimmied to rearrange his back. There was nothing going on and he needed some shut-eye. The Spade bitch and her partner should be all sewn up now. No one came back from a Krasky special. Once you’d been cold-cocked, dragged half-way across the city, and frog-marched through various cells and detainers, a lost parcel among the Watch postal services, you left the trail alone. He had experience with other private snoops before. This was how you got rid of them. In the beginning he’d tried paying ‘em off, but that had never panned out. The thing with paying a private snoop is that if you gave ‘em money once, they felt like they could always come back and get more. Krasky’s employers were not keen on paying more.

There were few things he hated worse than a private shamus. Maybe elves. Maybe elf sorcerers. So full of themselves. So fucking pompous. But at least the elves had a point-they were clearly superior to orcs, dwarves, ogres, so Leon could forgive them that. But a private shamus? That was an engine of a whole different color. A shamus was supposed to be on your side. After all, they were licensed by the city. You’d think they’d want to help the Watch. A lot of ‘em where even Watchmen themselves, at some point.

But, no. They had no respect for decent, hard-working Watchmen. What was the saying? Familiarity breeds contempt. And a private shamus was as contemptuous a creature as you could imagine on the Godhead’s Umwelt.

There was a moment where Krasky was dangerously close to clarity. He wondered if it had to do with who was paying the bills, meaning his, Krasky’s, as opposed to some private snoop. People like the dame Spade and her partner, that mope Kowalski, had been Blues before. But now they weren’t on the City dole, they didn’t answer to any City politician. Private, individual, citizens were the employers. If he had been less tired, or less jaded, or less cruel, he might have made the connection. He might even have worked out who he (along with all the other Blues) actually served. At that moment, the revelation was extinguished by his malice like a blown pilot light. Rather than explore the thought, he shoved it aside, spit a curse on all prying snoops, private shamuses, and contract investigators. Damn Spade, and Kowalski, and all the rest.

He wiggled down deeper into the seat. The cushions of an autowagon were filled with cotton and wrapped with leather, but underneath there was nothing but hard, back-breaking wood. Long years of patrol had done a number on his back. He shifted again, trying to arrange the cotton in a more pleasant way beneath him.

The springs jounced. The wagon creaked in response. Back before autowagons, when you were put on a post you literally became one. Contentin Bellwright had been a strict old man. In those days, Blues were little wind-up soldiers under Commissioner Bellwright’s orders. “A good watch officer,” the mad old bastard used to say, “is little more than a machine. They stand at attention. They record. They report. They arrest.” Bellwright’s good watch officer had never existed, of course, but that didn’t stop him from trying to make one. Why where they always and forever trying to make men over into machines? And now that they’d finally done it at the Academy and produced that line of horrors known as the ersatzmann, they found out it wasn’t what they’d wanted after all.

There, that was more comfortable. Krasky let his lids descend. It wasn’t so bad, this job, once you got used to the ins and outs of it. Oh, the paperwork started to get to you, and they added so many regulations that you yearned to just go out and crack some skulls once in a while, but ole Leon Krasky had landed himself a good position vis-a-vis head-cracking.

He had just closed his eyes, or felt like he just had, when the wagon started rocking. His brain scrambled to make sense of what he heard. The creak of the wagon springs was the loudest and most immediate sound, but there were others behind it. Voices, raised in some kind of argument just outside. The door insulated them a bit, so that he couldn’t make out the specifics of what they were saying. It sounded like a woman and a man exchanging insults, but this was suddenly broken up by the sound of the door being wrenched open with a prybar. The clatter of the snapping lock brought Krasky bolt upright.

“I knew you could do it,” Dolora smirked.

Miles grunted. “Shut up. Hurt my damn arm.”

“Aww,” she said, “poor Miles.” Thump. She punched him in the opposite arm.

Krasky skittered across the seat, propelling himself back against the door that was still closed. What the fuck? he thought and then, because that didn’t seem loud enough, he said “What the fuck?”

He was staring at Spade and Kowalski. They both wore expressions of dark amusement. Without thinking about it, as an act of self-preservation, he reached for his pistol. Kowalski, who was still holding the prybar, broke his hand. He howled in pain and kicked up his heels. Dolora grabbed his shins and dragged him from the wagon. His hand was a frayed ball of raw nerve endings. The movement made it worse.

“Who hired you, Krasky?” asked the orc.

Krasky nursed his hand to his chest and resisted the urge to spit. “Fuck you,” he said.

Spade shrugged and grabbed him by his ruined red hand. Blood poured from her grip and the pain surged up his wrist. His vision swam, and the edges of the world turned a dangerous blurry gray. He thought he was going to black out, but instead he came back around, slapped in the face by Spade as she dragged him onto the sidewalk. Between gasps, he managed to say, “There’ll be officers here any minute.”

“Aw, you don’t like it? I say turnabout is fair play,” said Spade, digging her thumb into his crushed palm. The ligaments shrieked in agony. There were shards in there, the small bones of the hand pulverized like a bird caught under heel. They stabbed and twisted amongst the muscle.

“You stupid bitch, you’re going to leave me a cripple!” he spat. The words were as shredded as his hand, caught between ragged gasps. He felt Kowalski’s broad hands beneath his back, and then he was raised bodily and carried. “Ahhhhnnn!” he moaned, both trying to voice the hideous pain that was spreading through his body and hoping to alert any other nearby officers. They’ll have to come find me! They won’t let these two degenerates take me! When he saw the face of notorious gangster, “Slim” Solomon float by, he knew he’d been delivered into their power.

The mob was a force on Iron Island. It may not have much sway down in Silver City, Regensburg, or the Hills, but here in the edges of the City, it was something to be feared. There were always turf wars going on. The Watch tried to exploit them, tried to make strategic alliances with this boss or that one. It was hard to remember which Oeonotrian pug was running things. The boss-ascendent seemed to depend on the day of the week and the alignment of the stars.

But Slim? Slim, he knew. Solomon Slim, the slinky Alkebulan button man had floated between mobs for a long time. Unlike some of the other muscle on the Island, he wasn’t on a hair trigger. He could keep his cool. Krasky had seen the man in interrogation rooms and he never broke a sweat. He’d never been away, either. Most of the mob on the Island had done time in the Pen. Not Slim Solomon. He knew how to beat a rap.

He was working for Marcone now, worst of the bad lot. Not just an Oeonotrian foreigner, but an orc to boot. If Spade and Kowalski had Marcone on their side, things were not looking good for old Sergeant Krasky.

When they finally sat him up again, he was in an empty warehouse. The sound of machinery echoed through the walls, and he could hear the pumps and screws of ships outside. Not too far from where they got him, then. Probably on the channel docks, facing Alstat. The room was a huge abandoned space with wide open windows. Warm morning air poured in, stinking of salt and oil.

“What,” he sputtered, “what do you want?” Slim Solomon looped ropes around his shins and forearms to keep him from moving. Graciously, he left Krasky’s blasted right hand untouched. Another interloper appeared: a serious-looking Alkebulan woman in a long straight dress that cascaded around her like water. “Who the fuck are you people?” Krasky could feel froth on his lips.

“What we want and who we are are basically the same thing,” Spade said from behind him. “Justice.”

Kowalski cracked his knuckles and walked back into view. “Here’s the deal, mac. I’m gonna start hitting and I’m not gonna stop until you tell us all about Credit Moe-bill-yer and Hadrada Varnag.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he grumbled. That was a mistake.

Kowalski hit him like a streetcar. Krasky went back, nearly toppled in the chair. The sound of the crack was so loud it echoed through the concrete room. “Cor-reis,” Kraksy hissed. The blow almost distracted him from the searing riot in his hand.

“Why, and how, did the bank have Hadrada Varnag killed?” the dumb orc asked.

“You think you’re smart, Kowalski?” Krasky asked. He spat out the blood welling in his mouth. Kowalski’s punch had driven his teeth into his cheek. “Correis, you think you’re doing something here? The captain is gonna see you hang.”

Kowalski shook his head. “If this is what we have to do, Krasky, this is what we have to do.” Then he raised his wing-tip and slammed it into Krasky’s groin.

Now here was pain enough to make him forget about the hand, the punch, the teeth, the blood. It shot through his whole body like lightning. It was like being blasted in the crotch with a strompistole. His balls became engines of agony. His whole body wanted to curl up. He reflexively strained against the ropes. His stomach heaved in revulsion as his generative organs tried to crawl back inside. His throat moved: he was dry-retching.

“Now,” Kowalski said with forced patience, “Tell us about the bank and the murder.”

“Not on your life,” Krasky hissed. Kowalski rolled his eyes and drew his pistol. “What, you gonna kill me now?” Krasky asked. His brain was reeling, half-delirious. Maybe Kowalski was going to plug him. It sounded like something his hare-brained partner Spade might do. Isn’t that what got her fired from the force?

Kowalski pointed the pistol away and pulled the trigger. The strummer belched out its payload of lead into the concrete floor. The muzzle smoked. “Not now,” Kowalski said, then pressed the muzzle to Krasky’s side. His uniform scorched and he could feel the heat of the pistol radiating through the cloth.

Krasky squirmed. No matter where he went, the muzzle followed. Kowalski clamped his sweating, meaty hand on Krasky’s shoulder and squeezed. Every moment that went by, Krasky was more and more certain that the damning pain would follow, that the strummer would burn through his clothes and leave its mark on his flesh. But the pain didn’t come; the heat faded. Kowalski took a step back. “Next time that barrel goes against your face.” He pointed his strummer anew. “Should I save my shot?”

He looked at the weapon. Could he resist when that scalding metal was pressed against his cheek? He would be scarred forever. And those moments of agony… And what for? They wouldn’t protect me. Why should I protect them? Ah, but the reverse wasn’t true. They might kill him.

Kowalski sighed and pointed the strummer away. In that moment Krasky’s body made the decision before he did. “Wait! Wait. I’ll tell you what you want to know. You think Credit Mobilier’s crooked? Well, you’re right. And so am I. Just like you were, Kowalski, you dumb orc.” Kowalski snarled at that. “Take me to a fucking hospital.”

“I want to hear about Varnag,” Kowalski threatened, raising the pistol again.

Krasky groaned. “I did it. I did it! They pay me to be their enforcer in this part of the Island. I’ve been on their payroll for years, since before they were even Credit Mobilier. OK? It’s Cinder City Consolidated, its all the luftmanufactories, it’s everyone. You get it? These are the fathers of the city. Your buddy Varnag comes asking questions about the acquisition. So what am I supposed to do? I don’t know shit about shit, except that I’m supposed to keep people quite. So I try to bribe him. You know, the old palm oil. Except that doesn’t work. The bastard’s a commonist. The bribe just makes him angry. I tell him we can get his girl a new place to live, no problem, and he asks me if I know about a deportation plan.

“I don’t know shit. What do I know? I’m just muscle, Kowalski, just some fucking schnook doing his job. So I go to the foundry late at night to catch him without his big commonist buddies around. I just want to talk. I go on the platform where he’s running the press, basically alone, and we get into another argument. He wants to talk policy, and blowback, and turning on my bosses. I want to talk shutting him the fuck up.”

“And he goes over the edge.” Kowalski looked sick. They can’t use any of this anyway.

Krasky shrugged. “He doesn’t so much go over the edge.” No reason not to tell them. Fuck ‘em. What are they gonna do? Murder or manslaughter, they have nothing. The Juridicium would never prosecute, and if they did he could just say these mooks beat the confession out of him. That only worked when the father-confessor was one of the Blues. “I see an opportunity. I take it.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. Wham, bam, you know the rest. Smashed.”

There was a heavy clicking noise from somewhere behind him. “What? You’re gonna plug me now?”

Spade came around his side holding a heavy silver case and a huge… was that a microphone? “No, Sergeant Krasky,” she said. “Now you’re going to help us catch John MacTavish.” She held up the machine. “You, me, Mr. Kowalski, and this here audiograph.” She pressed a button and the huge wax cylinder inside cranked back.

Krasky heard his voice above the hiss and static.

His voice.

Confessing.

 

Dolora stood on the sidewalk outside Kit’s Silver City apartment building. It was too fancy for her. She knew it was too fancy. She didn’t belong downtown among the sleek silver autowagons and the big, heavy luftleighners sinking low to tie down on rooftop spires and disgorge their payload of wealthy drunks.

“How else are we gonna get to MacTavish? You know she has access to him and all those other snobs. Fancy lawyer like her knows everybody.”

Miles was right. He was going to have to see MacTavish; she would put a bullet in the man if she tried to arrest him. But that left the other target for her: Stadtprasident Heward Longstreet. Longstreet might not be the driver on this scheme, but he had to keep quiet for it to go forward. There’s no way he doesn’t know. They would catch MacTavish and Longstreet in the same web. All the way to the top, she told herself. But that meant she had to go all the way to the top of 305 West Pewter Street and see her girlfriend.

The same girlfriend she’d abandoned to galavant around on Iron Island with Dotti, right? That girlfriend? Yeah, this is gonna go well. The same girlfriend that told her to forget about her crusade for MacTavish. The same one that she’d left behind when she went to fight in the war, after she couldn’t bring MacTavish to justice. Justice! Did the word have any meaning whatsoever? If not, she’d was about to give it one.

She stubbed out her bidi and jangled Kit’s apartment keys in her pocket. 305 West Pewter Street was a tower. That meant it had a door man, a buzzer, the whole nine yards.  Dolora had been there a few times before, but getting through the lobby was never easy. The top of the tower even had one of those fancy docks for luftleighners. There were no balloons overhead now, which didn’t mean anything. Kit could be there, or not. Probably not, since it was early in the day and she had work to do. You know, like a responsible person. Unlike you.

The plate glass doors gave with a nudge. Cool air circulated in the foyer beyond, impelled by the huge fan overhead. The door man, or rather door ogre, was a huge suit in a coat with his cap down nearly over his eyes. Dolora nodded to him. The ogre looked at her from under his cap. “You supposed to be here?”

She nodded. “Kit Winter.”

“Good enough for me. Go on up.” He settled back down into his chair, letting the velvet swallow him again. Thank Correis and Georn for tired workers. He’d probably been there all night, watching a door used only by the glittering members of the upper class snobbery come and go to their parties.

Those shindigs were common occasion in Silver City and Regensburg. They could last for days. Bankers, lawyers, politicos, the whole lot of them drank refined giantsblood liquor, smoked sirensong bidis, and chewed spice-scented nasvy plugs. Meanwhile, giantsblood parlors were busted up across town and the Iron Island laborers who lived off sirensong were beaten senseless by the Blues. Dolora had worked a case at one of those fantastical, bizarre occasions when she and Miles first started their partnership. The party was at a silver-mirrored bar built into an eisenbahn car. Wailing viols and a theremin provided the backdrop to the most depraved debauchery she’d ever seen first hand. It felt like being back in the Aonrijk, in those enormous mansions and Rijklander houses all dripping with stolen Fiddish, orcish, and ogre wealth.

Miles had finally pulled her out of there before she got the intel they needed. Instead of doing her job, she’d taken on far too much gin and nearly downed a bottle of refined giantsblood. They’d found another way to get what they needed (they jumped their mark a little while later and forced a confession out of him), but Dolora would never forget the experience. When Kit was at one of her “parties,” that was what she was doing.

Dolora closed her eyes in the elevator and let the motion of the cabin lull her into a brief sleep. She started awake when the door chimed. Kit’s apartment was high up in the tower. She’d gotten it while Dolora was away in the war. Before that, before Dolora left the City and went to kill Rijklanders because she couldn’t get her fingers around John MacTavish’s throat, they’d both lived in the Alstat. Their apartments were close by each other in Dwarfside. It had only taken a five minute walk! Now they were aeons apart. Kit lived halfway across the city and only came down to visit her old friends in the Alstat when she had time.

That’s not fair, Dolora told herself. She’d come if you weren’t so fucking hostile all the time. And maybe that was true. There was no lack of blame to go around, and Dolora could reasonably take plenty of it.

But damn that apartment! It had floor to ceiling windows on one whole wall, looking down over the maze of Silver City. For a full five minutes after letting herself in, Dolora stood and stared at the peninsula spreading out below. There was the Hall of Records, and the trolleys coming and going at the stations. Around the corner of the building she could just make out One Cinder Plaza, the Stadtprasident’s building. Parliament Island was behind her, invisible through the bulk of the tower. Away in the distance, the greenery of Centrum Hills blotted out Woodland and the Giant Territories.

There wasn’t much to do without Kit. Dolora locked the door behind her, then wandered like a ghost through the rooms of Kit’s place. The parquet floors squeaked under heel. The sound of her cane was a thunderous clatter, and as she turned into the kitchen she slid a little and winced as the cane scraped the finish. This damn thing. She hated it. It was a concession, a sign of weakness, a giving-in, and her entire life had been fought in resistance to such concessions. She didn’t give in to anyone, least of all herself. It hurts a lot less, though. Between the brace and the cane, there were whole hours where she didn’t think about the fragments of metal in her knee. It faded into the background, became part of the general noise of bodily complaints that beset her. That was something. Maybe its not giving in.

She poked through Kit’s liquor cabinet. Of course there were no cheap spirits. Dolora drank gin that tasted like varnish, but Kit was part of a better set now. Can’t be entertaining the guests with cheap booze, she thought, with only a gentle current of little anger running beneath. Wait, what’s this? There were a few very fancy bottles of giantsblood-fortified wine along the top shelf. When did she…? Fuck it. Dolora grabbed one, ripped the cork out, and sat in Kit’s living room with the radio on.

Go slow now, she warned herself. She wasn’t a habitual giantsblood drinker, which meant the stuff would be extra potent. She couldn’t be falling all over herself when Kit arrived. She needed just enough to give her the courage to ask what she had to ask in the face of Kit’s withering glare, but not so much that she couldn’t frame the words.

The radio hummed softly as Dolora sank into the couch and sipped from Kit’s glass. Everything swirled in great luminous arcs in her mind. There were connections that she couldn’t yet make: she saw the outline of a grand pattern, but couldn’t narrow it down in its particulars. The sweep of it was just too big. It involved every major player in the City, of that much she was certain. There were too many factors, too many little things, to sort out. Better to go to the source and wring the answers out of them. That meant Longstreet and MacTavish, the twin poles of this hideous battery. Good thing Kowalski and Spade is a two-man operation, she told herself, filling the glass again.

There were other problems, problems outside the case, but they tended to get minimal stage-time for Dolora. The biggest was Kit, of course. She’d treated her girl Ms. Winter abominably, and she wasn’t sure how she could recover from it. Leaving her alone for weeks without notice… it wasn’t a great way to behave, she knew that. I had important things to do! I was solving the case! Yeah, that sounded hollow, even to her. You know the truth. You were avoiding her. Avoiding her because she’s in bed with all the people you hate. That much was true. Kit was always with these fancy big-wigs these days. These were the people they’d hated together from their little Alstat apartments!

So, what about Dotti? Kit didn’t even know the commonist Dotti Freeman existed. Alkebulan madame, secret agent, friend and confidant. It used to be that, if Dolora were hurt, it would be Kit sitting at her bedside. Kit was too busy these days. No, that’s not fair. No one told her. You kept her out of the loop on purpose. It’s your fault.

It was worse than that. She liked Dotti. She felt a connection to her. She wanted to protect her from the world of shit that had treated her so Fabricator-damned badly all these years. Her very body cried out no more, no more, no more! But she couldn’t be faithful to Kit and help Dotti. It just wasn’t in her.

A burp welled its way out of her stomach. It carried with it the sour taste of the wine, which burst against the roof of her mouth. She groaned and flexed her knee. The damn knee. It took a little to get the brace off, working the steel-clasped straps. The brace was a fucking embarrassment. I don’t need this. No. She didn’t want it, but she most certainly needed it. Dr. Horn had been clear. Between telling her about Longstreet’s mass hiring of ersatzmenn and answering Miles’ questions, he’d been clear: whatever was done to her knee, it wasn’t going to last for much longer.

Well, Dolora knew what was done. She’d paid back that scumbag Krasky ten times over. She patted the pocket of her jacket where a copy of his confession rode on reel-tape. Between that and the mountain of evidence on Kit’s nice mahogany table, she was going to give Ms. Winter one hell of a show. One hell of a show indeed.

 

Kit took a bracing breath of summer air, then plunged into the lobby. The ogre in the suit nodded at her and said quietly, “You’ve Miss Spade waiting for you upstairs.” She winced. This was not the time to see Dolora again. For one, she was half-drunk and dressed in a glittery chemise dress that ended at the knee. Her cap was knit with costume-jewelry rhinestones. She’s going to spit when she sees me, Kit thought, and then all of a sudden there was the righteous anger, billowing up through her like hot iron in a mould. And why shouldn’t she? Where’s she been for so long? I’ve been working my tail off to get appointments and make good while she runs through Iron Island with her head cut off, like some kind of fucking mope.

“Thanks, Earl,” she said, and she kept the anger from shaking her voice.

Upstairs, she was not shocked to discover a disheveled and dirty Dolora slumped on her couch with an empty wine glass locked in one hand. A bomb of paperwork had gone off in the apartment. Dolora herself was so fucking miserable looking, that it almost softened Kit’s heart. There she was, in her grubby suit, with her tie undone and her head slouched forward, her pomaded blonde hair tousled. Was she wearing a brace and carrying a cane? Who was this person?

“Dolora,” Kit said, kicking the sole of her shoe. “Dolora. What are you doing up here?” It really was pathetic. She couldn’t help it. It was like someone had taken the plug out of the bath, and all that hot iron inside drained out through Kit’s feet. “What’s the matter?” Not Where have you been? Because she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer. The last time she asked Dolora where she’d been, Ms. Spade had off and joined the army and left for the Continent.

The shamus opened her eyes. “Oh, shit,” she said. Her breath was thick with the after-scent of giantsblood. “I didn’t meant to fall asleep.”

“You’ve had a rough time these last few weeks. Apparently. Not that I would know.” Kit couldn’t help the bile from creeping through. It was there, and it wanted out. She tried to tamp it down, to hold onto it so it wouldn’t slip its leash like a wild thing. The dog was straining.

“Sorry,” Dolora mumbled. “I was going to offer you wine.”

“But you drank it all,” Kit said. “And I don’t want any.”

Dolora didn’t raise her eyes. Great. She’s here to push. To ask. To demand I give her more. Kit didn’t know how much more of herself there was left to give. Dolora only took. Maybe she’d given back once, when they were young and they loved each other very much, but since the MacTavish business — no, even before that — she’d forgotten what it meant to be partners. Her only partner was Kowalski, and their only business was raising hell. She wasn’t here to make up with Kit. She was here to raise hell again. “Just fucking tell me,” she said. Rip the bandage off and get it over with.

Kit did. Dolora told her.

The story Dolora unfolded from her mumbling lips was an unbelievable one. It began with a Blue named Kraksy and wandered through half a dozen paths. It was a labyrinth, replete with dead ends and blind alleys. Kit just tried to hang on and bear with it, though she couldn’t stop herself from snarking here and there at what Dolora considered shamus work. Oh, that’s your proof?

But the fact of the matter was, there was proof. The magnotape audiograph of Krasky confessing to the murder was enough to keep Kit reluctantly on the hook. So this Krasky worked for Credit Mobilier, which was funded by basically every major consortium in Cinder City. Dolora told her about an electioneering plan to dump ballot boxes and stuff votes for Longstreet - her guy, Varnag, was involved with the also-deceased Tyrsis Trist. Who killed Trist? “No my concern. Someone trying to cover their tracks, I guess. They used the Marcone mob to try it. We could get more out of Uncle Niel, but that’s not what we were hired to do.” Just chasing down this one path of justice was proving almost too much for them.

Then it got to MacTavish. This was the crux of Dolora’s explanation. John MacTavish, ex-MP of Orctown, current Chief Officer of Cinder City Consolidated Gas & Steam, was the heart of the labyrinth. “Look. MacTavish wanted to build a power plant in Alstat when he was an MP. We have copies of the old proposals.” Dolora showed her photostats taken under strange lighting. “We could get the originals from Records if we have to. So we know he was always interested in the Alstat. Please don’t say anything about Marguerite.” Kit bit her lip. “It’s not about her! Kit! It doesn’t have anything to do with her.” She was pleading. She grabbed Kit by her arm and held tight as a vice-clamp. “But we have their proposals for Credit Mobilier.”

More photostats. “Where did you get these?” Kit murmured. She could hardly believe Dolora had all this evidence. Proof of her wild claims was spilling all over the floor. Some of them, particularly the photostats, seemed too good to be true.

“The CCCG&S offices. At night.” Dolora hung her head.

Correis and Artax! Kit recoiled. “You broke in?”

“We had to! It’s a murder, Kit. No! It’s a whole scheme of murders. They’re going to relocate everyone in the Alstat so they can build a new power plant and all these fancy new houses, and Credit Mobilier is set up to make a killing. Look at the money behind this! And these!” She shoved another set of photostats toward Kit, this stack showing the Giantsblood mines in the New Territories, and the model villages being thrown together with spit and nails. “They’re going to relocate everyone. It’s just like the Rijk.” She grunted. “We were over there fighting against this shit!”

“You were,” Kit reminded her. The memory of being abandoned put iron in her limbs. She twisted away from Dolora.

Dolora touched her arm again, this time lightly. “I thought I was. I wasn’t, though. Someone told me we were fighting to make sure we could do what the Rijk was doing. They were right, Kit. Look at this. It’s the same damn thing.”

As Kit pawed through the downpour of papers and photostats, she knew Dolora was right. She was on to something. It might not be exactly what she and Kowalski thought it was, but it wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t like the MacTavish bullshit either, much as she wanted it to be. With MacTavish, that had been something Dolora knew but couldn’t prove. There was no way to pursue a man like John MacTavish with the scant traces he’d left behind; interviews with now-dead street addicts and drifters, the word of a mobster, the kinds of things the Juridicium would never pursue. That was attacking a luftleighner with a toothpick. But this… this mountain of evidence of all different kinds, most of it documentary, was something else.

“This points in all kinds of directions,” Kit warned. “All the way to the—“

“Don’t say is,” Dolora groaned. “I know. I have to go to Cinder Plaza.” She threw her cane across the room. “I have to get an audience with Longstreet.”

With the Stadtprasident? Out of the question. She wanted to explode, to burst like the grenade that had crippled Dolora in the Rijk and blow the entire apartment to pieces. This was too much. It was too big! It touched everything. Kit shuffled through the stats and rubbed her temple. “I need a drink.”

“I need your help. I know how to get to Longstreet. He’ll take a meeting with me. We have an audiograph tape that implicates him, and he’ll want the chance to make a statement. Maybe even to catch me. I’ve got copies stashed away, and one to take with me.” She patted her bulging pocket. “I’ve got everything I need to get up there. What I don’t have is…” Kit could see her swelling up, drawing all her energy in. She’s going to ask me to do something terrible. “Where and how Miles can get to John MacTavish. Before you say anything, he’s the other player in this!”

“You came here to pressure me into giving you an in with one of the most important businesspeople in the city?” Even knowing it was coming, it still took her breath away. The unmitigated brass balls to ask, after all they’d been through…! After everything. After the war, being drummed out of the Bluebells, being told time and again to drop the MacTavish bullshit, letting it almost tear them apart! Kit wanted to collapse, or else to cry, but she did neither. She felt her head getting hot. “Are you kidding me, Dolora? Is this a joke? You came into my apartment after weeks of treating me like dog shit and now you want me to put your guy onto John MacTavish? Do you have the least ounce of respect for me, or am I just a dope? Another dope to be played like a chess piece in Dolora Spade’s quest for truth and integrity?” She punched a chair instead of falling into one, and it clattered against the floor.

Dolora’s answer came in a small voice. “I’m sorry, Kit,” she whispered. “This isn’t just one girl. Marguerite was… I wanted justice for her, and I took it too far, but this isn’t that. It’s bigger. It’s the whole city, Kit. It’s everything.”

And she was right. The dumb broad was right. The spread of evidence on the table and the floor wasn’t just one missing girl. It was at least two murders and hundreds of people involved in a conspiracy to emmiserate the poorest residents of the city. Not just that, but to defraud them and relocate them to the New Territories where they would work in or wind up supporting CCCG&S giantsblood mines. And while those poor dwarves and orcs were being leveraged out of their homes, the Alstat was going to be turned into a mirror of the Centrum. Everything, even the draft legislation for redistricting and rezoning were in the stack of documents.

“I hate you,” Kit said. Tears welled up behind her eyelids. She did. She hated Dolora with every ounce of her being. “Why aren’t I enough? You have to run around and tear down the whole world. We could live here! We could live here, and be happy, you know that? I make enough money for both of us now. It isn’t like before.” But even as she said it, she knew Dolora couldn’t. She would never be happy, never be content, and that was what hurt most of all. I’m not enough. Me alone, I’m not enough. So to hell with her. “I’ll do it. MacTavish is at a luftleighner party. I’ll tell get Miles in there. But after that we’re done. Just so we understand each other.” The words caught in her throat as she said them.

Do I mean it?

Well, I’ve said it. I better.

Dolora frowned. “Kit, I-“

It wasn’t worth it. She couldn’t listen. No matter what Dolora said, it would hurt her. It was either an apology, which wouldn’t be true, or it was an admission that she was right. “No,” she snapped. It wasn’t worth it to hear. Lies or truth, it would only be a knife.

But she didn’t stop! Dolora breathed, “I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

Now, finally, the tears came. They didn’t stop. Kit turned away. “I know,” she said. I’ve always known.

 

The air above Cinder City was always awash with the diesel fumes of luftkraft, leighners and lighters. They’d played a major part in the War, through all of its phases. The leighners had slowly been phased out for the faster lighters. Even though they weren’t on the forefront of military technology, they were still the fanciest form of air travel. Lighter-than-air was less taxing on both magic and diesel. Once the balloon was full, a leighner would chew through a slow giantsblood-diesel suspension, but it didn’t need to refuel every time it stopped. Unlike a luftlighter, its djinn was imprisoned in its center, away from any aerial magicians. Miles had heard of luftlighters and panzerchariots erupting in gouts of magical fire when some clever sorcerer got close enough to unleash the bindings on the captive djinn. Anyone who did that on a leighner had better have some spells handy for escape, because the whole gas bag would go up like hot magma, and the gondola would be sent into free-fall.

Last century, the wealthy would have been on steamships and coke-burning ocean leighners. The same expression of power could now be had not by sailing all over the world, but merely by cruising around the Cinder City peninsula in the gondola of a luftleighner, attended by a veritable horde of servants, waiters, and chefs. There were dancing girls, performers, everything you would expect at a swanky party on the Tears.

It wasn’t a surprise, then, to discover that John MacTavish was in a luftleighner that very night, celebrating a Credit Mobilier party in the clouds. Like all luftgatherings, this one stopped periodically at the skytower docking piers to let passengers on and off. Like a silver-skinned whale, the luftleighner would sound its fog horns and descend. Each docking took around half an hour as ties and guy ropes were flung over its body to secure it to the tower. Guests came and went on a gangway, showing their invitations to the off-duty Blues who’d been hired for security.

Miles had one tucked into his coat. It nestled there nicely against his enormous Atla Warbow. The weight of the pistol provided some comfort. It was the same model the Ae Viran officers had used during the war, long barrel and all. It could propel a slug of magic-killing lead straight through an ogre’s torso at fifty paces, which is all anyone really needed a weapon to do. Its effectiveness was exaggerated in close quarters, though he hoped to Karzel he wouldn’t have to fire it on the leighner. Having never been on one, he thought of the thing as a rickety contraption prone to self-annihilation. Seeing one up close changed his mind.

He had to wait for nearly an hour before the leighner reached the pier. Two of the Blues on security turned out to be old comrades-in-arms from Iron Island: Bud Arras and the ogre patrolman Jeran Wake. Bud had been a good counter to Cutter when Miles was coming up, and the two of them had fantasized more than once about throwing the evil dwarf cuss onto a streetwagon line and watching the trolley cut him in half. As for Jeran, he was smarter than he appeared. For that, Miles supposed, essentially every ogre was “smarter than he appeared.” For humans, dwarves, and elves orcs were essentially seen as laborers, and ogres as little children. It really didn’t take much to surpass the public expectation of an ogre.

Jeran kept his light under a bushel. Most orcs and ogres Miles knew did, even his parents. No one wanted to stand out. No-one wanted an elf looking down their nose at them from on high, wondering just how bright the whole mass was. You really were better off if they thought you were a dumb lump. They didn’t ask so many questions then. They didn’t like it when their porters, shoe-shiners, and teamsters could outthink them. Why no ogre magicians? the old joke asked. Because they’d kill the kings.

Miles lit a cigar and leaned on the pier strut. He tried to appear nonchalant, but the height of the tower made his stomach lurch. On the elevator up he’d taken too long of a look at the floors. He was on the sixty-first, roof pier access and Silver City was more or less below him. Only a handful of buildings were taller. Even One Cinder Plaza, the Prasident’s tower, was down there in the moonlight ocean of night. Miles thought he could see the glimmer of ersatz at the plaza, a swarm of hollow mercenaries. Stay safe, Dolora, he prayed as the flame licked his cigar. She was down there even now, trying to get into the Stadtprasident’s office. He was supposed to make an appearance at this evil party later in the evening. She’d have to get to him before he did. Otherwise, Miles would have two masterminds to deal with, and he didn’t fancy trying to arrest MacTavish and Longstreet both.

It floored him that Longstreet could be involved. It really did. He’d had hopes for the man. For one thing, Longstreet was relatively young. He’d been a state water commissioner, but never really hooked into the old club of government. Even when he was campaigning, Longstreet had liked to say that he’d “learned to play the game, but never taken a seat.” Who cared if he played the same dirty game as Harker and the other Cavalier bastards? When was the last time a Kirk had been in office? When Miles was just a kid.

He remembered those days, the street wars between the Unionists and the Kirks. The Unionists wanted Cinder City to go back to Ae Vira. They’d pulled hard for a treaty with Aonrijk during the war, and basically made themselves non-entities politically. Everyone in Cinder City hated the Aonrijk. Not for any real reason, just because the war was good for business. Too many Ae Viran ties, perhaps, even though half the words and names in the city were Rijkish.

Jeran clucked at him from the gangway. Wind whistled through the metal grating and a handful of businessmen and flappers in straight dresses shivered. This is the big attraction of these damn things? Freezing up here in the sky while we wait for our ride? “Sergeant-shamus Kowalski, didn’t think I’d see you up again, let alone up here with the quality.”

“Well, Officer Wake, I’m not in the force anymore. You know, moving up and all that.”

“It’s Shamus now, sir. And we heard. Bud and I are real glad for ya.”

Bud nodded. “Heard you’ve been a right terror in Wilder’s ass.” The partygoers looked askance at the Blues gabbing together, as though someone had intruded in their living room and taken a shit on the floor. Miles grunted and blew a cloud of smoke their way.

“I hope so. Someone needs to take the stick out.”

Jeran waddled over to him. “What brings you up here?”

“Just out making an extra dollar, like you two,” Miles said. “Actually, I have a ticket to this damn thing, if you can believe it.” He flashed the silvery ballot Kit had given Dolora. Hope it turns out to be worth it, kid. There was no coming back from that one. He liked Kit, which made it a real shame. But, then again, Dolora deserved it. It had been a long time coming. He hated to think something like that about his own partner, but she’d been truly awful to Kit. He didn’t understand how she put up with it all those years, and then this last few months… well, better to stay focused. He shifted and grinned at Jeran as the ogre gaped at the ticket, then slid it back into his pocket. The barrel of the Warbow came to rest comfortingly against his ribs.

“Well, look at that dapper dick,” Bud smirked. Miles could hardly believe he was going onto the leighner himself. If there had been any other way, he would have taken it. No matter how nonchalant he made himself look, his legs were locking up and his shoulders bunching in tension at the thought of all that air below. He grinned a watery smile in return.

“Yeah, don’t I just look the part.” He’d put on his best suit, but even that was threadbare compared to the bespoke cloth draped on the other party-goers. At least he had the valise. He hefted it with his spare hand. “You know what I got in here, right?”

“Guns,” Jeran guessed, laughing. The other guests glanced nervously over at the three Blues again. Miles shook his head.

Bud narrowed his eyes. “Something people on there don’t want to see, if I know Ms. Spade right. How’d you ever get mixed up with her, Miles? The girl’s a damn hurricane.”

“Yeah, but she’s right,” Miles said. It was true. All those years towing the line had taught him the difference between right and wrong, and that he’d always been on the wrong damn side. It meant he had to go up into the sky to meet with MacTavish because his work with Dolora was his redemption.

He burned through two anxious cigars before the airship arrived. His mission was simple: confront MacTavish, show him the evidence if he could, and try to get a cuff. The little piece of paper in his wallet gave him that authority. The only thing was, when a shamus made a collar of someone with the kind of clout that MacTavish had, they couldn’t afford to be wrong. It’d cost him more than his license. Dolora didn’t care about civil liability and false imprisonment, so why should he? C’mon kid. He could do this. She was going after the harder target. It was one thing to try to bring the Chief Officer of CCCG&S in, and something altogether different to frog march the Stadtprasident into the Commissioner’s office and demand he be held on murder charges.

The luftleighner was bigger than he imagined. When you saw them from the ground they were delicate things; that gondola high above, covered in frilly iron fretwork seemed but a little removed from the basket of a hot-air balloon. The silvered gas bags all appeared soft and airy, as though the whole contraption were somehow the insubstantial product of the mystic arts. Up close they were nothing of the sort.

First, there was the blast of the fog horn. This flattened the rooftop with a wall of sound that blew Miles’ cigar out of his mouth and sent it spiralling over the edge of the tower, to fall the sixty stories to the street below. Then, there was the smell of diesel exhaust, oil, giantsblood, and the oxidizing lightning-scent of magic. The Argos appeared from the bosom of the clouds like a building suspended by hidden wires. Against all logic, it drifted slowly toward them. The sound of the engines chugging and the huge screws turning in the air throbbed through Miles’ jaw. He realized he was clenching his teeth and holding the gangway railing so tight his fingers ached.

“Here she is,” Bud called against the noise. “Take a bit to get her down. Godhead, Kowalski, you’re really going up there?”

Miles nodded. He really was.

 

One Cinder Plaza might not be the biggest building in Silver City, but it was one of the most impressive. The enormous marble staircase was flanked by concrete bluffs carved in geometric patterns and topped with winged figures. Dolora supposed they were meant to be the Fabricators, though their menacing look gave them the appearance of New Territories Giants: unrecognized gods, lords of the new land that had been beaten down by the coming of the Ae Virans and Rijklanders centuries and centuries ago. The tower rose out of that foundation, a fountain of iron and glass. The rooftop of the plaza was adorned with more concrete, silver, and mirrored glass to give it the appearance of a huge presettlement temple. Somewhere where the native orcs, ogres, and dwarves prayed before the ships came from the Continent to sweep across the New Territories in search of plunder.

The ersatzmenn at the door were a shabby sort of temple guard. Like the rest of the lost, they stared hollow-eyed at the huge rotary of eisenbahns and trolly tracks that occupied the middle of the plaza. Some where talking in low tones, others drinking stale coffee, while still more played at cards and wagered bottlecaps or pennies.

They wanted to give Dolora trouble, but she put them off. “Step aside, step aside you drips, I’ve got an appointment with the prasident. Private Shamus Dolora Spade. Get out of my way.” She was afraid they wouldn’t, that they would crowd her and beat her senseless, like they’d attacked Miles when he threw himself at the building. Maybe it was her shattered knee or her cane, but they gave her a wide berth. Like recognizes like, she thought hopelessly. How was she any different from one of the ersatz, after all?

Like them, she had been in the war. Like them, she had lost. Maybe it was their djinn that cooked up the hallucinations of the past for them. Maybe, like Sidney Blackstreet, the flamensoldat she’d met in the trenches, they were forced to relive all the murders their ersatz limbs helped them perform. But if that were true, Dolora was more like them than not. She didn’t have an evil djinn in her body forcing her to repeat all her mistakes… yet, she did it anyway. She didn’t guzzle giantsblood in her limbs to keep them going, but she did swill gin. Tonight she’d had wine, giantsblood, and a bit of gin just to get her courage up. Like the ersatz fellowship, she’d lost everything.

As she mounted the steps, she glanced toward Kit’s building. I’m giving up everything for this, she told herself. This has to work because I’m giving up Kit, and my life as I know it. Nothing would be the same after tonight. She wasn’t used to compromises, but here she was. First, the knee, and now Kit. Yet even in the same moment, she remembered shooting at that john on Iron Island who’d towered over Dotti. Kit, Dotti, both were nothing compared to the justice she was seeking. Oh, she’d probably wind up in the Pen for the rest of her life, or murdered like poor Hadrada, but she couldn’t give up. She’d given up trying to nail MacTavish once. Never again.

She picked up a new strummer just for the occasion. She was glad she didn’t have to use it on any of the ersatzmenn outside the plaza. It was a little Sage & Hoenecker Snapdragon, not much to look at, but enough to stop a magician dead in his tracks if she had to. No one patted her down or tried to take her pistol from her. So much for your fancy security, she thought.

She’d never been inside the plaza before. The foyer was as large as a cavern and could comfortably fit a container ship from the harbor under its marble-roofed canopy. Her footsteps echoed as she walked to the reception desk. There were more ersatzmenn inside, scattered like discarded toys. Broken dolls. They hung on the couches and leather-upholstered chairs. They lay on the floor in semi-repose. This isn’t a security detail, this is an army. An army of wash-outs and no-ones, an army of the hopeless. What exactly is going on here?

It didn’t fit with the theory. According to what she and Miles had mocked up, Longstreet should be at the top of his peak, just about to make millions. His building could’ve been staffed with crack shots from the Cinder City Army, or bruisers from the Bluebells. Why ersatzmenn, throwaways, cast-offs? But Dr. Horn at the Sanitorium said Longstreet had been giving the veterans jobs here in the city. If Longstreet works through ersatzmenn, why did he send Krasky, a Bluebell, to kill Hadrada? Why not one of his ersatz puppets?

Her limping steps faltered. Had they really considered all the angles? What if we’re wrong? This was a dangerous place to be. About to confront one of, if not the, most important city officials with satchelful of evidence… that’s not the place to be wondering if you’d gotten everything right. And, truth be told, it was impossible that they could have sorted everything correctly. There were bound to be mistakes. The question was, how big were they? The holes should be small and inconsequential. Can’t leave him anything big enough to escape through. But then, round back to the same question. If she and Miles were right, why the need for so many ersatzmenn?

At the desk, the receptionist said she was expected. Dolora smiled, but felt the cold chill of fear balling up in her stomach like a cancer. “Mr. Longstreet hopes it won’t take too long,” the woman said. She had brilliant crimson lipstick. It made her look predatory to Dolora’s jaded eye, like she was hiding something. On the take for Longstreet. Waiting with a pistol in her tights. Ready to give me the K.O. if I make a misstep, or call for that clinking clattering army of misfits.

“That’s up to him,” Dolora said. That sounded good. Cold. Ominous. She liked the way it came out. Almost like a kinograph picture.

As she rode the elevator up, she realized just how little like a kino any of this was. She certainly wasn’t a kino star, with her now-disheveled and frumpy suit, her brace, and her cane. She was tired, probably as hollow-eyed as the ersatzmenn downstairs, and half boozed up on gin. As the elevator rose through the lobby and the glow of the reception desk turned into a distant halo, Dolora clenched her fists. The handle of the cane was warm in her palm. She liked that. The weakness in her knee was getting worse, like her leg might fold up at any time. With the cane as a prop, her fury kept her upright and rigid. That was good. That was what she needed. Make sure to keep the fury. Longstreet should see it in her eyes.

Beyond the elevator grate, the foyer vanished and then she was passing through the heart of the building, soaring up in the little cage faster than she wanted to think about. Somewhere nearby, Miles should be boarding the luftleighner about now with Kit’s ticket. She envied him. He was going to confront MacTavish. This had been her dream for going on five years.

Johnathan H. MacTavish was a son of a bitch. He was as much a mobster as Aniello Marcone, but because Marcone was Oenotrian and an orc, MacTavish served in the Parliament while Marcone hid above a restaurant. They were different incarnations of the same crooked gangster. As MP of Orctown, MacTavish had run his own whorehouses and drug rings. He’d imported siren and giantsblood. He was a jolly lad that worked his way up from Ward Boss and made it into the big time. Now he was sipping drinks with those Ae Viran snobs that thought of themselves as Cinder City nobility. He was probably exchanging snuff with rescued Rijlkland war criminals. All from a humble little Aeren. That was how he’d made do.

And the people he’d killed along the way?

Fuck ‘em. Step or be stepped on, that was the law of Cinder City. That was the rule. Dolora couldn’t handle that. That rule has to change.

Worse, she realized in that long elevator ride, was that the Blues weren’t the solution. They’re part of the same problem. The Bluebell Watch existed not to flush out the evil ones like MacTavish, but to protect them so long as they stayed on the right side of the line. The Blues weren’t after him because they were in his pocket. She’d found that out the hard way. Fired. One of the Watch’s youngest shamuses. Fired, thrown away like I was nothing. So she became nothing. She went to sign up as soon as Cinder City entered the war. And that’s where she’d truly joined with the ersatzmenn. She’d become one, an ersatzmann without the ersatz, a hollow marionette.

Not any more, she told herself. The elevator binged. Now I’m going to get some fucking answers. If it kills me.

 

Miles wasn’t sure how to navigate a party of this size. He’d been to a few Watch balls when he was still in good standing, but this was nothing like any of those.

First, the sheer mass of the leighner was intimidating. The gondola was larger than his parents house. He had always thought of them as being basically a flying observation deck, but the Argos was large enough to have its own rooms and corridors. It didn’t make him any more comfortable with being suspended above the city to know that he could get lost in this metal sardine can. Every so often it would lurch sickeningly one way or the other as the leighner changed direction. Miles didn’t like to be reminded that he was slung beneath the gas bag like a satchel. He stayed away from exterior portholes and refused to walk far enough into the ballroom to get a view through the glass floor that made up its center. Dancing on air. These people are insane. Who else but the wealthy would want to be this high up, in a place this dangerous. Regular life isn’t dangerous enough for them, I guess. They didn’t spend their mornings worried that the water or power would be shut off, or that the Blues would come to enforce an eviction order.

If there was one thing Miles remembered about his days on the Watch, it was that these kinds of people never got in trouble with the Bluebells. If there was going to be an arrest from the city’s moneyed class, it was made by Jurdicium agents, and only after long and careful investigation. None of the door-busting and head-smashing Miles had done on the Island.

He lit another cigar when he got aboard to help calm his nerves (and his stomach). It wasn’t too out of place. Most folks had a bidi. A few had pipes, while others had more occult contraptions: giantsblood fumers, siren sticks. The smell of nasvy was everywhere, undercut with the sweet and pungent odor of sirensong, like vomit mixed with orange blossom. It almost obscured the overriding stink of the luftleighner’s natural black oil smell. Every metal surface seemed to shimmer with grease, Miles assumed to make sure nothing rusted. At this altitude, waterproofing had to be pretty serious, considering they cruised through a low-lying cloud for nearly an hour.

The first thing to do was to find MacTavish and get him alone. Things could go a number of different ways once he did, but they were all more or less predictable. Usually, a guy like that would turn pale as a midnight mushroom, or maybe go all shaky. A big mover and shaker like this might try to bluff his way out. That wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but the proof was too good. The reel-to-reel audiograph pointed the finger directly at Credit Mobilier. Sure, there was no through-line saying MacTavish had given the order, but… there were too many other  schemes liable to exposure. Once this got out, there would be no putting the djinn back in the prison-stone, as it were.

The last real option was a bribe. Miles had been offered and refused bribes from middle level politicos before. MacTavish might be that type. It would be interesting to see what one of the glittering high-flyers of Cinder City would offer as a bribe. Certainly more than the measly $50 he’d gotten out of Thromond Taub when Miles broke his smuggling ring. He’d begged on his hands and knees. “These girls just want to get out of the Dragon Empire and find husbands!” Yeah, they all wanted to be cooped up in leaky barrels for long overseas voyages. Likely story.

He kept his eyes peeled for the CCCG&S officer. He’d met him before, way back when. MacTavish wouldn’t recognize him because he’d just been another faceless Blue back when the mope was the Ward Boss around Orctown. He’d met him again when he was a Member of Parliament, but that was at one of the big Bluebell fundraiser balls. John MacTavish was an unassuming Aeren man with conservative good looks and a jaunty smile. He’d been a lot younger when Miles had known him, so he had a recent photostat from the Gazette in hand. It looked like he’d put on some weight around the middle but otherwise retained his youthful charms. He had big front teeth and a sweep of brown hair that retreated from his forehead like a forest fighting a losing battle with a logging company.

Champagne and canapés flowed freely. Miles didn’t need a second invitation to take them, and he ate with gusto as he made his way through the party. He didn’t see any of the ersatzmenn he’d begun to associate with the conspiracy, which meant he could finally relax. No one was tailing him, or trying to shoot him, or throw him off a streetwagon from up here. He was alone with the donors and businessmen.

There was a live band being piped into every room and corridor by means of a speaker system. It was lively jazz, which surprised Miles, as he assumed all these rich Ae Virans would listen to chamber orchestras. The party was really not all that different from the kinds of things that people got up to in Orctown, except everyone was dripping in wealth and Ae Viran rather than poor as dirt and Oeonotrian, or Alkebulan. Surprising to hear them listening to New Territories Alkie music like jazz. These people were supposed to hate the former slaves. Or suppose they do, but they can’t get by without stealing whatever spark they had left. Jazz, the Alstat, everything down to the very last drop. It was like being among thirsty vampires.

He spotted MacTavish out on the forward balcony drinking alone. While the Credit Mobilier party went on behind him, light pouring out of the portholes and observation windows like liquid gold, MacTavish watched Parliament Island emerge out of the mist.

“Mr. MacTavish,” he said.

John MacTavish sniffed, but didn’t turn. “What is it now? Something else broken?”

“No,” Miles replied carefully. “I’m here to talk about a mutual friend. I think you’re going to want to listen.”

MacTavish turned and actually raised an eyebrow. “We have a mutual friend? Enlighten me.”

Miles sucked in a barrelful of cold air. “Leon Krasky.”

This struck MacTavish like a blow. He didn’t move, but Miles could see the thoughts washing over him - first fear, then anger, and lastly curiosity. He swirled his drink. “Alright. Let’s go somewhere quiet so we can talk.”

 

“Come in.” The voice in the darkened office could belong to no one else but the Stadtprasident Heward Longstreet. Dolora had heard it enough times on the radio to recognize it anywhere. She even remembered that damn Gravel Street speech that had impressed Miles so much. They say we can’t beat Boss Harker’s machine! She hesitated in the doorway. “Don’t leave me breathless, come in. And close the door.”

The Stadtprasident’s office was as impressive as she imagined. The floor was tiled in three colors of marble. Tall windows in coffered alcoves looked out from the left-hand wall to give a spreading panorama of Silver City, Regensburg, and Centrum beyond. You can’t even see Alstat from this office. It was at least two hundred feet long, and probably forty feet wide. There were little seating clusters of chairs that would cost Dolora’s whole life savings. Built-in bookshelves broke up the walls, these filled with titles Dolora could neither see nor care about. Low recessed lighting glimmered off of the gold wirework.

Heward Longstreet was seated behind a desk at the far end of the room beneath an enormous painting of the city. The desk was lit from below, like a hellish pulpit. The prasident was dressed in a white tuxedo. He looked like he did on the posters: a friendly-neighbor face with big glasses and a boyish smile. “Have a seat,” he said. His voice carried across the huge room, straight from the desk to the door, in a way that couldn’t have been accidental. Even the acoustics had been designed here. Unless its magic. Correis, his office could be warded. She hadn’t been checked for a pistol at any point. Why have all those ersatzmenn and no weapons check, unless you were protected by enchantments?

“Thank you,” Dolora said. The long walk to the desk gave her plenty of time to doubt herself. She was assailed with a thousand voices. If he did all this, he would never have let you in. And, no, he would have, but then he would have you killed. Are there any ersatzmenn waiting for you in the shadows? And then, You’ve got nothing on him, and he knows it. He’s going to laugh at you. He didn’t seem angry. That was the only thing that kept her going. He’s smiling. That means we’re right about something. If he had bellowed, he could have bowled her over and blown her back downstairs. But that wasn’t his nature, she could see. Heward Longstreet was inviting. He wanted you to feel at home. Even, perhaps, when he was about to do something very nasty indeed. He wasn’t a club. He was ether.

“You’ll give me a chance to explain everything,” he said. His eyes were glued to her valise.

Dolora swung it down, but did not sit. “This isn’t the only copy I have, if that’s what you’re thinking. And there are people out there who will distribute everything to the papers if I don’t show up in person tomorrow to tell them not to.” A bluff, but an important one. Or would Dotti really do it? She didn’t know. What made commonists do anything?

“Of course. I would never think of… well, please. You want to ask me questions, and I obviously want to see what you have in your case.” He lifted a glass of what looked, in the low light, to be coffee liqueur. “I’m not surprised you have questions, but you don’t have the right ones, yet.” He shifted in his seat. Is he uncomfortable? He’s drinking. The dope on him had to be good.

With more confidence, Dolora began. “We know you’re selling out the Alstat. And making a killing off of it.” Miles’ blind faith in the man sent a pang through her heart. This was the idiot Miles Kowalski had placed his trust in! The person who was going to “clean up” the Alstat and bring real reforms. “You were supposed to help us,” she hissed. “You were supposed to be the hero.” This is why Dolora hated politicians.

A strangled sound that Dolora realized was meant to be a laugh escaped from Longstreet. “If it were that easy, I would have done it.”

“Easy? Should we talk about easy? How about the murder of Hadrada Varnag.” She unbuckled the valise, then slammed the reel of audiograph tape onto the prasident’s desk. The silver cover gleamed like a strummer slug. “This is a recording of Sergeant Leon Krasky admitting to killing Hadrada Varnag on the orders of Credit Mobilier.” Well, not exactly. To bribe him on their orders, and then the bribe gets out of hand. But let Longstreet sweat.

“I don’t have anything to do with those people,” Longstreet said. Sweat beaded on his brow. “The Development Board was established under Harker. Check your notes. You’ll see. Those development people… they’re behind the whole Credit scam.”

Dolora narrowed her eyes and took a hitching step toward the desk. “And you’re gonna let them do it.”

“Let them? Let them!” Longstreet barked. His composure was slipping. “How could I let them? Do you know what it’s like when you win the prasidency in this city? No, of course not, ha, how could you?” He was nervous! The Stadtprasident was sweating, wiping his hands, drinking maniacally. What she had thought from across the room was the cool calculation of a master manipulator was merely the crumbling facade of someone who longed to confess. “Let me tell you what it looks like. You beat their picked candidate, you get into office—“

“By cheating.”

Longstreet paused. “The Cavaliers have been rigging elections in this city since we were kids. Did you really want to see another Harker prasidency?”

“Ok, but you admit you were cheating.” Dolora looked longways at him. “We have someone who can confirm it. He said he would do anything to make sure you got what you wanted.” Let’s see if that pushes the right buttons.

Longstreet did laugh then, a great relieved gust. “Cory Adelaide? The man’s in love with me. He would blow his own head off if he thought it would help.” Though Dolora had never met Adelaide, Miles had described him. She couldn’t imagine anyone loving Longstreet. First of all, the man had as homely a look as you could muster, but he also had a wife. She had always assumed the wife was a marriage of convenience, some equally homely woman looking to get a good deal with a local politician. But to think of a man like Adelaide, who apparently wanted to run the church, as in love with this drip… well, truth beggars fiction. Longstreet shook his head. “You’ll never get Cory to stand up in front of a judge and condemn me.”

“We don’t need that to tie you to the killings.”

“Killings?” Longstreet’s brows jumped. “That’s the first I’ve heard of any such thing.”

This was not the response she expected. He was the Stadtprasident, for Fabricator’s sake. He wasn’t supposed to mutter impossible denials like a common street criminal. She wasn’t sure what she expected: a grand counter-narrative, or open corruption, but not this feeble attempt at chicanery. Although he does look surprised. “Your people killed Hadrada Varnag and Tyrsis Trist. They were involved in getting you elected. They’d worked with Adelaide on rigging the Silver City count. We already have everything we need from the Kirk files.”

At the mention of the Kirk party, Longstreet actually sneered. “You think I give a damn about how I won? Kirks. Ha! Those cowards are in bed with the same people the Cavaliers are. If I hadn’t cheated early and often, we’d be looking at another twenty years of Boss Harker, until he died in this chair. I don’t care if the paper gets hold of that story. I’ve always known how this city works.” He was on more solid ground with this denial. His demeanor was hardening, changing from soft lime clay to granite. She needed to bring him back around where he was uncomfortable.

“You said you were going to help the people in the Alstat,” she said quietly. “Credit Mobilier is going to turn them out onto the street. Hadrada, the dwarf your people killed, found out about it.”

“My people didn’t kill anyone!” Longstreet exploded. “It’s not my fault the dwarf died! Do you have any…” He mastered himself and adjusted his tie with an embarrassed smile. “You don’t have any evidence of any of that.”

“We have an audiograph confession from your agent Leon Krasky at the Bluebell Watch. We have the Credit Mobilier plans for the Alstat power plant, and the draft legislation forcing debtors into giantsblood colonies in the New Territories. And you said you were an Alstat man.” That was the way to rattle him. Challenge him not on the blood that was on his hands, but on the fact that he’d lied to the electorate. He’d already had one outburst. Maybe she could provoke another.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” growled the formerly affable Longstreet. “It’s easy to come in here with accusations like that. But you don’t know anything. It’s not me you want, it’s those bastards on the Development Council. I got into politics to help people.”

“To line your pockets.”

“To help people! I lived in the Alstat my whole life! I still do!” He abruptly stood, startling Dolora. She took a step back, as though she expected him to draw a pistol. Instead, he walked to one of the steep window casements and looked out. “No windows in this building even face it. Everything for the harbor or Regensburg. Parliament Island. The Stadtprasidents don’t even want to look at it. The Alstat, Shipston, everything on the west side.” His hands writhed behind his back like captive serpents. “They have a machine. We beat the election machine, but that didn’t stop the rest of it from turning over.”

“You’re going to sell those people. Destroy them.” Dolora envisioned the stinking boats taking the crowds of Alstat refugees into the New Territories. They would arrive at the prefabricated mining towns to find the government relocation loans were set to run out. The only source of employment would be killing natives or working in the giantsblood mines. And so the great rolling beast of Cinder City would slough onward, crushing everything beneath it while its masters rode on palanquins above. “And you’ll make a profit all the while.”

He whirled. “Profit?” His face was ashen. “You think I’m making money off of this?” He stalked toward her. “I’m all bound up myself. You don’t get it, Ms. Spade. I’m not the villain you think I am. As soon as I came into the office they ambushed me. ‘You’re going to do this deal for us, or we’ll have you removed. We’ll bring up the election in front of the Jurdicium.’ You want to know who killed Mr. Varnag and Mr. Trist? Start looking into the Development Council. They run Credit Mobilier, it’s their private bank. The whole damn thing was pre-arranged. Do you understand, Ms. Spade? I’m a fall-guy.”

Longstreet put the drink down on the window sill and slouched against the wall. “I just wanted to do something good. At first I thought it wouldn’t be so bad. Let the developers make their money off of the renovations. You know, rebuilding the Alstat would bring so much to those people. Those are my neighbors!”

He was pleading now. Dolora closed in for the kill. “It would turn Alstat into Centrum,” she said. “Push all your old neighbors out onto Iron Island, or have them take the loans the council wants Parliament to offer so they relocate to one of those mining towns. Make them homeless, or else slaves.” Face the truth, Longstreet. Face what you’ve done.

“It wasn’t like that! I swear!” His face contorted in pain. “They said if I wanted to get anything at all done, if I wasn’t going to face them at every turn, their pocket politicians, I had to play the game. So I played! But for the good of the Alstat.”

“And now you’ll go down, for their game. I have it all right here.” She patted the valise. “You know that. Even if you didn’t give the order to kill Hadrada, they’re not going to take the fall for you. They’ll let you hang.”

He had turned an ashen gray. “No they won’t,” he said, but his voice was a hoarse whisper. “No, because they’ll have you and your partner to do that. You think these people are like you and me. We grew up down in that stew, we thought it was cut-throat down there, but you have no idea. These people will kill their own relatives. They’ll kill kids. They’ll do whatever it takes not to lose everything. You’ve never been in their position. You don’t know.”

She thought of MacTavish and Marguerite. Her poor Marguerite, just trying to make a living out on the Island when MacTavish brought her into his house and— “I do know,” she said, “and I know they hate you. They’ll burn you and Cory Adelaide and laugh while they do. Boss Harker’ll be prasident again within the year.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said. He was very small now, and shrinking fast. His shoulders had slumped forward and his face was collapsing as the walls closed in around him. “You don’t even want me. You want the others.”

“You’re right,” Dolora agreed, “but I’ll take you if you’re all I can get.”

They faced each other in the darkened office of the Stadtprasident. Longstreet’s fingers worked numbly at his sides. Dolora could hear her heart slamming in her ears and feel the sweat coursing down her arms and along her back. At any moment, Longstreet might rush to his desk and call his ersatzmenn to come up and drag her away. Would she survive a night in the Pen, knowing what she knew? Would Dotti publish the evidence if she died? Would any of the papers even care? Would anyone believe them, even with the evidence in front of their faces?

Longstreet slid back toward his desk. Dolora tensed, every muscle ready to jump across the lacquered surface and wrestle him to the ground. He didn’t reach for the call button on his intercom. “You don’t have to do this,” Dolora said. Her voice quavered. “I can help you get out of this.”

“Sure, sure,” Longstreet said. He opened the top drawer. He withdrew an amber bottle of whiskey and, shaking, poured it into a pair of glasses. Dolora wanted to relax but something told her not to. She felt like she had in the moments before Sergeant Lusky went down. Somewhere in this room was the Aonrijk sniper, taking aim, levelling his long weapon.

She extended a hand, not to take the drink but to steady Longstreet, who had gone the color of spoiled cream. “I’m serious, Heward. You don’t have to worry. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. To get your side. I can help you.”

Longstreet said nothing. He moved quickly, whipping his hand up from below the level of the desk. Clasped between his fingers was a small snub strompistole, glittering silver in the dark. It was a fanged, evil insect, almost shimmering with a light of its own. This was what Dolora’s body had been waiting for. All those months of bearing up under stromkanon fire, artillery, Rijkland soldiers pouring lead from hidden cover, of seeing Sergeant Lusky stand up and have his brains blown out the back of his head, all that was wound in every spring of Dolora’s form. Her muscles moved before her brain could collect word strompistole from her memory. By the time Longstreet was pulling the trigger, she was already diving.

A silent explosion of hot white light filled the room. The shadows were annihilated, all hidden things blown back by the sudden intensity of the blast. A bolt of lightning as wide across as Dolora’s arm crackled through the air where she had been standing split seconds before. It etched its way through the long office with a soft sizzle. It only took the blink of an eye for it to cross all that space. It struck one of the leather couches. The material blackened, charred, and erupted in a cascade of feathers and fire. Whatever water had been left in that leather boiled instantly, leaving a sizzling ruin of soot and ash.

Dolora had her own pistole in her hand, a sturdy strummer, and steadied her aim. Longstreet was running already, disappearing into a stairway she hadn’t seen until the blast lit up the room. It went up, to the roof. She hissed a curse under her miserable breath, retrieved her cane, and limped after.

 

MacTavish led Miles through the dancing crowd, walking purposefully across the glass floor, forcing Miles to follow. He swallowed deeply before stepping out over that void. The city swayed beneath. Directly below the luftlieghner, Miles could see the dark abyss of the channel that lay between Silver City and Parliament Island. The airship was floating gently toward the high peak of the Parliament building and the many consortium towers and private homes that dotted the mountainous isle.

The thrumming of the engines grew louder as they passed through the ballroom and into the rear of the gondola. The motorgondels projected from the side of the gasbags near the rear of the luftleighner, which meant they were drawing closer and closer to them as they walked along the interior of the cigar-shaped carriage. “Where are we going?” Miles asked roughly, trying to keep pace with MacTavish. The band was playing a rollicking march and the attendees of the party went into riotous dance as an announcer blared over the loudspeakers that, “The Credit Mobilier deal is officially struck! Congratulate all the members of the Development Board, and give your honeycat or your daddy a kiss!”

MacTavish didn’t stop until they reached a maze of private suites and interlocking passages at the rearmost section of the passenger carriage. “You want to talk about this?” MacTavish asked in a low voice, “Then we’ll have to do it in a quiet place, away from everyone else. We can come to an agreement, I’m sure.”

The room was a private study at the back of the gondola. “This is my office,” he said as he closed the door behind Miles. “We can talk here in relative safety.” Miles eyed him as he crossed the polished wood floor to stand at the window. His demeanor had returned to that same quiet brooding he’d had when Miles first found him. “So. You’re the shamus that’s been bothering my people.” He twisted his mouth to one side and made a clicking noise as he paced back to a cabinet. With a touch, it sprang open and revealed a full display of giantsblood-infused liqueurs. He poured himself a glass, didn’t even ask if Miles wanted one.

“You could say that,” Miles grumbled. He didn’t like the way this was going. He hadn’t expected it to be simple or straightforward, but MacTavish wasn’t shaken at all. It was as though he knew this was coming; his intimation confirmed it. You’re the shamus that’s been bothering my people. He’d known he was under investigation and he was prepared for it.

MacTavish snorted at Miles’ reply. “Yes, of course, and Ms. Spade. Kowalski and Spade. Little rinky-dink outfit, but you’ve caused a lot of trouble. That has to be the same Dolora Spade who came after me a few years back. I notice she’s not in blue any more.”

“Neither of us are,” Miles said. His hand strayed to his big strummer. He wasn’t going to be caught flat-footed.

MacTavish nodded. “Well, you didn’t come for tea.” The other man narrowed his eyes. “Though it’s curious you were even able to get on board. This was an… exclusive party.”

“I know all about it,” Miles spat back. He stood up to his full height, let his shoulders do most of the talking. He was a huge orc, when it came down to it, nearly the size of an ogre, and it was time to stop pretending to be meek. This man was dangerous. Probably one of the most dangerous people Miles had ever spoken to. Let him sweat a little. Let him feel like the walls were closing in. “Tomorrow Credit Mobilier starts evictions. You really thought this whole thing was foolproof, didn’t you?”

MacTavish sighed. “This is a lot for a payoff,” he said. He drew a slender check book from his suit pocket. His fountain pen scratched. “Spell Kowalski for me and tell me exactly how much you’re asking for. Five?”

Miles was dumbfounded. “You’re writing me a check for five dollars?” Was that all it took to buy a shamus these days? Not that he was for sale.

“Alright, fine,” MacTavish grunted, “eight. But no more than that. You can retire comfortably if you don’t split it with your partner.” Eight thousand dollars. For keeping his mouth shut. That’s lal he had to do, was just nod, and smile, and take this check. Cash it in a few days, split the proceeds… or just keep it. It’d buy a whole new life for him and his parents. Maybe they could move out of the city, go somewhere nice.

But, no, he wasn’t going to take eight thousand dollars from this heel. He was here to do a job. “No, I’m not… I’m not taking your money, Mr. MacTavish. I’m going to explain, very slowly, why I have the authority to place you under arrest, and then I’m going to arrest you. As a private shamus I have the power to detain you for forty-eight hours before the Juridicium makes a determination as to your guilt.”

“Oh come on,” MacTavish sighed, “this is about that damn girl again? She was an Alkebulan piano player. Not the queen of Ae Vira.” He shook his head. “You aren’t taking me in, Mr. Kowalski. Not now, not at my own party. Sorry. You don’t have the iron.”

Miles bristled. “Oh, no? You wanna try me? We can do this the easy way, or the hard way, MacTavish.” No more misters. The time for kid gloves had just ended. Miles reached for his cuffs, which were clipped closed on the back of his belt. MacTavish didn’t make any sudden moves, which was good because Miles’ other hand was firmly on the butt of his Warbow. “Now just stay there.”

“This isn’t going to work, Mr. Kowalski,” he said, almost sadly. Well, fuck his sadness. He was going down. Tonight. Miles had been kicked, punched, thrown from a moving streetwagon, and nearly killed more times than he cared to remember on this damn job. “Woodward Iron is buying out your employer’s foundry. Krashnikol, right?”

The cuffs jingled. Miles took a few steps across the room. “We’ll disembark at the next stop. We can take the ferry from Parliament Island directly to the Commissioner’s office if you want.”

“Why waste your time?” MacTavish grunted. “Wilder will just let me go.”

“That’s his right. But before he does, the press will see you in cuffs going through Silver City in the middle of the night. And I’ll lay out everything I have. You already know I have a partner, and you know she’s not gonna give up.”

“Fabricator damn you two,” MacTavish said, giving the wall an angry blow with his foot. The glass in the cabinet jumped. “That’s why she had to be fired in the first place. Correis, how will it look when I have an attorney asking why she’s got such a hard-on for me after all these years? You know you don’t have enough clout to carry this through, or you would have arrested me already.”

“I’m here to arrest you,” Miles clarified. “She’s got the Stadtprasident in cuffs  already. It’s over MacTavish.” He pointed his Warbow at the man, watched his pasty face clench in outrage. “Hands up. Resisting a shamus, even a private like me, in the pursuit of his duty, is a crime. Don’t even think about it.”

MacTavish smirked, as though the barrel of the Warbow didn’t bother him at all. The man walked toward him, hands out rather than up, but Miles had handled cuffs for years. He slapped one wrist on before the door burst open. “You think you’re going to bring me in on my leighner?” MacTavish asked as Miles twisted around to see who had intruded on their little tete-a-tete.

A slender elf in a tux and tailcoat that Miles had never seen before was in the doorway. “Apologies,” he said in a stilted, Continental accent, “I was unsure if this was the proper time.”

“You shoulda been in here five minutes ago, Hans,” MacTavish growled. Miles turned back to look at the chief officer of CCCG&S. MacTavish pointed at the newcomer. “See Hans there? He’s a high magician. Fought in the war, the whole nine yards. Works for Cinder City Consolidated now, which means he works for me. You catch my drift? Put your strummer down. You’ll be getting off at Parliament Island. You want to arrest me? Try to get a warrant from the Juridicium. If you can.”

When MacTavish moved to walk by, Miles jerked the strummer around to track him. “Not tonight,” he said.

MacTavish blew out a huge huff of air and rolled his eyes. “Hans?” he called. Miles pointed the strummer at the magician instead. The elf raised his long-fingered hands in a gesture of surrender.

“Please. I don’t want any trouble.”

“Get down on the ground,” Miles said, advancing on him. I’ll just have to tie one up and cuff the other one. Georn and Karzel, how many more of these people does he have on this ship? Miles hadn’t realized the leighner belonged to MacTavish, but it made sense in a twisted sort of way. Would these people be loyal to him? Money could buy a lot of things, but whether or not it’d put bodies in front of a strummer, that was a question Miles was about to answer. Tie up the magician, cold-cock him so he can’t use his magic to get free, then march MacTavish out in cuffs with the strummer pointed at his spine. And don’t get too close. MacTavish looked doughy, but Miles knew better than anyone that big guys could fool you, move quicker than you thought, have more strength in their limbs than you were expecting.

Hans, if that was his name and not just a Rijklander slur, dropped to his knees as he was ordered. “This is humiliating,” he grumbled into the parquet. MacTavish grunted as Miles twisted the free cuff dangling from his wrist.

“Now, stand still.” To put the other cuff on he had to holster his strummer. The Warbow rested comfortably against his ribs again and Miles drew MacTavish’s hands together behind his back. This was actually going better than he thought it would. So far, the big-wig hadn’t cursed or ranted, spit or thrashed at all. He was, apart from the scheme with the magician, very calm. He must have known something like this was coming. You don’t fuck people out of their money every day of the week, every week of the year, impoverishing millions for yourself, without thinking about the day it all blows back in your face. Miles wondered how long MacTavish had prepared himself for this. Is this what you expected it would be? he asked in his head to a wincing MacTavish as he brought the other cuff around. Is this who you thought would bring you in? An orc and a disgraced shamus from the Island?

He never got the other cuff on. Instead, he was blown off his feet by an invisible wave of force that felt like a sledgehammer striking him in the knees, stomach, and head simultaneously. MacTavish was left standing, and immediately strode away. The force was accompanied by a huff of tangled Old Oenotrian words from the ground and Miles thought, as he slammed into the liquor cabinet with the force of an eisenbahn: oh shit, the magus—!

Full bottles of fortified alcohol smashed on the floor. Shards of glass fountained against him and sliced his hands and face. “FUCK!” he bellowed. By the time he managed to get control of his limbs and whip around, the elf was already scrambling through the door. Miles didn’t waste any time. He was a shamus, licensed by the city. It was a crime to hinder a shamus in his duty! And besides, before he’d been a private snoop, Miles had been a shamus in the Blues, and the Blue reflexes were to shoot first and ask questions later.

He whipped out his Warbow and banged away at the elf as he vanished. Lead slugs blew two fist-sized holes in the open door, but missed the magician. “You’re both under arrest!” he hollered, then pounded after them.

The music in the ballroom faltered and stopped as Miles staggered onto the floor. Waitstaff fled before him. Shrieks erupted at the sight of this pistol. “Everyone down!” Miles hollered. From across the room, a bolt of sizzling Oenotrian words took shape: the Rijklander magus spoke a fiery lance into being and hurled it through the crowd. He was utterly careless, his face transformed into a haughty mask of hate, as the fire burned into whirling gyros through the crowd. People fell away from its path, throwing themselves onto the ground and covering themselves with their hands as its heat blistered and scarred them.

The liquid bolt of flame burned straight for Miles. In that instant he found himself praying to Karzel, not to Georn. Preserve me, Father of Fathers, Fountainhead! No more Fabricationism for Miles. No, for the bolt passed him by as he slid beneath the piano and toppled the musician at its bench. The fire splashed against black veneered wood. When the danger passed, Miles was up again and pounding after the Rijkland magician and his boss MacTavish.

He followed them down the maze of corridors. Every so often he was able to draw a bead and bang at the magician, but it was always just at the last second, as those coat-tails vanished around a corner. No spell was proof against a lead slug. That’s why strummers had been invented: to even the playing field with the masters of the Art.

This is the first time I’ve really been up against a magus, he realized. He’d heard of other people on the Island facing Oeonotrian magi when they tried to make a mob arrest. Big Eno himself, the old overboss of the Island, had been rumored to be a magician, but he had died just like the rest when his underbosses gave the tip to the Blues and they filled his office with lead.

They tore through the kitchen. Miles had a few clear shots at both MacTavish and the magus, but he didn’t take them for fear he might hit a chef or a waiter. “Get out of the way!” he shouted. His lungs were burning. He wasn’t used to running this much and his body was still in torment from the beating he’d taken at the hands of the ersatzmann. Not to mention throwing himself out of a moving streetwagon! Karzel, Karzel, Karzel and Georn, it was as though the entire Umwelt was conspiring against him today.

“Karzel burn you!” he shouted as they both mounted an iron latticework staircase at the back of the kitchen. “Where does that go?” he asked a terrified chef.

“T-to the lighters,” the chef burbled.

Lighters. Every luftleighner was equipped with a handful of lighters. In the war they’d used the big balloon-bound gondolas as travelling launch carriages and flew their luftlighters from them like battleships. Civvie leighners were required to have them in case emergency landings needed to be made. MacTavish is trying to get off this ship, Miles realized. Then, he forced his aching thighs to pound after. Not if I can help it.

The stairway led up to a space between the gasbag and the gondola. This was a world of lattice rampworks and steel grills. The wind howled abominably, and the drone of the leighner’s engines was as loud as a rock-drill at high speed. Everything was vibrating, and a slick of rain or cloud-mist covered every surface. The lighters hung from the gasbag like roosting bats. It took Miles a moment to locate the magician and MacTavish. By the time he did, sounds in the kitchen below began to take on a certain martial tenor: security must have caught up with him.

Trapped in the vice, Miles chose to barrel on. Every third step he slid a foot or two on the rainwater. The grating felt like tissue-paper beneath him. One rough or misplaced foot, and the whole thing would tear. That tingling in the pit of his stomach that meant he was up too high and knew it had begun again. He swayed and rocked, pistol clenched firmly in his hand, so hard his knuckles ached. “MacTavish!” he shouted. The man was climbing into the nearest lighter, going hand-over-hand on the ladder. “MacTavish, stop!”

Miles opened fire. The bullet whined off the metal and vanished into the dirigible night. “You fool!” MacTavish replied, “Stop shooting! You’re on a luftleighner!” Miles fired again. His Warbow bucked and a finger-length of railing blasted into the night. “You’ll kill us all!”

“Get down from there!” Miles bellowed. “You’re under arrest!” This isn’t working. He’s still going! Miles only had two shots left. He swept the Warbow back to Hans. “I’ll kill your wizard here!”

“You wouldn’t dare!” MacTavish replied through the storm of spray and sound.

Miles pulled the trigger. The Warbow jumped again, and the tall Rijkish elf staggered. He’d been winged, the slug blowing off part of his left arm around the bicep. The magician howled and began to work his fingers in the air. MacTavish screamed.

“Litten, no! No magic this close to the engines! The djinn—!”

Lightning and fire erupted from the magus. Miles saw MacTavish throw himself the last three feet up, and tumble into the cockpit. Then the world exploded, and he had to close his eyes.

 

Dolora emerged from the hatchway to find herself on the roof of One Cinder Plaza, one of the tallest buildings in Silver City. She wasn’t far behind Longstreet. He had stopped, though, and was staring southward, across the channel, at a flaming star coasting along the lower atmosphere.

“What the fuck is that?” she asked, taking a few tentative steps forward. He still had his strompistole, was still dangerous as all get-out. Her mind tried to make sense of what she was seeing. The shape was huge, drifting, and covered in blazing fire. At this distance, it looked like a great bloated shadow crawling with tongues of flame. “What are we looking at?” she asked again.

“The Argus,” Longstreet called back, “I’m sure of it. When I was a kid, the Whitehead from Ae Vira was caught in a storm. Its djinn got free and blasted it to pieces in the sky. The gasbag burned for an hour before it fell.”

The Argus didn’t burn for an hour. As Dolora was realizing that this wasn’t just any luftleighner, this was the leighner that Miles was on, she saw it plunge into the side of Parliament Island. A huge plume of fire erupted from the mountainside. They both gasped as a cloud of shattered glass blew like the breath of a Fabricator from the nearby office towers. The whole sea lit up, like fireworks. A gust of hot air that smelled of rust, oil, and the sparking tinge of magic, blew across Silver City. A breath out of hell.

“Miles,” she said, in a small voice.

Longstreet turned to look at her with wild eyes. “Your partner did that?”

Icy knives stabbed outward from her heart. They pierced her limbs and transfixed her body. Her ribs felt like they were being prized open, her lungs as though they were burning. Miles Kowalski, her friend and partner, was in that luftleighner that had transformed so suddenly into a falling star. Tears streamed down her face without her bidding and her breath came in hitching gasps. Miles had been her support for three years, her only friend in a friendless city, her partner and her ally in the darkest places. She’d met him on her first furlough from the Continent. They’d kept up a correspondence with at least as much frequency as she’d written Kit. Probably more.

Miles. Correis, Miles, please be safe, she prayed. How anyone could survive that nightmare drifting in the sky she didn’t know. There had to be away. He had to be alive.

A sizzling crackle followed by the blast of lightning striking the building behind her brought her back to herself. No matter how much it hurt to know that Miles might have gone down with the blazing wreck of the Argus, she needed her senses. Longstreet had fired again and missed, but barely. The stink of ozone and magic joined the deadly furnace-wind from the wreck.

Across the roof, Longstreet took aim again. His attention was wholly on Dolora. As she threw herself behind a vent-cap, another bolt of lightning ripped from the strompistole, ionizing the air where, until a moment before, she had been standing. “It’s over, Longstreet!” she shouted.

The top of One Cinder Plaza was capped with an enormous step pyramid that occupied most of the central portion. This was filigreed in gold fitted with neon tubing that lit it up in a variety of colors, all culminating in a spire with a radio aerial atop it. They were on the west side of the rooftop, where the stairs let out, with a clear view of Alstat, Parliament Island, and Centrum hills to the west, south, and north. Luckily, the vent-shafts, crenels of the pyramid, and lip that ran around the edge of the roof all provided plenty of cover to keep out of Longstreet’s eye line. In addition to not being fried by strom-fire, she had to make sure Longstreet didn’t make it back to the stairs. There has to be no way out of this.

“Like hell it is!” he screamed back. He leveled the ugly pistol again and squeezed one eye shut. Even from this distance, Dolora could see he had no idea how to shoot. He was lit with a halo of dancing hydrogen fire as the Argus broke up in the distance behind him. His tongue poked from between his lips in concentration, his finger rested inside the trigger-guard as he calculated his shot. Strom shot wasn’t like strummer fire. Unlike a slug, a lightning bolt could take awkward patterns that you hadn’t intended when you fired. That was why it was primarily used by magicians in combat, when all you wanted to do was scare and lay waste to an enemy line.

She had a Sage & Hoenecker Firedrake, the standard semi-automatic strummer of the Cinder City underworld. She preferred her little Wardart, but they hadn’t had time or money to get another Atla. Besides, if she wasn’t mistaken, that kraftger pistol Longstreet was toting was itself a Wardart, built as a strompistole. Anyway, the point was that her new Firedrake would throw a slug in a straight line. No zigging and zagging of magical fire for her.

She peeked out just enough to blast at Longstreet. He jumped, his concentration disturbed, and jerkily fired again, this time sending a bolt of energy straight into the sky. Someone’s going to see this. All they have to do is look up. And if not someone down in Silver City at this time of night, there were certainly plenty of other luftleighners and lighters swarming through the city air. All a pilot would have to do is look over. She wondered if she could hide from lighter fire if they decided to strafe the building. Maybe they’ll be too busy looking at the Argus. The thing was big, and was lighting up the entire night sky. Maybe they would overlook her little gun battle with the Stadtprasident. Hopefully.

Dolora fired again. She didn’t want to kill Longstreet, or even hit him, really. She just wanted him off his game. She couldn’t bring a corpse to trial, and if she was written up as the person who killed the Stadtprasident, it probably wouldn’t matter what she had on his criminal activity. As it was, he already disavowed most of the worst shit, pawning it off on MacTavish and his circle. With any luck, MacTavish is burning in that fucking fire, she thought, but immediately regretted it, because it brought back thoughts of Miles plummeting to his death in the sea, or consumed by waves of djinn-fueled flames as they spread from the leighner’s motive engines.

The slug whanged off concrete only a handspan from Longstreet’s wingtips. He made a startled “gurk” sound and dove for cover himself. That’ll teach ya to stand in the open like its a skeet contest, she thought sourly.

“What will you get out of this? I’m not the one you want!” Longstreet swung out from behind the concrete block he’d chosen as his hiding place and unleashed another withering blast of electricity. As soon as he did, Dolora returned fire. She’d dropped her cane somewhere ages ago, and could barely feel the rush of pain in her knee.

“Then put your pistol down and let me take you in, Heward! You don’t have to keep fighting.”

“Your partner’s dead up there!” Longstreet slipped away, flitting between the intervening vent-shafts, then appeared again on the first course of the gold giltwork pyramid.

This was all too much for Dolora. The luftleighner’s burning carcass had now spread the fire to nearby buildings on Parliament Island. Miles was dead, either crushed beneath the struts of steel and layers of nylon balloon-skin, or burned alive by the inferno that had taken hold of its wreck. She fired at Longstreet again, blasting three more shots. Half my magazine, she reminded herself, keeping careful count. Funny, the things you learned to do in the war.

Glass and neon blew out in a cloud of toxic fumes as one of her slugs struck the pyramids lighting. Heward spat and cursed, flapping the glass out of his hair and eyes, discharging another futile, rage-filled bolt of power into the sky. Dolora took the moments of confusion to barrel toward him, pumping her bad leg as though it were fine. The agony that replied drove an inarticulate howl from her lips that had yet to die when she plowed into the prasident and toppled with him over the edge of the pyramid.

They fell to the roof’s surface and staggered forward with the momentum of the impact. Heward fought furiously as they tumbled. He was stronger than she expected, stronger than a soft storekeep had any right to be. The wheeled on as he kicked at her, swung at her. The strompistole flew from his hand and clattered to the rooftop. “Give it up, Heward, you’re done. What are you gonna do, throw me off?”

A light came on behind Longstreet’s eyes. His fighting grew more frantic. He kicked at her knee-brace, stomping with abandon. Dolora heard something tear, but the pain was already so intense that she hardly noticed. She drove her fist into his throat and he made a hideous sucking noise, then staggered further back. His fingers clutched at her shoulders as they drove backwards. Longstreet struck the curb of the roof.

“We’re all guilty!” he screeched. “If I’m guilty, so are you!”

He went over the lip. Dolora maintained her hold on his coat, and he on her upper arms. He hung there, over the dark abyss of streets and autowagons, swaying in the oil-scented breeze. “No,” Dolora said. Longstreet’s face was only inches from hers. His breath stank of giantsblood and alcohol. “Listen, Heward, I’ve got you. We can do this together.” She could feel her grip slipping, but Heward’s was tight as a vice. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he was a patsy. If so, he could flush out the other Development Council members. MacTavish was dead, that much was clear, but there were others responsible for this. Everyone, every last one, should pay with at least much as MacTavish had. If not for their crimes, then for Miles. Her heart felt like it was going to seize in her chest.

“No we can’t,” said the Stadtprasident. She could see how he’d been elected, while Miles had such faith in him. His guileless, kind face was convincing, even now at the end of the road, when he was out of places to run. He was earnest. “It’s bigger than me and you. It’s bigger than the prasidency. It’s the whole city, kid.” The way he said kid reminded her of Miles. She would never hear him call her kid again. He was dead. Miles Kowalski was dead. “Why do you think I hired those ersatz bastards? I needed protection.” Protection from who? The Development Council. The real masters of Cinder City. The people who controlled Boss Harker and Longstreet.

“I deserve it, I guess,” Heward said, quietly. From somewhere in the distance, Dolora could hear sirens. She was running out of time. “I deserve all of it.” She felt his fingers start to loosen.

“Hold on, I’ll swing you onto the roof,” she grunted. Her arms were starting to ache.

Longstreet sighed. “I hope you’re right,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper. “I hope you get ‘em, Ms. Spade.” He closed his eyes.

Dolora knew what he was going to do only in the same second that he did it. She suddenly tightened her grip, but it was too late: his arms and shoulders were sliding through his jacket, leaving only hollow fabric behind. This crumpled in Dolora’s grasp and she almost overbalanced and joined him. His fingers let go, and he fell. And he fell. And he fell.

Dolora watched his figure grow smaller and smaller, and then stop with an abrupt finality. She backed away from the ledge.

The sirens were getting louder.

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