FOUNDRYSONG Chapter 10: Justice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She’d stuff him, all right.

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two stubborn assholes, she guessed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have more giantsblood?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s when her autowagon cannoned into a truck.

 

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

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

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

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

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

She lay back down on the cot and fell asleep.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

“Misses Spade, can you give a comment?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Get up,” Dotti called.

Dolora struggled to her feet.

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

 

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

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

“We have a way to get you out.”

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

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

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

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

“What, some shack in the New Territories?”

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

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

“Somewhere free.” O extended her hand.

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But it’s not my home!” Dolora said.

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

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