Stone Mad

by Elizabeth Bear

  Right now.

  I thought it. But I couldn’t make it happen.

  I ain’t a bad shot. But I couldn’t, I physically couldn’t, pull the trigger on that revolver when I was going to have to shoot past Priya, and once I realized that I realized, too, that it were plumb foolishness to start slinging bullets around in a stone basement full of ricochets.

  The borglum drew back his pickaxe again. He moved faster than a greased weasel, and that heavy pick didn’t seem to have no weight at all in his hands. Based on that, and based on the way his skin glinted—frankly, I wasn’t sure he was made of flesh and blood and not some kind of stone-hard whatever it might be. Whereas me and my love and the rest of my little basement range gang were soft and pink and squishy, and bullets weren’t no good for none of us.

  Priya yelped and flinched back. In that light, I couldn’t have seen blood. I didn’t need to. Enough was enough.

  Maybe I couldn’t shoot. But I was standing not too far from the pillar supporting one of those vaults. And I reached out with the butt of my pistol and rapped it hard against the mortared stones, loud as I could manage, one-two-three-four, five times.

  That borglum stopped with his pick lifted up in one hand over his head as neat and as quick as if somebody had dropped him in a tub of quick-cure epoxy. He didn’t even tremble, just froze there, unmoving. Then his head turned toward me and his little eyes focused on my trembling hand.

  “Karen,” Priya said, warning. And I definitely heard her, but it didn’t stop me, either.

  Once more with feeling, I slow rapped out the five-count.

  The borglum blinked. He looked at the pistol. He looked at me. He looked at Priya as if reassessing whether she was a threat or maybe no. He settled back on his heels and lowered the pick, which a strong man would have needed both hands to swing, comfortably and with a relaxed wrist to lean on it once more. Without taking his eyes off me, he lifted his heel up and tapped lightly on the floor.

  It was hella loud knocking for such a little gesture, and I blinked more scratchy dust out of my eyes.

  “We’re friends,” I said. Knock knock, knock knock knock.

  The long ears twitched. He didn’t talk, just knocked back. And took a calm couple of steps over to me.

  Hilaria set a suddenly quiet Mrs. Horner down gently, on her feet, and stretched out her own fingers and arms.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Constable Waterson slowly unskinning his pistol, and shaking his shoulders as if to loosen the coat sleeves over them.

  “Quick thinking,” he said, not even grudgingly. “You going to drum it through the streets like the Pied Piper, until you get it to a friendly local mine?”

  “If I got to,” I answered.

  * * *

  I had to. Constable Waterson got the streets cleared for us, and the mayor, Madame Damnable—who didn’t even have to be wakened up at two in the morning, being already up and in the street outside with a bunch of aides, on account of the happening—found us an abandoned claim back in the hills about five miles, which is a nasty walk in the freezing rain even if you got somebody to hold an umbrella for you.

  We had a little discussion about getting the borglum on a boat and shipping him back to Alaska, but this weren’t the time of year for it and what sensible captain would agree? So he’d have to stay a local tommy-knocker, but maybe there were some of his kind in the mines around here, too, or maybe once he was on his own he could send off for a catalogue bride lady borglum, or however borglums manage such things.

  I thought it was a real good thing that the only people watching us was watching out of windows. I reckoned the borglum probably would have tossed a fit if there was folks all around on the pavements. I was self-conscious enough about the attention for us both, anyway.

  There goes Karen Memery again. Boy, that trouble does seem to find her.

  Priya walked with me, on foot because the Singer was out of diesel. That was fine; everybody in town knew who it belonged to now. It’d get back to us. Everybody else except the constable stayed behind, though he and I had a fight to make that happen, and finally we had to consent to letting the mayor send a steam carriage up to follow us, far enough back that there weren’t too much noise carrying up to us. She scowled at me, but she did it.

  We went back, her and me.

  The borglum followed us real suspiciously, to be honest, making sure his borrowed axe clinked on the paving stones. Every time I knocked, though, he knocked back. And as we got out of town and up into the pinewoods, he seemed to settle. The rain didn’t bother him none, or if it did he didn’t show it. It didn’t even flatten his beard, just ran through the stiff, sparkly fibers like they was asbestos.

  Then we got up on the mine, and I could feel him getting excited. He was . . . sniffing, like, when the road came through a blasted cut, and he walked right over to one of those drilled granite cliffs and put his face against it, eyes closed, drawing in deep breaths the way some new mothers will of their baby’s head. He picked at it with a fingernail, and damned if a big old flake didn’t come off in his hand.

  He licked it.

  Then he turned to me and grinned, holding it out, and I could see it was a sharp-edged piece of white quartz as long as my hand.

  The constable stirred uneasily—it could have been a crude knife, sure, but I didn’t see no point in that when the borglum still had his pickaxe. I accepted the quartz, which he laid gently on my palm, and looked at it without conning what he wanted at all.

  Priya, though, she’s smarter than me.

  “That’s right,” she said. “There’s a gold vein where we’re taking you.”

  * * *

  Another uphill mile in the cold rain, my hip aching like it was on fire, and we came in sight of the mine tunnel. Constable Waterson had apparently sent somebody on ahead, which I hadn’t thought of, because though the tunnel had been closed off it was partially unboarded now, and there was a couple of court officers standing well off to the side with crowbars and a pile of broad-sawn boards.

  You know, that borglum didn’t even hesitate. He looked at me once, looked at the constable and Priya, sketched a quick bow, and vanished down that open mine shaft like a weasel down a bunny den.

  It was all so much like when you get to the end of a dime novel and the last three pages is torn out that honest, me and Priya and Waterson just stood there letting the cold rain fall in our hair for a good minute and a half, staring after him. I curled my fingers around the quartz flake, cold enough that I could barely feel the sharpness.

  We might just all be standing there still if there hadn’t been a loud, echoing bang from inside the mine, then another and one more after that. There was a short pause, and the knocking sounded again, identical to the first time.

  Not five thumps this time, but six.

  Maybe that was borglum for “thank you.”

  * * *

  By the time we got that done, we was that grateful for the police steam carriage to pick us up from the sloppy rimed road in the freezing rain. The rest of the ladies had sensibly stayed back in the hotel where I hoped somebody had found them some intact sleeping quarters and a hot buttered rum and left them alone to work things out between themselves. I was ready for nothing so much as a warm bath and a hot toddy myself and a whole three days of not climbing out of my double-thick feather bed.

  But we had to go back through town to get to our house anyway, because that was how the road ran, so when we did Waterson and the driver helped us load the Singer onto a rack on the back of the carriage. Then they rolled us home in merciful lack of conversation, which you couldn’t call silence because those steam carriages make a lot of noise. But I sat there inside the swaying thing as it rocked on its springs, and stared out the window at the dark rain. Without turning my head, I stuck out my hand and squeezed Priya’s cold fingers. And—maybe a little reluctantly—she squeezed mine back.

  * * *

  We only had to get pulled out of the mud once on th
e way up the hill, in the coldest dark before dawntime, and fortunately a teamster was coming down with a team of mules just as we was getting stuck going up. I wondered if that teamster was out all night for just such occasions, as he made fifty cents off the haul. Steam carriages is great until they ain’t, and they’re getting more popular in town. You ain’t got to care for them daily like you do stock.

  I knowed we weren’t out of the woods nohow, but stepping down the wrought-iron kick stair at the bottom of the path to our own little ranch house about broke my heart all over again. Priya weren’t thick blooded enough for this cold yet if she ever would be, and my wrap was back in the cloakroom at the Riverside. So we was both soaked through and shivering—her worse than me. Still she wouldn’t rest and come in until we had the Singer unloaded and shut in the barn, and she wouldn’t take Constable Waterson’s coat when I didn’t have one, even though I wasn’t half as cold as she was, having some flesh on my bones and also being originally from up where some real cold does come down.

  So I said, “Suit yourself,” and went up to the house.

  Even in the dark, in the rain, with the windows blank as dead eyes, that place looked like paradise in my eyes. It weren’t ornate, like Madame Damnable’s old place, or the mayor’s house, or the Riverside. It was just a little slice of whitewashed clapboard heaven, single-story, with a wide wrap porch to keep the rain off, and a breezeway to the barn. I felt as house-proud as Tom Sawyer’s aunt Polly every time I looked at it, and right now that pride came with a busted-up ache inside.

  What if all this good I’d finally found—what if it went away? I had plans to cable up to Hay Camp and see if my good mare Molly was still with the friend I’d left her with. And I had another filly coming up from the Indian Country, if another friend got his mustang mare in foal and managed to get a girl colt out of her. That was the foundation of a little band of mares of our own right there, and that was the foundation of a future.

  Had we broken it all already, before we’d even managed a start?

  I left my soaked shoes on the porch, and nearly shucked out of my dress and shawl right there, too, but I didn’t want to scare the horses—and by “horses” I mean the constables, on account of the carriage being steam.

  I went inside and got ready for bed, and left the kettle hot for Priya, but by the time she came in I was fast asleep and we never got to have it out in an argument the way I figured we probably needed to.

  * * *

  We went to the magic show the next night. Which was that same night, because we’d gone to bed with the rising sun. We arrived quite early, before the crowds, as instructed, and had to show the ushers at the door our backstage passes for admittance, because the opera house was still closed to the public for several hours.

  I didn’t know what sort of conversations Mrs. Horner and the Arcade sisters had had after we left the night before, but I confess I was a mite surprised to find Hilaria and Hypatia in the lobby. They had changed their dresses and fixed up their hair and looked, if possible, even more the thing than they had the night before.

  They’d patently been waiting for us, and greeted us with smiles. Hilaria stood back a little, which seemed to be her way, and smiled when I thanked her for saving me a nasty tumble down the stairs the night before. Hypatia took Priya’s hand and was sweet as butter to her, and Priya was guarded and polite.

  Then they showed us backstage, where Mrs. Horner was already hard at work. She wasn’t dressed for the stage yet, because she was wearing little Chinese slippers and a man’s flannel trousers held up with button-on suspenders, over a calico work shirt. That was all we could see of her, too, because she was lying on her back on a plywood plank with skate wheels screwed to the bottom, and her head and hands was completely concealed under something that bore a real resemblance to a big, black cannon.

  The Arcade sisters being there was a peace offering—from Mrs. Horner to them, and from them to Mrs. Horner—and we all knowed it. On the other hand, almost dying together does sort of cement a relationship.

  “Mrs. Horner,” Hilaria said, and Mrs. Horner rolled out from under the—it was definitely—a cannon. Her hair was just braided and pinned up. She levered herself up, pretty spry for a woman of sixtyish, and wiped her hand on a rag before holding it out. There was still lampblack smutched all around her nails, but Priya didn’t care and honestly I was used to hands that looked like that, though I made Priya use the nail brush before she sat down to dinner.

  Priya was polite enough to introduce herself before she crouched down to examine how the cart was put together, and I knew we’d have one in the barn by tomorrow after lunch, depending on if Priya had to go into town to get parts. I made a note to myself to hide my skates. And find my roller skate key.

  I started to think about whether or not she’d be staying with me long enough to even want to steal those skates, and instead I made myself wonder if Priya would like to learn how to skate. It didn’t get cold enough in Rapid to make ice you could trust for ice skating, which I used to love. But roller skates are all right, I guess. Not as good, but better than nothing. Priya could probably improve on ’em if she wanted to.

  She’d wandered away a step and was inspecting a sort of armature that looked like the Singer’s lighter, showier cousin. It was enameled in curlicued red and gold, like a show carriage, and had rhinestones at the joints. Those expensive ones, that glitter more than real diamonds. She looked from the cannon to the carapace and back again, and said, “You cannot catch a cannonball in this.”

  Mrs. Horner smiled. Hypatia was right there beside her, crouched down inside the swell of her skirts, head tilted. She touched the thing’s gauntlets, delicate laceries of decorative metal, and said, “She’s right, you know.”

  “That’s why we call it a trick,” Mrs. Horner said with a smile.

  “Wait,” I said. “Who’s going to catch a cannonball?”

  “Why,” said Mrs. Horner, ingénue as a fifty-dollar parlor lady in pigtails and a white pinafore, “my dear Karen. Your lovely Priya is. If she’s brave enough.”

  * * *

  I ain’t gonna tell you how the trick works exactly, because it’s Mrs. Horner’s trick to keep as secret or sell to other magicians as she sees fit. I will tell you that the armature, once they laced Priya into it, was nine-tenths stage costume and one-tenth mechanism. Also, Mrs. Horner gave Priya a stage dress, so as her coat wouldn’t be ruined. Priya fussed about wearing skirts, but as Mrs. Horner pointed out, she needed someplace to keep the cannonball.

  “You can keep your trousers on under,” Mrs. Horner said. And that settled that nicely.

  The dress had panels front and back on the bodice that was just basted in so they could be picked out fast and replaced for the next day, and by the time Priya had it on and fitted, Hilaria was making noises around a mouthful of pins about how to do it better. Those two’s as bad as Priya and me when it comes to not letting well enough alone, I tell you.

  The cannon is a trick cannon with a trap at the bottom, so the cannonball never actually hits you. Unless the trap doesn’t work, in which case you die like you was on a battlefield, so there is some risk to it.

  Priya seemed to think it was marginal. Me, I chewed my lip and checked it three times myself, though honestly I couldn’t have told if it was working right or if Mrs. Horner meant to murder us all. My job, which I was much better suited to, was to lead the pale gray pony that drew the cannon out onstage, and make sure he looked pretty and prancing. He was a sweet little thing at thirteen hands and had some Arab in him, enough to make him dish-faced and give him elf ears but not enough to make him fractious. His name was Gremlin, which seemed a little close to the bone given how I’d spent the previous evening, but we made friends fast, though he was deaf as a post, which as you imagine was an asset in his line of work.

  So you all, gentle readers, have probably heard of the illusion magicians call the Bullet Catch. It’s supposed to be the most dangerous illusion of all, because even
though—surprise—they ain’t catching a real bullet in their teeth (I know, you coulda knocked me over with a feather also) things go wrong, and mistakes get made, and real guns really kill people. And you can kill somebody with a blank, which a lot of folks don’t know, but my da taught me to be even more careful around blank cartridges than loads.

  So one way the Bullet Catch can work is that a member of the audience marks a bullet and the case, which the magician’s assistant takes and puts into a revolver. Or appears to; really she palms it and transfers it to the magician. And it’s a trick round, see—the bullet just slides out of the casing, so the casing goes into the pistol and the bullet gets slipped into the magician’s mouth.

  The magician goes to one end of the stage. The assistant goes to the other. A glass pane is between them, or a sheet of rice paper, which is supposed to prove the bullet’s path.

  There’s a drumroll and a moment of silence and the assistant fires the gun. The paper shreds, the glass shatters, and the magician fishes the bullet out of his teeth and holds it up. Possibly with a bit of stage blood for flourish, because some of ’em like the gore. Me, I think I’d avoid that show, because even if I know it ain’t real blood, my stomach still feels like I swallowed a boa constrictor if I have to look at it.

  You don’t want to know about the time me and some of the girls went to see Titus Andronicus. They thought it was pretty funny. I think they could have warned me.

  Anyway, when the audience inspects the cartridge and the bullet they find they’re both the marked ones. And there’s that shattered glass, showing the bullet’s course. Which of course is done with a little black powder flash, or just by making sure that the assistant fires the pistol from close enough that the muzzle flash can break sugared glass, or shred thin paper. That’s got the benefit, according to my old paying beau, of protecting the magician. You can still get hit by flying shards, but it stops any spark, or fragment of casing.