Cruel Numbers
By Christopher Beats
After the North loses the War of Southern Secession, money buys power in the Magnocracy, and people can disappear in a blink. War veteran Donovan Schist’s specialty is finding these missing persons. There isn’t much money in it, but he sleeps a little better.
This time, Donovan is looking for a girl named Bridget Cleary. Her family’s had no word from her for months. Donovan’s certain he’ll find her belly-up, but it seems her talent for analytical machines has made her a valuable asset to the powers that be—an asset that they’re determined to keep hidden and out of reach. In over his head, Donovan enlists his friend Verhalen to help. The eccentric inventor may be unstable, but his steam-powered gadgets give Donovan the edge.
Donovan’s no stranger to the rougher edges of society, but when the usual threats turn to attacks on his life, it quickly becomes clear that someone very important does not want him to find Bridget Cleary…
42,000 words
Dear Reader,
April is a bit of a mixed-bag month, isn’t it? In some countries, like here in the United States, it’s tax season, which for many is either a very stressful time or a time of “Hurray! Tax-return money arrives!” We also get Easter weekend, which comes with days off for some. April is also the month where we finally (hopefully) really start seeing the change of seasons from winter to spring, let out a long breath and kick our children outdoors for longer periods of time (surely it’s not just me who does that?).
So I guess it’s only appropriate that our releases this month are also a mixed bag. Carina Press is able to bring you an assortment of titles to help bust you out of any lingering winter blues. The month starts off with a smokin’-hot bang via Abby Wood’s erotic contemporary cowboy romance Consent to Love. Joining her in the first week of April are Sandy James with her contemporary romance Rules of the Game, and Regency romance The Perfect Impostor by Wendy Soliman.
Also in the contemporary romance genre in April we have His Secret Temptation by Cat Schield, Serious Play by Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon, and North of Heartbreak by Julie Rowe. Historical romance author M.K. Chester joins the April lineup with Surrender to the Roman, and Juliana Ross heats up the Victorian era with erotic historical romance Improper Relations. Returning with three more books in her White series is author Susan Edwards.
Talented Natalie J. Damschroder returns with another crowd-pleasing romantic suspense, Acceptable Risks. And if you love that book, make sure you check out her previous romantic suspense, Fight or Flight, from our 2011 release schedule!
For those of you who prefer your romance a bit more…otherworldly, Kaylea Cross’s Darkest Caress is a paranormal romance of magical races, darkly handsome men and fiercely independent women. Ella Drake takes us to her vision of our post-apocalyptic world in Desert Blade, and new Carina Press author Kay Keppler’s Zero Gravity Outcasts takes readers on a science-fiction adventure with a hint of romance. Fans of male/male romance should be on the lookout for Brook Street: Fortune Hunter, the next in author Ava March’s regency historical trilogy.
Last, but certainly not least, we’re very pleased to present debut author Christopher Beats’s steampunk noir Cruel Numbers this month. Visit Christopher’s alternate historical world in which the North loses the War of Southern Secession, one girl’s talent for analytical machines has made her a valuable asset in the new world, and steam-powered gadgets may give war veteran Donovan Schist the edge he needs to save his life, and hers.
I think April’s schedule of releases is a good reason to wish for just one more snow day—so you can stay inside and read! I hope you enjoy these books as much as we have.
We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
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Dedication
For ’Nessa
Acknowledgements
Even divergent timelines require a certain amount of historical accuracy. For giving me the tools I needed, I would like to thank Robert Cassanello and Connie Lester. I’d also like to thank Deb Nemeth and all the other editors who helped me find and eradicate those pesky anachronistic hobgoblins. I am responsible for any that breached our defenses. I’ll take this opportunity to add that some of these anachronisms are deliberate. Because the world of Cruel Numbers is far more advanced than our nineteenth century, I’ve assumed that certain terms such as gremlin and triage entered the lexicon sooner. Finally, I must extend my deepest thanks to Chudney DeFreitas-Thomas, a first-rate pathfinder and friend.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
About the Author
Copyright
Chapter One
“Haven’t seen her.”
I scratched the left side of my mustache and coughed. “Could you at least look at her picture before you say that?”
The barkeep rolled his eyes and turned his head toward me slowly, like it was taking all the effort in the world. “You ain’t even bought nothing.”
Bridget’s frayed yellow portrait still hung in my fingers, just inches from his face, but he stared at me instead with his faded blue, bloodshot eyes, ignoring the portrait.
“I’ll take a stout.” I slapped a nickel on the table.
“This is a Yankee bar,” he spat. “We don’t serve that Teague shit here.”
“Then whatever you have on tap.” I blew on my hands. It was nice to be indoors. I’d deal with cold bartenders over cold wind any day.
He turned his broad back to me and took a semi-clear mug down from the shelf. He drew up a line and squirted a foamy yellow liquid that reminded me of fresh piss and slapped it in front of me.
“Thanks,” I told him. I fucking hate pilsners. “Mind taking a look?” I took a quaff and instantly regretted it. The beer had somehow conspired to be warm despite the frigid temperature.
This time he shot a glance at her and shrugged. “Haven’t seen her.”
I couldn’t blame him. A thousand Bridgets a day came here, all fresh-faced from the country, ready for a big adventure in the Big City. Just like the pigs from upstate, they come here in blissful droves by train and steamer and carriage. More meat for the grinder. No one asks where most of these girls go. Unfortunately, I was being paid to ask, so this one mattered.
“You know anyone I might ask about her?” I put the picture in my right front pocket. It was the Cleary family’s only copy. “She lived in the tenements across the street. She posted a letter from this address.” I thumped the bar to add emphasis. It didn’t mean this slouching prick knew anything, but it was the best lead I had.
He shrugged. “Lotta people drop their post off here.” He snorted. “She’s a Papist, right? Try the warlock ’round the corner. Good luck talking to him, though
.”
“Why? He mute or something?”
“Worse. He talks that filthy mick-speech.”
As it happened, my ma brought me up in Gaelic, so the padre’s communication skills weren’t a problem. He was the opposite of the tavern-keeper but no more useful. He had plenty to say about a dozen Bridgets in his parish and more besides, but nothing about Bridget Cleary. If she’d been in the neighborhood, she’d not gone to church. The reverend made it plain that if she had, she wouldn’t be in trouble now.
As if a priest could help anyone in this city. God knows that priests had never helped me. The worst thing that ever happened to me had been done by a priest. He’d married me to her.
When I left, he was still jabbering about Jezebels or Leviticus or something. His eyesight wasn’t too keen so I doubt he noticed when I left. I had briefly considered the rite of confession while I was there, but I don’t think the padre would have shut up long enough to hear me. If I’d confessed, it would have broken my nearly decade-long run of avoiding God, so maybe it was better I hadn’t. Last time I’d asked forgiveness, it was from a chaplain on the front. Believe it or not, I’d done worse things since the war was over, though I doubt the Church would understand. No one who got three squares a day and a roof over their head could understand.
To really understand the things I’d done, you’d have to live in the heart of the Magnocracy for ten long years, getting paid nothing but worthless veterans’ certificates and watching your honorable comrades starve in the street. The smart ones cracked kneecaps for the local entrepreneurial class. I wasn’t going to starve, but I also wasn’t too keen on cracking kneecaps. So I look for Little Girls Lost. Today, anyway.
I had a pretty good guess what happened to young Bridget, because the same thing had more or less happened to me. I’ve never sucked cocks on the graveyard shift for a quarter, but that don’t mean I can hold my head up when I walk. It just means my hands got dirty where my knees stayed clean.
Most girls like Bridget start out innocent enough and nothing is more innocent than dancing, despite what the Baptists say. There was no point in going to the dance halls while it was light out so I dropped a penny and rode the smoking rail for a couple hours. Someone left a paper on the bench, so I perused it a little when I got tired of staring at the rotten brick tenements sagging in the shadow of immaculate glass towers. It was a goddamn Nativist rag. I studiously ignored the usual shit about English-Only Laws or the immigrant hordes and stuck to the international page. It’s a good thing, too, ’cause I think they were blaming us micks for the latest dirigible crash. I dunno…it’s hard to follow their logic sometimes.
The international page wasn’t exactly cheery. The dispute over West Virginia was getting ugly. The treaty that officially ended the United States of America had also said each state would declare Yankee or Dixie for itself. West Virginia said “Yankee” and Johnny Reb was crying foul. It was the coal—they weren’t going to let a thing like democracy get between them and their bituminous. More importantly, it looked like Great Britain was going to back the CSA. Again.
So the goddamn limeys were threatening another blockade. There were even a few wet ironclads parked off Long Island to let the Magnates know their ambassador wasn’t just a blowhard. As if anyone doubted a Brit when he threatened seaborne violence. Another radical tried and failed to blow up the czar, which meant he must be down like seven out of nine lives by now. Meanwhile, the entire contingent of Austrian Parliamentarians had stormed out of the Reichstag when the Junkers made Bismarck prime minister again.
It sounded like the Old World was running about as smoothly as the New. I hoped the paper was lying about the international stuff just like it lied about the “Irish problem,” but I knew it wasn’t.
Ten years since the Halifax Conference and everyone was in a hurry to fight again.
Fighting was the last thing on anyone’s mind at the dance halls. It was Friday, I think, and everyone was in good cheer. The more progressive factories had gone to half-days on Saturday, which meant the next day they’d only have to work six hours with a hangover, which is entirely manageable.
I’ve never been one for dancing and I’ve a stern look about me, left over from my military days and sharpened by the Pinkertons. Most would have thought me a policeman, especially since the Magnates were fond of plainclothes spies to keep the workers honest.
Still, a stout here and there topped with some Irish-speak can ease my image and loosen many a tongue, not to mention other body parts, though I wasn’t there for that. Not tonight anyway. Most folk in the boroughs get over their fear of investigators quick if they think you’re of their clan. Sure, there are shining glass towers now, and duranite ships that float through the sky, but the workers are still as primitive as the mud they came from. We still cling to the old ways in the tenements, the ways of faded banners and bloodstained totems, where a familiar surname or a string of rosaries can get more answers than a police battalion.
I gathered quite a bit about all the young Bridgets of this parish, and saw swell dancing to boot. It would have been easy to forget why I was there.
But I didn’t. If I had, I might’ve been caught off guard, might’ve made a mistake. Guess that’s why in the end, the books-and-battlefield part of me always wins out.
I was coming out of my third dance hall of the evening—and my sixth stout of the hour—when I saw a trio of toughs waiting outside under a gaslight. They were unsavory sorts, completely out of place in the merry world of the dance halls. They didn’t have the tired look or red faces of factory workers who had scrubbed for hours to look nice. They wore expensive leather shoes, polished black, with thin neckties like dead snakes hanging from their necks.
The one in the back, which is to say the largest of them, reached into his vest with his right hand. He had a hard look about him, the look one gets from hurting people for a living.
“Evenin’, gents,” I said.
“We hear you bin askin’ some questions tonight. ’Bout a girl named Bridget.”
I backed up to the soot-stained wall and grinned in the shadows. “You got information for me? Her family misses her very much.”
“Yeah, well, that’s too bad, ’cause she left town.” The speaker was in front of the rest. He was short, apish and supremely confident. His hands were nowhere near his pockets. His commanding demeanor plainly said fighting was beneath him. His larger friends would handle any action.
“I heard she went upstate with some rich fellah,” another added. “So take your nickel from her potato-picking family and fuck off.”
“No more questions,” the little one reiterated.
“So you’re in charge,” I said with a nod. “Better not hurt your mouth then, eh?”
Before they could register what I’d said, I slipped my ashwood truncheon out of my jacket and jabbed its blunt end into the leader’s soft guts and sent him sprawling into the medium-sized thug.
The big one came fast, as I’d expected he would, a knuckle-duster glimmering in the gaslight. I easily dodged the blow and came in close. Brass knuckles aren’t so vicious if you can’t land a punch.
He might have thought the advantage was his, since he was packing a lot of muscle. What he didn’t know was that my truncheon doesn’t need much room to swing. I delivered a rapid upward thrust into his jaw, staggering him. He exhaled a fine mist of blood into the cool night air.
The other goon was getting free of the leader so I rapped him twice on the noggin. He dropped like a stone. By the time he’d hit the ground, the big one was shaking his head and seeing red. He spat a tooth onto the sidewalk and pulled back to hit me but froze mid-punch.
After slapping my truncheon around, I’d found enough time to draw my derringer. I leveled the piece at them and watched them wilt. Before, it might not have had as much an effect but now they hesitated. It only had two shots
and there were only two left. The third was on the ground with a cracked skull. If he lived he would have a worse headache tomorrow than all the dancers’ hangovers combined.
“Take your shoes off,” I ordered.
They looked at me as if I was crazy.
“Now,” I hissed. “And his, too.”
When I had their shoes I knew I had their attention too. Lunacy is a strange ally in times like this. “Now empty your pockets.”
The doors to the dance hall swung open and three red-faced bucks came out with three pretty girls.
“Keep walking,” I told them in Gaelic.
They nodded and padded away. One of the girls cast an eye over her shoulder. When she saw who I was jack-rolling, she quickened her pace.
The big one wasn’t going to talk after the poke I’d given his jaw, so I aimed my piece at the apish leader. “What happened to Bridget?”
“She’s gone,” he said in a slack voice.
Gaslight is piss-poor illumination, so his expression was hard to read.
“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” I growled, brandishing the pistol closer. “You pricks are done if anything’s happened to Bridget Cleary. I mean, you fuck with her and you are pissing in the coffee of some very powerful men. Do you understand me, boys?”
Neither would look at me.
“You think just anyone can afford the Pinkertons?” I asked them. I hadn’t worked for the Pinkertons in over a year, but that hardly mattered. I still walked and talked like one, and no matter how little the Clearys of Cork County paid, they and their daughter deserved one that night.
It was like a spark had jumped between them. Both of them shifted a little and looked around. This time they met my stare.
“We never hurt anyone,” the leader said.
“Satan’s balls!” I exclaimed. “Of course you have. I know your type. You would have stomped on my back if I hadn’t been so fast. Lucky for all of us you’re just two-bit hooligans. Let’s not delude ourselves, boys. You ain’t the decision-makers of the gang, so just tell me who is and what happened to Bridget and I’ll be on my way.”
Cruel Numbers Page 1
