The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  “My magic wasn’t wrong.”

  Janus rolled his eyes. “Your magic!”

  Edwin reached out and snatched a playing card from the air between them, where there had been none before. It made a crisp snap.

  Janus blinked, accepted the card, turned it. “If you could really bend the laws of the universe, you’d stop the hearts of our enemies. Perhaps you’d stop mine. But no. You magic up the knave of swords.” He tore the card in half. “Your tricks have no power.”

  “Then why are you whispering?” Edwin asked.

  The gentle smile returned to Janus’s soft face. “Remember what they did to your mother, when her tricks ran out? She was fully woman. That much they understood. But you – boy, girl, whatever you are – you make their stomachs turn. What will happen to you, do you suppose, when your magic is all gone?”

  The two halves of the playing card fluttered to the ground in his wake as he walked away.

  CHAPTER 5

  On the second day after their arrival at the hotel in Niagara, Elizabeth found herself sitting opposite Agent McLeod. Julia was being interrogated by Winslow in another room.

  “What is the purpose behind your silence?” McLeod asked.

  It was the right question. Rather than asking again about her experiences in Newfoundland, rephrasing to find some more pleasing formulation, or repeating the threats in a louder voice, he had got straight to the heart of the matter. It showed respect for her intelligence. And it hinted at his own.

  “You threatened me,” she said.

  “I stated the facts and offered you help.”

  “Help against a list of accusations, any one of which would surely send me to the gallows.”

  “I can’t change the facts to suit your sensibilities. Witnesses have told us that all these things occurred.”

  “Are you offering me help?”

  “We might be. If you were to be more cooperative, we would pass that information on to the authorities.”

  “You are the authorities.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not the one who’d stand judgement. But I could note in my report that you’re not our enemy. Not by inclination. That would change things in your trial. It might reverse them altogether.”

  “You advise me to talk, then?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And who would hand over money before a bargain has been struck?”

  He smiled. “A fair point. Though I’d hoped we might skip over all those things as a matter of trust. But you are correct. Very well. What would you like in exchange for your information?”

  “Immunity from prosecution for me and my companions. For all the things that happened beyond the borders of the Gas-Lit Empire.”

  McLeod looked down to the tips of his fingers and frowned. “I think you overestimate your value to us. We already know much of what is happening on Newfoundland. You’d merely be filling in some of the texture. The names of certain individuals, their characters, their interests and weaknesses – as you perceive them.”

  “What can you offer then?”

  “Immunity for the boy.”

  “He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “He stowed away on a ship of the company fleet. Theft of company property…”

  “What did he steal?”

  “Food.”

  “You’d have preferred him to starve?”

  “Not at all. I’m merely listing the charges that await him: stowing away, theft, conspiring with an enemy of the Gas-Lit Empire…”

  “What enemy?”

  “You, Miss Barnabus.”

  “But he’s a child!”

  “The accusations are severe. But as you say, he is a child. And led astray. A pardon wouldn’t be unreasonable.”

  “And a pardon for Julia.”

  “In exchange for your full cooperation, we could discuss that. She didn’t go voluntarily into their hands.”

  “But you will not pardon me?”

  “Your problem comes from others. Not I. Not the Patent Office. There are so many witnesses to stand against you. It is hard to imagine you’d not be found guilty. The charges are grievous. But none within our jurisdiction. It’s not patent crime you’re accused of.”

  “You have influence, though,” she said.

  “Limited influence. There is a special hatred in the hearts of the fleet for piracy. I’m sure you understand. The admirals might be coaxed. But further down the chain of command, the sailors wouldn’t stomach a pardon.”

  Elizabeth stood, stepped to the window, looked out through the long net curtain. The grounds outside were empty of people. Lawns and flower beds were not what the guests of the Grand Niagara hotel had come to see.

  “Delay won’t help you,” McLeod said. “Your information is most valuable now. But it will turn. As surely as milk left out in the sun. I’m confident we could guarantee full pardons for your friends if you spoke now. But next week…”

  The night before, Tinker had gone to the pigeon master and the message had been sent. It would have arrived in New York already. Robert would be on his way. If he yet lived. Sorrow had consumed him after Julia was lost. Elizabeth had never mentioned it to her friend, but there was a possibility that he’d lacked the willpower to resist his grief.

  Turning from the window, she met McLeod’s eyes. “Were I to say yes, how long would it take you to have our agreement confirmed?”

  “I’m authorised to make such decisions,” he said, but a fraction too quickly.

  “Nevertheless, if I wanted confirmation from the mouth of someone I trust, as well as in writing, could this all be arranged in the next couple of days?”

  “Say the word and I’ll have it done,” he said. “But you may as well start telling me your story.”

  “You’d surely think me a fool if I did.”

  He stood, his chair legs scraping the floor. “If your friends told their stories, you’d have nothing left to bargain with.”

  She laughed, then. She actually laughed and he seemed offended.

  “Go ask Agent Winslow. He’ll tell you exactly how much they’ve revealed. The answer will be nothing.”

  “These rooms are very pleasant,” McLeod said. “This debriefing need not happen in such relaxed surroundings.”

  “Then move us to some prison. But know that if you do, any trust you’ve built with me will be gone.”

  “We have trust?”

  “Some. I trust I know what you’re trying to do. And I trust you have the best interests of the world in your mind. But I also trust that my information will be of more than passing interest. I know things that you do not know. The fate of the Gas-Lit Empire rests in the balance. I trust that your apparent disinterest is feigned.”

  “Then what should I trust?” he asked.

  “That I do not want the Gas-Lit Empire to fall.”

  Julia had taken to staring out of the window. When Tinker squeezed himself into the dumbwaiter, she had seemed all excitement. And then, when he returned by the same route, she’d held him and kissed his cheeks and blessed him until he turned beetroot red. But the waiting was devouring her spirit, Elizabeth thought. All the dark possibilities that Julia had not entertained before, now began to haunt her. While the chief danger holding back their reunion had been the possibility of her own death or enslavement, Julia had been her usual happy self. Returning to the land of order had changed that. Perhaps her husband, Robert, had found someone else, or taken sick, or become indifferent. It was all ridiculous but Elizabeth could see the thoughts haunting her friend nonetheless.

  “There are hundreds of miles between Niagara and New York,” Elizabeth whispered, taking her hand.

  “The road is good,” Julia said.

  “I’d be surprised if he could make it in less than five days. You can come away from the window.”

  Julia allowed herself to be led back to a chair. “He will come though?”

  “Most surely! He will rescue you. You’ll see.”

  “The agent
s said we’re all in trouble. They said you’ll hang and I’ll be thrown in prison.”

  “No one is going to hang,” Elizabeth said. “You just need to keep on telling them nothing. That’s how we get out of this.”

  For the afternoon interrogation, the agents swapped around. McLeod took Julia. Elizabeth found herself facing Winslow.

  “You’ve had time to consider our offer,” he said.

  “I have.”

  “Will you tell us your story?”

  “I will. When immunity has been guaranteed for Julia and Tinker. Full immunity. I want it legally binding.”

  “This can be done.”

  “Then… I do agree. On the condition that I can have it set in writing. And on the condition that John Farthing will say it to my face. He’s been my liaison with the Patent Office from the start. I do trust him.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And you mustn’t tell the others what I’m going to do. They must think the immunity is granted to us all.”

  This seemed to disturb him. “I cannot lie,” he said.

  “You won’t have to,” said Elizabeth. “I will do that part myself.”

  She began the story with something they already knew: the existence of submarine boats, which had disturbed the balance of power in Newfoundland, allowing weapons to be smuggled across the water.

  “How were they powered?” Agent Winslow asked, leaning forwards in his chair.

  By a kind of steam engine, she told him. He wrote it down, though he didn’t seem to believe her. With a submarine boat, the problem was what to do with the exhaust gases. But the fuel of this steam engine was hydrogen. It made no smoke. The product of its burning was water so pure that it could be drunk by the crew.

  As she explained the method, the agent’s expression of scepticism was replaced by one of wonder. He nodded as he wrote, the story making sense to him. She told him of the wave mills, which captured galvanic energy, the energising of seawater, which created flammable gases, and the iron bottles in which the gases were held under pressure.

  When the description was complete, she folded her arms.

  The agent waited, pen poised.

  “That’s all for today,” she said.

  “We need more. Much more!”

  “And you shall have it. Just as soon as you’ve met your side of the bargain.”

  “We can have the agreement written for you. But John Farthing has already left. He’ll be in New York by now.”

  “Then you’d better hurry in bringing him back. Before he sets off for London.”

  The days of their captivity grew long. Agents came and went. But there was always one left to watch over them. Elizabeth took to walking around at night. When the others were sleeping, she opened the door onto the balcony, though it had been forbidden, and stepped out to stand in the moonlight. The air was cold and damp. It made her shiver. But it was worth it, that small disobedience, proving to herself that she had not been broken.

  Padding barefoot and silent down the narrow stairs, she investigated the small black door, probing the lock with a piece of stiff wire from the springs of her bed. She had no expectation of being able to pick it. The Patent Office worked with locksmiths of the highest order. Having inserted the end of the wire, she probed, feeling the levers and wards within, knowing it was far beyond her skill.

  Back upstairs, she opened the cupboard door and examined the dumbwaiter. Tinker had been able to fold himself double and squeeze inside. But she would never fit. Muffling the bell with one hand, she pulled the rope, sending the compartment down its narrow shaft, into the darkness beyond her sight.

  The cold had worked itself into her. Shivering, she returned to bed. This time she slept.

  On the morning of the fourth day, Agent McLeod returned from a walk with a new urgency in his step and Elizabeth knew her time was almost gone. Two slices of bacon rested on each breakfast plate, with grilled tomatoes and eggs over easy. Tinker finished his portion and licked it clean as usual. Feeling no appetite, she pushed hers over to him. Instead of wolfing down what she hadn’t eaten, he cocked his head and looked at her, eyes questioning. Another sign that he was growing up.

  “I’m not hungry,” she explained.

  Where he put all that food, she never knew, but when it was gone, he looked at her again and took her hand. They would all be pardoned, she’d told him. Now she couldn’t hold his gaze. Pulling away, she stepped to the net curtains. The weather had turned mild and the windows had been left open. She inhaled air, scented with the first touch of autumn. A man was walking in the grounds outside. He wore a long, grey coat and a fedora.

  It wasn’t John Farthing. It couldn’t be him.

  Behind her, Julia was clearing away the breakfast things. Plates clinked against each other. A door opened and closed. Elizabeth glanced back. McLeod and Winslow had withdrawn to their room.

  The man in the grounds was proceeding in bursts and pauses. She couldn’t see his face. But he was searching for something. And furtively.

  She turned the handle of the forbidden balcony door. The net curtain billowed into the room as she slipped through. The man had stopped and was casting around, as if he’d heard her, though she’d made almost no sound. The sight of him made her draw breath.

  It was Robert, Julia’s husband. But not as she’d seen him last. He’d been clean-shaven then. Now he wore a beard. Notwithstanding that, his face seemed thinner. He saw her. His haunted eyes widened. She pointed towards the unmarked door below.

  Julia and Tinker must have felt the change in her because they were staring as she pushed back through the net curtains. Winslow had caught her entering the room.

  “The balcony’s forbidden!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why did you do that? You knew the rule.”

  Before she could answer, a fist began to hammer on the door below.

  She followed the agent down the stairs, waiting behind him as he peered through the spy hole. The door shuddered from another series of bangs.

  “Who is it?” Winslow hissed.

  “Open the door and find out.”

  “He’ll be hauled away for a madman.”

  “Mad, perhaps. But not a fool. If you don’t let him in, he’ll come back with the sheriff. If you want to keep this place a secret, I’d suggest you let him in.”

  “On what grounds can he demand anything?”

  “You’re holding his wife a prisoner.”

  There was a rush of fabric and footsteps behind her. She had to hold Julia back while Winslow turned the key. The door burst inwards. Elizabeth found herself pushed against the wall as Julia and Robert forced through into each other’s embrace. Both were weeping, unrestrained. Elizabeth looked away from them to Winslow, who’d been squeezed into the corner on the other side.

  He glowered at her. “What have you done?”

  She found herself unable to speak, for joy perhaps. Or for pain. She couldn’t tell which.

  CHAPTER 6

  A hunting party was a masculine affair in the Oregon Territory. Donning jacket and shirt, Edwin had followed that mode, but instead of trousers, had chosen a riding skirt and side-saddle. A touch of kohl made the eyes seem larger, softer. A bruise of darker tone suggested a hollowness of the cheeks. Not he and yet not she. Something neither pronoun managed to convey. But something entirely real. They.

  The king rode at the front with his hunting master, a Salishan marksman. Behind came eight men of the court, including Timon, the king’s half-brother. Two more in the hunting party were in the royal succession. It might have been more, but after the first few, any claim to kingship would be disputed anyway. To have so many riding out together was foolhardy. A well-timed ambush could topple the kingdom.

  Yet the king had ordered it and they had complied. No questions voiced.

  Harnesses jangled and hoofs fell heavy. The clamour was such that any deer within two miles would have gone to ground. The party had been crawling along, slower than the bre
eze. The mixed scents of horse and cologne would be reaching out ahead of them, alerting any game that happened to be deaf.

  Counsellor Janus had kept a polite distance since their encounter outside the Room of Cabinets. He was up front with the rest of the court, laughing at bad jokes. Riding a dappled mare, Edwin preferred to lag behind, closer to the cooks and the baggage mules.

  The wide and rolling land above the river gorge bore a scattering of copses. In the distance, Mount Hood stood magnificent against a blue sky. A few patches of snow still remained in gullies on its northern slope. It wouldn’t be long before winter set in again. Then the wild north road between Oregon and Newfoundland would freeze. Communications would become dangerous until the spring thaw. After that, mud would be the problem. On a good year there might be eight clear months of travel on the northern trail.

  Forming an alliance between the two free kingdoms was only the first step in Edwin’s plan. If they could take land from the Gas-Lit Empire to open up a southern road, then trade and communication might continue through the whole year, ocean to ocean. The two kingdoms would become two faces of power, one looking east, the other west.

  No one could truly comprehend the vast scale of the Gas-Lit Empire, with all its many nations, its billions of people. Had it been only a question of numbers, what hope could Oregon have had? But the Gas-Lit Empire had chosen to hold back the progress of its science and technology, its weapons little different from how they’d been two hundred years before.

  The Founding Fathers of the Gas-Lit Empire had understood that holding back the technologies of destruction would only work if all nations agreed to do the same. Thus, they had frozen themselves into that primitive state, by solemn treaty and through the executive oversight of the International Patent Office. Unable to out-develop each other, and bound in a pact of mutual security, warfare between them had become impractical.

  The design had worked, but the order of the Gas-Lit Empire could only continue so long as those tracts of wilderness beyond its borders remained chaotic. That had always been the weakness of the plan, Edwin’s mother had told them again and again.