The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  The side of her foot caught against a cup and sent red wine spilling into the white tablecloth. Her gun had been in its holster through the feast. No one could have tampered with it. Her thoughts were coming too fast to hold on to. She was halfway down the length of the table already. Even if they’d been marksmen, the chances of hitting with handguns would be low at that distance. They would each fire a shot. They would each miss. Janus would have earned nothing but the displeasure of the king.

  Then a memory flashed in her mind: the story Edwin had told of another miraculous shot, the king bringing down a deer from the back of a galloping horse. A second shooter, armed with a long rifle. Windows dotted the wall behind the platform. When she reached the end of the table and turned to face her enemy, a second gun would surely be aiming at her chest.

  Lying cramped in stuffy darkness, Edwin had been listening to the sounds of the feast, aware that his toes were slowly going numb. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to move his leg when the time came. In his mind, he rehearsed each action. The twist. The upward push. Breaking through the cloth. Standing. It could not seem like a struggle. If his leg didn’t obey, he might need to grab the sides of the chest for support. Torchlight would be blinding after the dark of his hiding place. He couldn’t let it show.

  Then he heard his sister’s voice returning. And Janus. In horror, he listened to the argument, to Janus’s challenge. Elizabeth didn’t understand what was coming: the demand for satisfaction.

  The table juddered. He felt footsteps vibrating through the crate, tried to picture the scene in his mind, to understand what she was doing. The vibration of her footsteps receded as she picked her way down the table. Then he saw it – in his mind’s eye – a dark entranceway at the very end, where she was heading. Her gun was loaded. His was not. That was the illusion they’d planned. She had the flash bomb in her pocket. It could still work.

  He began flexing his toes, tensing his leg muscle and relaxing it again, trying to get blood to circulate, trying not to shift the crate or its contents.

  The back of Elizabeth’s head itched as she imagined a hidden shooter taking aim. She slipped her left hand into her pocket and withdrew the flash bomb, keeping it concealed in her fist. Once the ring was pulled, she would have half a second.

  Pull. Drop. Eyes closed. Half a step back.

  There would be no misdirection this time. Indeed, she was the misdirection for Janus’s second shooter. Would Edwin even understand what she was going to do?

  Five paces remained to the end of the table. The courtyard had fallen completely silent. She had to make noise to stop them hearing the fall of the flash bomb. Bringing back a foot she kicked a metal goblet, sending it clattering onto the flagstones.

  Four paces. Nothing to kick.

  Three paces. With the side of her foot she pushed a metal plate over the edge.

  Two paces. Trying to fix in her mind the dark entranceway just beyond the table end.

  Pulling the ring from the bomb. Dropping it. Stepping over it. Turning. Seeing Janus facing her, raising his pistol. And in the last moment it seemed she did catch the crisp line of a gun barrel in a window.

  Eyes closed.

  Detonation.

  The world turned white. She let herself fall back, twisting as she dropped. The ground hit her hard on the shoulder, knocked the breath from her, but she was scrambling away, blind, towards the memory of the shadows.

  Hearing the bang, Edwin launched himself upwards, using the barrel of the pistol to force through the thin cotton. The sudden weight of fruit pressing down on him was more than he’d expected. He pushed himself onto one knee, raised his gun hand, felt the chill air of the courtyard as he broke through.

  Suddenly there was light and the smell of cooked food. And air. He tried to stand, but the muscles of his left leg felt like clay. With his free hand he gripped the side of the crate and pushed himself up. A woman screamed. It was the consort, in front of him, not behind. He was facing the wrong way. Disorientated, he whipped around, bringing his gun to aim at the back of Janus’s head.

  There had been noise, the sounds of surprise. Gasps, oaths. But as Edwin’s senses cleared, he began to take in the whole scene.

  Janus had been holding out his own gun, aiming along the length of the long table. Aiming at nothing. Slowly his hand dropped. He turned. Edwin saw recognition in his eyes. And torment. It was a terrible thing.

  “Do you yield?”

  Janus shook his head, though it seemed not a response to the challenge, but to some internal conflict. His head snapped back to look towards the end of the table, where Elizabeth must have been standing moments before.

  “Do you yield?” Edwin asked again.

  “How did you do that?” It was a whisper. Then, again louder, “How did you do that?”

  “He’s the Magician of Crown Point,” said Timon, approaching.

  There was something frightened and brittle in Janus’s expression. The man who had believed in only the powers of the physical world. He had witnessed a thing beyond explanation. He looked down to the spilled fruit on the table, then to the gun in Edwin’s right hand, and to the parchment in his left.

  “No,” he said.

  “No you don’t yield?” Timon asked.

  “It’s a trick. It has to be a trick.”

  “That was no trick,” said Brandt. “I’d never thought to see such a thing.”

  “Now you believe in magic?” Timon asked.

  “No,” said Brandt. “It is some strange science. One we’ve not yet learned.”

  Edwin held up the parchment for all to see. “There are many powers you haven’t seen. Will you not be our partners?”

  Gilad glanced towards Red, who seemed too shocked to speak.

  Edwin handed the document down and watched as Brandt unfolded it on the table and bent close, as if to check that no words had been changed through its transportation.

  Edwin wanted to speak, to give them one more push towards signing. But he kept his mouth closed. They had done enough.

  Of the three hundred people in the courtyard, no one beyond the high table had spoken a word. Edwin glanced around, and saw them staring, many open-mouthed. It was going to work. For the first time he felt certain. What a trick it must have been. He wished he could have seen it for himself. It was greater than all the grand illusions his mother had described. She would have been proud. And their father. For the first time that he could remember, he wished his father were there.

  They’d scattered. Lowborn and lord, it made no difference. As Elizabeth advanced down the long table, gun in hand, they’d scrambled away. By the time she reached the end there’d been no one within ten paces on either side.

  Then the flash. Even through closed eyelids, the detonation had been brilliant. A purple sun still floated in her vision. Anyone looking directly at her when it went off would have been blinded. She’d thrown herself back, then scrambled over the flagstones into the shadow of the entrance. Or, into the memory of it. She still couldn’t see.

  There she’d remained, hiding through stillness, not daring to draw her legs further into the passageway until her vision had cleared enough to be sure that she lay beyond the corner and out of direct view.

  Her shoulder throbbed from the fall and her cheeks smarted from the flash bomb. The stink of burned hair clung to her. She felt queasy with it. The hubbub of voices had disappeared, as if everyone in the courtyard had vanished in the same moment as the explosion. All that remained was a thin hiss of tinnitus.

  She got to her feet, back pressed against the wall, then inched towards the edge of dressed stone.

  Edwin was standing on the table at the far end, facing away from her. Everyone else was staring at him.

  Her first feeling was amazement. And triumph. They’d done it. Not as planned. But better than they could have imagined. Anyone watching would have thought Edwin had been forced into the situation. The flash. The vanishing act. The magical reappearance. It all came from so
meone else’s will.

  Staring at her brother in the distance felt eerily like catching sight of herself in a mirror. In front of him the king and Brandt were bending over something on the table. Immediately behind Edwin, Janus had crouched, head bent, face covered by one hand, as if in mourning. She scanned the dark windows behind and above the high table, searching for another glimpse of that gun barrel.

  CHAPTER 39

  At first Elizabeth walked slowly, to be quiet. Then she ducked into an alcove, unlaced her boots, and set off at a run, with one in each hand. Even the kitchen staff were at the feast, now. The passageways were empty and silent. At the turn of the corridor she set off up the stairs, climbing two flights, then out and along another passage, heading north this time.

  She’d seen a gun barrel in one of the windows. Or thought she had. The fraction of a second before the flash had seemed so vivid. But in memory it felt unreal. She’d been looking for a shooter. Perhaps the window had been empty and her mind had filled in the blank.

  Approaching the north wall of the castle, she slowed, stopping at the turn of the passageway. To listen. To wait.

  Little time had passed since the vanishing. Yet the crowd in the courtyard had begun to make noise again. A low hubbub. The sound of excitement. The story being re-told. At first she could hear nothing else. Then a metallic click echoed in the passageway: the mechanism of a gun, crisp and clear.

  Relying on the blackness to hide her, she stepped around the corner. There were no lamps. But five splashes of light marked out five tall windows, each most of the height of the passageway. In the fourth splash of light she saw the silhouette of a figure, standing, gun raised to shoulder, the long barrel angled steeply down into the courtyard. Whoever was in his sights, they were close to the north wall. That meant the platform. The high table. The king, the consort, the embassy. And Edwin. The last remnant of her family.

  Elizabeth shifted both of her boots to one hand and raised her pistol with the other. She began to advance, silent and with purpose. The figure shifted aim a fraction, readying to take a shot. She had passed through the light of two windows unseen, but as she stepped through the third, the shooter flinched and jumped back. They were both in shadow now.

  “Who goes there?”

  A man’s voice, further to the right than she’d imagined. She shifted her aim, sidestepped to the left, bringing her shoulder to the wall. If she fired, it would bring guards running. She’d be captured. The trick would be uncovered. If she ran, the shooter might finish his work.

  “Who is it?” he asked again.

  She adjusted her aim. To the left this time. He was on the move, as silent as her. The calm of his voice chilled her. Her own blood was pumping so hard that she could hear the thud of her heart. She lowered herself to the ground, trying to get under his aim, but the sleeve of her jacket brushed against the stones. A rasping whisper.

  His footsteps rushed at her. Something hard jabbed into her side: the muzzle of his gun.

  “Get up,” he said. That same calm voice. “Let’s have a look at you. And you can leave that pistol on the floor.”

  She did as he said, clambering back to her feet, the gun barrel never shifting from her kidney. Then a shove, sending her into the splash of light next to the window. She heard the catch of his breath.

  “Turn,” he whispered.

  She did. Slowly. Facing him. A wiry figure. With the light of the window directly behind, she couldn’t see his expression. But she heard the gasp as he saw her: the very image of the man he’d been aiming at a moment before. His shoulder twitched. The barrel of his long gun wavered.

  “Impossible.” He hissed the word. His head turned, as if he was about to look behind him, through the tall window, down into the courtyard.

  There would be no better chance to act.

  She lunged, twisting so her shoulder caught him in the chest. He tripped backwards, towards the window, toppling, set to fall through. But in the last moment he twisted his long gun around so it caught the stones on either side. She could see his face now in the light of the torches. A man she’d never seen before, his surprise twisting to anger. He began to heave his centre of gravity back towards standing. She ducked, grabbed one of his ankles, lifted. The long barrel scraped the wall as it twisted free. Then he was falling, and the rifle with him. She heard the impact as he hit the ground and a split second later, a gunshot.

  The vanishing act had shaken them: the king, the men of the embassy, perhaps Janus most of all. The only one who seemed unmoved was the consort, who had believed in his magic from the start. Edwin had been standing on the table since the miracle, watching the king and Brandt as they examined the agreement. He wanted to tell them to sign. But this apple would only fall when it was ripe.

  They’d unfolded the parchment on the high table and were bent over it, reading line by line. Others in the courtyard had begun to whisper, the volume of their voices growing as they gave confidence to each other.

  Edwin could feel the atmosphere changing from wonder to excitement. If he left it much longer he might not even be heard. He took a deep breath and began: “There are two paths before you. One path leads to our separation. The Gas-Lit Empire will grow outwards into the free wilds. In time we’ll be cut off from each other. There won’t be a battle. Just a slow decline. At last we’ll be begging to join them. Or our children will.”

  Everyone on the high table was looking up at him now. Brandt seemed troubled, as if disturbed by a thought that he might agree. Everything rested on the next few words.

  “Is that a prophecy?” Gilad asked.

  That had been the plan: to claim mystical knowledge. But meeting Gilad’s eyes, he changed his mind. “No. This is the science of reason.” Afterwards, he would wonder why he’d said those words.

  “Then what does reason say about the other path?”

  “It’s harder to read,” Edwin said. “If we make this alliance, you will have our newest guns. You will control the eastern seaboard. We will launch our war against the nations of North America.”

  “The outcome?”

  “Together we take the continent. Probably.”

  Red got to his feet. “And the first path? Is that certain?”

  “Nothing is certain.”

  Gilad and Tomo were looking at Red, whose thoughts seemed in turmoil. He shook his head. He tugged at his beard.

  But whatever he had been about to say was cut short by the crash of something heavy landing behind the high table. A body. A gunshot reverberated around the courtyard. Gilad cried out in pain.

  Then everyone was moving. The king jumped to shield his consort. Brandt dived on the man who had fallen. Timon drew a knife. Gilad staggered back, clutching a bloody hand to his chest.

  Edwin felt the table shifting under his feet and turned to see Janus in the act of clambering down. There was fear in his face. Terror. On instinct, Edwin grabbed his arm, hauling him back.

  With Brandt’s body in the way, he couldn’t see the face of the fallen man. A sniper rifle lay next to him. The impact must have triggered the shot. Gilad had taken the random bullet. Grandson to the king of Newfoundland.

  Janus was thrashing his arm, trying to get away. But other hands were helping now, a gang of revellers holding him, his struggle to escape the only instruction they needed.

  Edwin left them to it, jumped to the high table, clambered down on the other side. He ignored the shooter. It could have been anyone. A paid assassin. Gilad was all that mattered. His hand was still clutched to his body, blood-soaked clothes seeming black in the yellow torchlight. If he died, there could be no alliance.

  Others were pressed close around him.

  “Hold it up,” one of them shouted.

  Then Gilad was swearing, raising his arm, and Edwin saw that the wound was in the hand itself, not the body. All the blood had come from there. He would live.

  The assassin did have one more part to play. Edwin recognised the face, but vaguely. He’d been one of t
he castle garrison a year before, a man by the name of Bartholomew who had gone missing. Brandt had him pinned, though he couldn’t have escaped in any case. He’d fallen badly, the unnatural twist of his leg spoke of shattered bones. But it was his words, not his injuries that proved fatal.

  “It was Janus made me do it,” he said, which was enough of a confession to seal his death.

  The king picked up the long rifle. Brandt stepped back. Edwin looked away and didn’t see the shot. Then it was Janus’s turn. Everyone remembered his demand for satisfaction, so uncharacteristic. Everyone could see the assassin’s long gun with its telescopic sights, and the window he had fallen from. Timon took hold of Janus’s arm and dragged him before the king, who gave a nod. The revellers had become a mob. Edwin watched them surge forwards, pushing his enemy ahead of them, driving him not towards the battlements, but to the marshalling yard. He did not want to follow, but had no choice. He needed to be with the men of power.

  In the yard, the crowd parted for them. Janus was revealed, standing in front of the ruined straw bales. No one had tied him. But there was nowhere for him to run. A wall of bodies and faces cut off any possibility of his escape.

  And there stood the means of death: the Mark Four automatic gun on its reinforced mount, a technician slotting in the end of an ammunition belt.

  A hush and stillness spread through the crowd. Janus was shaking his head, as if denying some point of argument. He wiped his brow and blinked.

  No one had taken the controls of the gun. The king looked to Timon, who avoided his brother’s gaze. Then to the technician, who suddenly seemed to realise what was expected of him. The man’s expression fell to horror, but he knelt all the same. He gripped the gun, his finger hovering over the trigger, glanced back to the king with a pleading expression. But the king’s nod was a command he could not ignore.