Baltic Gambit: A Novel of the Vampire Earth

by E. E. Knight

  The cold was dreadful. The wet gave it a penetrative staying power; even after you stepped inside, it took a few minutes to warm up. She hoped the whole trip wouldn’t be like this.

  They had arrived with six days until their transatlantic ship departed for the Baltic, and had already spent three of them working out the kinks from the long, segment-by-segment flight.

  “Easy from here on out,” Sime announced upon their bouncy landing into the wind at the Halifax airstrip, with a smile that for once didn’t look practiced and professional. Sime was probably sick of riding in a walk-in cooler that was being tossed around like the last tablet in a pillbox on a courier’s galloping horse.

  Valentine was fond of Sime, and being Valentine, wanted her to like him, too. He was always defending Sime as being “good at his job.” She could put up with him for the trip to the conference, but it didn’t mean she had to like him. He always evoked memories of the Kansas “quality” of her youth. Their faces and hair were always as polished as their vehicles’ dashboards, and to her, just as plasticine. They were all good at their jobs, too.

  They were met at the airport by a bearded man in a furry hat that made Duvalier think of Russians. She had no idea what kind of hats Russians wore, honestly, but this one was tallish, with flaps at the sides, and neatly trimmed in gray fur. She’d seen something like it somewhere or other, maybe on a vodka bottle. It looked warm. Indeed, it must have been, because he wore only a goose-down vest over a wool shirt as protection against the North Atlantic wind.

  “Welcome to Nova Scotia,” he said, with an even thicker accent than they’d heard in Ontario. “Name’s Preffer. I’m with the Refugee Network. I’m arranging your departure for Europe. I have a car waiting to take you to your hotel. We weren’t sure about your arrival, so you have a couple days in balmy Halifax before starting your crossing.” He cracked his knuckles before shaking their hands.

  He bundled them into a delivery van that smelled like kerosene. There were little fold-down seats in the back. It made Duvalier think of the collection vans from the Kurian Zones, save that this one wasn’t armored. And there were handles on all the cargo-area doors.

  “Sorry about the no-windows thing,” Preffer said. “We use this when we need to discreetly shuttle refugees around. Not that you’re refugees—no offense.”

  The town was full of “refugees.” Halifax, as it turned out, had families who’d escaped from the Congo delta to the Gulf of Murmansk.

  Valentine had talked on the flight about Hong Kong, how it was a poor province of China until some revolution or other. A lot of people fled to Hong Kong because it still had British law, and within a few decades a poor collection of muddy hillside villages became some of the most valuable real estate in the world.

  Before she grew bored and more or less quit listening, she had heard Val go on to say that something similar was under way in Halifax. People with the means to escape the European Kurians tended to flee to Southern Argentina or Canada, and Halifax had become what Ellis Island was to an earlier generation of immigrants: a gateway to a New World. Despite the cold North Atlantic climate and the damp chill through most of the year, they stayed and prospered, bringing with them all sorts of intriguing abilities. There were restaurateurs and clothiers, makers of precision instruments and doctors, furriers and perfume manufacturers—Halifax still did a little whaling to help feed its population—making it a more cosmopolitan city than it had ever been, even during the World War booms it had known.

  The immigrants had mostly settled in an area of the city known as the Beehive. It covered the old North End of the Halifax peninsula, centered around the old Hydrostone and the memorial to the Halifax explosion in 1917 when an ammunition ship in the harbor exploded, leveling most of the city. The colors, sights, and sounds of the Beehive ran almost around the clock. The locals had covered stretches of the narrow old streets with a sort of plasticized canvas to keep out the rain.

  Preffer set them up in four rooms above a twenty-four-hour café. The kitchen had been stripped and turned into a dormitory with sinks for washing and laundry. Everything was double-layered. Double layers of glass to keep out the cold, double layers of door with steel bars over the regular door for security, blinds and curtains on the windows. At least there were no bugs. Duvalier was an expert on critters in cheap lodgings.

  “When do we depart for Europe?” Sime asked.

  “Your boat is here. She came in a couple days late, sorry to say, and the crew needs a few days of rest. Soon as the captain gives me the okay, we can ship you out.”

  “A ship?” Stamp asked, making a face as Pistols removed his boots and socks to air out his toes.

  Preffer cracked his knuckles. “Well, not really a ship. But you’ll be comfortable enough.”

  “Must we be isolated until then?” Stamp asked, aiming the question at Sime rather than Preffer.

  Sime glanced at Preffer.

  “The town is safe enough. Nobody’s going to get shanghaied for their aura,” he said. “There are a lot of touts soliciting people for labor of one kind or another, long hours at low pay. Pickpockets might get something, but we don’t have a lot of violent crime. Don’t be loud and drunk; that’s a guaranteed night in the cells and while we have good relations with the black-and-blues, they don’t have to do us any favors. So please, stay out of trouble.”

  He extracted a small phone from his pocket and plugged it into the wall. There were two numbers written on it in indelible pen. “Call if you’re at a loss about anything. The bigger number is mine. The smaller is the Refugee Network. Only a few people know about your trip, so if you can’t reach me and you have to go through them, just tell them you’re new arrivals and you’re above the Ballyhoo Diner. Someone will get here in minutes.”

  They could order up food from the café through a dumbwaiter, of all things; Preffer had made some sort of arrangements. There were people going in and out of both front and back at all hours with no small amount of noise.

  Valentine and Pistols fell asleep within minutes of deciding on sleeping locations, Sime and his secretary were comparing notes about the journey, and Ahn-Kha was pushing two single mattresses together to make a bed able to accommodate most of him.

  The next morning, they ate breakfast over the smell of drying socks.

  “I’ve been cooped up too long,” Stamp said as Ahn-Kha loaded the breakfast dishes back into the dumbwaiter. “Alessa, feel like exploring?”

  She shrugged. The cold wasn’t what she’d call pleasant, but compared to a Wyoming winter it was within an elbow poke of balmy. “It’s what I do.”

  Sime had produced a small radio and everyone was listening to the news from the Baltic English-language station. She buttoned up her duster, picked up the sword-stick, and followed Stamp, who was dressed in her nice camel-colored long coat, out the door.

  They explored the Beehive. It was already humming with human, vehicular, muscle-powered, and horse-drawn traffic.

  Duvalier noticed there were little decorative bees everywhere. On signposts, in store windows, on the door handles of a few of the more expensive shops. She commented on it and Stamp just shrugged and said, “Let’s ask.”

  In every store where they engaged in casual conversation, they asked about the bees. They received a slightly different answer every time.

  No one knew where the bee symbol came from. Some said it was Newfoundland honey, a “free” three-ounce jar of which was given away to every immigrant, thanks to the resources of the Newfoundland Relocation Resource, the entity that helped refugees find a useful life on the island or elsewhere in Canada. Others said it was a manufacturer symbol, that of a large cutlery concern that had set itself up in Halifax, reputedly owned by some French. Others claimed it was the Mormons, whose missions also did a great deal of fine work with the most destitute of the refugees. Or it might have been the Canadian currency, which featured a bee
on its hundred-dollar bill. It could be that bees were also relative newcomers to Newfoundland, and had prospered under the altered weather patterns of the Kurian Order.

  In any case, bees were a theme of the Beehive. They were pictured in shop windows, decorated lampposts, and glowed golden brown when painted on lampshades. The town certainly buzzed; despite the cold, everyone seemed to be outdoors: talking, standing around with steaming mugs or glasses in their fists, enjoying the night and the camaraderie. There were string quartets playing and accordions, with rival musicians playing spirited dance numbers—Duvalier recognized the “Pennsylvania Polka”—or sadder, wistful songs. She noted that the livelier players had larger audiences and more money thrown into the proffered hat.

  And the food! There were street vendors and restaurants, cafés and bakeries, all doing a thriving business, with everything wrapped up in brown paper and string that all seemed to come from the same source. Every three steps a new aroma seemed to strike: coffee, yeast baking, chocolate melting, meat roasting (she had to follow that one; it turned out to be a vast wheel of spiced flesh rotating on a heated spit that a man would shave and then sell with a little red onion and sour cream on a piece of flatbread, her first encounter with a “gyro”).

  The Old World must have been something like this, she thought.

  She mostly watched Stamp shop. A few of the Canadians remarked on her syrup-sweet Southern accent, but not as many as Duvalier would have thought.

  When their feet grew sore, they stopped in one of the cafés.

  “You haven’t bought anything,” Stamp stated, as though it were an accusation.

  “I don’t need anything.”

  “Oh, sweetie pie, you should treat yourself. I wasn’t expecting Canada to have so much. I figured I’d have to wait until we got to Europe. But wouldn’t it be nice to have some fresh, stylish clothes for the trip?”

  For just a moment, Duvalier was jealous of the world that Stamp inhabited. She had time to think about clothes, how they looked, what others thought about how they looked. It seemed both frivolous and appealing at the same time.

  “Listen, Alessa, I have a stash of gold coins. I want to change one of them for the funny-money currency they use around here and spend it shopping and eating. They have cheap seafood everywhere here, and I’m in the mood to stuff myself, enjoy some wine, and pick up something nice.” Stamp wore an inviting but practiced smile.

  Duvalier wondered briefly what she meant by “pick up something nice.”

  “Why me? Sime seems more the type for perusing a wine list.”

  “You seem like you don’t know what girl time is. I like exploring. This is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to travel, and I need a partner in fun. I’d feel a little safer with someone tough around. I don’t want one of the guys. I’m not looking for a date or anything like that. Certainly I don’t know you, but I feel comfortable around you and, well, I’m sorry to be blunt, but you look like you need it. Don’t take that the wrong way.”

  How many guys have given her the “diamond in the rough” line? Not as many lately. “Honestly, I’ve never been one for appearances.”

  “Well, I think you could be really something if you made a little effort. You’d be shocked at how little it takes. C’mon, as a personal favor. I know a lot of people between Austin and Little Rock. I should be able to do you a good turn someday, when you’re no longer doing front-line work. Truthies.”

  “I don’t care for the front lines any more than you do,” Duvalier said. “I avoid them if at all possible. But what I do, I plan to keep doing until they get me. There are a lot of forgotten bodies out there, people swallowed by the crematoriums after the Reapers have had their fun, who deserve a little payback.”

  Stamp looked a little ashamed. “I should really do more to support the cause. Maybe I can get a hospital built by one of the foundations. I’m on three boards.”

  Duvalier found herself smiling back. “Okay, build a hospital and name the operating room after me. Or maybe a mortuary room. Something sharp and bloody would be a nice legacy.”

  Stamp’s smile grew more natural. “There you go, then. Deal.”

  With the beginnings of a bond formed, Stamp asked her to “truthies” on Valentine. While Duvalier had no end of anecdotes that might be entertaining, she didn’t much feel like issuing them in exchange for a few pieces of clothing.

  Refreshed, they wandered around the blocks for a few more hours, looking through windows. Off the main streets and in the alleys there were a lot of secondhand-clothing stores, places to get shoes repaired, and on every other corner there was a place to sell valuables. Duvalier looked at the gleaming jewelry behind armored glass and thought about the broken dreams each piece represented.

  Of course, she’d never had much in the way of dreams to break to begin with. The only rings she’d ever worn were as fake as a thirty-dollar bill.

  The raw spring cold made them hungry again quickly, and as Duvalier’s ever-troublesome stomach growled, they looked at menus posted next to doors until she found a seafood place where Stamp liked the look of the “plating.” The only kind of plating Duvalier was familiar with involved armor on reconnaissance vehicles, but she figured Stamp was in her element when it came to how the forks should lie on the napkins. She just nodded when Stamp asked her if she wanted to get a bite.

  She had a chowder soup and a pan-fried piece of cod covered with little pealike things that Stamp told her were capers. They were nicely salty, without the overtaste of olives, and went with the cod admirably. Stamp drank wine and Duvalier had a cola. It was a real cola, a wonderful combination of fizzy and syrupy with a hint of fruit cocktail—the restaurant’s own concoction, which they called an Italian Cola, though the waiter seemed to take it as a personal insult that she wouldn’t drink wine with the meal.

  After they were fortified by the food, the real shopping began. Duvalier found spending time with Stamp strangely exhausting, like trying to converse in a foreign language. Her one triumph came when she found some “French milled” soaps for Valentine and a boar’s-hair brush for Ahn-Kha. Stamp offered to pay, but she still had some of Montee’s Canadian currency left, and it was enough to get soap and their biggest brush, anyway.

  “You’re not getting yourself a little indulgence? Not even chocolates?”

  “Gives me the runs,” Duvalier said. Which was only sometimes true; the ration chocolate in the Kurian Zone had some strange fat in it that kept her squatting. She’d had real Hershey bars and been fine.

  Stamp wasn’t quite the sophisticate she claimed to be. Some of the shop staff corrected her on minor points: she called any sort of fancy dress “couture” (“if it’s hanging on a rack, it’s not couture,” sniffed an Italian shopgirl) and she called an alligator purse “patent leather.” Even Duvalier, who wasn’t quite clear on what culottes were, was pretty sure alligator hides weren’t patent.

  She did, however, insist on taking Duvalier to a salon to have her hair and face done. She agreed more enthusiastically than she would have believed possible a few days ago. The trip was seeming less and less of an op and more like the vacation Colonel Lambert had promised. Stamp was much more in her element there, and Duvalier had had a theatrical streak and done stage makeup a few times in her life. She’d had to doll up enough times that she was comfortable with makeup. She tried a few different colors and finally went with a pale violet base and purple highlight to go with the green in her eyes. It felt oddly relaxing to lie back in a chair and have someone putter away at her eyes, and the results were startling, even before they moved on to finishing touches with the hair. They couldn’t do much with her short-short hair, but they did plaster it down with something that gave it a nice shine and brightened the color.

  The cosmetologists tut-tutted over her skin. “Do you live under a sunlamp?” one asked.

  “I’m outdoors a lot,” Duvalier said
.

  “Take care, duckies,” the beauticians said as they left. Stamp gave a wink and a wave.

  Stamp wanted more wine, and Duvalier hoped she wouldn’t have to carry her home. Rain and wind came in from the sea with the evening, ruining their makeup and hair in a few minutes of chill exposure.

  “Short hair has its advantages,” Stamp said as they surveyed the ruins in the shelter of a doorway.

  “I’m pretty tired. Time to call it a day?” Duvalier asked.

  “I was going to save this for later, but you might as well have it now,” Stamp said, handing over a little gift bag.

  In it was a selection of makeups, lip glosses, and some kind of little pearly drops you were supposed to break open and rub around your eyes and forehead to get rid of wrinkles.

  Duvalier snorted. “I feel like I owe you an apology for wasting your money.”

  “Plenty more money where that came from.”

  “From where does the family fortune spring?” Duvalier asked.

  “UFR contracts, mostly. Roads, bridges, power lines. We do a little of everything. We’ve been busy with the respite buildup. War’s such a dead end.”

  They left the hotel for Halifax’s harbor side on a chill morning, before dawn on the first day of May, piled into that same plumbing supply van with the fold-down seats.

  Everyone, even so-phlegmatic-it-was-hard-to-tell-he-was-alive Sime, had enjoyed Halifax. Duvalier now found the cold ocean air refreshing. Valentine had told her what the west coast of Lake Superior was like in winter—cold and damp that sank in deep and was tough to get rid of quickly, even in the warmest room—and she’d been expecting something like that. This was more like wet and windy fall weather, which she always enjoyed, provided she didn’t have to walk far in it.

  They were waiting for their ride to the docks, having received a message that their stopover in Halifax was coming to an end the following morning. Everyone was back in their travel clothes, toiletries and freshly washed laundry all packed away. Stamp had on a blue-and-white-striped shirt under a navy-colored blazer, with a cute white hat. Valentine had muttered that she looked like a Cracker Jack sailor as they shared a last round of coffee from the café below.