by Abra SW
Lacey winced at that description but found herself being swept along with a dozen others into the dark, beer-smelling interior of Nancy’s Harbor Cafe. They were greeted by an older barmaid who looked like she’d seen everything, done most of it, and regretted none of it. Despite this, she still managed a blowsy kind of beauty, like a past-its-prime rose.
Lacey found herself sitting beside Michael the animal handler. Nobody was paying attention to them. Lacey seized the opportunity. Her father had taught her that servants should be reprimanded in private, to allow them to preserve their dignity. Michael was no servant of hers, but she supposed the same principle applied.
“Michael, the mahout told me that you let it slip the fortune teller was missing.” She smiled, trying to be reassuring. “We don’t know why she vanished. A little discretion might be in order.”
“What?” Michael set down his beer. “But—I didn’t say a word.”
“It’s okay,” Lacey hurried to say. “Just think a little before talking about other circus members, even amongst ourselves, if you don’t know what’s going on. We all need to stick together.”
“No, really, I didn’t! I don’t talk to the mahout hardly at all.”
“It’s fine. That’s all I wanted to tell you,” she said, with exasperated patience. “You don’t have to pretend you avoid him!”
Michael lowered his head. “I do. I know it ain’t right to treat him like that, but his bone elephant gives me the shivers. It ain’t natural. The animals get nervy when it’s around.” He met her eyes. “I’ll take their judgment above most people I know.”
“Oh!” His obvious sincerity took Lacey aback. “I’m sorry. I must have misunderstood.”
“I didn’t even know the fortune teller was missing until we were in New York and Christopher let it slip he was looking for her.”
“Ah.” Lacey glared toward the bar where the mahout stood. He seemed in danger of being drowned by the free drinks being thrust upon him.
“Even if I had known, I don’t know why you thought I’d spread it about,” Michael continued, aggrieved. “I’m not a fool, you know!”
“Of course not. I—I’ll just go over—.” Lacey fled.
Her attempt to retreat to a more solitary corner backfired when she found herself wedged in between the lady ship captain and the snake charmer.
The snake charmer heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness, a corner for just us girls! I declare, dealing with some males’ idea of chivalry is positively exhausting!” She extended her hand to the captain. “I’m Alis Gray. Delighted to meet another sensible female.”
“Captain Angie Endo,” the captain said, with a crocodilian grin. “And I find one warning is enough to make them back off.”
“With teeth like those, I bet it is! Now that’s an idea that would keep the punters coming back for more,” Alis said admiringly, as she assessed the captain’s sharpened teeth. “And I daresay it would come in quite handy for scaring off unwanted suitors. Did it hurt?”
Captain Angie flashed a very pointed smile. “It hurts plenty if some bastard pisses me off enough to make me bite!”
Both women laughed. If they heard the harsh edge to the sound, it just made them laugh the more. Lacey smiled politely, wishing she could make her escape.
“No, but really,” Alis persisted. “Did it hurt?”
The lady captain shrugged. “Not so’s you’d notice. You can only file the edges. Be careful to avoid the core of the tooth—if you go too deep, it hurts like bloody hell. I did that a couple of times, but a drop of bone aether put it right again.”
“That’s not so easy to come by these days.”
“No.”
The topic of conversation turned to other matters and Lacey relaxed. Prematurely, as it happened.
Captain Angie paused in the middle of telling a story involving a peacock, a priest, a madam, and a saint’s relic. “My glass is empty,” she said sadly.
“Let me,” Alis volunteered. She rolled her shoulders in a way that drew attention to her feminine assets. “I know sailors, and this lot have been away from women for too long. They’ll fight each other to provide us with liquid refreshment.”
“Wait!” Lacey put out her hand. “What if one of the sailors decides to press his attentions—forcefully?”
Alis laughed huskily. “Then he’ll find that I have a bite like one of my snakes. After me, he’ll never press his attentions on any poor girl again.”
Alis sashayed away from the table. When she returned, she was followed by a clutch of sailors who insisted on gifting the ladies with drinks. Captain Angie’s grin and the snake inquisitively poking its head out from behind Alis’ fichu sent them on their way, but the drinks remained. As the level of liquor lowered, so did the tone of the conversation. Lacey was hardly a blushing prude, but she found herself controlling her expression with great difficulty.
“Ah! There’s the doctor!” she finally said hastily. “I must speak with him. Do excuse me.”
Alis’ raised eyebrows warned her that she was not entirely believed, but it was a polite enough pretext for her to escape graciously.
“Doctor!” she called, hurrying over to the bar where he sat.
He identified the source of the call, gave her a quick once-over, and then picked up the shot glass in front of him and slammed the liquor, signaling the barmaid for more. His face was pale and taut with strain.
“Is that wise?” Lacey asked, instead of the more polite opening she’d planned.
“You’re not injured,” he said. “I checked.” The barmaid put a second shot in front of him. He drank it down and gestured for another one. “Do you remember the Grey Steel Regiment?”
“I wanted to talk to you about whatever happened to those deer-creatures,” Lacey said.
“Do. You. Remember?”
Lacey nodded slowly. “The monsters of the South. They slaughtered our soldiers. Hell, they ate our soldiers. The surviving members are still being held for war crimes, though people can’t quite figure out how best to put them on trial without hanging every farm boy who used to fight for the Confederates.”
“Sure, they were monsters,” the doctor agreed. “By the end of the war. In the beginning they were just boys. The brass put them in those war harnesses, and the aether pumped into their bones made them nigh invincible.”
“Uh-huh.”
“When defeat approached, the generals stopped listening to their doctors. Those boys should have been pulled back from the front lines and treated. The aether overdose did horrible things to them. It twisted and pulled them and made them into monsters. It burned through their bodies’ resources so fast that they were swept away by a mad, ravenous hunger. That’s when they started to hunt the battlefields and to eat what they killed.” The doctor paused. “Mostly after they’d killed it.”
“Oh,” Lacey said, taken aback. “That’s horrible. But I wanted to—”
“Need to tell the ‘thorities,” he interrupted. “Need to make plans. First,” he gulped down the liquor, “need a drink.”
“Er, you might want to slow down,” Lacey suggested. “You’ll be needing your own patent remedy in the morning, else.”
“Hrm?” He squinted at her.
“The Great Doctor Panjandrum’s miracle remedy?” she prompted. “Excellent for toothache, neuralgia, and sore chests? A sure-fire cure for muscle aches and tremors?”
“Tremors,” the doctor repeated moodily. “‘Splains why business has been so good. Do you know what my remedy does?”
“No,” Lacey said carefully. “You always said it wouldn’t cause any harm at the recommended dosage—”
“Nothing!” he bellowed, slapping his hand down on the bar. “It does nothing! All those poor, doomed people—nothing!”
Heads were starting to turn. Lacey leaned forward. In an undertone, she said, “Doctor, you shouldn’t say such things here.”
“Eh?” He squinted at her. “Oh, right. Barmaid!” He waved his hand.
Lacey wished she could melt into the floor. There were enough sticky patches and puddles; one more wouldn’t be noticed.
An older fellow eased his way through the crowd and grabbed her elbow in a very forward way. Lacey straightened and pulled away. She ought to be offended. In truth, she welcomed the distraction.
“I beg your pardon, sir!” she said frostily.
“Ma’am.” His hand raised, as if to tug the brim of a cap that wasn’t there. Recalling himself, he coughed and tucked his hands into his belt. “The commissioner sent me. He wanted to talk to your lot right promptly. You and the other fella who came to see him the first time.”
“Oh!” Now that the man had declared his allegiance, she noticed the straight-shouldered way he carried himself, like a man accustomed to a uniform. He’d wisely removed his jacket and cap to get by on the dock, but his pants were the dark blue of the New York policeman’s uniform, and his boots likewise bore the police force’s imprimatur.
She dismounted from the bar stool and found Ginger the clown. Somehow, the strongman, the snake charmer, the snake charmer’s baby boa, and the rather drunken doctor also ended up trailing along. Their motley appearance dismayed Lacey, but she tried to console herself that they were a good advertisement for the circus.
~ * ~
Their guide abandoned them inside the Central Police Department with a muttered, “His aide will come for you when he’s ready.”
Several dozen policeman and special patrolmen stared at the little group of circus folk. Lacey fidgeted. She wished she was back in Nancy’s Harbor Cafe.
Then—”Hey! It’s them! With the elephant and the fire and—tonight! The circus!”
The doctor gave a tipsy little bow and murmured, “Obliged, I’m sure.”
With that, all the policemen relaxed. Chicory coffee was pressed upon them, and a couple of slices of stale pound cake. It turned into an impromptu sort of celebration of the Battle of High Bridge. Before they were entirely drowned in the rather terrible coffee, Lacey threw the snake charmer a desperate glance.
With winsome charm, Alis made their excuses, saying that they really, truly needed to pay their respects to the commissioner and return to Rumsey Port to prepare for their performance tonight—which all the policemen would surely be attending, yes?
An awkward silence fell. “The commissioner’s not in a real good mood,” one of the younger patrolmen ventured. “You should maybe stay out here until he’s ready for you.”
“Hate to see him take his temper out on such a fine lady,” another seconded, attempting chivalry.
“Nonsense!” the doctor proclaimed, lurching upright with the peculiar energy of a man who has had much alcohol topped with far more coffee than is good for him. “He wishes to congratulate us on the Battle of High Bridge.” He managed a wink. “Details he needs to know, don’t you see. Hush-hush. Now, his office is off this way?” He turned and began to stride toward a door clearly labeled “Holding Cells.”
One of Alis’ would-be swains leapt forward. “No, no—this way, sirs and madams.” He blushed. “Ladies, I mean.”
They followed his guidance until they were in front of Commissioner Guirard’s door. “I don’t know if you—”
Lacey ignored his dithering. She pushed open the door, walked in, and found herself amidst a heated discussion between Commissioner Guirard and his aide.
“—all the ration-hoarders?” Commissioner Guirard demanded.
“As many as we could, sir,” Mr. Akrill responded. “Making an example of some so early put a stop to most of it. And the rewards have brought out the rest.”
Commissioner Guirard paced back and forth. “Perhaps in the dead zone? You could search those houses that are unclaimed.”
“The men don’t like it, sir. They say they’re haunted. Besides, we rounded up the food supplies right after we cleared the corpses out.”
“I don’t care if you get it by digging up graves and robbing the bodies!” Commissioner Guirard said furiously. “If that dratted female causes any more civilians to besiege me with complaints about her impossible expectations …”
“The men will ask why, sir.”
Commissioner Guirard sighed and rubbed his face, his anger evaporating. “And I can’t take special privileges. It wouldn’t be right, especially after I made such a big fuss about how important it was to share and share alike. But my darling wife needs something ‘civilized’ to calm her down. It’s damn hard to find civilization right now. Chocolate did the trick for a while, but now I can’t find any of the precious stuff. I’m afraid that once she realizes the situation we’re in, she’ll single-handedly try to re-create civilization in her own inimitable style. Probably hold costume balls for orphans, insist on a hundred patrolmen to re-open the park promenades, and chivy the seamstresses into sewing the latest Paris fashions instead of turning out the basics we need.”
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Akrill said.
Commissioner Guirard grimaced. “It’s enough to drive me to declare war on the ports. I know those ships are brimming with supplies we need.”
Lacey stepped forward. “Ahem,” she said delicately. “Your messenger indicated you wished to speak with us?”
He blinked. “Right. Come in then, all of you.” He nodded to his aide. “You may go.”
“Yessir.”
After the assorted circus members crowded into his office, he lowered his brows and glared at them. “What madness have you lot stirred up in my city?” he growled.
Lacey gaped. “What?” After the cheers of the cityfolk, the jubilant greeting of the sailors, and the warm welcome of Commissioner Guirard’s own policemen, his greeting was a dash of cold water to the face.
“I’ve heard all kinds of crazy stories about what happened on the bridge,” he said. “The facts are as follows: one of my policemen is dead; work on the defensive wall is interrupted; a mound of burned animals is clogging up the bridge; and it all happened when you came to my city. What can you bring to the city to make up for this? I want an inventory.”
Lacey blinked, unable to come up with a response. Ginger the clown seemed to be likewise stricken, and the doctor was intently studying a spot on the ceiling.
“We saved your city,” rumbled the strong man. A frown broke through his normally impassive expression, twisting the thick tattoos on his face.
“That’s as may be, boy,” Commissioner Guirard said dismissively. “We’ll see what my coroner has to say about that once he’s taken a look at those deer.”
The doctor pulled his attention back to the here-and-now. “We didn’t save the city,” he agreed.
Lacey spun to look at him. “What?!” she gasped.
“I knew that ‘monster’ business was just a wild story,” Commissioner Guirard said, in a grimly satisfied tone. “Now if we can get down to discussing what I summoned you here for—”
“The city’s doomed. We’re all doomed. You think you’ve gathered the survivors here, but you haven’t. You’ve just got people that haven’t finished dying yet.”
“What?”
“Do you remember the Grey Steel Regiment?”
“That’s past history,” Commissioner Guirard said gruffly. “A gruesome campfire tale. It’s got nothing to do with the here and now.”
The doctor laughed, a bit hysterically. “How I wish you were right, sir! But the storm that laid us all low and killed so many, that was an aether storm. Since then, I’ve seen people complaining of excess energy, muscle tremors, strange growths. Tumors. Bone spurs. Some have a milder case, some have it worse. It depends on where they were, if they were higher up, or behind walls, or near water, or just in a place where the aether currents were particularly agitated.”
Commissioner Guirard frowned. “This isn’t—”
The doctor interrupted him. “They’re turning into monsters. At different rates, depending on the excitation of their bone aether. Do you understand? Not just people, either. Those things on the bridge? Those were de
er. Harmless deer. What do you think a bear is going to be like? Or a wild boar?” His shoulders slumped, and he slowed to a mutter. “I figure a third of your ‘survivors’ are turning. They’ll slaughter the rest of you.”
Commissioner Guirard shook his head. “No. I’ve secured the city. My doctors have seen no signs of this—this coming plague. I’ll take their word above that of a snake oil salesman! No doubt you’ve some cure you’d like to peddle to me at a very dear price.”
“I wish I did. What I need is live specimens. If I could examine—”
“No,” Commissioner Guirard interrupted. “I will not discuss this further. I will not borrow trouble because of some circus sideshow.” He rubbed his face. “Today’s problems are more than enough.” He turned his attention to Lacey. “You said you were an equestrienne?”
“Yes,” Lacey said faintly, still stunned by the doctor’s revelation.
“How many horses do you have?”
Lacey frowned. “You want to know about my horses?”
Commissioner Guirard nodded shortly. “They’re wasted with you. Resource like that should serve the population. Trained horses—hell, any horses—will be invaluable for riot control and defense of the city.”
Lacey paled. “We’re not part of your city, sir,” she choked out. “I note that you currently lack both riots and external enemies.”
“And as long as I’m in command, we won’t be threatened by either,” he growled.
“I’m sorry, the horses are not for sale.” Lacey fought to keep her voice calm as panic began to rise. Without her horses, she was nothing.
“Who said anything about sale?” He lowered his brows. “They’re being requisitioned.”
Chapter 16
~* * *~
The Equestrienne’s Worst Fear
Ginger, the Whitefaced Clown
Police Headquarters, New York City
