by Steve Rzasa
Winch recoiled but held his tongue. He’d forgotten Cope’s near confrontation with Beam at the Perch aerodrome just following the air raid. He mustn’t speak a word of it! “Can’t say anything to that.”
“Why all this denial?” Beam chuckled. Winch had never heard a more terrifying sound—not because it was devoid of emotion, but because it sounded downright happy. Beam stepped closer. He saw the pocket watch on the floor and gave it a swift kick. It careened off the stone wall. “I do swear, it’s rather like a contagion. Come now, Winchell, if you throw in your lot with us, you know you’ll be well rewarded.”
“You’ll find no traitors here,” Jesca said coldly.
“Fine words from the harlot whose life is a long treachery against Trestleway,” Taube snapped.
“I love this city. But you are not Trestleway. Neither are the so-called councilors.” Jesca lifted her chin. “I would die to save the people of this city.”
“And Perch?” Beam asked. He put kicked the pocket watch aside.
Winch glared. That watch belonged to his grandfather. But at least Beam hadn’t touched the camera in the bag at Winch’s feet.
“My allegiance is to those I love,” Jesca said.
“Your brother was a fool like you. And a traitor.”
“Just like your Condor?” Jesca snapped.
Taube smirked. “He is a man who has sense enough to see the future coming his way and jump on board that train!”
“Taube!” Beam’s tone went stern. “Enough. She’s working you.”
Taube’s eyes narrowed. “Why that little…” He slashed at her again with the knife. She screamed.
“Stop it!” Winch’s command thundered off the brick walls. The drip-drip of water was the only sound that ensued. Taube glared at him. Even Beam appeared surprised.
“You will not touch her again.” Winch’s voice was shaking. Jesca was a beautiful woman, and Winch’s heart went out to her. But every time that Peace Branch man hit her, he could see only Lysanne in his mind’s eye.
“And what will you do about it?” Taube took a step forward. He held the knife up, every gesture menacing.
Beam raised a hand. “Hold there, Taube. Put the knife away.”
“Sir, this method—”
Beam let out a guttural growl. He flicked his hand at Taube. Taube yelped as if in pain. It clattered against the far wall then fell to the stone floor.
Its landing echoed in the abrupt quiet. “My methods suffice, Sergeant.” Beam’s voice dropped an octave. All pleasantness fled. “Don’t ever mistake that.”
“Yessir.” Taube’s eyes searched for anything to look at other than Beam. Yet there was no hiding the anger in his expression.
Beam turned his attention to both prisoners. He thrust out his right hand, and Jesca’s chair skidded across the floor to join Winch’s against the wall. Winch couldn’t see the powers that held her in their grip, but he could sense…something. A presence. It was like expecting to find someone standing behind you, but every time you turned around, there was no one.
Suddenly both chairs lifted up off the floor—first a few inches, then several feet. The ceiling was not far away from Winch’s hair. Wood scraped on brick. Before Winch could offer any words of comfort to Jesca, Beam closed his outstretched fingers into fists. His muttering went softer and increased in tempo. Pain rippled through Winch’s body—a slow wave washing up onto a lake shore. Then a faster and more agonizing wave attacked. Jesca groaned.
Winch bit his lip as a third wave of pain crashed across him. Clouds above, it felt like everything hurt. By the fourth wave, every bit of his body felt as if someone were cutting his insides with brambles. He grunted.
“You see now that you have little choice. I don’t reckon this is enjoyable.” Beam’s smile returned, brighter than ever. “Just tell me where your dear brother is.”
It took greater effort than Winch thought possible to turn his head. Sweat drenched Jesca’s forehead. Her hair was in a tangle. She grimaced and looked ready to faint when the next wave of pain came. But when she opened her eyes, defiance was still there. She shook her head.
Turn on his brother? Never. “I don’t…know what you…mean,” Winch said through gritted teeth. Every word was an endeavor.
Beam’s smile collapsed. He tightened his invisible grasp.
Allfather! The pain! Winch’s tears came fast. Jesca sobbed. There was nothing to stop it. How long could they last having their insides dragged into the fires of Avernus itself?
Save me, Ifan!
He remembered his dream.
I already have.
Winch’s eyes rolled up into his head. He felt faint. Was he dying? Please, Ifan, make it stop. I know Thel can do this. Forgive me for my offenses and my doubt. I believe.
The pain intensified. There was no time between the waves now. Jesca cried out, but Winch couldn’t hear the words. Instead he heard the words he’d read in Vaughn Markwater’s pamphlet:
“All authority on this land and in the land hereafter is mine. Make no mistake—all those powers you fear in the dark take their orders from me. They obey the Writ.”
All the powers. All authority. Even over the cythraul?
“By the Writ of the Allfather Thel, stop it!” Winch croaked out loud.
Where had those words come from?
He felt frozen—but not cold. And then a different presence came to him. A comfort. Like being draped in a warm quilt against the chill of a mountain morning. Then came one word, a rushing of wind.
Behold.
Winch’s chair hit the floor at the same time as Jesca’s. The impact boomed in the confines of the cell. His eyes flew wide open. Jesca’s breath came in startled gasps.
The pain was gone. His body was tired—blamed tired—but whole. Had it all been an illusion? Something the cythraul did to his mind?
Winch didn’t care. It was over. And he knew why. “Thank you, Thel,” he whispered.
What about his captors? Taube looked incredulously back and forth between Winch and Beam. “Captain? What’s wrong? Captain Beam?”
Winch had never seen this expression on Beam’s face. Not confidence, not anger.
Uncertainty.
“Sir.” Taube spoke quietly. “Why did you drop them?”
“I…I didn’t.” Beam still held his hands in the same position, fingers curled shut, as when the pain had raked Winch’s and Jesca’s body. Beam relaxed his hands. He murmured the same syllables as Winch had heard in the rail shed last night, but this time, Beam’s eyes didn’t roll up into his sockets. Instead he stared hard at Winch. “The cythraul don’t answer.” He stepped off of the watch.
“Winch?” Jesca’s question came urgently. “Did you…stop that?”
“No.” Winch knew it to be true.
“What did you do?”
Winch glanced from Jesca to the Peace Branch officers. “I prayed to Thel.”
Beam’s face contorted in sudden fury. “Exalter. I should’ve suspected.”
Winch nodded. His fear was strangely muted—not absent, but not pushing him aside either. “I serve Thel, the Allfather—and his Exaltson, and the Hallowed Sepyr who counsels all believers.” The words gave him palpable confidence. “Nothing changes that. Ever.”
“We’ll see.” Beam held out his hand to Taube. “Your knife.”
Taube grinned wickedly. He ducked down to retrieve the knife. “You first, sir?”
Beam took the blade. “Once I start in with him, you can do with her as you see fit. Just keep her quiet.”
The wolfish grin on Taube’s face broadened, and he gave Jesca a visual once-over.
Someone pounded on the door.
Taube cursed. “Confounded rusted spikes!” He stomped to the door and slid the tiny eye-level hatch open. “You’d better have a tarnal good reason for interrupting, or I’ll have you fusilladed!”
“Orders from the Second Councilor, sir.” Something about the muffled voice teased Winch’s memory. At least it was
a distraction from the bloody blade hovering a few feet from his nose.
Taube sighed. “Sir, the guards have a message from Ehrlichmann.”
“I heard, Taube. Hmph.” Beam lowered the knife, but didn’t take his glare off Winch. “Let them in.”
Taube unlocked the door. It bumped open, admitting two militiamen. Winch blinked. One was of average height—not much taller than Winch—and carried himself rather casually for a soldier. The other was a massive, broad-shouldered fellow. They wore the standard tan and brown with the purple flag of Trestleway on their shoulders, but under their caps, their faces were obscured by goggles with lenses of amber and odd mouth coverings. Winch recalled the strainers in his kitchen back in Perch—smaller versions of those, bound by leather to the guard’s goggles. Breather masks?
And why did Winch’s suddenly smell printer’s ink?
Taube cleared his throat. “The messages?”
The smaller of the two guards shifted his carbine to the opposite shoulder. He dug into his pocket. As he did, he made eye contact with Winch.
And winked.
Beam frowned. “Why do you have your gas masks on? Was there a drill?”
Winch’s jaw fell wide open as the guard tossed something into the room. A grey metal canister topped with purple clunked across the floor to Beam’s feet. It let off a loud pop as Beam shouted a warning.
Smoke billowed out of both ends of the canister faster than steam from a locomotive’s stack.
Taube dug into his coat, and his hand came out with a Klaus revolver. But the same guard who’d tossed the canister was already on him. He brought the stock of his carbine up into Taube’s jaw. Winch found the crack satisfying—guiltily so.
The second guard lunged for Beam. But Beam flung the knife so quickly the other guard had no time to dodge. The blade made a wet, hard whump as it jabbed into his left shoulder. The guard gave a muffled thump and staggered back, even as he lifted his carbine.
Beam advanced on him, hands raised. Winch saw his opportunity through the thickening smoke.
His camera.
Winch strained for the kick until his hip socket burned. His boot connected, sending the camera skittering on stone, right into Beam’s path.
Beam tripped, fell face-first. He was no slouch—he caught himself one his hands, then rolled onto his back. He drew his own gun, a double-barreled Cloister Twin revolver. A shot boomed loud in the room, but there was so much smoke from the canister that Winch doubted he could have aimed. The bullet twanged off the walls, sending sparks in three places before it thunked into the door.
Thank Thel, no one got hit.
Ker-whack! The bigger guard brought his carbine’s stock down on Beam’s head.
He was down.
The smoke billowed until it completely blotted out the melee. And it made it quite a bit harder for Winch to breathe. He coughed, trying for some clean air. Was Jesca all right? What was going on? It was all swirling white and grey haze.
The shorter guard materialized from the manmade fog. He shoved a leather-and-metal mask to Winch’s face. “Breathe deep. And don’t pass out. You might be skinny as a teratorn’s bone, Winch, but I’m not keen on having to carry you.”
Winch inhaled deeply through the mask as the guard—Cope, of course—freed him from his bonds. He heard Jesca coughing nearby, then footsteps leading away. Where was the other guard? “Jesca!” Winch shouted, then launched into a coughing fit as the smoke attacked his throat.
“Blue skies, Winch, keep the jo-fired mask on!” Cope tried to drag him from the room.
No, wait—the camera! Winch scrabbled about on the floor until his fingers closed against the rucksack strap. Good, the camera was still inside. He found the pocket watch nearby and scooped it up too. Only then did he let Cope guide him out. He staggered against a hallway wall, sucking greedily for air. The smoke swirled around Cope as he removed his mask and lifted his goggles. There it was—his brother’s old grin.
“Would figure you’d go back for Father’s old watch. Miss me?”
More than words would allow. Winch nodded.
“Huh. No kiss?” Cope chuckled. “Come on, let’s not overstay our welcome, big brother.”
Friday
Cope half-dragged Winch down a series of dark corridors with sharp corners. They passed several wooden doors on their way—more prison cells? Winch coughed, still fighting the smoke in his lungs. He kept a firm grasp on his rucksack.
They rounded a corner. A Peace Branch man and two militia ran pell-mell for them. “What’s going on?” The Peace Branch officer’s red tie flapped over his shoulder.
Cope, thankfully, had replaced his mask. “Someone set off a smoke bomb in the second interrogation room. There might be more men in there! We’re transferring these prisoners.”
“Well, don’t dawdle, then. Move out!” The officer swept by, guards in tow.
“Track-head,” Cope muttered. “Oneyear, I honestly thought they’d be a bit more tight on their security.”
“Wouldn’t have thought it easy, would you?”
Winch jerked his head around. The much larger guard—Oneyear Hines, from the bookstore—helped Jesca down the hallway. Of course.
“Mind you, gents, I don’t fancy the thought of leaving poor Franz out colder than a smilodon in a blizzard on that floor.” Oneyear sighed deeply. “Did you really have to hit him?”
“Ah, yes, I think so, unless you’d rather I gained a shiny new bullet in my brain,” Cope said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. He looked sideways at Winch. “He’s worse than you.”
Winch managed a smile. “What’s the rest of your plan?”
“Plan? You mean besides the jailbreak?” Cope shrugged. “I reckoned we’d steal one of the Peace Branch’s fine motorwagons. I hear they handle nicely.”
“Then head up this next flight of stairs to your right,” Oneyear said. “But don’t draw undue attention.”
“I think it’s a little late for that.” Jesca coughed hard. Then she winced. “Ah! My arm.”
Cope nearly dropped Winch in his rush to Jesca’s side. He gingerly probed at Jesca’s wounds. “Oneyear, get a cloth on that.”
“Yessir.” Sarcasm fairly dripped from Oneyear’s voice. He rummaged through his pockets.
“And for Perch’s sake, make certain it’s clean.” Cope resumed his hold on Winch.
Winch saw the stairwell ahead. Dim light flooded it—he hoped it led out of doors.
Oneyear had Jesca’s wounds bound with cloths. “Better, Miss?”
“Thank you.”
Cope stopped. “Winch, get your hands behind your back. Make like you’re handcuffed.”
“All right.” Cope unslung his carbine. “All right, you get up them stairs, hill-boy,” he said in a louder-than-necessary voice.
Winch rolled his eyes.
He pushed the door open at the top of the stairs.
Daylight nearly blinded him. Shouted questions hurtled his way as he blinked away the brilliant morning sun.
“We’re transferring the prisoners,” Cope said imperiously. “Do you have a problem with my orders, Private?”
A lanky, young militiaman stared at them. His uniform carried only a single slash, compared with the three on Cope’s arm. “Yessir. I mean, no sir!”
“Good. Then round me a up some transport.” The young guard didn’t move. Cope ground his teeth. “A motorwagon, son! Tarnation, were you born under a set of rusty rails, or are you a man of the Trestleway Militia? Get to it!”
“Yessir!” The guard scurried off. That was when Winch realized they were in an alleyway—possibly the one he’d caught glimpses of through the narrow windows of his cell. They were in the Peace Branch building! When had they been moved from the rail yards? The building reached up five stories, its dark red brick fairly aglow with the sun. It smelled of rotten food and damp cloth back here. Winch wrinkled his nose.
“Their garage is right around the corner. Shouldn’t take him but a half-minute.” Oney
ear chuckled softly. “That is, if Cope put the fear of Thel into him.”
“Quite the performance.” Jesca cradled her wounded arm. “Thank you, Cope.”
Winch thought Cope’s grin might break right through the gas mask. “Don’t mention it, Jesca. Or rather, mention it one more time. I liked the way it sounded coming from you.”
“Throttle back, Cope,” Winch said. “We’d just better hope your stunt with the smoke didn’t raise too much of an alarm.”
As if on cue, bells clanged loudly from behind.
Oneyear sidled as casually as possible to the door and closed it. “Reckon they woke those two hooligans we took out in the smoke?”
“I doubt it.” Cope snorted. “We hit that Franz fellow and that Beam creep hard enough to startle a diprotodon…ah. Here’s service!”
A shiny black motorwagon with the silver Peace Branch emblem on the door rattled down the alley and skidded to a halt in front of them. Steam sputtered from the exhaust. It had a roof and four seats, with only the windshield for glass.
The jittery young guard hopped out. He managed a hasty and sloppy salute. “Sir! All yours.”
“Good work, Private.” Cope turned to Oneyear. “Corporal?”
“Yes, sir.” Oneyear punched the private in the face.
Jesca yelped. Cope slid a hand over her mouth. “Hush, now, no need for a ruckus.”
“No, you’ve seen to that!” Winch slipped into the motorwagon. Thankfully, he still had his rucksack and the camera inside.
They all piled in after him—Oneyear squeezed into the front passenger seat, and Jesca ducked in beside Winch.
Cope got behind the wheel. He smiled over his shoulder. “All in then? Good. Off we go!”
The motorwagon bolted down the alley—as fast as a motorwagon could bolt. The steam engine chugged, and its wheels bounced along. Cope merged them seamlessly with the early morning traffic on one of Trestleway’s busy streets, dodging between a pair of large trucks. Winch didn’t pay attention to the myriad vehicles and carts that blurred by—instead, he dug frantically through his rucksack. The camera, thank Thel, had survived its rough treatment. But… “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Jesca checked on the bandaged wounds. The cloths had helped slow the bleeding.
