She stands there, expectantly. Finally, Whipsnake rises and bows to us, but she don’t look at the wee little lady. She goes out the back, givin’ the barkeep a look to melt tar. The big feller just flexes his chest at us, and follows Whipsnake out the back.
When I looks back to see her again that wee lady is gone. Such a small and broken thing as she is to move so fast. I hardly knows what to make of any of it.
The lads is all silent.
“I still say the captain wouldn’t do us so wrong.” Martin breaks into our ponderin’.
“He’ll have a mutiny on his hands when the others find out,” says Beakman, takin’ another swig.
“Well, it weren’t the cap’n who made the choice to pay off the admiral in men’s hides,” I reminds them. “Look, I ain’t sayin’ I think she done what that Snake says. But if it’s true, I say we finds Dashwood and make her account for what she done.”
“Don’t feel right takin’ on a woman,” mumbles Martin.
“What ain’t right is her tossin’ us to that elephant!” Beakman’s roarin’ a bit now, and Martin moves his pint out the way. “Harris is right. I say she comes to account to us before she gets the chance to pay off the a‘miral.” Beakman stands and stumbles backwards over his chair, landin’ in a heap on the floor. It’s testament to how low we is that we doesn’t even laugh.
Well, it would have been all well and good to go about confrontin’ Dashwood for what she’d done, but we couldn’t find her. The lads at the ship is horrified by the prospect that any one o’ them could’ve been on the list to go, and they’re preparin’ to make off with the ship before we convinced ’em that there’s folks what we owed some help. They agreed to wait until dawn of the day after next. We leaves Beakman behind to see it done, which don’t sit well with me. Not that much ’bout this sits well with me. My gut is tellin’ me to be wary, and me hand is still smartin’ from catchin’ that sexton. Nothin’ worse than a cut in a man’s hand, you know.
We each scoured the city lookin’ for any sign of Dashwood, but Singapore goes darker at night than one might ’spect. I decides to go lookin’ down the surgeon’s street, seein’ as it’s one of the few places still movin’ this hour. No church bells tollin’ the hours here, but the stars will tell any sailor worth the salt in his beard that it’s half past one.
The smell of the surgeon’s street runs to meet you ’fore you ever set foot on the rushes that soak up the blood in the gutters. It’s the scent of a thousand cauterized wounds, the smith that forges the bits replacin’ what’s gone, and all the wee beasties that feed off the spoils.
The door of every surgeon has his mark; the admiral ain’t the only one that advertises his wares, see? There’s the Three-Legged Dog, the Silver Lion with a wrench for a tail, the Smiling Clock Face, and a dozen others. Each has a specialty. I once knew a bloke who had an eye fitted at the Clock Face. I takes my time, pacin’ along like I’m lookin’ at the doors, but I’m listenin’. If there’s music in the physics’ street, Dashwood will be there.
I’m listenin’ to the sound of metal feet crushin’ the reeds in the street. I’m listenin’ to the squeak and grind of fittin’s being put in place and the groans that go along with ’em. And then I’m listenin’ to the unmistakable sound of a pianoforte. It’s out of tune, like it’s been pulled from the drink, and like as not it was once, but there ain’t no one in all Asia who knows that tune so well as Margaret Dashwood.
The tune takes me out of the surgeon’s street, and into a part o’ town a respectable bloke might be found. I walk ’long the street to the place where the music’s playin’, and it’s a parlor. All fancy teas and lace napkins and Heaven knows what else the English gentry need when they lands in a place.
Such a fine establishment wouldn’t let an old codger like me peer through the windows, so I heads round back. The door is open and all manner of men and women too poor to go in are gathered ’round listenin’.
I manage a look into the room, and the lanterns are lightin’ the yeller mass of tangles that only belongs to the first mate, Dashwood, the rag doll of the sea. And she’s sittin’ there singin’ in the most melancholy way, but in all the ten years I’ve sailed with her, she only sung this way twice.
She were very happy then, and I can’t fathom as she would be in such a mood after sendin’ four men to their deaths. And I never once in those years of sailin’ thought she would turn on a man who sailed under the flag of Cap’n Dagger Campbell. Cap’n couldn’t love a thing so cold as to send a man to be torn apart for nothin’ more than being member of a good man’s crew.
She turns just a little, and the light changes. It glows in her mess o’ hair, and drops off her shirt sleeves like sea spray. If she can look like an angel, sing like a siren, and steer a twenty-man crew to port, she can’t be the heartless wretch that Snake said she was.
I works my way through to the door and into the room, and I’m about to interrupt when three burly blokes, all metaled-up, come burstin’ in the front o’ the shop. I sees the Elephant stamped on ’em, right enough, so I slips behind a bamboo screen ’fore they sees me. The crowd at the door scatters, and them blokes start clearin’ out the rest, but Dashwood keeps on playin’. I find a tear in the fabric of my hidin’ place, and peer out into the room.
Dashwood finishes her song, and just looks at the mates standin’ there, but I see her hand restin’ on them throwin’ knives in her belt. She’s lookin’ around, markin’ the ways out and places to take cover, and sure enough, she looks right at me. She holds out a finger, down low by the seat o’ her chair, signalin’ me to stay put and keep quiet. Well, I ain’t plannin’ to jump out and yell ‘surprise,’ now, is I?
Once the room is clear, in walks that wee, little lady from the admiral’s.
Dashwood rises with all the grace of the fine-born thing she is, and goes to kneel before that tiniest creature. She bows her head, placin’ her hands together, and says somethin’ real quiet-like.
I can see that small lady now, in the light of the lanterns, with her seagull feet of polished brass. I’m lookin’ for her mark, but I don’t see the elephant anywhere on her. Her faced is brown and wrinkled like my own grizzled mug, but there’s a kindness in ’er eye that only comes from livin’ with those you love, and servin’ ’em well.
It’s what every sailor dreams o’ comin’ home to, and most never possess. I can just see her pourin’ the admiral’s tea each day, in gratitude for givin’ her back her feet. Who’s gonna mind leavin’ bird tracks all they life, long as they can leave tracks at all?
“You may tell your man to come out from his hiding place,” the wee lady says, and there’s that tone again tells you she ain’t askin’.
Dashwood nods and I do like she asks, waitin’ to see if I’m about to be dragged back to the Elephant’s door to pay Dashwood’s debts.
“Harris, don’t stand there dithering like a beggar on the stoop.” Dashwood waves me over, and I does my best to put each foot in front o’ the other ’til I’m standin’ just behind her.
“Harris, this is Li Dao Ming. She is a great friend of the captain’s.” The gesture of her hand is smoother than a well-sanded keel.
I bows to Li Dao Ming, and she grows three feet. I blink a few times, makin’ sure it ain’t the drink come up on me slow-like, but there she stands, nearly a head above me. Her legs are what’s done it, extended ’til she’s eye-to-eye with the tallest of her lads.
“Your captain is a good man,” she says lookin’ me straight in the face. “I hope he has good men sailing with him.” I know she reckernizes me from the tap room. She just looks at me like she’s waitin’ for an answer.
I swallows. “When a cap’n ’spects his crew, then his men is always wid him,” says I.
“And does Captain Campbell respect his crew?” Li Dao Ming asks me, still starin’ right through the soul o’ me.
“Dashwood would have to answer that, ma’am.” I’m treadin’ the waters now, I know. One of Li Dao Ming
’s boys flexes his mechanical arms, and I swallow, though I don’t mean to.
“What are you talking about, Harris?” Dashwood asks. She stands up, lookin’ me in the face with that same intensity.
“Whipsnake found me and the lads in the pub, and she said—”
“Whipsnake!” Dashwood shouts. “That harpy is back in town?” She looks to Li Dao Ming, who only nods. “Harris, whatever she told you is a lie. She has been after the captain since he sailed out of Jakarta without her. Her life changed because of him, and she never forgave him.”
“No offense, Dashwood,” I insist, “but I remember Jakarta. She weren’t never there.” That Indonesian job ’bout eight years back were a nasty bit of business, and we barely left with what we came for, but there weren’t no ladies involved. Dashwood always stayed with the ship when we was on the job, ’cept in this here mad bit o’ circumstance, o’ course. Cap’n not wantin’ to risk her gettin’ pinched, see? And there’s no one else he trusts better to see that the ship stayed put and were ready to sail.
“Yes, she was. And so was I,” Li Dao Ming says. “In a little shelter by the side of the road was a lame woman and her child. Captain Campbell paused long enough to—”
“—throw a handful of coins to ’em.” I says in wonder. Sure enough, I remember now, ’cause I was runnin’ like the devil hisself was behind me, and I nearly run straight into the cap’n’s back when he stopped. Thought he was mad to waste a cut on a street wretch. Seems I weren’t so wrong.
“I took my little girl and the money to a man who was rumored to repair the lame. He refused my money, but accepted my service, insisting that I use the gold to buy my girl an apprenticeship. I sent her away to my home in China, to a woman who knew how to weave.” Li Dao Ming bows her head and her eyelids are flutterin’ fierce. “But she never arrived in my village.”
“She was kidnapped by a group of mercenaries who used her for her body,” Dashwood says. “They made her choose between death or training so she could serve their band. It was with the mercenaries that she ran into the captain again, and knew him for who he was. It didn’t go well.”
Dashwood sniffs in a way that tells me she don’t want to talk about what transpired ’tween the Snake and the cap’n, but a trained seductress and assassin—well, you can guess.
“When she returned to me six years later, she had become a weapon. Made of metal and twice as cold,” Li Dao Ming says. “She blamed me and the admiral for sending her away. Blamed the coins that had fallen as if from the sky, and the man who rejected her.” She looks at Dashwood. “She will not stop until she takes her revenge.”
I huffs out a sigh of relief. I was certain our Dashwood wouldn’t do something so wicked as send a good man to die when he’d been loyal more years than an old sea dog can count.
“Where is she?” Dashwood asks.
“I do not know, but she will not come back out in the open now that I have seen her,” Li Dao Ming says. “She will stay out of sight until she means to strike.”
“She didn’t say nothin’ ’bout strikin’,” I says. “Just that if the lads and I could fight our way to freedom, we ought to feel ’bliged to return to help the others. Get them out of Singapore on the ship.”
“That’ll all just be extra chaos,” Dashwood says. “A distraction from what she means to do. You see now that there’s no one in the admiral’s retinue that needs saving. They love him. He saved them. He takes the cases no one else will, when the work is too much or the price is too high.”
“So he ain’t the Elephant Butcher, then?” I asks.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” Dashwood admits. “The title of admiral isn’t honorary, and you don’t get that by stitching wounds, do you?”
I s’pose you never know a man, even when you see his handiwork. No one sees how the clock does the tickin’, ’cept the man that made it.
“No one leaves this ship without the express permission of the captain or myself!” Dashwood bellows from the helm. “Do so and you run the risk of being left behind. That may appeal to some of you, as you may not wish to be captained by a man that doesn’t walk on two feet anymore. If so, go now and Godspeed to you. The rest of you will get this ship fit to sail on whatever tide we may have need.”
Dashwood insisted on sortin’ out the crew herself, though I volunteered to go on me own.
“They’ll need to hear it from me,” she says. “No man wants a firm hand more than one who’s heard a mutinous rumor.”
The ship’s never this busy at night, men crawlin’ all over the riggin’, loadin’ crates and barrels from the docks, and scrubbin’ down anything weren’t movin’. There’s no sign of Beakman, though. I know’d it was bad idea leavin’ that limp bit o’ seaweed with the crew. No tellin’ what he’s got hisself up to, daft thing that he is.
“Martin, Harris, you’re with me,” Dashwood says over her shoulder as she goes walkin’ down the gangplank.
I’m just coming down behind her when me right wrist gets yanked across me, turnin’ me all about. I’m flying right off the gangplank, and I knows it’s bad ’cuz I can’t feel nothing in me arm at all as I’m droppin’. I lands in the drink, right in me face. I’m kickin’ and flailin’, but I gets me head above the water. There’s this pain racin’ up me arm, the salt searin’ the wound. I reach towards the dock. I try to grab the pilin’, spittin’ and splutterin’ from the water and the pain. But I can’t grab, ’cuz I got no hand to grab with no more. The pain makes sense now. I got no right hand. I pull the stump of what was me whole right arm in close to my chest, and I’m kickin’ and scramblin’ with my left hand tryin’ to clear the surface proper, trying to get hold of anything to pull meself up.
Martin’s the one pulls me out. I hear Dashwood shoutin’ like a fury, but her words make no sense over the pain in my hand. I take a breath, but it comes out a choke and then a scream and then her angel face is there in front of me.
“Is it bad Harris?” She reaches out her hand and I put out my stump. She holds it for a moment without no fear in her eyes. “It’s a clean cut. The Snake’s work to be sure. She could have taken your life, Harris. That makes you lucky, but she will pay for taking your hand.” She looks right in me eyes, makin’ sure I understand her. I just nods. “Good, now up you get.”
She and Martin haul me up, and I sway like it’s me first day ’board ship. “Hold him steady as we go, Martin. We’ve got to get to the admiral before her.”
It’s all a jumble from there. Lights and shadows and how my hand were screamin’ ’bout not bein’ there no more. We run longer than I thought it should take. I catches my boots on the cobbles and in the mud and in the reeds chokin’ the gutters. Me arm always shoutin’ at me to stop.
Finally, we gets to the door, and that elephant with the dirty great cog stickin’ out its back is the most welcome sight. But Dashwood is screamin’ again. And realize it ain’t just my vision that’s flickerin’ with the pain. This alley were like black pitch when I carried the cap’n that first night. Now I can see that elephant on the door like noonday sun. And it’s all ’cuz the roof of the hut is ablaze.
“Michael! Michael!” Dashwood never sounded more a woman than in her heartbreak. Martin drops me to the ground and pulls her back. She would have gone straight through that door if she thought she could save him.
I don’t know how long she screams or how long I sits there feeling every heartbeat in fingers that’s gone. The heat don’t help the pain, it blows into all the bloody, open spaces. I looks down the alley behind us, back into the dark we came from, and she’s standin’ there. Taller than I remember, with wickedness in every shinin’ whip.
“Dashwood, she’s here,” is all I says. It’s all that seems ’portant. She’s here to kill us for a life full of bitterness that started in Jakarta with a deed o’ kindness. Maybe it’s the pain in me voice, maybe Dashwood was ’specting her to be here, but Dashwood stops her wailin’. Her silence is bigger than the screamin’. Even the flames go
quiet, ’fraid of what comes next.
That Snake moves first, though, runnin’ at Dashwood, wavin’ those shinin’ whips into a frenzy no eye could follow. And a howl builds in her that beats against Dashwood’s silence, but Dashwood don’t move. Martin and I is lookin’ to and fro, waitin’ for her to do somethin’, and watchin’ the Snake comin’ on like a thing out of a wee child’s nightmare.
Martin decides since he’s got two legs that he ought to use them, and runs off. I never pegged Martin a coward. It’s near as frightenin’ as the scene before me eyes, to see him turn tail.
The barbs of the whips reach the Dashwood before I can do nothin’, barely able to stand, and swoonin’as I do. They rips into her face and her shirt sleeves, makin’ a ringin’ clang as they do. Bits of cloth and Dashwood’s fine yeller hair go flyin’ away from her. She’s bleedin’ all over, but she don’t move. No man I ever knew could stand before such pain and not move.
Then that Snake’s neck is in her reach. One moment those whips are a blur and a fury and the next they lays limp at her side, and there stands Dashwood holdin’ her foe by the throat with a strength that defies reason. The Snake is chokin’ and strugglin’, her weapons in the way now so she can’t get hold of the hand that’s crushin’ the life from her. Dashwood’s face is shimmerin’ in the firelight, all covered in trails of blood.
I know’d a man from the Ivory Coast, once, could crush a snake in his bare hands. But that were just a plain old snake, and he were a sailor in the prime of his days. He would laugh when he done it. There ain’t no laughter in that alley.
Dashwood ain’t the angel from the parlor beyond the surgeon’s street. She’s cold and there’s a rage in her eyes, more quellin’ than all the waves of the great deep.
“Margaret, stop!” comes a cry from a voice I never thought to hear again. The cap’n walks with another man supportin’ him, lurchin’ about as he goes. He comes to his wife and places a hand on her arm. “Margaret, that’s enough,” and he says it tender-like, so’s I’m almost embarrassed to hear it.
Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology Page 7
