Metal and Magic

by Chris Paton

  “Bugger,” Egmont resumed his pacing. “Just when I thought I had her on an even keel, she stirs up a real levanter.”

  “A levanter, sir?”

  “Yes, Boyce, a Mediterranean wind, so raw you’ll never forget its like.”

  Smith ignored Egmont and addressed the seaman. “Did Captain Willard manage to find out the names of the convicts attempting to escape?”

  “After a fashion, sir.”

  “And who were they?”

  “He didn’t get any names, sir, but he heard the guards refer to them as the Jap and the Indian,” Boyce followed the Admiral’s pacing with his eyes.

  “An Indian?”

  “Yes, sir,” Boyce turned his attention to Smith. “They have them trapped in the prison armoury, sir. Seems the Indian wanted to collect his personal effects.” Boyce smiled. “Some kind of bent sword.”

  “A kukri?” Smith stood and placed a hand on Egmont’s arm as he paced past the armchair. “It’s him.”

  “Who?” Egmont scowled and shook his head.

  “Hari Singh.”

  “Singh? He is here in London?”

  “Apparently,” Smith’s wrinkled cheeks stretched into a smile. “It would seem that The Nightjar has made contact with Miss Hanover.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “Difficult to say,” Smith tapped his fingers upon his chin. “We should get down there.”

  “Yes,” Egmont turned on his heel toward Boyce. “My compliments to Captain Willard.”

  “Yes, sir,” Boyce snapped to attention.

  “Get back to the teashop and tell Captain Willard to contain the situation. Keep the convicts inside the prison, but don’t let the prison guards move in,” Egmont nodded at Smith. “I take it we want them alive?”

  “Oh, yes,” Smith nodded. “The Nightjar and I have a lot to catch up on. But what he is doing in London is beyond me.”

  “Did you get all that, Boyce?” Egmont waited.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well then, don’t dawdle, man.”

  Boyce threw the Admiral a salute before snapping his heels together and running out of the study.

  “So,” Egmont clapped his hands together. “Your man is still in play.”

  “Yes, it would appear so,” Smith took a deep breath. “We need to mobilise now.”

  Egmont shrugged. “Why the rush? We know where they are.”

  “Yes,” Smith slurred. “But I don’t yet know which side my man is playing on. We had better find out.”

  ҉

  Dieter pinched his bottom lip between his finger and thumb as he walked around the prototype Wallendorf racer. After each lap he stopped and scrutinised unfamiliar components. Bremen’s mechanics, arms crossed, maintained a close vigil.

  “What do you think?” Romney knelt by the side of Dieter.

  “What do I think?”

  “Yes,” Romney placed her hand around Dieter’s arm. “Your opinion matters to me.”

  “Not enough?” Dieter shrugged his arm free of Romney’s fingers.

  “Not enough? What do you mean?”

  “Not enough to put me on the team.”

  “That’s Bremen’s doing, not mine,” Romney stood, fists clenched at her sides.

  “You could have said something,” Dieter twiddled a valve between his fingers. One of Bremen’s mechanics took a step forward. Dieter glared at him until he stepped back alongside his colleagues.

  “I did...”

  “You did?” Dieter stood and started another lap of the steamracer.

  “Yes,” Romney stepped back out of his way. “He said you could stay.”

  “He said I could look but not touch, eh?”

  “Something like that,” Romney nodded. “I am sorry, Dieter.”

  “So you say,” Dieter stopped at the rear of the steamracer. He bent closer to inspect a spring-loaded cylinder containing large, honeycombed wooden pellets. “What is this?”

  “The injector,” Romney smiled. “The springs push the pellets into a second boiler, like a mini-furnace.” She reached inside the cockpit. “When I pull on this lever,” she waited as the pellet at the bottom of the cylinder disappeared into the cold furnace, “the spring pushes a pellet into the injector furnace.”

  “And?”

  “And,” Romney joined Dieter at the rear of the steamracer. “That increases the temperature as it burns, speeding up the rate of consumption...”

  “Giving you more steam. Ja, ja,” Dieter nodded. “But you will run out of steam the f-faster you burn the f-fuel.”

  “That’s why the tank is bigger,” Romney pointed at the enlarged globus tank built into the rear of the steamracer. “It is like the tanks on the backs of daddy’s emissaries.”

  “It is ugly,” Dieter scowled. He stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  “Come now, Dieter,” Romney slipped her arm through Dieter’s. “Aren’t you just a little impressed?”

  “Maybe,” Dieter shrugged. “Just a little.”

  Romney tugged Dieter away from the racer and onto the road leading to the bridge. Bremen’s mechanics hurried over to the steamracer and returned all of the valves and appendages to their original positions before Dieter had fiddled with them. Dieter shook his head as he glanced back at the team from Wallendorf’s advanced research and development department.

  “Forget about them, Dieter,” Romney picked up the pace. “Let me show you what it can do. Look there,” Romney pointed at the bridge. In the middle of the road a crowd of men, women and children parted to reveal a blood red steamracer, its metal ticking in the heat from its furnace. More of Bremen’s mechanics screwed pellet magazines into the enhanced globus tank. Robshaw waited by the side of the cockpit swinging a pair of goggles in his hand.

  “Him?” Dieter stopped. “He gets to drive?”

  “It’s true, Bremen has brought several steamracers on the steamjammer from Germany,” Romney pulled Dieter forward. “But this one is mine.”

  Romney let go of Dieter and walked up to Robshaw. Tucking her red hair behind her ears, she took the goggles from Robshaw’s hand and slipped them over her face. Climbing into the cockpit, she waved at Dieter and squeezed Robshaw’s hand as he helped her buckle in. Romney gave Bremen’s mechanics the thumbs-up as Robshaw jumped down from the running boards and trotted over to stand next to Dieter.

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think, but I hope,” Dieter yelled over the shrill yelp of steam pursing from Romney’s steamracer as she opened the throttle. “I hope she knows how to stop this time. We cannot af-fford to ref-furbish anymore shops in London.”

  “I know what you mean,” Robshaw grinned.

  Robshaw turned as a steam carriage slowed to a stop behind the Wallendorf steamracer. Bremen stepped out of the carriage, twirling his cane as he strode over to join them.

  “You are not racing, Mr. Robshaw?” Bremen raised his voice above the steam whistle. The mechanics shooed the crowd back to a safe distance.

  “Not today,” Robshaw dipped his head toward Romney. “It’s her show, Herr Bremen.”

  “Very sporting of you, Mr. Robshaw,” Bremen paused. “Put a determined woman on a horse and she will flog it to within an inch of its life but no more.”

  “Yes?” Robshaw looked at Bremen and waited.

  “But if you put that same woman behind the wheel of the finest steamracer in all of Europe,” Bremen smiled. “Well, let’s see, but I think she will drive that car to within an inch of her own life and beyond if we are not careful.”

  “Ja,” Dieter nodded. “That sounds like the daughter of Herr Wallendorf.”

  “And that, gentlemen,” Bremen tipped his hat at Romney as she turned to wave, “is what I am counting on.”

  Grit from the street spewed off the rear wheels in an arc, plastering the crowd and crew standing behind the steamracer as Romney thrust the gear lever into first, injecting the first of the fast-burning pellets into the furnace and thundering across
the bridge.

  ҉

  Luise’s boots scuffed the stone sill beneath the broken window as Hari pushed at her heels with his left hand.

  “There’s nothing to grip, nothing I can get my hands on,” Luise reached into the ventilation shaft with one hand, pushing against the rotten wood of the window frame with the other.

  Hari caught and held the heel of Luise’s left boot as it flashed toward his face. “Please try harder, Miss Luise.”

  “Try harder?” Luise turned and slipped. Falling out of the window she fell into Hari’s arms.

  “Miss Luise?” Hari winced as he instinctively steadied Luise’s body with his left and right hands.

  “You can let go of me now, Mr. Singh,” Luise leaned backward, tipping her face away from Hari’s.

  “Yes,” Hari relaxed his grip and slipped his right hand inside his robes. “Truly, I am sorry.”

  “Knife,” Yuu waddled up to Hari and handed him a large knife with a bent blade tucked inside a leather scabbard.

  “Thank you, Yuu,” Hari’s eyes lit up as he took the scabbard in his left hand.

  “What on earth is that?” Luise stared at the blade as Hari risked a little more pain to his right hand to draw the knife from its scabbard.

  “This, Miss Luise, is a kukri. A Gurkha blade from my time with the Indian Gurkhas.” Hari slid the blade back inside the scabbard. Attaching the blade around his waist, he stepped back from Luise and looked up at the window. Avoiding Luise’s legs, Hari looked her in the eye. “Are you ready to try again?”

  Luise sighed. “Yes. If I must?”

  “There is no other way out, Miss Luise.”

  “Quickly now,” Yuu tapped the floor with the bokken, his prized wooden sword he found alongside Hari’s kukri inside the captured weapons section of the armoury.

  “Very well,” Luise looked up at the window. “And what do I do if I succeed in getting through the window, Hari?”

  “At the end of the tunnel, you will find a small room with a door at the far end.”

  “And beyond the door?”

  “Ah,” Hari stroked his beard. “I do not know.”

  “You don’t...” Luise shook her head. “Why don’t you know?”

  “It is as far as we have ever got.”

  “You have tried to escape before?”

  “Many times,” Hari nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” Luise looked from Hari to Yuu. “If you have tried to escape before, why were there so few men guarding your cell?”

  “Truly,” Hari waved his finger in the dusty air between them. “A good question.”

  “Well?”

  “We were never caught,” Yuu’s parchment face creased into a smile.

  “And you managed to get back to your cell every time? Without raising the alarm? I find that hard to believe.”

  Yuu stepped forward and directed Luise to the corner of the room. Hari stood next to her as Yuu clambered onto the boxes beneath the window and thrust the bokken between the broken panes. Within a few seconds, the elderly oriental disappeared through the window. A soft thud of feet landing on the stone floor of the adjoining room whispered into the armoury.

  “See,” Hari gestured at the window.

  “No, Mr. Singh. I don’t see.”

  “Yuu is very accomplished.”

  “You have not answered my question. How did you never get caught?”

  “Yuu is also very rich,” Hari smiled.

  “You paid your way out of trouble?”

  “Frequently, yes. We paid the guards to turn a blind eye.”

  “And how come you never got further than this point?”

  Hari shrugged. “Yuu ran out of money.”

  “Unbelievable,” Luise looked up at the window. She gasped as a length of rope whistled through the broken panes and snaked against the stone wall.

  “Not so rich, but still very resourceful,” Hari grasped the rope in his left hand. “After you, Miss Luise.”

  ҉

  Romney didn’t hear the crowds cheering and jeering above the whistle of steam spitting out of the rear exhausts of the steamracer. The thunder of the tires shuddering along the cobbled streets jarred her whole body, distracting her from the scene she was stirring among the Londoners enjoying a brief reprieve from the rain. Romney’s steam-smudged cheeks spread wide as she grinned her way along the length of Lupus Street. The splintered shop front she ignored with an indifferent shake of her head, the blaze of red hair streaming behind her in fiery tangles as she crunched into third gear and accelerated away from the treacherous corner.

  In the distance, hovering on both sides of the street, Romney spied Bremen’s mechanics waving the black flags they said they would fly when she should slow down. Romney pulled the lever, emptying the last of the pellets into the injector furnace as she fumbled for fourth gear. Bremen’s men, dressed all in black, their grey woollen caps tugged over their ears, leaped back into the relative safety of the shop fronts as Romney smoked past them in a wake of grit and steam.

  “Verdammt. She is out of control,” Bremen’s lead mechanic threw his flag to the ground at Bremen’s feet.

  “Relax,” Bremen removed his hat and wiped his brow free of dirt with a black silk handkerchief. “She will stop when she runs out of fuel.”

  “And where will that be?” The mechanic picked up the flag and stamped away from Bremen.

  “Herr Bremen?” Armbrüster sidled up beside his master as Bremen stuffed the dirty handkerchief back into his pocket.

  “Yes? Do you have any news?”

  “Ja,” Armbruster pointed at a man feigning interest in the wares on sale in a shop window. The man wore a tight-fitting leather jacket and trousers beneath a long leather duster. “That is the man I was telling you about.”

  “And he knows the location of Hanover’s laboratory?”

  “Ja, Herr Bremen.”

  Bremen gripped Armbrüster’s arm. “Is it there? Has he seen it?”

  Armbrüster spread his lips in a slow smile. “Ja, it is there.”

  “Good,” Bremen clapped Armbrüster on the shoulder. “We have the means to get the machine quickly out of London,” he pointed the tip of his cane at Romney’s racer steaming into the distance. “And soon we will have the machine itself.” He paused. “Can we trust him?” Bremen stared at the man by the window.

  “Nein, Herr Bremen,” Armbrüster shook his head. “But we can pay him.”

  “See to it,” Bremen nodded at the man. “Bring me the impediment machine.” Bremen waited as Armbrüster approached the man by the window, slipped an envelope from his jacket pocket into the man’s hand and waved at Bremen. “It is done then,” Bremen waved back. He took a breath. “Phase one is complete.”

  ҉

  Luise slid down the rope and onto the stone floor of the tiny room. Yuu held out his hand to steady her as she landed. Luise nodded her thanks and stepped back to pull on her dress as Hari squirmed through the window and into the room. He dropped down onto the floor with a whisper of cotton as his robes blossomed on landing. He glanced at Luise and smiled as she tied the cords of her skirt around her waist and pulled her jacket smartly downward.

  “Are you ready, Miss Luise?” Hari drew the kukri from its scabbard.

  “Ready?” Luise pointed at the bent blade in Hari’s left hand. “What should I be ready for? Are we going to war?”

  “This is a prison break,” Hari turned the blade in his hand. “I don’t think we can expect anything less.”

  Luise made a fist, straightened her index finger and pointed at Hari as she walked toward him. “When I came in here...” She stopped as the point of Yuu’s bokken pressed into her sternum.

  “Yuu,” Hari rested the wrist of his right hand on the wooden blade. “It is all right. She has a right to be angry.”

  “I am not angry,” Luise stepped back from the bokken.

  “You are not?”

  “No. I just don’t think another bout of violence is the an
swer.” Luise glanced from Hari to Yuu. “From the look on your faces, I can see you both disagree.”

  “We have fought our way out of our cell,” Hari pointed the tip of the kukri at the door. “And now, so close to freedom, we shall keep on fighting.”

  “And I don’t understand,” Luise shook her head.

  “Miss Luise,” Hari sheathed the kukri, stepped forward and took Luise’s hand. “Your brother instructed me to look after you, and I can’t do that within these walls,” Hari gestured at the solid stone walls of the guardroom. “I sent the locket to you, knowing that you would come and find me. Yuu and I,” Hari nodded at Yuu, “have been planning this for weeks. Driving the guards crazy and lining their pockets.”

  “To get me to come to you?” Luise frowned.

  “Not just that,” Hari shook his head. “There is a war coming, Miss Luise, and I promised Jamie I would protect you. I came all the way from Afghanistan to find you, but I was... delayed.”

  Yuu tapped the point of his bokken on the floor. He pointed at the door. “We must leave now.”

  “Yes,” Hari let go of Luise’s hand and gestured at the door. “After you, Miss Luise.”

  “You are not going to draw your sword?”

  “No,” Hari smiled. “We will do it your way.”

  Yuu stepped to one side as Luise walked up to the door. She looked at Hari before gripping the door knob and turning it. The door creaked as it opened and Luise peered through the gap.

  “What do you see?” Hari leaned close to Luise and placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “There are a lot of policemen and...”

  “And?”

  “Admiral Egmont and Mr. Smith are stepping out of a carriage at the gates.”

  “Smith and Egmont?”

  “Yes.” Luise turned to look at Hari. “I met with them this morning. They mentioned you.”

  “Manningheim is here?” Hari shrank back from the door.

  “Hari?”

  “I am all right,” Hari took a breath. “Truly,” he walked back to the door. “Let us go out and greet them.”

  “Should I go first?” Luise moved to open the door.

  “No,” Hari stepped past her. “If anything were to happen to you...”