Arcadia Snips and the Steamwork Consortium (24 page)

"Three."

Like water, Snips thought, clenching her teeth. Be like water. She slid the string over her hat, pulling it down and knotting it under her chin.

"Two."

She adjusted the parasol looped through her belt, making sure it wasn’t in the way.

"One."

"Soar," she whispered, rushing out in a sprint; before her was the most complicated obstacle course she had ever beheld. It made her days of leaping among the vendors and carts of the Rookery look like child's play. Everywhere she looked, there was a sharp edge to catch her—a rusty hook to snag her. She steeled herself and dove forward, hands reaching out for hard surfaces to latch onto.

She heard the thunder-crack of a rifle; something popped behind her. But she was no longer paying attention to
him
, only the world around her. Like a mad acrobat, she leapt and cavorted among buried ovens and the rusty husks of long-broken bathtubs.

She kicked off a shattered cabinet, rolled up and sprang from a bed frame, and ducked between two slabs of concrete arranged in pillars.

Another rifle-shot sounded out somewhere behind her; she vaulted up to one pillar, kicked off it with her foot, then kicked off the next. By then, she was high enough to catch the top of the column with the edge of her fingers. She dragged herself up and leapt into the air, descending down for the next pile.

Directly below and in front of her was the top of the assassin's little house. And sitting on its roof was William, eyes wide, mouth gagged—tied down to a chair.

Snips leapt and landed in front of him, pulling the umbrella out with one hand. Opening it with a snap in hopes that it would ward off the next shot, she darted up to snatch the gag out of William's mouth.

"It's a trap!" he screamed.

It was only then that Snips noticed the abundance of small glass spheres placed in a weighted net beneath the chair. Each one contained two chemicals, separated by a thin wafer of metal; each had an odd looking pin. And tied to each pin was a length of string, which bundled together into a single metal wire that extended from beneath the chair to the distant perch from which the rifle shots were coming...

The metal wire drew back with a snap. At once, every pin was drawn free. The chemicals mixed and fermented into an array of brilliant colors.

"Bloody hell," Snips said.

~*~

The assassin smiled.

He set the rifle aside and rose up from his perch, moving to circle around and make his way towards the smoldering slag where his house had once stood. There remained only one final task; to collect whatever remained of Snips' body and turn it in for his reward.

But as he approached the smoking ruin, he could not help but notice that there was a distinct lack of gruesome body-parts decorating the ground. He glanced high and low, frowning. Had he used too many explosives? He had wanted to make sure, of course; could her remains have been disintegrated?

Something clunked behind him. He turned around, instinctively drawing his pistol—but what he saw left him too startled to pull the trigger.

Snips was floating down from above, clutching the umbrella in both arms, its S-shaped hook jammed underneath the back of William’s chair. The boy was currently unconscious, but Snips was very much awake, and staring straight at the assassin.

Her hat was missing.

Regaining his composure, he lifted his gun to fire just as she touched ground. She managed to bring the parasol down to deflect the shot, then disappeared with William and the chair beneath a mound of rusty metal. The assassin cursed, stepping back to take measure of the situation.

"Lucky little bugger," he said aloud, addressing Snips. "By the way, do you mind if I call you Miss Arcadia Arcanum?"

Silence greeted him. The assassin smiled.

"Oh, yes, did I forget to mention that I know all about your little secret? The missing scion of the Arcanum estate. Daughter of the great genius, Nigel Arcanum." He crept forward, gun in hand.

"So why did you run away from home, hm? Didn't daddy give you enough love?"

Almost there. He leveled the gun towards one side of the mound expectantly, bending his knees and tensing his legs.

Something leapt out the left side of the mound; the assassin had already swiveled and fired before he realized it was just the umbrella. The girl darted out from the opposite side with a speed that took him by surprise, swinging her crowbar around like a jackhammer. It cracked hard against the assassin's forearm, forcing him to drop the pistol.

He spat out a series of curses and darted back, nursing the injured limb. He quickly reached for his second pistol, but before he could even slip it out of his holster, Snips was wearing a smile.

"Oh,
you
," she said, eyes gleaming with recognition. "I remember you."

"Huh?"

Snips lifted her clenched fist to her mouth, rolled open several fingers, and proceeded to produce a single sound:

"
Quack
."

Jake 'The Beak' Montgomery shrieked like a little girl and started to fire.

~*~

William’s recollection of the previous few minutes was groggy at best. Despite this, he was gradually becoming aware of his surroundings. He realized that he was propped up against a wall of rusty bedpans and broken cabinets, listening to the sound of wild gunshots and screaming.

"You!" The assassin shouted somewhere behind him. "It was you! Do you have any idea how long I had to go to
therapy

—"

The chair he had been sitting in had snapped nearly in half; it was a simple matter to slip free of his bindings. He crept around the mound, trying to piece together what was going on. Snips was currently struggling arm-in-arm with the assassin who had captured her previously, a gun held between them; shot after shot flew off into the air.

"Oh, shove it," Snips said, violently head-butting the man in the temple. The second gun tumbled from his grip and into the burning slag nearby.

"I'm going to mount your skull on my wall, you snarky little twit," he hissed.

William caught sight of the pistol that the assassin had previously dropped. He plucked it up, testing its weight in his hand and raising it up to take aim. Still dazed from the concussive force of the explosion, he walked towards the struggling pair.

"William!" Snips cried at the sight of the mathematician.

"Get back—"

The assassin used the moment of distraction to slam his elbow into Snips' stomach and send the thief reeling to the ground.

At once, he turned and sprang towards William, murder shining in his eyes.

William pulled the trigger.

It refused to budge.

"Typical," the assassin said. He chopped his hand across William's throat; the boy gasped for air as he crumpled to the ground. The gun was plucked from his limp hands and brought to bear on Snips.

Except she was already flying like an arrow, slamming headfirst into the assassin’s chest. The gun fell from his hand as he stumbled back, teetering at the side of the mountain. He waved his arms for balance, looking at Snips with wide-eyed shock.

Snips plucked the large revolver from the ground and pulled the trigger in a single, fluid motion.

The bullet darted past the assassin's face, skipping across his left eye; he cried out in anguish as he slapped his hand over the wounded socket. His balance lost, the assassin fell—tumbling tumbling along the side of the mountain. Trap after trap went off, leading to an avalanche of rock and metal.

~*~

~*~

"You started a war," Jeremiah said.

"Extraordinary problems require extraordinary answers."

"You started a war," Jeremiah repeated, stepping forward.

"You used your contacts throughout the Society—throughout the whole damn city—and you started a goddamn war."

"Only a small one, Jeremiah."

"Was that supposed to be a joke? Am I supposed to be laughing?" Jeremiah asked. "Blood will be spilled, Nigel. Over nothing more than a boundary on someone else's map. People will die because of this."

"I fail to see the significance. People die every day," Nigel said. "And it's certainly not as if our country could lose this little conflict."

"That's not the bloody point, and you know it!"

"Really, Jeremiah, you need to consider the broader picture," Nigel told him. "This war will help release some of the pressure—help reduce the severity of the war to come. It may even delay it," he added, "buying us precious time to reconsider our method of attack."

"We can't stop it," Jeremiah said. "Any attempt to do so will only make it worse."

"Obviously, this minor scuffle will not do so. But I refuse to believe that stopping the Great War is impossible," Nigel said. "A decade ago, if I had told you that it was feasible to replace a heart with a machine, you would have called me mad. Do not tell me what can and cannot be done. With determination and genius, anything is possible."

Jeremiah stiffened. "If it weren't for what you did for my boy, Nigel, I swear I'd—"

"What? Turn me into the authorities?" Nigel asked. "On what grounds? I've done nothing but send letters to a few public officials. Or perhaps you'd release information concerning my little social club? Tell the world how it's all a sham? No one of importance would believe you, and the only way to convince them would be to reveal the existence of our probability engine. Which would leave it in the hands of men far more capable of evil."

"Neither Abigail nor I will allow you to use the engine anymore," Jeremiah pointed out. "We won't submit any more data for it. We're both through with it."

"Yes, yes; it doesn't matter. I no longer need your help,"

Nigel said. "I've learned how to program the original engine myself."

"We'll stop you."

"How? And more importantly, why? You and Abigail made it clear that you are unwilling to do what is necessary to prevent the Great War. I am. I shall take the burden, Jeremiah, and I will bare the consequences. Alone."

"You're insane," Jeremiah said.

"I'm a moral pragmatist, Jeremiah. A few thousand lives are of less value than a few million lives. Can you not see the simplicity of it? One man's life now is not worth a hundred tomorrow."

"Morality is not a matter of simple arithmetic, Nigel!"

"And why not?"

"Because it's murder!" Jeremiah replied. "It's villainy!"

"In an era such as ours," Nigel said, "one must sometimes play the villain to remain a gentleman."

~*~

The probability engine growled angrily beneath the Steamwork as Abigail fed the last equations into it. As it reached the end of the problem's thread, the dials began to spin wildly out of control; a valve hissed inside the machine as it began to choke on the results.

Something gave. A belt snapped; a gear popped. Abigail shut the engine off, leaving it to splutter with impotence.

"He's sabotaged the engine," Abigail said, voice grim. "It's nothing more than an overglorified adding machine, now. Bloody brilliant, really."

"How?" Jeremiah asked. "No one works with it but us. The vault is locked—no one else can get in. I don't understand how he could—"

"By using his engine," she said. "He set a chain of events in motion that lead to our engine failing to function. But for an effect that specific, he must have been planning this for some time. For a very long time," she added. "Perhaps ever since we realized that the war was coming."

"If he's willing to use the engine to sabotage us," Jeremiah began, shuddering. "The things that one could accomplish with a machine like this—"

"Once we stop him, we should destroy our own," Abigail said. "Back then, we thought it was too much power for one man.

We were wrong; it's too much power for any number of men."

"If only we knew what he intended."

"He intends to create a disaster powerful enough to stop the coming war," Abigail stated flatly.

"But how?"

"That I do not know. But it would be best for us to keep William away. He is safe with his grandmother, for now."

"Wait—back then, when Nigel asked you how to stop the war. What were the possibilities you told him?"

"A nation collapsing," she said. "Or perhaps a city disappearing overnight—Jeremiah? Is something wrong?"

Jeremiah's face had gone stark white. "I hadn't even considered it at the time. Such forethought! Such horrible, murderous forethought!"

"What? What is it, Jeremiah?"

"When we replaced William's heart," Jeremiah said. "The only way to power the machine was with my mother's invention—

the radium generator. We disassembled it, and I explained its operation to Nigel—some time afterward, I noticed that the blueprints and several key parts that had been left over were missing. I thought nothing of it at the time, but—my God!"

Abigail's jaw dropped. "He wouldn't—he couldn't—"

"An entire city," Jeremiah said. "Gone, overnight."

"Tens of thousands dead—"

"To save hundreds of thousands more," Jeremiah finished.

"We must find him. We must stop him before it is too late."

~*~

The device resembled a boiler more than a bomb; pipes and valves protruded from every inch of it, keeping tabs on the reaction that struggled to escape from deep within its belly. Nigel checked the readings a third time, nodding in approval.

"Nigel."

He turned; several of the society's initiates stood around Abigail, watching her warily. One of them opened his mouth to explain her presence here in the center of the chapter house— despite Nigel's very specific instructions that he was not to be disturbed—but Nigel dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

"Madame," Nigel spoke, bowing. "I wish I could say I was surprised. Is Jeremiah with you?"

"I only have one question," she said, her eyes like steel.

"What you did to William—was it part of your plan? Was it unnecessary?"

"No," Nigel told her. "It was merely fortunate coincidence."