The Hangman's Revolution (26 page)

In the heart of the ruckus, Malarkey grinned.

“Ha,” he said, and from his bent-over position he punched Vallicose once above the right knee, which turned her entire leg to rubber and collapsed her on the spot.

“Count yerself fortunate that I am pressed for time,” he said, then ducked into the crowd, sparing one second to kick the man Peeble square in the rear end, lifting him to his tippy-toes.

“There you go, rat,” he said, dearly wishing he could linger and watch that lippy oaf Peeble writhe in the particular agony brought on by a spot-on bum kick, but this day was not won by a long shot. Otto plucked his trampled shirt from underfoot, sighing at the scuffs mashed into its silk, then slipped through the busy throngs, following Riley’s footsteps toward the underground dock where dear Lunka was waiting in something called an amphibious craft.

Box had a sudden premonition that the cogs of his finely tooled machination were spinning apart, and he was surprised that his ordered brain would even accommodate such things as premonitions.

A premonition is simply a considered consequence. A possible consequence.

Nothing had changed, he decided. The Revolution was inevitable.

Can it fail? he wondered, scanning his mind for concrete stumbling blocks.

No, he decided. Malarkey and Savano are but two loose cannons in a forest of automatic barrels. They will shortly be dead, and I will chastise myself for such inefficiency of thought.

He held aloft the radio detonator.

I will wait forty more seconds for my artillery to mount their vehicles, then blow the wall.

First the queen would die, and then the politicians.

How could the past prevail against the future? Impossible.

Box counted down, visualizing his soldiers loading up, checking each other’s equipment, and so forth. Seeing in his mind’s eye Malarkey despairing the loss of his men and the utter failure of his plan.

Someone will casually shoot him as they pass, Box felt certain.

Forty,
said the voice in his head.

A pity some of his men would miss the execution, but sometimes strokes must be sacrificed for the good of the greater plan.

Time to change the world, thought Box. And he pressed the button.

Something exploded, but it wasn’t the wall. It was close, whatever it was, but it most definitely was not the wall, which remained resolutely intact. Box’s mind did not initially connect his pressing of the red button with the nearby explosion.

It is much more likely that the detonator is faulty and there has been some coincidental weapons malfunction in another chamber.

Then he heard the water and realized.

We are under attack.

If there was one thing all good magicians knew, it was how to be invisible. Or more accurately,
practically
invisible. Riley was not, in fact, wearing a cap at the moment, but even if he had been, it would be woven from Irish tweed and not the magical translucent threads of Athena’s cap of invisibility. Riley could clearly be seen when someone was looking directly at him. When they were not—if there was a distraction, for example—then he was practically invisible when he wished to be so.

When Witmeyer led Riley and Malarkey from their cell to the underground dock, they had passed the arch leading to the assembly room and overheard Box’s big troop rallying speech and seen Chevie dragged from the back room. A makeshift plan had been hurriedly cobbled together. There were three strands. Witmeyer would steal an amphibious vehicle. Malarkey would distract the crowds with a challenge, and Riley would steal the detonator.

Yes. Riley’s target had been the detonator—and Chevie, too, if he could manage it—but the detonator came first, or she would be blown to smithereens where she hung.

All three objectives were achieved. Malarkey took his licking in the name of queen and country. Witmeyer did not even need to steal the amphibian, as the keys were tossed to her by a trooper. And Riley crept with infinite patience across the chamber’s back wall and up the ramp, blending with the shadows until he managed to slide the receiver and detonator from the shaped charge and tuck them into his pocket. And according to the first rule of magic, which was misdirection, he retreated down the ramp with his body in the attitude of one going forward, so if spotted he would appear to be heading toward Chevie and not sliding past her.

Standing there mere inches from his unconscious friend, Riley realized that the animal Box had etherized her and so it would be impossible to rescue her at this juncture. All he could do was tuck his skeleton key into her fist in case she should wake up. To see her in such a helpless dangle caused Riley to flinch in shock, and it was this reflexive jerk that caught Box’s eye.

Riley realized that he had been detected, and he abandoned his stealth on the spot. He spun and ran for the doorway, hearing Box’s amplified voice rise above the general commotion.

“Stop him, you idiots! Stop the boy.”

Riley ran, thinking,
Chevron, oh Chevie. I have abandoned you
. And also,
No. I have deferred your death, for Box would be blowing you to hell presently were it not for me.

He raced on, wondering what time it was precisely.

Surely five. Surely.

And after five, how many minutes’ grace before Otto’s bribe to the pump-house master was down the drain?

It did him no good to think about that now, for there were men on his heels, men with longer legs than his.

Men were in his path, too. Ahead was an entire wedge-shaped squadron, double-timing it toward a yellow square painted on the ground. The squad leader was kneeling to examine a mortar tube and he registered Riley half a second before Riley’s foot took him in the teeth, scattering them like bowling pins. The leader’s gaping mouth acted as a boost, allowing Riley to step up and then launch himself over the heads of several confused foot soldiers. Riley could not help but laugh aloud at the unlikeliness of it all, and the giddiness of rushing adrenaline and danger converging from all quarters.

How many stars would need to align for this fantastical plan to succeed?

A galaxy of stars, surely
.

Impossible, surely.

For a moment Riley saw himself as though from above as he flew through the air. He saw himself extended from fingertip to tiptoe, his head thrown back, lips stretched in a smile; and his eyes sparkled, dashed if they didn’t, and he wondered was this a true vision or wishful thinking. Then a shock rattled his frame as he hit the ground, and he was back in his own head and running like the devil was on his trail. And if this was not precisely the case, then surely these men were the devil’s minions, for their intention was to set the whole country on the road to hell.

“To hell with all of
you
,” he called breathlessly, then, like a player in a stage farce, he was dodging through rows of characters all top-heavy with muscle and body armor. “The devil will turn on his own.”

It occurred to Riley that most of these men were making no attempt to stop him, no more than they would to swat a fly buzzing around their beer. Their missions were set, ingrained in their muscles from countless dry runs; and they followed them as they would a well-worn path.

What do they care about a running boy, Riley realized, when soon the entire capital would be fleeing from their guns?

But he was not ignored entirely. There was a determined posse dogging his footsteps, and Riley could imagine their grins as they herded their quarry deeper into the catacombs, where he would soon be dead-ended.

Perhaps not, thought Riley. Perhaps one chance in a million is enough.

A shot buzzed past his ear and burrowed into the wall, reminding Riley that he was clear of the soldiers now and could be fired upon, so he darted right into a low tunnel with a curved ceiling of bedrock, and water flowing in rivulets down the walls.

More shots cracked the stone at his feet and overhead, and Riley realized that the men were not aiming at his person. They were cat-and-mousing him for sport. He felt his breath burning in his chest and his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

I must be close, he thought. Please, God.

The tunnel opened to a larger chamber, which was half-full of crates that lay open, spilling straw from their bellies. Three walls were dark stone, but one was white and smooth.

Here, thought Riley. Here.

The light in this outlying chamber was low with just one orange blister on the ceiling casting a sunset glow on the pale wall, but it was enough if a person knew what he sought, which Riley did.

Smack bang in the center was an off-color ring with a telltale cone of drill dust on the floor below.

Riley thrust his hand into his pocket, wrapping his fingers around the detonator and radio receiver therein.

Perhaps I am too far away, he thought, and he offered up a quick prayer that it was not so.

No time for daintiness with men on his tail, so Riley poked the detonator into the plastique and twisted once.

If that ain’t it, then it ain’t it, and I keep running until fate throws me a bone.

But he knew that there would be no bone from fate. All his bones had been tossed already.

“That’s far enough, boyo,” said the head man in the posse group. “I got royals to kill.”

Riley did not stop or even slow. Either Box would press the button or he wouldn’t.

Riley ducked into the tunnel at the other end of the chamber and kept his feet a-racing.

“Press it!” he shouted aloud, as if he had gallons of breath to spare for yelling useless instructions. “Press it, Box!”

And, in the distant war chamber, Box did press the red button, sending a radio signal not to his own shaped charge as he expected, but to the cylinder of plastique that Riley and Malarkey had previously planted from the sewer side. The explosives blew a cart-sized hole in the reinforced wall, skewering the soldiers on Riley’s tail with steel rods, or braining them with lumps of concrete. And that would have been the whole of it had not Malarkey dropped a small fortune on the Camden pump-house manager earlier in the day to flush the sewers at five of the clock precisely. And not just the regular flush—the manager was to open the stopcocks to their limits and take himself off to the Bull and Bear Tavern for a night in his cups. The manager objected that this would near to empty the canal, and Malarkey assured him that it would do no such thing and added a fistful of sovereigns to his asking price.

I guess it won’t do no such thing,
the manager had said, swiping the coins into his poke.
And now that I comes to ponder it, I have a premonition of a mighty thirst coming on me about the teatime mark.

And even though the clocks had struck five a few minutes previously, there was still more than ample sewer flush water coming down the pipes to fill Box’s catacombs fuller than the manager’s stomach would be by closing time.

The reinforced wall had previously deflected the flood and flush torrents from invading the catacombs, but now, with the wall ruptured, the long-thwarted waters were finally allowed ingress, and they roared inside with all the eagerness of the Greek armies entering Troy.

Riley ran on, laughing. It was bordering on the incredible that Box should have scuppered his own plan, but there it was. First, pride; and then the fall.

And if I don’t lift up my own two feet, the water will scupper my plans for future breathing, too.

The blister lights overhead crackled and popped as the water invaded their electrics, and when the explosion noise cleared from his ear passages, Riley could hear shouts and roars of panicked men as they hurriedly abandoned their dreams of carnage and sought to save their own skins.

All will be forgotten now save survival.

Riley would have dearly loved to have the luxury of thinking about his own survival, but concerns about Chevie’s fate prevented him from concentrating solely on his own.

Perhaps she has freed herself with my skeleton key.

It depended on the strength of the ether Box had administered. Chevie could already be loose in the catacombs.

I pray that it is so, thought Riley. I hope and pray.

Riley was fleet of foot, but even youth cannot outrun the flow of water, especially when it has pressure behind it. Soon enough there was water at his ankles and then fizzing around his knees, and with the water came the rank smell of sewer that Riley now knew well but would never become accustomed to. Riley took to coughing while he ran, which was not a good blend of activities; and soon his run slowed until his cough played out, and he thought that one more hacking session like that would surely sink him.

Then, mercifully, the levels dropped as the claustrophobic tunnel widened to the expanse of loading bay and dock, which was crowded with soldiers attempting to make good their escape. These attempts were hampered by the fact that all the craft that had been seaworthy had been sunk except one, and Witmeyer stood on the prow fighting off any who would board. Otto Malarkey stood behind her, shaking his head in admiration, the Thunderbolt holding full sway over his emotions.

“Otto,” called Riley, “Chevie is still in there. We must find her.”

Malarkey caught Riley’s outstretched hand and swung him onto the deck of the amphibious craft.

“Ramlet. I am glad to see you. And chivalrous as I surely am, I would most times be overjoyed to add to mine own legend and search out the Injun maiden, but…”

Malarkey did not finish his sentence but instead cupped a hand over his ear and cocked his head to listen. Riley did likewise and soon heard a sound that grew loud enough to blot out the industry of men. The noise became huge and overpowering, stomping on the other senses, rendering insignificant their input.

It was the sound of a howling torrent approaching at great speed.

“Miss Chevron is upstream,” shouted Malarkey over the din. “And unless we be suicidal fish, we ain’t going upstream.”