Karen Memory (34 page)

“Pity about your face,” he said. “You were lovely.”

And a lot of good it did me.
His words still smarted, though I determined to do everything possible to keep him from noticing. I hoped he’d think my stung look was just pain. Christ knows I had plenty of it.

Besides, I never met more than one man in a hundred who was ever nice to a whore except out of pity or because he wanted something. Standish had the charm, sure, and I knew Priya said he was kind, by the standards of them as work for Bantle. But he wasn’t entirely enticing me to let my guard down.

“Where’s Priya?” I asked. I’d thought about keeping mum, not letting on that I cared. But who would I think I was fooling?

“I’m going to see her next. I’ll let her know you were asking after her.” He smiled. “I convinced Peter not to just kill both of you outright, you know. You owe me, Miss Memery.”

Ah, there it was. I could do something for him. “What do you want?”

“Right now, I want you to rest and get your strength up,” he said.

Well, that could sound as ominous as I wanted to make it.“I’ll send someone with food presently.”

That, however, couldn’t sound ominous. My stomach rumbled, and I winced. I didn’t want to admit to human weakness in front of any of Bantle’s men.

At least I managed not to say,
Thank you
.

*   *   *

Standish took the bucket with him, and pretty soon the room only smelled faintly of vomit. I guess the air circulation worked pretty good, if he was telling the truth and we was in a submersible boat. In any case, it weren’t pitching up and down with the waves the way a boat on the surface would.

The food came. The seaman who brought it was a white man, with high cheekbones and dark eyes. I tried talking to him, but he just shook his head and muttered, “No English,” with a heavy accent. I might could have tried to brain him with the bowl, but then where would I go? Besides, there was another one in the corridor outside.

It weren’t anything I’d eaten before—some kind of gritty tan grain, boiled, with turnips and mushrooms in it and a scrambled egg. I wondered if this were the sort of food Priya had grown up with. From her descriptions, I had expected more spices.

Unfamiliar or not, I ate it and didn’t fuss. I figured if they wanted me dead they wouldn’t waste poison when they could just drown me. And now that my belly had settled from the ether or the chloroform or whatever they’d used, I was ravenous.

I figured that since Standish hadn’t mentioned Merry Lee or Marshal Reeves that maybe meant they’d gotten away clean. Which meant they was looking for us. Which meant I had all the reason in the world to stay alive and stay strong.

After I ate, I slept on that narrow table again, wishing I was wearing girl clothes. I could have used my top layer of skirts as a blanket, if I had any. And to cover my eyes from the glare of that awful, hissing electric light.

I was awakened by a terrible lurching and a horrible series of thuds that reverberated through the whole hull. I clutched the edges of the table to keep from being pitched bodily to the floor.

Well, of course I thought of Mr. Verne again and his
Nautilus
. Which was more like a narwhal, when it come right down to it—the
Nautilus
had a screw on its nose, a sort of augur that it used to rip open the bellies of enemy ships so they would founder and sink.

Maybe this Nemo had built his ship to be like the
Nautilus
in addition to taking the captain’s name. Or maybe Mr. Verne has somehow heard about this Nemo and his submersible and put them into his book wholesale.

I hoped not.

I paced the room then, tried the door, tried to climb up to the ventilation shaft. I scrambled up, but it was too narrow for my shoulders. And I didn’t hear anything down it but the deep hum of machines.

So I laid my head back down on my arms, then, 100 percent certain that I no longer knew what to think, and I hoped like hell Merry and the Marshal would come for us quick.

*   *   *

Some time went by. Having no clock and no light but the electric arc, I’d be hard-pressed to say how much time, except I was getting that desperate for a toilet. And that thirsty, too, because bodies is perverse and a trial. My face had settled into a sharp kind of itching, and I spent most of my time trying not to pick and peel at it.

I discovered I could use the polished steel of the table as a sort of clumsy mirror, and when I poked my face in it I could tell that those soft white bulges along my jaw was blisters. I didn’t look forward to when they popped and peeled and left raw red behind ’em, so I tried not to poke at ’em too much. Anybody who’s ever had a blister can tell you how well that went.

In what might of been the morning, the man with the dark eyes and no English brought me a bucket, a cup of water, and another bowl of mush. He had the decency to turn his back while I used the bucket, too, though at that point I wouldn’t of thought much of dropping my trousers and peeing on his foot. If I could aim like a boy, I might of even tried it.

I drank the water and ate the mush, and he took the things away again. I commenced to my non-sleep pastime, which was pacing in circles around the table, twiddling my thumbs.

Thumb twiddling is harder than it looks, it turns out. Unless you go pretty slow, your thumbs have a tendency to brush together. But I got pretty good at it after what I figure was an hour or so.

Some more time later, Horaz Standish came back in.

His timing was good enough to make me wonder if there were spyholes in the walls, or those half-silvered mirrors you get in some whorehouses so people can spy on the clientele. Madame doesn’t hold with such chicanery, but I know there’s them that do.

I’d worn myself to a frazzle with the pacing, but every time I sat still for more than a moment the anxiousness started spinning around in me like an unhinged gyroscope until I felt like bits was going to start flinging off me in all directions. So even though I’d been watching the door like a mouse in front of a cathole, I still jumped half out of my skin when it opened.

He came in all mild, like before. But what I didn’t like was that he had two big seamen with him, dressed like they fell out of a burlesque about the Happy Sailor, white shirts and bulging arms and little blue neckerchiefs and all.

They didn’t look happy, though. Their hair was cropped off into brown-blond bristles. One had a cauliflower ear and a low forehead. The other was balding at the temples and had a flattened nose and was missing a couple of fingers. Neither one of ’em looked as if they was from India.

I turned to face them. At least the pacing had dried off the parts of my clothes that had still been wet and clammy when I woke up. It’s one way to keep warm. And it ain’t too cozy in a submersible.

In my head, when I was thinking about this moment, I’d rehearsed all sorts of clever things I might say. I’d wracked my brains, trying to come up with some bit of badinage worthy of Calamity Jane. But I looked Horatio Standish in the eye, and all that came out was, “Can I be of some assistance to you gentlemen?”

“These aren’t gentlemen,” Standish said. “They’re Cossacks.”

Then he did something that purely blindsided me, though looking back now, I can’t tell you that I know why I didn’t see it coming. It was just that he was so polite, even working for Bantle. And in my defense, I was so busy being surprised by my realization that this was a
Russian
submersible, and that whoever Bantle was working for was a
Russian
agent, I didn’t have much thinking space left over to be spotting other stuff in advance.

Horaz Standish pulled a riding crop out of his boot and slashed me once hard across the burned cheek with it.

Reader, I ain’t never felt a thing that hurt like that before.

I rocked over sideways and then went down on my knees. Or would of done, except the table caught me across the floating ribs and the next thing I knew I was on the floor on my back, a cramp in my midsection I couldn’t breathe around, and sticky-slick heat welling over the fingers I had clutched to my face. I stared up at Standish and his thugs, wondering if I was going to die of not being able to inhale.

Standish eyed the whip thoughtfully, gave it a snap as if he was shaking it off, and slid it back into his boot. “That’s just so you have something to think about,” he said. “For later.”

He turned and said something in what I assumed was Russian that might of been, “Now help her up, lads.”

So they did, and they were the only reason I stayed standing, because when they pulled me to my feet the world went black around the edges and nausea cramped me. I still couldn’t breathe, and the idea of vomiting when I couldn’t pull a breath in was so scary I started to yank against the sailors’ grip. But I couldn’t manage much more than a kitten thrash, and at least kittens have claws.

One of the sailors thumped me on the back—hard—and somehow that started me up breathing again. Released the cramp or something. The air came in with a whoosh and went right back out again on a scream. I ain’t never been much of a screamer—but for that incident right then I made an exception. I gave another yank against the sailors, but I might as well have been pulling at iron bars set in stone. They were big, and as hard as a plowhorse’s haunches.

I kicked at Standish, since they had my arms and all. He caught the ankle and gave it a fond squeeze before letting go of me again.“Don’t worry, Miss Memery. We’ll have plenty of time together later. Why do you think I argued so hard to keep you and your friend alive?”

He touched my bruised and burned and split-open cheek, and I tell you true—though I didn’t mean to, I shivered. I thought of the girl in the alley, tossed in with the trash. I thought about Priya saying that things were always better when Standish was in town but that he traveled a lot. Because I realized something—something I should have comprehended as soon as he pulled that crop out of his boot. The Devil can quote scripture, after all. And monsters can say “please” and “thank you” same as any mother’s son.

“How did you like the Indian Territory?” I asked. “Lose a cuff link there?”

His eyes narrowed. I might of regretted my bravado if it hadn’t of been the only thing keeping me on my feet. I thought about this barn cat Da used to have that run off a brown bear once out of pure cussedness, and I made up my mind to be like her. Then he smiled and pulled out his crop again and tapped me lightly on the tip of the nose with it.

I flinched, all right. But then I made myself pick my chin up and smile right back at him.

“Oh,” he said. “I’m going to like breaking you.”

*   *   *

I had expected a long walk, sort of tromping through endless corridors. Instead it was just a few yards, and we did it in a sort of hunched-over shuffle because the corridors was that narrow and short. It was uncomfortable enough for me. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for Ivan and Boris, the two Russian sides of beef. But in all honesty, I didn’t mind seeing them suffer.

That short walk seemed long enough, with me dwelling on what Standish had said about breaking, and me thinking about my da and Priya and the ones you can’t break. I didn’t think I was one of those. But I wondered if I could make myself be, if I knew that no matter what he was going to kill me anyway.

Either Ivan or Boris stepped forward to open a hatch, and the other one guided me through it by my elbows. I’d expected … some sort of control room, I guessed. A bridge, right out of the illustrations for Monsieur Verne’s book. But it was just a narrow room with a long table in it, and a lingering smell of onions and sour cream.

My stomach growled. Da would say that nothing in the history of ever has upset my appetite. And then he’d point out that Chinese recorded history is three thousand years long.

Endure this,
I thought.
And you’ll be seeing him soon. And Mama, too.

Some would say a whore don’t have no expectation of Heaven. I’d say, if she gives value for cash, she’s got a better shot at God’s blessing than your average banker.

Jesus loved Mary Magdalene. He kicked over tables when He met a moneylender.

Well, that made me feel so much immeasurably better about everything that I was just about ready to trust to Providence and commend my soul into the hands of the Almighty—because whatever the preachers say, I know and you know that the flesh ain’t His concern and He don’t take no truck with what befalls it—when the door at the far end of the room opened up and another set of Boris and Ivan so like my own I could only tell ’em apart by hairline walked in, escorting Priya.

And it occurred to me that Da and Mama might be waiting for me … but whatever happened to Priya, if her religion was as right as mine, she was coming around for another cycle on her great wheel of being and me, I was going to Heaven or maybe Hell.

Well, dammit. If I had any say in the matter, I wasn’t going anywhere without a chance at a good long life with Priya first.

She looked up at me, and even across the room I saw her mouth tighten. At least she didn’t seem to be any more banged up than when I had saw her last.

I resolved then and there to do what it took to keep Horatio Standish’s affections to myself for as long as possible. I wondered if I knew what I was getting into. Thinking about that poor girl cut to ribbons in the trash, I decided I probably had no idea.

I figured Standish must have a purpose for letting Priya and me see each other, so I kept my face as blank as I could. She stared at me hard, then let her gaze drop to her feet.

Boris and Ivan Mark Two brought Priya down to my end of the table. We stood side by side, not touching or talking or even acknowledging each other’s existence, though it was all I could do not to lean toward her and soak up her warmth through my skin. She made me stronger and better just standing there.

That door she’d come in through opened again, and this time the person who walked in looked like a captain. He wore a black wool coat, double-breasted with silver buttons. A high collar embroidered with silver bullion and scarlet edging lifted his chin. His cuffs were embroidered, too, and his epaulets were gold, with a design of an anchor topped by a two-headed, crowned eagle on each one.