Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) (19 page)

XXXIII

REFUGIO

Sabrina stood in a dark room lit only by one lantern. Shafts of sunlight filtered through gaps in the rickety wooden plank ceiling, the same gaps that poured water when it rained. The space was full of crates, some opened, some nailed shut, the dirt floor littered with bits of packing hay. Outside in the filthy street the shopkeepers haggled with customers, donkeys brayed, and children shrieked with laughter. Sabrina heard Sato, the neighboring cobbler, arguing with his wife, their voices barking through the paper-thin walls. The smell of the peppered fish-head soup boiling in the pots of the Kaminski’s leaked in from the other side—the Kaminskis always had their big meal at noon and it was always fish-head soup and black bread.

There was so little privacy in the slums of Refugio.

Sabrina clenched her teeth and blocked it all out, blocked out everything but the target in front of her, a crude bull’s-eye she’d painted on a wooden pillar. In her hand she weighed her knife, the leather-bound surface of its handle, the balance of its blade. She stepped forward and whipped her arm at the target, releasing the knife in a spinning whirl. The knife struck the target center and stuck there.

Sabrina walked to the post and yanked the knife free. Two swords, bonecutters far too expensive for a poor spice seller and his twelve-year-old daughter to possess even as pretenders, hung on the wall, one of them two inches shorter than the other.

“Sabrina,” Vadim said, poking his head around the doorway leading to the shop. “The Master needs your help.” Vadim was nineteen years of age but cursed with the appearance and thin build of a fifteen-year-old boy; he was the fifth son of the Refugio harbormaster and his apprenticeship under Marter was part of a black market trading agreement. It was obvious, however, that Vadim preferred the get-rich-quick schemes of the street hawkers to the slow plod of a semi-honest living. Easygoing on the surface, Vadim never seemed to mind when Marter couldn’t pay him on time but he also had a greedy streak—Sabrina knew that he coveted both the shop and her, though he would never admit such jealousy. He also had a damaged right arm, one which he always kept sleeved, and he did his fine work and handwriting with his left hand. His normally placid face was tight this afternoon, his eyes bright and darting; he was nervous and Sabrina didn’t like it. He was up to something.

Sabrina nodded, sheathing the knife into a belt hidden under her tunic. She checked herself in a mirror, tucking her black-dyed hair under her bowler hat before she stepped into the shop.

Marter, a tall, thin man with a balding head, smiled at Sabrina. In front of Marter stood a portly gentlemen of Asian descent who wanted to look wealthy—his silk cravat and amber-topped walking stick aimed to make that impression—but the elite didn’t shop in the Refugio slums. The Asian man was most likely a userer or a high-end criminal.

“Dear, please bring me the new shipment of saffron,” Marter asked.

“I want the pure Oriental spice,” the Asian man grumbled, shoving aside a set of display samplers. “No salt-cut garbage cooked up by the Russians. But if you don’t have saffron I’ll take turmeric.”

“Pure oriental saffron is expensive,” Marter said gently.

The portly man huffed. “Does it look like money is a concern for me? I have a forgotten wedding anniversary and an angry wife on my hands. Show me the good stuff.”

Marter smiled at Sabrina. “Get the Yokuni, then.”

“Yes, father,” Sabrina replied, ducking into the back room. Marter was not her real father but rather a sort of step-father. He’d been the family tutor at the Crystal Palace and he’d carried Sabrina out of the city on the night of Isambard’s purge. After six months of constant running they’d ended up settling in the trader port of Refugio, a backwater town serving the hinterlands of the Spartak Territory. Refugio had a strange Asiatic-Russian feel to it, in its culture and its people, and it was a rough place.

Marter and Sabrina had lived in Refugio for three years. It offered a life of hard work and always looking over one’s shoulder. Marter paid half-pennies to the local street urchins, with their eyes and ears always attuned to the narrow, crowded lanes which passed for streets in the slums, to be on the lookout for any authority figures. Refugio had very little by way of local government beyond the organized gangs which controlled specific zones and ran extortion rackets for merchant
protection
.

Danger never caused Marter to pause. He’d been a soldier—an officer of the Interior Ministry—before he turned his attention to tutoring, though few traces of his military career were noticeable outside of the erectness of his bearing. In the years since the purge he’d taught Sabrina the arts of self-defense and killing with firearms, swords, daggers, rocks and her bare hands. In her soldier’s education Marter never relented, whether the classroom was a barn in the forests of the Palisades or the dingy back room of their Refugio spice shop. Marter’s lessons were serious business and Sabrina bore plenty of little scars on her forearms and fingers to prove it.

Marter was ever the protector, ever the provider, and he became well invested in the Refugio underworld though it was a side of his operation he worked hard to conceal from Sabrina. If days passed without customers and they got hungrier and hungrier, she could sense a growing rage in him even though he tried to hide it. In the difficult times Marter would put on his cloak and vanish, sometimes for one night, sometimes for a few days, but every time he returned he had money or food or both.

Where the treasures came from, Sabrina never asked, and Marter never told her.

Sabrina located a small crate and carried it out to the counter. Marter opened the lid to reveal a dozen glass vials filled with orange saffron and sealed with black wax, nestled amidst packing wraps. Sabrina remembered eating food spiced with the metallic hay-tasting saffron off of ceramic plates when she had been a small child inside Founders City. Now she ate gruel and questionable meats out of a wooden bowl.

“How many vials do you wish to purchase?” Marter had asked. They’d paid a small fortune—the last stack of coins in the reserve tin can they kept hidden under the floorboards—on the black market for the case of saffron, surely lifted by sea pirates out of the hold of some unfortunate Oriental Compact trader. It would be nice to turn a profit and have some money, perhaps even to buy a chicken for dinner.

The Asian man lifted a vial to the light and grimaced at the orange powder. “This is one dozen?” he grunted.

“One dozen,” Marter replied. “Twenty-two apiece or two hundred for the set.”

The Asian man had plunked the vial on the counter. “If this was purple crocus, even red, I would find the price acceptable. But surely you can’t expect much for this weak chaff. I’ll pay half that.”

“The price is the price, good sir,” Marter said pleasantly. “And it is a very good price for orange.”

“One hundred or I walk out of here,” the customer said.

“Fare thee well, then,” Marter replied.

The Asian man glared at Marter and then at Sabrina and then back to Marter. “This is unfair, for I have given you too much information,” he huffed. “I slipped up in announcing my anniversary.”

“Would you like these wrapped?” Marter asked.

“What would that cost me?” the Asian man sighed, digging in his pocket for his purse. “No.”

“Vadim, watch the street,” Marter said.

“Yes,” Vadim said, hurrying to the shop entranceway. It was always good to keep an eye out when coins exchanged hands, for the shysters, the rampmen, and the pistol-toting thieves always seemed to be able to sniff out money on the table, and they hit hard. Marter was careful but he also kept two loaded pistols under the counter.

The Asian man counted out his money—Founders coins, which were the best currency—and handed them to Marter.

“Thank you for your patronage, kind sir,” Marter said.

“Harrumph,” the Asian man replied and hurried out into the busy lane, lugging his little crate.

Marter turned to Sabrina and smiled. “Here, little one, this is good for us. We can keep improving our stock.”

“May I go to the sweet shop?” Sabrina asked.

Marter laughed, pressing a silver coin into Sabrina’s hand. “Yes. One shilling for the sweet shop.”

“Thank you, father!” Sabrina said. Marter insisted that they call each other father and daughter ever since they had left Founders City. In Refugio they were known as Leonid and Sabrina Serafim. Sabrina was a fairly common name, especially in the north, so Marter had seen no harm in her keeping it, but the surname of Fawkes was never to be breathed again.

“Master Serafim!” the voice of a young boy cracked, high and sharp, from the doorway. The hair stood up on the back of Sabrina’s neck. “Master Serafim!” The boy was Gaspar, a street urchin whose clothes were dirty and tattered but he was well fed because he was an excellent pickpocket.

“Gaspar—what is it?” Marter asked.

“Men are coming this way,” Gaspar said. “Black cloaks and pistols.”

“How do you know they are for us?” Marter asked.

“Vadim met them at the intersection,” Gaspar answered, turning to peer into the street. “He’s leading them here.”

“Vadim,” Sabrina snarled under her breath. She should have known better. She should have known.

“Get out of here!” Marter shouted to Gaspar, then spun to Sabrina. “Get in the tunnel.”

“Not without you,” Sabrina replied, her fright making her words snap.

Marter snatched her by the shoulders. It was the first time she’d ever seen him angry, the first time he’d ever gripped her roughly. “Go!”

Sabrina obeyed. She scurried into the back room, shoving aside a wicker table and a rug to expose a trapdoor.

“Good afternoon, dear sirs,” Marter said loudly in the shop. “What can I find for you today?”

Sabrina hauled the heavy trapdoor open and paused. She crawled to a gap in the wall where, with the right side of her face pressed against the rough wood, she could see through into the shop. Marter’s back was to her; his right hand resting on one of the pistols hidden under the counter.

Five people stood in the shop, their dark forms blocking out the noise and light from the street. Vadim was with them, off to one side, looking scared. The leading man in a dark leather hat and overcoat grinned, a gap-toothed smile through his scattershot black beard, his blazing blue eyes standing out from his dirty face; he was a mercenary from the looks of the irregular knives and pistols jammed in his bandoliers. The mercenary stepped aside to allow a tall, strawberry-haired woman and two equally tall blond-haired men to advance in front of him, soldierly in their bearing, wearing black airman clothes and black cloaks, all gripping pistols.

“This would be your man, I believe?” the mercenary announced to the strawberry-blond woman.

“Yes, it’s him,” she answered without taking her eyes off Marter. “You’ve earned your reward, Mr. Hackett.”

“Ah, Lieutenant Tunney,” Marter said, a tense strain in his voice. “What brings you to my little shop? Spartak is awfully far afield for a Founders interior agent and her steampipers.”

“My rank is captain now, Marter, you filthy yellowjacket,” Tunney answered. “Where is the girl?”

“Long dead, I’m afraid,” Marter said. “Carbuncle plague. Very sad.”

Tunney’s eyes narrowed. “Put your right hand on the countertop, Marter.” Tunney and her two steampipers raised their pistols. A firing squad.

Hackett laughed.

Sabrina gasped. Marter’s head shifted slightly, a barely perceptible jerk back towards her. He’d heard her. They had heard her.

“Dead, eh?” Tunney roared.

“Run!” Marter shouted, whipping his pistol up.

The three Founders’ pistols fired as one.

Hot blood hit Sabrina’s cheek and she jerked back, her legs knocking the trapdoor shut with a resounding thud. There was no time to pull it up again. Already she’d spun to her feet and was on the run, bolting out of the box-crowded storeroom and through the tiny kitchen into the sleeping quarters. Her few personal possessions rested in a metal box under her bed—but there was no time to get it.

In the rear corridor Sabrina snatched a kerosene lamp from its hook and hurled it back into the kitchen. The glass shattered, the spraying fuel bursting into flames. She hurled herself at the back door, slamming into it and staggering backwards. The lock. The damned door was always locked.

Sabrina threw the bolt and kicked the door open, charging into the cold blue light of the narrow alleyway. She croaked for breath—the blow against the door seemed to have collapsed her lungs—but breathing was less important than escaping now. She raced along the gap between the tar-paper shacks and wooden buildings, a space hardly wider than the breadth of her shoulders. Her lungs opened up just as she thought she might faint, her chest expanding in one painful heave. She charged ahead, head low, her boots splashing in the filthy, steaming, slushy black sewage streaming down a central channel, floating with dead rats and other, less-sanitary things. She could smell nothing but urine.

She heard the splashes of boots coming after her.

Dogs barked on Sabrina’s left, their fangs snapping in a two-inch gap between the ground and the bottom of a corrugated tin wall. Her breath fired white bolts in front of her face and she knew she was stupid because the Founders would have stationed someone at the other end of the alley. She was stupid not to have flung herself into the escape tunnel, the tunnel Marter and Vadim had secretly dug to emerge behind a garbage pile on the other side of the Kaminski’s hovel thirty feet away.