Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) (26 page)

“Do I know you?” the old man mumbled, his lower lip quivering.

“Be quiet!” Buckle whispered harshly.

“What? No one quiets old Shadrack! The blackguards knocked out half my teeth, and still no one quiets old Shadrack! I sing. I sing!” Shadrack rattled his window bars, getting agitated and getting louder.

“Fine. Sure,” Buckle said quickly, soothingly. “Sing. Just stop jabbering.”

“The roaches in the mush—they speak and I listen,” Shadrack said. “And the clouds speak. Beautiful voices. But if your head is not in it, you lose them. They sink away, whispers in the hurly-burly.”

“Whispering is good. How about we whisper?” Buckle glanced down the corridor in the direction of the front anteroom. Sooner or later the guards were going to respond to their prisoner’s ravings.

Narrowing his lids over his bulbous eyes, Shadrack shot his arm out and pointed again. “You fear them, too. You do not belong here…you do not belong here!” He began to utter a low, tremulous howl.

“Hush!”

To Buckle’s surprise, Shadrack went silent. He slammed his face into the gap between the window bars, framed by his bony hands. “Are you here to save me? Are you here to rescue poor old Shadrack? Are you an angel?”

“Romulus!” Pluteus whispered from the darkness of an adjoining corridor twenty feet behind, where the entire assault team crouched in wait. “Move!”

Buckle looked at Shadrack. The old man’s face had gone soft, the eyes innocent and plaintive as a puppy’s. “Yes. I came to save you,” Buckle whispered. “But you have to be quiet, you hear me?”

Tears flowed down Shadrack’s face. His tense hands relaxed, the fingers shaking. “My son. Did my son send you?”

“Yes, Shadrack, he did.” Buckle had no choice but to lie. “Now be quiet.”

“My son…” Shadrack whispered, his eyes clouding over, suddenly lost in a dream.

Buckle started forward. He still had to cover fifty feet up the gently sloping entrance ramp before reaching the prison anteroom.

“Angels with guns!” Shadrack screamed at the top of his lungs. “You have saved me! You have saved old Shadrack! Angels with guns! I am free! I am free!”

Buckle felt like a sitting duck. He lowered his head and lengthened his stride. Behind him, the old Shadrack, face beet red, released a long, guttural, half-moose howl. Buckle forced himself to continue walking: nothing was wrong if he acted like nothing was wrong. He maintained an easy stride as he ascended the entrance ramp.

Just how had he gotten this job, again? Did not Sabrina simply hand him the kid’s hat? Come to think of it, he didn’t remember volunteering at all.

The entrance to the anteroom loomed ahead, just twenty paces away. Buckle saw the edges of wooden desks and a row of ornamental columns beyond. The front outer doors were tall, buttressed with metal skirts, and dominated the space.

The master of the watch stepped into view at the top of the ramp. She peered down the corridor with no sense of alarm, her arms crossed in front of her in the easy fashion of someone who stood around guarding things—things that were locked up and stationary. She was in her early thirties, pretty in a rough sort of way, her blonde hair bound up tightly under her black cap. The silver stripes on her uniform sleeves and her air of authority left no doubt that she was the one in charge. A large brass ring loaded with skeleton keys jingled at her belt, right beside a pistol sitting in a thick leather holster.

It was the pistol that concerned Buckle the most.

“Is old Shadrack having at you again, Mister Beck?” the master of the watch asked in a loud, husky, and somewhat amused voice.

Another voice came from the anteroom, from another jailer that Buckle could not see yet. “I say we let him take a stroll in the mustard and be done with his ravings,” the other guard shouted, then laughed.

Buckle shrugged, tugged at the brim of his hat and coughed, pressing his fist up to his mouth to hide the lower half of his face. He had to buy a little more time. A few more steps were all he needed to see how many people were in the anteroom. His aching feet started to go numb in the undersized boots, threatening to give out underneath him. His blood circulation was cut off from the knees down.

And old Shadrack, mad as a loon, continued howling.

“Mister Beck?” the master of the watch repeated, her tone turning quizzical and concerned.

Balthazar’s life hung in the balance, and everything was going wrong.

“Mister Beck!”

Time was up. Buckle yanked out his pistol and marched into the lair of the master of the watch.

THE FINAL ACT OF THE MASTER OF THE WATCH

W
ITH
B
UCKLE
’
S PISTOL MERE INCHES
from her face, the master of the watch backed up into the anteroom. Upon entering, Buckle sensed that the semicircular prison entrance chamber was far more elegant than he might have expected: the curved walls were coated with cream-colored plaster and lined with granite columns, each affixed with a flickering blue gas lamp. The domed ceiling overhead bore a beautiful painting of the red phoenix, while the massive wooden doors, ten feet high, weak gray sunlight spilling in around the edges, were gilded in metal etched with scenes of men toiling on an assembly line.

From a long, dark desk on the right, polished to a gleam under stacks of paper and a little iron cage where two yellow canaries resided, a lazy-faced guard of average height gaped in disbelief.

Buckle had two Crankshaft pistols stuffed into the back of his belt and, keeping his first pistol on the master of the watch, he drew another pistol to cover the second jailer. “Hands up,” Buckle ordered with the calmness of a man ready to kill. “On your feet with hands up.”

There was a fraction of a pause as the second jailer just stared at him, his dull eyes blinking.

“Do it!” Buckle repeated.

The second jailer’s hands flew straight up as he jumped to his feet, his droopy-lidded eyes now bright with fear. Buckle knew that he had nothing to worry about with this fellow. But the master of the watch was a different story. She had lifted her hands only slightly, not even up to her shoulders, and although Buckle had stopped, she was still moving, backing up in a slink, intentionally increasing the distance between them, eyeing him like an angry cat. She was going to be trouble.

“Move together. Quick, now,” Buckle ordered, nudging both of his pistols inward. He wanted to push the jailers together because there was too much space between them—he had to cock his head back and forth to watch them properly. He only had to keep them at bay for a few moments. Having seen Buckle pull his pistols, the Ballblasters would surely be hurrying up the ramp behind.

But the master of the watch sensed the nature of her predicament. If she was going to resist, her only opportunity was now. Buckle glared at her over the muzzle of his pistol. She had been warned.

The lazy jailer, hands thrust so high they threatened to pull his arms out of the sockets, sidled to his right as requested, closing the gap between him and the master of the watch. Buckle flicked his eyes at the man, and at that instant, in his peripheral vision, he saw the master of the watch make a sudden movement.

“Hold!” Buckle yelled, snapping his eyes back on her. She paused, still, giving him a defiant grin. Her right hand was on her pistol butt. Her left hand was raised, her fingers a mere inch from the silver tassel of a cord dangling from a hole in the ceiling.

The alarm bell.

“Don’t do it,” Buckle said. His voice came out raspy—damned weak. He knew that she thought she could see hesitation in his eyes, but she was mistaken: it wasn’t hesitation, but empathy. Buckle did not want to shoot her.

“You dare…” the master of the watch said, her voice strong and indignant, straightening her back.

“I dare,” Buckle answered. Buckle could read her blue eyes and in what he found, he was not mistaken: the master of the watch was willing to die rather than be taken prisoner in her own prison.

“Mother of mercy,” the lazy jailer whimpered, edging away. “Mother of mercy. Oh, no.”

A profound calmness flooded the face of the master of the watch. Her fingers moved a hair closer to the alarm cord.

“Don’t!” Buckle shouted. He could hear the armored boots of the Ballblasters clanging on the ramp stones, growing louder as they approached. And the master of the watch could hear it, too.

Buckle knew what the master of the watch was going to do.

And in the next heartbeat she did it.

She was fast, grabbing at the alarm cord with one hand and drawing her pistol with the other, both in the same twisting motion.

But she wasn’t fast enough.

The pistol kicked his left hand as Buckle fired, the loudness of the concussion deafening in the enclosed chamber, the usual cloud of ponderous black smoke blimping into the air. The body of the master of the watch was flung backward against the doors and collapsed in a heap. Her pistol, half drawn, slid out of her dead fingers and tumbled onto the floor stones with a dull clatter.

The canaries shrieked, frantic yellow whirlwinds rattling their cage.

The alarm cord swung, unpulled, brushed by the master of the watch’s fingers in the last act of her life.

“Damn it!” Buckle cursed, feeling his stomach twist in his gut as hard as if he had been punched. Surely the sound of the pistol discharge would bring the Founders officials running just as quickly as the alarm would have. He flicked his eyes to check the lazy jailer: the man had dropped to his knees in terror, his hands quivering.

“Please, please…” the lazy jailer mumbled, trying to duck his head down inside the collar of his tunic to get away from the loaded pistol still pointed at him.

Buckle realized that his own body was shaking.

“Buckle!” Pluteus shouted, emerging from the entrance corridor with Sergeant Scully, three Ballblasters, and Kepler at his heels. “What’s the shooting for? Now the whole prison knows we’re here!”

“I had no choice,” Buckle replied. His stomach wrenched again. The acrid stench of the blackbang-powder haze suddenly made him sick. His mouth started watering.

He tried to focus. He had no time for this. There had to be other jailers scattered about the prison, and they must have heard the blast of Buckle’s pistol. They had to be coming. They had to be raising the alarm.

“Aye,” Pluteus said with a nod at the body of the master of the watch. “Ran into a real trooper, did you? That’s why we never die old in bed.” He knelt and cut open her belt to remove her key ring. “Have first platoon hold here, Sergeant Scully,” he ordered. “If anybody comes through that door—blast them to smithereens.”

“Aye!” Scully responded.

Tossing aside his empty pistol and holstering the unused one, Buckle stepped up to the lazy jailer; a Ballblaster had already disarmed him and was quickly tying up his hands. “In which cell is Andromeda Pollux? Speak up!”

“The Alchemist?” the jailer answered. He was obviously thick in the noggin.

“Spit it out!” Buckle snapped.

“She’s in special cell fourteen.”

“Sergeant Scully, inform General Scorpius that Andromeda is in special cell fourteen,” Buckle said. “Kepler! Bring this lazybrat with us. If he is lying, we shall skin him alive.”

Kepler obeyed instantly, stepping forward to grab the cringing jailer by the scruff of his collar, which somehow surprised Buckle a bit.

Buckle’s stomach betrayed him. He bent over against a pillar and threw up, spattering the floor stones with the yellowish-gray remains of his breakfast and a gallon of bile. After a few heaving gags, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and drew himself up.

“You finished, Captain?” Pluteus asked, tossing him the master of the watch’s key ring.

Buckle caught the jangling key ring. It was slippery with bright red blood.

“You found Balthazar,” Pluteus said. “Now go and get him.”

BALTHAZAR CRANKSHAFT

E
XCITEMENT FLOODED
B
UCKLE
’
S VEINS AS
he hurried down the entrance ramp, blurring the memory of the body on the floor behind him and dulling the putrid taste of vomit on his tongue, at least for the moment. The bloody skeleton keys clattered in his hands. He could not regret such things. What had to be done was done to recover Balthazar.