Lady of Devices

chapter 24



Vauxhall Gardens was not nearly as picturesque as its name might suggest. Claire guided the landau down one narrow street after another at Snouts’s direction, winding deeper into the neighborhoods of the working poor. At least they had proper roofs over their heads, unlike the children packed all around her, who had to make do with a warehouse loft.

“There.” Snouts pointed to a stone house nestled against the bridge abutment. Possessed of two storeys, its windows were intact and even at this hour, light glowed behind the ones downstairs. “It fronts on the river, so Luke can move his cargo.”

“What cargo?”

“Dunno. Whatever he lifted that day, I suppose. He started out a rag picker like us, they say, but bein’ the enterprisin’ sort, he moved up in the world. I figure piracy and theft, but them’s the sorts of questions a man don’t ask down here.”

“I hope his associates don’t expect those activities to continue.” Claire appraised the house as the landau coasted to a stop in front. It was a solid little place. Nothing was broken or abused—in fact, if a criminal could be said to be house-proud, then Lightning Luke was that. Even the head-high stone wall around what could have been a front garden was sturdy and well kept.

Just how sturdy, they discovered as soon as they approached. “There’s no gate,” Maggie said. “’Ow are we to get in?”

“On the river side,” Jake said. “Best scout it first.”

The Mopsies took their duties very seriously, and even if Claire had wanted to protest, her voice would have had less effect than the gurgle of the river against the stone arches of the bridge. On the house’s other side was a tangle of brambles and what might have been a toll shed for the drawbridge, now fallen into disrepair. So Luke’s house might once have belonged to the toll keeper.

The Mopsies returned with silent suddenness. “Watch is posted,” Lizzie said. “There’s a platform above the people door an’ a bloke wi’ a bl—er, a dirty big gun. Water door’s shut and locked tight. Windows too.”

“We can’t use the gassy—gassicky—“ Maggie stopped.

“Gaseous capsaicin devices,” Claire finished. “It does not seem so. Our plan, then?”

Jake snorted in a most ungentlemanly fashion. “Lady, you’re the mort wi’ the gun. Ent no one gonna argue wi’ you. Take out the watch wi’ one shot and after that the place is ours.”

Claire felt her jaw slacken with horror, and firmed both it and her resolution. “We shall not. There will be no murder.”

“What d’ye call Lightning Luke’s situation, then?” Tigg wanted to know.

“As I’ve already explained, that was an accident. And since Mr. Jake is a ‘dab hand’ at such things, I suggest he take care of the watch.”

Jake put a hand on Lizzie’s shoulder. “What sort o’ gun was it?”

“One o’ them many-chambered ones that go round and round.”

Snouts made a sound of disbelief. “Them ones wot were invented by that nasty Gatling bloke? If that’s true, no one’s getting in that way. We’ll have to do for the river door.”

“And what’s to prevent him shooting us no matter what door we use?” Claire had not wanted to come on this fool’s errand, but she was not about to be held up at the gates if the inside of Luke’s house was as snug as the outside. What if there was food? And a basin to wash in?

And to what depths had she sunk when the merest possibility of such amenities would make her contemplate violence?

“Enough. We shall announce our presence like civilized people, show them Luke’s body, and the house will be ours. Isn’t that what you said, Mr. McTavish?”

Snouts hesitated. “It might be a tad more dodgy than that, Lady.”

“Why?”

“What’s to stop ’em from just shooting us fer killin’ their boss?”

It took Claire a full ten seconds to reel in her temper and exhaustion and to curtail the urge to slap him. “Why did you not bring up this possibility before?”

“’Cause maybe you wouldn’t have come?”

Claire turned her back on him and marched along the wall in the direction of the river. Behind her, a muffled conversation broke out, and then silence. When she risked a glance back, she could see nothing but two small shadows and a larger one against the deeper dark of the stone wall. Why the presence of two ten-year-old ragamuffins and a boy of twelve should make her confidence rise was more than she could explain. Still, if a person was going to march up to an armed establishment with a pathetic plan, it was comforting to know she was not alone. And just to be prudent, she flipped the lever on the lightning rifle. Its hum and the accompanying vibration in her hands was comfort of a different sort.

It felt good to be in command of something. Electrick power was nothing to sneeze at. She had no intention of hurting anyone, but she would not be treated like a nonentity again.

She peered around the corner of the wall and found the Mopsies’ reconnaissance report to be accurate. On a verandah above the door, a deadly looking example of one of Mr. Gatling’s guns stood mounted on a swivel. Behind it lounged an individual who clearly did not expect to be challenged.

“Ho! You there!” she called.

In the light from the window behind him, she saw him jump and swing his feet down from the rail. Leaping to battle position, he commanded, “State yer errand.”

“My errand is to require your unconditional surrender.” The lightning rifle had begun to sound like it meant business.

“Sez who?”

“Sez the Lady of Devices, ’oo shot down Lightning Luke wiv ’is own gun,” came Jake’s voice from behind her. “Show yer hands and come down.”

In answer, the guard grasped something in the back of his weapon, and the multiple bores swung to face them. “I’ll show ye more’n my hands, you pitiful lot.”

Claire’s instincts for self-preservation had not been honed by her previous life, but in that moment she discovered they were alive and well in her current one. She swung the lightning rifle to bear on the sullen barrels of the gun above her, and pulled the trigger.

The bolt sizzled wide and fried the railing two feet to the guard’s left. While he shouted, she corrected its trajectory and fired again. This time the bolt swallowed the Gatling piece in its lethal blue light, the tiny wriggling currents of power seizing it and stopping its action. The cartridges in the magazine began to explode like Chinese fireworks. Claire and Jake grabbed the Mopsies and flung themselves under the verandah as, screaming and maddened with pain, the guard leaped into the sullen waters of the Thames below.

“Now, lady!” Tigg and Snouts rushed past her—oh, he condescended to join them, did he, now that the field was hers?—and burst through the front door. The commotion outside had alerted everyone within that something was amiss, and a bullet pinged off the door frame inches from her head.

“Stand aside!” she shouted, and when her crew pressed themselves against the wall, she sent a lightning bolt into the large room on the right, aiming at the fireplace. In the blue flash, the lamplight erased itself and time stopped, as though a flicker at the theater had frozen on a single image. Horrified faces. Bodies flung upon the floor. A rug. A sofa.

“I require your immediate and unconditional surrender,” she announced amid the smell of burned stone and the shrieks and whimpers of the unprepared. “I am the Lady of Devices, and I claim this house as my own. Lightning Luke is dead and I have his body outside. If you are unable to accept my terms, I will allow you to leave. But if you stay, I demand your loyalty. Make your choice now.”

No one moved.

In the silence, a muffled voice asked, “You kilt Lightning Luke? For true?”

“It’s true.” Snouts stepped forward, looking as though he were inspecting a battalion. “I saw it meself. The Lady’s a fair leader, and I’m her first lieutenant.”

“You’re not first anything, Snouts McTavish.” A boy who couldn’t be any older than Jake pushed himself up off the floor. “You’re a thief and a rag picker and I ent belonging to any gang wot has you in it.”

“That is perfectly fair.” With the flared barrel of the rifle, Claire gestured toward the door. “You may leave unaccosted.”

Snouts bristled at her failure to defend his honor, but for once, in the interests of solidarity, kept his mouth shut. The boy looked about him at his prostrate companions. “Are you lot gonna just lie there and let ’em take over? Anybody gets Luke’s treasury, it’s us wot worked for it, not them.”

Treasury?

Slights to his manhood forgotten, she and Snouts exchanged a glance. Without a word, the Mopsies disappeared. Scouts to their fingertips, they did not need to be told where their duty lay.

“The treasury belongs to those who have earned it,” she said loudly. “And believe me, if you stay under my—” Command? Jurisdiction? “—roof, you will earn it. There will be no more thieving and fisticuffs and pickpocketing. We will earn our bread through the force of intellect, as befits ladies and gentlemen of this modern age.”

Murmuring rose from the corners of the room, and people began to get up, keeping one eye on the lightning rifle as they did so. A handful of them—goodness, the eldest couldn’t be more than her own age—sidled past her and out the door.

“A pity a life on the correct side of the law does not appeal,” she observed to no one in particular.

“Ent much money in it to most folk,” Jake responded. Then his voice grew stronger, pitched to the back of the room. “Shame they ent schooled in the ways of your devices, not to mention your foolproof stratagems at cards, innit? All the more for us, I say.”

The slow trickle out of the room halted.

“Devices? Stratagems?” asked a boy with a mop of curly hair, mummified to the chin in an enormous woolen muffler. “Like them Wits?”

“The Lady is a Wit leader,” Jake said without a twitch. “We already took down Billy Crumwell’s gang afore we got around to Lightning Luke. I’ze you, I’d stick to the winning side.”

“It’s for true, then,” the boy whispered. “She really kilt ’im.” His gaze traveled the length of Luke’s rifle in Claire’s hands. “Her own self.”

“’Is corpse is outside, you don’t believe ’er,” Jake told him. “But touch the Lady’s landau an’ it’s worth your life.”

“I recommend we give your former leader a decent burial.” Claire took command of the situation before the tales got any taller. “Is there any among you who would like to say a few words?” No one moved. Evidently he was not held in high regard among his confederates. How did one go about burying the man one had accidentally killed? “Are we possessed of a shovel?”

Snouts nudged her. “You leave that to me, Lady. Once I’m done, no one will ever know what happened to ’im. You’d best see to that treasury quick-like, in case any here gets ideas above their station, as it were.”

“Quite right, Mr. McTavish.” She turned on her heel and, accompanied by Jake and Tigg, went in search of the Mopsies. Perhaps on her way to the treasury she might happen upon some food.