They were off and running again. The Baroness could be seen just ahead of them, racing south. Her metal limbs hung useless.
“She’s heading for the river! If she has a boat there, we’ll lose her.” Malcolm sprinted, forcing his legs to pump harder despite the pain spiking through them. He pulled ahead of Penny, but the rubble in the streets and the chaos of injured and terrified people hampered him. “I thought you took out her infernal engine.”
“I didn’t have time to shut it down completely. It must be powering her heart too, or Imogen’s quills would’ve stopped her.”
The Baroness raced into the ruins of a house. Malcolm leapt over the remains of the stoop and ducked inside after her. There was a hole in the back wall. As the Baroness ran toward it she slammed her shoulder into the bricks. The wall started to collapse behind her. Malcolm spun and blocked the charging Penny just in time. He turned her aside, covering her as the cascade of bricks crashed to the ground. The rubble scattered across the carcass of the town house, raising a cloud of dust. Malcolm dragged Penny after him, following and fighting against the heat and thick air.
By the time they scrambled over the bricks, the Baroness had gained considerable distance, weaving through narrow lanes. Both Malcolm and Penny were laboring for breath, but neither would relent. Between buildings, the Thames came into view. She was going to reach the river before they could stop her. Malcolm could see green smoke boiling from a docked boat, similar to the one they had hijacked to Gaios’s island.
Without breaking stride, the Baroness weaved around overturned wagons and vaulted the many bodies that littered the broken street. She reached the steps down to the river where her boat waited with its funnel steaming and ready. A quick hop onto the deck and she would be away. The Baroness glanced back with an obnoxious grin. She would have a waved a jaunty hand if her arms had worked.
“No,” Penny moaned, coming to a halt in the center of the street.
Malcolm ran a few steps more and stopped too. His fingers trembled with exhaustion as he tried to jam thick cartridges into the chambers of one of his pistols. Penny had something in her hand and she threw it hard. He realized it was one of her clockwork messenger birds. It buzzed through the air and struck the Baroness in the back of the head hard like a cricket ball. With no way to catch herself, she fell forward in a hard tumble on the stone steps to the edge of the water.
Several men scrambled from the boat and laid hands on her. They heaved the Baroness to her feet where she cursed and bodily shoving them away. They all shrank back.
Malcolm braced himself with his feet apart. He grasped the wrist of his gun hand to steady his aim. The Baroness stepped to the edge of the jetty. The heavy paddle wheels of the steamer churned the water. She smiled at him, licking blood from her lips. Then Malcolm’s bullet put a red streak across her unprotected temple.
Her eyes went wide. She was slammed off the dock. She hit the bow of the steamer and hung there for a split second. Her arms flew helplessly around her. She bounced off the rail and splashed into the river. Her head bobbed up once and she screamed. Then a heavy plank of the paddle wheel swept down and smashed her beneath the water. Her metal form rose again briefly before another paddle crashed onto her and dragged her under the dark river.
Malcolm and Penny reached the edge of the jetty. The steamboat was roaring away into the river with its crew hardly sparing a look back at their lost mistress. Malcolm kept his pistol trained on the boat in case they attempted an attack, but the crew had nothing in mind but escape.
Penny stared down at the foaming water slapping heavily against the dock.
Malcolm returned his pistol to its holster. “It’s over. With that iron body she’s on the bottom of the Thames where she’ll stay. She’s an anchor now.” His hand reached over to grab hers and she turned to him. She let out a hard breath and nodded.
They both turned around and saw Jane stricken. She leaned on the side of a demolished building, a ruin of bricks, staring at the dead lying around her. A trembling hand clutched her glasses as if trying to decide whether to drag them off her face so she could see no more. Malcolm turned her to look at him.
“Jane.”
Now she covered her ears, trying to block out the sound of the dying city. Her tear-streaked face was inconsolable. “I did this. This is all my fault.”
“That’s a load of shite. This is about that madman. This is his doing, his revenge for an age-old crime. You were nothing but a pawn.”
She searched his face for redemption. “But I did what he asked.”
“To save the life of your father. I would have done the same for anyone here.”
She took in the devastation around her, her voice but a shadow. “How can one man do all of this?”