The Shotgun Arcana (41 page)

And of course there were the crime lords of the camp, including the man Maude was seeking out now.

Maude had used the skills she had been taught to alter her appearance—not just makeup and clothing, but posture, voice, even facial expression. It was doubtful Mutt or even Constance would recognize her if they passed her now. She was dressed for work—dark collarless man’s shirt, pants and boots. Her hair was tied back and up to conceal its length. A bandana was about her neck, ready to be pulled up to cover her face. At a casual glance, Maude would appear to be a man and given her training, a casual glance is all anyone would give her.

All three of the dead girls had been moonlighting up here in the camp; all three were working away from the Dove’s Roost for the man known as the Nail. Maude found herself outside a semicircle of large canvas- and wood-framed buildings that were the base of Niall Devlin’s dirty little kingdom. One such tent was the Halla Damhsa, Devlin’s dance hall, saloon and brothel. A crowd of men, mostly miners and prospectors, were jostling to get in. A pair of armed toughs stood at the entrance, rifles in hand. Maude had melted into a deep shadow off to the far side of the compound, waiting for some sign of the Nail. After about twenty minutes the crowd parted at the barking insistence of the two toughs on the door, and Devlin exited the tent, accompanied by a woman. He was a tall man with reddish-brown hair, sharp features and hazel eyes, armed with at least three pistols, a knife and a hand axe on his belt. His companion was a small, lithe woman with a mane of raven black hair, dressed in a vest of black and green. The pair passed through the crowd and walked toward the smaller tent on the opposite side of the semicircle from where Maude was hiding. She moved quickly behind the tents, using the deep shadows to cross the gulf in a few seconds. She used her sharpened nail and precise technique to silently tear a small hole in the thick canvas, and peered within.

The tent was Devlin’s office. A crude wooden table served as a desk and there were numerous crates and barrels, most likely of stolen goods, in small islands about the room. A large lamp rested on the edge of Devlin’s desk and one of Devlin’s men, a lanky boy in simple clothes and a vest, sat on a crate, sharpening a knife, his rifle leaning next to him.

“So this is the beauty that has all the big bad men in Golgotha atremble,” Devlin said. “Black Rowan, Hellcat of the Barbary Coast. It’s a pleasure, darlin’. Care for a touch of the creature to chase away the night’s chill?”

Devlin poured a drink from a bottle on his desk. He offered it to Rowan and she accepted it. Devlin poured himself one and raised the glass.

“To the future of Golgotha,” he said. They both drank. Devlin offered Rowan a chair and he sat after she did. Rowan paused and looked toward where Maude was watching.

“Problem?” Devlin said.

Rowan shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Mr. Devlin, you know why I’m here. You seem an intelligent man, so I’ll do you the courtesy of not wasting either of our time. Your days of poaching from the Dove’s Roost are over. Malachi Bick may not have been giving the matter its appropriate attention, but I assure you I am. You want to contract public girls in this town, you talk to me now.”

“Is that so?” Devlin said, smiling and leaning back in his chair.

“It is,” Rowan said. “I have already had conversations with the other gentlemen in Golgotha who make money off public girls, and so far they are all in agreement—that is my business now and you will subcontract through me. You will get a handsome percentage, I assure you, Mr. Devlin.”

“And what, love, do you consider handsome?” Devlin asked.

“Forty-five percent,” Rowan said.

“I get one hundred percent now,” Devlin said.

“Those days are past,” she said. “Welcome to the future. Mr. Devlin, no offense, but you are a parasite. You were making a living in this line by existing in the margin and hoping Bick thought you were too small a flea to scratch off. While he may be well-off enough to afford the occasional flea,I can’t and will not. You lured girls away from the Dove’s Roost and then sent them out into this tent jungle of yours with no protection, no escort, nothing. They were butchered.”

“The cost of doing business, love,” Devlin said. “I didn’t force those girls to work for me, I gave them plenty of extra work, just like they asked for.”

“Then you have the sand to get one of them killed right outside the Dove’s Roost,” Rowan said. “You honestly thought that you would get away with that? You are a brave one, Nail, I’ll give you that.”

“Do you know how I got that name?” Devlin said. Rowan shook her head. “My da was a carpenter in Galway. Taught me and my younger brother the craft. ‘Measure twice, cut once,’ he always said. He died on the boat ride to New York. I got his tools, his chest. Well, some lads on the boat, they figured they had a better claim to my da’s tools, so they took them from me.

“When I healed up and could walk again, see again, I went looking for them in Kingsbridge, and I found them. I asked them nice as you please for my da’s tools and they laughed and told me they had sold most of them already and they were going to sell the rest and for me to piss the hell off. So I did some dirty work, did some favors for some culchies I knew and when it came time for payment for what I done for them, they held those gobshites down while I nailed their kneecaps and their hands to the floor with my dear old da’s hammer and the last few of his nails.”

Devlin reached under the table and placed a battered old hammer down on the table with a thump. “This hammer,” he said. “I keep a single nail that belonged to my da with me all the time—a good luck charm and a reminder. I’m a patient man, Lady Rowan, and I assure you I always measure twice before I cut. So now, you were telling me about how I should run my business here?”

Rowan nodded. “You were spoiling for a fight with Bick, were you?”

“Testing the waters,” he said. “You want the whore trade up here on the mountain and you’ll give me forty-five percent of it. Make it fifty-fifty and I’ll purr like a kitten for you.”

“Forty-eight,” she said. “But I’ll tell everyone it’s fifty-fifty … and perhaps I’ll do the purring.”

Devlin laughed and stood. “Fair shake, love. From one parasite to another, eh? We’re both living off Malachi Bick’s table scraps and good graces, right?”

“For now,” Rowan said. “Like I said, welcome to the future. Bick’s slipping. This Zeal character may be the death of him.”

“And if that happens,” Devlin said, leaning against his desk, “then the race is on, beauty.”

Rowan nodded and smiled. She glanced over again to the spot where Maude’s rip was, then back to Devlin. “Until then, I intend to call my girls in. No need to give this maniac any more grist for his mill, yes? How many girls are running tonight and where are they?”

Devlin sighed with a whoosh. “Umm … three, I think. Little Gold Dollar, Lady Jane Gray and Gold Tooth Betty. All three were working the Tanner Row.”

“And where did the dead girls work?” Rowan asked, standing now.

“Tanner Row…,” Devlin said.

Maude didn’t wait to hear any more. She launched herself skyward, her fingers lightly gripping the wooden frame and the tarp as she cleared the six-foot roof of Devlin’s tent with less sound than the wind. She kept heading up, a shadow that tore itself loose from the silhouette of the camp’s darkness, sailing another ten feet into the air. She spun as gravity once again tugged at her and dove, feetfirst, curling toward another tent. She landed on the flat edge of a central tent pole for less than a second, on the balls of her feet, and then snapped upward and launched again. Hopping like a ballet dancer, jetéing between the tent poles, swaying as they did, alighting for balance and a solid point only for an instant before hurling herself again and again across the canvas city: invisible, silent, hunting.

Her heart was calm and her breath even. Her soul sang. This was life; this was the gift of freedom Gran had helped her to unlock so long ago. The power to defy gravity, to kiss the night like a lover; the power to right a wrong. Maude paused for a heartbeat on a pole, pivoted as it swayed as if in a gentle breeze, got her bearings and then launched herself again toward the wide, winding thoroughfare that was Tanner Row.

She dropped into a deep cold shadow and with a few quick changes to her attire, hair and posture, assumed the face and gait of a public girl. Stepping out into the light, she swaggered slowly down the row.

“Here’s a right handsome adventuress,” an old prospector reeking of cheap phlegm-cutter said as he grabbed Maude with strong, dirty hands. “Come ’ere, my randy Dutch Girl. What do you say to a little fuck, eh?”

“Hello, little fuck,” Maude muttered in his ear as she pressed gently on the vagus nerve on the side of his neck. It looked like a caress to the untrained eye but the old coot’s eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed, unconscious. His drinking buddies came to his aid and Maude made a few squeaks of feigned distress and quickly slipped away.

She took a cleansing breath and moved the blood about in her body to enhance her hearing. It was a horrible ruckus for a moment before she began to filter and sort as she had been taught to do as a child. She moved along past tent barkers, hustlers and leering faces, a dingy carnival of sweat-soaked nightmares. Tanner Row was the dark heart of the mining camp and Maude ached at the thought of being a woman here, forced to seek out the worst of the lot, helpless compared to her. She suddenly wanted to hurt Niall Devlin very badly.

There was a scream, muffled and cut short—a woman. Maude sprinted ahead, closing on the source. A hand flashed out quickly, grabbed her by the back of her shirt and another by the hair; before she could react, she was flying through the air and crashing into one of the dark alleys between the rows of tents. Maude tumbled and came up, derringer in her hand ready to fire. Black Rowan stood between her and the row. “Who are you?” Rowan said. “You’re not one of the Doves and you’re disguising yourself like you’re one of us.”

“Who’s ‘us’?” Maude said.

“The Sirens of the Pirate Goddess,” Rowan said. “The worshipers of the Rada, the Loa Mami Wata, mother of the waves and the mysteries of the deep … Anne Bonny.”

“What?” Maude said. “Look, I don’t have time for this now, a woman is dying.” She fired the derringer with intent to graze Rowan’s temple, giving her a mild concussion. The pistol thundered, but Rowan was no longer there; she was twisting Maude’s arm upward in a classic disarming maneuver, exactly like Gran Bonny had taught her.

“How did you learn to do that?” Maude said.

Maude was shocked, but only for a second. She drove the heel of her palm into Rowan’s diaphragm and the pirate queen shifted to minimize the blow, but it still doubled her over and put her off-balance. Maude didn’t let up. She snap-kicked Rowan squarely in the chin, knocking her backward.

Rowan tried to recover from the blow by staying close to the ground, on her back, twisting and trying to tangle Maude’s legs; it was a style of island fighting Gran had taught her. Rowan flipped back onto her feet when she realized Maude would not fall for the entangling tricks and began to launch a series of powerful strikes. Maude countered and blocked every one and managed to counterstrike Rowan a number of times in the process. It had taken a few moments of sparring, but Maude soon realized that although Rowan knew a wide array of tricks, she hadn’t had nearly the extensive training Maude had.

“Look,” Maude said, blocking another punch and tumbling back away from Rowan. “This is pointless. I heard you talking to Devlin.…”

“I know, I heard you outside the tent,” Rowan said. “I followed you, as best I could. How did you jump like that? I’ve never…”

“One of the girls out here is dying right now,” Maude said, “and I’m going to help her. Try to keep up.”

Maude took a step back into the darkness and was gone, racing between the shadows, toward the fading scream.

It took less than a minute, but it was already too late. Maude stepped into the filthy side alley off the row. The woman’s body was torn and bleeding, the dark pool of her life spreading outward, soaking into the thirsty ground. Ten feet away she could hear drunken laughter and arguments. No one had done a damn thing to help her, even as she was screaming, pleading for her life.

Maude knelt next to her body, which had been shoved up against one of the canvas tent walls. Maude knelt and examined the wounds. They had been done with a short, sharp knife—a scalpel perhaps. There were shoe prints, not boots. Gentleman’s shoes.

Something stung her arm through the canvas of the tent: a hypodermic. Maude felt herself become flushed, dizzy and hot. It was very hard to focus, to think, like gauze had been draped over her thoughts and her vision. She pulled her arm back instinctively and rubbed where the needle had stabbed her. The men’s laughter out on the row was distorted and hard to hear over the thudding of the blood in her ears. She staggered back, but lost her balance and fell onto her bottom. It was hard to remember what to do or how to move.

An opiate alkaloid
, some distant corridor of her mind said.
Possibly whole opium … Laudanum perhaps
 … The words tumbled into each other and crashed; it was so hot and so hard to focus.

There was a ripping sound and the canvas wall next to the girl’s body split as the small, very sharp knife made its incision. A man stepped through. His face was hidden in shadow by a black scarf, and distorted by the drugs affecting her eyes. The curved scalpel gleamed in the camp’s torches and lanterns; it seemed too bright to Maude’s eyes, like a thing made of blood-spattered light. He wore a short top hat and a fine cape; she saw spats above his gentleman’s shoes.

Gentleman’s shoes
 …

“Well, aren’t I a saucy lucky lad this fine evening?” the stranger said, his voice booming and fading, accompanied to the symphony of Maude’s blood. “You, my curious quim, you, shall be my lucky fifth. I always give my utmost attention to the last in the sacred sequence.”

Maude wanted to slide into warm, numb oblivion, but a cold, strong voice—Gran’s voice—barked at her,
“Focus, girl, this man is death, he will torture you and kill you and eat you and you will never see Constance again, never see Gillian or Mutt again. Focus! You know what you have to do, focus, damn you!”