I looked around the room. Only Effie looked the least bit dubious, and she seemed willing to be swayed. I sighed and reminded them, “We ain’t getting there without a ship.”
“Or an airship,” the Marshal said after we’d stared at one another in dismay for a few more seconds.
And just like that, the penny dropped.
“I know a pilot,” I said. “I know where to find him. Maybe he can get us there.”
* * *
Of course, knowing a pilot and talking one into something were two different things. And I might of been exaggerating slightly when I said I knew one. But I’d met one, the very day before. And if I were lucky, he might even turn out to be daring.
I don’t know if it was the colors on his airship and his uniform that made me think Mr. Captain Minneapolis Colony If That Was His Real Name Which I Doubt might be sympathetic to Priya, but I remembered Priya pointing them out and that they’d made her homesick. And they sure weren’t colors that most white folk would put together to indicate their patriotism or whatnot.
And what the hell did I have to lose, anyway?
We took a streetcar back to the general vicinity of Mayor Stone’s, and weren’t we a gawker’s paradise. Me with my burned face; me and Priya and Merry in men’s clothes — at least Priya’s and Merry’s half-fit; Effie in what she thought of as a practical dress; Tomoatooah refusing to lean on anybody but just as plain needing to; Bass Reeves, a black man with his dapper coat and his gun on his hip and his silver star. Aashini stayed behind, tucked away at Merry’s after a whispered fight with Priya. But even so, and even by Rapid standards, we was an assemblage.
I half-expected to get stopped by the constables, either because we looked like an escaped circus or because Peter Bantle had set ’em on us. But maybe on account of it was so early there was next to nobody about we didn’t find no trouble. It’s comforting when God lets you get away with something once in a while.
And a little unnerving. You start to wonder what he’s got set up for you next and why he’s softening you up, like.
We staggered up the hill to the mayor’s yellow-and-sea-colored house, trying not to kill ourselves where the cobbles was icing. We weren’t stupid: we went around to the servants’ door. Miss Francina let us inside before we even had the chance to knock, and then her and Miss Lizzie and Crispin was all over us — all over me and Tomoatooah in particular.
I guess we looked rode hard, switched, and put away without a rubdown … and in fairness that’s how I felt. Miss Francina kept hovering her long, graceful fingers by my cheek and then snatching her hand back until Miss Lizzie shooed her out to find “some brandy or something.”
She held up a mirror for me, and I made myself look, though Priya had to hold my hand to get me through it.
It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. I mean, bad enough, sure, and the blisters was already rising. But I’d imagined two big red bubbled handprints by the way it hurt, and what I had on my cheek and throat looked just like the scars on Priya: a scatter of circles, sharp edged and as big as dimes.
Marshal Reeves just about let Miss Lizzie and Crispin get some aloe juice on my face before he pulled Crispin aside. I heard him say, “That pilot — I know you ain’t no servant and I hate to ask it, brother…” and then Crispin sighed and nodded and vanished up the back stair.
Madame beat Crispin and Mr. Colony down. She was still dressed, or maybe dressed again, because she was wearing a different gown than when I’d seen her last. It fitted, and I wondered where she’d gotten it.
Priya slipped a little bag into my hand, and a little book, too. They were both familiar, weight and heft, and that along with her sitting beside me did more to give me peace than any amount of Miss Lizzie’s fussing.
Madame took one look at my face, sat down across from me, and balled her hands into fists on the scrubbed pine worktable. “I’ll fucking kill that fucking son of a bitch,” she said.
I had no illusions all her rage was on my behalf — Peter Bantle’s fate had been sealed since he burned down Madame’s house and killed Connie. But it was right sweet to see her flare up again. A good feeling that almost made me lose track how much my face hurt. And my knees. I’d almost forgotten about those, in all the adventures of the night, and now those blisters radiated pain again.
“I got plans in that direction myself,” I answered. “Just as soon as Captain Colony gets down these stairs.”
Then, all of us interrupting and talking over the top of one another, Effie and Priya and Merry and the Marshal and me filled Madame in on what we’d found at Bantle’s house and what we’d done there.
She asked a few questions — smart ones — and said, “Well, that explains some things.”
I waited.
“That pair of shitnozzles — I’m guessing they’re trying to run the honest whores in Rapid out of business. Maybe in the whole Oregon Territories. If they corner the market, and they kick that money back to this Nemo fellow…” She shrugged. “I can see why he’d make an investment in ’em.”
“Not to mention,” Miss Francina said, “folks talk to whores.”
Madame’s mouth corner twitched, but she didn’t say nothing. “What are we going to do about it?” Miss Lizzie asked.
There was another pause. Then, “I’m running for mayor,” Madame said.
Miss Lizzie brought over the laudanum then. I held up my hand to give her pause.
“With what money?” I asked. Then I slapped my hand over my mouth, because I oughtn’t of said that.
“I got investments,” Madame said at the same moment Miss Francina said, “I got money in the bank.”
We all looked at her.
She shrugged. “Banks fail. Houses burn down and get robbed. You pick your poison.”
“And the Ancient and Honorable Guild of Seamstresses will back Madame,” Lizzie said.
“We can’t vote!” Merry yelped, like it had bubbled and bubbled until it couldn’t help boiling out of her.
“No,” Madame said. “But there ain’t no law we can’t run. And if Dyer’s out of it, and the opposition is Bantle … well, without his infernal machine I think I got a fighting chance.” She waved her hand around vaguely. “Besides, we need a new house, and this is a nice one.”
“Mayor Stone’s house?” I asked.
“It’s not Dyer’s house. It’s the mayor’s house,” Madame said. “It comes with the job.”
Miss Lizzie started to pour some laudanum into a teaspoon again. I stopped her again. “I ain’t staying. I got a meeting to crash.”
“Karen. Honey—”
Miss Francina cleared her throat. “She’s a grown woman, Lizzie.” Then she looked at me. “Unless you want me to go in your place, Karen honey. I wouldn’t mind it.”
“Ma’am,” I said. And oh, I wanted to tell her, Please. Go. It had been a hell of a night, and my face — well, my face felt worse than my knees or hands, which was saying something.
But nobody was leaving Priya home and I wasn’t staying behind if she was going.
And besides, I owed Peter Bantle something fierce right now.
“Thank you, Miss Francina. But this is my business.”
I was interrupted in her turn by the tromp of man’s boots in the hall. Crispin pushed the door open, and Captain Colony stepped through it behind him. He was in shirtsleeves and britches and boots, but his hair was slicked back and his eyes were only slightly bloodshot. He drew up short just inside the door.
“Now what are all you doing in the kitchen?”
I reached into the bag of money, found that Morgan dollar by feel, and slipped it into my bodice. Then I tossed my four hundred dollars in gold and silver to Captain Colony.
The bag clinked when he caught it. He looked at it curiously, his ponytail twitching over his shoulder when his head turned. “I haven’t earned this.”