Definitely a captain.
He looked me up and down, and then Priya. Then he and Standish had a rapid-fire conversation that I understood exactly one word of—prostitutki.
“If you’re going to talk about us,” I put in, “it’s polite to use a language we understand.”
My da didn’t raise no rude girls: I waited until one of ’em hesitated for breath.
The Russian captain looked at me. He was lean and bald on top, with white hair and a white beard cropped close to his pointed jaw. His eyebrows, though, was devilish black peaks over sparking eyes, and you could tell he knew he was handsome.
“Forgive me, miss,” he said dryly. “I was simply asking Mr. Standish how it was that he intended to infect the two of you with his Vibrio cholerae without exposing my men to the bacillus.”
His English was better than Miss Bethel’s, and his lordly manner made me feel small and filthy.
Well, I might be filthy. But I weren’t small. And even if I was, well, that barn cat still ran off that five-hundred-pound bear just by being a damned sight more invested in the outcome than the bear was.
“I bet you’re what’s been sinking the gold boats, aren’t you? You really are Captain Nemo.”
The captain looked at Standish all quizzical.
Standish shrugged. “It’s a code name Bantle gave you.”
“Ah,” the captain said. “As in Monsieur Verne’s books.” He seemed quite pleased by the comparison.
That was about when what he’d said about … Vibrio cholerae started to sink in, and I realized exactly what was going on. My da didn’t raise no dummies, even if I am a bit trusting for my own good sometimes. Still, Mama would say it’s better to think the best of people and every so often get to be disappointed than always think the worst and die alone.
“Wait. You’re going to use us to start a cholera epidemic. Which you plan to have kill off all the gold miners coming out of Rapid, and maybe even spread to Alaska. And then Russia can come take Alaska back.”
“That’s a brain that’s wasted on a woman,” Standish said.
I bit my tongue to keep from spitting on his shoe. If I had it to do over … well, quite frankly, I would of spat in his face.
I said, “Cholera is too catching. It kills too fast. Nobody still sick will make it all the way to Anchorage.”
“You just leave the details to us, little lady,” Standish said. “We have thought of everything. Our cholera bacillus is encapsulated.”
The way he said it made me think he was quoting somebody and he weren’t too sure what the words actually meant. I bet they had some kind of special breed, then. Something that could lie quiet before it spread and killed.
I nodded, then regretted it. “Well, you won’t be able to flog me to death if that’s your plan,” I told Standish. “Dead people don’t shit, and you know that’s how cholera gets spread. It’s in fouled water, from folks already sick with it.”
Priya was about vibrating with indignation, but she held her tongue.“Oh, flogging you nearly to death will suffice for my needs,” Standish said. “Besides, we need to keep you from talking. It’s all in the service of a greater good.”
He turned to the Ivans and the Borises and said something in Russian that was probably, “Take them away.”
Because that was what happened next.
* * *
They put Priya and me in the same cell, though, and that’s when I found out why she’d been so quiet while we was being … not interrogated. Assessed? Assayed?
Turns out, she spoke a little Russian. And she’d been memorizing what Standish and the captain said.
I’m afraid I weren’t at my most helpful. Because when she told me — we was chained up to opposite walls — all I could think to say was, “You didn’t say you spoke Russian.”
“I don’t,” she answered. “Well, not much. I understand a bit more of it.”
My Priya. None smarter.
Briefly, we caught up. I had more to tell her than she had to tell me, though she’d figured out most of it already. She was looking at that cut on my face — or worse, she was trying not to.
I figured it was best to just face up to it, so I ponied and said, “I’d rather it was me and not you he took a fancy to.”
Her lips stretched. Somebody who didn’t know her might have called it a smile. “You think it’s him and not Scarlet. The killer.”
There was enough slack in my chains to touch my cheek if I squatted down with my back to the wall. Touching it smarted. “I’m pretty fucking certain of it.”
“He must have had the sense not to shit in his own well.”
I guffawed, she took me so by surprise. That’s what happens, I suppose, when somebody spends too much time around Madame. You’d think Miss Bethel would be more of a civilizing influence, but I suppose there’s only so much any of us can do to counteract Madame’s level of artistry of language.
“I think he only likes American girls,” I said. Then I thought about it and corrected myself. “White American girls. That’s all he’s done, that I’ve heard tell.”
I poked the cheek again. It smarted again. I wondered if I would learn to stop doing that.
Priya thought about it and nodded. “Like them as only like black girls. Or blondes.”
“Or whatever.”
It didn’t make me feel too much better about my prospects. Or her, either, from the sorrowful look she gave me.
But then, being Priya, she shook herself hard enough to make her chains rattle, and she started patting herself like she was looking for something. I watched, losing myself in the expression of concentration she wore. But finally she sighed in frustration and shook her head.
“For once, I wish I wore a corset,” she said. “I could use a bit of whalebone now.” She held up her wrist, showing off the keyhole in the shackle on it.
What kind of a submersible ship comes with a room equipped with hasps for chaining folk, too, anyway?
“How about a hairpin?” I asked.
“This isn’t one of your dime novels, Karen my love.”
The fact that she called me “my love” took every bit of sting out of the other thing she said. I sniffed and shot back, “A hairpin’s what I have on offer. I ain’t got a set of stays on, neither. Take it or leave it.”
“Take it,” she said.
I found one that hadn’t slipped out of the mess of knots and undone braids my coiffure had become and slid it across the floor to her. It went wide, but she snagged it with a toe and pulled it to her. She sank down with her back to the wall, picked it up, snapped it in half to make two pieces, and went to work on the lock.
I wanted to talk, but I didn’t want to distract her, so I contented myself with listening to the scratch-scratch-scratch of the pin in the lock and watching her concentrated face.
I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the face of somebody you love when you’re in mortal fear for your own life and also theirs. But there’s nothing lovelier nor more terrifying that I have ever seen.
I wanted to memorize everything. The way the too-bright light caught in her black amber eyes and cast the reverse of shadows there. The wrinkle of absorption in her smooth brow. Her lips pressed tight, then slowly slackening as she worked the hairpin deeper.
To keep from talking, I dug into my shirt and found the warm, slick surface of Marshal Reeves’ silver dollar still tucked into the wrap around my breasts. They hadn’t done a real good job of searching me, and at that moment I made up my mind that from then on if I lived I would always keep a penknife tucked inside my unmentionables.
I was leaning forward by then. I could tell from Priya’s face that she was making progress and also that I shouldn’t say a word. She was pressing one-half the pin down and sideways with the heel of her hand while raking the other half back and forth between forefinger and thumb. She held the shackle still against her thigh while she worked, and though it was cold in that little room, sweat beaded on her lip.