I thought back to that night in Helltown, that night that now seemed so long ago, when I had been prepared to let Dorland kill me. I had stood in the cold and the filth of the Helltown alley and considered that I might yet talk my way into living, but I held my tongue.
I would not stay quiet this time. The air smelled of powder and my eyes stung with smoke. Just behind me, a door lay open, and sunlight seeped into our little gathering storm of violence. This would likely end in more deaths. There were far too many people in the room for whom I cared-maybe the only people on earth for whom I cared-and I would not let it go that way. I had been built from my foundation with a capacity to deceive, and here, if ever there was one, was a time for deception.
“Hold!” I cried. “Hold! Let there be no more violence.”
Dalton pointed his other pistol to Lavien, who lay prostrate upon the ground, and I stood directly in his path.
All this time Cynthia had stood a mute statue; I had hardly dared to look upon her. A weapon had already been fired, and there was like to be more. I would not have my own resolve softened by her fear. But now Cynthia spoke up, and her voice, though wavering, had a kind of clarity that surprised me. “It’s true. My God, it is true. I knew he was cruel, but I never thought he could kill a man in cold blood. He walked up to him, and your man-he suspected nothing.”
Was ever anyone so in love as I at that moment? Did ever man, since the fall of Eve, so rejoice in the lies of woman?
“Shut up,” Pearson hissed at her. “It’s not true,” he said to the others, but if Cynthia had just spoken the most convincing of lies, her husband had the misfortune of sounding entirely false while speaking truth.
Leonidas trained his gun upon Pearson. “Let the lady go.”
“But they lie,” he said.
“You make a better case,” Leonidas said, “if you are not holding a gun to a woman.”
“She is my wife. I may use her as I wish.”
“Let the lady go,” Joan said, and her voice was hard and angry. Somehow Cynthia, held upon the stairs by her husband, a gun to her back, had become the most important thing to everyone in the room-not the dead man upstairs, not the two prisoners who had gotten free, not the open door to freedom that lay behind us.
He released his grip and Cynthia ran down the stairs and toward me. Our eyes met and she, for but a fleeting instant, nodded at me, and I knew that this was the moment when she must prove herself. She must be the woman she had always wished to be, or she would fail me. I dared to hold her eyes for a long important moment, and I hoped it would be enough for her to understand.
“You stupid bitch,” I snapped. “This is all your fault.”
She took a step back, the hurt on her face so real-or so seemingly real-it nearly broke my heart. “Ethan, I am sorry.”
“I told you no one gets hurt. I told you that.”
She shook her head. “I could not stop him,” she said. Tears began to well up in her eyes. “I tried to stop him, Ethan, but I could not. I tried. You should have been there for me, but you weren’t, and I could not do it alone.”
“Oh, shut up,” I said. “I never should have trusted you.”
Dalton had heard enough. He turned now on Pearson. While, in general, I do not care to see unarmed men viciously assaulted, here was a case in which I could make an exception. Dalton darted up the stairs, grabbed Pearson under his armpits, and lifted him high in the air as if he weighed no more than a baby. Dalton then locked his elbows and hurled Pearson-whose mouth was open in terror too primal for noise-through the air and hard against the wall separating the foyer from the sitting room. He struck with a sharp agonizing crack, spun slightly, and then landed with his feet against a narrow chair, his head toward us, though it was cocked at the most unnatural of angles.
Cynthia let out a moan and covered her mouth. Leonidas whispered something under his breath. Dalton took a moment to admire his work and then ran up two flights of stairs. Above, I heard him wail.
I turned to Joan. “I am sorry it ended thus. Yours are good people, with your own sense of honor, and I do not doubt you’ve been wronged. I wish we were never opposed.”
She shook her head. “So much bloodshed.”
I stepped to her. “It never ought to have been like this. Joan, you are better than this. You are so much better. Imagine what you might have done had you only tried your hand at creating rather than destroying.” I touched her face. “Imagine what we could do together. Joan, you and I must be together.”
Cynthia rushed forward. “Ethan, are you mad? You promised it would be me. You swore you loved me.”
“You silly woman,” I said with a laugh. “How could I love someone like you?”
Leonidas let out a throaty laugh and began to clap his hands. “I must say, I am remarkably impressed. You cannot have practiced this, and yet it is so easy and natural.”
Joan turned to him. “What do you mean?”
Leonidas laughed again. “I have seen it a hundred times, though never when the stakes were so high. It is Ethan Saunders being Ethan Saunders, when lies and false notions and absurd claims roll off his tongue; we all watched him. But now I look up and see his point. Even I, who ought not to have been fooled, was caught up. Do you not notice someone is missing?”
And indeed he was. I could not say when Lavien had slipped away. I had made a point not to look at him myself, hoping that if he was invisible to me he might be invisible to all. Joan Maycott now rushed to the door and looked out into the morning light. I moved behind her, prepared to place my hand over her mouth should she try to call to Dalton, but she made no effort. She stood there in confused silence. Far away, upon the distant King’s Highway, appeared a single awkward figure upon a gray horse, riding hard and fast like Paul Revere, to save a country that was not even his own native land. I did not believe that there would ever be ballads sung of this ride, but oh, how worthy, how glorious, it was. And it had been made possible by my actions, which I could not but like.
C ynthia once more collapsed into my arms. She trembled, and I could not be surprised. She had witnessed more violence in a few minutes than most women see in a lifetime. Her husband, however foul a man, had been killed before her eyes, killed upon false pretenses and owing to her own machinations. It would not be easy for her in the days to come, but I meant to help her all I could.
For her part, Joan Maycott looked hardly less stunned. “I underestimated you, Captain Saunders. You too, Cynthia. I thought you were but a victim, but you are clever enough to deserve the captain.” She took out a watch and studied it. “Your friend may yet save the bank.”
“You appear less distraught than I would have thought,” I said.
“Even if Hamilton can save the bank, Duer’s ruin is accomplished and cannot be undone, and his fall will be a terrible blow. There will be panic and chaos, and the Hamiltonian plan may not be utterly demolished, but it will be discredited. I had four goals, Captain Saunders: to destroy the bank, destroy Hamilton, destroy Duer, and enrich myself. Even if the bank survives, Hamilton’s career will end, and with the collapse of the market for overvalued six percent securities, I will profit handsomely on my own four percents, whose value will rise. By the way, Mrs. Pearson, you husband was a principal owner. I advise you to sell them the moment they rise above par. They won’t stay there long.”
“She is good in defeat,” I said to Leonidas.
“And what are you like in victory?” she asked. “Do you think to apprehend me and my men?”
“No,” I answered. “Lavien may have felt otherwise, but he is gone, and I don’t believe Leonidas would permit it. For my own part, I do not want to see you plotting more against the nation, but I would not see you in prison.”