Emily was anything more than the whore and fixer I had known for five years now. I put everything away and looked around the rest of the apartment.
There wasn’t much to see. Her clothes were all neatly arranged in the bedroom dresser, her bed was made. The room smelled like her, like summerwisp blooming in spring. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the bedroom, and the kitchen nook was just a drawer of cutlery and a coolbox that was empty. There were no signs of struggle or forced entry, but the gun she kept in the closet by the front door was missing, as were the ledgers she had been working on when I left. Those had been for Cacher, I remembered, which meant he had been here. Probably let himself in, couldn’t find Emily so he took what he had come for and left. Did he take the Cog, too, or had Emily taken it with her? For that matter, where did she go, and why?
I sat on the divan that looked out over the street, laid the service revolver in my lap, and turned the situation over in my head. Lot of ways to come at this one.
The least likely, least worrying possibility was that Emily was just on some business. Not missing, just laying low while she attended to… whatever. Either one of her Haven Hill clients or some deal that required her personal attention. And maybe she took the Cog with her, intending to drop it with Valentine or whoever, as part of her errand. But if that’s what was happening, Valentine would be able to track her down. For that matter, it seemed awfully early for Valentine to be concerned about Emily’s whereabouts. People in this business disappeared, they went to ground fairly easily. Being able to stay out of trouble is what made fixers like Emily valuable.
And the gun? It was her home defense piece, a cruel foot and a half of metal, just the critical bits of a shotgun with the rest cut away. She had a traveling piece, always left the shotgun in the closet in case someone jumped her as she came into the apartment.
That left the more worrying option. Emily, surprised somehow in the apartment, caught off guard. Taken without mess or struggle. Taken, and the Cog with her. Not a lot of people could pull that on Em. Maybe there had been a fight, and the creep cleaned up before he left. I looked around the room; everything was obsessively aligned, clean, perfect. It would take time to get a room back into this state, and there wouldn’t have been a lot of that, between my departure and when Cacher had arrived. It didn’t make sense.
I was standing up when I heard them on the stairs. I snapped out of my revere and immediately understood why I hadn’t seen anyone stalking the house from the street. They were across the way, two Badges in gray overcoats peering calmly through a rented window. Fucking stupid and lazy; my head just wasn’t in this staying alive thing. Now that the move was on, their boys hammering up the foyer stairs, they had given up hiding behind the curtains and were leaning out into the street, sighting the long rifles that the Council rarely issued and that you never saw in the city limits. I rolled away from the window just as the glass splattered into bright shards and the far wall crumpled into plaster.
I took four squatting steps to the door before I remembered the feet on the stairs and threw myself back into Emily’s room. The front door began to flex under officer’s boots, flakes of plaster dusting down from the jambs like snow. I fired twice into the door and then winced as a shot from across the street splintered the bedroom window sill and sprayed the room with splintered glass. I leaned over and, bracing with both my feet, flipped the mattress over and against the window. Better that they fire blind. The pounding on the front door started again. I belly- crawled over to the fireplace and scooped up the iron poker. Another bullet came through the window, dust and feathers puffing out of the mattress, wood splintering from the bed frame. I wedged myself into a corner of the bedroom and started hacking at the plaster ceiling. Emily lived on the second floor of a two-story building. When I got to the plank slating I climbed on a chair and put my fist through, depending on the laced bone conduit of my Pilot’s interface to hold me together. There was a lot of blood, the skin flapping back from my knuckles, but I got through. I pulled myself up into the darkness as they cleared the front door.
The attic was dark, and it was hot. There was only a little light, coming in from the gable vents. I had plaster dust in my eyes and mouth, and my hands were bleeding all over my gun. The floor of the attic was just beam framework over slating, so I balanced carefully toward the vents. A spattering of fire came up through the floor, the Badgemen getting damn desperate. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t follow me up, all of them too precious to be the first one to stick his head up into the darkness.
I kicked the vent out and shimmied up onto the roof. It was all of two heartbeats before the goons across the street shot at me. Hard to miss with a rifle like that, but they did. I rolled down the opposite decline of the roof, hooked my leg over and crawled, slowly, too slowly, down the drainage pipe and into the street. People had cleared out, all the gunshots and kicked out architecture had scattered folks. The Badge came out of the building, just about the time I was putting my boots on the ground.
I didn’t bother aiming, just shot, cycled, shot, bullets nicking off the brick wall of Emily’s building. I was on my heels, backpedaling so fast that I was falling. The Badges dropped to the ground or ducked behind doors and barrels. I only counted four of them, but there were more inside.
I finally came down on my back, rolling around the corner of the building and coming up on my knees. I realized that my last couple shots had been dry, the cylinder empty. Kneeling, I dumped the hot shells into my lap and started to quick load, keeping one eye on the building front. The Badges started to peek out. I had a brief memory, kneeling like this in the empty room of the Tomb Estate, fumbling bullets into this gun as that thing came down the hall. I thought I could hear the dry rasp of wings on wallpaper, blinked and realized I was frozen, a bullet pinched in my fingers, the Badge slowly creeping across the street towards me.
I snapped the cylinder closed and fired hurriedly. Luck put the bullet into one of the Badgemen, into the meat of his arm. He fell and the others crouched and started firing. I scrambled out and ran down the street. I wasn’t sure how many shots I’d loaded. Not a full cylinder, surely, and one fewer now. I looked for a place to pull off and finish the load.
I darted around a corner and dragged to a stop. There was an iron carriage, the shutters riveted shut, parked across the avenue. It was cold, the chill washing off it in sheets, breathtaking in the day’s freakish heat. I had never seen such a thing. I was cold just standing here. There were Badges all around it, leaning against walls or talking quietly among themselves. They were dressed in winter gear, heavy gloves on their hands. Their skin was pale and their faces were puffy, like they hadn’t been sleeping well. They looked up.
I shot the closest one, stepped forward and put my shoulder into his chest as he staggered, knocking him into one of his boys. The rest started to draw, but I kept my gun low and shooting. I fired three times before I heard that horrible dry snap of an empty chamber. The Badges were down, either bleeding or behind cover. There had been other shots, I slowly realized, and my chest and leg were hot. I looked down, saw that I was on one knee, saw red, red blood running down my shirt.
I stood up, staggered, stumbled past the carriage. Someone was yelling and I turned. The street was incredibly close, a tunnel of buildings and a burning sky pressed down. The Badges were hidden behind the iron box of the carriage. I waved my pistol at them, shuffling backward. My chest was tearing itself apart.
Another carriage rolled up, pulling between me and the iron box. Its engine clattered like shuffling plates as it idled. I put my hand on the side. There was a lace of blood between my fingers, and I winced as the door opened. It was Emily, and she was waving that wicked little shotgun at the Badges.
“You’re making a lot of noise, Jacob.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. My voice sounded flat in my head. “We’re having a little party, me and the Badge.” I coughed and pain lanced through my lungs. “You joining us?”
“No, no, I think we’ll be going now. Get in.”
“Not sure I should. Where you been, Em?”
She grimaced. “Get in or get fucked, Burn.”
“I gotta choose? Any way we could arrange both?”
Emily cuffed me and jerked my collar. I rolled into the carriage and lay down. Emily closed the door and, with one last look down the street at the iron carriage and its lurking guard, drove away.
I woke up with most of my ribs broken and some guy’s bloody hands fiddling with the damage. He was a tall guy, thin, his skin paper smooth and his face long and narrow. He was formally dressed, the cuffs of his sleeves neatly folded back and pinned in place. His arms were all bone, like the meat had been sucked away. I didn’t know him, so I tried to sit up. The pain knocked me down before I’d gotten very far into it. It felt like my lungs were stapled to the table. I moaned and rolled my head to one side. Emily was there, her hands folded in her lap. She smiled a little.
“Who’s the guy?” I asked. My voice sounded ragged, and the pain in my chest bundled up again.
