The Dark Volume

Before Svenson could dispute this especially stupid idea he felt something cold and heavy pressed into his hand, and looked down to see he was now holding a silver-plated revolver.

“Wait a moment, all of you! We do not know—”

“You will shoot them!” cried the old man. “You will open the gate!”

“That is unlikely,” snapped Doctor Svenson, but no one heard. They had already taken hold of his arms and legs, lifting him abruptly to the level of their shoulders and marching straight to the wall—indeed, slamming him into the planks. The men holding his legs hefted him higher with exuberant force. The Doctor clutched the wall convulsively with both hands, ignoring the drop to either side, and threw a leg over the top to grip tightly with all four of his limbs.

The men behind him shouted with triumph, but the Doctor expected at any moment to be shot at or perforated by a pike. He looked down into a grassy compound, lit from the factory's high windows— the light streaming so brightly he was forced to squint. They called to him—what did he see, who was there, what had he found? Someone bounced the fence and he promptly lost his grip on the pistol, dropping it onto the grass inside. Svenson swore. His outer leg was suddenly shoved upwards and he toppled over. With a grunt he caught himself before he fell completely, hanging by one arm, but there was no way he could pull himself back up. He spat with frustration—suspended between the louts outside and the rogues within, all convinced he had murdered the barge-master. He dropped with a squawk into an ungainly roll. A triumphant cry soared at his disappearance—and he groped urgently for the pistol. A door in the factory opened wide. Someone had seen him.

SVENSON LOOKED into the glare. Perhaps ten men filed out toward him, the gleam of polished metal in their hands. He flung himself facedown, flinching as they snapped carbines to their shoulders and fired a crashing volley.

Svenson realized he was not dead—nor had the bullets gone into the fence above him. They had fired into the air. He heard a synchronous clacking as each rifleman advanced his next round, and then too soon a second volley—and then a third, and then a fourth, then a fifth, in what seemed like as many seconds, the shots harmless but the demonstration as cold a display of unanswerable force as a frigate's broadside.

The mob fell silent, as if they too were on their knees and trembling. What else had he expected—it was an armament factory. Who knew what weapons they might possess, what explosives, what newfangled quick-firing carbines, what vicious hand-cannons stuffed with grapeshot? The glass woman's army stood helpless as lambs outside a slaughterhouse.

His groping hand found the pistol and closed about it. One soldier detached himself from the line and strode directly at Svenson, his carbine fixed on the Doctor's chest. Svenson raised his empty hand in supplication, the hand with the pistol still hidden in the grass.

“These fellows have raised me over this wall,” he stammered. “I am not one of them.”

The soldier wore an extravagant green uniform, like that of a hotel doorman, with polished black shoes and a black belt loaded with am munition pouches. An elaborate silver plume of flame had been embroidered on each tab of his stiff green collar—an officer, but of what force? The man's expression was stone-hard. He advanced a new shell into the carbine. The Doctor recalled the one bit of advice he had received with regard to dueling (Svenson having been challenged as a student by a drunken Prussian), from a disinterested young baron with unpleasant pink scars across each cheek. The nobleman had advised Svenson to note when his opponent breathed—for men typically inhaled before launching an attack—and use that very instant to attack himself. It had not worked in the duel—Svenson had been extremely fortunate to take a saber-tip along his wrist for an honorable ending. But he found himself now transfixed by the man before him, the swelling of his chest… waiting for the exhale that must put a bullet into his heart.

“Stop!”

The cry came from the doorway, but Svenson could see only the speaker's shadow.

“There is another dead,” called Mr. Fruitricks, quite perturbed. “And this man cannot have done it. Bring him inside.”

THE PISTOL'S silver-plating betrayed his attempt to tuck it behind his back, and it was taken away. The officer marched him into the house, the rest of the detachment following in a drill precise enough to satisfy a tartar. The door was slammed and bolted, and the men leapt up ladders to loopholes in the wall through which they could fire upon the whole of the open yard and the wooden wall. These were not young men, not raw fellows recruited from the thousands driven from work by failed mills or ruined farms—but men with hard faces, scarred and grim. Svenson had seen them on his own ships, sailors whose service had required terrible acts—criminal in any civilian circumstance— and who after years where such work grew familiar came to inhabit another world entirely, men whose shore leave inevitably resulted in bloody mayhem and consequent whippings. Such men filled the ranks of the Xonck Armaments private militia. No doubt the company paid better than the Queen. He thought of the crowd outside the wall, its peevish assumption of privilege, and how little they understood the resolute figures arrayed to keep them out—men whose deep-set resentment for everything the privileged adherents stood for would find grateful outlet in the Xonck family's defense.

The officer detailed two men to escort Svenson to a perfunctory office complete with filing cabinets, a desk, and two wooden chairs. Fruitricks was already behind the desk, shoving at the ledger books on top of it. Svenson fell into a chair and reached in his tunic for his cigarettes.

“Who is killed?” he asked mildly.

“You are astonishingly insolent,” Fruitricks muttered, sorting papers without looking at his hands.

“On the contrary, I am merely a foreigner who knows not your ways.” The Doctor blew smoke toward the lantern on the desk, wishing very much that his fingers would stop trembling. “You know I did not kill your man at his watch fire—I found him dead.”

“Then why did you run away?”

“Because your men would have shot me,” replied the Doctor. “Who has been killed?”

Fruitricks sighed, his expression aggrieved and pinched. “One of them.”

Svenson swiveled his head, following Fruitricks' gaze to the guards.

“The Xonck private army?”

“They are most formidable, I assure you.”

“As formidable as your new weapons can make them, at least.”

“That is very formidable!” Fruitricks was nearly shouting.

The Doctor sat back in his chair and looked for a spot to tap his ash. “A very good thing they answer to your command.”

“Of course they do.”

“And not to anyone named Xonck.”

Mr. Fruitricks glared at him. “No one named Xonck is my present concern.”

“What about anyone named Trapping?”

Mr. Fruitricks shot to his feet, prompting the soldiers at the door to look in. He ignored them, leaning over the desk at Svenson.

“I am a businessman, sir—and this is a place of work! Whatever your intrigues, we have no part of them!”

“Of course not,” replied the Doctor. “This is an island of calm.”

Fruitricks snorted and waved with anger toward the courtyard and the gate.

“Who is that crowd?” he cried. “Do they not realize we can easily kill them all? Nor how very tempting it has been to do so?”

“I think they appreciate it more than they did before your display.”

“But who are they?”

“You do not know?” Svenson tapped his ash into a dish of pins. “My goodness. All manner of people from the city, some of them very highly placed—”

“But they cannot do anything!” Fruitricks protested. “We are impregnable!”

“Then why are you upset?”

“Because two men are dead! I watched you out there—speaking and plotting! They put you over my wall!”

“They assume I am of their number.”