He gestured to the oncoming enemy. One hundred yards and closing.
Then the gangster Daud had spoken to turned around. She jerked her head to one side.
“Get her away from here.”
Jack shook her head. “I stay with my family. They die, I die.”
“I’m sorry,” said Daud, “but I can’t let that happen. You have information I need. And I’m not going to let you die before I get it.”
The gangster waved at them. “Go! We’ll buy you time.”
Then she made a fist and raised it. Her companionsjoined him, the three beginning their chant as they walked toward the approaching machines.
“Better off dead! Better off dead!”
Daud reached for Jack. She jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
“We can debate this later,” he said. He grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him. Then he reached up and pulled at the world, the Mark of the Outsider alive and electric on his hand.
The pair rematerialized in one of the gaping empty windows of the burned-out building next to the Suicide Hall. Behind, Daud heard the last survivors of the Sixways Gang shout their chant and heard the nightmare machines chatter their emotionless assessment of the threat.
Then Daud shifted higher, taking Jack with him, from window to window, then to the edge of the roof. The weak structure began to crumble under their combined weight. Daud felt the tiredness, his mind beginning to blur after all the exertion, but he kept going, transversing them across the street to another roof, then farther out, across the buildings, away from the Sixways and the horror of the clockwork soldiers. He didn’t know where he was going, he only knew he had to get away, somewhere safe, where he could question Eat ’Em Up Jack, perhaps finally convincing her to give up her secret. To tell him where the Twin-bladed Knife had gone.
And as they traveled, the Mark of the Outsider glowed under his glove, the pain white hot, sapping his concentration and willpower the more he used it.
Instead, Daud focused on the pain. He wanted to remember it like a song—every note, every nuance, so he could return it in full to the one who deserved it the most.
The black-eyed bastard who had given him the Mark in the first place.
9
THE SUICIDE HALL, WYRMWOOD DISTRICT, DUNWALL
18th Day, Month of Earth, 1852
“Our investigations have proved conclusively that there is indeed operating within the boundaries of Gristol, a covert organization, apparently independent of any foreign political control, but possibly funded by a rogue branch of one of the governments of the Isles. The makeup of this organization is as yet unclear, although we know its agents are numerous and widespread; in Dunwall, we believe they have infiltrated all levels of society, from the aristocratic classes of the Estate District down to the street gangs which still plague certain quarters of the city.
As to this organization’s purpose, we have yet to fully understand. But that their prime focus of attention is on the Imperial throne is a certainty, although for what purpose, we do not know.
Investigations continue; full report to follow.”
—ANALYSIS OF REPORTS OF COVERT FOREIGN ACTIVITIES
Excerpt from a report commissioned by the Royal Spymaster
“Exquisite.”
“Absolutely exquisite.”
A curl of blue smoke headed toward the nicotine-stained ceiling, adding to the thick fog that already filled the room.
“Such lines, such movement.”
“Such movement. Such exquisite movement.”
The woman took another draw on her long, black cigarillo and held the smoke in her lungs. She savored the rich aniseed flavor, the tight buzz in her head. She kept her elbow crooked and the cigarette well away from her scarlet velvet trouser suit, and as she enjoyed the rush from the medicinal herbs wrapped in with the tobacco, she absently ran a hand over her coiffured blonde hair, held high in place by a long gold hairpin.
And then she exhaled, long and slow. She unbuttoned the top of her black shirt. They’d been in the room for an eternity, and with the windows closed and the door shut it was getting hot, and perspiration was most certainly not good for one’s complexion.
The man next to her was clad in opposite colors: a jet-black velvet suit, the jacket double-breasted and cinched tight, his shirt scarlet and high-collared, a black silk cravat tied in a knot so elaborate it had taken him a good half hour to get just so, as had his slicked black hair and neatly waxed moustache. He didn’t move from his position, half-sitting, half-leaning on the windowsill, arms folded tightly, his neck craned awkwardly to look down into the street below. He didn’t look comfortable, but comfort, the woman knew, was far from the point. The man was posing, for her, for the invisible audience he liked to imagine was watching their every move. Nothing he did was by chance, and his position by the window was carefully arranged to be a work of art in itself, a worthy subject for a portrait.
The woman lifted her chin. Ah, if only there were someone here to capture this moment in oils. What would the painting be called? The Masters at Work, perhaps? She liked the simplicity of it. Of course, he would think differently. He liked the elaborate, and the ostentatious. He would suggest something like The Mistress, Her Lover, and the Blood of the Others. Garish and a little awkward, but certainly memorable.
The woman frowned and took another long suck on her cigarillo. The Blood of Others was good. It seemed to sum up their job rather well. And it was certainly apt today, because there was a very great deal of the blood of others being spilled as the two clockwork soldiers dismantled the bodies of the last members of the Sixways Gang in the
