Andrew Lane - Red Leech

“That,” said Sherlock, “is about the size of it. Not intentional. Not in the slightest.”

“It’s true,” Virginia said, voice muffled by her father’s chest. “We were following the men who had Matty, and the train started to move before we could get off.”

“But they did rescue me,” Matty added, eyes still closed.

“That they did,” Crowe admitted. He glanced at the three of them. “I think you need food and drink and rest, but I think I need to find out what happened to you while you’re eatin’ an’ drinkin’.” He turned his head towards the rear of the room, where a doorway led out. “Mrs Dimmock! Four breakfasts, with all the orange juice an’ coffee you can muster!" He glanced at Sherlock and Matty. “Make that eight breakfasts,” he shouted. “There’s hungry people here!"

The next hour was a blur. Food arrived while the three of them were telling Amyus Crowe everything that had happened to them, and they ended up talking while they were stuffing their faces with ham, fried potato, eggs of various sorts and juice.

“He’s planning to invade Canada,” Sherlock said to Crowe when they got to the end. “He’s got an army built up, and he’s planning to set up a new country within Canada and declare it as the New Confederacy’

“That’s pretty much what the Pinkertons had already worked out,” Crowe said, nodding. “They’ve had their eye on this Duke Balthassar for some time now. The fact that he’s usin’ John Wilkes Booth as a figurehead to give his troops some backbone an’ give this new nation some legitimacy in the eyes of the Southern States was news to them, but it served to explain what he was waitin’ for.”

“So what are they going to do about it?” Sherlock asked. “They can’t be letting it go ahead, surely? It’ll poison relationships between America and England for generations.”

Crowe shook his massive, craggy head. “They got a plan,” he rumbled. “Can’t say I think much of it, but Secretary of War Stanton has personally endorsed it, so that’s about all a man can say’

“They’re going to attack?” Matty asked, mouth still full of fried potatoes.

“The Army’s been mobilized, an’ they’re forming a cordon somewhere ’tween here and the border ,” Crowe said. “But there’s somethin’ else afoot. The Government wants to resolve this without hand to hand fightin’, if at all possible.” He sighed, and glanced away, towards the front door to the hotel. “Secretary of War Stanton was quite taken with the use of balloons for reconnaissance durin’ the War Between the States. He reckons that balloons are the future for warfare. He’s directed that the Army Corps of Engineers deploys with as many hot air balloons as it has. Come evening, he intends floatin’ the balloons over Balthassar’s encampment an’ droppin’ explosive devices on them.”

“But—" Sherlock started, then stopped, appalled. “But that would be a massacre! I know these men are about to invade another country, but to drop bombs on them! Can’t he at least give them a chance to surrender?”

Crowe shook his head. “It don’t work that way. Secretary of War Stanton wants to send a message. He wants everyone to know that the war is over an’ the Union won, an’ any attempt to revive Confederate fortunes will be met with overwhelmin’ force.”

“But hundreds, maybe thousands of men will be killed!" Sherlock protested. “And not even in a battle, where they might defend themselves. They’re going to die when fire rains down on them from above! That’s just wrong !"

“It may be wrong,” Crowe said quietly, “but it’s goin’ to happen that way. Welcome to the world of what the Germans call Realpolitik , Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s dreams were full of fire, falling from the sky, and the screaming of charred and stick-thin figures running around in chaos. He woke up after a few hours, still tired but unable to sleep any more.

The bedroom was one of three spare ones the hotel manager had found for them to sleep in. Sherlock had wondered if the empty train in the station had meant that the hotel would be full of travellers, but in fact the train had been hired as a special by Amyus Crowe and a small group of Pinkerton’s agents who were monitoring the situation.

As he lay there, his mind kept coming back to what was going to happen in a few hours. It wasn’t as if the men in Balthassar’s Army were necessarily evil — they just had a different idea on how they wanted to be governed. Invading another country was wrong, obviously, but did that mean they deserved to be wiped out like ants?

Mycroft would have found a way to stop it. Sherlock was sure about that. Mycroft was a cog in the machinery of the British Government, of course, but he had beliefs, and morals, and convictions. The same beliefs, morals and convictions that had been inculcated into Sherlock by their father, Major Siger Holmes of the King’s Dragoons. They were both Siger’s sons, and they had inherited his values in the same way that they had inherited his blue eyes.

He had to do something. But what? What could he do to stop the Army Corps of Engineers?

Maybe he could send a telegraph message to Mycroft, in England. He didn’t know how much that might cost, although he suspected it would be expensive, but he still had some money left from earlier. Mycroft could call in the American Ambassador, or something, and get it stopped.

Or could he? Would he? And, more to the point, did Mycroft have enough time? He was several thousand miles away, after all, and perhaps his superiors in the Foreign Office would be more concerned with preventing an invasion of a British territory than in saving the lives of men they had never even met.

Sherlock knew that he needed to get out there, to see Balthassar’s Army and the Army Corps of Engineers balloon force. Maybe he couldn’t do anything, but he certainly wouldn’t be able to here at the hotel. There, out in the grasslands, maybe something would occur to him.

But how to get there?

He could rent a horse here in town, he guessed. He could ride out to where the balloons were being launched from. He’d seen the location, marked on the map that Amyus Crowe had been consulting a few hours before. He hadn’t consciously memorized it but, like so many things that he read, it had just lodged in his brain.

Should he take Virginia and Matty? Their presence would be comforting, but he had a feeling that this was his battle. They cared about it less than he did, and he had no right to drag them into it.

He got up and got dressed in fresh clothes that Amyus Crowe had managed to find somewhere in town. They were still new and made him itch, but the thought of putting on the same clothes he’d been wearing for the past couple of days filled him with horror.

Crowe was in the dining room, talking with two other men in suits. They had guns slung on low belts at their waists. Sherlock assumed they were from the Pinkerton Agency. He slipped past them while they were distracted and headed out into the open air.

The boardwalks along the edges of the street were filled with people wandering back and forth or just standing and talking. Sherlock walked along with the flow until he saw something that looked like a stables. He went inside.

“Can I help you, son?” a voice said. Sherlock looked around. An elderly man came out of the darkness — bald apart from a fringe of white hair around the back of his head, and a bushy white moustache.

“I need a horse, just for the day,” Sherlock said.

“That’s convenient,” the man said. “I got a horse that ain’t had any exercise for a while. Looks like we got ourselves a perfect match.”