Elizabeth Bear - Karen Memory

I unlocked the Singer’s gripper and cocked my arm back, bided my time until I was dangling near the maw and there was only a whisper of slow match left, and hurled that dynamite inside.

I made it, too. And either I timed that fuse right or the chomping beak itself detonated the dynamite.

A shudder ran through the thing, and a cloud of black smoke billowed from the beak. The Octopus started to slide backward, still thrashing — that hadn’t been enough to torpedo it entirely, then. The arms were folding up tight again, closing over the beak. But not sealing as tight as before! The whole front of the submersible was twisted slightly askew, so it couldn’t close itself up into a smooth, almost-seamless cone.

I wished them luck limping back to Russia like that, the sons of bastards. And I wondered for a moment why it was that I wasn’t hearing the tremendous rasping and grating of metal, before I realized I wasn’t hearing much of anything at all.

Then I was falling through the air, shaken loose from the barbed arm, and the ground came up and struck me — and the Singer — a prodigious blow.

* * *

I woke to find Priya kneeling beside me, reaching through the cage to touch my cheek and press my face. I squinted; her lips were moving. I couldn’t hear what she said over the flat, painful ringing in my ears. But once she saw my eyes open, she smiled a dazzling smile.

Carefully, steadily, she unlocked the Singer’s retaining bars and unbuckled the harness.

She caught me when I rolled out, too. Then she kissed me on the cheek like she didn’t mind the blood on my face or the vomit in my hair. I couldn’t stand; my hip hurt that much. But I was happy just to lay in her lap and let her stroke my hair.

After a bit, I decided I was probably even going to live, though I might regret it for a while.

Priya squeezed my hand until my eyes opened again. From watching her lips, I figured out what she said: “I need to confess something.”

I looked at her, so serious, and a chill settled into my chest. It was going to be bad news, whatever it was. Nobody ever got told nothing good lying in the middle of the smoking ruins of a city dock.

Then she said, “I read your journal.”

My hearing was coming back, but I must have heard that wrong. “You — wait, what ?”

“Please don’t be angry,” she said. “I just … I missed you, and I couldn’t find you, and I was scared. And once I started, Karen, I couldn’t stop. You tell stories better than any of the ones we read in the library.” She looked at me so earnestly I almost melted.

I opened my mouth. I closed it again.

She said, “What if we got Captain Colony to bring your manuscript back to Chicago? Or even New York? You know he said he knows writers. Maybe one of them would write a letter of introduction to a publisher.…”

She trailed off, looking at my face.

“That’s not what you want.”

“It is what I want,” I said.

I struggled to get up, and after a minute she gave up fighting with me about it. Over her shoulder, I saw Crispin and Francina jogging toward us, the Marshal and Merry behind them. Tomoatooah was back there on Scout, and there was a bundle in a black coat over his saddle still.

I said, “But I thought … you’d want to go home.” Back to India.

She stared at me like I was stupid, and then she smiled. “Aashini is going home,” she answered, while she helped me sit. I leaned on her hard. “We’ll get the money somehow. I want to stay with you. And I thought a book would help pay for your stable, and maybe I could keep fixing things. We can make something work.”

The lightning of my heart hurt more than the buckshot in my wrenched hip. And the pain was a hell of a lot more welcome, too.

I dug in my shirt, inside the wrap binding up my bosom, until I found a warm disc of metal. It slipped, wet with sweat, but I dug it out and folded it in my fist. The fist was sticky with dried blood. I was a goddamn mess.

“I want you to have this,” I said. “Marshal Reeves gave it to me. It’s been … lucky.”

She held out her hand hesitantly, curious, and I laid the Marshal’s dollar in it.

She slid her thumb across and frowned. Then smiled. “She looks like you,” she said, and grinned at me with all the morning sunlight caught in her bottomless eyes.

Mostly, I guess you know how it ended.

It was pneumonia. And it was a separated hip. And I still hear ringing in my ears when I’m in a quiet room, and I suspect I always will.

But it turns out the Federal Government actually takes a very kind view of folk who foil foreign plots against their sovereign territory. After the Os’minog, unable to submerge with her damaged hull, was tracked, rammed, and sunk off the Oregon coast by the USS Amphitrite we had a pretty nice reward paid in double eagles to divvy up.

Miss Francina took her share and what she’d had in the bank and rebuilt the parlor house better than it had been. Except Miss Francina listened to Bea and named the place the Hôtel Ma Cherie, even though Madame insisted that “mon” was better because “those fucking men think everything belongs to them anyway.” Crispin’s the manager now, and Miss Bethel runs the bar. The other girls all went back to work with her. I bet Bea’s still sneaking Signor into her bedroom after closing.

It ain’t all roses. Remember my old friend Bill? He runs Bantle’s cribhouse now, and Merry’s still in business busting girls out, more’s the pity. But we got some legislation planned about that.

We gave Connie a New Orleans funeral, at Beatrice’s insistence. Since Connie always kept her opinions on God to herself, we had to take our best guess.

The food wasn’t as good as she would have managed.

Marshal Reeves and Tomoatooah had to sneak out of town to get his prisoner away from Sergeant Waterson, since our local constables wanted Horaz Standish, too. The Marshal and his posseman took Horaz back to Oklahoma in shackles, by way of the train. I read in the paper that he charmed Judge Parker so that Parker apologized when he sentenced Standish to swing.

Either way, Standish didn’t live long enough to be extradited back to the Washington Territory. But the Marshal did ship Sergeant Waterson his remains, in a nice pine box.

* * *

Me and Priya paid for Miss Lizzie’s inventor’s license in return for her taking Priya on as a formal apprentice.

That’s going well. So long as they don’t blow themselves up.

I send the Marshal a letter once in a while. His Jennie reads ’em to him, and she writes me back. She says she’ll ask Tomoatooah about a filly for me, when he gets around to getting Scout in foal. I just about think he might sell me one. Maybe I’ll even take the train down there to get her when she’s old enough to travel, and meet all the little Reeveses, too.

The house me and Priya bought together with our share of the reward has a nice bit of land attached, and Molly’s going to need a stablemate once we’re done teaching Priya to ride.

Mr. Colony took my manuscript to Chicago, and now you hold my book in your hand.

* * *

Madame ran for mayor.

Unopposed.

Rapid City is not any one real place but a sort of Ur-place, a compilation derived of elements of historic Portland, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Madame Damnable is inspired by but not in any factual way based upon Seattle’s legendary real Mother Damnable, Mary Ann Conklin (1821–1873), who is supposed to have run a city courthouse downstairs and a brothel upstairs in the same house on King Street.