Devon Monk - Cold Copper

A switch snapped, metal against metal, and gaslights caught one to the other in a line across the top of the building. Rose blinked hard to get her eyes adjusted to the bright, and hunkered down a little tighter. They’d chosen a good enough hiding place, and the men, five she could see still near the door with Hob walking back from a little farther off, didn’t seem to suspect they were anything but alone in the big building.

The men were of a height to one another, most of them wearing beards and mustaches cut trim to their faces. She’d guess them all of an age too, maybe even as old as thirty or so. They wore a mix of styles: pants in dark, heavy wool plaid, plain leather, or sturdy denim blue; boots in black polish or oiled hide. The only thing their coats and hats had in common was they all looked warm and useful in the hard weather.

But there was one other thing that they each sported—a wide-muzzled gun of some sort with a copper box attached to it, hanging at the side.

One look at that gun sent her mind spinning with possibilities. She’d never seen anything like it, and her fingers itched to figure what it was made of and why, exactly, it was modified in such a manner.

A hand reached out and pressed gently downward on her arm. She glanced up. It was Hink. He wasn’t looking at her, but crouched as he was at her side, he must have sensed her coiling up with curiosity. He must have known she was pulled by the knowing of something worse than a cat by yarn, and given too much a chance, might just walk up there and ask those men what the guns were for and how, exactly, they worked.

“Mayor says there’s an end to them,” the second man said. “Won’t need a second warehouse, and this one’s nearly full. I say there’ll be no ghosts in the night come spring.”

The men each hung their guns on wall pegs, then freed the copper boxes from the contraptions by thumbing off a couple latches and giving them a good tug.

“Want to put money on that, Sal?” one of the other men asked.

“Didn’t say I’d bet for it.”

“Here now. A man who ain’t willing to back up his opinion with money shows you exactly what his opinion’s worth.”

The men chuckled and walked off with the copper boxes, heading deeper into the warehouse, out of Rose’s sight. In a moment, a clattering of cogs and wheels and chains filled the quiet of the place as some large device was activated. After a bit, there was silence.

“Should we follow them?” Rose whispered once the racket had died down.

“No,” Hink whispered back. “We stay here.”

“We do not stay here,” Mr. Wicks said. “We investigate.”

Hink just shook his head slowly. “I don’t know how you can’t seem to understand a two-letter word, but let me try again: No.”

“As your director, I order you to follow my orders, Mr. Hink.”

Hink snorted.

Mr. Wicks scowled at him. He stood and very quietly and quickly made his way down the aisle, pausing at the end of the stack of crates and peering around the corner to where the men had wandered.

“Blasted yatterhead,” Hink whispered. He turned and gave Rose a look that said she would share the blame if Wicks got them all killed.

There was no use calling out—the other men would likely hear them. So Rose did the only thing she could think of. She pulled her gun and got ready to shoot if Wicks was discovered.

Thomas didn’t dash out from behind the crates. But it wasn’t long before the men were back, talking over more mundane market prices of buckwheat and potatoes. They crossed over to the door.

Wicks ducked down out of their line of sight as the men reconnected the copper boxes back to the guns, shouldered them, shut down the lights, then left through the same door they’d come in.

Rose’s heart thumped for a minute, maybe two, as her eyes, once again, got the hang of darkness. Then Captain Hink was on his feet, just as quiet as Wicks, but twice as large and twice as temperamental as he strode in a killing sort of way down to where Wicks sat.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hink growled.

“Gathering information.” Wicks stood, dusted his coat, and adjusted his hat, though neither looked out of place to Rose.

“They could have found us.”

“Yes. Then we would have killed them, I suppose,” he said nonplussed.

“Idiot,” Hink grumbled.

“‘Sir,’” Wicks added. “You will address me as ‘sir.’”

“When hell burns holes in my boots,” Hink said. “And not even then.”

“What exactly will convince you of my station above you, Marshal Cage?”

“Paperwork signed and sealed by the president. Don’t have that, do you?”

“Let’s find out, shall we?” Wicks dug in the satchel he carried, thumbed through a small stack of paper, and pulled out one clean sheet.

In the dark of the place, Rose could just make out a seal of an eagle worked up in red and blue ink.

“Will this do?” He handed the paper to Hink.

Hink took it and tipped it to the meager light slipping in through the cracks in the ceiling.

“Anyone could forge a document. There’s practically a printing press on every corner nowadays.” He shoved it back at him.

Thomas paused, looking for a moment like he might have just noticed the depths of Hink’s stubbornness.

“Yes. Well,” he said. “I want to know where they went with those copper boxes. Go and see where they put them and report back to me.”

Hink inhaled. His hand clenched into a fist.

She didn’t know if he was fighting the urge to yell at the man or just fighting the urge to fight.

“Lady said she wants to go to town,” Hink said. “Find a nice hotel and a bath. I say that’s the way I’m walking.”

“I’m sure Miss Small won’t mind one little jaunt to see what’s behind that door.” He pointed.

Rose walked over to the both of them. Then walked past them so she could see what he was going on about.

There at the far end of the warehouse was, indeed, a door. “Armory?” she suggested.

“Won’t know if we don’t look.” Wicks took the distance at a quick clip, placed his hand on the door handle, and leaned in a bit as if listening for something moving behind the door. Then he tried the latch.

The door opened. Wicks turned, grinned, and stepped over the threshold.

“Idiot,” Hink said. “And a fool. We should leave, Rose. Now.”

“You want to know what’s in there,” she said. “You know you do. Doesn’t matter if he’s your superior or a horsefly. You’ll always wonder what was really back there. Got a case of the curious in a bad way.”

Hink glanced at the boarded-up windows, then shook his head, a smile easing the edge of his anger. “Woman, the trouble you find.” He turned and stormed off after Wicks.

“I like to keep my eyes out on the world,” she said.

“Thought you wanted a bath.”

“I do. After we find where they went with the copper boxes.”

Hink pulled his gun again, and stepped away from the stacks of crates and into the darkened room. “Wicks?” he called out softly.

Thomas seemed to melt out of shadows, a small flame tucked tight in his hand so as not to give more than an ember of light to his face. “Some kind of device here. I think it’s a hoist for the goods. The men used it.”

Captain Hink never seemed to fail when a light was needed and this time was no different. He pulled a flint and steel from his pocket and lit up a small torch.

“You hear that?” he asked.

Rose nodded. “Like trumpets, but higher? And…water? Maybe there’s a waterwheel that runs the equipment under here?”

“No,” Hink and Wicks said at the same time.

“You first, Marshal Cage,” Thomas said.