Johannes Cabal the Detective (32 page)

Cabal was very disappointed by this development; he had been hoping that Marechal would empty the gun in a furious ecstasy, making it much easier for Cabal to murder him quickly and efficiently before he had a chance to reload. No, not murder, he reminded himself. It would be self-defence. Ah, the novelty of it.

Marechal looked around the room, daring anybody to speak, before returning his full attention to Cabal. He levelled his revolver, but Cabal was studying his watch yet again, this time with some perplexity. “What the hell are you gawping at, Cabal?” spat Marechal. He was already regretting shooting the colonel; he would have had to go, of course, but it could have been done less messily. It also meant that he couldn’t just shoot Cabal immediately, as he so urgently desired, without looking like an utter maniac. He made a conscious attempt to recover some dignity. “I’ve got a gun here, and you can’t drag your eyes off your watch. What is the matter with you?”

“Me? Well, apart from having a revolver aimed at me, very little. My watch, I fear, is running a little slow.” He finally looked at Marechal. “You know,” he added, taking Marechal into his confidence, “I had a feeling I should have dragged the explanations out for another minute or two.”

“They were quite long enough.”

“Well, I would have thought so, but without time to take proper titrations to make sure the concentrations were as advertised—and, of course, this hardly represents standard laboratory conditions with respect to temperature and pressure—my calculations might have been a little off. So frustrating.”

There was a distant
boom
, like thunder, but it reverberated throughout the
Princess Hortense’s
hull like a lump hammer against a tin bath, the deck lurching sharply to starboard for a moment. There were cries in the salon, and swearing from some quarters.

“Ah,” said Cabal, happily. “There we go.”

“What was that?” Marechal narrowed his eyes and aimed his revolver directly at Cabal’s head. “What have you done, Cabal?”

“Blown up No. 1 Etheric Line Guide. That’s the forward port one, isn’t it, Captain?”

But Captain Schten had already left the salon at a run. Cabal watched the door swing to after him, then confided to Marechal, “He’s probably got a lot on his mind at the moment.”

“You’ve done what, Cabal?” Marechal, pale and suddenly sweating, looked at Cabal over his revolver. He wanted so very much to fire, but he had an ugly feeling that he had been outmanoeuvred.

“I’ve outmanoeuvred you,” said Cabal, confirming those fears. “That first one was on a timer. The others—”

“Others?”

“Of course, there are others. Not much of a threat if there’s no chance of escalation, is there? The others, as I was saying, are on long timers, but have a rather cunning anti-tamper device I came up with at short notice. It’s wonderful what you can hash together with the contents of a general grocery store and a pharmaceutical chemist’s shop. I suppose,” he said, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “I should really have mentioned that to Captain Schten before he rushed off. The business about the anti-tamper devices, that is; I don’t imagine grocers and chemists are very high on his agenda at present.”

Marechal was at the door in a few long strides. As he opened it, a steward almost ran into him from the other side. “Find the captain!” snapped Marechal, gripping the man fiercely by the shoulders. “Tell him not to disturb any devices he finds! Tell him Cabal has planted bombs and the slightest interference could set them off!” He released the man, who simply stood there wincing at his freshly bruised biceps. “
Run
, you idiot!” roared Marechal in his face. “All our lives depend upon it!” That was sufficient, and the steward bolted back the way he came.

Marechal wheeled around to face Cabal. “Very well, you whey-faced bastard. What do you hope to gain by this?”

Cabal, ignoring the slight, considered thoughtfully for a moment, calculated to irritate the count within the limits of his small temper. “I desired to put you in a position where you or—more accurately—the captain and the homicidal Fräulein Satunin would feel restrained from killing me. That’s one. I am also of the strong opinion that this aeroship should turn around and head back to Parila. That’s two. I must admit, I was not expecting you to be here when I arrived, Count, but since you are, I think the Senzans should have a chance to chat with you. That’s three, and final.”

Marechal stared at him; angrily, yes, but also rather sulkily. He shook his head heavily. “Forlorn hopes all.” He returned to his barstool, picking up an empty ashtray from a table in passing, lit a new cigarette, and regarded Cabal as a headmaster nearing retirement might regard a troublesome schoolboy who defies all attempts at discipline. “I don’t understand you, Cabal. You were free and clear. You don’t give a damn about what happens in this part of the world. Why would you come back? Bombs or no bombs, you’re not leaving this ship alive. I—” He shook his head again. “I don’t understand you.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Cabal. “If you did, you would have gift-wrapped the
Principia Necromantica
for me, given me free passage out of your country right at the beginning of our acquaintance, and counted yourself lucky. I have dealt with greater forces than you, Count.”

“Don’t give yourself airs, Cabal.”

“He isn’t.” Leonie Barrow’s voice was quiet but clear. With Marechal’s eyes on her, she said, “Cabal is more dangerous than you can believe, Count. Both the angels and the devils fear him. He’s a monster, but an evenhanded one. I know he is capable of the most appalling acts of evil.” Her glance moved to Cabal, who was listening dispassionately. “I believe he is also capable of great good. But to predict which he will do next isn’t easy or safe.”

Marechal grimaced. “What is your association with this man? Public relations or something?”

“I loathe him,” she said with sudden venom. Then, more quietly, “And I admire him. You’re right; he didn’t have to come back. He’s taken a big risk, but I know he’s taken bigger. I can’t tell you whether he’s a monster or playing the hero right now, but I know one thing. You made the biggest mistake of your life when you made an enemy of him.”

Cabal raised an eyebrow and smiled a smile at Count Marechal so dry that you couldn’t have dragged a molecule of water out of it with fuming sulphuric acid. “I sound quite mythical, don’t I, Marechal? What wonders shall I perform next?”

“You can perform them from beyond the grave, Cabal. You’ve made a mistake.”

“Oh?” said Cabal, mildly curious. He drew out his pocket watch and checked it. “And what would that be?”

“You’ve told us that the other bombs have long timers. Soon we shall be across the border. There are cleared areas there. We can set the ship down and the engineers can deal with your bombs without fear of crashing out of the sky. Not that you’ll be there to see it. Checkmate, Cabal.” He drew back his pistol’s hammer slowly, with every sign of enjoyment.

“You would have a point, except that you have made an assumption. That I told the truth about the bombs.”

Marechal narrowed his eyes. “There are no more bombs, are there?”

“Oh, there are bombs. Just no anti-tamper fuses. I mean to say, as Miss Barrow so kindly intimated, I
am
terribly talented, but rustling up mercury switches out of thin air is beyond even my admittedly extraordinary abilities.”

“Even better,” Marechal said, smiling. “My only concern was that a heavy landing might trigger them. Thank you for removing that last lingering anxiety.”

“Oh, my pleasure. Really. But … I also lied about the timed fuses.”

Marechal’s smile slid off his face like a stunned monkey from a buttered banyan. “What?”

“They’re not actually very long.”

At which point the second bomb exploded.

Chapter 17

IN WHICH THERE IS DANGER, DISASTER, AND DEATH

The detonation was that much closer and that much more violent, throwing Cabal and Marechal off their feet. The large windows on the starboard side of the salon exploded inwards, and suddenly the room was home to a howling gale and tumbling fragments of glass. The clouds outside seemed to buck backwards and forwards as the
Princess Hortense
yawed wildly. Miss Barrow and the other passengers were hurled from their seats, Lady Ninuka sent sprawling over Colonel Konstantin’s body. Her screams mingled with the other cries of surprise and terror.

“Cabal!” bellowed Marechal, climbing to his feet and standing with his legs well apart, braced against the rolling deck. “You’re insane! You’ll kill us all!” He looked around, and caught sight of Cabal taking refuge behind a sofa. It was no sort of cover; Marechal aimed and fired, the heavy slug tearing clean through it. The lurching deck had spoilt his aim, however, and the bullet hole went through the MirkAir antimacassar on the sofa top.

“Two bullets left,” called Cabal. “This is one of the many reasons you would make a bad ruler, Marechal—poor resource management. Also, you show appallingly weak anticipatory skills.”

“Oh? And how would anybody guess that you would be mad enough to do this?”

“Not this,” said Cabal, his tone dismissive. “
This
.” He leaned out suddenly. Marechal barely had time to register that Cabal had a gun in his hand before it fired. The swaying of the deck saved him, too, the round going high and punching a hole in an aft window, and he ducked low and scuttled away. “You think a city as close to a bunch of rabid dogs as Parila is to Mirkarvia wouldn’t have a good supply of gunsmiths?” Cabal called after the scampering noble.

He weighed the gun in his hand; the man behind the counter had looked at him quizzically when he’d enquired whether they stocked the Webley .577 revolver. Thwarted, Cabal had settled on a Senzan revolver, but at least had the mild pleasure of finding one in an equally untidy calibre—10.35 mm. His mind was usually quite pristine, but—O secret sin!—he had always taken a perverse joy in dangling decimals.

“The ship’s going down and you two are having a gunfight?” shouted Herr Roborovski. “You’re both mad!”

“Sir, this may not be the best time for this,” agreed Fräulein Satunin, grimly holding on to the carpet. Behind her, the ground was briefly glimpsed through the aft windows as the ship’s tail dipped and swung.

“Shut up!” spat Marechal, his black hair askew and his composure shattered, from the end of the bar furthest from Cabal. “You, Satunin! You’re supposed to be a trained killer! Get him!”

“Sir,” she replied forcefully, “he has a gun. I have a knife. He has cover. I have open ground. Worst of all, you’ve told me in his hearing what you want me to do. Tactically, this is a very unsound proposition, sir!”

“I don’t give a flying pfennig for your damned tactical propositions, you stupid bitch! Just kill him!”

“No! You’re not listening to me!” interrupted Roborovski with urgent passion. “We’re all in dreadful danger!”

“Nice attempt, sir,” called Cabal from where he lay in moderate comfort behind the sofa. He was glad all the furniture was bolted down. With the
Princess Hortense’s
current perturbations, he would otherwise have been forced to chase his place of concealment around the salon. “But the line guides provide only forward motion, not lift. As long as the gyroscopic levitators continue to spin, we will not crash. We will just drift. Shortly, the Senzan airforce will come in pursuit of my stolen entomopter, and they will find us.”

“Oh, God,” said Miss Barrow, and Cabal had a sudden intimation that he may have made a miscalculation. “Cabal, the line guides are the ship’s main source of power! Didn’t you know that? It’s in the pamphlet!”

Cabal twitched. “Pamphlet?”

“The one about the ship! The one you got with your travel documents and itinerary!”

Cabal thought of an origami swan and swallowed.

“Not so mythical now, eh, Cabal!” Marechal started laughing—a coughing, barking laugh that contained little humour.

“She’s right!” Herr Roborovski was hanging on to a table support for dear life as the deck pitched violently beneath him. “With two of them destroyed, there’s barely enough to keep the levitators running! We need to land! We need to land immediately before the reserves are depleted!” He was interrupted by a shuddering groan that juddered through the entire fabric of the vessel. It ran through their bodies and shook their hearts in their chests. Roborovski swore something in a Mirkarvian dialect, a desperate and pleading jumble of words. “It’s the ship’s spine! She’s not designed to be thrown around like this! If we don’t set down soon, she’ll break her back!”

But beneath them was nothing but forest and steep hillsides.

J
ohannes Cabal was, though it pained him sorely to admit it, only human, and it is human to err. In his chosen profession, however, to err was to risk lynching, immolation, or ingestion. Cabal had so far kept his errors mainly on the small side—a singed eyebrow here, a deranged imp with a meat cleaver there—but overlooking the intimate connection between the etheric line guides and the gyroscopic levitators was beginning to look like one of the more final variety.

Furthermore, there was naught he could do about it while pinned down in the salon. While he and Marechal maintained their standoff, there was little chance of anybody getting out of there alive. He could bet that the crew members were too busy trying to restore trim to the ship to bother him for the moment, but this was an imperfect state of affairs. They would either succeed, and then he would have a lot of angry Mirkarvians after him, or they would fail, and Cabal would finish his life and career cremated on some anonymous Senzan hillside.

He considered his options. How much of a threat was Marechal? Assuming he had the same sort of revolver that Cabal had stolen from him back in Harslaus, it was a six-chamber design. Assuming, further, that he wasn’t the cautious type and therefore carried a round under the hammer, that left him with two rounds. Might he have reloaded? Possible, but unlikely; given the softness of Cabal’s cover, it would have been an obvious tactic to place three or four rounds in judiciously chosen points through the sofa with a guarantee of at least one hit. Even if not fatal or debilitating, it would give him an advantage. That Marechal had not done so suggested that he had come out unprepared to shoot more than six peasants. Cabal had five rounds remaining, and was bitterly regretting not having brought some more with him. Like Marechal, however, he had not been anticipating a gunfight. So, he had a small advantage, but time was wasting. He risked a peep along the side of the sofa away from the bar and saw Miss Barrow and the others clinging to the furniture.

Not so long ago, he thought, I would have been safe on a train at this point. Harlmann could have said what he liked, and I wouldn’t have cared a fig.

The ship pitched upwards amidst shouts and screams. Everybody who could, clung on for their lives. Unattended, Konstantin rolled heavily back and up against the base of the bullet-damaged window in a half-sitting position. With a hollow musical tone, a long crack formed between the hole and the base of the window. It held for a second longer, then shattered, great shards of glass falling down to the treetops. Konstantin lolled like a rag doll with nothing to support him, and slipped backwards out of the window. Cabal watched the old soldier vanish, and ground his teeth together.
So, this is what a conscience does for one, is it?

He’d had enough. Precipitate action would kill him just as surely as indecision, but at least he would be doing something. He quickly analysed his situation, recalled that almost everything aboard an aeroship is built to save weight, and decided that the wood panels of the bar could not be as substantial as they appeared to be. In the moment between the
Princess Hortense
swaying this way and that, he stood up and put three judiciously aimed bullets through the side of the bar. The scream of rage from behind it told him his gamble had paid off, thus far at least.

Moving quickly towards the huddled group of passengers, he tried to get an angle on Count Marechal—a clear shot that would finish all this now. The wind roaring through the two broken windows whipped through his clothes and made his tie flutter like a black pennant as he strode forwards, gun aimed at the bar edge, waiting to see his target.

He never heard the metallic hiss of the blade being drawn; there wasn’t the faintest possibility that he ever could, in that maelstrom of sound and whirling newspaper sheets and napkins. He would have died there and then but for Miss Barrow calling, “Cabal! Behind you!” He didn’t look at her first, which also saved his life. He simply turned immediately, gun leading, and found Fräulein Satunin standing behind him with a stiletto in her hand, the same blade she had used to kill Cacon. It wasn’t raised dramatically high—she was a killer, not an actress—but out to her right, blade pointing in, ready for her to step close behind Cabal and grab him with her free hand over his mouth or throat as the blade drove in just below the sternum and up into his heart. But even the coldest killer may balk a second when her target turns and she finds herself facing a gun barrel at mouth level. In that second, Lisabet Satunin looked over the gun into Cabal’s eyes and, in them, she saw … nothing at all.

Cabal fired, and turned away.

Marechal, believing he was being shot at again, leaned out of his bullet-riddled cover and fired at Cabal. It was an impulsive shot, but still a narrow miss, and Cabal shied to his left, away from the path of the bullet. It was a sudden movement that caught him as much by surprise as it did Marechal, and took him clear past the end of the bar, leaving both him and the count entirely without cover.

Suddenly, it was no longer a gunfight. They faced each other, both armed with heavy revolvers containing but a single round apiece and—in a shared thought that occurred to each man simultaneously—they realised that this was a duel. It was the same duel they had started with swords three days ago, and this was where it would finally end. Their guns barked, a fraction of a second apart.

Count Marechal was swift, but Cabal was sure.

He lowered his gun as Lady Ninuka threw herself wordlessly across her father’s body.

Cabal reached down and took Miss Barrow by the upper arm. “We should leave now,” he said in a terse undertone.

“No! Cabal, we can’t.
I
can’t.”

She was looking at the surviving passengers: Herr Roborovski pushed back up against a chair, unable to look away from Satunin’s body; Miss Ambersleigh, hands to her mouth, trapped in incomprehension; Lady Ninuka, her dark lace cuffs darkened further by blood as she held her father tightly. “What has happened?” she asked nobody in particular. “What has happened?”

For his part, Marechal lay with his eyes open and with the calmest expression Cabal had ever seen him wear, his brow now troubled only by a dark hole a mite over 10.35 mm wide, the brain behind it forever stilled by the addition of 179 grains of lead.

Cabal grimaced. “They can look out for themselves. Come on. Every second wasted narrows our chances.” It seemed unnecessary to expound upon the fact that their chances were already as narrow as the leg of an emaciated giraffe.

Miss Barrow was having none of it. She shook off his hand. “Why
did
you come back?” she demanded through taut lips.

“It wasn’t for you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Are you coming or not?” They glared at each other.

Coming to a decision, she turned to the others. “If we stay here, we’ll die. Come on.”

Two of them looked at her with eyes like hunted animals, but Lady Ninuka’s hunt was over. Her eyes were as glassy as a vixen’s in a museum. “Daddy,” she said with faint certainty. “Daddy will make everything right.” She hugged Marechal’s corpse more tightly yet, a still point in a shattering world.

Miss Ambersleigh moved to follow her, but Miss Barrow stopped her. “I have to go to her,” said Miss Ambersleigh. “I have a duty.”