Ganymede (The Clockwork Century #3)

Ganymede (The Clockwork Century #3) Page 3

“That one?” Josephine took the cigarette he offered and waited for him to light it. She gently sucked it to life, and the smell of tobacco wafted up her nose, down her throat. It took the edge off the mulchy odor of the alley. “Maybe. I don’t think he’d make any trouble for us. He’d die of sorrow if we told him he wasn’t welcome anymore.”

Deaderick lit his own cigarette and stepped onto a higher corner of the curb, dodging a rivulet of running gutter water. “You making friends with Republicans now? Next thing I hear, you’ll be cozying up to the Rebs.”

“You shut your mouth,” she whispered hard. “All I’m telling you is that Fenn spends more time at the Court than he does at his own home, assuming he has one. He’s sweet on Delphine and Ruthie in particular, and he won’t go talking if he thinks we’ll keep him from coming back.”

“If you say so.” He sighed and asked quietly, “Any chance you heard from that pilot friend of yours? The man from Georgia—could you talk him into it?”

“He can’t make it, so now I’ve got to find someone else. I’m working on it, all right? I’ve already talked to Marylin, and tomorrow she’ll take Ruthie over to the airyard to look around.”

“There’s nothing but Republicans and Rebs down at the airyard. You’d have better luck in Barataria. Not that I’m suggesting it.”

She snorted, and a puff of smoke coiled out her nostril. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. But I want to check the straight docks first, all the same. Times are hard all over. We might find foreigners—or maybe Westerners—desperate enough to take the job.”

“How much money you offering?”

“Not enough. But between me and the girls, we might be able to negotiate. There’s always wiggle room. I’ve talked it over with those who can be trusted, and they’re game as me to pool our resources.”

“I don’t want to hear about that,” Deaderick said stiffly.

“I suppose you don’t, but that doesn’t change anything. If we can get this done between us, it’ll all be worth it. Every bit of it, even the unpleasant parts. We’re all making sacrifices, Rick. Don’t act like it’s a walk in the park for you and the boys, because I know it isn’t.”

Life was hard outside the city, in the swamps where the guerrillas lurked, and poached, and picked off Confederates and Texians whenever they could. It was written all over her brother’s flesh, in the insect bites and scrapes of thorns. The story was told in the rips that had been patched and repatched on his homespun pants, and in the linen shirt with its round wood buttons—none of which matched.

But she was proud of him, desperately so. And she was made all the prouder just by looking at him and knowing that they were all struggling, certainly—but her little brother, fully ten years her junior, was in charge of a thirty-man company, and quietly paid by the Union besides. He drew a real salary in Federal silver, every three months like clockwork. Out of sight, at the edge of civilization, he was fighting for them all—for her, for the colored girls at the Garden Court, and for the Union, which would be whole again, one of these days.

And just like her, he was fighting for New Orleans, which deserved better than to have Texas squat upon it with its guns, soldiers, and Confederate allegiance.

Deaderick gazed at his sister over the tiny red coal of his smoldering cigarette. “It can’t go on like this much longer. These … these—” He gestured at the alley’s entrance, where a large Texian machine was gargling, grumbling, and rolling, its lone star insignia visible as it shuddered past, and was gone. “—vermin. I want them out of my city.”

“Most of them want out just as bad.”

“Well, then, that’s one thing we got in common. But I don’t know why you have to run around defending them.”

“Who’s defending them? All I said in behalf of Fenn Calais is that he’s an old whoremonger with no place left to hang his hat. I have a business to run, that’s all—and I don’t get to pick my customers. Besides, the better the brown boys like us, the safer I stay,” she insisted, using the Quarter’s favorite ironic slang for the soldiers who, despite their dun-colored uniforms, were as white as sugar down to the last man. “I can’t have their officers sniffing around, looking too close. Not while I’m courting the admiral, and not while you’re running the bayou. As long as we keep them quiet and happy, they leave us alone.”

“Except for the ones you treat to room and board,” he sniffed. “You let that old fat one get too close. You call him harmless, but maybe he thinks like you do. Maybe he watches you send telegrams, or pass messages to me or Chester. Maybe he sees a scrap of paper in the trash, or overhears us talking some night. Then you’ll sure as hell find out how far you can trust your resident Texian, won’t you?”

It was something she’d privately wondered about sometimes, upon catching a glimpse of Fenn Calais’s familiar form sauntering through the halls with Delphine, Ruthie, or a new girl hanging on his arm … or drinking himself into a charmingly dignified stupor in one of the tower lounges. Occasionally it occurred to her that he could well be a spy, sent to watch her and the ladies. Spies were a fact of life in New Orleans, after all—spies of every breed, background, quality, and style. The Republic of Texas had a few, though as an occupying force, they were all of them spies by default; the Confederacy kept a number on hand, to keep an eye on the Texians who were keeping an eye on things; and even the Union managed to plant a few here and there, keeping an eye on everyone else.

As Josephine would well know. She was on their payroll, too.

She dropped the last of her cigarette before it could burn her fingers, and she crushed its ashes underfoot on street stones that were slippery with humidity and the afternoon’s rain. Her house slippers weren’t made for outdoor excursions of even the briefest sort, and they’d never be the same again—she could sense it. Between her toes she felt the creeping damp of street water and regurgitated bourbon, runny horse droppings strung together with wads of brittle grass, and the warm, unholy squish of God-knew-what, which smelled like grave dirt and death.

“I don’t like it out here,” she said by way of changing the subject. “And I don’t like you being here. Go home, Rick. Go back to the bayou, where you’re safe.”

“It’s been good to see you, too.”

“Just … stay away from the river, will you?”

“I always do.”

“Promise me, please?”

Down by the river and roaming the Quarter’s darker corners, monstrous things waited, and were hungry. Or so the stories went.

“I promise. Even though I’m not afraid of a few dusters.”

“I know you’re not, but I am. I’ve seen them.”

“So have I,” he declared flippantly, which meant he was lying. He’d only heard about them.

“They aren’t dusters,” she muttered.

“Sure they are. Addicts gone feral, like cats. And you worry too much.”

She almost accused him of lying, but decided against starting that particular fight. If anything, it was good that he was ignorant of the dead—or that’s what she told herself. She’d be thrilled if he went his whole life without ever seeing one, even though it meant that he wrote them off as bedtime stories, designed to frighten naughty children.

He last lived in the Quarter ten years ago, before he’d headed off to fight. Back then, there hadn’t been so many of them.

Deaderick didn’t want to argue any more than Josephine did. “I’ll stay away from the river, if it’ll make you happy. And maybe I’ll head out to Barataria myself, one of these days soon. We hit them up for discreet mechanics and supply fliers every now and again. While I’m there, I’ll see if I can’t spot any potential pilots for you.”

“All right, but if you find anyone, be careful what you tell him. It’s dangerous work we’re asking for, but anybody we have to trick too badly won’t do us any good, when push comes to shove. That’s why I’m sending another few telegrams tonight. I’ve got somebody else in mind.”

“You do?”

“I know of a man who might be good for the task. If I can find him. And if he’s still alive. And if he can be persuaded to come within fifty feet of me.”

Deaderick grinned at her. “Sounds promising.”

“It’s not promising, but it’s better than nothing. We have to get that thing out of the lake. We have to get it out to sea, to the Federal Navy. Once they get a crack at it, it’s just a matter of time. Ganymede could change everything.”

“I know,” her brother said, putting his arms around her. “And it will.”

In the distance, a cheer went up and so did a small flare—a little rocket of a thing that cast a pink white trail of burning fire into the sky. A second cheer followed it, and the clapping of a crowd.

“Goddamn Texians,” Josephine said wearily, the words garbled against his shoulder.

“What are they doing?”

“Tearing up the cathedral square, gambling on livestock, and shooting off fireworks. It isn’t right.”

Deaderick nodded, but noted, “You haven’t been to church in half a lifetime.”

“Still,” she said, “that doesn’t make it right, what they’re doing over there.”

A faintly burning chemical stink joined the city’s odors, trapped in the humid fog of Gulf water and river water that crept through the Quarter like a warm, wet bath. Gunpowder and animals, men and women, alcohols sweet and sour—bourbons brought from Kentucky, whiskeys imported from Tennessee, rums shipped in from the islands south of Florida, and grain distillations made in a neighbor’s cast-iron tub. The night smelled of gun oil and saddles, and the jasmine colognes of the night ladies, or the violets and azaleas that hung from balconies in baskets; of berry liqueur and the verdant, herbal tang of absinthe delivered from crystal decanters, and the dried chilies hanging in the stalls of the French market, and powdered sugar and chicory.