Karen Memory

Chapter Seventeen

I woke up. I wasn’t sure I had expected to. But I did it anyway. And where I woke up was someplace I had never been before.

It was a comfortable room, with green walls and ivory window ledges, and I was tucked up in a narrow bed. My hands and arms rested outside the mint-colored chenille bedspread laid over me. They was wrapped in gauze, which felt stuck to the skin with something slippery. Miss Lizzie’s aloe leaf, I was guessing. And I was wearing a clean nightgown, too big for me, red flannel. With a frayed lace collar.

My hair on the pillow was still in its braid, though pulled all which-a-way, and it still smelled like dirty fire. My skin smelled like dirty fire, too.

I was alone.

I sat up cautiously, but the room didn’t spin. My arms smarted, and the skin around my eyes. The burns on my knees from the sewing machine were welted, blistering, and I guessed before long they would scab. They were the worst of it, though, and I have never felt so lucky.

There wasn’t any gauze on my face, but the skin felt sticky there, too. And it itched as well as stinging. I reached for it with gauzy fingers, then remembered Miss Lizzie telling me the scalds weren’t bad and that I wouldn’t scar if I could leave it alone. So instead I groaned. I might of sat on my hands — or laid on ’em, I guess — but they hurt too damned much.

So instead I put my feet on the floor and winced. I had no socks, and the boards were ivory painted and rugless, cold. Not a rich room, by any means. But not a poor one, either. The bedstead was oak, and mended. There were sprigged gingham curtains over the windows, a blue and green that went with the green of the coverlet, and the blue-and-silver wallpaper. I wondered if somebody had just taken the rug outside to beat it, though that would be weird in the winter.

Sitting up seemed to be going better than anticipated. I felt … well, I didn’t feel dizzy. But I didn’t feel all myself, either. Light-headed, maybe. Like I wasn’t quite in my own skull, but above and behind and a little to the left. Watching myself rather than … I don’t know. Being myself.

I wondered if I could stand. At least my feet weren’t burned, and thank Crispin for that. I put my gauzy hands down — one on the bedspread, one on the sheets — and slow as I could I pushed myself up. Now, Da would tell you that Caution ain’t my middle name, but this once, honest, I was trying. There was a ladderback chair right there, too, that I could grab if I needed, or so I was thinking.

Turned out, I didn’t need it at all. I stood there, rocking, and gathered my wits and my dignity — such of both as I’ve got — for the best part of five minutes. I knowed it was five minutes, because there was a glass and brass shelf clock ticking away on that little side table. It seems strange to me now, but right then that little clock meant the world to me. It was almost like a companion, and its polished brass case and fresh-wound works told me I hadn’t been forgotten in this strange place entirely.

I guess it ain’t uncommon for a person to get maudlin under circumstances such as that.

Well, when I decided I wasn’t like to pitch over if I lifted a foot I did so — lifted one — and put it down again a little bit forward of its previous position. It turned out to be a blessing that the rug was up, because otherwise I might just have tripped on it and pitched right over. And that would of been embarrassing.

I made it to the window without needing to grab that chair, but then I didn’t get to look out it for a spell because I had to clutch at the frame and cough up several ounces of horrible black grit. Bits of burned-up velvet draperies and knotted wool rugs that had made their habitation in my lungs, no doubt.

It didn’t taste too nice.

Then I had to find someplace to spit it, because I wasn’t swallowing that Christ knows what back down and I didn’t appear to be equipped with a pocket handkerchief. Or for that matter any pockets. There was a brass spittoon tucked between the table and the bed, though, so I shuffled back over to it — walking was getting easier — and used it.

When I straightened up again, my eyes were watering so I didn’t dare go wandering around until they quit. I wiped my eyes on the gauze on my arm and wished I hadn’t; the pressure started up a raw throbbing ache underneath. No scars, I reminded myself, and didn’t scratch it.

By the time I made it back to the window, I was in a bit better form, though the gunk coming out of me looked and tasted like well-used axle grease. I leaned my forehead on the glass pane. It was cool and comforting, but I left a smear of aloe on it and felt bad about that for the housekeeper. Oh, well. There was aloe all over the bedsheets, too.

The view out the window was something special. As soon as I pulled the curtain aside, I knowed where I was. Well, not right where I was, in the sense of I could have told you the address.

But what I could tell you is that there was Rapid all spread out in front of me, a sweep like a lawn made of rooftops and the poky tops of trees. And there I was up above ’em all, looking down across the city like a Queen. It was a rare clear day. You could see the bristle of masts and smokestacks at the harbor, the glint of the sun off the Sound, the tumble of white that was the river moving fast over stones, unfrozen. Off to every side, mountains hovered on tails of blue distance.

I was up on the hill. And more: the gaudy-painted clapboard of the house I stood in framed the view. I could see part of a turret, a bit of wall. Lemon and sea green, with a thick row of fish-scale scalloping below the roofline banded in three different shades of turquoise. So then I did know whose cold wood floor I was standing on.

This was Mayor Stone’s house.

Down close to the water, a single slow black trail meandered higher and thicker through the haze of gray chimney smoke. I knowed what it was, and I knowed it should make me feel lost, or afraid, or something like that. But all it did was make me angry. So furious that if it hadn’t been for the gauze and the way my hands rocketed hot pain up my arms when my fists clenched, I would of been picking fingernails out of my palms for a month.

I knew who had set that fire — or who had ordered it set. Who had burned up our house and all our books and the little wooden horse that Da had made me. Who had probably killed Connie and nearly killed Signor and me — no. That hurt too much to think about, so instead I thought about what I was going to do about it.

And I was going to do something about it, too. It wasn’t like Madame could put me out on the street now if I defied her.

Well, I was still standing there wishing I could ball my hand up to punch the wall when the door swung open and Miss Lizzie come in, carrying a little basket of gauze for dressings and such in her clockwork. I jumped, guilty like, because I knowed I weren’t supposed to be out of bed. But she just set her basket on that side table and said briskly, “You’re up. Good. We should see about getting you some clothes.”

She grabbed a silver-tassled bellpull in the corner that I hadn’t even noticed, it blended into the wallpaper so well, and gave it a tug with some decision behind it. Wherever the bells were, it was far enough away that I didn’t hear even a faint jangle.

“There,” she said. “We’ll get you some tea, too. Are you hungry?”

As if my stomach was a tiger trained to come to the word “hungry,” it rumbled. Miss Lizzie looked at me with her head cocked to one side, obviously wondering if I was going to try to brazen it out.

“I should eat,” I allowed. “Even as I don’t have much appetite right now.”

“Oh, honey. None of us do. But it’s wise to get what you can, when you can, if you take my meaning.”

There was no telling where we’d wind up come morning.

A maid came and Miss Lizzie sent her away again, on a quest for coffee and breakfast. As soon as the door shut behind her, I asked, “Connie?” I hoped, even though I knowed there was nothing to hope for.

“They’re still looking for her,” she said. “I’m sorry. Everybody else made it out, though, and that’s thanks in large part to you and Priya raising the alarm.” We were lucky to only lose one.

Neither she nor I was going to say that out loud. And it was cold comfort, but I’d have taken the coldest just now. “Is everyone else here?”

“Nearly.”

I waited for her to say more, but she absorbed herself in the dressings so devotedly that I knowed she was avoiding the question. The hands looked better than I’d feared — about like I’d poured boiling water on them, sure, but no worse than that. One more small mercy.

Then, just about as she got my hands rewrapped, the food and coffee came, along with a basin and water for washing and a borrowed day dress. Soft-boiled eggs weren’t the best choice, it turned out. Because of my hands, she had to do the next best thing to feeding me. Fortunately, we got that out of the way before I tried on the dress.

“What happened to the Singer?” I asked.

“Downstairs,” she answered. She looked at me curiously.

“It saved my life,” I said. Then, heart in my throat: “How’s Signor?”

“He’s himself,” she allowed. “Soon enough, everybody is going to forget how happy they are he’s not dead.”

* * *

As she was lacing me up, I reminded her, “Nearly everyone is here?”

“Priya,” she admitted. I could see her in the mirror, looking everywhere but at me. “She hasn’t come back. We left a message with Merry Lee where to find us—”

“How long has it been?”

“The fire was just last night.”

I tried to rein my temper and my voice shook with the effort, but I managed it. “What if Bantle’s got her? What if something awful’s happened?”

She had my journal. And my little purse of savings. The Marshal’s silver dollar …

I realized with a sting that that was everything and everybody I had left in the world. All missing, all at the same time. “What if she needs rescuing?”

“What if she don’t?”

That stunned me into silence. She wouldn’t — Priya wouldn’t do that to me. I didn’t believe it for a heartbeat.

“She might of just made a run for it,” Miss Lizzie said. “Collected that sister of hers and moved on. Or she might be in hiding. Odds are better that than the other, Karen honey. There.” She patted my shoulder and stepped away from my laces to glance me over. “It’s not the best fit, but not bad for borrowed, and for now it’ll do.”

“Do for what?” I asked.

“For the parlor,” she said. “For the council of war we’re about to have.”

* * *

The character of the house changed from threadbare respectability to opulence when we left my sickroom and descended to the second floor. We used the servants’ stair, and I wish I could say that surprised me. From back there, I could see how expenses had been spared, but the public rooms of the house were as luxuriant as anything Madame’s had had to offer.

That thought put a pang in me, and no mistake.

What was going to become of all of us? What was going to become of Madame? Everything she’d earned and owned was in that house. And she was, as she had said, too old to go back to whoring on street corners. I’d survive, even if Priya was gone with all my savings — and I felt like a miserable weasel even for considering that she might be, but I had to consider it. There’d be enough there to get her and Aashini back to India, and if it were my sister mightn’t I do just that? And feel like I had to, even if I also felt awful about it all the while?

Maybe the Marshal would take me with him and I could get a job breaking horses in the Indian Territory. I heard they were less stiff about what women could and couldn’t do the farther into the wilderness you got. That weren’t without its own kinds of risks, though; people back east might think Rapid was the Wild West, but we had constables and an opera hall. There were places where the law was whose arm was strongest, and that was all.

Those weren’t no places for a woman all alone.

Anyway, all my dreadful musing was brought to a screeching halt as soon’s Miss Lizzie and me walked into the parlor. And I do mean “screeching,” because there was Signor, stalking at me across the royal-blue, honey-gold, and ivory Oriental carpet, yelling his tiny head off until the crystal chandelier vibrated. I was surprised the crystals weren’t popping like squeezed grapes, to tell you true.

Somebody had washed the soot from his coat, and he sparkled every time his little fat tummy wobbled. The colors of the carpet made his eyes look like jewels. I’d never been so damned happy to be yelled at by somebody as left a four-inch gouge down my forearm the last time we met. He twisted around my ankles, leaving the usual dusting of white fur and me feeling painful self-conscious about my lack of shoes and stockings.

I didn’t try to scoop him up, though. He might be happy to see me, but I knowed better than to push my luck.

Also, I weren’t half-distracted by the people in the room.

The sheers was drawn across the windows, so the afternoon sun shone through ’em with a soft orange glow that made everybody in the room seem not a mite otherworldly. Madame was there, and the misses except for Lizzie, who came in right behind me of course. Miss Bethel and Effie had their different shades of red heads together, Miss Bethel’s arm around Effie’s shoulder. Effie might of been sleeping, or she might just have been resting her eyes. Miss Francina sat in a back corner with Crispin and Bea, and I could tell they was all trying to melt into the upholstery. Pollywog … well, she was on the arm of one of the other two men in the room, leaning into him with that trusting kind of … sincere melt that we all learn to fake first thing. She was gazing up at him out her big blue eyes and tugging at her pigtail in charming nervousness with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around his elbow, and I knowed I was watching a professional at work.

She was three times the politician of old Dyer Stone, the middle-aged lump she was making up to. I remember thinking that if only she could run for mayor we’d have it sewn up.

The Professor wasn’t there, though I didn’t really expect him to be. He wasn’t part of Madame’s family, exactly, in the way the rest of us was. And that was his choice; I’d always gotten a feeling he was a man didn’t like too many commitments.

The other man in the room, the one who weren’t the Professor … well, he was the most flamboyant thing I’d seen this side of a saloon girl in full whoop-de-do. He was tall — not quite as tall as Marshal Reeves — and he had straight dirty-blond hair slicked back in a ponytail under a bottle-green tricorne hat with vermilion piping. He had the strength of feature to carry it off, too — notched chin, planed cheeks, a nose like a ice skate blade. He so resembled my mother’s people, I felt a kick in my chest to look at him.

His coat was in the same shades as his hat, with the addition of plenty of bullion on the left shoulder, and his trousers was a darker green. He had — of all things — a cavalry sword belt slung about his waist. The sword was not currently in evidence, but the rig to sling its scabbard through was, the straps pattering against his leg as he stood.

I blinked at him for a moment before I realized he was standing for me and Miss Lizzie. That ain’t something whores get accustomed to. “Mr. Colony,” Madame said, “this is Miss Karen Memory and Miss Lizzie Bach. Karen, Miss Lizzie, this is Mr. Minneapolis Colony.”

With the airship that matched his coat! Of course. I remembered glimpsing it when Priya and Crispin and me were all out shopping for Priya’s now-burned-up wardrobe. I wondered where she’d run off to, barefoot in her nightgown. I ain’t the praying sort, but I prayed she was unhurt.

And somehow I managed to collect myself, keep my cool, and remember to be polite to Mr. Colony.

“Charmed,” I said, and gave him my hand. “Please make yourself comfortable. You don’t need to fuss on my account”

He had a gold ring on his right hand, set with seven or eight different-colored stones in a kind of wheel pattern. There was a kind of winged figure on either side of the band. It pinched my hand when he gave me a gentle squeeze. He settled back, garish on ivory silk, and I looked around for a place to settle. I wanted to hide my bare feet under my skirt hem as soon as possible. I was seating myself on a gold-and-ivory settee when Miss Bethel leaned forward, obviously resuming an interrupted conversational thread, and said, “I think we ought to consider taking Mr. Colony up on his offer of transportation.”

“Mr. Colony is a business acquaintance of the mayor’s,” Madame said for my benefit — and maybe for Lizzie’s. “He’s offered to take us as far as San Francisco if we like.”

“I’m supposed to be heading down there to pick up Edwin Marsh, anyway,” he said.

I blinked. “He writes those dime novels!”

Mr. Colony smiled indulgently at me. “I’ll tell him he has readers in Rapid. Unless you come down with me and get to meet him your own self, of course.”

“Where are you taking him?” I asked, because I could tell from Bea’s expression that she was dying to find out.

“He’s heading out to Tucson to interview some shootist who tracked down a road agent out there last summer. For his next book.”

I watched Mayor Stone as Madame was talking. The possessive way he stroked Polly’s hair, and the little lean forward while Miss Bethel was talking — he wanted us out of town, I realized. This was his idea. I wondered if he meant to have Pollywog stay on with him and if he’d marry her or just set her up as a servant or something. If I were Polly, I’d hold out for the ring. Assuming she wanted to spend the rest of her life yoked to Dyer Stone, I’m meaning.

“I’m not real keen on leaving Rapid, personally,” Miss Francina said. I could see it took some courage for her to speak up against Dyer’s glare, too. “We built a lot here, and we have a customer base. Some of us had our money in the bank, or got it out — and I know the house was fire-insured. Once it pays out, can’t we rebuild?”

Madame lifted her chin, stretching the soft skin underneath. “Assuming the insurance company doesn’t spend two years making me jump hoops to get what I’m entitled to, half the payout would go to my investor.”

That took us all aback. “Investor?” Miss Lizzie asked.

Madame nodded. “Some years back — before the Gold Rush — we hit a tight patch, and I sold forty-three percent of the house to an investor. Lately, he’s been urging me to sell out.”

She didn’t say another word, but she looked at Mayor Stone and so did all of us.

Well, that’s Peter Bantle and his mind control rays again.

Stone shook his head. “Rapid’s not going to be the Wild West for too much longer, girls.” I could tell Madame was included in that “girls,” and it put my back up. She had years and miles on Dyer Stone, and brains to boot. But he had a prick, and inherited money, and a prick. I guess that gave him the right to lord it over her.

And I thought about his upstairs bedrooms and their serviceable furnishings, and I thought that maybe he needed the insurance money more than he was about to let on. Don’t get the wrong end of it: I didn’t think he’d burned down Madame’s house. There was more than enough candidates for that bit of evil, and all of them was named Bantle. But I realized he weren’t above capitalizing on it. And if Bantle had blackmailed or mind-gadgeted him out of mayoring, he’d have to get money some other way than kickbacks and bribes from now on.…

“Mayor Stone,” Madame said, as if casually. I’d never seen her work feminine wiles before, and I am ashamed to say that it surprised me. But she got to be Madame somehow, and it weren’t by taking no for an answer. “Is Bantle blackmailing you?”

He didn’t answer, but he flushed. He shrugged. Pollywog leaned in closer to his arm.

She said, “If you don’t run against him, you know it’ll be seen as an admission of guilt.”

“So I should spend a lot of money to lose to him?” Mayor Stone asked. His eyebrows arched. “Spend money to make money,” she said.“A businessman knows when to cut his losses. Something maybe you should study up on, Alice.”

“Now, Mayor,” Mr. Colony said in tones that sounded like they was meant to be appeasing — or maybe the better word is “reasonable.” “A beautiful woman thinks you should keep your job. Is there some shame in that?”

Stone shook his head. “I’ll leave you ladies to talk it over. Mr. Colony, will you join me in the library for cigars?”

Cigar smoke being the best thing for books, of course. But maybe it made Mayor Stone feel some kind of cultured.

Madame’s fingers twitched. I knew she was pining for her pipe, though she usually won’t let nobody but us girls see her smoking. Mr. Colony, though, he seemed a bit reluctant. Nevertheless, while Mayor Stone was patting Pollywog’s hand and making sure at her that she’d be taken care of he stood up. I thought he gave me a sly kind of wink, too, but maybe he was just tossing his ponytail over his shoulder.

They left, the door shut behind them, and Madame sighed. “I built a life here in Rapid,” she said. “And I ain’t gonna let Peter fucking Bantle fuck me out of it, neither.”

“We ain’t gonna get no help from him,” Miss Francina said, her lip curled, meaning the mayor.

“Now, Francina. Our host wouldn’t leave us out in the cold,” Madame said. “But we’re to be gone as soon as possible, and in the meantime we’re to stay out of sight and stay hid.” I could tell from her tone that it griped her.

I cleared my throat. “What if Peter Bantle wasn’t a problem anymore?”

Everybody in the room looked at me.

I looked at Madame. I didn’t want to give away more than she wanted me to — but she nodded permission, and so I gathered myself. It felt like I was pushing those words out through the weight of all those gazes on me, but I managed.

“Peter Bantle’s got a machine.” My voice sounded like it was being dragged over a wood rasp. Just talking hurt my throat sore, and before I could finish everybody had to wait through another damned coughing fit and me wiping more black muck off my lips. Miss Lizzie got me some more tea, and that helped — or maybe it was just the lemon and the honey in it.

I continued, “He can use it to change people’s minds, sometimes make ’em do things they might not, otherwise. Maybe tell him things. Definitely vote for him, some of ’em. It might be it works especially well on drunks. He used it to make those tricks bust up our parlor, remember?”

I could feel all of ’em doubtful at me. But Miss Francina nodded and said, “I’ve seen it work,” and Miss Lizzie — who had walked over to perch on the arm of the chair beside Miss Bethel and Effie — said, “It’s theoretically possible,” at the same instant.

“Priya said it was in his house. If I was to destroy it…”

“Karen, honey,” Miss Bethel said, “that’s a lot of risk.”

“I think the bastard as is whipping girls to death is his mechanic,” I said. “Don’t it serve Bantle to have us all afraid, cowering? I could take a swing at both of ’em at once. We could change things up, maybe provoke ’em into making a mistake where we could prove something!” It all came out on a rush, which was probably a mistake, I reckoned, looking at their faces. I should of been chewing on my words some, so everybody else would have had a better chance of swallowing them.

“Madame,” Miss Bethel said. “Are you listening to this nonsense? Are you really going to let her take these kinds of chances? Especially if it turned out that there is a multiple murderer working for Bantle? Do we want Karen to be the next girl flogged to death?”

Madame said, “She’s a grown woman. She can make her decisions. And this would benefit us all.”

“I can’t listen to this,” Miss Bethel said. She slipped out from under Miss Lizzie’s soothing hand and stalked to the door. She was wearing a borrowed dress, too, and where mine strained at the shoulders, she swam in hers. “I’ll be upstairs.”

We all watched her go. I knowed I should say something, should maybe back down. But I couldn’t think of another way to keep us together. We could go to San Francisco, go work for different houses. None of those houses would be Madame’s.

And Priya was here in Rapid. And I couldn’t help but be scared that Bantle had her back. I had to go find out.

So yes, I guess you could say I had an ulterior motive.

My frown stung my face, but it weren’t no worse than some sunburns I’ve had, and I gritted my teeth and ignored it. Before I took up sewing, I didn’t used to scorch so easy, but I’m out of the sun most days now.

“Wait!” Bea cried suddenly, and darted after Miss Bethel. The door swung shut behind ’em, and I sighed and settled back.

“We’re in a bad box now,” Madame said. “And no mistake about it. Does anybody have a better plan?”

“I want to go with her,” Effie said, shaking her red hair back. “For Connie’s sake.”

A lot of faces hardened when she said that, but I knowed they weren’t hardening at Effie. She’d just said out loud the thing that had changed everything. Everything else Bantle had done to us — even burning down the Hôtel Mon Cherie like that and pauperizing the lot of us — weren’t a patch on killing Connie. We’d get him for that, and no mistake.

It didn’t even really need saying out loud, but still I felt a kind of relief that Effie’d up and said it.

Madame looked around the room. No one said anything else, though Miss Francina’s stare was pretty heavy where it laid on me.

“Without the machine,” Pollywog said, “I might be able to talk some sense into Dyer. If Bantle’s running the insides of people’s heads, that might explain some things about how Dyer’s been different lately.”

The silence kept on for another few seconds. Madame let it go until it was uncomfortable, and nobody was making any signs of breaking it before she nodded. “Then it’s settled.”

“Fetch your friend the Marshal,” Miss Francina said. “If they haven’t hanged him or his posseman yet, he’s got a horse in this race.”

“And a bounty to collect,” I agreed.

After all, he’d come all this way.