“Not just his turf,” replied Merry Lee.
“Ain’t none of us gonna run,” I said. “We’re gonna fight.”
* * *
The thing that stumped me most was what we were going to do to get the sewing machine back. But once Priya and Merry Lee and the Marshal and me explained the complex of problems to the others — this was after we paid off that teamster and left him behind, not anywhere close to anything that might be construed as a destination, and Merry Lee led us through byways to a room in Chinatown where she said nobody on earth was likely to bother us — everybody was agreed that we had to bring the fight to Bantle. And not just to bust Madame out of jail.
“How long do you think it’ll take this submersible to reach us?” Miss Francina asked.
Marshal Reeves huffed through his mustache. “That’d be a question for Captain Colony, I’m afraid. I ain’t no expert on steamship velocities, underwater or otherwise.”
“Is the ship like to be a real problem?” I asked. “I mean, I figure they got the cholera on board, probably in drums of water, right? But all we gotta do is stop those from being shipped to Anchorage.”
“What if they decide to release it here after all?” Crispin asked. “They could just dump it in a cistern down by the docks. Or at one of the cribhouses. Hell, Bantle’s cribhouse. The sailors would cart the infection off to Anchorage inside their intestines, if what you say about them having some kind of … dormant and hibernating … variety is true.”
I bit my lip. They could. And would. And no one the wiser until people started dying in droves.
Priya said, “If their plan needed Bantle to be mayor, then it wasn’t ready to spring yet anyway. We might have rushed them by crashing their party.”
“There’s too much we ain’t privy to,” said Marshal Reeves. He hunkered down under his hat, elbows on knees. In his black duster, he could have passed for a raven skinchanged into a man and none too happy about it. “But that’s the way of it. So we work from what we do know.”
In the pregnant silence that followed, the careful tap on the door of the room that no one was supposed to be tapping on sounded like shotgun blasts. I jumped so high I near came down next to my pants.
The Marshal flicked his duster back from his pistols, but Merry laid a gentling hand on his elbow and he settled some. “If it were the constables,” she said, “they would just have kicked in the door. Besides, I know that knock.”
She was right, it turned out. Because when she unbarred the door and opened it, beyond was Aashini and Tomoatooah. They sidled in, and Merry barred the door once more.
It was getting damned close in that windowless closet, and we had long since run out of places to sit. But after Priya and Aashini had finished hugging each other until I thought their ribs would crack, it transpired that the newcomers had brought a passel of steamed Chinese buns — chicken and vegetables — and a salty sharp sauce to slather on ’em. And they’d brought news, too, though that waited a minute.
I never did find out how Merry got word to Aashini where we were. But I hadn’t understood a single word she said to her countrymen on the way in, neither, so that ain’t too much of a mystery.
We settled again — cheek by jowl, at this point, and wishing for a breeze — and had recommenced arguing about whether to take on Peter Bantle direct like, and how to get our hands on Standish when he was somewhere under the Sound with the Russian Nemo, and whether we should just go bust Madame out of jail with dynamite five minutes ago.
That was when Tomoatooah started telling us about what he’d seen in the last day or so, which he’d spent spying on Bantle. Namely, that as of an hour previous when he’d tracked down Aashini at Merry’s other safe house, he’d just come from Bantle’s temporary lodging, where he was receiving visitors. To wit, Horaz Standish and an older white man, well dressed, answering the description of the Russian Nemo. They must have rushed right there as soon as the Octopus made it into the harbor — and it had to have made better time than Captain Colony thought possible, too.
Tomoatooah’d been with Aashini when the runner had come from Merry Lee informing her of our whereabouts. They had sensibly decided that the best plan was for us to regroup and share information.
A useful fellow, that Tomoatooah. He was only saved from perfection by the fact that he told us these details through a mouthful of half-chewed vegetable bun.
“Where’s the sewing machine?” I asked. “The Singer. The one I used in the fire.”
“Still at the mayor’s house, as far as I know,” said Miss Francina.
Crispin said, “You aren’t plotting what I think you’re plotting, young lady.”
I pasted my most innocent expression on. “If Nemo’s here, his submersible must be in the harbor, right? Ready to pick him up? I can think of one way to end the threat of it sinking ships for good and all. And put paid to any chance of a cholera epidemic, also.”
He spent a long time looking at me, and I spent just as long looking back.
“Besides,” I said. “I bet after all Miss Lizzie’s done to hot-rod it, that Singer can bust down a jailhouse wall pretty well. Don’t you?”
Crispin frowned and stared harder. I smiled more. The standoff only ended because Miss Francina put her chicken bun down on her knee, sighed, and said, “You know if we don’t help her, she’s just going to try to do it by herself.”
Butter wouldn’t have melted in my smile, I swear.
* * *
So it was Marshal Reeves who tore strips of black fabric into masks, which we snipped eyeholes in with Miss Francina’s nail scissors — of course she had them in her reticule. We all tied them over our faces until we looked like a pack of cartoon banditos, and by then it was dark enough that we slunk out into the night. We split up, because that always works out so well for the heroes in the dime novels. Most of our party stayed in Chinatown but took off over the roofs under Merry’s guidance toward the building down by the waterfront where Bantle processed his new-imported indenturees. Apparently, he was staying there until he got his parlor fixed.
My heart bled, I tell you.
Aashini had stayed behind, though Priya had had to twist her arm something awful to make it happen. She had a letter written out by Miss Francina and addressed to Mr. Orange Jacobs, who had been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Washington until 1875 and who was now the Territory’s Delegate to the Congress of the United States, even if he couldn’t vote there. In this letter was explained everything we’d learned about what Bantle and Nemo and Standish were up to.
So even if we all died, somebody would find out the truth and maybe be able to do something about it.
Merry Lee would have been the member of our company most specialized for second-story work, but as she was occupied, me and the Comache made do. He collected Adobe and Scout from the livery where they was stabled, and we made our way up the hill at a good trot. Not fast enough to draw attention but not slow, either.
The masks stayed inside our collars for now, tucked down like range bandannas.
We left the mares a street away, tied to a hitching rail, and crept around the back of the mayor’s house. Tomoatooah lifted me through the window on the back porch roof while the constables milled about more or less uselessly below, and it was Tomoatooah and me who creeped down the servants’ stair by stepping only on the edges of the risers, where the boards wouldn’t creak. Most of the activity around the place seemed to have halted with suppertime. Though there was guards at each of the doors, the constant in-and-out had stopped and we moved through the shadows of the stairwell unobserved.
I knowed the Singer was in one of the rooms at the back of the house, and it was easy enough to figure out which one because the doorway smelled like rancid smoke. I made a face, but Tomoatooah was right at my shoulder, and we’d been through too much together for me to let him down. Besides, I’d be letting the whole city — the whole nation, and President Hayes to boot! — down if I didn’t go through with it.