Lizanne angled her head, watching the ingots on top shift as those on the bottom began to melt. Despite the heat she somehow contrived to feel cold, her face frozen and her hands numb as they settled onto the scaffolding. Makario’s music played in her head, or rather the music he had spent his life rediscovering. She made a mental note to ensure all his papers were properly catalogued and secured then closed her eyes, remembering that first time she had heard him play back in the Miner’s Repose. Even in the midst of the worst place on earth, there had been something magical about it. A jarring note interrupted her reverie and she realised Lockbar was speaking again.
“. . . not so different.” She opened her eyes to find him attempting to angle his body towards her, striving to meet her gaze. “We are guilty of similar sins, I suspect.” He grunted the words out, Lizanne seeing sweat bathing his skin as more smoke rose from the bowl. She could see the first flecks of molten metal bubbling up between the as yet unmelted ingots at the top. “So, I ask you,” Lockbar went on, “would you consider this a fitting end? Would you not deserve some courtesy?”
He had managed to contort himself sufficiently to meet her gaze, his one good eye gleaming amidst the mask of bandages. Lizanne felt no reluctance in meeting his gaze, nor any in looking away. She said nothing, watching the iron melt and realising with a pang of deep regret that she had never learned Makario’s full name. She could hear Lockbar continuing to babble out entreaties but none of it captured her attention until he began to bargain.
“I bribed a bosun on one of the pirate ships to smuggle me here,” he said, his eye flicking between her and the now-almost-melted contents of the bowl. “I can give you his name.”
Seeing the last ingot subside into the bright orange soup, Lizanne moved to the length of chain hanging near by. It ran through a series of pulleys from which Lockbar had been suspended and required only minimal exertion to shift him about.
“Arshav and Ethilda!” Lockbar went on, shouting now. “I know where they are. They left the Seven Walls! As you must have guessed. But I know where they went.”
Lizanne hauled on the chain, tilting Lockbar’s body so that his feet pointed towards the bubbling contents of the bowl.
“North!” Lockbar screamed, legs flailing as a splash of molten iron escaped the bowl. “They went north, intending to treat with the Corvantine rebels. I was to join them in Corvus.”
Lizanne’s hands paused on the chain, lips pursed as she considered the information. “Yes,” she said, “I thought they might.” Then she began to haul on the chain once more, lowering him towards the bowl.
“Lizanne!” Her father stood at the top of the ladder, breathless from the run that had brought him here and staring at her in appalled dismay. “What are you doing?”
“The ironworkers tell me it won’t spoil the output,” she said, continuing to haul on the chain.
“Stop that!” He rushed from the ladder, reaching out to grasp her hands. She grimaced in annoyance and tried to jerk her hands free but he held on. “This is not justice,” he said. “Justice requires a court and judge.”
“I’m not sure the world has a use for such things any more, Father,” she said, inclining her head at Lockbar. “Now there are only people like him, and me.”
He gazed down at her with the expression of a man seeing a baffling stranger for the first time. “What did they do to you?” he murmured, releasing her hands to cup her face. “What did they turn you into?”
“What did you think they would make of me, Father?” she asked. “When you let them take me, what did you think I would become? You must have known I was Blessed even before the Blood-lot. A clever man like you would have made sure to discover his daughter’s true nature, would he not?”
Professor Lethridge lowered his gaze, giving a fractional nod.
“And yet you let them take me.”
“It was the law.” She saw him wince in the knowledge that he had spoken a lie. A clever man like him could have hidden her, perhaps even taken her far away, where the Syndicate would never find her. “I thought it for the best,” he said, meeting her gaze once more. “Academy-educated Blood-blessed enjoy great privilege, have rewarding careers. What could I offer you? A lifetime tinkering with novelties with barely a scrip to rub together. I didn’t know . . .” His hands gripped her face more tightly and he leaned closer, whispering, “I didn’t know what they would do to you. If I had I would never have allowed it.”
She felt her purpose slip away then, her body seeming to sag as the need for retribution faded into simple grief and loss. “I am such a disappointment then?” she asked him.
“No.” He pulled her close. “No, you are what you have always been. A very frightening but wonderful surprise.”
And Lizanne Lethridge held her father tight and wept for the first time in many years.
Mr. Lockbar was executed by firing squad the next morning. His trial had been brief but as thorough as they could make it. Madame Hakugen sat as judge whilst Captain Trumane acted as prosecuting counsel. Ensign Tollver took on the role of defending counsel and displayed an impressive gift for inventive argument. Employing a fine set of rhetorical skills, the young officer contended that Mr. Lockbar’s actions, terrible as they were, had been committed in a location lacking anything that could be called established legal process, or even a canon of recognised law. Therefore, they were not technically illegal. Madame Hakugen, however, ruled in favour of Captain Trumane’s argument that the charter of the Mount Works Manufacturing Company had been constituted on the same basis as Ironship Syndicate law, a law that prohibited murder and mandated the death penalty for convicted offenders.
The firing squad consisted of riflemen from the Viable Opportunity, though there had been numerous volunteers from the ranks of the workers. Dr. Weygrand had been popular and many had also appreciated the nights when Makario would consent to play a tune or two once the shifts had ended. Lockbar was marched to the end of a pier at high tide whereupon he refused a blindfold and faced his executioners as they levelled their rifles in response to Trumane’s order. Lizanne had heard how it was common for a few shots to go astray on such occasions, thanks to the natural human aversion to killing. If so, it was not the case with Mr. Lockbar. Every bullet fired slammed home into his chest, sending him tumbling from the pier into the waters of Blaska Sound.
“Too bad about Arshav and Ethilda,” Alzar Lokaras said as Lizanne accompanied him back to his ship. “They’re probably a hundred miles away by now. And forget what Lockbar told you about their heading north, too many Blues. My guess is they’ll head for the Cape of Souls and then make their way up the east Corvantine coast. Either that or strike out for Dalcia, if they’ve got the fuel. You could send your flying contraptions after them . . .”
“We have a war to fight,” Lizanne interrupted. “Other concerns will have to wait. The Firefly made a reconnaissance flight yesterday, it seems the White forces are less than twenty miles from the passes.”
He nodded and they halted at the foot of the gangway to his ship. “The Blood-blessed will be put ashore this evening, those that were willing. Seems the Blessing isn’t a cure for cowardice.”
Cowardice? Lizanne wondered. Or wisdom? In times like these perhaps there’s no difference. “This operation is only a delaying tactic,” she told him. “Even if every aspect succeeds the main battles are still to come. We need fighters, as many as you can gather and transport to the peninsular in the time remaining.”