The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad Read online

  She posed with one hand on her hip, the lace ruffle of her sleeve cascading halfway down the skirt. “Arrr,” she said, her voice melodic and cultured, even though her diction still resembled the pirate’s to some degree. “This might be a bit old for you, my duck, and a bit theatrical for their eminences at the palace, but as you’re in mourning and I’m not at present, I could rent it to you for a small consideration. Accessories are extra, but I’ll throw in the matching shawl to make it more appropriate for one of your tender years. What size shoes do you wear?”

  Verity told her and the lady clapped her hands, which had short, rather grubby nails and calloused palms. “Oh, lovely! We wear the same size! You must try on these dance slippers I found.” She turned to Madame Marsha. “What about jewels?”

  “Mourning, Captain, I mean, Madame,” the seamstress shopkeeper said. “No ornaments for at least three months.”

  “Oh, of course! What was I thinking? I’ve been at sea far too long, that I have, my dear. Forget the niceties, I do.”

  Madame Marsha addressing her customer as Captain confirmed Verity’s suspicion that the well-dressed lady was also the bearded, mat-haired piratical gentleman. After another trip to the fitting room where the black outfit was exchanged for a scarlet gown trimmed with sparkling crystals, Captain Lewis and the shopkeeper hustled Verity back to the changing room, where she donned the black gown and shawl. By the mirror on the back of the wall, she saw that on her, the ensemble looked far more sedate and with the shawl looked like proper mourning, and very stylish at that, as long as she let down the longer skirt, formerly draped bunting style over the shorter one, for a more sedate silhouette.

  “Go speak for the boy now, lassie,” the pirate lady told her. “Let me know how it goes when you bring the frock back to me.”

  “Shall I bring it back here?”

  The fashionable pirate reached into her little drawstring beaded bag and handed Verity a piece of paper with a picture of her wearing a hair style held in place with clips in the shapes of voluptuous mermaids. It bore an advertisement: The Changeling Club is proud to present for an exclusive limited engagement, Madame Louisa, Siren of the Seven Seas.

  “No need for that,” the captain said. “I hope you like music?”

  “Very much,” she said.

  “If your business is concluded by then, come to the matinee.”

  “Matinee?”

  “Yes, as you see, I’m performing at the Changeling Club, two shows a day.”

  Feeling a little stunned, Verity in her new finery climbed into a cab the chanteuse had summoned with a piercing whistle.

  “The castle, driver,” she said.

  “Yes, Madame,” he said in a perfectly respectful tone. Verity grinned to herself.

  The Queenston Dungeon (and Wine Cellar)

  At the palace she identified herself to the guard and asked to see the magistrate.

  “You have an appointment?” he asked, unimpressed with her credentials. “Magistrate’s a busy man.”

  Verity drew herself up so that she loomed about a foot over the top of the guard’s helmet. She was nervous about talking to official people, but reminded herself that her experiences in the finishing school portion of her education had to be good for something and this seemed an appropriate occasion. She asked herself who she knew who always got what she wanted and how did she get it, a question which turned into how would Malady Hide handle this situation?

  “Sir, I am Verity Magdalene Amberwine Bronwyn Songsmith Rowan Brown,” she said, hoping to suggest by repeating all of her names that she was somehow more of a crowd than one person, “I am the only surviving witness of a tragedy and disaster for which an innocent man is being held in durance vile. I have come with important evidence to impart to His Honor.”

  From inside the castle walls came hammering noises. Peering over the guard’s head and turning slightly, she saw three men pounding together the unmistakable structure of a gallows.

  “He’s very busy just now, clearing the docket—or something,” the guard said, his voice trailing off after she frowned at the word busy.

  She didn’t need the twinge of pain above her left ear to tell her he was lying.

  “In that case, I’d like to see the accused while I wait,” she said.

  “Yes, well, I’d like a lot of things,” he said, evidently having reminded himself that he was armed and the giantess before him was not.

  “No doubt,” she said, in the icy voice she had learned, if nothing else, from Sister Velocity. “However, I was the victim of the accident for which the accused is being held and I am alive only because the poor man pulled me out of the sea. It was my father who died and if I say it was an accident, it was a bloody accident.”

  A light seemed to go on beneath his helmet. “You’re that Miss Brown!” he said, as if it were a great revelation to him.

  “I believe I said so when I introduced myself.”

  “Your dad owns the Dragon Works.”

  “He did,” she said grimly. “And a few other things as well. So, I think I’m entitled to speak to the magistrate about this if I want, don’t you?”

  “Indeed I do, Miss, and quite right you are, but the magistrate is, like I said, busy.”

  Still lying. She bit her lip and began the countdown from ten to one.

  “But there’s no harm in letting you see the lad,” the guard continued, “It will be a comfort to him, I’d think, to know you’ve forgiven him.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive!” she said. “As I mentioned, I owe him my life which makes up for a lot. Where is he, please?”

  The guard marched noisily ahead of her through the castle’s iron-hinged and studded doors, across the cavernous entry foyer bedecked with shields, banners, and pictures of toothy government officials past and present. Off to one side, hidden by the curve of a grand stairway, was a heavy iron-hinged oaken door. The guard held this for her and paused to snag one of a pair of torches beside the landing, leading her down an increasingly dark and forbidding staircase to the dungeon of the old castle, which served as a jail.

  It stank of mold, mildew, the body odor of unwashed men, and human waste, as well as a nastier underlying smell that she thought might have been the bodies of prisoners who had starved to death or been tortured to death and left in their cells to rot until they were too ripe to totally remove all of the odor. Dragons smelled considerably better.

  It was not nearly as big as she thought it might be, only three doors with tiny barred windows faced into an evil-smelling chamber with walls of stained and slimy looking stone and a sticky stone-flagged floor piled in the corners with refuse she didn’t even want to think about. The furnishings consisted of a rack and a table accessorized with an assortment of what she assumed were instruments of torture—rather rusty. Chains draped from the ceiling.

  If the prisoner didn’t succumb to the torture, he or she might die of a nasty infection, thought Verity, whose domestic training had included The Theory and Strategic Application of Home Hygiene. She had learned how to clean a wide variety of surfaces and objects with formulas composed of various substances concocted in specific, complex formulas to banish ill humors from the home and therefore from the bodies of the residents.

  A modicum of practical application was included on the premise that in order to lead one’s staff effectively, one must be intimately acquainted with the tasks required of them. In schools where there were scholarship students or charity cases, those girls became quite proficient in that part, though the girls from wealthier and more prestigious families were better trained in how to supervise and inspect the efforts of staff while imparting to them the necessity of banishing such insidious threats.

  It didn’t help that the dungeon had not been modernized with dragon-gas lamps, but still used smoky torches, which stank and produced nose-burning smoke along with shadow-haunted, inadequate light, also full of ill humors if she wasn’t mistaken.

  Sister Hoover would have been app
alled.

  “Lady here to see the prisoner,” the guard announced to another one playing with a deck of cards laid out on one end of the torture table.

  He rose slowly, stiffly, reminding Verity of Sister Hinge, who stumped about the corridors half the morning until her arthritis limbered up. The cold and dankness of the dungeon can’t have been good for another sufferer, as the guard evidently was.

  He rattled his keys, “Easy enough to find. He’s our only guest at present.”

  “Low crime rate?” Verity asked.

  “Speedy executions,” the guard replied proudly.

  It might have been the smoke that was giving her a headache just then, but she hoped he was lying. “It’s quite a small dungeon, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, the old dungeon extends way beyond that door there, but thanks to our expert elimination of crime, the rest of it is in excess of our needs, says the magistrate, and has been converted into a wine cellar and storage for old records and bits and bobs of other things. If we have too many prisoners, the nobs upstairs have to drink faster so we can clear out a cell.”

  The first guard rapped on the little bars of the middle cell’s window. “You got a visitor, lad,” he said. “It’s a lady so you’d best be decent.” To Verity, he said, “You can see we’re taking good care of him. He’s got the room with the almost-a-view.”

  Toby was probably the most decent thing about the dungeon, even though he was filthy and thin and had scrapes on his forehead and a cut on his chin, as she saw when the guard opened the door. He probably stank, too, but the rot, mold, urine, and human gasses so permeated the wood and masonry walls, ceiling, and floor of the place that his scent was totally overpowered. She caught a whiff of the slightly sulfurous, forest fire stench common to dragon wranglers.

  The ceiling groaned with the weight of the heavy iron chains hanging from it. The iron exuded its own smell, though Verity didn’t pause to investigate.

  The jailer blocked her way. “You’re not goin’ in there, Miss. It’s as much as your life is worth,” he protested. “This here is a dangerous criminal. Killed two people.”

  Verity, pain stabbing through her at his lie, however unintentional, snapped, “Did not! I was there. I’ve nothing to fear from him. He saved my life!”

  The guard who had accompanied her to the dungeon nodded to the jailer. “You heard the lady.”

  The jailer spat a stream of Miragenian tobacco from a wad in his cheek (had to be Miragenian. That’s where tobacco came from, one of their most popular exports), clamped his lips together, and with much clanking from his skillet-sized ring full of keys the length of Verity’s fingers, retreated into the comparative comfort of the outer dungeon.

  Toby sat up straight and said, “I’m sorry about Sir Gowen and the pilot, Miss. I got dumped out before I could help them.”

  “Yes,” she said, not trusting herself to say more lest she choke up. “I actually wanted to come and thank you for saving me. I’m sorry it got you put in jail. Is there anything I can bring you?”

  Although the cell was cramped, it nevertheless managed to be drafty and cold thanks to the view of a barred window about a foot deep by two feet wide. The view was the debris-clogged well dug into the ground to allow light and ventilation through the window. He followed her glance and said, “Oh yes, Miss. As the good officer said, this is luxury accommodation. I can catch the essence of the moat at any hour of the day. Also, it allows easy access for any rats and pigeons who might wish to keep me company.”

  She smiled at his bravado.

  “Have you heard if they caught Taz yet? My dragon?”

  “I’ve heard nothing to that effect, no,” she said and he looked relieved. “It wasn’t her fault, you know. I checked that chain and all the ropes as soon as the gentleman made the arrangements for the flight and everything was in good working order.”

  “I saw that it was the chain, too,” she said. “I’m going to try to get the magistrate to delay your execution until I can search for it.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Miss. Taz was doing that when I was taken. She wanted to stay with me, but I ran her off. They’d kill her, too, and she’s young and did her best. She must be so lost,” Toby said. “She’s never been on her own. I hand-fed her as a hatchling. Please don’t let them kill her, Miss. She did nothing wrong. It was an accident.”

  “I intend to sort it out,” she said. “I would have been to see you sooner, but there was the funeral and then I got sick. I’m trying to…”

  “Oh, I was free up till yesterday. Should have just run, I guess, but I wanted to find the chains if I could and clear us.”

  A voice boomed from outside the cell. “Where is Miss Brown?”

  Chapter 5

  Sieking Justice

  The jailer stammered and apparently pointed, as the doorway was suddenly filled with Magistrate Jacob Sieke. She recognized him from parties her father had given before he met Sophronia and she had Verity shipped off to school.

  “Glad to see you up and around, young lady,” he said in an avuncular fashion. “I suppose you had to come and see the scum who murdered your dear papa for yourself. I understand this happened on your birthday. For a belated birthday gift, you may choose his manner of execution. What will you have done to him? We’re erecting a nice scaffold for a hanging, but it could be turned into a stake for burning if you’d prefer?”

  Toby turned pale under his dirt.

  “I’d prefer he be released and given a pay increase for saving my life,” she said. “I intend to suggest it to the company steward as soon as he returns to work.”

  The magistrate’s eyes narrowed, but he said kindly, “It’s said you’ve been ill, my dear. Perhaps you forget…”

  “My memory is fine,” she said, forgetting her social graces in spite of her determination to follow protocol according to Sister Brace. “And I distinctly recall hearing and seeing the chain break, much more easily than a chain should break. It had to be sabotage and not by Toby, since he was going to be in the balloon when it broke.”

  “It was a traumatic day for a sensitive young lady,” he said. “You may think you saw something that in fact didn’t happen. There’s no way of proving it one way or the other. The balloon apparatus sank in the sea.”

  “As I would have had it not been for Toby here.”

  “Toby?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and shifting his expression to one that recognized her as female, but no longer any sort of kin. “On first name terms with the help, I see. Did your father object to your—familiarity—with Toby?”

  She would have said “I beg your pardon,” except that she couldn’t because she did no such thing. “I came to provide you with evidence and you find it an excuse to cast aspersions on my social life?”

  “These legal matters are far too complex for an innocent young lady to…”

  “This innocent young lady understands it’s important to get your facts straight before you go around executing innocent young men,” she told him. This had all slid downhill rather quickly, hadn’t it? She’d meant to be diplomatic and simply explain the facts and of course, he would see reason and release the hapless dragon wrangler. Except he didn’t. See reason, that is, nor did he seem inclined to release poor Toby.

  To her chagrin, many of Verity’s conversations, which started out to be simple disagreements on the nature of the facts of some matter or the other, also rapidly became shouting matches. It was what the alienist her stepmother sent her to following her first academic expulsion called her communication impairment and what her father called her curse. She’d asked him why once and he’d taken her up to the family gallery and showed her the portrait of a red-haired queen in formal attire, holding her scepter at a very aggressive angle. “This is Queen Bronwyn the Bold,” he’d told her. “She was your great grandmother several greats ago. You have her size though not her hair color. You’ve our complexion and eyes, though, from the Brown side of the family. Bronwyn’s mother, Queen Amberwine, wa
s said to be a bit scatterbrained. Her lapse in diplomacy inviting the guests to Bronwyn’s christening aggravated one powerful guest so much that she cursed Bronwyn instead of blessing her.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with me.”

  “Her curse was that everything she said would be a lie. Yours is much worse, in some ways.”

  “But I don’t lie!”

  “Exactly. People often do not want to hear the truth—or at least your version of it.”

  “My version?”

  “Never mind. We’ll discuss this more as you get older.”

  Of course, there hadn’t been much opportunity to do that. She was getting older, but Papa was no longer there. But he hadn’t meant it unkindly, she was sure of that. Her papa was—had been—the kindest man ever. It was a well-known fact. Some of the people in his company even thought he was too kind to the dragons employed by his various concerns. If he stopped coddling them, detractors claimed, profits would increase. So she knew he wasn’t being hurtful.

  He was merely warning her. Watching the reactions of those around her. She saw his point. The last thing people wanted to know was what was on her mind, but nevertheless she couldn’t seem to keep from blurting out her innermost thoughts. Diplomacy was not an option open to her, and in spite of her borrowed finery, she had the feeling the magistrate wouldn’t listen to a woman of her years anyway. Perhaps she should have borrowed one of Sophronia’s veils.