Amberlough(109)

The wounds were clean, at least, and she meant to keep them that way. She took Malcolm’s good belt from its peg on the door and put it between her teeth. In the washroom, she turned the taps to hot and bathed the stubs of her fingers with lye soap. By the time she was done, she’d bitten straight through the leather.

Like a dead woman, she slept flat on her back without a twitch. When she woke, it was light out—the middle of the morning, from Malcolm’s clock, but it probably needed winding. She lay in his bed, smelling him: sweat and hair tonic and cheap cologne. If she closed her eyes, it almost seemed like …

No. She sat up, gasping at the grinding pain in her chest, and put her feet over the edge of the bed. She wouldn’t close her eyes, and she couldn’t play pretend.

She’d always kept a compact in Malcolm’s bedside drawer, and it was still there (next to a wad of cash she wasn’t too proud to snatch). The bed of powder was cracked, but the makeup covered the worst of her bruises. There would be plenty of people walking around the city with rammed-in faces today, anyhow. The fingers were easy, too. She hauled Malcolm’s khaki overcoat from its hook; the pockets were deep. Her eye-catching hair she twisted up and covered with Malcolm’s brown felt hat. Pulling it low to hide her face, she made for the door.

Though she tried not to look, she couldn’t walk out on him like that. Not when she was leaving him for the last time. Swallowing against the smell, she stepped into the kitchenette. The blood on the floor had dried tacky and tarry brown. There were already flies. Though Malcolm had shoved the gun in his mouth and kept his face of a piece, she couldn’t pretend he was sleeping, or passed out.

Picking up the paper in front of him, she stared at his picture. He looked so tired. When she touched the newsprint, at least his cheek wasn’t cold. She didn’t want to feel him like that, when he’d always been hot as a radiator to the touch. As she ran her fingers over the photo, something in the column caught her eye.

“A cinema.” She shook her head, disbelieving. “An Ospie picture palace. You stone-sucking half-wit.” It sounded angrier than she’d meant it to, but she’d realized what she wanted to do, and the rage felt good.

Dropping the paper, she knelt to pry the gun from Malcolm’s death-hard grip. As she uncurled each cold finger, she gritted her teeth and told him, “You always gave up on your fights too soon.”

*

The chemist round the corner let her stand behind his rows of pills and powders and use his ’phone to call up Zelda Peronides. No one answered at the shop or the docks, so she tried the emergency exchange Ari had given her and told her never, ever to use. Not even in an emergency, if she could help it. It got her a gruff male voice, two rounds of pass codes, and eventually, the woman herself.

“Who is this again?” Zelda’s voice was rough and deep—Cordelia figured she sounded about the same. Too much action, too little sleep.

“Ari’s red-haired friend. We only met once or twice. But I got a little project and I need some help.”

“Is there money in it?”

“Some.”

“Will I laugh or cry when you tell me how much?”

“Depends how much you need it.”

With a lot of exhausting double-talk, they set up a meeting that night on the edge of the southwest quarter; not quite in Eel Town, but not quite respectable, either. Cordelia killed time nursing one long pint in a dark booth at the Hare’s Tail, alternating with some laudanum she’d pocketed at the chemist.

After the sun went down, she made her way to a nameless dive off Solemnity Street. Zelda sat in the back, dressed in frumpy dark clothes, peering over a glass.

“Ah yes,” she said. “I remember you. Ari’s runner. The stripper at the Bee.”

“I’m flattered.” She wasn’t.

“What happened to your hands?”

“Busted.” Cordelia lifted her broken wrist, swollen where her fingers peeked out from the splint. Then, her other hand. “Cut.”

“Hmm.” Zelda pursed her lips. “And what exactly do you need?”

“Dynamite.”

“Of course you do. How much money have you got?”

Cordelia plunked most of Malcolm’s cash down on the table. It wasn’t a lot, and she’d skimmed some off the top just in case she needed it later. Zelda thumbed through the stack and made a face.

“This would buy you approximately enough to detonate a birdhouse. And I imagine you’re aiming for something a little larger than that.”

Cordelia ground her teeth. “All right. How much?”

“For what? The capitol building? Bythesea Station? Whatever it is, you can’t afford it.”

“Just give me a number. I’ll make it work.”

Zelda folded her hands and stared across the table, looking at Cordelia like she was a crossword, and there were a couple letters missing from the toughest answer.

“I know I shouldn’t ask,” she said at last. “And you certainly don’t have to say. But does it have to do with that little Ospie facelift they’re proposing for the Bee?”

“Mother’s tits.” Cordelia sagged. “Did everybody know but me?”

“They were keeping it rather quiet, darling.” Ice rattled as Zelda tipped her glass. “Though I must say I’m surprised that Ari didn’t tell you.”