The Blood Market Chapter 18

"I assume that you'd like to know how we survived?" Harbinger asked.

"Actually, I'm more interested in specificall how you aren't dead. Flintock technology doesn't render one any less dead when fired into the skull at close range."

"I did cut myself," Harbinger said, pushing his bear up to display a weird squiggly gouge in his throat that was quietly bleeding down his neck, "I'll need to dress it fairly soon I imagine. I was lucky I didn't hit an artery or a vein. That could have been messy."

"But you still shot yourself with a lead ball."

"I did no such thing. I did magic. Or to put it another way, I presented an illusion that made it look as though I had shot myself with a lead ball." harbinger said, "Did you think that you actually missed that shot you took at Mr. Albrecht?"  Harbinger asked me.

"I assumed that the round was compromised or similar," I said, "I assumed that the round has basically exploded as it exited the barrel and Albrecht had been lucky in where the shrapnel went."

"Think about the range at which you fired. You're talking about the lead ball basically turning into a small shotgun round filled with bird shot. How far would bird shot spread at that distance?"

"I should have blown his skull open." I admitted, "So what did you do?"

Harbinger smiled, "Instead of facing death with dignity,I took a series of calculated gambles. Because after all, when do I show dignity? I stole a page from such luminous magicians as Penn and Teller, Ted Annemann, and the legendary Jean-Eugen Robert-Houdin. It was Robert-Houdin who was our salvation this day. I used the shoe polish from your shoe, a pin from my hat band, wax from the candle and blood from my finger to craft hollow wax rounds for our duel, filling with a little of my own blood. Just as Robert-Houdin did so long ago in Ancient Algeria when faced with a similar duel. I then palmed the real lead balls and replaced them with the fake rounds during our inspection, and let the man load the pistols with the fake balls. The rounds were likely ruined by the ram rod, and so al the pistol succeeded in firing were deformed chunks of wax and a dramatic spray of blood. Hence why I held the pistol beneath my chin, so the effect of the spraying blood would be convincing."

"So I fired a little bit of your blood and a wad of wax at our enemy. You might have warned me."

"I was dead at that point if you recall," Harbinger said, grinning widely.

"You could have let me in on the plan." I said, "What if you hadn't been able to switch the shot before the game?"

"Then we'd probably be dead now." Harbinger said, "That's why I didn't tell you. If you thought I might still be alive, you might have hesitated in defending yourself. Even if the switch failed, you might still escape and my letter would still have been found, with the explanation of the protection that it provided us. Or you, of course, because in this explanation I would have been dead."

"Why didn't you just approach him with the evidence and make a deal?"

"Because the evidence was not as strange as it looked." harbinger said, "It wouldn't convict most of the people I named. But it could ruin lives and reputations. And so, standing in front of a group of corrupt nobility and basically telling them that only cooperation on the part of Mr. Blackwater could protect them, Mr. Blackwater was highly motivated to do just that. Had I approached him privately, he would have waved off our evidence correctly as circumstantial, but he couldn't wave off the panic of his richest customers."

We reached the office and climbed the stairs, "We're not really done yet though are we?" I said.

"Anything else can be done tomorrow." Harbinger answered, opening the door. I nodded, exhaustion starting to creep in behind my eyes.

"That sounds good."

We entered the office and collapsed. Dead to the world. The next morning, we awakened by a pounding on the lower office door. Heading down stairs, we found Victoria standing outside our office grinning like a Cheshire cat, hands planted on hips, dress swaying in the summer breeze, "I have tracked down a relative of little June. One whom is not a disgusting moral offesnse to humanity. She has an Aunt. Somebody named, if you can beleive this, April. And Aunt April seems to have no connections with those elements can got her sister murdered. Little June seems to feel safe with this arrangement. I suspect she'll need a while to recover of course. But she'll be in good good care and as safe as we can manage."

"That seems as neat a solution as we are going to get." Harbinger said, "Thank you young lady."

Victoria smiled, "I'm not your young lady, I'm hers." She swung a face towards me as she spoke and I found myself blushing again.

After a rendevous with Mr. Barchester reunited us with June, we began our walk towards the home of her Aunt April. June looked at me very intently, but silently as we walked. Finally she spoke.

"Do you make him sorry?" She asked, "The man who took Mommy away?"

I was silent for a moment as I considered my answer, then I nodded, "We did. Not as sorry as I'd liked to have made him. But it's a start, and I'll keep making him sorry until I've stopped him forever."

June looked down at the ground for about thirty seconds before answering, "That sounds good. I miss my mommy, and people who take mommy's away are bad."

I nodded, "Yes, they are."

We delivered June to her Aunt, who was very relieved to be reunited with her neice. We provided her with what closure we could regarding the case. And then headed back to the office. We entered the Baker's District and I detected the smell of a Jakarta black clove cigarette. I looked for the source and spotted the large mutton chopped Jaromir Hus leaning against the stilt of a Marzipan stall. He caught my gaze and grinned at me. Hus stepped into the street and walked slowly up towards us. I reached for my sabre, but he waved me off as I did.

"Hey hey. I ain't here to try and thrash you again. I know better. Hell, if we weren't on different sides, I'd ask you out." He said with a grin, "Want a Jakarta Black? These are way nicer than the 108s I normally smoke."

"I don't date men. but I'll take the cigarette. From Blackwater I assume? I can't imagine either of us being able to afford these normally," he nodded as I took the cigarette.  As reached a hand out with a lighter to light the cigarette, I asked, "Why are you here then?"

"That a loss for guys everywhere then," He said, "I'm here to give you folks a message from my new boss, now that Gunter ain't breathing and so he can't run the Sons of Perun no more. I told the new boss that I couldn't thrash you, you were better than me. He said that was fine. He said that the words could do my thrashing for me. So here goes. Mr. Blackwater says that he wants to thank you. He's been given a promotion, he says he's a full Colonel now. And he says it's because of him catching the Red Flag fleet and Gunter Albrecht and shutting down that Chinamen smuggling ring and the Russian Roulette scheme. And he said that he controls the Sons of Perun now, and he does- Mr. Albrecht's dead and Mr. Blackwater just walked in and took over. We were his biggest competition, now we're him. He basically controls the whole of the Sticktown underworld, and I think Old Smoke too. And he says that the photos that bought your freedom helped him blackmail a lot of rich folk and noble pricks and such and now he has pull on the House of Council too. So, he says to tell you, that he's almost a general, he controls crime in Sticktown, he's got Queen Bonnie's ear, and he's got enough votes to control the House of Council. And he says he owes at least half of that to you. So he wants to say thank you."

"The man's a gentleman," I said, keeping my voice flat.

"He also says, "Hus continued, "That even with your photos and your letters, he could still wipe you off the board. And now that he's received his rewards for all this, that would be even easier. He says he'd rather not deal with the mess that'd cause him, so he doesn't want to do it unless he needs to. But he told me to tell you, not to mistake a tactical preference for weakness. He's not leaving you alive it cause he's nice or cause he doesn't think he could pull it off. He's leaving you alive because getting rid of you would be messy. And he says that if you make leaving you both alive more messy, well then, he's got no reason not to wipe you off the board. Oh and one more thing, he's going to give you credit for the investigation, so that if you tumble his schemes, you'll have to expose the backroom deal that you made with him. But hey, The Royal Commission will pay your bill this time, right? So basically, stay out of his affairs. And oh yeah, pretty much everything in Sticktown is his affairs now, so good luck."

"Congratulations Mr. Hus," I said," You have succeeded in thrashing us."

"It's not as much fun though is it?" Jaromir Hus said, " I'd rather lose a straight fight than win all sneaky like."

"That's why you do what you do," I said.

"Yeah, I guess so. Try not to get my new boss rethinking letting you breath, cause he could ruin things for you real easy. And I like you guys. Good luck, cause you're going to need it."

Hus left us standing on our our front steps and I shook my head at Harbinger, "All the real villains have escaped. I lied to that little girl. We lost."

"Did we now?" Harbinger answered, "That little girl is still alive. Remember that when you consider this a complete loss. And we're alive."

"Not everyone's alive," I pointed out, "And so what? I've survived a lot of battles in which I think I'd have rather died."

"The Russian Roulette racket has been shut down in it's current form. Blackwater's power has been raised, but at the cost of his credibility to his clientele. We embarrassed him, and that is important in his business. We've removed some of the more odious aspects of the illegal immigration process coming here from accros the Pacific, people need not bet their lives literally to get here now."

"I guess that's something."

"It's also not the end of it. We get paid, which means I can pay Mr. Barchester his much needed rent. He is so very patient about that sort of thing. I'm only a month or too behind at the moment. And, far more importantly, we have an arch enemy now. That's a story worth telling. That's a tale where a hero might feel comfortable dying at the end of it!"

"Stop. I like breathing, and this is the end. He's stopped us. Cold. What can we do now? Given what he's got on us?"

"We can be very careful, very slow, and very sneaky, and wait until we're ready. We have made a strategic retreat, and have gained a huge tactical advantage with what we have learned. We have not lost, merely bought time to prepare for the next confrontation."

The office was not clean. But hey pathway have been cleared, and an item that I recognized have sat in the center of the disaster. Somebody had moved my father's favorite oak writing desk into harbingers office. I stared at it as it that out of place amidst the mess.

“What is that doing there?” I asked.

“Well there wasn't much room, to be honest. I told them to put it wherever they could make room. Because, after all, you did say that you were going to clean up this mess.

“I don't mean method. I mean motivation,” I said, “I can intuit how my father's favorite writing desk arrived in your office. I don't understand why my father's desk arrived in your office.”

"Your father felt you needed your own desk."

"And what do you think?" I asked. "It's your office.”

"The office is ours. And I think both partners should have a desk."
“Am I? A partner I mean?” I asked.

“You've been a partner since day one Dahlia. You were raised somewhere else, but this is where you belong.”

“You're trying to make me cry, and it won't work.” I said.

“I would never do that,” Harbinger smiled and looked out the window.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to see what he was looking at. He was quite for nearly seventy five seconds.

"So I guess that we will need a new sign, " Harbinger said, staring out and up at his mahogany sign through the office window.

I looked up at the sign-  Freeman Harbinger: Investigations and Exorcisms.

"It looks fine to me. What's wrong with it?" I asked.

"It's incomplete. I think it should read- Harbinger and Crowe: Investigations and Exorcisms. This is your place too. I can't leave my partner off the sign. You've proven you belong in the office, it seems only fair too say that you also belong on the sign.

I'm a not girl. Don't cry, but I will admit that I found some dust on the summer breeze caught on my eyes.

I smiled, "A desk, and my name on the sign. Any chance I could push my luck and ask that we purchase a filing cabinet?"

Harbinger looked at me with a truly baffled expression, "Why? What use that would be?"

I shook my head, “Fine, we'll work on that one.”