Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [125]
“Until Constantine expels you all as spies.”
“Until then. In any case, Mr. Bartram is one of us, and he will have to travel abroad with his countrymen. I’m afraid there simply isn’t much you can do about it, little girl.”
This was too much, the last insult was the nudge I needed to suddenly feel all the fatigue and fear and anger I had been denying myself during this journey; the dam that had been holding my feelings at bay—constructed from pure stubbornness and desperation—finally burst in a starry flash of red. I felt my hands closing into fists and my legs propelling me toward Nightingale even as my shoulder drew back and my arm swung in a wide arc, like that of a drunk and a lowlife. The anger felt delicious.
A sensation of metallic cold on my forehead jolted me back to my senses and I held back my fist, which was only inches away from Nightingale’s face. I saw the mother-of-pearl handle of Nightingale’s tiny pistol in great detail, down to tiny cracks cobwebbing one of the larger panels, and felt acutely its barrel pressing against my brow, cutting a cruel red circle into my skin. My anger could not find release and pounded inside me, like a wave on some oceanic shore, my impotent rage that could not even find a simple relief accessible to any tavern brawler. How I wished then to break that beautiful, haughty face, and the impossibility of doing so boiled in my eyes and spilled as tears.
“Well,” Nightingale said then. “Will you behave now?”
Out of the corner of my tearing eye I could see her left hand rise and motion to her entourage to stand by. “Yes,” I whispered. I had to struggle to meet Jack’s gaze, and shook my head ever so slightly. I saw his fists tensing too, and had no doubt that he could shatter his stocks if I gave a signal; surely he was strong enough. Only he would never endanger us—at least, that was what I was hoping for.
Jack gave a slightest nod that he understood, and I took a very slow step back, eager to end the contact between my flesh and Nightingale’s pistol. My forehead burned where the steel had touched it.
“There is nothing you can do,” Dame Nightingale said simply, and let her pistol arm hang limply along her side. “You are outnumbered, and your friend Bartram here knows as well as I do that if he tries any of his tricks, I will not hesitate to shoot you and your barbarians.”
“Unless we can bargain.” My mind, still clouded with anger, was starting to clear and to cast about for possible solutions.
Chiang Tse, quiet until then, stepped closer to me and whispered, “What do you mean?”
“The ship,” I whispered back. “Surely, you have more.”
“But . . . ” he started.
Nightingale looked at him, bored. “Dear boy,” she said. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t know what she speaks of. You have nothing we want. Rather, nothing we do not have.”
“That is not true,” Chiang Tse said. “I heard about the robbery in the Crane Club. You want our inventions.”
“We have some models,” Nightingale said, smiling. “Remember—we don’t really need anything from you; Britain won that war.” And yet, I noticed her eyes stray toward the dragon airship resting behind us, twin streams of steam coming from the symmetrical holes in the side of its hull and making the wings undulate up and down.
Chiang Tse noticed too: he hooked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the ship. “Not even that?”
“We do not want blueprints; we already have them.”
“Then it won’t make any difference,” I told Chiang Tse. “It’s only the matter of time before the British can build their own.”
Chiang Tse frowned. “But Sasha, we cannot give them such weapons. Our very survival—”
“—is a matter completely separate from the one at hand,” I interrupted. “Don’t you remember? You owe your life to this man, you owe him the very alliance between our countries.”
He shook his head, but then smiled, as if remembering something. “If you put it that way . . . What are matters of military security when you can save the man who risked