Clementine (The Clockwork Century 1.10)

Ossian Steen said, “Fine. ” And he asked the guard who was stationed within the outbuilding, “How long until the rest of them arrive?”

From inside, a voice replied, “No more than five minutes, sir. They’re on their way. ”

Steen appeared to consider his options. Then he grabbed Maria by the arm, towed her toward himself, and told the two men, “Go hunt for him. We’ll hold down this preposterous little fort until the rest of your garrison gets here. ”

With that, he pulled Maria inside and slammed the door behind them both.

The outbuilding’s interior was no larger than its exterior would suggest; really, it was only one large room—stuffed with desks, boxes, books, crates of guns and ammunition. All the walls were bare except for the farthest, behind the largest desk, where a map of the Mason-Dixon area was tacked up and heavily scribbled upon.

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sp; And underneath this map, behind the desk was a small pallet with a moth-eaten blanket and a punched-flat pillow the size of her purse. In the corner, at the pallet’s foot, was crouched a small boy with his head buried in his folded arms, atop his knees. He did not look up at the commotion; he did not even appear to be breathing, but holding himself so little and still that he might make himself invisible.

Maria wondered how much time she had left.

Standing beside the desk, which must surely belong to the lieutenant colonel, was a red-haired man in scorched brown pants and an undershirt, with a loose gray jacket covering his bulky arms. He was possibly the whitest man she’d ever seen, with skin so pale it looked pink at the joints of his fingers, and blue around the recesses of his eyes. He gave her a look from top to bottom, folded his arms, and didn’t say anything.

A pair of guns hung from a belt around his hips, but he wasn’t holding anything at the ready.

“I swear I’ve seen you before,” Steen said to Maria. “It’ll drive me mad if I don’t figure out it. ”

To change the subject, she said, “Who’s that child? Is he your son?”

“That’s no business of yours. Keep your mouth shut and your head down if you want to stay inside here, or we’ll throw you back out the door and let the pirate have his way with you. ”

Outside, a pair of gunshots rang out from the woods, and there were shouts from behind the trunks of the trees.

“Hainey,” the red-haired man growled. “Jesus Christ. He can have his ship; why won’t he just take it and leave?”

Maria fingered the Colt she gripped behind her handbag. In a few steps she retreated to the desk, and to the boy. She crouched down beside him and touched the edge of his arm, but she said to Felton Brink, “Perhaps he took it personally. ”

“What would you know?” he snapped back without looking at her. He walked to the nearest window and hid himself behind the edge of the frame so he could see outside without risking a bullet in the face.

She didn’t answer him. Instead she whispered to the boy, “Edwin?”

He raised his eyes—just his eyes—over the edge of his arm to look at her. They were brown eyes, and exhausted ones. He was no older than nine or ten years of age, and thin in the way orphans were expected to be, but without the hollow look of a child who starves.

Maria opened her arms and gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

He unfolded from his crouch and let her lift him up as if what happened to him didn’t matter anyway, and he may as well let the woman hold him if that’s what she wanted to do.

He wasn’t very heavy. Maria pulled him up onto her hip, where she held him easily. He latched his legs around her waist and put his head down on her shoulder.

“You. What are you doing?” Steen asked.

With her free hand, she dropped her handbag and revealed the Colt. “I’m leaving. And I’m taking this child. Don’t do it—” she added as he reached for his belt and the gun that was holstered there. “You either,” she said to Brink, and her voice was as calm now as it had been hysterical a minute before.

She motioned with her gun that the two of them should stand together, and she circled her way around the desk, and around the room. She saw the diamond then, and she wondered how she could have ever missed it in the first place. It was perched on the desk like a paperweight, glittering as if it were alive—cutting the sunlight into ribbons, squares, and shining specks.

But Maria didn’t let her glance linger there for long.

She said to the boy with his face buried against her shoulder, his elbow bent into her cleavage, “Close your eyes, Edwin. We’re going to have to hurry. ” She tried her best to estimate how long she’d lingered, and she couldn’t imagine that she had long before Hainey—and her thought of him was punctuated by another round of shots being exchanged outside—decided that her time was up.

“You,” she said to Brink. “Open that door. Now. ”

“I don’t take orders from—”

“I don’t have any trouble with you,” she said to the pirate, speaking over his complaint. “I don’t care if you live or die, so I’m sending you on your way, and if you have any sense you’ll leave before I change my mind, or before you give me a reason to shoot you. Now go. Get out. ”