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February 23, 1882

Gunner had made quick at finding us passage: a cargo airship cruising over the Front Range mountains had been scheduled for a morning refueling of water for their steam engines in First Chance before leaving the state, according to the telegraph operator. And when the ship docked in the early hours, the sky still dark and air brutally cold, we’d left the inn to meet the crew. The captain, a tall and distinguished older gentleman hauling fine fabrics from Japan, was scheduled to arrive at Pier 17 in New York City, where no doubt his payload was destined for the army of seamstresses employed at the Iron Palace. Gunner had spoken with the captain as his crew filled the water tanks, and we were onboard and being shown a spare cabin before the first mate had called for the release of the dock locks.

The trip was night and day when compared to the luxury of a first-class passenger liner. Our quarters were intended for crew, so there was hardly enough room for two grown men to squeeze around each other. The narrow bunks were also more accommodated to those not much taller than myself, and so Gunner’s feet hung off the end. Add to that the noise of steam rattling the pipes, the clanks and bangs of hardware, and the general filth that came from the mouths of sailors at all hours, and it proved to be a long two days.

I would be lying, however, if I didn’t admit that there were small bouts of enjoyment to be had, when the captain permitted us to walk the deck. It had become apparent that a few sailors recognized Gunner, and word had quickly spread among the ranks as to his presence. Soon enough, the crew was completely enamored with Gunner’s stoic personality and they shared renditions of his “heroic” exploits—some of which were simply not true, but Gunner didn’t once correct the sailors or tell the stories himself. I realized this was how outlaws such as him earned their monikers and became household names, so I let it all slide without comment. I worried at first that we’d hardly be docked in New York before coppers would be notified to come and arrest Gunner, since this crew appeared to be the respectable sort, but it turned out the men were far more thrilled to have something to boast to other airship crews about over drinks than they were about collecting a reward bounty.

One of the younger sailors—he couldn’t have been a year or two beyond twenty, with blond hair that was nearly white from long hours on deck and working in the sun—had timidly shared a stick of Black Jack with Gunner, at the egging-on of his fellow crewmen, like it was some rite of passage. Later that first night, however, as I’d been stowing goggles, collar, and cuffs in my bag before turning in, there’d been a knock at the door. Gunner had opened it to reveal the same lad, his face a crimson mask of nervousness as he’d stuttered a request to speak in private. So Gunner had stepped into the passageway, and when he returned a minute later, his composed expression gave no hint as to their brief conversation.

“What did he want?” I’d finally asked.

Gunner had said, in his typical monotone as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, “A tumble.”

“A—wait, what?”

“Are you jealous?”

“It very much depends on what you said.”

I’d been treated to that there-and-gone smile of Gunner’s before he’d answered, “I told him I was attached.” He crouched before me on the bottom bunk and had put his hands on my knees. “Does that make you feel gross?”

I shrugged a little before shaking my head.

“Then it makes you happy?”

“More than I can say,” I’d whispered.

He kissed me, and said against my lips, “Me too.”

 

 

It was nearly eleven o’clock that Monday night when our cargo airship docked at the piers along the southeastern edge of Manhattan. The original structure of Pier 17 still existed, but after the city remodeled the seaport for import and export via air instead of water back in ’75, the pier was merely a boardwalk by which to reach the ramps and pneumatic lifts to the docked ships overhead, their steam engines chugging and creating a constant but not unpleasant drone. We thanked the captain for his goodwill, Gunner paid him of course, and we departed before the skeletal crew who worked throughout the night to accept international deliveries could notice that the captain had been hauling more than bolts of fabric.

I was always mindful of Cherry Street when I was down this way—the destitution and depravity that never failed to make my blood run cold in ways the rest of this wicked city could never scare me was just a few minutes east of Pier 17. I hastily led the way west along Water Street, which boasted the same fares as along the Bowery—spirits and sex—but due to the sheer number of airship crews who frequented these watering holes, the neighborhood was also home to river gangs who gave the Whyos a run for their money in terms of brutal viciousness. There was no easier target to rob, fuck, or kill than a lower-class transient man, whose captain wasn’t in a position to delay flights and search for him among the dilapidated tenements—ergo, no charges were ever brought down upon these thieves and murderers. Their numbers and territory were small in comparison, but I didn’t have to tell Gunner to unbutton his coat for easy access to the shoulder holster he preferred to wear in the city.

When we’d reached the El train’s South Ferry station, we paid fare for the Sixth Avenue line, joined the few other passengers heading uptown at the late hour, and sat beside each other in a comfortable silence until Fourteenth Street, where the train picked up a belligerent drunk who zeroed in on a young, well-dressed woman traveling on her own. Gunner and I stood at the same time, and I walked across the car, held out my hand, and asked if she would care to sit at the other end. She offered a relieved smile and accepted, hardly out of her seat before the drunkard started in, slurring vile comments about her person that were so disgusting even sailors would have winced. Gunner promptly punched him in the face, dragged him to the car doors, and calmly held the scum upright by his jacket collar while his nose and mouth bled and he covered himself in snot as he cried. Once we reached Twenty-Third Street, the doors opened with a hiss of steam and Gunner threw the drunkard onto the platform. When the young lady departed a few stops later, Gunner tipped his hat and bid her a good night.

We remained on the Harlem-bound train, which transferred tracks and hopped onto the Ninth Avenue line, before stepping out of the car at the Seventy-Second Street platform. Gunner followed without question as I once again led the way down to street level and one block north to an apartment hotel towering between avenues. The Globe was impressive in both its sheer size and flamboyancy in design. It was the first of these bachelor accommodations to embrace the opulent, overblown, hyperaccentuated Beaux Arts aesthetic over the Renaissance Revival motif seen in my former home of The Buchanan. A combination of limestone and brick on its exterior emphasized the ornate, balustraded balconies and sloped, copper roofs, of which was the inspiration behind the structure’s name.

A doorman met us at the gates of a small courtyard. “Good evening, sirs,” he said.

“Good evening,” I replied. “May I be permitted to call on Loren Moore? Is he home?”

“The Globe doesn’t allow guests after ten, sir,” the doorman answered.

“It’s pertaining to federal business,” I said next, unswayed by his dismissal. “If you could let him know Misters Ackerman and Gaylord are here, per his request.”

Dropping “federal” as a means of making a point tended to work wonders on the honest sort, and luckily I’d pegged this doorman’s reaction accordingly. He told us to wait a moment and disappeared into The Globe’s bright and warmly lit lobby.

“Why Ackerman?” Gunner finally asked, a plume of cold air settling around him on the exhale, visible via the red and green lampposts along the sidewalk.

“It was the false name Barrie had provided for my airship ticket.”

“I see.”

“You don’t like it?”

“I do not.”

I laughed under my breath.

“How is it you knew Moore’s home address?” Gunner asked next.

“Oh. I’d been renting a room for years, here and there, you know? As families moved and landlords changed. And I was preparing to find new accommodations once again, when Moore told me about these new apartment hotels being built throughout the city. I was rather dubious, because it sounded like the worst of two worlds: the publicness of a hotel and the overcrowding of a tenement. So he brought me uptown one day to show me The Globe,” I concluded, motioning with one hand. “I found my way to The Buchanan about a month later.”

The front doors opened and the doorman stepped outside, his footfalls echoing on the cold stone and crunchy snow of the courtyard.

Gunner said, “Moore was angling for you to rent here, my dear.”

“He what?”

“Gentlemen,” the doorman said as he opened the iron gate and gestured us into the courtyard. “Mr. Moore will see you. 7C—the lift is available at the end of the hall, to the left of the stairs.”

I thanked him as we stepped toward the main entrance. Inside, the lobby was far grander than my own had been—marble and colored tile floors, gilded molding along the ceiling, and premiere-quality mosaics covering every inch of available wall space. The cogs and screws, gears and wheels all gleamed in the overhead steam-powered lighting, the parts moving in a perfect and silent synchronization so that as we crossed the long hall, it shifted with us. The brass and copper and silver and gold mechanics all together created the New York cityscape, with airships chasing the rise and fall of the sun and moon, and silhouettes of men and women ballroom dancing on the bank of the East River. We passed two doors, one marked Mailroom and the other Newsroom before reaching the lifting apparatus.

When we stepped inside, I pulled the gate shut and cranked the brass handle to level seven. As the lift rose, the passing floors quiet at the late hour, I murmured, “I’d have never been able to afford a place like this.”

“Moore pulls in that State Director paycheck.”

“You really think he wanted me to move here?”

Gunner glanced down, a careful sort of expression on his face. “He loved you then. He loves you now.”

“I wish he didn’t. No, I don’t mean how that sounded. It’s only—”

“I know what you meant,” Gunner answered.

At the seventh floor, we exited the lift and walked to the corner apartment with a gold plate naming it 7C. I knocked quietly, and like he’d been waiting on the other side, the door opened suddenly and Moore—still larger than life and as handsome as ever, with his ash-brown-and-steel-gray hair and out-of-date but well-groomed beard—stood in the threshold. He wore a waistcoat and tie, but his sleeves had been rolled back, so the transducer connected to his PDD headset around his neck had been tucked into the front pocket instead of being hidden up the sleeve. He took the pipe from between his teeth and leaned forward to check the hallway at our backs. Moore took a step inside and motioned us to follow with a tilt of his head.

He shut and locked the door behind us before asking, “Did anyone see you?”

“Only the doorman,” I said, removing my cap.

Moore nodded, but like he’d only half heard my response. He was staring at me so intently, I felt I was about to wilt like a summer flower who’d had too much sun and not enough rain. He reached forward and gave my shoulder a hard squeeze. The touch lingered until wisps of smoke rose from my jacket as our magics reacted to each other, and if it hadn’t been for that limitation, undoubtably Moore would have pulled me into a back-breaking embrace.

“It’s good to see you again, Hamilton.”

“You too, sir.”

Moore looked over my shoulder and said to Gunner, “And I suppose you’re part of the package?”

“You had your chance, Director.”

Moore’s expression darkened, but when he looked at me again, his tone was gentler than I expected. “Hang up your coats and come sit.” He stuck the bit of his pipe between his teeth and walked into the parlor just to the left off the foyer, a heady, cherry smoke trailing behind him.

Gunner silently took my carpet bag and set mine and his atop a marble counter before we both hung winter jackets and hats on the brass rack beside it. I glanced down the hall straight ahead—two closed doors on the left and one on the right. I suspected there was no kitchen, much like how The Buchanan had been designed, and that the top floor featured a restaurant for the tenants. The air in the parlor was warmed by the steam radiator along the far wall beside a large, eastern-facing window that still hadn’t had its curtains drawn closed for the night, so colored lamps from the street below cast a sort of fantastical and kaleidoscopic glow about the room.

I took a seat on the settee, a pretty thing of vibrant yellow with a corresponding armchair, both of which matched the dark mahogany furniture and wall paneling. Gunner didn’t join me. Instead, he went to the window and peered out into the city night. Moore stood opposite of me at a brass cart, his back turned. The clink of glass and slosh of liquid told me he was mixing drinks. His pipe rested in a glass tray atop the table beside me, the ember dying without Moore there to puff and tamp the tobacco.

The first thing Moore said was “We took Barrie into custody this evening.”

I let out a breath and nodded to myself. “Good.”

“So far he’s not talking, but a night behind bars is bound to soften him to the idea. You said nothing about showing up on my doorstep, Hamilton.”

“I couldn’t very well ask you in advance,” I said.

“Because I would be aiding and abetting?”

“At the very least.”

Moore glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’m already in plenty deep.”

“Pardon?”

“I didn’t want to say so over unsecured airwaves,” he began, “but on February the eighteenth, I was ordered to dispatch agents to the city ports and apprehend Simon Fitzgerald, who the FBMS claimed had caused critical magic injury to both person and property while attending a routine health screening at Bellevue and was now on the run.”

I shook my head in disgust and said, just shy of a whisper, “I was never at Bellevue.”

“I know that now,” he replied, returning to his drink-making. “I didn’t then.”

“Who’d the report come from?”

“That’s the thing.” A clink against glass as Moore stirred the contents. “D.C. council sent me the directive. It’d been the first time in over a month you’d been spoken of, but I knew something wasn’t right. Because the council had also been the ones to tell me you’d quit and left the city—so why did they know about your routine health screening in the city?” Moore turned and walked across the room with a crystal tumbler. “Be it Fitzgerald or Hamilton, the man I knew would never hurt innocent people and would never willfully cause chaos or destruction. So I went out to Bellevue myself.” He handed me the glass. “To confirm the situation. And you know what? There was no damage, no injuries. No one knew anything about a Simon Fitzgerald.” He pointed to the drink and said, “Old-fashioned. That’s a cherry, by the way. Much better than an orange peel.”

“Ah, thank you,” I said hastily before continuing with the more important matter at hand. “But you mean to tell me the council has now falsified evidence against me and presented it to a State Director as gospel more than once?”

Gunner snorted from the window but didn’t interject with his own comment.

Moore had resumed mixing two more drinks. The strong line of his shoulders dropped a little—deflated, even. “Yes.” He carried a glass to Gunner, who accepted it without a word, and then Moore collected his own drink and took a long sip. “If it had been in regard to any other agent, I might not have realized. But a lie about you, Hamilton?”

“Lies are a pretty accurate assessment of my person,” I said.

“A lie about your name is not the same as a lie about your character.” Moore took another drink. “I didn’t know what to do, other than if you were on the run, to let you get where you needed to be.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Sir?”

He said again, in that professional but indifferent tone, “I was only able to spare three teams to conduct the search and apprehension of Simon Fitzgerald. One for the East River ports, one for the Hudson, and one for Grand Central. So far, they have been… unsuccessful.”

“Agent Plunket,” I whispered. “She knew to look the other way.”

Moore smiled, stroked his beard, and said, “Let’s just say that Plunket is still making amends and did me a favor.”

“Sir, if the council learns about this—”

“They’ll what?” Moore countered. “Take my badge too?”

“Yes!”

“I welcome them to try. I’ve given the Bureau seventeen years of my life because they promised protection, integrity, and opportunity for our community. And now I learn they want to ruin one of their best men because… what… they’d rather charge you with war crimes?”

Hot, sour bile rose up my throat, and I focused on the hardwood floor of the parlor, somewhere at the middle point of the room, but what I really saw was the blood-soaked battlefield. Smoke from cannon fire was so heavy, it made my eyes sting. I could smell the lingering stench of destruction—of ozone from too much magic, of gunpowder, of ruptured bowels, of charred flesh. I could hear a eulogy of rage whispering across Antietam: Kill the monster, kill the monster, kill the monster, drop the curtain on his life.

This horror was to forever be the soul of my plot.

I slammed the tumbler down on the table and clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from retching.

“Hamilton?”

But it was Gunner who reached me first, strong hands gripping my biceps as he drew me to my feet. He tilted my chin up, forcing me to meet his gaze, to acknowledge the naked honesty of his concern. “Gillian?”

I sucked in a deep breath through my nose and was briefly overwhelmed by the Sandringham perfume Gunner wore, the hint of black licorice on his breath, and the fine wool of his suit coat warming after being in the cold. I lowered my shaking hand and said, “I’m fine.” I pulled free from Gunner’s touch and looked at Moore. “May I use your water closet?”

“Second door on the left,” he answered somberly.

My legs felt about as firm as custard as I left the parlor. I hurried down the hall to the door Moore had indicated, shut it behind me, and was promptly sick into the toilet. I was never prepared for how I would or wouldn’t react to those war-torn recollections, but I was certain the more people who knew I had been born Simon Fitzgerald, the worse it got. Because even if my darling and my friend insisted it was not a burden I had to keep shouldering, even when they called me Gillian Hamilton, I couldn’t help but remind myself that when they looked at me… they knew.

They knew I took all those lives.

A violence forced upon me, yes.

But I had still been the one who aimed and pulled the trigger.

And if the federal government had it their way, I would do it again.

I was sick a second time, the knots in my gut lessening some after that. I flushed, washed my mouth and face, and silently left the closet. I moved down the hall and neared the open doorway of the parlor before I picked up pieces of Gunner and Moore’s low but fierce discussion.

“—Soldier’s Heart—” That was Gunner.

“—didn’t know,” Moore retorted.

“—wanted since ’62.”

“Fitzgerald—casualty of war.”

Gunner said something decidedly in the negative, and I moved to stand in the doorway as he asked Moore, “Do you think you and Inspector Byrnes are the only law enforcement with a rogues’ gallery?”

“What does that mean?” I interrupted.

Both of them turned quickly, guiltily, in my direction.

“What does that mean?” I asked again, aiming the question at Gunner.

And for perhaps the first time since we’d met, he looked wholeheartedly uneasy. “My dear—”

I shook my head. “Don’t.”

“This isn’t the time or place.”

“You just made it so.”

Gunner didn’t move, but all at once, there was a sensation of him having drawn himself up, much like the way he’d stared down Tinkerer’s deadly devices in Shallow Grave and not blinked. And while Gunner almost always spoke in a monotone, I had learned how to recognize his very real emotions in between the words. But this time, those breaths were distant, empty. “It means, until a dead body is presented, the Pinkerton Detective Agency has considered Simon Fitzgerald an ongoing and active case since the Great Rebellion.”

I felt as if I’d been submerged in an ice bath and someone was holding my head under. “And you know because…?”

“Because I was a Pinkerton,” he concluded.

“What?” Moore interjected.

Gunner didn’t break eye contact with me. “For eleven years. During the war, I worked with Allan Pinkerton as part of his Union Intelligence Service. When Simon Fitzgerald went missing after the Battle of Antietam, I was tasked with locating and returning him to the Union Army.” Gunner took a step toward me, and his tone changed—something akin to an animal in distress. “I refused the assignment.”

Moore said, boldly, defiantly, “You’d have us believe you worked as a Pinkerton for nearly a decade, and no one has questioned the probability of Detective Gunner and Gunner the Deadly being one and the same man?”

Gunner’s gaze cut to his left, listening to Moore at his back, but he looked directly at me when he answered, “I worked under an assumed name as a detective.”

“Hogwash,” Moore spat.

But I shook my head, saying, “Gunner doesn’t lie.” To Gunner, I asked, point-blank, “When did you leave the agency?”

“’72.”

“Why?”

Gunner narrowed his eyes. “Because who I was before did not allow for self-respect.”

“That’s not enough of an answer,” I said.

“It’s what I’m comfortable sharing.” He held his hands out slightly, indicating our surroundings, while adding, “I gave you my word I’d explain, and I’d hoped that was enough for you. With Blackwell’s, the FBMS, and let’s not forget Barrie, this was an undue stress to our current situation that I wanted to avoid.”

I ran a hand through my hair, swore under my breath, and strode toward the settee. I picked up my abandoned drink from the table, knocked it back in one long swallow, and put the glass aside. I pushed my suit coat back, set my hands on my hips, and walked to the window. I took Gunner’s drink from the sill and sipped it as well, but more appreciatively. I watched the reflection of the room—Moore shaking his head as if disagreeing with some inward conversation, and Gunner approaching, footfalls silent.

“I know the exact moment,” I said, turning partially to meet Gunner’s gaze. “At Dead Man’s Canyon. You had such an odd expression on your face. I knew you wanted to speak, but then you clammed up. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s when you knew who I was?”

Gunner nodded.

“Why didn’t you just say so? We could have avoided… so much bullshit.”

“Would we?” Gunner countered. “You introduced yourself as Gillian Hamilton. You had reinvented yourself, as I had. That was good enough for me. But when I began to notice how certain circumstances afflicted you, I realized I was wrong in my prior assessment. It wasn’t that you wished to merely reinvent yourself—you wanted to be someone else entirely.”

“The things you said,” I whispered against the rim of the glass.

“I wanted you to know love. I wanted you to know that I could be trusted.” After a beat, Gunner added, “I admittedly got frustrated once or twice, when you were on the verge of divulging and then backed away.”

I took a swallow of the bourbon. “You really refused the assignment?”

“McClennan wanted to court-martial me, but I was a civilian.” Gunner gently took the tumbler from my hand and set it back on the sill. “I promise you, I’ve never been privy to any additional information about your life. I only knew, and still know, the basics. Simon Fitzgerald was a weapon of war and disappeared after Antietam. On paper, the government did consider Simon a casualty of the Great Rebellion, but they also employed the Pinkertons to find proof either way.” Gunner touched my balled-up fist and then visibly relaxed as I wrapped my hand around his. “If you never want to speak another word of that life, I will respect your decision. But I want you to understand, when I was asked to apprehend Simon and was given the description of a ten-year-old boy….” Gunner’s very-blue eyes caught the colorful lights from outside when he looked away, and I realized he was about to cry.

“What?” I pressed.

“Let’s say that my difference of opinion with law enforcement began in September of 1862.” Gunner cleared his throat and hastily wiped one eye. “I’m sorry for upsetting you, my dear.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t—I was surprised, is all. Really surprised.” I looked up at Gunner, and even though I felt exhausted, managed a smile. “You being a detective.”

“Once upon a time.”

“The unblinking eye. It explains a lot about you.”

“Hamilton,” Moore interrupted.

I looked across the room, but was not oblivious to the way Gunner drew his hand up my arm and held my elbow, a suggestion of both intimacy and territoriality. It was a blatant warning to Moore. “Sir?”

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. It’s been a long few—” I almost said ‘days,’ before laughing and opting instead for “—decades.”

Moore offered a sympathetic expression. “Do you have accommodations in place?”

“Oh. No, not yet. There’s bound to be lodgings—”

“Stay here.”

I blinked. “Pardon?”

“I have a spare bedroom,” Moore answered.

I looked at Gunner, who said nothing. To Moore, I said, “I, uhm… that is….”

“These aren’t transient affections, are they?” Moore asked. He didn’t need to motion between us to make his point.

“No, sir.”

“Stay here,” Moore reiterated. “Barrie isn’t going anywhere. Get some rest, and we can decide in the morning our next plan of action.” His gaze shifted to meet Gunner’s. “And since I can’t shake the man of many faces….”

“It’s just the one, Director,” Gunner corrected, letting go of my arm, pocketing his hands, and turning to face Moore head-on.

“Is that so?”

“I make no attempt to hide who I am.”

“And so who might that be?”

“America’s most-wanted outlaw, and Hamilton’s darling—Gunner the Deadly.”