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  Someone was moving outside, footsteps going away from her door and towards Kate. The agent’s hand slipped into her pocket. There she found the aural-defenders.

  Something that the delightful Miss Burgess mentioned had stirred Eliza to caution, and she’d been careful to take one item in particular from the Ministry’s agent issued devices.

  It was not the first time she or her counterparts had been forced to face mind manipulation devices in their line of work, so the clankertons had come up with some damn fine counter measures—unfortunately there was only one kind that were anywhere near portable to stick in your pocket. She slipped them over the top of her ear and tightened the clamp to hold them in place. They mimicked the shape of the human ear, but were heavy, and dampened her own natural hearing. However they were also only defence against mind control—which she suspected Fish had. After flicking the tiny lever behind her ear, she could immediately hear the whirring of the clockwork, and a faint grinding sound like a music box run amok. It was distracting, but then it was meant to be.

  Then, cocking her gun, she levered open her door, and immediately had to step over Douglas. Her training held, so that she didn’t panic.

  He was crumpled on the floor, his face pressed to the worn carpet, his eyes closed. Eliza felt for a pulse and was damn relieved to find one. He was down, but not dead. Unfortunately she had no time to stop and revive him.

  Kate and the petition were in peril, so it was up to the junior agent to help them. Abandoning stealth, she ran towards the suffragist’s room. The door was swinging slightly. The lock had been kicked in and broken in the frame. Eliza darted a look around the jamb.

  “You can come in, Miss Braun,” Henry Smith Fish shouted. “Come in and let’s talk.”

  Her glance had told her one thing, Kate was being held in a choke-hold and very close to the cad—any kind of subtly was done with. Smith was behind Kate, one arm around her throat, as they stood backed against the window. Eliza’s eyes darted to the trunk that was pulled out from under the bed, and only feet away from the man who hated it so.

  Eliza kept her pistols down, yet did not give them up entirely and stepped into the room. “So let’s make a deal; you let go of Mrs. Sheppard and I don’t shoot you in the head.” She said it in a kindly tone—but meant every word of it.

  Smith adjusted the still struggling Kate. Mrs. Sheppard was a martial artist of no little metal, so Smith must have caught her while she slept. So he was living up to his reputation of being a right bastard.

  Eliza considered. The shot was a hard one, especially if he moved. “How about instead,” he purred, “you put down the gun and then run out into the street to wait for a carriage to run you over?”

  The buzz in the air fairly pulsed against her skin. The aural-defenders rattled and chattered in Eliza’s ears, and thankfully she did not feel the urge to obey him. “I don’t think so,” she hissed back.

  His hateful face twisted; horrified that she was not obeying and mystified as to why not. After all her hair was loose and he couldn’t really see her earlobes properly.

  Fish’s hand clenched around Kate’s throat, and the bracelet flared bright blue. “Or I could tell the delightful Mrs. Sheppard here to stand up in parliament on Monday and convince everyone this petition is forged.”

  The two women shared a look. Kate was wide-eyed, horrified and frightened—no doubt seeing all she worked for in deadly peril. Her jaw tightened, and then she mouthed, “Shoot it!”

  It was no easy shot, but the pistols were as accurate as the agent’s aim. Eliza nodded, raised her weapon and obeyed. It was the only thing to do.

  Her weapons roared in the tiny room and both of her shots hit home. The brass wiring that held the bracelet together hummed, while the second round shattered some of the glass.

  Now the sound was pressing down on them all, like the rumble before the lightning crashed. It seemed to have an actual physical presence.

  “The petition!” Kate screamed, twisting away, even as the light grew to blinding strength, destroying all shape and form, and confusing the eye. Eliza had only a moment to make her decision, and she chose to do as asked. She could not let all those women’s efforts come to naught.

  Throwing herself forward and down, she dove across the floor, smacking into the trunk, and sliding with it through the wardrobe door.

  Behind was a sound that resembled what she imagined a dragon’s roar might have been like. Eliza felt the air get sucked out of her lungs and everything rang as if they were inside a great bell. Behind her in the bedroom proper, she heard Fish and Kate howl together.

  Twisting around, Eliza staggered upright back the way she had come, yelling Kate’s name. The carnage she saw there said immediately that the bracelet and Mr. Henry Fish Smith would not be bothering them. Both were in pieces.

  Kate lay a short distance off. It looked like at the last moment she’d been able to jerk at least partly free of her attacker—but not quite far enough. Fitful flames were already engulfing the bed and curtains and smoke beginning to fill the room.

  Kate’s clothing was torn, and there was blood everywhere coming from a devastating head injury. The suffragist’s eye was gone in a bloody mess.

  Eliza’s hands fluttered around the wound not knowing what to do. This couldn’t be happening. Only hours before they’d been joking in the loco-motor, and now she was kneeling in the blood of her heroine, screaming for Douglas.

  He came and gathered up his mother, and then everyone was evacuating the hotel. Eliza only had enough sense in her to take the travelling case containing the petition with her. Nothing else seemed to matter.

  ******

  “You’ll be glad to know Mrs. Sheppard made it through the night. “ The goliath of a man standing on the other side of the oak desk did not sound like he was very pleased. His name was King Dick, and never had a man been better named. He looked powerful, he sounded powerful, and as Prime Minister of New Zealand he was. Luckily for Miss Braun, he was not the Minister in charge of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.

  Eliza found she didn’t have the energy to respond as she should have. She had changed her clothes, but hadn’t had a chance to have bath since Oamaru. Her hair still smelt of smoke and blood.

  A government airship had been sent to evacuate Kate to Wellington, and after that it had been a bit of a blur. Luckily for the suffragist it would have reflected badly to have the government leave a prominent lady such as herself to die in a tiny town after such an event.

  Douglas had accompanied his mother to hospital, while Eliza numbly went to meet Mr. John Hall with the petition in the trunk. She’d barely said two sentences to him, and though he had called after her, she had no reply to give him.

  The summons by the Prime Minister would have usually engendered at least some nervousness, but all she could think of was Kate’s face covered in blood.

  Richard Seddon, not used to being so ignored, cleared his throat again, leaning over the desk. “I don’t think, Agent Braun, you realise how much trouble you are in. Not only did you pursue a case without permission from your superior at the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, but you also killed a member of Parliament, and caused a fire in a boarding establishment!”

  She knew what he wasn’t going to say was the real reason he was so angry with her was that she had succeeded in getting the petition to Wellington, and that come Monday morning he would have to deal with that in parliament. King Dick was not known for his appreciation of Kate Sheppard’s efforts.

  “Even more unfortunately,” Seddon said easing himself into his chair, while Eliza remained standing, “I can do nothing about it, since the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences is directed from London and not from New Zealand.” He grunted at that, again making his opinion known without a word.

  At that moment, Eliza didn’t care. She loved what she did, but she could not shake the recollection of Douglas’ face as he followed the stretcher into the hospital. She knew what he had to be thinking.
Eliza had said she would protect them, and now his mother hovered on the brink of death. Her job, which he had always seen as a silly fancy, had suddenly become much more serious.

  The Prime Minister waited for a moment, for some reaction. When there was none, he slammed his fist on the desk. Eliza did jump at that.

  “Damnit woman, I can’t get you demoted, but there is one thing I can do. You have to leave immediately!”

  “Pardon?” She shook her head as if emerging from a London fog.

  King Dick grinned, with an expression that would have looked better on a crocodile. “You have to leave, and by Jove, I’ll do everything to make sure you never set foot in this country again. We don’t need your sort of feminine derry doing here.”

  “But...” Eliza was wondering if this nightmare was never going to end, “This is my home!”

  “Not anymore.” He pulled a sheef of papers in front of him. “You’re being reassigned to the London office of the Ministry. And if you ever come back to our fair shores, Miss Eliza D Braun, you will be arrested as a public menace, the murderer of Mr. Henry Smith Fish, and arsonist of the Valiant Hotel.”

  She had never pleaded for anything in her life, but suddenly she understood how much she loved New Zealand—just as it was about to be snatched away. “Please, sir,” she gasped out. “My family are here, the man I love—I can’t leave forever. I just can’t!”

  His look was as cold as an Antarctic winter. “Then don’t. Spend your time in a prison here for the rest of your life.”

  The grim reality began to settle over her. She had won, but she had lost. She could not disgrace her family, Douglas or the Ministry. It had to be London then.

  However she was not going to leave without getting a last word in. Now it was her turn to lean over the desk. “I’ll go then—but I hope one day Richard Seddon, you learn how painful it is to lose all you love—including your country! Think of me when that day comes!”

  With that she turned on her heel and marched out of the Prime Minister’s office. She would go and find Douglas, and send word to her family what had happened. It was going to be hard indeed to be parted from them and him—but what other choice did she have? None. None but to be the scapegoat for others rage.

  She comforted herself that maybe things would alter, maybe the suffragists would change things, and it would not be men in charge forever. Maybe one day there would be a woman in King Dick’s place.

  That thought and one other warmed her as she strode out of the parliament buildings. Monday was not yet here, and the petition would be presented. She would stay that long at least, book passage north once it was over. She wanted to see the faces of all those menfolk when Kate and the suffragists’ success was revealed.

  It would make the leaving easier—or if not, at least worthwhile.

  A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Tale from the Archives

  The Astonishing Amulet of Amenartas

  By Nathan Lowell

  An Excerpt from the Field Journal of

  Agent Heathcliffe Durham,

  Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences

  May 23, 1878 – August 12, 1878

  On the afternoon of May the 23rd, 1878, I found myself standing in the muggy shadow of the airship Piet Retief on the airfield at Durban, Natal Province. The fortnight’s journey from London to Durban by way of Cape Town had addled my mind and left my eyes feeling as if the sands of the Kalahari herself had traversed the width of the Dark Continent to take refuge in my ocular orbits. Normally, I enjoy the leisurely perambulations of airship travel, but the urgency of my mission had me straining at the traces and wishing for the Gate Keys I had turned over to the Ministry’s archives back in ‘72. Aethergate travel would have carved weeks off my journey, to say nothing of being much less taxing on the backside.

  While I waited for the porters to off-load my steamer trunk and gun case from the airship’s hold, I surveyed the city, such as it was. The moist haze of subtropical afternoon pressed its heavy hand on the landscape, and even the shrill screech of a steam whistle somewhere down on the Point seemed muffled. Adjusting the magnification on my tele-monocle, I brought the distant harbor into clear view and watched as an ancient side-wheeler laboured to clear the harbor, a dark plume from her funnels drifting languidly up and across the bay.

  The sudden occlusion of my view by a dark forest made me release the monocle in reflex, and I stared into the yellowed eyes of the chief porter.

  “Jambo, mbwana,” he said. “You need cart to get to town, ja?” Behind him a skinny boy regarded me with a gleam of hope in his eyes. “My nephew has cart. Make you good deal, mbwana.”

  “I say, that won’t be necessary,” I told them, “but if some one could show me the way to the Royal I’d be quite grateful.”

  While the skinny boy looked disappointed, the porter himself beamed. “At once, mbwana. My second wife’s nephew’s brother knows the way, you bet.” He waved one brawny arm above his head and shouted something at a group of native lads crouched in the shade of a luggage shed. While the erstwhile cart man shuffled away, a spry lad wearing little more than a breech cloth bounded across the dusty field.

  He skidded to a halt beside the larger man, and they gabbled in one of the native dialects for a moment. The boy eyed my steamer trunk with a certain amount of dubiousness, all the while casting surreptitious glances in my direction.

  While they negotiated, I addressed the steamer trunk in question. The boiler had been cold for several days while in transit from the Ministry’s offices in London. I stoked the compact furnace with a few scoops of coal pellets from the trunk’s storage compartment, and set the clockwork ignition to start the fire. Standing from my labours, I found the natives had competed their business. The boy crouched in the shade of the airship waiting for me while the muscular porter shambled toward a sturdy looking building with the White Star logo above the door.

  “You, lad! Speak English, do you?”

  “Oh, yassir, mbwana. Spick it goodly, you know it.” He eyed the trunk while I tried to gauge his stock.

  “Good lad. You know the way to the Royal? The Royal Hotel?”

  “Oh, yassir. Smith Street!” His voice piped clearly above the subdued murmur of the town.

  The trunk began to hiss softly as the boiler gained pressure.

  “Good! I’ll give you a copper to lead me there.”

  “A copper, mbwana? What you get me for a copper, huh?” He scowled at the gun case and trunk waiting on the ground. “Who dat gonna heft dat, hey, mbwana?”

  My brain had to work a bit to unscramble his sentences but I just shook my head. “No. Just walk. I’ll deal with this, there’s a good lad.”

  I held out my hand with a copper in it. When he reached for it, I closed my fingers around it. “When we get there, lad.”

  He shrugged and tried to look uninterested, but the steamer had come up to pressure. I swung the gun case up from the ground and laid it across the top of the trunk then freed the guide tether from its clip at the front.

  “Let’s go, lad, shall we?”

  “But dat trunk, mb—” his voice cut off as I tugged the guide sharply and with a hiss of steam and a groan of gears, the articulated legs unfolded smoothly from the bottom of the trunk.

  The boy jumped up and started to run but stopped after only a few steps—his eyes darting back and forth between me and the steamer. He leaned over and tried to look up under the base, but there was nothing really to see and in a few moments his face broke into a broad smile.

  I waved my hand for him to go on and we set off across the hard pan; him in the lead, me next in line, and my steamer on its guide lead stepping along smartly behind with a rhythmic hiss-click-stamp, hiss-click-stamp, hiss-click-stamp, hiss-click-stamp. In a few minutes our strange parade marched along the side of broad Smith Street in Durban proper and up to the front of the Royal Hotel.

  I flipped the copper to the boy as we stopped in front of the hotel. He raced off back toward the airship landin
g field and I went in search of my room and my local contact, Agent Randall Morrison.

  I found Morrison in the bar at the Royal, dressed shamefully for a loyal subject in a sweat stained bush shirt and short, baggy trousers. When I entered the bar he looked up from his drink and staggered over to greet me, pumping my hand effusively. “Durham, old man! I didn’t expect you until the twenty-third!”

  “It is the twenty-third, Morrison.” I eyed his dishabille.

  Morrison drew himself up to his full height. “Dash it all, you say! It can’t be! Why just yesterday...” He paused, a frown creasing his brow and he brought up one rough paw and figured something on his fingers. He blinked several times and repeated the movements before looking back at me. “By gads, so it its!” His expression brightened. “And here you are!”

  I sighed. “Indeed.”

  “Well, come along, come along,” he said, and drew me to the bar.

  The dark-skinned barman offered a welcoming smile and asked, “What can I get for you, sir?”

  “Would it be possible to get a cup of tea?”

  “Of course, sir, this is the Royal. Do you have a preference?”

  “A spot of assam, if you have it.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Morrison returned to his stool and took a long pull from the glass awaiting him. He winked over the rim. “Gin,” he said when he finally surfaced. “Mix it with the quinine and it rather cuts the taste. Quite useful in the ‘Fly,’ don’t cha know.”

  “The Fly?”

  “Yes, tse-tse fly country. Dreadful little blighters. Trust me, Durham. Malaria is nothing to fool about with. Gin is your friend.”

  The barman returned with my tea in a proper china pot and delicate cup and saucer. “Milk or sugar, sir?”

  “None, thanks.”

  He smiled and left the pot, moving down the bar.