Something else was firing, a little like a gatling gun but not much. Trotting out all the novelties for the party, he thought. But they’ll have to do better than this.
The streets grew narrower as he got down onto the flats where there were older buildings, sometimes leaning out over the cobbles. The rough street hammered at the car’s suspension, and he had to squeeze the bulb of the horn—and keep his speed up—to get through the crowds. When he stopped, it was beneath a leaning tenement where laundry flapped from lines strung across the street. The balconies were crowded with chattering tenants pointing southward.
Jeffrey leaned out the window and flourished a coin. “Eh, bambino!” he called.
A barefoot urchin with pants held up by a single suspender elbowed through to him. “Tell Lucretzia Collossi that Jeffrey is here to see her,” he said. “And tell her to bring her jewels. Another one of these if she’s here in five minutes.”
The boy—he was about nine—grinned, showing gaps in his teeth, and disappeared in a flash of bare heels. Jeffrey got out of the car and waited tensely, one hand on the butt of his revolver. He didn’t expect trouble; there were few Imperials his size, people in this neighborhood avoided uniforms, even unfamiliar ones, and it wasn’t really all that rough anyway. Still, no sense in taking chances.
The spectators were disappearing from the balconies. Finally showing some sense, he thought. A trickle of traffic appeared, heading north and uphill away from the harbor. Then a woman hurried out of the tenement’s front doors. She was a year or two younger than him, dressed much better than the neighborhood standard, and extremely pretty in a dark full-figured way. She smiled at him, but there was a nervous wariness in her eyes; she carried her jewel box, and a small suitcase, moving like a dancer even now. Of course, she was a dancer, and quite a good one. Nice girl, even if she wasn’t a nice girl, so to speak. And very useful. To recruit agents, he had to have respect; and to an Imperial, if Jeffrey didn’t have a woman, he wasn’t manly enough to take seriously. It generally paid to talk to people in their own language, he’d found.
Jeffrey flicked another coin to the boy and slid behind the wheel. Lucretzia kissed him as she took the passenger’s seat.
“Is it the war?” she said.
“It is,” Jeffrey replied. “With a vengeance.”
“Where are we going?” Her voice rose.
Jeffrey did a sharp right and headed south down the alleyway. “The corniche. It’s likely to be the quickest way to the consulate, and short of getting out of town, that’s the safest place right now.”
The growing crowd parted before the bow of the Sherrinford. The bumper rapped sharply against the wheel of a pushcart full of fruit; it spun away, showering oranges and melons into the crowd, and the owner screamed curses after the car. Jeffrey slid his revolver free and held it in his lap.
“Why . . .” Lucretzia licked her lips. “Why don’t we do that, leave town?”
“Because a big flotilla of those dirigibles went right over when this all started,” Jeffrey said grimly. “One gets you nine they dropped troops right on the main roads and the railway to Ciano.”
probability 88%, ±2, Center said.
“But that would mean . . . that would mean a real war,” she said.
Her voice rose a little again; Lucretzia was nobody’s fool. She had her career path planned out, down to the dressmaking shop she intended to buy, and her previous “friend” had been a post-captain in the Imperial Navy. The Imperials had been expecting a few skirmishes in the Passage, perhaps a raid or two, followed by some diplomatic chair-polishing. That had happened before.
The scenario had changed.
A new series of thud sounds punctuated the thought.
They came out of the narrow alleyway and onto the broad paved esplanade, and Lucretzia crossed herself. Battleship Row was plainly visible from here. Or would have been, if the warships between here and the naval docks hadn’t been spewing so much black coal smoke from their sharply raked funnels.