“Hail Colonel Box,” she said, launching into the Colonel’s Prayer. “Blessed be Clayton. He who labored long in the darkness so that we all may see the Light. Look down on us and forgive us our human frailty. Deliver us from the godless and the sinner. You are our shepherd, our daily inspiration, and our road to Heaven. Hail Colonel Box. Amen.”
Witmeyer did not genuflect or bow her head. She wanted to get a good look at this man, who had neglected to mention in the gospel that his weapons cache came from the future and that he was not in fact a god.
So while Box stood enthralled by Vallicose’s recitation, Witmeyer studied the colonel from top to toe and committed every detail to memory.
Colonel Clayton Box was a tall man. Six-four or six-five, maybe, with a slick wedge of golden hair that sat atop his crown like a gold brick. The sides of his head were shaved, which should please Vallicose. He looked pretty much like his portraits, but there was an intensity in his features that no paintbrush or camera could ever capture. His eyes seemed uncommonly round and dark, a deep blue with shards of white running through them like lightning bolts. Those eyes stared at Vallicose without blinking, no matter how long Witmeyer watched, making her think that the colonel must be somehow coordinating his blink pattern with hers. Impossible, of course. It was true that the man’s face was familiar from a million billboards and banners—familiar, but not identical. Witmeyer thought that the party artists had been a little generous when commissioned to capture the colonel’s likeness. The strong points were well drawn, but the colonel’s weaker features had all been given a little boost. The jaw, for example, was slung low and jutted forward, which gave Box the look of an orangutan, and the lips were narrow like the slit flaps of a fish’s gut, and they moved while Vallicose was talking, as though the colonel was casting a spell on her. Box’s skin was slick and pasty from too many years underground, and his mustache, while medium impressive, certainly did not live up to expectations. Especially when one considered that the number-one nursery rhyme taught in New Albion nurseries was “The Colonel’s Mustache,” which went:
The colonel’s mustache
The colonel’s mustache
As thick as a brush
And grown in a flash
You may travel the world
Spend a fortune in cash
But you won’t see the like
Of the colonel’s mustache.
Every child in the Empire knew that rhyme, written by poet laureate Edderick Bulsara, who had also penned such masterpieces as “The Colonel’s Flat Cap” and “The Colonel’s Pet Cat,” which were all as different as chalk and something very like chalk.
If Witmeyer was painfully honest with herself, she had to admit that, what with all the steroids in her regimen, sometimes her own mustache was the like of the colonel’s.
But none of this mattered—not the mustache, not the pugnacious jaw or the creepy lips—when the man himself looked you in the eyes. When those deep blue orbs were turned a person’s way, that person felt like their soul had been laid bare for all to see. That person knew that somehow Colonel Clayton Box had some form of second sight that saw right through the everyday mask that everyone wore to the secret face beneath. It was terrifying, awe inspiring, and felt never-ending.
Witmeyer found this out while Box studied her for all of two seconds.
“One question,” he said in an accent that was mostly neutral, with only a slight hint of a Texas twang. “What do you think of my mustache?”
It’s a trap, screamed Witmeyer’s intuition. Whatever you do, don’t answer truthfully.
“Lovely, Colonel,” she said. “Very…luxuriant.”
Box’s eyes narrowed. “Hmmm,” he said, and then turned to Vallicose. “Same question to you. The mustache. Opinions?”
Vallicose’s entire face quivered, but she knew that it would be impossible for her to lie to the Blessed Colonel. “I like the idea of your mustache,” she said slowly.
“But?” prompted Clayton Box.
“But in reality, it seems a little sparse. It pains me to speak these words, Colonel, but I could never lie to you.”
“Hmmm,” said Box again. “I respect the truth.” He pointed at Witmeyer. “But she lied to me. I will not tolerate falsehood. Shoot her.”
This was intended as a test for the newcomers, just a little psychological needling to see how they would react, but the two Thundercats were on the move before the command’s echo faded. Both went for Rosenbaum. Witmeyer winded him with a punch to the solar plexus, then snagged his revolver from its holster. Vallicose palmed Woodrow Rosenbaum’s head to one side, grabbed a blade from his belt, and then the Thundercats were on each other, blade to neck and barrel to temple.
“We’re partners, Clove,” said Witmeyer. “We go back.”
Vallicose was teary-eyed. “I’m sorry, Lunka, but I have no choice.”
Box gave this most entertaining scenario a second, then intervened. “Wait, okay, wait. I thought there was room for only one more in my operation, but with skills like that, I guess I can use two.”
Vallicose blinked. “Do you absolve her, Colonel?”
Box frowned, bemused by this level of deference, but also liking it quite a bit.
“I absolve her. Put your weapons down, both of you.”
Vallicose obeyed instantly. Witmeyer had to think about it for a moment, then she too lowered her steel.
“If the colonel forgives you, Sister,” said Vallicose, “then I can, too.”
Witmeyer did not return the favor. She was not in a forgiving mood.
Box glanced back over his own shoulder at the plans and charts that were calling to him. He would schedule an hour to debrief these two later, but for now there were a few tactics that had to be ironed out about the Revolution.
“Put these two under guard until morning,” he told Farley. “Then get yourself patched up. I need you in top shape for tomorrow. We have a big day ahead.”
“Emergence Day,” whispered Vallicose, and she knew then why she had been sent here: to stand by the Blessed Colonel’s side as they waged holy war.
Blood will flow, she thought. The blood of sinners and unbelievers.
GROSVENOR SQUARE, MAYFAIR, LONDON, 1899
Riley and Chevron slept head to toe on a wide divan in the drawing room while the maggots feasted on Otto Malarkey’s flesh. It was possible that there were more urgent matters to attend to than their own exhaustion—in fact, it had only been a few hours since Riley had stolen a catnap in the theater. Nevertheless, their traumatized minds decided that they had absorbed enough information for one day and shut them both down until dawn. They awoke to find themselves covered in a goose-down quilt. There was a breakfast tray on one of
the terribly ostentatious coffee tables, and a slight whiff of brandy in the air, which led them to believe that Figary had something of a soft heart after all.
They passed an hour stripping the breakfast tray down to the last crumb of muffin and catching up on all that had happened since the last time they had almost expired in each other’s company. There was a lot to digest on the two sides, and both put forward a summary at the end.
Riley went first. “So what you’re telling me, Chevron Savano, is that the entire future has changed just because Farley clapped eyes on you the last time you visited our pungent metropolis. And now everything you hold dear is gone, along with several million murdered innocents, and in its place a dastardly empire of evil that wages holy war with anyone what don’t see things its way?”
Chevron swallowed a final chunk of sausage, which, as a fitness fanatic, she would normally never eat, but she had just this morning constructed a new diet rule: Anything eaten outside your own time zone does not count.
“That’s about it, kid. And what you’re telling me is that you were preparing to open your theater with a magic show featuring you as the Great Savano when a bunch of gangsters arrived to milk you dry, except one of their own turned out to be a future soldier who murdered all the rest?”
Riley nodded. “Hard to credit, ain’t it? But that ain’t the entirety of it, is it, Chevie? I recall you mentioning two dodgy yokes by the name of Moley and GooGoo?”
Chevie chased the sausage with a swallow of hot chocolate, as she had just decided that the time zone food rule also applied to drinks.
“Moley and GooGoo, also known as Clover Vallicose and Lunka Witmeyer. Two warrior women sent to kill me. They’re here now, in this time. Hopefully London will swallow them up, but I doubt it.”