Foreword
Welcome to The Circus of Brass and Bone. This story is free, but donations are what keeps it going. All proceeds go to help cover the bills incurred during my mother's treatment for advanced ovarian cancer.

Now settle back and enjoy the circus. It's the end of civilization, but the show...must go on.

Episode 15

Hail the Heroes

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Lacey clapped her heels to her mare's flanks, urging the horse to a flat-out gallop. Her breath thundered in her ears as she galloped toward the child trapped on the bridge.

Ahead of her, the girl sharpshooter aimed and fired at the monsters. One jerked its head to the side as its jaw exploded. Lacey could have cheered. Then she saw lumpy flesh crawl over the shattered bone. Within seconds, it was as the beast had never been injured.

Genevieve dismounted and sank to one knee to steady her rifle as she aimed and fired. One of the monsters collapsed to its knees and then pushed itself up and rose again. She was aiming for the joints, Lacey realized. It wouldn't stop them, but it might slow them down long enough.

The little girl huddled against the railing, easy prey for the monsters unless Lacey could get there first. The angles flashed through her mind. The only way to rescue the girl at a gallop would be to perform a modified cossack drag. Lacey needed to circle in front of them and grab the child on the way back.

"I'm coming for the girl!" Lacey shouted, hoping her voice carried over the thunder of hooves. "Don't shoot!"

Genevieve aimed, fired. Reloaded, aimed, fired. Her horse bolted back across the bridge. Genevieve could have fled then, but she didn't. She stayed by the little girl and kept firing as Lacey galloped past them.

"Don't shoot!" Lacey shouted, as she raced between them and the deer-things.

The monsters were so close. Too close. She saw every detail of the creatures as she wheeled in front of them: the bloodshot eyes, the foam at nostrils and mouth, the bone spurs erupting from their flesh, and the blood smeared across their muzzles. It was a relief to swing herself over the mare's side and hang down from the saddle.

Lacey focused on the small girl huddled beside the bridge railing. She had only one chance. The girl shrank back as the horse bore down on her. Lacey had expected that. She seized the child's wrist with one hand and wrapped her other arm around the girl's waist, sweeping her up as they galloped past.

Lacey's arms burned like fire. She couldn't haul herself and the girl back into the saddle, but all she had to do was hold on to the child.

Upside down and half under the horse's belly, Lacey saw what happened next.

Genevieve should have run, but she didn't. She kept firing, aiming for the deer-things' legs. Giving Lacey time to widen her lead and escape.

The monsters were a scant yard away when Genevieve tossed her rifle aside.

For a second, Lacey thought she'd make it. Genevieve climbed onto the railing and was about to dive into the river below. Then a deer-monster stretched its neck out, sank its teeth into her shoulder, and wrenched her back onto the bridge. It jerked its head, sending her tumbling through the air like a rag doll. She landed headfirst on the hard stone of the bridge and did not move again. It was a mercy. Lacey looked away from what happened next.

The sound of Lacey's horse's hooves changed timbre, but it took her a minute to realize what that meant. They were off the bridge, in New York City. She caught glimpses of buildings, lamp poles, sidewalks, wagons. Wagons? She'd caught up to the rest of the circus.

"Whoa," she croaked. "Whoa!"

Her mare slowed to a canter and then to a trot. They passed the roustabouts, the doctor's wagon, and the animal cages.

"Whoa!"

The mare came to a stop beside two massive columns of bone and brass: the aether elephant's legs. The mahout had stopped, even as the rest of the circus continued to flee farther into the city. Lacey released the little girl. She'd been gripping the child so hard that straightening her fingers sent throbbing pain through them. The girl fell to the ground and began to cry.

Lacey summoned her last reserves of strength and hauled herself up to the saddle. The world righted itself. She cast a quick look around.

The mahout hunched over the neck of his elephant, feverishly pushing buttons and pulling levers. The elephant's giant, hammered brass ears rotated straight up. Its ribcage heaved and parted, ribs rippling open. Brass tubes inside slotted into new locations. And yet it did not move. What a terrible time for a malfunction, Lacey thought.

As the doctor's wagon approached, Lacey shouted, "Doctor! Take the child!"

He nodded in response, pulling on the reins to slow his wagon. Seeing the promise of safety, the little girl bolted to him. He leaned over, lifted her up onto the seat beside him, and slapped his reins to get his wagon moving again.

Lacey wondered if the best chance for survival might be to abandon the wagons and seek shelter inside the buildings nearby. Deer couldn't handle doors and stairs. Neither could her horses, though. Without her horses, she would be nothing.

Beside her, the bone and brass elephant lurched into movement--toward the attacking deer-creatures. Lacey gasped. Her eyes were drawn to the mahout sitting atop the elephant. She expected to see terror in his face. After all, he was trapped aboard a malfunctioning aether elephant, and it was carrying him to certain death.

He was grinning.

As the elephant strode onto the bridge, the mahout reached into the long brass canister by his seat--the canister that held a ceremonial flag--and pulled out a large bore gun. Lacey gasped as he mounted it onto a "flag holder" that fit it perfectly.

A veil lifted from her eyes. The elephant had never malfunctioned. Those upright brass ears acted as shields on either side of the mahout's seat. The pointed ends of the splayed ribs would be as effective as a field of bayonets. And how had she not noticed that the protective brass caps on the elephant's tusks had vanished, baring its wickedly sharp war ivory?

The mahout sighted his gun on a deer and fired. Half its head disappeared, and it tumbled to the stones and lay there, thrashing. He fired again, gouging a chunk out of another monster's chest. Then he was among them.

Lacey felt sick, thinking of how casually they had treated the mahout and his war machine. If he was capable of this, what else could he do? What else did he know? The hoof pick in her waistband, a present from the mahout, seemed to grow heavier.

The monstrous bone elephant was as unstoppable as an avalanche in monsoon season. It speared the deer-things on its tusks and tossed them in the air. It crushed them beneath its hooves. It swung its side against them, stabbing them in a dozen places with bayonet-sharp ribs. The mahout aimed and fired from his protected seat on the elephant's back. Flesh spattered against the stone.

Yet it wasn't enough. The monsters kept getting back up again. The elephant inflicted horrendous wounds--and the deer healed them. Even that first head shot hadn't been fatal. The deer staggered to its feet. Half its head was lumpy and misshapen, like a bag of rocks. Its eye had regrown halfway back on its skull, where it stared blankly at the sky. The beast should have been dead, but it shambled forward.

The mahout must have reached the same conclusion. Instead of continuing his attack, he stopped and did something complicated with the elephant's control apparatus. The elephant's ornamental collar unlatched and rotated counterclockwise. He seized the end, fed it through the elephant's skull, and hooked it to the opening of the elephant's trunk.

The elephant wheeled around and stampeded through the deer pack, mashing them to the ground. It kicked left and right, shattering their ribs and pulverizing their legs.

As soon as the deer were down, the elephant charged to the end of the bridge. The deer began to struggle to their feet. The bone and brass elephant raised its trunk as if to trumpet defiance. Instead, it expelled a shining golden sphere that flew from the elephant's trunk and shattered among the deer.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then flames roared to life, wrapping around the monsters' flesh. The deer screamed as pain finally penetrated their maddened minds. They reared and fell and reared again. Some managed to run, though fire wreathed them.

Lacey stared in shock. He had fire aether bombs? Those ornamental golden balls decorating the elephant's collar were more armament than ornament.

The mahout steered his elephant back into the fray. It waded through fire and crushed the deer until they moved no more. Lacey expected it to catch fire, but it didn't. When the last deer lay still, the elephant emerged unburnt, though soot streaked the bones of its legs.

She heard a dinning in her ears. Then she realized the sound was cheering. She looked back at new New York. The townies hung out of building windows, shaking their fists and shouting approval.

Only one thing to do.

Though her muscles screamed in protest, Lacey leapt to stand on her saddle. "You've seen Rajesh, the Hindu mystic, and his fearsome aether-powered bone-and-brass elephant!" she shouted. "We are the Loyale Traveling Menagerie, Hippodrome, Circus, and Museum of Educational Novelties! See us perform tonight on the dock at Port Rumsey! Tell your neighbors, tell your friends--heck, tell your enemies! Come, see our performance tonight at Port Rumsey!"

She signaled her horse. The mare reared, the momentum catapulting Lacey up in the air. She executed a neat flip before landing on her feet and bowing. People clapped, so she assumed they couldn't tell how close she came to falling over.

The circus doctor hurried over, trailed by the little girl Lacey had rescued. "I saw that. You nearly toppled over there at the end. How are you?"

"I'll be fine," she assured him. "I strained my muscles a bit, that's all. You needn't worry. I'm sure you have your own business to attend to."

He nodded. "I need to go and see if what I suspect about those creatures is true." He frowned at the carnage on the bridge. "Assuming that mad Indian left me enough to examine! But first, Miss Tracy LaChance wants to tell you something." He nudged the little girl forward.

Tracy stared at Lacey with big eyes and sucked bashfully on her thumb for a minute. Then, mustering her courage, she removed that appendage and said, "Thank you, lady. I was scared." Having covered the matter to her satisfaction, she popped her thumb back in her mouth.

Lacey reached out and swept Tracy into a hug, feeling a pang in her heart. There had been a moment, when she hung off the side of the horse and reached for the child,* that she had been sure she would miss, that the child would die. A wave of gratitude for her well-trained horses washed over Lacey. Without them, she would be nothing but another useless female--and Tracy would be dead.

"Tracy!" Lacey released her grasp on the little girl as the girl's brother ran up to them. He was soaking wet from his head to his toes. "You shouldn't have pulled away, Tracy! You scared me! Next time you jump with me, you hear!" He blinked, looking past them to the charred corpses on the bridge. "What happened?"

"Something to be scared of," Lacey said dryly. "See that you take better care of her in future."

"Yes'm!" he said earnestly.

Relenting, she added, "And come see the circus. We'll be performing at Rumsey Port tonight. I'll leave word with the ticketmaster that you and your sister are to be allowed in for free."

"The circus? Yes, ma'am!" And there it was, the grin that she'd been hoping for back when she first tied the trick-riding straps to her saddle.

The doctor was examining the corpses of the dead deer-monsters on the bridge. Lacey rode up to him. The smell of charred meat made her stomach grumble.

"Can we eat them?" she asked.

The doctor frowned. "Bone aether is usually administered by injection into the flesh, but taking your nourishment from this thing, having it spread throughout your body . . . no, I wouldn't eat it."

"What does bone aether have to do with it?"

The doctor scowled and didn't answer the question. "Shouldn't we be moving along?"

"Excellent point," she allowed. "You should return to your wagon and hang up your posters, Dr. Panjandrum. Best we be off soon, but we can put on our finery and give this city a proper grand procession."

"I need the bodies--"

She held up her hand to stop him. "Quickly. Get the strong man to help you. And leave plenty for the police to inspect. One thing we learned while scouting the city is that we do not want to interfere with what they consider proper legal procedure. Tell the others to gussy up while I consult with our Indian warrior."

"Our. . . ? Oh." He nodded.

Lacey approached the mahout. She planned to say something carefully roundabout. Polite, but firm. Demanding answers, but respectful. Instead, she heard herself say, "The elephant is a weapon."

He looked levelly at her. "Anything can be a weapon. We are all having hidden depths. But as you yourself were saying, we must stick together."

She found her mouth opening and closing without a word coming out, so she spun on her heel and stalked back to the caravan to prepare for the grand processional.

It took less time than she would have expected. Everyone was eager to get away from the bridge. Meanwhile, however, word of what had happened had spread. People came out on the street to watch the circus parade. At first, they pretended to be on some errand that just happened to bring them near the circus. Now and then a scowling policeman would stalk toward the gaudy circus procession, but one of his brethren would intercept him and whisper in his ear and he'd fade back without pestering them. Seeing that tacit approval, the spectators became brave. First, they stopped and stared openly. Then they smiled. Then they waved and cheered. Even the corpses dangling from the lampposts seemed to take on a festive, ornamental air.

At Rumsey Port dock, an unruly crowd of sailors awaited them. They welcomed the circus with shouts that included several crude suggestions Lacey pretended not to hear. No wonder the Commissioner had trouble with this bunch! The hastily pulled aside barricades did not escape her notice either. She smiled and waved, glad that the animal trainer and ringmaster-in-training had made some friends while they were here.

One member of the crowd separated itself from the others and came forward with arms outstretched. "Welcome!"

Hearing a woman's voice emanating from the mannishly dressed figure shocked Lacey. It must be that female captain that Christopher had mentioned meeting.

Isaac and Christopher hastened forward. After they greeted her and introduced her to the rest of the circus, Captain Angie showed them where they could circle their wagons and set up their circus tents for the performance tonight. Then she invited them all to the tavern to tell her all about how, as she put it, "demons from hell chased you onto High Bridge, where you battled them with a dozen trained war-elephants."

Lacey winced at that description but found herself being swept along with a dozen others into the dark, beer-smelling interior of Nancy's Harbor Cafe. They were greeted by an older barmaid who looked like she'd seen everything, done most of it, and regretted none of it. Despite this, she still managed a blowsy kind of beauty, like a past-its-prime rose.

Lacey found herself sitting beside Isaac the animal handler. Nobody was paying attention to them. Lacey seized the opportunity. Her father had taught her that servants should be reprimanded in private, to allow them to preserve their dignity. Isaac was no servant of hers, but she supposed the same principle applied.

"Isaac, the mahout told me that you let it slip the fortune teller was missing." She smiled, trying to be reassuring. "We don't know why she vanished. A little discretion might be in order."

"What?" Isaac set down his beer. "But--I didn't say a word."

"It's okay," Lacey hurried to say. "Just think a little before talking about other circus members, even amongst ourselves, if you don't know what's going on. We all need to stick together."

"No, really, I didn't! I don't talk to the mahout hardly at all."

"It's fine. That's all I wanted to tell you," she said, with exasperated patience. "You don't have to pretend you avoid him!"

Isaac lowered his head. "I do. I know it ain't right to treat him like that, but his bone elephant gives me the shivers. It ain't natural. The animals get nervy when it's around." He met her eyes. "I'll take their judgment above most people I know."

"Oh!" His honesty took Lacey aback. "I'm sorry. I must have misunderstood."

"I didn't even know the fortune teller was missing until we were in New York and Christopher let it slip he was looking for her."

"Ah." Lacey glared toward the bar where the mahout stood. He seemed in danger of being drowned by the free drinks being thrust upon him.

"Even if I had known, I don't know why you thought I'd spread it about," Isaac continued, aggrieved. "I'm not a fool, you know!"

"Of course not. I--I'll just go over--." Lacey fled.

Her attempt to retreat to a more solitary corner backfired when she found herself wedged in between the lady ship captain and the snake charmer.

The snake charmer heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness, a corner for just us girls! I declare, dealing with some males' idea of chivalry is positively exhausting!" She extended her hand to the captain. "I'm Alis Gray. Delighted to meet another sensible female."

"Captain Angie Endo," the captain said, with a crocodilian grin. "And I find one warning is enough to make them back off."

"With teeth like those, I bet it is! Now that's an idea that would keep the punters coming back for more," Alis said admiringly, as she assessed the captain's sharpened teeth. "And I daresay it would come in quite handy for scaring off unwanted suitors. Did it hurt?"

Captain Angie flashed a very pointed smile. "It hurts plenty if some bastard pisses me off enough to make me bite!"

Both women laughed. If they heard the harsh edge to the sound, it just made them laugh the more. Lacey smiled politely, wishing she could make her escape.

"No, but really," Alis persisted. "Did it hurt?"

The lady captain shrugged. "Not so's you'd notice. You can only file the edges. Be careful to avoid the core of the tooth--if you go too deep, it hurts like bloody hell. I did that a couple of times, but a drop of bone aether put it right again."

"That's not so easy to come by these days."

"No."

The topic of conversation turned to other matters and Lacey relaxed. Prematurely, as it happened.

Captain Angie paused in the middle of telling a story involving a peacock, a priest, a madam, and a saint's relic. "My glass is empty," she said sadly.

"Let me," Alis volunteered. She rolled her shoulders in a way that drew attention to her feminine assets. "I know sailors, and this lot have been away from women for too long. They'll fight each other to provide us with liquid refreshment."

"Wait!" Lacey put out her hand. "What if one of the sailors decides to press his attentions--forcefully?"

Alis laughed huskily. "Then he'll find that I have a bite like one of my snakes. After me, he'll never press his attentions on any poor girl again."

Alis sashayed away from the table. When she returned, she was followed by a clutch of sailors who insisted on gifting the ladies with drinks. Captain Angie's grin and the snake inquisitively poking its head out from behind Alis' fichu sent them on their way, but the drinks remained. As the level of liquor lowered, so did the tone of the conversation. Lacey was hardly a blushing prude, but she found herself controlling her expression with great difficulty.

"Ah! There's the doctor!" she finally said hastily. "I must speak with him. Do excuse me."

Alis' raised eyebrows warned her that she was not entirely believed, but it was a polite enough pretext for her to escape graciously.

"Doctor!" she called, hurrying over to the bar where the doctor sat.

He identified the source of the call, gave her a quick once-over, and then picked up the shot glass in front of him and slammed the liquor, signaling the barmaid for more. His face was pale and taut with strain.

"Is that wise?" Lacey asked, instead of the more polite opening she'd planned.

"You're not injured," he said. "I checked." The barmaid put a second shot in front of him. He drank it down and gestured for another one. "Do you remember the Grey Steel Regiment?"

"I wanted to talk to you about whatever happened to those deer-creatures," Lacey said.

"Do. You. Remember?"

Lacey nodded slowly. "The monsters of the South. They slaughtered our soldiers. Hell, they ate our soldiers. The surviving members are still being held for war crimes, though people can't quite figure out how best to put them on trial without hanging every farm boy who used to fight for the Confederates."

"Sure, they were monsters," the doctor agreed. "By the end of the war. In the beginning they were just boys. The brass put them in those war harnesses, and the aether pumped into their bones made them nigh invincible."

"Uh-huh."

"When defeat approached, those generals stopped listening to their doctors. Those boys should have been pulled back from the front lines and treated. The aether overdose did horrible things to them. It twisted and pulled them and made them into monsters. It burned through their bodies' resources so fast that they were swept away by a mad, ravenous hunger. That's when they started to hunt the battlefields and to eat what they killed." The doctor paused. "Mostly after they'd killed it."

"Oh," Lacey said, taken aback. "That's horrible. But I wanted to--"

"Need to tell the 'thorities," he interrupted. "Need to make plans. First," he gulped down the liquor, "need a drink."

"Er, you might want to slow down," Lacey suggested. "You'll be needing your own patent remedy in the morning, else."

"Hrm?" He squinted at her.

"The Great Doctor Panjandrum's miracle remedy?" she prompted. "Excellent for toothache, neuralgia, and sore chests? A sure-fire cure for muscle aches and tremors?"

"Tremors," the doctor repeated moodily. "'Splains why business has been so good. Do you know what my remedy does?"

"No," Lacey said carefully. "You always said it wouldn't cause any harm at the recommended dosage--"

"Nothing!" he bellowed, slapping his hand down on the bar. "It did nothing! All those poor, doomed people--nothing!"

Heads were starting to turn. Lacey leaned forward. In an undertone, she said, "Doctor, you shouldn't say such things here."

"Eh?" He squinted at her. "Oh, right. Barmaid!" He waved his hand.

Lacey wished she could melt into the floor. There were enough sticky patches and puddles; one more wouldn't be noticed.

An older fellow eased his way through the crowd and grabbed her elbow in a very forward way. Lacey straightened and pulled away. She ought to be offended. In truth, she welcomed the distraction.

"I beg your pardon, sir!" she said frostily.

"Ma'am." His hand raised, as if to tug the brim of a cap that wasn't there. Recalling himself, he coughed and tucked his hands into his belt. "The Commissioner sent me. He wanted to talk to your lot right promptly. You and the other fella who came to see him the first time."

"Oh!" Now that the man had declared his allegience, she noticed the straight-shouldered way he carried himself, like a man accustomed to a uniform. He'd wisely removed his jacket and cap to get by on the dock, but his pants were the dark blue of the New York policeman's uniform, and his boots likewise bore the police force's imprimatur.

She dismounted from the bar stool and found Ginger the clown. Somehow, the strongman, the snake charmer, the snake charmer's baby boa, and the rather drunken doctor also ended up trailing along. Their motley appearance dismayed Lacey, but she tried to console herself that they were a good advertisement for the circus.

#

Their guide abandoned them inside the Central Police Department with a muttered, "His aide will come for you when he's ready."

Several dozen policeman and special patrolmen stared at the little group of circus folk. Lacey fidgeted. She wished she was back in Nancy's Harbor Cafe.

Then--"Hey! It's them! With the elephant and the fire and--tonight! The circus!"

The doctor gave a tipsy little bow and murmured, "Obliged, I'm sure."

With that, all the policemen relaxed. Chicory coffee was pressed upon them, and a couple of slices of stale pound cake.* It turned into an impromptu sort of celebration of the Battle of High Bridge. Before they were entirely drowned in the rather terrible coffee, Lacey threw the snake charmer a desperate glance.

With winsome charm, Alis made their excuses, saying that they had been summoned by the Commissioner and really, truly needed to pay their respects and return to Rumsey Port to prepare for their performance tonight--which all the policemen would surely be attending, yes?

An awkward silence fell. "The Commissioner's not in a real good mood," one of the younger patrolmen ventured. "You should maybe stay out here until he's ready for you."

"Hate to see him take his temper out on such a fine lady," another seconded, attempting chivalry.

"Nonsense!" the doctor proclaimed, lurching upright with the peculiar energy of a man who has had much alcohol topped with far more coffee than is good for him. "He wishes to congratulate us on the Battle of High Bridge." He managed a wink. "Details he needs to know, don't you see. Hush-hush. Now, his office is off this way?" He turned and began to stride toward a door clearly labeled "Holding Cells."

One of Alis' would-be swains leapt forward. "No, no--this way, sirs and madams." He blushed. "Ladies, I mean."

They followed his guidance until they were in front of the Commissioner's door. "I don't know if you--"

Lacey ignored his dithering. She pushed open the door, walked in, and found herself amidst a heated discussion between the Commissioner and his aide.

"--all the ration-hoarders?" the Commissioner demanded.

"As many as we could, sir," Mr. Akrill responded. "Making an example of some so early put a stop to most of it. And the rewards have brought out the rest."

The Commissioner paced back and forth. "Perhaps in the dead zone? You could search those houses that are unclaimed."

"The men don't like it, sir. They say they're haunted. Besides, we rounded up the food supplies right after we cleared the corpses out."

"I don't care if you get it by digging up graves and robbing the bodies!" the Commissioner said furiously. "If that dratted female causes any more civilians to besiege me with complaints about her impossible expectations. . . ."

"The men will ask why, sir."

The Commissioner sighed and rubbed his face, his anger evaporating. "And I can't take special privileges. It wouldn't be right, especially after I made such a big fuss about how important it was to share and share alike. But my darling wife needs something . . . civilized . . . to calm her down. It's damn hard to find civilization right now. Chocolate did the trick for a while, but now I can't find any of the precious stuff. I'm afraid that once she realizes the situation we're in, she'll single-handedly try to re-create civilization in her own inimitable style. Probably hold costume balls for orphans, insist on a hundred patrolmen to re-open the park promenades, and chivy the seamstresses into sewing the latest Paris fashions instead of turning out the basics we need."

"Yes, sir," Mr. Akrill said.

The Commissioner grimaced. "It's enough to drive me to declare war on the ports. I know those ships are brimming with supplies we need."

Lacey stepped forward. "Ahem," she said delicately. "Your messenger indicated you wished to speak with us?"

He blinked. "Right. Come in then, all of you." He nodded to his aide. "You may go."

"Yessir."

After the assorted circus members crowded into his office, he lowered his brows and glared at them. "What madness have you lot stirred up in my city?" he growled.

Lacey gaped. "What?" After the cheers of the cityfolk, the jubilant greeting of the sailors, and the warm welcome of the Commissioner's own policemen, his greeting was a dash of cold water to the face.

"I've heard all kinds of crazy stories about what happened on the bridge," he said. "The facts are as follows: one of my policemen is dead; work on the defensive wall is interrupted; a mound of burned animals is clogging up the bridge; and it all happened when you came to my city. What can you bring to the city to make up for this? I want an inventory."

Lacey blinked, unable to come up with a response. Ginger the clown seemed to be likewise stricken, and the doctor was intently studying a spot on the ceiling.

"We saved your city," rumbled the strong man. A frown broke through his normally impassive expression, twisting the thick tattoos on his face.

"That's as may be, boy," the Commissioner said dismissively. "We'll see what my coroner has to say about that once he's taken a look at those deer."

The doctor pulled his attention back to the here-and-now. "We didn't save the city," he agreed.

Lacey spun to look at him. "What?!" she gasped.

"I knew that 'monster' business was just a wild story," the Commissioner said, in a grimly satisfied tone. "Now if we can get down to discussing what I summoned you here for--"

"The city's doomed. We're all doomed. You think you've gathered the survivors here, but you haven't. You've just got people that haven't finished dying yet."

"What?"

"Do you remember the Grey Steel Regiment?"

"That's past history," the Commissioner said gruffly. "A gruesome campfire tale. It's got nothing to do with the here and now."

The doctor laughed, a bit hysterically. "How I wish you were right, sir! But the storm that laid us all low and killed so many, that was an aether storm. Since then, I've seen people complaining of excess energy, muscle tremors, strange growths. Tumors. Bone spurs. Some have a milder case, some have it worse. It depends on where they were, if they were higher up, or behind walls, or near water, or just in a place where the aether currents were particularly agitated."

The Commissioner frowned. "This isn't--"

The doctor interrupted him. "They're turning into monsters. At different rates, depending on the excitation of their bone aether. Do you understand? Not just people, either. Those things on the bridge? Those were deer. Harmless deer. What do you think a bear is going to be like? Or a wild boar?" His shoulders slumped, and he slowed to a mutter. "I figure a third of your 'survivors' are turning. They'll slaughter the rest of you."

The Commissioner shook his head. "No. I've secured the city. My doctors have seen no signs of this--this coming plague. I'll take their word above that of a snake oil salesman! No doubt you've some cure you'd like to peddle to me at a very dear price."

"I wish I did. What I need is live specimens. If I could examine--"

"No," the Commissioner interrupted. "I will not discuss this further. I will not borrow trouble because of some circus sideshow." He rubbed his face. "Today's problems are more than enough." He turned his attention to Lacey. "You said you were an equestrienne?"

"Yes," Lacey said faintly, still stunned by the doctor's revelation.

"How many horses do you have?"

Lacey frowned. "You want to know about my horses?"

The Commissioner nodded shortly. "They're wasted with you. Resource like that should serve the population. Trained horses--hell, any horses--will be invaluable for riot control and defense of the city."

Lacey paled. "We're not part of your city, sir," she choked out. "I note that you currently lack both riots and external enemies."

"And as long as I'm in command, we won't be threatened by either," he growled.

"I'm sorry, the horses are not for sale." Lacey fought to keep her voice calm as panic began to rise. Without her horses, she was nothing.

"Who said anything about sale?" He lowered his brows. "They're being requisitioned."

(To be continued in Episode 16: The Equestrienne's Worst Fear)

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If you enjoyed this episode of The Circus of Brass and Bone, consider making a donation to keep it going (and get a character named after you, and a copy of the final book). All proceeds go to help cover the costs incurred during my mother's treatment for advanced ovarian cancer. If you can't afford a donation, tell a friend, or blog about it.

Acknowledgments

This episode is brought to you by the generous donations of Hannah Valentine, Lindsey Tuominen, Pamela Dyer-Bennet, and Alice Marks.

The Circus of Brass and Bone is written and recorded by Abra Staffin-Wiebe. My main website is at www.aswiebe.com, and I blog at cloudscudding.livejournal.com.

Music is courtesy of Vermillion Lies. Go to their website at vermillionlies.com to hear more.

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