Magnificent Devices 01 - Lady of Devices

door began to open, inexorably pushing her out into the square. Another body hit the back of it, and another, and the door was flung back. She stumbled to the side as Lightning Luke careened into the open, his hands mashed to his eyes, his oddly shaped gun in the crook of his elbow and hanging over his forearm. Shrieking in pain, the others followed, a cloud of gas billowing out behind them.
    Luke collapsed not ten feet from her, the flared barrel of the gun clunking on the cobbles next to him.
    The gun. That was what everyone feared most.
    She darted forward and snatched it up, then nearly fell headlong herself as its unexpected weight dragged at her arms. Luke did not move except to moan and scrub at his eyes with the velvet tails of his coat. She hefted his gun more carefully, and in the swath of lamplight that fell out into the middle of the square, eyed its operation.
    It possessed a trigger, but there was no chamber for bullets. Not like her father’s pistols. But what was this? Instead of a chamber, there was a thick glass globe. If she moved this lever, then ...
    The gun began to hum.
    Now what was she to do? Common sense begged her to ignite the landau and drive away as fast as she could. But where was Lizzie? Maggie had taken refuge again behind the barrels. She could not leave without the other child, but if she didn’t begin the landau’s ignition sequence immediately, the miscreants would recover and her situation would be unthinkable.
    A dim reflection of blue light pulsed on the wet cobbles. She looked down.
    A lightning storm had formed in the glass globe, and the hum had taken on real authority now. Great heavens, this gun somehow harnessed electrick power! No wonder they called him Lightning Luke.
    She had to move. Now.
    “Maggie,” she shouted. “Find Lizzie!”
    “Who’s that?” Luke had gotten to his feet, and swayed like a drunken man. “Where’s my gun?”
    He was still blinded. Common sense told her to keep quiet, get the landau started, and get out of there. Anger demanded that she give him a piece of her mind.
    “It’s a trap,” one of his companions moaned. “Billy’s done turned on us.”
    Luke got one eye open, which widened at the sight of her, then slammed shut as droplets of condensed capsaicin gas rolled into it. “Who are you? Put that down, you fool of a woman, and get out of here.”
    With the help of the side of the building nearest her, Billy had managed to stand as well. One of Luke’s men flung himself at him. “Turncoat! You’ll see us all dead!”
    He pulled a knife, and before Claire could even shriek, he had stabbed Billy in the chest. The chains laced through the shoulders of his long coat clanked on the cobbles as he fell. Instinctively, her hands tightened on the gun, her forefinger sliding into the trigger guard, and when Billy rolled, his still twitching arm slapped her skirts. She screamed, lurched back, and the gun went off.
    A lightning bolt ten feet long leaped from the flared barrel, flashing across the square and catching Luke dead in the center of his chest. He arched back as flickering tendrils of blue light traveled outward, along his limbs, along his coat, even to the top of his crushed beaver hat. His eyes bugged out and there was a sizzling sound as the liquid in them evaporated. He fell, rigid as a tree trunk, and lay still.
    A plume of smoke rose from the blackened mass that had been his leather vest.
    Claire’s fingers went numb, and she dropped the gun on her foot. The night crowded into her vision, and a hive of bees seemed to have entered her brain. From a great distance, she heard another shout that sounded like, “Lady! Are you all right?” and several figures ran into the square.
    Fisticuffs.
    The Mopsies.
    If there was fighting, they would be in danger. She must not faint. She must not.
    The gun will hurt them. Pick up the gun. Get the landau. Find the Mopsies.
    “Lady!”
    She blinked and Snouts’s face swam into clarity. “Mr. McTavish?”
    “Stop standing there like a mug, Lady. You just kilt Lightning Luke Jackson!”
    “Is he ... really dead?” Surely not. This had not happened. She would wake in her comfortable bed in Wilton Crescent presently and wonder what she had eaten to cause such vivid dreams.
    “As a blinkin’ doornail.” Dream or not, Snouts was speaking slowly and not allowing her gaze to wander from his. “Look sharp, Lady. We have to get back to his squat before word gets out and the bobbies