Chương 6: The Power of a Craftswoman:
When Arlene had finished talking, the Strider was loaded with medicine and the watchman was twirling the waxed point of his moustache while staring into the middle distance.
Finally, he turned to Arlene.
"Hitch a ride with me to the staging post. We simply don't have anyone to spare to guard your house or escort you right now, but at the station you should be safe."
Arlene hesitated. It was tempting, for her to accept would mean she'd be safe but, as her head cooled, a tight knot of fear had wound itself within her.
"I'd appreciate the lift, but, right now, I want to go as quickly as I can to Gastielle and find my father."
The watchman wasn't impressed.
"Young lady. You know as well as I do, the dangers involved. I shall inform sergeant Hasker at the station to send a letter via the evening express, requesting an investigation. You need not do anything further until the law has dealt with the problem."
Arlene was chewing her lip hard enough to draw blood.
"Even if I don't go to Gastielle, I still need to go to my house. What they're looking for is there."
The watchman snapped.
"Were you even listening! That would be even more dangerous. I cannot afford to tarry here any longer as it is, so please climb aboard!"
Arlene looked to Hahn and he nodded solemnly at her. Cynthia turned away and Harper-
"It'll be fine officer, I'll come with her! The men who attacked you, they weren't craftsmen right? So they'd be no match for me!"
The watchman looked at Harper with justified doubt. After all, Craftsmen and women weren't exactly common. Even in a city the size of Lumiere there were less than a dozen.
"What rank are you?"
"Silver."
Harper pulled out a coin and her fingers shimmered slightly as she folded it in half- and then half again.
"Deliberately defacing coinage is an offence, but under the present circumstances, I shall use my discretion to disregard what I saw. Very well, climb aboard."
Arlene blinked in mild disbelief.
"It's okay?"
"After retrieving this... stone, I trust you will come straight back to the station. If your pursuers had craftsmen of their own, I rather imagine they would've been part of the group hunting you- And I pity the ordinary man who has to fight a craftswoman hand to hand."
Arlene climbed aboard smiling, sitting atop the sacks of medicine and bandages. Harper squeezed alongside her, and gave her a cheery thumbs-up and a wink. Arlene was grateful to her, not just for the offer of help, but for her deliberately vague answer to the watchman. Before the age of machines and devices, Craftspeople had another title and lived as fierce worriers. The rather pretentious ranking system stemmed from their militant past, and without clarification if someone said they were silver rank, they were generally referring to their physique rather than their technique. Even the most useless silver ranker could harden their skin the moment before an impact to turn-away blows and could bend metal with just strength and without using a technique to make it ductile like Harper did.
"Sorry Harper. You were right- they were bad news."
Harper grabbed Arlene's clenched hands and wrapped them in her own.
"Don't worry. I'm more than enough to handle whatever comes our way."
"You... didn't have to come with me though."
Harper huffed at that-
"We may have only just met, but... uh.... You shared water with me! Share a cup once, and you're forever a companion right?"
Arlene burst out laughing.
"It was a bottle! What're you even talking about?"
"I don't know! Do I need a reason to help you? We're friends already aren't we!"
Arlene couldn't help but muss Harpers hair again.
"Sure we are.... Hey, did you leave your hat at the shop?" it was strange. A few minutes ago she was stressed and strung out, but, a few moments of nonsense talk and the bad memories, the impending danger, it seemed to fade away a little. A moment of calm at the eye of the storm.
The Watchman driving the City-Strider smiled quietly as the spidery legs of his vehicle ate up the distance with graceful clicking steps. Whenever they approached a building, he would operate the complicated array of levers in the pilot's seat and the legs of the Strider would extend to two, sometimes three times their normal length and carry the cockpit over the rooftops.
The Strider was in operation deceptively quiet- strategically placed baffles and muffles minimised the engine noise so it could be used on night patrol.
Right now though that meant the other sounds of the night carried easily to the ears of the riders.
Pained yells, angry shouting.... and... something else.
Harper's superior senses picked it up first.
"I can hear engines and breaking wood and glass.... North of here. Three, small. But it doesn't sound like fighting."
The watchman twisted in his seat.
".... Point the way young lady. I don't particularly like the sound of that."
Despite what he said, the watchman didn't go directly towards the direction Harper pointed out. He circled around briefly and then extended the legs of the Strider to raise just above the roof of the adjacent buildings, almost hidden by the chimneys jutting out at the peak of the tiled rooftops.
The street that Harper had pointed towards had several people splayed on the stonework- and three Treadbikes.
Treadbikes used to be exclusively used by outriders and army scouts. A single bag of extended coal could run the bike's boiler for a week and they were durable enough to withstand neglect and rough treatment.
Unfortunately that made them favourites for bandits as well. Seeing the extended water tanks the bikes sported- waterproof saddlebags with pipes poking into them, recent events sparked an idea in Arlene's mind.
"The stolen wine." She was certain that the saddlebags were like her haversack, a magical container that contained a much greater volume than their size suggested.
"Officer. You know how tonight's shortage came about right? Do you think that they stole the wine and then planned to raid the town in the confusion?"
The Watchman had been silent, but he spoke in a strained voice.
"I do believe so. Our perimeter watch is lax right now- and we're stretched thin... I wish to harry them and wring the number of their comrades out of them but..."
He glanced backwards and Arlene knew what he was thinking. His original duty was to carry medicine. He was already late- if he was struck down here, more lives than his own could be lost.
Harper went onto all fours.
"I have this! I can do this!"
"Young lady, what're you-"
Harper sprang forward with enough force to make the Strider yaw backwards. She arced towards the tip of the rooftop, caught the tiles at the peak with one hand and swung her body over to the other side. Sliding down, she caught the metal gutter at the lip of the roof and tore a meter long section of it free.
One of the men looked up from where he was emptying a register into a bag, alarmed by the sound- but it was too late.
Harper swung herself around the edge of the roof and alighted on a window-still briefly before dropping heavily to the ground and dashing forwards- her feet making divots in the stonework of the street.
"It's a Crafts-"
As she moved, she readied the section of gutter, and without breaking stride, swung it at the stomach of the speaker.
He bent like a bow around the impact point and flew back two meters before rolling to a stop, one knee twisted unnaturally.
Harper exhaled heavily, and focused. The other two men had still been inside the stores, but when they saw what was going on, they drew their weapons and with the reflexes of a true veteran they took cover before opening fire.
*Crack!*
*Shick!Shick!Shick!*
Harper dived behind the bikes. With her physique, a gun could absolutely do her a mischief even with normal rounds. One man seemed to have a revolver, the other a needler- a gun that used compressed gas from an arm mounted canister to fire deadly slivers of metal. Her eyes fell on the bodies that were lying on the ground. Now she was closer, she could see it. The needles sticking from vital points. A deep anger rose within her, and the gutter warped underneath her fingers.
The two men stopped firing the moment she'd dived out of sight. Though their faces were calm, their palms were slick. Their opponent was at least of a low enough rank to be affected by bullets. But that didn't make her any less terrifying to face. Their brother now lying broken on the ground was evidence enough of that. In the hands of a craftswoman, anything could be a weapon. If they stepped out now, they might not even know how they died. Their ears, made sensitive by the tension, picked up the sound of tearing cloth.
From behind the bike, a large leather bag flew in a shallow ark towards the wall between the two doorways the men were crouched behind. As their eyes followed the arc, Harper kicked backwards and sent her body flying low across the ground, she was lying down, arm drawn back holding the gutterpipe like a spear. Before her back touched the ground, she'd thrown her improvised javelin.
Faster than the eye could follow, the metal caught up with the flying saddle-bag and impaled it, piercing through the tough leather.
Even though the men realised what was about to happen, they simply had no time to react. All they could do was offer up a wordless prayer, and hope that they were lucky. It was common knowledge, that when a magical bag was pierced, one of two two things could happen to the contents.
They would immediately appear inside the physical pouch of the bag- usually with explosive results for a full haversack.... Or one or all of the items within would be lost forever.
Unfortunately for them, the exception to this was liquids. While you might end up with less liquid than you started with, most of it would arrive back and in force.
With a sound like depth-charge going off in deep water, the men were knocked off their feet by the explosive expansion of hundreds of litres of water at close range.
The watchman lowered the Strider down in front of the dripping shops, and looked at the groaning bodies dangling by their ankles from Harper's hands.
".... Consider yourselves nicked, chums."
Arlene looked at the men flickering in and out of consciousness.
"I think they figured that one out."
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