Chapter 10
He'd suspected it. Strongly. After reading those magazines, content that would have elicited a reaction from any reasonably built man, and it did, in a sense.
He'd felt something, excitement, reading those books.
It just hadn't come paired with what that kind of excitement was supposed to come with.
First memory loss? Now this? What's next? He could only imagine discovering some horrid condition, but what could possibly be worse than this? Cancer? Yeah, actually, that's definitely worse.
"That was quite a performance," Anya whispered, pressing her cheek to his shoulder, her hair soft against his neck, ears tickling his chin.
"Hm," he said, nodding at the girl sitting atop him.
"For an impotent man."
"Don't call me that."
She pushed off his shoulder, revealing a face still very flustered.
"Aw, my little cauliflower, I didn't mean it as an insult.
Not mostly. But what you did makes me doubt you only just discovered this.
It's almost like you already knew how to work without, you know," she said, shifting some of her weight onto the still-downed little fella beneath her.
"You saw it. I only just figured it out," he said.
"As for my performance, I guess I'm just a man of many talents.
Some of which I'm still discovering myself.
" He smiled wide, watching her lift herself to face him, closing the distance between their faces, which prompted him to naturally shut his eyes in expectation.
Unfortunately, she'd only done it to tease him.
"That was fun," she said, withdrawing, which made his eyes drop to something he'd have been foolish not to memorize. "But it's time to hold up your end of the bargain. You won't argue I underdelivered, will you?"
"How could I," he said, reaching, noble as he could manage, for the revolver sitting holstered atop his discarded pants. In the attempt, he took a nibble of what was just in front of him, earning him moan then a scolding he shut down with a smile and a handover. "As promised," he said.
She smiled back, and smiled wider still as her fingers wrapped around the massive, textured grip of the Vanguard Five-Chamber, lifting the gun into the moonlight, clearly unprepared for the weight.
"Where did you find this?" she murmured, a soft, fascinated smile on her lips as she studied the flawless metal.
"Somewhere."
She gave him a scolding look, lowering the gun. "Just how heavy is this thing?"
Shiro suppressed a laugh. If holding it up for five seconds was already a strain on her wrist, it was probably for the best she never actually fired it.
"So? Where'd you get it?"
"Alright," he conceded, not entirely. "I got it from someone. I won't say who, since it's an old acquaintance I'd rather keep to myself, for both our sakes."
Ever since realizing, through Chaska, just how big a deal Nazim and his workshop actually was, he'd decided it would be safer going forward not to mention casually stumbling onto such a mythical workshop.
She looked at him, clearly intent on pressing further, but when he met her gaze with an unyielding stare of his own, she changed tactic. "There are no forge marks. No flint, no matchlock. How does it even fire?"
"It's a revolver," he explained, amused by her fascination. "A Vanguard Five-Chamber. It doesn't need a powder horn or a—what do you call the thing you use to pack gunpowder into a rifle?"
"A ramrod."
"Right. It doesn't need one of those."
She turned it sideways, fingers tracing the metal lightly. He could tell her expression held more than a merchant's curiosity. At least, not only that.
"This, it has a hole," she said. "Is this where the bullet goes?"
"It is," he confirmed. He pressed the latch on the side, and with a heavy, precise click, the cylinder swung outward. "See? The wheel drops open."
She peered inside. "Are those—?"
"The bullets? Yes. Hold on." He tipped the gun back, letting two of the massive brass cartridges slide into his palm, and handed them to her.
She weighed the casings in her hand, staring at the cylinder. "It spins?"
"Yep. That's what lets me fire as fast as I do.
" With the gun emptied, he snapped the cylinder shut and pulled the trigger, letting her watch the mechanism rotate.
"The chamber spins automatically when you pull the trigger, or when you cock the hammer back.
This is the hammer, by the way. What do you call this part on your guns? It's what sets off the whole thing."
"A cock."
"I'm very tempted, but since I'm an adult, I won't joke about that," he said, smirking. "This is called a hammer. And this, as I'm sure you already know, is the trigger."
"There's really no gunpowder involved," she murmured, still searching the frame.
"Hm." He paused, then corrected her gently. "Actually, there is. Definitely is. You just can't see it."
"Where is it?"
"Inside the bullet itself," he said, gesturing at the brass casings in her hand.
"Inside each of these is exactly the right amount of powder to send the projectile forward.
This outer part is called the shell casing.
It stays behind in the chamber, which is what allows for such a fast reload. Smart, right?"
As he spoke, she looked down, finally noticing the stark difference between the two bullets he pulled out of the chamber.
For the next several minutes, he kept feeding her information. To him, it felt like surface-level, basic stuff, but she absorbed every word with infectious enthusiasm. He talked until he'd run out of things to explain.
That was when her demeanor shifted.
The scholarly curiosity vanished instantly. Her eyes gleamed with something he immediately recognized as predatory. "My little cauliflower," she purred.
"Yes?"
"Sell it to me," she whispered, leaning closer.
He let out a soft chuckle beneath her, his hands squeezing her waist gently. "I can't."
"Name your price. I'll pay whatever it takes."
"I still can't. Look, my shameless side is telling me to let you try to persuade me, and I'm sure it'd be fun, but I know it'd just be mocking your effort, since my answer's going to be no either way.
I got absurdly lucky stumbling onto this in the first place.
The odds of me finding something like it again are basically none.
Selling it for money alone just isn't worth it. "
She searched his face for something and apparently didn't find it, because she promptly changed approach.
"How about this instead? Come with us. Follow me to my city.
Of course, I'll pay you for your time, it'll be worth your while," she said, with a wink that suggested plenty. "You know what I mean by that."
He chuckled at the attempt, knowing his condition. "Hahaha, but why? To give your smiths a chance to take it apart?"
She winced, just barely.
"You know," he said, "your offer, with all the accommodations you're promising, might be one you come to regret."
Anya frowned. "Why?"
"You seem confident in your smiths, but I'm also confident that even if I took this whole thing apart myself and showed you every spring, screw, and pin inside, it still wouldn't matter."
She pouted slightly, studying his face. "Why not? A gun's a gun. I'm sure they could replicate it. My smiths are the best in the city. In the whole region, even."
Not even bothering to hide her interest in replicating his gun anymore, he thought, amused.
"I'm sure they are. But what you're asking of them would be hell, on multiple levels, starting with the metal itself," he said, tapping the cold barrel.
"I'm no smith, but I know for a fact the people whose best work is muskets, flintlock pistols, and blunderbusses, and what else? "
"We do swivel guns too."
"Well, for people whose best work is that, it's very unlikely they'd manage to replicate this.
No offense to your people. But even assuming they somehow pulled it off, got the alloy and durability right to even ten percent, they'd still have to deal with this," he said, pressing a cartridge into her hand.
"This will be hell for them." He said it with enough confidence that her shoulders dropped a little, which was why he added, "That's why I think, for starters, you should have your men try to replicate these instead. "
He gave her a wicked, confident grin. "If your smiths can actually manage to replicate just one of those cartridges, then convincing me to make the trip to your city and let them study the gun will be worth your time and effort. Call it their baptism of fire."
"You'll give it to me?" she asked, already withdrawing her hand, making it clear there'd be no taking the bullet back now.
"Yes. But give that one back, I think it's best your smiths start with the Standard-Sentry and the Short-Scout," he said, swapping the Trench-Spike for a Short-Scout after having teased her with two.
She naturally reached for it, but he pulled his hand back before she could take it.
She reached again, and seeing what was essentially right in front of her face, went for another nibble instead, which drew a very pleasant sound out of her.
"What are you doing?"
"This one isn't free."
"Really?!"
"Really."
"You already got the first one for free, and that thing's worth a fortune."
"I didn't know you were this stingy."
"I can assure you there are plenty of other qualities about me still waiting to be discovered, given the time and, apparently, the opportunity."
She sighed, then asked, mercantile once more, "How much?"
???
Leaving the tower behind, he went looking for Chaska and found her right where he'd left her, standing beside a carriage, her plate empty despite her earlier claim of having no interest in the food Vanya had brought.
Her injuries had been tended to as well, her left hand bandaged, the sling improved and some kind of mixture applied to the bruise left by his butt of his vanguard.
The sight lifted a weight off Shiro's chest. Truth be told, given how stubbornly she'd been pushing herself to follow him into the city despite his insistence they rest at the fortress a few more days, he'd half expected her to collapse and planned on using that opportunity to get the rest he believed she needed.
She'd proven just as tenacious as she was stubborn, though not too stubborn to refuse help and food when it was offered.
"You took your sweet time. I was starting to think she did something to you." She frowned. "She did do something to you, didn’t she?"
"More like I did something to her, but that's just semantics," he quipped back, flashing a wide smile. "Got something for you," he said, pulling something from behind his back.
"That's..."
"For you, like I said," he answered, handing her the flintlock pistols.
"No," she said, shaking her head.
"I'll teach you how to use them if you don't know how."
"It's not that. I have my bow."
"Had," he corrected. "Until you fix it. And, no offense, but I think it'll be a while before you can draw a bow again," he said matter-of-factly.
"If you're going to stick with me, I want you able to defend yourself.
So take this," he pressed the heavy wood and iron into her good hand, "and this, and this last one.
They only fire once each, so you'll get three shots befor—oh shit! "
He'd been tucking the last flintlock into the waistband of her long skirt when the combined weight of the items dragged the whole thing down her knee. He winced, looking away from his own handiwork. "Yeah, I probably should've bargained for a holster too. Hold on, let me—"
He'd already turned to head back toward the tower when Anya's voice boomed authoritatively across the camp. "Alright, since we're all good to go, let's get moving!"