THE SWP
1904—St. Louis
When Esta went inside the building, it was dark, but she could see a light coming from a hallway to the right. In the distance she heard something like the murmuring of a crowd. Because Harte wasn’t there, she took the risk of pulling her affinity around her and followed the source of the light until she found that it was coming from a set of stairs.
Keeping her hold on time, she went up the steps slowly, careful to keep the notebook balanced under her arm. At the top, there was another hallway, but at the far end of it, she saw a glow coming from beneath a door. As she walked toward it, the sound of her footsteps echoed into the silence that had been created by her magic. She found it unlocked, and with time still motionless, she slipped through.
On the other side was a large room filled with people. The high-ceilinged space stretched the entire width of the building, and the men and women within it were caught in the web of time gone slow, their mouths open and their expressions rapt as they listened to a speaker standing in the center. Though some sat on benches at the edges of the room, most were on their feet, crowded around the man elevated on the small platform of a stage. The speaker was dressed in shirtsleeves, which had been pulled back to reveal the broad forearms of a workman, but it was clear that his working days were behind him. His balding hair was nearly white, and his face was partially obscured by a full beard. His hand was raised, and his face was rapturous, his mouth opened and his eyes wild.
Esta had a sense that this man in the middle of the crowd was Lipscomb. She could leave the device here and go, but if she was wrong, it could mean trouble. She needed to make sure she had the right target.
Making her way through the crowd, Esta was careful not to touch anyone or bobble the parcel under her arm. She found a spot in the back corner, far from anyone who might notice her sudden appearance, and then she let go of her hold on time. The room spun back into life. The noise of the crowd was deafening, and the air suddenly held an electricity that had nothing to do with magic.
In the center of the room, the man’s voice boomed over the crowd. “The bourgeois care nothing for the workers,” he shouted. “They would print their money with the blood of our children. While our families work themselves to death in factories, the rich men of this city plan parties and balls. They feast while we starve! Look at the excesses of the Exposition,” he shouted, pounding his fist against his hand to punctuate his words. “Instead of celebrating the worker—the true spirit of this country—the Exposition celebrates a feudal past that cannot be allowed to rise again. They’ve built palaces and temples in our city, a city where native-born sons die without a roof over their heads.
“Look at the Society, with its heathenish ways. They look to magic, to the occult, because they understand that the workers of this country will not be silenced. They know that only the heathen power can subdue the power of the workers when they unite. But we will show them that not even their sorcery will be enough to extinguish the fire lit here, in this place, tonight.” He paused, looking around the room with satisfaction. “The Society has planned a parade—”
The room rumbled with disgusted murmurs, punctuated by low boos. The man’s voice didn’t carry with it any hint of magic, but there was power there nonetheless. Esta could feel him stirring the souls in the room all around her with nothing more than his words. The people around him were leaning in toward the platform on which he stood, their minds open and willing to accept what he was saying.
“Yes. Their parade is an abomination. Their prophet is a false one, an idol of profit and power created to suppress the voice of the proletariat. You all know this. You have seen it for yourselves every year since the brave porters stood up and demanded a living wage and were crushed by the powers of the bourgeois pigs. Every year the bourgeoisie remind us that they hold our lives in their hands—hands that have never known the weight of a hammer or the sting of labor—but not this year.
“This year we will rise up. This year, with the world watching, with the president himself viewing the spectacle, we must rise up and say enough. We must demand what is ours—with force, if necessary.”
The crowd erupted around Esta, and she lifted her hands in half-hearted applause, so she wouldn’t be noticed. But his words, along with the anger and hatred in his tone, made her uneasy. The room felt like a powder keg about to ignite.
“This your first meeting?” A girl had come up next to her and was examining her with an appraising look in her eyes.
“What?” Esta asked, unnerved at how easily she’d missed the girl’s approach. She was wearing a dress of slate gray that was buttoned up to her chin. The color seemed too severe for how young she was, but the plain cut of it seemed to suit the girl’s stern expression.
“You’re a new face,” the girl said, a question in her eyes.
Esta’s mind raced. “I heard about this . . . this meeting,” she said, improvising as she went. “And thought I’d see for myself what it was all about.”
“Who’d you hear from?” the girl asked. Her voice was soft but determined. And her eyes were suspicious.
“Oh, one of the guys at the brewery told me. Said I might find it interesting.”
The girl studied Esta a long moment more, like she wasn’t sure if she believed the story, but then she relented. “I’m Greta, and you are?”
“John,” Esta said, picking the plainest, most forgettable name she could think of.
“We’re glad to have you, John,” Greta told her as she handed Esta a sheet of paper. “Our movement needs more able bodies willing to stand firm.”
Keeping the notebook clamped steadily beneath her arm, she accepted it without reading it. “Thanks,” she said. “Who’s that speaking now?”
The girl’s eyes narrowed a little. “Your friend, the one at the brewery, he didn’t tell you?”
Esta’s throat felt tight. “He just said I’d be interested . . . didn’t say much else.”
“Where is he?” the girl asked. “This friend of yours?”
“Who knows?” Esta said, and when she sensed that it wasn’t the right answer, she added, “Probably working overtime.” She gave a shrug that she hoped looked tired and frustrated. “You know how it is—when the foreman says stay, you stay.”
The girl’s expression relaxed slightly. “Yes. We all know how it is.” She looked to the speaker and then back at Esta. “That’s Caleb Lipscomb. He’s the current secretary of the SWP. He’s brilliant.”
“What’s this parade he’s talking about?”
“The Veiled Prophet Parade?” the girl asked, and the suspicion was back in her eyes. “They have it every year. . . .” Her voice trailed off like this was something Esta should have known.
“I’m new in town,” Esta told her. “Came because my cousin said there was work, what with the Exposition and all. Only been here about two months.”
The girl’s expression didn’t relax. “Where did you say you worked again?”
Esta felt as though the stiff collar of her shirt were strangling her, but she’d been in tighter situations than this. “The Feltz Brewery,” she said, giving the name of Ruth’s place, since it was the only place she knew of.
The girl made a sound in the back of her throat. “He’s talking about the Veiled Prophet Parade that’s set for Independence Day.”
“This parade . . . It’s a big deal?” Esta asked, trying to get a sense of what the girl thought of it.
“That depends on who you are. A lot of people in town like the spectacle of it, but there’s plenty of us who know the truth.” Greta shrugged. “It’s just a show of power. The Society started the parade back in seventy-eight, after a railroad strike threatened to shut down the city. They couldn’t let a bunch of simple workmen get away with an action like that, especially not ones with skin darker than their own, so they invented the Prophet and the Parade. They use the threat of magic to keep the workers in their places all the year through, and the parade is a reminder of their power—a reminder of who is truly free in this country.” The girl’s expression lit with determination. “We never make it easy for them, and this year’s parade won’t be any exception.”
“I see,” Esta said, glancing at the sheet in her hand. The bold, dark type only accented the anger in the words printed on the page.
“Well, enjoy the rest of the evening,” the girl said. “If you have any questions at all, any of us with the broadsheets can answer them.”
“Thanks,” Esta told her, and turned her eyes back to the man speaking in the center of the room.
Go away, she thought as she felt the girl’s eyes on her.
She pretended to pay attention to what Lipscomb was saying. After a few minutes, she glanced over her shoulder to find the girl still watching her. Inwardly she cursed. As long as the girl was there, Esta was stuck—she couldn’t disappear, and she couldn’t drop the package, not without giving away either what she was or what she was doing. Magic would make what she had to do easier, but with the girl, she couldn’t risk it.
An opening parted in the crowd in front of her, and Esta took the opportunity it presented to slip through, little by little making her way closer to the small platform that Caleb Lipscomb was standing on. Every so often she paused, as though considering his words, and then would take the opportunity some shifting in the crowd offered to slip closer yet. She didn’t doubt that the girl was still watching her, but there wasn’t anything she could do about that.
When she was standing right in front of him, she stopped, keeping the notebook in her hands secure. She’d give it a minute or two before she made her move.
“But we must be vigilant,” Lipscomb was bellowing. “We know there are those who would corrupt our purpose. Undesirable elements that bring with them the feudal superstitions of the old countries: the Catholics with their papist loyalty and those who refuse to set aside their feral magic to join the true proletariat. You know what I speak of,” he shouted, his voice rising in a feverish pitch.
“Maggots!” shouted someone deep in the crowd.
Esta saw the curve of Lipscomb’s mouth at the sound of the slur. “Yes. Why do they come here? Why do they seek to take the jobs we’ve worked so hard for? To disrupt the country we are trying to build with their dangerous ways?” Lipscomb shook his head dramatically. “We must guard against those who would pervert the true proletariat with their shadowy powers.”
She pretended interest, hiding her disgust beneath a placid expression. No honor among thieves, and no solidarity among the downtrodden, apparently. Maybe she didn’t know this Caleb Lipscomb, but she knew those like him and felt some of the guilt she’d been carrying about what she was supposed to do lift from her.
He would do the same to me, she thought as she pressed even closer to the platform. He would do worse.
When someone bumped into her, Esta let the sheet of paper the girl had given her drop to the floor. She waited until it landed at her feet before she stooped to retrieve it, and in a subtle movement perfected during her years of training, she placed the parcel on the floor and held on to the edge of the loose sheet within it. Then she slid the notebook forward, until the loose sheet came free and the device was directly under the platform.
The Antistasi had explained that she had less than five minutes once she removed the fuse, but when she got back up to her feet, she realized that she was penned in, trapped by the crowd that was on its feet, shouting with the fervor of true converts. There was no opening, so Esta made one, throwing an elbow sharply into the stomach of the man behind her. The man groaned and tumbled backward into the people behind him, and the crowd, already whipped into an excited frenzy, responded by pushing him back. In a matter of seconds, someone threw a punch, and the room erupted into chaos.
Esta ducked, keeping herself low as she shoved her way to the edges of the madness, and when she reached the other side, she pulled time around her and ran.
She didn’t let go of time until she was outside the building and at the carriage where North was waiting. The sounds of the night returned as she opened the door and climbed in.
“Go!” she told him, looking back out the window.
He didn’t look up from picking at his fingernails with the blade of a knife.
“Go!” she said again. “We need to get out of here.”
“Let’s just give it a minute or two to be sure.”
He’s insane.
Her breathing was still ragged from running out of the building and down the block, and her heart felt as though it would pound its way straight out of her chest. When you did a job, you didn’t just wait around to get caught. “We need to get out of here before the police come.”
“We have time,” he said again, putting the knife away in his back pocket. He took out the pocket watch from inside his vest and considered it. “I’d say we got at least two more minutes to go.”
Because she’d used her affinity to escape, it took nearly four.
North had just picked up the revolver when they heard the echo of a small explosion.
Esta’s stomach dropped. “You said it wasn’t a bomb,” she told him, her mouth dry as she thought of all the people who had been in that room—workers, laborers, all who had come to listen because they needed hope. She’d been so angered by Lipscomb’s words that she hadn’t considered the other people when she set the device for him.
“No,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I said nobody was going to die, and they won’t. The explosives in that package won’t do more than take a leg or an arm—just enough to put Lipscomb into the hospital and keep him out of our way.” He twisted the knob on the side of his watch as the first of the people began to pour from the doorway of the building. With them came a dense, cloudlike fog, and even from more than a block away, Esta could feel the strange, icy-hot magic in the air.
“What did you do to them?” she asked.
“It’s not what we did to them,” he told her, glancing up from the watch. “It’s what you did for them.”
He clicked the watch closed, and Esta didn’t have time to contemplate the meaning of his words before she felt her veins turn to ice and the world went white.