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Katharine Hay it with her fists She shouted, but Maria couldn’t hear her; the glass was uncommonly thick She wondered if even a bullet would break it It was al airship, andvery si

Maria pulled the lever She pulled hard, and it dren slowly She did not hear the hiss of gas spilling through the tubes and out of the tanks, but she could see it: a yellow jet of air, puffing, curling, and falling to the floor like syrup

Katharine Haylass She took a step back away froan to fill Stoically she stood as the gas pooled at her feet, hiding her boots and the he as it crawled up her thighs, and covered her to her waist, then her breasts Her breathing faltered, but she stayed strong, holding back the coughing fit that her body begged for until the last moments, when the poisonous air flowed down her throat

Maria could still see her through thestock-still save for clenching and unclenching her fists, until she fell to her knees, then to her hands and knees

Then to the floor, where she writhed and twisted

And then stopped ether

When Maria had asked the Fiddlehead how as, and howfiends, theMaybe Hayood Maybe she’d poke her head up again ed at her nervous system and puppeted her into cannibalisun Hainey said she should shoot for the head

And she had a mask She pulled it out of her pocket and drew it over her face, exactly the way Hainey had showed her, aps or leaks "When it hurts to breathe, you know it’s on right," he’d assured her He should know He’d worn theh the filters tasted like mildew and charcoal, but that was better than sulfur and blood

She glanced out theone last tie of Katharine Haymes wavered and wobbled as if it were surrounded by rainbows--distorted by theitself Ah, so that’s what the note had lass didn’t just protect observers, it detected the gas as well The whole thing must be polarized, which must’ve cost a fortune

But Katharine Haymes had a fortune

Maria seized the research files and stashed theun, tested the mask one last time … and opened the control room door

Twenty-four

December 1880

"‘It did not happen immediately, but it happened quickly in the wake of Katharine Haymes’s death: Word was out Word went even farther the next , when all of us--Abraham, Gideon, Nelson, and myself--exhausted to the bone yet thrilled to be alive, scattered to the four winds We took the neherever ent, threw it as far as our ai weeks, we found others reaching out fro across a barrier that had once seemed insurmountable The diained her standing and her credibility by force of will, and her voice ae Maria Boyd’s voice did likewise, for although she belongs to neither North nor South, she speaks to both with equal authority So, too, Gideon Bardsley, no longer a slave but a citizen, both of Alabama and the District Outcast and hero, the inventor and scientist who created the s’"

Julia shook her head "Dearest, no one talks like that Least of all you"

"No, but people write like this This is the language that ‘keeps’ the best"

"I wish you wouldn’t bother Sounds a bit forced toso"

"I don’this eyes off the papers he’d so meticulously written out by hand They’d taken five months to compose, and they went off to the printer tomorrow This was his last chance to read it before he coa "But if I wrote it as it happened, with all the swearing and sweating, no one would want to read it"

"Oh, but you’re wrong about that," his wife ed in an overstuffed chair beside a cooling fire "If anything, I think the readershipbored on trains, or swearing every day when the post coraph operators"

"That only happened the once You rinned, and she was beautiful "More’s the pity Honestly, I can’t believe you’ve written so o on"

"‘Those who had been silenced were heard, and although forces conspired to silence theh to rise above theround The undead leprosy was a threat to all It cared nothing for the color of a arded politics, age, and virtue It came for all alike