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    Karen Memory
    Karen Memory
    Karen Memory
    Ebook423 pages5 hours

    Karen Memory

    By Elizabeth Bear

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    “Bear pumps fresh energy in the steampunk genre with a light touch on the gadgetry and a vivid sense of place . . . Karen and the ladies kick ass.” —Library Journal (starred review)

    Set in the late nineteenth century—when the city we now call Seattle Underground was the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes, would-be gold miners were heading to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront, Karen Memery (“like memory only spelt with an e”) is a young woman on her own, making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Through Karen’s eyes we get to know the other girls in the house—a resourceful group—and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging for sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.

    Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper yarn of the old west with a light touch in Karen’s own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.

    “[A] rollicking, suspenseful, and sentimental steampunk novel . . . [Karen’s] story is a timeless one: a woman doing what is needed to get by while dreaming and fighting for great things to come.” —Publishers Weekly
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateFeb 3, 2015
    ISBN9781466846340
    Author

    Elizabeth Bear

    Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, Locus, and Astounding Award–winning author of dozens of novels and over a hundred short stories. She has spoken on futurism at Google, MIT, DARPA’s 100 Year Starship Project, and the White House, among others. Find her at www.elizabethbear.com.  

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    Reviews for Karen Memory

    4/5

    246 ratings27 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Do yourself a favor and get this one. Authors--THIS is how steampunk is done!
    • 4/5
      Karen is a young woman on her own, is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Trouble erupts one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, begging sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, and who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered. I found this a lot of fun -- not fantasy, in and of itself, but steampunk and Elizabeth Bear, so I’m cool with it.
    • 4/5
      I like the book but we're told too much and not shown enough, and I think thats mostly due in effect that its just one pov... But not enough of the world is established and given full explainations so it feels like I'm missing an entire book? The romance had potential but again due to the perspective we don't really get to see it become fleshed out and made to feel tangible. I like that this is a Jack the ripper-ish retelling, that feels like it pulled from 10,000 leagues under the sea and the league of extrodinary gentlemen.... but I just needed more of the 'other' details to really back it up.... I'd give it a 3 because of the lack of details... but ultimately, I really did like it, so 4 starts it is.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed the language of this book. It evoked a character who is not scholarly but also not stupid, just not formally educated. Considering how much of the book takes place in a whorehouse, I appreciated how the story alluded to the business of the place without ever going into useless sex scenes. Karen is a strong narrator and I enjoyed the time I spent with her.
    • 2/5
      I thought this book had a lot of promise to begin with. Prostitutes in a an alternate steampunk Wild West dealing with dark killing? Definitely sounded interesting. But a number of things tripped this book up for me.

      Firstly, the protagonists narrative style. It was annoying. Her use of slang and metaphor seemed overdone and repetetive.

      Secondly, I was unsure how I felt about Elizabeth Bear's adoption and use of Indian characters. While she a got a few things right, she also got a few things wrong including names.

      Thirdly, the scope of the 'stakes' of the book dramatically jumped in the last 25% of the book, and I was not entirely sure why. Why inflate a local political scandal and serial killer story into something of international scope? It felt tacked on.

      Fourthly, portions of the book were physically unrealistic. As in, the protagonist, who is a teenage girl of no special physical power repeatedly gets injured and yet continues to function at near optimum capabilities. The injuries towards the end especially should have killed her.

      So overall, it was a pretty ordinary story which did not fulfil the potential of its premise.
    • 5/5
      This book was so much fun! I am a sucker for a good mashup and this had a little romance, some intrigue, smart mechanical things, and a unique perspective on American history.
    • 4/5
      This story felt like a love letter to the old Wild Wild West show. It doesn’t slavishly copy it but by the time I was finished reading it I wanted to watch those old shows again. Karen works in an upper class bordello saving her money for when she can open her own business of training horses, a skill she learned from her departed dad. Things in town quickly get turned on its ear when they women of the house decide to shelter a cribhouse prostitute that was broken out and taken there by someone that has been harassing the owner of the cribhouse for a while now. Soon after a black US Marshall comes to town following a serial killer of prostitute across the West. Turns out that there is a lot more to the story than this and even with several bad turns for Karen and her friends there is a happy ending. The author’s note was very informative about sources she used for her world building.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book a lot. There are a few flaws - namely that Karen's dialogue isn't consistent throughout the book and also that using "of" instead of "have" drives me nuts. Having that as a dialect trait was difficult to read. I got used to it, though, which made it easier to notice lapses in the usage.

      Overall, the story was interesting and fun. I love the steampunk setting although it's almost incidental to the plot. The characters are diverse in most cases (and made more interesting for being based on real people), but I did have trouble telling a few apart by name.

      If I had one major complaint, it's that the novel gets a little hijinx-filled to me, where everything that can go wrong, does, so that one crazy plan has to hatch another. It works, though.
    • 3/5
      I loved the setting of this mystery with a bit of fantasy to it: 19th Century Seattle (even though it goes by another name) just as the original city was being covered up, ultimately to become the Seattle Underground. It is a rough world and our heroine works at a high-class bordello where the workers are called "seamstresses". The mystery tootles along, but it is the atmosphere and characters that make the book worth reading.
    • 4/5
      Steampunk, the old west, Captain Nemo, serial killers. This book is right in my wheelhouse. I liked the book but it wasn't a 5 star for a reason I can't totally blame on the author. The similarities in setting to Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century books never quite left my mind and honestly I prefer Priest's books slightly more.

      This does not mean you shouldn't give this book a go. You absolutely should. It's fun and fast moving and if Bear writes a second book I will be on board. I will warn you the book is written in first person and has quite a few colloquialisms. If you don't like the main character's voice in the first chapter you should go ahead and out it down.
    • 3/5
      Cross Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate with Cherie Priest's Boneshaker.... sprinkle in some Cowboys & Aliens....
      I enjoyed this story. Have been meaning to try some of this author for a while, and this jumped off the New Books shelf into my hand, is the right sort of reading for me right now (brief, escapist, not too deep).
      Worth a go.
    • 5/5
      I was excited to get a copy of Karen Memory because I enjoyed Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy – it had an epic scope, a great unconventional setting and subverted a whole bunch of stereotypes of women in fantasy. Karen Memory is pretty different in both setting and tone (steampunk adventure featuring a lesbian prostitute protagonist), but it was still superb.Karen Memery is a “seamstress” at Madam Damnable’s upscale brothel Hôtel Mon Cherie in the burgeoning Rapid City. When Madam Damnable offers sanctuary to a girl escaping from the harsh conditions of Peter Bantle’s rather lower-scale establishment, he swears retribution and Karen gets swept up into the adventure of her life, involving a legendary lawman, a serial killer, a plot against the United States and more.Karen’s first-person narration really sells this book – she’s down to earth, but has a sharp wit, plain-spoken but charismatic, and most importantly, is full of heart. She’s had a tough life, and she doesn’t run away from that, but neither does she doesn’t let that stop her from being optimistic. It’s apparent that she’s no lady, but she’s definitely someone you’d want as a friend.All the supporting characters feel like people you’d want to know too. Of course there’s Priya, the indentured girl rescued from Bantle and Karen’s love interest – she’s whip-smart and has a core of steel, despite being abused. She’s a full, three-dimensional person that is treated as such and isn’t really exoticized at all despite being from India, which is pretty amazing (I’ve met people in real life who have the best intentions but feel like they have to treat me differently because I’m from India, so I really mean that it’s amazing). There’s the kind but determined U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves, who was a real person, and Tomoatooah, his badass Numu posseman, and Merry Lee the also-badass woman that rescued indentured slaves. And all the other girls at the Hôtel Mon Cherie have their own distinct personalities without any reference to what they do for a living (something that is carried over from the Eternal Sky trilogy and sorely missing from fantasy – a cast of mainly women that all defy stereotypes) – in fact, there’s very little sex in this book, and none actually described.The protagonist and the characters are the most charming things about Karen Memory, but it’s also a damn good adventure story. The pacing is excellent, and the stakes keep getting higher – what starts off as a simple mission to rescue Priya’s sister turns into helping Marshal Reeves find his killer, which turns into an attempt to stop Peter Bantle’s political ambition, and that leads into even more trouble. Karen grows as a character, learning to move on from her father’s death, discovering talents she didn’t know she had, and falling in love.I’m not super well-read in the steampunk genre, but I’ve learned to be wary of stories that are all about the gadgets. The steampunk elements in this book, though prevalent and integral to the plot, are just everyday items in the world Karen lives in. Gadget fans won’t be disappointed either – there’s the mandatory airship trip and a cool submersible, as well as some very useful household and medical devices – but they are just supplements to the plot and characters.I really need to go back and read Elizabeth Bear’s earlier work – between this and Eternal Sky, she’s shown she has incredible range.
    • 5/5
      Great. I don't read much steam punk, but if it's like this, I should!
    • 5/5
      Karen Memory can be classified as sci-fi fantasy, steampunk, western, mystery, or historical fiction. It is all of those. It is especially the tale of an extremely capable young woman who can be tender, nurturing and kick ass as the situation demands. Karen is one of the most memorable (figure the pun) heroines you will ever meet. She does not need a man to save her. The really great part of the story is the men do not need to be saved either. Both male and female characters are well developed and balanced. If a character is weak it is the personality of the character, not the gender that makes them so.

      Karen Memory is a prostitute at Hôtel Mon Cherie, one of the better bordellos in what is to become Seattle. She works for Madame Damnable. Karen describes Madame as, “She’s got to be fifty-nine, and she’s still got a balcony you could do Shakespeare from.” The descriptions of people are wonderful. They are three dimensional with actions fitting with their characters. The range of characters is broad also. Besides Karen’s coworkers there are villains, inventors, and a broad range of nationalities as well as ethnicities.

      Karen tells narrates her own story. Her voice is clear. Her backstory slips in where she feels it is relevant to what is happening. It does help explain her motivations and how she comes to working as a prostitute. The steampunk aspect of the story is very subtle. It is woven into the story and not distracting at all. Karen’s sexuality is seamlessly written into the story. Her attraction to women is not explained or commented on. It just is as it should be only a part of who she is.

      The narration by Jennifer Grace is perfect. Karen’s voice is strong as she recounts the events that take place in the story. She admits her mistakes, admits her fears, and allows her anger to show. She felt very real to me, like someone I would want to call friend. The other voices are equally well done by Ms. Grace. The women’s voices are identifiable by pitch, accent or tone as are the men’s voices. It really is a great job narrating.

      I enjoyed Karen Memory and was sad to see the book end. I know it will be one that I will revisit again and again.

      Story (Plot) 5
      Performance 5
      Production Quality 5
      Attention Holding 5

      I originally received Karen Memory from Audiobook Jukebox in exchange for a fair review but enjoyed it so much I purchased Kindle and Audible versions.
    • 3/5
      This book came highly recommended, but I thought it was a mess. Poor pacing, and the first-person voice irked me. I did like the world-building, but the way the story was told spoiled it for me.
    • 3/5
      Told in the distinct voice of its narrator, Karen Memory is the story of young woman, Karen Memery, who works at a high end bordello in a steampunk version of the Pacific Northwest. One night two girls, one badly injured, show up on the doorsteps of Madame Damnable’s house, seeking shelter. They’re perused by a man with a machine that can control minds, and the trouble has only begun to start.“So why a woman did the same should be judged different … well, women always is. Judged different, I mean.”The highlight of Karen Memory is how it focuses on the normally marginalized. The majority of our protagonists are women working at Madame Damnable’s, and the cast is extremely diverse, on measures varying from gender, class, race and sexual orientation. Karen herself soon falls in love with Priya, one of the girls who wound up on Madame Damnable’s doorstep.For the most part, the steampunk elements of Karen Memory feel in the background. Karen’s POV presents a very narrow sliver of this world, focused in on her area of a fictional city reminiscent of 19th century Seattle. I feel like it might appeal to fans of Cherie Priest.But for what ever reason, I never connected with Karen Memory. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. The entire time I was reading it I had the feeling that at any moment I would have no trouble putting the book down and walking away forever. While the story obviously has its heart in the right place, I never felt much of an emotional investment in the characters or plot. I would bet that there’s other people out there would find Karen Memory a rollicking adventure, and I hope that anyone picking it up has better success than I did.Review originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
    • 4/5
      An enjoyable steampunk romp in an alternate-history Seattle where a license for Mad Science is cheaper than one for being a seamstress and cryptids like hodags and gumberoos are common knowledge. Bear ably depicts an eclectic group of characters who stand up against a personal threat and wind up embroiled in a conflict with much higher stakes.
    • 4/5
      While I'm giving this book four stars if I could give it 3-3/4's that would probably better describe my reaction to it. This is to say that I admire the novel more than I like it in that I respect the thought and care that the author put into it but I also found it a little hard to keep engaged with the story. Part of it is due to the format of the narrative being provided as the memoir of our main character Karen Memery, which is inevitably a distancing device, but which is appropriate under the circumstances seeing as how the memoir was the main literary outlet for women of the period. There is also the matter that I might have enjoyed some perspective from another character in the story; perhaps Karen's love interest, perhaps the main antagonist. Still, this is one of the better exercises in steam punk that I've read in awhile and I wouldn't mind seeing some more stories set in this milieu considering some allusions made to great events in other quarters by one of the characters.
    • 5/5
      Pros: great world-building, fun characters, interesting plot Cons: some crude languageKaren Memery works as a ‘seamstress’ in Madame Damnable’s Hotel Mon Cherie. When two women knock on their door running from one of Peter Bantle’s cribs by the pier, Karen stands up to him and the roughs who’ve come to take the women back. Bantle’s got a special machine and he’s running for mayor, and things in Rapid City start to go downhill fast for the ‘seamstresses’, especially when U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves rolls into town, looking for a killer.You get a wonderful first chapter explaining how Karen’s a ‘seamstress’ and a seamstress, making her own dresses for her, ahem, actual work. You also get a great introduction to her co-workers and the environment they work in vs environments other ‘seamstresses’ have to work in. So when a ‘seamstress’ from a much worse environment show up, you’re already sympathetic towards her.The world is basically a decent sized town in the wild west, if the wild west had dirigibles and other steampunk accoutrements - like a souped up Singer sewing machine that straps on. There’s also a wide variety of characters, from the black marshal (patterned off of a real man), a lot of spunky women (not all of whom are white), some Russians, a native man, and others. The cast makes the city feel real - and remembers the history of the Western coast, with China towns, escaped slaves, indentured servants, and more. Bear’s prose is fun, seeing through Karen’s eyes, though it takes some getting used to as the grammar’s atrocious. There’s a lot of period - and character - appropriate terms (including derogatory terms for people of other races/nationalities) and swearing, which some may find offensive. The plot rambles a bit, as Karen isn’t always at the centre of things, but is quite interesting and coalesces in a series of fights that make for an exciting climax.This is an excellent book. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book! Both the voice and the pacing were perfect, and while it certainly has serious elements, it is in general pretty light.I loved the snapshots of the world illustrated by the various events, or just there for color and texture- like the guild of Mad Scientists.It's written by Karen in the fist person, and her voice is spot on. While it was a bit irritating at first to have her consistently write "should of" when we'd say "should have" was more accurate- it became just a part of the way she spoke/wrote; she is not a well-educated girl. I admired her pragmatism in choosing a life after her father died and left her essentially penniless.I also admire her ethics/morals. She drove much of the plot, based on her accurate conviction that "This isn't right", and "if not me, who? If not now, when?" Which is not to say she's moralizing! Indeed, she makes some questionable decisions... but she's only 16 (though she reads older).It's a great plot, with automatons (one derived from a sewing machine), mind-control rays, submarines, airships, clockwork limbs, and so much more... and yet, these are in many ways secondary to the plot, which is very human.Not only is Karen a very vivid character, so are the other characters in this- both friends and foes.Very recommended, to anyone to whom this description appeals!
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. It has a diverse set of well-drawn characters. I like what it does with steampunk -- enough for an interesting setting, but not so much as to overwhelm the story with "and here's another zany steampunk contraption!!". The plot keeps moving, and I didn't know how it would end.
    • 5/5
      This is Karen Memery’s story. She’s a prostitute, an orphan, a loyal friend, a fair shot, an excellent horsewoman, and a fair seamstress. Set in the western town of Rapid City in the late 1800s on the west coast of the US, most likely Washington territory, there’s plenty of little steampunk touches to keep me happy. However this story is mostly about the people, and I was not disappointed one bit.This tale is told in a first person manner as if you were reading Karen’s journal front to back like a printed novel. I instantly liked Karen. She wasn’t raised with much schooling though she has some common sense she learned from working with horses before she was orphaned. That common sense lead her to the bordello run by Madame Damnable, who has a peg leg and runs a respectable and clean establishment. She’s been saving up to move on once she is ready. But things go awry one night when Merry Li shows up with an indentured Indian (from India) woman named Priya. Both are in bad shape and the bordello ladies immediately have to face down Peter Bantle and a few of his men. It wasn’t easy.So starts some of the toughest days of Karen’s life. Street walkers are turning up dead and dumped in places they will be found. Marshall Bass Reeves plays a prominent role in this novel (hooray!). Here’s my little confession – until last year, I was completely oblivious to the historical figure Bass Reeves, the first black US Marshall west of the Mississippi. He made an excellent character in this novel. He’s hunting a serial killer that may somehow be connected to the mess in Rapid City.I’ve long been a fan of Elizabeth Bear’s work because she has such a variety of characters in her novels. This book is no exception. We have folks from so many backgrounds. Russian, Indian, Chinese, Native American, African American, French, and probably some others are all represented in this novel. Most of them are multi-dimensional. Now to add to that, this story has folks of various sexual orientation. Hooray! SFF in general needs more of this. There’s a touch of romance and it was very sweet to see through Karen’s eyes.Then we have all the awesome tech. It’s there, it just doesn’t eclipse the kickass characters and the plot. There was a submersible, a few dirigibles, a very fancy Singer sewing machine, and a mind control device that is put to nefarious deeds. There were references to more things, like mad scientist duels, and such. These steampunk touches were enough to add to the scenery but not enough to become the focus and take away from the plot and characters.I have to talk about the horses. These are important to Karen and since I have donkeys, I really connected with what she felt towards the horses Bass Reeves and his posse man (Sky) brought with them. Karen grew up with horses and had several ‘friends’ among the horses. When she was orphaned, she had to give all that up and it was terribly hard. Now she finds herself around these horses and so many feelings she had kept under lock and key come to the surface. Tear-jerking scenes folks! As Karen says, once you’ve made a friend of a horse, your life will never be the same again.The plot had some unexpected turns. I simply didn’t want to put this book down. It started off with this parlor showdown between Madame Damnable’s ladies and Bantle and his men and the tension was kept going throughout, though there were plenty of scenes that were more intense. At first, there’s simply this immediate problem to deal with, but that leads to a bigger issue and then that one leads to yet a bigger issue. It was very well done. This story left me feeling highly satisfied. Yet I can’t but hope for another story set in the same world, or even another Karen Memery story.I received this book free of charge from the publisher (via Audiobook Jukebox) in exchange for an honest review.The Narration: Jennifer Grace did a most excellent job with this book. Most of the book is in Karen’s voice, but Grace had a range of accents and voices for all the other characters. Her male voices were quite believable. I especially liked her voice for Priya and her voice for Bass Reeves.
    • 4/5
      I like books that have strong female characters and Karen Memery is certainly strong. She is maybe a little too good to be true but if Bruce Willis in all those Die Hard movies can keep surviving then why not Karen?Karen is a prostitute working out of Madame Damnable's Hotel Mon Cherie in a city somewhat like Seattle during the Gold Rush. She doesn't intend to make her living this way forever and hopes to follow her father who was a horse trainer before a horse killed him. She is putting aside money but not too eager to rock the boat. That is, until an East Indian girl accompanying a Chinese woman who was shot extricating her from the dock side bordello, arrives at the door of Hotel Mon Cherie. The women in the house take the two in but shortly after Peter Bantle, a notorious local businessman who holds the Indian girl's indenture papers, kicks in the door and demands her back. Madame Damnable makes it clear that is not going to happen but Bantle isn't going to take the loss lying down. Karen has fallen hard for Priya, the East Indian girl, and is determined to keep her out of harm's way. If that takes shutting Peter Bantle down then she is going to try her best. She has help from many others including Marshall Bass Reeves from the Indian Territory who is searching for a murderer and thinks the man may be in Bantle's company. A rollicking good read.
    • 3/5
      I have been wanting to read this book since it released (and even before it released). I read the first 200 pages of it but had a very hard time staying engaging in the story. There is some cool alternate history/steampunk stuff in here, but the story moves very slowly.Karen works at a bordello. The life of her and her fellow working girls gets complicated when an injured girl shows up at their door seeking sanctuary. Shortly after that another girl ends up dead in the alleyway outside of their house. Initially it looks like both events might be tied together. By sheltering the injured girl, the madam of the house has put herself in direct competition with another force in the city. However, when a Marshall shows up hunting down a serial killer they find out that the mystery might be much more complex than expected.There wasn’t anything awful about this book I just had a very hard time engaging in the story. I read the first 200 pages of the book and felt like it moved really really slow. At 200 pages in we were just starting to get involved in the mystery surrounding the deaths of working girls in the area. I also had some trouble engaging with the characters; there are a lot of them. The story is told from Karen’s point of view but I had a lot of trouble engaging with her as a character and really caring what happened to her. All the characters were all okay, they just weren’t all that interesting to read about.There were some interesting alternate history details in here and I did enjoy those. However, that wasn’t worth slogging through the tedious day to day life of these working girls. I finally just gave up because it was a struggle for me to stay interested in the story and I have a lot of other great books to read.Overall this was a slow read that I found fairly boring. It takes a long time for the mystery to get going. I did enjoy some of the alternate history details in here, but I had trouble caring about the characters or engaging in the plot. I wouldn’t recommend this book. There are many other very good alternate history/steampunk books out there. I would recommend checking out Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century series or Meljean Brook’s Iron Seas series.
    • 5/5
      This is close to a perfect book. Fun. Sheer fun, and an absolute joy to read, the wordsmithing is that good. "They boiled into the room like a confusion of scalded weasels..." - how can you not fall in love with that? Wild West with ragged steampunk around the edges, with a nice little love story woven throughout. There's an added bonus in that Marshal Bass Reeves is a character in the book, and it's nice that more attention has been called to a man who led a remarkable life. What is best is the respect that is accorded to all in this book, which is a rarity in most books. (That respect applied to gay, lesbian, and trans*persons, and non-white people, who suffered with terrible indignities when they happened to rise above invisible status.)
    • 5/5
      When someone says steampunk, it immediately brings to mind London and Queen Victoria. Even if there are some stories set in the States, it is rare and usually concentrated in the big cities of the East. Well - it was time for a story that is steampunk but is set in the Indian Territories - in the area which is destined to become Seattle (or at least somewhere there) - but for now, in the novel - welcome to Rapid City - the closest port to Anchorage and the golden fever of Alaska - a city of sailors, mad scientists and seamstresses (they even possess a few sewing machines - after all this is what the city licenses them as - it will be shameful for those citizens to call them whores, right?).Meet our gracious host on this journey - Karen Memery (like memory but with "e" as she is quick to explain to her readers). She works on Madam Damnable's bordello (even if noone calls it this way because of all this virtue and what's not so important to everyone - especially when they visit the young ladies working there). And she has a good life there - it is easier job than a manual one; she makes enough money to be able to dream of the life after and the house is one of the best - with the madam not being a bad person or forcing anyone about anything. Until one day, an Indian (as in from India) girl is saved from her crib where she had been forced to work as a whore and in the process the rescuer get shot and needs help and ends up at Madam Damnable's door. And the life as they all know it is gone forever. The girls in the house are very young - the kind of young that would send Social Services to their doors today if they decide to practice the oldest profession - a 16 years old is considered one of the older girls. Such are the times - and the novel does not sugarcoat the realities of 12 years old girls that are forced to sell themselves - it is not a commentary on the practice; it is just part of life. And in a lot of cases when someone did something, I had to remind myself that these are girls, that no matter what they had been doing, they are still children, some of them still growing their bodies and height. But back to the story - where the Indian girl (Priya) finds her home in Madam Damnable's house (as a domestic help after she refuses to work as a whore) and things start getting back to normal. Except for the fact that Priya belonged to the worst possible man - a sadistic and unscrupulous man that would go to whatever lengths needed to have her back - and destroy the madam in the process. Which does not sit very well with the girls; not to mention the US Marshal Bass Reeves that had travelled after a murderer that kills whores and leaves their ruined bodies to be found (whoever did not think of Jack the Ripper had not been paying attention - and no, the guy did not come from London and this is not a Jack the Ripper story but the types of crimes are matching for a reason - the timing is right after all). A house fire, mind control, submarine, airships, explosions, a Comanche, young love (our narrator Karen really falls for Priya and the tentative budding romance is handled nicely), daring escapes and chases - the novel has it all. And somehow it pulls it off - from the descriptions of a city in the middle of being elevated so it does not get flooded to the descriptions of the submersible and air ships - everything fits, everything makes sense. Of course there is enough automatons (it is steampunk after all) and a lot of them get used in such creative ways that you cannot stop from smiling. And there is death and setbacks and battles that good people cannot win. But there is also this young enthusiasm that only teenagers have - regardless if what time they had been born in or if we still call them children at that point of their life. And of course there is a lot bigger plot than the stolen Priya - Peter Bantle does not practically start a war simply because one of his whores was taken away. And when it is revealed, I laughed. Not because it is impossible or funny or even unexpected if you think about it but because I did not expect it - not in the middle of a novel rooted into the Wild Wild West - this is the last place where you expect to read about the Russians plotting to get Alaska back. It fits the story, it fits the clues and some of the things happening - but it is sounds so ridiculously out of place when you see for the first time. And then it does not - and I love it when an author manages to pull one of those off and to surprise me (and you are planning to read the novel, don't read the spoiler thingie above. This novel was so much fun -- highly recommended if you read steampunk and if you do not throw away a book when love is not defined as love between a man and a woman - not that there is anything that would bother even a child - a kiss is the most that anyone does on the pages (well - besides the actual work of course but no descriptions). Not to mention just how funny Karen is (because the book is told entirely in her voice and you understand why at the end of the book) - even if she is uneducated so her tenses don't always match and her word choices can be weird but that's part of the charm.
    • 5/5
      “You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.”A lot of times, it’s the books that initially fly under my radar which end up impressing me the most. This was the case with Karen Memory, whose description didn’t actually appeal to me at first. After all, as much as I love steampunk, I’ve read so much of the genre that admittedly I’ve gotten a lot pickier in recent years. It’s going to take more than just airships and clockwork gadgetry to entice me these days.The moment I read the first paragraph though, I knew I was going to be in for a treat. It’s not even just the “Old West” feel of the setting (which I’m a sucker for and gets me every time) that caught my attention, but the distinct and down-to-earth voice of the narrator which immediately tugged at something in my heart. Right away, I knew I wanted to learn more about her. I wanted to get to know her and hear her story.Our protagonist Karen Memery turns out to a young “seamstress” (a euphemism those around her parts use for prostitute) working for Madame Damnable at one of Rapid City’s more upscale establishments. It’s late 19th century and the Pacific Northwest is at the height of another gold rush; like any frontier town that’s sprouted up around the mining industry, life is rough and the folks even rougher. Working girls like Karen at the Hôtel Mon Cherie know that the best way to survive is to stick together and look after one another, but not everyone is so fortunate to have an employer like Madame Damnable or friends to watch their back.The calm is shattered one night when two young women arrive at the Mon Cherie seeking help and protection. This is how Karen first meets and falls in love with Priya, a prostitute who managed to escape the horrific conditions of a rival brothel, but not without its mean and nasty proprietor Peter Bantle in hot pursuit. Thwarted, Bantle vows to make Madame Damnable and her girls’ lives a living hell, and with what appears to be mind-control device in his possession, he might be more dangerous than anyone believed. When the flogged and bloody corpses of women start appearing around town, one begins to wonder if all of this is connected somehow. A new lawman rides into town with his Comanche partner on the tail of a vicious serial killer, and together with Karen and the friends, this ragtag but resourceful crew is determined to get to the bottom of this conspiracy.At times, Karen Memory did feel very much like my perfect book. It is imaginative steampunk that feels fresh and full of life, served up as a rich blend of mystery, suspense, action and romance. The end result is difficult to describe, but delightfully easy to enjoy. As I said before, I have a weakness for westerns and stories that take place during the expansion into the western frontier, so I was charmed at once by Rapid City, resplendently brought to life by Elizabeth Bear’s evocative and vivid descriptions. Despite a healthy dose of fantastical steampunk, we never lose sight of the distinctive characteristics or nuances of this particular era.Karen herself is an amazing one-of-a-kind character, telling her story with a candidness that I found very charming. No doubt the book would not have been the same without her unique voice, but the other ladies at the Hôtel Mon Cherie surely deserve a mention too. This entire cast of brave and capable kickass women will rock your world and fill you with admiration. After Karen, I’m especially taken with the character of Madame, inspired by the real Mother Damnable, Mary Ann Conklin who ran Seattle’s first hotel and high-class brothel. For a certainty, this novel features no shortage of spirited women will go to great lengths for those they love and what they believe in, and will not back down without a fight. Karen Memory is a book about a lot of things – solving a mystery, hunting a merciless killer, saving the city from evil, and all the spectacular drama that comes along with such activities. But at its heart, the book is also about forging friendships, growing up, and chasing one’s dreams. Behind the rollicking adventure is also a softer, more introspective side to the story that will surely resonate with a lot of readers. Final verdict? I would definitely recommend this. It’s actually my first book by Elizabeth Bear, but regardless of whether you’re a long-time fan of the author or relatively new to her work like me, you really can’t go wrong with this one. Check it out.

    Book preview

    Karen Memory - Elizabeth Bear

    Chapter One

    You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I’m one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.

    Some call it the Cherry Hotel. But most just say it’s Madame Damnable’s Sewing Circle and have done. So I guess that makes me a seamstress, just like Beatrice and Miss Francina and Pollywog and Effie and all the other girls. I pay my sewing machine tax to the city, which is fifty dollar a week, and they don’t care if your sewing machine’s got a foot treadle, if you take my meaning.

    Which ain’t to say we ain’t got a sewing machine. We’ve got two, an old-style one with a black cast-iron body and a shiny chrome wheel, and one of the new steel-geared brass ones that run on water pressure, such that you stand inside of and move with your whole body, and it does the cutting and stitching and steam pressing, too.

    Them two machines sit out in a corner of the parlor as kind of a joke.

    I can use the old-fashioned one—I learned to sew, I mean really sew—pretty good after Mama died—and Miss Francina is teaching me to use the new one to do fancywork, though it kind of scares me. And it fits her, so it’s big as your grandpa’s trousers on me. But the thing is, nobody in Rapid City sells the kind of dresses we parlor girls need, so it’s make our own patterned after fashion dolls from Paris and London and New York or it’s pay a ladies’ tailor two-thirds your wage for something you don’t like as well.

    But as you can imagine, a house full of ladies like this goes through a lot of frocks and a lot of mending. So it pays to know how to sew both ways, so to speak.

    Really pays. Miss Francina and me, we charge less than the ladies’ tailors. And it’s easier to do fittings when you live with the girls. And every penny I make goes into the knotted sock in my room for when I get too old for sewing. I have a plan, see.

    The richest bit is that the city and the tailors can’t complain, can they, when we’re paying our sewing machine tax and our guild and union dues, too. Sure, fifty dollar’d be a year’s wages back in Hay Camp for a real seamstress and here in Rapid City it’ll barely buy you a dozen of eggs, a shot of whiskey, and a couple pair of those new blue jeans that Mr. Strauss is manufacturing. But here in Rapid City a girl can pay fifty dollar a week and still have enough left over to live on and put a little away besides, even after the house’s cut.

    You want to work for a house, if you’re working. I mean … working sewing. Because Madam Damnable is a battleship and she runs the Hôtel Mon Cherie tight, but nobody hits her girls, and we’ve got an Ancient and Honorable Guild of Seamstresses and nobody’s going to make us do anything we really don’t want to unless it’s by paying us so much we’ll consider it in spite of. Not like in the cheap cribs down in the mud beside the pier with the locked doors and no fireplaces, where they keep the Chinese and the Indian girls the sailors use. Those girls, if they’re lucky, they work two to a room so they can keep an eye on each other for safety and they got a slicker to throw over the bottom sheet so the tricks’ spurs and mud don’t ruin it.

    I’ve never been down there, but I’ve been up along the pier, and you can’t hear the girls except once in a while when one goes crazy, crying and screaming. All you can hear up there is the sailors cursing and the dog teams barking in the kennels like they know they’re going to be loaded on those deep-keel ships and sent up north to Alaska to probably freeze in the snow and die along with some eastern idiot who’s heard there’s gold. Sometimes girls go north, too—there’s supposed to be good money from the men in the gold camps—but I ain’t known but one who made it away again ever.

    That was Madame Damnable, and when she came back she had enough to set herself up in business and keep her seamstresses dry and clean. She was also missing half her right foot from gangrene, and five or six teeth from scurvy, so I guess it’s up to you to decide if you think that was worth it to her.

    She seems pretty happy, and she walks all right with a cane, but it ain’t half-hard for her to get up and down the ladders to street level.

    So anyway, about them ladders. Madame Damnable’s is in the deep part of town, and they ain’t yet finished raising the streets here. What I mean is when they started building up the roads a while back so the sea wouldn’t flood the downtown every spring tide they couldn’t very well close down all the shopping—and all the sewing—so they built these big old masonry walls and started filling in the streets between them up to the top level with just any old thing they had to throw in there. There’s dead horses down there, dead men for all I know. Street signs and old couches and broke-up wagons and such.

    They left the sidewalks down here where they had been, and the front doors to the shops and such, so on each block there’s this passage between the walls of the street and the walls of the buildings. And since horses can’t climb ladders and wagons can’t fly, they didn’t connect the blocks. Well, I guess they could of built tunnels, but it’s bad enough down there on the walkways at night as it is now and worth your life to go out without a couple of good big lantern bearers with a stout cudgel apiece.

    At Madame Damnable’s, we’ve got Crispin, who’s our doorman and a freed or maybe a runaway slave and about as big as a house. He’s the only man allowed to live in the hotel, as he doesn’t care for humping with women. He hardly talks and he’s real calm and quiet, but you never feel not safe with him standing right behind you, even when you’re strong-arming out a drunk or a deadbeat. Especially if Miss Francina is standing on the other side.

    So all over downtown, from one block to the next you’ve got to climb a ladder—in your hoopskirts and corset and bustle that ain’t no small thing even if you’ve got two good feet in your boots to stand on—and in our part of town that’s thirty-two feet from down on the walk up to street level.

    When the water table’s high, the walks still flood out, of course. Bet you guessed that without me.

    They filled up the streets at the top of town first, because the rich folk live there, Colonel Marsh who owns the lumber mill and Dyer Stone—that’s Obadiah, but nobody call him that—who’s the mayor, and such. And Skid Road they didn’t fill in at all, because they needed it steep on account of the logs, so there’s staircases up from it to the new streets, where the new streets are finished and sometimes where they ain’t. The better neighborhoods got steam lifts, too, all brass and shiny, so the rich ladies ain’t got to show their bloomers to the whole world climbing ladders. Nobody cares if a soiled dove shows off her underthings, I guess, as long as the underthings are clean.

    Up there some places the fill was only eight feet and they’ve got the new sidewalks finished over top of the old already. What they did there was use deck prisms meant for ships, green and blue from the glass factory up by the river as gives Rapid City its name, set in metal gratings so that when there’s light the light can shine on down.

    Down here we’ll get wood plank, I expect, and like it. And then Madame Damnable will just keep those ruby lamps by the front door burning all the time.

    The red light looks nice on the gilt, anyway.

    *   *   *

    Our business mostly ain’t sailors but gold camp men coming or going to Anchorage, which is about the stupidest thing you ever could get to naming a harbor. I mean, why not just call it Harbor, like it was the only one ever? So we get late nights, sure, but our trade’s more late afternoon to say two or four, more like a saloon than like those poor girls down under the docks who work all night, five dollar a poke, when the neap tide keeps the ships locked in. Which means most nights ’cept Fridays and Saturdays by 3:00 A.M. we’re down in the dining room while Miss Bethel and Connie serves us supper. They’re the barkeep and the cook. They don’t work the parlor, but Connie feeds us better than we’d get at home and Miss Bethel, she keeps a sharp eye on the patrons.

    Sundays, we close down for the Sabbath and such girls as like can get their churching in.

    So I don’t remember which day it was exactly that Merry Lee and Priya came staggering into the parlor a little before three in the morning, but I can tell you it wasn’t a Friday or Saturday, because all the punters had gone home except one who’d paid Pollywog for an all-night alteration session and was up in the Chinese Room with her getting his seams ripped, if you take my meaning. The Professor—he plays the piano in the parlor for Effie and Pollywog and Beatrice to sing to—had gone home for the night already, it was that slow. The rest of us—just the girls and Crispin, not Madame Damnable—were in our robes and slippers, faces scrubbed and hair down, sitting in the library when it happened. We don’t use the parlor except for working.

    Beatrice, who’s the only one at the hotel younger than me, was practicing reading out loud to the rest of us, her slim, dark fingers bent back holding the big ivory-bound book of Grimm’s fairy tales. She’s a tiny bit of a thing, is Bea, and has all the manners I don’t. Her mother was a courtesan—what they call a placée—down in New Orleans, and Bea speaks French better than English and has a long, straight nose, a good high forehead, and lips like a bee-stung rose.

    We’d just settled in with after-dinner tea and biscuits when there was a crash down the ladder out front and the sound of somebody crying like her leg was broke. Given the loudness of the thump, I reckoned that might not be too far from the truth of it.

    Crispin and Miss Francina gave each other The Look, and while Beatrice put the ribbon in her book they both got up and moved toward the front door. Crispin I already said about, and the thing about Miss Francina is that Miss Francina’s got a pecker under her dress. But that ain’t nothing but God’s rude joke. She’s one of us girls every way that matters, and handy for a bouncer besides.

    I followed along just behind them, and so did Effie. We’re the sturdiest girls, and Effie can shoot well enough that Madame Damnable lets her keep a gun in her room. Miss Bethel hides a pump shotgun under the bar, too, but she was upstairs in bed already, so while Crispin was unlocking the door I went over and got it, working the breech to make sure it was loaded. Beatrice grabbed Signor, the deaf white cat who lives in the parlor—he’s got one blue eye and one yellow and he’s loud as an Ozark howler when he wants something—and pulled him back into the library with the rest of the girls.

    When I got up behind Crispin, it was all silence outside except the patting of the rain dripping down into the well and splashing in the puddles. Not even any more crying, though we all stood with our ears straining. Crispin pulled open the door and Miss Francina went striding out into that burning cold in her negligee and marabou slippers like she owned the night and the rest of us was just paying rent on it. I skin-flinched, just from nerves, but it was all right because I’d had the sense to keep my finger off the shotgun trigger.

    And then Miss Francina said, Sweet child Christ! in that breathy voice of hers and Crispin was through the door with his truncheon, the bald center of his pate shining in the red lantern light. I heard him curse, too, but it sounded worried rather than angry or fearful, so I let the shotgun muzzle droop and walked up to the doorway just in time to grab the arm of a pretty little Indian girl—Eastern Indian, not American Indian—who was half-naked and in hysterics. Her clothes had never been good, or warm enough for the night, though somewhere she’d gotten some lace-up boots and a man’s coat too big for her, and now they was wet through and shredded. All she had on else was a ripped-up shift all stained across the bosom, and I could tell she weren’t wearing nothing under it.

    She was turned around, tugging something—another girl’s arm, poking out frontward between Crispin and Miss Francina where they were half-dragging her. She had a fine hand, which was all I could see of her, and the rain dripped pink off her sallow fingers. Once they got both girls inside in the light, Effie lunged forward and slammed the door. I handed her the shotgun and went to see to the girls.

    Here, Karen, Crispin said in his big slow-molasses voice. You take this little one. Bring her after. I’ll get Miss Merry here upstairs to the sickroom.

    Miss Francina stepped back and I could see that the girl between them was somebody I knowed, at least by reputation. Not a girl, really. A woman, a Chinese woman.

    Aw, shit, Effie said. Not only can she shoot, but Effie’s not real well-spoken. That’s Merry Lee.

    Merry Lee, which was as close as most American tongues could get to her real name, I guess, was half-conscious and half-fighting, batting at Crispin’s hands while he swung her up into his arms. Miss Francina stuck her own hands in there to try to hold her still, where they looked very white against all the red on Merry Lee’s face and arms.

    Effie said, She’s gun shot. I guess all that running around busting out Chinatown crib whores finally done caught up with her. You know’d it was sooner or later going to.

    You hush about things you know nothing about, Miss Francina said, so Effie drew back, chastened like, and said, I didn’t mean nothing by it.

    Go and watch the door, Effie, Miss Francina said. Effie hefted that shotgun and did, not sulking at all. Effie talks without thinking sometimes, but she’s a good girl. Madame Damnable don’t tolerate them what ain’t.

    The girl in my arms was as cold skinned as she was slick with rain, and all she wanted was to twist loose of me. She pulled away once and threw herself at Crispin, but Miss Francina caught her and gave her back, and honest, she was mostly too light and skinny to put up a good fight once I had a grip on her. I tried to talk to her, tell her she was safe and we were going to take care of her and Merry Lee both. I could hear her teeth chatter when I got close. I didn’t think then she understood a word of it, but I found out later her English was better’n mine, so I think it was mostly that she couldn’t hardly of been more upset. But something got through to her, because after a minute of twisting her wrists and getting blood all over my good pink flannel she stood still, shivering and dripping, her long face sad as a wet filly’s. She let me bundle her up the stairs after Crispin and Merry Lee while Miss Francina went to fetch Miss Lizzie.

    We followed them down the long rose-painted hall to the sickroom door. Crispin wanted to take Merry Lee in without the Indian girl, but the girl weren’t having none of it. She leaned against my arms and keened through the doorway, and finally Crispin just looked at me helplessly and said, Karen honey, you better bring that child in here before she cries down the roof.

    She was better inside, sitting in a chair beside the bed with wool blankets wrapped around her, though it were another fight to get her to cut loose of that soaking old coat. She leaned forward—again I thought filly, starved and leaning on her plow collar—while Crispin checked over Merry Lee for where she was hurt worst. Effie was right about her being gun shot, too—she had a graze through her long black hair showing bone, and that was where most of the blood was from, but there was a bullet in her back, too, and Crispin couldn’t tell from looking if it had gone through to a lung. It weren’t in the spine, he said, or she wouldn’t of been walking.

    Just as he was stoking up the surgery machine—it hissed and clanked like a steam engine, which was never too reassuring when you just needed a boil lanced or something—Miss Lizzie came barreling up the stairs with an armload of towels and a bottle of clear corn liquor. She must of had her arm off for sleeping, because it was bundled up with the linens, but when she strapped it over her stump and started to turn the crank to wind up the spring I knowed it was time for me to be leaving. Miss Lizzie’s narrow and sharp as one of her scalpels, and nothing shakes her: not even lockjaw, which is the scariest thing I can think of, just about, ’cepting maybe the hydrophobia. The girl weren’t going nowhere, but she didn’t look like interfering anymore—she just leaned forward moaning in her throat like a hurt kitten, both hands clenched on the blankets over the cane arms of the bedside chair.

    Crispin could handle her if she did anything. And he could hold down Merry Lee if she woke up that much.

    I slipped through the door while Miss Lizzie was cutting the dress off Merry Lee’s back. I’d seen her and that machine pull a bullet before, and I didn’t feel like puking.

    I got downstairs just as somebody started trying to kick in the front doors.

    Chapter Two

    In the fuss Effie hadn’t thrown the bolt, which should be second nature, but you’d be surprised what you can forget when there’s blood and rain all over everywhere and people are handing you guns. The good thing was that I had handed her the gun and when the front doors busted in on their hinges she had the presence of mind to raise up that gun and yell at the top of her little lungs, Stop!

    They didn’t, though. There was four of them, and they came boiling through the door like a confusion of scalded weasels, shouting and swearing. Hair dripped down over their eyes—two of ’em had lost their hats—and their boots were mud caked to the ankles. And by mud I mean whatever’s out in the roads, which ain’t really mud except by courtesy. They checked and drew up just inside, staring from side to side and trading glances, and from halfway up the stairs I got a real fine look at all of them. It was Peter Bantle and three of his bully boys, all of them tricked out in gold watch chains and brocade and carrying truncheons and chains along with their lanterns, and you never saw a crew more looking for a fight.

    The edges of the big doors were splintered where they’d busted out the latch. So maybe they’d of broken out the bolt trying to get in even if it had been locked.

    "I said fucking stop," said Effie, all alone in her nightgown in the middle of the floor, that big gun on her shoulder looking like to tip her over.

    Miss Francina weren’t anywhere to be seen, and I could tell from the sounds through the sickroom door that Crispin had his hands full of Merry Lee. Madame Damnable, bless her heart, was half-deaf from working in dance halls. She might of gone up to bed and even if Miss Francina had headed up to fetch her it would take her a minute to find her cane and glasses, which meant a minute in which somebody had to do something.

    I didn’t think on it. I just jumped over the banister, flannel gown and quilted robe and slippers and all, exactly the way Miss Bethel was always after me about for it not being ladylike, and thumped down on the curvy striped silk divan below the staircase.

    I stepped off the couch, swept my robe up like skirts, and stuck my chin out. Peter Bantle, I said, real loud, hoping wherever Miss Francina had got off to, that she would hear me and come running. You wipe your damn muddy feet before you come in my parlor.

    Now I ain’t one of the smaller girls—like I said, I’m sturdy—and Peter Bantle is like his name: a banty, and a peckerwood, which is probably why he struts so much. I’m plump, too—the men like that—and I’m broad across the shoulders and hips, and when I came marching up beside Effie he had to pick his chin up to meet my eyes. He wore a silk hat over a greasy slick of hair. His cravat was pinned right up under his chin, fresh pressed, and he reeked of violets and lime. Maybe the fug was what made his eyes so squinty.

    He frowned a little at the size I had on him.

    The three in front of him were plenty big, however, and they didn’t look impressed by two girls in their nighties with a single pump shotgun between them. Bantle’s men had all kinds of gear hung on them I didn’t even recognize, technologics and contrivances with lenses and brass tubes and glossy black enamel. The one in the very front had a bottle-green velvet coat and a bottle-blue stovepipe hat, and the patterned waistcoat to tie it together. He had the looks to pull those bright colors off—strong features and good skin. He was the only one of the three who was anything close to the usual size for human beings, being merely strapping as opposed to monstrous. I knowed him, too—Horaz Standish, who all the girls liked despite of who he worked for.

    For whom he worked, Miss Bethel would tell me.

    In fact, Horaz—that’s short for Horatio—looked a bit apologetic at me now.

    Bantle his own self had a kind of gauntlet on his left hand, stiff boiled leather segmented so the rubber underneath showed through, copper coils on each segment connected by bare wires.

    I’d heard about that thing. I talked to a girl once he made piss herself with it. She had burns all up her arm where he grabbed her. But I didn’t look at it, and I didn’t let him see me shudder. You get to know a lot about men in my work, and men like Peter Bantle? They’re all over seeing a woman shudder.

    I don’t take to men who like to hit. If he reached out at me with that gadget, I was afraid I’d like to kill him.

    He didn’t, though. He just ignored me and looked past Horaz’s shoulder at Effie, who he could get eye to eye with if he stood up straight. He sneered at her and through a curled lip said, Where’s the Damnable bitch?

    "Madame is busy, I said. Only reason I didn’t step in front of Effie was on account of she had the gun, but the urge to was that strong. I’m Miss Memery. Me and Miss Sims here can help you. Or escort you out, if you’d rather."

    Miss Bethel would of cringed at my grammar, too. But right then I couldn’t afford to stammer over it to make it pretty.

    Effie settled that gun on her shoulder a little better and lowered her eye to sight down the barrel. Bantle’s men looked unimpressed so hard I could tell they was a little nervous. One hefted his black rubber truncheon.

    You got one of my whores in here, you little chit, and that thieving outlaw Merry Lee. Bantle’s voice was all out of proportion with the weedy little body under his oilcloth coat. Maybe he was wearing some kind of amplifier in that high flounced collar of his. "I aim to have them with me when I go. And if you’re lucky and give them over nice and easy, my boys here won’t bust up your face or your parlor."

    Rightly, I didn’t know what to say. It weren’t my house, after all, and Madame Damnable gives us a lot of liberty, but setting the rules of her parlor and offering sanctuary to someone else’s girls ain’t in it. But I knowed she didn’t like Peter Bantle, with his bruised-up, hungry crib whores and his saddle shoes, and since he had come crashing through the front door with three armed men and a world of insolence, I figured I had a little more scope than usual.

    You’re going to leave this parlor now, I said. And shut the door behind you. And Madame Damnable will send somebody around in the morning so you can settle up for the lock you busted.

    I know they came in here, Bantle said. There’s Chink whore blood all over your hands and the floor here.

    Oh, I knowed the answer to that one. I’d heard Madame Damnable say it often enough. It’s not the house’s policy to discuss anyone whom we may or may not be entertaining.

    Mr. Bantle, that Horaz Standish said, if you give these ladies a little room to negotiate, you know they might be reasonable. Nobody’s at her best when her back’s up against the wall. He turned his attention to me. Miss Memery, was it? Of course we’ll pay for the door—

    Bantle snorted. Then the thing happened that I ain’t been able to make head nor tail of. My head went all sort of sticky fuzzy, like your mouth when you wake up, and I started feeling like maybe Bantle had a point. That was one of his girls upstairs, and Merry Lee had brought her here—or vice versa maybe—without asking. And didn’t she owe him, that girl, for paying to have her brought over from India? And there was Effie pointing a gun at him.

    And that Horaz was being right reasonable about affairs, the whole thing considered.

    Bantle pointed that glove at me, finger and thumb cocked like he was making a gun. I had another skin flinch, this time as I wondered if Bantle could shoot electricity out of that thing. And if it were healthy for him or anyone else for him to do so when he was dripping on the rug. His eyes sort of … glittered, with the reflections moving across them. It was like what they say Mesmeric—I think Mr. Mesmer was the fellow’s name?

    Do it, Bantle said, and God help me if I didn’t think it seemed a fine idea.

    I was just about reaching over to grab the barrel of Effie’s shotgun when the library door eased open off to my left. Through the crack I could see Beatrice’s bright eyes peeping. Bantle saw her, too, because he snarled, Get that Negra whore out here, and one of his stand-over men started toward her.

    I had just enough warning to snatch back my reaching hand and slap my palms over my ears before Effie jerked the gun up and sent a load of buckshot through the stained glass over the door panels that didn’t never get too much sun no more anyhow. The window burst out like a spray of glory and Bantle and his men all ducked and cringed like quirted hounds.

    I just stood there, dumbfounded, useless, as full of shame for what I’d been thinking about doing to Effie and Madame Damnable as some folk think I ought to be for whoring.

    I wondered what the trick up with Pollywog thought was going on down here, and if he’d hightailed it out the window yet. We’re not supposed to know, but one of Pollywog’s regulars is Dyer Stone, and he’s the mayor of Rapid City. He sneaks in the back and never sits in the parlor, of course.

    I got four more fucking shells, Effie said. Go on and get her.

    The bully who’d started moving couldn’t seem to make his feet work all of a sudden, like the floor’d gotten as sticky as my head had been. Without looking over at Beatrice, I said, Bea sweetie, you go run get the constable. It seems these gentlemen have lost their way and need directions.

    It’d be better if we could call for help on that handsome mother-of-pearl example of Mr. Bell’s telephone sitting on the table beside the striped divan. But the city council hadn’t voted the constabulary money to install a set of their own, and honestly there was almost nobody in Rapid City we could even call, as yet. But we did have a line to the switchboard, and you could talk to the operator any time you liked.

    When it was coming out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe it. The words sounded calm and smooth, the opposite of the sticky fuzz I’d been feeling a moment before. I even saw one of the bully boys take a half step back. It didn’t impress Peter Bantle, though, because while the library door was closing across Beatrice’s face he started forward. Effie worked the pump on the shotgun, but he looked right at her and sneered, "You don’t have the balls," and then he was reaching for me with that awful glove.

    Horaz Standish had his hand stretched out like he might try to stop Bantle, but also like he hadn’t made up his mind to do it yet. I didn’t know yet if I was going to scream or run or try to hit him, or if Effie was really going to have to learn to shoot a man dead that night.

    But a big voice arrested him before I had to decide. Peter goddamn Bantle, just what the pig-shitting hell do you think you’re doing in my house?

    Madame is quick to correct Effie’s mouth when it gets coarse. But I know where Effie done learned it.

    Peter Bantle didn’t have the sense to turn around and run when he heard the ferrule of Madame Damnable’s cane clicking on the marble tile at the top of the stair, even though Horaz’s hand finally reached his sleeve and tugged him backward. He did let his hand fall, though, and stepped back smartly. Effie’s breath went out with a sound like surprise. I looked over at her pale, sweaty face and saw her move her finger off the trigger.

    She really had been gonna shoot him.

    I stepped back and half-turned so I could watch Madame Damnable coming down the stairs, her cane in one hand, the other clenching on the banister with each step.

    She was a great battleship of a woman, her black hair gone all steel color at the temples. Her eyes hadn’t had to go steel color; they had started off that way. Miss Francina was behind her on the one side and Miss Bethel on the other, and they didn’t look like they was in any hurry, nor in any mood for conversation. You got one of my girls in here, Alice, Peter Bantle said.

    She reached the bottom of the stairs and Miss Bethel fanned off left to come take the shotgun from Effie. You speak with respect to Madame, Miss Francina said.

    Bantle turned his head and spat on the fireplace rug. I’ll give a tart what respect she deserves. Now, you’re going to give me my whore back. Aren’t you.

    Madame Damnable kept coming, inexorable as a steam locomotive rolling through the yard. She was in her robe and slippers, like the rest of us, and it didn’t one whit make her less imposing. I’ll give you your head back if you don’t step outside my parlor. You may think you can own folks, Peter Bantle, but this here Rapid City is a free city, where no letter of indenture signed overseas is going to hold water. The constable’s on his way, and if you’re not gone when he gets here I’m going to have him arrest you and your boys for trespass, breaking and entering, and malicious mischief. I pay more in taxes than you do, and most of the law would rather be with my happy girls than your broke-down sad and terrified ones. So you know how that’s going to end.

    That, I thought, and the mayor just slid out an upstairs window. Unless he’s still in bed with the covers over his head.

    Well, I hadn’t seen Polly. Maybe the covers was over her head, instead.

    Madame gestured to the broken door and the busted-out window. The evidence is right there.

    Your own girl shot out that window! Outrage made his voice squeak.

    I had to hide my laugh behind my hand. Effie squeezed the other one. She was shaking, but it was all right. Madame Damnable was here now and she was going to take care of everything.

    Peter Bantle knowed it, too. He had already given way a step, and when you were faced with Madame Damnable there was no coming back from that. He drew himself up in the doorway as his bully boys collapsed around him. Madame Damnable kept walking forward, and all four of those thugs slid out the

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