Precious jewels
Author’s Note: It’s a tribute to Kage Baker that ended up as more of a pastiche of Kage’s Company stories than I expected. But it’s the sort of thing where I created a bunch of characters I’d be happy to re-use elsewhere.
“Vagabond!” Arkwright yelled from his first storey apartment window, down the cobbled, fog-wreathed, gaslight-smeared London street. He produced a trusty service revolver that still smelled of the oil he had used to clean it the night before and took aim at the quickly disappearing form of the burglar.
A loud report and a plume of smoke erupted from the weapon as its missile was propelled at the target, aside a cry of pure rage.
Arkwright had spent sometime with Buffalo Bill’s travelling show and more time yet in Crimea and was considered by diverse parties a crackshot. Yet still the bullet contrived to miss the miscreant.
His next words are best left unrecorded, though there are other testimonies that attest to the curses and epithets fired from his lips. (They also mention the spray of spittle and the rush of blood to his face and the slight twinge of pain in his left arm that indicated the start of a heart condition.)