Free The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter by Rod Duncan

education. But there are some things an acrobat can teach you that a Latin master never could.
    “Talk!” ordered Farthing.
    “Of what?”
    “Of anything so that I know where you are. Tell me where you were born.”
    “We haven’t been introduced,” I said, reaching out to grip the drainpipe – cast iron, it seemed, painted over and smooth to the touch. Testing it, I felt it shift a fraction, though not too much to alarm me. Back inside and away from the window, I quickly began to change, pulling my corset around me and hooking the eyes at the front.
    “Not introduced?” he said. “You remind me of your lie in the air carriage. Will I regret believing your brother didn’t make it to your room? I ask again, where were you born?”
    “In the Kingdom,” I said, unrolling my stockings up my legs.
    “Why is your voice strained?”
    “You wish me to give an account of my under garments? Is this for your work, Mr Farthing, or for your pleasure?”
    “I... forgive me. Where in the Kingdom?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “A foundling?”
    “A daughter of loving parents.”
    “Your father’s profession?”
    “Are you thinking of proposing marriage?”
    He made a noise like a cough, and I remembered how he had used just such a sound to cover his laugh in the air carriage. After a moment he said, “You have a way of steering the conversation, Miss Barnabus. I don’t know if you do it to avoid answering or merely to rile me.”
    “I’m not accustomed to being questioned as I dress! It flusters me.”
    “Your father?” he asked again.
    “Ringmaster of a travelling show.”
    Our conversation had passed back and forth like a tennis ball but now it paused.
    “I may think you more of a liar for admitting such an upbringing,” he said at last.
    “Ironic that you’d like me to lie so that I might seem trustworthy!”
    “Why is this taking so long?” he asked, his voice coming from close to the door, as if his ear were pressed against it.
    “I take it you’re not a married man, Mr Farthing. Else you’d know what women must go through as we dress!”
    “You’re right,” he said. “I’m not. And I apologise.”
    “For the lies or the threats?”
    “They’re tools of my office. But if I’ve gone beyond the professional... I’m sorry.”
    That was the third time he’d said it. Agents of the Patent Office should be made of sterner stuff. It occurred to me that were I to weep, the sound might dislodge him from his equilibrium. He would try to find calming words to speak through the door. I would run water into the basin, as if composing myself and washing the tear tracks away. Twenty seconds from my silence, he would begin to suspect. Ten seconds beyond that he would burst through the door to see me clambering down the drainpipe. I would have slipped into the night before he could run the stairs and reach the ground floor to give chase.
    “Miss Barnabus?” he called. “Please speak.”
    The drainpipe felt too smooth for a reliable grip. And to find answers we must sometimes turn to face those who would chase us. Thus I opened the door and stood before him, fully dressed.
    “Please don’t present your actions as virtue, Mr Farthing. I’ve nothing but contempt for you and for the office you serve.”

Chapter 9
Which is easier to switch – the bullet into which a josser has scratched his name or the gun that is to fire it?
    – The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
    Two years after the end of the British Revolutionary War, the first nations signed the Great Accord. With the ink still wet they put their signatures to a second document – the charter that established the jurisdiction and powers of the International Patent Office. More nations signed and the Second Enlightenment spread. Soon it encompassed the globe, as did the Patent Office itself.
    When the Earl of Liverpool coined the phrase Gas-Lit Empire, it was to ridicule the leaders then rushing to add the names of their countries to the agreement. This