Free The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker

have left of my work, can you believe it? So I’ve just done a bit of gardening, you might say, putting the stuff on my wall here. If it lives, it lives, and I know I have phototropic lichen. If it doesn’t, it wouldn’t have worked anyway.
    “Either way, it’s no stinking use now. Come inside, Manco dear. You look like you could use a good cup of tea. I’m setting up a tavern, see.”
    “I’d be grateful for something to drink, Ms. Griffith, but I can’t pay you,” Manco had said. She’d waved an impatient hand.
    “Nobody has any money. Don’t worry about it, my dear. And call me Mother; everyone else does,” she’d said.

 
     
     
     

CHAPTER 7
The Lost Boy
     
     
    When Mary and Mr. De Wit returned from the ruined allotment, the Brick was still where they had left him, placidly sipping ale. Everyone else in the Empress looked ill at ease, however. Rowan came to meet Mary as she entered. “Mum, Mr. Cochevelou wants a word,” she said in an undertone.
    “Cochevelou!” Mary said, turning with a basilisk glare, and spotted him in his customary booth. He smiled at her, rubbing his fingertips together in a nervous kind of way, and seemed to shrink back into the darkness as she advanced on him.
    “Eh, I imagine you’ve come from your old allotment,” he said. “That’s just what I wanted to talk to you about, Mary dearest.”
    “Don’t you ‘Mary dearest’ me!” she told him. “Chiring! Here’s a conversation you’re going to want to film. It’s going to be quite dramatic.”
    “Yes, Mother,” said Chiring, grabbing his handcam and running into range. He focused on Cochevelou, who grimaced and made ineffectual shooing motions at him.
    “Mary, darling! Darling. You’ve every right to be killing mad, so you do. I struck the bastards to the floor with these two hands when I found out, so I did. ‘You worthless thieving pigs!’ I said to them. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?’ I said. ‘Here we are in this cold hard place and do we stick together in adversity, as true Celts ought?Won’t the English laugh and nod at us when they find out?’ That’s what I said.”
    “Words are all you have for me, are they?” said Mary icily.
    “No indeed, dear,” said Cochevelou, looking wounded. “Aren’t I talking compensation? But you have to understand that some of the lads come of desperate stock, and there’s some will always envy another’s good fortune bitterly keen.”
    “How’d they know about my good fortune?” Mary demanded.
    “Well, your Mona might have told our DeWayne about your Dutchman,” said Cochevelou. “Or it might have gone about the Tube some other way, but good news travels fast, eh? And there’s no secrets up here anyway, as we both know. And how nice to know our Finn, now delighting in the Blessed Isles, kept his word and took your diamond to Amsterdam after all, and don’t I feel awful now for all those curses I laid on his dear name? The main thing is, we’re dealing with it. The clan has voted to expel the dirty beggars forthwith—”
    “Much good that does me!”
    “And to rebate you the cost of Finn’s fields at the original asking price of four thousand, and to award you perpetual use of the biis from henceforth, rent-free as though you were one of our own,” Cochevelou added. “The new improved ones, as our Perrik is so proud of.”
    “That’s better.” Mary relaxed slightly. “You got that on record, didn’t you, Chiring?”
    “And perhaps we’ll find other little ways to make it up to you,” said Cochevelou, pouring her a cup of her own Black Label. “I can send work parties over to mend the damage. New vizio panels for you, what about it? And free harrowing and manuring that poor tract of worthless ground.”
    “I’m sure you’d love to get your boys in there digging again,” Mary grumbled, accepting the cup.
    “No, no; they’re out, as I told you,” said Cochevelou. “We’re shipping their raggedy asses back to Earth on