He stood up. With seizing muscles, I scrambled back against the wall and did my best to stand.

“Yeah,” he said, “you could find her. But you really think you could kill her?”

“I absolutely do,” I said. He believed it, and I believed it too.

“And what should I do?”

“Go back to your bottle. Let the women sort this out.”

He shrugged and holstered his pistol, happy to have orders at last. He wandered back toward the hold.

I wanted to sob, but I didn’t have time. I ran deeper into the ship, until I saw the glow of the engines. I yanked the gas can off my shoulder and went to work.

Much later, I received a full account of the battle at the docks. I don’t doubt that it was highly embellished, as all good Westside yarns must be. I am told it was a glorious affair, that there were heroes on both sides, that every warrior stood tall, that all proved themselves true Westside men. But I had seen the agony with which the first victims died, and I do not believe it could have been glorious at all.

The fight was short. A third of Van Alen’s men were killed in the first barrage, and that many fell again before the little band of Westsiders reached the end of the dock. By then, the numbers were even. Van Alen and his rainbow guard lived for a good hand-to-hand scrap, and they acquitted themselves well. They smashed the rifles out of the policemen’s hands, cracked their skulls, and knocked their limp bodies into the river. Cherub Stevens, I am told, ran two of them through with his saber—the first time, I believe, it ever tasted blood. Ugly felled a pair with his ax, and Ida Greene, who insisted so indignantly that she ran a train station and nothing more, cut the throat of at least one cop.

Casualties were heavy, but by the time I appeared on the starboard deck, the battle was won. On the dock, the cops lay slaughtered in a heap. Van Alen stood with his foot on the bodies and pointed up the gangway.

“If there’s any of you left up there,” he shouted, “come down and die.”

The object of his challenge sat outside the door to the pilot’s house, her rifle clutched in her hands, her back pressed to the railing.

“That’s all right,” Juliette called back.

“Who the hell is that?” answered Van Alen.

“The last voice you shall ever hear.”