Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction

by A. M. Dellamonica

  I backed away, my eyes on the stevedores busy under the lights. I wanted to run, but that was sure to draw attention; I would have to leave as quietly as I’d come. I took another step, and another, and collided abruptly with someone’s chest. Hands grabbed my shoulders, and I made a panicked sound, but a voice spoke in my ear.

  “Quiet, unless you want the police down on us.”

  “Maybe I do. There’s a dead man there—”

  “Did you kill him?” The stranger’s voice was politely curious, as though he was asking if I’d torn my stocking.

  “I did not!” I just managed to keep my voice to a near-whisper. “Did you?”

  I don’t know what I expected him to say, or what I would have done if he’d said yes, but he just shook his head. “I just got here. And I think it would behoove us both to make ourselves scarce.”

  I looked back down the pier. The stevedores were coming closer, and several of them were heading for the shed that housed the nearest of the donkey engines. “Probably. And if you’d just let me go—”

  “I’d like a word with you,” he said, and didn’t release my arm. “But not here.”

  I let him draw me down the pier toward Eleventh Avenue. If I cooperated now, seemed docile and cowed, I’d have a better chance of jerking free once we reached the street. I thought I could lose him there.

  “Quickly, though,” he said. “Was that Peter Gagne?”

  He said it the way Mainers did, pronouncing each letter, and irrationally that inclined me to trust him. “Yes.”

  “Damn.”

  “You’re the one he was meeting?”

  We were at the end of the pier, where the streetlights cast circles duller than the bright lights of the docks. It had begun to rain again, a slow drizzle that promised a harder rain to come. In the shifting light, I got a better look at the stranger, a tall man in a dark overcoat buttoned high to hide his shirtfront. HIs had was pulled low over his eyes; I could make out a strong chin and not much more.

  “I was. He said he would introduce me to—you must be Nicholas Wright’s daughter. Thomasina.”

  I stuck my chin out. “What if I am?”

  “I would like very much to talk to you,” he said. “All the more so if Gagne’s dead. But this is hardly the place.”

  “It’s as good as any.” The rain was getting heavier, dripping from my cloche and from the brim of his fedora.

  “I’d prefer not to court pneumonia.” He paused. “I take it Gagne didn’t mention me.”

  “He said he wanted me to meet someone,” I answered. “He didn’t say who. And I’m not going anywhere with you—not anywhere private, anyway.”

  The stranger sighed. “There’s an all-night diner on West Sixteenth. It’s not very respectable, but it’s dry. Will that do?”

  “Yes.” It was worth the risk, if only to find out why Peter had wanted me to meet him—assuming he was telling the truth, of course. But I had to know.

  The diner was what he’d described, brightly lit and smelling of grease and burnt toast. There was a surprising number of people there, mostly men who looked like sailors of stevedore, plus a handful of women in shabby evening dresses and too much makeup. A couple of them were sitting at the end of the counter, trolling for business, but the rest either had clients and were trying to get enough food down them to get them back to their rooms, or were taking a break for the night. The stranger chose a booth, and the waitress slouched over to take our orders.

  “Two bits minimum after midnight. And the pie’s off.”

  I glanced at the board with the chalked specials, and heard the stranger sigh again. “Coffee to start, please. With cream?”

  I nodded, and the waitress said, “That’s a nickel extra.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He handed me a menu, and I realized with some embarrassment that in spite of everything I was hungry. I had two dollars in my purse, and another dime for the subway in my shoe, and I really didn’t care what he thought. “I’ll have a grilled cheese sandwich. With the tomato.”

  “That’s extra.”

  “Fine.”

  She scribbled on her notepad, and cocked her head at the stranger. “You?”

  “Poached eggs and corned beef hash,” he said. “And a side of toast—I know, it’s extra, that’s fine.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, and flounced off. She came back with our coffee and a very small pitcher of cream.

  “So. Who are you, and why did Peter want me to meet you?” When I said his name, I could see the body lying on the pier, feel the curve of his skull giving way under my fingers. I shivered and stripped off my gloves, reaching for the sugar and the cream. The wadded-up gloves left a rusty mark on the tabletop; I winced, and rolled them up with the fingers on the inside.

  The stranger unbuttoned his overcoat and shrugged himself out of it, revealing a tailcoat and white tie. “My name’s Max Cullinane.”

  The evening clothes told me where I’d heard the name. “The magician?” I gulped at my coffee, grateful for the sugar and the scalding heat. I had heard of him—who hadn’t? He’d been headliner at every major club on both coasts, and had even starred in his own radio serial. There were all sorts of stories about him, that he’d studied mystic arts in Tibet, that he found lost things and people, and that not all his tricks were done with mirrors. I didn’t believe that, of course, but he had a look to him that made it plausible.

  He nodded. “You may have heard that I sometimes do—favors—for friends. Look into things discreetly. These rumors about Nereiade were brought to my attention.”

  “What rumors—you mean the stories that people saw her before other disappearances?” I shook my head. “I don’t believe it, and neither did Peter.”

  “Oh?”

  My eyes fell. We’d argued about that the last time we’d met, eating apple pie at the automat—I was glad, suddenly, that pie was off the menu here. Nereiade had supposedly been seen again, trailing other ships that never came home again: no, I didn’t believe that. “Sailors can be superstitious, that’s all.”

  “Is that what your father told you?”

  I blinked. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  Cullinane gave me a lop-sided smile. “I’ve been doing some research on your father. He seems to have done some remarkable things in a too-short life. I’d hoped you might be able to help me understand some things about his work.”

  “I don’t know anything about it.” The practiced answer came out firm and clear and frank, and I met Cullinane’s eyes squarely. “I’m not any kind of engineer—any kind of sailor at all.”

  “And yet Miss Thomasine Wright—Tommy to her friends—not only won the Portland Ladies’ Cup two years running, but struck rather a shrewd bargain for the bulk of her father’s designs after his death.”

  “That doesn’t mean I understand them,” I protested. “I just knew who was likely to be interested.”

  “But you didn’t sell the Nymphs.”

  “Wollart Lines owns all the rights.”

  I could see that he didn’t believe me, and I was relieved to see the waitress returning with our plates. She slapped them down in front of us, and I readied another lie, but Cullinane forestalled me.

  “Miss Wright, let me be frank with you. Gagne’s death is not the first connected to these ships’ disappearance, and it’s unlikely to be the last. Will you at least hear me out?”

  “Of course.”

  “I know that your father studied mathematics in Berlin before the war, and that he was involved with a small group who had developed some radical theories about wave formation and mapping. I also know that he used those theories when he designed the hulls of the three Wollart liners known as the Nymphs, intending to make them significantly faster than their peers without a corresponding increase in fuel consumption.”

  I took a huge bite of my sandwich, hardly caring that I burned my mouth on the hot cheese. These were the things Father had told me never to talk about, never t
o share with anyone; I had been supposed to burn his original designs, though I had never been able to bring myself to do it. Sailors are superstitious, he had said. If they find out there’s anything odd about the hull, they’ll refuse to sail on any of them… For the first time, I wondered if there was more to the story than he had told me.

  “Dryade was, I think, pure bad luck: her engines were out of order when Zeeadler—the raider — spotted her or she never would have been taken. As it was, the prize captain was an ambitious young officer who realized there was something special about the ship. She was faster than she should be, and yet burned less coal than he expected, and he persuaded the Imperial Navy to refit her as another commerce raider, hoping to make his name. But somehow the refit didn’t work. Whatever they did to her—adding guns, changing her configuration—cancelled out her special qualities, and she was caught and sunk by a British Q-ship before she’d left the North Sea. Erfurt was killed in that action, but he had given a detailed report to his superiors. It was largely ignored, but in the chaos of the mutinies, someone seems to have taken it seriously. The original file on the Wollart Nymphs was stolen from the Imperial Navy’s offices in Kiel, and subsequently the abstract of the report—all that was left—disappeared from the archives as well. A friend of imine in the British War Office received an unofficial inquiry from a German compatriot, one who supports the new Republican government, and in attempting a little international cooperation, my British friend discovered that there had been considerable interest in the surviving Nymphs, culminating in the disappearance of Nereiade. My friend suspects that Nereiade was taken to be the core of a new privateer fleet, supporting itself by piracy, and ultimately available to the highest bidder, not merely among the Great Powers, but among those countries that would like to make their mark on the world.”

  “You think someone took Nereiade,” I said, and was proud that my voice was steady. “Captured her and killed everyone who wouldn’t cooperate and now they’re using her as a pirate ship?”

  “More than that,” Cullinane said, “I think they want Naiade, too.”

  “We have to stop them.” I had no idea how one might go about such a thing, but it couldn’t be allowed to continue. Nereiade had two hundred passengers as well as her crew, and there was Peter, too, lying dead on the docks… “What can I do?”

  Cullinane eyed me thoughtfully. “If you mean that—”

  “I have my father’s plans for all the Nymphs.” It was a leap of faith, but Peter had trusted him. And I had to do something.

  “That could be very useful.” Cullinane leaned forward, his elbows on the table, lean face intent. “I have tickets on Naiade’s next sailing. I believe that an attempt will be made to take her then, and that this will be the best chance to save her, and perhaps to find out what’s really going on. Are you game?”

  “I’m in,” I said, and we shook hands over the dirty plates.

  And that was how I found myself following Cullinane up the gangplank to Naiade’s main deck, dressed in a hastily-altered man’s suit and caring a briefcase. That wasn’t so much to protect my reputation as that Cullinane didn’t want anyone to connect me to my father and the Nymphs, and a secretary was much less conspicuous than a girlfriend. I’d spent most of my childhood in pants, sailing my own skiff or crewing for my friends and their brothers, and played all the boys’ parts at Miss Cutler’s Day School when we’d studied drama. I felt sure I could pass.

  Cullinane had booked one of the medium suites on C Deck, with a large sitting room and two small bedrooms, more luxury than I was used to, and more than adequate privacy. The steward had everything well in hand, and I made my way down to the promenade to watch the departure. We cast off in a flurry of steam and sirens, passengers laughing and shouting farewells and throwing streamers to friend on the dock. I stayed at the rail as the tugs shepherd us through the bustling harbor and out to the open sea, then made my way to the stern to watch the city sink below the horizon. I’d forgotten, or maybe I’d never truly known, how lovely the Wollart Nymphs were. Naiade had been designed to echo the lines of a racing yacht, with a rounded schooner’s stern and a sharp bow that mimicked a clipper’s—she even had the stub of a bowsprit, though old Mr. Wollart had nixed the idea of an actual figurehead. A statue was on display in the First Class Saloon instead, a sleek, half-naked woman with a flapper’s face and close-cut hair emerging from stylized waves, and I had to admit she looked better there than she would have on Naiade’s bow. There were naiads everywhere in the first class section—holding the light sconces, woven into the curtains, back-to-back on the gilded panels, even sitting on the ashtrays in the Smoking Lounge—and when we went in to dinner the centerpiece on our table was a silver-plated miniature of the figurehead.

  The table was full even on the first night: the weather was good, Wollart Lines had a reputation for hiring excellent chefs, and our table boasted not only Cullinane but a second celebrity. Lottie Lowe Davis was a nightclub singer who’d made a name for herself in Paris after the War, and was on her way home to New Orleans, she said, before a trip to Hollywood. Her voice was softly southern, her skin pale as porcelain above her ivory and gold dress, her hair a vivid red-gold that owed nothing to peroxide. Her figure was a little rounder than was fashionable, and I had to admire the way her dress was cut to flatter. She was cheerful and charming and even the older women who had been inclined to mark her off as a mere singer—and a divorcée, no better than she should be—had thawed to her by the end of the meal. I’d had two glasses of wine myself, as well as the chance to chat, and I was feeling quite content.

  “There’s a pianist in the First Class Saloon,” I said to Cullinane, as we strolled sternward along the promenade. “I thought I’d stop in for a while.”

  “I’d rather you went back to the suite,” he said, and my good humor vanished. This was no pleasure cruise, not for us, and I was foolish to forget it even for an instant.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll join you in a bit,” he said. “Set up a drinks table, if you would.”

  I did as I was told, setting out the bottles and the fancy crystal that had come with the suite, and it wasn’t long before Cullinane returned. With him was a sandy-haired man about his own age in the blue serge of Naiade’s crew. Even without the uniform, anyone could have told he was a sailor, and Cullinane introduced him as Stefan Mab, Naiade’s second engineer.

  “And this is my new secretary, Tommy Wright,” Cullinane said. Mab seemed to be looking at me more closely that I liked, and I retreated, dropping my eyes.

  “May I get you a drink, sir?”

  “Brandy and soda, yes, thank you.”

  His voice was lightly accented: Scandinavian, I thought, or maybe German. If Cullinane was working with the Germans…I killed that thought, and busied myself with the siphon. “And for you, Mr. Cullinane?”

  “The same.” Cullinane looked back at Mab, an odd half-smile on his face. “Tommy is Nicholas Wright’s daughter.”

  “Daughter?” Mab blinked, then smiled in turn. “Ah. Better to be in disguise, yes.”

  “I thought it might be kinder to mention,” Cullinane said.

  “Just so.”

  I brought them each their drinks, and mixed a lighter gin and tonic for myself. “Are you helping us, Mr. Mab?”

  “He is,” Cullinane said. “But let’s wait a bit. We’ve one more coming, and I don’t want to have to say everything twice.”

  Even as he said it, there was a knock on the stateroom door. I opened it, and stepped back, blinking myself as I saw Miss Davis in the corridor.

  “Come on in, Lottie,” Cullinane said, and she gave a tired smile.

  “So it’s for real,” she said, and I closed the door behind her.

  “It is.” Cullinane handed her to a seat, and she looked up at me.

  “If that’s a gin and tonic, honey, I’d love one.”

  “Of course, Miss Davis.” I busied myself at the drinks tray, brought her the glass and was
rewarded with a nod.

  “Thanks, honey. That’s perfect.”

  I perched on the arm of a chair with my own drink, doing my best to look boyish. Cullinane took a swallow of his brandy-and-soda, and set the glass aside.

  “All right. Introductions first, and then a plan.” He smiled. “You all know me. I’m here to fix this if I can.”

  “And I would still like to know at whose behest,” Mab said.

  “I can’t tell you,” Cullinane answered. “There is of course interest in high places, but nothing official.”

  “There never is.” Mab slumped back against the sofa cushions.

  “Mab is here because he is familiar with the conversion of Dryade during—”

  “I served on the Zeeadler that captured her,” Mab interrupted, “and I was in line to be her chief engineer when she was lost. I hope that doesn’t make you too uncomfortable, Miss Wright.”

  I shook my head, aware of Miss Davis’s sudden sharp look, and Cullinane went on.

  “Miss Wright — who I think we should all call Tommy for the duration of this exploit — is Nicholas Wright’s daughter and friend of any number of people who have disappeared on the missing Nymphs. Miss Davis —”

  “My daughter was traveling on Nereiade when she disappeared,” Miss Davis said. “With my ex-husband. I want to know what happened.”

  “And I think we can find some answers for you,” Cullinane said. “For all of us. Tommy, would you fetch the plans? And, Stefan, did you find anything in the engines?”

  I did as I was told, and Mab shook his head. “The engines are perfectly ordinary. I have been over every inch of the machinery, and there’s nothing that didn’t come straight from the builder. And yet we are still using nearly a third less fuel than I would expect, and making better speed.”