Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  Chantico sighed and sat heavily on a broken piece of roof timber. “You are always going on, El Chupacabras this, El Chupacabras that. The savior of New Spain’s downtrodden. I made the costume … I thought…”

  Inez laughed, the tension flooding from her. “You thought to fool me that El Chupacabras, the great cowled hero of the dusty plains, was not missing or dead after all, but had been you, Chantico of the Yaqui, all along?”

  Chantico scowled. Inez went on, “With your mask made from … what is this? An old flour bag? Dyed with…?”

  “The juice of juniper berries,” muttered Chantico.

  “Juniper berries! And a rapier made of old fence wire! Oh, Chantico.”

  “You’re lovers,” said the man without a name.

  Inez glared at him. He held up his hands and smiled. “I have traveled the length and breadth of this land and the only time I heard a boy and a girl speak to each other thus, with such honeyed barbs, was when they were sweethearts.”

  “It is none of your damned business, sir!” said Inez.

  Chantico laid a hand on her arm. “Inez,” he said softly. “You cannot speak to him like that. He is Chichijal. The Texans, they call him the Nameless.”

  “Very original,” said Inez sourly. She brushed down her skirts. “Well, Señor Sin Nombre, I suppose I should thank you for rescuing us. If in fact you have. You are not planning to take us to San Antonio yourself, for profit?”

  The Nameless shook his head. “No, ma’am, I’m not. The Texans are no friends of mine. They abuse the land as much as the British, or the Japanese.” He looked pointedly at her. “Or the Spanish.”

  Inez drew herself to her full height, her nostrils flaring. “What do you mean, sir?”

  The Nameless shrugged. “This land … something’s not right here. It’s not meant to be carved up and fought over by folks from far away. This isn’t how it is meant to be.”

  “I am Yaqui,” said Chantico. “I was born here.”

  “So was I!” said Inez.

  “True,” said the Nameless thoughtfully. “You were both born here. That’s right.” He stared ahead, as though studying something that neither Inez nor Chantico could see. He blinked and said, “Both born here … but still. How do a Yaqui boy and the daughter of the Governor of Uvalde find each other?”

  Inez folded her arms and stared out the window. Chantico smiled. “My people, we move around a lot. We used to go into what the Spanish call Uvalde on market days, selling leather and cactus juice. Every market day, I feel like someone is watching me. Eventually I see Inez, looking from a window in her big house. She cannot take her eyes off me.”

  Inez snorted and aimed the toe of her riding boot at Chantico. “You lie. You were like a puppy dog, mooning about outside my window.”

  “So why did you throw me the note? Asking to meet me after dark?”

  “I pitied you!” roared Inez, her cheeks flushing. She paused. “Besides, I like puppy dogs.”

  The Nameless was smirking at them. “You might be just what I’ve been looking for, these long years.”

  Inez turned to him. “Looking? For what?”

  The Nameless seemed lost in thought for a moment then said, “Looking for America. Follow me. I have something to show you.”

  * * *

  They stood in a row outside the abandoned mine shaft, the old winding gear partially collapsed, the square hole shored up with rotting timbers. The Nameless took a clay pipe from one of the crazily stitched pockets of his jacket and struck a match, puffing until it began to smoke, then tossed the match into the shaft.

  Even Inez knew this was foolhardy, and she pulled Chantico back sharply. She glared at the Nameless. “Don’t you know there are gases in there that can explode?”

  He gazed into the black pit. “Usually, there are. There must have been no coal in there, or maybe just a little. That’s why this place is deserted.”

  Inez put her fists on her hips. “So…?”

  “So…” said the Nameless eventually. “So, there is some kind of gas. I can see it.”

  Inez screwed up her eyes and peered at the pit. “I see nothing.”

  “It’s like … sunshine,” said the Nameless, a little uncertainly. “I have seen it before, on occasion, though I have no idea what it is.”

  “I still see nothing. Do you, Chantico?”

  Chantico shrugged. “No.”

  The Nameless puffed thoughtfully on his small white pipe. “I see things that most men can’t,” he said shortly. “And there’s a gas like sunshine coming out of that pit. I think it’s important. I just don’t know why, or how. Not yet.”

  “So you brought us out here to show us something we cannot see?” said Inez.

  “No,” said the Nameless. He turned and led them to the far side of the building, where his horse, a gray stallion, was tethered alongside Inez’s mare. “I brought you out here to show you this.”

  On the back of the stallion was a woman, still, facedown. Something stuck out of her back—something that looked like a giant key.

  “Is she dead?” whispered Chantico.

  “I don’t think she was ever alive,” said the Nameless.

  The woman wore long skirts and a small jacket that was torn, as was her white shirt. Blond hair cascaded over her face, and Inez moved it gently to one side. She was quite beautiful, with pale skin. She appeared to be sleeping. Inez laid a hand on her cheek. It was cool, but not cold. There was the faintest thrum of movement deep within the woman, but not like a heartbeat, not like breathing. Inez touched the key. “She has been stabbed with this thing?”

  “No,” said the Nameless, hauling her down from the horse and laying her on her side in the shadows. “I put that there.”

  “You killed her?” said Chantico.

  “No. I found her, in the desert.” He took from his saddlebag a cloth sack. “She had these with her.”

  Chantico peeked inside the bag. There were all kinds of strange things: a little fat man made of stone, a box that shone with precious stones, a ruby amulet. He asked, “Is that apple made of gold?”

  “What do you mean, you found her?” asked Inez. “You don’t just find women like this. And why did you stick a key in her back?”

  “Did you see the dragon?” asked the Nameless.

  “I did,” said Chantico quietly.

  “I heard of it,” said Inez. “My father said it was a new kind of airship, maybe something the Japanese were testing.”

  “It was made of brass,” said the Nameless. “She was with it. I took her away before the Texans came for the dragon.” He bent down and lifted up the back of her shirt. There was no blood where the key stuck into her back, as Inez expected. The Nameless tugged it out. There was a small, metal-ringed aperture there. “The key fits her. I wound her up, but nothing happened. But the key fits.” He looked up at Inez. “I think she’s made from clockwork. I don’t think she’s a real woman.”

  Inez crouched beside the Nameless. There was something about her … almost as if she was actually too flawless to be real. Her skin felt smooth, like the softest, most expensive kid leather. Putting a hand to the woman’s breast, Inez could feel the faint hum of machinery, but no heart pumping.

  “But I think she is, somehow, alive,” said the Nameless. “I don’t know how or why, but I feel it.”

  “Like you can see the sun gas?” said Chantico.

  He nodded. Inez said, “So what are you going to do with her?”

  “Leave her here,” said the Nameless. “This is a safe place now. You are going to look after her for me.”

  Inez stood. “But I have to be back at Uvalde before nightfall! And Chantico at the encampment! We can’t stay here and babysit your … your clockwork woman!”

  The Nameless stood also. “I’ll get rid of those dead Texans, bury ’em away from here. I’ll fix up the roof, bring you some water. Then I’ve got errands to run.”

  “But I need to get home!” said Inez.

  The Name
less looked into the middle distance again. “I know. But something’s coming.”

  Chantico frowned at the blue sky. “A storm?”

  “Maybe,” said the Nameless. “Maybe.”

  * * *

  While the Nameless was inside, Chantico and Inez embraced by their horses. She pushed him away as she felt the lump in his groin press against her.

  “Please, Inez,” he moaned. “I will be quick.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “And I don’t like you being quick, Chantico. When will you learn? Besides, I’m quite not in the mood anymore. What do you make of him? Is he crazy?”

  “He is the spirit, Inez. The one with no name. You can’t say he’s crazy.”

  Inez mounted her horse. “I will come back tomorrow. I will make some excuse. See you here?”

  Chantico nodded as he untethered her mare.

  Inez turned the horse toward Uvalde and looked down at Chantico. “I do love you, you know. And I think you were very sweet, with that El Chupacabras business.” The costume and Chantico’s makeshift sword were in Inez’s saddlebag. The fabric smelled of Chantico, and she wanted it with her in bed that night.

  “I love you, too, darling Inez.”

  She looked thoughtfully at the house. “Everyone is someone, Chantico. He must have a name, a history. He must come from somewhere.”

  As Inez spurred her horse into movement, Chantico blew her a kiss. “I think he does come from somewhere,” he said, almost to himself. “I think he comes from America.”

  10

  AUBREY’S BAR & GRILL

  After Gideon, Bent, and Hart had departed for the military airfield in Newark, Rowena mooched around the Albert Gardens, following its meandering paths, resting in its meadows. She sat in contemplative silence in Sheep Meadow, watching the rising smog of the city that, by lunchtime every day, had obliterated the view of the higher skyscrapers from the street level. The elevated steam stilt-trains thundered between the towers, ferrying commuters to their jobs and goods from the airfields and docks to the big stores downtown and the communities of the five boroughs that came under Edward Lyle’s governorship.

  It was peaceful in the Albert Gardens, though the clamor of Manhattan was never too distant, only a shout on the breeze or an exhalation of steam away. The trees of the Gardens fought valiantly against the encroaching smog to keep the air clean, but New York was a lost cause once the mighty engine of American business was cranked up.

  As the day wore on, Rowena picked at the packed lunch the servants had prepared for her in the kitchens of the governor’s mansion. She was already bored. Rowena understood the need for Gideon and Bent to travel south of the Wall by covert means, understood they could not go flying in on the Skylady III. And she was no fool; she had heard enough of Steamtown to steer well clear of it all her adult life. Hell, most male ’stat pilots gave Steamtown a wide berth. Some places, you just didn’t go.

  Still, she felt uncommonly like she was missing out on something. She chided herself; she had been engaged for a job, one that had paid handsomely. She had fulfilled the assigned task, brought Gideon and Bent to New York. Should she wish, she could fly away now—she looked over to where the top of the Skylady III’s balloon could be seen, bobbing above the trees that bordered the Governor’s Residence. There was more money on offer, to take Gideon and Bent back to London should they complete their mission, but she was under no obligation to do so. There were any number of passenger ’stats or military dirigibles that could transfer them back to England.

  It was good business to wait; if she was going to return to London anyway then she might as well stay put for a few days and earn money for piloting the return trip as well. That was what she told herself, at any rate. But she wasn’t only Rowena Fanshawe, proprietor and sole employee of Fanshawe Aeronautical Endeavors, established 1883, Highgate Aerodrome, London. She was also Rowena Fanshawe, holder of the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal, the adventuress who had played her part in saving Queen Victoria from the deluded machinations of Dr. John Reed.

  And, goddammit, she cared about Gideon Smith, cared enough to worry that he was off on some foolish mission in the most hostile territory in America. A few weeks ago he’d been a wet-behind-the-ears fisherman. Now he was expected to be the Hero of the Empire.

  She bit into her apple in frustration, chewing thoughtfully as New Yorkers escaped from the rising temperature of the smog-bound city to the shadowy oasis of the Albert Gardens. The space had been modeled on Hyde Park, with its own version of the Serpentine glittering at its center. Rowena watched nannies pushing baby carriages, sneaking looks at her from beneath their bonnets; she saw office clerks in brown derbies and the waxed mustaches the Manhattanites so loved, casting surreptitious glances at her; a crowd of Bowery boys in laceless boots and patched trousers climbed over each other like puppies, whistling at her and running away, laughing. Two gentlemen doffed their tall stovepipe hats at her, beating out tattoos on the path with their gold-tipped canes. New York had burst out of the expectations laid upon it as a mere colony of Britain long ago; it was as if the rebel spirit had not been crushed by the redcoats but merely molded into the haughty self-confidence that earned New Yorkers their unfathomable reputation among London’s chattering classes. It seemed to Rowena that peering out beneath every bonnet, stovepipe, and derby was a look that said, All right, you won. We’re British. But don’t expect us to be like any British you’ve ever seen before.…

  Of course, Rowena was hardly like any British woman the New Yorkers had ever seen or heard of, either. Her flying trousers were scandalously close-fitting, her hair cropped defiantly short. She had opened two buttons on her crisp white cotton shirt against the heat; young Manhattan women might show more ankle than their counterparts in Mayfair, but they were still a conservative lot. Conservative, that was, outside the negro clubs in Harlem, where former slaves freed long ago danced to the beat of drum music throughout the night; or the pubs in the Bronx, where the Irish sipped porter and played fiddles; or the trattorias on Mulberry Street, where Roman passions were played out after dark. It was the white, British American women who were laced up tight as any Londoner Rowena had ever seen. As another brace of nannies scowled at her she leaned forward and recklessly unfastened another button on her shirt, smiling at them.

  Rowena cast another glance at her distant ’stat. She hated earthbound mores and despised the judgment others held her in, the shackles and bounds society felt should be placed upon her. Only in the sky, above the smog, above the clouds, did Rowena feel really, truly free. She was tempted, there and then, to flee. But she held herself back. She had made a promise that she would wait awhile, in case Gideon needed her. But that didn’t mean she had to hang around the stuffy Governor’s Residence. If she couldn’t fly, she could do the next best thing.

  She could go to Aubrey’s Bar & Grill.

  * * *

  Rowena walked into Aubrey’s just as darkness was falling; she had agreed to an early dinner with Lyle then told him she was going to see the sights. Which she was; there were few sights more worth seeing than the ones at Aubrey’s after dark.

  It was, to give it its full name, the Union Hall of the New York Chapter of the Esteemed Brethren of International Airshipmen, located in a squat building among the sheds and hangars of the North Beach Aerodrome. The members’ bar was in the hands of one Aubrey Flanagan, a Cork man who, in ’45, had built his own airship and carried families devastated by the potato blight over to new lives in America. After three years of ferrying his countrymen to New York, Aubrey had settled in Manhattan and acquired the license to run the bar in the Union Hall, and after that everyone just called it Aubrey’s Bar & Grill. Aubrey was, in his own words, “built like a brick shithouse, with hair like a bog-brush,” and he could generally be found behind his bar, serving up porter and rum and supervising a constant flow of sausages from the kitchens. Every ’stat pilot worth the name found their way to Aubrey’s sooner or later, and Rowena was no exception. Pushing open
the double doors to the warmth, shrill conversation, and frantic accordion music within, she felt like she was coming home.

  Life in the air was not subject to the same rules as that on the ground, but female ’stat pilots were still enough of a novelty for all eyes to turn toward Rowena as she walked across the crowded hall. Those who she knew nodded, waved, or raised an eyebrow in greeting. Those she didn’t laid the weight of their appreciative gaze upon her, until a neighbor or friend nudged and whispered, “That’s Rowena Fanshawe.”

  She changed course on her way to the bar and stepped into the cool, shadowy chapel. ’Stat pilots weren’t known for being religious, as such; more spiritual. She’d known airshipmen to hang around their necks crosses and Stars of David and everything in between, every totem or symbol they picked up on their journeys to the far corners of the Earth. They relied on their wits and their expertise, ’stat pilots, but there was nothing wrong with hedging your bets. The chapel, lit by church candles on tall metal stands, was dominated by a long corkboard on one wall, onto which were pinned grainy photographs of lost Brethren or, where there were no photographs available, sketches or even just scrawled names. A yellowed roll of paper above the corkboard was inscribed in flowing script, MY SOUL IS IN THE SKY. How many pilots would recognize it, as Rowena did, from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream she neither knew nor cared. It was written across the roll call of the lost in every chapel in every Union Hall across the Empire, and on every corkboard was the photograph, or sketch, or handwritten name that always drew her.

  Charles Collier. She found him, near the middle of the board, a ragged-edged photograph of a man with sandy hair, his mustache waxed proud, the line of his mouth slightly upturned at the corners, echoing the crease lines at the corners of his eyes that betrayed good humor. He wore a pair of brass goggles on his head, the shearling collar of his leather jacket pulled up. Rowena stroked the photograph, then took up a flat votive candle from the wicker basket beneath the corkboard and borrowed a flame from the nearest lit candle. She placed it in the rack below the corkboard and stayed silent, head bowed, in mute contemplation for a moment.