Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon

by David Barnett

  Rowena raised her head and looked at the photograph of Charles Collier once more. It was time for a drink.

  * * *

  Aubrey leaned across the bar and threw his huge arms around Rowena, scattering empty glasses and full ashtrays.

  “Rowena Fanshawe!” he exclaimed. “By the bulging sac of Jean-Pierre Blanchard, what sends you flying our way?”

  Rowena extricated herself from his bearlike hug. “Bit of business, Aubrey. How are you?”

  “As good as the Lord and as fit as the devil.” He laughed then paused. “Or is it the other way around? Anyhow, let me get you a drink. Porter?”

  Rowena shook her head. “Rum. As usual.”

  He roared again. “I’ll get you on some fine Irish porter one of these days, Rowena Fanshawe. Put hairs on your chest!”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, accepting the generous measure of dark, spiced rum that Aubrey poured for her. She reached into her satchel for her wallet but he waved his meaty fist at her.

  “Your money’s no good here tonight, Rowena. Tonight you drink on Aubrey Flanagan.” He picked up a glass of his own and banged on the bar for silence. “Shut it, you balloon-rats! We have a proper heroine in the house! Raise your glasses to Rowena Fanshawe.”

  There was a chorus of cheers that Rowena waved away. She drained the glass and Aubrey poured another. He said, “We all read about what happened, that Battle of London. You did mighty fine there, Rowena. Mighty fine indeed. We’re awful proud of you.”

  “How’s Fanny?” asked Rowena.

  “Fit as a fiddle! She’s in the back, cooking up her sausages. They’re a fine body of men, these Brethren, but greedy! You never saw the like. They’ll eat ’til sausages come out of their arses. They’re like dogs. Don’t know when to stop.”

  Rowena spent an easy hour catching up with Brethren gossip, until Aubrey had to take up his shillelagh from the shelf behind him and go and sort out a fight in the far corner that was threatening to turn into a brawl. She rose unsteadily from her stool—damn Aubrey’s generous measures—and weaved through the throng toward the Union Hall proper, where one or two airshipmen browsed the contracts that had been pinned to the walls. This was where most ’stat pilots picked up their jobs when they were at loose ends, and Rowena scrutinized the nearest. She was itching to get back in the air, even if it was just a short cargo hop to Boston.

  Behind the desk was the hirer, a thin man in a suit that had seen better days. She saw him hail the two men who were in the Union Hall ahead of her, and an urgent, low conversation took place. The two men shook their heads and walked away. Intrigued, Rowena wandered over.

  “Any jobs going?”

  The hirer looked her up and down. “You Brethren?”

  The rum had emboldened her. She jabbed her thumb at her chest. “I’m Rowena Fanshawe.”

  The hirer clicked his tongue. “I do have a job, but it’s not for you.”

  She placed her hands on the table and leaned forward. “Any job is for me.”

  “It’s for a big ’stat. What you flying?”

  “Tripler, out of the Gefa-Flug factory in Aachen. She’s called the Skylady III. Used to fly under the name the Yellow Rose.”

  The hirer sat back and whistled. “Louis Cockayne’s ’stat? And how did you get your hands on that? I’d say you must have won it off him, but Louis Cockayne doesn’t lose at cards.”

  Rowena smiled. “No, but sometimes he bites off more than he can chew.”

  The hirer rubbed his chin. “We-e-ell … you could handle the cargo, certainly. But it’s the destination, Miss Fanshawe. It’s south of the Wall.”

  Rowena raised an eyebrow, but didn’t react further. “The Mason-Dixon Wall?”

  “That’s the only Wall we talk about ’round here. Specifically … San Antonio.”

  “Steamtown?” said Rowena. “Who’s doing business with Steamtown? And what’s the cargo?”

  “The contractor is classified,” said the hirer. “And the cargo is classified as well. All you got to know is that you load up here at dawn, get down to Steamtown, and stay the hell in your ’stat while they unload. There’ll be a cargo to bring back, as well. The contract states that your hold has to be locked throughout and you don’t even think about looking in there.” He rubbed his chin again. “I don’t know … a woman like you in Steamtown…”

  “I can look after myself,” said Rowena. She was getting tired of having to point that out. “Besides…”

  He shrugged. “Besides, as a chartered ’stat pilot and paid-up member of the Esteemed Brethren of International Airshipmen, even those barbarians would know better than to try any funny business. You stay put on your bridge and keep a gun to hand, and you won’t come to any harm.”

  “So the contract’s mine?”

  The hirer tapped his chin then held out two manila envelopes. “This here’s your manifest. It won’t tell you anything about the cargo, but it will tell you what you do when you get to Steamtown.” He held the other out but pulled it back as Rowena reached for it. “This here’s classified documents, to be handed over at Steamtown air ground. They’re secured with the Brethren seal, and if that’s broken … well, I can’t guarantee anything when you get to Steamtown.”

  “All very mysterious,” muttered Rowena, taking both envelopes. “But legal?”

  The hirer shrugged. “It came through formal channels, but with the rules I just told you.”

  “It could be anything,” said Rowena.

  “You know the Brethren code,” said the hirer. “Periculo tuo and all that.”

  Periculo tuo. At your own risk. The Brethren would fix you up with work, lend you money if you needed it, get you out of somewhere fast if you were in trouble. But you were responsible for the jobs you took on. If a cargo turned out to be unsavory or worse … then you knew the risks.

  The hirer raised an eyebrow. “You still want it?”

  Whatever was in there, she had to take the job if she wanted to go down to Steamtown. It went against the grain to take on a cargo without knowing what it was, but … she nodded.

  “You got it. Be here with your ’stat at dawn. And fair winds, Miss Fanshawe. Fair winds.”

  * * *

  Rowena told Governor Lyle that she was going away for a few days, to “see friends.” Which, she hoped, would prove true. He looked doubtful, though.

  “You’re not thinking of heading down to Texas, Miss Fanshawe? Remember what we said, this has to be a covert operation.…”

  “I don’t go anywhere I’m not paid to,” said Rowena sweetly.

  She took to her bed early and was awake and alert in the small hours, accepting breakfast from the kitchen and finally feeling her earthbound anxieties fall away as she nosed the Skylady III into the gradually lightening sky and toward North Beach Aerodrome.

  Never in the trading history of Fanshawe Aeronautical Endeavors had Rowena taken a cargo on board without knowing its provenance, not since she started the business with the Skylady I, a Thompson Flashman blimp that had lifting power for only two passengers and a long hundredweight of cargo. But as the instructions stated, she sat on the bridge of the ’stat staring grimly ahead at the pale approach of dawn while representatives of the mysterious contract holder loaded up the cargo bay from the ground. Even more galling, she had to allow them access to the gondola—without even seeing them!—so they could chain up the interior door down to the cargo bay. Eventually, a groundsman from the Aerodrome climbed up the rope ladder to tell her they were done.

  “What’s in there?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. They loaded up from covered wagons.”

  “And who exactly are they?”

  He hesitated. “You don’t want to know.”

  As her slot arrived and she was waved into the air, the groundsmen casting off the cables, Rowena quickly brought the Skylady III up to a cruising height. New York rumbled into life and the ever-present smog began to creep up from street-level, the heat
and the churning of ten thousand steam engines creating a rising tide of insidious, impenetrable gray that would engulf the tops of the skyscrapers by nightfall. She charted a course south and west, and then she only needed to glance over the instructions one more time (ten miles out of San Antonio she was to signal a preset sequence with the heliograph, to allow her access to Steamtown and stop the Texans blowing her out of the sky with their steam-cannons) then sit tight while her bay was unloaded and filled up with the return cargo.

  She had the best of intentions, she really did. But once she was airborne, with few distractions in the largely ’stat-free skies on her course, she couldn’t stop herself staring at the manila envelope she was meant to hand over to the Steamtown groundsmen. She went to make a pot of coffee and toast some bread in the galley, but as she sat back in the leather chair on the bridge, her eyes kept gazing toward the envelope.

  She picked it up and inspected the wax seal. It was imprinted with the gothic “B” symbol of the Brethren. She plucked the union pin from the lapel of her flying jacket, which was embossed with the same ornate feature. A bit of candle wax, pressed with the pin … they’d never know the difference between that and the original seal in Steamtown, where they didn’t get much Brethren traffic, surely.

  “To hell with it,” she muttered, and slid her thumb under the envelope’s flap, breaking the Brethren seal. She slid out a single sheet of paper, which bore no company masthead or other identifying marks. It detailed the return cargo only: an eye-watering five hundred tons of coal. Rowena had never lifted anything approaching that and hoped it didn’t leave her grounded in San Antonio or crashed in the desert. At the bottom of the manifest were the words “payment as agreed” and a scrawled signature she couldn’t decipher.

  So someone in Manhattan was doing business with Steamtown. What had Governor Lyle said? You wouldn’t believe how much coal a city like New York runs on.… Much of it, we buy in. Governor Lyle would be very interested to know that the coal his city ran on was being bought from Steamtown, she thought. And it wasn’t money that someone was paying with … but just what had been loaded up in her hold that Steamtown would take as payment in kind for coal?

  For another half an hour, Rowena sat on the bridge, watching the vast empty prairies unfold before her. Then she made a decision, and went to get a hefty crowbar from the stores. The men had chained up the handles of the door down to the cargo bay, but after a moment’s hesitation it was the work of two minutes to pry the chain and padlock off with a sharp snap.

  She hauled open the door and peered down into the cargo bay.

  “Oh,” she said eventually. “Oh, shit.”

  11

  DAMN STEAMTOWN TO A HUNDRED HELLS

  “Mr. Bent, I am presuming you haven’t done much in the way of riding before,” called Jeb Hart, his words echoing around the rust-colored walls of the steep-sided canyon he was leading them through.

  “I am renowned…,” panted Bent from the rear, “… as something … of a … chevalier in the brothels of Whitechapel … you cheeky effer.…”

  “He means horses, not whores,” said Gideon from the middle of the short column.

  “Well, I wouldn’t be expected to be a horseman, chap of my girth and sensibilities,” shouted Bent. “I’m an effing journalist, not some kind of country gent or … or cattle wrangler!”

  They had been riding for half a day, the pace slow due to Bent’s steed, an old workhorse from the barracks, plodding at its own pace and requiring frequent stops to drink water and to piss—“not unlike Mr. Bent himself,” Jeb Hart had observed. Gideon was on nodding terms with horses, having ridden a bit in his youth, though not over any great distance. He was enjoying the feel of freedom that riding afforded him, the sensation that he could dig his heels into the pony and bolt off into the wide-open spaces, and not see another man for days. Even in the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors there was only so far you could go before you chanced upon a village or trading post. Here the world seemed infinite in both breadth and possibilities.

  Their route had taken them along the Mason-Dixon Wall for the first three hours, then Hart had led them on a meandering path north, ducking into valleys and around hills until the Wall was lost from sight, and finally he brought them in an arc back westward. “They’re a suspicious bunch in Steamtown,” he’d said. “We need to make them think we’ve been out on the plains for a matter of weeks, not just flown in on a military dirigible.”

  At the next stop, where a cool spring ran down the wall of the canyon just as it opened out into a wide, yellow prairie dotted with the shapes of dark cacti, Hart rubbed dust into the trouser legs of Gideon and Bent, and tore at their sleeves with a length of thorny bush.

  “That’s my best coat,” Bent protested.

  “All part of the deception,” said Jeb. The horses were allowed to drink deep from the small pool that gathered where the spring flowed down the orange rocks. Jeb filled the canteens and squinted into the west.

  “I figure we’ve time for some food. Might just get us to Steamtown before dark.”

  “Food, thank God, thought you were never going to effing mention food,” said Bent, walking up and down with a rolling, simian gait. “Christ, my poor old effing arse is like a pound of tripe that’s been set to with a carpet beater. I don’t think I’ll ever shit right again.”

  Gideon, too, was feeling saddle-sore from the journey. He was keen to get to their destination, but wary, too. “What’s the plan when we get to San Antonio?”

  Hart looked up from where he was fanning the campfire embers with his hat. “I was hoping you was going to tell me, Mr. Smith. I’m merely your guide.”

  Gideon looked to the sun as it proceeded toward the line of mountains out west. “What will this Thaddeus Pinch’s reaction to us walking into his town be?”

  Hart piled some dry twigs onto the leaping flames amid the brushwood. “Well, it’s true to say that Steamtown don’t get many tourists, as such. But people do go to visit. Men, of course, with what you might call appetites.”

  Gideon frowned and Bent sighed. “He means them as fancy a roll in the hay with the hookers. And the whorehouses are that special, are they, Hart? That men would travel thousands of miles to visit them?”

  Hart shrugged. “It’s not so much the women, Mr. Bent, as the rules. There are none. Anything goes in Steamtown, and frequently does. There are no boundaries, no one telling you you’ve gone too far.” He blew softly at the heart of the fire. “I guess some men likes that freedom.”

  “Then we’ll be two … two gentlemen from London, perhaps unsavory types, touring the Americas and eager to see this Steamtown we’ve heard so much about,” said Gideon. “And you’ll be the guide whose services we have secured.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me,” said Hart. “They know my face in Steamtown, know that’s the sort of thing I might be apt to do.”

  Bent nudged him. “’Course, what they don’t know is that you work for the Governor of New York,” he said with a wink.

  Hart didn’t smile. “No, Mr. Bent, and I’d rather they didn’t, no more than you’d want them to know you was agents of the British Crown. That wouldn’t be very good at all, not for any of us.”

  While Hart warmed up some beans, Gideon sat on a rock and watched Bent flicking through his notebook. When he came to the sketch he’d made of the tattoo, Bent said, “Here, you been around Nyu Edo and all that. You read that Japanese stuff?”

  “Enough to get me by.” Hart nodded, taking the notebook from Bent. He stared at it and frowned just long enough for Gideon to catch his expression, then said, “Mr. Bent, I don’t think this is actually … um, where did you say you saw it?”

  “On the neck of that dead ninja who attacked Lyle,” said Bent.

  Hart shook his head. “No. Like I said, I just about get by. No idea what that is at all.”

  Gideon caught the swift glance Bent shot at him. “Maybe you’d like a longer look?”

  Hart shook his head. “No,
thank you, Mr. Bent. Not one I recognize. Now I think our beans are ready; we should eat up if we want to get to Steamtown before dark.”

  * * *

  They made good time after their meal, or so it seemed to Gideon. Even Bent managed to pick up the pace, though his incessant complaining about the tenderness of his rump continued unabated and with increasingly imaginative language.

  Hart slowed to allow Gideon to come alongside as they passed by a ridge of rock topped with tufts of desert grass. He shielded a match from the wind to light a cigar and appraised Gideon from beneath the shadow of his hat.

  “So you’re the best the Empire has, then?”

  Gideon shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Hart spat in the dry dust. “So if this job’s so important, why send you if you’re not the best?”

  Gideon fixed his eyes on the horizon. “As Governor Lyle said, this is a necessarily secret endeavor.”

  Hart nodded. “But the British government doesn’t have more experienced operatives at its disposal than a fisherman and a scribbler?”

  Gideon glanced at him. Mr. Hart certainly seemed to know more than he let on. He said, “If you know so much about me, you’ll know that this is also something of a personal mission.”

  “You should never mix business and pleasure, Mr. Smith,” said Hart. He peered forward. “You see that?”

  Gideon followed his outstretched hand to where a column of black smoke bisected the blue sky beyond the ridge. “Steamtown?” he said.

  “Not yet,” said Hart. “I’ll take a look.”

  As he spurred his horse forward into a canter, Bent eventually caught up with Gideon. He said, “He’s just trying to needle you. Ignore him.”

  “He’s right though, isn’t he?” said Gideon. “Why has Mr. Walsingham sent the two of us to rescue Maria and bring back Apep?”

  Bent sighed. “Look, you know my feelings on the whole shooting match. Walsingham and his crew, they’re not to be trusted. But sometimes what they want and what you want can rub up, fit together for a while. Let’s get through this little soiree in one piece and maybe we can start asking a few questions, eh?”