Fires of Hell: The Alchemystic

by Maureen L. Mills

  But the book? I hadn’t expected that. I supposed it was too much to hope it was a private journal; perhaps one where he had written “I’m meeting with ___, my worst enemy, tonight!”

  I opened the slim tome and found a sort of ledger. The entries seemed to begin some years ago; although anno Domini’s were not included in the dates of payments, the number of Januarys, Aprils, and Augusts made it clear the accounting had continued for at least eight years.

  I jotted the information onto the back of the old chart alongside the sketch I’d made of the brass button, noting the number and amount of payments and the initials of the four receivers, which was as much identification as the book contained. Stuffing the bank notes and accounting book back into the wallet, I replaced the whole into the drawer.

  The quiet chime of the captain’s clock striking the third quarter of the hour alerted me to the passing of time. Obadiah would wonder if I’d fallen into the head if I didn’t get back soon.

  I hurried from the cabin, taking care to lock it behind me. Now I needed some undisturbed time to study the clues I had collected. For that, I had to wait until we docked at our home airfield the following day.

  * * *

  The brown fog that marked London’s airspace was almost a welcome sight, as was Wormwood Airfield, the wide stretch of scrub on the western outskirts of the city where Winged Goods, the company the Mercury flew for, kept its hangars.

  We followed the Thames in. The water, approximately the color and texture of rotten cabbage, glinted dully in the afternoon sun. Lieutenant Whitcomb swung us wide around the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and Regent’s Park to avoid the uncertain winds caused by high-priced aerologists working to keep the fetid reek of the river away from noble noses. I spied the aeromancers’ white and gold robes fluttering atop their trio of towers, waving their arms as they communed with their favored element.

  Aerologists had no need to hide what they were. Because they worked with air, their abilities were assumed to come from Heaven, not the Hell to which my own were attributed.

  Too, no one had ever caught an air worker destroying people’s homes if they couldn’t pay protection money, a favorite activity of pyromancers of old. Not many aerologists were strong enough to wreck a building sturdier than a shack, in any case.

  Europe had no laws prohibiting their free existence. In fact, none of the three other alchemical talents were illegal. Not aeromancy, not hydromancy, not geomancy.

  Only pyromancy.

  Only people like me.

  The Winged Goods office in Constantinople had wired ahead with news of Captain Rollins’ death. Six of Winged Goods’ mooring towers were occupied as all our people who could make it back to London gathered to honor the founder and head of our company. Men with signal lanterns poured from the three-story tower, built to house the ground crews and provide clear sight lines to guide our ships in.

  As soon as we docked, wicker hull creaking as it settled into its cradle, a black hearse drawn by matching black horses drove through the gates and up to our mooring tower to collect the captain’s body.

  I stood at attention with the rest of the crew—Obadiah, Lieutenant Whitcomb, and me on one side of the gangway, quartermaster and cook Henry McDonnell, able airman Reuben Dodd, and ship’s boy Benjamin Tibbett on the other—to show our respect as the ground crewmen carried Captain Rollins between our ranks to the hearse.

  I stayed by the rail and watched as it drove away. The captain’s final flight had come to an end.

  The hearse turned out of the gates and disappeared from view in North Kensington’s crowded streets. I went to help Obadiah shut the engines down and damp out the fires. Relative silence fell, ringing in my ears as they adjusted to the sudden cessation of the constant chug and hiss.

  Lieutenant Whitcomb released us all to shore leave with a promise to post the details of the funeral at the company offices. Obadiah and I, of course, would attend, and probably Henry, who had no family to go to. I doubted Benjamin Tibbet would show up, most likely too busy with his parents and little sister in Cheapside.

  Reuben might make an appearance. Strange, I did not know of his home circumstances, despite the years he had been with the Mercury. He was a cheerful, friendly sort, great company aboard ship. But he never spoke much of home.

  Lieutenant Whitcomb left for the company’s offices near Pall Mall in somber silence, with a nod in response to Obadiah’s sketched salute. He ignored mine.

  Obadiah clapped me on the shoulder, a rough, comforting gesture, and went to gather the company’s employees whose task it was to drag the Mercury into her hangar. I slipped back into the engine room.

  The ship was deserted, the engines still, but for the tick of metal shrinking as it cooled.

  I had a quick wash in the shower I’d rigged from the boiler overflow tank to rid myself of the worst of the coal grime, changed out of my working clothes, and packed up my traveling kit.

  As I swished down the gangway in a forest-green, muslin day dress, uncomfortable in the narrow, trailing skirts that fashion—and Maman—insisted I wear in civilized countries, I called greetings to the crewmen who labored to attach towlines to the draft horses.

  “I heard as how the captain went and got ‘iz gullet sliced,” one of the crewmen working by the gangway said in a conspiratorial tone. “That true, Miz ‘Melia?”

  My heart seized at the sudden stab of sorrow, bringing me to a stumbling halt.

  “Bert, you mutton-head,” muttered Thomas, the other crewman.

  I half-turned and stepped back, hiding my expression from the men, and something whizzed past my ear. I heard a muffled thump, as of a pebble hitting a rug hung for beating. The nearest draft horse started, squealed, and shied, lashing out with a frying-pan-sized hoof that narrowly missed Bert’s leg.

  Oaths filled the air, mine among them. The horse danced the other way, yanking at his harness. Bert raced to his head and hung on grimly, shouting for Thomas to help him, but Thomas was too busy calming his own horse to lend a hand.

  Drat the brats who haunted the airfields to cause a bit of trouble and pick a pocket or two in the resulting chaos!

  I dropped my bag and sprang off the gangway, reaching for the horse’s headstall.

  “Hush, now, you great brute,” I said, attempting to keep my voice soothing and low. A difficult task, as the beast’s heavy feet stamped and jittered next to my own. “‘Twas only a stone. Settle down.”

  Why did we still use horses to tow our airships? They were dangerously unpredictable, required constant care and feeding, and produced copious amounts of manure that needed to be hauled away daily to prevent the airfield from being overwhelmed with the noxious stuff.

  Perhaps I could devise a form of steam engine to replace the horses, a small one, self-contained, one able to move without being restricted to tracks. I seemed to recall a design first presented at Prince Albert’s Exposition that might be modified…

  A shout rose from the direction of the offices, and the sound of running feet indicated help was on the way.

  The barmy horse, however, took exception to the noise. He flung up his head, jerking out of my grasp. I lurched forward in an attempt to regain my balance. My foot landed directly on a length of my ruffled hem. Arms wind-milling, I tumbled face first, right under the dancing feet of the panicked animal.

  This was going to hurt.

  Chapter Three

  The draft horse reared as I hit the hard-packed earth, ruffles and ribbons flying. Huge hooves, iron-shod and sharp as chisels, lashed at the air, missing my head by inches. I shoved up onto my elbows and tried to drag myself out of the way, but my sleeves had trailing bits too, and my hands got tangled, accomplishing exactly nothing.

  The horse’s massive body began to descend. I braced for the agony of crushed bones and torn flesh.

  A hard arm banded across my middle, hauling me upward and back. It held me firmly against a male chest, my toes scraping the ground. The draft horse’
s hooves landed in the depression my bustled skirts had made in the matted grass.

  “Back him up,” snapped an unfamiliar voice beside my head. “He’ll rip the lines from the framework.”

  Just what I would have said, if I hadn’t been so flustered from my narrow escape. The mooring lines twisted and strained as the horse danced in fright. The aether-filled lifting bodies bobbed ponderously above our heads. The Mercury’s pine skeleton creaked under the stress.

  Bert struggled to obey the command, and crewmen poured from the hangars, tower, and the stables. The men surrounded the poor animal, catching at its headstall to drag its head down, and holding it steady as they unfastened the beast’s harness and led it away. A trickle of blood marked its flank, and its skin twitched as if trying to dislodge a persistent insect.

  Quite a vicious wound for a stone thrown by an urchin’s hand.

  “Check the horse,” I told the nearest crewman, tugging at my skirts and hopping from foot to foot to get my hem out from under my kid half boots. “He’s injured.”

  The male arm holding me was replaced by a pair of hands that circled my waist and lifted me, seemingly effortlessly, and deposited me upright a hand’s span away.

  “Thank you,” I said, turning to my rescuer. “These skirts are so very…”

  I broke off, staring up at a ghost. All thoughts of the injured horse fled.

  The man wasn’t a ghost, of course. But he could have been, to tell by the shiver that arrowed down my spine. Not a fear shiver, exactly, but unsettling nonetheless. His dark hair, his firm chin, his elegant bearing, his captain’s uniform, his piercing grey eyes all added to the illusion.

  Especially his eyes.

  Captain Rollins. A much younger version, as young as I, and one with a colder, sharper edge to him. “If you’ll excuse me, miss,” he said in a correct if impatient manner. “This is a working airfield. Do you have someone to escort you off the premises?”

  For a moment I simply gaped, not a very refined reaction. Maman would have tapped my chin with her fan in chastisement if she’d seen me. What a rude person he was, to hurry me off without waiting for an introduction or even bothering to see if I belonged here!

  Who was this man, to give orders as if he owned the place?

  Then the realization dawned. He did own the place. Or the ship, rather. With the death of his father, Josiah Rollins had inherited the whole of Winged Goods.

  Huh. I thought he’d be younger. And less rude.

  Rude or not, I’d have to get along with him if I wished to continue in my position with the company. I extended a hand, intending to introduce myself as one of his employees.

  Obadiah appeared from the crowd of ground crew who’d gathered to settle the fracas. He grabbed my outstretched hand, tugging me behind him. “Amelia’s a friend of the family, Captain Rollins,” he said. “I’ll see her safely out.”

  The fact that Obadiah appeared to be trying to hide me hardly registered. Captain Rollins. The name echoed in my head.

  I went cold as if I’d been standing midnight watch in a frigid, Scandinavian ice storm. Numbly, I allowed Obadiah to lead me away. “You called him Captain Rollins,” I whispered. My voice didn’t seem to want to function.

  “Because that’s who he is, now.” He paused, rearranging my hand until it rested on his arm in a more formal manner before he escorted me past an Empress Airships passenger liner in the process of deboarding and out of the airfield’s gates. “Melly, lass, you have to be prepared for changes. I was in the tower and saw the posted reassignments.” He stopped and turned me to face him. “Mr. Josiah—Captain Rollins—is going to take over his father’s ship. He’ll be captaining the Winged Mercury.”

  Was this how it was supposed to go? Captain Rollins—my Captain Rollins—had been murdered in an alley, and nobody seemed to care. He’d already been swept away like coal dust on the decks. After his funeral, would anyone even think of him again? We’d have a new Captain Rollins, the ships would keep flying, and the engines continue burning.

  As if Captain Edmund Rollins had meant nothing. As if he could be replaced so easily.

  As if he did not need to be avenged.

  Obadiah waited for me to speak, but my voice was lost in the tangle inside my soul.

  He sighed, scrubbed his hands over his face. He looked tired and older than I remembered.

  He’d known the captain longer than I had, and if Obadiah hadn’t relied on him almost as a father as I had, he’d come to know the captain as a friend. I patted his arm, attempting to comfort the man, although my face still felt as frozen as my voice.

  Obadiah whistled up a hansom cab and handed me in. “Be prepared for changes,” he repeated as he closed the doors over my skirts.

  It wasn’t until after I’d gone to bed in the small but luxurious town home Maman kept in one of the more artistic streets in Bedford Park, attempting to sleep on my too-soft mattress without the hiss of the engines and soothing sway of the airship, that I remembered the blood trickling down the draft horse’s side.

  If the horse had bolted, the towline anchored to the Mercury’s framework might have torn a large chunk from her hull; perhaps torn her right in two. No urchin could have thrown a pebble hard enough to draw blood from a horse’s thick hide. No, the projectile must have come from another source.

  I wished I could think of what that source might be. Some sort of air-propelled pellet gun, perhaps, since I had not heard the bark of a traditional firearm? Maybe wielded by a man from one of our rival companies? The death of its owner and best captain left Winged Goods vulnerable. Now would be an ideal time to attempt to force us out of business.

  I hoped Josiah Rollins had the sense to post extra men to watch over his ships.

  Chapter Four

  I was late to the funeral, held two days after we brought the captain’s body home.

  Although the day had dawned uncharacteristically bright and clear, I’d woken in a vile mood, and the comedy of errors that made up my morning did nothing to improve my temper. My throat felt tight and sore, as if I were coming down with a nasty cold.

  I had to change out of my blue and green bodice and skirt which served as a female version of Winged Goods’ uniform when I remembered Obadiah believed I should keep my identity secret.

  Cursing, I donned my black silk, struggling not to snap at poor Dolly Allred, who tried to keep the elaborate arrangement she’d made of my hair from collapsing during the change. She, along with her husband, Matthew, constituted the entire contingent of servants in Maman’s Bedford Park house. I could not afford to offend her, not to mention she deserved better from me.

  The delay caused me to miss my connection to Finlay Park, a short hackney ride from Abney Park Cemetery, and I had to wait for the next train. The platform teemed with mothers and nurses leading strings of well-scrubbed children, businessmen heading into the city for the day, and red-coated officers fresh from India, by their sun-darkened skin, out on leave.

  I shied away from the gaudy, crimson uniforms on general principles. The soldiers probably were not with the Phlogistologist Corps, but one could never be too careful. Or rather, not just anyone. Me. I could not be too careful.

  The military men moved toward the back of the train, away from the smoke and noise of the steam engine, therefore I moved to the front. A little smoke and noise hardly made a difference to me.

  I was so busy looking over my shoulder I failed to notice the crowd had stopped in front of me. A hand on my arm halted my progress, and I turned to face the wall of red leather into which I’d been about to walk. Not the blood-red wool of the other soldier’s coats. Fire-red leather, with the gold trim, padded gloves, and smoked glass eye-protectors to go with it.

  I’d retreated from the possibility of an encounter with the Phlogistologist Corps straight into the reality of it. My knees went weak as English tea, and my power of speech seemed to have fled.

  “Stand back, ma’am,” the officer said. “Phlogistologist comin
g through shortly.”

  I gave the man a curt nod, and wobbled a step back, but by now others in the crowd had noticed the corpsmen creating a corridor between the stationhouse and the engine and had gathered around me to watch the show.

  I was hemmed in, and didn’t dare draw attention to myself by thrusting through the tight-packed mass of humanity to escape. I could only stand and watch while corpsmen led the pyromancer— “phlogistologist” implied a degree of choice and intellectual accomplishment I could not equate with a captive pyromancer’s circumstances—through the cleared passage.

  He was a young man, appearing not much older than I. He held his head high, despite the hisses and mutters of “filthy phlog” and “demonspawn” from the crowd, proudly displaying the tattooed flames that climbed from his rune-stamped collar, licking up the sides of his face to his temples. With that many commendation tats, he’d probably been acquired as a baby and had no experience with the freedom I valued so highly. His red and gold robes were cut at a sharp angle at the neckline to expose the brand on the left side of his chest, the curling flame burnt into his flesh long ago to test the strength of his magic, the edges distorting as he grew.

  The flowing sleeve of his robe flipped up as he strode past, revealing the identification number emblazoned on his forearm.

  I shivered at the sudden chill that gripped me at the sight. He was no longer a person; this man had been reduced to a possession. As I would be, if I were ever betrayed to the Corps.

  The pyromancer boarded the baggage car along with his escorts. They—or he, rather—would not be welcome among the passengers.

  With the excitement over, the crowd dispersed, and I shakily made my way to the center of the train before I mounted the steps to a passenger car. Nothing had happened. Not really. My secret was still safe. The pyromancer had not been obviously abused. But my mood, already low and uncertain, fell to new depths.