Treasure, Darkly (Treasure Chronicles Book 1)

by Jordan Elizabeth

  “We’re wasting time,” Clark whispered.

  Jeremiah panted, his fists tight around his rifle. “That son of a—”

  “We’ll get her ourselves.” They could avoid the army. Soldiers wouldn’t need to see Clark.

  “We don’t know where the bloody hangar is.” Jeremiah kicked the wall. The plaster cracked, leaving a hole the size of his boot heel.

  Clark rested his hand on his half-brother’s shoulder. “We’ll follow the wind trail as best we can.”

  “You ever been in this wilderness? How you figuring to follow a nonexistent trail to a hangar nobody knows about.”

  Some people did know about it. Clark grinned. Since fleeing Tangled Wire, the open prairie had been his solstice. “Trust me. I’ve got some friends out there who can help.”

  lark’s steamcycle roared over the dirt, dust billowing behind his tire. Hot wind slapped his cheeks and pushed against his helmet, forcing his head back and straining his neck. The strap pressed into the underside of his chin with that familiar bite. Behind him, Jeremiah followed on the ranch’s only steamcycle, a newer model than Clark’s, with the Treasure emblem on the sides. Jeremiah’s loose, brown coat flapped behind him, and extra bullets were slung on a belt across his chest. A red whip of braided leather bounced against his thigh.

  The wind from the airship had blown a weak path. Clark assumed they were headed in the correct direction, but it wouldn’t matter after tomorrow. He knew who could find anything in the desert.

  The cloudless sky purpled with twilight as the sun sank. The more dangerous animals emerged at night. They should find shelter and rest until morning.

  At the next ridge, Clark steered to the right and Jeremiah followed. They passed skeleton trees shriveling in the dry dirt, cactuses, and bushes.

  As the beige land whirled by, he sensed his mother beside him, as though she could run as fast as a steamcycle—more a memory than a spirit. She wore her sequined dress, the one without straps and the hem that ended at her knees. The saloon owner had given it to her to wear when she danced on the bar, but as she aged, she’d done that less. The old man had still made her wear it at holidays, even though her waist had thickened. Without enough food, the rest of her body remained skin over bones. As a child, he’d dreamt about bringing her enough food that she’d grow as plump as the generals. She wouldn’t have to look as if his hug might break her.

  Beneath the bandana he’d wrapped over his mouth to keep the dust out, he smiled. She would be proud of him. He’d survived by honest means. Mostly honest counted. She would be thrilled that he wanted to save Amethyst. Family meant everything.

  “We must stay together,” she had told him. “Without family, you have nothing.”

  The shadows crept over an abandoned monastery in the next ridge. He turned his steamcycle into the path overgrown with desert weeds and drove through the wrought iron archway. Metal words read McKinley Monastery of Saints.

  Gravestones, with the words weathered off, lined the pathway and covered the front yard. Clark parked beside the front door and slid his leg off the seat, stretching the cramp from the small of his back.

  Jeremiah stopped in front of him and pushed down his dirt-encrusted bandana. “Why’re we here? You think this is the place?”

  The wooden door that sagged off the hinges. The broken windows, some without glass. The holes in the wooden roof. The chips in the stone walls. Did Jeremiah really think it was the airship hangar?

  “We should rest here.”

  A vein leapt in Jeremiah’s jaw. “We have to get Amethyst. What do you want to do? Run off? Hide at this dump?”

  Clark pulled down his bandana. “I’m not stupid. We won’t reach the hangar before dark. You want to get picked off by a cactus cat?”

  “We’re on cycles,” Jeremiah spat. “A cactus cat won’t yank you off one.”

  Clark blinked at him from beneath his goggles. Did Jeremiah really think a cycle could keep him safe? Clark had seen too many people ripped off by a cactus cat’s powerful jaws. The creature could outrun a cycle if it tried hard enough. “Trust me. I’ve lived out here.”

  “You lived here?” Jeremiah waved at the dilapidated building.

  “Yes.” Clark pushed open the door. It had become a refuge more times than he could count. “You take shelter when you find it.” He gripped his handlebars and pushed the steamcycle inside. “We don’t want anyone taking off with our rides.”

  “We’re alone out here.” Jeremiah glanced at the desert.

  Clark headed to the room to the right of the entrance hall. It had been a meeting chamber with a table and benches. Dirt littered the floor and someone had chopped a bench in half. Clark kicked the other half of the bench, splitting it down the middle. As Jeremiah entered with his cycle, Clark tossed the broken wood into the hearth. Since desert dwellers kept the monastery as a haven, the fireplace was kept clean. You didn’t screw over other thieves, a law of survival when you didn’t have anyone else to watch your back.

  He fished through his jacket pocket for his lighter and held it against the dry bush someone had left in the hearth. It caught, the flame transferring to other brush.

  “We’ll leave at first light.” Jeremiah crossed his arms as if the room would attack him. Unbuttoned, his jacket revealed the white shirt underneath, the linen speckled with grime from the road.

  Clark set his helmet on the table. “The fire will keep animals away if they come to the doorway and it will provide us with some heat. We’ll take turns sleeping.” He popped the back compartment of his cycle and pulled out the bread Jeremiah had taken from the kitchen. He’d wrapped it in a cloth and added two jars of peaches. One jar he set on the shelf near the door. “That will be for the next straggler.”

  How odd to actually have food in the refuge. When he’d come before, he’d huddled near the hearth burning furniture from other rooms, ignoring the growls in his stomach.

  “You’re wasting our food?” Jeremiah reached for the jar, but Clark seized his wrist. Jeremiah had grown up without feeling dizzy from lack of nourishment, without ever staying awake for fear of starving.

  Clark’s mother had appeared beside him, once, when he’d wept from hunger.

  “Don’t fear, my darling boy,” she’d cooed, be she hallucination or spirit, perhaps a memory. “Your own pains can be ignored so long as you don’t inflict them on others.”

  She didn’t appear often, but when she did, he crumbled.

  “There’s more than enough back at the ranch,” Clark growled at his half-brother. “The people who come here need it.”

  “Outlaws?” Scowling, Jeremiah jerked away.

  Would he call Clark an outlaw now? “Men who would be honest if they could, but instead, they survive.”

  Jeremiah bared his teeth. “What do we do tomorrow?”

  “We find some of those people.” Clark grinned when Jeremiah gulped.

  By midmorning, Clark and Jeremiah had reached the Spindle Pass, where two ridges pressed together. Rocks had fallen along the edges and the path down the middle appeared bumpy, unused. As Clark headed toward the left, Jeremiah waved for him to stop.

  Clark halted and his half-brother pulled up alongside. “Yeah?” Had Jeremiah ever left the ranch?

  “You know what this is?” Jeremiah pointed at the ridges.

  Clark pulled down his bandana. “Spindle’s Pass.” He refrained from adding “duh.” Jeremiah might not understand the slang term.

  “We can’t go through here,” Jeremiah yelled. “The gangs prey on these people.”

  Clark rolled his eyes. Before the railroad, Spindle’s Pass had been one of the few paths to Hedlund from the rest of the country. Outlaws had lurked at the top shooting arrows and guns at passersby. They would charge down the rocks to accost them. With the railroad, though, fewer people passed through and the gangs had moved on. “That was over twenty years ago.”

  Jeremiah scratched his thigh. “But it happened.”

  “The outlaws bu
ilt caves and shelters,” Clark explained. The perfect hideouts for misfits. Some people still passed through, so action did still happen, but fewer. Instead, Spindle’s Pass had become another refuge for those who didn’t want to be found. “This way.”

  A narrow edge provided enough room for a steamcycle, or a horse, and led to the top. The tires bumped over rocks and some of the path had crumbled. Clark held his breath as he maneuvered his cycle close to the wall.

  “Bloody gears,” Jeremiah swore from behind him, but he kept the cycle steady.

  Why hadn’t anyone accosted them yet? Clark bit back a scowl. The gangs had better still be there. He’d come from the pass to the Treasure Ranch. The misfits couldn’t have moved on that fast.

  An arrow pinged into the dirt beside Clark’s front tire as he rode on to the top. He stopped, leaving enough room for Jeremiah to drive off the ledge onto steady ground, and removed his helmet so the gang could see who intruded. He held out his arm to keep Jeremiah at his side.

  “Gears,” Jeremiah breathed.

  The cycles had made enough commotion to rouse the inhabitants from the thirty lean-tos sprinkled across the ridge. Young men and women stepped forward with weapons drawn, a mix of archery and guns. The youngest occupant, a boy of thirteen, wielded a hatchet.

  Misfits cast from society: orphans expelled from the religious orphanages for being too unruly, Tarnished Silvers who chose not to whore their bodies, men wanted by the law for a mistake they regretted. Their number also included Bromi natives who had chosen freedom over slavery—or death.

  “Hello.” Clark turned off his cycle’s engine. “Didn’t expect me so soon, huh?”

  A Bromi man around Clark’s age stepped forward with his arrow aimed at Jeremiah. “Who you bring?”

  Clark switched to the Bromi language; the misfits used it in case anyone outside the pact overheard. “This is my brother. I have been accepted into my family.”

  “You speak that?” Jeremiah yelped. “That’s the slave tongue.”

  Clark winced. Of course Jeremiah would have to insult their helpers.

  The Bromi man continued forward with measured steps, but he nodded. The sun had turned his bare skin the color of mud, his chest and arms corded with muscles. A deerskin loincloth hung around his narrow waist and a copper necklace dangled from his thick neck. His naked toes dug into the rock as he paused. “Why you bring him?”

  “My family has been attacked.” Clark pushed his goggles up so he could study the crowd’s expressions. Most of them had poor luck with family. The girl behind the Bromi man, younger than Clark by a year, had been kicked out of her home when a drifter raped her in her father’s cornfield. She’d turned to prostitution as a Tarnished Silver before fleeing from a cruel brothel master. She would have no passion for family.

  Yet, those who remained at the ridge, and those who visited before moving on, were a family. They stuck together because they had no one else.

  “Who attacked you?” the Bromi asked.

  “Senator Horan’s brother has a vendetta against my family.” Clark jutted his chin. “Senator Horan has an airship that looks like a metal disk. He used it to kidnap my sister.”

  “How old is she?” asked a man with a rifle. Closer to Jeremiah’s age, he’d been forced to rob banks with his father until a sheriff shot the man.

  “Sixteen,” Clark said.

  “We saw what you speak of.” The Bromi nodded. Wind tugged on his shoulder-length black hair. “It was far in the distance, a silver flying machine.”

  “Senator Horan keeps it in a hangar secret from the government. We need to find that hangar.” Clark saluted the crowd. “Has one of you seen the building? I bow to your wisdom.” A Bromi saying that worked well to show respect and homage.

  Another Bromi warrior glided forward, his steps silent despite the loose stones. “Before my tribe was enslaved, we lived near where it was built. I can take you.”

  “I will accompany,” said the first Bromi man. “A sister is precious. You will need assistance.”

  Clark turned to Jeremiah with a chuckle. “They’ll help us. Robin Flight knows where the hangar is.”

  “Robin Flight?” Jeremiah repeated.

  He’d be more familiar if the slaves weren’t given “normal” names in captivity.

  Jeremiah removed his helmet as he faced the group. “We will pay whoever wishes to help.”

  The first Bromi man lowered his bow and slid his arrow into his quiver. “It is honor we choose, not money.”

  “And to ruin a senator,” Robin Flight said in Bromi. Jeremiah didn’t need to know that until Clark knew where his feelings lay in regards to the government.

  methyst kicked the wall. Metal jolted against her bare foot and she gritted her teeth. “Give me back my bloody shoes!”

  The guard’s laughter drifted through the tin shed where they’d locked her. A padlock sealed the door and rope bound her wrists. The brown linen dress they’d given her to wear scratched against her skin.

  “You could’ve left me underwear,” she added.

  The guard laughed outside. The one who’d brought her in had shoved her into the shed, tossed in the dress, and commanded she change out of everything. When he returned, he’d pulled down a corner of her sleeve to check her bare shoulder to make sure she wasn’t wearing anything.

  “You want me naked?” she’d shrieked.

  He’d chuckled, his goggles making his eyes appear to bug. “You won’t go nowhere without proper clothes.”

  Day had turned into night, marked by the darkness outside the shed. When dawn came, the tin seemed to glow. Now, heat vibrated within. Sweat beaded along her skin to run down, soaking into the dress. At least it was thin enough to keep her from overheating.

  “Idiots,” she snarled. The shed, with its dirt floor, was empty except for her. The criminals had to want a ransom. Sure, her father would pay it, and then he’d sic the army after them. They wouldn’t go without punishment for dragging her into that contraption and leaving her to melt in a tool shed. “I’m not a shovel!”

  When the army freed her, she would be in every newspaper across the country. Treasure daughter found and Treasure heiress rescued. People would send her gifts of sympathy. Her parents would let her go back to her great-uncle in the city where the worst thing to happen was being mugged at the docks when they watched ships sail into port. At least one positive thing would occur if it meant going home.

  “You hear that?” came the muffled voice of the guard. No, “guard” sounded too professional. He was a villain.

  “Like a steamcycle?” asked another villain. His voice seemed softer, as if coming from farther away.

  “The army will rescue me,” she yelled.

  “Honey,” said the first villain, “the army don’t care about you.”

  Her eyes widened. “My father is the Garth Treasure. My brother is a general. Of course they’ll care!”

  “It stopped,” the second villain said. “Must’ve moved on. Horan should come by later.”

  Horan. Amethyst bit her lower lip. The crook didn’t want a ransom then. He wanted revenge.

  Clark sat back on his cycle’s seat and folded his arms. Below the outcrop, sunlight reflected off the tin hangars. Two were side-by-side and long enough to house three airships each. A wooden cabin rested behind, probably for Senator Horan to use when he arrived, and beside that, a tin shed. Two men in fringed pants, button up skirts, and leather vests stood outside it.

  “Amethyst must be in there.” Clark pointed at the shed. They wouldn’t guard it for nothing, with their rifles slung across their backs and pistols at their waists.

  “Let’s ride down.” Jeremiah snapped his goggles in place over his eyes. “We’ll take them when they don’t expect us.”

  “No, we plan,” Clark snapped to his half-brother beside him. Riding down might turn into a massacre. They needed to scope the site more to determine how many guards Senator Horan had posted altogether.

  “Yo
ur brother is right,” Robin Flight said. He’d gathered twenty of the misfits, all those with steamcycles; innocent horses didn’t belong amongst bloodshed. The gang stretched across the edge of the outcrop like a ribbon of metal upon rock. “They think this is secret. The government doesn’t know. They won’t expect you to have us.”

  Clark frowned at the hangar. A faint path led toward the east, probably to the main road. “Nothing can be a secret forever.” Except for mine. Despite the baking sun, he shivered.

  “We kill everyone we see,” a man down the line barked. He’d been an accountant at a bank until the manager accused him of stealing to cover up his own crimes. An accountant wouldn’t be believed over a manager; the man had taken off to live free.

  “We ruin the airships.” Jeremiah pumped his fist. Maybe he didn’t make such a bad misfit.

  “I’ll get Amethyst and the other two people from Cogton,” Clark called. “You do the rest.” Jeremiah’s hotheadedness would fuel his bloodlust. Let him take it out on machines and villains. Clark would get Amethyst away. His mother would want her to be the top priority.

  “Attack,” Robin Flight shouted. The warriors switched on their steamcycles in a unison rumble that seemed to shake the rocks beneath them. They gunned their vehicles forward fast enough to jump the jagged edge. The rubber tires bounced against rocks and the riders swayed to keep the cycles upright. Jeremiah whooped as he followed the crowd.

  Clark grinned despite the dust slapping his face. Grit crunched between his teeth. If he had to have an older brother, Jeremiah didn’t make such a bad one.

  The guards ran toward them, rifles aimed. One of the riders drew a pistol and shot it at the closest guard. Blood blossomed on the front of his plaid button-up shirt. His body jerked before he fell backwards into the hangar’s wall. The other guards paused to fire and the misfits retaliated with bullets and arrows. The four Bromi in the group parked their cycles to handle their bows. Bullets ricocheted off rocks and buried into the ground. Dust rose into the still air. Arrows with hawk feathers attached to the ends buried themselves into the guards’ arms and legs. Men shouted in pain, bellowing curses. Explosions from rifles and pistols drowned out the roar of the cycles.