Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3)

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “Enough of this. I order you to come with me.” Max said.

  “Leave … me … be,” Valentine repeated through gritted teeth, head lower, his voice shaking.

  “Get out of that chair and come with me, Mr. Valentine, or I shall have you clapped in irons for insubordination.”

  “Leave … me … be!” With the last word, Valentine lashed out, swinging his right arm on the backhand.

  Max had not expected her crewman to strike her. His forearm, big and muscled from a lifetime of shoveling coal, struck her across the base of her throat and knocked her off the stool. The tavern whirled and she landed on her back on the beer-splattered floor. The stitches running up and down her torso felt like they blew apart and she released a sharp cry of pain.

  Perhaps she had pushed Valentine a little too hard.

  Max rolled over onto her hands and knees and leveraged herself up onto her feet. The squeak of her boots on the wet floorboards was too loud. The tavern had fallen silent. She froze, lantern light piercing through the rivers of her black hair hanging over her face, hurting her eyes. Her hood had fallen back, the weight of the wool soft against the back of her neck, the humid heat of the tavern tickling her ears.

  “Martian!” someone shouted. “A damned Martian!”

  Chair legs scraped across the uneven floor as seated patrons jumped to their feet. A low, angry howl rose from the assembled crowd.

  “It surely is!” a woman shouted, drunk and belligerent, her clipped accent unique to the Black Diamond clan. “Hidden among us like a snake, she is!”

  Ignoring the brutal throbbing in her back, Max stood as tall and straight as she possibly could. She threw her hair back and faced the sea of slack-jaw, snarling faces. Valentine sat on the floor, the swing of his blow having also carried him off his stool. He looked stunned and hurt, gripping the joint where his peg leg attached to his knee, the shortened trouser leg now stained with fresh blood.

  “Vile zebe!” a Gallowglass zeppelineer, a big, burly lout with a blond beard, yelled, drawing a knife from his belt. “Here selling delirium poison!”

  Max backed up a step. She both saw and sensed the predator-like encroachment of The Ophir’s rough crowd as they left their drinks on the tables and slowly, pack-like, crept up to encircle her. Max did not recognize one face among them. If the Pneumatic Zeppelin had been in harbor there might have been a few of her own crew there and, regardless of their personal feelings, duty would have brought them running to her defense.

  Max’s hand instinctively slid to the spot on her hip where her saber handle would have been but even as she grasped for it she knew it wasn’t there. She should have borrowed a sword on her way out of the citadel. Martians were strong but, unarmed and hurt, she would not be able to hold so many with her bare hands. She snatched an iron candlestick holder off of a table, the paraffin candles tumbling across the floor in rolling flickers. The holder made for a worthy club but it would do her little good once the crowd pinned her down.

  The blond-bearded Gallowglass brute, his drink-bright eyes gleaming with the prospect easy violence, led the advance upon Max. “I take first crack, you blackhearts!”

  The mob surged in, tightening the circle. Max saw the gleam of brass knuckles and knives. The beer aftertaste in her mouth turned sour and she wanted to spit, though that was something she would never do, etiquette-wise. Her eyes itched terribly, needing moisture; rapid blinking eased the discomfort but it also blurred her vision.

  Blood-weak and half-blind. Perfect, Max thought.

  Someone stepped in front of her with the clomp of wood thumping on wood, placing his barrel-chested form between Max and the Gallowglass man. “Stand down,” Valentine shouted. “There shall be no violence here.”

  “You have been hypnotized to stand with this freak, brother,” the Gallowglass man raged, though he looked surprised. “Brain-addled by a zebe. We shall teach her a lesson! Do not interfere with your own revenge!”

  “Nay, brother,” Valentine replied. “She is Max of the Crankshafts, the adopted half-breed daughter of Admiral Balthazar. You hear me? Lay not one hand upon her, charlatans, for if you harm a child of Balthazar’s it shall be most unlikely that you escape the Punchbowl with yer lives. Stand down!”

  “Balthazar is not here,” The Gallowglass trader replied, aghast. “And you, brother, you stand with this monster? You, a sky dog? A Roustabout? One of us? One of us whose leg must be paid for?”

  “She is my officer,” Valentine growled, rocking between his good leg and peg leg in his drunkenness. “I do tend to dislike her, you see, but she is my Lieutenant and I am bound by oath to defend my shipmates to the death. Such is the oath of all zeppelineers and I wager that all of you have taken it. So if you pick a fight with her you pick a fight with me, brother.”

  The forward lean of the mob shifted back in a tiny, near imperceptible way. Max felt it. She was rescued.

  The bearded Gallowglass man grimaced, glancing back at the group. He threw his arm out, pointing at Max over Valentine’s shoulder. “You are most lucky, you stinking zebe bitch, that your filthy hide is owned by the leader of the Crankshafts and that one of our own has stood up for you in this public house. Because if it were not this way I’d already have your striped hide tacked up on that wall.”

  “Time to go, Mr. Valentine,” Max said.

  Valentine held up a penny, glaring at her with half-open eyes. “But I got enough for one more beer—”

  Max snatched Valentine by the collar and, at the cost of more pain in her back, yanked him around table after table and knot after knot of leering faces until she squeezed him out the door.

  The cold of the night air focused Max’s mind. She dropped the candlestick without being aware of it and the loud clang of its iron on the cobblestones startled her. Faces turned in the dark street, peering at her in the weak lantern light. Max threw her hood back over her head. Valentine tore free of her grasp to stumble up against the side of the tavern, bend over and vomit.

  It seemed to take forever as Max waited for Valentine to finish puking. The people in the street had turned back to their own nefarious deals, however—the sight of a Martian, a cassiderium dealer, perhaps— did little to rattle them.

  “You owe me a shilling’s worth of beer, damn you,” Valentine spit, gasped and vomited again.

  “I shall reimburse you,” Max replied. She felt as if she had slipped into the surreal where the flickering snowfall and ice-rimed cobblestones gleamed weightless under the illumination of the street lamps. Everything pulsed red-yellow, red-yellow with the throb of her barely healed wounds. Most painful was the knowledge that Valentine had saved her from a beating, saved her perhaps even from death, and she was unhappy owing anything to a man like him.

  XVII

  AN ODD COUPLE

  The journey through the Devil’s Punchbowl was slow but much easier for Max. With her hood on and Valentine at her side, drunk and argumentative, hobbling along on his peg, they fit right in with the town’s nocturnal crowd. She was a cloaked apothecary of dark drugs, he the addled and addicted customer, out for a stroll. The cold air, sweet after the sickly warm miasma of The Ophir, braced the body. Above the yellow haloes of the streetlights the clouds glowed with a peculiar sheen of moonlight, a rippling silver and blue ceiling the people called ‘Pearlie’s blanket.’

  Valentine’s wooden leg slipped across the cobblestones and he nearly fell. “Blast the frog-eared ghost of the frog-headed bastard who fathered me!” he roared.

  “The airship corps shall provide you with a mechanical leg,” Max said. “Traversing cobblestones shall be no hindrance then, and less cause for babblement.”

  Valentine spit, wiping his mouth his sleeve. “I don’t want nor need no clockwork device attached to my person. The peg suits me just fine, it does.”

  “Suit yourself,” Max said.

  “How about we just don’t talk at all, Lieutenant?” Valentine grumbled. “That would suit me.”

  It would hav
e suited Max as well. Valentine’s breath stank of bile. “You need to sleep. Go home.”

  “You damn well dragged me outta my home,” Valentine grumbled.

  “I meant where you sleep, Mr. Valentine.”

  Valentine sighed. “I always slept on my flying machine.”

  “You have no home, no place to sleep beyond the Pneumatic Zeppelin?”

  “I always slept on my assigned airship from the day I was brought on at sixteen, with the exception of a few inns here and there on leave. I started with the Albert, then the Bromhead and now the Pneumatic Zeppelin.”

  Valentine’s lack of a ground home did not surprise Max. The crew who came into the zeppelin service young and poor often need no other residence, especially if they remained unmarried. “I’ll find you a bunk in the citadel, then.”

  Valentine guffawed. “What, Lieutenant, do you plan to bed me? You are far too young and pretty to fancy a rough old coot like me, even with your nasty skin.”

  Max halted, not out of any affront taken from Valentine’s words—the man could spew insults all night long and not bother her—but the street had taken a steep rise and her strength, falling away, threatened to fail her again; she feared another step might result in her knees collapsing.

  Valentine cleared his throat and she felt him looking at her hood. “Begging your pardon, Lieutenant. My mouth runs ahead of my brain more often than not.”

  “The open sewer of your mouth is of no concern to me, crewman,” Max whispered. Every intake of breath hurt her back. Something hot trickled down the left side of her ribcage.

  “Yes, well, I did save yer striped hide this evening, did I not?” Valentine replied, heartiness returned, born to deliver unintentional insults. “I suppose that might buy me a little room for my indiscretions.”

  “I am making exceptions because you are hurt and drunk, Mr. Valentine,” Max said. “But continue after such a fashion and it will buy you the brig in the morning.”

  “Aye, Lieutenant,” Valentine responded softly, almost with a tone of remorse, as if melancholy had suddenly overwhelmed him. “I do expect a punishment.”

  “A punishment?” Max asked, still, fighting dizziness.

  “For striking a senior officer. I am still on the ship’s roll. I expect punishment.”

  “I recall no such transgression,” Max said. “And let us leave it at that.”

  “I do regret hitting you, Lieutenant.”

  “No such thing happened. Do not speak of it again.”

  The earth tilted. Max would have toppled over had not Valentine caught her in his big, dirty hands.

  “Hold fast, Lieutenant,” Valentine said gently, his arms around her. “Are you injured?”

  “I just need to sit, to sit down,” Max whispered; her voice sounded weak and it angered her.

  “Here,” Valentine replied, guiding her to a seat on the stones of a low wall.

  Max removed her gloves and pressed her hands against her aching eyes. She had gone too long without the goggles, the irritation exacerbated by the stinking smoke of The Ophir. “Thank you, crewman.”

  “Aye,” Valentine answered softly. “Is it your wounds, Lieutenant? The surgeon, he told me about how you saved Captain Buckle, about how the sabertooths ripped you up at Tehachapi.”

  “No,” Max answered. A burst of frustration brought her new energy and she stood up.

  Valentine chuckled to himself and nodded. The boilerman was odd. But then, again, most pure humans struck Max as odd much of the time. “Where are we going, Lieutenant, if you don’t mind me asking?” He sounded less drunk than before. “This isn’t the way to the citadel.”

  Max took a deep breath and felt more blood meander down her back, which she ignored by resuming her walk, briskly this time. “Our destination is the public jetty. If we are going to get back to the Pneumatic Zeppelin we’ll need a fast ship to get us to her.”

  “Shouldn’t they be on their way back to us already?” Valentine asked. He looked pale in the pools of lamplight and the intervening shadows, his peg clicking on the cobblestones as he drew himself alongside her.

  “Unknown,” Max said. She had no idea how she knew it but she was certain Buckle was not heading home. “Our airship needs us.”

  “Your airship needs you, Lieutenant,” Valentine said. “I am no good for her now.”

  “You shall remain a part of my crew. I shall see to it.”

  “And how shall you do that?” The shred of hope in Valentine’s voice made putting up with him easier.

  “Captain Buckle has accommodations for a personal steward, a station he has resisted filling. I shall draft you into that service.” This was the solution Max had devised on her way to The Ophir, the way to keep Cornelius Valentine on the Pneumatic Zeppelin. Buckle would fight the idea, deeming the job unnecessary because he ate what the crew ate, but she knew how to outmaneuver him on such matters. The Captain’s steward was one of the few idler positions which would allow a disabled airman to remain with his airship.

  “Captain’s steward?” Valentine spluttered. “Me? I can’t boil a rat in a bucket. I would poison the captain with my cooking skills, I would.”

  Max wanted to smile. “You can fry an egg on a boiler, can you not?”

  “That’s not going to make a captain happy.”

  “It is a start. You shall learn. And our captain shall endure that difficult journey with you. Do we have an agreement?”

  “I … don’t the Captain pick his own steward?”

  “He has not done so and now I have done it for him. As first officer I am responsible for recruiting.”

  They walked for a quarter mile in silence, Valentine considering. Max smelled fabric stiffening dope and the parsley-infused aroma of Gallowglass lamb stew; they were approaching the jetty.

  “Maggots in the biscuits,” Valentine muttered. “I accept the position. But why do this for me?”

  “Since Lady Fortune has both damaged us and cast us together I recommend we do all we can to make the best of it. And let’s just say I owe you one, Mr. Valentine.”

  Valentine cleared his throat and belched with it. “Since you have salvaged me from certain beggary in the gutter I suppose I have no choice but to accept, and with gratitude. But I still do not enjoy your company overmuch, Lieutenant.”

  “The feeling is mutual, I assure you.”

  XVIII

  A FAST SHIP

  The high wooden structure of the public jetty was located on the southwestern outskirts of the Devil’s Punchbowl stronghold. Six small, sleek airships floated at the docking towers, overpowered corsairs and cutters with masters ducking the scrutiny of their cargoes required at the main airfield, running errands known only to them and the customers they served. Normally the jetty’s long stretch of boardwalk was well-lit by lamps but now, in near blackout conditions, only a few night lanterns glowed here and there, joined by the faint glow of buglights inside the gondola windows of the airships.

  Max stopped at the broad staircase leading up to the jetty boardwalk. “Can you make the stairs?” she asked Valentine.

  “Bah! Don’t worry about me, Lieutenant. This old salt has a new lease on life, he does,” Valentine replied. “Burning captain’s eggs.”

  “A simple ‘yes’ would have sufficed,” Max replied, starting up the steps.

  “Aye, but then the breath is wasted. It ain’t got no color to it. You see what I mean, Lieutenant?”

  “You are loquacious. I’ll give you that.”

  “I don’t know what that means but I’ll take it as a compliment,” Valentine said, his peg leg thumping on the wooden stairs as he kept pace with Max. She was operating at a reduced speed; it galled her but she dared not push her body any harder.

  The public jetty provided an expansive view overlooking the stronghold, maze-like in appearance because its fortifications and streets weaved around hundreds of rock outcroppings. The lanes were lit up here and there by a lantern-carrying citizen and the factory quarter glow
ed red and orange with the illumination of the forges, burning coal overtime to produce war materiel, and the color gave its streets and alleys a hellish aspect. The black silhouette of the citadel loomed over the town and beyond, its towers the high black rectangles of the airship hangars hunched like sleeping giants at the base of the mountains.

  The ellipsoidal shadows of docked Crankshaft war zeppelins hung massive and silent at the airfield. The entire fleet had been recalled and most of them were there, minus those on patrol.

  Max and Valentine moved through the anchor ropes, supply carts and unmarked crates crowding the jetty. The stretch was unattended except for a female air constable who sat cross-legged on a bench, whittling at a stick and looking drowsy. She gave them a long but disinterested glance as they passed.

  “Which one of these little bilge rats strikes your fancy, Lieutenant?” Valentine asked.

  “The black,” Max replied, pointing to a sleek corsair with a black envelope and an impressive array of six irregular propellers.

  “The Shenandoah,” Valentine said. “I’ve heard of her. She’s fast. Her captain is Prisco, a Gallowglass by birth and a real piece of work, so they say.”

  “Who are ‘they’?” Max asked, terribly thirsty once again.

  “They are the ones who know,” Valentine replied.

  Max and Valentine arrived at the corsair’s gangway, a simple, sturdy ramp of unfinished boards stamped with the name Shenandoah. They paused, waiting under the creak and groan of the corsair’s mooring ropes straining against the light breeze.

  “Who comes a calling?” A man’s voice rang out from the airship. He emerged from the gondola cabin, holding a buglight that lit the side of his long face and accentuated the shadows of his heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Two travelers seeking passage to Spartak,” Max said.

  “Spartak, eh? There’s a war on. Come back and make suicidal requests at a decent hour.”

  “I am Balthazar Crankshaft’s daughter and I must be away at dawn,” Max said. “We settle a transaction now or your competitors get my pretty penny.”