Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One)

by Richard Ellis Preston Jr.

  “Cookie cooked up some bangers and eggs for Kellie,” Howard continued. Kellie yipped at the word “bangers.” Kellie was crazy for bangers. “Cookie said there’s nothing like a crash landing to make the hens pop eggs like there’s no tomorrow.”

  Sabrina opened her logbook in her casual, unperturbed fashion. “I have a status report on the piloting-gondola control surfaces, if you wish, Captain.”

  “Go ahead,” Buckle said. As Sabrina began her list of repairs, Buckle could not help but be distracted by the raucous singing resounding from the mess hall. Had they been singing all this time? He could not recall.

  YE WHO HAVE LOVED AND LOST

  IT WAS AN OLD MEMORY—AT least for Sabrina, who was only nineteen, six years distant was an old memory—and it overwhelmed the present moment with such vividness that she actually stopped speaking in midsentence, in order to catch her breath.

  She was aboard the airship trader Condor once again, a thirteen-year-old whose heart was beating so rapidly she could feel it drumming in her wrists.

  “I love you, Sabrina,” Gabriel Teague said, his face only inches from hers, speaking loudly over the roar of the steam boilers, just inside the hatchway of the old tramp.

  It was a loud, seal-oil-stinking, greasy place—but they could be alone there, away from the laughing eyes of the crew.

  Sabrina placed her hand on his chest, halfheartedly pushing him away. “Dear Gabriel,” she answered. “It is no good.”

  His brown eyes never left hers. “I love you.”

  Sabrina looked away and found the porthole across the passageway to stare at, the gray clouds drifting by. She could say nothing. Yes, she loved him. But she was only thirteen—what did she know? He was two years her senior and brutally handsome, in her opinion, his father the Condor’s owner and captain, and she was only a hired hand, a cargo rat one rung above a stowaway, working for bunk and board. “Your father would not approve,” she said.

  It was such a falsehood. She knew Gabriel’s father, and he would not care one whit. But Sabrina feared—she knew—that she would only torture Gabriel with her damaged heart.

  “If you do not declare the love I know you harbor for me, I swear I shall throw myself off the airship right now,” Gabriel declared, quite defiantly.

  Sabrina turned her eyes to his and kept them there. Inside, she was crumbling. Her family was gone. Marter was gone. Helpless to act upon her plots of revenge, she was alone. She wanted to love Gabriel.

  “I love you then, if saying so will serve to prevent you from jumping over the side,” Sabrina blurted, and when Gabriel kissed her, she wept.

  “I shall make a fortune for us, you shall see,” Gabriel had enthused. “My father has given me shares. Tomorrow morning, after we deliver our rubber shipment, I shall be a wealthy man.”

  The next morning, Gabriel and his father were dead, along with most of the crew. The Condor, stripped of her cargo and hydrogen, was burning.

  And Sabrina, the Jonah, bloody and branded with a hot iron, lay in the hold of the slaver pirates, waiting to die.

  It was startling what the brain might suddenly choose to offer from its depths, uninvited.

  Sabrina inhaled and continued reading her instrument reports out loud. She was unsettled. It was not the memory of poor Gabriel that derailed her. It hurt, certainly, but, no—she was dismayed by what she had just seen.

  She did not know what she thought of what she had just glimpsed between Max and Buckle. Seeing them locked together, drinking “to the blood,” was not unusual—she had taken that comradely oath with Buckle as well—but the naked moment she witnessed between them, more sensed than saw, was startling.

  Sabrina and Max were not particularly close, more acquaintances than sisters, but she knew what purple in Martian eyes meant. Max was in love with Romulus Buckle. Max was in love with Romulus Buckle, and he, magnificent, kind, handsome oaf that he was, had no bloody idea.

  At first she was just surprised. Now she felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach.

  BUFFALO STEAK AND A DUEL FOR DINNER

  BY THE TIME CAPTAIN BUCKLE, Howard Hampton, and Kellie arrived in the mess hall, the festivities were in full swing. Some of the Ballblasters and Alchemists were also in the thick of it, including Wolfgang and Zwicky, and they appeared to be enjoying themselves. The airship’s string quartet fiddled at the back of the chamber. It was not a full quartet, not anymore, not with the fourth chair empty after the death of their second violinist, Amanda Ambrose, the night before, but the remaining three carried on.

  “Three cheers for Captain Buckle!” shouted boilerman Nicholas Faraday, shoving through the crowd and thrusting a shot glass of illegally acquired gin into Buckle’s hand. “The Cap’n who soars with the tanglers!”

  The voices of the assembled crew rose as one. “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”

  Buckle lifted the glass and threw back the gin, its bite always popping with midshipman memories, most of them fond. He was a gin man no more, however—the juniper berry distillation was coarser to his palate than his much preferred rum.

  The men and women cheered, and a chant arose: “Name! Name! Name!”

  Buckle raised his hand. The mess went silent. He eyed the empty chair and thought of the name. “Amanda Ambrose,” he announced loudly. “The finest skinner I ever saw, the sweetest violinist I ever heard, and the finest ripper I ever met!”

  “To Amanda Ambrose!” the chief skinner, Marian Boyd, shouted.

  “To Amanda Ambrose!” the crew repeated in unison, then cheered.

  The wake party surged on, and Buckle found himself propelled forward by the husky arm of Perriman Salisbury.

  “I could cook you up some tangler giblets, Captain,” Salisbury joked. “Scraped fresh off the roof. Think of it: the beastie tries to eat you, but you eat the beastie. The irony of it all makes one’s mouth water, does it not?”

  “Tangler innards are poisonous, are they not?” Buckle asked.

  “That is beside the point.” Salisbury laughed. He sat Buckle down at a table, and slid a plate of hot buffalo steak, eggs, and bangers in front of him. Another plate, with bangers and a greasy shank bone, was placed on the deck for Kellie.

  “Everyone else has been fed, Cookie?” Buckle asked Salisbury.

  “Yes, Captain,” Salisbury replied. “I always make sure you are the last.”

  “It looks to be a capital dish,” Buckle said, thrusting his fork into the thick cut of venison on the metal plate, swirling it around in its greasy blood and the butter from the eggs, and cutting away a chunk of it with his knife. He jammed the meat into his mouth. It tasted so good he almost fainted.

  Katzenjammer Smelt’s voice ruined the whole thing.

  “Romulus Buckle, I expect you to surrender my airship to me the moment we arrive in Imperial territory,” Smelt announced, suddenly appearing across the table. “I will, of course, assure you and your crew safe conduct home.”

  Buckle, slowly chewing his steak, stared at Smelt. “What is done is done. This is my airship, Chancellor.”

  “I am honor-bound not to accept such an answer,” Smelt said evenly.

  The mess hall suddenly fell silent.

  “The Pneumatic Zeppelin is my airship, and you shall return her to me or suffer the consequences, sir,” Smelt pressed.

  “Have a drink, Chancellor,” Buckle offered.

  Nicholas Faraday ambled forward and shoved a glass of gin into Smelt’s face. “Aye! Have a drink, Imperial. Take the edge off.”

  Smelt slapped the gin away, spraying it all over Faraday.

  Sergeant Scully lunged forward, hurling his glassful of grog into Smelt’s face. “The captain said have a drink, you filthy spiker!”

  In a flash, Smelt’s sword was free of its scabbard, the flashing tip poised at Scully’s throat. “Have at it, Sergeant. Take the last breath you shall ever take.”

  The mood of the crowd went black. With hissing curses they closed in.

  Buckle jumped to his feet. “
Enough!”

  Everyone stopped. The mess fell silent again.

  Smelt lowered his sword and turned to Buckle. “You, sir, are a thief and a blackguard. If you refuse to return to me what is rightfully mine, then I must force your hand as a matter of honor. I invoke the right to challenge you to a Captain’s Duel. To the death.”

  A volcano went off in Buckle’s brain. He wanted to lunge at Smelt’s throat. He did not.

  “Do you accept, sir?” Smelt asked, almost whispering, watching Buckle with the eyes of a cobra waiting to strike. “Or is there not one scrap of honor in you?”

  There was nothing in the world at that moment that Buckle wanted more than to run a sword through Katzenjammer Smelt. “By the Code of the Captains, I accept.”

  “Choose your weapon,” Smelt said through gritted teeth.

  Swords. That was Buckle’s first thought. The blade was his best talent. But his fighting arm was injured. No, if Buckle was going to annihilate Smelt, it would have to be with a firearm. “Pistols,” Buckle said, “at ten paces.”

  “Pistols it is,” Smelt replied, his eyes glittering, especially the one behind the monocle.

  “Howard!” Buckle yelled. Howard Hampton jumped to his side, eyeing Smelt suspiciously.

  “Aye, Captain,” Howard said, trying to chew down a mouthful of steak.

  Buckle placed his hand on Howard’s shoulder. “There is a set of dueling pistols inside the drawer of the Lion’s Table up in my quarters. Go get the box and bring it to me up on the roof as fast as you can.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Howard took off at a sprint.

  Buckle looked at Smelt and gracefully extended his arm toward the keel corridor. “Shall we, Chancellor?”

  Smelt rammed his sword home into its scabbard with a sharp clank and strode out of the mess hall.

  Buckle turned to the sea of furious and concerned faces around him. “This will be finished in a matter of minutes. All of you remain here. Remain here!” He spun on his heel and marched after Smelt.

  THE ROOF

  BUCKLE STOOD ON THE MASSIVE roof of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, glaring at Katzenjammer Smelt in the chilly dusk, and wondered just how exactly he had gotten there. Hummingbirds buzzed the skin patches, rushing the hemp stitches and stiffening glue. A mild breeze had come up from the west, tugging at the folds of the zeppelin’s skin and driving the long, gray-black sweep of smoke from the funeral fires out over the dark blues of the channel, where the fluttering dots of seabirds wheeled high above.

  It had started to snow. The air floated with fat, soft snowflakes that played more than they fell.

  Howard Hampton clambered up out of the observer’s nacelle access hatch and arrived at Buckle’s hip. He flipped open a carved wooden chest to reveal a green felt interior that housed two blackbang dueling pistols, along with balls, powder satchels, and ramrods.

  Buckle took the chest and offered it to Smelt. “For your inspection, Chancellor,” he said.

  Smelt lifted one of the pistols and hefted it in his hand. “Acceptable,” he said.

  Buckle took the second pistol, and he and Smelt carefully loaded and primed their weapons in silence. Howard Hampton stared at them with wide eyes.

  “Ready?” Buckle asked Smelt.

  “Yes,” Smelt answered, cocking the firing hammer on his pistol with a heavy click.

  “Howard,” Buckle said. “When I give the word you will count to ten.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Howard replied weakly.

  “Just count out ten paces, boy,” Smelt said to Howard, then turned his gleaming monocle on Buckle. “On ten we turn and fire.”

  “Pick any distance, Smelt. You are a ghost already,” Buckle said.

  Smelt smiled. Buckle hadn’t expected that. It was a genuine grin, wide and long-toothed across the tight skin of his face, the chin and cheeks smattered with beard stubble. Buckle turned so he faced away from Smelt. He was looking northward: below, he could see the long span of the shoreline; the snowfall gave the landscape a softness, muting the edges between the dark sea, white land, and red-tinged clouds of evening.

  Smelt stepped behind him, his boots squeaking on the snow that was collecting on the canvas. They were now back-to-back. Buckle looked at Howard and nodded.

  “One!” Howard yelled nervously.

  Buckle took one stride forward. The carved wooden handle of the dueling pistol felt warm in his hand as he held it at his chest, barrel upright. It was a good weight.

  “Two!”

  Buckle had never been in a shooting duel before. He was an excellent marksman, but if he had his druthers he would always fight with swords. Blackbang firearms were unpredictable—even the master-crafted dueling pistols could easily misfire.

  “Three…four!”

  Buckle’s boots almost floated under him, his tread spongy on the taut canvas. The world felt unstable, and he felt loose in it. It was not nerves—even his rage had calmed, tempered by the opportunity to exact his revenge. Killing Smelt would throw a big wrench into Balthazar’s diplomatic plans, yes, but the die had been cast. There was no going back now.

  “Five…six!” Howard shouted, his voice gradually falling off behind Buckle.

  When he turned to fire, Buckle knew to rotate halfway, standing sideways to Smelt, presenting his slender flank, rather than his chest, to present as small a target as possible.

  “Seven!”

  The wind gusted, cold, driving a handful of snowflakes into Buckle’s face. The next two strides seemed as if they might take a thousand years. Even if Smelt did manage to pot him, he would get his shot off as well. Buckle would not miss. Perhaps today the crew of the Pneumatic Zeppelin would fire two more funeral pyres on the snowy Catalina slopes. If Buckle sent Smelt to his grave, he could die happy…and then he remembered Elizabeth.

  “Eight!”

  The sinews in Buckle’s cold fingers stiffened as he tightened his grip on the pistol. His injured right wrist, freed from its sling, ached. He thought he heard something lightly scamper across the canvas behind him, as if a gazelle had just passed through.

  Death arriving to make a collection, perhaps.

  “I, uh, nine!” Howard stuttered.

  What in blue blazes was wrong with Howard Hampton, messing up the count like that? Buckle thought, as he took another stride. Well, in one second it would not matter.

  “Ten!”

  Buckle whirled around and flung out his arm.

  How he stopped himself from pulling the trigger, Buckle would never know.

  THE WHITE ANGEL

  WHEN BUCKLE TURNED, HIS FINGER full on the trigger, the sinew coiled to jerk, he discovered Lady Andromeda standing directly between him and Katzenjammer Smelt. In that instant she seemed an apparition in white, an angel, her long infirmary gown and untethered hair flowing in the wind, her skin as pale as the snow under her bare feet, her eyes startlingly black, her lips bright red, her ivory white hands thrust out, long fingers quivering.

  It was as if she had risen up from the Pneumatic Zeppelin itself.

  “Curses, woman!” Smelt bellowed, attempting to aim his pistol past her. “Get out of the way!”

  Buckle peered down the barrel sight. He could see Smelt lurking beyond Andromeda, but she was in the way of a good shot. He did not trust the accuracy of his blackbang pistol to aim past her by a hair’s breadth. And neither did Smelt.

  “I shall do no such thing!” Andromeda shouted. “Either shoot me or lower your weapons, for I shall stand for nothing less!”

  Frustration dug its claws into Buckle. Smelt should be lying dead on the roof by now. “With all due respect, Lady Andromeda, this is not your affair,” Buckle said, still trying to keep Smelt as square as he could in his sights.

  “You fools! Can you not see?” Andromeda despaired. “Can you not think for yourselves? We are doomed if we continue to fight one another. Fortune has made us allies, and I, for one, shall not see the workings of fortune undone. So now, Romulus and Katzenjammer, lower your pistols.”<
br />
  The duel was over. Buckle lowered his pistol to his thigh and saw Smelt do the same.

  “Thank you, Lady Andromeda!” Howard Hampton interjected, with a sigh of relief.

  “Come to me, both of you,” Andromeda ordered.

  Buckle marched forward to arrive at Lady Andromeda’s left shoulder, just as Smelt arrived at her right. Up close, Andromeda looked terribly ill: her skin was too pale, the blood beneath coursing too faint and blue, her eyes too dark, her lips too sinisterly crimson.

  “Lady Andromeda,” Buckle said, “we need to get you back inside and into bed.”

  “I must agree,” Smelt said with a concern that seemed genuine. “I am afraid you look entirely unwell.”

  “No!” Andromeda said with a grimace. “Not until you two end the blood feud between you. The Crankshafts, the Imperials, and the Alchemists must join as one, or be destroyed in turn when the Founders crusade begins. The time for your private little war is over. Swear to bury your hostility toward one another before me, here and now.”

  Buckle and Smelt locked eyes and stared. The hatred Buckle felt for the man seemed insurmountable. “But, my lady,” Buckle said, “Smelt and the Imperials broke a treaty of truce between us. They attacked our stronghold in the night and bombed our houses and airships. Dozens of our clan were killed, including my sister and Balthazar’s wife. Such a thing cannot be forgiven.”

  “Liar!” Smelt snarled, his face purpling. “My clan made no such attack. It was you who broke the truce, you who invented this lie so you could raid us. Do you think I would allow you to steal my airship, this very airship which you just wrecked, and never come to take it back from you? Your punishment is at hand, Romulus Buckle.”

  “I saw the crosses on your airships in the night, Smelt,” Buckle said evenly. “I saw the bombs falling from your gondolas. Upon the souls of those you murdered, how dare you claim that you did not attack us.”

  Smelt fell into a smoldering calmness. “The Imperials have never broken a treaty or truce. Never. When we make war, we declare it first.”