by Beth Cato
“Aether suffocation.” I shook my head in disgust. “More merciful than he deserved. You . . .”
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think he would die that fast.”
He wavered on his feet and I braced him by the shoulder. He was terrified of me, but more terrified of what he had caused. “Corrado was going to kill you, kill all of us. He deserves no grief.” His face remained blank, my words unable to pierce his shock. He was a rare Caskentian, to be so unacquainted with death. I turned away. “Where’s Starling?”
“She fled toward the hold, sir!” called one of my new hires, a woman steward. “She wore one of them wing suits, too. Mr. Hue and some of the others were right behind.”
Mention of Sheridan caused my breath to catch. I motioned to the lollygagging crew. “Keep guards on the soldiers. The rest of you, with me.”
We rushed through the crew section, passed our berths, and entered the darkened hold. Large parcels of freight filled the space along with our usual stores. Sheridan hunkered behind a box larger than him, with two other men close by. Farther back in the hold, I heard a distinct and familiar rattle.
“Secure yourselves!” I yelled and lunged to grab the steel ribbing of the wall.
The freight ramp opened with a roar and high whistle of wind. The beleaguered Argus shuddered and groaned at the pressure change as cold bludgeoned us. I gripped two security straps fastened to the wall. I quickly looped one through my belt and knotted it, then used the other to hop over to Sheridan as if rappelling. Out of my sight, the metal mouth of the ramp clanged, the wind clattering it shut in bursts. A glance confirmed that the rest of my crew had found handholds and ropes.
“Captain?” called Mrs. Starling. Her voice was faint over the wind and clamor of metal.
“Corrado’s dead,” I yelled. “We’re flying back to Caskentia.”
“Idiot! Sabotaging . . . best effort . . . stop the war.”
“How many Caskentians died to fuel that box of yours?” I yelled. She surely had it on her person.
“Thousands.” I hoped I’d misheard her, but I feared I had not. “You’d . . . vain!”
“Then make it to the Waste, if you can!” I yelled back. “Don’t risk our hides.” Don’t risk Sheridan.
I squeezed his arm then passed the rope to his grip. He’d known sailor knots before he knew his letters, so it took him mere seconds to secure the rope to his belt. I gingerly moved past him so I could look around at Starling. The wind and my own accursed stiffness dropped me to a knee. The iciness of the floor stabbed through the cloth.
“You’re not going to survive . . . night. Winds . . . Even if you did . . . send Daggers after you. Keep you quiet.”
I forced away more grief as I wondered at the fate of my aether magi.
Mrs. Starling stood with her back to the clattering hatch, secured by her own rope. Her body was bundled thick like an autumn bear, the broad straps of the wing suit forming an X over her chest. Over her shoulders, the wings had opened slightly and seemed rigged to her arms by a series of pulleys. A full leather helmet, the goggles glassed in green, covered her head. She poked around some other crates, looking for something. A way to keep the hatch open, I imagined. She couldn’t risk it crunching her or the wings.
“With Corrado gone, that’s one fewer,” I said.
For a moment, I mistook her high laugh for the wind. “I’m the Clockwork Dagger! Corrado . . . assistant . . . damn poor one. Your boy, on the other hand . . .”
“My boy?” I snapped.
“ . . . Reputation among docks and crews . . . Clever. Curious. I see one of your men brought Corrado’s wings. Give . . . Sheridan. Barely . . . petrol to make the flight. He can come with me . . . train in the palace.”
I wanted Sheridan to live out his potential, but I also wanted him to keep his soul. I looked at Sheridan. He seemed dumbstruck. God help me, was he actually considering this?
Mrs. Starling continued, “Besides . . . Captain. Feel . . . ship . . . something wrong, not just headwind . . . crash soon . . . he . . . wear wings. Escape.”
Faint light shone on Sheridan’s smooth face, his slim body. He was still very much a child. “Sheridan?” I whispered. When had I last called to him by his first name?
“No!” He shouted to be heard. I released a breath deeper than my lungs. “I’m crew of the Argus. I will not abandon ship.” He met my eye and murmured, “I won’t abandon you, Captain.”
“ . . . Very well!” Mrs. Starling’s voice rang out. “ . . . No second chances . . . Good as damned.”
There was a hard clang, then another. I looked around. Mrs. Starling had grabbed a length of rebar and was stabbing it onto the hatch. I knew she’d succeeded to hold the maw wide open when the wind truly howled through and around us, the chill like death. Loose ropes and detritus blew about. An old, desecrated portrait of Queen Evandia—stored down here for ages—flapped past me and toward the hatch.
When I looked around again, Mrs. Starling was gone.
“Sheridan?” I bent close to his face. “You can leave with those wings. Go on your own.”
“No, sir.” His gaze was hard.
“We’ve lost our ballast. The Argus is venting gas. We’re going to crash. The hatch is open now—”
“Sir. No. I can’t.”
“You can, damn it.”
“No, Captain, I can’t.” His voice softened. I leaned closer. “After we spoke, I sneaked into the wardrobe boxes and sabotaged both suits. Hers will glide for a while, but the boosters are dead. There’s no uplift or steering.”
“Oh, my boy.” I laughed, the sound more like a wheeze through my cold-clenched throat. “You out-Daggered the Dagger.”
That accursed box would be buried in some high crest where the snow never melted. Maybe, after a time, the enchantment would dissipate and those captured screams would silence.
It took several minutes of precarious teamwork for us to shut the hatch. The hold secure, all of us near frozen solid, we retreated into the ship. The crew saluted me as we entered the control car. Their grins were grim, with reason. We’d vented a great deal of gas to control our ascent, and now skirted a mere hundred feet over the ground.
Dead ahead, the green-sliver of Caskentia shone in the weak dawn light. Clouds thickened the sky. A storm was sweeping in from the ocean. If we’d gone all the way to the divide, our fates would have been guaranteed.
“The old gal is mine,” I said to Ramsay at the rudder. “I’ll take her down.”
The metal wheel was warm from my co-pilot’s hold. “Crew, it’s been an honor to serve with you tonight. If we live past dawn, Caskentia may well hunt for us to find out what transpired here. It may be a sorry life, but—”
“Pardon, sir,” called the navigator. “It’ll be a life.” Grunts around the cabin backed him up.
“Very well,” I said. Sheridan stood beside me, his legs braced. I wanted to order him away from this glass-and-steel cage that would likely crumple upon impact, but I knew he’d disobey. Feeling the pressure of my gaze, he glanced over with a small smile.
Oh, God. He trusted me, that we’d survive.
I gripped the wheel harder, willing my thoughts into the Argus.
You’ve been good to us, old gal. I’ll do my best to be kind in these next minutes.
The sunlight from astern illuminated the skies ahead in brilliant purple and grey, the sprawling valley below an unreal, verdant green. I smiled. Views like this were why I’d taken to air as a boy, why I rarely stayed aground long.
What a beautiful, perfect dawn to share with my son.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Each of these works has been published individually, and thus has already had an acknowledgments page. To everyone I already thanked—thank you again! This collection wouldn’t exist without your support.
I am forever gra
teful to my agent, Rebecca Strauss at DeFiore and Company. She plucked my query letter out of the slush pile and has made so many of my dreams come true. I haven’t stopped dreaming, either.
I will forever be flabbergasted by the Nebula nomination for Wings of Sorrow and Bone. I’m deeply honored that readers found it worthy. Thank you; I’d feed you all maple cookies if I could.
Lastly, for my husband Jason, my favorite big dork, who knows when to back away slowly when I’m working and does what he can to get vacation days so I can attend conventions. He knows he’ll get lots of cookies, too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BETH CATO is the author of the fantasy duology The Clockwork Dagger, which was nominated for the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and The Clockwork Crown, as well as two short stories and a novella in the Clockwork realm. Her novella, Wings of Sorrow and Bone, has been nominated for a Nebula Award. Beth writes and bakes cookies in a lair outside of Phoenix, Arizona, which she shares with a hockey-loving husband, a numbers-obsessed son, and a cat the size of a canned ham.
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Also by Beth Cato
The Clockwork Dagger
The Clockwork Crown
The Deepest Poison: A Clockwork Dagger Story
Wings of Sorrow and Bone: A Clockwork Dagger Novella
Final Flight: A Clockwork Dagger Story
Breath of Earth
COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“The Deepest Poison.” Copyright © 2015 by Beth Cato.
“Wings of Sorrow and Bone.” Copyright © 2015 by Beth Cato.
“Final Flight.” Copyright © 2016 by Beth Cato.
DEEP ROOTS. Copyright © 2016 by Beth Cato. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2016 ISBN: 9780062561572
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062561565
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