Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century)

by Priest, Cherie

  The Black Dove balked violently, shaking almost in a full circle, sending them closer to upside down than Maria had ever been in her life. If she’d eaten anything at all that day she would’ve lost it in the clouds. But the hemp belt held her inside the small cabin, if not in the seat—she hovered above it, and then her backside slammed down again, jarring her whole body. Her head knocked against Henry’s shoulder, and his knees crashed against the underside of the controls.

  He fought to find the levers, wrestled with the engine, and lost.

  Black, billowing smoke coughed upward and the motor went utterly silent.

  The world froze.

  The sky was cold, clear, and unmoving, and the ground below was sharp and distant, miles and miles away—or so it looked. And so it felt, until the end of that moment, when the Black Dove pitched forward, dragged by the weight of its dead motor, and began to fall.

  Henry cranked viciously at the controls, jerking the clutch and receiving no response. Nothing. Not a cough or a sputter. Not a spark of electricity. Not even smoke. All of it was gone. The little craft sailed, gliding only at a tiny angle, aimed for the ground.

  “Henry!” Maria screamed.

  He reached over his shoulder and into the tiny back cargo space and pulled out a pack. “There’s just the one!” he screamed back as he wrestled his arms into a pair of straps.

  “One what?”

  “Of these. Come here—I’m undoing the belt!”

  “Henry!”

  “Trust me or die!” he told her. With one hand he seized her by the waist. With the other he snapped the hemp belt free and stood up inside the shattered, uncovered cab, taking her with him. Dangling in the firmament, he grabbed her tightly—both arms now—and kicked free of the wreckage. And then they were still falling, but falling together … above the battered Dove, and then beside it.

  Maria’s clothes billowed violently and her hair tried to tear itself off her head. She wanted to fight Henry, in order to … what? Swim in the sky? Fall by herself? Take these last seconds in silence, to pray or to reminisce, regret or wonder, and prepare for whatever came next?

  His grip was a vise around her ribs. He shouted into her ear, but still she barely heard him: “Hang on to me! Now!”

  She gave up her struggle and did as he commanded, because why not? Let their bones break together, and let them dig a crater to be both of their graves.

  But instead, Henry ripped at a cord that dangled from the pack on his back, and the fall jerked to a shattering stop—still well above the trees below. The terrific yank sucked all the air out of Maria’s chest and nearly snapped her neck; but she thrust her face into Henry’s throat and clung to him for dear life, now that she understood. Or, if she didn’t understand, she believed, and that was close enough for now.

  As long as they floated in the middle of the sky, held aloft by a great umbrella-like cloth that flapped noisily over their heads.

  “Emergency harness!” he said loudly. “One’s required in all these little passenger crafts!”

  “Emergency,” she muttered into his neck, refusing to open her eyes or look down. She damn well assumed it was an emergency piece, for surely no one in their right mind would don such a thing recreationally.

  Her head ached, her ribs were bruised all the way around, and she could scarcely breathe. Her arms felt as if they’d been half pulled from their sockets, and her feet dangled until she wrapped them around Henry’s legs, seeking whatever slight stability she could glean from the situation.

  And still they fell.

  They swayed back and forth, buffeted by the wind and without any protection at all, not even the pitiful guard of the tiny craft, which crashed somewhere below them. She heard it hit and crumple, and she thanked heaven and Henry that she was not inside it. Though being in midair was only marginally better, as she was still definitely alive—but for how long?

  She could feel the wind dragging them in this direction, then that direction, and on top of everything else she was dizzy. “Can you control this at all?” she begged him, nearer to tears than she’d been in a decade.

  “Not at all, I’m afraid,” he replied, and he did in fact sound sorry. “Hold on tight, Maria! We’re going down. We’re going down fast.”

  Not as fast as they might have otherwise, but fast enough that when they fell through the tops of two trees it was like being beaten by a mob, and when the final tree caught them in its uppermost branches it was such a horrible way to stop that she almost envied the Black Dove—for at least its awful fall had ended already.

  Their fall continued, though she clung to Henry until she was knocked free of him—and then she fell alone, down branches, through dead leaves and abandoned squirrel nests. Her body stripped a line of bark bare from the tree, and her gloves were no protection at all. Her skirts did a somewhat better job of shielding her legs, and her corset may or may not have guarded her organs like armor, but none of it helped very much. When she finally landed on her back, staring up at the hole she’d left in a tree, she watched the emergency sheet snag, tear, and wave forlornly above her.

  And then she wondered where Henry was.

  He told her: “Ow.”

  “Oh, dear—I’m … I’m sorry…”

  She rolled off his arm, then kept rolling until she was on her back again, beside him. She hadn’t left him after all.

  She couldn’t breathe. No, she was breathing. She put her hand to her chest and felt it rise and fall, but she was so winded that it meant very little. She could do nothing but lie there, as still as she could manage, and wait for her lungs to catch up to the rest of her.

  Every inch of her body hurt. She scarcely knew where to begin to check for injuries, so instead she asked Henry, “Are you all right? Mostly? More all right than not?” The words came out in whispers, in time with her every exhalation. It was the only way she could speak at all.

  “Yes,” he said in a similar gasp. “No. Wait. Mostly, I think. My arm, though.”

  “The one I was lying on?”

  “The one you landed on.”

  “Ah. Is it…?”

  He rolled over onto his side. “Broken. Not as bad as it could be,” he said with a wince.

  When she turned her head, she could see that yes, his hand was lying at an unhealthy angle. “Oh, no. We need to brace it.” She wiggled a bit and frowned. No longer lying on his arm, but she was somehow still lying upon something. Ah. Her satchel. Still slung around her chest. Would wonders never cease?

  “There seem to be plenty of promising sticks lying about, thanks to us. As for you,” he said, “we need to see about that pretty little head of yours.”

  “What about it?” she asked. But now that he mentioned it, a spot to the left of her forehead, just above her ear, felt hot. When she touched it, it stung, and it left the tattered remnants of her glove covered in blood. “Hmm.” She wasn’t sure how much of the blood was from her head, and how much was from her hands—the gloves themselves were in shreds, and scraped skin showed through them. She was quite confident that when she warmed up enough to feel her fingers again, every single one of them would be in agony.

  “Let me see it,” Henry suggested.

  “First, let’s see about that arm.”

  “Heads are more important than arms.”

  He had a point, so she let him probe the problem, but only briefly. “You see? It’s all right. I’m fine,” she assured him. “If that’s the worst I get from the adventure, I’ll be in excellent shape. Now. I can stand. Can you?”

  “You can stand? Prove it.”

  “Fine, I will.” She did, and though the effort was at first unsteady, she settled the matter by arriving upright. “Your turn.”

  She offered him her hand and he grasped it, clutching his broken arm to his chest and letting her pull him to his feet. “See? Me too.”

  “Apart from the arm, are you intact? How do you feel?”

  “Like I just fell out of an airship and crashed through a t
ree. How about you?”

  “The same. Now, let me bind up that arm, and I suppose we’ll have to get on our way. Did I mention I used to work as a nurse?”

  “Don’t believe it came up.”

  “No? Well,” she said, eyeing the ground for a promising splint. “I didn’t last very long. I don’t mind blood and bones, but I have trouble with vomiting and pus. Here. This will do nicely.”

  Before long, Henry was as patched up as he could expect to get, his injured arm fastened tight to a piece of wood, courtesy of the remains of the hemp belt, which had accompanied them to the ground. Maria had found it nearby and rejoiced. Henry’s scarf served as a sling, tied up in a knot behind his neck.

  Maria used her own scarf to staunch the bleeding above her ear. Her options were few, and it was dark enough that the stain scarcely showed. Maybe with a good laundering, it would vanish altogether. Or perhaps she’d pester Mr. Pinkerton for hazard pay, should she escape the mission alive. He could damn well buy her a new scarf for her pains. And maybe a good winter coat, too.

  “Where are we?” she asked, hoping that perhaps he’d paid closer attention on the way down that she had. “What time is it? How far away do you think we are?”

  He shielded his eyes against the sun, and checked the shadows filtering down through the brittle, naked branches around them. “Well, it’s early afternoon,” he said. “I think we landed a little to the east of the road. West should be that way.”

  “How certain are you, exactly?”

  “Somewhat. That’s the best I can do.”

  “It’ll have to suffice. We need to find that road and … and stop that caravan.”

  “Single-handedly,” he added, as he lurched forward in the general direction of west and south.

  “Well, you’ll be single-handed. But, between us, there are three hands.” She mustered a smile. “And I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

  Nineteen

  Gideon crouched behind the front door, performing mental calculations and deciding that yes, it’d likely withstand a significant ballistic onslaught. It was oak, he believed—upon rapping it gently and feeling the sturdy density of it—and fully three inches thick, with some variation where it was carved for the sake of a paneled appearance. Regardless, unless someone was firing a canon at the thing, it’d hold just fine. The lock, on the other hand …

  He examined it closely, since no one was firing at him right that moment.

  It was nothing special. Brass, with typical, easily circumnavigated workings. A thief or a locksmith could breach it in seconds. Two men with stout shoulders or feet could’ve forced it. A bullet could do so faster, if it occurred to a shooter to come up close and take a crack at it.

  He looked around for something to brace the door more firmly. Did it open inward? He checked the hinges. Yes, as all exterior doors ought to. But one couldn’t assume.

  Shortly down the hall was a standing clock of considerable heft. If he were to drag over and shove it diagonally across the door, it’d serve at least to slow down any efforts to come inside, through the door or the broken windows that flanked it at waist height.

  He peeked under the edge of the quilt, being careful to block any firelight that might escape with the bulk of his torso. Staring across the darkened lawn, he saw nothing moving. No one sneak-stepping across the grass. Though, when he leaned over to peek at a different angle, he saw something on the stairs of the stoop. It looked like a leg.

  On closer inspection, as his eyes adjusted to the dim, almost impenetrable murk, he determined that it was the body of whoever the president had shot.

  Gideon had no particular love for the old general, no more than he held for most people he just knew in passing, but he respected the man’s military prowess. He believed in his abilities as a soldier, if not as a politician—which probably put him in very good company, now that he thought about it. Not much of a president, but one hell of a shot and tactician.

  So presumably the man on the stairs was dead.

  But how many others lingered out there? Grant hadn’t given his estimation, and Gideon hadn’t yet heard enough gunfire to get a good idea of what was coming from where, so there was no way of knowing. Except … Grant was a master of these sorts of plans. He wouldn’t tell them to board up the downstairs entrances for merely one or two men—so there must be three or four, if such measures were called for. Probably more than that.

  Always the general, that one. He commanded like a general. Barked like one. Made assumptions like one.

  Well, all right then—if he had to take orders from a general, let it be Grant. After all, the orders were professional, not personal. Grant would just as happily bark commands to Polly or Wellers, or to Lincoln himself. It was so ingrained in him from years of being in charge that it was difficult to hold it against him—and there was always the chance that he knew what he was doing.

  So against his better judgment, and more than a little reluctantly … Gideon chose to believe in Grant.

  He’d take responsibility for the Fiddlehead’s evidence, and trust Grant to manage the armed intrusion. It was a trade-off he could accept, given the scheme of things, because he didn’t know if any of them would survive the night, and he couldn’t bear to be responsible for the deaths of the Lincolns.

  Or Polly, for that matter.

  Polly, who was not even important enough to kill, he realized, and which horrified him. It surely meant she’d die first, if it came to that, because that was how the world worked. She’d made him gloves, once, and he’d defend her with his life for those ridiculous gloves.

  Gideon slowly lowered the edge of the quilt, lest the motion be enough to lure more bullets. He looked again at the clock, and wondered if he could move it alone. It was huge, and certainly heavy.

  He scooted over to it and pushed it with his foot, testing the weight and balance of the thing. It didn’t budge.

  Out in the lawn—or at the edge of it—someone called out, hailing whoever might be inside.

  “You there, at the door! We only want to talk!”

  It was nonsense, of course. First of all, anyone out there would’ve seen Grant shoot their colleague. If they weren’t total idiots, they would’ve assumed it was the president behind the door, and addressed him accordingly. They’d be wrong, yes, but it was the logical conclusion. By pretending they didn’t know, they only made themselves look like they weren’t paying attention.

  Gideon returned to the window. Adjusting the edge of the blanket again, he took another look at the lawn, but saw nothing. He did not answer, of course, for his voice might betray him as an educated colored man from the South. But though they were hunting an educated colored man from the South, for the time being, they had no reason to think he might be in the house. He did not plan to disabuse them of that notion.

  He held his tongue, but continued to watch. He saw nothing, but he kept his ears open, and the man called again. “Send out the doctor, Nelson Wellers! He’s wanted for harboring a murderer!”

  A ridiculous, made-up charge. Definitely not police officers; Polly had been right to distrust them. He wanted to tell her so, but she was at the other end of the house. And she already knew it, anyway.

  Gideon still did not answer.

  “Just send him out, and we’ll call this a draw! There’s no need for things to get any worse! No need for anyone else to get hurt!”

  No need? No, he supposed not. But he didn’t trust the speaker as far as he could throw a horse; and even if he did, he would never toss Wellers out onto the front yard and tell him he was on his own. In order to make that clear, Gideon poked the barrel of his Starr under the bottom of the blanket, through the corner window, and fired off two shots in the direction from which he’d guessed the voice had come.

  Shots were fired in return. Several of them plunked against the door; he could feel them with his shoulder, but it was no more than a dull thud. He smiled. The door would definitely work as a shield. A good one, if he could do
something about that weak point, the lock.

  When the men outside ceased their response, Gideon returned to the clock. Positioning himself on the far side of it, he braced his back as best he could, and shoved it with his boots. Always the best leverage that way. Simple mechanics: levers, screws, pulleys. If more people were of a mechanical, scientific bent, the world would be an easier place—he was confident of it.

  Then again, if more people were of a scientific bent, it might lead to a more vibrant criminal class.

  The good would not necessarily outweigh the bad, but one could not pick and choose when it came to wishfully bestowing mythical aptitude on the masses … or so he concluded, as the clock moved by inches as he bent and unbent his knees. He kept his eyes on the clock’s face. The large piece of furniture was top-heavy, and it wouldn’t do for him to shove it too hard and wind up with the thing crashing across his lap.

  A sharp hiss came from behind him. “What are you doing?”

  He recognized it, and therefore did not startle. Instead, he said, “Mr. Grant, I am addressing a weak point in our defenses. The lock is a feeble thing. It could be resolved with one shot, at which point the door would open with a simple shove.”

  Gideon half expected the president to observe that the door stood between two broken windows, either one of which any fool could leap right through, as they were guarded only by blankets. But his good impression of the man’s strategic mind was borne out when Grant only nodded. “Let me help.”

  Only a fool would hop through a broken window when he couldn’t see what awaited on the other side. A wiser man might use the big oak door for cover—much like he and Grant were doing at present—and choose to lead a charge from that position. If he were lucky or ambitious enough, such a man might even blow the hinges and use the door as a shield all the way down the corridor.

  Perhaps. If another man or two were present to help him carry it.