Fields of Air: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 10)

by Shelley Adina

  CHAPTER 12

  “I don’t see why we ought to care for the same men who killed our own. In fact, now would be a fine time to finish the job—while they’re half mad from pain or passed out altogether.”

  The voice seemed to come from a long distance away, distorted as though transmitted through a blocked speaking tube. Evan had heard the appealingly accented feminine tones before, though he couldn’t place exactly where.

  “For land’s sakes, keep your voice down, Bonita! Those soldiers wouldn’t think nothing of shooting us where we stand just for having such thoughts. Bad enough we’re out here at all. If they ask, we’re looking for plunder.”

  “But what do we do if we find someone alive? If Ned’s alive? Dadburnit, Lorraine, he’s your man! You going to let one of those black jackets shoot him?”

  “It’ll take more than a bunch of dandies to kill Ned Mose,” came the grim reply. “He’s out here somewhere, and I aim to find him. Now, look. That arroyo’s full of blown-up parts and pieces. Could be we’ll find someone in there.”

  In a moment, above the scrape of boots on stone and the flapping of cotton skirts, someone gasped. “Lorraine! It’s that nice boy Alice brought. Oh, say he ain’t dead!”

  Evan felt warm fingers at his throat, then in his pockets with light-fingered skill. There was nothing in them, though, except perhaps a few shell casings. Everything he owned was on Swan.

  Swan.

  Gloria.

  Memory cascaded in like a landslide, and he moaned.

  “He’s alive,” Lorraine said. “Boy, can you hear me?”

  He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t form words. A gutteral sound came out instead.

  “He ought to be dead,” Bonita observed doubtfully. “All the blood—it looks awful.”

  “Head wound. They look worse than they are.” Capable hands felt his skull, and while it ached as though it were one giant bruise encasing his consciousness, there was no sudden screaming flash of pain, either, that would have indicated a more serious wound.

  His medical degree had given him more than a passing acquaintance with the frailty of the human body, and the wards of hospitals had given him an understanding of pain both mental and physical. Now he knew even more on that head than he had before. He opened his eyes, expecting to have to squint against the noon sun, and met the soothing apricot gray of early twilight instead.

  Gloria. Oh Lord, help me.

  “Can you hear me, I said,” Lorraine repeated. “Can you talk? Move? What’s broken?”

  He took inventory, moving feet, legs, fingers—nine out of ten—and arms. Then he rolled his head from side to side. He appeared to have sustained no broken bones except for the smallest finger of his left hand, which had swollen to the size of a plum in an effort to protect itself. And it was difficult to breathe without pain, which told him he had probably cracked a rib.

  Lorraine watched him, clearly having seen this procedure before. “This is a fine kettle of trout,” she said. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “Leave him here for the moment,” Bonita suggested, rather callously, in his opinion. “We have to check over the hill. If anyone is alive, they won’t last the night. Not with the coyotes and the pumas.”

  Evan didn’t know what a puma was, but if it was anything like a coyote, he didn’t want to find out.

  “Glo—” he croaked, and stopped himself. No, he couldn’t say her name, could he? What was the other one she had said she would use?

  “What’s that?” Lorraine was already standing, but now she bent to him.

  “Meredith.”

  “Who’s that? Never heard of her.”

  “Another—body—here? Woman?”

  “Was someone with you? Was Alice? Bonita, have a look around. It might be Alice—and she might know where my Perry is.”

  But while there were others, none were alive, or whole, and before long, the two women scrambled up the wall of the arroyo with instructions to stay put until they got back, and the sound of their departure faded.

  How could Gloria have deserted him?

  Misery swamped him, and it took a good ten minutes to weather the storm of grief, lying there in the sandy bottom of the wash as the twilight thickened, wishing his injuries had just killed him and been done with it. But at last, good sense swam to the surface to reassert itself. The truth was that she would not have left him had it been up to her. For she had come running from the airship to save him from the same fate as the air pirate, who had fired a gun incorrectly assembled.

  His heart would have warmed at this possibility of a change in her regard for him, had the situation not been so dire.

  For the fact was that they had landed together in this arroyo. He distinctly remembered falling over the edge with her in his arms. Had she been injured, and been taken somewhere? Not by the pirate contingent, that was certain. By the Californios? A chill of foreboding prickled his skin. She could not be dead, for they would have left her as they had left him. If those men had touched a single hair on her head, they would answer to him. And while he was rescuing her, he must look for Alice, and Jake.

  Grunting with the pain, he rolled to his knees, and then, with the help of a sinewy juniper, pulled himself to his feet.

  The vertical walls of the arroyo nearly defeated him, until he found the draw where Lorraine and Bonita had climbed out. Half stumbling, half crawling, he gained the slope of the promontory and skirted around it until the flat where the fight had been came into view.

  Off to the left, he sensed something had changed, and with an effort, turned to look.

  Above the pile of rocks where Swan had been moored, there was only empty air.

  She had not been shot down, for no deflated fuselage lay on the ground. But she could have been stolen. She must have been. For Alice and Jake to have lifted while leaving him and Gloria behind was so unthinkable that it defied possibility. It could simply not have happened.

  He turned back to the field, and reality shimmered into doubt a second time. He stared at the track, where he would have staked his life the great locomotive had been standing, steam curling up around its wheels and mercenaries pouring out of the doors of its cars. The cars were there. The bodies of several mercenaries strewed the ground, along with wrecked chariots and broken lumber and shells and guns.

  But the locomotive was gone.

  It could not be gone. There was no longer any track for it to run on. But it was as gone as Alice’s airship, leaving behind the lounge car to which it had been coupled, the cargo cars, and the caboose.

  Had the airship carried it away? Had it been rendered invisible by some alchemy of war? Was he dreaming? For every moment since he’d regained consciousness had been wrong somehow, from murderous grieving women to disappearing people to vanishing conveyances.

  But he would not be in this much pain if he were dreaming.

  Perhaps this was why they called it the Wild West. The rules of physics and mathematics and logic simply did not seem to apply here. Perhaps there was even magic at work, and if he were himself, he might be tempted to explore that possibility in the name of science. But he was not himself. Doggedly, Evan resigned himself to a reality that had lost its ability to make sense, and staggered down the slope.

  Along with the cars full of mechanicals and arms, the Californios had left behind the behemoth. Reality took another blow. These munitions had cost their country a fortune. And yet, there stood the behemoth, bent over, the weight of its trunk resting upon its extended arms—or arm, in this case, since the other was still cocked at an angle because of the exploding secondary rounds that had jammed its pistons. In this position it would be less likely to fall over, for heaven only knew how one would set it right again if it did.

  The head of the behemoth was lost in shadow. It was nearly dark, twilight being much shorter here in the desert than he was used to. But he could hear the voices of the women somewhere over toward a small rise crowned by rocks, and then one of the
m gave a sharp cry.

  “Ned! Aw, Ned, they done for you—I never would have believed it.” And then a sob. Was there really someone who would grieve the death of Ned Mose? “Dadblast you, Ned, now what am I going to do? You left me alone with these Californios and you know darn well our lives ain’t worth a plug nickel to ’em.”

  Evan turned away.

  Evidently not.

  A slow, agonized walk across the field of battle in the fading light showed him that neither Alice nor Jake were among the dead. That was something. If Lorraine did not know where she was, then perhaps she and Jake really had lifted. Perhaps they had found Gloria close to death, and had taken her to a larger settlement, where there was hope of a doctor.

  One who was alive, and had actually practiced medicine. Perhaps they had taken their chances, and run while they could, leaving him where he lay because, like Bonita, they thought he was dead.

  The dearth of facts in this place was likely to drive him mad. Could he not fix on one solid thing?

  For want of a better plan, he made his slow way over to Lorraine and Bonita, still kneeling disconsolately next to Ned’s body. Bonita was already disconnecting the mechanical arm.

  “I have not been able to find Alice or Jake,” he told them. It was difficult to take a deep breath. “Have you?”

  “No,” Lorraine said. “Them Californios were thorough, I’ll give them that. They brought all the survivors from their side to us. We got no doctor here, so me and some of the girls have learned a thing or two about binding up wounds, but these injuries …” Her voice faded. “Could be they just shot any who couldn’t be patched up, including our men, and were done with it.”

  “How many are among their wounded?” Evan asked.

  “A dozen or so. The girls been wasting good whiskey on bullet wounds, and we’ve got some broken bones. They set two healthy men to watch us, so I s’pose we’ll have to feed them on top of everything else.”

  “They will not hurt you as long as you are useful to them,” he ventured.

  “They won’t hurt us as long as we ain’t there,” Lorraine retorted. “I got no reason to stay here, and my Perry ain’t nowhere to be found. He wasn’t on the dadburned locomotive when it left, so I’m betting he’s with Alice on that airship.”

  “Wait—what did you say?” He must have sustained a brain injury of some kind, for the world kept spinning farther and farther away from rationality. “The locomotive left?”

  She nodded, felt in her pockets, and produced a stubby cheroot and a lucifer. She scraped the latter alight on a piece of sandstone and took a crackling draw before she went on, “Couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a nightmare—I come to find if my poor boy is alive and here’s hell spread out for acres in front of me. That devil locomotive picks up one set of wheels, puts down another, turns itself around, and goes rolling off into the sunset as slick as you please. They took one of ours, too. Some poor soul who must’ve been less dead than he looked.” She frowned at the glowing end of the cheroot in her fingers. “It don’t make sense. Why take one and shoot all the others? But then, I’m thinking Californios don’t make a lick of sense to start with. They take one of ours and leave a bunch of theirs and not a word about a ransom or nothing.”

  “We don’t have anything to pay a ransom with,” Bonita pointed out. “Just our feminine charms, and they don’t seem too interested in those.”

  “They’re busted up, you goose,” Lorraine reminded her. “They’re men, same as any other men. They’ll come around. But before they do, we’ll be gone.”

  “Gone?” Evan repeated.

  With a final draw, she tossed the end of the cheroot away. “Come along, Bonita. You too, mister. I forgot your name. The freight from Santa Fe goes through at midnight and I aim to jump it when it slows for the switch. I got no obligation to play nursemaid to folk who killed my man.”

  “When that locomotive comes back for them, I don’t imagine they’ll feel much obligation to us, either. Probably shoot us as soon as look at us,” Bonita predicted unhappily.

  Lorraine nodded. “They think they can lock us up, but they’re mistaken. I told the girls to put belladonna in that whiskey. I’m done with this place. Figure I’ll take my chances back east.”

  Despite her invitation to come along, she didn’t stay to see if he would. And by the time Evan came out of his thoughts, night had fallen and both women were gone.

  Material facts, at last. Two of them, which rocked the world back onto its axis and allowed him to think once more.

  The locomotive could travel on both rail and land. The Californios had taken one of the pirates. Lorraine was right—it didn’t make sense, unless that pirate was not a pirate at all, but Gloria Meriwether-Astor, the one person outside his own force of mercenaries who was personally known to the Ambassador commanding the fight. Somehow she had come to their attention, been recognized, and been taken away—the very thing he and Alice had gone to such great lengths to prevent.

  So now the questions he had to answer for himself numbered two, as well. One, should he find Alice and solicit her help to rescue Gloria, or two, should he waste no more time in settting forth on his own to attempt it?

  And how was he going to manage either one of those options? To set out on a journey, one needed transportation and supplies. Shank’s mare was not going to do the job—if he made it to the main line without losing consciousness, it would be a miracle. So, he must either steal a conveyance, if one could be had, or build one.

  In the dark, before he was caught and shot.

  Evan frowned and moved on to the next part of the equation, which might be more easily solved. What about supplies? There stood the luxury coach; surely there was food aboard. He had not had anything to eat since breakfast … aboard Swan, with Gloria and the crew. Had that only been this morning? It seemed to have been a dream, lived in another life. A sweet, civilized dream in which he would never contemplate killing a man, or abandoning the injured, or looting someone else’s train.

  But looting was the only sensible course of action when he needed sustenance—if only to dim the buzzing in his head and to keep up his strength.

  Inside the car, he found exactly what he had imagined—and a few things he hadn’t. In a porcelain bowl, he bathed his scrapes and bruises in fine French brandy to prevent infection, taking a liberal swallow for medicinal purposes. A length of white damask from the table made a serviceable binding for his ribs, two silver sugar spoons made a splint for his finger, and an investigation of the sideboard and cupboards in search of a sharper knife resulted in the discovery of a switch that, when pressed, made a statue of the Holy Virgin swing out of its carved niche. In the eight-inch recess behind her he found a gold bracelet set with rubies and sapphires, and a stack of gold coins bearing the likeness of Felipe XV of Spain.

  Neither were edible. Neither belonged to him. But only heaven knew how long his journey was going to be.

  He untied the damask bindings around his ribs and folded the coins and bracelet into the fabric as he re-wrapped it. If a flash flood came, he would likely sink like a stone to the bottom, but at least he could pay for his rescue.

  In the galley to the rear of the saloon he found bread, cheese, apples, bacon, and the cold remains of the lunch served to the Ambassador and his guests—a roast fowl, squash, and potatoes. He ate the latter and wrapped the former in another towel. The capable-looking carving knife with the chased silver handle accompanying the fowl went into his belt like that of a pirate, where he hoped he would manage not to stab himself.

  Food and the excellent brandy had cheered him a little, even if it did nothing for the pain in his head. The need to lie down and sleep upon the red velvet sofa came over him in a wave, and he swayed.

  No. He must rescue Gloria, and every moment he hesitated took her farther away. Surely they could not be very far ahead—no more than a few hours’ journey.

  All he had to do was find some means of travel.

  With a deep brea
th, he took a final look around the saloon at all the luxury items—china and plate and boxes of cigars and cushions and books and cards—that were useless to a man’s survival in this harsh landscape. Then, taking the lantern that hung outside and lighting it, he swung himself down from the stairs at the rear of the car.

  He was halfway across the flat, heading toward the town and picking his way carefully so that he did not stumble in a crevasse or trip over a corpse, when he saw tiny lights glowing just at the edge of his field of vision. Startled, he swung the lamp, and a scurrying in the dirt told him he was being watched. He went on a little faster. Animals, that was all.

  But what sort? Rodents? Or bigger—coyotes? Or bigger yet—could it be a puma? What was a puma?

  And where was he headed, anyway, out here in the dark? He might buy transport from Lorraine, if such a thing now existed, but the healthy mercenaries would catch him before he could leave. Predators with two and four legs abounded here—lured in by carnage. The four-legged sort would probably enjoy the bundle he was carrying. Or one of his legs. He should have stayed in the lounge car. Or taken refuge in one of the cargo cars, where at least he could possess himself of a gun, take up a position behind the crates, and build a barricade.

  Blast and bebother it! He should have thought earlier of taking a gun.

  Not twenty feet away, in a cluster of scrub pine, an animal whined. Another replied, and then a host of canine voices chimed in, howling.

  Coyotes.

  Primal fear reared up inside him, obliterating twenty-eight years of civilized life—including the ten spent earning a medical degree and a doctorate in the studies of the mind.

  Limping, hobbling, Evan clutched his bundle and the lamp and made for the looming hulk of the behemoth, closer now than the shelter the train would have provided. He was a fool to have left the lounge car. Perhaps he could get his back up against one of these metal legs and use the carving knife to protect himself.

  Around him, the glowing eyes narrowed and closed in.