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

by Shelley Adina

  CHAPTER 13

  Gloria fussed a little with the cushion behind her back as Silver Wind steamed steadily into the gathering dusk. She had managed to put the Ambassador off for several minutes with questions about how long it would take the locomotive to regain its footing on the rails, and how remarkable it was that they need not even be concerned about the position of the switch at the junction—they might simply retake the rails where they pleased.

  Which was a great pity, because the notion of leaping out of the door and running into the deepening dark while they changed the switch had been extremely appealing. If it came to a choice between being marooned in Resolution with coyotes, mercenaries, and air pirates and being kidnapped by the Ambassador on a westbound train, she would take the former without hesitation.

  But she was not given the choice. A man was stationed at each door—for her safety, she was assured. The locomotive settled itself over the rails, the clanking of changing ironworks underneath sounded once more, and with a huge billow of steam, they were under way.

  “I confess I feel very foolish,” she began at last, having no further prevarications to make. “After our lovely talk in the conservatory at Mrs. Hadley’s, I had settled into the role of president of the Meriwether-Astor Munitions Works by a majority vote of the board.”

  The men shifted, glancing at one another.

  Oh, for goodness sake. “I have been trained practically since birth to inherit the business,” she said a little tartly. “It is my father’s legacy, and he made sure that I would be able to manage it competently through the best education, the most comprehensive travels, and of course, his personal guidance while he was alive.”

  She allowed her lower lip to tremble, and dashed a tear from her cheek. It was a very real tear; she had been quite looking forward to leaping out of that blasted door to freedom.

  His face creased with gentlemanly sympathy, the gunnery captain offered her a handkerchief that smelled only a little of gear grease, and she accepted it with a grateful smile.

  “It was not long after the train departed that I heard it was going to be waylaid. So I immediately took ship to try to warn you—only to find myself too late—and worse, captured by those dreadful pirates.”

  The Ambassador leaned forward. “How did you hear it was going to be waylaid?”

  Here was a poser. Then, in a flash of illumination, she had the answer. Quickly, she turned her hesitation into reluctance. “I—I find this quite the most difficult part of the tale. For you see, I was betrayed by a member of my own family—my cousin Sydney, whom I have known and loved all my life. Oh, how could he?” Delicately, she dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief.

  “Sydney?” the Ambassador said rather blankly. “But he is the young man who shook my hand, accepted the final payment, and released the train on its journey.”

  “Yes, I am sure he waved you off with every appearance of comradeship before he put the money in his own pocket,” she said bitterly. “For he had already made arrangements with the inhabitants of that dreadful town back there to stop the train and relieve you of your—our—cargo. With the train vanished down an abandoned spur, His Highness the Viceroy would never know its fate, nor would there be any way to discover it.”

  “Dreadful,” murmured someone near the brandy table.

  “Shocking. El diablo.”

  “It is an appalling tale,” the Ambassador said, frowning. “But how did you come to be behind that rotating gun? Of all that has occurred today, that seems to me to be the most strange.”

  “It is not so strange if you remember my father’s training,” she said. “I can shoot any of the arms we make. He made sure of that.”

  More shifting about as the men considered how unladylike such training was. They would probably faint if they knew she had grown up riding astride, too, and it was not until she had been enrolled in St. Cecelia’s in London that she learned to manage a sidesaddle like a lady.

  “So naturally,” she went on, “the moment I was foolish enough to try to grab someone’s gun and they saw I knew how to handle one, they at once realized the most painful thing they could do was not to assault me or even to kill me, but to set me to firing upon the very people I considered my friends and allies.”

  The Ambassador leaped to his feet. “If we had not already done so, I should set the locomotive in reverse and return to wipe out every single man,” he fumed. “How dared they? They have no honor, no decency.”

  Gloria glanced at the gunnery captain with what she hoped was a sort of watery flirtatiousness. “And now, thanks to you, no CG-36 rotating carousel gun,” she said.

  He clasped her hand. “Please allow me to express my sincere regret for firing upon you,” he begged. “Had I known—”

  Flushing, she tugged her hands from his before she slapped him. “All is forgiven,” she said. “In the end, you saved my life, even though you thought I was a man.”

  “I shall not make that mistake again, senorita,” he said gallantly. “Your beauty is eclipsed only by your talent with a trigger. My only concern is how His Highness will take the news.”

  “Why should it concern him?” Gloria asked.

  “Because we are taking you to meet him,” the Ambassador said, taking control of the conversation once more.

  “To meet him!” Gloria had the sensation that she had just stepped off one of the high red mesas, and was free-falling through space with no rocket rucksack. “Are we not going to Santa Fe, now that you have so bravely rescued me, so that I may arrange passage back to Philadelphia?”

  She must at least find a postal office, where she could attempt to compose the letter that would break Ian Hollys’s heart. And then she must write a similar one to Claire—or better yet, she should carry the sad news in person, to comfort her friends in their bereavement.

  A bereavement that was all her fault.

  “Philadelphia! What would that accomplish, my dear young lady?” the Ambassador exclaimed. “No indeed, it is you who will tell this heroic tale to His Highness, and beseech his forgiveness for the betrayal of your family.”

  “My family?” It was a moment before she could get her stunned brain to work, and her cold lips to move. “I believe I have hazarded my life to make reparation for that betrayal already, sir.”

  “Indeed you have, and that will certainly be a factor in His Highness’s willingness to pardon you. But it must be done. No other course is possible to satisfy the demands of honor. You must beg forgiveness, and if he grants it, then you may return.”

  “And if he does not?” she said, her mouth dry as the prospect of a thousand miles of Wild West between herself and any person who might have seen her being kidnapped yawned before her. Not one soul in the country knew where she was. Or cared. Or could come to help.

  She had been alone before. But isolation like this was as wide and bleak and terrifying as the country through which they traveled.

  The Ambassador shook his head. “His Highness has not yet become the visionary—soldier—leader that his late father was. But he is a young man, and you are a beautiful young woman. I do not think he will withhold his magnanimity.”

  The prospect of hanging her life upon her ability to charm a young man—considering her demoralizing record in that department heretofore—did not appeal in the least.

  She fanned herself with the handkerchief. “I—I feel quite overcome at the prospect. Please, may I beg your indulgence and withdraw?”

  “We will stop at the next station to take on supplies,” he told her. “Our dinner will not be elegant, but we all must eat. It is a journey of a hundred miles yet, so you would be wise to rest. It has been an eventful day for us all.”

  One of the men showed her to a sleeping cupboard, into which she crawled gratefully, sliding the door shut and blocking out their embarrassed faces. She had forgotten she was wearing Jake’s pants. Briefly, she wondered where one might wash and perform other necessary ablutions, before sleep took her.

&nb
sp; In what seemed like a moment, there was a knock on her cupboard door and she was escorted off the train to a ramshackle inn next to the station. Silver Wind hissed and groaned as her water tender was filled and the engineer saw to the great engines in front of the saloon with the arched glass roof. She was not left alone for a moment, and when she had eaten a respectable amount of the dinner set before her—for heaven only knew where her next meal was coming from—she was escorted to a room with a wash basin and a commode, and no window. A man stationed himself in front of the plank door as she closed it.

  Her lips thinning with frustration, she used the commode and did her best to wash her face and neck. Only one hairpin remained of this morning’s coiffure, stuck in a tangle. Well, one never knew when a hairpin would be useful in a lock, so she finger-combed her hair, braided it round her head as Alice did, and used the pin to anchor it.

  Somewhat refreshed, she was escorted back to the train. Lying fully dressed in the dark of the cupboard, listening to the snores of the men, there was nothing to do but to try to fend off fear and despair by plotting ways of escape.

  It would have to be at night, and near a settlement of some kind, where one of the coins in her corset might buy her transportation. And it would have to be soon, before they crossed the border between the Texican Territory and the Californias. She doubted anyone could be paid to help her once she was in the Viceroy’s realm. It would probably mean death to that person, and she would not wish that on anyone.

  Oh Benny. Alice. Jake. What were the odds that they had survived? Just as low, perhaps, as the odds of anyone having seen her being carried aboard the train.

  Evan. Why had she not been kinder to Evan? It was clear that he was smitten with her, and with his stiff, awkward way of speaking she had put him in his place as a brotherly acquaintance. In return, he had pulled her off that gun and saved her life at the cost of his own.

  After years of feeling somehow unwomanly and left out because no one had yet shown sincere interest in her, it was a blow to realize too late that she had had real affection within her grasp and had not even recognized it. Grief welled up inside her, and she turned her face into the dusty-smelling pillow and wept. And a long time later, the rhythm of the wheels lulled her to sleep at last.

  Her awakening in the gray light of dawn brought an ugly jolt of fear when she thought they had locked her in the sleeping compartment. But after a moment of determined deep breathing and pressing her lips together to keep from screaming, she tried the cupboard door again and found that it had merely stuck in its track, and a tug freed it.

  She would not show fear.

  She would be fragile, polite, deferential—everything they expected in a woman, without benefit of skirts and petticoats to complete the illusion. And at the first moment, she would seize her chance to escape.

  Breakfast was cheese and bread and very tasty olives that she was assured came from the Californias themselves; from the rancho of the Ambassador, in fact.

  “You have a rancho?” she asked, trying not to cram the delicious cheese into her mouth, but rather eat it as though she sat at a society table. “I understand they are very large indeed.”

  “They are, senorita. I possess two hundred thousand acres near the Mission de San Gregorio, with a view of the Pacific Ocean from at least five thousand of them.”

  “I have seen the Pacific,” she said. “From the royal city of Victoria in the Canadas. It is awe-inspiring.”

  “Perhaps when you have obtained the Viceroy’s forgiveness, you will come for a visit. My wife will welcome you gladly—and any information about the fashion of dresses, too.” Politely, he did not glance at her pants.

  “Does she not see many women?” With two hundred thousand acres to cross in order to see a neighbor, perhaps the poor lady did not.

  “Si, indeed she does, for we have many fiestas and long visits among ourselves during the winter. It is a benign climate, and the rancheros are a social group, for we all have sons and daughters to marry off.” He laughed, and several of the men laughed with him. “There is music and dancing, and more food than you have ever seen in one place. It is a good life el Dios has given us, senorita.”

  “And the men and women who till the fields to grow the food, who cook it, and who clean up once the candles go out—what of them?” she asked. “Is their life a good one also?”

  He gazed at her as if trying to parse her meaning. “All our people are fed and clothed, and have valuable work to do,” he said.

  “Ah, so they are paid a wage, then?”

  Around the table, men looked at one another. She felt rather like a monkey who had done something human-like.

  “You must understand our way of life, senorita,” the doctor said. “The laborers on the ranchos are not paid. They have honest work, and live their entire lives under the protection of the ranchero. They want for nothing.”

  “And can they move about freely? What if a man wishes to take up his own business off the rancho?”

  The doctor smiled. “Why should he want to? He has no education but what is required to do simple mathematics for the counting of bushels, and so on. And he can write. These are not skills with which one can establish a business. However, many second and third sons of rancheros do so, and sometimes the laborers will work for them.”

  “And what of the women? And the daughters of rancheros? Are they educated also?”

  The Ambassador was clearly struggling with the urge to laugh at this outrageous idea. Finally, he straightened his face and replied, “They are well educated in the feminine arts of sewing, cooking, and child rearing. Many a happy child grows up on the rancho to take up his father’s work when the latter grows unable. And many a gently bred girl looks forward to a husband and home of her own.”

  Gloria smiled and nodded, doing her best to keep her expression pleasant and her feelings to herself. Such tales did nothing but make her look forward to escape. For once marooned on two hundred thousand acres of land, what were the odds of getting away?

  Two hundred thousand to one.

  Gloria gazed out through the great glazed arches of the saloon at the desert landscape, with its red rocks, green pines, and layers of brilliant color—purple, red, orange—like a sunset frozen forever in stone. She had been imprisoned before, but she had had friends with the courage and spirit to rescue her. Now she was alone in a magnificent landscape whose beauty itself could kill her.

  Somehow she had to find the resources within herself to save her own life and stop the war. Once that was accomplished somehow, she would return to Philadelphia and make her life over without her friends. It would be a bleak life—a return to the existence she had led before meeting Lady Claire, and Alice, and Ian, and Jake. And Evan.

  The view of the desert blurred, and she bent her head.

  All she needed was one moment.

  Just one.

  CHAPTER 14

  Evan Douglas put his back up against the cold iron leg of the behemoth and wished for a gun, or at the very least, a firebrand—in the flickers, the brave hero brandished fire at wolves and they ran away. But this was not the flickers, he was far from brave, and he had nothing but his wits to save him from the milling, growling pack of animals who shifted in and out of the small circle thrown by the lamp. With each pass, they came closer, and with each snarl he got a clearer look at their teeth.

  Iron dug into his back, a horizontal bar across his kidneys.

  Horizontal. A memory flashed before his mind’s eye of the gunner in the chamber where the behemoth’s head might be, and the crew working frantically in the chamber in its chest. But how had they got up there? They could not have been winched up, because the thing had been set into motion far too quickly for that.

  Perhaps they had climbed up.

  He held up the lantern and, keeping one eye on the coyotes, glanced up the leg against which he leaned. Sure enough, iron rungs had been constructed both to protect the mighty pistons that propelled it, and to form a l
adder.

  Without wasting another moment, he obeyed a gut-deep instinct to get out of reach of those teeth by any means possible. He hung his bag of food around his neck, grasped the wrought handle of the lantern more firmly, and heaved himself onto the first rung.

  The coyotes rushed in, as though they had sensed he was escaping, and he was barely able to pull up his second boot in time. Yipping and howling in frustration, they milled about the behemoth’s foot, snapping and jumping as he climbed the iron monster’s leg rung by rung.

  It was not a monster now. It was his salvation—until dawn, at least. Perhaps he could sleep inside it, as safe as if he were in the lounge car below. After that, he could only hope the animals would give up and leave him to climb down.

  At the top of the leg, there was a platform only the width of a man’s boot, and a door, which hung open a little way, likely because of the haste of the crew’s departure. He put the lantern on the metal floor inside and pulled himself into the chamber, then latched the door securely.

  Safe inside the marvel.

  For marvel it was. He removed the cloth sack of food from around his neck and, lantern once more in hand, looked about him. A control console lay under the viewing ports, with two large levers in a kind of truss arrangement that gave them rather more range of motion than levers typically had.

  The controls to the legs of the machine.

  A great wheel occupied the other half of the console and after a moment of study, he surmised that this must be for controlling the machine’s course, for pistons and levers could only move up and down. The mighty legs must be mounted on an assembly equivalent to human hips, which would allow a lateral change in direction.

  No wonder this machine required a crew, to say nothing of the gunner above, who would control the movement of the firing arms.

  In a moment, as he prowled to the rear of the chamber, he saw what the bulk of the behemoth’s torso protected—the steam engines that gave it its power. What would it be like to have such power at one’s command? What, he wondered with a kind of dark humor, would it be like to have any kind of power at all?