Now. Because if it wasn’t now, she would lose her nerve. After a final sip of water, Eliza climbed the bunk, slipped the latch again with her knife, and propped the window up with the fingers of one hand while she stowed the blade and made her move. It was neither easy nor graceful, but from the bunk she managed to work her head and shoulders through the small opening, and then scramble her way out once she saw the coast was clear. Aside from one moment when she feared she would lose her grip and land on her head, the whole thing went surprisingly well. She even managed to keep the window from slamming shut, lest the sound alert her door guards to the activity inside the room.
Knife again in hand, Eliza crouched low to the wall, skirting the building and peering around the corner to the front door. It was unguarded. A lost-looking worker shambled by carrying a yoke with two full water buckets, and she waited for him to pass out of sight beyond the next building before she peeked into the window next to the door. No guards on the inside either. Apparently Orm relied heavily on his perimeter defenses. The front door was latched from the outside, but it was a simple sliding latch, not a lock. Clearly the opium-addicted workers were not considered an escape risk. The generally lax security boded well for her prospect of finding Matthew and Cantlebury unguarded.
Eliza took a final glance around to make sure she hadn’t been seen, then slipped the latch and simply walked into the front door. She recognized the way from her first trip, and it was an easy enough matter to find the corridor her cell had been in. She would start her search close to there, but not too close; she wanted to save the issue with the door guards until she had no other choice.
Along the way she peeked into some of the communal rooms, where the workers slept off their dosed gruel while waiting to be called for their next shift. Orm had said it was like a dream to them, but she could only imagine it was a nightmare. As a child she’d been given laudanum once for a stomach ailment, and it robbed her of all sense of time, turning the days and nights into an endless indistinguishable wheel. Two days, she’d been dosed with the stuff. It had seemed like an eternity. Was that what all these poor people were suffering now, an eternity of hell on earth for their sin of falling prey to opium addiction?
“I don’t believe in sin,” Eliza whispered to one anonymous group as she watched them sleep through the little square window. “I’ll send help for you.”
Then she continued down the hall to find Matthew and Cantlebury.
She came close to being spotted once, when she passed a door to one of the guard’s rooms just as the occupant was crossing the floor. She flattened herself to the wall and waited, heart pounding, as his footsteps neared.
He was only closing the door. Almost sick with relief, Eliza went on, her knees shaking so hard they threatened to buckle under her.
Her cell had been near the end of the corridor. She snuck past the opening without being spotted, and started her search with the next hallway. No guards stood outside doorways, and her spirits sank as she started peeking into doors and checking locks. But in the end, she found them. Matthew and Cantlebury were all the way at the end of the hall, in the very last cell on the first side she checked. As with the other locks, this one was pathetically simple, though it did ostensibly require a key. Eliza used a hairpin to let herself in, and another to keep it from latching shut behind her.
“Hello,” she greeted Mr. Cantlebury cheerfully.
After a moment in which he stared at her with wonder, he composed himself again. “About time, Miss Hardison. I was beginning to think you’d never arrive. Now help me with Matthew and tell me which way we’re carrying him.”
Matthew was sitting up, eyes half-open, a dreamy smile on his face. She’d never seen him completely drunk, but she suspected this was similar to the look. He was more pleasant and amiable than she would have thought, and the smile held some secret knowledge in it. When he saw Eliza he grinned wider and whispered, “I’m the large predator.”
“I take it he’s still drugged?” She worried for his health, but not too much. He looked quite happy, at least, and she envied that state not a little.
“Drugged again. It’s beginning to wear off now, though. Whatever they’re giving him seems to act more like laudanum than opium. Doesn’t last very long, and he comes and goes while it’s active. I was foolish enough to take a few spoonfuls of gruel, but I’m over the symptoms now. I’ve been faking it ever since when they come in to shoot him up. Obviously they don’t think I’m much of a threat. Whatever they’re giving him seems stronger than what the poor slaves are getting. He doesn’t seem to mind it much.”
“It may be some specialty of the house. Apparently Lord Orm grows his own varieties. I think I’ve used up all the luck I care to on the corridors. Your cell window is on the outer wall, yes?”
“I believe so.”
“Lemon biscuit,” Matthew muttered.
Eliza pondered her choices. “Did you happen to see if anyone picked up our airships, or did they leave them be-hind?”
“I didn’t see anyone take mine. I don’t think the basket would have fit in the lorry, anyway. Matthew says his was smashed, or at least I think that’s what he’s been babbling about.”
“It was, but it should still be functional. His balloon will need patching, and so will his boiler. And he’ll need water for that. My ship’s intact, I just bundled it and hid it under his. So if we could sneak back up the valley to find them, now while it’s still dark, perhaps we can make some quick patches, just enough to get us out of here. I’m not sure of the way, but working together, perhaps we can find it.”
“I can find it,” Cantlebury assured her. “I always know which direction I’m heading. Also, I wasn’t tied up nearly as well as the two of you were, and I was able to look out the back window of the lorry a few times when they drove from my ship to yours. If my poor wreck is still there, we’d certainly have plenty of silk for patches. Although if the holes are small enough, I also have some pre-cut patches and this wonderful fibrous goo that Lavinia came up with. Faster than sewing.”
“Perfect. Now the only problem left is how to get Matthew up and out of that window.”
“Eliza?”
“Yes, Matthew, I’m here.”
“Oh, all right then. I love you, you know.”
She sighed. She knew, but it was problematic in so many ways for Matthew to say it aloud. “Yes, I know. Let’s get you on your feet and out this window. And not a word out of you, Cantlebury.”
“Madam, I wouldn’t dream of it.”
• • •
THE WINDOW TURNED out to be the easy part. The tricky bit was herding Matthew along without rousing the guards, particularly when he spotted the crescent moon and wanted to sing to it.
“No singing,” Cantlebury hissed, huffing along as fast as he could while Matthew and Eliza stumbled along behind. Matthew’s arm was heavy on her shoulders, and it was all she could do to stay upright.
“But it’s so beautiful,” he protested. “You’re so beautiful too. I could recite some poetry to you instead.”
“As long as you do it quietly,” said Cantlebury.
“Don’t encourage him. Matthew, do you even remember any poetry at the moment?”
“No.”
“There, you see.”
“I was going to make some up. About the hailstorm and the barn. Do you remember the—”
“Vividly. How about a nice poem about flowers instead?”
Cantlebury snickered. “I’d like to hear about the barn, myself.”
“There were no ponies in it, alas,” she told him, hoping to quell his enthusiasm.
“The sky, it falls, like heavy balls,” Matthew began. “Upon the drivers, full of woe.”
Eliza groaned. “Dear sweet merciful God in heaven.”
“Nature’s fury all unleash’d keeps us from where we want to go. This humble barn is
all that stands ’twixt us and Gaia’s vengeful wrath . . .”
“Ah, invocation of Gaia, nice touch,” Cantlebury quipped. “I’ll let Professor McCullough know you haven’t forgotten your classics, next time I see him.”
“So, grateful for it we must be . . . though one might wish it had a bath. The end.”
“Bloody brilliant,” was Cantlebury’s assessment.
“Very tasteful,” Eliza pronounced it. She was relieved and somewhat astonished that he’d kept it so. And absurdly touched that he’d just extemporized a poem to her. A very bad poem, she reminded herself fiercely, to no avail.
“I need to sleep now.”
He nearly managed it, slumping halfway to the ground and almost pulling her down with him. But Eliza pinched him hard, and Cantlebury splashed his face with a handful of the water from the bucket he carried. They’d taken it from the worker Eliza had seen, who was making another slow, shuffling trip to a well outside the wall when they passed by. She hoped the poor man wouldn’t be in trouble for losing the bucket. They’d crept up and taken it when he wasn’t looking, or more to the point, when he had seemed lost in rapt contemplation of the moon while he paused in pulling up the other full bucket for his yoke. Perhaps, she speculated, he had gone on to sing about it.
• • •
CANTLEBURY HADN’T LIED. He really could always tell exactly where he was, and his balloon was still stretched across the poppy field where he’d last seen it. The fields themselves had turned out to be blessedly empty, free of both the stupefied workers and their overseers.
Scrambling in the overturned basket, Cantlebury gathered a few surviving supplies.
“They’ve ransacked it, I think, and a few things were smashed when I came down. But here’s the repair kit, tool box. Oh, my hamper!”
The broken wine bottle inside had not sullied the sausage or cheese that also dwelled in Cantlebury’s hamper, and the trio ate ravenously as they trekked the last short distance to the wreck of Matthew’s airship. It was unmolested, with Eliza’s packed bundle still securely underneath it.
Matthew, unfortunately, was violently ill shortly after they finished the food, his stomach still reacting from the last dose of opium.
“It takes some like that,” Cantlebury said with a philosophical shrug. “At least he can sleep for a bit while we patch this up. Time for some of Lavinia’s miraculous goo.”
Eliza found Matthew’s discarded flight suit and pillowed his head on it, then set about putting his boiler to rights. A welding torch and proper metal patch would have been better, of course, or even a new boiler. But Cantlebury assured her that a square of tin nipped from the pail, secured with the fiber adhesive substance, would do the job well enough for a few hours. Eliza was impressed by the stuff, which adhered to both silk and metal equally well, and dried almost instantly.
“The trick is to avoid getting it on your fingers. Now, it would hold better still if it had an hour or two to cure, of course. But I say we give it fifteen minutes, then get the hell out of here. If you’ll excuse me.”
“I think it was called for. This place is like hell for those poor people. I hate leaving them all behind. And we never looked for Phineas. I feel like we’ve let down Barnabas and every other person who’s lost a loved one to Orm.”
Cantlebury reached for her hand, squeezing it gently. “Eliza, if Phineas were one of those sad creatures, he’s gone already. All the parts that made him who he was, at least. I have no idea what’s in that special preparation of Orm’s, but to the extent I believe in souls at all, I believe that drug has destroyed the souls of these people. The best thing we can do is find a way to get word to the authorities, to make sure that the troops from Salt Lake really do march down here to rout this bastard out. As far as what will happen to the workers after that . . . I’m not sure I want to know.”
“I want to know. I need to know. I’m going to do everything I can to get back here and help them. Those quicksilver miners too. Not through speeches or monographs or photos, but by doing things. Helping them to get well, to find other work somehow. There will be something I can do, and I will.”
“Strangely, I believe you.”
She chuckled. “Thank you. I’ll remember that later on when I’m doubting myself.”
“Let’s see if we can rouse the dangerous predator from his nap, shall we?”
“Please forget you heard . . . everything Matthew has said while under the influence of that stuff.”
“No. He’s happy. I don’t want to forget any of that, I like seeing my friends happy.”
Eliza smiled and walked over to Matthew, shaking his shoulder gently. “Matthew, wake up. Time to go.”
He snored and smacked his lips.
Cantlebury was more direct. He strode over to his friend and aimed a swift kick at the sole of his boot. “Pence. Up.”
“What?” Matthew sat up, swaying and blinking. “I was dreaming about biscuits. Oh, where the bloody hell am I now?”
Eliza coughed gently into her fist, drawing his attention.
“Oh. I thought I’d dreamed you too.”
“No. Can you stand up? It’s time for us to go now.”
He stood up, stumbling toward his battered airship. “Cantlebury’s going to have to sit in my lap, isn’t he? Damn.”
“Could be worse,” his friend said.
“I don’t see how.”
A shrill alarm pierced the night, and even at a few miles distance the three could see lights going on all over the castle compound.
“I’ll blame you for that later,” Cantlebury said. “Go, go, go.”
Eliza helped them onto the rigging, Matthew urging her all the while to leave them and get herself in the air. She finished strapping them in before stepping into her harness and shrugging on the pack.
“We did fill your boiler, yes?”
“Yes, yes, go!”
Thanking Dexter for making her own ship a much simpler affair than Matthew’s, she flicked the starter on her spirit lamp as Matthew turned the valve on his helium tank. The two balloons began to billow and fill in tandem, and they cleared the ground just as Eliza spotted the mounted riders pelting along the valley toward them.
Cranking the heat to full and crossing her fingers for luck, Eliza hauled on the rudder control and took a sharp turn west as she twirled up into the cool dark air. A shot flew past her, splitting the night with a singing whistle but somehow missing her.
Matthew’s green silks were directly below her, and she could hear the chug of the propeller engine and the roar of his helium tank releasing too quickly as it took him higher.
More shots followed, but they were already out of range. The airships swept up and over the western ridge, crossed a silent valley filled with more poppies, then two more, before finally reaching the far side of Orm’s holdings and soaring over the clear, safe ridges in the direction of Carson City.
TWENTY-TWO
ONLY THE DARK saved them, making it too hard for the sky pirates to track them over the mountains. They kept their airships low, lest the makeshift repairs fail and force them down. When they did land, however, it wasn’t the repairs that did it.
“Cantlebury has the plague,” Matthew called to Eliza as she stepped from her harness. They had come down on the outskirts of a small town, and the sun was just rising over the mountains behind them.
“It’s not the plague,” their friend said in a pathetically weak voice.
“Might as well be.”
“At least you seem to have recovered,” Eliza said.
Matthew shrugged. “I have a bad head, but I’ll survive.”
From the nearest building, an old man emerged, pointing a shotgun at them and approaching slowly.
“I assume I’ll survive,” he amended, raising his hands in the air and nodding to Eliza to do the same. “Good morning, sir. Does yo
ur town have a doctor?”
“Not for pirates.” The man spit to one side and shifted the tobacco in his mouth with a suspicious air. “Never seen a girl pirate before. Or balloons like those two.”
“We’re not pirates, sir,” Eliza explained. “We’re part of the Sky and Steam Rally. You’ve heard of it?”
He nodded slowly, then jerked his head toward Cantlebury, who still reclined against Matthew’s basket chair. “What’s that one, then? The mascot?”
“Our colleague Mr. Edmund Cantlebury, another of the drivers in the rally. He’s been taken ill and can’t continue. Please, he needs medical care. We can pay you handsomely.”
Still holding the shotgun at the ready with one hand, the gruff-looking fellow leaned down and placed a hand on Cantlebury’s forehead, then felt for the pulse in his neck. Sighing, he gestured to Matthew and handed off the gun. “Hold that. How long ago did he start feeling it?” Taking one knee, he lifted Cantlebury’s eyelids one at a time, cursing softly at the lack of light.
“About two hours? It’s difficult to say, we were flying in the dark.”
The man frowned and sniffed. “Vomiting?”
“Ah, no,” Matthew said. “That was me. It’s a long story. I’m quite well now, however.”
“Rough night?”
“Something like that.”
Eliza stepped forward. “You’re the doctor, aren’t you?”
He nodded, beard waggling as he smiled and chuckled. “Doctor John Belton. Also the mayor. And right now I guess I’m the sheriff too, since the real sheriff is sleeping off a bender over at the saloon. Your friend’s fever needs to come down. Any idea what he’s sick with?”
Sharing a quick glance first, Matthew and Eliza nodded in unison.
“It’s the influenza,” she confessed. “Several of the racers have been struck. Including Mr. Cantlebury’s . . . fiancée.”
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