by Devon Monk
The image of Mae Lindson came to him. He found himself savoring the memory of her touch as she tended his wounds in Hallelujah, remembered the warmth of her leaned full against him, his arms around her as she wept for her dead husband.
Like counting precious coins, he rolled through the moments he’d caught her, gathering herbs, or gazing at the sky, her face gentle and kind, her voice bent to song. He recalled the sweet sound of her all-too-rare laughter.
He’d been married. Loved his wife well and full. Never thought another woman would pull on his heart.
Mae Lindson called to him like a thirst to water. Not in the same way as his wife. The part of his heart that had loved her had died with her.
He thought, or maybe he only flattered himself in thinking, that some days when Mae was watching him, she was seeing him with the kind of desire he saw her.
He could build a life with her. If she’d have him. If he could still be the kind of man who lived for more than just surviving the rise and fall of the full moon.
The wind outside the airship gusted, and the frame and wood of the ship rocked and creaked a bit. Cedar knew the basic principles behind the steam airships. He’d heard the captain tell his men to drain the airbags—a good precaution so that they didn’t get broadsided by a big gust that might send them tumbling in the night even if they were anchored and lashed.
And he’d heard Molly Gregor say the steam boiler was in good condition. But he knew it took more than steam to keep a ship in the air. It took glim.
Glim harvesters kept enough of their take to augment their fuel. But there were men and women who underestimated how much glim they’d need. They were not above stealing glim from other ships, even if that meant shooting the ship out of the sky.
Captain Hink had told Cedar that the two ships that had given them chase, the Bickern and the Saginaw, were likely pirates out to steal glim and pick over the bones of the crippled ship.
Cedar knew there was more he didn’t say, secrets he didn’t want Cedar to know.
Wil shifted, his claws scraping the floor. Cedar opened his eyes.
The captain’s man, Mr. Seldom, was standing near the far window of the airship, bent a bit so he could see up and out the window. Cedar didn’t know what he was looking for. It might be dawn already, but down in this crater, it was still dark as ink. He wasn’t sure full noon would send down enough sunlight to sweep the shadows off the rocks.
Wil’s ears twitched, and then Cedar heard it too. The far-off buzz and chug of an airship.
He couldn’t tell how close by it might be, nor if it was either of the ships from yesterday.
Seldom shifted, his boot scuffing a soft hush against the floor.
Captain Hink rolled over in his cot and sat up.
Hink placed his hand around the nearest metal beam, and held very still. His head was tipped down as if waiting for the slight thrum of a heartbeat under his fingers.
The two men stood that way, without a twitch, for a full minute or so. Then, at the same time, they both moved. Mr. Seldom turned around and bedded back under his covers, pulling the scarves over his nose to keep the early cold off his face.
But Captain Hink looked over at Cedar. He seemed to consider something, then stood. He buckled his coat closed and dragged his scarf over his nose and mouth. He pointed to the door, pointed at the goggles Cedar wore at his neck, then pointed up.
Cedar stood. Captain Hink wanted Cedar’s eyes on the sky. Wil took two steps to follow him, then looked back at Rose and Mae and chose to stay behind.
Cedar pushed his hat a little tighter against his head and followed Captain Hink out the door. The captain closed it as quickly as he could, keeping the cold wind out of the room.
The rocky ground was foggy with a frost that made walking a slippery process.
The ship had landed on a small level outcropping of stone that didn’t seem wide or long enough for her. Like shooting a billiard ball into the corner pocket blindfolded, the ship’s coming to a stop just a few yards from the solid stone wall of the cliffs behind it was amazing. The bluffs above them did a lot to hide the ship from the narrow window of sky.
It was a dizzying, claustrophobic feeling, like standing at the bottom of a well. The darkness of night lay all around them, while just the slightest pink light blushed the sliver of sky high above.
“Heard a ship pass over,” Captain Hink said as he marched away from the Swift, casting glances at the sky. “Think you can get an eye on it?”
“Might,” Cedar said. “Why are they following us?”
The captain clambered up a fall of stones and stood at the top. “Depends on who it is following us,” he said. “I’ve made my enemies. A man who runs glim has no friends. He takes on a crew, and puts his trust in having a ship under his feet that can outrun or outgun his foes.”
“Then why pick us up?”
Cedar watched the man shift his stance a bit. The wolf in his blood gave him better than average eyesight, so even here in the dark he could see how the captain paused. Likely he was working out a story to answer that question.
“Truth of it? It was an accident,” he said. “I’d heard there might be something or someone I was looking for in Vicinity. When I saw the tipped wagon and angry mob, I got curious. You came pounding out of that jail with two women, one of whom was injured.” He was still looking at the sky, but he shrugged his big shoulders. “Seemed the decent thing to do.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Mostly same as you, I reckon,” he said. “Looking for the Holder. Heard tales of it. Heard it’s valuable. I’m a man who recognizes valuable opportunities when they present themselves.”
“It’s a weapon,” Cedar said.
Captain Hink glanced down at him. “You know that for sure, or you seen it with your own eyes?”
“Both.”
“A man who’s seen the legendary Holder? That’s what I call a valuable opportunity.”
“Depends on whose hands it falls into.”
“True. You suppose you’re the sort of man who should be responsible for that kind of a weapon, Mr. Hunt?”
“No. And neither are you.”
Captain Hink chuckled. “True. Wait.” He held very still, his body as taut as a plucked string. “Do you hear her?”
Cedar Hunt did indeed hear the ship. Coming in from the south. He pulled his goggles over his eyes and peered at the sky. “How many ships know about this bolt-hole?” he asked.
“Too many. And they know the Swift can pocket it.”
“Do they have charges?” Cedar asked.
“They shouldn’t. Glim harvest isn’t like shoveling for gold. No need for dropping dynamite when you’re digging the skies.”
“There she is,” Cedar said. The airship skimmed the edge of the chasm, lights flashing from the windows in her sides like stars stuck on a wedge of night.
“Doesn’t look like the Bickern, too small,” Cedar said.
“The Saginaw?”
“I didn’t get much of a look at her. Distinctions?”
“Narrow hull, three steamer, so you should be able to see three stacks if she shows her rump. She’s an open deck, so you’ll see sunlight between the hull and the airbags.”
“What type of propellers on her?” Cedar asked.
“Quad. Two front, two rear.”
“I see fans, front and rear, but I only see one stack…no, two.” The ship tipped out of sight, but for a bare second he caught the flash of sunlight between the deck and bags. “Open hull.”
“It’s the Saginaw,” Captain Hink said. “Hear the cough in her throttle?”
Cedar listened. The ship gave off the strange chugging and hum that all airships emitted. “No.”
“Well, I do. It’s Captain Smith. Don’t know what I did to cook his cockles.”
“Maybe he’s looking for what you were looking for,” Cedar said.
“The Holder?” Captain Hink started down the tumble of rocks, kicking pebbles
free. “Don’t think so. Most men think that’s just a bluff. A contraption to keep men spooked and under the president’s thumb.”
“The president?” Cedar asked. “What’s his part with the Holder?”
“He owns it, Mr. Hunt. Or so much as. This is his country, and to keep the peace, he has the right to control the weapons.”
“And what makes you think the Holder’s not a bluff?” Cedar asked.
“Besides you saying you’ve seen it? Records. Drawings sketched out by men learned in the wild sciences. I came across a man once who swore he’d seen it. Said it was headed out west in the possession of a peculiar aristocratic sort of man. A railroad tycoon.”
He stopped next to Cedar. “The power a man would carry in the palm of his hand if he had the Holder is enough to take all the states, and the world beyond for the spoils.”
“So how well do you know the president?” Cedar asked.
Captain Hink paused. He considered his answer just long enough for Cedar to know he’d hit a nerve. Regardless of what Captain Hink might say, he knew the president. Possibly had served under him. Maybe still did.
“Not well at all,” the captain lied cheerily. “But if I get my hands on the Holder, I’m going to march right up the hill and sit down to tea with the gentleman himself.
“We’ll need to patch the Swift enough to get her to a repair site,” he continued. “Old Jack’s isn’t too far off. We’ll have to do it quiet and slow. Crawl the cliffs and stay out of the clears, but we might make it by nightfall.”
“Then what?” Cedar asked.
“Then I drop you and yours off at the nearest town, we shake hands and let our paths take us where they may.”
Cedar didn’t think there were towns in these parts big enough to offer up the mounts and supplies they’d need to make it to Kansas. There might be a doctor for Rose, but if what Alun had said was true, they’d need the Holder to get that piece of tin out of her.
He’d promised the Madders he’d find the Holder for them. And he planned on doing just that. But he’d also promised he’d do anything necessary to get Rose the medical attention she needed. This was his last bargaining chip for her life.
“I can find it,” Cedar said.
Hink had taken three strides back toward the Swift, but he stopped dead.
“Find what?”
“The Holder.” He’d promised to find it for the Madders, but he had promised no man he’d give it into their possession. Wasn’t much promising he’d give it to Captain Hink either. Only that he’d look and find. After that, there’d be bargains to be made.
“I’ve seen it. I’ve smelled it. I know what it is. I can find it.”
Hink turned around, his head tipped just a little, as if he wasn’t clear that he was hearing correctly.
“I’m to take your word on this, Mr. Hunt?”
“If you think it’s a valuable opportunity.”
“Huh.” Captain Hink tucked his thumbs in the rigging gear at his hips. “What would it cost me to hire your services?”
“I find the Holder, and you take us to Kansas as fast as your ship can fly.”
“To Mrs. Lindson’s family?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you sure you have your bargain in order?” Captain Hink asked.
“I’m sure.”
The captain started off toward the ship again. “Most men would ask for the payment first, and service second.”
“I’m not most men.”
“So there’s a reason you want to find the Holder before taking Mrs. Lindson to her home?”
“Yes.”
“And what reason is that, Mr. Hunt?”
“Rose Small will die if I don’t.”
Cedar was watching Hink in profile as he said those words. The captain had placed his hand on the ship’s door. But his shoulders pulled back and his chin jerked up.
“Are you a doctor, Mr. Hunt?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then why should I believe your prognosis?”
“Because she has a piece of the Holder in that wound.”
“Impossible.” He turned. “The Holder can’t be broken. Each piece has been constructed so that nothing short of the fires of hell can melt it, no hammer can break it, and no vise can bend it. It’s made of Strange elements, Mr. Hunt. It isn’t just a tinker’s toy.”
For a man who had only seen sketches of it, he seemed to know an awful lot about it.
“It’s broken into seven pieces,” Cedar said, watching his eyes, the pace of his breathing. The Holder meant more to the captain than just a fancy bauble he could bargain with the president for over tea. The Holder was important enough to him that even implying it had been broken, tampered with, possibly destroyed, made him angry.
Not, not just angry. It made him fearful.
He had something on the line in finding the Holder, or in keeping it whole.
“Someone broke it into smaller bits,” Cedar said. “This one piece of it, at least. Someone who found this section of it tinkered with it. And I don’t think it’s an accident. That piece inside Miss Small was meant to kill. I think it was meant to kill me.”
“Are you so important that someone would destroy a weapon of that magnitude just to kill you? Isn’t a bullet good enough to stop you, Mr. Hunt?”
“I bleed,” Cedar said. “I can die. But I don’t do either easily.”
Hink narrowed his eyes, reassessing Cedar. Cedar waited. Let him make his own conclusions. Cedar had survived fatal wounds, from many of which he still carried the scars. The shift to wolf in the full moon sped up his healing to a remarkable degree.
He was a hard man to kill.
“Yet you’ll put the Holder in my hands for a ride on my ship,” Captain Hink said. “Not sure I’d trust a man who would hand over that weapon to the first sky rat he took ship with.”
“You’re not a sky rat,” Cedar said. “You’re the president’s man.”
Hink tugged the door open. “Says you.” He stepped into the Swift, Cedar right behind him.
The relief from the cold was a blessing, even though the interior of the ship was barely warmer than the frigid morning. At least there was no wind.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Cedar said.
Captain Hink held his gaze for a long moment. Then he strode off to the front of the ship. “It’s half past dawn, you lazy slacks,” he said. “Get up, men, we have wings to mend.”
The men were already up, already busy stowing bedrolls and strapping the cots to the walls and overhead storage. They didn’t do much more than give the captain a glance, familiar with his moods as only a long-standing crew could be.
Wil, next to Rose’s hammock, whined. Rose was awake, though she stared at the ceiling and held as still as she could. Her coloring was off, a strange gray paleness in the shadows of her face.
Cedar walked over to her.
“Mr. Hunt?” It was Mae.
Cedar glanced at Rose, who didn’t appear to have heard Mae’s soft whisper. She blinked, though, and was breathing steady, if a little shallow.
Maybe Mae could ease her pain with herbs.
He walked around the hammock to where Mae sat on the blankets on the floor. She had one hand on the tatting shuttle around her neck, the other clenched in a fist as if she were trying to hold on to the fabric of this waking world, worried that if she let go, she might slip back into dreams.
“Morning, Mrs. Lindson,” Cedar said, kneeling in front of her.
It took her some time to respond. Some time to actually move her eyes away from staring at things he could not see in the middle distance between them to seeing him only an arm’s reach in front of her.
“We’re not in the sky,” she said.
“We landed. Safe. You helped the captain with it. Do you remember?”
Her eyes flicked across his face as if trying to see him through so many other images. “We were falling.”
“Yes. But we didn’t fall. You cast a spell,
Mrs. Lindson. You touched the captain.”
“No,” she said.
Cedar paused. She sounded afraid. He wasn’t sure if she was telling him no, or saying it to the voices of the sisters in her head.
“I didn’t touch him,” she said. “Tell me I didn’t touch him. Please.”
He could lie. She would find comfort in it. But he didn’t know what kind of spell she had cast.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But you did touch the captain. You were singing. Some sort of prayer. Then he brought the ship down for a safe landing here in the mountains.”
She shook her head. “Is he alive? Is he breathing?”
“He’s fine.” Cedar clamped his teeth down before he said more. Why was she suddenly so concerned about the captain? He was a stranger, a rogue. For all they knew, he could be their enemy. And yet she showed more compassion to him than she had to Cedar in the last few weeks on the trail.
The killing need of the beast rose in him. The need to destroy the captain, to tear him to bloody shreds and leave him for the vultures to pick over. Just the thought of Mae caring for the captain set off a deep fury and jealousy, which he fought back.
No good would come of killing the only man who could repair the ship and fly them out of here.
No good would come of him being angry over Mae’s interest in a man other than him.
The beast squirmed under his logic and, finally, relented, leaving his head filled with reasonable thoughts again.
“I…” Mae seemed to be trying very hard to pull herself into a calmer state. She relaxed her fist, but did not let go of the shuttle.
“I may have harmed him,” she said quietly. “May have bound him to his ship in ways a man’s mind cannot endure. I have done worse with magic. Such terrible things.” Her eyes were bloodshot, and she was almost on the verge of tears, even though her voice was calm.
“He’s clearheaded,” Cedar said, still working to push his anger down. “I was just speaking with him outside. He’s decided to repair the ship, then go for supplies. He’s promised to take us to Kansas. To the sisterhood.”
“Are you certain?” she asked.
Cedar gently placed his hand over her fist. “Of his promise? Not at all.”