Dead Dukes Tell No Tales

by Catherine Stein

  Hartleigh pursed his lips. “It looks like you’ll have to hunt for your treasure after all.”

  “Yes,” Sabine sighed, half in relief, half frustration. Only days ago she’d had no idea whether she’d ever decrypt the document or whether the Heart of Ra was real. Now she had confirmation that it existed and had completed the first step along the path to retrieval.

  Still, the length of that path was disheartening. The longer she took, the more time her enemies had to discover her plan and come after her. She was relatively safe in England, where she had the backing of the king and the government, but in most parts of the world she was considered something between a nuisance and a wanted criminal.

  Lola tugged on Sabine’s sleeve. “Miss La Capitaine?”

  “Yes, Lola?”

  “Can I come with you?”

  Sabine looked across the carriage into Hartleigh’s eyes, sharp and blue behind his thick lenses.

  He nodded once.

  She grinned back. “I think it’s time we make some funeral arrangements, don’t you?”

  9

  Lola sat on the edge of her bed, legs dangling well off the floor. She looked so tiny, perched there on the massive old bed. None of the rooms in the dower house had been intended as a child’s bedroom. Another pang of homesickness for their pretty house in Chicago stabbed at Cliff’s chest.

  Lola carefully slotted the syringe full of luxene into her fuel tube, then looked up at him for approval. Cliff checked the placement of the syringe and gave her a nod. She depressed the plunger, sending the glowing green fuel streaming into her mechanical heart.

  “Did I get it all?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  She passed him the empty syringe and popped the cover back into place. Cliff helped her button up her shirt buttons.

  “Nice job, Lo. Pretty soon you’ll be able to do it all yourself. You’re good for another week. Hopefully by then we’ll be in San Francisco, looking for a new house with a view of the ocean.”

  Cliff cleaned the syringe and stashed it in the fuel kit, checking that the luxene bottle was properly sealed against leakage. The eight-ounce bottle was already half empty. At half an ounce per week, he’d need to buy more before the winter was out. Even a two-month supply didn’t feel like enough. Nothing ever felt like enough.

  Lola gripped the doorknob with both hands, looking back at him with wide-eyed expectation. “Can we go now, Daddy?”

  Cliff tucked the fuel kit into his shoulder bag. “Go ahead. But walk, don’t run. If you smash something rushing to get there, you’ll be stuck here until it’s cleaned up.”

  She yanked open the door and leapt out into the hall with a whoop of joy. Cliff grimaced. He still had a lingering headache from yesterday’s incident at the bank, which was probably a bad sign. Not that he could do much about it other than lay down and rest. And he could do that just as well on an airship as he could here.

  Sabine Diebin’s pirate ship hovered in the middle of his garden, its oblong, midnight-blue balloon swaying slightly in the chilly wind. The dark-stained, wooden hull resembled a seventeenth-century sailing ship, complete with portholes and shuttered openings that could potentially conceal cannons. It was smaller than Cliff had expected, perhaps sixty or seventy feet in length and as tall as a two-story house. His mental picture of her commanding a full score of rough, angry pirates was apparently a bit exaggerated.

  Lola ran toward the ship, waving a stick she’d scooped up off the ground, overjoyed at the fulfillment of all her pirate dreams. Damn, but he loved her. He couldn’t imagine loving anyone or anything as much as he loved his baby girl. He hitched up his bag to keep it on his shoulder, patting it to feel the fuel kit inside. Her health and safety were first priority.

  “Hartleigh!”

  Cliff sighed, slowing his pace. “Duchess. How kind of you to come see us off.”

  “Where do you think you’re going? The debts are still unpaid. The papers are making a mockery of you. You can’t go running off like this.”

  Cliff folded his arms across his chest. “I’m the Duke of Hartleigh. I can do whatever the hell I want.”

  “No, you can’t. You have obligations. Duty to your family name.”

  He glared at her. “Excuse me if I don’t want to take the advice of a woman who can’t even be bothered to warn me of dangerous traps.”

  “What?”

  “The treasure chest?”

  Her aristocratic brow crinkled. “What treasure chest?”

  “The one with the hidden key. And the booby-trapped strongbox inside. Your husband entrusted you with the secret, and you were supposed to tell me. But apparently I’m not respectable enough.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Your late husband. Did he or didn’t he leave information that was to be passed on to me?”

  Some of the fire went out of her usually-bright eyes. “He left dozens of notes, most of which made no sense whatsoever. He was… not his usual self in the last months of his life.”

  Her genuine sorrow dampened Cliff’s anger. “I’m sorry. I can tell you cared for him.”

  “I did. He was a kind man and very good to me.”

  Cliff nodded. He couldn’t pretend to understand how a sixty-year age difference could make for a satisfactory marriage. But, then again, his own views on the institution were cynical enough that he wasn’t certain there even was such a thing as a satisfactory marriage.

  “Well, I’m sorry for your loss. It will not, however, prevent me from traveling to France. This is my chance to take Lola on an airship and show her another new country. I’m not going to pass up the opportunity. We’ll be back in a few days.”

  We’ll be “dead” in a few days. Swept out to sea, perhaps. The convent is near the coast.

  An odd, guilty feeling fluttered in his belly. He didn’t want the duchess cast out of her home with only the clothes on her back.

  She’ll be fine. I’ll have Sabine send all the money from the sale of the scrap and antiquities we sorted straight to the duchess.

  “Why do I doubt that?” the duchess muttered to herself.

  Cliff pretended he hadn’t heard. “Excuse me. I need to see that our luggage has all been loaded.” They weren’t coming back. Nothing important could get left behind.

  The only access to the ship besides ropes and winches appeared to be a single ladder dangling from the deck to the ground. Lola scampered up it so quickly Cliff thought his heart might stop. He waited at the bottom, both hands free, ready to catch her if she fell. When she was safely aboard, he slung his bag across his body and started up.

  The ladder swayed as he climbed, tipping this way and that with each step. His knees and elbows banged against the hull, sending jolts of pain up and down his limbs. How the hell did anyone do this on a regular basis? No wonder pirates drank all the time. Pain relief. At least the bruises distracted from the headache.

  “Welcome aboard, Duke.”

  Cliff steadied himself with a hand on the rail. “Captain,” he replied.

  Sabine wore one of the simple dresses that made up her everyday wardrobe, but she’d topped it with a dashing military jacket in the same dark blue as the ship’s balloon. A leather tricorn hat sat atop her brown curls. She smiled at him. “This is my ship. Die Fledermaus. As of now, I officially outrank you.”

  Cliff lifted one shoulder. “Okay.”

  “Allow me to introduce my crew. Hawkes you know, of course.” She gestured at the butler, still attired in his tidy English suit, pointing out features of the ship to a beaming Lola. “Nicole Palmer, here, is my first mate.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Cliff shook the woman’s hand. She was tall, with dark brown skin and a penetrating gaze. Her unadorned, tan trousers and plain, white shirt revealed an athletic figure well-suited to shipboard duties. Cliff expected she could handily kick his ass if she ever tried.

  “Nicole does most of the piloting and oversees almost everything else,” Sabi
ne continued. “Do what she says. Her husband, Ben, is our engineer.” Sabine pointed at a lanky man busily working on one of the engines, a pair of goggles obscuring his face, and mysterious tools strapped all over his body. “They both hail from Jamaica, so the rule on board is if they don’t complain about the cold, you’d better not, either. Right, Jules?”

  “La Capitaine wounds me, monsieur,” the Frenchman said to Cliff, tossing his chin-length, white-blond hair. “She knows it is a rule I break all too often. But, you, of course, are our guest. We will give you every comfort during our travels. I am the navigator. I will see us safely to our intended destination. In this particular instance, I am delighted to escort you to my homeland.”

  Cliff shook the man’s hand, trying not to stare at the canary yellow embroidered waistcoat that looked like something from the court of Marie Antoinette. Maybe it was. For all Cliff knew, the crew had once looted an old French castle.

  “This is my personal ship,” Sabine explained, “and she flies easily with no more crew than this. In the days before I retired, I had two other, larger ships with crew members from even more countries. So if you hear anyone speaking Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Icelandic, or any other language, that’s where it came from. Mostly we all know the curse words.”

  Cliff made a vague noise of agreement, not certain how to reply. What he wouldn’t give to wake up at home in Chicago thinking, Dukedoms and pirates? What insane sort of dream was that?

  He stayed up on deck while the ship ascended, walking about with Lola and reminding her of the dangers of climbing while flying until she began to roll her eyes. Twice he stumbled over coils of rope because he was too busy watching the world fall away beneath them to look where he was going.

  The air grew even colder as they rose, and the crew donned thick coats and gloves. Lola wrapped herself in a borrowed fur and marched around bellowing orders to an imaginary crew. Cliff plopped himself down near the rail, protected from the wind and shaded a bit from the bright sunlight. The pounding in his head had grown worse, and he shut his eyes briefly.

  “You ought to go down to the captain’s cabin and rest, Your Grace,” Hawkes suggested. “I can keep an eye on the little miss. I’ll teach her all the pirate safety rules and if she starts to shiver, I’ll bring her down to you.”

  Cliff hesitated a moment, then nodded. Ordinarily he gave Lola plenty of freedom to play and do things on her own. And a flying airship wasn’t much more dangerous than an ocean liner. Right?

  He knew he’d made a good decision the moment he settled down in Sabine’s sturdy, but comfortable, armchair. His head fell against the back of the chair, his eyes closing again. He hadn’t slept well last night, still achy and anxious after the explosion at the bank. He’d be no use to Lola dozing on the deck. Better to nap well in comfort with the assurance that someone was watching her.

  Half an hour of sleep revived him, and when he woke he took a bit of time to examine the room around him. It suited Sabine’s style. Everything of quality, but nothing too ornate. The chair he sat in and a chest for storage sat opposite a rugged desk and a well-stocked bookshelf. To his left was a tidy bed, built directly into the wall for stability.

  The Sphinx device sat atop the desk, its wooden case closed and latched. Cliff walked over to examine it. The key they had found in the treasure chest fit neatly into the slot, but he didn’t turn it. He wasn’t foolish enough to try any more of the Mad Duke’s inventions without proper instructions. He fished out the folded piece of paper that had come with the key, wanting to read the directions for himself.

  The potential of the Heart of Ra to be weaponized makes it too dangerous to reveal to the world.

  “Heart of Ra?” he asked aloud. “Weaponized? What the hell kind of treasure is this?”

  Cliff rushed up to the deck, the note in his hand. No way in hell was he going to be part of a hunt for some kind of unspeakable weapon. He’d make Sabine drop him and Lola off at the closest convenient spot, and hopefully throw the damn decryption machine into the ocean as well.

  “Explain this,” he demanded, waving the note in Sabine’s face.

  “Calm down, Duke. What’s your problem?” She snatched the paper from his hand.

  Cliff refused to back down. “This ‘Heart of Ra.’ What is it?” He jabbed a finger at the paper. “It sounds like a fancy gemstone, but the duke speaks of its potential as a weapon. What is it really? A gun? A warship? A poison?”

  “It’s a battery.”

  Cliff’s eyes widened in surprise. “What?”

  “A tiny but powerful fuel cell. No bigger than my little finger, according to my sources, and they’ve been correct about everything so far. You’ve seen those pet dragons that run on luxene?”

  “Of course.” The small mechanical creatures used power sources similar to the one he and Lola had refueled only that morning. He’d practiced with them exhaustively in the days when Lola had first received the biomechanical implant, learning to make all necessary adjustments for regular maintenance of small devices.

  “The Heart of Ra could power one of those dragons for one hundred years.”

  Cliff reeled. One hundred years? Fuel for a lifetime? The very idea was intoxicating. A battery that small and powerful could change Lola’s life. It would free her from any fears that luxene would become too rare or too expensive. It would protect her from suppliers’ haphazard quality checks that could result in tainted, weak, or otherwise faulty fuel. It would keep her heart pumping until she was a great-grandmother, surrounded by generations of adoring family. Cliff wanted it so badly his chest ached.

  “I see,” he replied, the bland words all he could manage without revealing the turmoil now roiling inside him. What would he do to claim the Heart of Ra? Postpone his escape to California? Without a second thought. Betray a pirate? Not if he could help it. He’d pay her for it, once they found it. He’d pay everything he had. Sabine’s single-minded pursuit of the treasure was the only question mark. What if everything he had still wasn’t enough? What then?

  “I don’t plan to weaponize it, if that’s your concern,” Sabine said, staring up at him with her arms folded across her chest. “I believe we have already discussed how I am not a murderer.”

  “I know. I just… I’m worried for Lola, is all.”

  “If we stumble into any dangers, I will see that she is protected. The crew can fly her away at a moment’s notice.”

  “Thank you. I’ll, uh, go put those instructions away. Sorry to bother you.”

  Sabine handed the paper back, still scowling at him. “Don’t make me regret our bargain.”

  He shuddered and hurried down to the cabin, plopping himself into the armchair once more.

  “Fuck,” he muttered.

  Apparently he needed new business cards. Clifford J. Kinsley. Scrap collector. Duke. Treasure hunter.

  10

  Dagger, check. Torch, check. Lockpicks, check. Duke…

  Sabine stared into the dimly lit cabin, where he lay sleeping in her bed, Lola curled up beside him. Did she really want to bring him along? She could take Nicole instead and not have to worry about anyone making noise or poor decisions.

  No. She wouldn’t involve the crew. That had been part of the retirement deal. They’d agreed to stay on as her personal crew with legitimate, legal positions. They maintained her ships and flew her place-to-place. Nothing more. Any treasure hunting or potentially criminal deeds would be Sabine’s alone.

  And sneaking into a convent to break open a reliquary was certainly illegal. Cliff Kinsley would have to do as a partner. He was already involved with her search, and he was the right sort of person to send running for help if everything went horribly wrong.

  She crossed the room silently and gave him a gentle shake. He sat up immediately and climbed carefully over Lola. He hadn’t undressed, and it took only moments for him to don his eyeglasses, step into his short boots, and pull on his coat. The suit wasn’t ideal for burglary, but it wouldn’t unduly hampe
r him either, and she doubted he had anything better.

  “You’re wearing trousers,” he commented when they reached the deck.

  “So good of you to notice.”

  “It’s not so dark that I could possibly miss it, and you did walk up the stairs right in front of me.”

  “Staring at my bum, were you?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a nice bum. You have nice legs, too.”

  Sabine chuckled. She liked that forthright manner of his. “Thank you. You’re not unpleasant to look at yourself. And, yes, I have discarded my everyday clothing in favor of something that will allow me to climb through a window or over a wall.”

  “I imagine you’re better at that sort of thing than I am, even in a dress. I’ll do my best not to muck things up.”

  “Do as I say and hopefully we’ll avoid any trouble.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  The moonlit walk to the convent took no more than a few minutes. The abbess had given Sabine permission to park her ship on the grounds overnight, based on her supposed interest in a monastic life. Dinner and an evening spent in the company of the convent’s highly religious inhabitants had been excruciating. Sabine had never been a churchgoer, knew little about religious life, and certainly had no intention of ever giving up all her possessions to live in an uncomfortable little cell. She’d had quite enough of poverty as a child. She’d earned her way out of it and she wasn’t going back.

  Fortunately, the allure of a pirate repenting all her sins had captivated the nuns. They’d passed the hours telling Sabine exactly why she should pick this convent above all others for her holy life of redemption. She’d said little in return.

  “The reliquary is in the chapel,” she whispered to Hartleigh, pausing in a deep shadow along the convent’s outer wall. “The nuns take turns worshiping Saint Felicula’s holy bones, or some such nonsense.”

  “They don’t worship the bones, or even the saint,” Hartleigh explained. “They’re asking the saint to intercede on their behalf or on behalf of others.”