She made him as comfortable as possible with his back against a red boulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’ll see the ship lose altitude, and then you’ll see me, I promise.”
“Be … careful.”
She kissed him and rose. But before she could choose a path to higher ground so that she could get a better view of their options, a voice hailed them from the direction of the river. In a moment, two of the witches that had deserted them came pelting into sight, with something that looked suspiciously like a door suspended between them.
“Alice!” Betsy Trelawney called when she was within earshot. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
Alice’s grip tightened on her lightning pistol, and in a moment, when she recognized Gretchen the she-wolf in the rear, she pulled it out and thumbed on the ignition switch. The pistol began to hum in a cheerful treble.
“Don’t shoot!” Gretchen shouted, skidding to a halt. This jerked the door out of Betsy’s hands, and Gretchen flipped it up to crouch behind it, leaving poor Betsy standing in the clear. “We mean you no harm. We went back to the steamboat to get something to carry him with.”
Alice lost her tenuous grip on her temper. A bolt of lightning sizzled past Betsy, who threw herself to the ground with a scream, and fried the top off a pinon pine where Gretchen’s head had just been.
“Alice!” Betsy shrieked as smoke curled up and the air filled with the scent of hot resin. “We’re trying to help you!”
“The only thing that will help me is the sight of her dead body,” Alice snapped. “Get out from behind that door, you yellow-bellied sapsucker.” She cast a glance upward, but the Ranger ship was nowhere to be seen. Were they circling around for another pass? Or had this ridiculous delay cost her Ian’s only chance at getting to a doctor?
“Forgive me,” came from behind the door. “I lost my temper. I intended to shoot wide, but he moved.”
“Liar!” Alice’s voice was hoarse with fear and dust and tears. “You aimed at his heart, you filthy toad. Now, stand up and take what’s coming to you.”
Betsy scrambled to her feet and leaped back into Alice’s line of fire, her hands extended in a plea. “Alice—Alice—this is no time for revenge if we hope to get your husband to Sister Clara.”
“What is a cook going to do for him?” Tears of fear and frustration leaked from Alice’s eyes, which did nothing for her temper. “I need to get him to Santa Fe, and now the Ranger ship is gone!”
“The others are causing a distraction,” came from behind the door.
“What?” Alice’s trigger finger jerked, and the top left corner of the door blew off. Blue tendrils of light explored each panel, dancing and sizzling. With a shriek, Gretchen shoved it over and leaped away from it.
Finding nothing to ease its appetite in the wood, which bore neither knob nor hinges, the lightning attacked a rock. It exploded, and a chunk of it struck the other woman, knocking her to the ground.
Alice smiled the smile with which air pirates from Santa Fe to the Canadas had become all too familiar. She buffed the flared barrel of the pistol with her sleeve and deactivated it.
“Dadgummit, Alice, as I was saying,” Betsy went on furiously, “Sister Clara and May Lin between them do our doctoring. They’ve pulled out plenty of bullets. Now stop this nonsense and take us to your husband.”
“I’ll take you.” Alice jerked her chin at the moaning Gretchen. “She stays out of range or I’ll shoot a bigger boulder.”
Gretchen was no fool. She pulled herself out of the way as Alice and Betsy picked up the door and jogged back to where Ian lay. Her heart ached at the fresh blood that oozed from the wound as they laid him on the door. He was heavy, but the strength of desperation and love seemed to fill her muscles, enabling her to cover the half-mile to the river at something approaching a fast shamble.
The boat and crew were waiting on watch, as though every witch aboard was anxious to rectify the mistake their sister had committed.
“You get him home,” Gretchen told the man at the wheel. “I’ll join the distraction party and make sure you aren’t followed.”
Which suited Alice right down to the ground. Maybe the Rangers would get a good shot at her.
The witch had barely leaped to the rocks when a crewman dragged the gangplank in and they were on their way. The walls of the canyons slid past faster than anyone could walk, echoing the chug of the steam engines back to them, but still it was not fast enough for Alice. She crouched next to Ian on the deck—for the door was too wide to carry him into the main saloon from which it had come—and held his hand in both of hers, trying to smile reassuringly when all she wanted to do was weep.
Or shoot something.
A cloud passed over the sun, and instinctively she looked up. “There they are!”
“So much for a distraction,” Betsy said anxiously. “What happened?”
But there was no answer to this. Then Alice realized something else. “Are they—? Yes, they are. They’re following us.”
Betsy scrambled to her feet. “They’ll discover the village. I must tell Jack. He cannot take us home yet.”
“He better dadblamed well take us or I’ll shoot him myself!”
Betsy squeezed her shoulder, no doubt feeling the tremors that Alice couldn’t control, as though she’d been soaked and now huddled in the cold. “We must protect the village. Jack knows a thing or two about the river. It will be all right.”
“But there’s no time. And what if they can help—”
But Betsy had already released her and gone forward, and in a moment, the pitch of the engine changed, the great brass wheels in the stern digging into the water and increasing their speed against the powerful current. Now even a steam landau running wide open could not match them as the rocks and water slid by at a hectic pace.
Alice sagged onto the deck, her anxious gaze on Ian, not the Ranger ship. She should have stuck to her guns, and flagged the Rangers down when she had the chance. What had she been thinking—trusting the witches when other than Betsy, she had no reason to? Ian’s beloved face blurred in her vision.
And then a shadow passed over them again, and the sun went out. With a gasp, she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and looked up.
Her mouth fell open.
The steamboat slid under an arch of red rock so massive that it was dwarfed to the size of a child’s toy. On the far side, light played on the water of the main artery of the river, but as they passed through the opening of this smaller tributary, she felt the engines slow and echo from a great distance.
Betsy jumped down the steps from the wheelhouse. “Jack is going to bide here until they get tired of looking for us.”
“What is this place?” Her fear backed off just a fraction as she stared up … and up … to the ceiling of the natural chamber, where ripples of light seemed to dance and play.
“One of our little secrets.” Betsy’s lips, painted black with flowers at the corners, tilted up. “One of the very few we let the boatmen in on.”
An eternity passed in which Ian’s breathing became increasingly labored, and Alice’s fear stampeded back in to seize up her lungs and burn the edges of her temper. Finally she could bear it no longer. She stomped up the iron stairs, thumbing on the lightning pistol as the filigree treads rang under her boots.
“Get this boat back to the village now,” she rasped, “or I’ll put a hole through you and do it myself.”
The man who must be Jack turned from the wheel to face her. His eyes widened at the sight of the pistol. “What does that do?”
“You won’t survive the answer,” she snapped. “Get this tub moving.”
“But the Rangers—”
“I don’t care about the village, or the Rangers. All I care about is getting that bullet out of my husband before it’s too late. Now move!”
Watching her as though she were a she-bear and he stood between her and her cub, Jack found the acceleration levers by feel alone. In a moment the
pitch of the engines changed and they began to make way across the lake, heading for the bright daylight glow of the arch on the far side.
When they emerged, the skies were empty.
But Alice did not leave the wheelhouse. Instead, she kept the humming pistol aimed at the captain’s left ear, her face grim. Her hand did not shake. But her heart was pounding in her chest, her legs quivering from more than the vibrating deck, and pride and fierce love were the only things holding her upright.
* * *
For more, look for Fields of Gold at your favorite online retailer!
About the Author
Shelley Adina is the author of 24 novels published by Harlequin, Warner, and Hachette, and a dozen more published by Moonshell Books, Inc., her own independent press. She writes steampunk and contemporary romance as Shelley Adina, and as Adina Senft, writes Amish women’s fiction. She holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania, where she teaches as adjunct faculty. She won RWA’s RITA Award® in 2005, and was a finalist in 2006. When she’s not writing, Shelley is usually quilting, sewing historical costumes, or hanging out in the garden with her flock of rescued chickens.
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Also by Shelley Adina
STEAMPUNK
The Magnificent Devices series
Lady of Devices
Her Own Devices
Magnificent Devices
Brilliant Devices
Magnificent Devices: Books 1–4 Quartet
A Lady of Resources
A Lady of Spirit
Magnificent Devices: Books 5–6 Twin Set
A Lady of Integrity
A Gentleman of Means
Devices Brightly Shining (Christmas novella)
Fields of Air
Fields of Iron
Fields of Gold
ROMANCE
Moonshell Bay: The Men of CLEU
Call For Me
Dream of Me
Reach For Me
Also in the Moonshell Bay series
Caught You Looking
Caught You Listening
Caught You Hiding
The Wedding Scandal (a Four Weddings and a Fiasco novella)
PARANORMAL
Immortal Faith
YOUNG ADULT
The Glory Prep series (faith-based):
Glory Prep
The Fruit of My Lipstick
Be Strong and Curvaceous
Who Made You a Princess?
Tidings of Great Boys
The Chic Shall Inherit the Earth
Praise
“This is the first in a series of well-reviewed books set in the steampunk world. For those who like the melding of Victorian culture with the fantastic fantasy of reality-bending science fiction, this one will be right up their alley.”
―READERS’ REALM, ON LADY OF DEVICES
“An immensely fun book in an immensely fun series with some excellent anti-sexist messages, a wonderful main character (one of my favourites in the genre) and a great sense of Victorian style and language that’s both fun and beautiful to read.”
―FANGS FOR THE FANTASY, ON MAGNIFICENT DEVICES
“Adina manages to lure us into the steampunk era with joy and excitement. Her plotline is strong and the cast of characters well interwoven. It’s Adina’s vivid descriptions of Victorian London that make you turn the pages.”
―NOVEL CHATTER
Copyright © 2016 by Shelley Adina Bates. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to www.moonshellbooks.com.
This is a work of science fiction and fantasy. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Cover art by Claudia McKinney at Phat Puppy Studios, with images from DepositPhotos.com, used under license, and the author’s collection. Cover design by Kalen O’Donnell. Author font by Anthony Piraino at OneButtonMouse.com.
Fields of Iron / Shelley Adina—1st ed.
ISBN: 978-1-939087-60-7
Created with Vellum
Fields of Iron: A steampunk adventure novel Page 23