by Kin S. Law
“Bloody shit, that’s her,” I said to Hargreaves, in my colorful portmanteau of cultures. She had brought the rods with her as she walked up, sensing something wasn’t quite right. “Ada hires out her ship to German border patrol occasionally, after their GSG units became too expensive to maintain. There are only four left by all accounts, the rest of the border defended by mercenaries, often pirates looking to cannibalize their own.”
“The GSG would be the Reich’s terrorist response team,” breathed Inspector Hargreaves, visibly impressed. “Who is Ada anyway?”
“Captain of The Lovelorn. Doesn’t matter. Under no conditions are we to break this to Rosa Marija,” I cautioned. In the background, Rosa was arm-wrestling some assembled airmen for drinks, beating them into submission without mussing a single corset tie. As we watched, one man went down with a crash, right through a table, while Rosa waved an elegant glove and grunted supremacy.
“Why the bloody hell not? What does she have to do with either of them?” Hargreaves asked. Concern flashed across her face.
“You need to know if she’ll be dangerous, I understand. Nessie Drake is…well, she’s…sometimes, right, people hunt for booty together, and they…that is, female sexuality is a lot more fluid, right?”
I stammered. For some reason imagining Rosa with Nessie right then was very hard.
“Oh God, they were lovers,” whispered Hargreaves, flushing pink right down to where skin showed at her neck.
The embarrassment was handy, and I let my reply of “sort of…” go away and hang itself. Truth was I didn’t know what they were. Rosa didn’t talk about it, and if I got her alone she was the type to change the subject. Usually by undoing her clothes, in my case.
We couldn’t help but glance at Rosa, now dancing a jig on three-inch heels to the tune of an accordion and a fiddle played by a pair of hairy Turks. Surely she had drained the way station’s store of vodka by now?
Meanwhile, Blair had been conversing with their friend the Turk, seemingly discussing something of mutual amusement. He turned and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Ignat here says Le Maere isn’t likely to have gone far. If they’re running from someone, there are only a few places she could set down to make repairs.”
“Thanks, Georgie boy,” I said. “Have him mark them on this map.”
“If she’s downed, she could be anywhere,” Hargreaves interjected. “Not to mention she’ll likely shoot down anything flying close enough to see her. Didn’t you say Nessie Drake’s got, and I quote with disgust, ‘big honkin’ cannons?’”
“Frankly, now Rosa Marija’s all fired up for it, I would rather pit The ’Berry against Nessie’s cannons than Rosa’s piloting. Let’s chase a nightmare, shall we?”
Our conversation was interrupted as a man came flying between us. Rosa Marija yelled with gusto through a huge grin, whilst she laid into everyone within reach with maidenly, drunken fists.
It wasn’t as if I intended to fly over the whole of Romania, waiting for Nessie Drake to shoot us out of the sky. Blair had done well. Only five little valleys and mountainous nooks were available for a Chiropteran-class dirigible to hide in. Such a ship was as long as a German zeppelin, and far heavier if she was as damaged as I was led to believe. My plan was pretty simple: fly in low, stay invisible, and track on foot once they sighted any sign of aeon particles or debris.
Now if only Rosa Marija would cooperate.
“Hey! Drake! Get out here, you flat-chested bitch!” Rosa’s voice erupted over the first spot we stopped over. I had even taken the precaution of relieving her of the helm, but had overlooked the trumpets mounted at the forecastle directly over the bridge. Rosa’s richly peppered vernacular was now blasting from mountaintop to mountaintop, likely waking up every vampire in the country with its melodious echo. Bitch…bitch…bitch….
“What in blazes is that racket?” Elric Blair’s voice came over the speaking horns near my elbows.
Of course; he had been consulting charts in the library. A split second later, similar sentiments came in from all over the ship, as the crew discovered their helmswoman was intent on continuing her verbal assault until they found Nessie Drake.
“It’s all right,” I announced. I was exasperated, but in the remote mountains not too many other ships would be around. “They’re old friends. If anybody should be screaming her name, it’s Rosa.”
I was resigned to it, really. Rosa Marija was convinced Nessie wouldn’t hurt a mocha hair on her pretty head. Besides, if I tried to stop her, I might have two pepper pots to deal with instead of one. What I hadn’t counted on was somebody else trying.
“Miss Marija! Really! You disgrace yourself!” came thundering over the forecastle trumpets. It was Inspector Hargreaves, her prim, precise intonation jarring horrifically with the intrusive nature of the instrument. “Let go of the trumpet immediately! Is this the speaking toggle? Switch it off at once!”
“Go to hell, Hargreaves! DRAKE!” Rosa retaliated.
Sounds of a struggle came across the speakers. No slaphappy, maidenly tussle either. These were the hard, packed thuds and clipped grunts of two skilled fighters doing what they did best.
I couldn’t help but visualize Rosa’s familiar moves: smooth parries and pirouettes, sprinkled with liberal helpings of wild roundhouses and axe-kicks if she could elevate off the forecastle railings. The thought brought a big stupid grin to my face. Hargreaves would probably be a tucked-in fighter, all boxer’s jabs and stomps, with some judo or grappling thrown in. I suddenly remembered Rosa had been wearing a lime-green camisole today, with quite a low neckline. Hargreaves was probably in the linen blouse and tight pencil skirt from breakfast. My smile grew.
“Well, shit; this bird can fly herself. I’m watching this!” I said, flipping the toggle to release anchors. The squeal of wires accompanied the thud of a metal star walloping into a mountaintop.
In a moment, the ’Berry’s captain was out the port at the side of the bridge, vaulting up the ladder toward the forecastle without even a coat against the cold Romanian winds. I barely managed to dodge as a high heel came swinging out over the edge of the deck, nearly clipping my scalp through my bandanna.
“Maybe I should have worn goggles…” I muttered, peeking over the edge.
The fight had progressed, and Hargreaves was on the offense, pressing her advantage with smooth, textbook kicks of her pointed boot. Rosa was nimbly leaning to the left and right, obviously reading the telegraphed moves. Hargreaves was much taller though, and Rosa couldn’t get in close enough to do much but slap at her ankles, hoping she would overbalance. With a crash, Hargreaves smashed a lantern on deck, showering Rosa’s gypsy skirt with glass.
“Ooh, that might have smarted,” Blair’s voice came from my right. I turned to see the journalist’s carrot top and blue eyes over the lip of the deck, diagonally opposite. He was starting to grow out of the dye, leaving a sort of rotty vegetable look to his head.
“Do! You! Have! Any! Jammy! Dodgers!” came the voice of Cid Tanner from way out on the bow where he stood with a pair of binoculars. Out of the square hole beside him, Auntie and Alex emerged with a pot of tea and a basket of goodies, though whether or not they were jammy remained to be said. They were rabid fans of the picture house though, and I didn’t put it past them to load the pantry with references to their favorite shows.
“They’ve got the right idea. This might be a long haul,” I remarked instead, giving a moment to consider if I ought to go down and join my crew.
The sky was impeccably blue, spotted with big, fat cumulus clouds save for a dark blot on the east. The afternoon sun just began to descend from zenith, headed for a brief break in the green Romanian mountains before retiring for the night. As I was looking, a long, shapely, gartered leg blotted out the sun briefly, giving the impression of a swan in flight.
“What are you doing?” Blair called from his perch. “Shouldn’t we stop them?”
“It’s been a long time coming. Mig
ht as well let them have it out,” I responded in kind.
A blind man would have seen the tension stretching tighter and tighter, though I balked at naming precisely why. Rosa was a free spirit and Hargreaves lived by the book. Rosa hadn’t liked the idea of having an Inspector aboard from the start.
The ladies’ coexistence depended entirely on Rosa’s loyalty to me, and Hargreaves’ tenuous conviction of this pirate crew’s usefulness in her mission. Any further than that, I was loathe to conjecture. I had to admit, watching the gold braid dance behind Hargreaves’ long limbs made a pretty picture next to Rosa’s muscled, voluptuous, coffee-colored arms.
Slowly, very carefully, I put my toes in the woodwork of the ship and my fingers on the deck, working over to where Blair clung to his ladder.
“Budge up, friend,” I grunted, and then we were shoulder-to-shoulder. “What do you make of it?”
“Never been the scrapping sort myself,” Blair answered, somewhat reluctantly. “But Miss Marija sure does screech most piercingly.”
“It’s when she stops that you have to be careful,” I said as Rosa managed to get a grip on Hargreaves’ calf.
A brief moment of groping commenced. The audience winced as the deck shook with Hargreaves’ fall. Just as Rosa turned to gloat, a pair of long legs shot up from the floor and squished Rosa’s cheeks until her face looked like the balloon on an airship. Then, both women were on the floor, scrabbling for a hold.
“Might be over in a bit,” Blair remarked, but I merely shook my head. The deck trembled once more as Hargreaves hopped nimbly to the balls of her feet, while Rosa spun like a capoeira fighter, putting her legs under her but staying in a crouch. I winked at Blair. Just as suddenly as the fight had begun, it seemed about to end. Both women were down once again, and both struck simultaneously, rolling away from each other. Then they were up, circling. Red welts marked where bruises would soon bloom blue and mottled black. Other than at Rosa’s lip and Hargreaves’ knee, no blood had been drawn.
“I’m not going to let you endanger my mission just for some stupid pirate whore,” Hargreaves spat.
Pillow talk, it was, before the two bodies met again. Hargreaves was grinning.
Rosa’s shoulders tensed, just a bit, then relaxed.
“Shit,” I cursed. I knew Rosa when she got like this. It was bad news!
“What? Why shit? They’re not too hurt, right?” Blair said, but his voice was lost in the flurry of me clambering to his feet on the deck.
The two women on the forecastle stopped circling. A moment of silence clung, before they pounced toward each other, big cats going for the jugular.
“Rosa Marija, you put the knife away,” I bellowed before their bodies could clash. My voice thundered through my skull, louder than any speaking trumpet.
Both women skidded to a halt, Hargreaves stumbling for a moment as the heel of her boot went out from under her. Rosa stopped smoothly, her skirts flashing forward with the momentum. Her slender fingers opened, and a barb the size of an arrowhead stuck point-first in the deck. Hargreaves’ eyes grew huge.
My shoulders shook under my thin linen shirt and brown silk vest. My feet felt planted like centenarian trees. Anything else would be futile in the face of Rosa’s rage.
Rosa Marija turned on her heel and began the climb back into the ship.
“Aw! Anticlimatic!” Cid’s voice drifted in from across the ship. He hadn’t seen.
The three crew members threw up their hands, but made no move to break up their impromptu tea party. Maybe minutes had passed, and they had even set out things for Prissy Jack, just arrived, who had missed all the action.
“Would you mind telling me what just happened?” Hargreaves slurred through her labored breathing.
I looked around, shaken out of my stance. I hadn’t taken my eyes off Rosa Marija until she disappeared into the bridge. In a moment, the ship’s anchors made their whirring trip from the ground below, and The ’Berry began to move once again.
“I’d like an explanation, Captain Clemens,” the Inspector hounded me, a bit more clearly now.
I looked her up and down, watching the way she stood, and concluded she wasn’t too badly hurt. I took out a handkerchief. I knelt, pausing to be sure she wasn’t still on edge, and started to dab at the cut at Hargreaves’ knee. To her credit, she didn’t even flinch.
“What happened–” I said, as I wet the cloth from a flask at my hip. Hargreaves hissed as the liquor touched a cut. I pressed at the wound to open it and see if there was glass inside. “–was not your fault. You brought up something Rosa’s been pushing down for years. I expect when you see her again, she might be willing to discuss it with you. At the very least, she’s going to let you borrow her good clothes.”
“Nessie Drake wasn’t a lover,” Hargreaves concluded.
“No,” I agreed. “It was much worse.”
“What’s this about lesbians?” chimed in Blair. His nose was buried deep in his notebook, his hand fluttering away. But other than his initial absentmindedness, I wasn’t able to shake the sudden malaise that settled over my ship. People dogged me in the halls, wanting to know what it had all been about. Finally I had to call a meeting in the galley.
“Nessie Drake,” I continued over Earl Grey and biscuits. Seemed the most calming thing at the time. “She is very hard to explain. I don’t want to tell it, as I’ve known Rosa Marija longer than any of you, and she would not want me to.”
“But you are also acting captain of The Huckleberry, and the responsibility of our safety falls to you,” Blair noted. He was getting into the hang of piracy, albeit a bit uncomfortably.
“I won’t have us going into this blind, any of us. Particularly you.” I looked at the Inspector, boots stripped, toes tickling the wind. She had camped out in the galley to lick her wounds, and was the only person there who hadn’t followed their curiosity.
“Stop bellyaching and spill it. The lady’s a blasted mystery as it is,” Cockney Alex complained, banging his mug like a Saxon. “We finally get to know what makes the invincible Rosa Marija tick.”
“All right, you damned barbarian, don’t rush it!” I complained.
“I’ll be taking responsibility for my own life, you simpering infant,” Cid griped. I nodded to this. “But tell it like it is,” finished Cid.
“What I want to know is why she felt it was worth killing the Inspector over,” redirected Auntie. “Lady’s got the authority of Queen Victoria III herself. None of us would be safe from her wrath.”
“I wasn’t in my usual frame of mind.”
Everyone turned to see Rosa Marija at the door, changed into tight sable trousers and a brown bodice laced up over a cream blouse. She smelled of lilacs. It was much more utilitarian than her usual flamboyant affairs. I had never seen her in it. Blades studded every inch of leather on her, and four straps hung off her hips with additional hardware, including a three-foot long machete and a pair of knuckle dusters. Her hair was tucked into a tight arrangement, pinned with sturdy spikes. In all likelihood, Rosa now weighed twice her stone in metal. Her boots were flat, with spurs on the end—not cowboy rounds, but deadly studs.
“Would you like to hear it?” Rosa Marija began, not bothering to sit down or wait for a reply. None was coming. “If you have to hear it, you’ll hear it from me.”
14
The Rose and the Serpent
On the streets of cities like Monaco, or Belfast, or Detroit, a young waif grows up perpetually in sight of airships. Always there are airships and the flotsam they drag along: coal freight, train rails, old men peddling trinkets from all over the globe. Faberge eggs, real beaverskin moccasins, silk robes intricately interwoven with cherry blossoms or lined with fragrant jasmine. Anything gorgeous could be found in a port city.
People were no exception. Gruff aeronauts were aplenty, with their weeks’ worth of stubble and bulging arms covered with shiny steam burns. They dropped into the local pubs and bars, facilitating a booming trade in young
, attractive whores and the endless flow of strong liquor.
I was never a whore. You have a problem with how I dress? I respect them for what they do, but they chose to be, like I choose to be what I am. Nessie, she never chose be what she was. When you’re young, you do what you have to to survive. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Nessie and I were con artists. I’m sure you’ve guessed something of the kind. We never stayed in one city too long, though we kept to the frontiers as best we could—safer that way. It was the beauty of the dirigible, you see, the world was no longer closed to us as it was to people of ages past. We could pull a string of heists in the space it took to refuel a corsair, and sneak aboard before the cables pulled taut for lift-off. We were never caught. As far as our marks were concerned, we were acceptable dangers that come with the whistling of steam, and the irresistible force of freedom buoying them up through the wind.
I found the travelers fascinating, bedecked in their expensive traveling clothes. Fascinating, yes, but intelligent? No. We learned quickly our clever words would only take us so far. I had my knives, and my armor of curves. Nessie Drake had her wiles.
To us, the travelers quickly lost their identities, becoming frocks, feathered hats, and decorative fans, symbols of the bounty concealed under labels and tucked in purses. The men with their pinstriped suits or greatcoats always fondled somewhere on their bodies a pocket watch kept on a fob or tucked primly in a suit pocket. They never noticed one or two baubles missing. Often they took along more luggage than all the possessions a young girl could own. It was as if, loaded down with all their belongings, they still felt a need to chain themselves to time.
Nessie, against my advice, was always drawn to the pirates. Riveting, gorgeous, no two alike, they buzzed round docks like bees at honey. You could never pin them down from the clothes, or the beards. It was a different time, then. Still, when you spoke to one, their stories were better, they drank harder, and it was not uncommon to wake up one day and find yourself having slept next to one. Your valuables would be gone, more often than not, along with your pirate and your heart, all on board a ship some five hundred yards off in the sky and miles away.