by Scott McKay
And, having passed Harry’s test on the company manual, he was supposed to start the new job tomorrow. It wouldn’t be a good look if he missed his first day of work because he was in jail for no good reason.
But there was something else going on which made his immediate circumstances inconvenient; namely, that the Udar were said to be approaching in strength and, subsequently, Trenory could very well be the front line of an approaching bloody war. The savages had commenced hostilities with a series of raids along the south bank of the lower Tweade, and included in those raids was one on Hilltop Farm where Judith and her family lived. It had been in the broadsheets; his sister and her husband George Stuart had been killed, along with his little cousin Tabitha. His cousin Sarah had been taken but rescued by a hastily assembled force of cavalry and militia, including his uncle David and his cousin Rob, which rode south to defeat the Udar. Randall hadn’t seen any of them in several years, but the news had still hit him hard. Judith was one of his favorite people, and he’d had little success finding a bride who reminded him of her.
There hadn’t been a public funeral service for Judith, owing to the outbreak of war. Randall heard she and the other fallen members of the family were buried at Hilltop Farm, which was now Fort Stuart. Civilian life along the lower Tweade was petering out as the war began, and there was hardly time to mourn his sister. He was exceptionally depressed at that.
But the unusual circumstances were a golden opportunity for Randall to turn the steamer line, if he couldn’t sell it to Wilkins now, into at least a short-term profit-maker. People were going to want to evacuate, and they’d pay top dollar to get their stuff out. A quick shuttle up the Tweade to Turnerston, dropping the customers off to return for more, could turn a tidy profit, he thought, and get him out of town with a little nest egg. If it came to that, of course. Not to mention the opportunity to use his steamers as a ferry for folks evacuating the farms across the Aileen and the Tweade into the city and servicing the army as it made camp across the Aileen. And to hell with the Steam-Pilots’ Guild and their arbitrary rules.
But if the war did come to Trenory, and if it went badly, he really would be ruined. The bank stock would be all but worthless, and what good would it do to own part of an apartment building in occupied enemy territory? He’d be dead broke.
The family had been busy moving assets upriver in advance of the Udar march northward, just in case. Nobody really thought they’d be able to take Trenory, not with the city protected on three sides by some thirty thousand troops. It was impossible to imagine that a force of screaming savages with swords and spears could defeat such a heavily armed contingent of Ardenian soldiers, no matter how many Udar showed up.
But Randall needed out of this jail cell right now.
Maybe there was a deal to be cut, he thought. Time to find out.
“Constable!” he yelled out.
No one answered his repeated calls. Randall got the message and laid down on the bench, attempting to sleep.
…
TWENTY
Dunnansport, Tenthmonth Seventeenth, 1843rd Year Supernal
For just shy of two weeks Sarah Stuart’s life had been a whirlwind of agony, deliverance, loss, promise and exhaustion. It had been nine days since Sarah had miraculously been returned safely from her ordeal with the Udar. A procession of visitors had descended upon the palatial residence in the tony, tree-lined Dunnansport neighborhood of Tweade Landing she now shared with her aunt Rebecca, brothers Rob and Ethan and sister Hannah, and for now all Sarah really wanted was a little bit of peace and quiet. Just some rest for a few days to gather herself and recover from three days of hell at the hands of an Udar invasion force bent on, and nearly successful in, making her a slave.
Sarah’s life was still in turmoil and she was still processing the grief of watching her father and mother, not to mention her sister Tabitha, die. There was more than that, moreover, as she’d been stolen away from her home and taken south into what would have been slavery but for a rescuing force, which miraculously caught up with the invaders and set her free.
Amid that trauma there was a life change, as Sarah was engaged to be married. She would soon be Sarah Forling, though a date hadn’t quite been set. Will, her husband-to-be, was seventy miles to the west at Fort Stuart, which less than two weeks before had been Sarah’s home. It was now being transformed from the Stuart family farm into a fortress and a base for the airships, brought down from the capital at Principia and repurposed from passenger aircraft to weapons of war. Will was the executive officer for the Lower Tweade Military District and now a major in the Ardenian cavalry, a fast rise in two weeks from his status as a third-year student at the military academy at Aldingham. Sarah was still amazed at the change not just in his identity, but the relationship between them.
All her life she’d known him, after all, and until ten days ago she’d thought of him as the clumsy, rumpled boy next door she had no interest in. That changed when she saw Will transformed into a military hero who’d fought an Udar headman to the death in single combat in order to free her and more than three hundred others from captivity at the hands of the enemy. It was more than enough to set her mind toward making him hers, particularly since her parents had expressed interest in the match before she lost them in the Udar raid on what had been Hilltop Farm.
Everything had changed. Everything was new. And Sarah, having just turned seventeen three days earlier (she and Will shared a birthday), was now an adult with a brother and sister she now had to help raise, with a betrothed she couldn’t count on always having at her side. She knew the Udar were coming to conquer not just Fort Stuart, but also the town of Barley Point and Dunnansport, the little city she was now calling home, and lands far beyond that.
Sarah had been in the clutches of the enemy, and she still felt she was on the front lines. It was no environment for emotional recovery. She’d been tired, seemingly without pause, since arriving at Aunt Rebecca’s home, and between the demands of the children, the daily correspondence with Will, and the activity at the house occasioned by her brother Rob’s rather frenetic activities since taking over the family business ten days earlier, she’d had no time in peace to herself.
Further, the sights and sounds of Dunnansport weren’t exactly conducive to relaxation. The small city had become a hive of construction, transportation and every other kind of human activity imaginable, and what had been a town of five thousand had to be at least four times that number now. The park just west of Tweade Landing was now a tent city serving as home for the eight thousand men of the Twenty-Sixth Infantry Division, a military unit which had sprung up practically out of thin air over the past few days, with most of its officers having arrived on a train from Principia and the rest of the troops having been drawn from new enlistees, including several dozen members of the Dunnansport militia, which played a part in the rescue of Sarah and the other victims of the Udar raid on Dunnan’s Claim.
Sarah wished that the Twenty-Sixth had included Will. She missed him. While she had her aunt and siblings under the same roof, getting engaged to Will so soon after losing her parents meant that her emotional attachment to them had transferred somehow to her fiance’. He was, after all, to be her next of kin at some point in the, hopefully, near future. But Will was in more danger than Sarah, and while his daily letters didn’t include anything that might be considered military intelligence, he made it unmistakable that he expected to experience combat any day.
She could feel the strain. She felt powerless, as though events were blowing past her like those trains and ships and lorries loaded with soldiers and weapons moving through town at all hours. Aunt Rebecca had suggested Sarah and the children take one of those trains to Port William, where her cousin Josey lived with her husband, to get away from the war. But Sarah wouldn’t hear of that. She wasn’t going to abandon her aunt, who wouldn’t leave her home after having lost her husband, nor was she interested in moving further away from Will.
Rob g
ave her hell about what he was calling her “puppy love” over her betrothed. She was fine with it. Sarah knew that Rob greatly admired Will and was quite satisfied with the match. He had sworn to her a few nights before that he would do everything possible to ensure they would be safe in Dunnansport, as he was now in charge of the city’s militia. Rob had taken over for his uncle David in that role after the latter’s death on Sutton Hill a day before the Ardenian force rescued Sarah, and he had spent a good deal of the Stuarts’ ready cash on armaments. The militia was training on six ten-pounder artillery pieces Rob had purchased from the Questring Cannon Works in Welvary, which had a range of a mile and a half firing an explosive shell. If the enemy were to arrive across the river with designs on crossing it, they wouldn’t do so without the militia, the army and the navy having their say.
Despite her constant worry, Sarah liked that her brother was involved in the fight, and that Will was in it too. She was still burning for revenge on the Udar, not just for the mother, father and sister she’d lost, not to mention the uncertain fate of her oldest brother Matthew, but for the families of all the other women taken in those Udar raids. Sarah had been to the Recovery Center set up in a warehouse her uncle had owned by the wharf, the number of whose residents were slowly diminishing as they’d been moved away to safer homes with family far away from Dunnan’s Claim, and there she’d seen friends and acquaintances from before the war. Chief among those had been her family friend Hester Blaine of Landsdowne Farm, just across the river from Dunnansport; the Blaines had been close friends of Aunt Rebecca and Uncle David, and Hester was the only one of them left after a particularly vicious Udar war party had descended on Landsdowne two weeks ago. She’d been captured like Sarah had been, and as for what had happened to her, Hester hadn’t been willing to talk about it.
Rebecca had insisted Hester come to stay in a spare bedroom at the Stuart house, and for a couple of nights Hester had agreed. But she’d woken up screaming both times, and on the third day Hester expressed her regrets and hurried back to the shelter. She said she needed to be with the others, as helping them through their shared experience was her best way of battling her own demons. Sarah understood, though Rebecca had been horrified and insisted that when Hester was ready, she’d move in with the Stuarts. Hester had agreed and apologized for what she characterized as “my crazy slight.”
So much damage, so much heartache and so much loss. Sarah felt for Hester, because while she herself was devastated at losing her parents and sister and uncle, at least she still had family. Hester had nobody.
She made a trip to the recovery center every day, and she did what she could to help. And she made sure to spend time with Hester particularly, as she was determined that her friend knew she had people who loved and would protect her. But the other women there had similar stories of woe, and Sarah’s heart broke again and again when she heard about the ones who had been mothers and lost their children when the Udar came. They’d suffered so much from what the Udar had done, losing loved ones, suffering the indignity of being tied up and transported to what they thought would be slavery, and being made homeless with no possessions, existing on hand-me-down clothes from the women of Dunnansport, and care packages from charitable organizations in Port William and Aldingham.
What she wanted, and what the other women at the recovery center also wanted, was to kill Udar. Several of the women at the center had attempted to join the Marines for that very purpose and were turned down, though the Marine officer in charge of the recovery center did tell the group of some two hundred who didn’t have anywhere to go that, while they weren’t yet recruiting women, that might well change if the enemy began an advance on Dunnansport.
Sarah was also making a closer connection to one of her aunt’s near neighbors, Alice Wade. Alice was about ten years older than Sarah, and she was the girlfriend of Patrick Baker, the naval commander of the frigate Adelaide, which had been so instrumental to bringing her home from captivity. Sarah really liked Patrick and Alice, and they’d come for dinner twice since Sarah had been rescued. Alice had confided that she had the impression Patrick was going to ask her to marry him soon; a few days ago he and Sarah’s brother Rob had gone in on the purchase of some land along the Tweade on the west end of town near the rail station, and the seller had told them he was also putting his house on the market and relocating to Port William, away from the war.
Patrick went to see the house, made an offer on the spot, and bought it for nine thousand decirans. Alice had shown Rob, Sarah and Aunt Rebecca the house two days ago while Patrick was away on a mission, and she was beaming. It was big, with a nice yard, and though it was just north of the Tweade Landing neighborhood all the finest people in town lived in, its location was perfectly desirable. Alice told Sarah she just knew this was the preamble to a marriage proposal, because she’d made it clear to Patrick that her house wasn’t big enough for a family, and that his living quarters in a boarding house by the naval wharf on the east end of town near the mouth of the Tweade simply would not do.
Patrick buying that house, when he had never even shown interest in owning property before, had to be a sign that something was about to happen. Alice knew it, and Sarah was happy for her.
The mission Patrick and his Adelaide crew were on was also an item of some interest, though he wouldn’t say what it was. There was a lot of talk around Dunnansport that something was happening with the nine Udar pirates they’d captured at sea some two weeks ago, because the rumor mill had had it that they’d all be hung in the town square and then suddenly that was no longer the plan.
The people on the streets were angry about that, because they wanted to see some measure of revenge for what had happened in Dunnan’s Claim. So did Sarah, and so did Hester and the other rescuees. So far as they knew, those Udar prisoners were still in the brig at the naval base, and it was a sore spot with the people of the city. There was even talk of forming a Justice Committee to seize those prisoners and dispense with them; Sarah knew Rob had been called to a meeting along those lines, and he wouldn’t say anything about what had happened.
There was an electricity in the air, fueled by the presence of those prisoners, the day-and-night train and road traffic of the military mobilization, the sudden spike in construction, and the trauma of what had happened to the south.
Sarah should have found it exciting. Instead, it wore her out. She just wanted to curl up in bed and sleep for days.
That was her plan tonight. The Stuarts were due to have a quiet dinner at home, and Sarah had told her aunt that she was going straight to bed and taking tomorrow off from any activity of any sort; she wasn’t going to entertain, make decisions or do work of any kind. She was putting her foot down.
But Rob had just completely blown that plan up.
He strode through the front door of the Tweade Landing mansion while Sarah, Rebecca and the two children were sitting in the parlor, and triumphantly plopped into his uncle David’s grand chair near the fireplace.
He didn’t say a word, just gazed at them with a knowing grin. Rebecca eyed him with a degree of suspicion. She hadn’t disapproved of his frenetic business activity since taking over the family’s commercial affairs, but she did confess her amazement at how quickly he took to the role of executive, and Rebecca worried to Sarah it would all go to his head.
“All right, Rob,” Sarah said, looking up from her needlepoint. “Out with it.”
His smile got bigger.
“The Udar pirates Commander Baker and his crew captured,” he began. “Remember them?”
“Who could forget?” Rebecca said. “I’m tired of hearing about them.”
“Well, one of them was a headman. A very important headman, in fact. Apparently, he’s the commander of their whole army.”
“Good for him,” Sarah muttered. “Wish they’d hung him in the town square.”
“Better than that,” Rob said. “We sent him home.”
“What?” Rebecca exploded. “Why on
earth would the Navy do that?”
“Because he was exchanged,” Rob said. “For seven Ardenians the Udar held at Strongstead.”
Sarah looked up. “You mean Matthew?” she asked. “Is he one of the seven?”
“Yes, he is,” Rob said, beaming. “And he’s on board Adelaide, which is expected back at the naval wharf this afternoon!”
“The Lord of All be praised!” Rebecca said with relief. “That’s wonderful news. Pulled from the jaws of death.”
“I’m surprised the Navy would have made that trade,” Sarah said. “It’s a miracle.”
“Actually,” Rob said, “I’m told this was General Dees’ doing. He has some sort of dark strategy working.”
“Dark strategy?” Sarah asked.
She was certainly pleased to have Matthew coming home, though she and her oldest brother had never been particularly close. Matthew had always been very direct and driven, and there was little sweetness to him. Matthew was much like his father George, in that he was a military man, and it was understood that Matthew would be the one to inherit Hilltop Farm, which meant he’d been trained by George in every aspect of its operations. But while George had been a teaser and a storyteller, Matthew didn’t inherit that from his father. He’d had little time for the softer things in life, and when Sarah was just twelve, he’d gone off to the military academy at Aldingham where he’d finished best in his class. Then he’d been stationed at the fortress at Strongstead, where he’d apparently done well and been promoted all the way to captain.
She’d been proud of him, though Matthew’s success had only increased the distance between them in her eyes. She felt as though she didn’t really know her oldest brother that well, a reality which, given the loss of her parents, sister and uncle, she would have to remedy though she wasn’t sure how it would go. He scared her a little; hopefully, she thought, they’d get past that.
