by Devon Monk
He knew better than to rile up the Gregor woman, especially after a hard landing. She didn’t like hard landings much. None of the crew did. Though a hard landing was a damn sight better than not being around to complain about it.
“Don’t know what Mae Lindson did exactly,” Hink said. “She somehow made for bringing the bird down a little easier. I wouldn’t have threaded the buttonhole if she hadn’t…” He paused. “What did she do?” he asked Cedar Hunt. “Was it some kind of witchcraft?”
Molly rolled her eyes, then turned to Mr. Hunt. “You’ll have to forgive the captain here. Most days he has brains in his head.”
“Now, Molly,” Captain Hink said. “That was a question from me to him. Let’s let him have his say. Was it some kind of witchcraft?” He nodded toward Rose Small and the wolf before meeting Mr. Hunt’s steady gaze. “Mr. Hunt?”
“Yes.”
Funny how one word can stick a finger in the world’s gears and gum things up for a second or two.
“Huh.” It wasn’t much to say, but it was all he had in him. He tipped the flask, then walked over and offered it to Molly. She took a nip and handed it back.
“Anything we can do for her?” Molly asked. Heart of gold, that woman. He didn’t know if she believed that they had a witch on board. Even if she did, Molly wouldn’t let that get in the way of basic courtesy.
“Hot tea,” Cedar Hunt said. “Maybe food. But I think she’ll be unconscious for a while.”
“Well, then,” Hink said. “We have work to be getting done. Molly, if you could rustle some grub and tea, we could all use some. The boiler survive the bump?”
“No cracks that I’ve found yet, Captain,” she said.
“Good. Guffin, see to it we’re lashed down tight for the night. Ansell, drain the airbags. Seldom, see how bad off the fans and gears are.”
“What are you going to do, Captain?” Guffin asked.
“Drink the rest of this flask and tell you to get to work,” Hink said.
Molly went back to the galley and the men got moving, though they muttered loud enough to make sure he heard just what they thought of him, his mother, and his orders.
Once everyone was out of earshot, Hink turned to Cedar Hunt.
“Have a seat, Mr. Hunt,” he said as he dropped himself into one of the wicker and leather chairs next to a small table. The Swift wasn’t exactly set up for passenger comfort, but they’d long ago decided that the basic niceties were necessities.
For a moment, Hink didn’t think the man was going to oblige his invitation.
Then Mr. Hunt walked over and sat.
Hink handed him the flask. Mr. Hunt took a hard swallow and handed it back.
“Your brother’s a wolf, and your woman’s a witch,” the captain mused. “I find that some of the more interesting things I’ve seen lately. As luck would have it, I happen to have several hours on my hands to listen to the explanation of who you are, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going to. And, oh yes, why.”
Mr. Hunt didn’t say anything, just gave him that hard bronze gaze.
Hink settled in to outwait the man. Because they weren’t moving a single step farther along this trail until he knew exactly what kind of trouble he had on his hands.
CHAPTER EIGHT
General Alabaster Saint’s sword tapped the top of his boot with each stride as he paced the edge of Candlewick Bluff. The rocky ground beneath him cracked like bones of the dead as he surveyed the lower range and valley of the Big Horn Mountains spread wide before him.
He was waiting. Waiting in the cold dark before dawn, all the men in his militia sleeping, the three airships lashed down and cool in the night. Waiting for a message from his spies.
He’d sent out twenty men. To find Marshal Cage and bring him in. Dead or alive. The same men were told to listen for rumors of the weapon Alabaster Saint most wanted to get his hands on. The Holder.
During the war, both sides had claimed they were in possession of it. He’d found no proof that it was true. But he’d intercepted a man who said Marshal Cage had orders to track it if he could. Which meant the president was interested in the weapon.
And so was General Alabaster Saint.
He had spent years gathering men sympathetic to his cause. Men willing to rise up against the excessive restrictions and regulations on the western glim that the eastern states craved. Men willing to fight for the territory of the west to control all trade and profits made from glim, on both the legal and the illegal markets.
Saint had served his time fighting other men’s wars for zero profit.
Now it was time for a visionary leader to join glim harvesters and pirates in a common goal: to control the glim fields of the United States of America and govern the skies under law unconnected with the land beneath it.
A crow shook free from a tree, shadowing black across the gray sky. The general tracked it with the single eye left to him, watching it disappear into the deep of the hills.
This land’s war had brought him pain, suffering, and enough grief to choke a man. He’d lost his son, James, on the field, then his wife, Laura, to the grief.
The war had taken both of them from him.
And given him nothing in return. He was done with this land. But he still wanted the sky.
“General?” Lieutenant Foster walked up behind him, his pace altered by the drag of the prosthetic foot he’d worn for the last three years. The lantern in his hand swung a steady beam of light across the rocks and scrub around them.
Lieutenant Foster had been with him the longest of any of his men and had proven himself an unflinching second, unafraid to carry out his every command.
The tales of the Saint’s cruelty on and off the field had been passed in whispers between rank and file, building the Saint up into a nightmarish commander. Lieutenant Foster had done nothing to stop such talk. Because none of those tales were quite correct.
Most men, except for perhaps Lieutenant Foster, weren’t capable of imagining the sorts of things Alabaster Saint was truly willing to inflict on a man to see that his word was obeyed during the war.
And obey him they did, down to a man.
Until Mr. Hink Cage came under his service.
Charismatic, devious, a man who followed his own caprice, Captain Cage obeyed orders for a year before rising up with half the division and refusing his orders on the grounds that the Saint was not following the president’s order to hold the line until reinforcements came.
It was true that the Saint had been acting without orders. It was certainly not the first time. And he had one of the highest mortality rates in the Union army because of it.
Captain Cage had intercepted the president’s correspondence, then refused to march.
With one uprising, Cage forced the Saint to call the single retreat in his career.
Publicly shamed, Saint was put on trial for more than disobeying orders. Someone had infiltrated his records and correspondence. Records of the weapons trading the Saint had profited from.
When he stood trial, the man who had spied on him testified. That man was Captain Hink Cage.
The North and South spent five years beating each other into bloody graves. Now the states were one Union again, one land again with a railway to stitch over the old wounds.
But no one had yet claimed the skies.
Lieutenant Foster cleared his throat.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“There’s a man to see you, sir.”
The Saint adjusted the patch over the hole where his left eye used to be and turned.
Foster looked pressed and clean, as if he’d just walked out of a tailor’s shop. His dark hair was combed back off his forehead, his face clean shaven except for the precisely trimmed sideburns that reached down to his jaw.
Didn’t matter how much mud and blood he was wading through, the man always cut a sharp figure.
“What man, Lieutenant Foster?” Could be one of the spies he’d sent out. But
if it were, Foster would have just told him who had returned with news.
The spies knew better than to return without news.
“He didn’t give me his name, sir.” Foster licked his lips and looked as close to nervous as the Saint had ever seen him. “He’s waiting in your office.”
“I’m going to need more than that,” he said. “Where’s he from? What’s he look made of? Why’s he here?”
“Permission to speak plainly, sir.”
Alabaster Saint narrowed his eye. Then, “Granted.”
Lieutenant Foster relaxed his bearing just the nth of a degree and met Alabaster’s gaze.
“He’s tall, lean, and like nothing I’ve seen before.”
“Foreigner?”
“Not a kind I’ve put eyes on.”
“What’s your gut say, Foster?”
“He’s a killer. A butcher of men. And he enjoys it.”
Alabaster Saint didn’t see any of those traits as a downfall. Had made a point to bestow his rare praise on Lieutenant Foster for just those reasons.
“And why wouldn’t we welcome a man of that stripe, Lieutenant Foster?”
“I think he’s out of his mind insane.”
Alabaster Saint chuckled, a low, humorless rumble. “All men are insane, Mr. Foster. Just some utilize it better than others.”
Lieutenant Foster gave the Saint half a nod, though it was clear he was holding back words of disagreement. That wasn’t like him. Foster always told the general what was on his mind.
If other men had spoken with such frankness, Alabaster would have minced their entrails and served them with beans. But not Foster. Alabaster had learned quickly that the man’s mind was just as sharp as his uniform.
His insight had turned more than one plan to his favor.
“If you have something to say, Lieutenant, say it,” the general said.
“There’s something terribly wrong about him. Something Strange. It is my recommendation, sir, to have him on his way as quickly as possible.”
“Are you spooked, Mr. Foster?” the Saint asked, amused.
“No sir,” the lieutenant said. But his eyes betrayed his words.
Whoever was waiting for the Saint back in his office had managed to put a chill in the veins of a man the general would have bet good money couldn’t be spooked.
“Steel up, Lieutenant,” the Saint said, as he walked past his lieutenant, “or you’re no use to me.”
Alabaster Saint strode toward the building tucked far enough back in the rocks and scree that it was difficult to see from the surrounding ground, and, even more important, was nearly impossible to see from the air.
This was his fortress, his stronghold. When he called war—if it came to that—upon the eastern states, this would be his command center.
The only way a man knew of this place was by very careful invitation.
Or so he had thought.
The crunching of Foster’s boots over the rubble told him the man had courage enough to still follow him. Good.
Dawn had taken the bruise off the night and was pushing pale blue over the twisted trees and ragged mountain walls. No birdsong rode that light, an unusual omen on so clear a morning.
The house came into view, a large split-log and stone structure that looked like it had sat the mountain for centuries instead of just a few years. The barracks for the men was to one side, a long building with small windows and enough beds to sleep a couple hundred, though he had only half that many pressed into service right now.
To the north of the clearing was the huge shelter for the airships—made of wood and canvas cleverly secured to the side of the mountain to cut the worst of the wind. It wasn’t large enough to fly the ships into fully inflated, but once the air and steam was out of them, all three of his pride and joy could nest there together.
The men were waking, smoke from the cookhouse rising to mix with the mist that clung to the crags.
There was a single lantern polishing copper against the window of his office and home. A shadowed figure broke that light.
Even from this distance, the Saint could feel the eyes of the man who stood within that shadow, hidden as if light feared to touch him.
The hair on the back of the general’s neck pricked up. Those eyes, that man, were danger. The Saint had no doubt of that. And he knew that dangerous men could be very useful.
He strode up to the door and pulled it open, stepping into his office without taking off his hat. The man stood at the window, his back turned toward him, covered in layers and layers of coats, some of which were long enough to fall all the way to his heels. He wore a stovepipe hat, and a pile of scarves around his neck.
“What’s your name, and what’s your business?” The Saint paced to the other side of the room and sat at his desk. He always kept a revolver and a sword on him, but his Enfield Rifle-musket leaned against the wall behind the desk. In easy reach now.
The man did not turn. “I hear them,” he whispered, low. “The last words on their lips, the last thoughts in their heads.”
Lieutenant Foster stepped into the room, glanced at the man, then at the general, and closed the door, but didn’t go any farther. His left hand rested on his gun, his gaze on the tall stranger’s back.
“Name and business,” the Saint said. “Or I’ll end this conversation.”
“Her name was Laura,” the man murmured. “His name was James.”
The name of his wife. The name of his son.
Alabaster Saint picked up the Enfield and held it steady at the man. “Who are you? Who sent you?”
“I sent myself.”
The man turned. The scarves stacked all the way up his face so that only his eyes, shadowed by the brim of the stovepipe hat, were visible. Those eyes burned with an unearthly intensity, as if the fire of the damned kindled there.
“As to who I am, my name is Mr. Shunt,” he said in a tone as soft as a lullaby. “And I have come to offer you my services.”
Mr. Shunt lifted his right hand, slowly.
Lieutenant Foster drew his gun.
But all that was in Mr. Shunt’s hand was a large black burlap bag.
“My offering.”
The Saint eyed the bag, which was misshapen and lumpy. He had no idea what it might hold. “Lieutenant,” he said.
Foster walked forward, his weapon still drawn. He held out his right hand for the bag.
Mr. Shunt gave it to him, his fingers graceful, overly long and sharp, each ending in a metal tip.
The Saint had seen Chinamen who like to sharpen their nails into claws, but whatever Mr. Shunt had done to his hands was something else altogether. His fingers shone like metal.
Foster backed away before opening the bag and peering in it. He lifted his head and made sure his gun was on the man for a clean shot.
“Is this a threat, sir?” he asked.
“Not at all,” Mr. Shunt said, spreading both long, knob-boned hands outward in a strangely fluid motion. “It is an offer of my good intentions.”
“Bring it here,” the Saint said.
Foster placed the burlap on the desk, landing it with a meaty thump.
The Saint leaned forward, tipped the edge of the bag, and looked inside.
Body parts. Hands, feet, fingers, ears, and other smaller bits, each wrapped up in cotton gauze tied with a neat bow.
“Is this supposed to impress me, Mr. Shunt?” the general asked.
“No,” Mr. Shunt said. “It is to encourage you. I can do many things, General Alabaster Saint. I can even make men’s dreams come true.”
“I don’t recall dreaming about a bag of body parts,” General Saint said.
“No, you did not,” he said quietly. “Your dream”—he cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing—“is destruction. Nightmare. Conquest. Ah…and then control. Wealth. The skies.” Here the scarf at his mouth shifted. A grimace of serrated teeth carved a ragged white smile in the shadows of his face.
“Such sweet dark dreams
you have, Mr. Saint,” the stranger said.
The Saint thumbed back the hammer on the Enfield. “I’m not a man who dreams, Mr. Shunt. I’m a man who acts. Tell me what you want.”
Mr. Shunt plucked at the scarves, pulling them back over his mouth, seeming unafraid of the musket aimed at his chest. “There is a man I wish dead. A man and his brother. If you kill them, destroy them, your reward will be rich.”
“I am not a gun for hire,” Saint said. “And I am gravely offended by your audacity to think me so. You have climbed this mountain and endangered your life for no good reason, Mr. Shunt. And you have wasted my time.”
“I can bring you Marshal Hink Cage.”
Silence scraped by on jagged claws. Mr. Shunt did not move, didn’t even appear to be breathing. He waited, cold and uncaring as the north wind.
“How?” General Saint asked.
“With these,” he opened his hand. Brass blades and needles prickled from each fingertip.
“And that.” Shunt nodded toward the bag of body parts. “And this.” He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small glass vial.
The vial glowed the eerie glim-light green, but the Saint knew glim. This light was too dark. The vial had something else in it.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Glim,” Mr. Shunt breathed. “And the dust of strangeworked tin. To repair men.”
“Repair?”
Mr. Shunt tipped his head down so that all the Saint could make out from beneath the stovepipe hat was his burning eyes.
“I can give your men back what they lost,” he said. “Hands, arms, legs, feet. I can make them strong again, whole again. Stronger than they were. If you kill the hunter and wolf. If you bring me the deviser, the witch, and guards. Then I will give you back your eye, General Alabaster Saint. I will find Marshal Hink Cage.”
“You ask me to kill two men, and now you want me to capture prisoners for you? I follow no man’s orders, Mr. Shunt.”
“Of course,” Mr. Shunt said with a formal bow. “Perhaps I was mistaken.” Mr. Shunt did not look away. Did not make any indication he was leaving.
Saint leaned back in his chair. He wanted Captain Cage almost as much as he wanted the glim fields. If this crazy rag-a-man could find him, he would be a fool to let him walk away untried.
