Chapter 11
Gloria dressed carefully for the cabinet meeting. She fully expected that the ministers would insist she be dismissed from the room, but the real Viceroy would never have allowed it, and she and Joe would begin as they meant to go on.
For as long as they were able to go on.
Her skirt was an elegant sweep of biscuit linen, her blouse a wonder of delicate organza, which she and Ella had stayed up late the night before embroidering with white-on-white roses.
“They mean innocence, or they mean death,” Ella had explained.
“They are not used for a wedding?” Gloria snapped off a length of silk with her teeth.
“Not here,” Ella told her. “And not among us. Death is the last purifier, you see, returning every man or woman to the innocence with which they arrived in the world.”
Gloria tucked one of her red roses into her crown of braids, and took courage.
The cabinet members filed into the Viceroy’s sitting room and seated themselves around the table that the servants had brought in earlier. The majordomo had produced seating cards, and set a discreet diagram near Joe’s elbow. Gloria was half convinced they believed him to have lost his memory—which was turning out to be to their advantage.
Joe cleared his throat, and the men at the table ceased their breakfast conversations and scraping of chairs. Opposite him, at the foot of the table, the Ambassador had taken his seat as though this were his customary place. The man whose card had been there hastily found another seat.
“Thank you for joining us here today,” Joe began. “And for attending these celebrations of our engagement.” He held out a hand to Gloria, and she sank gracefully into the chair at his right hand. “The future Vicereine and I welcome you, and thank Senor de la Carrera y Borreaga for his unstinting hospitality. Please, help yourselves to more coffee.”
“Is … our future Vicereine to join us today?” one of the men asked in surprise.
“Si. If you please, we will conduct our discussions in English so that she may apprehend everything fully.”
“But, Your Serene Highness … this is most irregular,” the Ambassador said in dulcet tones. “And no doubt extremely dull for the young lady. Perhaps it would be best if she met with the wives of our ministers? For everyone knows,” he said with a smile, “that as many decisions are made in the drawing room as in the council chamber.”
“The decisions to be made here today require her presence,” Joe said shortly, and signaled for the coffee to be poured.
“I am sure that the reason for this will soon become apparent,” the Ambassador said, even though it was clear Joe did not intend to pursue the subject. “Perhaps we are to discuss the next fiesta—or the fashions of the eastern seaboard?”
Joe allowed the question to hang in the air until the serving maid—Ella—had poured his coffee and stood silently behind them both.
At last Joe said, “I have received word from Nuestra Senora de los Angeles that the missions’ ban on allowing airships in the Royal Kingdom’s skies has been lifted.”
A renewed silence met this declaration, as though this were the last thing the ministers had expected to hear. Perhaps they really had thought she was there to talk about fiestas.
“Lifted?” Peralta finally repeated. “Is that even possible?”
“It seems that a delegation of monks was tasked to determine whether Holy Writ actually forbids man to fly,” de la Carrera, briefed earlier by the bishop, said smoothly. “As it turns out, it does not. The legends of the Greeks would teach one not to attempt to fly too close to the sun, but fortunately, we do not base our eternal hopes upon mere tales.”
“Airships are now permitted to fly here?” one of the ministers repeated. “But we have none. What good is such a thing?”
“You will see much good come of it in the future, sir,” Gloria said pleasantly. “In fact, His Serene Highness has already decided that the ships of the Meriwether-Astor Manufacturing Works might be the first to cross the mountains and bring equipment and trade to the Royal Kingdom.”
“Of course he has,” murmured de Aragon.
But the elderly minister was not satisfied. “How can this be? How can a thing be a sin for generations, and then overnight be as acceptable as a train journey? What will we tell the people?”
“I doubt they will be too concerned,” de la Carrera said. “But it is certainly known that diligent study of Holy Writ produces a knowledge of the will of God. With deeper knowledge comes conviction … and change.”
The man subsided, shaking his head. Clearly Joe had been very clever in soliciting the approval of the missions first. It had spiked the cabinet’s guns before they even had a chance to fire. Gloria wondered how many roadblocks of this kind they were about to run up against.
The mention of trade led quite naturally into a discussion of the expansion of the Royal Kingdom’s interests abroad. Which quite naturally was the bailiwick of the Ambassador to the Fifteen Colonies, Augusto de Aragon.
Sadly for him, it was also Gloria’s bailiwick. She had not often had reason to be thankful for her father’s grudging, often unpleasant insistence on her presence during his board meetings. Her own short-lived experience at the head of the table before her journey out to the Wild West had been nearly as humiliating. But now, the tactics she had learned and the sheer bullheaded determination she had inherited came to the fore, as though her mind had been keeping them in reserve for just such a moment.
When he boasted about river shipping, she pleasantly pointed out that the dam was even now flooding the towns where his as yet unpurchased boats and barges might take on coal and kerosene.
When he suggested moving the towns, she countered with a reminder that he was massing troops to attack the Texican Territories, the only land to which towns might be relocated.
When he blustered and pounded the table and urged the Viceroy to annex the Territories and be done with it, Gloria calmly reminded him that their neighbor had airships equipped with bombs, and the Royal Kingdom did not. “And which side, Your Excellency, will come out the victor against such odds, both physical and moral?”
He glared at her while several members of the cabinet gazed out the windows and one or two smothered smiles under the guise of dabbing their lips with embroidered handkerchiefs.
“As the future Vicereine has so ably pointed out, sirs, it would be folly to go on massing for war. We do not need to take from our neighbors when we have ample resources with which to trade with them,” Joe said, capturing the gazes of each man in turn. “Before I gather all the landowners together this evening to command that their forces stand down and return to their ranchos, I would like to know I am assured of your support.”
The Ambassador leaped to his feet. “Sir! I protest! The gold—”
Joe gazed at him with pity. “We are not pirates, Ambassador, to take gold by force instead of by trade and commerce. Your ideas belong in the sixteenth century, sir. In fact, I am no longer convinced that such ideas best serve the Royal Kingdom, since no one has ever been able to find these miraculous caches of gold. Do not try my patience further. There may be a more forward-thinking man here better able to build bridges with the leaders of both territory and colony.”
Spittle had formed in the corners of the Ambassador’s lips, and he shook with the force of a towering temper barely held in check. If his dress sword had been to hand instead of lying in the rack in the corridor, Gloria had no doubt that he would have drawn it despite the certainty of execution to follow.
“With respect, sir, you are making a mistake. We will be left vulnerable to—”
“To whom?”
“The Texicans, of course!”
“Once the skies are open, it will be obvious that there are no armies massing, no weapons being deployed, no dam being built.”
“The dam is being built! It is half its planned height already.” His hand firmly on a fact he could prove, he flung it at his prince with satisfaction.
“Despite the danger to life and limb along the river?” Gloria asked. “Would it not be better to pour the Kingdom’s resources into building airships instead, to take the cargo where it must go?”
“There is nothing along the river but witches and half-breeds and los indios,” declared the Ambassador with contempt. “Jackrabbits and vultures. Nothing we may concern ourselves with. Certainly nothing that might stand in the way of Your Serene Highness’s plans.”
Oh, he was clever. And they were trapped, if the nods of approval around the table were any indication. For who would build the airships? They could not do it here, with not one trained mind in the entire country. They would have to hire engineers, or pay the Meriwether-Astor Manufacturing Works to do it, and that might take longer than they were willing to wait.
Whereas the river was already there, and rising daily.
“If the men of the ranchos are to be demobilized,” the Ambassador went on, “then might I suggest they augment the workforce now laboring at the dam, that the work might be finished twice as quickly?”
He was the very devil!
Gloria exchanged a glance with Joe. They had won the war—or stopped it, at least—but the battle for control of the river would not stop. It would go on even more quickly unless one of them had an idea in the next few seconds.
“I will not allow conscription of free men.” Joe’s tone was deadly quiet. “If the men wish to work for a fair wage rather than return to homes and fields, then the ranchos will support them as they would have had they gone to fight.”
This took the cabinet members aback. How clever Joe was! If he could not stop the work, then at least he could throttle the number of men who might be permitted to go, and slow it down. And there was another advantage—when Evan succeeded in blowing up the dam, even fewer lives would be lost.
“The dam and trade on the river were my father’s dream—not mine,” Joe said. “Air travel is the standard in this modern day and age. Are we all agreed that this should be put to the grandees—that they should choose whether their men should be better employed building a dam, or learning to build airships?”
They looked at one another, and before the Ambassador could speak, Peralta nodded. “Your Serene Highness, these are weighty matters. If all the grandees are to agree, it will take time.”
“How much time?”
“If you progress from one rancho to another during the period of your engagement to our future Vicereine—” He bowed in Gloria’s direction, and she inclined her head in acknowledgement. “—then you may bring your powers of persuasion to bear. In this manner, it may take no longer than a year to reach consensus.”
Gloria stared. “A year?”
Peralta nodded. “Certainly. Such changes cannot merely be conceived and carried out. It will take time for new laws to be written, for our prince to show himself again, to gather the approval and support of the people, who barely know him.”
“We do not have a year,” Joe said, frowning. “I will speak to all the landowners here, which account for more than half the country, if what our host tells me is correct?”
De la Carrerra nodded. “Only a few are missing from the northernmost reaches of our land, where I believe the snows have prevented their coming to celebrate your engagement.”
“Then I wish the grandees to reach agreement and the laws rewritten within a month.”
“Sir, that is impossible.” For a man who was ready to march across the mountains and take what wasn’t his, the Ambassador was awfully willing to delay his sovereign’s wishes.
“I do not wish to rule by fiat, as my father did,” Joe said with dignity. “I wish to rule with the support of cabinet and people. At the same time, I will not brook delay. Our country has languished in the backwaters of the world for long enough. The landowners will reach agreement on three things—stopping the mobilization for war, changing the laws to outlaw conscription, and choosing commerce by air or river—within a month. If they do not, I will begin insisting upon … contributions … to the treasury from each rancho owner who drags his feet.”
Once again the exchange of glances. Then Peralta said, “Nuestra Senora de la Soledad will support you, sir.”
“As will San Luis Obispo de Tolosa,” said de la Carrera.
Joe smiled. “Excellent. That is two out of twenty-one.” He stood, held out a hand to Gloria, and raised her from her chair. Every man at the table rose, too. “I thank you for a most illuminating meeting, and look forward to your company this evening, when I address the landowners.”
They bowed as Joe and Gloria sailed out of the room.
It was not until they reached the safety of the gardens, far from listening ears, and were strolling arm in arm among the orange trees, that Joe leaned close to whisper in Gloria’s ear, “We are in trouble.”
“We don’t have a month,” Gloria whispered back. “All the witches and the people in every town on the western reaches of the river will die, because you and I both know the work on the dam will not stop.”
“Evan and Barnaby are bound and determined to blow it up. I expect news of an accident any day.”
“But if we do not get our way with the airships—yet—what if we can find a way to stop the work before the rancho men come expecting their wages, and there are twice as many lives at stake? For truly, if the real Viceroy has consensus among his people to do the right thing, would that not be a better situation for him to return to when he is well?”
“Yes … but the question is, how? They can only see prosperity in the use of the river, not the skies.”
“You will have to make your case to the landowners. I will tell you as much as I can about airships this afternoon. Then, when the dam has its accident, they will have a plan to fall back on, and you will look like a true leader.”
“Or a madman who has blown up the Ambassador’s dam. I wouldn’t put it past him to accuse me of it.”
“Of course he won’t.”
But even as she said the words, Gloria wondered if she might be wrong this time.
Chapter 12
Somewhere along the Rio de Sangre Colorado de Christo
Three weeks later
Anxiety rolled in Alice’s stomach as she stared down into the swirling waters of the mighty river that both sustained and threatened her, the man she loved, and her hosts, las brujas. She stood, not on the stone pier where she had begun work on the submersible, but two levels higher. Her original moorage was now under water, and the submersible, which she and Ian had nicknamed the Chaloupe, after the dinghy-like glass-and-iron bubbles used to travel back and forth to Gloria’s undersea dirigibles, now rested on what had been a sun terrace. They had floated it in four feet of water.
“We must act without delay,” she said to May Lin, who was working with her.
“I agree.” May Lin shaded her eyes to gaze down the canyon. “My calculations tell me that at the current rate of rise, the water will begin to flood our storage rooms in three days. I have told Sister Clara to begin moving the animals and the food to the upper levels. At this rate we will be living on the mesa before we know it.”
“The water is getting more dangerous, too. It is not running freely through the sheer rock canyons, but has slowed, becoming more powerful. More unpredictable. This little tub has only the most rudimentary steering. I don’t much care to be dashed against the walls on the voyage down. Not with a hold full of explosives.”
“Our original plan of using the spider’s legs might have to come out again.”
“I think you’re right. We’re going to need something to fend us off
the rocks and give us some stability.” Alice glanced at the younger woman. “May I take this opportunity to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed working with you? Just in case—you know—Ian and I don’t come back.”
May Lin’s face softened into a smile. “It is mutual, Alice Chalmers. I think we have done some good work here. And you will come back. You are one of us now.”
Alice touched the silk roses braided into her unruly dust-colored hair. She had declined to be painted for Ian’s sake—the inability to tell one witch from another without careful observation made him tetchy—and though his wound was healing well, he was plenty tetchy enough. She did not think he would appreciate his wife’s adopting the custom of the country quite so thoroughly. But the roses were a different matter.
The roses meant she belonged—something she would not have believed even a fortnight ago. Gretchen had taken herself off on another spying mission and good riddance. Though they had come to a kind of uneasy peace, Alice still didn’t trust her, and if Ian had a lightning pistol to hand, he would probably shoot her on sight.
“Alice, what are you going to do with the mechanicals aboard your ship?”
She turned back to the Chaloupe and resumed screwing the isinglass window into the bow. It hadn’t been easy cutting an aperture into the end of the boiler-turned-submersible, but they had to see where they were going.
“I’ve had so much to think about lately that I haven’t given them much thought, to be honest.”
“If the Californios do attack, the mechanicals cannot be used for battle here in these canyons. They are designed for charges on flat ground.”
“So I risked my ship for nothing?”
“I do not believe anything we do is for nothing. But perhaps they could be put to good use … as pack animals. To help our people travel to safer places if blowing up the dam does not work.”
Fields of Gold: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 12) Page 11
