“Certainly. Jake? Benny? What about you?”
But her crewmen were already backing away. “I’ll stay with the ship, Captain,” Jake told her. “Mechanical horses were enough for me.”
Under more cheerful circumstances, Alice would have been agog at the inner workings of the behemoth, and at Evan’s and Captain Fremont’s skill as they worked together with seamless ease, one on the legs and one on the gripping arm. She hung out the door to watch her ship floating serenely behind, Ian visible at the helm through the viewing port. Already her mind was buzzing with the possibilities of building their own behemoth, not for war, but for useful tasks about the estate. Even something as simple as pollarding the trees along the avenue could be done by a machine such as this, rather than the groundskeeper’s risking life and limb with ladders and saws and shears.
She’d risk life and limb if only she could see the place once again, and grow old there with Ian. How much she’d changed since they’d embarked on a life together!
At the fort, the boys leaped down and secured Swan to the flagpole in the middle of the parade ground, and tied her lines to the support posts of the colonnade. Men began to trickle out of the buildings, their mouths agape, and others brought out their companions on stretchers.
Before he had lifted to shadow Alice and Ian’s journey down the river, Jake had reported, they and the witches had unloaded nearly all the mechanicals from the hold. Only a single horse remained—the one Jake had ridden back in Resolution in what seemed another life. Alice didn’t know why they hadn’t taken it out, too, but there was no time to wonder now. She and Ian and the witches had a debt to pay, and she would pay it pronto, before another sunset.
In less than an hour, the injured were laid out on the floor of the hold, with Benny and a couple of de Sola’s soldiers to watch over them and bring refreshment if they were able to take it. The commander himself snapped a salute to Alice and Ian as the last of the soldiers disembarked. “With your permission, I should like to go with you. We have sent a message to the mission at Reno, but we will likely arrive first, if what you say is true. It is my responsibility to see my men to safety.”
“We would be honored,” Alice said solemnly. “You and your men will be the first to fly in the entire country.”
He did not seem as pleased about this as one might expect. “I confess it makes me very uneasy—as though I am putting myself on a level with angels.”
“We could capture you and take you against your will, if that would help,” Evan suggested.
De Sola laughed. “No, if I am to mount up with wings as eagles, I will take responsibility for it. Think of the story I will have to tell my children when we return. Senor Douglas, are you coming, too?”
Evan shook his head. “I hear there are survivors from the south tower who may be stranded on the mesa. Captain Fremont and I will go to retrieve them as soon as you are safely away.”
De Sola grasped his arm. “You are as loyal a man as any in my own company. Gracias, senor.”
Evan blushed and managed to shake the man’s hand before he got himself away. Alice watched him and Captain Fremont climb the behemoth’s leg and scramble into the pilot’s chamber, then turned to find the man Dutch standing in the gangway as though he wanted something.
“Commander de Sola,” he said stiffly, “I request permission to come with you.”
The commander seemed taken aback. “Your reason, sir?”
“I am a free man, am I not, by your own prince’s command?”
“You are.”
“Then I must take my opportunities as I find them. I was told I was brought here from Reno. If I may find any clues as to my identity or the whereabouts of my wife and daughters, it will be there.”
“Senor Douglas and the captain will miss your companionship.”
“And I theirs. But I must go.” When he received the commander’s permission, the man called Dutch seemed to stand straighter, and went to the hold to render what assistance he could to the injured.
There was no more time to waste. “Captain Hollys, would you give the order, please?” she asked her husband as Commander de Sola made his way over to the viewing port and looked about for something to hang on to.
Ian leaned into the speaking horn. “Cast off, gentlemen.”
When Benny and Jake had done so and boarded, Alice called, “Up ship!” and they fell into the sky.
With a gasp, de Sola clutched a bit of pipe and watched the ground drop away beneath their feet. He clapped a hand to his mouth and for a dreadful moment Alice thought he was going to lose the contents of his stomach. With heroic control, though, he mastered himself, which made Benny, who would have had to swab the deck, visibly relax.
When he could speak, the commander breathed, “I can see nearly all the way to the sea.” Indeed, the horizon lay blue and misty in the far distance, and who was to say whether it was stained by sea or sky?
When they gained enough altitude, they crossed the mountains on a northeasterly course, leaving the river to the south, their shadow rippling across the vast expanses of desert land on the eastern slopes. When a smudge appeared at last on the horizon, de Sola pointed. “Those long lines—they are the railroad tracks?”
“They are. The paler ones are roads,” Ian told him.
“Landfall at Reno in twenty minutes, Captain,” Jake said from the navigation table.
“So small and fragile our effect on the vast earth,” de Sola murmured, his fascinated gaze never leaving the sere landscape far below. “I shall never feel proud of man’s accomplishments again.”
“Pride is a bit dangerous,” Alice agreed. “Nothing wrong with gratitude, though. I’ve been grateful to Swan many a time when she’s saved my skin.”
“I am grateful now,” he said, “to both crew and ship. I will not forget this. Never.”
“Perhaps your children will take flight for granted one day,” Ian said.
But de Sola was already shaking his head. “I will not let them. Not when I have seen myself as God sees me. Such a lesson may change a man’s life.”
When they moored at the Reno airfield—the only one in the Royal Kingdom, and that only because it was on the major train route into the country and beyond the pale of the mountains, de Sola and his soldiers disembarked. In what passed for dizzying bureaucratic speed in this country, they returned with permission in hand for a special landing in the mission’s orchard. By sunset, the last of the injured had been borne away and the doors closed behind them.
Alice leaned against Ian in sheer exhaustion—they had been up more than twenty-four hours. “I want to be carried away on one of those canvas stretchers myself … though I don’t deserve it, since it was my actions that put those poor men there.”
“If the old Viceroy had not begun the dam, they would not have been working on it, and we would not have had to act.” He kissed the top of her head. “We have done what we could to pay our debt. Now let us pull up ropes and decide what to do next.”
Dutch came down the gangway in what appeared to be one of the wool greatcoats Swan’s original crew had left behind when they had been captured in Venice, before Alice had liberated the empty ship. “I am told by your navigator that I am to take this garment and stop arguing,” he said unhappily to Alice. “But I do not feel it is right.”
“It’s too big for any of us,” she pointed out. “Take it and welcome. The nights are cold here, and you may be glad of it. Are you really leaving us?”
“I must,” he said simply. “I have nothing to my name but the coins Commander de Sola has given me, and this coat … and yet this is more than I began with when I met your friend Evan these many months ago. I will begin here in this hospital.” He bowed in his oddly formal way, as though there were an entire court behind him and a king standing in front of him. “I thank you for conveying me here … and for sharing with me the gift of your friendship.”
“Please—” Ian ran up the gangway and returned in a moment with one
of their calling cards. “If you are in England, or ever need help, I hope you will contact us.”
Dutch looked down at the engraved bit of stock, creamy against his deeply tanned and dirty fingers. “Sir Ian and Lady Hollys?” His brows raised, he gazed at them. “Is it so?”
Alice lifted a shoulder with a smile. “We try to keep a low profile. I hope we meet again, Dutch.”
“I hope so, too.” With a touch of the card to his temple, smiling as if at a good joke, he made his way into the dusk, the rabbit brush whispering against the hems of his coat.
“I don’t think I can fly tonight, Ian,” Alice said quietly, as the evening closed around them. “Do you suppose they’ll let us stay in this field until morning?”
“I don’t see why not. I shall find de Sola and inform him we shall return him and his men after sunrise.”
Alice staggered a little as she climbed the gangway and made her way back to the captain’s cabin. Never had she been so grateful for her bunk, though it smelled stale and dusty from disuse. She would just put her head on the pillow while she was waiting for Ian … not even take her boots off …
She woke with a start at the sound of shouting. It was fully dark, and outside the porthole there was far too much movement and flickering light for an orchard. Her mouth was dry and her head ached, but she forced herself up and out of the cabin. Where was Ian? How long had she been asleep? What was happening?
Jake met her in the corridor outside the navigation gondola. “Captain, did you hear?”
“I just woke up. What is happening? Where is Ian?”
“I am here, Alice.” Ian ushered Commander de Sola up the gangway, the latter as pale as a man so tanned could be in the light of the lamps. “It seems that while we were providing an ambulance to the men, news arrived.”
His voice heavy with dread, Commander de Sola said, “Ambassador de Aragon and his troops have seized the capital of San Francisco de Asis and he has declared himself Regent. Any man who supports the mad Viceroy is now declared traitor to the Crown.”
“Seized?” Alice said with a gasp. “But Gloria—the Viceroy—are they all right?”
“I do not know,” de Sola told her. “I must return to my post at once.”
“We will prepare to cast off,” Ian said immediately.
“No.” The commander stopped Ian in mid-turn. “I will go by train. I am very sorry to inform you—that is to say, we are so grateful for your help but I must—”
“Commander, what is it?” Alice had not known him above a day, but he did not strike her as a man prone to stammering and indecision.
“The borders are closed.” His fine brown eyes were miserable as they met hers. “By rights I should impound your ship and crew and hold you here.”
Alice felt herself sway with exhaustion and shock. This was just like Venice. Would they impose a tariff on her that she couldn’t pay this time, too?
“Should?” Ian inquired of de Sola as he passed a supportive arm about her waist, his mind obviously moving faster than hers. “Is that what you are going to do?”
“The missions will declare for the royalist or the regent’s cause in the morning,” de Sola said wearily. “In the confusion, no one will notice if your ship should disappear. I suggest you move quickly.”
“Which side will you choose?” Ian asked.
“The side of right. I fight for my Viceroy, and so will the remaining troops in the south. San Luis Obispo de Tolosa will also, and San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo. Nuestra Senora de los Angeles, as the religious capital, can do nothing but fight for God’s anointed representative. Sandwiched between those centers of power, the smaller southern landholders will see their duty and declare for Felipe as well.”
“This is no way for friends to say good-bye,” Alice protested.
“You are right. It is not.” De Sola offered his hand, and she took it. “Go at once. I will look after your friends Evan and the captain as you have looked after mine. And may God protect us until we meet again.”
Chapter 19
“Civil war?” Gloria sank to the sofa, one hand going almost of its own volition to her still flat belly. Cold fear cascaded into her stomach like a poison rain that couldn’t possibly be good for the baby.
Ignatio de la Carrera had turned nearly as white as the broad expanse of his spotless shirt front, and the bishop of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa was wringing his hands, waiting for his Viceroy’s reaction to the dreadful news. Honoria remained upright on her feet, though Gloria could hardly see how. “The south declares for me, as well as Santa Cruz and Santa Clara?”
“Not Santa Clara, sir,” the bishop said with regret. “They briefly attempted a neutral stance and were overrun by the Regent’s troops before Vespers.”
“Do not call him that,” Gloria snapped, recovering herself at this insult. “He is not even His Excellency the Ambassador any longer. He is de Aragon of San Gregorio, the traitor.”
“Yes, madam,” the bishop said mildly. “Your Serene Highness, our first priority must be your safety. The archbishop bids you come to Nuestra Senora de los Angeles for sanctuary immediately, before the railroads close to anything but military traffic.”
“Sanctuary?” Honoria folded her arms. “He means me to hide behind his adobe walls while my people fight and die for me?”
“The people need a living ruler for whom to fight,” the bishop pointed out. “The walls of our mother house have never been breached.”
“Then the archbishop may certainly continue to reside there in safety, and pray for us. I will join my troops in the south, and draw the traitor out. It is a harsh landscape that we know better than he, a man used to green hills and easy provisioning.”
“Sir, I beg you—”
“If he wants my crown, he may come and take it from me,” Honoria said grimly. “I will meet him on the field above the water meadows.”
“But the dam—sire, you are vulnerable in that quarter now that the river is once again open to any criminal who cares to travel it. What if the witches hear that you are there in person and cast a spell? What if they spill through the gap and attack?”
Honoria grinned, feral as a panther. “I should welcome it. Bishop, let the missions—all of them—know my plans. I expect the south to muster and while they do, I will take Silver Wind to the water meadows to inspect them as they arrive.”
“Silver Wind?” de la Carrera repeated. “But that is the—er, well, I suppose it is no longer the traitor’s train.”
“It is my train,” Honoria said in a tone just this side of dangerous. “Have it waiting at the siding here by sunset, and we will leave in the morning.”
For of course, in making his slippery escape, the traitor had not been able to use the beautiful locomotive he considered his own. It was far too visible, and his lines of escape were too cleverly drawn in invisible ink. He had surfaced in San Francisco de Asis and declared himself Regent the evening before last, to save the country from a prince who was not anointed of God in holy visions at all, but mad and under the influence of a witch.
Gloria’s wearing of the rose had not gone unnoticed by everyone but the women, it seemed. The traitor knew perfectly well what the symbol meant, and he had been swift to use it against her. The missions of the north had been loud in their outrage, and had positioned their rebellion as a religious war against the powers of witchcraft. Gloria felt ill at the thought of it—that in her loyalty to the women who had saved her life, she might inadvertently have put Honoria’s life and the success of their plan at risk.
The bishop and the grandee bowed themselves out, leaving Gloria and the Viceroy with the remains of their breakfast. Gloria could not even look at the table, and focused instead out the window, on the sunlight dancing on the water.
“Gloria, don’t let your courage fail you now.”
She turned to Honoria, her face crumpling in distress. “But this is all my fault. Everything we’ve done—all we’ve both sacrificed—and we are going to war
anyway.”
“But it is on our terms.”
“How can you say that? Having the north declare for a Regent is hardly what we were expecting. When you finally switch places, Felipe is going to have us both executed—and speaking of that, I am not altogether sure I like you in such danger while he is comfortably behind the mountains in complete safety.”
“That was the plan, you goose.”
“Yes, but at the time you weren’t riding to inspect troops. We were supposed to go on progress, and attend balls and fiestas, until he was well enough.”
“Are you going to have hysterics, or are you going to listen to me?” If not for her smile and the knowledge that Honoria could be depended on to the very last, Gloria might have lost her nerve and burst into tears.
She gulped her runaway emotions back. “I am listening.”
“It is true that we did not expect open, armed rebellion. But we know something the Ambassador does not—that there has been a secret rebellion building up in this country for years, engineered by women like me—spies and travelers. It has come to a head, Gloria, and you will be the one to fan the embers into flame.”
Gloria remembered the dream Evan had told her of, back in the little room at the inn that had held her one perfect night of happiness. In the fort commander’s dream, she had turned into an iron dragon and burned up her persecutor.
The commander had dreamed true, Evan had said. She needed to hold fast to that.
“What do I need to do?”
“The word must go out. It is time for the women to rise and fight.”
Gloria stared. “In this country? Impossible. What can women do when they can hardly step out of doors safely?”
Honoria gazed at her, humor playing at the corners of her mouth. “What have you seen the women doing?”
Since the question appeared serious, Gloria calmed her gabbling fear and set her mind to answer with equal deliberation. “I have seen them sewing, and going to market, and talking, and caring for children.”
“And what else?”
She thought back over the days of her stay here. “I have seen them in groups in the marketplace, exchanging news. And riding in carts together from rancho to rancho, with bags of seed for planting season. I have seen them in the trees, picking oranges and lemons with their sons and daughters while the men have been off building the dam.”
Fields of Gold: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 12) Page 18
