Hot and Steamy

by Jean Rabe

  Sinclair flinched when she saw his face in the dim light. “Oh, dear,” was all she said.

  Jameson felt his temperature rise. She was lovely, an angel come to ground.

  She held out her hand and offered him a small package. “I’m so sorry to see you hurt,” she said in a concerned voice. “I brought you a small token. It’s nothing, really. Don’t try to talk.” She touched his swollen lip with her finger. “Oh, this is my fault. If I hadn’t asked you to come to shore with me . . .”

  He shook off her words and held her fingers in his good hand, trying to draw her close, but the motion was awkward with his bandages and he practically stumbled into her.

  “Maybe we could meet later, Professor? Say this evening, after you’ve had the day to rest. I’ll be leaving as soon as we dock in the morning, and I’d hate to go without a proper farewell . . . a long, proper farewell.”

  His blood pounded in his ears. “Leaving?” the word came out as a croak.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Business, you understand. But that doesn’t mean we can’t . . . you know . . . if you feel up to it.”

  A smile crept to his swollen lips.

  “It’s settled then. I’ll be on deck . . . say . . . around ten. We’ll watch the stars on the water and then . . . retire . . . for the rest of the night.”

  Jameson watched her sway away and closed the cabin door behind her. He swallowed a powerful pain remedy with some bourbon sent by Captain Keel and woke not knowing if he’d slept an hour or an entire day. As he swung his stiff legs over the side of the bed and gathered the strength to stand, his blood tingled with the thought of seeing the willowy redhead for perhaps the final time.

  He scratched his whiskers, remembering the scent of her exotic perfume, and thought, Maybe she’d come with me to Egypt. Maybe this won’t be the last time. Maybe it will be forever.

  The pain had somewhat subsided, he felt hungry, and the lump on his head no longer stung. Maybe she could see past his infirmaries and idiosyncrasies . . . and the ugliness of his mottled black eye.

  It was nearly ten when he made his way along the deck awash in silvery moonlight. He slowly limped toward the stern where the water splashed off the paddle-wheel with a whooshing rhythm. Between the posts of the railing something familiar glistened—Sinclair’s cameo. As he tried to grab it, a gunshot ripped through the peaceful night, followed by a thud. He turned around to see Sinclair face down—dark blood slowly staining the back of her gown. The blade of a Bowie knife gleamed in the moonlight, the handle clutched in her leather-gloved fist.

  He didn’t need to look closer; he knew she was dead.

  Behind her Captain Keel held a smoking pistol. The sharp scent of gunpowder hung like a cloud around the captain as he looked sadly at the archaeologist.

  “Come on, Watts,” Keel said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  In the wheelhouse the archaeologist stared straight ahead in shock. Tears stained his bruised face.

  The captain threw back a large bourbon. “She was about to run you through with that Bowie knife when I showed up.”

  Jameson lifted his bloodshot eyes.

  “Her real name was Stella Rechow, a black widow for hire—so to speak, sent to kill you. A pack of Texas oilmen put her on their payroll. Word must’ve got out about your trip to Washington and your energy metal, and it seems they weren’t going to let your discovery put them out of business. I contacted the authorities and had them do a check on every passenger onboard. The information about our ‘Miss Upchurch’ had just come over my communicator, so I went to her cabin to confront her—but she’d gone. Found this on her bed.” The captain held out a green antiquities book. “It’s yours—she must have taken the book from your cabin.”

  Taken it, as she had taken his heart. Jameson sniffed as he opened the green cover and saw J. Watts scribbled in the corner.

  “The police’ll be waitin’ for us at Exeter in the morning. Seems they’ve been chasing her for a while. She’s got a list of aliases, murders, and felonies long as your arm. My best guess is she was gonna stab you and throw you overboard. I reckon she left that cameo for you to find right where you’d reach over the rail. She’d have been long gone before your body washed ashore.”

  Jameson regarded him numbly and finished his bourbon.

  “You better get some sleep now, Watts.” The captain grabbed Jameson by the shoulder and steered the shaken man toward his cabin.

  Dawn was seeping over the horizon when the archaeologist finally fell asleep.

  Several months later, after his meeting with the president, Jameson traveled back to Egypt. He visited the final resting place of the ancient scientist he’d discovered decades ago, stood at the sarcophagus, and gazed steadily while his eyes adjusted to the flickering torchlight.

  The hieroglyphs on the walls spelled out the necessary incantations for the mummy seeking the afterlife. The Ankh and Shen symbols meant life eternal, and beneath it the deity Ma’at wore the feather of truth next to Heh, the god of millions of years. The colorful spells that adorned the dusty walls had barely faded through eons of time.

  Jameson pried open the sarcophagus. He carefully placed the canopic jar and all but one of the artifacts he’d found there decades ago back inside. He idly wondered if the mummy had been murdered for the energy discovery.

  He rubbed the scarab beetle dangling around his neck for luck.

  Before he crawled out of the tomb for the last time, the archaeologist reverently said a prayer that the ancient man had found eternal life.

  THE PROBLEM OF TRYSTAN

  Maurice Broaddus

  Maurice Broaddus is the author of the novel series The Knights of Breton Court. His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, most recently including Dark Dreams II and III, Apex Magazine, Black Static, and Weird Tales Magazine . He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology. Visit him at www.mauricebroaddus.com.

  The Tejas Express was a monstrosity of gleaming metal, though in its own way beautiful to behold. Large and cumbersome, with steam curling around it like caressing tendrils, the carriage rumbled along on an intricate system of toothed tracks. It moved with a great thrumming sound, much like a racing heart attempting to be restrained. Winston Jefferson jostled about in the car, one eye on the group of soldiers milling as if they were not on duty. Part of him resented the scarlet bleed of their red soldier uniforms. The antithesis of camouflage by design, it let the enemy know who was coming for them in the name of Her Majesty Queen Diana.

  His other eye rested on his charge, who the soldiers amiably chatted up. Winston’s hand tightened its grip on his cane handle as she sauntered toward him.

  With an olive complexion and long brown hair framing aristocratic features from her piercing brown eyes to her aquiline nose, Lady Trystan stood at a formidable six feet. He couldn’t quite place her origin, but he didn’t care enough to ask. He simply appreciated the view and thanked God for whatever country that could produce such a resplendent specimen. Lips glossed to an exaggerated redness were pursed tightly, not betraying a hint of her feelings. She had a regal presence in her green and blue gown in a kente cloth pattern; a crinoline supported her dress with its slight train. It had a high neck with a tatted collar and soutache trim. She walked toward the bench. For a moment his eyes met hers. She held the gaze.

  “Mr. Jefferson,” she said in her demure drawl, pretending she didn’t know him. One of the little games she liked to play.

  “Colonel.” He tipped his top hat.

  “My . . . colonel. We are proud of our titles.”

  “Only the ones ‘we’ have earned.”

  Winston still wore a gray sack coat, copper buttons running up each side, left open in order to display a four-in-hand necktie and collared shirt. The veneer of respectability. He began his career as a soldier when he was seventeen. For ten years he served queen and country, earning a battlefield promotion to colonel during the Five Civilized Nations uprising. Not that the
title was anything more than honorific, as one of his station couldn’t hope to command men. A moot point as, wounded as he was, he was soon discharged for his troubles. His cane, a lacquered black rod with copper fittings beginning midway up its shank to its hilt, an openmouthed copper dragon’s head, allowed him to hide the slightest of limps.

  “Lady Trystan.” He nodded toward the wrought iron table bedecked with a silver tray set with tea and cream in matching pots next to a plate of strawberries. “A magnificent name.”

  “LaDashia Rachel Brown Willoughby of the Virginia Willoughbys.” She dipped a strawberry into the cream then rolled it in the sugar—a slow, deliberate action—before popping it into her mouth.

  “A family of noble bearing. Your father, Sir Anthony Willoughby, must be proud.”

  “Adopted father. My mother was widowed soon after I was born.”

  “Still, he’s a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. A rare honor.”

  “We both took his name when they married. I took Rachel as my confirmation name.”

  “So where does the name Trystan come from?”

  “Are we the sum of our names, or can we choose to own some of them but not others?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I had no say in my birth name. No say in my mother’s remarriage. And my religion was thrust upon me. Trystan is what I choose to call myself.”

  “To my ear, it almost sounds like Trickster.”

  “We all could use some of Br’er Nanci’s spirit sometimes.” She chatted to mask her unease, perhaps discomfited by the weight of his scrutiny. Her over-creamed coffee complexion allowed those who wanted to let her pass for a white woman. However, despite careful makeup and the distraction of her peculiar framed glasses, her features favored the Negro. A keen intelligence laid in wait behind the beguiling playfulness in her hazel eyes and mischievous humor was hinted about in her lips.

  “My mother was Caucasian. My natural father was African. He passed away soon after my birth. But I was so fair, none were the wiser when we relocated to Virginia, where Mother met Sir Anthony. My heritage would be an embarrassment to him, my mother impressed upon me.”

  “So why entrust your secret to me?”

  “You have one of those faces.”

  “What kind of face is that?”

  “Handsome. Intelligent. And something just short of trustworthy.” She smiled, a terribly enticing thing.

  He never imagined his oval shaped face, with low-cropped hair matching the length of his closely shorn beard, little longer than a week’s stubble, as a particularly pleasant countenance. At best, he tried to carry himself as a nobleman, a proud oak of a man with a complexion to match. She differed from most of the ladies of society he had encountered, with their insipidity and air of self-importance which accompanied most of the people of high society. They reeked of privilege and uselessness, and he listened to their chatter with perfect indifference. Inane white noise which heavied his eyelids. Lady Trystan was cautious in her praise of any man, he imagined, and with her insouciant demeanor—both flippant and wry—she would make a poor wife by most men’s standards. Not used to so bold a woman—sarcastic humor with a keen mind and no care for others’ thoughts on her manner—she intrigued him.

  “Men are such foolish creatures. Unsure of what you feel or if you should feel it. It was good for you that God chose to create women to help you along.”

  “I can sort my own feelings just fine, miss.”

  “Oh, I hardly believe that. You don’t even realize how much attraction you feel for me right now.”

  Winston found it difficult to disengage from her commanding gaze. Suddenly he straightened in his seat, conscious of where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He was a man with a job to do, and it wasn’t to be caught up in the spell of this woman.

  “You look as if you’ve swallowed a turnip,” Lady Trystan said.

  “Merely reminded of my duty.”

  “Sorry if I distracted you.”

  “Your father entrusted me to guarantee your safe passage.”

  “Are your coterie of soldiers not enough?”

  “They serve their function.”

  “Which is?”

  “To distract.”

  Winston studied the faces of the people who shared their car, searching for anything or anyone that looked out of place. He read their eyes. A gaunt, swarthy gentleman buried his face in a newspaper. On the short side of average, in his brown suit and bowler he had the build of a rodent dressed as a dandy. The newspaper’s headlines declared the beginnings of The Troubles—how everyone referred to the Jamaican uprising—as well as the Queen’s preparation to appoint Viceroy Reagan to rule the American colony in the name of Albion and carry the banner for the Empire. A former actor as puppet sounded about right to him, but he didn’t have the benefit of an A-level education. A young boy quavered as his father scolded him. The tone rose in volume and the tenor in harshness, a critical barrage fueled by anger and maybe a little drink. The rest of the passengers turned away in polite deference. The man’s contempt erupted as he drew back to beat the boy, when Winston rose and, heedless of the pain which caused him to limp, sprang to the boy’s side. His cane may have stayed his father’s blow, but it was the steel of his gaze which stilled the man.

  “There’s no need to take so stern a hand to the boy,” Winston said.

  “The boy,” the man started, swallowed hard, and then found his voice again. “The boy needed a lesson in quieting his manner.”

  “A lesson already delivered. Do not let me find this boy bruised.”

  “What business of it is yours to interfere with a father doing his duty?”

  Winston came from a family of five children; the responsibility of the older siblings was to protect the younger ones. Funny, the number of his family was six actually, but his brother, Auldwyn, had died when he was two. Though Winston was barely old enough to know him when he died, the thought of Auldwyn, more than the actual memory of his loss, continued to pain him. “I can’t abide bullies. They . . . vex me. You don’t want to vex me.”

  Trystan looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. A frightfully insufferable woman who had a predilection for revealing all of her teeth when she smiled, she quickly turned away, her long hair curled up into a tight coif, and she fanned herself as she stared out the window.

  “As I was saying, my duty was to deliver you to the hand of Sir Melbourne.”

  “Such was my father’s wish.”

  “He is a powerful man, your father, with many enemies.”

  “And he sought to mollify some of them with this ill-conceived arrangement. My parents are quite cross with me at the moment.”

  “I couldn’t hazard a guess why.”

  “I was to marry Sir Melbourne, the archduke of Georgia. A nobleman of noble family.”

  “And?”

  “He bored me.”

  “And a husband’s duty is to entertain his wife.”

  “Your sarcasm has been duly noted. He wanted a wife interested in keeping a home, organizing social events, to be a trophy attached to his arm when at a party and placed on the mantel when at home.”

  “And such is not the calling for your life.” Winston had no use for a wife. Marriage was a kind of ownership, one person belonging to another. Freedom was too precious a commodity for him to forfeit any.

  “No, it most certainly is not. However, I have more to do than just find a husband. The problem is that it is unseemly to have your daughters marry out of order.”

  “I trust that your younger sisters are vexed with you also?”

  “All four of them.”

  “You broke off all marriage talk with Sir Melbourne?”

  “Sir, my heart is my own. And it tarries . . . elsewhere.”

  “You still have time to change your mind.”

  “I know. A lot can happen in a fortnight.”

  The dynamo of Albion, the American colony, was a proud beacon that stretched
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, between the Five Civilized Nations of the Northwest Territories and the Tejas Free Republic of the Southwest Territories. The Tejas Express was a product of American revolutionary design. A luxurious vehicle, with an interior of lacquered mahogany, polished brass, and brushed velvet. To Winston’s mind, it was like a brothel decorated with decadent designer’s eye. His tastes ran to the simple. The engine snorted a continuous billow of steam as it bustled forward toward Indianapolis on its way to Chicago. For every burgeoning overcity like Indianapolis, there was a burgeoning undercity; in Indianapolis’ case, the residents referred to it as Atlantis.

  Winston imagined himself starting over in a place like Indianapolis. Nondescript, a blank slate where he could disappear and redefine himself. As of this moment, he was a forcibly retired—as forcibly as he was conscripted—soldier. His station was enough to spare him toiling away in the undercities shoveling coal or assembling small machines in the industrial shops, the clockwork gears biting into scabbed fingertips, for hours on end. He might be able to find a low-ranking position in the overcity, something he was overqualified for, but it’d be a place to start. Winston wondered why he couldn’t just be content with his lot in life. No, the nagging fear that he ought to be doing something other than his father’s profession dogged him. He had inherited an estate of $750,000 from his father, but his father had made his fortune in trafficking. Money made selling their own people into indentureship; the weight of the shame was not worth his soul. He used some of the credits to free others from indenture then gave the rest away. He was meant for greater things, to have it all, and he wanted to be beholden to no one. Perhaps his destiny awaited him as a businessman. If he could grow a business to the point where he wasn’t needed to run it day-to-day, then he could expand into other ventures. To dabble in airships was his dream, but it all began with starting a business. Only then could he hope to be with someone like Lady Trystan.