by Beth Cato
He had attired himself in thick coats to survive the deep cold of mountain flight. His mouth gaped, his eyes shut. One of my nearby crew held the wing suit. The heavy unit of slick, curvaceous brass had tall sticks attached to either side that resembled shuttered umbrellas. Heavy leather straps and buckles dragged on the floor.
“Why haven’t Corrado’s limbs been secured?” I asked.
“I didn’t know to take the mask off again right away, sir,” a man said, his voice raspy as he shakily saluted me.
“Aether suffocation.” I shook my head in disgust. “More merciful than he deserved. You . . .”
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t think he would die that fast.”
He wavered on his feet and I braced him by the shoulder. He was terrified of me, but more terrified of what he had caused. “Corrado was going to kill you, kill all of us. He deserves no grief.” His face remained blank, my words unable to pierce his shock. He was a rare Caskentian, to be so unacquainted with death. I turned away. “Where’s Starling?”
“She fled toward the hold, sir!” called one of my new hires, a woman steward. “She wore one of them wing suits, too. Mr. Hue and some of the others were right behind.”
Mention of Sheridan caused my breath to catch. I motioned to the lollygagging crew. “Keep guards on the soldiers. The rest of you, with me.”
We rushed through the crew section, passed our berths, and entered the darkened hold. Large parcels of freight filled the space along with our usual stores. Sheridan hunkered behind a box larger than him, with two other men close by. Farther back in the hold, I heard a distinct and familiar rattle.
“Secure yourselves!” I yelled and lunged to grab the steel ribbing of the wall.
The freight ramp opened with a roar and high whistle of wind. The beleaguered Argus shuddered and groaned at the pressure change as cold bludgeoned us. I gripped two security straps fastened to the wall. I quickly looped one through my belt and knotted it, then used the other to hop over to Sheridan as if rappelling. Out of my sight, the metal mouth of the ramp clanged, the wind clattering it shut in bursts. A glance confirmed that the rest of my crew had found handholds and ropes.
“Captain?” called Mrs. Starling. Her voice was faint over the wind and clamor of metal.
“Corrado’s dead,” I yelled. “We’re flying back to Caskentia.”
“Idiot! Sabotaging . . . best effort . . . stop the war.”
“How many Caskentians died to fuel that box of yours?” I yelled. She surely had it on her person.
“Thousands.” I hoped I’d misheard her, but I feared I had not. “You’d . . . vain!”
“Then make it to the Waste, if you can!” I yelled back. “Don’t risk our hides.” Don’t risk Sheridan.
I squeezed his arm then passed the rope to his grip. He’d known sailor knots before he knew his letters, so it took him mere seconds to secure the rope to his belt. I gingerly moved past him so I could look around at Starling. The wind and my own accursed stiffness dropped me to a knee. The iciness of the floor stabbed through the cloth.
“You’re not going to survive . . . night. Winds . . . Even if you did . . . send Daggers after you. Keep you quiet.”
I forced away more grief as I wondered at the fate of my aether magi.
Mrs. Starling stood with her back to the clattering hatch, secured by her own rope. Her body was bundled thick like an autumn bear, the broad straps of the wing suit forming an X over her chest. Over her shoulders, the wings had opened slightly and seemed rigged to her arms by a series of pulleys. A full leather helmet, the goggles glassed in green, covered her head. She poked around some other crates, looking for something. A way to keep the hatch open, I imagined. She couldn’t risk it crunching her or the wings.
“With Corrado gone, that’s one fewer,” I said.
For a moment, I mistook her high laugh for the wind. “I’m the Clockwork Dagger! Corrado . . . assistant . . . damn poor one. Your boy, on the other hand . . .”
“My boy?” I snapped.
“ . . . Reputation among docks and crews . . . Clever. Curious. I see one of your men brought Corrado’s wings. Give . . . Sheridan. Barely . . . petrol to make the flight. He can come with me . . . train in the palace.”
I wanted Sheridan to live out his potential, but I also wanted him to keep his soul. I looked at Sheridan. He seemed dumbstruck. God help me, was he actually considering this?
Mrs. Starling continued, “Besides . . . Captain. Feel . . . ship . . . something wrong, not just headwind . . . crash soon . . . he . . . wear wings. Escape.”
Faint light shone on Sheridan’s smooth face, his slim body. He was still very much a child. “Sheridan?” I whispered. When had I last called to him by his first name?
“No!” He shouted to be heard. I released a breath deeper than my lungs. “I’m crew of the Argus. I will not abandon ship.” He met my eye and murmured, “I won’t abandon you, Captain.”
“ . . . Very well!” Mrs. Starling’s voice rang out. “ . . . No second chances . . . Good as damned.”
There was a hard clang, then another. I looked around. Mrs. Starling had grabbed a length of rebar and was stabbing it onto the hatch. I knew she’d succeeded to hold the maw wide open when the wind truly howled through and around us, the chill like death. Loose ropes and detritus blew about. An old, desecrated portrait of Queen Evandia—stored down here for ages—flapped past me and toward the hatch.
When I looked around again, Mrs. Starling was gone.
“Sheridan?” I bent close to his face. “You can leave with those wings. Go on your own.”
“No, sir.” His gaze was hard.
“We’ve lost our ballast. The Argus is venting gas. We’re going to crash. The hatch is open now—”
“Sir. No. I can’t.”
“You can, damn it.”
“No, Captain, I can’t.” His voice softened. I leaned closer. “After we spoke, I sneaked into the wardrobe boxes and sabotaged both suits. Hers will glide for a while, but the boosters are dead. There’s no uplift or steering.”
“Oh, my boy.” I laughed, the sound more like a wheeze through my cold-clenched throat. “You out-Daggered the Dagger.”
That accursed box would be buried in some high crest where the snow never melted. Maybe, after a time, the enchantment would dissipate and those captured screams would silence.
It took several minutes of precarious teamwork for us to shut the hatch. The hold secure, all of us near frozen solid, we retreated into the ship. The crew saluted me as we entered the control car. Their grins were grim, with reason. We’d vented a great deal of gas to control our ascent, and now skirted a mere hundred feet over the ground.
Dead ahead, the green-sliver of Caskentia shone in the weak dawn light. Clouds thickened the sky. A storm was sweeping in from the ocean. If we’d gone all the way to the divide, our fates would have been guaranteed.
“The old gal is mine,” I said to Ramsay at the rudder. “I’ll take her down.”
The metal wheel was warm from my co-pilot’s hold. “Crew, it’s been an honor to serve with you tonight. If we live past dawn, Caskentia may well hunt for us to find out what transpired here. It may be a sorry life, but—”
“Pardon, sir,” called the navigator. “It’ll be a life.” Grunts around the cabin backed him up.
“Very well,” I said. Sheridan stood beside me, his legs braced. I wanted to order him away from this glass-and-steel cage that would likely crumple upon impact, but I knew he’d disobey. Feeling the pressure of my gaze, he glanced over with a small smile.
Oh, God. He trusted me, that we’d survive.
I gripped the wheel harder, willing my thoughts into the Argus.
You’ve been good to us, old gal. I’ll do my best to be kind in these next minutes.
The sunlight from astern illuminat
ed the skies ahead in brilliant purple and grey, the sprawling valley below an unreal, verdant green. I smiled. Views like this were why I’d taken to air as a boy, why I rarely stayed aground long.
What a beautiful, perfect dawn to share with my son.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some stories flow forth with little need for revision. This was not one of those stories. Many people provided me with feedback through multiple brain-breaking revision stages: Setsu Uzume, Nancy Fulda, Kat Otis (twice over!), Aaron DaMommio, Leo Korogodski, Daniel Bensen, Pam Wallace, Gwen Phua, J. Kathleen Cheney, Sara Dobie Bauer, and Rhonda Parrish. I’m forever grateful for the supportive bunch at Codex Writers.
If you want to learn more about real airships, I highly recommend Airships.net. That site helped a great deal as I tried to make the Argus as realistic as possible . . . with the addition of some magic, of course. Magic makes everything better.
Don’t miss the latest Beth Cato novel, coming August 2016!
Breath of Earth
Available in paperback and ebook!
After the earth’s power is suddenly left unprotected, a young geomancer must rely on her unique magical powers to survive in this fresh fantasy standalone from the author of acclaimed The Clockwork Dagger and The Clockwork Crown.
In an alternate 1906 San Francisco, headstrong Ingrid Carmichael is assisting a group of powerful geomancer wardens who have no idea of the depth of her power—or that she is the only woman to possess such skills.
When assassins kill the wardens, Ingrid and her mentor are protected by her incredible magic. But the pair is far from safe. Without its full force of guardian geomancers, the city is on the brink of a cataclysmic earthquake that will expose Earth’s powers to masterminds determined to control the energy for their own dark ends. The danger escalates when Chinese refugees, preparing to fight the encroaching American and Japanese, fracture the uneasy alliance between the Pacific allies, transforming the city into a veritable powder keg. And the slightest tremor will set it off . . .
AN EXCERPT FROM
BREATH OF EARTH
April 15, 1906
Ingrid hated her shoes with the same unholy passion she hated corsets, chewing tobacco, and men who clipped their fingernails in public. It wasn’t that her shoes were ugly or didn’t fit; no, it was the fact she had to wear them at all.
In the meeting chambers of the Earth Wardens Cordilleran Auxiliary, she was the only woman, and the only one in shoes.
The men seated at the table wore fine black suits, most tailored to precision, and a few downright natty. If she glanced beneath the table, though, she would see two rows of white-socked feet.
Cloth fibers conducted the earth’s currents best; thick leather or rubberized soles dampened the effect. The wood floor was also an excellent conductor, though plain ground was the best of all. Nearby double doors opened to the back garden. In the event of an earthquake, it would take a mere fifteen seconds for the mob of middle-aged and elderly men to bound outside for direct contact with the soil. Ingrid knew. She had timed the exercise more than once. As personal secretary to Warden Sakaguchi, she performed many vital functions for all five wardens—four in attendance today. A dozen senior adepts occupied the rest of the table.
“Would you like more coffee, Mr. Kealoha?” she whispered as she bent over his shoulder.
The silver-haired Hawaiian warden nodded, his thick fingers already twitching on the mug. In private at Mr. Sakaguchi’s house, he would smile at her and call her hanai niece, which meant foster niece in Hawaiian. He liked to joke that she could pass as a family member, but it was a dangerous jest. The Japanese overlords of the Hawaiian Islands had forbidden any use of his native language. Even on American soil, as a warden, he could lose his tongue for the offense—especially with a Japanese man as witness.
Mr. Sakaguchi, however, was not like most Japanese.
In any case, a Hawaiian would still be afforded more leniency than anyone from China. To speak any Chinese dialect was sedition and a quick path to a noose.
Around the table, the members’ argument on Vesuvius continued as it had for the previous three hours. The ancient volcano’s eruptions began on April 6, deluging Naples with hot boulders and toxic plumes of smoke. Mr. Sakaguchi had argued that they should send delegates to assist their European colleagues in quelling the eruption. “They report it’s worse than the eruption in year 79 that took Pompeii and Herculaneum,” he had said in his quiet way.
Others agreed that the Cordilleran auxiliary should dispatch wardens to Italy. “We have bountiful reserves of kermanite. This is a fine opportunity to harvest energy and fill our crystals. California has been extremely quiet of late,” said an adept.
It had gone back and forth from there, how geomancers from all over the world would converge on Naples for the same reason, how those numbers would likely stop the eruption before representatives from San Francisco could even arrive, and on and on. Their words growled and tumbled together like fighting tomcats, and nothing would likely come of it. If Ingrid hazarded a guess at an outcome, a majority would resolve that California should remain their priority, and they’d send along a signed sympathy note to the suffering in Italy.
An ornate shield on the far wall was emblazoned with the Latin motto to guide all geomancers: pro populo, “for the people,” a reminder that auxiliaries acted as businesses but that their ultimate goal was to use their magic for the welfare of the public.
Magic itself was common throughout San Francisco. Advertisements for Reiki doctors spanned the exposed bricks of skyscrapers, while the wealthy of Nob Hill journeyed to Sunday picnics in wagons teamed by iron-shackled pookas.
Geomancy, however, was a rare skill among people and relied upon kermanite, an even rarer crystal that acted as a supreme electrical capacitor. Wardens absorbed the earth’s energy from earthquakes and then channeled their power into kermanite, which was then installed in all varieties of machine. No other battery could keep airships aloft.
Kermanite had stimulated the Roman Empire two millennia past; now it was the manifest destiny of the Unified Pacific to govern the world, thanks in no small part to geomancers.
Ingrid poured coffee into Warden Kealoha’s cup. He grunted his gratitude.
A few seats down, Warden Thornton twirled his teacup in his hands, his lips frowning along with his imperial mustache. She caught his eye, but he jerked his head in a negative. He had been brooding for the past few days, probably due to more dire news from India.
She refilled an adept’s mug just as he bellowed, “Airship fares will be lower to that part of Europe! No one will want to fly near an eruption! We can charter a flight—”
“And for that very reason, any sensible pilot would charge more,” said Senior Warden Antonelli with a blatant eye roll.
The earth shifted. It was the tiniest twitch, like the tickle of a gnat landing on her skin—not even enough to coax a blue sheen to rise from the ground. The men, unshod as they were, showed no response. These were supposed to be the most gifted wardens west of the Rockies. In nearby classrooms, they cultivated the next generation of geomancers, but no barefoot boys trampled onto the lawn to absorb energy either.
Women weren’t supposed to be geomancers, but Ingrid was, and a damn better one than any of these men.
Earth magic was considered a hereditary trait among men, like baldness or an affinity for foul-smelling cigars. But then, women weren’t supposed to do anything as well as men. No, Ingrid shouldn’t be interested in reading, or learning, or anything that—heaven forbid—involved thinking. It was the dawn of the twentieth century, and given her skirts and complexion, she should be content to carry laundry for the rest of her life.
She carried something else instead: power.
The night before, Ingrid had fallen asleep in the first-floor library—Mr. Sakaguchi would launch into a tirade if h
e knew—and early in the morning an earthquake occurred. The energy coursed through her, hot and heady, like the time one of the adepts kissed her in a broom closet.
Hours later, power continued to course beneath her skin. Here she was, more sensitive to the earth than any warden, even with her feet stuffed in shoes. Shoes!
She squeezed the handle of her pitcher. Beneath the pressure of her anger, the ceramic cracked with a delicate tink. A foot nudged her below the table. She knew without looking that it was Mr. Sakaguchi. He would notice, as closely as he watched her.
Ingrid pasted on a smile. Not a very pretty smile, judging by the quick jerk of his head. She tried to dampen her constipated grimace as she softened her grip on the pitcher.
If Ingrid had to be a clandestine geomancer for the rest of her life, she’d probably explode—and to Mr. Sakaguchi’s chagrin, that might be literal, and at the cost of several windows or dishware sets. Ingrid ached for the earth’s vibrations to break out her skin in goose bumps and create eddies of heat along the length of her legs. She wanted—
“Da-drat,” she muttered, almost cursing aloud. She was around old men too often, picking up their language and other bad habits. Heaven forbid she start growing a mustache.
She pulled a rag from her waist to mop up spilled coffee. Mr. Antonelli shot her a frown as he paused while clipping his fingernails. She wished she could stick her tongue out at him, like when she was little, even if the action caused Mama to wallop her upside the head. It had been worth it.
The coffee pitcher was empty; time to resupply. She scooted backward. The men paid her no heed.
Ingrid slipped out into the hallway where her father always stared her down.
“Papa,” Ingrid whispered, offering his portrait a nod.
From the time she was very young, her greeting had become part of her daily ritual in the auxiliary. Mama always brought her along for a day of cooking and cleaning; the employment had been the least the auxiliary could do for a widow of their own. Abram Carmichael’s aptitude had earned him the title of warden by age thirty and killed him by thirty-five.
