Clementine tcc-2

by Cherie Priest

  “Sir!” Lamar objected, suddenly twigging on.

  “Over here! Now!”

  And even though the ship loomed, snapped, and reared only a few feet over their heads, he obeyed. He crouched his way over to Croggon Hainey, who stood as tall as he could reach, then bent at the knees and held his hands together like a slingshot.

  The captain said, “You’re going to have to grab for it, and once you’re on board, you’re going to have to steady her.” He didn’t ask if this was possible, or even if it was likely. He assumed that it must be, because no other option was acceptable.

  Lamar nodded, swallowed, and backed up enough to take a running leap at the captain’s hands.

  Hainey grabbed the engineer’s foot and swung with every ounce of strength left in his bruised, overworked, scratched and scarred back…

  …and the slight-framed engineer went tumbling up through the air, where his left hand and right fingertips snagged the bay’s edges.

  His right hand lost its hold, then found it again; his left hand squeezed hard enough to almost dent the metal, and held, and gave him leverage enough to work an elbow, and then a knee, and then a heel onto better footing. It took him no more than ten seconds to haul his whole body onboard, and then he vanished into the interior.

  Hainey turned to the cement block and saw how it had been carved, and how deeply it had been broken before he’d even begun to shoot at it. Down all the way to the core it’d been breached, all the way to the fossil of a woman’s body, lying crushed by the weight of its tomb.

  To the first mate he said frantically, “Help him if you can, once he gets her steady!”

  “You’re going after Brink?” Simeon asked, but the captain didn’t answer.

  He was already gone, in pursuit of the red-haired pirate who was carrying the most dangerous diamond in the world.

  12. MARIA ISABELLA BOYD

  Anne snuck Maria to the back of the sanatorium, where an exit was unwatched and no one might interrupt them. “Out here,” she said, opening the door. “That walkway will lead you to a fork. Take the left path, and it’ll send you to the outbuilding-perhaps a hundred yards off.”

  But Maria had only barely heard her, for bobbing above the trees was an airship, seemingly tethered and distressed about its state. “God in heaven!” she exclaimed. “Is that the Clementine? Er, I mean, the Free Crow?”

  Anne said with wonder, “I haven’t the foggiest idea! Good Lord, what’s going on over there?”

  “I could make a guess,” Maria murmured, and she fought the instinct to dash to the thrashing craft, if only to learn what was happening. The crown of the ship leaped and lurched, straining and fighting, and the spy could hear shouts-but she couldn’t tell what was being shouted. She turned to the nurse and double-checked, “This path? The left fork?”

  “That’s right,” she said without taking her eyes off the tussle in the trees.

  The path would lead her away from the ship, but she took it with a running start. Her carpetbag full of ammunition and personal effects bounced against her thigh and her skirts tangled around her knees; she kicked to keep herself mobile and she tore down the unpaved path, knocking gravel and dirt up against her knickers. Trees leaned above and cast her passage in shadow, and in the back of her ears she heard the whine of an overdriven engine and the breaking of branches somewhere in the distance.

  Where is this outbuilding? She asked herself as she panted under the load of her luggage, her clothes, and the changing grade of the scenery.

  Then she saw it, as the trees parted and the path dumped out to an open spot in the woods, where a low, undecorated structure sat surrounded by greenery.

  Before she could burst free of the forest and make her presence known, a red-haired man flung himself past the armed guard who stood at the door. He wrestled with the knob and threw himself inside, slamming the door behind himself.

  Maria stopped at the edge of the woods, since the guard was distracted by the visitor and no one had yet noticed her. She held one hand against her chest and counted to twenty-an old trick she’d picked up on the stage, but it worked, and her breathing slowed. Once she had her body under control, she slipped that hand down to the shawl tied around her waist and she withdrew one of her Colts.

  Moments later, the door opened again and the red-haired man stood beside a taller, thinner man in a Union uniform. “Steen,” she assumed softly, and she watched as he commanded the guard to summon his fellows. In seconds, three more guards had joined the first, and right before the officer retreated into the building’s interior, she saw something the color of sunlight flash in his hand.

  The diamond had been handed over to its purchaser.

  One of the guards stepped inside with his commanding officer; the other two kept their position on either side of the door, and both held revolvers at the ready. They anticipated trouble, that much was certain; and Maria was equally certain of the trouble they faced…even before she saw a broad flash of a blue wool coat sneaking between the trees on the other side of the clearing.

  She fell back farther into the trees and began to work her way around, sideways, as softly as her luggage and her dress would allow.

  Croggon Beauregard Hainey met her in the middle.

  He whispered, “I thought that must be you,” and he looked over her shoulder, past her head at the spot in the sky where the ship had been doing its terrible dance over the edge of the trees. Maria glanced too and saw that the craft had settled, and she thought that its engines sounded calmer, or perhaps she was only too far away now to hear the frantic whine.

  “You found your ship,” she whispered back.

  “But that thieving pirate made his delivery,” making the same point.

  She asked, “So what are you doing here? Take your ship and make your getaway!”

  “Not while that son of a pox-spreading whore is still breathing. Goddamn,” he rumbled. “I should’ve brought the Rattler.”

  “And why didn’t you?”

  He threw his hands up and said, “Because it’s heavy, woman! I can hardly carry the thing, and Brink was running with nothing but the diamond to tote.”

  “You carried it just fine in Kansas City.”

  “Across an open, flat field, sure,” he said, and realizing he was on the verge of a very distracting argument, he said, “Point is, I don’t have it, and we could use it.”

  “We, Captain?”

  “We, woman. You want the diamond, and I want the bastard who boosted it. How many shots have you got?”

  She set her carpetbag down and whipped out the other Colt. “Twelve loaded. And you?”

  “Same, damn it all.”

  “There’s only five of them. The two guards at the door, plus a third inside-with Ossian Steen and your pirate Brink. That leaves us nineteen shots to spare.” But she was thinking the very thing he next said aloud.

  “We can down the two at the door easy as pie, but if the other three are holed up…” he indicated a pair of windows. “They could hold us off awhile. And all I’ve got to back me up are two men who are a little bit busy right now.”

  “What are they doing?” she asked, looking again to the bulbous, curved dome. But the trees thwarted her and through their leaves, she could no longer see the spot on the hill where the craft had so recently struggled.

  “Long story,” he told her, and then when it didn’t seem to be enough he added, “They’re trying to wrestle my bird into submission. It was running, and unmanned.” But he didn’t bother to enlighten her on how that had come to pass.

  “Ah,” she said. And to change the subject, “I have an idea.”

  “So do I. I’ll retreat, summon the lads, and we’ll wipe this building off the face of the earth. I’ve got a couple of Minnericht’s Liquid Fire Shells stashed on board that would do the trick in under a minute flat.”

  She gasped, “No! No, you can’t do that, not yet. Please,” she laid her fingers on his arm. “Hear me out. There’s a child in there,
a boy named Edwin who is being held hostage by Steen. You can’t just demolish the place with him inside. Let me try something first, and…and if it doesn’t work, then you can level the place with me inside, too.”

  He said with no small degree of sarcasm, “That’s a generous offer, Belle Boyd.”

  “Not particularly. If what I’ve got in mind doesn’t work, I’ll be dead anyway, and I won’t mind the imposition. I’m going to barge inside under some pretense, seize the boy, escape back to the sanatorium, destroy the infernal machine, and…and…then I’ll think of something else.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

  “You’re not the first to say so.”

  He shook his head and put his hands on his hips, and said, “Fine. Risk your own neck, if that’s how you want it. I’ll cover you if I can, but if you take too long, I’m getting my men and turning this patch of Kentucky into a fire pit that’ll burn until Jesus comes back.”

  “Works for me,” she said. She gave the outbuilding and its guards a hard glance, made a decision, and said to Hainey before she left, “Give me two minutes before you get your gang.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Only two minutes?”

  “If this takes any longer, it won’t work at all. Trust me. I move fast. Do you have a watch?”

  “Not on me, but I can count to sixty twice.”

  “Good enough.” Maria shoved one of the Colts back under her shawl and held the other one in her hand, covered by the handbag. She reached to the neckline of her dress and gave it a tug that started a revealing rip, and dropped her carpetbag at her feet.

  “What are you doing?” Hainey asked.

  “Getting my story in order.” She took a deep breath. She said, “Captain, start counting.”

  “Wait.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Do me one favor. Leave Brink for me. Don’t shoot him unless you have to,” he requested.

  She nodded.

  And after scooting away from Hainey by ten or fifteen yards, she leaped out of the woods into the clearing as if she had a pack of wolves on her heels.

  She fired off a blood-curdling scream of feminine terror and, as the two guards in front of the outbuilding furrowed their brows, she wailed, “Help me! Oh help me, gentlemen, you must!”

  She flung her body up against the nearest guard and wept piteously. Between great sobs she gasped to the other guard, “You there! Your weapon! Ready it, man-he’s out there! He’s right behind me!”

  The guard she clung to held her back at an arm’s reach, took in the sight of a woman in a torn dress and got a glimpse of what lay beneath it. He stammered, “Ma’am, please, contain yourself!”

  But she would not be soothed so easily. She gulped, “But sir! There’s a horrible man-a hideous Negro with a terrible scar-he accosted me in the woods! He assaulted me!”

  Behind the cover of the woods’ edge, Croggon Hainey rolled his eyes.

  The second guard demanded to know, “Where is this man?”

  And as the first untangled himself from Maria’s clutched embrace, the first guard said, “Which way did he come from?”

  “Over there!” she indicated a position approximately ninety degrees away from Hainey’s precise locale.

  The guards exchanged a set of knowing looks that did not go unnoticed by the spy, who stayed in character to such an extent that she required a handkerchief-which was provided by her first choice of guards. He said, “We’d better put her inside.”

  “But Steen…?” It was a feeble objection, and when the door was flung open to reveal the Union officer, both men snapped to attention while Maria wibbled convincingly.

  “What’s going on out here?” he demanded, and seeing Maria his eyes narrowed into a look of confused concentration. “Do I know you?”

  She shook her head, flinging a stray tear loose.

  The nearest of the guards said in a stiff voice, “Sir, she was assaulted in the woods by a hideous Negro with a terrible scar!”

  Maria bobbed her head and said, “Please, sir, let me come inside. Protect me, I beg you!”

  One of the guards declared, “He came from that way, sir!” and repeated Maria’s lie.

  Ossian Steen said, “Fine.” And he asked the guard who was stationed within the outbuilding, “How long until the rest of them arrive?”

  From inside, a voice replied, “No more than five minutes, sir. They’re on their way.”

  Steen appeared to consider his options. Then he grabbed Maria by the arm, towed her toward himself, and told the two men, “Go hunt for him. We’ll hold down this preposterous little fort until the rest of your garrison gets here.”

  With that, he pulled Maria inside and slammed the door behind them both.

  The outbuilding’s interior was no larger than its exterior would suggest; really, it was only one large room-stuffed with desks, boxes, books, crates of guns and ammunition. All the walls were bare except for the farthest, behind the largest desk, where a map of the Mason-Dixon area was tacked up and heavily scribbled upon.

  And underneath this map, behind the desk was a small pallet with a moth-eaten blanket and a punched-flat pillow the size of her purse. In the corner, at the pallet’s foot, was crouched a small boy with his head buried in his folded arms, atop his knees. He did not look up at the commotion; he did not even appear to be breathing, but holding himself so little and still that he might make himself invisible.

  Maria wondered how much time she had left.

  Standing beside the desk, which must surely belong to the lieutenant colonel, was a red-haired man in scorched brown pants and an undershirt, with a loose gray jacket covering his bulky arms. He was possibly the whitest man she’d ever seen, with skin so pale it looked pink at the joints of his fingers, and blue around the recesses of his eyes. He gave her a look from top to bottom, folded his arms, and didn’t say anything.

  A pair of guns hung from a belt around his hips, but he wasn’t holding anything at the ready.

  “I swear I’ve seen you before,” Steen said to Maria. “It’ll drive me mad if I don’t figure out it.”

  To change the subject, she said, “Who’s that child? Is he your son?”

  “That’s no business of yours. Keep your mouth shut and your head down if you want to stay inside here, or we’ll throw you back out the door and let the pirate have his way with you.”

  Outside, a pair of gunshots rang out from the woods, and there were shouts from behind the trunks of the trees.

  “Hainey,” the red-haired man growled. “Jesus Christ. He can have his ship; why won’t he just take it and leave?”

  Maria fingered the Colt she gripped behind her handbag. In a few steps she retreated to the desk, and to the boy. She crouched down beside him and touched the edge of his arm, but she said to Felton Brink, “Perhaps he took it personally.”

  “What would you know?” he snapped back without looking at her. He walked to the nearest window and hid himself behind the edge of the frame so he could see outside without risking a bullet in the face.

  She didn’t answer him. Instead she whispered to the boy, “Edwin?”

  He raised his eyes-just his eyes-over the edge of his arm to look at her. They were brown eyes, and exhausted ones. He was no older than nine or ten years of age, and thin in the way orphans were expected to be, but without the hollow look of a child who starves.

  Maria opened her arms and gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile.

  He unfolded from his crouch and let her lift him up as if what happened to him didn’t matter anyway, and he may as well let the woman hold him if that’s what she wanted to do.

  He wasn’t very heavy. Maria pulled him up onto her hip, where she held him easily. He latched his legs around her waist and put his head down on her shoulder.

  “You. What are you doing?” Steen asked.

  With her free hand, she dropped her handbag and revealed the Colt. “I’m leaving. And I’m taking this child. Don’t
do it-” she added as he reached for his belt and the gun that was holstered there. “You either,” she said to Brink, and her voice was as calm now as it had been hysterical a minute before.

  She motioned with her gun that the two of them should stand together, and she circled her way around the desk, and around the room. She saw the diamond then, and she wondered how she could have ever missed it in the first place. It was perched on the desk like a paperweight, glittering as if it were alive-cutting the sunlight into ribbons, squares, and shining specks.

  But Maria didn’t let her glance linger there for long.

  She said to the boy with his face buried against her shoulder, his elbow bent into her cleavage, “Close your eyes, Edwin. We’re going to have to hurry.” She tried her best to estimate how long she’d lingered, and she couldn’t imagine that she had long before Hainey-and her thought of him was punctuated by another round of shots being exchanged outside-decided that her time was up.

  “You,” she said to Brink. “Open that door. Now.”

  “I don’t take orders from-”

  “I don’t have any trouble with you,” she said to the pirate, speaking over his complaint. “I don’t care if you live or die, so I’m sending you on your way, and if you have any sense you’ll leave before I change my mind, or before you give me a reason to shoot you. Now go. Get out.”

  He didn’t need to be told more than twice.

  Brink reached for the knob, turned it, and checked outside to see if anyone was waiting to shoot him. Seeing no one, he pretended to tip a hat at Ossian Steen and said, “Pleasure doing business with you,” in a tone of voice that fooled no one. With a flash of brown and white and red, he was out the door and running.

  Maria used her gun to urge Steen away from the door, which flapped itself shut behind Felton Brink. She came to stand beside it, her gun still aimed at the officer, and she said, “I’m going to destroy that weapon, and you’ll never have a chance to build another one.”