Secrets (The Steamship Chronicles Book 1)

by Margaret McGaffey Fisk

  She half-stepped forward to protect him, but the boy grinned so wide his cheeks must have ached with it and held the train up to show the man.

  “My train.”

  “See that you keep better hold of it this time. We’re not going to miss the packet because you’ve misplaced a toy.”

  The boy lowered his train so he could clutch it against his chest, some of his delight fading.

  A creak and groan sounded a warning behind Sam just as the crate she’d been sheltered by lifted into the air on its way to the ship.

  Two things happened all at once.

  The crate split, weakened by the nails she’d appropriated to transform the train, and the train began to spin its own wheels in the boy’s hands.

  The unexpected shift of weight tilted the cargo netting, which only made the crate boards slip more. Fine china that had been packed in straw spilled through the gap, sending a shower of straw and porcelain down on Sam’s head.

  Even as she ducked the onslaught, she felt more than saw the man wrench the train away, cursing and shouting for help.

  At first, Sam thought he wanted help in peeling the boy off his arm, but the way he cast the train from him made Sam remember her sister’s warnings.

  She’d done it again. Transformed something she should never have touched.

  Sam thrust her grease-stained hands beneath the folds of her skirt, but too many had seen her with the toy. She turned to run, clumsy with her hands bound in the cloth.

  A sailor caught her before she could hit the ground, his leer and broken-tooth smile failing to comfort her.

  Before he could say a word, Sam twisted free to the sound of “catch that thing” coming from behind her. Images of the asylum Henry once described to make sure she understood the danger loomed before Sam’s eyes even as she bounced and scrambled her way through the crowd.

  Panic undermined her control, and she swerved away from one machine then another, each offering its own request or demand if it had gathered enough aether to strengthen it.

  She bumped into a man who pushed her into the arms of another, then spun up against a polished lady who gave a startled cry and stumbled back.

  Sam didn’t stop to apologize, or even to see the results of her mad dash across the crowded docks. She ducked anyone who called out, unable to know if they meant to help or harm. Even if they would have helped a panicked young girl, what they would do when they discovered her true nature she had no way of telling.

  A pain in her side sent Sam palms first into the pavement.

  She crawled under a wagon that had stopped there, unable to go any further. Sam had to catch her breath at least, and maybe, just maybe, the passengers who had seen would be more interested in getting aboard the ship than chasing after her.

  Now that she could curl into a ball and cover her ears from the noise, Sam no longer wanted that quiet. She wished she could still be there in the crowd, just one more passenger waiting for word that she could mount the gangplank and head for distant places. There was no way she would board her ship now.

  She’d never be able to find Henry’s man with others looking for her, and even if she did, chances were her ship had been just as eager to catch the tide as the one where the passengers almost trampled her.

  But more than missing the ship, Sam felt the pain of the little boy and his train. The toy would always try to find him until someone broke it into little pieces to stop the aether from giving it purpose. And she suspected the boy would mourn its loss long after he’d outgrown all other playthings.

  Sam waited for the sounds to die down, for the ships to sail and the dock to clear. She had no idea what she would do next.

  Her best chance had been lost, not once but twice because she could not control what Lily persisted in calling a gift. Sam could dredge up no gratitude for her difference. It had cost her everything: Lily, Henry, the estate, and now even the chance to get to the Continent. Her only hope lay in staying hidden, staying in control. And she’d shown just how capable she was of that simple directive. With how luck had been treating her, she’d be locked up before the sun set on this very day.

  15

  I’m truly sorry, Mister Garth, for whatever I did to offend you,” Nat said, not for the first time as they detoured onto the passenger side of the docks because a wagon blocked the route they’d been taking. “I was only trying to stay out of your way as you requested.”

  The engineer, who’d steadily ignored Nat since they left the shipyard, twisted around to snarl, “So now you’re making it out to be my fault this happened?”

  Nat swallowed his retort that they’d attained higher than usual quality—and at a cheaper price—so Garth should be thanking him. Only the machinist’s words about arrogance stayed his tongue despite the risks. “Of course not. I would never presume. Only, did you want me to refuse them?”

  “Of course not,” Garth mocked before he swung back to continue his march forward, a motion so abrupt, the package at the top of his stack started to slip.

  “At least let me help.” Nat ran up fast enough to catch the bundle before the precious parts could hit the hard ground.

  “Get your grasping hands off of my equipment,” Garth snarled, his whole face twisted. More bundles shifted, unsettled by the tension in his arms.

  Nat raised both hands and backed away. “I’m sorry. It was falling.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Is that all you have to say for yourself. You’re a bumbling fool who’s puffed up in the head first from your high standing in the old days, and now because some over-themselves engineers thought you a fun toy to wind me up. Keep your mouth shut and get back to the captain’s cabin where you belong. Who knows what use he puts to you there?”

  Peter shot Nat a sympathetic glance, familiar with this type of treatment, Nat supposed.

  “And don’t you be thinking of helping that carry boy either. It’s his job to carry, and carry he will.” Garth had somehow intercepted their look, and now wrestled a hand free despite the precarious balance of his load so he could strip the offending bundle and plunk it on top of Peter’s even greater pile. “He’ll carry everything all the way onto the ship and down to my engine room as well. You, boy, will be off to the captain as soon as we return, to tell him of your victorious efforts, no doubt. Just as long as you keep out of my hair, I don’t much care where you find to stow yourself.”

  Nat dropped further back, unwilling to get Peter in as much trouble as he found himself, especially not with the smirk he’d caught sight of on the carry boy’s face. Garth had little hair to speak of, but he had some sway on the ship. Nat didn’t need the crew poisoned against him. Living down his upbringing had been the hardest part of his transition into a trade. Nat had no intention of making that his defining characteristic, and the time spent with the captain, though gaining crew appreciation, did little to help him.

  He tried to focus on all the wonders he’d seen rather than the one denied him, but the engine responsible for their safety in storms and their albeit limping progress across the seas remained a mystery he was dying to solve. Even discussing the inner workings of the latest in shipboard steam engines with the shipyard’s lead engineer himself offered nothing much of a distraction.

  Sure Mister Garth tended to be grumpy with every member of the crew, but the man had taken an unreasonable dislike to Nat from the day he’d first stepped aboard Captain Paderwatch’s vessel. Nat would swear up and down he’d done nothing to incur the engineer’s animosity, but that one existed could not be denied. Only the captain remained unaware of the problem, as shown by his decision to pair the two of them on this outing. The crewmen were known to lift up tarps when Mister Garth came into sight, laughingly telling Nat to crawl beneath them so he could avoid any chance of an encounter.

  A sharp curse sent him out of his glum self-absorption.

  He looked up in time to see not one but several men blundering in their direction, the leader having bumped Mister Garth.

&nb
sp; “We have to catch it,” one cried.

  Nat stared in the direction they were streaming, but could see no one, or rather nothing, that matched the admittedly spare description he’d been given. If they chased something, it had long eluded them in the crowd gathered at this section of the passenger docks.

  He looked back just in time to see a heavy-set latecomer slam into Peter, sending the top bundle Garth had passed over to punish Nat crashing to the ground. It landed with the harsh clank of abused metal.

  “You stupid, clumsy boy,” Garth screamed. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve paid for those? If there’s the least bit of bending, you’ll be running back to get a new one, you will, and out of your own pocket.”

  Nat stepped between the two of them. “He had no fault in this, as you well know. He carried too many, especially in a crowd this tight, even without a riot.”

  Garth snorted. “You call a couple of fellows running after a pickpocket a riot? You really haven’t seen much of life, have you? Well, if you’re so determined to be noble, you take on half of what he’s carrying, and the one that fell too. It’ll be your wages docked for any damage.”

  Peter’s grateful look kept Nat’s tongue in his mouth when he wanted to point out Mister Garth’s own decision had created this situation. Nat would have been happy to carry a third of the load rather than tagging along behind the two of them as though he couldn’t be trusted with a single bundle. At least his family didn’t depend on his wages, though it seemed unfair for the engineer to blame either of the boys for something out of their control.

  The remainder of the journey to the ship passed without incident, and in a silence Nat hoped meant Mister Garth had forgotten the rest of his command.

  Sadly, this seemed not to be true as, once they’d boarded, the engineer came to a halt outside the hatch to the engine room rather than continuing forward.

  “You put your burden down here and get on with you.”

  For a heartbeat, Nat thought Garth meant Peter, but when the carry boy started to bend at the knee, Garth barked, “Not you. You have a job to do, one you’ve shown a piss poor handle of so far. Get your back straight and follow me.”

  With that, the engineer jerked open the hatch and stomped his way down the short staircase into the belly of the ship, each step resounding with the force of a blow.

  Nat let his breath out on a sigh and bent to lower each bundle carefully. He didn’t plan to give Mister Garth the least excuse to take more of his pay than necessary, but he’d already lost the one thing he’d hoped to come out of this. The captain had been far off if he’d thought sending Nat with Mister Garth would result in a connection between the two.

  Garth kept his hold on the engine so tight it might have been his purse for all he let others even see to it. The engineer did all cleaning and maintenance, bought the supplies, and nursed the machine through each use. Any attempt to infringe on his domain beyond stocking the coal, no matter how innocent, he met with fire and rage. Only luck would keep Peter free of any further abuse before he could escape back to the shipyard and others of better disposition.

  16

  After what seemed like forever, the sounds around Sam eased as ship after ship took on its passengers and steamed out of the port. As grateful as she’d been to find the wagon, the space beneath it had grown tight and hot as the sun beat down on the hard-packed dirt making up the road in this section of Dover.

  Her stomach growled, demanding sustenance to replace the energy stripped by aether in its need to transform.

  She crawled out, took a careful glance around the road, and rose to her feet to shake some of the dust from her once-nice travel dress. Her feet ached in the unaccustomed pinch of boots. Sam braced against the nearest wall, intending to pull them off.

  “Get on with you, now. We don’t need any of your type up here. Get down to the cargo docks where you belong.”

  Sam jerked away from the wall. “I was just—”

  The shop woman lifted her skirts and ran at Sam much like how Sam had chased Henry’s chickens about, only this time she felt as they must have, her heart racing with the need to escape.

  She turned and scrambled away, once again running without a clear direction.

  By the time her fear faded enough so she could slow to a walking pace, she’d crossed an invisible, but obvious, line somewhere.

  The careful shops of the passenger section with their nice clothes and delicacies gave way to tradesman places selling rough-sewn clothing of thick canvas, interspersed with establishments giving off a rancid scent she didn’t quite recognize.

  Sam thought again of the wallet hidden in her skirts, but even more than before, she could not pull it free here. The few women lounging in the area had a tense, hard-cut look about them, while the men seemed all too interested in her doings for Sam’s comfort.

  She kept moving, unwilling to stop and chance an encounter she wouldn’t know how to get free of, but if anything, the rough nature of her surroundings grew rather than vanishing behind her. No shops stood in this section beyond those reeking of that sour stench, and the few words bawled out from within made her blush more even than the farmhands’ speech.

  Her feet hurt, her stomach had closed like a fist of pain as hunger ate at her, and sleep beckoned with the strength of a compulsion.

  A sailor swaggered out of the nearest door, steam rising from the meat pie in his hand.

  Sam couldn’t help staring. Her mouth watered in anticipation of food she could not have.

  “You want some, girlie?”

  “I can pay,” she whispered, forgetting the need to keep Henry’s wallet hidden.

  “I’m sure you can. Just come on over, and I’ll show you how to please me.”

  His eyes changed in a way she’d never seen before, but instinct warned her the consequences would not be worth the food he held pinched between meaty fingers.

  “I’m all right,” she told him, backing away.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” came a second voice from behind her. The same sour odor as rose from the taverns wafted past her strong enough to make Sam choke.

  Bending in an attempt to find clean air saved her from the thick arms that swept the space where she’d been a moment before.

  The second man stumbled, and Sam ducked sideways, remembering the time she’d ventured into the wrong pasture and met with Henry’s bull.

  Neither sailor had the weight of that massive animal, but they were more agile.

  She’d avoided the second, but the move brought her within reach of the first who hoisted her into the air, uncaring for how his hand, coated in grease from the pie, stained the bodice of her dress.

  The smell of gravy made Sam faint, but she didn’t give in to even that demand beyond a deep longing to wrench the meat pie from his grasp. Instead, she brought up both feet, still encased in the boots she’d come to hate, and slammed them into the face of the second man, now approaching.

  He went down cursing, giving Sam a reason to be grateful for the hard-soled footwear Lily expected her to wear.

  “Is that the way of it?” growled the first in her ear, his breath no less pungent.

  Before Lily put a stop to it, saying Sam had to learn to be a girl, she and Henry had wrestled and played hunting games. Those memories came to her now, along with some of the more rough moves Henry had taught her in the name of fun.

  She slammed her elbow back with as much force as she could manage. While it might not have stopped a healthy man, neither of these seemed quite as steady as they should be.

  He stumbled and started to fall, dropping her in the process.

  Sam kept the presence of mind to snatch what she could of the meat pie from his other hand before she took off at a run, the sound of her boots overly loud to her ears as they pounded against the ground.

  Then the tone of their beat changed from a heavy thud to an echoing bang, the meaning of this change filtering through her conscious mind even as she recognized how splashi
ng water eased over the noisy music and shouts from behind her.

  She glanced up to see an unattended gangplank, and without thinking twice, she scampered up its length to the deck of a ship tiny when compared to the towering passenger vessels, but still of a good size.

  Some boxes arrayed on the boards offered shelter Sam accepted happily. She slipped into a small space left between two of the biggest crates, where neither sailor nor sun could find her, and set to devouring the food she’d stolen. A pang of conscience bit her, but Lily would have wanted those men punished for how they’d manhandled Sam, and taking even the better part of the first one’s meat pie seemed mild in comparison to what the police might have done.

  Each bite offered a shiver of pleasure unmatched before because she’d never been quite this famished. Still, she had no time to savor. Between her desperate state and the knowledge that she could be discovered at any moment, Sam gobbled down her meal, sucking the last bit of sauce from her fingers and shirt. Not even the grease stains on the fabric from fixing the boy’s train could stop her from getting as much as she could from the meal.

  “Get those stowed before you take a night on shore. We’re sailing tomorrow with the tide.”

  Sam flattened against the crate when she heard a voice not far from her.

  A crate near those forming her shelter grated against the wood of the deck as the sailors she couldn’t see moved it.

  “Wait, not those. The captain wants that group near the front. Has a plan for offloading them when we stop for supplies. Start with these over here. Nat, you get down in the hold and make sure the space is clear.”

  Sam held her breath as she waited to discover if the command meant she had gained or lost time.

  When the noises seemed to grow more distant, she peeked around the edge to see the sailors concentrating on a section more toward the middle of the ship. Sam looked up and down the deck for a better hiding place. A closed hatch stood off to one side where she could see no sailors.