by Beth Cato
“That so?” Cy muttered, lost in his work.
“Yes. You have a lovely, shiny white coat, though I doubt it’s ever been touched with a curry comb. Your colorful mane flows when you walk. Your hooves are shiny gold.”
“I think we might need to use tin for the prototype. It’s light enough . . .” He tapped the blunt end of the pen against his lips.
Cy had drawn designs and figures on a full dozen sheets of paper, scowling and muttering and conversing with himself all the while. Ingrid had always had a gift for mathematics—one of the many reasons she’d been an effective secretary for Mr. Sakaguchi—but Cy spoke an advanced language of numbers that could have been some fae tongue, as far as she knew.
However, he’d also been at this nine hours straight, with one prolonged break in the middle to check on Fenris and acquire victuals for their evening meals. Cy had gobbled up the contents of his bento box without noticing what he was eating.
Fact was, for the man’s health, he needed to turn off his brain for a while and sleep. That wasn’t going to happen without her intervention.
Her words had been incapable of distracting him. She had a hunch there was another way that might prove more successful.
She scooted herself across the limp curve of the mattress to peer through the thin curtains to the street below. All was quiet. Curfew in Hilo had come down as swift and sharp as a guillotine. As sunset neared, yells and whistles had echoed through the streets. Soon afterward, a Bayard had marched through town. Ingrid felt its approach through shuddering steps that caused the ceiling lamp to chime and sway in their second-story room. Somehow, the heavy, resonant steps made its approach even more terrifying than that of the loud, rumbling treads of a Durendal tank. The Bayard passed by along a nearby block, unseen and nightmarish. She imagined being a sugarcane striker, protest sign in hand, feeling those things approach from the distance. She wondered how many men and women would hold the line against such machines.
Hours had passed since then. Cy stifled a yawn as he continued to work, his back bowed in a way that’d surely make him ache tomorrow.
Ingrid hiked up her skirt and worked her stockings down. She considered a balled-up stocking, wondering if throwing it at Cy might gain his attention. She unfastened her obi-style belt, then the large buttons down her chest.
“Ingrid? What’re you doing?”
She was down to her chemise and panties by that point.
She looked at Cy. “I’m removing my clothing, of course.”
“Why’re you doing that?” His gaze still looked bleary, as if he’d just awakened.
“Did you know it’s approaching midnight?”
“It is?” His brow furrowed. “I recollect curfew falling, and the Bayard walking by, but I didn’t think that was so long ago.”
She sighed. “You need to sleep soon, Cy. You can’t afford a second night with more coffee in your veins than blood. We can’t all function like Fenris.” She motioned toward the makeshift table. “Have you reached a good stopping point?”
“I’d rather not stop at all,” he said with a rueful smile. “But sleep sounds like a wise course of action . . . and the sight of you brings other scientific endeavors to mind.” He cleared his throat.
“You haven’t forgotten our discussion on the Bug the other day, then.”
He had a roguish twinkle in his eye as he stood. “I’ve given it a great deal of careful thought, actually. You were right to chastise me for regarding you as fragile. I know better.”
“Yes, you do.” She couldn’t help but stare, breathless and eager as he slipped his suspenders off his shoulders and reached for the buttons at his collar. “I’d volunteer to help unbutton, but I’m not sure if my fingers would cooperate.” Her voice sounded husky to her own ears.
“I wouldn’t mind if you relaxed for a time.” His shirt dropped to the floor. “I’d like a chance to do more of the seducing this time around. It’s only fair, seeing as you did much of the initial work in Seattle. And I have some things in mind I’d like to try,” he said airily.
Her body surged with pleasant warmth. Good God, but she wanted this. She wanted him. “It sounds like you do indeed have some plans.”
“Mind you, none of these plans have been committed to paper yet. I’d rather engage in some tests first to see what works. To see what you like.”
“I want everything to be to your liking, too.”
“Oh, Ingrid. I wouldn’t worry about that.” The look in his eyes made her heart pound fast and hopeful.
She opened her arms wide to accept Cy. His arms wrapped around her, his kiss on her lips searing and hungry as they fell back on the mattress together. They paused, breaths rasping, as they stared into each other’s eyes.
“I will gladly do my part for the sake of science,” she murmured, and snared his lips in another kiss.
Chapter 9
Monday, May 7, 1906
Though her legs were stiff, Ingrid had a new spring in her step as she walked with Cy toward the dock. He carried a burdened pack, rolled schematics sticking out the top like a bouquet. A giddy smile lit his face. He kept casting Ingrid fond looks, which she couldn’t help but reciprocate. They both sobered, however, as they came within a block of their destination.
“Good grief. Did a Behemoth class land during the night?” she muttered, self-consciously trying to avoid eye contact with swarms of soldiers in blue.
“Probably. Look at the skies, too.”
A torrential downpour had fallen during the night, but the morning was crisp and clear. The sky, however, was dotted with airships of various sizes that idled over the island. Her gaze shifted to the masts ahead. “Every mooring mast is full. What’s going on?”
“Nothing good.” He tugged his hat brim lower. “I had really hoped for a few days here to do thorough maintenance. Reckon we’ll need to vamoose as soon as we can, and pray to stay aloft until we see California’s shore.”
“As if the prayers will stop then. I’m glad you didn’t tell me the risks of flight before we initially flew to Hawaii. Or maybe you did. I was so medicated at the start, I can’t recall.”
“Would warning you have helped?”
“Certainly. It’s almost nice to distract myself with a worry that doesn’t involve war and the deaths of millions.”
“I suppose it’s good to diversify, have some worries that are personal, others that encompass the fate of the world.”
“You know I love you, right?”
The corners of his eyes creased as he smiled down at her. “I do. I hope you know with a certainty that I feel the same.”
“I don’t doubt that one bit, I—” A blue flash radiated from the ground. With one hand on her stick, she gripped Cy, squeezing his elbow in warning.
Ingrid pulled in a lash of heat that lasted all of two seconds. Cozy tingles swirled up her legs and eddied through her arms, causing her skin to break out in goose bumps.
“Mrs. Harvey?” Cy asked, alarm in his eyes.
“Did you feel that?” she murmured. He shook his head.
“How bad?” He kept his voice low.
“I’m fine. No. Don’t argue. I’ve coped with such events hundreds of times, and here, Grandmother is keeping things well in hand.” She did not feel comfortable saying more. People pressed too close to them at the bottleneck of the gate. Cy glanced at her, tight-lipped, and she was grateful that his words were held in check.
The jostling crowd made it impossible to see the ground underfoot, and she tripped twice before they were through the gate, though Cy and her walking stick managed to keep her upright.
“I need to get our debarkation paperwork,” Cy said, motioning toward a two-story stilt building. “That’ll speed up the process.” He warily eyed their surroundings, tension evident in his posture. He wasn’t alone in that either. The mood of the place had gotten uglier since their visit the previous afternoon. At least the Palmetto Bug was visible on its mast a short distance away.
Ingrid glared up at the building with narrowed eyes. “I used to think of spiders as my greatest nemeses. Now they’ve been replaced by stairs and ladders.”
“Let’s hope that you never encounter a spider on a ladder or staircase, then. You can wait here. This should take just a minute. No point in tiring you out when we need to climb the mooring mast next.”
“I’m amenable to that plan,” she said, waving him along. He bounded up the steps.
She wistfully stared after him. She could use her held power to give her stride a boost up the stairs, but she knew better. Nor did she want to pour the energy into the empty kermanite tucked in her pocket. That could wait until they were safely aloft.
She stood to one side of the stairs and looked toward the dock. There had to be some thirty masts, all occupied by various Sprite-, Pegasus-, and Porterman-class vessels. On the neighboring acreage, taller masts held three docked Behemoths bearing Unified Pacific colors. Their gray-and-parchment-toned envelopes almost entirely blocked the view of the massive volcano on the horizon.
Boots struck a discordant rhythm. Ingrid turned toward the noise, and before she knew what was happening, she found herself surrounded by soldiers. She bit back the urge to scream as several pairs of white-gloved hands grabbed her arms. Someone tried to pull away the stick, and she jerked it closer with a gasp.
“Are you Ingrid Carmichael?” A mustached man barked the words in her face.
She froze, her heart pounding against her rib cage. Where was Cy? Was he captured, too? She looked around and up the stairs. Cy looked down from the porch, utterly still. No soldiers were near him. A rush of relief rolled through her and she quickly pulled her gaze away. She couldn’t implicate him, too.
“Answer him, woman!” A man jostled her arm.
“What are you doing? Let me go!” she snapped. Her power flared against her skin. She could knock these men down like ninepins, but even boosted by geomancy, she couldn’t make the run to the Bug with so many other soldiers around.
“She doesn’t need to confess her name.”
She looked up. Cy was gone, replaced by a Japanese man. Ingrid went very still. Warden Hatsumi. He could see the miasma in her body.
“Bring her up to my office,” barked Hatsumi. His wardenship seemed to have afforded him considerable power here.
A soldier tried to pry away her stick again. She gripped it tight. “No! I need it.”
To her surprise, he let go.
The other men yanked her up the stairs. Her feet tripped on almost every step, and if not for the pressure on her arms, she would have fallen. They released their hold at the top. Another soldier gestured her inside.
“Walk,” he growled.
She clutched the staff with both hands. The soldiers eyed the stick and her with suspicion, but they didn’t make another move to steal it.
Good. Let them underestimate her, judge her to be a crippled, weak woman. Hatsumi might know her identity, but he didn’t know what she was truly capable of.
Hope and rage burned through her in equal measures, hot as the energy she held.
The hallway contained a nook with brackets designed to hold Hatsumi’s leg extenders; she imagined that he rarely left the building here. The soldiers pushed her up a long, narrow staircase, to a breezeway open to sunlight and air at both ends. Hatsumi awaited her there, scowling. She couldn’t sense the earth’s energy on this floor. The building’s stilts must have been reinforced with metal, which would conduct little supernatural energy.
A desk, filing cabinet, and several wooden chairs granted the stark white space no personality; not so much as a picture adorned the wall. A large window showed the wavered edge of the overhanging metal roof of the building next door.
A young man sat at the desk doing paperwork. He jumped to his feet, his gaze only for Hatsumi. He was the same man who had accompanied the warden in Honolulu.
“Ducey,” snapped Hatsumi. “You have the wanted person bulletin from yesterday.” It was not a question.
“Hai.” He hurried to the cabinet and opened up a file. Ingrid remained standing. The tread of heavy footsteps carried from elsewhere in the building. “Here, sir.” He passed a sheet to Hatsumi.
Warden Hatsumi read and began to chuckle. “Oh, you are a valuable find.” He waved the paper in Ingrid’s face, too fast for her to see anything but a gray photograph. “Where’s the man you were traveling with? Is he here?”
“I don’t even know who you are, or why I’m here.” She tried to keep her voice nonchalant, but she didn’t have Lee’s talent for these kinds of games.
“Ducey. Go telegram that I found the woman. I’m going to speak privately with her for now.” He shoved the sheet at his assistant. The younger man bowed, and taking the paper, he exited the room. The door shut behind him.
Hatsumi circled her, his arms folded. “A woman geomancer. I feel like I have found a Hidden One.” Ingrid bit her lower lip to hold back her retort. “You worked at the Cordilleran Auxiliary. I never met you there.” His fingers stroked his wispy beard. Knobby rings flashed from each of his fingers. Three of the facets held filled kermanite, while the fourth ring had an empty stone. He carried no energy within his body.
“I don’t believe you have introduced yourself,” she said coolly.
“I’m Earth Warden Hatsumi. And you’re Ingrid Carmichael, Sakaguchi’s pet. I suppose he must have known what you are. I have so many questions.”
Which Ingrid had no desire to answer. She needed to escape. She drew on the power in her veins, just a touch, well aware that Hatsumi could see any major fluctuations. She cast out her awareness. About a quarter mile away, she found the sylphs. They stirred at the brush of her power.
“Resist Fenris’s training. Show him that he needs to make the airship buzz,” she told them, imagining the roar of the revving engine. “Then cast yourselves invisible, and fly to me.” She pictured the building and the view from the office window.
A wave of happy emotion flowed over her as the sylphs began to move. earn pastry! yes!
“My instruments downstairs observed the tremblor that just occurred. It was a mere burp of energy. Not worth the effort of slipping off my shoes for a rare moment on the ground here. But you, stupid girl, were on the ground, as if without a care. You must not have been here long or you’d already be dead,” he mused. She gripped her staff as if to strangle it. “All those years at the Cordilleran, and you obviously learned nothing. Typical.”
“Typical for a woman, or someone of my color?”
“Either. Both.” He made a flippant motion with his hand. “You do remind me of your father. He is also a deviant geomancer with incredible ability but no sense.”
His use of the present tense provoked her to speak. “What do you know about my father?”
“I know he’s a fool. All those years he hid from the UP, but he couldn’t hide from me.” Hatsumi puffed up with pride. “Last winter, I had a strange call from a doctor here in Hilo. He had a man with a terrible foot infection who was delirious with a fever that couldn’t be broken. Some earthquakes had occurred recently, and the doctor suspected that his patient might be near death from energy sickness as well as infection. Imagine my surprise when I arrived and recognized the patient as one of my long-dead colleagues.”
Ingrid’s breaths came rapid. This man. He was the one who had turned Papa over to the UP. They initialized the Gaia Project. All those deaths in Peking. The scourging of San Francisco. It all led back to this pompous mugwump.
“He was too sensitive to the natural energy flow,” Hatsumi continued, oblivious to her reaction. “A problem with lesser peoples. I saw the same in Chinese geomancers years ago. They are physically and mentally too fragile to handle the gift bestowed on them. And for a woman to pull in the earth’s power?” He shook his head, tsking. “Look at you, unable to even walk upstairs on your own. Such degeneracy can’t continue. It sullies reputable geomancers.”
Ingrid couldn’t hold back anymore. She burst ou
t in laughter. Hatsumi stared at her, baffled.
“Really? You’re trying to use my existence as some argument for racial supremacy, even as the Unified Pacific offers that ridiculously high reward for my capture? Your value to them is certainly clear, Warden Hatsumi. You’re assigned to a place where any significant energy release will boil your innards in your skin in under a minute. You’re disposable.” His face flushed deep red while his jaw soundlessly opened and closed like a fish. “By all means, continue to gloat. I could use the laugh right now.”
“Uppity bitch!” The words were hoarse with rage.
“You’re threatened by me.” She stared him down. “Just as you were threatened by my father’s very existence. Our sensitivity can be a weakness in some ways, true, but it also makes us your superiors. And you can’t stand that.”
Hatsumi lunged forward as if to slap her. She stepped back, swinging her staff. He dodged and moved forward again, this time gripping Pele’s stick. Just as she had hoped he would. He reared back, ready for her to try to pull the stick away. Instead, she adjusted her grip and laid her fingers over his knuckles. His eyes widened in surprise at the intimate contact.
That’s when she pulled the power from the charged kermanite in his rings. The crystals dissolved to powder, the vacant facets hard against her fingers. Energy hot as blood slipped through her skin and twined up her arms and into the well of her chest.
Hatsumi stared in slack-jawed awe. He could see what she felt as she drew in magic. He was the only person who ever had.
Rage consumed her senses. She shoved him away.
Things tended to break when Ingrid was angry and held power, but rarely had she been this angry, this frustrated, this disgusted at the world entire, and all of it centered on this one horrible man.
He flew backward. A blue fireball surged into his body, searing a hole that briefly showed the white wall beyond. His body flopped to the wooden floor some ten feet away and slid to rest by the wall, a broken doll. The heaviness of his impact shuddered through her feet.
Hatsumi was dead. She had blasted a baseball-sized tunnel straight through his chest. Left a smear of blood and charred tissue across the entire room.
