Fiddlehead (The Clockwork Century)

by Priest, Cherie

  “They’ve been free to go and get them. We haven’t. If we can make it to dawn…”

  “Then what?” Gideon asked. “Then they’ll be able to see us if we try to sneak away. No. If we’re going to make some great move, we ought to make it before the sun comes up. The president likes to go on about our copious ‘advantages,’ and we can’t afford to squander one.”

  “Then what do you propose?” The worry on Wellers’s face was digging in hard, setting lines there and drawing bags beneath his eyes.

  “I propose to sit here and think about what to do next.” Another shot, back in Grant’s direction in the far hall. “Go see if he needs help. I’ll stay here and watch the new fellows. If you run past the office, send me Mary.”

  “Mary?”

  “She’s a wild shot with an ax to grind. I may need to guard the east wing where her husband is.”

  “You think she’ll leave him?”

  “I think she might trust my aim more than hers. Go and see,” he urged again. As Wellers left, he continued to eye the shadows outside. Yes, more men had definitely been rallied. If someone was shooting at the west wing, they’d added at least two—no, three, because here came another, scuttling through the darkness. It was looking like six to six, if Gideon were feeling optimistic. Even odds, except that it was three able-bodied men, two women, and a chairbound cripple versus six mercenaries.

  Mary appeared beside him, her approach announced by the swish and sway of her skirts—and only then did Gideon notice that the wind was dying down. The makeshift curtains were not blowing quite so hard, and the chimneys were no longer being played like a set of organ pipes.

  “All right, Gideon.” She was brandishing her weapon in a way that made him nervous, so he gently aimed it toward the floor for now. “What do I do?”

  “Mrs. Lincoln, I want you to sit here and keep an eye on the front door, right here—through the edge of this blanket, see? Stay low, and keep from moving any more than necessary. The curtain will move some, because of the wind, but that’s all right; we just don’t want them taking shots at your head.”

  She nodded grimly, her eyes narrowed. “All right. And if anyone approaches the house, I shoot!”

  “No! Or, yes, you should shoot … but like this: If anyone approaches the front door here, I want you to fire a warning shot. Aim it anywhere: the sky, the ground, what have you. If it’s a friend who’s accidentally slipped through, coming to see about the ruckus, he’ll identify himself. If it’s a foe, he’ll shoot back or start making demands. Either way, we’ll hear you, and one of us will come to help. Is that all clear?”

  “Crystal clear, yes.” The old lady squeezed her gun with both hands, and sidled up to the wall beneath the window. “Now, go look after my husband.”

  He left her, and proceeded down the east wing hall, where the former president remained with Polly. He leaned his head around the corner, saw that all was well, and said, “Polly, I want you to come with me.”

  “And leave Mr. Lincoln?”

  “Mr. Lincoln,” Gideon addressed the man personally. “Do you have any objections?”

  “None,” he said firmly, holding one of the rifles across his lap, despite the previous decision to leave them for later. Gideon wasn’t sure who’d given it to him, or if this was the best choice, given the man’s lack of depth perception and limited use of his hands, but it looked impressive all the same. And, ah, yes: He still had the handgun ready, half concealed by the blankets.

  Polly gazed at the man as if she’d do what she was told, but she wasn’t prepared to like it much. “All right, Dr. Bardsley. What do I do?”

  He led her out of the room and toward the foyer, to the stairs that led to the second story. “You go upstairs, and go back and forth between the windows. Draw all the curtains if they aren’t drawn already, but do it carefully. Keep from being seen. I don’t want anyone spying your shadow and taking a shot at you.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll do that.”

  “And I want you to watch for men who might be sneaking up on us from different sides. If you see such a man, fire a shot through a window in his general direction. Don’t worry about hitting him, just let him know that you saw him.”

  “All right. I can do that.”

  “I know you can. And don’t try to open a window—just shoot right through it. Glass isn’t that expensive. You’re worth more than the window, you hear me?”

  She blushed, and even the dwindling firelight couldn’t hide it. “Thank you, sir.”

  When she was gone, Gideon said to Lincoln through the still-open door, “I’m going to check the other end of the hall, then work my way back. If you have any trouble, fire a warning shot, but fire it into those books. Anywhere else, and it might bounce in this little room.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Gideon.”

  “I’m only thinking out loud,” he assured him. In the quiet that followed, he really should’ve turned and left; but, like Polly, he found himself reluctant to leave Lincoln alone. “Is there … anything I can get you? Anything you need?”

  “I need for my friends to believe I’m still a capable man,” he said. “I will be fine, and so will the rest of you. With you and Grant defending the place, I’m confident that it will stand.”

  Gideon wished he hadn’t said that, even if he agreed. “We’ll do our best,” he said, and he stalked off down the hall, praying their best would be enough.

  Twenty

  “I thought we’d landed closer to the road than this,” Maria grumbled, tripping over a tree root and scraping her already-raw hand against a trunk when she caught herself.

  “So did I.” Henry grimaced with pain, so often that it seemed his whole face was set that way in a permanent expression of discomfort. But a broken arm was plenty of excuse, to say nothing of the assorted scrapes, bumps, and bruises that plagued them both.

  Maria ached in places she rarely thought of, and she bled from more injuries than she let on. Besides the cut on her head, under her coat she hid a hard puncture that had made it past her corset stays. She didn’t know how deep it went, and she didn’t know what had caused it. Part of the Black Dove, as they’d kicked free of its tumbling wreckage? A tree branch on the way down? Something else, when she’d landed?

  The wound was under her rib cage, on the right side. It left a great stain on her dress, so she kept her coat fastened around herself, even tighter than before. Now it wasn’t just the cold. She needed for Henry to believe that she was all right, because if he thought otherwise, he’d attempt to coddle them both and they’d never get anywhere.

  Just this once, she was glad for the cold.

  It kept her numb enough to keep walking, hiking between the trees and around them. She hoped they were headed in the right direction, but had no way of knowing for certain. She had no compass, only Henry’s gut feeling; and she did her best not to second-guess him, because she had no idea herself.

  Finally, they saw a line where the trees thinned. When they stumbled up out of the woods, they found themselves on a road. It amounted to little more than four sets of ruts in places, but the rain that season had been bad, and it was no secret that the Confederacy was low on money. Public works were suffering along with everything else.

  No other vehicles or travelers were present, a fact that bothered Maria. She’d hoped to find carts—of the motorized or horse-drawn variety, she did not care which—and use her wiles to flag one down for a lift. She was exhausted and sore. Henry surely was in no better condition, though he also seemed to be hiding the worst of his pain.

  So they trudged forward, southbound and surly, until a benevolent farmer heading in the right direction came along. Maria bribed him with sorrowful eyes, and Henry sealed the deal with the few Confederate coins from his pocket that hadn’t rained across the Georgia countryside as he’d fallen to earth.

  The ride was faster than walking, and it gave them time to rest, if not recover.

  When the farmer took a turn for the west, he
left them on the road and they continued on foot, thankful for the help but wishing for more assistance. It didn’t come.

  The day grew later, and the shadows grew longer. Maria didn’t know what they’d do when night fell. They had almost nothing in the way of supplies, much less any source of light, and roaming along a road at night was a surefire way to get robbed or murdered … or so she’d always been told.

  She squeezed the battered satchel that still hung around her neck, and yes, her gun was still there. But none of her bullets had survived the trip, so whatever was in the wheel was all she had left. Henry had done better for himself: His shoulder holster was under his coat, and therefore his firearm and supplies had survived the trip more completely.

  She doubted their guns would be of much use against the Maynard device, but they made her feel better all the same.

  Another hour passed, and her feet were blocks of ice. Her nose had lost all feeling, and her injuries hurt terribly. Henry was flagged as well: His ordinarily fair complexion had gone positively white, his glasses were long gone, and when he wiped at his nose with one torn sleeve, it left a damp, bloody streak on the back of his arm.

  And then they heard voices, accompanied by the crush and roll of large wheels on uneven turf. Not far ahead, there were people. Carts. Horses.

  And then the dome of the big black cargo dirigible came into view.

  Henry stopped and took her arm. “Let’s leave the road. Come around to the side.”

  “You want to sneak up on them?”

  “I want to watch them before we try to engage. We might learn something. Spot a weak point. If we walk up to them now, they’ll shoot us before we get close.”

  She wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t fight him when he led her off the tracks that passed for a highway and back into the trees. They circled quietly around, staying just beyond the clearly visible road, until they were within earshot.

  The caravan had stopped. Only a few minutes of eavesdropping told them why.

  “Goddamn this road! How does anyone ever move anything?”

  “There’s not much left to move,” someone said wryly, but not loudly. “The state’s bankrupt—the whole country’s bankrupt. Hell, I’m just I’m glad there’s any road at all. We could be stuck hacking our way through the woods, and then what?”

  “Then we’d be stuck in this hellhole forever,” griped someone close. “How are we going to get this thing going again? Frank said we can’t push the crawler’s motor any harder, or we’ll blow it.”

  “Then we won’t push the crawler’s motor any harder,” said a new voice—someone who spoke with a commanding bent.

  Maria strained to see him, but between the trees she saw nothing but a flash of gray uniform and a shock of hair beneath a cap that looked like it might be red. “There’s the man in charge,” she guessed aloud to Henry, who nodded.

  The man in charge said, “We’ll have to dig ourselves out.”

  “You’re sure the ship can’t lift us?”

  “You saw us try it. Did it work? No? Then yes, I’m sure the ship can’t lift us. We can’t burn through its hydrogen, anyway. Not if we want a way home, when all’s said and done.”

  “Sir, we’re … we’re fish in a barrel if we stay in the middle of this road.”

  “Heavily armed fish in a military convoy. Pull yourself together, and get a shovel.”

  “Do we have shovels?”

  “Check with the ship; they might have some. If not, we’ll improvise. We have axes, and we have a whole forest full of wood we can commandeer if we have to. Bring me Lieutenant Engel, and I’ll see what exactly we have at our disposal.”

  Henry leaned over and whispered into Maria’s ear. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll wander away from the caravan. We may have to swipe him, but we’ll make him listen to us.”

  “We’re a pitiful pair of kidnappers, you and I.”

  “We’re armed. We don’t have to overpower him, just surprise him.”

  “Is that our plan?” she asked.

  “It’s a possibility. Should we split up?”

  She thought about it and said, “We could, but let’s not. We’d just double our chances of getting caught.”

  He nodded. “All right. Let’s go together, then.”

  Forward they crept, staying low and working toward the giant rolling-crawler—a Texian-made monstrosity that operated on floating axles, and was renowned for its ability to traverse uneven terrain. Apparently it wasn’t quite advanced enough for Georgia roads, which made Maria smile ruefully until she drew near enough to really look at the thing. It was huge—bigger than any such contraption she’d ever seen before, in the North or South. Six wheels on three axles, and about as tall as a single-story building, except for the back portion, which was open like a cart.

  This segment was occupied by something huge and—if the set of the wheels in the road was any gauge—quite heavy. The rear half was bogged down, oversized tires lodged into fresh ruts that had been made all the deeper by their spinning, digging, lunging efforts to free the thing.

  “Can you see it?” Henry asked, craning his neck.

  “They’ve covered it up with something. We’ll have to get closer, though it may be dangerous.”

  “We might … not have much choice,” he said slowly, turning his head sharply but carefully to the right.

  Maria followed his new gaze, and was horrified to see a gray-dressed soldier with a large army-issue rifle. The rifle was long-barreled with its hardware in gleaming condition, and it was aimed directly at them.

  He said, “Hello there. I’d ask what we have here, except I can make myself a guess.”

  “It’s not what it looks like,” she promised him.

  “It’s not two people spying on a military caravan?” he asked with a smirk.

  Maria instantly disliked him, not that there was anything she could do about it. “No, it’s not that. Not exactly.”

  Henry stood up straight from his crouch, and said, “I’m a U.S. Marshal, and I’m here to help. I’m going to get my badge out of my coat, see? I’m not drawing a gun.”

  “U.S. Marshal my ass. Don’t you dare move.” Over his shoulder he shouted, “Hey, Captain, I’ve got something over here!”

  “What?”

  “A couple of spies; come and see ’em,” he called. “One says he’s a marshal.”

  “A marshal?”

  Seconds later the captain appeared—and, yes, it was the red-haired man they’d identified before, in a well-fitting uniform, as opposed to those of his subordinates. He was handsome in a way that red-haired men tended not to be, in Maria’s experience—though there was always an exception to the rule, and here he was. His eyes were cool, intelligent, and very blue.

  Another gray-uniformed man appeared with him, and now they were outnumbered.

  “Captain,” Henry said, not bothering to address anyone anymore, except the man who made the decisions. “My name is Henry Epperson and I’m with the U.S. Marshals Service. I was sent here by the president himself, with regards to Project Maynard.”

  Maria gave him a bit of side-eye. She wasn’t sure she would’ve played it so on the nose, but between the pair of them, he was the one most likely to be listened to, so she chose to trust him. It was too late to do anything else, anyway.

  “The president?” The captain huffed a small, incredulous laugh. “If you’ve got word from President Grant, then why are you sneaking up on us, hiding in the woods? And furthermore, let me see your badge.”

  “It’s here in my coat pocket,” he said again, fumbling for it with his good hand, and finding it this time. He tossed it to the captain.

  While the captain examined it, Maria answered the rest. “We’re sneaking up on your caravan because the big cargo ship you’re traveling with shot us down a few miles back down the road. You’ll have to forgive us if we weren’t fully committed to approaching you openly—not while that thing docks overhead.”

  “Shot you down?�
� he frowned, and glanced back toward the road. “So that’s what all the commotion was about. We heard it, but couldn’t see it for the trees.” Over the trees they could all see the craft’s dome, bobbing slowly in the dying wind. “Why would they shoot you down? Why would…”

  The man obviously had more questions, but maybe he had answers, too—and he didn’t like them much. He tossed the badge back to Henry, who caught it with a fast jab of his hand. “What about you?” he asked. “You’re not a marshal, are you, ma’am?”

  “No, sir, I’m not. I’m a Pinkerton agent, hired by Abraham Lincoln. This marshal and I have been working together with regards to this project you’re transporting to Atlanta—and I do note that you didn’t contradict us, or argue, when Henry called it by its proper name. You’re Union soldiers, the lot of you. Blue wearing gray, undertaking a top secret mission to deploy a terrible weapon in Atlanta. You know it. We know it. And the president knows it, too. He’s trying to stop it.”

  “Ma’am,” he said, adjusting his hat and shifting his weight. He lowered his voice, but not much. “This project is as top secret as they come, or so we’re told. If you’re Confederate spies, you’re not very good ones—traveling alone and naming names, when you ought to play dumb and ask for help. But your badge looks like the real thing,” he said to Henry, “and if you say the president sent you, then that’s either the stupidest tall tale you could pull out of your ear on a moment’s notice, or it’s the truth.”

  Maria wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but she didn’t dare, not yet. “Captain, we came here to warn you. The project is more dangerous than you know: It’s a suicide mission for you and your men, authorized through unofficial channels, and paid for by a warhawk tycoon with the help of the Secretary of State.”

  The captain’s lovely eyes narrowed, and he crossed his arms. “Is that so?”

  “Who gave you your orders? And don’t answer me—I’m asking you to ask yourself. Did it come from the top? Or from some underling who professed to speak with presidential authority?”