The lieutenant trained his gaze upon her. “And why should he tell a gently bred lady these things? These are not the kinds of secrets that one usually lets slip at balls.”
“You would be surprised,” Ian said mildly. “My cousin’s wife, Lady Dunsmuir, is one of Her Majesty’s closest confidantes, and an astonishing number of state secrets are bandied about over dessert, and decisions made between the polka and the waltz.”
“Your cousin is Lord Dunsmuir?” It was clear that even in the Wild West, that name commanded attention.
“Yes.”
The lieutenant recovered himself under this fresh information. “Very well, then. Regardless of its believability, out of courtesy to you and your family, Lord Hollys—”
Ian winced at the incorrect title. “Sir Ian, please.”
“—I will give this information to Admiral Robert van Ness, our superior officer.”
Alice drew in a quick breath, and before she could cover it with a cough or some other distraction, both men were bending looks of concern upon her.
“Are you in pain, dearest?” Ian asked gently, easing her down into the pillows.
“Yes, I—I fear I have exceeded my strength,” she whispered.
“I do apologize,” the lieutenant said in a tone that told her he had weightier subjects on his mind. “Lady Hollys, perhaps tomorrow you might be well enough to receive Admiral Van Ness, and relay to him the things you have told me.”
“I can perform that task,” Ian said. “I do not wish to tire her.”
“I am sure you could, but he will wish more information that it appears Lady Hollys possesses.” He bowed to them. “Until tomorrow, then. I wish you a speedy recovery, ma’am.” He departed with long strides, as though he were in a hurry.
Ian pulled up a wooden chair and took her hand. “What startled you, Alice? Are you truly in pain? You turned rather white.”
“It doesn’t hurt—no more than it did before, at any rate,” Alice assured him. “But Ian, it’s Van Ness.”
“He knows you?”
“Not only me, but Claire and Andrew, too. He won’t have forgotten that they gave him the slip and we rescued Andrew from the pinnacle cell on which they’d condemned him to death.”
Ian’s eyes widened. “What in heaven’s name is a pinnacle cell?”
“You have seen the spires of rock jutting up all over Santa Fe? Some are used for moorage, and some … well, once a man is up there, there’s no way for him to get down outside of suicide or in bits and pieces in a bird’s beak.”
Now it was Ian’s turn to look aghast, and then positively ill. “Our friend Andrew Malvern was condemned to such a fate?”
“By this very Robert van Ness that the lieutenant is so anxious to bring for a visit tomorrow. He was a lieutenant himself then, and a more spineless individual convinced of his own capability you’ll never meet. You should hear Claire on the subject.”
“Perhaps I will, when we reach England. Which I plan to do with all speed. Alice, I hope it will not pain you too much, but we must get you out of here. Do you think you could walk if we spirit you out tonight?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Alice said. “Feel free to spirit me out this afternoon.”
He smiled into her eyes, and despite the winter chill in the stone walls of the hospital that the braziers could not altogether dispel, her skin warmed. “I would carry you out in my arms this moment if it would not result in a hue and cry and far too many explanations. No, we will wait for the cover of darkness, and Jake’s assistance.”
“He and Benny are with Alaia, in the Navapai village up on the cliffs to the west of the city.”
Ian frowned. “They are not aboard Swan, at the airfield?”
“My dear, in this country you must never miss an opportunity to renew connections among friends. Alaia saved Claire’s life five years ago, and brought the Mopsies back from the brink of death by dehydration and exposure. Jake took Benny there straightaway. She has been a friend to me for years, and I would like you to know her. She is expecting you, and she’s a wonderful cook.”
“That is no doubt why those rapscallions chose her over their duty,” Ian grumbled, but she could see his heart wasn’t in it. “Very well. Between the three of us, we will come up with a plan.”
“I already have.” Pulling him close, she kissed him, and then whispered into his ear what they must do.
CHAPTER 17
T hough Silver Wind was an extraordinary locomotive, full of technological surprises that made her unique, her greater weight and size meant that she was no faster than an everyday freight. Endless eons passed while Gloria was borne against her will farther and farther west. The desert was vast and lonely, but despite its vistas, the track was narrow and singular, and the locomotive had to pull off into a siding periodically in order to let the freights pass.
Had she any hope of rescue, she might have rejoiced at their middling speed and these delays. As it was, she spent them trying to disguise her fuming impatience and fear, and doing her best to appear ladylike, obedient, and of all people the least likely to attempt an escape.
The result was that her captors began to relax their vigilance. After all, where would she go, a young woman with no resources, alone and on foot?
The temperature warmed as they descended from the mountainous heights of Santa Fe into what the doctor explained was the enormous basin of a river.
“It is the Rio de la Sangre Colorado de Christo, and stretches for hundreds of miles, senorita,” he explained, his finger moving along a map that had actually been drawn by hand at some time in the previous century—when the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias had ruled the entire continent west of the great Mississippi River, it appeared.
Gloria suspected the map, like the man who carried it, had exaggerated its successes just a little, for she was quite certain that the Louisiana Territory lying between the Fifteen Colonies and the Texican Territory had been settled by the French, not the Spanish.
“The river passes through canyons that are nearly a mile deep,” he explained. “Our route takes us very near, so you may be able to see it, perhaps, in the distance.”
“Is it so large?”
“Si, senorita. She is mighty, the Sangre Colorado, and deep. But we keep her at a distance, until she reaches our borders and becomes tractable and civilized.”
Gloria let this pass. “At a distance? Is the river not used for commerce and shipping?”
He shuddered. “No, senorita. It is far too dangerous and unpredictable. The flash floods, you see, they magnify her power so that she cannot be controlled or harnessed. And then there are las brujas—the witches.” He crossed himself.
“Witches.” She could not help it if her tone was a little flat, for that was the last word she had expected to come out of his mouth.
“Devout men do not speak of them, except to say that in years past, the brave have sought to conquer the Sangre Colorado de Christo and failed. Entire expeditions have met their doom at the hands of these savage beasts, senorita, and now you will find it impossible to persuade the captain of any Californio vessel to ply the waters upriver of our borders.” His gaze rose to meet hers, and in his brown eyes she saw not humor, or teasing, but utter conviction. “It is part of His Excellency the Ambassador’s mission to reconquer the lands east of ours,” he said in a low voice that trembled with emotion. “To sweep the country clean of witches and superstition and death, as Holy Mother Church did hundreds of years ago in Spain. We know the evil beings inhabit the caves and cliffs along the river. We suspect they cause the wrecking of steam ships and take pleasure in the killing of crews and the looting of cargo. It is certain they possess knowledge of the lost mines of legend—El Dorado, Victorio Peak, the Salvación. With the help of your father’s arms, once His Excellency secures these territories under the Viceroy’s flag, he will invade and extract the information as a miner himself extracts gold.”
Gloria knew her medieval history a
s well as anyone. She swallowed, and delicately moved the subject to one less dreadful. “And once he has done so?”
“Then the late Viceroy’s plans may proceed under his son’s guiding hand—to build a series of shipping canals that link the Sangre Colorado with the rivers to the west and north. And eventually to the east. Between railroads and shipping, the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias will enjoy such a time of prosperity and riches that the rule of His Highness Felipe XVI will become the stuff of legend.”
Gloria took a moment to get her thoughts in order before the grandeur of such thinking carried her away screaming. “And all that stands between the Ambassador and his plans to change the world are the peaceable inhabitants of the territories and … witches?”
“Do not mistake me, senorita,” the doctor said soberly as he rolled up the map. “They are real. But they will not be for long.”
“But—” There was no such thing as witches. Surely he meant some kind of natural phenomenon. Flash floods were very real, as were sheer cliffs and winds and any number of hazards in this country. Perhaps superstition might attribute these things to some feminine power, some female entity. A goddess, even.
But witches?
“I must attend to the dressings of the wounded men, senorita, if you will excuse me.” The doctor bowed, put away the map, and turned to bend over a man in one of the bunks. She took up the place that had become hers—the corner of the sofa closest to the glass of the great arch above their heads.
Witches, real or otherwise, did not matter. They came second to stopping the Ambassador and his mad invasion of the Territories. She must first do that, and as far as she was concerned, las brujas would be welcome to haunt whomever they pleased.
The closer they came to the river, the warmer it became under the glass, until finally Gloria and the other men were forced into the corners of the saloon until the sun passed its meridian. Still, when they stopped in mid-afternoon to take on water and coal and Gloria was allowed out to take the air, it was almost a shock to feel the warmth on her face.
She was positive it was still January, but the gentle touch of the breeze felt like May. Even the red rocks thrusting from the ground looked as though they might burn, so intense did their color become—or perhaps they were merely reflecting the heat across the desert floor.
“You may take exercise for ten minutes,” the Ambassador said, as though he were bestowing a gift. “Please stay within sight of the train. This is no country in which to become lost.”
“Is it always this warm?” she asked. She had been using one of the blankets from her bunk as a shawl, and was tempted to leave it behind. But the uncomfortable glances of the men at her form clad in a boy’s pants and shirt made her wrap it around her waist instead, in an approximation of a skirt.
“Not always,” he said, standing ramrod straight at the foot of the iron steps, hands clasped behind his back, and surveying the land as though the Viceroy’s flag flew over it already. “The temperatures can change between one moment and the next. Snow can fall where moments before there was a cloudless sky. See there?” He pointed back toward the mountains, where clouds had massed as though they were pinned against the slopes by some greater force. “It is raining there, and not here. We Californios are used to a moderate climate—one less changeable. I fear that here it is a symptom of a greater spiritual deficiency.”
But Gloria did not want to debate theology with a man who could believe in witches yet in the same breath denounce the airship as being the tool of the devil for allowing man to fly in the face of God. Who seemed to believe that he alone had a God-given right to mount an invasion upon a territory that had exercised the will of its people and seceded of its own volition.
What were the odds that the young Viceroy, fresh out of school and mourning his father’s death, had any idea of the plans of said father’s right-hand man? For all she knew, the young Viceroy’s plans for his kingdom could include peaceable trade and treaties. His days could be numbered while the handsome, power-hungry individual before her gathered more and more of the reins of government into his hands. As her father had so amply proven, nothing drew a country together faster than war. And without a ruler, who would be the obvious choice to lead?
“I thank you for the opportunity for exercise,” she said, sidling away, “and shall make circuits about the locomotive until it is time to be on our way.”
But her agitated circuit took her some hundred feet north of the engine—close enough to hear it huff and sigh, but far enough away that she could turn her back on it and pretend it was not there. Under her boots the soft red soil crumbled and puffed, though it was pitted with millions of tiny holes, as though there had been rain recently. Spiny plants grew here, and twisted, hardy bushes that breathed out the scent of sage as she brushed past. She breathed deeply of the scent, trying to calm herself. Jackrabbits hopped away, and buff-colored lizards the length of her palm darted here and there, frightened at her shadow. Above, three large black birds that might be eagles or might be ravens circled and croaked to one another, no doubt discussing the possibilities her person might hold for a meal.
Gloria climbed a gentle rise to a pile of red rocks that looked like a stack of pies that had been knocked over. The rough sandstone was warm to the touch, and she leaned on it, gazing out into the red and gold rocks, the landscape scored by arroyos and water, and the lavender haze in the distance.
Was that the river, perhaps? But no, it was deep in a canyon, the doctor had said.
Too much distance. Too little hope.
Or was there? Who was it had once said, The enemy of my enemy is my friend? What if the witches were not witches at all, but ordinary men and women who resented being treated as lesser beings by people like the Ambassador and the doctor? What if their destructive tendencies came not from a murderous urge to destroy everything that invaded their territory, but from a healthy sense of self-preservation? What if they were simply the original inhabitants of this land, like the Navapai of Santa Fe, and did not appreciate the incursions of other peoples on the ancient cliffs and rivers of their homes?
Might they not be sympathetic to a prisoner of their enemy, and render her some assistance?
Gloria measured the distance between her knob of stony pies and the lavender haze. It must be twenty miles—though the air was so clear here that often distances were deceiving. Could she walk twenty miles with no water or food?
Probably not.
She could not hide in these rocks, or climb the mesa without being spotted. You must catalogue the resources at hand and use your intelligence, Lady Claire said in her memory. That was all very well for Claire, who seemed to have endless resources. But unless a Gatling carousel sprang out of the ground, at present Gloria’s resources amounted to exactly nothing. What a pity her education had not extended to the operation of locomotives. If Claire could steal an airship, Gloria might have been able to steal a train.
Well, then, what remained? Up was not a possibility, nor forward or back. Her gaze dropped to the ground. A cave, perhaps? Or any other hiding place? Other than rocks and brush, there was nothing visible but a small crack in the earth a little way off, screened from the view of anyone on the train by the knoll on which she stood.
A crack in the earth—deep enough to conceal a slender form unencumbered by skirts?
It was painfully clear that unless she did something to help herself soon, her chances of escape before they crossed the border were shrinking with every mile. Walking twenty miles to find the witches was utterly mad, unless one considered the alternative, which was apologizing to a prince for losing his mechanicals, and likely being executed for her effrontery. At the very least the Ambassador would not permit her to leave the kingdom until she had promised to resume cordial relations between his country and its supply of arms—and that she was not prepared to do. She would die first.
So … die at his hand, or at her own?
She could already hear the puffing of
the locomotive increasing in its vigor, and a glance over her shoulder confirmed that the men were performing their final duties before they boarded the train once more. She had nothing but the clothes on her back and her blanket—but that was more than she had come with.
She must be mad.
Gloria plunged down the slope on the other side, heading for the crack in the earth.
Mad and angry and desperate.
A man shouted. Panting, she ran between two rock formations and onto a solid shelf of sandstone that tilted down to the desert floor. And there it was—the crack—barely wide enough to admit her feet. All she needed was two or three feet of depth, just enough to conceal her body until night fell.
For her good sense had at last caught up with her. She need not find the witches or walk twenty miles. All she needed to do was hide, and when the next freight stopped at the siding for water and coal, she could leap aboard and conceal herself among its crates and sacks. Once she reached Santa Fe, she could inform the authorities about the impending invasion, go to a bank, and arrange passage on the first airship back to Philadelphia.
A plan at last!
She shuffled sideways in the narrow miniature canyon, now up to her knees. Then her thighs. Would this be deep enough, if she were to wriggle between the walls and lie on her side on its sandy floor? Ought she to go farther? What if there were spiders? Or worse—scorpions?
Another shout galvanized her into motion, and then several voices rose in argument—no doubt concerning the last place she’d been seen. She stepped farther in, and realized that its floor sloped downward. What luck! In a moment, with a scrape of stone over breast and derriere, she was fully entombed in the ground.
With her next step, the sandy floor fell away more steeply under her soles and she landed on her backside, slipping ten feet down a chute of rock before she got her boots under control and stopped herself. Goodness. She must be more careful. Cautiously, still sitting with her feet braced against a curve in the rock, she craned her neck to look up.
Fields of Air: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 10) Page 16
