Fields of Air: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 10)

by Shelley Adina

  “I am, too.” Alice’s stomach felt as though it might follow Perry’s example. “Go down and see if Perry knows where his mother might have gone. Someone has to be alive. The whole town can’t have been murdered, or pulled up stakes—and even if they did, where are Gloria and Evan?”

  Alice didn’t have the will to look any further. When she went downstairs, she saw that the chickens had come in. The ragged little scraps of life never gave up, did they? She followed them into the kitchen—empty of dead men, thank heaven—and with squawks and beats of their wings, they launched themselves upon a spilled sack of corn as though they could not get to it fast enough.

  “You poor things,” she murmured. “A whole town dead around you and no one left to see to you. I suppose the coyotes have done for the rest of your flock.”

  In the middle of the scratched and damaged kitchen table lay a scrap of paper with a name scrawled across the top. She snatched it up and took it outside, drawing a grateful breath of clean air.

  “Perry,” she said, “here’s a letter for you.”

  Still pale, he straightened and took it as Ian, Jake, and Benny joined them. In halting syllables, he read it aloud.

  Dear Son,

  I don’t know if you will ever find this but I can’t think what else to do. I searched the battlefield and don’t got any body to bury but Ned’s, so I can only hope you’re alive somewheres. Maybe with Alice. God don’t pay us much mind here, but I pray so.

  Them Californios took their abomination of a train overland and headed west, but they left all their munitions and their wounded, so they’ll be back. Me and the girls balanced the books and now we aim to hobo on the eastbound freight and seek our fortune elsewhere. That nice boy who come with Alice lost himself in the dark looking for someone. I expect the varmints got him.

  If you’re alive, I hope we’ll meet again some day. I’ll check the post office once a year in New Orleans. Maybe you’ll send a letter.

  Your loving ma,

  Lorraine Connelly

  Carefully, Perry folded up the letter and pushed it into the pocket of his shirt. He did not speak, merely gazed toward the horizon in the south and east.

  “Balanced the books?” Young Benny sounded puzzled. “They did their arithmetic before they left?”

  Alice exchanged a glance with Ian. “I suspect she meant that they took the Californios’ lives in exchange for those of their men,” she said gently to the boy. “The wounded were all abed in there, dead as doornails.”

  “Oh,” he said, the color draining out of his face. “If they’re all dead, what’s that racket in the kitchen?”

  “Those chickens followed us in.”

  “Chickens!” With the resilience of thirteen, he brightened. “Can we have chickens aboard Swan like Lady Claire does aboard Athena?”

  “Certainly not,” Ian said.

  “Benny, those birds are next door to dead themselves.” She stopped, undone by the hope in his eyes. “But they’re the only things who managed to stay alive in Resolution. You’re quite right. We can’t leave them on their own.”

  “Alice—” Ian began.

  “They’ll be good company for those stuck-up French hens in the garden at Hollys Park.” Her throat closed up unexpectedly. “They’re brave, and gallant, and I’m not going to leave them.” Tears started in her eyes, and to her dismay, Benny’s began to fill, too. “They’re in the kitchen,” she told the boy. “Gather up the corn and bring it as well.”

  Too much death. Too much horror. And there were three chickens, standing innocently in the face of it, the way poor Evan had when Ned Mose had sent her off to reconnoiter that train.

  “Evan can’t have been eaten by varmints,” she whispered fiercely. “I won’t let him. We have to search.”

  Ian seemed to have learned a thing or two about women in general and about her in particular in the months since their adventures in Venice. “Of course, dear,” he said, more gently. “While Benny wrangles the chickens on to the ship, the four of us will form parties of two and search town, battlefield, and train carriages for any sign of Evan and Gloria.”

  “I wish they’d just stayed on the ship,” Alice moaned. “Gloria in particular. Why did she leave it? Where did she go?”

  “Why, Captain? Because of Evan,” Benny said, reappearing in time to hear, a red hen in his arms. He dashed a tear off his dusty cheek. “They—the pirates—they were making him shoot that big Gatling carousel and Miss Gloria, she could see through the spyglass that they’d put it together wrong. So she ran to stop him killing himself, and they made her fix it and shoot it at the Calfornios instead.”

  Alice stared at him. “Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

  “I haven’t seen much of you, Captain,” he said reluctantly, adjusting his grip on the bird. “And I just remembered.”

  “Never mind, Benny. Then what happened?”

  “That behemoth took aim at them and shot the gun off the top of the hill. Everything went flying, even the wagon it stood on.”

  The contents of her stomach heaved again, and Alice struggled to breathe deeply. She must not lose control in front of her crew.

  “But just before it did, Evan must have seen what it was going to do, for he pulled Miss Gloria off the pilot’s brace and—and after that I couldn’t see because of the smoke and dust, but my orders were not to leave the ship, and then Jake came back carrying you, and—”

  “Thank you, Benny. We know what happened after that. Carry on. Ian, Jake, do you agree we ought to begin our search on the far side of that hill, if it was the last place either of them was seen?”

  “I do,” Ian said. “And following that, we’ll search the train for any survivors. At the very least, we’ll know what armaments are left so that we can report it to the Texican Rangers.”

  “They didn’t pay any attention to us, remember?” Alice reminded him as they walked across the field toward the hill where the big rotating gun had been set up.

  “Perhaps they might if we bring them one of the mechanicals,” Ian said grimly. “For it is clear to me that the Texicans must take possession of these arms before the Ambassador comes back with a larger party—or an army—and be ready to defend themselves.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Someone must. Even if it is only you and I.”

  “Swan is a military-grade airship, Captain,” Jake said thoughtfully. “She’s built to carry munitions. I wonder how many mechanicals she could fly? And what about that behemoth?”

  “You’ll need an articulated train car to load one of those on her,” Alice told him. “Never mind that. First we need to find some trace of our friends.”

  It wasn’t difficult to see what had happened to the equipment on top of the knoll—it had been scattered for an acre or so down the slope and into a dry arroyo. Wagon wheels, shells, human remains, and bits of the carousel assembly, including the pilot’s brace, led them downhill and into the sandy bottom.

  There, they found bloodstains on the rocks near the wall of the arroyo, but no bodies. For which Alice was devoutly grateful.

  “Ma’s letter said your friend got lost looking for someone,” Perry ventured. “So he survived. Maybe she did too.”

  “But why would he be looking for her if he was close to her when the explosion happened?” Alice gazed up at the hill. “Say you’re knocked down here together and you land hard. One doesn’t wake up and leave the other to go wandering around in the dark. Not with coyotes about.”

  “One might if one believed the other to be dead,” Ian suggested.

  “Evan didn’t believe Gloria was dead, then,” Jake said. “She must have been gone when he woke.”

  “She wouldn’t have left him,” Alice said firmly. “Not Gloria. Not if she could help it.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t help it,” Jake persisted. “Maybe she was taken. For ransom. Or something.”

  Alice drew in a breath. “The Ambassador knew her. Maybe he recognized her.”<
br />
  Something caught her eye in the dirt, and she bent to brush the sand away. “Look.”

  A hairpin. She turned it in her fingers. It was just like the ones in her own hair at this moment. Because Gloria had lent her some of hers for the board meeting.

  “She was here. And then she wasn’t, and Evan set off to look for her.”

  “The Ambassador’s men would have left her to lie if she’d been dead,” Ian said. “Therefore it follows that if someone recognized her and brought her to the Ambassador, she was alive.”

  “And Ma said they went off in their train,” Perry put in. “Though it beats me how.”

  “That can’t be what happened.” Alice’s strength had begun to flag, and she sat rather suddenly on a rock. “She can’t have been taken out West by those people. What would they want with her?”

  “It seems to fit a limited set of facts,” Ian said, “but there are great holes where we have no information. Come, Alice. We must get you back to the ship.”

  “We have to find Evan.”

  “You will not be able to find so much as a hairpin again if you do not rest. Please, my dear. Perry, Jake, and I will continue the search once I have you aboard.”

  Much as she wanted to protest, she felt as though she would faint if she didn’t lie down. And in the end, Ian had to carry her the last hundred yards to Swan. When the search party came back two hours later, it was to report no sign of Evan.

  Nor was there any evidence to tell them what had become of the behemoth, which was neither in pieces in the empty crates in the train carriage, nor anywhere near it. But by then, the sun had fallen and it was too dangerous to be out on the treacherous, pitted ground any longer. For the predators had indeed come in to feast on the bodies, and while there was not much left to bury, it was clear they had not finished yet.

  They set fire to the Desert Rose, turning it into an enormous funeral pyre for the remaining men. It was the only decent thing they could do so that they would not meet the fate of their companions.

  Alice turned from the fiery glow and gazed instead at the three chickens roosting on the rail in front of the viewing port in the dining saloon. They had shared the crew’s dinner and drained a soup bowl full of water, and now fluffed their feathers and blinked contentedly as night fell outside. They made a picture of safety—a red hen with a white tail, a black-and-white speckled individual who looked as though she had been marked with Morse code, and a black one so glossy that her feathers glinted green in certain lights.

  The only survivors of the Battle of Resolution.

  Outside, the dark bulk of the mesa rose behind the ruins of the town. The only survivors but two. And she wouldn’t rest until they were all together again.

  CHAPTER 20

  Evan Douglas gazed at the Californio doctor, who may have recognized him, but whom he was quite certain he had never clapped eyes on in his life. “You have the advantage of me, sir.”

  “It was after the battle,” the man explained, more to the Ambassador than to Evan. “His body lay near that of the senorita, and we left him for dead. My deepest apologies, sir.”

  Evan restrained the urge to remark upon his inability to diagnose such a grave condition. Tensions were running too high for levity, and if the truth were told, he felt very small and vulnerable outside his movable iron fortress.

  “I regained consciousness some time later, having sustained a blow to the head that was not fatal,” he told them. “I was told that you had offered hospitality to Miss Meriwether-Astor, and determined to follow her—she is the only one left of my traveling party, you see.”

  “Ah.” The Ambassador eyed him. “You are among those who assisted her in attempting to stop the theft of the armaments by those members of her family who have betrayed His Highness’s trust?”

  “Er—yes.” He hadn’t quite followed that, but chalked it up to the lingering effects of having had only one real meal in several days. “But sir, while we are standing here discussing the matter, Miss Meriwether-Astor is in considerable danger. Would we not be better employed in coordinating our rescue efforts?”

  “Indeed.”

  Evan could not decipher the expression on his face, but then, he was notoriously poor at the sort of communication that did not require words and images. Hence his ill luck with members of the fairer sex. But Gloria had not seemed to mind. In fact, being understood by her had been quite a novelty.

  “You are quite right, Senor …?”

  “Douglas. My name is Evan Douglas. I was a passenger aboard Swan, the vessel that carried Miss Meriwether-Astor here, before we were captured by air pirates.”

  “You also?” The Ambassador’s eyebrows rose. “I will dispense with remarks upon the wages of sin in connection with airships and ask merely this: Were you also pressed into service against your will by these pirates, and forced to fire upon us?”

  Also. They could only have heard such a twist upon events from Gloria, so he must play along. “Yes, sir. For which I hope you will in turn accept my apology. We have not, apparently, left one another for dead, for which I am most grateful.”

  The Ambassador smiled beneath his moustache. “It has resulted in the creation of an operator for our Gigante de la Guerra to replace the man so recently lost, so we may grieve but not regret the past. En verdad, sir, your assistance in the rescue of Senorita Meriwether-Astor is a gift from God.”

  “Then let us set off,” Evan said eagerly. “The waters may have receded by now.”

  The doctor shook his head. “The sun is at the point of setting, and el Gigante cannot be operated safely in the dark. Nor can we see our fair quarry, who may be injured or even unconscious. We must wait for morning.”

  “But the cold—”

  “We can do her no good from this elevation. The wisest course is to direct our journey to the nearest river crossing, and search the banks upriver from there, where her—where she may have been able to swim ashore.”

  The Ambassador stiffened. “Doctor Escobar, you are not suggesting—”

  “I am, Excellency.”

  “But las brujas—we cannot—”

  “No, we cannot. But Senor Douglas and el Gigante can, without let or hindrance. He may give them a taste of what is to come while at the same time mounting the search for the senorita—at no loss to His Highness’s remaining forces.”

  “Speak English before assigning errands to me,” Evan said crossly. “What are last brouhas?”

  “Las brujas.” The doctor spelled the words so that he could see them in his mind. “Witches.”

  Evan nearly asked him to spell that, too, so incredulous was he. The doctor explained to him what they knew of these beings, and then informed him with a smile that Gloria had not believed him at first, either.

  If she had not convinced Evan and the crew on the flight across the territory of the madness of the Ambassador concerning his plans for invasion, he believed it now. First an insane plan to invade a country for gold that did not exist, and now a fear of witches that did not exist, either?

  But it seemed he was to have a look firsthand at them, whatever they were. He did not care. The sooner he could get down to the river and find Gloria, the happier he would be. Once they were both safely ensconced in the behemoth’s pilot’s chamber, no one could stop their escape. He rather looked forward to showing her how well he had learned to operate it.

  He held fast to that thought through the rest of the night—which he prudently spent inside the behemoth, accepting only the gift of another blanket from the doctor, and an excellent breakfast in his company the next morning.

  The locomotive set off at dawn, with the behemoth stumping along behind, and switched to a northbound spur that took them lower and lower in elevation until finally the red rocks took on a purple cast as they plunged into canyons deeper than any Evan had yet seen. The spur terminated in a dusty town where the river was shallow enough for a horse and rider to cross, and where commerce and trade could proceed unhindered. The
Californios took on provisions and possessed themselves of a map of the river much more recent than the relic that had been open on the table in the saloon.

  “The word will have gone to the witches already,” the Ambassador said in a low voice as he traced the route the river took between the spot where they had lost Gloria and their current location. “We must retreat to the main line to avoid capture. Your search will encompass a distance of only ten or fifteen miles, as the raven flies, but you see here the bends and breaks in the Sangre Colorado’s course. The river has cut deeply into the stone and it may force you into the water, so steep and plunging are these cliffs.”

  “How deep is it?” Evan asked. “Can the behemoth be submerged without injury?”

  “It can, for short distances, as long as the exhaust piping is not submerged and air remains in the pilot’s chamber. If the water comes in through the piping, it will destroy the steam engine.”

  Evan nodded. The river would have to be twenty feet deep before he was in any danger of that. But he could not quite believe they meant to leave him here. “I cannot go alone. Surely you see that a search of this magnitude requires every man you can spare.”

  “Senor.” The Ambassador’s face seemed to stiffen with the effort to control his emotion. “The battle cost the lives of eighteen good men. We left eleven injured and two whole to guard them in that cursed town, awaiting our return, and eight more were lost to us yesterday during the flash flood. It is a miracle that the doctor and I, the engineer, the brakeman, and three of my escort remain to bring news of these dreadful events to His Highness. I have no more men to spare, I assure you. I am only thankful to God in Heaven that we have you to assist us, or Senorita Meriwether-Astor’s life would be forfeit for certain, if it is not already.”

  Put like that, Evan could see the man’s reluctance to risk any more lives for that of one woman. That left only Evan with both the courage and the resources to come to her aid.