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

by Shelley Adina

  “We will not leave you entirely alone in this effort,” the Ambassador went on, laying an encouraging hand upon his sleeve. “At the next river crossing, we will deploy ourselves to search, in case the waters carried her farther than our estimates have allowed. We will wait for you there. If we are not successful, you must continue the downriver search and Silver Wind will proceed to the great southward bend, where las vegas—the river meadows—are wide enough to permit a town to grow, and there is a hospital. Whichever party finds the young lady first will bring her there with all speed, and meet the others.”

  An excellent plan. He could hardly wait to be on his way. “All right. But tell me, sir, where were you taking her to begin with? It is the one thing that I do not understand. Why should the survival of one young lady from Philadelphia mean anything to His Highness?”

  The Ambassador exchanged another unreadable glance with the doctor. “For the simple reason, senor, that she is a heroine. We were acting as a kind of honor guard, conveying her to His Highness so that he might bestow upon her the royal favor merited by her father, his own father’s personal friend. She acted as a true ally of the Viceroyalty, and it is my personal belief that His Highness might even have gone so far as to confer a title and lands upon her in his gratitude.”

  Evan’s face went slack in his astonishment. Had Gloria really fooled them? Had she not meant to stop the war at all, but to encourage it? Had he somehow managed to get everything backward? He could hardly credit it, but neither could he imagine her going willingly all the way to San Francisco.

  No, that could not be right. She had believed in her mission to stop the war her father had begun—that was why he had risked his life in support of it. There was no way on earth she could be a collaborator—not the woman who had nearly been killed saving his life.

  The facts did not match this new information, but neither could he fathom why the Ambassador should think these things—unless Gloria had merely been playing along. Yes, that must be what had happened. So he must play along, too, until he found her.

  The Ambassador, apparently, had not missed his thoughtful expression. “You see why we are stopping at nothing to recover her, and why your ability to assist is so very important.”

  “I do,” Evan said at last, for there was nothing else he could say. “Well, then, allow me to bring this discussion to a close. It seems I have a very great deal of work to do today.”

  HOW LONG WOULD it take to search fifteen miles of river? Evan had no idea, but erring on the side of caution, he took enough food for three days, and memorized the location of the water meadows on the map, where the search parties would meet. Then, to the astonishment of the few people out in the single road through the town, who dove in fear into doorways and alleys, he guided the behemoth down to the shallow, graveled banks of the river and turned it eastward.

  The banks here appeared to have been carved out in flat loops wherever the river took a bend, so there were maybe fifty yards of walking room and his progress was rapid. Gloria had been wearing buff-colored canvas pants and a brown flight jacket, so it would not be as easy to spot her as it would have been had she been wearing her lavender or even her blue gown.

  Nonetheless, his gaze raked every yard from bank to bank, and sometimes twice, when a human-sized rock or the sudden movement of a foraging animal made him snap to attention.

  Toward mid-afternoon, the banks narrowed to the point that he must take to the river. Narrowed and stretched higher and higher, their red, gold, and purple faces sheer and forbidding on either side.

  The colors and striations in the rock made a fascinating display, almost as though a giant hand had laid down layers of sandstone, and then for a diversion had added layers of some chalky white substance that broke and crumbled more easily, like frosting on a cake. On top of that were rippled layers that looked oddly like the rocks where Gloria had disappeared, and another layer of frosting. Perhaps that was a good sign that he was going in the right direction, if the two landscapes shared similarities.

  As he progressed, the current swirling around the ankles of the behemoth rose to its jointed knees, and then halfway up the struts and pistons of its thighs. Its feet were large enough that the rocks of the riverbed did not overset him, though the thought of that was frightening enough that he proceeded with extreme caution despite his gnawing anxiety.

  By sunset on the second day he had lost all interest in the colors of the cliffs and simply concentrated with a sort of grim endurance on continuing his march. When he could, he guided the behemoth to walk on the banks. When he was forced to take to the water, progress was much slower—though in one way it was easier, for he did not need to search. No human could cling to the sheer, plunging cliffs.

  Or could one?

  On the third day, the landscape slowly took on a different aspect. In the sandstone cliffs, wind and water appeared to have carved out elongated openings from which dark stains descended on the rock faces. And within the openings he could swear there were buildings—blocky stone houses, towers, even rounded granaries. Evan could not imagine how one reached these dwellings, for they were far above the head of the behemoth. There appeared to be no signs of life in any case, other than ravens and jays flying in agitated circles at the sight of him.

  A lost civilization, perhaps, though the buildings seemed in good enough repair. A sense of wonder at the thought of being perhaps the first person in centuries to see such evidence of a lost civilization overcame him, and the urge to explore, to get out of his cramped harness and walk about in the fresh air, was overwhelming.

  But he could not. Gloria’s life depended on it.

  He’d seen no other signs of human life except for the completely incongruous sight of a riverboat emerging from a tributary and chugging merrily upstream, the sounds of music and the clatter of its steam engine utterly out of place in the majestic loneliness of the canyon.

  He had climbed down and been resting in the sun on a wide bank, trying to decide whether or not he should turn back, but the riverboat had not stopped or even seemed to notice the odd configuration of iron resting on its arm behind him. Before he had thought to leap up and hail them to ask if they had seen a young lady in the course of their voyage, they had rounded a bend, leaving nothing but the music of a banjo and fiddle and the sound of laughter in their wake.

  Blast. His exhaustion must be affecting the workings of his mind, for he had lost an excellent opportunity to ask for assistance. For his food supplies were once again running low.

  He must turn back. There was no other option, though everything in him urged him on. She could be around the next bend, shivering on a rock and equally ignored by the riverboat, never knowing that he had been within shouting distance.

  He dashed tears of frustration and weariness from his eyes, and climbed once more into the pilot’s chamber. The trip back downriver went a little faster, not least because he knew the vagaries of the riverbed now, and where to avoid the rapids and deeper pools in favor of the banks.

  By the evening of the fourth day, he had passed the first town and reached the second river crossing, where a man in a short-jacketed black uniform had been posted to watch for him. Silver Wind rested at a proper train station on a siding, and the Ambassador met him eagerly when he set the behemoth to rest and climbed wearily down.

  Taken aback by his exuberant greeting, Evan could hardly understand him. “She has been seen, senor!” he said, grasping Evan by the upper arms and embracing him.

  His heart leaped in his chest. “Seen? Where? For I have seen no sign of her in miles and miles.”

  “It is as we feared—the river carried her much farther than this. A pair of traders pulled a young lady from the water three nights ago and took her by boat to the hospital. We must leave at first light, after you are rested, for the water meadows. It is a journey of two days, and you must be exhausted by your unfruitful search.”

  He was. He was so weary he could barely think, and spent the next twel
ve hours in an upper room of the station house, where the bed was so comfortable he never wanted to get out of it.

  Gloria was safe. In the hospital, being cared for. His mind had no more room for anything but those two facts, and so on a deep wave of thankfulness, he allowed his body to succumb.

  Two days later, he was still exhausted by the constant movement in the harness necessary to make the behemoth walk. But joy was like a fuel that kept him going even as his limbs screamed for surcease.

  The railroad descended out of the ironlike, spiky rocks of the mountain range into a massive valley spread wide by the loops of the river. The water meadows were marshes on the margins of old loops and crescents where the course had been carved over centuries. The very sight of water behaving in a civilized manner was a balm to the soul, and Evan’s relief at climbing down from the behemoth came at least in part from the softness of moisture in the air.

  He hurried aboard Silver Wind, which rested, steaming gently, at a much larger station than he had yet seen in this country. Around him, adobe houses with graceful ironwork gates and window shutters stood along orderly streets, the walls bright with climbing vines and bougainvillea. In the distance, he could see the blocky brick steeple of a church. Inside the locomotive, the Ambassador and his men were in the process of toasting each other with delicate glasses filled with a tawny liquid. He accepted one with alacrity.

  “Shall we proceed to the hospital immediately, sir?” he asked the Ambassador when he had tossed back the liquor and it had burned its way down to his stomach. “Have you sent a messenger to inquire after Miss Meriwether-Astor’s health?”

  The Ambassador shook his head, gazing at Evan sadly. “She is dead, senor.”

  Evan felt as though the man had punched him in the stomach. “What? How is this possible? Have you had word from the hospital so quickly? What happened?”

  “There has been no word. I am sorry to have deceived you, senor, but there is no hospital here, either. Only an apothecary.” He nodded at the man he had called el doctor. No wonder the man had not been able to tell the difference between a dead man and a live one with a head wound. Evan felt very stupid in his turn, as though the Ambassador were speaking a language he’d thought he knew, but using words he had never learned.

  “It is impossible that the senorita could have survived the flash flood that took our men,” the apothecary chimed in sadly, pouring himself a second glass. “But it was of the utmost importance that el Gigante should cross the border into the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias so that he may lead our forces in battle.”

  Still Evan did not understand.

  “You are the only operator who could have brought him here.” The apothecary patted his sleeve. “I regret that it was necessary to use your hope of finding the senorita to compel you to make the journey, but there was no other way to transport our behemoth. You have our gratitude.”

  “Welcome to the Viceroyalty, Senor Douglas,” the Ambassador said in tones as smooth as silk, accepting a second glass and lifting it in a toast. “I am obliged to inform you that you are now a prisoner of war.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Several days previously

  Gloria landed in a heap in a drift of sand at the bottom of the rock wall, the breath knocked clean out of her. In the moments that it took for her lungs to begin working again, sand and gravel rained down upon her from above as the Ambassador’s search party clustered on the edge of the precipice and muttered among themselves.

  Could they see her? No matter—they had certainly heard her, for no one could have prevented a shriek of fear as she plunged into the abyss, however short the fall may have been. Perhaps they were making a plan to pursue her.

  In a moment, her fears were confirmed as a rope snaked down the stone and practically hit her in the face. Biting her lips together to prevent herself from crying out a second time, she scrambled along the wall and around a curtain of stone that thrust out into the passage.

  A man shouted the alarm, and in a moment someone called, “Senorita! Stop at once! Are you hurt?”

  No, no, no. Tightening her blanket about her middle, Gloria ran along the passage, which undulated this way and that, its solid walls not walls at all, but ripples and flutes and ruffles of stone thirty feet tall. Light from the sun glanced off the curved walls, turning them pink and orange and purple, and beams struck down through holes in the roof in glowing pillars that turned the sandstone gold and looked like the fingers of God.

  She could hear her pursuers now, scraping and sliding down the rope. She must escape! The fingers of God must not point them to her. If she were recaptured, she was quite sure she would die of despair, and what would Claire think of her then?

  In the distance, she could hear a kind of hollow roar, increasing in volume, as though there were a waterfall. A big one. But a waterfall meant a river, and a river meant witches, and witches meant safety.

  She hoped.

  She plunged on, becoming a little disoriented now. The walls would not stay put. They curved and swirled, and when she put out her hand to regain her balance, they didn’t seem to be where they suggested they were, but curled playfully away so that she staggered like a drunken woman.

  Here and there, passages branched off, but she followed the ribbon of blue sky far above her head, trusting that the largest passage might lead her to safety more quickly.

  “Senorita! Come back!”

  The voice seemed farther away, thank heaven. Perhaps she could outdistance them yet.

  The roar seemed louder now, booming and crashing, and on the heels of a particularly heavy explosion she thought she heard a man scream.

  Heavens! Were they firing on her now? In this undulating enclosed space? Were they mad?

  She dodged around a rock formation that looked like an angel, complete with spreading wings, and skidded to a stop with a muffled shriek.

  A skeleton stood in the passage.

  Gloria felt her knees give out.

  It had no eyes, only black cavities in the skull set upon its neck. Black and red dots outlined where eyes should have been, and it had no mouth, only bony teeth in a grinning row, surrounded by more dots. Gloria was too frightened even to scream. She was frozen, staring, as the figure ran toward her.

  Trapped between death and imprisonment—oh, how had she come to this!

  But … but … skeletons did not wear skirts. Dazed, Gloria gaped at the very ordinary tiered skirt and black boots the creature wore. And at the white cotton blouse with a red jacket that matched the roses in her twisted-up hair.

  Dead people might wear roses, but they certainly did not run about in skirts and boots, or take the trouble to put up their hair.

  Gloria made up her mind. She had been knocked unconscious when she’d fallen from the rock wall, that was all. This time she really was dreaming, and in dreams, things did not hurt you. Skeletons could dance upon your head, and you would come to no harm.

  The creature grabbed her hand. “Run! The water—it will kill us!”

  No, it wouldn’t, but Gloria had no objection to running down the passage with the witch—for witch it must be. Its skull had spoken in distinctly feminine tones.

  They pelted down the passage, Gloria imitating the witch in dodging and ducking … and splashing. For now the sandy bottom of the canyon was running with water, first a trickle, then a runnel, and soon a creek, up over their ankles.

  “Faster!” the skull shouted over her bony shoulder.

  Gloria couldn’t go any faster—was out of breath, in fact—but the water frightened her. Even if this were a dream, she had no intention of letting it get her. Screams echoed down the canyon, and now the roar of the water was so loud she couldn’t hear her own splashing footsteps.

  Then, in a moment of horror, she realized there was no waterfall. The water was coming down the canyon passage behind them—a maelstrom, a monster, exploding through the passages like a dragon intent on death.

  “Jump!” the witch scream
ed, and Gloria had no choice, for the creature’s bony fingers did not let go of her hand as she launched herself over the precipice feet first.

  Thank heaven one could do this safely in dreams.

  Gloria leaped after her, and not a moment too soon. The water exploded out of the hole they had just vacated like a projectile from a cannon’s mouth, leaping and spewing out over their heads and washing them willy-nilly down a slick slope of rock.

  The witch lost her grip on Gloria’s hand, but there was no way on this earth that Gloria was about to lose her in the maelstrom. She flung herself forward and grabbed the creature’s skirts with one hand, her blanket locked in the cold fingers of the other. Together, they slid over the precipice and plunged forty feet into the river.

  The cold was as savage as a blow.

  Gloria kicked for the surface, blinded by bubbles and swift water, hardly conscious of anything but the fabric in her left hand and the need to hang on to it no matter what. Their two heads broke the surface together, gasping, and when Gloria felt the other pulling away, she kicked in that direction, the tug of the skirt the only thing tethering her to reality.

  For this was no dream. This was so painful it had to be real. One did not feel stabbing cold like this in dreams, nor was there this much water in all the world of imagination.

  Far away, she heard another scream, but her companion did not so much as turn her head. Instead, she seemed to be swimming strongly for a black opening in the cliff on the other side. They hadn’t much time. Gloria could feel her lungs seizing up, and her limbs no longer obeyed the commands of her brain.

  Her companion must have felt the increasing drag on her garments, for she turned and snatched the blanket from Gloria’s hand, passed it about both their bodies, and formed a kind of sling so that even if Gloria lost consciousness, she could still pull her along.

  But she was not going to lose consciousness. If she was to be saved by a prehensile skeleton only to be made into the witches’ dinner or sacrificed to a pagan god, she was going to be awake and conscious to see it, by George.