by Devon Monk
But on the other hand, if Foster was the chatty sort, he might have some kind of idea where in damnation they were taking him.
Not that he supposed he’d get out of it alive anyway, but if the chance fell upon him, he’d like to know which direction to run.
The uneven drone of the ship’s damaged fans filled his head. There wasn’t a window anywhere in his eyesight. They’d thrown him belowdecks, but made sure he was trussed up well out of reach of any of the supplies down there with him.
And there were plenty of supplies.
Along with three guards who kept their guns leveled at him.
He knew one of those men. Couldn’t much recall his name, but he’d been part of the mutiny Hink had led all those years ago. Chickened out of it halfway to Chicago. Heard he went back begging to Alabaster for forgiveness. Heard Alabaster had accepted him into the new army he was mustering.
Course, he cut off his ear first.
Wasn’t a man who’d served under the Saint who had walked away from the last battle unscathed. So Alabaster Saint made sure the man carried a wound just like the rest of them.
The general enjoyed his torturing almost as much as he enjoyed just plain killing folk.
Hink thought maybe he could get a little conversation out of the soldiers, but he was still gagged and, frankly, not feeling his best.
So he did what he could to breathe, and hurt, and memorize the faces of the men who inflicted that hurt on him.
The Saint might be top cock at torture, but there was no man who could match Hink when it came to revenge.
With no water, and no relief, it was a long damn ride before the ship fans altered in sound.
They were heading into the wind, changing course. From the tip the floor suddenly took, they were coming down to land. He half hoped his gun company would find themselves something less useful to do and give him a moment to gather his wits.
Instead, they stood watch over him as the ship went through the various stages of anchor, catch, lash, and landing, and was walked to whatever dock or port had been readied for her.
Then one of the soldiers walked up to him and hit him so hard in the side of the head, he heard his neck crack before he went out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mae didn’t know how much longer she could last. Staying connected to the spell she had worked between Hink and the Swift took all the concentration she could muster. It would be too easy to slip into believing she was a part of the ship, to feel the pump of steam like hot blood driving her wings, to flinch from the icy cold of the night sky.
Between that and the sisters’ whipping voices, she might completely lose all hope of remaining herself, of knowing her skin was her own, her mind was her own, and her will was her own too.
If it weren’t for Cedar, who held her, the warmth of his body, the heat of the anger burning within him, helping her focus on her own bones and breath, she would be nothing, her mind torn apart and left in scattered ribbons on the wind.
He was a rock holding her to the earth.
He was a heat refusing to let death’s cold claws slice her apart for good.
“Mae,” Cedar said. “Where is he?”
It seemed to take forever to make her mouth move, to lift her tongue and carry the words from thought to breath. “South more. East soon.”
At the edges of her awareness, she heard his voice carrying her words. So much stronger, with so much more life and power than she had left in her. She knew people were moving about the ship.
They were talking about repairs. They were talking about weapons. She’d heard firebombs and cannons, dynamite and guns. But there was no fire in those words. Whoever had said it was worried, the words thin and tenuous, knowing that would not be nearly enough to win. To save Captain Hink.
She felt the connection between Hink and the Swift tug. Hard. Down.
“East,” she said. “Landing. He’s landing.”
Cedar carried her words again, and the Swift shifted joyfully closer to Hink, to the captain she searched for.
“You can let go,” Cedar was saying. “Mae. Mae. Let go of the ship. We see the landing area. We see the ship’s lights.”
But Mae could not seem to sort his words out from the sisters’ screaming for her return, could not divorce herself from the taut shiver of awareness, the almost inhuman hunger between the ship and Hink.
She heard his words, but they were just another rattle of noise that threatened to suffocate her screams.
Someone clamped a hand over her mouth. And then someone tore the ship away from her.
No, someone tore her away from the ship.
And that someone was Cedar.
Mae came to her senses, her mouth covered by Cedar’s palm, her body pulled up against his so hard, not even her feet were touching the ground.
It was that, the complete disconnection from the Swift that finally cleared her head enough for her to realize that she had been screaming.
Everything and everyone around her was silent, staring at her.
Even the ship was silent.
They’d cut the steam. She was gliding in.
But Mae didn’t know where.
“Easy now,” Cedar was saying. “Quiet now. You’re safe.”
Mae nodded and Cedar nodded back, his eyes searching hers and apparently liking what he saw.
“I’m going to set you on your feet,” he said, “but I won’t take my hand away until I know you’re all right. Understand?”
She nodded again.
Cedar shifted his hold on her and gently set her down on her feet again.
She didn’t feel like screaming.
“All right now?” he whispered.
One more nod.
Cedar removed his hand. “We’re coming in silent to see the structure below. As much of it as we can in the dark.”
“The captain?” Mae asked, trying to get her thoughts and her mouth working in unison again.
“The ship is there,” Cedar said. “Unless you think they dumped him overboard on the way?”
“No.”
“Then he’s there and we’re going to go in there and save him.”
Mae brushed her skirts to straighten them. The sisters’ voices still swirled in her mind, but at least she wasn’t tied so tight to the ship. “I’ll need to give Rose medicine.”
“Rose stays with the Swift,” Cedar said. There was no room for argument in his words.
“Yes,” Mae said. “But I want her awake, at least. In case…” A hundred possible things that could go wrong rolled through her mind. “In case she needs to be,” she simply said.
Cedar let go of Mae’s hand. Mae hadn’t realized he was still holding on to her.
“Be quick,” he said. “We’ll drop down and go in after him, and the Swift will stay steady as long as she can. Then Ansell is going to get her, and you and Rose, out of the range of fire.”
“Only Rose and me?” Mae asked as she found her satchel strapped to the wall and dug through it for the coca leaf tonic. “Everyone else is going down there?”
“You, Rose, Wil, Theobald, and Joonie stay on board. Molly won’t stay behind, and Theobald says he knows the basics of running a steam engine. Ansell flies, Miss Wright can navigate. That’s the smallest crew that can stay on the ship. Seldom, Molly, Guffin, me, and Miss Dupuis are going down.”
“If Ansell and Miss Wright are flying, who’s going to man the cannons?” Mae asked.
“Miss Wright can handle one if need be.”
“And I’ll handle the other,” Mae said.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She found the bottle of tonic and then looked Cedar straight in the eye. “I think I’d find some deep satisfaction in blowing something to bits right now.”
He gave her a quick, animal smile that made her go hot and needful inside. The memory of his mouth against hers, his body hard pressed along every inch of her flashed quick through her mind.
She had lost her husband.
She’d never thought she would feel again. It frightened her to think that Cedar, that any man, could take the place of Jeb. But there was something about Cedar. Every time he looked at her, she was reminded that she was alive, strong. And still had a long life ahead of her.
A life she did not want to live alone.
“Be careful,” Cedar said, shaking her out of thoughts that had nothing to do with cannons or rescuing Captain Hink.
“I will be.”
Cedar turned away.
Mae opened her mouth to say something more, to tell him.… She didn’t know what she should tell him. That she cared for him. That he had made a place for himself in her heart without her even knowing.
But then he was gone, leaned at the door next to Mr. Seldom, scanning the earth in the darkness and planning their attack.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hink came awake strapped to a table beneath the stretch of a canvas tent. On the one hand he was glad to have missed the fun of being packed like fresh kill out of the ship and into wherever it was that he was now.
On the other, the first real fingers of horror were sliding down his skin along with his cold sweat.
He didn’t know where he was, but he was bound, and General Alabaster Saint was likely on his way.
They’d taken the gag off. That was something. But then, he knew Alabaster liked to hear a man beg.
The sound of boot soles over stone and dirt somewhere off over his right shoulder caught his attention.
He turned his head that way.
A tall man in a long coat and stovepipe hat stood in the corner of the room with a doctor’s bag open on the table in front of him. He was drawing knives, saws, and clamps out of the bag, inspecting them, before setting them down in a neat, straight row.
Even though Hink didn’t say anything, the man paused, and swiveled his head so that his eyes, lost in shadows of the hat and scarf around his neck, fixed on him.
“You,” he breathed, a strange sound that made the word seem foreign on his lips. “Have touched the witch.”
Hink had no idea what the hell he was talking about and opened his mouth to say so.
The man skittered across the room. Fast. So fast that Hink didn’t have time to close his mouth before the man was above him, his fingers stuck between Hink’s teeth, prying his jaws open.
Hink yelled a bit, trying to shake the man’s fingers free from his mouth, but the man just clamped his other hand down over Hink’s forehead and pressed down to hold him still.
Then the man leaned in so close, Hink felt the spiderweb tickle of his scarf brush against his cheek. Something inside that man was ticking, clicking like a cog with a broken tooth. Whatever it was that kept that man together, it wasn’t of God’s design.
He was Strange. Like Mr. Hunt had said the other men were. Made of bits, made of something rotting, something ticking.
The man ratcheted Hink’s mouth open a little more, then placed his face so near Hink’s lips that Hink could taste his moist, hot exhale. The man sniffed at Hink’s mouth, then inhaled deeply.
“You are sweet with her,” he cooed. “Sweet with her magic.” He lifted away just enough to peer down into his eyes. “Shall I bleed her magic out of you?”
“Mr. Shunt,” a voice said from somewhere near Hink’s boots. “Step away from my prisoner.”
Hink knew that voice. General Alabaster Saint.
Mr. Shunt held still, making his decision. Then he slipped his fingers out of Hink’s mouth, revoltingly slow, stroking the inside of his cheek, the side of his tongue and finally his lip as he pulled his fingers away. He straightened and licked Hink’s spittle from his fingertips.
“Your prisoner,” Mr. Shunt said. “And the witch? My witch. Where is my witch?”
“I have ships out looking,” Alabaster said as he paced nearer, but not near enough Hink could see him yet. “You’ll have your witch soon enough. And the heads of the hunter and wolf. For now, leave me.”
“Will he scream?” Shunt asked.
“Yes,” General Alabaster Saint said, stepping up nice and close now, so Hink could see him, and his two eyes, one flat brown, the other the color of old tin, but both of them working. “He will.”
Shunt gave the Saint a nod and Hink heard him retreat to the corner of the room but didn’t hear him leave. Of course his heart was pounding so hard in his ears, he was surprised he could even hear the Saint’s words.
“After all these years gone past,” the Saint said, “you and I are finally at the table of negotiation.”
Hink kept his mouth shut. He knew he wasn’t getting out of this in one piece.
“Nothing to say?” the Saint asked. “As I recall, you always had a smart mouth. Testified against me on every charge. Had me dismissed from my command, from the army. Dishonored. All for trading weapons, profiteering, and disobeying orders of retreat. So many things you had to say about my character then. And now? Silence.
“Perhaps you fully realize your situation. You know I intend to make you pay for all you have taken from me, Mr. Cage.”
“Marshal,” he said.
“Marshal Cage,” the general agreed. “The president’s man. Charged to speak with his law and act on his honor. When you die, Mr. Cage—for I am going to kill you—it will almost be as if I am killing the president himself. Such pleasure.”
“What about that spook?” Hink asked. “You his man now?”
The general pulled his pipe out of his pocket and tamped tobacco into it with his thumb. “You talk too much. Assume too much. You think I’m threatening you, when I am simply stating facts. I’m going to kill you, Cage. But not before you beg at my feet.”
“The witch,” Mr. Shunt whispered from the corner.
The general’s eyes flashed with anger.
He and the abomination didn’t get along. Good. That might be something Hink could use to his advantage. And if he survived this—not damn likely, but still, he wasn’t the kind of man who gave up—he’d want as much information on the general’s plans as he could get.
“I require silence from all my subordinates, Mr. Shunt,” the general warned.
Mr. Shunt folded his fingers together. They made an eerie clacking sound, as if he was more metal and bone than flesh and blood.
“I require the witch,” Shunt said, quiet as a beast stalking prey.
“If,” the general replied, his voice rising, “you will not fall in line, then you will be escorted out. This is my land, my rule. Do you understand?”
There was a pause. Hink had tried his bindings while the men postured, but there was no slack in them. Alabaster’s men knew how to keep prisoners kept.
“I understand every piece of you,” Mr. Shunt said.
It was a threat. Hink held his breath, waiting for weapons to be drawn. Hoping they would be.
“Then you understand my need to destroy this filth,” the general said.
To Hink’s surprise, Mr. Shunt gave a sort of hissing laugh. “Yes.”
Whatever hope Hink had of finding a way out of this hell was crushed with that one small word.
Alabaster paced away. Hink could just make out the table forge in the corner of the room. It smelled hot.
“You took my men, Mr. Cage,” the general said. “You took my rank. You took my career, and my eye.” There was a pause while he scraped coals, and then there was the pop of his lips sucking flame into the pipe tobacco.
“I never forget those who die for me,” he said, “and I never forgive those who don’t.”
The scrape of metal tongs stirring coals filled the tent.
“So now you have a choice, Mr. Cage.”
Hink strained to hear anything beyond the tent, anything that would tell him where he was. But all he heard was the scratching of something metal stirred in the hot coals, the puff of Alabaster’s pipe, the tick and click of Mr. Shunt, and the rush of the wind outside.
“Do you want me to dig your eye out of your skull?” General Saint asked.
&
nbsp; He turned and paced over to Hink, standing above him. “Or do you want to do it yourself, Marshal Cage?”
Sweat rolled down Hink’s neck and he swallowed hard. The general gripped a pair of tongs in his hand. Clamped in those tongs was Hink’s tin badge. It was red-hot, the wicked points of the star dusty white and smoking.
Hink had no weapon, no plan. He’d told his crew to run and they damn well better have run. He was tied down in his enemy’s parlor.
There was no bargaining with the Saint. No forgiveness and no negotiation. Hink knew the general wasn’t offering him a choice so much as just wanting to watch him squirm.
“How about your man, Mr. Shunt?” Hink asked. “Aren’t you going to offer him a go at me?”
“This is between you and me,” the general said.
“Then hand me that poker,” Hink said. “And you’ll have my answer.”
The general puffed on his pipe and smoke curled up around his head, like some kind of devil come elbowing up out of hell.
“I disapprove of your tone, Marshal.” The Saint leaned over him. The heat from the poker lashed a hot shadow over his face. “Struggle. It will make this all the more memorable for me.”
Hink was breathing hard. He clenched his teeth, steeling himself for the pain.
“I’m going to push this through your eye. Then I’m going to stir it in the coals and push it through your other eye. After that, we’ll see how long you can stay alive while I cut off every other part of you, bit by bit.
“But first, let me make it clear to the world just whose man you are.” The general pressed the hot star into the center of Hink’s forehead.
Hink screamed as his skin crisped and burned, pain flaying his nerves.
The Saint removed the star and turned to place it back in the coals.
Blood dripped down into Hink’s ears and eyes, and the rancid smell of burned hair and meat choked his throat.
“Marshal Cage,” the general said, puffing on his pipe. “Now no one will forget exactly who and what you are.”
Just past the rattle of his own heartbeat, the Saint’s words, and the sizzling metal dropping wet into the coals, Hink heard a sound. It was the hum of an engine in the sky.
