Tin Swift taos-2

by Devon Monk

  Men cried out, unable to see, unable to shoot.

  Cedar squinted, his vision foggy and fouled even though he’d had his eyes screwed tight.

  Walking across the field, with another green globe in one hand and a tinkered blunderbuss in the other, dark goggles firmly over his eyes, was Alun Madder.

  Above him hovered a wooden airship that resembled a child’s top with fans stuck out every which way.

  Bryn Madder leaned out the door of the thing and cranked a Gatling gun into the crouching soldiers.

  Cadoc Madder was standing in a basket that had been lowered from the ship, laying down fire in the opposite direction.

  They were all wearing dark goggles and were likely the only people on this rock who still had clear enough vision to shoot.

  Alun looked over at Cedar. “Evening, Mr. Hunt,” he yelled over the gunfire. “Got a message from Captain Beaumont you might be in the area. Have you found the Holder for us yet?” He smashed the globe into the ground and another painfully blinding light flashed out.

  Men screamed.

  Cedar growled at the pain of the light, even through his eyelids. “Can’t find something blind,” he yelled.

  Alun laughed. “Don’t expect you’d need your eyes for that. Still…”

  Another flash went off, and this one wasn’t just light. This one was dynamite. Cedar’s ears cracked with the sound, and rocks and dirt slammed through the air.

  Then Alun was beside him, his hand on his arm. “I’ll get you to the basket. Then we can talk about your promise to us aboard ship. Shall we?”

  “Wil,” he said. “He’s got Molly.”

  “Already have them on the way to the basket. The men with Miss Dupuis too. You’re the only one left out here worth saving, Mr. Hunt. You and whoever that is you’re wearing as a neck warmer.”

  “Shunt’s here.” Cedar jogged blind, with only Alun’s rough hand on his elbow guiding him forward.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Maybe you’ll get your chance. First, you’ll need eyes. Step up.”

  Cedar lifted his foot and stood up onto a wooden platform.

  “Mr. Hunt,” Cadoc Madder said by way of greeting. “Good night for flying. Find the Holder?”

  “Don’t have it on me,” Cedar said.

  “Not a yes, nor a no,” he noted.

  “Make her fast, brother Cadoc,” Alun said. “They’ll be finding their eyes, and their trigger fingers any moment now.”

  The floor beneath him jerked, and the wind rushed by his face as some kind of pulley system lifted them up to the ship.

  It took a surprisingly short time to be level with the interior of the ship, and the light inside made it easier to see.

  “I am so pleased you were able to find us,” Miss Dupuis said.

  “Got your message by way of Captain Beaumont,” Alun said. “He passes his regards to you.”

  Seldom and Guffin helped Cedar get Hink off his shoulders and set down onto the floor next to Molly.

  “Where’s the Swift?” Cedar asked.

  “She’s anchored on the other side of the ridge,” Alun said, as he helped secure the basket, and stomped off to the front of the vehicle. “Busted up pretty bad. Don’t know how long she’ll stay in the sky.”

  “We need Mae,” Cedar said. “She has medicines that might help Molly and Hink.”

  “Molly’s gone,” Seldom said softly.

  Cedar closed his eyes a moment, and swallowed against the sorrow. She had been a fine woman. It had been her word, the Gregor word, that had convinced Captain Hink to help them.

  He had thought he could get to her in time, but he had failed her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What we need,” Alun said as he guided the ship, which moved a lot faster, and seemed to take much sharper turns than most ships, “is the Holder, Mr. Hunt.”

  “I think Shunt has it,” Cedar said.

  Wil, who was taking a swig out of the canteen Miss Dupuis had handed him, put the canteen down and gave him a hard look. The same look Miss Dupuis and all the Madders were giving him.

  “Are you sure?” Wil asked.

  “Smelled it on him. Heard its song.”

  “You hear it?” Wil asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. Not really. It’s more like…a feeling of heat or cold, and that strange glow each piece gives off.”

  “You think they glow?” Cedar asked.

  “Think nothing,” Wil said. “They do glow.”

  “Sounds like each of you has your own way of tracking Strange objects,” Alun said. “I don’t care how it’s tracked, I just want it found. Now.”

  “Take us to the Swift,” Cedar said.

  “Is the Holder on the Swift?” Alun asked, his words hard with challenge.

  “Not all of it. Not yet.”

  “Sounds like you have a plan, Mr. Hunt?”

  “Might. But we’ll need the Swift.”

  “Then you’ll have her. Hold fast. I’m going to open her up.”

  The Madder brothers scrambled to hold tight to bars and ropes, and the rest of the crew did the same, as Alun Madder worked the levers and gears of his strange flying device and blasted them through the night sky at breathtaking speed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Mae pulled her hands away from Mr. Theobald, wiping his blood on her dress. She had done everything she could for him. Everything she could think of doing through the yelling of the sisters’ voices, through the rattling of gunshots, the boiler being shot in half by the cannon, taking Mr. Theobald’s life.

  Joonie had helped her drag him out of the ruined boiler room where they’d suffered the most damage. Mae tried to tend his injuries, but he was missing a great deal of the right side of his torso.

  She whispered a prayer for his soul’s gentle passage.

  Joonie was on her knees, crying beside him. Mae placed her hand on Joonie’s shoulder in comfort for a while, then stood.

  She walked over to Mr. Ansell. “Are we going down, Mr. Ansell?”

  “The envelope will hold for a few hours at the most,” he said. “We have no boiler, so no steam. Throw the anchor, Miss Lindson, or we’ll be crushed against these mountains.”

  Mae made her way to the anchor and pulled the linchpin, releasing the anchor. They seemed to drift for a long time, too long, before finally, the anchor caught hold and stopped them.

  “What about the others?” Joonie asked, picking herself up finally and wiping her face. “We’ve got to go back and get them out of there.”

  Ansell turned, his round face grim. “We don’t have power, Miss Wright. We don’t have steam. We can’t go back. There is nothing we can do to help them. So we wait for them to find us in the next couple hours. If not, we’ll let air out of the envelope, slow as we can, bring the ship down, and walk out of these hills.”

  “But Rose—,” Mae started.

  Ansell just pressed his lips together, shaking his head, and turned away.

  Rose couldn’t walk, and the three of them couldn’t carry her. If they brought the ship down, she’d have to be left behind.

  They were no longer the rescuers. They were in sore need of being rescued.

  “Mae?” Rose said softly.

  Mae jerked. She didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, the sisters’ voices filling her thoughts, but Ansell was now sitting staring out the fore windows and Miss Wright was staring out the aft. Someone had pulled a blanket over Mr. Theobald and moved him to one side of the space.

  Mae rubbed her hands down her dress and walked over to Rose, her boots strangely loud in the quietly rocking ship.

  “I’m here,” Mae said.

  Rose opened her eyes. “Maybe I could help,” she said. “Fix the boilers?”

  Mae took her hand. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do. Any of us, right now.”

  “Ship coming,” Joonie said. “Straight over from the compound.”
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  Ansell jumped up and jogged over to peer out the window. “What kind of thing is that?”

  Joonie bit her lip and shook her head. “Nothing I’ve seen before. Wait. That’s glim light in glass. A single globe high. It’s okay, Mr. Ansell. That’s a friendly ship.”

  “Lots of people can get their hand on glim,” Ansell said, pulling a gun down from the overhead storage.

  Joonie put her hand on his arm. “It’s a signal among the people I work for. Miss Dupuis knows it.”

  “You think she’s aboard?”

  “She must be.”

  The sound of fans grew louder as the ship neared.

  “There!” Joonie said. “That’s Mr. Hunt.”

  Mae’s heart lurched. She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath, wondering if he was alive.

  “We’re coming aboard!” he yelled, from where he hung half out of the craft.

  Ansell strode over to the door. “Is the captain alive? We lost the boiler.”

  “He’s alive,” Cedar yelled. “Stand back while we secure the ship.”

  Ansell got out of the doorway. A cannon boomed, and ropes fell like rain around the ship. No, not rain, it was a net with weighted bolos on the edges catching at the ship.

  Clever.

  Ansell stepped up to the door and latched the net onto the hooks worked into the frame. Then he tied two extra lines from the netting to bars inside the ship. The net formed a sort of rope walkway between the two vessels.

  Mae shifted so she could see out the door. Cedar Hunt strode into the room, bloody, burned, but whole, and Mae felt as if she’d just seen the sun rise.

  Then Bryn Madder strode in behind him, his tool belt and pockets bulgy with metal and devices, his goggles strapped across his forehead. “Heard there’s a blown gasket or two?” he said. “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Back that way,” Cedar said.

  “You know him?” Ansell asked, eyeing the bull-shouldered short Madder.

  “Yes. And he’ll treat the ship right, Mr. Ansell.” Cedar paced over to Mae.

  “And the captain?” Ansell asked.

  “He’s still breathing, but hurt badly,” Cedar said. “Mae, can you help him?”

  “The captain?” she asked. “I can try. Of course. But I won’t leave Rose. Cedar, we can’t leave her behind.”

  Cedar’s eyes went hard. “Who said we’re going to leave her behind?”

  “I…” Mae looked around the room. Someone had said it. Surely they had. But she couldn’t remember. There were too many voices in her head, too many words screaming at her, pulling at her.

  Cedar’s hand gently touched her face. “…need you to stay with us, Mae. Just a bit longer.”

  She blinked hard, trying to focus on him. His touch, his words. “I’m fine,” she said. “What do I need to do?”

  “I need you to tend to the captain.”

  “Bring him here,” she said.

  “Mae, the ship isn’t steady. It’d be better if you came over to the Madders’ craft. Better if we all boarded their ship.”

  She heard him, his voice a low rumble beneath the sisters’ constant shriek. But he wasn’t listening to her.

  “Captain Cage needs to be here,” Mae said, not sure that her voice was rising above the sisters’. “He needs to be on the Swift. He’s tied to her. Bound because I bound him, tied him. His ship’s dying. He’s dying.”

  Ansell muttered something, but Cedar must have heard her and understood. “I’ll bring him. Stay here with Rose.”

  Then Mr. Alun Madder was suddenly strolling across the ship toward her.

  “How’s Miss Small?” he asked, looking genuinely concerned.

  “Fine as wine,” Rose whispered.

  Alun looked down at her and gave her a smile. “Just lying around when there’s a ship to be flown? That’s not like you, Rose.”

  “I offered to fix it,” she said slowly, her words falling off at the end of each breath. “Mae said no.”

  “And you listened?”

  “Just haven’t argued yet,” Rose managed. Then her face screwed up in pain and she bit her lip, her moan thin and high. Even the blood that trickled from her lip was tinged with gray.

  “Mrs. Lindson,” Alun said, “if you have a way of making Mr. Hunt find that piece of Holder, then now’s the time for him to do so. She won’t last the hour.”

  There was a ruckus of boots and grunting as Cedar, Wil, and Seldom carried Captain Cage into the ship and laid him down on the blankets near Rose’s hammock.

  Someone had taken the time to wipe most of the blood from his face, but there was no hiding the hole where his right eye should be, nor the burned star in his forehead.

  “I’ll need my satchel,” Mae said, walking over, then kneeling next to the captain. “Someone check his limbs and torso for wounds.” She ran her fingers over his neck, his head, and then looked at both his ears.

  He had lost the eye. His face was burned, bruised. But he still had one eye, his tongue, both ears, and his nose.

  Seldom split the buttons on the captain’s shirt and spread it open. His entire chest was bruised and knotted, with black, green, and sickly yellows spread out across his skin.

  “Bullet hole in one leg,” Seldom said. “Broken arm. I don’t see blood except his face.”

  “That’s good, thank you, Mr. Seldom.” She took her satchel from Cedar and soaked a cloth with the coca leaf tonic, then pressed that against his eye socket and did the same for the brand in his forehead. She quickly bandaged his head, and then wrapped his ribs, in hopes they weren’t so broken that they were cutting up his insides.

  She put his arm in a sling and soaked another cloth with the coca leaf to tie down tight over both sides of the hole in his leg.

  He didn’t wake. He didn’t stir. But he was breathing.

  “That’s all,” she said, trying to think through the call of the sisters, the incessant push for her to return to the coven, to walk, run, jump the ship if she had to. “That’s all I can do for him. If the ship can be patched, any at all, it might help him.”

  “Bryn’s working on it,” Cedar said.

  She looked up. Some time had passed. Miss Dupuis was sitting next to Mr. Theobald, holding his hand. She was very pale and silent, her eyes red as tears stained her face.

  Mae knew that sorrow. Mr. Theobald had been more than a traveling companion to Miss Dupuis. He had been her love.

  Wil and Cedar seemed oblivious to her pain, and stood squared off toward Alun Madder. From the set of their shoulders and grim expressions, it was clear they had been arguing.

  “What?” Mae asked.

  “You tell her, Mr. Hunt,” Alun said. “It’s your idea.”

  Cedar turned to her, and helped her stand. “Rose needs the Holder. Mr. Madder still thinks if we can find the tin piece of it, we can use it to draw out the key that is killing her.”

  “Yes,” Mae said. “I remember.”

  “Mr. Shunt is down there. He was in the compound. I think he has the Holder with him,” Cedar said.

  “So you’re going to go find him, right?” she asked. “You’ll hunt him, find him, take the Holder from him, and bring it back for Rose.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  His words were even, and without much emotion. But she could see the sorrow in his eyes.

  Rose. It was Rose who didn’t have the time.

  “What can we do then? We can’t just…Oh, Cedar, we can’t just let her die.”

  “Can you save her?” he asked. “Your magic is vows and curses: bindings. Can you call to the Holder, Mae? Now that it is so near, can you cast a spell to bind the piece that’s in her to the whole of it? It used to be one whole thing. It might respond to being one thing again at your urging. If you can bind it to itself, and to Rose, just like you bound the captain and his ship, you’d draw it here, right out of Shunt’s hands. Rose might have a chance then. We could try to remove the piece once we have the chunk it came from.”

>   “Bind it?” Mae’s heart raced. “I don’t…my magic. It’s so hard to focus. To make magic do what I want. If I bound it to…to Rose. Made her a part of it like Captain Hink and the Swift…” She searched his face. “I could kill her.”

  Cedar nodded. “I can’t think of any other way to save her, Mae. No time. No Holder. She’d want you to try. You know she would.”

  Mae looked away from him to his brother, Wil, who was watching her with the curious eyes of the wolf he once was. Then she looked at Alun. “You’re against it?” she asked.

  “Not entirely,” he hedged. “If you think you can do it. Are you strong enough, Mrs. Lindson? Are you near enough the Holder to call it this far?”

  Mae knew she was not. But she had to try. “I’ll need a flame, a bowl of water, a stone or dirt, and smoke. And I’ll need you all to give me and Rose space.”

  Alun lifted one eyebrow. “As you say.”

  Everyone on the ship moved away. Someone found the items she had asked for, and Cedar handed them to her.

  A lantern for flame, a cup of water, a smooth stone out of Seldom’s pocket, and a bundle of sage that would smoke once lit.

  “Will these do?” Cedar asked.

  “Yes.” Mae took them and placed one at each compass point on the floor around Rose. Then she stood next to Rose.

  It was as if all the color had washed out of her friend. Her skin was gray, her lips blue, and the fire of her hair dulled down to ash.

  Her eyes were open, glossy as dull nickels, staring at the ceiling. Each breath stopped too soon, and the next began too late.

  Mae took a deep breath. The sisters’ chorus grew louder with her fear. She shouldn’t be using magic, shouldn’t whisper the spell, shouldn’t utter the blessing, cast the binding. Magic turned dark in her hands. Magic turned wicked on her words.

  The sisters did not want her to use magic.

  Mae refused to listen to the voices. This was the only thing that might save Rose.

  She took Rose’s hand firmly in her own and closed her eyes.

  The fragment to the whole, the Holder to the key. Two as one, joined, bound, forever. Come on the wind, come on the earth, come on the stars, come on the mist. Be bound, be whole, be healed once again.