Salvage

by Meljean Brook

  Oh, dear God. Her heart thundered against her ribs. This had been so easy to imagine before. Just a simple climb to the weather deck.

  Craning her neck, she looked up. With the glass blocking the porthole, she hadn’t been able to stick her head out like this and see exactly what they’d have to climb. But there was almost ten feet of smooth, polished wood between the porthole and the rail on the upper deck—and all of it at that same steep angle.

  She pulled her head back in. “I made a mistake, Thom. I don’t think this will work.”

  “It will.” Thom was pushing up his sleeves over his forearms, sliding aside small steel panels in his wrists, breaking the illusion of smooth metal skin and revealing the gears and pistons within. “You’ve just got to hang on to me. All right?”

  His certainty helped. Though her heart still raced, she nodded.

  Moving to the porthole, Thom looked up. He swung his arm. A glint of metal caught the moonlight—a thin cable, she realized. He tugged, seemed satisfied.

  He gestured her close. “All right, Georgie. I’ve got this hooked around the bowsprit. We’re going to swing out, and I’m going to pull us up. Once we get up to the rail, I’ll look over, see where the crew is. The bird screen they’ve put across the bow will probably keep us from being seen, but if we’re spotted, I’m going to go up and over right there. But if they don’t see us, you’re going to hang on while I go around the hull and get closer to them. You should take off your gloves for a better grip.”

  She stripped them off and shoved them into her coat.

  The steel of his palm chilled by the air outside, he cupped her cheek. “Now, listen. If it all goes to hell when I cut that balloon, if you see any hint of fire, you drop into the water before she explodes. Try to straighten your body and hit feet first—your legs will heal. Can you swim?”

  “A little.” She couldn’t manage more than a whisper.

  “I’ll come for you. I’ll find you.” His head lowered, his kiss a fierce promise. “Are you ready?”

  She nodded. After another hard kiss, he moved to the porthole. Gripping the frame at the top, he lifted his body through and sat in the opening with his legs hanging over. Georgiana linked her arms around his shoulders, and buried her face against the back of his neck.

  “All right,” she whispered.

  He leaned forward, pulling her with him. The front of her legs scraped past the porthole frame, and then they were falling out into nothing, the bowsprit creaking above them and her scream locked behind clenched teeth. They spun, the hull and the moon in a dizzying whirl around them. Desperately, she wrapped her legs around his waist, then a windowed porthole spun into her view—the porthole on the other side of the stateroom, over the settee instead of the table—and she realized that they weren’t falling, but swinging in an arc around the prow like a pendulum.

  Before they swung back, Thom began to climb. A soft ratcheting click came from inside his left arm—winding up the slack in the cable. Georgiana clung to him, not daring to close her eyes, too frightened to look anywhere but up. The long bowsprit spar extended like a spear from the point of the bow, and at its base, the heavy iron loop that anchored the balloon’s forward tethers was set into the hull.

  “As soon as we reach that anchor, you put your foot on that big loop,” Thom said softly. “Then grab on to those balloon cables or hold on to the spar. You can hide right there for a bit.”

  Better than dangling from the rail. Heart thumping wildly, Georgiana watched the anchor loop come closer. Thom slowed, hanging on to the cable with one hand while reaching around behind her with the other. His forearm rotated against her back, his fingers curving around her side as securely as if he’d been holding her from the front.

  “I’ve got you, Georgie. Now step on that loop.”

  The iron was as thick as her ankle, but even while dangling from a thin cable a hundred feet over the water, the man she clung to seemed more secure. Clenching her teeth against the whimpers building in her chest, she let her leg slide from around his waist and set the toe of her boot on the anchor loop.

  “Reach out and grab that spar now.”

  Held, but still terrifying to let go. With one arm still clinging to his shoulders, she leaned over. The wooden bowsprit pole was smooth and cold, slippery to her sweating hand. She gripped it tight.

  “Pull yourself over, now. I’ve got you.”

  It seemed almost impossible to make herself move, then she was over all at once, clinging to the heavy tether cables and looking at Thom.

  His dark gaze swept her from head to toe. “All right?”

  As long as she didn’t look down. Chest heaving, she nodded. The rail was just above her head—truly an easy climb now. She would just have to reach up and pull herself over.

  Just as Thom did now, lifting himself and glancing over. After lowering himself again, he hung on to the rail with one hand and unhooked his cable from the bowsprit. A grapple dangled from the end. He folded the claws and slipped the contraption into his left biceps.

  “There’s just two of them amidships, starboard side,” he said quietly. “Only three lanterns. There’s none at this end, Georgie, so they won’t be coming this way to put one out—and they aren’t likely to see you when you look over.”

  And they would be less likely to see him coming. Good. “Be careful, Thom.”

  He grinned. “That’s the opposite of what we’re doing, Georgie.”

  And then he was gone, silently making his way along the rail. Hardly daring to breathe, Georgiana waited. A cold breeze slipped past her cheeks. The airship swayed slightly, the hull creaking.

  A shout rang from the deck.

  Heart almost bursting in her chest, Georgiana gripped the rail and hauled herself up to look, feet braced against the cables. The soft glow of the lamps at the opposite end of the deck transformed everything in between into shapes and shadows—two men with pistols extended, but they didn’t dare shoot, not with Thom so close to the balloon. With the moon behind him, he was silhouetted ten feet above the deck, hanging from a portside tether cable by one arm. From his other arm, the point of a long blade pressed against the envelope.

  His deep voice carried across the deck. “You’d best put those lanterns out.”

  They hesitated, clearly not believing that he would. It was unthinkable to them, too. Without a word, Thom stabbed the blade through the envelope.

  Georgiana’s heart stopped. The opposite of careful—but if they didn’t risk everything, they’d lose everything.

  And it was a risk worth taking. Shouting, the men ran for the lanterns, flinging them over the starboard side, away from the hole. Only a tiny leak right now. Thom had only pierced the balloon’s skin; his blade was still buried in the envelope, blocking the leak, and despite the pressure the metal fabric wouldn’t rip easily.

  As soon as the lanterns were gone, Thom jerked the blade upward, slicing open a two-foot tear. He dropped to the deck with a heavy thud, the steel blade at his arm glinting.

  The mercenaries ran. They sprinted to the companionway, shouting the fire alert as they disappeared down the ladder.

  Georgiana hauled herself over the rail, stumbling into the coils of rope and crates near the bow. Moonlight spilled faintly over the port side of the deck, lighting her way as she hurried toward Thom. He caught her hand, and they raced to the stern, where the boats hung on pulleys.

  Out of breath, she stopped at the tie, frantically unfastening the ropes. And Thom . . . didn’t have a left hand.

  For the space of a second, she stared. He wasn’t holding a blade that had been stashed inside his arm, as she’d thought. His arm was a blade. And as she watched, he pushed back a small lever at his elbow, and his forearm unfolded as if being turned inside out. Gears clicked. The blade retracted and his fingers snapped into place, one by one.

  Mouth open in shock, she met his eyes. “Thom!”

  His grin flashed again. “I asked Ivy for it—in case I was ever eaten by a mega
lodon, I could cut myself out.”

  Shaking with sudden laughter, she quickly finished unwinding the tie. Thom hauled on the line and lowered the boat to the deck, then grabbed it by the mooring rope tied to the bow.

  “To the tether, Georgie. I don’t trust that they won’t cut the pulley line if we go down this way.”

  Dragging the boat after him, Thom quickly started down the moonlit port side, toward the center of the ship. Georgiana followed close behind. But they weren’t going to be there alone. Ahead of them, footsteps pounded up the ladder. Mercenaries spilled out of the companionway, shadowy shapes peering through the dark toward them.

  “I ripped the balloon open portside,” Thom called over the scrape of the boat against the deck. “If you shoot, we’re all dead.”

  More mercenaries came up as he spoke. Winch’s voice sounded through the dark. “Put your guns away, you fools! Go pull down the other lifeboat. Billy, Leigh—go find Southampton. He’ll need help carrying up that gold.”

  “I’m here, Mrs. Winch.”

  Thom abruptly stopped and faced the center of the ship. Georgiana scrambled past the boat to his side. He pushed her back against the rail, behind him.

  Southampton emerged from the shadows at the center of the deck, wearing a jacket over his nightshirt and a sword in his hand.

  A sword. Fear roiled in Georgiana’s stomach. Southampton couldn’t shoot, but he could stab—and he held the weapon with the ease of someone long familiar with it.

  He stopped, just over the length of his blade away from her husband. A thin smile curled his lips. “Well done, Big Thom.”

  To her astonishment, instead of forming his own blade again, Thom pulled on his gloves. His voice was flat and hard. “If you have a brain at all, you’ll get into that lifeboat with your crew, and then you’ll leave us be. We won’t put any claim on your gold. We won’t say I was the one that brought it up. Those coins don’t matter to me.”

  “You believe I’ll take that risk? Only three people know how many coins you found. I’ve already silenced your salvage dealer. Now you and your wife must be silenced.”

  “And your mercenaries?” Georgiana said.

  “Ah, yes. Well, they will be paid enough to keep silent.”

  “Or maybe you’ll have them killed, too,” she said. In the shadows, the mercenaries had quieted. “Or perhaps they’ll blackmail you for more money. Or steal the gold and be done with it.”

  She hoped Mrs. Winch would at least consider it.

  “There will be no blackmail or stealing, Mrs. Thomas.” Southampton looked away from her and regarded Thom with amusement. “And my crew and I will be the only ones to survive this. You’re a fool for thinking this will save you. We’re forty leagues from the nearest shore. The two of you alone will have little chance of reaching it alive.”

  Forty leagues? Oh, dear God. They would have to row a hundred and twenty miles.

  But she wouldn’t let the dread overwhelm her. They still had a better chance in a small boat than they did on this ship.

  Thom obviously thought so, too. “Little chance is better than none.”

  “I prefer all or nothing. Now you’d do well to say good-bye to your lovely wife while you still can.”

  “And you’d best get in your boat and go while you can,” Thom said, and she’d never heard his voice so hard and cold. “I was raised under the boot of men like you, who use people and toss them away. When that tower came down, I tore apart men like you. We called them the Horde, but they were the same. And if you don’t back away, I’ll tear you apart, too.”

  “They put you down with a tower.” Southampton took a step, his blade rising. “I’ll do it with a sword.”

  He lunged, jabbing the blade toward Thom’s heart—and stayed, as if his blade had embedded in flesh. Screaming, Georgiana flew forward. But it wasn’t what she’d thought. Southampton hadn’t impaled Thom’s chest.

  Thom had caught the blade in his fist.

  He stood, staring at Southampton as his fist slid farther down the sword toward the hilt—the glove preventing any spark from steel scraping against steel.

  Jaw clenched so hard that his face seemed to shake, Southampton tried to pull back on his sword, then tried to shove it forward.

  With a twist of his wrist, Thom snapped the blade and tossed it over the side. Stepping forward, he swung his right fist. A terrible wet crack split the air. Southampton flew back into the shadows at the center of the deck—but by the shape of his head, Georgiana could see that half of it was gone.

  Stripping off his bloody glove, Thom threw it to the deck and looked into the dark. “Any of you want a go?”

  “I don’t think we do,” Mrs. Winch answered quickly. “We’ll consider Southampton’s gold your ransom.”

  “Fair enough.” Thom looked to Georgiana. “Now you hang on to me again.”

  They’d done it. Heart pounding with sudden relief, she leapt up onto his back, winding her arms around his shoulders. He reached the airship tether—five hundred feet below, still connected to Oriana—and grabbed on with his gloved left hand. With his right hand, he hauled the boat over the side by its mooring line.

  “Ready?”

  She buried her face in his neck. “Yes.”

  He went over, sliding down the cable toward the water. The tether bowed slightly under their weight—the airship was sinking, the cable taking on slack. With their feet just above the sea, Thom lowered the boat to the surface, then carefully slid the rest of the way down.

  Standing in the boat, he hugged her fiercely. Georgiana clung to him, refusing to think of the forty leagues. They’d made it this far.

  A splash suddenly sounded nearby, followed by a dismayed shout from Mrs. Winch. Thom stiffened against her.

  “Those damned fools.” Letting her go, Thom dragged up the oars stowed lengthwise beneath the wooden thwarts and moved to the bow. “Sit, Georgie.”

  Georgiana quickly took a seat on the center thwart, searching for another pair of oars on the bottom boards. “What happened?”

  “They threw the body over.” He fitted the oars into the rowlocks. “Now hang on.”

  “But let me—”

  Thom surged backward with a mighty pull. The boat shot forward, almost tumbling Georgiana off her bench. A wild laugh broke from her.

  “Oh, Thom! Perhaps forty leagues is not much at all!”

  He grinned and pulled again, and they sped across the swells. Georgiana faced forward as long as she could, watching him, until the wind and salt spray blinded her. She turned to look behind them.

  Lit by the moon, the airship had just settled onto the surface of the water, the balloon sinking in on itself. The mercenaries had begun filling the other boat—across the distance, she made out their dark silhouettes, the items being tossed from the airship to the mercenaries waiting below. Supplies or gold.

  She looked around again as Thom suddenly stopped rowing. The expression on his face warned her to silence. Quietly, he tucked the oars inside the boat and moved to her thwart.

  “Shh.” He gathered her to his chest, his voice a whisper in her ear. “No noise against the bottom of the boat. Stay absolutely quiet, no matter what.”

  She nodded against his wet coat, not daring to breathe. They waited, rising and falling with the roll of the sea. Minutes passed.

  The boat suddenly jolted, rocking deeper into a swell. Moonlight glinted on a blade of steel racing past the stern—a razor-edged dorsal fin taller than Thom would have been standing. Sharp terror jumped through Georgiana’s skin, spearing her heart.

  A megalodon.

  Thom’s arms tightened around her. She watched in horror as the monstrous armored shark sped straight toward the airship, the fin slicing through the path of moonlight.

  And from the south, another fin. Oh, dear God.

  Faint across the distance, shouts rose from the other boat. Water splashed as they began a desperate rowing. Two men jumped out, tried to swim back to the sinking airship, as
if seeking safety.

  There would be no safety there, either. A frenzy was starting. The giant sharks would batter the airship’s hull until they’d torn everything apart.

  Nearing the mercenaries’ lifeboat, the fin disappeared beneath the surface.

  “Don’t look, Georgie,” Thom breathed into her ear.

  But she couldn’t look away. The other boat abruptly lifted up out of the water, as if on a huge wave.

  And in one bite was gone. Soon the thrashing swimmers in the water were gone, too.

  For a long moment, there were no more shouts, no sounds but Georgiana’s ragged breath. The bow of the airship suddenly tipped up, wood splintering. Another fin raced toward it. Georgiana clenched her teeth against a scream of warning. On the deck, a familiar silhouette—Mrs. Winch, standing with her feet apart. A gun barrel gleamed in her hand, pointed at the shark coming toward her.

  A bullet wouldn’t do anything to a megalodon. Shooting a weapon beneath a leaking balloon would.

  The fin went under. The airship tipped sharply to port—and Mrs. Winch fired her pistol.

  The airship exploded in a bright ball of light. Muffling her cry, Georgiana turned her face against Thom’s throat. Heat rushed past her skin.

  Then there was just cold again.

  And despite Thom’s strength and how quickly he could row, with monsters swimming all around them, forty leagues seemed very, very far away.

  * * *

  The burning remains of the airship were nothing but smoking pieces of flotsam when Georgiana finally succumbed to sleep, held securely in Thom’s arms.

  Only a few minutes seemed to pass before his low “Wake up, Georgie” pulled her back up, but when she blinked her eyes open, the eastern sky had paled, and pink traced the clouds.

  The low thrum of an airship jolted her fully awake.

  Still cradled in Thom’s lap, she sat up. Her gaze searched the air, her heart lifting when she saw the skyrunner coming from the southeast, her lines sleek and beautiful.

  Thom pulled her back against his chest and pressed a kiss to her hair. “They must have seen the explosion,” he said softly.