by Trisha Telep
Rank breath washed over her and made her gag. “’Ere, now,” the man’s low voice rumbled in her ear. “Dark tunnels be no place f’sumpin so lov’ly ’nd sweet.”
Ro screeched as he grabbed her hair and yanked, pulling her head back at a sharp angle. Dry and cracking lips pressed against hers, and she tasted the sour remnants of ancient whiskey. She bucked and kicked to free herself, landing ineffective blows against his larger frame.
The man cackled and pawed at her clothing. The bodice of her shirt ripped, exposing her flesh to the cool air. “’At’s ’it – I likes it rough!”
Terror settled into Ro’s core. She fought to reach the dagger hidden in the top of her boot. If she could only—
Light flooded the chamber and her attacker froze. The silhouette of another man appeared in the entrance. “Oi,” a familiar voice drawled. The light and the silhouette bobbed as Mason Beck moved into the room. “In the mind to share, mate?”
The vagrant stared at Mason, blinking against the bright light, and then chuckled. “Sure, mate. Lots o’ life in ’is one.”
Ro shrieked again as he cupped her breast and squeezed.
The light shifted and Mason towered over them. His lighted goggles covered his eyes, and he pointed a long-barreled pistol at her attacker’s head. “Aye,” he snarled, “and I aim to keep it that way.” The distinct click-clack as the pistol’s hammer locked into firing position echoed along the tunnel. “Now let her go.”
The drifter slowly backed away and rose to his knees, arms pointed skyward to show he had no weapons.
Mason stooped, keeping his eyes and pistol trained on the man, and helped Ro to her feet. He gently guided her faltering steps so she stood behind him.
The vagrant’s voice took on a pleading tremor. “Please, sir, thought she be a harlot.” His lips parted in a leering smile to reveal blackened and missing teeth. “No ’arm meant.”
“No harm? I’ll show you the meaning of no harm.” Mason struck the man across the temple with the pistol.
The man crumpled, and Mason dropped to his knees, striking him again with both his fist and his pistol.
“Stop!” Ro grabbed Mason’s arm and tugged. “Leave him – he isn’t worth it!”
Mason jerked away and pushed to his feet. Breathing heavily, he spat on the unmoving man and holstered his revolver. He turned to Ro and pushed his goggles to his forehead so the light illuminated the chamber but didn’t blind her.
Ro tried to cover herself with the tattered remains of her shirt. Her hands trembled like the ground beneath running Peacemakers. “I . . . I . . .” Words lodged behind her teeth and refused to move.
Mason took off his long coat and draped it around her shoulders. The hem brushed her ankles as he worked to close it. “Where’s your jacket?”
“I’m not certain,” Ro whispered, not looking at him. She threaded her arms into his coat’s sleeves, seeking the warmth he’d left in the garment.
He looked around and the light moved with him, casting odd shadows on the walls. He stepped around the now groaning vagabond and picked up a mass of torn dark fabric. “I don’t think you’ll want to keep the coat, but if you have anything of value in the pockets, you’ll want to retrieve it.”
While Mason used a length of twine to tie the drifter’s hands behind his back, Ro rummaged through the remnants of her ruined coat. She retrieved Lord Duffy’s ecto-orb first. Green and blue light pulsed in its depths as she slipped it into her pocket. Goggles, her glow-rod and a pouch containing a set of brass lock-picking tools were the last items she retrieved.
She pulled her goggles over her head to hold her hopelessly tangled curls away from her face. Mason joined her as she tossed the tattered coat into a corner.
His hand brushed her cheek. Dark emotions swam in his eyes. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
Ro felt the sting of gathering tears and looked away.
His hand searched for hers, which was hidden within the folds of his coat. Finding it and holding it tightly, he led her out of the chamber. “Let’s get you out of here.”
They paused long enough for her to pick up her revolver, and then she allowed him to guide her through the Narrows and into the broader tunnels until they reached a ladder.
“I’ll move the grate.” He peeled off his lighted goggles and handed them to her. “Wait here until I give you the signal.”
She nodded.
Mason hesitated for a moment before swinging onto the ladder. His rapid ascent soon took him out of the reach of her light.
Anxiety gnawed at Ro. Had Mason come looking for her because he discovered the orb was missing? Or had he come in search of her for other reasons? How had he found her? Where was Lord Duffy’s ecto-impression? More questions rampaged through her mind, distracting her, so that she nearly dropped Mason’s goggles when the grate scraped along its resting clamps above her.
“All clear,” Mason called.
Ro held the strap of the goggles between her teeth and scaled the ladder. The length of Mason’s borrowed coat made finding her footing on the rungs difficult, but she kept a steady pace. Soon she felt Mason’s hands on her upper arms, helping her out of the hole.
Gas lamps lining the streets still flickered in the monotone greyness of the pre-morning hours. Dawn hadn’t yet painted the buildings in shades of rose, violet and gold, deepening some of the vibrant colors that made Ithe the country’s crowning jewel.
Ro glanced at the surroundings, trying to gain her bearings. Their escape from the tunnel had placed them in a small courtyard surrounded by squat single-story buildings. She waited with her back to a wall, which still retained the coolness of the night’s air, while Mason replaced the grate. She handed his goggles over when he came to stand in front of her.
He switched off the lights and pocketed the goggles. “Did he—” He choked on the question. “Are you injured?”
She shook her head. The memory of the vagabond’s hands pawing at her made her shiver. Tears slipped down her cheeks.
Mason pulled her into his arms, and she melted into his embrace. He held her while her shoulders shook with muted sobs.
Once her tears eased, she listened to the steady rhythm of his heart. Perhaps she was wrong when she told Lord Duffy she didn’t need anyone to be happy.
Mason understood what it meant to be outcast. Perhaps he and she . . .
Her eyes slipped shut against the threat of more tears. No, she was a Dreg. Her existence on the fringes of Ithian society wasn’t something she could share without guilt.
Not even with someone like Mason. He deserved better. He deserved to be free.
“Thank you,” she finally mumbled against his chest. She craned her neck to see his face. “For coming to my rescue.”
“I have a confession.” He eased away from her. “I knew when you kissed me in the tunnels that you were stealing the orb.”
She gasped. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
A lopsided smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “To be completely honest, I was enjoying it.”
Ro groaned.
“And I knew I could get it back. But then we argued, and like an idiot I left.” He sighed and his smile vanished. “I was halfway out of the tunnels, on my way to sell the orb, before I remembered you had it.”
“Mason—”
“I went to the Furnace Room, looking for you,” he continued. “The guard told me you’d come and gone. I had no idea where you might be so I wandered the tunnels, thinking about why I’d been so stupid to let you take the orb. The only answer I could give myself was that I wanted your kiss more than I wanted the orb.”
A knot cinched deep inside Ro’s gut.
“Once I realized that, I thought of why I came back to Ithe.”
“The bounty.”
He shook his head. “I’ve had other prices on my head, and I’ve never tempted fate as I have this time.”
Ro slumped against the courtyard wall, her head swimming and stomach churning. “Mason, don’t do this. Please
.”
“When I admitted to myself that I’d come back to Ithe because of you and not the bounty, I stopped wandering the tunnels and started searching for you in earnest.” His voice dropped in pitch. “That’s when Duffy came to me and said you were in danger.”
She stared at him, not certain she’d heard correctly.
“He told me you were in the Narrows,” Mason whispered. “He told me about the bastard stalking you, and it—” He drew a deep breath before continuing in a rush, “It frightened me. The thought of someone hurting you because I’d abandoned you was more than I could bear.”
Ro hung her head and wrapped her arms tight around herself. She didn’t want to care for Mason. She didn’t want him to want her. She didn’t want to need him.
And yet when he gently cupped her chin and coaxed her to look at him, need was precisely what she felt.
“I won’t leave you again,” he murmured, dipping his head toward her. “My sweet Rosalind.”
“Stop.” She braced her hand against his chest. Guilt stabbed Ro’s heart. “I can’t do this, Mason. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand. I thought . . .”
“Take this.” She pulled Lord Duffy’s ecto-orb from her pocket. It pulsed with light, an indication of the impression’s presence within. “Take it and go. Sell it.”
“Ro—”
“Pay off your bounty.” She dropped the orb into his hands. “And then leave Ithe.”
He stared at the glass sphere. Green and blue mist swirled and churned in its depths. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.” She shoved him. “Be free. It’s what you want.”
“Not anymore.”
Her heart shattered. “I don’t want you here.”
Mason looked from her to the orb to the eastern horizon. His jaw clenched. Anger and a steely determination shone in his eyes when he focused on her again. “No, I won’t allow you to push me away, Ro. Not when you give me the means to keep you.”
His hand seized the back of her head before she could respond. He kissed her hard until her legs threatened to buckle and her lungs screamed for air. Then he was gone, running toward the Queen’s Market.
The shock of his absence slammed into her. She gulped in breaths of air. Shifting hues of violet, crimson and orange brightened the eastern sky as the sun began its slow climb out of darkness.
“Dawn,” she whispered. “Lady Helena.”
She hiked up the hem of Mason’s long coat to her thighs and galloped after him. Her chances of stopping him before he reached the Kresa were slim. But she couldn’t allow him to throw away his life just to be a part of hers.
Ro dashed through the streets, puffs of fine red dust rising with each strike of her boots. She rounded a corner and the brightly colored flags and banners of the Queen’s Market rose before her.
Airships were tethered to moorings along the western wall on the other side of the market. The Kresa would be among them, boarding passengers and a cargo of ecto-orbs to deliver to the Well of Souls.
She caught the flash of a white shirt darting among the silent stalls. “Mason!”
A shadow detached from the deeper gloom. Metal glinted in the weak dawn light as the figure darted after Mason.
Fear spurred her fading strength. The market’s colors blended into a rainbow of confusion as she ran. Her heart drummed in her chest. Her mind emptied of all thoughts but reaching Mason before he returned the orb.
Bursting from the market, Ro saw the outlines of airships bobbing and swaying over their moorings. The rising sun painted the white gas-filled balloons of the larger cargo dirigibles pink and yellow. Smaller brightly colored zeppelins remained dull ghosts of themselves in the shadow of the merchant vessels. But only one dirigible sported black canvases.
The Kresa.
Ro slowed as she neared. Crews were already readying their ships for the day. Men called out orders and used large steam-driven carts to move heavy pallets of cargo from the warehouses opposite the docks.
She scanned the gated entrance leading to the Kresa, searching for either Mason or Lady Helena. Neither was among the few crewmen assisting passengers into the lift that would take them up to the ship. “Stars burn it all,” she mumbled and retraced her steps toward the market.
In the narrow space between two warehouses, a swirling green and blue mist formed beside her as she walked, taking the form of Lord Everett Duffy. “Miss Vargas,” he said, once fully visible. “You must hurry. Helena is in danger, as is your Mr Beck.”
“Where are they?”
A clang of metal against metal and a pained cry answered.
Ro reversed course, heading back toward the airships, with Duffy keeping pace. They exited the alley as a body crashed through the side entrance of one of the warehouses and landed in the dust in front of them. She recognized Mason’s white shirt as he struggled to regain his feet.
A dusky-skinned man wearing foreign robes followed him out. He had a firm grip on Lady Helena’s arm. The tip of a curved scimitar’s blade pointed at her throat.
“Dacat,” Ro sighed and ducked into the dark shadows beside the warehouse.
Duffy remained at her side, his dull eyes wide. “You must help Helena,” he whispered.
Ro motioned for him to be quiet.
“Where is the orb?” Dacat demanded. “I know you stole it – you and that Fae-bastard woman.”
“Sold it,” Mason huffed, raising his cutlass.
Guilt sliced through Ro.
“You’re lying. If you sold it, why were you running here to meet this woman?” Dacat pressed the scimitar point into Helena’s flesh so she whimpered.
Mason grinned. “I have to catch an airship, mate. Even a Dreg expects certain matrimonial accommodations in exchange for her virtue.” He gestured to Lady Helena. “And I’ve never seen this woman before.”
Ro winced. Even though she knew her place, hearing the common Ithian insult from Mason’s lips sliced her. She steeled herself against the hurt and shrugged out of his borrowed coat. It was too cumbersome. She would soon need to move quickly.
“I saw you the two of you speaking,” Dacat snapped. “If you don’t know her, why—”
Mason laughed. “I’m a thief, you ninny. Unless I want to steal an airship, passage aboard one isn’t free. I see a high-born woman, unaccompanied on the docks, I see an easy mark.”
While Dacat seemed to be weighing Mason’s explanation, Ro eased forward on silent feet, keeping to the darker shadows, and slipped the dagger from her boot. If she could sneak up behind him without drawing his attention, perhaps she could—
Her foot kicked a discarded bit of metal hidden beneath the fine powder dust on the ground. The fragment skipped across the ground, bounced, and thumped against Dacat’s boot heel.
The foreigner looked to the ground and then over his shoulder at Ro.
Stars abandon us.
“You!” Dacat shouted at her, and shoved Lady Helena to the ground. Mason lunged for him. The two men brawled their way out of the alley.
Ro rushed to Lady Helena’s side. “Are you harmed?”
The old woman’s face was a frozen mask of terror. Her entire body quivered. She made weak mewling noises when Ro laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“My lady?”
Lady Helena offered no response or recognition that Ro had spoken.
“She’s in shock,” Lord Duffy said as he appeared beside his stricken wife. He reached for her. His hand dissolved as it passed through her in a haze of blue and green mist only to reappear on the other side of her body. He looked at his arm in surprise. Sad grey eyes focused on his wife. “Dearest Helena . . .”
Ro’s guilt crushed her. What had she been thinking? How could she have given the orb to Mason, told him to trade Duffy’s life for his own? Duffy belonged with Lady Helena.
Alarm bells clanged in succession along the docks, summoning the Peacemakers and demanding Ro’s attention. Airship crewmen scurried to secure gated en
trances as Mason and Dacat continued to fight their way over the docks. Early morning light flashed off sword blades and they lunged and parried.
“Remain here, my lord,” she said to Duffy, who nodded. “I have to help Mason.”
As she hurried to join the melee, she saw Dacat block a sword thrust and punch Mason in the face. The thief staggered back and fell to one knee.
“Mason!”
Dacat whirled, his robes trailing like a banner behind him. He slashed at her.
She dropped to the ground and rolled. The foreigner’s blade sliced the air recently occupied by her head. Regaining her feet, she thrust her dagger upward, aiming for his heart.
But he twisted and the blade pierced his side.
Dacat’s fist slammed into her jaw and sent her sprawling. Pain radiated down her neck and her head felt as though it would explode.
Sunlight flashed off Dacat’s sword as he loomed over her, preparing to deliver a final blow.
Then the tip of a cutlass pushed through Dacat’s chest. He screamed. Mason’s face appeared over the foreigner’s shoulder, a thin line of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. He wrapped his arm around Dacat’s throat, and then kicked him between the shoulder blades, sending him sprawling forward. The cutlass slid out of the man’s lifeless body, trailing blood.
As Dacat toppled into the dust, Mason turned back to Ro and swiped at the blood on his chin. “Never in the face,” he spat.
Ro couldn’t help smiling at the absurdity.
He returned her smile and jammed his cutlass into the ground. He offered her a hand. “Need a lift?”
She clapped her hand in his and groaned as he pulled her to her feet. “Stars burn it all, that hurt.”
“Let’s see it.” He gently tilted her head to examine her jaw. “You’ll bruise nicely but I don’t think you’ll suffer any permanent damage.”
Her fingers stroked his already swelling cheek where Dacat had struck him. “Nor will you.”
“Praise the Stars,” he mumbled. His strong arms crushed her against him and his lips captured hers.
Despite the pain in her jaw, Ro returned his kiss. Sweat slicked his skin and soaked his shirt but she didn’t care.
He was safe and whole.
