Myell bit into one of the apples, discovered he was famished, and finished it before his stomach began to revolt. He stripped off his own clothes, climbed into bed next to Jodenny and junior, and was asleep before he could even figure out how to turn down the lantern wick.
Someone else took care of it, or else it burned itself out, because when he opened his eyes again the room was entirely dark. He was certain that he was back in the Painted Sphere with water rising all around him. He gasped for air, kicked his legs. Firm hands caught his wrists.
“Stop,” Jodenny said. “Wake up. You’re okay.”
As his eyes grew accustomed to starlight through the windows, he saw that she was lying beside him with junior’s bump between them.
“What?” he asked.
“You were dreaming,” she whispered. “Go to sleep.”
He slipped underwater into more bad dreams in which he couldn’t save Cappaletto or Bell. When sunlight hit his eyes he turned to the wall and pulled the bedspread over his head. He woke much later when the taste of butter reached his tongue. Pushing the blanket aside, he blinked at Jodenny sitting on the bed and smiling at him. She had been painting his lips with her finger.
“Humph?” he asked, as articulately as he could.
“Time for breakfast,” she said. “There’s a housekeeper here named Mrs. Dunbar, and I think I love her. She made pancakes.”
Getting out of bed was a good idea, but not as easy as he’d hoped. His whole body ached in bone-deep ways, and all his muscles had stiffened during the night.
“Maybe I’ll bring it to you,” Jodenny said, leveraging herself to her feet.
Shame got him to his feet and toddling after her. The house was larger by daylight than he remembered, which meant more walking, which meant more pain radiating up his legs and back. What he wouldn’t give for a painkiller or two. The sight of the pancakes cheered him up, as did the smell of good old-fashioned coffee.
Jodenny watched him shovel food into his mouth, a fond smile on her face.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” he asked.
“I had my turn,” she said.
“Where’s the commander?”
“After all this time, I think you can call him Sam.”
Myell poured himself more coffee. “I think you can call him Sam. He’s still Commander Osherman to me.”
Mrs. Dunbar, round-faced and perfectly cheerful, bustled in with some fresh eggs. “It’s good to have people in the house again,” she said. “Lady Darling, she always said to treat Captain Osherman like one of the family.”
“And now he’s a captain,” Myell mused.
Jodenny squeezed Myell’s hand. “Not that kind.”
“Will you be staying long?” she asked.
Myell’s gaze drifted to the mantel clock he’d seen in the living room. It was almost ten o’clock. He was startled he’d slept that long. Jodenny’s grip tightened on his fingers and he realized she hadn’t been thinking of the clock at all.
“Yes,” Jodenny said tightly. “We’ll be staying for several days.”
“I’d better see how the cows are doing,” Mrs. Dunbar said.
She left the kitchen. Myell concentrated on his pancakes and tried not to flinch under Jodenny’s stern expression.
“You’re not going,” she said.
He tried to think of something reassuring and soothing to say, but the words didn’t exist. He settled for “Nothing’s changed.”
“Nothing’s changed.” Her cheeks turned red with outrage. “Nothing’s changed?”
Myell had been warned that pregnant women could be mercurial, but he wasn’t prepared for the full reality.
“I’ll tell you what’s changed,” Jodenny said. “See this belly? It’s changed. See my body? It’s changed a lot. See the view outside these windows? This is nineteenth-century Australia. Does that sound like home to you?”
“It’s not about—” he started.
But she was just warming up. “I’ve been stuck here with flies and open sewers, and do you know what a Team Space supply officer does around here? Nothing! She does nothing. She sits around and goes to tea parties and tries to save babies whose mothers are going to kill them anyway.”
Myell shut his open jaw. “And she talks about herself in third person.”
“It’s not funny,” Jodenny said.
“No.” He pushed his plate aside. “It’s not.”
She didn’t burst into tears, but looked close to the breaking point. Myell got out of his chair, came up behind her, and wrapped his arms around her so she could lean backward.
Jodenny sniffed. “When?” “This afternoon,” he said. “I’m probably back to every twenty-four hours or so.”
She shook her head. “I’m not letting you go.”
He didn’t say, “You can’t go with me,” because that was as obvious as the sunlight streaking through the window. They both remembered what had happened when she went from Providence to the Confident.They couldn’t risk that again, not so close to junior’s arrival. Not even if junior dropped out in the next few minutes; who knew what the ring could do to a newborn?
Myell kissed the top of her head. It wasn’t enough, of course, but it was all he had at the moment.
Osherman came in the kitchen door, stomping dust from his boots. “Well, we have a problem with the airship.”
“What problem?” Jodenny asked.
“It’s gone.”
She sniffled. “Are you sure it’s not just invisible?”
“Pretty sure, yes.”
They searched the yard, but found no airship either visible or invisible.
“Maybe it drifted off,” Jodenny suggested. “Like a balloon.”
Osherman said, “I don’t like it.”
“Speaking of things you won’t like,” Myell said, steeling himself, “I need to tell you both about Homer.”
The house had a shaded front porch and the day wasn’t too hot out yet. A breeze washed over them as Jodenny sat in a rocking chair, Osherman leaned against a post, and Myell stood against the railing. He needed something to do with his hands and so he picked up a handful of pebbles and began pitching them, one by one, at a eucalyptus tree a few meters away.
“It started when I was with Commander Nam’s team,” he said. He told them about that long-ago day when he’d been rescued from the ocean by Free-not-chained, and later how she’d saved him from a shark attack, and how the rescue had been more intimate than he expected or wanted.
“Define intimate,” Jodenny said, her expression dark.
“I was barely conscious,” he said. “I didn’t realize what she was doing.”
Jodenny looked away. Osherman said nothing.
Next he told them about meeting Free-not-chained again, and the man-seal who’d told him about the son he hadn’t expected. A son who was fully grown and in trouble with the Wondjina gods, and who just happened to be the one who’d stranded Jodenny and Osherman here in the past.
“Let me get this straight,” Osherman said when he was done. “You have a son who’s a half-crocodile. He angered the gods, stranded us here, lied and misled just about everyone, and now his mother wants you to intercede and release him from some kind of purgatory or curse.”
Myell had no more stones to throw.
“I think that’s about it,” he said.
Jodenny covered her face with both hands. Her shoulders shook. Myell didn’t know what to say or do. He went to his knees in front of her chair and put his hands on her knees.
“I’ll fix it,” he promised. “Whatever I have to do.”
She pulled her hands down. Her expression was half amazement, half amusement. “They never mentioned this kind of thing in officer training.”
A knot loosened its hold on Myell’s heart. “You’re not mad?”
“I’m furious,” she said. “But not so much at you.”
Myell kissed her soundly.
Osherman said, “I’m going to take a walk,” and left.
>
Myell glanced after him, wondering if he should follow. Jodenny wrapped both hands around his head and pulled him tight. He breathed in the smell of her—cities and caves and places he hadn’t been with her, hadn’t shared.
Her lips broke free of his and she made a lewd suggestion against his ear.
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“You don’t know much about pregnant women, do you?”
“We’ll squish the baby.”
“No, we won’t.” Her smile was wide and genuine and dirty. “We just need some pillows and some creative positioning.”
He was still doubtful as she pulled him into the room, and even more doubtful once she’d shed her dress, but she was gorgeously lush in the morning light, all curves and soft skin and wide-eyed under his touch.
“I’ll be back,” he said. “Wherever it takes me, I’ll come back. I won’t leave you.”
“Sssh.” Her hands slid around his waist. “Right here, right now, it’s only us. Stay with me.”
So he did.
They slept until a dog barked somewhere, loud and obnoxious. Myell woke famished. The sun stood at midday and the hot air was still.
“Food?” he asked her.
“Great idea.”
He slid out of bed, fumbled into his pants, and padded barefoot down the hallway. The house was empty and peaceful in the bright light. He was halfway to the kitchen when he saw Osherman sitting in the living room. A moment later he realized the man wasn’t Osherman.
“Hello, Chief,” the man said.
Myell squinted. He didn’t recognize the stranger—not his pale face, his thin hair, or his well-cut clothes.
“Do I know you?” Myell asked.
The man patted the pistol that was resting in his lap.
He said, “You knew me when I was named Speed.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Jodenny was dozing off again. She thought she’d heard voices, but it was easy to ignore them and luxuriate in the comfort of the sturdy bed. When footsteps came down the hall she forced herself awake to greet Myell. Instead, Osherman walked into view. She grabbed the bed-sheet and pulled it up to her neck.
He glanced her way and flushed.
“Where’s Myell?” he asked.
“Not far.” The sheet seemed woefully inadequate for the task of hiding, but Jodenny pulled it tighter anyway. “Why?”
“I talked to Tulip, and he had an idea or two,” Osherman said.
He carefully avoided looking at her, which Jodenny decided was ridiculous. They’d shared beds together, after all. In the permanent timeline, they’d been married. Still, logic had nothing to do with it.
“He was just here,” Jodenny said. “Is he in the kitchen?”
Osherman went to find him. Jodenny got herself out of the bed, pulled her dress back on, pined for the luxury of a hot shower, and went after them. The living room was empty and Osherman was alone by the stove.
“Outhouse?” Jodenny suggested.
Osherman went out into the yard, and returned shaking his head. He scanned the countryside. “He can’t have gone far.”
“He wouldn’t go anywhere,” Jodenny protested. “Not on his own.”
“Homer,” Osherman said.
“Why would Homer take him away?”
“I don’t know. But if not Homer, then who?”
A gunshot cracked through the air.
Myell risked a glance over his shoulder. “Where are we going, Speed?”
“The name’s Cohen.”
The dirt road wound past Lady Darling’s farmhouse and through the deep woods. Flies hovered in the hot stillness. They were the only two people on the road. Maybe the only people for hundreds of kilometers, as far as Myell knew. He had only the vaguest sense of the surrounding geography—Cohen hadn’t seen fit to give him a map. Myell’s feet were bare and he was sweating in the heat. Cohen was also sweating under his hat and city jacket.
The pistol was unwaveringly fixed on Myell’s back, sweat or no sweat.
“Tell me why you want to kill me?” Myell asked.
“I don’t want to kill you,” Cohen said. “You’re going to drown yourself in the lake on the other side of this hill. It’s not far, near where I parked the airship. Your stupid friends never thought to check if it had a recall device.”
“Oh.” Myell kept walking. “Why am I going to drown myself?”
A pistol shot whizzed over his shoulder.
Myell jerked and stopped walking, at the risk of a bullet through his back. “Bell,” he said in sudden realization. “This is about Bell?”
“Keep going.” Cohen’s voice was brittle with anger. “I’m not kidding. I’ll kill you here. I killed Darling for less.”
“You killed her?”
“I had to. She was going to stop me from using the airship to go back through the Sphere and save Bell from drowning.”
That plan was so fundamentally flawed that Myell lost his breath for a moment.
“It wouldn’t work,” he managed to say. “She didn’t drown in the permanent timeline. She died with you and Darling and the others when you blew up the base. There’s nothing there now but debris and rubble.”
Cohen spat out, “According to you. Why should I believe anything you say?”
Damned if Myell was going to be Cohen’s next victim, not because of some crazy plan and in the middle of nowhere with Jodenny and Junior so close by. He hadn’t even had the goddamned chance to say goodbye. Myell turned and swung out. Cohen fired the gun again, sending the bullet in a wild trajectory by Myell’s midsection. He didn’t want to see if he’d been hit. He threw himself forward with fists and kicks, knocking Cohen into the dirt. The pistol fell aside with a solid thud.
Though Myell was sore and bruised already, he was still younger and stronger than Cohen. The boy who’d been known as Speed cringed at the blows, returned them slow and clumsy.
“You killed her!” Cohen was saying. “You let her drown!”
Myell landed a punch square on Cohen’s jaw that made the older man’s head snap back into the dirt. Myell grabbed the pistol and staggered upright, keeping it aimed at Cohen’s chest. His knuckles sang with pain and his throat was tight with fury.
“I would have saved her,” Myell said. He spat out a wad of blood. “All of them. Don’t you think I would have saved all of them?”
Someone was running up the road toward them—Osherman, armed not with a gun but a knife. Jodenny was hurrying up the road after him, slowed by Junior. Myell wiped sweat from his eyes and kept the gun aimed at Cohen.
“Twig and Kyle,” he said. Their names were bitter in his mouth. “Cappaletto, Adryn, Nam. Your sister. I couldn’t save any of them.”
Cohen’s face was wet with tears and blood, and racking sobs shook his body. “You killed her.”
“No.” Osherman said, slowing to a stop beside them. His gaze was steady on Myell, his voice confident. “He didn’t kill anyone. He just didn’t save her.”
Myell felt as if he’d been slapped. The sting was refreshing in its own way, a confirmation of everything he knew.
“Bell died when Darling blew up the base,” Osherman said, still looking only at Myell. “I’m sure I died, bitter and old, on Providence. Jodenny, too. Cappaletto must have died in the Roon mines. Kyle and Twig had their own fates. Chief Myell gave us second chances, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Jodenny was still coming up the road, too far to hear them. Myell shook his head. “Second chances that didn’t work out.”
“Worked out for me,” Osherman said. “Jodenny’s here. Cappaletto died free. You think that doesn’t matter?”
“I didn’t save the fleet at Kultana,” Myell pointed out.
Osherman shook his head in exasperation. “Oh, sorry. One single man didn’t save all of mankind from an armada of invading ships. That’s your crime?”
Cohen was still sobbing.
“It can be done,” Myell said.
Osherman clea
rly didn’t believe him.
“The Flying Doctor tried to stop me because it’s possible,” Myell said. “I still don’t know how, but this isn’t over.”
Jodenny arrived. Myell took her into his arms, reassuring himself that she wasn’t going to faint from the heat and exertion. She felt his arms and torso, looking for injuries that weren’t there.
“I’m never letting you out of my sight again,” she said.
“What about him?” Osherman said, his gaze on Cohen.
“He killed Darling,” Myell said, feeling empty and drained. “He told me.”
Osherman’s face turned a mottled red. He held out his hand for the pistol. Myell glanced at Jodenny, who was watching them all with a stricken expression. Something was going on here that Myell didn’t quite understand.
“Commander?” he asked carefully.
“I’m not going to kill him,” Osherman said firmly. “Give me the gun.”
Myell hesitated some more. Flies buzzed in his ears and around his head. Osherman looked angry but not out-of-control homicidal angry. Slowly he handed over the pistol and walked away. He met Jodenny in the road and fell into her arms.
“You’re okay?” she asked. Her hands again felt for injuries. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” he murmured into her neck.
A pistol shot had them both whirling around in the road. Osherman had shot Cohen. Not a fatal wound in the torso or head but instead in the knee. Cohen rocked and screamed in agony. Myell wondered if a fatal shot wouldn’t have been more merciful.
“That was for Cassandra, you son of a bitch,” Osherman said.
The airship that had returned to Cohen in Sydney and then come back again was down to dangerous levels of power, but Osherman thought they could make it.
“Make it where?” Jodenny asked. She was clinging to Myell as if the strength of her grip could keep him safe from the blue ring. “Where is there to go?”
Osherman leaned against the ship. “Your crocodile girlfriend said you need witches or shamans, so I talked to Tulip. His people can call the Wondjina gods. They’re gathering now at the Painted Child. If we hurry, we can make it before the blue ring comes again.”
Jodenny frowned. “Why do we want to talk to the gods?”
The Stars Blue Yonder Page 33
