by Kin Law
“What I want to know is why she felt it was worth killing the Inspector over,” redirected Auntie. “Lady’s got the authority of Queen Victoria III herself. None of us would be safe from her wrath.”
“I wasn’t in my usual frame of mind.”
Everyone turned to see Rosa Marija at the door, changed into tight sable trousers and a brown bodice tightened over a cream blouse. It was much more utilitarian than her usual flamboyant affairs. Blades studded every inch of leather on her, and four straps hung off her hips with additional hardware, including a three-foot long machete and a pair of knuckle dusters. Her hair was tucked into a tight arrangement, pinned with sturdy spikes.
In all likelihood, Rosa now weighed twice her stone in metal. Her boots were flat, with spurs on the end- not cowboy rounds, but deadly studs.
“Would you like to hear it?” Rosa Marija began, not bothering to sit down or wait for a reply. None was coming. “If you have to hear it, you’ll hear it from me.”
“On the streets of cities like Monaco, or Belfast, or Detroit, a young waif grows up perpetually in sight of airships.
Always there are airships, and the flotsam they drag along- coal freight, train rails, old men peddling trinkets from all over the globe, at best only a couple months journey away. Faberge eggs, real beaverskin moccasins, silk robes intricately interwoven with cherry blossoms or lined with fragrant jasmine. Anything gorgeous could be found in a port city.
People were no exception. Gruff aeronauts were aplenty, with their weeks’ worth of stubble and bulging arms covered with shiny steam burns. They dropped into the local pubs and bars, facilitating a booming trade in young, attractive whores and the endless flow of strong liquor.
I was never a whore. I respect them for what they do, those who chose to be, like I choose to be what I am. Nessie, she never chose be what she was. When you’re young, you do what you have to to survive.
Nessie and I were con artists. We never stayed in one city too long, though we kept to the frontiers as best we could- safer that way. It was the beauty of the dirigible, you see, the world was no longer closed to us as it was to people of ages past.
We could pull a string of heists in the space it took to refuel a corsair, and sneak aboard before the cables pulled taut for lift-off.
We were never caught. As far as our marks were concerned, we were acceptable dangers that come with the whistling of steam, and the irresistible force buoying them up through the wind.
I found the travelers fascinating, bedecked in their expensive traveling clothes. Fascinating, yes, but intelligent? No. I had my knives, and my armor of curves. Nessie Drake had her wiles. To us, the travellers quickly lost their identities, becoming frocks, feathered hats and decorative fans, symbols of what we might reap from the bounty of the sky. In particular, the men with their pinstriped suits or greatcoats often took along more luggage than all the possessions a young girl could own. They never noticed one or two baubles missing, and they always carried gold monocles or pocket-watches chained to their buttonholes. It was as if, loaded down with all their belongings, they still felt a need to fetter themselves to time.
Nessie, against my advice, was always drawn to the pirates. Riveting, gorgeous, no two alike, they buzzed round docks like bees at honey. You could never pin them down from the clothes, or the beards- it was a different time, then. Still, when you spoke to one, their stories were better, they drank harder, and it was not uncommon to wake up one day and find yourself having slept next to one. Your valuables would be gone, more often than not, along with your pirate and your heart, all onboard a ship some five hundred yards in the sky and miles away.
That was how I found Nessie Drake one morning, in the bad parts of Fort Chattanooga. She was in a rented dive no bigger than a shack, stinking from the abattoirs next door, but it wasn’t far from the mooring towers. The fact they were so close ought to have tipped off Nessie, more than anything.
We were smarter than those starry-eyed girls you sometimes saw hanging round the base of the towers, hoping to catch a glimpse of their latest pulp fiction heroes.
“Girl, you do what you want with your winnings, but any way you cut this, letting a man run off with a hundred silver dollars ain’t my idea of a good time,” I said as I shook out her empty purse.
I was snippy, and it irked me. I had spent the better part of the morning looking for her, and here she was, sleeping naked like a fairy-tale princess. There wasn’t even the familiar jaunty smell of sex, though the air was a little funky with sweat and livestock. I picked up the monochrome pleated gown draped neatly over a chair and shook it, trying to tell the value from the weight. “I hope you kept a couple of galleons from the Burton heist stitched in your knickers.”
We were both gorgeous girls, plying the skies for fame and fortune, but Nessie Drake was as different from me as apples and oranges. Pale, thin and waif-like, she nearly always played the straight man. Who would ever suspect a Lewis Carol wet dream of coming after your valuables? Never mind she could strangle you half to death with a silk ribbon. With those raven locks down to her waist, and a thousand-yard stare lurking beneath her porcelain skin, the girl was beautifully diverting. It was her eyes, like a doll’s, flat and expressionless, and they fascinated people with their deep color, like heart’s blood.
As soon as she rolled over and fixed those round garnets on me, I knew we were in deep shit.
“Oh screw me two ways to Tuesday, you’re in love,” I cursed.
I kicked at the much-abused door, which was splintered from having been knocked down just a minute before.
“I was left those on purpose,” Nessie murmured incoherently, gesturing to the dress. “Tried to make it look like an accident.”
“You idiot! He obviously couldn’t be bothered to root through the seams. Rattlesnakes, he thought you were a local, even with those clipped consonants,” I was busy feeling for and tearing out what loose coins had been left in the gown- a dollar, at least, and a collection of odd foreign currency, none of which was useable tender so far in the frontier. California was only a few states away, and the Lands Beyond, untamed territory as far as anyone cared. Paper money would be gone with the first blue storm.
Done with the garment, I chucked it across the room so Nessie could cover herself. “Get dressed. We’re leaving on the Saratoga in an hour. Her Captain lost to me arm-wrestling me in the pub.”
Was I? Of course, you nitwits, I was jealous, now shut the hell up and listen.
“I’m not going,” Nessie had the gall to protest. Nevertheless, she began to pull the gown on, lacing ribbons across her flat back. “We’re meeting in the Stablehand’s Breeches at noon. I’m going on their ship, the Lovelorn…”
Christ on a cracker, the way she said the word, like it wiped away seven years of pilfering and running and hard knocks.
“Here,” I said, fishing a small pocket-watch out of my own skirts. I think I still have the outfit, candy-striped, great with those suede boots…
Right! Sorry! Okay. No stalling.
I tossed her the locket, which was a decent timepiece in ball crystal.
“Blast! It’s this late! She’ll have left without me! I have to get to the Lovelorn!” Nessie screeched.
God, I tore up the place when she broke the damn watch, smashing it on the floor like plates at a Greek wedding. Little gears and aeon pebble everywhere.
She made a dive for her stockings, trying to get them on her arms. Her gloves were neatly folded on the bed stand, right over her dainty patent leathers.
“My watch! Bitch, I’m taking this silver.”
Nessie had no care for her partner. There was a wild look in her eyes I had never seen before. Nessie Drake was often pissed, smashed or cynical, I’ve even seen her laugh, but I was not equipped to handle this.
“My choker! Right, parasol…. Ribbons… have to look good when I get there, rouge…” Nessie’s mumbling scared me even more than her eyes. Her anal retentiveness was her best trait, had gott
en us out of sticky situations a thousand times before. The fact she was losing it right now gave me gooseflesh all over my gorgeous arms.
“Listen, Nessie, it’s already two fifteen, I’m sure the Lovelorn is loosed from her tower already and miles away.”
What I didn’t say was the Saratoga would be leaving in forty-five minutes, and if we weren’t on it, there was a high chance the church we had robbed in the guise of a chapter of the Salvation Army would discover, via telegraph, that Sister Goebbels and Sister Banks were safe in their sickbeds in Maine.
“Rosa, you get out of the way right now. I’m going after the Lovelorn!”
What could I do but follow the monochrome confection as she stalked out of the hovel and down towards the mooring towers? Fully dressed, she cut a fancy figure striding across a dirt road, scaring cowboys and shopkeeps.
At the base of the towers, there was a makeshift bazaar of the type to be found in air docks the world over.
I recognized familiar franchises advertising wares with carved, painted signage, illustrated, not printed, like old medieval shop fronts. With so many tongues spoken, everything was clearly labeled with a universal medium: the sky blue and bird of Albatross Shipping, the placid green nut of Ursine Gears for ship parts, and the streaky, abstract branding of Ubique Sundries. There was a lot of Valima Mordemere gadgetry, though he had just begun to build his alchemic empire.
Nessie stalked past all of these, even as the clerks swiveled their heads at the petite sugarplum fairy striding determinedly through their displays. She plowed through the colorful livery and into a mess of smaller counters, where the swiveling turned to catcalling. Here were deals made, underground transactions conducted, illicit transport planned. Neither of us had planned on coming here in our nightwear, but I was well known, at least, from the evening’s merrymaking. I simply followed in Nessie’s wake, and her admirers backed the hell off.
“Do you even know where the ship is?” I asked, once I drew level with Nessie. Even on my long legs it was difficult to keep up.
“No, but I know what it looks like,” Nessie answered, never looking away from the varied shapes bobbing overhead. “Triangular hull, black with pink trim. Two sails, no balloon. Satyr figurehead.”
“Wait, a satyr? I saw it, Nessie, I saw it.”
Nessie’s shoes scraped to a stop on the hard dust.
“Where?”
We were in sight of the Breeches, a dilapidated shanty bar strung between two towers.
The square, wood beams of the tower were completely obscured by planks, theatre bills, and structurally essential piles of beer crates. Even at a distance, it was clear there were only species of hopeless inebriate and the odd barback at the counter.
I sighed.
“Grid six, four by four. In the Potter’s.”
Nessie Drake took off like taffeta buckshot. I followed at a more languished pace, now I knew where she was headed.
At frontier ports, wealthy ship owners could book the few steel towers, while merchants leased from available lines strung from rusting piles of lumber and pig iron. Everyone else tied up to scrub brush or tall hills in the Potter’s.
Potter’s Fields were not so grisly as their name suggested, owing their nomenclature only to their common availability. Most of the frontier docks have them, spaced out over flat, low land in a perimeter round the towers proper. Scattered across the fields were hopelessly unsalvageable hulks in the ground, picked over long ago by entrepreneurial opportunists, bleached by sun.
They were about the scariest things there, like stoned trolls, and as threatening. Nessie obviously thought her Lovelorn could hardly be amongst the rabble, and had made straight for the soaring edifices instead.
I found Nessie on her knees at one of the downed dirigibles, her face cast in marble. I had walked slowly, because I knew what the high cheekbones and pointed, elfin nose meant to say. Over those striking features, her burgundy eyes were fixed on a rotted wood wreck.
“You’ll get a tan,” I managed, trying for Nessie Drake’s vanity.
It provoked no reaction, though two days ago Drake had thrown a fit when we were forced to traverse a mile of fields with naught but pilfered parasols for protection. Now she was kneeling exposed in the naked sunshine, threatening to incinerate her pasty complexion.
After the betrayal, Nessie Drake wasn’t the same deadly efficient partner I had known. She messed up. Sometimes she let marks go on a whim, and other times she wouldn’t even show for a heist. Every free moment she had was spent hanging about airmen’s elbows, her eyes darting over the milling crowd even as her lips formed the most insipid interrogations.
Of course she hadn’t given up- she was merely changing tactics. It was obvious she was convinced the Catastrophic Betrayal had been some kind of mistake. I could see it in her eyes, in the glaringly bright skirts and bustles and ribbons she now wore to attract attention.
One of these days, she figured, we would hit on the right pub, in the right city, and there he would be, the airman of the Lovelorn, and he would sweep her off her feet.
Meanwhile, I was the same old Rosa Marija. Truth be told, I hadn’t realized how deep Nessie had been stung, and besides I was too taken up with my gallivanting. I was enjoying my freedom far too much to realize my partner was deeply sick. Hell, I didn’t even realize she was so important until she started moving the airmen from the bars to her bed. By then, I think, she was far too gone.
The black dresses were the first clue. Nessie Drake was given to a distinctly Gothic aesthetic, but now the black verged on funereal, her accessories sickened rather than charmed, and her already pale skin took on an unhealthy pallor.
She walked around toting a dead bat, scraping one long, black fingernail across the skin of any man who seemed to exhibit an undue interest in such fetishes.
It couldn’t last. When a girl is possessed by an idea of a perfect lover, the idea warps, it changes, grows new heads. Love, if there ever was any, turns sour and intoxicating. Even the strongest of us can’t fight it. Nessie Drake had turned the sweet nectar of a chance romance into some fanatical vinegar, burning away at her breast. Even I never guessed the lengths she would go to fulfill it.”
“But how did she get to be such a notorious dirigible pirate? And why ‘Countess?’” Elric Blair said after a long pause.
Rosa Marija’s tale had rendered the Berry’s galley a tableau of wide eyes and gaping mouths, and now she stopped, there was a minor flurry of activity as each person made a show of sipping their cold tea, or examining a nearby tchotchke.
“Simple, really. Birds of a feather flock together. Most of her conquests were never the same after- even I was afraid what she might do behind the curtains of the boudoir. A lot of them came out in the mornings like they would evaporate at the touch of sunlight. There was madness in their eyes, a frantic devotion. ‘Countess’ was just one of the names they whispered amongst themselves, but it was one that stuck.”
“Pirates will call ourselves what we like. Most of Queen Victoria’s nobles these days are little different, all title and few lands to seat,” Albion noted.
Rosa nodded and continued.
“It seemed Nessie Drake had perfected what her original onerous romancer once did to her, a seduction like a strain of disease spread from her touch, her lips, her smell.
It was only a short time before she commandeered her own ship, crewed by her devoted followers, and not long after she found out Ada Lovelace really did have a ship called the Lovelorn- commandeered and crewed two years after they had first met.”
“Ahhh….” Someone, probably Alex, had a belated epiphany.
“La Maere,” Albion said casually.
“Blast it Alby, yes, Nessie’s ship was La Maere. Alex I understand, but you’re usually sharp as a tack.”
“No, La Maere. She’s right there, right outside the porthole.”
In a flash, everybody was pressed to the bulkhead, Rosa Marija stuck to the glass tightest of all.
Clemens had expected little different. He himself flew one of the rarer types of airship, the pressed-helium Huckleberry, and had been chased by a selection of Cantonese junks, Spanish corsairs, and even seen a Balaenopteron up close off the coast of Africa. Besides, he had seen La Maere before.
Chiropteran-class were so named not because of any particular size differences, but because they were laid out like their bat namesakes- vast networks of thin ribbing, supported by flat gas envelopes between.
The upshot of the arrangement was lift compound could be pumped through the skeletal ribbing to raise or lower the ship quickly. The entire construction was capable of gliding through the sky even under no boiler power.
It made for stealthy, fast ships usually favored by the ilk of the skies- namely, pirates.
Chiropteran-class airships could only be called ‘strange,’ a moniker certainly scoffed at by the builders of La Maere as ‘mundane.’ Not so much one ship as a cluster of several, the thing sprawled across Romania like it had dwelt there for centuries, feeding on blood from the necks of supple milkmaids. Gothic points marked bridges and quarters, while a phalanx of black, towering decks bristled with weaponry. Most pirates could only afford to field a ship of patchwork and gaffer’s tape- Nessie Drake required a vessel a la mode.
“Basically,” Rosa Marija said. “I’m going down there. Is anyone with me?”
“Do we have a choice?” Albion said.
The landing party consisted of four: Albion, Rosa, Hargreaves, and for some reason Blair, as well. It seemed Albion ran a democratic ship; nobody who did not volunteer were asked as to why.
A few minutes later, the four were slip-sliding down the mountains, using the same cable anchors they used to drop down on unsuspecting freighters. Their boots crunched through deadfalls and over salt rocks, while the ominous shadow of La Maere loomed in the near distance. It wasn’t long before they stumbled onto a paved path, and then they were rounding the peak where the ‘Berry stayed hidden.
