“I got someone coming to ransom a prisoner, but the rascalous girl escaped.” His ocular assembly whined as it focused on his daughter, in and out. “You seen her?”
“Who? Your prisoner? It’s been a while since anyone gave you the slip, Pa.”
“Girl vanished out of a locked room.”
“You don’t say.”
“Only explanation is she fell in the flood, but that don’t seem likely. People don’t just fall out of windows.”
“Maybe someone pushed her, Pa. And locked the door behind him when he was done.”
He was silent for a moment while Claire silently applauded her. How clever to plant yet another doubt in his mind about his own men! Who knew when that might bear fruit?
“Ain’t none of us would do such a thing, Ned,” one of the pirates ventured. “Not if there was money to be made off her. Say, Miss Alice, you got anything to eat around here?”
“I could whip up a mess of biscuits if you wanted, Perry.”
Claire couldn’t see Perry, but from the sound of his voice, he was young. A hungry age, maybe somewhere between her own age and Jake’s.
Jake … Jake. Oh, if only I’d—
“Shut up, Perry. We got work to do.” Mose began to pace, though the cabin was so small he couldn’t take more than a few steps either way. The ocular assembly adjusted to his course every time he made the turn. “So I’m thinkin’, since I got no girl to hand over for the ransom, I gotta do something else. I don’t see any choice.”
“Pa, no.” Alice’s tone was hushed with pain and pleading.
“Don’t take that tone with me. You think I like wrecking? But what’s this fancy man gonna do once he finds we got no girl? He’ll have the Rangers down on us quick as that flash flood and twice as mean.”
“Rangers been here before and we gave ’em the slip, Ned,” one of the pirates offered.
“Got too much to lose this time. Got a house, and a woman. And I’m getting too old to pick up and run every time someone takes exception to the way I manage my business.”
“So you’re set on this course, then?” Carefully, as if it were fine Limoges that would shatter at a breath, Alice put a dry saucer into a crate tacked to the wall as a cupboard. “You want to wreck this ship that’s coming?”
Claire suddenly realized what they were talking about. Wrecking.
Wreckers operated in Cornwall, too—setting out lights on the cliffs on stormy nights. A ship would steer toward the light thinking it indicated a safe harbor, only to be wrecked on the rocks. The loss of life was terrible—some wreckers even made sure it was total. Meanwhile, the cargo washed ashore for the wreckers to pick over, use, or sell. Claire had heard them use the word and it hadn’t sunk in that the despicable practice could mean the same thing out here in the desert as it did at home in Cornwall.
“I do. Pigeon came saying they’re a hundred miles off. The boys will help you set out the lanterns.”
“Pa—”
“No arguments, girl. Do it or you’ll be sorry you didn’t.”
It took an act of will for Claire to remain motionless. The ship was coming—James’s ship. No matter what he had done to her, he was still part of her past. They had broken bread together, conversed together. He had asked her to be his wife.
If she did not do something, he would be lured to his death.
And it would be all her fault.
Chapter 12
Alice did not give up, despite the fierce brows and downturned mustache of her father. “There must be a different way. Why not just take ’em prisoner when they get off?”
“Because then we’ll have more witnesses than we do already. My mind is made up, girl, so quit your whining. We’ll run ’em into Spider Woman same as always.”
“Pa, they’re innocent people trusting you to do a proper deal.”
This appeal to his better nature seemed to have no effect on Ned Mose. “Cheer up. You can make yourself another automaton from the plunder. Ten’s a nice round number.”
They had wrecked nine ships?
But how did they coax a ship out of the sky and run it into a rock?
The pirates swept Alice out with them, and in a moment Claire heard the locomotive tower fire up. But, in the grip of cold horror, she could not move.
Spider Woman. That spire of rock with the woman spinning on top of it. Spinning out the threads that would end the lives of innocent men.
She rolled over the crates and fell to her hands and knees, fighting the nausea down. Alice had not been able to put the ladder back up. Never mind. She’d dropped from the tops of walls higher than this.
As she landed lightly, she heard scraping and cursing somewhere behind and above the shack. Then the sound of metal on rock and a shout of “All the lamps. No, all of them! Hurry up, you fleabitten coyotes, or they’ll be on us!”
There must be some kind of equipment storage up in the cliff, reachable only by the tower. Evidently they valued their equipment more than the life of their tower operator—considering the unpredictable flash floods and goodness knows what other natural disasters this place was subject to.
Her fingers felt almost numb as Claire pulled her damp clothes on. She snapped the corselet together and snatched a knife with a thick bone handle from beside the washbasin, wrapping the blade in her scarf and slipping it diagonally into the leather. She’d never laced her boots so fast in all her life.
She slipped out of the shack and into the inky shadows where it met stone. And it was there, as she watched the tower chug across the ground toward Spider Woman, that the full scale of the enterprise hit her.
They were not carrying lamps to light their way across the flat. They were going to set them out on either side of Spider Woman to indicate a landing field, and when the zeppelin glided in, it would smash right into the vast spire of rock.
What could one almost eighteen-year-old girl do against two dozen pirates, a locomotive tower, and this hostile landscape?
Claire examined the impossibilities as they raced before her mind’s eye.
Could she release the Lady Lucy and take it up, turning it somehow so that it would obscure the lamps from the view of the incoming ship? Assuming she could release the mooring ropes and get aboard before it floated away, how would she manage both steering and engines? They were hundreds of feet apart, and by the time she got one going, the other would have become uncontrollable.
Keep it simple.
Could she run out and kick over the lamps? Yes, and then they’d catch her and this time, they’d save themselves the bother of locking her up. They’d simply shoot her on the spot.
Could she run to town, then, and release the Dunsmuirs and the crew? That would be an excellent plan if she had more than a few minutes. By the time they got back, James would have fallen out of the sky and landed among the wreckage, twisted and broken.
She couldn’t even send a pigeon up to tell them something was wrong. Or wave a flag or those lamps that the railway men had to signal a train to—
Wait. Lamps.
One lamp.
All she needed was one lamp with which to signify danger, up high enough to catch the eye of the navigator and make him wonder why there was a danger signal where logic said no signal should be.
Her scarf was red. She could wrap the lamp in it. It would probably catch fire, but she had to take the chance.
With only the vaguest idea of where exactly Spider Woman was in the dark, Claire followed the sound of the locomotive tower, keeping fifty yards to the side and praying the night would conceal her. No point trying to keep quiet—the locomotive, grumbling along on its rotating treads, made enough noise to cover the sound of an approaching army, never mind one person.
She must steal a lamp. Now, while everyone was facing the monolith that rose out of the desert floor, blocking out the stars.
Crouching low, she ran in and snatched up the first one on the makeshift landing field, then darted back out to the perimeter.
&nb
sp; Blast, it wasn’t a flame at all! It was the same substance as in the moonglobes, and the more she agitated it by moving, the brighter it glowed.
She tore off her skirt and wrapped the lamp in it, then took off at a dead run for the foot of Spider Woman.
This was no time for modesty. Besides, it was dark.
She didn’t know what she expected, but it was not the scree of fallen rock and shelves of rough, sandpaper-like stone that made up the base of the huge formation. It was unstable and broken and was probably going to kill her—but better that than to live with the knowledge that she had watched a ship full of people die and had done nothing to stop it.
Perhaps this would balance her accounts with the Almighty over the matter of Lightning Luke.
Her foot slipped and she banged a knee on an outcropping. A word escaped her she had heard Snouts use and never imagined using herself—but when she lifted her head to grit her teeth in pain, she saw that the locomotive tower had passed the rocks and was laboring away into the dark on the other side. Alice was placing lamps. The pirates would conceal themselves in the monolith’s shadow. She had a few moments to gain some ground.
If only she could stuff her bundle in the holster and use both hands! If only her underthings weren’t white! It was of no use at all to have a black skirt and stockings in one’s raiding rig and have a white batiste corset cover and pantalettes. If she survived this, by George, she was going to have black underthings made just as soon as she found civilization.
Another ledge. Another outcrop of rough stone.
Pull, scrape, heave. Again. And again.
Scrape. Claire halted. She could hear her own boots on the rock.
The locomotive had shut down.
And in the distant night sky, she heard the now-familiar clattering purr of steam engines. They were not Daimler engines, that was certain—the Germans were dab hands at a smooth operation that didn’t make so much noise. These must be made here in the Americas.
What was she thinking? Climb!
Ten yards further, the scree smoothed out and the stone leaped straight up in a face so smooth it could have been cut with a spinner’s knife. She could go no further.
How far up was she? And how long would it take them to scale the tumble of rocks and earth to catch her?
No matter.
Claire unwrapped the lamp, which was glowing like a small sun from all her exertions. She yanked her skirt back on and slid the knife out of her red scarf, jamming it into the back of her corselet. Then she wrapped her scarf around the lamp, grasped the handle, and swung it in wide, swooping arcs, the way she had seen the switchmen do on the tracks. Only this time her movements were exaggerated, almost balletic, the red glow of the lamp curving up, down, and up again.
The hum of the approaching airship did not change pitch. Or course.
She must get their attention. She must.
Please, Lord. Let them see. Let me be in time.
Down, out, up again. Down, out, and up. Again. And again.
Her arms were getting tired, both from the climb and from the weight of the lamp.
Down, out, up.
Two hundred yards.
Down, out, up. Down, out, up.
One hundred.
Oh, God—oh, God—
Down, out—
Fifty.
—up.
The engines coughed, hitched, and growled in a change of pitch that told her they’d been thrown, protesting, into full reverse.
Down, out, up. Down, out—
The fuselage floated over her head and scraped along the face of Spider Woman as if kissing it hello.
Claire cried out and, far above in the gondola, got a glimpse of a man’s face, his mouth stretched in a rictus of terror, his hands flashing as he ratcheted the wheel over, its spokes blurred in the light of the running lamps.
He had not given up his post.
Neither would she.
Whoever he was, they were bound in this moment of horror as the sheer rock released its burden. Canvas tore, but the great gas bags housed within did not, and the ship turned as ponderously as a whale in the open sea.
Something landed ten feet down the slope, as heavy as a body. Claire screamed and dropped the lamp, and darkness plunged down on her.
Another body. And another and another—had so many died?
Straining, she tried to see movement. And then she realized what had happened. They were releasing the sandbags, lightening the ship enough to take them aloft again. Sure enough, as she sat there amid the wreckage of the lamp and the splattered sandbags, the breathing, living presence of the ship rose to block out the fading stars, its engines once again set full ahead.
Before her heart had slowed to its normal rate, the airship bearing her former fiancé had climbed to cruising altitude. As it moved off into the glimmer of gray that presaged the dawn, a silence that was almost holy fell upon the spire of rock lifting into the night.
Chapter 13
A howl of pure rage echoed among the rocks, somewhere on the ground behind Spider Woman, as the sound of the airship’s laboring engines faded into the distance.
Claire picked herself up and retrieved her scarf from the wreckage of the lamp, but it was soaked in the chemical compound from which the light had emanated. Nothing emanated from it now but a harsh, sour scent that burned her nostrils.
It had served its purpose well. She could see the outlines of objects now—well enough to scoop up the crumbly clay earth and cover the scarf and the wreck of the lamp. Then she picked up one of the lengths of rope that had secured the sandbags to the ballast irons, and wound it around her waist, over the corselet.
One never knew when one might be glad of a length of rope. Earlier tonight, for instance.
For the moment, though, the most urgent course of action was to stay out of sight until Ned Mose and his gang of wreckers had gone back to town. She shuddered to think what might happen to the Dunsmuirs and the crew in that event, but the truth was, she was powerless in the matter.
However, she could do one thing. She could find Rosie and the hatbox and put a little distance between herself and Mose’s rage at the same time.
The sun had not risen, but the rocks had taken on shape and substance now. She climbed down somewhat more carefully than she had scrambled up, keeping a sharp eye on the ground below in case someone rounded the base of the monolith. In her black raiding rig she could give a fair impression of a shadow if she had to, despite the red and ochre colors of the rock.
The sound of the locomotive tower’s engine firing up halted her so suddenly that she skidded on gravel. Taking refuge in the inky shadow of a huge tumbled boulder, she stretched up just enough to see the tower rumble off toward the wash and Alice’s shack. When no one followed on foot, Claire assumed the pirates were crammed inside.
That did not mean Ned Mose wouldn’t send someone to see what had alerted the Texican airship and caused it to evade their trap.
Darting from rock to rock, holding her breath and feeling exposed every time she was forced to step out on a ledge and drop the next level down, she made her way back to the desert floor. Her hands were scraped raw from the sandpaper consistency of the rocks, and all the knuckles on her left hand had been bruised when a handhold had crumbled.
But she was free. And alive. And so were James and the crew of that ship.
Knuckles would heal, and torn stockings could be mended. But if that ship had gone down … Claire shuddered.
She began an easy run in the direction the hatbox had taken, angling away from Spider Woman and toward the lake over which they had passed. Somewhere between the water and the spire of rock, there had been a stand of scrubby trees, bigger than the round bushes that seemed to uproot themselves and go rolling across the landscape, but smaller and less densely leafed than any tree back in England.
She had just passed an outcropping of rock that jutted out of the side of a much smaller wash when the sun broke over the horizon and pain
ted it with gentle shades of yellow and cream. This country, harsh as it was, had its beauties, then. Who could have imagined that ordinary rocks could possess colors from scarlet and carmine to lemon yellow and deepest ocean blue? Someone who made a study of geology could make his fortune writing papers about—
In the distance, she heard the sound she had been waiting for—and dreading.
An engine.
She whirled and flung herself at the base of the outcrop. There was no shelter—it was merely a heap of rock piled in the middle of a hump of land—but the eye saw what it expected, did it not? Not what was there.
She stretched out at the base of it and did her best impression of a shadow.
The sound grew louder, and then she saw it.
The great golden fuselage of the Lady Lucy fell up into the sky above the red mesa, made a quarter turn to the north, and moved gently off into the clear bright morning.
*
Claire lay in the dirt, leaning on her elbows, her mouth hanging open. Under the twin blows of shock and dismay, it didn’t even occur to her to leap to her feet and signal, and by the time it did, the Lady Lucy had already reached a thousand feet, where no one save a hawk or an eagle could see a small, disbelieving figure jumping up and down, waving frantically.
She sat abruptly in grass that had once been green, but was now burned and dry from the sun.
They had left her!
Marooned her in the middle of a desert, without a single ally or even so much as a drink of water!
How was this possible? Granted, she had been somewhat distracted in trying to save the lives of an entire ship and crew, but for goodness sake, couldn’t they at least have sent out a search party when they found she was missing?
They must have freed themselves and returned to the ship immediately after the floodwaters had receded. Clearly she had been a little hasty in jumping out of the window when if she had merely waited half an hour, she could have walked out the door with the rest of them, and at this moment be floating off into the air, blissfully unconcerned about what was happening on the ground.
Magnificent Devices Page 10
