“Not lookin’ like that, you ent.” Jake’s voice was firm. “You look like a tomato getting’ ready to spoil, for true. Besides, someone has to stay and watch over the Lady.”
Lizzie subsided, but Maggie could see plain as plain that watching over the Lady was just a job to fob her off while Jake and Alice got all the fun. She kept the smile off her aching face, though.
What Mr. Pleased-as-Punch didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Chapter 18
“There ’as to be another way down.”
Maggie gazed into the chimney of rock, down which spiraled steps cut out of the stone. The two Navapai boys who had gone along had lit lamps that flickered in niches every now and again, but other than that, only the glow left in the sky after sunset lit the stair.
“If there is, we ent got time to find it. C’mon, before we lose them.” Lizzie started down as though she was tripping down the steps in the cottage in Vauxhall Gardens.
It was all an act. One misstep and in the morning, those big birds would be scraping her off the rocks hundreds of feet below. Maggie consigned her soul to Heaven and started down after her.
It didn’t take near as long to get to the bottom as she thought. The stair wound inside for a bit, so that helped. The girls emerged at the base of the cliff feeling as though they’d managed to burgle the Tower of London, because on a difficulty scale of one to ten, that stair was definitely a ten.
In the distance they could see Jake and Alice and two Navapai boys, jogging along a road that looked white in the fading light. There was nothing for it but to jog along after them and hope they didn’t look back.
They didn’t—not until they’d reached the outskirts of Santa Fe. The girls’ steps echoed off the mud walls of the houses, and before you could say Jack Robinson, Jake stepped out of a shadowy alley and grabbed them both by the scruff of the neck.
“Didn’t I tell you two t’stay wi’ the Lady?”
“You can’t go on a mission wivout scouts, you silly gumpus.” Lizzie wriggled until he set her down. “Ent you listened to Snouts ever?”
“Two days ago you almost died, and now yer givin’ me guff?”
“Somebody has to,” Maggie said. “Now, what’s the plan?”
“Give it up, Jake,” Alice said merrily, while the Navapai boys snickered. “There’s no keeping these two out of the soup, so we may as well take them along. Maybe they can help.”
Jake wagged his head. “Keep up and shut up, aye?” Maggie and Lizzie exchanged a triumphant glance. “Here’s what we’re doin’. Alice knows the mechanics at the airfield. We’re takin’ a steambus out there and doin’ a reconnoiter for news of Ned Mose, and seein’ if the Lady Lucy is here.”
Hope surged in Maggie’s chest. “You mean we c’n go home?”
His rapid pace checked, then resumed. “You can, likely. Don’t see why they wouldn’t take you an’ the Lady on, now that yer not dead.”
“Wot about you?” Maggie had to jog to keep up, but nary a complaint would pass her lips. “You c’n explain—’is lordship’ll understand.”
Jake kept his face turned away, faking like he was watching where they were going, like Alice wasn’t in charge of this little parade. “I dunno. Ent much for me back ’ome except playin’ second fiddle to Snouts. Might stay ’ere and scare up some work.”
Maggie fell back to keep Lizzie company. It had never occurred to her that they wouldn’t all go home together—and the sooner the better. Who would want to stay in this outlandish place all alone?
“Don’t worry,” Lizzie said in a low tone as they got on a steambus without paying any fare. “We’re a flock. Of course we’ll stay together. ’E’s just talkin’ up a show for them boys and Alice. I think ’e’s sweet on ’er.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. Alice was about a century older than Jake, and could probably do better in any case than a penniless runaway with a reputation as a turncoat.
They got off the bus outside the airfield, before anyone came to check for tickets, and followed Alice through a maze of hangars, piles of scrap metal, and wide acres where the airships floated at their masts. They approached a building where the plinkety-plunk of music told them airmen found entertainment, but Alice waved them off to the side behind a stack of what smelled like whisky barrels.
“No kids allowed inside, I’m afraid. Wait here while we take a look.”
“Jake’s a kid,” Lizzie objected.
“He’s over fourteen, and he’s a boy, both of which you ain’t,” Alice told them. “I don’t want you getting stole or mistook for a desert flower.”
“What’s a—”
“Never mind. Just stay here, all right? We won’t be long.”
They were long. They were interminably long. They were so long that Lizzie fell asleep behind the barrels, and when she woke up, she was in a fine temper.
“I ent stayin’ here another moment.” She craned up to look over at the door, where everyone in the city but Alice and Jake and those boys was going in and out and having a fine time while they were stuck here in the dark. “Come on. Who cares what them Rangers are up to? They don’t want us. We c’n spot the Lady Lucy ourselves. They’re probably sitting down to dinner and won’t they be glad to see us?”
“Mad, more like.” Maggie hurried behind her sister as they made for the biggest airfield, where the greatest number of ships was moored. “We didn’t stay in our room, ’member. We didn’t do as we was told.” If they had, what then? Maybe the Lady would have found Rosie. Maybe not. But their hides would have been safe.
Was it better to keep your own hide safe, and not try to save those of your flock mates? Not likely. Even knowing what she knew now, she’d still have gone down that rope.
She wouldn’t’ve nearly died in the desert, maybe.
But she wouldn’t’ve met up with Miss Alice again, either, or known Jake was still alive.
All in all, the scale was about even.
Besides, they’d been in bed for two days. The goop Alice had slathered on her made it so her sunburn hardly hurt. And Snouts always said, if you didn’t keep your hand in, you lost your skills.
Maggie had no intention of losing hers.
“There she is!” Lizzie pointed to the near side of the field, where the Lady Lucy’s distinctive golden fuselage rode gently next to a long, sleek craft with a shallow gondola set close underneath. It looked as if it were designed for speed records. “Come on. There’s even a tower pushed up to it. We can walk right in.”
Together, they ran across the field.
But someone was coming down the steps inside the tower. Running, more like. Light boots pounded on brass stairs.
Running people never meant good things, in Maggie’s experience. She grabbed Lizzie’s sleeve and dragged her behind the tower’s wheels.
“Mopsies!” someone exclaimed, half a shout, half a whisper. “Mags—Liz—it’s me, Tigg.”
“Tigg!” Maggie had never hugged Tigg in all the time she’d known him, but that was before she’d almost died. They were a flock, and as far as she was concerned, flock mates hugged.
And the funny thing was, he hugged her right back.
“Cor, what a fuss you two caused, disappearin’ like that. Where’ve you been?”
Lizzie just shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe us if we told you. Was ’is nibs fit to be tied?”
“Yes. But ’er ladyship took it the worst. She cried. Thought you’d both been killed in the fall when we lifted.”
Lizzie laughed. “Even Jake didn’t get killed when he fell.”
Tigg grabbed her. “What’d you say? Jake? Jake’s alive?”
“Alive and havin’ a wonderful time somewhere over there.” Maggie waved a hand in the direction of the building with the music. She wasn’t sure she could find it again if he asked her, but that didn’t seem very important right now. “’E fell in the lake, just like off the Clarendon footbridge. Didn’t ’arm a single ’air.”
“C’mon, Mags
, I’m starved.” Lizzie pulled her toward the stairs. “Tigg, what’s Cook got for grub? I ent had nowt but soup in two days.”
He took a quick breath. “Don’t go up there.”
“Whyever not?” Lizzie stopped on the third step. “Did you eat it all?”
“No, but they’re at dinner. And you don’t want to join ’em, Liz. Not after what he done to the Lady.”
“Who done?” Great snakes, the Dunsmuirs couldn’t be eating with Ned Mose, could they? That was impossible.
“Lord James Selwyn, that’s who.” Tigg’s face set in lines of implacable dislike. “That’s why I’m out here instead of in there in me best bib and tucker. I ent sittin’ across from that bounder if it were me last meal. Not after ’e stole our device an’ kidnapped it here.”
“How come we never ’eard of this?” Lizzie demanded. “The Lady never said a word.”
“Well, up till we left, she were going to be ’is wife, weren’t she? Couldn’t very well speak against him, could she?”
“She ent goin’ to be ’is wife now.” Maggie knew that for true.
“Guess not.” In the electrick lights on the tower, Tigg’s face became bleak. “Not now she’s dead.”
Lizzie clutched his arm. “Cor, Tigg, didn’t you know? She ent dead. She got swept off in that flash flood, but Alice pulled ’er out and she’s right as rain now.”
“Or mostly,” Maggie corrected. “Had a run-in with some kind of cat creature so she’s feeling poorly, but she ent dead at least.”
Tigg looked from one to the other in astonishment. “The Lady’s not dead? Somebody better tell the Dunsmuirs, then. They already sent a pigeon to Gwyn Place, and Lord James is wearin’ black like he ’ad a right to it.”
Lizzie shook her head. “She might not want ’im to know. She might be quite ’appy wiv ’im thinkin’ she’s dead.”
“Better ask her,” Maggie agreed. “Soon’s we get back.”
“Back where?”
“The Navapai village, over there.” Lizzie waved a hand in a general westerly direction. “Alice got the Stalwart Lass running again, and her and Jake flew it up here.”
Tigg’s eyebrows rose. “Who’s this Alice, then?”
“Ned Mose’s daughter, but he was goin’ t’kill her for helpin’ us, so she took off in the Lass.” Lizzie tugged on his shirt sleeve when he didn’t appear to be able to get his mouth working properly at these astonishing revelations. “Sure you can’t nip up t’the galley and nick summat for us?”
“All right,” he said at last. “But stay out of sight. Lord James gets a peep at you two and the jig’s up.”
Back up the stairs his boots went, and Maggie pulled Lizzie down in the shadows behind the great wheels of the tower again. To keep her mind off the sad state of her stomach, she pictured his route—through the embarkation bay, then avoiding the open stair that led up to A deck, he’d nip along the corridor past the crew’s quarters and the Chief Steward’s cabin. The galley was the very next door. If Lord James had come to dinner, what would Cook be dishing up? Roast beef, maybe? Or pork? No fish, that was certain, unless there was a river within fifty miles. Her mouth watered at the thought of a nice roast beef, with Yorkshire puddings swimming in drippings—
“Mags!” Lizzie nudged her in the ribs with her elbow.
“Do you think Tigg’s on ’is way back yet?”
“Sh! What’s that over there? D’you see something moving?”
The vision of the beef and pudding evaporated as Maggie focused on a pile of crates stacked up near an airship that looked as though it had been through a war moored just off the Lady Lucy’s stern. Sure enough, a dark figure detached itself from the stack and darted across the flat ground into the shadow of the Lady Lucy’s fuselage.
Lizzie’s hand closed around a broken brick. “He’s headin’ this way,” she whispered, her lips barely moving.
Maggie whistled, the unknown intruder approaching whistle they’d used for years, just in case Tigg was on his way back and could hear.
In the distance, the call of a bird came in acknowledgement. Maggie sucked in a breath. “That were Jake.”
The intruder gave no indication he’d heard, or if he had, that the sounds of night birds in a busy airfield were anything unusual. They could hear him breathing now, heavily, from all his running.
And overhead, the girls heard the sound of Tigg’s boots on the first of the stairs.
“Thief,” Lizzie breathed. “On three.”
One … two …
Three! Both girls leaped at the black figure and Lizzie swung the brick so hard Maggie expected the man to drop like a stone.
Instead, an arm flashed out and caught her on the wrist, and the brick fell out of her fingers. “Dash it all,” he said, “what do you mean, attacking me in this fashion, you little ruffians?”
With both hands, he pushed them off and Maggie landed so hard on her bottom that the breath was knocked clean out of her. When Tigg burst out of the entrance to the tower, a basket in his hands, she couldn’t make a single sound to warn him.
Tigg’s mouth dropped open.
“Mr. Malvern, sir!” he exclaimed when the man stepped into the light. “What in all the skies are you doing here?”
Chapter 19
Claire swam to the surface of an ocean filled with gibbering monsters and apparitions, all of which wanted her dead. Expecting at any moment for one of them to grab her by the ankles and pull her under once again, she opened her eyes to a warm darkness punctuated by gentle lamplight.
A cool cloth was applied to her forehead. “She wakes, and her spirit is with her,” said a woman with dusky skin and calm dark eyes. “Are you feeling better?”
“Where am I?”
She put a mug to her lips and Claire drank. It tasted acidic and faintly like grass, but no matter. It was cold and wet and glorious.
“You are in the Navapai village west of Santa Fe. The girls who were with you are well. They have been out doing a reckoning with Alice and my sons and have brought back some folk who are anxious to see you.”
Alice? Alice was here and not floating in the sky or back in her shack by Spider Woman? Claire roped her thoughts together. “Dunsmuirs?”
“No. Lie back. I have told them they cannot see you until you can sit up.”
“I can sit up.” She struggled up, allowing the woman to stuff a rolled-up wool blanket behind her back. “Forgive me for asking, but who are you? What happened to me? I had a dream that Alice and Jake came and rescued us—but that is impossible.”
“I am Alaia, healer of this village, and it was no dream. Jake fell in Spider Woman’s mirror and has lived to tell about it. He is now her son, and under her protection.”
She rose, and Claire saw she wore a black dress belted with colorful woven wool in the same pattern as the blanket. She must be the weaver. Spinning threads like Spider Woman. She picked up a bowl of something that smelled delicious, and Claire leaned forward like a hound sniffing the wind.
“Thank you for caring for me, Miss—Mrs.—Alaia. The girls and I would surely have died without you.”
“You are Alice’s friends,” the woman said simply. “And she is my friend and sister in spirit.”
Claire took the bowl and tasted the soup. She couldn’t remember ever tasting anything so delicious. The entire bowl went down in less time than it took to think about it.
Alaia nodded with satisfaction. “Now your friends may come in for a short time.”
Claire touched her hair and realized it was down, and someone had brushed it. She was wearing a cotton shift and not much else, so she pulled the wool blanket up under her armpits.
And then the door opened and Tigg and the Mopsies poured in, followed by Jake. They fetched up in a wave on the bed, everyone except Jake climbing on in a great pile of hugs and relief and greeting.
Laughing, Claire kissed Tigg with such joy that he blushed and ducked his head. She settled the Mopsies on either side and extended her hand
to Jake. When he took it hesitantly, she tugged on his arm so that he practically toppled over, and she hugged him fiercely as he knelt next to the bed.
“I am so glad you were not killed,” she whispered. “If I never experience a moment as dreadful as you going out that hatch for the rest of eternity, it will be too soon.”
He could not look at her. His face buried in her lap, he choked out, “I’m sorry, Lady. Sorry I turned coat. Sorry for everything. But they told me they’d kill you all and I—”
“Shh.” Gently, she rubbed his heaving shoulders. “It is forgotten. We are all together again and we will not look back.”
“We’re a flock,” Maggie put in from her cozy corner between Claire, the bolster, and the wall.
“Don’t forget Mr. Malvern,” Tigg said from his place next to her knees. “He’s been awful anxious to see you.”
Claire looked up and saw Andrew hovering in the doorway. For the space of ten seconds she could not speak. Instead, she drank in the wholly unexpected sight of him. Yes, he had told her he was in pursuit of James. But to see him here, in the flesh, in circumstances that anyone would call extraordinary … she drank in the sight of him with shameless greed.
And speaking of extraordinary, what an astonishing rig he wore! Over the normalcy of his brocade vest and cravat and shirt was a dusty canvas coat, and he wore an airman’s leather cap with the goggles pushed up on his forehead. A holster on his hip contained some kind of firearm, but she could not tell more than that.
Heavens. He looked positively wild. In a good way.
A very good way.
“Are you not glad to see me, Claire?”
And there was the Andrew she knew, a gentleman and a scientist to the core, complete with an endearing awkwardness around the fairer sex.
“I can think of no more welcome sight in the world, after that of Jake alive and well.” She extended her hand and Andrew took it, folding himself onto the lightning designs of the rug next to Jake, who sniffled one last time and wiped his nose on his sleeve as he made room.
“I was awful anxious,” Andrew said with a smile. “In what seems another life, I sent you a letter. Did you ever receive it?”
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