Aether Spirit

by Cecilia Dominic

  * * * * *

  When Claire arrived at the hospital, Chad noted the determined expression on her face but didn’t ask if she was all right. She’d tell him if she wanted him to know what was on her mind.

  “Will Patrick be all right?” she asked. “Does he have experience in battle?”

  He wished he could tell Claire yes, that Patrick was a seasoned soldier, but he wasn’t going to start lying to her now, and the glimpse of a ropy white scar peeking from the space between her glove and her sleeve reminded him there were no guarantees.

  “Even if he was a seasoned soldier, he’d be in danger,” he said. “The best thing to do is stay busy and keep your mind occupied. Worrying about him won’t keep him safe.” Like your parents worrying about you didn’t keep you safe.

  “That’s not helpful,” she grumbled, but she followed him.

  The boom of the field artillery provided a heartbeat for the rhythm of the work. Chad thought he might hear the occasional whip-crack of the aether weapon, but he also recognized that as long as he thought he heard it, it meant that Patrick must still be alive.

  Soon it felt like Claire had been by his side all along. She seemed to know what each soldier needed, whether it was a word of comfort, a gentle touch, or a drink of water. When he pulled her into surgery, she assisted him like she’d been a trained nurse, and he reminded himself that she was a physician like him, although with a different specialty. She’d have more minds to heal after this battle.

  The young men who returned from the battlefield had been mostly wounded by their own weapons—steam rifles and pistols that had overpressurized and exploded in their hands—but they had a haunted look like they’d peeked into the face of Hell. Chad didn’t ask, but he guessed that they had seen the handiwork of La Reine.

  Finally, a few hours into it, the stream of wounded slowed, and they had a break before the field teams brought in the men who couldn’t make it from the battlefield on their own.

  “How do you think it went?” Claire asked. Sweat matted her stray curl to her cheek, and she brushed at it with her wrist. She had discarded her gloves earlier, and he averted his eyes from the wreaths of pink and white. He still felt responsible for them, and ashamed that he couldn’t face them because the scars had given many of the boys hope that they’d be able to use their burned hands again.

  “The main injuries we saw today were from our own steam guns and some of the enemy’s artillery explosions, which means the Confederates didn’t get close enough to hit anything accurately with their rifles. So I bet we won.”

  “But was it the rout the general hoped for?” Her mouth twisted around the word “rout.” They both knew what it meant—carnage.

  “We won’t know until later. Now you go eat and for god’s sake, get some sleep.”

  She looked at him from narrowed eyes. “And what about you?”

  “I’ll be going with a medical field team to do field triage.”

  “What? But that puts you at risk! A spy could snatch you up, and you’d be lost forever.”

  “But some of those boys need to be patched up before they can be moved. It’s my job, Claire. Besides, the battle is over.”

  “Fine, then I’m going with you.” She brushed her hands on her skirts. “Just give me some time to change clothes. I can pass as a boy.”

  “No, you stay here.” He felt like a hypocrite saying he didn’t want her risking herself when he’d just assured her he would be all right, but he also knew what he was doing.

  “But Patrick hasn’t returned yet.”

  “He’s probably guarding La Reine. Look, we’ll find him at the armory, and then the two of you can eat and go to your beds.”

  But Patrick wasn’t in the armory. Nor was he among the stragglers returning from the battlefield or on the wagon that brought La Reine back to the base. The men reported that the aether gun had performed beautifully, and it had looked like the rout the general wanted.

  “Where is he?” Claire asked. “He couldn’t have been hit!”

  Chad refrained from remarking on the obvious, that Patrick had been the most desirable target on the field. Plus, none of the men had said anything about the gunner being hit.

  “I’ll look for him first. Now you eat and go to bed.”

  “Fine, but I’m not sleeping.” She gave him a classic stubborn Claire glare. In spite of his concern for Patrick, Chad had to press his lips together so he wouldn’t smile. She sounded so much like his Claire.

  Then he remembered why they could never be together, and exhaustion crept into his muscles. For the first time in a very long time, he considered how nice it would be to have a partner to share his troubles with, someone to go home to who understood him and didn’t see his half Negro or half white side, or even his doctor persona—just him.

  Claire had been that for him at one point.

  “You had better not have gotten yourself killed, you stupid bastard,” he muttered at Patrick, wherever he was.

  * * * * *

  Patrick looked out across the battlefield that had been cleared of trees long before he’d arrived at Fort Daniels. Now it was dotted with shadows. No, those were the blue uniforms of the casualties. He knew the field teams would emerge from the base once the all-clear was sounded. He couldn’t tell if he’d actually hit the rebel base with the aether fired from La Reine, but it had done its job and allowed the Union soldiers to advance along both flanks and trap the Confederates in between them. The general wanted to give Fort Temperance a chance to surrender before destroying it because it, like Fort Daniels, contained civilians.

  It’s amazing that even now, there are some honorable men and women in this war.

  He finished supervising the loading of La Reine on to a wagon and sent it ahead of him to the base.

  “You sure you don’t want a ride?” Bryce McPhee asked. He was still weak from his amputation, but he’d come to do what he could with his one arm. He’d been picking up steam weapons that had been dropped by the wounded and killed and placing them on the wagon.

  “Yes, I need to walk to clear my head.”

  “You want company?” Bryce asked. He slipped off the wagon.

  “Are you sure? Your cousin’ll have my head if something happens to you.” And you’ve overstressed yourself before. That’s how you ended up losing your arm.

  “Yes. She’s my cousin, not my mother, and you look like you could use someone to talk to.”

  Patrick removed his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. The shadows grew longer with the setting sun, and the air grew chillier by the minute, but he still had a shaky, sweating feeling. He thought he’d stayed in the “safe” range of aether frequencies, but he knew the stuff was sneaky. Or maybe he still had the screams that echoed from the first knot of Confederate soldiers he’d fired La Reine at ringing in his ears. They were of pure terror and despair, and he’d been far enough away, but had the wind shifted to bring him the smoky-sweet smell of burning flesh?

  He swallowed the acid back down to his stomach at the thought.

  A group of three or four people approached on the path from the fort, and Patrick shaded his eyes. He identified Nanette, Private Derry, and two other soldiers whose names he didn’t know. They carried steam rifles.

  “Who is it?” Bryce asked.

  “The first of the field teams, I think. That nurse Nanette is with them, so it must be one of the medical ones.” Something told him to head in the opposite direction, and he paused.

  “Are you all right?” Bryce asked.

  “Let’s go this way,” Patrick said and struck off the path. He wished he’d insisted Bryce go back with the wagon because the lad moved slowly.

  Nanette and her group changed their direction as well to intercept them.

  “Go on to the base,” he told Bryce. “I’m going to head them off.”

  �
�Why? Aren’t they on our side?”

  “I don’t know. Just go!”

  Bryce disappeared over a hillock, and Patrick stopped and waited for Nanette to approach him. She had a satchel over her shoulder.

  “What can I do for you, Nurse? That wouldn’t happen to be a bag of the missing drugs, would it?”

  “You’re too clever, and you’re coming with us, Mister O’Connell.” She raised her rifle and sighted him. “General Lee wants an aether weapon of his own.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Fort Daniels, 3 March 1871

  Claire stalked away from Radcliffe. That stupid man. He acted like she couldn’t handle herself, like she hadn’t managed to almost escape from an asylum in Paris and get a medical degree in spite of being an experiment. She needed to go look for Patrick. She owed him that much for taking on the risk of manning the weapon during the battle. Not that anyone would have let her do it, her being a “weak woman”.

  And would she have wanted to?

  She bumped into Beth on her way out of the hospital and remembered she’d neglected Bryce, she’d been so busy. The few times she’d snuck away to see him, it had been after she knew Radcliffe would be done at the hospital, and Bryce had been asleep.

  “How’s Bryce?” Claire asked. “He didn’t overextend himself trying to help, did he?”

  “Not as far as I know,” the nurse told her. “I was busy like everyone else.”

  “Where is he now? I’ll come back and spend the evening with him, maybe eat with him.”

  “Well…” Beth looked around and drew closer to Claire. “He so desperately wanted to do something, Doctor Perkins let him ride out on the wagon that went to retrieve the aether gun.”

  The sick sensation in Claire’s middle could only be her heart sinking into her stomach. “The wagon is back. Bryce wasn’t on it.”

  Beth’s rosy cheeks paled. “What? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. What could have happened to him?”

  “I don’t know, but now I’m worried.”

  “Me too.” Claire’s horrified expression mirrored Beth’s.

  I’m not so helpless I can’t go look for my cousin.

  “I’ll find him.”

  She walked back to her room at a pace slow enough not to arouse suspicion or interest but fast enough that it didn’t take her long. When she entered, she found Calla turning down the bed.

  “Oh, there you are! Are you ready to sleep? You must be exhausted, but the whole base is talking about how successful La Reine was.”

  Claire almost said no, she wasn’t going to bed, but getting undressed would be quicker if she had help, so she nodded. Calla helped her out of her dress and corset and wrinkled her nose at the blood.

  “I’ll just send these to the laundry, but you may need to replace them. Oh, and the recovery teams managed to extract your clothes from the General’s House, what’s left of it. They arrived from the laundry today. And your trunk is here too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Oh, that’s a relief. Go away, go away, go away.

  “Oh, you’re tired. Well, then, good night, Doctor.”

  “Good night, Calla. I’ll get the door.”

  Claire shut the door behind the girl and stripped off her nightgown. She dug around in her trunk—dented and dusty, but intact—and found what she was looking for. She wondered what Martine would think, her still using his clothing to go someplace a woman had no business being. He’d appreciated her help in the men’s clubs in Vienna. She’d been able to steer him toward the other young men looking for someone like him and away from the government spies who only had ill intent toward those who didn’t conform to traditional relationship standards.

  She dressed quickly and tucked her hair up into a hat. She’d find Bryce and Patrick. They could both be exhausted and hysterical from pain by now and wandering about lost. She piled some of her clothing under her blankets so it would look like she slept to anyone who peeked into her room and let herself out through the window.

  * * * * *

  Chad met his team in the courtyard and noticed Nanette wasn’t with them. Where had she gone?

  Or did he have to ask?

  He would have given almost anything to be wrong. The betrayal of a colleague, one whom he’d trusted with his patients’ lives, infuriated him, but he was most disappointed in himself for not pursuing his suspicions earlier. He hadn’t wanted to accuse Nanette without proof, but what more had he needed? Her disappearances and determination to ingratiate herself to him fell into place along with the fact that she was the only person Thaddeus Mitchell had been civil to. She’d been trying to run a honeypot scheme on him, get him to join her and spy on the army from the hospital. Not that she’d needed him. Men’s lips loosened with painkillers, so she probably saw and heard enough to report.

  He closed his eyes as yet another layer of her duplicity became clear.

  She’d used the missing painkillers, both to lower inhibitions at Fort Daniels and help the Confederate soldiers back at Fort Temperance. It was well-known that the Confederacy was strapped for pharmaceuticals with their major ports being blockaded.

  He could chastise himself for days about missing the clues about Nanette, but he had a more important mission.

  “Our mission tonight is not for us,” he told his team. “It’s for any survivors we find out there. Even though the battle is over, there will still be danger, so stay low, stick together, and stay alert.”

  He had each person show him their steam pistols. All the pressure dials showed they were ready to fire. Each had two shots before it had to be repressurized and reloaded, but in his experience, one was usually enough. They didn’t have the range of traditional firearms, but they were quiet and were therefore good for picking off looters.

  No one spoke as they walked from the gates. Dampness, mud, and the metallic odor of blood combined with the chill in the air to make Chad wish he could curl up with Claire in front of a fire somewhere with cups of hot cider.

  Shadows moved around the field, and Chad guessed the looters were already afoot. His team knew not to shoot unless they were threatened, but others were not so cautious, which made being out at all risky. He motioned for his people to extinguish their lanterns so they wouldn’t be easy targets for bitter Confederate teams who may want revenge for the afternoon’s rout. The moon provided enough illumination for their grisly task.

  They moved from body to body, and Chad fell into an unemotional rhythm that allowed him space from the grief of examining the bodies of the boys he’d healed but who hadn’t made it back from this battle. That most of them were victims of shelling made identification more difficult. Pitifully few went back to the fort, the first one with his strongest orderlies, who moved as fast as they could with a stretcher. He hoped Perkins would be able to get the leg off in time.

  Chad and his dwindling company came to the top of the bluff that overlooked the border, where a pile of corpses showed how heavily defended La Reine had been. If Patrick was anywhere, he would be here.

  Chad saw a boy bending over them, looking intently from face to face. Except the person didn’t move like a male, and moonlight glinted off the lenses of glasses.

  “Claire!” he hissed. The not-boy looked up, and he caught the full force of her defiant glare. “Get over here!”

  “Not until I know he’s safe. And Bryce is out here somewhere too!”

  “What?” Chad rubbed his eyes. Why all these wandering McPhees? He’d ream them both out when they got back to the base.

  At first he thought the noise was his own furious heartbeat, but it grew louder and resolved into hoofbeats coming up the bluff. For a moment, he was back in the steam cart in the fog and unsure of where the horseman was.

  Claire looked behind her, then ran toward Chad and his team. A dark figure on a horse grabbed her, swinging her over t
he pommel of the saddle, and she screamed.

  The glow of steam pistols being swung toward the horseman and Claire made Chad hold up his hand. “No! Don’t shoot—you could hit her!”

  The sound of the horse’s hooves retreated into the dark, and he knew where it took her—to Fort Temperance, the Confederate base.

  As much as Chad wanted to find a horse and go after her, he knew it was futile. He’d never catch her at this point, and if he was captured, he wouldn’t be able to rescue her. He’d allow his mind to work on a plan while he finished his tour of his part of the field. That was something Allen McPhee had impressed on him long ago—sometimes you needed to let your mind work indirectly on problems, especially if your emotions were involved. His team found a few more soldiers they could save, but his heart was heavy. Plus Patrick wasn’t in the hospital or anywhere on base.

  Bryce McPhee came in on another team’s stretcher and was practically delirious from pain and cold. Chad cursed under his breath when he saw him.

  “What happened?” he asked. “No, even better, don’t speak. We need to get you warmed up.”

  “No, I have to tell you this.” Bryce gasped out a story that chilled Chad’s blood. Patrick had been taken too, which meant that now the Confederates had both inventors of the aether weapon.

  The war may not be over so quickly, and now Chad would have to figure out something to save his love and his best friend.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Fort Temperance, 3 March 1871

  The horseman clapped a hand over Claire’s mouth when she screamed, and the stench of blood made her gag. Her glasses had hung on valiantly during the first part of the ride, but she lost them when the horse jumped a stream, and the world passed by in a blur. The thud of the horse’s hooves mostly shut out the moans of the wounded, but she could still feel them, their fear and despair in the dark. Where were the Confederate field teams? Would they leave their men to die?