Lands Beyond Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by Kin S. Law

  “But our solution to Hallow…” said Hargreaves.

  “After Mordemere’s Calamity, we offered him the dish on a silver platter, well-seasoned, of course, with a plague of our own making. His host fell, and there was no Doctor Snow to save him.”

  “What if it had spread? What if it turned San Francisco into a plague pit?”

  “We were willing to risk it. The Cook box was the key to Hallow’s plans, my dear,” Her Majesty the Queen said. “His lynchpin. We had to manufacture a plague to get past the his machinations. And it worked. Not only did the plague we added to his infernal engine destroy Hallow’s host, the threat of his dominance destroyed all those dreadful Incognito. And the red herring of a devastating weapon was useful. Simply the rumor of it forced the Ottomans’ hand. We’ve crushed them in the Falklands, pushed the Argentines back. When the Ottomans made to strike at the motherland, our Balaenopterons were ready over the Channel. Not diverted, merely hiding. Once the threat was gone, the Falklands were ours.”

  That small cluster of islands an ocean away from Buckingham Palace held a fortune in aeon stone, lightly mined. With one stroke, Her Majesty had crippled a major threat and ripped away a crowning gem for her Crown.

  It didn’t make events sit any easier on Hargreaves’ mind.

  “America was your model. You wanted Britain to be self-sufficient, to be isolated and protected by miles of ocean, only that wasn’t possible, so you created an ocean of fear,” accused Hargreaves. She didn’t care that the dragoon stood near, hearing everything that was said. “But I’ve seen what they must do to satiate the appetites of the masters here. Nobody here is independent, not yet, though they fight valiantly for it every day. How easy was it for Jean to convince you to build his monsters?”

  “Violence and physical colonization cost too much gold and too much English blood. It’s a vulgar habit. Today we buy our enemy, or we allow them to destroy themselves. I won’t ask you to approve, but we have to protect ourselves from the seeds we’ve sown. The days of imperialism are over, Vanessa,” replied Her Majesty. For the first time, the Queen sounded shaken. Unsure. It was slight, but it was there- and that more than anything solidified Hargreaves’ resolve.

  “Not from where I’m standing, ma’am,” said Hargreaves. “Begging your pardon, but consider this my letter of resignation.”

  Before Her Majesty could say something eloquent, Hargreaves took up the shivering dague and broke it over her knee. Then she removed the nugget of tuned sugar crystal inside, still quivering with the Queen’s voice, and popped it into her mouth.

  The very idea of what Her Majesty had done sent a wave of revulsion through Hargreaves. She thought she had been dragging a spectre of war across America, when all the while the box contained only a trap set for one man. A death sentence, not a world-killer. A booby-trapped present for the tick at England’s neck, Jean Hallow.

  Let the Queen worry about her congress of shadows. Vanessa Hargreaves had had enough.

  After their conversation with Rosa atop the school, Hargreaves dove into the care of the survivors of San Francisco. By the time she returned to the wreck of the ’Berry, late in the evening, Auntie was speaking with the owners of the building they’d landed upon, and there were rumors of turning the whole arrangement into a thematic inn. Certainly the ship would never fly again; her vital engine had been ripped clean out in landing, dashed to pieces. Rosa’s room was stripped, save for a pack of tarot cards for Hargreaves left on the desk. Their edges were soft pasteboard—regular tarot, not Rosa’s specialty throwing ones. There was no reason for Rosa to stay—this was no longer Albion Clemens’ Huckleberry.

  It took nearly three weeks for Hargreaves to make up her mind to find Rosa Marija in the roiling pot that was America, but once she began looking, she discovered just how easily a worldly airship pirate could disappear into the ether. Rosa Marija left no sign anywhere on the coast, but Hargreaves did a tour of the dives anyway, traveling from city to city, knowing the pirate favored such dingy, comfortable watering holes. She drew tarot cards from her pack when she was unsure of where to go. As she looked, she kept hoping to run into someone with wide shoulders a very tall Chinese with a penchant for whiskey.

  In a relatively small mining town turned pirate port, Hargreaves paid a local a pittance for a room, over the open-air market, and settled in for the long haul. There was a good waystation, and easy ether connections at the telegraph office. She didn’t have to run around bodily, not when airships carried information about Rosa to her doorstep. The outpost was so far removed from civilization that pirates could speak openly, deal plainly, and even traded in their own coin. Mostly they ran people from one end of the country to another, less pirates than shuttle pilots.

  To pass the time, Hargreaves put a stop to a local bandit. Then another, then an arsonist, and then the neighbors came by regularly, for their small quibbles, their lost cats and to sue their government for small offenses, like fixing their roads. No inspector any more, she still possessed a crack shot and a reluctance to use it: the best credentials a lawman could have.

  In February of that year, she somehow got swept up into the Lunar New Year celebration in the local Chinatown, briefly becoming the midsection of a dancing dragon, and got famously drunk. For a month afterward, not a single person who passed her in the street would fail to give her a knowing smirk or shout “milkmaid!” On St. Patrick’s Day she was outdone by a firebrand named Maddy O’Halloran, who outclassed her by two corset sizes and a half-pint. That was the year they made the flash contest official, and set a prize for it.

  Finally, with the first spring flowering, Hargreaves traveled to a San Francisco in the midst of rebuilding. The neighborhoods were not so stylish or tall, nor worn comfortably by history any longer, but the people were hardy, and used to labor. There was grain spirit in plenty, good company in the saloons, and most of all a unity of purpose that had red Indians smoking with brown Italians. Southern belles sung alongside negro pianists, with the good old boys clapping rhythm alongside. Lenders rubbed shoulders with vagrants, who were not vagrants at all, for they had jobs and slapdash addresses and new friends to care for them.

  She missed Funny Goat.

  In the Chandler Hotel against the knees of the city’s famous hills, she signed for a room, found a fairly good-looking, dusky young man in the bar and slept with him. When she left in the morning a bored-looking desk clerk delivered Hargreaves a missive that had crossed and re-crossed the western edge of the land. Like a hound on a scent, it had followed her travels for some months, missing her by days in San Jose and nearly burned up by an airship disaster in the Napa Valley. The thin pad of paper would have gone up in flames, only it had been waylaid by a week even before that, by a roundsman’s strike in Las Vegas.

  But the envelope had found her at last. It bore the thick scale of postage that was the evidence of multiple post ships, dark cloakrooms and even one sprawling stamp that suggested the thing had done a loop through Mexico. Inside the envelope, there was only a pasteboard card, of the kind found in the tourist kiosks, and sold on the trolleys.

  It was a cheap postcard, a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific. A mark had been scrawled on it, bright red even though the edges of the card were starting to soften to yellow from wear. At first, she thought the mark circled the red peak of the bridge. On closer examination, the mark was off-center, and actually went round the ocean itself.

  “That’s bloody clear of you,” the inspector cursed. It took her a moment to realize that, yes, it was. Beside the floating seafood restaurants, the fishing junks, and the trader dirigibles circumscribing a languid route to the Orient, there was only one thing left out there worth any interest.

  It was fearsome. It was daunting. It was also the last place not already found, not claimed by some robber baron, persecuted religion or outlaws seeking another life. It was clean, and it was still, despite folks’ best efforts, mostly a mystery. Not the last, but certainly the next frontier.


  …the Lands Beyond.

  She turned over the card. The missive read, simply:

  He’s out there, Inspector. Why don’t you come catch us?

  THE END

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  About the Author

  KIN S. LAW is a Chinese-American author who looks to include diversity, representation, and truth in his steampunk. Instead of a historical fiction where one event has changed things, his worlds represent what could have been, what should be, and what always was. He draws from a life lived in multiple cultures, but always with a love for everything weird and geeky. voxvorago.tumblr.com

  About the Publisher

  City Owl Press is a cutting edge indie publishing company, bringing the world of romance and speculative fiction to discerning readers.

  www.cityowlpress.com

  Additional Titles

  FUTURE THAT NEVER WAS

  By: Kin S. Law

  A steampunk romp featuring an unorthodox, multi-cultural pirate Captain!

  SPECTRE OF WAR

  By: Kin S. Law

  A third Victoria has ascended the throne of a steam-driven country where enormous clockwork giants walk the streets.

  OF STATIONS INFERNAL

  By: Kin S. Law

  In the wilds of America, Vanessa Hargreaves finds herself up to her corset in trouble.

  BLOOD AND MAGIC

  By: Melissa Sercia

  Gray is a Dhampir—a woman alive, but also dead. With supernatural powers and an insatiable need for blood, her existence is cursed.

  FLESH AND BONE

  By: Melissa Sercia

  Gray’s dark magic has grown stronger and threatens to consume her. But when her partner Aldric mysteriously disappears, she must rely on her powers to find him.

  GODS AND DEMONS

  By: Melissa Sercia

  Will Gray send the demons back to the Underworld or watch her world burn to the ground?

  BOHERMORE

  By: Jennifer Rose McMahon

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  When your dreams become reality, being cursed can be a real nightmare.

  INISH CLARE

  By: Jennifer Rose McMahon

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  When your dreams become reality, hidden secrets come to light.

  BALLYCROY

  By: Jennifer Rose McMahon

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  When your dreams become reality, the legends become truth.

  DIVIDED

  By: Sharon M. Johnston

  A new heart should mean new life, instead it’s a living nightmare.

  SHATTERED

  By: Sharon M. Johnston

  Healing a battered heart will risk her last link to humanity.

  FROSTBITE

  By: Joshua Bader

  Getting hired to be a personal wizard for a billionaire may just become a death sentence.

  TWO WIZARD ROULETTE

  By: Joshua Bader

  While working as a personal wizard for a billionaire, the stakes have never been higher.

  FACELESS

  By: Joshua Bader

  The Race is on to Save Colin and Bring Him Back from the Beyond.

  MAD GOD WALKING

  By: Connor Drexler

  A stranger on earth and a refugee from a twisted Sideways world, can Damon save his friends before he turns into the Mad God the Inquisition believes him to be?

  MIXED IN

  By: Catherine Haustein

  When passions are regulated, which laws will you break?

  MUD

  By: E. J. Wenstrom

  Torn apart by war and abandoned by the gods, only one hope remains to save humanity. But the savior isn’t human at all.

  Royal Palm Literary Award for Book of the Year and First Place for Fantasy.

  RAIN

  By: E. J. Wenstrom

  After Nia’s father dies from a mysterious illness, she grows in isolation amidst the fear and suspicion from her village.

  Prequel novella of Chronicles of the Third Realm War.

  TIDES

  By: E. J. Wenstrom

  Rona didn't ask to be brought back from the Underworld, and now that she is alive again, she’s angry enough to raise hell.

  PURGATORY’S ANGEL

  By: B. Hughes-Millman

  We all have a dark side where inner demons roam. When devils of our nightmares murder in their sleep, only she can stop them.

  RESURRECTION’S ANGEL

  By: B. Hughes-Millman

  Resurrecting your soul from hell isn’t for the weak of heart.

  SORROW’S POINT

  By: Danielle DeVor

  Not All Exorcists are Equal....One is Marked

  SORROW’S EDGE

  By: Danielle DeVor

  Uncovering The Truth…Will Take An Exorcist

  SORROW’S TURN

  By: Danielle DeVor

  Some Things Are Worse Than Demons

  SORROW’S LIE

  By: Danielle DeVor

  Only an Exorcist Can Confront His Demons

  THE MARKER CHRONICLES: THE FIRST TRILOGY

  By: Danielle DeVor

  From Examiner’s Recommended Women in Horror comes the First Trilogy containing books 1 – 3.

  SOUL OF THE UNBORN

  By: Natalia Brothers

  Can you call yourself human if supernatural forces control your every breath, every emotion, every desire?

  UNREGISTERED

  By: Megan Lynch

  Living the ideal life is a human right, unless you’re unregistered.

  UNAFRAID

  By: Megan Lynch

  When Freedom Has a Price, Who Will Stand Unafraid?

  UNDONE

  By: Megan Lynch

  Living the ideal life is a human right, unless you’re unregistered.

  WAKING THE DEAD

  By: D. B. Sieders

  The road to hell begins when the reaper darkens her door.

  RAISING THE DEAD

  By: D. B. Sieders

  Afterlife management is a tricky business, especially for a living soul broker.