Dawn's Early Light (8 page)

She strode past Pearson with a word, and they entered the airship's belly. As they went deeper into the gondola it got warmer and warmer, returning to a more comfortable temperature once beyond the engine room. A handful of guards, dressed in steel grey uniforms bearing, just above their right breast, the insignia of the
Titan
, acknowledged Sophia with a little bow. Beneath her notice or concern, she did not return the salute but fixated on the path ahead.

Pearson opened a final bulkhead door and ushered her in. It was dark. The Maestro always preferred shadow, but then so did she.

“Signora del Morte,”
his voice wheezed, accompanied by occasional bursts of steam escaping from his breathing apparatus. “You have done excellent work this day.”

Compliments from him were few and far between, and Sophia took what he offered with both hands. It was like rain on a parched garden. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I am honoured to serve as herald to your arrival in the Americas.”

“An office you fulfilled admirably,” he wheezed. “This final test of the electroporter, I would safely say”—and he motioned with his metallic encased hand—“was a rousing success. We are now able to proceed to the next stage: recruiting our latest candidate to come work for me, once he leaves his current position, that is.” She heard the machine move, a subtle creak and rattle of gears. “And, of course, your next task.”

Sophia felt a bitterness form in her mouth. “I will not be here to work alongside you?”

“You, my dear Angel of Death, shall use the electroporter to journey to San Francisco.”

Her mouth immediately dried up as the horrific image of Chandi Culpepper emerging from the prototype came to mind. There was the flash of unnaturally bright light, then the scream accompanied by the malformed and distorted madwoman . . .

“Is there a problem?” the Maestro asked.

“No, Maestro,” she lied.

His good hand reached from the shadows with a leather folio. “Your orders.”

“And what will you do here?” she asked as she took the attaché from him.

A few seconds had passed before Sophia realised what had made the Maestro mute. She knew the question had been a mistake even before he spoke. “This is your business because—?”

She searched for an answer, but all Sophia could be certain of was the sweat breaking out on her skin. She opened her mouth. No words came. At first. “I . . . I simply wish to understand my service to you, Maestro. To make certain my objectives are clear.”

“Understand my service”—and he motioned to the billfold she tightly grasped in her hands—“by understanding your orders.”

“Yes, Maestro,” she said without blinking or hesitation, her face completely devoid of any emotion.

“Come closer, Signora,” the Maestro wheezed suddenly, a pair of malevolent crimson eyes glowing softly from the shadows.

She felt the folio's leather dig underneath her nails, her memory of when she was last within the Maestro's reach—and consequentially, in his grasp—still very vivid.

The brass-and-leather fingers reached for her, slowly and languidly. “If there are any problems here in the Carolinas . . .” The Maestro's voice was accompanied by assorted hisses and creaks, as if bellows within his suit were working hard. But why? Was he trying to keep his own emotions under control as well? “. . . I will call for you.” Those final words were punctuated with his fingertips brushing her cheek ever so gently.

Sophia was having a hard time breathing, particularly when feeling his cold, metallic caress. Fear and desire mixed together in the pit of her stomach. “Of course, Maestro.”

His fingers stopped their forward progress just underneath her chin where they lingered for an instant longer, the red points of light seeming to flare brighter now that she was close.

“Arm yourself, my Angel of Death,” the Maestro whispered to her. “This foreign soil is not without its protectors.”

Sophia nodded. “Yes, the House of Usher have dealt with OSM before. I can take care of anyone they have in their employment.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.”

Sophia motioned to the folio in her hands. “I am certain it is in here, Maestro, but will I be able to recognise my target in San Francisco?”

The laugh that came echoed within the metal suit, making it seem as if more than one man was amused by the question she was posing. It was terrifying and wonderful all at the same time.

When the answer came it made her smile as well. “His name is Albert. As he is heir to the throne of England, he will be difficult to miss.”

“I
n America, we call this scoping the territory.” Bill grinned at Eliza and slid her a shot of a clear liquid across the table where they were seated. She glanced around the tiny bar and pressed her lips together, even as she wrapped her fingers around his offering. Apparently, they were the only ones taking this case seriously.

As a frown formed on her brow, she decided that part of her anger was related to the mounting suspicion that the other two, apparently cross-referencing previous Ministry investigations against open OSM cases, had the better end of the deal. This establishment smelt of fish, sea salt, and unwashed men, and was not the first place she would have picked as a night out on the town with a handsome foreign agent.

Not that she was going to tell Bill she thought he was handsome. She couldn't imagine how arrogant he would get if she let that one slip.

Quagmire's—the territory they were currently scoping—was a little building on the sand, with windows easily rattled by the whistling wind and a handful of bleak-looking locals enjoying a limited choice of spirits. A far cry from Swan's Retreat.

Eliza picked up the glass and drained its contents in one motion. Whatever she had just knocked back down her gullet burned her throat and—she was most certain—the inside of her stomach, but she made sure not to let any hint of that cross her face. “Smooth,” she uttered, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, “but I really don't think the locals are quite used to women sharing their drinking space.”

Bill seemed, for the first time, to take notice of the attention they were drawing: the dirty looks of the inhabitants. “Well, I do believe that is because they have never seen such a beautiful woman in all their lives.”

Eliza raised both her eyebrows and sighed. They had dressed down for this little bit of infiltration; but the resident population of the Outer Banks was so small, they would have drawn notice no matter what they wore. Apart from the rich little country resort, the rest of these giant sandbanks' inhabitants were better described as “salt of the earth.”
Or perhaps, of the earth and sea,
Eliza mused.

Her thumb brushed against her Ministry-issued signet ring and, ignoring the odd tingle the tracking device imparted, she lowered her voice as she leaned closer to her companion. “This lot don't look like they have seen many women. Full stop.”

Bill let his gaze roam over their fellow drinkers and then nodded slowly as he refilled her tiny glass. “You have a point there, but think on them as toys in your experienced hands. We need information on the area, and these boys have what we need.”

Eliza looked him up and down, and replied tartly, “I'm not exactly sure how you do it here, but I am not about to sit on all of these blokes' laps for information when we don't even know exactly what it is we need to ask . . .”

The American's laugh, for a moment, managed to drown out the roar of the wind. “What do you take me for, Miss Braun? I might not be no gentleman from England and all, but I'm not about to ask a lady to pass herself around like that!” He kicked back his own shot and then slapped a fistful of dollars on the table. “No, I believe in doing things the old-fashioned way.”

It took only an hour to change everyone's perspective in the room. It was amazing the change that could be wrought with the application of cash. By the time Bill's money was gone, they had made themselves a colourful collection of new friends in North Carolina. Eliza paced herself with sips of the rotgut Quagmire's palmed off as liquor, only wetting her lips.

Bill on the other hand was letting nothing go to waste.

With his bowie knife slicing through the air, Bill performed wild tricks ranging from juggling tosses to the always-popular parlour game of knife's tip skipped between the spaces of his splayed hand. It was a miracle, on seeing Bill's antics, that he still possessed all his fingers. After winning yet another round of this harrowing stunt of accuracy, Bill threw his knife at his own feet and broke into a dance to a tune the old man in the corner was belting out on his tin whistle. It was a jaunty little ditty, and Bill's feet certainly flew.

A smile was forming on her mouth. Despite his brashness, arrogance, and the former incident in San Francisco, she was starting to see how Bill operated. He was a man's man, and had so few pretensions that normal working folk didn't feel as if he was talking down to them.

It reminded her of how she operated.

Bill ended his show with a flourish as the locals exploded in adulation. He stumbled through the flurry of back slaps and shoulder punches to flop in the seat before her. “They might be dirt farmers,” he said, wiping the sweat off his face with his sleeve, “but these folk sure can drink.”

“And that is the sum and total of what we've learned?” Eliza tilted her head and fixed him with a relatively sober gaze.

“Not quite,” Bill said with a grin. “I've been pepperin' the talk with questions about anything that just wasn't right. I kept hearin' the same thing: talk to Merle. Accordin' to the lore, he's seen things.” He took a swig of his beer.

Eliza looked at her partner, and shrugged. “Merle is . . . ?”

He pointed to an older man huddled in the corner, nursing a glass of whiskey, avoiding everyone's gaze. Eliza noticed immediately that there was something strange about the man's legs. With a little more observation she discerned a prosthetic, just visible through long tears in the fabric. The fixtures she could only just see did not look well cared for, pitted and scarred by a life at sea. Much like the man it was strapped to.

Bill leaned over. “Veteran,” he muttered. “Surprised the old codger has lived this long.”

“He's a man, Bill. Not some horse that should be put down on account of a crippling wound.”

He took another swig of his beer. “Take a good look at ol' Merle, and tell me that what he's got is something resembling a life.”

War was something this child of the even deeper south—namely the Pacific Ocean—had never experienced. Peering into the eyes of this old man, however, she could only guess at the horrors he had seen. Wellington sometimes wore that look in unguarded moments.

Eliza waved over the bartender, such as he was, and bought the bottle from him. “Leave this to me,” she muttered to Bill, and strode over to the corner.

He had the look of a beaten, but still very angry dog. The pity Eliza felt welling inside her vanished when Merle locked eyes with her as she approached. His hand slid down his good leg. The snarl growing on his face, and her own instincts, warned her of some kind of pistol there. Her own hands were full, but she could drop the glasses and bottle in a moment to pit her speed of youth against his advanced years and experience.

Not tonight,
she thought as she cast a warm smile his way.

After a moment, his hand slid back into view, his eyes, grey as the ocean, still fixed with hers. A smile twitched in the corner of his mouth as he raked her form up and down. “What do you want, girl?”

His gaze shifted abruptly from her to the glasses and bottle she set in front of him. The hardness softened slightly on seeing how very full the bottle was.

“I hear you're Merle,” she said, taking a seat next to him. He was busy staring at the whiskey still sloshing inside the bottle. “I also hear you know what goes on around here.”

Merle reached for the bottle, but just then his gaze travelled past her. Immediately he seemed to deflate. Eliza turned in that direction to see a knot of men muttering among themselves, their callous nods and gestures towards their corner making her skin prickle. She breathed easier when Bill appeared, offering another round which they graciously accepted. Just before they turned away from view, Bill looked over to Eliza and winked at her.

“Is that true?” Eliza asked, turning back to Merle.

“Maybe,” he grumbled in reply, his eyes boring into the worn table under his hands.

“How long have you called the Outer Banks your home?”

“Since before you entered this world, girl, I can tell you that.”

Eliza nodded, filling one of the small glasses. She looked Merle over. Whatever was in this tiny glass could have been what Axelrod and Blackwell used to clean their contraptions. It certainly couldn't hurt this old-timer.

“That means you've seen a lot,” she said, sliding the drink closer to him. “Maybe even some things you shouldn't.”

He snorted, picked up his drink, and raised it to his lips. “You think anyone here believes a crazy old man? Believes in Blackbeard's Curse? Even with what I've seen . . .”

A curse? Perhaps as credible as hauntings, but sometimes a lead could spring from wives' tales and superstitions. “Maybe it's because you're talking to the wrong people.”

His gaze hardened again. “What's that s'posed to mean?”

“It means, Merle, that these men haven't seen what you've seen, have they? They're too young to have fought in the war. Some people can't believe in anything spectacular because they have small minds, small lives.” Merle downed the drink quickly, the glass knocking softly against the table. She poured him another shot. “They don't like to imagine anything exists beyond their own little world, but you . . . well, you know better.”

The lines around Merle's face deepened as he frowned up at her, searching her face for some sign that she was stringing him along. Eliza held his gaze unflinchingly.

Merle tilted his head and nodded as if acknowledging that. “Like how you were only on your second shot before coming over here? How many has that beau of yours had? Seven?”

Eliza's mouth bent into a grin. “Nine.”

“Nine?” The old man gave a rough bark she could only assume was a laugh. His fingers wandered over to the glass and tightened on the shot, once finding it. “Guess all this shit bourbon here is finally taking a toll on me.”

Eliza poured herself a glass, just in case. “You mentioned a curse.”

He leaned forwards over the table and gestured her in closer. “It's real, you know? Blackbeard's airship,
Devil's Shadow
, went down here. He was en route to Ocracoke, but had to stop at Corolla for a quick refuel. There was a ship moored offshore. He thought it was
Queen Anne's Revenge
, but it wasn't.” He exchanged his now-empty glass for Eliza's. “Not sure who it was that done it, but Blackbeard's airship fell from the sky that night. A ball of flame that lit the Currituck Banks for miles.”

While akin to a fantastic yarn to chill children in front of a hearth's fire, Merle's story actually had merit. Early airships in the nineteenth century were truly experimental, usually a long gondola with several balloons suspended overhead. Pirate vessels were particularly dangerous as the easiest lighter-than-air gas to purchase through underground channels was hydrogren, hence why airships were not so common in the Golden Age of Piracy.

“Are you sure this wasn't the Fire Ship of New Bern you were seeing?” Eliza asked.

A bushy eyebrow crooked at that query. “I may be a damn drunk, girl, but I know the difference between where I live and Ocracoke. Next time, know your geography as well as your local lore.”

Eliza often talked with folks who had seen and heard things that would earn them anything from a dubious reputation to confinement in an asylum. He carried with him the look of a haunted man; but in that bold statement, he displayed a cold sobriety.

“So Blackbeard crashed off Currituck then?” she pressed.

“Folks all swear it's the Graveyard of the Atlantic?” Merle hissed. “What's happening is more than just shallow shoals.”

Eliza swallowed and glanced back over her shoulder. Bill and his new friends were still working through a pair of bottles; but if he were trying to keep a pace with these gents, he might be losing feeling in his legs at any moment.

She turned back to Merle, fixing her eyes with his, as if it were only them in Quagmire's tonight. “Go on. Tell me what you saw.”

He tugged on her arm and bent towards her ear. “A sword of flame, come rising from hell itself, blasting ships from the sky and cuttin' vessels in half. Saw it with my own eyes the other night. I had just come home when Blackbeard's sword plucked an airship out of the sky. I thought it was just the drink . . . then I saw the bodies wash up. It was as if Sherman had come back . . .” His voice trailed off as tears spilled from his eyes.

Eliza reached out and took Merle's open hand. He had not asked to be a witness, but there was a real chance he was drinking harder than before to erase recent memories. He had seen enough death for one lifetime.

A quick blink, and his face twisted into a chiselled grimace. “Next morning, the corpses were gone, but like all the other ghosts of the Carolinas, they'll be back.”