Tin Swift (15 page)

The prayer, the women’s voices, the taste of honey, and the feel of the ship upon him stripped away.

Captain Hink blinked hard to get his bearings.

Mae Lindson was no longer touching his shoulder. She was standing in front of him. No, she was falling, fainting. Hink let go of the wheel and reached out for her, but Cedar Hunt was there, and caught her up before she fell.

For a moment Cedar Hunt stood in front of him, more wolf in his gaze than Captain Hink had seen in the wild beasts themselves. He suddenly wished he had a gun in his hand.

“She saved your life,” Cedar Hunt snarled. Then, “Don’t touch her.”

He strode away past Rose Small in the hammock to the wolf, who was on his feet, ears tipped back and head down, staring at Hink with the selfsame killing eyes as Cedar Hunt.

Maybe they really were brothers.

Hink looked over the crew members. All three men looked a little rattled and were taking a hard pull on flasks of hooch. Mr. Seldom lifted his in a sort of salute toward Hink, then took another generous swallow.

Hink patted his jacket for his own ounce of courage.

“What kind of a cow patty landing was that?” Molly Gregor asked as she stormed out from the boiler room bringing with her the smell of soot and oil and hot wet metal. She took in the sight of Cedar Hunt laying Mae Lindson on the floor and then leveled a blistering glare at the captain.

“What did you do to her?” she demanded.

Hink tugged out a flask of bourbon and took a long swallow. He’d need it to put a calm in his voice.

He knew better than to rile up the Gregor woman, especially after a hard landing. She didn’t like hard landings much. None of the crew did. Though a hard landing was a damn sight better than not being around to complain about it.

“Don’t know what Mae Lindson did exactly,” Hink said.
“She somehow made for bringing the bird down a little easier. I wouldn’t have threaded the buttonhole if she hadn’t…” He paused. “What did she do?” he asked Cedar Hunt. “Was it some kind of witchcraft?”

Molly rolled her eyes, then turned to Mr. Hunt. “You’ll have to forgive the captain here. Most days he has brains in his head.”

“Now, Molly,” Captain Hink said. “That was a question from me to him. Let’s let him have his say. Was it some kind of witchcraft?” He nodded toward Rose Small and the wolf before meeting Mr. Hunt’s steady gaze. “Mr. Hunt?”

“Yes.”

Funny how one word can stick a finger in the world’s gears and gum things up for a second or two.

“Huh.” It wasn’t much to say, but it was all he had in him. He tipped the flask, then walked over and offered it to Molly. She took a nip and handed it back.

“Anything we can do for her?” Molly asked. Heart of gold, that woman. He didn’t know if she believed that they had a witch on board. Even if she did, Molly wouldn’t let that get in the way of basic courtesy.

“Hot tea,” Cedar Hunt said. “Maybe food. But I think she’ll be unconscious for a while.”

“Well, then,” Hink said. “We have work to be getting done. Molly, if you could rustle some grub and tea, we could all use some. The boiler survive the bump?”

“No cracks that I’ve found yet, Captain,” she said.

“Good. Guffin, see to it we’re lashed down tight for the night. Ansell, drain the airbags. Seldom, see how bad off the fans and gears are.”

“What are you going to do, Captain?” Guffin asked.

“Drink the rest of this flask and tell you to get to work,” Hink said.

Molly went back to the galley and the men got moving, though they muttered loud enough to make sure he heard just what they thought of him, his mother, and his orders.

Once everyone was out of earshot, Hink turned to Cedar Hunt.

“Have a seat, Mr. Hunt,” he said as he dropped himself into one of the wicker and leather chairs next to a small table. The
Swift
wasn’t exactly set up for passenger comfort, but they’d long ago decided that the basic niceties were necessities.

For a moment, Hink didn’t think the man was going to oblige his invitation.

Then Mr. Hunt walked over and sat.

Hink handed him the flask. Mr. Hunt took a hard swallow and handed it back.

“Your brother’s a wolf, and your woman’s a witch,” the captain mused. “I find that some of the more interesting things I’ve seen lately. As luck would have it, I happen to have several hours on my hands to listen to the explanation of who you are, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going to. And, oh yes, why.”

Mr. Hunt didn’t say anything, just gave him that hard bronze gaze.

Hink settled in to outwait the man. Because they weren’t moving a single step farther along this trail until he knew exactly what kind of trouble he had on his hands.

G
eneral Alabaster Saint’s sword tapped the top of his boot with each stride as he paced the edge of Candlewick Bluff. The rocky ground beneath him cracked like bones of the dead as he surveyed the lower range and valley of the Big Horn Mountains spread wide before him.

He was waiting. Waiting in the cold dark before dawn, all the men in his militia sleeping, the three airships lashed down and cool in the night. Waiting for a message from his spies.

He’d sent out twenty men. To find Marshal Cage and bring him in. Dead or alive. The same men were told to listen for rumors of the weapon Alabaster Saint most wanted to get his hands on. The Holder.

During the war, both sides had claimed they were in possession of it. He’d found no proof that it was true. But he’d intercepted a man who said Marshal Cage had orders to track it if he could. Which meant the president was interested in the weapon.

And so was General Alabaster Saint.

He had spent years gathering men sympathetic to his cause. Men willing to rise up against the excessive restrictions and regulations on the western glim that the eastern states craved. Men willing to fight for the territory of the west to control all trade and profits made from glim, on both the legal and the illegal markets.

Saint had served his time fighting other men’s wars for zero profit.

Now it was time for a visionary leader to join glim harvesters and pirates in a common goal: to control the glim fields of the United States of America and govern the skies under law unconnected with the land beneath it.

A crow shook free from a tree, shadowing black across the gray sky. The general tracked it with the single eye left to him, watching it disappear into the deep of the hills.

This land’s war had brought him pain, suffering, and enough grief to choke a man. He’d lost his son, James, on the field, then his wife, Laura, to the grief.

The war had taken both of them from him.

And given him nothing in return. He was done with this land. But he still wanted the sky.

“General?” Lieutenant Foster walked up behind him, his pace altered by the drag of the prosthetic foot he’d worn for the last three years. The lantern in his hand swung a steady beam of light across the rocks and scrub around them.

Lieutenant Foster had been with him the longest of any of his men and had proven himself an unflinching second, unafraid to carry out his every command.

The tales of the Saint’s cruelty on and off the field had been passed in whispers between rank and file, building the Saint up into a nightmarish commander. Lieutenant Foster had done nothing to stop such talk. Because none of those tales were quite correct.

Most men, except for perhaps Lieutenant Foster, weren’t capable of imagining the sorts of things Alabaster Saint was truly willing to inflict on a man to see that his word was obeyed during the war.

And obey him they did, down to a man.

Until Mr. Hink Cage came under his service.

Charismatic, devious, a man who followed his own caprice, Captain Cage obeyed orders for a year before rising up with half the division and
refusing his orders on the grounds that the Saint was not following the president’s order to hold the line until reinforcements came.

It was true that the Saint had been acting without orders. It was certainly not the first time. And he had one of the highest mortality rates in the Union army because of it.

Captain Cage had intercepted the president’s correspondence, then refused to march.

With one uprising, Cage forced the Saint to call the single retreat in his career.

Publicly shamed, Saint was put on trial for more than disobeying orders. Someone had infiltrated his records and correspondence. Records of the weapons trading the Saint had profited from.

When he stood trial, the man who had spied on him testified. That man was Captain Hink Cage.

The North and South spent five years beating each other into bloody graves. Now the states were one Union again, one land again with a railway to stitch over the old wounds.

But no one had yet claimed the skies.

Lieutenant Foster cleared his throat.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“There’s a man to see you, sir.”

The Saint adjusted the patch over the hole where his left eye used to be and turned.

Foster looked pressed and clean, as if he’d just walked out of a tailor’s shop. His dark hair was combed back off his forehead, his face clean shaven except for the precisely trimmed sideburns that reached down to his jaw.

Didn’t matter how much mud and blood he was wading through, the man always cut a sharp figure.

“What man, Lieutenant Foster?” Could be one of the spies he’d sent out. But if it were, Foster would have just told him who had returned with news.

The spies knew better than to return without news.

“He didn’t give me his name, sir.” Foster licked his lips and looked as close to nervous as the Saint had ever seen him. “He’s waiting in your office.”

“I’m going to need more than that,” he said. “Where’s he from? What’s he look made of? Why’s he here?”

“Permission to speak plainly, sir.”

Alabaster Saint narrowed his eye. Then, “Granted.”

Lieutenant Foster relaxed his bearing just the nth of a degree and met Alabaster’s gaze.

“He’s tall, lean, and like nothing I’ve seen before.”

“Foreigner?”

“Not a kind I’ve put eyes on.”

“What’s your gut say, Foster?”

“He’s a killer. A butcher of men. And he enjoys it.”

Alabaster Saint didn’t see any of those traits as a downfall. Had made a point to bestow his rare praise on Lieutenant Foster for just those reasons.

“And why wouldn’t we welcome a man of that stripe, Lieutenant Foster?”

“I think he’s out of his mind insane.”

Alabaster Saint chuckled, a low, humorless rumble. “All men are insane, Mr. Foster. Just some utilize it better than others.”

Lieutenant Foster gave the Saint half a nod, though it was clear he was holding back words of disagreement. That wasn’t like him. Foster always told the general what was on his mind.

If other men had spoken with such frankness, Alabaster would have minced their entrails and served them with beans. But not Foster. Alabaster had learned quickly that the man’s mind was just as sharp as his uniform.

His insight had turned more than one plan to his favor.

“If you have something to say, Lieutenant, say it,” the general said.

“There’s something terribly wrong about him. Something Strange. It is my recommendation, sir, to have him on his way as quickly as possible.”

“Are you spooked, Mr. Foster?” the Saint asked, amused.

“No sir,” the lieutenant said. But his eyes betrayed his words.

Whoever was waiting for the Saint back in his office had managed to put a chill in the veins of a man the general would have bet good money couldn’t be spooked.

“Steel up, Lieutenant,” the Saint said, as he walked past his lieutenant, “or you’re no use to me.”

Alabaster Saint strode toward the building tucked far enough back in the rocks and scree that it was difficult to see from the surrounding ground, and, even more important, was nearly impossible to see from the air.

This was his fortress, his stronghold. When he called war—if it came to that—upon the eastern states, this would be his command center.

The only way a man knew of this place was by very careful invitation.

Or so he had thought.

The crunching of Foster’s boots over the rubble told him the man had courage enough to still follow him. Good.

Dawn had taken the bruise off the night and was pushing pale blue over the twisted trees and ragged mountain walls. No birdsong rode that light, an unusual omen on so clear a morning.

The house came into view, a large split-log and stone structure that looked like it had sat the mountain for centuries instead of just a few years. The barracks for the men was to one side, a long building with small windows and enough beds to sleep a couple hundred, though he had only half that many pressed into service right now.

To the north of the clearing was the huge shelter for the airships—made of wood and canvas cleverly secured to the side of the mountain
to cut the worst of the wind. It wasn’t large enough to fly the ships into fully inflated, but once the air and steam was out of them, all three of his pride and joy could nest there together.

The men were waking, smoke from the cookhouse rising to mix with the mist that clung to the crags.

There was a single lantern polishing copper against the window of his office and home. A shadowed figure broke that light.

Even from this distance, the Saint could feel the eyes of the man who stood within that shadow, hidden as if light feared to touch him.

The hair on the back of the general’s neck pricked up. Those eyes, that man, were danger. The Saint had no doubt of that. And he knew that dangerous men could be very useful.

He strode up to the door and pulled it open, stepping into his office without taking off his hat. The man stood at the window, his back turned toward him, covered in layers and layers of coats, some of which were long enough to fall all the way to his heels. He wore a stovepipe hat, and a pile of scarves around his neck.

“What’s your name, and what’s your business?” The Saint paced to the other side of the room and sat at his desk. He always kept a revolver and a sword on him, but his Enfield Rifle-musket leaned against the wall behind the desk. In easy reach now.