Tin Swift (16 page)

The man did not turn. “I hear them,” he whispered, low. “The last words on their lips, the last thoughts in their heads.”

Lieutenant Foster stepped into the room, glanced at the man, then at the general, and closed the door, but didn’t go any farther. His left hand rested on his gun, his gaze on the tall stranger’s back.

“Name and business,” the Saint said. “Or I’ll end this conversation.”

“Her name was Laura,” the man murmured. “His name was James.”

The name of his wife. The name of his son.

Alabaster Saint picked up the Enfield and held it steady at the man. “Who are you? Who sent you?”

“I sent myself.”

The man turned. The scarves stacked all the way up his face so that only his eyes, shadowed by the brim of the stovepipe hat, were visible. Those eyes burned with an unearthly intensity, as if the fire of the damned kindled there.

“As to who I am, my name is Mr. Shunt,” he said in a tone as soft as a lullaby. “And I have come to offer you my services.”

Mr. Shunt lifted his right hand, slowly.

Lieutenant Foster drew his gun.

But all that was in Mr. Shunt’s hand was a large black burlap bag.

“My offering.”

The Saint eyed the bag, which was misshapen and lumpy. He had no idea what it might hold. “Lieutenant,” he said.

Foster walked forward, his weapon still drawn. He held out his right hand for the bag.

Mr. Shunt gave it to him, his fingers graceful, overly long and sharp, each ending in a metal tip.

The Saint had seen Chinamen who like to sharpen their nails into claws, but whatever Mr. Shunt had done to his hands was something else altogether. His fingers shone like metal.

Foster backed away before opening the bag and peering in it. He lifted his head and made sure his gun was on the man for a clean shot.

“Is this a threat, sir?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Mr. Shunt said, spreading both long, knob-boned hands outward in a strangely fluid motion. “It is an offer of my good intentions.”

“Bring it here,” the Saint said.

Foster placed the burlap on the desk, landing it with a meaty thump.

The Saint leaned forward, tipped the edge of the bag, and looked inside.

Body parts. Hands, feet, fingers, ears, and other smaller bits, each wrapped up in cotton gauze tied with a neat bow.

“Is this supposed to impress me, Mr. Shunt?” the general asked.

“No,” Mr. Shunt said. “It is to encourage you. I can do many things, General Alabaster Saint. I can even make men’s dreams come true.”

“I don’t recall dreaming about a bag of body parts,” General Saint said.

“No, you did not,” he said quietly. “Your dream”—he cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing—“is destruction. Nightmare. Conquest. Ah…and then control. Wealth. The skies.” Here the scarf at his mouth shifted. A grimace of serrated teeth carved a ragged white smile in the shadows of his face.

“Such sweet dark dreams you have, Mr. Saint,” the stranger said.

The Saint thumbed back the hammer on the Enfield. “I’m not a man who dreams, Mr. Shunt. I’m a man who acts. Tell me what you want.”

Mr. Shunt plucked at the scarves, pulling them back over his mouth, seeming unafraid of the musket aimed at his chest. “There is a man I wish dead. A man and his brother. If you kill them, destroy them, your reward will be rich.”

“I am not a gun for hire,” Saint said. “And I am gravely offended by your audacity to think me so. You have climbed this mountain and endangered your life for no good reason, Mr. Shunt. And you have wasted my time.”

“I can bring you Marshal Hink Cage.”

Silence scraped by on jagged claws. Mr. Shunt did not move, didn’t even appear to be breathing. He waited, cold and uncaring as the north wind.

“How?” General Saint asked.

“With these,” he opened his hand. Brass blades and needles prickled from each fingertip.

“And that.” Shunt nodded toward the bag of body parts. “And this.” He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small glass vial.

The vial glowed the eerie glim-light green, but the Saint knew glim. This light was too dark. The vial had something else in it.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Glim,” Mr. Shunt breathed. “And the dust of strangeworked tin. To repair men.”

“Repair?”

Mr. Shunt tipped his head down so that all the Saint could make out from beneath the stovepipe hat was his burning eyes.

“I can give your men back what they lost,” he said. “Hands, arms, legs, feet. I can make them strong again, whole again. Stronger than they were. If you kill the hunter and wolf. If you bring me the deviser, the witch, and guards. Then I will give you back your eye, General Alabaster Saint. I will find Marshal Hink Cage.”

“You ask me to kill two men, and now you want me to capture prisoners for you? I follow no man’s orders, Mr. Shunt.”

“Of course,” Mr. Shunt said with a formal bow. “Perhaps I was mistaken.” Mr. Shunt did not look away. Did not make any indication he was leaving.

Saint leaned back in his chair. He wanted Captain Cage almost as much as he wanted the glim fields. If this crazy rag-a-man could find him, he would be a fool to let him walk away untried.

Better to let him think they could work together, and test his worth.

“Can you prove your claim, Mr. Shunt? The healing of men?”

“Repairs of the flesh,” he said. “Yes.”

Time to call his bluff.

“Before I agree upon anything, I want you to do so. Lieutenant,” General Saint said, “bring me Private Bailey.”

“Yes, sir.”

Saint took a long look at Mr. Shunt, who stood still as death before him. “If you can repair men, Mr. Shunt, and find Captain Cage, there might be reason for us to enter a business proposition after all.”

R
ose Small woke to the sound of men’s voices. The voices were close enough she could make out most of the words, but none of them made much sense.

One of the men was Cedar Hunt. She’d recognize his low, threatening tone anywhere. The other voice she was sure she’d never heard before.

It took her a couple tries, but she finally opened her eyes. The ceiling above her arched with scrolling metal beams and joists, over a deep polished wood. She wasn’t in the Madder brothers’ wagon, though she most certainly was in a hammock. And she wasn’t anyplace she could recall being before.

Rose turned her head and winced at the pain digging deep in her shoulder and spreading out like claws across her neck, chest, and back. She’d been hurt?

Last she recalled she and Mr. Hunt were gathering wood. No, that wasn’t right. They were doing something more. Gathering up the dead.

Those poor people in Vicinity. They’d been trying to give them a grave. And she’d seen Mr. Hunt holding that little dead girl in his arms, his eyes so lost to sorrow, tears down his face that she didn’t even think he felt, she’d taken him with her to gather wood.

That’s when he’d heard someone crying. They’d gone into the kitchen and…

Something had happened. A shot? An earthquake? Something. She remembered pain, remembered Mr. Hunt holding on to her like he could shield her from bullets, remembered the hard taste of hot metal in her mouth.

And then, nothing.

Now that she’d turned her head, she saw Mrs. Lindson to the left of her asleep on some blankets. She looked pale even in the warm yellow light from the low-burning lantern. Wil was lying beside her, and turned his head to look at her, ears straight up. He didn’t seem worried. That was something, she supposed.

Rose took a few breaths waiting for the pain to take itself off to the distance, then turned her head the other way.

She could just make out the back of Mr. Hunt here in the room. He was sitting in a chair. Still had his coat and hat on. The man he was talking to was blocked by him. Well, most of him anyway. She could see one shoulder, and a hand.

Whoever the man was, he liked to use his hands a lot when he talked, taking up a lot of the space around him. She figured he’d be the sort of man who danced with his elbows out.

“When did you meet the Madders?” the other man asked.

“Few years ago,” Cedar said. “Knew them as miners. Asked for their help finding a lost boy, and fell into owing them a favor.”

“And about that item you said you’d find for them?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve seen a bit of the land and sky, Mr. Hunt. Might be I’ve seen what you’re searching for. Does your item have a name?”

“It probably has several. They call it the Holder.”

Rose blinked hard. She didn’t think Mr. Hunt was the sort of man to tell their private business to a stranger. Maybe the man was someone
Mr. Hunt knew from back east or from when he worked in the university. Or maybe the man was holding a gun in his other hand.

One way to find out.

Rose licked her lips and pushed herself up, leveraging her right elbow under her, and pushing back.

From the clench of pain that stomped over her, Rose decided real quick she had overestimated her leveraging abilities.

She moaned, though she tried to hold it back.

Two sets of wicker chairs squeaked, then two sets of boots got louder as they came nearer her.

Well, this wasn’t her plan at all. Still, if Mr. Hunt had been under gunpoint, she sure hoped her diversion helped to give him the upper hand.

“Miss Small,” Cedar Hunt asked, near now, and clearly concerned. “Easy.” His hand pressed gently down on her good shoulder, and she just didn’t have it in her to put up a fight. “Do you think you can drink some tea?”

Rose opened her eyes, a little surprised she’d kept them clenched shut so long. Wasn’t like her to look away from a situation.

But the pounding at the back of her head and the blur to her vision said maybe her looking away wasn’t such a bad idea.

Something soft was being wedged against her back, a pillow maybe or a blanket roll, and then she rested her head, and worked on no more than staring up toward the ceiling until her head stopped drumming a beat.

“Miss Small?” Cedar said again, taking her hand. “Rose?”

Rose tried not to smile. He sounded so very worried. Almost distraught. It was sweet of him.

“Don’t worry so, Mr. Hunt,” she whispered. Her throat was dry and sour with the hot taste of metal. “Tea would be nice.”

He let go of her hand to see to it.

“Does she need anything else?” the other man asked. “Molly has a fair hand with medicine, though we’re running low on supplies.”

What a nice voice, Rose decided. Deep, with a little music to it, like maybe he hadn’t grown up in the Oregon Territory. She liked the sound of it. She hoped he wasn’t holding them all hostage.

“We’ll start with the tea,” Cedar said. “I laced it with a bit of laudanum to take the pain off.”

Rose turned her eyes away from the ceiling, catching sight first of the other man. He was light-haired and had a fine face, straight nose, carved cheekbones and a strong jaw that gave him the look of northern people. He was clean shaven, and his mouth seemed more than willing to smile.

His eyes…clear gray with a dark ring of blue at the edge, so striking it made her wonder if she was seeing them right. They were the color of storms and blue skies, framed by dark lashes.

Any one part of him might not be extraordinary, but taken all together, he was quite fetching.

Maybe it didn’t matter if he danced with his elbows out.

She supposed she might be staring.

She supposed she didn’t care.

“Take a sip, Miss Small,” Cedar Hunt said. “It will help.”

Rose looked away from the man’s face and paid attention to the cup Mr. Hunt held before her. She took a sip, placing her right hand under it so Mr. Hunt didn’t have to support it.

The tea was weak, but bitter with laudanum. She’d be asleep again soon for sure.

“Where are we?” she asked, the tea having put more of her voice back in her words.

“In the mountains,” Cedar said. “This is Captain Hink, and we’re aboard his airship.”

“Airship?” Rose’s heartbeat pumped a little faster, and she glanced again at the metal beams and as much of the room as she could see.

Of course, a ridged skeleton to carry the gondola. Above that ceiling would be the airbags—no, they were called envelopes. She wondered how many boilers she had on her, and how many fans.

“The
Swift
,” the man, Captain Hink, said. “She’s small, fast, and—”

“Beautiful,” Rose said with a sigh.

Captain Hink smiled and pride lit his eyes. “Yes, she is. Have you flown, Miss Small?”

“Only once. But not in a ship.” Rose’s neck was beginning to hurt from looking up at his eyes, but she found herself not wanting to look away.

She had so many questions. About flying, about the ship. She wondered if they had to use glim to power her like the Madders had used glim to augment the power of the balloon.

But the tea was already starting to make her tired. She reluctantly looked away from Captain Hink and held the cup out for Mr. Hunt so she wouldn’t spill.

Medicines were scarce and expensive.

“I’m filled with questions,” she said. “But my eyes are so tired. Is Mrs. Lindson well?”

Cedar placed the cup on a nearby shelf. “She will be. She overexerted herself.” That last bit he said with a deep growl in his voice. Rose had noticed that when Mr. Hunt talked about Mrs. Lindson, he often had a bit of the wild behind his words. Especially since she’d been so whimsical in the brain lately.

She didn’t think he noticed it, but he felt very protective of her. Likely felt more for her than he’d yet admitted to himself.

Funny how a scholar could lose all sense and logic when falling in love with a woman.

She had found it to be most entertaining on the trail so far. Well, except for the day she’d found Mr. Hunt covered in blood with that man dead at his feet. There was a difference between losing your mind when falling in love, and just plain losing your mind.

“…be in the air before dawn, if we’re lucky,” Captain Hink was saying.

Rose opened her eyes. She must have slipped off to sleep. The lantern was doused, and there were other voices, farther off, men. Maybe two or three, talking over fuel and lift and steam and something about temperature and rivets and tin.