The wind rose, pushing at his back, and drawing Miss Dupuis’s carefully coifed hair into ribbons around her face. Far off, a hawk circled the shadows of trees, calling out once before it climbed higher.
He didn’t know enough about the group of people she wanted him to join to make a decision in their favor. His promise to the Madders would stand. He’d find the Holder. But that didn’t mean he wanted to spend his life killing Strange for those who could not.
“I have my own path to walk, Miss Dupuis, my own…family to keep safe. The very last thing I would do right now is leave them behind. I cannot travel with you, nor join your cause. The curse I carry is no gift, no matter what the Madders think. And I will not live my life beneath its demands. Thank you for the walk. Good day.”
Cedar turned to stroll back to the landing area. Did he believe that Miss Dupuis and others could fight the Strange? Yes. But that fight had never been his choice. The “gift,” as she called it, given to him by the Pawnee gods was a curse that had nearly killed his brother, and destroyed both of their lives.
He would be free of it if he could.
He owed the Madders a favor, and had given his word to Captain Hink. He would see those things through. Find the Holder, then bring the Madders and Hink together to discuss just where the weapon should be kept.
But first, the Holder would be in his hands. And he would use it to cure Rose. Then he would take Rose, Mae, and Wil to the coven, where their curses would be put to rest once and for all.
And if that happened, if his curse were broken, he wouldn’t be the kind of man Miss Dupuis or her cause would want among them any longer.
Something crackled under his boots. Glass.
He stopped, looked down, and took a step back. Green glass rolled away from his boot, roughly in the shape of a teardrop the size of his head. He had broken a globe. He bent, picked up the remains. It stank of gunpowder and oil. He looked around from his crouched position to see where it might have fallen from.
A flash of light caught his eye. From this angle, he could see through a slot in the cliff face along the way he had come. Miss Dupuis stood a ways down the path still. Over her shoulder, where it wouldn’t be noticed until at least another turn in the path, burned a green-yellow light, bright enough to hurt the eyes, even in the afternoon.
He knew what it was. Globes, like the one he had broken at his feet, coupled with mirrors which were set up across the peaks, catching and shooting that light to more and more mirrors scattered across the peaks to the east. Those globes were carefully shrouded so that no light was reflected here at the landing area.
It was a signal system that stretched for miles.
But for what. Or who?
Cedar left the glass behind and jogged to the ship. He strode over to Captain Hink, who was cranking a wrench against a bolt to secure the trawling arm.
“Captain,” Cedar said to Captain Hink’s back, “a word with you?”
“Don’t need my hands or eyes to listen. Speak up, Mr. Hunt.”
“What’s the signal light for?”
Hink grunted as he squeezed the last turn out of the bolt. “What signal light?”
“A flare, burning in a glass globe and reflecting off mirrors across the peaks.”
Hink froze. Then, “What color was it?”
“Green and yellow.”
“Son of a bitch,” Hink swore. “Get the women on the ship, now. Get what supplies you can grab. I’m going to go beat the hell out of Old Jack.”
He pushed past him, but Cedar grabbed his arm.
“What is the signal for?”
“It tells whoever Jack’s made a deal with that he has the person they’re looking for. He must have lit it last night sometime. Whoever wants me, or you, or hell, maybe Captain Beaumont over there, is close enough to see the signal and is on their way here. With guns. Get the women on board. Now.”
Hink pulled his arm out of Cedar’s grip and broke into a run. “Molly Gregor,” he yelled, “fire that boiler. We’ve been spotted and we’ve been flared. Tell Beaumont’s crew!”
Hink’s crew scrambled like a kicked hive of wasps. They secured nets, outrigs, and set the slip on the lashes as fast as they could.
Cedar ran back toward the cavern and passed Molly Gregor as she was running toward the ship. “Make it quick, Mr. Hunt!” she shouted.
Cedar rushed through the halls, taking the turns by memory to their sleeping quarters. Wil looked up from where he had been dozing as Cedar pounded into the room.
Mae had a satchel stuffed and slung over her shoulder, her coat on, and a hat securely in place. She was grabbing up the blankets they had brought in from the ship.
“We need to go. Now.” He rushed over to where Rose was sleeping and gathered her up as carefully as he could into his arms.
“What’s happening?” Mae asked as she hurried to the door.
One thing about Mae, she knew how to ask questions on the go.
“There was a signal set off. A flare. Captain Hink thinks someone is coming here. Either for us, or for the people aboard Captain Beaumont’s ship.”
“Who?” Mae asked. “Who would be coming here for us?”
“I don’t know,” Cedar said, “but the captain says that light was fired last night, and whoever’s on the way will be armed.”
Mae didn’t say anything more. They jogged through the tunnel until they hit fresh air.
The landing pad was a study in chaos. Beaumont’s crew hauled supplies into their ship, as did Hink’s men. Great gouts of smoke filled the air above, blocking what sunlight there was and making the entire scene more confusing.
Wet flues coughed up so much smoke and steam that the landing area and all those working or running about on it were obscured.
Wil ran straight for the Swift, not needing his eyes to know where she was anchored. Cedar and Mae were right behind him.
Cedar was glad Rose was unconscious. He could get her to the ship quickly or he could get her there painlessly. And they didn’t have time for painless.
The rumble of turbines and fans firing up clogged the air along with the shouts of voices, and banging of metal, rope, and wood as the ships prepared to fly.
But above all that, up in the sky, a high whine was growing louder.
Cedar wasn’t the only one who heard it. Seldom paused and tipped his face skyward. Captain Hink was nowhere to be seen, though Cedar could hear him cussing out Old Jack somewhere back toward the doors to the living area.
Whatever ship it was coming in above them, whatever threat it might bring, Cedar wanted Rose and Mae out of the line of fire. He stepped up into the Swift.
“You think the hammock, or should we strap her in?” he asked Mae.
“Better strap her in. Here.” She spread one of the blankets out on the floor, and then shook the harness loose from its place attached to the wall where they had last sat.
Cedar got on his knees and eased Rose down onto the blankets.
“Hold her up a bit,” Mae said. Cedar did so, listening to the ruckus outside while Mae slipped Rose’s arm into the straps and buckled the harness over her chest.
The crack of a gunshot rang out, and the repeated shots of return fire.
“Hold tight,” Cedar said, “and stay with the ship.” They needed the crew on the ship, in the ship now, giving her fire to put her in the sky. Molly was aboard, back behind the blast door trying to drum up the boilers. But the rest of the crew were outside.
Cedar ducked out the door, intending to hunt Hink’s men and haul them in by the scruffs of their necks if that’s what it took to get this ship out of here.
In the short time he’d been in the ship, the chaos of people rushing about had turned into a standoff.
Old Jack and all his men were lined up behind the rock blind, near the doors to the living chambers, guns drawn. Up on the top of the cliffs, his men were scrambling to man the cannons. If they fired those cannons on them, or worse, on the ship, they would cripple her a
nd strand them all here.
Captain Hink, Ansell, Guffin, and Seldom stood side by side in front of the Swift as if their bodies alone could shield the ship from harm.
Standing behind them were Miss Dupuis, Mr. Theobald, and Miss Wright, weapons the likes of which Cedar had never seen before, drawn and facing off Old Jack.
“You snake-belly, backbiting pissant,” Captain Hink yelled. “Who did you sell me out to?”
“Ain’t yours to know. Yet,” Old Jack yelled back.
The big boilers and fans of the Coin de Paradis caught hold and puffed out steam. Then the fans picked up and threw so much wind and dust and smoke around, it was impossible to see half a foot in any direction.
“Fire!” Old Jack hollered.
Jack’s men powdered the air with shots, bullets lost to the sound of the fans angling for the climb. Hink and his crew fired back, taking scant cover from the few crates of supplies still scattered out on the field.
“The ship!” Captain Hink yelled. “Seldom, Guffin, Ansell. Out, out! Get her out before they fire the cannons.”
The men ran for it under the clamor and god-awful racket of the Coin de Paradis’s slow launch. Cedar didn’t know why the ship was so loud. But what he did know was there was an ax strapped next to the Swift’s door.
He grabbed the ax, stuck it in his belt, and drew his gun, wishing for his rifle. He jumped out of the Swift, Wil right beside him, and fired at Old Jack and his boys so the crew could make the ship.
But Captain Hink, Miss Dupuis, and her companions were pinned against one side of the landing pad, concentrating their fire at the cannon stands, to keep Old Jack’s men from firing on the crew and ship.
“Get to the ship!” Cedar yelled. “Dupuis, Theobald, Wright. Get to the Swift.”
But Miss Dupuis and her crew did not budge. “We stay with you,” she said.
Captain Beaumont’s ship cleared the landing pad, lifting up straight at Old Jack and his boys. Old Jack used the ship as cover, and by the time the last board on the ship’s hull had scraped the wall of rocks, Old Jack was gone.
But his men had made the cannons, and let loose a blast straight at the Swift. It missed, but not by much.
Cedar ducked behind the corner of stone where the captain and others were huddled, just as Captain Hink ran out into the middle of the landing pad, waving his arms and airing his lungs in full shout. “…backstabbing devil! Don’t you go hide in that hole of yours and leave them out here to fight for you. And you!” He yelled up to the men on the cannons. “Stop shooting at my ship!”
Through the dense shifting smoke, another shadow loomed over the field.
Cedar looked up just as a new gout of gunfire ricocheted off the cliff walls, throwing sprays of dirt and rock like someone had tossed dynamite.
Hink ran for cover. “Fly!” he yelled, throwing his hands up twice, as if by will alone he could push the ship into the air. “Get the hell out of here!”
For a moment, Cedar didn’t think Ansell, Guffin, Seldom, and Molly were going to do what the captain said, didn’t think the Swift would take to the air. She had a few holes in her, but hadn’t yet been hit by a cannon.
“That’s an order!” Hink added.
And then, so fast that Cedar had to suck in a hard breath, the ship was up and screaming over the edge of the cliffs, rocketing to the clouds.
The looming shadow passed across the landing pad, and as the smoke cleared, Cedar craned his neck to see the sky. A ship was coming in for a landing.
Easily as big as the Coin de Paradis but built with a closed deck and plenty of portholes with cannons set to fire, she rose up from the cover of the mountain peak, turned into the wind, and bore down on them.
Old Jack’s signal must have reached its intended party.
“It’s Les Mullins’s boat,” Hink said as he, Cedar, Miss Dupuis, Mr. Theobald, and Miss Wright pressed their backs against the rock wall. Wil was there with them too. Not a lot of cover, but it was either stand out in the open flat with an armed ship homing into view, or take a chance in the mazelike tunnels of Old Jack’s place. Tunnels Jack and his men knew like the insides of their eyelids.
“Who’s Les Mullins?” Cedar asked.
They were all busy reloading their weapons, and glancing up at the ship closing down on the field, while the singing cry of the Swift beating against the wind to make her retreat filled the air.
“He’s a man I should of killed when he was in my sights. Works for a general who wants me and mine dead.”
“Which general?” Miss Dupuis asked.
“General Alabaster Saint,” Hink said. “Heard of him?”
“Yes,” Miss Dupuis said, pumping the shotgun in her hands. “I have. Dismissed from command for trading weapons between the North and South, among other offenses.” She glanced at Cedar. “He is in league with the forces you and I were speaking of earlier, Mr. Hunt. Dark forces.”
“The darker, bloodier, plain crazy hell on earth thing the Saint can find,” Hink said, “is what he’s going to be in league with. Never saw a more bloodthirsty insane rabid demon in my life.”
“What does he want with you?” Cedar asked.
“He wants me dead.” Captain Hink holstered his gun and picked up a modified Smith and Wesson. “I served under him. Mutinied. Saved a hundred and fifty men’s lives that day, and got the Saint discharged for disobeying the president’s direct orders. He’s wanted my head ever since. The feeling is mutual.”
The shadow of the airship had passed over them now, and the ship itself was coming into position just to one side of the landing pad. It wasn’t moving in fast, whether due to the shifting winds or smoke, or if they were waiting to see if the cannons were manned, Cedar wasn’t sure.
“Well, that’s some good news,” Captain Hink said. “They’re looking for us.”
“And how do you define that as good news, Captain?” Theobald asked.
Hink grinned at him over his shoulder. “Son, so long as the Swift’s in the sky, we all have a chance of getting out of here. I know Les Mullins. He’s got a gut wound from our last meeting and a crew who’d just as soon kick him out of the boat as take a bullet for him. We shoot, we put a few holes in that ship, and Mullins is gonna turn tail and run.”
Cedar lifted his head. There was a scent on the wind, a song he could feel in his bones.
Wil snarled.
The Strange. He narrowed his eyes and searched the ship’s portholes. Steely-faced men stood there, rifles, shotguns, and flamethrowers at the ready.
Theobald pressed his spectacles closer to his face, glanced at the same portholes Cedar was looking at, and swore. “I think we’ll need more than guns for this fight.”
The men staring out of the ship were not human. Well, not all of them.
They were strangeworked.
Just like the things that had nearly killed Mae, Wil, and little Elbert back in Hallelujah. Just like Mr. Shunt.
“Why do you say that, Theobald?” Captain Hink asked.
Cedar’s heart thumped against his ribs. “Those aren’t men.”
“What?” Hink asked. “Of course they’re men. I know his crew.”
“They aren’t men,” Cedar continued as Theobald got busy unpacking things from his carpetbag and handing them to Miss Dupuis and Miss Wright. “They stink of the Strange.”
Hink took a moment to give Cedar a long look. Then, “Strange. All right. So they’re not men. Haven’t met a thing that breathes that can’t be unlunged. Take the ship first. Fans, and rudder, don’t aim for the envelope. Unless we have fire, a few rounds of bullets won’t take her down. And if we ground this beast, be ready to aim for the head of anything that crawls out of her belly.
“We clear on that?” he asked.
“Yes, Captain,” Miss Dupuis said, latching a contraption of brass and tubes and gauges that fit over her shotgun, like a second weapon.
“Aye, sir,” Theobald said, adjusting his goggles and shrugging a belt of bullets over his s
houlder, that fed into the chamber of the blunderbuss in his hand.
“Aye,” Miss Wright said, winding a coil of wires up her left arm and sliding her gun into a fanned-out device of brass and copper that looked like a dinner plate–sized shield with tubes and wires rolling around it.
“Mr. Hunt?” Captain Hink asked. “Are you in agreement?”
The beast pushed against Cedar’s bones. It wasn’t the full moon—wasn’t even close. The new moon should be tonight, complete blackness in the sky. But he couldn’t think. Couldn’t just think as a man ought to. The hunger, the need, the scent of the Strange drew a hard, killing thirst up through him.
His grip on logic, on the thoughts of a man, was slipping.
The beast thrilled and tore at his mind. Taking. Ruling.
Kill, it whispered. Destroy.
Cedar strained to push that desire away. His sanity was sliding with each breath.
He growled, and pulled his goggles into place, his crystal-sighted Walker heavy in his palm, and the need to spill blood and tear bones from flesh rolling through him in a hot wave.
“You have me,” Cedar rasped, answering Hink, answering the beast within him. And promising the ship full of strangeworked men, coming down hard over the landing pad now, doors open, guns rattling through the air, that he would be their end.
Distantly, Cedar was aware of the captain and the others firing at the ship.
He didn’t care about the ship. Didn’t care about the bullets spraying through the air. Didn’t care about the cannons locked and loaded, fuses lit.
He ran. To the ship, to the strangeworked crew, Wil beside him, ahead of him.
All the world seemed to slow to a dream landscape. He could sense the heartbeats of the strangeworked men in the ship. He could hear their sour song, hungry to devour this world, tainted with the nightmare singsong stitched together by Mr. Shunt’s thread.
The song, the beat of hearts, the blood he could almost taste in the back of his throat were so clear, they made Captain Hink’s yell, the gunfire behind him, the gunfire ahead of him seem like the softest hush of wind through leaves.
Cedar’s world was filled with the scent of the Strange. All his reason for breathing was their death.