Tin Swift(110)

“We’ll find him, Rose,” Mae said, though she was staring straight ahead, staring blankly at the middle distance. “You’ll see him again. I promise.”

“Perhaps you should sit yourself down, Mae,” Molly said.

“She can do it,” Cedar said.

“No one can do that,” Molly said.

Cedar gave her a look. The beast shifted just beneath his skin, its hatred and hunger threatening to swallow his reason. There was no time to argue with her. Rose was dying. And Mae was hurting.

“Yes,” Cedar said, knowing the raw power of the beast hovering just behind his eyes, just beneath his words. “She can. Follow, or get out of my way.”

Molly’s hand slipped down to the gun at her hip.

Cedar didn’t move. If he had the breath in him, the reason in him, he’d tell her Mae was a witch and damn good at magic. But it was all he could do to keep the urge for blood in his control.

“Stand down, Molly,” Seldom said. “If she can find our captain, we follow.”

Molly shook her head, switching her gaze from Cedar to Seldom and finally to Mae.

“Then let’s find the captain,” she said. “Before Alabaster hangs him up by his guts.”

Molly stomped back into the boiler room and shut the blast door.

“Ansell, see to the repairs,” Seldom said.

“Aye, Mr. Seldom.” Ansell picked up a toolbox and scrambled up the ladder to see what he could do above.

“Heading?” Seldom called out.

Mae didn’t say anything. Just stood, swaying slightly, breathing a little raggedly as if she kept forgetting how often she should be filling her lungs.

Cedar ducked under the line that held Rose’s hammock from swinging too hard. He stepped up to Mae, stopping just short of touching her.

He could smell the scent of the herbs she’d been using on Rose’s shoulder, a watered honey and green odor that blended with the fragrance that was all her own. A fragrance that stirred him to his bones.

“Mae,” he said, holding his own desires firmly in check, “we need a direction. Where is Captain Cage?”

“Flying.”

That wasn’t going to help much.

“Which direction is he headed?”

There was a long pause. Finally. “Southwest. Running fast. Above the ridge.”

“Southwest,” Cedar called to Seldom.

Mr. Seldom corrected course and brought the Swift around.

“A compass direction won’t be enough,” Guffin said.

“More west,” Mae said.

“More to the west, Mr. Seldom,” Cedar relayed.

Seldom corrected course again.

“Yes,” Mae said. “Steady.”

“Hold that heading steady,” Cedar called.

“Aye,” Seldom said.

Guffin took a reading of the compass. “Ain’t nothing but mountains and Indian territory that way. She know how far?”

“She’s following the captain,” Cedar said. “As far as he goes is as far as we go.”

“Aye that,” Guffin said.

“And what,” Mr. Theobald asked, “is our plan once we catch up with this ship?”

“You find out what weapons we have at our disposal,” Cedar said. “Then we’ll talk plan.”

“Aye, sir,” he said with a slight smile. “Miss Dupuis, Miss Wright. Would you help me take inventory? Captain Seldom, permission to check the stores?”

“It’s first mate,” Seldom said. “Granted.”

Mr. Theobald and his companions got busy counting the munitions they had on hand. All Cedar wanted to do was pace, but he was afraid he’d miss some whispered change of direction from Mae.

He finally leaned one shoulder against the wall of the ship and simply watched people do their jobs.

To his surprise, Mae’s hand slipped down between them and caught at his fingers. Her hand was trembling, cold.

He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her into the heat of his body as she shuddered. It was almost as if the frigid wind beyond the ship was wrapped around her.

Cedar quickly unbuttoned his coat and shrugged out of it, put it around her, and then drew her close to him again.

Mae leaned into him and doggedly kept hold of the ship with one hand too.

“We can’t lose him,” Mae said.

“I won’t,” he said. “I won’t lose anyone.”

He held her tight as the airship scorched the sky.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


Hink measured time by how long he could hold out against the pain before he cussed or moaned.

Lieutenant Foster’s men made it easy by coming past him every once in a while and hitting him in the face, the stomach, or his bad leg. He’d hoped one of them might have the guts or the hate to knock him clean out, just so he could slip the pain unconscious, but they were good soldiers.