“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.
They knew exactly how much he could endure. And doled it out.
Mr. Foster didn’t have a lot to say, which was fine with Hink, since he’d always thought the man to be a piss-proud lick finger who couldn’t blow his own nose without asking Alabaster Saint to hold the hanky.
But on the other hand, if Foster was the chatty sort, he might have some kind of idea where in damnation they were taking him.
Not that he supposed he’d get out of it alive anyway, but if the chance fell upon him, he’d like to know which direction to run.
The uneven drone of the ship’s damaged fans filled his head. There wasn’t a window anywhere in his eyesight. They’d thrown him belowdecks, but made sure he was trussed up well out of reach of any of the supplies down there with him.
And there were plenty of supplies.
Along with three guards who kept their guns leveled at him.
He knew one of those men. Couldn’t much recall his name, but he’d been part of the mutiny Hink had led all those years ago. Chickened out of it halfway to Chicago. Heard he went back begging to Alabaster for forgiveness. Heard Alabaster had accepted him into the new army he was mustering.
Course, he cut off his ear first.
Wasn’t a man who’d served under the Saint who had walked away from the last battle unscathed. So Alabaster Saint made sure the man carried a wound just like the rest of them.
The general enjoyed his torturing almost as much as he enjoyed just plain killing folk.
Hink thought maybe he could get a little conversation out of the soldiers, but he was still gagged and, frankly, not feeling his best.
So he did what he could to breathe, and hurt, and memorize the faces of the men who inflicted that hurt on him.
The Saint might be top cock at torture, but there was no man who could match Hink when it came to revenge.
With no water, and no relief, it was a long damn ride before the ship fans altered in sound.
They were heading into the wind, changing course. From the tip the floor suddenly took, they were coming down to land. He half hoped his gun company would find themselves something less useful to do and give him a moment to gather his wits.
Instead, they stood watch over him as the ship went through the various stages of anchor, catch, lash, and landing, and was walked to whatever dock or port had been readied for her.
Then one of the soldiers walked up to him and hit him so hard in the side of the head, he heard his neck crack before he went out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mae didn’t know how much longer she could last. Staying connected to the spell she had worked between Hink and the Swift took all the concentration she could muster. It would be too easy to slip into believing she was a part of the ship, to feel the pump of steam like hot blood driving her wings, to flinch from the icy cold of the night sky.
Between that and the sisters’ whipping voices, she might completely lose all hope of remaining herself, of knowing her skin was her own, her mind was her own, and her will was her own too.
If it weren’t for Cedar, who held her, the warmth of his body, the heat of the anger burning within him, helping her focus on her own bones and breath, she would be nothing, her mind torn apart and left in scattered ribbons on the wind.
He was a rock holding her to the earth.
He was a heat refusing to let death’s cold claws slice her apart for good.
“Mae,” Cedar said. “Where is he?”