It seemed to take forever to make her mouth move, to lift her tongue and carry the words from thought to breath. “South more. East soon.”
At the edges of her awareness, she heard his voice carrying her words. So much stronger, with so much more life and power than she had left in her. She knew people were moving about the ship.
They were talking about repairs. They were talking about weapons. She’d heard firebombs and cannons, dynamite and guns. But there was no fire in those words. Whoever had said it was worried, the words thin and tenuous, knowing that would not be nearly enough to win. To save Captain Hink.
She felt the connection between Hink and the Swift tug. Hard. Down.
“East,” she said. “Landing. He’s landing.”
Cedar carried her words again, and the Swift shifted joyfully closer to Hink, to the captain she searched for.
“You can let go,” Cedar was saying. “Mae. Mae. Let go of the ship. We see the landing area. We see the ship’s lights.”
But Mae could not seem to sort his words out from the sisters’ screaming for her return, could not divorce herself from the taut shiver of awareness, the almost inhuman hunger between the ship and Hink.
She heard his words, but they were just another rattle of noise that threatened to suffocate her screams.
Someone clamped a hand over her mouth. And then someone tore the ship away from her.
No, someone tore her away from the ship.
And that someone was Cedar.
Mae came to her senses, her mouth covered by Cedar’s palm, her body pulled up against his so hard, not even her feet were touching the ground.
It was that, the complete disconnection from the Swift that finally cleared her head enough for her to realize that she had been screaming.
Everything and everyone around her was silent, staring at her.
Even the ship was silent.
They’d cut the steam. She was gliding in.
But Mae didn’t know where.
“Easy now,” Cedar was saying. “Quiet now. You’re safe.”
Mae nodded and Cedar nodded back, his eyes searching hers and apparently liking what he saw.
“I’m going to set you on your feet,” he said, “but I won’t take my hand away until I know you’re all right. Understand?”
She nodded again.
Cedar shifted his hold on her and gently set her down on her feet again.
She didn’t feel like screaming.
“All right now?” he whispered.
One more nod.
Cedar removed his hand. “We’re coming in silent to see the structure below. As much of it as we can in the dark.”
“The captain?” Mae asked, trying to get her thoughts and her mouth working in unison again.
“The ship is there,” Cedar said. “Unless you think they dumped him overboard on the way?”
“No.”
“Then he’s there and we’re going to go in there and save him.”
Mae brushed her skirts to straighten them. The sisters’ voices still swirled in her mind, but at least she wasn’t tied so tight to the ship. “I’ll need to give Rose medicine.”
“Rose stays with the Swift,” Cedar said. There was no room for argument in his words.
“Yes,” Mae said. “But I want her awake, at least. In case…” A hundred possible things that could go wrong rolled through her mind. “In case she needs to be,” she simply said.
Cedar let go of Mae’s hand. Mae hadn’t realized he was still holding on to her.
“Be quick,” he said. “We’ll drop down and go in after him, and the Swift will stay steady as long as she can. Then Ansell is going to get her, and you and Rose, out of the range of fire.”
“Only Rose and me?” Mae asked as she found her satchel strapped to the wall and dug through it for the coca leaf tonic. “Everyone else is going down there?”
“You, Rose, Wil, Theobald, and Joonie stay on board. Molly won’t stay behind, and Theobald says he knows the basics of running a steam engine. Ansell flies, Miss Wright can navigate. That’s the smallest crew that can stay on the ship. Seldom, Molly, Guffin, me, and Miss Dupuis are going down.”
“If Ansell and Miss Wright are flying, who’s going to man the cannons?” Mae asked.
“Miss Wright can handle one if need be.”
“And I’ll handle the other,” Mae said.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She found the bottle of tonic and then looked Cedar straight in the eye. “I think I’d find some deep satisfaction in blowing something to bits right now.”
He gave her a quick, animal smile that made her go hot and needful inside. The memory of his mouth against hers, his body hard pressed along every inch of her flashed quick through her mind.
She had lost her husband. She’d never thought she would feel again. It frightened her to think that Cedar, that any man, could take the place of Jeb. But there was something about Cedar. Every time he looked at her, she was reminded that she was alive, strong. And still had a long life ahead of her.
A life she did not want to live alone.
“Be careful,” Cedar said, shaking her out of thoughts that had nothing to do with cannons or rescuing Captain Hink.
“I will be.”
Cedar turned away.
Mae opened her mouth to say something more, to tell him.… She didn’t know what she should tell him. That she cared for him. That he had made a place for himself in her heart without her even knowing.
But then he was gone, leaned at the door next to Mr. Seldom, scanning the earth in the darkness and planning their attack.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hink came awake strapped to a table beneath the stretch of a canvas tent. On the one hand he was glad to have missed the fun of being packed like fresh kill out of the ship and into wherever it was that he was now.
On the other, the first real fingers of horror were sliding down his skin along with his cold sweat.
He didn’t know where he was, but he was bound, and General Alabaster Saint was likely on his way.
They’d taken the gag off. That was something. But then, he knew Alabaster liked to hear a man beg.
The sound of boot soles over stone and dirt somewhere off over his right shoulder caught his attention.
He turned his head that way.
A tall man in a long coat and stovepipe hat stood in the corner of the room with a doctor’s bag open on the table in front of him. He was drawing knives, saws, and clamps out of the bag, inspecting them, before setting them down in a neat, straight row.
Even though Hink didn’t say anything, the man paused, and swiveled his head so that his eyes, lost in shadows of the hat and scarf around his neck, fixed on him.
“You,” he breathed, a strange sound that made the word seem foreign on his lips. “Have touched the witch.”
Hink had no idea what the hell he was talking about and opened his mouth to say so.
The man skittered across the room. Fast. So fast that Hink didn’t have time to close his mouth before the man was above him, his fingers stuck between Hink’s teeth, prying his jaws open.
Hink yelled a bit, trying to shake the man’s fingers free from his mouth, but the man just clamped his other hand down over Hink’s forehead and pressed down to hold him still.
Then the man leaned in so close, Hink felt the spiderweb tickle of his scarf brush against his cheek. Something inside that man was ticking, clicking like a cog with a broken tooth. Whatever it was that kept that man together, it wasn’t of God’s design.
He was Strange. Like Mr. Hunt had said the other men were. Made of bits, made of something rotting, something ticking.
The man ratcheted Hink’s mouth open a little more, then placed his face so near Hink’s lips that Hink could taste his moist, hot exhale. The man sniffed at Hink’s mouth, then inhaled deeply.
“You are sweet with her,” he cooed. “Sweet with her magic.” He lifted away just enough to peer down into his eyes. “Shall I bleed her magic out of you?”