Fields of Gold: A steampunk adventure novel (Magnificent Devices Book 12) Read online

  Fields of Gold

  A steampunk adventure novel

  Shelley Adina

  Moonshell Books, Inc.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by Shelley Adina

  Praise

  Introduction

  Book 12 in the Magnificent Devices steampunk series!

  If a wedding won’t stop a war, what will?

  Gloria Meriwether-Astor’s belief in doing the right thing has carried her across the world and through dangers that would have felled a lesser woman. She believed that if she married the dashing Captain Fremont, she could approach the Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias with impunity. She could convince the prince to stop the war their fathers began, and then she could return to Philadelphia with her husband, her conscience clear at last. Sadly, belief and reality are two different things. The prince agrees to her proposal on one condition—that she annul her marriage and become his wife instead!

  Every woman has a threshold she will not cross. Gloria has come to love her riverboat captain, and the price of peace is simply too high. But when the evil stalking the pleasant gardens of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa claims its victim, the time for belief is over and the time to act—daringly, outrageously—is at hand. Do the witches hold the key to a way out of this trap?

  All Gloria has to do is take up the crown of roses and play for the highest stakes. All she has to do is become the iron dragon, and start a war of her own.

  “It’s another excellent chapter in this ongoing epic adventure of this series. I love this world and the story of these excellent women and the saga will never end. No. It will not.” —Fangs for the Fantasy, on Fields of Iron

  “She makes hard choices because they’re right, because of principle, because of morality—perhaps even out of a need to change her family and her business’s legacy: but Gloria’s is ultimately the most unselfish path and that is unexpected.” —Fangs for the Fantasy, on Fields of Air

  For the flock

  With thanks for joining me on the journey

  and with gratitude to Elly Catmull, Carol Douglas, and Timons Esaias

  Chapter 1

  Somewhere in the Wild West

  March 1895

  It was one thing to be afraid for yourself—that cold, paralyzing fear that paradoxically made your innards turn to liquid instead of a solid block of ice. It was quite another to be afraid for someone you loved—in a massive, towering cloud of fear that blotted out even the memory of sunshine.

  Alice, Lady Hollys, crouched in the dirt next to the prone form of her husband, beneath the ironwood trees in an arroyo that fed runoff into the mighty Rio de Sangre Colorado de Christo. “Ian,” she whispered through dry lips. “Ian, hang on. I’m going for help, but you have to wake up, and press this handkerchief against the wound.”

  His eyelids fluttered open and tears of relief sprang into her eyes.

  “What … happened?”

  “That dadblamed Prussian she-wolf shot you.” And if it was the last thing she did on this earth, Alice was going to return the favor. In spades. The kind you dug a grave with, and that was a promise.

  Ian turned his head weakly, and frowned. “Where … are they?”

  “Back on the steamboat and already a mile upriver, no doubt. There’s a Texican Ranger airship in a mooring pattern overhead, and the witches vanished like water on a hot griddle.”

  “What’s a griddle?”

  Alice’s grim face contorted in pain that radiated from deep inside. “Oh, my darling,” she said brokenly. “This is no time for jokes. She might have been aiming for the heart, but you moved at the last second and she got you right below the collarbone. Heaven only knows where the bullet is, but I have to get you to a doctor, and our only hope is that ship.”

  “Santa Fe.” His dear gray eyes searched hers. “You’ll be … recognized.”

  “I don’t care,” she told him gently. “If I’m lucky, it’ll happen after I get you into the hospital, and not before. Dearest, I hate to ask this of you, but you must stand and try to walk. We need to signal them, and then find some open ground so they can lower a basket.”

  “I’ll try.”

  That was her man. Not a word of complaint, not a moan. Simply determination—and a harshly indrawn breath that told her just what it cost him to do as she asked.

  A quarter of an hour ago, they had been intent on ways to destroy the dam the Californios were building across the river. A dam that threatened the lives and homes of everyone along its banks as the water rose. And while Alice didn’t give a plug nickel about many of the witches who had come unwillingly to their aid, others were good, compassionate people who did not deserve to drown or be displaced simply because of the greed of others. But the arroyo that had made such a superb hiding place for the reconnaissance party had become a disaster for two people needing help. Alice searched frantically from side to side, looking for a place clear enough for the airship’s crew to see them, and large enough for them to let its basket down and get Ian into it safely. But these canyons had long been used for concealment, not rescue. Half a mile from the river, it became obvious that Ian’s strength was at an end, and she was going to have to leave him and widen her search alone.

  She made him as comfortable as possible with his back against a red boulder. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’ll see the ship lose altitude, and then you’ll see me, I promise.”

  “Be … careful.”

  She kissed him and rose. But before she could choose a path to higher ground, a voice hailed them from the direction of the river. In a moment, two of the witches came pelting into sight, with something that looked suspiciously like a door suspended between them.

  “Alice!” Betsy Trelawney called when she was within earshot. “Where is he? Is he all right?”

  Alice’s grip tightened on her lightning pistol, and in a moment, when she recognized Gretchen the she-wolf in the rear, she pulled it off her belt and thumbed on the ignition switch. The pistol began to hum in a cheerful treble.

  “Don’t shoot!” Gretchen shouted, skidding to a halt. This jerked the door out of Betsy’s hands, and before it even crashed to the ground, Gretchen had flipped it up to crouch behind it. “We mean you no harm. We went back to the steamboat to get something to carry him with.”

  Alice lost her tenuous grip on her temper. A bolt of lightning sizzled past Betsy, who threw herself to the dirt with a scream, and fried the top off a pinon pine where Gretchen’s head had just been.

  “Alice!” Betsy shrieked as smoke curled up and the air filled with the scent of hot resin. “We’re trying to help you!”

  “The only thing that will help me is the sight of her dead body,” Alice snapped. “Get out from behind that door, you yellow-bellied sapsucker.” She cast a glance upward, but the Ranger
ship was nowhere to be seen. Were they circling around for another pass? Or had this ridiculous delay cost her Ian’s only chance at getting to a doctor?

  “Forgive me,” came from behind the door. “I lost my temper. I intended to shoot wide, but he moved.”

  “Liar!” Alice’s voice was hoarse with fear and dust and tears. “You aimed at his heart, you filthy toad. Now, stand up and take what’s coming to you.”

  Betsy scrambled to her feet and leaped into Alice’s line of fire, her hands extended in a plea. “Alice—Alice—this is no time for revenge if we hope to get your husband to Sister Clara.”

  “What is a cook going to do for him?” Tears of fear and frustration leaked from Alice’s eyes, which did nothing for her temper. “I need to get him to Santa Fe, and now the Ranger ship is gone!”

  “The others are causing a distraction,” came from behind the door.

  “What?” Alice’s trigger finger jerked, and the top left corner of the door blew off. Blue tendrils of light explored each panel, dancing and sizzling. With a shriek, Gretchen shoved it over and leaped away from it.

  Finding nothing to ease its appetite in the wood, which bore only knob and hinges, the lightning attacked a rock. It exploded, and a chunk of it struck the other woman, knocking her to the ground.

  Alice smiled the smile with which air pirates from Santa Fe to the Canadas had become all too familiar. She buffed the flared barrel of the pistol with her sleeve and deactivated it.

  “Dadgummit, Alice,” Betsy said furiously, “Sister Clara and May Lin between them do our doctoring. They’ve pulled out plenty of bullets. Now stop this nonsense and take us to your husband.”

  “I’ll take you.” Alice jerked her chin at the moaning Gretchen. “She stays out of range or I’ll shoot a bigger boulder.”

  Gretchen was no fool. She pulled herself out of the way as Alice and Betsy picked up the door and jogged back to where Ian lay. Her heart ached at the fresh blood that oozed from the wound as they laid him on the door. He was heavy, but the strength of desperation and love seemed to fill her muscles, enabling her to cover the distance to the river at something approaching a fast shamble.

  The boat and crew were waiting on watch, as though every witch aboard was anxious to rectify the mistake their sister had committed.

  “You get him home,” Gretchen told the man at the wheel. “I’ll join the distraction party and make sure you aren’t followed.”

  Which suited Alice right down to the ground. Maybe the Rangers would get a good shot at her.

  The witch had barely leaped to the rocks when a crewman dragged the gangplank in and they were under way. The walls of the canyons slid past faster than anyone could walk, echoing the chug of the steam engines and the splash of the great paddles in the stern back to them, but still it was not fast enough for Alice. She crouched next to Ian on the deck—for the door was too wide to carry him into the main saloon from which it had come—and held his hand in both of hers, trying to smile reassuringly when all she wanted to do was weep.

  Or shoot something.

  A cloud passed over the sun, and instinctively she looked up.

  “There they are!”

  “So much for a distraction,” Betsy said anxiously. “What happened?”

  But there was no answer to this. Then Alice realized something else. “Are they—? Yes, they are. They’re following us.”

  Betsy scrambled to her feet. “They’ll discover the village. I must tell Jack. He cannot take us home yet.”

  “He better dadblamed well take us or I’ll shoot him myself!”

  Betsy squeezed her shoulder, no doubt feeling the tremors that Alice couldn’t control, as though she’d been soaked and now huddled in the cold. “We must protect the village. Jack knows a thing or two about the river. It will be all right.”

  “But there’s no time. And what if they can help—”

  But Betsy had already released her and gone forward, and in a moment, the pitch of the engine changed, the great brass wheels in the stern digging into the water and increasing their speed against the powerful current. Now even a steam landau running wide open could not match them as the rocks and water churned by at a hectic pace.

  Alice sagged onto the deck. She should have stuck to her guns, and flagged the Rangers down when she had the chance. What had she been thinking—trusting the witches when other than Betsy, she had no reason to? Ian’s beloved face blurred in her vision.

  And then a shadow passed over them again, and the sun went out. With a gasp, she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and looked up.

  Her mouth fell open.

  They slid under an arch of red rock so massive that the steamboat was dwarfed to the size of a child’s toy. Below openings in the rock, light played on the water, and as they chugged into the middle of the vast natural chamber, she felt the engines slow and the sounds echo as from a great distance.

  Betsy jumped down the steps from the wheelhouse. “Jack is going to bide here until they get tired of looking for us.”

  “What is this place?” Her fear backed off just a fraction as she stared up … and up … to the arched ceiling, where ripples of light seemed to dance and play.

  “One of our little secrets.” Betsy’s lips, painted black with flowers at the corners, tilted up. “One of the very few we let the boatmen in on.”

  An eternity passed in which Ian’s breathing became increasingly labored, and Alice’s fear stampeded back in to seize up her lungs and burn the edges of her temper. Finally she could bear it no longer.

  She stomped up the iron stairs, thumbing on the lightning pistol as the filigree treads rang under her boots.

  “Get this boat back to the village now,” she rasped, “or I’ll put a hole through you and do it myself.”

  The man who must be Jack turned from the wheel to face her. His eyes widened at the sight of the pistol. “What does that do?”

  “You won’t survive the answer,” she snapped. “Get this tub moving.”

  “But the Rangers—”

  “I don’t care about the village, or the Rangers. All I care about is getting that bullet out of my husband before it’s too late. Now move!”

  Watching her as though she were a she-bear and he stood between her and her cub, Jack found the acceleration levers by feel alone. In a moment the pitch of the engines changed again and they began to make way across the lake, heading for the bright daylight glow of the arch on the far side.

  When they emerged, the skies were empty.

  But Alice did not leave the wheelhouse. Instead, she kept the humming pistol aimed at the captain’s left ear, her face grim. Her hand did not shake. But her heart was pounding in her chest, her legs shaking from more than the vibrating deck. She hoped beyond hope he could not see that pride and fierce love were the only things holding her upright.

  Chapter 2

  Something was gravely amiss in the world when a woman could not accomplish what she set out to do without having to marry someone.

  The shock and frustration presently rolling beneath Gloria Meriwether-Astor Fremont’s well-worn corset was making her feel positively ill. Whether king or scientist, peasant or witch, boat captain or … oh, dear. Why could people not simply do the right thing and forsake all these machinations? How had her friend Lady Claire Trevelyan managed to change the world all on her own, without resorting to the authority and power of a husband, however high or low he might be placed? For that matter, how had Claire managed to choose the one she wanted when Gloria couldn’t seem able to manage it at all despite any number of willing prospects?

  But never mind all that. She must speak.

  For still he knelt at her feet, this slender boy of nineteen with the hollow eyes, curling hair, and tanned skin. This boy gazing up at her as though he had not just tipped her entire world off its axis and set all her hopes at naught with one sentence.

  One sentence that she must answer. Immediately.

  She clasped his hand in both of
hers and tugged. “Please, sir, do get up. This is a—a most extraordinary situation.”

  The Viceroy of the Royal Kingdom of Spain and the Californias, Defender of the Faith, and General of the Armies of Heaven obligingly got to his feet, though he did not release her hand. “Please, you must call me Felipe,” he said. “Will you allow me to call you Gloria?”

  Good heavens. The rules of polite society dictated that only family or gentlemen in a very close relationship might call one by one’s Christian name. But the rules of polite society did not cover what one was supposed to do when one was married and had just been most illegally proposed to by a prince.

  “Our situation may be extraordinary,” he went on, “but it is one with which you are not unfamiliar.”

  “That is only partly true,” she retorted, shock having burned away the polite civilities this situation might warrant under normal circumstances, “since I was unattached at the time. You cannot seriously mean this, sir—er, Felipe. You would have my marriage annulled and marry me yourself in exchange for what I ask? Why not simply issue a command as—as the General of the Armies of Heaven, and stop this dreadful war? I’m afraid I do not understand why I must be part of the bargain.”

  “Because then you would not marry me,” he said simply.

  “I cannot say I am inclined to marry you now,” she blurted. No, no, that would not do. “Felipe, please, what conditions are these in which two people could be expected to find happiness? It is impossible.”

  He gazed at her, and his thoughts seemed to withdraw, as though he were looking into the past. “I have never expected to find happiness,” he admitted at last.

  Her panic subsided just a little, and compassion trickled in. “Why should you not?” Her voice softened, for he did look so painfully young. “Why should any man or woman not expect to find love, and companionship, and the refuge of a home?”