Magnificent Devices Page 13

Chapter 16

  With the resiliency of childhood, Lizzie seemed to recover by midday. The hot wind of their going dried her underclothes, and they were soon able to dress again completely. Though there was not a soul for a hundred miles or more, but Claire still felt naked and exposed in the vastness of the landscape.

  As vulnerable as Rosie, with only the leather sides of the hatbox between her and death.

  Hungry enough to regret that the cat had not been something more edible.

  By late morning of the third day, they swallowed the last of the dried meat. The cheese and bread had gone the day before. Rosie killed a lizard and Maggie’s speculative gaze caused Claire to say rather hastily, “They’re not edible by people, dearest. We must have fortitude.”

  They had more water because of the creek, but while it went down like a blessing, it did nothing for the fact that her stomach appeared to be clinging to her backbone. It was all she could do to keep her temper every time the girls whined for something to eat or one more sip of water.

  They were still heading north, weren’t they? She was losing the ability to tell.

  And surely they must have covered two hundred miles by now. In three days they could have walked halfway to Cornwall.

  It would be all too terrifyingly easy to miss a city by ten miles, would it not? One could sail right by and never know that one had left safety and friends well behind—and they in turn would never know one had done so.

  Why had they not seen the Rangers going overhead in their ship? She would have expected them on the first day, but not a whisper had they seen or heard.

  In their miserable foodless camp, Claire tilted her head to the brazen sky, which reflected all the reds and oranges of the interminable mesas and rock piles in this godforsaken land.

  Did no one care that they were going to die out here? Would no one search? Andrew—James—the Dunsmuirs—they were all probably sitting down to a huge dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and every vegetable imaginable while she was out here, sitting on a rock, staring death in the face for the umpteenth time in the past week.

  One of these days it would come for her and the girls. Maybe not today. But tomorrow, certainly.

  They were all lightheaded and weepy and she had never felt such pain in her stomach. Her tongue moved sluggishly, and she kept hearing bees where it was not possible for bees to be.

  “I want to go ’ome,” Maggie moaned. “I hate this place. Why aren’t we there yet?”

  Claire clenched her molars together to keep from snapping that if she knew where “there” was, it would go a long way toward actually finding it.

  They could not die out here. It was insupportable and inconceivable … and inevitable, if they did not locate Santa Fe the next day.

  How could she manage the sail with arms too weak to hold the cords? Maggie and Lizzie were already trading off the steering every hour, one resting while the other tried to concentrate on steering.

  There was absolutely nothing she could do to help the situation except to go on … and trust to Providence.

  In the morning, after waking from a dream of pastel-colored meringues raining from the sky, it seemed as though even Providence had forgotten them.

  The wind died.

  Claire stood with the cords wrapped around her hands, turning the sail this way and that to try to catch a breath of breeze.

  “Wot’s wrong wiv it?” Maggie’s voice was so apathetic it sounded as though she asked for form’s sake only. “Why ent we goin’?”

  “There is no wind.” Claire sat on the rail with a bump. “How can there be no wind? That has been the one constant of this place besides grit in one’s eyes.”

  “Yer not doin’ it right,” Lizzie said. Her eyes were swollen to slits from sunburn. “Are you tryin’ to get us killed?”

  “I have been trying to save your miserable lives, you—” She bit back her temper, wondering why she even tried if that was what they thought of her.

  “Miserable is it?” Lizzie flared. “I’ll tell you this, we was a whole lot less miserable before you came. We was ’appy in London.”

  “What, picking rags and stealing bread? Yes, I’m sure you were.”

  “It’s better’n bein’ shot at and starvin’ to death.”

  “We haven’t starved. You’re still talking, aren’t you?” Claire took a deep breath. “Come. We will push the frame along until the wind comes up. We must make some progress today.”

  But the girls would not push. They would only sit on the bench and moan, and Claire could not hold the cords and push at the same time.

  It was too much.

  She sat in the dirt and a great sob came heaving up from her chest, but no tears stood in her eyes. Her body was too dehydrated to allow her that luxury. Wrapping her arms around her legs, she lowered her forehead to her knees and wept soundlessly.

  “Lady.”

  She could not bear it. If Lizzie could think of nothing kind to say, she would just pretend the girl did not exist.

  “Lady, I c’n hear something.”

  “It’s just the buzzing in your ears, Lizzie. I have it, too.”

  “It ain’t in my ears. It’s in the sky.”

  “Yes, and it sounds like bees. I know.”

  “Lady! Look up!”

  Atlas hefting the world up on his shoulders could have felt its weight no more than Claire. Wearily, she peered in the direction Lizzie’s trembling finger indicated.

  She sat up, then used the rail to drag herself to her feet.

  “An airship!” They were saved!

  Now she could hear the distant purring of the engine. She blinked, and rubbed her eyes free of grit. “Is that a double fuselage?”

  The distinctive Y shape floated closer. Two gasbags, with a gondola suspended between them.

  How many ships of that configuration flew these unrelenting skies?

  “Girls! Conceal yourselves under something. It’s the Stalwart Lass—Ned Mose has found us!”

  *

  Maggie and Lizzie flung themselves at a pile of rocks, but there was not even a shadow to be found under them. Claire took refuge under a bush, which was rather like Rosie trying to hide behind a pebble—it offered no protection, either. They could do nothing about the velogig—there it sat in all its brass and silk glory, a rich man’s plaything that was as immobile as a beacon advertising their location.

  Even the slender hope that the pirates would think it had been abandoned and move on to find people on foot was dashed as the engine slowed and finally reversed.

  They were going to moor.

  If she and the girls were not shot on sight, at least there was the soup in the prison room to look forward to. And the nice sprigged-china ewer and basin with blessed cold water to drink. Why had she not been grateful for that ewer of water while she had it? If she had, she might have waited that half hour and none of the past four days would have happened.

  If only …

  A lead weight slammed into the ground. In the absence of a mooring mast and any wind, it would act as an anchor long enough for the pirates to lower a basket. Because if she was to be required to shimmy up that rope, they may as well leave her to die. Claire put her head down on top of Rosie’s hatbox as though it were a pillow.

  One way or another, she really didn’t care.

  Rosie stuck her head out of the hole and bubbled a greeting.

  Good grief, you silly bird. Those men will make a fine dinner of you. There’s no need to sound so glad to see them.

  “Lady!” a boy’s voice called. It cracked—not a boy, then. Becoming a man. The one called Perry, perhaps?

  “Lady Claire! Are you dead?”

  She could swear she knew that voice.

  With a Herculean effort, she lifted her head.

  Rosie clucked again, and she heard a scream from the direction of the rocks. “Jake! Jake, is that you?”

  A slim figure slid down the mooring rope and pounded across the dry soil. “Mags? Lizz
ie? All right?”

  As if she were watching a flicker at the theatre, Claire saw the dead boy scoop Maggie up in his arms and hold her a moment over his head before he hugged her and grabbed Lizzie, swinging them both in a circle so that their limp legs flew out.

  Hallucinations. Was this the precursor to death? It wasn’t exactly her life flashing before her eyes, but close enough.

  The apparition set the girls down and tilted his head up to the gondola floating above his head. “Alice, send down t’basket. The Lady’s in a bad way.”

  In a moment a hatch opened in the stern, near the engine. A passenger basket was winched down and the ghost bundled the girls into it. It rose swiftly, to return empty, settling on the ground once more.

  “Come on, then, Lady,” the ghost said. “Cor, izzat Rosie? Ent you stew yet, old girl? Up wi’ you, now.”

  There was only one reason a ghost came to fetch people. That was why they called it a fetch. Her Cornish nanny at Gwyn Place had been firm on that point. “Am I going to hell for my sins?” Claire’s feet dragged as he pulled her over to the basket and bundled her in.

  “Seems both of us ’ave been there an’ back, eh? But they’ll ’ave to wait a while to get us permanent-like.”

  And then all the buzzing bees coalesced into one giant swarm. The floor of the basket rose up and slapped her, and Claire went out like a lamp.

  Chapter 17

  Maggie’s eyes unstuck long enough for her to see a perfect square of blue sky. She blinked, then raised a hand to rub them—not that it did much good. A blanket covered her. Wool, worked in odd patterns like stairsteps and lightning and the whirls water made when it went down a drain.

  “Water,” she croaked.

  “Right ’ere, yer majesty.” A mug was set to her lips and she drank and drank until it was taken away.

  “More.”

  “In a bit. A little at a time, Alice says. That sunburn prob’ly smarts, but she put cactus goop all over it. She says it’ll be better tomorrow.”

  The water was clearing her brain. “Jake?”

  “Yes. Alive and well, no thanks to Ned Mose. I’ve a score to settle wiv ’im, an’ no mistake.”

  “Lizzie?”

  “Right next to you. Snug as two bugs, you are.”

  She had a moment to wonder why he was being so nice to her when he never was before, but then her eyes slid shut and she knew no more.

  *

  The next time she woke, the square of blue was replaced by black, and a lamp burned in a niche in the wall. A wall made of mud. Was she in a mole’s hole?

  Maggie propped herself up on her elbows just as Lizzie pushed the door open with her bum and backed in carrying a tray. “You awake, Mags?”

  “Water.”

  “Right ’ere, plus some soup. I already had some. It’s good. Poh-soh-lay, they call it.”

  “Who?” She drank the whole mug of water and then tipped the pitcher up to her mouth and drank half of that, too. The soup was good. It went down almost as fast.

  “The Navapai. Friends of Alice’s.” She lowered her voice. “I think they’re real Wild West Injuns, like in the flickers.”

  “When did you ever see a flicker?”

  Lizzie looked injured. “I might’ve snuck in once.”

  “Wivout me?”

  “Maybe you were sick. Listen, d’you remember who rescued us?”

  “Jake was here.” Another thought occurred to her. “Where’s the Lady?”

  “Next door. I think summat went wrong in them cat scratches she got. She’s been talking strange. Thinks Jake’s a ghost.”

  “I think he is, too. He’s nicer than in real life.”

  Lizzie giggled. “The Navapai are doctoring her. So’s Alice. Can you get up?”

  Maggie slid her feet out of bed. She was wearing her cammy and drawers and nothing else. “Where’s our clothes?”

  “Washed and drying. C’mon. Jake says to bring you.”

  “Where’s Rosie?”

  “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  They emerged out of the mud house onto a flagstone terrace that dropped away into space on the far side. Maggie swayed and staggered back. “Is this Santa Fe?”

  A voice came from across the terrace. “No. This is a Navapai village. Can’t pronounce the name of it.” Jake sat on a wide, low wall, his feet dangling over a couple of hundred feet of empty air. He could kick out one boot and practically nudge the leftmost fuselage of the Stalwart Lass, floating serenely at the end of her line. A skinny pinnacle of rock seemed to be her mooring mast.

  Jake saw her looking at it. “A mast is a mast, eh?”

  “Jake, what are you doing here? How did we get here? How did you get on the Lass and where are all those pirates?”

  He grinned, that sly urchin’s grin that immediately made her feel at home. “Probably ridin’ shank’s mare t’the nearest airfield and cursin’ our names.”

  “Nearest airfield besides here is Texico City, and that’s three days’ flight from Resolution.” Alice Chalmers stepped out onto the terrace. “How do you feel, Maggie?”

  “Like that dried-up meat you gave us.”

  “That’s called jerky, and it probably kept you alive long enough for us to find you. What were you doing all the way out there, thirty miles east? You were supposed to head north from Resolution. Santa Fe is hard to miss.”

  She waved a hand to the east, and Maggie took in the size of the city that lay in the distance. It seemed to go on for a mile, though maybe that was the clarity of the air, which made you able to see almost forever. Spires of rock and brass punctuated neat stretches of mud houses like the one behind them—only they were bigger, like layer cakes and building blocks all mixed up. Airships floated from mooring masts even in town.

  “Does everybody have their own ship?” she asked in wonder.

  “Most of those are the Ranger fleet, but some people do.” Alice patted a stone bench and Maggie sank onto it with Lizzie. Not likely they’d join Jake on his wall, not with her head feeling as muzzy as it did.

  “I dunno where we were,” she said at last. “All I know is, we ’ad no wind and no hope of anyone, and next thing I knew there was Jake. Mind tellin’ us ’ow you came to be not dead? Did Ned Mose really push you out of Lady Lucy in midair?”

  Jake leaned back against a rock and stretched his legs out on the top of the wall. “He did. I thought I was a goner, for true. But what ’e didn’t know was that if ’e’d waited just a minute or so, we’d’ve been flying over land instead of water.”

  “He fell into the lake,” Alice expanded helpfully.

  “An’ not just any old how, either,” Jake said. “Remember jumpin’ off the Clarendon footbridge that summer we found Willie?”

  “I do. You pushed me off cos I wouldn’t jump.” Lizzie hadn’t forgotten, that was clear.

  “Did I? Anyways, wot we found is that if you jump in straight-like instead of floppin’ around like a trout, it don’t hurt when you hit. So there I was, fallin’ out of the sky, out of me ’ead with fear. I remembered Clarendon footbridge and straightened meself out. Went into t’water like a spear and didn’t get kilt.”

  Maggie could see it, plain as day. “And then what?”

  “I swam hard as I could for shore and watched what direction the ships went in. Figured there’d be food I could steal to keep body an’ soul together until I found you.”

  “What would you want to find us for?” Lizzie burst out, as if she’d had enough of being polite. “You turned us over to Ned Mose like we was cattle and I ent forgot it, Jake Fletcher. Nor am I like to, ever.”

  At least he had the grace to look shamefaced. “Don’t hold it against me, Lizzie.”

  “Where else am I supposed to ’old it? You nearly got us all killed.”

  “Nearly. Fact is, you would’ve been killed for sure. I were their first collar, you know. They woulda stuck me then an’ there if I didn’t go over to their side and show ’em where the family were and such.”r />
  “You never!” Lizzie stomped over to him and shook her finger in his face. He ought to grab hold of something, in Maggie’s mind, in case she gave him a push, she was so angry. “I saw you. You were ’appy to ’and us over. Fact is, Jake, you go to whatever side you think is winnin’, never mind who yer friends are.” She paused, fists on hips, glaring. “Were.”

  “Don’t be so hard on him, peaches,” Alice put in from the rock. Maggie leaned against her side, and Alice slipped an arm around her. It felt nice. As nice as the hugs the Lady gave when she wasn’t being leader of the gang.

  “Why shouldn’t I? I don’t even know why you’re ’ere.”

  “I’m here because it was that or let pa kill me,” she said simply.

  Maggie stiffened and straightened up to stare at her. Alice coaxed her back against her side with a squeeze. Lizzie stood there, the wind properly taken out of her sails.

  “Kill you?”

  Alice nodded. “He caught me giving you help, see. So he locked me in a storage room in town till he was sober enough to shoot straight, and that’s when—”

  “—I broke in lookin’ for food.” Jake looked rather pleased with himself. “So between us, we took the engine out o’ that locomotive tower and put ’er in the Lass, and—”

  “—before pa woke the next morning, we set out to try and find you. Didn’t see you in the logical places, so widened our search, all the while hoping pa and the boys wouldn’t cobble together an engine and start out after us.”

  “There ent no airships left in that place, is there?” Maggie asked in spite of the fact that she felt so sleepy.

  “Ranger ship was on its way, we knew that. Pa’d likely wreck it and use the fuselage.”

  “Did the Rangers come?” Even Lizzie had to admit that the prospect of being killed by your pa was heaps worse than going over to the other side to save your life. “We looked and looked but never saw ’em.”

  “Don’t know,” Jake said. “I expect me and one or two of Alice’s friends here will go into town after a bit and do some scoutin’.”

  “I’m coming,” Lizzie said at once. “You can’t scout wivout at least one of us.”