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 something 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 to 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 the 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Not lookin’ like that, you ent.” Jake’s voice was firm. “You look like a tomato getting’ ready to spoil, for true. Besides, someone has to stay and watch over the Lady.”
Lizzie subsided, but Maggie could see plain as plain that watching over the Lady was just a job to fob her off while Jake and Alice got all the fun. She kept the smile off her aching face, though.
What Mr. Pleased-as-Punch didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.