Claire swam to the surface of an ocean filled with gibbering monsters and apparitions, all of which wanted her dead. Expecting at any moment for one of them to grab her by the ankles and pull her under once again, she opened her eyes to a warm darkness punctuated by gentle lamplight.
A cool cloth was applied to her forehead. “She wakes, and her spirit is with her,” said a woman with dusky skin and calm dark eyes. “Are you feeling better?”
“Where am I?”
She put a mug to her lips and Claire drank. It tasted acidic and faintly like grass, but no matter. It was cold and wet and glorious.
“You are in the Navapai village west of Santa Fe. The girls who were with you are well. They have been out doing a reckoning with Alice and my sons and have brought back some folk who are anxious to see you.”
Alice? Alice was here and not floating in the sky or back in her shack by Spider Woman? Claire roped her thoughts together. “Dunsmuirs?”
“No. Lie back. I have told them they cannot see you until you can sit up.”
“I can sit up.” She struggled up, allowing the woman to stuff a rolled-up wool blanket behind her back. “Forgive me for asking, but who are you? What happened to me? I had a dream that Alice and Jake came and rescued us—but that is impossible.”
“I am Alaia, healer of this village, and it was no dream. Jake fell in Spider Woman’s mirror and has lived to tell about it. He is now her son, and under her protection.”
She rose, and Claire saw she wore a black dress belted with colorful woven wool in the same pattern as the blanket. She must be the weaver. Spinning threads like Spider Woman. She picked up a bowl of something that smelled delicious, and Claire leaned forward like a hound sniffing the wind.
“Thank you for caring for me, Miss—Mrs.—Alaia. The girls and I would surely have died without you.”
“You are Alice’s friends,” the woman said simply. “And she is my friend and sister in spirit.”
Claire took the bowl and tasted the soup. She couldn’t remember ever tasting anything so delicious. The entire bowl went down in less time than it took to think about it.
Alaia nodded with satisfaction. “Now your friends may come in for a short time.”
Claire touched her hair and realized it was down, and someone had brushed it. She was wearing a cotton shift and not much else, so she pulled the wool blanket up under her armpits.
And then the door opened and Tigg and the Mopsies poured in, followed by Jake. They fetched up in a wave on the bed, everyone except Jake climbing on in a great pile of hugs and relief and greeting.
Laughing, Claire kissed Tigg with such joy that he blushed and ducked his head. She settled the Mopsies on either side and extended her hand to Jake. When he took it hesitantly, she tugged on his arm so that he practically toppled over, and she hugged him fiercely as he knelt next to the bed.
“I am so glad you were not killed,” she whispered. “If I never experience a moment as dreadful as you going out that hatch for the rest of eternity, it will be too soon.”
He could not look at her. His face buried in her lap, he choked out, “I’m sorry, Lady. Sorry I turned coat. Sorry for everything. But they told me they’d kill you all and I—”
“Shh.” Gently, she rubbed his heaving shoulders. “It is forgotten. We are all together again and we will not look back.”
“We’re a flock,” Maggie put in from her cozy corner between Claire, the bolster, and the wall.
“Don’t forget Mr. Malvern,” Tigg said from his place next to her knees. “He’s been awful anxious to see you.”
Claire looked up and saw Andrew hovering in the doorway. For the space of ten seconds she could not speak. Instead, she drank in the wholly unexpected sight of him. Yes, he had told her he was in pursuit of James. But to see him here, in the flesh, in circumstances that anyone would call extraordinary … she drank in the sight of him with shameless greed.
And speaking of extraordinary, what an astonishing rig he wore! Over the normalcy of his brocade vest and cravat and shirt was a dusty canvas coat, and he wore an airman’s leather cap with the goggles pushed up on his forehead. A holster on his hip contained some kind of firearm, but she could not tell more than that.
Heavens. He looked positively wild. In a good way.
A very good way.
“Are you not glad to see me, Claire?”
And there was the Andrew she knew, a gentleman and a scientist to the core, complete with an endearing awkwardness around the fairer sex.
“I can think of no more welcome sight in the world, after that of Jake alive and well.” She extended her hand and Andrew took it, folding himself onto the lightning designs of the rug next to Jake, who sniffled one last time and wiped his nose on his sleeve as he made room.
“I was awful anxious,” Andrew said with a smile. “In what seems another life, I sent you a letter. Did you ever receive it?”
Claire nodded. He did not release her hand, and if he was content to do so, she was perfectly content to leave it there.
“A pigeon came about three days into the flight. But immediately after that, we ran into a dreadful storm, and—”
“Do not exert yourself. Tigg and the girls told me the whole story on the way here.”
Claire looked over the little assembly. “Mopsies, if Alice was indeed here and not a dream, why do I not see her?”
“She’s probably still at the airfield,” Jake said. “She an’ Alaia’s boys were talkin’ so long wiv these airmen friends o’ hers that I thought I’d take a reconnoiter meself. When I didn’t find the Mopsies where we’d left ’em, I headed over to the Lady Lucy. Got there just in time to see Lizzie clock Mr. Malvern wiv a brick.”
“Lizzie!” Claire looked down at her, shocked to the core.
“I thought ’e were an intruder,” Lizzie said in her own defense. “An’ I missed anyhow.”
“What was in this letter you were talkin’ about?” Tigg asked. “Mr. Malvern, I can’t figure why you’re here and not in the laboratory in London.”
“All in good time.” Andrew smiled and finally released Claire’s hand. “It sounds like we owe this Alice a great debt for saving your lives.”
“Jake, too,” Lizzie said. “Tell ’em what you and Alice did, Jake.”
Uncomfortable in the spotlight, Jake shifted and cleared his throat. “We put the locomotive tower’s engine in the Stalwart Lass and came after the Lady and the girls.”
“Wait—you did what?” Andrew leaned forward to look into Jake’s eyes. “Two of you put a locomotive engine in an airship? How is that possible?”
“It weren’t really a locomotive engine. It were an airship engine, but it runs the tower just fine. And we ’ad ’elp. Half a dozen automatons, easy. They’re a lot stronger’n they look. They made a good crew, too, once we was in the air.”
Goodness. A vision of a miniature army of automatons carrying bits of engine from one vessel to another played across Claire’s mind. On one hand, what a triumph of engineering it must have been. On the other, they were automatons, bronze and faceless and mindless. And she had been unconscious and surrounded by them on the Lass. She swallowed.
“Where did the automatons come from?” Andrew asked with interest.
It was best he did not know their actual provenance. “Alice made them. She is a young lady of singular resources.”
“I look forward to making her acquaintance. Very much so.”
Hmph. Were her accomplishments as nothing? It was quite clearly time to change the subject.
“Now you must tell us your adventures,” she said. “Including the parts about Lord James. I have a feeling our tales will dovetail rather neatly toward the end.”
Andrew got to his feet and removed his canvas coat, while Claire and the Mopsies settled more comfortably against the bolster.
“As I said in my letter, the night of the exhibition at the Crystal Palace, James came to an agreement with a consortium of Texican railroad men and made off with the Selwyn Kinetick Carbonator. They had passage on a private merchant ship belonging to one of them, but I was able to leave the next morning on a Zeppelin vessel out of Hamburg going to New York. Once there, I made inquiries and learned that the Texican vessel was bound for Santa Fe, which is the capital of this territory.”
Claire nodded, encouraging him to go on.
“When I arrived here, I realized that learning their intentions was paramount. They might choose to duplicate the Carbonator and build the devices here, or they might ship the Carbonator to some other location. They might even begin processing coal.”
“Did you find out?” Tigg asked with the seriousness of a fellow scientist. He, after all, had as much invested in the Carbonator as any of them.
“I could not just hang about the railroad offices and eavesdrop, so I did the next best thing. I signed on as a laborer in the yard. They soon realized I had more skills than loading cars, so they moved me into the laboratory, where I had a fair task ahead of me to stay out of sight whenever James or one of the barons was on the premises. They’d all met me at the Crystal Palace, you see.”
“Did you succeed?” Claire asked.
“I did. I found out that they plan to carbonate an entire trainload of coal and send a locomotive from here to San Francisco on the new Nevada Territory line as a kind of demonstration. They plan to sell a device like ours to the Royal Kingdom of Spain, you see. The Spaniards are building locomotives with the plan to run railways all the way down to South America.”
“How will they get past the Texicans?” Claire asked. She had seen the charts. “The Territory covers nearly the entire southern half of the continent.”
“Ah, but there are no railways directly to South America. The Spaniards are building lines down the west coast to evade the Texican tariffs, and you can bet the government in Texico City will not be happy about it.”
“The money to be made will be astronomical,” Claire murmured.
“And the carbonated coal is light, hard, and lasts a long time,” Tigg said. “If you’re aiming for speed, you can’t stop to load your tender, can you?”
“What villains they are,” Claire breathed. “Go behind the Texican government’s back to supply the Spaniards, then claim innocence and rake in the money.”
“With our device,” Tigg said indignantly.
Claire’s lips firmed. “I think not.”
Andrew nodded, following her train of thought as though he had had the same one. “The Carbonator is heavily guarded, but there are brief periods when the guard changes and it could be possible to slip past. The power cell you and Dr. Craig developed is not so large that it could not be spirited out. And without the cell, of course, they have nothing.”
“They’re probably already working on more of ’em,” Tigg said. “Wouldn’t make sense to risk something happening to the one.”
“You are quite correct. I have already seen the prototypes. Time is of the essence,” Andrew agreed. “With assistance, I could repossess the cell as soon as tomorrow night.”
Jake, who had not said a word during the tale, nodded now. “We could use a mission. Keep our ’ands in, like.”
“You’ll need scouts,” Lizzie said.
“And someone who knows ’is way round bolts and suchlike,” Tigg put in.
“I could not ask it of you all.” Andrew seemed to have realized a moment too late that he was proposing that a group of children engage in criminal activity on foreign soil. “I will hazard the task alone.”
“You would be foolish to do so,” Claire told him. Her energy was rapidly seeping away.
Andrew’s gaze became concerned. “We will discuss this in the morning. The moon is probably setting and you will be no use to anyone if you do not get some rest.” He chivvied them out of the room.
“A moment, Andrew.” When he returned alone to her side, she gathered her strength. “You will be careful on this enterprise?”
“I have had several days to reconnoiter the hangars and laboratory,” he said. “Have no fear. You must concentrate on getting well.” The assurance faded from his expression and he started to speak, then thought better of it. After a moment of struggle, he finally blurted, “Claire, I know it is none of my business, but considering James’s behavior, I must ask you to reconsider your engagement to him.” When she only stared, he rushed on, “I know what you are thinking. I am only the son of a policeman and a cook, and these things are done differently in Blood circles. But can you not—I cannot bear to think—” His voice stumbled into silence. “I apologize,” he said finally, and had taken two steps toward the door before Claire found her voice.
“Andrew, I have not been engaged to James Selwyn since the night he stole the Carbonator.”
He turned, stiffly. When his gaze found her face, his eyes were blazing. “You have not?”
She struggled to sit higher against the bolster. “He removed my name from the patent that night, so as not to shock Ross Stephenson. He said he would reinstate it as a wedding gift. And at that moment I realized he would never do it—he would use it as a carrot for years to come, and expect me to follow it as obediently as a brood mare. I broke it off that same moment.”
“You are not engaged to him,” he repeated. He took a step closer. “You are a free woman.”
“As free as you.”
Another step. “I have not been free since the moment you knocked on the door of my laboratory.” The sound of voices came from outside the door. “Claire, would you—”
The door flew open and Alice burst into the room like a whirlwind. Her hair was a wild tangle, and there appeared to be pieces of those tumbling weeds stuck in it. One sleeve of her cotton shirt had been torn out, and her knuckles were scraped raw. She had either been dragged some distance by a vehicle, or had been in a fight.
“Claire, you’re awake! I’ll tell you, you gave me quite a scare. Listen, you’ll never guess who I—oh, I’m sorry. You have company.”
Claire released a long breath and with it, any hope of knowing what the conclusion to Andrew’s question might have been.
“Alice. We’ve all been worried about you. I’m glad you’re back. But are you all right?”
“Not near as worried as I’ve been about you.” She paused. “I’m fine. Just a little dustup. Are you going to introduce me?”
Exhausted as she was, the situation was too interesting to ignore. “Do you not know?”
Alice looked puzzled. And awkward. And a trifle embarrassed. “Um. No.” Gamely, she held out a hand to Andrew. “I’m Alice Chalmers. Sorry about the mess.”
Andrew looked equally puzzled, but it was quite likely about Claire’s behavior. She could not resist. “Cast this face as a daguerreotype, perhaps. And surround it with print—an article on the properties of coal. Give it a byline, one that says—”
Alice gasped, and covered her mouth with filthy fingers. “It can’t be,” she whispered.
Andrew had clearly had enough of being sported with, particularly so soon after … whatever he had been going to say. He bowed. “Do forgive Lady Claire, Alice. She is not in full control of her faculties just now.”
“Not in—!”
Andrew ignored her and spoke to Alice. “I am Andrew Malvern, and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. I do hope you fared better than the other person.”
“Andrew Malvern,” Alice whispered. “The Andrew Malvern, of the Royal Society of Engineers?”
Andrew peered at her, as though doubting the strength of her mind. “The very one. Have you read one of my monographs?”
Alice grasped her hair in both hands, yanked some dried vegetation out of it, then clapped one palm to her mouth. She dashed to the window, and in the next moment, was violently sick onto the terrace outside.