Tin Swift

CHAPTER NINE

Rose Small woke to the sound of men’s voices. The voices were close enough she could make out most of the words, but none of them made much sense.

One of the men was Cedar Hunt. She’d recognize his low, threatening tone anywhere. The other voice she was sure she’d never heard before.

It took her a couple tries, but she finally opened her eyes. The ceiling above her arched with scrolling metal beams and joists, over a deep polished wood. She wasn’t in the Madder brothers’ wagon, though she most certainly was in a hammock. And she wasn’t anyplace she could recall being before.

Rose turned her head and winced at the pain digging deep in her shoulder and spreading out like claws across her neck, chest, and back. She’d been hurt?

Last she recalled she and Mr. Hunt were gathering wood. No, that wasn’t right. They were doing something more. Gathering up the dead.

Those poor people in Vicinity. They’d been trying to give them a grave. And she’d seen Mr. Hunt holding that little dead girl in his arms, his eyes so lost to sorrow, tears down his face that she didn’t even think he felt, she’d taken him with her to gather wood.

That’s when he’d heard someone crying. They’d gone into the kitchen and…

Something had happened. A shot? An earthquake? Something. She remembered pain, remembered Mr. Hunt holding on to her like he could shield her from bullets, remembered the hard taste of hot metal in her mouth.

And then, nothing.

Now that she’d turned her head, she saw Mrs. Lindson to the left of her asleep on some blankets. She looked pale even in the warm yellow light from the low-burning lantern. Wil was lying beside her, and turned his head to look at her, ears straight up. He didn’t seem worried. That was something, she supposed.

Rose took a few breaths waiting for the pain to take itself off to the distance, then turned her head the other way.

She could just make out the back of Mr. Hunt here in the room. He was sitting in a chair. Still had his coat and hat on. The man he was talking to was blocked by him. Well, most of him anyway. She could see one shoulder, and a hand.

Whoever the man was, he liked to use his hands a lot when he talked, taking up a lot of the space around him. She figured he’d be the sort of man who danced with his elbows out.

“When did you meet the Madders?” the other man asked.

“Few years ago,” Cedar said. “Knew them as miners. Asked for their help finding a lost boy, and fell into owing them a favor.”

“And about that item you said you’d find for them?”

“Yes?”

“Well, I’ve seen a bit of the land and sky, Mr. Hunt. Might be I’ve seen what you’re searching for. Does your item have a name?”

“It probably has several. They call it the Holder.”

Rose blinked hard. She didn’t think Mr. Hunt was the sort of man to tell their private business to a stranger. Maybe the man was someone Mr. Hunt knew from back east or from when he worked in the university. Or maybe the man was holding a gun in his other hand.

One way to find out.

Rose licked her lips and pushed herself up, leveraging her right elbow under her, and pushing back.

From the clench of pain that stomped over her, Rose decided real quick she had overestimated her leveraging abilities.

She moaned, though she tried to hold it back.

Two sets of wicker chairs squeaked, then two sets of boots got louder as they came nearer her.

Well, this wasn’t her plan at all. Still, if Mr. Hunt had been under gunpoint, she sure hoped her diversion helped to give him the upper hand.

“Miss Small,” Cedar Hunt asked, near now, and clearly concerned. “Easy.” His hand pressed gently down on her good shoulder, and she just didn’t have it in her to put up a fight. “Do you think you can drink some tea?”

Rose opened her eyes, a little surprised she’d kept them clenched shut so long. Wasn’t like her to look away from a situation.

But the pounding at the back of her head and the blur to her vision said maybe her looking away wasn’t such a bad idea.

Something soft was being wedged against her back, a pillow maybe or a blanket roll, and then she rested her head, and worked on no more than staring up toward the ceiling until her head stopped drumming a beat.

“Miss Small?” Cedar said again, taking her hand. “Rose?”

Rose tried not to smile. He sounded so very worried. Almost distraught. It was sweet of him.

“Don’t worry so, Mr. Hunt,” she whispered. Her throat was dry and sour with the hot taste of metal. “Tea would be nice.”

He let go of her hand to see to it.

“Does she need anything else?” the other man asked. “Molly has a fair hand with medicine, though we’re running low on supplies.”

What a nice voice, Rose decided. Deep, with a little music to it, like maybe he hadn’t grown up in the Oregon Territory. She liked the sound of it. She hoped he wasn’t holding them all hostage.

“We’ll start with the tea,” Cedar said. “I laced it with a bit of laudanum to take the pain off.”

Rose turned her eyes away from the ceiling, catching sight first of the other man. He was light-haired and had a fine face, straight nose, carved cheekbones and a strong jaw that gave him the look of northern people. He was clean shaven, and his mouth seemed more than willing to smile.

His eyes…clear gray with a dark ring of blue at the edge, so striking it made her wonder if she was seeing them right. They were the color of storms and blue skies, framed by dark lashes.

Any one part of him might not be extraordinary, but taken all together, he was quite fetching.

Maybe it didn’t matter if he danced with his elbows out.

She supposed she might be staring.

She supposed she didn’t care.

“Take a sip, Miss Small,” Cedar Hunt said. “It will help.”

Rose looked away from the man’s face and paid attention to the cup Mr. Hunt held before her. She took a sip, placing her right hand under it so Mr. Hunt didn’t have to support it.

The tea was weak, but bitter with laudanum. She’d be asleep again soon for sure.

“Where are we?” she asked, the tea having put more of her voice back in her words.

“In the mountains,” Cedar said. “This is Captain Hink, and we’re aboard his airship.”

“Airship?” Rose’s heartbeat pumped a little faster, and she glanced again at the metal beams and as much of the room as she could see.

Of course, a ridged skeleton to carry the gondola. Above that ceiling would be the airbags—no, they were called envelopes. She wondered how many boilers she had on her, and how many fans.

“The Swift,” the man, Captain Hink, said. “She’s small, fast, and—”

“Beautiful,” Rose said with a sigh.

Captain Hink smiled and pride lit his eyes. “Yes, she is. Have you flown, Miss Small?”

“Only once. But not in a ship.” Rose’s neck was beginning to hurt from looking up at his eyes, but she found herself not wanting to look away.

She had so many questions. About flying, about the ship. She wondered if they had to use glim to power her like the Madders had used glim to augment the power of the balloon.

But the tea was already starting to make her tired. She reluctantly looked away from Captain Hink and held the cup out for Mr. Hunt so she wouldn’t spill.

Medicines were scarce and expensive.

“I’m filled with questions,” she said. “But my eyes are so tired. Is Mrs. Lindson well?”

Cedar placed the cup on a nearby shelf. “She will be. She overexerted herself.” That last bit he said with a deep growl in his voice. Rose had noticed that when Mr. Hunt talked about Mrs. Lindson, he often had a bit of the wild behind his words. Especially since she’d been so whimsical in the brain lately.

She didn’t think he noticed it, but he felt very protective of her. Likely felt more for her than he’d yet admitted to himself.

Funny how a scholar could lose all sense and logic when falling in love with a woman.

She had found it to be most entertaining on the trail so far. Well, except for the day she’d found Mr. Hunt covered in blood with that man dead at his feet. There was a difference between losing your mind when falling in love, and just plain losing your mind.

“…be in the air before dawn, if we’re lucky,” Captain Hink was saying.

Rose opened her eyes. She must have slipped off to sleep. The lantern was doused, and there were other voices, farther off, men. Maybe two or three, talking over fuel and lift and steam and something about temperature and rivets and tin.

She heard Mr. Cedar Hunt shift on the floor near her, and got a look at him. He sat, his back to the wall, his hat tipped down to shadow his eyes. Wil sat next to him, his bronze eyes aglow in the darkness, ears twitching to sounds in the ship she couldn’t hear. Mr. Hunt’s hand rested on Wil’s back, and Mr. Hunt was asleep.

The men at the end of the ship sounded like they were bedding down. She even heard the soft breath of a snore muffled by something like a pillow or an arm over a face.

And then Captain Hink was standing above her hammock, looking down at her.

She was startled to see him there.

He appeared just as startled to see her awake.

They held still, caught in a stare they could not seem to break.

He opened his mouth, closed it, glanced over at Cedar Hunt, who as far as Rose could tell hadn’t stirred, then finally back at her.

“My apologies,” he whispered. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was,” Rose whispered back, enjoying his discomfort more than she probably should. He looked like he’d swallowed a prickly pear and didn’t know how to get it down proper.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.” He lifted his hand and showed her the pillow he was holding.

“What did you mean to do with that, Captain Hink?” Rose asked.

“Lee,” he said. “Please, call me Lee.”

“I’m not sure that I’m on first-name familiarity with you, Captain Lee Hink.”

He looked down at the pillow in his hand, then back at her with a smile. “Maybe that’s not my first name,” he said. Then, “Would you be on first-name basis with a man who was going to offer you his feather pillow?”

Rose held her breath for a second. Was he just teasing her, or had he really come back here to try to give her a little comfort? Why would a stranger do such a thing?

“Is that what you were doing, Captain Hink?”

“Lee,” he said. “And yes. I just wanted to see you…just wanted to see if you were comfortable.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” a man grumbled from somewhere toward the head of the ship. “Just give the woman the pillow, Lee, so we can all get some sleep.”

Captain Hink looked like he was trying hard to count to ten before yelling.

Rose didn’t want to wake everyone on the ship, most of all Mrs. Lindson. “Yes,” she said quickly, “a pillow would be very nice, Captain Lee Hink. Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

He stepped the rest of the way up to her hammock and then seemed to realize there would be a bit of situating to get the pillow under her head.

Rose held out her right hand. “Just don’t jostle my left shoulder.”

He leaned down. Instead of taking her hand, he placed his palm against her back and helped her sit, while simultaneously tucking the pillow down behind her head.

This close to him, Rose could smell the grease and oil and soot on his clothes. His breath carried the sharp honey-burn of alcohol, all of it made warmer by the very nearness of him.

For a flicker of a second, Rose wondered what it would be like to kiss his lips. And then the very thought of that, with him leaning over her in such an intimate manner, made her busy mind start thinking other things and asking other questions.

What would it be like if he just crawled into this hammock with her? What would it be like if he took his shirt off, if they were all alone on this airship with nothing but the darkness of the sky to shelter them? How would he feel, heavy and naked against her?

She blushed so hard, her head hurt.

“Are you all right, Miss Small?” he asked, pulling back enough that he could see every inch of her blush.

What was wrong with her? Thinking such things. And blushing!

“Fine,” she managed. “Thank you, fine.”

Captain Hink paused and studied her face, which only made her blush until her stomach stung.

“It’s just, I’m not used to a man’s pillow…I mean, I haven’t seen a man’s kindness so, um, personal lately.” The last word sort of died on a whisper as she realized she was just babbling, and doing more to embarrass herself than to explain herself.

He bit his bottom lip, but couldn’t keep the smile from turning into a grin.

“Well.” He looked down at his boot for a second as if trying to decide something, then looked straight back at her. “Well.”

His eyes were piercing in the low light of the lantern, the angles of his face like something out of a fine art museum. And that half smile curving his lips let her know he knew exactly what she’d been thinking, and approved.

Good God and glim. If she’d been in a more embarrassing spot in her whole life, she didn’t know what it was. Still, Rose knew the best way to deal with a man was to step up to the dance. Stand up to him, and match him, move for move. Elbows out.

She raised one eyebrow, and held his gaze, daring him to call her out on her inappropriate thoughts.

“It’s a pity,” he said softly, “that you’ve not seen, personal, a man’s kindness, lately,” he said, keeping his smile down to something that looked platonic, though his eyes blazed with mischief. “If I’d known—”

“Good night, Captain Hink,” Rose said firmly. She glanced past him to indicate he could just turn that smirk around and get to walking now.

“Good night, Miss Small.”

He was still standing there. Still smirking.

She turned her head away and closed her eyes. After what felt like an eternity, he walked away, the sound of his bootheels against wood more and more distant. She opened her eyes again and watched as he moved out of the low lantern light.

The slight bell-tone sound of his palm gripping and releasing the metal overhead bars as if he were in the air instead of on the ground sang a soft counterpart to his retreating footsteps.

How could she have acted like such a fool? Maybe it was the laudanum muddling her mind. Or maybe she could blame it on the pain in her shoulder, which seemed to be getting worse.

The memory of his eyes, the angle of his jaw, that soft smile, the smell and nearness of his body all came rushing back at her and made her skin go tingly with itch.

It wasn’t her injury that made her lose her wits around the captain.

It was the captain.

And now he’d had a good old laugh at her expense. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much. She usually didn’t give a hog’s heel for what a stranger thought about her.

But there was something different about Captain Hink.

Maybe it was his airship. Maybe she was the kind of girl who turned into a doe-eyed fool when she met a man who could fly.

Rose considered that for a moment. It was possible. But they weren’t flying, and she certainly didn’t want to be moving off the ground right now. It was entirely possible it was just the man himself that tightened her spring.

She wasn’t thinking straight, that was for sure. The pain was interfering with any logical thought. She needed the tea. She reached out for the cup on the shelf, but that only kicked everything up to hurting more.

She bit back a little groan and decided holding still was much better than trying to reach the tea.

“Would you like some tea, Rose?” Cedar asked quietly.

Had he been awake this whole time?

Of course he’d been awake this whole time. She and the captain had practically had their entire conversation on top of him. He must have heard it all. Every stuttering, embarrassing word.

“Yes,” she said, miserable with pain, and now with a whole new kind of embarrassment.

Mr. Hunt got to his feet. He didn’t make any noise at all moving in the dark. She’d always wondered about that. He had a way of fitting into his surroundings and taking on the silence of them, much like the natives of this land.

Maybe it was his wolf self that made him like that. Or maybe that was one of the reasons the Pawnee gods had chosen him to carry their curse.

He stood beside her, almost in the same place the captain had been standing. She hesitated to meet his gaze, but when she did, she discovered he wasn’t smirking at her. His eyes were kind, searching her face and then taking the measure of the wound on her shoulder.

She didn’t think she had the strength to hold out her hand again, but she didn’t have to. Cedar Hunt brought the cup to her lips and helped her drink.

The tea was cold and so bitter she almost couldn’t swallow it down, but she managed.

“How’s the pain?” he asked, replacing the tea on the shelf.

“Not so bad I want to claw out of my skin, but not so good I want to stay in it so much either. What happened, Mr. Hunt?”

“Someone rigged explosives to the girl. The dead girl. I tripped some kind of spark. The whole house went up. And you were hit. I tried to block the blast—”

“I remember,” she said. “Do I still have a piece of…” Her eyes went wide as she considered what might be embedded in her shoulder.

“…tin,” Cedar said.

“Tin,” Rose said, relieved. “Do I have tin in my shoulder?”

“Yes. It’s a very small key. The Madders think it’s a part of the Holder.”

“Oh.” She tried to work that through. The medicine was already starting to rub the edges off her brain, sanding her thoughts down to dust. “Do you think it is?”

Cedar nodded. “If we had the device, it would draw the key out quick. But we don’t yet. So we’ll need to try and dig it out. Mae has the steadiest hand, and she’s…” His voice tightened up on a growl, but he managed to breathe that down and continue in his scholar’s tone. “She’s unable to do that just now.”

“What happened to Mrs. Lindson? Are the Madders here?”

“She used magic, cast some sort of spell on the captain. She’s the reason we landed in one piece. But she fainted and hasn’t come to. As for the Madders…” Cedar rubbed at the bridge of his nose as if weary from too many hours spent reading a difficult text.

“Last I saw, they were fighting their way through the unalives in Vicinity. Do you remember them rising?”

Rose nodded. She’d likely be nightmaring on it for years.

“The Madders said they can track us and find us. Captain Hink and his crew pulled us out of that mess.”

“How…” Rose searched for the word. Couldn’t quite find it. “Nice,” she finally said. Her eyes were staying closed longer and longer between each blink. She didn’t think she had much more time being awake. “Thank you, Mr. Hunt,” she said softly. “For…keeping us safe.”

“You’re welcome, Miss Small.”

For a second, Rose thought she heard a man in the distance curse, and then sleep came and took her to gentler lands.