Tin Swift

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Rose loved the feel of the wind on her face, loved even more the heat and strength of Captain Hink’s arms around her.

He had paused just outside the blind of rocks that hid the doorways to the caverns from the open landing area.

It was dark out, but not raining. In the shift of clouds over the deep ink sky, she could make out two ships crouched on the landing flats. The larger ship was a hulking silhouette that looked like a wooden frigate, the inflatable envelope above it lashed by lines to the ship’s hull below. There were no long, spindly trawling arms sticking off it. Instead, alongside the bottom of the hull were long, wide sleds that looked a little like extra large canoes attached to the vessel.

In comparison to that ship, the Swift looked tiny.

It was the first time Rose had really seen her from the outside. Built lean and narrow like a bullet, she was a smooth gray ghost with her pointed nose tipped ever so slightly up, as if she were yearning for the sky. The horizontal sails on her side, which were tucked in tight now, made her look even more like the bird she was named after. The only thing to spoil that look was the glim trawling arms extending straight up along her sides, the netting clicking and clacking as it rattled against the metal arms.

“There she is,” Captain Hink said. “My everything.”

“She’s beautiful,” Rose whispered with a sigh.

“She is. And fast. And strong.”

“Can we go to her? Go aboard?” Rose asked.

“You sure I haven’t worn you out yet?” he asked.

“No. Not at all. I’d love to see her. While I’m awake.”

“Well, then, welcome aboard, m’lady.” Captain Hink strode toward the Swift, every step jostling Rose and making her shoulder ache. But even though she hurt, the closer they came to that ship, the more her spirit lifted, the more she felt alive and happy.

“How long have you had her?” Rose asked.

“Oh, near three years now. Bought her from a pilot named Charity Senders. Her husband and she had built the Swift themselves. He had the deviser knack. The boilers, for one thing, are brilliance. Small, powerful. And making her out of tin skin keeps her light and tough. Not a single other ship out there like her. No place in this world.”

Rose smiled. She watched his face as he talked about his ship, and there was a light there, a joy that couldn’t be hidden by the night. Lee Hink loved this ship.

There was something about that kind of dedication in a man that made her like him all the more.

“Did Mrs. Senders retire?” Rose asked.

“Near as I know. Her husband was ill. Black lung. She decided to stay the ground to be with him for however long he still breathed.” He paused. They were so close to the ship now, the inflated envelope blocked out most of the sky above them.

He shook his head as he looked up at the Swift. “Takes a certain kind of love to give up a ship like this for someone,” he said. “I’m not sure that I’d have the will to do the same.”

“Maybe you just haven’t loved deeply enough, Captain,” Rose said.

He put one foot on the threshold and slipped a hand free to turn the door’s latch. “Likely you are correct, Miss Small. Not a lot of time for love when you’re riding the skies.”

He pushed the door open.

“Problem, Captain?” Ansell called out from the nose of the ship, his gun in one hand and knife in the other.

“Just taking a stroll, Mr. Ansell,” Hink said. “No need to stay awake on our account.”

“Aye, that, Captain.” He stowed his gun and rolled in his cot so his back was to the rest of the ship.

Captain Hink stepped fully into the ship. “Shall I set you on your feet, Miss Small?” he asked quietly.

“Please.”

Rose held her breath as he adjusted his hold on her and let her feet touch the ground. Her stomach roiled at the movement and she broke out in a cold sweat. But that couldn’t dampen her joy. She was determined to see the ship, all of her, or at least all of her that she could before either fatigue or pain made her pass out.

“Tell me about her,” Rose said, looking around.

“What do you want to know?” he asked, watching Rose as she held on to the metal bars and slowly walked toward the rear of the vessel.

She looked over at the captain, a big smile on her face. “Everything. I want to know her like a friend.”

He paused, studying her. The intensity in his gaze near took Rose’s breath right out of her chest.

Then he smiled, just so much that it curved his lips. It was an intimate sort of smile. As if he was intending to take his time and show her pleasure she had never known before.

“Let’s start in the boiler room,” he said. “It’s always a bit warmer there.”

Rose realized she was shaking. From the cold, yes, and the pain, and the effects of the coca leaf. But also with excitement. She was standing in an airship. With a handsome captain.

If she weren’t aching and cold, she might think this was a dream. A pleasant one at that.

Captain Hink paced up near her and wrapped his arm around her back, helping to guide her to the back of the ship. “This way.”

He opened the blast door, then turned a small gear, which struck a spark against flint. The burnt sulphur smell tickled her nose, as light caught across a network of glass globes around the metal rafters of the room.

Rose stopped full and put her hand to her heart, unable to speak. The lights were beautiful, catching flame in the burnished copper and brass of the big iron boilers.

Pipes, flues, and tanks filled the room, mahogany and teak adding their own beauty among the valves and compasslike gauges, even more lovely than when Molly had brought her back here.

“I’ve never imagined,” she began. “Well, I’ve imagined, but I was wrong.”

“Thought it might be a bit fancier?” he asked, turning his shoulders so he could walk into the room, his thumbs tucked in his belt.

“No. She’s more wondrous than I’d hoped. I can’t seem to make my eyes big enough to take it all in.” She smiled, and found Captain Hink smiling right back at her.

“Molly has a cot here.” He pointed to the snug bed in the corner of the room. “Why don’t you sit before you lose your knees?”

“You don’t think she’d mind?”

“Molly? Might be a bit hardheaded, and Lord knows she doesn’t listen to orders well, but she has a heart the size of the seven seas. I hear Gregors are built that way.”

Rose got herself over to the bed and was out of breath from that much activity. “I knew a Gregor,” she said, puffing a little. “He was just the same.”

The captain strolled to a boiler, and out of habit touched it, checking for heat, before leaning back against it.

“So this is the heart of the ship,” he said, looking around the room. “Molly’s the pulse that keeps it beating. Up front, I stand as the brains. Seldom is my navigator, that makes him the eyes. And Ansell and Guffin, I suppose, are her wings. We run a small crew, but we like it that way. Less chance of us stepping on top of each other and wanting to finish our disagreements with guns.”

“How long have you been harvesting glim? Three years?” she asked.

He looked down at his boots and shook his head. “That’s about right.”

“What did you do before that? Transport? She seems a small ship for that.”

Captain Hink took a deep breath and then started walking toward her. “I haven’t told you all the truth, Miss Small. Plainly, there hasn’t been time.”

He sat himself down beside her. So close, his shoulder brushed against hers. He rested his arms out over his knees, and loosely carded his fingers together.

“I’ve been running glim for three years. Several years before that I was a soldier in the war. And since the war, I’ve also been working for the president of the United States.”

“You’re a statesman?” she asked, confused. Didn’t make any sense for a statesman to be out in the wilds hopping skies for glim.

But then, Mr. Hunt was from the universities back east, and had been a teacher before hard times fell upon him. Maybe Captain Hink’s story was the same.

“Not so much a statesman. I’m a lawman. U.S. Marshal.”

“Really, now?” Rose said.

He tilted his head to get a better look at her. “You don’t believe me?”

“I just think if a fellow were trying to impress a girl, being an airship captain, a glim pirate, and a U.S. Marshal just might do the trick, unless maybe you’d like to add doctor, lawyer, or war hero for good measure.”

She was trying not to smile but couldn’t help it. He looked so confused.

“I suppose war hero might be true too,” he said, “or not, depending on whose side you believe. But I swear on my sweet mama’s grave. I was a U.S. Marshal long before I took to flying or harvesting glim.”

“Yes,” Rose said, keeping her expression serious. “Of course you were.”

He frowned and blew out air. “It’s”—he gestured with his hands, as if trying to catch a fleeting thought—“true,” he finally managed.

“Then why don’t you wear a badge?”

“I have a badge.”

“Can I see it?” she asked solemnly.

He dug in the inner pocket of his coat, hesitated a moment, then drew his fingers out. In his hand was a tin badge shaped like a star.

“Oh,” Rose said. She really had thought he was teasing her, trying to impress her. “So should I call you Marshal Captain Hink now?”

“I’d rather you not. And it would be Marshal Cage if you did.”

“What about ‘Lee’?”

“That’s one of the names I answer to.”

“How many names do you have, Captain?” Rose asked.

Hink hesitated. “I’d hate to tarnish your opinion of me, Miss Small.”

“Over a name or two?”

“Not that, as such.” He took a breath as if bracing for something, then let it out. “I have one name for each man who might have been my daddy.”

Rose pressed her fingers over her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Not at all. I had it coming.” He grinned wickedly at her.

“My mother was a woman of some adventure, if you understand what I’m saying. Wonderful woman, and I loved her very much. But she once told me she wasn’t quite sure which of her suitors had fathered me. So she gave me a name from each of them, in case they ever came back to claim me.”

“Your mother was a…”

He raised one eyebrow and nodded encouragingly, as if daring her to use a word to describe his mother.

“She was alone to raise you?” she asked.

From his look, that was not at all what he had expected out of her. She liked being able to surprise him.

“Some other adults lent a hand now and then, but yes. She raised me alone.”

“And did your father return?”

“No.”

“So how many…names do you have?”

“Four.”

“Four?”

“Lee Cadwaller Hink Cage.”

“That’s an impressive list.”

“It’s done me no harm.”

He stared a little too long, then finally turned his gaze back to the star in his hand.

“Don’t normally have to reveal all my secrets just to get a woman to kiss me. A well-timed smile usually does the trick.”

Rose’s face warmed from that comment, but she tried not to let it show. “I can’t imagine those were all your secrets, Captain—”

“Lee,” he said.

“Lee,” she repeated. “Surely there’s one or two surprises left to you.”

“Might be at that,” he said softly.

Then he repocketed the star, and before she could come up with the next thing to tease out of him, he was shifting sideways to her, one hand firmly at her back so she could lean against it if she needed to, the other gently brushing a strand of her hair from her cheek.

And then, without asking, without a word, without permission, he lowered his mouth to hers.

Rose stopped breathing. Stopped thinking. She’d been cornered by boys and kissed before. It was always rough, not always innocent. But she’d never had a man do this.

Lee held her lips with his own in a sort of embrace, moving slowly, as if showing her the steps to a dance she should follow. She moved with him, and shivered when his tongue dragged delicious warmth along her lower lip.

And then she paid no mind as to what came first and what came next. She opened her mouth to him, wanting that warmth inside her. He tasted like bourbon and something pleasantly richer.

The heat of his mouth sent flames over her skin and she wanted to stretch into that feeling. His lips were soft, but insistent. His stubble scratched along her cheek and only made her want more of his skin, more of his body against hers.

He seemed willing for that too. His hand slid along her thigh, cupping the outer curve of it before he slid his palm over the crest to rest upward on her hip.

That wasn’t where she wanted him touching her. That wasn’t the only place she wanted to be touched.

She couldn’t seem to get near enough with these layers of clothes between them.

Unthinking, she lifted her left hand, her wounded shoulder.

Pain shot white-hot through her, stealing her breath, vision, and body.

When the pain and white pulled away, leaving her aware of her body again, of her own skin and thoughts and breath again, she heard her own screams.

She clamped her teeth together, trying to breathe instead of moan. The pain was getting less. Of course it was getting less. She’d be fine. Just fine. In a minute.

And beyond the rattling of her thoughts, was Lee’s voice.

“You’ll be fine, Rose,” he was saying in a constant string, as if reciting the words of a hymn. “Almost there now, and we’ll get your medicine, nice soft bed, blankets, and sleep. This will all be a dream, a bad dream, but you’re going to wake up, and you’ll be fine, Rose.”

She tried to focus on the world around her. Black. No glittering brass or deep rose-colored wood of the boiler room. And it was cold. They were outside again. He was carrying her back to the cavern.

She rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. His words fell around her like a gentle net, holding her close, keeping her there, anchored in her own thoughts, in her own skin, away from the clawing pain.

Distantly, she heard the sounds of other voices. Mr. Hunt’s low growl, Mae being calm as ever. She wanted to tell them not to fuss over her so, but by the time she got the words together, she was lying down on the cot again, and Mae was urging her to drink as much as she could out of the cup she held to her lips.

Rose drank the cup dry. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“I’m going to repack your shoulder as soon as that starts working,” Mae said. “Don’t worry. You’ll be asleep soon.”

Mae moved to set the cup to one side and she could see Cedar Hunt and Lee Cage both standing at the foot of her bed, facing each other, and neither one of them looking happy with the other.

She didn’t know what they were all worked up about. Yes, she was wounded and the pain had been something awful. But she didn’t plan on giving up breathing anytime soon. There was too much of life she still wanted to see in the time she had left. Too much of it she still wanted to feel.

“Take your discussion outside, please, gentlemen,” Mae was saying. “Rose needs a little rest now.”

Rose didn’t know if they did what Mae said or not, for she was falling down and down into darkness and was asleep before she could hear what either of the men answered.