Breath of Earth (31 page)

At that, the snakes flinched. The heat against her flared:
pain.
Yes. They knew pain. They knew it, because Papa knew it.

Through them, she comprehended that Papa was dying.

As hot as the air was, his arms and legs were cooling, drained of blood. Papa's brain still boiled with power, even as his life force faded. His thready pulse was a baby's breath against hurricane winds. His spirit was far stronger than his frail, abused body. Mr. Thornton's knife had struck true. Whatever Papa's powers were, they didn't include self-healing. Nor could he communicate with the snakes.

Ingrid knew this by their delight in her presence, even through their empathetic pain with Papa. She didn't detect any malice. They simply
were,
in Zen simplicity.

She had called to the selkies, too, projected her prayer into the depths of the ocean. She could communicate with fantastics. A week ago, that knowledge would have caused her to erupt in delighted giggles and dance about the house. Now the thought of yet another mystery made her weary.

Papa stepped forward. Ripples brushed her skin.

“The killing will continue, Ingrid, despite your fancies. If that old fox Blum knows about you, if anyone knows about you, you'll never have peace. You'll kill and kill. Japanese, Thuggees, Americans. Who holds us doesn't really matter. The result is the same.”

Sudden pressure clenched her neck. A final wheeze escaped her throat.

“The world isn't meant for gods like us anymore. Our power doesn't let us rule. It makes us slaves.”

Adrenaline flooded through her veins. She grabbed at her neck, her fingers flailing at air. She drew on her own heat to push him away as she had before, but he blocked her throat from within. Her lungs seared in desperation.

The snake heads recoiled at her pain. Their distress penetrated her fading awareness.

A strange sense of sadness broke into her mind, with images:

animal attack. eggs breaking. nest mates dying. stop?

Ingrid replied, picturing Papa. Picturing him as the raccoon attacking the egg.

Silent and sinuous, the snake heads reached out of the fissure. Blood pounded in her ears, but she still heard a slight squawk, a juicy crunch.

The pressure on her released. Ingrid fell over, gasping. The heat around her whirled and flowed and withdrew, like water sucked into a drain. Papa's pain no longer provoked the snakes.

She didn't have the strength to raise her head, but she didn't need to see with her eyes.

The Hidden One was gone. Retreated into the deep recesses of the earth.

Papa was gone.

She was too weary for grief, if any existed at all. Something roared overhead and strangely cool air caressed her feverish skin, but the world was still too hot, and she was so very tired.

Ice pressed against her palms. It burned through her, stark against the heat that sweltered in her veins. Ingrid gasped. She heard herself as if she echoed down a long tunnel, distant and tinny.

“Relax, Ingrid. I have you.”

She knew the strength of those hands on her, the fingers large and long enough to encircle her wrists. Cold pressed against her palms again. She tried to orient herself. She faced down. Something dripped from her head and trickled down her nose. Everything was hot. She opened her lips. Liquid dribbled inside. Water, flavored by iron. She might have spit it out, but her parched tongue craved any moisture at all, and spitting took energy she didn't have.

Funny, really. So much energy inside, yet she couldn't muster the strength to spit.

Heat trickled down her hands. Ingrid cranked her eyelids open.

She stared into a chunk of kermanite. Not horse-sized, but like a bowling ball, big enough to power a Behemoth-class vessel. Her body curled around it as if to protect the stone. Cy's hand was inches from her face, holding her fingers secure on the surface. Smokiness whirled inside the clarity of the crystal; half full, perhaps. She could likely fill it.

“Cy?” Ingrid's voice creaked.

“Thank the Almighty. I have water here. Let me lift your head.”

She was limp as overcooked udon in his hands. He draped her back onto his lap. Her head lolled to one side. Sleek silver and copper arched overhead—the spines and ridges of a dirigible cabin, one she had never seen before. An engine rumbled, louder than Fenris's ship. Cy cupped her jaw and tilted her head back enough for her to take a sip of water, then more.

“Need to stop meeting like this,” she slurred. “You have to keep . . . carrying me around. Taking care of me like a baby.”

“A baby who can make men fly and shatter buildings with the touch of a hand.”

“Does only . . . so much if I'm too pathetic to even walk on my own.”

“I should make a sling for you, like mothers use. Might be relaxing in the long run, like a portable hammock.”

She tried to laugh and it came out as a small cough. He helped her take another drink. “Where are we?”

“Hovering over Olema Valley. I was afraid to land until you vented power. I almost sang the full ‘Hallelujah' chorus when I saw they had a stockpile of empty kermanite on board.”

The auxiliary's stolen kermanite. Everything flooded back
to her. Blum. The horrible earthquake. The Hidden One. Papa.

“The Hidden One, it . . . ate him,” she whispered as she crouched over the kermanite again. Heat poured out of her.

“I didn't see it happen. From here in the cabin, though, I heard you and your father talking.” He paused. His thumb idly stroked the back of her knuckles. It felt so good she wanted to lean into him, like a cat. “I saw an opera performed years ago,
Mount Sinai
. They had the voice of God boom from a megaphone offstage. That's what the two of you sounded like. Voices of God.”

Papa and his talk of gods and goddesses. Ingrid shivered. Mama hadn't raised her to be a churchgoer, but Ingrid still knew blasphemy, and she didn't like to be deified that way. It felt topsy-turvy and wrong.

“When I was little, I always wondered what Papa was like,” she whispered. “I rather imagined he was like Mr. Sakaguchi, only he looked like me. Silly, I know.”

“You filled in the blanks, Ingrid.”

“With a fantasy.”

The reality: he would have smothered her in her cot.

That cruelty had always been there. He hadn't willingly slaughtered whole cities, but even so, there was poison in his blood. Was that same poison in her? She thought she could confront Mr. Thornton and make him talk. If Cy hadn't been there—if Papa hadn't bludgeoned him with his power—would she have gone through with it?

“Did you . . .” Cy hesitated.

“What?”

“The question is a mite personal.”

She had enough strength to raise her head to look over her shoulder at him. His face had been scrubbed clean but for soft red swirls on his forehead. “Cy. You've seen me in a wide variety of inappropriate situations this week. Ask.”

“Did you feel any urge to do . . . to do what he asked?”

Ingrid looked down at the smooth facets of the kermanite. She could see some of her reflection in its clarity—her skin smeared with red, as if with battle paint.

“No,” she said softly. “Maybe I should have. Maybe it'd be better for the world if I killed myself. It's selfish to live, when so many people can suffer because of it.”

“I've questioned the same thing myself.” His fingers curled around hers. “Our minds are weapons, and so long as we have a choice—”

“That's the problem, isn't it? If someone like Ambassador Blum gets hold of us, we have no choice.”

“Miss Ingrid, if it comes down to that, the best choice might be to jump.” Cy's voice was level. “But until then, we live.”

The way he said her name made her shiver in a whole different way. “I . . . I'd like to clean up a little more. If I could.”

“Can you sit up?”

Ingrid did.

He moistened a towel at the tap. Ingrid scrubbed her face and hair as best she could. It wasn't a bath, but it felt wonderful to get that horrid stiffness off her skin.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked.

“A favor, if you could come down here.”

Cy immediately dropped to his knees beside her. “Yes?”

Ingrid grabbed his head with both hands and kissed him.
There was nothing gentle about how their lips met. They pressed together, sloppy with passion. Off balance, she was suddenly reminded of how weak she was, and tipped forward. He caught her full body against his and cupped her waist with both hands.

Cy kissed back. Oh goodness, did he kiss back. His lips massaged hers, his bristled skin scraping hers in a way that set her nerves pleasantly alight. Ingrid moaned. She wanted this. She wanted him. She wanted to know she was alive and he was alive and people they loved were still alive and that, by God, there was hope in the world.

His hand worked up to cup her jaw and cheek. His callused fingers teased back an aggravating strand of hair. The heat deep in her pelvis had nothing to do with energy or earthquakes and everything to do with him.

Cy came up for air, his breath rattling. “Kisses like that will make a gentleman forget himself.”

“Sometimes, maybe it's nice to forget,” she whispered.

His lips quirked in a smile. “Maybe. But forgetting right now might be a bad thing, as we're hovering.”

“I suppose an airship crash would disrupt the moment.”

“There's also the fact you need time to recover. I wouldn't want you to think I'm taking advantage.”

Ingrid arched an eyebrow. “I see. So that's how things will need to proceed.”

“Pardon?”

“Chivalry is good and fine, but it's clear to me that when we're on the ground and we're not near death again, I need to take advantage of you.” She pressed a hand to his chest. It kept
her from flopping over, but she also just plain wanted to place a hand there.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, and he adjusted his glasses.

“You were saying you need to pilot this craft before we crash and die?” she asked.

“Oh. Yes. I should.” He eased himself back from her, slowly, giving her time to balance on the wall instead. The cockpit was about five feet away, just through a doorway. Sunlight reflected on the gauges. This airship was designed in a dark color scheme—cherrywood, steel, black matting on the floor—and stank of cigar smoke and blood. Ingrid crawled a few feet to see if she could get more water on her own, and through another doorway, she spied a hand draping to the floor.

It was Miss Rossi. She was unconscious, her jaw slack and face bloody. Cy had her strapped down in a bunk, and not straps like a harness; no, he'd found a coil of bloodied rope and had her trussed up like a calf. The rope had likely restrained Papa in a similar fashion.

“Ah. I see you found our other passenger.” Cy stood over Miss Rossi and Ingrid.

“What are we going to do with her?” asked Ingrid. Dark possibilities danced through her mind and she forced them away.

“See about getting her a doctor. Find out what she'll say about these rebels and their plans. I imagine she'd rather talk to us than to an Ambassador.”

“Maybe.” Ingrid stared at Miss Rossi and shook her head.
“You know what's funny? She did all of this to get a photograph of the Hidden One, and then she never even got to see it.”

The
Palmetto Bug
was not moored in the churchyard. Cy circled the vicinity, frowning, while Ingrid huddled in the copilot's seat. Miss Rossi was still unconscious. Ingrid had downed two imported digestive biscuits and more water, but she was still shaky. Her body had vacillated between healthy and deathly ill too much over the past day. After this, it was clear she couldn't bounce back again. She needed to recover for a week, just as she would from a bout of influenza.

They were on their fifth low pass over the church when Lee emerged from the trees. He motioned them to a field across the way, and Cy landed there. He did so gently, but the jolt still jarred through Ingrid's aching body.

“Stay here,” Cy said, a hand glancing her shoulder. The airship's engines wound down with a piercingly high whine. She nodded. Pride was all well and good, but she had a strong hunch that any attempt to stand would end up with her drooling on the floor.

“I was panicked when I saw this ship circling overhead!” Lee's voice carried up through the open hatch. “I watched through the trees and finally saw you piloting. Where's Ingrid?”

“Here,” she managed to call, voice hoarse. Lee bounded down the hallway and launched himself against her in a brief, tight hug. Painful as it was, she didn't rear back.

“Christ. You've wasted away in the past hour.” Lee stepped away, frowning.

Ingrid rubbed her arms, suddenly self-conscious. She
looked at Cy, but his gaze escaped hers, slippery as a seal.

“And that,” said Cy, “goes on the list of things you should never, ever say to a lady under any circumstances.”

Lee looked abashed. “I was just surprised, that's all. But you're both alive, and less bloody. What happened? I was going to head to the chasm, but Fenris said it went against my role as a hostage.”

“Where's our airship?” asked Cy.

“There's a mechanic down the road. Some farm boys came over and hauled the airship down there. Fenris is doing the repairs in their barn. It doesn't involve deflating, so he says we should be ready to go in an hour. Which is good because the mechanic isn't happy about how Fenris has taken over the place.”

“No. Fenris doesn't readily make friends.” Cy cringed. “Ingrid, what did you tell the officers at that police station about the attack plans you overheard?”

“That something was set to happen at dawn at Mussel Rock, caused by Thuggees. They didn't listen. They were all too eager to blame Mr. Sakaguchi.”

“Maybe the A-and-A did listen. They could have done a flyover. Or they might follow up on leads on local Thuggees. They might know to look for this ship.” He glanced around the control car. “We need to clean out the craft as best we can, squeeze their valuables into the
Bug
. We might find out more about their plot. There's additional empty kermanite, too. We can sell off some energized crystals in the next port.”

“Like pirates,” murmured Ingrid.

“Yes, like pirates.” Cy didn't say that unkindly. “I'm sorry,
Miss Ingrid, but from now on, you're living beneath the law. Lee, does that mechanic have room to keep this airship undercover?”

Lee nodded. Even with his face bruised, he looked so strangely normal in contrast to them; he looked like he did every day when he sauntered into Mr. Sakaguchi's study—his white button-up shirt partially untucked, his too-big beige trousers puffing out where they tucked into his boots. He even had a new yellow patch on his arm. “There's another empty barn I happened to see.”

“Good. Maybe this local repairman'll be the sort who'll accept the donation of an almost new ground lander for scavenging, and stay quiet about us for at least a few hours more. We've already drawn too much attention here, and that crack in the earth will get people talking, even if the Hidden One is hiding again.”

“What about Mr. Thornton?” she asked.

“I took care of him.”

Ingrid was rather in awe of how casual he was about all of this.

“Thornton.” Lee shook his head in disbelief as he turned toward the hall. “Tell me all the details later. I'll run back and tell Fenris you're coming over and—”

“That's the last thing you'll do,” said Cy.

He stopped in the doorway. “What?”

“Lee, I know you've been beaten and abused in San Francisco, where they're actually accustomed to the sight of your eyes and skin. You're the enemy, essentially enslaved, but you're
useful
there. That's not so elsewhere.”
Cy frowned as his fingers tapped on the wooden chair arm.

“The Chinese were fleeing Chinatown,” Ingrid whispered.

“What about them?” asked Lee.

“You said the big
tongs
were leaving a few days ago. Mr. Thornton worked in Chinatown. He used Chinese explosives in the auxiliary. I bet he hinted to the
tongs
that something was going to happen. If your smaller
tong
noticed others leaving, other people did, too.”

Cy's mouth tightened. “He set them up to take the blame for the auxiliary explosion, and for the earthquake, too. They look guilty because they knew to leave.”

“The bastard framed us.” Lee's bruises flushed with anger. “But most of Chinatown didn't know. Most of them stayed. I saw when we flew over. It burned. All of it burned.” He looked away, too overcome to speak.