Steamsworn (Steamborn Series Book 3) (13 page)

“What happened?”

“More than I’m going to tell you here. You don’t need to be worrying about Archibald’s more questionable tactics of the last ten years right now. You already know he has spies in every city on the continent. That should be unsettling enough.”

“I thought that was all to help keep Bollwerk informed. From possible threats, right?”

“Good intentions, Alice. People end up doing a lot of bad things, even when they start with good intentions.” Mary glanced at a cluster of gauges before she said, “
Especially
when they start with good intentions.”

One of the horns rattled beside Mary. “Thrusters are at maximum.”

“Thanks, Smith.”

“We have been in the sky for a few hours. Keep an eye out. You should be seeing those warships soon. I would not want Alice to miss that.”

“I’m more worried about running into them in the literal sense,” Mary said.

“Yes, that would also be bad.”

Mary turned and smiled at Alice. “You’re in for a sight. That’ll be a story you can make Jacob jealous with. You know that’s how Belldorn dealt with pirates?”

“They have pirates in Belldorn?”

“Not anymore. They blew them out of the sky. Truth be told, that may have been heavy-handed of the Lady Katherine. We could have turned some of them into allies.”

“Was that the political issue you had with Archibald?”

Mary turned in her seat and stared at Alice. “How in the …” She laughed and spun back around. “That’s a long story for another day. Let’s just say I used to have more in common with Jacob’s pickpocketing than I did with the Steamsworn.”

“Look!” Mary said as she popped open one of the horns. “They’re on the horizon, Smith. You coming up?”

“Not at these speeds,” Smith said. “I will check the porthole.”

“Take off your harness. It won’t do you any good at these speeds anyway.”

With that reassuring thought, Alice unfastened herself and stepped up beside Mary.

At first, she didn’t see what Mary was talking about, but then the sun glinted on a shadow in the distance. It grew faster than she could believe, reminding her of just how impossibly fast the Skysworn traveled.

“Don’t blink,” Mary said. She gave Alice a sideways smile.

It felt like no more than a heartbeat from the time she caught the glint of light to the time the monstrosity filled the windscreen, and then it was gone. The vision of what Alice had seen wasn’t gone, though. It was a floating city of cannons. That was the only description that made sense. Some of the cannons had been so large she’d thought they were smokestacks, others were angled down and back, covering the terrain behind the massive warship. It didn’t matter where an attacker would come from … It would be in the crosshairs.

Smith howled into the horn. “Did you see that, Mary! Damn! Tell me the kid saw it!”

“Where … where were the gas chambers?” Alice asked. “It was all metal.”

Smith’s tinny voice laughed in the horn. “Oh yes, she saw it.”

“They’re inside of it,” Mary said. “It has more thrusters across the bottom to add lift and propulsion. It’s a mad weapon.”

“It is utter insanity,” Smith said. “And they are sending
two
toward Bollwerk? Archibald is a genius, Mary. Tell me he is not.”

“He is,” Mary said, “and it terrifies me.”

“He is much like a Berserker when pushed,” Smith said. “Be glad he is on your side, and do not concern yourself with the collateral.”

“Sometimes the collateral is our friends,” Mary said.

Smith cursed, and his voice was much more reserved when he came back over the horn. “I know, but keep your chin up. You have the Skysworn now, and there is nothing we cannot do. Nothing.”

Mary gently closed the cover to the horn. “I hope you’re right, Smith. Gods but I hope you’re right.”

They spent the rest of the trip in relative silence. Alice fastened herself back into her harness. Smith’s voice popped onto the horn a few times while he complained about some level or some pressure being too high for the ship, but after a terse word from Mary he’d usually find a way to fix it.

It reminded Alice of Jacob, and that made her smile before it made her worry. Charles had taken Jacob into Dauschen. They were on the front line of this disaster. Alice supposed they had been already, after what happened in Ancora. Those guards would have killed Jacob, or at least would have taken him to be killed, if Charles hadn’t stopped them. And what about her parents? Or Reggie, or Bobby, or Miss Penny?

She took a deep breath and tried to clear her mind while she watched the blue sky streak by around them. At some point she nodded off, only to awaken when the Skysworn lurched forward.

“Guess it’s a good thing I put my harness back on,” Alice said with an edge to her voice.

Mary laughed and glanced back at her. “You’re awake, good. And I made sure you were buckled in. Don’t worry about that.”

The door to the cabin opened and Smith stepped through. “Everything still looks good. After I swapped out that last gauge, I have not seen another bad pressure reading.”

“You’ve done some amazing work on her,” Mary said, patting the dashboard.

“I think I’m going to go out on deck for a bit,” Alice said. She unbuckled her harness.

Smith stopped before he closed the door. “By all means.”

Alice was almost to the door when the radio crackled to life. There were no codes or hidden messages, only Archibald’s voice, fast and clipped.

“Something’s happened in Dauschen. We’ve lost contact with the safe house and Charles. I have information that the bombs have gone off and the base is in ruins, but it’s not from one of my regular spies, and I don’t know if I can trust him. One of the others is saying the Steamsworn have been captured and the mission is compromised. I don’t know who to trust. The last message from Drakkar was they’d been compromised.”

The world closed in around Alice like someone had wrapped her in an icy blanket. “What about Jacob?”

“Get there as fast as you can, Mary. I’m … I’m releasing one of the warships. We’re taking Dauschen.”

We’ve lost contact with the safe house and Charles.

Mary was speechless, staring out the windscreen. “Smith …” Her voice was quiet, barely above a whisper.

We’ve lost contact with the safe house and Charles.

“It does not matter,” Smith said as he ushered Alice back into her seat. “Buckle yourself in. I am going to jump the thrusters, and it is going to be rough as hell.”

We’ve lost contact with the safe house and Charles.

Mary clicked the transmitter. “We’re on our way.”

Mary said something else before Smith vanished out the door. There was a cold, merciless thing that took root in Alice’s gut. If someone had hurt her friends, they’d pay. She’d killed once, and she could do it again. She was sure of it. She’d barely known Gladys, and this was Jacob.
Jacob.
Mary was screaming something when the force of the Skysworn’s thrusters slammed her into the back of her seat, but all Alice heard was the echo of Archibald’s words.

We’ve lost contact with the safe house and Charles.

J
acob felt the
weight of the grappling gun in his hand and aimed it as best he could. It was awkward with the weighted hooks on either end. Jacob thought that would make it balanced, but it felt more like it just wanted to tilt even more than Charles’s unwieldy air cannon.

“Remember to keep it over your shoulder,” Charles said. “I’m not going to drag you out of here if you fire a hook through your head. I’ve seen smarter men do stupider things.”

Jacob smiled and slowly depressed the trigger. The brass gun jumped in his hands as the thin cables screamed out in either direction. The one firing behind him thunked into the stone much faster than the hook that had to bridge the chasm. It was still only a couple seconds before they heard the chink of the second hook anchoring into the wall.

“Flip the second safety,” Charles said.

Jacob did. This was the third time they’d had to use the grappling gun to traverse the massive steel supports beneath the city. Each time they laid explosives, their packs grew lighter, and Jacob thought there was a better chance he wouldn’t be dying in the chasm.

“You first,” Charles said as he tugged on the line and nodded.

Jacob took a deep breath and stared into the pit in front of him. “This is crazy.”

“Some of the best plans are.”

“Right,” Jacob said with a laugh. He double-checked the safety line buckled to the harness of his backpack and jumped. Jacob kept one hand on top of the grappling gun and pulled the trigger with the other. The wheels engaged and propelled him toward the far wall at a fairly alarming rate.

“Slow down!” Charles shouted.

Jacob eased up on the trigger, and the wheels slowed immediately. He pumped the trigger a few times, like Charles had shown him, and it set a much more reasonable pace across the chasm. It was almost as exhilarating as it was terrifying, hanging over that infinite darkness.

He released the trigger when the steel supports filled the void beneath him in the dim lantern light. Jacob smiled to himself as he set his foot down. It was almost at a perfect height for him. That might make it a bit of a drop for Charles, but he didn’t feel too bad after the old man had run Jacob’s shins directly into the last support.

Jacob tapped his boot to check his foothold before detaching his safety line from the gun. He flipped the reverse switch and watched the brass contraption zip back toward Charles. Grappling became more difficult the farther in they went. There were huge stone columns here they had to avoid that seemed to help support some of the city’s weight. Jacob worried they’d support it so well that the base wouldn’t break, but Charles didn’t seem concerned at all.

Jacob couldn’t see Charles very well until he turned around. The old tinker had his lantern clipped to the front of his vest. The only way he could tell Charles was moving at all was the sudden blossoming of the lantern light as he closed in.

Charles dangled above the support and looked down at his feet. “My knees aren’t made for this.” He grumbled some more and then dropped onto the steel beam with a thump.

“It beats ramming your shins though, doesn’t it?”

Charles laughed quietly. “Maybe, boy. Maybe.”

Jacob unclipped his own lantern and swung it around the support. “Looks like another crossbeam here.” He pointed to the intersection of the support they were standing on and then a massive girder that stretched from one side of the chasm to the other.

Jacob pulled a loop of explosives out of his backpack and began tying it down to the joint with blasting cord.

Charles slapped the wall beside him. “Hmm, more stone. All the way up, it would appear, and it’s thicker. Let’s anchor this receiver a little higher.” Charles took a few steps up the ladder that led to one of the access grates overhead. He held a small metal bracket out and punched the stone with his right hand. The heavy nail glove shot an anchoring bolt into the wall. Tiny bits of broken rock pinged off the ladder rungs.

Jacob finished positioning the charges at the crossbeam, attached the blasting cord to the receiver, hopped up a few steps, and handed the assembly up to Charles.

“That should do it,” the old tinker said as he started back down the ladder. “One more and we’re done. Set the grapple again. It’s a narrow angle back to the other side, but I’m sure you can hit it.”

Jacob held his lantern out, aiming it across the chasm. He couldn’t see the other side very clearly, but at just the right angle, the steel supports glinted in the light. Charles hadn’t been exaggerating when he said it was a narrow angle. They’d have maybe two feet on either side of the cable, and that was if Jacob could shoot straight.

He took his time, lining up the shot and slowly depressing the trigger. The sound of the anchor cracking into the wall behind him was almost familiar now, followed by the distant thunk of the forward bolt. Jacob threw the switch on the grappling gun, and the lines tightened. It wasn’t perfectly centered in the narrow pass, but they’d make it.

“Alright, it’s set.”

The world seemed to slow when the grate overhead squealed and the dim light around it brightened as someone pried the hinges open. Charles swung the air cannon off his back and pointed it at the rectangular hole of light. The silhouette of a head appeared above them, and then there were shouts and the head vanished.

“What was that?” Jacob asked.

Charles shook his head. “I don’t know. We need to take a look.”

Jacob didn’t question Charles’s statement. He swung up onto the ladder on one side of the support while Charles began climbing the opposite. They both slowed near the top when a series of explosions and screams echoed down into the chasm.

“Keep your head low,” Charles whispered. “Angle your neck back, keep as low a profile as you can.”

Jacob heard Charles speaking, but he didn’t acknowledge the old man. There were more sounds, like the crack of gunfire, and more screams. Jacob tried to take a deep breath, but all his pounding heart did was speed up. He watched Charles as the old man poked his head just above the edge of the grate.

Charles ducked back down and leaned his forehead on the wall.

Jacob slowly raised his head enough that his eyes breached street level, and he almost screamed. Lottie, Morgan, and Clark were sprawled across the cobblestones just outside the wall to the base. Jacob could only assume the third body was Clark, because the face was ruined. He’d been hit by something large, and there was very little left but blood and gore.

City guards from Fel lay dead and wounded all around them. They’d killed at least three men for every one of their own, but that still left three dead Steamsworn on the streets of Dauschen. More soldiers arrived by the minute, marching out of the gate, and as Jacob turned to look behind him, he saw more rushing out of the city proper.

Charles joined him again at street level, only to yank Jacob back into the shadows when one of the squads began walking toward their hiding place. “We have to move,” Charles said. “We finish planting the bombs and we set them off today.
That
is our mission now.”