Steamsworn (Steamborn Series Book 3) (16 page)

“What?” Smith asked. He reached into the leg and tightened a clamp on an interior hose.

“If they’d taken over Dauschen, what have they done in Ancora?”

“They already did it,” Jacob said. “We were there when it happened.”

The pieces slammed together in Alice’s mind. “The Fall? They did all of that.”

“The Butcher is orchestrating this entire ordeal.” Smith shined a light into Jacob’s leg and cursed.

“Bad?” Alice asked.

“One of the anchors is cracked.” He exhaled and stood up straight. “I need to break it off and insert a new anchor. Jacob, it is going to hurt.”

“Fine,” he said. “Just get it over with.”

Alice reached out and grabbed Jacob’s hand. She wasn’t sure if he would want her to or not, but when he squeezed her fingers, she had no intention of letting go.

“I would normally not do this on a conscious person,” Smith said.

“I get that a lot,” Jacob said with a small smile.

Smith arranged his tools, pointed at each in turn, and mumbled to himself. Alice watched the tinker. He was much younger than Charles, but he seemed almost as knowledgeable. She’d seen him save Jacob’s life and seen him kill a dozen men in a few seconds. It was hard to reconcile what his true face was.

Alice slowly smiled.

“What?” Jacob asked, staring at her and obviously keeping his eyes averted from the menacing tools Smith was about to implement.

“His true face. I was just thinking that’s a phrase my mom likes to use.”

“That is a very old saying,” Smith said as he glanced up at her. “My people, before we became Bollwerk, told stories that every man and woman had two faces. You could live with someone for a decade without meeting their true face, but when both sides of those people met for the first time, that was the true test of a marriage.”

“Sounds stupid,” Jacob said.

“Most stupid sayings are true on some level. Brace yourself.”

Alice gasped when Jacob’s hand spasmed and crushed her own. She didn’t scream at the pain of her fingers being smashed together, she squeezed back. She held on to Jacob until his breath fell short, and the pain pushed him over the edge into unconsciousness.

“He’s out,” she said.

“Probably for the best.” Smith twisted something in the leg and a horrible crack echoed around the small lab. He squinted at a bloody screw that was missing its head. “I do not understand how that happened. Hell of a place to get a faulty screw.”

Alice squeezed Jacob’s hand again before stepping closer to Smith. She grimaced at the mass of scar tissue around the plates bolted to Jacob’s leg. “Will it hold?”

“Yes, it will hold this time. I am reinforcing the anchoring with a back plate. The screw will be deeper, and he will be in pain when he wakes up, but it will not have to come off again.” He scraped a flint striker across a small silver nozzle. A blue flame burst into brilliant life, and Smith ran the new screw and plate through the fire.

Alice watched the man bind flesh to metal. The sheer scale of pistons and gears inside that leg was madness. She watched him cap the tubing and replace the connection. It was a strange thing, seeing blood flow through a machine like that.

“It’s like it’s not a machine.”

“It is not,” Smith said. “It is Jacob, through and through. It will live as long as he does and no more.” The tinker began tightening everything down before he moved Jacob’s leg. Alice watched the mechanisms inside shift and flex and move.

“It’s amazing, Smith.”

He gave her a small smile as he wiped out the last of the blood and began closing Jacob’s leg once more. “Can you tell Mary we are almost ready to move?”

Alice slid behind Smith and popped the cover off the largest brass horn. “Mary, we’re almost ready to move.”

“Glad to hear it,” Mary said, her voice made tinny by the horn. “Come topside when you’re ready.”

Alice leaned over and kissed Jacob’s forehead.

Smith cocked an eyebrow.

She gave him a flat look. “What?”

He smiled and snapped Jacob’s leg closed.

D
rakkar did not
look back at Dauschen. He had no need to look upon that burning mass of flesh and wood and ruin.

“Did you hear that?” Samuel asked.

Drakkar looked back at him and narrowed his eyes. “More falling stone?”

Samuel shook his head. “That’s a train, Drakkar. I know it. It sounds like … hell, it sounds like the engine on the personnel carrier we used in training.”

“There are no tracks here.”

“There are,” Samuel said, “but I can’t imagine the old station survived the collapse.”

Drakkar pointed to a ship in the sky, moving in a slow circle not far from where they’d last seen the glider drifting through the clouds of debris. “Look.”

“Is that the Skysworn?”

“I … think it may be,” Drakkar said, disbelief warring with hope as he watched the slowly drifting vessel. “We need to get their attention.”

“Use the reflector of the lantern. Three quick bursts, three long bursts, three—”

“I know the signal,” Drakkar said as he pulled the lantern off his belt and snapped the reflector off.

“Good, go.”

Drakkar started toward the ship so he could locate a better angle for the windscreen. It wasn’t long before he realized Samuel wasn’t following him. “What are you doing?”

“There’s a second station,” Samuel said. He was on his knees close to the preliminary guardhouse. “I have to find it. Have them wait. I’ll be back as quick as I can. It has to be close.”

Drakkar thought to argue with the Spider Knight, but what if Samuel was right? What if there was a train beneath their very feet. That kind of knowledge could turn the tide of a war.

“Hurry.”

He didn’t watch Samuel leave. Instead he concentrated on the reflector. The sun was high enough to cast a bright light. At the right angle, he could see the thin beam bounce from the reflector onto the windscreen above. The ship hovered in a small circle, though Drakkar couldn’t imagine why.

Minutes passed, and the Cave Guardian began to lose hope for Samuel’s idea. Then the pattern changed. The ship wasn’t moving in a wide circle anymore, it drifted closer to him. At first he feared it could be his imagination, but then a landing line crashed to the ground not thirty feet away.

There was a shout, and then he heard Mary’s voice. “Drakkar!”

*     *     *

What the hell
are you doing, Samuel?

At some level he knew he was right, but he didn’t want to leave Drakkar behind. He couldn’t stay and try to flag down the airship and still be sure he’d find the train. If it left while he was hunting, and the sound died away, that would be it. They’d never really know what he’d heard.

At the forward guardhouse the rumble grew louder. A muffled whistle sounded nearby, and any doubt he’d had was erased. They had a train.

Samuel jogged to the next guardhouse and the rumble was even louder. This was it. He had no doubt. How else would Archibald’s spies not have known? He tried the door, but it only rattled in its frame. Another whistle blew. It was going to leave.

The Spider Knight snarled and kicked at the old wooden door with the flat of his boot. Something cracked, but the door held. He took a step back and landed another forward kick beside the frame where the bolts should be. A larger crack, and the door began to move.

“Come on!”

He leaned into the last kick, and it was enough to tear the bolt through the frame. The door cracked open, only to be caught by a thin chain. Samuel rammed through it with his shoulder, opening the door the rest of the way.

A dirty ancient rug sat piled in the corner. There was a hatch exposed in the floor. Samuel grabbed the round iron handle and threw it open without thinking. Below waited lights and noise, and the sounds of a massive steam engine pumping away.

He’d expected to find a flimsy ladder at best, but a stone staircase spiraled down at his feet. Now the question was a matter of guards. Would they be at the bottom of the staircase, or would the attack on the base have been enough to break whatever protocol they had set? Or were they overconfident enough to not even have protocol?

“Screw it,” Samuel said under his breath. The leather boots he had on were quiet on the stone—much quieter than his armored ones would have been. He followed the smooth stone walls around several times before he could see an end to the stairs. The lower he got, the louder the steam engines and shouts were. He didn’t think it would have mattered if he’d walked in playing a drum at that point.

Chaos reigned on the platform below, but in that chaos Samuel saw everything he needed to know. Most of the men were soldiers, dressed in the colors of Fel. They scrambled off and on the train like a swarm of angry Sky Needles, hauling crates and pushing barrels filled with gods know what up the loading ramps.

No guards stood at the base of the stairs, but armed soldiers stood farther in, watching the tracks for some reason Samuel did not know. With the cargo sealed, it didn’t matter if he got closer, there was no telling what was in those crates.

He knew where the tracks led, and there was no way the engines came from there.

Those tracks led to Ancora. Fel was moving on Ancora.

Samuel cursed and ran back up the staircase.

*     *     *

Jacob awoke to
shouts echoing through the horns beside his bed. “Horns?” he muttered to himself while his brain slowly pieced his world back together. He was on the Skysworn. Alice was here, and from the sound of it, there were more people in the cabin.

He grunted and unfastened the harness holding him in the bed. He found his boots tucked into the tight space below, and he slid them on before making his way to the ladder. His leg hurt like hell, but at least he wasn’t dripping blood everywhere he went.

Jacob twisted the iron handle and pushed on the hatch at the top of the ladder. It felt heavier than it should, but he saw nothing on top of it once he managed to climb out onto the wooden surface of the deck.

He sat for a moment, taking three deep breaths before pushing himself to his feet. The doorway into the cabin wasn’t far, but it felt like a mile with his newly repaired leg. The Skysworn coasted in a wide circle, and before he made it to the cabin, the towers of smoke that used to be the base at Dauschen swept into view.

Memories of Charles and the dead guards and the bodies strung along the walls came screaming into his mind. Jacob pushed the thoughts away with a grimace as he made his way into the pilot’s cabin. A sharp pain in his side caused him to clutch at his ribs.

“Jacob?”

He looked up as the twinge of pain subsided. Drakkar stared at him.

“Hey,” was the extent of Jacob’s words.

“I am so sorry, my friend. Charles was a loss to us all.”

Jacob nodded and lowered himself onto one of the retractable flight chairs beside Alice. “Thank you.”

“How are you feeling?” Smith asked as he took two steps away from Mary and crouched beside Jacob. He pulled up the cuff on Jacob’s pants and started prodding his biomechanics.

“Like I blew up half a city and jumped off a mountain.”

Alice reached over and squeezed his thigh before wrapping her fingers between his own. She felt warm, almost feverish.

Jacob looked over at her and offered a weak smile. “Are you feeling okay? You feel hot, like you’re sick.”

“I’m fine.”

“It is likely the blood loss, Jacob,” Smith said before he pulled Jacob’s pant cuff back down over his boot. “You lost a lot, and that will make anyone cold. We will get you a good meal and water. The chill will not last too long.”

“And sake,” Jacob said quietly.

Smith hesitated. “I am not sure if that—”

Jacob looked him in the eye. “I’m older and I need less sense.”

Smith glanced at Mary and then nodded.

“Glad to see you up and about, kid,” Mary said. She pulled two floor levers beside the Skysworn’s dashboard. “We’re waiting on Samuel, and then we’re getting the hell out of here.”

“You’ve heard from him?” He glanced at Smith and then turned to Drakkar. “You both made it out?” Then he paused and
really
looked at Drakkar. “And how did
you
get up here?”