Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] (25 page)

T
he precipice broke apart under him and Mayhew, huge chunks of rocks and dirt plunging to the water. His blood chilled when he noticed at the same time that Kali was rolling down the hillside. Without the cliff to stop her fall, she’d plummet down, four hundred feet—right to her death.

Reflex took over. As the cliff disintegrated beneath him, he launched himself toward the hill, a diagonal jump that placed him directly in Kali’s path. From the corner of his eye, he saw Mayhew also leap to the hill.

But Fletcher didn’t care if Mayhew made it. His focus was only on Kali. She rolled toward him, trying to stop her fall with her hands. He threw himself over her, acting like a cage and pinning her down. She wasn’t going anywhere.

They lay like that for a moment, both gasping. She had her back to his front, so he couldn’t see her face, but he felt her shuddering breath through his own body. Proof that she’d not only fought, but survived. Relief poured through him like ether, making his head light.

“All right?” he managed to rasp.

“I’m a little dizzy . . . but tolerably well.” Her voice was a balm to his thudding heart. She managed to turn her head a little so he could see her dirt-streaked face. “You?”

“Shipshape.”

An unsteady smile curved her lips. “And heavy.”

He snorted, but pushed himself up onto his forearms, taking his weight off her. “Ready to sit up?”

She nodded, and slowly, carefully, he rolled off of her. They both sat upright, bracing themselves to keep from sliding down the slope of the mountain. Damn everything—there’d been too many close shaves this morning. He’d been in countless battles, but nothing had rattled him like seeing Kali at the end of Robbins’s knife, or tumbling down the hill, the dark blue of her dress like the sky itself falling.

But she was alive. He didn’t have to see her lovely throat torn open and her blood upon the ground. He didn’t need to pull her limp, battered body from the water.

They both looked down at where the cliff had once been. Nothing was left—not a single pebble or shrub. She let out a soft, quivering curse and her cheeks went pale.

“I’d have survived the fall,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean I want you taking that plunge.”

He cursed when he saw that Mayhew was gone, along with his thugs. The need for revenge was a hard beat beneath his pulse. He leapt to his feet. “I’m going after him.”

“
We
are.” Kali also stood. Or tried to. Her legs wobbled beneath her, and he was at her side instantly, supporting her. Jesus, it felt good to have her safe in his arms.

He could go faster on his own, but he wouldn’t leave her here. Not with her legs still unstable and the sea so far below. So he did exactly as she suggested, picking her up and swinging her onto his back. She made a slight burden. Even so, when they reached the top of the hill and were far enough away from the edge, he set her down.

“Stay here,” he commanded. “Do not move a sodding inch.”

Her lips pressed into a tight line, but she nodded.

He took off down the mountain at a dead run. Here was some benefit to his months on this island, hunting to feed himself: he could read tracks in the earth. Not so difficult when three large men had dashed down a mountain and over moorland within the past fifteen minutes.

They’d a goodly head start. Though they left him a decent trail, he couldn’t see the men—or whatever Mayhew was now—ahead. He tore across the heath. Until he reached the northern shore. There wasn’t a beach here, just a five-foot plunge from the land into the water.

No Mayhew, either. His boat was a heaving speck on the water, growing smaller by the second, the trail of tetrol smoke from the engine a dark stain against the sky.

Could Fletcher catch up to him? He could swim far, and fast, but fast enough? The sea rose up in angry, white-topped peaks. It’d be a rough swim.

Man O’ War he might be, but even he had his limitations. The fight with Mayhew, his terror at seeing Kali in danger, the sprint across the island—if he swam after the lieutenant and managed to catch up with him, he’d arrive at his boat so spent he’d put up a piss poor fight. Accomplishing nothing.

He bellowed a curse. But there was nothing to be done. Furious with Mayhew and himself, he turned back and headed toward where Kali waited.

It stunned him that she stood precisely where he’d left her. Though she didn’t look pleased about it. And she let out a string of oaths in Hindi when she saw that he was alone. But he knew that her anger wasn’t for him and his inability to catch Mayhew. No—he knew her well enough to understand she raged against the lieutenant’s escape.

“Damn it,” she fumed as she marched toward him, “what a bloody psychopath. To encourage our trust like that. We sodding
helped
him find that strongbox. And what it contained,” she added darkly. “You two served together—you were his commanding officer—and
this
is the fruit of his so-called loyalty.”

Fletcher shook his head as they made their way down the hill. Everything within him had coalesced into a knot he couldn’t possibly untie. He took Kali’s hand in his because he needed it, needed her touch.

“A mild one, Mayhew. Never gave a sign. Not a look, not a word about how he felt about Man O’ Wars or wanting to be one. All that tinkering, but I never knew what it was he worked on.”

“He was mutilating himself,” she muttered. “Readying himself for . . . gods, I don’t even know what.”

“Vengeance.” The word tasted oily and sour.

“He was on the
Persephone
, butchering his own body, and quietly, privately despising you.” She looked appalled.

Fletcher could picture it: Mayhew in his cabin, shoving stolen telumium wires into his body without benefit of anesthetic, taking his anger and pain and transforming it into hate. Hate for him.

They’d reached the base of the hill, and she stopped walking, facing him. She placed one hand on his chest and looked up at him, her expression fierce. A woman who’d battled and would gladly fight again.

“They
looked
for you, Fletcher,” she said, her voice hard. “I’d wager my soldering iron he fed the navy bad information so they’d search the wrong areas for you.”

He had to admit it made sense. Mayhew wouldn’t want the navy finding him and recovering not just the ship, but everything that had been on it. Including Mayhew’s strongbox, and the means of his transformation.

“The navy wanted their weapon back—me.”

“Damn it, Fletcher.” Her fingers closed around the fabric of his shirt, gripping him tighter. “You’re so much more than that. Not just to the navy, but to me.” Still fierce as a tigress, she held his gaze, while his heart set up a tattoo in his chest. “If he’d hurt you, killed you . . .” Her throat worked and her voice turned to rough, raw silk. “I’d have hunted him down. Made him suffer before pulling that false heart off of him, and sending him to Hell.”

Vicious, bloodthirsty words from a woman who’d seen too much of violence, who lived to build and create, not destroy. Yet she would. Because of him.

He wouldn’t tell her that, even if she’d removed Mayhew’s mechanized heart, the man had been too altered to be killed by a normal human. Hers would’ve been a suicide mission. Either she had no idea, or knew and didn’t care.

He kissed her. Gripped her head gently and took her mouth with his, greedy for the taste of her. Her hand on his shirt tightened even more, digging her nails into his flesh, as she kissed him back. She was flame, and he was fire, and together, they were an inferno.

But the kiss couldn’t last. They broke apart, and silently continued back toward the
Persephone
, which sat broken and useless on the moor.

“He didn’t kill you, though,” Kali said in that tone that he knew meant she was puzzling something through. “Didn’t hang about to continue your fight. Just ran off . . . as if he had somewhere to be.” She looked up at him. “There was a reason he didn’t try to finish the job. If the navy already thinks you’re dead—”

“Then who’d care if he killed me?” Fletcher concluded. “He became a Man O’ War to kill Man O’ Wars. Nobody would notice my death.”

“But he’d want the navy—the world—to take note of him. The way he always wanted.”

Fletcher’s mind furiously churned. “He’s got a target in mind.”

“A British Man O’ War,” Kali deduced. “The perfect payback to the system that destroyed his dream. How many Man O’ Wars are there in the navy?”

“Fifty,” he answered. “They wanted a hundred, but we’re expensive to make and there aren’t many naval men who meet the requirements. Airships cost a mountain of coin, too. Can’t have one without the other.”

She growled, “There’s got to be a way to narrow down a list of fifty to one possible target.”

They reached the
Persephone
, and climbed back aboard. Sunlight broke through the haze, casting shifting shadows upon the deck, almost as if the airship was back in the sky, where she belonged.

“Mayhew wants to exact revenge on the navy.” Fletcher stared up at the clouds, squinting from the sun’s glare.

“Then he’d want to assassinate the navy’s top Man O’ War,” Kali concluded.

He knew she had to be exhausted from everything that had happened, but she didn’t sit down on the crate he offered. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the support beam that had once held the main ether tanks. The tanks themselves had rolled aft, and now rested against the rails. “Send them, and everyone else, a message,” she reasoned.

He rubbed the back of his neck. Thinking of the navy, of the other Man O’ Wars, felt like wearing a different uniform. It was tight, awkward. But there was no avoiding it. A man’s life was at risk, possibly many lives.

“Redmond,” he said suddenly. At Kali’s questioning frown, he explained, “Captain Christopher Redmond. He’s the jewel in the navy’s crown.”

She pushed away from the support beam. “I remember him. He went behind enemy lines and destroyed a key munitions plant. It was in all the papers.”

“Redmond’s always been a valuable asset,” Fletcher murmured. “But after the destruction of the plant, he became matchless. Victory after victory against the enemy.” He didn’t add that Redmond’s success was partly due to the presence of the captain’s wife, Louisa, aboard his airship. It was a rare arrangement, but the former Miss Shaw was one of the navy’s finest intelligence agents, and a crucial reason why Redmond knew exactly where to be and when. Of course, it was Redmond’s skill as a captain that ensured his victories, but between him and his wife, they were nigh unstoppable.

Few outside of the highest levels in the navy knew about Louisa Redmond’s contributions. Intelligence agents had to have their identities and work protected at all times. Mayhew wouldn’t know anything about her.

“If Mayhew kills Captain Redmond,” Kali said, “Her Majesty’s Aerial Navy not only loses its best man, but loses face, as well.”

“And Mayhew’s reputation is set up. Everything he wants.” Fletcher curled his hands into fists. “Wish I’d killed that lunatic bastard.” He replayed his fight with the lieutenant in his mind, trying to figure out where he’d missed an opportunity, but nothing revealed itself.

Kali was suddenly standing before him, her gaze bright with urgency. “Captain Redmond has to be warned about Mayhew. The navy must know, too.”

“Aye.” But as he said it, he realized that if he did alert the navy, he’d no longer be dead. A possibility that had come to him that morning, when Mayhew had first arrived, yet it struck him anew. His haven was being torn away. He’d be forced back into a role he no longer wanted to play. But was that role truly what defined him?

Kali’s gentled voice pierced his thoughts. “I can build a boat. Using wood from the
Persephone
. And building an engine wouldn’t take more than a few hours. If I work all day and night, I could set out for South Uist tomorrow morning. By myself.”

He stared at her. Here was her gift, her offering. No one ever needed to know about him. Mayhew certainly wouldn’t tell anyone that Fletcher still lived. And Kali would keep his confidence. He could go on as he had these past months—dead.

And alone.

He’d lose her to the world. To duty and responsibility. To the pain and suffering and wonder that was life beyond Eilean Comhachag.

His lips were dry, his voice cracked, as he asked, “What would you tell them?”

“That I’d come to this island and found a crashed airship. No survivors. Then Mayhew showed up, got his strongbox, and all the rest. I witnessed it all without being seen, and heard him swear vengeance on the navy.”

“They’d never believe a tale like that.”

She shrugged, though there was nothing careless about the movement. “It’s all I can do.”

He turned away, dragging his hands through his hair. Paced the length of the deck and back.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “You don’t—”

“I do. I’m the one who’s got to tell them about Mayhew. Otherwise, they’d shrug off your claims as the ravings of a woman scarred by her experience at Liverpool.”

If his bluntness offended her, she made no sign. She only looked at him with those impossibly dark, beautiful eyes of hers, those eyes that saw too much, that revealed a mind of fathomless complexity.

“You won’t be dead any longer,” she said quietly.

“I haven’t been,” he answered. “You resurrected me, disinterred me from the grave I’d dug.” He stepped closer, and she held her ground, so hardly any distance separated them. His voice rough, he continued, “Your breath became my breath. The beat of your heart pumps blood through my veins.”

He could see her pulse now, fast and hard in the delicate skin of her throat. Bringing his hand up, he cupped the side of her face. “Any thoughts that I can exist without you died today on that cliff.”

“I have to go,” she whispered.

“I’m coming with you,” he said.

She swallowed hard. “Are you ready?”

“Aye.” He realized as he said it that it was true. “I’ve been thinking. About what you’ve said to me. That a Man O’ War brings safety, not just death.”