A Study in Darkness

WHAT IF THE SKIES NEVER CLEARED AND HIS QUARRY
slipped past, swathed in cloud like a bride beneath her veil?

Or what if the enemy burst forth like a vengeful ghost, spewing a fiery retribution of lead and flame? Indeed, an airship with that much cargo would have guns aplenty on board.

There were a thousand what-ifs the captain of the
Red Jack
could not avoid, but that was the price Nick paid for this new life on the knife-edge of risk. But as an orphan abandoned to the circus—perhaps a Gypsy by his dark features, or perhaps something even less welcome in the world—his existence had been one gamble after another. Plundering a ship twice the size of his own craft was just one more.

Nick had called his magic earlier and raised a vision of where his quarry—the
Leaping Hind
—would pass, but something had gone amiss. By now the
Hind
should have sailed into view, engines groaning beneath the weight of all that wealth. She would be coming in off the coast, flying low and with holds crammed with clockwork, gears, and costly parts from the German states—a queen’s ransom in shining brass.

Nick shut his eyes and listened, giving up on sight. The engines of his ship were silent as it drifted with the wind. The creak of rigging was a comforting chorus, as if the
Red
Jack
muttered to itself as it waited. Condensation dripped from the lines. He could hear the footsteps of his men moving around the ship—Digby at the helm, Beadle giving orders to the bosun and the boy, Striker cursing at some piece of equipment. Through the fresh, clear air, Nick caught the scent of gunpowder and grease.

“Athena,” Nick muttered under his breath. “Do you sense anything?”

There are birds
, the air deva replied from her place of honor at the prow. Devas did not have a voice exactly, or language, though that was how Nick perceived it.
The ash rooks
.

“Anything else?” The rooks were always near, looking for something dead to eat. They were as much pirates as the men.

Captain Niccolo is impatient
, Athena chided.
For shame. A successful thief bides his time
.

The elemental spirit—trapped in a half-melted metal cube—seemed female, although she possessed no physical form of her own. Before the cube had been stripped of all its golden decorations, it had been known to scholars as Athena’s Casket—an ancient Greek navigation device. Nick had started calling the deva Athena, and the name had stuck. She was the soul of the airship, its intelligence and vital force, and she made the
Red Jack
unique. No other ship, much less pirate ship, had a deva on its crew, and only Nick could speak to her.

Not that those conversations always went smoothly.

“I’m not impatient,” he growled. “I’m concerned.”

You
are
impatient. Your thoughts buffet me like a gale. There is no need
.

“I have buyers waiting for what the
Hind
carries.”

All that metal men prize so highly. Dull stuff
. But then she was a creature of air.

“Metal makes machines. Machines make power.”

And that power—heat, light, pumps to drive clean water into streets and villages—was a necessity of life. The steam barons ran the utility companies as well as the railways, dockyards, and most factories that produced weapons or
mechanical parts. They were even branching into the defense industry and the telegraph. And where the barons took an interest, competition was quite literally crushed. No company dared to challenge their monopoly.

To make matters worse, conspicuous consumption of heat and light had become a hallmark of status among the gentry, and that drove up prices and left the poor to shiver in the dark. All this guaranteed an underground market for parts to build unauthorized machines—generators, windmills, batteries charged by wind, and whatever equipment a man needed for his trade. And that’s where the pirates sailed in and made their fortunes.

And what did Nick plan to do with all the profit? He wasn’t sure anymore. Every man had his dream, but he’d had to let his go. Or rather, his had walked away with a toss of her long, dark curls. Perhaps he was saving up to buy forgetfulness, for surely there must be a sorcerer who could carve Evelina Cooper out of his heart.

He felt a twinge of exasperation from the deva, equivalent to a human woman rolling her eyes.
You must heed your birds, Niccolo. They have found the ship you seek
.

Nick opened his eyes, looking out at the wet expanse that wrapped the
Red Jack
, soaking men and equipment in a clinging mist. If the other ship was invisible, so were they.

Nick’s ship was a perfect pirate vessel, small and sleek as a hawk. She had a rigid keel for mounting steam-powered thrusters and a long, thin tail that ended in a propeller. The gondola, wide and shallow, had been shaped to hug the long, thin oval of gray silk, the prow rising into a graceful raptor with outstretched wings. The ship was fancifully carved and painted in shades of white and blue. Its only splash of color was the scarlet flags around the rigging that gave the
Red Jack
its name. Perhaps she was far from the newest in airship design, but she was elegant, and the crew had slaved to make her shine.

“Oy,” came the soft exclamation from a few yards away. Striker, his second in command, leaned against the rail, pointing over the side. He wore a long coat covered in pieces
of metal—each scrap of brass and steel representing wealth in a land where such goods were hard to get.

Nick joined him, following the line of his pointing finger. It angled down and to the ship’s starboard, where dark shapes moved among the clouds. The ash rooks hung in the air like scraps of ragged black velvet, their feathers so dark they seemed more an absence than a concrete form.