A Study in Darkness (9 page)

They were in for a fight.

NICK HADN’T PAID A GREAT DEAL OF ATTENTION TO THE
tannery, but now he squinted to make out what he could by the vague light of the moon. From his vantage point, he could see through the wide gates into the tannery yard. There were sheds and buildings, but a lot of the operation seemed to be set up outside, probably for the ventilation. Figures were moving around the yard, darting from the shelter of one huge vat to another, and then out through the gates to the scrubland where he stood.

He caught a glimpse of a uniform—a familiar pattern of light braid on dark cloth, barely seen in the uncertain light but still more than enough for alarm. He swore under his breath. “The Scarlet King’s men. They’re coming from inside the tannery.”

“Bugger,” the Schoolmaster said in cool tones. “That means they were waiting for us. Probably listening until we told them everything they wanted to know.”

And there were more of them than he was seeing. Nick could sense more than hear the footsteps moving in the darkness, as if every shred of his being were suddenly attuned to the fine movement of air. Scarlet’s soldiers were good at stealth—he had to give them that. Then again, the penalty for failure was death.

“Do they know we’ve seen them?” Nick said.

“Hard to tell.”

Nick couldn’t stop a quiver of panic when he thought of Striker, puttering down the road in the Steamer, or the
Red Jack
, hovering low and vulnerable like a whale trying to
hide in a puddle. A curse escaped his lips. Had the soldiers found them? He was the captain. He should know what was happening to his ship.
I have to go. I have to go now
.

His scrambling thoughts were interrupted as the Schoolmaster leaned close and slid something—paper by the sound—into the pocket of Nick’s jacket. “When you get to Scotland,” he whispered, “the code word is Baskerville.”

Baskerville?
Was that a person? A place?

But the Schoolmaster stepped away, giving a casual tip of his hat. The long tails of his scarf swung as he turned to go, his eyes sharp with a hellish species of mischief. He raised the pistol in a salute, cocking it with a sharp, metallic rasp. Then he raised his voice in a mocking tone meant for the audience in the shadows. “It’s time we said farewell, eh what?”

There was a rustling that said he’d caught their attention.

“Best get this over with, for all it’s been a pleasure,” said the Schoolmaster. “Safe journey, Captain.”

And nothing says safe like a half dozen assassins hiding behind vats of piss and brains
. Nick shifted his grip on the knife. Before he’d taken up the life of a thief and a smuggler, he’d been the Indomitable Niccolo, the best trick rider and knife man around—and he’d been no mean acrobat, either. If these fools wanted a show, he’d give them one.

Then the darkness itself seemed to move. The knife left his hand in a graceful arc, anticipating where the gunman would be, and the flash of gunfire blinded him. In the same instant, Nick flew into the air, twisting out of the path of the bullet. He felt it kiss along his thigh, leaving a trail of sharp heat.

“Fardlin’ hell!” someone raged.

Nick landed, rolled through a somersault, and came up a foot away from the speaker. A second knife slid out of his boot and into his hand. As he rose, the momentum of his body carrying him forward, he slid the weapon into the man’s diaphragm, the slight resistance of cloth and leather giving way to the elastic slide of steel through flesh and the scraping roughness of bone. He felt the man’s shudder, the wet, terrified
cough as it vibrated through the knife hilt, and then he pulled the weapon away with a sucking jerk.

There was an inarticulate cry behind him, and he whirled, ducking slightly for balance as the wounded man fell to the ground. A third assailant was there, raising his weapon to shoot. Nick kicked that one in the head hard enough to hear his jawbone snap.

The Schoolmaster was trading gunfire with another three. He’d produced a second weapon from somewhere and was shooting two-handed, the ends of his scarf flipping with the recoils. Using the bloody knife in his hand, Nick reduced the man’s opponents from three to two.

Suddenly, there was quiet. It had only taken a matter of minutes to end six lives. Nick’s knees trembled slightly as tension seeped out of his muscles. The Schoolmaster tipped his hat back with the barrel of one pistol. “Damned fine work. Do you always fight with knives?”

“No.” Once, he’d entertained with them, made people laugh and gasp with admiration. Nick slammed an iron door on those memories. “But I like the quiet.”

The man’s laugh was uneasy. “Well, good luck, Captain. I think we had best go.”

But Nick caught his arm. “How did they know we were here?”

The Schoolmaster stiffened. “A traitor, obviously.”

That was barely an answer, and not nearly enough to satisfy Nick.

The man must have read it in his silence. “I don’t know any more than that, but I’ll make it my business to find answers.” The Schoolmaster’s voice was furred with anger.

Nick released his grip. That was still not good enough, but he had to get to the ship. Then he felt the slippery heat on his fingers. “You’re bleeding.”

“So I noticed,” the Schoolmaster drawled. “Though it’s nothing that will keep me from carrying a well-deserved brandy to my lips. Good night, Captain Niccolo.”

“Good night, Schoolmaster.”

The man was hurt, but was already walking quickly away,
so it couldn’t have been any more serious than the sting the bullet had left in Nick’s leg. Annoying, but not bad enough to hold him up. Nick paused long enough to collect his knives, then turned and sprinted in the direction of the
Red Jack
. The road looped to the left, but he cut through the rutted field that he and Striker had crossed to reach the tannery. It had been plowed and left in furrows, turning his stride into an ungainly lope. To make matters worse, recent rain had turned the dirt into a boot-sucking mud, but going this way gave him the best chance to catch up to the Steamer. As he crested a rise, he got a clear view of the land.

Straight ahead, where the road jogged, Striker had abandoned the Steamer. The strange-looking vehicle, with two enormous wheels in back and a smaller one in front, looked like nothing so much as a solid-sided birdcage big enough for two people. The engine sat in front beneath a metallic hump that reminded Nick of a snout. A single smokestack puffed out the top, and a round-topped oaken trunk was strapped on at the back for luggage. To date, Nick had declined to ride in one of the vehicles, mostly for aesthetic reasons.

Striker had left the Steamer at the point where the road could take him no closer to the
Red Jack
. Now he had the parcel draped over his shoulders and was trudging toward the far side of the hill where the ship was hovering in a shallow valley. No other airship, however clever the design, could have snuggled out of sight quite so easily, but the
Jack
had a distinct advantage in both its captain and Athena’s capabilities.

Nick climbed over a stone stile into another field. This one had a handful of heavy workhorses sleeping in a loose huddle. He ghosted past the animals, breathing in the familiar scent, and then climbed over the fence at the other side of the enclosure.

Now he was standing to the south of the
Red Jack
, with Striker to the west. The Scarlet King’s soldiers were crawling over the hills to the northeast, right where the ship’s
watch would have the most difficulty seeing them. The same little bird that had told them where Nick and the Schoolmaster would meet had also betrayed the location of the
Red Jack
. Who was it?

There was no time to do anything but react. Nick cast out his powers, hoping he was not too far away. “Athena!” he whispered, his lips echoing the thought he screamed with his mind.

What, Niccolo?

“Enemies are coming. Get ready to fly for safety.”

Hurry back. Be safe
.

“Ring the bell to alert the crew.”

You do not need to tell me. I have flown before, my sweet. I have fled the fire of the northern dragons and the claws of the winged lions of Babylon
.

“And hopefully the crew was awake when you did it.”

Her wordless exasperation reminded him that he was a mere human, and she a powerful spirit who transcended mortal understanding, but Nick didn’t give way. The ship’s bell clanged, and Nick’s stomach unclenched a notch. The crew—by now used to dealing with a presence they couldn’t perceive—was warned. Beadle and the others would take things from there.

Nick ran across the next field, casting an anxious glance at Striker’s progress. He had set his burden down to rest his back. Anxiety arrowed through Nick, raising the hair on his neck, but he had no power to reach human minds—and no way to warn his friend disaster was closing in.

Piracy carried a death sentence. Magic users—those of the Blood—were burned at the stake or given to Her Majesty’s Laboratories for experimentation. Where Nick was concerned, the law—which meant the Steam Council—had far too many choices where his punishment was concerned. And—even worse—he had no idea what that meant for his crew. Death, certainly, but would the council content itself with a simple hanging?

Dark Furies!
He leaped a ditch, scrambling to keep his footing, and began running down the side of the valley
where the
Red Jack
was hunkered down. He needed to get the ship in the air not just for the sake of the crew but for that of the nearby farmers. He paid them well to ignore the huge ship that paused there from time to time, always at night and for never more than a few hours, but things would not go well if the steam barons discovered they’d been turning a blind eye to smugglers.

Thanks to Athena’s powers, the ship could hold its position for an hour or two without the need for mooring lines. It hovered near the side of the valley, close enough that Nick and Striker had been able to climb down the side of the gondola and jump to the ground below. Now Nick slithered down the sloping grass, waving his arms and feeling like an ant trying to signal a buffalo.

The
Red Jack
’s gray silk bulk—the color of rain clouds—filled the valley, the balloon blotting out the stars.

Nick finally caught the attention of Poole, the bosun, who immediately threw a rope ladder over the side. Nick grabbed it and began climbing, his years at Ploughman’s Paramount Circus giving him an agility and head for heights equal to his crew. As he got near the rail of the gondola, Poole’s anxious face was joined by that of the first mate, Beadle. They grabbed his arms and helped him aboard, then Poole began pulling the ladder up again. Good security meant never leaving the ladder out and unattended.

“We’ve seen them,” Beadle said without preamble. “They’re carrying enough firepower to be a problem.”

Striker was Nick’s second in command and the undisputed king of mechanics, but Beadle knew airships and had flown them into more battles than Nick had birthdays. From his basset-hound face to his large-knuckled hands, he looked like he’d been laundered and left wet in a pile to dry. Now he was turning mournful eyes toward the northeast horizon.

“There are a hundred, at least, sir. They have hot harpoons. We’ve got five minutes at most before they’re here. We’d best leave at once.”

Nick flinched. Steam-driven harpoons, wreathed in chemical
flame, were an airship’s nightmare. They could shred the fabric of the balloon, costing them lift, or worse, there could be fire. In the air, with plenty of wind to fan the flames, it was almost impossible to put a blaze out. About the only good news was that the
Red Jack
—a smuggling ship prone to gun battles—had been converted to run on aether distillate, which was not as explosive as other fuels.

But hot harpoons were not their only problem. “We have to stay low to pick up Striker. I don’t leave stragglers. Not when they’re off the ship on my orders.”

Worry flashed across Beadle’s face, saying everything Nick wouldn’t. Striker was still halfway across the field and right between the
Red Jack
and the harpoons. “Your loyalty is commendable, sir, but we need distance. Not even this ship can outmaneuver Scarlet’s troops if they get grapples on us.”

It was true. Athena could steer the ship, providing lift, speed, and precision beyond a normal craft. Striker, ever pragmatic, would understand. But Nick’s soul wouldn’t. He felt the
Red Jack
shifting beneath his feet as Athena stirred restlessly. “I’m going to pick him up. Tell the crew we’re going to stay low and go west.”

“Aye, sir.”

Aye, sir
. Nick felt Athena’s mind touch his, drawing out exactly what he wanted to do. It was a connection that had grown since he’d first picked up the cube containing the deva four months ago. At the time, he’d barely understood what it was. Since then, Athena had taught him much about his powers and how they could work together, man and ship, with the precision of trapeze artists.

The ship rose, staying a constant height above the slope of the valley wall. Nick stood by the rail, watching the shadow of the ship blotting out the light of the setting moon. His hand twitched into a fist. To the northeast, he could see the soldiers more clearly now—clumps of men ranging themselves on the other side of the valley, more running for the bridge to get to the west side. In every group, there was one carrying a harpoon gun, the long cylindrical tube like a
miniature cannon barrel. With a clench of his gut, Nick tried to guess how far they could reach.