Breath of Earth (14 page)

“If I could bind the wound—”

“No. Not here. Home.”

“I'll help you walk,” she said. The man flinched as she wrapped an arm around his waist, and she wondered if it was her touch as much as the injury that caused him to do so.

“You shouldn't walk with me like this,” Mr. Fenris mumbled. “People will see—”

“To hell with what people see. I'm sick to death of propriety.” Tears smarted her eyes. She couldn't help but think of Mr. Sakaguchi and his regrets about not marrying Mama.

“I care very much what people see.” The words were so low Ingrid almost missed them.

Crowds thinned as they hobbled along the next block. Normal city noises—wheels, engines, that constant backward clatter of dogs and chickens—seemed quiet compared to the intensity of Chinatown. It took her a moment to realize that the silence wasn't simply because of the decrease in people.

Damage hadn't occurred here to the same extent as in Chinatown. It's not that the buildings were constructed that
much better; this ground was still made, and would liquefy as it would under much of downtown.

It was as though the earth twitched just beneath Chinatown, even with her there to siphon much of its intensity. By everything she ever learned in the auxiliary, that just plain didn't make sense. What would cause such a localized explosion of earth energy?

Heat roiled beneath her skin. Her body was a reservoir still perilously close to overflowing, but now she did more than break dishes. Now someone needed her. She partially carried Mr. Fenris. She was huskier than he, but it was still a surprise how little exertion it took to hoist his weight.

A cab rattled by, and she waved it down.

“No,” Fenris whispered. “He'll see, ask questions—”

“More people will ask questions if I'm carrying you across town,” she whispered back. “Hello, sir!”

The cab consisted of a black buckboard wagon with a chestnut horse in the shafts. The skittish stallion danced in his jingling harness, restless hooves clopping on the basalt. His eyes rolled back to show whites.

“Hey, hey!” The driver tightened his grip on the reins. He spat out a wad of tobacco on the far side. “Eh. Wassup wit him?”

“My boss was injured in the earthquake in Chinatown just now, sir.” She felt Fenris stiffen at the subterfuge; she gave him a reassuring pat on the back. Ingrid knew how to play this game.

“Earthquake. Bah. Shoulda brought t' whole section down. Want the nuns?”

The Catholic hospital was certainly the closest. As though reading her thoughts, Mr. Fenris leaned into her. She sighed. “No, sir. He wants to go home. I'll call a doctor.”

“Eh. Suit yerrself. Hay-up!”

Using Mr. Fenris's body to shield her incredible strength, she boosted him up into the cab. He dragged his body into the seat. She hopped up after him, bounding up like a kangaroo, and almost squealed in surprise at her own athleticism.

The horse started to bolt when the driver clicked his teeth, but he kept the beast in check. Mr. Fenris moaned deep in his throat, and continued to bite back sounds the entire ride back to the workshop.

Ingrid assisted Mr. Fenris down to the sidewalk. His knees buckled, but she didn't let him fall.

“You're as strong as Cy,” he whispered.

She didn't even know how to reply to that. Empowered as she was, she almost snapped off the doorknob when she leaned her weight on the front door to Jennings and Braun's shop. It was as though she had reached some fantastic middle ground between the delicious tingle of power she was used to and the state of being deathly ill.

“My cot,” Mr. Fenris whispered. “Beneath Cy's room.”

The room was spare and Spartan in a way that suggested an impersonal hotel rather than a daily living space. Ingrid set him down gently on the edge of the bed and pried off his shoes. Mr. Fenris's body quivered and seemed to deflate as he lay down. Ingrid turned on bedside lamps for better light.

Mama had taught her how to bandage a wound and do basic stitches, but from the sheer amount of blood, this was far
beyond what Ingrid could handle with a needle and thread. Still, she had to do something.

“I can try to clean you up,” she said, the doubt clear in her voice.

Mr. Fenris shook his head again, and Ingrid felt the profound urge to grab him by the lapels and shake sense into him. Didn't the man know how serious his wound was, how quickly infection could set in? Mama's labor was supposed to be easy, after all; Mama always said baking her first cake was a lot harder, and took longer, than Ingrid's birth. When everything went wrong with the new baby, it went wrong fast. So terribly fast.

Ingrid tried to block out her last sight of Mr. Sakaguchi, so fragile in that strange and sterile room.

A door banged, the sound echoing across the vastness of the workshop. Ingrid tensed. Had soldiers followed them?

“It's Cy.” A smile wobbled on Mr. Fenris's lips. “I know his footsteps.”

Ingrid stood and met Mr. Jennings near the now-completed airship. He sucked in a sharp breath. “You're bloodied. Were you attacked again?” His long strides covered the distance between them in seconds.

“It's not me. It's Fenris.”

His expression shifted, hardening, and he stepped past her and stopped in the doorway. “God have mercy.”

“Hello to you, too,” whispered Mr. Fenris.

“Miss Carmichael?” Mr. Jennings turned to her.

“He needs the hospital, but he won't go. He insisted we come here, to you. It's hard to see now, but the cut goes all the
way across, from armpit to sternum. I don't know how deep.”

Mr. Jennings's jaw worked from side to side. “That settles it, then. Miss, this'll be messy work, but I need your help to prepare him for a doctor.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Prepare him? He's not a turkey!”

“There's no time to mess around here.” The gravity of the situation shone in his eyes. “I'll put some water on to boil and run to the market to dial up a doctor. Can you strip him down? There's a trunk beneath the bed with clothes you can use.”

Confused, she nodded. Mr. Jennings dashed off toward the kitchen.

“It's his time as a soldier,” Mr. Fenris muttered. “He gets in these moods and starts spouting off orders. Doesn't bother asking me what I think.”

“I'll ask you, then. Do you want to die?” Ingrid asked.

“No.”

“Good. That's a start.”

Why was she the one taking off the man's clothes? If she had trained as a nurse, doctor, or midwife, then it'd make sense, but Mr. Jennings knew she had no such expertise.

“I . . . I am . . .” Mr. Fenris's words slurred.

“I'm working your coat off,” she said. “Can you sit up?”

To his credit, he tried, but the instant he did so, his eyes rolled back and his body fell utterly slack.

“Hell and damnation!”

Well, maybe his fainting was for the best. The current of power still in her veins, Ingrid readily propped up the man and eased off the leather jacket. The motion caused a fresh welling of blood. She scanned the room and grabbed an ivory-handled
penknife from a shelf. Drying her hands on her borrowed and hopelessly stained coat, she opened the blade and sliced Mr. Fenris's shirt open. Buttons pinged off as she yanked the rest of it free.

To her surprise, another layer of bloodied cloth swathed the width of his chest.

She stared. Suddenly everything made sense.

Ingrid had listened to Graphophone recordings of the opera
Jasmine in Bloom
more times than she could count. It had been a dear favorite of Mama's, too, with its powerful portrayal of a woman dirigible sailor. Undeterred by social mores, Leticia binds her breasts and goes off to war, and saves her entire Roman legion even as she dies an excruciating death by poison.

Mr. Fenris wasn't dying, but he most definitely had bound breasts that suggested that
he
might actually be a
she
.

By the time Ingrid had Mr.—well, Fenris Braun changed into a night shift from the trunk, Mr. Jennings arrived with a doctor in tow. One look at the physician, with his pale skin and suit and tie, and she knew he was a Pasteurian.

“Out, girl!” the doctor barked. “I must sanitize the area. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, you changed her clothes? She's bleeding like a stuck pig! Are you trying to kill her? Meddlesome git!”

He shooed Ingrid away like a fly. Accustomed to such treatment from the wardens, she forced a look of shame onto her face while she inwardly seethed. Heat prickled her skin, and she made sure not to stand too close to the doctor. As Mr. Sakaguchi's
dishware knew all too well, when she brimmed with power, things around her tended to break.

Ingrid and Mr. Jennings were shoved out the door, and it shut with a clang that shivered up the metal staircase above. Mr. Jennings's brows furrowed. Ingrid stared, unsure of what to say.

Fenris was a woman living as a man, living with another man. Were they lovers? They were certainly close, though Mr. Jennings had foisted the clothes-changing duties on Ingrid. Maybe he had done that for propriety's sake, but good grief, what did propriety mean in a situation like this?

The door burst open again. “Where's that boiling water?” asked the doctor.

“I'll get it,” said Mr. Jennings. He rushed off with Ingrid two steps behind.

“I suppose you have some questions, miss,” he said in a low voice, guiding her to a partition on the far side of the warehouse. Far, she noted, from the airship with its hydrogen gasbag. Other spark-creating materials were also on this side of the building.

“You may as well stop with the constant use of ‘miss.' I know it's the proper southern tradition, but it makes me feel like I'm supposed to be a little girl dolled up in a kimono and pigtails. We're all deep in this together now.”

Through a stack of boxes, she caught sight of a familiar autocar and paused.

He glanced back, his expression unreadable. Ingrid scurried to catch up. “I suppose so, miss. Er. Well, if we're less formal now, I suppose we should be on a first-name basis in private.”

“I'm Ingrid. I know you're Cy. And I don't know what to call
Mister
Fenris now.”

Cy sighed and nodded. He ducked behind a rubber curtain and into a makeshift kitchen that featured an archaic electric stove, an icebox, a table with oilskin tacked over the top, and chairs made of wooden orange crates. A kettle on the stove already belched steam, and he grabbed thick towels to grip the handle.

“I'll take this to the doctor. Don't go anywhere, please.”

Ingrid lowered herself to a crate pasted with labels for citrus fruit from sunny Tulare, California. She tugged off the scarf and set it aside. A battered metal breadbox sat in the center of the rough-hewn table, and she couldn't help but roll back the lid. Pastries. The reminder of food made her stomach moan.

She helped herself to a yeast roll speckled with poppy seeds. Her normal breakfast would have included pickled salmon, sourdough bread with jam, and tea, but right now she was hungry enough to lick crumbs off a counter. She found some cold coffee in a carafe, and needed it; the rolls had reached an advanced stage of life where they were best suited for bread pudding or duck food. She washed down the bread before it dammed her throat.

Somewhat satiated, Ingrid took off her coat and tossed it over her crate chair. She appraised the condition of her dress. The cloth was black, standard and understated attire for a house worker her age. Red-tinged large patches spread across her sleeves and skirt. Mr. Sakaguchi's blood. It wouldn't be noticeable from far away, but close up, there was no denying what it was. If the doctor saw, at least he'd think it was from Fenris.

Ingrid shuddered. Why was everyone bleeding on her?

She'd also endured her own share of pain over the past day. She'd banged herself pretty well in the tunnel before that aftershock hit, not that it caused any lingering damage. She'd thumped herself on the walkway when she fled the house yesterday, too. A small seism had followed that as well.

There had been many shivers of earth when she'd had her Reiki session after the auxiliary explosion. They stopped after her treatment.

She stilled. Were the quakes all coincidences, or . . . ?

Ingrid leaned over and, taking a steadying breath, tapped her knuckle against the cooling stove burner. Horrendous heat made her jerk back a half second later, nursing the injured hand against her chest.

A few seconds later came the tingle of an earthquake. Small, easily ignored by anyone else. The blue tinge of the earth's power lapped her feet and faded along with the pain. Yesterday's Reiki would still help in that regard.

“Dear God,” she whispered.

Her pain provoked the earth. How, why? Even more—Mama and Mr. Sakaguchi
knew,
and had known since she was little. She stared at the red mark on her hand. She'd had so many little injuries over the years and had never made this connection before, but there had always been other geomancers around to siphon the energy. Plus, Mama had bustled her off to Reiki or confined her to upstairs until she was well.

The thought of injury and sickness put her in mind of Mr. Thornton. She left the kitchen.

Mr. Thornton's distinctive autocar sat there in the shop. The glossy black hood was mottled by rust spots, the front
bumper lopsided like a rogue's smile. She hadn't thought to look for the car at Mr. Thornton's house. How long had it been here? This old thing broke down with regularity. The warden made plenty of money but the car wasn't his priority. Mr. Thornton's three principal hobbies consisted of complaining of Britain's treatment of India, of San Francisco's obliviousness to India's plight, and his horrid autocar.

She cast a self-conscious glance over her shoulder as she popped open the door. The leather seat was covered by a tucked-in blanket. She frowned and looked around. No signs of sickness or blood. Maybe he left behind a note or a ticket that could tell her where he might have gone.