Sky Pirates (17 page)

“Fantastic. Then the cuff need not cause you any bother. And I promise you, it’s only until we are back in the air. All right?”

She did not answer.

He offered his arm in a gesture that was absurdly gentlemanly, given the circumstances. “Shall we?”

Elle ignored his gesture and stood aside so he could pass. “Lead on, Captain,” she said with a stiff smile. Despite her protestations, she was itching to be on land. They had been airborne for the better part of a month
now and she was starting to crave the oxygen-rich air that one breathed closer to the ground. It was not an unusual phenomenon. Sky sailors called it “the craving.”

On the ground, San Francisco looked even prettier than it did from above. Elle watched in fascination as the city’s trolley service ran up and down the hills, disappearing into the fog.

This morning the city was shrouded in a fine mist that turned the buildings sweaty with damp and the streets muddy and black from grime.

Elle shivered in her leather coat as they walked away from the bustling air docks. At least Dashwood had allowed her to wear her own clothes this morning, she thought resentfully.

San Francisco was a busy place and not the backwater gold rush village she had pictured. Everywhere she looked, crates of freight were being unloaded at a breakneck pace. Wagons with giant loads of lumber rumbled by, leaving dark slashes in the mud.

Elle studied a group of women waiting patiently under a corrugated iron awning. Each had a cloth bundle or a battered carpetbag with their belongings. They stared forlornly at the dismal drizzle, faces drawn in apprehension.

“Bit of a shortage of women in this place. So they fly them in from abroad,” Dashwood said next to her. “Those lovely brides are most likely destined for the ranches and gold fields farther inland. Probably waiting for the trolley to take them to the station.”

“Brides?” Elle frowned at the thought.

“Surely you must have seen the advertisements in the newspapers?” Dashwood said.

Elle nodded. “I have. It’s just that I never thought
women actually answered them …” she trailed off, lost in thought.

“Life’s hard if you don’t have any money, Mrs. Marsh. Those women are looking for a better life. Some say this is the land of opportunity. Not everyone manages to land themselves a husband that is richer than a Roman emperor,” he said with a hint of disdain in his voice.

“I’ll thank you to keep your comments to yourself, if you don’t mind, Captain. The subject of my marriage is not something I wish to discuss with you,” she said in icy tones. She was still very angry about the cuff around her wrist and she was not about to take his little dig at her circumstances.

Dashwood held up his hands. “Just trying to open your eyes,” he said.

“My eyes are extremely open, thank you very much.” She turned to him. “So what exactly have we come here to do?”

Dashwood smiled again. “Whiskey, my dear Mrs. Marsh.” He gestured for her to follow him. “Come on, we have an appointment.”

They started walking down one of the long, broad avenues. It was strange how American cities were laid out in perfect grids. Although poverty and squalor were still in evidence, there were no dark alleys or crooked lanes in the brave cities of the New World. She spared a sideways glance at a huddle of street children in a doorway who stared at them with hungry eyes.

“Captain, wait!” Elle said as she stopped beside the children. She felt in the pockets of her coat, but she had no money. She started shrugging off her coat in order to give it to them.

“Wait,” Dashwood said. He pulled a handful of coins out of his pocket and handed them to the children. Dirty little hands scrabbled for the money.

“Can’t have my navvy dying of exposure without a coat,” he said.

Elle sized him up. “That was really nice of you,” she said.

He shrugged. “Now I don’t want a word out of you once we get to our meeting. I only brought you along so you could watch and learn. In silence. Do you understand?”

“I’ll do my best,” Elle said as they started walking up a steep slope.

The venue for Dashwood’s appointment turned out to be a saloon called Crazy Jerry’s. It was a tin-roofed place not too far from China Town. The barkeep smiled as he recognized Dashwood.

“Ah, Captain Dashwood. Nice to see ya,” he drawled as he wiped his hands on his apron to shake Dashwood’s in greeting.

“Jerry!” He greeted the barkeep with a warm handshake and a wide grin, but Elle was not convinced that they were old friends.

“Who’s she?” Jerry said, nodding at Elle.

“New navigator pilot. I’m busy showing her the ropes,” Dashwood said.

“That’s a bit of a risk,” Jerry said, rubbing his chin. He started laughing. “You’re even crazier than I thought. And you honestly let her drive your ship?”

“She does all right. As good as any,” Dashwood answered.

Elle stood slightly behind him, but said nothing. Being spoken about as if she was not there was one thing, but having her skills criticized was quite another. She was sorely tempted to give this man a piece of her mind, but Dashwood gave her a warning look before she could say anything, so she remained where she was, silently annoyed.

“The boys will be along with the wagon in a few minutes,
but I brought this for you to taste.” Dashwood reached into the deep inner pocket of his coat and produced a bottle of amber liquid stoppered with a cork. “Top-of-the-line merchandise all the way from Scotland, as promised.” He placed the bottle on the counter with a flourish.

The barkeep eyed the bottle with no small measure of skepticism. “I hope for your sake that’s the case. Them fellers been a bit thirsty round these parts. Good whiskey has been in short supply. We’ve had to make do with my cousin’s moonshine on some nights,” the barkeep said as he stepped round the back of the bar. He pulled out three greasy-looking shot glasses and set them out on the counter. He pulled the cork and poured out three measures.

“Drink up,” he said.

Elle eyed the cloudy whiskey in the glass with little enthusiasm. The whiskey smelled strange, something earthy and sweet that she could not quite put her finger on.

“Oh, none for me,” she said. “I’m on duty and it is only ten o’clock in the morning. I tend to limit my whiskey drinking until afternoon.”

“You first,” Dashwood said, aiming a devastatingly charming smile at the barkeep.

The barkeep laughed. “Oh no, my friend, you go first.” He gestured at the drink.

Dashwood gave a nervous laugh.

Just then, Heller and Atticus Crow burst through the swing doors of the saloon with a wheelbarrow filled with whiskey bottles.

“Free drinks for everyone!” Heller said in a loud voice.

Heller’s arrival had the desired effect. Even at this early hour there were punters inside the saloon. The promise of a free drink seemed to galvanize them into
action. More materialized from corners Elle had not observed that the saloon possessed, and the barkeep was suddenly overwhelmed with requests for glasses. Some of the drinkers didn’t even wait, and pulled out stoppers with their teeth, swigging from the bottle.

“Gesture of goodwill! For the special people of San Francisco,” Dashwood said with a flourish. He was grinning from ear to ear now. “So, shall we agree on a price?”

Elle watched the captain with growing suspicion. Was it her imagination or did he look slightly nervous? Elle studied the way he held his shoulders and the way he watched the punters dig into the hooch.

“Anything the matter, Captain?” she asked sweetly.

“Not at all,” he drawled. “We have a schedule to keep, is all.”

He turned to Jerry, who was doing his best to fend off the tide of customers who were suddenly inside his establishment. “Fifty cents a bottle. Six bottles a case. I have a hundred cases; what do you say we call it an even three hundred?” he said.

Before Jerry could answer, a punter to the side of the bar suddenly spat his whiskey out onto the floor and swore loudly. “Dawg-naggit. It’s rotgut!” he shouted.

Before him, the gray-blue mist of a specter hovered. It was drifting up and down as it keened sorrowfully.

Elle turned to Dashwood. “Oh, you have got to be joking.”

“Afraid not,” he said with a shrug.

The specter’s keen had intensified as it searched for the human remains it was supposed to be tethered to, but these were probably back in Edinburgh and in the process of being dissected by a student of medicine at the university.

Rotgut whiskey, Elle thought with a shudder. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the whiskey in the shipment had
once been used for preserving corpses in aid of medical research, rot gut also carried the inherent risk of being haunted. Much in the same way that absinthe fairies spirited into liquor, ghosts appeared when the corpses they had been tethered to were soaked in alcohol. This wasn’t a problem until the body was removed from the keg and disposed of. The realization that its earthly tether was no more was usually more than most specters could handle, and judging from the shrillness of the keening filling her ears, Elle estimated that things were about to get very ugly in Crazy Jerry’s saloon.

Elle took a step away from the counter and looked about. Suddenly, the whole saloon was filled with specters, hovering in midair as they emerged from the bottles that held them.

One of the saloon girls screamed, which in turn set a few of the ghosts howling and set off the other specters. Within seconds the entire saloon was filled with the angry spirits of the departed, demanding vengeance for the terrible wrong that had been done to them.

“Dashwoo-ood! If we survive this, I am going to kill you myself!” Jerry shouted.

“Ah, I think there may have been a bit of a misunderstanding on that front,” Dashwood said. “They assured me that all the spectral energy had been removed when they strained the whiskey. I promise.”

The air filled with ear-piercing shrieks as one by one the specters transformed into poltergeists. Glass started breaking and mirrors split due to the force with which they changed. One of the punters pulled out his shotgun and started firing at the ghosts. This was a completely pointless course of action and only caused other on-edge punters to start firing back. Elle ducked behind the counter as an empty bottle flew past her head and smashed against the wall behind her. Within seconds, a
full-blown gunfight complete with howling poltergeists had erupted.

“Aw crap,” Dashwood said under his breath as he crawled beside Elle. “I thought they’d take a bit longer to show up, but I guess they didn’t take too well to the flight.” He ducked as a chair flew past, narrowly missing his head.

A few of the ghosts turned on the punters and soon bodies were flying about the room as more shots rang out.

“Heller! Take the men and get to the ship!” Dashwood shouted. “Each man for himself until we get there!”

“Aye, Captain,” Heller called from behind a piano on the other side of the room, where he was busy laying down cover fire with a sawn-off shotgun.

Another bullet whizzed past Elle’s head, closely followed by a keening poltergeist, this time so close that she felt the air move against her cheek. Enough was enough.

The only way out was blocked by specters and half-drunk trigger-happy brawlers. She sighed. There was only one way out of this mess and that was via the Shadow. This was most inconvenient, given that she was still tethered to the captain. He would have to come with her if they stood any chance of survival.

“Take a deep breath and don’t let go of me!” Elle shouted, as an upturned table smashed into the wall behind them, sending long splinters of wood flying everywhere.

Before he could react, she grabbed a handful of Dashwood’s green velvet coat and closed her eyes. Quickly she reached out to the barrier between Shadow and Light. She had not touched the barrier since Khartoum, weeks ago. She could feel it the moment she closed her
eyes, humming with energy at the edge of her consciousness.

She reached into the meta-space and dragged herself and Dashwood into the void. The aetheric turmoil the specters were creating made the transition between worlds feel like crossing the English Channel in a force-ten gale, but she held on to the captain and forged ahead. They hit the golden murk headfirst. The barrier wobbled and engulfed them with a big slurping sound.

Dashwood looked like a man drowning. His eyes were wide as saucers, and she had to grip his collar and his biceps hard to hold on to him as he struggled against the aether. She gave him a little shake to make him look at her.

He stared at her in horror, his mouth agape.

Keep still
, she said into his mind.
You are quite safe as long as you hold on to me
.

He nodded, looking more than a little distressed. Even here, the sound of shotgun fire could still be heard as well as the ghostly shrieks of the poltergeists.

Slowly Elle counted the moments, holding on as long as she dared. Dashwood looked like he was about to expire from lack of breath. She could tell him that it was perfectly safe to breathe in here, but his bright red face and the bulging veins on the side of his neck gave her a small measure of satisfaction. Good, let him think he is drowning for a little while longer. It would serve him right for everything he’d done to her.

When she reached ten, she moved them gently back toward the point where they had entered the barrier. She could see the small rent glimmering in the distance. When they reached it, she shoved Dashwood out, and without ceremony they spilled back onto the sawdust and plank floor of Crazy Jerry’s bar. Or at least what was left of it.

Dashwood wheezed and coughed violently where he lay, gasping for breath.

Elle stood up. She dusted herself off as she glanced about. The bar was deserted. The floor was covered in smashed glass and what looked suspiciously like spilled and spattered blood.

“What in the name of all that is holy was that?” Dashwood said from the floor. He wheezed and resumed his coughing fit.

“That, I believe, was me saving your life, Captain,” Elle said. “And you’re welcome.” She held her hand out to help him up, but he refused and stood up by himself.