Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] (13 page)

“I’d think the crying infant would be enough of an alarm.”

“Thus the failure of the invention. But after he gave me that bit of advice, I finally left.” She sighed as an ache of homesickness swelled.

“Advice or no,” he said, “not many would take the same risk. Did you even have an offer of work in Liverpool?”

She grinned. “Not a one. Just my diploma from the university and a portfolio full of designs. I arrived in Liverpool knowing nobody, without a job or a place to stay.” Those first weeks in a dingy boarding house had been brutal, with her literally knocking on doors during the day and stifling her sobs into her pillow at night. Until Drogin & Daughters decided to take the gamble, and had hired her.

These past few months, she felt as though she’d become nothing but longing. Missing her family, her friends. That grief never vanished, but the scar was fading, more and more with each moment spent in Fletcher’s company.

“You’re a bloody brave woman,” he said.

She laughed. “Not brave. Just egotistical. I couldn’t stand the thought of languishing in obscurity.”

“I know bravery,” he said, abruptly solemn. “I’ve seen it in dozens of battles. So if I say you’re brave, then you’d better listen.”

His vehemence stunned her into silence, and they’d been quiet the rest of their walk that day.

He had stories in abundance. It took some work on her part to pull them out of him. Fletcher radiated strength, but he was a modest man, reluctant to talk of his own heroism. When once she even used that word,
heroism
, he snorted and fell into a moody silence. But there was no other word for it.

As a sailor, he’d defended British outposts and their native populaces from warlords and other European nations trying to stake their claims. He’d run into collapsing, burning towns to pull people to safety. He’d risen quickly from a common seaman to an officer, proving again and again his courage and steadiness in the midst of battle. In one fierce battle, the captain of his ship had been badly wounded, and the next in command crumbled beneath the pressure, so he’d stepped in to command the crew to victory.

She already knew his valor as an airship captain—she’d watched him in the skies above Liverpool. And he’d sacrificed himself so his crew might survive, and no one would be injured by the crashing
Persephone
.

But these were tales that had been as difficult to extract as rusted bolts. He wouldn’t speak of the procedure that had transformed him into a Man O’ War, either, though from the small grains of information he’d accidentally dropped, she learned it had been painful, and long. He couldn’t be away from his ship, or one of the specially-designed batteries, for more than a few days without his energy building up to dangerous levels, provoking a frenzied, mindless rage. Thus the reason why he kept the turbines running at night, to drain the batteries so his energy had somewhere to go. And he couldn’t have children.

He’d given away all chances of a normal life when he’d laid himself down on the operating table. Deliberately changed himself into an amalgam of human and machine. Though he never spoke of Emily again, it was clear he thought he would have some chance of normalcy with her. And been wrong.

When Liverpool had been attacked, Kali had been without a lover for some time. In the aftermath of the battle, there’d been no man to look at her or her prosthetic leg with disgust. She bore her transformation alone. All she’d written to her parents was that she’d been injured, but not fatally, and she would recover from her injuries in England. She refused their offers of help.

One day, she met Fletcher by the pond. In his hand, he held a long, smoothly-polished stick. Wordlessly, he held it out to her.

“What’s this for?” she asked, taking it. The stout piece of wood was four feet long, with a tapered end, and a wider top. A strip of leather looped through a hole near the top of the stick.

Silently, he gazed toward the ridge of peaks to the west. The one part of the island they hadn’t explored. She’d always been afraid of those sharp hills. They weren’t mountains, but they were steep, and rocky. She didn’t know if she had the strength or balance to attempt them. Before she’d lost her leg, she would’ve challenged him to a race to the top, but now . . .

“It came from the
Persephone
,” he said. “The wood. Took it from the engineering deck.”

“Fletcher,” she said, eyeing the walking stick dubiously. Her heart contracted, thinking of him patiently carving the walking stick just for her. It was well balanced, too, and just the right height. Considerable thought had gone into its making. And he’d made it from a piece of his ship. “I hate disappointing you—”

“Then don’t,” he said. Without another word, he strode toward the steep hills, leaving her alone.

Go after him? Or stay? Risk injury and humiliation, or watch him climb the hills while she felt sorry for herself?

She hefted the walking stick, took a deep breath, and followed.

H
e was patient. Kali had to credit him that. Doubtless he could have bound up the steep hill, powerful and fleet as a tiger. Or he could have shouted at her, urging her to be stronger, go faster. Of course, if he’d tried yelling at her, she would’ve taken his carefully carved walking stick and swung it at his head—or his groin.

Yet she didn’t have cause to use the walking stick as a weapon. Fletcher hiked slightly ahead of her, but from the set of his shoulders, and the tilt of his head, it was plain his senses were tuned to her. He slowed whenever her steps faltered. Yet he didn’t once turn around to offer her help or suggest that she’d gone far enough for the day. As if he knew she’d push him away or insist she was fine. A compliment of sorts. He believed she could make it up the hill, and his belief shored up her own.

But it wasn’t easy. Her leg of flesh and bone protested at the amount of work it had to do. The long walks around the island had strengthened her, true, but a steep slope presented a new challenge to her muscles. It took some finessing of her artificial leg, too. She had to stop once to loosen some of the pins, enabling a greater range of movement. And there was a rhythm to hiking, a careful calibration of balance and weight.

Sweat filmed her back, and she wiped her forehead with her sleeve. Breath was like a furnace in her chest. She hurt all over.

The summit seemed miles above. How could she ever make it?

“I stole the captain’s brandy once,” he said, breaking the silence.

His unexpected words pulled her out of her misery. “Didn’t peg you for a thief.”

He continued climbing upward as he spoke over his shoulder. “I was a petty officer, and a right swaggerer. Thought I knew everything about everything. Got a few lashings back when they were still handing them out, but that didn’t stop me from pushing back whenever the warrant officer gave me an order. What a strutting bastard I was.” He chuckled.

She stared at his wide back. “I’m having . . . a hard time . . . picturing that,” she gasped.

“A miracle that I made it above the rank of seaman.” He didn’t sound breathless at all, the demon. “One night, I got to boasting with the other lads, telling ’em all how I was so ruddy clever, and that the officers didn’t know anything I didn’t know. So one of the boys—Browne, I think—tells me to prove it. Show everyone that I’m really smarter and quicker than the officers. Somebody got the idea that I should steal something from the captain’s quarters.”

“How . . . would that prove . . . anything?”

“The lot of us couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old. Had more come than brains. I mean, ah . . . we didn’t think clearly.”

She panted a laugh as she dug the walking stick into the hill and dragged herself higher. “Quite a . . . feat to . . . manage.”

“Nothing’s more steady than a naval ship. Everything happens at the same time every day. I knew when the captain would be out of his quarters, and when the midshipman who patrolled the passageway would go by. All I did was wait for the right moment.”

“The door . . . had to be . . . locked.”

“I nicked a few of the sailmaker’s awls and needles and used those to pick the lock. Got inside in a trice.” A large boulder blocked their path, so Fletcher veered to the side. He could surely have climbed over it, but she didn’t object that he changed their path to accommodate her.

“You . . . clever rogue,” she mock-admonished him.

He chuckled. “Here’s where my cleverness ran out. I found the brandy and instead of just taking it and leaving, I decided to have myself a drink right there in the captain’s quarters.”

“Oh, no,” she groaned.

“We had our share of grog, and I’d drunk plenty of ale, but strong spirits were new to me. New, and tasty. Finished the whole bottle.”

She groaned again at his foolishness.

“When I came to,” he continued, “I was in the brig. They wanted to make sure I was conscious for my lashing. Before they dragged me out on deck for punishment, the captain himself came to see me. He said that if I wasn’t such a damned idiot, I’d make a fine officer. But I was going to have to make a choice. Keep up my blustering ways, or actually make something of myself. Bled more brandy than blood from the lashing,” he added.

Clearly, he’d opted to reform. Yet it stunned her that this modest, honorable man had once been so young and stupid, so arrogant. The intervening years must’ve shaped him a good deal—or he’d chosen to change himself. Something few people could accomplish.

Her thoughts scattered when he began to sing a seafaring tune. His baritone was low and rang like a bell.

My comely lass, it’s back to the sky,

For the Hun has come calling, but never you cry.

With ether and courage, we’ll send ’em to Hell,

And then I’ll be home, in your arms to dwell.

“Ah,” he said. “Here we are.”

Kali had been focused on putting one foot in front of the other, taking each step in turn, and listening to his shanty. Only now she looked up and realized they’d reached the summit.

“You distracted me,” she said, almost accusing.

“You made it to the top,” he countered.

Her first look at the island in its entirety. It was a patchwork of gray and green, a rumpled blanket of stone and grass in the middle of a shale-colored sea. From this vantage, she spotted the roof of her cottage, miniscule from this height, and the rolling expanse of the moors, which truly did look like the ocean made solid. The
Persephone
lay in her permanent berth, dug into the earth. Shadows from clouds speckled the island. It wasn’t a lush place, but it held a raw, uncompromising beauty. Now, from the top of this peak, she could see it all, feel the cool wind nip at her cheeks and tug at her unraveling braid.

And she had Fletcher to thank for it.

But she didn’t want words.
Thank you
felt so pallid. She’d thought her leg would never allow her to have such a view or know this soaring freedom.

So she reached down between them. Took his hand in hers. Gave it a squeeze.

He squeezed back. A silent acknowledgment of what this meant.

They stood like that, hand in hand, as if they’d made the world and now stood back to admire their handiwork.

And she realized at that moment that for the first time in three months—for the first time in
years
—she was truly happy.

F
letcher stared balefully out the window in his quarters. Nearly through the morning and the rain hadn’t let up. It had been coming down since the middle of last night, beating on the top deck like drummer boys announcing an admiral. He’d hoped it would clear by midmorning at the latest to give the ground the slightest chance of drying out. No luck.

He glanced at the clockwork cricket, sitting quietly on his desk. He was careful not to use it too much, in case he should break it. But every night, he turned its key and listened to its musical chirp while it softly illuminated the darkness of his quarters.

Turning back to the window, he cursed. He didn’t want Kali out in that muck. It made for treacherous going. Had they been in a city with paved streets, or even a village with packed earth lanes, he wouldn’t worry. But there was no town planning commission for Eilean Comhachag, unless you counted the rabbits’ warrens.

She shouldn’t risk it. But the damn stubborn woman would probably show up at the pond anyway. What if she got hurt between the pond and her cottage?

He threw on his coat and jumped down from the window to the ground. Then he ran. He reached her cottage in fifteen minutes.

Kali frowned in confusion when she answered his knock. She stepped back to let him inside, out of the rain. The cottage smelled of tea, solder, and wool, with the sweet spice of her beneath it all. The windows had all fogged from the warmth of the cooking apparatus’s hearth. Though crowded with equipment and tools, everything was neatly organized and clean, a far cry from the chaos of the
Persephone
.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

He glanced up at the roof. “It’s raining.”

A corner of her mouth turned up. “Here I thought Vishnu’s lemon ice was melting and dripping on my roof.” She took out her timepiece. “I was just about to head out for our meeting.”

“That’s why I’m here.” He stood completely still, afraid he might turn and knock over some delicate piece of equipment, or accidentally crush a tool beneath his boots. The cottage had been fitted perfectly for someone Kali’s size. Fletcher, however, felt like an ironclad trying to dock in a sloop’s berth.

She looked taken aback, and hurt. “You don’t want to meet today.”

“Like hell.” He didn’t realize how heated his voice was until he saw her take a step back. “I mean, I do want to. But with the rain . . .” A frown began to gather between her brows, and he realized he couldn’t flat out tell her that he feared she’d injure herself in the mud and slippery terrain. They’d been hiking the hills for a week, and her strength had grown daily. She no longer gasped for breath on the climb, and her movements were smoother, faster. Still, he didn’t like the thought of her tromping around in the mud and over slippery rocks.