Cherie Priest - Clementine

He swore loudly and repeatedly, on everything from Brink’s thieving soul to his father’s gleaming eyes. He flipped a switch to power down the Rattler and with Simeon’s help, he deposited it onto the ground.

Felton Brink used the quiet moment to run. He stood just enough to see over the block, saw the men running towards the jittering, flailing craft, and he took off running back up the hill.

Hainey made a mental note of which direction he’d gone, and he said to Simeon, “Get to that tether! Crank and draw the strap by hand, bring the ship lower-as low as you can get it without dragging her down on top of us! Lamar,” he said then. “Get over here-underneath her, with me!”

With the bay floor hanging open, its underside portal destroyed, there was nothing to grab and nothing to climb, only an open hole on the bottom of the craft. The Free Crow was becoming more distressed by the moment, as her engines strove against the tethers that wouldn’t let her up. Freed from her overweight load, she stretched against the straps and chains and would’ve taken the whole landing pad with her if she could only get enough leverage.

“Sir!” Lamar objected, suddenly twigging on.

“Over here! Now!”

And even though the ship loomed, snapped, and reared only a few feet over their heads, he obeyed. He crouched his way over to Croggon Hainey, who stood as tall as he could reach, then bent at the knees and held his hands together like a slingshot.

The captain said, “You’re going to have to grab for it, and once you’re on board, you’re going to have to steady her.” He didn’t ask if this was possible, or even if it was likely. He assumed that it must be, because no other option was acceptable.

Lamar nodded, swallowed, and backed up enough to take a running leap at the captain’s hands.

Hainey grabbed the engineer’s foot and swung with every ounce of strength left in his bruised, overworked, scratched and scarred back…

…and the slight-framed engineer went tumbling up through the air, where his left hand and right fingertips snagged the bay’s edges.

His right hand lost its hold, then found it again; his left hand squeezed hard enough to almost dent the metal, and held, and gave him leverage enough to work an elbow, and then a knee, and then a heel onto better footing. It took him no more than ten seconds to haul his whole body onboard, and then he vanished into the interior.

Hainey turned to the cement block and saw how it had been carved, and how deeply it had been broken before he’d even begun to shoot at it. Down all the way to the core it’d been breached, all the way to the fossil of a woman’s body, lying crushed by the weight of its tomb.

To the first mate he said frantically, “Help him if you can, once he gets her steady!”

“You’re going after Brink?” Simeon asked, but the captain didn’t answer.

He was already gone, in pursuit of the red-haired pirate who was carrying the most dangerous diamond in the world.

Anne snuck Maria to the back of the sanatorium, where an exit was unwatched and no one might interrupt them. “Out here,” she said, opening the door. “That walkway will lead you to a fork. Take the left path, and it’ll send you to the outbuilding-perhaps a hundred yards off.”

But Maria had only barely heard her, for bobbing above the trees was an airship, seemingly tethered and distressed about its state. “God in heaven!” she exclaimed. “Is that the Clementine ? Er, I mean, the Free Crow ?”

Anne said with wonder, “I haven’t the foggiest idea! Good Lord, what’s going on over there?”

“I could make a guess,” Maria murmured, and she fought the instinct to dash to the thrashing craft, if only to learn what was happening. The crown of the ship leaped and lurched, straining and fighting, and the spy could hear shouts-but she couldn’t tell what was being shouted. She turned to the nurse and double-checked, “This path? The left fork?”

“That’s right,” she said without taking her eyes off the tussle in the trees.

The path would lead her away from the ship, but she took it with a running start. Her carpetbag full of ammunition and personal effects bounced against her thigh and her skirts tangled around her knees; she kicked to keep herself mobile and she tore down the unpaved path, knocking gravel and dirt up against her knickers. Trees leaned above and cast her passage in shadow, and in the back of her ears she heard the whine of an overdriven engine and the breaking of branches somewhere in the distance.

Where is this outbuilding? She asked herself as she panted under the load of her luggage, her clothes, and the changing grade of the scenery.

Then she saw it, as the trees parted and the path dumped out to an open spot in the woods, where a low, undecorated structure sat surrounded by greenery.

Before she could burst free of the forest and make her presence known, a red-haired man flung himself past the armed guard who stood at the door. He wrestled with the knob and threw himself inside, slamming the door behind himself.

Maria stopped at the edge of the woods, since the guard was distracted by the visitor and no one had yet noticed her. She held one hand against her chest and counted to twenty-an old trick she’d picked up on the stage, but it worked, and her breathing slowed. Once she had her body under control, she slipped that hand down to the shawl tied around her waist and she withdrew one of her Colts.

Moments later, the door opened again and the red-haired man stood beside a taller, thinner man in a Union uniform. “Steen,” she assumed softly, and she watched as he commanded the guard to summon his fellows. In seconds, three more guards had joined the first, and right before the officer retreated into the building’s interior, she saw something the color of sunlight flash in his hand.

The diamond had been handed over to its purchaser.

One of the guards stepped inside with his commanding officer; the other two kept their position on either side of the door, and both held revolvers at the ready. They anticipated trouble, that much was certain; and Maria was equally certain of the trouble they faced…even before she saw a broad flash of a blue wool coat sneaking between the trees on the other side of the clearing.

She fell back farther into the trees and began to work her way around, sideways, as softly as her luggage and her dress would allow.

Croggon Beauregard Hainey met her in the middle.

He whispered, “I thought that must be you,” and he looked over her shoulder, past her head at the spot in the sky where the ship had been doing its terrible dance over the edge of the trees. Maria glanced too and saw that the craft had settled, and she thought that its engines sounded calmer, or perhaps she was only too far away now to hear the frantic whine.

“You found your ship,” she whispered back.

“But that thieving pirate made his delivery,” making the same point.

She asked, “So what are you doing here? Take your ship and make your getaway!”

“Not while that son of a pox-spreading whore is still breathing. Goddamn,” he rumbled. “I should’ve brought the Rattler.”

“And why didn’t you?”

He threw his hands up and said, “Because it’s heavy, woman! I can hardly carry the thing, and Brink was running with nothing but the diamond to tote.”

“You carried it just fine in Kansas City.”

“Across an open, flat field, sure,” he said, and realizing he was on the verge of a very distracting argument, he said, “Point is, I don’t have it, and we could use it.”

“We, Captain?”

“We, woman. You want the diamond, and I want the bastard who boosted it. How many shots have you got?”