Steven Harper - The Doomsday Vault

What few social and business contacts had been left to Arthur Michaels quickly dried up. His investments went bad, and he’d been forced to sell the family home. Debts and bad business moves had decreased their fortunes further. Now they couldn’t even afford a girl to come in and sweep. And the daughter of a baron was socially forbidden from finding paying work, no matter how many useful skills she might have. Even Ad Hoc ladies would find the idea of a baron’s daughter laboring for mere money horrifying. More than once, Alice had considered disguising herself somehow and finding a job, but the only skill she had was assembling and repairing automatic machinery, and since most automatons were owned by nobility, she stood a good chance of being recognized. The possibility of being caught out made her too nervous to try it.

Alice donned a jeweler’s loupe to magnify the tiny machinery and saw one of the propeller gears was missing several teeth. Alice plucked a replacement from a drawer with a pair of tweezers, dropped it into place, and tightened the tiny bolt. She had already sold several of Aunt Edwina’s gift automatons without telling Father, and she wondered how long it would be before she ran out of machines to sell. Her greatest fear was that she might have to sell Click.

Deftly she finished reassembling the little automaton, unable to help but admire how its smooth brass surface hid a number of greasy, whirling bits of machinery. Her quick fingers rewound the brass key, and the automaton whirled to life. Its eyes snapped open, its blades spun it aloft, and it flew, chittering, across the room to join the others. They caressed it and squeaked among themselves.

“Enough of that now,” Alice told them with mock sternness. “I want my nightshirt.”

The automatons scampered and flew to obey. They removed the remainder of Alice’s petticoats and helped Alice pull the worn nightshirt over her head. The undergarments, at least, were undamaged. She kicked The Dress into the corner before wolfing down the sandwich. One of the automatons picked up a bit of pasteboard from the floor and handed it to Alice. It was Glenda Teasdale’s card, the one with the square root of two on it-a mystery indeed. And what on earth was the Third Ward?

If you find you need a change in your life, write to me, all right?

Alice frowned as she finished the last bite of sandwich. Miss Teasdale was an Ad Hoc woman, wearing trousers, riding astride, calling a peer of the realm love as if they were related. Earlier, Alice had found it exciting, but now that she’d had time to calm down, she realized how ridiculous the entire affair was. And she had sacrificed an extremely expensive dress to this Third Ward for barely a thank-you. Glenda Teasdale and her Third Ward could go hang.

Alice Michaels tossed the card onto her workbench, blew out the candle, and dropped into exhausted, righteous sleep.

“Here you go, son.” Stone hunkered next to the pallet and set the pewter plate on the deck near Gavin. His phosphorescent lantern cast a low circle of green light on the wood and shoved the shadows backward. “I got you some beans this time. They even have some salt pork in’em.”

Gavin pushed himself into an upright sitting position on his pallet with deliberate slowness. Each movement pulled at his back, sending demon twinges up and down his body. Around him, the dark hold smelled of tea and cinnamon, silk and paper. Bundles, boxes, and crates created chunks of deeper shadow all their own. He carefully took up the plate and shoveled salty beans into his mouth. The chain around his left ankle clanked.

“Have we moved yet?” he asked.

Stone shook his head. “Still tethered. Not much to see out there but a hangar, my boy. Wellesley Field’s a good three miles from London. You can’t even see the city now that we’ve landed, so you ain’t missing anything.”

“I’ve made the Beefeater run a hundred times,” Gavin muttered. “Seen London.”

“Right.”

Gavin finished the beans and shoved the plate aside. It felt odd to be on board ship with her engines silent. Two engines had turned up damaged from the pirate fight and had shut themselves down not long after Gavin’s whipping. Repairs had taken more than a week, and in that time both the Juniper and the pirate ship had drifted about as playthings of light and wind. Correcting their course and getting to England had taken another two days. A medium-sized dirigible normally made the run from New York to London in three days, two with favorable winds, but the Juniper had arrived in London as a captive more than ten days late. Gavin wondered if she and her crew had been reported lost. Had anyone notified his family? The telegraph offices ran regular messages, but he had no idea if the Boston Shipping and Mail Company would go through the expense for a mere cabin boy. The image of his mother slumped across the kitchen table, a crumpled telegram in her hand and tears on her face, made his throat grow thick, and he found himself hoping the BSMC was too miserly for common courtesy.

He swallowed the tinny taste of beans and made himself ask the question he’d been dreading. “Will we be ransomed soon?”

Stone shrugged. “Probably. Captain hasn’t said, but he can hardly keep you all locked in the brig for another week, can he?”

“Is he going to ransom me ?”

“He’ll ask. The real question is”-Stone leaned forward a little-“will your company pay it?”

Gavin’s mouth went dry. The fears he’d been trying to suppress all the long days he’d spent lying on his stomach in the Juniper ’s hold while fevers wrenched and tore at his healing body came roaring back. The BSMC always paid ransom for ships. It usually paid ransom for officers. It often paid ransom for airmen. It never paid ransom for cabin boys-not even for cabin boys only a few weeks away from their eighteenth birthdays.

“That’s what I thought,” Stone said, reading the expression on Gavin’s face. “Listen, boy-Captain Keene ain’t cruel. He only beat you instead of throwing you overboard for killing Blue, didn’t he? And he let that old man tend your back, right?” When Gavin didn’t answer, he went on. “I think he likes you. If I talked to him, I bet he’d let you stay on with us. You’d be a proper privateer instead of a milksop merchant. Load better’n being sold to the East End whorehouses.”

“Is that what he’ll do?”

“Most like. He has to make money off you somehow to pay for everything you ate.”

Gavin wondered on what sort of scale a few cans of beans outweighed the lives of Tom and Captain Naismith and the lashes that had landed on Gavin’s back. He wanted to be angry, but he was too tired. The skin over his spine felt tight.

“So those are my choices,” Gavin said. “Join you or spend my time doing… doing what Madoc Blue wanted.”

“Think so.” He scooted closer to the gunnysack pallet and perched on its edge, close enough for Gavin to feel the heat of his leg. “Anyway, I’m ready.”

With stiff, reluctant movements, Gavin leaned toward Stone and retrieved his fiddle from its battered case on the floor. Once it was under his chin, he gave Stone a resigned look. It was the price for extra food-and for Stone speaking up so Gavin would keep his life.

“ ‘Tam Lin,’ ” the man said, his eyes glowing green above the phosphorous light. His white leathers, those he had stolen from one of Gavin’s crewmates, took on the same sickly hue.

Gavin played. The ancient song’s minor key meshed with the unearthly cold fire within the lantern as his bow and skittering fingers cast dreadful shadows over the bulkheads. Every note was a curse, but the iron chain around Gavin’s ankle siphoned his strength, and the music seemed to fall away into the darkness, its art and beauty flat and dead. Stone didn’t notice. He nodded his head, tapped his fingers, and grinned with green teeth.