Devon Monk - Tin Swift

She was pretty, for sure. But not well. No, not at all.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked as Mae tore back the length of cloth so she had a better strip to tie with.

“Caught in an explosion. A bit of…of tin is wedged in there.”

Hink frowned. “Small wound to be causing so much pain,” he said. “Did it blow through the back?”

“No. We checked. It’s in there. And it’s plenty big enough to kill her, Captain.” She paused as if listening to a far-off sound, then shook her head and got back to seeing that the binding was down tight. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” she said. Maybe to the woman, maybe to him. Maybe just to herself. “He isn’t looking, he doesn’t want it.”

“What?” he asked.

“The Hold—”

Captain Hink leaned in closer. The word had died on her lips, and she shot a glance up at him. Fearful eyes lowered, and she set her shoulders as if to remind herself of the weight of them.

“The hole,” she said. “That might have been blown through the back of Miss Small’s shoulder. You aren’t looking for it. Now, if you’d move your hand so I can tug the knot tight?”

“Talk to yourself often, do you?” he asked with his best bar-side smile. “They say the winds do that to a person. You often been aboard an airship?”

“No, Captain. I prefer to keep my roots in the ground. But thank you, for…” She looked up, looked around her as if maybe just seeing the place for the first time. “Oh. Thank you for pulling us up and out of that town. Why were you there?”

“We make drops, supplies and such. Doing a run before winter storms wash out the sky trails.”

Mae Lindson’s eyebrows notched upward. She clearly did not believe him. “Is that so?” she asked, like a schoolmarm catching a student putting a frog in a neighbor’s lunch pail.

“Or maybe we’ve just come back from the mountains and are looking for some supplies ourselves,” he said with a wink. “You see what happened to that town, ma’am?”

“We just came through before sunset.” She buttoned up Rose’s dress, but not so high that it would pull tight across her bandages. Then she buttoned up her coat to keep her warm and decent.

“They were already dead when we got there.”

“The townfolk?” Hink asked, not quite knowing what to do with his hand now that he wasn’t touching Miss Small. He finally decided to loop his thumb through one of the rigging belts at his hips. “They looked lively enough to me.”

“It’s a difficult thing to explain, Captain Hink,” she said. “Very strange happenings.”

“There,” Cedar Hunt said. “Can you slow the ship?”

“Captain,” Guffin called out.

“Well,” he said to Mae, “once we put our feet earthward, I hope you’ll save some time to tell me your tale.” He tipped his finger to his forehead, even though he wasn’t wearing a hat. “Ma’am.”

Captain Hink strode away from the women and stopped beside Mr. Hunt, peering over his shoulder at the ground below.

There was a fair amount of movement going on down there. People moving about, but they seemed slower. As the airship paused overhead, they looked up. Well, the ones that still had eyes anyway.

“There’s a mess that’s gonna need cleaning up come morning,” he said.

Cedar Hunt didn’t say anything.

“Spot him?” Captain Hink asked.

“No.” The word came out more as a growl. The hair on the back of Hink’s neck rose up in response.

“Why are you folks out this way?” he asked.

“We’re headed to Kansas,” Cedar said. “Mrs. Lindson has family there.”

Captain Hink nodded. That might be part of the reason. The women didn’t look related. Rose Small looked nothing like Mr. Hunt. He hadn’t seen a ring on Miss Small’s finger. If she and Mr. Hunt were married, Cedar wasn’t acting like a concerned husband whose wife just might be dying.

“And you and Miss Small?”

“I’m headed east from there. Miss Small’s traveling for education.” He glanced over his shoulder, the ruby lens of his goggle giving him the look of a mad deviser. “That sustain your curiosity, Captain Hink?”

“Oh, not hardly,” Hink said. “My curiosity has a hearty appetite. Wants to know things like what those mangled folk down there are doing alive, and what came through to mangle them in the first place.”

“I don’t have clear answers to either of those questions,” Mr. Hunt said.

“Mrs. Lindson said you came upon the town at sunset. That’s late on the trail this far into the year.”

“We didn’t kill them.” Cedar looked out the window again. “We rode through for supplies. Found them dead. Miss Small insisted we stay to bury them.”

“And you listened to her?” Captain Hink glanced at the hammock where Rose tossed restlessly.

“She can be convincing,” Cedar said. “There!”

Captain Hink looked out the window again. They were over the outskirts of town near the mill that squatted over the wider end of the creek. Trees, scrub, more scrub.

“I don’t see anything,” Captain Hink said.

“By the barn. On the edge. It’s Wil.”

Captain Hink pulled his telescope out of his pocket and put it to use. He finally caught sight of something moving. “Big enough to be a wolf. You sure it’s the one you’re looking for?”

“That’s him. Land the ship.”

“That’s not going to happen, Mr. Hunt.”

“I won’t leave him behind.”

“And I won’t bring a wild animal onto my ship.” At the killing glare Cedar gave him, he had to work on not grinning. Meant a lot to him, that wolf. Enough he appeared willing to shoot Hink out of the sky for it.

“Then we are at a very dangerous impasse,” Cedar said. “I won’t leave him behind.”

“Heard you the first dozen times, Mr. Hunt. But the last thing I want on my ship is a beast that could kill us all. So you need to give me a damn good reason to make me change my mind. ’Cause where I stand it’d be just as easy to let you all off, down there into that town, and let fate have at you.”

A blast clapped across the heavens, cracking hard as thunder.

“Cannons, Captain!” Guffin yelled.

Hink glanced at his crewman, and then found himself getting grabbed and grappled by Cedar Hunt, who moved faster than a man should. Hink hit the floor with an oof , all the wind slammed out of him as an elbow bent around his throat.

The spine-chilling click of a hammer thumbing back filled his ears. As rightly it should, since the barrel of the gun was pressing a cold circle against his temple.

“You already have a wild animal on your ship, Captain Hink,” Cedar said. “And I’ll blow your head off unless you bring my brother aboard.”

It never took Captain Hink long to make up his mind. And whenever a man put a gun to his head, he right off decided that one, the man might not be the friendly sort, and two, he was not going to let anyone blow his brains out.

But before he could so much as make a move to ungun the man, the roar of another cannon splashed a wash of orange over the sky just north of them.

“It’s a ship, Captain,” Guffin said, not moving from his station.

“Damn it to glim, man,” Captain Hink said. “Of all the times to put a gun to my head it’s when my ship’s under fire?” Another blast thundered off, close enough it rocked the Swift . “Let’s you and I pick this up after I make sure we don’t go tumbling to our deaths.”

“Pull my brother up and I’ll put my gun down.”

Mr. Seldom was already halfway across the ship, a grappling hook hanging casually from one hand. Hink didn’t think there was an object, tool, or knickknack Mr. Seldom couldn’t make into a deadly weapon. He’d once seen him use a doily to strangle a man.