Devon Monk - Tin Swift

“Yes.”

Funny how one word can stick a finger in the world’s gears and gum things up for a second or two.

“Huh.” It wasn’t much to say, but it was all he had in him. He tipped the flask, then walked over and offered it to Molly. She took a nip and handed it back.

“Anything we can do for her?” Molly asked. Heart of gold, that woman. He didn’t know if she believed that they had a witch on board. Even if she did, Molly wouldn’t let that get in the way of basic courtesy.

“Hot tea,” Cedar Hunt said. “Maybe food. But I think she’ll be unconscious for a while.”

“Well, then,” Hink said. “We have work to be getting done. Molly, if you could rustle some grub and tea, we could all use some. The boiler survive the bump?”

“No cracks that I’ve found yet, Captain,” she said.

“Good. Guffin, see to it we’re lashed down tight for the night. Ansell, drain the airbags. Seldom, see how bad off the fans and gears are.”

“What are you going to do, Captain?” Guffin asked.

“Drink the rest of this flask and tell you to get to work,” Hink said.

Molly went back to the galley and the men got moving, though they muttered loud enough to make sure he heard just what they thought of him, his mother, and his orders.

Once everyone was out of earshot, Hink turned to Cedar Hunt.

“Have a seat, Mr. Hunt,” he said as he dropped himself into one of the wicker and leather chairs next to a small table. The Swift wasn’t exactly set up for passenger comfort, but they’d long ago decided that the basic niceties were necessities.

For a moment, Hink didn’t think the man was going to oblige his invitation.

Then Mr. Hunt walked over and sat.

Hink handed him the flask. Mr. Hunt took a hard swallow and handed it back.

“Your brother’s a wolf, and your woman’s a witch,” the captain mused. “I find that some of the more interesting things I’ve seen lately. As luck would have it, I happen to have several hours on my hands to listen to the explanation of who you are, where you’re coming from, and where you’re going to. And, oh yes, why.”

Mr. Hunt didn’t say anything, just gave him that hard bronze gaze.

Hink settled in to outwait the man. Because they weren’t moving a single step farther along this trail until he knew exactly what kind of trouble he had on his hands.

General Alabaster Saint’s sword tapped the top of his boot with each stride as he paced the edge of Candlewick Bluff. The rocky ground beneath him cracked like bones of the dead as he surveyed the lower range and valley of the Big Horn Mountains spread wide before him.

He was waiting. Waiting in the cold dark before dawn, all the men in his militia sleeping, the three airships lashed down and cool in the night. Waiting for a message from his spies.

He’d sent out twenty men. To find Marshal Cage and bring him in. Dead or alive. The same men were told to listen for rumors of the weapon Alabaster Saint most wanted to get his hands on. The Holder.

During the war, both sides had claimed they were in possession of it. He’d found no proof that it was true. But he’d intercepted a man who said Marshal Cage had orders to track it if he could. Which meant the president was interested in the weapon.

And so was General Alabaster Saint.

He had spent years gathering men sympathetic to his cause. Men willing to rise up against the excessive restrictions and regulations on the western glim that the eastern states craved. Men willing to fight for the territory of the west to control all trade and profits made from glim, on both the legal and the illegal markets.

Saint had served his time fighting other men’s wars for zero profit.

Now it was time for a visionary leader to join glim harvesters and pirates in a common goal: to control the glim fields of the United States of America and govern the skies under law unconnected with the land beneath it.

A crow shook free from a tree, shadowing black across the gray sky. The general tracked it with the single eye left to him, watching it disappear into the deep of the hills.

This land’s war had brought him pain, suffering, and enough grief to choke a man. He’d lost his son, James, on the field, then his wife, Laura, to the grief.

The war had taken both of them from him.

And given him nothing in return. He was done with this land. But he still wanted the sky.

“General?” Lieutenant Foster walked up behind him, his pace altered by the drag of the prosthetic foot he’d worn for the last three years. The lantern in his hand swung a steady beam of light across the rocks and scrub around them.

Lieutenant Foster had been with him the longest of any of his men and had proven himself an unflinching second, unafraid to carry out his every command.

The tales of the Saint’s cruelty on and off the field had been passed in whispers between rank and file, building the Saint up into a nightmarish commander. Lieutenant Foster had done nothing to stop such talk. Because none of those tales were quite correct.

Most men, except for perhaps Lieutenant Foster, weren’t capable of imagining the sorts of things Alabaster Saint was truly willing to inflict on a man to see that his word was obeyed during the war.

And obey him they did, down to a man.

Until Mr. Hink Cage came under his service.

Charismatic, devious, a man who followed his own caprice, Captain Cage obeyed orders for a year before rising up with half the division and refusing his orders on the grounds that the Saint was not following the president’s order to hold the line until reinforcements came.

It was true that the Saint had been acting without orders. It was certainly not the first time. And he had one of the highest mortality rates in the Union army because of it.

Captain Cage had intercepted the president’s correspondence, then refused to march.

With one uprising, Cage forced the Saint to call the single retreat in his career.

Publicly shamed, Saint was put on trial for more than disobeying orders. Someone had infiltrated his records and correspondence. Records of the weapons trading the Saint had profited from.

When he stood trial, the man who had spied on him testified. That man was Captain Hink Cage.

The North and South spent five years beating each other into bloody graves. Now the states were one Union again, one land again with a railway to stitch over the old wounds.

But no one had yet claimed the skies.

Lieutenant Foster cleared his throat.

“What is it, Lieutenant?”

“There’s a man to see you, sir.”

The Saint adjusted the patch over the hole where his left eye used to be and turned.

Foster looked pressed and clean, as if he’d just walked out of a tailor’s shop. His dark hair was combed back off his forehead, his face clean shaven except for the precisely trimmed sideburns that reached down to his jaw.

Didn’t matter how much mud and blood he was wading through, the man always cut a sharp figure.

“What man, Lieutenant Foster?” Could be one of the spies he’d sent out. But if it were, Foster would have just told him who had returned with news.

The spies knew better than to return without news.

“He didn’t give me his name, sir.” Foster licked his lips and looked as close to nervous as the Saint had ever seen him. “He’s waiting in your office.”

“I’m going to need more than that,” he said. “Where’s he from? What’s he look made of? Why’s he here?”

“Permission to speak plainly, sir.”

Alabaster Saint narrowed his eye. Then, “Granted.”

Lieutenant Foster relaxed his bearing just the nth of a degree and met Alabaster’s gaze.