Devon Monk - Tin Swift

Miss Dupuis pulled the shotgun off her shoulder. “Perfectly, Captain.”

Hink drew the flare gun from where it was holstered low on his hip. He took aim straight up, and fired into the clouds.

A bright orange-pink flame burned a trail up and up, then blew open like a Chinese firework.

The sound of an engine grew louder. Whatever ship was out there, they’d seen the flare. And they were on the way.

Mae was trying not to listen to the sisters. Ever since they had run out of Old Jack’s mountain, the voices had come back in force. Furious. They no longer sang, but screamed for her to return home, clawing at her sanity, stabbing at her mind.

She didn’t know how she had endured it before.

When Mr. Guffin had told her they were anchored and she could take off her harness and step away from the wall, she just shook her head. The need, the push to be home at the coven, was so strong she didn’t trust her own feet.

It would be too easy to listen to the voices that told her to come, walk, run to them. No matter that there was nothing but hundreds of feet of empty air between her and the ground—if she weren’t harnessed, she just might step out into the wind.

The sisters’ voices had come on so gradually since Jeb’s death that she hadn’t realized just how much of a torment they had become. Her marriage vows to Jeb had taken the place of her vows to the sisters. But now that he was dead and that vow was broken, her earlier vows, made of magic and blood, were demanding her return.

And she knew the sisterhood wasn’t so much calling her home as calling for her death.

They feared her magic. Feared the curses and bindings, oaths and vows she so easily drew upon.

They feared her. Probably always had.

Once she returned, if she returned, she would ask them to break this binding that tied her to the soil of the coven.

She should have never let them throw such ropes around her, but she had been young and afraid of her own abilities. They had told her the bindings would hold her safe, like a net. A way to assure that she never fell into using magic for ill causes. That she never harmed anyone.

Even though magic could easily lean toward dark results in her hands, she had only wanted to use it for good, for love, for mercy. And the sisterhood could not tell her she had ever done so wrongly. Not without admitting that what they were doing to her now was also wrong.

Rose was awake, silent, lying on the hammock and staring at the ceiling. Her color was so pale and gray, it was almost as if her skin were turning into tin. Even her lips had a bluish cast. But when Mae brushed her hair back from her forehead with shaking fingers, she blinked and smiled.

“Have we seen the signal yet?” she asked.

Mae had to hold her breath against the screaming in her mind and focus on Rose’s lips to understand the words.

Signal? Oh, yes. They were waiting for a signal from Captain Hink so they could find him and Cedar and those other people. So they could rescue them. If they were still alive.

“Not yet,” she said. “Soon. I’m sure soon.”

Rose swallowed and closed her eyes. Mae knew she wasn’t sleeping. She’d offered to give her another dose of the coca leaf tonic, but Rose had refused it. She didn’t even want the laudanum, afraid it would put her too deeply asleep again.

All she had allowed Mae to do was change the dressing on her wound.

Her shoulder was hot, and still weeping greenish-yellow fluid. They needed to find the Holder, and remove the key buried in her.

Even if they removed the tin, Mae wasn’t sure if it would be enough to save her.

“There!” Guffin said. “The flare. See it?”

Ansell and Seldom both scrambled to the windows. And so did Molly, who had been whittling on something that looked like a whistle while waiting for the engines to be needed.

“We want steam, boys?” she asked.

“Bring her up, Molly.” Seldom was already jogging to the wheel while Ansell and Guffin took their places on either side of him.

“Hold tight, ladies,” Molly said as she opened the blast door, releasing a billowing wave of heat into the cabin. “We’re on our way!”

Rose opened her eyes. “Are we flying?”

“Yes,” Mae said. “We’re flying.”

They had strapped Rose into the hammock and tied cross lines from the hammock to each wall so it couldn’t swing too far to either side.

Mae made sure the blanket was tucked tight around her.

“Can I have the tonic now?” she asked.

“Of course.” Mae helped Rose drink the tonic straight from the bottle. “Just a sip,” she cautioned.

“Up anchor!” Seldom called.

“Aye,” Ansell answered. He worked the winch and cranked the anchor free.

The ship swayed in the breeze, but seemed to drift for only a moment before the fans were on and the sails were set.

“We’ll have them soon,” Mae said, to herself, to Rose, to the sisters screaming in her head as she rubbed her hands down the front of her dress, wiping her palms. “We’ll have them and then we’ll be on our way. On our way soon again. Soon. And then,” she said, speaking just to the scream of the sisters voices in her head, “I will break this tie between us.”

The roar of the fans turning against the wind and the huff of steam clearing the flues drowned her soft words.

Captain Hink scanned the sky, his gun in his hand. Everyone was spread out among the boulders outside the opening to the tunnel, weapons drawn, waiting for the Swift .

But all he could hear was the engine from another vessel, bigger, heavier. A vessel he did not know.

He cussed and kept a sky eye. If he didn’t hear the Swift soon, then they’d all take cover back in the tunnel and hope the other ship didn’t get a hard read on that flare.

And while they were at it they could hope Old Jack hadn’t happened to see the flare light up the eastern sky, and wasn’t willing to send his boys around to do some more shooting.

They were trapped. He was wounded. And unless they wanted to run through the mountain range on the turn of winter with no provisions other than a few blankets and lanterns, there wasn’t anything else they could do but wait for the Swift .

There was the chance the ship wasn’t headed toward them, but was coincidentally stopping off at Old Jack’s to resupply. Hink had never met a coincidence he was willing to bet his life on.

The engine grew louder, but the peaks threw the sound around and broke it up so bad that for all he could tell, there were two or three ships out there.

“Two engines,” Cedar said from where he stood with the wolf not too far off from Hink.

Hink tipped his head. “Either you’re full of wishing, Mr. Hunt, or you have damn sharp ears.”

“I gave up wishing years ago,” Cedar said. “Is it the Swift ?”

Hink took a breath and held it, straining to hear the familiar fans of his vessel. She’d be coming in fast, or at least he hoped to hell she was coming in fast for them.

Every time he thought he had a bead on it, the wind changed and snatched away the rumble of the fans, and all he heard instead was Theobald sneeze, or the brush around them rustle and scratch.

Cedar Hunt had said he heard two engines.

There. Yes. Hink could make out the pulses of two different ships.

One wasn’t the Swift .

But he would bet his bottom dollar the other was.

“Two ships,” he said, loud enough the others could hear. “One’s the Swift . I’d say she’s coming from the…south?” He glanced at Cedar.

Cedar nodded.

“She’ll land if we have time. If not, if that other ship decides to take a swat at us, or worse, tries to shoot us dead, then we might want to do a running board. Ever done that?”