Devon Monk - Tin Swift

“You think she’s aboard?”

“She must be.”

The sound of fans grew louder as the ship neared.

“There!” Joonie said. “That’s Mr. Hunt.”

Mae’s heart lurched. She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath, wondering if he was alive.

“We’re coming aboard!” he yelled, from where he hung half out of the craft.

Ansell strode over to the door. “Is the captain alive? We lost the boiler.”

“He’s alive,” Cedar yelled. “Stand back while we secure the ship.”

Ansell got out of the doorway. A cannon boomed, and ropes fell like rain around the ship. No, not rain, it was a net with weighted bolos on the edges catching at the ship.

Clever.

Ansell stepped up to the door and latched the net onto the hooks worked into the frame. Then he tied two extra lines from the netting to bars inside the ship. The net formed a sort of rope walkway between the two vessels.

Mae shifted so she could see out the door. Cedar Hunt strode into the room, bloody, burned, but whole, and Mae felt as if she’d just seen the sun rise.

Then Bryn Madder strode in behind him, his tool belt and pockets bulgy with metal and devices, his goggles strapped across his forehead. “Heard there’s a blown gasket or two?” he said. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Back that way,” Cedar said.

“You know him?” Ansell asked, eyeing the bull-shouldered short Madder.

“Yes. And he’ll treat the ship right, Mr. Ansell.” Cedar paced over to Mae.

“And the captain?” Ansell asked.

“He’s still breathing, but hurt badly,” Cedar said. “Mae, can you help him?”

“The captain?” she asked. “I can try. Of course. But I won’t leave Rose. Cedar, we can’t leave her behind.”

Cedar’s eyes went hard. “Who said we’re going to leave her behind?”

“I…” Mae looked around the room. Someone had said it. Surely they had. But she couldn’t remember. There were too many voices in her head, too many words screaming at her, pulling at her.

Cedar’s hand gently touched her face. “…need you to stay with us, Mae. Just a bit longer.”

She blinked hard, trying to focus on him. His touch, his words. “I’m fine,” she said. “What do I need to do?”

“I need you to tend to the captain.”

“Bring him here,” she said.

“Mae, the ship isn’t steady. It’d be better if you came over to the Madders’ craft. Better if we all boarded their ship.”

She heard him, his voice a low rumble beneath the sisters’ constant shriek. But he wasn’t listening to her.

“Captain Cage needs to be here,” Mae said, not sure that her voice was rising above the sisters’. “He needs to be on the Swift . He’s tied to her. Bound because I bound him, tied him. His ship’s dying. He’s dying.”

Ansell muttered something, but Cedar must have heard her and understood. “I’ll bring him. Stay here with Rose.”

Then Mr. Alun Madder was suddenly strolling across the ship toward her.

“How’s Miss Small?” he asked, looking genuinely concerned.

“Fine as wine,” Rose whispered.

Alun looked down at her and gave her a smile. “Just lying around when there’s a ship to be flown? That’s not like you, Rose.”

“I offered to fix it,” she said slowly, her words falling off at the end of each breath. “Mae said no.”

“And you listened?”

“Just haven’t argued yet,” Rose managed. Then her face screwed up in pain and she bit her lip, her moan thin and high. Even the blood that trickled from her lip was tinged with gray.

“Mrs. Lindson,” Alun said, “if you have a way of making Mr. Hunt find that piece of Holder, then now’s the time for him to do so. She won’t last the hour.”

There was a ruckus of boots and grunting as Cedar, Wil, and Seldom carried Captain Cage into the ship and laid him down on the blankets near Rose’s hammock.

Someone had taken the time to wipe most of the blood from his face, but there was no hiding the hole where his right eye should be, nor the burned star in his forehead.

“I’ll need my satchel,” Mae said, walking over, then kneeling next to the captain. “Someone check his limbs and torso for wounds.” She ran her fingers over his neck, his head, and then looked at both his ears.

He had lost the eye. His face was burned, bruised. But he still had one eye, his tongue, both ears, and his nose.

Seldom split the buttons on the captain’s shirt and spread it open. His entire chest was bruised and knotted, with black, green, and sickly yellows spread out across his skin.

“Bullet hole in one leg,” Seldom said. “Broken arm. I don’t see blood except his face.”

“That’s good, thank you, Mr. Seldom.” She took her satchel from Cedar and soaked a cloth with the coca leaf tonic, then pressed that against his eye socket and did the same for the brand in his forehead. She quickly bandaged his head, and then wrapped his ribs, in hopes they weren’t so broken that they were cutting up his insides.

She put his arm in a sling and soaked another cloth with the coca leaf to tie down tight over both sides of the hole in his leg.

He didn’t wake. He didn’t stir. But he was breathing.

“That’s all,” she said, trying to think through the call of the sisters, the incessant push for her to return to the coven, to walk, run, jump the ship if she had to. “That’s all I can do for him. If the ship can be patched, any at all, it might help him.”

“Bryn’s working on it,” Cedar said.

She looked up. Some time had passed. Miss Dupuis was sitting next to Mr. Theobald, holding his hand. She was very pale and silent, her eyes red as tears stained her face.

Mae knew that sorrow. Mr. Theobald had been more than a traveling companion to Miss Dupuis. He had been her love.

Wil and Cedar seemed oblivious to her pain, and stood squared off toward Alun Madder. From the set of their shoulders and grim expressions, it was clear they had been arguing.

“What?” Mae asked.

“You tell her, Mr. Hunt,” Alun said. “It’s your idea.”

Cedar turned to her, and helped her stand. “Rose needs the Holder. Mr. Madder still thinks if we can find the tin piece of it, we can use it to draw out the key that is killing her.”

“Yes,” Mae said. “I remember.”

“Mr. Shunt is down there. He was in the compound. I think he has the Holder with him,” Cedar said.

“So you’re going to go find him, right?” she asked. “You’ll hunt him, find him, take the Holder from him, and bring it back for Rose.”

“We don’t have time.”

His words were even, and without much emotion. But she could see the sorrow in his eyes.

Rose. It was Rose who didn’t have the time.

“What can we do then? We can’t just…Oh, Cedar, we can’t just let her die.”

“Can you save her?” he asked. “Your magic is vows and curses: bindings. Can you call to the Holder, Mae? Now that it is so near, can you cast a spell to bind the piece that’s in her to the whole of it? It used to be one whole thing. It might respond to being one thing again at your urging. If you can bind it to itself, and to Rose, just like you bound the captain and his ship, you’d draw it here, right out of Shunt’s hands. Rose might have a chance then. We could try to remove the piece once we have the chunk it came from.”

“Bind it?” Mae’s heart raced. “I don’t…my magic. It’s so hard to focus. To make magic do what I want. If I bound it to…to Rose. Made her a part of it like Captain Hink and the Swift …” She searched his face. “I could kill her.”

Cedar nodded. “I can’t think of any other way to save her, Mae. No time. No Holder. She’d want you to try. You know she would.”