Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon (15 page)

“What's in there?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Don't know. They loaded up from covered wagons.”

“And who exactly are they?”

He hesitated. “You don't want to know.”

As her slot arrived and she was waved into the air, the groundsmen casting off the cables, Rowena quickly brought the
Skylady III
up to a cruising height. New York rumbled into life and the ever-present smog began to creep up from street-level, the heat and the churning of ten thousand steam engines creating a rising tide of insidious, impenetrable gray that would engulf the tops of the skyscrapers by nightfall. She charted a course south and west, and then she only needed to glance over the instructions one more time (ten miles out of San Antonio she was to signal a preset sequence with the heliograph, to allow her access to Steamtown and stop the Texans blowing her out of the sky with their steam-cannons) then sit tight while her bay was unloaded and filled up with the return cargo.

She had the best of intentions, she really did. But once she was airborne, with few distractions in the largely 'stat-free skies on her course, she couldn't stop herself staring at the manila envelope she was meant to hand over to the Steamtown groundsmen. She went to make a pot of coffee and toast some bread in the galley, but as she sat back in the leather chair on the bridge, her eyes kept gazing toward the envelope.

She picked it up and inspected the wax seal. It was imprinted with the gothic “B” symbol of the Brethren. She plucked the union pin from the lapel of her flying jacket, which was embossed with the same ornate feature. A bit of candle wax, pressed with the pin … they'd never know the difference between that and the original seal in Steamtown, where they didn't get much Brethren traffic, surely.

“To hell with it,” she muttered, and slid her thumb under the envelope's flap, breaking the Brethren seal. She slid out a single sheet of paper, which bore no company masthead or other identifying marks. It detailed the return cargo only: an eye-watering five hundred tons of coal. Rowena had never lifted anything approaching that and hoped it didn't leave her grounded in San Antonio or crashed in the desert. At the bottom of the manifest were the words “payment as agreed” and a scrawled signature she couldn't decipher.

So someone in Manhattan was doing business with Steamtown. What had Governor Lyle said?
You wouldn't believe how much coal a city like New York runs on.… Much of it, we buy in.
Governor Lyle would be very interested to know that the coal his city ran on was being bought from Steamtown, she thought. And it wasn't money that someone was paying with … but just what had been loaded up in her hold that Steamtown would take as payment in kind for coal?

For another half an hour, Rowena sat on the bridge, watching the vast empty prairies unfold before her. Then she made a decision, and went to get a hefty crowbar from the stores. The men had chained up the handles of the door down to the cargo bay, but after a moment's hesitation it was the work of two minutes to pry the chain and padlock off with a sharp snap.

She hauled open the door and peered down into the cargo bay.

“Oh,” she said eventually. “Oh, shit.”

 

11

D
AMN
S
TEAMTOWN
TO
A
H
UNDRED
H
ELLS

“Mr. Bent, I am presuming you haven't done much in the way of riding before,” called Jeb Hart, his words echoing around the rust-colored walls of the steep-sided canyon he was leading them through.

“I am renowned…,” panted Bent from the rear, “… as something … of a … chevalier in the brothels of Whitechapel … you cheeky effer.…”

“He means horses, not whores,” said Gideon from the middle of the short column.

“Well, I wouldn't be expected to be a horseman, chap of my girth and sensibilities,” shouted Bent. “I'm an effing journalist, not some kind of country gent or … or cattle wrangler!”

They had been riding for half a day, the pace slow due to Bent's steed, an old workhorse from the barracks, plodding at its own pace and requiring frequent stops to drink water and to piss—“not unlike Mr. Bent himself,” Jeb Hart had observed. Gideon was on nodding terms with horses, having ridden a bit in his youth, though not over any great distance. He was enjoying the feel of freedom that riding afforded him, the sensation that he could dig his heels into the pony and bolt off into the wide-open spaces, and not see another man for days. Even in the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors there was only so far you could go before you chanced upon a village or trading post. Here the world seemed infinite in both breadth and possibilities.

Their route had taken them along the Mason-Dixon Wall for the first three hours, then Hart had led them on a meandering path north, ducking into valleys and around hills until the Wall was lost from sight, and finally he brought them in an arc back westward. “They're a suspicious bunch in Steamtown,” he'd said. “We need to make them think we've been out on the plains for a matter of weeks, not just flown in on a military dirigible.”

At the next stop, where a cool spring ran down the wall of the canyon just as it opened out into a wide, yellow prairie dotted with the shapes of dark cacti, Hart rubbed dust into the trouser legs of Gideon and Bent, and tore at their sleeves with a length of thorny bush.

“That's my best coat,” Bent protested.

“All part of the deception,” said Jeb. The horses were allowed to drink deep from the small pool that gathered where the spring flowed down the orange rocks. Jeb filled the canteens and squinted into the west.

“I figure we've time for some food. Might just get us to Steamtown before dark.”

“Food, thank God, thought you were never going to effing mention food,” said Bent, walking up and down with a rolling, simian gait. “Christ, my poor old effing arse is like a pound of tripe that's been set to with a carpet beater. I don't think I'll ever shit right again.”

Gideon, too, was feeling saddle-sore from the journey. He was keen to get to their destination, but wary, too. “What's the plan when we get to San Antonio?”

Hart looked up from where he was fanning the campfire embers with his hat. “I was hoping you was going to tell me, Mr. Smith. I'm merely your guide.”

Gideon looked to the sun as it proceeded toward the line of mountains out west. “What will this Thaddeus Pinch's reaction to us walking into his town be?”

Hart piled some dry twigs onto the leaping flames amid the brushwood. “Well, it's true to say that Steamtown don't get many tourists, as such. But people do go to visit. Men, of course, with what you might call appetites.”

Gideon frowned and Bent sighed. “He means them as fancy a roll in the hay with the hookers. And the whorehouses are that special, are they, Hart? That men would travel thousands of miles to visit them?”

Hart shrugged. “It's not so much the women, Mr. Bent, as the rules. There are none. Anything goes in Steamtown, and frequently does. There are no boundaries, no one telling you you've gone too far.” He blew softly at the heart of the fire. “I guess some men likes that freedom.”

“Then we'll be two … two gentlemen from London, perhaps unsavory types, touring the Americas and eager to see this Steamtown we've heard so much about,” said Gideon. “And you'll be the guide whose services we have secured.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” said Hart. “They know my face in Steamtown, know that's the sort of thing I might be apt to do.”

Bent nudged him. “'Course, what they don't know is that you work for the Governor of New York,” he said with a wink.

Hart didn't smile. “No, Mr. Bent, and I'd rather they didn't, no more than you'd want them to know you was agents of the British Crown. That wouldn't be very good at all, not for any of us.”

While Hart warmed up some beans, Gideon sat on a rock and watched Bent flicking through his notebook. When he came to the sketch he'd made of the tattoo, Bent said, “Here, you been around Nyu Edo and all that. You read that Japanese stuff?”

“Enough to get me by.” Hart nodded, taking the notebook from Bent. He stared at it and frowned just long enough for Gideon to catch his expression, then said, “Mr. Bent, I don't think this is actually … um, where did you say you saw it?”

“On the neck of that dead ninja who attacked Lyle,” said Bent.

Hart shook his head. “No. Like I said, I just about get by. No idea what that is at all.”

Gideon caught the swift glance Bent shot at him. “Maybe you'd like a longer look?”

Hart shook his head. “No, thank you, Mr. Bent. Not one I recognize. Now I think our beans are ready; we should eat up if we want to get to Steamtown before dark.”

*   *   *

They made good time after their meal, or so it seemed to Gideon. Even Bent managed to pick up the pace, though his incessant complaining about the tenderness of his rump continued unabated and with increasingly imaginative language.

Hart slowed to allow Gideon to come alongside as they passed by a ridge of rock topped with tufts of desert grass. He shielded a match from the wind to light a cigar and appraised Gideon from beneath the shadow of his hat.

“So you're the best the Empire has, then?”

Gideon shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “I wouldn't say that.”

Hart spat in the dry dust. “So if this job's so important, why send you if you're not the best?”

Gideon fixed his eyes on the horizon. “As Governor Lyle said, this is a necessarily secret endeavor.”

Hart nodded. “But the British government doesn't have more experienced operatives at its disposal than a fisherman and a scribbler?”

Gideon glanced at him. Mr. Hart certainly seemed to know more than he let on. He said, “If you know so much about me, you'll know that this is also something of a personal mission.”

“You should never mix business and pleasure, Mr. Smith,” said Hart. He peered forward. “You see that?”

Gideon followed his outstretched hand to where a column of black smoke bisected the blue sky beyond the ridge. “Steamtown?” he said.

“Not yet,” said Hart. “I'll take a look.”

As he spurred his horse forward into a canter, Bent eventually caught up with Gideon. He said, “He's just trying to needle you. Ignore him.”

“He's right though, isn't he?” said Gideon. “Why has Mr. Walsingham sent the two of us to rescue Maria and bring back Apep?”

Bent sighed. “Look, you know my feelings on the whole shooting match. Walsingham and his crew, they're not to be trusted. But sometimes what they want and what you want can rub up, fit together for a while. Let's get through this little soiree in one piece and maybe we can start asking a few questions, eh?”

Gideon looked ahead to where Hart had stopped at the edge of the ridge. “Come on,” he said. “Let's see what this is all about.”

*   *   *

Oswald P. Ackroyd had just about had enough. It was a tough enough life, overseeing a ranch with fifteen hundred head of cattle in the middle of nowhere, a hundred miles from the nearest collection of wooden houses that you might call a town. He had to work his fingers to the bone from dawn to past dark every single day—not even a rest on the Lord's day, because there wasn't a church he could get to and back on a Sunday. He had only his sister's feckless son Albert to help out, because despite his best efforts he'd only been able to fill his sweet wife Caroline with daughters. Not that he could have loved those four girls more, because he couldn't. But being the father of girls had its own troubles, especially with a young man in the house who was getting to that age when he was randy as a dog day and night. Also, the girls now wanted pretty things, dresses and combs and mirrors, so when he did eventually get to drive some beef over to Nixontown or Redcreek Gorge or, once a year, to the big markets at Randolph City, then he had to take them with him or come back laden with trinkets and white cloth … either way, several guineas lighter than he should have been.

But all that he could cope with, because Oswald P. Ackroyd was a loving, generous, hardworking man who just wanted the best for his family, and if that meant taking the pioneer shilling and coming out here to one of the few patches of arable land so close to the Mason-Dixon Wall, then so be it. So long as he could take Caroline back to New York once a year or so to see her folks, and keep young Albert's trousers tightly buckled, then everyone was relatively happy. Everyone got by.

What really pissed him off were these Steamtown bastards who thought they could waltz on to his ranch and start calling the shots.

There were four of them, and the ringleader was sitting on the porch—in Oswald's favorite rocking chair, chewing tobacco. He spat a brown stream onto the stoop and didn't apologize. Oswald gripped the barrel of his shotgun tighter with his sweating palm.

“Now, then, pappy,” drawled the Steamtown punk, his hat pushed back over his black hair. “Suppose you just put that peashooter down before someone gets hurt.”

“Suppose you just get the hell off my land,” said Oswald.

The man tutted. “Nasty mouth you got there, pappy. And you with four such pretty daughters as well.”

Oswald glanced over his shoulder at Caroline and the girls, huddled in the kitchen behind him. “You don't even look at my girls, mister.” God
damn
Albert for being away getting supplies at Nixontown today. The one day he might have come in useful. Goddamn him.

The man sat forward. His three boys were lounging around the porch, two with Winchester repeaters, the other making a show of polishing the barrels of a pair of Colts with his ragged shirtsleeve. “Look here, pappy. All we want is two … make that three hundred head of beef. We gotta eat in Steamtown, same as regular folks. Think of it as
insurance
.”