The Iron Duke (18 page)

Mina lowered the spyglass. “Will we reach the fort ahead of them?”

“Yes. Yasmeen will put the engines at full bore, and with this wind, she’ll run at sixty knots to their fifteen.”

Even as Trahaearn spoke, Yasmeen gave orders that an aviator relayed by shouting into metal tubes running through the deck floor. Bells rang up and down the rails.

“And we’ll fly directly over the fort,” he said. “They’ll have to anchor offshore and row their boats in. Altogether, we should have an hour on them after we’ve arrived.”

Mina nodded. “Why did she call them idiots?”

Keeping his mouth still near to her left ear, Trahaearn moved around behind her until he shared her line of sight. His right palm flattened against her side, and she felt the huge size of his hand through her jacket and armor. “Raise that glass up again, and look to the first ship of the line.”

Swallowing, Mina did. She searched, and finally found the ship’s squared-off stern and tall rigging through the lens, the image shaking from the vibrations in the airship and the unsteadiness of her hands.

“There’s smoke coming from the main deck. Do you see it?”

Barely. If he hadn’t told her to look for it, she wouldn’t have detected the dark smudge. “Yes.”

“Those are the steelcoats. They’re firing up the suits’ mobility engines, and waiting in formation on the decks.”

Oh, smoking hells.
That couldn’t bode well for the boys. As harrowing as the kidnapping was, as long as the ransom was paid, very few men or women held hostage came to harm. The practice had become so common among pirates that being taken for ransom was almost to be expected by the upper classes and the wealthy traveling on the high seas—and treated as an everyday business transaction.

But when relations refused to pay the ransom and instead attacked the pirates, everyone usually ended up dead.

“Are they readying the steelcoats as a threat? Or do they intend to storm the fort?”

“Does it matter? Either way, the Dame will know that a ransom won’t be part of any deal they make. So if she sees them coming, she’ll cut and run—and we’ll have no information on the
Terror
, no arrest for you, no boys left alive.” He took the spyglass. “Some idiot merchant threw his weight around, demanded his boy be rescued, and now the navy’s charging in. Two hundred years with no nation to protect, just the trade routes, and the navy got used to bending over for them—but it’s everyone else who’s fucked.”

The bitterness in his voice startled her.
He’d been angry about this once
, she thought. But now there was more resignation than fury.

And he probably had it exactly right. While the Horde had occupied England, the navy had become the merchants’ muscle in Manhattan City. But it didn’t have to stay that way.

“That should change now that the Crown is funding naval operations again.” At least she hoped so. The taxes squeezed out of her had to be doing some good—and right or wrong, loyalty very often followed money. Even if she felt the pinch of it, Mina preferred that the navy took money from the Crown’s purse than from the merchants. “And England’s interests will be put ahead of the merchants’ again—and already must be. Not every commander is the merchants’ tool.”

“No, not all of them. But there’s one fewer now.”

Baxter
, Mina realized. “There will soon be more like him.”

“That won’t help us today.” Trahaearn lowered the spyglass. His fingers curled around the side of her waist. “You’ve got armor. And your constable?”

She remembered to breathe. “He does, too.”

“All right.” His voice lowered against her ear, though no one could possibly have heard him before. “I’ll keep you safe, inspector.”

How?
He was a danger to her, just by being who he was. Moving away from his hand, she said, “I’ll do that myself, sir.”

 

 

The captain cut
Lady Corsair
’s
engines a mile from the
shore and let the sails take them in. In the sudden quiet, Mina stared out over bow, entranced by the thin ribbon of yellow sand, and the tangled marsh surrounding Calais’s ruins, now little more than stone rubble. Beyond it, a forest stretched to the horizon. Never had she seen so many trees, gnarled and twisted near the sand, becoming fuller and greener farther away from the beach.

Zombies could hide between those trees. But how could an airship?

She looked to Trahaearn, standing beside her. “Where is
Bontemps
?”

He pointed to the west of Calais’s ruins, near the edge of the marsh, where the growth of trees didn’t seem so dense. “The old fort is there. They maintain the walls to keep out the zombies.”

Using the spyglass, she could just make out the stone remains—worn and weathered, but not rubble. Gray stone walls surrounded the ruins of long structures supported by crumbling arches. Aqueducts, maybe. As they drew closer, she spotted a few sheep grazing in the yards, and small wooden shacks that probably housed chickens, but nothing inhabitable by humans.

“Where do they live?”

“Underground,” Trahaearn said. “Evans settled here because he wanted to dig a tunnel under the Channel from the fort to Dover—”

A laugh burst from her. She couldn’t have heard that correctly. “A
what
?”

He grinned. “A tunnel under the Channel.”

“Did he actually try?”

“Yes. But it filled with water even before he reached the shore. He blamed the marshes.”

No.
Shoulders shaking, Mina steepled her hands in front of her mouth, laughing silently. When her stomach hurt and she couldn’t take another breath, she pushed up her goggles and wiped her eyes. “Oh, he
is
insane.”

“But brilliant,” Trahaearn said. “When his tunnel failed, he kept digging. This area is a maze of underground chambers now. His generators power electric lights and continually pump the water seepage into the steam engines, so that all he has to do is keep the furnace stoked.”

Mina looked out over the fort again, eyes wide. “Are you certain that’s not just a drunk’s tale?”

“Three years ago, one of the Dame’s aviators went in to the Blacksmith’s for a new leg. Scarsdale found out, and chatted him up at the Hammer & Chain.”

More drunken stories then, but from a different source. “But where would Evans find enough fuel? That much coal would—
Oh
,” she realized. “The trees. But how does he avoid the zombies?”

“Evans built a harvester—an armored tank that saws down the trees and drags them back to the fort.”

Just like the Horde was rumored to do in other parts of Europe. Giant machines harvested their crops, and stored the food within walled settlements until it was shipped east.

“Inspector.” Trahaearn’s eyes were narrowed as he looked toward the fort. “The spyglass.”

She passed it to him, and watched his face as he peered through the telescope. Whatever he saw didn’t please him. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” He shook his head. “No one is manning the walls. There should be at least two lookouts—one for the forest, one for the sea.”

Uneasy, Mina watched the fort for any signs of humans—or zombies—but not a single one appeared as they flew closer.

They were passing over the fort walls when Newberry came up on the main deck, carrying two machetes, a gun belt with holsters, and a fat-barreled blunderbuss. He offered them to Trahaearn.

“Captain Corsair said that these were for you.”

Trahaearn nodded and shrugged out of his long overcoat—and then his short one, followed by his waistcoat. A white lawn shirt stretched over his broad back, doing little to hide the heavy muscles beneath . . . yet she would have liked to see them, anyway. Mina turned away, gripping the rail. Newberry joined her, his face red as a plum.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t see the airship, sir.”

Buckling the holsters around his hips, Trahaearn glanced over the side and nodded. “It’s there. The main yard.”

Puzzled, Mina stared at the ground before realizing that a fence surrounded a long, rectangular section of the yard, preventing the sheep from straying into that area. The oddly mottled ground surface in that section was sunken . . . as if a painted canvas had been stretched across a large hole.

Unbelievable. If the airship was anchored beneath that, she could hardly imagine the size of the underground chamber.

“Yasmeen will wait for us near the fort’s south wall,” Trahaearn said, pushing the machetes through leather loops on each side of the gun belt. “We’ll ride
Lady Corsair
’s cargo platform down into the compound rather than taking the ladder one at a time. The walls should keep out the zombies, but if one comes over, shoot it on sight. Aim for the head. We run straight for the cover over
Bontemps
, and drop in on the Dame from there.”

He hefted a coil of rope over his shoulder. Mina looked back toward the sea. The fort only sat five hundred yards from the beach, and the navy ships were drawing quickly nearer. “How long?”

“The wind picked up,” Trahaearn said. “They’ll be ready to anchor in twenty minutes, but it’ll take them longer to row into shore and to cross the marsh. So we need to be done in forty. Ready, then?”

With a nod, Mina followed him amidships, where two aviators waited at the platform’s control lever. With a rattle of chains, the cargo platform rose even with the decks. Bracing his hand on the gunwale, Trahaearn vaulted over the side onto the platform, and turned to help Mina while Newberry clambered over.

She looked back at the airship and blinked. All along the wooden sides, small gunports had opened. At each one, an aviator stood with a rifle, watching the ground below.

Trahaearn must have noted her surprise. “Worth every denier,” he said.

Apparently.
Mina braced her feet as the platform began lowering. Trahaearn held the blunderbuss loosely in his left hand, barrel pointed toward the ground. Behind her, she heard Newberry draw in a deep, steadying breath.

The platform touched the ground, and she felt the vibration under her feet. She glanced at Trahaearn. “The generators?”

“Yes.”

“Then someone must be here.” A furnace didn’t stoke itself.

He nodded. “Let’s go.”

A sheep bleated as they raced across the yard. Mina’s heart pounded, but there were no shouts, no gunshots. Trahaearn reached the fence and lifted Mina over before she could protest. Three feet away from the fence, the painted canvas cover had been fastened to a metal frame with hook-and-eye loops. Mina quickly freed one corner, folding back a triangle of heavy canvas. She peered down into the chamber.

Bontemps
’s white balloon almost reached the chamber’s canvas roof, and obscured most everything below. Squinting, Mina made out a few large crates stacked on the floor near the corner. No movement, no lights.

Trahaearn crouched beside her, the coil of rope in hand, and Mina saw that he’d tied the other end around the thick fence post. He tossed the rope into the chamber. “I’m down first. I’ll wave you in when it’s secure.”

Her heart leapt into her throat as he backed up and jumped in—not using the rope to climb down, but to slow his fall. On her knees, she braced her hands at the edge, looked over, and saw him land near the crates. The tension on the rope slackened. She tracked him by his white shirt as he walked along the wall of the chamber, until he disappeared from view beneath the sides of the balloon.

Glancing back, she checked on Newberry. The constable had apparently shed his nervousness. Weapons ready, he stood near the fence, quietly scanning the yard.
Good man.

She looked into the chamber again as Trahaearn walked into view again. Mina took hold of the rope when he waved her down.

“Follow as soon as I’m at the bottom, Newberry.”

He nodded, and Mina eased herself over the side. Though her bugs made her strong enough to support her weight, they couldn’t guard against a friction burn. She clamped the rope between the sole of her boot and her leather-covered ankle, and eased down slowly. Dim light spilled into the chamber at the opposite end, and once Mina could see past
Bontemps
’s balloon, she saw that it came from a corridor leading east. Trahaearn stood near an unlit corridor at the near end.

As she reached bottom, he told her quietly, “I don’t hear any noises from this direction.”

They’d go the opposite way, then. She looked around the chamber while Newberry descended. Though damp, its stone walls faintly wet, the air didn’t smell of must or mildew. The chamber was warm, as if heated—but if so, the heat had to have been coming from the opposite corridor.

Newberry dropped the last few feet to the stone floor. Mina looked to Trahaearn, and gestured toward the lighted corridor. He nodded and led the way.

Unlike the straight rectangular walls in the chamber, the passageways were rounded at the top and sides, as if an enormous drill had passed through the stone, and the floor squared off later. A wire ran along the ceiling, connecting small bulbs that glowed with yellow light that flickered and buzzed.
Incredible.
She’d seen electric lamps before, but always used as novelties, and never put to practical use—that was, if burning a few trees every day in order to light an underground compound could be considered
practical
.

Halfway down the corridor, she noticed the smell. Sweet, pungent—and as familiar as an opium den. Someone had stopped here to smoke.

“Is Evans a pipelayer?” she whispered.

Trahaearn shook his head. “The Dame isn’t, either—and she’d be damned before allowing her crew to smoke. They can’t work if they’re blissed.”

The scent dissipated as they emerged into another large chamber—this one with a ceiling. Either a workspace or for storing Evans’s inventions, the chamber had been packed full of machinery. Steelcoats stood among piles of scrap metal. Flying autogyros lay against the wall, their bladed rotors propped beside them like steel daisies. A two-seater balloon with a flat envelope had been parked atop a hulking cylindrical vehicle that might have been a submersible. Two more lighted passageways led from the chamber: one directly across, and the other to the right. Mina followed Trahaearn across the chamber, picking her way through the machines. Accustomed to her mother’s meticulously organized attic, the place seemed a disastrous—and dangerous—mess.