Scarlet Devices (24 page)

E
LIZA DISAPPEARED FROM
view almost immediately, the delicate blue flame of the spirit lamp barely illuminating the red of her balloon. Matthew watched anyway, wishing for something better to happen. Something that didn't involve her having to leave his side and head off into dangers unknown. Or his having to wait here alone, possibly for days, to find out whether she'd made it.

He wanted her safely back, and he wanted her in his bed for as long as she could persuade her to stay there. Until they had to leave or starve. He supposed that was why hotel room service had been invented, to keep honeymooning couples from starving to death. So now he wanted Eliza back safely, in his bed, in a hotel with decent room service. Things were already getting complicated, and he'd only had sex with her the one time. That probably confirmed it had been a mistake, but Matthew didn't care. He would take her on her terms, scandalous or otherwise. Eliza was worth the complication.

Matthew sighed and looked back at his tent, which looked more blue than green under the waxing moon. He pondered the improbability of flight, the marvel that they'd gotten this far at all. An owl hooted somewhere, and he thought of birds.

Then he thought of wings, and breaking a thing into its parts to start all over again, and the fact that he still had Cantlebury's toolbox. And the next moment, he set to work.

 • • • 

E
LIZA DIDN'T LIKE
Carson City one bit. Her view of the place might have been tempered by the fact that she'd grown accustomed to being greeted by cheering crowds when she arrived in a new town. True, not
all
the towns she'd been in recently and not
all
the crowd members were friendly. Some had been aggressively hostile. Eliza no longer cared much about winning, especially not to prove anything to Matthew. She knew what she'd gone through, and felt she had nothing left to prove to anyone about her general competence to take care of herself.

But even so, the absence of even a welcoming banner across the main road struck her as off-putting. The race was important. People, some of them her friends, had been injured or murdered along the way. The least they deserved was some recognition of the event they'd sacrificed so much for.

“It's as if these people don't care at all,” she muttered, hiking up the street in the pre-dawn gloom with her bundled aircraft tucked under her arm. A woman on the wooden sidewalk did a double take, then stared at Eliza with a confused expression. There was a similar reaction from the sleepy boy minding the hitching post in front of the hotel, and from the hotel clerk himself. He procured the rally officials, who had been scheduled to leave with the afternoon mail coach, and backed them up as they explained things to Eliza. Beginning with the fact that she could not possibly be Eliza Hardison.

“Who else would I be? I demand that you clock my time and check me in so I can refuel and continue to San Francisco.” It hadn't occurred to her that her very identity might be challenged. She would proceed without checking in if she could, but she needed that fuel if she was to make it to San Francisco and put a stop to Orm. She was the only one left to do it.

“But . . . the race is cancelled, miss. Because of the explosion. All the racers died. We had a letter,” the official said, with a firm nod that nearly sent his glasses sliding off his nose.

“What explosion?”

“Over the Sierras. The last three got caught in one of those vapor fumes, one of their gas balloons caught fire and the whole thing went up. Fried to a crisp, all three of them, on the spot.”

“And yet,” she pointed out, “here I am. I'm not fried to a crisp, and neither are Mr. Pence or Mr. Cantlebury. Mr. Pence made it as far as the hills just east of here, and Mr. Cantlebury took ill. We dropped him off with the doctor in Belton.”

“But we had a letter!” he repeated.

“From whom?”

“Lord Orm. Owns a big ranch up near where the gases start. Sent it by his own special messenger, and it had the rally committee seal and everything.”

Eliza showed her rigging and balloon to the rally officials and asked again that they provide her fuel and let her sign the official check-in sheet.

“After all, if I'm not who I say I am, the race is cancelled anyway, so it won't matter. But if I'm telling the truth, and you refuse to let me sign and provide me my fuel, you've just compromised the outcome of the rally. And knowingly left two drivers stranded with no way to get to San Francisco or home. In that case, you'll have the entire committee and my sponsor, Baron Hardison, to answer to. Which option sounds more appealing, gentlemen?”

She had her check-in signed and her fuel tank filled within fifteen minutes, and was back in the air for the final leg of the rally.

 • • • 

M
ATTHEW DECIDED TO
wait for dawn to test his creation out. It wouldn't do to spend all night and all his materials on the damn thing, then break an ankle tripping over a rock as he tried to launch it. Besides, it was most likely a death trap, and perhaps the morning light would bring some common sense with it and help him decide against trying it out at all.

He fell asleep waiting, and dreamed an explicit but ultimately frustrating dream of Eliza flying her dirigible clad only in her chemise. He woke to full daylight and a chorus of excessive bird song.

“Oh, shut up,” he sniped at the harmless creatures, who paid him no mind and continued to trill and chirp merrily while he strapped himself in to the contraption.

Matthew suspected they were laughing at him, and he thought if he were a bird he'd probably be laughing too.

The curved framework of his balloon seat was lightweight metal, and it had been easy enough to pry away the wood and wicker, then straighten that piece into a large V shape. Scraps of wood from the rigging, unwound wicker bindings and a few stripped-down tree branches filled out the frame, and he had been able to cover it with silk handily. They'd run out of the wondrous fiber goo while patching Eliza's balloon, but he had needle and thread aplenty. The dawn light had found him stitching, testing, reinforcing, until the silk was securely in place. Then it was simply a question of attaching the wing to the framework he'd made by knocking down his balloon rigging and reassembling an abbreviated version of it. Taking a cue from Eliza's ship, he'd used his seat straps to create a harness like a mountain-climber might use, allowing him to run while launching the thing, then sit suspended by the harness, hanging on to a bar in front of him.

The birds might laugh, but Matthew was determined. He didn't merely
want
to go after Eliza. He
had
to, or die trying. It was very simple . . . though of course he hoped it wouldn't come to death. He sprinted down the hill at top speed, bouncing high a few times and coming down hard, but never quite managing to stay up. By the time he reached the flat before the next drop, his lungs were burning and his legs were jelly. He was hungry, thirsty, exhausted and in no shape for this, he decided.

He tried to pull up before the drop but momentum carried him forward, the wing bucked and he almost lost his grip, and then the hill fell away beneath his feet and Matthew was soaring away on an updraft, screaming at the top of his lungs.

 • • • 

E
LIZA COULD BARELY
land in front of San Francisco's primary government building for all the temperance ladies in the way. They crowded the official timekeepers, rushing past the barrier of posts and bunting that had been set up around a central grassy square. She didn't know what they hoped to accomplish, as she must land
somewhere
, and at the moment it seemed likely she'd wind up landing on one of their heads.

She pulled up and away from the grounds, hoping to give the officials time to clear a space, and that was when she saw the craft moored beside the graceful neoclassical Royal Governor's office. Wooden hull, a billowing clump of patched and dirty-looking ballonets and white sails. Replace white with black and arm the thing, and it would be unmistakably a pirate ship. As it was, it resembled a slightly disreputable but otherwise unremarkable sky schooner. With a golden poppy painted on its bow.

Drawing her spyglass from its tube on her rigging, Eliza rose higher still and scanned the ship's decks. She saw unkempt pirates, and even a few filthy, rag-clad opium slaves. Those were working below the main deck, and probably invisible to anyone with a lower vantage point. Unless somebody recognized the craft or was looking for pirates, they'd probably never look closely enough to see the obviously suspicious crew. There was no sign of Orm.

Eliza looped slowly over the green, looking for a bandstand, a stage or other places where authority figures tended to linger.
There
. She put the skyglass up again and saw the race committee, marked with red and white sashes, seated on a dais and apparently grumbling to one another. They gestured toward the landing square, and up to Eliza's ship, but she saw no sign of anything being done to clear the area so she might land.

Orm was seated at the end of the row, wearing a gaudy lime green waistcoat and only slightly less gaudy dark green suit with gold piping that matched his gold lapel poppy. As she watched him through the glass, he looked up and gave her a little salute. Then he slipped the poppy free, flicked a switch on the side, and opened it to reveal a hidden compartment containing some kind of brown powder.

Snuff
. He pulled one of the poppy petals, which turned out to be a tiny spoon. Then he dosed himself, saluted her again and put the ridiculous contraption back in its place.

She watched him lean over and speak to the committee members, saw them shake their heads and scowl at him. Orm shrugged and sat back again, crossing his arms. One of the members strode to the front of the stage and picked up a megaphone, aiming it directly toward her.

“Miss Eliza Hardison!” he shouted. “Miss Hardison, we must ask that you land and answer the charges brought against you, or we will be forced to allow the Royal Governor's Guard to intervene and bring you down.”

Without a megaphone of her own, Eliza was forced to yell through cupped hands and hope the old man could hear her over the crowd.

“I would love to land, sir, but my choices seem to be a tree, a rooftop or somebody's head.”

A ripple of laughter went through the crowd, but it didn't reassure Eliza. What charges was she being called to answer? What had Orm told the committee? And hadn't
anyone
in San Francisco recognized a thinly disguised pirate ship when they saw it? Were they all willfully blind? Had they never traveled far enough east to encounter Orm's crews?
Probably both
, she considered ruefully. Orm had spent a great deal of time making sure people defaulted to the northeastern passage; the pirates couldn't be very busy these days.

“Clear the landing square! You there, with the placards, please remain outside the barriers!”

He seemed to like using the megaphone, as he shouted several more instructions through it before the square was sufficiently vacated.

“Harlot!” a few ladies called from the safe anonymity of the mob. Then, more ominously, “Murderess!”

“What are you all talking about?”

Nobody seemed to hear her, so she took advantage of the clear space to touch down, unsnapping her harness and resisting the urge to fall to her knees and kiss the ground.
Finished
. No matter what else, the whole misbegotten adventure was
over
, and Eliza couldn't remember being so relieved.

Except for the ostentatious guards bearing down on her from one corner of the grassy square. That part was less than a relief.

“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, reasoning that by going on the offensive she would be in a position of greater strength.

The two leading guards took an arm each and simply lifted her up, marching on out of the square with Eliza dangling ignominiously between them, facing backwards. Facing the crowd, in other words, some of whom were laughing at her.

Perfect
.
At least Matthew isn't here to see this . . . although I rather wish he could be here. Wherever he is, I only hope he's safe.

They came to a halt in unison, quite impressively, before the dais. The speaker wasn't quite as loud, so he must have abandoned his megaphone, for which she was thankful. She could only tell by hearing, as the guards still held her backwards.

“Miss Eliza Hardison, this gentleman has brought—oh, for heaven's sake, turn her around, you buffoons.”

The guards scuffled about as though embarassed, putting Eliza down and turning her roughly by the shoulders to face the committee members and Orm.

“Better. Miss Eliza Hardison?”

“Yes, sir,” she said politely, unable to curtsy with the guards once more gripping her upper arms.