More blasts, more green light. Nathaniel shuddered from the agonizing shock of the blows but remained standing. All his focus centered on containing the energy suffusing his body, shifting and shaping it until it emerged from his chest in a rotating sphere of fire. The orb hovered between him and the resurrectionists, tiny bolts of lightning arcing along its surface.
“Dust thou art.” Nathaniel blew gently and the sphere exploded, blasting outward in a blinding surge.
It enveloped the men in radiant flame. Their screams cut through the night breeze, dampened to whimpers by the rays’ effects. Fabric and flesh melted away from bone that darkened to coal and finally disintegrated altogether until what were once six men became nothing more than the scrapings from a dirty fireplace.
Nathaniel ran the tip of his cane through one of the ash heaps, pushing aside the melted scraps of destroyed disrupters. “And unto dust shalt thou return,” he whispered.
The sepulchral chorus chanted in his ears once more.“They are gone. They are gone.”
“Yes, and good riddance.” He suffered no guilt for dispatching the vile creatures that desecrated the dead and turned them over to men who would make them lurching horrors. He wiped the cane on the dew covered grass. And people calledhimmonster.
He left the ashes where they’d fallen. Wind and rain would wash them away until they became part of cemetery earth and the gardeners would dispose of their melted tools. He paused at Kenward’s grave. “Be at peace, friend.” He scooped up another handful of petals. Frail slips drifted between his fingers as he carried them through the graveyard to the caretaker’s cottage.
There would be no more thieves tonight. They were a territorial lot and staked their claims on certain burial grounds on certain nights. Once others discovered this band no longer offered a challenge, a new group would take their place to do the nefarious Dr. Tepes’s work. Nathaniel snorted derisively at the pompous pseudonym.
A carafe of wine awaited him at the house, left by the wife of the rector who attended the adjacent chapel. No amount of wine or ale would ever dull his senses again, but he found some lost measure of humanity in the simple act of enjoying a libation.
The cottage had once been a homey place, despite its location. Now it reflected the cemetery’s hushed solemnity. Nearly empty of furniture, the rooms lay in darkness, broken only by bars of moonlight filtered through panes of cloudy glass. Dust drifted across Nathaniel’s feet and rose in a murky cloud when he sat at a rickety table in what was once the parlor and poured wine into a pewter chalice.
Cool on his lips, the wine was sweet and tasted of summer—or what he remembered of summer. An image spun before his eyes, of a brown-eyed girl with an easy smile and long dark hair that glinted red in the sun.
“Lenore.” White rose petals danced across the table, and the name echoed in the void.
CHAPTER THREE
“Would you think poorly of me if I confessed to the temptation to drown my mother in her koi pond?” Lenore eyed her hostess over the rim of her pint glass and wiggled her eyebrows.
Nettie Widderschynnes, captain of thePollux, grinned and raised her glass in a toast. Lamplight winked off the bits of beads, shell and ribbon entwined in her blonde braids. She’d greeted Lenore’s sudden arrival on the ship with a spine-cracking embrace and the offer to share a pint in her quarters. “I’d think you were your father’s daughter. I’m surprised he didn’t do it years ago.”
A fundamental traditionalist, Jane Kenward had loathed Nettie at first sight and considered her a low-class, immoral strumpet who dirtied their doorstep each time she appeared at Kenward’s workshop to do business. Nettie returned her contempt in equal measure.
A formidable woman of unknown age and even more obscure birth, Nettie Widderschynnes had risen from the gutters of the Abyss to become one of the airship fleet’s most experienced captains. She ran her ship with a strict hand and carried a reputation as a fearless captain and even more ruthless business woman. She had no patience for traditionalists like Jane and told her so in no uncertain terms, forever earning the other woman’s enmity.
Lenore adored Nettie for all the reasons Jane abhorred her. Encouraged, albeit on the sly, by her father, she had pretended to be Captain Widderschynnes when she was a child, guiding thePolluxon her many runs, capturing cargo and enemy dirigibles for the king. She’d dreamed of joining Nettie’s crew, but her mother’s stringent disapproval and the progression of her father’s illness had insured it remained a dream. Until now.
She put her glass down and folded her hands in her lap, once more silently rehearsing what she planned to say. A golden tide of ale rocked in the glass as the airship gently yawed at its mooring mast.
Nettie eyed her, one eyebrow lifted. “Now this should be good. Every time you do that, I know you’re about to spin some scheme. Spit it out, girl.”
Lenore took a deep breath and spilled her words in a torrent before she lost courage. “Papa was a great inventor but no banker. There’s debt—a lot of it. The creditors will seize his workshop and everything in it to pay what is owed.” She took a quick sip of beer before continuing.
“He left some funds so that Mama may live comfortably but not enough to support us both.” Arthur Kenward had expected his only child to be married by now, and if Lenore was honest with herself, she once assumed the same thing. “I want to join the crew. Your crew. I’ll take any spot—messman, rigger, mechanic, ground crew even—whatever is open. Papa taught me soldering and welding. I can read blueprints and am familiar with propulsion and the concepts of thrust vectoring. I haven’t much experience for telegraph or navigation, but I can learn. What do you think? Would you take me on, Captain?”
She inhaled after her long spiel and stared at Nettie, willing the woman to say yes. Unfortunately for Lenore, Captain Widderschynnes’ distinction as an intrepid adventurer didn’t include an impulsive nature.
The terraced lines at the corners of the captain’s blue eyes deepened, and she set her glass on a nearby table. She braced her elbows on her knees and scrutinized Lenore as thoroughly as the Guardian had done two months earlier at Highgate.
“Your father,” she said in a far more formal accent than Lenore had ever heard before, “bless his departed soul, would have my guts for garters if I had you flutterin’ in the wind from a mooring mast or runnin’ about stringing yaw guys to cables and pulley blocks.”
Lenore’s heart threatened to pound out of her chest. “I don’t have to be a rigger.” She loosened the death grip she held on her own fingers. “I can work in the mess or the laundry. There’s no danger in sweeping and washing dishes. Or I can post to the main engine room. I know machinery. I assisted Papa with several of the improvements installed on this ship, including the incendiary shield.”
Nettie graced her with a disgusted look. “Don’t play stupid, Lenore. ThePolluxis bristlin’ with cannon, machine guns and bombs, as well as other nastiness you’re best not knowing about. You know any post on an airship, especially a runner, is risky. If Nathaniel’s death didn’t teach you that lesson, nothing will.”
Five years, and the grief was as crushing as the day she received word of Nathaniel’s death. Lenore closed her eyes for a moment, forcing the sorrow back to the shadowed parts of her soul. It was enough she mourn for her father. She knew the pain of that loss would lessen with time; she’d shoulder the pain of the other until she died.
She opened her eyes to find Nettie’s expression had gentled to one of sympathy. “It’s not my way to be cruel, Lenore. I think you just need remindin’ this isn’t a game or some great adventure. There’s danger and costs in this business. Nathaniel paid the ‘ighest price, and you paid with ‘im.” She frowned. “Your papa was my one of my best mates. I’d be no friend to ‘im if I put ‘is girl at risk. You’re better off hiring out as a governess or lady’s companion.”
Jane Kenward and Nettie Widderschynnes agreed for once in their lives, much to Lenore’s dismay. Jane had suggested—insisted—on the same thing. A position as governess or companion was Lenore’s best course. Respectable, safe, soul-withering. Lenore blanched at the idea of years stretched out before her, trapped in households where she was isolated from everyone except spoiled, difficult children or bitter widows whose idea of a companion was synonymous with whipping boy. Her father might disapprove, but he wasn’t here to tell her no.
