Lenore blinked and shook her head before offering him a rueful half smile. “Forgive me. I remembered...” She shook her head a second time as if to clear her thoughts. Nathaniel wondered at the sudden glossiness in her eyes: tears.
They exchanged farewells a second time before parting; he to linger in the gate’s shadow and keep watch, she to stand at the edge of the road.
She’d been right that he intimidated others, but any driver attempting to bypass Lenore as she stood in the rain waiting for a ride would have found himself suddenly off his high seat and on his backside in a puddle while Nathaniel himself took her home. Fortunately, for all involved, an empty omnibus halted a few minutes later, for which he was grateful, and carried her away from him.
He waited until he no longer heard the clop of hooves on cobblestone before setting off eastward to the Bishopsgate station. His reputation as a vigilant, lethal Guardian served him well. Resurrectionists hesitated to rob Highgate of its newly buried citizens during daylight, and Nathaniel didn’t think they’d try again anytime soon—at least not now when he abandoned his post to seek the person who once commanded his most devout loyalty.
The streets were almost empty of people. Most who hadn’t found shelter indoors huddled in doorways, and none accosted him. He avoided the main roads, keeping to side lanes and squalid alleyways ankle-deep in water. If any saw him pass, they said nothing, wishing no acquaintance with an apparition possessing eyes that resembled gateways to Hell.
Nathaniel made quick time to the train station, unencumbered by crowds. The station itself offered numerous places for him to blend or disappear, concealed by shadows and a Guardian’s unique talent for being overlooked by even the most observant gazes.
He avoided the passenger trains. Stowing away was easiest on the freight lines run by freight guards instead of the more eagle-eyed conductor guards. He hid in an empty car on a freight bound for Maldon and its vast mooring field of airships, tapping his foot impatiently and cursing his former captain under his breath the entire journey. The trip took a little more than an hour, and he was off the train and out of the station before anyone noted his presence.
Maldon’s airfield stretched over a flat of land next to a farmer’s fields, but this one’s crop flew instead of fed. At least a dozen airships of every size and design rocked gently at their tall mooring masts. Nathaniel paused for a moment to admire them. The sweet ache of recollection filled him. These majestic lasses had occupied his dreams since he was a boy and caused the rift between him and his family. He never regretted his course of action—to serve in the fleet instead of on the family estate—even when he fell from thePollux’s deck and into the Atlantic’s frigid depths.
The ache grew when he spotted his previous mistress docked at her mast tower. He knew every inch of her as intimately as he did Lenore’s own supple frame and loved both with equal ferocity. The ship’s thin metal envelope sparkled in the wet gloom, beckoning him to stroke her once more with an affectionate hand.
He’d happily stand all night staring at her, but he came with a purpose, and it didn’t include hours of forlorn, lovesick gazes that put a green lad to shame. Mud sucked at his feet, and the fog rising off the fields didn’t wait for the rain to stop. It rose to his knees to swirl around his legs, creeping ever higher. By the time he reached the mast tower, a gray shroud enveloped him completely.
A pea-souper only worked in the favor of thieves and murderers, and in this case, Guardians as well. The fog lapped over thePollux’s keel, obscuring the control room gondola windows and any occupants. A clearer day and alarms would have sounded across the field, along with the warning crack of rifle shot, at the sight of him shimmying up the tower like a spider on a skeleton.
The long spike attached to the tip of the airship’s nose aided in tethering her to the mooring mast and, much to Nettie’s disgust, earned her the nickname the Narwhal. Despite the ridicule, the steel horn had saved thePolluxnumerous times, generating a buffer shield that protected her from attack by both enemy ships and the otherworldly monstrosities lurking in the dimensional rift.
The shield was powered down, and Nathaniel used the spike as a death-defying bridge to cross onto the airship’s broad back instead of the platform the crew used to enter the ship’s interior. Rain made the metal sheathing slippery as ice. His balance was exceptional, but he grasped the cable that ran the length of the ship like a sliver of spine from some prehistoric beast and raced toward the stern. Halfway there, he used the line to sling downward, snagged a second cable stretching from one of the engine gondolas and caught his footing on the ladder leading from the gondola to an opening in the ship’s hull. He slipped inside unseen to drop silently onto a narrow catwalk.
He breathed a longing sigh at the familiar view. The belly of the beast. Longitudinal and transverse girders filled his vision--the rigid frame that gave the ship her streamlined shape. Corded and wire netting ran from girder to girder, completing the massive metal spiderweb. The catwalk he stood on ran perpendicular to the much longer gangplank that stretched from thePollux’s bow to her stern, suspended above the ship’s helium andempyrean-filled gasbags.
Many a trip out, he had walked these narrow planks and climbed the girders. His fingers danced across a section of framework, following a span of varnished duralumin tubes riveted together. He imagined thePolluxsang to him down the weave of wire bracing, her metallic serenade welcoming home a much-missed, if wayward son. It was good to be near her, inside her and see her whole and undamaged once more.
Voices originating from the rear gondola spurred him toward the ladder that spanned the distance between gasbag deck and keel corridor. He wasn’t fast enough.
“Oy! Did you see ‘im?”
“See what?”
The first voice, exasperated, grew louder. “Looked like a vicar climbing into the keel!” Disbelieving laughter followed the remark, but the chase was on.
Nathaniel dropped from the ladder into the narrow corridor. Gaslights attached to long tubing flickered overhead and ran parallel to the speaking tube and water line. His familiarity with the ship served him well. Unless Nettie had builders gut thePolluxand change everything—which, knowing Nettie, seemed unlikely—he’d find her quarters near the ship’s bow. He just needed to reach her without encountering more of the crew.
His luck didn’t hold. A crewwoman almost cannoned into him as she emerged from a berth doorway. Her surprised shriek set his ears to ringing as he swung around her at a dead run toward the bow. Were he truly a vicar, her colorful curses would have set his ears alight.
He raced past crew quarters and storage rooms containing water ballasts, weaponry, fuel and food. In different circumstances, he might have laughed at the shouts behind him.
“There’s a churchman on the ship!”
“See? Mary saw him too!”
“Why’s he running away?”
“Ain’t no soul on this ship can be saved that fast.”
Others joined the pack as more of the crew sought out the source of the commotion.
A voice rose above the rested, its tone one of revulsion. “Bloody hell, that ain’t no vicar. It’s a bonekeeper!”
Nathaniel paused to glance briefly over his shoulder. That alone brought the foremost pursuer to a sudden halt, causing the line behind to crash into him. They went down like pins in a nine pin match. The resulting chaos bought him a few moments of reprieve but cost him his goal.
He turned to flee again and found himself staring down the business end of a double-barreled Howdah pistol. The woman holding it in a steadfast grip resembled a ragged and beaded trull straight out of a Whitechapel crack. The cold gleam in her eyes warned she’d put a bullet in him if he so much as twitched an eyelash.
