“I want to hire you,” I said. “We need to get to Baskerville before dawn, or not too much after.”
He glanced at the kitchen clock. It said 4:37 and a hair. He said, “Sun’s up around seven thirty? We could make it. But why?”
My mouth opened, then shut again. I didn’t even know where to start.
Priya put her hands on the table and leaned forward. “Because if we don’t, the whoremongers who enslaved me and my sister are going to meet up with somebody who is selling them more stolen Hindu girls like us, and we want to stop them.”
He looked at her. His mouth did something, and he nodded. Then his hand moved, and the bag of coins lobbed back to me. I was too surprised even to move my hand toward it, so it thumped to the table in front of me and sat there while my heart sank so fast and so hard that the rush in my ears almost deafened me to what Captain Colony said next.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
I blinked at him, dumbfounded. I’d always thought that was just a word, but it turns out to be a real thing and now I can say it’s happened to me.
“Your money’s no good with me, Miss Memery,” he said. He glanced at the clock again. “But if you want to be there by sunup, you’d better drink that tea and button up your boots.”
I don’t rightly recall everything that happened next, except Effie had fell asleep in the corner next to Tomoatooah and we decided not to wake either one of ’em — Effie on account of she was so tired and Tomoatooah on account of how bad Bantle had shocked him. I got burned, sure … but we’d all been pretty sure Tomoatooah’s heart had stopped. So he could snore all he wanted.
And it turned out that was plenty, thank you very much.
Crispin promised to wake him up and put him in a proper bed once we was safely away and he couldn’t follow. And I could tell that him and the Marshal and Priya and Miss Lizzie only wasn’t tucking me in next to him because Miss Francina was defending my right to go out and get my fool self killed if that was what it took to learn me.
I gave Miss Francina that purse and my diary, anyway, and made her promise to keep ’em for me. And she gave me a Colt six-shooter, and I didn’t ask her where she’d gotten it.
“I’ll never hear the end of this,” Marshal Reeves said softly as we shut the door behind us. But I think he looked relieved as well as troubled to be leaving his friend behind.
So it was me and Merry and Priya and Marshal Reeves who got into the hack with Captain Colony and rode through the dark streets at a fast trot like to rattle our bones. They was supposed to be putting a kind of pneumatic tube system in to move people around Rapid, but it weren’t there yet, so this was the fastest we could manage. We jounced along in silence, and I noticed Priya kept casting apprehensive glances at the eastern sky, and I couldn’t do much to comfort her. So, while Marshal Reeves cleaned his nails with his fighting knife — a risk I wouldn’t have taken on those springs — Captain Colony stared out the window at the Christmas candles that had begun flickering in people’s windows as of the past day or two, and Merry caught the nap she’d been smart enough not to commence until we’d have to stop the carriage not to bring her, I edged over beside lovely Priya and took her hand.
“How did you know?” I whispered in Priya’s ear, flicking my eyes at Colony. Of course she couldn’t see me in the dark, but she understood me anyway. Because that was Priya.
“He’s wearing navaratna,” she whispered back. She waved at his hand. The gaudy ring with the stones in a wheel shimmered faintly even in the dark. “You’d say … ‘nine jewels.’ Ruby in the heart for the sun. Then diamond, most sacred. Pearl, coral, saffron garnet, sapphire, cat’s-eye, topaz, and emerald. It’s a very powerful amulet. He could have gotten it from a maharaja or maharani for some service or great friendship. And he wears green and saffron.”
“You thought he might be a friend.”
“He is a friend,” she said. She leaned over and brushed my hair aside with her lips, then kissed the lobe of my ear. Such a shiver ran through me as I had only ever imagined, reading novels. “And so are you.”
Chapter Twenty
I’d never been in an airship before. I expected quarters to be cramped, as I’d read they were on ships, but the salon was plenty big for all four of us, and there was coffee. Hot, too, from a gadget that brewed each cup as you wanted it. I drank four and then had to go find the head. That was tiny enough to suit my prejudices.
Captain Colony, of course, was in the control room. The rest of us tried to come up with a plan for a while, but we didn’t know enough about what we was getting into to even begin one. Find Bantle and break his meeting up, have the Marshal arrest him and Scarlet, if Scarlet wasn’t dead.
I drove the Marshal and Merry crazy walking in circles, jittering, but it had been coffee or collapse. Priya just kept handing me cookies. They was sugar cookies with peppermint icing, slightly stale. I ate every one she gave me, soaked in the coffee.
Mostly, we fretted and stared and tried to figure out how to sneak up on them. At least the airship was quiet and we figured we could have Captain Colony let us off down the beach and hike in.
“I hope they’re out in the open,” the Marshal said while his own third cup of coffee cooled between his palms. “Otherwise I don’t know how we’re gonna find them.”
“It ain’t a big camp,” I said. “And this time of year, ain’t nobody there but a caretaker, I’d submit.”
The Marshal flashed his smile. Rain had begun drumming on the big gasbag overhead. It was strange to hear that, and nothing on the canopy of the gondola. But of course we hung in that gasbag’s shadow, so there weren’t no rain falling over us.
“You know much about logging?”
I wandered around the salon some more, smudging brass fixtures fiddling with ’em. The aloe juice was soaking through the fresh bandages Miss Lizzie’d wrapped on my hands, though they didn’t hurt anymore. “Grew up in Hay Camp,” I said. “I know a little.”
He stared out the window into black overcast for a minute or two. “I asked Mr. Hayden that when Sky wakes up, he ask him to track down that Bruce Scarlet fellow. Or his remains. And put him under arrest if he can manage it, and he ain’t already permanently arrested. But I’m thinking it might be within my remit to slap irons on Mr. Bantle, too, for conspiracy to commit murder.”
He nodded, satisfied.
“Mr. Hayden?” I asked.
“Mr. Crispin Hayden?”
My face went hot as coals and I leaned on the brass railing I’d been finger-spotting. I’d never even thought to learn Crispin’s surname.
Marshal Reeves, watching me, snorted. “Live and learn, child,” he said. “Everybody’s worthy of respect.”
I went to fix another cup of coffee, trying to sort how I felt. Other than like a damned fool. I went and sat next to Priya and drank my coffee and wished I’d brought a book.
Fortunately, it was only another ten minutes or so to Baskerville. By the time we got there I could imagine there was a little gray through the clouds outside, but I knew I was probably imagining it. Down below, though, I could make out the narrow pale strip of the beach, so I stared at that — and just as I realized that the soft hum of the engines had changed a little, I also realized the blurred light-colored ribbon underneath was getting broader. Or closer.
“What’s that?” Priya asked.
She pointed, but I didn’t see anything but black. “What?”
“I thought I saw lights. Over there.”