Clementine (The Clockwork Century #1.1)

Croggon Beauregard Hainey met her in the middle.

He whispered, “I thought that must be you,” and he looked over her shoulder, past her head at the spot in the sky where the ship had been doing its terrible dance over the edge of the trees. Maria glanced too and saw that the craft had settled, and she thought that its engines sounded calmer, or perhaps she was only too far away now to hear the frantic whine.

“You found your ship,” she whispered back.

“But that thieving pirate made his delivery,” making the same point.

She asked, “So what are you doing here? Take your ship and make your getaway!”

“Not while that son of a pox-spreading whore is still breathing. Goddamn,” he rumbled. “I should’ve brought the Rattler.”

“And why didn’t you?”

He threw his hands up and said, “Because it’s heavy, woman! I can hardly carry the thing, and Brink was running with nothing but the diamond to tote.”

“You carried it just fine in Kansas City.”

“Across an open, flat field, sure,” he said, and realizing he was on the verge of a very distracting argument, he said, “Point is, I don’t have it, and we could use it.”

“We, Captain?”

“We, woman. You want the diamond, and I want the bastard who boosted it. How many shots have you got?”

She set her carpetbag down and whipped out the other Colt. “Twelve loaded. And you?”

“Same, damn it all.”

“There’s only five of them. The two guards at the door, plus a third inside—with Ossian Steen and your pirate Brink. That leaves us nineteen shots to spare.” But she was thinking the very thing he next said aloud.

“We can down the two at the door easy as pie, but if the other three are holed up…” he indicated a pair of windows. “They could hold us off awhile. And all I’ve got to back me up are two men who are a little bit busy right now.”

“What are they doing?” she asked, looking again to the bulbous, curved dome. But the trees thwarted her and through their leaves, she could no longer see the spot on the hill where the craft had so recently struggled.

“Long story,” he told her, and then when it didn’t seem to be enough he added, “They’re trying to wrestle my bird into submission. It was running, and unmanned.” But he didn’t bother to enlighten her on how that had come to pass.

“Ah,” she said. And to change the subject, “I have an idea.”

“So do I. I’ll retreat, summon the lads, and we’ll wipe this building off the face of the earth. I’ve got a couple of Minnericht’s Liquid Fire Shells stashed on board that would do the trick in under a minute flat.”

She gasped, “No! No, you can’t do that, not yet. Please,” she laid her fingers on his arm. “Hear me out. There’s a child in there, a boy named Edwin who is being held hostage by Steen. You can’t just demolish the place with him inside. Let me try something first, and…and if it doesn’t work, then you can level the place with me inside, too.”

He said with no small degree of sarcasm, “That’s a generous offer, Belle Boyd.”

“Not particularly. If what I’ve got in mind doesn’t work, I’ll be dead anyway, and I won’t mind the imposition. I’m going to barge inside under some pretense, seize the boy, escape back to the sanatorium, destroy the infernal machine, and…and…then I’ll think of something else.”

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“You’re not the first to say so.”

He shook his head and put his hands on his hips, and said, “Fine. Risk your own neck, if that’s how you want it. I’ll cover you if I can, but if you take too long, I’m getting my men and turning this patch of Kentucky into a fire pit that’ll burn until Jesus comes back.”

“Works for me,” she said. She gave the outbuilding and its guards a hard glance, made a decision, and said to Hainey before she left, “Give me two minutes before you get your gang.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Only two minutes?”

“If this takes any longer, it won’t work at all. Trust me. I move fast. Do you have a watch?”

“Not on me, but I can count to sixty twice.”

“Good enough.” Maria shoved one of the Colts back under her shawl and held the other one in her hand, covered by the handbag. She reached to the neckline of her dress and gave it a tug that started a revealing rip, and dropped her carpetbag at her feet.

“What are you doing?” Hainey asked.

“Getting my story in order.” She took a deep breath. She said, “Captain, start counting.”

“Wait.”

“What?” she asked.

“Do me one favor. Leave Brink for me. Don’t shoot him unless you have to,” he requested.

She nodded.

And after scooting away from Hainey by ten or fifteen yards, she leaped out of the woods into the clearing as if she had a pack of wolves on her heels.

She fired off a blood-curdling scream of feminine terror and, as the two guards in front of the outbuilding furrowed their brows, she wailed, “Help me! Oh help me, gentlemen, you must!”

She flung her body up against the nearest guard and wept piteously. Between great sobs she gasped to the other guard, “You there! Your weapon! Ready it, man—he’s out there! He’s right behind me!”

The guard she clung to held her back at an arm’s reach, took in the sight of a woman in a torn dress and got a glimpse of what lay beneath it. He stammered, “Ma’am, please, contain yourself!”

But she would not be soothed so easily. She gulped, “But sir! There’s a horrible man—a hideous Negro with a terrible scar—he accosted me in the woods! He assaulted me!”

Behind the cover of the woods’ edge, Croggon Hainey rolled his eyes.

The second guard demanded to know, “Where is this man?”

And as the first untangled himself from Maria’s clutched embrace, the first guard said, “Which way did he come from?”

“Over there!” she indicated a position approximately ninety degrees away from Hainey’s precise locale.

The guards exchanged a set of knowing looks that did not go unnoticed by the spy, who stayed in character to such an extent that she required a handkerchief—which was provided by her first choice of guards. He said, “We’d better put her inside.”

“But Steen…?” It was a feeble objection, and when the door was flung open to reveal the Union officer, both men snapped to attention while Maria wibbled convincingly.

“What’s going on out here?” he demanded, and seeing Maria his eyes narrowed into a look of confused concentration. “Do I know you?”

She shook her head, flinging a stray tear loose.

The nearest of the guards said in a stiff voice, “Sir, she was assaulted in the woods by a hideous Negro with a terrible scar!”

Maria bobbed her head and said, “Please, sir, let me come inside. Protect me, I beg you!”

One of the guards declared, “He came from that way, sir!” and repeated Maria’s lie.

Ossian Steen said, “Fine.” And he asked the guard who was stationed within the outbuilding, “How long until the rest of them arrive?”

From inside, a voice replied, “No more than five minutes, sir. They’re on their way.”

Steen appeared to consider his options. Then he grabbed Maria by the arm, towed her toward himself, and told the two men, “Go hunt for him. We’ll hold down this preposterous little fort until the rest of your garrison gets here.”

With that, he pulled Maria inside and slammed the door behind them both.

The outbuilding’s interior was no larger than its exterior would suggest; really, it was only one large room—stuffed with desks, boxes, books, crates of guns and ammunition. All the walls were bare except for the farthest, behind the largest desk, where a map of the Mason-Dixon area was tacked up and heavily scribbled upon.

And underneath this map, behind the desk was a small pallet with a moth-eaten blanket and a punched-flat pillow the size of her purse. In the corner, at the pallet’s foot, was crouched a small boy with his head buried in his folded arms, atop his knees. He did not look up at the commotion; he did not even appear to be breathing, but holding himself so little and still that he might make himself invisible.

Maria wondered how much time she had left.

Standing beside the desk, which must surely belong to the lieutenant colonel, was a red-haired man in scorched brown pants and an undershirt, with a loose gray jacket covering his bulky arms. He was possibly the whitest man she’d ever seen, with skin so pale it looked pink at the joints of his fingers, and blue around the recesses of his eyes. He gave her a look from top to bottom, folded his arms, and didn’t say anything.

A pair of guns hung from a belt around his hips, but he wasn’t holding anything at the ready.

“I swear I’ve seen you before,” Steen said to Maria. “It’ll drive me mad if I don’t figure out it.”

To change the subject, she said, “Who’s that child? Is he your son?”

“That’s no business of yours. Keep your mouth shut and your head down if you want to stay inside here, or we’ll throw you back out the door and let the pirate have his way with you.”

Outside, a pair of gunshots rang out from the woods, and there were shouts from behind the trunks of the trees.

“Hainey,” the red-haired man growled. “Jesus Christ. He can have his ship; why won’t he just take it and leave?”

Maria fingered the Colt she gripped behind her handbag. In a few steps she retreated to the desk, and to the boy. She crouched down beside him and touched the edge of his arm, but she said to Felton Brink, “Perhaps he took it personally.”

“What would you know?” he snapped back without looking at her. He walked to the nearest window and hid himself behind the edge of the frame so he could see outside without risking a bullet in the face.