She shrugged. “He was, in an odd way. Very gentlemanly as well. He promised none would disturb the grave, and he’s kept that promise. The bricks are as they were laid.” She didn’t mention the sense of recognition that struck her at their first meeting. Even now, weeks later, his image burned darkly in her mind’s eye, along with the unwavering certainty she knew him. “I haven’t seen him since then, and I go to the cemetery weekly.”
“A good thing, I think.” Nettie escorted her out of the captain’s quarters and into the corridor that ran the length of the keel. “He’s one of Harvel’s experiments. Who knows what terrible things those poor souls suffered and how much it changed them—for the worst I’ll wager.”
They bid each other farewell at the gangplank. Donal McCullough, Nettie’s master rigger, escorted Lenore to the omnibus waiting at the depot. “Sure you don’t need me to take you to the station, miss?”
“I’m certain, Mr. McCullough. Thank you.” She boarded the omnibus and found a seat next to a woman cradling an infant. She returned McCullough’s wave as the driver pulled away and settled in for her journey to the train station.
CHAPTER FOUR
Nathaniel groaned under his breath at the sight of Lenore strolling down one of the cemetery paths to her father’s grave. Hidden by an ancient elm bedecked in ivy, he consumed her with his gaze, taking in the bombazine gown of unrelenting black, the upswept hair that revealed her pale neck and highlighted the line of her jaw.
She tortured him with these weekly visits to her father’s grave. Pulled from the opposite side of the sprawling cemetery as if by a lodestone, he sensed her presence the moment she passed through the entrance archway. Coves of hanging ivy and the shadows cast by crypts kept him hidden from view as he admired her profile and listened to the easy pitch of her voice.
She conversed with her father at each visit as if he were standing before her, his eyes bright with the avid curiosity he’d passed on to his only child. Nathaniel could have told her that Arthur’s spirit didn’t linger the way some did, that it had crossed the ethereal barrier; the body beneath the bricks had been an empty vessel at burial. Nathaniel was not, however, a cruel man. He recognized her need to hold onto some remnant of her loved one, to accept her sorrow and gradually let it go. Other mourners did the same. The difference was he didn’t eavesdrop on their conversations with the dearly departed.
Many might say he breached every form of courtesy in listening to her one-sided conversations with her father. He invaded her privacy, but he couldn’t stop or bring himself to feel any shame. He’d thought his love for Lenore Kenward had been ripped out of him along with his humanity. His first glimpse of her at her father’s graveside had re-ignited emotions once lost in the hazy memories of a distant life. Seeing her again had been an ecstasy. Knowing she was forever out of his reach an agony. He concentrated on her words and closed his eyes as a wave of homesickness washed over him.
“I visited with Nettie today, Papa. She sends her regards. The Pollux will be in port at Maldon for a few more days, then Nettie is taking her out. I’m to understand she will act as escort for the Andromeda. They will face the Redan.”
The Redan. The dimensional fissure. Images flashed behind Nathaniel’s closed lids.
He’d never get used to seeing it, never lose the terror that churned his guts and sucked the air from his lungs. The black tide of roiling clouds pounded the protective barrier, searching—always searching—for the one weakness that would allow it to breach the wards woven by Her Majesty’s best guild mages and rip the fissure even wider.
The nebula writhed and twisted, illuminated by flashes of sour yellow lightning that revealed the monstrous things surfing its waves—colossal maws baring teeth the length of cathedral spires, segmented legs of insectile abominations bristling with spiky black fur, and slick tentacles that whipped from the fissure to tongue the wards with a barbed stroke.
Wind, flecked with ice crystals and smelling of ozone, blasted across the Pollux’s gun batteries and glazed the empyrean-loaded carronades in a thin sheet of ice.
The gunnery crew shouted as one when a tentacle lashed out of the obscuring cloud, the curving claws stretched across its underside extending and retracting as it reached for the Pollux. The ship dove, narrowly avoiding the shredding appendage. The tentacle retreated into the miasma.
“Steady, men,” he called out to the other gunners.
“Look sharp, lads.” Nettie’s command traveled through the speaking tube, as bracing as the wind threatening to freeze his hands to the battery shield.
Despite the numbing cold, sweat trickled down his ribs beneath his heavy woolens. The fissure contorted and labored as if trying to whelp the unearthly life squirming within it.
Three tentacles burst out of the nebula and struck the ship.
“Fire!” he roared into the link. “Fire!”
Crimson light filled his vision as the carronades belched empyrean from their barrels. An explosion deafened him. The Pollux squealed and yawed hard to starboard. Wood shrapnel and broken tether lines exploded into the air. A wash of heat splattered his face. Blinded, he wiped at his eyes and came away with a glove smeared in blood. Something heavy struck his shoulder and bounced across the gunnery deck—an arm, shredded at the shoulder joint, and no body attached to it.
The Pollux suddenly pitched back on her rudder, sending him careening into the nearest cannon. His tether cable jerked taut, smashing his stomach against his backbone. Scorched wool filled his nostrils. He clutched at a broken railing to stay upright. Hot metal burned through his glove, searing his palm. He gritted his teeth against the pain and held on. The agonized screams of men rent to pieces filled his ears.
He looked up—far, far up to the boiling sky where an arching nightmare laced with curving white claws hurtled toward the wounded Pollux. The deck bucked hard beneath his feet. He lost his grip on the railing and jittered across the slick surface like a marionette dancing to the tune of the shuddering ship...
...the shuddering ship.
Nathaniel’s eyes snapped open. He inhaled a strangled breath. A voice, achingly familiar, cut short its casual monologue.
“Who’s there?”
He blinked, desperate to clear his mind of the images that seized and held him fast in frozen horror.
“Who’s there?” The sharp tones of Lenore’s repeated question, didn’t quite disguise her fear. She peered into the ivy shielding him from view, poised to take flight at the slightest motion, her brown eyes wide in her pale face.
Nathaniel breathed deep, willing away the terror, the memory of the churning nebula, the whipping tentacle.
...the shuddering ship.
“Forgive me, miss,” he said in a smooth voice and stepped from the ivy’s concealment. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Despite his knowledge of her character, he still expected to her run. She didn’t. Instead, she wilted, her stiff shoulders relaxing in obvious relief. It was a first for him in this new incarnation. Guardians weren’t persecuted outright, but they were shunned and feared. Most people avoided them as if they were plague-ridden. Lenore wasn’t most people.
She drew closer, head tilted. “The Guardian.”