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 the Pollux’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 the Pollux numerous 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 the Pollux’s bow to her stern, suspended above the ship’s helium and empyrean-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 the Pollux sang 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 the Pollux and 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.
“Mate, you’re either very lost or very stupid. This ain’t a graveyard yet, but to back-slang it onto my ship is a sure way to see you end up berthing next to the dead you watch over.”
Nathaniel exhaled a slow breath and bowed, never breaking eye contact. “Captain Widderschynnes,” he said softly, his great affection for her surging into his voice. Surprise flickered in her flat stare. “It’s been far too long.”
Her aim never wavered. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t recall our association.”
He knew that tone. Step lively or be shot. “I wish to speak with you.” The crew gathered behind him, a silent, breathing beast ready to tear him apart at its mistress’s signal. “Alone.”
One of Nettie’s eyebrows lifted in a doubtful arch. “Is that so? I’m not in the habit of having chinwags with Guardians.”
“I’m here regarding Lenore Kenward.”
Nettie’s finger flexed on the trigger, and Nathaniel’s body reacted. Fabric transformed to steel, encasing him from head to foot in black armor. Various cries calling upon the Almighty filled the narrow hallway.
“‘Oly mother o’ ‘Baub!”
“Blue damn, it’s a demon!”
To her credit, Nettie didn’t blink, even when the only thing she saw of Nathaniel were his eyes behind a mask of plate steel. She gave orders to her crew. “Back to work and carry on proper.”
A chorus of reluctant “Aye, Captain,” answered her, and Nathaniel listened as the crewmen backed slowly down the corridor, in no rush to leave Nettie alone with him.
Her stoic expression grew annoyed. “Move it!” she snapped, and this time the running thud of boots filled the space. Nathaniel himself had to squelch his own reaction to the order and not race after them.
His armor softened, changing back to cloth and the ensemble that many mistook as a vicar’s. She might still shoot him, but her trigger finger had relaxed. She gestured toward the door at the bow. “Through there,” she said. “I’ll follow.”