Heart of Steel - Meljean Brook [18]
And of those ships, only one made her glad to see it: Vesuvius. Mad Machen’s blackwood pirate ship had been anchored apart from the others, floating in the harbor near the south dock. Yasmeen ordered Lady Corsair to be tethered nearby. She leaned over the airship’s railing, hoping to see Mad Machen on his decks. A giant of a man, he was always easy to spot—but he wasn’t in sight. She caught the attention of his quartermaster, instead, which suited her just as well. Yasmeen liked Obadiah Barker almost as much as she liked his captain.
With a few signals, she arranged to meet with him and descended into the madness of Port Fallow’s busy dockside. Men loaded lorries that waited with idling engines and rattling frames. Small carts puttered by, the drivers ceaselessly honking a warning to move out of their way, and rickshaws weaved between the foot traffic. A messenger on an autogyro landed lightly beside a stack of crates, huffing from the exertion of spinning the rotor pedals. Travelers waiting for their boarding calls huddled together around their baggage, while sailors and urchins watched them for a drop in their guard and an opportunity to snatch a purse or a trunk. Food peddlers rolled squeaky wagons, shouting their prices and wares.
Yasmeen lit a cigarillo to combat the ever-present stink of fish and oil, and waited for Barker to row in from Vesuvius. His launch cut through the yellow scum that foamed on the water and clung to the dock posts.
Disgusting, but at least the scum kept the megalodons away. In many harbors in the North Sea, a sailor couldn’t risk manning such a small boat—barely more than a mouthful to the giant sharks.
His black hair contained beneath a woolen cap, Barker tied off the launch and leapt onto the dock, approaching her with a wide grin. “Captain Corsair! Just the woman I’d hoped to see. You owe me a drink.”
Possibly. Yasmeen made so many bets with him, she couldn’t keep track. “Why?”
“You said that if I ever lost a finger, I’d cry like a baby. But I didn’t. I cried like a man.”
Yasmeen frowned and glanced at his hands. Obligingly, he pulled off his left glove, revealing a shining, mechanical pinky finger. The brown skin around the prosthetic had a reddish hue to it. Still healing.
She met his eyes again. “How?”
“Slavers, two days out. I caught a bullet.” He paused, and his quick smile appeared. “Literally.”
“And the slavers?”
“Dead.”
Of course they were. Mad Machen wouldn’t have returned to port otherwise. He’d have chased them down.
She looked at the prosthetic again. Embedded in his flesh, the shape of it was all but indistinguishable from a real pinky, the knuckle joints smooth—and, as Barker demonstrated by wiggling his fingers—perfectly functional. Incredible work.
“Your ship’s blacksmith is skilled.” So skilled that Yasmeen would have lured her away from Vesuvius if the idiot girl hadn’t been soft on Mad Machen.
“She’s brilliant,” Barker said. He replaced the glove and glanced up at Lady Corsair. “None of your aviators have come down. Is this just a stopover?”
“Yes.” Even if it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t leave the airship unmanned while the sketch was aboard. “I’m only here long enough to have a word with someone. We’ll fly out in the morning.”
“A word with someone?” Barker had known her long enough to guess exactly what that meant. “Would you like me to come along?”
She didn’t need the help, but she wouldn’t mind the company. “If you like.”
“I would. I’ll fetch a cab. Where to?”
His brows lifted when she told him their destination, but he didn’t say anything until they’d climbed into the small steamcoach.
He had to raise his voice over the noise of the engine. “Why Kessler?”
“He talked when he wasn’t supposed to.”
“Is anyone dead?”
“Miracle Mattson. Kessler gave information to him.”
Barker’s frown said that he was having the same thought Yasmeen had: Men like Kessler and Mattson didn’t usually do business together. Though plenty of art was smuggled into the New World, it wasn’t something Mattson