The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [36]
“Never,” Dean said. “Harry’s too fast for ravens.”
“Yeah, well,” Cal groused. “Fast, slow … he better have someplace for me to sit, with this bum ankle.”
Dean banged on the hull. After a moment the hatch wheel spun and it opened with a creak and a rumble of abused gears. Captain Harry might be stealthy in the sky, but he needed to learn his way around an oilcan.
“Evening,” Dean said to the figure in the hatch, a massive man in a greatcoat, profile shielded in shadow. “Got two with me looking to take passage up Arkham way. The usual fee.”
There was silence for a long time, and even though I only caught the gleam of lenses and brass where the man’s eyes should be, I could feel him staring. I shifted under the silence and the stare, letting out a small cough. “Hello, sir. Captain, I mean.”
“Bonsoir, mam’selle,” he said, finally. “And Dean Harrison. I think I not see you again for some time after that trouble up Lovecraft way.”
“Trouble?” Cal perked like a poodle sniffing hamburger meat. “What trouble?”
I admit I wondered the same, but I had the sense to keep quiet about it in front of Dean and Captain Harry.
“Nothing you need to get excited about, kid,” Dean snapped. “Got no time for gossip, Harry. I’ve charged this young lady fair and square and I’m her guide.”
“Mais oui,” Captain Harry said. His accent was slow as syrup on a cold morning, but his voice was gravel, hardened and crushed by years of smoke and wind. “She’s a different class of traveler, no? Young.” He stepped out of the hatch, his big steam-ventor boots—bigger, thicker, brass-bound versions of the boots Dean wore—crushing the rock beneath the airship with a grating like bone on bone. In the light, Harry was about Professor Swan’s age, massive and unkempt, sporting red hair shot with white through the left temple, like he’d been struck by lightning. Bug-eyed ruby glass flying goggles covered his eyes and crimson stubble his face, which was split by a wide grin. He fit with the Berkshire Belle—scarred and rough, but in fine working order.
Harry stuck out a large hand and said, “Who might you be, mademoiselle?” I didn’t take it. His paw could have crushed both of my hands with room to spare, and I’d abused them enough crossing the bridge.
“I might be Aoife Grayson, and I might be in a hurry,” I said, tightening my grip on Cal. I wasn’t going to be the pretty, delicate thing who needed men to do her talking. Harry didn’t seem hostile, but Dorlock hadn’t either.
“Pretty, hein,” Captain Harry hooted. “But even less manners than you, eh, Dean?”
“We almost got peeped by some ravens on the bridge,” Dean said. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to see the Lovecraft in my taillights just as much as the young lady.”
“Oui, course you would.” Captain Harry gestured with a sweep of his greatcoat. The material was deep blue, and hid a red silk vest and oil-streaked gray trousers. It was a navy uniform, I realized on a second glance, from the war before the last one. Harry did look like he’d be at home manning the furnace on a war zeppelin, or pulling his weight as an antiaircraft gunner on a destroyer.
“Come on, then,” Harry told me. “The night, she ain’t getting longer. Allez.” He pulled himself into the ship without another word, leaving us alone. I let out my breath, at long last. He hadn’t challenged me on being young, or female, or dragging along a friend with a bad ankle. Maybe this would end all right.
Once I’d managed to wrest myself and Cal through the hatch, Dean followed and spun it closed. “We’re right and tight back here, Harry!” he hollered.
The hold of the Berkshire Belle was one large convex room, hard benches bolted to the arched rib cage of the inner hull, and cargo netting swaying back and forth overhead like Spanish moss. I settled Cal on a bench in easy reach of a tie-down, should we hit rough weather, and tried to give him a reassuring smile. I think I managed one that made me seem only slightly nauseated.