Gideon Smith and the Brass Dragon by David Barnett

Author:David Barnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466809093
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

17

PAYMENT IN KIND

Carefully following the instructions that had been left with her, Rowena stood on the observation deck of the Skylady III and aimed her Lime Light Signaling Lamp in the direction of the cluster of distant lights around the black shape that crouched on the pale horizon. San Antonio. Steamtown. She was half an hour away, and they would have sighted her long ago, readying their defenses against the incoming ’stat. Only transmitting the coded message—it seemed to be a string of numbers broken up by words such as “blackbird” and “eagle,” “bugle” and “spoon,” utter nonsense—would cause Steamtown to hold its fire and allow her to land in the airfield the manifest told her was on the east side of the town. Rowena flashed the signal three times, hoping that someone at the other end had a signaling telescope trained upon her and was transcribing the message that would enable her to approach unmolested.

Flashing the code left her just her enough time to get the QF three-pounder Hotchkiss from the armory out to the observation deck. According to the helpful notes, the airfield was adjacent to several warehouses containing—Rowena surmised—coal. Which meant she would need help retrieving the Hotchkiss and her collection of incendiaries. Coal burned very nicely, and the Hotchkiss would be the flame she put to the touch paper of Steamtown.

Rowena strode from the observation deck into the bridge and surveyed what she’d found when she burst the lock and chain off the hold. There were fifty-four of them, evidently payment for the cargo of coal she had been hired to take back to New York. She’d felt sick when she first opened up the hold, sick to her stomach that she’d been involved, no matter how unwittingly, in this. Then she had reconsidered. Better that it was Rowena Fanshawe who had taken the contract than someone who would have followed the orders to the letter.

“I need some help,” she announced. The fifty-four faces turned to her. “I need to bring some equipment—artillery and ammunition, mostly—from the armory up to the observation deck. I need strong arms and, more importantly, steady hands.”

There were five or six hesitant hands raised, then more, until eventually all of her passengers were volunteering. Even the children. That someone had quite happily sold children into slavery for a ’stat’s hold full of coal … she didn’t feel sick anymore. She felt angry.

When Rowena had first jimmied the lock off and opened the door the fifty-four pairs of eyes regarded her with a mixture of slight interest, fear, and hatred. And why not? As far as they were concerned, she was just another link in the chain that was dragging them from one wretched life to another. Half of them were black, and after she’d unchained them all and taken them up to the galley (a Frenchman with them had rustled up the most marvelous stew from ingredients Rowena, a self-confessed terrible cook, kept in the larder) she did a quick census.

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