Cold Copper

Chapter Thirty-nine

Hearing the Tin Swift screaming through the sky was enough to make Cedar Hunt laugh, but the trouble with airships was trying to get their attention from the ground.

He didn’t have any of the bright orange flares Captain Hink always carried, and he was certain the sparse tree cover they were galloping through wasn’t helping their visibility any.

“Can you signal them?” Cedar asked Mae.

“Yes.” Mae urged her horse to the left, out of the cover of trees. Out where she’d be an easy target for their pursuers. An easy target for the crew of the Swift too, if they thought she was trying to shoot at them.

She tugged on the reins, pulling her horse up into a hard stop. Then she turned and lifted her hands toward the ship.

A small but bright yellow light flickered in her hands, growing larger until her entire hand shone like a small sun.

The Swift cut fans, swiveling in the sky until the port door, filled by the ship’s cannon, was bobbing just above Mae.

“Mae!” Cedar yelled.

A voice called down from the ship—the operatic baritone of one of Captain Hink’s crewmen, Mr. Ansell: “Howdy, Mrs. Lindson! Care for a ride?”

“Yes,” Mae yelled back. “The men behind us—”

“Don’t worry about them.”

The Swift wobbled in the air again and gunfire from the ship hailed down on the trail behind them. The rope basket dropped from the port door and Mae helped Cedar get Wil into it.

Then the ladder was lowered while the basket was being cranked back into the ship.

“Go,” Cedar said.

Mae started up the ladder and Cedar was right behind her.

Before they reached the wooden floor of the ship, before the sound of return fire from the men on horseback had finished its echo, the Tin Swift’s fans roared to life and the ship climbed sky, out of the bullets’ reach.

“Good to see you, Mrs. Lindson.” Mr. Ansell was short, rounded, and dusky-skinned. He was also the most nimble and sure-footed man in the air Cedar had ever seen. He offered his hand to help Mae safely into the ship. The basket with Wil in it was already stowed and latched tight. Wil rubbed his face, as if coming up out of a hangover.

“Even more pleasant for me to see you and the crew, Mr. Ansell,” Mae said. “How did you know to come here?”

“Got a wire from the captain a while back. Mr. Seldom put the last rivets in the Swift and we came right away. Didn’t expect to find you on the run. Welcome aboard, Mr. Hunt,” he said, offering Cedar a hand for the final step into the ship.

“Thank you, Mr. Ansell. Wil, are you all right?”

Wil nodded. “That was a hell of a thing.”

“Don’t suppose you’d mind manning the port guns?” Ansell asked. “We’re running a thin crew.”

Cedar glanced at the crewmen. The Swift was a small ship and usually ran on a skeletal five people, including the boilerman and captain. Aboard the ship there was only Mr. Seldom, Hink’s second at the helm; Mr. Guffin, a thin, pale, sad-eyed man with a mop of unruly yellow hair, who was locking the starboard door and stowing the guns; and Mr. Ansell.

“Happy to help,” Cedar said. “We know where Captain Hink is,” he added.

“So do we,” Mr. Seldom called back from the front of the ship. “Have a tracker locked on him.”

“Tracker?” Mae asked. “I don’t understand.”

“Some thing Miss Small cobbled together.” Ansell made his way to the navigation gear at the helm.

Mr. Guffin nodded his tousled mess of hair and stomped his way up toward the front too. “That finder compass has held straight as an arrow for fifty miles. Hell of a way to keep track of a person. Not surprised Miss Small thought it up. She’s got a head full of clever.”

“Doesn’t she just?” Cedar said with a smile as the ship shot through the air, over the town and dead set toward the church.