Call of Fire Read online

  Dedication

  To Sue, Mel, Mary, and Paul, for offering me a welcome escape in the big tent

  Epigraph

  “The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

  —Abraham Lincoln

  Annual Message to Congress

  December 1, 1862

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for Breath of Earth

  Also by Beth Cato

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Thursday, April 19, 1906

  If Ingrid Carmichael closed her eyes, her thoughts immediately drifted to her beloved San Francisco as she last knew it: a city ravaged by earthquakes, the ruins afire, with the unfurled blue energy of the earth coiling up her legs in a turbulent fog.

  She sat in one of the pilot’s chairs on the airship Palmetto Bug and sipped coffee from a lidded mug. The stuff tasted foul enough to scour pipes clean, but the caffeine kept her eyes pried as wide open as a china doll’s, which was exactly what she needed.

  Between Ingrid’s feet sat the simple pine box that her mentor, Mr. Sakaguchi, had asked her to recover. He had told her that the letters inside would explain why she must flee the city before something terrible happened.

  Unfortunately, she had not been able to leave fast enough.

  Her estranged father had caused the destruction of San Francisco. Ingrid had pulled in enough energy to mitigate the attack, and it almost killed her. Even so, guilt and regret persisted, stubborn as nettles in cloth. She loved San Francisco. It had been her home. Now it lay in rubble, buried in ashes.

  Her thumb caressed the edges of the letters on her lap as she looked out the glass that spanned the front of the cabin. Pine trees coated seemingly endless mountain ridges. A few distant peaks still carried snow. Sporadic trails of smoke denoted settlements. No blue energy fogged the ground as it had around San Francisco Bay.

  The Palmetto Bug had flown for a full day now. Ingrid surmised that they had crossed into Oregon. Cy had said that they should arrive in Portland that night.

  “Goddamn it.” Fenris scowled in his pilot’s chair a foot away. He stared at the dashboard dials the way Ingrid would look at a large spider.

  “What?” she asked.

  “When I used to imagine the Palmetto Bug’s maiden flight, I thought it would be something—I don’t know—pleasant. Like a trip to the salvage yards down in San Jose. A day-trip. A chance to test the vessel and tweak things afterward. Not this.” He waved a hand toward the wilderness below. “A prolonged flight over nothingness, not a damned mooring mast in sight.”

  “Do you think we’re going to crash?” Ingrid tucked the letters in their box again and sat up straight. “If we get everyone together, I can—”

  Fenris raised an eyebrow, cutting her off. “If we were going to crash, I’d just announce, ‘We’re going to crash.’ Simple and effective.”

  “Good to know.” Adrenaline and caffeine had mingled together in Ingrid’s blood, making her even more jittery and anxious. Not that she had been steady at all over the past day. Mystical and mysterious as her powers might be, the repercussions manifested in very physical—and damned annoying—forms. Even if Fenris had said they were going to crash, she wasn’t sure she should—or could—hold the energy to protect them.

  “That said,” Fenris continued, “go rouse Cy. I need to talk to him.”

  Ingrid locked her mug into a holder built at foot level of the dashboard, then pushed herself up off the arms of the upholstered wooden chair. She felt Fenris’s scrutiny, his worry, as he waited for her to show signs of frailty. She set her jaw and made her rubbery legs move like normal, one hand to the wall as she entered the narrow central corridor of the airship. Her stocking feet whispered against the tatami matting.

  Her left hand kept the pine box tucked close to her ribs. She needed to discuss the contents with Lee—a talk that had to come sooner rather than later.

  The Palmetto Bug was a Sprite-class airship designed to fit up to four passengers, though not in comfort. The entire gondola was about thirty feet in length from control cabin to engine room. Just outside the cockpit was a large floor hatch with stairs that folded flat; Ingrid didn’t like stepping on grates or manhole lids—her mother had raised her to be skeptical of such infrastructure in San Francisco—so she took mincing steps around this potential opening as well.

  Just past the hatch was the kitchenette of the craft. It consisted of a packed pantry of boxed and canned foods or other things that could be eaten with minimal preparation, as a lone stove burner was their only means to heat food on board. Within hours of being under way, Ingrid had realized that the coffee percolator had a permanent home there, so it was best to eat straight out of the cupboard.

  The thought of food made her pause. She had been relentlessly hungry over the past day as her body recovered. It was appalling, really. She felt like a sumo wrestler before a bout.

  Ingrid slid up the pantry door. Fenris had made it clear that the situation in the cabin wasn’t an emergency. Awakening Cy would wait a minute more.

  None of the cabinets opened outward to impede movement within the limited space in the corridor. High-sided boxes and elasticized straps secured food in place as a precaution against turbulence. An entire shelf was devoted to fine liquor that they had raided from Mr. Thornton’s airship, thinking that the bottles might prove useful to sell.

  Her fingers glanced over boxed crackers and canned chicken. She pulled out a parcel wrapped in parchment and twine, and she sniffed it to guess the contents.

  “That’s hard cheese.”

  Ingrid looked up in surprise. Heat fluttered in her chest. Cy leaned against the wall a few feet away. His button-up blue cotton shirt hung crooked on his lanky form, the tails partially tucked into brown trousers. Pince-nez sat atop his rather long nose. He smiled at her, his brown eyes kind.

  “You can cut into that block, if you like, but we always need some cheese handy in case gremlins latch on to the ship. The critters aren’t as attracted to orichalcum as they are to silver, but they still like to cause mischief, and that’s a bad thing in flight.” His voice stayed at a low rumble out of respect for those still sleeping nearby.

  “The cheese is bait, then?”

  He nodded, and she noticed his jaw was lightly covered with a fine scruff that was redder than his brown hair. “I chuck cheese out a window and gremlins dive for it like a wyvern on sheep.” He grinned. “Sometimes I wonder if gremlins’ve trained people to do that very thing, just so they get cheese.” His southern accent was sweet enough to flavor a pitcher of tea.

  Ingrid closed the cupboard. She was too self-conscious about her terrible hunger to grab anything with Cy right there. Which was silly, really, considering how the man had seen her slathered in blood, gore, and manure.

&nbs
p; “Did you sleep well?” she murmured.

  “Well enough.” He worked his shoulders, quirking his neck to either side as he frowned. Cy stood at about six and a half feet, and he certainly didn’t fit well into the small, stacked sleeping racks on board.

  Ingrid wanted to feel the tightness of his shoulder muscles beneath her hands. She wanted to feel a lot more than that, actually. The memory of kissing Cy brought a magma-like flare to her body.

  She swallowed, her throat dry. This was neither the time nor the place to be lusting after Cy, not with Lee and Fenris in such close quarters. She leaned against the wall, partly to give her weakened legs a break, partly to create distance between them. “Fenris wanted me to fetch you. Something about the ship is aggravating him.”

  Cy snorted softly. “Everything aggravates Fenris like a woolen union suit. I’ll see what the matter is.” His hand grazed her shoulder as he sidled past. She turned to watch him walk toward the cockpit. Even rumpled, his trousers fit him in a fine way.

  As soon as he left, Ingrid slid open the pantry again and secured the pine box on a high shelf. From her eye level, she grabbed a box of British digestive biscuits, more salvage from the late Mr. Thornton’s airship. The British-born warden had never disguised his deep passion for India, a place Britannia was currently bombing with civilized efficiency to quell rebellion. But Ingrid had never suspected that Mr. Thornton had joined the modern incarnation of the Thuggees to ruthlessly fight for India’s independence. Current bestselling dime novels liked to romanticize Thuggees as dark-skinned pagans with weighted scarves in hand to strangle their victims, carrying on the legacy of the reputed cult of Kali that had existed earlier in the nineteenth century. In reality, the name had been fully appropriated by pasty-skinned Brits with natty suits and Oxford and Cambridge egos.

  San Francisco had become their testing ground for a new brand of warfare. Four days ago Mr. Thornton had orchestrated an explosion at the Cordilleran Auxiliary, killing almost everyone Ingrid knew. She and her mentor, Mr. Sakaguchi, would have died as well if she hadn’t spontaneously created a strange pressure-wave bubble to keep them safe in the debris.

  She had thought things couldn’t get worse than that. How little she knew.

  Ingrid moved to sink onto the bunk vacated by Cy, the biscuit tin on her lap. He had tugged the sheets straight but the mattress still carried some of his warmth. In the rack above, Lee made soft noises as he slept.

  Directly across from her, their one unexpected passenger, Miss Victoria Rossi, remained utterly still in the bottom bunk. She hadn’t awakened since Papa, flushed with earth energy, had tossed her the way a temperamental child might fling a doll.

  Miss Rossi and Mr. Thornton had been lovers and partners in their plot to create an earthquake. Miss Rossi’s goals had been twofold: vengeance against San Francisco, and a chance to provoke the Hidden One within the San Andreas Fault to emerge and be immortalized by her camera lens. Papa injured Miss Rossi before she had the chance to witness the massive two-headed snake that had reared up from the fault line in Olema. Tragic justice, that.

  Miss Rossi had yet to make a sound. When they had carried her onto the ship, her body had been bruised and bloodied, both of her legs broken, and worst of all, her spine hadn’t rested at the right angle.

  Ingrid leaned forward and tugged back the curtains that offered a modicum of privacy to each bunk. Miss Rossi lay curled on her side, facing the corridor. Her tumultuous black hair framed her face as if she posed for a Pre-Raphaelite artist. Purple bruises, puffed like pillows, encircled her eyes. Her chapped lips gaped open.

  “I want you to know that even though I hate you, I still don’t wish for you to die,” Ingrid whispered, her voice wobbly with unspent emotion. “There’s too much on Papa already. He killed Mr. Thornton and that other man. He tried to kill me, too.” She touched her neck. Her throat was still raw from when Papa choked her with his invisible grip. He said if he had known about her power, he would have smothered her to death as a child. She believed him.

  “We’ll be in Portland soon, Miss Rossi. We’ll get you to a doctor.” She touched Miss Rossi’s hand. It was cold.

  Ingrid recoiled with a slight cry then lunged forward to press her hand to Miss Rossi’s cheek. It was likewise cold and stiff.

  “Ing?” Lee’s muffled voice came from above.

  “Lee, you need to get up.” Ingrid gripped the wall to pull herself upright again. “Cy?” she called. Then she saw he was already walking their way, his expression grim.

  “Ingrid, we have a mite of a problem. Lee? Glad to see you’re awake. We need to palaver.”

  “Yes, we do.” Emotion squeezed Ingrid’s throat, as if Papa had hold of her again. “Miss Rossi’s dead.”

  “A dead woman on board. That’s just dandy.” Fenris remained in his pilot’s chair. The cabin glass showed the same view as before, with forested mountains stretching to a cloudy horizon. “I suppose the plan to quiz her for more information is out unless someone knows how to conduct a séance.”

  “I knew mediums in Chinatown.” Lee sat on one of the wooden benches that flanked the door to the control cabin; Ingrid had claimed the other seat, though by Cy’s frown, he would have much rather she had taken the plush copilot’s chair. “But the way Chinatown was when we left, the mediums might need mediums.” The joke fell flat even for him.

  Cy angled to look at each of them in turn. “It would have helped matters to question Miss Rossi, true—”

  “‘Helped’?” Lee echoed. “Helped is putting it mildly. She’s the only one who could’ve given us any information at this point about the attack on the auxiliary and the attack on the city. Both of which, I might remind you, are being blamed on the Chinese. On me.”

  He ran a hand through his wild black hair and released a huffy breath. Ingrid nudged his shoulder with her knuckles. His grin for her was thin.

  The allied forces of Japan and the United States, known as the Unified Pacific, had worked together for over a decade to subjugate the Chinese people. Many refugees had fled to America, but the Land of Liberty had not granted them refuge.

  In public, Lee Fong had been a meek errand boy for Mr. Sakaguchi, in every way subservient to his Japanese master. In private, Lee was fully educated and treated with outright fondness.

  Ingrid had thought this was simply part of Mr. Sakaguchi’s kind nature—he was dangerously outspoken on behalf of the Chinese people—but things were more complicated than she had ever realized.

  Lee Fong, the boy she had engaged in tickle wars with, was in fact the only surviving child of China’s emperor Qixiang. Mr. Sakaguchi had known the truth and had nurtured Lee as he kept him hidden from both American and Japanese forces.

  “We can’t take Miss Rossi to authorities in Portland. It brings too much attention to us.” Cy’s brows scrunched together. “Much as I’d prefer to treat her body with dignity, our circumstances make that a challenge.”

  “I can argue about how much dignity she should be granted, considering the hell she caused. This woman wandered all over San Francisco taking pictures of the city in its final days so she could sell the prints later, remember?” Fenris scowled over his shoulder.

  “What if we find a mooring mast before Portland?” Ingrid asked. “We can dock long enough to bury her and speak some words.”

  “Mooring masts also mean civilization. A docked airship will draw attention and people will talk, especially if a dead woman’s involved. We can’t risk that,” said Cy.

  No, they couldn’t. Not with the Unified Pacific and Ambassador Blum after them.

  “Dignity.” Lee worked the word as if he had something stuck between his teeth. “Miss Rossi’s actions say a great deal about her soul. She’ll be judged. She might even become a ghost. I hope she’s tormented for all eternity, quite honestly, but it’s only right for us to treat her body with respect as long as it doesn’t endanger us.”

  Cy nodded at Lee. “Wisely said. I think that leaves us one option. We n
eed to drop her from the air. Maybe into a lake.”

  “Bodies float,” Fenris said. “We need to weigh her down. We don’t have much deadweight aboard—pardon the expression.” His lips quirked in a split-second smile.

  Cy thought for a moment, and then his expression twisted in disgust. “Well. We can seal bilge waste in buckets. It’s not exactly respectful, but it would weigh her down.”

  “Sounds appropriate to me,” said Fenris.

  Ingrid shook her head in disbelief of the whole conversation. “Where’s the dignity in that?”

  “It’s a better fate than she would have given any of us,” said Cy.

  Ingrid wanted to argue for some other means of disposal, but nothing came to mind. She sighed, resigned. “I’ll wrap up her body best as I can.”

  “Since I made the suggestion, it’s only right that I take on bucket duty,” Cy said.

  “I can help,” Lee added, tone quiet.

  Fenris sighed. “And I can fly my poor beleaguered airship, who in her two days of functionality has been shot, repaired, and hosted a dead woman who might possibly become a ghost. I’d also like to remind you that I had important revelations of my own before this problem with a corpse cropped up.”

  Cy froze as he started to stand. “That’s right. Sorry.”

  Fenris flicked a wrist over his shoulder. “It’s not as though the issues are that dire. Yet. Some of the dial readings don’t feel accurate based on other data. Our viewing windows and mirrors at the back keep frosting over. The vents must not be angled quite right. And I think the ballast weight isn’t quite balanced because—”

  A squeak of alarm escaped from Lee’s throat.

  Cy held up a hand. “That’s enough, Fenris. They get it.”

  Fenris grunted. “When we moor in Portland, we’ll need to stay for a few days. I know, I know, it’s not ideal with the UP on our tails, but the city has a good stockpile of parts. We shouldn’t need to wait for anything like we might in some Podunk town.”