Breath of Earth Read online

  The catfish would be upset again, too, but then they probably had been restless for hours. Maybe this impending quake was why they had been upset last night.

  A small cluster of men in navy blue flowed across the street. They wore fine uniforms with trim black belts and stripes down the outside leg. Soldiers.

  “Damn them to hell! Why are they here?” growled Lee.

  “They can’t be here for her!” said Mr. Fenris. “How would they know?”

  “Come on!” snapped Lee. “They won’t last long here.” He made a sharp motion with his arm.

  Last long? Whatever did he mean? Reality was a fog as she staggered after him. The alley to Dupont seemed to squeeze her even more than before, the darks darker and the distant light aching in its brightness. Something bobbed ahead, like a buoy at sea, and it took her a moment to realize the objects were approaching people.

  “Clear out, pigtail,” snarled the leader. There were three men—white, broad, swarthy. Sailors, dockworkers, some occupation that involved heavy labor and ill temperaments.

  In her dazed state, she almost corrected him, saying that Lee had no pigtails at all. The crude term made no sense with Manchu queues banned.

  “Apologies, Master!” Lee offered a placating bow.

  “Bah.” The man shoved Lee onto the trash cans, and his eyes widened. “What’s a pretty thing like you doing down here, eh?” Australian accent, maybe. British Empire for certain. “Yo hablo español.” And he assumed she spoke Spanish. How typical.

  “Stop! Miss, miss! Are you Miss Carmichael! I order you to halt!”

  The brash voice caused her to spin around, her shoulder knocking against a brick wall. The soldiers. She immediately cursed her own addled brain—by responding to her name, she’d damned herself.

  “Miss Carmichael!” The soldier stood tall and thick, a handlebar mustache stretched across his face like the spread wings of a bird. “We’ve had men searching the city for you. We’re to take you in for questioning.”

  “Damn Yanks.” That was spat by the sailor. “Can’t even leave a pretty girl well alone, can you? Questioning, my arse.”

  “This is none of your concern!” barked the soldier. Behind him, his two companions reached for their belts.

  The world wavered through her feverish eyes, but Ingrid had the sense to crouch down in case gunfire erupted on either side. She glanced back at Lee as he raised his hands overhead, as if to surrender, and clapped three times.

  That’s when the men leaped from the heavens. Or from a balcony. That seemed more likely.

  Dark blurs dropped onto soldiers and sailors alike. Yells echoed on either side of the narrow passage. Knife blades flashed in the dim light. Mr. Fenris fell against a metal bin, and with a sweep of his arm a Tesla rod extended. It smacked against the nearest soldier with an audible crackle. A figure in black, only his eyes visible, brandished a white cloth and pressed it to a soldier’s face. The man immediately fell slack. Ingrid stared in dreamy fascination.

  “Bloody hell!” A heavy hand grasped her shoulder. “Come on, girl! S’no place for you in this mess! Vámonos!”

  Ingrid did not like being called girl.

  She also did not like strange men grabbing hold of her.

  She shrugged his hand off of her, willing him away. It worked a bit better than she expected. He flew backward with a guttural yelp and the mad clatter of bins. Fumes of rotting garbage rolled over her.

  Lee yelled out something in Chinese—spoken in front of soldiers this time. More evidence against her, against Mr. Sakaguchi. Now Captain Sutcliff would be certain they were working with a tong.

  Using up power cleared some of her mental fog. Ingrid struggled to find Lee in the tight melee, then spotted him crouched atop a large bin, knees jutted out like a frog.

  Mr. Fenris, panting heavily and clutching his coat, squeezed beside her. “Are you well?”

  She nodded, unable to find the words to speak.

  Lee conversed in Chinese with the masked men. They bowed and began to drag limp bodies across the pavement. Lee turned toward Ingrid. “Fenris, get her out of Chinatown. There’s a scarf vendor immediately to the right as you leave this alley. Tell the shopkeeper, ‘The thousand-li horse is always hungry,’ and grab a scarf to cover Ingrid’s head. She stands out too much.”

  She stared at Lee. Who was this? Where was the boy, the servant, she had known for years? He spoke and acted like he led a tong. Maybe he did.

  “The thousand-li horse is always hungry,” Fenris repeated, licking his lips.

  Ingrid spied the sailor who had grabbed her. He lay unconscious, sprawled out like a sunning walrus.

  “Lee, what will happen to the Brits?”

  “Ingrid. Go.” Lee stood a little taller. The men around him shuffled; she couldn’t see their faces, but she knew they looked askance at her.

  “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don’t kill them.”

  The coldness on Lee’s face wavered, and she took comfort in that. “None of them will die, not even the soldiers. Even if they deserve it. Now go.”

  “Miss Carmichael.” Mr. Fenris’s voice was a hoarse whisper. His arm brushed hers as he pushed past. With one final, frantic look at Lee, she followed the mechanic.

  Dupont Street was a sea of heads and hats, the air thickened by the cries of babies and the scents of perfumes and coffee. She noted bricks half crushing several swags and canopies. A woman screamed, shrill and high. Voices mingled like a panicked congregation in the Tower of Babel.

  “We’re not supposed to have earthquakes here!” snapped a man.

  “Well, d’you hear what happened to the geomancers’ auxiliary yesterday?”

  “Bollocks! That’s just a building. There’s more of them wardens about, they . . .”

  The reality of the situation left her dry-mouthed. This was a minor earthquake. One from which Ingrid had siphoned a great deal of power, yet it had still done this. If she hadn’t been nearby, whole buildings could have come down. And if she hadn’t broken contact when she did, she could have died.

  The woman at the scarf stand was hurriedly packing her wares into wooden crates.

  “The thousand-li horse is always hungry,” said Mr. Fenris as he leaned to grab a green scarf threaded in gold and white. The vendor nodded, tight-lipped, and resumed her work. Mr. Fenris shoved the scarf at Ingrid, and she caught a glimpse of his face—too blanched, too drawn.

  Ingrid snaked through the crowd to grab his elbow. She felt the hard knob of bone through the cloth. “What’s wrong?” she yelled, and barely heard herself. Mr. Fenris shook his head.

  Sheer numbers of people overwhelmed the guard station. Whistles split the air as more soldiers and policemen neared. The tide of humanity swept them out the gate and to the outer city. She guided him to a niche pasted with ads for the Barbary Coast. Mr. Fenris began to stumble, and she caught him by the back of the coat. He turned.

  The knife wound arced across his chest, starting at the armpit, sweeping over his heart, and dipping almost down to the sternum. Between the darkness of his coat and the blackness of the alley, it just wasn’t visible until she was up close.

  “I don’t think it’s that bad,” he croaked out.

  “Bad!” She snorted. “Men! Always trying to be too brave for their own good.”

  Mr. Fenris laughed at that, light and airy through the pain, and Ingrid realized it was the first time she’d heard such a sound from him.

  “Get the scarf on,” he whispered. “We need to get home. There are other soldiers in the crowd. I can see them from here.”

  Biting back a frustrated snarl, she fumbled the scarf over her head and knotted it in place. It covered her wavy, tumultuous hair and the dark skin of her neck. “We have to get you to a doctor, and not one in Chinatown. There’s a Reiki—”

  “No!” A note of panic elevated his voice. “We have to go home. Cy. I need Cy. He should be back by now. Please.” The intense vulnerability in Mr. Fenris’s eyes mad
e Ingrid uncomfortable, and she looked away, nodding. She preferred his caustic wit to this.

  “If I could bind the wound—”

  “No. Not here. Home.”

  “I’ll help you walk,” she said. The man flinched as she wrapped an arm around his waist, and she wondered if it was her touch as much as the injury that caused him to do so.

  “You shouldn’t walk with me like this,” Mr. Fenris mumbled. “People will see—”

  “To hell with what people see. I’m sick to death of propriety.” Tears smarted her eyes. She couldn’t help but think of Mr. Sakaguchi and his regrets about not marrying Mama.

  “I care very much what people see.” The words were so low Ingrid almost missed them.

  Crowds thinned as they hobbled along the next block. Normal city noises—wheels, engines, that constant backward clatter of dogs and chickens—seemed quiet compared to the intensity of Chinatown. It took her a moment to realize that the silence wasn’t simply because of the decrease in people.

  Damage hadn’t occurred here to the same extent as in Chinatown. It’s not that the buildings were constructed that much better; this ground was still made, and would liquefy as it would under much of downtown.

  It was as though the earth twitched just beneath Chinatown, even with her there to siphon much of its intensity. By everything she ever learned in the auxiliary, that just plain didn’t make sense. What would cause such a localized explosion of earth energy?

  Heat roiled beneath her skin. Her body was a reservoir still perilously close to overflowing, but now she did more than break dishes. Now someone needed her. She partially carried Mr. Fenris. She was huskier than he, but it was still a surprise how little exertion it took to hoist his weight.

  A cab rattled by, and she waved it down.

  “No,” Fenris whispered. “He’ll see, ask questions—”

  “More people will ask questions if I’m carrying you across town,” she whispered back. “Hello, sir!”

  The cab consisted of a black buckboard wagon with a chestnut horse in the shafts. The skittish stallion danced in his jingling harness, restless hooves clopping on the basalt. His eyes rolled back to show whites.

  “Hey, hey!” The driver tightened his grip on the reins. He spat out a wad of tobacco on the far side. “Eh. Wassup wit him?”

  “My boss was injured in the earthquake in Chinatown just now, sir.” She felt Fenris stiffen at the subterfuge; she gave him a reassuring pat on the back. Ingrid knew how to play this game.

  “Earthquake. Bah. Shoulda brought t’ whole section down. Want the nuns?”

  The Catholic hospital was certainly the closest. As though reading her thoughts, Mr. Fenris leaned into her. She sighed. “No, sir. He wants to go home. I’ll call a doctor.”

  “Eh. Suit yerrself. Hay-up!”

  Using Mr. Fenris’s body to shield her incredible strength, she boosted him up into the cab. He dragged his body into the seat. She hopped up after him, bounding up like a kangaroo, and almost squealed in surprise at her own athleticism.

  The horse started to bolt when the driver clicked his teeth, but he kept the beast in check. Mr. Fenris moaned deep in his throat, and continued to bite back sounds the entire ride back to the workshop.

  Ingrid assisted Mr. Fenris down to the sidewalk. His knees buckled, but she didn’t let him fall.

  “You’re as strong as Cy,” he whispered.

  She didn’t even know how to reply to that. Empowered as she was, she almost snapped off the doorknob when she leaned her weight on the front door to Jennings and Braun’s shop. It was as though she had reached some fantastic middle ground between the delicious tingle of power she was used to and the state of being deathly ill.

  “My cot,” Mr. Fenris whispered. “Beneath Cy’s room.”

  The room was spare and Spartan in a way that suggested an impersonal hotel rather than a daily living space. Ingrid set him down gently on the edge of the bed and pried off his shoes. Mr. Fenris’s body quivered and seemed to deflate as he lay down. Ingrid turned on bedside lamps for better light.

  Mama had taught her how to bandage a wound and do basic stitches, but from the sheer amount of blood, this was far beyond what Ingrid could handle with a needle and thread. Still, she had to do something.

  “I can try to clean you up,” she said, the doubt clear in her voice.

  Mr. Fenris shook his head again, and Ingrid felt the profound urge to grab him by the lapels and shake sense into him. Didn’t the man know how serious his wound was, how quickly infection could set in? Mama’s labor was supposed to be easy, after all; Mama always said baking her first cake was a lot harder, and took longer, than Ingrid’s birth. When everything went wrong with the new baby, it went wrong fast. So terribly fast.

  Ingrid tried to block out her last sight of Mr. Sakaguchi, so fragile in that strange and sterile room.

  A door banged, the sound echoing across the vastness of the workshop. Ingrid tensed. Had soldiers followed them?

  “It’s Cy.” A smile wobbled on Mr. Fenris’s lips. “I know his footsteps.”

  Ingrid stood and met Mr. Jennings near the now-completed airship. He sucked in a sharp breath. “You’re bloodied. Were you attacked again?” His long strides covered the distance between them in seconds.

  “It’s not me. It’s Fenris.”

  His expression shifted, hardening, and he stepped past her and stopped in the doorway. “God have mercy.”

  “Hello to you, too,” whispered Mr. Fenris.

  “Miss Carmichael?” Mr. Jennings turned to her.

  “He needs the hospital, but he won’t go. He insisted we come here, to you. It’s hard to see now, but the cut goes all the way across, from armpit to sternum. I don’t know how deep.”

  Mr. Jennings’s jaw worked from side to side. “That settles it, then. Miss, this’ll be messy work, but I need your help to prepare him for a doctor.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Prepare him? He’s not a turkey!”

  “There’s no time to mess around here.” The gravity of the situation shone in his eyes. “I’ll put some water on to boil and run to the market to dial up a doctor. Can you strip him down? There’s a trunk beneath the bed with clothes you can use.”

  Confused, she nodded. Mr. Jennings dashed off toward the kitchen.

  “It’s his time as a soldier,” Mr. Fenris muttered. “He gets in these moods and starts spouting off orders. Doesn’t bother asking me what I think.”

  “I’ll ask you, then. Do you want to die?” Ingrid asked.

  “No.”

  “Good. That’s a start.”

  Why was she the one taking off the man’s clothes? If she had trained as a nurse, doctor, or midwife, then it’d make sense, but Mr. Jennings knew she had no such expertise.

  “I . . . I am . . .” Mr. Fenris’s words slurred.

  “I’m working your coat off,” she said. “Can you sit up?”

  To his credit, he tried, but the instant he did so, his eyes rolled back and his body fell utterly slack.

  “Hell and damnation!”

  Well, maybe his fainting was for the best. The current of power still in her veins, Ingrid readily propped up the man and eased off the leather jacket. The motion caused a fresh welling of blood. She scanned the room and grabbed an ivory-handled penknife from a shelf. Drying her hands on her borrowed and hopelessly stained coat, she opened the blade and sliced Mr. Fenris’s shirt open. Buttons pinged off as she yanked the rest of it free.

  To her surprise, another layer of bloodied cloth swathed the width of his chest.

  She stared. Suddenly everything made sense.

  Ingrid had listened to Graphophone recordings of the opera Jasmine in Bloom more times than she could count. It had been a dear favorite of Mama’s, too, with its powerful portrayal of a woman dirigible sailor. Undeterred by social mores, Leticia binds her breasts and goes off to war, and saves her entire Roman legion even as she dies an excruciating death by poison.

  Mr. Fenris was
n’t dying, but he most definitely had bound breasts that suggested that he might actually be a she.

  By the time Ingrid had Mr.—well, Fenris Braun changed into a night shift from the trunk, Mr. Jennings arrived with a doctor in tow. One look at the physician, with his pale skin and suit and tie, and she knew he was a Pasteurian.

  “Out, girl!” the doctor barked. “I must sanitize the area. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, you changed her clothes? She’s bleeding like a stuck pig! Are you trying to kill her? Meddlesome git!”

  He shooed Ingrid away like a fly. Accustomed to such treatment from the wardens, she forced a look of shame onto her face while she inwardly seethed. Heat prickled her skin, and she made sure not to stand too close to the doctor. As Mr. Sakaguchi’s dishware knew all too well, when she brimmed with power, things around her tended to break.

  Ingrid and Mr. Jennings were shoved out the door, and it shut with a clang that shivered up the metal staircase above. Mr. Jennings’s brows furrowed. Ingrid stared, unsure of what to say.

  Fenris was a woman living as a man, living with another man. Were they lovers? They were certainly close, though Mr. Jennings had foisted the clothes-changing duties on Ingrid. Maybe he had done that for propriety’s sake, but good grief, what did propriety mean in a situation like this?

  The door burst open again. “Where’s that boiling water?” asked the doctor.

  “I’ll get it,” said Mr. Jennings. He rushed off with Ingrid two steps behind.

  “I suppose you have some questions, miss,” he said in a low voice, guiding her to a partition on the far side of the warehouse. Far, she noted, from the airship with its hydrogen gasbag. Other spark-creating materials were also on this side of the building.

  “You may as well stop with the constant use of ‘miss.’ I know it’s the proper southern tradition, but it makes me feel like I’m supposed to be a little girl dolled up in a kimono and pigtails. We’re all deep in this together now.”