Breath of Earth Read online

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered, and pressed down.

  The wound was inches above his heart. Had the bullet passed through? Had it ricocheted inside him? She had to get him to a doctor.

  “Them,” he whispered. “Can’t . . .”

  She wanted to shush him, tell him not to exert himself, but she desperately clung to his every word.

  Something scuffled in the hallway. She pivoted on a hip and fumbled inside her pocket.

  Lee emerged from the shadows and into the doorway. “Damn! Where was he hit?” He crawled closer.

  “Shoulder. Can you call the police? I—”

  “Line’s cut,” Lee said. “First thing I tried when I heard the shot.” Another bullet clinked through the glass. Splinters exploded in a small fountain not six inches from Lee’s hand. He moved a little faster to reach the shelter of the desk.

  She pulled out the pistol. “I must get him into the hall, maybe get him out the front. Shoot anything that moves out there.”

  If Captain Sutcliff needed a proper excuse to fit her for a noose, now he had one. Supplying a weapon to a Chinese boy probably broke a dozen laws. Not that she gave a damn at the moment, not with Mr. Sakaguchi bleeding out.

  Lee accepted the gun with a grimace and checked the bullets in the chambers. With a jolt, she realized he knew what he was doing.

  Lee had handled a gun before.

  No time to mull over his sedition now. She crawled to Mr. Sakaguchi’s feet and wedged herself between his calves. Hauling his feet up over each hip, she leaned forward. After a few seconds of strain, he slid forward. Ingrid thanked God for the slickness of the wooden floor. Mr. Sakaguchi made only the slightest whimper.

  Shattering glass caused her to jump. She turned. Lee crouched to the side of the door and had knocked out the lower glass panel. He fired the gun once, twice.

  A few more feet, and she had Mr. Sakaguchi in the claustrophobic shelter of the hallway. She crawled forward. The crown of her head butted against something warm. She fell against Mr. Sakaguchi’s thighs with a squeal. A shadow stood over her.

  “Get back!” she yelped. The faint tingle of energy welled up, and she shoved the intruder away.

  The figure flew back five feet into a wall with a resounding thud and a rather high-pitched “Oof!” Lamplight illuminated the man’s face and the rod in his hand.

  “Mr. Jennings!”

  The wall clock over his head tilted and slid straight down. Stop! she thought at the clock.

  It did. Literally. It pinned itself to the wall, cock-eyed, not four inches over his cranium. She gaped. She had always had some extra awareness of things around her—like when that baseball almost struck her earlier—but hadn’t manipulated something beyond her grasp before.

  That sense of coldness crept into her veins again, and she shivered. At the motion, the clock resumed its slide, but at her gaze it again stopped. She was reminded of the bubble she created earlier, and how it popped when Mr. Sakaguchi surprised her by picking her up. She scurried forward and set the clock on the floor.

  Mr. Jennings groaned. “How the . . . ?” He stared at her from beneath furrowed brows. He had donned his leather coat again.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Coming to check on you, miss. The boy told me to stay put, but I couldn’t wait about while shooting’s going on.” He pivoted his hand to show the Tesla rod, still contracted.

  “You only have the rod, no gun?”

  “No, miss. I’m a pacifist.”

  “Bloody hell,” she muttered. Fancy that. Middle of a gunfight and here’s this big, strong man, and he’s a pacifist! She retreated to check on Mr. Sakaguchi. Blood had soaked through the thick blanket.

  “My car’s out front, but that sidewalk doesn’t give us any cover.” Mr. Jennings scooped up his hat from the floor. She noted his shoes were on, too, the laces untied.

  “I think the gunman’s gone.” Lee backed into the hallway.

  “Lee. When your ribs were bruised, you went to a man in Chinatown who did powerful Reiki—lingqi.” She hesitated to say the Chinese word for it, a word she shouldn’t even utter. “Take Mr. Sakaguchi there.”

  Lee stared at her. “Take Mr. Sakaguchi into Chinatown?”

  “He’s dying.”

  Lee’s face tightened as he nodded. “It’s a risk, but . . . Jiao!” he yelled loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. “Run next door, tell the boys to drive the Suzukis’ flatbed over! We have to get to Uncle Moon’s, fast!”

  Not two seconds later, the side door clattered. Ingrid hoped it was Jiao, not the gunman.

  Don’t die, don’t die. Ingrid laid a hand against Mr. Sakaguchi’s cheek. She willed the words through her touch, as if she could stop his soul from leaving his body as she stopped that clock. The short stubble on his jaw prickled her palm. She had no sense of power, no flow of energy. She almost wanted another earthquake to happen—just a small one—so she might be able to do something again. Anything.

  “Miss, sending a Japanese man into Chinatown, and a warden at that—”

  “What else can we do?” she snapped at Mr. Jennings. Anyone desperate enough to venture into Chinatown for healing needed results, the kind that couldn’t unfurl from a bucket of benign seeds. “I know the risks. But this—this is business. I’ll pay your uncle whatever he needs, Lee. Mr. Sakaguchi just—he just needs to get in and out of there safely.”

  Seventy thousand angry, despairing refugees in Chinatown, all of them there because of Japan. None dared to strike out directly against the Japanese, not even the Chinese tongs, but sending Mr. Sakaguchi into the heart of their district carried risks that Ingrid didn’t want to contemplate right now.

  She just needed her ojisan alive.

  Lee defiantly tucked the gun into his waistband and stared at Mr. Jennings. “I’ve heard about you, Jennings. Everything you’ve seen here, keep quiet. You have a good reputation, and you better live up to it. I know where you live.” Even with his soft prepubescent voice, the threat came across loud and clear.

  Mr. Jennings nodded. The Tesla rod remained in his hand. “I carry no grudge against the Chinese. Don’t intend to create any either.”

  The front door banged open. Both Lee and Mr. Jennings turned, weapons at the ready. Ingrid shielded Mr. Sakaguchi. The Chinese servants from across the street skittered to a halt in the hallway, took in the scene in an instant, and shared an expression of shock and revulsion.

  “You want to take him to Chinatown?” one spat.

  “Yes, and you’re going to help me carry him, even if you have to use a whole bar of soap after.” Lee’s voice carried a gravitas that Ingrid had never heard before. “Come on!”

  The men worked as a team to haul up Mr. Sakaguchi. Ingrid stumbled back, suddenly lost and useless. The police would be here soon. They would ask questions she couldn’t answer, and then that captain was bound to nose around. This house might end up as ransacked as Mr. Thornton’s.

  Ingrid ran back to the study. She yanked Mr. Sakaguchi’s safe-deposit keys from their hiding place on a shelf, and then grabbed his planner and notebook from the desk. She dropped everything into one of her abandoned hats and folded them up together.

  As she dashed toward the door, her feet slid and she caught herself against the doorframe.

  His blood. She slid in his blood. A violent tremor of awareness almost dropped her to the floor. Almost. Grinding her teeth, she pushed herself away from the room, the doorway, the house. The stench of iron clung to her.

  The young night sky glowered with gray clouds. A truck idled at the curb as the men set Mr. Sakaguchi in the back. Utterly distracted as she was, her foot struck something. Ingrid tripped and staggered forward, her house slippers flying from her feet. Her knee bounced against the walkway with a painful jolt as her hands caught her in time to prevent face planting. An object rolled beside her hand—Mr. Sakaguchi’s slipper. She stuffed it into her makeshift tote. Abandoning her own stained slippers, she sc
ampered forward.

  “Damn it!” snapped Lee.

  “A Durendal.” Mr. Jennings said it as a growl.

  “What?” Ingrid looked up. Chinese men filled the appropriated truck. Mr. Jennings stood at the open door to his car, gaze focused up the street. Trees blocked her view.

  The truck lurched from the curb with a sharp squeal.

  “Wait! Come back!” Ingrid cried, even as she knew they couldn’t afford to stay here, nor could Mr. Sakaguchi. The truck made a tight turn and bounced down a side street and out of sight.

  “Miss Ingrid! Here!”

  There was no time. A Durendal meant the Army & Airship Corps, and the A&A meant Captain Sutcliff and all his incriminations and innuendo.

  She ran for the autocar as a blue sheen rose from the lawn. The pressure wave penetrated cotton and stroked her skin like a baby’s breath. It was a tiny earthquake, the sort most people could dismiss as a passing large truck—or the grinding heaviness of a Durendal. Lukewarm heat looped in crazed circles around her ankles and anchored on her bone, traveling up her calves with a static-electric zap.

  The seism ceased just as she reached the car. She flung the door open and threw herself inside. She slammed the door shut as Mr. Jennings lurched away from the curb. Something hard jostled against her feet—her shoes, she realized. He must have grabbed them on the way out.

  She twisted around to glance up the block.

  The ambulatory tank’s sleek metal body gleamed beneath the streetlights. Its two mighty treads crunched against the basalt block thoroughfare. From a block away, she could feel the vibrations of its approach. The gun barrel aimed dead ahead, as though it would blast any obstacle to smithereens. Along the right and left sides, objects bobbed behind a shielding wall.

  “It’s a transport loaded with soldiers. I’m curious to know why the A-and-A was on the way here before the shooting even happened, but I’m not about to linger to ask them questions.” He glanced at her, clearly expecting some answers.

  Ingrid faced forward, gasping as they took a hard turn. A car horn blared. Gas lamps illuminated the residential street ahead. The truck bearing Mr. Sakaguchi had already vanished from sight. Grief twisted in her chest. What if he asked for her? What if he took a turn for the worse? She should be with him! Damn all the dangers of Chinatown, and damn Captain Sutcliff and his ridiculous suspicions!

  Behind them, the kermanite-powered transport tank roared like a hungry lion, and she knew very well that it intended to gobble her up.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Hang on!” snapped Mr. Jennings. The little car buzzed as it zoomed down the street.

  “Hanging!” The scant window frame didn’t give her much to cling to.

  Ingrid looked out the back window. The Durendal was close enough for her to discern the individual soldiers that lined the walled running boards on either side of the armored ambulatory. Who knew how many were inside?

  Releasing her death grip on her door, she stuffed the hat and its contents behind her cloth belt. The hard corner of the planner gouged at her belly. The car took another sharp turn, and Ingrid squealed as she slid across the seat and right into Mr. Jennings.

  “Some warning?” she snapped.

  “I said to hold on!”

  “To what?”

  “Me, if nothing else!”

  No time for that as he took another fast turn and sent her sliding the other way. She felt his leg kick out and brush her hip as he shifted as well.

  He glanced at her. “Look at it this way—could be worse. Could be an Ambassador back there.”

  “How do you know there’s not?”

  “Ambassadors don’t ride with common soldiers. They’re too good for that. With the exception of Roosevelt, maybe.” True, that. She’d personally seen Theodore Roosevelt talk horses with several black hostlers at a livery stable downtown, treating them with perfect decency. “I’d rather face that full Durendal, running hot, than any Ambassador.”

  She grunted agreement; she wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of Mr. Roosevelt either, and she knew him. Ambassadors oversaw the Japanese and American governments and their joint military operations. The sheer amount of power they wielded made Captain Sutcliff seem about as mighty as an ant biting a giant’s big toe.

  Grappling on to the leather seat, she pulled herself up to check the tank’s progress. Mr. Jennings was zigzagging up Russian Hill, and this time the slope was to their advantage. The car’s engine roared with exertion, but it easily outmatched the heavy Durendal that pursued them from a block away.

  “Durendals have endurance but they can’t take tight corners well.” Mr. Jennings turned again, looping to drive down Hyde, but this time Ingrid gripped the seat with both arms. Her hip jutted to the side and bumped him. This was not the body contact she had imagined earlier.

  “You’ve almost gone in a circle!” Her heart had revved like the car engine, but the lingering burble of power beneath her skin was a comfort.

  “Yes, almost, but not quite. Standard procedure has it Durendals never travel alone to a location, so they may very well have left unfriendly folk back at your house, miss.”

  He sounded surprisingly cool considering how that evening she had threatened to shoot him, brought him home to endure a gunfight, embroiled him in a conspiracy with seditious Chinese, and then fled from a tank that carried enough firepower to level an entire city block. He’d even had the foresight to grab her shoes.

  She liked the man more by the minute.

  “Just so you know, Miss Ingrid, I’m not keen on attracting the military’s attention. I’d like to know why a Durendal happened down your street.”

  Another swerve, followed by a chorus of honks from other drivers and the abrupt neigh of a horse. In the dimming light, electric signs had already flicked on, advertising booze, dancing halls, and French-style restaurants—all the sinful glories of the Barbary Coast neighborhood. She tried to avoid these blocks, particularly as night fell.

  “A fellow by the name of Captain Sutcliff thinks that Mr. Sakaguchi and I are somehow involved in the explosion of the auxiliary this morning.”

  “Explosion?”

  “It looks like we gave them the slip. Give me a moment to catch my breath.”

  Ingrid let her hips collapse onto the seat again as she faced forward. Ahead lay the naval dock with its masts and massive shipping containers; beyond that, the dark sheet of the bay. The canvas top of the car didn’t filter out the briny air and the tang of a thousand things shipped from around the world.

  Her heart began to climb back down from where it lodged in her throat. “The auxiliary blew up earlier, right after you left. I was with Mr. Sakaguchi when . . . we were the only survivors.” She forced her dry throat to swallow. Had that really happened just this morning? “Captain Sutcliff showed up right afterward, saying he was on a mission . . .” She let her voice trail off. This stranger didn’t need to know about a missing hunk of impossibly large kermanite. “He insinuated Mr. Sakaguchi or other wardens were involved.”

  “Hmm. You think this might’ve been handy for me to know a little earlier?” The lightness in his tone conveyed a slight edge.

  “I met you in Mr. Thornton’s house, which had quite clearly been ransacked, and you expect me to tell you personal details from the day? Almost everyone I know died.” Tears threatened and she blinked them away.

  “My apologies.” His voice softened.

  The autocar slowed as evening port traffic squeezed in on them. Surrounding cars glistened beneath the high electric lights along the dock. The grand spire of the ferry terminal loomed ahead, and past that trailed short and tall rows of airship masts. Each resembled a steel lighthouse with exposed staircases and girders. Elevators lifted pallets of goods.

  Airships bobbed in a variety of colors and sizes, taut ropes tethering them to the top cones of many of the masts. Rigid Behemoth-class freightliners were the largest today, their gasbags swollen with hydrogen and decks receded within their hulls.<
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  Commercial passenger vessels were a bit smaller, identified by the presence of windows along the deck. These were nicknamed Portermans after the man who created the first east–west American airship network in the years soon after the California Gold Rush.

  A smattering of small vessels moored at the lower masts: Sprite-class personal vessels that seated anywhere from four to twelve, as well as a number of Pegasus gunships. She wondered which one had brought Sutcliff to the city.

  Flags of all nations emblazoned the rounded hulls—the majority being Japanese, American, or the split flag of the Unified Pacific—but British, Mexican, and Russian dirigibles freckled the rows. Ingrid knew that if she leaned out the window, she would hear dozens of languages in a brilliant cacophony, all of them belonging to men who were laughing and trading and ready for a night on the town. Women in furs with hats the size of Spartan shields ambled past Russian sailors in heavy furs of a different sort. Machinery clanked and propellers whirred from crafts too directly above to be visible.

  “Beautiful airships, aren’t they?” Mr. Jennings’s voice was quiet, reverent. “My father used to say that an airship at sundown was colored silver and gold, and worth far more.”

  Ingrid looked down at her hands. Mr. Sakaguchi’s blood had dried in the crevices of her palms and itched beneath her nails. Emotion caught in her throat. On any other night, she would have delighted in speaking with a kindred soul, someone who saw the beauty beyond the everyday bustle of the port.

  She tugged the wadded hat from her obi. Mr. Sakaguchi’s slipper plopped out onto her lap. Her pointer finger traced the gold embroidery along the top. Mama’s work.

  “I’m sorry, miss. He’s like a father to you, isn’t he? The fellow shot?”

  “Yes.”

  A horn honked somewhere ahead. Pedestrian traffic shuffled along faster than they did.

  “Hey, hey!” a very loud man spoke just outside. “Word’s a Durendal’s driving about downtown! Let’s go have a look!”

  “Holy hell, I’d like to see one a’ dem!” A whole mob of sailors crossed in front of the autocar, headed into town.