Captain Gravenor’s Airship Equinox (Steampunk Smugglers) Read Free

wound, at least.”
    Her fingers fumbled against the wood for a minute. When she
mewled, he knew her hands had found a splinter. The deck hadn’t been treated
and varnished properly yet. How had a simple test run gone so wrong? He should
have gone out closer to dark.
    “Never mind,” she said after a moment. “I have no idea where
it is.”
    He heard more chugging. The airship was flying a tight
pattern. Had they seen something suspicious? “Then rest.”
    “And don’t think about drowning?”
    “Exactly. I don’t think we are sinking, anyway.” He didn’t
hear any cries of success from above either. Had he hidden them properly?
    “From your mouth to God’s ear.”
    The gentle sway of the airship on the water relaxed him,
until he heard the chugging again some indeterminate amount of time later. As
expected, they were going to keep looking, for a while, at least. He wondered
if he’d be able to get his airship aloft again. He’d never tried to do it from
the water. At least airships were designed from water craft, not wagons. His
family designed boats as well as airships. In fact, most of their airship work
was black market, for the smuggling trade, which was how he’d managed to fall
across Terrwyn Fenna’s path on Valentine’s Day. Her family, revered among
smugglers, had decided to have a new airship built when old Gladstone fell from
power and they thought the skies would be safer again. But she was an escapee
from prison, and when the Blockaders recognized her, she and her family had
tried to escape Cardiff with Brecon aboard to help. They had escaped, it was
true, but he’d lost his hand in the process. He’d thrown in his lot with the
Red Kite free traders once he’d healed sufficiently to leave the fishing family
who had nursed him back to health, since he knew better than to show his face
in Cardiff again.
    Still, he didn’t begrudge Terrwyn her freedom. She had a
daughter to care for, and a new man, from all reports. He’d heard they were in
France. But he’d lost all urge to woo her, even if she had been the most
beautiful woman in Cardiff. Beauty could get you killed.
    The woman lying next to him, now no one would call her a Fenna-quality
beauty, from what he had seen. Her features, while balanced, were a bit too
defined. Her nose had a razor edge, her sharp chin jutted above a long, thin
neck, which hardly seemed able to hold up the patrician head and overabundance
of bright blond hair. What she had was personality.
    “Do you have a husband somewhere, or children?” he asked,
after the chugging had gone away.
    “No. I lived with my brother, but he died in June, so I went
to live with my cousin, since his widow didn’t want me at the estate.”
    “Why not?”
    There was a long pause, during which he began to hear a
faint pinging, which he recognized as rain against the balloon. At least they
were warm and dry, trapped in an air pocket under the fabric.
    “She blamed me for his death. When she returned from Italy,
where she had been living, she ordered all my things destroyed and cast my
sister and me out.”
    “Was his death your fault?”
    “Certainly not,” she snapped.
    “Where is your sister?”
    “She has fallen into the role of housekeeper for my cousin.
Her interests have always been more domestic than mine.”
    “Why did your brother’s wife blame you and not your sister?”
    “That is a very long tale,” she said.
    He kept his chuckle low. “I have the time, madam.”
    She sighed. “I showed mechanical talent from an early age,
strange in a female,” she began.
    Then he heard chugging again and squeezed her arm to stop
her speech. The chugging intensified as the airship flew overhead. It moved
south a bit, then turned and circled back, crossing directly over their
location, then travelled north-west.
    Would it turn again ? Yes. Ahh, he recognized it now.
“We’re clear,” he said with satisfaction when the airship turned again.
    “How do you know?”
    “They