Mission: Nutcracker

Chapter 15-2

“What’s the easiest way out?”

He had just opened his mouth to reply when they heard gunshots from two floors below. At least that’s what Vinni thought.

“What in the hell…?” she asked, then looked at the reproachful expression on the girl’s face. “Here, sweetie, do you want some water?”

Caprice nodded, and Vinni handed her the canteen. “Stay here. I’m going to see what’s what.”

She ran down the stairs and encountered the last person she’d expected to see. Well, maybe not the last since the girl seemed to be very good at getting herself into trouble. And this time she had a young man with her.

“You!” said the redhead who’d confronted the fake automaton the day before.

Vinni grinned. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

The wall splintered beside her. “Now go, I’ll join you in a minute.” They didn’t hesitate, and Vinni pulled out her pistol. She peered around the railing and saw three automatons, or men dressed like them, conferring. They all turned toward her at the same moment, their masks creepy in their blank expressions. She shot one of them in the shoulder, and he crumpled with a cry. The other two pulled out their weapons, and Vinni didn’t hesitate—she ran to join the others.

“Come out. There’s no escape for you,” one of the men called. “If you’re cooperative, we may not kill all of you.”

“Right,” Vinni muttered. She found the redhead and the young man standing in the bedroom with Hollowell and the little girl. The young woman and Hollowell were talking in a familiar manner.

“We can’t—it’s too experimental,” she was saying.

“Fiona, it’s our only way out,” Hollowell ground out. He clutched his side like he was in a lot of pain.

“Then we need to hurry so it has time to inflate.”

They nodded, then turned to Vinni.

“One of the tinkerers was working on a light inflatable craft that can hold four people. We may be able to use it with five since you and I are small, and so is she.” Fiona gestured to the little girl, who clutched Vinni’s canteen with both hands.

The promise of freedom, the escape from Cat and ability to vanish into a new life, seemed very tempting from Vinni’s perspective. Too tempting. Nothing came without a price.

“Where’s the airship?” Fiona asked Hollowell as they half-helped, half-dragged him up the stairs. She knew she’d catch hell from her mother for the bloodstains on her dress, but she couldn’t help the elation she’d felt at finding him alive, if injured. There hadn’t been time to question him, but she desperately wanted to know if he had any idea where the others had gone. Or at least what he knew.

“Top floor. Roof compartment.”

“How long will it take to inflate?”

“Dunno. Caprice? Did you start the balloons?”

The little girl nodded, her curls bouncing. “This morning, like you told me to.”

Fiona looked at her. “You weren’t stuck in the room?”

“No, we’d pulled the door tight so it would be harder for people to come in after us. Caprice is stronger than she looks.”

The girl nodded again, her teeth small and bright with a smile. “We were gonna escape today. Hollowell said he needed time to get better before we could.”

“So that woman,” Devon whispered glancing back to where the dark-haired woman brought up the rear of their little group. “Who is she? The same one who helped you yesterday?”

Fiona nodded, again unable to speak to him. Blast it, why did this keep happening? Hollowell grinned at her, and she wanted to smack him, but dared not in his state.

They finally reached the roof and heard pounding from below. That prompted them to hurry, and Caprice indicated a long door set into the roof’s surface. “It’s in there.”

Devon left Fiona to support Hollowell and opened the door, allowing it to swing up and then back. But it didn’t bang. Rather, the joints caught and held it at a forty-five degree angle.

An oblong balloon rose out of the compartment, and then two more, all attached by ropes. Fiona grinned—it looked bizarre, but it should work.

The last thing to rise was the gondola, open, and fitted with benches behind the steering device. Goggles and helmets lay on the benches.

“This is only going to hold four of us,” the mysterious woman said. She bit her lip.

“Do you know what to do with this?” Devon asked Fiona.

“No, they only let male apprentices allowed to sit for journeymanship take flying lessons. But I know the theory.”

“Then hop in,” Fiona’s savior said. “I’ll quickly show you the basics, and you can handle it with him.” She nodded toward Hollowell.

“Yes, Hollowell and I can manage.”

But Hollowell’s eyes had gone half-lidded.

“Caprice, give him more water.”

They got him into the gondola and on to a bench. Fiona put goggles and a helmet on and studied the controls. She knew theoretically how one of these things worked, but she hadn’t been able to get any practice. The woman showed her which controls steered it and how to increase and reduce the air in the balloons to make it go up and down. Then she hopped out.

“You go, I’ll hold them off.”

Caprice held the canteen out to the woman, but she waved her on. “Keep drinking. But slowly. And watch out for those three.” With a grin, Caprice nodded.

Heavy steps clomped up the stairs to the roof, and Devon yelled, “We don’t have any time left. Casting off!”

He sawed through the mooring rope with a knife he’d found in the bottom of the gondola, and Caprice got the other one. Fiona made sure they all wore goggles and helmets and prayed they wouldn’t need the protective gear. She increased the heat to the balloons, and the airship jerked upward, nearly throwing the three standing passengers to the floor.

“Sorry,” she said to all of them. “Hang on.”

“Bit late for that, don’t you think?” Devon asked.

His typical sarcasm made her frustration grow, but instead of clouding her judgment, it sharpened her focus. She saw the schematics in her mind, adjusted dials and the rudder, and cleared the trees. There would be a trail of steam in the cool air behind them, but she couldn’t worry about that. She only needed to get them to the carriage. Which she saw galloping off below them pursued by black-cloaked men on horseback. Hopefully that meant the woman on the roof had escaped.

Devon swore, but only loud enough for her to hear the tone and not the specific words. Right, there was a child aboard.

“I instructed the driver to leave if it sounded like there was trouble,” he said. “Looks like he waited too long.”

“Do you have a weapon?” Hollowell asked, apparently roused by the motion of the airship. Fiona glanced back and saw Caprice sitting beside him.

“A small one. It won’t do much damage, but it can at least scare them. I hope.”

“I’ll follow the carriage,” Fiona said.

Devon leaned over the side, holding on to one of the ropes that held the balloons to the gondola, and shot at the cloaked figures. A sound like metal hitting metal reached them, and the men all reined in their horses and looked up, the sunlight glinting off the masks. Fiona shivered.

The men raised their guns. Fiona again pulled the lever for more air and heat, taking them out of range. Plus, their pursuers had lost time they could have used to go after Devon’s carriage, which had vanished down the twisting wooden lane. She allowed herself to relax, albeit slightly.

“Nicely done, Fiona,” Devon said.

Fiona blushed at his using her given name more than at the compliment. She felt alive, the airship under her command, and its power hers to harness. It again struck her at how unfair it was for women to be barred from the Tinkerer’s Guild examinations, but she might be able to change that.

She guessed at the heading for Devon’s mansion.

“There’s a place to land this thing, right?” she called back, her brain back in problem-solving gear.

“The lawn should be big enough,” came his reply. “Or do you think you can’t hit that big a target?”

Teasing! He was teasing her. And she liked it. She made the mental calculations. “I think so.”

“Good,” he said as Hollowell groaned. “And Fiona, you may want to put some speed on this.”

Vinni watched the airship—and her hope of immediate escape—lift off. But her instincts had told her she couldn’t risk overloading a new inflatable craft. If it crashed, she would be responsible.

The two uninjured nutcracker men stomped up the stairs. Was the slowness in their steps part of the costume’s limitations—in which case she could easily outrun them—or a trick to further intimidate her? From what she had seen, she guessed the latter. But, stupid men, it also allowed her time to find a hiding place and take aim when they finally appeared.

They cursed when they saw the airship in the sky. Even though it had moved out of range, they clomped to the edge of the roof and shot at it. She fired at one of them, but the bullet glanced off his back.

Ah, metal plates. Smart move, that.

They turned, and she shot again, and the bullet similarly glanced off the other one’s leg. So the costumes were at least partially armored. They’d come ready for battle. But what were they in the house for?

Then she realized—Hollowell. They wanted the n***o. Why else would they be there? The redheaded girl had seemed familiar with him. Had that made her a target of the man who’d followed her the day before?

Armed with that knowledge and a gun with just three bullets left, Vinni checked her escape routes. She ran to the door leading to the upper hallway.

“There she is!”

She darted into the bedroom, yanked the key from the door, and pulled the sheets—bloodstained from Hollowell’s injuries—off. The slow tread of the men in the hallway told her she just had a few minutes. She tied one end of the sheet to the bedpost, opened the window, and threw the end out. It was of course way too short to reach the ground. Then she hid in the closet where the little girl had been. It smelled of human waste, but Vinni thought nothing of it. If she’d been forced to hide from metal men, she’d probably soil herself, too.

And that brought back a memory, of hiding in a closet such as this for days.

“Don’t you make a sound, Davinia. Not a sound, you hear me?”

Vinni nodded, unwilling to open her mouth and risk a slap. Her papa wasn’t normally one to hit, but he’d gotten wild-eyed, and she knew that look. It was either panic or drink, and he hadn’t had a drop of liquor for days.

She felt the coarse fabric of his shirt against her cheek as he carried her to the closet and put her there. She wanted to cast about through the memory, but she had to pay attention to the slow clomp of the nutcrackers.

They arrived at the bedroom door and pushed through it. Seeing the sheet tied to the bed, they walked to the window and looked down. Vinni darted out of the closet and pulled the door to with an extra oomph. A bullet smashed into the other side, but the wood was thick. She turned the key in the lock on the outside and crept down the stairs, alert for sounds of the others.

She opened the front door to find a wide-eyed Cat standing there.

“You all right?” Cat asked.

Vinni nodded. “Right as can be. You take care of the guard?”

Cat’s mouth twisted. “Took two hits to knock him out.”

Had Cat taking out the rear guard allowed the nutcracker men in? Or had they all been in league with each other? “You’re losing your touch. Are you all right?”

“Yes. Find anything?”

A pounding noise came from upstairs. If Vinni were to tell Cat about the young man and woman, as well as Hollowell and the little girl, she would be giving up a potential escape route. She decided to keep the information to herself.

“Just trouble. Let’s go.”

As they walked around the house and down the drive, Vinni noticed the stream trail left by the miniature airship and its direction. Her talent told her the heading it had taken, which gave her an idea for where to look for them. There was a lot of Terminus to search, but she’d find them, the solution to her mystery, and perhaps even a means of escape.