Breath of Earth (17 page)

“Those boys won't be seeing anything for a good twenty minutes. I just so happened to truss them up and drop them all in the Durendal.” He was sweat-soaked and panting from the effort. “Here's hoping Lee led the other two on a merry chase, and that any neighbors peering through the curtains are just as blind.”

“Is the Durendal disabled?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Is it really that easy to do?”

“Certainly is.”

“Then other than the difficulties of getting inside one, why aren't more tanks being sabotaged?”

“Only the designer of the Durendal knows the flaw. Created the flaw.”

“Oh.” She looked at him, eyes widening.
“Oh.”

Who was this man? The Durendal was made by the Augustinian Company out of Atlanta. If Cy created it over a dozen years ago, he must have been little more than a kid at the time. Lee's age. Some pieces started to come together in her mind, jagged as they were.

He'd served in the military. He was a pacifist. He'd likely deserted. If he was caught by those soldiers, it could very well mean a firing squad.

“If you built a flaw into Durendals, then . . .” Her voice trailed away. Cy made it clear he didn't want Lee to know how it was done, but the very existence of the weakness meant that Cy planned to exploit it someday, or for someone else to. Interesting.

She jerked her head toward the fence and her house. “This will provide the best access to Mr. Sakaguchi's office. Will there be any surprises in the backyard?”

He peered over the fence. “No, not where birds or weather could set them off. Here, I'll help you over the top.”

Mama used to say that whoever decided women should wear skirts should be forced to do constant jigs for the devil in hell, and this was one of those moments when Ingrid agreed.

The coarse wood of the fence grabbed hold of her skirt. Instead of heaving over the top and landing with finesse worthy of those
boo how doy
in Chinatown, she ended up upside down, the goddamned skirt tangled and half upended for all of three seconds before gravity did its job and brought her down with a mortifying rip of cloth. It took everything she had to not screech at the hard impact on her hands, her forearms, and then her knees. Blue mist flared again.

“Are you all right?” hissed Cy.

She choked down some blasphemy that would have made the southern man turn vermilion, and managed to crawl a few feet to hide behind a bush and assess her injured skirt and dignity. The cheap cotton had shredded from the knee on down to a ninety-degree angle at her other leg. The apron didn't fall quite far enough to cover it. The rip exposed her lacy bloomers up to the thigh.

Cy had seen that, and a whole lot more. Good Lord, of all people. Now she was feverishly red for a different reason.

Cy landed with lean grace that befitted the fantastic coyote. “I'm so sorry. Your skirt—”

“I'll make do.” She grabbed the two ripped ends and tied them together in a knot. It bulged out and showed her knickers. “Pretend you don't see that.”

He utterly failed to choke back a laugh. She glared him into muteness.

In naughty books, if a lady's bloomers were exposed, there tended to be kisses and other pleasantness involved, not to mention some semblance of privacy. Now she and Cy risked getting shot, captured, or worse. In the best-case scenario, she'd have to walk blocks through San Francisco looking like this. Dandy.

“I reckon they set alarm devices at all major entrances to the house and inside the house, too.”

“Like . . . a trip wire? The sort they use over in China and the Philippines?”

“Worse. In a set environment like a house, they have automata that use a beam of light instead of a wire. If something
interferes with the light, it triggers the blast.” His brow furrowed, causing his pince-nez to rise on his nose crinkles. “The question is, what did they use here, and where? Could even be something akin to a flash grenade. They'd want to question, not kill, any interlopers.”

“Ah, yes, because being maimed is so much more pleasant.” Ingrid frowned toward the house she had loved all of her life. It looked different since the shooting. Ominous. Even the fairy motes had fully retreated from the garden; the distinct prickling sensation of their magic was gone. She leaned on a small statue of a kirin. The fabled creature was a chimerical mix of dragon, goat, and unicorn, and the fantastic's arrival was supposed to portend the coming of a wise ruler. As a statue, it was intended to bring good luck. She couldn't help but give the ceramic snout a quick rub; they could use any luck they could get.

“Where do we need to go within the house?” asked Cy.

“Mr. Sakaguchi said to go to the namazu wall. He has namazu-e prints in his study, over bookshelves. See those double doors?” The soldiers had nailed boards over the broken glass. Under other circumstances, that might be regarded as considerate.

He pursed his lips. The faint trace of a mustache colored his upper lip, the tint a deeper red than his wavy brown hair. “Almost too easy, having such direct access there.”

“Easy?” she snapped. “After what you did, and then Lee . . .”

“Easy for them to rig something, miss,” he amended, gently. “Let's go closer.”

They snaked their way through the paradise of Mr. Sakaguchi's
backyard. The gravel of the Zen garden crunched underfoot. The soft, almost rubbery leaves of the vivid Japanese maples stroked her arms and attempted to snare her skirt.

As they rounded the catfish pond, she couldn't help but glance within the rock-lined basin.

“Dear God,” she whispered.

Dead catfish blanketed the top of the water, their white bellies exposed to cloud-strained sunlight. Wide mouths gaped open in the rictus of death. Some fish still lived, barely. Their sleek black bodies twitched and writhed as though starved for air. A day without food couldn't have done this.

“Poison?” Cy asked.

“No.” The straightforward, scientific explanation was that they died because of the dearth of geomancers in the region, but she couldn't help but think of Mr. Sakaguchi's stories. Of a geomancy-bound Hidden One's agitation causing totem creatures to go crazed or die because of the looming energy of a major earthquake. Were the double-headed snakes within the San Andreas fault about to writhe and resettle their coils? Was that
because
of the lack of geomancers?

Cy waited at the door for her, frowning in concern. Ingrid shook her head. “Later,” she whispered.

It was impossible to see inside the house with the door partially boarded over and the intact glass covered by shutters.

“Do you have any electronics on you? Are there any within the room, within about ten feet?” Cy asked.

“Me? No. Inside there's a Marconi, a Graphophone, a couple of other little things. Why?”

“I'm about to kill them. Until some components can be replaced, in any case. Here.” He reached inside his coat for
the Tesla rod and handed it to her. The metal rod was warm with his body heat. From the depths of a pocket, he pulled out a wooden box about the size of his palm. The lid was inlaid with stained glass panels, and through a clear triangle she could see a piece of kermanite the size of a walnut. It took up almost the entire box. Wires and clamps occupied the rest of the space, like a miniature heart and pulmonary system.

“If you don't mind, Miss Ingrid, please head toward the fence with the rod so I don't neutralize it.”

She obliged and retreated. Cy set the box on the porch welcome mat and opened the lid. He twiddled with the mechanism and went very still. She expected something intense. A bright flash, a boom, something to reveal the nature of the weapon in his possession, something that might bring the soldiers swooping in like Valkyries to a battlefield. Instead, he closed the box and returned it to his pocket. He beckoned her over.

“Thank you,” he said, taking the Tesla rod and extending it with an elegant flick of his wrist.

“What was that? Another Tesla invention?”

“No. This one is all mine. I call it a radioflash. Invented it a few years back, and Fenris near strangled me when I neutralized most everything he was working on.” He eyed the door. “I think you'll understand when I ask that you—”

“Don't tell anyone? Of course. And before you get any fancy ideas about that door, I should tell you I have the key.”

“Kicking's not fancy, Miss Ingrid. It's practical, if a bit too loud for our needs.” His broad grin made her smile in return. “Please unlock it. I'll be ready for any surprises.”

With trembling fingers, she worked the key in the lock, even as her anxious heart all but galloped up her throat. The
door clicked. Cy led the way. Ingrid's fingers twitched with want of a gun, but at least she had her power. Maybe now she could figure out how to control the damn thing.

The wood-paneled room was as dark as a cave. Glass crunched underfoot. Cy held out the Tesla rod and did something at the base. Brilliant blue light spilled forth, kermanite-powered and pure. At his nod, she shut the door behind her.

The familiar room spooked her in its wrongness. The army had clearly visited, and their imprint made her even more certain that Sutcliff's men hadn't ransacked Mr. Thornton's house. The azure beam revealed tidy disarray. Books had shifted. A mantel clock faced the wrong way. The desk chair sat upright.

Blood had dried in long streaks leading out to the hallway. Sweet Lord, there was a lot of it.

“Don't look at it.” Cy's voice was soft. “He's alive. He's with a ki doc. Focus on that.”

“Easier said than done.” Her voice shook.

His hand reached for hers, and she met him halfway. She sucked in a breath. She had never held hands like this with a man before. Fenris and Mr. Sakaguchi, that'd been different. Cy's fingers were long enough to encircle her wrist like a bracelet. His solidness anchored her in the present.

“We dare not dally too long, Ingrid.” It jolted her, to hear him say her name without a title. “Think on where he'd hide important papers for you.”

“Right.”

Ingrid faced the wall with the namazu-e. The framed propaganda posters from Japan showed the massive catfish in many forms—in his native environment of the sea, as a monster
being flailed for killing so many with his movement, and so on. Mr. Sakaguchi had said something about a box. Could there be a hidden vault in the wall?

Releasing her hold on Cy, she ran her fingers down the panels, exploring every crevice and knothole. Cy followed her example. The two went up and down every panel over a five-foot span, but nothing happened. She crouched down at the low shelves built into the wall. There were several netsuke of carved ivory, bone, or wood, most depicting earthbound Hidden Ones from around the world: the buffalo from Bulgaria, the turtle of Algonquin mythology, the frog of Mongolia. Cy pulled out books and flipped through pages, checking to see if they were actual books, and then tapped the wall behind them. It thudded as solid, not hollow.

More of Ingrid's hair slipped loose from its bun and dangled before her eyes. She blew the strands to the side with a frustrated huff.

“I don't know where else to look!” She scanned the entire room, desperate for any possibilities. Mr. Sakaguchi said to look for the namazu wall.

The namazu. She almost smacked herself in the forehead.

Ingrid headed toward the door. “When he said to look for the catfish, I assumed he meant the box had to be here, indoors, in the library. But that's where anyone searching would look first, so of course he wouldn't put anything here. I wasn't being literal enough.”

“Then where's it hidden?”

“In the pond with all those dead fish.”

Ingrid stared into water littered with fishy corpses. She had no issues with preparing or eating dead fish, but the idea of sticking her hand in there turned her stomach. It wasn't so much what the fish were; it was what their dead bodies
meant
.

“Mr. Sakaguchi came out here often. I always teased him about playing with his catfish. He'd be wet to the elbow.” Emotion caught in her throat again.

Leather fell to the stony patio with a heavy ripple. Cy had shed his coat and undid the buttons on his white shirt to roll back the cuffs. “That says a good deal. It means he wasn't wading to the middle of the pond.”

“True.” Light gleamed through the slatted patio cover and cast white spears against the dimpled surface.

Ingrid was relieved as Cy took the initiative and reached into the pond. He tugged at the rocks that lined the sides and bottom. Dead fish bobbed and rode on miniature waves.

“Loose rock here,” he said after a minute. He hefted a sizable piece of quartz speckled with algae. He reached into the hole just beneath the waterline and pulled out a parcel wrapped in oil cloth. He passed it to her as he pulled on his coat again.

Ingrid stroked the slick black surface. She guessed there to be a wooden box inside. It was about the size of a Bible, but these contents were more personally relevant than any holy book. This was supposed to convince her to leave the city, to take care with her power—something that Mr. Sakaguchi had apologized for with immense regret. Did it contain some secret tract of the wardens? Maybe women like her had existed all along.

“Ingrid.” The sharpness in Cy's voice caused her to jerk up her head.

Across the garden, another head stared at them—one topped with a navy cap with a black brim.

Ingrid dashed for the side yard with the box tucked into her armpit. Branches yanked at her skirts and pried at her hair. Cy loped past her with his long strides and grappled with the latch, swinging back the gate as she reached it.

“Waterfront,” he barked out as she passed.

Waterfront. Four long blocks away, a downhill slope. The area would teem with people at this time of evening, the perfect place to lose their pursuers.

They just had to make it there.

She ran across the yard and bounded through the gaping front gate not five feet from the Durendal. An autocar was parked behind it, a cluster of soldiers piled atop the Durendal. The hatch was open, one soldier halfway down the ladder.
They turned in unison. One man shifted to unholster his gun, but Ingrid turned the corner and away.

A shrill whistle sliced through the air.

Oh God, oh God.
She pounded out the words with every footstep. Her feet screamed in agony, her calves afire. Cy ran at her side, breath huffing, coat rippling. Gravity propelled them down the slope. Behind them, the car squealed as it pulled away from the curb.

Cy grabbed her arm, directing her toward a building—a factory, the doors open wide. She dodged tables and surprised women in white smocks, Cy leading the way on through. His holstered Tesla rod bounced against his hip and thwacked her. Through a courtyard, and into another business—a kite store. Rainbows of color blurred together as they burst through and onto the next block.

She couldn't hear the car anymore but whistles split the air and seemed to multiply.

Breath escaped her in massive wheezing gasps. Her lungs seared and seized and fought for every breath. Her strides slowed, even as she grimaced and forced them to keep going. Pedestrian traffic thickened as they passed card shops and dentists and delis. A bicyclist grazed her and sent her spinning but she ran on. Ingrid knew that if she stopped, if she had to walk, she couldn't run again. Her leg muscles were like rubber bands in a child's hands, stretched and stretched and unable to return to their previous shape.

A hundred masts pricked the cloudless sky. Beyond them sprawled the cool blue of the bay. Stevedores and deliverymen and trucks crowded the way.

Traffic forced Ingrid and Cy to a walk. Ingrid's agonized legs made to keep going, but Cy caught her against him. Her hand clutched at his lapel, her head at his chest. His hands cupped her waist and he all but dragged her across the street. Ingrid was aware of the blur of curious onlookers. She made her legs work, wobbly as they were. She ducked around a workman with a dolly.

Whistles. High, piercing. Close.

“Hide,” she gasped.

Cy nodded, glancing back. His face was ruddy with exertion, his glasses halfway down his nose. Brown hair clung to his scalp in perfect curls.

There were buildings, warehouses, trucks. Men everywhere, ants swarming for their crumbs of work. Very few women. Ingrid stuck out.

“Split up,” she gasped.

“No.” His hand encircled her elbow. “This way. Hurry.”

Cy guided her into a building. The heady scent of garlic reeled through her nostrils. Workers at their boxes looked up, eyebrows raised. She and Cy wound their way through, seeking any sort of privacy, any sort of refuge in the darkness. Nothing. They passed through a bright doorway and into daylight again.

“Stop! Stop them! Stop the dark woman!”

A boardwalk skirted the building. Seagulls squawked annoyance and fluttered away as Ingrid forced her legs to a pathetic run. Cy should leave her. He could outrun them, blend in. Fury at her slowness, at her lack of fitness, flushed heat through her already drenched skin.

“Stop them!”

An unloader turned, his mouth gaping in surprise, and reached for her. She swatted him back without touching him. Maybe that's what she could do—knock all their pursuers down—but what about the crowds around them, and the autocars and boxes? No, she couldn't risk hurting any bystanders.

But there was something she could do.

“Cy!” His name emerged sharp between breaths. “Hold on to me.”

He didn't hesitate. He wrapped his arms around her from the back, pressing the oilskin-wrapped box even closer to her torso just as she leaped into the water and prayed it was deep.

Heat didn't tingle to the surface of her skin. It roared. It consumed. The ten-foot drop to the bay took only a matter of seconds, but in her mind, it was so much more. Mr. Sakaguchi had said that the next time she built a bubble, she needed to make it big. Very well. She pressed herself into Cy—no, she willed herself against Cy, even as they fell together. She focused on his height, his breadth of form. She thought on the danger of rocks below, and the need for the bubble to be heavy enough to sink and hide them beneath the waves despite the air it maintained.

Focus. She etched it like a blueprint in her mind, one she already knew by touch and texture within the scope of her imagination.

All this, in three seconds. Then, the water. Despite her preparations, she held her breath, ready for the bitter cold and the strength of the waves. The water came, but she didn't get wet. It splashed against the shield. Tiny bubbles danced
past in streams, light and darkness mottled like a layer of ink spilled across a page. At her back, Cy strengthened his grip as their feet struck bottom, sort of. The seabed consisted of uneven sand and rotten pilings and God knew what else. The bubble settled. Plumes of sand rose and shifted around them and clouded the water even more.

They were underwater.

Panic drove a high, piglike squeal from her throat. Being buried beneath the ruins of a building was one thing, but this—this was worse. The bubble wavered, and she made herself focus.

“Miss Ingrid.” Cy's voice was higher than its usual range. “What exactly just happened?”

“When I know, I'll tell you.” She breathed in and out, quelling her terror, keenly aware of the heat still in her skin. She had enough power to do this for a little while. Whatever it was she was doing. She analyzed the nature of the bubble she'd created. Before, she and Mr. Sakaguchi had been crouched and low, and the bubble had been round. Now it was tall to fit Cy. She found the glassy sheen about six inches in front of her, the surface so cold it practically bit her hand. She jerked her fingers back.

They could have been in that frigid water. They were, in a way.

Ingrid thought of washing clothes, how a soap bubble would catch on the breeze. A bubble might look round, but it could bend and flex with the pressure of the wind. That's how this constructed bubble would work, too.

She stepped forward, gingerly. The bubble flowed with
them. Hesitating, Cy followed, his body indecently close. His lanky form fit against the curve of her backside. They were like dancers in a club, the sort she shouldn't spy on but couldn't help doing so if the opportunity arose. The heat of her body slid from her fingertips and deep into a well beneath her pelvis, where she could just imagine—

The bubble rippled. “Idiot!” Ingrid snapped at herself. Heat lurched up and out of her again.

“What . . . ?”

“Never mind.” She tried to edge her hips forward a smidgen, but with every step he rocked against her again. She released a frustrated huff. She wanted to enjoy this close proximity, damn it all.

“I will mind, because in case you didn't notice, we're underwater and breathing.” A straight line of bubbles rippled downward in front of them. “And that, I believe, was a bullet.”

“Damn them all to hell! Do you think they can see us? Walk! Fast!”

“They can see something, evidently.” His voice was still high with a slight trill. “I'd still like to know what you've done, miss. Miss Ingrid.”

She had managed to confound and petrify the coolheaded Cypress Jennings. Wonderful.

They briskly walked as step-in-step as they could over the rough terrain, staying parallel to the land. The bottoms of boats swayed overhead.

“I made something similar yesterday when the auxiliary exploded. I grabbed Mr. Sakaguchi as the blast occurred. My only thought was to protect him. The bubble kept us safe in
the rubble. There is one major deficiency. We'll need to surface soon, as the air in here will last for only so long.”

“I see.” The words were drawn out and measured. His fingers quivered at her waist as the box dug deeper into her side. She overlapped his hand and squeezed in reassurance.

“I'm sorry,” she said, and meant it. “You said you were curious about my powers—well, this is what I can do, the full demonstration.”

“Miss Ingrid, pardon my language, but this is a damn sight more impressive than directing energy into kermanite. I say that as a machinist with a fine appreciation of those rocks.”

“Thank me when we're out of here.”

How were they going to get out? It's not as though there were any stairs conveniently leading to the street. She had a strong feeling she would have to pop the bubble while they were still underwater, and worried about how Cy would react to that. Could he swim? If she asked him the question, would that only intensify his terror?

It's not as if she could swim either. She'd been to the beach with Mama a few times, but was never completely immersed in the water. That wouldn't have been
proper
.

Damn propriety to hell and back. She needed to get out of here, learn to swim, fly an airship, run up and downhill, and do whatever in God's creation she wanted to do.

Including Cy.

His hand fit against her waist. Every few steps, it seemed, they each shifted on the dense sand and couldn't help but press together. She made a concerted effort to focus on the bubble.

“Have you seen any other bullets?”

“No. But they likely are looking near that dock or where they expect the tide to take our . . . to take us.”

Our bodies. Well, that thought was a bit of a damper.

A barnacle-crusted hull thrust out of the sand, and she led them around it. The shore was a smudgy shadow now. Less light filtered from above.

“Let them think we're dead, then. It should buy us more time. I hope no one recognized you.”

“I don't do much business with naval ships. They tend to stay with machinists they've used for years.” His voice trembled and he paused to swallow. “Airship industry has boomed with the war, brought in new folks who are also willing to employ new folks.”

Ingrid was glad she couldn't see his face. Feeling the tension in his body was disconcerting enough. Seeing his terror, letting him see hers—no, that wouldn't be good.

They walked around the tall poles of a pier. No gentle slope led back to the shore. Instead, everything looked darker and deeper. Fewer boats swayed above, and if there were more, she couldn't see them. How far had they walked? How long until sunset? What were they going to do? She held the box and Cy's arm tighter against her side.

The slight fever was dissipating, her skin cooling. Sunset wasn't going to be an issue. She'd lose consciousness before then.

God, I'm not one for prayer, but we need help. Don't let Cy die because of me. Please, show us a way out of this.
The intensity of the feeling radiated from her.
Help. We need help.

“It's curious, Miss Ingrid, this matter of you being a geomancer. And a woman.”

Terrified as Ingrid was, she couldn't help but smile at the change of subject. “Oh, so you noticed both.”

“It seems a bit obvious. Being a geomancer. And being a woman.” He shakily chuckled. “You're trying to get me in trouble, Miss Ingrid.”

Such pleasant trouble, compared to the literal deep water they were in. “The magic manifested when I was five. My papa was a warden. Mama had been managing on her own since he died, but then I became very sick. Near death. No doctor could help. Mama had a hunch and took me to the auxiliary. Mr. Sakaguchi was the one she spoke with, and he found I could siphon power into kermanite. He hired Mama as his cook and housekeeper. I scarcely remember a thing before that time.”

“Your mother . . . ?”

“She died two years ago.”

“I'm sorry. I . . . my sister died last year. Hurt never really leaves, does it?” His voice softened. “I never heard of a geomancer doing these things you do.”