Blazing Blunderbuss (Wyvern Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Harlen turned and left. The airship tipped and shuddered.

  Hara motioned to Talen and said, “Get the professor and my father onto the deck. My father needs to see this.”

  Talen asked, “And how am I supposed to do that? They’re cowering like cowards under your bed.”

  Hara gritted her teeth at the image he elicited and answered, “Tell them there’s a fire on the deck and that the rest of us are still fighting the dreadnaught.” A fire was a serious thing on an airship, which was mostly made of wood and highly flammable materials.

  Talen hesitated and said, “Are you sure about this?”

  Hara nodded. It was the only way to save lives. She turned to the others and said, “Alice, evasive maneuvers.”

  Alice frowned, but nodded her head to accept the command. They weren’t being shot at and the dreadnaught was just sitting there, but her father would recognize the feel of an airship evading cannon fire.

  Hara motioned to the others and said, “Stay here.” Angel disagreed with a chirp and flew over to her shoulder. Hara patted her small paw.

  Hara didn’t trust the others to set a fire which looked believable and would do little damage. Gideon followed her. She could trust him. Besides, he could probably put out a fire just by breathing on it in his dragon form, or shifting it somewhere else like he had done with that silk flower.

  Hara asked Gideon, “Are you going to do something about the poison?”

  “Yes,” he answered simply.

  She nodded her head. There wasn’t anything else to say on that topic.

  Once on the deck Hara carefully set a fire. She made sure there was nothing close which was flammable. The last thing she wanted to do was burn her own airship to the ground. Angel made some hissing noise at the fire but remained on Hara’s shoulder.

  Hara looked at Gideon, and he answered without having to be asked, “The fire will burn out before it gets to anything flammable. If the wind was worse we would be in trouble.”

  Satisfied the fire would burn for a while and smoke enough to be convincing, she turned and left.

  Alice looked at her with a worried frown when they returned to the bridge. A small shake of Hara’s head indicated to Alice to keep it to herself for the time being.

  Hara nodded to Gideon and left to make sure Talen knew the plan and would convince her father of the seriousness of it all On the bridge they could hear the hurried steps of her father and the professor as they raced to fight the fire. Hara called out some orders. Murphy frowned at her, but she shook her head. She would talk to them later.

  When Talen got to the deck there would be a convincing fire for them to fight, giving the dragon his opportunity to snatch away the professor without any suspicion.

  Hara saw the dragon swoop past the large windows that wrapped around the front of the bridge. There was a short scream and she winced.

  Alice asked, “They haven’t killed him, have they?”

  Hara shook her head. “If Gideon trusts them not to hurt him then I do as well.” Alice frowned and Hara clarified, “The professor is very good at making things. The Empire isn’t stupid enough to throw him away. The professor will get his lab and will never see the light of day. He’ll be happy as Larry. But Alice, you can’t say anything about this again. My dad likes to eavesdrop.”

  Hara glared at the others and they all nodded their heads. They only had to keep it from her father until he had met with the Rosh. Because, in the end, it was the Rosh they had to convince.

  Her father and Talen rushed back onto the bridge. Gideon sauntered in behind them both. Hara motioned to Alice and the airship swooped past the dreadnaught, which sluggishly tried to follow them. The act was very convincing.

  Her father gasped in a breath and said, “The professor is dead.”

  Hara nodded and said, “Do you still want to go to Moscow?”

  Her father blinked, shocked by her coldness. She didn’t wait for his question about her mood and said, “A prison teaches you to be cold. Do you want to go to Moscow?” she asked again.

  Her father nodded thoughtfully and said, “We still have the vials. Maybe that will be enough.”

  It probably would be enough for the Rosh, as their aim was to cripple the Empire. They didn’t need the professor for that.

  Hara wasn’t surprised to see Gideon lounging on her bed when she went to her room that night.

  She asked, “The case?”

  “Sorted,” Gideon said casually.

  Hara frowned and he added. “They won’t know it isn’t the real stuff. Trust me.”

  She shook her head and said, “This is my father’s plan. His plans always fall to pieces and I’m usually the one holding the bag at the end of it.”

  Gideon patted the bed next to him and she sat down. He tucked her in against him and she let him. They were quiet for a long moment.

  Hara said, “The last time my dad was around, he planned to con people out of a lot of money. He had me build a digging tool and told them it would cut down on mining costs, and that he had a mine in Africa. It was all going to plan when one man went to Africa and came back and said he knew about the fake mines. He attacked my father. Dad almost killed him. The doctor ran for it, but I was knocked unconscious in the fight.”

  Gideon didn’t say anything but his arm around her tightened. She continued. “When I woke up they had arrested me. They discovered I was a woman so they took me to the judge who was trying my case. He listened to my story.”

  Hara sighed at the memories. If the judge hadn’t taken pity on her, she would be dead. Prison was no laughing matter. Instead, he had given her community service to pay for her crimes.

  Gideon ran a hand over her hair. She accepted comfort and said, “My dad didn’t even check on me. He didn’t care if I was alive or dead. I realized then he wasn’t my father. But I was still so angry.”

  Gideon’s voice showed his understanding. “So this is for you.”

  Hara nodded. “I need to cut ties with my father in a way that makes it my choice. This is a farewell.”

  Gideon said, “When we release something from our collection there is a ritual that we perform.” She smiled, glad he understood.

  He asked, “Are you going to be part of my collection?”

  Hara rested her head on his shoulder and said, “Let me finish with my father and then I’ll give you an answer.”

  Gideon didn’t push, and that made her want to give in.

  Hara flipped the switch and turned off the air pump. She had been putting in something to help the boys shovel in the coal.

  Liam asked, “Is that it?”

  She grinned at him and said, “I know it seems simple, but that joint there which holds that arm took me almost two years to perfect. Everything in here is a culmination of thousands of clever people putting together the bits they’re good at. Now help me pack up these tools. A tinker always looks after their tools.”

  Liam was an eager lad and he was good at the work as well, though Hara doubted he would be as imaginative as her Oupa when it came to making something new.

  There was a screech, like the sound of metal on metal. Liam lifted his head and was about to go see what it was, but she waved him back to packing up. She heard the sound again and followed it to the back of the engine room, where she also heard Marvin curse. “Ouch! You damn little creature. Stop wriggling. I just need to get to your bloody off-switch and when you wake up again, you’ll be in the lap of luxury.”

  Anger burned through Hara. She grabbed the shovel which was hanging up. She didn’t announce herself, she just stepped around the corner and swung the shovel.

  She caught her father on the back of his head. He collapsed in an unceremonious lump.

  Angel twittered and struggled to get out of Marvin’s grip. Hara dumped the shovel and crouched to free Angel, muttering a curse at her father. Angel clicked her metal wings in agreement and scrambled up Hara’s arm the moment she was free. Angel turned on her shoulder to hiss at Mar
vin’s prone form.

  Hara stood up and picked up the shovel to put it away. After all, a tinker looks after her tools.

  Gideon found Marvin on the deck, drinking. He smiled at Gideon as he approached and motioned for him to share a drink. Gideon approached, but he didn’t take the flask. He tucked his hands in his pockets to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid and said, “Do you care about your daughter?”

  “Hara? Of course. She’s a brilliant engineer. It runs in the family,” he said nonchalantly.

  From what Hara had told him, Marvin couldn’t put a travelling set together. Gideon studied him for a long moment then asked, “What do you want from Hara?”

  Marvin snorted. “Want? We’re family. There isn’t an account of checks and balances between us.”

  Gideon startled Marvin by grabbing him by his shirt and lifting him until Marvin was on his toes. Marvin squeaked but Gideon’s hold made it hard for him to make a loud noise. Gideon’s voice when he spoke was deadpan. “You are to do nothing to harm Hara. Do you understand me?”

  The jovial light went from Marvin’s eyes and he said, “You forget yourself, lizard. Hara is my daughter and she will come back to me over and over because she is family. There is nothing you can do about the blood we share.”

  Gideon dropped him and said, “Just stay away from her. Your blood is weak, Marvin, and Hara is strong. She will be in my collection and she will turn from you.”

  Marvin snorted. “You’re dreaming, lizard. She always comes back crawling.”

  Gideon shook his head at the delusions of the man.

  Hara was checking on the gauges of the hydraulics. She had been tweaking the system and wanted to be sure she wasn’t putting undue pressure on it.

  She heard Gideon say in a singsong voice, “If I take these two away how many would I have left?”

  For a moment she wondered if Gideon was having lessons with Liam, but the maths seemed too simple for the clever boy. Curious, Hara made sure she was quiet as she peered around the corner.

  Gideon was sitting crosslegged on the floor with coffee beans in front of him. He was shifting beans from one pile to the other. Angel sat in front of him and shifted her small claws to indicate a number.

  Gideon beamed and said excitedly, “Yes! Yes, that’s right. Okay, let’s try another one.”

  Hara pressed her back against the wall and covered her mouth. The urge to laugh was extreme. So much for Gideon hating Angel. Angel was clever, but like-an-animal clever. To teach her to count would have taken hours.

  Once Hara had her urge to laugh under control she left as quietly as she had arrived. This was one little secret she would keep to herself until she needed a good reason to tease Gideon. Knowing him, it wouldn’t be very long.

  Hara woke up from a doze and realized she had fallen asleep against Gideon. She blinked her sleep-addled eyes. She realized she had woken because there was someone outside the door. It opened without a knock and Harlen came in.

  She said, “You could have knocked.”

  The dragon looked at Gideon first before he turned to her and said, “I do not want anyone to know I am here. Did the ruse work?”

  Hara nodded. “My father is going to take the vials to the Rosh.”

  Harlen seemed to be hesitating about something, but he must have come to a decision as he said, “It would please the Empire if this ship were no longer a privateer. To that end, I offer some information. The member of parliament you deal with has some of her dirty fingers in diamonds that her fellow Roshians are unaware of.”

  Hara raised an eyebrow. This was the kind of information which could free her and their ship. Gideon said, “I will dispose of the poison in our old world.”

  Harlen raised an eyebrow and asked, “Is that wise?”

  Gideon said, “It only works on the bonded.”

  Harlen looked thoughtful and she wondered if he was going to ask for the poison, but in the end he shook his head and said, “Later.”

  He left them without another word. Hara twisted her head so she could look at Gideon and asked, “What are you doing in my bed, by the way?”

  He answered without any hesitation. “Having my arm go to sleep.”

  She punched him in the arm and when he glared at her she asked, “Better?”

  She asked after a long silence, “Why would the poison work on bonded dragons and not others?”

  He was quiet for long enough that she wondered if he would answer at all.

  Eventually he said, “To explain it I would have to tell you more about my people.”

  He was quiet for a while but she didn’t push him. He would answer her when he was ready. “If you took a rock and crushed it what would you get?”

  “Pebbles, probably. Sand if you really crushed it small.”

  “People are like that. We are all made up of things that seem solid, but which are made up of really tiny things. These tiny things act very strange. They don’t always stay inside you. Sometimes they go to the in-between and sometimes they even travel all the way to my former home. When we travelled the in-between we wanted to look like something that lived in your world. It helped us to travel that distance as well as the in-between is not kind to things which are alive.”

  “Like flowers?”

  His voice showed he was smiling. “Yes, like flowers. When we travelled the in-between to come to this world we borrowed the tiny things that make up a person, but only the bits that were in the in-between. When they returned to this world they remembered their shape and what they were, and this allowed us to be shaped like humans.”

  Curious, she asked, “Could you pick what you looked like?”

  “Yes, in a way. We didn’t know whether the shapes we picked would be pleasing to your people. Instead we picked forms that would be useful.”

  His fingers stroked through her hair and he asked, “Is this form pleasing to you?”

  She snorted and said, “Get back to the story, Gideon.”

  “All of us who came over to this world are made up of bits of this world, but mostly we are made up of tiny stuff that comes from our home world. That means things in this world can affect only a small part of us, because the tiny bits from our home world doesn’t work the same way as the tiny bits from your world.”

  “What about the dragons who are bonded to people here?”

  “Most of them are men as most of our women stayed in our home plane. We discovered that we can make our tiny bits tangle up with a person’s tiny bits.”

  She chuckled and said, “I know the birds and the bees Gideon, you don’t have to explain how sex works.”

  She could feel his own chuckle, as she was still lying on his chest. She really should yell at him for sneaking into her room, but he was a dragon and she knew it would be wasted breath.

  “By making our tiny stuff tangle up with your tiny stuff means that our small bits act the same way, and that means we can be more affected by things in this world. We are still different from humans but when we are bonded, more of ourselves are here, and not like what we were in our home world.”

  He was quiet for a long while so Hara felt comfortable to ask, “Do you really want to bond with me?”

  He let out a soft breath and said, “More than anything in two worlds.”

  Hara shrugged on her fur coat and tucked her hands into the pockets. Angel was again curled in the fold of her collar. It was warmer here than the inhospitable area in which the professor had his cabin, but the cold of Moscow could still make Angel a bit sluggish.

  Hara stepped onto the lift which would take them to the ground. Though slower the lift was also safer because of the vials. Gideon carried the case of vials. He carefully guarded it as if he still believed the poison was inside.

  Marvin said, “Come along, we’re meeting Marya in a warehouse.”

  Gideon and Hara exchanged looks. It didn’t sit well with her that her father’s contact was Marya.

  Marvin asked, “Are all the vials there?”
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  Gideon answered, “Every last one.”

  It looked like her father was going to say something, but he just wrinkled his face and shook his head. They left the Blazing Blunderbuss.

  Hara was nervous on many levels. Would they be able to fool Marya? Would they be able to convince Marya to leave them alone? This would be their only chance to get free without dirtying their hands first.

  She looked at Gideon, and he didn’t seem worried in the least. She took some strength from that. The warehouse where they had met Marya before was the same one they were using this time. Gideon raised an eyebrow at Hara and she returned it.

  Her father seemed oblivious. He strolled into the warehouse and called out, “Marya, sweetheart.”

  Hara rolled her eyes. Her father had never cared for anyone but himself, though he did have a track record of wining and dining many women. Usually for one of his cons. Marya, though, wasn’t one to fall for shallow endearments and charms.

  When Marya came out of the shadows she threw her arms around Marvin and he spun her around.

  Hara sighed and said, “You two can quit the act. You two are sharks.”

  Marya blinked at her and said, “I didn’t expect you.”

  Hara was tired of the lies and said, “Yes you did. You wouldn’t have met us if you weren’t aware of everything.”

  Marya’s eyes sparked. Marvin said, “What is this, my dear? Are you known to my lovely daughter?”

  Marya stepped back and said, “Fine, no acts. Yes, yes, I knew you were on your way, and you have completely bungled the operation.”

  Marvin opened his mouth, probably to profess his innocence, but Marya waved it off and said, “Quit it, Marvin. You were useful. There is no need to act.”

  Gideon placed the case down and said, “This is what you want.”

  Marya looked at the case, but didn’t move towards it. She turned to Marvin and said, “Tell me what happened to the doctor.”

  Marvin waved his hands dramatically and said, “We were attacked by their massive airship and a dragon came out of nowhere and knocked the doctor off the deck. He splattered on the ground below. He was dead instantly. Man, I heard his scream and how it cut off so suddenly. I must say, Marya, I’m truly sorry about that. I really did intend to bring him. But we did bring you the vials. There should be enough there to deal with all the trouble you can find.”