Blazing Blunderbuss (Wyvern Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Some dragons had bred with human women, and many of the children still had the ability to change into a dragon, though humans had no inkling of the half-breeds’ ability. These children were mostly nobility. Gideon had never bothered with politics. Dragon or human.

  Gideon hadn’t realized he desired a family until he had seen Hara stepping into trouble to save a stranger like him. Now all he had to do was convince her she wanted to be part of his collection.

  Gideon was pressed up against the glass of the bridge like a child against a candy store window. He said almost conversationally, “Hara, I think you might want to see this.”

  Hara was reading through the logs to see exactly whom they had taken the airship from. The ship only went to ports which were in the no man’s land between the Empire and the rest of the world, so they were definitely pirates or arms smugglers. They were not people anyone wanted to mess with.

  Hara was not amused to be interrupted. “What?” she snapped, glancing up and dropping the log books.

  There was another airship approaching them at speed. Hara swore and rushed to the window. There were no flags on the airship, but the envelope that held its helium was painted black. It must be the pirates. Except it was coming from the wrong direction. There were mountains close by though—probably where the pirates had been lying in wait for someone to come close enough for them to attack.

  Damn it, they had fallen into a trap and it was plain bad luck. She glared at the fop. He had brought bad luck right from the start. With a crew, she would have probably tried to run or fight back. With only the three of them on board, they didn’t have any real options, except maybe to die horribly or die quickly. She decided she would die fighting.

  Hara rushed to the speaking tube. She yelled, “Henry, we have company. Stoke it up.”

  Henry’s voice replied over the tube. “Aye aye, Captain.”

  Hara spun the wheel and said to Gideon, who was still staring out the window, “Maybe you could be useful and man one of the guns. Otherwise, it won’t matter how fast we are. Not that it’ll matter, we’re dead meat anyway.” This last bit she muttered to herself.

  Gideon turned and said, “You don’t think you can outrun them?”

  She worked vigorously at half a dozen crewmen’s jobs on the bridge. “Not today. We would need more crew to man the boilers to be able to outrun that pirate, let alone trim sails so we can manoeuvre. I’d be tempted to shoot them out of the sky, but we don’t even have enough crew to man all the guns.”

  He came up to her and offered his hands. “Take these off.”

  Hara heard the crack of a cannon blast and span the wheel to avoid it. The Blazing Blunderbuss shuddered as the cannon ball clipped one side of the ship.

  Gideon shoved his wrists in her face and demanded, “Take these off now!”

  Hara shoved him away and said, “I don’t think we have time for this, Gideon. We’re about to be killed by a bunch of thieving pirates.”

  He caught her arm and said, “We will be if you don’t remove these bands right now.”

  She looked down at his wrists and saw he was wearing ivory and ebony bracelets. A little girly, but then, he was a fop. They were tight, so they weren’t the kind that were slipped over the hands. Instead, there was a lock on one side and hinges on the other. The lock was a simple thing, but it needed two hands to unlock it.

  Hara grabbed his wrists and snapped off the first bracelet. She did the same to the other and turned back to the wheel. She said over her shoulder, “Now go put some holes in those pirates.”

  He disappeared without a comment. There was a series of cracks and the airship shuddered and creaked as wood shattered. There was a wheeze from the engine and she knew it wouldn’t be long before they were in serious trouble.

  An air current hit the side of their airship, buffeting them. She struggled to keep her footing and to keep the ship on course as the whole craft tilted sideways. The window on the bridge darkened as something flew in front of it. All she saw was gold scales. Hell, it was a dragon!

  Hara tried to get the airship to move, but the wheel was unresponsive. That last hit must have been to the rudder or to one of the stabilizers on the side. With the dragon in the air as well as the pirate they really had no chance. Hara closed her eyes for a moment and prayed to the gods to take her soul out of the hellfire she was in.

  She braced for the dragon to attack, but it didn’t attack their ship at all. Instead, it turned on the other ship. She went to the window to look out at the pirate ship and the golden dragon.

  The dragon wrapped itself around the wooden ship and ripped into the envelope above it. The pirate ship lost altitude quickly.

  The dragon flapped his large leathery wings and pulled away. The pirate airship sank down, and it was clear it would not be a problem any longer. The dragon hovered for a moment, then headed towards them.

  Hara ran back to the wheel. She wasn’t sure what she could do against a dragon, but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The airship shuddered, but nothing else happened.

  She turned when Gideon walked in. He tucked his hands into his pockets and walked to the windows to look outside again.

  Hara asked, “Where the hell did you go?”

  Gideon glanced over his shoulder and had to flick his head to get his hair out of his eyes long enough to actually look at her. “I thought I’d go for a walk.”

  She opened her mouth to demand an explanation when things clicked in her head. She set the wheel and stalked up to him.

  Hara asked, her voice a little shrill, “Are you a dragon?” He turned to face her fully and leaned against the frame of the window. His eyes were warm as he gazed at her.

  Gideon asked, “Is that going to be a problem?”

  Hara blinked in confusion at his nonchalant tone. “A problem? You’re a dragon!”

  Obviously concerned about her answer, he said, “Yes. But I asked you if it’ll be a problem. I kind of want to know your answer.”

  He was a dragon. The kind that ate people. Why would he care what people thought of him, let alone her? She studied him for a long moment, waiting for her thoughts to unscramble, until she could string some words together. “Why the hell would it be a problem that you’re a bloody dragon? You’re a dragon, you can do what the hell you like. You can leave right now if you want to. Go anywhere you like.”

  That meant he hadn’t really needed rescuing in the first place. When he had assured her he would be fine, he had been telling the truth. She had followed him onto this damn ship because she had been worried about him, but he hadn’t needed the ship either. Her anger was supplanted for a moment by confusion. “Why didn’t you just fly away when we were in the smuggler’s port?”

  Hara frowned as she asked the question. Maybe it was better to change the subject anyway, as she wasn’t comfortable with her own anger.

  He motioned to the ivory bracelets, which were lying on the wooden boards by the wheel. “They stopped me. That’s why I got you to take them off. I think we should put them away. Don’t you?”

  Gideon stepped past her and collected up the bracelets. Hara followed him, stunned by his revelation. “What’s a dragon doing here?” she asked. “I mean in a smugglers’ port. You were being kept prisoner by a couple of Rosh Barkers.”

  Gideon tucked the bracelets away in one of his pockets and nodded, as if that answered the question. He was so frustrating. He was looking out the window to the side. Probably checking out the damage the ship had taken.

  The engine still whined. She went to the tube and called down. “Henry, let the engines idle. We don’t need the power and I don’t want to blow it.”

  “Aye aye, Captain,” Henry replied automatically.

  Hara turned back to the dragon.

  Gideon said, “It might be difficult to get anywhere with the damage. I’m sorry it took me so long, but I needed to get some distance away from the bands.”

  Hara shook her head. He was a dragon. She could
hardly get her head around the fact that there was a dragon in front of her. Dragons had once eaten humans and burned them to crisps. But a few hundred years ago, they had made a treaty with humans. Now the nobility were mostly half-dragon, half-human hybrids.

  The dragons could have taken over the government if they had wanted to, but they did not crave power in the same way that humans did. They usually collected things. Money, treasure and even humans. Slavery was outlawed, but dragons did not consider the humans in their collections to be slaves. They also never took things from people who looked after them. Hara thought that was the main reason why they hadn’t seized power from humans. They must have approved of whatever the governments were doing to look after their people and lands.

  Hara worried that one day that attitude might change if humans ever took advantage of the people under their care.

  No one had ever explained to her why it was different if you were owned by a dragon, because she had never met a dragon before and would probably have gone her whole life without meeting one if she hadn’t stumbled upon Gideon. Most commoners never met a dragon in their lifetime. She had hoped to be so blessed. Unfortunately, she had never been very lucky, and recently luck had not been her friend.

  Hara said, “So what’s stopping you from flying away now?”

  Gideon glanced at her as if amazed by the suggestion. He looked over his shoulder out to the side stabilizers and said, “I think I’ll stick around a little longer. You might need me.”

  She went to the window to assess the damage. The stabilizer was there, but it was flapping in the wind. If they didn’t secure it soon it would snap off and they would have to replace the whole thing. Hara asked, “Can you make sure we don’t lose bits of the ship?”

  Gideon grinned at her and said, “I knew you wouldn’t mind I was a dragon.”

  Hara wrinkled her nose and said, “You’re useful. We’ll discuss your being a dragon later.”

  She turned when Henry came onto the bridge.

  Henry said, “Man, that was close.”

  Hara had to agree with him. “And bad luck. We’re badly damaged.”

  Henry asked, “The place we’re going to, does it have the facilities to fix this kind of damage?”

  Hara looked out the window again at the stabilizers. She said, “My Oupa is an engineer. He’ll fix this in a jiffy. If I had the tools I could have fixed it myself. My Oupa is also a very good teacher. His place isn’t very far from here; it was where we were headed in the first place. It’s more than time I visited my home town. After that you two can go anywhere you like. Preferably back to your homes.”

  Henry ran a hand through his hair and said, “That might be difficult for me. You see, the Empire…and well, most countries don’t look so kindly on people who work on pirate ships.”

  Hara frowned at him. “But you were taken, you’re a victim. Surely they can’t blame you.”

  Gideon spoke up. “They’ll say he should have died.”

  Hara snorted. There were always options when you were alive. But she saw the point. Regardless of whether Henry had been forced or not, he would be considered guilty.

  Gideon stepped closer to her and said, “I also don’t really want to go back home. You see, I was minding my own business when some people kidnapped me. I think floating around all over the place will make me just a tad more difficult to kidnap.”

  She turned to glare at him. She was going to say that he was a dragon and could look after himself perfectly well, but she noticed that Henry was listening intently. She decided it might be better to keep Gideon’s identity a secret for the time being. She flapped a hand at him and he just flashed her a grin. She said firmly, “You might be safer at home.”

  The insufferable lout. But he had saved her life, so she would tolerate him for a little longer. She would need all her attention focused on their destination anyway.

  Hara hadn’t been home in years. A few years ago her father had destroyed her faith in family. She had walked away from him and his schemes. At first she had intended to go back, but she had remembered the last visit and how awkward it had been. So she had decided to take the long way home, and that had been two years ago.

  She wasn’t looking forward to this homecoming.

  Gideon held onto the side of the Blazing Blunderbuss. The ship tipped with his extra mass as he made sure the stabilizing sails on the side of the ship weren’t going anywhere.

  He let go of the airship and dropped back, snapping his wings open at the last moment. He spun and grazed the ground with a claw before he moved his wings and pulled himself up. He flew a few laps around the airship before bringing himself to the deck. He changed back to his human form.

  Henry was coming past, and he looked up from some food stores in his hands. He frowned and asked, “What are you doing out here?”

  Gideon grinned and said, “Just getting some air.”

  Henry nodded and turned his attention back to the food. “I hope you like coq au vin. Man, I miss cooking.”

  Henry was gone before Gideon could give an answer either way. He seemed like an easygoing fellow, and Gideon wondered if Hara realized she had already added the man to her collection.

  Gideon went to the bridge. Hara had her head bowed as she worked on something. He watched her for a long moment. Her hands were delicate and moved like a witch’s casting an incantation. He asked, “What are you making?”

  Hara didn’t look up as she answered. “I’m putting in a mount so I can put a chair up here for you to sit on. At the very least it should give you something to hold onto if we ever have to move suddenly.” She looked up at him and asked, “You secure the sails?”

  He nodded. “They’ll be fine until we can get into a port.”

  Hara thanked him and went back to her work. She didn’t notice when he continued to watch her. It was kind of her to put in the chair for him. He wondered if she realized she wore her emotions on her sleeve.

  After a while he went to explore the rest of the ship. There were a few small rooms and a large stateroom. He was tempted to move into it and see what Hara did about it, but he knew he would have to work slowly with her. She reminded him of a deer. A little skittish.

  He finally settled himself in one of the cleanest rooms and lay down to sleep. He felt comfortable on the ship, a bit like how he felt when he was working on a theorem with other mathematicians. That moment when everything clicked together and the part he had played in it all…amazing he could feel that without having to do anything. He fell asleep with a smile on his lips.

  The Blazing Blunderbuss limped into the outskirts of the small town near sunset. Hara yelled for Gideon to drop anchor well outside the town centre. There was no one to set the anchor, so they let it drag on the ground until it dug in. The whole ship jerked and shuddered before it settled.

  Henry called up from the engine room. “She’s all put to bed, Captain.”

  Hara had instructed Henry to idle the engines down, and for the last few miles they had been cruising on the leftover momentum and the wind. They could have arrived earlier, but they would have risked more damage to the engine and the airship.

  Gideon came to stand next to her and said, “It looks quaint.”

  Hara would have said “sleepy” if she had been in a good mood, or likened it to a one-horse town where the horse had died and been buried. There were no other airships, but there were plenty of steam engines in the courtyard outside her Oupa’s workshop.

  Oupa took in all the vehicles in the area for repairs and he often invented his own as well. His workshop was the largest building in the small town. There were some stores and a few houses, but most people lived further out on their farms.

  Hara kicked the ladder over the edge and it clattered and almost reached the ground.

  Henry sidled up next to her and Gideon and said, “You all right with me wandering around for a bit? I haven’t been off the lady in almost a year.”

  Hara said, “It’s your choice. Y
ou aren’t a prisoner anymore. We’ll be around for a day or two while we do repairs. We’ll be at that workshop over there.” She pointed to her Oupa’s workshop and then started down the ladder. The others followed behind her.

  She wasn’t worried about setting a guard as there wasn’t anywhere the ship could limp off to in its current condition. All the gear on board was locked up and she had the keys. The pirates had kindly left them in the stateroom.

  Gideon was down next. He looked around at the town and tucked himself into Hara’s shadow. Once Henry was down he scuttled off and Hara wondered if they would ever see him again. It would be difficult to get the airship moving without someone in the engine room. Hara doubted she could convince Gideon to shovel coal.

  Anna came out of the post shop situated on the edge of the landing field. She was there late, but that wasn’t unusual. She leaned against the door of the shop and said, “Haven’t seen you in a while. I thought you had died or something.”

  Hara ignored the tone. Anna was always grumpy. Anna pushed away from the door and came over to give her a hug. A little tighter than usual, which meant Anna had probably started to worry about her. Hara felt guilty. She should have at least sent a letter to tell them she was fine. Even better than fine. She had finally escaped her father.

  Anna said softly against Hara’s hair, “Too long my girl. Too long.” Anna looked over her shoulder to Gideon and asked, “So is this your man? He’s yummy.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

  Hara rolled her eyes. “Anna, I am not going to settle and start having babies. This is…” Hara stalled. She still didn’t want to tell people Gideon was a dragon. She wasn’t sure what he was to her, either.

  Gideon stepped forward and offered his hand. He grinned at Anna and said, “Are you family to Hara?”

  Anna looked him up and down without any shame. “You could say that. Her mother was never in the picture and Alfred has never been good with kids. Look at the mess he made with her father. Reckless cad he is.” She patted Hara on the cheek and turned to Gideon. “You look after her and make lots of babies.”