On the third day he found a small wild apple tree and on it, a couple of brown, shrunken, sour crab apples. He managed to eat them, horrible as they were, and although they made his tummy ache, he was temporarily cheered. But then the following night was terrible, the coldest one yet. He had no way of making a fire, and he couldn’t risk one anyway. It was too cold to rest; he had to keep moving, but had barely a faint glimmer of energy left in his body. Somehow he was able to keep going, still following the stream which snaked along on his righthand side, going east, only his instinct guiding him away from the camp and the pursuing guards. He could barely keep upright now, was on his hands and knees at times, crawling. But still moving, still following the stream, still going east.

She was in the chicken shed, collecting eggs. She would wipe each egg as she found it with a small cloth before putting it down carefully into her wicker basket. She was alone at the farm for a few days. The men had gone with the cattle to the winter pasture and would not return for weeks. Her mother and aunt, and the three young children, had taken produce to the trade town and were not due to return for two more days. They were hoping to trade the potato vodka they had made for some medicine or fuel, things they had seen little of in the last years, and get some salt, maybe wool, or even better: a sheep or goat. Their own friendly little sheep had all been killed by wolves last summer. The children had been inconsolable when they found the carcasses, and she’d cried too, and her mother had ridiculed her for it. She’d cried again, just as bitterly, when her father and uncle went out with their guns and came back with a emaciated female wolf and her two little cubs, just skin and bone. She did not hate the wolves; she understood their hunger. But she could not understand, or forgive, her father’s vengeance or her family’s joy as they celebrated the kill.

Her basket half full now and the chicken shed empty of eggs, she stepped outside and drew a long, luxurious breath. As much as she despised living out here, she loved the air, the forest, and the silence. These few days alone were so precious to her; it was difficult being cooped up in that house with too many people in it, and with Jeb, the hired hand whom everyone expected her to marry. Her parents approved of him of course; they saw him as a sensible choice, her only choice. True, he was the only man, not counting family, she had seen in years who was not a guard. Townsfolk didn’t count, they were all sick and weak, and had nothing, less even than her family. She knew her family saw themselves as better than others, they were healthier and supposedly they were not sinners, like everyone else. She didn’t see it like that at all; to her they were all equal, all pathetic. She would never marry Jeb, or anyone else for that matter. She thought of her bag, tucked under her bed, filled with everything she had; clothes, a couple of books, dried beef that she’d snuck out of the cellar, apples, and a leather pouch filled with water. The women were expected back the day after tomorrow, sometime in the evening. In the morning she would get up and feed the animals, then she’d set off, through the woods. She would never come back. They wouldn’t look for her. She had no idea where she would go, maybe she could make it to the sea, she had heard things were better there. Maybe catch a boat somewhere. Probably everywhere else would be the same though, just more dead-eyed people. That was the thing, everyone around her, they were all broken people. Their eyes were missing something, blank and expressionless, and when they spoke they all sounded so tired. It was fear, a constant terror. She had never questioned this until that day at the market in town.

She was there that day with her mother, selling cabbages, carrots, and honey. It had been a busy day, a train was expected to come in and the town was buzzing with anticipation. Trains meant people and goods, meant business and a chance to see something different for once. The marketplace was a throng of people, most of them moving toward the station, children trying to squeeze through so as to not miss the iron monster roaring in, steam gushing from its nostrils and scores of people spilling in and out of its metal belly. She’d seen trains before, of course, so she stayed with her mother, but no one was buying much as the crowd pushed back and forth. As usual there was an awful ruckus: the murmurs of hundreds of people, sellers calling out their wares, the train whistling, the noise made by the wheels of the coaches rattling past on the cobbled road, and the occasional screams as a fight broke out. Then something seemed to change, all the sounds died down to a collective whisper. The crowd parted, as if swept to each side, divided by a giant, invisible hand.

Who could be coming? her mother had whispered. Must be someone important. Fear in her voice. She was curious then, and climbed up on their cart to get a better view. Her mother tugged at her skirt, soundlessly begging her to come down, not to draw attention to them. She kicked out with her foot and her mother shrank away, hiding her face in her shawls. There were only a handful of people between her and the corridor that had opened up through the full marketplace. Through this came a procession of guards in two groups, heavily armed and looking grimly at the crowd, signaling don’t you try anything. Between them, bound with leather straps in a row by their hands and feet, were three women. Rebel scum! a voice from the crowd exclaimed. She gasped. Rebels? They really did exist?

The women had been beaten, they were in their undergarments, they were in bad shape. She leaned closer, fascinated. People whispered excitedly, Rebel whores!, Deserve whatever they get! Some were spitting at the captives, some picked up rotten fruit from the ground to throw at them. But the women did not lower their heads in shame like prisoners tended to do; they marched on. As they came past her, the girl in the middle raised her head and suddenly she was looking at her, they were looking at each other, straight in the eye. She was devastated. She had never seen eyes like that. There was fear, yes, but something else as well, a fierceness, strength, and pride. Without thought, she nodded her head slightly in a sort of acknowledgement of the existence of that face, those eyes. A faint smile flashed across the prisoner’s swollen lips. Then the moment passed, and the crowd closed behind them and they were gone. People were breathlessly discussing what they’d just seen. Be going to the camps. Serves them right. Get what they deserve for stirring up trouble. They won’t be doing that anymore, that’s for sure.

She had thought about those eyes so many times since then, and whenever she did she would feel a stirring sense that there was something out there for her to discover, that the life she knew was not all there was. She’d feel suddenly rebellious and strong, and she dreamt of going away to find adventure. Alone in her cold bed at night sometimes she would close her eyes and imagine those eyes and their pride, and she’d feel less alone at the thought of that woman and how brave and fiercely beautiful she was. Sometimes when she laid there thinking about this, she felt a warmth emanating from between her legs, spreading outward, beckoning her touch. She would stroke herself under the blanket, wishing it was someone else’s hands on her skin, someone fearless and free, who would stroke her hair and laugh, kiss her softly on her neck, ears, between her breasts… Slowly her hands would caress the inside of her thighs, fingers finding their way up to the soft hair and warm skin of her cunny. Wetting a finger in her mouth she’d gently circle her clit, enjoying the feel of that tingling sensation beginning to build up and her body beginning to hum as she moved her finger closer and closer. She had to be quiet because her “room” was just a corner of the main room upstairs, sectioned off by a large bookcase, and her cousins were sleeping at the other end of the room. So she would silently bite her lip and focus her energy inward instead, thinking of that woman’s wetness and what her wet lips would taste like in her mouth, wishing their bodies were rubbing against each other sweaty and warm; until she was so wet that the juices seeped out from between her lips. Then she would push a finger inside herself and move it, faster and faster, while working her clit with her thumb until at last she came, shaking in spasms, her eyes closed, stars appearing on the insides of her eyelids.

Suddenly the air around him felt warmer and there were glimmers of light around him. He thought he might be losing consciousness, but then he realized he was nearing the edge of the woods, and up ahead he saw a sunny field and at the edge of it, a farm.

She was coming round the corner of the chicken shed when she saw him, stumbling out of the woods towards her. She froze for half a second, terror gripping her across the chest and back with icy, steely fingers. Then she took a quick step back around the corner, instinctively. She needed to get into the house before he did. Had he seen her? He must have. She ran to the back of the house, out of sight for him, running with long springy steps, adrenaline pulsing through her body like liquid fire, heart pounding, fists clenched. She made it through the back door and bolted it quickly, then as she heard the front door open, she threw herself at the gun on the rack by the cellar door, grabbed it, and was halfway up the stairs to the loft in one frantic heartbeat. The closet in her parents room had a secret hatch, leading to a crawlspace which ran along the length of the house. When guards came, she would hide there on her father’s insistence, to keep them from getting ideas. Young thing like you, he’d say, worth almost as much to them as a horse. The space had a blanket and, luckily, a leather pouch of water, almost full. It was unlikely he would find her here, unless he knew where to look for the hatch. Besides, she had the gun.

He collapsed on the floor in the hallway. He’d expected someone to come out and wave a gun in his face, maybe even shoot him. He didn’t have a choice; he needed warmth and water, and some food, or he would die anyway. But no one came. The house seemed abandoned, but it was warm, so someone would be coming back any time. He lay for a while unable to move but as warmth seeped into him he found a last glint of energy and made it to the kitchen. There was a bucket of water on the floor with a scoop in it, and he lay down next to it and drank. When he woke up it was twilight and he hadn’t been shot or tied up. Maybe whoever lived here had been scared into the woods and would come back with help, or was hiding somewhere close, just waiting him out. Well, he wasn’t planning on staying too long. He found some food in a cupboard: bread, cheese and apples, and some hard boiled eggs. It was the best meal he’d had in two years.

There had been no sound from the man downstairs for a couple of hours, but she stayed hidden. She was just beginning to think he might have left when there came a sound, a crash or something being shifted, followed by the sound of steps on the stairs. She held her breath as the steps came closer. There was a tiny hole in the wall facing the main upstairs room. She moved soundlessly towards it and put her face up against the wall to try and see who the intruder was. She could only see a tiny portion of the room, and he was not in view. Then she heard him in her parents’ room, and for a moment she thought he might know exactly how to find her. She lifted the gun and pointed it towards the hatch. But the steps moved away again, and she put her eye to the spy hole once more. This time she saw him, his back at least as he walked across the room and descended the stairs. She was puzzled. He hadn’t really touched anything, not even rooted around. What did he want? Unless he was planning on taking his good time with the place, but he didn’t seem to be looking for valuables or weapons. It was more as if he was just curious and having a look around.

There was no one in the house, no one in the outbuildings; but the chickens had been fed, there was a shed filled with rabbit cages inhabited by fat and sleepy rabbits, and he found a basket full of eggs by the back door. It was certainly not an abandoned house. He’d poked around for a while but there wasn’t a trace of anyone, and then he simply decided there was no point in worrying. He was safer here than he’d been in years, he’d found a pistol and some bullets in a desk in the front room. Not that he could actually shoot anyone, but he was pleased, it evened the playing field. He had eaten and drunk and slept, and eaten and drunk once more and then he was beginning to feel like himself again. Not quite back to his old form, but he decided a bath would cure that. There was a big wooden tub in the storeroom which he pulled into the kitchen. He then fed several big logs into the big black stove and lit it. He had found some clothes; a shirt, a pair of socks and trousers and a coat, from a chest in the cellar. There were some holes and tears here and there, but they were soft and clean and all he could think about was how great it would feel to put them on after the bath. He didn’t feel good about stealing, but he needed new clothes that weren’t ripped, bloody and generally signaling escaped prisoner. He would take the clothes and the gun, and some water and food, out of necessity; but he was leaving the money that he found in the pot in the cupboard and the pretty necklace he’d seen in the bedroom. He carried in water from the well and had a shave on the back porch, letting the long straggly beard fall onto the nettles by the stone steps. He cut his hair close to the scalp. He kept warming water and putting it in the tub, which filled very slowly. He had found a bag of hay so he took some out to the rabbits, changed their water and stroked them softly while he waited for the next round of bathwater to warm.

She heard him rummaging about in the kitchen. Then the back door opened. A few minutes later he came back in again, and then he went, and came back. What was he up to? He seemed to be preoccupied with strange activities so she decided it would be safe to sneak out into her parent’s room and peer through the little window onto the front yard. She saw him walking across the grass towards the rabbit house. Oh no, not the rabbits. But then he stopped at the well and filled a bucket, which he brought with him into the shed. He’d been carrying something else as well, that she couldn’t quite make out, under his arm. When he came out again after a few minutes, and started to approach the house, she could get a better look at him. How young he seemed! But his face was blurred by the twilight of the evening and it was hard to be sure. He wasn’t carrying dead rabbits though, rather he was carrying their feedbag. He fed the rabbits? What kind of intruder was this, what was next, was he going to scrub the kitchen floor, as well? She made her way to the stairs and snuck halfway down them, until she could see into the kitchen. She was hopefully cloaked by the darkness; it was quickly getting dark outside, but the kitchen was quite bright, he’d lit the ceiling kerosene lamp. He had his back towards her, was pouring hot water in the bathtub, and there was a soft smell of marzipan in the air, from their pine oil soap that she had made with her mother. He slid his tattered shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. His back was muscular, and covered with bruises and scars. He looked like he’d been whipped. Seeing the dark vertical lines on his skin she realized he must have escaped from the prison camp on the other side of the forest.

She watched him as he slid his trousers off and stepped out of them into the tub, then lowered himself into the water until he was sitting down. At the sight of his naked skin she felt a tingle running down her back. The hot water seemed to be painful for him because he tensed up as he submerged his body, before relaxing and leaning back. He rested his head on the edge of the tub; it tilted towards her and she could see his face. He wasn’t quite as young as she had first thought, rather about her age, or late twenties maybe. She wondered how long he had been in that camp, and how he managed to get away. Some people never got out of there, and she’d never heard of anyone escaping before. He sloshed about in the water as he scrubbed himself all over and washed his hair. She watched him bathe; she wasn’t scared anymore. How do you fear a man who bathes, and feeds rabbits? …Especially when you’re the one holding a shotgun. Eventually he stood up, poured a bucket of water over his head and shook his head like a dog. He was facing her now, his eyes closed, suds on his nose. Seeing him like this she suddenly felt strange, and she understood that this feeling was an intense attraction towards this man who stood there wet and naked in front of her. He was too skinny, of course, like everyone she knew, but in a tough way, and broad shouldered. All over his body there were traces of pain. Burn marks, some old and faded, some fresh and still healing. Pale lines leaping across his skin, scars from cuts probably, and bruises blooming across his entire body. He’d been beaten all over, in the kidneys, on his thighs, in his face. He had light brown hair on his chest and his nipples were oval and pink brown. Her gaze followed the contour of his waist and hipbone; it led her eyes to his thighs and his cock which shook a little as he tried to shake more water out of his ears. That’s when he looked straight at her and smiled.

He had seen her standing on the stairs, silently in the shadows like a ghost, as he was lowering himself into the tub. So someone was home, after all. It was a young woman holding a shotgun. He didn’t know what to do. The pistol was on a table out of reach. Oh, stupid. He pretended not to have seen her, trying to buy some time, trying to think of a plan. The water was like hot iron pins sticking into his skin. He closed his eyes and laid there, not knowing what else to do. Would she shoot him? But she didn’t, she didn’t do anything. After a couple of minutes he decided he wasn’t about to waste the first warm bath he’d had in years. At least he would die clean, and warm. If she wanted to watch him then fine. So he washed, scrubbed himself raw with his nails and the sweet smelling soap. He glanced over at her and saw her staring at him with her mouth open, gun now pointing at the floor. The situation felt… less threatening. So he stood up, facing her.

She didn’t even realize at first that she’d been discovered; when their eyes met she couldn’t think. She felt like she was being struck by waves of lightning coming towards her. The eyes! He was different; he was like the rebel woman. No fear, just presence. She moved down the steps, towards him, her face, arms, legs, her body was pulsating. Her heart was pounding in her ears and her hands felt heavy, like they did after she had been carrying buckets of water from the well. She tried to say something but couldn’t, there was too much to say. He stepped out of the tub, water dripping all over the floor. Sorry about the mess, he said.

She was staring at him with her intense eyes and a strangely solemn expression. He didn’t know what to do so he got out of the tub and just stood there, watching her as she came towards him. She put the shotgun down on the shelf by the door. He started saying something, wanted to explain, apologize for being in her house uninvited and taking things, but she just reached her hand out and touched his, softly. I am very sorry about what they have done to you, she said. He nodded, and at this very moment it caught up with him, the realization that he was free, that he had made it out of that hell. He sobbed as he felt the loosening of the knot he’d carried in his chest for so long, and she held him tightly. It’s ok now, she whispered. You know, I never would have thought I’d find a friend in this kitchen. She smiled. Eventually, he smiled too.

They were undressing her. His hands were warm and real on her skin. She pulled her blouse over her head and he reached around her to loosen her stay. She leaned into him and kissed him where his neck and shoulder met, then rubbed her nose up against his face and their lips touched for the first time. His cock responded to this quite strongly. She tasted him slowly, circling her tongue around his, trying to pull it into her mouth. He was struggling with the stay so she helped him, and together they quickly got her out of it. As it dropped to the floor he put his arms around her, scooping her up and bringing his face down between her breasts, kissing her there, then each stiff nipple. She moaned quietly which encouraged him to continue, circling her nipple and the soft, delicate skin of her large areolas, before licking the nipple again, harder, and then almost violently rubbing it with his tongue. She reached down and grabbed his hand and guided it in under her skirt. He stroked along her thigh and the soft downy hairs on her legs stood up expectantly. As his hand reached her cunny she let go and grabbed his cock instead, softly tugging at it. He let out a soft moan and pushed his hand further up towards her warmth. He stroked her cunny lips and slid a finger in between, gently parting them. She was dripping her juices over his fingers and sliding her hand up and down his shaft. They locked eyes and she stroked his ass and back softly, forcing herself to be gentle with him because of his wounds, as he slid two fingers deeper inside her. She pulled him closer and wrapped one leg around him. They were up against the wall now, and he grabbed her ass and lifted her up slightly and moved himself in between her legs. She was pulling at him; her body was humming with longing to have him inside her, a feeling close to seasickness. She wrapped her arms around his neck and they held on to each other as he pushed his hard cock past her cunny lips, and deep inside her. He was warm and as he moved himself in and out slowly, gently, she could feel herself around him, a pulsing surge involving her entire body tensing and relaxing to their movements. Let’s go on the floor she whispered. He nodded and pushed inside her once more, quite hard, then pulled out and set her down.

They laid down together, wrapping around each other, kissing softly for a while and she very gently stroked his skin and kissed his bruises. Then she moved in between his legs. She stroked his inner thighs and explored his balls, kissing the soft skin there. She could taste herself on his skin, which turned her on, even more. She started kissing his cock, taking the tip into her mouth slowly, letting her tongue continue its survey of him by sliding around the tip a couple of times before she pushed her head down to take him fully into her mouth. She grabbed the base and pushed down gently there, which made him moan loudly. So she did it again, this time simultaneously going up and down on the shaft with her mouth. She continued this for a while, analyzing his responsiveness to her motions; how he groaned, tensed and relaxed, until she stopped abruptly and straddled him. As she sat on top of him she leaned forward towards him, he wrapped his arms around her, held her there as they shared a deep, wet kiss. She moved herself up and down towards his erection, brushing against him, teasing him with her wetness until he tried to grab her and attempted to push himself inside her. But she evaded him and bit his nipple instead, hard, until he let out a little yelp, surrendering, and laid back. She brought herself down and guided herself onto him, hovering for a moment with the tip of his cock just between her cunny lips. Moving her hips back and forth, she teased him even further; until she couldn’t wait any longer and she took him inside her, deep and hard. She rode him quickly and firmly, leaning back and rubbing her clit in rhythm to their movement. He reached up and grabbed her breasts, breathing faster now as he softly kneaded them with his palms. As she felt herself tightening around him, waves of pleasure begun to wash over her bringing her closer and closer to climax. As the orgasm started to flow through her, it seemed to flow between them and into him, because his pleasure was intensifying as well, his legs shaking and moans escaping his lips. As he came, deep inside her, their backs arched and she grabbed his arms wildly, adding bright new hues to the muted patchwork of bruises on his skin.

They walked through the woods together, talking and laughing, keeping close to the road but making sure they were out of sight from it. She knew the way to a village a few towns over, where he knew of someone who might be able to help them hide for a while. He was going to move on after that, to continue the mission he’d been arrested for plotting. She was going to stick around, ask some questions. She was looking for someone, a girl with fierce eyes.

Written and illustrated by Honoria Tox
The moon flickers like a gaslight behind the torn, torrid clouds as I watch out the upper window, straining my ears for the sound of horse-hooves. The earth falls away from my home and down to the river, only one thin horse-trail separating its wildness from mine; and the darkness courses above us.
     I sigh at the silence, leaving the window to move about the room: first to the stack of thick azure paper that sits on my work-bench. I cut the paper into cottony slices with my knife in strong, swooping gestures, like a factory-woman tossing the shuttle-cock back and forth across a loom. I fold the paper with quick, skilled strokes, my dainty fingers darting them into points and curves. Then I fit them with their mechanisms, small gears and springs thrust into their wings, and set them free: a hundred tiny blue-birds, my automata, winding their way through the air and into the night, flapping all their pretty wings against the moonlight as they go.

     I lean again against the window-frame, weary with my waiting, and watch the warm, caramel-colored light flowing around me and out into the river. Turning, I glance in the mirror to evaluate myself. My thick dark hair is piled atop my head like a ball of silk thread caught on thorn-boughs; long strands of tiny blue pearls drip from my ears onto my breast, which is bursting itself under the force of my impossibly tight corset. A cascade of cream-colored lace skirts overlap and struggle their way all the way down to my ankles, while my small, soft feet chill, bare against the floor. Gently lifting the lid of my letter-box, I pull out the letter I received from him last night, as though removing the host for sacrament. The ink-lines are thick and urgent, slanted like a race-horse, without time wasted on the frivolous loops and flourishes so often used by my suitors.
     “Camilla,” he writes; for that is my name, “How often I have thought of you, when you knew it not, and of how I might possess you, my black country Rose. You must know who I am from the news that travels along these dirt veins — but shall I tell you more? How often I have hid myself nearest your home, first out of desperation — for there is a dear little cave, as you might know, within the river’s walls — and then out of preference, for the sight of you. At first I observed you, my idol! my goddess!, creating those objects of the most intricate and artistic nature in your hands, and was filled with curiosity, as I have never observed such a science in your sex; and yet with your hands you were a creator, an inventor not of the petty craft of man, but a mother of the tenderest natures. How I loved to watch you toil at your work-table, stuffing tools and pens up in your hair as you worked, loosening your corset to breathe in your experience and learning, thoroughly immersed in your art…
     “Ah, but more pleasure I have seldom had than a near-fortnight later, when almost caught out by our good Men of the Queen, I hid in amongst your rushes — closer still to your window — and watched you dressing before your glass. You are such a fine woman as is rarely seen in the country, and with lustful tremblings, I marked the smoothness of your skin, the fine pink in your cheek and breast! I will not hold back from telling you: as you loosed your corset to change into your night-clothes, I was overcome with such a heat that I could not restrain myself! I trussed my hand up under my wool coat and loosed my trousers, stroking my prick deliciously as I watched you put on that show of undress. I shall speak true; though I have had my way with many a doxy of Portsmouth, none could compare to you in beauty of form, grace of movement, and radiance!
     “Now I am sure to have shocked your girlish sensibilities and delicate innocence; but as a rogue I cannot do but speak plain. And supposing my words have stirred in you any heat of the blood, any fever in your cheek or heart, or in those tender moist regions which you do well to keep hidden — well then, I will come for you upon the eve of the Seventeenth, late along in the moon-rise, and stand full and waiting below your window. I am not so knavish as to force myself upon a lady who did not intentionally excite me so; but if you wish it so, I will have you!”

     Of course, it is a letter full of plain silly writing, and beyond the decency of any gentleman; but as to the last, he was full well right that I was stirred, though not so innocent in knowledge of him as he might suppose, as I did observe him well enough in his hiding at the river-side, his disguise amongst the rushes, and his enthusiastic fondling of his manhood as he watched me undress. I found it exciting — I cannot say how deeply — to catch a glimpse of him so engaged when I glanced at my mirror, and so with length and excess spent that evening in careful, sensual movements, laying myself almost wholly open to his gaze. And all these times, combined as they were with the visage of his tall and dangerous frame, his dark and ragged locks, and the clear beauty of his countenance did work well to excite my womanly desires.
     I look now, therefor, again from the letter to the window, and as I gaze out, my eyes acclimating to the nighttime, I observe upon the road the shape of a man on his horse. I gaze a moment longer, and find his white cheek reflecting the moonlight up at me; yes, it is him, of course. I did not hear his horse’s footfall, but then, I must remind myself that the silent journey is a highwayman’s craft. I play as a girl does for a moment, dropping the letter onto the floor as though I had not been reading it, and pretending not to see him on the road, gazing instead upon the moon, the movement of the clouds, and the leaves of the trees as they throw themselves against the wind. Finally I let my glance fall upon the man, whose form is clearer now, and who looks up at me unafraid, eyes bright and gleaming in my lamp-light, a smirk regarding me as I am. Reaching to my desk, I pull out a white paper dove that I crafted this morning; I wrote upon its wings the words, “I come.” I let my hands fall out the window and opening my palms, release my little dove into the night air; with the seeking that a true lover’s note should always have, it circles about a few times, and then comes to perch on the highwayman’s hand, nesting itself there. I smile down on it a moment, and then turn to pack up a few things; no toys, but all my tools — screws and drivers, a kit of gears, rods, cogs, cams, and a thousand other bits, which are nonetheless small in size and pack away quickly into my bag. With a smirk I leave my cloth shoes and slippers, but pack up my leather boots; I leave here my lacy frocks, but pack my corsets. At the last, I throw the whole pack over my shoulder and wrap myself around in a great black cloak, blowing out the light and exiting my room.
     He swings off his horse as I near him, little but our eyes shining through the night. He ties my pack to the horse’s saddle and then, turning towards me, wraps his hands about my waist and draws me close; and now I note how he towers over me, and with his great arms lifts me up to kiss him on the mouth. He kisses me broadly and deeply, like a man overcome with hunger, and breathing deeply his hot breath into the chill air around us.
     “How I worried you would not want me,” he breathes against my cheek, holding me tight.
     I nuzzle his neck and breath in his scent. He smells of pine, and smoke, and wine.
     He suddenly pulls away from me, inclining his ear to some far-off sound. “Not here,” he says, “We may be found.” He leads me to the horse and wraps his hands around my waist, lifting me onto it, then leaps up behind me. With a quiet prodding of the horse, we set off down the road, turning as we reach the forest’s edge off the road and into uncleared bramble. The horse moves slowly, but delicately, and my love whispers to me as we go: “My fortune’s nearly made, and I’ve plans to leave the county, perhaps to head northward — anywhere that the black-hearts won’t follow. Or perhaps to Paris — I can see you taking lessons there, a lithe Parisian woman in their highly-reputed academies. If you wish — shall we go to Paris? You can have the finest fashions, and I shall proudly take you out on my arm to dance in those cafés — from which so many lewd tales come to us, even here in the country! Ahh, are you as dark and devious as I am, my dear? For I do love such stories…”
     I don’t reply, my heart beating too fast for me to find the words as our way is picked through the forest, leading us deeper into lands where most men rarely venture. The bushes and trees are thick enough now that I can barely see their forms; a moment later, the horse halts, and my love slides off the horse, catching me as I come after him. He pushes aside some dark vines and branches, and leads me, a hand wrapped around my waist, into a tunnel of overgrowth, which soon seems to mingle with earth. We make our way through, his one hand feeling along the stone wall as the tunnel curves underground, his other holding me tight to guide my steps. There is now no light at all, and the tunnel seems to turn and weave like a worm underground. We keep on, and a few foot-falls later, I note that our noises are met with echoes.
     Placing a hand on my shoulder to steady me, he bids me stay a moment. In a second, brightness erupts into my vision as a lantern is struck, and our dwelling is illuminated; a cavern, the size of a good sitting room, looms before me. The ground is evenly packed dirt, and around us are the accoutrement of a simple but sufficient home: a royally-sized feather-bed, layered up in thick blankets and with a locker set up at its foot; shelves crudely made out of wood, on which rest books and a few tools — as well as a few guns; and upon a very small oak desk, hand-made maps of the country whole. He motions for me to join him in the room’s center, and watches my expression for an appraisal. I smile and blush under his gaze, suddenly shy of his glance.
     His beauty, which I had only known in the darkness, I now see clear: how he is both tall and broad-shouldered, how keen and sharp his eyes are, twinkling green at me. As he tosses aside his riding-hat, his dark hair falls around his head; and again he laces his eager hands, with their long and slender fingers, under my coat and around my waist. He presses himself to me, kissing my face and cheeks. I sigh with joy, and let my fingers, trembling, burrow under his shirt to touch against the skin at his ribs. He gasps at the touch of my cold hands, perhaps from surprise; for a moment later he is unbuttoning his jacket and his shirt. He has a sudden urgency, which I can see flushing his cheek as he moves me towards the bed, breathing heavily. He lays me out on my back, and looses the cloak to let it fall off of me. He sheds his jacket and his shirt, and sits beside me on the bed, kissing me. He sits back for a moment and gazes down at me, as though savoring the sight, and I venture to let my own gaze wander over his body. His shoulders and chest are shining yellow in the lantern-light, his chest broad and muscled, his skin rough and weathered… and although I know how he can see me as I gaze, I let my glance fall down to his trousers, where his prick strains against the cloth.
     He watches, and smiling knowingly, begins to work a hand up underneath my skirt, caressing it along my legs. He loosens my under garments and pulls them out of the way, so that I am exposed to him, my wet snatch sparkling delicately. He fondles it a moment with his fingers, stroking the lips and the clitoris, pressing a finger or two into me, and bringing me to such a state of warmth and pleasure that I can hardly remember where I am. Then, leaning over me, he unbuttons his trousers, letting his cock fall out, erect and red-headed, already wet with arousal. He gazes at me, and opens my legs wide, bending them at the knee, and climbing between to point his long, red-headed penis at my slit.

     Then, with a single thrust, he pushes fully into me, causing me to gasp and arch my back, lifting me off the bed by the pain and great joy of it. He trembles, and rocks back to push into me again, and I inadvertently give a small cry. He looks at me in concern, and so I kiss him encouragingly; and with that, he suddenly reaches a hand down to his trouser-pocket, and removing a small switch-blade, begins cutting off all the little strings of my corset. He continues with his prick inside of me, thrusting as he looses my chest to his gaze, now pinching and playing with my nipples insatiably. I feel tight, my blood heating and coursing through me as he withdraws and then sheaths himself in me again. His rhythm is growing faster, and I grasp at the coverlet of the bed to keep in my place, as he is now reaching a state of violent passion, my body moving over the bed at his whim. His breath is coming, uneven and ragged, against my ear, and his hands roam across my skin. I whimper in joy, and he wraps a hand around one of my wrists to push it down and hold me tight in place. I twist, and with my free hand, streak my black-polished nails over his arm, leaving red in their wake as we wrestle in the exertions of lust.
     His free hand finds its way back down to my clitoris, and he begins to rub, pinch, and twist it as he thrusts, which brings my breath up to catch in my throat, and causes me to tighten around his cock. The blood is building in me, and I can hear my own cries rising into the chill air as he continues. My breasts are bouncing crudely now in response to his quick pace, and my hair has come loosened to tumble everywhere. I paw ecstatically at his shoulders, clutching him to me and twining my legs around his as I scream and come, my whole body shaking uncontrollably with the thrill of my passion. I draw him full into me, impaling myself upon his cock as I shudder out my last pleasures, losing a few cries to the night, and as I hear his breath increase, his pace quickens so that his strokes are short and fast. I continue to embrace him as he thrusts at me, and then, pausing and pushing into my cunt, he quivers in male ecstasy as he comes, his juices running hot inside me. He collapses on top of me, and we lie there a moment, still wrapped and spent in each others’ arms, before he rolls away in exhaustion.
     My head swims, my cheeks burning in the cavern air, and he fondly plays a bit with the wetness that has streaked out onto my legs, stroking them gently and bringing me to relax. He rises to turn out the lantern, and then returns to wrap himself and the blankets around me, warming me against the night, and whispering into my ears about the travels we must take.
     “We could go to London, if you like — have you not been away from the country?” I shake my head — no.
     “Or perhaps to Istanbul — it is exquisitely exotic, a city of enticing spices and heat…” he continues. I tremble in excitement.
     “Ahhh, but most of all, my love,” he sighs, “I think how well you will like Paris…”
     [To be continued...]

Each one had a painted sign identifying it – Gideon’s yard’s read Le Société Panthères de Ciel, Ltd., a curious and somewhat barbaric name for an airship concern.  Edward had the coachman merely pass the yard’s gate, then turn about and pass it again before depositing him at a supply shed and custom’s house half a mile away.  The man seemed irritated at the extra distance, but a generous tip insured his courteous departure.

Edward mumbled something about a better view to the civil servant on duty, a junior assistant customs officer of some sort who was intent upon his lunch, and the man waved him in.  He made his way up to the tiny three-storey “observation tower”, one of many along the wide stretches of the Aeroport, designed to allow passengers, guests, and ground controllers a better view of the sprawling complex.  From here you could see the dozens of mooring towers which seemed to be constantly busy with new ships arriving and old ones departing from all over the continent.  There was even a brass telescope there, so that the various numerals and symbols upon their flanks could be more readily espied for a mere two sous – though the overcast and constant drizzle made such attempts overly ambitious.  Edward made use of it, but it wasn’t the ships aloft he turned it upon.

He scanned the breadth and length of Gideon’s yard, where a dozen sheds clustered around a massive wooden hanger that looked like an enlarged barn.  The entirety was enclosed by a wooden fence nearly four meters high.  The perimeter of the compound was patrolled by some dusky-looking carbine-toting natives of some distant land, who seemed eager to shoot at someone.  There were no less than five of them at the gate, itself, and when a few beggar children who seemed to haunt every aeroport he’d ever been in came near, the guards wasted no time in turning them briskly away.

The more Edward watched, the more he grinned.  Whatever Gideon was doing in the yard, he did not want it known, that was certain.  The utilitarian iron mooring tower that peeked up over the sheds was empty, at the moment, but there were two more keen-eyed lookouts ensconced therein, with long, wicked-looking rifles at the ready, constantly searching the area around the yard.  All in all it reminded Edward more of a fortress than a manufactory.

But a manufactory it was.  Carts and lorries of all description seemed to be gaining access, once they presented their credentials to the guards, though Edward could see that the crew inside insisted that all materials be off-loaded in the foremost part of the yard, well-away from the hanger.  Upon retiring, every vehicle was subject to close scrutiny before it was allowed to leave.

This, then, would be a challenge, Edward decided, as he abandoned the observation tower.

Less so, it turned out, than he’d hoped for.  It took only ten francs under the desk to the attendant to discover that Capt. Becker’s ship, the Victrix, was scheduled to return from a brief trip to Berlin near sunset – if, the bitter clerk added, the sun deigned to show it’s face today before retiring.  A brief walk down the muddy road that swung around the yards provided Edward with the only other essential piece of information he needed to gain access, and the roots of a plan began to form.  Yet merely appearing as if out of nowhere was not sufficient to appease his desire for an impressive arrival.  He took steps to ensure that his appearance would be memorable.

He took his supper at the wine shop where waiting passengers took their comfort before they embarked, paying far too much for fare that would have made any self-respecting Parisian shudder.  While there, supping on the upper porch where he had a reasonable view of Gideon’s mysterious yard, he was able to monitor who was allowed in, and who was stopped at the gate by the armed savages that seemed to be everywhere.  Edward sketched out some notes in his notebook while he observed, and noted Gideon could have easily been raping innocent schoolgirls by the wagonload within.  But any Parisian gendarme would have balked at trying to get past the private army of dark-skinned warriors and their gleaming guns to preserve their virtue.

The interior of the compound held numerous sheds and huts, all surrounding the massive building the fence barely contained.  A few of the huts were nearly full houses, and one in particular was easy enough to pick out as Gideon’s residence.  It was a legitimate house, at lease four or five bedrooms, and it had several servants who went back and forth between it and the gate, or it and the kitchen, or it and the biggest building.  If there was a brain behind the hum of activity, it was there.  But before he got into there, he had to get past the gates.

Several deliveries arrived while he watched, and Gideon noted that they were each well-searched at the gate, their identities and business no doubt identified, before being aloud to pass within the compound, proper.  The walls were regularly patrolled, and the towers at the edges of the yard were constantly manned by his friend’s soldiers.  And twice while he sat there observing Edward witnessed a savage patrolling the exterior of the fence with a brace of fierce-looking wolfhounds.

It was a formidable defense, to be sure, but as Uncle Pete never failed to remind him, the greater the visible defense, the easier it was to penetrate it once you understood its weaknesses.  His uncle used the metaphor of an old widow: though she might protest mightily on the basis of her morality, she was just as willing as any maiden to part her legs when approached properly.  By the time Edward had finished his meal and a second glass of vin ordinaire, he knew exactly how to get this metaphorical widow to spread like a whore.

*                      *                      *

“So who is that mysterious whore Billy’s seein’ in town?” Tayanita asked Marta casually as she swabbed an acrid smelling concoction of liquid latex on to a broad canvass sheet in her “laboratory”.  It bore little resemblance to the pristine German laboratories she’d seen, the French versions at the University and the Academy of Science or even the hastily-built labs back in the Oklahoma Kingdom.  Indeed, it was little more than a shed tacked on to the massive hanger building, but it was where she and her protégé, Marta, worked on the millions of questions that needed to be answered before the Argo could be successfully built and launched.

She was testing the comparative weight ratios of rubberized canvas, which the French and British used as the outer envelopes for their airships, compared to the cotton denim cloth the Germans and Italians preferred. The outer envelopes did not need to be gas-tight, of course, as the interior lifting cells were, but they did have to be water-tight, fire-resistant (if not fire proof) yet strong enough to hold together under the punishing conditions of the atmosphere – but not weigh more than absolutely necessary.  Every kilogram of unnecessary weight was a loss.

The Atlan girl shrugged as she continued to stitch together the denim sheet that was next to be coated.

“I am not certain,” Marta answered, cautiously.  While she loved her friend dearly, the issue of William Bonney had been a sore spot for both of them.  “She must be fabelachtig, though.  Even the well-born women in Paris dress and act like whores – how much better, then, would the actual Parisian whores be?”

She and Tayanita had become close friends and confidants, as well as colleagues, despite the problems over the man they had shared.  Though Tayanita had been angry and jealous of the less-attractive Atlan woman, as their journey through New Orelans and their adventures with the Moriscan pirates beyond the Florida Straits had overtaken them on their journey to France, Tayanita had recognized a kindred spirit when it came to all things aeronautical.  Marta did not have her training and education, being destined for the more feminine world of early matrimony, but she had a nimble mind and a keen eye, and she, like Tayanita, had been around airships most of her life.  True, they had been the primitive Atlan variety, but the basic principals were the same.  If she did not share Tayanita’s talent for engineering, she shared her enthusiasm for building the Argo.

“You ain’t too wrong about that,” Tayanita admitted with a sigh.  “Never saw so much lace and silk in my life as there was in M. Belvoir’s gown when she came to call on Gid.  And talk about forward: she had her hand on his knee fast as a shot!  It’s like these French women breathe and sleep sex all the time.  Hard for us American girls to compete,” she said, a trace of bitterness in her voice.

“Do not worry, misje,” Marta reassured her, “They may capture a man’s attention for a few weeks, but they tire of them quickly.  Or so I’ve heard,” she added, a trace of doubt in her voice. Tayanita suddenly felt sympathetic to Marta – while she felt inadequate compared to these whorish Parisians, she was still aware of how much more attractive men still found her, compared to Marta, whose wide features and broad nose, not to mention her dusky complexion and dark eyes – made her homely by most accounts.

Marta had reveled in the brief relationship she’d enjoyed with Billy on the voyage across the Atlantic, but within weeks of arriving at the City of Lights Billy’s attention had turned towards the perfumed-and-belaced examples of French femininity the cosmopolitan Empire thrust at him so forcefully.  Their romance had faded within days, and had broken within a fortnight, under the pressure of such aggressive competition.  Marta still carried quite a torch for the dashing young American, but Billy’s eyes were easily distracted.  Indeed, even as they had brought the Victrix down in their yard for the first time there had been nearly a dozen airport whores huddled around the mooring tower waving and showing off their cleavage and their slender limbs.

Gideon had put a stop to that quickly, of course.  No prude, her half-brother was dedicated to running a smooth enterprise, and complicating matters with on-site prostitutes went against that ideal.  He had immediately restricted the entire yard to “outsiders”, depending upon his fierce Oklahoman marines to patrol the compound and keep the whores, thieves, and other airport scum at bay.  The men were still permitted liberal opportunities to enjoy their illicit favors off-premises, in their off-duty hours, but no one came past the second gate and into the secretive yard without written permission.

But that left the few ladies of the Victrix largely without company.  Tayanita was lucky – she had a few German engineers on her crew she could count on to service her womanly needs, secure in the knowledge that nothing more serious would arise from the liaison. But poor, plain Marta rarely attracted even their brief attention, and it was starting to bother her mightily.  She had even started mooning about Billy again, and that could not be a healthy thing to the Cherokee woman’s mind.

“Oh, I ain’t worried none – not much, anyway.  I know my future last name won’t be ‘Bonney’,” she reassured her friend as she dropped the heavy brush back into the evil-smelling bucket.  “But I’m just curious what manner of whore has got him so twitterpated.”

“I’m sure she is very beautiful,” Marta said, bitterly, as she hung up the denim sheet on the framework she’d built the day before.  “A beautiful, sweet-smelling, foul-mouthed nasty Parisian whore,” she completed, scathingly.  “Probably a Protestant whore, too,” she condemned, as if that made it worse somehow.

Tayanita had to giggle – that was one thing she adored about Marta, her polite forthrightness.  Tayanita herself had little patience for the long-winded way the French conducted business, preferring plainspoken American methods instead, and one of the things that had charmed her about the homely Atlan woman was her earnest manner.

“If only there were boy whores, too,” Tayanita sighed wistfully as she moved the bucket of latex over to the denim sheet.  “They say there are, down in that Moulin Rouge place they keep talkin’ about.  But from what I gather, they’re more interested in other boys than us delicate flowers.”

“My ‘delicate flower’ is in need of some tending, misje,” Marta said, wistfully.  “And I am near to thinking that paying for the service from a . . . professional gentleman might be the only way that occurs. Not even those savage braves that lope around here will pay me attention!” she pouted.

“Oh, honey, that ain’t no way to talk!” Tayanita soothed, lapsing back into the casual English her people spoke at their ease.  “Don’t worry, if these Frenchies know ‘bout anything besides wine, it’s how to get their jollies.  I heard tale of this device they build here, a special contraption—”

“For . . . masturbation?” Marta asked in a whisper, looking around scandalously.  “I, too, have heard such things, but such mechanical abominations must be a grievous sin . . .”

“You can’t tell me you haven’t rubbed your nubbin before,” Tayanita said, aghast.  “Every girl does it!”

“Not nuns,” Marta quickly pointed out.  “Never nuns.  And they would whip us if they even thought we had been . . . pleasuring ourselves.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t, though,” she observed.  “You do know how, don’t you?”

Marta blushed, her dark skin growing even darker.  “Yes.  I believe so.  There was a girl – her name was Anchelle, from the coast – she once showed some of us . . . what she did—”

“And you ain’t done it since then?”

“Well, with all that has happened . . .” Marta said, skeptically.

“Here,” Tayanita said gently, sitting up on her own desk and drawing up her knees.  “I know you have religious objections to this, but watch what I do, at least,” she said, not knowing what strange humor had came over her.  Why was she being this intimate with the girl?  They were friends, close friends, which was unusual considering their peoples were traditional enemies and had been at war all their young lives.  Compared to the Parisians, they were practically from the same clan.  But this was an intimacy that she had shared with no one.  Yet here she was, drawing her skirts up and peeling down the lacy drawers that seemed to be required among the fairer sex in this fair city.   Her slender pussy was exposed to her friend’s astonished sight.  Suddenly Tayanita’s loins were heavy with the dew of her excitement as her brown-skinned friend gazed enchanted at her brazenly displayed beaver.

“It’s real easy,” she breathed, as she parted her inner lips with her fingers.  “This up here, that’s your happy spot – rub it.  A lot.”  To demonstrate, she began making delectate circles around her clitoris with her hand, her breathing getting deeper and more ragged as she did so.  “You got to relax, though,” she said softly as her friend watched her perform the private ritual.  “Maybe stick a few . . . fingers inside yourself,” she said, exhaling pleasantly, “and run ‘em in and out, like they’re a real cock . . .” she said, demonstrating, “and it feels . . . real nice . . .”

“Are you . . . ?”

“Gettin’ there,” Tayanita agreed huskily, relaxing a little more, now that Marta had accepted the spectacle of her masturbation.  “It ain’t as nice as a real dick, but when a girl’s got . . . no place else to be . . . and no one to be with . . . it will get you through a hard night.  An’ sometimes it can keep a girl from thinkin’ with her cunny instead of her brain, and that’s a help.”

“It looks like fun,” the Atlan girl admitted, licking her lips.

“Oh, it is, it is,” she assured her as her fingers sped up their revolutions around her button.  “It’s a whole lot of fun – more fun than most boys, actually. Oh . . . OH!  Watch closely, Marta . . . here I . . . go!”

With that the girl spasmed hard as her orgasm washed over her, shook her like a dog shakes a squirrel, and then deposited her gently back to earth.

“There,” Tayanita sighed as she pulled up her drawers.  “That was simple – and a lot of fun.  And no smelly, nasty, hateful man to deal with afterwards.”

“I don’t know, ‘Nita,” Marta said, doubtfully.  “The nuns . . . they said it was a sin . . .”

“You been sinnin’ since we met, Marta,” Tayanita chided.  “And you go to church more’n any body here.  Weren’t you fornicatin’ without the blessings of the Church all the way over the ocean?  How in hell is that somehow more godly than ticklin’ your twat your ownself?”

“Well . . . technically . . . that was rape,” Marta justified, quietly.  “I was – am – a prisoner of war, and therefore I am not in control of my destiny.”

“Well ain’t you just full of justifications today!” Tayanita howled.  “Rape? That weren’t rape.  I seen rape before, sad to say.  If anyone was getting’ raped, it was poor Billy.  You realize how much noise y’all made?  Enough where we could hear over the engines clear back in the Engine Room!”

“If it was rape,” Marta sniffed, indignantly, “then it was no sin.  That is what the priests say.”

“Likely why I ain’t a Christian,” Tayanita said, shaking her head as she coated the denim.  “All them rules about fuckin’ – ain’t right.  The Spirit put us here with perfectly good working girl parts, Marta, ain’t no good reason not to use them as intended.”

“Ignorant savage,” Marta spat, derisively. But she was blushing deeply at having

“Pretentious slut,” the Cherokee princess sneered.

“Blasphemous cunt!”

“Filthy Atlan whore!”

“You’re courting damnation!”

“You’re courtin’ cobwebs in your coochie!”

Both women stared at each other, then broke into gales of laughter.  It was a common and enjoyable game they had developed to pass the long hours spent running trials on materials and figuring out complex calculations.  ‘Swearing like an airman’ was a common expression, and both women had been around such rough trade for almost six months, and had learned a rich new vocabulary they never hesitated to try out on each other.  The exchanges were good natured and intended to amuse, not hurt, and they always ended in laughter.  This time, however, the laughter was cut short by the sudden peal of the alarm bell.

“What the hell?” Tayanita asked, confused.

“The alarm!” Marta said in a hushed whisper.  “Quickly: how many bells?”

“Three—no, four!” Tayanita said.  “Intruder!  Probably one o’ them pickpockets and sneaktheifs.”  She quickly rooted around in the large bag she carried, full of useful tools, and pulled out a wide belt from which was suspended a small but deadly revolver.  As she strapped it on her hips, Marta nodded, her face pale, and picked up a carbine that Gideon had thoughtfully posted in her shed for their protection.

The girls made a point of locking the laboratory securely, then made their way to the central courtyard in front of the yawning hanger where the Victrix slumbered and from which the Argo had yet to be born.  There was already a crowd of two-dozen, a mixture of Oklahoman marines and European crewmen, all of whom had armed themselves with deliberate speed.  A profusion of carbines and revolvers, not to mention implements of a ruder – but no less effective – sort bristled from the crowd.

Gideon was on the pedestal he’d erected there, addressing his folk like the lord he was.  His voice was loud, purposeful, and angry.

“—saw him around the front gate, asking questions about our yard.  Wet Fox sent him on his way, but the man disappeared a few moments later, and that’s when the sergeant on duty noticed the cash box we use to pay our suppliers was missing.  Since the front gate was bolted at that point, the only explanation is that the thief is still somewhere on the premises.  There will be five ounces of gold for any man who brings him to me alive, and two gold for his corpse.”

“It was a thief,” nodded Marta.

“Perhaps he will take you unawares and rape you,” offered Tayanita in a whisper.  “I’m sure you’d enjoy that.”

“Perhaps if he was handsome,” the Atlan girl conceded.  “I would not struggle overmuch.”

“Struggle?  You’d put him down and ride him like a rented horse!”

“Surely you have mistaken me for a woman of loose reputation?”

“You ain’t got no reputation right now, that’s the problem!” the Cherokee girl giggled as she checked the load on her pistol.  “Tell you what: we find the man, we take that reward money, go into town, and get us a couple o’ fellas.  Don’t care if they like boys – they got pricks that can rise, that’ll do.”

“We may have sex if we find this man?” Marta said, suddenly interested.  “Then lead the way, meisje, and I’ll destroy him!”

“You horny old . . . hey, see how the Marines are all headed for the walls?”

Marta nodded.  “It would make sense.  The thief would want to escape with his prize as expediently as possible.”

“Which is why goin’ towards where all the folk with guns are ain’t necessarily the best plan for him,” Tayanita pointed out.  “So let’s go up to the guard shack, take a look around, see what this fella got and then figure where he went.  Basic tracking.”

The two women wandered away from the resolute-looking men who were swarming the fences and found the route to the guard shed, where there were easily twice as many armed Indians as usual.  They were reluctant to let two women in to look around, but the respect they held for Tayanita – and the fact that both ladies in question were armed – allowed them into the scene of the crime.  Tayanita wasted no time, asking questions about the look of the criminal, exactly what happened, and expressed a desire to see where the stolen money box had been secured.

“Bolted to the wall,” noted Tayanita in a murmur.  “So he planned this.  Chief, how much money in the box?”

“Twenty, thirty francs,” Robert “Chief” Standing Bear answered.  “Plus some sous.  Hardly seems worth the effort.”

“It wasn’t,” agreed Tayanita sagely.  “And note what else was stolen?”

“The box?” Marta asked.

“The book,” Tayanita corrected.  “Gid’s big accounts book.  It’s gone.”

“Why would someone want that?”

“And why would someone after money not take that cigar box?” she asked, nodding towards the desk where an ornately carved and inlaid Moriscan box held fine cigars looted from the wreck of a Corsair the Victrix had overtaken.  “That box is worth forty francs by itself, not to mention the tobacco inside.”

“Yes, that is strange,” Chief admitted.

“So they took the book, but not the box,” reasoned Tayanita, quietly, opening the expensive piece.

“And this means?  Besides the fact that he does not care to smoke?”

“The thief wasn’t after money.  If he was after mere money, he would have taken the box, the cigars, and had them safely sold before he left the port.  Oh, he took the money, of course, but what he really wanted to take was the information in the accounts book.  How much we’ve spent, and with whom.”

“But why?”

“That,” agreed Tayanita, “is an excellent question, Marta.  All of our suppliers are of public record – all of the ones in France, at any rate.  So he wanted to see . . . how much we’ve spent, and with which vendors.  And on what.  Someone, it seems, is curious about the Argo.”

“Who even knows about the Argo?” Chief asked, mystified.

“Someone who wanted to know so badly they hired a thief to steal our account book.  And you say he left . . . this way?”

Fifteen minutes later, while the outbuildings were being thoroughly searched and the walls were being checked for the intruder, the pair of young women came out of the guard shack and strode resolutely across the compound to the old farmhouse that Gideon had converted into a residence fit for a captain.  And his engineer.

The old country house predated the airfield by a century, at least, but was snug, warm, dry, and even painted a lovely light blue color.  No one seemed to be searching it, so the girls were able to enter without notice.  Tayanita immediately drew her pistol and turned towards her brother’s hallowed study, where he kept his desk, some books, his safe, his papers, and – most importantly – the master plans she herself had drawn up in designing the Argo. If anyone was curious enough about their labors to steal the account book, then the blueprints and designs would be too rich a prize to pass up – not with the entire compound mobilized to search for a petty thief.

Indeed, Tayanita was gratified a moment later to discover the thief, right where she had deduced he was located.

Sitting at Gideon’s desk reading those same – very secret – plans was a young man no more than twenty five, neatly coiffed, clean shaven and professionally dressed.  He looked like a bright young accountant, or clerk at law, in his well-tailored dark suit.  After being around Frenchmen for almost half a year, she was able to determine that this man looked somehow “more English” – although, truth be told, she frequently found all Whites looked the same to her.  But this one was strikingly handsome, she had to admit.  He was puffing heartily on one of the Moriscan cigars from the gilt box from the guard shack while he studied, much to Tayanita’s horror, the master blueprints that she had painstakingly drawn herself.

“Excuse me,” she said, a deadly threat in her voice, “but I believe the tradesmen are expected to use the rear entrance.”  She spoke in English, because her French was awful and it was one of the languages she and Marta shared.  Besides, after six months of seeing how the whole of Paris dressed, the style of the man’s suit was decidedly English, even if his face might not be.

“This is a social call, actually,” the handsome young Englishman said, without looking up.  “This ship you’re building – it’s fantastic!  I’ve never seen anything like it!  It’s beautiful!”

“I’m glad you like it,” Tayanita said, evenly.  “As it may be the last thing you ever see!”

Finally, the intruder glanced up.  “Well, perhaps not the last,” he said, after a pause.  “Nor, I’m afraid, the fairest.  You have taken that honor.”

Tayanita had the good grace to blush, but her pistol never wavered.  “You have a gentle tongue, I see,” she said, when she had recovered from the unexpected flattery.

“That depends entirely on my mood and the lady I’m with,” he quipped.  “Not to mention the manner in which it may be deployed.  Would you be so kind as to summon Captain Becker for me?  Thank you.”

“Sir, it seems to have escaped your notice that I am armed,” she said, her anger rising.  “I have yet to kill anyone on this continent, but you are making that exceedingly hard to avoid!  In any case, yes, Captain Becker should be informed of your capture.  Tom!  Black Tom!” she called over her shoulder.  When no response was forthcoming, she glanced at Marta.  “Go seek my brother and tell him what has happened.”

“Will you be all right with him?” the Atlan girl asked.

“I have the gun, he is the trespasser,” the Cherokee princess replied.  “As far as being ravished,” she added, scornfully, “he hardly looks the type.”

“As you say,” Marta said doubtfully, but she left in good haste.

“I’m not, actually,” the stranger commented.

“You are not what?  A trespasser?”

“Oh, I’m guilty of that.  And of evading your stout savages.  And of breaking into this house in broad daylight without a single one of you witnessing the act.  I meant to say, ‘I’m not the type to ravish a lady’ . . . without her express permission.”

“I assure you, that shall not be forthcoming,” Tayanita said, raising the weapon a little higher to emphasize her argument.

The man shrugged and smiled, displaying dimples that revealed a boyish nature.  It unnerved and frustrated her that he was not displaying an adequate amount of fear of her and her pistol.  “The day is still young.  So, in what capacity do you serve Captain Becker?”

“You are not to do the interrogation, Mr. Thief.  I am the one holding the gun!”

“So you have said, thrice now, and yet you haven’t fired and I haven’t been remotely concerned that you would do so.  Does that not speak of a more complicated affair than merely catching a thief?”

“What?  If I have restrained myself, Sir, it is out of a fear of giving in to my savage nature – which I assure you, my people are well known for!”

“Yes, I’d say you were about half English,” he nodded.  “A beastly people.  I’m one, myself, sad to say.”

“Are you not concerned for your skin, Sir?” she asked, quivering at the stranger’s temerity – and wondering about his accuracy.

“Usually,” he admitted, sublimely. “But my foremost concern regarding my skin is what the most expedient means would be to press it excitedly against your own.”

“You go too far, Sir!” she warned.  She blushed, despite herself, and realized that she was attracted to this cocky, self-assured stranger.

“Do I?” the thief mused.  “I often wonder if I go far enough.  I had considered making my entry by means of a line dropped from an airship, but discarded the idea as too . . . showy.  I prefer a subtler style.  Now Gideon,” he chuckled, “Gideon would not have considered such a sudden appearance as ‘subtle’, unless there was a lion or a camel or something involved, and then he’d only consider it ‘mildly interesting’.”

“Yes, Miss?” asked the deep and pleasant voice of Black Tom, who acted as Gideon’s majordomo while they were aground.  If the fact that she was holding a loaded pistol on a stranger in his master’s office disturbed the Negro in the slightest, he did not show it.

“Tom, if you would not mind, please pour two glasses of wine for myself and our guest.  Three, actually – the Captain will be joining us.”  She spoke lightly, but through clenched teeth.

“Yes, Miss,” the sharply-dressed man nodded, and disappeared.  A moment later he handed a winestem full of red – a Burgundy, to which her brother was partial – to Tayanita, and without getting in the line of fire, set a glass near to the thief’s elbow on the desk – receiving a polite thank you for his trouble.  The third glass he deposited on a nearby table.  “How many for lunch, Miss?  Will you be dining with us today?”

“Yes, I think I will be,” she agreed.  “Set a table for four.  We can always remove a seat, if it isn’t required any more.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“This is splendid,” the mysterious stranger nodded after sipping the wine.  “From Burgundy, I would have to guess an ’88?”

“If you are seeking to impress me,” Tayanita said, sipping her own glass, “you will be hard pressed to do so.  Although I admit your stealth in breeching our compound has piqued my curiosity.  How did you do that?”

“Easily enough,” the thief demurred.

“And you act as if you know my brother?”

“Know him well,” the thief agreed, congenially, as he continued to smoke the cigar and sip the wine.  “To his health!” he added, raising the glass.

“Cheers,” she nodded.  The pistol did not waver.

“So, what is a gloriously radiant woman such as yours—oh, hello Gid, outstanding vintage!” the thief said, interrupting himself as her brother stomped into the house, half a dozen of his Sky Panther marines behind him bristling with weaponry.

“It’s an ’88,” the airship captain said, dully.

“Thought so,” the man nodded.  “It’s splendid . . . but it will be radiant in a few years.”

Gideon crossed the room and retrieved the glass that had been prepared for him.  “Good to see you Edward.  Oh, gentlemen, please cancel the alarm,” he added over his shoulder to the bronzed warriors.  They nodded and left without any further discussion.  “I see you met Tayanita,” he said, as the thief vacated his chair.

“Lovely woman, truly beautiful,” the man her brother called Edward said, affably.  “Is she your bride?  Or your fiancé?  Or something less . . . formal?”

“She’s my sister, actually,” Gideon said, putting his mud-stained boots up on an ottoman.  Edward took one of the facing chairs, while Tayanita still had not lowered her weapon.  While the men were acting like old friends, she knew that Gideon’s lack of an order to do so was no oversight: clearly he was suspicious of this “old friend” who was so free with his property and security.  “Half sister.”

Edward’s eyebrows raised in surprise.  “She? She’s the one your . . . oh, dear God, it is such a pleasure to meet you, then!” he said, roaring with laughter.  “And such an enchanting creature, too, to be at the heart of that tempest.  Oh, what a scandal you have left behind you, Gid!  Your mother is livid, your father is . . . well, I would have a care before you dropped in over the holidays.  Might want some of those savages with you.”

“I doubt they could stand one of Mater’s vicious assaults,” Gideon chuckled, wryly.

“I don’t say you’re wrong.  Oh, by the way: your strongbox,” the thief said, pulling it out from behind an aeronautical globe in the study.

“Why did you steal it?” Gideon asked, curiously.

“Because it got your attention.  You had to know a thief was about.  I thought it a fair warning to get your people mobilized for a search for me.  That’s an impressive cadre you’ve built, Old Man.”

“And yet you broke in anyway.  Sissy, when we were at Rugby, Edward had the most amazing talent of . . . acquisition you had ever seen!”

“So, you know this man is a thief?” she asked, skeptically.

“I prefer ‘gentleman burglar’, actually,” Edward offered.

“I prefer ‘housebreaker extraordinaire!  You may holster your weapon, Sissy, and join us for a bit.  Edward was one of my closest friends from school, but afterwards he . . . got involved with disreputable folk.”

“Please,” Edward dismissed, “I’ve always been involved with disreputable folk.  It makes a man truly appreciate a reputation.”

“In any case, Edward steals things – expensive things – from very rich people.”

“The truth comes out at last,” Edward sighed.  “So you knew?”

“Of course.  Don’t let it concern you, Old Man, I didn’t mind.  You never stole anything from me, personally.  And you shared your loot in school too often for me to begrudge you a few silver spoons.  I was amused, actually – the way you made the rounds.  Always seemed to have some brass, never seemed to work for it.”

“Never work for it?” Edward asked, astonished.  “Are you joking?  Burglary is hard work, I’ll have you know.  There’s as much art to it as science, and if one is to remain a burglar long, one must put in endless hours of preparation for the tiniest assignment!”

“Really?  Is that how you stole my cousin’s silver Swiss pocket watch?” Gideon countered.  “A grand, elaborate plan with meticulously detailed preparation?”

“He passed out drunk at cards, and I took an opportunity,” Edward admitted.  “All right, I admit, there’s as much initiative in the art as preparation.  But it is hardly easy.  Not if you’re good at it.”

“And are you?” asked Tayanita, impressed with the man, despite herself.

“Did I not just break into your home in an armed camp in broad daylight?  With no witnesses?”

“He’s one of the best in Europe,” Gideon assured her.

“Well, as long as you’re associating yourself with a high class of criminal,” Tayanita said, beginning to relax a bit.  Perhaps the wine was soothing her nerves.  “By the way, I am indeed claiming my five ounces of gold for capturing him, Gideon.  I need to get Marta . . . serviced.”  And herself, too, she added, silently, somewhat to her dismay.

There was just something about this damned city that made a girl want to throw her legs up to the heavens and hump every cock that happened by!  She didn’t know if it was the finery, the architecture, or the fabulous cosmetics, but the city of Paris enchanted you, reached out and grabbed you by your cunt and made you want to fuck.  Even the presence of this Edward, a comparative stranger, was having a most lubricating effect on her virtue.  That was one reason why she didn’t blame Billy as much about his infidelity with Marta – everyone in this town was horny, from the lusty young Emperor to the lowliest scullery maid.  And the cosmopolitan nature of the city drew the horny from all over the world, compounding the problem.

She had heard a rumor that the magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame was behind it – that the church had been built originally on the site of a pagan temple of a particularly lusty divinity, a kin of Pan’s, and that Paris’ well-deserved reputation for licentiousness was his revenge.  She liked that thought – she found the European manner of religion to be stuffy and impractical – not to mention not much fun.

The wine helped – she rarely drank it, preferring good German beer instead, but in Paris wine ran like water – better than Parisian water, actually.  She tolerated the flavor, but the effects of the alcohol were the same as beer.  And the Parisians seemed to drink it at all hours of the day.  That had to contribute to the lusty nature of the city.

“Is Marta your horse?  Dog?” Edward asked, curious.

“She’s my aeroarchitechtural protégé,” Tayanita corrected.  “And if she doesn’t see some joy soon, she will be unbearable.”  That went for both women, of course – Tayanita nearly blushed at the memory of her brazen display of self-love earlier.  If she did not soon find relief . . .

“So you’re an . . . engineer?”

“I am the engineer,” she corrected, smoothly.  “A distinction I truly hope you’ll bear in mind.”

“Oh!  Of course, mademoiselle,” Edward assured her.  “I meant no disrespect.  If you are half as talented in your field as your brother is in his . . .”

“Half?  She eclipses me, Old Man.  Really, Edward, ‘Nita’s extraordinary, she really is,” Gideon smiled indulgently.  “She’s not only my chief engineer, she’s the chief architect of this,” he said, dramatically spreading his arms to encompass the large sheaf of design diagrams covering the desk before him.  “She’s the wizard behind the Argo.”

“Now I am the one who stands impressed,” Edward said, quietly, after a moment’s consideration.  “That ship is . . . it’s no less than magnificent.  Glorious.”

“You know how to read blueprints?” she asked, surprised.

“A gentleman burglar is equipped with all sorts of unusual skills, my dear,” he assured her, a silky tone in his voice that she found both pleasant and irritating all at once.  “I can read a blueprint, but more importantly I can recognize a truly unique design when I see one.  This will be the biggest, most extraordinary thing aloft—”

“If it gets built,” Tayanita finished, sourly.

“What?” Edward asked in surprise.  “I thought you came back from America loaded with gold and jewels.”

“Not as such – but I did come back a wealthy man.  And wealth I earned in my own hand, by the by, not taken from my father’s,” her brother said, proudly.  “Yet I have this yard to pay for, my crew to pay, plus the cost of this ship,” he sighed, concern haunting his eyes.  “I have not spoken openly about it, but . . . well, my funds will run out in months – and it will be at least two years before the Argo is skyworthy.”

“It’s true,” Tayanita confirmed.  “I’ve had to reduce some of my expenditures . . . and we are making progress on the envelope structure, and the gondola is mostly framed in, but . . .”

“Bah!  We took plenty from that Moriscan corsair,” Gideon reminded her.  “Enough for a few additional months, at least.  And I can always sell off a precious tank of Helium to keep us afloat.”

“Don’t you dare!” she almost shouted.  “That noble element is the key to our whole enterprise!”

“I know, I know,” Gideon agreed, clearly frustrated with the prospect, “but if it’s the only way forward . . .”

“We can go raiding in the Victrix if we need more funds,” she countered, shaking her head.  “Air piracy isn’t my natural calling, but if it keeps the creditors at bay . . .” This was not a discussion she wanted to be having now, especially in front of this . . . surprisingly handsome stranger.

“See, Edward?  I’m a thief as well,” Gideon chuckled.  “I just steal to a larger scale.  But if I don’t, then all the money I’ve spent thus far will have been wasted.”

“Actually,” Edward said, mildly, “I think I may have a solution . . . for all of our problems.”

It wasn’t exactly easy to return to work with the cabin empty and the lingering sensation of the soldier’s touch. Vincent tried to immerse himself in the figures, to visualise how the thoughts would become a delightfully functioning apparatus, but he kept feeling that hand on his shoulder, as if all he had to do was lean back for a nice feel of muscle and safety. He began to pace about, look out the window, and eventually picked up Raoul’s book. The drawings of scarily exposed women met him. No big surprise. He looked through a couple of pages the way a young boy would peek through the window to a women’s bath, before putting it back down.
     The storm increased in strength, and the restlessness in Vincent grew accordingly, until he decided to go for a stroll on the deck. He didn’t think to bring his jacket; these mundane worries were never really on his mind.
Outside the crew was busy. Not panicking; they were used to worse, and the storm was wearing off already. One of the main problems seemed to Vincent to be the slippery floor.
     The rain soaked Vincent to the bone as he walked about the deck, watching the big burly sailors do their job with a distant look. He wasn’t there to be drenched, he barely felt the water whipping against his face. His thoughts and mind were following the heartbeat of the ship, almost per default, trying to reach its core.

Soon enough he found himself in shelter. The halls echoed with heavy thuds of engines bringing the ship to life. The clicks of cogs and wheels turning and rhythmic, almost musical thuds of the steel working. He was blissful to spend a while rediscovering this quite old technology – the ship was outdated in many ways, it felt almost like returning to more innocent times. Vincent was lost in his trail of thoughts for a while.
     Until he was brought from his trance by a sudden sound.
     Every instinct in his body told him to flee – and so he did. He took cover behind one of the larger contraptions in the room, hoping that the shadows would hide him from whoever had just entered. He didn’t know why he hid; this was a habit of his since he was a boy. People intimidated him. When they weren’t bullies they expected others to be sociable, to converse about mundane things. To give a care about weather and wind, about taxation and governing. He had no interest in the world, nor discussing it.
     Hiding was easier.
     Only seconds after he had taken refuge, whispers and giggles echoed against the walls of the engine room. Fabric brushing against fabric. He curled up into a ball. Had the intruder been a man he would perhaps have reconsidered this approach to the unpleasant situation, but women had a tendency to paralyse him completely. He decided to stay in the comfort of shadows and lifeless music. There was a sound of a thud – human weight knocked lightly against a wall.
     “Ow!” a young female voice exclaimed, still half choked with laughter. For some reason the voice was recognisable to him.
     “Aww, did my little girl hurt herself?” teased a more mature woman, one that Vincent recognised quite well. She was the scary woman that he and Raoul were accompanying to more safe areas.
     “You did! Be more careful.”
     “I’d better make it up to you then, sweetness.”
A noise – one that Vincent had known for a long time due to his friendship with Raoul – of lips meeting and tongues touching. He couldn’t help but peek, just enough to get a glimpse of the women that were stood in a close, almost frantic embrace, whilst kissing and nibbling lightly at each other. The young woman, thin and tomboyish, with a head full of dark curls, fighting with the corset of the more mature and plump Katherine. In the dimly lit room he couldn’t make out who the young girl was, but he had a feeling that he knew her.
     “Leave it for now,” she whispered, still calm and collect in comparison to the fierce kisses and heavy breath of the young girl. With tenderness and the eventual stroke of bare skin, she unbuttoned the young woman’s shirt. Vincent took a moment to grab onto his knees until it hurt, forcing his gaze away from the warm and moist women to a cold metallic wall. But as little as he wanted to, he couldn’t fight the urge to peek at the oblivious women once more. Raoul had often complained over the uptight society of their home-town – he needed to go to the brothels or more southern towns to find open-minded women. From these stories Vincent had gathered that certain free-spirited women would get sexually and romantically involved. However he had never seen it. And least of all had he seen it unfold before his eyes. It was baffling. Arousing and terrifying. All-together – just painful.
     Whilst the young woman swept her curls out of her way to kiss and suck on the neck of Katherine, her shirt was unbuttoned to her belly button. The woman however didn’t rush to uncover skin and breasts; rather, she ran a finger from the collar bone to the stomach. The result was a delighted shudder. Katherine let her lips follow her finger closely, stopping between the breasts to trace her tongue over the skin with extra attention.
     Her young lover ran her fingers over Katherine’s ginger head with closed eyes. She murmured … well, something. He couldn’t make it out over the noise of the machines.
     “How’s your head?” Katherine teased her, focusing attention on her lover’s neck. Whilst kissing the one side, she caressed the earlobes and sensitive skin, stroking her face and exploring shoulders and arms, but nothing below the collarbone. The tomboyish beauty couldn’t produce much of a reply other than a half choked laughter. Either frightened of, or unable to keep her hands idle, she was grabbing onto every inch of the woman that she could get to.
     “That’s what I thought.”
Vincent held his breath. He couldn’t very well leave now. And the fear for being discovered as some perverted voyeur kept him from fully enjoying what he saw – if only he could look away. But every pained, restrained gasp and damp kiss tore at his mind until he, once again, gave into his curiosity. Only to see how Katherine was stroking every inch of the woman’s young, thin body, but avoiding breasts and the inner thighs completely. It was not difficult to undress someone wrapped in such simple, manly clothes – however the young lover had a sincere struggle with the laces and layers of skirts, frantically trying to get to feel some skin, anything warm and soft against her own hands. And Katherine kept stopping her. Keeping herself concealed from the young girl. When she had the younger woman exposed and naked she pushed her down onto the cold floor. The girl hissed.
     “It’s cold.”
     “That’s not always a bad thing, Lily.”
She lifted up her skirts to sit across the girl’s lap, she stooped down to finally plant two kisses on the small breasts. She licked the nipples with carefulness, slowly increasing in pressure until she was sucking one and massaging the other with her free hand. Lily, as her name seemed to be, had a wide grin across her face, stretching and arching her back so that it would receive even more pressure from the woman on top of her. Finally the noises came to an end, and Katherine sat up, slowly removing her corset. The girl reached to touch, to fondle, to caress and to never let go. But the woman lay on top of her, positioning herself so that their breasts would meet, and while her hands explored the girl’s side and wandered in the dark, curly hair between her thighs, she rubbed against her.
     There was something so surprising by this. For one, they didn’t make the same noise that Raoul’s girls always did. There were none of the choking screams, the almost pained cries of pleasure. A slight whimper, sensual moans concealed by one another’s lips, or sometimes even from biting their own lips. The noise from the two was overpowered by the machines; they were clearly not interested in getting caught. But Lily was still writhing in pleasure while Katherine worked her way between her thighs, still rubbing against her. Vincent could only imagine the warmth of nude, sweaty skin would feel like. He wasn’t sure if he liked the idea. Then again, his painful erection kind of told him otherwise.
     Then something peculiar happened. Lily seemed to have worked herself into a state of tension as she lay gasping on the floor, her hands gripping for anything to clutch onto – preferably Katherine. The ginger woman was slowly slithering down between her legs, spreading them, and lifting her slightly up against her mouth, as she seemed to – at first – kiss her way through the dark hair. But then her movements were more of a licking nature. She licked, while stroking with one hand first on the sides of the rough, warm skin, then down her thigh, and back up again. Now and then she would stop to rub her clit with her fingers, and during these times her left hand finally found its way beneath her own skirts. When she returned to licking it was now with light whimpers under her own breath.
     This set Lily off. The aroused, pleasured noises from Katherine were responded to with equal, tense noises, and their pleasure escalated together.
     “Get up here,” Lily requested, in between the gaps that were to hide her moans.
     “I want to see you cum,” Katherine replied with a smirk, returning to her task at hand. Finally, Lily’s back arched as she seemed to squirm trying to keep herself from shouting out. Katherine took it all in, the spasms and the genuine surprise, followed by an almost limp body before her.

They lay together for a while. Curled up together, caressing each other now in a loving fashion. Lily was wrapped in the naked arms of Katherine. Her hands now just exploring casually. They were whispering things to each other that he couldn’t hear. They sounded tender, but also cut off with muffled laughter, as Lily laughed against Katherine’s shoulder, before she kissed the warm skin.
Vincent was forced to watch this, despite his most painful arousal. If he’d ever had the chance to leave it had escaped him long ago, he would prefer any corporal punishment to admitting to his voyeurism of these women. Also, he didn’t want to interrupt them. He felt almost sad at the sight of the women. He envied them their tenderness.
     But it was nice to watch.
     He found himself even more jealous of this aftermath than he had ever been of the noise from Raoul’s sexual acquaintances. This was different. This was sweet, and only for a moment he wished he was more like normal people.
     
Finally the women got dressed, returning to their duties on the ship. The rain had stopped and Vincent returned to his cabin, only to find that he had the place to himself. Obviously Raoul hadn’t returned from his meeting with the captain yet.
     “Figures,” he muttered. Then he sat down on the bed in the corner to tend to his own needs. Something he had grown quite good at over the years.

The empire made it illegal for us to import ammunition here in the colonies. I shot my last legal round three years ago now, just an angry potshot at a passing police glider. I don’t have a head for grinding black powder, it turns out—though I still have my fingers, thank goodness—, so my sister put me in touch with some folks she knew, and they put me in touch with Gregor Johann. My pirate.
     He was looking for a partner, someone to distribute, someone who could stay on land and manage the stores. Someone who could do encryption in their head, someone who had a way with words. Someone with no gag reflex.
     And I was looking for him, though of course I didn’t know it. If you’d asked me three years ago, I would have told you I wasn’t particularly into sex, that it just didn’t do much for me. Of course, I’d never tied anyone down by the neck before, either, and watched their whole body convulse with orgasm while held down at a single, immovable point.
     The deal went wrong. Our first deal, three years ago. Someone sold us out to Her Majesty, and we’d fled the docks, setting fire to the crates of explosives. We escaped with our lives, leaving two gendarmes dead in our wake.
     We went up into the hills, into the birch forests, and I fucked him with the scent of scorched hair still lingering on my skin. The moonlight cast shadows from the leaves onto his bare skin as he lay with his back on the soft forest earth. My adrenaline high never stopped that day, not until dawn. After it all—after the deal, the fight, the fire, and the sex—I collapsed more exhausted, perhaps more complete, than I’d ever been.
     The whole of the next day we slept in the sunshine, and woke up at night to fuck, make our way back into town, and fuck again. None of the guards saw me the night before well enough to identify me, fortunately, at least none of the guards who got out alive. But Gregor Johann wasn’t as lucky. His likeness was up on flyers around the town, most likely around a good portion of the country.
     I hid Gregor Johann for two weeks before I let him out, and then he was off to sea.

A sailor knows lots of knots, but a pirate knows even more. Last time he was home, he taught me the ropework he’d learned overseas from a handsome man.
     I met him at the docks in the morning mist—a much safer time for illicit activity than the dead of night, I assure you—and we shook as though there were only business between us.
     “The months have treated you well?” he asked.
     “Fair, fair.”
     “How’s business?”
     Gregor Johann knew well enough the answer to his question , because we run it together. Mostly, we use coded letters. Straight code, all numbers, using one-time pads. Any code you can work into legible sentences can be cracked, so we send letters through the couriers who work the black market and our correspondence is, by and large, unseen by the authorities. Our telegraph conversations are recorded, of course, so we say nothing of business.
     “Fuck me,” I told him. “I’m sick of staring at crates of guns. It’s been months.”
     “You oughta find someone else,” he said, not for the first time.
     “You find me someone else,” I said, “I’m too busy.”
     He laughed, and his crooked nose flared that way I dream about. He ran his tongue over his white teeth as he looked at me.
     “I want to come on your face,” he said.
     I blushed—I can’t help it—and I turned to the crates, clearly marked gin and clearly full of guns. “Let’s get this shit done,” I said.
     We got the crates onto the back of the car and I hopped up onto the driver’s platform and drove us to the bar that held our office on the outskirts of town. The mist was clearing then, and the morning sun lit the white of the birch trees, the leaves yellow and copper.
     We secured the crates in the cellar then walked up to the tower room, my office. I closed the door behind us.
     “Strip,” I said. Unspoken was the if you want to that took us years to feel comfortable without.
     He didn’t turn to face me. Instead, he stared out the window, overlooking the hills, and slowly removed his shirt, revealing his tan and miraculously unscarred back. Then his gun belt. He must have unknotted the drawstring on his pants after that, because they slipped down his muscled legs. Finally his drawers. He stepped away from the window to face me, his cock halfway erect.
     I stepped up to him, placed my hands on his hips, and went up onto my toes to kiss him. His breath impeccably clean, his lips impossibly soft. He kept his beard and mustache just long enough not to scratch, and its tickle was a comfort. My pirate was home. At least for now.
     I pulled away from his mouth, but he sought after mine and I relented, letting him kiss me hard. Finally, I broke off to ask him, “what do you want?”
     “I want you to beat me,” he said. “I want you to tie me up and beat me. What do you want?”
     I didn’t have to think about it. I’d been fantasizing about him for months. “I want you to bite my nipples, hard. I want to still feel your teeth on them tomorrow.”
     He sat down in my desk chair, put his hands behind his back, and looked at me as I pulled off my layers, exposing my chest. I took him by the hair and pressed his face to my breast, only letting go when my nipple was firmly held in his teeth.
     It was the pain I’d been dreaming of, the pain that kept me going. All of my energy focused onto that single point on my chest. My mouth went agape and I let my head hang back, choking back a scream. He moved to the other nipple, and this time I smiled, looking down at the handsome man prepared to give himself to me.
     After some indescribable length of time, he let go, pulled his head away from my chest, and stared at my skin. The release left me panting, happy, and horny as hell. “Get on the floor,” I told him, and he obeyed.
     “What’s our safeword?” I asked him, though of course I knew the answer.
     “Stop,” he answered. It wouldn’t work for everyone, but it worked for us.
     I struck him open-handed on the face, not gently. “Do you want to get on your hands and knees?” I asked.
     He did, and I beat him on his ass and back, with my fists and with my palms, slowly. Each smack echoed off the walls, and probably down through the stairwell to the empty barroom below.
     Eventually he rolled over, onto his back, and looked up at me and smiled.
     “Enough?” I asked.
     “For now,” he said. I touched him then, running my hands down his chest, running a nail along his erect cock, playing lightly with the
urethra. Then I brought up my hand to hold his face, gently, and looked him in the eyes.
     “Kiss me?” he asked, near to tears.
     No one else has ever compared.
     “I learned some new knots,” he said, and he showed me how to tie him up so that, if he struggled, they would tighten. I bound his legs together first, at the ankles and under the knees, a cord running between the two points for me to grab onto. I piled up our clothes under him to pad the wood-planked floor, then stopped to kiss him.
     I never understand how he can be so gentle, when all I want to do is consume him whole.
     I tied his hands above his head, then took shears from my belt and left them where he could reach them and cut himself loose if he had to.
     I stood up and walked back to the door. Some things just need to be appreciated. The most handsome man I’d ever met was tied willingly on my floor, his face filled with longing. The sun cast squares of light on the floor where it came in the window. I had crates of guns in the cellar, and I wasn’t going to get caught. I touched my nipple between thumb and forefinger, and it was as though his teeth were still upon me.
     I strode back over to Gregor Johann and touched his thigh with my toes, then ran my foot up onto his cock. I looked at him, he nodded, and I brought some of my weight down onto it. He looked pleased, so I lifted my weight and did it again, harder.
     Then I straddled his chest, my back to him, and began to touch myself. It wasn’t hard to get worked up, and I let myself moan, staring at his cock, watching it move involuntarily. I let go of myself with one hand and reached out to touch it, pressing my thumb against the top of the base, watching it gorge even further with blood.
     I bent over, pressed my ass against his face—letting him lick for a moment before pulling out of his reach—and put the head of his cock into my mouth, running my teeth lightly against it, flicking the urethra with my tongue.
     Then I took him into my throat and let him fuck me, watched him try not to struggle too hard against his bonds. He thrusted and filled me, and I touched myself with renewed vigor. He was gasping now, and letting out long moans that filled the room and most likely the courtyard below the window. I put the head of his cock back in my mouth, tongued it, fucked it, moving my head faster than this thrusts, alternating my speed until we reached a rhythm with each other. My right hand was on his cock, wet with spit and jerking him off. My left was on myself, keeping me ever more aroused.
     “Do you want me to come this way?” he asked.
     I kept going, and he thrust harder up against me. It was too good to stop, too good to change positions, and I was bucking against him myself.
     “I’m going to come,” he said, and I pulled his cock out of my mouth, drooled spit into my hand and jerked him off faster, keeping my face and my mouth inches from him.
     He came onto my face. He’s a man who keeps his promises. It spurt up against my lip, my cheeks, my chin, came a little too close to my nose. I let it drip down me, down my neck and chest.
     “Tell me to come,” I said.
     “Hit me.”
     I took my hand off his cock and slapped his side, hard.
     “More,” he said, and I did it again, and again.
     “Now come,” he said. “Fucking come.”
     I hit him another time and then orgasm came over me. I put both hands on myself and collapsed against his body, my face near his cock, and shook, letting it run through me. I breathed hard, and heavy.
     The autumn wind picked up outside, rattling the glass, and I slowly came to my senses.
     “Do you want me to untie you?” I asked.
     “In a minute,” he said.
     Later that day, we worked out business. Business is important too. And fun, and dangerous. It’s hard to imagine fun without dangerous.
     I can’t wait to see him again.

Your lips were warm, of course, and your shoulder sweaty where I tried to rest my hand. My fingers kept sliding down your skin. The wind whistled over the roof of the hothouse, and when I inched closer to you on the bench, you smelled of wood steam and the squash that we ate for dinner. You pushed your tongue tentatively against my lips and I opened my mouth. Your tongue swept slowly along my teeth and palate and tongue. I sat up in your arms, our lips making a soft smacking noise. My hand went to your head to thread its fingers in your hair.
     ”Oh,” I said, pulling back, surprised at myself, “Is that okay?”
     ”Mm. Yes,” you managed. You forced yourself to focus on my face. “Can I touch you?”
     I blinked, watched a drop of sweat roll down your neck. I nodded.

     You put your palm on my hip, rough skin of your palms, and squeezed. I pushed into it, feeling strong. I took your face in my hands and concentrated on your lips. A tug, my nipple between your fingers, heat inside my belly, a fine sweat along my breast bone.
     You pulled back, saying against my lips, “You are very soft.” I pushed against you, thinking I might burst my skin.
     ”Please,” I said, letting my knees open.
     ”I can?” you asked. I nodded.
     You rested your forearm on the bench one step up, my head cradled in the crook of your elbow, and pulled my leg over one of yours, turning me towards you. I went for your mouth again as your free hand trailed up my thigh. You could tell I felt a little frantic.
     ”Yes?” you asked, and I nodded, going limp when your fingers made it to their destination. Carefully, you fingered open the linings, slowly running the tips up and down. I pushed into your hand; you slipped a middle finger inside, and, finding a little more room, your ring finger too. You dragged them slowly along the inside of my belly, and, like it was a button on a bot, I rose toward you, hooking your neck in the crook of my elbow. It put my mouth right where I wanted it: near your jugular.

This had begun three weeks before, when the river seemed to have re-routed itself through the city. Streets raged with iridescent water that made abrupt turns as if incensed by competing traffic. My traveling companion, Jill, and I had thought we’d spend the rainy winter writing a trashy romance novel; we figured we could sell the novel to a few people we knew who still traded in books, or give in and get it copper-printed. We’d take whatever goods we made and head out while our permit plates were still good. Neither of us had spent any time outside of the city, and the travel-permit plates being hard to procure, it seemed one of our most viable options.
     But a sturdy tinker with a studio and small living loft seduced Jill, and last I heard she was living in the northeast quadrant, writing scripts for the tinker’s copper-bot puppets.
     Permission plates or no, I left the city, stopping in the southeast quadrant to trade a child several grommets for a tin of Delights, something sweet to cut through the rain, and to bulk up my stores, which included three packets of muscle nutrition, two of brain nutrition, and a bar of soap. The last bath I had was in the hot springs on the coast, which I found on the poor directions of urban mythology.
     I hitched inland for two weeks, unable to take in the breadth of a field, the girth of a tree. I couldn’t comprehend trees, couldn’t think of them as anything other than structures. I knew the word, tree, since folks in town loved to pass around the stories of the Unbuilt Hinterlands—full of organisms, things growing that are not ourselves, that we maybe can’t see. Even now its hard for me to understand that things grow. I caught myself wondering if folks lived in secret out here, constructed these things, made them look soft and dewy or stiff and leafy, set the mist on the ground each morning and evening, and what sort of alloy would you use for each structure? As I walked, I tried not to touch anything, not sure what might happen.

You sat suddenly upright with my body overflowing your arms. You picked me up and walked down to the lowest bench, which was the widest and closet to the stove, and you laid me down there, and then yourself alongside me. Your fingers sank again between my legs, and I finally got a taste of your neck. Cinnamon, squash, salt, oil. I sank my teeth in experimentally, then withdrew, looking up at you with a raised eyebrow. You nodded, and I pushed sweaty hair from your neck, happily applying my teeth to the newly bared area. The skin gave way and pushed against my incisors satisfyingly. I felt another finger worm its way inside, and my nipples grew harder.
     At my ear you said, “I want to fuck you.”
     I pulled myself away from your neck. “Tell me how,” I said.
     ”I’m going outside for a moment,” you said, “and when I come back, I want you sitting against the wall, legs spread.”
     I blinked, but managed, “Yes.”
     And you thrust your tongue in my mouth one more time before getting up and pushing out of the door.
     I shivered for a moment at the gust of cold air, the sudden quiet in the room. Inside the stove, the dead trees on fire popped, and in the dark, I sat up, scooted backward until my back felt the warm wall. I stared at the glow of the stove, so that when you came back in, all I could see was your dark outline, and something in each of your hands.
     You kneeled on the bench in front of me, setting your things behind you, and now I could see you small breasts with their nipples standing up fiercely, defying gravity in a way mine never would. You let me lay my hands on your thighs, hard and shaped by the stove light. The heat seemed impossible to survive. You reached behind you and offered me a jug of water. I took it and tilted my head back.
     As I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, you looked me in the eye. “May I do what I like?”
     I didn’t look away. I said, “Until I say no.”

The last forty miles, I’d ridden in the back of a scrap metal truck, the drivers offering to put me up for the night but refusing to name a destination. I sat in the wagon, no way to look out, only the dim translucence of the waxed canvas covering the wagon. Jostled by the steam of the truck, I pulled on nearly every layer of clothing in my pack, trying to protect my skin from the sharp edges. When the truck sputtered to a halt, I struggled out of my metal nest, my layers hanging limply about me. In the pearly wet evening, I found tiny shards of copper standing all over my clothes, the back of my hands. In the corners of my vision they glimmered in my hair and on my cheeks.
     The truck stopped at the edge of a field lined with big structures, and you hung like a spider, suspended from one of the structures—a white oak, I have since learned—harnessed, hair hanging down. Your hands were sunk inside the first of a long row of boxes, familiarly made of alloy and rivets and ringing the edge of the roof of a glass building, each box bedded with a nest of green tentacles, swaths, and shoots. You tinkered, cranked on bolts, pulled at grommets, tongue escaping the corner of your mouth. The mist pulled at the line that held you. I couldn’t look away. The drivers silently set me aside and hauled out their load, tossing my pack on the ground.
     You looked up. I like to imagine your seeing me, upside down, my grimy face, my hair a storm, the copper dust and slivers. I couldn’t breathe deeply, not really, lungs likely full of copper shards and 25 years of city metals. From that distance I could tell you were looking at me. I continued to stand there, and you looked back to your work, wrenched and pulled, deftly, effectively. The drivers finished unloading, caught my eye, and nodded toward a small path, behind the glasshouse at the far end of the meadow. They hoisted their belongings and walked that way. I took my pack as well, like a dead thing, and stopped at the base of your tree. Your eyes, I could tell, were a shade similar to the things bedded in the boxes.
     I cleared my throat and you glanced down, then back at your work, hands never stopping. “Where are we?”
     You made a particularly strong torque with your wrench. “Nowhere of consequence,” you said. “Not anywhere you could get to.”
 
    This prickled, the indirectness of it. “I am not supposed to know?”
     You made a sound of assent deep in your throat.
     I watched you turn the wrench again. “I can handle that,” I said. I looked up and down the rows of boxes, suspended above my head. “I can leave whenever I want?”
     Another grunt of assent.
     I nodded up at the boxes. “Are these organisms?” I was trying to apply my vocabulary.
     You sounded amused. “I suppose so,” you said. “As much as this oak, or you or I.”
     ”I’m getting used to trees,” I said. “Wild, thats the word?”
     Again you sounded amused. “Wild, sure. But these here aren’t wild.”
     I blinked. “Are they people?” I asked. “Or are they bots?”
     ”Ah,” you said. “How long have you been gone?”
     ”From the city? A couple weeks.”
     ”Come up,” you said.
     I raised an eyebrow, wondering if you thought I was a bot myself, able to levitate, but then I noticed the rope you was feeding down, a thick double ply of fibers. Near the lower end were two loops; several feet above that, a big knot. I dropped my pack, shoved a foot into each loop, wrapped both hand above the knot. You pulled at a knot on the other side of a gadget, and slowly in fits and starts I rocked up through the air. When I approached eye level with you I understood that a double pulley system held each of our ropes, parallel to the trunk of the oak. You held a length of doubled webbing in your hands.
     ”May I?” you asked, and I nodded, unsure. “Keep holding the rope,” you said, and wrapped the webbing deftly about my hips, pulling both strands harmlessly between my thighs, tying it off at my waist. Then you hooked a locking copper loop from the front of my webbing to a loop in the rope. “In case your hands get tired,” you said, sitting back in your harness.
     You gestured with your chin, the ends of your sandy hair flicking slightly in the twilight. “These are plants,” you said, and I leaned forward gingerly in my harness to peer into a box. Earth lay at the bottom, and soft green tissues emerged from the earth.
     I looked at you. “Like trees or fields?”
     ”Yes, but not wild. Cultivated.”
     I must have look mystified.
     ”Like a parent raises a child,” you said, “Only, according to the needs of the organism.”
     ”Needs?” The wind was rising slowly, maybe with rain.
     ”Water, nutrients, tenderness.”
     ”Nutrition packets?”
     You shook your head. “Horseshit.” I must have looked mystified again, because you laughed. It was so sudden and brazen, cutting through the tiny misty world between us, that I started backward in my webbing, wheeling my arms. My rope swung in a pendulum, rocking yours, and you reached forward to steady me.
     ”It hurts,” I said, wiggling to keep the webbing from digging into my thighs.
     ”Makeshift,” you sighed.
     I wriggled again and threw myself into a wild swing, heart surging. Your reached around my waist, pulling me forward and taking the weight off my thighs. My bellybutton pressed above your hip. I used my palms on your shoulders to steady myself.
     ”Too much in your space?” you asked, from somewhere near my jaw. I stood several inches above you in my stirrups, looking over your shoulder at the purple on the horizon.
     I considered. Your warmth seeped through your shirt into my hands. “No,” I said, “This feels fine,” and I could feel you nod.
     ”Let me know,” you said.
     I sniffed, took a deep breath, let it out. You smelled strange, but appealing.

     You held my gaze, taking the jug from me and setting it behind you. When you turned back, you held a length of cloth. “Arms up,” you said.
     I settled back against the wall, watching you, and slowly raised my hands. You took a wrist and brought it against the wall. I looked up and saw that, beneath each small wrought iron shelf upon which candles sat, a loop of twisted iron hung. You wrapped my wrists carefully and tied each to a loop. I squirmed into a comfortable position.
     ”Legs apart,” you said.
     I squinted up at you. “You planned this,” I accused, complying, bending my knees and settling my soles on the bench. I felt the heat on my labia, and a long wet drip.
     You looked at me. “I hoped,” you said, and leaned down to kiss me. I wrapped my legs around your hips. You pulled your mouth away, weighing my breast in your hand. You kissed the nipple, and straightened up, turned away. This time you came back with a solid object, dark and long and blunt. It looked heavy, the way you were holding it.
     You looked up and smiled, your hip and hard thigh lit by the stove glow. “Its warm,” you said, and settled in front of me.
     You slid the tip from my knee down the inside of my thigh.
     ”What —” I asked, and you slipped the warm length inside me. If it felt any bigger, I probably would have objected. You looked at me and pushed and turned it, and the straps that hung from your end made a sound against the bench. I felt torn between bringing my mouth to you and pushing my hips toward you, and I couldn’t do both because of my wrists. You saw, and leaned in toward me, letting your small breasts brush against mine, your tongue sliding along my lips, your hand on the object. I let my legs settle around your hips, and I pulled you toward me, and your hand pushed the object deeper.
     ”Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t help it. You pulled away and fiddle with the object. It curved up on your end. Kneeling, thighs open wide, you raised up and fitted the end between your thighs, squirming until it disappeared inside you. This whole event caused vibration and pushes that sent little jolts through me. I squirmed. You wrapped the straps around your hips and thighs, fastening them and adjusting until you nodded, satisfied. You eyed me.

     You lowered me down from the tree in the dark, then yourself, landing both feet and a thump. You’d given me your name but to be honest it was a whole two days before I could remember it. The air was too thin, full of water vapor and void of particulates, and my gaze seemed to slide off of you. I couldn’t make my eyes stick.
     Through the cold wet dark you led me down a trail, through a patch of trees and then to another clearing, some structures and more fields behind them.
Inside one structure, seven others sat around big table, chewing, imbibing, red earth walls illuminated by what appeared to be plants on fire. I think in my tiredness I asked a lot of questions, stopping now and then to examine the food that didn’t look like anything from a nutrition packet, eventually struggling to hold my head up. You led me to a mattress, up in the air, under the eaves, where it was dark and warm and I listened to the murmurs until I slept. You didn’t stay, only handed me a blanket, grayish and soft, and climbed back down.
     For four days I wandered around the land, happening upon your landmates doing strange things. I watched Lou take a creature, no bigger than a seven year old child, by its horns, open the front, and slide it out of its skin, which was covered in thick white hair. In the dirt beds, I helped you take plants out of the ground and put them back in somewhere else, where there was more sun. The best, by far, was finding Gael in a tree, pulling soft purple things off and tossing them into baskets. They oozed a sticky golden substance, and when you opened them up, the insides were a mass of pink and white wiggles. It was hard to put them in my mouth at first; later it was hard to stop.
     That evening, I followed you to a clay structure, with an oven, which we fed with pieces of dead trees from the outside.
     ”Everyone else is inside,” you said, and opened the door.
     Your landmates lounged unclad on the benches, and I blinked and backed out. You turned to look at my face, and then walked back to me, shutting the door to keep in the heat.
     ”Ferret,” you said. “Is it the no-clothing?”
     You’d been calling me that, and I didn’t know what it meant; it was one question I hadn’t asked. The word startled me every time.
     ”I don’t know what it is,” I said. “I’m not afraid.”
     You considered my face.
     ”Seems true,” you said, tucking your hands in your armpits and continuing to studying me. “We don’t have to go in.” The late light caught the fine wrinkle at your eye, the hair tucked behind your ear. I studied your jaw.
     ”No,” I said finally. I shivered.
     ”Its warm in there,” you said, nodding toward the door.
     ”Yes,” I said. So we threw our clothes down quickly and scurried in.
     An aroma rose from the wood of the benches, which you called cedar. Your landmates greeted us lazily. All that was visible to my eyes were the outlines of bodies in a fine sheen. Someone was telling a story, which seemed to be about a trip to the city.
     I stretched my legs toward the fire, leaned back on my elbows, and set about examining my body. It seemed like I hadn’t seen it before. You sat nearby, turning your head to check on me. I was absorbed in the new brownness of my forearms, the dark matter under my fingernails, the stretchy feeling in the backs of my legs.
     ”Ferret,” Gael said, “You haven’t asked a question yet,” and everyone laughed. Ginny handed me a bottle, something spicy and bubbly.
     I could see people better now. “What is this place for?”
     It was quiet and then they said things all at once, about washing and relaxing and muscles.
     ”Like a tune-up,” you said, grinning, “You know, to make the body work well. Like eating or sleeping or kissing.”
     I raised a brow. “Like a bot needs oil?”
     ”Well,” you said thinking, “Sometimes you want a bot to do more than move. You want it to do a little dance, right?”
     In the corner Ginny and Lou were turned towards each other, nose to nose, Ginny’s hand on Lou’s hip. Corke tipped back the last of a bottle while Gael told a joke in a low voice, hands waving in the air. I stretched my toes toward the heat, settling into the corners of my skin.
     ”I haven’t danced in a while,” I said. I felt power seeping in through my feet.
     You leaned forward, forearms on knees. “Neither have we,” you said, like a confession. “Too much work.”
     ”In the tree, it was kind of like dancing,” I said. I turned my head and your shaggy one was there, inclined towards mine.
     ”Yeah.” You hesitated, then said, “I wanted to kiss you right then.” We were quiet. “Maybe I shouldn’t say that,” you said.
     I looked at you, upside down. The light flickered on your cheek, your green-brown eyes.
     ”The funny thing,” I said, “was that I was going to write a story. About kissing.”
     You raised a brow and waited.
     ”But I didn’t even know that I wanted you to kiss me,” I concluded.
     You waited.
     ”Well,” I said, “How was I going to write a story in a state like that?”
     You shook your head, grinning. “You’re a writer?”
     ”Would you kiss me now?”
     ”As fodder for your story?” you asked.
     ”What’s fodder?” I asked.
     You laughed. “This is just grease for your story? Me kissing you?”
     ”Grease for me.” I squinted up at you. “Please.”
     The door opened and let in a gust of cool air, and I shivered. I saw the goosebumps on your skin, too. You raised your head to look around the small space; it seemed the others conveniently exited, or had just gotten too warm.
     You turned your eyes back to me.
     ”I would do this,” you said, “even if it was just grease for your story.”
     

I lay at an angle against the wall, my legs bent over your thighs and around your hips. Reaching out, you ran a knuckle between my breasts, down my belly. You moved your hips, pushing into me. I couldn’t open my legs any wider, but I could close my eyes. You pushed again harder, tweaking a nipple roughly, running your nails down my side. I wanted your mouth, but you shook your head.
     ”I have to look at you,” you said. You pushed again and again, the smooth rippled object sliding slickly, gleaming in the stove glow. I could feel it bottom out inside. You held it there, deep, and ground your hips, holding the backs of my knees in your hands. It was too soon by far, but I couldn’t help it. When I made that sound, you started fucking me in earnest, punctuating the slides with deep round strokes like a mortar and pestle.
     ”Please,” I said, trying to sit up and give you my hips at the same time. You acquiesced this time, laying hands on either side of my face against the wall, letting your tongue in my mouth. I sunk my teeth into your lower lip, wrapped my legs around you, and let my body do what it wanted, muscles clenching around your object.
     ”Oh,” I said, over and over as you continued to move in me. You reached up with your hands, hips rolling, and untied my wrists. I slid down the wall until you lay on top of me. You propped yourself with your hands, and I reached up to touch your neck, your nipple.
     ”Thank you, Ferret,” you said, moving, moving. I wrapped my hand around your neck and brought you down to me, my legs locked around your waist, my tongue opening your mouth. Your coming made the object tremble inside me, and I wrapped my arms around yo
u, ran my fingers up and down your spine. Eventually you stopped shivering, and we lay there quietly, moving our hips and hands lazily, enjoying the surprise jolt now and then.
     ”Its hot,” I said.
     ”It’s you,” you said. You wrapped your arms around me and sat up, you on the bench, me on your lap facing you. It seemed to take you little effort. I used my thumbs to wipe the sweat from the freckles on your cheekbones.
     ”I know of a softer place to lie down,” you said.
     ”Oh?” I asked.
     You used your hand to wiggle the base of the object. I looked down between us and we watched a bit of goo ooze from me, down the object toward you.
     ”I’ll wipe you down,” you said, “and then will you come sleep with me?”
     I nodded and began to undo your straps.
     Now its time to sleep, since I’ve told you all I know of this story. Tomorrow, there will be more.
     

“Are you ready to depart then, Captain Becker?” Baron Amadahy asked Gideon on his penultimate day in service to the Kingdom of Oklahoma. They were meeting in the Foreign Minister’s opulent office, easily as posh as any in England, though some of the decorations might have raised an eyebrow in London. But his ship’s recent heroism had earned Gideon the privilege of meeting with the third most powerful man in the Prairie Realm in his private office. Tomorrow he would go aloft from the Tillassa Yard one last time, his service ending the moment he crossed the border into the province of Lafayette, in the Empire of Louisiana.

He had chosen that route to protect the Louisianan locomotive that would haul fifty cars through the Empire’s northern frontier, through the provincial capital of Petite Roche. From there the cars would be loaded aboard barges and floated the rest of the way south to the Lousianan capitol at the mouth of the Mississippi. The shipment was of especial import to Gideon, as fifteen of the fifty large steel canisters of compressed Helium belonged to him, not to mention sundry baggage of his crew that could better travel by ship to Europe than on the Victrix. That provided him a great interest in the locomotive arriving at Petite Roche intact – that is, safe from the various Negro bandits, renegade Reds, gangs of Louisianan outlaws and opportunistic Atlan soldiers who might consider attacking it.

Indeed, it was only the last of these that were of any particular concern – bandits, whether Red, White, or Black, had little to gain from rousting the train as the wealth involved, while profound, was hardly portable or easy to conceal. The Atlans, however, had placed a high bounty on any Helium captured by their soldiers or private mercenaries. There had been sporadic raids on the Helium trains for years, since the very first year the vital Tillassa-Petite Roche rail line had been completed, in 1869.

Four times had ambitious gunmen managed to halt the train, remove or kill the engineers, and off-load the massive canisters across the border using traction engines before either the Louisianan Imperial Army or the Oklahoman Kingdom could respond in force. Therefore, despite the added expense, it was now standard practice for an airship-of-war to accompany the train as it wound through the wilds. Usually an Oklahoman patrol ship would suffice, but since Gideon and his men were leaving any way, the Kingdom had requested this one last service so as to keep their new ships-of-the-line on duty defending the kingdom.

“Yes, your Excellency,” Gideon bowed, gracefully. “My crew is chosen, my quarters are stripped bare, and the Victrix is loaded so that I was amazed when my sister managed to get her aloft this morning. We will be prepared to depart at dawn, as scheduled.”

“Excellent, excellent. Captain Becker, it is my pleasure to inform you that His Majesty is very pleased with your service in the last year, and has authorized me to extend to you this final offer: a commission as Vice Flight Admiral in the Royal Air Service. I might add that a commission that senior has never been extended to a White man,” Amadahy added.

“While I am most gratified by His Majesty’s extremely generous offer,” Gideon replied carefully, “and though I have enjoyed my service in His Majesty’s military, my own ambitions lie outside of the Kingdom. Although I hope this in no way prejudices the great friendship between myself and His Majesty, as I hope to remain in the good graces of the Kingdom for some time to come.”

The old Indian smiled indulgently – more like a Frenchman than a Cherokee, Gideon decided – and chuckled. “I told Steven you’d say that,” he nodded. “And I don’t believe you have any fear of vexing the Crown by refusing the offer, especially since you are half-brother to his grand-niece. But I urged him to make it anyway, as did others in the cabinet. It was the least we could do, under the circumstances.”

“Well, please kindly inform His Majesty that my ambitions extend to making his grand-niece’s vision for a new kind of airship come true. Indeed, it is no secret that after we have secured our property in Petite Roche, we will be voyaging to Paris where we shall commence construction. In fact, my agent has already secured the use of a yard and shed, and the basic structures are being laid. Perhaps the next time we meet, you shall see what honors Tayanita’s design will bring to her realm.”

“Oh, I certainly hope so,” he agreed. “She has always been brilliant. Her Uncle Cheasequah has been trying to marry her off since she was a little girl, but her mother and I have always been able to stop his machinations. He’s a traditionalist of the worst sort: women are for tending babies, cocks, and cooking fires, and damn little else. I don’t care how important he is in the House of Delegates, that girl has no place bearing brats or languishing in a convent school. He even tried to stop her from leaving in quest of her true father, but she slipped away. She lives up to her name,” he mused. “Indeed, I’ve always had a fondness for her, as if she were my own daughter. “

“I can’t imagine Sissy in a convent,” Gideon laughed, rolling his eyes. “Yet I don’t wish to leave bad blood in our wake – is this uncle . . .Cheas . . .” he stumbled – almost a year in this land, and the words still tripped him up as badly as did Ancient Greek.

“Cheasequah,” the baron corrected. “Lord Robert Cheasequah. Or Delegate Cheasequah, I should say. I wouldn’t concern yourself, Becker. He gave up on Tayanita long ago, in favor of torturing his other relatives. I, on the other hand, know she’s possessed of both great vision and a powerful intellect, and I believe that it is best for her to pursue her fantastical ideas. Robert and I often are at loggerheads, however, and Tayanita was just one of our battles. I have yet to forgive him for teasing me about my name when we were lads in the service of Steven I,” he mused, recalling his youth with a gleam in his eye. “I knocked him flat that day, and he has yet to move beyond it.”

“What’s wrong with your name, if you don’t mind me asking, Excellency?”

“Eh? Oh, I suppose you wouldn’t know. ‘Amadahy’ is traditionally a girl’s name. It means ‘forest water’, or, more specifically, ‘forest spring’. Hardly a warrior’s moniker, which Cheasequah never tired of pointing out. Still, it was my mother’s dying wish that it be mine, and so I’ve kept it – and had to fight to keep it. One reason why Tayanita and I are close, I suppose. Her name is traditionally a boy’s name – but her grandmother wished it.”

“Well, you are both extraordinary individuals, regardless of the propriety of your names,” agreed Gideon. “And I can only hope the Kingdom will forgive me for borrowing a favored daughter for a time. But Sissy and I have great plans, plans that will shape the design of airships for a generation.”

“I would expect nothing less from either of you,” Amadahy said, opening a drawer in his impressive French desk. “In any case, here is a draft on the Treasury for the balance of your fee, here is your letter of commendation for service and recognition of your status as a member of the realm’s military, and this,” he chuckled, “is a personal note of thanks from King Steven.”

“This . . . looks perhaps too generous,” Gideon said as he studied the first document. “It was my understanding that our balance was only a few thousand pounds, yet this draft is for more than ten thousand!”

“It’s no mistake,” Amadahy said, in a much lower and conspiratorial voice. “It’s compensation for a favor the Kingdom would ask of one of its best officers.”

“A . . . favor?” Gideon asked, cautiously.

“Yes, a very quiet favor,” said Amadahy.

“And that would be . . . ?”

“On the morrow, before dawn, there will arrive at your yard a group of men I wish you to take aboard,” he continued quietly, “a group I would rather not have be seen embarking with you. This town is depressingly full of spies, and it would undermine our plan if they were discovered.”

“Plan?” Gideon asked, his interest piqued.

“Oh, just another little skirmish in this interminable war,” Amadahy dismissed with a wave of his hand. “We have intelligence that the Beanies are planning something, and we plan to counter it forcefully. Yet due to the current negotiations in New Orleans between our respective delegations, it would be unwise if we were seen to be bargaining in bad faith.”

“So you wish me to take these men to Petite Roche?” Gideon asked, confused.

“No, they shall not be disembarking there,” Amadahy said, shaking his head.

“All the way to New Orleans, then?” Gideon asked, surprised. “I had not yet decided whether to cross the sea in a southerly clime or voyage to the Golden Halo, but—”

“Either choice is fine, I assure you. They will not be disembarking at any point beyond, either.”
“Then I am to land elsewhere? I am confounded by this plan,” Gideon said, worriedly.

“No, Captain Becker. Indeed, I wish you to depart and conduct your voyage just as you would without my men, but . . . well, let us gaze at the map, shall we?” he asked, nodding to the office wall where a meticulous hand-painted parchment map displayed in miniature the features of the kingdom. Amadahy peered at the thing until he found the capital, then traced the main rail route to Petite Rouche. “This, then, is the river, which the rail line parallels quite nicely for most of its course. You shall be following the locomotive – circling it, actually – as it travels. All we ask is that you find your way along your route over . . . this section,” he said, drawing an imaginary circle around a spot a few miles off the river, proper, “where you will . . . let my men out.”

“You mean . . . a rough grounding?” Gideon asked, imagining his over-loaded Victrix trying to make an unassisted landing in the rough frontier between Louisiana and Altlan without benefit of ground crew, mooring tower, or any of the other comforts an airman desired to reduce the risk of catastrophe. Surely such a landing could be made, of course, but the danger . . .

“Not at all,” Amadahy chuckled. “Indeed, the Atlan pickets would spot your descent at once and dispatch troops to investigate.”

“So I’m to just throw your men out over the rails?” Gideon asked, sarcastically.

“In a manner of speaking . . . yes,” Amadahy agreed, serenely.

“I shall not be your executioner, sir,” Gideon said, darkly.

“Nor would I ask you to be, Captain. Suffice it to say that before dawn tomorrow, a number of the Crown’s soldiers will board the Victrix under the command of . . . Duke Goyahkla,” he said, with just a hint of drama.

Gideon stiffened. Of all the Oklahoman soldiers to have made a reputation in the constant border war with the Atlan Empire, General – now Duke – Goyahkla was by far the most respected.

The wiley old Indian general had been born in the deserts of the western Atlan territories, where his people had been brutally oppressed by an empire infamous for its brutality. As a result, his tribe had become warriors of reknown in their struggle against Atlan City. For while their lands were in close proximity to the lamas of the Hopi lands, they had eschewed the faith of the Buddha and cleved instead only to their own gods and spirits – very warlike spirits, as the Atlans had come to discover.

After fighting the Beanies for half of his life, Goyahkla had heard of the new Kingdom in the east from traveling monks, and learned that they were seeking warriors to overthrow the Atlan governor. While he had little knowledge of the Eastern tribes of the Chocktaw and the Cherokee, Goyahkla was eager to lay his sword at the feet of any king who swore the Atlans his enmity. He had taken service in King Steven I’s rag-tag bands of warriors and quickly distinguished himself in both cunning and ruthlessness in his war of separation. It was said the Atlan scalps he had taken as trophies could have carpeted the Royal Opera House, and Gideon knew serious men of war who would not dispute that fact.

Knighted on the battlefield and commissioned as Lieutenant in the Royal Army only two years after he arrived, Goyahkla took charge of a light cavalry unit and had led dozens of punishing raids deep into Atlan territory. Two years after his knighting, he had been enobled by Steven I and granted an estate and a promotion to Captain; three years after that he was a Baron and a Major, and five years after that, during the Atlan’s near-successful push into the gas fields that had almost cost King steven his crown, Goyahkla had rallied the stragglers left behind the disasterous Battle of Two Creeks, split his forces, and coordinated a surprise two-pronged counter-attack on the Atlan column in conjunction with a Louisianan airship bombardment, and broke the momentum of said column.

That battle had been fierce enough and important enough that Edward had remembered reading about it in the newspapers in England. Goyahkla was a living hero to the people of Oklahoma, a revered and respected military man in Louisiana and America, and the bitterest foe to the Atlan Empire that God had seen fit to torment them with.

If Goyahkla was involved in the mission, then, Gideon would trust the man’s reputation and battle plan. “Say no more,” he nodded. “I shall do as the General bids.”

“Thank you, Captain,” the Baron nodded. “This war with the Beanies is like conducting three games of chess simultaneously . . . in a room full of rattlesnakes. General Goyahkla is as one of our knights, then, jumping over the frontier and attacking from a clandestine location. There is method to this madness. But say no more to your men than you have to.”

“Understood, your Excellency. If there is nothing else—”

“Actually,” the man said, suddenly looking embarassed, “there might be. In my capacity as foreign minister, it behooves me to avoid entangling the Kingdom in any unecessary diplomatic disputes . . . and as of last night, one has arisen that you may well be able to assist me with.”

“How so?” Gideon asked, intrigued.

“Well, as I’m sure you are aware, the capitol is postively awash in foreign spies. We are well aware of this, of course, and our intelligence service depends on them as much as they depend upon us for their livlihood. Among these . . . agents are those representing the interests not only of various Empires and powers, but some who work for certain mercantile interests. One of these – a countryman of yours, actually – was caught en flagrente delecto with the wife of Duke Mushulatubbee, Minor.”

Gideon knew the name, though he had never met the man. Mushulatubbee was a financially powerful Red Indian, a Choktaw nobleman having titles and estates both in the Oklahoma Kingdom and in the Mississippi province of the Louisianan Empire, the Choktaw’s original homelands. Indeed, his family had been instrumental in the support of the first Kings, and had powerful influence in the Court of New Orleans as well. Not the smartest man to cuckold, Gideon observed silently.

“You mean His Excellency—”

“The good Duke returned from business in Guthrie on an earlier train than he had telegraphed to his wife,” the Baron explained. “When he had arrived at his townhome, he discovered this . . . gentleman in his lady wife quite up to the balls, and clearly not for the first time. The man in question serves some German merchant interests, though he was once an officer of the British Army – I believe he was the only survivor of Piper’s Fort in Afghanistan, under General Elphinstone, back in the 40s, or something equally as heroic and historic. But that won’t save him. Mushulatubbee is a powerful man, and proud. He chased the interloper away, but is now seeking him with vengeance on his mind. He’s quite an accomplished duelist, as well – he studied at the Imperial Academy in New Orleans, and excelled in fencing, as well as the more traditional Indian arts of combat.”

“I thought such affairs were commonplace amongst the Oklahoman aristocracy,” Gideon pointed out, delicately.

“Perhaps,” the Baron conceded. “But when a Choktaw nobleman is humiliated like that, for his wife’s lover was a White man, after all, vengeance often clouds his judgement – and to give you some idea of how proud a man Mushulatubbee is, his name means ‘determined to kill’ in Choktaw.”

“How oddly propitious,” Gideon observed.

“Not for the Englishman, I’m afraid. He appeared at my doorstep at midnight last night, begging for sanctuary. While I should, by all rights, summon the Guard and have him appear before the Court of Chiefs for judgement – which would in all liklihood include a duel to the death between the principals, in consideration of the Duke’s high position in court – I chose to avoid an international incident. I have him sequestered at the moment, but the Duke’s men scour the city and search every train to Petite Roche. So . . . I would consider it a personal favor, Captain, if you would spirit this mad Englishman far away from our Kingdom. He pretends to desire to return to Europe, and since that is, indeed, your final destination, I considered you to be his best chance at doing so with his scalp intact.”

“I am not quite sure that I want to gain the enmity of such a powerful figure as Duke Mushulatubbee—” Gideon began, preparing to decline the dubious honor.

“The Foreign Office will be happy to pay his fare to Europe in advance, in gold. It would be embarassing, you see, if the old fool turned up dead on Oklahoman soil. Once you are out over the ocean, I care not what happens to him. Throw him over the side or sell him to the Moriscans, if they’ll take him. But neither Oklahoma nor Louisiana is safe for him anymore.”

“Very well,” Gideon said, affecting a heavy sigh. “Because you ask it, Baron, and because you and Tayanita are so close, I will consent to remove this offensive man from the realm.” In all liklihood, he would have done it anyway, but every conversation with Baron Amadahy was a negotiation, he had discovered long before. “But not an ounce more gold, or I’ll not make it to Louisiana. Just pay my soliciter, Sir James LaFlore, and he will wire me the money. It is he who shall be in charge of running what few affairs I have left here. And he knows how to contact me, should you have further need of my services.”

“LaFlore? I know him well, good man. Another Choctaw, related to Duke Mushulatubbee, too, I believe, so we’ll make the reason for payment . . . discreet. Now, if that is all, Captain Becker, then I have an appointment on the Royal Links at noon to play nine with the Ambassador of Louisiana and the Consul of the Cherokee Nation. And let me repeat, just one last time, what a pleasure it has been doing business with a White man I can trust. You’ve been most . . . civilized about things, Becker, and don’t think that has escaped our notice.”

* * *

Just before dawn the next morning, a troop of twenty five extremely well-muscled young native men in the green woolen coats of the Oklahoman Royal Army arrived en masse, bearing no small amount of weaponry. Each carried a brace of pistols, Gideon observed, as well as a tomahawk, a cavalry sword, a carbine, knives strapped to various appendages, and long belts of ammunition strung over their shoulders. At their head rode an impressive old Indian, his face worn like a leather apron left overlong in the sun, but his eyes seeming like portals to some ancient wisdom.

“General Goyahkla,” Gideon said, bowing deeply as he took the head of the old warrior’s horse. “An honor to meet you again, Your Grace.”

“The reception at New Year’s,” the General recalled, sharply, after studying Gideon’s face in the twilight gloom for no more than an instant. “You wore a blue coat and a silly hat. You danced with Little Beaver. But my old friend Wolf Rider says you fight well.” It sounded like a major concession from his lips, but Gideon took it in stride. He was used to the arrogant attitudes of the natives, and this man, above all others, had good reason for his arrogance.

“The General has an excellent memory,” Gideon agreed. “And it is a pure honor to bear you aloft. I only wish old Wolf Rider was accompanying me – I’ll have to make do with a fellow he recommended for the post, Captain Ned Wauhillau, late of your service.”

“I knew his father, Lord Ned Christie,” the old Indian grunted. “Good warrior. He stood alone against fifty Atlans with only his rifle, pistol and sword for almost a year at Wauhillau, in the old days, until he was relieved. If his son is half as good a warrior, you will be well served.”

“I certainly hope so. If your men will ascend to the gondola, we’ve made temporary quarters available to them. As far as your baggage . . .” he said, nodding towards a large pile of rucksacks that had been unloaded concurrently with the arrival of the soldiers.

“My men will each take one and carry it themselves,” the General said, dismounting his horse like he was a teenager and handing it off to a subordinate. “They are . . . secret weapons.”

“No doubt,” Gideon nodded, suddenly wondering what that amount of explosives could do to his ship if they were ignited. “Then please use the utmost care in their stowage.”

“As you wish,” the old soldier grunted, then ordered his men to begin the long climb up to the gondola.

“I believe there was to be one other passenger,” Gideon said, biting his lip as he peered into the gloom past the soldiers. “If he does not move with more expediency, however, I fear he will be scalped by noon.”

“F_________,” the General said, rolling his eyes with disgust. He added a word in a language that Gideon didn’t know, but sounded vile, and spat on the ground.

“Was that the name? An older gentleman, an Englishman—”

“I heard of Mushulatubbee’s shame,” Goyahkla spat again, this time in honor of his countrymen. “They are both old fools. F________ for dishonoring his host, Mushulatubbee for not keeping his woman in line.”

“Well, if the old bugger doesn’t arrive, and soon, he can face the consequences with Mushulatubbee,” Gideon pronounced. “Oh, this must be him,” he added, as he heard the clatter of wooden rickshaw wheels and the panting of the youth that pulled it. Soon the imposing figure of his passenger was standing proudly before him, a tall Englishman wearing a well-tailored suit of dark blue.

Gideon was not impressed. His passenger’s mustache was long and luxurious, but white with age – clearly the man had to be almost seventy. Gideon discovered by observation that he seemed to possess the same officiousness he despised in his father. Even more annoying he affected an air of superiority that clearly he had yet to earn in the Prarie Kingdom.

“Ready to board, Captain!” he said in a booming voice, throwing a perfect and perfectly inappropriate British military salute.

“Yes, well, up to the gondola and see the steward, Mr.—”

“You may call me Mr. Jones, for the duration of the voyage,” the old man said, glancing around at the many natives in the yard suspiciously. “Indeed, I would prefer that you remember that I am a simple representative of Bauer & Schmit, in the German Empire, and forget that I am English at all, if you’d be so kind.”

“Certainly . . . Mr. Jones. As I was saying, if you would be so good as to check in with my steward– he’s the Negro in the billed cap – about your assigned quarters, he will have a porter load your baggage. We will lift as soon as you are aboard.”

“Might I ask, Captain, whereto we are bound?”

“Petite Roche, to begin with. After that, perhaps New Orleans, perhaps up the Mississippi to the Golden Halo, or out across the Atlantic towards Africa. I have yet to decide. Ultimately, however, we go to Paris.”

“Depend on Fortune, and you will always come out ahead,” the old man said, sagely. “Up we go then!” The smell of gin on the old passenger was daunting as he passed by, two large portmanteaus borne by his native rickshaw driver. As the sky lightened in the East, Gideon took one last look around the yard that had been his home for most of the last year, and then ascended himself.

“Ready to depart, Cap’n?” Black Tom asked, putting his ubiquitous notebook under his left arm. He seemed no worse for wear having dealt with “Mr. Jones”, but then Tom always seemed to keep cool under pressure.

Tom was a civilian, a clerk Gideon had rescued from debtor’s prison in New Orleans six months previously when he had made an escort run and was forced by weather to linger in the decadent capitol a few days. The Negro’s family had held lands on the northern frontier of Louisiana, but had lost their holdings during the second war between the Republic and the Empire as they tried yet again to establish a border in the Mississippi valley. Since the Americans had paid a bounty on any Negro bearing arms in the war, and took a dim view of even unarmed Negro peasants, he and his family had departed St. Louis for a more civilized life in the south, and Tom had found a home in service of the Louisianan great houses throughout most of his youth.

Though he lacked formal education, Tom spoke and wrote in fluent French, English, Spanish, Dutch, German, Moriscan, and a smattering of Indian tongues, and had been well-trained for service amongst the nobles of New Orleans. But a love of gambling and a streak of poor fortune had landed him in near-slavery. He had jumped at the opportunity to sign on with the Victrix as porter and ship’s accountant, and after three months Gideon had promoted him to steward.

Now he ran the administrative affairs of the crew with an attention to detail that often astonished Gideon. He had been well-worth the small sum he’d paid to repair the debt and have the man released into his service. His real name was Thomas Million John Turpin, but the English and the Oklahomans alike aboard the Victrix had taken to calling him Black Tom, and he had many admirers in both parties. Even Tayanita’s Germans were fond of him – he was as massive as any Saxon brute, and the way he played on the tiny pianette in the gondola’s tiny salon was almost magical. Gideon had come to depend upon the Louisianan for the smooth operation of his ship, and that trust had yet to be betrayed.

“All are aboard,” Gideon agreed. “Sound the ascension horn and the departure bell, Tom, I’ll have the pilot take us alfot momentarily.” The Negro nodded curtly and calmly went about his duties as Gideon found his way into the control room. The horn and bell sounded, the ship gave a gentle lurch as the mooring lines were loosed, and the engines began humming as the blades of the propellers that sent the ship through the air found their full steam.

Watching dawn break over Oklahoma from such a serene height was spectacular, even if he had to hold that position in a small lazy circle about the town until the locomotive below was finally ready. Then he ordered George to begin the lazy circles over the train that would provide cover against banditry. His only real duty discharged, he repaired to the observation lounge and had Tom bring him breakfast.

It was nearly noon by the time the train and airship were approaching the designated spot the Foreign Minister had indicated. Gideon, curious about the Oklahomans’ mysterious weaponry, made a point of joining Duke Goyahkla and his men at the main hatch. Each of them seemed prepared for a boarding mission, with thick leather helmets and brass goggles, and each bore one of the mysterious packs, but Gideon had gleaned no more comprehension about their purpose or utility. The men seemed unconcerned with sudden movements or jostling, as one would expect if they were carrying explosives. It was a testament to their professionalism, and the leadership of their General, that they prepared for battle in relative silence.

The same could not be said for “Mr. Jones”, who seemed as curious as Gideon about the sortie. He stood at the periphery and told long, rambling stories about his own military service, including several improbable posts and exaggerated missions, but even his boorishness was quieted by the stoic nature of the Indians.

Duke Goyahkla inspected each man’s equipment and rigging, spoke a few words of encouragement, and chuckled good-naturedly with his soldiers as they approached their point of departure.

“You Grace,” Gideon finally managed, when the General had completed his inspection, “I was told that we would not be descending for a rough grounding, or even low enough to utilize the boarding gondola – I cannot but help be curious as to your intended means of departure.”

“I suppose we’re safely out of earshot of spies,” the Duke conceded, though he glanced at Mr. Jones pointedly. “And it will not matter much longer, after today. We will leave your ship by the most expedient route possible, Captain: we will jump.”

“Have Red Indians gone and sprouted angel wings, then?”

“No, Captain. The French have. Well, a young American in Louisiana, that is. These are known as ‘Baldwin Bags’,” the General said, indicating the packs he and his men wore. “Within is a meticulously folded contraption of silk and string, which will deploy as soon as we leap. When it naturally expands due to the force of the wind, it will slow our descent enough to allow us a gentle landing . . . in a region where we are not supposed to be.”

“Parachutes!” Gideon cried, his eyes blazing. “I’ve seen the like, though nothing this small and compact. Do they actually work, then?”

“This will be my third foray,” the wizened General nodded. “We tested them in the Northern fields, out over the Ocean of Grass. Only two of my men were injured.”

“And you will be able to land your entire platoon without alerting your foe . . . brilliant!” Gideon said, smiling broadly at the idea. He was an airman, himself, but he’d spent time as an infantry officer before he’d acquired his ship; he fully appreciated the tactical advantage of such a deployment.

“That is the theory,” the Duke said, grimly. “We will plummet safely and rendezvous in force, before we attack. There are three observation posts along yonder ridge that the Beanies use to spy on our movements – such as the departure of the train, below. It is my mission to strike them, leaving none alive. The sortie is designed to strike fear into the soldiers of the Beanie army and make them more cautious in regards to our frontier. That, and those shiny new airships we paid so dearly for, should settle this war . . . for a while, I believe.”

“So you just . . . jump out, then?”

“Yes,” the General confirmed, pulling his brass goggles over his wise old eyes. “As their leader, I shall make the first departure.” He made a final check of his straps and his weaponry, before sliding the wicker door open to reveal the sprawling land below.

“Then good hunting, Your Excellency!” Gideon said, enthusiastically. “No doubt by nightfall the name of Duke Goyakhlah shall once again strike terror in the craven Beanie heart!”

“Actually,” the old indian said, with a sly smirk, “the Beanies do not oft use my proper name. I picked up a nomme d’guerre in my youth, when I battled the despicable Spanish mercenaries the Atlans sent to conquer my people.”

“Really?” Gideon asked, surprised. This was a tale of the war he’d not heard. And he was particularly intrigued by war-names, now that he and his fellows were known as the Sky Panthers. “What do they call you, then? Something awful, I imagine.”

“The Spanish mercenaries were drunken brutes, hired from South America by the Atlans for their dirty work in the desert when we proved too strong for their own people. Catholics, of course,” he explained, as he approached the door. “So when they were at need, they called upon St. Jerome. My band and I ensured that they had ample cause to do so, I assure you. So when we made our forays against them in the dark of night, all their comrades could hear were their cries to the saint, as we slew them. In time, as I became more and more associated with those raids, they began using the term to refer to me, specifically, until it became my war-name amongst them.”

“So . . . what do they call you?” Gideon asked, expectantly, as the General prepared to jump.

“Geronimo!” the Duke cried, as he leapt out of the airship and into the fickle winds of fate.

Gideon held his breath as he watched the man plummet, and was ready to begin a prayer for his soul when he saw the parachute emit from the Baldwin Bag, catch the air, and slow the old warrior’s descent to a less-deadly velocity. The next soldier leapt immediately afterwards, grinning foolishly at Gideon as he leapt, and he, too, repeated the General’s name. Indeed, each of the braves did so as they leapt, almost as an invocation of the living legend they followed into battle so avidly.

“I wonder if that will catch on?” Gideon asked himself, as he closed the hatch and dogged it securely.
“It’s ingenious,” the faux Mr. Jones said, nodding, his face reflecting a kind of awe at the display. “This could very well change warfare. Imagine: whole armies born aloft and inserted precisely where they are needed, behind enemy lines. It will cast the science of war into a proper tizzy!”

“Perhaps,” Gideon shrugged. “But I endeavor to change the science of war altogether, myself. Someday, Mr. Jones, the world will see the launch of the greatest airship in history, and the most terrible, under my command.”

“You have ambitions, then, Captain?” Jones chuckled as he followed Gideon up the narrow stairway to the salon. “I thought you were in exile?”

“Which is why I travel to Paris, not London,” Gideon agreed, grimly. “Until Pater decides to live up to his responsibilities in regards to Tayanita, I shall not serve him, nor the British Empire, save only as a mercenary – if then.”

“You would make war on your mother country, then?” Jones frowned.

“Not war – but not love, either. I might die a begger in exile, but I will have my honor. My father, my brother and their cronies have lost any idea of what that might be, but if I alone of the Beckers yet know the meaning of the word, I shall redeem the blemish my father casts upon it by his rejection of his daughter.”

“You live a complicated life, Captain Becker,” Jones said, shaking his head. “Mark my words: a military career is a grand one, as long as one can avoid battle and live to bed the wench at the end of the day.”

“This from the last survivor of Piper’s Fort? I expected more valor,” Gideon chided, mindful he did so of an elder – which pleased his rebellious pride.

“So you heard about that, eh?” Jones said, shaking his head. “Candidly, it’s all lies. Well, true enough in fact, but the story is untruthful about the event. It usually is, in my experience. They found me with an empty pistol in my hand, surrounded by my dead comrades, the Union Jack clutched in my fingers. They said I was trying to protect the flag from the Afghan invaders, but the truth was I was looking for the chief of the Afghans to surrender to. I was near insensible, at the time, and if I fired a shot in defense of the Empire the memory escapes me.”

“So your entire military and diplomatic career . . .”

“Is built on a lie? Perhaps,” the old man shrugged. “But an instructive lie. Keep that in mind as you bravely challenge the world, Captain. Often it is the perception, not the truth, that lingers on far after memory itself has faded. What people believe of you is often far more important than what you have actually done. But you must weigh that against your own sense of honor, and act accordingly. Now, on to cheerier things: who was that delightful morsel of dusky womanhood I saw lurking around when I came aboard? She may have been dressed as a boy, but there is no disguising those curves.”

It was Gideon’s turn to chuckle. “That is my half-sister, Tayanita. She’s also my Engineer, and while I could add she is under my protection, I think you’ll find that forcing yourself on her unwilling would produce an abrupt and inglorious end to your career, regardless of how it began. She is very independent-minded – which I encourage. And an adept shot,” he added.

“Remarkable,” Mr. Jones sighed, nodding. “I suppose there will be whores enough in Petite Roche – and certainly in New Orleans.”

Gideon left the man to breakfast in the salon. He made his way back to the humming Engine Room, where Sissy and a brace of her men were keeping the steam engine that powered the propellors and the pumps whirring along. The room was moist and overly warm, as usual, and the smell of burning alcohol and stale steam haunted the air. Sissy herself was tapping the altimeter she’d insisted on installing down here and frowning.

“If I didn’t know better,” she said, absently, “I’d say we just dropped a dozen rockets! Did something fall?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Gideon grinned. He explained the method of egress his secret guests had used, and made Tayanita jealous that she hadn’t been there to witness the event.

“But you must procure me some o’ those Baldwin Bags when we get to Na’orleans,” she insisted. “We could do so much with those!”

“It is already on my agenda,” he assured her. “So, do we have everything we need, then, to begin construction of the Argo?”

“What? Of course not!” she scoffed. “Not by half. Oh, we got the gas, now, and the keel is alread laid if that firm we hired knows their business. But there are still thousands o’ things we’ll need before she takes air, much less goes to battle!”

“Such as?” Gideon asked, his heart sinking. He thought they had acquired enough of a fortune to build their dream ship twice over.

“Such as about forty thousand gallons o’ latex,” Tayanita began listing, “about ninety miles o’ hemp rope, four tonnes o’ steel cable – that ain’t cheap – two brand new custom engines from Germany, and, and . . .”

“I understand,” Gideon sighed. “I suppose we’ll be hiring our swords out for a while, yet.”

“Oh, I think we can take a respite from battle . . . for a while. But Gid, even if we paid pure gold, the Argo will take years to build. At least two. And there are hundreds o’ miscellaneous parts that we’ll have to special order, or fabricate. That costs, too. More than we have. But we have enough to start, and if Fortune smiles, we’ll have the rest afore long,” she assured.

“So, to New Orleans, then to Paris,” he nodded.

“Uh, Gid? Any way we could do a little . . . fishin’ along the way?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, aware that the girl was prone to metaphor far more than an English girl would be.

“I mean, that there are plenty o’ Spanish ships comin’ back from their colonies in the South, and latex is one of their major spoils. The Moriscan pirates take latex ships all the time. If we could contrive to capture a few o’ these, maybe, we could cut down the price significantly. Time, too.”

“Air piracy?” Gideon asked, a little startled..

“Well, if you wanna go and get all technical,” the Indian maid scowled. “Yes, piracy it would be. I know that might go against your idea of honor—”

“Actually, I find the idea rather appealing,” he chuckled. “I was dreading a prolonged stay in Paris. Too easy to be lured into indolence by its many charms. A little casual piracy might be just the thing I need to keep me sharp, until the Argo is complete.”

“That’s ideal!” she smiled, relieved. “Way I figure, we hole up in Paris while I supervise construction, then maybe go out every couple o’ months to go . . . shopping,” she said, wryly. “I mean, as long as we stay on the right side of the Frogs, and not hit anything too important, we should be able to linger there until it’s complete without having the air navy of every Empire under Heaven chasing us.”

“Still, it’s unlikely that Emperor Napolean will appreciate a brazen outlaw using his fair city as a hideout. Paris isn’t an ideal base for piracy,” Gideon pointed out, “although the amenities are, indeed, delightful.”

“True, but it’s where we got to build the Argo. So if you want to dock the Victrix elsewhere, I suggest you start searching for a spot. But within telegraph reach of Paris.”

“That’s most of Europe, Sissy,” Gideon observed, gently. “Very well, I shall seek some out-of-the-way place, then, for our pirate base. But—

“Shhhh!” Taynita said, suddenly, her eyes widening. Gideon almost interrupted, but thought better of it. If Sissy heard something amiss with the engines, he’d leave her to it.

“What is it?” he whispered, afer a long pause. Tayanita waved at him impatiently, then started wandering into the labyrinth of tight corridors that ran the length of the gas envelope. Each of the massive inflating cells had to be accessed at need, so the catwalks wound around a great deal, providing ample territory for mischeif to strike. Gideon followed her, suddenly concerned – had some Atlan spy actually stowed away up here, ready to sabotage his vessel? Grimly, he drew his pistol.
As they approached he began to hear what had attracted Sissy’s attention: a rythmic moaning and grunting that was all too familiar. The noise of the engines, while now receded, was still omnipresent enough to hide their footfalls, so the siblings were able to approach without alerting anyone.

Taynita paused, abruptly, and Gideon stood behind her, peering over her shoulder, at what she stared at. There in a tiny nook between two swollen cells lay two familiar figures: William Bonney and Marta, the captive Beanie noblewoman. The lady in question was on her hands and knees, her bronze arse high in the air, as she welcomed the pounding of Billy’s turgid tool in her cunny with apparent relish. For his part, Bonney was riding her cunt like he was breaking a horse, wildly and with abandon. If his approach was crude, it apparently met with Marta’s approval, as she had a loud and boistrous climax moments after the siblings discovered them. Neither one was aware of their presence, however, and though Gideon waited for Sissy to intervene, she didn’t.

They contented themselves with watching the rowdy coupling, and Gideon had to admit to himself that Billy, for all of his wild ways, seemed to know his business when it came to fucking. The course mercenary gunman slapped at Marta’s broad buttocks with enthusiasm, making her squeal and wimper as he rode her cunt, until he, himself finally arrived with a bellowing scream near to that Gideon had heard the day he’d lept off of the side of an airship.

“That,” Tayanita said icily, clapping slowly in the aftermath, “was impressive, Mr. Bonney.”

There was an unpleasant edge to her voice that made Gideon realize that he might be escorting Mr. Bonney through the hatch without the benefit of one of those Baldwin Bags. “So did you smuggle this whore aboard? Or did she make it here on her own?”

“Captain,” Bonney said, wide-eyed at his discovery and clearly unwilling to confront Tayanita, “I have to report the presence of a stowaway!”

“Really?” Gideon said, trying hard to keep a smirk from his lips as he returned his pistol to its holster. “And how did you apprehend this stowaway, Mr. Bonney?”

“Wellsir,” the mercenary said, as he collapsed on the floor next to his lover, “I was doin’ my rounds, patrollin’, if you like, when I heard a noise. When I went to investigate said noise, I found me an Atlan spy. So of course I wrestled her to the ground and was in the process of securing her when you arrived in such a timely manner.”

“Full marks for boldness, Mr. Bonney,” Gideon had to admit. “But that doesn’t quite clear your name. Come, did you bring Marta along?”

“No, Captain,” the Atlan woman said, sadly. “He is correct: I did stow away. I felt compelled to: my father is reluctant to part with such a high ransom for his . . . homely daughter. He was engaging in bargaining with the Oklahomans more suited to purchasing a mare at market, not redeeming a beloved child. So I escaped the confines of the Atlan Consulate and stole aboard last night.”

“So you have cost me a ransom—” Gideon began.

“And me a man,” added Tayanita, levelly, her arms crossed judgementally under her breasts.

“And imperilled our entire journey. You do know the law about stowaways, do you not, Marta?”

“Indeed,” she said, nodding seriously. “You may do with me what you will. But I can only beg of you, Captain, to take me into your service. I’ve always been passionate about airships, and yours is so fine compared to my homeland’s rude attempts. I will bear any burden, Captain, and swear any oath if you would but consent to allow me to accompany you and learn what I can. I shall clean privys, cook, sew, be the whore of your men. But I have no wish to be the bride of some ancient, pushing out his brats while I see such magnificence as your Victrix probing the skies from the perspective of my miserable life.”

Gideon looked at Tayanita, who glanced back at the Atlan girl. He would have to leave this up to her, he knew: he might be captain aboard the Victrix, but he was equal partners with his sister in the venture, and when it came to keeping her happy that alone was Gideon’s top priority. There was a long silence that led the captain to believe his half-savage sister might consign both of them to the skies.

“If you truly are that in love with flight,” she began, cautiously, “then report to the Engine Room at noon. Have Evan teach you the basics of the room, what everything is called. You will be the absolute lowest of my crew, I warn you, and I will not spare you in the slightest either because of your sex or your class. Noble or common, man or woman, the Engine room is my domain and you will do what I want precisely how I want it done.” Gideon stifled a sigh of relief – he had no desire to execute either of them, though he had been willing to do so.

“As for you, young lady,” he said, addressing Marta sternly, “your life belongs to me, now, even moreso than before. When we land at Petite Roche, I will wire your Consulate and let them know I have taken you into custody myself because I was unhappy with negotiations. But when and if your father should see reason and ransom you back, then you will depart for home by the most expedient available transport. Until then, you are Lady Tayanita’s to dispose of as she will. Do you understand me?”

Marta nodded, trembling. “I shall do as you bid, Captain.”

“As for you, Bonney,” he continued, sternly, “seeing as how you have taken up her cause, you will share your quarters with her for the trip. Somehow I don’t think you’ll be sharing them with anyone else,” he added, wryly, looking at the furious expression on Tayanita’s face. “Until we get to New Orleans, at least, and then we can decide exactly what to do then.”

“That’s fair, Cap’n,” he agreed, nodding sagely, as if he just made a good bargain trading horses. “Truth is, I’m kinda sweet on ol’ Marta, here. Sorry, ‘Nita, not that you ain’t a peach, but . . . well, always carried a torch for Atlan women, an’ Marta here is just grand!”

“I’m sure you’ll be very happy together,” the Engineer said, grimly, and stomped off.

“I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that,” Gideon said, apologetically, as he followed her. “Not if she has anything to say about it. And do pull up your trousers, Bonney.”

When Chief Jacob Two Star, of the Cherokee Nation, and Chief Everett Mauser of the Chocktaw led their bands of native mercenaries to the frontier of the White Man’s empires to found the Oklahoma Kingdom on the basis of the vast reserves of gasses naturally occurring to the otherwise bland and disinteresting land, they had invited (some said kidnapped) a number of German chemists to assist them in exploiting the resource.

The Germans were fabulous chemists and physicists, and they had happily assisted the Prairie Crown in developing the industry to wrest the gas from the earth, then separate out the precious helium from the less noble elements. The pay was extravagant, compared to what they could command as instructors and professors in the universities of the Rhine, and many worked two and five year contracts with the Crown and retired to Europe rich men. But their presence had had another, unintentional effect, however: the construction of an authentic German beer hall in the middle of a dusty native Kingdom.

Das Jagerhaus had the feel of a Saxon hunting lodge – or, that was what the original design had intended. Made of wattle-and-daub, complete with rune-like exposed beams, Das Jagerhaus had become the unofficial headquarters for both the German scientists who toiled for the Prairie Crown’s Helium monopoly and the airship mercenaries who protected it. The two groups mixed freely, providing one of the few truly cosmopolitan venues in Tillassa, both attracted by the hall’s near-monopoly on the brewing and dispensing of good German beer.

King Steven Two Star, noting his own people’s poor history with strong drink, had thus restricted the production and sale of such spirits to fully licensed purveyors – of which Das Jagerhaus was one of three in Tillassa. While the restriction had not completely protected the Indians from indulging in the wickedness of drunkenness, it had made the frequently violent outbursts a drunken native was reputed to be capable of a rarity. A native could go to Das Jagerhaus and get a drink, but did so under watchful eyes of foreigners and fellow tribesmen, both of which took a dim view of such behavior. Indeed only a few, notably the mercenary marines like Wolf Rider and his men, made a habit of entering the German tavern, and a marine who could not maintain his control with drink there would not be employed long. None of them would have risked their well-paying positions by hazarding a stupor.

But the European, American, and Louisianan airmen mercenaries were more accustomed to liquor, and had no hesitation about the lure of strong drink. They made Das Jagerhaus their unofficial home, place of business, and recreation hall. Each ship had a section of the large hall where they were in the habit of congregating after a flight, concentrating around an Indian-style fetish on the wall above upon which they bestowed ribbons signifying their battles and triumphs.

The usual air of celebration was muted today, however, due to the silence coming from the Hobgoblin’s empty table. No one had yet removed the ship’s trophies, which had been draped in black in mourning while the fallen airmen’s comrades drank to their memory.

The corner where the Star of Baton Rouge’s crew drank was muted, at best. Five of their number had fallen in the Atlan skirmish, but they had only barely escaped the Hobgoblin’s fate when a massive Borealis nearly clipped them in midair. The ship had spun crazily, but Fortune or some unknown native Sky God had favored them, merely leaving them unpowered and battered, not fallen. The bounty on their kill – which Gideon had been only too happy to confirm to the Crown’s representative – would be barely enough to pay for repairs, a process which would keep the ship out of service for at least a fortnight.

The big round table where the Victrix’s crew was stationed, however, was as jubilant as propriety allowed, under the circumstances. By tradition, the large table was reserved for the marines and flight crew, while a rectangular table nearby attracted the engineers from the ship. As captain, Gideon had the pick of the tables but mostly clung to the larger, in deference to his sister’s reign at the latter.

Having successfully nursed his prize ship back to port, as well as his relatively unscathed Victrix, Gideon’s band of “Sky Panthers” (he had relayed the Beanie dame’s sobriquet for the mercenaries to his men, if not the circumstances under which the intelligence was gathered, and they had adopted the moniker with savage pride and humor) had been richly rewarded for their bravery and efforts. The prize ship was already in the process of being converted into an Oklahoman warship – resigned to patrol, due to her primitive nature – by being repaired and outfitted with Helium balloon and good Manchester rockets. When the conversion was complete, she would work the pickets along the southern frontier, along with her relatively weak sister-ships, espying on the land of her birth like a captive Sabine pining from Rome.

Gideon was glad that he had driven such a hard bargain for her, too, commanding a good thirty percent over his last prize. Still, the Crown had been eager to pay it – even with the additional expense of overhauling her to Okie standards, it was less expensive than purchasing such a craft new from Europe or even America or Louisiana, both of which had nascent airship manufactories. Yet while he had haggled with the wily old Baron Amadahy (made easier by his relation as an uncle or something to his sister Tayanita), he had also discovered the incipient arrival of five brand new warships purchased from the French, through the Louisianans, for the purpose of interdiction duty.

Each was half again the size of his Victrix, real three-hundred-meter Emperor Napoleon I-class air frigates armed with the latest French Imperial military-grade accoutrements throughout. They were devastating war machines, as the Indochinese discovered during their recent rebellion, able to over-match all but the largest German-made Atlan ships.

In addition to the nine smaller airships the Kingdom currently used for patrol and interdiction duties (ten, with the addition of Gideon’s prize), the five would essentially replace the mercenaries that had protected the Crown and its lucrative Helium for the last decade. It had been a complex, complicated bargain that Baron Amadahy had personally negotiated, but it seemed as if the tenure of easy money for airship mercenaries was drawing to a close. While the ships would not arrive for another month, and take a month beyond to be fully crewed, the Victrix would be redundant soon enough. Even with Amadahy’s assurance that Gideon would always be welcome in the Okie Kingdom as a friend to the Crown, he could tell that he was being sacked, albeit gently.

That suited Gideon’s own plans nicely – between the bounty for the prize and the likely ransom for Marta the Beanie Dame (who had taken up residence in his Marine barracks, and seemed to be determined to make up for time lost in the convent by making the full acquaintance of the phallus in all of its manifestations ere she was redeemed), he would have easily fifteen fully-loaded cylinders of Helium in a fortnight, with credits payable for up to two more on account with the Crown. That was a titanic fortune, by any account. In truth, he hadn’t been particularly surprised by the knowledge – he had heard the rumors of the French ships for months, now, and had factored them into his plotting. Witnessing the Hobgoblin’s ignoble destruction had further convinced him that remaining in Oklahoma indefinitely was not in his future.

Gideon’s sister seemed more enthusiastic than even he was about winning the day and capturing the prize. Despite her allegedly noble upbringing and gentle appearance, Lady Tayanita made a regular practice of joining the rougher elements of the Victrix’s crew with her own Engineers, and tonight she wore a proper lady’s dress in defiance of her usual custom of boyish trousers, braces, shirt and cap. She sat amid her German and Dutch mechanics, sipping brandy and talking with some of the scientists from the Gas Works about some exciting ideas she’d had.

The scientists, lonely, far from home, and drunk, were captivated with the physically ravishing and intellectually brilliant half-native beauty and hung on her every word. Gideon liked to pretend that they were more enthralled with her impressive brain as much as her shapely bubbies, but the gentleman in him knew better. Still, Tayanita could handle herself in nearly any situation, and here she was surrounded by shipmates. Indeed, Das Jagerhaus seemed almost like a home – a shabby, smelly home where he needn’t worry about appearances or his family or anything but buying the next round and shagging the next girl. To proceed with his plan meant abandoning this comfortable lifestyle and going back to stuffy Europe, where this kind of frontier camaraderie was rare.

“So where to now, Cap’n?” Bonney suddenly asked Gideon, breaking him from his reverie.

“What do you mean, Bonney?”

“Cap, I know good ‘n’ well that look in your eye – seen it in the lookin’ glass myself a time or two. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that you was lookin’ about, sayin’ farewell to this place.”

Gideon laughed despite himself. “Well struck, Bill! You are not far wrong. Pray, don’t speak of it to the rest of the crew yet, but yes, we are not long for Oklahoma.” No sense in keeping the information too close to his vest — the arrival of the ships was hardly a state secret now. “The Crown has procured a real aerofleet, now, and will be using mercenaries less and less,” he explained quietly.

“So, bringin’ me back to my earlier point, where to now?” The man didn’t seem shaken by the idea of abandoning Oklahoma. That was one reason he liked Bonney — always on the lookout for adventure.

“Well, I’ve given it some thought,” Gideon admitted. “And much of my plans revolve around my sister.”

“Beg pardon?” Bill asked, surprised. He gave the Engineer and his occasional lover her due as an officer and a woman – but Gideon alone of the Victrix’s non-engineering crew saw Tayanita’s potential as a visionary in airship design. He had seen her portfolios, crammed with sketches and designs and hundreds of pages of technical notes she had put together over her years of casual conversations with engineers, scientists, and airmen. While he doubted the utility of all of her work – likely because he lacked the intellectual foundation to comprehend it – he had seen his dusky sibling work miracles in the air. The improvements she had made on the Victrix’s archaic design had made her a model of graceful efficiency compared to other ships in her class – and as a result many of the modifications had been adopted by the other mercenary crews.

“She has an idea to build a new kind of airship,” Gideon explained. “I’m going to see her vision come to life. And I will command it,” he added, as if there might be some doubt.

“Huh? Little Tayanita?” Bonney asked, mystified.

“Indeed,” Gideon nodded. “When we quit here, likely we will travel to Europe to find a proper yard. With the loot I’ve gathered, we should be able to fund most of the construction.”

“Most?” Bonney inquired again.

“Most,” agreed Gideon. “The rest we can steal. Or earn, if we have to. With a bag full of Helium, we would be in high demand in some places. But there remain plenty of opportunities for a crafty and adventurous airman out there, Bonney, and I dare say we’ll find a few on our travels.”

“You mean to include me in y’all’s excursions?” he asked, again surprised.

“Where we travel, we are likely to need someone with your skills. Wolf Rider and his men, too. Unless you would prefer to terminate your service . . .”

“Oh, hell no, Cap’n!” Bonney swore. “Do you jest? The Victrix’s crew is the first place I felt a part o’ somethin’ akin to a family. Worked my share of ranches and such, might have lifted a horse or two that weren’t mine, technically speakin’, but I never felt a man until I was aloft,” he said, sincerely. “If you’ll have me, I’ll stay hitched to your star as long as I can!”

“Good to hear!” Gideon agreed, happy that the itinerant gunman was willing to accompany him. He could trust the man, he knew, and that was worth more than a pile of German degrees. “Persuading your native colleagues might be more problematic – Wolf Rider himself was mentioning settling down to ranch, when he put down his guns. But I imagine I’ll be able to find a dozen or so healthy rascals who don’t mind a fight.”

“They’re a scrappin’ people, assured,” Billy agreed, admiringly. “Your sis amongst them. Buit she’s sore as hell at me right now. She found out I dipped my wick in that Atlan cunt, she ‘bout threw me outta her engine room. Ain’t let me near her yet. I know she’s your sis an’ all, but I confess I’m sweet on her.”

“She’s likely to forgive, eventually,” Gideon said, kindly. “She has a temper, no doubt about it, but she checks it at need and forgets trespasses quickly. Thank Jupiter – else she would have ended me months ago!”

“Sure is a hoot knowin’ you’re a real English Lord, and she’s your daddy’s bastard,” Bonney chuckled, finishing his beer. “I think it’s noble as hell o’ you runnin’ away from your family castle and bein’ with her. Family’s important,” the orphan assured him.

“It’s the only important thing, really,” Gideon sighed. “I might hate my father, pity my brother, and despise my sisters and mother for their many shallow faults, but I shall love them all until the day I die. I confess that it is only their intractability in the matter of Sissy’s legitimacy that estranges me yet from them.”

“Well, hope you and your kin come to accord,” Bonney said, raising his mug after receiving a refill from the buxom Saxon daughter of the tavernkeeper.

“Hope springs eternal,” Gideon grumbled, raising his own glass.

“Gid!” his sister called suddenly from her table. “GID! Get o’er here!” She had the sparkling quality in her voice that told her brother that she was already half-drunk and giddy over something. Gideon also knew that she was stubborn enough not to let him at peace until he saw what excited her so. With a nod to his gunman, he rose and came dutifully over to the Engineer’s table, where Tayanita held court.

“Gid, this fella here is Herr Doctor Planck. Maxie!” she said, correcting herself. “Maxie works o’er at th’ Gas Works, an’ I, we been talkin’,” she slurred, conspiratorially. Gideon glanced at the young German scientist, who seemed more than a little intimidated by his sister. That was a common reaction in the Germans, who saw most natives as mere laborers or servants, not potentially brilliant scientists and technicians. Or his awkwardness might have been inspired by the way Sissy was pushing her vivacious breasts around. While they were slight, compared to some women, she seemed determined to make up for their lack of size by increasing their visibility. The dress she wore, of colorful native fabrics, was cut low enough to incite scandal in polite society in London.

Therefore, he loved it on her.

“Go on,” he encouraged, when he felt prompted.

“Anyway, me an’ Maxie worked out . . . it’s right here,” she said, holding up a big sheet of foolscap covered with penciled equations, “we worked out a way to build a new kinda gun.”

“A gun?” Gideon asked, his interest piqued. “What kind of gun? Like the infamous French gas cannon?”

“No, no, nothing so element-ry,” she dismissed, haughtily, with a hiccough. “But I had this idea come from watching the water hose on th’ ship, wonderin’ if light acts like water an’ what would happen if—”

“It’s really a matter uv coherency,” the German managed to get in, finally. “Ven you push light tru un tuben, tru a reactif matrix of transluscent matter und bounce it off a series of mirrors—”

“The upshot is, you should be able to knock light around with mirrors to get it to act like a cannon!” Tayanita explained, impatiently. “Under the proper conditions, it should be able to tear through a balloon and bring down a Hydrogen ship at over five times the range of a Manchester, afore dispersion sets in! Theoretically-ly, that is,” she added with another hiccough.

“That’s a fascinating theory,” Gideon said, smiling indulgently. “And one of many you’ve explained to me that I’ll have to take on faith, lacking the education or numbers to do otherwise. Tell me, Sissy, is Dr. Planck as convinced as you?” He hated to publicly doubt his sister’s abilities, but she was drunk, he reasoned, and a little gracious investigation might help keep her enthusiasm properly channeled.

“He says so,” she admitted, as if that hardly mattered. “But think of the implications!” she said, wide-eyed. “Think about shootin’ down Beanies wi’ a spray o’ light, not Manchesters! No weight penalty, no chance o’ fire, no missin’ the fuckin’ target . . .”

“It sounds magnificent, Sissy,” Gideon agreed. “We’ll have to install it aboard our new ship.”

“New ship?” Planck asked confused. “Ze one you captured?”

“Nah, that shitbag?” Tayanita swore. “I wouldn’t wipe my cunt with that flyin’ turkey! No, me an’ my dear brother, here, are going to build the most advanced airship in the world. One of the biggest, too!” she added, hugging her knees through her dress like a little girl. “It’s gonna be called—”

“That’s enough, Sissy,” Gideon said, gently interrupting her. “I know you’re enthusiastic, but we have yet to even lay the keel of the thing, much less fly it. If it flies,” he added.

“It will fly!” she insisted, ardently. “It will! It’s built on sound principals, just—”

“If you say it will fly,” Gideon said, stopping her, “I will trust my life that it will do so. But let’s not be casually mentioning our ultimate goal, shall we? Too many ears around.” While the tavern was half-filled, and he recognized almost everyone there, he was also fully aware of the sensitivity of the situation. Since Das Jagerhaus was the nexus of the foreign mercenary and the foreign technician class in Oklahoma, naturally all of the major empires had observers here.

The French, of course, were intently interested in the goings on in Tillassa, as were the British and Germans. Add the American, Louisianan, and even Atlan spies that were no doubt prowling around trying to overhear valuable intelligence about the wildcat kingdom, and the beer hall, while quaint, was hardly a secure venue for sensitive matters.

“Oh, no one’s gonna listen to li’l ol’ me,” Tayanita dismissed. “I’m just a girl.”

“You are also the chief engineer of the most successful mercenary airship in the kingdom,” he reminded her. “That gives you standing your sex does not.”

“My sex ain’t gettin’ any standin’ no how,” Tayanita complained. “That fool Billy went and put his pecker in that Beanie cunt, an’ I ain’t ready to forgive him that . . . yet!” Gideon made note not to reveal his own sexual indiscretion with the captive, lest he incite his sister’s wrath at him as well. “That was tant’mount to consortin’ with th’ enemy! So my poor li’l pussy goes to bed all alone tonight . . .” she pouted.

“I’m sure your genitalia will recover—hullo, what’s this?” Gideon asked, interrupting himself as a commotion from the front of the tavern attracted his attention.

It wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for the tavern to play scene to an altercation or disturbance, either due to distraught airmen, wild mercenaries, homesick Germans, or drunken natives or a mixture of any or all of them. Hans, the barrel-chested barkeep, had two husky native lads on hand to keep the peace, and the Royal Watch station was on Tacumsah Street, a mere dusty block away. But the tumult that had attracted Gideon’s attention bore none of the hallmarks of a typical rowdy evening at the pub – the shouts weren’t angry or fearful.

“What is it?” his sister asked, only to see the focus of the commotion at the same time as Gideon – although the expression she affected was quite different.

“It’s . . . a monk!” Gideon whispered. “A real Hopi monk!”

“So?” scoffed Tayanita. “Those . . . fucking Hopi have been begging at my people’s door for generations. Their preaching hurts the ears of our spirits. And they’re pacifists,” she said, openly scornful. The art of warfare was a well-developed cultural aspect of Cherokee, Chocktaw, and many other clans who had settled in the Okie Kingdom – the saffron-clad Hopi missionaries’ reluctance to participate, and indeed their practice of condemning the practice of warfare, were looked upon with open scorn. “They don’t fuck, neither,” she added with contempt. “How can you trust a man o’ god what don’t fuck?” she asked, as if that was a crime against nature.

“Catholic priests do not marry,” Gideon pointed out, gently. “Surely you’ve met some Atlan or Louisianan Catholics, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but they only say they don’t fuck,” she pointed out, crudely. “If my friend Atoya’s experience at the convent school in Baton Rouge is any guide, their attention to their vows is at best nominal. The fucking Hopi monks,” she said, nodding in the direction of the old man who had caused such a ruckus, “they tend to really not fuck. Or fight. Or eat meat. Or drink,” she added, finishing her brandy.

“And that offends you?” He was always amused at the surprising prejudices his sister demonstrated. The inter-clan rivalries of the Red Indians were almost as amusing to him as the similar rivalries between the Empires of Europe and their fetid aristocracies.

“I have no argument with their religion,” she said, carefully, “but their society is foreign to my people. They were in too close a proximity to Near Cathay, and took up their religion without looking to their other cultural gifts. That’s fine, such as it is – but they can’t keep it to themselves. They have sent out missionaries for hundreds of years – everywhere. As far as the Saltless Seas, and the Ocean of Grass. To my people’s original home in the Appalachians, even.”

“I’ve always heard the Hopi monks were fortune tellers of great repute,” Gideon observed, chuckling at his sister’s annoyance. “Aged mystics in their bleak mountain caves, doling out wisdom and mystical offal to everyone who can reach their peaks, that sort of thing.”

“If only that was th’ extent,” his sister snorted, curling her lip derisively. “Don’t need to go all the way to Hopiland t’ get your fortune. Plenty o’ holy men around Tillassi and Guthrie, sick on peyote and spouting mystical nonsense. Everywhere, I expect. I’ve seen their likes, the wild men from the Open Plains, and the medicine men of the swamps of Louisiana. Mostly a bunch of charlatans and harmless fanatics. Love spells and speaking to your ancestors and the like.

“But the Hopi monks come and they preach and they preach and they preach – more than a body can stand! I have no more desire to take refuge than I do to be saved from Perdition,” she said, defiantly. “Reincarnation or resurrection, neither hold my attention as sufficient as ascension.”

“Do you think I could get him to tell me my fortune?” Gideon asked, impetuously, not taking his eyes off of the wizened old man. “I’ve always loved that sort of thing. A Roma witch once read my palm in Cheapside, then offered to get her daughter to suck me off for half a crown,” he mused. “Cheeky wench said I’d challenge the titans of the earth and become a force to topple empires. She did not believe so much that she would reduce the price for the fellatio, however. One would assume a toppler of empires would be due a discount.”

“You can ask,” she admitted. “’Bout the fortune tellin’, that is, not the bargain cocksucking. Almost all of them bald-headed johnnies got some magic beads or sticks or such. They throw lots, some pretend to prophesy, and some will examine your head. But it’s their damn begging bowl that’s in your face before you can take a breath.”

“I’m going to ask,” Gideon decided, sliding out of his chair. “And do be good to Bonney, won’t you Sissy? If you are going to fuck a wild creature, you cannot expect it to become tame overnight.”

“I know, I know,” she replied, glumly. “He ain’t my intended or anything. We’re just good friends who rut occasionally. Still, hurts my feelin’s. We get back to the hanger by the skin o’ our teeth, and finally see your ship in the sky, and the bastard has the nerve to be all fucked out when I want him!”

“Well, in his defense, we were staring death in the face,” Gideon offered. “Any moment we could have been consigned to doom.”

“Like that ain’t his life every other day?” she asked, scornfully. “He’s gonna find a grave afore he finds a cane, that ‘un. Still, he shoulda known better! He does! He knows I get worked up in a sky-fight an’ need to . . . blow off some pressure!”

“Just don’t make him suffer overmuch. I have need of men such as he. And, apparently, so do you.”

“I’ll make up with him,” she agreed, sullenly. “But that don’t mean we’re pickin’ out wedding blankets!”

“I’m certain he’ll be relieved to hear you say that,” Gideon agreed. “Off to hear my oracle!”

“Superstitious idiot,” he heard his sister whisper under her breath. Gideon didn’t mind – he had a minor fascination with the occult, and having his fortune told by an authentic Hopi Buddhist Monk in an authentic German beer-hall on the dusty plains of Oklahoma was just the thing to tickle his fancy. He made his way through the crowd, mostly curious Germans and a few guilty-looking natives who were apparently back-slid Buddhists, to where the man was standing.

Hans, the burly barkeep, was standing imposingly in front of the Indian, arms akimbo, a hard expression on his classically Teutonic face.
“Ve vill haf no trouble from your kind!” he said, adamantly. “If you don’t like beer, don’t preach against it unter mein roof!”

“Peace,” the wizened monk said, bowing submissively – yet with great dignity. “I wish only to beg—”

“He is a holy man,” one of the stoic Choctaw mercenaries said, quietly but sternly. “He should not be harmed.”

“Oh, let him stay, Hans!” a German chemist insisted, drunkenly. “It vill be good sport!”

“If efan one uv mein patronz complainz . . . “ Hans said, warningly, raising a fat finger at the man.

“I say,” Gideon said, interrupting the rotund Saxon before he could complete the threat, “old man, I’ve heard it said that your sect can see the future and tell a man’s fortune. I’ll see you well paid if you would do me that service.” For emphasis Gideon jingled his wallet.

“Do not insult the holy brother,” the Choctaw infantryman said, looking at Gideon menacingly. While he had to admit the potency of such a gaze, the truth was that Gideon had long learned to ignore such stares from natives – if nothing else, enduring his sister’s glares had hardened him. “He is not here to do tricks for White men. He speaks the path of the Awakened.”

“Nor would I ask him to do tricks,” Gideon soothed. “I have the same respect for all holy orders. But a man likes to have a glimpse of what Destiny has in store for him, and his sect has a reputation for oracles. Helps in planning your afternoons.”

The big Choctaw started to respond angrily, but the monk held up a wrinkled hand wrapped in his turquoise rosary and the man desisted in an instant. Then he turned gracefully to Gideon and bowed. “I would be pleased to relate this man’s dharma to him,” he said quietly, in strangely-accented English. “All walk the path towards Nirvana, even the Whites.” Gideon shot the mercenary a triumphant look as he led the monk through the crowd and towards a small, unoccupied table.

“Can I buy you a drink, Brother . . . ?”

“I am called Sumki,” the old man said as he sat gingerly in the rough wooden chair. “For I seek.”

Gideon was certain that there was a long and complicated story behind the name and the old monk’s mysterious manner, but he was anxious to hear his oracle. But there was the matter of hospitality to attend to. “Of course you do, old man. But do you seek a drink, is what I’m asking.”

“I will have water,” the monk conceded with a nod of his brown, bald head.

“Well then,” Gideon said, excitedly as he clapped his hands together, after ordering for them both from a passing barmaid, “I’m Captain Gideon Becker, Brother Sumki. I’m curious – where did you learn your English? It’s passing good.”

“I was a guide for the monastery when I was a boy,” he explained. “I traveled with many English and learned their tongue. French, Spanish, and Dutch, as well. ”

“Brilliant!” Gideon nodded, sliding several silver coins – enough to pay for a month’s worth of meals – across the rough wooden table until they rested near to the monk’s elbow. “Pray, what do the Fates have in store for me?”

With a quiet sigh of patience the old man opened a simple cloth bag at his side, long faded from dust and sun – much like the man himself, Gideon noted – and withdrew a number of items. First was a small doeskin bag which proved to contain a multitude of odd trinkets, the second was a colorful native doll, like a child’s toy, and the third was a handsomely decorated scroll case. “Every man has his dharma,” the monk intoned as he opened the bag of lots. “And every man may know his dharma if he but ask the intercession of the spirits. When the great Muna Lama set me upon my path many years ago at the great monastery at Orayvi, he gave into my hand powerful medicine: the Kachina of Taatayi Kokyang Wuti, the Awakened Spider Woman.”

“She looks . . . formidable,” Gideon acknowledged, as he admired the strangely dressed wooden doll. “Does she . . . talk?”

“Kokyang Wuti brings the whispers of the Spirits and the Buddhas to my ears,” Brother Sumki explained patiently in halting English. “She is the middle between Man and the Spirits. It was to her that Pahana brought the sacred scrolls first, so that she could bring them before all of the spirits and convert them to the path of the Awakened One.” The old monk rattled off the folk tale as if it was the History of the Roman Empire, not a lot of native superstition. “But she says no words with breath.”

“Well, as long as you can hear her, then, I suppose,” Gideon chuckled. “So, what does she say?”

“She answers your questions,” Sumki explained patiently. “Hold her gently in your hand and whisper your words into her ears. Then I will divine with the stones and hear her answer.”

Gideon beamed indulgently, picking up the gnarled little wooden doll with exaggerated care, whilst imagining the proper way to phrase what he most wanted to know. He closed his eyes, imagining himself at some ancient Hellenic oracle, the gods themselves standing by to answer him. Finally, he leaned forward and whispered, “What course will lead me to love, riches, and fame?” into the doll’s tiny ear.

Satisfied, he placed the poppet in front of the monk and waited. He had kept his whisper low enough that it was unlikely that Brother Sumki had heard a word of his barely-voiced inquiry, so he had little expectation that the alleged holy man would be forthcoming with any but the vaguest generalities.

With eager curiosity he watched the monk spill a little cornmeal on the table in front of him, wave a hummingbird feather through the meal until it was swept into a surprisingly complete circle – no doubt the old wizard had done this ritual many, many times in the past. “The sacred hoop is dharma’s wheel,” he said, reverently, then chanted something in Hopi or Chinese – Gideon didn’t know enough about either culture to tell the difference. “We pour down our questions like the rain,” he recited, and followed it with another long string of native gibberish. “Come unto us and speak the path of this man’s dharma!” he intoned in a dramatic voice as he rattled the stones and bones within their pouch, throwing them the moment he spoke the last bit of the incantation.

Gideon eagerly bent forward to see what the tiny objects had divined for him – and was at a loss. There were five small stones of various hues, a translucent crystal, a tiny wagon wheel, a grain of maize, a clay feather, a copper coin and a twig. If there was special significance to any of it, it escaped him – it looked like the contents of the pocket of any eight-year-old boy in Brighton.

Brother Sumki noted the placement of each of the elements, and then drew forth the scrolls secreted within the case at his elbow, nodding significantly when he found whatever passage the oracle called for. Three more times he repeated the rite, before he replaced the tools of divination in their pouch and brushed away the cornmeal with some prayer or other.

“Well?” Gideon asked, impatiently, at the conclusion of the ritual.
“The spirits have much to say about you, Gideon Becker” the man said sagely as he eyed Gideon as if he was seeing him for the first time. “Let he who has ears and the sense to listen attend me: you are to be a great man, if you follow the dharma the spirits have laid before you. “

“Is that all?” Gideon demanded.

“The spirits say a great journey lies before you,” the monk replied, serenely. “A journey of great importance, in many distant lands.”.

“Well, since I’m an airship captain, that’s hardly a novel horoscope,” he sniffed. “Do you have anything more . . . specific? Fame and glory, for instance,” he offered.

“You will make the cloud that destroys the dreams of kings,” the monk said, as if in a trance. “You will capture the sun within a mighty spear of light. You will slay your enemies with your command. No man will be able to assail you. The kings of the nations of the earth will cry out against you, but you will not bend. Your name will be on the tongue of the multitude that will see in you a savior. You will strike at empires and they will bend to your command. Nations will serve you.”

Gideon chuckled in surprise. “Oh, I find I quite like that fortune! Well, I can’t imagine such a fate, but far be it for me to argue with the almighty spirits! Fortune? Am I destined for the workhouse in my dotage?”

“Great wealth of material things will be yours, and you will play with the jewels of the earth like they were toys. Gold and grain will be in great supply and you will want not. Yet you will care not for your treasure, for you will find greater riches than can be kept by a man.”

“Fame, then wealth,” Gideon smiled. “If I didn’t know better, Brother Sumki, I might think you were gilding this oracular lily with every breath just to flatter me! What of love, then? Shall I die a bachelor?”

“Many will you sample before you discover your fate. You find your heart under a stone. You will see beauty in the eyes of one who does not. Your spirit will clash with your woman until the skies themselves ache. You will marry,” he said, slowly – almost reluctantly, Gideon decided. “But the one you will wed is already long a bride, and carries three sisters on her brow. You shall know her for her skill at arms, for you shall not best her in contest. Blood will be spilt before your heart finds the mate to your spirit. Great misfortune, death, war follow in the footsteps of your union. And in finding your heart, you shall restore the broken sacred hoop of your blood by binding it with your friendship,” he pronounced, and then grew silent.

“That is quite a fortune, then!” Gideon sighed, more than a little disappointed. It had been colorful enough, but he had really been hoping for something like: Go to France and build your airship, where you will meet an attractive noblewoman who is heir to some imperial throne willing to extend your exile in the most pleasant of ways.

Unfortunately, the Hopi monk was no more efficient in his pronouncements than the Roma sorceress had been. Or any of the other fortune tellers, medicine men, shaman and fakirs he had visited over the years. They all seemed to promise the same thing: riches, fame, and love, all in generous portions. Yet it never seemed to materialize. True, he’d been lucky at his trade of sellsword, and had acquired a small fortune in that trade, but it was dwarfed by his father’s holdings, for example. It must be an occupational mandate of the soothsayers guild, he mused, to trade only in heady superlatives when fleecing their flock.

“It is as I have said,” Brother Sumki bowed. “I spare you nothing of my visions.”

“You didn’t mention a violent death, I noticed,” Gideon observed.

“Such is beyond the knowing,” the man shrugged.

“Nor a reconciliation with my father,” he added.

“I speak what I hear from the Spider Woman. The spirits show us our dharma only as much as they desire, and only what we truly need know. I say what I see, nothing more,” the monk said, serenely. “Those words were for your ears, not mine. Only you can give them meaning.”

“Thank you,” Gideon sighed, placing a thick golden Louisianan Dollar in the monk’s bowl on top of the silver already there. That was far more than a month’s wages, even by the prosperous standards of Oklahoma, but Gideon didn’t mind the expense. The reading had been highly entertaining if nothing else and the man seemed sincere, if a little addled. Well worth the cost – and some of his men had Buddhist inclinations, so the open display of largesse to the monk would be popular with them. Of course that meant he would have to be just as generous with the next Catholic priest or Protestant preacher they chanced upon to please the Christians among his men, but he had no trouble with that. Like his sister, he ascribed to no specific faith, Christian or Heathen, save his own code of honor and a sense of filial piety. Perhaps he might regret not cultivating a religion, he mused, in this most dangerous of trades, but Gideon cared not where he spent eternity, provided the company was good.

As he rose and glanced toward his ship’s corner, he saw that most of his folk had already retired for the evening. A few mercenaries were deep in their cups, and three engineers were playing cards, but of Tayanita and Bonney, Wolf Rider and Black Joe and the others with whom he fancied sharing the result of his augury, there was no sign. With a sigh he left the beer hall and into the gas-lit evening.

The road between the city center and the airship fields was brightly lit, like all of Oklahoma’s cities. The amazing profits from the Helium trade made the raw natural gas it was extracted from nearly a waste product – nearly all of the native homes were fitted for gas pipes for heating and cooking, and the King had invested lavishly in iron streetlamps, more than he had seen in any moldy European city. They provided him ample lamination to cross town on foot without fear of molestation by the occasional footpad, had his sword and pistol been inadequate protection. At this late hour, the rickshaws that carried the well-to-do were long gone from the cobbled track . . . but the whores, he saw, were quite awake.

The road to the airship yard was positively studded with whorehouses and pleasure palaces where an airman or an engineer could spend his time and money in this lonely place. Unlike some other cities he’d seen, they seemed prosperous and happy at their trade, not tired and desperate. While a majority were native girls or half-breeds, there were plenty of delicate French and robust Negro whores from Louisiana, some Celtic and Norse ladies from the Northern countries, and even a few American lasses from Philadelphia and New York, who had come west to seek their fortune with their twats.

But the house he favored was Madame Lei’s Orchid House, which was stocked with only the finest Celestial whores from Near Cathay. There was something about the diminutive, fair-skinned women he found alluring, from the way they sucked his cock to the noises they made when he fucked them.

Perhaps it was the novelty of the sallow beauties he found so enchanting, but upon the occasions where he had indulged in such pleasures in the last eight months, the Orchid House had received the majority of his trade. And a clear night tonight, today’s violent maelstrom already soaked into the prairie soil, combined with the brush with danger had made him randy despite his earlier tryst with the unhandsome Marta. He resolved to pay a call on the distinguished house before he retired – but was distracted by a familiar moan from the shrubberies adorning the house next to his destination.

Fearing one of his men had been set upon and lay wounded, Gideon parted the shrubbery with one hand, the other on the butt of his revolver. He abandoned the weapon when he saw the author of the moan, however, for Bill Bonney was standing with his back against the brothel wall being serviced enthusiastically by some native whore below him in the shadows. The young man opened his eyes at the noise of the foliage being disturbed, but his hand stayed his lover’s head in its place.

Gideon clucked. “Billy!”

“Howdy, Cap’n!” the man grunted. “Did’t figure on seein’ you again tonight. How did your fortune tellin’ go?”

“The monk happened to mention how unpleasant your life might be if my sister catches your cock in the mouth of a whore,” Gideon said, cheerfully.

“Ain’t that a relief?” Billy said, his head tilted back in pleasure as his companion continued her work.

“You desire an unpleasant life?” Gideon asked, surprised. “Or a short one? My sister is an excellent shot, I must warn you. And the Cherokee are adept at torture with nothing but a knife and a fire. And that might be preferable to what she would do to you should she deign to let you live.”

“Nah,” Billy said, dismissing the issue with a casual wave of his hand. “Don’t need to worry none ‘bout ‘Nita ‘cause it’s ‘Nita who’s asuckin’ on my pecker!”

“Oh,” Gideon commented, blankly, staring suddenly at the native woman he’d presumed was a whore. “Oh! Hera’s bouncing paps, Sissy! Not quite where I expected to find you this evening!”

Tayanita slowly turned her head around to glance at her brother, allowing Bonney’s proud weapon to dangle obscenely in front of her face.

“What’s the matter, Gid?” she asked, sweetly. “Have you never seen a lady give her sweetheart a suckin’ afore she gets rightly fucked?” Gideon could tell by the way her accent had degraded from her usual very proper English that his sister was far into her cups – enough so that she would consent to some fellatio al fresco before retiring to her quarters for more intimate fare, apparently.

“Well,” Gideon sighed, “I am gratified that you two have made up, then. Carry on,” he added with a half-salute, before he beat a hasty retreat to the sound of their giggles.

He really had not planned upon, nor had the slightest desire, to witness his sister’s sexual hunger, which was legendary around the Tillassa airyards. While he appreciated her lusty disregard for proper European decorum, he hadn’t planned on participating even as an observer. No matter how casual the natives were about such things (the Beanies married first cousins rather often, he reflected) Gideon was squeamish about them when it came to his half-sister.

If nothing else, however, the sight, while disturbing, had enflamed his lust even further, and his feet led him to the threshold of the Orchid House without command. He inhaled the sweet smell of incense, opium and sex as he parted the beaded curtain that served as entranceway, once you passed the stout wooden door. That exotic smell always transported him to a state of relaxation and happiness.

Madame Lei was waiting for him in the parlor, a middle-aged Celestial woman in a dark red silk robe, her face painted in what Gideon could only assume was the fashion way out west in Near Cathay. Madame Lei spoke several languages, many Gideon had never heard of. But her English was impeccable – it was rumored that she had served in her youth in a whorehouse in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the United States, which made sense, considering her accent. She greeted Gideon formally with a deep and respectful bow, and two young girls came forward to take his coat and hat and provide him with tea. There was a certain ritual in visiting the Orchid House, and drinking a cup of tea and chatting with Madame Lei was part of it.

“And what pleasures can our humble house provide the dashing Captain Becker this evening?” she asked, after the formal pleasantries were complete. “A bath, perhaps? A massage?” The Orchid House alone of the houses in this district had a large bath tub, which Gideon had used more than he had used the whores. The Oklahomans, while fierce warriors and cunning businessmen, were only beginning to adopt European standards of cleanliness, washing sporadically if at all, whereas the Celestials from Near Cathay saw bathing as a ritual which should be indulged in weekly. While Gideon had yet to progress to that zealous state of cleanliness, nonetheless he found himself in the massive chin-high tub of fragarent, hot water at least once a fortnight.

But not tonight. “Madame, I would be much obliged if you would provide me two fetching young lasses to tend to me for an hour or so,” he declared. “In a private room, of course. And a pipe of opium immediately afterwards will see me slumber the sleep of the gods – and see you well paid for the effort.”

“But of course,” Madame Lei said, gracefully. “Does the Captain prefer one of the ladies he’s seen previously? For not two days ago three new girls arrived, fresh from beyond the Ocean of Grass. Young, pretty . . . although not virgins anymore,” she said, biting her lip regretfully.

“It is no matter,” Gideon dismissed. “In truth, I prefer a more experienced whore, and with a brace of them virgins I fear I’d spend more time in teaching than fucking. But if they are young and pretty, that should be a sufficiency. I trust your judgment implicitly.”

“One of each, then. As you will,” she said, bowing again, then chattered away in the sing-song language of New Cathay to the two attending girls. From Gideon’s experience, the pretty hostesses in the parlor would only service a client if he was insistent and generous – the duty was considered light, and given to those girls who had already worked several days as a respite from tending Aphrodite’s gardens. But they did not spare him any flirtation, sitting in his lap and cooing strange words in his ear, rubbing his bulge in his pants and feeling the muscles on his arms and giggling to prepare him for his coming exploits. The fair dames of the Orchid House knew how to make a gentleman feel manly.

At last Madame Lei returned to him, and the hostesses scattered. “All is prepared,” she assured him, leading him through another beaded curtain and back to the rooms of the house. “Two fine young maidens, recently plucked. Ripe and enthusiastic. Spare them nothing, Captain,” she added with a tight smile, knowing he had the purse to pay for any perversion.

He thanked her and entered the room, which was lit by a trio of gas lamps and decorated with paper lanterns and red tassels and beautiful but indecipherable scrolls, a delicately stitched cover of silk on the bed, as if it was in the real Near Cathay. Adding to the effect were the two young whores, who wore their traditional costume. They bowed deeply and respectfully to him before they converged, undressing him gaily while chatting to each other in their native language.

Gideon allowed his clothes to be doffed by the giggling girls before he took a position in the center of the lavish bed. The soft silks from the Far West provided a lavish sense of comfort that he had often lacked while on campaign, but he relished them now. And while the girls did not seem to know any English, French, or Atlan Dutch, they seemed to know their business quite well, as each one took a position at the foot of the bed and began rubbing the soles of his feet with professional confidence.

The feeling was exquisite. His boots were well-made, but he spent an inordinate amount of time in them, and his feet often felt abused by his busy life. Having two pretty Celestial maidens (figuratively, at least) use their surprisingly strong hands to rub away the tension within was a sensual delight. Indeed, the pleasure they gave his feet was such that he forgot all about his erection, which started to flag as he lost himself in reverie. The girls knew better than to let that happen, however, and with a small cry of distress the one on his right foot abandoned her effort to rectify the matter.

Stooping beside the bed, she used a deft and delicate hand to stroke his cock, cooing to it as if it were some animal. While that halted his erection’s decline, she was not satisfied with the progress, and so popped the head of his pego between her lips, running her busy tongue rapidly over the glans, much to his enjoyment. Gideon uttered a blissful sigh, relaxing into the bed even as his whores stimulated them.

He barely knew two words of Mandarin to rub together himself, and those he’d learned in this very “school”, but when he gestured for the girl sucking his prick to continue, she did so eagerly. The girl on his feet began changing sides frequently, forcing Gideon to issue the most beatific moans from the pressure. He contented himself to lie there for nearly a half-hour, soaking in the simple pleasures of life.

“Remove your garments,” he commanded, hesitantly. “Take off your clothes,” he repeated, pantomiming to his young fellatrix what he desired. She bowed quickly and doffed her simple silk gown, revealing a slender form almost bereft of the womanly attributes he was accustomed to seeing on members of his own race. Her breasts were small but well formed, and her hips were narrow, with only the most graceful of curves at her waist. He had slowly gotten used to the nature of the Celestial whores, but it always occurred to him that a naked specimen, such as he had before him, sucking his cock at the moment, could have been anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five years old and bear such a shape.

What delighted him the most, however, was the nature of this whore’s mound of Venus: it was entirely bereft of the hair normally accustomed to grow there. At first he began to panick when her bare pussy came into sight, thinking for a moment that his hostess, Madame Lei, had somehow foisted off a child on him; but upon closer examination, this sweetly sucking tart was clearly passed into maturity, and had but shaved her crotch in the manner of the ancient Roman gladiators or the odalisques of the Turks. Once he became accustomed to the look, he was infatuated by it: a completely naked pussy on a grown woman was quite a novelty.

His right hand stole out and buried itself between her slender thighs, and his fingers sought to measure the full extent of the barren mound. It was complete; if there was a hair worthy of mention on this girl’s cunt, it was not one he could feel. He contented himself then with plying his finger within her hot, clasping depths, fucking her gently while she sucked attentively on his tool.

Meanwhile the girl on his feet had not ceased her toil from the moment she began, though she did move from one foot to the other while her sister whore sucked him. The combined feelings of the two strong sensations made him drunk on bliss, and the added favor of a tight pussy clasping around his finger added greatly to the already sublime experience.

Yet while he was willing to allow his doxy to ply her trade to completion, he craved something more substantial to sate his lusts. Pulling gently on his fellatrix’s bum, he encouraged her to mount the bed and sit astride his face, where her slick, bare folds descended upon his lips with the inevitability of a sunset. Her lips barely moved around his cock as she settled, but soon she was sucking just as enthusiastically as before – more so, now that Gideon was licking her sweet juices from her cunny like a mad long-starved. The little whore responded immediately, moaning delightfully around his prick and gasping with each sweep of his tongue.

The girl massaging his feet began to call instruction to the cocksucker in front of her, apparently finding fault with her technique. Gideon could find none – as far as he was concerned, she was doing an admirable job on his dick, and would soon reap the reward of such activity in the traditional manner. Yet still the lass at the foot of the bed chided the newcomer girl, admonishing her to do… something, although Gideon had not the slightest idea what.

Finally the more experience girl, who did not have the handicap of a deft and worrisome tongue invading her most private space while she worked – yet – finally gave up verbal instruction and instead grabbed the newer girl’s raven-black hair between her hands and began pushing it further and further down his cock, until the whore nearly gagged with her nose buried in his pubic hairs. Only then did the other girl relent and allow her protégé to breathe. Then she once again forced her head down on his prick, which inspired Gideon to redouble his efforts against the young girl’s clitoris. That in turn forced the cock sucking whore to lose her concentration, which while it vexed her mentor, sent Gideon into spasms of joy as he felt her mouth struggle.

Licking a bare cunny was delicious, he decided, for it not only allowed him to suck the juices from this exotic peach unencumbered by hair, it made the whole region surrounding her clitoris terribly sensitive, a state which he exploited with enthusiasm. Indeed, the quivering arse above his head was trembling with joy and confusion as the poor girl attempted to focus enough on his blowjob to complete it, yet also enough on the rapid-fire tongue that was eliciting from her such moans. He vowed to extend her pleasurable suffering yet further by the simple expedient of moistening his largest finger in the tight slit above his face, then repositioning the digit in proximity to the girl’s tight bumhole.

He felt her tense, of course – only a seasoned sodomite would face such an intrusion without trepidation, and were he to wager a sum, he’d do so on the chance that her arse remained inviolate. So much the better, he thought wickedly, suddenly pushing his thick finger deep into her fundament until it was wholly buried within her most intimate opening.

The move caught his massager off guard, but the older girl recovered quickly enough to ensure that the younger girl’s face never wavered from its duty. That produced a stifled scream from her which in ordinary circumstances would be erotic enough . . . but when the mouth that produced such a scream did so with one’s cock ensconced within was divine!

He chuckled into her cunt and began fucking her bunghole with long, strong strokes that mimicked coitus well enough to cause the girl’s hips to begin rocking back to meet his finger in response. He resolved at once to bugger the girl before morning, no matter the cost.

Yet the excitement of the moment was too much for a man already aroused and recovering from an exhausting battle. Once his finger was truly buried in her arse, their companion again forced the girl to suck by moving the other girl’s head with her hands, faster and faster. The result was a quick increase in the joy that was exploding through his body from his prick, and the inevitable conclusion of such erotic dalliance.

With a moan into the young girl’s weeping twat above him, he shoved his cock as deeply into the young whore’s mouth that she would have yelped, had her mouth not been otherwise occupied, and issued a mighty torrent of sticky sperm into the cavern of her lips. The assistant fucker, as Gideon called the other girl in his mind, ensured that the cocksucker did not lose a drop. Indeed, once completed, the diminutive pixy whose cunt he was feasting upon struggled to swallow everything that he contributed, while simultaneously encountering a sudden and powerful orgasm inspired by Gideon’s skilful lips on her lit.

The girl screamed and moaned around his spurting cock, and only then did the older girl seem satisfied. She climbed down from her saddle on his face a little gingerly, slanted eyes wide with wonder as she contemplated such a powerful climax, such a thick jet of sperm, and such a large penis.

“That was very well done,” he praised them, as he recovered. “Fetch me more tea,” he ordered the older one, making a tell-tale sipping motion with his fingers. Apparently the whore had known enough English to understand “tea” – indeed, the folk of Near Cathay were rumored to be distant relatives of the people of the Chinese Empire, where tea was consumed in massive quantities, so knowledge of the word in foreign tongues was not unheard of. His enthusiastic fellatrix, however, was busy attempting to recover her wits after her climax, and lay in a heap on the bed, panting.

When the older girl returned, Gideon made a great show of taking it, bowing, and then tipping her lavishly with a silver penny. She smiled and graciously took it, then asked him what else he desired, in heavily broken English.

“Just undress yourself,” he commanded, feeling like some Turk in his seraglio, surrounded by doting minions. “It will take a moment or two before I am fit for duty again, I’m afraid. But you could improve that process if you . . .” he said, trailing off. The older whore was naked in an instant, and possessed all the womanly curves the younger girl did not. Nodding happily, Gideon sat up enough to avoid spilling his tea, so that he could make his orders clearer. The girls acted confused by his words, however, and just kept shaking their heads in bewilderment – until he finished pulling the older whore’s robe off entirely, arraying her on the bed in the spot he had just vacated, and then pushed down the new whore’s face between the thighs of her colleague.

That inspired a whole new round of confusion, this time on the part of the younger whore, who seemed unready to perform such a service. The older whore did her best to comfort the girl, no doubt explaining that such forbidden delights were long-practiced by the Europeans while touring their imperial conquests – or, Gideon mused, more likely threatening her with a beating if she did not comply, and do so with enthusiasm befitting her profession.

Eventually the older girl tired of her charge’s arguments and simply pulled her face into her groin, holding it there until the younger girl obediently began to suckle her clit.

Gideon had always enjoyed watching the Sapphic arts, ever since he had discovered his sister Gwendolyn practicing such perversions with her Welsh maid when he was seventeen. He had insisted they stay entwined until they had finished their course, then he had roughly taken the maid from behind, quite against his sister’s objections (though not, he recalled, the maid’s).

The feeling of fucking a freshly sucked cunt had been one of the finest he’d enjoyed, and he had encouraged the girl (whom he had fucked a few times before, though that hardly mattered during this tryst) to continue licking Gwendolyn. His sister had stormed out, embarrassed and threatening to inform their father, which meant Gideon had to content himself with slaking his lust between the maid’s thighs – though he gained a certain excitement knowing he was doing it to his sister’s secret lover.

Of course Gwendolyn had made no such confession to her father, for fear of the truth of her own bestial lusts emerging in public, so Gideon had proceeded to fuck the maid whenever the occasion permitted, and more, encouraged her to find another girl with whom they both could play.

But tonight he needed the stimulation provided by seeing such wonderful exploits should he care to take full advantage of his hostess’ hospitality and bugger the young whore. Watching two nearly identical whores sup between each others’ thighs was a glorious sight to behold, and as the two Celestial girls approached a mutual and monumental crisis of lust, Gideon found his cock quite hard and perfectly ready to resume his fun.

He had a sudden pang of regret, when he remembered that in as little as a fortnight he might be departing Tillassa and her wild, unsophisticated fleshpots for the more staid and civilized ports in Europe. So he resolved that moment to indulge himself to the fullest in his few remaining days, amusing himself the way only a noble in exile could: with lusty native girls and a bit of opium.

“I think I’m ready, Ladies,” he said, as the last moans and cries receded from throats and their spent twats recovered from their mutual licking. The two looked up at him, their juices thick on each others’ chins. “A little more sucking, a pipe, a little fucking, and a bit of buggery or two, and I think we can safely call it a well-spent evening.”