Clementine by Cherie Priest Page B

doesn’t fight us, we’ll hold more or less steady at seventeen miles per hour. Welcome aboard my Cherokee Rose , Miss…?”
    “Boyd,” she said. “I’m Miss Boyd, Captain…?”
    He removed his hat and bowed. “Seymour Oliver, at your service. Can I help you stash your bags?”
    “Thank you sir, very much!” She handed over her large tapestry bag and held close to the smaller one with Pinkerton’s instructions.
    The captain heaved the luggage into a slot at the stowing bays, secured it with a woven net that fastened on the corners, and he told her, “Take your pick from the seats available, and please, make yourself comfortable. Refreshments are available in the galley room, immediately to your left—through the rounded door with the rivets, you see. A small washroom can be found to the rear of the craft, and the seats recline slightly if you adjust the lever on the arm rest. And if you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to stick your head through the curtain and let me hear about it.”
    Captain Seymour Oliver retreated with two or three backward glances, and when he was gone Maria chose a seat in the back, without any other occupants in the row.
    The seat was as comfortable as she had any right to expect on a machine that was made to move people from one place to another with efficiency. Though padded, it was lumpy; and though she had plenty of space to stretch out her legs, she could not raise her arms to stretch without knocking her knuckles on a metal panel affixed above her head. This was no flying hotel, but she could survive almost anything for twenty hours.
    She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat’s edge, holding her smaller bag and its informative contents in her lap—and covered with her hands.
    Through the speaking tubes, the captain announced that they were prepared to depart, and asked everyone to make use of the bracing straps built into the seats before them. Maria opened one eye, spotted the leather loop, and reached out to twist her fingers in the hand-hold; but it wasn’t as necessary as she’d expected.
    The Cherokee Rose gave only the slightest shudder as it disembarked, leaving behind a pipework pier with barely a gasp and a wiggle. The feeling of being lifted made waves in Maria’s stomach. The sensation of being swung, ever so gently, from a gypsy’s pendulum, made her wish for something sturdier to grasp, but she didn’t flinch and she didn’t flail about, seeking a bar or a belt. Instead, she leaned her head back again—eyes closed once more—and prayed that she might nab a little sleep once the sun went down, and the cabin inevitably went dark.
    It was a curious thing, the way her belly quivered and her ears rang and popped. She’d risen once before in a hot air balloon, but it’d been nothing like the Cherokee Rose —there’d been no hydrogen, no thrusters, no hissing squeals of pressurized steam forcing its way through pipes. Under her feet she detected the vibrating percussion of pipes beneath the floorboards and it tickled and warmed through her ice-chilled boots. She wormed her toes down and let the busy shaking soothe her, or mesmerize her, or otherwise distract her; and within five more minutes the ship was fully airborne, having crested the trees and even the tallest of the uniform, fireproof brick structures that surrounded the dockyards.
    “Quite a performance there, Miss Belle.”
    Maria blinked slowly; and through a rounded window to her right, she could see the tips of roofs falling away beneath the craft—and the dark, scattering flutter of birds disturbed from their flights.
    To her left, the empty seat beside her was no longer empty. It was now occupied by an average-looking man in an average-looking suit. Indeed, everything about him seemed utterly calculated to achieve the very utmost median of averageness. His hair was a moderate shade of brown and his mustache was of a reasonable length and set; the shape of his body