The Doomsday Vault

indeed. And what on earth was the Third Ward?

If you find you need a change in your life, write to me, all right?

Alice frowned as she finished the last bite of sandwich. Miss Teasdale was an Ad Hoc woman, wearing trousers, riding astride, calling a peer of the realm love as if they were related. Earlier, Alice had found it exciting, but now that she’d had time to calm down, she realized how ridiculous the entire affair was. And she had sacrificed an extremely expensive dress to this Third Ward for barely a thank-you. Glenda Teasdale and her Third Ward could go hang.

Alice Michaels tossed the card onto her workbench, blew out the candle, and dropped into exhausted, righteous sleep.

Chapter Four

“Here you go, son.” Stone hunkered next to the pallet and set the pewter plate on the deck near Gavin. His phosphorescent lantern cast a low circle of green light on the wood and shoved the shadows backward. “I got you some beans this time. They even have some salt pork in’em.”

Gavin pushed himself into an upright sitting position on his pallet with deliberate slowness. Each movement pulled at his back, sending demon twinges up and down his body. Around him, the dark hold smelled of tea and cinnamon, silk and paper. Bundles, boxes, and crates created chunks of deeper shadow all their own. He carefully took up the plate and shoveled salty beans into his mouth. The chain around his left ankle clanked.

“Have we moved yet?” he asked.

Stone shook his head. “Still tethered. Not much to see out there but a hangar, my boy. Wellesley Field’s a good three miles from London. You can’t even see the city now that we’ve landed, so you ain’t missing anything.”

“I’ve made the Beefeater run a hundred times,” Gavin muttered. “Seen London.”

“Right.”

Gavin finished the beans and shoved the plate aside. It felt odd to be on board ship with her engines silent. Two engines had turned up damaged from the pirate fight and had shut themselves down not long after Gavin’s whipping. Repairs had taken more than a week, and in that time both the Juniper and the pirate ship had drifted about as playthings of light and wind. Correcting their course and getting to England had taken another two days. A medium-sized dirigible normally made the run from New York to London in three days, two with favorable winds, but the Juniper had arrived in London as a captive more than ten days late. Gavin wondered if she and her crew had been reported lost. Had anyone notified his family? The telegraph offices ran regular messages, but he had no idea if the Boston Shipping and Mail Company would go through the expense for a mere cabin boy. The image of his mother slumped across the kitchen table, a crumpled telegram in her hand and tears on her face, made his throat grow thick, and he found himself hoping the BSMC was too miserly for common courtesy.

He swallowed the tinny taste of beans and made himself ask the question he’d been dreading. “Will we be ransomed soon?”

Stone shrugged. “Probably. Captain hasn’t said, but he can hardly keep you all locked in the brig for another week, can he?”

“Is he going to ransom me?”

“He’ll ask. The real question is”-Stone leaned forward a little-“will your company pay it?”

Gavin’s mouth went dry. The fears he’d been trying to suppress all the long days he’d spent lying on his stomach in the Juniper’s hold while fevers wrenched and tore at his healing body came roaring back. The BSMC always paid ransom for ships. It usually paid ransom for officers. It often paid ransom for airmen. It never paid ransom for cabin boys-not even for cabin boys only a few weeks away from their eighteenth birthdays.

“That’s what I thought,” Stone said, reading the expression on Gavin’s face. “Listen, boy-Captain Keene ain’t cruel. He only beat you instead of throwing you overboard for killing Blue, didn’t he? And he let that old man tend your back, right?” When Gavin didn’t answer, he went on. “I think he likes you. If I talked to him, I bet he’d let you stay on with us. You’d be a proper privateer instead of a milksop merchant. Load better’n being sold to the East End whorehouses.”

“Is that what he’ll do?”

“Most like. He has to make money off you somehow to pay for everything you ate.”

Gavin wondered on what sort of scale a few cans of beans outweighed the lives of Tom and Captain Naismith and the lashes that had landed on Gavin’s back. He wanted to be angry, but he was too tired. The skin over his spine felt tight.

“So those are my choices,” Gavin said. “Join you or spend my time doing… doing what Madoc Blue wanted.”

“Think so.” He scooted closer to the gunnysack pallet and perched on its edge, close enough for Gavin to feel the heat of his leg. “Anyway, I’m ready.”

With stiff, reluctant movements, Gavin leaned toward Stone and retrieved his fiddle from its battered case on the floor. Once it was under his chin, he gave Stone a resigned look. It was the price for extra food-and for Stone speaking up so Gavin would keep his life.

“ ‘Tam Lin,’ ” the man said, his eyes glowing green above the phosphorous light. His white leathers, those he had stolen from one of Gavin’s crewmates, took on the same sickly hue.

Gavin played. The ancient song’s minor key meshed with the unearthly cold fire within the lantern as his bow and skittering fingers cast dreadful shadows over the bulkheads. Every note was a curse, but the iron chain around Gavin’s ankle siphoned his strength, and the music seemed to fall away into the darkness, its art and beauty flat and dead. Stone didn’t notice. He nodded his head, tapped his fingers, and grinned with green teeth.

When Gavin finished, he said, “I lied, son. I’m sorry.”

The bow jumped in Gavin’s hands and screeched across the strings. “What do you mean?” he asked, straining to keep his voice level even as his heart jerked hard.

“The captain already ransomed the crew, and the company’s wired the money. Except for you. They drew the line at a cabin boy.”

Gavin’s mouth dried up and tension tightened his chest. “They’re gone? Everyone’s gone?”

“On their way back to Boston. You’re the only one left. The captain talked to a woman what runs a little backgammon house, and she was all happy to hear about a boy who can fiddle in the evening and handle instruments at night. I’m supposed to bring you up. The captain’ll give me hell for taking so long, but I had to get another tune of you, didn’t I?”

Gavin hit him with his fiddle. The instrument’s edge caught the underside of Stone’s chin, and he went down with a grunt, eyes glassy. Gavin went through his pockets with chilly fingers and came up with a key. It fit the lock on his ankle chain. He released it, fastened it around Stone’s ankle, and tossed the key into the dark hold.

“Bastard,” he whispered, then shoved the fiddle into its case and made his way toward the ladder out of the hold, abandoning the pretense that his wounds made him a near invalid. He just wished they didn’t still hurt. At the last moment, he ran back to strip Stone’s white leather jacket and put it on himself. It was overly large and still warm from Stone’s body heat.

Gavin threaded a path through the dark hold, finding his way by touch and memory, until he came to the rear ladder. He crept upward to the hatch, fiddle case strapped to his back, and listened. No voices. With aching care, he edged the hatch cover up until he could peer out onto the deck. Dim light; no people. He eased the cover higher, set it aside, and froze as it scraped against the wooden decking. The sound vanished into the distance as if swallowed.

Heart thudding in his rib cage, Gavin slipped out onto the deck. He had the sense of great space all around him, but there was no sky. Overhead, he heard the faint creak of the envelope straining against the thick netting that tethered it to the ship, and the deck swayed only faintly. Behind the ship lay a huge archway of cloudy light, a doorway so big the Juniper could coast straight through it. She was in one of the hangars at Wellesley Field. Gavin had seen the Juniper into Wellesley any number of times, but