and enough beds to sleep a couple hundred, though he had only half that many pressed into service right now.
To the north of the clearing was the huge shelter for the airships—made of wood and canvas cleverly secured to the side of the mountain to cut the worst of the wind. It wasn’t large enough to fly the ships into fully inflated, but once the air and steam was out of them, all three of his pride and joy could nest there together.
The men were waking, smoke from the cookhouse rising to mix with the mist that clung to the crags.
There was a single lantern polishing copper against the window of his office and home. A shadowed figure broke that light.
Even from this distance, the Saint could feel the eyes of the man who stood within that shadow, hidden as if light feared to touch him.
The hair on the back of the general’s neck pricked up. Those eyes, that man, were danger. The Saint had no doubt of that. And he knew that dangerous men could be very useful.
He strode up to the door and pulled it open, stepping into his office without taking off his hat. The man stood at the window, his back turned toward him, covered in layers and layers of coats, some of which were long enough to fall all the way to his heels. He wore a stovepipe hat, and a pile of scarves around his neck.
“What’s your name, and what’s your business?” The Saint paced to the other side of the room and sat at his desk. He always kept a revolver and a sword on him, but his Enfield Rifle-musket leaned against the wall behind the desk. In easy reach now.
The man did not turn. “I hear them,” he whispered, low. “The last words on their lips, the last thoughts in their heads.”
Lieutenant Foster stepped into the room, glanced at the man, then at the general, and closed the door, but didn’t go any farther. His left hand rested on his gun, his gaze on the tall stranger’s back.
“Name and business,” the Saint said. “Or I’ll end this conversation.”
“Her name was Laura,” the man murmured. “His name was James.”
The name of his wife. The name of his son.
Alabaster Saint picked up the Enfield and held it steady at the man. “Who are you? Who sent you?”
“I sent myself.”
The man turned. The scarves stacked all the way up his face so that only his eyes, shadowed by the brim of the stovepipe hat, were visible. Those eyes burned with an unearthly intensity, as if the fire of the damned kindled there.
“As to who I am, my name is Mr. Shunt,” he said in a tone as soft as a lullaby. “And I have come to offer you my services.”
Mr. Shunt lifted his right hand, slowly.
Lieutenant Foster drew his gun.
But all that was in Mr. Shunt’s hand was a large black burlap bag.
“My offering.”
The Saint eyed the bag, which was misshapen and lumpy. He had no idea what it might hold. “Lieutenant,” he said.
Foster walked forward, his weapon still drawn. He held out his right hand for the bag.
Mr. Shunt gave it to him, his fingers graceful, overly long and sharp, each ending in a metal tip.
The Saint had seen Chinamen who like to sharpen their nails into claws, but whatever Mr. Shunt had done to his hands was something else altogether. His fingers shone like metal.
Foster backed away before opening the bag and peering in it. He lifted his head and made sure his gun was on the man for a clean shot.
“Is this a threat, sir?” he asked.
“Not at all,” Mr. Shunt said, spreading both long, knob-boned hands outward in a strangely fluid motion. “It is an offer of my good intentions.”
“Bring it here,” the Saint said.
Foster placed the burlap on the desk, landing it with a meaty thump.
The Saint leaned forward, tipped the edge of the bag, and looked inside.
Body parts. Hands, feet, fingers, ears, and other smaller bits, each wrapped up in cotton gauze tied with a neat bow.
“Is this supposed to impress me, Mr. Shunt?” the general asked.
“No,” Mr. Shunt said. “It is to encourage you. I can do many things, General Alabaster Saint. I can even make men’s dreams come true.”
“I don’t recall dreaming about a bag of body parts,” General Saint said.
“No, you did not,” he said quietly. “Your dream”—he cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing—“is destruction. Nightmare. Conquest. Ah…and then control. Wealth. The skies.” Here the scarf at his mouth shifted. A grimace of serrated teeth carved a ragged white smile in the shadows of his face.
“Such sweet dark dreams you have, Mr. Saint,” the stranger said.
The Saint thumbed back the hammer on the Enfield. “I’m not a man who dreams, Mr. Shunt. I’m a man who acts. Tell me what you want.”
Mr. Shunt plucked at the scarves, pulling them back over his mouth, seeming unafraid of the musket aimed at his chest. “There is a man I wish dead. A man and his brother. If you kill them, destroy them, your reward will be rich.”
“I am not a gun for hire,” Saint said. “And I am gravely offended by your audacity to think me so. You have climbed this mountain and endangered your life for no good reason, Mr. Shunt. And you have wasted my time.”
“I can bring you Marshal Hink Cage.”
Silence scraped by on jagged claws. Mr. Shunt did not move, didn’t even appear to be breathing. He waited, cold and uncaring as the north wind.
“How?” General Saint asked.
“With these,” he opened his hand. Brass blades and needles prickled from each fingertip.
“And that.” Shunt nodded toward the bag of body parts. “And this.” He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small glass vial.
The vial glowed the eerie glim-light green, but the Saint knew glim. This light was too dark. The vial had something else in it.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Glim,” Mr. Shunt breathed. “And the dust of strangeworked tin. To repair men.”
“Repair?”
Mr. Shunt tipped his head down so that all the Saint could make out from beneath the stovepipe hat was his burning eyes.
“I can give your men back what they lost,” he said. “Hands, arms, legs, feet. I can make them strong again, whole again. Stronger than they were. If you kill the hunter and wolf. If you bring me the deviser, the witch, and guards. Then I will give you back your eye, General Alabaster Saint. I will find Marshal Hink Cage.”
“You ask me to kill two men, and now you want me to capture prisoners for you? I follow no man’s orders, Mr. Shunt.”
“Of course,” Mr. Shunt said with a formal bow. “Perhaps I was mistaken.” Mr. Shunt did not look away. Did not make any indication he was leaving.
Saint leaned back in his chair. He wanted Captain Cage almost as much as he wanted the glim fields. If this crazy rag-a-man could find him, he would be a fool to let him walk away untried.
Better to let him think they could work together, and test his worth.
“Can you prove your claim, Mr. Shunt? The healing of men?”
“Repairs of the flesh,” he said. “Yes.”
Time to call his bluff.
“Before I agree upon anything, I want you to do so. Lieutenant,” General Saint said, “bring me Private Bailey.”
“Yes, sir.”
Saint took a long look at Mr. Shunt, who stood still as death before him. “If you can repair men, Mr. Shunt, and find Captain Cage, there might be reason for us to enter a business proposition after all.”
