Page 1 of Company of Thieves
ONE
“Cap’n Pye! Cap’n Pye!”
“No, I’m Hallie.” I gave the teenage boy who burst into the navigation room a quelling look. Dooley had what I thought of as an alternate-world form of ADD, and could hardly stand still let alone focus on anything for longer than a few minutes. He was forever flitting around the airship like a deranged, but friendly, puppy. “You know this. I’ve been on theEnterprisefor a year now. Even if you suffer from the same facial blindness that affects me—and I fervently pray you don’t, because it takes me years to recognize people, and then, I rely heavily on cues like hair or clothing—then surely you must still know who I am.”
Dooley bobbed a little bow, his freckled face flushed with excitement. As a fellow heavily freckled person who also blushed easily, he had my sympathy, but I wasn’t going to let that emotion keep me from putting the kid right. “Aye, I do know you, Miss Norris, but I thought it must be the captain making some sort of repairs to the autonavigator to make the ship go so badly awry.”
I squared my shoulders and gave him another stifling look. “We are not going badly awry. Awry implies off course, and according to this—” I pointed to the machinery that sat on a wooden desk. It was clockwork, like so much of this new world into which Jack and I had been dumped a year before, and contained lots of whirring gears, dials, and leather belts that constantly seemed to need adjusting.
“—according to this, we are perfectly on course.”
Dooley had the nerve to raise his eyebrows. I looked at the three rows of dials, and sighed. “Dammit, wewere! I just set it! Where is this taking us—really, airship? To Spain? Oh, I don’t think so.” I recalculated the dials, spinning the disks that adjusted the settings until they matched the numbers I’d written down from Octavia’s map. “Blasted thing has a mind of its own, I swear. Did you want something in particular, Dooley?”
He bobbed another little bow. “No’m. You wouldn’t happen to know where the cap’n is? It’s just that Mr. Piper, he wants to know what she intends to do with the cargo that we liberated this morning.”
I watched the autonavigator closely for a minute, just in case it decided to reset the numbers I’d input into it, but this time they seemed to stick. “Hmm? Oh, she’s probably in her cabin with Jack having a quickie.”
“A what, now?”
I was about to answer when I remembered his age. Even in this world, I deemed him too young for such things. “They have a quick ... er ... conversation with each other. Privately.”
“Oh, aye,” the lad said, nodding, the confusion on his face clearing. “Without Mr. Francisco bothering the captain, you mean.”
“Is the Lothario of the skies back with us?” I gathered up my notes, and left the small navigation room to stroll down the metal gangway running the length of the topmost of three decks that made up the gondola. A slight wind ruffled my hair, the faint but persistent rush of air that skimmed the airship an ever present reminder of just how different this world was from the one in which Jack and I had lived. “I thought he was in Spain visiting family?”
“He was, but we picked him up when we liberated the emperor’s supplies at Annaba.”
I made a rude face. “Oh, great. Now we’ll have him stomping around being a drama queen and making risqué comments about Octavia’s hair.”
Dooley flitted ahead of me, the walkway vibrating with not just the thrum of the boilers but also his footsteps. I took secret delight in the click of footsteps along the metal walkways, even though looking down through the struts and beams made me a bit dizzy. “I’ll tell Mr. Ho that theEnterpriseisn’t about to crash, as she thought.”
“Yeah, well, you can also tell her that I’m just pinch-hitting with that damned autonavigator, and the sooner that Mr. Christian gets back from his holidays, the better I’ll like ... oh, hell. He’s gone.” I stood in the middle of the empty walkway and slapped my hands on my legs, feeling more than a little adrift.
I’d been that way for a year, and dammit, it was time that changed.
With a muttered curse to myself, I spun around and marched to the other end of the walkway, taking a right turn at an intersection, and climbing down a spiral staircase until I came to the crew quarters. I tapped on the door that bore a brass sign indicating it was the captain’s quarters. “You guys decent in there?”
Muffled voices exclaiming in surprise could be heard in response, along with a couple of thumps, and what sounded like a chair being hurriedly pushed back.
“Hallie?”
“Yes, it’s me. Come on, you guys, it’s not even noon. You can’t possibly be doing it again. Not after going at it all last night.”
The door opened to show Jack buttoning his shirt, his mismatched eyes narrowed on me, his hair tousled as if someone had just run her hands through it. Behind him, I could see Octavia hurriedly pulling on a white lacy blouse. “We are newlyweds. Thus, if we choose to engage in connubial acts all night, with a few additional midday reminders of just how happy the wedded state has made us, that is no one’s business but our own.”
“You were married ten months ago. At some point, the honeymoon phase has to end.” Since they were both mostly decent, I pushed past Jack and went into their cabin to plop down in a blue upholstered armchair that sat in front of a desk bolted to the floor. “And it’s my business when you keep me awake all night with thumps, giggles, and assorted cries of sexual ecstasy.”
Octavia, who was pulling on her boots, cast me a horrified glance, which she almost immediately turned onto Jack. “You heard us? Blast it, Jack, I told you that the leather cuffs were going too far. Now your sister heard you making me ... making me say ...” She stopped, a faint color lighting her cheeks.
Jack grinned at her, slipping on the black wool jacket that was part of the crew uniform Octavia and he had devised. The silver compass embossed on the jacket over the word enterprise glinted in the sunlight that streamed through the porthole. “Ignore her, Tavy. She’s just jealous because I found a fabulously sexy airship pirate captain, and she’s still looking for Mr. Right.”
I made a face. “I couldn’t care less about having a man. I had one, divorced him, and was happier for it. Until ...” I bit off the words, having promised myself almost a year ago to the day that I was going to stop whining about what had happened. What was done was done, and I needed to move past being torn out of my reality and put down in this one.
Jack’s grin faded as he and Octavia exchanged glances.
“I’m sorry,” I said before either one of them could express sympathy. I slumped down with my elbows resting on my knees, my hands over my face. “I didn’t come here to snivel.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. But do tell us what it was that has you so distressed that you would disturb
