In a world of steamships and Progress, no one who sails due south across the Wild Sea ever returns.
No one knows why.
Dale Mortensen intends to solve the mystery. With the help of an old sailor and a reformed playboy searching for his missing sweetheart, he locates a captain and crew ambitious—not to mention crazy—enough to undertake the journey across the Wild Sea.
The Infinity and her crew sail south, but the truth of what really lies on the other side of the horizon is more amazing—and terrifying—than anything they can imagine.
It’s the adventure of a lifetime—and it may just get Dale and his friends killed.
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Click here to start from the beginning. Or if you want to read it at your own pace, buy the ebook for $6.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HORIZON
E. R. PASKEY
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“WE’RE WORKING ON FINDING PEABODY,” SAID RILEY soberly. “With the division in the Council, we have every reason to believe he is still alive.”
“That, however, is not your concern at the moment.” Theroux swept a dismissive hand through the air. “I am afraid, Mr. Mortensen, it has become necessary for us to put you into protective custody now.”
“What?” Those words startled Dale clear down to the tips of his toes. “Protective custody? Me?” He looked around the table as though he expected them to break into chuckles.
No one smiled.
“Oh, aye, lad,” said Withers grimly. “Protective custody. Other than your friends on the Platform, you are the only New Arrival who has any knowledge of Peabody and the dirigible.”
Seldon tilted a wry eyebrow at him. “We’re not about to risk you Disappearing too, are we?”
Sucking in a deep breath, Dale leaned back in his chair. He understood; really, he did, but the very thought of it left him cold. “What will I do?” He lifted one broad shoulder in a semblance of a shrug. “I can’t just hide.”
Theroux and Riley exchanged glances. “Oh, don’t worry on that account, young man. We’ll put you to work.”
All right, then. “I have a few things I need from Mrs. Yunker’s.” Dale’s face flushed a little, but he kept his chin up. “Had to have my clothes made to order.”
“Hawk and I will take him,” said Withers, looking at Theroux.
Theroux nodded slowly. “Be quick about it. You don’t want to linger.”
“Oh, we won’t.” Hawk assured him.
Riley consulted his battered pocket watch. “You’d best be heading off now.”
Hawk nodded to the other man and rose to his feet. Behind his black beard, he looked happier and more determined than Dale believed he had ever seen the man. “Where do you want us to take him when we get done?”
Theroux, Riley, and Seldon all exchanged glances. “Up or down, that’s the question,” said Seldon.
“Best take him down,” advised Theroux.
Riley nodded. “Go see Miss Kokila Phipps.”
Hawk sketched a salute and waited at the door for Dale and Withers to join him. He looked up at Dale. “If anybody asks, the story is you got rip-roaring drunk after learning your friend has Disappeared, you passed out at the pub, and we let you sleep it off at my place.”
Hawk has a place in Rift City? thought Dale in astonishment—to his knowledge, the other man rarely left the Platform—but he dipped his head in a nod.
The world took on a surreal cast as he, Withers, and Hawk departed the room, stepping out into a small kitchen where a middle-aged woman with old grief written in every line of her face stood bent over a stove. She nodded to Dale as they passed, before turning her attention back to her task as though they had not even been there.
Withers led the way out into a narrow hall and turned left into a small, windowless parlor. Before Dale had time to wonder why they were here, the older man had crossed to a corner beside a faded armchair and pulled down a cleverly-concealed hatch from the ceiling. A ladder unfolded itself. Wordlessly, he beckoned Dale and Hawk forward.
Hawk started up the ladder first. When he got to the top, he raised another hatch and his legs disappeared as he hauled himself up through the opening. Dale started up after him. The ladder was made of a strong, flexible material he did not recognize, and cunningly fit together.
At the top, Dale pulled himself up into what appeared to be a guest bedroom. He quickly clambered out of the way to make room for Withers, but looked around with great interest. He glanced at Hawk and pitched his voice low. “This is a different house, isn’t it?”
Hawk nodded. “As far as we know, nobody else knows both of these families are involved.” He deliberately did not mention the Revolution, but Dale knew what he meant.
Ingenious, he thought, shaking his head as he followed the other man through the house, careful not to disturb anything. “The owners just let you come through their house?” He dodged a small table with a vase of blue, blown glass and almost put his elbow through a china cabinet. This house is too small!
“In emergencies, yes,” said Withers from behind them. “This certainly qualifies.”
In another moment, they were out the front door and stepping onto a walkway, at which point Dale realized they were on Level 4 somewhere in East Middlesedge. It was certainly ritzier than West Lowersedge, but it not so upscale that he, Withers, and Hawk stood out. A slow trickle of pedestrians wound up and down the walkways on either side of the great divide spanning the boulevard far below.
They worked their way through Rift City to Mrs. Yunker’s Boarding House. Hawk silently took up a post outside, near the front door, while Dale and Withers stepped inside. At this time of the morning, Mrs. Yunker was usually in the kitchen overseeing her help, but she popped her head out to see who had entered. Gray eyebrows rose slightly as she nodded to them, but she said nothing.
Dale looked at Withers, who almost smiled. The old bat would probably say nothing, but she knew neither one of them had spent the night in their beds. Dale’s foot faltered on the steps. That means she knows about Raphael, too.
It would not surprise him.
Withers followed Dale into his small room. “Don’t take much,” he warned in a low voice. “Don’t want to tip them off.”
Dale snorted mirthlessly. “Don’t have much to take.” Indeed, he did not. Aside from things like books, his needs were very simple. He fit his clothes and toiletries into his seabag, slipping in a few of his most important books—like his language book—in at the last moment. Regretfully, he abandoned the rest of his books. The extra blanket he had bought, he left on the bed. No room for it.
Withers watched him trail a hand over the books before they departed, but said nothing. He himself took nothing from his own room; Dale resolved to ask him about that later.
They managed to avoid Mrs. Yunker on the way out of the house, and Hawk fell in beside Dale as they walked away, effectively blocking any view of what the larger man was carrying. “Got everything?” he asked quietly.
“More or less.” Dale resolutely pushed thoughts of his abandoned books out of his mind. They’re just books, he reminded himself. He had the most important ones, after all.
When they had put a respectable distance between them and Dale’s boarding house, he looked at Withers. “Am I still paying for the room? Or is someone going to tell her she can rent it out again?”
Hawk and Withers exchanged glances behind his back, and then the latter said, “You won’t be coming back, Mortensen. Not for a good while, anyway.”
“Not until this is done,” said Hawk. “People will think you’ve Disappeared, but that can’t be helped.”
They took a Lift down to Level 2 and disembarked. Withers abruptly took a hanging bridge across to the other side; Dale and Hawk matched his pace. They did this several more times over the course of the next half-hour. Dale had not noticed anyone following them, but he knew that meant nothing.
At long last, Withers stopped in front of a one door in a series of many wooden doors, and rapped sharply on it with his knuckles. The door opened to reveal a woman with a young face at serious odds with her white hair pulled back in a shapely bun. She propped a hand on one hip, looking faintly suspicious. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”
“Miss Phipps? I have a message from our mutual friend with the cane.”
“Oh, is that so?” Miss Phipps held out a hand, looking no less suspicious. “Well, let’s have it.”
“Not that kind, ma’am.” Withers shook his head. “Didn’t have time.” He leaned toward her a little and said something very softly, too low for Dale to catch.
“I see. You’d best come in.” Miss Phipps stepped back and waved them inside.
As soon as the door was safely shut—and bolted, Dale noticed—Miss Phipps rounded on them. Her eyes swept Dale from head to toe, though she had to crane her neck to take in all of him. “I suppose this is the other new one?”
“Aye,” said Withers, as Hawk’s voice had apparently take leave the moment they entered the house. “Dale Mortensen, meet Miss Kokila Phipps.”
Even at a closer range, Dale found it impossible to determine how old this woman actually was. He bowed over the hand Miss Phipps presented him, making her cheeks pink a little.
She tucked a wispy lock of white hair back behind her ear and turned to Withers. “I’ll have to put a mark on the wall. I do believe this is the first time somebody’s come through.” She cocked her head to the left like a bird. “That is why you’re here, correct?”
“Yes. But just through, Miss Phipps. He and Hawk here won’t be coming back out,” Withers assured her.
Having absolutely no idea what they were talking about, Dale glanced at Hawk. The other man’s face had gone blank again, but he was watching Miss Phipps as though he was not quite sure what to make of her.
Dale forgot about that, however, as Miss Phipps led them into a hall and flattened a hand against a particular section of one wall. With a little snick, a panel unlatched and she pushed it open. “There you go.”
“In you go, lads,” said Withers. “Quietly, now.”
“Keep going straight,” advised Miss Phipps. “There’ll be a turn, and then you’ll go down some steps to a door.”
Dale hunched over slightly to squeeze his large frame through the opening, but paused long enough to nod to Miss Phipps over his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“Yes,” said Hawk gruffly. “Thanks.”
She dipped them a curtsy. Once Hawk was through the panel as well, she shut it behind them, plunging them into darkness blacker than pitch.
Still hunched over, Dale spread his arms until his fingertips brushed bricks on either side. He and Hawk were in a narrow corridor with an unusually low ceiling. His neck protested being subjected to such treatment and he winced. Keep going straight, she had said. Well, she had said nothing about possible holes in the floor, but Dale was taking no chances. The last thing he needed at the moment was a broken leg—or worse.
He inched his way across the floor, feeling for each step before he took it. When the brick wall took a sharp turn, he paused to whisper, “Found the stairs.”
Hawk said nothing, but Dale heard the slight shuffle of his footsteps behind his back.
Gingerly, Dale started down the stairs. He grimaced, biting back a curse as he realized they were just as narrow as the corridor had been. Definitely not constructed for a man of my size, he thought wryly.
At the bottom of the steps, he found himself facing a smooth obstacle—the door of which Miss Phipps had spoken. He felt around for the door handle, which was strangely bumpy in his hand as though there was either machinery around it or else decoration of some sort, but it opened easily enough. He and Hawk slipped through, and allowed the door to shut behind them.
When Dale thought—belatedly—that they might want to leave the door open just in case, he found it had already shut and locked itself.
Peculiar door. “It’s locked,” he announced to Hawk.
“That’s what Withers meant by saying we were only going through.” Hawk’s voice was farther away than Dale expected.
“What do we do now?”
“Keep walking. There has to be another door here somewhere.”
Using Dale’s arm-span as a gauge, the two men determined they were in a small room about two meters in width. At the opposite end of the room from the stairs, they did indeed discover another door. It, too, was locked. In fact, they found two more doors besides these. The last door, however, was not locked; Hawk opened it easily—and almost fell headlong down another set of stairs beyond it.
“All right there?” asked Dale, trying not to laugh.
Hawk’s only response was a series of muttered imprecations.
At the bottom of that stairwell, they found a landing about a meter long…leading to another door. Dale shook his head. Who built this place?
“This should be the last one.” Hawk reached for the doorknob and opened the door. They both blinked as a sudden warm glow of light washed over them.
“Hello, Hawk,” said a cheerful voice in a painfully familiar accent. “Who is your friend?”
Dark spots danced before Dale’s eyes; he blinked rapidly, ignoring the way his eyes watered as they tried to adjust to the light. “Dale Mortensen,” he said, thrusting a large hand toward the voice’s source.
His vision cleared in time for him to see a short, rather stout man approach and enthusiastically pump his hand. “You are Raphael Franco Avarez’s friend, no?” He had curly dark hair, a mustache that curled at the ends, and remarkably fair skin.
“Yes.” Something in Dale’s chest twisted. Raphael must have talked about me—more than I’d realized. “You’re from Selendria, aren’t you?”
“Once upon a time, yes.” A shadow flickered across the man’s face before he chased it away with a wave of his hand. “Hawk.” He nodded to Dale’s companion before turning his attention back to Dale. “I am Mr. Machell.”
Now that he could finally see, Dale took a few seconds to gaze around him in unabashed interest. “What is this place?”
A large table filled the center of the room, with chairs lined up around it, while more chairs lined the walls. Several more men occupied those chairs; two of them had half-risen, as though prepared to go to battle. A vast array of papers had been spread over the table.
“Oh, this?” Machell gestured around him. “This is our headquarters. For the moment, anyway.” He scowled. “If you are here, things are worse than we imagined.”
“You’ve heard about Avarez then, haven’t you?” asked Hawk impatiently.
Machell’s scowl deepened. “Yes.” He peered up at Dale. “Thanks to you, I think most of Rift City now knows.”
Dale only raised his chin. He refused to surrender to guilt over his pub announcement. I should have been looking out for Raph—but so should they. However willingly Raphael had succumbed, the Revolution had sucked him in like the back draft of a sinking ship.
Oddly enough, his defiant attitude seemed to please the stout little man. “They should know,” he muttered, motioning for Dale and Hawk to follow him to the table. “All of Rift City should know that somebody else has Disappeared.”
“How did you know?” asked Hawk suddenly. “Nobody thought to ask earlier.”
“Raph’s fiancée.” Dale shrugged. “She wrote me a letter, told me she was afraid something had happened to him.”
“She was correct.” Machell pursed his lips and gave his head a sad little shake.
After running through a brief introduction to the other men in the room, Machell directed everyone to take a seat. What followed was a dizzying, albeit fascinating look at the Revolution’s underground work in Rift City. They were still searching possible locations for the Council to have hidden the dirigible; as yet, they had found nothing.
As the hours wore on, however, Dale grew more and more internally impatient. Eventually, he broke into a brief lull in the conversation. “How can I help?”
The men all looked at each other. After a long pause, Machell cleared his throat and said gently, “You are here because you are a witness to the dirigible’s existence.”
“What about Raphael?”
More uncomfortable glances were exchanged. “Mr. Mortensen,” said a young man named Ussin who looked no older than Dale himself. “I’m afraid we have to face reality here. If Avarez has Disappeared, odds are very good that he is gone for good.”
“We have never found anyone, not even bodies,” added Machell thoughtfully. “And no one has found evidence that there is a large prison hidden somewhere in Rift City where all of the Disappeared are kept.”
“And there would at least be rumors,” said a man with coal black skin and a commanding voice. Dale thought his name was Lethe.
“I don’t see how I can help you, then.” He set his jaw.
“It is not your time yet.” Machell gave him a sympathetic look. “I know Avarez was your friend.”
“So was Belly Skoog,” said Dale evenly.
“The best thing you can do now is stay alive,” advised Ussin. “When we find out what larger role you’re meant to play in all this, Mortensen, we’ll tell you.”
Beside Dale, Hawk bristled. Dale had the distinct impression that his friend did not care much for that young man.
Later, Hawk confirmed his suspicions. “That one sets my teeth on edge,” he confessed quietly, not looking at the other man. “So sure of himself, so certain they know best.” He bared his teeth in a feral smile. “I’ve seen things that’d make his hair curl.”
Ussin did look rather milquetoast, beneath his efficient manner, Dale had to admit. Still, you never know. He shrugged and looked down at his hands. “What am I going to tell Elena?”
Hawk looked at him in some surprise. “The fiancée?” At Dale’s nod, he shrugged. “What can you tell her, besides the truth?” He scowled and ran a hand through his thick, curly hair. “Anyway, she’s probably going to think you’ve up and Disappeared too.”
That sent a real jolt of alarm coursing through Dale; he had forgotten it in the midst of everything else. He thought of Elena—and Naya. And her grandmother. “I can’t—”
“Keep your pants on,” said Hawk through his teeth. “I said ‘probably’.” He shot Dale a look he undoubtedly intended to be meaningful.
In that moment, Dale realized two things. One, he was going to get out of here and find Peabody on his own, and two…
Hawk’s going to help me.
Find out how this Young Adult steampunk adventure unfolds chapter-by-chapter every Thursday! Or if you want to keep reading right now, buy the ebook for $6.99 from Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords or Sony, or get it as a trade paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Book Depository.
Copyright © 2013 E. R. Paskey