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 FORTY-FOUR
AFTERWARD, DALE REMEMBERED LITTLE OF THAT TRIP through Rift City. When he thought about it later, the only things he recalled clearly were the warmth of Naya’s body pressed against his side, the strength in her slender frame—and the dark patches of blood staining his best friend’s body.
Hawk led them to a safe house on the southern edge of East Middlesedge that belonged to another of the Revolution’s more upper-middle-class members. He warned Flag and Terry to stay put with them while the owner of the safe house sent word back to Headquarters that they had found Peabody and the dirigible. He could not give them more information than that; it was too risky.
As soon as they were safely indoors, Naya pushed Dale down onto a chair. “Take off your shirt,” she said briskly. “Let me see how bad it is.” She helped him remove it; he was having difficulty. She also knelt down at his feet, removed his soggy boots, and rolled up the bottoms of his trousers to look at his legs.
“I’m all right,” he tried to protest, but she gave him such a flat look that he instantly subsided. Her hands, he noticed, were trembling as she dipped a clean rag into a bowl of hot water and proceeded to clean his wounds.
Dale caught one of her slim brown hands in his and used his other hand to tilt her chin up so he could see her face. “Are you all right?”
Swallowing, Naya nodded. Her dark eyes grew suspiciously moist again. “I was afraid you’d die.”
“I would have, if it weren’t for you.” Dale tightened his grip on her hand. “We’d all be dead. How did you even find us?”
Naya took a deep, shuddering breath. “Elena added a postscript to your letter, telling me to come to their house later. She thought you’d be back by then, and she knew I’d want to see you.” A blush colored her dusky cheeks.
Dale wanted to close the remaining distance between them and kiss her, but he held himself back.
“I waited until after Gran was asleep and then I slipped out and went to Elena’s house.” Naya bit her lip. “But when I got there—the house was dark and nobody answered my knock.” She shook her head, meeting Dale’s gaze again. “I knew something was wrong. I just knew it.”
“But how did you know where to find us?” Dale angled his body a little closer to hers. “What made you even think of the river?” He was more than a little alarmed at the way her face grew ashen.
“I found you because I—I remembered something.” Naya swallowed heavily and hunched her shoulders. “Something bad.”
She looked so lost and fragile that a fierce wave of tender protectiveness bowled Dale over. For once, he acted on instinct, without thinking about it first. Pushing the bowl of hot water aside, he took the rag from Naya and tossed it carelessly into the bowl. Then he reached for her. “Come here.”
She came.
His blood had already ruined her shirtwaist and skirts; what was a little more? Dale perched her on his good leg—the one the Streamers had not had a chance to mangle—and wrapped an arm around her waist, anchoring her to him.
He did not care what it looked like to anyone; at this precise moment, he did not give a fig about propriety. He was going to marry this girl. She had been courageous enough to keep her fears from crippling her and had saved all of their lives. Right now, she needed comfort—comfort he could provide.
Looking down at her, Dale asked gently, “What happened?”
Naya swallowed again, still trembling. “Gran and I never told you, but I had a little brother.”
Dale’s eyes widened in sudden understanding; he tightened his grip on her.
“We were little,” continued Naya. “I was ten, and he was six. Gran sent us to deliver something to a lady in East Lowersedge, and on our way back, my brother begged to see the river for a minute.” Her dark eyes filled with pain. “He loved the water. No matter how much Gran scolded him or tried to tell us that getting near the water was dangerous, he wouldn’t listen.”
She shook her head. “I told him no, of course, but he didn’t listen to me. We were close to one of the doors—he just ran over to it and went out before I could stop him.” Her shoulders hunched further and she buried her face in Dale’s chest. “It took me a minute to catch up to him. I was—I was scared of the water. But I made myself open the door, and that’s…that’s when I saw it.”
Dale had an idea of what her younger self had found, but he held his tongue and waited.
“There were men out there, yelling.” Naya shuddered. “They were in the water, just like you and your friends. My brother heard them calling for help and he…” A sob rose in her throat. “He tried to help them.”
Sadness settled over Dale. He could well imagine a little boy trying to untie those ropes to help desperate men.
“I called him, tried to convince him to come back to the door, but it didn’t do any good. He told me to come help him.” She closed her eyes. “I can still see him on the dock, telling me to come help him.”
Dale hugged her tighter, resting his chin on her head.
“And then…and then…” Naya was crying in earnest now. Nine years of pent-up grief and guilt had finally breached the dam and now came pouring out. “The—the Streamers came. And one of them—one of them reached up and grabbed my little brother. And I couldn’t help him! I was too afraid to go out there and they took him! This—this scaly hand came up out of the water and grabbed his ankle.” She drew in a great gasping breath. “One minute he was there, and the next he was in the water, screaming. He went under—and—and he never came back up.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran home,” sobbed Naya. “I ran home to Gran, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t stop crying long enough to tell her what had hap-happened.”
“And then you didn’t remember.”
Tears streaming down her cheeks, Naya shook her head. “The doctor told her I’d blocked it out. All we knew was that my brother had Disappeared.”
It was Dale’s turn to shake his head. “Then how in the world did you remember in time to find us?”
“I remembered part of it when you read Elena’s letter in Professor Hodges’s classroom.” Naya sat up, straightening so she could see his face. “Bits and pieces, anyway.”
Dale vaguely recalled that; it was jumbled up with everything else that had occurred over the past few days. “And then?”
“I didn’t remember the rest until I got to the Mountebanks’ and nobody answered the door.” Naya cupped his cheek with one hand. “I was so afraid that something had happened to you.” She bit her lip. “That’s when I knew where I had to look.”
“I’m so glad you did.” Dale caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “We’d be dead now if it weren’t for you, Naya.”
A fresh spasm of grief contorted her face. “My little brother is dead because of me. Because I was too frightened to go out there and help him!”
“Naya…” Dale shook his head. “If those knots were anything like the ones they tied us up with tonight, two little children wouldn’t have been able to untie them.” He met her gaze and held it. “The Streamers would have gotten you too that day.”
“How can you know that?” she demanded.
“Logic.” He brushed an errant curl out of her face. “You were a frightened little girl, Naya. You believed what your grandmother told you. It’s not your fault that your brother didn’t listen.” He could tell by the look on her face that Naya desperately wanted to believe him. “You overcame all of that fear to help me—to help us. And you did.”
He offered her a small, grateful smile. “You saved our lives.”
“I didn’t want you to Disappear,” said Naya in a small voice. “I didn’t want you to—to die, Dale.” She blinked back tears, her fingers tightening in the fabric of her shirt. “I—I love you. I know you were shipwrecked here and you never actually wanted to come to Rift City, but I’m so glad you did.”
Dale’s heart soared. She loves me. He had suspected as much—hoped as much—but to actually hear it… He cleared his throat. “Naya, I—”
“Dale!”
Raphael’s voice—a little hoarse, but steady—cut through the chatter in the room…and right across what Dale had been about to say to Naya. Dale could have happily decked his friend. Usually, Raphael has better timing than that.
“Dale!” Raphael’s voice grew louder and more insistent.
Meeting Naya’s eyes, Dale conveyed as much of an apology as he could.
She offered him a tremulous half-smile in response and slid off his lap. “Go on. He needs you. It’s probably important.”
So are you, Dale wanted to say, but the words tangled up together on his tongue and the moment passed. He got up, restraining a wince as various muscles in his body protested being required to move, and tried not to think about how empty his arms felt without Naya. Gingerly, he made his way across the room to his friend.
The owner of the safe house had smuggled in a doctor, who had immediately set to work tending Raphael’s wounds. Fortunately for Raphael, they were not as severe as they looked. He had bled quite a bit, but the Streamers had not hit any arteries.
He was now sitting up, despite Elena’s attempts to get him to lie down on a chaise, and his dark eyes were intense as he fixed them on Dale. “We must go back, Dale.”
Back? Even as he thought it, Dale realized what his friend meant. He wants to rescue Peabody again. “You don’t think they’ll have moved him?”
“No.” Raphael shook his head. “Not yet. But Sivak may when he has time to think about it.”
“Raphael!” Elena went white as a sheet. She clutched the crook of his elbow—one of the few place on his arm that remained uninjured. “You’re hurt! You can’t go back out there tonight! Not after—after—” She swallowed convulsively. “You—my father—my father!” Tears slipped down her cheeks.
She’s still in shock, thought Dale. He understood; there was no way Elena could have already dealt with the fact that her father had just been violently ripped away from her by a bunch of Streamers who had probably already eaten him by now.
For a second, Dale’s mind flashed back to an old memory—an old terror—of a surging, foaming, writhing wall of muddy water headed toward him and his family. He shook it off. No time for reminiscing.
And really, it was not like he wanted to relive the day his family died.
“My love.” Raphael’s expression and voice both gentled as he shifted to comfort his fiancée, but the implacable resolve etched into every line of his body did not change. “I will be fine. We must do this, Dale and I.” He cupped her cheek with his relatively good hand and stared into her eyes as though willing her to understand his next words. “You must be strong, now, my Elena. Strong for your father’s sake and strong for me. Do you understand?”
Elena nodded shakily. “But I still don’t want you to go.” Her fingers tightened further on his arm. “I can’t lose you again, Raphael. Not again. Not after—”
He murmured something to her in Selendrian and she answered in kind. Dale tried to pretend he did not understand; he felt awkward, standing here with Hawk and Corwin, who had both approached when Raphael called him. They were all intruding on a private moment. He felt a tiny stir of jealousy mixed with annoyance. And I was interrupted in the middle of mine.
Dale glanced over his shoulder at Naya. She was sitting in his chair where he had left her, hands tightly clasped in her lap. A little of the color had returned to her face, but not much. He gave her an encouraging nod and turned back to Raphael.
“We must get Peabody and the dirigible out of there. From what bits and pieces he relayed to me while I was a prisoner, Sivak and the Council are of two minds as to what to do with it.” Raphael’s mouth twisted into a pained grimace. “Half of them wish to hold it in reserve for some possible future need, while the other half would like to see it destroyed.”
“Of course the Council is involved,” said Hawk scornfully. “They’d have to be, what with Sivak sitting on it.”
“I wonder which side of the coin my father figures into,” said Corwin quietly.
Dale, Hawk, Raphael, and the other men all looked at him; for a moment, they had forgotten just who Corwin was.
Corwin raised his shoulders in a half-defensive, half self-conscious shrug. “My father is the head of one of the Four Families and he’s on the Council. It stands to reason that he’d know about it. The only question is…” He trailed off, looking pained.
Dale gave him a not unsympathetic look and put out a hand to stop Raphael from getting up from his chair. “Not yet. We’d best wait for the Revolution to get here—if we’re going to rescue Peabody, we need more manpower. And more weapons,” he added thoughtfully.
“Aye,” said Hawk grimly. “Definitely more weapons. I’ll not be put out as Streamer bait again.”
“Hear, hear,” said Corwin. Flag and Terry also nodded, looking equal parts nervous and excited.
Reluctantly, Raphael settled back in his chair. He narrowed dark eyes at Dale. “I’ll only sit until they get here.”
“Frankly, mate, I’m not sure you should be going at all.” Hawk shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “You’re in bad shape, Avarez. Might be best if you just stay here and—”
“No,” said Raphael sharply. “I will go.” He motioned to his wounds. “These…are not that bad. I am going.” He lifted his chin. “Besides, other than Peabody, I am the only other person who knows anything about the dirigible.”
Much as I hate to admit it, he’s got a point there. Dale suppressed a sigh. “There’ll be no talking him out of it, Hawk, trust me.” He forced Raphael to look him in the eye. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Raphael’s lips curved into a feral smile. “We will get him out.”
“You’ll get who out of where, now?” demanded a new voice.
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