Free Dead Men's Tales (Tales of the Brass Griffin Book 5) by C. B. Ash Page B

headlong pace slowed to a trot, then became a walk. Both drank in the sharp cold air with deep gulps, their breath condensing into clouds which blossomed in front of the their faces.
    “Damnable thin air,” Thorias complained. “I never have gotten used to it.”
    Tonks looked around for anything unusual. Just something that would tell them where Angela had gotten to. Unfortunately, everything around them seemed quite normal. To their right loomed a set of unremarkable large warehouses. Metal and brass plates, streaked with dark soot stains, were haphazardly bolted to the outer walls. While some organization and thought had obviously gone into the attempt, over time, the end result was haphazard, and at times even visually manic.
    The pilot looked off to his left where the docks stretched out into the cold air, away from the boardwalk. Unlike where the Griffin was moored, there were fewer airships here. Three were moored quietly nearby, with a handful of crew bundled against the cold, quickly going about their business.
    Tonks glanced over the ships carefully one by one. All three were a good size, at least two thousand six hundred tons apiece by his rough visual estimation, with two of the airships sporting the metal hull plating that was becoming more commonplace with airship construction these days. However it was the last one – the Revenge – that truly captured his attention.
    “Odd name for a ship,” he remarked. His eyes trailed over her worn hull and newly replaced wooden planks set low along the traditional ‘waterline’. While he watched, four crew members were hard at work bolting and welding metal plates over the wooden planks to provide protection and stability. “She’s been busy lately, too, having that much damage along her sides,” he said with a suspicious tone.
    “Hm?” The doctor replied, looking back down the way they had come along the boardwalk. “Indeed, but do you see Angela anywhere about? Or any sign her of her brass companion?”
    The pilot tore his eyes away from the ship, then looked up and down along the boardwalk again. Here and there groups of sailors, no more than two or three at a time, worked among water-stained wooden crates and canvas-covered objects. Once, the brass skeletal nightmare of a mechanized CASS lumbered into view, carrying a crate from a warehouse twenty yards ahead of them out to a waiting cargo ship. Nowhere, though, did he see any sign of a ten-year-old girl or a brass monkey.
    “Nothing,” he said with a sour tone.
    Dr. Llwellyn, meanwhile, peered down an alley between two of the warehouses. On seeing nothing, he walked over to the next alleyway. “Perhaps down one of these avenues?” He suggested.
    No sooner had he said the words than the dainty figure of a young girl stepped out of the shadows in the distance. No more than four and half feet tall, Angela was wrapped up in a wine-colored woolen coat over her dark navy blue dress. Her brown hair was askew, but still mostly kept in check by a wine colored ribbon. On her shoulder clung a small brass and leather servitor – a brass monkey.
    “There she is!” Thorias exclaimed. Before he could call out to her, Tonks stopped him.
    “She’s not alone,” the pilot said, pointing to a pair of men. Possibly sailors at one time, they were dressed in ragged woolen coats, stained trousers and shoes.
    The pair had just stepped into the alley, no more than ten feet away from Angela Von Patterson who seemed unaware of their presence. The taller of the two, sporting unkempt, greasy hair tucked haphazardly under a wool cap, nudged his companion and pointed at Angela. With an ugly smile, the other man – squat, swarthy and wearing a soiled gray coat just a size too tight for his barrel chest – advanced towards the unsuspecting girl with outstretched, oil-stained hands.
    “Angela!” Dr. Llwellyn shouted, slipping the loop off the hammer of his LeMat revolver and racing off down the alley as fast as he could