Free Captain Gravenor’s Airship Equinox (Steampunk Smugglers) by Heather Hiestand

some
power source,” she said.
    Her voice was calm, in what Brecon privately called her
scientist mode. How could she act so with a dying man in front of her?
    “Isn’t there anything to be done?” he asked. “Could we give
him some water, laudanum?”
    One lifted the man with his boot. The crewman flopped onto
his back bonelessly when he removed his boot. “No need to trouble yourself. He
is dead now.”
    Brecon heard a little gagging sound from Philadelphia and
slid his gaze to the side. Now he saw the faint trembling in the lady’s limbs,
knew she was fighting hard for control. No, she wasn’t so indifferent after
all.
    Escape . The word came seriously for the first time in
days. They had to get out of here. The captain had never been so ruthless about
human life before. She had turned some kind of corner in her head, gone too
far.
    “Do you want me to detach the hand?” One asked.
    Brecon saw scientific curiosity fight against revulsion of
the smell of the body. But the fevered light slowly left her eyes.
    “Can you bring the Brass Hand up close to the cage, please, and
unstrap the hand slowly so I can see how it attaches?”
    One nodded and bent to his task. Philadelphia muttered something
unintelligible as he sliced up the sleeve covering the top of the brass hand
and detached the thing.
    Brecon didn’t see much difference between the dead man’s hand
and his, though this version did have a strap around the elbow joint. That may
have been because the man’s amputation was higher than his was. He wondered if
the man had lost his hand in some other way than a Blockader amputation given
the placement, but he’d never know.
    One thrust the hand at Brecon. He let it fall rather than
touch it.
    “Do you need the body?” One asked gruffly.
    Philadelphia sighed. “I need to know if he has any mechanical
contraptions on his person.”
    One sniffed. “I’ll look.”
    She picked up the hand from where it rested on the ground
and brushed off a piece of straw. Brecon saw none of the light of scientific
excitement in her eyes, only sadness that this man had died, and fear. He
gripped her shoulder with his hands, tried to communicate solidarity with his gaze.
    She stared back at him, cradling the brass hand as if it
were a babe. What was she trying to communicate to him? Trust, maybe. That was
what he read in her eyes. She trusted him to get her out of this horrible
place.
    One dropped a dirty dagger to the floor. “That is the only
bit of metal I found,” he reported.
    “Is it an ordinary knife? It could be disguised,” Brecon
suggested.
    One snorted. “Like I’d hand you a weapon.” He flipped it
over with his boot. “Looks like any other to me.”
    “Take it,” Philadelphia said. “And please, take him before
he spoils.”
    “You don’t want to reanimate him?” Two poked at the dead
man’s ribs. “Keep him as a servant?”
    Philadelphia’s face went green. She thrust the hand at Brecon
and ran to the back of the cell, resting her head against cool stone.
    “Why taunt her?” he demanded. “She’s done nothing to you.”
    One pressed his lips together. “The Blockaders took our
little brother, Gravenor. He tried to escape, of course. So he got a brass hand.
It killed him when he tried to escape again. He must have been one of the
first, didn’t know what it was capable of doing to him. We only found out
because one of the men heard an officer boasting about how many had died during
a mutiny. Just drinking in a pub in Cardiff, boasting about dead men, his own
countrymen.”
    “How did they know for sure it was your brother?”
    “He had a tattoo, and a lazy eye.” One rubbed his nose. “Men
kept asking him for details for just that purpose, in case they could figure
out who got killed.”
    “I am sorry for the death. But it isn’t Miss Hardcastle’s
fault. She didn’t apply her inventions to the purpose they have been used for
by the Blockaders.”
    “But she invented them just the