Clementine

“Yes, a situation,” he said grouchily, with a hint of false cheer. “You know about half of what’s going on, and I know about half of what’s going on, and there are spots where our information…” he hunted for a phrase. “Fails to overlap.”

“That seems to be the case, yes.” She was half a head shorter than him, and a hundred pounds smaller, but she met his gaze over the contents of the last crate, and she didn’t flinch or retreat.

He sounded almost optimistic when he said, “We could work together, you and me. I could tell you some useful things, and you have permission to go to places I’m not allowed.”

“You can take me to Louisville.”

“I’m headed that direction anyway.”

“And I can tell you where your ship is.”

He was startled, despite himself. “You can what?”

“It’s parked at a transient dock outside the city. It may be gone now, but it was there last I heard, maybe an hour or two ago. I don’t think your quarry has quite the lead you think it does.”

Hainey turned on his heels, crossed the cargo bay, and leaned himself through the doorway that led to the bridge. “Simeon! Where are the nearest transient docks?”

“Nearest…to here?”

“Nearest to Kansas City!”

The first mate thought about it, then said, “East of here, a little ways. At least, that’s where they used to park and set up. Why?”

“Because the Free Crow’s there-or she was quite recently. Adjust course!”

Lamar said, “But sir, we’re still riding heavy. You going to toss the cargo, or what?”

He said, “Yeah, I’ll toss it. Are we over anything or anybody important?”

Simeon said, “No, but we will be soon if we adjust course. So get to dropping sooner, rather than later.”

The captain didn’t answer except to dash back to the hold and say to Maria, “Give that lever over there a yank!”

She grabbed it with both hands and hauled it down; when it clicked at the bottom part of its track, a set of sliding doors retracted in the floor at the back of the hold. “Are we discarding the cargo now? I thought we were going to go low and hover?”

“Change of plans. We’re going east, to the only transient docks my first mate knows. On the way, you and me are going to toss this stuff out of the Valkyrie. Sim says we shouldn’t hit anything or anybody important for the next few minutes, so give me a hand. Except for what we talked about, grab anything you can move and kick it out, fast as you can.”

Maria pressed herself between the crate of linens and the wall, and she used her back and legs to shove it out into the middle of the room.

Hainey met her there and ushered her aside; he cast the crate over the lip of the retracted door and let it tumble out, down to the prairie below. Then he reached for the next box, which held part of the soap shipment. He swung it and dragged it over to the edge and this too went freefalling to the dry, brown ground half a mile below.

Maria took the next box of linens and worked them over the edge. She went back for a cache of polish, which was almost more than she could move, but she took it and she wiggled it, and skidded it until it was teetering-and she tipped it overboard.

“Help me with this one,” the captain said like it was an order, but Maria was getting the impression that this was simply how he talked.

“Coming,” she said, and she joined him.

Side by side, their backs pressed against the metal-stuffed crate of small tools and hardware. This one dug into the paint on the floor but it moved in jerks and inch-long shrugs until finally it too crashed heavily over the lip and into the sky.

“Back to the bridge,” the captain said when the last of the expendable boxes had been expended.

Arms aching and back throbbing, Maria tagged behind him and took up her familiar seat. She dropped herself down and reached for the straps that would fasten her into place.

Hainey took up his position with similar haste, asking for a time estimate from his first mate. “How long before the docks are in sight?”

“Five minutes. Ten, at the outside,” Simeon said. “But how do we want to approach?”

“Guns blazing,” Hainey growled. “We’ve still got a right-side ball turret and I’ll take it up myself, if you two can fly us.”

“I’m getting the hang of it, sir,” Lamar said helpfully.

The first mate added, “I’ve found everything I need to steer alone, if I have to. But do you really want to shoot the Crow out of the sky?”

“I don’t mind doing her a little damage if it helps us get her back. She’ll forgive us in the morning; she always does.”

“What about her?” Simeon asked, aiming an eyebrow in Maria’s direction.

“What about her? She needs a ride to Louisville, and we’re going to give her one. She’ll behave herself, I bet. It turns out, we have more in common than we thought. Our goals…overlap,” he used that word again. “We want the Free Crow, she wants what it’s carrying, even if it costs her the shiny new job she’s landed.”

“That’s true,” she said from her seat. “And I’ll be damned if I even know what the cargo is.”

Hainey’s bright white grin spread so far that the scar on his cheek crinkled up to his ear. “It’s a diamond.”

“A diamond?” Maria exclaimed. “All this trouble for a diamond?”

The captain said, “Not just any diamond. An orange diamond the size of a plum. The man who cut the thing called it the ‘clementine,’ so I guess the boys who stole our ship thought they were being fu

“I’ve never even heard of a diamond that big. And why do you know this?”

“I’ve got a friend back west, a fellow captain and a man of fine character. When the Free Crow was first boosted out from under us, this friend helped us try to retrieve her.”

“That’s a good friend indeed,” Maria said.

Hainey agreed. “I owe him one. Or two, or ten. And now I owe him double. Down in Tacoma he found a fellow to tell him what my ship is carrying. He sent a telegram to fill me in. That’s how I know about the diamond. And now I know why my ship was stolen.”

“To transport a diamond?”

“To transport a diamond and a two-thousand-pound corpse. There’s an old story that floated around for years, and everyone always thought it was a tall tale-even though every man who ever repeated it swore it was the truth.” As he spoke, Hainey gave the throttle a deeper nudge, urging the ship faster, farther, towards the transient docks.

He continued, “There was a certain lady of…leisure. Her name was Conklin, but everyone called her ‘Damnable.’ She was the richest woman west of the Mississippi and maybe east of it too, for all anybody knows. She had plenty of money, at any rate, and she spent a great wad of it on a diamond found a hundred years ago in India. She wore it set in a necklace, almost all the time.”

Lamar piped up. “I heard she shot a dozen men who tried to steal it from her, and one woman too.”

The captain said, “It’s possible. She was a real piece of work, and when she died, she took the diamond with her. The funeral man dressed her in her finest, hung the diamond around her neck, and filled her coffin with every drop of cement it would hold-just like she asked him to. Then the gravedigger made a hole twice as big as he needed, and once the coffin was lowered down inside, they filled up the hole with cement too, in order to keep out anybody who wanted what she was wearing.”

“And no one ever bothered her body?”

“Not until my Free Crow was stolen. Not another ship west of the river could’ve lifted her up, carried her over the mountains, and gotten her into bluegrass country-”

Maria said, “No ship except for yours? She must be nearly as powerful as this one, then.”

“Nearly,” he said. “But not quite, and this one wasn’t anywhere handy-so some bastard Union man paid a bastard pirate named Felton Brink to steal my Free Crow, dig up old Madam Damnable, and tote her to Kentucky.”