Ganymede Read online

  Ganymede is dedicated to everyone who didn’t make it into the history books …

  … but should have.

  Like all my Clockwork Century books, this is a work of fiction. Its facts are contrived and improbable, its finer points are forcibly bent to serve my narrative purposes, and I am led to understand that its zombies are highly unscientific. But if you’re okay with zombies shambling around New Orleans in the nineteenth century … then I’d like to think you can forgive some finessing of politics and geography.

  So thanks for reading! And please don’t send me letters about how wrong I’ve gotten this whole “history” thing. I assure you, my history is at least as accurate as my portrayal of the living dead.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would have never come together without the patience, assistance, and all-around awesomeness of the following (in no particular order): Liz Gorinsky—editor, diplomat, and advocate of the highest caliber; my husband, Aric, who keeps the home fires bright; Jennifer Jackson—agent and sounding board, who is worth her weight in diamonds; Bill Schafer, a friend and boss, who invited me on board with love, and saw me off with encouragement; and webmaster Greg Wild-Smith, for preventing personal Internet meltdowns by the score.… A thousand grateful kudos to all of you, for putting up with this Tiny Godzilla.

  Thanks also to the community of writers who keep me company as I work from home. The Team Seattle crew of Mark Henry, Caitlin Kittredge (still a member in honorary standing, though she’s moved), Richelle Mead, and Kat Richardson; my convention peeps Scalzi, Mary Robinette, Tobias, Scott, Justine, and many others, who keep this from being such a lonely gig. See also Wil and Warren, Ariana (the gatekeeper), and everyone else in the secret clubhouse that serves the world: I couldn’t do it without you. Likewise, love to the Home Team of Ellen and Suezie, keepers of cats and purveyors of brunches and baked goods.

  Mad props also to all the indie bookstores and chains alike across the country. You’ve been so extraordinarily helpful and supportive, and I can’t thank you enough. Particular gratitude goes to the Seattle-area folks who deal with me the most: Duane Wilkins over at the University Book Store, Steve and Vlad over at Third Place Books, and the crew at the Northgate B&N.

  And finally, excessive, effusive thanks must go out to all the readers who have embraced this weird little franchise. Thank you steampunks, dieselpunks, clockpunks, steamgoths, and everyone else in the retro-futurist niche of your choosing. Thank you for reading these books, and for sharing them, and for giving them a place on your shelves and in your hearts.

  You have made these books happen.

  Nor must Uncle Sam’s web feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been, and made their tracks.

  —ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  (From a letter to John Conkling, August 26, 1863)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Disclaimer

  Acknowledgments

  Map

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Author’s Note

  Tor Books by Cherie Priest

  Copyright

  One

  “Croggon Hainey sends his regards, but he isn’t up for hire,” Josephine Early declared grimly as she crumpled the telegram in her fist. She flicked the wad of paper into the tiny round wastebin beside her desk and took a deep breath that came out in a hard sigh. “So we’ll have to find another pilot, goddammit.”

  “Ma’am, the airyard’s full of pilots,” her assistant, Marylin Quantrill, replied.

  She leaned back in her seat and tapped her fingers on the chair’s armrest. “Not pilots like him.”

  “Hainey … he’s a colored fellow, isn’t he? One of the Macon Madmen?”

  “Yes, and he’s the best flier I know. But I can’t blame him for turning us down. It’s asking a lot, for him to come so far south while he’s still wanted—and we don’t have the money to pay him what he’s worth, much less compensate him for the extra danger.”

  Marylin nodded, disappointed but understanding. “It didn’t hurt to ask.”

  “No. And if it were me, I wouldn’t take the job either.” Josephine ceased her tapping and shifted her weight, further wedging her voluminous blue dress into the narrow confines of the worn mahogany chair’s rigid arms. “But I sure was hoping he’d say yes. He’s perfect for the job, and perfect doesn’t come along every day. We won’t find anyone half so perfect hanging about the airyard, I can tell you that much. We need a man with excellent flying skills and absolutely no loyalty to the Republic or the Confederacy. And that, my dear, will be the trouble.”

  “Is there anyone else we could ask, anyone farther afield?”

  “No one springs to mind,” Josephine murmured.

  Marylin pressed on. “It might not matter, anyway. It could be Rucker Little is right, and a pilot won’t have any better luck than a seaman.”

  “It’d be hard for anyone, anywhere, to fail so spectacularly as that last batch of sailors.”

  “Not all of them drowned.”

  “Four out of five isn’t anything to crow about.”

  “I suppose not, ma’am.” Marylin lowered her eyes and fiddled with her gloves. She didn’t often wear gloves, given the heat and damp of the delta, but the elbow-length silk pair with tiny pearl buttons had been a gift from a customer, and he’d requested specifically that she wear them tonight. Her hair was done up in a twisted set of plaits and set with an ostrich feather. The yellow dress she wore cost only half what the gloves did, but they complemented each other all the same.

  Josephine vowed, “I’ll find someone else, and I’ll show Mr. Mumler that I’m right. They’re going about that machine all wrong, I just know it. All I need is a pilot to prove it.”

  “But you have to admit,” the younger woman carefully ventured, “it sounds strange, wanting an airman for a … for whatever it is, there in the lake.”

  “Sometimes a strangely shaped problem requires a strangely shaped solution, dear. So here’s what we’ll do for now: Tomorrow afternoon, you take one of the other girls—Hazel or Ruthie, maybe—and you go down to the airyard and keep your eyes open.”

  “Open for what?”

  “Anyone who isn’t Southern or Texian. Look for foreigners who stand out from the usual crowd—ignore the English and the islanders, we don’t want them. We want people who don’t care about the war, and who aren’t taking sides. Tradesmen, merchants, or pirates.”

  “I don’t know about pirates, ma’am. They scare me, I don’t mind saying.”

  Josephine said, “Hainey’s a pirate, and I’d trust him enough to employ him. Pirates come in different sorts like everybody else, and I’ll settle for one if I have to. But don’t worry. I wouldn’t ask you to go down to the bay or barter with the Lafittes. If our situation turns out to call for a pirate, I’ll go get one myself.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Let’s consider Barataria a last resort. We aren’t up to needing last resorts. Not yet. The craft is barely in working order, and Chester says it’ll be a few days before it’s dried out enough to try again. When it works, and when we have s
omeone who can consistently operate it without drowning everyone inside it, then we’ll move it. We have to get it to the Gulf, and we’ll have to do it right the first time. We won’t get a second chance.”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t expect we will,” Marylin agreed. Then she changed the subject. “Begging your pardon, ma’am—but do you have the time?”

  “The time? Oh, yes.” Josephine reached into her front left pocket and retrieved a watch. It was an engineer’s design with a glass cutout in the cover, allowing her to see the hour at a glance. “It’s ten till eight. Don’t worry, your meeting with Mr. Spring has not been compromised—though, knowing him, he’s already waiting downstairs.”

  “I think he rather likes me, ma’am.”

  “I expect he does. And with that in mind, be careful, Marylin.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She rose from her seat and asked, “Is there anything else?”

  “No, darling.”

  Therefore, with a quick check of her hair in the mirror by the door, Marylin Quantrill exited the office on the fourth floor of the building known officially as the Garden Court Boarding House for Ladies, and unofficially as “Miss Early’s Place,” home of “Miss Early’s Girlies.”

  Josephine did not particularly care for the unofficial designation, but there wasn’t much to be done about it now. A name with a rhyme sticks harder than sun-dried tar.

  But quietly, bitterly, Josephine saw no logical reason why a woman in her forties should be referred to with the same address as a toddler, purely because she’d never married. Furthermore, she employed no “girlies.” She took great pains to see to it that her ladies were precisely that: ladies, well informed and well educated. Her ladies could read and write French as well as English, and some of them spoke Spanish, too; they took instruction on manners, sewing, and cooking. They were young women, yes, but they were not frivolous children, and she hoped that they would have skills to support themselves upon leaving the Garden Court Boarding House.

  All the Garden Court ladies were free women of color.

  It was Josephine’s experience that men liked nothing better than variety, and that no two men shared precisely the same tastes. With that in mind, she’d recruited fourteen women in a spectrum of skin tones, ranging from two very dark Caribbean natives to several lighter mixes like Marylin, who could have nearly passed for white. Josephine herself counted an eighth of her own ancestry from Africa, courtesy of a great-grandmother who’d come to New Orleans aboard a ship called the Adelaide. At thirteen, her grandmother had been bought to serve as a maid, and at fourteen, she’d birthed her first child, Josephine’s mother.

  And so forth, and so on.

  Josephine was tall and lean, with skin like tea stirred with milk. Her forehead was high and her lips were full, and although she looked her age, she wore all forty-two years with grace. It was true that in her maturity she’d slipped from “beautiful” to merely “pretty,” but she anticipated another ten years before sliding down to the dreaded “handsome.”

  She looked again at the watch, and at the wastebin holding the unfortunate telegram, and she wondered what on earth she was going to do now. Major Alcock was expecting a report on her mission’s progress, and Admiral Partridge had made clear that it wasn’t safe to keep the airship carrier Valiant too close to the delta for very long. Texas wouldn’t tolerate it—they’d chase the big ship back out to sea like a flock of crows harrying an eagle.

  She had until the end of May. No longer.

  That left not quite four weeks to figure out a number of things which had gone years without having been figured out thus far.

  “Ganymede,” she said under her breath, “I will find someone to fly you.”

  All she needed was a pilot willing to risk his life in a machine that had killed seventeen men to date; brave the Mississippi River as it went past Forts Jackson and Saint Philip and all the attending Rebels and Texians therein; and kindly guide it out into the Gulf of Mexico past half a dozen Confederate warships—all the while knowing the thing could explode, suffocate everyone inside, or sink to the ocean bottom at any moment.

  Was it really so much to ask?

  The Union thought she was out of her mind, and though they wanted the scuttled craft, they couldn’t see paying yet another seventeen men to die for it. Therefore, any further salvage efforts must come out of Josephine’s own pocket. But her pockets weren’t as deep as the major seemed to think, and the cost of hiring a high-level mercenary for such a mission was well outside her reach.

  Even if she knew another pilot half so good as Croggon Hainey, and without any allegiance to the occupying Republicans or the Confederates, a month might not be enough time to fetch him, prepare him, and test him.

  She squeezed her watch and popped it open. The gears inside flipped, swayed, and spun.

  But on second thought …

  She’d told Marylin she didn’t know any other pilots. The lie had slipped off her tongue as if it’d been greased, or as if she’d only forgotten it wasn’t true, but there was someone else.

  It wasn’t worth thinking about. After all, it’d been years since last she saw him—since she even thought about him. Had he gone back West? Had he married, and raised a family? Would he come if she summoned him? For all she knew, he wasn’t even alive anymore. Not every man—even a man like Andan Cly—survives a pirate’s career.

  “He’s probably dead,” Josephine told herself. “Long gone, I’m sure.”

  She wasn’t sure.

  She looked back at the wastebin, and she realized that with one more telegram, she could likely find out.

  Croggon Hainey frequented the Northwest corners, didn’t he? And Cly had come from a wretched, wet backwater of a port called … what was it again? Oh, yes: Seattle—out in the Washington Territory, as far away from New Orleans as a man could get while staying on colonial turf.

  “No coincidence, that,” she said to the empty room, realizing she flattered herself to think so. Well, so what? Then she flattered herself. She wasn’t the first.

  Downstairs, something fell heavily, or something large was thrown and landed with a muffled thunk.

  Josephine’s ears perked, and she briefly forgot about the wastebin, the telegram, and potential news of long-ago lovers from distant hinterlands. She listened hard, hoping to hear nothing more without daring to assume it.

  The Garden Court Boarding House was different from many bordellos, but not so different that there were never problems: drunk men, or cruel men who wanted more than they were willing to buy. Josephine did her best to screen out the worst, and she prided herself on both the quality of her ladies and the relative peace of her establishment; even so, it was never far from her mind how quickly things could turn, and how little it would take for the French Quarter to remember that she was only a colored woman, and not necessarily entitled to own things, much less protect them, preserve them, and use them for illicit activities.

  It was a line she walked every night, between legitimate businesswoman performing a service for the community of soldiers, sailors, merchants, and planters … and the grandchild of slaves, who could become a slave herself again simply by crossing the wrong state lines.

  Louisiana wasn’t safe, not for her or any of her ladies. Maybe not for anybody.

  But this was Josephine’s house, and she guarded it with all the ferocity and cunning of a mother fox. So when she heard the noise downstairs, she listened hard, willing innocent silence to follow, but suspecting the worst and preparing herself accordingly.

  In the top left drawer of her battered, antique, secondhand desk, she kept a .44-caliber Schofield—a Smith & Wesson revolver she’d nicknamed “Little Russia.” It was loaded, as always. She retrieved it and pushed the desk drawer shut again.

  It was easy to hide the weapon behind her skirts. People don’t expect a left-handed woman, and no one expects to be assaulted by anyone in a fancy gown—which wa
s one more good reason to wear them all the time.

  Out past the paneled office door she swept, and down the red-carpeted runner to the end of the hall, where a set of stairs curved down to all three lower levels, flanked by a banister that was polished weekly and gleamed under the skimming touch of Josephine’s hand. The commotion was on the second floor, or so her ears told her as she drew up nearer.

  The location was a good thing, insofar as any commotion was ever good. Far better than if it were taking place down in the lobby. It’s bad for business, and bad for covering up trouble, should a cover-up be required. At street level, people could squint and peek past the gossamer curtains, trying to focus on the slivers of light inside and the women who lived within.

  At street level, there could be witnesses.

  Josephine was getting ahead of herself, and she knew it. She always got ahead of herself, but that’s how she’d stayed alive and in charge this long, so she couldn’t imagine slowing down anytime soon. Instead she held the Schofield with a cool, loose grip. She felt the gun’s weight as a strange, foreign thing against her silk overskirts, where she buried it out of sight. As she’d learned one evening in her misspent youth at the notorious pirate call of Barataria, she need not brandish a gun to fire it. It’d shoot just fine through a petticoat, and knock a hole in a man all the same. It would ruin the skirts, to be certain, but those were trade-offs a woman could make in the name of survival.

  Down on the second-floor landing, she stepped off the stairs so swiftly, she seemed to be moving on wings or wheels. She brought herself up short just in time to keep from running into the Texian Fenn Calais.

  A big man in his youth, Mr. Calais was now a soft man, with cheeks blushed pink from years of alcohol and a round, friendly face that had become well known to ladies of the Garden Court. Delphine Hoobler was under one of his arms, and Caroline Younger was hooked beneath the other.