Hearts of Smoke and Steam by Andrew P. Mayer Page A

shot my father, and have stolen the lives of God knows how many others.” Her father would have yelled the words, but Sarah spoke them softly, almost like a prayer, just making sure she was loud enough for the old Irishman to hear. Her tone was flat and bitter, and she barely recognized the sound of her own voice. “Now I'm going to make you taste their pain.”
    She took a deep breath and heaved back, tensing her muscles so that she could put all of her strength into the blow. A voice cried out, and a hand gripped the lower half of her arm. “No, no, no!”
    She turned to see what fool had interfered, and stared straight into the Italian man's blue eyes. This time she did yell, letting her fury pour out on him. “How dare you!”
    “No, bella donna. You don't want this.”
    With a sense of alarm, frustration, and shame, she felt traitorous tears welling up in her eyes. “You don't know what he did to me!” she shouted, using her anger to hold back the flood. There would be no crying.
    She slowly lowered the weapon down and handed Emilio the gun, too exhausted to trust herself to hold it any longer.
    “Such a weapon!” He said, looking at the gun in his hands. “You make this?”
    Sarah shook her head and stared down at her feet. “Darby.”
    “Dennis Darby?” he replied. There was genuine awe in his voice.
    He stepped towards her. “And who are you?” He reached out toward her, and as his hand brushed against her face, Sarah gasped and closed her eyes. She could feel that he was gently lifting the mask away from her face.
    “No!” she said, turning away, but it was too late.
    “I'm sorry,” he said, letting his fingers trace down her cheeks. They felt cool against her skin, leaving a trail of sensation as his hand settled under her chin. He lifted up her face to gaze back into her eyes. “I know you. You are that girl! He called you Sarah! S-s-s-Stander!” He said the wrong name proudly, as if he'd won a contest.
    Sarah twitched free from his gentle grasp and stared out over the water. “Stanton,” she sighed as she glanced back up at him—so much for her masterful disguise. It was stupid to have removed the veil. Clearly the mask alone was useless. She should have covered her entire face like the women of the East. “Now you know my name. What's yours?”
    The Italian boy (man!) opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say another word, there was a stirring at their feet—the Bomb Lance had begun to recover, and something would have to be done about him.
    He had activated something in his harness, and the wire that connected to the harpoon to his arm began to retract, rapidly dragging him across the deck towards the smokestack.
    Sarah glanced up and saw that the balloon had positioned itself directly above the ship. Something toppled down from it, and an instant later a large weight slammed into the top of the ship's bridge, denting the roof. It was an anchor at the end of a thick rope that led back up to the balloon.
    Sarah tried to grab the Irishman as he slid away, but her gloves made her clumsy, and she only managed to snag the edge of his coat. The cloth pulled free from her hands almost as soon as she caught it.
    Murphy twisted himself around and brought his feet in front of him as he struck the wall of the wheelhouse. Using his momentum along with the power of the retracting cable, he walked straight up the side of the wooden shack, then grabbed onto the waiting rope.
    She ran after him, but he was out of reach.
    “Damn it! He's getting away!” she shouted.
    The Italian boy stood ran up next to her. “Is okay. We're okay.”
    Sarah shook her head, trying to clear the anger that was flooding her thoughts. “It's not okay. We have to stop him!” She desperately tried to think of something, anything she could do to prevent the villain from escaping.
    In frustration she reached down and grabbed at one of the metal rods sticking out of the roof nearby. The shaft was stuck deep in the