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Steamships were never this complicated before.
In the old days, Crane inevitably booked passage on the cheaper merchant ships where he and Merrick could bunker down alongside the cargo and share their meals with traders whose stories matched their own. Anything fancier than a clipper was wasted coin. They’d come over from London on a steamship, a suffocating, hulking giant that only reached China on its last gasp, and that had been enough for the both of them.
Few truly luxury steamers sailed the routes between Shanghai and her surrounding ports unless they were crossing east to the Americas, which made a lovely excuse to postpone returning to London to put his father’s affairs in order – Lord Crane could be seen travelling in nothing less, after all. Certainly not a mail carrier, and they weren’t traipsing through America on the way to an even worse hell.
He vaguely recalled the second voyage’s accommodations and the designated areas for each traveling class. It hadn’t mattered a jot at the time with his manservant rooming alongside him in the largest first class suite available. They’d wandered a bit to stretch their legs but had no need of deciphering the labyrinth of society rooms with even more monotonous Society held within.
Now he had no goddamn idea where he was.
He’d passed the same twisting stairwell to third class half a dozen times, excused himself through three separate smoking parlors and a music salon with overly impassioned performers, bribed a pack of serving children with another outrageous tale in exchange for directions, and still failed to uncover the path back to first class. If any shaman onboard could manage a sliver of practice among all the iron, he’d had sworn Stephen looped every path back to third class on purpose.
Traveling with four was a disaster. Had Stephen simply acclimated himself to a finer wardrobe, perhaps they’d have been able to pass him off as a moneyed if mousy businessman who belonged in a first class cabin. Two rooms side by side in first class, easy. Shamans never made anything easy. Trains posed no problem, he’d simply booked an entire carriage for their personal use. But a ship, he’d been told, had too many other eyes watching.
Statistically, third class had far more eyes than first. Crane had wisely kept that observation to himself. If Stephen wanted to split the party across two rooms so far apart they may as well be on separate ships, all to preserve a false veneer of decency, then that was what they’d do.
And there was that damn stairwell again. Had first class only one entry point? A bloody tower kept pristine above the masses? Of course it had.
Crane doubled back to the music salon. If he couldn’t trust his sense of direction, at least he could follow his ear, and he’d sighted some finer fabrics among the audience milling about. All he had to do was charm a few bored birds lurking in the back corners and casually escort them back to the above-deck promenade. From there he could easily find his way back to the first class cabin with his own damn bed. Or throw himself overboard, as the mood struck.
By the time his feet finally found their way back to the right cabin, he needed a drink. His wretched manservant didn’t immediately rise to offer one—didn’t look his way at all, actually—so Crane went to pour his own measure of brandy. It wasn’t worth a trek to the private lounges for anything better.
The settee and the armchair were both occupied. Saint had been all but living on the settee since they left port, and she lounged there now like a riotous parody of déshabillé that would get them all arrested far faster than Stephen’s worst fears. Boots off, a spare pair of Merrick’s slacks rolled up to her knees, and her shirt buttoned indecently low, she barely glanced his way as he raised his glass in silent greeting. The ship’s iron suffocated Stephen, as he was quick to bemoan whenever given the chance, but the disconnect from her winds had Saint roasting in her skin.
Strange days indeed when he had a swooning young lady in his bedroom. Stranger still was Merrick’s single-minded focus over in the armchair. Crane knocked back his glass and went for a closer look.
“…Are you darning her socks?”
Merrick’s head remained bent over his task, but his eyes flicked up in a clear warning: carry along that line of teasing and the Hawkes and Cheney would never make it to Shanghai intact.
Saint jumped at the bait. Stretching out her legs over the edge of the settee, she wiggled her bare toes in his direction and forced a graceful pose as though she thought herself Venus rising from the foam. “Lady Crane cannot have holey socks.”
“Lady Crane would wear stockings,” Crane informed her dryly. As if he would allow any less, were the game in truth.
“Nay, my lordship!” She dipped back her head, gone faint at the very notion. “That these feet should ever touch such flimsy, pitiable stuff with their very soles! How shocking!”
A frazzled clerk in Milan had so badly bungled their reservation that the hotel prepared for a Lord and Lady Crane with full complement of staff. To everyone’s horror, Saint had stepped up to Lord Crane’s side in pants and dirty boots, given a lopsided curtsy, and extended a limp hand for kisses or professions of loyalty – either would suffice, she informed them gravely, as Stephen sidestepped into Crane’s shadow and desperately tried to swallow his own laughter. Since then, she’d fallen into the role whenever the mood struck her, gleefully flouting every social convention she could remember and blithely ignoring the rest. Following him into the ship’s smoking lounge to get at the fine liquors, tripping the tittering hags who gave her a veiled sneer as they strolled past on deck, dropping masterful obscenities into every posh utterance she pulled out of her sleeve.
She was frankly the most offensive Lady Crane he could ever have dreamed of. He couldn’t be more delighted, or less eager to let her know it.
Crane watched them for a moment longer, noting the way Merrick’s lips twisted around the pins in his mouth, a careful smile he couldn’t hold back in the face of Saint’s nonsense. And however desperate for amusement, she appeared happy enough to pillow her head on her elbow to watch him sew in silence.
“Domestic,” Crane concluded gravely. “You’ve domesticated him.”
“Says the bloke playing nursemaid.”
Scowling, Crane checked his cuffs once more for any remaining bodily fluids.
Merrick shook his head. “Should’ve taken the Silk—”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“I wanted to see more camels,” Saint added mournfully. “Frank says the China ones is different than that grubby lot in Constantinople. Got two humps for easier riding, yeah? Ain’t my problem if Mr. D don’t know what to do with a pair of—” She mimed a camel’s distinctive parts above her chest, and Merrick snorted dangerously around the pins still clenched between his teeth.
The sock only required a few more passes of the needle before it regained its original state: lumpy, itchy, and cheap. Saint still grinned all sweet when Merrick bit off the loose thread and tossed it her way.
“Ah. Now I see.” Crane switched to Shanghainese with a low chuckle. “All those years as my manservant and I never realized the depths of your affection.”
“My affection?”
“Every sock, a declaration. Every stitch, a mark of your devotion.” He lay a hand over his chest, palm centered on a button he knew Merrick had repaired recently. “So dearly you’ve honored me—"
Merrick barked a laugh. “Christ, I’ve got better taste than that.”
“You used to. Won’t catch me playing silly buggers with a shaman, hmm? How the mighty have fallen.”
Merrick rose from his chair and crossed the room to brew them all a round of tea from their dwindling supply. The coffee had run out soon after they reached the Red Sea. By the time he served, Crane had reclaimed the armchair. Merrick handed him the mug directly, still scalding, and took a seat on the settee instead. Without a word passing between them, Saint pulled up her legs to free the space and pushed them into her husband’s lap the moment he’d settled.
A united front of conjugal bliss. Disgusting.
“Speaking of, how’s your shaman holding up?”
“He isn’t,” Crane answered with forced cheer, as though he hadn’t spent half the day minding his lover through day eight of the worst case of seasickness he’d ever witnessed.
Their decision to take a ship south from Constantinople had hinged on simple mathematics: a few days in a floating coffin versus the interminable stop-and-go crossing of railroads and camel trains on the overland route. Stephen had been quite firm that it was the optimal solution all around, up until an hour after the ship left port, when his insides announced a desperate wish to be on his outside and hadn’t yet stopped their revolt.
Merrick winced in sympathy. The bastard hadn’t gone down to the other room even once. “Could be worse. Could be—”
Crane raised his glass in silent acknowledgment of Mrs. Gold’s recent suffering. They both shuddered.
“Mrs. Merrick seems to be holding up fine,” Crane continued after a drink. “Well. Comparatively.”
“Who, Lady Crane? She’s alright I guess. A bit demanding.” Merrick tweaked one of her toes to get her attention, then asked with slow, clear words, “That right, Jen? Full of demands?”
Saint gave him a drowsy smile and chirped in Shanghainese, “Yes. Magpies up your bum.”
Crane froze.
Forcing himself to finish his gulp of tea, he leaned back and reached for that old certainty that Saint couldn’t understand a word of anything but English. And sometimes hardly that. “Planning to unleash her with a mouthful of swears, are we?”
“It’s how you started, ain’t it?”
“If you recall, I began with—”
Merrick forced out one of a younger Crane’s broken attempts at back alley flirtations, then broke into laughter at the look on Saint’s face as she tried to puzzle her way through the half-familiar obscenities. “Keep that one to yourself. I’ll work on her threats instead. Let her warn the fucksters before she kicks their teeth out.”
“Yes, do give them a sporting chance. We can’t be run out of Shanghai the first week. Leo would never stop crowing.” He teased, but they’d both been dreading how the dour, restrained shamans of the east would react to Saint, or even to Stephen. Corruption of a shaman was no joke.
“How’s Mr. Day managing?”
“We’ve established he’s not.”
“With the language, my lord,” Merrick said in the tone that clearly meant, you dumb bugger.
Apparently he let the moment drag too long as he reached for an appropriately dismissive response, because Merrick leaned back, rubbed a hand over his bristled chin, and swore violently under his breath. “You ain’t taught him. You absolute shit.”
“He’s indisposed.”
“Hey Jen,” Merrick called in English. He didn’t look at her, still leveling a deadly glower at Crane. “Think Mr. Day will get on in China if he don’t know a word?”
Saint pushed up onto her elbows in alarm. “Jesus Christ, I’m not sticking around for that. Frank and I will skip to—to—” She searched her dim grasp of the geography and proudly announced, “Kowloon.”
“Bit far,” Crane added mildly.
“Bloody necessary.”
“Least I can ask for the privy. Know them squiggles for it too!”
Crane raised an eyebrow, first at her and then at Merrick. She could scarcely read English without the letters dancing away on her, but hell if he knew how it worked for Chinese practitioners with similar frustrations. Either way, the race was on. Had been on, secretly, ever since they’d gut-punched him at the gate and bolted for the finish line.
“We figure that must be how Chinese graphomancers manage. Write it out and—”
“Make a bloke shit himself,” Saint finished with palpable glee.
With that payoff, of course she’d manage to commit the characters to memory. Crane had no desire to consider the matter further.
“Oi, Frank, how’s his lordship stamp his name? It a crane or a magpie?”
“That isn’t how it works,” Crane snapped. It was exactly how it worked. His teenage self had not been particularly clever with the language and stamping his father’s name on all manner of outrageous disasters had gone a long way towards youthful vengeance. Changing it now was a nightmare of bureaucracy that even the Council couldn’t match.
Before the Merricks could begin planning for an entirely bloody useless stamp set of their own—it would not be Lady Crane, it would not—Crane set his mug on the side table and rose to his feet. “Thank you for this rousing discussion of why we should turn tail back to Europe. Enlightening, I assure you.”
Merrick didn’t let him leave without divesting him of his suit jacket and cufflinks, too posh not to attract attention downstairs, and pushing a tray of fresh water and scones into his hands.
As usual, the return trip to third class took scarcely ten minutes. Stairwells lead down whenever Crane turned a corner. It might not have been outright practice, but he swore the damn tattoos had a smug look about them that week, the shifty little fucksters.
Crane opened the door to the other cabin without knocking. The door clanked heavily against the wall, and he nudged it closed with a foot as he carried in the tray. He clattered about the small space with a grim smile, fixing up the meager dinner and switching out the wash bin stationed on the floor near the bed.
“Still alive?”
He earned a weary grunt from the lump of blankets on the bottom bunk.
“Among the living and the conscious. Such progress.”
Stephen scowled as Crane peeled the blankets down to his lap and hauled him into a half-upright position. “I can’t, it won’t stay down, I’ve tried—”
“It’s scones.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Best to let you starve then.” Crane settled on the edge of the opposite cot and bit into one of the scones. Still fresh. Saint might not want to be around his hurling huddle, but she’d nicked him the good stuff.
“Lucien,” he groaned pitifully, one arm flung over the side of the bed to dangle.
Crane had seen Merrick through smallpox when they had barely a biscuit to their names. Tending to Stephen with an upset stomach in a hell of his own making was a delight. “Yes?”
“I’ve thought the matter through.”
“Oh?”
“I need you to throw me overboard.”
“I’d be honored.”
“No, I’m serious, listen. If I can get past the, the fucking iron, I can use what Dan taught me and—"
“You swim well enough to practice underwater?”
Stephen’s face fell. “…Perhaps.”
“I can’t wait to witness such a feat.”
“Why is it iron,” Stephen asked in a small, miserable voice. “Four thousand years of ship practice all for nothing because you bastards needed your iron.”
This was Crane’s favorite bit, when Stephen opined about the horrors of technology and how they’d dared to put iron to sea and ruin all the pretty nausea spells Mr. Gold had taught him before they left. Saint shrugged off her malaise and called it an even trade; Stephen planned Vengeance.
“Come to bed, my lord,” Stephen tried next, right on schedule. His eyes flashed, a dim gold that assured Crane he wasn’t actually that close to stripping himself, and he forced a vulnerable smile which would normally have Crane’s hands on him within the space of a breath.
Crane smiled, all charm. “After dinner.”
Inevitably, Crane wheedled him into a full glass of water and three whole scones. He promised, he bribed, he traded stories for single bites until Stephen finally shook the crumbs from his fingers and rolled back onto his side to face the wall. Crane took the old wash bin out into the hall to trade for a fresh one and arrange for the morning’s service.
Stephen had nodded off by the time he returned, lulled by the gentle rocking of the traitorous sea, but he cracked open an eye as Crane squeezed himself into the cramped space between Stephen and the wall. He sagged into Crane’s arms as soon as they wrapped around him, knuckles rubbing soothingly at Stephen’s upper back.
“Only a few more days,” Crane promised him solemnly.
He couldn’t hear whatever Stephen grumbled against his neck.
It was more like a week, but that wasn’t what Stephen needed to hear. He needed control of the situation, same as he always had, always would. Crane couldn’t help with the here and now.
Merrick was, unfortunately, correct. Stephen wouldn’t last long in Shanghai if he couldn’t see himself surviving on his own merits, and Crane couldn’t take that personally. He’d learned that lesson.
“You’ll be fine, my sweet boy,” he hummed in Shanghainese. “We’ll be home soon."
“Rise and shine, Mr. D!”
On instinct, Stephen reached to snuff out whatever light she’d brought into his chamber. Nothing happened. Saint grabbed his flailing hand and hauled him upright before he’d made any sense of the situation.
Stephen braced against her shoulder, stomach rolling with the sudden pitch of the ship. “Oh God.” He turned towards the wall, grateful for once that Crane had already abandoned him, and remembered his breathing. He wasn’t going to be sick in front of his student. He was not.
Saint just laughed.
“Go away,” he croaked.
“You’ve been down here nine days.”
“I’m dying.”
“Come die on your feet.”
That was the most sensible thing she’d said in the entire time he’d known her. Robbed of every retort, Stephen let her drag him to the edge of the cot. She pushed a mug of tea into his hands, lukewarm and surprisingly manageable.
As she fussed around the room, Stephen leaned against the cold metal bars of his bunk and watched her work. Her color wasn’t good. He glanced down at his hands, lifeless and sallow in the dim light. Her color was probably better than his but he still didn’t like it.
She found him a new shirt, shook it out as though the precise creases offended her, and tossed it over. Shoes followed, along with a day-old scone that bounced off his shoulder.
“You’re not a very good valet.”
“Man’s job, innit?”
Saint steered him out of the cabin as soon as he laced up his shoes. It was worse outside. In his room, he could cherish the delusion that freedom lay just outside those walls, not a meandering metal hell. At least he’d mostly found his feet. Saint braced him whenever he swayed, that same old spring in her step even though it had nowhere to go.
They emerged onto one of the side promenades, closed to the sky but swept by such fresh air that Stephen’s eyes watered. He filled his lungs gladly. He wandered to the railing and gazed out to where sea and sky merged, then turned back to Saint with a wild grin.
It was all almost worth it for two whole minutes, and then his stomach caught up with him.
Merrick turned up dragging deck chairs from farther down the promenade, and before Stephen knew it, they’d bundled him into one of the chairs and pushed tea and breakfast into his hands. Mr. Merrick sat on one side and Mrs. Merrick on the other. A hostage situation.
Stephen nibbled patiently on the corner of a scone.
“So. This China route’s not so grand. What with the—” Saint made a gesture to encompass the elaborate iron coffin they’d isolated themselves on. “—And you at death’s door ‘n all. We was thinking maybe you’d prefer the train.”
“Yes. Oh God, yes please.”
“Unfortunately, my lord’s already booked the tickets from Bombay. Another steamer,” Merrick added before Saint cut back in.
“But you’re dying, right? So maybe you’d lean into him for the train, and his lordship can give us the steamer tickets.”
That gave him pause. Stephen glanced up at Saint, wondering why on earth she’d volunteer for another round of the nightmare vessels, then caught the look she shared with her husband. Ah. Of course.
“I could in fact expire faster if it would help.”
Saint’s grin was all teeth.
Fifteen minutes to reach first class this time. His suspicions grim, Crane entered his cabin to find the entire traveling party waiting for him. He locked the door, leaned back against it, and crossed his arms loosely over his chest.
“What have you lot done now?”
Merrick rubbed the back of his neck, never a good sign. Saint’s smile was too restrained for honesty.
Even Stephen had joined the cabal. Rather than risk the bedding, he’d taken up on the floor with his back to the settee and a mug of tea in his hands. Or he’d simply fallen and not yet gotten around to finding his feet again. He’d set his shoulders in anticipation of Crane’s displeasure, which only amplified it as he damn well should have known.
The practitioners shared a glance then looked to Merrick in unison.
Crane waved a hand. “Speak, voice of the mutiny.”
Merrick scowled at them all. “Look. It ain’t fair to take Mr. Day on another ship like this.”
“I can’t watch him suffer,” Saint sniffed.
Stephen’s weary desperation spoke for itself, his gaze fixed on Crane.
“May I remind you all that you agreed to this itinerary. To quote, it can’t be worse than Piper—”
“It’s worse than Piper.”
“—And it is by far the fastest route,” Crane finished, meeting Stephen’s scowl head-on.
Of course, he had no actual reservations about changing directions. They weren’t on a schedule, monsoon season wouldn’t be a concern this time of year, and no one in Shanghai knew they were en route. The steamship had absolutely nothing to commend it. Still, best to let them sweat.
“May I remind you that there are a dozen ways to get home and this is clearly the shit one.” Merrick crossed his own arms to mirror Crane’s more languid pose. “We hit Bombay. You get train tickets. Buy out a whole carriage if you want.”
Crane did want. There would be room to stretch his legs, among other things. He and Stephen did so enjoy long train rides.
“Then you and Mr. Day go overland to Calcutta. You can get a clipper from there so he’ll have his magic fingers back.”
All too well-reasoned, all too neat. “Hold up. Just where are you going to be during all of this?”
“Well we ain’t windwalking India,” Saint laughed. She tapped her right temple. “Keep up. You already bought them Bombay tickets. No use wasting them."
“No. Absolutely not.”
They’d continue onward as a group. That was the definitive last word, and with the matter settled, a gratifying silence filled the room. For all of five seconds. Still, what a beautiful five seconds they were.
“Explain to us peasants, my lord,” Merrick said, words so thick with sarcasm it was a wonder they made it out his throat.
“It isn’t a debate.”
“Not a monarchy either.”
Crane caught a glimmer of quartz out of the corner of his eye—Stephen fiddling with his ring—and promptly swallowed his curt reply. That idle fidget always portended repercussions. The debate might be a wiser path. “We set out as four and we’d best arrive as four.”
“Two for joy,” Stephen said quietly.
Crane scowled. “We know the sea routes. We can take a damn rowboat around the coast of India if need be. Or we’ll all cut through India by rail.”
“Might be putting you on a bleeding rowboat at this rate.” Merrick turned his back, stiff and sharp, and went to claim Stephen’s mug to pour a new round of tea. He pointedly set out another three glasses. “Fine. Train it is. Best for everyone.”
The silence was neither settled nor gratifying this time. The kettle screamed. The cups clinked as he set them. Crane could feel Merrick’s anger weigh down on him as heavily as the ship’s iron on Stephen’s lungs. Yet confusion weighed heavier: Merrick never backed down if it mattered. Usually even if it didn’t. Certainly not in front of a crowd.
Saint waved off the offered glass. “Right. I’ve got a question, your highness.”
With an indulgent smile, Crane crooked two fingers as though inviting a sparring partner to strike.
“Were you handcuffed to Frank on his first honeymoon, too?”
Stephen choked on a gulp of tea and sputtered his laughter behind a quick hand.
“Yes, yes. Very funny,” Crane said in a tone that made clear it was anything but. He shot a reproving glance at Merrick, who wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“I ain’t laughing. We been trying to chase you off for half a world by now. Can’t even have a bloody biscuit without your posh majesty sweeping in to—”
“Lavish you with gifts and grandeur?”
Saint was overstating her case by far. It was nonsense to book separate tables at the finest restaurants in Paris, or separate hotel suites in Milan, or separate train carriages on the way to Constantinople. Crane may have interrupted a quick bite at a café or two, but only when they had theater tickets elsewhere, and separate boxes would have been—Ah. He narrowed his eyes not at Saint, but at Stephen, who’d pushed so fervently for travel via iron coffin instead of weeks in rural isolation only to argue for that third class cabin so very, very far from his own. Two for joy indeed.
“I concede the point,” he snapped before Saint could spit her rebuttal. “If you prefer separate accommodations, that is easily managed. You might have said as much earlier.”
She gave him a strange look well beyond her years, the way shamans got when they’d pieced together some bit of magical esoterica outside his grasp of the universe. “…Oi, that how it is then?”
“That I’m not an unreasonable bastard?”
But Saint wasn’t staring at him anymore. All her attention had turned to Merrick. “He ain’t worried, Frank. He just don’t trust you with me.”
Merrick straightened, and Crane instinctively braced himself for a round. “You can take care of yourself.”
Saint rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Same as you. But I could be any bloke in the world and it wouldn’t matter a shit. You fuck out of his sight and he’ll be out his bloody head, like one of those old dogs ‘as lost his master. Anxious little ankle-biter.”
“Excuse me?”
To Crane’s absolute horror, Merrick gave it a solemn moment of genuine consideration. “Fair enough.”
“Fair enough? Fair enough?” Good lord, he’d turned parrot. “You can’t actually see a whit of truth in that. You’re my manservant, your very position depends on you being near my person. And you’re a piss poor one for that matter since you’re away on our business on an hourly basis.”
“The business of killing people so’s you’re not so jumpy,” said Saint. “Ooh, Frank, he ain’t so fond of that postman at the door, can’t you hobble him a bit? Put his lordship’s mind at ease?”
“He does tend to find himself imperiled whenever Mr. Merrick’s gone out,” Stephen offered carefully, as though the bastard hadn’t been responsible for half of the debacles in question.
Merrick only needed one word to prove the point. “Boghda.”
After a long moment of tense silence, Crane gave them all a pinched smile, strolled to his valise, and promptly rummaged up the envelope containing their steamer tickets out of Bombay. Two first class, two third class, the latter of which he dutifully shredded and dumped onto the table in a flutter. He handed the remaining tickets to Merrick with a cheery, “To hell with all of you.”
Merrick pocketed the tickets. “Sir.”
With the same bitter cheer, Crane bid them all a good evening and stalked out of the room. Stephen caught up with him halfway down the hallway, swaying so terribly on his feet that Crane slowed up and looped an arm around his lover’s waist despite the lingering fury.
“Lucien…”
“You might have been less subtle.” Crane kept his eyes trained on the hall ahead of them, palm warm against Stephen’s side even through his shirt. His thumb stroked minutely against the soft fabric, enough for Stephen to judge his anger more clearly as wounded pride, not simmering betrayal.
Stephen sighed and leaned into him. “I expected Mr. Merrick to ask you outright. When he didn’t…”
Checking the hallway once more, Crane wheeled Stephen around until his back hit the wall then crowded in after him. “I meant playing with your ring.” He took Stephen’s right hand into his own, teasing at the too-quiet skin on either side of the golden band adorning his fourth finger. It earned him a faint pulse of energy, just a crack of distant thunder, but all too promising.
“You shouldn’t be thinking of anyone else, sweet boy,” he growled in Stephen’s ear. “I can hardly be blamed for following that little gesture down another path entirely.”
“To where, exactly?”
“You’ll find out in due time. You’re the one who wanted a private train carriage, after all.”
Crane pulled back casually as someone else turned into the corridor. He lay steadying hands on Stephen’s shoulders and frowned at the patchy blush creeping across Stephen’s cheeks. “You’d best return to your room. You don’t look well.”
They took the long way, strolling along the starboard promenade in comfortable silence, Crane’s hand brushing against Stephen’s spine whenever they found themselves alone.
“You’re not mad?” Stephen asked quietly, gazing out at the distant swell of the horizon.
“That you traded your health for Saint’s chance at playing lovebirds? Typical, really. It’s the Golds all over again.”
“…Oh God, you’re right.”
Crane barked a laugh and joined him at the railing. “I need only one thing from you.”
“Anything.”
“A fair grasp of Shanghainese by the time we reach China?”
Stephen’s eyebrows shot up. He gave a wan smile, the curl of his lip promising much for their trek across India. “With a private carriage and ample reward? Let’s see what we can manage.”
Once they reached the port, handling their subdued shamans turned into an exercise in herding cats. The moment her back foot left the last stretch of iron flooring, Saint sprang up a full three inches, which signaled rather a great deal of restraint. She flit between Stephen, walking circles up ahead, and Crane and Merrick as they orchestrated the new directions for their split baggage. In she’d sweep to whisper in her husband’s ear then dart away to ferry imaginary messages to Stephen, dancing on air just low enough for discretion.
Stephen was the one pacing the dock in a furious daze. Hands clenched like they’d gone into full rigor while he clawed someone apart, he zigzagged through the crowd on the trail of every gasp of ether he could taste, a man so far starved he’d make himself sick again off the buffet.
They left him to it.
“Should be all.” Merrick clicked shut the latch of his trunk after one last check. “Try not to ruin my life’s work.”
“My own person?”
“The suits.”
“Very well. I’ll have them forwarded to Shanghai when I meet my end at the hands of crazed warlocks.” Crane glanced back at their own crazed warlocks. “I still don’t like this.”
“Yeah, ‘cause I’ve got a shaman and you’ve got a bloody liability.”
Arguably, Stephen was only a liability when he and Crane were together, which didn’t help his case. Crane kept his mouth shut.
“…I’ll do fine,” Merrick said more quietly.
Contrary to the apparently popular belief, Crane had no reservations about traveling sans manservant. He always managed on his own. On a magpie wing and a curse, perhaps, but in the end he was still alive and Merrick couldn’t take all the credit. Eighty percent, tops.
It was nothing to do with Mongol warlords or bloodthirsty warlocks or any other war-born monstrosity nipping at their heels, and everything to do with the lifeless clockwork smile Merrick turned his way in the aftermath of Yuan-yuan’s death. Crane had spent a full year handcuffed to him, hurtling through the world as they rebuilt their walls against it and sealed everyone else out.
Saint skated back over from across the dock, weaving around passersby with a cheeky grin. She stalled halfway and quirked an eyebrow at Crane. He hadn’t meant to glower so intensely it stopped her in her tracks, but she didn’t even flinch. After a moment, she straightened her back, gave him a wink, and coasted over to flit circles around her husband.
“We’ll see,” Crane answered at last, though the words came out damnably soft and left no such room for doubt. He cleared his throat. “End of the line, Lady Crane. Kindly collect your borrowed manservant. Try not to throw anyone overboard.”
Saint beamed and skated over. “Them buggers will float.”
“See that they do.” He glanced back to make sure Merrick wasn’t paying attention, then added, “See that you do as well.”
It took her a moment to piece that one together, but her face lit up when she had. Thank God. It would have been ghastly to put it into any clearer words than that. Despite himself, his eyes drifted back to Merrick, and it was a moment before he caught wind of Saint’s soft laughter. She howled under her breath like a baying, heartbroken hound, then danced out of the way as soon as Crane turned with a vicious scowl.
“End of the line, your lordship,” she echoed back in as regal a tone as she could manage, clinging to Merrick’s arm. “Kindly collect your borrowed magpie. Try not to burn yourself on the kettle!”
Before he could snap that it was one time, Merrick’s own laughter boomed, and Crane found himself grinning instead. “I’ll try,” he managed, a fleet-winged flutter in his chest. “Merrick, have you taught her how to say goodbye in Shanghainese yet?”
Saint and Merrick shared a look.
“Kwai-kwai.”
“Means fuck on out of here, you sentimental twat,” Merrick translated blithely. “Catch us in Singapore. If you’re not round by September, we’re heading home without you.”