“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 was one more good reason to wear them all the time.