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Keetso Edison is an electrician on the sidewheeler Hertiginna when it runs into trouble, and the coyote must join forces with husky surveyor Annie Janssen to save the ship in a Very Steampunk Gold Rush.

It's Christmas, and you know what that means~ Have some nice, warm-hearted, old-fashioned smut for your holidays. And an adventure! And triangledogs! I hope you enjoy, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the year. Many thanks to Spudz for helping with this, particularly the local Alaska knowledge! And to huskies, my very own magical northern lights. This story is for you.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

"To Hold Him Like a Spell," by Rob Baird

---

Iron, laddie, the chief engineer had told him once. Iron is all there is between you and the hereafter.

Keetso had an easy time believing Kylie Heath's admonition. He couldn't see the outside world, but its howling was deafening even through the hull of the SS Hertiginna. A coyote's howling, wild and mournful--but Keetso felt no kinship. He put his paw out, steadying himself as the sidewheeler dropped and its prow plunged headlong into the trough of a wave.

She was all of seven years old, but life had worn the Hertiginna down like any other Alaskan. That was why Keetso found himself groping his way along the corridor, one lurching step at a time, until he found Stateroom 26 and knocked with relief. Two more swells went by before the door finally opened.

"Hello? Oh--you're the electrician?"

"Keetso," he confirmed, and tried to bow. The effort was complicated by the steamship's incessant rolling, and the stateroom's occupant gave him a wry, understanding smile. "Apologies"--he said it anyway, in case she'd taken offense at his failure to be properly deferential to someone in a first-class cabin.

But the room's owner, a bright-eyed husky, stepped back and shook her head. "You can't help it. I'm Annie Janssen--Keetso, you said? That's an unusual name."

"Keetso Edison," he confirmed. He closed the door behind him and looked around to orient himself with the stateroom. The radiator wasn't working, apparently--and the room was, indeed, rather chilly. Late December only made it worse. Given the snowdog's lustrous silver fur, he rather thought it wasn't much of a problem for Annie herself... but the coyote certainly noticed the temperature.

"Any relation?" Annie asked, her head tilting curiously. "To the Edison, I mean?"

"No." Keetso knelt down next to the radiator, patting it carefully. Sure enough, it had gone completely cold. The SS Hertiginna's owners would've been quite proud, back in '87 when the ship launched. Completely electrical, in the very newest fashion. Electrical lights. Electrical heating. Electrical stoves. Electrically assisted steering. Electrical watertight doors. In sedate southern waters that was quite fine, but now all it meant was keeping a coyote occupied. "Just my parents' imagination," he continued, and pulled a wrench from his vest to open up the access panel for the radiator's wiring. "We didn't really have a last name, so they made something up."

"Oh! You must be an Indian!" Keetso paused, looking over his shoulder at the husky. She'd occupied one of the sumptuous chairs that made a first-class stateroom worthwhile even on a coastal steamship, and was examining him with academic interest. "Right?"

"I'm American. Just... a coyote," he concluded, and went back to the panel. At last he was able to pry it open--just as another wave struck, and the metal covering sprang free to rap his paw like a reproving nun. "Damn it! Ah--I mean, sorry. Apologies for my language, Miss Janssen."

"Apologies for mine. I certainly didn't mean to question your heritage." The husky left her seat carefully, and braced herself on the wall to see what he'd gotten himself up to. "Can you fix this?"

"Yes." The problem was obvious: one of the patented Edison's Electrical-Circuit Interruptors had flipped. He clicked it back in the other way; the circuit breaker held, because his namesake was a genius, and not merely a coyote. "It should work now. Give it time."

"That was all you needed to do? Really?" Her forthrightness surprised the desert dog, though he knew it shouldn't have done so. Annie was, after all, traveling alone in the cabin. And if that hadn't been sufficiently scandalous, she'd also had the temerity to ask Captain McKee about her radiator without even bothering to find a chaperone on her way to the bridge. She might just as well have been a suffragette, for all the decency her bold questioning implied.

Though Keetso didn't mind, really, since it was better than the alternative. Better than the imperious attitude everyone else took with the coyote. He wasn't optimistic enough to take the husky's curiosity as genuine interest, but he answered just the same. "It's a matter of resetting the interruptor, that's all."

"I could've done that myself," she teased. "How does it work, Mr. Edison?"

The lilting of her voice made him briefly question his lack of optimism. You can just call me 'Keetso,' Miss Janssen, he wanted to say; maybe she'd repay the favor. The coyote caught himself before more mischievous thoughts could intrude. "It's just some electrical contacts in an oil bath. If they take too much current, the contacts heat up and separate, and the oil keeps the spark from melting anything. Then, when you've fixed whatever was wrong, you can just... push the contacts back together."

"And it's back to normal, I suppose? Clever!"

He patted the radiator, which had started to warm up again. So had he. That's what's doing it, he told himself. Not that smile of hers--it's the radiator, damn it. "Then it's back to normal, Miss Janssen, yes. You shouldn't have any further problems."

"I didn't really have problems before... God bless a husky's coat, I suppose." She did, Keetso admitted to himself, have a gorgeous one--her forearms were bare: soft slate and the pure white of fresh snow. He availed himself of the opportunity to take the sight in. "I bet Alaska isn't much fun for a coyote, though. How'd you get up here?"

"I thought it would be a change of pace from the Four Corners. And it was."

"An adventure?" When he didn't answer at first, she smiled cheekily--quite below the station implied by her long, ruffled dress. "You'll pardon me if I take you for the adventuring type, Mr. Edison."

Because he was a coyote, probably, and it was hard to imagine them wearing the same kind of formal attire Annie made look so very effortless. "I suppose I am, though it's been a few years."

"But you stayed in the Alaska Territory, anyway? How do you like it?"

"It pays the bills." He looked away, turning back to the panel from her inquisitive eyes. Not before he noticed their color: one sky blue, the other the fetching brown of expensive teak. "Or, at least, the ship does. As long as the heating works, it's pleasant enough inside."

But he had to put his hand out to keep from toppling with the next wave, and Annie stifled an obvious laugh. "Is it? I should've stayed on land, but I had places to go... you're sure it won't break again?"

"I hope so. Don't tell Captain McKee, but I can't make promises." 'Don't tell Captain McKee'?--what's gotten into you? She's probably just worried about the damn ship, with the storm and all...

"McKee said the SS Hertiginna was the most advanced ship in the world when I boarded in Skagway. I think he wanted to make a good impression, but he wouldn't tell me about the dynamo--said I shouldn't trouble myself with 'complicated' things like that. I imagine you'd let me trouble myself. Is that the problem?"

"Yes. The dynamo was the very best in the world... in 1887. But she was meant for inland travel... on the open seas, with the engines driven faster, sometimes the dynamo runs too hard and there are these... think of it like a sudden wave of electrical current. A power surge, if you will."

The husky waited for him to finish securing the panel and turn around before she shook her head. "I will, but I don't like it much. I was raised with good Continental clockwork and, you know, I don't see the point in all this... all this electrical nonsense."

"Well, for one, it's much more flexible."

"Flexible? Oh, come on, Mr. Edison--you'll have to do better than that. I've seen what clockwork can do, up at the processing engine in Sitka." He liked her grin from the moment she turned it on him. "You didn't think I was just a pampered rich girl, did you?"

"What are you, then?" he asked, ducking the question.

"I'm a specialist for the United States Geological Survey! That's how I ended up in Alaska. I'm on my first assignment since the university with Dr. Rob Cooley, if you've heard of him. He was the only scout-yawl helmsman, and I was the only one who knew how to arrange computing-cards for the Sitka engine."

"I don't even know how it works," Keetso admitted; mechanical engineering wasn't especially interesting to him. The difference engine was an overbuilt mechanical calculator--truly huge; even the one in Sitka was the size of a sternwheeler. He heard they made quite a clatter, and that was the extent of his knowledge.

"I don't, either. You put numbers in and you get them out. I've been working on integrating declination into the lines for the standard navigational charts... I'd just finished when I was recalled to Skagway, and then I got on the boat to Seattle. I'll tell you about it sometime," she promised. "Over tea or something more civilized than... this. But I suppose you have to get back to work."

And I don't eat in the first-class dining room, he didn't add. Something about Annie Janssen intrigued him--not just her grin and not just her work. But it was hard to know what she really wanted. Maybe she was genuinely interested in electricity, just now making inroads in the Alaska Territory.

Or maybe she wanted a distraction on the southern journey. Keetso was enough of a coyote to be willing to provide that. And he was enough of a coyote to know that well-off high-society ladies didn't just talk to men like him unless they wanted something. Iron. Trust in iron, he told himself. It was hard, true, but the softer things in life had a way of keeping themselves from coyotes. Iron hulls and handcuffs: those were reliable.

The weather grew worse as the sidewheeler battled its way south, and December 23rd stretched on into December 24th. There wasn't much change in the light, which remained grey and fitful, courtesy of the building storm. Keetso soaked a chunk of stale bread in his stew rather than chancing a spoon in the rolling waves. "It's getting worse," he said to his friend--Dickie Shea, a snowdog like Annie but a Territory native with not even a hint of aristocracy about him.

Dickie snorted. "We're getting worse, 'yote. Fuckin' bad state we're in."

"What do you mean?" The Hertiginna rolled again; he had to catch himself to keep from toppling out of the chair, and it left his bowl of stew sliding down the table.

Shea caught it handily, and grinned the fatalistic grin of a dog who, having seen the far side of forty years, didn't count on seeing more. "We're not steering. Heard from Tanner that our rudder's jammed and the auxiliary gear's broken."

Keetso swallowed hard. "Don't spread rumors like that. We can't get boats off in this weather."

"Can't get anything off in this weather," Dickie agreed, without showing any sign that he knew the implications of what he was saying. "Better than being in the dark, isn't it? Captain McKee can maintain some control with the paddlewheels, but we're going to be in trouble if they don't get it fixed."

Dickie's threat was underscored by the appearance of the third mate. "Coyote. Come along."

"Sir." Keetso nodded, took another bite of bread, and left the rest of his evening meal with Dickie. The electric lights in the corridor flickered ominously, but he ignored Dickie Shea's pessimism and focused on keeping his legs under him. "Problem, sir?"

Third Mate Robinson shook his head bitterly. "The rudder. Kylie wouldn't listen to McKee--the assist motor is..." A wave rocked them, slamming Robinson into the wall. "It's done for."

"Done for?" Kylie Heath, their chief engineer, knew more than anyone about steam. His treatment of the electrical systems, on the other hand, drove Keetso mad. The coyote could only hope that Heath hadn't permanently damaged the Westinghouse Patent Drive Motors that turned the steamship's rudder.

Robinson took him all the way to the bridge, where Captain McKee was speaking in hushed tones with Kylie Heath himself. Heath's chagrinned expression was chilling--the fox's muzzle looked a lot more white than Keetso remembered. "Good!" Kylie eyed him in open desperation. "You can help. You'll have to make it work again."

"How bad is it, sir?"

"The rudder cracked its pintle and the shaft bent. We managed to get it moving by overdriving the assistance gear, but now the motors aren't responding. Nothing happens when we apply power." Kylie scrupulously avoided Captain McKee's baleful glare. "And there was smoke reported from the transformer."

"Can you fix it, Mr. Edison?"

Keetso stayed on the Hertiginna because McKee respected the coyote as few others did. He owed the captain his honest answer. "No, sir. If the transformer's gone--and probably the winding in the motor, too--I can't repair that at sea."

"We needed to, laddie," Heath insisted. "The only way we could get enough torque to move the rudder at all, even with all hands on the manual gearing. If we can't get it working..."

Captain McKee twirled his fingers in agitation. "Mr. Heath says we're staying ahead of the water, for now, but the pumps won't be enough when we run aground. The way the mercury goes, the storm will worsen before it gets better. Robinson, start blowing the whistle. Send the distress signal--Mr. Heath, we need steering back. Get to work."

"Well, ya picked a good day for a miracle," the fox said. "If we can survive 'til tomorrow."

He left quickly, though, either happy to have work to distract him or happy to be out from under the captain's stare. McKee kept fidgeting. "Mr. Edison, you know I'm not up to date with your sparks and wires and whatnot."

"No, sir."

The otter looked forward, out the bridge windows on the driving snow. "Heard in Skagway they were testing some new type of... aetherial telegraph."

"Wireless, yes sir. We don't have the equipment for it here." The wireless was, anyway, just a means of bridging the gap between Skagway and Ketchikan. The submarine cables linking the Alaska Territory together never lasted more than a winter at a time.

"Shame," the otter sighed. "I kind of liked you, son. For a coyote, you weren't half bad."

Keetso shuffled on his feet, uncomfortable with the verb tense. "Maybe another ship, sir?"

"We're the last this week. Bloody terrible idea, sailing to make Christmas... Obviously the launch is useless. The small boats won't make headway in the storm, and if the weather gets any worse..."

"No," Robinson agreed, back from ordering the whistle blown. "We can't use the launch. But maybe there's another option. We could get above the waves, could we not? I think I saw a k-wing, under cover on the foredeck. Government property."

"Oh!" Keetso spoke out of turn, but at the hour of their imminent death nobody even noticed. "It must be from the USGS. You're familiar with Miss Janssen? She's with Dr. Robert Cooley. He'd know."

"Robin," McKee corrected, and dispatched a crewman to summon Dr. Cooley to the bridge.

'K-wing' was the shortened translation of the machine's full name, karalidapter. Two-person flying machines, nimble like hummingbirds and with about the same short range. The USGS used them for aerial surveys, the US Army used them as cavalry scouts, and McKee fully intended to use one as a lifeline.

Dr. Cooley could fly to Ketchikan, an hour away, and alert the Coast Guard to the ship's distress. It put the otter at ease... but only until Robin Cooley joined them. Fearful of the steamship's condition as the badger might've been, he plainly wanted no part of the idea. "Nonsense."

"No more than an hour, doctor," McKee insisted.

"In this weather? You're mad. Somebody will come. Find a different way."

"Nobody's answered the whistle, Dr. Cooley, and we can't very well launch a lifeboat in these conditions."

"Then you can't launch the aeroyawl either. Fifty-knot winds, captain--it can't be done."

Keetso cleared his throat. "They've flown in worse. Admiral Ito used a squadron of them to sink the Novgorod off Kamchakta in a gale, and to guide his troopships into Petropavlovsk."

McKee nodded. "I heard that--the Tsar thought nobody could attack in the winter. But they did, and if we don't get help, we're going to run aground. And then you'll be out in those fifty-knot winds in an open boat. The engineer says we can't hold position indefinitely without overstressing the wheels, and the anchor-chain's not rated for this. Somebody has to go."

"Do I look Japanese?"

"I don't care. We're not staging the bloody Mikado, Dr. Cooley--we need a pilot."

"I'll do it," Keetso volunteered, really before even knowing why. Just that it needed to be done, as McKee said, and he didn't fancy his luck in the frigid water. Besides, as he'd told Janssen, he was given to adventuring now and then. "I can fly it."

"You have an aeronaut's rating?" Dr. Cooley demanded.

Captain McKee seemed to have the same question. But then his eyes met Keetso's, and the otter read his answer in them. Not just what Cooley had asked, but what would happen if Keetso replied honestly. "Of course he does. Learned it in the army."

"He doesn't look like it," Cooley shot back. "He looks like a... a damned coyote, is what he looks like."

"Watch your language." Captain McKee reached out, and gripped Keetso's paw firmly. "I'll take the ship into the lee of the islands to our east... with luck, we'll be able to hold there for a day or so, but I don't dare take her back out. You'll need to find help."

"Ketchikan," Keetso confirmed aloud.

The ship's navigator found him a heavy sealskin jacket that kept out the worst of the spray and snow. He went on to explain the course he'd need to fly, and the landmarks to look out for, on the short walk to the foredeck where the Hertiginna's crew were getting the karalidapter uncovered. "And good luck with that thing," the navigator muttered. It was nice knowing you. At least get out of our sight before you crash it.

George Karalidas designed the flying machine as a means of quickly hopping between Mediterranean islands, but Americans had truly perfected the karalidapter. It matched their rugged, reckless spirit, after all, and they avoided fumbling with a Greek name by calling them 'k-wings' or 'aeroyawls.' Those made just as much sense--what else could such a thing be called?

There was no good word for the insectoid contraption, with two gossamer wings the shape of dandelion puffs blossoming to either side of its midsection. These were the source of its lift and propulsion; Keetso wondered if the first Greeks to see it fly had thought Karalidas some kind of sorcerer. Some of the crew thought the same of Keetso--he was a coyote, after all. They wanted him to do tricks for them.

In general Keetso didn't believe in 'magic,' but the k-wing was an abomination of physics. So even if the desert dog wasn't spiritual, he hoped the fates wouldn't be watching closely and he could avoid the worst of their judgment. While the crew of the SS Hertiginna went about readying the yawl for launch, he settled down on the bench in its cabin and checked the simple instruments: a compass, a chronometer, two motor-speed dials, a level, and a gauge for their power reserve.

The tightly wound springs could drive the wings for six hours, if used efficiently. What about when time was of the essence? His dime novels told the coyote he could expect half that endurance. That was still enough to get to Ketchikan, as long as he didn't get lost.

A door on the other side of the karalidapter opened, and Annie swung herself onto the seat next to him. "I'm coming with you," the husky said, brooking no argument. "It's government property, anyway."

"Does Dr. Cooley know?"

"He tried to talk me out of it. It didn't work for him, either. He has his flask, that's all he needs now." She tried to brush the water from her parka, gave up, and finally pulled the door shut. "Can you actually fly an aeroyawl? Dr. Cooley said it took years of practice."

"I've read some books," Keetso told her. The controls, like the gauges, were simple--two handles, one for each wing. Pulling on the handles adjusted the wing's tilt, and a lever changed the speed at which they spun. Lest she get the wrong impression, the coyote kept going: "And I flew one on a ranch in Wyoming."

"In winds like this?"

"Well... no."

"You seem like the kind of guy who thinks about getting into trouble."

"Adventures," he countered. "Remember? You said that already. I think about getting into adventures."

"Adventures are one thing, coyote--will you be able to fly this?"

One of the Hertiginna's crew tapped on the window next to him, forestalling his answer. Ready to go? the crewman mouthed. Keetso nodded, and twisted each handle in turn to release the brakes on the wings. Nothing happened at first; the yawl was still lashed down. The crewman held up three fingers. Then two. "Hold on," the coyote cautioned.

He squeezed both levers tight, and the yawl lurched skywards, just barely clearing the steamship's mast when the first blast of wind buffeted them. Spruce spars creaked and groaned, and another gust threatened to slam them back to the sea--but he had enough altitude to keep them from the crashing waves below, and they continued to climb in fits and starts.

Even fading, the lights of the sidewheeler were rather comforting, and he wondered if he'd made the wrong decision. Surely it made more sense to be down there, where it was safe--for the moment--than to be fighting against the air itself in a frigid arctic storm.

"Can you control it?" Annie asked him.

"Yes." His muzzle was tense. "It's not--so--bad."

"Good. We'll make for Ketchikan. Bearing three hundred and thirty-eight degrees."

He turned, shooting her a look. "The navigator said three-forty."

"He's wrong."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I'm a surveyor, Mr. Adventurer, and I know the Hertiginna's last position. Stay below the clouds if you can, and I'll keep you on course. Or at least, I'll try... it should be about a hundred and twenty nautical miles." He kept glancing over, splitting his attention between the karalidapter and the husky, while she pulled out a book from one of the pockets of her parka. Annie leafed through it until she found the map she was looking for. "We can do this... I think..."

"You think?"

From another pocket, Annie retrieved a metal protractor and a pencil. Despite the unsteady bucking, she managed to settle the protractor down, checking her work. "Yes. Seventy minutes at the gallop, by my calculations. Hold this heading."

A brass plate above the gauges gave him the most important details of the yawl: it had been made by Westinghouse in 1891, the wings were to be kept below three hundred revolutions per minute, and forward speed was not to exceed one hundred knots--'at the gallop.'

"Well, you're not making anywhere near that speed," Annie concluded ten minutes later. The protractor had generated a little spiderweb of lines atop her map, and something about their intersections clearly displeased her. "Nowhere close. That's Cathar's Head off to starboard--we should be another five miles further on."

"Fifty-knot crosswind," he pointed out. Keetso wasn't up to doing the arithmetic in his head, not with as much effort as it took just to keep the yawl level in the intensifying turbulence. He half expected the husky to pull something else from her parka and prove him wrong, but she stayed quiet. "As long as we're still headed in the right direction. We are, right? Then we'll get there."

"I hope so, Mr. Edison. Is this the right time to tell you that Dr. Cooley always had his doubts about the reliability of the aeroyawl?"

"Very much the wrong time."

The husky nodded, put her belongings back in her pockets, and reached over to grip his shoulder. He could feel the warmth, he thought, even through the heavy sealskin of his jacket. "I always had my doubts about Dr. Cooley, then. How does it handle? You seem to be doing it well enough."

All he could ask for was that it flew, and the karalidapter managed that--barely. Two hundred feet above the Pacific, they blundered on against the wind and the shear that knocked them about like insubstantial leaves. Every few minutes, Annie Janssen took her maps out again and noted their slow progress.

Two and a half hours later she leaned forward, peering out and into the darkness. "Lights," she murmured. "That must be Ketchikan. It feels like the wind is letting up, too, doesn't it?"

"I think so." He couldn't see much; low clouds blocked the stars, and the turbulent sea stretched on and on to either side. He had to take the husky's word on their course--then again, she was a mapmaker. And the lights, it turned out, did belong to the unimposing settlement of Ketchikan.

Keetso pulled the karalidapter into an awkward hover over the docks, its spherical wings buzzing fitfully until someone finally emerged. Three more workers joined the first, and together they got a rope around the yawl's skids. As soon as he touched down Keetso hit the engine brakes, and the coyote realized he had never been more exhausted.

"Who the hell are you?" a burly bear of a dockworker demanded. "Who the hell is out in this weather?"

He could barely hear the man over the howling wind, but he raised his voice and made it carry. "Keetso Edison! The SS Hertiginna!"

"Hertiginna?" He shouted the name over his shoulder, and a wolfy-looking dog with a missing left ear and a surly scowl made his way forward, bracing himself against the wind. "Hank, you know about a Hertiginna?"

"Outta Skagway," the wolf said, his voice slurred by the wind. "Down to Seattle, and hell if I know what's in between. Folks with more greed than sense--rich bastards, the lot of--eh? Sorry, miss," he checked himself, as Annie stepped from the karalidapter into the storm. "Didn't know you was a lady."

"Who's in charge?" Keetso asked.

Hank pointed to himself, and dragged the pair from the docks to a wooden shack that looked ready to surrender to the elements at any moment. He closed the door, and Keetso found he was grateful at least for the iron stove--though the wind was no less insistent. Hank still had to raise his voice. "What do you want?"

"The ship's disabled--no steering. Captain McKee put her into the lee of an island to the south, but he'll need a tug, or to get the passengers off."

Hank pulled off his jacket and gloves. The wolf's ear wasn't the only thing missing: three of the fingers on his right hand were gone, too. "Can't be done," he declared. "Not in this weather."

"There's six hundred souls aboard," Annie said.

"Five ninety-eight, beg pardon." Hank pointed at them with his remaining index finger. "And count yer blessings there--could be worse. Ain't got anything what'll sail in this. Biggest ship's the sternwheeler Alice May, and her master's no damned fool. Beg pardon. Again."

"Skagway, then," Keetso suggested. "Can we get a message to Skagway?"

"The cable's down to Camp Juneau on account of auroral activity, and ice has bound up the shutters on our heliograph. So... no," Hank finished. "We can't. I'll put you up 'til the storm clears, but that's the best I can do. Your ship's in the hands of a very angry god. Try praying."

"That won't be good enough." Annie shoved her paw into her parka, coming back with neither protractor nor map but a gold pocket-watch. "It's been three hours already. Time is critical. Can you recharge the springs of the aeroyawl here?"

"Well..."

"By order of the government," she insisted. The husky snapped the watch closed, and produced her mapbook instead. "We're with the Geological Survey, as you can see."

"Both of you? The coyote?"

"Both of us."

Hank sighed heavily--they could hear it over the wind--and asked them to give him an hour. Until then, the battered wolf directed them to another shack, empty and slightly better insulated against the cold. Only slightly; frost crackled in the blankets when Keetso settled heavily on the edge of a bunk. "What don't you have in those pockets? You got the wolf to listen to you."

"Wolves are easy. Just look like an authority figure." She sat down on the opposite bunk, burying her face in her paws. "The dockmaster was right, wasn't he? I heard that the later the season gets, the fewer ships are willing to sail. Will there be ones in Skagway?"

"There should be, and the Coast Guard has an aerial cutter that can handle these conditions... if it hasn't been called out to rescue some other poor ship." Keetso had now seen three winters in Skagway, and in each of them the cutter Gyrfalcon had spent nearly as much time aloft and rescuing the helpless as it had undergoing repairs from the brutal work.

"This isn't your first close call, I suppose."

"Nope. The frontier isn't for everyone."

"Is that why you gave up adventuring? It stopped being for you?"

"Well. I was fine." He tried to decide how much she might really want to know. "And we were on a mining claim, not a ship. But I needed a new partner, let's put it that way."

"The one you were working with couldn't handle it?"

"He froze to death."

"Oh, goodness."

"So Skagway seemed like a better option, at least for a spell."

Annie's ears lowered, and her muzzle stayed framed by her clasping paws. "Yeah. We should've stayed there."

"Why didn't you? Not adventuring, right?"

"No." She looked up at him, meeting the coyote with her mouth hidden and her eyes dark. "You wouldn't believe me, Mr. Edison."

"Wanted to be home for Christmas?" he tried joking, remembering what McKee said about the voyage.

Her pinned ears twitched. "Yes."

"What?"

Annie fidgeted, and when she finally lifted a paw from her muzzle it was only to draw the pocket-watch back out and check the time. Catching his expression, she turned the face of the watch so he could read the inscription. "My father is Leon Janssen, of Janssen Steel in Milwaukee."

To Anastasia, the inscription read. And every hour saved from that eternal silence. "I see," Keetso said, although in truth he did not. Except that the timepiece must've been quite expensive, because on further investigation it was a proper, high-accuracy chronometer. "They bring you back for Christmas?"

"To put me in the traces like a common sled-dog." She closed the watch and tucked it into her parka.

Keetso's intuition told him that the gift had been meant to stand in lieu of actual support for the course she chose. Her father assumed that giving her a chronometer, like a proper surveyor, would satisfy a craving. And, further, his intuition told him that she was not so easily fooled. "Golden traces, though."

"Oh, yes. Back in Wisconsin is a ball I've been putting off for five years, a gown I don't want to wear, and my husband-to-be. The heir to the Lake Line--unless they've bought the Erie Eastern already, in which case: the heir to the Lake and Erie. A thousand miles of track, Mr. Edison," she told him, in what was plainly her father's tone.

He hadn't known the husky long. Even still, the word 'husband' was a bit of a blow, and he was glad Annie seemed to be distracted. "I see," he repeated. Don't wander, coyote. Focus on what you need to get done if it helps. "So then--"

"My parents let me go to college hoping I'd find a quiet pursuit like the classics, or poetry. Father pulled strings for me to get a desk job with the Survey, in Washington, DC. He was livid when I wound up here... but it took him another year before he got enough leverage over Dr. Cooley's supervisor to have us recalled. For Christmas. His letter with the tickets called it a gift. You know how parents are."

The coyote twitched his ears, not certain what to think. "My father became a miner in Colorado when the government took his land. They were happy to see me go--one less mouth to feed, you know?"

"Oh. I'm sorry. After we get through this, let me know if you're ever in Milwaukee at Christmas. We'll definitely owe you dinner... have you done that? Or was that not something your family did, a proper Christmas dinner? You're not... I guess..."

"I'm a heathen, right." It was a gamble that she'd take the joke as it was intended.

And she did. "Fine. I do like the holidays. My mother..." Annie caught herself, laughing. Her mood was starting to improve. "It wasn't her, was it? Her cook, my mother's cook, makes the very best Christmas pies. As reputable individuals, we even used to sponsor the carolers. I joined them."

'Carolers' sounded like one of those ancient military units that endured as a badge of honor, but from his vague knowledge of European tradition Keetso thought it had something to do with singing. "In a... choir?"

"House to house. I know I don't look so respectable now," she admitted. In the heavy winter coat, she looked like any other Alaskan--more concerned with survival than sartorial affairs. Still, it left her muzzle exposed, and Keetso figured her smile alone counted for the difference.

Annie went on for a bit longer about the strange ritual that was 'Christmas,' with candles burning in the boughs of a pine tree, and wreaths, and feasting. He didn't see the point in telling her that, even had his family been monied, coyotes were kept at a distance from the romantic arts. They stayed on the fringes of society, where they belonged, to be dirtied up with coal dust and grease.

"I will miss the lights this year," the husky continued. "But it was worth it."

"With some more work, it will be."

Her mood drifted from wistfulness to fresh concern. "True. Do you know Captain McKee well? Do you think he can save the ship? I don't know anything about him, and I don't know much about sailing."

"You're asking a desert dog about ships?" Keetso laughed ruefully. "I've been on the Hertiginna for about a year, and McKee seems good. But they'll need luck, and they'll need the storm not to worsen."

Annie nodded. "The worst part is not knowing, isn't it?" From some pocket--she seemed to have many--the husky produced a small lump of metal. "Luck. Dr. Cooley gave this to me when I said I was coming with you. He's carried it with him ever since the Plains Wars."

"What is it?"

"A bullet. He was holding up his flask to take a drink when it hit and punched a hole clean through the side, and he said it was a waste of good whiskey, but... worth it. I hope I see him again, curmudgeon that he is..."

She handed the bullet to him for his inspection. The coyote took it--then gasped at the sudden, strange feeling flashing through him. He didn't know what made him say it: "They're still alive."

"How do you know? You felt something, didn't you?"

"I'm not sure..."

Annie took the bullet back and it vanished into the depths of her pocket. "You did. I had wondered if it was true, what they say about coyotes... that you know magic..."

"Magic's a myth. I know electricity, and a little engineering."

"But they say it--don't they?"

Keetso's head drooped. Was she being serious? Or was she trying to cheer him up--trying to make light of their situation, there in the cold bunkhouse where parlor tricks seemed so very far away. Could she really have believed he detected something about Cooley from the bullet?

Could he?

His father claimed he could kindle light from the tips of his fingers. He'd never been able to show Keetso; the mines wore him out. "They say it," he finally granted her. "But I don't believe it. I don't believe in magic. Do you?"

"I've seen strange things up here, Mr. Edison, just like you." She took a deep breath. "But if I don't believe in magic, I have to believe in something. Will you be able to fly to Camp Juneau? Are you ready?"

"I suppose. And from there to Skagway?" He wouldn't be able to make it all on one charge of the karalidapter's springs. "I have to be, don't I?"

"I wish I could fly it, but I don't think now is the time to learn. I'll be there to help you navigate."

"No. Stay here. I can find Juneau, and--"

"Mr. Edison, I insist. I said I believed in you--what's the point of faith unless you act on it? I'm coming."

She wouldn't change her mind, and Keetso didn't argue too much. And a few minutes later, Hank pushed the door open, kicked snow from his boots, and told them it was time to leave. "Your yawl's ready to go. Latest from the Bureau: winds from the west-northwest at forty knots. Twenty-eight point one inches of mercury, fifteen degrees of temperature."

"Good news," Keetso muttered.

"Sorry, 'yote. Best of luck to ya. We'll keep yer companion safe, don't ya worry."

He'd made the same assumption Keetso had, and got no further with it. "I'm the navigator." Annie stood, straightening her parka and pulling the hood forward until her ears poked through the holes stitched in it. The extra ruff of fur about her face was problematically fetching, and it only called attention to her stern eyes. "We're going together. Now, I suppose."

"Your funeral, then." Hank scoffed, and stepped back to let them out.

He could just see the port's flag, looming in the driven snow. Keetso grabbed the handhold on the left side of the karalidapter, and Annie took its counterpart on the right side. Between them they were able to twist the machine to face the direction of the incoming wind.

The cabin was freezing, no warmer than the outside, but at least the biting storm couldn't have its way with them when he got the door closed. Annie gave him a sympathetic look, and reached out to brush his neck. "We'll get you back to Colorado soon. Where it's warmer."

"Not much warmer." He was grateful for the sealskin coat, though, which at least made the aeroyawl bearable. And, making eye contact with Annie to ensure the husky knew what was about to come, he pulled the throttle levers for the yawl's engines, and they tumbled skyward before the skids had a chance to freeze to the dock.

"Three thirty-three degrees," Annie said. "At least the wind is steady."

So it was. That made staying on course a little easier, and kept the flying from becoming too taxing. Based on his calculations, they had two and a half hours of it to go. And they'd need to adjust their course, at some point; they could cross that bridge later.

Annie Janssen had calculated the rhumb line--a navigator's crutch, the line of constant bearing between two points. Not necessarily the shortest route and, with the wind a constant forty knots, not the one they could rely on flying. But, for the moment, it served. For the moment. "Can I ask a question, Mr. Edison? Without offending you, I hope..."

"As long as it's not about coyote magic."

"Just a little. Have you flown in clouds before?" He shook his head without looking at her. "We'll need to climb above them, if we can, in half an hour or so... I have to take a sight."

"I think I can do that."

"Dr. Cooley hated flying in clouds, as he said it turned him around something fierce. Focus on the instruments, and I'll help the best I can. Remember: I believe in you. Do you believe in me, Mr. Edison?"

"Yes," he said, though it didn't make the next thirty minutes easier. Every passing second darkened the sky further, rendering the soupy fog less distinct. Clouds had never seemed so ominous--not even the dark thunderheads rolling in across the prairie, with their gleeful threat of lighting and tornadoes.

But Annie had said need and have to; Keetso pulled on the controls, curving the karalidapter into an upwards arc until the world vanished.

A blanket had been thrown over his head: deadening, suffocating. The karalidapter's level seemed to show the wings were straight, and the yawl's prow was pointed just a few degrees up. And the compass hadn't moved--but they were drifting, he was sure of it. "Steady on," Annie reassured him. "You're starting to turn."

How?

Keetso forced himself to stare at the level and the compass until the needle pointed back to "333" and stayed in place. But the more he stared, the more he knew the level or the compass were lying. Tricked by the storm. Not up to the job, not any more than he was. "Steady," Annie said again. "You're doing fine, Mr. Edison."

Maybe that was a lie, too.

He thought of a story his father had told him. There'd been a minor cave-in, no longer than an hour to clear, but his light had gone out and he told Keetso about the darkness. About not knowing where the walls were, or if they had meaning, or if time passed at all in that hour between the end of the light and the first flicker of the world being reborn.

In that hour I was dead for a thousand years. Never go underground, Keetso. Never.

And this should've been the opposite. But no. There, up in the heavens, it was the same damned thing. He strained his eyes to make sense of anything, and fought the malicious instruments to a draw. Annie pulled her pocketwatch out, hanging it on its chain to gauge the angle of their ascent. And her head tilted. "Is that... light?"

"Is it?" The coyote's fingers were so tense on the throttles that they ached. "I think you might be right... I think..." And they broke through, and both of them yelped, and he almost lost control of the yawl.

High above, beyond darkness and death, beyond the reach of any coyote, a rippling, twisting emerald ribbon stretched across the night. And no sooner had it started to fade than the sky thought better of it and the silky green glow brightened to a luminous dazzle. Beyond that, its crimson-hued mate twirled and twisted--and beyond that, the stars, a silent audience.

"You said you loved the lights, didn't you..."

Annie's muzzle hung open. The display danced in her eyes, turning the blue and brown to jewels that sparked like struck flint. "It isn't what I meant," she whispered. "But it should've been. My Lord, it should've been... Mr. Edison, snap me out of this. Help."

"A sight," he reminded her.

The husky forced her muzzle shut; her paw fumbled around her parka until she found the right pocket at last. Keetso glanced at the level, and the horizon, but his attention was elsewhere: on the snowdog, whose fur was glowing. Spring wildflowers and autumn leaves and winter campfires capered in the brass of the instrument she held.

The coyote knew that he'd have to descend at some point, to fight the clouds again. From above, with the aurora reflected on their wispy tops, it didn't seem so bad. Manageable. And he would survive, he decided, because he refused to ever forget the way Annie Janssen looked, with the sextant along her muzzle and her downy ears rimmed with halo.

"We're..." She shook her head fiercely, putting the sextant down and tearing herself from the sky. "You flew a steady course, right?"

"Steady as I could. Maybe a few degrees' drift in the cloud cover."

Her fingers were shaking when she got out her map, chronometer, and protractor. "Based on our flight time, we should be half a degree further north. Although..."

"Although?"

Annie flipped through the book of maps. "Checking the declination tables." Her pencil worked swiftly, and the urgency served to distract her even from the celestial display. "Slightly further to the left. Three hundred and twenty-eight degrees... and we can stay up here for a bit, if you don't mind it?"

He didn't. The air was calm, and the northern lights were as bright as he'd ever seen them. "How much further to Juneau?"

"Should be an hour to the army camp... but... to be honest, Mr. Edison, I don't know that we'll have much better luck with a telegraph there... not with those as they are." She leaned back, watching the lights through a porthole on the roof of the aeroyawl's hull. "I wish I could enjoy it. I don't expect to see many more of them."

"You'd have to stay in Alaska. There must be work for someone with your talents."

The husky smiled, rather wistfully, and slid across the bench to lean on his side. Gently, at first, to make sure he had control of the karalidapter. When it was obvious that he did, the lean became heavier, and she used him to brace her head in the direction of the fire-framed stars. "Did you not hear me talk about the heir to a railroad, Mr. Edison?"

"Sure. But you didn't sound very happy about it, and there's not so much of this in Wisconsin. And you only get one chance to make the life you want. Used to tell myself I'd get in adventures, with the right partner. Then I started out on my own, and that worked, too."

"Coyote advice?"

"Your father might have it wrong, you know. I don't think he got the right idea from the Tennyson on the chronometer."

"Oh, so you know Tennyson now?"

"I've read it, yes. And I've 'drunk delight of battle with my peers, far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.'"

"You do..."

"'I am a part of all that I have met,'" he continued. "'Yet all experience is an arch, wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades forever, and forever, when I move.' You don't seem like you'd be content with knowing there was an untraveled world, if you ask me."

Annie smiled, reaching out to run her gloved fingers over the edge of the glass as though the cabin window was the arch, and the aurora was what gleamed beyond. "Maybe not. 'How dull it is to pause, to make an end... to rust, unburnished, not to shine in use'..."

"It's only the end if you want it to be."

"Do you mean of Alaska? Or of our adventure, Mr. Edison?"

"That's up to you."

She grinned wider. "Coyote advice it is. And don't bother telling me there's no such thing as coyote advice any more than there's such a thing as coyote magic--I know you're thinking that." She sighed heavily, and despite the weight of the evening her tail thumped on the bench. "I'll just savor the aurora while I can."

The aurora, and the midnight sun, and the cold that sharpened the air until the trees were razor-thin and ice crystals hung like a meteor shower suspended in amber. Keetso was, himself, committed to the Alaska Territory. Cold as it was, dangerous as it was, it beat dying in a silver mine, for someone else's silver.

Annie stayed quiet until it was time to descend. Her eyes held the stars as long as they could, until clouds re-enveloped them and they were settling back down towards the earth and all its broken promises. Keetso was slower on the descent than he had been going the other way--who knew how low the clouds were, after all?

His navigator's work was superlative: as soon as they dipped back below the clouds both of them caught the dull glow of gas lights and campfires from the army outpost east of Juneau and the town itself just behind it. A few hundred people, each trying to make the most of their one chance. On a night like that--a cold night, with four inches of fresh snow already on the ground and more threatened--nobody hastened to see who was joining them.

"Do they not believe in Saint Nicholas?" Annie muttered. Two minutes of increasingly unstable hovering went by before the husky finally tapped a lever on the floor with her boot, firing a Very signal flare over the largest building in the army camp. The Very flare formed its own, bright-orange aurora, reflected on the metal roofs.

The half-dozen soldiers that brought them down were bundled up like the dockworkers at Ketchikan; Keetso didn't even recognize their species until they were in and out of the storm. Captain Haskins looked disconsolate. When he opened his mouth, the bear's Mississippian accent provided the reason. "Not flying weather. Ain't traveling weather, either. Are you with the Post?"

"With the government survey," Annie corrected, as if it might carry weight. "We were passengers on a steamship that's been disabled and needs assistance. Is--"

Haskins shook his head, cutting off the discussion before it could even begin in earnest. Half the camp, he said, was gone--organized as a relief party for a grounded fishing trawler. They had no ability to stage another rescue, and they hadn't been able to raise any of the adjacent stations by tele- or heliograph.

Once more all he could offer was to recharge the power reserve on the karalidapter--but it would take at least two hours. Their auxiliary engine was old and idle; the boilers needed time to build up steam. Annie took off her parka, and Keetso removed his rather filthy sealskin coat, and they huddled around the stove in the barracks. He managed to doze off, briefly, but the sound of boots startled him back awake--a pair of soldiers who'd remained as part of the garrison. "You're ready to leave. It is your k-wing, right?"

"Yes," Keetso said. "Ours."

"Doesn't surprise me they'd make a coyote fly it," one of them said. A canine himself, with pointed ears that didn't seem out of place when he went on to explain he was quarter-blooded Cherokee. "They thought you'd be expendable."

"Ain't I?" Keetso asked, forcing a grin. "Why didn't they send you out on the rescue party, sergeant?"

"'Cause Billy's full half," the other soldier butted in. "Unlike Price here. What I want to know is, what about the lady? How'd she get up here?"

"She--"

Annie cut him off. "I'm an employee of the government. I do surveys and mapmaking."

"Really?" Price didn't know what to make of the husky. And in fairness, without the parka and the sextant, Keetso wasn't entirely sure himself. Her summer-sky blouse, a perfect complementary shade to her blue eye, was more than a few classes above the coyote. But the slight curl to her lip was at least on his level, and maybe even more déclassé.

"Really," the coyote decided to join in, extracting a precious few more seconds of warmth before it was time to brave the night once more. "We got from the ship to Ketchikan to here, in the storm, without losing our way. I couldn't have done that by myself."

"You shouldn't have even tried. Bloody stupid, if you ask me," Price growled. "Dumb coyote gamble."

"Stupid? There's six hundred on that ship--don't know what it would be to let them drown," Keetso shot back. "But I'd rather do my kind proud than sit around this damn oven and wait."

They didn't have a choice, of course; the karalidapter didn't have room for two more passengers even if the soldiers wanted to join in. Annie, who did have a choice but had obviously thrown her lot in with him, got her parka on and they walked back out to where the machine lay abandoned.

"Hey... for what it's worth? I don't think you're expendable."

"Just a coyote?" He felt comfortable enough to smile, inappropriate for his station as it might have been.

She smiled back. "We've managed to make it work so far. One more leg, right?"

"One more leg."

"A short one, too. Three hundred thirty-four degrees, with the headwind, but I'm sure we'll find landmarks soon enough. It's only seventy miles."

"Seventy miles to a proper bed?" And some warm stew, and a reliable heater. He tried to keep those images held in his mind, and couldn't help it if Annie intruded. And he squeezed the throttles--but the karalidapter just jolted, and stayed still.

"Are we frozen again?"

"Already?" He tried the throttles a second time, and the yawl shuddered uselessly. Annie pulled open the door and went to check their skids. When she reappeared, shaking her head, Keetso growled. "Then I don't know--are the wings spinning?"

"No."

"We have plenty of power..."

"Can you look at the engine?"

"And do what?" Well aware that it wouldn't matter, he worked the throttle levers through their full range again. "I'm an electrician, remember? You're the one who loves clockwork."

Annie pulled the door closed, taking a few deep breaths and trying to calm down. "It's better than nothing. Might the engine be broken?"

"Seized, more likely. The grease bound up, or the parts froze together--it was showing all of five degrees above zero."

"So, then, we'll find some tools and take it apart and fix whatever's wrong."

Now they were hitting the limits both of headstrong husky gumption and of blind coyote rashness. "If it's seized, we'll need new parts, and they don't fly these things at Camp Juneau... maybe if we get lucky there would be spares in town, but... I don't know the first thing about these engines..."

He trailed off to avoid forcing them to confront the other options. Going by land would add another two days, given the weather. The telegraph couldn't be relied on. The heliograph network was frozen stiff just like their yawl. "What if we..." Annie didn't finish either.

"I'm just a coyote, I..."

"Don't do that!" she snapped. "Don't listen to them. You agreed to do this because it was the right thing--because they needed you. Same reason I did, and I don't talk down to myself, do I? So you don't either. You volunteered, and you kept going in Ketchikan when you could've given up. We'll find a way."

"I..."

"Coyote. Be magical."

"I told you, it doesn't work that way."

"It has to! I--you got us here! You got us off the ship, and don't try to fool me, Mr. Edison, you've never flown a karalidapter by yourself before, you just knew that you had to. I believe in you. What do we do? Give up?"

He turned, trying to keep the helplessness from his eyes. "We can't give up, we just--"

Five degrees on the thermometer, but he learned quickly that her lips were warm as anything. The husky's muzzle was crushed to his, and a moment later her arms were around him too. He felt the puff of air as she gasped, and her breath turning to ice at the tips of his whiskers. He had time for a second of surprise, and then he hugged her back, letting go of the handle in his right paw.

Back in the heart of the yawl's transmission, two tightly meshed gears twitched and jolted. In some moments, in some glimpses between the relentless drumbeat of physics, there was magic--and Keetso's desperation took form. Startled by the kiss, by the husky in his arms, the energy raced from his fingertips to the steel gears, prying the metal apart.

Or maybe it was the released tension on the throttle line, rebounding to jar the transmission free--but the gears clattered and spun, erratically at first and then at full speed. His left paw was still on the control for the port wing: the yawl lurched, and his shock was fortuitous, for he let go of that control too.

Annie jerked backwards. "Did it work?"

"Maybe? Maybe!" He didn't know how, he only knew that the wings were turning again, and he wasn't about to second-guess serendipity. "I don't know--but we better get moving. We--"

"Three thirty-four degrees, as fast as you dare." Her ears were back, she was out of breath... and he knew the feeling, but as long as the spinning wings were responding correctly they had places to be. He aligned the yawl's nose and released the brakes on both throttles, getting his wits back about him as they darted forward and Camp Juneau swept by beneath their humming steed.

Keetso let that reassuring drone fill the silence for two or three minutes. "So was that... your own kind of magic, then?"

"Nobody even spreads rumors about 'husky magic.'"

"I might now, to tell you the truth. I don't know how else to explain it, Miss Janssen--but whatever you did..."

"Believed in you. What I did was believe in you, Keetso. We already agreed we're believing in each other."

And if he focused on their flying, he didn't have to spend so long thinking about what she'd done. Had she been too anxious to notice how impulsive it was? Did she honestly believe he was some kind of sorcerer? Would she do it again, willingly?

Probably not, and so he concentrated on getting them to their destination. At least the route was direct, and fast, and he knew much of it by past experience. When the lights appeared, dim on the storm-shrouded horizon, he consoled himself with their approaching goal. "I never thought I'd be so happy to see this place."

"Speak for yourself," Annie said with a grin--they were both feeling the easing tension of the final stretch. "It's charming. Think of how many adventures start here."

"I'll just be glad to end one." The coyote eased up on the karalidapter, slowing it down so he could scan the docks for a place to land. Skagway was the biggest, most important city in that part of the Territory--even late on Christmas Eve there were men on the docks to catch sight of the approaching yawl.

There was also, at her special berth, the Gyrfalcon, porthole lights aglow. Keetso made for the aerial cutter, and as he approached he could see the crew racing to make room for him. They must've known something was amiss, for a lone traveler to stagger in from the storm and nestle up to the Coast Guard's most distinguished Alaskan vessel.

Sailors expertly caught the aeroyawl's skids and worked him down to a safe landing. As soon as he opened the cabin door he was face-to-face with a white-furred wolf, the very picture of authority. "Commander Barrett. Who are you?"

"Keetso Edison, electrician on the SS Hertiginna. And..."

"Annie Janssen, government surveyor," she introduced herself.

Commander Barrett nodded, glancing over his shoulder at the Gyrfalcon. Two hundred-fifty feet of polished, pristine airship. The six lifting airscrews that kept her safely above the waves were beginning to spin. But if the cutter was a prestige assignment, and Barrett was picture-book elegant, the wolf showed no signs of slack. "The ship must be in trouble, if you came back."

"Her rudder's gone. Captain McKee is taking shelter and the hull was sound when we left..."

"Nine hours ago," Annie added. "Her last known position was at fifty-three degrees twenty-eight north, one-thirty degrees thirty-four west."

"Not even to Vancouver," Commander Barrett growled. "You said that it was nine hours--you made it from the ship to here in nine hours? In these conditions? God bless you. We'll make ready to cast off." He turned sharply on his heel.

"Do you need help? We can help guide you."

Keetso felt the nine hours weighing down strongly--not that he minded Annie's offer, but he also wasn't disappointed when the wolf turned, and shook his head. "You've done enough, you two. Let the Coast Guard deal with the storm--you should get some rest."

He strode off, the pace even and heavy--his demeanor told Keetso and Annie that the steamship was as good as rescued already. "Guess we should trust him. Guess we ain't got much of a choice..."

"Doesn't seem like it, no. But I think we've earned some sleep, Keetso."

The steamship line's flophouse would still be open, and he had his union card handy. Earned some sleep--that was putting it mildly! The flophouse was a squalid affair, the food was rancid, and the company unspeakable... and he looked forward to having the hard cot on his back like nothing else. "Agreed--will I see you in the morning?"

"Eh?" The husky cocked her head. "Where are you going?"

"I have a cot waiting at the... at the barracks. At... over past Soapy's... Annie?" She was staring at him. The coyote didn't know which eye judged him more sternly, the blue or the brown one.

"Keetso."

"What?"

She shook her head in what passed for genuine exasperation. Then she took his gloved paw and started leading him up the street. "Answer me one question--which I believe I have earned, as your navigator."

"As many as you want, fine."

"Do they make you eat from the scrapheap, too?"

The question was rhetorical--at least, he thought so. But she didn't stop walking until they were standing in the entrance of the Placer Inn, with Alaskan-gold inlays in the mahogany doors. The kind of place that would've been unthinkable in Skagway before the gold rush, and now catered to the lucky few who felt like showing off their good fortune. "You're staying here?"

"We're staying here," she said primly. "Go on. Open the door."

He did, earning a fresh shake of her head as the husky slipped through and into the lobby. "I can't afford to stay here, Annie, you know. You can come to the flophouse if you want."

Annie jabbed his side, scowling. "You're impossible. At least you held the door, like a good servant. I might as well try to retain a little plausible deniability." She walked up to the front desk, catching the attention of the bemused clerk. "We'll need a room for tonight."

"Of course, Miss Janssen. Your usual? What about for your... him..." the clerk pointed in Keetso's direction.

"You'll know his name by tomorrow," she assured the man. "He'll take the spare room."

"Yes," the clerk said, unhappily. "I suppose he will. Your room is on the third floor, Miss Janssen. Please let us know if you need anything."

The elevator operator, too, eyed Keetso like Annie was dragging in something truly noisome. She ignored the expression, and led him briskly to the ornate wooden door of the indicated room. "One of them, rather--the spare room has a separate entrance, if you don't want to cause a scandal."

"I don't really..." Mind. The word caught on his muzzle.

"What do you think? Honestly. Truly honest, Keetso."

"I'll be god-damned," he breathed.

"Maybe a bit less blasphemy on Christmas Eve," she chided him--then undid the work by grinning. "You like it?"

Brass and silver fittings... thick, lush carpets... soft, well-tuned gaslights instead of candles or hard electric lamps. The suite even had its very own water closet, and a faucet that ran both hot and cold in the adjoining washroom. "I'm impressed."

And then he turned around.

Annie's parka was hanging on an ornate rack by the door. This time there was no storm or crisis to steal his attention from the finer details... such as the delicate embroidery, spreading across the soft blue of the husky's blouse like window-frost. Such as the indecorous curve of the cerulean skirt, clinging to her hips, and the even more indecorous way it left nearly four inches of her leg exposed.

Such as her grin at the look he was giving her. "Don't stare, Keetso," she ordered.

"No? Why?"

"It isn't done, that's why."

"A lot of things that aren't done happen anyway," he pointed out. He took his coat off and hung it up, rather acutely aware that his knickerbockers and chemise wouldn't have passed muster for the hotel clerk--let alone someone like Leon Janssen. And presumably his daughter, who was still grinning. "I'm not like you. All... fluffy."

"This is fluffy?" she teased, brushing the arms of her blouse. "Frilly? Didn't you have a uniform when we first met?"

"I was off-duty when they summoned me," the coyote explained. "And it wouldn't have been comfortable in the cabin."

"A good point," Annie admitted. "I wish I'd had some proper bloomers, but my father doesn't like me being so disreputable. I am a husky of noble station, you know."

"Right."

"You sound doubtful."

He coughed, and delicately indicated the elephant in the room. "When we were in Juneau, and... there was a kiss..."

"When I kissed you?" the husky prompted.

"I was trying to use the passive voice to give you an excuse," Keetso explained. She hadn't taken it, and she didn't protest when he stepped closer. "We could pretend it didn't happen. You have your life to get to... your husband..."

"My father's son-in-law." Annie shrugged softly when she offered the correction. "Eventually. Not yet. What if we didn't pretend?"

"Well, your father wouldn't like it very much, for one. And beyond that, I imagine it would mean you'd disappoint your father twice--sticking around instead of going back to be a stately, demure heiress..."

"Mm. But what reason would I have to stay?"

Later Annie would tell him that she knew what was coming before she asked the question, but whether she did or not when he kissed her the dog seemed to melt at once. Her graceful arms slipped around the coyote's back, and her happy sigh was a warm, soft zephyr against his lips.

On the bridge of the SS Hertiginna he'd volunteered to fly the yawl impulsively, because it needed to be done. The kiss was impulsive, too--the clinging tightness with which he embraced her, drawing her body to his until their contours formed a perfect match. He could not have said who, exactly, he was rescuing that time.

Hungrily, the coyote sought the inside of her muzzle, and though she gasped it was only another second until he felt her own tongue meeting his. And they locked, the heat of the contact building heartbeat by heartbeat--the husky's paws grasping his back, shameless and possessive.

The end of it left them both panting; something brighter and warmer than the gaslamps danced in the dog's eyes. "Is that the reason? You?" Annie's eyebrows arched, but the wagging of her curly tail betrayed any attempt at skepticism.

And if there was husky magic, it was in the giddiness the suggestion wrought in the desert canid. You? She'd asked it like it wasn't so strange, after all. Like he wasn't just some damned coyote. Hired help. "What if it was? We..." He fumbled for excuses, pressing his nose to hers and stealing another kiss that she gave up with a soft laugh and a knowing grin. "I imagine the prospectors wouldn't mind a pilot..."

"Maybe not." She kept waiting. Her tail kept wagging.

He kept going: "And good maps. You might even have an idea for a claim or two."

"A claim? Is that right? An extra one, or just..." And for a moment, she hugged him closer. "Just this?"

"More than that, but let's--"

"Start with this?"

"Yes."

The bed, ornate as it was, proved deceptively sturdy. That made it plenty easy--gratifyingly easy--to pin the husky. The snowdog's body was warm, plush beneath his chest. He heard himself growling into her muzzle, and her heady whimper of reply. And his pants were turning out to be much tighter than he remembered.

At least they had the same idea. He dispensed with the breeches, fighting the suspenders that held them with a frustrated snarl that Annie giggled at... until she was too busy wriggling under him, working the woolen skirt off. Four inches of leg may have been scandalous, but it didn't give much room to maneuver. And when it was gone, the heat of her bare fur was even less acceptable in polite society.

And even more enticing. She had to be able to feel him, the bulge in his warm cotton underwear pressing against her as their hips ground together. Had to be able to, Keetso figured, because her legs wrapped around him and squeezed closer with the pointed, rolling thrusts. "Off," she mewled--at first he didn't know if the husky meant him, but her paws shoved his chemise up eagerly and when the shirt fell away her claws raked his chest approvingly.

The second race they'd run proved to be shorter, faster, and substantially less complex. He helped Annie tug off her blouse, pulling the camisole with it. And somewhere in it her knickers disappeared. Her maps and chronometer were still in the pockets of her parka, much too far away to matter. There wasn't much that did: not the storm, not the completely inappropriate tableau of the elegant husky pinned and naked--immaculate fur next to his coarse pelt; snow and silver under desert sand.

She grabbed for the fur of his cheeks and pulled him roughly into a fresh kiss, shuddering with his shallow thrusts that nudged the pointed tip of the coyote's cock between her thighs, pushing teasingly against smooth, bare flesh. His shaft caught, and Keetso felt the silky texture give way under his next short stroke, yielding to wet, slick heat.

It was all he could do to stop himself the first time. The second time, as he pushed a half-inch further inside, Annie's paws dropped from his head to grasp his hips shakily, groping him. He bucked, hilting solidly in the snowdog whose back arched to drive the first, deep thrust home. She met him again on the next stroke, the countermovement sharp and strong.

"Coyote!" His lips barely half-muffled the cry. The next sound, just as breathless and broken, was his name. He groaned her own back to her and as it crossed his lips the thought hit home what exactly he was doing. Who he had pinned--just who his plunging thrusts were claiming as he pistoned eagerly between her downy-furred legs. Sometimes coyote fortunes turned. Sometimes they found a kindred spirit. Sometimes--

Sometimes it was even simpler than that, as the husky's muted howls attested. Restraint seemed less and less worthwhile. Keetso pushed against her hips and the leverage of the straining bed harder and harder as they wrung a sparking, yelping, giddy pleasure from each other in their coupling. She hugged him, her well-kept fur wrapping him in deliriously soft plush.

His growling was a low constant as he buried himself in her, shuddering at the feeling of her slick heat gripping his cock tightly. The squeezing pressure of the husky's pussy caressed the gentle bulge of his knot until it became less subtle. Annie quivered and whimpered and her hips jerked along her coyote lover's shaft. "Keetso!" She moaned it, almost questioningly at first--then sharp and demanding.

Her voice broke into heavy, unsteady panting. Their gaze met, and held--then her claws scored him, and he watched the gorgeous dog's eyes roll back as the panting yielded its energy in a wailing, lyrical howl. He felt her folds pulse and ripple on his length. Soft, exquisite pleasure to match the sharp pain of her fevered grip on his sides.

Keetso slowed down, trading his powerful thrusts for gentle, rolling strokes until she was calmer. She looked at him again, finally, and the coyote could've sworn he saw the gleaming rainbow of northern lights in her shining eyes. Husky magic, maybe. "Coyote... oh, Keetso," she murmured. "My coyote. Did you tie me?"

"Not yet." The unsteadiness in his voice was all too telling. "Pretty close. Do you want--"

"Please?" The color in her eyes deepened. She relaxed her grip and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. The embrace deepened when he took her, and when he speared sharply forward she hugged him even closer. "Let me have it... all of you... slip that knot in me..."

He gave into her urgings without a second thought, pressing his shaft deep until his knot slid thickly past the resistance of her lips. And he didn't try to pull out, didn't try to fight the pleasure building in him with every trapped, deliberate lunge. "Annie," he groaned. Her paws kneaded at his shoulders encouragingly as he rutted his way through the erratic, desperate thrusts of a canine sating himself in his mate.

"Yes! Take me, coyote," she begged.

And he bucked, snarling, and bit down impulsively at her throat as the wave of pleasure hit him. "Annie!" The husky's name broke free from clenched teeth. He claimed her, his cock throbbing and flexing in the rhythm that filled her warm, wet folds with the sticky heat of coyote seed. His knot tugged and pulled as he humped into her, and she squirmed at the bite and the spurts of his cum as he made her his... but biology or canid magic did the job of keeping them nice and properly locked.

Objectively Keetso figured things had escalated rather quickly. He'd only known Annie for two days, after all. It was just that nothing had given him the freedom to be objective. He had needed her, it was that simple. Clearly she wasn't in the mood to argue.

Far from it. "For someone who doesn't know Christmas you might have just invented a very pleasant tradition." Annie smiled drowsily, and licked the coyote's nose. "Next year we might want to skip purchasing tickets on a steamship."

It was strange to hear her talk of 'next year'; stranger still to think he could picture it himself. "So we're agreeing this is just the beginning of the adventure?" He snuggled closer, into the husky's fur. "I approve."

"It might turn out to be a little more than just adventuring, if you approve of that, too." Annie leaned up and kissed him softly. "I think I could fall for you, coyote."

His tail wagged, though he was too lost in the moment to realize the novelty of the sensation. "You sure? Think about that last word."

"Navigating from Vancouver to Skagway by the stars in gale is hard, Keetso. Falling for you didn't take any work at all. Now I want to see what comes next. The Yukon? Charting the Aleutians? Striking gold--if we're lucky."

"If?" Keetso grinned. "You already know what comes next. You and your husky magic."

"You're going to kiss me? And you're going to say--"

"I love you." And their muzzles drifted close, and their fingers intertwined. And as he felt her velvet fur, he realized there were stronger things by far in the world than iron. Warmth, and light, and companionship, and--

"I love you, too"--

Magic.