Cherie Priest - Boneshaker

Boneshaker

Cherie Priest

More Praise for Boneshaker

Cherie Priest wove a story so convincing, so evocative, so terrifying that I read this book with the doors locked and a gun on my lap. Boneshaker is a steampunk menagerie of thrills and horror.

Mario Acevedo, bestselling author of Jailbait Zombie

Everything youd want in such a volume and much more Its full of buckle and has swash to spare, and the characters are likable and the prose is fun. This is a hoot from start to finish, pure mad adventure.

Cory Doctorow, bestselling author of Little Brother

A gorgeously grim world of deadly gases, mysterious machines, Zeppelin pirates, and a relentless plague of zombies. With Boneshaker, Priest is geared up to begin her reign as the Queen of Steampunk.

Mark Henry, author of Road Trip of the Living Dead

A rip-snorting adventure in the best tradition of a penny dreadful. Priest has crafted a novel of exquisite prose and thrilling twists, populated by folk heroes and dastardly villains, zombies and air pirates, incredible machines, and a heroine wholl have you cheering. Boneshaker is the definitive steampunk story, absolutely unique and one hell of a fun read.

Caitlin Kittredge, author of the Nocturne City novels

If Wild, Wild West had been written by Mark Twain with the assistance of Jules Verne and Bram Stoker, it still couldnt be as fabulous and fantastical as Boneshaker. Cherie Priest has penned a rousing adventure tale that breathes a roaring soul and thundering heart into the glittering skin of steampunk. Stylish, taut, and wonderful, its a literary ride you must not miss!

Kat Richardson, bestselling author of Greywalker

Its awesome. I loved everything about it, and I cant wait for it to come out so the rest of the world can read it and understand why I loved it as much as I did.

Wil Wheat on, author of Just a Geek

Tor Books by Cherie Priest

THE EDEN MOORE BOOKS

Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Wings to the Kingdom

Not Flesh Nor Feathers

Fathom

Boneshaker

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

BONESHAKER

Copyright 2009 by Cherie Priest

All rights reserved.

Map by Jennifer Hanover

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

173 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Priest, Cherie.

Boneshaker / Cherie Priest.1st ed.

p. cm.

A Tom Doherty Associates book.

ISBN 978-0-7653-1841-1

1. Mothers and sonsFiction. 2. ZombiesFiction. 3. Northwest, PacificFiction. I. Title.

PS3616.R537 B66 2009

813'.6dc22

Printed in the United States of America

This ones for Team Seattle

Mark Henry, Caitlin Kittredge,

Richelle Mead, and Kat Richardson

for they are the heart and soul of this place.

Acknowledgments

This one requires many rounds of thanks, so please allow me to make a list.

Thanks to my editor, Liz Gorinsky, for her superlative skills, astonishing patience, and unparalleled determination; thanks to the publicity team at Tor, specifically Dot Lin and Patty Garcia, both of whom rock quite thoroughly; thanks to my ever-encouraging and unrelenting agent, Jennifer Jackson.

And thanks to the home team, tooin particular, my husband, Aric Annear, who is subjected to most of these stories in excruciating detail and for dissection before theyre ever finished; to my sister Becky Priest, for helping to scan all my proofs and passes; to Jerry and Donna Priest, for being my number-one cheerleaders; and to my mother, Sharon Priest, for keeping me humble.

Thanks go out to the aforementioned Team Seattle, and to our friends Duane Wilkins at the University of Washington bookstore and the incomparable Synde Korman at the downtown Barnes & Noble. Speaking of Barnes & Noble, I also send love and thanks to Paul Goat Allen. He knows why.

Yet further thanks must be showered upon my favorite lycanthrope, Amanda Gannon, for letting me use her Livejournal handle as the name of a dirigible (shes the original Naamah Darling); to the guides of the Seattle Underground tour, who keep offering me a job because Ive taken the tour so many times; and to my old friend Andrea Jones and her Usual Suspects, because shes always got my historical backand she provides me with the best lead-in quotes. Thanks also to Talia Kaye, the amazingly helpful speculative-fiction-loving librarian at the Seattle Public Librarys Seattle Room; to Greg Wild-Smith, my intrepid webmaster; to Warren Ellis and everyone in the clubhouse; and to Ellen Milne, for all the cookies.

From Unlikely Episodes in Western History

CHAPTER 7: Seattles Walled and Peculiar State

Work in progress, by Hale Quarter (1880)

Unpaved, uneven trails pretended to be roads; they tied the nations coasts together like laces holding a boot, binding it with crossed strings and crossed fingers. And over the great river, across the plains, between the mountain passes, the settlers pushed from east to west. They trickled over the Rockies in dribs and drabs, in wagons and coaches.

Or this is how it began.

In California there were nuggets the size of walnuts lying on the groundor so it was said, and truth travels slowly when rumors have wings of gold. The trickle of humanity became a magnificent flow. The glittering western shores swarmed with prospectors, pushing their luck and pushing their pans into the gravelly streams, praying for fortunes.

In time, the earth grew crowded, and claims became more tenuous. Gold came out of the ground in dust so fine that the men who mined it couldve inhaled it.

In 1850 another rumor, winged and sparkling, came swiftly from the north.