All The Turns of Light (4 page)

“Just launch the bloody thing,” she muttered.
It’s only a brief test. She’ll only be at one-quarter gas capacity, and running on a single pair of fans. Why the Air Corps felt the need to delay the test with speeches is quite beyond me.

Meralda very nearly loosed a small but cacophonous noisemaker spell when a fourth Guild officer dashed hurriedly to the foot of the podium. But the new man caught the speaker’s eye with a wave, whispered something up to him, and then the brass band wallowed awkwardly into a discordant rendition of
Tirlin, Tirlin.

The
Intrepid’s
blunt silver bow floated out of the Dock and caught its first rays of sun.

The man on the podium shouted and grew red-faced, but the band redoubled their efforts, drowning him out, as the airship
Intrepid
emerged from her cavernous lair.

The crowd broke into furious applause. Men cheered. Women threw their hats. Watchmen’s whistles sounded, tweet-tweet-tweet, three times for a cheery hello.

A team of stalwart horses pulled and heaved, drawing the
Intrepid
slowly out into the light of day.

Meralda watched critically. The ship was level enough. There was no listing, no yawing, no apparent movement at all, save that of a stately forward float. Of course the flying coils were not complete, but mere fans would suffice for this test.

The crowd roared. Even Meralda caught herself holding her breath as the massive airship sailed slowly into full view. It would soon face twenty-five thousand miles of open sea, including storms. Winds. And who knew what else? A shiver tiptoed down her spine.

As if sensing Meralda’s trepidation, a woman in the crowd suddenly screamed. A man gave a cry of alarm. The horses pulling at the
Intrepid’s
lines reared and kicked, their iron horseshoes flashing in the sun.

“Fire!” shouted a man, pointing. “Fire!” Smoke billowed up from the Dock’s roof, spreading in a great black cloud against the sky.

The Watchmen’s whistles changed to long, loud warning blasts as they began pushing the crowd of spectators away from the Docks. All around Meralda, people clutched at their purses and hats and ran.

Figures danced in Meralda’s mind. Even at one-quarter gas capacity the
Intrepid
carries over a million cubic feet of lifting gas. If the fire reaches her gas cells, the spark inhibitors will fail, and a million cubic feet of lifting gas will explode.

Meralda began to push and dodge her way through the fleeing crowd.

A Watchman caught her by the arm.

“You can’t go that way, Miss,” he shouted over the din. “It could blow at any moment!”

Meralda shook him off and headed for the Dock.

Her mind raced. The spark inhibitor spell was designed to keep static charges or tiny flames from igniting the gas–a raging inferno, such as that from a burning dock, would quickly exceed the spell’s capacity to prevent combustion. Meralda tried to think of a way, any way, to increase her spark inhibitor spell’s influence–but how? From this distance, and with the contents of her pockets? Impossible!

The horses strained, hooves digging in, their drivers shouting and pulling–but the
Intrepid
halted, caught a quarter of the way past the doors. The tow lines hung taut, but the airship moved no more.

Meralda heard the whine and keen of distant fans, and knew the crew was trying to use them to drive the airship outside to safety, but the
Intrepid’s
vast bulk remained frozen in the door.

Flames roared up and smoke billowed, quickly blotting out the sun.

In another moment, a million cubic feet of lifting gas would ignite all at once.

There was no more time. “Nameless,” Meralda shouted. “Faceless. To me.”

The few stragglers who rushed by yelled exhortations for Meralda to run, but none appeared to hear her call.

A pair of ragged crows dropped from the sky and landed at Meralda’s feet. They pranced and hopped, pecking at one another as the first ragged veils of smoke settled upon the grass.

“Free the airship,” Meralda whispered. “With discretion. Let no one see you at work.”

The crows leaped and flapped away, vanishing in the thickening smoke.

Meralda coughed. The roar of the flames too soon drowned out the piercing Watch whistles and the bells of approaching Fire Brigade wagons.

Dock Five was lost. The curved roof sagged and the sound of massive timbers snapped,
crack crack crack
. A panicked cry rose from the crowd, but the
Intrepid
heaved and wobbled and began to emerge from the burning dock to sail, with maddening sluggishness, away from the greedy flames.

“Suppress the fire while she escapes,” Meralda instructed in a tiny whisper.

The roiling coils of black smoke that reached out for the airship’s retreating tail blew suddenly back, though Meralda felt no wind.

The horse crews released their lines and thundered away, clods flying, the horses’ eyes wide and panicked at the smell of smoke and the heat of the fire. The
Intrepid’s
fans strained and swung, as her crew desperately sought to take her as far away from the inferno at her tail as possible.

The crows returned to dance and hop at Meralda’s feet. She let out her breath all at once.

Fire Watch crews charged toward the flames. Meralda’s heart sank as she heard faint cries from the smoke-choked interior of the Dock.

“You left people behind?” she said, glaring.

The crows flapped their wings.

We freed yonder airship,
one spoke in Meralda’s mind.
Was that not our mission?

Ye said naught of any rescue,
spoke the other.

“I say it now,” Meralda said. “Save all those trapped within. At once.”

The crows tilted their ink-black heads.

As ye wish,
they said in unison.
Shall we keep our presence a secret, as ye have wished before?

The Fire Brigades fell back, prevented from entering the sagging Dock’s flame-lit maw by the heat of the raging fires.

“Get those men out of there this instant, seen or not!”

Aye.
The rightmost crow winked, and again they flapped away.

Someone tapped at Meralda’s shoulder.

“You’re too close,” said a soldier Meralda recognized as one of the longtime Palace guards. He pressed a clean handkerchief in Meralda’s palm. “Here. Breathe through this. Nothing you can do, Mage. Those poor wights are lost.”

“No,” Meralda disagreed. “Not yet.”

Something stirred deep inside the roiling columns of thick black smoke that billowed out from the ruined Dock. The smoke gathered, pulled together, took shape, towering up and up, looming over the flames, taller than the Tower, taller than the Palace.

The soldier watched it all, wide-eyed.

“Are you doing that?”

Meralda didn’t answer. Instead, she watched with growing horror as the smoke took on a form–her form.

It wore her blouse, her sensible slacks, her boots, her scarf, her narrow-brimmed Phendelit day hat. All in featureless black silhouette, but all unmistakably her.

The towering lady of smoke looked down upon the burning Dock, raised her arms, and with a deafening crack of thunder brought down a sudden deluge from the cloudless, smoke-stained sky.

People ran again and screamed even louder than before. Rain fell, a torrential downpour like a score of summer thunderstorms stacked atop one another and loosed at the same instant.

Water fell and kept falling, the beat of it so harsh that all those caught in the open were pushed to their knees and left gasping and hunched.

All save Meralda and the soldier, who were enveloped in a narrow shaft of dry air and sunlight.

Then, as abruptly as it began, the deluge ceased.

The sun returned. The towering smoke-woman fell apart, and became a thousand ragged billows of soot caught up on as many sudden, confused winds.

The flames were gone. There were hisses and pops, but not even a trail of smoke survived.

“Mage, what have you done?”

In the sunlight, on the grass, silver shapes began to flop.

“Are those…fish?”

Two dozen men, coughing and stumbling, darted out of the ruined Dock Five and stood blinking in the sunlight. The cheering started slowly. Someone shouted in triumph. Another clapped. Then another.

More joined in. Soon, it spread, and Meralda turned, blushing furiously, to find herself faced with a cheering, clapping crowd of hundreds.

Over them, a pair of crows wheeled, cawing and flapping, circling the block once before losing themselves in the sky.

The soldier grinned at Meralda. “I won’t ask,” he said. “Really, I won’t.” He located a trio of red-clad Palace guards in the crowd and stomped toward them, bellowing about wheelbarrows and loading up fish.

The
Intrepid
, barely twenty feet off the ground, turned and sailed to a gentle halt a stone’s throw from Meralda. As the gathered penswifts watched, the
Intrepid’s
Captain threw Meralda a formal salute through the glass while her crew lined the portholes and followed suit.

“Well, you’ve done it now, lass,” said Shingvere, as he dragged a dripping, wheezing Fromarch to stand by Meralda’s side. “The papers will run this story until Yule, if not well after.”

Meralda groaned, but then forced a smile and a wave to the
Intrepid’s
somber-faced Captain.

“And you said the woman didn’t understand showmanship,” grumbled Fromarch. “Nice touch, the giant smoke-lady. But how’d you lift that much seawater and get it here so fast? You’re not even carrying a latched staff!”

The penswifts broke ranks and charged, swarming about Meralda like smiling but determined wasps, each shouting a question, each holding a pen poised to record her answer.

“Oh, bugger,” Meralda said, as they closed in about her.

Chapter 4

“They made a giant woman out of smoke, dropped part of the Great Sea on a burning building in downtown Tirlin, and they did it all in front of the papers?” Mug’s twenty-nine eyes were wide.

Meralda sank further into her chair. “I nearly had to order Tervis and Kervis to draw their swords just to keep the penswifts out of the Laboratory,” she said. “I’m so glad I allowed them to stay on. Bodyguards do prove useful where the press is concerned. I’m sure there’s still a mob of penswifts waiting just outside.”

“Oh, Mistress.” Mug wilted.

Meralda hid her face for a moment. “It’s my fault,” she said. “I should have been explicit. But there wasn’t time. I never imagined they’d –” She searched for words.

“Put on a show?” offered Mug. “Reveal their dread presence? Make you more famous than any Mage since Tim the Horsehead?”

“Yes. That.”

Sudden shadows darted across the Laboratory’s worn stone floor.

“Well, well, look who’s back,” Mug said, half of his eyes searching the nooks and crannies of the cavernous Laboratory for the flitting dark shapes of the staves. “Brainless and Heedless, the wonder kindling of legend.”

“Why?” muttered Meralda. “Of all the things you could have done to save those men, why that?”

We did as ye bid, did we not?

None perished.

A pair of crows dropped down onto Meralda’s desk. Shiny black eyes regarded her warily.

Meralda took a deep breath. She had to be careful. The staves, even in crow form, were older than Tirlin. Probably more dangerous than anything else in all of Realms.

“You saved twenty-four lives. Twenty-four, and for that, I am grateful.”

Mug piped up. “It’s the giant smoke-lady she’s upset about. You backed her into a corner. She can either let people think she carries that kind of magic around in her pockets every day, or she can explain that Otrinvion the Black’s ancient staves have spent the last nineteen centuries hiding in this very room, and have only recently come out to play.”

The crows exchanged a brief unblinking gaze.

We kenned ye would not have us reveal ourselves,
one of them admitted.

We laid the glory at your feet,
said the other.
As we did for the Master. Is it not the way of doing?

“I would prefer a more discreet approach,” Meralda managed after a moment. “For instance, a sudden rain would have sufficed today. There was no need for my likeness to appear.”

The crows faced one another. Each lifted a dainty crow foot.