All The Turns of Light (6 page)

I tell you, that blasted airship is cursed.

First there was the fire. Then poor Meralda had to cast and latch seven hundred spark arrestor spells. Then a storm blew in and caught the
Intrepid
grounded, and lightning and wind nearly accomplished what the firebug didn’t.

The firebug is still on the loose, by the way. The Captain and the City Watch lost a lot of sleep chasing the fiend, but they might as well have tried to bottle the sky.

Mistress is a mess. She lives in the Laboratory now. She sleeps in her chair, eats in her chair, frets and moons and glares in her chair. When she’s not sitting, she is pacing and muttering.

I wish the Hang had stayed on their side of the Great Sea, or come a hundred years ago, or a hundred years hence. Then we wouldn’t be forced to make this daft journey at all.

But try it we will. Tower brought word last night from the secret Hang speaking machine. The Long Dragon has passed. Shame. He was a nice old fellow, and though only a handful of people in the Realms know this, the
Intrepid
sets off across the Sea in five days, ready or not, come fire, wind, or further calamity. Meralda’s parents were coming for a visit in three weeks. She’ll miss seeing them, because how long we’ll stay—in the unlikely event we survive the crossing—is very much up to our Hang hosts.

Donchen seems to think they’ll insist on two months at a minimum, because apparently state funerals in Hang are far more involved than simply digging a hole, saying a few kind words, and planting nice flowers.

Unless common sense prevails, we will take to the skies on the morning of the fourteenth and hope to accomplish what no vessel of the Realms has ever managed. We’ll have to cross twenty-five thousand miles of open water, and do it in an airship which thus far has yet to traverse a single pair of city blocks without provoking conflagration and disaster.

I will board with my Mistress, brave to the last.

Please see that the sentence above is read aloud during my eulogy.

Set down this day the 9
^th
of Novembre in the Year of the Realms 1969.

Don’t say I didn’t warn them,

Mugglesworth Ovis

Chapter 5

And just like that, the
Intrepid
took to the sky.

Meralda realized she was holding her breath and let it out slowly, hoping Mug didn’t notice.

“Well that’s it,” he said, hovering so close to the brass-trimmed salon porthole that the bars of his flying birdcage touched the thick glass. “We’re done for now.”

Meralda pretended not to hear.

The ground fell away. The lights and crowds gathered for the early evening launch in the Park shrank, slowly disappearing as the
Intrepid
calmly turned her face eastward.

Three bells rang, filling Meralda’s cabin with sound.

“Three bells, three hundred feet,” Mug reported, as if she didn’t know what the bells meant. “Still not too late to steal the flying launch and sneak home.”

Meralda stood perfectly still, trying to discern any hint of movement, but the
Intrepid’s
gentle ascent was subtle and steady.

Mug turned half of his eyes downward. “Look at those lucky wights waving and jumping.”

Meralda turned away from the porthole. She’d watched Donchen wave sadly before vanishing into the crowd, well before the
Intrepid
cast off her lines. He had left before he had to watch her go.

Thirty-four days to cross the Great Sea. If all went according to plan.

Two months, perhaps, languishing in a palace somewhere as guests of the Hang. Then another thirty-four days home.

“We’ll be home before you know it, Mistress,” Mug said. He flew his cage to bob at eye level with Meralda. “Unless we crash, that is.”

“We are not going to crash, and I will hear no more such talk.”

“As you wish, Mistress, although I reserve the right to scream as we fall helplessly to our doom. Now then. We’re aloft, and if I recall the schedule correctly that gives you two hours before your first appearance on the bridge for introductions to the officers and crew.”

Mug flew to her side, all his eyes upon her.

“Why don’t I have the Bellringers bring you some coffee?” he asked. “Might as well make the best of it.”

Before Meralda could answer, the speaking tube on her nightstand coughed, buzzed, and issued a sudden harsh bugle-note.

“Attention,” said a voice. “Attention. This is the Captain speaking. Prepare at once for acceleration. I repeat, prepare for emergency acceleration. Stow any loose baggage and seat yourself. You have half a minute. This is not a drill. Captain Fairweather out.”

The speaking tube fell silent.

Mug raised his cage, his miniature flying coils buzzing like a handful of angry hornets.

“That’s not on the official schedule, is it, Mistress?”

“No. It isn’t.”

Meralda rose from her berth, and moved to the plain wooden chair which sat before her tiny desk. She sat down, grasping the arms of the chair and counting off the seconds.

Mug floated at her side, his eyes swinging wildly around the room. “I wonder what’s the matter. Air pirates? Vonats? Dragons?”

“Twenty-seven,” Meralda said just as the
Intrepid
lurched forward.

Her bags tumbled, sliding across the polished wooden deck. Her chair jerked, but the legs were bolted to the deck and held fast.

Crashes, thumps and shouts echoed from beyond the door. The
Intrepid
continued to pick up speed, and the airship’s frame began to hum. Meralda recognized the sound immediately. “They’ve engaged the flying coils!”

Meralda stood, leaning into the force pushing her back with implacable, invisible hands. “If they keep this up the coils will soon be at full saturation. What are they doing?”

Mug rose with her, keeping his flying birdcage aloft, expertly matching the
Intrepid’s
increasing speed.

“Mistress,” he said, “might I ask where you are going, and why you feel it necessary to go there right this minute?”

“They’re about to heat my coils past their endurance,” Meralda replied, fighting to reach her door. “I wrote a great detailed manual, did I not? I specifically stated the need for a ten-hour burn-in, did I not?”

The
Intrepid
began to shake. The wind rushing past keened and howled. Glass shattered and men shouted. Abruptly, the
Intrepid
lifted her nose toward the stars and the angry hornet’s humming of her flying coils grew loud and she hurled herself skyward, her decks tilting precariously.

Meralda lost her balance, and fell to her knees. Within seconds she joined her bags huddled in a heap against the bulkhead.

“Mistress! Are you all right?”

Meralda gritted her teeth.

“If we are at full acceleration we are gaining 32 feet of speed per second, every second. Count the seconds, Mug!”

“One. Two. Three…” Mug counted off.

Meralda juggled numbers in her head, trying and failing to rise or walk.

“… thirteen,” Mug intoned.

The roaring of the wind subsided. The deep bass humming of the flying coils did not cease, but it diminished until it was barely audible.

The
Intrepid
leveled out, and Meralda leaped to her feet.

“Thirteen seconds,” Meralda panted. “That’s a final speed of two hundred and ninety-one miles an hour.”

“Fascinating,” Mug said. “But are we crashing?”

The speaking tube coughed again.

“This is the Captain. We have resumed normal flight. Damage control teams, all decks, report in five. Officers to the bridge. I repeat, officers to the bridge.”

“That’s you, Chief Engineer Ovis,” Mug said. “I’m coming along.”

Meralda stood. She recognized the determination in Mug’s voice and gave him a nod. If the Captain doesn’t want Mug in his wheelhouse he can order him out himself, she thought.
And if he damaged my flying coils with this mad ascent I may leave with Mug
.

“Let’s go set this lot straight, shall we, Chief Engineer Ovis?”

“Yes, let’s,” Meralda agreed, as she marched for the door.

* * *

The passageway outside Meralda’s cabin was chaos. Luggage lay scattered. Some of the bags had spilled open, resulting in a veritable flood of unmentionables that were now being trodden underfoot by rushing crewmen and panicked dignitaries. Here and there, uniformed Guardsmen knelt by supine figures, applying bandages or helping them to their feet.

The Bellringer twins, Meralda’s personal guards, spotted Meralda and rushed to her side, their identical brows creased by the same wrinkle of worry.

“Mage!” said Kervis.

“Are you hurt?” asked Tervis.

“Are we crashing?” asked Kervis.

“Hello, no, thank you for asking, and certainly not,” Meralda replied.

The Bellringer brothers fell into place, Kervis on her right, Tervis on her left.

“Help with the injured,” she suggested. “I’m heading for the bridge. I promise not to be taken hostage along the way. Scoot.”

The Bellringers grinned and trotted away.

Mug buzzed beside her, dodging wide-eyed guards and passengers as he flew among them.

“I know you have an estimate of how high we just climbed,” he said. “Care to share?”

“Fifteen thousand feet,” Meralda said. She stepped aside to let a pair of Guards bearing a makeshift stretcher pass. “What was that daft Captain thinking?”

“I’d be a bit hesitant to speak the words
daft
and
Captain
so close together, Mistress,” Mug said, casting his red eyes about warily. “This isn’t the Palace.”

Meralda nodded. “You’re right about that. Even King Yvin never managed to shake the Palace so severely people were knocked from their feet.”

The passageway began to curve, following the outline of the
Intrepid’s
gas envelope. The electric lamps set along the bulkhead at regular intervals flickered and then flared to life, revealing more chaos at every step.

People shouted and held onto each other, or knelt and quietly swapped undergarments as they tried to sort out the contents of their spilled luggage.

Ahead, the curving walnut passageway ended in a pair of sturdy brass-trimmed doors, each half a circle, each side flanked by stern-faced Palace guards.

The guards were holding a dozen strident complainers at bay.

“Young man, I am the Lord Mayor of Tirlin and I say let me pass!” shouted a red-faced man in a bright yellow waistcoat. His top hat was crushed, and his backside dripped with what appeared to be the remains of a flattened apple pie. “Let me pass!”

The impassive guard saw Meralda, gently pushed the sputtering Lord Mayor aside, and stood at sudden rigid attention.

“Chief Engineer,” he said. His companion threw out a brief salute and opened the door to the bridge.

Meralda swept inside, Mug sailing over her shoulder, before the Lord Mayor could launch himself through the opening.

The
Intrepid’s
bridge was laid out in a half-circle. The front bulkhead was glass, set into a steel frame that vanished against the inky night sky. The glass extended up, over Meralda’s head, until the airship’s envelope blotted out the heavens. The glass also extended below, meeting the polished cherry deck, leaving Meralda with the brief but uncomfortable sensation that she was standing on a railless platform high amid the clouds.

Jutting out from the center of the bulkhead behind her was the open frame the airmen called the reach. Set into the reach was the Bubble, a large curved glass tube filled with a bright yellow fluid. A single large bubble rode at the top of the curve.

Meralda smiled at the black-clad young man staring at his elevation glass. He nodded back, but his eyes never left the bubble, and his hands never strayed from his levers.

Ahead of the helmsman stood the rudder man, his hands on the brass wheel that would steer the
Intrepid
left or right, controlling the set of the enormous rudders at the ship’s aft end.

Ahead of them both sat the gas man, bathed in the glow of his slanted instrument panel. Dials and lights–all designed or improved by Meralda–glowed and moved. Meralda stepped to stand behind the gas man and glared at the dials that indicated the temperature and stability of the flying coils.

“There,” she said, stabbing the dial marked REGULATOR TEMPERATURE. “That should be reading a hundred degrees. It shows twice that, and it’s rising.” Meralda turned to the seated watch officer. “Order the regulator bin to be flooded with water.”