Chasing the Lantern (24 page)

Lina held up her free hand. Runt was laying across her shoulders again, rumbling like a cat in contentment. "No, Ryan," she said. "This is the one from earlier, remember?" She beamed. "I'm keeping him. I named him Runt."

Ryan stared at her. His mouth pursed beneath his scruffy black beard. "Lina, you saw what happened. Those little monsters are dangerous."

Lina sighed. "Look, it's docile at the moment, and that's not why I had Allen go find you." She stepped aside so that he could see the unconscious, wounded pirate. "This fellow attacked me. I think he's one of Natasha's Reavers."

Ryan quieted immediately. "Stay right here," he said quietly. "I'm going to go get the gunnery mistress. You too, Mechanist."

Her friend drew his cutlass and shoved Allen into the small room, then left to go get more help. Sarah Lome arrived with him a few minutes later, and from the shouts up the hall it sounded like searches were being made of the remaining storerooms on this level. The huge piratess said nothing, only hoisted the Reaver over her shoulder and hauled him up to the deck. Lina followed, rubbing her pet on its sinuous neck just behind its head. The creature seemed to like the gesture, and belched contentedly now and again.

The
Dawnhawk
floated across the night sky of the Yulan. Darkness encompassed them, broken only by the pinprick lights of the stars and the few low lanterns lit on the deck of the ship. The Stormwall was somewhere to the west, the wreck of the
Albatross
hours to the south. The moon had yet to rise. It was warm here; each little breeze was more pleasant and cooling than it had been out over the sea. It smelled different, not briny, but instead carrying a rich scent of earth from the impenetrable jungle below. So many little things told them they were strangers here, tourists in this land.

Crewmen moved quietly about the ship. A few low gas-lamps had been lit in standing braziers along the centerline of the ship. Both shifts were out; having recaptured the
Dawnhawk,
any sense of urgency was lost. Those without obvious duties were belowdecks in the hold, counting the treasure from the
Albatross
.

Ryan, Sarah Lome, and two others hauled the stung Reaver up towards the captain at the bow of the ship. The three of them kept stealing looks back at her and her new pet; Gunny Lome shoved their captive forward. This might damage her standing with the crew a little, but Lina didn't particularly care. Runt was hers.

They reached the bow. Fengel stood there leaning over the gunwales and peering at something down below. Henry Smalls stood by, Fengel's faithful right hand, as always. Three stout pirates stood nearby, hands on a set of ropes tied off to a cleat down on the deck. The ropes ran over the bow. Lina heard faint yelling from that direction.

"Now, now," said Fengel in exasperation. "Don't all shout at once. What, are you a howling mob of ruffians and cut-throats? Let's start again. How much of that loot was left behind? What happened to the survivors of the
Albatross
?"

Sarah Lome dumped the pirate from below onto the deck with a thump. Fengel glanced over his shoulder at her. She threw her thick red braid back over her shoulder, then raised an eyebrow at him.

"What are you doing, Captain?"

"Just interrogating our prisoners," replied Fengel. "I was quite curious how they'd gotten through the Stormwall without trouble; apparently hugging the Silverpenny was much less problematic than our own entrance." He paused and touched his chin, looking thoughtful. "Also, I am engaging in a bit of extracurricular catharsis. But so it goes. What have you got here?" He turned to take in the moaning, shuddering pirate at their feet. "Who is this poor devil? And what in the Goddess's good name has happened to him?"

"One of Natasha's Reavers. Miss Stone surprised him down below and...took care of him."

"Took care of him how? This man looks like he's been attacked by scryn. Or an angry Haventown prostitute."

For the first time she'd known Sarah, the big gunnery mistress looked at a loss for words. "Ah, there, sir." She gestured at Lina. Arriving in the store-room below, Sarah had only asked Lina if she had it under control, though she'd had a strange expression on her face.

Fengel looked up, noticing Lina for the first time. His eyes widened and he went for the saber at his side. "Stone! Hold still!"

Runt raised its head at the noise. "
Chirr?
" it said.

Lina held up a hand. "It's fine, Captain. Runt's safe," she lied. "Helped me with this fellow."

"That's a
scryn
, Miss Stone. Don't you remember what happened last time? Hold still so we can get it off of you."

"I
do
remember," said Lina defensively. "This one's fine. I've got it drunk on Corsair's Cure-all."

She met his gaze and held it. He owed her for the scryn attack and her quick thinking at Engmann's Maelstrom. And he knew she knew that.

Fengel appeared to come to a decision. He relaxed, moving his hand away from his saber. The look he gave her was obvious.
Fine then,
it seemed to say.
Its messes are your own though, and keep it out of trouble.
"Well," said her captain. "So long as it's
under control
," he stressed, "that should be all right then."

He turned back to the pirate at their feet with a frown. "Henry, go tell Lucian, then take care of this fellow here. Tie him up and then see if we have any antivenin left. Gunny Lome, round up some men and search this vessel from top to bottom. Get the Mechanist and move the light-air cells in the frame around if you have to. I find I am tiring of surprises this evening."

Both rushed off to their tasks. Those that Sarah didn't take with her glanced at Runt and found reasons to be elsewhere. She hadn't been ordered away, so Lina moved up to the gunwales to peer over the edge. The ropes descended over the railing to somewhere below the bow. Several pirates were outlined by the backdrop of the jungle, the captive Reavers all tied up and suspended upside down. Some moaned, some pleaded, others cursed.

Fengel sidled slightly away from her. Lina looked up to him; he quickly glanced away from her and the serpentine creature on her shoulders.

"So," she asked hesitantly. "What have you found out?"

Captain Fengel raised an eyebrow at her. Then he shrugged. "Not much of import, really. Apparently the
Albatross
was deserted when they got there. Strange, but it could be that most of the crew decided to make their way on foot back up to Breachtown. Moreover though, we didn't get quite
all
the treasure aboard, and I want to know how much we left behind. Looks like just a few chests of coins." He gestured at the bow gunwales. "From what these fellows tell me, the Lantern wasn't in them."

Lina had peeked down in the hold. The amount of loot they'd taken was enormous. "Does that matter? We've got a ton of treasure down below. That gemstone your Sindicato friend wants has got to be in there somewhere."

Fengel snorted. "The thought of leaving my harpy of a wife anything worthwhile chaps my hide somewhat fiercely."

Lina considered that fact, and agreed that it was somewhat irksome.

"Still," she said. "We're golden. You pay off that debt, you've got a new airship, and we're all rich now." Lina smiled. "And you've left Natasha marooned in a strange jungle filled with Goddess-knows-what, with a hundred-league march back to civilization."

Her captain nodded slowly. "That's true."

"She's probably wanted in Breachtown. I mean, we
are
pirates, right?"

Fengel brightened. "True! They'd confiscate everything she has and lock her in the dungeon. I hadn't thought of that."

"Don't sell her short. If Breachtown is like Triskelion, they'll have her head off inside a week."

He frowned. "That may be going a bit too—" Fengel trailed off as Lucian came stomping up the deck to them. They turned to face the first mate.

Lucian was dirty. Grime covered his face and clothes. He was, however, wearing ten golden rings, four silver necklaces, and a pair of diamond-studded earrings. "Finished the count Captain," he said.

Fengel smiled. "And?"

"Quite a haul. We're good to pay that debt off and then some with just the lucre below."

"Capital. But I'd prefer we hand over the Lantern and keep the loot."

Lucian shook his head. "Plenty of lesser gemstones. Diamonds in particular. But nothing like the description we've heard."

Fengel stared. "Then where is it?" At Lucian's shrug he bent back over the gunwales toward their captives. "Hoy! You lot
sure
you never saw a glowing diamond, big as two fists?" The pirates below answered him in the negative. He turned back to face them. "We need that gem. Grey won't leave me alone without it, and I would
really
like to keep the rest of the treasure."

Lucian held up his hands. "It's not up here, Captain. And from what we know, it's not back there with Natasha."

Fengel clenched his fists at his side. "Then where
is
it?"

The first mate could only shake his head.

Chapter Fourteen

Fengel paced the deck. The moon was rising on the eastern horizon, just high enough now to be seen over the port-side gunwales. It spread pale illumination out over the deck, removing the need for lanterns. The rigging, gas-bag frame above, and the crewmen were all ghost-colored. Were he to look overboard, Fengel knew the jungle canopy would be visible as a silver carpet spreading out for miles in every direction.

Maxim had the helm. The aetherite growled something into his shoulder, then smiled at Fengel's approach, trying to catch his captain's eyes. It was obvious he wanted someone to talk to. Maxim was normally a solitary man, though not by choice—the constant mean-spirited pranks he played on the crew in order to retain his power were responsible. He'd once told Fengel that the daemon on his shoulder nattered constantly, and on occasion he felt the need to converse with anyone else.

Fengel didn't feel like talking at the moment. Just before he would have had to politely acknowledge the helmsman and become trapped in banal discourse, he turned on his heel to march back up the deck. At the far end of the bow, Lucian and several crewmen were pulling up their captives. Once they'd been wrung of anything useful, and then hung a little extra to teach them manners, Fengel had ordered them stowed somewhere they wouldn't cause trouble. They could be dropped off somewhere relatively safe in time.

He turned his mind back to his quandary. Lucian had not lied. After the incident with Miss Stone and her troubling new pet, his first mate had brought up the final tally from the holds, less a few small pieces that would go "missing" only to turn up as "longtime family heirlooms." Fengel let a little pilfering slide amongst the crew so long as it wasn't excessive. Even with such considerations, the treasure in the hold was ridiculous. It was estimated at some three hundred thousand sovereigns' worth of gold, silver, and precious gemstones. That would pay the two-hundred-and-forty-thousand sovereign debt to Mr. Grey and the Sindicato, with a decent amount left over to divvy up amongst the crew and to resupply the airship.

The problem was, Fengel really wanted to keep it all.

Unfortunately, he didn't think that he'd be able to. Grey wanted the Lantern, but the gemstone wasn't in the plunder that had been loaded aboard. Fengel had ordered another search and gone down himself, but nothing he could find came close to fitting the description. Also, he'd interrogated their captives again; there was the chance that Natasha and her Reavers simply hadn't found the Lantern aboard the
Albatross.
That was unlikely, however. His wife wasn't the kind of woman to miss any plunder of worth, especially considering the brass fixtures and old pots that Fengel found in the loot. There existed a small chance that she'd found the thing and hidden it. Fengel dismissed the idea almost instantly: the action was wholly out of character. Natasha was as subtle as a cannonball to the head.

Ah well. We've still come out of this mess a damn sight better than we entered it.
They didn't have the Lantern for Mr. Grey, but there was no way that the financier would turn down good gold and silver toward his loans. Still. Fengel tried to force himself to be happy; his debt would be paid, he'd won out against his harpy wife, and he had his brand new skyship back beneath his feet.

But still. It wasn't
quite
perfect.

Fengel stopped his pacing and turned toward the starboard rails. He spied Miss Stone a few dozen paces away, back to the gunwales, playing with her new pet. The young woman seemed to be teaching it to sit up, the scryn making odd little leaps at the open flask in her hands. Fengel shuddered and forced himself to put her out of his mind. If she wanted to keep the little monster, then he wouldn't stop her. She'd made it plain to him that this was what she wanted for rescuing the ship in the Maelstrom. If the beast went rabid they'd kill it. If she actually trained the thing, what she did with it didn't really matter.

He gazed out at the jungle canopy. It stretched below them into the horizon, only broken here and there by the swell of hills bulging up to form lonesome and craggy cliffs. As far as he knew, he might very well be the first civilized person to set eyes on them. The initial surveyors had never made it this far into the Interior.

The thought struck him then. Below him lay a strange new world. Wondrous and ancient, and he had all the freedom to explore it at his whim. But what he really wanted was someone to
show
it to. Someone to hold beneath the shining moon, someone he could confide in...

Fengel snorted. He pushed the thoughts aside and gazed out at the jungles of the Yulan.
Maybe I should write a journal? A memoir?
People back on the Western Continent bought up air pirate stories like mad. Why shouldn't he be involved in that? And there were the Perinese explorers' clubs. What would they pay for an account of the Stormwall and the Yulan Interior viewed from the air?
Captain Fengel,
he mused,
The
Adventurer.
The title certainly made him sound more dashing. Even if there wasn't much money to be had, there would be renown. And that was just as good.