Escapement (64 page)

They chivvied him up the ladder. One-handed, exhausted, al-Wazir didn’t think he could make the climb. Only the smell of fresh sea air drew him onward.

He stumbled out onto the deck of the submarine. Clear water the color of blown glass lapped close by. Breeze plucked at him. A green-wrapped coast was close by, with a small crowd of men along the shore.

Al-Wazir shuddered in the sunlight, then collapsed to a sitting position with his back against the cold, damp iron of the submarine’s tower.

Where am I?

The sailors who’d brought him spread out across the deck, leaving him to his thoughts. Two of their number armed with pistols remained crouched close by, grinning at him. Despite the weapons, al-Wazir did not feel threatened. It was like a man showing his fist in a bar . . . a promise of what might come, if things went awry, but no intent of violence in that moment.

“Chief?”

He glanced around. That had been in English.

“Chief al-Wazir!?”

“Paolina?” Al-Wazir looked up. Someone peered over the edge of the top of the tower, but it didn’t look like the girl. He couldn’t easily tell—the person’s head was silhouetted by the sunlight.

Feet on a ladder within the tower echoed behind him; then Paolina burst out onto the deck. She hurled herself at al-Wazir’s chest, hugging him. “You’re better! You’re walking.”

“Aye, and waking, lassie. Ah, lassie, I thought I’d lost you, too. That would be a foul hard blow after leaving John Brass in Africa.” He stroked her hair a moment. “Now get up before yon Chinee gossip about us.”

“I hope Boaz found a way to slip free of the violence.” She sighed a moment. “You remember asking me to take this ship to Lanarkshire?”

He frowned, thinking back into the confusion of recent hours. “Ah . . . no.”

“Your fever was breaking.” Paolina’s expression sagged oddly. “Oh, Chief, I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t like the sound of that at all. “For what, lassie?”

“When we were drowning, in the storm, I used the gleam. To improve our chances of surviving. This ship,
Five Lucky Winds,
moved a hundred miles in a moment. In your fever, you asked if I could move the ship to Lanarkshire. P-probably I could. But we caused an earthquake here. People d-d-died.”

“Lassie, lassie, never you mind that.” He wished that he hadn’t pushed her away. Her misery was writ large upon her face.

“The Mask Childress w-w-wants to put me ashore on the Wall. I want that as well. But the gleam. It’s too powerful.”

“You’ll know what to do, lassie.” He prayed that was true. Her toy was a terrible invention, one that could make any man a wizard with deadly will.

“I do now.”

“And what is that?” al-Wazir asked softly.

But she wouldn’t tell him. Instead she just shook her head and stared out at the horizon.

_______

An Englishwoman joined them shortly thereafter. Older, slight of build, gray-haired.

“I am the Mask Childress.” Her accent was colonial. She stared down at him.

He tried to get up, but his legs trembled too much. Instead he made a clumsy salute from where he sat. “Chief Petty Officer Threadgill Angus al-Wazir, of Her Imperial Majesty’s Royal Navy airship service.” He wondered what a Mask was, but he was too tired to ask.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Childress nodded. “You brought this girl and her mechanism across the Indian Ocean, I see.”

“No. She brought herself. I merely followed.”

“We were taken,” Paolina said. “In Mogadishu. Where we lost Boaz.”

“It does not matter.” The Mask looked at them both, with something like pity in her eyes. “You are here. You have hard choices now.”

“I have a plan,” Paolina announced. “How to stop the threat of the gleam. It touches people as well as the world.” She took a deep breath. “I w-w-will use it to erase my own knowledge of how to build another one.”

“No!” Childress seemed shocked.

“Aye,” al-Wazir said.

The Mask met his eyes. “We cannot do that to her,” she said.

“ ’Tis not we who do aught to her. She kens the danger even if you do not.”

“Neither of you shall do anything to me,” Paolina said. “The gleam is deadly dangerous. I made this thing. It is for me to take it from the world.”

“You cannot.” Childress was gaping and waving for words. “To destroy a known thing, to remove knowledge from the world . . . it is wrong.”

“This knowledge is evil,” al-Wazir said. “There’s them as kills and dies for what this girl knows.”

Paolina nodded. “
I
have killed for it. I have nearly died for it, over and over. Two empires pursue this. It must be removed.”

Childress seemed to have control of her voice now. “I disagree. A thing done once will be a thing done again. Much like the path the Silent Order seeks to reopen under the guise of the Golden Bridge and their efforts to pass beyond the Wall. This thing of yours is in the world. To damage your mind, your soul, is too high a price to pay for something which cannot be hidden anyway.”

“No, no, ’tis her that does it,” Al-Wazir finally got to his feet, though the horizon swayed as he stood. “If she removed herself and her infernal device from the world, no man would find the manner of doin’ it again.”

“It would be best if I did not know,” said Paolina. “Should the Silent Order ever again take me somehow, they cannot force me to make another. For your Golden Bridge or any other purpose.”

Childress shook her head. “Not
my
Golden Bridge. Regardless, you owe yourself your best strength, your highest effort. Not cutting off the fingers of your mind.”

Al-Wazir found enough strength to step away from the support of the tower. The two sailors with their pistols waddled back as well, keeping their distance, but they did not seem worried. “Paolina . . .”

She met his eye.

“What would Boaz have you do?”

“Boaz would have me do what was best.” She sighed. “He was not a moral actor, Chief. He was a Brass man of Ophir, a creature of
a Muralha.
”

“The Wall is neither moral nor immoral, woman. It swallowed me ship, it swallowed me da’s soul, it swallowed up the Roman Empire, and it may yet swallow up the British Empire. I do not know whether a man o’ the Wall can be any more than a man o’ the Wall, but he can show you the way.”

“I am a woman of the Wall.”

“And a woman of Northern Earth,” Childress said softly.

The launch returned with the water barrels as they spoke. The deck was suddenly aswarm with Chinese sailors, tuns of water, and two puzzled Sumatrans in straw skirts with painted faces.

Leung rejoined them as the water was pumped into a connection inset in the deck.

“The girl has a plan, Captain.” There was a catch in Childress’ voice.

“Aye, and she has the right of it,” al-Wazir added.

“This is for me to decide,” Paolina snapped.

Leung shook his head. “It is for
me
to decide. I command here.”

Paolina drew herself up and squared her shoulders. “You do not command me.”

One of the Sumatrans called out, pointing. Al-Wazir looked, following the line of the man’s arm.

A trio of Chinese airships rose over the line of mountains behind the shore.

Leung shouted up to the tower. The lookout shouted back down.

“Ship smoke to the northwest,” he said. “The pursuit out of Singapore has located us.”

“What now?” asked al-Wazir, suddenly very tired of fighting.

The captain looked at the airships a moment. “We bind ourselves over.
Five Lucky Winds
cannot flee an entire fleet. Not in these waters, in clear weather and broad daylight.”

“Then I must do this thing now,” said Paolina. “Put me to sea in your boat, so that the gleam will not affect the submarine.”

“No,” said Childress.

“Aye,” said al-Wazir.

Leung barked orders in Chinese, then offered Paolina his hand.

She watched Paolina step down into the launch. Ming and Fat Cheung went with her to man the oars and lend her aid. Leung had the crew dump the barrels they had not yet pumped and pass the empties back down the hatch.

“They cannot move the full ones down the ladder,” al-Wazir said. “Too heavy.”

Childress nodded. “In port they open larger hatches and use cranes.”

Both of them watched Paolina as they spoke.

The girl looked up from her seat in the small boat. It rocked slightly on the water. Ropes coiled around her feet, and the sunlight caught Paolina’s hair like polished oak.

Ming, just aft of Paolina, smiled up at Childress. “
Zai jien,
” he said.
Goodbye.
He and Fat Cheung then put their backs into the oars, pulling away from
Five Lucky Winds
.

Childress watched them go as the deck cleared around her. “How far?”

“I’d make it a thousand yards, me,” said al-Wazir. “If I was them. Did you hear their captain giving them orders?”

She thought about that a moment. “No. Actually, I did not.”

“Nor did I.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’s gone without orders, is what it means. That Ming, he’s kind of a Chinee petty officer. He has an understanding with the captain here. Since there’s seven kinds of admiralty hell about to land on this here deck, the captain’s used the chief to send his biggest problem away.”

She had to laugh. “You are also a large problem for Captain Leung, Chief al-Wazir.”

“Not so large as yon poppet and her device. I’m a big man, she has the killing of the world in her hand.”

“Paolina will erase part of herself, and perhaps cast that thing into the sea. It won’t be such a problem then.”

Meanwhile a series of whistles and bells caused the crew of
Five Lucky Winds
to pour out onto the deck. A few sailors were stringing flags to the tower, while others mounted the staves at the bow and stern.

Al-Wazir snorted. “Yon captain’s making a show if it. He’ll go down in full kit, I reckon. He seems something of a gentleman for a Chinee.”

Childress bit back a cold retort. “Captain Leung is indeed a gentlemen. You would do well to remember that, Chief.”

The airships approached over the jungle. A Sumatran canoe slid up to the hull to take the two local warriors off. One of them turned and gave al-Wazir a long, solemn look.

She noted that the chief’s guards had disappeared.

“Ye want off for yon island?” al-Wazir asked Childress. “Methinks the captain is letting all his biggest problems slip overboard.”

“No.” She didn’t have to consider it. “I will stay with the ship. I am the Mask Childress. The Celestial Empire holds no fear for me. But please, take yourself ashore.”

“The Celestial Empire holds plenty of fear for me, ma’am, and begging your pardon.” He sighed and raised his bandaged stump. “I’ve run too far, and without me southern paw I’m not the fighter I was. Besides, I will not leave an Englishwoman behind in heathen clutches.”

Childress took his remaining hand in hers. “You’re a better man than you believe yourself to be, Chief al-Wazir.”

Al-Wazir let her hold on to him for a moment. He nodded at the Sumatran, who grinned and shoved off in his canoe. Childress scanned the water, watching Paolina’s launch pull farther and farther away. She could hear the engines of the approaching airships growling in the sky.

Within minutes the crew of
Five Lucky Winds
was assembled on the deck. Most were in better uniforms than the usual blue service cotton she’d become accustomed to seeing them in. Three flags snapped from a staff rigged on the tower, while a series of smaller banners hung on the forward line.

It was ceremonious, even pretty, in the light of an equatorial morning. She felt like she was attending an execution. All that was lacking was a drum beating the measure at the end of a man’s life.

Two of the airships closed to pass overhead. The third split eastward toward where Paolina bobbed in the launch with Ming and Fat Cheung. She looked to the north and west. The ships steaming toward them were visible to the casual eye now. As she watched, a wisp of smoke rose from the oncoming hull as a single gun boomed to send a ripple of sound across the restless water.

Each of the airships passing overhead dropped a smoke pot into the water near
Five Lucky Winds.
One burned red on the starboard side, the other burned white on the port.

Al-Wazir leaned over and rumbled in her ear. “Bracketing their shots, they is. Showing your captain what’s what. Airships is the best thing for fighting these blasted submarines.”

“I would expect that they don’t generally fight their own side.”

“No, no.” He added contemplatively a moment later, “Not so as you’d think, at any rate.”

The airships circled overhead, engines whining. She watched each vessel drop a set of lines over the side. Preparing to lower men to take over
Five Lucky Winds.
Though it was obvious even to Childress that the true threat would come from the approaching surface ships.