Pinion (34 page)

“Such a job he did, too!” Ottweill settled back into his chair and stared at the dregs of his whiskey. His voice dropped off. “I am not so certain now.”

This does not sound like the doctor
, Kitchens thought. “Of what?”

“I have been told a thing. A thing that I did not believe.”

“What is that?”

The doctor met his eye. “I will show you, if you are brave enough.”

They rode a handcart deeper into the tunnel, past the camp. Ottweill pumped the mechanism to keep them moving, the gears within the cart emitting an echoing squeak-squeal. After a moment’s thought, Kitchens realized this served at least in part to announce the arrival of the cart, assuming more sentries ahead.

Noise from the boring machine was practically a solid thing this close. Dust hung in the air, as if the ceiling of this section of tunnel were continually vibrating. He smelled scorched oil, hot rock, and the sweat of men.

Soon enough the walls vanished into another wider opening. There were no lights here, either, but locomotives and railroad wagons bulked vaguely in the gleam of Ottweill’s lantern. He stopped pumping and allowed the handcart to glide to a halt.

Ottweill gestured with his lantern, a complex signal obviously prearranged. They stood their ground, waiting. No door opened. Kitchens wondered why.

Then the noise faded. It did not stop so much as step down from the roar of a metal hurricane to the grind of wounded stone, then to the clash of very heavy iron on the move, then the shriek of steam being released, and finally to a crumbling silence that very much put Kitchens in mind of the first few moments of a rockslide just before an entire mountain face descended to the valley below.

Ottweill turned to him and said something. His ears were ringing far too loudly to understand the doctor’s intention, but Kitchens nodded anyway. No point in a dense-voiced shouting match over how they would pass through into the diggings beyond.

The doctor stepped to the gate set within the armored wall. It swung open before him, courtesy of the hidden watchers. Kitchens followed into a whole new kind of hell.

Set me as a Seal upon thine heart, as a Seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.          
— Song of Solomon 8:6

McCurdy approached Boaz where he had been resting. “Can you walk back to the clearing? The doctor’s men are at the stockade once more, and
Erinyes
is circling again. I believe that Lieutenant Ostrander means to land her at our signal, but I’d feel better if you was there.”

“She’s your ship, Chief,” Boaz replied. “You have the man Harrow to stand by you with wise counsel.”

“He’s all right, but he’s no particular friend. Besides, you know the lieutenant at least a little. Harrow’s a proper fellow, will look to Ostrander’s rank and not to his deeds.”

Despite himself, Boaz was intrigued. “Do you mean to relieve him of command?”

McCurdy’s discomfort was written large on his face. “Without
Erinyes
, we are trapped here. With the war on against the Chinee, there may not be another patrol for some time. When it shows, it might
be
John Chinaman. We’d not stand against that. Little food, little equipment, and those mad tunnel rats at our back.”

“Let the man Kitchens make work of this.”

“Mr. Kitchens has gone down the tunnel, and he ain’t come back up, begging your pardon.” McCurdy’s discomfort turned almost to pain. “You’re a foreigner, and an enemy besides, and not even human, but I needs someone who can think like an officer. I’ll likely hang for this as it is, and consorting with you is no improvement, but I cannot throw down the skipper on my own.”

They slogged back up the slope toward the rest of the stranded sailors.

Boaz stared at
Erinyes
, wondering how long before the winged savages attacked again. Two of McCurdy’s men moved out in the open with a set of rough-made semaphores—leaves woven together on sticks. They made a series of signals in a code Boaz knew nothing of. After a few moments, the airship dropped a line of colored flags.

“She comes down,” said Harrow, standing with them.

“This is going to be a sorry business,” McCurdy added. “Even if Midshipman Longoria takes our part.”

Erinyes
was slow descending, forcing herself down with her motors. She’d need to take on water ballast if possible, but there was no way to pump. He wondered how much of her fuel Lieutenant Ostrander had burned away in his soaring about of the past day or so.

Ain’t your problem, laddie
, growled the voice of al-Wazir deep within.

In time she cast down her lines. Stranded airmen from both vessels raced to secure them and warp her close. Boaz lent his solid strength to the effort as the airship was tethered to a soaring mahogany at the edge of the clearing. Another set of lines came over the side—knotted rope for climbing, and a more complicated sling for lifting.

Someone peered over the rail to shout down. Midshipman Longoria, Boaz realized from the piping voice. “Bosun McCurdy, please come aboard.” A note of panic hung in the young man’s voice, discernible even over the sputter of the engines.

McCurdy swarmed up the rope like a drowning man who could not wait to escape the waves. Boaz followed at a swift pace of his own. If the bosun would have him be officerial, officerial he would be.

She entered the Silent World without moving, simply to sit among the twisted shadows and dark casts of power surrounding the Northern prophet in his abode. Her
wa
was still agitated, but not so much as before. It flitted about like a moon moth on a particularly difficult night.

The view here was so very different than in the city. This Hethor was not crowded by the shades of powers past, as everything was at home. Rather, his bulwarks stemmed from within and around him. That he saw these as the handiwork of his god was understandable, she realized. He possessed only that lens for viewing the world.

Correct People left their own fierce currents here. Small, like animals, but bright, like people. The house priests had long ago recognized the little tribesmen as being at some half-state between the kingdoms of beasts and men, living reminders of an experiment by the world before it settled on the true shape of what was to come. The Wall teemed with miracles and
wonders, some of them far out of time with the limits of the world. The Correct People had simply come down to live in the jungles, rather than work out their lives among the mists and crags above.

Gashansunu attended most carefully to Paolina. The girl had lessoned frighteningly well. Hethor seemed to think the device in her hand mattered most, but Gashansunu was more concerned with the spirit that burned inside. The sorceress slept now in a hammock in the Shadow World that also served to elevate her here in the Silent World.

The house priests and circle callers and sorcerers of her city were complex, difficult women and men. Those who had spent decades accumulating wisdom tended to be layered so deeply that their core was beyond finding. Paolina was the opposite—nothing
but
core. The girl practically burned with righteous anger at the state of the world, while her power wrapped tight around her.

This did not make her easier to read. In fact, the opposite. But it did lend Paolina an air of inevitability diametric to the subtle indirections of the powers in the city.

Now she dreamed, Gashansunu saw. Ripples of whatever lover or child she had left behind in the Northern Earth seemed to possess her.

This girl would go back to her side of the Wall, and quite soon. Gashansunu was pleased to have caught up with her first. Much about Paolina fascinated her.

I would follow her
, Gashansunu told her
wa
.
To see how she spills her power
.

YOU ARE BOTH BETTER HERE
, was the counsel she received in return.

Gashansunu understood this perfectly well. She could likely not restrain Paolina. Besides, the girl’s appeal was powerful. Like the draw to touch the flame, a sweet spark in her head that made no sense and did not suit the purposes of her life.

She will not be kept, and I will not let her wander unattended until we grasp the extents of her power
.

Her
wa
muttered, then retreated some distance to sulk in the safety of darkness.

They cruised the open ocean. “We will cover almost fourteen hundred nautical miles to the Gulf of Aden.” Leung’s voice startled her, rising over the slap of waves and the mutter of the screws plowing water aft. “A bit less than sixty hours if we stay awash, but we must submerge by day, which cuts our speed considerably.”

“More than three days?”

“Perhaps dawn of the fourth.” His fingers entwined more closely with
hers. “Have you considered how you will talk us past the British patrols at Bab el Mandeb? I should expect to make our way into the Gulf unchallenged, with a little luck, but the passage into the Red Sea is utterly controlled. No vessel in any of the Celestial Emperor’s navies has made that transit, except under armed escort with a diplomatic flag.”

“Captain,” she told him. “We have a diplomatic flag. Our standard of the whole Earth. I am a Mask, and can claim to be an ambassador of sorts. When we sail into the Gulf of Aden, we will do so with all banners flying and the crew turned out on deck, as when we reached Tainan. We will look for the first British ship we can find. We will approach and negotiate. From there, on to Malta or deeper into the British Empire as circumstances suggest.”

“Hardly subtle, Miss Childress.”

“Embassies rarely are subtle, my friend.” She clutched his hand within the warmth of both of hers. “Ambassadors themselves almost always are.”

Morning brought bright sunlight, overripe papayas, and a time for acting on her decisions.
Boaz
, she thought. Paolina knew she’d never be safe, no matter how far she fled, so she might as well be where she wanted to be. Right now she stood on Hethor’s balcony looking down on an oh-so-accidental crowd of Correct People.

Arellya stepped out beside her.

“What are they waiting for?” Paolina asked.

“A miracle. A legend. A show.” The Correct Person leaned close. “My people find life amusing, but complex deeds wrought by strange folk are particularly entertaining. Anyone might drop a load of taro roots on their neighbor’s foot in error, but a truly magnificent mistake requires truly magnificent effort.”

“I am . . . er, flattered.”

“You will choose well,” Arellya assured her. “The world does not hang on this moment, or indeed any moment, but still you will choose well.”

“Is that true?” Their eyes met. “Did Hethor not come to such a moment, in his journey south? I recall the great shakings of the earth. The waves they brought killed cities, and drowned much of the African coast.”

“Hethor followed a fire I could not see,” Arellya answered quietly. “I took a strong band of our young males and went with him. Only he gained the center of all things, though I was taken there against my will. He fought an adversary there, then set himself to loving my life more than his own. A gift, from his heart to his God.”