Pinion (39 page)

“You might want to watch your mouth there,” McCurdy said. His eyes were pleading, though his voice was hard.

Kitchens shifted his attention to the junior officer quite literally hiding behind the bosun. “Midshipman, you are in command now, yes?”

The boy nodded reluctantly.

“I have no authority here. My writ runs only to the surviving crew of
Notus
. But I have the ear of the Sea Lords and the Prime Minister’s office. I tell you now that our duty to Queen and country requires you to make all speed to Cotonou so I can send word onward of what has befallen, and mount an effective relief of these stranded sailors and the camp beyond. What are your orders?”

The midshipman gulped and began shaking.

“You are a British officer, lad. What are your orders?”

The boy fainted dead away, hitting the deck with a crack.

“Bloody hell,” Kitchens said, almost shouting. He smashed his poor attaché case into the deck.

The Brass loomed out of the evening shadows. “Ah,” he said. “It is you. Have you poisoned Midshipman Longoria?”

Kitchens stared at the metal man, vainly willing him to transform into a capable, competent Lieutenant Ostrander, then said, “I believe Bosun McCurdy is now in command of this vessel.”

“Oh, sir,” McCurdy breathed, appalled.

Shouting echoed from below, and a short scream.

“Then cut the bedamned lines and we lift,” Kitchens said, hating the moment.

“I am not sailing away with you,” the Brass man protested.

“Everyone else expects to!”

A series of quick ax chops, and the airship jumped away to screaming from below, and scattered rifle fire. McCurdy ran to the rail, shouting, “Stop, you idiots!” before staggering back with a bloody hole in his face where his right eye had been.

He spun once, blinked with his remaining eye at Kitchens, said quite distinctly, “Trust the Brass bastard,” then toppled backward over the rail.

And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.          
—Ruth 2:3

Christ, man, get to the helm
, shouted the Paolina–al-Wazir voice in his head.
Don’t let them swing
.

The Sixth Seal shrieked as well.

::
binded him to the mast they did, and whipped him three times three days with a salt-crusted rope, for that was the punishment for mutiny in those days
::

Most of the sailors rushed to the rail like monkeys at a fruit fall. Boaz stumbled aft. A white-haired man clutched at the wheel, his seamed face drawn in shock.

“Get us away from the Wall,” Boaz ordered. “Head west of north with all speed.” Altitude, these airships always fought for altitude. “Take us up.”

::
the very air is the kingdom of the birds. Do not challenge the will of the Lord by casting thyself into the skies
::

“H-how f-far, s-sir?” The helmsman clutched the wheel, not reaching for the engine telegraph or the attitude controls.

Boaz picked a number out of nowhere. “Five thousand feet, then level out.”

Good lad
. That was al-Wazir.

::
he shewed a span of a dozen dozen cubits, and dozen more of those, and claimed the tribes would climb that far
::

I am cracked. My crystals are damaged. Shadows of people I have come to love live in my head and tell me things I do not know in my own mind. The history of my kind lives in my gut and rants madly of ancient times and the brutal privilege of absolute power
.

If he took the Sixth Seal back to Ophir now, what would become of the city? This monstrous voice would require only a handful of years to raise a mighty empire bent on conquest and destruction, in the name of
biblical restoration. No wonder the ancient Kohanim had hidden the Seal away in a lost cave on a deserted coast.

::
that we might beat even the sepulchers of our fathers into swords and drive the enemies of our God into the bloodred waters of the sea
::

He wrenched his thoughts back to the present moment. McCurdy was dead, which saddened him. Kitchens’ notion to race for help was plentifully sensible. But Boaz could not go with them.

Five thousand feet? What was he thinking? He could not get down from that height. Yet turning back toward Ophir seemed less and less practical, given the mad thing in his belly.

::
you should not know the voice of the Lord even as He shouts thunder in your ear
::

The rest of the crew were being driven to their tasks by the vessel’s surviving petty officer. The helmsman had signaled for altitude and for speed, then resumed clutching his wheel for all the worth of his life. Kitchens stepped to
Erinyes
’ aft rail and looked down across the night-dark jungle. Boaz joined him there.

The wreck of
Notus
still smoldered. Sparks were visible at the edge of the camp’s cleared field of fire. Boaz realized they were the flash of a last few shots in their direction.

::
they will defend the holy books, the consecrated oils, and the salt that we have harvested from the graves of angels
::

“Harrow will have his hands full,” Kitchens said. “That’s a mutiny in progress down there, and one petty officer dead already.”

“I should not know,” Boaz said. The human voices in his head muttered at that. “My kind account authority differently.”

“Not so different as all that, I think.” The man studied him carefully. “I have read the reports. But now we have a pretty problem here aboard
Erinyes
.”

::
kings fail and fall; their thrones shiver empty; dark smokes hang over all the lands until even the olives wither in their groves
::

That voice was so loud in his thoughts it threatened to flow from his mouth. He tried to concentrate on what Kitchens had been saying. “That problem would be what, precisely?”

“Midshipman Longoria is unfit for duty. Lieutenant Ostrander is not even fit to wander loose. McCurdy is dead. That petty officer working the deck now will not speak to me, or look at you.
Erinyes
is a vessel without a commander, but carrying great need.”

::
snatch up the banner and ride the fallen hero’s horse into the fray, for ye shall be accounted holy and brave and the names of thy sons sung at temple for a hundred years
::

’Tis nae mutiny when you have never taken the oath
.

“You surely do not propose that I should captain this ship,” Boaz said. This clerk had no idea how worrisome his thoughts had become.

“I have no warrants here.
Notus
was under my control, but
Erinyes
is posted to the East African station. I will take command if I must, but I will be years at hearings before they can unwind the whole business.”

“Whereas I am an enemy of the British Crown,” Boaz pointed out. “Or at the least my people are. You would surrender your vessel to an adversary?”

::
do not play at the game of captains and kings unless you are forged of their mettle
::

“It is not my vessel to surrender.” The frustration in Kitchens’ voice was evident. “If I am delivered to Cotonou as a hostage released, I will be made welcome and heeded. If I come to Cotonou at the helm of a ship over which I have no command authority, I will be arrested and bound over for transport back to England.” His voice dropped to a nearly desperate whisper. “My duty requires me to be free and effective. Better that you seize the ship than that I take it.”

Careful, lad
. The Paolina–al-Wazir voice was gaining strength over the clamor of the Sixth Seal. Her sense infused him.
Walk softly, but be bold
.

“So they will arrest me instead? Better to put me down now along the coast and let me make my own way.”

::
no man ever took a crown without a thought to the swords that might someday break down the door of his throne room
::

The Seal had become almost reasonable, Boaz realized.

Their further conversation was interrupted when a shout went up from the foredeck. “Lanterns in the east! The Chinee is upon us!”

Al-Wazir’s voice gusted from Boaz’ mouth. “Ring for battle stations. Man the guns, now. Deck division to arms!”

“By the blood of Christ,” Kitchens swore. “This Wall will never let up.”

“This is not the doing of the Wall. Your empire is at war with China.” It dawned on Boaz that this man had traveled aboard
Notus
for some time. “Or do you not know that?”

“What?”

“
Erinyes
came east scouting after a great aerial battle over Abyssinia. The Imperial dragon and the British lion are savaging one another bloody in the east.”

“We are undone!” The clerk’s anger was palpable.

::
a messenger came with the dawn, riding on wings of wind, and cried defeat in the green vales above the city
::

Boaz’ fingers scrabbled at his midsection, seeking to open the little doors the Sixth Seal had caused to be so firmly shut.

Stop!
he shouted to the voices in his head.

“Fliers!” screamed the bow watch. “Them killer angels come off the Wall!”

“Mind the helm,” Boaz shouted to Kitchens and the terrified sailor at the wheel. He stomped forward. This was a threat he could grasp in hand. “Rifles at the ready!”

The white warship drew nearer. She gleamed slightly pink in the light of the setting sun and flew more flags than any one man ought to be required to understand.

Shen brought
Good Change
parallel with the great vessel. A dozen sailors lounged at her rail high over his head, staring down. Raising his hand, he waved. Some of them waved back. On a balcony above them, another man stared at them through a pair of lenses. He studied them a while, but did not wave back.

That was it.

No guile, no stealth, no force. No signal. Just two ships passing in the late light of the day.

A strange lack of climax to a moment that could have claimed all their lives.

Wu reappeared from belowdecks once the warship was safely behind them. “We will make the smallest port we can find, and purchase fuel oil for our engines. You will be our buyer.”

“Of course,” said Wang. “You trust me with funds?”

“Your loyalty is not in question, only your good sense.”

He wanted to ask,
Who are you to question my loyalty, who conspire with vanishing monks and claim to be a dead man walking?
There was no point. Wu was right. Wang would not escape into an English port here. Where would he go? Who would take him in?

Besides, he was still far too interested in finding Childress to give himself up to anyone else.

Anyone, he corrected his own thought. Not anyone
else
. Anyone.

Morning found the cataloger talking to a strange little man in grubby white robes. The fellow’s skin was the color of the rocks above his port town, his eyes black, and he had a narrow beard that he was forever stroking as if it were a restless animal.

A handful of coolies wearing nothing but roughspun trousers and head-scarves wrestled a fuel line onto the deck of
Lucky Change
. Several of Wu’s crew worked with them, bringing up a connection from below.

The man almost hopped from foot to foot in his nervousness. “How is it that your vessel full of the enemy is permitted to pass our water gates?”

“We are no enemy.” The story was at risk of becoming too practiced. “We serve a prince of Serendip, who has sent us to secure some peace in this fighting that seems set to overtake all.”

“I do not know the fighting,” the wharfinger said. Quite clearly he cherished his ignorance.

“I might ask you a small question,” Wang proposed.

“My answers will likely be small, as well.”

“Have you seen another vessel here with a Chinese crew and an English commander? It would be strangely formed, for it is made to go underneath the waters at times.”