Pinion (45 page)

He looked a while, until he realized that a darker thread hung in the lightening sky of the last of night. Smoke, rising from a great fire on the ground.

Cotonou had been burned.

“The ship will not make the journey all the way back to England,” Boaz said, almost to himself.

“She may not have to.”

The battle lanterns of four more Chinese airships lit, one by one, bonfires to announce the coming of the enemy.

“Go and fetch Paolina now,” Boaz said urgently. “Kitchens with her, if he can be wakened.”

The ship’s engines seemed louder, more strident, as if
Erinyes
knew that battle came to her one last time.

::
dig the trenches before you fight, that the carriers of spears shall have a place to lay their bodies down
::

You are in for it now, boy
.

British tars working the decks of their idled ships stared at
Five Lucky Winds
with frank curiosity. A small crowd of mixed Egyptians and foreigners gathered along the base of the pier, where it met a public street. Clearly the submarine was the day’s wonder.

The war, wherever else it raged, did not seem to have come to Port Said yet.

The morning grew so hot that even the seabirds retreated to crouch spread-winged along the verges of the pier, or simply huddled miserably in the glare. The city continued its bustle of noise and smell and squalor and plain, old-fashioned busyness.

All eyes were pointed at them. As were the Maxim turrets aboard
Inerrancy
. She wondered how those men felt, trapped in their little metal cages, aiming death at her unmoving crew.

At least Leung had caused the awning to be raised.

Bork arrived a few hours later, in the pounding noonday sun. He was piped aboard by an English bosun, from a flatboat filled with sailors in crisp, white uniforms with large sidearms.

Not quite a raiding party, but much more than a courtesy call.

She did not see al-Wazir among them.

The lieutenant commander appeared intensely pleased. Four of his sailors came with him, pistols depending prominently from their belts. “Mask Childress,” he intoned with the righteous satisfaction of a beadle confronting a parishioner napping through the homily.

Something orange—no, saffron—flashed in the corner of her eye. Bork’s flatboat issued a loud crack and began listing. Two of the sailors fell into the harbor, the other two struggling to clamber onto the sloping deck of the submarine.

Leung’s crew began to laugh. Bork turned to his men, then lost his balance and fell.

That was a bizarre piece of slapstick, robbing the British officer of his dignity. Childress contained a smile as two of Bork’s escorts helped him to
his feet. The others fished their fellows out of the water, with assistance from the amused Chinese.

“Madam, if you somehow believe this moment to be accounted a victory,” the lieutenant commander shouted, “then you shall indeed be sadly mistaken!” He spun to leave, then realized his error.

“A dramatic exit works much better, sir, when one has a usable egress,” Childress said softly to his shaking back.

The crowd along the docks howled with laughter. The tars on the moored ships enjoyed their mirth as well, though they fell stiffly silent as Bork’s gaze swept them.

“You will be hard pressed to explain to a promotion board how you allowed a woman and a pack of grinning Chinese to watch you swim to shore,” she told him.

Bork growled, “You will kindly lend me a boat, madam.”

“Of course.” Childress turned to Captain Leung. “The launch for our guest, Mr. Leung. Also a crew to row it, lest our property be misplaced.”

The monk would go ashore, she realized, much as the woman had come aboard—cloaked from observing eyes until she was ready to be seen. The Chinese would know better than to question such a one, should they glimpse a flash of her robe or a whiff of her smoke, while the British would never notice her.

Go
, Childress thought.
Turn their commander’s heart and fetch al-Wazir from his cell
.

The launch was winched up from beneath the deck grating and set into the water. “You will fare with my best blessings,” Childress called out.

She hoped the monk’s trick, whatever it was, would turn the business soon. They could hardly sit idle in this harbor, waiting for Wang and his fellows to come to some devilment, or worse, the war to catch them all.

Five Lucky Winds
would fall victim to Chinese grenadoes just as readily, and likely with far more enthusiasm, than she would to the predations of the British.

The lieutenant commander and his party were rowed away in resentful order, taking their observers with them in the horribly overcrowded launch. The submarine was at last alone with her surviving crew. Except for al-Wazir, wherever he was.

As to whereabouts,
why
was Wang here? His purposes could not possibly be friendly to hers, yet Childress had not seen ill in the man’s eyes in Panjim. At any rate, he would not approach the submarine while she was moored so close to the British. Not Wang, who didn’t have nearly that kind of heat in his blood.

What an odd thing to think of a man
.

A man shouted in his ear. He’d dreamt of tumbledown shanties and a railroad that stretched around the world like barbed wire wrapping the skull of a martyr with rough rust and cold steel rain.

“Wha—”

The razor was in his hands, and a sailor stumbled backward with an expression of shocked panic.

A crisis was afoot, to be sure. Kitchens had not even gone below, just tucked himself behind an equipment locker on the foredeck. He knew nothing of
Erinyes
or the arrangements of her people.

Surely this was not an attack, for no guns fired, either in the hands of crew or from the turrets along the ship’s waist.

He stood, rubbed his eyes and revised his opinion. Four Chinese airships loomed forward with glowing battle lanterns spread wide. A rising column of smoke testified to the state of the airship towers at Cotonou. A trap had been sprung.

The last sunrise he’d ever see blossomed in the east.

The girl!
She could stop airships. She’d frightened Captain Sayeed silly with her strange powers before demonstrating them again right here on this deck.

Kitchens scrambled to the poop. The Brass man stood there, gripping the wheel as if it were his very existence. Martins, the surviving petty officer, was there along with two of the older sailors. Where the devil was that worthless midshipman? Longfellow? Longglory? This vessel was cursed by God, that much was certain.

“We will not live out the day,” Kitchens announced flatly on reaching the helm. “Unless, friend Boaz, that girl you so delight in can work some magic against all our enemies at once.”

“I do not think she likes that magic so much.”

Kitchens bowed slightly. “Sir, I must inform you that my given word concerning your fate in Cotonou is almost certainly broken. We cannot fight four aerial cruisers together, even if the ship were in full trim.”

“I am here.” Paolina mounted the three steps from the deck closely followed by Gashansunu.

The clerk became painfully aware of the fact that almost half the effectives remaining to this stricken ship were crowding onto the poop. Between the wounded and the dead, they could not mount a decent firing party at either rail.

“Already there have been too many fights,” Kitchens said. “We have not enough left to us. You I have seen fall through the air and return again as if strolling through an alder copse. Can you send
Erinyes
through
some hidden path in much the same way? Or shall we wait here to be burned from the sky?”

“This pass is not my doing.” Her voice was solid, though her face was pale and her body shook with fatigue. “You men piloted your ship into the gates of Hell, and now you wish to once again be pulled free by a woman.” Paolina reached out and circled Gashansunu’s arm with her own. She favored Boaz with a long, silent look. Then: “I could take my friends and step away from here, and never be troubled by the sight of your pyre.”

No prison would ever hold this woman
. Kitchens opened his mouth, seeking some words that might turn her heart.

Boaz spoke first. “You will not.”

His words dropped like belaying pins. Some part of Kitchens noted that they were sailing uncaring into battle. They could slow; they could turn; they could delay the moment of inevitable reckoning in some form or fashion.

Or they could listen to two lovers argue until all were slain. “No,” Paolina said. Her voice was clear and hard. “I will not. Because that is what a
man
would do.”

“And you are no man, my lady,” Kitchens said, sliding back into the conversation. “Least of all a dead man.”

“I—I do not think I can move this entire airship away.”

“Stop the engines of those before us, as you did before,” Martins said reluctantly.

“Why? They will only restart, and we could not escape a tired stork. We cannot sail close and snuff their lives with our mighty cannon. Furthermore”—she raised her hand—“I will not slay them. I have already killed far too many with my powers. This I will not do again.”

“Then what?” snapped Kitchens.

“We land,” she told them. “We land, and I find a way to help us escape on foot.”

“No.” Boaz’ voice was flat. “We may do better than that. I have been aboard one of those airships before.”

“As have I,” muttered Paolina.

Boaz continued. “We shall take one of theirs, flee with a full gasbag and engines under all power. You can cripple the others for a short while. They will not make up the distance.”

“Where then?” Kitchens demanded.

“Who cares!” screamed Martins. “Anywhere that does not require us falling to our death with skins afire will suit me.” He took a huge, shuddering breath, then added, “Sir.”

Kitchens nodded. “You have an excellent sense of priorities.” He turned
to Boaz and Paolina. “How precisely do you propose to undertake this misadventure?”

“I have a plan,” she said slowly.

She hadn’t the least idea, but panic was edging into the exhausted faces around her.
Erinyes
and all her people would drown of fear before the Chinese could kill them. This was no time for indecision.

She most certainly did not intend to die with the dawn.

“Gashansunu, to the prow with me,” she said. “The rest of you gather and arm such crew as can still stand and fight.”

Paolina had no idea what they would do with any weapons, but that sort of thing always comforted men. The organization would give them purpose in the face of panic.

The sorceress followed her to the prow. “Go, now,” the foreign woman said without preamble. “Leave these people to their fates. They are not yours, and you are not theirs.”

“I will not depart without Boaz,” Paolina said firmly. “And I will not condemn these men who have fought for our lives.”

“You cannot move this airship; you said so yourself.”

“I once called a submarine across hundreds of miles of ocean.”

“What?”

“An underwater ship.”

“How did you do this?”

Paolina almost screamed. “I don’t
know
!”

“Even then,” Gashansunu told her, “you had something to push against.”

“Yes. I caused an earthquake that claimed many lives.”

“You have nothing here to push against. We are in the air.”

“I pushed against those horrid angels,” she told the sorceress. “Their weight countervailed our rise. I could push against one of those airships.”

“Without destroying the ship and crew?”

“I will not slay them. But for every action there is a precisely opposing reaction.” Paolina turned that over. “Can I balance this passage by taking our crew there and moving their crew here?”

Gashansunu looked as if she were trying not to be impressed. “How would you
know
?”

“I can look at their ship. All life glows in the Silent World. How much else can there be in the middle of their air, in this world or the other?”

“Then look with my eyes,” the sorceress told Paolina. The other woman proffered the braided silver. “Take my wrist and we will examine together.”

“You will not step away with me?”

“You are right to mistrust,” said Gashansunu. “But now is not a time for betrayal. Now is a time for swift action.”

Together they slipped into the Silent World without ever leaving their few inches of deck.

The airships hung like flies trapped in ancient pine sap. Even in the Silent World, the spirit of their hydrogen flickered like a ghost within a ghost. Sparks swarmed below the belly of each fire.

Light and life in the middle of the atmosphere.

She looked behind her and counted the presences. Twenty-four remained alive on
Erinyes
—along with Boaz, who did not glow in the same fashion. She knew that the way she knew the length of her own hair, the shape of her own hand. Paolina stared once more across the airy gulf, trying to figure out how many Chinese there were. Could she so simply trade people from place to place, balancing the push of each translation like the numbers in a pretty piece of mathematics?