Pinion (48 page)

Yet something had been traded for that. She had gained. A fair trade?

A man looked closely at her a moment, opened his mouth to speak,
but his voice was like distant thunder trapped in a cave. Just an echo, an echo, an echo.

Is this madness? Has some wall inside my head burst open
?

Her
wa
did not answer.

Gashansunu tried to reach into the Silent World, to mark her place there. If she could, she would step home now, walking with the stride of leagues as Paolina had shown her.

To her horror, the Silent World would not open for her. That had not happened since her first bleeding!

“Where?” Gashansunu cried out in her own language, but no one on this side of the Wall would know the words, would hear the loss in them.

The city had abandoned her. She was already dead. She was become a
wa
, unknowing and unknown. She had lost the connection between her two selves, between Shadow and Silence.

The sorceress wept until a grubby little man brought her a cup of water and awkwardly patted her arm. He stood inside time with her a while, which comforted Gashansunu. Eventually she realized she heard the rage of voices in full quarrel.

Paolina, her Brass, and that strange, dark-suited madman who seemed to issue orders without authority.

She checked for her
wa
one more time, realized that she was indeed lost, and went to see what she could make of this bit of afterlife that remained to her.

Two airships gave chase. The third tended to
Erinyes
.

She was so tired of being at the wrong end of someone else’s gun sight. The Northern Earth was nothing but bullying, warfare and mad grabs for power. She’d found Boaz, finally, but instead of stepping away together they seemed trapped ever deeper inside this English war.

She
wanted to go home. Wherever that was.

“Before you ask,” Paolina announced, “I will not strike them down for you. I will not kill and kill again.”

“You didn’t strike down the last lot.” Kitchens’ voice was drawn tight. “You deterred them so we could flee.”

“We fled into more enemies, despite your promises. I played my little tricks again.” She felt something boiling up inside her. “When do I stop running? Is every hour of every day going to be another call for me to rescue more and more?
I am not here to be your guardian angel!
”

“Paolina—,” Boaz began.

But she whirled on him, still shouting. “Let me find my way!”

Kitchens visibly gathered himself. “You claim to desire stability. In that case, help me do what I must. Then Government will be too distracted to prosecute this war in the East. Afterward, the Wall can go back to the Brass and their like, China can return to her own affairs, and Mother England may rethink her purposes.”

She opened her mouth once, twice, then forced words out around the bitter laughter that threatened. “So all I need do is get you home, help you murder a queen, escape the retribution of your entire empire, await the progress of negotiations at half the distance around the Northern Earth, and
then
all will be well? You must think me a terrible fool, Mr. Kitchens.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Miss Barthes, but yes, that is all you need do.” Unshed tears glittered bright and savage in his gaze. “I have no better answer, except to let the servants of both empires continue about their killing ways. If you are going to magic yourself away, this would be an auspicious time.”

She looked to Boaz, who still clutched the helm. He shook his head slightly before saying, “I will follow wherever you lead. But for my own part, I would not abandon these men and their purposes. Mr. Kitchens offers more hope than any other path I can see.”

Paolina felt as if her heart would crack. “You will not come if I step away?”

“No, I will come.” If Boaz were human, his smile would be lopsided and melting; she heard that in his voice. “I will come though I know it to be wrong, because what else can I do but follow you?”

Gashansunu touched Paolina’s elbow, startling her. “There is no path behind us. I will follow you much as the Brass will, but set your direction well.”

Paolina wanted peace, harmony and a good set of tools. Not a creaking deck and the boom of none-too-distant cannon, and the ever-changing word of a man little better than the
fidalgos
of Praia Nova who had so plagued her childhood.

Kitchens wouldn’t look at her. “The helm, if you please, sir,” he said to Boaz.

The Brass braced against the rising crosswind until the clerk had a good grip.

“Stern watch!” Kitchens bellowed. “Someone tell me where we stand on weapons. We’re fighting for it again, boys, this one last time.”

The few crew still on deck simply groaned. Someone began handing firearms up through a hatch. Paolina stood by the rail with Boaz and Gashansunu. The Brass had a weary set to his shoulders, as if even the
metal of his body were sinking into fatigue. The sorceress appeared very troubled.

They could have their damned silly war. Once she was safely on the Wall, Paolina was never coming back. The two empires might battle one another to their proverbial knees and it would mean nothing to her.
Nothing
.

Try as she could to hold on to that anger, the surge kept slipping away. Would she condemn Ming and ten thousand of his fellow sailors to watery graves? She’d already slain half a fleet, off the coast of Sumatra. That they would go on slaying each other without her was no excuse.

Not when she had a chance to stop this war.

“I would leave with you,” she said to Boaz. “To a place where we might find calm, and consider the times to come. I am afraid we will not find that place.”

“No one will find that place,” Gashansunu said. “It is lost.”

Boaz answered them both. “We will. In time. Right now, I owe these men their lives. Mr. Kitchens has convinced me of the worth of his purpose.”

“I cannot say if he is right or wrong.” Paolina examined her conscience carefully before she chose her next words. She was letting go of something she barely understood: freedom, companionship, her life lived her way. “I can only know that the price of walking away is higher even than the price of staying. If we can stop a war with his mad idea to behead a government, then we will stop a war. But . . .” She looked at them both. “I
will
comprehend what storm it is we sail into. In every detail that clerk can squeeze out of himself.”

Paolina drew the stemwinder from its pouch and stared down the Chinese airships sailing after them. She had disabled the last two such that pursued them, and caused a fire in the process. Now that she had moved men just as she’d once moved
Five Lucky Winds
, she wondered if she might more profitably remove the crews from their ships and let the altitude take the vessels.

Otherwise the men would simply effect repairs and continue their war.

Paolina focused in on the pursuing airships, finding their images in the Silent World. The gasbags glowed with the restless energy of the hydrogen within. The motes of souls swarmed below aboard both vessels, men at their oh-so-serious business of pursuit and destruction. Very briefly she was tempted to send them all to Praia Nova. Let the
doms
with their precious male wisdom deal with almost a hundred angry Chinese sailors.

But she could not do that. Such a gesture was too cruel, and the cost to the women of Praia Nova would be unbearable.

Ming would be disappointed besides. All those men over there were versions of him, just as all these men here were versions of al-Wazir. Similars, brothers, reflections.

Real to her. In a way that she had never been real to the
doms
.

Sumatra it was.

She could visualize that fatal stretch of shoreline very well indeed. The boat had been about half a mile offshore. Sufficiently close for these men to swim if she put them in that exact spot, though the beach would be safer.

Had she seen enough of the beach?

Paolina set the fourth hand to the rhythms of the first airship. That one closed slightly faster than its fellow. The men swarmed, each golden light, each heartbeat, each soul and mind.

They will know I am here
, she thought. But they already did. Everyone seemed to. Even Gashansunu had come looking for her. Hethor was right—she could not hide. All that was left to her was to use her power as best she could.

“No more waiting,” Paolina announced, and sent forty-seven very startled men halfway around the world.

A huge spray of saltwater spewed away from the airship. Something large fell with it, wriggling.

The now-abandoned airship veered off course almost immediately. Her helm had been fighting the same crosswind that bedeviled their own ship. Paolina swiftly turned her focus to the other vessel. Forty-nine men there. They already reacted to the change in the other vessel, moving toward the rail. She could imagine men calling out to their cousins or old friends on the other deck.

Maybe they would find Ming, and he would help them understand.

She simply could not kill more of these Chinese.

This crew vanished as well, traded for several more tons of seawater and a flashing silver rain of fish that glittered as they fell. The second vessel veered away from its course, nose pitching downward.

“I will let them wander,” Paolina said. “I suppose the remaining airship could conduct a recovery operation, but they will be a long time about it.”

“
Erinyes
will distract them, miss.” That was Kitchens.

She hadn’t realized he’d left the helm. “I am very tired,” Paolina said, then sat down on the deck so quickly it was nearly a collapse.

Boaz bent close as Kitchens stared from the helm. “Do you need to rest below?” the clerk asked.

She peered up at him. His face seemed to almost glow in the orange light of morning, erasing the grime and pallor and half-starved gauntness. Privation, transformed into something edging on serenity.

“I will sit a moment,” Paolina said, “and you will sit with me, and you will tell me
exactly
what it is you hope to accomplish on your return to England. If I am going to give up everything to aid you, I would like to know what I am buying at such cost.”

Beside her, Gashansunu stared aft toward the drifting airships. “You are already buying many things at great cost, air priestess.” Her voice was distant.

A great ruckus erupted ashore. An alarm bell shrilled in a building beyond the moored British gunboats. Most of the sailors visible on their decks vanished with some urgency. Even the attentions of HIMS
Inerrancy
shifted away from
Five Lucky Winds
.

She could have laughed.
The monk has done some grave mischief. If she does not bring al-Wazir out of this unharmed, I will do
her
a grave mischief
.

“Captain Leung,” Childress called out in Chinese, “I should have the men strike the awning and stand by.”

Orders were barked, and the crew hustled to their work. Ashore, a pillar of smoke rose from the building that bulked behind the gunboats.

Fire? The monk had set a
fire
?

If nothing else, Childress had to admire the woman’s brazenness. The Mask Poinsard could have taken lessons from this one.

Another alarm joined the first. Her shore party emerged from astern the endmost gunboat, rowing with all diligence.

Something was different.

Childress counted.

Five men, not four, in that launch. Though he was hunched over an oar, the fifth was far too large.

She turned and scrambled up the conning tower. “We should sail as soon as the launch is aboard,” Childress announced to Leung, who scanned the shore through a set of glasses.

He called down for the engines to be ready and the harbor anchors to be drawn up, then said to Childress, much more quietly and in English, “I see six gunboats moored, another anchored along with that heavy cruiser. Do you propose to leave this harbor in full view of them all?”

“Do you propose to await a better time? Keep the crew paraded on the foredeck, depart waving to the people of Port Said, and play the fool. If
they send swift boats after us, we will stand to and claim ignorance. Our chances of accomplishing anything are better on open water.”

“Then we are bound for Malta,” Leung confirmed.

“Yes.” Childress thought quickly, but there were no better answers. “All other routes are closed to us now. The only way to have done with this nonsense between the Middle Kingdom and the British throne is a path drawn straight through the inner corridors of the
avebianco
.” Though she would dearly love to know what the monk had to say about this.

The launch came aside. Al-Wazir, red faced and huffing, climbed aboard first. “Get it up here now, lads,” he growled, pointing at the boat.

Childress called down to him. “Go below, Chief, before you’re spotted.”

His upturned face met her gaze. “Am I glad to see you.” Al-Wazir stepped inside the base of the tower and grunted as he climbed one-handed down the hatch.