Pinion (52 page)

Except somewhere along this voyage, she’d lost the notion that New Haven
was
home. She could not decide if that was a tragedy, or a liberation. The west beckoned, the island of her reckoning rising pale-cliffed from sun-drenched waters somewhere ahead.

Childress spoke quietly with the chief. Her guilt drove her to the conversation as much as her fondness for the great Scotsman.

“How was it aboard Bork’s ship?” she asked.

He turned briefly away, pain flitting across his face. “A man should never swear too many oaths, Mask. In time, his word will come to break itself.”

“Were you . . .” She was afraid of the word.

“Tortured?” He laughed, though it came out more as a retching. “Nae, unless you call a ration of rum and some good Royal Navy slop in a tin tray torture. They treated me far worse than that. They were
reasonable
.”

Childress whispered, “What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nae. I did not speak of this vessel or her crew. I did not tell them of the Mask Childress, who I’ve come to call a friend.” He paused, then said, “I did not ask help for the mad doctor at the Wall. That would hae betrayed too much of our intents. As well as Boaz.”

At the misery in his voice, Childress stepped close, wrapped her arms as far as she could reach around al-Wazir’s massive shoulders, and held on to him while he wept.

Much to his surprise, they sailed the North African coast unmolested. He’d expected airships to come droning out of the sky, a fleet from Port Said or Cairo or some Italian port to be hunting
Good Change
. Even just simple bad luck should have overtaken them.

Instead there was water, shoreline and a quiet sea. Weather threatened but did not appear. Dolphins followed the boat a while. The crew was surly and silent as normal. Wu muttered at him from time to time, but Wang even discovered some shrimp left in the pot when he went below after the crew’s dinner mess.

He could not remember being at peace since before leaving the library at Chersonesus Aurea. Fear of one kind or another had driven him forward, darkened his soul, clouded his thinking, robbed him of too much of who and what he was.

Now, trapped in a boat amid angry men too far from their own waters, he was just Wang again. The son of farmers, a cataloger and an archivist, a subject of the Son of Heaven, a denizen of Northern Earth.

Wang wondered where this unexpected sense of peace had come from.

Wherever the war was right now, it did not follow them across the Mediterranean. He could well imagine the bombings, the shelling, the duels on the waves and amid the clouds, all raging from Singapore to the African coast of the Wall.

If the war stayed there and did not come into the South China Sea or the British Atlantic, then, well, this was the game of nations.

But the Golden Bridge project, fed by his work in the sunken library, would tip that balance. The fires, the killing, the dying would spread all around the world. Childress had the right of it when she argued against the Middle Kingdom building a broad path across the wall. Ancient magic or modern engineering, it would not matter once they’d opened that wound in the fabric of the world.

Her fear had been for what might come over from the other side. His fear was for what this side would take across.

Wang still did not know what he would do on catching up to Childress. Bringing her back to Phu Ket seemed unlikely. So far as the crew of
Good Change
were concerned, he could stand in the middle of Malta and their vengeance would not reach him.

No man was safe from the Silent Order—they were like the tongs of Shanghai and Hong Kong writ large across the world. But this boat full of dead men would trouble him little so long as he stayed away from the water.

Wang watched the sun slip magenta-bright below the horizon and contemplated how he might live through the coming fights, how the Mask Childress would receive him, what he might say to her, persuade her of.

Tell me, do the Masks truly believe they rule the world
?

Let us fight the Golden Bridge together
!

I have come to capture you, but I will not. Please do not send me home
.

The sea held no wisdom, only the ever-closing
li
between his feet and the stony shores of Malta. There some of his questions might perhaps be answered.

And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita.          
—Acts 28:1

He brought
Stolen
down out of the upper sky a day later. The engines sounded close to failure, and the crew slept far too long. Boaz had rested at the wheel, staring sightless along their course and holding firm while the voice of the Sixth Seal ranted quietly deep within him. His constant companion had become like a heartbeat, though he was still all too conscious of its power.

Now the airship passed over sparse, brown mountains somewhere in Spain, according to Kitchens’ hand-drawn map. Boaz hadn’t succeeded in following the coastline, for there was too much air and sea traffic, so he’d kept inland except for passing high above a narrow strait busy with military vessels.

None of them had looked high enough
up
. A speck in the sky was just a speck in the sky, Boaz knew, but when your enemy flew, any such were as dangerous as rust specks on an idled joint.

That was all to his good fortune.

::
wings of wax and feathers with which to challenge the very angels of the Host of Heaven
::

They cruised low over ragged forests that gave way to long aprons of shattered rock and glum brown outcroppings. The air was crisp, but nothing like the misery of the upper altitudes.

Gashansunu had been among the last to go below, and she was the first to emerge. She seemed far less fey, as if whatever had troubled her before had passed in the unquiet rest below.

“Does the air agree with you now?” Boaz asked.

“Never did I starve for breath.” The edge was gone from her voice, as well.

::
crammed with dust you are, and you eat the prayers of men as if they were broken stalks in the meadow
::

She would say no more. The rest of the crew began to stumble forth. Within the hour almost all were on the deck.

“We lost two men to the altitude,” Martins said quietly to Boaz and Kitchens. Both the petty officer and the clerk looked worse for the wear. The Brass realized that he had become something of a judge of human beings.

“Whom?” asked Kitchens.

“Schoenhuth of the gas division, what had carried a wound from the killer angels. Also Gallaher from the engineering division.” Martins grimaced. “He was our best mechanic. Only one left with real training. Klaw didn’t make it off
Erinyes
, and Weiss died in the fighting.”

::
the oldest warhorse in the pasture yet has the light of battle in his clouded eyes
::

“This will not matter much longer,” Boaz replied. All eyes leapt to the horizon, seeking Chinese airships or winged savages or some new horror.

“Brass bastard,” muttered the petty officer. Then: “We’ll lose several more if we take those heights again.”

Paolina joined them, bleary and stumbling from her time below. She carried another oxygen pot. “A number of the crew are ill.” Waving the little device, she added, “This seems to aid them. I have a second one charging below.”

“Mr. Kitchens,” Boaz said. “This is your errand. We are beyond the boundaries of my purpose.”

The clerk stared at his hands. That was, the Brass realized, an unusual episode of uncertainty for this man. Whatever doubts warred inside him, Kitchens always maintained a focused intent.

::
a Godly man, pursuing justice past all cost of reason, as a Godly man should do
::

The clerk’s gaze passed slowly from eye to eye. “I must press forward, and not spend time in fighting or fruitless negotiation. If we are stopped, I will never be permitted to approach Blenheim Palace and the presence of the Queen. Her Imperial Majesty asks no less of me. I can ask no less of
Stolen
and her crew.”

Boaz spoke. “This vessel will not fight again, true?”

Martins shook his head. “Our crew won’t fire on a British ship, and we’re much too far into our own territory for them Chinee to find us now.”

Kitchens muttered agreement, as if it pained him.

::
set flame to your banners, cast away your armor, shear your heads and rub your faces with ash, for you are already lost to the living
::

The Brass ignored the voice this time. “Our last operation will be the landing at Blenheim Palace.”

“Yes,” the clerk said.

Paolina smiled at Boaz—she saw the line of his reasoning. Her approval thrilled him, sending an unexpected crackle through his crystals.

“We land now, and set to ground all but the few crew we need to keep
Stolen
operating for another day or two.” He looked up at the tapered bag. “A gas man, whoever is left to manage the engines, and an extra pair of hands. We do not have sufficient company even now to work this ship in full. Let us make a virtue of our failings and travel as lightly as possible.”

The petty officer looked to Kitchens. “Sir?”

“Best be done soon,” said Paolina before the clerk could speak. “Let me know how many will remain aboard. I will create additional oxygen pots.”

::
the King gave them back their oaths and set each man free with a coin and a sack of grain
::

Martins began counting out on his fingers. The crew huddled ragged and cold, sipping soup from tight-clutched bowls.

“I believe that this is your decision,” Kitchens told the petty officer. “None of us know how to do more than grasp a wheel or guess at a map.”

“I’ll keep six,” Martins said gruffly. “I’m off to tell the good news to them who have been volunteered.”

Boaz turned to Paolina. “Go to the bow and watch for a place where we may approach the earth.” He’d never landed an airship, did not intend to start now, but he understood what was required—a large patch of relatively level ground without nearby cliffs or other sources of disturbances to the air. “We shall want a good-sized meadow, or possibly the margin of a lake.”

“Will you aid me?” she asked the silent Gashansunu. Together the two women walked forward.

He didn’t want to bring the airship any lower. Already he was too close to the peaks of these ragged mountains. The airman’s lesson that altitude was always your friend had not been lost on Boaz.

::
even a priest knows the ground over which he fights, workrooms of the soul where ideas labor at their patents
::

Forty-five minutes later, the old sailor Levine brought them low over a glittering tarn surrounded by meadows of blooming lavender. Boaz stared down at the pale purple haze of autumn blossoms mixed with the green-gray foliage.

“There is no point in trying to moor,” Martins had shouted over the laboring of the engines. Instead they passed a pair of lines over the rail.

Most of the departing crew scrambled down like monkeys, swarming the fifty feet or so to the ground. Six would go over the side in slings, along with anything else deemed surplus to final requirements.

Stolen
would be left with little more than a handful of crew, and no margin of error. whatever happened would be the end of them—storm, attack, breakage, British interception.

::
uncovered by fate, they moved into the light, bathing in the gaze of their enemies
::

If he could catch a favorable wind at sufficient altitude, they might make Blenheim Palace undetected in two more days. The most dangerous portion of that journey would be the descent to the palace grounds.

An idea occurred to him. They could at least
attempt
to mitigate that. “Are there stores of cloth below?” Boaz asked Paolina. “Chinese silk, perhaps?”

“I have seen those. As well muslin sheeting.”

“We are in want of a banner that we could lower so as to communicate with the ground upon our arrival. If we are lucky, this will slow the British from instantly burning us out of the sky for Chinese invaders.”