Romulus Buckle & the City of the Founders (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin, Book One) (14 page)

THE CROW WHO COULD NOT CAW

M
AX PAUSED ON THE MAIN
keel corridor just a few feet from the piloting gondola stairwell. She had felt the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
rev up to all ahead full with little concern: she knew that the captain—whether it was Buckle or Sabrina—would push the engines to their fullest regardless of her recommendations. The situation demanded such risks. And she was certain that the patching would hold.

She was staring at her hands. She could not make them stop shaking.

She clamped them behind her back.

Captain Buckle was lost, and it was her fault.

No one would blame her, of course, not after she’d killed one tangler and nearly lost her life to the second while trying to drag her captain to safety. But that made no difference at all. Buckle was dead. She had failed him.

Snap out of it, Max! she thought. Things would be harder now, with Buckle gone. But she had to truly be the first mate and help Sabrina as best she could.

If only her hands would stop shaking.

Max hurried down the circular staircase with her hands still clasped behind her back. When she stepped onto the gondola
deck, she scanned the gauges and dials at the engineering station, making sure that the zeppelin’s systems were in good shape. She also immediately smelled the tension simmering between Sabrina and Pluteus. Sabrina looked calm, but Pluteus’s face was flushed; he was shifting his weight almost imperceptibly forward onto the balls of his feet.

Sabrina turned her head and smiled sadly at Max. “Good work, Max. Aerodynamics are acceptable.”

Max rubbed her ice-rimed goggles with the sleeve of her coat, doing so more to keep her hands busy than to actually defrost the lenses. “She will hold together as long as we do not run into any weather.”

“I trust you have recovered sufficiently from your fall?” Sabrina asked.

“Yes,” Max replied. It was almost a mumble. Max did not feel like talking.

“I was told that you did everything you could on the roof,” Sabrina said. “No one could have done more.”

Max nodded, unable to look Sabrina in the eyes. Kind words, but each one stabbed Max in the heart.

“We all know—” Sabrina started.

Something burst in Max’s head. “What are your orders now, Captain Serafim?” Max asked, cutting Sabrina off, daring her to continue with her ineffective sympathies, her unintentional tortures.

“All right, Max,” Sabrina said softly. “All right.”

“There is no point in dwelling upon tragedy, Captain Serafim,” Pluteus said gravely. “Time is a-wasting, and you have not answered my question. How do you know the way into the City of the Founders?”

Despite the ratcheting up of the tension, Max was grateful for the distraction.

“I haven’t time for explanations now, General Pluteus,” Sabrina replied with an authority in her voice that Max had never heard before. “See that your troopers are prepared. I shall be joining you presently.”

“I am a general and a council elder—” Pluteus started.

“And I am the captain,” Sabrina replied evenly. “See to your men.”

Pluteus glared.

Max glanced back at Sabrina. Sabrina was correct that the airship captain was the commander on the airship. But what was this she had just overheard? Sabrina knew about a passageway leading into the City of the Founders? In a world where no one on the outside knew anything about the mysterious city, it was a considerable revelation. Pluteus was reasonable in his request for her to explain how she knew such a thing.

But Balthazar always allowed his adopted children to keep their secrets.

Something big and birdlike swooped up and landed on the gondola’s starboard gunwale rail, where it was open to the sky.

Tangler. That was Max’s first thought. A tangler zipping in to snatch a meal. She grabbed for her pistol.

“Tangler!” both Sabrina and Pluteus shouted, both drawing their pistols. Nero, unarmed, threw himself to the deck.

The dog—the thought flashed in Max’s mind—the dog was too distraught to even bark.

It was not a tangler.

So the dog did not bark.

The bird-thing perched on the gondola rail was a machine, a bizarre metal construction that resembled a huge crow. Gears and cogs hummed across the length of its body, and glass portals roiled with steam and boiling water within; polished copper
feathers lined the wings, glimmering in the gray light, while the eyes glowed red over a jet black beak on the metal skull.

Max and her shipmates stared over their pistols at the mechanical apparition. Neither she nor they had ever seen anything like this before.

The crow looked back at them with its red eyes. It released a jet of steam from a valve on its back and then seemed to relax, as if conserving its energy.

Uttering a small yip, Kellie jumped to her feet, hurried up to the mechanical crow and carefully sniffed one of the brass claws clutching the rail.

Max slowly lowered her pistol. The others did the same. Nero rose to his feet, looking a bit sheepish.

“Well, keep my powder dry,” Pluteus stammered. “What wizards construct such wondrous contraptions as this?”

“Alchemists,” Sabrina whispered.

The crow lifted its left leg, causing Kellie to jump back an inch, and there, clutched in its brass talons, was a leather-bound scroll.

Welly cautiously stepped forward and took a hold of the scroll, which the crow’s talons released with a convulsive jerk as soon as he touched it. He rolled the scroll open, its parchment paper crackling as it was stretched out.

Welly read the note and then read it again. “I…” he started, and stopped, as if his eyes could not make out the elegant handwriting.

“Out with it, man,” Pluteus huffed.

Welly looked up from the scroll, blinking, stunned. “It’s from Captain Buckle. He’s with the Alchemists. He wants us to come retrieve him.”

“What?” Sabrina asked, incredulous.

Max was afraid to believe her ears; she felt as if she had suddenly forgotten how to breathe. Kellie, on the other hand, somehow understood, leaping up and chasing her tail as she did when a particular excitement was too much for her.

Welly waved the scroll, overcome with joy. “He is at the Observatory. The captain! Captain Buckle’s alive!”

NINETY-NINE SOULS

C
APTAIN
R
OMULUS
B
UCKLE SMILED THE
way he smiled when he had some air under him. He stood shoulder to shoulder with General Scorpius, Wolfgang, Wolfgang’s assistant Luckmoor Zwicky, six Alchemist soldiers, and two robots inside the cramped and creaking main hold of the
Arabella
, the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
’s launch. The
Arabella
was not flying on this trip—she had been lowered by cables to pick up her passengers near the Alchemist Observatory, and now she was being ratcheted back up into her berth inside the belly of the hovering mother zeppelin—but it was close enough to flying for Buckle.

Scorpius cleared his throat and scratched his hoary gray-black beard. He obviously was not comfortable off the ground, and neither were the tall Alchemist soldiers with him. Wolfgang looked quite pleased, however, as did Zwicky, a scrawny, bookwormish type. Wolfgang and Zwicky ran the two robots Scorpius had chosen to accompany his platoon: Newton, with all of his firepower, and a strange machine they called the Owl, because it looked like one, or at least its face did, while the rest of its body more resembled that of a metal ostrich. Ten Alchemists and two robots did not an army make, but from the looks of their equipment and the three massive trunks packed with gear
they carried with them, they would add needed punch to the Crankshaft rescue mission.

The Alchemists were expecting to find Andromeda Pollux in the Founder’s prison. Why? Because Buckle had told them she would be there. He did not know if she would be there, but…surely Andromeda would be sitting in a cell next to Balthazar’s.

Buckle did not want to anger the Alchemists. He did not want to be squashed by Newton.

And there was another fly in the ointment, as far as Buckle’s potential predicament went: looming at his shoulder was a hulking Alchemist soldier named Caliban Kepler. Kepler was a bear of a fellow, his bulk straining at the seams of his long white coat, his face so beefy that his leather cap and goggles seemed almost swallowed up by the fleshiness around them.

Capella De Vega had assigned Kepler to Buckle as his “bodyguard,” although Buckle figured the man was actually an assassin ordered to exact revenge if Buckle attempted a double cross, or failed to secure the release of Andromeda Pollux.

The Alchemists did not fool around.

Still, Buckle felt he had struck a good deal. Once the Alchemists agreed to assist the Crankshaft expedition, they had activated some strange mechanical crow to deliver his handwritten message to the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
. And Capella De Vega had invited Buckle to peer through one of their gigantic telescopes to watch his airship rotate on her heel and steam full speed back in his direction. Perhaps two hundred Alchemists, every one of them begrimed in some way with soot or oil, had come outside to the monument park to view the zeppelin as it arrived. They seemed to approve of the massive airship, nodding as she came to a hover fifty feet above the Observatory dome and dropped her static lines.

Buckle found his pocket watch and spun the winder back and forth between his fingers. The
Arabella
shuddered and made a distinct
bump
as she arrived in her berth in the belly of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
. Copper-encased anchor bars slid into position with scraping
clank
s. Crew members in the launch bay shouted orders back and forth as they secured the
Arabella
in her hangar.

Buckle moved forward. The drawbridge ramp in the
Arabella
’s nose cranked down, admitting gray light into the launch’s dark interior. He strode out onto the loading platform where Max, Kellie, Pluteus, two Ballblasters, and the ship’s surgeon, Harrison Fogg, waited to greet him. Their faces were both alight at the sight of him and tight as they scrutinized the Alchemists coming behind, especially the hulking Newton. Buckle chuckled under his breath.

Kellie raced forward with a happy yip and wheeled around Buckle’s feet, her tail a blurry hurricane. He reached down to pat her head and she jumped into his arms, licking his face with such a fury it felt like her tongue was scraping the beard off his chin.

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” Max said. Her voice was emotionless, but her eyes glimmered blue inside her goggles. Martian blue reflected happiness.

“Thanks, Max,” Buckle replied. “It appears that you and I are tanglerproof.”

“Just barely, Captain,” Max responded dryly.

Buckle smiled, his gaze lingering a moment on the dazzling blue shimmers lurking in Max’s goggles—he saw joy in her eyes only rarely, and when he did he always felt a great surge of encouragement, though to what purpose or effect he was not sure. And the presence of the Alchemists did not perturb Max
as it did the others, not even in the slightest. Buckle knew such surprises never ruffled her feathers.

General Pluteus, on the other hand, stepped forward with his hand on his pistol holster and a storm of suspicion in his face. “Captain Buckle,” he growled, “what is the meaning of this armed Alchemist force? Are you under arrest? Have they made you a prisoner?”

Buckle set Kellie on the platform and slapped his hand on Pluteus’s shoulder. “Stand down, Pluteus,” he said with a reassuring smile. “They are here as friends.”

“Friends? Friends?” Pluteus stammered.

“They are joining us in our assault on the City of the Founders,” Buckle said.

Pluteus went quiet, but his jaw was working. He looked like he had just bitten down on a bugbear turd as he eyed the Alchemists.

“Status report, Max,” Buckle said.

“The ship suffered damage to the exterior envelope, but temporary repairs have been completed to my satisfaction, Captain,” Max said, taking a half step forward. “All systems are functioning at maximum efficiency. Crew is at regular complement of sixty-eight. With the addition of twenty-one Crankshaft infantry, and now ten Alchemists, not counting the two robots, there are a total of ninety-nine souls aboard, sir.”