Sky Pirates (10 page)

Try as she might, the barrier would not manifest. It was as if something was preventing her from finding it. Up here, high in the sky, surrounded by the iron bars of the brig, the pull of the Shadow realm felt weak and distant, and each time she sought to enter the barrier, she would black out and wake to find she had collapsed on the floor. She kept trying until her temples pounded and blood trickled from her nose.

On the fourth day, she was transferred to one of the crew cabins. Heller came to collect her himself. “By the way, the captain says not to try any funny Shadow business. This ship’s been warded against tricks. She’s got iron in her bones, so you can forget about escaping that way, girlie,” he said as he shoved her through the door.

Elle turned and looked at him. “An iron-boned ship?” So her suspicions had been correct.

Heller nodded. “Aye, we took her off a Trader. Even the ship’s grappling hooks are hexed. If you look at them closely you can see the magic inscribed on the metal. Captain says the slavers used the hooks to stop their prey from escaping in midair.” He shrugged. “Not sure how that all works, but I can tell you we found
some pretty funny creatures lurking in the hull when we took her.” He pointed to the hatch. “See, over here is one of the markings.”

Below his stubby finger, Elle could make out the faint markings of some ward or talisman engraved into the metal.

Elle felt her mouth go dry. Because part of her existed in both the Realms of Shadow and of Light, she was not usually so heavily affected by iron, as those who dwelled exclusively in the Shadow would be. But even she had felt the power of whatever made up this ship. The hexes were most likely the reason the aether would not work when they were first caught. She had been too distracted by the danger at the time to think about it, but if the
Inanna
had been an old battleship that had been converted to a slaver specializing in the trade of Shadow creatures, then it all made sense. The thought made her feel sick.

“Never you mind,” Heller said, reading her thoughts. “We cleaned her up good and solid when we took her. Had her refitted for the crew as you can see. The captain even let the Shadow creatures we found chained up in here go free. They were worth quite a bit of gold, but he let them go just the same.”

Elle shook her head. The world was so full of evil it was almost too much to comprehend.

“Anyways, I’m under orders that you are to be confined to quarters and so it shall be,” he said as he closed the door. Elle heard the wheel that operated the lock in the door spin, followed by the crunch of metal on metal. The door was resolutely locked and she was completely on her own.

Days passed in silence. The only company Elle had was the low hum of the ship’s engines.

The tiny cabin was fitted with two narrow bunks,
bolted one above the other. In one corner was a small water closet and basin with a little shaving mirror embedded in the metal. Along the other side of the cabin were storage lockers. She still hated the place, but at least the berth was more or less clean and dry and, more important, she did not have to share it with anyone.

She even had an extra blanket and a small porthole. These were items of luxury for ordinary crewmen aboard a ship like this, and she found herself feeling strangely grateful for being afforded them.

She spent hours staring out of the grubby little porthole, thinking. Outside was nothing but endless sky and clouds. They were flying at high altitude; a feat only the very big airships could achieve, and so apart from the fact that they were traveling in a westerly direction, it was impossible to tell where they were or where they were going.

She was let out of her quarters once to attend Gertrude’s funeral. There among the other pirates, she stood dry-eyed, staring bleakly at the row of bodies wrapped in canvas. In all, six people had died in the siege of the
Water Lily
.

Well, Gertrude, we gave them a run for their money
, she thought silently as she watched the crewmen dispatch the bodies through a cargo hatch. They were far out over open water and the weighted canvas would sink down into the vast expanse of sea below.

To his credit, Dashwood said a few heartfelt words about the waste of human life and how everyone should take this as a lesson in humility, but Elle was too distraught to listen. She just stared out of one of the portholes at the white clouds that drifted below them.

Locked back inside her cabin after the funeral, Elle had crumpled to the ground. Alone, she had wept over the loss of her friend and her ship and the monstrous unfairness of it all.

She had stared at her stiletto for a long time, wondering briefly whether it might not be better to simply put an end to her misery, but Elle was not the sort to take the coward’s way out. No, she would hide the blade and bide her time, for at some stage these pirates would slip up. She just needed to be ready for them.

From what she could see, the
Inanna
was of the rigid design models, which meant that the gas balloons and hulls of the ship were all housed inside giant metal rings that formed her distinctive double-hull shape. The rings in turn were covered with specially reinforced canvas and metal plating. Even if the web of rigging that held the two together was severed, the upper and lower parts could still float independently. She was armor plated, armed and designed for long-haul flight, so with her spark reactors filled, she could remain airborne for months before she needed to touch down on land. That was not good news, Elle realized. They could well be on the other side of the world before her chance of escape came.

Getting home was going to be much harder than she had initially thought.

Some days, when she listened carefully, she could hear the sound of hammering and the buzz of spark-powered saws cutting through metal from below. It was the sound of the crew working on stripping down the
Water Lily
. Every clang and buzz was a blow to her heart. But every night before she went to bed, she resolutely scratched a line into the metal of her bunk.

She had lost her ship. She felt the grief of it as if the
Water Lily
had been a person. And in a way the loss was just as great. For it had been the
Water Lily
and the escape that her work brought that provided Elle with sanctuary from her grief in the dark months that followed the loss of her husband. All was lost now, she thought bitterly. She had only two goals left in life now.
One was to escape from this ship, and the other was to honor her promise to Gertrude. If there was even the slightest hope that it would bring him back, she would find the lost city of Angkor Wat. She had vowed that she would restore Marsh to the realm of Light and she would not stop until she managed it. Even if it was the last thing she did in this life.

But amid all of her ardent resolve, she found that she could not quell the nasty thought that perhaps Marsh did not wish to be found.

On and on it niggled while she lay in her bunk in the quiet, dark hours. Perhaps Marsh chose the realm of Shadow as a convenient means to be rid of their marriage. Perhaps he did not really love her as he said he did. Perhaps she made him so unhappy that dwelling in darkness in the form of a half-alive wraith was a preferable alternative. These thoughts made Elle very sad and she tried to push them down deep inside of her with a force that only someone as stubborn as she could muster.

She did not have to wait long for her prospects to change, though. On the fourth day alone in the cabin, there was a thump and a rattle at the door.

Atticus Crow appeared. “Captain says you can have these now,” he said, dumping her rucksack and her holdall onto the bunk. Then he turned and shoved Gertrude’s trunk into the narrow space on the floor. “I don’t know where you’re going to put all that stuff, though.” He sniffed. “Which is why ladies don’t belong on ships, I says.”

Elle was too thrilled to see her things to care about his nasty comment. The thought of wearing fresh underwear filled her with such joy that she honestly did not care what Atticus Crow or any of the other crewmen thought.

And so her solitary confinement continued.

In the late afternoon of the eleventh scratch, Atticus Crow appeared at the door again.

“Dinner,” he said awkwardly as he put a tray down on the small table which was welded to the hull.

“Thank you,” Elle said in a low voice. She was busy leafing through one of the journals she had found in Gertrude’s trunk. They were the chronicles of a lifetime’s work. It wasn’t the full set—the earlier ones were presumably at home—but she had been captivated by Gertrude’s easy style of writing and her wonderful illustrations. Gertrude, it turned out, had been blessed with the most amazing ability to draw, and her work was littered with fine drawings and diagrams.

She found the journal that was marked
Siam
. It was a slim volume in a soft leather cover. This was the volume that told her how to find Angkor Wat. She had studied it over and over, trying to memorize every detail.

Atticus stared at her for a few seconds as if he wanted to say something.

Elle looked up from the page she was reading, but said nothing.

He turned bright red and pulled something wrapped in a dirty piece of cloth out of his coat pocket. “I saved this for you. I saw you looking at it when we went to get your things, so I thought you might want to keep it,” he said as he held the ragged bundle out to her.

Elle opened it and bit her lip. It was a small pane of glass with a fine water lily inlaid on it.

“I thought you might want it to remember her by,” Atticus said. “We are jettisoning the scrap tomorrow.”

Elle looked away, unable to say anything.

“It will get better.” Atticus cleared his throat again. “I was press-ganged when I was just a lad myself. They locked me up at first too, so I would forget about running away. I think I must have spent my first year crying.
I was only little and the other fellas used to tease me something terrible. That was years and quite a few ships ago, but I still remember.”

Elle stared at him, surprised by his sincerity.

“Anyway,” Atticus continued. “The captain’s not so bad. He’s better than most. You’ll see—you just have to give him a chance.”

“Thank you.” She was oddly touched by this strange rough man’s kindness.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I’ll let you get back to your readin’ now,” he said, casting an eye over the journals that were spread out on the bunk.

“Say, is that a map?” His little eyes lit up at the sight of the fine illustration on the page.

“Er, not exactly,” Elle said. She moved to her bunk and started closing journals and shuffling papers. “They are scientific notes on archaeological digs.”

“So it’s like looking for buried treasure?” Atticus appeared even more interested.

“In a manner of speaking, but this is more like looking for history. So no gold or treasure,” Elle said, doing her best to keep her voice even.

He nodded slowly. “Hmm, sounds like hunting for treasure to me. There was plenty of gold in them crates we took.”

“Well, thank you for the glass pane,” Elle said, trying to divert his attention from the papers. “It was very kind of you to save it for me.”

Atticus nodded. “Always makes me sad when they strip a ship,” he said. “Makes me feel like someone’s died.” He turned to leave the cabin, casting a final long look at the papers she was holding in her arms.

The moment the door was locked, Elle flung the journals and notes onto the bed and regarded them. She shook her head in frustration at her stupidity. Allowing
someone like Crow to see those notes was just about the most foolish thing she could have done.

She picked up the fork that was on her dinner tray. It wasn’t the ideal tool for the job, but it would do. She dragged the mattress off the bed and, using the tines of the fork, she unpicked the stitching on the side until she had a space that was big enough. Carefully she slipped the journal into the stuffing. She tucked the innards back and folded the canvas cover over as best she could. She lifted the mattress back onto the frame and pushed the open side against the hull. She would sew up the hole as soon as she managed to find a needle, but hopefully the hiding place would do for now.

Carefully she made up the bed again. With a little luck, if they decided to search her, Dashwood and his crew might overlook it in favor of the trunk.

After stowing the rest of the journals back in the trunk, she sighed and flopped down on the narrow bunk. The metal frame and the thin mattress groaned in sympathy under her.

How could she have been so careless?

The only way she could convince them to let her go was to make them believe that she was of no value at all. That was already difficult, given that Dashwood believed she might be worth something because of her title and connection. If rumor got out that she was in possession of treasure maps, there was no way these men would let her go. She closed her eyes in frustration. Her means of escape had just slipped away a little further.

PARIS