The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (18 page)

The man shouting had reached the base of the gangway, and Germer, appearing behind Candice, answered him. “We are the
Brofman
. What news?”

“We have business with your captain. Would you bring him to the deck?” His request sounded more like an order, and Germer stepped between Candice and the man on the airslip.

“I can take any message for the captain, but I can tell you we are not for hire at the moment. We are in transit with cargo already and can take no more.” Germer stepped to the gangway then put a fist on each hip, puffing his chest to its full and imposing size.

The man on the airslip put a foot onto the gangway and said, “That’s what we are here about; we need to check your cargo for irregularities.”

Candice was taken off guard by the speed at which the attack happened. The man from the airslip plunged forward, launching himself over the length of the gangway and plunging a fist into Germer’s gut. The engineer fell backward onto the deck of the
Brofman
and gasped. He clutched at the knife sticking out of his right side, but the handle was already too slippery with blood. Candice screamed in terror as the other men flooded onto the deck.

A man covered Candice’s mouth with a rough palm, and fingers pressed hard into her left cheek. Through her pain and terror she struggled like a tiny wolverine, thrashing her legs and scratching at the man’s hand with her fingernails, until suddenly her head was smacked hard into the handrail along the steps leading down to the heart of the ship. It was all she could do to remain conscious, and her resistance fell by the wayside. For a moment she was sure she would vomit from the pain, but nothing happened. Candice started to sob, furious and, now, completely restrained by her captor.

The man who had led the others onto the ship was looking around the deck. He lit a torch he carried and began pulling open a hatch and looking in. He shouted back to Germer’s twitching body, “Full of cargo, is it?” He slammed the hatch closed and opened the next. “I see that you exaggerate a bit.” He moved on to the third hatch and lowered in the torch to look. He shook his head, tsk-tsking. “No, no. How unfortunate. I think you are not such innocents as you seem. I find sacks of seed below, and I think that you are smugglers for the resistance.”

He smiled at Candice, and the light from the torch shone on his face. She could see he was definitely Tugrulian and mad with zeal. “I will help you before you find yourself in trouble with the emperor,” he said to her as be pulled a flask from beneath his coat. He poured the liquid into the hold and dropped the torch.

Candice tried to leap out of her captor’s hands and catch the falling flames, but she was held firm and left to scream into the hand pressed over her face. She bit at the restraining hand, and blood filled her mouth. The man holding her yelped, but would not let go. He banged her head on something solid once more. The rekindled pain could not mask the
whoosh
of the cargo hold igniting. Her painstakingly acquired, sorted, and accounted cache of seeds was burning now, and there was nothing she could do about it. Candice’s screams of fury turned to frustration, and still she was held fast.

The leader of the invasion turned and marched down the gangway, and the rest of his men followed silently, including the man holding Candice. He carried the struggling woman into the empty terminal and onto the incline car, where she was pitched hard onto the floor.

No sooner was she down than she felt her arms bound behind her and a gag stuffed in her mouth. She panicked and thrashed around with her legs.
How dare they kidnap me!
was all she could think. A big hand grasped her around her tiny neck and pressed hard, pushing her back down toward the floor of the car. The leader of the thugs, eyes bright with violence, said, “Professor, it would be my pleasure to snap your neck right here, but I must temper my desires. The emperor has other plans for you, so I must rather insist”—he smacked the back of her head against the floor, knocking most of the fight out of her—“that you cease this struggle. No one will stop us below. No one will stand between us and our ship. And no one will cross the patrol line to come after you. You, Dr. Mortimer, will stand for your crimes in Kotal, as will the rest of your rebel companions.”

The tone of the man left nothing to doubt: his will was to be her reality. Afraid to gaze into his mad eyes any longer, she turned her head and watched the darkness through the glass panel of the incline car’s side door, a tear escaping the corner of her downturned eye. She prayed that she would see her love again, that she could tell him she loved him, or at least let him find out what had happened to her.

A shudder rocked the car at the midway point, as the dimly lit upward-bound mate to the car Candice was in passed by. Through the window she saw Lincoln in the rising gondola, his head pressed against glass as he lazily looked down at the shrinking city below.

When he saw Candice in the passing car, he flinched and blinked. Just before he drifted out of sight above her, Candice saw the young man shout and point in her direction, and for the briefest moment, Captain Endicott’s face appeared at the window.

He saw her. For a split second he saw her and he knew she was in trouble. Inside, she glowed with triumph.
Prayers asked and answered
, she thought to herself.
Well, two out of three, anyway
. She was sad to think that, if this was the last time she would see her captain’s handsome face, the look she would remember was one of helpless horror.

The leader yanked Candice to her feet as the incline car clanged to a stop at the bottom of the mountain, and he pushed her toward the man whom she had bitten in her struggle. He threw her over his shoulder, and as he walked from the car toward the docks, he vindictively bit her on the hip where her shirt rolled away from her flight pants, drawing blood.

She yelped into her gag, and her fury built. She had never wanted to kill before, not really, but she was acquiring a taste for it. She saw a knife tucked into the back of the man’s belt, but with her hands bound behind her, there was no reaching for it. She struggled against her bonds, but she was held fast.

There were a few people about on the predawn dock, but none intervened, and most busily occupied themselves with things that kept their heads down and their eyes averted. She groaned and tried to shout for help, but all ears were deaf to her. The men who held her were ghosts. The law did not apply to them, and they scared the wits out of everyone they passed. She felt doomed. Moments later, she was being tossed aboard a Tugrulian patrol boat that snarled to life and left the dock in seconds.

She reasoned that Max would turn around and come back down to look for her. Her captain was likely less than five minutes behind her, but it might as well have been five years. There was no catching up to her now. The entirety of the world is lost in seconds and inches, and Candice could feel it all being taken from her. She seethed with anger, and had nowhere to aim it . . . yet.

chapter 13

Reunion

Afham stuck to Chenda like a barnacle for the whole of the day after the targa hunt, which did not bother her in the least. Unlike the rest of the family on the
Tao-Tallis
, Afham did not treat her like nobility. He treated her like a friend. To him, Chenda was a real pal to have helped him be the first to see the rising targa. He was part of the hunt, at least in that small way. Her connection to divinity and role in the world outside the hulls of his family home concerned him not at all.

And she could do neat tricks. Chenda found it odd that the Mae-Lyn liked popcorn, but Rainor explained that any foodstuff that stayed small until they wanted it to take up more space was a good thing. Afham discovered that Chenda could make the kernels pop using her power, and this became a great game between the two. She would sit cross-legged in the bow of the ship with him in her lap. He would toss a seed into the air and she would pop it. If the boy was quick enough, he would catch the puff and eat it before the sea winds blew it away. She tried to explain that the process was as simple as boiling the tiny amount of water inside each kernel, just the tiniest strain on her powers. He found it hilarious and wanted to do it for hours on end.

Afham was a happy little soul, and spending time with him took Chenda’s mind off the ache in her heart for Fenimore. For a moment she dreamed of having a child such as Afham one day, but pushed that thought away before it could twist in her gut.

Afham’s father was also becoming a friend, or at least closer to it. Rainor sat with Chenda while the boy was away reluctantly doing his chores.

“I see how you look at the sea. I think there are Mae-Lyn somewhere in your family,” he said confidently.

“I’ve been told that myself,” she sighed as she watched the eastern sky. “But when I boarded an airship for the first time, I loved it, too. Perhaps I just sat still too long as a child. I like to be on the move whenever I can.”

“I think your soul is balanced,” Rainor said. Chenda gave him a puzzled look, so he went on. “People love you when they meet you, I am sure you have seen that. Not just like you—they love you. Loyalty. It comes to you from all sides. We Mae-Lyn understand loyalty. A Mae-Lyn never likes to be alone, but always to have his family with him. Ships make for good family: tight together, few visitors. A Mae-Lyn with no family, that would be evil, or close to it.”

Chenda smiled and considered Rainor’s words. It really had been too easy to get her friends to follow her. She’d thought it had been her manners and general charm, but perhaps it was something more than that, something bigger.
And look where it has gotten you
, she thought as her face saddened.
He’s right, people get sucked into my danger so easily. Maybe Trygan was justified to have thrown me overboard. At least when I am alone, I can’t cause so much trouble for good people.

Rainor, not seeing her sudden melancholy, kept talking. “So, it just naturally follows that you as well would love so much of the world and be good with so many people. Love will balance love, one way or another. You who receive great love will have to share great love. That is the way of equilibrium."

She thought on how her life was connected to the Mae-Lyn, suddenly and strongly but still so clouded to her. From what Pranav Erato had told her, she knew that her father was Mae-Lyn, but he had not known her father’s name. Chenda turned to Rainor and asked, “How many Mae-Lyn are there?”

“Many,” Rainor said proudly. “Our women have fine babies, and we welcome many from the lands. We teach them the ways of the sea and they make us more wise and strong.”

Chenda smiled, realizing that she had asked a silly question. She tried again. “I am rather interested in knowing about a wealthy Mae-Lyn merchant who did business with the emperor about twenty-five years ago. I don’t know his name, but maybe you do. His wife—well the one he married at that time anyway—she was an imperial princess; Bhagnee was her name. Do you know her? Or rather who her husband was?”

Rainor slapped his knee and laughed. “Oh, Pramuc, you ask for a strange story to be told.

“We Mae-Lyn are the best people on land or sea. You may laugh at me, but it is true. We are smart, but more importantly, we are kind. We love and take that which we need from the sea. We are brave and we give what we have to those in need. We are shrewd and we can make room in our hearts for peace that others cannot make for themselves. We take in, we share, we give. It is our way. But, we are not fools to be taken advantage of.

“Ja-nok Ba-leta was such a shrewd man. So many years ago, when he was young and strong, he was a gifted trader. He could take a shell from the sea and trade it for a needle in Kite’s Republic, and then trade the needle for a pound of bacon in the next port, then turn the bacon to a knife and the knife to a bail of cotton and then the cotton for a silver spoon and the spoon for a rowboat and on and on, until he owned a king’s castle in the sky painted in glittering narwhal-horn paint!”

Chenda laughed at the fanciful description.

“Perhaps I exaggerated about that last bit, but I tell you, people would see his ship’s sails as he came to port, and they would hide under their stalls and pretend to be away. He could charm anyone into parting with anything, and make you feel that you got the better end of the deal—but you could be certain that you did not, as he always drove the hardest of bargains.”

Rainor sighed. “Except for his bargain for Bhagnee. The stories we share never fully explain that bargain. Perhaps it is just that he wanted to trade for a piece of land that was bigger than any other.” Rainor gazed at Chenda. “I have never seen the appeal of land. Fish are so few there, and the air too still.

“Nevertheless, this appealed to Ja-nok. He traded on behalf of the emperor, making great opportunities for the Tugrulians. The emperor was pleased and offered Bhagnee as a sign of his appreciation. I do not think that Ja-nok really knew what he was getting involved in, as it always seemed to me that the Tugrulians cared little about their women, and the women cared little about anything that was not Tugrulian.” Rainor paused and spit in disgust. “But Ja-nok thought that the Mae-Lyn could make anyone feel at home and part of the family. He believed this unseen wife would find nothing but peace with him.

“We were close friends back then, and saw each other often. Once he married, however, he was a changed man. He told me that on their wedding night, she was truly a great wife—like Mae-Lyn already. She was kind, she gave herself willingly, and he knew through their lovemaking that the arranged marriage would be a fine one, and he hoped for many children with her.

“But the next day, when they left the palace, his wife had grown cold and trembled at the sight of him. She was always ill on the boats. Bhagnee demanded that he build a home on land for her. Believing that it was his duty to care for her, and wanting the woman he had loved on land, on their wedding night, Ja-nok purchased a sliver of land in the middle of the Kohlian Sea. He built her a nice home there, but she was never pleased. He built more and traded well, and his wealth grew, and still Bhagnee was not happy. Eventually, mad with unhappiness, she cast herself into the cold waters and died.”