Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] (29 page)

She nodded. “How long will it take us to get there?”

“At top speed, six and a half, seven hours.”

Behind her goggles, her eyes widened. “The force of the wind topside . . .”

“A brutal place for anyone, even the strongest crewman. Only safe spot is the pilot house.” He held her gaze. “You’ll have to stay below.”

“Or in the pilot house,” she countered.

He made a show of looking around the small space. No place to sit, nowhere comfortable to rest. It was meant for one thing only: steering the ship. “Seven hours is the minimum,” he said, turning back to her. “I checked the maps and charts before we shoved off. Most of the inhabited places in Greenland are on the coast—the middle’s just a huge field of ice and glaciers.”

“The enemy won’t build their bases near habitations,” she murmured.

“Inland won’t work, either. Those bases, if they exist, would need to be resupplied, and they can’t always use airships. Too noticeable. They’ll use seafaring vessels.”

She frowned. “So if there are enemy bases on Greenland, they’d be on the coast, too.”

“Redmond’s going to know that,” Fletcher said. “He’ll be covering the coastline, traveling counterclockwise since the east is closest to England. But he’s been on this mission for at least a week—”

“So he’ll probably have made it around the northernmost tip of the island,” she deduced. “He could already be on the west coast by now.”

“Mayhew’s not stupid. He’ll have figured this out, too. Either we stop him or we intercept and warn Redmond.” Fletcher clenched his jaw. “Either way, we’ll get there faster if we cross the center of the island. That’s hundreds more miles. At top speed.”

She leaned against the back of the pilot house, eyeing him. “Seven more hours, then. A total of fourteen.”

“Cold, long hours.” He nodded toward the deck beneath his boots. “Stay below. Rest. Keep warm.”

“And leave you alone up here?” She scowled.

“I’ve got food”—they’d purchased a mountain of pies and other provisions in Lochboisdale, and half of it was heaped in the pilot house—“I don’t need much sleep, and the cold doesn’t trouble me.” When she opened her mouth to speak, he added, “Three months I was alone on that tiny island. Fourteen hours on my own is a speck of time.”

For a while, she said nothing. Only stared out the glass, at the empty deck, and the sea and sky that surrounded them.

She spoke in a voice so low that a normal man wouldn’t have heard her above the wind and drone of the turbines. “Perhaps I want to spend those specks of time with you.”

Kali, with him as he flew. It filled him with a strange sense of being opened, as if some interior cabinet was thrown wide and sunlight poured in, illuminating all the places inside that had been dark and hidden.

“Stay, then,” he answered. “But I’m sending you below the minute I see you start to nod off or shiver.”

She gave him a clipped nod, and tucked her arms beneath her cloak.

“I’m giving her full throttle,” he said. “Brace yourself.”

She planted her feet. “Ready.”

He pushed on the throttle, opening up the engines, urging the airship as fast as she could go without venting the ether tanks. The
Persephone
shuddered, as if throwing off a long sleep. Then, she raced forward.

Kali caught her breath. Even he could feel it, that subtle, wondrous pressure against his body. The pilot house protected them, but didn’t shield them from the sensation of racing like a levanter wind through the sky. He’d only undertaken this kind of speed in times of great emergency, the crew ordered to remain below until the ship had slowed. But it was a marvelous thing, letting his ship unleash the fullness of her power, him at the wheel.

He’d prefer knowing Kali was in their cabin, resting, or even tinkering in her makeshift workshop. But he also loved sharing this with her. Having her beside him. It was possible they wouldn’t survive the coming fight. These hours together might be all they had left.

F
letcher had been right. The pilot house of a speeding airship wasn’t a comfortable place. It hadn’t been built with anything but utility in mind. She had nowhere to sit, and leaning provided little relief. There was always the option of sitting directly on the deck, but the floor was hard and chill and would leave her behind aching. She wore her warmest cloak and even wrapped a few spare blankets around her, yet despite this and the shelter of the pilot house, frigid air jabbed her like needles and worked its way into her bones.

Her body was miserable, but she ignored it. What she wouldn’t, couldn’t, ignore was this time with Fletcher. If they lived through the confrontation with Mayhew, Fletcher would likely be assigned to a new ship and sent on mission. Gone for who knew how long. So she had to clutch at whatever time she could spend with him now. She wouldn’t toss these moments overboard like so much unwanted scrap.

So she stayed upright and forced herself not to shiver as they raced over the ocean. The water passed hundreds of feet beneath them in an unrelenting iron blue sweep. From this height, the rough waves appeared tiny, tipped with white. She’d no desire to get closer to them and see just how choppy those waters really were.

The sky fascinated her, because where the ocean seemed endless, the sky
was
without limit. It stretched up and up, boundless and blue. As blue, she realized, as Fletcher’s eyes.

They passed the hours talking. More of their youth, and the years that led them to becoming their present selves. She spoke of Nagpur, and he told her of the many ports of call he’d seen—places she hadn’t given much thought to, until she saw them through his eyes. She realized that anywhere could be fascinating with the right company.

“I’d be keen to go there with you,” she murmured, when he talked of the mountains crowded around Hong Kong Bay, the countless junks in the water, and tetrol-powered gliders that wheeled across the bay, transporting passengers and cargo from one end to the other and trailing smoke like gray banners. Britain kept a supply of airships there, too, ready to protect their acquisition and keep enemy intrusions at a distance.

“You’d like it,” he said, his grin white in his dark beard. “The street market in Sham Shui Po—you’ve never seen clockwork devices such as these. They would make British inventors throw away their tools and become crossing sweeps. Except you,” he added. “The Chinese engineers would cry at their workbenches if they saw what you can build.”

“I don’t want to make anyone cry.” She quirked a smile. “Maybe I can give them a small sense of inferiority. But tears—never.”

“Crowds of inventors in Sham Shui Po. There’ll be a cloud of humility hovering over the district when you walk through. But I’ll protect you if anyone gets drunk and rowdy on their shame.”

“I’d say that I could protect myself,” she answered, “but who’d refuse a Man O’ War for a bodyguard? Or as a lover?”

His look grew heated. “There are hotels and pavilions along the bay. We could lie in bed and watch the lights and lanterns dance on the water, and make love while the street musicians play their
erhu
violins outside.”

Her throat closed and behind her goggles, her eyes burned. It sounded wondrous. And something that would likely never happen. In wartime, a Man O’ War didn’t likely get leave long enough to take his lover on a trip to distant shores. If she and Fletcher had any time together at all, it would be in little fragments, grabbed here and there. It would be better than nothing, but far from perfect.

Eventually, the sky darkened as night fell. A rare privilege, seeing the sun slip beyond the horizon as the ship flew through the air. But with nightfall came a brittle wave of cold.

“You’re going below,” he commanded.

“I’m f-fine.”

“And your lips are blue. Go now.” He slowed the ship enough so that there was no possibility she’d be pushed overboard by the wind.

Arguing would be hopeless, and, she had to admit, her whole body ached with cold and weariness. She’d need to be in top form—or as good a form as she could manage—when they intercepted Mayhew. Before she left the pilot house, she raised up on the tips of her toes and brushed her mouth over Fletcher’s, loving the feel of his beard against her skin and the warmth of his lips. They clung together like that, with him wrapping an arm around her waist, the other hand still on the wheel, until she shivered, and not from desire.

He sent her away, a gentle push on her lower back to urge her on. After one final look at him over her shoulder, she took a lantern and eased down the companionway. They hadn’t turned on any of the lights topside or below decks, the better to hide their position. It felt eerie to move through the flying airship alone, but at least it was warmer. She gathered some food from the galley then took it to their quarters.

As she ate her dinner, she studied the charts that included Greenland. But they revealed nothing except a cartographer’s skill—no prophecies of the future, only a sparsely populated coast and an interior filled with ice.

She awoke with a start and a stiff neck, still sitting at the table. Unrelenting night filled the windows. Fletcher was still up there, guiding the
Persephone
. The ship’s internal audio communication devices had been damaged in the crash, and she hadn’t possessed the time to restore them before they’d left the island. She had no way of speaking with him now. All she could hope was that he felt her thoughts of him.

Lonely and worried, she crawled into bed fully dressed, except for her boots. She kept her prosthetic leg on. If there was an emergency, it would take too long to put back on, and she needed to be ready in an instant.

She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep. Too much weighed on her mind and heart. Yet as she lay in bed—their bed—she inhaled deeply, taking in his scent of flesh and metal. He might be several decks above her, but his presence enveloped her, and she slipped into a dreamless sleep.

B
rilliant, unsparing white light filled the cabin. Kali blinked awake. Her movements roused Four, who’d burrowed beside her for warmth. He scurried beneath the blankets as she rose and walked to the windows.

Ice. Ice everywhere. She’d never seen such endless stretches of it. A few gray rocky peaks jutted up from the ice, but that constituted the whole of the landscape. Nothing could live down there. Nothing, it seemed, did. It was merciless, barren, beautiful.

She touched her fingertips to the glass, and immediately pulled them back. They burned with cold.

Checking her watch, she noted that they were nearing the time Fletcher had estimated. Not too long before they arrived close to Redmond’s position on the west coast. She could feel the ship’s slight deceleration as they neared their target. After bolting down some breakfast, she swaddled herself in her cloak and more blankets. Then hurried through the passageways of the ship, until she reached the companionway.

Wrapping a scarf around her lower face, hunching down to keep herself low and less likely to be blown off the ship, she raced up the companionway. The wind tried to claw her from the deck. But she ran the short distance to the pilot house.

Fletcher still stood at the wheel, guiding the ship over the ice. A bit of frost clung to the sleeves of his coat, glittering in the morning light, and his hair was windblown. Large, dark, and wild, he reminded her of one of the old Celtic gods from her father’s tales. The kind of god that either brought the world into being, or destroyed it.

Her heart leapt to see him again. It was silly—less than eight hours had passed since she’d gone belowdecks, and he’d been close the whole time—and yet it felt like a reunion after long, long years had passed.

He glanced at her, his gaze warm. “Sleep well?”

“It’s hard to know.”

He held out one arm, inviting her close. She wasted no time accepting the invitation, wrapping her arms around him while he held her. Coils and springs still wound within her, but their tension loosened at his touch.

“And you?” she asked. “Did you miss your bed?”

“Aye, but not for sleeping.”

She warmed everywhere, the chill dispelling. And, in truth, he looked almost as fresh as when she’d left him, with only the slightest shadows beneath his eyes. He’d said that Man O’ Wars didn’t need much sleep—but when they’d shared a bed, he always stayed the whole night, even though he was likely awake for most of it. But he remained there because of her.

Now they stood together in the pilot house as a world of unending winter passed beneath them. Only a few moments passed before Fletcher pulled back on the throttle, slowing the airship.

“The coast’s approaching,” he said.

She couldn’t see anything except ice and rocks, but then, within minutes, did: snow-topped mountains rose up sharply, then plunged down into the sea. As Fletcher brought the
Persephone
over the jagged coastline, Kali made out gentler slopes of stone, some even dusted with furze and gorse. Another time, she would’ve appreciated this rough, unsparing beauty. Yet it also revealed that, while the conditions wouldn’t be easy, the enemy could certainly position a base here. Putting them within short distance of Canada, and then into the soya-rich fields of the United States.

“Any sign of Mayhew or Redmond?” she asked.

Fletcher peered into the distance. “None yet, but anything can change in an instant. You should go check to make sure the guns are warm enough to fire.”

He’d slowed the ship and brought it low enough for Kali to comfortably walk on deck without fear of flying over the rails or suffering hypothermia. The air was clean and sharp as a surgical blade, and almost punishingly clear. She fumbled in her pockets and pulled out a second pair of goggles, ones with tinted lenses, and exchanged those for the others she wore. Much better. She didn’t feel half-drunk on light, though any exposed skin felt the bite of the wind.

She tested both weapons, running them through their paces of loading and unloading, plus dry firing. If the metal was too cold, the superheating from shooting the gun could cause the whole thing to shatter. Not very desirable in a fight. She’d be as likely to be wounded or killed by her own weapon as the enemy’s.