Zoe Archer - [Ether Chronicles 03] (8 page)

She shook her head, staring at the broken panel in front of her. “It didn’t make any sense. We were a civilian corporation. Maybe we handled a few military commissions, but not enough to make us a threat. That’s what I was thinking as the walls blasted apart and I saw my friends, my colleagues, crushed by debris or literally torn apart.
This doesn’t make any sense.
” A harsh rasp resembling a laugh clawed from her. “As if logic had any business in Liverpool that day.”

She started at the feel of Fletcher’s warm, large hand upon her shoulder. A tentative touch. He didn’t know how to offer comfort, but did what he could. Somehow, that uncertainty soothed her even more than practiced words or rehearsed gestures.

Clearing her throat, she went on. “I won’t bore you with the rest of the day. I spent most of it pinned beneath a collapsed wall, with a view of the city being destroyed, and my ears full of the groans of my friends, my co-workers, and strangers, all dying. Stayed conscious long enough to see the British ships arrive and light into the enemy. I saw you,” she said, glancing up with a tiny smile, which he didn’t return. “The sun began to set, and there was so much smoke and particulate in the air. It was one of the most beautiful sunsets I’d ever seen. As if the sky was gold, the clouds amethyst and topaz and smoky onyx. After that, I lost consciousness. I woke up in a field hospital, with my leg gone and the city finally quiet.”

She resisted the impulse to rub at her left thigh, which ached from time to time, as if to remind her of what had been lost.

“The doctors told me I’d lain unconscious for three days,” she said flatly. “I’d been out of my head with fever. Nobody from Drogin & Daughters had survived. Just me. When I was well enough, a nurse took me in a wheelchair to the Bluecoat Chambers—one of the last major buildings still standing. Lists of the dead had been posted there. On the way, I saw what had happened to the city. It was . . . a ruin. Almost nothing left. The streets still smoking, days later. There were people digging through rubble to look for survivors and bodies. Fights broke out over crusts of bread and cupfuls of water. What the enemy hadn’t destroyed, we did ourselves. We turned to animals. Worse than animals.”

“The lists?” Fletcher asked gently, his hand still upon her shoulder.

“They looked like banners. Sheets and sheets of paper with the names of the dead, flapping in the wind, torn and dirty from being handled by so many. Everyone who looked at them turned away with tears in their eyes. I wasn’t any different.” She blinked hard and ran her sleeve across her face.

“Kali—”

She pushed his hand off of her shoulder. “As soon as I could, as soon as I made my leg, I left. I wouldn’t go to London or Manchester or Birmingham. I couldn’t go back to India and let my parents coddle me back into infancy. So I found the one place I’d be alone. Or
thought
I’d be alone,” she added, gazing at him. He stared back at her, and though he made no more moves to touch her or speak, his eyes glinted. Not with pity—which she would’ve rejected—or sadness. No, what she saw reflected back in his gaze was . . . respect. Understanding. And anger.

“Weeks I waited,” he said after a moment. “Thought for certain that if the navy didn’t come looking for me, they’d want to at least recover what remained of the
Persephone
. Not cheap, these airships, and there’d be enough to salvage. They wouldn’t want the enemy to get hold of one of our ships, either. Give them too much information.”

“But no one came.” She rubbed her hands together—the sun dipped lower, and the temperature dropped as violet shadows stretched across the moor.

When he reached for her arm, she didn’t pull away. Instead, she let him take her back down the stairs, into the passageways beneath the top deck. They went down several more levels in the airship, and he helped her over the debris and wreckage—wooden planks, metal panels, bits of machinery, plates and cups, clothing. A small attempt had been made to clear away some of the detritus, but those efforts must have been restricted to pushing the biggest items off to the sides of the corridors, leaving a kind of path through the ruins. Men had worked and dwelled here, likely some had died, and now it was broken and littered with the remains of lives.

A ghost ship.

Haunted by the living.

Fletcher reached the end of a corridor and pushed a door open. The chamber inside had to have been his quarters, since it was a generous room that covered the width of the ship. Large windows faced the back, though the glass had all broken. The furniture was minimal—a repaired desk, a tilting bookcase holding a few volumes. A bolted-down bed stood near a bulkhead, blankets strewn across it. Some articles of clothing draped over a chair. One of his shirts looked big enough to use as a sail.

She felt herself unaccountably flustered. This was where he slept. He’d made it as domestic as possible—though it still had the air of an animal’s den.

He left her standing in the middle of the chamber and walked to the windows. Crouched just beneath the empty panes was an iron stove. The chimney poked out the window. It was unlit, but in a matter of moments, Fletcher had a goodly peat fire burning. She stepped to it and warmed her hands, waiting for him to speak again.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded. More silence fell.

“Nobody appeared,” he finally said. He watched the flames through the stove’s grate. “I thought it strange, but figured either they were too busy finishing off the enemy, or they assumed I was lying at the bottom of the Sea of the Hebrides. So I started to think of all the ways off the island, just like you said. A swim would be arduous, but possible.”

“Or you could build a boat.”

His teeth flashed in a white smile. “I’m a better swimmer than boat builder.”

“But you’re the captain of this ship,” she objected.

“Didn’t build it, only commanded it. Same when I was a seaman. I knew the ways of a seafaring ship, but not the making of one. We had carpenters for that.”

She glanced around at his quarters. “From what I’ve seen, I could put together a boat for you in a matter of days.”

Again, he smiled, and it lit a small flare in her chest. “I didn’t have you around then. It was either swim for it, or stay. But as I started thinking, planning, figuring out which would be the best direction to head in, I realized something.”

“You were afraid of water,” she guessed.

“Been in the navy for twenty-two years. Sixteen of those years were at sea. Water doesn’t scare me.” He shook his head, his expression thoughtful. “I hadn’t actually survived the crash. Like you said, I lived. My heart beat. I needed food and sometimes sleep. But the man I’d been had died in the wreck. And I was glad of it.”

He paused, as though waiting for her to object, but she didn’t. Only felt his words like a chilled wind. One that had scoured her own heart many times.

When she said nothing, he went on. “I thought, didn’t I owe it to Britain to find my way back? We’d beaten the enemy badly at Liverpool, but they could always rally. Man O’ Wars aren’t like spare pairs of shoes just lying around. There aren’t many of us, and we cost a bloody fortune to make. We’re powerful weapons in this war. Britain couldn’t afford to lose me.”

There was no arrogance or boasting in his words. He stated a simple truth. Even civilians like Kali knew the importance of Man O’ Wars. Only they could power and captain airships, and the Mechanized War would only be won in the air.

“But they needed to lose me,” he went on, his gaze distant. “When I first became a Man O’ War, it was . . . the greatest honor. Not everyone thought so.” A shadow crossed his face.

She’d read a handful of newspaper opinion pieces that decried Man O’ Wars as abominations, unnatural farragoes of man and machine. Yet she knew he wasn’t speaking of those faceless newspaper hacks stirring up sentiment for the sake of readership. Someone close to Fletcher had hurt him after his transformation. Family? A sweetheart?

But she kept silent. He wouldn’t want to speak of that now.

“I threw myself into being a Man O’ War,” he continued, his voice sounding hollow. “It was all I had. Fought in God knows how many battles. All of them brutal. And I started to wonder . . . were we the cause?”

“We?”

“Man O’ Wars. Truth is, we’re just weapons. Bringers of death and destruction. The whole damn war wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for us. Nations want telumium to create more Man O’ Wars, so they fight over territory with telumium deposits. But they need Man O’ Wars to do the fighting. A goddamn unending cycle.”

His jaw tightened. “Liverpool just proved what I’d come to believe. Man O’ Wars are the bloody problem.
We’re
the danger.”

She stared at him. “You and the other British Man O’ Wars, you
saved
Liverpool. Without you, no one would’ve survived.”

Yet her words seemed to glance off him like gravel thrown at the hull of an ironclad. “The battle never would’ve happened if Man O’ Wars didn’t exist. I didn’t think I’d survive the
Persephone
crashing. But when I did, and when no rescue came . . . it was for the best. If I went back, if I rejoined the fight, how many more would die?” He shook his head. “Better that I stay here. One less weapon. One less chance for someone to meet their death at the hands of my kind. So I needed to stay dead, and so I have.”

Angry pain glinted in his eyes. Rage directed at himself. An ache spread from her heart, radiating through her.

Words seemed useless. Liverpool had stolen everything. Her leg, her sense of self. It had taken from him, too. They were both empty husks. And yet . . . when she was with him . . . she didn’t feel quite as empty. As though their hollowness somehow created substance. Two negatives making a positive.

Despite what he said, energy pulsed around him. He wasn’t dead. He was alive and vital, and there was a sympathy between them, a shared understanding. And that roused sensations within her.

But she didn’t want to feel anything. It was easier, safer, to be numb.

Whirling away from the stove, she strode to a different window and looked out. “The sun’s going down. I shouldn’t be out after dark.” She glanced out at the distance from the window to the ground. Less than six feet, since the remainder of the lower decks had been crushed.

She checked to make sure there was no glass left in the window casing. Then sat herself on the sill and swung her legs around, so she faced the outside. Fletcher made no noise of complaint or move to stop her.

“I’m not going to disturb your peace again,” she said. “It’s scientific method, really. Try something, and if it fails, you move on. Repeating a failed experiment is just an exercise in folly.”

And then she dropped to the ground. The landing wasn’t as smooth as she would’ve liked, her artificial leg taking the impact hard, but she didn’t fall and she could walk, and she wasn’t on his ship anymore, in his presence. Sensing his energy, feeling herself being pulled back from the realm of shadows into the light.

Without looking back at him, she strode away from the ship. Back to safety.

K
ali stood on the rocky beach, watching the waves curl and tumble onto the shore. The water was the color of blued steel, the sky the hue of pale ash. She didn’t know how long she’d been standing here. Minutes. Hours.

Answers and calm were always found at her worktable, or as she sketched and planned ideas for new devices. But since yesterday, it was as though her eyes and mind couldn’t focus. They’d try to sharpen on a particular issue related to a design, then blur. In frustration, she’d abandoned her work—it wasn’t as though anyone was waiting for it, or she had deadlines to meet—and done something she hadn’t done in a long while. Deliberately let her thoughts drift.

Her mother used to take her to Maharaj Baug garden when she’d grow too monomaniacal about her schoolwork and extracurricular projects. Maa’ had always hoped that the lush garden would distract her, or calm her fevered brain.

When your thoughts are like a monsoon,
Maa’ had said,
remember, there is more to this world than the one inside your head.

Her poor mother, saddled with not just an engineer for a husband, but a daughter who also lived most of her life within the confines of her mind. Maa’ had done her best, and Kali usually returned from their outings to Maharaj Baug with a brain that, if not entirely calm, had settled somewhat.

She tried to find that peace now, but she couldn’t forget yesterday’s surprises. Fletcher, a Man O’ War. Who had also been at the battle of Liverpool. Who’d given his life for his country. As he’d said, to the British Aerial Navy, he was a dead man. And he’d decided to stay dead—for the safety of others.

The biggest revelation of all had been the discovery of what tied them together. Not simply his presence at Liverpool, but that they were each, in their way, only partially living. They shared a connection, when she’d run from them so fiercely.

Bending down, she gathered up handfuls of rocks. One by one, she tossed them into the sea, testing how far she could throw them. Each splash punctuated her thoughts.

She couldn’t blame him for wanting to stay dead. After what she’d seen, what she’d endured, she herself wanted nothing to do with the world. A Man O’ War might be enhanced through technology, but they were still men, with needs and fears and hearts—even if those hearts had telumium filaments attached to them. He hadn’t questioned her own need to flee from the world. And if he so firmly believed he was only a weapon, what could she say to convince him otherwise? The damage he bore went much deeper than Liverpool. There was that someone who’d damaged him, planting the seeds of his self-hatred. Seeds that had taken root and grown into a thick, twisted vine, knotted around him, binding him.

Both Kali and Fletcher had hidden themselves away, each of them the walking wounded.

They were fugitives.

The stones in her hands were worn smooth by countless years of rolling up and down the beach, tumbling in the surf. After so long handling metal and wire, it was primal and satisfying to touch organic material, something created not by man but the earth itself. So easy to forget that this planet would outlast them all, and all their buildings and technology would crumble and rust long before the earth stopped existing.