by Carrie Patel
“Well, maybe–”
“Also, Kennedy is one of the biggest ships on Salvage.” He pointed to a deck, tiny at this distance but large enough to rise above its neighbors.
“You could have just said that.”
Roman shrugged, smiling impishly as he sucked his fingers clean.
“But that still doesn’t settle what they want and why they’re agitating. Or agitated,” Jane said. “What if someone is looking for us? Or you and the vault,” she whispered.
He frowned. “It’s possible. But if someone wanted to find me – or you – I’ve got to think they already would’ve. Kennedy’s not only one of the biggest, it’s also one of the most influential. Its capitan has been stirring up trouble.”
“Over what?”
He shook his head. “Engine room chatter only goes so far. But I’ll keep my ear to the ground.”
This all felt familiar. So did the dread clotting in her stomach. “If they’re not after you, then what’s this about?”
Roman shrugged, but Jane read in the lines in his brow that he was getting worried too.
“What else did they pick up? What else that could be this much trouble?” Jane asked.
“Oh, I’m trouble now?” Roman asked, grinning.
“The worst kind.” Warmth briefly tickled her chest, and she didn’t think it was just the food. “The kind that starts wars and–”
Suddenly, Roman’s eyes flew wide with understanding.
Jane thought of it, too. “The Library,” she said.
He nodded.
That sick feeling was congealing into something solid and substantial. And familiar.
Roman’s furrowed brow cast long shadows where his bruises had been. “I’ve got to look,” he said.
“You don’t,” she said, knowing he would anyway.
He met her gaze. “The last time someone went looking for something useful in the Library, Sato found an ancient formula for combustibles and used it to burn hundreds of young soldiers alive.”
He didn’t mention her unintentional role in that particular tragedy. He didn’t have to.
“Nothing good comes from that place,” he said. “And I helped Sato uncover it.”
“So now you think whatever comes out of it is your responsibility,” Jane said. She hated the idea, but she couldn’t help but admire him for it. He had become a very different man from the one she’d met at Councilor Hollens’s mansion.
“I’ll be cautious,” he said.
“No, you won’t.” Even he wasn’t a skilled enough liar to make her believe that. And if he was going to rush into trouble, she couldn’t let him go alone. “I’ll go. If we’re wrong and someone is onto you, then snooping around the Kennedy is the last place you should be.”
“That’s a risk I choose to take,” he said. “I’m not letting anyone else endanger themselves on my behalf.” He gave her a long, sober expression. His mind was made up.
But so was hers. “You can’t stop me from coming with you,” she whispered.
He erupted into a laugh loud enough that the people around them turned and looked. “I wouldn’t dare try.”
Jane felt heat rising in her face. She glanced away and saw some of the people around them still watching. A woman chewing a roasted potato. A man with a big straw hat shading his face. A couple sharing a basket of oysters.
They were looking and whispering.
Fear curdled in Jane’s blood. “I think we’re being watched.”
“They probably don’t see a sunburn like yours every day,” Roman said, brushing his hand lightly across her arm. “You should find some ointment and stay in the shade.”
Jane pulled back her sleeve. Next to the pale flesh of her upper arm, everything below the elbow appeared as though it had been left on one of the cook fires for a few hours.
But she might as well have been invisible. The others weren’t paying her any mind. “They’re staring at you,” she said.
He grunted. “That’s what you get for having too much fun around people named Purity and Innocente.” It was a joke, but he wasn’t laughing. And neither was she.
There was more she wanted to say, but she felt foolishly exposed out here. “We should go,” she said, already leading him toward the gangway.
“You’re right,” he said, though he didn’t sound happy about it.
“When should we meet? For the, um, errand we discussed. We’ll want some sort of distraction.”
He grinned. “The Crossing Day festival is in three days.”
Chapter 15
Sauvage
Malone made it her business to get to know every inch of the Glasauge.
At least, every inch she was permitted to visit.
The only deck she knew already – probably the only one she’d spent any amount of time on – was the one with crew quarters. An oval-shaped corridor wrapped around the deck and its tiny cabins with tinier windows. The two U-bends of the corridor connected to the lounge on one end and the mess on the other. At the center of the deck, inside the corridor, were washrooms and the ubiquitous storage compartments. It seemed that any wall panel, or any piece of furniture, could be opened up or pulled away to reveal another dimension filled with supplies.
The deck below was mostly storage. Crates were anchored to the floor and lashed to the walls. Malone had peeked through a sample of them, searching for anything of note – something she could use, perhaps, or something that might tell her more about the Continentals. So far, all she’d found were more sundries and foodstuffs. Tanks bulged at either end of the deck, filled – as she was told – with fuel, water, and waste. They all looked the same, but sniffing at the seals left little doubt as to which was which.
The deck was dark and cramped and, most importantly, the crew of the Glasauge rarely visited it.
The third and fourth decks, however, interested Malone the most.
Directly above crew quarters was the command deck. While Malone was politely ignored among the cabins and in the lounge, the crew paid her closer attention once she ascended the stairs. The forward end housed what Geist had called the “pilot house,” where at any given time half a dozen crew members occupied themselves with the business of keeping the airship aloft and moving. There was more open space on this deck, and other rooms with navigational instruments, charts, and logbooks.
And on the back of the third deck was a room that was always locked. Malone had seen Geist and a handful of other crew enter and leave it, but she’d never been allowed inside. Any time she got close, the nearest crew member would shoo her away.
But she’d heard a strange sound coming from within. A soft, warbling murmur. It was almost drowned out by the humming of machinery from the next deck, but not quite.
The upper deck was nestled in the lower portion of the envelope – the big, rigid balloon – and the crew referred to it only as “engineering.” As best Malone could tell, that section contained most of the equipment that propelled the airship and controlled its altitude. The brief glimpse she got of it was of compartments filled with humming, pumping machinery. Above that, Geist told her, were the gas bags that held the Glasauge aloft and the scaffolding that supported the envelope.
The more she saw of the ship, the more it seemed like a flying mystery, and its people even more so. Their hybrid language was still difficult to understand, though she’d gotten used to Geist’s wording and cadence.
The others, though, had little to say to her. Malone got the feeling that most of them – Phelan excepted – wanted as little to do with her as possible. The stray bits of conversation she heard between them might have been backwards for all she understood.
After a couple of days, she was becoming stir-crazy. Geist happily charged her with cleaning the decks. It was dull, unglamorous work, but it gave her an excuse to continue studying the ship without attracting too many eyes.
She monitored the timing of the shift rotations. They weren’t as regimented or regular as she would have expected
, but she got a sense for them nonetheless. She began to recognize individual crew members, and to learn who did what on the airship.
The best time for reconnaissance was the moonrise shift – from ten at night to six in the morning. The pace was slower. Quieter. It was easier to move around the decks without attracting the notice of the crew.
That was her favorite time.
They were four days out of Meyerston when she found the body.
She was sweeping the hall on the second deck. She wasn’t supposed to enter the crew cabins, but as she’d learned the shift rotations, she’d gotten a sense for when each cabin was likeliest to be empty. She’d started combing them for clues – about Geist and his crew, what they wanted.
But she hadn’t found much yet. She had to pick her moments carefully, waiting for the early and mid-shift lulls, when off-duty crew were occupied in their bunks or settled in the lounge or mess.
The cabin Malone really wanted into was Geist’s, but that one was always locked.
So she explored as she could. She’d gone through the personal quarters of a navigator, a soldier, and three different people who always took their work shifts in the engine room. She’d found spare clothes, coins like the one Salazar had shown them, and a love letter with just enough familiar words to make her blush, but nothing that told her anything useful. Not without more context.
But that was fine. All she needed was more time, and she was sure to find something.
It was night. They had left land behind the day before yesterday. Now, the moon gleamed over an endless expanse of dimpled water. It was enough to make Malone suddenly glad for the relative safety of the airship, so high above it.
It was also a stark reminder that she’d passed the point of no return.
She’d just finished her rounds on the cargo deck, and the crew deck was dark and quiet. The soft clink of dishes came from the mess, and a gentle murmur filtered in from the lounge. Poorly suppressed sighs and giggles came from some of the cabins – members of the crew paired off frequently and openly. It surprised Malone that this happened in a professional expeditionary force, but it was just one of many things that did.
In short, all was calm and quiet. Perfect for a few quick forays.
Malone passed the cook’s cabin. He’d be sleeping. The next belonged to someone else she’d seen in the engine room. She paused and heard a gentle snoring coming from within.
At the next door, silence. The occupant was part of the control room crew, and Malone knew she’d seen him on the moonlight shift before.
She glanced down the hall. No movement from the galley, and none from the lounge. This was her chance.
Malone pushed the cabin door open and saw a body lying in the bunk. She froze.
Then, the metallic tang of blood assailed her senses.
It splashed the walls and soaked the pillow. Malone realized the body was a corpse.
She heard movement: the click of a door opening. Malone was already halfway into the cabin – she slid the rest of the way in and eased the door shut.
She waited by the door, listening as a torpid stride approached and then clopped past her position. A sleeper on the way to the washroom, most likely.
When the footsteps receded, she checked the body.
It was a young man in his mid-twenties. His throat had been cut, and a small, red-soaked towel lay over his neck and mouth. There was no sign of struggle – no bruising on his arms, no skin or hair under his fingernails, and the bedsheets were still tucked under the mattress at his feet. Whoever had killed him had caught him asleep.
Or had been invited into his cabin.
Malone lifted the covers. The victim was dressed in a loose shirt and trousers. If he’d been out of them at the time of his death, she doubted very much his killer would have been able to get him back into them.
The body had barely cooled. Blood pooled where it pressed against the mattress, leaving long, dark bruises. He’d probably been dead a couple of hours.
Malone inspected the rest of his cabin. Leather boots tucked neatly under the bed, folded uniforms and underclothes in the shelf above it. The cabins were barely big enough to turn around in; there was little to search and even less to find. A glossy card identified the man as Michel Sharad. The leather case with its straight-bristled shaving brush, scuffed leather strop, and assortment of creams, oils, and powders established him as a man of meticulous habits.
The only thing missing from his case was the razor itself. A pair of looped leather straps gaped at the blade’s absence.
By all appearances, then, someone had entered Sharad’s room while he slept, slit his throat with his own razor, and disappeared, with the murder weapon still on hand.
Several concerns occurred to Malone almost at once.
The first was that a murderer was loose on the Glasauge, and as they were now floating over open water, they were all trapped together.
Barely behind that thought was another. She and Lachesse were the two people on board that Geist and his crew knew the least. And she was more physically capable than her older companion. Suspicion was likely to fall on her.
The last was that Michel Sharad had been part of the moonlight shift, which had started less than an hour ago. That meant someone was apt to come searching for him.
She needed to leave, and fast.
No sooner did Malone have this thought than she heard footsteps, swift and purposeful, approaching from the end of the hall. This was no midnight washroom trip. This was someone with a mission.
She held her breath and stood still, hoping the person in the hall would keep walking.
The footsteps stopped outside the cabin. Five quick raps rattled the door.
“Sharad,” came a man’s voice, “reveille und aufcome. You are en tard.”
Malone considered the body in the bunk. The longer she stayed here, the guiltier she’d look if anyone opened the door.
Then again, she looked pretty guilty already.
The knocking came again, hard enough to shake the door on its hinges. “Sharad!” He said something too fast to follow, but in it she caught “watch officer.”
Hope welled in Malone’s chest. She willed him to go.
A heavy sigh hissed on the other side of the door. The crewman’s footsteps, fast and heavy with irritation, receded down the hall.
She had one hand over the lever. When the footsteps faded, Malone counted a few extra seconds to give him time to head up the stair. Then, she opened the door.
Malone stepped into the hall and found herself staring at the Glasauge’s balding cook, Chernev, who was leaning out of his cabin with the same startled, confused look on his slack face she must have had right then.
Shit.
The cook’s gaze sharpened as he recognized her. “Is not your cabine.”
She needed to establish some meager control over the situation while she still could. “Did anyone else enter or leave the cabin?” Malone asked.
“Wass?” The cook licked his lips. He was uneasy.
“This is important.”
His brow beetled with suspicion. “Attendey. We wait,” he said. A Recolettan would have used the same mild tone to make a polite suggestion, but among the Continentals it was a command. He glanced between her and the stairs at the end of the hall, willing someone – someone with authority – to come and sort this mess out.
Presently, a man and a woman descended the tight spiral stairs. She led the way, and her stern and expressionless face remained just so when she saw Malone. Only the man’s eyebrows moved in surprise.
The cook said something and pointed to Malone. His meaning was obvious enough.
The watch officer’s face betrayed nothing, but Malone read plenty in the young cadet’s expression. Confusion. Fear. Disgust, even. Under different circumstances, she might have been amused.
“There’s a murderer on your ship,” Malone said, as if she could get ahead of the suspicions by announcing it now. It was a long shot, but
it was better than nothing.
“Wass ist this odeur?” the cadet asked, a quaver in his voice. The coppery musk of Sharad’s blood was wafting into the hall.
“Stay beside,” the watch officer said, motioning to Malone. She hadn’t blinked once.
Malone eased into the hall, her hands up. “The killer appears to have used the man’s razor. I expect he or she has hidden it elsewhere by now.”
If anyone understood her, they gave no indication.
The watch officer shoved past Malone and into the doorway. Malone could only see her face in profile, but the woman’s eyebrows shot up.
“Malabar. Bringen Geist,” she said.
Malone saw the cook scuttle off. Then the young cadet slammed her into the wall, pressing his forearm into her neck and her cheek into the bulkhead.
“Perfid pestilander!” he roared in her ear. Gone was all of the careful civility of the Continentals. “Merde dreckt! Wass did you do?”
He had taken her by surprise, but his grip on her arm was weak and he was swaying with emotion. It would have been easy – and satisfying – to hook his ankle with hers, knock him from his feet, and see how he liked having his head rammed into hard surfaces.
But it would be a short-lived victory, and one that would only complicate her declaration of innocence.
So Malone swallowed her anger and her words. Anything she said now would only be distorted by the young cadet’s wrath.
But the watch officer had a cooler head. “Valenti.” She spoke with the chilly tone of command. He eased off her neck, but just barely.
It would be the bitterest of ironies to survive her hanging only to be hurled from the airship for a crime she didn’t commit.
At least the fall would be faster.
One half of Malone’s face was still pressed against the cold metal of the bulkhead, so she heard rather than saw Geist’s approach, recognizing his swift, short stride.
“Wass has happened?” he said. His words were even more clipped than normal. Malone could imagine his expression, his lips thin and his jaw tight with tension.