The Song of the Dead

by Carrie Patel

  Roman and Malone fell silent, both turning to look at her.

  “Roman, do you still have the book I gave you?” Dread prickled at her neck. She hoped it hadn’t been left on the airship.

  But Roman pulled the familiar volume from his back pocket and gave it to her. She brushed the grime off the cover with its field of stars and its short, simple title: ESA. Then she flipped to the middle, where pages showed pictures of enormous, unfathomable machines. Worlds that looked like marbles and dewdrops hanging against the night sky.

  “What am I looking at?” Malone asked, squinting at the page.

  “People built these things,” Jane said.

  “Why?”

  “To go places. To see things.”

  Malone glanced up at her. “And?”

  She suppressed a sigh of exasperation. “That’s not – the point is, they built them. And they built them with our ancestors. Look.” She flipped through a series of pictures that showed ancient people in strange suits laughing, talking, shaking hands.

  Malone stopped her hand and leaned in closer. “I’ve seen that place,” she said, tapping a picture that showed a happy ceremony in front of a tall, pointed pillar of some kind. “It’s fallen over now. But it’s near the Library. Near Recoletta.”

  Roman was only watching quietly, his lips pressed into a thoughtful line.

  “So, what are you saying?” Malone asked. “That we tell people that we all used to get along?”

  Jane gnawed her lip. This was the difficult part. “It’s not just about the past. I’m saying we give people a new future. One in which we’re building things like this. Not fighting old wars.” She stole a glance at Roman out of the corner of her eye. “But it’ll take leadership. Someone directing the Continent away from war and toward something more concrete. Constructive.”

  “A Gran Meisterwork,” Roman muttered.

  Jane nodded.

  “I hate to tell you this,” Malone said, “but you’re going to need more than a book. For starters, you’re going to need proof this stuff actually existed.”

  Jane flipped to a map in the back. “There were places all over the Continent. Maybe one of these sites would have something.”

  But Roman shook his head, and Jane felt her heart sink.

  “Chances are anything useful would have been taken for scrap or built over a long time ago. We could look, but–”

  Vicenzo cleared his throat. He was standing next to Roman, peering at one side of the map. “Pardon. But I am thinking maybe that one still exists.” He tapped a dot with a most curious label: Noordwijk.

  “What’s special about that one?” Malone asked.

  “It is in the Flooded Lands.”

  “How do we get there?” Jane asked.

  “We will be needing an airship. There is a mooring tower on the nord of the city. I am certain none would refuse the senure if he wished to requisition one,” Vicenzo said, eying Roman.

  Roman nodded.

  Malone crossed her arms, staring at the map. “Geist’ll follow. Maybe Rothbauer, too.”

  “Then we hurry,” Roman said. “The lead we’ve got now is our best hope.”

  Chapter 29

  The Flooded Lands

  The new airship was like the Glasauge, only larger and more lavish. They were speeding along as fast as it would allow. Even so, Malone was told their journey would take several hours. She supposed she should take the opportunity to rest, but she couldn’t sit still for any length of time.

  Most of the crew and passengers who had followed Arnault to Cologne-de-le-Kur had insisted on joining him for this journey, too. The remainder who had stayed behind had promised to spread word of the discovery in the Flooded Lands and his new Gran Meisterwork. Malone was surprised at the loyalty the man inspired, but at the moment it seemed useful enough.

  Now she just hoped there was really something to find. And that it was enough for Rothbauer, Geist, and the hopeful multitudes of the Continent.

  So, as the hours wore on, she paced between the cockpit and the aft lounge, watching the sky behind them for signs of pursuit and the land below them for anything else.

  For a few hours, all she saw were gray skies and green fields.

  She was in the cockpit with Captain Vicenzo when an expanse of water appeared on the horizon. Her skin prickled with cold.

  “The place is Old Holland,” Vicenzo said. “Once, it was a busy und prosperous nation.”

  Malone contemplated the flooded landscape through the window. “What happened?”

  “They used pumps und dams to keep their lands dry. But after the war and the great sickness – the one the senure’s forefather cured – few people remained. They did not comprend the engines that kept their cities from sinking.” He shrugged. “They flet. The sea took its tithe.”

  It was as likely as anything she’d learned about the pre-Catastrophe people in the last few days. “Seems like a bad spot for cities in the first place,” she said.

  Vicenzo considered the view. “If Dame Jane’s book is vert, then the anciens left even grander things here.”

  Malone looked out the window, watching the still waters. Doubt gnawed at her even now, even after all she’d seen. Skepticism was a hard habit for a detective to break, and stories of airships that flew to the stars seemed too fantastical to be true.

  “Do you think we’ll find anything?” she finally asked.

  “The senure does,” Vicenzo said. “That is sufficient for me. Und for the others who have come.”

  It wasn’t an answer, but hers had been a pointless question. One way or another, they were out of places to run.

  The thought left her tired and a little relieved.

  “I’m going to lie down,” Malone said. “Wake me if anything happens.”

  She stretched out on a couch in the first-class deck, not particularly caring how unprofessional it appeared. She fell asleep almost instantly and dreamed of falling and crashing.

  She dreamed of the Glasauge.

  In her dream, Geist’s crew were running around, trying futilely to keep the airship aloft. But it was plummeting, the world outside the windows looming closer and larger. Only Lachesse stood by, either unconcerned by their plight or else resigned to it.

  Malone herself moved with the same clumsy torpor that afflicted her in every dream.

  She tried to grab Lady Lachesse’s arm, but she couldn’t seem to move her own hands. “Run,” Malone said, “We’ve got to get off this ship.”

  Lachesse looked at Malone with something between amusement and exasperation. “I wouldn’t have thought the woman who survived her own hanging could be defeated so easily.”

  “The ship’s crashing. We’re going to die.” You’re going to die.

  The whitenail shook her head. “You used every excuse you could find to go sleuthing around, avoiding the political responsibilities with which you’d been entrusted.”

  “Please,” Malone said, wanting the dream to end even as she knew how it would play out. “I can’t save you.”

  The woman laughed. “I know you’ll do what’s necessary.”

  The dream ended with a jolt. Someone was gripping Malone’s shoulders and shaking her awake.

  It was a young crewman; his face was rigid with panic.

  “An airship follows. We must be landing, und quickly.”

  * * *

  A strip of land had emerged from the water about an hour ago. Sitting next to Roman, his hand in hers, Jane watched it so intently, looking for any signs of the wondrous site from her book, that she nearly jumped when Captain Vicenzo approached, tense but composed.

  “Senure, Dame Jane, we must begin debarking. An airship follows, und after the senure’s… demonstration in Cologne-de-le-Kur, it is imprudent to descend on top of the site itself.”

  “But where is the site?” Jane asked. So far she had seen only rolling meadows, broken up occasionally by crumbling stone buildings and the bald spots of pre-Catastrophe roads. Certainly nothin
g that looked like a repository of miracles.

  Vicenzo winced. “Comprend, the maps of this place are stark ancient. Und the land changes much. But I am thinking we are close. A few kilometers away at most.”

  “A brisk walk, then,” Roman said.

  Vicenzo bowed. “Assuredly.”

  “Do we know who’s following us?”

  Again, Vicenzo looked pained. “I regret there is no way to know until they are much closer.”

  “Thank you,” Roman said. “Please make preparations to land. We’ll be ready.”

  Vicenzo departed with another bow, and Roman gave Jane’s hand a squeeze. She looked at him, hoping – as she suspected he was – that it was Rothbauer in pursuit. Rothbauer, at least, wanted to keep Roman alive. Jane suspected he could be reasoned with if they could find the site and convince him of its value. With the vault gone, the site and any ancient machines there could become a potent symbol for a united future.

  Geist, on the other hand…

  “Let’s find the site first. We can worry about the rest later,” Roman said, squeezing her hand again.

  But the thought of coming so far and accomplishing so much only to lose him again was nearly unbearable.

  The airship shuddered as they set down – Jane could see why tower moorings were preferable. By the time they’d all filed out and into the grass, the pursuing craft was the size of a saucer on the horizon.

  Malone was pacing, watching the approaching ship and the open fields with a sleep-reddened but alert gaze. Captain Vicenzo was making a headcount of thirty or so passengers and crew and passing out small whistles that glinted in the late afternoon light. Each was strung on a cord. Jane slipped hers around her neck.

  When Vicenzo was done, he clapped his hands for silence. “Pleece, we must proceed quickly. We space ourselves und continue west in formation. I will take one end und Lieutenant Yulia the other. Attempt to maintain some visual contact mit the person on either side.” He held up the whistle around his neck. “One tone for something of interest, two for danger.”

  With that, they headed west, spreading out in a wide file. Jane was somewhere near the middle of the row, with Roman on one side and Malone on the other. The small comfort she felt at having them both close evaporated when she looked over her shoulder and saw the mysterious airship drawing closer still.

  Before long, they came to the ruins of an old town, now overgrown with vegetation. The deteriorating buildings provided some cover, yet Jane quickly lost sight of Roman and Malone. Behind and above her, the climbing trees and tumbling walls blocked her view of the horizon. In the brief glimpses she caught, however, there was no sign of the airship.

  Which likely meant it had landed, or was close to doing so.

  She had just reached a break in the ruins when she heard two distant trills behind her and to her right.

  Followed by gunfire.

  Jane ran. The ruined buildings were receding back into the earth, replaced by scrubby trees and tall grass. Roman and Malone were still nowhere in sight – she supposed they’d lost each other amidst the ruins. In fact, they all probably had.

  She found the callus of an old road and followed it. Two more whistle blasts sounded. Still behind her, but closer. She threw herself into another burst of speed.

  Her legs were burning when she finally heard a single whistle tone. It was coming from a spot ahead of her and a little to the right. She pointed herself toward the sound, hoping to reach it before their pursuers did the same.

  Three whistle blasts sounded from somewhere to her left. Three more distantly behind her. She didn’t remember a signal for three blasts, unless –

  Of course. The others were distracting the pursuers. Drawing them away so that she and Roman – and anyone else nearby – could converge upon the source of the single blast.

  She was heaving for breath when she came upon Malone, standing next to a heavy cone that lay on its side. The former inspector was glaring at it as though she still weren’t sure what to make of it.

  “This looked like one of the things from your book,” Malone said.

  Jane reached out and felt the cold metal, rough with peeling paint. It was real. Her heart thudded in her chest.

  Roman came dashing around the corner, his face glowing with exertion and surprise. “Is that–?”

  A whistle shrieked twice from the woods that Jane had just emerged from.

  “No time,” Malone said. “Inside.”

  A building stood behind Malone. The glass panes along the front were either frosted with filth or shattered entirely.

  The blocky letters above the entrance read: European Space Research and Technology Centre.

  Jane followed the others inside, through one of the broken windows, her heart in her mouth.

  They had entered a large room. It was dark but for the light coming through the broken windows. A broad hallway burrowed further into the shadows. Jane and the others followed it.

  “Look,” Malone said. “Light.”

  A wide set of double doors stood at the far end of the hall. A faint, grayish glow seeped out from beneath them.

  Jane tried the handle, but it was stuck tight. “Locked,” she said. “Or jammed just as good.”

  “Maybe there’s another way around,” Roman said. “We–”

  Two whistle blasts. Not far from the shattered entrance, by the sound of it.

  Roman aimed a kick at the door which shuddered but held fast. He tried another.

  “Move,” Malone said, barreling toward them. She was holding a bulky red canister, and she brought it down hard on the door handle as Roman jumped out of the way.

  The handle fell away after another two blows. The door swung open, and for a moment no one said a word.

  Jane, Malone, and Roman stared at a large, high room. Part of the ceiling had collapsed, leaving a pile of rubble in the center of the room and diffuse daylight that illuminated marvels.

  A spindly apparatus lay on the floor, looking like two pairs of mated dragonflies, with long, tubular segments connected to iridescent, rectangular panels. Near it, on a bed of sand that had spilled and spread throughout the old room, was a clunky contraption with a body like a turtle shell set on wheels, topped by a long-necked head. In a different corner was another rounded cone, much like the one outside, only larger and still coated in paint. On it was an emblem – a blue and green planet, the dragonfly apparatus soaring triumphantly above it.

  Malone swallowed. “Is that–?”

  Jane could hardly contain herself. Everything she’d read, everything she’d hoped for, was true. “That one sent pictures from other worlds,” she said, pointing to the turtle-like device. “And that was one of the airships that sailed beyond the clouds.” She pointed to the cone. But it was the dragonfly apparatus that truly excited her. “That’s where people lived. Pre-Catastrophe people from every part of the world, all watching the stars together.”

  From the other end of the hallway came the sound of breaking glass and tense, shouting voices.

  “Hide,” Malone said to Jane and Roman. “I’ll handle this.”

  * * *

  Malone watched as Jane and Arnault scurried into something that looked like a very large and very complex tin can.

  From the sound and timbre of the voices in the hall, she’d realized that it was Geist who had followed them.

  She felt naked standing in the open without a weapon, but she realized a gun would do her little good now. Killing Geist wouldn’t be enough, just as deposing Ruthers and killing Sato hadn’t been enough. Either she’d convince him to lay down his arms – Sundar’s way – or she’d at least provide enough of a distraction for Jane and Arnault to run. Doing what was necessary, as Lachesse would have called it.

  Geist emerged from the hall seconds later, leading a handful of his irregulars. His eyes widened as they fell on her.

  “Still you are surprising me,” he said. “Are you sole?”

  “We split up,” she said.
/>   Geist nodded and turned to his companions. “Cherch.”

  “The question you should be asking,” Malone said, “is why.”

  He cocked his head. His troops hesitated. “Why did you imagine you could hide Arnault? Or why are you aiding him?”

  She took a deep breath, trying to imagine what Sundar would have said. “No one came here to hide. We came to show you something. To show everyone something.” She waved a hand at the ancient contraptions and hoped they impressed Geist as much as they had Jane.

  “I am not understanding,” he said, keeping his eyes on her.

  “You talk about a history in which our lands were at war,” Malone said, thinking back to the way Sundar had talked down a drunk at a bar. She had to tell him something true, something he needed to hear. If she could convince him, they could convince the rest of the Continent easily. “But there was another history. One in which they built machines that took them to the stars.”

  Geist glanced around. “Und you are thinking Rothbauer will build these machines?”

  “No,” Malone said. “But Arnault will.”

  “Arnault,” Geist said, scowling, “will be the last of his dynasty.”

  “Only if you murder him like the despots you despise,” Malone said.

  “It is different,” he said, tapping his ragged lapels. “I am different.”

  But she knew better. She just had to get him to see it. “No. I’ve seen this history, Geist. I’ve seen it with Sato. If you defeat Rothbauer, you will become everything he was and more in order to maintain order. If he defeats you, then you will have given him all the license he needs to come down even harder.”

  History held rare sway over the Continentals, including Geist’s people. The men and women who had come in with him were wavering, looking to their boss. Geist himself was harder to read.

  What did he need to hear? What would Sundar have told him?

  Malone remembered their conversation on the boat with sudden clarity. Geist resented the iron grip of the past – what he’d always wanted was a brighter horizon. “You can’t win this on your own,” she said. “If you want to make the Continent better, you have to give your people something better to work towards. The question is, did you come to seize power or to find a better future?”