by Beth Cato
Scorched bones and rubble snapped under Mrs. Starling’s feet as she plowed forward, ash puffing in the air as if she stomped through spilled flour. With one hand, she hitched her skirt to knee level as she paced in a small circle, grimacing.
“Oh, bother,” she said, sighing. “I can sense it, but where . . . Ah, here we are.” She brushed debris aside to pick up an iridescent white brick.
“The box held up well,” said Corrado.
“Of course. It’s endured this dozens of times over. We’d planned a few more, but well. Opportunity.” A sudden wind billowed ash over us as she stomped out into the road. Her gloved hands brushed off the box, though it seemed strangely clean. Its alabaster surface gleamed and wavered like glass, flawless except for the shallow bevel of the lid.
As I stared at the box, a cold sensation slithered down my spine. Suddenly, I heard compounded screams, yells, and cries, as if they were bound within that warped surface. I retreated several steps, scarcely checking my own urge to scream, as if the horror was contagious. I could imagine falling to my knees as the fire consumed me, ate my flesh—and it didn’t stop. As if I were immortal, my pain infinite.
I forced my gaze away, and suddenly the world was fully there again, my breaths ragged to my own ears. I heard heavy breaths from Corrado and the nearest soldiers, too, all of us sounding as though we had run across a field in full military gear. The breeze dried thick sweat on my brow and I realized we all stood downwind of Mrs. Starling. She had not reacted at all.
I was not particularly sensitive to magic. I’d known the heat of a medician’s healing circle a few times, and seen infernal magi call up fire. Dark magic was the stuff children whispered about to keep siblings awake long past midnight. I had never considered that it might be real.
“What would happen if that were opened?” I asked, voice rasping.
Mrs. Starling draped a black cloth over the box and the horrid presence of it was abruptly muffled. More magic. She tucked the bundle beneath her arm like mere groceries. “Now, Captain Hue, don’t ask questions unless you want answers.” With that properly schoolmarmish reply, she headed toward the tower.
The noise of wheels made me turn. The wagon with my magi was leaving. At this distance, I couldn’t see my boy in the back. I needed to see him, to talk to him. I needed him. I lurched into a run, each stride scorching pain up both my knees.
Corrado huffed as he easily caught up with me. “Cuthbert, stop. Stop.” He gripped my arm to force me from my vain pursuit. “Let him go. He’ll be better off. We must fly on. We can stop the war, Cuthbert. Save your son and generations to come.”
Save my son. Stop the war.
Corrado blotted his face with a kerchief—a result of that foul box more than his brief run. He cast a nervous glance toward the tower and Mrs. Starling. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but I think you should know. Your ship has been granted a noble task. You’ve been granted a noble task.” A sort of religious fervor gleamed in his eyes. “When we open that white box on the far side of the Pinnacles, the Waste will be poisoned. The people, the land. Everything touched by the enchantment.”
I stared at him in sick fascination. That small box could do that? I didn’t want to believe it, but I couldn’t help but shudder.
“Cuthbert, when you were docked in Mercia, did you hear rumors of the Lady’s Tree suddenly becoming visible in the southern Waste, revealing a Wasters’ settlement at its roots?”
“Certainly.” Medicians were said to worship the giant tree; certainly no educated person believed the thing to be real before this past week. “Last scuttlebutt I heard was that Caskentia’s airship bombardment failed to eliminate the town for some reason, but . . .”
Corrado nodded. “Now you understand.”
This doom box was their failsafe, a way to take care of the Waster menace once and for all. “What if that thing is opened on my ship?”
“It won’t be. Only a special magus can unlock it. It’s just . . . unpleasant for almost everyone else in close proximity. To magi, it’s particularly potent. Maddening. It would have been highly disturbing for the crew to witness.” He couldn’t suppress a shudder of his own.
“Wait—you expect us to get you to the far side of the Pinnacles?”
“No, just . . .” A soldier approached, and Corrado’s demeanor abruptly changed. “Just think,” he muttered so low I could barely hear. “Caskentia will know peace, because of you.”
“Peace.” I repeated the word dully as I tried to absorb all he had said. The war had dragged on since I was in knickerbockers. What did I know of peace?
The one mercy was that Sheridan would be far from that vile box, but what opportunity did Mrs. Starling intend for him? When would I see my boy again?
I knew the heavy weight of despair as I trudged up the mast.
“What do you mean, you couldn’t find him?” Mrs. Starling’s high voice carried down from the top of the tower. I froze.
“We searched the whole ship, m’lady. I’m sorry.”
I forced my legs faster up the last flight of stairs. Mrs. Starling lingered at the ramp to the Argus. “My son?” I asked.
Winds whipped her black attire. “He’s apparently hidden himself aboard. Well, we can’t tarry.” Mrs. Starling sighed as she glanced at the Argus directly above. “What a waste.” With that, she advanced up the ramp.
I took a steadying breath as relief and fear flooded through me. I hesitated a few seconds more to regain full composure, then followed her aboard.
I supervised the control cabin as we unmoored and resumed flight. Corrado informed us of our next destination.
“The northern pass.” I stared at him. “The first snow of the season just—”
“It’s not fully winter yet, and the Argus doesn’t need to fly all the way to the Waste, just to the divide, then you can return to Caskentia.”
My crew shifted and glanced around, dread and fear thick in the air. Two soldiers stood feet away in the navigation section of the cabin; three more were aboard elsewhere. Fewer soldiers than before, but the threat of their presence remained palpable.
At least Mrs. Starling wasn’t in the cabin. I didn’t want that damned box anywhere near my officers on duty, even if that cloth around it somehow smothered its power.
“Do you have a mooring mast at the divide as well?” I asked Corrado. “Or are we tenderly booting you out the freight ramp?”
“I’m touched that you’d do so tenderly.”
“My concern is for my crew and my ship.” Sheridan. Where was that boy hiding? Why was he hiding? “Even going halfway through the pass is a damned risk—”
“Caskentia requires your service. Get us to the divide. We’ll take care of ourselves from there.”
I’d been known to gamble at times, but even with a million gilly coins up for wager, I would not have flown his proposed route at this time of year.
I looked to Yee, my officer on watch; Ramsay at the rudder wheel; Jonah at the elevator panel; my navigator, and all the rest. I had twenty crew on board, most with family. I pressed a hand to the wall to keep my posture strong even as my legs screamed agony.
Old gal, I wanted to tell the ship, you deserve a better grave than the godforsaken Pinnacles. All of us do.
“Operate as normal into the northern pass.” Corrado motioned to his remaining men as he left. The two Caskentian soldiers stood ready and wary.
Operate as normal, indeed. What a piss-poor kind of normal.
I met eyes all around the room. “You heard the man. You know our aether magi are absent. I want a double shift to monitor our gas levels. Yee, any word on the whereabouts of Mr. Hue?”
“No, sir,” Yee said, her brown skin blanched. “Soldiers searched the whole ship. He never went down the mast.”
“Spread the word that our yeoman electrician should carry on with his
duties.” Much as I wanted to treat him as my son, right now, shorthanded as we were, I needed him more as crew. “He’s stuck on board with us now.”
Officer Yee saluted. “Yes, Captain.”
We flew onward. I spent the next hours with my navigator as we reviewed our most current weather maps and plotted our course and elevation.
“Sir?” murmured the navigator, a wary eye to the nearest soldier. “Whatever this mission is, they don’t want us alive to tell tales, do they?”
I opened and closed my mouth without speaking, realizing the man was terrified and needed to talk.
He rambled on, “The wind shears at the divide will chew us like a dog with a bone, and if we survive turning around, we’ll have the wind bearing down on our bow the whole flight back. If a storm meets us head-on, it’ll be like flying against a hurricane. Our gas bags will shred.”
“If we fight back—if we win—that carries risks, too,” I muttered.
“Better to fight, sir, than to blithely fly a suicide mission. Maybe then my wife would have something to bury. No one would find our ship on the Pinnacles.” A pencil twirled in his shaky grip. “I think that’s what they want.”
I met his fierce gaze and bowed my head to study our charts again.
After a while, word came to me that Sheridan had emerged and stood his proper watch elsewhere. Restless as I was to see him, I tried to content myself with that knowledge as I busied myself with necessary work to keep us aloft and alive.
The sun set early in the autumnal far north. Stars sparkled on high as we entered the northern pass to the Waste. A grim, sleepless tension clutched the crew, and shift changes did nothing to alleviate that dread.
I departed the cabin and walked to the stairs as I mulled methods to quietly eliminate the soldiers without risking a gun battle on board. Ricochets were a danger with our largely metal interior. I worried for our gas bags directly above deck A as well; a helium vessel such as ours wasn’t as inclined to immolate as old hydrogen models, but fire was the greatest enemy to sailors of sea or air.
I recognized the rapid patter of shoes coming downstairs from deck A. Sheridan. I wavered on my feet and caught myself on the railing as he came into view. I didn’t know if I should shake his hand or throttle him.
“The smoke room,” I said, motioning my son downstairs again. The double doors clacked as we entered. The space was empty. Even the cabinets behind the bar were vacant, the liquor locked away in our bartender’s absence. “Where did you . . . ?”
“I heard a soldier asking after me. I hid where they never thought to look—Corrado’s berth.” I shook my head at his cleverness. “I broke into his wardrobe box, then Mrs. Starling’s. They have two wing suits. The real deal.”
We’d seen some suits in action back in summer. They were a newfangled invention out of Tamarania, a sort of backpack with broad, fold-out wings. I called them a stylish form of suicide.
Suddenly, everything made sense. “Corrado ordered us to fly to the divide in the northern pass. Now I understand why. With the wind behind them, the petrol in those wing suits would be adequate to fly them to Caskentia’s encampment on the far side. They’d manage the shears better than an airship.” I rubbed my bristled jaw. “You should know what happened in the village, Mr. Hue.” I recounted the events from the ground.
“Captain, in the really old stories they say the Waste is called the Waste because Caskentia’s magi cast a blood spell a thousand years ago that made the land infertile and the settlers sick. It sounds like Mr. Corrado and Mrs. Starling intend to recreate that.”
How many villages had been burned in the name of pox containment? Had they even had pox at all, or were they all deemed a sacrifice—an offering—for this enchantment?
The Argus was being offered for the cause, too.
I hated Wasters as much as anyone. They damn near killed my Sheridan. But I knew what I felt standing near that atrocious box. Could I wish that darkness on anyone, Waster or Caskentian? Even if it ended the war?
Even if it did bring about lasting peace, Sheridan wouldn’t be alive to enjoy it.
As I mulled possibilities, a bell toned from down the hall. The engine-car-personnel shift change was done. Inspiration struck. My head jerked up.
“Aether gas,” I said. Mechanics stationed in the engine cars required full gas masks to stay conscious amidst the enchanted gas.
“Sir?”
“We need to subdue the soldiers without gunfire. Get our spare gas masks—”
“Oh, yes! Saturate the filters in aether, force them to breathe through the masks. It’ll work, sir!” He almost bounced in excitement. “I’ll inform the rest of the crew—”
“No.” I stopped him with an outstretched hand as I thought on my discussion with our navigator. “We need to ask them first. If we succeed and survive, life afterward will not be easy.” Sheridan looked at me blankly. I sighed. “This is sedition, Mr. Hue. We’re not merely subverting the command of a Clockwork Dagger, but Queen Evandia herself. Recollect the so-called traitors we often see hanged near ports. Many of them die on hearsay alone. How will we be judged?”
“Oh.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “What if we do as they ask and fly to the divide? Is there any chance we could make it home, sir?”
“Mr. Hue, anything is possible, but I’ve heard drunken airship crews in taverns across Caskentia boast many things, and I have never heard anyone claim to have flown that far into the northern pass and back to Caskentia at this time of year. Dragon sightings are more believable.”
“I see, sir.” He looked fearful but resolute. “I’ll quietly consult the crew.”
I clasped his shoulder. “As will I. God willing, we can regain full control of the Argus before it’s too late, Mr. Hue.”
For all that there were fewer soldiers aboard, they seemed damned near everywhere. They didn’t interfere, however, as I made my usual rounds. Wherever privacy allowed, I briefed my crew on the situation. All agreed to fight our occupation. I returned to the control cabin to wait as Sheridan set the plot in motion.
High winds rattled the Argus, though they favored us for now. I stared out the broad windows of the bow and into the bleak night. The deep, jagged crevasse stretched before us. Snow glowed beneath moonlight.
A soft noise carried from the hall. Had our insurrection begun? It took all my will not to turn. I didn’t dare drag the soldiers’ attention with me. A long minute passed.
Then, chaos. More crew dashed in, their movements flurried like a startled flock of gremlins. Yelling, “Get him, get the gun!” “Down!” “Pin him!” “Get the mask on!” A soldier’s arm swung out and sent two men flying. Other crew fell like dominoes. More screams. A bullet pinged. My red-attired crew lunged atop the soldiers in a tangle of limbs.
I stood, my legs stiff as if I was turning into a statue. I glanced around. Essential crew positions were still manned.
My crew untwined themselves and stood. I spied the soldiers, their bodies slack. Leather gas masks covered their faces, their visages bug-like. Each mask was quickly removed as other hands worked to secure the soldiers’ arms and legs.
“Report! Where’d that bullet go?” I snapped.
The trajectory had taken it through the ballast board, just feet away from Ramsay at the rudder, then through the upper portion of the elevator board, where it again ricocheted. All vital equipment. Ballast was water stored as a weight to counterbalance the loft of gas; we would drop some ballast if we needed to quickly ascend. The elevator controls kept us level.
One of my crew didn’t move. Yee, my off-duty watch officer. Blood and brain spattered the floor. The bullet had made a full circuit of the cabin to strike her in the back of the skull.
Grief rocked me, but I had no time to linger on our loss. “Where are the other soldiers? Corrado? Starling?”
&
nbsp; “Captain, sir!” A mechanic saluted me. Her nose was bloodied flat, her voice tinny. A soldier lay hog-tied at her feet. “The two swaddies in the berths went down easy, but Corrado and Starling put up a fight on the stairs. Not sure what happened to them.”
“Soldier in the hall’s out, too,” said a steward.
Where was Sheridan? Did we have any other casualties? I gritted my teeth. First things first.
“Correct our heading, Ramsay.”
Never was I as proud of my crew as at that moment, the way we fought wind shears to steadily bring the Argus around. Icy peaks looked sharp enough to pierce the old gal’s belly. The wind clawed and buffeted us as we came broadside, then we took it dead-on. The Waste now astern, we pointed toward the green valley of home, still hidden by countless ridges of mountains.
Our elevation was too high.
I stepped closer to the ballast board, just beside my helmsman. The readings looked the same as before, frozen beside the massive dent of the bullet. I looked to Ramsay, who like me had decades of experience on airships.
“The ballast . . .”
“Aye, sir. Damage must have triggered our ballast to release. We’re losing water slow-like, but . . .”
In the valley, we kept our maximum elevation at five hundred feet. Here in the pass, at this elevation and with less pressure on our gas bags, we had to take even more care. If we kept rising, our lift gas would expand and we risked gas bag ruptures. Of all the voyages to not have our magi.
“Vent gas as needed. Push us to maximum knots. God willing, we’ll make the foothills before our depleted bags force us down.” As if the odds against us were not terrible enough.
Leaving the cabin in Ramsay’s capable hands, I hurried down the hall as fast as my legs allowed. A good number of crew had gathered at the bottom of the open stairwell. The secured, unconscious soldiers had been dragged downstairs and to one side.
“Captain!” called the chief cook. “The Dagger’s here.” He pushed aside some of the other men to reveal Corrado by their feet.