by Rich Horton
“Is everything in order, Mr. Fuille?” he asked, with a reasonable facsimile of calm.
“I could ask you the same,” said Fuille.
“Mere nothing. Difference of opinion,” said Moon. “With the steersman. Can I help you?”
“I should not have thought he could hear you from here,” said Fuille. “I went to my room to fetch my commonplace book—I keep a record of . . . intriguing artefacts. I thought I might have something relevant to your window latch. May I have a closer look?”
Moon stood, back to the window. He hoped Ivana would not try to get in again, and at the same time that she would not need to, and would not freeze to death. You found one weatherfinder, there must be others, he scolded himself, you only have one Hyssop. “I wouldn’t ask a scientist of your standing to trouble himself with such trifles,” said Moon.
“Nonsense,” said Fuille. “You were so insistent before. It is the least I can do to repay your hospitality.”
He opened the book and flipped through it. “It so happens that I have seen some ships not unlike this one. Less festively coloured perhaps.” Moon, taller than Fuille, looked down to see a rough sketch not of a window latch but of a figurehead of unmistakeable elegance, pale and long-jawed, with a lantern in its outstretched hand. Where it should have joined the ship, the drawing disintegrated into a network of carefully labelled lines.
Moon leaned against the window. “You should secure your cargo,” he said. “I’ll send the boys to help. Weatherfinder says there’s a storm coming.”
“It’s as blue a day as you could care to see,” said Fuille. “The rigours of this crossing have been exaggerated. You should secure your brandy—it has addled your woman’s brains.”
Moon thought he heard the slap of cloth against the window once more. He hoped his shoulders blocked the glass. If Ivana had not already damaged the figurehead beyond recognition, he did not want to give Fuille the chance to study it.
“Sky’s deceiving,” said Moon. “Said there’s a bad storm coming. Could be here anytime. Small ship. Very good weatherfinder.”
“You think I cannot tell the fresh marks of a pen from the ink of a tattoo?” said Fuille smoothly. “This is very gallant of you, and I’m sure she’s sufficiently grateful, considering it is as you say such a small ship, but I must insist, Captain, that you permit me—”
“My weatherfinder went down to the cargo hold earlier and hasn’t come back up the hatch,” said Moon.
Fuille’s forced pleasantness evaporated. He spun on his heel and ran out of the cabin. Moon latched the cabin door and turned back as glass shattered behind him. Reaching the window, he wrenched it open and caught the line hook.
“I will . . . throw you . . . over . . . the side!” he shouted into the wind, punctuating the sentence by shaking the hook. He let go. Ivana, who had been pulling down, fell backwards and slipped. Moon saw her fall into the wind, only to jerk to a halt. She still held onto a line by one gloved hand.
Moon did not later remember how he got himself out the window.
The wind hit him like white fire. He gripped a line and dropped down into the slight shelter of the ravaged figurehead. The cold stung his eyes to tears, but he reached out, caught the front of Ivana’s coat and towed her back to the ledge. “I didn’t mean it!” he shouted as he hauled her upright. He couldn’t hear her reply. He pushed her up towards the window. She went in with a convulsive struggle. One boot, or the dangling line hook, struck him in the side of the head.
The sky was growing dark. Dazed, Moon risked a glance at the figurehead. A panel had been broken over a narrow door at the base of the carved skirts—a boarded-over exit from the belly of the ship, but that was easily repaired. The true damage was to the figurehead herself—the paint had broken away in great chips where Ivana’s first few blows had glanced, and the elegant folds of the back of the figures’ robes were splintered and shattered open. Within the dark hollow behind them was something curled and pale—like a bird’s talon, or a clawed hand. Moon started back and looked up at the window. His vision was blurring and he could not tell whether his grip held on the line.
Ivana, still goggled, leaned out the window, both hands out. Moon jumped up, caught them and fought both elbows over the window. Ivana pulled him in by the back of his jacket, headfirst among the broken glass.
“I’ve got frostbite,” he said, through lips that were nearly immobile. “I’m going to lose my face and my fingers. Do you destroy everything?”
Ivana pulled put her bare hand on his face. He could not feel it. “You’ll live,” she said. She stood up, closed the window and took the eye-mask off.
“There’s a body in my figurehead,” said Moon. He had seen its empty eyes, the clinging strands of black hair. Skin and cloth had been dried to the bones, the skin mottled with tattoos.
“I’m going to kill him,” said Ivana.
“Whoever it is, he’s already dead,” said Moon.
“Not him,” said Ivana. “Fuille. He knows we exist now.” Her face looked like Moon’s felt. She held the line hook and looked at Moon as if she wondered what would show up if she broke him open. “How did you come by this ship, Moon?”
“A game of squares!” he protested. “I won it in a game. Fairly! A year ago! I was just out of hospital and a chance came—”
“Then why hide its real name? The missing Ravens—you must have known the bargain was tainted, you who wish to be a pirate. Did you also know my brother was dead inside the figurehead—your own private skull and cross-bones?”
“No!”
“Were you going to do the same to me? You could have. All those little wires running through the ship into my veins, into my head so I could fly it for you—the fastest ship in the world? You were so happy to find what I could do.”
“No!” said Moon. He was thawing enough to sit up. Ivana and the ship were slipping through his fingers, and he did not know how to choose. “I swear! I knew—I knew there were probably shady dealings, but there always are and I played fair. I didn’t know.” Behind her, the lines of the wires fanned out across the walls of the cabin, spread through the ship. He felt ill.
“Left there to die,” she went on. “Staring endlessly into the well of the wind.”
“It was a Government ship,” said Moon, although he did not really think Ivana was listening to him. “I swear—I didn’t think anyone would miss it. Not after a while. She was just an old tub, and—” and beautiful, he was going to say, but it was harder to think that now. “I swear on the ship—on my life. I didn’t know.” And he didn’t know if Evan Arden had been still alive in there. He couldn’t have known.
“There were papers in the cargo—very technical,” she said in a colourless voice, rubbing her hand as if to rid it of a stain. “Experiments, formulae. And I know—I touched him. They kept him alive. They used the same drugs as were in Fuille’s blood, but by the end he would have had more chemicals than blood. I didn’t always get on with my brother, but still—”
“Fuille had a drawing of a ship very like this,” said Moon. His lips were chapped. Blood came away on his hand when he touched it to his mouth. “His life’s work—”
“ ‘Mind and the mellifluosity of the wind,’ ” echoed Ivana. She looked down at Moon, unseeing.
“Help me up,” he said, holding out his hand. She looked at the darkening window and turned away to the door.
“Wait!” said Moon. He tried to scramble to his feet but, still half-frozen, had more control over his wooden leg than his own. “Fuille went down to the hold. I told him you were down there.”
“He’ll be angry then,” said Ivana placidly. She hefted the line hook, stepped out and closed the door behind her.
Moon could not bring himself to lean against the cabin wall with its tracery of wires, and did not think calling for help would simplify matters. He levered himself up to sit on the edge of his desk and waited for life to return to his limbs. The wooden shutter banged in the ice wind. Moon lunged a
cross the cabin and slammed it closed. Luck couldn’t be out forever, it would turn and he could get another ship—besides, he told himself, this one was losing its charms. The thought did not comfort him. He was leaning his forehead against the shutter, seeing again the weatherfinder plunge backwards into air, when Cally entered the cabin.
“Pardon me, Captain,” he said, “But I wasn’t sure all was well. I was singing-out before, and no answer, and Tomasch said he saw someone out on the figurehead. Again. Wouldn’t have believed it if it had been Alban said it, but there it is.”
“I’m fine,” said Moon, straightening. “Is that all?”
“Storm’s coming. And passenger’s not best pleased,” said the steersman.
A shot rang out on deck.
Fuille’s pistol was a heavy one. The shot had thrown Ivana to the deck like a fist. She lay sprawled on the darkening timbers, hand clutched over what was left of her shoulder.
Tomasch had already seized Fuille, but before Alban could, at his direction, secure the pistol, the scientist fired again. Moon fell, nearly at Ivana’s side. The steersman sprang forward and dashed the gun from the scientist’s hand. It skittered across the deck to Moon’s feet.
The shot stunned Moon, and he was numb to the feel of blood slick beneath his hand, but he had fallen too often in the early days of his wooden leg to be much dazed by the fall itself. He was conscious of a gathering anger—Fuille would not take his leg, too. It had been too hard-won.
Moon sat up, felt the splinters where the bullet had struck his bad leg, and reached for the gun.
“I’d better get to the tiller, sir,” said Cally, and made himself scarce.
“It was self-defence!” said the scientist. “I did not shoot to kill. I could have, but I did not. I requisition this woman on the authority of their Imperial Majesties’ Government—!”
“On my ship, I’m the government,” interrupted Moon. He stood up stiffly and limped towards Fuille, who gaped. Moon put the muzzle of the pistol to the middle of the man’s forehead. Fuille stopped pulling against Tomasch’s grip.
“This ship is stolen,” whispered Fuille, his skin turning greyer. “It was part of a project of national—international!—significance. Don’t think that by uncovering what may very well be a genuine weatherfinder, the consequences to you will be lessened. By your actions you interrupted and destroyed a very delicate and long-running Government operation, which, if disclosed to our enemies—”
“I am tempted to conduct a delicate operation of my own,” said Moon, tapping the muzzle lightly against Fuille’s forehead. He found he did not enjoy doing so, although Tomasch looked appreciative. “The only reason I won’t is that I know it’s a capital offence to carry loaded firearms on a gas-ship.” He took the bullets out of the pistol and went to thrust it into his belt, then changed his mind and threw the weapon over the side. It was a more dramatic gesture, but it only relieved his feelings a little. “Besides, we’re nearly in the Republic’s sky, and what loyalty is it of yours that takes you and your precious experiments out of the Empire?”
Whatever joy Fuille’s helpless rage might have given him was taken away by the sight of what lay ahead, piling up in what had been blue sky.
“Shut him in his cabin,” he told Tomasch. “Lock him up and tie him to something. Don’t let Alban tie the knots. There’s going to be a storm.”
“No!” said the scientist. “No, no, you must let me secure my specimens.”
“Gag him, for preference,” added Moon. Tomasch hauled Fuille away, struggling again.
He knelt down again next to Ivana. Alban had his bare hands clamped over the wound, blood welling between his fingers. Together they dragged her upright, but she passed out before she was standing. They towed her back into his cabin and propped her on a chair.
“Go do what your father tells you,” Moon told Alban. “Heavy weather’s here.” Alban acquired a sickly expression but obeyed.
Moon got the sleeve of Ivana’s coat cut away and had his own jacket against the wound before Tomasch, eyes averted from blood, arrived to report the scientist secure. When he was gone, she opened her eyes and murmured, reproachfully, “You were shot.”
“It didn’t take,” said Moon cheerfully. “The good news is you’re not bleeding to death. He really had quite good aim—that, or the deck gave a fortunate tilt. Or possibly, though I never thought I’d say this, you owe a little thanks to Alban. The bad news is that your storm is here, and I’m going to pour the rest of the brandy into you until you’re able to get up and tell me how to get through it.”
“I don’t want to get through it,” murmured Ivana. “Do you know what a bullet tastes like in blood?”
“Never tried it,” said Moon. “Anyway, it’s not in you. It went straight through, more or less, and into my cabin door—you can see it if you like. There’s probably another in my leg, but I think I’ll keep it as a souvenir. Drink up.”
“Why?” said Ivana.
“Because Fuille is still furious and alive, and I’ll let him out if you don’t,” said Moon. “I’m only asking you to report on the storm. He wanted you to fly the whole ship. Like your brother.”
That had the effect he wanted. “You should have killed him,” said Ivana, weak but angry.
“I want him to stand trial,” said Moon, although privately he agreed with her.
“He’s Government,” said Ivana. “He won’t.”
“There are other sorts of trials. Tomasch reported some choice selections from his luggage,” said Moon, securing the bandage around her body and under her other arm. “I plan to let the newsmongers make what they will of it. Their Majesties’ precious ambassadors will have conniptions. Eliza would love to interview you—almost his next victim, and all that, and it’s pleasant when she’s grateful.” Moon knew he was talking too much, and still he could not bring himself to say what he wanted to say, or to think clearly about what that was. “Well,” he continued, “it doesn’t happen all that often. Or at all. But I think it would be nice. And then I’ll be properly surprised about her news, and a model uncle to the poor creature when it’s born, and everyone will be happy.”
“Uncle?” said Ivana.
“I know, and it makes me feel very old, but that’s better than not getting to be old,” said Moon, then realised that Ivana’s brother would never have the chance to say that. He cleared his throat and went on, “But we have to get to Poorfortune first, so have another drink, please, quickly, then come out on deck and tell me the way through.”
“How long have you been flying?” asked Ivana, her voice stronger although her words were slurred.
“I like to think we would survive,” lied Moon. “But there’s a reason small ships don’t fly this way. Besides, I’ve never flown with a real, born, weatherfinder, and I’d like to say I’ve done it once in my life. I might not get the chance again.”
“I think I’m drunk,” said Ivana.
The Hyssop limped over Poorfortune, ragged and battered, listing where gas cushions had burst, her spars and lines tangled, but still aloft and still bearing its crew—all bone-weary, save for the captain. He was exhilarated by survival and their neck-or-nothing passage through the great storm. When they cleared the last shreds of cloud and broke through into clear air, when Ivana—shaken—had silently pointed to the horizon while Cally corrected their course, he had wanted to take her by the shoulders and dance her in a circle. He had remembered in time that she was wounded and he could not dance, so had simply pulled out his pipe and folded his arms, grinning towards the distant port until Tomasch shouted for help with the most urgent repairs. Moon said, sadly, that he saw no need for efforts beyond those, and as Cally, given long acquaintance with Moon, had insisted on full pay in advance and suspected there was no future on the Hyssop, there was no objection from the crew.
When Moon returned to his cabin, he had found Ivana asleep on his bed, Alban watching anxiously over her. He dismissed Alban, and stood a moment looking down at hi
s weatherfinder. Her face was an unhealthy colour, but she was breathing and so he left her while he salvaged the few books and papers he could carry in a canvas matilda. He righted a chair and sat to compose a letter which would inspire the necessary curiosity and urgency in an ambitious journalist, and terror in distant corridors of power.
Once he looked around the cabin, and wondered if he would miss it. The thought of the use to which the ship had once been put made his skin crawl, but that was shadowed by the quiet company of the weatherfinder and the bond of the wild flight. Ivana was awake again and watching him with her long jaw set, but she did not speak.
As they worked their way in over Poorfortune at last, Moon dropped a package overboard carefully labelled with Eliza Blancrose’s name. The sprawling city had its own systems for such things—by the time the wounded Hyssop was in position to dock, the newsmongers of the Poorfortune Exclamation and the High Harbour Times, together with a bevy of Poorfortune police, were at the low docks crowding out a contingent of eager civil servants on the service of the Republic, and several alarmed gentlemen in dark suits whom Moon judged to be in Their Imperial Majesties’ employ. Somewhere beyond them, customs officers gesticulated, disregarded.
Eliza was there with the linesmen, and first across to the Hyssop, helped willingly by an appreciative Tomasch. She held her hat on with one gloved hand.
“Who are the police here for?” asked Moon by way of greeting.
“Whoever has the best story,” said Eliza. “They’re relentlessly incorruptible, so now that they’ve seen you with me you’d better get off this tub. Does Cally have the Port Fury forms, and ship’s papers? Then you’d better clear out. Come see me at the Palm Rooms—I owe you for this story and I’ve a lead who can put you in a likely game for a real antique—”
“I’m off old ships,” said Moon. “I need a yacht. Something white and sleek, with no skeletons in its cupboards.”
“Less piratical, but you never know what your luck will hold.”
“Or for how long,” said Moon. “Eliza, can you get Ivana to a doctor, quietly?”