Oath Bound - Book V of The Order of the Air

by Melissa Scott

  “Not to mention why he wants it in the first place,” Mitch said.

  “Jerry’s in Alexandria, right?” Lewis said. “This was sent from there.”

  Alma nodded. “So presumably Iskinder’s there with him. Though why Jerry didn’t say what they wanted …”

  “Presumably because he couldn’t, darling,” Stasi said. “Not in a telegram that anyone could read.”

  Mitch rubbed his chin. “They were skirmishing with the Italians back in October, I think. Something to do with that?”

  “It’s war,” Lewis said. His voice wasn’t loud, but the word seemed to echo in the quiet room. “That — I’m sure of it. It’s something to do with war, present and approaching.”

  Stasi gave him an approving look. “What do you see, darling?”

  “I’ve been seeing the Five of Wands for days,” he answered, “but this is more. Bigger. The real thing, not a skirmish.”

  “And Iskinder’s in the middle of it,” Alma said. “I think we should go.”

  She’d last seen Iskinder just about three years ago, the winter Jerry had been in New York working for the Met. It had been Iskinder who’d helped them get Jerry’s medallion, helped them hold off Pelley’s men in the city and get them safely away to Colorado. It had been seventeen years since Mitch had seen him, and what he remembered was the thin, good-looking youth, one more Harvard boy among the rest of the Harvard volunteers — except, as Iskinder himself had pointed out, a bit duskier. He had been part of the lodge Gil pulled together out of nothing, had been one of Mitch’s sponsors when he proclaimed his apprenticeship; he and Mitch together had arranged Gil and Alma’s wedding so that she could stay in Venice and take care of Gil after he’d been gassed so badly.

  Lewis looked from him to Alma, not yet saying anything. Stasi lifted her perfect eyebrows. “And how exactly are you going to explain this? I don’t think you can just go jaunting off to Egypt without someone taking notice, and then what are you going to say?”

  “We’ve got another eight days before we have to catch the Alceste home,” Mitch said. “It’s, what, a straight day’s flight to Alexandria? That gives us a week to find out what’s going on, and do whatever it is Iskinder needs.”

  “He wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t vital,” Alma said.

  That was true. Mitch nodded again.

  “All right, but what are you going to tell people?” Stasi asked. “They’re going to ask questions.”

  “We’ll tell them it’s an unscheduled test flight, for a private client,” Alma said. “It’s not that unlikely.”

  “It’s pretty thin,” Mitch said.

  “Have you got anything better?” Alma glared, and Mitch shook his head.

  “Nope. But it’s still thin.”

  “I hate to ask this,” Alma said, to Stasi, “but can you stay here with the kids? We can’t take them with us, not with something fishy going on.”

  “You’ll owe me, darling.” Stasi reached for her cigarettes, and Lewis offered her a light.

  “We will.”

  “We’ll be short-handed,” Mitch said. “You, me, Lewis, Tiny. It would be better with another pilot.”

  “We don’t have one,” Alma said. “We’ll have to go with what we’ve got. Fuel — we can cover the flight to Alexandria and back. I hate to ask it, but Iskinder’s going to have to pay for anything else he wants us to do.”

  “We don’t know what he needs,” Lewis said. “It may not be something we can do once we get there. I don’t have any feelings about that. But I agree, we have to find out. And a telegram isn’t going to help us.”

  “All right. We’ll plan to fly out of here —” Alma groaned. “First thing tomorrow, probably, which means we should plan to leave the party early. I’ll talk to Henry, he should be able to help us out — and he’ll be able to help you, too, Stasi, if you need anything while we’re gone.”

  “Darling, Mr. Kershaw and I are just on speaking terms these days.” Stasi tipped her head back to release a plume of smoke. “I don’t know that I want to test our friendship.”

  “He was part of that Lodge,” Mitch said. “He owes Iskinder, too.”

  “If you say so, darling.”

  “And there’s the weather to worry about,” Alma said. “As long as we have a few decent days.”

  “I think the weather will be all right,” Lewis said. “It’s just the rest of it. And, no, I don’t have anything solid to go on, it’s just — War is coming, and this is part of it.”

  A chill ran down Mitch’s spine. “The Ethiopians have been fighting the Italians since the 1890s. This is just more of the same.”

  “Maybe so,” Lewis said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “This is about Iskinder,” Alma said. “We fly to Alexandria, find out what he wants, and do it if we can.”

  Alma made her way out of the little chapel of Our Lady of Loreto, set close beside the airfield. It had been hot and crowded inside, not just standing room only but packed shoulder to shoulder so that she’d had to clutch her purse against her chest throughout the entire memorial. The French flyers had been well remembered; Vuillemin himself had pronounced the official tribute, and Marshal Balbo had offered Italy’s sympathies as well as a cash donation to the flyers’ families. That, at least, was something useful, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit depressed. This was the risk they took every working day, but it was harder not to think of it, especially now that they had Dora. Lewis would stay for the Mass, but there was no comfort there for her. Instead, she lifted her face to the cloudy sky, breathing in the cold smell of tar and gasoline and damp salt air. The rain had very nearly stopped, just the occasional pinpoint against her skin. She’d chosen this life long ago, before she’d even met Gil, and to give it up now would be another kind of death. She took a deep breath, and crossed the street, heading for the main terminal.

  She found Henry in the main hangar, standing with his hands in his pockets beside the velvet ropes that encircled the Dart. He doffed his Homburg at her approach, then blinked as though he’d only just realized who she was, and Alma suppressed a smile. She’d worn her good tweed suit to the memorial, gold-flecked green wool, sober and business-like, and she wasn’t surprised Henry hadn’t recognized her out of pants and a flying jacket, or the Hollywood glamor of her ball gown.

  “Good morning, Henry.”

  “Alma.” He kissed her cheek in a very continental style, looking past her as though he expected to see Lewis or Mitch. “I thought that was a very nice service.”

  “It was.” And Henry had left as soon as was decent, she knew. He liked that sort of memorial even less than the average airman, had been to too many during the war, and after. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Of course.” Henry took a step back, drawing her away from the passing crowd. It wasn’t a particularly conspicuous movement, but they were out of earshot of the average passer-by.

  “We need to fly to Egypt,” Alma said. “Mitch, me, and Lewis. And Tiny, since we need another engineer.”

  “Egypt?”

  Alma nodded. “I need your help —”

  “What the hell’s in Egypt? You’re not taking those kids, are you?”

  “No,” Alma said. “We’re not taking the children. Stasi is staying here with them, and that’s one thing I’d like you to do, help look after her.”

  “That dame doesn’t need any help from me.” Henry sounded both admiring and a little annoyed, and Alma couldn’t help grinning.

  “Just in case. As for why Egypt —” She lowered her voice. “Jerry’s there, on a dig. He cabled to say that Iskinder needs help.”

  Henry’s face changed. “What kind of help? I heard there was more trouble with the Italians.”

  “I don’t know. Jerry couldn’t say, not in a cable, and I gather it’s urgent enough he couldn’t wait for a letter. And I don’t want to ask too many questions because of the Italian claims. But of course we have to go.”

  “Of course.” And that was the
Henry she remembered from the war, quick and decisive and absolutely committed both to his country and to the Lodge. “How can I help?”

  “Back up Stasi,” Alma said. “She seems pretty well at home in Italy, but we’ll all feel better if we know she can call on you.”

  Henry nodded.

  “Then — help cover for us. We’ll be leaving first thing in the morning tomorrow, and I’m going to try to keep it as quiet as possible, but obviously people are going to notice a missing seaplane. We’re going to tell people that we have a potential buyer who wanted a private test flight outside the parameters of the show — someone who didn’t want people talking about him buying a plane like this.”

  Henry nodded more thoughtfully. “Ok, sure, I can do that. I don’t know who, exactly, but you had an expression of serious interest that you had to follow up on. Where exactly are you heading?”

  Alma glanced over her shoulder in spite of herself, and knew it just made her look furtive. Well, with any luck, anyone who noticed would just think she was arranging an assignation. For some reason people seemed to assume she did things like that. “Alexandria. That’s where Jerry’s working.”

  “How about fuel? Are you good for it?”

  Alma squeezed his shoulder. Was that von Rosen in the crowd beside them, his eyes on the Dart? No, she was mistaken. The man in the blue suit was a stranger. “Thank you. We’re all right for now.”

  “Wire if you need help,” Henry said. “I can spare you a load of fuel if I have to. Have you gotten a forecast?”

  “Not yet. I was going to wait till this afternoon, get as complete a reading as possible.”

  “The last I saw, there was some rough weather coming in a day or so. No idea if it will stretch that far south, but you might want to leave tonight, get ahead of it.” Henry paused, considering. “Say, that’s not a bad idea in general. If you try to leave New Year’s Day, too many people will be able to see that it’s just you guys. If you took off tonight, you’d get into Alexandria in the morning — daylight landing, no problem, and nobody would ask questions.”

  “We have to go to the closing party,” Alma said. “If we don’t — that’d draw too much attention.”

  “Right.”

  “We could leave early…” That wasn’t actually a bad idea, she thought. Go to the dance, let themselves be seen, if need be distract people with hints of another buyer, another set of test flights — yes, that could work. And no one would need to know that they didn’t have a buyer on board, which was better than saying they were meeting a potential buyer in Egypt. That would only raise questions: who in Africa could afford to consider one of Floyd’s expensive seaplanes, and why would they want one now? Better not to start people thinking in that direction, not when they needed the Italians to stay on their side. “Yeah. You’re right, that makes sense.”

  “I thought so.” Henry managed to look only momentarily smug. “Al, if this is about the Italian invasion — tell Iskinder from me he needs to get the hell out of there.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Nothing more than you have, I’m sure. But Ethiopia — they don’t have much of any army, they can’t afford one. I don’t see how the hell they can hold off anybody, never mind a modern army like Italy’s.”

  “I know. But if it was your country —”

  Henry nodded. “And this is Iskinder. Just tell him — tell him if he needs a place, needs a job, he can always come to me.”

  And that was generous, probably unnecessary, and the only thing Henry could do to help. Alma touched his shoulder again. “Thank you, Henry. For everything.”

  “I just don’t want to have to explain to Floyd that you’ve destroyed his fancy seaplane. Promise me you won’t get it torn up.”

  “I won’t even scratch our pretty paint job,” Alma promised, and moved away.

  The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur as Alma did her best to finish her arrangements without attracting undue attention and without shirking her duty to Odlum and the Catalina. As always, there were half a dozen latecomers with questions, one of whom might even be a serious buyer, and she spent nearly an hour with him trying not to look over her shoulder for the harbormaster. She needed to get the Cat fueled up before they left, they weren’t going to find a fuel truck on duty when they came down here at midnight — the buyer was giving her an odd look, and she quickly collected herself, forcing herself to concentrate.

  “So sorry, signor, could you say that again…”

  Maybe she should send Mitch, she thought, as she showed the man off the Catalina with properly effusive farewells. He could sign a company check, and Pozzi’s English was perfectly good — but no, it made the buyers happier to see Mitch there, confirmation that she knew what she was doing. She glanced surreptitiously at her watch. The day’s show was almost over, anyway. She needed to go now if she was going to get it done.

  She walked to the end of the gangway, looking down the length of the dock, and almost groaned aloud. Of all people, there was Count von Rosen walking toward the Cat, a neatly rolled umbrella tucked under his arm.

  “Mitch!”

  He came down the gangway to join her, frowning as he saw her expression. “What’s — oh.”

  “You talk to him, will you? I’ve got to get the fuel taken care of for tonight.”

  “Sure thing,” Mitch answered, and she hurried away.

  Pozzi wasn’t in his office, but the junior harbormaster was willing to fuel the Catalina after the gates were closed for the day.

  “An unexpected client,” Alma said, and shrugged as though it happened all the time.

  “A pity it happens today, with the ball and the holiday,” the harbormaster agreed, with merely ordinary sympathy, and she bit her lip to keep from offering too many explanations. She signed the check and handed it over, and the harbormaster wrote out her receipt and slid it across the counter. “And we will have that all taken care of, Signora, don’t worry.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and let herself back out of the office. To her relief, the crowds were thinning, and Mitch was still standing at the foot of the gangway, looking almost sleepy. Von Rosen must have gone, she thought, making her way along the dock, and Mitch straightened at her approach.

  “All set?”

  “It’s all taken care of,” Alma answered. “I got the forecast, too, and Henry was right about leaving tonight. Tomorrow evening’s going to be a lot like this morning, but we’ve got a nice window to get us south of the front.”

  Mitch nodded. “Good.”

  “Did von Rosen say anything?”

  “Just hello. He didn’t really stop.”

  “That’s good,” Alma said.

  “You really don’t trust that guy.”

  Alma paused, considering. “I don’t,” she said at last. “It’s not just that he doesn’t like dealing with a woman, and he got better about that, anyway. I just — I don’t know, Mitch, I don’t like him.”

  “What does Lewis say?”

  Anyone else, Alma thought, anyone else who said that would make her want to slap them silly, but she knew perfectly well what Mitch meant. She had absolutely no precognitive gifts — was about as sensitive as a brick. Lewis and Stasi were the ones with the Sight, and they were the ones to handle the question. “Nothing,” she admitted. “He said after the opening party he didn’t feel anything odd about him, and — he’s been busy with Henry and the Dart, and it didn’t seem that important. I don’t suppose Stasi’s said anything?”

  Mitch shook his head. “Not a word. Well, at least we’ll be out of here tonight.”

  Alma winced, even though she doubted his voice could have been heard more than a yard away. “Let’s not make any announcements.”

  “Sorry.” Mitch gave her a crooked grin. “At least we’ll get to enjoy some of the party.”

  Alma snorted. “Sure.”

  Palermo, Italy

  December 31, 1935

  The closing ball was held at another palazzo, t
his one within sight of the airfield itself. It was older than the first, Alma thought, the stone of the outside walls plain and darkened with weather; inside, the floors were flagstone, not mosaic, and the fireplaces at each end of the ballroom were big enough to roast an ox. There were tapestries on the long walls, two stories tall and covered with strange elongated knights and ladies and very old-fashioned animals; between them, the plaster was painted a soft peach that seemed to glow in the light from the chandeliers. There were real candles on the mantels, filling enormous silver candelabra, and above them in the shadows hung smoke-darkened shields and swords and spears.

  “This is different,” she said, in Lewis’s ear, after they’d made their way down the receiving line and emerged into the ballroom proper.

  He nodded. “Like something out of the Middle Ages.”

  An orchestra was playing somewhere above them, and Alma shaded her eyes with a gloved hand, looking up into the lights until she found a balcony to one side. The orchestra was up there — hadn’t she read something about that once, in a novel, musicians relegated to their own gallery? The music drifted down, a gentle waltz, and she shook herself. “Do you want to dance?”

  “Sure.” Lewis took her arm, and they eased themselves onto the dance floor, finding the spot where they could make the circuit at their own pace and not worry about the better dancers around them. Mitch and Stasi swept past, perfect and elegant as they turned around an invisible axis. Stasi was in black, as usual, though this dress was cut so low in the back that Mitch’s hand rested on bare skin. It was more daring that Alma herself could manage, and besides, she liked the security of lingerie — and the intense focus on Lewis’s face when it came time to take it off for bed. It was a pity this evening wouldn’t end that way. But it was for Iskinder, and for Jerry, neither of whom would call for help unless it was vital. She only hoped it was something they could fix.

  The waltz ended, and the dancers applauded politely. Alma let Lewis lead her away from the dance floor, and accepted a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. She’d have to be careful, she thought, but she didn’t want to attract attention by not drinking. “Where’s the buffet, I wonder?”