Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel Book 1)

by Josiah Bancroft

  “I’ve considered it,” he admitted.

  “That doesn’t sound very captainly.”

  “Yes, I would like to do it,” he said, correcting his posture. “I will be captain.”

  “I wouldn’t say that to Billy Lee.”

  “Who’s Billy Lee?”

  “Captain of the ship, of course,” she said, a little archly, then quickly sobered and added, “He’s hot-headed, treacherous, free with his hands and trigger-happy, but underneath all that gentility beats the heart of a rabid dog.”

  “Oh,” Senlin said. He’d been so busy thinking of ways to extract the crew, he’d neglected to consider how difficult it might be to unseat the captain.

  “But, here, before we worry about Captain Lee, tell me what you have in mind. How do you mean to do it, and who is this ‘we’ you keep talking about?”

  Senlin recited a brief history, and as is so often the case with history, the whole tangled ordeal sounded simple and tidy in summary: the tyrannical Commissioner, the obsessed painter, and the stolen masterpiece that had won Senlin some grim news of his wife; the Boudoir, and the reemergence of Finn Goll, the mastermind, and Adam, the sympathetic thief who had become such a friend to him; and Rodion’s Steam Pipe, which was a sugar trap for men and a gulag for women like Voleta. Senlin spared Edith many details and instead hurried to explain how all of this muddling misery and drudgery laid the way for his plan. He got as far as explaining how Adam would betray him, telling Rodion that Senlin was smuggling the Commissioner’s painting through the port in exchange for Voleta’s freedom, when Edith finally interrupted.

  “But, wait, why would the painting be on my ship?”

  “Because I’m going to hire you, or Billy Lee, to smuggle it out for me. Rodion cannot pass up an opportunity at such influence and fortune. He will come with… twenty men at least. Maybe twice that. Your captain should feel sufficiently overwhelmed. I’ve seen more than a few ships searched in my time as Port Master. There’s a standard procedure. The cargo hold is unloaded to port and gone through with the manifest, box by box, piece by piece, while the crew stands in detention. It can take hours.”

  She balked at this. “You think that Billy Lee will give up his ship without a fight?”

  “He’s not surrendering his ship,” Senlin reasoned, and then saw absurdity of it, “…at least, not so far he knows. His ship is just being searched. I’m sure it won’t be the first time for that. Hopefully, the first mate will be able to smooth the way.”

  “Oh, sure.” She regarded him as one might a lunatic who has climbed onto a roof with a pair of paper wings. “A port authority strips a private vessel by force and rifles through its cargo while the crew stands on the dock with hands neatly folded. Is that it?”

  “I’m glad you share my confidence,” Senlin said, forging on through her sarcasm. “Then, Finn Goll shows up to catch Rodion mid-search, which he can only interpret as a prelude to larceny and conspiracy. A great commotion will follow, and a lot of fingers will be pointed, and amidst the fracas, we will board and launch the ship.”

  “That is a terrible idea! What’s to keep them from firing on the ship?”

  “They’ll be distracted for one, and then the cargo will stay them. It’s very precious, this painting, apparently. I realize Billy Lee won’t appreciate that, but I don’t think he’ll try to shoot down his own ship. And Finn Goll will be afraid to because he doesn’t want to attract the Commissioner’s attention. We just have to make sure the painting goes with us. It’s like a shield, you see? They’ll try to catch us, of course. But as long as we have the painting, they won’t shoot us down. I think. I hope. And I have an escape route.” Senlin pointed to the Tower face at a hardly visible indentation in the facade. “There. If we blow all the ballast at once, and unmoor at the last moment, we should jump to that undiscovered current.” He made a guttural sound of equivocation. “Eh… probably.”

  Edith didn’t even make a show of following his finger to look. “So, to be clear, your plan is to strike one hornet’s nest, rattle a second, throw it at the first nest, and then run away amid the madness.” She made a motion like she was picking a cherry from a tree. “This is your plan. You expect every one of those hornets to fly right on course, just as you like.”

  “I’m only planning for each to act according to their nature,” Senlin said levelly, not backing down from the point. “I’m counting on greed and egotism, forces that are as reliable as gravity in the Tower. It is a gamble, but not a hopeless one.” He placed his hands on her shoulders in that ancient gesture of desperate arguments and earnest pleas. He lowered his voice and said, “The real question is, will you be my first mate?”

  The gangplank groaned behind them, followed by a tittering laugh that slid into a snort. Wobbling across the moon-washed deck came a woman dressed in a puff of skirt and a keyhole blouse that framed her cleavage. Behind her, swatting her backside with a bottle, came a youthful, brown-bearded man wearing a bright green tabard, emblazoned with a gold pyramid. It was an absurd outfit, more suited to a King’s guard than a pirate.

  “Captain Billy,” Edith called, surprising the canoodling pair. Billy Lee came to a staggering, squinting stop. He swung his head from Edith to Senlin and back again, taking in the lanky figure that loomed beside his first mate.

  “Who’s the lurker, Eddy?”

  “Man wants to buy our services,” she explained easily and without a hint of the anxiety that was presently electrifying Senlin’s spine. “Has a small package that needs a pocket.”

  “Is it legal?” Billy asked, his neck jerking like a goose, spittle flying.

  “No,” Edith said.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Ah. So-so. He said eight mina now, and when we deliver it to the Port of Orland, which is on our way, Captain, we get sixteen more from the recipient.”

  “That’s a lot of money for so-so danger.”

  “I’m paying for discretion.” Senlin said, speaking for the first time, and glad to find his voice firm.

  “I’m as discreet as a mustache or two bit whore.” More spit flew out and caught in Billy Lee’s beard. The woman with the locket of cleavage snorted. “Now, come on, come on, fork over my money.”

  “I’ll send it along tomorrow with the parcel,” Senlin said. “When will you disembark?”

  “Tomorrow night. See that you send my money. Now, get off my ship! I need the whole deck tonight!” he said, goosing the woman.

  Edith escorted Senlin back onto the skyport, where he whispered, “He doesn’t seem like such a monstrous chap.”

  Behind her a bottle crashed, followed by a thunderous laugh. She flinched and mouthed the word: “Rabid dog.”

  Senlin found himself hesitating again. “The package I send in the morning, please make sure no one opens it,” he said, and she nodded. The gloom that had felt cosmic before now seemed intimate. “Thank you, Edith.”

  “Oh, no, don’t thank me. I’m first mate. I’m going to pin every mistake, every empty belly, every extra duty, and flaccid wind on you. You are going to hate me.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Every important journey I have undertaken has begun the same: with crushed sheets, a balled pillow, flung open books, and not a wink of sleep. Tonight, I added a new sort of frittering to the ritual: sewing. I have at least solved the question of where to hide the painting, though I mangled my coat’s lining in the process.”

  - Every Man’s Tower, One Man’s Travails by T. Senlin

  When Adam came to the Port Master’s office the next morning, he found Senlin with his sleeves rolled up, leaning over a small pine crate on his desktop. The dingy handkerchief tied over the bottom half of his face made Senlin look like a field surgeon. His shoulders heaved as if he’d just been relieved of some great tension.

  “Ah, good! Just in time,” Senlin said, pulling down the makeshift mask and clapping his hands. A hammer, nails and tufts of packing straw littered his desktop, seeming out of place amid the p
apers and ledgers. “Close the door, close the door. Today is the day! And since I can’t very well be seen walking about with a packed bag, I have transformed myself into a piece of luggage. I am wearing three shirts and all my undergarments.” He said, patting his somewhat plumper chest. “I could hardly get my boots on. For the first time in months, I am actually a little warm. I have enough pockets for four books, but oh, which books! It’s kept me up half the night...” He was prattling, and Adam was quick to interrupt when he took a breath.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Ah! Well, I’ve just finished booby-trapping this crate.”

  “You’ve what? What for?”

  “For you to deliver.” Senlin gave the wooden cube on his desk two quick knocks. “Don’t worry; it’s only dangerous if you open it.”

  “The Commissioner’s painting is in there?”

  “No, it’s a decoy,” Senlin pressed a finger on the side of his nose. “A booby-trapped decoy! How’s that for treachery? You’re going to take this to Edith on the Stone Cloud. Be sure to tell her not to open it, not to let anyone open it. Now, here’s the eight mina I promised Captain Billy Lee. Don’t lose it. It’s every last shekel I have.”

  Untouched by Senlin’s enthusiasm, Adam looked unhappily at the envelope he’d been passed; it was heavy with coins. “Who is this woman, Tom? Is she really deserving of so much trust?” He shook his head in a quick, almost shivering fashion. “Whoever she was before, she’s spent the past half year cavorting with pirates. That changes a person. She might betray you without so much as a second thought.”

  “Of course! Anyone could. But I think she is sympathetic to our plight; she’s in the same spot as us: indentured and in debt. Yes, she has lived among pirates, but we have lived among smugglers and whoremongers and thieves. We don’t have to become the company we keep. We can hope for better, and cling to those who share our hope.” Senlin tried to project a cheerful calm, though he was not untroubled. Edith and Adam weren’t wrong to question his scheme. It was daring, to say the least, and if the plan failed, he would have led them all to their deaths. It was not a burden he carried lightly. But what else could they do? Wait for rescue? Work until their concocted debts were repaid to men who could always concoct more debt? “We just have to survive the day.”

  Adam’s broad lips thinned and disappeared into a rigid smile. “Alright. But Tom, please, for my peace of mind, tell me you have the painting. If your gamble goes bad, it’s our last chip.”

  Senlin smiled, “Of course I have it.”

  “Then why won’t you tell me where it is? What if you are conked on the head, or thrown from the pier…”

  “Thank you very much,” Senlin said, drolly.

  “…I’m serious! Where would that leave Voleta and I? We’d be defenseless.”

  “Do you know what the Red Hand did to the only other person who knew where the painting was? He tortured him to death. He told me so. The painter, Ogier, died because he knew. The same almost happened to me. It isn’t safe to know, Adam. I won’t tell you because… it isn’t safe.” Senlin’s voice dropped and he had to stretch his neck to recover it. “All you need to worry about is Voleta. Keep her close. Get her on the ship and do whatever you can to ready the ship for launch. I may be preoccupied. And, Adam, if I am…” he searched for a diplomatic way of saying it, then smiled at the ready answer: “…if I am conked on the head, you should not hesitate to cast off. I don’t know if you can fly the ship without a crew, but it’s better to risk it than to stay.”

  Adam seemed ready to argue, but he pulled up short. His hearing was keener than Senlin’s, and he appeared now to be listening. “Iren’s on the stairs.”

  “Ah, my final Eight O’Clock report,” Senlin said in a rush. “Take the crate. Careful, now. Go, go, go. If not before, I’ll see you at the port at nine tonight.” Senlin shooed Adam with the handkerchief he’d pulled from his neck.

  The amazon passed Adam in the hall, and soon dominated the doorway. She could’ve passed for a door herself. Senlin whisked a hand at the straw on his desk, fussing to cover the excitement that roiled inside him. “Iren, don’t look so perturbed! I don’t hold a grudge...”

  She spoke over him. “You have to come with me.”

  “Oh. Well, let me just get the report…”

  “Leave it,” she said.

  “All right,” he replied slowly. He cocked his head to one side, reassessing her demeanor, trying to detect some hint of why their morning ritual was not going as usual. Her broad brow and smooth, uncreased eyelids betrayed nothing; she was unreadable. “Going on a picnic?” he said, picking up his aerorod.

  “Leave it,” she repeated more sharply, her eyes flashing.

  Senlin froze under her glower, which contained none of the familiarity they had built during the recent weeks. It was not his sparring teacher, nor his student of letters that stood before him. This was Finn Goll’s enforcer blocking the only exit to the room.

  He gently lowered the aerorod to his desk and began the deliberate process of unrolling his sleeves. “Can I take my coat, at least?” he asked, and when she made no reply, he pulled it from the rack in the corner. Though it was invisible to her, he could feel the slight stiffness in the back of his coat where he’d sewn in Ogier’s painting.

  “Empty the pockets.”

  Senlin dutifully extracted the books he’d so carefully chosen: a guide to aeronautics, an engineering primer, a book on ship repair, and of course his private journal. He stacked the treasures on his desk. He hoped he’d have the chance to return for them. He also pulled out the jailor’s key to show her. “Can I take my key?” She gave a slight shrug, and he smiled back with all the magnanimity he could muster. “Lead on,” he said.

  Finn Goll’s carriage idled in the glum, yellow light of the stockyard. It was the only running engine in the blister-shaped cavern, and it reverberated like a rough heartbeat. The porters, already soaked in chilling sweat from their morning work, stood quiet, frozen amid their labor. They eyed their Port Master, who seemed a little naked without his rod, stoically preceding the giantess toward the open door of the carriage. Goll’s aged driver on his high bench looked like a scarecrow. Some of the gawking porters smirked meanly, but others watched with pitying expressions. It made Senlin wonder what they suspected or knew.

  He was surprised to discover that Goll was not inside the coach. Since arriving in New Babel, Senlin had not once seen his diminutive boss outside his hearse. He had half assumed that Goll lived in it, bizarre as that seemed, and so it felt a little like he was trespassing upon a man’s private chambers by entering the carriage alone. Though of course, he was not alone. Feeling the looming presence of Iren behind him, Senlin hiked himself quickly into the coach. She followed on his heels and hardly had the door closed before the carriage lurched softly forward.

  It occurred to him that Finn Goll might not take the news of Rodion’s impending betrayal without comment. Goll might reasonably assume that Senlin was somehow embroiled in the plot. Or perhaps, in an inspired fit of unrelated treachery, Goll had contacted the Commissioner, and decided that he’d rather have a bounty than a bookkeeper. Perhaps Senlin was about to discover firsthand the grim fate of his predecessor. Really, a hundred things might have— and probably should have— gone wrong. Weighing each possibility was exhausting, so he turned his attention to the carriage window and refused to fret any further. Wherever he was going, whatever was going to happen, anticipation wouldn’t change it.

  They emerged from the port tunnel into an ecstatic display of lightning. The wire dome atop the central monolith spat sparks over the bleak citadels of New Babel. Fingers of electricity scratched the hewn rock ceiling, leapt down to the flat tops of the taller cinder buildings, and tapered out into the frigid air where a colony of bats fled from the ghastly light.

  Iren reached over and lowered the blind, ending the show. Senlin gave a little indignant huff, and turned his attention to her. Her knees, jutting out from under
her leather apron, were each as large as a child’s skull. She was too large for the seat or for the carriage, and so had been forced into the humiliated posture of a big dog hiding under a small table. She stared glumly at the dark paneling of Senlin’s headboard, which made him feel as if she was looking through him. He tried to reconcile this vision with the tireless, merciless martial instructor who’d hurled and swatted him about the stockyard in weeks past. She seemed so lifeless now.

  “I’ve been working on a theory for a while that you might find interesting,” Senlin said affably.

  “No,” she said.

  Senlin was undeterred. “Yes, indeed. It was born, my little theory, out of a glancing curiosity with the steam engine. The steam engine is so ubiquitous here, I mean to say, they’re everywhere, and not just on rails or on wheels. I’ve seen a mechanical hippopotamus fired on steam, and the pipe organ at the Valve is steam fed. It’s a marvelous thing, steam.”

  “Stop saying steam,” Iren said, though with little force. “Shut up.”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to lecture. But, it really is not an ideal energy. It’s bulky and difficult to regulate. If you want to energize something that is small or portable or delicately calibrated, steam won’t do. You need electricity. Now, electricity is relatively unheard of where I come from. It was sort of a parlor trick. We could make a person’s hair stand on end with a simple static machine, but there was far too little of the stuff to do anything practical with it.”

  “Shut up or I’ll put a gag on you,” she said, glancing at him finally.

  “If I shut up, I might as well be gagged,” he quipped, hardly breaking the stride of what had indeed become a lecture. “Steam is a crude energy that can be refined into a superior form. Which is what is happening here, inside that fierce turbine that looms over our city, steam is being transformed into electricity. But it takes a lot of steam. And this brings me to my theory.”