by Karen Kincy
Konstantin eyed the raven with considerable disgust and a hint of fascination.
“Don’t tell me you have undead nearby,” Konstantin said.
“All right,” Wendel said flippantly, “I won’t.”
Konstantin spoke in a dangerous murmur. “I am absolutely serious.”
The raven clambered nearer to Wendel, its claws clicking on the lacquered wood of the sleigh, and Wendel gazed at it rather fondly. Ardis suspected the necromancer liked the bird only because the archmage didn’t.
She smiled. The lingering venom in her blood weighed down her eyelids. They had barely slept a night since Constantinople. A hard bench in a sleigh was a luxury after huddling together in a cave in the wilderness.
Ardis rested her head against Wendel’s shoulder.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine they were alone. They were safe. And she let this delusion lull her to sleep.
~
San Francisco never slept through the night. Red lanterns hung like garlands of glowing fruit over the streets of Chinatown. Ardis ran over the cobblestones, dodging the crowds, ducking into alleys wherever she could. She loved the feeling of cutting her own way through the city, of finding things she had never seen.
Outside an herbalist’s shop, a man sat on the sidewalk and played a haunting melody on a two-stringed erhu from China. The song reminded Ardis of romantic maidens in flowing robes. She lingered until the man pointed with his bow at the box of coins by his feet. Then she shook her head and kept running.
Ardis passed a restaurant, which smelled of sizzling and simmering, and an opium den, which smelled of burnt poppies. The odd sweet aroma always provoked a shiver down her spine, though she had never been tempted.
Ardis ducked her head and ran faster. She would be late. Again.
Her mother’s brothel looked almost respectable from the outside, with bright red paint and a bit of gilding around the doorways. Inside, the smoke of incense perfumed the air and twisted serpentine between lamplight. A courtesan lounged on a divan, chatting with a man who wrung his hat in his hands. A new customer, clearly, one who hadn’t been seduced yet. Ardis raised her eyebrows, and the courtesan smiled.
Her mother’s office was at the back of the brothel, down a long hallway.
“Yu Lan,” her mother called. “Hurry.”
Ardis brushed aside a velvet curtain and crossed the threshold.
“Yu Lan!”
“I’m coming,” Ardis said.
When she stepped into the office, there were only shadows.
When Ardis woke, clouds blotted out the stars and the moon. Wendel brushed a snowflake from her face with his thumb. She had fallen asleep with her head in his lap. In other circumstances, without Konstantin watching, this might not have been such a bad arrangement. Blushing, she sat upright and straightened her clothes.
The sleigh still glided through a dark forest. Pines swayed in a gust of wind.
“Ardis,” Wendel said. “How do you feel?”
She blinked a few times. “Better.”
“You slept for over an hour. Is the half-life finished, archmage?”
Konstantin sighed. “That isn’t how half-lives work.”
“Don’t tell me.” Wendel held up a hand. “I don’t care to know.”
Ardis yawned. The vampire venom must have faded from her blood, but she still felt exhausted. Like she hadn’t slept a minute. Gingerly, she touched her neck. Her skin ached from where Konstantin had cauterized the wound. The memory of the vampire’s bite flashed through her mind. The pain. The pleasure.
Shame scorched her face. She closed her eyes for a moment.
“I shouldn’t have let him get so close,” Ardis said. “That was stupid of me.”
“Don’t blame yourself.” Wendel’s words roughened. “We all made mistakes.”
She shivered. “What happened to the vampires?”
“I underestimated them.” He twisted his mouth. “The dead don’t usually fight back.”
“Are they immune to your necromancy?”
“When I touched the vampire, she resisted my command. She felt dead, but there was a pricking energy beneath her skin. By the time I forced her to obey, I saw the other vampire biting you. I should have seen him sooner.”
Konstantin fidgeted with his gauntlets. “I eliminated that threat.”
“That’s a polite way of putting it.” Wendel flicked his eyebrows upward. “I had no idea vampires were so flammable.”
Konstantin coughed. “I apologize for the way things went.”
“Thank you so much for conveniently swooping in and rescuing us, archmage.”
A hint of pink touched Konstantin’s cheeks. He narrowed his eyes.
“Next time,” he said, “maybe you should pay less attention to finding a shiny new minion and more to staying in one piece.”
Wendel inspected his nails. “My shiny new minion distracted the border patrol.”
Ardis imagined the vampire sinking her teeth into Officer Zlatkov’s lifeless body, which gave her a perverse satisfaction.
“Oh, right,” Wendel said. “You could have called off the border patrol yourself.”
Konstantin’s gauntlets clinked together as his hands curled into fists.
“I would have,” he said.
Wendel curled his lip. “Before or after the Bulgarians interrogated us?”
“They interrogated you?”
Wendel laughed scornfully. “God, what did you think would happen?”
“They acted against my orders. I didn’t ask them to treat you like criminals.”
They could be considered criminals, though Ardis neglected to mention that.
“What did you tell them?” Wendel said. “They knew an awful lot about my past and present. They promised a rather unpleasant future.”
Konstantin spoke crisply. “The Archmages of Vienna research each of their employees.”
“Employees?” Wendel said the word with spectacular derision. “I’m not your employee.”
“You will be once we work on the automatons.”
“Am I getting one of those little flower pins, like Ardis?”
Konstantin scoffed. “No.”
Wendel started to speak, but Ardis interrupted him.
“Stop,” she said. “Both of you. Just stop.”
They stared at her, nonplussed.
“All I want for Christmas is one day without fighting,” she said.
Konstantin furrowed his brow and looked almost wistful.
“Fine.” Wendel looked considerably less wistful. “But you may be disappointed.”
Before Ardis could ask what he meant, the sleigh driver reined in his horses. They had arrived on the outskirts of a city.
“Phillipopolis,” Konstantin said. “We have to walk from here.”
Snow hushed the city and lay unbroken on many roads. Streetlights gleamed like fireflies, scattered here and there, and suffused the fog with gold. Ardis jumped from the sleigh, pinpricks dancing through her numb legs.
“I feel undead,” she muttered.
Wendel arched an eyebrow. “Believe me. You aren’t.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
Konstantin climbed from the sleigh and fished out a pocketwatch from his coat. The watch’s dial glowed with technomancy.
“It’s two o’clock,” he said. “Technically, it’s Christmas.”
Wendel leapt to the ground with surprising grace, Ardis thought, considering how his muscles had to be just as stiff as her own.
“Technically, it’s my first Christmas as a free man,” Wendel said.
Konstantin looked sideways at him. “How sad.”
Wendel hated pity in all its varieties, but this time he faked a flattering smile.
“Can you make it all better, archmage?” he said. “Can you give me the Christmas gift I have been dreaming of?”
Konstantin blushed to the roots of his hair. “And what would that be?”
“Don’t take t
he bait, Konstantin,” Ardis said.
Wendel grinned. “Too late.”
Konstantin shook his head and started walking, but Wendel followed at his heels.
“I want asylum,” Wendel said.
“Asylum?”
“I’m tired of everyone trying to kill me.”
“You belong in an asylum,” Konstantin muttered.
Wendel laughed, then frowned as if he hadn’t meant to humor the archmage.
“Is that a no?” Wendel said.
“Talk to me after you fix my automatons.”
“You drive a hard bargain, archmage.”
Konstantin snorted. “Yes, because not killing you is a bargain.”
“As if you would.”
“God,” Ardis sighed. “I’m so tired of you two bickering.”
Shivering, she plodded through Phillipopolis.
In a frosty field near the center of the city, a sleek zeppelin with a sky blue gondola hovered at a mooring mast. Ardis recognized the golden flower on the zeppelin’s fins as an edelweiss, the symbol of the archmages.
“We’re traveling by airship?” Wendel said.
“Obviously.” Konstantin broke into a boyish smile. “I love zeppelins. I can’t be bothered with those buzzing little airplanes.”
Wendel’s shoulders stiffened. He slowed and craned his neck to inspect the zeppelin. Ardis wondered if he didn’t like flying. But she had seen him on an airship twice before, and he hadn’t been this suspicious.
“Excuse me,” Ardis said. “Konstantin, where are we flying?”
The archmage’s smile faltered. “My apologies. You fell asleep before I could explain things a bit more clearly to you.”
“Our destination?”
“Prussia.”
“Prussia?”
Ardis glanced at Wendel, but he had the face of a statue. He tilted his head as he gazed along the zeppelin. She had no way of knowing how he felt about returning home. If he even thought of Prussia as his home anymore.
“Why?” Ardis said.
Konstantin touched his knuckles to his mouth. He sucked in a breath, then sighed.
“We are at war,” he said.
Ardis stared at him for a minute. Dumbfounded. Even though she had known there would be a war. They all had.
“With who?” she said.
“Blame Russia,” Konstantin said. “They declared war on us.”
“On Austria-Hungary?”
“And Germany. By necessity.”
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia may have been cousins, but that didn’t mean they had aced diplomacy. A tangle of alliances meant yet more countries would be dragged into the fight—starting with Germany and Austria-Hungary on one side, Russia and Serbia on the other.
“Did Russia say why?” Ardis said.
“To retaliate against Project Lazarus.” Konstantin met her gaze. “They won’t tolerate an army of automatons. When the Order replied to my telegram, they accused Wendel of selling our military secrets to the Russians.”
Zlatkov’s words echoed in her ears.
She whored herself out again to the Russians when they paid more money than the archmages. Because she was a greedy little bitch.
Ardis felt her heartbeat in her throat. She met Konstantin’s eyes.
“You can’t think it was us,” she said, “or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”
“Wendel said it was Thorsten Magnusson,” Konstantin said.
“Thorsten betrayed the archmages. He told the Russians about Project Lazarus.”
Konstantin shook his head. “Ardis, I—”
“We tried to stop him. Thorsten didn’t care what the consequences would be. He even said that war was good for business.”
“Ardis.” He met her gaze. “I believe you.”
Her breath escaped in a sigh. “I should have done more.”
“The archmages tried to stop this war. But the Hex wasn’t enough.”
Konstantin touched her back and nudged her toward the zeppelin. When she looked into his eyes, she saw understanding there.
“The Russians are invading East Prussia,” he said. “It’s not too late to stop them.”
Ardis glanced at Wendel. “Is that how you convinced him?”
Konstantin’s smile looked distant. “It seems he still has some loyalty to his family, as much as he would like to deny it.”
Certainty settled over Ardis with the weight and comfort of armor.
This would be her future.
She strode to Wendel and waited by his side. When he looked at her, she recognized the tension of worry in his face.
“Wendel,” she said. “Are you ready?”
Wendel sighed but said nothing.
They walked beneath the zeppelin’s underbelly. Stairs corkscrewed inside the tower of the mooring mast. Konstantin bounded upstairs, his boots clanging on steel, and Ardis followed at his heels. The railing felt slick with ice under her hand. She reached the nose of the zeppelin, where a swaying gangway led inside.
A man in a smart blue uniform saluted her. “Welcome to the Wanderfalke.”
Peregrine falcon. Ardis hoped this airship was as fast as its namesake.
“Thank you,” she said.
Konstantin waved at her. “Captain Himmel, meet Ardis. She’s one of our mercenaries.”
Himmel glanced at Ardis with honey-colored eyes. A smile curved under his waxed mustache. She arched her eyebrows, and he broke into a grin. If Himmel was flirting, Ardis doubted Wendel would appreciate that.
Shockingly, she didn’t hear a single sarcastic comment.
Ardis frowned and glanced back over the gangway. Empty. She squeezed past Konstantin and ran back to the mooring mast.
Wind whistled in her ears and tugged her toward the edge. She leaned over and saw Wendel halfway up the mooring mast. He stood with his head down, his hair in his eyes, and clutched the railings on either side.
“Wendel!” she said.
He lifted his head. “Yes?” he said, managing to sound irritated.
“What are you doing?”
Something strange crossed his face. “Catching my breath.”
Ardis narrowed her eyes. She didn’t believe Wendel for half a second. But she knew he wouldn’t tell her the truth with Konstantin and the airship captain watching from the nose of the zeppelin. She waved him onward.
“We don’t have time for this,” she said.
Even from here, she could see Wendel clench his jaw. His grip on the railings tightened, and he yanked himself up a flight of stairs. He ran the rest of the way and stopped where she blocked him on the gangway.
Panting, Wendel stared at Ardis. “Excuse me.”
She lowered her voice. “What’s wrong?”
Wendel shook his head, still breathing too hard.
“Tell me later,” Ardis said.
She stepped aside to let him pass, and watched how he crossed the gangway with his head high and his shoulders rigid.
At last, they all boarded the Wanderfalke.
Konstantin thinned his lips. “Wendel, how good of you to join us.”
Wendel didn’t even retort, though he eyed Himmel.
“Captain Himmel,” Konstantin said, “this is Prince Wendel of Prussia.” He coughed. “Formerly, anyway.”
“There’s no need for obsolete titles,” Wendel muttered.
“Sir.” Himmel stood at attention. “This is the necromancer?”
Konstantin gave him a meaningful glance. “I’ll take them from here. Prepare to cast off, and plot the fastest course to Prussia.”
“Yes, sir.”
Himmel saluted the archmage again and stepped aside to let them pass.
Konstantin led them down a gangway that ran deeper into the zeppelin. The gangway had no walls, like it might on a passenger airship, and Ardis could see the duralumin skeleton of the zeppelin in the dim light. The gangway leveled out as they reached the lower deck. Konstantin held the door and waved them throu
gh into a corridor. They passed doors marked as the kitchen and the wireless telegraphy room.
“Your cabins are on the upper deck,” Konstantin said.
Ardis raised her eyebrows. This must be a flagship zeppelin.
They followed Konstantin upstairs to a deserted lounge and dining room. On both the port and starboard sides, promenade decks slanted to overlook the ground. Ardis wandered to the windows and stared at the snowy roofs of Phillipopolis. With a jolt, the zeppelin cast away from the mooring mast and floated into the sky.
“How long is the trip to Prussia?” Ardis said.
Konstantin joined her on the promenade and stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He frowned, his face thoughtful.
“Fifteen hours in good weather,” Konstantin said, “though airship travel has been restricted ever since the declaration of war.”
“Are there enemy airships?” Ardis said. “I didn’t think Russia had any.”
“They don’t.” Konstantin smiled grimly. “But Britain does, and there’s talk of them allying with Russia against us.”
“Wonderful,” Wendel said.
Ardis glanced over her shoulder. Wendel lingered in the shadows, not looking at the windows, his arms crossed. Her chest tightened as she realized why he had been acting so wary. He was afraid of heights.
Or perhaps Wendel was afraid of falling.
Ardis would never forget the look on Wendel’s face as he plummeted to his death. But she had assumed he had forgotten it all. Did he remember her standing on the Serpent’s Tower as he dropped through the darkness?
Did he remember dying?
Ardis shivered and hugged herself. Konstantin was staring at her now.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s a little cold.”
Konstantin dipped his head. “The Wanderfalke is outfitted with shielding technomancy, though temperature regulation isn’t a primary concern. We care more about hydrogen containment.” He cleared his throat as if realizing he had gone off on a tangent. “May I suggest your cabins? They tend to be warmer.”
Wendel waved at nothing in particular. “Lead the way.”
They left the dining room and walked down a corridor lined with doors.