TWENTY FOUR
Amazing Grace
Spyder awoke sometime around dawn. Lulu was curled up next to him under a blanket on a big love seat. Spyder looked around for Shrike, but she wasn’t anywhere in sight. Water was boiling on the little stove.
He got up carefully, trying not to wake Lulu, and went outside. The steady wind was wet and frigid. Spyder wrapped his arms around himself and went to the bow where Primo and Shrike, in her heavy coat, were talking. As he rounded the corner of the cabin, Spyder saw what the two were talking about. Another airship was hanging twenty or so yards off the port bow. It was shaped like an immense black scorpion. A metal cable was slowly extending from the scorpion ship’s gondola, which hung from the end of the stinger.
“What’s going on?” asked Spyder.
“According to Primo, they’ve been shadowing us all morning,” said Shrike.
“What’s that line they’re sending over here?”
“A communication device,” said Primo. “I believe.”
“You don’t know?”
“It’s similar to devices I’ve seen, but I can’t be sure.”
“In any case, they’ll be tethered to us. I don’t like that,” said Shrike.
“What’s up, Spyder?” came a voice. He turned to see Lulu coming from the cabin.
“The neighbors want to borrow a cup of sugar.”
“Holy shit,” Lulu said, coming up behind him. “Are we happy about this?”
“I don’t think we have any choice,” said Shrike. “Spyder, not that I want you doing anything crazy, but would you go into the cabin and get that demon blade that Madame Cinders gave us?”
“Apollyon’s knife?”
Shrike nodded. “It’s wrapped in a silk scarf. If anything comes off that ship, I want to know we can kill it.”
“We going Texas Chainsaw on the other blimp, too?” asked Lulu. She pointed off to starboard.
“Spyder…?” said Shrike.
“Another ship’s coming out of the clouds,” he said. “A burning heart wrapped in thorns. It looks like a Christian sacred heart.”
“It’s the Seraphic Brotherhood,” said Primo, “pledged to the archangel Michael. They’re warrior priests.”
“Are they approaching us?” asked Shrike.
“No,” said Spyder. “They’re just hanging parallel a mile or two away.”
“There’s others out there, too,” said Lulu.
“She’s right. I can see a half dozen other ships, but they’re mostly just dots.”
“Get the blade, Spyder,” Shrike said.
He ducked back below deck and Lulu followed him.
“Lulu, I want you to stay in here,” said Spyder. He stalked around the cabin looking for the silken bundle.
“I’m no cotillion queen, Spyder. I can take care of myself.”
“Not when you’re coming off junk.”
“I wasn’t that deep in this time.”
On the kitchen counter, he spotted the bundle. “In any case, I’ll feel better knowing you’re safe.” Spyder found a butcher knife on the stove and tossed it to her. “But if anything with more than one head comes through the door, feel free to stick it.”
“That’s pretty much always my policy.”
“That’s my girl.” Spyder grabbed his leather jacket and headed back onto the deck.
“Hey, Spyder!”
“Yeah, Lulu?”
“Your kamikaze girl outside? She’s a sweet slice of honeydew.”
“That she is.”
When Spyder got back to the bow of the ship, the cable that had been spooling from the scorpion had settled onto the port railing, clamping itself in place with a single golden claw. A rotating disc had flipped open at the top of the claw and there was a grainy image of a young man flickering on a small screen before the wheel. The young man’s face was cut through with snowy scan lines. He wore a dark uniform of a severe cut (and marked with numerous medals and campaign ribbons) and a kind of silver ring around his head. To Spyder’s relief, he was clearly human. The young man and Primo were speaking rapidly in a language Spyder didn’t understand.
“Did I miss anything good?” Spyder asked Shrike.
“We’re being offered a bribe,” Shrike whispered. “The young pup doing all the talking is Bel, the crown prince of the Erragal clan. One of the powerful houses of the Third Sphere.”
“What exactly are we being bribed for?”
“They know where we’re going and what we’re bringing back. They want the book.”
“I’m guessing these aren’t the kind of people Madame Cinders would have over to tell her troubles to.”
“It’s unlikely,” said Shrike. “Did you bring the knife?”
“I’ve got it under my coat.”
“Don’t do anything until I tell you. For now, we’re just playing a diplomacy game. Primo is politely telling the prince thanks, but no thanks.”
“What if he gets mad? Last time I looked there was fuck-all but water under us.”
“Those other airships should keep him in line. The Erragals are powerful, but they wouldn’t want to be seen shooting an unarmed ship from the sky.”
“Pardon me,” said Primo, “but the young prince is becoming very agitated. I don’t think that anyone has every refused an Erragal royal bribe before.”
“Tell him we’re on Hajj. Religious pilgrims can’t accept bribes.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Off to the starboard side of the ship, the sky opened like a sunbeam slicing through a cloudbank. A pale, sexless, beatific face appeared between the ship and the Seraphic Brotherhood’s floating heart. The face was glowing, like a child’s dream of angels, and when it spoke, its voice was like thunder.
“Fuck me,” whispered Spyder.
“I know that sound,” said Shrike. “God’s Army to the rescue.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Listen.”
All Spyder could hear was the echo and rumble of the transparent head hanging in the cold ocean air. The voice and the size of the thing weren’t what was most awful about it; it was the utter blissfulness of its expression. Spyder had seen faces like that before—especially the eyes—when being analyzed by court-appointed psychiatrists and being sentenced by compassionate judges who sent him off to juvenile work camps for his own good. They were the understanding eyes of kindly folk who burned witches alive to save their souls. But when Spyder glanced back to the prince, he saw that Primo had dropped out of the conversation completely.
Lulu emerged from the cabin, clutching the butcher knife to her chest. “Are we dead yet?” she asked.
“Not so’s you’d notice,” said Spyder. He nodded toward Bel’s image. The young prince’s flickering face was creased with anger. He was clearly no longer addressing Primo, but the Seraphic Brotherhood’s ghost representative. The ghostly head nodded and calmly answered the young prince’s furious chatter. “The bribers are bitch slapping each other,” Spyder said.
“That or arguing over who gets to suck our bones,” said Lulu.
“We’ll know soon,” said Shrike.
“Hey, Spyder?”
“What, Lulu?”
“When you were sixteen, how many times did you picture yourself freezing to death while god and a big scorpion tried to decide who was going to eat you?”
“It’s not god, Lulu. It’s just some magic trick,” said Spyder. “And the answer is once every acid trip.”
Lulu hunched her shoulder and went over to lead sit on a bail of rope. She softly began to sing: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus going on before…” Spyder laughed at her.
“Quiet!” Shrike yelled. “Primo, before I push these fools overboard, what’s happening?”
“I believe, it’s over, ma’am.”
Spyder looked toward the beatific ghost head. It was fading from the sky. On the bow railing, the prince’s spinning disc was folding itself up and retracting into the cable still hoo
ked to the port railing.
“He’s right,” said Spyder. “Everyone’s packing up and backing off.”
“We got lucky,” said Shrike. “Primo, set the course and come into the cabin with the rest of us.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come on, Lulu,” said Spyder.
“I don’t think I like that Christian soldiers song anymore,” Lulu said. “I loved it when I was little, but I never thought about the words till now. Doesn’t seem very Christian singing about how fun war is.”
“It’s someone’s idea of Christian.”
“Not mine,” said Lulu. “Don’t let them play it at my funeral, okay? I want Amazing Grace.”
“I don’t know that they’re going to have Amazing Grace on the jukebox at the strip club.”
“What strip club?”
“The one we’re going to have your funeral at.”
“Cool. Can I come?”
TWENTY FIVE
Angel Fire
It was warm below decks, but Spyder shivered. He tucked Apollyon’s knife into his belt and pulled his jacket around himself.
Primo was pouring whiskey for everyone from a crystal decanter that looked like it was worth more than everything Spyder had ever owned put together.
“I thought we were on some kind of secret mission,” said Lulu. “Not much of a secret if every balloon jockey in NeverNever Land shows up for the run.”
“Someone’s been ratting us out since day one. We got ambushed on the way to set up this job,” Spyder said, downing his whiskey in a gulp.
“Thanks for inviting me along, bro.” Lulu, too, swallowed her whiskey and gave an exaggerated shake of her shoulders.
“Primo, did Madame Cinders tell anyone about trying to retrieve her book?” asked Shrike.
“Not that I know of.”
“How many people knew she had the book in the first place?”
“A great many. Every truly powerful practitioner of magic in all the Spheres knows about the book of true names.”
“Did Bel say why he wanted the book?”
“No, ma’am. In fact, I don’t think he knows what it was. He just kept offering more and more gold. I got the distinct impression that he was acting on behalf of someone else. Perhaps behind his family’s back.”
“Did he say that?” asked Spyder, pouring himself and Lulu more whiskey. Shrike and Primo weren’t drinking theirs, but, Spyder noted, seemed to take some comfort in simply holding the glasses.
“No. He was very evasive.”
“So, you’re just guessing.”
“I’m observing. I’m a traveler. We learn to read people or we don’t survive.”
“No offense, man,” said Spyder.
“None taken, sir.”
“What do we do now?” Spyder asked Shrike.
She finally drank her whiskey, in two long gulps. “Sail on,” she said. “Quickly. The sooner we reach the Kasla Mountains, the better.”
“The young prince is still attached to the bow,” said Primo.
“Get him off and get us out of here,” Shrike said.
“Right away.”
“So, the plan is we run real fast and hope they don’t pounce on us like a cat on a baby chick?” asked Lulu.
“There’s not much else we can do, bobbing along like a damned cork.”
“This balloon idea was bullshit.”
“A ship, a caravan or a magic pumpkin pulled by mice. It doesn’t matter. Someone was going try and stop us from getting to the gates of Hell. I was just hoping we’d get more of a head start.”
Spyder was no longer gulping the whiskey, but sipping it. Still, its warmth wasn’t particularly comforting. Just when he felt like he was getting used to the high weirdness that had swallowed his life, that lost-at-sea feeling was coming on him again.
When Jenny was packing to leave and the warehouse had iced over into glacial silence, Spyder had re-watched what he considered the most peculiar Orson Welles movie, Mr. Arkadin. The flick was a puzzling mish-mash of Citizen Kane crossed with a baroque post-war crime melodrama sort of spot-welded onto the side. Mr. Arkadin was about an ambitious young smuggler who’s researching how the mysterious financier, Gregory Arkadin, made his first fortune. Arkadin himself ends up hiring the smuggler to finish the project. Apparently, he had amnesia and didn’t know his own early history. The story dragged the young ne’er-do-well through the junk and small-time gangster debris of post-war Europe, taking him from a flea circus to flea bag motels to mansions where drunks hinted at escapades in white slavery. As the bad guys who were murdering the people the ne’er-do-well had interviewed got closer and closer to him, Spyder didn’t understand why the guy didn’t just take his pocket full of expenses money, hop a train and head for the hills.
One thing about the movie had always stuck with Spyder, however: Arkadin’s amnesia story. Spyder wondered what that was like, waking up in some stranger’s clothes, afraid to touch anything because it might be a mirage, or a papier mâché prop on a movie set or a museum artifact wired to an alarm. The cops would come running in and beat you, maybe kill you, before ever you had the chance to explain that you were simply lost. Drinking his whiskey, Spyder felt definitely lost, trapped in someone else’s life, imprisoned in some other loser’s skin.
The airship shook. Then shook again, knocking the whiskey decanter and tea kettle onto the floor. Outside, the booming voice of the Christians’ talking head was back.
Spyder ran out onto the deck, followed by the others. The sacred heart airship had come much closer. At this distance, its size was shocking. The other ships, which had been keeping a discreet distance, were also closing in. When Spyder described the scene to Shrike, she yelled, “Primo, get us moving!”
“I can’t! The prince’s ship is still attached,” Primo yelled, struggling with the claw that still gripped the railing.
“Get that thing off us,” Shrike told Spyder. “Primo, get back to the navigation. When Spyder shakes us loose, take us low and away from here.”
Spyder kicked at the golden claw and managed to put a few cracks in the surface of the rail, but whatever the rail and line were made of, they were very tough. Lulu ran over and kicked along with Spyder, but both the claw and railing remained where they were. Then Lulu stopped what she was doing.
“Shrike, get away from the railing,” Lulu said.
Spyder turned to see what had caught Lulu’s attention. The Seraphic Brotherhood’s great burning heart was slowly opening, like the doors of a hangar. There was a burst of light and angels (or angel-shaped things) poured from the opening, flaming swords out before them. They scattered across the sky, some coming toward their ship, some toward the scorpion, while others headed for the more distant ships. The sound of cannon fire erupted across the sky as several of the more distant airships began to shoot at the angels and the Brotherhood’s heart.
Something scraped against Spyder’s side, and he remembered Apollyon’s knife. Pulling it from its scabbard, Spyder swung it down. The blade split the claw and sliced through the railing so easily that, at first, Spyder thought he’d missed. A thick black fluid pumped from the claw’s wrist as it and its tether fell away. The scorpion ship shuddered, perhaps in pain or perhaps in response to the angels slashing it with their burning blades.
Lulu was crouched with her back to the wall of the cabin, yelling “Shit, shit, shit…,” over and over. Shrike was at the far railing, slashing any angel that dared fly too low. Finally free of the claw, Primo had more control of the ship, but the angels overhead slashed at the steering lines. The deck swayed as the little man had less and less influence over the vessel. Spyder held onto the railing to keep from being thrown overboard. In the distance, a crystal skull was burning and a jeweled Garuda was sliced nearly in half before exploding.
The prince’s scorpion ship wasn’t faring much better. One of its enormous claws was falling away, on fire. At least they’re shooting back, Spyder thought, as something streaked across the sky be
tween the ship and the scorpion. Angels fled from the flying thing. The ones that didn’t see it coming were sliced to pieces in its wake. Then the thing dived and was gone, only to emerge from under the far side of the deck, near Shrike. It flew right at and through the sacred heart, before circling back through the angel swarms, killing and maiming dozens as it swung back toward their ship.
Their seahorse was losing altitude fast. Spyder went forward to where Primo was struggling with the ship. Control lines and splintered sections of rigging lay at the little man’s feet. As Spyder reached him, he was wrestling with the few lines that still worked.
“Please take this,” Primo said. Spyder grabbed the line and was almost lifted off his feet by the weight. Primo had been holding it with one arm.
“Can you get us out of here?” Spyder asked.
“It’s doubtful. I’m just trying to make our crash as easy as possible.”
“What can I do?”
“Don’t let go of that line.” But it went slack in Spyder’s hand as more angels swooped down and slashed at the ropes. Shrike jumped to the base of the rigging and slashed the heads from two angels. Too late. The deck trembled and the whole vessel dropped thirty feet in a second, then seemed to catch itself. Primo strained against the remaining lines.
“It’s dead! Leave it,” someone shouted.
Hovering off the starboard bow was a small, flat black flier. Its tapered body was curved like a wasp’s, and its veined quadruple wings were streaked with angel blood. The pilot had pushed back the canopy and was gesturing to them. “Get on board! You can’t stay aloft much longer!”
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” said Spyder.
“I’ll keep us steady and join you in a moment,” Primo said.
Angels, debris and flames were thick overhead. Spyder kept his head down as he ran. He grabbed Lulu by the arm and yelled, “Shrike, we’re leaving,” then pulled her to the flier at the bow of the ship. The tall pilot leaned from the cabin as Spyder helped Shrike over the rail. Taking her hand, the pilot pulled her inside. Lulu followed.
“Primo!” Spyder yelled. “Come on!” An angelic sword slashed at Spyder. He fell back, his arm scorched, his vision blurred by the flaming sword. When he could see straight again, Spyder saw Primo, swollen to his fighting size, spikes slick with blood. He was burned and bleeding; dead angels lay all around him. An angel in Primo’s grip fought weakly as he strangled it. Another angel dropped down from the overhead lines, slicing off Primo’s right arm. The little man screamed. Spyder, Apollyon’s knife out, felt the blade nick a rib as he buried it in the chest of the angel who’d cut Primo. The little man picked up his severed arm, then with Spyder’s help, they stumbled to the black flier, grabbing on as the seahorse groaned and slid toward the ocean in flames.
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