Applause filled the air. Jinian stood with an abashed smile, shaking her sword loose from the gun and wiping her face with her forearm. She was immediately swamped by lictors who passed the flexible sword from hand to hand, peppering her with questions. Taya grinned as her husband pressed forward, holding the weapon close to his spectacles as he flexed it back and forth.
“Interesting. I don’t suppose you know how it’s made?” he asked Jinian.
“I am sorry, Ambassador. I do not.”
“You might be able to make one out of ondium,” Taya suggested. “The primary feathers on my wings are almost that flexible.”
“True, but it would be prohibitively expensive. I’d rather figure out how Cabiel manufactured a strip of metal that flexible out of steel….”
“Gearhead.”
“Well, I’ll need something to do after the Council fires me. I’ve been thinking about that Dancer statue, too. I could build programmed automata like that. Smaller, of course. And more practical. What do you think?”
“I think it’s too early to worry about a career change,” Taya said, twining her fingers through his. She didn’t add the rest of her thought: We have too many other things to worry about, first.
* * *
Lieutenant Imbrex developed a new set of frown lines as she checked and rechecked the Firebrand’s fuel consumption and tried to convince the captain to jettison the ship’s cannon and ammunition, an option he refused to entertain. He did, however, abandon their Alzanan captives in the middle of a rolling vineyard, agreeing that they were an unnecessary tax on the ship’s resources. Taya thanked him for his mercy, suspecting that if Amcathra had been on his own, he would have simply shot them and thrown them overboard. Cristof helped the chief engineer monitor the ship’s engine and brainstorm ways to eke out a few more miles, from rearranging the ship’s stowage to adjusting the wings’ tilt. Professor Dautry kept a close eye on her maps and the horizon, making sure they didn’t deviate from their carefully plotted route.
Their new course would take them out of Mareaux and over Alzana for two days before they reached Ondinium. Their goal was the Alzana-Ondinium Terminal station. After the initial Alzanan invasion, both nations had closed down their rail lines and evacuated their support personnel and citizens, leaving only two heavily armed military camps to glare at each other over newly constructed barriers. With luck, the Ondinium troops would be able to cover the Firebrand as it swept over the Alzanan encampment. But whether they could reach A-O station would depend on their fuel reserves, the prevailing winds, and the Alzanans’ military preparation.
The crew gathered on the Firebrand’s deck when it finally reached the Mareaux-Alzana border. Even the cook abandoned the mess hall’s observation window to get a 360-degree view up top. The flat, rolling agricultural plains of southern and central Mareaux had gradually turned into higher terrain over the last few days, and as they neared the northern border the hills had grown steeper and more thickly forested, with rising mountain passes visible in the distance.
Signs of a military presence had also increased as they’d neared the border— they’d seen more encampments, more trains carrying covered loads, and more armed patrols. Now the Firebrand sped over the forested land dividing the two countries as a group of red-coated Mareaux soldiers bivouacking around a farmhouse took wild shots at the ship.
“We’re in Alzana now, Captain,” Dautry announced, less than an hour later. She pointed to a winding river that gleamed silver in the early afternoon light. “That’s our landmark.”
“Thank you, Dautry.” Amcathra’s tone was dry, perhaps because of the telltale group of blue-coated Alzanan soldiers camped on the border beside the river. The Firebrand swept over them as they scrambled for their weapons. He looked around at the lictors leaning over the rails. “Does nobody here have any work to do?”
The lictors hurried back to their stations.
That evening, as they drew closer to the mountains, Lieutenant Imbrex reported that their fuel situation was grave. The winds over the last three days hadn’t been as steady and strong as she’d hoped.
“We’re going to end up stalled on the wrong side of the border,” she warned, as if she hadn’t been fretting about the same thing since they’d fought the Resolute. “Unless the wind suddenly picks up, we’ll soon be dead in the air.”
“Strip the ship of as much excess as you can,” Amcathra ordered. “Burn anything that can be used as fuel.”
“That won’t buy us more than a few hours.”
“Hours are miles, Lieutenant.”
“Can we sail on wind alone?” Cristof asked.
“A few imperial captains were said to have rigged their vessels for emergency sail,” Amcathra said, “but we have no masts or sails in the hold, and neither I nor my crew know how to rig a ship.”
“What if you just raised the wings like sails?” Taya inquired.
“We would have extremely limited maneuverability.”
“So what do we do if we stall?”
“We evacuate, destroy the ship, and proceed on foot.”
Taya opened her mouth to object, then closed it again. Of course the Council had ordered Amcathra to destroy this beautiful, remarkable ancient artifact instead of letting it fall into Alzanan hands.
“How many ornithopters do we have?” Cristof asked.
“I do not know.” Amcathra hesitated. “Perhaps many. The access tunnels beneath Ondinium are extensive, and I believe a great deal of imperial technology was hidden within them during the Reclamation. However, the more relevant question is how many lictors have been trained to fly an ornithopter. I believe there are only thirty or forty of us, and at least half of that number were assigned to this ship.”
“While the Alzanans have at least twelve dirigibles.”
“Of which at least five have been destroyed and one captured.”
“We only destroyed three in the invasion,” Taya objected. “And the Resolute. That’s four.”
“One of the invading dirigibles was forced to descend. It was too damaged to repair, so the crew burned it.”
“Either way,” Cristof said, “we can’t spare the Firebrand.”
“I have no choice, Exalted. We must destroy the ship if it runs out of fuel. Lieutenant, would you please attend to making that occurrence as unlikely as possible?”
“Yes, Captain.” Imbrex looked unhappy as she left.
Cristof waited until they were alone in the mess hall before sighing and pulling off his glasses.
“What is it?” Taya asked, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Are you worried about losing the ship?”
“I’d hate to see such a magnificent machine destroyed,” he said, studying his lenses with a frown, “but I’m more worried about how the loss will affect Janos’s career. What a slagging disaster all of this has been!”
“The Council can’t be too hard on him— he’s done everything he can to get us back to Ondinium.”
“I know. Taya, would you hate me if I retired?”
“Retired… as ambassador?”
“Yes.” He looked up, sliding his glasses back on. “If the Council doesn’t fire me, first.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, wearily. “I can barely sleep at night anymore, wondering what I should have done differently.”
Taya brushed his long hair back over his shoulder. Not for the first time, she noticed the new worry lines and scars that creased his sharp-featured face.
“I feel like I haven’t done a thing to help Ondinium since I left my old shop,” he continued. “I was more useful as a clockwright than I am as an exalted.”
“You’re a very good clockwright,” she murmured, her heart aching for him. “But you’re an excellent exalted, too. And you did help Ondinium— you tracked those illegal shipments
to Demicus and helped stop the invasion.”
“You were more instrumental in all that than I was.”
She shook her head.
“You’re the one who made the plans, who convinced me to stick with the investigation to the end, who identified the steam cannon parts, and who told me everything about the ships that I reported back to Ondinium. And you let yourself get captured so I could escape. We’re a team, Cris. You’re the one who thinks things through and figures out what’s going on— I’m the one who runs the messages back and forth.”
“You do a lot more than that.” But his lips quirked up, just a bit. “Do you still want to be a diplomatic envoy after all of this?”
“I think I’ll have to be, after all this,” she said, seriously. “You’re right. This is a disaster. It’s not our disaster, but we got caught up in it, and we’ll have to deal with the aftermath. Just because the decaturs are a bunch of bastards doesn’t mean we don’t have a responsibility to Ondinium.”
The quirk became a crooked smile.
“Does that mean you aren’t going to let me quit?”
She studied his face, trying to decide if his self-mocking tone indicated bitterness or amusement.
“I’ll support you either way,” she said at last. “But will you wait until we’re back in Ondinium to decide?”
He sighed and pressed her hand against his scarred cheek a moment.
“Of course,” he agreed. “We’ll talk about it again when we get home.”
The rest of his sentence — if we get home — hung unspoken between them.
Chapter Thirteen
The first explosion hit the Firebrand directly under its starboard wing, sending the entire ship spinning wildly. Its juddering roll knocked everyone off their feet and sent one screaming crew member overboard.
Taya, who was below dismantling the ship’s interior for firewood, was thrown against the hull and sent sprawling; the hatchet flew from her hand. Broken furniture and splintered planks pelted her as she curled into a ball, protecting her head. Flashbacks from the train crash made her heart hammer with fear.
“Cris!” Her panicked shout was lost in the shrieking of strained mechanisms, the thumping of the steam engine, and the alarmed voices of the crew. “Cris, where are you?”
She uncurled and staggered to her feet. A second mortar hit the ship with a cacophony of bending metal and splintering wood. The ship shuddered again. A thundering rumble shook the floor as the Firebrand’s gunnery deck opened.
“Taya!” Cristof appeared in the doorway. She pulled herself up and they met in the center of the tiny cabin, clutching each other as much for balance as relief. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, unconcerned about her bruises and sore wrist. “You?”
“I think—”
Staccato gunfire cut him off— the Firebrand was returning fire. They plunged out the door, pressing close to the half-demolished wall as lictors ran to their stations.
“Where’s the ship?” Taya shouted, raising her voice over the clamor.
“Don’t know,” one of the lictors shouted back as he scrambled up a ladder.
The Firebrand’s steam cannon boomed and the mountainsides and valley below tilted as the ornithopter struggled to maintain its equilibrium.
“I’m going up to go help the engineers,” Cristof said, visibly bracing himself. Taya nodded, following him.
The top deck was chaos as the primary and secondary helms fought to steady the ship and repair teams swarmed over the starboard wing mount. Captain Amcathra and Lieutenant Imbrex were shouting orders and lictors manned the volley guns, firing them downward at a steep angle. Jinian and Liliana were on one, too, the kattaka firing and the principessa struggling to reload the extra breech block. Taya searched the skies but didn’t see any sign of a dirigible. A moment later she realized why the guns were pointed down— their attackers were Alzanan infantry bivouacked in the mountain pass. Once she knew where to look, she saw soldiers moving on the mountainside and puffs of smoke rising as their cannon and mortars fired.
Cristof joined the wing mount crew, nearly falling as the ship was jolted upward by another blast. Taya threw open the nearest rescue harness chest and yanked one of the harnesses off its restraining cable. She grabbed a lead-filled weight belt and slammed the chest shut.
“Cris!” He was unscrewing the protective metal skin over the wing servomechanism. She dropped to her knees next to him. “Put this on.”
“What?” He gave her a distracted look, then blinked as she thrust the harness at him. “I don’t—”
“Yes, you do,” she said firmly. “When you’re on deck during a firefight, you do. You’re an exalted.”
“Then you should wear your wings,” he complained, sliding his arms through the harness and then leaning over to work again. Exasperated, Taya reached around him to snap the chest straps closed, then wrapped the lead belt around his waist and buckled it. “Taya, would you please—”
A second mortar hit the stern. Metal shrieked and crumpled, the ornithopter pitching sharply forward. Cristof grabbed Taya as she tumbled backward and they both clutched the wing mount. Screams filled the air and gears gave off horrible metallic grating sounds, stripping their metal teeth before freezing. The ship’s engineer swore as he tried to cling to the wing-mount with one hand. At last he dropped his wrench. It clattered away from him as he used both hands to grip the mechanism.
Another mortar slammed into the ship, shaking it.
Holding on tightly to avoid sliding down the steeply tilted deck like the engineer’s wrench, Taya looked up. The ornithopter’s broken tailrudder floated vertically over the ship, still attached by a few strained wooden struts. Captain Amcathra bellowed orders and shouts answered from the primary and secondary helms, but the Firebrand’s port wing kept moving, pulling the ship down toward the ground.
The steam cannon gave another roar, jolting the ship. At least one lictor intended to fight until the end.
“Taya…” Cristof was breathing hard, his eyes wide as he looked down the length of the deck to the ground far below.
“You’ll be all right,” she reminded him. “You’re counterweighted. If you fall overboard, you’ll float to the ground. If you think you’re descending too fast, just drop a lead weight out of your belt.”
He swallowed.
“I think,” he said, shakily, “that this would be a good time for me to apologize for objecting to a rescue harness.”
“Apology accepted.”
The wings and demiwings stopped moving as the helms resumed control. The Firebrand rocked back a little from its previous sharp pitch, but not enough for Taya to want to try standing. Someone shouted the captain’s name. Both she and Cris looked up to see Captain Amcathra pulling himself hand-over-hand up the rail toward the floating rudder.
Cristof swore under his breath. “I should go help him.”
“No!” The thought of her awkward husband trying to follow Amcathra’s lead made Taya’s heart rise in her throat. “He’ll be fine.”
“He’s not wearing a harness.”
“He knows what he’s doing.” And he won’t seize with panic if he looks over the edge.
Around them, lictors were struggling to get back to their stations, but few were in any position to succeed. Taya heard distant gunfire— the Alzanans were shooting at them, but nobody on board could shoot back except the lictor manning the steam cannon. Taya could only imagine that the cannon had a perfect shot toward the ground now.
Amcathra reached the empennage and straddled what little of the tail assembly remained intact. Moving carefully, he grabbed the twisted wooden strut that still held the floating rudder in place. Holding it with one hand, he pulled out his boot dagger with the other and began hacking at the splintering wood.
Another shot hit the Firebrand. A lictor scre
amed and Taya jerked her head around, but the receding sound of his horrified wail told her what had happened. Her fingers tightened on the wing mount as she prayed for him.
Amcathra gouged and chopped at the wood until, with an aching creak, it gave way. The broken rudder snapped up into the sky and the Firebrand’s deck dropped, roughly level again.
Everybody scrambled to their feet. The helms shouted to each other, but only the port wing began moving. Cristof spun and began working on the starboard wing with the chief engineer. Lieutenant Imbrex ran to the hatch, ordering the crew to cast off all excess weight. Professor Dautry secured her navigational instruments and followed the lieutenant below. Captain Amcathra was climbing back on deck and a very pale Liliana was dashing tears from her eyes as she leaned against the volley gun she’d been clutching. Jinian began checking the wounded.
Guns fired, and the steam cannon went off once more, even though it must have lost its ground target when the ornithopter had stabilized.
“Are you all right?” Taya asked, hurrying to Liliana’s side. The principessa nodded, looking sick and shaken. Several feet away, the deck had been torn apart by the attack, its broken railing dangling from a few ondium plates that hadn’t wrenched loose yet.
“I just— we were hit, and Cadet Fidenus was thrown off the side,” she said, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “And Mister Pitio was shot— I think he’s dead!”
Taya crouched and put an arm around her, heartbroken as she saw Amcathra straighten up over the signaler’s body and shake his head.
“I’m sorry,” she said, uselessly. “I’m sorry.”
Both wings started moving again. The Firebrand flew unsteadily away from the battle, its course angling badly to starboard as that wing periodically stuttered and seized.
Clockwork Secrets Page 21