The Guns Above

by Robyn Bennis

  It took Bernat a moment to get into the cumbersome little chair. The captain leaned over and opened a stern port, helping to clear the smell of shit from the aftmost frames and revealing the thick woods passing below them.

  “I wonder why the king doesn’t harvest these woods,” Bernat said, not because he cared about the subject, but because he felt obligated to say something.

  The captain finally pulled the musket ball out and idly examined it. “Your idea has merit,” she said, “but I’m afraid it would make Durum good for something, and we can’t have that.” She turned the ball over and over, until Bernat got the distinct impression that, despite where her eyes were pointed, she wasn’t looking at it at all. “Durum hasn’t exported anything in over a century. The people can barely even feed themselves. It’s a convenient place for a signal base, being so close to the border, but if not for that, you could wipe this place off the map and the rest of Garnia would shrug and move on, assuming they even noticed.”

  Bernat smiled. “No love like the love for a hometown.” He desperately wanted a glass of wine, but his wine was in a bag in his berth, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing those bloody stumps again.

  A crewman approached, stepping gingerly. “Mr. Martel sends his compliments, sir, and says we’re on approach to the base.”

  The captain nodded and tossed the musket ball out the open port.

  “Leaving so soon?” Bernat asked, sounding rather more desperate for companionship than he’d intended.

  She stood. “Feel free to use the cabin. Nothing you find in here could make your uncle think any less of me than he already does.”

  “I promise I won’t—”

  “I just said that it doesn’t matter.”

  “Nevertheless,” he said to her back, as she walked away.

  He didn’t think she’d respond, but then she turned and spoke quietly. “Oh, if you are staying in the keel, will you keep an eye on the crew for me? Victory tends to get the blood up. There may be attempts at … mingling.”

  “Mingling?”

  “Mingling.”

  “Ah,” he said, and exhaled. “Mingling. I shall stand ready with a bucket of cold water.”

  * * *

  MARTEL SALUTED HER as she came down the companionway, then stepped away from the captain’s station. “The leaks are under control,” he said, “the rudder cable is spliced, and the girders are sound, sir. The ship’s still very light, which will make the landing tricky.” By which he meant that Mistral was too light to settle gently to the ground, and had to be driven down with the engine. That, or vent luftgas, which everyone knew was a mortal sin. “I’ve brought us into the wind and signaled the base with our status.”

  “Very good,” Josette said. They were coming in toward the setting sun. “Elevators down five degrees, steamjack to full power.” To their right, cheering townsfolk were gathered on Durum’s city walls, waving their handkerchiefs.

  Ahead, on the edge of the airfield, a dozen yardsmen pushed ten times as many part-timers into their places. The part-timers would only be farmhands who’d been conscripted into yard duties for the evening, and hardly skilled enough to grab onto lines when commanded.

  Mistral descended, passing them overhead at no more than a hundred feet. Josette ordered, “Cast lines.” Crewmen in the corners of the hurricane deck and at ports along the keel dropped rope to the men below.

  Lieutenant Martel looked a little nervous. “Have you stood the deck for an evening landing in a light ship before, sir?”

  “Mister Martel, in my previous rank of auxiliary lieutenant, I was absolutely forbidden from performing such a dangerous operation.” She looked straight ahead. “So I’ve only done it seven times.”

  While yardsmen below yelled directions at the rabble of part-timers, Mistral continued to descend toward the base’s single mooring circle. As more men below put their weight on the ropes and held fast, the ship’s buoyancy decreased, and it took less downward elevator to keep her from rising. If the elevatorman misjudged the angle, or failed to correct properly for a gust of wind, he might strike the mooring mast, or even fling the ground crew a hundred feet into the air.

  “Stand by bow lines,” Josette called up the companionway. She heard the monkey rigger run forward above her. “Disengage airscrews and rig for reverse.” The airscrews slowed but the ship continued to glide forward on momentum, bow pointed straight at the mooring mast in the center of the landing circle, where a single brave yardsman waited to receive their line. When they were so close that a collision seemed impossible to avoid, Josette shouted, “Engage airscrews!”

  The airscrews engaged in reverse gear, blasting the hurricane deck with their wash. The ship lurched, slowed, but did not yet halt. It slid on, kissing the mast before it finally began to reverse, playing out a line, which, at the moment of contact, had been passed between mastman and monkey rigger.

  “Disengage airscrews!”

  The airscrews stopped but the steamjack continued to spin, ready to bring the ship back under power at a moment’s notice. The bow line was winched in, drawing the ship to the mast, until a sudden shudder spoke to the nose cap’s connection. The monkey rigger’s report was passed a few seconds later. “Secure to mast, sir.”

  As the sun went down, the yardsmen dragged her—mast, ship, and all—across the yard and into Durum’s shed.

  8

  IT WAS NEARLY dark by the time Josette left the ship. The base commander, a junior lieutenant, was waiting at the foot of the ladder. As she hopped off the last rung, he only stood there, hardly glancing at her.

  When Martel descended, however, he snapped a salute and spoke with bubbly energy. “Congratulations on your victory, sir! Sorry sir, I’ve neglected to introduce myself. Lieutenant Garand, sir. We don’t get to see that kind of action every day, sir, let me tell you, sir! The way you took care of that Dumpling bastard, sir! Amazing! Anything you need from me, sir, you just name it!”

  Lieutenant Martel said nothing. He only cleared his throat, tapped the single wing on his collar badge, and pointed to Josette.

  Garand turned to her as if seeing her for the first time. His eager expression shattered when his eyes found the two wings on her collar badge. “You’re a woman,” he said.

  Josette looked down at herself and saw some meager evidence of the accusation. “It would appear so.” She pulled a folded sheaf of papers out of her jacket and handed them to him. “Here are the repairs and modifications I’ll need.”

  She was not technically entitled to the yard’s assistance in modifying her airship, but she outranked him, she’d just given Durum a show the likes of which it had never seen before, and she had nothing to lose.

  “My carpenter is already familiar with the changes,” she said, “and my crew will be at your disposal, once they’ve sobered up from the bacchanalia they’ll undoubtedly enjoy this evening. Say, I don’t suppose you have a spare twelve-pounder bref gun in stores?”

  Garand looked up from perusing Josette’s sketches and shook his head.

  “Oh well,” she said. “I think I remember where we dropped ours.”

  Garand pointed to one of the sketches. “We only have four airscrews of this type in stock.”

  “Lucky for both of us that we’re reducing the number of Mistral’s screws from six to four, then.”

  Garand still wasn’t happy. “The point is, you’ll run my stock dry if we make these modifications.”

  “That’s what the stocks are there for,” she said.

  “Actually—” he began.

  She cut him off. “We have wounded aboard. Don’t take them to the town surgeon, if by some misfortune he’s still alive. That man is an idiot. Take them to Heny the midwife. You know her?”

  Garand shook his head.

  “She’s in the cottage near the north gate. The one with the plants growing out of the roof. I’m sure you’ve noticed it. Now if you’ll excuse me, Lieutenant, I must find billets for my crew.” She snatche
d up her bag, turned, and left the shed.

  Martel caught up to her halfway across the base and said, “I can handle the billets if you’d like, sir. Anyplace in particular you’d like for your personal quarters?”

  “Regrettably,” she said, looking uphill to the town, “I already have a billet waiting.”

  “I see,” Martel said, though it was clear he didn’t.

  As they approached the town’s south wall, throngs of townsfolk crowded around them. In the faint evening light, she didn’t recognize any of them, and she hoped they wouldn’t recognize her. They didn’t; more merciful still, they pressed toward Martel, all wanting to shake his hand or profess their love and admiration for the “hero captain.”

  Josette separated herself from the crowd and, walking backwards, shouted over the din, “And you can handle”—she waved her hand vaguely at the throng—“this whole situation?”

  “Yes, sir!” Martel said, seeming to enjoy the accolades.

  “Very good. Carry on.”

  She entered the city through the south gate. Inside, the narrow stone streets and close-packed buildings made Durum look like a more substantial city than it really was. But she knew half the buildings were empty. Some had been vacant for generations, and were now filled to their moldering roof beams with decades of neighborhood trash. Farther into the city, entire blocks were nothing but empty, weed-ridden plots, or used only for vegetable gardens, whose manure-fertilized furrows made the whole town smell like shit.

  As she walked the streets, Josette found it difficult to believe that, hundreds of years ago, before the long wars, Durum had been an important city. Straddling the border between Garnia and Vinzhalia—though back then it was on the Vinzhalian side—it was a center of trade and a boon to both nations. Trade goods crossing the border in this region had passed through Durum by edict of law, and in Durum they were taxed, tariffed, and skimmed.

  Merchants’ gold came in by the bag, and the king’s gold left by the bag—often the very same bag, albeit with its burden substantially reduced during the short trip across town. The nomadic horse lords that once terrified the countryside became caravan masters, not because they were subdued by martial force but because the money was so much better. The local guilds flourished, the people thrived, and the town grew so fast they had to move the city walls out six times in as many generations.

  Or so her father once told her. She had searched the town for the forgotten foundations of those older walls, and only ever found four. She’d spent half her childhood looking for the other two, rummaging in empty lots and digging archaeological pits across public streets in the middle of the night, searching for buried remnants.

  She was tempted, even now, to spend the night looking for them. But it would be wasted time now, as it had been wasted time then, to search for something no one else even cared about in a town that everyone else had forgotten.

  And then, quite suddenly, she found herself at her destination. It was a two-story brick-and-stone house sitting at the end of a lane—a much narrower lane than she remembered. She dropped her bag, took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

  Josette was looking slightly up when the door opened, and had to tilt her head back down when she found the woman who answered was of the same height. The woman had Josette’s dry, wavy hair, but it was longer. Her eyes went from Josette’s face to the bruise on her forehead, down to the bandage around her hand, and then to the bag at her feet.

  The woman stood staring, thin lips pressed together, for several seconds. Then she swallowed and asked, “So, what’ll you be wanting?”

  Josette sighed and said, “Nice to see you too, Mother.”

  * * *

  BERNAT WAITED UNTIL the wounded were offloaded, sitting quietly in the captain’s cabin and pretending interest in the view from the stern ports. They looked out on nothing more than a bare shed wall, blackened by mildew. It wasn’t much to look at, but Bernat couldn’t see it anyway, as hard as he stared at it. What Bernat saw in its place was an expanding cloud of steam that had been an airship, alternating with the puzzled, strangely indignant expression of the man he’d shot through the neck.

  After they finally took Kiffer out on a stretcher made from his own bunk, Bernat went forward to make use of the writing materials near the bow, then gathered a few essentials and disembarked.

  It was strange, walking on solid earth again after nearly a week in the air. The ground seemed to lurch and sway underneath him. The crew had warned him of this. They called it “air legs,” but to Bernat it seemed that the ground itself had disinherited him, and was refusing to recognize him as a child of the earth after his time in the air. It got better, though, just as the airmen said it would, and was gone by the time he passed through the south gate of Durum.

  What a lovely little town it was.

  The houses, workshops, and stores were tightly packed in this side of the city, no doubt due to its desirable southern exposure. It reminded him of his favorite streets in Kuchin, where quaint little buildings had been protected and preserved down through the centuries by wealthy families. Yet this was so much better. It had none of the bustle of Kuchin, none of that feeling of being shoved into a barrel with the other fish.

  He took a winding route through the southern quarter, losing himself in the tangle of narrow streets. The town only became better the farther he wandered. Closer to the center of the town, the streets widened, and the press of buildings gave way to a checkerboard of beautiful open lots. Some of them were even furrowed into lovely gardens, whose rich, earthy aromas blanketed all of Durum, speaking to its deep connection with the land.

  Perhaps, if he could find a good tavern and a gambling house, he might even stay for a while. Certainly, what he would earn from the letter tucked into his coat pocket would set him up in lodgings for as long as he wanted. Even if that hadn’t been the case, he’d rather live in the poorhouse than go up in that accursed airship again.

  Now he came to the town square, with frogs croaking in the decorative pond at its center. He walked the edge of the square, looking for the post office, but couldn’t find it. He thought that it might lie inside the town hall, but that was locked up for the night. Fortunately, there were a couple of men seated on its steps, having a lively political debate. What a wonderful town this was.

  As Bernat approached, the younger of them seemed flustered. “What do we want with Quah, anyway?”

  The older man harrumphed. “Apart from it’s our goddamn birthright as Garnians—something your generation just don’t seem to understand—think of the iron and gold in those mountains.”

  “But we must have already spent half of that wealth in conquering and holding the damn place, if not all of it.”

  “All the more reason to keep fighting, by God! ’Cause if you don’t—” He blew a short, rude note between his tongue and upper lip. “All that investment’s just wasted.”

  Bernat was going to have to remember that smashing line of argument for his own use. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, stepping up to them. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but could either of you direct me to the post office?”

  They directed him down a scenic lane off the square, to a squat house halfway down the block. He arrived there to find no sign on the door, no indication at all that this was a government building. He strolled the length of the lane, thinking there had been some mistake, but found nothing that looked any more like a post office. With nothing left to do, he knocked on the door.

  An old man answered. Fresh gravy clung to the corners of his mouth, and he had a crust of bread in his left hand. Inside, the table was set for dinner.

  “My apologies,” Bernat said. “I didn’t mean to bother you. It’s only … someone told me this was the post office. You don’t happen to know where it is, do you?”

  The man took a bite from his bread crust and spoke around it. “Right they are, sir. This is the post office, and I am the postmaster.”

  “How delightful,” Bernat
said, beaming a smile. “How charming!”

  The postmaster took another bite and chewed with his mouth wide open. His dull eyes ran over Bernat’s clothes. “New in town, sir?”

  “Why, yes,” Bernat said, “and I’d like to send a letter to my uncle.” He fished into his pocket and brought it out. “It only needs to go to the garrison in Arle, and the army will forward it along to him.” And shortly after that, he reflected, Captain Dupre’s career would be over.

  “I’m sure it will, sir,” the postmaster said, reaching out to take the letter. “Very good at getting things where they need to go, the army is.”

  Bernat pulled it back, flushed, and said, “I, uh, I don’t even know what it costs.”

  “One dinar to Arle, sir.”

  Good God, that was cheap. A few lines sent by semaphore had cost him over a hundred times as much. No wonder there was no proper post office—the pocket change the mail brought in could never justify the expense. He held the letter just out of the postmaster’s reach. “I’m not convinced it’s worth the price,” he said.

  “The price is the price, sir.”

  Bernat stared, his eyes unfocused. “Quite so.”

  “I tell you what, sir,” the postmaster said, looking impatiently back at his dinner table. “You take the night to think about it, and if in the morning it seems worth the cost, I’ll still be right where you left me.”

  He smiled. “A wonderful idea. Thank you.” He was just turning to leave, when he suddenly snapped his fingers. “I don’t suppose you know if there’s a Dupre living in this town? A widow, perhaps?”

  The postmaster narrowed his eyes. “And why would you be wanting to know, sir?”

  “I’m a friend of the family.”

  The postmaster’s directions brought him to a lovely little cottage at the end of a lovely little lane. He took a moment to listen at the door. The voices on the other side were elevated, but the words were not clear through the thick oak. He gave it a few hearty knocks.