by Iain Lindsay
These weren’t small and fast Volt ships; the Captain was glad to see. No, these were much larger, the central boat was easily five or six decks high, four masts, with a glitter of black gun ports under her prow. Emblazoned across its front square sail there was the red asterisk star in a circle.
It was a full Protectorate battlegroup.
“Never have I been so pleased to see so many guns,” Tremaine said, setting a course straight for them.
“They’re almost on us!” Lura was calling, meaning the swooping Volt.
“Deadman!” Tremaine hollered.
“You what?” Gulbrand was looking at him like he had gone mad. “You know what that means…”
“You heard me, sailor! This boat is performing a Deadman, now!” Tremaine spat, seeing the Quartermaster leap from his seat down to the deck, cursing and waving the few Nhkari out of the way as he ran to the forecastle deck, and the front anchor line.
The Deadman was a crazy move even by Tremaine’s usual standards. Otherwise called the Deadman’s Drop, it entailed the boat suddenly losing altitude and speed in a move that could see it tumble out of the sky altogether. The only point to such a move was to fast evade approaching enemies – and if you had somewhere to escape to.
“Captain?” Lura was calling, checking that she had heard correctly.
“You heard me, Rigger. Deadman’s Drop, on my command.” He said, eyes trained on the approaching Volt.
But it was a complicated procedure, one that required the entire vessel working in tandem. Which would be tough with this skeleton crew, Tremaine hissed at himself. But what other choice did he have?
“Ready?” He barked.
“Nowhere near!” Lura returned, and Tremaine bit his lips. The ground underneath them had broken into greens and orange. There were even trees and rivers. The noise of the Volt had become a keening shriek. Was it his imagination, or could the Captain see dark shapes surging forward to the top deck of the Volt ship? Shapes that were no doubt readying one of their hellish raiding parties…
“Ready now? The Captain begged.
“Go.” Lura said tersely, leaning out with three different ropes attached to her belt.
“DROP!” Tremaine barked and, at the same time, Gulbrand released the wheel that held the front anchor secure. The anchor shot downwards in a death-plunge, it’s rope dragging the prow of the Storm down with it.
Lura somersaulted backwards, attached to her ropes. Each one was secured to winches, and then the weights at the end of the main sail, top sail, and front lateen. As her weight plummeted, these sails shot upwards, releasing them from their current, snatching the boat out of the air and giving her to gravity.
Below them, Odestin pulled the levers that closed both air fans, and the Storm shot downwards following its anchor like a diving hawk.
The two Volt ships screamed overhead and started to slow, turning in wide circles. But even their fast schooner shapes would take a long time to swing down to the Storm.
“Quartermaster!” Tremaine bellowed, and Gulbrand shoved his war maul into the spokes of the anchor wheel. It thudded to a halt, and Gulbrand started to wrench the anchor back in again.
“First Mate!” As Tremaine called, Odestin kicked the levers full, flaring the Air Fans wide like a slowing bird.
“Rigger!” Lura released the winches, and, free of their restraining holds, the three sails once again flowed back down.
It was all on the anchor and the fans, Tremaine knew. He heard a creak as the side-sails of the fans shuddered under the tumult of air. Gulbrand was grunting as the two Nhkari guides helped him wind up the anchor wheel, bringing the prow and the bowsprit slowly up…
CREAK! Another protesting groan from the air fans, and Tremaine could feel the pressures threatening to pop nails and break wooden joists through the wheel as he prayed. Come on, you beauty, you can do it…
The Storm flattened out, a bare fifty feet above the grass, and shot forward towards the welcoming Protectorate guns, it’s dive giving it the acceleration of a speeding arrow.
The two Volt vessels far above and behind them became small, but they were still there.
“Back!” Talin screamed once more, flinging the river of force at one of the shadow-creatures that had been dislodged. The magic hit the thing broadside, sending it curling up and over itself in a flurry of grotesque tentacles.
How dare you attack me! Holder railed, spinning around with a mighty tail beat that, even in this environment, was like a thundercrack against the body of the second shadow-creature. It twitched and tumbled, leaving Talin gasping and crying in the waters below Storm-Holder.
You must go back now, Talin. You have given too much of yourself… The voice and shadow of the ship-beast fell over him, as Holder’s mind nudged the boy and sent him tumbling back to reality…
“Agh!” Talin gasped away, coughing desert dust out of his lungs. There was a ringing sound in his ears, only it wasn’t a ringing, it was a scream.
“Aiiiii!” The girl in the powder blue dress, the one that they called the Princess Eliset, was screaming full-tilt. At her feet was Sevesti, face in a grimace as he wrapped strips of linen around the splints over her ankle.
Talin tried to take it all in, but his vision still swam with blue. Half of his mind was still wrapped up in the ship’s connection, and he could feel every shuddering knot and taut line, ever protesting plank of wood aboard the Storm. More than that, he could feel the pain of his fellow Nhkari sitting on their benches, he could feel Sevesti’s tense worry pooling around his shoulders as he worked, Gulbrand’s annoyance, Father Kef’s flicker of life, Odestin’s fierce joy, Tremaine’s gritty concentration and the tyl’s tense concentration. But it was all drowned out next to this girl’s scream of pain blossoming into the crew area like a bloody rose. Talin couldn’t take it. He knew too much as he pushed himself forward, falling to the floor with the heavy ship’s blanket at his feet.
Pain. So much pain. He didn’t know if it was him or the ship-beast that thought it, but the awareness forced his shaking hand to the girl’s shoulder.
“We’re going to be safe now. They’re gone,” he found himself saying, talking about the strange Volt-beasts.
“?” The Princess choked in her cries, as something passed from the boy’s hands and hit her like a blast of fresh air. Talin felt the sensation of the tranquil blues inside him – the patient home of the ship-beast that he retreated to in his dreams – as it jumped through his hand to touch the girl’s mind.
The Princesses screaming wavered to a stop, she panted, eyes wide as she turned to look at the boy holding onto her shoulder. Her pain had lessened, masked by a fog of calming blue.
“What... What did you do?” She whispered.
“You’re going to be safe…” Talin nodded again, before he slumped back against the table leg, his eyes fluttering, and his head drooping. “I just – I just…need to sleep now.” This time, his exhausted sleep was black and dreamless.
“What in the sacred waters was that all about!?” Sevesti cursed, wiping the sweat from his head as the warning horns of the oncoming Protectorate battle group blared at them.
38. Welcome to the North
Others. Storm-Holder said in the haze of quiet blues. There are many others here like me.
“Like us?” Talin floated in front of the giant creature, as he always did. He thought he could see the suggestion of dark shapes further out in the realm that the ship-beast occupied, little more than shadows in the aquamarine, further out and indistinct.
Not like us. I don’t know if there are many like us, Storm-Holder said, but not with its usual sense of loss. If anything, the beast sounded warm to it’s new, human companion.
“What has happened to us?” Talin thought about what he had done in the deserts – or what the ship had done through him. Like what the Breaker’s did. Sorcery.
I don’t know. But I feel we are one thing now. Talin-Storm-Holder.
Yes, that felt right, Talin kne
w. But these others – where were they?
All around us. Look!
Talin woke up in a start to his small, constrained human form. Everything felt heavy and achy. Gravity pulled on him strangely. “Urgh.” He pushed himself up from the bare wooden floor where he had been laying, knowing instinctively that the boat that held him was not the Storm. “Where are we?” he grumbled, meaning him and the ship-beast inside of him – but he was answered by a human voice.
“We’re in a jail lad, believe me, I’ve been in enough of them to know.” The sorrowful Odestin muttered from his crouch against the wall opposite, beside the seated form of Sevesti (minus his hat), with the other crew members of the Storm arranged in an angry silence in the long compartment. There were no beds, no storage crates, no blankets, and nothing but bare wood in here.
“It’s the Her Fortune, Tal,” Lura beckoned him from where she stood on tiptoes at one of the two portholes that looked out of the outer hull. “Look – that’s the Northern Gate.”
The Northern Gate was well named, Talin saw when he leaned up to peer through the barred glass. A round tower that was as wide as some villages were, stood high at the end of a range of hills. It was vast, higher even than Breaker’s Reach. Up and down its length Talin could see mooring piers for the much smaller airships and the boxy outcrops of gun emplacements. They must be the other ship-beasts Holder could sense. At the tower’s feet stretched a city that straddled a wide canal.
“The Gulf of Eig,” Lura confirmed for him.
The galleon herself was tethered by anchors and long lines to one of the wooden landing platforms of the Gate, as smaller balloons and schooner-style airships ferried messages, crew and supplies up and down around them. The Fortune bobbed and swayed in the air.
“This size of boat never lands properly,” the tylaethi said offhandedly. “They spend their lives in the air.”
Just like Holder, Talin thought, and felt a small surge of pride wash back towards him. He still had no words for what had happened out there on the desert sands, or in the skies above. All he knew was that Holder was with him now, beside his mind like a constant friend. He could push his own thoughts towards the ship-beast, and sometimes, it would even answer. It was strange, but he didn’t feel so alone anymore.
The tylaethi’s tail batted the floor in annoyance. “We’re the ‘guests’ of the Admiral who found us over the plains.”
“He didn’t take kindly to the fact that we had the Empress’s daughter battered to all kinds of hell,” Odestin was scratching at the floor with a dirty nail. Talin saw he was writing something rude for the owners of the boat.
“That girl in the forecastle…?” The one that he had healed – kind of. “Won’t she speak for us?”
“That girl, Talin,” Sevesti looked mournful, “is the heir apparent to the protector’s throne. I don’t think it matters what the Princess Eliset thinks of her saviors, it’s her mother we need to win over.” The chef groaned and scratched his head.
“Welcome to the North, lad.” Odestin said.
“Even if they were Volt ships – which I doubt…” said the thin-lipped Admiral Geisse of the Southern Fleet; a compact and not very tall man with greying blonde hair and a gold brocade jacket, “they have gone now, it appears.”
“I’m not surprised,” Tremaine reached to refill his tumbler glass from the bottle of aged brandy on the table. Admiral Geisse’s eyes narrowed at the impudence, but he said nothing.
The Captain sat in one of the Admiral’s state rooms aboard the Protectorate galleon The Fortune, surrounded by the trappings of a very successful life. The furniture were all antiques, the wall proudly displayed several bronze medals the size of plates for various victories both at sea and in the air, and an entire book cabinet filled one wall. The windows at the far end of the room looked out upon the edge of the brown and green lands around the Northern Gate, with the swimming forms of airships, both small and large, crossing the skies.
I see that he doesn’t have to sleep in his state rooms then, Tremaine sighed. He had managed to swap his torn and blood-spattered leather vest for his own brocade vest, but still felt drab compared to the leader of the entire Southern Fleet.
The battle group under this man had been tasked with finding the Princess Eliset, and now the Princess was being held in the height of luxury and security at the Northern Gate complex itself – while my men are in custody, Tremaine gritted his teeth and threw back the shot. This officer pacing the floorboards in front of Tremaine also had not hid his skepticism that it had been the dreaded Volt who had so endangered them.
“They looked like southern raiders through our telescopes, nothing more. Barbarians, Captain Tremaine,” the Admiral said the Captain’s name carefully, fully aware of the disgrace that House Tremaine was under. “And besides which; what on earth would the Voltapuri want with her royal personage?”
“The same thing every desperate fanatic wants I expect, Admiral,” Tremaine said sourly. “Recognition. To send a message. Unspeakable amounts of money.”
“Hm.” The Admiral tapped the glove of one hand. “Well, if it were up to me, sir, I would be asking the Empress to look into why a disgraced lord was in keeping of her royal daughter, but I have been informed that her highness has corroborated at least a little of your story…” He glowered.
“Maybe because it’s true?” Tremaine glared back at the man. “Now am I, my boat and my crew, free to go? And talking about unspeakable amounts of money…?”
The reward. Tremaine refilled the tumbler glass. The Admiral hasn’t mentioned any reward money yet…
“We all wait on the Empresses wishes, Tremaine,” Admiral Geisse said in clipped tones. “I have been ordered to see that the Storm is moored here at the ‘Gate until the matter is looked into, and the Princess can be securely transported back to the Citadel and her majesty.”
“But the Princess does corroborate our story, Admiral?” Tremaine reached for the brandy bottle to pour himself another shot.
A sigh from the small military man. “Aye, she does.”
Talin looked out of the porthole window, trying to count the number of airships he could see. More than he had ever seen at the Reach, and in better condition, too. “I’m further than I’ve ever been,” he said, earning a wry grin from the Quartermaster.
“Good.” Gulbrand grunted.
“Right you swobs!” A voice said from the other side of their door, before a jangle of keys and the door was pulled open by a very annoyed looking guard, with a slightly worse-for-wear Captain standing behind him.
“Thought I’d forgotten you?” He opened wide his hands to a hazy grin.
“Thought they’d shot you, actually.” Odestin returned, standing up to a groan.
Tremaine ignored his First Mate’s cynicism. “Well, it looks like the princess has agreed with our story, and we’re not going to get executed!” He beamed. “And I have managed to convince the good Admiral Geisse to give us the freedom of the Gate, until they sort this mess out!”
“Oh yay.” Lura said through clenched teeth, her tail lashing the floor.
“But we have the Storm, and we’re not dead. How’s that for a result?” The Captain called out.
“The money, boss. What about the reward money?” Odestin looked up from his misery hopefully.
“Ah yeah, about that…” Tremaine grinned nervously.
39. Charters
The Storm wobbled away from its mooring perch, surrounded by small and mean-looking Protectorate guard boats as it headed down the stronghold of Northern Gate to a more secure mooring position. There were shouts, curses, and even a few fights on board the airship – but underneath their ill-tempers, the crew of the Storm were relieved to be alive and almost free once again.
Free as long as we don’t leave the Northern Gate, Talin considered as he pulled at the ropes and tried to stay out of the bristling Odestin’s way.
Captain Joselyn Tremaine had to explain to them that they had not, in fact, earn
ed a few hundred thousand ducats as reward for saving the Princess Eliset. Instead, Tremaine said that what they had been offered was “an opportunity”.
The Empress, it appeared, had sent a bird to the Admiral to the effect that; the Great House Tremaine was outcast and deemed traitors to the throne. As such, it was unfeasible for such a high reward to be paid to a traitor, until his name was cleared. She was ever a cruel woman, it seems. But not an entirely unwise one.
“Given the scandal that it would cause for the derelict House Tremaine to be ceded such a high honor; it has been decided that as a reward for her valor, the name of House Tremaine and the boat known as the Storm will instead be given a chance to redeem itself in the eyes of the World Islands.’
‘No reward money shall be forthcoming, aside from basic recuperations for your losses – instead, the Storm and her crew, subject to Council review, are hereby recognized by Royal Warrant as a Vessel-under-Charter to the Queen. The Storm, and her Captain, now have the great opportunity to act out the Queen’s wishes both near and abroad, and in that service, we hope that the Storm and the name of House Tremaine will retain their former glory.
‘The Storm and her Captain will await the full and final decision of the Protectorate Council as guests of Northern Gate, when they will also be given their first task for the good of the Empress…”
“A Vessel-Under-Charter.” Odestin had said flatly, looking appalled. “You mean we’re going to be lackeys. Messengers. Odd-job boys for the Empress’s dirty laundry that she doesn’t want to air in public? I didn’t sign up to work for the Protectorate!”
“Think of all the ports, and all the inns of the World Islands you will get to visit…” The Captain said. “If the Council clears our name, that is…” he added as an aside.