by Meg Merriet
“There was nothing to come between. The girl was a noble.”
“So that matters to you?”
“Of course. I made that mistake before, and dueled three men for it: a father, a brother and a suitor. Never again.”
“I should think the possibility of being shot would only add to the thrill.”
“Perhaps…” he mused. “I may have enjoyed her attention or her pretty stories of Shale, but she was not a wench worth dying for.”
“If she didn’t matter, then why did you say I was dead to you?” I thought I had him on this one, but he only laughed at me.
“That was the thirst speaking. A few days without Skye made a grouse of me. You don’t have to take everything personally simply because you’re a woman now. I took no offense that you thought I had the clap.”
“That was uncalled for on my part,” I admitted.
“It’s all right. That corset they made you wear likely dislodged your uterus and gave you the hysteria.”
I grinned and gave him a playful shove. “I missed you, you knob.”
The assembly fell quiet as Captain Dirk entered. He threw a nest of dried moss on the fire and the flame licked vertically at the air. Dirk needed no stage or megaphone to capture the attention of his army. Even dressed in a common flight suit and a wool-lined trench coat, he had all the presence of a king.
“Rotters!” he roared.
“Rise!” answered the army.
The firelight glimmered on his face, and he circled it as he spoke. “Some of you have flown with me before, and know I am a capable leader. Others have only heard the stories, only imagined the horror I’ve wrought on wealthier men. I come to you, today, not as a pirate, or a prince, but as a dreamer. Too long these lands have been ruled by tyrants, the people ever on the brink of starvation with no recourse but thievery. I too have felt the sting of shame in not being able to earn a wage or care for my own. I have seen my entire family murdered, watched my infant sister waste away from hunger and been powerless in the face of it all.
“I have been to several dungeons and would not send any man to this dark hole for a crime as small as desperation. I should pardon every one of you this very night, and future repercussions would be repaid with rehabilitation! Not extermination! My family brought the revolution on themselves. I admit this freely. My father was isolated from the reality of the world he governed, which was why he did not see it coming when Perceval usurped him. We learned that trading a king for an emperor solves nothing, and so I do not want to be your king. I want to be your captain. I will not have subjects, but brothers and sisters whose interests are my interests.
“Many of us will not live to see the new dawn, but the capital is our battlefield, and the souls who perish will forever be laid to rest in her wreckage, which we will rebuild upon, so that the bones of these brave revolutionaries are forever entombed in the greatest city of mankind. And every year for a thousand years or more, people will take their children beneath the new city to see the ruins of old Locwyn. They will show them the stones and tell them of a day when pirates and peasants became patriots and made Elsace free!”
The arena resounded with a great roar of triumph. Baker and I stood like all the rest, raising our fists and crying out with the red lust for battle. Captain Dirk glowed with pride in all of us. He began to speak again, and everyone was seated, hanging on his every word.
“Now, soldiers, we have an airship rigged to blow the face of that city to smithereens. What we need now is the right man to operate it. He has to signal for landing so the ship isn’t shot down before reaching its point of attack. There will be a chance to evacuate just before it blows, but this man must ride the wind and wait for support from within.”
I stood tall amidst the rows of seated men. Baker reached for my arm, but I slipped his grasp and bounded down the stairs to the central pit.
“I will do it,” I said, traipsing towards my captain. Some of the men laughed. I didn’t care. I said it again. “I’ll fly the ship.”
“I’ll fly the ship,” Baker announced, standing. “Clikk doesn’t know how to fly.”
Dirk shook his head. “Your nerves are shot.”
“All the more reason to use me as cannon fodder, sir!”
Dirk stroked his chin with his thumb. “How inspiring to see two men vying for the same suicide mission.”
“Don’t let him,” I whispered as I neared Dirk. “I can do this myself.”
Dirk smiled. “I think you should both go, in case something goes wrong. Now that’s settled, let’s go over the battle plan.”
XVIII. The Siege
Flying a ship was nothing at all like riding in one. Baker did his best to guide me along, but I felt overwhelmed with a sense of responsibility for everything about to take place. There were so many switches, levers and toggles to consider.
While Baker took care of controlling ballast and Skye distribution, I handled the propellers, the thrust and the overall trajectory, which was controlled by a left-hand apparatus that fit like a set of knuckledusters.
Our ship’s gondola was small, airtight and freezing. Equipped in our flak jackets, parachute packs, goggles and Rotter bandanas, we were ready to blow open the gates of Locwyn.
Through the windows, we had visibility of everything in front of and beneath us. In the distance, the vane atop the communications tower winked at us as stars sometimes do in the mist. I glanced down at the dots and dashes scrawled on my wrist in black ink. I had the access code. I told myself over and over this would work. It had to.
Built like a lock, the city was a circular mandala encased in a steel exoskeleton. Mechanical moving walls decked with seven spires, the shell was tallest near the center where its features became sharp and dreary. This city had always been on the brink of starvation, its people controlled with fear and propaganda. It had never known fair rule; it had never known peace.
The wind got the better of me and bounced us furiously on its air currents. We sloped and heaved.
“I’m going to kill us before we even get there!” I cried. “You should take over!”
Baker laughed at me. “You’re fine.”
“It feels as though we’re about to capsize.”
“We’re in a balloon. She can’t capsize. Just relax and keep her steady.” Baker stood and came behind me, leaning in and placing his left hand over mine on the apparatus. “Easy,” he said. He knew how to ride the wind, and the bucking of the ship ended almost as instantly as he took hold. I felt my blood warming my cheeks. “Are you blushing?” he asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” My flustered heat spiked.
He had this effect deliberately, found some amusement in it. He returned to his seat and read the gauges. “I hope we live to see this crazy firework.”
“We will,” I said. “I brought your lucky ring.” I pulled the chain out from my collar where the steel dangled.
“You still have it!” Baker laughed and shook his head. “I got that in Amaranthia. There’s a smith who makes them.”
“It is lucky though, isn’t it?”
“So said the smith. The day I bought it was the same day I chipped my tooth in that brawl. I thought the man a charlatan… until recently when you saved my life. Upon reflection, I saw the ring had some luck in it after all, for the day I bought it was also the day we became friends.”
The mooring tower signaled to us. I pressed a switch to flicker the ship’s lamps, hoping I had the correct code. If I had misremembered even just one dot or dash, all our efforts would be wasted. Our balloon full of hydrogen would be fired on and we would make one hell of an explosion just a few minutes too early.
To my relief, I heard the gears grinding behind the city’s façade. The towers pivoted and the walls slowly diverged, unveiling a cavity of a thousand lights. The arched windows sparkled like diamonds in the deep of a cavern.
“Clikk. Should we not make it—”
“The more you say goodbye, the stupider you’ll feel
when we’re blitzed as bats at the victory party.”
I pulled hard on the lever that increased our propulsion. The ship lurched and a rush of blood flooded my heart. The lights grew bigger fast. Soon I could see silhouettes of armed Duskmen against that backdrop of windows.
I turned on the autopilot mechanic. “Now,” I said.
Baker tugged the chain that opened the hatch and we slid onto the air.
With a forwards roll, I gave my body up to gravity. Time compressed. I was a shadow, invisible in the darkness. Suspended in air, I surveyed the world beneath me, searching for the horses and green stagecoach that were to be our drop point. Cobblestone alleys wove between towering buildings made of steel. I leveled out and pulled the ripcord. My parachute wrenched my whole body as it burst overhead. I used the handles to change course to be as far from the airship as possible. As I came around the bend of a massive building, the sabotaged ship exploded with an ear-splitting boom.
The force shoved me and my nostrils filled with the scent of charred air. I heard the vague sound of Baker’s shouts on the wind and looked over my shoulder. His parachute had caught fire and a mountain of black smoke enveloped him. He cut himself free, fell out of the cloud and released his reserve. There was a series of booms and implosions, which I felt in my bones as the façade of Locwyn crumbled. Men on the city streets went running, swinging lanterns and shouting.
I tried to see how Baker was faring, but when I looked again, he had vanished. Below me, a red flare burned at the back of a green carriage. The ground got closer and closer, until it was right beneath my feet. I set down half a city block from the coach and ran for it. A man in a duster and top hat jumped out and helped me slip off my harness. We scooped up my parachute and climbed into the carriage.
“Wait!” I cried. “Baker hasn’t landed.”
“We have to go!” the man shouted, slamming the doors shut. The driver whipped the horses and we were on our way down the bumpy street.
The mustached stranger had familiar eyes behind his round black spectacles. I was still trembling from a rush of adrenalin and shock. I pulled my goggles down around my neck and nearly screamed when I recognized the man across from me.
“Fitz?” I said. “Where’s Lord Terrence?”
“He was called away this morning and never returned. Maive sent me instead.” His explanation spilled out into the air between us, but I couldn’t focus. A shrill frequency pierced my head. Baker had tried to say goodbye, and I had cut him short. I longed to go back to that moment. Something pulled within, a dark chasm that opened up in my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
“Stay firm! You’re across enemy lines!” Fitz said, patting my shoulder. “Clikk. Baker’s going to be fine. He pulled his reserve and it carried him off course, but he has made it out of worse situations, I assure you.”
“I hear you,” I said, sniffing air down into my lungs. “Are we still going through the library?”
“Yes. We can bypass the guard.”
I nodded, popping the knuckles in my left hand. We kept the carriage dark inside to maintain our anonymity and travelled through the allies of Locwyn towards the library.
I peeked through the curtain and saw humans in agony, men with boney arms and legs hunched in on themselves, bodies wrapped in rags and shoved behind waste compartments. As the poor never got any sunlight, malnutrition plagued their lot. The wealthy could afford to take supplements and sunny excursions, but everyone else had no choice but to grow weak and sink into melancholy.
A woman of the night walked down the street, her breasts bulging out of the top of her corset. Her skin was covered in filth and her hair was matted into a dry braid. She pulled an even sadder creature behind her, a little boy with a distended belly. This glimpse at what must have been Baker’s childhood filled me with a voyeuristic shame and compelled me to close the curtain.
The carriage came to a halt. The driver was speaking to someone in muffled tones, but I couldn’t make out any of the words exchanged between them. It sounded like a simple misunderstanding, but then there was a gunshot and the horses shrieked.
Fitz cursed under his breath. He lifted a carpet from the middle of the carriage and opened a trap door. Before I could ask what we were doing, he shoved me down the chute and closed it. I hit the cobblestones and went flat beneath the carriage. Craning my neck, I could see the officers’ boots and our driver’s lifeless body. The Duskmen opened the coach door.
“What is the meaning of—” was all Fitz managed to say before his choked agony sounded overhead. Fitz joined the other man on the ground, bleeding out from a wide gash in his neck. He looked at me and I looked at him and as much as I wanted to reach out to him, I couldn’t. His suffering quieted as he accepted his death and went still.
“That’s the last of them,” said one of the officers. “Guard the library in case they come looking for their witch.”
“Yes sir.”
I kept my breath slow and silent. As a Duskman soothed the horses with a gentle hush, the blood of my allies wound down the cracks in the cobblestones until it found me, staining my sleeve. I gazed into Fitz’s glassy dead boy eyes and swore to never forget him, this creature of such bewildering altruism.
XIX. Dawn Comes
The battle raged in the distance. Every second I spent waiting beneath that carriage made me feel like more of a coward. I heard canon fire and screeching babes that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. The rational part of my mind knew I had to wait here for Dirk so I could warn him of the ambush in the library, but the more I stared at the bodies of Fitz and our driver, the more I wanted to head in there and take vengeance myself.
A mortar round landed nearby and smashed the awning of a bakery. The horses spooked and bolted, pulling the carriage as they fled. I was exposed. A Duskman saw me lying there, but he must been influenced by all of Fitz’s blood on me, for he didn’t see me as a threat until after I had already fired Millicent three times into his chest. I rolled behind a stoop and reloaded the revolver.
The library doors burst open and some men came running out, raising lanterns and inspecting the scene. There were three men. I took aim from the shadows and fired shots at each. I felled two of them, but the third I missed entirely. I fled down an alley. His footfalls grew louder as he gained on me.
“Halt!” he shouted.
I went around the bend and drew the dagger from my boot. As he came around I tried stabbing him in the gut, but he sidestepped me and fired off his pocket automatic. He was young, had clearly never discharged his weapon outside of training. The weapon’s recoil knocked his wrist back and bullets sprayed the building behind me, breaking off small clouds of cement debris. When the clip was empty, he drew his short sword and tackled me. We grappled on the hard ground. I tried to wrestle his sword’s tip away from my throat, but it was a losing battle. I closed my eyes and fought with all the energy I had left, which wasn’t enough. He was too strong.
The Duskman drooled down my shoulder and his body went limp. I opened my eyes and saw a dark figure standing over us. It was Baker. He yanked his dagger from out the man’s back and wiped it clean on his pant leg. He helped me to stand up, but my legs shook so fiercely I had to lean against the brick wall. “You gave me a scare,” I said. “I feared the worst.”
“Lost control of my reserve, but I sorted it out.”
“We’ve been betrayed. They killed Fitz.”
Baker flinched, knitting his brow as he closed his eyes. He took the Duskman’s pocket automatic and reloaded the clip. “Let’s push on,” he said. “I need to kill somebody.”
“Stay close.” I led him back through the alley. I knew he wanted vengeance as badly as I did, but we could not take the library without help.
As we came out onto the street, I realized we wouldn’t have to. A barrage of footsteps sounded nearby as a mob approached. Dirk was leading the front lines. The dense rows of men resembled an army of the dead, for all were war-painted, their tunics and yellow b
andanas covered in blood.
“Captain!” I cried, running towards him. “An ambush lies in wait in the library!”
Dirk signaled for one of his units to follow him and for the others to begin the onslaught of the palace. Fifty men advanced towards the castle gate and climbed the stone. Gunfire rained down upon them, but where one man fell, another would soon take up his place.
“Ned!” Dirk shouted. “Toss a boom stick in there.” He pointed at the library.
Ned lit a stick of dynamite and sent it twirling into the open window.
The Blue Dusk cried out within. The doors flung open and a thick cloud of white smoke came rushing out. A couple uniforms tried to flee, only to meet our swords as we advanced. I held my breath and ran in, Rotters at my side. A cloud imbued the library and buried the tall bookshelves in mist. Coughing fits hindered the Duskmen. They could hardly fight back as we gutted them. We matched Dirk’s pace as he dashed upstairs. The upper level was only mildly clouded, the shelves of books unaffected by the explosion. Dirk touched a marble bust and one of the bookshelves spun, revealing a secret passage that descended underground. Our footsteps echoed on stone as we traversed the long dark hall. The men used matches to light torches, passing one up for Dirk as he led the charge.
“There is a chance Maive hid in this tunnel,” said Dirk.
I didn’t want to tell him that it wasn’t likely, so I kept my mouth shut. At the end of the tunnel, we came up some stairs and reached an opening and what appeared to be the back of an armoire with light peeking out beneath it. It was solid wood, but Baker and Saul helped Dirk to topple it easily. We came out into the king’s suite, a room that had fallen into disuse. The furniture was covered in white sheets, and the grand mirrors adorning the walls were grey with dust and age.
“Maive?” whispered Dirk. “Are you in here?” He peered under the bed. He ripped the sheets off the furniture and frantically searched every inch of the room. The witch was not there.