by Karen Kincy
“What happened to your arm?” Ursula said.
“A clockwork wasp stung me.”
Ursula backed away. “Come in and sit down.”
Ardis hesitated, since she didn’t want to intrude, but the steely look in Ursula’s eyes hardly invited argument. Ardis ducked into the cabin and dropped onto the berth. She tightened her fingers around the sting.
“It didn’t hurt like this until a minute or two ago,” she said.
“Let me look,” Ursula said.
Ardis lifted her fingers. Ursula rubbed her thumb over the tender skin, then pressed hard against the bump. A brilliant shard of pain sliced through Ardis. She gasped, her eyes watering, and yanked her arm away.
“This may hurt,” Ursula said. “Hold still.”
It already hurt, but Ardis nodded and braced herself.
Ursula unlocked her bag and reached inside. Steel flashed in her hand. A scalpel. Ardis sucked her breath through her teeth. Ursula poured alcohol onto a cloth and dabbed the sting, then reached for the scalpel.
“What is that for?” Ardis said.
“There’s something under your skin,” Ursula said, “that doesn’t belong there.”
“God, are you serious?”
“Yes.” Ursula angled the scalpel over Ardis’s arm. “Ready?”
Ardis swallowed hard. Blood rarely turned her stomach, but she preferred the steel of a sword to the steel of a scalpel.
“Do it,” Ardis said.
Ursula lowered the blade, her eyes sharp with concentration. She sliced into the inflamed skin and cut a tiny incision less than an inch long. Ursula turned away, bent over her bag, and returned with forceps.
“I almost have it,” Ursula said.
Queasy, Ardis wasn’t sure she wanted to know what it was.
Ursula reached into the incision with the forceps and picked out a miniscule metal worm. It wriggled against the forceps, gears whirring inside its steel segments. The doctor dropped the worm into a glass vial.
“God.” Ardis pressed her hand to her mouth. “What is that?”
Ursula held an eye loupe to her glasses and inspected the worm. She tilted the vial, and the creature rolled with a rattle.
“It appears to be a clockwork larva,” Ursula said.
Ardis shuddered. “That’s repulsive.”
“I see writing carved onto the larva. Possibly Russian.”
“I don’t suppose you can read Russian?”
Ursula lowered the loupe. Unmistakable curiosity glinted in her gray eyes.
“No,” she said. “But I believe the archmage may know more. You should bring the larva to him for further examination.”
Ursula bandaged Ardis’s arm with gauze. The pain from the sting had faded.
“Thank you, doctor.” Ardis hopped off the berth. “I feel better without that worm.”
Ursula met her gaze. “Don’t speak too soon. I would rather know the purpose of the larva before making a prognosis.”
That was less than reassuring.
Ursula stoppered the vial. “Take this to the archmage and report back.”
Ardis pocketed the vial. The larva clinked against the glass. With a nod goodbye, she left the doctor and looked for Konstantin. She discovered the archmage walking downstairs, and she hurried to match his long stride.
“Konstantin,” she said.
“Care to join me for lunch, Ardis?” He smiled absently. “I’m venturing to the mess hall.”
Ardis wasn’t sure the crew would be comfortable eating with the archmage. But Konstantin leapt off the last step and turned the corner. She sighed and followed him. When they stepped into the mess hall, they interrupted a conversation between crewmates. Himmel shoved his chair from the table and saluted.
“Archmage Konstantin,” the captain said.
The rest of the crewmates realized who stood in the doorway, and all of them leapt to their feet with a scraping of chairs.
Konstantin’s cheeks reddened. “Please, sit down. This is terribly embarrassing.”
A few of the youngest crewmen shared glances. Perhaps they expected the archmage to be more strict with formalities.
Himmel furrowed his brow. “Did you have something to say, sir?”
Konstantin pinched the bridge of his nose. His ears looked scarlet.
“I thought we might join you for lunch,” he said. “Considering how empty the dining room would be above deck.”
“Very well, sir,” Himmel said. “You can be my right-hand man.”
Himmel dragged two more chairs to the table. Konstantin perched on the chair to the captain’s right. Ardis took the last seat and stared at her napkin. After the captain sat again, his crew dropped back into their chairs.
“Eat,” Himmel said. “That’s an order.” He winked.
Ardis fingered the vial in her pocket. Lunch didn’t seem like the best time to whip out a clockwork larva. But she had lost her appetite. The others ate rye bread, cheese, cold meats, and apples from the last autumn. She had dined alone for years, always the stranger in the corner, and she didn’t know how to join the chatter of conversation. Konstantin seemed just as tongue-tied while Himmel talked about the weather.
“On a winter day like this,” Himmel said, “the sun can be an advantage.”
Konstantin ruffled his curls. “How so?”
“When things heat up, our lifting power increases.”
“Ah! I know exactly what you mean. Elementary physics.”
Ardis reached halfway to a slice of cheese, then stopped, her stomach still unsettled. She nudged Konstantin’s elbow.
“Yes?” he said.
“Look at this,” she whispered.
Ardis hid the vial in a napkin and slid it to Konstantin. He unwrapped it and squinted. Then his eyes widened.
“Where did this come from?” he said softly.
“The clockwork wasp,” she said, keeping her voice down. “The doctor cut it out of me.”
Konstantin blanched. “Cut it out…?”
“From my arm. And look, there are letters carved on it.”
Konstantin pinched the vial between his fingers and lifted it to his eye. The clockwork larva curled on the bottom. The archmage looked torn between fascination and revulsion. A few of the crew glanced sideways at him.
“Can you read Russian?” Ardis said.
“Not a word.” Konstantin squeezed his eyes shut. “But I’m sure I have seen a clockwork creature such as this before.” His eyes sprang open. “Yes! I remember reading a textbook, rather obscure, that dealt with espionage.”
Ardis felt her stomach plummet. “Such as?”
“Clockwork creatures with technomancy for tracking and spying.”
“Konstantin? Smash the worm.”
“Oh, God.” He stared at the larva. “The Russians.”
The zeppelin shuddered. Ardis caught her fork before it fell off the table.
Konstantin laughed nervously. “I don’t suppose that’s turbulence?”
Himmel threw down his napkin and shoved his chair from the table. He peered through the portholes along the wall.
“Doubtful,” the captain said. “We—”
The zeppelin lurched sideways. Its nose careened downward at a steep slant. Everything on the table jolted off and clattered on the floor. The crew scrambled to their feet, stumbling over chairs, as Himmel shouted orders.
“All hands on deck! Officers report to the Control Room!”
Outside the zeppelin, Ardis glimpsed a flicker of red.
Fire? Magic?
Ardis jumped over a fallen chair and dodged people running to their posts. A glass shattered under her boot.
A blur of crimson whipped past the portholes. It vanished an instant later.
“Ardis!” Konstantin called.
She looked back at the archmage. He braced himself against the doorframe. The two of them were the last ones left.
“Ardis,” he said, “we can’t stay. We—”
The zeppelin p
lunged earthward and flung them both off their feet.
EIGHT
Ardis slammed against the wall. Konstantin clung to the doorframe until he fell and hit the floor beside her. She crawled to her feet, her ribs bruised, and helped him stagger upright. They leaned against the slanted wall.
“Abandon ship,” Konstantin said. “We have to abandon ship.”
“Already?” Ardis said.
Konstantin’s eyes looked glassy with panic.
“Hydrogen,” he said. “Highly flammable. Technomancy can’t shield us forever.”
“Go to Himmel. Stay with him.”
Konstantin scrambled out the door and ran at a stumbling lope down the crooked corridor. Ardis followed him, watching his back, and detoured to the dining room. She leaned against the windows of the promenade deck.
“Impossible,” Ardis whispered.
A clockwork dragon soared through the air on wings of duralumin. Thousands of scales, each enameled in crimson, glittered along its length. Silvered cloth clung to its scything claws—a tatter torn from the zeppelin’s skin.
The dragon glided away from the Wanderfalke and circled for another attack.
Ardis didn’t wait to see if it breathed fire.
She sprinted from the promenade deck and ran to Wendel’s cabin. Outside the door, Krampus hopped against the wood, pecking and scrabbling with his claws. Ardis shooed the raven away and flung open the door. Wendel curled around a lump of blanket with his back to the door. Krampus flew onto his pillow.
“Wendel!”
Ardis shook his shoulder. He rolled over and squinted at her.
“What?” Wendel said. Sleep and laudanum thickened his voice.
“Get up,” she said. “Now.”
Wendel staggered to his feet. He looked only mildly alarmed.
“What is that terrible noise?” he said.
“The zeppelin. Crashing.”
Ardis grabbed Wendel’s wrist and hauled him out of the cabin. He stumbled behind her, still clumsy, but she didn’t let go.
They ran into the Control Room.
Himmel called out orders to his crew, who scrambled to save the crippled zeppelin even as it plunged from the sky. Konstantin stood by the windows, his palms flat against the glass, frozen in a sea of pandemonium.
Ardis halted on the threshold. Powerless to help.
“Drop the emergency ballast,” Himmel said. “Full astern!”
“Sir!” a man said. “No response from the starboard aft mechanic.”
The navigator glanced from his instruments. “Captain, we can’t do without that engine. We’re losing altitude too fast.”
Himmel’s hands curled into fists. “Stop the engines.”
“Sir?”
“We’re going down, but we won’t go down in flames.”
The engines sputtered and silenced. In the eerie calm, the telegraph operator tapped out a message even Ardis understood.
S-O-S.
Konstantin twisted back to look over his shoulder.
“Himmel!” he said. “I see a lake.”
The captain stared out the window for an instant, then turned on his heel.
“Sixty degrees starboard,” Himmel said. “All ruddermen stay at their stations. Everyone brace for an emergency landing!”
Ardis locked gazes with Wendel. He grabbed her hand. She wasn’t sure if he meant to steady himself or protect her from harm. He looked more lucid than before, though that might have been the gleam of fear in his eyes.
Bristling pines loomed beneath them. Rushing closer.
“Increase altitude!” Himmel said. “We won’t make—”
The zeppelin snagged on a treetop and lurched sideways. The impact knocked Ardis against Wendel. His grip on her fingers was almost crushing. He hooked his arm around her shoulders and held her close.
Ardis clung to him. Praying they would land alive. Every heartbeat an eternity.
After a moment of silence, they hit earth. The zeppelin scraped the ground with a screech of metal on stone. It skidded along the rocks and plowed into the lake. Water absorbed their speed and began to drag them down.
“Abandon ship!” Himmel shouted, his command all but lost in the chaos.
Ardis and Wendel fled the Control Room. She bolted for the stairs, but Wendel pulled her to the promenade deck. Waves lapped at the windows. Ardis realized his plan and hauled open a large window. Water poured inside.
“After you,” Wendel said.
“Can you swim?” Ardis said.
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“Enough.”
Water sloshed around her boots. She climbed through the window and leapt into the lake.
Icy cold hit her like a sledgehammer. Ardis sank underwater, then kicked to the surface. She sucked in air that scraped her throat raw. Now wasn’t the time to tread water. Not when the cold could kill you. She swam toward shore, her lungs on fire, but she could already feel her muscles stiffening and slowing.
Drowning. Hypothermia. Neither sounded like a good way to die.
Ardis clawed her way to the beach and staggered onto the rocks. Her teeth chattering, she searched the lake for survivors.
“Wendel!” she shouted. “Wendel!”
“Ardis.”
She turned and saw Wendel, farther down the shore, wading through the shallows with his hand clamped around Konstantin’s arm. The necromancer towed the archmage out of the lake. Ardis ran to meet them.
“We have to go back,” Konstantin said.
“We can’t,” Wendel said.
“But Himmel. He’s still in the zeppelin.”
“Along with the rest of his crew.”
Konstantin stared at Wendel, his face white, his eyes feverish.
“We can’t stand here and let them die,” Konstantin said.
“If we go back,” Wendel said, “both of us will die.”
Ardis stepped between them. “Wendel is right. We—”
A shadow darkened them. She looked up as the clockwork dragon soared overhead. It swooped over the lake like an eagle hunting a wounded bird. The dragon missed the Wanderfalke, but it circled over the trees.
“Himmel!” Konstantin said.
Ardis reached for him, afraid he would fling himself back into the water. But he pointed to a man clinging on the zeppelin’s gondola. Even from here, they could see his captain’s hat. Himmel’s hands slipped on the steel as he struggled to hold on. But it was only a matter of time before his fingers became too numb.
The clockwork dragon swooped for another attack.
Oil slicked the water. When the dragon shredded the zeppelin’s balloon, it tore deeper and clawed into the duralumin ribs of the airship. The bent metal’s screech was deafened by the whoosh of hydrogen igniting.
In an instant the Wanderfalke was ablaze.
Ardis glimpsed Himmel slip beneath the waves seconds before the oil caught fire. Reflected flames danced in the lake. Gorgeous, in a macabre way. The burning zeppelin sank slowly into the water.
Ardis and Wendel shared a glance. His eyes hardened.
“I’m going back,” he said.
“Wendel!”
Had he lost his sanity to laudanum?
“I don’t feel cold much anymore,” he said. “Remember?”
Wendel kicked off his boots and strode out into the lake. Ardis clenched her hands into fists and followed him. She would be damned if she let him go in there alone. She wasn’t sure he was very good as a hero, anyway.
Ardis swam out to the zeppelin. A rush of intense heat buffeted her. As the zeppelin sank into the lake, water conquered fire in a hiss of steam. She saw no sign of Himmel, but she found a crewman fighting against the undertow created by the sinking airship. Ardis seized him by the arm and helped him swim to shore.
By the time they made it, both of them were shivering uncontrollably.
“Stay out of the wind,” Ardis told the crewman. “Try to keep warm.”
The crewman nodded and
stumbled to the shelter of the trees. Konstantin huddled on the beach, shivering, hugging himself tight.
“I don’t see him,” Konstantin said. “I don’t see anyone.”
Then two men walked from the water, dragging a third man by his arms. When Ardis ran to them, she realized three things.
The walking men were dead. They had been revived by Wendel. And they had rescued Himmel.
But was the captain still alive?
The dead men dropped Himmel on the rocks and walked away stiffly, returning to the lake to fish out more survivors. Ardis knelt by Himmel and pressed against his neck for a pulse, but her fingers felt like icicles.
Faintly, she detected a heartbeat.
“He’s alive,” Ardis said. “Help me move him.”
Konstantin’s face looked blank with shock, but he did as she said. They carried Himmel to the trees and lowered him onto the pine needles. Himmel’s right arm looked mangled, wounded by the airship’s wreckage. Blood trickled from a ragged gash that cut to the bone. Worse, Himmel wasn’t breathing.
“Did the doctor make it?” Ardis said.
“The doctor?” Konstantin stammered. “Yes. I saw her.”
“Go get her.”
Himmel wasn’t losing much blood, which was one advantage of the cold. But Ardis didn’t know how to save him. Konstantin returned with Ursula. The doctor took one look at Himmel and grabbed his good arm.
“Help me roll him over,” Ursula said.
Konstantin obeyed the doctor. Ursula angled Himmel’s head sideways. Water trickled from his open mouth. Himmel choked and started coughing water from his lungs. Konstantin held his head until he could breathe.
“Thank God,” Konstantin said. “You almost went down with your ship.”
Himmel sucked in a rattling breath, tried to speak, and started coughing again.
“Where is Wendel?” Ardis said.
Konstantin shook his head. “He must have come back by now.”
Ardis climbed to her feet, still soaking wet, and trudged through the trees to where the scattered crew huddled. She turned to scan the lake. The crumpled ribs of the zeppelin sank underwater. No sign of Wendel.
Fear clamped around her heart like a hand of ice.
“No,” Ardis said. “Not again.”
She ran to where the waves crashed into mist. A few survivors dragged themselves ashore, and she directed them to the doctor.