Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  “I assure you, I cannot,” Salvator said.

  “You assure me?” Radu stood up sharply and tugged his dress jacket down smartly over his chest. “Who are you to assure me? You are no councilor of mine, no trusted advisor to the imperial court. You serve my enemies!” He slammed his fist down on the corner of the desk as he circled it to stand beside the other men.

  Salvator frowned.

  This has gone on long enough.

  “Yes, I suppose I do serve your enemies, Highness.” Salvator’s hand shot out and ripped the seireiken from the green-robed monk’s sash. The scabbard flew off the blade and clattered against the wall as the sun-steel sword bathed the room in a warm golden light. Ripples of heat danced around the edges of the blade.

  The seireiken was heavier and shorter than his rapier, and the knowledge that even touching the flat of the blade was deadly did nothing to soothe Salvator’s peace of mind. But still, it was a weapon, and a terrifying one at that.

  Suddenly everyone in the room was quite still and silent, and every eye was fixed on the shining sword. Salvator swung the tip of the blade casually past Iruka’s face, passing just before his eyes, and then he pointed the bright sword at the sweating prince. “Highness, I could kill you and everyone in this room before you could cry out for your guards. I could imprison your souls in this hideous sword and leave you trapped in there for all eternity, and I could slaughter my way out of this palace and sail back to my beloved Rome, where I will live out my days, never giving any of you a second thought.”

  Radu wet his lips. “Fabris…”

  “But I’m not going to do that,” the Italian said. “With you dead, no one would free poor Koschei and his mother would drive everyone mad, but sooner or later your emperor would send someone else to command the siege and this war would go on, and on. And if I was very unlucky, I might even be caught in this aether storm of insanity myself.”

  “I see,” said the prince, his eyes never leaving the golden shimmer of the sword. “So when words fail, you resort to violence like any other man, Fabris?”

  Salvator smiled. “I didn’t become the Supreme Knight of the Order of Seven Hearts without a certain flair for violence, Highness.”

  “Very well, then. I accept your terms. Koschei goes free, immediately.”

  Salvator nodded and lowered the sword as he backed away toward the window. “Excellent. You won’t mind if I just oversee the orders and make sure all is in order before I return this little trinket of yours, would you?”

  The bullwhip crack of a pistol shot rang out.

  Salvator grimaced as the searing pain began to radiate out from his belly. He saw the trail of smoke rising from inside Iruka’s right sleeve. The monk’s hand glided out with a tiny Numidian gun clutched in his hairy fingers.

  “Damn you.” Salvator dropped the seireiken as he leaned heavily against the wall and pressed his hand to his stomach and felt the warm blood staining his shirt. He glanced down at his bloody hand and then looked up at the prince. “I despise guns.”

  And he fell to the floor.

  Chapter 12

  Tycho sat on a cold, wet stone beneath the Galata Bridge and stared out across the dark waters of the Bosporus. On his right he could follow the outer walls of the Palace of Constantine out to the Seraglio Point, and from there it was a short distance to the three ironclad warships sitting in the middle of the Strait.

  A young man called Lycus clambered down from the upper road and crouched beside the major. “Sir, the sun’s down. It’s getting pretty dark out there. And it looks like the storm around the tower is getting bigger.”

  Tycho nodded and checked his revolver one last time. “All right then. It looks like Salvator didn’t get anywhere with the Turks after all, so it’s down to us.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll get through them just fine.” The youth grinned and ran his hand over his shaved head.

  All of the marines had recently shaved their heads, and at that moment Tycho couldn’t remember why.

  They were probably drunk.

  Nearly one hundred of the lightly clothed youths stood in the shadows under the bridge with their dozens of little boats bobbing in the shallows. They wore no uniforms, no boots, and no armor, but every last one them had two knives and a Mazigh revolver, and they knew how to use them.

  Tycho stood up. “Let’s get moving. You all have you orders.”

  The marines flashed cruel and eager grins as they headed down to the water, climbed into their boats, and slipped silently out into the river.

  Tycho sat in the bow of his dory and two young men rowed him out into the center of the channel where the Hellan destroyers sat at anchor, protecting the Galata Bridge. When the dory came alongside the Herakles, a sailor at the rail lowered a knotted rope. Tycho grabbed the line and was lifted up to the deck of the warship, and then he hurried to the bridge to tell the captain that it was time to begin.

  The shadows of the palace walls blanketed the channel, masking the rippling waters and the dozens of tiny boats quietly rowing down the river toward the Strait and the three Furies. The Herakles and two of its escorts rumbled to life and pale columns of steam rose from their engines. Tycho stood in the corner of the bridge, watching the sailors go about their business, shouting orders down to the engine room and pulling levers and spinning wheels. The Hellan destroyers shuddered as their screws bit into the cold waters and the ships crept forward.

  “Lights,” Tycho said.

  “Ensign, lights,” the captain said.

  “Lights, aye.” The young officer began flicking switches and a dozen huge electric lamps snapped and buzzed on the bow, throwing a hideous white glare out over the water, aimed upward away from the tiny dories and the marines rowing silently in the dark.

  Tycho paced quietly over to the chart table where the captain was frowning at the depth markings. “You don’t look very confident, captain.”

  “We need more ships for this,” the older man muttered.

  “I agree, but we don’t have more ships to risk.”

  “We shouldn’t be risking any ships like this, not for a single man.”

  Tycho nodded. “We’re not doing this for a single man. You really think I would risk my precious marines for Koschei? No. We’re doing this to save the entire city.”

  “You said that before. But from what exactly?”

  Tycho glanced out the dark windows, over the walls of the palace, to the slender spire wrapped in white storm winds. “From that.”

  The aether maelstrom had doubled since he last saw it, growing wider and taller, and now as he stared at it Tycho could see slender ribbons of white mist streaming out from the storm over the city and over the Strait.

  “We don’t have much time.”

  As the Hellan ships accelerated down the channel toward the Furies, Tycho lingered by the window and peered into the storm, searching for the outline of the Tower of Justice.

  That poor girl. All alone in there. I can’t believe I just left her there. I should have… done something. Gone back. Gotten her out.

  Something.

  Tycho turned back to the captain. “What hope do we have of actually damaging those warships?”

  The captain glanced up from the map table. “None.”

  “Don’t spare my feelings, sir, I can handle the truth.” Tycho forced a grin. “What if we angle the guns up at the command deck instead of down at the hull?”

  “We’ll kill a few officers while their guns shatter our hulls and destroy our engines.”

  Tycho sighed. “Ah, the soldier’s life for me.”

  The captain strode past him, saying, “You’re a sailor tonight, Xenakis.”

  The Herakles and her escorts bore down on the Furies, and now Tycho could see the lights shifting on the decks of the Eranian ironclads. The three warships were turning to meet their attackers, their electric lights flickering and blinking in the darkness as the Turks ran back and forth across the decks to their battle stations.r />
  “We’ll bear northeast and draw their fire in that direction,” the captain said. “With any luck, they won’t notice your boys coming up out of the water until it’s too late.”

  Tycho nodded.

  With any luck. If we had luck, we wouldn’t have needed Vlad, or Koschei, and we wouldn’t be sacrificing three ships and a thousand good men to stop a witch from driving us all insane. No, we won’t have any luck tonight.

  The Hellan destroyers swept to the northeast and the guns began to fire. A soft boom here, a distant crack there. And then a few more. And more, a little faster. As the enemy ships came together, they came within range of the enemy guns one by one, and one by one they opened fire.

  Shells exploded in the water, hurling tall white spouts of spray into the air.

  That one was damn close.

  Tycho moved away from the windows.

  I’m only in the way here. I shouldn’t be here at all. I should be in the palace, protecting the Duchess. I should be trying to help Wren…

  A shell struck the hull of the Herakles and the whole ship shuddered for a moment. Men were shouting and screaming outside. The captain calmly issued orders, and the bridge crew calmly obeyed them. Engines at one quarter, all guns fire at will, fire team to the armory, medics to the armory.

  Tycho watched the mechanical precision and stoic demeanor of the sailors around him, wondering if there had ever been a field of battle on dry land like this one.

  Rifles began crackling and popping as the men on deck fired at each other across the water. The Hellan ships were spread out in a long line, cruising slowly past the Eranians with their hissing electric flood lamps glaring up at the enemy decks.

  Directly ahead of the Herakles, the lead Hellan escort ship’s engines exploded in a rolling firestorm that flew up into the sky and painted the rippling waters in yellow and red. Bodies were thrown in every direction and the survivors dove over the railings into the freezing Bosporus.

  Tycho shoved a sweating hand back through his hair and tried to slow the pounding of his heart.

  You never see the shot that kills you. It just kills you, and that’s it.

  He swallowed and went to the rear door of the bridge, exchanged a grim nod with the captain, and headed below.

  Another shell struck the Herakles and Tycho clung to the handrails and walls to keep his balance at the ship groaned and shivered around him. A sailor scrambled past him and Tycho called out, “Where are the wounded?”

  “Aft!” and the sailor was gone.

  Frowning, Tycho headed aft, and down another deck, and aft again until he found the fire team throwing buckets of water on the smoldering decks and hacking at the smoking walls with their axes. One of the men pointed Tycho down the narrow corridor and he hurried to the far side of the ship where he found nine burned and bloodied men lying on the floor with two very young and very nervous medics trying to bandage them up.

  “Major Xenakis, sir!” One of the medics bolted up.

  Tycho waved him back to work. “Give me those bandages, and find some more blankets.” He knelt down beside one of the injured men.

  “Sir, is there something you need?” the medic asked.

  “No.” Tycho began wrapping up a bloody leg. “I just need to be busy right now.”

  They’re out there, right now. My marines. My boys. If not for me, they’d probably be sleeping in some barracks right now, safe and sound. But I had to open my big mouth, and well, here they are.

  The Herakles shook and from down the long corridors the voices of the sailors and the keening of the bulkheads echoed thunderously.

  I had to show off my damn gun. I had to be so smart.

  He recalled his tirade to Salvator, which had caught the Duchess’s attention from the far end of the Chamber of Petitions.

  Why fight a powerful ship when all you need is to disable the crew? Why pit man against man when a gun will kill the enemy at a distance? We don’t need to be strong, we need to be fast and silent and precise.

  One thing had led to another, and within three months he had founded a whole new force of young marines, all trained in gunplay and knife throwing, all trained to swarm a ship silently from fragile little dories wearing nothing more than rags.

  They must be on the Eranian ship by now.

  Tycho tried to focus on his bandaging.

  They’re dying right now. Some of them are dying. And it’s because I put them there.

  He finished with his patient and moved on to the next one.

  It’s awfully quiet out there right now. Maybe they’re doing well. Maybe they’ve found Koschei. Maybe this stupid plan will work out after all.

  “Good God, sir, what’s that?!”

  Tycho looked up and saw a pale shape snaking its way along the deck. “Aether! It’s the aether, it’s here. Get the men up, get them out of here!” He jumped to his feet and began yanking at the injured man in front of him as the two medics grabbed the arms and legs of another man and fumbled him down the hall, heading farther aft.

  Tycho pulled and pulled, but he could only shift the wounded sailor a few steps and the curling, writhing tendril of white mist was flowing closer and closer to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he dropped the sailor. He stumbled backward the first few paces, keeping his eyes on the mist. Then he heard the screams.

  Men were screaming in the distance, their voices echoing across the waters and in the narrow steel canyons between the ships’ hulls. There were no words, no cries for help, no names, no pleas. Just wordless shrieks of pain and terror.

  Tycho turned and ran back down the hall. At the end of the corridor was a locked door and he pounded on it, yelling, “Let me in! Let me in!”

  But the door remained shut, and there was no sound of anyone on the other side.

  The entire hull of the Herakles shuddered and groaned as the ship began to list to starboard, and the growling and crackling sounds of fire echoed in the distance while yellow and red lights danced on the walls.

  And along the floor of the corridor, the thin fingers of the aether mist crept toward him.

  Tycho pulled out his revolver and glanced around at the walls, but there was only one target. He flattened himself against the inner bulkhead, aimed, and fired.

  The first bullet shattered the window, and the next four shots smashed away the bits of the frame and small chunks of the wall, splintering the wooden panels and revealing a few ragged glimpses of the black night outside.

  Tycho holstered his gun with one bullet still in the chamber, climbed up onto the handrail, and began kicking at the window frame. It creaked and cracked, and then suddenly burst apart and a piece of the wall disappeared out into the darkness. The resulting hole was not large, barely larger than the window had been, but it would do.

  The small major scrambled up into the jagged gap, stabbing and cutting his hands on the broken boards. For a moment his jacket snagged, and he was caught half in and half out of the ship, dangling high above the black waves. He stared down into the darkness, gasping for breath.

  I am an idiot.

  The wood crackled and snapped and the man tumbled out of the ship just as the aether clouds slithered over his boots. He spun sideways and smashed down into the water shoulder first. The freezing Bosporus stabbed him in the ear and shocked his heart and clawed at his warm skin. He opened his mouth to gasp and choked on the cold brine rushing into his mouth and nose.

  Everything was dark and icy and churning with bubbles and surging with liquid force, tumbling him head over heels. Tycho kicked and pulled and swept his arms back and forth, squinting into the dark for some hint of where to go. He glimpsed a flash of fire and swam toward it, and his head broke the surface. The night air felt warm in his mouth, but the breeze slashed through his wet hair and skin like an icicle.

  “Help!” Another mouthful of water stung his tongue and he gurgled and spat as he struggled to breathe. “Help! Anyone!”

  “Sir?”

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sp; Tycho twisted around and saw two of the little dories just a stone’s throw away, each with a handful of young marines aboard. “Lycus?”

  “Major!”

  One of the boats paddled near and several hands reached down and hauled Tycho up and out of the water. He slumped down to the bottom of the dory clutching his chest. The cold had cut him deeply, well under the skin and into the muscle and had begun to scratch at his bones.

  Another minute in that water and I’d be dead.

  “Sir, what do we do?”

  Tycho sat up, shivering, and looked at the three scared young faces leaning over him. The other boat was coming alongside them now with four more marines, some clutching bleeding or burnt wounds. Out across the water, the Herakles was leaning dangerously to starboard and most of it was blanketed in white mist. What few parts of the ship remained dry were on fire, and from somewhere within her hull there were voices screaming.

  Farther out, Tycho could see the remains of the lead Hellan ship smoking as it sank beneath the waves. The three Furies remained intact, all three still at anchor and none on fire, but none of the Turks were firing now. Their guns were silent and their lights pointed out at every angle at nothing in particular, illuminating empty patches of the Strait or burning flotsam.

  “They’re not shooting at us,” Lycus said softly. “Why aren’t they shooting?”

  “Listen.” Tycho nodded at the Furies.

  And over the roar of the flames and the growl of the engines and the slosh of the waves, they heard the distant screams of the Turks.

  “We have to get away from this mist.” Tycho pointed the marines to the oars, and they began turning the dories. “Get to the north side of the channel, fast as you can. And don’t worry about making any noise. I don’t think anyone is listening for us anymore.”

  The young men set to rowing and the burning ships began to recede into the darkness as the aether continued to billow out from the palace, swallowing up the city and the waters a bit more with each passing moment.