Venturess

by Betsy Cornwell

✷

  At first, I hadn’t been able to tell even Fin and Caro about how Jules had taken me to the place where Ashes were made. It felt private, the most horrible kind of intimacy, to have witnessed a painful death like that. I was glad Jules had shown me for his sake, but I wouldn’t share the burden of that knowledge with anyone else, especially not when even I had to admit it would be necessary to use the Ashes in the battle, if it came. Nothing could dissuade Fin from riding into the fight with the rest of us, and I couldn’t have him in any further moral torture over our army and Esting’s while he needed to focus on staying alive.

  I had nightmares, though. One night, a little less than a week into my grueling, all-consuming work with Mother, I woke up screaming.

  I was nestled between Fin and Caro when I woke. They were both sitting up by the time I came to myself, sweating and gasping.

  “Nick, Nick, we’re here,” Caro murmured, stroking my hot forehead.

  Fin’s hand squeezed mine. “Are you all right?”

  “Her eyes,” I whispered, fighting to get my breath back. “Her eyes were rolling . . .”

  “Whose eyes?” Fin asked.

  “It’s just us here, Nick,” Caro reminded me. “No one else. You’re safe here with us.”

  I managed a deep, shuddering breath. “I know,” I sighed out on my exhale. I brought my hand up to touch Caro’s, and I met Fin’s reassuring glance.

  “Whose eyes, Nick?” Fin asked. “Do you want to tell us about it?”

  I shook my head, wishing I could spare them . . . but I knew that it would bring such relief to tell about my dream and the very real nightmare that had inspired it.

  So I put my arms around both of them and pulled them down close to me, and in a shaking whisper I told them where Jules had taken me after I fled from my mother.

  When I got to the part about the soldier’s screams, Fin jumped out of bed and began to pace around the room, raking his hands through his curls until they stood out like a dark halo.

  “Those . . . those villains,” he hissed. “Those utter, utter—” He couldn’t find words strong enough.

  “Yes,” I said quietly.

  “Every one of them an Esting soldier. Every one of them burned alive.” He began to breathe heavily.

  My eyes stung with tears. I pulled Caro closer. “And Jules and the buzzers too. All of them burned, to make them . . .”

  “And your mother,” Caro whispered, shocked.

  I shook my head. “At least with her, it was her own choice.”

  Fin was actually shaking with rage. “And to think we have to—​to take advantage of—” He stopped, and I saw something settle itself into his body, something that made him stand a little taller and straighter, seem a little more assured. “If we must, then we must,” he said. “Esting’s rule in Faerie will be over after that army arrives if it’s my own blood that brings the peace,” he said. “I swear it. I swear it.”

  I believed him.

  “All right, Fin,” Caro said. “But we all have to sleep awhile first. This was Nick’s nightmare, not yours. Come back to bed, because it’s over now.”

  But all three of us knew it was not.

  Still, Fin returned to the bed, and we lay on our sides and held one another, Caro behind me, Fin in front. With the familiar reassurance of their bodies around me, I began to drift back into a sleep that I felt sure, this time, would be dreamless.

  When I woke in the morning, I was equally sure that Fin had stayed awake all night.

  ✷

  I was so bone-tiringly busy that the days flowed together into one endless stream of work and exhausted sleep. Eventually even my nightmares were welcome, because when they startled me awake I had a few moments to appreciate the sleepy intimacy I shared with Caro and Fin. On the nights I didn’t wake, I hardly even noticed that we were together.

  The idea that our time might be limited indeed, that the coming battle might part us with no possibility for reunion . . . it was too terrible to contemplate, so I didn’t. Caro and I had fulfilled our vow to keep Fin safe so far, and if I wanted to maintain any sanity at all, I had to believe that we would continue to do so.

  On the day that one of the lookouts announced a group of dark and bulky Estinger ships on the horizon, I knew we were well prepared. With the help of our many new apprentices, we had built a metal menagerie of warfare that I truly believed no foot soldiers, not even Ashes-powered automatons, could stand against. We knew from the position of the ships that they would cross the shore at the beach where Jules had crashed after his first flight. I was sure we had every advantage possible. If all Fin and Talis’s negotiations couldn’t win Faerie’s freedom, the cavalry my mother and I had made would win it with steel and glass and smoke.

  We were ready for war.

  A DOZEN airships on the horizon, each of them many times larger than the Imperator. Lurking like black holes above the ocean.

  I stood on top of the barracks wall, watching them move slowly closer. Fin, Caro, Talis, and my mother stood with me. Ombrossus oil burned in shallow bowls all around us, concealing our presence and drenching the air with its spicy scent.

  Jules soared up from the ground and hovered just above the tree line. He was watching the far-off airships too.

  He touched down on the wall next to me and nibbled my shoulder in greeting. I stroked his cheek.

  The new wings I had built for Jules were magnificent; even then I couldn’t help admiring them. Constructed from an ultra-lightweight, translucent alloy that Mother had shown me and that was found only here in Faerie, they stretched out more than thirty feet on either side of his body. They were modeled on bats’ wings rather than birds’, which eliminated the need for cumbersome layers of feathers and also seemed somehow more natural on Jules’s mammalian body.

  With these new wings, he could carry two riders hundreds of feet in the air as easily as if he bore no burden at all.

  My mother didn’t move when Jules touched down on the wall, but I heard her furnace rumble, and some of the gears inside her whirred as they sped up. Jules seemed to ignore her entirely. I was surprised she’d helped me with his wings at all, though she’d been building bats’ wings for years before we arrived. She’d even shared her blueprints—​although she couldn’t bring herself to talk to me when she did so.

  She didn’t tell me much of anything, really. We no longer spoke unless we needed to confer on some design. It was almost as if I were working with another machine, not a woman.

  Fin had wanted to go alone to meet the approaching Estinger forces, but neither Caro nor I would hear of it. Caro couldn’t bear to go into the fight at all, though; if a battle ensued, she planned to spend it assisting the Fey healers who would wait at the barracks to treat any wounded who were brought to them. This was one custom the Fey had never abandoned, no matter how atrocious their treatment at Estingers’ hands had become: Anyone who suffered was welcome in their healers’ halls.

  I wondered if that was because of Shim and the Estinger prince.

  The fact that the Estingers kept alive some injured soldiers who would likely be burned for Ashes later when they returned to their own troops didn’t bear thinking of.

  “It’s time,” Fin said quietly.

  The airships were close enough that I could just make out the spiny individual sails.

  Talis looked at Fin a little fearfully. The peace treaty fe and Fin had brokered was a strong one, but I could tell Talis believed this would only end in violence. Secretly, I thought I might agree, but I was determined to give Fin his chance to be the diplomatic hero.

  “Right,” I said. I placed one foot in a stirrup and pulled myself onto Jules. Fin came after, riding in front of me this time; the Estingers needed to see him first.

  Jules lifted from the wall, taking to the air as lightly as a dandelion seed.

  I glanced back to see Caro, not letting myself think that it was “one last time.” She was going down to join the healers as soon as we took off, but
when I looked, she was still watching us. She gave me a small wave and a smile that I’m sure she meant to be encouraging.

  I couldn’t bear it. I looked ahead again, over Fin’s shoulder at the bright sky. I tightened my arms around his waist, and he released one of Jules’s handles so he could touch my wrist.

  We came to the beach in no time, and as the landscape underneath us changed from green forest to blue sand, Jules rose higher still, up and up until the air grew thin and cool around us, a sweet relief after the muggy jungle heat.

  We sailed over the ocean, on toward the ships. I felt a leaden weight settle in my stomach as we approached them, so heavy that it seemed hard to believe Jules could still fly.

  I marveled at the airships’ bulk and power, at the low predatory roar of the huge fires below the balloons. I could not quite call them beautiful, and they filled me with a sick, cold fear . . . but the inventor in me knew they were wonders.

  Jules jerked and swooped. A hissing streak of a bullet only just missed us.

  We dropped twenty feet in the next moment, dodging another. Jules’s head strained forward, watching the lead ship, and we were close enough that I could see one dark-clad figure on the top deck holding a rifle. He reloaded and settled the butt of the gun against his shoulder.

  “Hold on,” Jules rumbled, gaining speed.

  He reared, spreading his wings and pulling us vertical and, for a dizzying moment, upside down as he avoided the next volley of shots. I saw the rifleman suspended from the airship by his feet and an endless line of waves above my head. But Jules wheeled so quickly through the air that Fin and I were pressed against the saddle, the force of Jules’s motion propelling us upward against gravity.

  I understood all that, but I was grateful beyond words when he righted himself again.

  We soared to the leading ship. Another crew member had joined the rifleman on the deck, and I wondered why there weren’t more of them. But the ships were so huge and bulky, and I knew what the weight of the automaton army below their decks must be. They had to keep the automatons sleeping for the voyage to avoid wasting fuel, of course . . . and only enough human crew as was needed to supervise the voyage and wake the metal soldiers when the time came.

  Well, two marksmen were easier to avoid than a dozen. Only the lead airship was in range, at least for rifles.

  I couldn’t think about the possibility of cannons.

  At the prow of the ship I saw a Brethren cleric, muttering to himself and waving incense. I shouldn’t have been able to see the smoke from here, but I could: It rose thick and dark green through the clear Faerie air. In the heart of the cloud of smoke something bright flickered once, then again. The cloud grew slowly, in sudden starts and thumps, like a weak heartbeat. The brightness came back and showed itself for what it was: nascent lightning.

  My own heartbeat thrummed. I knew that dark cloud, that lightning. That storm. I knew at once what the Brother on board the Imperator had been doing when we had approached Faerie, knew who had doomed the ship. Who had killed Wheelock and the crew and left the rest of us for dead.

  The Brethren had controlled that storm, and this one, too. At Fitz’s bidding, no doubt, or even the king’s . . .

  “Fin, the storm,” I said into his ear, over the wind. “Be careful . . . ”

  He just nodded and urged Jules closer. He pulled a metal tube out of the leather holster on his belt and, urging Jules still farther ahead, he tossed it toward the ship’s deck. My own design propelled it forward, and it landed perfectly, rolling to a stop at the second marksman’s feet.

  He jumped away from it as he would have from a grenade. When the tube opened with only a gentle pop, revealing a bit of paper, the two men looked at each other.

  The one who had jumped away walked cautiously forward. The first kept his rifle trained on us.

  The paper identified Fin in his own writing, and it guaranteed his peaceful purpose. He had signed it, as well, with some code word he’d been taught as a way to confirm the absence of Fey interference, although he couldn’t tell even me or Caro what it was.

  The second marksman scanned the paper and looked quickly back up at us; we drew close enough that I could see him squint.

  With a start, I recognized him. The sharp eyes, the handsome creamy-pale face, the auburn hair. Fitzwilliam Covington, commanding his automaton army after all.

  He spoke to the other man on deck, but the roar of the fires drowned out his words.

  Both men set their guns down on the ground. Fitz beckoned us forward.

  Jules approached so cautiously that it almost felt as if we were walking rather than flying. His hooves touched down lightly, and he kept his wings extended so that Fin and I could not dismount.

  “Your Highness,” Fitz said, bowing low. “I cannot tell you how deeply moved I am to see you alive. We attended the funerals just before our departure.”

  The plural of funeral was his only acknowledgment of me; he never even broke eye contact with Fin to look my way.

  “You’ve read our treaty,” Fin said flatly. “We know why you’ve come. Will you turn back now and bring the news to Esting that there will be no more killing here?”

  Fitz frowned. “Such news would hardly be well received,” he said. “I’m afraid your deaths stirred the whole country into bloodlust.”

  I stood up in Jules’s stirrups. “Then our lives will bring them back to peace,” I said.

  Fitz looked up at me at last. “Not your death, Miss Nick,” he said. “Although I realize it must come as a shock to you that you’re not actually very important.” He spoke that line with such satisfaction, I realized he’d been wanting to say it for a long time. I opened my mouth to insult him in turn, but his next words stopped me cold.

  “I meant the Heir’s death, and the king’s.”

  Fin shrank back against my chest. I felt him starting to slump, and I wrapped my arms more tightly around him. “I’m here, Fin,” I whispered, very low, in his ear. “I’m here.” But there was one word running through my mind: orphan. I’d had an intimate knowledge of that term for years; being an orphan had shaped my life as much as being an inventor had, and Fin’s parentage had shaped every facet of his.

  But since we’d come to Faerie, I’d found my mother again, and Fin was the orphan now.

  I couldn’t see his face, but I saw the smirk on Fitz’s as he delivered the news. I hated him more in that moment than I’d ever hated the Steps.

  “When he heard you’d died, Fin, he just . . . stopped. Like a piece of bad clockwork. The doctors said it was his heart. The country is united now, Fin—​your deaths did for them what all your fiery speeches and high ideals could not.” Fitz walked toward us, stopping just outside of Jules’s wingspan. “The Fey are terrorists and savages. Doesn’t their having killed both your parents prove that to you?”

  Fin shivered, but I could feel him getting his strength back. He sat up straighter. “They didn’t,” he said. He looked back at me. “It’s time to go.”

  I looked at the cleric again. His incense-storm, about the size of Jules now, had stopped growing, and he’d stopped muttering; he watched Fitz, waiting for orders.

  As Jules gave a great flap of his translucent wings and hauled us back into the air, I pulled the longest wrench from my ever-present tool belt and hurled it at the cleric. Fin was right: There would be no negotiation here.

  I didn’t have time to see if my aim was true. As we rose farther into the air, Fitz grabbed the rifle he’d placed on the deck and took aim at us.

  Jules reacted before I could, diving down and out of range, flying right under the belly of the airship.

  Those cannons that didn’t bear thinking of earlier began to fire from the side of the lead ship as we came out from under it, but we were infinitely smaller and Jules infinitely faster and more agile than the airship, and he dodged out of the cannonballs’ trajectories with ease.

  “We tried,” I called to Fin over the wind and the fiery roar, leaning f
orward against his shoulder to make sure he heard me.

  He nodded grimly.

  The other ships were approaching fast. There were shockingly few crew members on their huge decks too, and I shuddered to think of the masses of soldiers lurking below, thousands in every hull.

  Jules flew us back to Faerie so fast that each beat of his wings stole the breath from my lungs.

  The roar of the airships receded behind us into silence. We were high up in the cool air, but I began to sweat.

  ✷

  When we returned to the barracks, only Talis and a few of the highest-ranking Fey officers remained; my mother’s and my menagerie was already gone, and the Fey soldiers with them. Talis had told us that they’d come together from all over the vast continent for this final defense. I looked around at the empty camp that had been so crowded mere days before, and it felt like looking at a graveyard.

  Fin made his brief report to Talis, who only nodded, listening silently. But that quiet gentleness that I’d seen in fer when we first met slowly diminished as Fin spoke, like a candle dimming as the last of the wick burns up.

  Fin wouldn’t even dismount. I could tell he thought Jules and I might abandon him here for his own safety if he did, and it wasn’t as if the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.

  I was afraid Jules would leave me behind if I dismounted. He protected my safety as fiercely as I protected Fin’s.

  So we both stayed astride, and after our few moments with Talis, we went to join the ranks.

  Jules galloped along the uneven ground, his wings tucked into neat folded shields at our sides as he ran. We had to stay below the tree line to avoid the airships’ lookouts spotting us. As always, Jules seemed to know exactly where to go, and we needed only to ride.

  We had received helmets, breastplates, and arm guards made from some kind of plant fiber intricately woven into a scaly armor; the Fey soldiers and my mother had both assured us it was as strong as any metal, but lighter and more flexible. The same material had gone into many of our new cavalry’s designs as well. The armor’s gentle pressure on my head, chest, and arms didn’t feel like much protection, but it didn’t chafe against my nearly healed burns and distract me either.