Escapement

by Jay Lake

  “I have no fan, sir,” Childress said.

  “Indeed. You are not Chinese, you are of no known nobility, you are perhaps not even human according to the strictures of the Celestial Empire. Admiral Shang, who understands much about the judgments of the color of skin and eye, proposes that we consider the elaborate courtesies to have been rendered. He is even so gracious as to yield the point to you.”

  Childress swallowed a laugh. “Since such yielding is, after all, wasted on an old woman from the English lands.”

  “Do not underestimate the power of old women in China,” Leung told her, an intense expression on this face. “And as that may be, do you accept Admiral Shang’s proposal of courtesies dispensed with?”

  “Of course.” Childress bowed to the admiral. “And convey to him my admiration for his subtle observation of the forms of civilized discourse.”

  Some expression flickered on Leung’s face that might have been the ghost of laughter. Then he spoke again.

  When the admiral answered, Leung froze. The admiral then spoke directly to Childress, in thickly accented but clear English. “Where is the Ma sue ka Pu Yin Sar?”

  TWELVE

  PAOLINA

  Time passed with a slowness that Paolina found excruciating. She toyed with crazed plans once more, bringing down the other airships or somehow reaching out to the city of Marseilles with the power of her gleam. Revenge seemed pointless, even in the privacy of her imagination. All men followed their courses surely as the earth did. To expect Captain Sayeed to relent in his decision to confine her aboard ship was no more sensible than to expect night to fail in coming after day.

  Despite her wounded pride and overwhelming boredom, night did follow day, and day came again. By six bells of the second dogwatch, as the curious Naval method of timekeeping had been explained to her, the crew was aboard. Paolina watched from atop a rope locker while the first mate mustered the divisions for a head count.

  The captain seemed surprised to have all his men back. She could understand that. They’d just come off a cruise down the Atlantic to the Wall and back, with no company but one another and hostile Chinese airships. The wine and . . . other amusements . . . in port must be irresistible. She’d heard enough English grumbling about the unreliable, incompetent French to understand why the British tars would come back aboard, but the Continental Europeans among the crew were another matter.

  They cast off into the chilling air of an October dusk. As Notus gained altitude, all Paolina could see were clouds and more clouds, parting to show the brass orbital threads of Luna and Earth and distant Venus.

  The lights of Marseilles fell away behind the ship. First the pulsing glow of the central city, as if a furnace powered the metropolis, then the glimmering knots of neighborhoods and outlying villages until there was only the dark countryside below with the occasional light of a shepherd’s camp.

  There were more people in Marseilles than Paolina had ever thought to exist in the world. Logically the world was capable of containing billions, so long as they had enough to eat and places to sleep. But she’d assumed that cities would be larger versions of Praia Nova, much as Karindira’s stone town had been. Even Ophir, for all the proud history proclaimed by Boaz, had still been comprehensible to her.

  The teeming sprawl of Marseilles was another matter entirely. Even from the air she’d smelled more human beings than she’d ever have known the existence of. She tried to calculate the mileage of all the streets in the city, but gave up when she realized that a thousand miles of pavement would not encompass half of what she could see.

  Europeans bred like rabbits in a meadow. The only reason they had not overwhelmed a Muralha was sheer distance. Someday this flood of people would lap at the foot of the Wall, then begin to climb. Praia Nova, Ophir, and every village, tribe, and hypogeal monster between the Atlantic surf and the brass track in the frigid air high above would be at risk.

  That thought depressed her, immensely.

  They sailed almost due north that night, which seemed odd, given Paolina’s limited understanding of European geography. She would have expected a more easterly curse. She continued in her strange version of solitary confinement. If she moved about the deck, men sidled away from her. The only exception was if she approached the poop where the officers stood. Invariably some large airman would block her way, looking overboard or aft, anywhere but at her.

  She wound up in the bow, watching clouds lit by starshine. Paolina did not need to speak to Captain Sayeed, or Bucknell, or anyone else aboard this accursed ship. They were all men, with the same universal delusions of ownership and importance.

  As the night wore on, she found herself wishing she had reached some accommodation with life in Praia Nova. At least there she’d understood what the fidalgos were about. These Englishmen of sail and sky seemed more alien than the enkidus or the Brass.

  Eventually light stole into the eastern sky. The bright traceries of the outer planets vanished first, taking the slighter lamps of the stars with them. Somewhere during that slowly fading display Paolina realized the strange clouds she’d been watching to the east were in fact mountains. Their white shoulders thrust into the airship’s wide sky.

  East of north would have taken Notus right into those peaks deep in the night. While she had no doubt that Captain Sayeed would fly his ship over a Muralha if he felt compelled to do that, she also acknowledged him as a very prudent man.

  In some matters, at least.

  Sunlight had not made the climb over the eastern mountains, but dawn’s brightening lent depth and color to the last of night’s shadow play. There were towns below, not large enough to have had electricks against the darkness, where roof tiles glistened with morning dewfall.

  It was also cold up here; colder than she’d been before on this voyage. Or really, colder than she’d ever been in her life. Paolina realized she was shivering. Her teeth clicked, and her body seemed oddly numb.

  She’d avoided the sailors just as they’d avoided her, but this was too much. She crept to the forecastle and slipped through the hatch to her little cabin. Though she’d slept on deck through most of their African travels, Europe was too cold and damp. Belowdecks there were blankets, and no wind.

  She finally fell asleep.

  “We’s over Strasbourg,” Bucknell said, waking her as he leaned through the door without actually setting foot within. He looked sullen, and had a dreadful black eye.

  Paolina didn’t ask. She didn’t want to ask. That would presume she cared for Bucknell and his fate. He was just another Englishman.

  “Am I to come on deck?”

  “Wouldn’t rightly know, ma’am, seein’ as I’m a stunted lackbrain.” He spat on the deck. “Captain might see it amiss if you did not, though.”

  “Thank you,” she said, almost reflexively. Then, on impulse: “Bucknell, I apologize. My difficulties are not your doing, and it was unfair of me to strike at you as if they were.”

  One hand strayed gingerly to his eye. “ ‘T’ were Gunny Rosskamp what struck at me, ma’am. You only did give me the sharp side of your tongue.”

  “Well, I am sorry for that as well.”

  Maybe sleep had dulled her edge, or the notion of arriving at a destination so far from the Wall. Whatever Sayeed’s machinations, the Schwilgué Clock was here. It counted the unwinding of the heart of destiny, if half of what he’d said about the magnificent thing was true.

  She was bound for where she’d set out to be—in the company of wizards, in the presence of great and powerful things beyond what she might ever have found upon the Wall.

  Paolina gathered her handful of belongings and stepped into the companionway. Bucknell slouched ahead, leading her back to the main deck as if she’d never found her way there on her own before.

  Notus was passing low over a city of spires and thick-walled buildings with red roofs. A cathedral with a single tower dominated a central square, while a complex of large buildings huddled a few blocks away al
ong tree-lined streets. A smaller river met a larger here, and the city was surrounded by the richest, greenest hills she had seen since the jungles at the foot of a Muralha. There was a certain twisty charm clear even from the air. The brawling ruckus that had afflicted Marseilles seemed to have passed Strasbourg by. This pretty little city seemed made for the dreams of artists.

  There were two masts at the edge of town in the middle of a fenced-off field where sheep grazed. The little base wasn’t much—some small buildings of a bunkered, windowless appearance, two large fuel tanks, and a handful of men in dark hats gawping up at the approaching Notus.

  The group of watchers reminded her of the people of Praia Nova, how the fidalgos would stare openmouthed at anything that wasn’t part of their everyday lives.

  The Silent Order and the Schwilgué Clock; that was what she was here for. The elusive wizards who’d built an empire spanning half the Northern Earth could show her secrets. They would guide her on the road she’d long since tired of building for herself. It didn’t matter what Sayeed thought he was doing—she was here.

  Paolina wrapped her arms tight against the morning chill and smiled as Notus’ motors forced the airship downward. The sailors shouted in short, loud codes and cast lines over the rail to secure their arrival.

  “I am Karol Lachance,” said a gangly Frenchman in black canvas pants, a white linen shirt, and a black leather vest. He wore a small-billed cap over an apparently bald head, with black eyes and a beak of a nose. Paolina couldn’t tell Lachance’s age, save that he was of middle years.

  She and Sayeed had just climbed down the ladder within the mooring mast, and stood in a damp field, which smelled of morning dew and cowpats. The captain shifted uncomfortably. “Where is the Royal Navy station commander?”

  Lachance shrugged. “Leftenant Charles was called to Stuttgart two days past. He took his chief with him.” His accent was obvious now, different from anything Paolina had heard before.

  Captain Sayeed shook his head. “He left a civilian in command?”

  This time a slow, sharp smile dawned. “I am the Strasbourg harbormaster. This facility belongs to the city, under my care. Your Royal Navy leases it, but this is my field, Captain. And we had no indication you might be coming. Notus, she is not on the lists.”

  Sayeed made a complicated hand sign, to which Lachance did not respond. Paolina wondered if this were her opportunity to break away from Sayeed. She then wondered why she would want to do so. Better to stay with him to the Silent Order. Though she supposed she could find the Schwilgué Clock on her own. A cathedral could not be so hard to locate, after all.

  “I must go into the city,” the captain said. Paolina assumed he’d considered and rejected several stronger responses.

  “Out the gate, to your left,” Lachance replied with that same sharp smile.

  After a graceless moment, Sayeed walked across the field along a gravel track and past a cart with two harnessed horses. Paolina trailed behind him until they reached the gate and were out on a wider road.

  “Your diplomatic skills do you credit, Captain,” she said.

  He ignored the sarcasm. “This is not right.”

  “A disaster afoot?”

  “No, no. Just poor standards. I might have expected such laxity in some distant port, but not here so close to London.”

  “They seemed competent enough to me.”

  Sayeed favored her with a glare. “Lachance does not follow protocol. Neither did the absent Leftenant Charles. Absent good Naval discipline, we are nothing.”

  “You are men. I am but a woman, and would not know of such things.”

  After a while Lachance passed them in his wagon. He tipped his hat to Paolina while ignoring Sayeed.

  Once again, she had a sense of choice. She elected to continue following the man who would lead her to the Silent Order.

  From the ground, Strasbourg was a city of cobbled streets and tall, narrow buildings. There was not as much traffic as she might have imagined, but the hour was early. Had she not seen Marseilles, Paolina would have found this alien and huge, but the place was almost homelike compared with that great Mediterranean hive.

  Some buildings flew flags signifying alliances or professions. Others had signboards. She quickly realized that the citizens of Strasbourg lived on the upper floors, while their business stood below. Paolina had never seen a real shop, only knew them from reading Dickens. She was quite curious to look at the windows, or even pass within.

  Sayeed set a brisk pace, though. He seemed uninterested in checking that she followed. Paolina realized that the captain understood the invisible cord that bound her surely as she did. The clock, he knew all about the clock.

  They found their way to the central square facing the cathedral, a towering square edifice with a single turret rising from the left front. The building was covered with a frenzied ornamentation that struck her as a madman’s work, angels and devils and sinners writhing in eye-bending braids of stone. Even the curious buildings of Ophir were far more plain than this cliff of close-carved masonry.

  “It is Sunday,” Sayeed said, who did not seem to see the wonder before his eyes. “We must await the morning services.”

  Paolina followed him to a building with several tables out front, chairs upturned. He set two down and they sat. After a little while Paolina realized this was a restaurant, a shop that would sell them food once it opened. Or could, had she any money.

  They waited.

  The city unfolded as morning passed slowly toward midday. It was one of the most fascinating things she had ever seen, like watching a flower open, petal after petal curling to meet the light. Here each color unfurling was a person bustling into view, throwing open shutters, lowering awnings, unlocking doors, setting out racks and bins and little shelves all around the storefronts of the square.

  Bells high atop the cathedral called the times of services, and tolled the hours in between. Other churches of the city echoed the rhythms of the morning, but she noted far more people going about their business than entering or leaving the cathedral.

  Horses, dogs, boys, men, women, baskets of fresh-baked bread, barrows full of cheeses and cabbages—all passed her in a parade of color and scent and sound, the unrolling of the scrim of civic life.

  This was what had moved Dickens to write of the city and its people. She could only imagine how grand London would be, this small miracle of commerce and society writ large enough to govern an empire.

  If she squinted upward, Paolina could even see the track of the earth rising in the sky, a thread to tie this city and its holy cathedral back to Heaven.

  Eventually a dumpy woman in a thick black dress trimmed with black lace came out and took down the other chairs. She worked around them—Sayeed paying no attention at all, while the woman ignored Paolina’s inquiring looks. Linens appeared on the little iron tables (including theirs), then small dishes filled with sugar and salt and cream. After a while forks and knives as well. Finally, unbidden, a pot of coffee and a basket of rolls for them.

  She took one out. It was a flaky half-moon with a fat middle and narrow arms that weighed less than any piece of bread she’d ever touched in her life.

  “Crescent roll,” Sayeed told her—his first words since they’d sat down. While she’d watched life around the square, he’d stared unendingly at the doors of the cathedral.

  Paolina smiled, too happy in the moment to be angry even at this man. “And coffee.”

  “Mmm.” He poured himself a cup of black and sipped at it. “When the next service lets out, we shall approach the cathedral. There will be someone waiting for us. He will take us to the Silent Fathers.”

  Paolina hoped it might be Lachance. That would be a small humiliation for Sayeed, who had richly earned it.

  An onion-seller found them as they approached the cathedral. He wore a rumpled blue garment cut to fit his whole body, not divided into pants and shirt, and carried a basket that reeked of his produce mixed with the
scent of damp loam.

  The onion-seller made a hand sign, which Sayeed matched. They stood close and murmured to one another, with sidelong glances at Paolina. She smiled again.

  Sayeed tugged at her arm. Paolina followed around to an alley beside the cathedral. A man in a long black dress opened a side door at the onion-seller’s rhythmic knock. He said something to Sayeed in a language Paolina didn’t know, then offered her his hand.

  Her last view of Sayeed was the door shutting, the captain’s face flushed with frustration.

  “You are the girl here about the clock,” the priest said.

  Surely, she thought, he has to be a priest. “How did you know?”

  “We are the Silent Order. I could not tell you even if I wished to.”

  “You are not so silent,” she pointed out.

  The priest laughed. “No, perhaps not so much.”

  They stepped from a plain little hall into a great space. The inside of the cathedral was if anything more frenzied and ornamented that the outside. The walls soared toward heaven, supported by a single great pillar. The curious carvings on the face of the building were replicated here, relieved in turn by a riot of colored glass and winged statues and candles and banners, all in dizzying array above a room full of benches that reeked of incense.

  It would take hours to sort out everything her eyes could see—much like looking up at a Muralha on an exceptionally clear day, where there was more detail than any one person could hope to understand. Paolina felt overwhelmed.

  “The clock is this way.” The priest tugged at her hand with a dry grip.

  She followed him, the gleam so heavy in her pocket that it felt like a boulder dragging her downward.

  AL - WAZIR