Escapement

by Jay Lake

  And something bad would happen.

  There must be a time delay as well, otherwise it would be fatal to the user.

  That was good enough for Paolina. She didn’t have to aim or fire anything. The chief would be dead in moments if she did not act. She used her ax to hack off the bar that held the canisters in their rack. Some were already gone. Discharged back at Mogadishu, then.

  She pulled five, barely fitting them in her arms. At the door of the weapons locker, she set one down and tugged the locking rod free. The click popped back. Paolina then turned and ran to the ladder, climbing with arms full of the four remaining canisters.

  As she cleared the ladder into the sunlight, there was a loud explosion, which knocked her forward onto the deck. Wooden splinters spun through the air as someone shouted very loudly in Chinese. She got back to her feet with her canisters still in hand—one had spun loose—pulled the next rod free. She held that canister over her head, keeping the clip down only by the pressure of her fingers.

  “Stop it right now!” she screamed.

  Al-Wazir was farther aft, apparently fighting toward to the poop. Two men clung to his back, while a third faced him off a long pole. Half a dozen more were laid on the deck. A crowd was close around the chief. Almost all of them now stared at her, or at the smoking hole in the deck just aft of the hatch.

  A few looked up at the gasbag, which smoldered above the shattered gap she’d blown open.

  “Do you know what that is in your hand, lassie?” al-Wazir asked quietly. “All these lads certainly do.”

  “It’s something you don’t want me to let go of.” Paolina tried to keep her voice from spiraling into a shriek.

  “Aye.” He shook the men off his back. Most of the crew scuttled to the far rail.

  She saw that al-Wazir was bleeding from a handful of new wounds. He still burned with that fevered intensity as well, but paradoxically seemed steadier on his feet.

  “Who speaks English here?” she called. “English. Now!” She waved the canister again.

  The chief stumbled over to her. “I hope your plan has another step, lassie.” His breath heaved.

  “I’ve got three of these.”

  “And any one of them will set the gasbag to blowing up. ’Tis a miracle your first did not already do so.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t thought that through.

  A short man in the ubiquitous blue pajamas stepped forward from the poop. “You are fools,” he said.

  “Dead fools,” Paolina told him. “All of us. I want your parachutes on the deck, now.”

  “Parachutes?”

  “Yes, or you’ll be jumping overboard without them.”

  She hadn’t even looked yet, but she was confident that it was a long way down to the sea.

  Without taking his eyes off her, the officer barked something in Chinese. The men by the far rail muttered, but none of them stepped away. He turned and pointed out three men.

  “Follow them, Chief,” Paolina said.

  She had no idea what to do next, but she was certain she had to do it quickly and purposefully.

  Al-Wazir stumbled to the ladderway to meet the men who were sidling around Paolina as best they could. He growled, slapping his grappling hook against his thigh. They dropped downward quickly.

  “I cannot go below,” he told her with a tired sigh.

  “Then watch the hatch. If they come back in some wrong fashion, I will release this handle.”

  “You will not,” said the officer calmly.

  Paolina shifted her grip and the handle popped up. He yelped and started to jump toward her. She counted three seconds, then turned and tossed the canister over the rail. As she did, Paolina noted that the ocean was indeed far below.

  There was a loud crack. Smoke billowed behind the ship.

  She turned back and slid the next rod free. It clattered to the deck. Using her toe, Paolina pushed it toward the officer, whose face was now sheened with sweat. “If you tell me I am going to die, you must be prepared for me to believe you.”

  “Fools.” The officer stepped back a pace.

  Behind her now, al-Wazir called out, “They’re coming.”

  Moments later the three sailors had deposited a dozen backpacks on the deck.

  “All right.” She held the canister high. “Every officer on this ship takes a parachute and jumps.”

  “Lassie . . . ,” rumbled al-Wazir.

  “Starting with you.” She jabbed the canister at the English-speaking officer.

  “I will die before doing so.”

  Her mood was wild, fey, full of fire and fury. “Fine. I’m ready to go.”

  “Lassie . . .”

  She popped the handle on this canister and tossed the explosive to the protesting officer.

  AL - WAZIR

  He was on his feet only through sheer panic. His missing hand burned, while the one that still remained to him ached. He wasn’t sure any of his ribs were intact. Every breath felt as if it had been strained through a net full of shattered glass.

  But when Paolina threw the grenado, he knew his life was over.

  The Chinese officer grabbed the tumbling canister, taking a few steps back toward the starboard rail as he did so. Sheer reflex, al-Wazir thought, wondering how few seconds he had left to live.

  The girl shot past him. She screamed as she slammed her shoulder into the officer’s belly. He stumbled backwards, shouting something as she slugged him in the wedding tackle. Over the rail the officer went, taking the grenado with him in a shriek that ended in another blast.

  Paolina turned, brandishing her next grenado. How many of those fewking things did she have?

  “Get off my ship!” she screeched, advancing on the gaggle of sailors backing toward the poop. She reached up and slipped a little wooden peg from the top. “Get off, now!”

  Three of them broke from the crowd to sprint for the packs on the deck. Al-Wazir held back a wheezing chuckle, staving off the pain. She had more nerve than he might have expected from any man.

  The first sailors jumped over the rail as Paolina stalked the deck, shouting in a language he didn’t understand. Another bunch charged for the parachutes. She was emptying the ship.

  Al-Wazir started to think he might live out the day. Or at least the hour. In which case, he realized, the rest of the ship’s officers needed to be dealt with. No one carried firearms on ordinary duty aboard an airship—the dangers were too great—but if they had an arms locker in the poop, there would be pistols out at any moment.

  He scrambled for the grenado Paolina had dropped. Once it was retrieved, al-Wazir skirted the smoking hole in the deck and headed toward the poop.

  The stern was laid out much as a British airship. There were five or six sailors clustered near the wheel, and two men with the look of officers. Al-Wazir broke into a run, brandishing the grenado much as Paolina was doing and hoping they’d panic as well.

  Surely enough, there were two men climbing up out of a hatch there with pistols in hand. He leapt the pair of steps from the main deck to the poop and ran them down, kicking one in the head while the other ducked. Al-Wazir turned and swung a fist, remembering only as his stump drove into the other man’s face that there was no longer a hand at the end of that arm.

  The agony nearly blacked him out. He dropped to his knees, the grenado rolling away from his grip. Two of the sailors jumped on him, but al-Wazir managed to grab a loose pistol that was spun on the deck.

  He was down flat then, being punched by two shouting men who each probably weighed half of what he did. Al-Wazir got the pistol up and shot one in the face. The other jumped back, cursing.

  Looking up he saw the second officer aiming another pistol down at his chest. The Chinese was smiling as they pointed their weapons at each other.

  “Think you have yourself a stand off, do yer now, laddie?” Al-Wazir smiled back. “Me, I already figured on dying today.” He pulled the trigger.

  The punch that should have drilled him
to the deck and claimed his life never came. Instead his opponent toppled backwards. Al-Wazir lurched up, tucking the burning hot barrel of his weapon under his left arm, and grabbed the second pistol.

  Where is the damned grenado?

  The poop had emptied of all but the two dead men. Stumbling back to the low drop to the main deck, he saw there were a dozen men kneeling or lying on the boards. Paolina stalked among them, still shouting incomprehensibly, grenado in hand.

  Everything else was quiet.

  “What do we do now?” he tried to ask, but his voice was a strange and distant croak.

  She turned toward him and burst into tears.

  “Heading?” al-Wazir demanded a few minutes later.

  Paolina shook with the aftermath of her battle lust, her last grenado lodged between her feet. “The Wall.”

  He looked to the south. Heaven’s Deer had made a course north of east out of Mogadishu, bound for Phu Ket. A group of islands lay in the distance along their course. The Wall was still well in sight.

  “If we make east of south, we’ll keep a fair wind at this altitude. Easier sailing.”

  He was more concerned about clouds to the north and west, out over the empty desert of the Indian Ocean, but he didn’t say anything. There was too much to worry about already. Fourteen of the ordinary crew remained aboard Heaven’s Deer, along with the doctor.

  Al-Wazir and Paolina were forced to occupy the poop. They’d demanded that the sailors stay on the maindeck. This would work until they ran into foul weather. Then . . . what? How could they stop the remaining men from plotting?

  How could they sail the ship alone?

  It took only one hand at the wheel, when everything was in proper trim. But as soon as an engine began to run rough or a cell in the gasbag lost pressure, they would be at the mercy of the men. He wouldn’t have cared to sail Bassett shorthanded, and he knew that ship as well as he knew his own boots.

  This ship was something else again. An unknown vessel with the remnants of a hostile crew, unwilling to follow his orders or set his course. Assuming they even understood what it was he wanted.

  There was nothing for it but to run toward the Wall and pray they reached their destination before any of a dozen disasters caught up with them.

  “I bleed,” he told Paolina.

  “Then see the doctor.”

  He handed her the pistol he’d been holding and walked on down among the resentful, blue-clad men.

  The doctor bound al-Wazir’s ribs, then tended to various wounds.

  “Why did you help us?” al-Wazir asked once the pain had subsided.

  “You Europe. You bastards, make fight, take fight.” There was a moment of silence as the physician concentrated on a stitch. “That is way of thrones, ah?”

  “Well, yes.” Al-Wazir looked around the deck. His effort at distraction didn’t help when the doctor’s needle dug into a thigh wound al-Wazir didn’t recall sustaining.

  “Silent Order . . .” The doctor’s voice trailed off. “Not serve Celestial Empire. Not serve Europe Empire. Serve self, against order of world.”

  “Aye, laddie.” Al-Wazir closed his eyes against a wave of pain-induced nausea. “So much is against the order of the world, I’m afraid.”

  The doctor looked up at him, eyes old, bright, and wise in his fleshy, pale face. “China live forever, ah. Silent Order have different idea. Girl, she too much. Golden Bridge burn world down. She Golden Bridge.”

  “Golden Bridge?”

  But the doctor would not say more.

  When he returned to the poop, Paolina took her chance to leave. “I’m going below.”

  He didn’t ask what she intended. Their shared violence seemed to have changed something between them, in a way that he’d never felt on his own. He concentrated on keeping their heading and wondered what to do when night fell.

  The doctor might be an ally. At least he was not so much of an enemy. What would they do with the crew, though? Tie them up? A dozen men, bound for the night, didn’t seem wise to al-Wazir. Their discomfort and resentment would spark an uprising faster than anything else he could think for them do.

  Two days’ sail to the Wall. If he were in decent health, he could stay awake that long. With his current injuries, that didn’t seem reasonable.

  Several hours passed with no sign of Paolina. The men on the deck had settled into some game of tiles. Hands moved and faint clacks carried back to him at the wheel. The sunlight slanted low across the deck.

  When darkness came, he would be hard-pressed not to fall asleep.

  Al-Wazir tried to catch the doctor’s eye. The old man rested against the rails, apparently sleeping himself. That would not be of any help.

  The chief twisted to look down the deck hatch where Paolina had descended. Unless someone was hiding—and they’d been unable to make an effective search, unfortunately—she should have had belowdecks to herself.

  Where had she gone?

  He would need Paolina to stand watch tonight. All night, probably. His body had the heavy feeling it got after a fight.

  Right now he missed Boaz very much. The Brass man’s presence would have shifted this problem right smartly.

  The worst was that he could not leave the wheel and go search for her. Having neither of them on deck watching the remaining crew was the height of madness.

  Let them get used to us, he prayed. When need came, they would do their jobs simply in order to survive. Of course, he had no idea which divisions these men came from. If every jack among them was a deck idler, they were in trouble.

  Al-Wazir amused himself by watching the clouds pile in the west as the sun descended. A real corker of a storm was brewing. His weather sense didn’t apply here—different winds over this ocean—but he’d lay money they’d feel the lash of wind and rain before making their destination.

  That would be enough to end it all, if the crew did not cooperate.

  Paolina reappeared at dusk, climbing up out of the hull.

  “Where the fewk have you been, lassie?” al-Wazir demanded. He was so exhausted, he could barely think.

  She gave him a hard, tired look. Her dress was stained with blood, her face still smudged from their morning’s uprising. “Making sure there were no more grenadoes to be used against us, nor guns.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Threw them overboard. There are ports in the hull below.” She smiled weakly. “I didn’t want the crew to see me doing it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I found a machine shop.”

  “Did you now?” He was already slipping into a tunnel of blinded sight and blinkered thought.

  “I cut some gears.”

  “Aye.” Al-Wazir slumped to a sitting position. “Keep us pointed at the Wall, lassie, and don’t fight the wind.” His body was so damned heavy. How had that happened? As if his limbs were fashioned from lead. “Trust that old doctor if you must trust someone.”

  “What about when that storm hits?”

  “Wake me. If I’m nae dead, I’ll answer t’call.”

  “Please stay with me, Chief.”

  The note of pleading in her voice got his attention. “I can’t do this alone.” She stared down at him with watering eyes. “I shouldn’t have done it all. I just won’t . . . won’t . . . be a thing for them to use. The fidalgos, these Chinese are just like the fidalgos. No different from your English either.”

  “Hush, lassie.” He tried to lift his hand, but it was fastened to the deck by gravity and fatigue. “There’s no more of that. Yon Wall is your home. You’ll be there soon.”

  “I don’t want to kill these men.” She sounded miserable. “I never wanted to do anything like that. I am not one of them.”

  He reached for words lost deep inside himself. “Would you give up to them?”

  “No, no.”

  “Then you do what you must so you are not taken, lass.” The stars came rushing in on him then, echoes of old dreams as the fingers of his los
t left hand reached out to grab at the lights of heaven.

  His face was wet when he was shaken awake. Al-Wazir blinked past dreams of Brass men falling from the orbital tracks on ropes as long as the world was wide. Rain blew across the deck, which was pitching slowly.

  The doctor leaned over him. Paolina was barely visible in the shadows beyond.

  “You not sleep more now, ah. Demons in head take thoughts.”

  “The sleep of wounds?” He hated how muzzy his voice was. He’d seen men lie down after an accident or fight, and never awaken.

  “Demons in head.”

  “Where’s the storm?” He staggered to his feet.

  “Almost upon us,” Paolina told him. “The clouds are piled as high as the stars.”

  Wall storm. With that, al-Wazir realized he’d been stupid. They should have driven north, gaining altitude and distance to survive the battering to come.

  Lightning cracked among the clouds, casting a swift, blinding glare across the deck.

  “I’m going below,” she said as al-Wazir blinked away the sudden flash. “I must.”

  “What?” he asked, but she was gone. The wheel spun until he lurched forward to catch it with a bone-wrenching crack in his good hand—his only hand.

  Just another hurt, that.

  The doctor shouted over a wind gust. “Crew not attack me.”

  Al-Wazir looked. They certainly weren’t huddled on the maindeck anymore. He should have checked that first—a possibly fatal mistake. “Where are the men?”

  The old man leaned close. “Motors, bag!”

  Al-Wazir braced his stump into the wheel and fought the wind. He had little choice of heading, save a need to keep the ship from spinning beyond control. Lightning passed within the clouds around him, setting the textures of the sky glowing in fitful contrast. It might have been beautiful had it not meant his life.

  He wondered if they could lift above this storm, but it was too late. He wasn’t even sure how they controlled altitude on this vessel. So hand and stump, al-Wazir kept the ship turned away from the wind and let it be driven east and south while the weather raged around him and the object of this bitter quest remained belowdecks on some mysterious errand of her own.