by Jay Lake
CHILDRESS
“Whatever the Golden Bridge is, they are not building it here,” Captain Leung said.
A storm moved in from the west as the evening fell—they could see the clouds on the horizon. The harbor at Chersonesus Aurea was still very pleasant but for the excruciating heat.
“No. They are here mining the bones of this old library.” She thought about that some more. “Whoever came before didn’t use this knowledge the way Wang and the others want to, either.”
“Where do they build it, then?”
“There is no Golden Bridge, Captain. These people are looking for something more. Something different. They seek to undermine the order of the world.”
Something in those words . . .
“All the world is order,” he said.
“No . . . I mean, yes. There’s something about the order.” She thought through her conversation with William of Ghent, with Admiral Shang, with Leung himself. And what the Malaya Chinthé agent had told her about a panic in Europe.
Gleam, that was the word. The mysterious European girl had somehow been the key to overturning the order of the world. And now the Silent Order were looking for her.
Here, the Chinese worked both for and against the avebianco. Which was another way of saying they were working both for and against the Silent Order.
“Your people play both sides against one another,” she said. It began to make a certain awful sense. “You overreach. It is not the Golden Bridge at stake, except in the loosest sense. There is a girl who burned down half of Strasbourg with some magic. Or science. I don’t know which. The Celestial Empire has been trying to build that same power here. She has entered their plans. Or perhaps the Silent Order is pursuing this project, using the Celestial Empire as a stalking horse.”
“Phu Ket,” said Leung. “The great house of the Silent Order is at Phu Ket.”
“Wang mentioned Phu Ket. Why? Does the Celestial Empire have a university there?”
“Nothing is there.” Leung’s voice was slow and thoughtful. “A small fishing port, and the Silent Order. No more.”
“The Silent Order . . .” She took a walk through her house of memory. This kept coming back to the Silent Order, from the very beginning. The Mask Poinsard had summoned her forth from the library for the sake of the Silent Order’s vengeance. The devilry that the Malaya Chinthé agent had mentioned was the Silent Order’s doing. Now Wang had brought them up again, as if expecting her to know the significance of Phu Ket.
Even though she was a Mask—or at least claimed to be.
Does Wang even see a difference?
A second, quieter thought crept in. What if there is no difference?
She came to a conclusion. “It is the Silent Order to which we must turn for an accounting of this. Not the Celestial Empire. You yourself explained how being exiled to Tainan placed the Beiyang admiralty outside the bounds of the Imperial Court. How much further from the Celestial Throne is a project which abides here at the waist of the world? This has been arranged for the convenience and ambitions of the Silent Order, not China.” She stared at Leung in the pale light of evening. It didn’t matter why, in whose behalf, only what.
“Through this Golden Bridge, they seek control of the very engines of creation. The girl who destroyed Strasbourg must be a great clue to them. That is the sort of power which will shatter the world.” Her voice became more urgent as her thoughts raced ahead. “We must go to Phu Ket, now. It may be a fool’s errand, but I would see what can be done to convince the Silent Order of the dangers of their pursuit.”
Childress knew the Silent Order spoke with the Feathered Masks. She would carry her deception into the heart of the enemy. “How soon can Five Lucky Winds sail?”
“Five Lucky Winds sails at my command.”
She stifled the surge of anger that roiled through her. “Certainly, Captain Leung. I should think no less.” She leaned close, almost touching noses. “How soon can you command Five Lucky Winds to sail?”
“My orders have great latitude, but the waters of the Indian Ocean are beyond the purview of the Beiy—”
She cut him off. “So are the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, yet you found me there. You owe me lives, Captain, the life of a ship and everyone aboard her. For better or worse I am the Mask now. You helped make me so. And everything you and I and Admiral Shang spoke about that might be happening here at Chersonesus Aurea is doubly true of the machinations of the Silent Order at Phu Ket.” Childress paused, trying to find the right words. “They are godless, sir. They know no order, no naming of things, save that which they impose themselves. An affront to the Celestial Empire and the British Empire alike.”
“So what if we go?”
Cataloger Wang loomed out of the darkness. He spoke in Chinese, but Childress followed him well enough. “If you go, you will bring disaster on yourself and everyone you touch.”
She looked beyond him. Leung’s sailors were in the hands of four big men from the library staff.
Leung began to speak urgently, an admonition that slid into argument too rapid for her to follow. Childress stepped back, then gathered a great breath and shrieked as if her life depended on it.
Wang and Leung stopped arguing and stared at her. Someone called out from the tower of Five Lucky Winds. The deck watch, of course. What she had been playing for.
The two constrained sailors lurched into motion, fighting their captors. Another sailor popped up the jetty from down inside the launch. Wang threw an ineffectual blow at Leung. The sailor shouted and vaulted to the top of the ladder to wade into the fight.
Childress sat down and covered her face and neck. She had no place amid fisticuffs. At least there was a fight, rather than the endless chaffering the Chinese seemed to prefer as they sought to save face for themselves and one another.
She knew that they should sail now for Phu Ket, ahead of the storm and whatever came next. Waiting here in the shadow of the Wall for rounds of negotiations and wireless messages was pointless.
She didn’t even glance up as someone gave a shout that cut off with a hard thump. There was a splash of a body falling in water, then two more splashes.
“Please hurry,” said Leung, touching her arm. “More will be here.”
Childress looked up from her crouch. “Are we sailing, Captain?”
“We are now.” His face and tone were grim, but his decision was in favor of her thinking.
“Then I come.”
By the time the launch reached the submarine, there were shouts and bright lights on the jetty. Childress thought she heard the crack of a gun, but Captain Leung acted as if he had noticed nothing.
He certainly made no effort to return fire.
Then the hatches were closed, the bells ringing, and the engines humming to life. For the first time, she was allowed on the bridge.
It was as close and tight as any other area of the submarine. The electricks had bloodred lenses over their lighting elements, which lent everything a strange Dantean aspect. Great brass wheels were arrayed along three bulkheads, some of which had men already working to spin them. Leung sat on a tall stool next to a pillar in the middle of the space, staring at the array of gauges and dials above the control wheels.
She could make little of it. How did they navigate from here? How did they know anything of their sailing at all?
The pilot called orders through an electrick box, which crackled and spat and hissed as it brought his voice down from the tower above. The vessel must be moving slowly into the winding channel out of the harbor.
Childress stayed back by the hatch as Leung put his face against a pair of goggles set against the pipe before him. He spoke quietly to the pilot. No one else talked, save to murmur a response to Leung’s occasional orders.
They were moving. The librarians of Chersonesus Aurea had no forces with which to pursue Five Lucky Winds. The submarine could sail below the stormy seas to come.
Why did she feel a sense of panic?
More murmured conversation. Slowly they walked out. Leung would not rush this. She knew that. Even if they had been under fire, he would not have pushed his ship through that winding, strange channel.
When the pitch of the engines changed and the pilot stopped speaking almost continuously, she knew they’d reached the open, shallow waters of the Kepualuan Riau islands. Leung snapped shut a cover on his goggles. Without turning about he said, “Mask Childress, I believe the bridge is off-limits to you, on the terms of your parole.”
“My apologies, Captain.”
She left the bridge. Childress knew she should go back to her own cabin. Or the wardroom, perhaps. Not wander the vessel.
Instead she climbed the tower ladder. They would not dive among the reefs and shoals of these islands, not until they’d cleared the Strait of Malacca.
Opening a hatch in the outer hull was a gross violation of orders. No officer or crewman of Five Lucky Winds would do such without a direct instruction from the bridge. The pilot would require permission to come below when time came. No one went up without the captain’s explicit assent.
She was the Mask Childress. She would go where she willed.
Undogging the hatch and spinning back the great brass wheel, she climbed into the little chamber at the bottom of the tower. Childress shut the hatch again, spinning it closed from the outside, then climbing the rest of the way. The tower was bare, nothing more than an observation stand with a small cluster of plugs and dials normally closed by a waterproof cover.
Ming seemed unsurprised to see her. He nodded as she greeted him in Chinese. “Good evening. Are you well?”
“I am well, yes.”
It was a full night. Singapore glowed to the north and east of them, while the Wall glowered close by to the south. The prow of the submarine coursed through waters that glowed as they broke across the hull. Ahead, the western horizon was dark with clouds limned by flashes of lightning. The night reeked of salt and distant jungle and the smell of weather.
“We sail well,” Ming said.
“Yes.”
After that, they both fell silent. From time to time he picked up a small speaking horn he’d plugged into the panel and murmured some comment as they slid through the night-dark islands. Childress watched the sky, picking out the threads of brass.
When the stars began moving, she wondered what it was she saw. She tugged at Ming’s arm and pointed. He turned and looked. After that he began speaking more urgently into the horn. She caught some of it—airships, Singapore, Navy.
“Do they chase us?” she asked, forgetting herself to speak in English.
Ming glanced at her.
“Are they for us?” was the best she could do in Chinese.
“Yes.” He seemed calm.
She did not worry yet, but she watched lights move, then wink out.
Had they lifted with lanterns lit? Why? To warn Five Lucky Winds? Or possibly to send a message to the people of Singapore. Malaya Chinthé would certainly be watching.
She began to be afraid. The maps were clear enough—the Strait of Malacca was a long, narrow body of water. It was shallow as well. She was fairly certain that airships could move faster than submarines.
Though not through the coming storm.
Childress smiled. She began to understand Ming’s apparent lack of worry. She stayed in the hot night, watching them sail into the storm and away from pursuit, convinced that there was nothing more they could have done.
Nothing more she could have done.
Her journey from New Haven would make sense if they found their way to Phu Ket and brought reason to the Silent Order. Or better yet, stopped the project entirely. She had no idea how she would do that, but if they could sail into the teeth of this storm and make their goal ahead of their pursuit, anything was possible.
Lightning danced in the sky before them, a bright bonfire to illuminate their way.
NINETEEN
PAOLINA
The machine shop tucked within the lower decks of Heaven’s Deer was small, even by the cramped standards of an airship. The storm was not making matters easy either. The ship rolled and bucked while the bamboo walls vibrated to the point of thrumming. They sweat stormwater as well, but Paolina decided after brief thought that this was probably a desirable feature rather than a defect in the ship’s construction.
Whoever had designed the shop had anticipated the need for repairs under fire or storm. She was thankful for that. Every flat surface had vises, mounting hooks, or braces. Many of the tools were gimballed. Some were electrick as well, something she’d never seen or really even considered.
It made sense—an electrick cutter could do so much more than a hand with a file, if everything were properly braced.
Her greatest challenge was that the shop had been equipped for engine and weapons repairs. Many of the tools were simply too large a scale to support what she was attempting.
Paolina was building another gleam.
Even now, cutting gears to fit into the crude casing she’d adapted from the base of a large caliber shell, she was having trouble justifying it to herself. The death of Lachance, even of those venal fools back in the Strasbourg Cathedral, had been a very high price for her last such effort. But she was heading for a Muralha now, passing beyond the reach of the Silent Order. Their greed for her fabrication would mean nothing once she’d regained safety.
Her largest worry now was that if she built the thing, or at least enough of it, the gleam might fall into Chinese hands. Events in Strasbourg made it perfectly clear that these people were capable of anything once they got a gleam into their hands. All the more so if it came to Phu Ket and the control of the Silent Order for a second time.
Her second largest worry now was that she might not be able to build another.
The original stemwinder had come to her in the fevered dark, from parts and tools that had traveled down a Muralha to her. Her memories of its design and construction were incomplete. On the other hand, her sense of its purpose and function was much better.
The gleam was a miracle waiting to happen, potentiality trapped in the gears and energy of the clockwork. A sort of magic, written in the same clockwork that underlay the order of the world.
Why she could build it, and others could not, was a question that begged an answer Paolina was not prepared to think on. Especially at that moment, with Heaven’s Deer shuddering at the force of the wind. This was a Wall storm, piled so high, nothing but an angel could fly above the violence of wind and rain. It could only be ridden out, with hopes of not being driven down or forced so far south that the airship impacted a Muralha.
Al-Wazir knew his business. The chief’s experience and their reluctant crew should bring the airship through. Her hope was to finish the gleam in time to help them survive, if possible.
The cutter she was using whined and spat as the electricks flickered. Lightning strike? Up here away from the earth the power in the bolt would move on harmlessly. She hoped.
Paolina was building an escapement now. It would translate the power of her mainspring to the hands. She had no jewels for the movements, no method to set the hair-fine axles solid and secure in their courses, but she would find a way. For all that the shop was cramped, it was equipped with a multitude of drawers like a giant puzzle box. There seemed to be half a dozen of everything a craftsman might wish to have, if only she knew where to look.
The hardest part was building without a plan. She had done so once before, but she hadn’t understood her own purposes as she did now. Knowing too much was almost as bad as not knowing enough.
Still, she set to her work, bracing her body against the swaying of the little room.
When lightning finally did strike the hull, she understood the difference between weather and a Wall storm, at least from aboard an airship. The electrick over her head flared, died, then sputtered back to fitful orange life. The bamboo walls crackled as the water rolling down them puffed to steam. Her teeth ached
, her skin prickled, and her hair felt just wrong.
For a moment, Paolina thought the pick and file in her hand were hot. She nearly dropped them, but held on as she was trying to set a gear train into her case.
The work was so crude that she nearly despaired of it. The storm was growing worse as well, the airship pitching forward more and more. Was the gasbag in trouble?
She wondered how far down the ocean was. Then she wondered how close the ocean was. She set both thoughts aside and kept the task at hand close.
Her mechanism. A way to address the order of the world. It wasn’t just her, either, for the Silent Order had made a horrid mess of things back in Strasbourg with the first gleam.
Paolina prayed that only she could build one. The world didn’t need more of these devices—one was enough to rewrite history, in the wrong hands.
With that thought, she felt a renewed surge of guilt at building this one. Was it fair to protect herself with such a creation? This was no different from a man making himself a more powerful gun.
All the while, her hands kept moving, following a plan she didn’t fully understand. Distraction was good, Paolina realized. She prayed for more distraction.
The storm kept shaking the airship, her work progressed, and she tried not to think about the waves surging below them, the rain pouring around them, the wind pounding Heaven’s Deer apart while the airship could neither fight nor rise above the weather.
The next time she noticed a strike was when the hull began to smoke. Paolina looked up to see water pouring down the inside wall. Was there flooding in the corridor? That shouldn’t be possible, not on an airship.
Then she remembered the gaping hole she’d blown in the deck above the arms locker.
She looked down at her new gleam. It was larger, cruder, and simpler than the old one, but it was of a type with the first—a mechanical incantation written in springs and gears that moved in sympathetic echo with the hidden order of the world. Creation was nothing more than a complex dance of belief and mechanism, a design worded in the dreaming mind of God. All man could do was attempt to read the Divine intent and apply what could be perceived.