by Jay Lake
At the moment Divine intent was sluicing an inch or more of water past her ankles.
Working quickly, Paolina clipped a face to her gleam. This one more resembled a clock than a pocket watch, but it had the same four hands. She’d set them to the same tempi, too—the beat of the hours, the rhythm of her own heart, the time that counted at the heart of the world, and the fourth hand freewheeling to match whatever she could match.
She clutched it close and stepped to the hatch. The door was stiff and would not open at her tug. Paolina put her weight into it, yanking the door harder. It popped open just as the ship flexed with another great groan and a blast of wet wind.
Heaven’s Deer was coming apart, shaking itself like a wet dog in the face of the storm.
Paolina stumbled into the passageway as the ship rolled violently. She slipped across the floor and collapsed against the far bulkhead. More water flowed across her, soaking her shoulder and side. Wind and rain tore through the passageway from the gaping hatch to the maindeck.
She fought to her feet, holding the gleam above her head to keep it out of the flow of the water. There was no help for the streaming rain. She made it to the ladder before the airship lurched again, and kept her feet this time by grabbing on to the ladderway. Once the ship settled a little more, Paolina climbed one-handed. She kept the gleam close.
There was no question that Heaven’s Deer was dying in the air. If the gleam could find the rhythms that drove this storm, she might be able to at least bring them down safely. Otherwise their survival would be up to al-Wazir and his reluctant crew.
The ship yawed again as she made the deck, giving a gaping view of darkness. Cloud banks below them were illuminated by jags of lightning. Paolina’s stomach lurched—it was a more disorienting sight than anything she’d ever seen from a Muralha—before Heaven’s Deer heeled the other way and the rain closed in again in thick curtains.
A frightened Chinese face loomed out of the storm’s gloom, waving a rope. She jumped away, but he caught her waist.
A safety line, Paolina thought. She tried to thank him, but her voice was captured by the wind, and her ears were still ringing.
She stepped close and let him knot it around her. The crewman then led her to the poop, walking hand-over-hand along another line strung along the deck. He had to stop twice and reset her safety line, and once more as the airship pitched hard. She realized she could hear something besides the storm’s rage—the gasbag was booming.
That couldn’t be good.
Al-Wazir was lashed to the wheel like some hero out of ancient legend. The Chinese doctor huddled beside him, tied to ropes staked to the deck and stretching to the aft rail, clutching a little storm lantern. Her escort dropped back as she stumbled up the steps to the poop. Her rope caught on something, then popped free.
She finally reached the wheel.
She screamed at al-Wazir, “Are we dying?”
Another lighting strike sizzled, flaring across the lines and midmasts on the deck. It was a wonder that the gasbag had not caught fire.
He stared at her. She could see little more than a silhouette, a shape in the darkness, but the man was practically glowing with effort. His eyes were red, either bloody with effort or glowing in the fitful light of the doctor’s storm lantern.
Al-Wazir opened his mouth and roared. The words were nothing but fragments to her. “. . . ocean . . . nae . . . Almighty . . .”
She turned her hand and showed him the gleam.
This time his eyes practically bulged. “You . . . a clock . . . fewking . . .”
Another swirl of rain blew by, a horizontal flood that choked Paolina so hard, she wondered if she were drowning.
The next lightning strike showed her something far more fearsome—the ocean heaving at a high angle of view. Heaven’s Deer was diving for the water.
She was too late, far too late.
Al-Wazir was trying to tell her something more. “. . . nae . . . crew . . . few . . .”
Paolina tucked her head down and focused on the gleam. The three hands beat as they should. She pulled her crude stem—a large brass key, in truth—to the fourth stop and began to set the hand. Could she find the storm’s beat long enough to steal calm from the enormous forces driving them to the waves?
This time she had a better sense of how to set and drive the hand. The problem was the overwhelming fury of the weather. It was like trying to tune in to the key of all life at once, find each of God’s creatures amid a cry or shout or shriek. A Wall storm was an explosion of water and wind, an epic eruption of force fit to rewrite the face of lands.
In that moment, she would have traded all of this for one of the great waves that had ravaged a Muralha two years earlier. At least those came, cleared their paths, and moved onward.
Paolina tried to slip inside the rhythms of wind and water, lightning and thunder. The ocean below their keel was nothing but another place, the clear air high above the storm clouds nothing but another time. Here, now, Heaven’s Deer was in the heart of the storm.
How would God have done it? He would not have parted the waters of the air and stilled the winds with His hand; she knew that. The Divine would instead have turned one from the other, as water tumbling from a cliff will fold past a quiet place. Or how a swirl of drainage always had clear air at the middle, pointing down into the depths.
Order from chaos, in keeping with the same laws and movements that generated that chaos in the first place.
The gleam clicked as it found the movement of the storm. She was inside now, but the forces were too complex, the scope and scale of the thing too large. Still, Paolina thought she could deflect the worst, perhaps make a blade of air to shield the last of Heaven’s Deer’s fall.
She had one glimpse of al-Wazir, his mouth in a rounded O of surprise or shock; then she was lifting the storm like draperies away from a statue. Something swung her gut from hips to teeth and back again, and she choked on her own bile, but she held open the way.
The ocean hit her in all its tons with the slap of the world’s gleam. Someone grabbed her while Paolina clutched the new gleam as close as she could, curling her body into nearly a ball. Water battered her first against a wooden beam, then an enormous soft surface.
The gasbag, she thought, before she was yanked about again. She rolled over and broke free of the water a moment to find herself at the top of a sliding mountain of ocean, the fabric billowing in a trough below her. Paolina took a deep breath just before she was pulled under once more.
The next time she came up, al-Wazir was dragging her onto a matted mass of ropes and deck lumber. Paolina loosened her grip on the gleam long enough to hook one hand into the ropes, then clutched her treasure tight again. The wreckage shifted, tugging her along as it rose up the next mountainous wave to clear the crest. Somehow they didn’t turn turtle or spin out of control as the mass began to slide down the far side.
She found her blade of air again in that brief respite and banished the rain from the raft. That did nothing to stop their wild slide across the angles of the ocean, but at least they could breathe.
Al-Wazir looked at her and growled, “Now what, lassie?”
Paolina hitched herself higher up on the matted mass. “We make ourselves fast. When I release the storm, we shall have to survive the worst.”
“Aye,” he growled, with a look that made clear how much he doubted that eventuality. “And what will ye be doin’ when ye releases the storm, lassie?”
“Calling to whoever will hear us,” she said calmly.
Her stomach lurched again as the raft topped another crest to again slide rapidly down into the dark pit of the waters.
He stared at her. “Who would hear us now, lassie?”
“God, if no one else,” she answered primly.
“You’re crazed beyond measure, girl.”
Paolina folded herself close around the gleam. “Crazed I may be, Chief, but I’m the one that calmed the storm over our heads.”
His remaining hand slid free of the ropes and gripped her arms. “Bless ye, lassie. God bless you.”
“God bless us both,” she said, then turned her attention to the device ticking in her hand, and the world ticking around her.
AL - WAZIR
He looked at the girl huddled on their makeshift raft and wondered when the storm would close over them again. She’d as much as said it would. Right now he believed anything she told him. Without Paolina, there’d be nothing left to believe in save the crabs picking at his waterlogged body.
Al-Wazir had written Paolina off to panic before she’d finally reappeared in the last, desperate moments of their descent. She’d literally glowed as the ship had come down. Once again, he had seen his death tumbling from the air. Once again it had been denied to him. Denied, or at least postponed a short while.
His luck almost made him sick.
Whatever magic the girl thought she was up to with the little clock-box, the great magic that had gotten her into so much trouble, well . . . he couldn’t imagine it helping them much once the storm fell back upon their heads. The very air would drown them then, stealing life from their lungs as quickly as they could suck it in.
He tried to make his peace with God, fumbling at half-remembered prayer. God wasn’t having any of Threadgill Angus al-Wazir. At least there was no sign of acceptance or contentment in whatever served him as a soul.
“To hell with God.” He’d always put more faith in sheer human cussedness anyway. And damn him if Paolina Barthes was not easily the most cussed girl he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. She’d struck him as something between a beloved daughter and a dread termagant, though right now she more resembled an Old Testament prophet gone wrong.
She looked at him and said, “Breathe deep.”
He sucked in air as the water collapsed around his head like a rock fall.
Without the protection of her magic watch, the storm had them fully in its grip. Water raced in white-foamed hillocks whipped by wind and rain until the boundary between ocean and air was little more than a laughable notion. It was pit-dark as well within the bowels of the storm. They might have been beneath the soil, but for the forks of lighting riving the sky. One moment al-Wazir’s eyes were full of stinging salt; the next they were blinded by a stab from the heavens.
When the strokes began skipping from one wave crest to another, he worried. Then he laughed—what was the point in fearing electrick death from the heavens when the next surge of the sea could easily fold them to their graves?
He tried to focus on Paolina. She’d coiled herself inside a mat of rope a foot or two away from him, still in a protective ball around her device. As a practical matter, if their little raft of junk didn’t flip or get dragged under, they might be able to survive awhile. Every time they rode over the folded top of a wave, that was put to the test. Each yawning valley was another death-gate through which they must pass. Some were black as Acheron’s bed; others glowed with sparking lightning.
He tried to close his eyes. That made the furious pitching and tossing all the worse.
Al-Wazir’s other concern was whether they were close to land. Should they live, he did not want to be lost amid a thousand knots of ocean. On the other hand, being driven onto a beach now would be more deadly than riding out the worst of the tempest on the open sea.
A saltwater fist caught him in the face, lifting him bodily from the makeshift raft until only the ropes tangled around his legs kept him from being torn completely away. The wind cut through his clothing like cold glass knives while he tried to cough out the brine that had been forced down his throat.
I am a fool, al-Wazir thought. Moments from death, I worry about tomorrow’s landfall. “I am sorry,” he screamed into the wind, still choking on the salt. “I am sorry we will die.”
If Paolina heard him, she made no answer. Another round of lightning lit her body, wet and curled tight beneath her mass of ropes. He could not tell if she were shivering or fighting or struggling. He wondered if the sea had already taken her.
A sharp lurch in his gut told him they were racing up another wave, heading for another crest. White foam gleamed around him as it rose to a steeper and steeper angle. Was this one nigh vertical?
He looked up into another lightning strike as something large flapped across the sky. Part of the gasbag from Heaven’s Deer. Or maybe a demon out of Hell, in this storm.
The raft spun once, twice, three times, then lost all support. They tumbled in the air, al-Wazir finally giving in to the scream that had been clawing up his throat. He realized the mass of bamboo and ropes was above him. Something caught, the raft lurched, and they landed flat at the bottom of the next trough even as a combination of rain and spray closed in once more.
Paolina grabbed his arm, startling another scream from al-Wazir. Her face was little more than a pale blur. He could see the dark oval of her mouth flexing.
He had no idea what she was saying, but he closed his hand over hers. Their grip held a moment before each slipped back to their rope nest.
The next lightning strike caused his legs to flex so tight, he kicked himself in the buttocks. Something tore within each knee. The water burned, too, crackling and glowing. Al-Wazir’s throat closed so tightly that nothing could have forced more screams from him. That was just as well when another wall of water collapsed over him.
He opened his eyes—a second later? Minutes? How much longer could he survive in this wet and bitter hell? A wall of wet metal passed close by.
That makes no sense.
Al-Wazir closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
That makes no sense either.
Where was the storm?
She’s brought back the calm.
He opened his eyes once more. A vessel riding far too low in the water slid by them. A pale face peered over the top of the metal wall.
Al-Wazir pulled himself up on one hand and bellowed as he’d never bellowed before. “Halloo!”
Then the ship was gone, slipping into the curtain of howling rain that surrounded their narrow island of calm. Not ship, submarine. What in blazes would such a thing be doing in such killing weather? They could slide below the chaos of air and wave and wait it out, or cruise for better seas.
The raft spun in the bottom of a wave trough, neither rising nor falling. There was little more than mist in that moment. The wind and rain had been calmed by Paolina and her magic.
“Can you hear me, lassie?”
She groaned as she turned to face him. The movement made her cough up seawater in plenitude just as the raft began to lift up the face of the next wave.
“You done good,” al-Wazir told her.
They joined hands again as the raft rose into the wet night, carrying their little blade of calm with them.
Much to al-Wazir’s surprise, the submarine returned. The raft was spinning along the flank of a wave rather than sliding straight down when the vessel rose in the trough below them. The tower, what he’d previously mistaken for a wall of metal, heeled over as the ship rolled. Her side rudders lifted out of the water, twisting to gain purchase. Three pale faces appeared at the side of the tower as a light flared above them. One of them raised a weapon and fired it at him.
Al-Wazir was too exhausted to wonder why they’d risk their lives to ensure his death. Something streaked overhead, sizzling as it passed, and a cable splashed in the water near the raft. A white float was dragged backwards past him.
There was no more time to think. He tugged Paolina with him as he tried to pull himself from the ropes that tangled his legs to the raft. Trapped, he was trapped, and the damned float was skimming away.
“Grab on t’it, girl!” he shouted.
She lunged without breaking her grip on his wrist, but fell short.
“The gleam,” she
called back. “I cannot lose it.”
Al-Wazir clawed toward Paolina. “Give the damnable thing to me!”
There was a look of pure panic on her face in the sputtering glare of the flare.
“I’ve but one hand, lass. I cannot hold on and also grab the float if they try again!”
She shoved the magic clock at him with her free hand, then began plucking at the ropes. He tucked it tight between his arm and body before renewing his good-handed grip upon her.
The wave was threatening to overtake both raft and submarine when they fired their line once more. This time it soared high over al-Wazir to splash into the water above them. The calm was wavering, too, as the flare hit the sea and spluttered out.
Paolina grabbed at the line, shrieked, then grabbed at the float as it slithered into her arms. Line and float pulled her free of the raft so that she was connected to al-Wazir only by the grip of their hands on one another’s wrists.
“No . . . ,” she screamed as their fingers slipped.
The wave lifted farther above the raft, forcing it toward the submarine. For a moment his grip was secure in Paolina’s. Then she was jerked away as the raft slammed into the iron hull.
I am undone, he thought amid the flying splinters and flapping ends of broken line.
Something—no, someone—plucked at his shoulders. Al-Wazir looked into a Chinese face. It was a man in a puffy vest and harness, who in turn glanced up at the wave forcing the submarine to roll further and further away from vertical.
The Chinese smiled, said something, then they all slipped beneath the water once more.
This time he forgot to breathe.
There was a dark indigo moment of cold air, a bubble like transparent steel. A surprised sailor tugged al-Wazir into a metal deck. A hatch stood open in the tower before them. The ocean roiled all around, above, below, held back by a sphere of crackling air.