by Jay Lake
Al-Wazir stumbled, following the sailor and one of his fellows into the tower. They slammed it shut as water coursed around them with a clap like another lightning strike.
They were thrown so hard against the metal of the inside of the tower that the wind was smashed from his chest and into the eager salt water. It drained away fast, even as al-Wazir’s lungs felt fit to burst. One of the sailors banged sharply on a hatch in the floor. The wheel spun, and the first sailor dropped down below the deck. The second looked at al-Wazir and said something urgent.
Anything was better than this storm. He climbed one-handed, clumsy with cold and exhaustion, desperate to clear the deck before water folded over them again. The second sailor followed so close, he kicked al-Wazir in the head, and tugged the hatch shut behind them. They passed through a second hatch to alight in a narrow passageway. He had to bend low while half a dozen more Chinese sailors stood close with knives, shouting.
Al-Wazir chose the better part of valor and collapsed to the deck, coughing up seawater with the last of his panic. He wondered where Paolina was.
CHILDRESS
“Get down the ladder, now!” She didn’t know how to make herself heard over the storm that had closed back in after a few moments of unnatural calm. The girl had come up instead of going below.
Childress still had no idea how they’d gotten here—one moment Five Lucky Winds had been heading toward the distant storm, land visible on both flanks of the ship. The next they were deep in a horrendous torment of the sea. That she and Ming had survived the few minutes that followed was a testament far more to luck, and Ming’s quick thinking, than any merit of hers.
They had seen that raft with the two people clinging to it. Ming had argued on the speaking horn briefly, then more intently, until she’d grabbed it and shouted, “Turn the damned ship!”
Now they had one castaway gone below after a lunatic rescue involving a line fired from a gun. The other was here in the tower with them as Five Lucky Winds slid toward another dunking.
They could drown right now. They should have already.
The girl looked at her calmly. “I can hold back the ocean until we go below.”
And then she did.
Ming, Childress, the girl, and Fat Cheung with his line gun scrambled down the ladder even while the waters roiled around a ball of air centered on them. Cheung rapped on the hatch in the dark damp at the base of the tower, then dropped in as it was opened from below.
“Go,” said Childress to the girl.
“The air will follow me,” she warned.
Childress nodded, then scrambled down the ladder, wet as she’d ever been. Her eyes and ears and throat stung with seawater. Bells were ringing alarms all over the ship.
Above her, the girl and Ming crammed into the lock together—something that would not have been possible if they were not both of small stature. Ming closed the outer hatch as Childress found the deck.
She heard them pass the inner hatch, but her attention was taken by the two cooks bending over that giant European that had been pulled from the same raft as the girl.
He was a massive redheaded brute, and he’d produced an astonishing quantity of salt water. One of the cooks pounded his back while the other held his head up above the water and vomitus pooling the deck.
“I see you have taken us fishing,” said Captain Leung from behind her.
The girl stepped off the ladder and screamed at the cooks, “Get away from him!”
“Wait,” Childress called.
She whirled, anger and panic clear in her face. “What?”
“They’re trying to save his life.”
“These are Chinese!” In the cold silence that followed, she added with an edge of fury, “They’re almost as bad as the English.”
“Enough,” said Leung. He rattled off some rapid Chinese, which sent most of the sailors scattering. He then turned to Ming with a question. Childress caught the phrase “All men” in Ming’s answer. All men, whatever that meant.
“We dive now,” Leung said. “As soon as we know how deep and where we are.” He looked at the girl. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” she gasped. Her anger drained away from her as fast as the water from the man on the floor.
Leung stepped back into the bridge, where alarms continued to ring. In the silence that followed, Childress was very aware of the hull groaning and popping.
“Take him forward when you can,” she told the cooks. “And my profound gratitude.” Then, to the girl, in English, “Let us repair to the wardroom. We’ll be out of the way. If the ship survives this storm, there will be many questions.”
“The questions are there whether or not the ship survives the storm,” the girl said more calmly. “I won’t leave al-Wazir.”
“The wardroom is a few steps aft,” she said. “You can see him from there.”
She picked her way past the groaning giant. The girl followed her with an anxious glance backward.
“You’ll forgive me if I do not make tea,” Childress said as the submarine rolled again. The hull continued to groan. The noise of water was more loud than she’d ever heard before.
The girl shivered under the blankets Childress had given her, and kept glancing at the open hatch.
She leaned forward. “You’re the girl with the gleam, aren’t you?”
“If you know that, you know everything.” Her voice was sullen.
Childress felt a surge of sympathy. She kept her voice level and calm. “You’ve nearly drowned, my dear, and been chased across half the Northern Earth if I don’t miss my guess. But that’s nearly all I can say. I don’t even know your name.”
“We nearly drowned after crashing an airship. And worse, along the way.” After a moment, she added, “I am Paolina Barthes, of Praia Nova, along the Atlantic extents of a Muralha.”
“Well, Paolina Barthes, I am the Mask Childress, also known as Emily McHenry Childress, sometime librarian in New Haven, Connecticut.”
“Mask?”
“Of the Feathered Masks. The avebianco. Spiritualists searching for man’s path in God’s world.”
Paolina stiffened. “I have had enough of searchers. Your Silent Order has been the death of many in their quest to abuse me.”
“Not my Silent Order,” Childress said carefully. “They have a writ against my life.”
“So why are you aboard this ship?”
“Looking for you, I think. To stop the Silent Order from taking you to finish building their Golden Bridge.”
“You must be the other ones, the birds.”
“Yes.” Childress wasn’t certain whether to be pleased or concerned at what this girl knew. “The white birds, as I said.”
“And what are your plans for me?” The anger was building once again.
“For you?” Childress was surprised at the question. “Nothing. To offer you aid, if possible, and somehow ensure your freedom. Our aim was to stop another project in which you and your device seem to have come to play a critical role. If you find a way to escape the Silent Order, we may have succeeded in a single stroke.” Phu Ket could wait, if this Paolina somehow left the chase behind.
“If you want a single stroke, best cut off my head now and be done with it.”
“No, I do not think so.” Childress gathered Paolina’s hands in hers. The girl did not resist. “We do not do things that way. I do not do things that way.”
“Do you command this ship?”
“No, of course not. But I am the Mask here. And your fate is most properly my concern, far more so than Captain Leung’s.”
Paolina fell silent. She did not pull her hands away from Childress’ grip. The ship shuddered again, rolling with some motion of the waves as they found their depth.
“Listen,” Childress finally said. “You must have had a direction, a goal when you were forced down by the storm. Where were you bound?”
“ We had t-t-taken Heaven’s Deer.”
“You stole an
airship?”
“No. We took her wheel from her captain.”
Childress turned that over. “Who? You had a crew.”
“Just me and al-Wazir,” Paolina whispered.
“Two of you took on an airship?” She was impressed and alarmed. This girl was very powerful. No wonder the Silent Order and the Chinese were both after her. That Paolina might be the Golden Bridge brought to life seemed very possible.
“Yes we did.”
“Bound where? What was your plan?”
“We f-f-forced most of the crew off. We were headed for a-a-a Muralha—the Wall. If the storm had not taken us, we would have made our d-d-destination in another day or so.”
“So you want to go to the Wall.”
“I was born on the Wall. If I am to die soon, I would prefer to die on the Wall. If I am to live, I would p-p-prefer to live there. As you v-v-value me, take me there.”
“Then we sail to the Wall,” Childress said, her tone firm.
“Not until I know what caused Five Lucky Winds to move two hundred nautical miles in a moment,” Leung said from the hatch. He slipped into the wardroom and sat at the table with them. “I am Captain Leung.”
Paolina just stared at him. “B-b-but you’re Ch-ch-chinese.”
“Yes, he is,” Childress said, stepping into the argument before it erupted. “He is master of this vessel, and it is his ship and crew that have saved you from certain drowning. Captain Leung, this is Paolina Barthes, late of the Wall. A Muralha, she calls it.”
“Miss Barthes, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” His voice grew hard. “What happened to my ship?”
The girl tugged a brass disk from the folds of her blanket. It glinted with recent dunking. “The gleam,” she said softly. “I called you to me.”
“Called me? Called my ship? How did you know to find us?”
“I did not.” She looked up, met his eyes, then Childress’. The Mask saw misery in the girl’s gaze. “I arranged the world so that rescue might come to me.”
Leung was incredulous. “You moved a vessel of over three hundred tons with the power of your arrangements?”
“This is the strength of the Golden Bridge,” Childress snapped. “The missing keystone to their arch lies in what this poor girl can do. She is the Bridge, in a very real way. She already carries what they seek to build. The Silent Order and your government have pursued this girl across Northern Earth. You can see what such power would mean in the wrong hands.”
“My last gleam destroyed half of Strasbourg,” Paolina muttered.
The captain stared at her. “A bomb? Aboard my vessel, you have brought a bomb?”
“More like . . . a spell.” Paolina showed them what looked like a clockface. “A windup spell.”
“There have always been wizards in Northern Earth.” Childress wasn’t sure which of the three of the them she was speaking to. “William of Ghent, for example.” The stakes for which this game were being played had grown immense. “This thing that you have wrought is a grave danger, Miss Barthes.”
“People have died,” she muttered. “Too many.”
Childress led her to the horrifying conclusion. “Because it might make any man a wizard.”
“That seems true. Though I built the one which damaged Strasbourg, I did not wield it.”
“I should dump both you and that device in the ocean,” said Leung. “You are the most dangerous person to walk this Northern Earth since K’ung-fu-tzu.”
Paolina turned to Childress. “I told you.”
“Let him think, child,” she said in her calmest voice, the one usually reserved for an angry professor. Childress knew better. Leung was not planning to dump this poor girl into the sea. Still, his reaction echoed her own. This was exactly the sort of disruptive, destructive force that she feared in the Golden Bridge project. Leveling cities, indeed.
“Where were you bound with it?” the captain asked.
“As a prisoner aboard one of your airships.” Sullen, resentful, angry. “Reportedly to Phu Ket. Al-Wazir and I had turned it south toward the Wall.”
Leung sounded amazed. “You suborned the crew of one of the Celestial Emperor’s airships?”
“We took it from the crew, cast the officers overboard.” Her voice was filled with a fearsome, fragile pride. “We would be at the Wall now except that the storm forced us down.”
“You captured an airship of the Celestial Empire, then crashed it into the sea. This is not the power to level cities, but some other glamour. That makes you all the more dangerous, girl. I do not believe that one-handed monster lying in my passage could have done so on his own.”
“Then dump me into the ocean,” she said fiercely.
“No.” Childress had her best Mask Poinsard voice on now. “We shall put you ashore at the Wall. From there, you must carry on as best you can.” She turned to Leung. “In the meantime, we will let her rest. In my cabin, undisturbed, as her sailor still lies in the passageway.”
Leung nodded, but remained seated. Childress took that as a hint, and escorted Paolina out of the wardroom and the few steps forward to her cabin. Casting eyes on the snoring, snorting British sailor, the girl refused further aid once they’d reached the entrance.
Childress returned to the wardroom to sit with Leung once more. “How did you discover our position?”
“We still are not certain,” he told her. “There are, ah . . . wheels that turn and keep their orientation? Very strong, small wheels?”
“Gyroscopes?”
“Yes. Gyroscopes. In our compasses. I believe we are about a hundred nautical miles west and north of Sumatra. I am not certain, and thus we must be very, very cautious as to our depth and heading until the storm reduces and we can take a reliable position from the sky.”
“The gleam.” Childress tried to imagine how the avebianco or the British Crown would react to the presence of such power in the world. Much as the Silent Order already had, she assumed.
“An accursed device if ever there was one.” He looked at his hands. “I will make a heading toward the Wall, if you will work to find a way to assure me that once ashore she and her device will trouble us no more.”
“How could I make that assurance?”
“You are the Mask here. I rely on your discernment and discretion.”
“Indeed.” Discernment and discretion are all well and fine, she thought. What she needed was a flash of genius.
More than a flash.
TWENTY
PAOLINA
She awoke shivering violently. A fever. She felt neither burning nor chilled, though. She was unclothed, wrapped in layers of blankets, lying in a narrow bed in a tiny metal-walled room. She distinctly remembered it pitching and rolling when she’d lain down. The deck seemed level now.
Metal meant she was no longer on the airship. No, the submarine. She’d fought with the captain. A panic overwhelmed Paolina as she cast about for the gleam, but it was under her covers with her. She must have slept with it wrapped in her hands.
Holding the thing calmed her. She rose and pulled on her damp, tattered dress. There was nothing else to wear. When she opened the hatch a sailor stationed there turned and smiled at her, then called out.
That old woman—Childless?—appeared from down the corridor. “Good day, young lady.”
Paolina couldn’t decide whether to be appalled or pleased that there was an Englishwoman aboard a Chinese vessel. It made no sense to her at all, yet here she was. “How is Chief al-Wazir?”
“Your great lummox of a Scotsman? He has a dreadful fever, but seems in no danger of passing away. He has twice asked for you.”
“Where is he?”
“The forward torpedo room. With you in my cabin, it’s the only place on Five Lucky Winds to put him.”
“I would like to see the chief.”
“Not before Captain Leung says so, dear. Besides, we are coming to a shore. There will be distractions.”
Her heart leapt. “A
Muralha?”
“No, no. I am afraid only a small harbor along the southwest coast of Sumatra. We lost most of our fresh water in the storm. The captain would prefer to take on further supply. Once that is sorted, we are perhaps a day’s sail from the Wall.”
“Oh.” There was only delay, disappointment, more kinds of trouble ahead. That was all she could see, ever and again.
“Do not despair,” the old woman said kindly. She picked up a bowl and pair of the Chinese sticks. “Here, you should eat. It will improve your mood.”
They breakfasted on cold rice with some slippery, naked beans in brownish sauce. To her surprise, Paolina did feel a bit better. A sailor stepped in and whispered to Childress, who nodded and murmured her thanks.
“We can go see your angry giant now, Miss Barthes. Then if you’d like to come up into the tower, we might look upon the shore of Sumatra.”
“How is Chief al-Wazir?”
“I can assure you he’s well cared for.” Childress rose. “Come with me.”
They headed for a hatch at the end of the short passageway. A sailor swung it open at their approach and waved them in.
The room beyond was very narrow, lined with long cylinders and two round hatches at the front. A set of winches was stowed above, and the cleared space on the floor where the cylinders—torpedoes?—could be handled was currently occupied by one Threadgill Angus al-Wazir.
He in turn was surrounded by half a dozen sailors in their blue pajamas. They seemed to be fascinated by the towering redheaded man. It had been somewhat the same aboard Heaven’s Deer, though with far more anger and weapons. Al-Wazir and the airship had met fighting, after all. Still, he’d exerted a certain strange attraction to the Chinese.
“Lassie,” al-Wazir mumbled. His voice was thick as mud.
“Chief,” she answered.
“They’re feeding me crap, lassie. Stewed crap what tastes like the worst of last winter’s oats.”
He sounded so pathetic, so small. It made her want to cry.