by Kin S. Law
Hikawa could not perceive the look of intense pain in Dio’s eyes, peering forlornly over the young man’s shoulder. But he could feel the elderly Templar’s tendons tensed as if gripping an invisible broadsword, toes dug into the dry sands of some heathen country. The sudden painful vision swept over the young man, so much so that he almost did not react to Esteban Dio’s voice sounding an alarm, or the shadow of figures on the ground ahead.
“Your faith is about to be tested,” Dio said.
There was a dry yellow stoop just near, where Hikawa was able to set Dio comfortably. The pair did not speak more. It was hard enough going through an intermediary language neither man had mastered, and they were both ascending toward the frame of mind common to men of battle. Hikawa was tempted to leave Dio his short tanto, but that proved unnecessary; the enemy seemed uninterested in the defenseless old man.
Odd, Hikawa thought, so they are not after the old Templar… He was secretly glad he did not have to divest the blades from each other. The wazikashi and tanto were two halves of the same weapon, after all.
If the assailants were surprised at some Benedictine monk wielding a batto, or sword drawing, stance with Japanese swords, they could not show it. Now Hikawa could assess his situation, he was able to see both figures were hooded and cloaked, their faces in shadow. Neither appeared armed. And since they did not move, it was hard to judge from the weight of pace what devices were about their person. Two had appeared from ahead as Hikawa and Dio approached. Now a third appeared from the building behind. Hikawa drew his wazikashi, the longer of the two, and fell into a stance where the figure behind was clearly reflected in the shining length of deathly mirror.
“I warn you,” Hikawa said, in English, “My blade is faster than your bullets. If you do not believe me, you will taste it yourself.”
They came unhurriedly, closing the distance in a languid formation that seemed to indicate they weren’t about to use firearms. To the left and right were high old walls. High above, the steady thrum of the cutting beam kept up a background of catastrophic destruction. It seemed fitting. Hikawa had read about such thematic climaxes in old samurai tales, like the beach duel between Miyamoto Musashi and rival Sasaki Kojiro. Only there seemed insufficient drama between himself and his assailants. To Hikawa’s surprise, his first blow struck sparks off his enemy, and an angry hiss of escaping steam.
“Nan no mane da?!” Hikawa exclaimed.
He spun, and cut a blow to fell trees. Again, sparks and fabric were his only reward. Impossible! Hikawa’s strokes could decapitate men easily through lacquered armor. Either these hooded men were shorn in truly impenetrable stuff, or…
If Hikawa had paid attention to traders’ stories as a boy, he might have heard of clankers. Or, if he had listened to Esteban Dio’s broken Italian a little more closely, recalled a time when Dio fought a man in Barcelona who could not be pierced by his dancing rapier. But Dio sat slumped in a corner, and Hikawa was fending off the heavy blows of the hooded attackers, too quickly now to walk to Dio.
Hikawa’s sword edge slipped through the wall with barely a yellow spurt of brick dust, yet dulling against whatever armor the hooded men wore. Hikawa was no idiot; he would not waste a good edge. The backside of the sword was dull, but dense and heavy. Sidestepping a takedown, he struck with it against one of the hoods and felt something crumple triumphantly beneath. The shisa guard fair shook beneath his hands, but his victim fell writhing to the ground.
As the man fell, the ground began to shake. Later, Hikawa would reflect on how the towering grime of Rome seemed to fall away unnoticeably, gradually. There would have been no denying the historic piece of ground they stood on was slowly rising into the air.
The other two were not so easy. Not only were they well armored, they learned. They also seemed to work better as a pair. Hikawa could no longer dodge their coordinated kicks and punches. Metal crunched splinters of bone. The swordsman felt one eye go dark, the socket crumpling under some titanic, mechanical pressure. He lashed out blindly, in trained sweeps, to gain some ground, only to find his left quarter blocked. They had pinned him against the wall. With a grunt, Hikawa pushed off against it, knocking one of his attackers to the ground in a clatter.
Run, fool, run! Hikawa imagined Dio shouting. Honor is not worth life!
Young samurai are not symbolized by falling cherry for naught. A bloom flowers but once on the tree, briefly, its petals falling in a glorious snowfall before exhausting itself in its own glory. Hikawa believed this fleetingly, as a child might believe in the tooth fairy when his first canine begins to wiggle. What he believed, and relied on, was the sword passed down by his father, and his father’s fathers, not just the ornate weapon at hand but the idea of the sword. The perfect cut. Yes, there was the way. Straight up and down, with no snags, the blade that would slice through anything. It would have little trouble cleaving through the unworldly stuff of the hooded man’s face.
If there was a time when the perfect cut was needed, it was now. The second hooded man would be up soon. The first was only awaiting his advantage. Hikawa’s sword seemed to quiver and beckon, its hamon waving expectantly, bloodthirsty, in his already failing good eye.
Slowly, Hikawa edged his right foot forward, placing his hands on his sword. His right hand would form the fulcrum, his left, driving force. He almost couldn’t do it. He was dizzy from repeated blows, and something felt broken along his side. Four ribs, maybe. Yet, his legs were steady. His legs were all-important, yes, providing both the forward drive and the balance to recover. He would step—yes, now, right there, perfectly spaced!
Fatigued muscles grated like airship plating, yet Hikawa felt a rush of power. This, this was the perfect cut; the metal slipping through, unnoticed, a serpent through tall grass, bisecting his enemy.
With a resounding snap, the sword burst into a thousand shards against his opponent’s helmet, even as the first monumental gleam of modern metal emerged through the clouds. It seemed God himself had set a celestial palace to rival the Vatican’s beauty.
12
Albion and the Countess Nessie Drake, Gothic Pirate Princess
Kitty Desperado’s tip had gone cold not far after we reached the Mediterranean. We lost Captain Sam’s trail, and now as captain of the airship I was being forced to resort to alternative methods. It wasn’t particularly savory, but it got results—and I think I am more lenient than most.
“Le Maere, she’s called. Means nightmare, in the French. A bit grim, yes, but the Countess Nessie Drake is honorable, by all accounts.”
I pondered over this last bit of information as if sipping a fine vintage from a lost, dusty cellar uncovered in some ancient, rediscovered castle: suspiciously, skeptically, but overall quite pleasurably. The Mediterranean breeze felt far too good for this type of activity, but I believed firmly in the little things. They deserved enjoyment and attention independent of unpleasantness close at hand.
As a point of pride, the fine bone china teacup in my digits was filled with a very fragrant Orange Pekoe from a British tanker out of Sri Lanka. From a second teacup, I provided my charge with a fair draught of the amber liquid. It was a shame the informant could not enjoy it properly, though I was careful not to spill the tea over the rim and into the man’s eyes.
“I say,” the fellow remarked through a mustache surely magnificent in its native habitat. I could just imagine it flapping through the wind at the helm of the man’s own ship. For a chap bound by the ankles and hung from The Huckleberry’s second lateral mast, he sure drank in a dignified way. “Isn’t this quite enough dangling for one day?”
“My friend, I’m not the one who has to go back to that crew,” I replied, kicking at a plank near the man’s face.
The effect was to make it seem as if I had knocked in the man’s Adam’s apple, shaking him dangerously above a sheer drop over the frothing cliffs passing by below. Even across a span of twenty yards in open air, the gasp of the man’s crew was perfectly audible.
“Well,
all right; lay it on thickly then.”
“Gentlemen are such a pleasure to work with. Say hello to your sainted mother for me,” I answered, punching the man’s solar plexus.
“Not the face, my good man, not the face!”
It took about an hour to work up a respectable set of bruises, but once I had given the other captain a good enough excuse (“Not the face, my good man, not the face!”) I offloaded him onto a rock in the ocean and let his crew retrieve him. It was the sort of rock Cepheus would chain Andromeda to, suitably barren enough for a summary execution. We exchanged cues and the captain dashed a spray of sand into my eyes, which were closed, of course. I gave a good show of groping about, waving Victoria in futile manner, and let my informant hide clinging to the stones just above the surf.
“Damn!” I said quite loudly. “Where has the bugger gone? Dash it all,” I said, and got back on my ship.
“Captain, are you sure?” said Rosa, who had come to work on her acting. It was really bad. Really very bad.
“Let him sleep with the fishes!” I declared. A year ago I might have seduced my way to the information, but this way was quicker. It was hard to guess exactly which lady captain or lady of the evening had held the right grapevine, so to speak. And this was the Aegean! The skies were full of people who would do me harm. I had intended to lay low from the Mediterranean until the Tsarvena Anastasia stopped trying to marry me or kill me.
As I watched the tiny smuggler’s trireme drift slowly away over some stunted relation of the Alps, I wondered why all my encounters with fellow pirates either ended in black eyes or lipstick stains. Often, it was both. Surely the sky was free for everyone. Why couldn’t they ever find a cause sufficient to motivate pirates into standing each other’s company? Perhaps freedom was just such a beast, as violently reactive to society as gas to fire.
“Couldn’t you have simply asked the captain?” Vanessa Hargreaves’ stern judgment drifted over the raw-scrubbed decks of The ’Berry. Her voice was particularly grating.
I spared a look, as I always did when the intriguing woman came to call. Our Inspector Vanessa Hargreaves had commandeered a tight-fitting, matte ebony duster with two rows of buttons down the front. It went down to her knees, where burnished boot clasps matched her copper-framed visor against the wind. Her hair had been braided into a long rope down her back. The overall effect was refreshing, as if this was how she ought to look, magnifying glass in hand, kicking down the doors of criminality. Not serving tankards in short, frilly mops. I noted the convenient slits in the coat for easy gun access, and the formfitting pockets undoubtedly filled with ammunition and notebooks. Hargreaves pirated up well.
The thing that gave me pause was the tiny lump in the Inspector’s duster pocket. I knew where her derringer and peashooter were on her person. This corn-headed copper clearly did not carry enough stopping power to actually intend to kill anyone, but I marked those spots as soon as she came on deck. The third lump was something about the size of a pocket watch, but square. When she thought I wasn’t looking, she would absently touch it. Probably of no consequence. A memento, probably, like Rosa’s cameo brooch that she never told anybody about.
“Captain is forgiving. Roberto is more of a bookkeeper,” I sidetracked. “If I hadn’t left a few marks, the more enterprising members of the crew might have thought him easy pickings. I’d rather have the Sirocco’s fleet keep their small fry in check; less chaos in the skies.”
“Right,” Hargreaves said in the wonderfully cleansing way she had, tossing my words overboard. “Did you get anything useful?”
“Actually, yes,” I answered, glad to be on the unshakable foundations of common interest. Like oases in the shark-filled waters of verbal intercourse. “Word is, our dear Captain Sam is hiding out with an old friend. Nessie Drake’s Chiropteran-class is somewhere over Romania, and it looks like the old pervert is aboard. You know, I’ve heard her whole crew is beautiful young women?”
“Your Samuel Clemens makes fast friends,” Hargreaves remarked.
“We must. When the skies are filled with predators, it’s best to be among others of our kind,” I replied. “He also can’t ever resist a damsel in distress. Nessie Drake used to run with The Lovelorn’s captain, over the Dead Sea. Now there’s some bad blood in the clouds. If he’s gone to her, it might be to negotiate with her old mates. He was the only one the two of them ever listened to.”
“And when they don’t listen? I want the Steamboat Man alive to tell me about the laboratory in Oxford. Elric Blair’s received a wire from his sources. Someone’s stolen the Vatican, Saint Peter’s Basillica, carved it right out of the ground like a potato. Whoever’s done this seems to be taking the piss out of the whole of Europe.”
“I hear Nessie’s got some big honkin’ cannons,” quipped I. Seeing Hargreaves’ derisive snort, I got serious. “Look, Inspector, I’d like to find my Captain Sam as much as you, but I’ve been looking for him for over a year. He’s as slippery as a jellied eel. We have to take this very carefully.”
Hargreaves peeked through the corner of her visor. What? I wanted to say, but that would have ruined my carefully cultivated aura of mystique. Sometimes I think the only reason people like Cid listen to me is they are afraid of what I’m really thinking.
“All right. I will take your experience in this matter into consideration,” Hargreaves yielded. “Let us hope Nessie Drake is indeed harboring our quarry.”
“What do you think it is?” I asked. The Mediterranean was once again roiling past under us as we took out new heading, and the breeze made it easy to think. “That’s doing it, I mean. Stealing bloody huge buildings. The airmen have their gossip. Some people say it’s nothing manmade at all, but some creature of the ether come to cut us down to size. Us as in human beings, as if it were some old god. There are old pirate legends, you know? Like the Krakens of old, or the maelstroms, the mermaids, we have our demon storms, our ghost ships cleaving soulless through the air. There are things out there we have very little knowledge of. Even the lift compound running through this ship seems otherworldly, anachronistic in spite of our steamworked times. The superstitious rabble could easily be right.”
“I know not what it is,” Hargreaves admitted. “And I do not care very much. The Queen set me to stop it, and retrieve our Houses of Parliament if we can. That is all I wish to know.”
“You have to have some curiosity about the thing you mean to intercept.”
Hargreaves snorted. Within her was much of the detective, but also something of the soldier as well. I wasn’t sure if I loved it or feared it. If it was the latter, that was all right. I could deal with being afraid of people who could kill me in my sleep. There were at least four aboard right this moment. If it was the former...
The Inspector seemed to be finished. I shrugged, and bid her enjoy the view as we flew on across the Mediterranean, before heading below decks. Let the Inspector snort. She would not be a problem. The one I knew I had to worry about when we got to Romania, was my helmswoman, Rosa Marija.
13
In which Rosa Marija Drinks. Prodigiously.
Rosa Marija, Inspector Hargreaves and crewman Prissy Jack stood on the rickety landing platform with me. Ostensibly we had come fishing for clues. It was a way station in the middle of nowhere, with only the bare essentials, namely, a bar. The place was packed with dirigibles roped to poles thrust out over the mountains, many of them having been waylaid, turned back at the closed Ottoman border.
There was a thinnish stream just under the platform, so Hargreaves and I were engaged in a spot of actual fishing. Our rods soared high over the edge of the balustrades, plunging the line some hundred feet down into the water.
“Two quid rod rental. Bait is five a bucket,” I remembered saying to Hargreaves, “but catch more than me and it’s on me.” Hargreaves had looked behind her, where Rosa was burning through all the airmen who had stopped for a drink. It looked like it would take awhile. We would have been churlish to get i
n her way.
“Prepare to be thoroughly thrashed,” Hargreaves had said.
Now, thirty minutes later, she had whisked three smart trout into her bucket and was taking the piss. Just then a familiar voice cut through our tranquil procrastination.
“What do you mean, gone?” squawked Rosa. We turned to behold our helmswoman standing on her tiptoes, screaming in a Romanian dockhand’s face.
The thick-browed Turk just started, alarmed but uncomprehending of the beautiful mocha horror screaming at the point of his goatee. This close to the Ottoman border, the man’s ethnicity was the only sign of their intrusion on this, an independent mooring platform somewhere in the Romanian mountains.
“Just that, gone,” Elric Blair, who happened to know some Turkish, attempted to squeak against Rosa’s tirade. He spoke rapidly with the dockhand, who seemed to be reconsidering the coin clutched in his hand. Blair translated again.
“He says a Russian freighter came round two days ago, reporting a black ship like Le Maere over the northwest. She was flying low, otherwise they would never have seen her. It looked like she had taken a lot of damage.”
While Rosa Marija whirled away in a cloud of gypsy veils and huff, the Inspector and I exchanged a look. It seemed Le Maere had run into the Lovelorn after all. I gave my rod to Hargreaves—who almost didn’t catch it—and sauntered over to stand near Rosa. The dockside bar felt slippery and smelled flamable with old vodka.
“Ask him if there was another ship,” I said quietly while Rosa Marija was getting a drink on the other side of the bar. She wasn’t the type to wait. “About the size of the French Revenant-class, sort of shaped like a wedge. The name is the Lovelorn.”
Another burst of chatter, in which Blair glanced between the distant Rosa and the suddenly animated Turk.
“He says, of course!” Blair returned with an answer. “The Lovelorn put in at this very station not three days ago. They paid very good money, though in German marks. ”