Quill

by A. C. Cobble

  “I have no idea, Catherine,” replied Oliver. “What do you suggest?”

  “Run before the wind, m’lord,” she advised. “Let the storm chase us. We try to make soil before it hits. Then, if necessary, we can come down and find a bit of shelter to break the wind. Over water, there’s always the risk we end up in it. In the air, we’re at the mercy of the storm.”

  Oliver nodded. “Do it, then, Captain Catherine. Catherine, is that your proper name?”

  “First Mate Catherine. It would be Captain Ainsley — if you promote me, m’lord,” she said with a grin. Then she warned, “Running in front of a storm at full sail is a ride if you haven’t done it before.”

  “I’m no sailor,” replied Oliver, “but it’s not my first time on an airship. Full sail. Try to beat the storm. We’ll hold on tight.”

  The Captain I

  She spun on her heel and began barking orders. In front of her, sailors jumped to it, steady hands on the ropes and canvas as they piled more on, preparing to run before the dark wall of cloud that was looming behind.

  Sparing a look back at the duke, she saw he’d settled down with his elbows on the gunwale, looking ahead of them. The strange girl, daggers on her hips, was peering back. Nervous eyes, the only sign she wasn’t as comfortable on deck as Ainsley herself. She’d seen the look before in plenty of salt-stained sailors and battle-hardened soldiers. There was something different about doing it one thousand yards above a storm-tossed sea.

  “In a moment,” called Ainsley, “we’ll string ropes along the deck. You ought to use them.”

  The girl grimaced and nodded her thanks.

  Ainsley turned and dashed off after a man who was lazily looping a thick rope into a loose knot.

  “Tight, Samuels, tight!” she barked. “You see what’s coming behind us?”

  “What’s that, First Mate?” drawled the sailor.

  She cuffed him on the side of the head. “I’m the captain, Mister Samuels. Until you hear different, you keep calling me that. If the duke himself can do it, then you damn well better. Otherwise, I’ll be happy to show you off the side of the ship next time we’re over land.”

  The man grunted and bent to his work on the knot with an added burst of determination.

  She strode across the desk, knowing Samuel’s newfound dedication wouldn’t last and making a note to keep an eye on the man. It wouldn’t do, allowing laziness so early in her tenure. Haines had taught her that. Show a strong hand early, and you won’t have to later. Haines… She couldn’t believe what she’d heard, but it was no rumor. She’d heard it from too many tongues. Haines had murdered Governor Dalyrimple. Murdered him in cold blood and then died himself. If what she’d heard was true, then good riddance as far as she was concerned. Poison, a coward’s weapon, if ever there was one.

  She spit over the side of the railing, offering a silent curse for Captain Haines’ name. She was glad a man — a murderer — like that had departed the face of the earth, and it didn’t hurt that she’d gotten command of his airship in the bargain.

  The spirits were dealing a fair hand for once.

  All around her, the sailors scrambled to get their work done and to avoid her attention. As she made it to the quarterdeck and climbed to where the wheel would have been located on a conventional vessel, a fresh sheet of canvas rose behind her, high up the mainmast.

  They were piling on every stitch of it they could to catch the powerful winds that ran before a storm. With a little luck, they’d be propelled at four times the speed of a racing horse and make landfall before the storm caught them. They could soak the stones, lowering the airship to right above the ground, and then lower the canvas and secure the ship to ride it out. They’d get rained on and swung around a bit, but down low, they’d avoid the most violent gusts that could threaten to flip an airship over. A skilled captain could generally avoid such a fate, but if it happened, they were almost certain to die. She saw no reason to risk it, not on her first voyage.

  The cards that the spirits dealt were fair but fickle.

  Atop the quarterdeck, she studied the darkening bank of clouds behind them.

  “Mate Pettybone!” she called.

  The second mate, a rag tied over his wild mop of hair, his mutton-chop beard bristling, snapped to attention. “Captain?”

  “Have them pull in the sweeps and shut the hatches. We’ll proceed on sail alone. That’ll give us a bit more speed, maybe enough to make it over land before the storm catches us.”

  “Putting a lot of faith in the crew, Captain.”

  “They deserve it, don’t you think, Mate Pettybone? They’ve been trained by you after all.”

  “Aye,” replied the man, bobbing his head in appreciation. “They deserve it.”

  “Let’s impress the duke, then, and maybe it can be First Mate Pettybone. Has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

  Grinning, Pettybone scampered down the stairs and ducked into the airship to instruct the men below to pull in the sweeps and batten down the hatches. The sweeps were crucial if they were to become becalmed and helped steer in times they were not, but with the stirrings of wind she was already beginning to feel, it would only slow them down.

  She turned from the storm and looked over the decks where the crew was efficiently adjusting and then cinching down the sail. Experienced hands, all of them. They wouldn’t be on the airship if they weren’t. No one made it on a deck in the sky unless they’d spent a few years at sea. They knew their craft and performed it well. None of them had any more interest than her in riding out the storm hundreds of yards above the water.

  The wind picked up, the sails billowed, and she smiled.

  The wind whipped around her, screaming in her ears, filling the snapping sails above her head as rain lashed across the desk.

  “You almost made it, Captain,” called the duke, wiping a hand across his brow where the sudden patter of water had caught him. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to step inside where it’s dry.”

  “Another quarter turn of the clock, m’lord, and we’ll descend over Ivalla,” she said, pulling the cowl of her oiled, canvas jacket over her head as another band of torrential rain washed over them.

  “You planning to stop for some wine while we’re there?” the duke inquired, hustling past her, cursing as the rain caught him moments before he jerked open the door to the captain’s cabin.

  “We’ll need a few turns to reconfigure the rigging and dry the stones once the storm passes, m’lord,” she called after him. “You can stretch our legs, then, if you like.”

  “I’ve got plenty of wine, Captain Ainsley. If you want to be a real Company officer, you have to think like a trader. Wine’s not just for drinking. Consider what you ought to be doing with an empty hold and an unexpected stop.”

  The duke turned and ducked into the cabin, pulling the door shut behind him.

  Face wet, a smile on her lips, she stalked about the rain-splattered deck, checking the men’s work, glancing between the darkness behind them and the rapidly approaching coastline of Ivalla. One of the United Territories, it was a tribute to Enhover and just about the safest piece of land they could find to come down over that wasn’t home. On the coast, Ivalla was all rolling green hills covered in lush grasses — where it wasn’t dotted with row after row of vineyards.

  She frowned. Had the duke been testing her when he suggested picking up some wine? Down along the coast of Ivalla, the quality stuff could be had for a third the price it went for in Westundon. A tidy arbitrage if one could afford to invest in enough barrels and had the connections to sell it back in Enhover. In the manual, private trade was against Company policies, but what else could the duke have meant?

  Interim captain for a week, she certainly didn’t have spare funds to purchase a hold full of wine, but the duke did. Could she provide the opportunity, see if that’s what he truly meant, and see if he’d supply the sterling?

  She held her jacket closed and turned, searching out Mate
Pettybone.

  “First Mate,” she instructed, “bring us down near those stone buildings.”

  “Is that a winery?” he asked, peering through the sheets of rain at the distant complex.

  “I believe it is,” she answered.

  Letting the First Mate handle the steering adjustment, she watched as the Cloud Serpent descended and the buildings came closer. Captain, the thrill of commanding the airship, and the rewards that came with it… It was going to be sweeter than Ivalla wine.

  The Priestess IX

  She looked up the hill, up the one hundred steps, at the towering facade of Westundon’s Church. The hulking edifice was meant to be the face of the Church, the rock on which the foundation of its teaching was built. A dark gray stone construct, giant and intimidating, looming over the buildings around it, casting a shadow across the entirety of the street leading up to it. That it was chosen as the face of the Church was telling, as far as Sam was concerned.

  Sparkling colored glass was set in a spiral pattern to let light into the cavernous sanctuary that was the heart of the building. It was the only spot of color on the entire grim frontage. It was the only pleasant section, Sam thought. Elsewhere, elaborate flying buttresses and sharp peaks of the rib-vaulted roof gave the place the look of a giant skeletal centipede. Armies of fanciful creatures lined the top walls of the building like ever-watchful guardians, peering down with stern expressions at anyone who approached. Brass doors, the height of three men, polished daily to gleam like the sun on the glass above, were closed.

  So early in the morning, the windows that flanked the doors were open to catch the cool autumn breeze, but the doors themselves were locked. No one would go in that way until mid-afternoon when the day’s sermons began.

  Sighing, she started up the one hundred steps. She’d made the climb countless times, but it didn’t get any less ridiculous. There were three entire floors of the building below the top of the steps and any one of them could have been designed as an entrance, but no, the Church expected its congregants to climb.

  At the top of the stairs, a pair of cassocked men with plain steel longswords at their hips offered her a curt nod. Whether they knew her or not, she wasn’t sure, but they would have been able to sense her, to feel the markings on her body as she drew close. Even if they didn’t know her face, they knew enough to stand clear of that feeling. They wanted nothing to do with what she was.

  Ignoring the men, she bypassed the giant, brass doors and took a simple wooden one that was hidden behind the base of a stone buttress. She entered the narthex and then, turning, took to the halls of the building that snaked around the sanctuary, avoiding the vaulted-ceilinged space. Her mentor liked the isolation of the giant, empty room, but she preferred the intimate stone halls around it.

  As she walked, she saw robed men and women scurrying about their tasks, junior priests and priestesses or perhaps even hired staff bustled like ants working tirelessly on behalf of the hive, doing the menial tasks they knew were expected of them and that they thought were important. Ignorant, like ants in the hive, they knew nothing of the larger picture.

  She passed through the building that housed the public space of the Church and moved into the living quarters — the hive. She passed deeper into the network of stone corridors, like she was walking into a cave, farther in and farther down. A narrow stairway led her to a long hallway lit by only a handful of torches. The air was rich with the scent of the flaming brands, the walls blacked where generations of those torches had burned.

  Above, in the bishop’s quarters, there were fae lights glowing softly within their glass globes. The public spaces where the light through the stained glass did not reach were lit by candles or bright mirrored lanterns fueled by distilled oil. It was only below, outside of the haunts of wealthy parishioners and senior Church leaders, that the open torches lit the path. Strangers were not welcome down in the bowels of the Church, and sometimes, she wasn’t sure the denizens of the place were welcome, either.

  As she passed, the wind from her movement set the brands flickering — a warning to those watching that something was moving nearby. It was her, now, but just as easily the wavering flames would give away the presence of something else, something less tangible but just as substantial. Deep in the heart of the Church, the sounds of the quick feet of the junior priests was gone, replaced by her lone steps.

  In years past, she’d been told that these halls were filled with Knives of the Council. Men and women dedicated to eradicating sorcery. Men and women who had little to do over the last two decades since the Coldlands War. Men and women who had failed. Twenty years ago, their work had been done by King Edward and his airships. Now, the king’s son—

  “Sam,” called a voice.

  She turned. Her mentor, Thotham, stood in the middle of an intersection in the hallway.

  He nodded down the crossing corridor. “Come. I’m on the way to the practice yard.”

  “Why?” she asked, walking back and falling in beside him. “Do you plan to make yourself known and rejoin the battle?”

  “You are mad at me,” he acknowledged.

  “Of course I’m mad at you,” she snapped. “You should have been in Archtan Atoll, not me!”

  “You did not find the sorcerer, then?” he asked.

  “No,” she admitted. “I found practitioners and terrible evidence of sorcery, but I do not think we found who we were looking for.”

  “I did not think you would.”

  “What?” she asked. “Why did you send me, then?”

  “Did you learn anything?” asked her mentor.

  She frowned at him.

  “Here,” he said, stepping out of an open doorway into a small courtyard.

  The space was ringed by stone walls and squat, thick-leaved, potted trees. Nothing was visible except the gray of the walls of the Church, the bright green foliage, and the blue sky above. The courtyard was hidden from eyes within the Church though it sat right at its center. The courtyard wasn’t empty, she saw. It held targets set against the wall, racks of practice weapons, scaffolding for climbing across, weights for lifting and building strength, padded armor, and other devices designed for training.

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “Who uses all of this?”

  “You will while you can,” said Thotham. “Sometimes, others do.”

  She grunted.

  “You are right,” he continued. “You have little time, but what time you do have shall not be wasted. This was not assembled for you, but since it is here…”

  “I don’t understand,” she complained.

  “You didn’t answer, but I can infer you did learn something on your journey,” said Thotham, walking to the racks of practice weapons. “Tell me about it.”

  He tossed her a slender, reed sword, and she snagged it from the air with one hand. He raised an eyebrow at her kris daggers. Reluctantly, she shed them, tossing the belt to the corner of the courtyard.

  “And the rest,” he chided.

  Muttering to herself, she disarmed, setting half a dozen sharp blades atop the ones she’d already left. She then turned to her mentor and demanded, “You wasted my time sending me to Archtan Atoll. You mean to waste it now with sparring?”

  “It’s never a waste if you learn something,” claimed the old man, and he danced closer to her, a head-high staff in his hands. He flicked a weak strike at her to force her practice sword up then asked, “The duke, is he trustworthy?”

  “You always say no one is trustworthy,” replied Sam, and then she leapt at her mentor, swinging a series of quick strikes, all of which the white-haired man easily parried with his staff before he backed away.

  “You trust me, don’t you?” asked Thotham.

  “Until you start talking,” claimed Sam. “I don’t trust you any more than anyone else. That’s what you expect me to say, right?”

  Thotham spun and lashed out with a low, sweeping attack. She jumped over his staff and swung down at him, nearly connec
ting with his bony shoulder before he brushed her blow aside. Continuing his spin, he brought the other end of his staff around, and she was forced to slap it away with her hand, the hard wood stinging her flesh.

  “That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?” asked Thotham. “Trust. Who do you trust? You trust me, even though you won’t say it to my face. Do you trust the duke? Does he trust you?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” she asked, settling her feet and slowly spinning the reed practice sword.

  “You are keeping things from him, are you not?” chided Thotham. “Did you tell him Bishop Yates had no idea you were accompanying him to Archtan Atoll? Did you tell him what you’re truly capable of, who you are? This is no test, girl. It’s a simple question. Tell me. Do you trust him?”

  Stalking around the courtyard, waiting for an opening in the old man’s guard, she finally answered, “I do. Why do you ask?”

  “So you can continue to work together, of course,” replied the old priest.

  “Continue to work together?” queried Sam.

  “You don’t think he’ll want to?” questioned Thotham. He frowned. “Don’t tell me you two…”

  “No!” snapped Sam.

  She charged her mentor, raining blows that the old man deflected and dodged, but he’d lost a step in his years, and as she pressed him, his parries became slower, his movements less graceful.

  He tried to launch a counterattack, but she saw it coming and stepped into his guard, trapping his staff between her arm and torso then whipping her sword around at his head. Cursing, Thotham released his staff and jumped back, narrowly avoiding a stinging welt across his temple. Moving with a speed that belied his apparent age, he scampered to the rack of practice weapons and snatched up a sword similar to her own.

  “I didn’t expect that,” he admitted. “Well done. But this is important. Will the duke accept you by his side if you ask it?”

  Sam paused. “Why?”

  “Because you are going to ask it,” declared Thotham. “You will request to continue working with him on his investigation. Lie to him if you must. Tell him Bishop Yates directed it or whatever you need to say.”