by Jay Lake
Panic clawed his throat. It recalled the sensation of drowning in a river. He’d nearly done so one summer when he was nine, tangled in the rotting branches of an old log in the current, willing to mortgage his soul for one more breath of air.
“Please …” Hethor choked out the word, fighting his desire to scream and bolt from the prison even if he had to claw through stone to do it. Surely they all felt that in this place. These men were buried, dead as the Brass Christ in his tomb, with no angel to roll back the stone.
Someone pressed a bowl into his hand. It was cool to the touch, and a little rough. He could barely see it even in the candlelight, but with his other hand Hethor found a pile of boiled eggs. He took one and passed the bowl along.
Soon there was a sound of peeling and chomping as the candlemen ate. Still there were no words.
Another bowl came, almost the same as the first, this one filled with a soppy mess of which Hethor took a fingered scoop. Rolled oats with a trace of honey, he decided from the smell. He passed that bowl, then licked his fingers clean.
When the third bowl came, he finally realized what he was holding. They were the tops of skulls, round as his own head and no bigger. Hethor shrieked and nearly dropped it.
The candleman to his right, who had not spoken before, said in a soft voice, “If you don’t like sausage, please just pass it on.”
“The bowl …”
“We share everything here in the pit,” said the spokesman. “Even ourselves, once we are gone.”
“What is this place?” Hethor asked desperately.
“In eighteen hundred and seventy-one, Viceroy Earl Cornwallis caused engineers from London’s Metropolitan Railway to come to Boston and create a tube train here. He built a line from the harbor to the viceregal offices at Massachusetts House. From here it ran onward to the west end of Boston Common.”
That was not the answer Hethor had expected. “What?”
“The candlemen’s pit is the Massachusetts House Station.”
“We even have a locomotive here,” croaked another voice out of the flickering shadows. Pride still echoed within the reedy weakness of age.
An underground railroad? In a prison? They are all crazed. What had William of Ghent done to him? “And you are the engineers?”
“Some of the oldest of us,” said the spokesman. “Some of us were laborers or draughtsmen. Others were placed here to wait for … whatever.”
“As I am—”
“Observe the rule!” the spokesman interrupted sharply. “Our stories are old, and may be freely told. Your story is new, and more precious than gold.”
“What happened to the rail line?” Hethor was trying to find a semblance of sanity among these half-mad, half-blind old men.
“Never opened,” said the spokesman. He sounded sad. “Viceroy Earl Cornwallis lost a son under the wheels of our test locomotive before the line was ever opened. In his grief, he had us all shut in here with the murdering machine. I believe they eventually shipped him home wrapped in madness.”
Surely Viceroy Lord Courtenay did not mean him to rot here for decades? Hethor thought. He would be mad as these candlemen, and no more useful to himself or the world.
If the world indeed kept turning. He thought back to the fault in the noises he had heard as he had fallen asleep. Something was going wrong in the heart of the world. The Key Perilous would be part of whatever was needed to set it to right. Whatever and wherever the Key was.
“I don’t want to be here,” Hethor whispered.
“None do,” a voice responded from around the circle. “We are lost to life. You will no more escape this place than you will fly across the great Wall at the waist of the world. Not till you are born once more into the light.”
“Kennard ‘as flown over’t,” cackled another. “Ain’t’ch’a, Kenn? Magic and hoody-men walkin’ on corpse-legs beyond, na?”
There was a mumbled response. The circle began to rustle as men shifted their weight.
“Please,” said Hethor. “There must be appeal. Some escape.”
“’Tis not so bad,” said his neighbor to the right. A ragged hand touched his arm.
“We all keep nearby,” said another.
Around him, the candlemen began to shuffle closer together, closer to Hethor, their bodies one by one blocking the candlelight as their hands reached out for him. Rough-scarred fingers stroked his face, his hair, his body, tugging at his pants, touching him, touching, touching.
With a scream he leapt to his feet, only to crack his head on a stone arch. Hethor collapsed into the heap of candlemen, terrified for his life. They reached once more for him when a bright light stabbed into them all.
The candlemen screeched, shouted, scuttled away from the brilliant beam. A group of men walked through distant doors carrying bull’s-eye lanterns and waving staves.
“Line ’em up,” someone shouted. “Every able-bodied man fall in, right now!”
Hethor scrambled on hands and knees toward the newcomers, eager to be away from the candlemen, no matter what the cost. He tried to get to his feet, but the throbbing in his head made him sick to his stomach. He missed his footing and slid flat on the floor.
“Corne along, vou monkeys, or you’ll be billy-damned sorry,” roared the shouting man.
Choking, Hethor got to his feet. He staggered forward. “Wait for me,” he gasped. “Please, wait.”
“This place is scuppered,” said another voice in a thick Scottish accent. “Dinna see what the fewk we come for. Wastin’ our time with them broken old bastards. Dark as yon eclipse in here, ’tis, and them all blind as stones.”
“No!” Hethor tried to shout, but his stomach heaved so hard the words came out in a strangled cough.
Hands grabbed at his ankles and his calves, tugging him back into the flickering darkness. A wave of fury and fear drove Hethor forward. They had come for him. He knew it. He fought his tormenters to chase after the lanterns bobbing through the door. “Wait for me!” he shouted.
The last one in the line paused, the light sweeping back once more into the pit of the candlemen. It caught Hethor in the face. He madly waved even as more hands tried to pull him down. Hethor kicked a candleman in the face, then stumbled into the lantern’s glare.
“Well and you’re nae prize,” said the Scottish voice. A great hand grabbed Hethor’s shoulder and yanked him out the first door, then the second, into the brick corridor beyond.
“Is he fit?” asked the first man, the one who had shouted for the prisoners to fall in.
“Fit enough, by the white bird,” said Phelps quietly. The little man stood in the corridor with Sergeant Ellis, a few feet away from the party with their lanterns and staves.
Hethor tried not to stare at Phelps. His message to the mysterious Malgus at Anthony’s must have gotten through. They really had come for him. His eyes ached in the lantern’s glare. Someone felt the muscles of Hethor’s arms and shoulders.
Phelps smiled, nodding slowly, acting for all the world like he’d never before laid eyes on Hethor. “He’ll do.”
Hethor found himself being dragged down the corridor faster than he could walk. He was surrounded by a chatter of voices talking about weight and lift and drag and everything except the most important thing of all.
What were they going to do with him, now that he had been rescued from the pit?
THE GROUP that took him from the prison turned out to be six men including the leader and the vocal Scot. They bundled Hethor into an enclosed wagon of the sort used by the bobbies to round up drunks and criminals. But they all followed him in. He noted that the door was not locked.
Inside the black Mariah with its tiny, high windows, his eyes had a chance to adjust to the light once more. He realized these men with their striped shirts and canvas jackets were sailors. One even wore a gold hooped earring just like the engravings in the Boy’s Own books he’d read as a child. They carried on a multisided conversation that seemed to be all talking and no li
stening.
“Ain’t never seen nothing like that place. Like some demon-hell out of the south.”
“Straddle me and me mum both, you’ve been to the Gambia and Formosa. Don’t bet that’s the worser’s ever been seen by the likes of us.”
“All right, you stupid arse-licker, but ’tain’t nothing like it in a proper English city.”
“Who the bloody fewk says Boston’s a proper English city?”
They all laughed.
“Excuse me,” Hethor said.
“What ho,” the Scot replied. “New chum speaks.”
“I’m grateful for the rescue, but where are we bound?”
More laughter. The one with the earring punched Hethor in the shoulder so hard Hethor was knocked into the man on the other side of him.
“Silly bugger,” shouted one of the sailors.
“No, no buggering his sweetness yet,” said another.
Hethor subsided, holding his tongue. He’d gotten in trouble enough already these past few days by talking too much.
After about twenty minutes of travel, the black Mariah rumbled to a stop with much heying and clucking from the driver outside. The sailors tumbled out, sweeping Hethor with them onto a pier. A ship was tied at the far end. A little shingled shack stood right beside them. The sign above the entrance read ANTHONY’S.
“Pier Four?” Hethor asked.
“The same,” roared the Scot, slapping Hethor again. “Nae time for drinking this morning. Smallwood wants to cast lines and head south before the midday calm. As His Lordship is our captain and our master, cast lines we shall.”
“I’m going on a ship,” Hethor squeaked. He’d never even been in a rowboat, though he’d swum enough in rivers and ponds as a small child.
“Oh, that you are, my little beggar.”
Someone grabbed his elbow, marched Hethor down the pier, and literally threw him off the dock into a little boat with a single mast and eight oars. He had not seen the small vessel before because it was hidden by the pier’s height.
“Sit down and shut your bleeding gob,” growled Gold Earring, “if you know what’s good for you.”
Anything is better than the pit of the candlemen, Hethor told himself. At least if this crew killed him, it would be in good honest daylight, not in that dungeon full of half-starved ghosts bent on terrible violation of his body and soul.
Around him the sailors began to row. They chanted as they pulled.
“Starboard, ya great eejit,” bellowed the Scotsman at the small man on the tiller. “Or I’ll have your sister for brekkie.”
The boat heeled and lurched as salt spray broke over the bow. Hethor tried to poke his head up only to be slapped down by Gold Earring again.
He lay in the bottom of the boat feeling nauseous once more but glad of the daylight as the sailors rowed their little vessel out across the harbor.
“JEFFRIES POINT,” bellowed the Scot. “All ashore what’s goin’ ashore.”
Everyone but Hethor found that very funny. Somewhere in the middle of the harbor his stomach had finally rebelled. He’d kept his guts behind his teeth, barely, but his nose stung and his breath reeked. Hethor knew without being told that spewing would be worse than pained silence.
Much worse.
He climbed up, this time without being slapped down into the bottom of the boat, and was helped out onto a muddy flat populated with wooden towers rising from stone footings. Gold Earring spun Hethor around by the shoulder to point back across the harbor.
“See that?” he growled. “Your precious Boston. Say good-bye, candy-arse.”
New Haven was far more precious to Hethor than Boston, but this didn’t seem to be the time to mention that.
Two of the sailors set anchors far out into the mud flat from the little boat. They then began hiking along a winding path toward the towers. Away from the water. The group was quieter than they’d been since first snatching Hethor from the viceroy’s peculiar dungeon.
“Where’s the ship?” Hethor asked after a few minutes of walking.
“Look up,” said Gold Earring.
Hethor looked up.
Airships—canvas clouds that dripped hemp rope and wooden decks—floated at three of the towers. Great wings of slats webbed with silk drooped from the bows and sterns of the hulls, which were lean and narrow enough to kiss the water. Huge blades hung crossed over each other, screws protruding from the backs of outrigger pods that had steam hissing along their flanks. Nets hung across the canvas gasbags. The Union Jack was woven into them.
“Oh,” said Hethor.
“Seeing as how we’ve yet to climb the ladder, it’s a mite early to be saying so,” said the Scotsman from the front of their little hiking party, “but welcome to Her Imperial Majesty’s Ship of the Air Bassett.”
“You’ve been pressed, man,” Gold Earring said with a nasty chuckle, “into the Royal Navy, finest fewkin’ fleet on air or water.”
Hethor knew he should be dismayed, or even terrified, but he was profoundly glad to be shut of the scent of candle wax. And it didn’t matter whether this sweep from the viceroy’s prison was meant to help him or betray him. The message Hethor had sent to Malgus through Sergeant Ellis had ultimately summoned the press-gang, saving him.
“Thank you,” Hethor mouthed as they reached the bottom of one of the towers.
The climb was ferocious, his arms and legs burning, but still it tasted of a kind of freedom he’d never known before.
THE SHIP cast off almost immediately after the press-gang’s return, with a great roaring sluice of seawater ballast being dumped. No one on deck commented on their poor catch of one gangly youth. Gold Earring hustled Hethor to a rope locker near the front of the ship, close under the lowering curve of the gasbag.
“You’re to stay here, and no moving about, till someone comes for you. Get a real sailor hurt and I warrant you’ll know the meaning of pain under our lash. I’ll staple your pecker to the rail with a twelve-penny nail, I find you in the way.” He poked Hethor in the chest for emphasis. “And listen, little fish. Wind comes up, you tie yourself down to a safety line and hold on.”
Hethor crouched next to the rope locker in a small space between it and a rail until a bored-looking boy with blond hair and a pink face came to find him.
“On your feet,” said the child, who had to be four years younger than Hethor—twelve or thirteen at most. In contrast to Hethor’s increasingly grimy work clothes, the newcomer wore a nicely cut uniform complete with gold-scabbarded sword.
Hethor stood, steadying himself on the rope locker, and wondered what was supposed to happen.
“You are hereby sworn to Her Imperial Majesty’s service, at the pleasure of the queen or her appointed officers, under pain of punishment and death subject to the Articles of War and the captain’s will.”
“What?”
The child cuffed Hethor across the cheek. “Say ‘yes,’ lout.”
Frustrated and enraged, Hethor hit him back. “Don’t touch—”
But the child drew his sword and pressed the point into Hethor’s chest. “That will stand you twelve lashes, and twelve more, for striking an officer, lout.”
“I—”
“Shall we try for thirty-six?” The child waited for a moment, then lowered the sword’s point. “I thought not. I am Midshipman Fine, officer in charge of the deck division. You are the most junior of the deck idlers. This means you do what any man on this ship says unless I tell you otherwise.”
“Yes, sir.” Hethor’s back already itched.
“You’ll be lashed at the next discipline call,” said Midshipman Fine. “Until then, I suggest you stay out of further trouble. You may begin by finding Deck Chief Lombardo and doing whatever he requires of you.”
Deck Chief Lombardo, of course, turned out to be Gold Earring, the man from the press-gang who’d invested his time in harassing Hethor.
HETHOR’S SENSE of freedom evaporated as he scrubbed the decks with a holystone and a broom
and tried not to think about the promised lashing. Though on the water the Royal Navy had gone to steam-powered iron hulls, in the air wood was still very much favored for its relatively light weight, flexibility, and ease of expedient repair.
These things were explained to him, lovingly and with great care, by Lombardo. The deck chief seemed to delight in forcing Hethor to absorb cataracts of Bassett trivia, with every expectation that they would be disgorged again on command.
“You’re lucky,” Lombardo growled the morning of Hethor’s third day on board. The gray Atlantic tossed white lines of foam back and forth perhaps a thousand feet below the deck. “Most lads have to do five or ten years on the water before they get to the air. Hard work and plenty of buggering. Ain’t never seen a press-gang for an airship before.”
Hethor’s back itched to distraction in anticipation of Middie Fine’s promised lashing. The thought of the punishment held a sick dread for him, to the point where he barely listened to Lombardo.
“What the fewk makes you special?” Lombardo asked. His rough-shaven face pressed close to Hethor’s ear. “Who the bloody raging hell are you?”
“Someone who needed very badly to leave Boston,” Hethor said, despite his efforts to keep his mouth shut and just listen. Someone had made an extraordinary effort to bring him aboard; that was clear. A combination of Phelps and the mysterious Malgus. The question was, were they working with or against the connivance of the treacherous William of Ghent?
“This ain’t no cush berth, you hear? We work damned hard, and we’re bound for territory where Chinee airships troll for trouble. You’d best be able to fight, boy, or you’ll really be in for it for some hard scut.”
Lombardo gave Hethor a shove, doubling him over his broom, and stalked away.
HETHOR FOUND that even in his distress he loved the air. The airship had met only calm weather since leaving Boston, mostly favorable westerly breezes, so the rocking of the hull had been a gentle minimum. He could work the deck along a railing and stare out across the ocean toward the land to the west—though that slipped beneath the horizon soon enough. They often passed among the clouds, towering white geometries like he imagined mountains to be. The ocean below was a pattern of infinite variety, swells moving at cross-purposes, the colored rivers of currents visible, sometimes the dots of ships.