Edith did not react to the mention of his title. “I’m not here for you. I’ve come to speak with your wife.”
The demand appeared to catch Duke Wilhelm off guard, though he was quick enough to cover his surprise with disdain. He tightened the belt of his dark robe and said, “Absolutely not.”
A woman with unbrushed auburn hair and fine features peered from behind the door the duke had lately come by. She wore a morning gown, ruffled about the collar, and a headband, both a pale shade of lavender.
When the duke noticed her, he said, “Darling, go back to your room, please. I’m dealing with some trespassers. I’ve already sent my man to fetch a constable.”
“Marya.” Edith could not keep the awe from her voice. She recognized Senlin’s wife at once; she looked more like the poisoned painting he had carried than Edith would’ve expected, and yet she was shocked by how different Marya seemed, too. In all of Senlin’s stories, she had been full of a sort of contagious vivacity, an impish joy, and boundless confidence. In the painting, she had projected an unabashed self-possession, which was more arresting than her nakedness.
Now, she seemed anything but self-possessed. She looked timid and haunted and ready to bolt. Dark circles underscored her eyes. Her gaze flew again and again to the duke, even though he wasn’t facing her. Without looking, he pointed at the door like a man commanding an old dog from the room, and she began to withdraw. Edith called to her, “Marya. Please, wait. I’m not here to hurt you, and I will leave if you ask. But I need to speak to you for one moment first.”
This direct address seemed to embolden her a little. Gathering her courage, Marya took two steps into the room, a movement that brought the duke’s head around quick enough. The lower half of her arms were bare, and when she reached up to tuck a strand of hair under the crocheted band, Edith saw the dark bracelets of bruised flesh.
Marya said, “You’re the girl’s friend, aren’t you? The one with the cropped hair.”
“Yes, I am.” Edith pulled her cocked hat from her head.
“What are you talking about, Marya?” The duke spoke at twice her volume, his voice pitching higher with annoyance. “This woman is responsible for destroying our port and murdering a score of young men in their prime. She is a fanatic! She is the reason we’re all stuck indoors. And she is leaving! Now, please, go to your room!”
Edith ignored the duke’s interruption, saying, “I’m a friend of Tom, too.”
“Are you?” Hope and sorrow seemed to fight over Marya’s expression.
“Yes. I met him just days after he lost you. He’s been looking for you ever since.”
“He found me.” Marya looked over her shoulder as if she expected someone to be there. For a moment, Edith thought she would leave, but then she came back around and said, “But I fobbed him off. I told him to go away. I was …” She glanced at the duke.
“Perhaps you were afraid,” Edith said. “I don’t blame you if you were. I’m sure Tom doesn’t blame you either. You have every reason to be afraid. Your husband is a dangerous man and your position here is tenuous.”
“Now, see here, you ugly doxy—” the duke began.
“If you speak again, my pilot will escort you out of the room,” Edith said, pointing at the duke with her engine. The duke glanced at the potbellied officer, and Reddleman waved at him like a schoolboy. Edith continued to address Marya: “I know your husband has fooled a lot of people into thinking he is likeable, or at least decent. He fooled Senlin, too, at least for a time. Tom was always trusting. I have benefitted from his faith in people, but I do not share it.” Her thoughts flickered to Georgine, bleeding to death on the floor of her cabin. “Certainly not anymore. Here is what I believe: I believe the duke took advantage of you when you were desperate. He kidnapped you and called it a rescue. He isolated you and removed every option you had until you could not even think of escape, not even when the opportunity presented itself. I think you were trying to protect Tom from the duke. I don’t think that makes you weak or him strong. It makes you a casualty of a careless city and an impotent coward.”
The duke lunged at an end table, flung the drawer open, and drew out a pistol. As he spun around with it, Reddleman picked him up at the hip and shoulder, hoisted him up like a dumbbell, and flung him through a bay window. The sound of shattering glass, cracking wood, and tearing curtains almost drowned out the duke’s undignified yelp. Almost.
Dusting his hands, Reddleman turned to see the startled expressions of the two women in the room. “Should I have used the door?”
“The window’s fine,” Edith said. “Marya, I know you told Senlin you were happy here. I suspect you told Voleta the same thing. But I want you to tell me. Are you here because you wish to be? Is this the life you want?”
Marya continued to gape a moment longer at the shattered remnant of the window that had swallowed her husband, but soon she stirred from her shock and said in a stronger voice, “No. No, I don’t like this life at all. He’s an absolute maniac. This place is a prison. But he’ll kill us if I cross him, he’ll kill—”
“No, he won’t,” Edith said. “I won’t let him. If you want to leave, we’ll go this instant. I have a ready ship and plenty of room.”
“And Tom?” Marya squeezed her hands till the knuckles whitened.
“We’ll worry about Tom next. Let’s take care of you first,” Edith said.
Marya’s chin rose with resolve. “All right. Yes. Yes, please take me with you. I want to go. Just let me get—”
The duke dashed into the room and fired his pistol before he’d cleared the threshold. The shot caught Reddleman in the shoulder and turned him on his heel. Edith drew and returned fire almost as quickly. Her shot hit the duke in the thigh, knocking his leg out from under him. He fell to the floor with a pained shout.
Edith looked to Marya, her hands cupped over her mouth in shock, and said, “As soon as you’re ready.”
“I’ll just be a moment,” Marya said, and left the parlor in a rush.
Edith asked her pilot if he was all right. Reddleman laughed and declared the newest hole in his person hardly a nick. Considering how quickly he’d recovered from being skewered by a sword, Edith wasn’t concerned. She wouldn’t be rid of him that easily.
She strode to the hissing duke, his face contorted with agony, and knelt down beside him. He clutched at his thigh, pressing the skirt of his housecoat against the darkly seeping wound. Edith threw his pistol out into the foyer. “Let’s talk about Thomas Senlin,” she said in a tone that seemed to suggest they were settling down for a nice chat in the snug of a public house. “I need you to confirm a few things for me. I suspect that you turned Tom into a hod, put a blinder on his head, and set him on the black trail. Is that right?”
“I will see you pinned to the Wall of Recompense, you tin-armed harlot!” the duke spat back at her.
“Will you?” she said, pulling his hand away from where it clutched his wound. Her iron fingers enclosed his hand completely. “Perhaps I should pose it as a question: Did you make Tom a hod and put a blinder on his—”
“Yes!” the duke shouted in her face. “Yes, I put the mudder’s head in a can and threw him on the trail! I did it days ago. He’s dead already!”
“I see,” Edith said.
The sound of snapping bones was quickly drowned out by the duke’s screams. He tried to kick and struggle away from her, but the more he fought, the more she squeezed until at last he lay flat on his back pleading with her to stop. She lightened her grip and said, “Give me your other hand.” He sniveled and shook his head, so she resumed her pressures.
When she observed the duke’s blood running between the black billets of her hand, Edith felt nothing. She thought of Tom lying dead in some unlit tunnel with his head entombed and his body uncovered. Even that awful vision seemed only to expand the numbness inside her.
Not so long ago, Tom had shared his fear that the pirate life was ruining Voleta, was transforming the once cal
low girl into a ruthless woman. He blamed the change upon friction, the abrasions of hardship, violence, and loss, a friction that toughened tender skin into unfeeling callus.
As Edith watched herself coolly torture the duke, she realized it was too late for her. The callus she’d built up to protect herself had spread too deep. It had touched her heart and turned it as hard as a horn.
The shrieking duke stuck out his unbroken hand.
She took it up and said, “I’ve lived with the use of only one hand. I can tell you, it is not easy. Some days you will wake up angry, and you will go to bed wanting to weep from frustration.” She regarded the quaking tips of his fingers protruding from her iron grasp. “But, I think, even at its worst, living with the use of one hand is better than surviving with none. Wouldn’t you agree?” She paused long enough to listen to his bawled affirmations. “I’ve always preferred to shake hands when I give my word. So here’s my promise to you, sir duke: If you ever make a single inquiry or cast so much as a shadow in Marya’s direction, I will come back and squeeze the rest of you, one bone at a time. Does that sound fair to you? Are you willing to shake on that?” Edith spoke to him lightly, as if he were a pup. The duke nodded eagerly. She pumped his arm twice and said, “Good.”
“I’m ready!” Marya called from the doorway. Edith turned to find her clutching a swaddled infant to her breast.
When Edith stood, it felt as if the room rose with her. It took all her concentration just to cross the open space. The floor pitched like a ship beneath her. “Who do you have there?” she asked.
“This is Olivet,” Marya said, swaying the child in her arms. “She’s mine. Mine and Tom’s.”
Marya peeled back the cover to show the infant, squinting with drowsiness and the newness of life.
“She’s beautiful,” Edith said in a hushed tone. Tears rose to her eyes. As she marveled at the child’s face, Edith felt a wash of relief that she was not entirely desensitized to wonder and anguish.
Then she felt a new weight settle inside of her—the weight of errant hope and misplaced affection. The feeling was as heavy as her arm and, she knew, just as permanent.
Aboard the State of Art, Byron knocked lightly on the doorway of the great cabin where Iren watched over Voleta. The amazon overwhelmed the chair she sat upon, and yet she looked as small as Byron had ever seen her with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. Voleta, still tucked neatly under the covers, looked peaceful, but whether it was the serenity of death or slumber was difficult to say.
Iren looked up when she heard the knock, her eyes red and raw. Byron said, “There’s someone outside who wants something. I thought she might go away, but she’s been loitering for nearly half an hour. I really don’t think I should be the one to answer the door. I’m sorry, but can you go see what she wants?”
Iren patted the bedspread where Voleta’s hand was buried and stood with a grunt. “Stay with her. I’ll be right back.”
She took the holstered pistol off the coatrack by the door and went to see who was pacing in the port.
When she opened the hatch, the morning sun had added its flattering rouge to the devastation. A few braids of smoke were all that remained of the fires. At the bottom of their makeshift gangplank, a petite woman with her back to the ship stood between a suitcase and a covered birdcage.
Ann turned at the sound of the opening hatch and smiled tentatively up at Iren. “Good morning! It appears they’ve been doing some remodeling since last I was out. A touch extreme, but you know how wildly fashions swing.” Ann’s light tone nearly concealed the nervous quiver in her voice. “But, my goodness, you have a magic ship! Look at that. It just sort of floats there, doesn’t it? Like … like a needle on water. Very handsome! I’m sure it’ll make all the other boats jealous.”
Iren said nothing in reply as she strode down the bowing boards onto the charred pier. She stood before Ann, her arms hanging loose at her sides, a stormy expression on her face.
Ann dipped to pick up the sheathed cage and lifted up the hem of the cover to show Squit, curled up on a shawl inside. The squirrel’s black eyes were wide with apprehension. “I realized that you and Lady Voleta left in such a hurry there wasn’t time to retrieve her pet. So I thought I’d bring her to you.”
Still, Iren said nothing. Ann swallowed and set the cage back down. She waved at the small suitcase at her hip. “I’ve recently found myself looking for new employment. I and the Lady Xenia have parted ways, I would say amicably, but such a word would be both inaccurate and confusing to her, so instead, I’ll say that I’m out on my ear and looking for work. I thought to ask whether you had any need of an experienced governess or a novice cabin boy.” Ann saw the tears rising to the corners of Iren’s eyes and her prattling faded. “Oh, Iren dear, what is it? What’s happened?”
Iren fell to one knee and took Ann in an embrace that nearly consumed her. She began to weep, each sob ending in a shuddering gasp. Ann stroked her coarse hair, filled her ear with consoling murmurs, and waited for the long-deferred flood to crest.
Chapter Eighteen
Memory is not like a box of stationery—easy to browse, reorder, and read. No, memories accumulate like leaves upon the forest floor. They are irregular and fragile. They crumble and break upon inspection. They turn to soil the deeper you go.
—I Sip a Cup of Wind by Jumet
The darkest hours are behind us. Brighter days lie ahead. Everything will be all right.
Byron had found numerous applications for this mantra in the days since their departure from what remained of the Pelphian port. When he peeked in on his receiving cages in the Communications Closet and found them empty, he said, “The darkest hours are behind us.” When he caught Reddleman stripped to his vest and dissecting a songbird on a dining room table in the middle of the night, Byron said, “Brighter days lie ahead.” When he found the amazon ringing the bulkhead with her fist so fixedly she left a bloody spot on the steel, he said, “Everything will be all right.”
Edith had inadvertently suggested the mantra shortly after they had bid a hasty retreat to home port. It seemed obvious to all that if anyone was capable of healing Voleta, it was the Sphinx. But when the State of Art presented herself before the seamless, secret gates near the Tower’s summit and delivered a perfunctory flash of her signal lamps, nothing happened. And nothing continued to happen for the rest of the day into the evening.
The captain suggested that perhaps Henry, the Sphinx’s walking port crane, was asleep. In response, Byron scoffed to hide his alarm and said, “Henry does not sleep! The motors that operate the gates do not sleep! The Sphinx does not sleep either!”
And yet, the gates remained shut.
Byron might’ve descended into a panic then if Edith had not been there to talk him down. She said, “All right. I admit, it is worrying. But you need to understand, Byron, this state of anxiety, this is how the rest of us have been living for quite a while. You aren’t accustomed to being on this side of things. I am. And I can tell you, sometimes the Sphinx doesn’t answer his door. Sometimes messages are slow to be delivered and slow to return. Sometimes his silence seems an answer in itself. But let’s be reasonable. Perhaps the Sphinx is indisposed. Perhaps his machines were affected by the bomb in the Circuit of Court, and if that’s the case, I’m sure he has his hands full with repairs. We both know he is capable of miracles, and I’m sure a stuck door is not beyond his powers to fix. And short of blasting his gates open, which I doubt we could manage even if we tried, there’s nothing to be done but be patient. You’ll keep sending your reports—I trust you have much to say—and we shall carry on with the work, because there’s plenty to be done. We may not have our daily orders anymore, but we still have our mission. We’re going to go ringdom to ringdom, in order and all the way up until we’re told to do differently. The Wakemen are peacekeepers, so we will keep the peace. And Reddleman will continue to look after Voleta, and she will improve. We will take care of each other, and we will
wait. The darkest hours are behind us. Brighter days lie ahead. Everything will be all right. You’ll see.”
Byron wasn’t sure that he believed her, but he wanted to, and for the time being, that had to suffice.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of work to keep him occupied. The passenger list of the State of Art was growing. As far as Byron was concerned, that was a fine thing. He’d rather have a noisy ship to complain about than a lonesome quiet to stew in. He’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.
The first days after their uncelebrated departure from the Pelphian port were spent choosing cabins, touring the ship’s amenities, unpacking what they had managed to bring aboard, and finding replacements for what they lacked. Byron showed the newcomers how to operate the oven range, how to talk between decks via the communication horns, and how to operate the electric lights, which the ladies found an astounding feature aboard an airship. Byron learned to dodge certain questions about the ship and the Sphinx, which he either could not or should not answer, at least not yet. And though every allusion to the Sphinx reinvigorated his anxiety, he was too busy to fret for long. There were meals to prepare, dishes to scrub, and an apparently endless procession of diapers to wash.
Byron liked Ann Gaucher at once. She was talkative and bright and eager to contribute to the work that had to be done. She seemed to make peace with his unusual appearance after hardly a pause, declaring him too charming and well dressed to be frightening. She took Reddleman’s personality and unusual foibles in stride, and she praised Captain Winters as an obvious leader and a gracious host. Perhaps most incredibly, she raised Iren’s spirits when nothing and no one else could. Were it not for Ann, Iren might’ve perished from exhaustion or malnourishment. It was Ann who brought her meals and made sure she ate them. It was Ann who dressed Iren’s battered knuckles and convinced her to bathe. It was Ann who chased her off to bed for a few hours’ sleep, and Ann who stayed at Voleta’s bedside in her place.
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