He hacked down, hard and fast, and she knocked the heavier blade aside with her own. It was the perfect moment to strike, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the carpenters move her way. She slashed sideways with her right-hand blade. She didn’t see what she hit, but she heard the high, tearing scream, and felt her sword sink into flesh.
Her original opponent drove in, slashing low and driving her away from the precious charts table. She couldn’t afford to duel. If she got surrounded, she was finished. She kicked out and nearly lost her foot, pulling it away from her foe’s stroke just in time. She followed up with an attack, gaining a step toward the table. Two.
The side of her head exploded in pain. Half-blinded, she reeled, face wet with blood. She stumbled and went to her knees and left wing. Dazed, she stared at the small cloth bag of nails the carpenter had thrown at her. Desperately, she raised her right sword above her head, bracing herself for the blow.
A door burst open.
The blow didn’t come. Instead, swords rang about her. She cleared the blood from her cheek and eye and staggered to her feet, the pain of the superficial cuts already clearing.
Elazar stood in the middle of the room, facing her erstwhile foe and the two remaining carpenters. They were big men and they had had time to recover from the initial shock of her attack. One held a hammer, the other a vicious, saw-toothed blade. Behind him, another sailor entered, swore, and drew. Elazar feinted toward the carpenter with the saw, who gave ground, jostling his companion. He flicked his right wingtip in the face of the man behind him. The man flinched away, and his sword came up. Elazar’s drove home below it, into the man’s gut, and then Elazar was on the last of the sailors. His blades flashing like a whirlwind, each stroke gaining ground on the heavier cutlass that parried them desperately. The man screamed in terror an instant before an airsword found his throat.
Azriyqam thrust her point into the hammer-wielder’s kidney as he raised it for a blow, plainly having forgotten about her.
The last carpenter slashed at Elazar with the saw, a blow that would have cut a man in half, but Elazar dodged aside and buried his blades into the man’s side.
There was silence in the cabin for an instant, then Elazar shook himself. “No time. Move.”
Azriyqam dashed for the charts table. There were a dizzying array of them, but days aboard the airship had taught her what to look for. She wanted the big ones, the ones Haraad used. She saw the course of the Ship plotted out, saw the Grove and the Near Islands. Frantically, she gathered them.
Elazar firmly folded them and tucked them inside her flying harness, just as the portside door slammed open again. “The rudders are burst—” the new sailor began. Then a wordless shout of rage and fear burst from his throat as he screamed for help.
“Now you must go,” said Elazar, firmly. “Fly!” Ignoring the threat behind them, he opened the starboard door and stepped out into the face of two startled crewmen. He buried his airsword in one’s belly and faced the other. “Fly! Now!”
A semicircle of men with swords stood between Azriyqam and the starboard side. One carried a musket that looked like a small, brass cannon. He raised his weapon.
Thunder struck down from above. Splinters rose from the deck and the gunman toppled over. Every eye went skyward. There, beyond the topgallants, Tselah’s last surviving topmen fired again. She saw one make a throwing motion. Leaden darts rained down, and the men before her scattered, cursing and clutching wounds. Screams of “Get them down from there! To the tops!” “No, stop the freaks!” rang out.
“Fly!” screamed Elazar. “Go!”
Azriyqam ran for the starboard side, spreading her exhausted wings. Screams pursued her. “Responsibility! She’s getting away!”
Behind her there were pounding feet, and then the sound of another set of wings slicing the air loosened the cold bands around her heart. Elazar was behind her, beating the air no less frantically than she herself. He took up position above and to her left, between her and the ship, pacing her. Fighting the headwind, they lunged for the forecastle and safety. From the corner of her eye, Azriyqam counted the masts, keeping close to the side of the Ship.
Men and women ran about like ants, carrying globes of lamplight with them.
The whole world had shrunk to the next wingbeat. The next set of masts. The mainmasts fell behind. Then the foremains. Now the bare foremasts, and beyond them the vast spinnakers. The forecastle loomed ahead of them, beckoning them home. Azriyqam began her bank to port.
A crack of thunder split the night and she heard a hoarse cry.
Azriyqam’s head snapped around. She had an instant to see the bloody hole that one of Haraad’s topmen had blasted through Elazar’s wing membrane before he was gone, spiraling into the sea.
She folded her wings and dove.
The water enfolded her with a crash like gunfire. Her wings wrapped about Elazar’s body. She kicked up. Up through the endless blackness. Up at last to breath and life.
Only then did she realize what she had done. The charts, tied about her body, threatened to slip from her harness. Elazar, struggling in her grasp, weighed her down. She screamed, looking up and up at the vast bulk of Ekkaia, a cliff threatening to heel over and crush them, not three wingspans away, and yet as far out of reach as the distant stars.
“You,” gasped Elazar. “Here. No.”
She heard the betrayal in her mentor’s voice and knew in her heart that she had lost. Lost everything. The charts, Elazar, her brother, the kingdom, and shortly, her life.
A huge splash engulfed her. Things were being thrown at her. Another splash, smaller and cleaner, and a dark head surfaced beside her.
“You damned idiot!”
It was Tselah, swimming toward them with swift, powerful strokes, towing a barrel behind her, half-floating in the water. “Hold on!” the older woman shouted in her ear. “This will only work once. Don’t let go!”
Azriyqam clung to the barrel with wings and feet. She was dimly aware of Elazar placed beside her, hanging on to her and the barrel both. Then Tselah, opposite.
“Pull!”
Azriyqam couldn’t tell whether the shout came from Tselah or from above. She only knew they were being lifted from the clutching water, through air that pulled savagely at her exhausted wings. Finally, they were swung over and dragged through a massive porthole, where she collapsed, still at last, coughing out seawater.
Tselah shouted, “You selfish, asinine, twisted freak! You nearly killed yourself and all the rest of us with you!”
“You could have let me die,” Azriyqam sputtered. “You’ve wanted me dead for a long time.”
“We needed the charts!”
“You could have thrown me right back out.”
Tselah stopped as if Azriyqam had hit her. “I’m not a murderer!”
“Neither am I,” Azriyqam said levelly.
Tselah stared at her a long moment.
“No. I suppose not,” she said, softly, looking down. Then she turned away and started giving orders.
* * * * *
Chapter 18
“Llhaw kayi aklath vayor. Krey vaduzh irin dashul. Llhaw kayi aklath vayor. Krey vaduzh irin dashul.”
Union with the Theurge was like running along a rope bridge made of a single thick strand, or flying down a tunnel just slightly wider than your wings. It was possible as long as you kept going and concentrated. And slowly, it drained you of every resource you had.
“Llhaw kayi aklath vayor. Krey vaduzh irin dashul.”
It had taken her hours of repetition to get the words right, and hours more before Elazar—let alone Merav—would allow her to take her turn maintaining the Commands that kept Avnai stable and alive. In truth, Merav still wouldn’t have allowed it, were she not desperate for sleep, and she’d made both Elazar and Azriyqam swear on their blood that they’d wake her if anything went wrong, or even strange, with her patient.
But nothing had, thank the dead and absent gods. Merav sl
ept at last, having pushed herself past endurance. Azriyqam could feel the thread of Avnai’s weak pulse, the laborious effort of his remaining lung. It was a broken and agonized rhythm, which she fought to ease.
She did not know exactly what the Commands meant. All she knew was that it kept Avnai in a deep sleep and allowed the resources of his body to be used for healing, while at the same time keeping him from going into the wracking coughing spasms that exhausted him. She could feel them, threatening, swelling and subsiding, like a malignant tide.
She was tired of fighting them.
Then in the no-space behind her closed eyelids where she visualized her ceaseless chant as a flight down an endless tunnel, she felt another Command join hers in a smooth unison. A voice that strengthened. Suppressing a shudder of relief, Azriyqam allowed her voice to drop, and opened her eyes.
Elazar knelt beside her, eyes half-shut. His left wing had been bound, much as she had used to bind hers, so long ago, when she still didn’t know why her wings were growing or what they were for. It was the best way to allow the gunshot wound to heal.
Avnai lay on the cot, his condition seemingly unchanged, yet he lost strength every day. He could neither eat nor drink in this state. Azriyqam suspected Merav had been using other spells to try strengthening Avnai at her own expense, but neither Azriyqam nor Elazar dared to repeat such Commands. In truth, even Merav shouldn’t have tried, gifted as she was.
Forcing these dark thoughts away, Azriyqam rose, ignoring the protests from joints that felt frozen by their long vigil. She needed food and sleep, but more than that, she needed to know their progress. She left the cabin and slowly climbed the forecastle.
In the central room, where there were no windows, Tselah had spread out the charts Azriyqam had stolen on a large table, and was surrounded by logbooks, sextants straightedges, pencils, and other instruments of navigation. Tselah pored over them hungrily.
“Where are we?” asked Azriyqam.
“I’m just figuring that,” said Tselah. She scribbled some figures and moved her lips. Interminably, it seemed to Azriyqam, but there was no point hurrying her. “According to our position at noon, we are here.”
Azriyqam swallowed. Relief warred with tension. They were very nearly to the edge of the outer range of the kingdom’s waters. By the end of the day, if they were very lucky, they might be spotted by a Free Navy patrol or an intrepid captain-owner pushing his luck.
They might.
It would be two more days, however, until they reached kingdom waters proper, where no Century Ship would ever go, and the Consortium acknowledged the kingdom’s quasi-sovereignty.
Azriyqam looked at Cana’s daughter now. There would never be friendship between them, but at least there was respect rather than just a leashed distrust. There was a rapid knock at the door, and it opened without waiting for Tselah’s command.
“Captain!” shouted the stripling who had burst in.
“Is it another attack?” Tselah’s hand flashed to her sword. There had been two attacks the first day after the winddrivers had started, both bloodily repulsed and with heavy losses. The last two days had been almost quiet, though.
“No, Captain. Something in the air! Something big! Not an airship.”
“A dragon?” asked Azriyqam, not daring to hope.
“I don’t know what it is. Come see!”
Azriyqam followed Tselah up to the top deck of the forecastle. She looked about carefully to make sure their guards were still there and armed. Every now and then, Haraad would set a topman to sniping from the skysails. From that distance, hits were more a matter of luck than skill, but the danger had made the reflex automatic. For now, however, no one was worried about gunmen. All of Haraad’s people also stood, work and rebellion forgotten, to watch the sky.
Azriyqam’s attention was briefly caught by the same bizarre tableau she’d seen since noon two days ago: Haraad had ordered all the winddrivers along the ship turned backward and at full power, into the sails, pushing the great ship back with all their might.
All pushed in vain. Avnai’s strategic breaking of their own winddrivers made them stronger than ever, and they pushed the ship forward. They would also burn out within a week. In a week, though, they would be almost to the Kreyntorm itself. Sooner, if they were spotted by a ship of the kingdom, or better still, a dragon.
At that thought, Azriyqam followed the gaze of all her fellow-passengers, seeking desperately for a sign of hope.
She saw it at the same moment she became aware of a low drone that hummed even above the loud murmur of conversation. The thing in the sky banked, even as she watched, and headed toward them on rigid wings.
This was no dragon. It was the same model aircraft she, Avnai, Merav, and the rest had ridden to the carrier Talion. Her heart beat faster as the big airplane came closer, and the Ship’s people murmured in fear. No one on the Century Ship had ever seen an airplane before. Now she could see sunlight glinting off the big, bubble canopies, and the red-and-black sword-pierced ring of the Consortium emblazoned on its tail.
Tselah was beside her. “What is that thing? What does it mean?”
“It’s from the Consortium,” Azriyqam said.
“Dead gods, it’s true,” said one of Tselah’s lieutenants. “They really can freeze dragons and ride them.”
“That is no dragon. It’s a machine, much like a skyship but smaller, faster, and more powerful.” The plane made no effort to descend. It simply circled. A wide circle, all around the Century Ship.
“What does it mean?” Tselah repeated.
“It means,” said Azriyqam heavily, “that the Consortium knows where we are. And that the ship we ran from has made repairs.”
“Another Consortium ship?” Tselah swallowed. “How much time do we have?”
“I don’t know, and only Avnai could tell us.
“I need to consult with Elazar and your people. That thing isn’t going to hurt us right now,” Azriyqam said with more confidence than she felt. Even if it does, there’s nothing we can do about it. No weapon the Century Ship carried would reach a tenth the distance to the circling patrol craft, and they could no more outrun it than they could outrun the wind.
Tselah and her lieutenants were waiting by the time Azriyqam returned to the charts table.
Azriyqam filled Elazar in on the events of the past few minutes as they climbed the forecastle. The more she spoke, the grimmer Elazar looked. He stood and looked down at the charts for a long moment.
Finally, Tselah’s patience ran out. “Well? What are we to do? Do we expect an attack from the Consortium?”
“I doubt it,” said Elazar. “The Consortium does not want to sink Ekkaia with its own carriers. According to Avnai, they want it burned, and they probably want to preserve parts of it so they can prove the kingdom’s dragons were responsible. If they bomb us from the air, they lose that story.”
“They’ve already lost their best chance to sink us unawares. You say they could sink us?” Tselah’s face still betrayed doubt.
Elazar met her eyes. “The Consortium’s battlecarrier alone could easily destroy this entire ship. They may do that as a last resort. If they do, they’ll leave no survivors. Not even Haraad. Instead, they’ll approach the Grove, report the loss, and offer protection in exchange for an alliance. However, that’s not nearly as politically advantageous from their perspective. They won’t be able to frame the kingdom, although they can always say they believe that we were behind it. The consequence, however, is that there will always be those in the Grove who will suspect the Consortium might be responsible. The moment they reveal their true capabilities to you, that will be obvious. No, the prize is too great. I think they’ll try to salvage their plan right up until the moment that it becomes impossible.”
“How will we know when that moment is?” asked Tselah.
Elazar wrinkled his brow. “Do you know where Ulzhe was leading Haraad? Where did he say this treasure of his was?”
Tselah
looked disgusted. “No, Ulzhe only spoke with the high captain and the sailing master about such things. I only know it would have added a month to our voyage when we wanted to get Home. If our bearing was right, then it could be anywhere in here.” She pointed to an area of the map, dusted with tiny islands, well to darkward of the Grove.
Elazar studied the map for a long time, then shook his head. “There is simply too much that we do not know. We know Consortium ships don’t rely on the wind for power, but we have no idea how fast or far their submarines can travel. We don’t know how far away the Talion is, or how far his airplanes can travel from his decks. Those decks were rather, ah, severely damaged by the Lady Senaatha during our escape. Have they been fully repaired or just enough to launch this aircraft? It can land on the sea if they want. It could take off that way, too. The Talion may be fully repaired, or it may still be severely damaged. But there is one question that takes precedence even over that.”
“What?” asked Tselah and Azriyqam together.
“Whether there is a radio on that plane or not.”
“What is a radio?” asked Tselah.
“A device of great power,” said Elazar. “It allows them to speak with one another over vast distances, as easily as we are speaking to one another now. It is one of the reasons that the Consortium is so terrifying in battle.”
“You mean besides being able to build things like that?” one of Tselah’s men said, pointing skyward.
“That’s only a refinement of the airships you yourselves can build, but if they have no radio, then only the crew of that plane knows where we are right now. They’d have to report back to their carrier, which would take hours. If they do have one, then the submarine and the carrier may know our location as well, and then our danger is considerably more immediate.”
“Why would they not have one of these radios if it can do what you say?”
“Because they’re very expensive and delicate, from what Commander Avnai has told me. Heavy and bulky as well. But there is no use speculating. We’d have to ask him.”
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