“Pah.” The doctor waved his free hand in dismissal. “He is run off. Cowardly fool. Afraid, too afraid.”
Al-Wazir was many things, some not necessarily good, but a coward was not among them. “His name is not in your expedition logs.”
“You have been reading my logs?” Ottweill purpled even in the flickering lights of the cabin.
“Of course I did,” Kitchens said forcefully, trying to interrupt the doctor’s tantrum. “I am here to look over the progress of your expedition. Where else should I look but the logs? Interestingly, I find no mention of the man charged with ensuring your safety.”
“Such a job he did, too!” Ottweill settled back into his chair and stared at the dregs of his whiskey. His voice dropped off. “I am not so certain now.”
This does not sound like the doctor, Kitchens thought. “Of what?”
“I have been told a thing. A thing that I did not believe.”
“What is that?”
The doctor met his eye. “I will show you, if you are brave enough.”
They rode a handcart deeper into the tunnel, past the camp. Ottweill pumped the mechanism to keep them moving, the gears within the cart emitting an echoing squeak-squeal. After a moment’s thought, Kitchens realized this served at least in part to announce the arrival of the cart, assuming more sentries ahead.
Noise from the boring machine was practically a solid thing this close. Dust hung in the air, as if the ceiling of this section of tunnel were continually vibrating. He smelled scorched oil, hot rock, and the sweat of men.
Soon enough the walls vanished into another wider opening. There were no lights here, either, but locomotives and railroad wagons bulked vaguely in the gleam of Ottweill’s lantern. He stopped pumping and allowed the handcart to glide to a halt.
Ottweill gestured with his lantern, a complex signal obviously prearranged. They stood their ground, waiting. No door opened. Kitchens wondered why.
Then the noise faded. It did not stop so much as step down from the roar of a metal hurricane to the grind of wounded stone, then to the clash of very heavy iron on the move, then the shriek of steam being released, and finally to a crumbling silence that very much put Kitchens in mind of the first few moments of a rockslide just before an entire mountain face descended to the valley below.
Ottweill turned to him and said something. His ears were ringing far too loudly to understand the doctor’s intention, but Kitchens nodded anyway. No point in a dense-voiced shouting match over how they would pass through into the diggings beyond.
The doctor stepped to the gate set within the armored wall. It swung open before him, courtesy of the hidden watchers. Kitchens followed into a whole new kind of hell.
TWELVE
Set me as a Seal upon thine heart, as a Seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. — Song of Solomon 8:6
BOAZ
McCurdy approached Boaz where he had been resting. “Can you walk back to the clearing? The doctor’s men are at the stockade once more, and Erinyes is circling again. I believe that Lieutenant Ostrander means to land her at our signal, but I’d feel better if you was there.”
“She’s your ship, Chief,” Boaz replied. “You have the man Harrow to stand by you with wise counsel.”
“He’s all right, but he’s no particular friend. Besides, you know the lieutenant at least a little. Harrow’s a proper fellow, will look to Ostrander’s rank and not to his deeds.”
Despite himself, Boaz was intrigued. “Do you mean to relieve him of command?”
McCurdy’s discomfort was written large on his face. “Without Erinyes, we are trapped here. With the war on against the Chinee, there may not be another patrol for some time. When it shows, it might be John Chinaman. We’d not stand against that. Little food, little equipment, and those mad tunnel rats at our back.”
“Let the man Kitchens make work of this.”
“Mr. Kitchens has gone down the tunnel, and he ain’t come back up, begging your pardon.” McCurdy’s discomfort turned almost to pain. “You’re a foreigner, and an enemy besides, and not even human, but I needs someone who can think like an officer. I’ll likely hang for this as it is, and consorting with you is no improvement, but I cannot throw down the skipper on my own.”
They slogged back up the slope toward the rest of the stranded sailors.
Boaz stared at Erinyes, wondering how long before the winged savages attacked again. Two of McCurdy’s men moved out in the open with a set of rough-made semaphores—leaves woven together on sticks. They made a series of signals in a code Boaz knew nothing of. After a few moments, the airship dropped a line of colored flags.
“She comes down,” said Harrow, standing with them.
“This is going to be a sorry business,” McCurdy added. “Even if Midshipman Longoria takes our part.”
Erinyes was slow descending, forcing herself down with her motors. She’d need to take on water ballast if possible, but there was no way to pump. He wondered how much of her fuel Lieutenant Ostrander had burned away in his soaring about of the past day or so.
Ain’t your problem, laddie, growled the voice of al-Wazir deep within.
In time she cast down her lines. Stranded airmen from both vessels raced to secure them and warp her close. Boaz lent his solid strength to the effort as the airship was tethered to a soaring mahogany at the edge of the clearing. Another set of lines came over the side—knotted rope for climbing, and a more complicated sling for lifting.
Someone peered over the rail to shout down. Midshipman Longoria, Boaz realized from the piping voice. “Bosun McCurdy, please come aboard.” A note of panic hung in the young man’s voice, discernible even over the sputter of the engines.
McCurdy swarmed up the rope like a drowning man who could not wait to escape the waves. Boaz followed at a swift pace of his own. If the bosun would have him be officerial, officerial he would be.
GASHANSUNU
She entered the Silent World without moving, simply to sit among the twisted shadows and dark casts of power surrounding the Northern prophet in his abode. Her wa was still agitated, but not so much as before. It flitted about like a moon moth on a particularly difficult night.
The view here was so very different than in the city. This Hethor was not crowded by the shades of powers past, as everything was at home. Rather, his bulwarks stemmed from within and around him. That he saw these as the handiwork of his god was understandable, she realized. He possessed only that lens for viewing the world.
Correct People left their own fierce currents here. Small, like animals, but bright, like people. The house priests had long ago recognized the little tribesmen as being at some half-state between the kingdoms of beasts and men, living reminders of an experiment by the world before it settled on the true shape of what was to come. The Wall teemed with miracles and wonders, some of them far out of time with the limits of the world. The Correct People had simply come down to live in the jungles, rather than work out their lives among the mists and crags above.
Gashansunu attended most carefully to Paolina. The girl had lessoned frighteningly well. Hethor seemed to think the device in her hand mattered most, but Gashansunu was more concerned with the spirit that burned inside. The sorceress slept now in a hammock in the Shadow World that also served to elevate her here in the Silent World.
The house priests and circle callers and sorcerers of her city were complex, difficult women and men. Those who had spent decades accumulating wisdom tended to be layered so deeply that their core was beyond finding. Paolina was the opposite—nothing but core. The girl practically burned with righteous anger at the state of the world, while her power wrapped tight around her.
This did not make her easier to read. In fact, the opposite. But it did lend Paolina an air of inevitability diametric to the subtle indirections of the powers in the city.
Now she dreamed, Gashansunu sa
w. Ripples of whatever lover or child she had left behind in the Northern Earth seemed to possess her.
This girl would go back to her side of the Wall, and quite soon. Gashansunu was pleased to have caught up with her first. Much about Paolina fascinated her.
I would follow her, Gashansunu told her wa. To see how she spills her power.
YOU ARE BOTH BETTER HERE, was the counsel she received in return.
Gashansunu understood this perfectly well. She could likely not restrain Paolina. Besides, the girl’s appeal was powerful. Like the draw to touch the flame, a sweet spark in her head that made no sense and did not suit the purposes of her life.
She will not be kept, and I will not let her wander unattended until we grasp the extents of her power.
Her wa muttered, then retreated some distance to sulk in the safety of darkness.
CHILDRESS
They cruised the open ocean. “We will cover almost fourteen hundred nautical miles to the Gulf of Aden.” Leung’s voice startled her, rising over the slap of waves and the mutter of the screws plowing water aft. “A bit less than sixty hours if we stay awash, but we must submerge by day, which cuts our speed considerably.”
“More than three days?”
“Perhaps dawn of the fourth.” His fingers entwined more closely with hers. “Have you considered how you will talk us past the British patrols at Bab el Mandeb? I should expect to make our way into the Gulf unchallenged, with a little luck, but the passage into the Red Sea is utterly controlled. No vessel in any of the Celestial Emperor’s navies has made that transit, except under armed escort with a diplomatic flag.”
“Captain,” she told him. “We have a diplomatic flag. Our standard of the whole Earth. I am a Mask, and can claim to be an ambassador of sorts. When we sail into the Gulf of Aden, we will do so with all banners flying and the crew turned out on deck, as when we reached Tainan. We will look for the first British ship we can find. We will approach and negotiate. From there, on to Malta or deeper into the British Empire as circumstances suggest.”
“Hardly subtle, Miss Childress.”
“Embassies rarely are subtle, my friend.” She clutched his hand within the warmth of both of hers. “Ambassadors themselves almost always are.”
PAOLINA
Morning brought bright sunlight, overripe papayas, and a time for acting on her decisions. Boaz, she thought. Paolina knew she’d never be safe, no matter how far she fled, so she might as well be where she wanted to be. Right now she stood on Hethor’s balcony looking down on an oh-so-accidental crowd of Correct People.
Arellya stepped out beside her.
“What are they waiting for?” Paolina asked.
“A miracle. A legend. A show.” The Correct Person leaned close. “My people find life amusing, but complex deeds wrought by strange folk are particularly entertaining. Anyone might drop a load of taro roots on their neighbor’s foot in error, but a truly magnificent mistake requires truly magnificent effort.”
“I am . . . er, flattered.”
“You will choose well,” Arellya assured her. “The world does not hang on this moment, or indeed any moment, but still you will choose well.”
“Is that true?” Their eyes met. “Did Hethor not come to such a moment, in his journey south? I recall the great shakings of the earth. The waves they brought killed cities, and drowned much of the African coast.”
“Hethor followed a fire I could not see,” Arellya answered quietly. “I took a strong band of our young males and went with him. Only he gained the center of all things, though I was taken there against my will. He fought an adversary there, then set himself to loving my life more than his own. A gift, from his heart to his God.”
“If he had not been present?”
“Someone else would have gone down.” The woman shrugged. “Or the earth would have shaken ever harder until we all fell away like fleas from a flying fox. There was no single moment when the world would have ended as a result of either his presence or his absence.”
Paolina understood the argument, but it bothered her. “Choice must enter into the matter.”
“What is there to choose? We are born into the world; we live a while; we pass on. What matter if one chooses the left path or the right, the red flower or the blue? The world remains the same.”
“If one chose to dam a river, and a great lake grew while the lands below thirsted, that would be a choice that changed the world.”
Arellya smiled. “Remember who I abide with. He is the world’s worst tease for such conundrums. I should answer you thusly: In time the rains will swell the lake so badly that the dam will break. The breaking will destroy the stream for many miles and days, but half a generation later the land will have reclaimed its own, the dam builder will be long drowned, and the world will once more be the same.”
“Would everything have been the same if no one had gone down where Hethor did, and repaired the mainspring of the world?”
“Maybe not.” Her smile broadened to a grin. “But I do not worry about consistency of argument.”
Paolina returned her smile with a laugh. “You would make a terrible priest. They are obsessed with consistency.”
“Why thank you.” Arellya gestured to the fruit staining Paolina’s hand. “Now you should eat, so that your head might be clear. I have the idea that you are traveling a great distance today.”
“I would go around the world,” Paolina said, “to find Boaz. He is the only man I truly trust.”
“Then he is there, waiting for you, somewhere on the measure of the Earth.”
Ming pulled Paolina aside as she returned to the shaded darkness of the house. “Are you going to take us back over the Wall?” he asked in Chinese. Fear darted across his face.
“In one large step,” she replied. “Would you walk instead?”
“I am no . . . , but I fear that.”
She lost his word, but the context was clear enough. “It is a lengthy journey. I can send you home more quickly.”
“Where? Five Lucky Winds? I do not know how you would find her.”
“Not the ship. Unless that is your desire. Do you have a wife awaiting you somewhere?”
Ming stared at his feet for a moment, then back at her. “A wife, no. But I have someone. In Oluanpi.”
“Would you like to go to her? I think I can send you.”
The sailor blushed violently and turned away.
What did I say? Paolina wondered.
The strange sorceress Gashansunu stood with Hethor. They shared the uncomfortable expression of people who would rather be doing something else. Paolina addressed the woman.
“I thank you for the time you spent teaching me. You showed me things I had not understood about the stemwinder. I plan to go now, walk north and pass across the Wall.”
“You will take me with you.” Something in Gashansunu’s voice was different today. Had Hethor altered his spell? “You are not safe for yourself or those around you. Not until you understand the Silent World far better.”
Hethor cleared his throat. “She has the right of it, Miss Barthes. There is much to understand, especially if you will be stepping across the Wall in one go. Not a guide, as you know the way, but surely an advisor.”
Paolina continued. “So I would go. I would send Ming to the true home of his heart as my thanks for his guidance all this time. At Boaz’ side, I would think what to do next. It will not include giving the stemwinder to the English or their lackeys in the secret societies.”
“Do not judge so harshly.” Hethor’s voice was gentle, sad. “Even the worst of villains are generally trying to do right by their own lights. That has been a hard lesson for me. Pause before you take action, accept Gashansunu’s direction on how best to set your feet upon your own path, and you may succeed.”
“I shall.” First she must know how, of course.
Once more they stood in sunlight. Paolina was very aware of her place—the firmness of the pounded clay beneath her too-wor
n boots; the heavy, moist air wrapping her like the breath of the river; the heat so strong it seemed to be a physical presence; the tropical brightness of the day that flooded her eyes red even with lids shut tight. Every insect drone, every distant splash, every scent of green and growing and water and muck called out to her.
She held the ragged remains of the angel’s feather in one hand and the stemwinder in the other.
This is where I begin, Paolina thought. I have once before gone where I have not been, but I was being called by the angel.
Opening her eyes, she spoke. “I do not know the place where Ming’s heart dwells. The closest I have seen is a beach on the Sumatran coast.” Then, to him in Chinese, “Would you go back to the island where we first met?”
“No,” he said. “I would go to Oluanpi, or anywhere in Taiwan.”
Paolina looked to Gashansunu. “Is it possible for me to send him someplace I have never been?”
The sorceress glanced at Ming. “Difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Can you begin by going someplace you have visited before?”
Where she wanted to be was at Boaz’ side, but she had no idea where the Brass man was. Or in truth, if he even still lived. “I could take us to Mogadishu,” she said. “The British and the Chinese were fighting when last I was there. It would not be safe for Ming.”
“We left a boat along the foot of the Wall,” Ming said in Chinese again, having followed her English. “If we must go back to where we have landed together, I can begin from there.”
“Then I could pass on to Africa, and the question of Boaz,” she answered.
“What did he say?” asked Gashansunu.
“We will go to the Northern Earth, to the point along the Wall where Ming and I left our boat when we first journeyed south.”
The sorceress frowned. “How well do you recall that place?”
Paolina considered the question. They had drawn up in a shallow bay, bounded at the west by a great knee of rock that had weathered into crumbling fragments but still loomed high. The east end of the bay had been a mudflat with scattered trees. Some pilings in the water recalled a time when men—or someone, as this was the Wall, after all—had made a settlement, but Paolina had seen no other evidence of habitation. The beach was mud and sand. She had helped Ming draw the boat up and conceal it in a thick stand of bushes bearing pale, waxy berries. There they had startled a colony of pale blue butterflies each the size of her hand.