“Thank you,” Kitchens replied.
A quiet, angry-eyed man in MacGregor tartan appeared at the entrance of the palace. “Come on, then.” His voice was a deep burr of sheep and rocky hills.
Kitchens walked with mea sured pace toward the great, carved doors, aware with every step of the pistols tracking him. No bustle of servants, no hurrying army of maids and men-at-arms—just a palace quiet enough to be a mausoleum, surrounded by force sufficient to hold off an entire jacquerie.
The En glish queen abided somewhere within the marbled halls, quietly dreaming of distant empire.
The MacGregor led him down long halls shrouded in pale muslin. Blenheim Palace had been sealed up, made over to a box of dust and memories. Twice Kitchens saw dark figures scurrying furtively ahead. At some unknowable midpoint in a corridor, his guide stopped, then turned and gave a calculating stare. “Tell me what you know, clerk.”
Kitchens nodded, closing his eyes a moment that he might better listen, sense, and scent. A special clerk’s trick, to look away from the world’s light in order to see the darkness better.
Air moved in faint currents. Something close by clicked with a complex, irregular rhythm. The temperature was unusually cold, even for the deep interior of a great building. The smells were complex, as well. Ammonia. Vinegar. Blood. A peculiar and faint fleshy stench, like a distant slaughter house in summer.
He opened his eyes to meet the MacGregor’s mad gaze. “A morgue is nearby. Or possibly a vivisectionist’s. There are other explanations, but they make less sense.”
“If it’s sense you’re looking for, lad, you’ve come to the wrong place.” The man hawked and spat on the floor. “Madness is loose here, and I don’t have a care for whoever might hear me say that. You’re the first to come from London since the New Year’s honors.” He leaned close. “What makes you so special?”
“Nothing, sir.” Kitchens mentally mapped escape routes. “I perform the task I am set to. The Prime Minister has given me this job, and instructed me to appear before Her Imperial Majesty.”
The MacGregor began to chuckle, an odd, hollow sound closer to tears than laughter. “Appear before the Queen you shall, then.” He turned on his heel and strode to the next set of double doors. Kitchens noticed the polished scuffs on the marble floors beneath the Scotsman’s feet. Quite a lot of something heavy had been dragged through here.
The doors were thrown open. The MacGregor waved Kitchens through the thick brocade blocking the view beyond. Kitchens could imagine pistols, swords, snares, pits, snakes—anything in the darkness behind the cloth. What he could smell was more of the corpse odor, leaking out of the room beyond the arras.
He pushed through anyway, afraid for the first time in many years.
TWO
What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. —Romans 9:22
BOAZ
The Chinese air sailors made their way through a bleached, barren country. Pale rock rose in columns twice the height of a man, each topped with a darker, overhanging capstone. Everything was crusted in a white fuzz that Boaz finally realized was salt. The sun beat down like a molten hammer, warming his brass shell and even the crystals within his head.
Chin Ping walked close behind Boaz.
“I am remembering more,” the Brass said aloud, almost unwillingly.
“More, ah?”
“More of matters which properly I should not recall.”
“Is echo,” Chin Ping responded.
“Echo,” Boaz muttered. The Chinese might have the right of it, at that.
He had never been to this place before, not during all the centuries of his life, yet it seemed familiar. As if each step were bringing him closer to a forgotten home.
Yet forgetting was something he could not do. Memories could be stolen from him, as Paolina had so painfully proven, but they could not slip away as did the thoughts of men. He could well imagine what the girl would have said to this:
“Explore; find your way; open what has been closed.”
Not Paolina’s words, for she spoke differently, but surely her meaning.
“Sometimes ghost come,” Chin Ping added to Boaz’ surprise. “Pass by, leave thought in head.”
A ghost of someone he’d never been. Except, of course, all Brass were the same, from the first hammered in the foundry by the wise power of King Solomon himself. Brass were Brass, different in their roles and duties, but one metal, one sword in the hand of an ancient king, united by the Seals glowing in their heads.
Shem, the very word of YHWH.
“I believe that you are correct,” Boaz told Chin Ping. “A thought has been left in my mentarium.”
They slogged onward over the broken, uneven ground until the columns gave way to sloping dunes netted down by indifferent grass. The ocean sparkled close by.
Chin Yuen shouted orders. Some of the men headed along their backtrail. Others raced forward to scout to the water’s edge.
Boaz stood still, soaking in the flood of memory.
A vessel. Ship-fat, square-sterned and slow as any merchanter too proud to run before a pirate.
A storm. Water raised high to strike at an impious, impudent fleet.
A coast. Rock-bound and time-worn, even here in the early days of Creation, anvil for the hammer of the seas.
Somehow the broken-backed fleet did not vanish entirely beneath the angry ocean. Brass and flesh, angel and servant, ox and boy—they dragged themselves up the beach like Noah’s rearguard.
Lightning raged among the rocks. Freshwater floods turned the shoreline to sliding muck. Some people died, more did not, as wrack was wrenched ashore to the cost of straining muscles and more than one burst heart.
The great fleet out of Asiongaber was no more. Her people and her admiral walked the Abyssinian coast with their eyes still on distant Ophir and the awful majesty of the Wall. A man greater than all the kings of old waited in a jeweled palace back in Jerusalem. A mission spread before them.
Some things could not be carried into darkness’ heart. Some things were safer left behind, secured against return. Ships might die, but so long as men sailed on, the mission was never lost.
A cliff. Scarred by sand, hidden among the dunes, an errant bone of the earth exposed to harsh light and the ravages of weather.
A cave. Grave-dank hole, a collapsed tube of softer stone eaten away by the cares of the world and the ceaseless patience of water.
A box. Laid within, marked by runes and seals, ensorcelled with the magic of the divine to hide it from prying eyes.
Safety, the lie of trea sure hidden in a place to which no one ever returned. Until today.
If he had been made of monkey meat, Boaz would have awoken sweating. As it was, he stood quiet in the moonlight. A fire crackled to itself nearby. Chinese voices chattered softly.
A fire? he thought. They must deem themselves safe from the British here. The men had scavenged driftwood to burn. He could not see the flames, but a glow edged the line of dunes between Boaz and the sea. The men were silhouetted atop a sandy ridge. That was very unlike Chin Yuen, here in the country of his enemies.
Paolina would have suggested some more subtle method of signaling. A fire in a bucket, perhaps, or an arrangement of lenses, to keep them safely hidden until need and opportunity presented.
His mind circled the fear, seeking distractions. Boaz forced his thoughts back toward the . . . dream? Memory. Brass did not dream. Not even renegade, flawed Brass such as himself.
Memory.
Of this place. Somewhere nearby was a cave, protected by magic as old as Solomon, as old as the Seal inside Boaz’ head. If only Paolina were here to discuss the problem, to think it through in her strange, human way. She would have seen the true meaning of this memory far better than his poor sense of time and self could discern.
Boaz resisted the urge to race toward the cave, wherever it might be. He h
ad no way of knowing—the memory was a fragment of this place, not a map.
He walked carefully into the dunes. There was a cliff to be discovered, and a cave within. The simple logic of geology and place would help him know where to search, for such a rock wall could not be hidden under every slope of sand.
CHILDRESS
After the storm, they held a council session on the conning tower. The place was small as ever, barely room for four to stand together, that space interrupted by the speaking tube and the small metal pilot’s wheel. The ocean smelled new, clean, bright. Even the horizons seemed freshly scrubbed. The Wall loomed to their south, a brooding reminder of God’s handiwork in the world. Childress fancied she could see a glint of brass at the top.
She would never grow accustomed to the sight, nor ever understand whether the Wall was a prison to trap man upon the Earth, or a stairway meant to open up the heavens.
God’s plan was obscure, even to God, or so it seemed. Reverend Cheadle back at the church of St. John Horofabricus in New Haven would have been appalled at the thought.
Childress chuckled as Sun-Wei, the chief engineer, scrambled up the ladderway. Captain Leung and Chief al-Wazir were already in the crowded tower.
“Why do you laugh?” Sun-Wei asked, speaking with sufficient care that she could follow his Chinese.
She worked a moment to construct a coherent reply. “The world is too large for one woman.”
Leung chuckled. “I would have thought to say the world was too small for even one woman.”
“Only some women,” al-Wazir said, glancing toward the Wall.
Paolina, thought Childress. “There is much to be done here. The Chinese effort on their Golden Bridge threatens to take their empire across to the Southern Earth. I cannot see yet how to stop it, but I will. In any case, we must take a respite first. Somewhere. To that end, tell me more of this Goa.”
“The port is . . .” Leung glanced at a paper clipped to his map. “In En glish you say Old Goa. Goa Velha, the Portuguese call it.”
“Portugal is a protectorate of the British Crown,” Childress said. “I do not see how this is of aid to us.”
“I dinna know for certain,” al-Wazir said slowly. “I never sailed to Goa, not on any of my ships, but the wet-ears like it well enough. A free province, that Her Imperial Majesty never took the charter of. It’s all card houses and fancy gi—” He stopped, embarrassed.
“Chief, I believe I understand.” Childress kept the gentle amusement from her voice. “They don’t bar the harbors to foreign ships or neutral flags.”
Leung cleared his throat. “Even so, a submarine might be taken amiss. Your navy does not make use of them, preferring to contend from the air. There will be no mistaking our origins.”
“Then we shall fly another flag,” Childress announced.
Both Leung and al-Wazir looked horrified. Sun-Wei just appeared puzzled.
She stared them down. “Are you concerned with sailing under false colors? What colors do we sail under today, pray tell me?”
“None,” al-Wazir admitted.
She bored on. “We cannot sail under the Chinese flag. I don’t imagine the White Ensign is aboard, and our valiant submarine would deceive no one even if she did show that En glish banner. Quod erat demonstrandum, we fly another flag.”
“But ’tis wrong,” al-Wazir said.
“What flag do you suggest?” Leung asked.
Childress took hold of her temper, which threatened a rare escape. “Do you have any territorial ensigns aboard? A flag of Singapore, or Taiwan?”
Leung barked a series of orders to Sun-Wei, then smiled. “Singapore is my birthplace. Also a former British outpost. It would be appropriate. Sadly, I do not carry it.”
“Then I shall design one for us. I know your men can sew.”
Al-Wazir grunted. “You’re both cracked.”
Leung began to plot a course. Al-Wazir stared moodily at the extent of the Wall rising to their south. Childress watched a school of silver fish skimming the wavetops like so many coins and wondered how they would be received in Goa.
Their entrance to the port in no wise resembled Five Lucky Winds’ home-coming to Tainan. The harbor was different here, merely a great, shallow river mouth. The bar was about two miles wide, offering little shelter from westerly storms. The old Portuguese town perched several miles up the river, not even affording the luxury of an airship tower. That suited Childress’ purposes well enough, since it meant no nosy British captains lounging at the rail to remark upon the arrival of a submarine in their waters.
Even if there had been, she and Leung had little choice. The submarine’s battery problems continued to elude resolution. This meant she could not long remain submerged below snorkel depth. Airships were very good at killing submarines, Childress had been given to understand—one reason the Royal Navy had never troubled itself with the difficult, dangerous vessels. Five Lucky Winds’ only safety from attack lay in deep waters, moving quietly far enough below the surface to evade watchful eyes.
As they drew closer, she realized why they saw no towers at Goa Velha. There was barely a town. Just a collection of massive churches atop a hill sloping up from the estuary, surrounded by fields and huts. A half-rotted dock jutted out into the riparian waters, two fishing boats tied alongside.
The greenery of the shore struck her as strange, too. Neither the tropical riot of Chersonesus Aurea, nor the more mea sured greens of a New En gland spring, this place was dusky, dusty and dark. The grasses by the roadside were burned a deeper shade than she might have expected. The wind brought unfamiliar scents as well, more resembling Tainan than New Haven.
Leung shouted orders down the speaking tube, slowly conning the submarine in to her mooring.
This was the most dangerous part of their plan. An excitable En glish officer with artillery to hand could end all their hopes between one breath and the next. For that reason alone, the sleepy isolation of Goa Velha was a welcome sight to Childress.
Even a small town should have food for sale. The river here promised an abundance of water, though she might prefer not to drink the murky stuff.
She would be the Mask Childress here, speaking to what ever bishop or local farmer came to the docks to treat with them.
Their flag snapped overhead, false as it could be. After further argument Childress had sketched out a narrowing quadrangle, the shape of a pennant with the tip cut off. The field was white, hopefully signifying a lack of warlike intent to the En glish coupled with the Chinese color of mourning. The device on the banner was a simplified gear, square-toothed and hollow, a solid circle set within.
The Earth, Northern and Southern halves united in heraldry as they were not in life. “We sail all oceans,” Childress had urged. “Pursuing peace in the world. Let us put the world on our flagstaff and they all may wonder at our coming.”
“They’ll be wondering at our submarine,” al-Wazir had growled.
However the locals chose to read the submarine’s banner, they neither fled screaming nor mounted a welcoming party. A handful of fishermen tended the gear aboard their boats, incuriously eyeing the arriving vessel. Farmers working the fields along the shore did not even look up.
Sailors sprang ashore and made the submarine fast to piers of dubious substance. Even Childress could see this would not be a place to tarry. “I doubt we will find fuel here,” she said, “nor machined parts. Food, yes.”
“Information as well,” replied Leung, biting his lip. “Beginning with the knowledge that the Beiyang Navy’s charts are inaccurate. Clearly the British have moved what ever port was once here to some other locale.”
“And you’re complaining now, are ye?” Al-Wazir eyed the skies, looking for airships on the rise. “Better we trot through this little costume play like good kiddies than stride onto Her Imperial Majesty’s battlefields not even knowing our lines.”
After a few minutes, Childress took herself down to the deck.
“Nothing i
s here,” Bai, one of the ratings, said to her in Chinese.
Childress smiled. “This is En gland’s doorstep,”she replied.
She was still dressed in her ship’s castoffs. Touched by sun, with her hair pulled into a queue by Lao Mu, she could almost pass for one of the crew within the shapeless blue top and straight-legged trousers.
Bai laid down a plank for her to step ashore. Another agreement: She would go first if there was no obvious course of action, mumble in Chinese at need and listen to what was said in En glish. If Portuguese was the language here, so much the worse that they did not have Paolina. Childress’ face would fool no one, of course, but they counted on the thin hope that the clothes would make her the man she wasn’t.
Childress was not above a bit of brazening if it came to that. Something else the woman she had been would barely have understood, but long months of violence and deprivation had changed much within her.
She reached the end of the dock and set foot in India. Nothing in partic u lar happened except that a mule brayed. Childress looked up the hill to see a corpulent man riding down the road. His skin was sun-reddened, and he was dressed in black vestments.
A priest, though whether Portuguese Catholic or good Church of En gland she could not say. Childress briefly examined her standing with God and decided that nothing had changed of late. The last time she’d knelt to prayer had been inside that Catholic church in Singapore, under the watchful eye of a priest who himself had hailed from somewhere here in India. Where that young man had been handsome in a sort of nut-brown way, even from a distance, this fellow on the mule gave the impression of being resolutely uncomfortable.
For a moment, she was almost overwhelmed with the temptation to beg for mercy, to ask to be released from her durance vile aboard an enemy vessel on the high seas. Childress laughed at herself, her voice pealing silver-bright into the warming air of this Asian morning.