“I do not think she likes that magic so much.”
Kitchens bowed slightly. “Sir, I must inform you that my given word concerning your fate in Cotonou is almost certainly broken. We cannot fight four aerial cruisers together, even if the ship were in full trim.”
“I am here.” Paolina mounted the three steps from the deck closely followed by Gashansunu.
The clerk became painfully aware of the fact that almost half the effectives remaining to this stricken ship were crowding onto the poop. Between the wounded and the dead, they could not mount a decent firing party at either rail.
“Already there have been too many fights,” Kitchens said. “We have not enough left to us. You I have seen fall through the air and return again as if strolling through an alder copse. Can you send Erinyes through some hidden path in much the same way? Or shall we wait here to be burned from the sky?”
“This pass is not my doing.” Her voice was solid, though her face was pale and her body shook with fatigue. “You men piloted your ship into the gates of Hell, and now you wish to once again be pulled free by a woman.” Paolina reached out and circled Gashansunu’s arm with her own. She favored Boaz with a long, silent look. Then: “I could take my friends and step away from here, and never be troubled by the sight of your pyre.”
No prison would ever hold this woman. Kitchens opened his mouth, seeking some words that might turn her heart.
Boaz spoke first. “You will not.”
His words dropped like belaying pins. Some part of Kitchens noted that they were sailing uncaring into battle. They could slow; they could turn; they could delay the moment of inevitable reckoning in some form or fashion.
Or they could listen to two lovers argue until all were slain. “No,” Paolina said. Her voice was clear and hard. “I will not. Because that is what a man would do.”
“And you are no man, my lady,” Kitchens said, sliding back into the conversation. “Least of all a dead man.”
“I—I do not think I can move this entire airship away.”
“Stop the engines of those before us, as you did before,” Martins said reluctantly.
“Why? They will only restart, and we could not escape a tired stork. We cannot sail close and snuff their lives with our mighty cannon. Furthermore”—she raised her hand—“I will not slay them. I have already killed far too many with my powers. This I will not do again.”
“Then what?” snapped Kitchens.
“We land,” she told them. “We land, and I find a way to help us escape on foot.”
“No.” Boaz’ voice was flat. “We may do better than that. I have been aboard one of those airships before.”
“As have I,” muttered Paolina.
Boaz continued. “We shall take one of theirs, flee with a full gasbag and engines under all power. You can cripple the others for a short while. They will not make up the distance.”
“Where then?” Kitchens demanded.
“Who cares!” screamed Martins. “Anywhere that does not require us falling to our death with skins afire will suit me.” He took a huge, shuddering breath, then added, “Sir.”
Kitchens nodded. “You have an excellent sense of priorities.” He turned to Boaz and Paolina. “How precisely do you propose to undertake this misadventure?”
“I have a plan,” she said slowly.
PAOLINA
She hadn’t the least idea, but panic was edging into the exhausted faces around her. Erinyes and all her people would drown of fear before the Chinese could kill them. This was no time for indecision.
She most certainly did not intend to die with the dawn.
“Gashansunu, to the prow with me,” she said. “The rest of you gather and arm such crew as can still stand and fight.”
Paolina had no idea what they would do with any weapons, but that sort of thing always comforted men. The organization would give them purpose in the face of panic.
The sorceress followed her to the prow. “Go, now,” the foreign woman said without preamble. “Leave these people to their fates. They are not yours, and you are not theirs.”
“I will not depart without Boaz,” Paolina said firmly. “And I will not condemn these men who have fought for our lives.”
“You cannot move this airship; you said so yourself.”
“I once called a submarine across hundreds of miles of ocean.”
“What?”
“An underwater ship.”
“How did you do this?”
Paolina almost screamed. “I don’t know!”
“Even then,” Gashansunu told her, “you had something to push against.”
“Yes. I caused an earthquake that claimed many lives.”
“You have nothing here to push against. We are in the air.”
“I pushed against those horrid angels,” she told the sorceress. “Their weight countervailed our rise. I could push against one of those airships.”
“Without destroying the ship and crew?”
“I will not slay them. But for every action there is a precisely opposing reaction.” Paolina turned that over. “Can I balance this passage by taking our crew there and moving their crew here?”
Gashansunu looked as if she were trying not to be impressed. “How would you know?”
“I can look at their ship. All life glows in the Silent World. How much else can there be in the middle of their air, in this world or the other?”
“Then look with my eyes,” the sorceress told Paolina. The other woman proffered the braided silver. “Take my wrist and we will examine together.”
“You will not step away with me?”
“You are right to mistrust,” said Gashansunu. “But now is not a time for betrayal. Now is a time for swift action.”
Together they slipped into the Silent World without ever leaving their few inches of deck.
The airships hung like flies trapped in ancient pine sap. Even in the Silent World, the spirit of their hydrogen flickered like a ghost within a ghost. Sparks swarmed below the belly of each fire.
Light and life in the middle of the atmosphere.
She looked behind her and counted the presences. Twenty-four remained alive on Erinyes—along with Boaz, who did not glow in the same fashion. She knew that the way she knew the length of her own hair, the shape of her own hand. Paolina stared once more across the airy gulf, trying to figure out how many Chinese there were. Could she so simply trade people from place to place, balancing the push of each translation like the numbers in a pretty piece of mathematics?
The world was never so clean and simple.
Or was it?
The principles of action were as basic to the universe as anything she knew of. God had designed the world to work clearly, cleanly, consistently. Apparent miracles like the stemwinder, or indeed the Silent World itself, were just a lack of sufficient understanding. That was so painfully obvious that she had always had difficulty comprehending why everyone else did not see it as such.
The Creator had endowed human beings with minds that they might think clearly about the wonders of His world, not so that they could cast aside reason just to prove some article of faith. Otherwise, what was the point of reason in the first place?
That argued for a world that was clean and simple, once you stripped away the shadows of faith and unreason and looked only at what was before you.
Before Paolina was a swarm of men bent on her destruction. Before her was the problem of setting one crew against another without slaughter or fire or plunging death.
If the men would let her.
Forty-seven souls on the airship she studied. Almost twice as many as remained aboard Erinyes.
But the balance of forces is physical, she realized. Not spiritual.
She patted the bow chasers. Small-bore cannon, on cradles with levers designed to level and aim them. They were recoilless to keep from interfering with the airship’s course.
I shall bring the guns, she thought. They will be toothless
behind us. Paolina turned to Gashansunu and tried to speak. Here in the Silent World her lips moved like a fish in water.
Paolina took them back into the Shadow World. The Chinese airships were closer, the men of Erinyes gathered for the last, exhausted fight. “Get everyone who yet lives onto the main deck,” she said urgently. “Don’t bother defending the ship. Have them all join hands or link arms, touching one line. I wish we had a silver cord, but rope will have to do.” Bad enough she would have to account for all the men on the approaching vessel.
Gashansunu stepped aft while Paolina watched the impending battle. The east lightened. A few thousand feet below them, a beach gleamed, the ocean reflecting the last of night’s stars. The interior was sullen mudflats and the textures of jungle, except for the scattering of fires that marked the remains of the British presence at Cotonou.
If she failed, if they fell or were struck down from the air, not much time would remain for repentance. Paolina wondered how many men she could step away with, as she had done on arriving. Could she break the backs and burst the hearts of some to save the rest?
Or would she only spirit away Boaz and Gashansunu?
It could not be much of a crime to murder someone who would be dead of falling moments later.
Oh, yes it could. Once again, she was thinking like a man. She hated that.
Paolina set to work with the stemwinder, finding the firefly-in-a-bottle glow of the men aboard the oncoming airship. This might be a kind of magic, but the principles of action would save them all.
It took far too long for Gashansunu to gather the men of Erinyes, even with Boaz and Kitchens chivvying them on. Tired as they were, staring at their approaching deaths, these men still knew how to stand and fight. They did not know how to cluster in a trusting circle.
Cannon boomed all too close before they were ready, but the shots went wild. She could hear the distant barking of orders after the first salvo. Boarding parties, or firing lines, or just the gunners re-laying their weapons.
Paolina gathered her chosen ship firmly in her mind, its people spread out along the waist and down inside the hull. Her people were close.
What would happen to them, so scattered? The ones too far from the center might simply plunge to the earth as she almost had.
Nothing to be done about it now. She would not take more lives, not with a purpose, but she was not yet ready to lay down her own either. This ship’s company were not so much to her, but their loyal, fearful respect for Boaz was clear enough, and his for them unmistakable.
For the sake of everyone, she would take these Englishmen with her.
“We are ready.” Gashansunu slipped her hand into the silver cord dangling from Paolina’s right wrist. She had a loop of the rope wrapped around her free arm. Boaz was beside the sorceress, one hand on the rope as well. With the other he reached out to touch Paolina.
“You will save us all,” he said quietly.
Her heart thrilled. He was here. They had no past, they likely had little future, but he was here now.
Paolina looked into the rising glow of morning and wished she’d known a better way. Praia Nova was never so difficult as this, was it?
Of course it was.
“Boaz,” she said as she focused in on the effort that would take them all in a leap across the space between the ships. Too late to worry about how high the decks were or whether anyone would appear inside the unbreathable gases of the bag or whether the beam of the hull would be a problem.
“I love you.” Her words were lost in another roar of cannonfire.
Then things changed.
WANG
He went ashore in Port Said with his story about serving a prince of Serendip close to his lips. Cataloger Wang soon realized that no one cared, not even the bored harbor master’s clerk who’d pressed him for moorage fees.
None of the crew from Good Change came with him, of course. He did not believe Wu’s tale about their being cursed from touching land, but they certainly seemed to.
Someone must buy the fruits and vegetables for the galley, seek a chandler for marine necessities, bargain for more fuel, listen to whatever street gossip an enemy foreigner might be able to pick up.
Port Said was a town of low, flat-roofed buildings that reminded him of Haikuo or one of the other sleepy ports of southern China, rather than the mad bustle of Canton or Singapore.
People here seemed to live on the streets. He wondered what they used the buildings for, given that every activity from cooking to vending to childbirth took place in public. The heat was different here, too: baked-rock solar violence unlike the drenched discomfort of Chersonesus Aurea. This place felt as if it never known a sea breeze.
Once again, Wang was tempted to just walk away. If he didn’t return to Good Change, how would they fetch him back? By the time either the Silent Order or the Celestial Empire sent assassins, he would have moved on.
As before, he knew he would not jump the rail. Shen and Wu surely knew that as well, or they would not have sent him into the city.
He did the business of the ship, signed notes of payment for gold at the dockside—their scrip was dangerous here, very dangerous.
Once he’d finished marketing, Wang headed back for the docks. His goal was to get close to Childress and the submarine. Idlers there would be chewing over the rumors like back-alley mongrels.
Wang walked briskly. This was not a place to show himself overmuch, not so close to the British vessels, but he kept an eye on Five Lucky Winds. Sailors milled on the deck, and he thought he saw Childress among them.
He had to conclude that the Mask would prevail. She had gotten this far without being captured or sunk by the British.
“Psst.”
Wang turned, against his better judgment, which was shrieking for him to walk on, walk on, WALK ON.
It was the monk!
“You must help me break them free.” She spoke around the pipe dangling from her mouth.
“What!?”
Her hand snagged Wang before he could back away. “Come, now. We will go to their navy offices. You will pretend to be confused, and seeking aid. You have that same lie about the Indian prince, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Wang began.
“Then use it.”
Walking with the monk was an unusual experience. No one noticed her. Wang understood this at some level—he’d seen her do that trick before. Or more to the point, had not seen her.
The world didn’t turn some strange hue; demons did not climb out of Hell; there were no colored smokes. She simply walked, and no one saw.
Arm clutched tightly in her grip, he followed in the same cloud of confusion.
Together they marched right past the marines guarding a two-story wooden building over which flew an oversized Union Jack.
The monk paused at the top, touched her lips for silence, then waited for the door to open. A group of suited English civilians came out. She slipped in, followed by Wang.
He supposed someone might notice if the door moved on its own, but he could scarcely credit that five sober men had filed past him at the distance of less than a foot, and noticed nothing.
Wang was desperate to ask the monk how she did this, but he already knew the sort of ridiculous answer she would give him.
Inside were polished wooden floors, high walls painted white, and electrick ceiling fans whicking slowly over rows of desks. The monk paused, closed her eyes for a moment, then threaded across the room. Wang hurried to keep up. If he fell out of her spell in here, that would be the end of him.
They passed within inches of diligent clerks, then ducked down a hallway to a door labeled “Chart Room.” The monk moved as if she were born to this place, but Wang was beyond surprise.
She darted inside, necessarily dragging him along. The room was filled with large, flat-drawered filing cases. The monk swiftly rifled through them, searching for something specific, then pushed several sheaves of paper into Wang’s hands. “Here, put these away,
” she said urgently, before stuffing more inside her own robes. “If you survive, you’ll be glad you have them.”
Moments later, they were back in the great hall, heading toward a little office of frosted glass. She stopped him just outside the partition and leaned very close to his ear.
“How fast can you run?” the monk whispered.
“Not very,” he mouthed. Wang mimed a slap to his ample belly.
“Fear will move you.” She spun a high kick and shattered the glass set into the door.
Everyone stared. Two dozen English clerks, an armed marine turning from near the front door, a man in a naval uniform springing up from behind his desk within the little office.
Run, her voice said somewhere inside his ear.
He sprinted as the shouting began, cursing as violently as his innocent childhood would allow.
GASHANSUNU
Her wa cried.
She had never considered that the denizens of the Silent World could grow lonely. They lived amid perfection of form, unchanging, blissful. Like the Northern concept of Heaven, an eternity of sameness in a state of grace. Gashansunu had always thought that aspiration to be a special kind of madness, but she was not a Northerner. Nor was she a wa. Not in this life.
But her wa was, well, her.
And her wa cried.
I am here, Gashansunu told it.
YOU ARE LOST.
She could not see her wa, even as a trace of a presence. A gulf of air yawned beneath, the flat silence of the world far below, traceries of life sparking brighter as in the Shadow World daylight woke the jungles. The ocean surged, a sullen, glowing thing.
Gashansunu wondered why she was here, amid nothing.
I TRY TO BRING YOU BACK.
Imploring her, Gashansunu realized. Here I am. Not gone from my head.
Another cry, vacant tears from an eyeless face.
THE NORTH IS EMPTY.
THEIR IDEA OF GOD HAS SAPPED MY ILK FROM THE WORLD.