I AM BEING TAKEN UP.
Soon I will come back, Gashansunu promised her wa, as if it were a sobbing child.
SOON YOU WILL BE TOO LATE.
SOON YOU WILL BE LOST, CUT OFF, AS AN INFANT OR ONE OF THEM.
SOON I WILL BE NOTHING, AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FIND YOUR WAY HOME.
She looked around. Paolina was nearby, in midstride, face set with determination and a strange grief.
A Chinese shell hung in the air. Though the metal was dead, and thus had little presence here in the Silent World, the energies of its discharge played around it. Fire is a species of life, she thought.
The airships were close. Their bags danced with light. A flurry of sparks fled the nearest one, that made Gashansunu think to turn and look at the ship they had left behind.
Twenty-two souls followed her and Paolina, clinging to the line like mussels to an anchor rope. Not enough time had passed for terror, or even a surge of their bodies, but in another moment mouths would be opening; then they would be on the Chinese deck.
Gashansunu belatedly realized where she was. She had sliced time between one heartbeat and the next, between one click of the Shadow World and the next. The Silent World did not have time, as such, but the minds of people who went there perceived it through the filter of time, just as their bodies did back in the Shadow World. Great power was required to step completely outside time and slice it open like a sacrificial slave.
I do not have this power, she thought. I am no house priest.
YOU ARE SWALLOWING MINE.
The sorceress finally realized that the distance of her wa’s voice was within her.
She could not conceive of what that meant. People sometimes lost their wa, or themselves, but no one she knew of had ever swallowed up their wa.
My poor soul, Gashansunu thought, then wondered why she had chosen that terrible, terrible word.
SEVENTEEN
And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and every living soul died in the sea. —Revelation 16:3
BOAZ
He stepped heavily onto an alien deck. A knotted circle of men crowded around, gasping and stifling cries. Seven of Erinyes’ cannon rolled loose.
Someone screamed out across the open air, their voice trailing away. A Chinese sailor who’d missed his footing.
::birds could soar no higher than the very angels of the Lord, yet here you have stood on the mountain with wings of wax and feathers upon your shoulders::
Paolina, he thought, but survival came even before love. She and that sorceress were safer than any of them. Orders were needed, quickly. He spoke in a low, urgent voice.
“Quiet. These ships are similar enough to your own. Petty Officer Martins, take three men and find the engine control room amidships. Two from the gas division go up into the bag so you may see to learning the arrangements. The rest of you dump these loose cannon overboard. We will depart as swiftly and silently as we may.”
“Someone should pull in the battle lanterns,” Kitchens shouted as he loped away.
Another salvo of fire came from one of their sister ships. Erinyes bucked and splintered, a brief flame jetting from her hull. Already the men over there were yelling.
Boaz wished them the luck of it.
::one by one their robes were torn back, to shew each a man with his sword beneath his woman’s cloak, and the deception was brake::
He twisted the wheel hard to port. Levine, an old sailor from Erinyes, had followed him onto the command deck. “Here,” the Brass said. “Figure how to call for more altitude. We must gain before they are on to our ruse.”
Their airship turned away from the attack. Paolina had chosen the northmost vessel in the Chinese line, so they were not forced to cross the bows of their erstwhile enemies. Small favors, Boaz thought, from the hand of the Divine.
The sailor looked at the controls in bafflement. “Ain’t like our’n, guvner.”
“I know nothing of it, either,” he snapped. “If you need to, run smartly and carry word to the gas division and the engineers that they must sort this out right away.”
Everyone scrambled in a rush of panic and relief. They would survive another few minutes, and maybe beyond the day with both luck and skill.
::watch the last horseman, for if he is taken, you will all be ate one by one, each by each::
“I understand.” Boaz raised his voice. “Two men here for a stern watch, quickly.”
Kitchens popped up from a hatch in the deck and looked him in the eye. “Will we live, John Brass?”
“For now.”
The Paolina–al-Wazir voice surfaced again. And well done, laddie, well done.
I did nothing, he thought, but did not say.
“Something’s gone over the side of Erinyes. Looks like a strip of bag fabric. They’re making a signal.”
“Number two Chinee is swung toward us.”
“Flames on our ship! Erm, their ship! Erinyes, sir!”
“Number three Chinee is standing to our’n.”
“Number four is heading our way.”
::the false riders were diverted away by cunning, and so the trapper trapped::
“The hoax is done,” Paolina said. “It bought us several minutes’ head start and a faster airship.”
“Yes,” Kitchens replied, “and we sail toward the heart of the Empire cloaked in the enemy’s colors.”
Boaz realized that his desire to reach Ophir had guttered out in Paolina’s presence. He hadn’t even noticed the death of that ambition. Just having her close to hand was sufficient. But to sail to England . . .
“We must alight, Mr. Kitchens,” he said. “Neither Paolina nor I have any wish to approach London.”
“I—” The clerk stopped, looked about. “You men, clear the deck a moment. I shall keep the stern watch a bit, but I must speak in confidence to John Brass and this sorceress.”
The two men on the stern watch exchanged a glance, then scuttled forward. From the shouts, Petty Officer Martins was trying to organize a firing party with unfamiliar Chinese weapons.
Kitchens stared aft, avoiding both Boaz and Paolina. “Our defense is in speed and wit, not force of arms.”
::the storm that crosses the desert spares no man, claiming the virtuous and the wicked alike::
“That is your defense, sir,” the Brass said. “Not ours.”
“I will not go to London,” Paolina stated flatly.
A sad, tired tension filled Kitchens’ voice. “For my part, I apologize.” He glanced at them, then returned to his study of the pursuit. “The fate of my country rests on what happens next. I can compel you to nothing, but I beg you to help see me safe to England.”
“What is this fate?” asked Paolina.
::and a darkness rose over the plains of Absalom, while in her heart writhed the pain of two loves twined like snakes::
Kitchens seemed to shiver as he glanced at the pursuing airships. “We are a nation at the edge.”
Boaz marshaled his thoughts. “What, sir, is the edge on which the largest empire in history now abides?”
“The edge of madness.” The clerk’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I fear the Empire will fall.”
::the flames of the furnace polished his bones, until on the third day the prophet rose up, gathered himself from the ashes and walked through the iron door to once more confront the king::
“All empires fall.” Boaz tried to think what the Sixth Seal had meant with those words.
“Maybe this is England’s turn,” Kitchens replied. “But there is already war to drag down the world with her. Look at the deck on which we stand right now. A month ago, this would have been beyond conception.”
“It is my doing.” Paolina’s voice was bleak. “I carried the gleam into your empire. The Chinese pursued me to Mogadishu, where they snatched me away from Boaz, carrying poor al-Wazir with them. That was the opening salvo in this war. Because of me, and my stemwinder. If I h
ad not come, they would not be fighting now.”
::a maiden rode the shoulders of a cold wind, ice streaming from her hair, while death carried himself in her van::
“Regardless, there is war today,” Kitchens said, obviously impatient with the argument. “It pursues us at this moment; it spreads across Africa and the Wall. India must already be a battleground. A war that will take the lives of tens of thousands, and ruin millions more.”
::as you travel among the distant forests, so the concerns of the forest dwellers become your own, for all that your heart abides among the sheep and their meadows::
“This war is not my concern,” Boaz told the clerk. “The Wall will not burn. It is of the Lord, and too large for your armies to encompass.”
“Perhaps you are correct, sir. But that is not enough for me. This cancer grows at the heart of England. I have been charged with cutting it away. If I can do so, Government will change, and we will have cause to stop the fighting without seeming weak.”
That gave Boaz long pause. Paolina gripped him more tightly. Their gaze met, though he could not read her eyes.
“Whom will you kill?” she asked.
“I will kill no one,” the clerk replied almost absently. “But I would help a beloved woman finish dying.”
::when you heed the counsel of women, and leave the priests idle in the dusty rooms of their temple, you will find a different nation at your feet::
“The enemy is gaining,” Boaz reported. “We are nearly at risk, if they are willing to fire on one of their own airships.”
Paolina stared at him. “This is not their airship anymore.”
WANG
Pursued by shouting men, he burst into another hallway. This was crowded with boxes, crates and a cluster of mops and brooms.
No time to choose. He ran right. Bellowing close by. A bell began shrilling alarm, alarm, intruder, intruder.
Double doors ahead. A place to bring in goods and equipment.
He raced into a marshaling yard. Wagons, a steam tractor with a flat trailer behind it. Surprised men, mostly Arabs but a few large-boned Britons.
“Fire!” Wang screamed without breaking stride. “Inside! Raise the alarm!”
He’d never run so fast in his life.
The crack of a bullet told him that being outside had been a poor choice. Nothing struck him down, while a babble of Arab voices rose louder and louder.
The outer gates of the yard stood open. The street beyond invited him. Already the people and traffic there swirled to focus on the happenings within.
“My pardons,” shouted Wang. “Make way for the injured!”
Another bullet snapped overhead. The gathering crowd melted as fast as it had coalesced. He melted with it, the shouts of “Oi, you, ’alt,” lost among the chaos.
Don’t push, Wang thought. Be one of them.
He knew he was an idiot. There wasn’t another Chinese man on this street. Everyone would mark him for a foreigner.
Yet a dozen styles of dress pressed around him, clothing skin colored from almost midnight black through nut brown to pale white. He was different, but not alone in his difference.
The alarm still shrilled behind him, fading with distance. Angry British shouts echoed, but few in this crowd would turn a hand to aid their masters.
This place was like Singapore, he realized. Whoever ruled held the power, but the people were their own and majestically indifferent. He would never see such a thing in the heart of China.
Wang’s chest ached awfully. A stitch in his gut felt like he’d been knifed. His legs shivered, elastic and vague.
He slowed to a walk. Either he would reach the boat or he would not. Meanwhile, the monk had been doing . . . what?
Sometimes, Wang wished he had told the Kô to do his Imperial worst. Instead of chasing two magically impossible women halfway around the Northern Earth under the threat of his own death, he could be in his notso-comfortable office, drinking bad tea and piecing through ancient documents so rotten they made his eyes burn.
He smiled as he passed through the dusty streets amid the donkey shit and the spilled fruit and the press of foreigners.
GASHANSUNU
She continued unmoored in time, even in the Shadow World. The new airship seemed little different than the old, but the men were strange. Here one moment, over there the next, then gone. Likewise the sun stuttering as it crested the horizon.
I am Westfacing, she thought. That is east. Unless the Northern Earth was so turned around even the compass stood untrue.
A magenta sliver jumped to an orange crescent between one moment and the next.
Worse, the voice of her wa had faded completely. She felt different, as if a hand had been sliced from her body. The sense in her head of always knowing gaped.
Yet something had been traded for that. She had gained. A fair trade?
A man looked closely at her a moment, opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was like distant thunder trapped in a cave. Just an echo, an echo, an echo.
Is this madness? Has some wall inside my head burst open?
Her wa did not answer.
Gashansunu tried to reach into the Silent World, to mark her place there. If she could, she would step home now, walking with the stride of leagues as Paolina had shown her.
To her horror, the Silent World would not open for her. That had not happened since her first bleeding!
“Where?” Gashansunu cried out in her own language, but no one on this side of the Wall would know the words, would hear the loss in them.
The city had abandoned her. She was already dead. She was become a wa, unknowing and unknown. She had lost the connection between her two selves, between Shadow and Silence.
The sorceress wept until a grubby little man brought her a cup of water and awkwardly patted her arm. He stood inside time with her a while, which comforted Gashansunu. Eventually she realized she heard the rage of voices in full quarrel.
Paolina, her Brass, and that strange, dark-suited madman who seemed to issue orders without authority.
She checked for her wa one more time, realized that she was indeed lost, and went to see what she could make of this bit of afterlife that remained to her.
PAOLINA
Two airships gave chase. The third tended to Erinyes.
She was so tired of being at the wrong end of someone else’s gun sight. The Northern Earth was nothing but bullying, warfare and mad grabs for power. She’d found Boaz, finally, but instead of stepping away together they seemed trapped ever deeper inside this English war.
She wanted to go home. Wherever that was.
“Before you ask,” Paolina announced, “I will not strike them down for you. I will not kill and kill again.”
“You didn’t strike down the last lot.” Kitchens’ voice was drawn tight. “You deterred them so we could flee.”
“We fled into more enemies, despite your promises. I played my little tricks again.” She felt something boiling up inside her. “When do I stop running? Is every hour of every day going to be another call for me to rescue more and more? I am not here to be your guardian angel!”
“Paolina—,” Boaz began.
But she whirled on him, still shouting. “Let me find my way!”
Kitchens visibly gathered himself. “You claim to desire stability. In that case, help me do what I must. Then Government will be too distracted to prosecute this war in the East. Afterward, the Wall can go back to the Brass and their like, China can return to her own affairs, and Mother England may rethink her purposes.”
She opened her mouth once, twice, then forced words out around the bitter laughter that threatened. “So all I need do is get you home, help you murder a queen, escape the retribution of your entire empire, await the progress of negotiations at half the distance around the Northern Earth, and then all will be well? You must think me a terrible fool, Mr. Kitchens.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, Miss Barthes, but yes, that is all you need d
o.” Unshed tears glittered bright and savage in his gaze. “I have no better answer, except to let the servants of both empires continue about their killing ways. If you are going to magic yourself away, this would be an auspicious time.”
She looked to Boaz, who still clutched the helm. He shook his head slightly before saying, “I will follow wherever you lead. But for my own part, I would not abandon these men and their purposes. Mr. Kitchens offers more hope than any other path I can see.”
Paolina felt as if her heart would crack. “You will not come if I step away?”
“No, I will come.” If Boaz were human, his smile would be lopsided and melting; she heard that in his voice. “I will come though I know it to be wrong, because what else can I do but follow you?”
Gashansunu touched Paolina’s elbow, startling her. “There is no path behind us. I will follow you much as the Brass will, but set your direction well.”
Paolina wanted peace, harmony and a good set of tools. Not a creaking deck and the boom of none-too-distant cannon, and the ever-changing word of a man little better than the fidalgos of Praia Nova who had so plagued her childhood.
Kitchens wouldn’t look at her. “The helm, if you please, sir,” he said to Boaz.
The Brass braced against the rising crosswind until the clerk had a good grip.
“Stern watch!” Kitchens bellowed. “Someone tell me where we stand on weapons. We’re fighting for it again, boys, this one last time.”
The few crew still on deck simply groaned. Someone began handing firearms up through a hatch. Paolina stood by the rail with Boaz and Gashansunu. The Brass had a weary set to his shoulders, as if even the metal of his body were sinking into fatigue. The sorceress appeared very troubled.
They could have their damned silly war. Once she was safely on the Wall, Paolina was never coming back. The two empires might battle one another to their proverbial knees and it would mean nothing to her. Nothing.
Try as she could to hold on to that anger, the surge kept slipping away. Would she condemn Ming and ten thousand of his fellow sailors to watery graves? She’d already slain half a fleet, off the coast of Sumatra. That they would go on slaying each other without her was no excuse.