“Best be done soon,” said Paolina before the clerk could speak. “Let me know how many will remain aboard. I will create additional oxygen pots.”
::the King gave them back their oaths and set each man free with a coin and a sack of grain::
Martins began counting out on his fingers. The crew huddled ragged and cold, sipping soup from tight-clutched bowls.
“I believe that this is your decision,” Kitchens told the petty officer. “None of us know how to do more than grasp a wheel or guess at a map.”
“I’ll keep six,” Martins said gruffly. “I’m off to tell the good news to them who have been volunteered.”
Boaz turned to Paolina. “Go to the bow and watch for a place where we may approach the earth.” He’d never landed an airship, did not intend to start now, but he understood what was required—a large patch of relatively level ground without nearby cliffs or other sources of disturbances to the air. “We shall want a good-sized meadow, or possibly the margin of a lake.”
“Will you aid me?” she asked the silent Gashansunu. Together the two women walked forward.
He didn’t want to bring the airship any lower. Already he was too close to the peaks of these ragged mountains. The airman’s lesson that altitude was always your friend had not been lost on Boaz.
::even a priest knows the ground over which he fights, workrooms of the soul where ideas labor at their patents::
Forty-five minutes later, the old sailor Levine brought them low over a glittering tarn surrounded by meadows of blooming lavender. Boaz stared down at the pale purple haze of autumn blossoms mixed with the green-gray foliage.
“There is no point in trying to moor,” Martins had shouted over the laboring of the engines. Instead they passed a pair of lines over the rail.
Most of the departing crew scrambled down like monkeys, swarming the fifty feet or so to the ground. Six would go over the side in slings, along with anything else deemed surplus to final requirements.
Stolen would be left with little more than a handful of crew, and no margin of error. whatever happened would be the end of them—storm, attack, breakage, British interception.
::uncovered by fate, they moved into the light, bathing in the gaze of their enemies::
If he could catch a favorable wind at sufficient altitude, they might make Blenheim Palace undetected in two more days. The most dangerous portion of that journey would be the descent to the palace grounds.
An idea occurred to him. They could at least attempt to mitigate that. “Are there stores of cloth below?” Boaz asked Paolina. “Chinese silk, perhaps?”
“I have seen those. As well muslin sheeting.”
“We are in want of a banner that we could lower so as to communicate with the ground upon our arrival. If we are lucky, this will slow the British from instantly burning us out of the sky for Chinese invaders.”
“Ah,” she said thoughtfully. “I must go see who among our remaining crew is a good hand with a needle.”
::for six days the maid Shulit sewed upon the standard of the King; on the seventh he called it finished and took her kiss for a seal::
Soon enough they were off. Martins’ six men had turned to nine, for not everyone wished to go over the side into the wilds of the Andalusian highlands. Boaz considered the fate of those aboard Stolen to be far more uncertain than those remaining on the ground, but each sailor’s decision was his own.
WANG
Valetta lay before him. A little port in a little harbor, consisting of a rising array of formal sand-colored buildings in a European style—flat roofs, domes, spires, square windows of unfortunate nuance staring empty-eyed across the harbor. No one seemed to mind as Good Change approached.
Five Lucky Winds was not in evidence.
“Captain Shen says that we will not seek out a harbor master here,” Wu told him. “I shall row you to a landing.”
“How will you know to come fetch me back?”
“You will return to wherever I land you. A lookout will be kept.”
Wang could imagine how effective this lookout would be. The crew, though no longer so mercilessly irritated with him, continued to treat Wang as if he barely existed. They were much too far from home, and perhaps worried about how to find their way safely down to hell from this distant place.
Then he wondered why he cared. He was come for Childress. The idea of returning to Chersonesus Aurea seemed alien. Going all the way back to China had become almost unimaginable.
The English Mask was his oracle now, his guide, his lodestone.
“I need a few moments,” he told Shen. Wang went below to gather such small belongings as he had accumulated, along with the money allowed him by Captain Shen. All of this he placed in a canvas bag that had once contained onions and garlic. He tugged on the white robes of an Arab, so he would not be marked as so obviously Asian at a glance. Wang could not even pretend to pass for a European.
He wondered whether he would pass even a dozen paces down the street before being called out for a spy.
Wu rowed them across the harbor.
“Tell me,” Wang asked, driven to seek some final sense of connection with this man who had both aided and tormented him. “What would become of you if you set foot on dry land? You might step ashore with me here and see a different world than the country of ghosts and ships that you have made your own.”
“We are ghosts. I have explained this to you.”
“A ghost on land is still a ghost.”
“But he is not me.” Wu crabbed water, bringing them close to a stone stairway rising from the slopping tide. “Come here; look for Good Change. If we have been forced to move, return periodically. Also, show a light if it is night.”
“That’s a stupid plan,” Wang protested. “How will I see you? This harbor is full of boats, and half of them are white. Worse, the shore will be dotted with lights come eve ning.”
“I will know.” Some echo of the Kô’s implacable, brutal indifference stood in the mate’s voice.
“Then we shall see each other again.” Clambering out, Wang wondered if he should have made a better good-bye.
“Little man,” Wu called from the boat.
The cataloger turned from the top step and looked back down.
“You have done better than I might have thought.” The sailor rowed himself away.
Wang was unaccountably pleased at the praise. He turned into the rowdy traffic of a busy port and was lost within moments. Not called out for a spy, not called out for anything at all, just a sun-darkened face amid sun-darkened faces, busy and anonymous and ever moving.
How would he find Childress in this?
CHILDRESS
Five Lucky Winds steamed into Valetta with flags flying and her crew on parade. This created a visible stir, from the decks of fishing boats to the balconies of the harborside buildings to the waterfront street traffic.
Childress stood in the tower with Leung. The monk was nowhere to be seen, of course. Al-Wazir waited on the foredeck with his raiding party, discreetly armed so as not to seem too much the invasion force.
As if a one-handed Scotsman and eight Chinese sailors were going to take on an entire island.
She wished them the luck of it. Right now, a thousand eyes upon her was much safer than anonymity. Already the British airship was casting off from its tower, moving swiftly enough that she figured panic at their helm.
Small craft skittered out of the submarine’s way. Larger vessels gave long wails on their steam whistles. Somewhere in the city a bell began to clang. The noise was soon picked up and sent rolling across the harbor from a dozen church towers.
For a moment, everything inside her seemed to pause, as if coiled to spring. The iodine smell of the ocean, the rotten wrack of any fishing port, the scent of stone and roofing and animals; the golden light gelid as if to seize the harbor in an amber grip; the wind standing in her hair just so, to lift her away from the place and fly her to a better world; the coolth of th
e turning season on her skin, even here in the Mediterranean. A transcendent moment, as permanent in her ars memoriae as it would be ephemeral in the march of her existence.
Soldiers clattered down the waterfront, running too fast for the crowds, bayoneted rifles bobbing and swaying. The bells acquired an urgent clamor as the engines of the approaching airship raced. Five Lucky Winds glided into a mooring, her crew at attention on the foredeck, the world banner flapping.
Two men cautiously approached and took the lines thrown by Leung’s sailors. They worked their way from fore to aft, tying off the submarine and laughing nervously. Childress descended the ladder, reasoning she would be far better positioned up on the dock.
Leung stayed behind. This was her enterprise now, though her failure would cost the captain and his crew imprisonment, and possibly their lives. Five Lucky Winds might well never sail again.
“This will not happen,” she told the grimy ladder as she climbed.
Bai had repaired and polished Childress’ old boots. Her dress was proper New England fashion, retailored by Lao Mu. Her hair had been done as neatly as any peasant’s queue, though the fashion would pass no social muster. For the first time in a great while, Childress was conscious of her sun-darkened face, the marks of weather on her cheeks, her hands, her neck.
Such a scandal she would be to anyone who had ever known her.
Smiling, she reached the dock just before the puffing sergeant at the head of his little knot of men. The airship growled, pitching low above them.
“Ma’am,” the sergeant almost shouted. His surprise was visible. “You, you, did you—?”
“This is my vessel, Sergeant,” she announced. “I thank you for the honor guard, but it will not be required. My faith in the welcoming virtues of the citizens of Valetta is complete.”
“Ma’am, I’m not . . .” The sergeant looked down at the deck. Al-Wazir grinned up at him, flanked by two sailors in dress whites, each holding a tray covered with small glasses of plum wine.
“Drinks for you and your men, laddie?” the chief roared, his voice thick with the fields of his youth.
“Sir, no . . .”
“You seem at a loss for words, Sergeant,” Childress said pleasantly. “Perhaps you would care to escort me to the avebianco? I have much to report to the Feathered Masks in grand concilium, and a war to stop before it comes calling on your pleasant shores.”
She was here. She was truly here. Where her journey would have taken her from the beginning, if Five Lucky Winds had not intercepted Mute Swan on the high seas and taken her off, to the cost of the lives of all others aboard the ship.
Such a long, difficult voyage.
“You’re one, you’re . . .” The sergeant glanced back over his shoulder at the crowd that had gathered thick and noisy.
“I am, my son,” Childress said gently. “Now let us remove this business from the open.”
The sergeant surrendered to the inevitable. He made a signal to the airship, then called his squad around and formed them up around her. Off they went, striding through the cobbled streets of Valetta toward a destination she knew nothing of.
Finding it herself would have been painful.
The crowds melted before them and re-formed behind, trailing a ragged tide of people. Good, Childress thought. The more public the better.
At one corner she saw Cataloger Wang, of all people, dressed as an Arab. Their eyes met a moment. He nodded slowly, then stepped into the thickest press to follow her toward the domed and spired structure that the sergeant seemed to have in mind for his destination.
She knew she could not look back, could not ask for him to be caught up, but still Childress wished she had some way to bring him with her.
PAOLINA
This time she stayed with Boaz even at the most rarefied heights. She’d made additional oxygen pots and had rigged the electricks to continue to produce more of the precious substance.
Others went below, all but Gashansunu. It seemed a point of pride to the foreign sorceress to remain with Paolina, which Paolina could understand. An airship was very much a male domain. Outlasting even the roughest swaggerer among the crew made a strong statement.
Although, in fairness, these men had been a fairly gentle bunch. Paolina was unsure if Erinyes’ complement were cowed by the losses they had sustained, or if their essential natures were somehow less male.
In the crackling air that left small whiskers of ice on so many surfaces, only Boaz and the two women remained awake and moving. Once again, he had driven them so high that the engines sounded on the verge of expiration. The world below seemed strangely distant, as well.
“I continue alone,” Gashansunu announced. She sounded gloomy.
Correctly divining her meaning, Paolina asked, “Have you sought your wa further?”
“Yes.” A long, slow silence followed as words struggled from the sorceress’ lips. Paolina waited in the silence—nothing would be rushed, not until Stolen descended over England and that empire’s defenses leapt into action. Finally Gashansunu said, “I told you, I believe I have passed on.”
“I do not think you are in the land of the dead,” Paolina said politely. “This is the Northern Earth, not Hell.”
“The Silent World is empty to me now. That my body still breathes in the Shadow World is testament only to the persistence of meat.”
“This I cannot argue with. You take a point of philosophy that seems lateral to the facts of our existence. But I am not of your people.”
“This is because you do not understand the nature of the real.” Gashansunu glanced back toward Boaz. “He has no wa, nor even the possibility of one. He exists in this world without referent to the next. You, I believe, have the potential for a wa inside you—you can be unified, whole, a complete piece of yourself. Long have I thought our way in the city was the most right and natural, that our understanding with our was is the most proper way for a person to feel. Sooner would I have sliced away my thumbs than be as alone as I am now.”
Awkward, Paolina pulled Gashansunu toward her embrace. The sorceress resisted for a moment, then stepped into the circle of arms. Paolina’s head barely came to Gashansunu’s shoulders, but for a long moment they were of a single purpose.
Paolina released the other woman. “I cannot counsel you on the fate of your wa, or what that might mean for you. I can only say that if you can sorrow, and shed a tear, then you are not yet dead in this world.”
“We will be soon enough, I believe,” Gashansunu said with a bitter laugh.
“England is possibly our grave, yes. There is a strange irony here.”
After a moment, Gashansunu prompted her. “Yes?”
“When I first resolved to leave Praia Nova, the village of my birth, my greatest ambition was to reach England and present myself to the court of Queen Victoria. Now, well, finally here we are, reaching for England and the royal court. I find my intent so different from what it was mere months past. I am finally come to where I once set out to be, and I have no interest in my arrival.”
Stolen passed over the south coast of England late the next morning. Paolina knew the lack of charts would be critical in finding Blenheim Palace. Kitchens had drawn a rough map, but they would require much more than that to locate their goal.
“That must be Portsmouth,” the clerk announced a few minutes later, looking over the stern rail. “By the gods, I wish we had a decent chart. Blenheim Palace is in Oxfordshire, reasonably due north. The problem is finding the palace.”
“You have been there?” Gashansunu asked.
“Well, yes.”
She looked at Paolina. “I will not walk the Silent World here, with my wa gone and all the familiar countries of the Southern Earth too far away. You might be able to find this place of his desires.”
“Could I walk there? No, for I do not know the place,” Paolina answered her own question, “and no one whose light I can follow is there for me to pursue as I did Boaz before.”
&n
bsp; The sorceress shrugged. “In time, we might think on a way. Surely it can be seen from this height.”
“It is a great, huge palace amid woods and fields,” Kitchens said. “We might take note of it if we are close, but only if we know where to look. Up here the world is too wide as my gaze slides across the ground.”
Paolina took out the stemwinder. “Think on this place, Mr. Kitchens. Remember it as well as you can. Let me see if I can find a path within.”
“I shall hold my course northward,” said Boaz quietly. “Until one of you tells me otherwise.”
WANG
Valetta’s people were far more interested in the submarine than they were in the procession jogging through their streets. Wang did not have difficulty following Childress.
She’d seen him as well, and they’d traded a significant glance. Wang could not convince himself of this being a disaster. He followed until the men escorting her crossed a wide plaza and hurried up the stairs of a great, domed building.
Childress stopped at the top, to the evident surprise of the soldiers, and turned to scan the streets. He resisted the urge to wave, but presented himself at the bottom of the flight.
She extended a hand.
Wang nodded to acknowledge the invitation and trudged upward to meet her.
The librarian greeted him warmly. “My friend,” she said in English, and clasped his hands with a smile. She added in Chinese, “Are you crazed? This will be the death of you. You should have gone home from Goa.”
“Going home would have been the death of me,” he replied in the same language.
The sergeant leading her spoke reluctantly. “Ma’am . . .”
Even Wang could see that he was torn between duties and self-preservation. Childress was a formidable woman, slayer of fleets and leader of mutinies. This English soldier could not be aware of more than a portion of the truth, but still he knew trouble when he saw it.
“My man, who was not ready at our arrival,” she said crisply in English.