Probably not Hell, then, he realized.
“With me,” she called in Chinese. “We have our purpose, and must follow the girl Paolina one last time.”
A man with captain’s tabs on his uniform looked up from behind a chunk of hull. The traitor Leung! Wang had not realized he was so close. “Purpose?” the captain shouted. “You destroyed my ship for a purpose?”
“I did nothing,” Childress said calmly. Two bullets sprayed dirt at her feet, then were answered by a hail of Chinese gunfire. When those echoes died away, she added, “If you wish to live, you will come with me.”
Leung called out, “You heard the Mask!”
The call to fall back echoed around the garden. Another Beiyang officer slid down a rope from Five Lucky Winds, wires trailing from behind him. “Scuttling charges ready, sir!” he shouted. “I have warheads from the torpedoes hooked in as well.”
“Everyone after the Mask,” Leung said. “Including you, Sun-Wei. I shall slay my own ship.”
The sailors raced for shelter, heedless of the fire from the rooftops. Some returned covering fire, and two of their men fell to be dragged along, but in moments the garden was empty except for Wang and Leung.
“You should have gone with them,” Leung said sadly.
Wang saw the grief in the captain’s eyes. That woke him to the truth of the moment. What would Childress say to this man? He tried his best: “Why? So you could die alone with your ship?”
“Five Lucky Winds is already dead. This is her funeral to carry her into the next world.” He slid something on a little box, grabbed Wang’s arm, and rushed the two of them indoors. They passed a ruined room, into a ruined hallway, and followed the echo of running feet until the explosion behind them rocked the building so hard that both men tumbled to the floor.
“I never want to see a firecracker again in my life,” Wang moaned.
“I will never command the sea again.” Leung picked them both up, and they followed the sounds of the panicked crew.
TWENTY-TWO
. . . of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. —Acts 23:6
BOAZ
He opened his eyes.
His head was blessedly silent.
A high ceiling above, dark blue painted with gold and red. Phoenixes?
Vision was curiously strained and flat. Only one eye seemed to be functioning.
A face loomed. For a moment, Boaz thought he was among Chen’s sailors again, along the Abyssinian coast, but this was a much older man than any of those warriors. He seemed far too calm as well.
There had been fighting.
Boaz tried to lift his hand, but it would not come.
“You have been in a very bad way, my metal friend,” the man said in Adamic.
“No monkey alive speaks that tongue,” Boaz whispered.
“I am no monkey; I am a man.” A wrinkled smile. “And I have been alive a very, very long time. You would be amazed at what you learn if you stay around.”
“I am Brass,” he replied, this time in Hebrew. “We live on from the days of the first Brass.”
“You are Brass no more.” The old man followed his change of language, then touched Boaz’ forehead, marking the spot where al-Wazir and Paolina had laid their chrism.
Paolina!
His rescuer continued. “You are something more. Just as the world is now becoming something more than it has been all these divided years of Creation.”
“If I am more, then why can I not move?”
A sad smile. “Because I repaired your processor first. There is a dangerous beast in your belly.”
“The Sixth Seal of Solomon.”
The old man seemed surprised. “Ancient of days?”
“From a cave in Abyssinia.” Boaz reflected for a moment. “Sealed there by a Kohanim of King Solomon’s reign.”
“Such times those were.”
Boaz asked the paramount question. “Where is Paolina?”
The old man’s face wrinkled into a delighted smile. “The girl with the gleam. I am afraid that I am neither all-seeing nor all-knowing, so I cannot say.”
“Where am I?”
“A question from the musings of every thinking being down the ages of Creation.” He leaned close. “In this case, you are in the Jade Temple atop the Wall.”
A woman loomed into Boaz’ vision. After taking a long look at him, she said in Chinese, “Your Holiness, I would go back, but I lack the means.” Boaz understood her well enough.
“As would I,” Boaz urged. He willed his body into motion, but he had been reduced to a talking head. “I need to return to Paolina.”
“All will resolve,” the old man replied in Hebrew. “You are going nowhere, my metal friend.”
The woman gave him another long look, switching to Hebrew. “You saved them all, I believe. You stopped the British long enough for help to arrive.”
Disjointed recent memory stirred. “No,” Boaz said slowly. “The Seal did. I was . . . gone . . . from my head. I had been wounded too gravely. It picked me up and carried me forward those last minutes.”
The old man laid a gentle hand on Boaz’ forehead again. “Then perhaps it has served its purpose in this matter. Perhaps you have served yours.”
KITCHENS
Gashansunu had led them in a broken-backed gait down one hall and up a grand corridor. When she stepped around a corner, a storm of gunfire brought her down.
Kitchens slammed back against the wall, breathing hard. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting tears.
“What now?” whispered Martins.
He looked around. Levine, the old pilot. Three other sailors. The petty officer. Himself. Six men, with empty pistols and burns upon their faces.
In short, they looked like people who’d wrecked an airship.
Gashansunu was surely dead now. Paolina was gone, run after Boaz. Boaz was broken. The rest of his crew were dead or missing.
They were out of options.
“I do not know,” Kitchens said. “At this point, they will not negotiate.”
“Can’t imagine there’s much retreat, sir.”
An enormous explosion rocked the building. Plaster dumped from the ceiling, setting up a roiling cloud of pale dust that floured them all.
Kitchens took advantage of the moment to duck his head around the corner where Gashansunu had died. Definitely the hall to the Queen’s chambers. Fifteen or twenty men were positioned before her doors, rifles bearing from behind overturned tables.
He ducked away again before they could sight in on him. “No retreat, no advance, no surrender.”
Her Imperial Majesty’s words echoed in his head.
Remake what has been undone.
Break my throne.
Help me finish dying.
He’d done nothing she asked. All he’d accomplished was the deaths of dozens and a terrible disturbance among her guardians. This war would intensify, for surely Government would see their airship as evidence of Chinese complicity in the attack. China, and the Wall in the form of Boaz.
England would go to war against the world in mistaken vengeance for his mission to do the Queen’s bidding.
“I have failed.” The razor hung heavy in the lining of his sleeve. Kitchens wondered how it would feel kissing his neck.
“Sir, I don’t know if we did right or not,” the petty officer said. “But you believed it, and I believed you.” He turned to the surviving sailors. “You lot find linen closets or something and hide till the fighting’s over. I can’t think you’ll escape this, but if they take me and Mr. Kitchens here, maybe they won’t be killing mad by the time they find you.”
Levine growled. “No point in stopping now.”
“It’s at an end!” Kitchens shouted, then was ashamed of the violence of his voice. “We have failed, and we will be brought down for it.”
A racket of men moving fast sounded through the double doors behind them. The other defending party had broken past whatever la
st magic Boaz had been working. The Brass and Paolina were lost, too, then.
Sobbing openly, Kitchens slipped his razor into his hand and waited to die.
A wave of Chinese sailors broke through the doors, Angus Threadgill al-Wazir at their head.
CHILDRESS
She had never been much for running, but this was a time for nothing else. Al-Wazir took the doors ahead without stopping, leading with his left shoulder so that they burst through in a cloud of plaster dust. Childress heard him bellow, “Kitchens, my lad!”
There was a brief moment of further confusion as the running mob skidded to a stop and sorted itself out. She and Paolina pushed forward to see a body in the cross-corridor. The girl let out a short, shuddering sob.
“Fifteen, twenty oppose us,” Kitchens gasped to al-Wazir. “Around to the left. We must break through them before the regiment at Woodstock arrives in force.”
Al-Wazir looked sidelong at Paolina. Childress followed his glance. She knew what he was thinking.
“Do not use it,” she said in a low voice, gathering Paolina into her arms.
The girl wept into her shoulder. “I cannot,” she whispered.
The chief had already seen this, and turned back to his planning. Leung and Wang caught up as well.
“Captain,” al-Wazir said. “Are we up to rushing a score of armed men in a prepared position? We’ll lose half of us at the very least.”
Leung looked sour. “What do we gain?”
“An end to the war,” Paolina said, pulling away from Childress’ shoulder. “Even more so, an end to all this madness.”
“An end for the Queen, who desires it most rightly,” Kitchens answered. “But I must do this thing, or we will have failed.”
“None of us are getting out alive,” said Martins. “You going to surrender and let them shoot you like a dog, or try until the last?”
Now Leung looked back at Childress.
Was this truly up to her? There could only be moments before more defenders arrived.
Why was it her decision?
Because she was the Mask.
This was a game of secret societies and dueling thrones, and most properly her business. She had taken up the Mask Poinsard’s role with her original pretense. Now it was time for her to accept the full responsibility of that elusive, hidden power.
Men would die. Many men. She came in that moment to an enlarged understanding of Paolina’s distress at being forced to use the stemwinder again and again, begetting ever more violence to stop other violence.
Where did it end?
Not here, not now, not today.
“Make the attack,” she ordered. “Let us give Mr. Kitchens his chance.”
Leung barked out orders. Al-Wazir pulled his assault team together. “I’ll go out first,” he announced loudly. “The lads will be confused by me. That might buy us a few extra seconds.”
They all shouted in Chinese, counting up to ten, then—waving carbines and pistols, sweeping Kitchens’ few surviving sailors with them—poured around the corner.
PAOLINA
She stood trembling in the empty hall. Only Childress was with her. Even that chubby civilian—Wang, someone called him?—had run shouting into the gunfire. The noise of battle bordered on the deafening, bullets shattering the walls in their corridor. Childress pushed her against the left wall, where she was least likely to be hit except by a ricochet.
“I sh-should have used the stemwinder,” Paolina said. Hethor had told her the world was dust and gears, that the stemwinder was an instrument of man’s free will. Why was she ever so plagued by power? “N-now they’re all g-going to die. All of this is my doing. Look, they have even trampled Gashansunu’s body.”
The sorceress was unrecognizable, a broken corpse spread too far.
Something banged loudly.
“You must calm yourself,” Childress said. “Can the stemwinder take you away now?”
“Y-yes. I could abandon all of you to your deaths and walk free.”
“Then go,” urged the librarian. “Enough has been done here. Just depart.”
“To Boaz.” Paolina was miserable. Every fiber of sense told her to flee. Her love for the Brass man urged the same. She was trapped here only by a sense of loyalty to choices Boaz had made. This was the culmination of Kitchens’ mad errand.
Abruptly, the shooting stopped. The building was strangely quiet, except for the crackle of a distant fire, and muffled voices shouting. Servants to battle the flames, or more soldiers, to battle them.
“Do we look?” Paolina asked.
Childress shrugged.
Then Wang leaned around the corner. His face was bloodied and feral, with a darkness in his eyes. “It is a disaster, but we have won the moment. The price was too high.”
Paolina shuddered, then summoned her courage and stepped out to see what had become of her friends.
Bodies were scattered everywhere. Chinese and English, attackers and defenders. Some groaned or breathed in slow red bubbles. Many more were broken, shattered. Al-Wazir stood amid a small knot of Chinese, his red hair torn and bloody where something had snagged at his scalp. Everyone else was mess.
“Leung is fallen,” Wang told them.
Childress shrieked, then covered her mouth. Paolina’s heart curdled at that.
The knot of men broke up, stumbling backward. Kitchens she spotted now, and thought she recognized a few others; then the doors broke open with a blast of light and sound.
Everything seemed to happen out of order. Childress on her knees, crying over a body. Al-Wazir slumped against the far wall, looking surprised. Kitchens pressing into the next room, men with guns at his back.
Could she heal them? Where could she take them?
Did she have the right to?
All here had chosen to reach this moment, to live or die in this place.
She could not simply whisk them away.
Paolina knelt next to Childress.
Leung’s mouth was open as if he had some final wisdom to impart. Hs forehead was marred by a gaping third eye, bloody and strange, that had swallowed all his words and left him with nothing but a blank and clouded gaze.
“I do not think he was ever out of Admiral Shen’s orders,” Childress said in a strangely calm voice. “They played a long and careful game, even with the mutiny and the deaths of the Nanyang fleet.” Her voice drifted to quiet for a moment, then she said, “At the least, I should like to think this, for it means everything he did from beginning signified more than this foolish death.”
She leaned forward and kissed his cooling lips.
Paolina helped Childress to her feet, and they looked to see if any of the wounded might likely live. She could not go to Boaz until this was done.
WANG
The women were with the captain. He knew no other duty to follow, and the will of both the Silent Order and the Kô had been cast away. He passed beyond the doors to see what prize they had won.
A spacious room, mostly darkened, a great pair of bellows flanking the door, with a big tank standing just at the edge of the lit area beyond them. Hoses and cables extended from it. A woman lay crying on the floor beside an empty rocking chair.
Of the forty or so who had entered this fight, eight remained standing alongside al-Wazir. They had their weapons pointed toward the man Kitchens as he faced off with a red-cheeked Englishman who held a long, flexible rod tipped by a glittering knife.
“. . . not the Queen!” the last defender shouted. His accent was similar to al-Wazir’s.
“This insanity is over, Dr. Stewart.” Something metal glinted in Kitchens’ hand.
The two circled like cocks in the fighting ring.
He wondered where the monk was. She would have tripped this fool, tied his shoelaces together and blown pipe smoke in his face.
Wang stepped next to al-Wazir. He felt a curious kinship to the big, one-handed man. “Why do you not shoot the crazy one?”
“I’m about to,” al
-Wazir grumbled.
Kitchens tried again. “Dr. Stewart, be reasonable.”
Stewart glanced at the sailors. “I did not bring the enemy here.” He jabbed his weapon toward Kitchens, who stepped around it with ease.
“You are the enemy here,” the chief called out.
Wang sidled behind al-Wazir’s men, along the wall, past the rocking chair, to the tank that was obviously the prize. He bent to study the pipes and hoses, wondering what they might mean, whether they were properly labeled.
This day had passed so far from strangeness that he could believe he had already descended into Hell.
KITCHENS
The razor was comfortingly familiar in his hand. He had learned to use it as a child in Savoy, then much later trained further in the killing arts at the Black College. Kitchens knew he should just shout for al-Wazir to shoot Dr. Stewart down, but here before him was the man who as much as anyone was architect of all their troubles.
The troubles of the Queen.
Stewart’s surgical implement flashed again. The doctor might be a great one for cutting into bodies on the table, but he had no notion of fighting. Kitchens stepped inside the jab to bring his razor around and lay open a slash on the man’s cheek.
“Are you finished?” he asked.
Stewart gasped, put one hand on the wound. “You’re cracked!”
“I did not keep the Queen alive past her time!”
Another jab, another step—then the doctor lost his footing. Kitchens moved quickly, drawing the razor across the side of his opponent’s neck.
Like all real knife fights, the combat was over in moments.
Stewart fell in a spitting, spinning rush of blood and cried out.
Kitchens kicked him in the head, then stepped to the Queen’s tank. Behind him a single shot echoed as someone ended the doctor’s moans.
He did not even know how to open this. Latches and locks presented themselves around the edge of the port he’d looked through on his previous visit, alongside a panel of stuttering gauges. He was loath to have them fire into the tank.