by A. C. Cobble
“The souls,” interjected William.
“I will assemble the required souls,” amended Raffles, “to initiate the ceremony and begin the ritual. It shouldn’t be difficult. Because of the situation in Imbon, Edward has already agreed to open the debtors’ prisons to the Company. He couldn’t make it any easier for us. By the time they find out my allocation isn’t going to the tropics, it will be too late.”
“For Yates to return to Enhover, travel to Middlebury, and lay out the pattern… just under two weeks?” wondered the prime minister. “It seems so fast.”
“Not fast,” disagreed Raffles. “We’ve been working toward this for twenty years. It won’t interrupt anything you have planned, will it?” he asked with a smirk.
William snorted. “It will interrupt everything. There is much you and I will need to do to prepare. I’ll need to marshal the forces from Southwatch to Middlebury. You need to assemble the Company’s airships and have them ready to defend against the royal marines in case it comes to that. If we’re interrupted halfway through…”
“It cannot come to that,” insisted Raffles, leaning forward and speaking quickly. “The Company’s airships are outfitted to face pirates or the United Territories. They don’t have the armament to win against your brother’s marines.”
“If I can slip my men from Southwatch to Middlebury in secrecy, we’ll have strength from the army, but don’t be foolish and think it will be sufficient,” warned William. “I will do my best to encourage Admiral Brach to deploy his forces to the tropics and whatever other far-flung place I can imagine, but he will not send everything. My brother promoted the man because of his paranoia. The admiral will never leave Enhover unguarded. My men can dig in and hold on the ground for a time against my brother’s troops, but we’ll need your airships to prevent attack from above. If Brach is able to fly over my men, the battle will be a short one. Not to mention, the other is out there and will certainly feel what we attempt. Airships, armies, legions of shades… we have to be ready for anything.”
Frowning, Raffles nodded. “I’ll arrange what I can. I only have so many loyalists, you know. No matter what I tell them, regular Company men will not fire on the royal marines. Crewing a few airships with men in my thrall will take all of the resources I have.”
William glared at him sharply.
“It will be enough,” the director claimed. “If the royal marines fly north, they’ll be looking for what is on the ground. They won’t expect us to strike first from the air.”
“Two weeks then,” the prime minster said, sitting back in his chair, cradling his whiskey. “Two weeks and we either achieve the ultimate, or we suffer for eternity.”
Raffles nodded. “Two decades of study and hidden machinations all for this.”
William raised his glass. “A toast, then, to the ritual.”
Raffles raised his as well and nodded before sipping along with the prime minster. He was pleased. After the man’s initial objection, he’d come along quickly. A tremor of uncertainty assailed the director, though, as he considered that. William was as strong willed as any Wellesley. Had he already considered progressing with the ritual? The director decided it didn’t matter. He was getting what he needed from William. The man had agreed to conduct the ritual, and that was what mattered.
They’d been preparing the ritual since William Wellesley had returned from campaign in the Coldlands. They’d infiltrated the nation’s secret societies, its government, its economy, and its religion. They’d accomplished incredible things by working together. It was all a lead up, though. There was only one worthwhile goal, as far as Raffles was concerned, and they had not yet reached it. There was still one rank left to obtain, one achievement that would set them above all men.
Tilting back his whiskey, Raffles finished it, letting the harsh liquor burn down his throat.
Immortality.
Once it was his, then he would worry about the blood he’d spilled to get it.
The Cartographer XVIII
The ice-clad coastline emerged from the sea mist like the bottom of a raised mug of ale. Foam from crashing waves spilled off the rocky shore, leaving gleaming ice in its wake, only to smash again on the uncaring land. Beyond the violent confrontation of sea and shore, a solemn forest covered the soil. Towering pines, untouched in a generation by man or woman, stood sentinel over the forgotten territory.
The Coldlands, harsh and unwelcoming, had been decimated when his family had sailed against them two decades before. Every building they’d found had been razed, every person killed. The land had recovered, it seemed, but no other settlers had found reason to venture into the forbidding forest and make it home. There was open land farther south, fertile land where one could fly above it on the deck of a speeding airship without one’s balls freezing off, imagined Oliver.
He tugged his long coat tighter and briefly considered taking one of Captain Ainsley’s ridiculous hats. Sam, standing beside him, had doffed one of First Mate Pettybone’s ratty knit caps, which might be warmer than Ainsley’s offering, but the high possibility of head lice had convinced Oliver to pass. He didn’t care how often the man denied it, Pettybone looked like the kind of person who would have head lice.
Sam scratched absentmindedly at the back of her head, murmuring something about itchy wool, and Oliver nodded to himself. Just as he’d suspected.
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to find you a clear spot in the forest we can settle down over,” said Captain Ainsley, “and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to if we could.”
“The men having trouble keeping the stones clear?” asked Oliver.
“We pulled up most of the planking in the cargo hold, and I’ve got them scrubbing away any ice that forms, but the air spirits are always sluggish in the cold, and it doesn’t much help that it’s ice forming and not water,” remarked Ainsley. “Normally, as the ship moves, the stones shift with the tilt of the deck and whatever condensation has formed rolls off. But at such a low temperature it freezes almost immediately. There’s not much we can do to keep the frost off except removing it manually. The water tanks above are an even worse mess. Every quarter turn of the clock, I’ve got the men tossing fire-hot stones into the tank to keep it from freezing, but m’lord, there’s only so long we can keep this up. I understand now why so much of the Coldlands campaign was conducted on the ground.”
“Set us down on the shoreline, then, Captain,” instructed Oliver. “Near the river. We’ll use that as our egress into the forest. When we’re clear, head north for a bit to reconnoiter the coastline. I don’t think you’ll find anything, but it’s worth the effort. A day up, a day back, then you can travel south and let the Cloud Serpent thaw until our meeting time.”
The captain looked ahead at the unbroken forest. “A lot can change in twenty years.”
Oliver grunted. He knew. He’d left the faded, two-decades’ old maps of the region stashed in the captain’s cabin. They had the charts that were part of every airship’s library, but those hadn’t been updated since the campaign. They depicted the coastline and the mountains dozens of leagues inland, but everything else the cartographers had noted had likely changed. The villages of the Coldlands folk were all gone, for one. If they were to find something, they’d have to do it in the trackless expanse of the frozen forest.
“There,” said Sam. “Is that the river?”
Oliver nodded to Ainsley. The captain relayed instructions to the first mate, who informed the crew, and the Cloud Serpent began a slow descent toward the break in the forest where a narrow band of white split the wall of gray tree trunks and frost-covered nettles.
Checking his kit one last time, Oliver sifted through the tightly packed rucksack and then strapped it shut. His satchel, a constant companion on expeditions all over the world, was back in the cabin with the maps. He wouldn’t be charting this journey. If they found what they were looking for, he suspected it was better left secret.
Sam, standing at his side
, hitched her own pack onto her back and gathered Thotham’s spear. The intricate runes remained free of the relentless sheen of frost that covered every other surface left exposed to the elements. He knew the weapon was warm to the touch, but that was all he knew. Whatever strange powers the priest had imbued in it, they’d yet to see them displayed.
Frowning, he realized he’d rather not see it used. If Sam was forced to use the weapon, then something had gone wrong.
Oliver checked his basket-hilted broadsword at his hip, noting the steel had already frozen in the sheath. He rattled it, breaking it loose in case he needed it when they disembarked. He slung his own pack and moved to stand beside the thick hemp lines Ainsley’s crew would drop overboard so they could shimmy down to the rocky shore, just a couple of dozen paces from the thick forest and frozen river.
“Nervous?” asked Sam.
“Not even a little,” he said.
He gathered the rope and clambered onto the ice-slick gunwale before he could see her expression.
No, not a little nervous. A lot.
His feet crunched on the hard coating of old snow that covered the frozen river. A steady breeze, channeled down the opening in the trees, blew a calf-high blizzard around their feet. The snow was shallow because of the constant wind, and they’d found walking on the river was far easier than braving the thick drifts that accumulated underneath the trees.
Marching for three days now, they’d made relatively good time, and he estimated they’d traveled twenty leagues inland. It was slower than he could have traveled across the rolling turf of central Enhover, but in the forest, it was the best they could do.
Each night, they’d made rough camp underneath the trees, digging through the snow until they’d found drier branches they could light for a little bit of heat. They carried a weather-treated canvass from the ship that they fashioned into a makeshift tent, and each night, they’d slept back-to-back for the shared warmth. They ate salted meat and hard biscuits they’d taken from the ship’s larder. Oliver tried not to think that fresh meat would have kept just as well in the bitter cold. They had a few wizened pieces of fruit and no vegetables. Water wasn’t a problem, at least. They filled canteens with snow and stuffed them inside of their garments. Within an hour, it was water.
He never thought he would have craved something green so badly, but after three days of salted meat and biscuit, he would have paid a fortune for a pile of buttered peas or a handful of roasted sticks of asparagus. He would have killed a man for a proper drink.
Sighing, he pressed forward, leaning into the steady wind, blinking constantly to keep his eyes from accumulating ice. Three days of frozen trekking, three days of seeing nothing but the slender ice-bound river, its tall banks, and the unbroken forest around them. His face was chapped, his fingers numb, and he couldn’t feel his toes. He could only hope to the spirits that they weren’t frost-bitten. If they were, there was nothing to be done about it.
Worse than the current discomfort, though, was that with each plodding step, he knew they’d have to return the same way to meet Ainsley and the Cloud Serpent.
They only had food for seven more days, which gave them two more to hike inland then five to return. Neither one of them had any experience with foraging, and in the frozen northlands, Oliver thought their chances would have been grim regardless. No, in the next two days, they needed to find what they sought, or the journey would be wasted.
“It was a good idea,” said Sam through chattering teeth.
He grunted.
“If someone still lives in this place, they’d settle near fresh water. Your maps only indicated a few sources that are more than seasonal streams. Water, fish, the animals that would come for both… It made sense that this would be the place, Duke.”
“If we can’t find someone,” he said, turning his head so the blowing snow wouldn’t pelt into his open mouth, “we have no hope. There’s no way we can locate and search the old villages underneath this snow. That’s assuming something would even be left after my uncle’s best efforts to destroy evidence and twenty long years of weather to finish the job.”
It was Sam’s turn to grunt.
A long shot, they’d both known, but they had no other ideas. Back in Enhover, they would be hunted by the unknown sorcerers behind all of this mess and likely by his father’s government as well, now that they’d fired on an airship tied to the bridge in Westundon. If they returned, he knew it was only a matter of time before their hidden opponent caught them unawares. How can one protect against shades from the underworld, wolfmalkin, and whatever the frozen hell it was that Marquess Colston had turned into? Moving forward was the only way to find an end to the trail, but in two days, they would reach their limit. They’d have to turn around.
“I wonder if Ainsley’s found anything along the coast?” asked Sam after a long pause.
Oliver shook his head. “Harwick’s whaling fleet sometimes passes within sight of the shore. If there was a settlement along the sea, they would have seen it. It was worth having her check, but I’m certain there will be nothing there.”
“Maybe a few passes over the forest, then?” suggested Sam. “If there’s smoke from a substantial fire, we could see it from a distance. We can find a way down into the forest once we have a location.”
“If anyone survives in this land, it’s because they’ve learned to avoid detection from the air,” said Oliver, “first, twenty years ago when my uncle led the royal marines here, and then from the periodic patrols my family has sent since that time. If people still live here, we won’t spot them from above. We’ll have to find them on foot. We’ll have to find them on this river in the next two days.”
They kept on trudging along the snow-covered frozen river. There was nothing else to say.
That night, they huddled close together. Darkness fell early beneath the trees, but they’d pushed hard to try and cover as much ground as they could before having to go back. By the light of half-a-dozen stubborn, cold-slowed faes, they dug under the snow, struggling to find branches dry enough to start a fire with.
The pathetic result in front of them was barely providing enough warmth to thaw his toes and nothing to warm the rest of his body. Oliver knew that if he tossed the remaining wood on it, the fire wouldn’t last half the night. They’d have to take what little heat they could, stretch it out, and make it last.
He sat next to Sam, their sides and legs pressed tight together to share the heat of their bodies and limit the amount of space the bitter, cold wind could slice across them.
“I’ve been on worse trips,” said Sam, her voice muffled in the scarf she’d wrapped around her head.
“Really?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted, “though I have been almost as cold.”
Rubbing his hands together then holding them toward the tiny pile of crackling branches, Oliver asked, “When was that?”
“I spent a few months in Glanhow’s gaol,” she explained. “I was younger then and didn’t have any meat on my bones. The stoves didn’t do much to keep the girl’s dormitory warm, and it wasn’t uncommon for the guards to get lazy and let it go cold. The other girls would all huddle together for warmth when it was really cold, but back then, I was a bit of a loner.”
Slowly, Oliver turned to her. “As a young girl, you spent several months in Glanhow’s gaol?”
She blinked at him. “I hadn’t told you that?”
“You’ve told me nothing about how you grew up,” he said.
“I guess I didn’t think it was that unusual,” she claimed. “Kalbeth and a lot of the girls I got to know, they’d been in the same circumstances or worse.”
“Worse?”
“There are worse things than a few months in gaol, m’lord,” she muttered into her scarf.
“I saw a gaol, once,” he said, studying her out of the corner of his eye. When she didn’t respond, he asked, “What did you do?”
“I killed and ate a man,” she claimed. “We
were trapped together in a frozen forest, and I only had a few days of salted meat left in my rucksack.”
He snorted. “Keep your secrets, then.”
“A girl needs a few of them, don’t you think?”
He picked up a handful of slender twigs and set them on the fire, watching as the fresh wood popped and hissed. Dry, frozen snow melted and boiled up in a thick cloud of smoke.
“Do you smell that? Is that smoke?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes…” he said, frowning at her, his hands still held out to the fire. He wondered if she’d gone snow-mad. Was that a thing?
“Smoke and… and meat, I think,” she said, standing quickly, a shower of frost falling from her long coat and dusting Oliver.
Muttering under his breath, he stood as well and looked around the forest, hugging himself tightly now that her warm body had moved. After staring into their fire for the last hour, all he could see was black under the trees. All he could hear was the whistle of the wind through the tree branches.
“I can’t smell anything,” he complained. He inhaled deeply, catching the smoke from their fire along with the clean scent of ice. He coughed, hacking up the smoke, and scowled at Sam.
“There’s something…” she murmured, quickly packing up her rucksack. “Let’s explore.”
Sighing, not wanting to venture into the cold but not wanting to sit at the tiny fire alone, Oliver packed his gear. He shook a treated canvass tarp over the fire and let the puff of snow settle on it before kicking several more piles to extinguish the dancing flames.
He complained, “At night, it’s going to take us half a turn of the clock to get that going again.”
