Dorotea stepped back. She’d grown accustomed to Jasper’s six-foot height, but Flint was another foot taller.
Sigrun stayed in Flint’s embrace but gave Dorotea a fierce look. “Wake the rest. We don’t have much time.”
The gleam of fanaticism in her eyes made Dorotea uneasy, but she shoved down her doubt. The gargoyles had been wrongfully imprisoned, and she’d agreed to do this in return for Marta’s life.
Dorotea moved on to the next gargoyle, a woman of jade. Her form was just as voluptuous as Rose Granite’s but less stocky. Rows of patterned, or perhaps carved, interlocking scales on her torso gave her the appearance of wearing clothing or armor. Whorls decorated her head like a cap of short hair.
Dorotea blinked out a few more tears and smeared them over the jade face. “Wake.”
Green Jade shook her head. “What?”
Dorotea didn’t answer, moving on to the next and then the next. When her tears started to run dry, she deliberately stubbed her toe.
It took a long time to wake all the gargoyles in the hall. By the time she finished, they had stopped milling about and embracing and were listening attentively to Sigrun and Flint.
“Grandchildren of the Goddess!” Sigrun’s voice rang out. “A great wrong has been done you! Years have been stolen from you. Years in which the humans continued to bleed gold from your grandfathers.”
A growl of anger answered her speech.
What was Sigrun doing? Uneasy, Dorotea edged toward Jasper. He put an arm around her.
Did she need protection?
As Sigrun continued to enumerate the humans’ sins, the gargoyles pounded their weapons on the floor of the cavern and stomped their feet.
Flint took his turn. “We must drive the humans back Above.”
Horror engulfed Dorotea like immersion in cold water. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. “No! Stop!”
“Who is this?” roared Green Jade. “Why is this human here?”
Jasper snarled back, “She is the Stone Heart who woke you! You owe her the courtesy of listening.”
Dorotea’s vocal cords dried up as she faced the crowd of angry gargoyles, their faces like creatures from a nightmare. But if she didn’t speak, her people would die.
“I freed you because humanity needs your help. The Goddess is angry. She’s been sending earthquakes. I want you to tell her we’re sorry, and we won’t take any more gold.”
Flint folded his arms. “That sounds well, but you and Sigrun are the only humans here. It seems as if you woke us in secret. Is this true?”
“Yes.” Dorotea faltered under his flat stare.
“Then how can we believe that you speak for all humans when you say the gold mining will stop?”
A reasonable question to which she had no answer. “I—I’ll make them listen to me.”
“They will view you as a traitor. They won’t listen to you, any more than they listened to Sigrun when she tried to tell them the truth. And she was an Elect.”
Dorotea’s mouth fell open in surprise. She hadn’t known that. He was right; it didn’t bode well. But she didn’t admit it. “If you stop the earthquakes, they’ll listen,” Dorotea said desperately.
Flint shook his head. “I cannot put any faith in humanity’s reason.”
Green Jade was more blunt. “The Goddess has good reason to be wrathful. Humans must return Above.”
“But they’ll die there!”
“They should have thought of that before abusing our hospitality and imprisoning us,” Flint said harshly.
Jasper stepped forward. “Dorotea has helped us. I won’t let you drive her Above to die!”
Flint nodded. “Agreed. We owe her a debt.”
“My mother, my sister,” Dorotea said frantically, but Flint had already dismissed her.
The gray gargoyle raised his voice. “We will start in the lower cavern and raise a wall to drive them upward, emptying each cavern behind us—”
Dorotea appealed to Sigrun. “I was promised True World medical help for Marta.”
Sigrun shrugged. “Not by me. Your arrangement was with Chris. Contact him.”
I don’t know how.
It was all going horribly wrong. Temper and panic roiled together inside her, leaving a residue of bile on her tongue. She raised her voice to a shout. “I thought the Elect were wrong to imprison you, but if you do this, you really are monsters!”
This time, the tears came to her eyes without prompting.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Mirror Device—
In Which Sail Meets Steam
Air World
Audrey’s muscles clenched tight as the HMS Queen Winifred approached Donlon’s shining peak. For the last half day, her father had used all his skill to eke every last iota of speed from the zeppelin. He’d even ordered all airships to put out windsails despite the risk of tearing in the strong winds of the Grand Current. They’d left behind two smaller ships to sail damage, but they still had not caught up to the Sipar Fleet. Which meant—
Boom! Cannon fire flashed from the fortifications flanking the royal palace.
Audrey cringed. The attack was already underway.
The next fifteen minutes stretched her nerves as taut as piano wires. Closer, closer… Then her father gave the order to drop down into the lower and slower winds of the Grand Current directly over Donlon, and the battle scene became clear.
The royal palace still stood, though one of the garden domes had a five-foot-wide hole punched in it. Three rows of liveried soldiers armed with rifles guarded the steps. A pall of smoke from the cannons obscured the street.
Audrey felt a fierce elation at the sight of three crashed zipships. The enemy dirigible on Tier Two was being defended by a brace of Siparese riflemen, while its crewmen scrambled to reinflate the envelope. The zipship corpse on Tier Four had been mobbed by commoners with shovels. A third enemy ship dangled by the deflated balloon envelope over an abyss. Its gondola was nearly vertical. A few more might have already fallen off the mountain, but far too many zipships still filled the air.
Individually, the Siparese dirigibles looked reassuringly small. Audrey didn’t see anything zeppelin-class. The Siparese outnumbered them, but surely Donlon’s long-winded pilots would even the odds?
The Donlon Fleet was in modified attack formation. Normally, the dirigibles were tasked with protecting the larger zeppelin while it dropped its bombs, but since the battle was being fought over Donlon, the Queen Winifrid was effectively reduced to a double complement of riflemen. So only five dirigibles screened the zeppelin, while the other fifteen swept forward in a half-moon formation.
The Siparese Fleet was arranged in a loose cloud. Riflemen appeared on their decks, too, and the two fleets exchanged volleys. The distance was such that Audrey only heard a small report and saw a puff of smoke rise up.
A line of punctures appeared in several of the Siparese ship’s balloons. Gas hissed out. An equal number of Donlon dirigibles were hit.
But then four zipships dived at the Donlon line, bobbing a little as they crossed the wind currents, but pushing through with their whiny propellers. Crewmen endured rifle fire and cranked back a catapult, which lobbed hollow globes at the nearest Donlon ships. They arced through the air and splashed fire on impact.
Suddenly, there were holes in the Donlon line.
Audrey’s throat felt like she’d swallowed glass. The zipships didn’t need to tack, didn’t need knowledge of the subcurrents. They just aimed their propellers and zipped in a straight line toward their target.
One darted through the gap in the line. Even as the Queen Winifrid’s troops cracked out rifle fire, it lobbed one of the terrible hollow globes at them.
“Mistral!” her father Called, and a gust of wind shoved the shell away from their vulnerable sails.
The little zipship veered out of range of their riflemen.
“Five degrees’ elevation!” Admiral Harding bellowed.
Audrey understood. To let the zipshi
p get above them would be a deadly mistake. It would be able to fire at will on their enormous 500-foot envelope, and their riflemen would be unable to return fire.
Normally, guarding the zeppelin’s envelope was the job of a squad of five smaller dirigibles, but their screening force was spread too thin. Everyone was under attack.
Crewmen sprang to obey her father. Levers were cranked, ballast released, and they smoothly caught a mini-thermal and rose up until they were even with the zipship.
Another fireball sailed out. It hit one of their guard ships. It missed the envelope, but the sail burned up in a flash, crippling the dirigible.
All around them, Siparese ships flung globes of flame and hideous death. The return rifle fire from Donlon was ragged, no longer a coordinated volley.
Audrey watched in stunned horror, sick to her stomach at the destruction of Donlon’s beautiful Fleet.
“Signal retreat!” her father shouted.
Two more ships had caught fire and fallen from the sky by the time the signal flags were waved.
Her face was wet with tears. Piers put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her tight.
“Is there anything you can do?” Audrey begged. “Can you ask the Grand Current to swat the zipships out of the sky?”
He looked pained. “Yes, but we’d risk losing all of our own ships, too. I already discussed this with your father.”
He had? When? Audrey’s eyes narrowed, and her tears slowed. “What are you keeping from me?”
Piers grimaced. “Your father made me promise that the enemy Fleet wouldn’t be allowed to return to Sipar—no matter what. We have to annihilate their entire force. If the Empire learns that zipships are superior to sail, they’ll keep throwing ships at us forever.”
Audrey’s mouth dried at the thought of so many deaths, both friend and foe. Her mind couldn’t grasp the scope of it.
“If it comes to that, my job is to carry you to safety.”
So the two of them would survive—but her father and Grady wouldn’t. If Donlon couldn’t get its fleet out of the Grand Current in time, Piers would still Call the Grand Current to swat all the ships out of the sky, Donlon and Siparese. Audrey shook her head in denial, but the terrible logic of it was inescapable. Not only was war between Sipar and Donlon inevitable, Donlon would inevitably lose if Sipar continued to produce more zipships.
“Hopefully, it won’t come to that.” Piers squeezed her hand.
Not reassured, she risked another look out the window. All the dirigibles had retreated behind the Queen Winifrid. More fire globes were flung their way, but Mistral protected them.
It wouldn’t, couldn’t, last. Not without a place to retreat to.
“Mirror formation!” her father barked out.
Audrey winced. She and Piers had told her father Norton’s Mirror Device was likely compromised. He’d had a mechanic check it over and set a guard, but stubbornly refused to throw it overboard. “It’s still a weapon,” he’d said. “One we might need against the Siparese.”
Audrey knew he wouldn’t use it lightly. It was a gamble, but less dreadful than asking the Grand Current to smash both fleets. She couldn’t argue with the decision, but she could go to the Mirror Device and be on the lookout for Qeturah’s mischief.
She was useless on the bridge in any case.
“Come on.” She grabbed Piers’s hand. “Let’s go to the Device.”
He nodded. “Good idea.”
They left the bridge while her father wasn’t looking and hurried down the hallway.
The gondola floor lurched under them, sending her crashing to her knees. Had they been hit again? She tensed, but they remained under sail, with none of the frantic bucking and sawing motions that had happened to those ships whose envelopes were hit by fireballs. Her father must’ve just been maneuvering the zeppelin into mirror formation.
Except, when she remembered the formation from the Fleet Parade, she realized it hadn’t included the zeppelin.
She called up the picture in her mind: Donlon’s Fleet in such close formation, its spread sails almost overlapped. A shaft of sunlight had bounced off the gleaming golden sails as if they were making a huge mirror.
The flagship had sailed in front of the formation—likely because it carried the Mirror Device.
Piers helped Audrey back to her feet, and they ran down the corridor, blundering into the walls at every evasive maneuver. She spared a moment to worry for Grady, then pushed it aside. He had a job to do and far too much pride to abandon it even if she could offer him some safety. Which she couldn’t.
Piers halted her just around the corner. “Best if I go invisible from this point on,” he murmured near her ear.
She nodded and watched him fade out before rounding the corner. A skinny midshipman armed with a blunderbuss stood outside the room.
“Did anyone come or go into the room?” she asked him.
“No, er, Lady Audrey,” he said awkwardly. He kept his gaze on her face, but Audrey blushed, suddenly remembering her atrocious costume.
There was no woman’s clothing on board, and Audrey had hoped to retain her trousers, but her father wouldn’t hear of it. He’d handed her a sewing kit and a blanket and told her to make do. She’d been in a hurry and wasn’t much of a seamstress. The resulting wool skirt was bunched and ugly and so scratchy, she was wearing her trousers underneath—an inch peeped out under the hem.
“Who’s inside?” she asked.
“Just the mechanics.”
Audrey breathed easier. Still… “My father sent me to check on things,” she lied.
The guard moved aside, and she entered the Device room, taking care to hold the door open long enough for The Phantom to slip inside, too. She felt his body brush hers.
The Mirror Device filled the room with valves and gears and a confusing array of levers. Two men in dark coats tended the Device. They didn’t turn at her entrance, and Audrey took the opportunity to study them. They were strangers. Relief fluttered through her. The Phantom had searched the whole ship during their flight back to Donlon but had been unable to find Billy. Piers had eventually concluded he’d been mistaken.
The speaking tube crackled, and she heard her father’s voice. “Mirror formation will be complete in two minutes. Is the Device ready to fire?”
One of the men in dark coats shouted back into the tube, “She’ll be ready! Just give the word!”
A twinge of alarm skittered down her spine. His voice sounded like Billy’s. But it wasn’t Billy—not only was the man bald, but his nose was perfectly straight. She tried to convince herself the man merely shared the same low-tier accent.
“Almost time. Let’s just hope we don’t get shot out of the sky first,” the second man said.
Audrey jumped. The speaker was obviously a man—muscular and bearded, with hairy forearms—but he had Qeturah’s voice. Audrey blinked, but nothing changed.
Qeturah is a sorceress. Leah had told her that, but Audrey hadn’t considered what it meant: that Qeturah had the ability to disguise herself and her followers with illusions.
Surprise turned to fear, and she flattened herself against the wall so the Device shielded her, her heart hammering. Whatever the Device did, it served Qeturah’s end, not her father’s.
Audrey peeked back around the Device, thinking frantically. Could she break it? But it was made of shiny brass, resistant to dents. She could ask the skinny guard for help, but he hadn’t inspired her with much confidence.
Where was Piers? She crouched down and crawled forward, trying to keep out of sight. Maybe if she jammed her shoe in the gears…
“Fire when ready!” her father’s voice echoed from the speaking tube.
Bearded Qeturah pulled a lever.
A streak of light lit the gray sky outside the portholes, like sustained lightning. Audrey’s breath caught.
The Device gathered the reflected light from the immense mirror and channeled it into an intense beam, the diameter of her wrist. The
red light touched a zipship’s balloon and burned a hole straight through it.
Cheers erupted from the deck above them.
The zeppelin rode the wind current a little higher, and the beam cut another zipship in half. It fell from the sky.
Audrey didn’t know whether to join the rejoicing or cry. Here was revenge for the dirigibles destroyed by the fire globes, but the wholesale destruction made her queasy. We have no choice, she told herself.
Even Qeturah must understand that, or why would she help?
“That ought to keep him off our backs,” Bearded Qeturah said smugly. “Start building pressure.”
Obediently, Bald Billy moved another lever up.
Audrey tensed. Pressure for what? She crouched there, with her shoe in hand, undecided. Was there a way to stop Qeturah without shutting down the weapon entirely? She searched for The Phantom, wishing she could signal him to attack.
“Fool!” Qeturah castigated Billy a moment later. “I told you to push the lever up!”
“I did,” Bald Billy protested. He pushed it up again. The Device began a slow clank and the hiss of steam building up.
Bearded Qeturah stilled. “The Phantom is here.”
“What? Where?”
Qeturah ignored him and addressed the empty air. “There’s no need for this, Jack. This is the big score we always talked about, our retirement.”
A blur over in the corner by Billy attracted Audrey’s attention.
“Is it the girl?” Qeturah asked. “You want to be a hero for her? She’s safe back in Donlon. You can tell her you tried and failed. She doesn’t need to know our business. You can become Lord Tennyson and marry her if you’d like. But we need to finish one last job first.”
The blur briefly became visible high in the corner. “It’s not the girl; it’s you. I found her body. My mother’s. You’re going to pay for her death.”
He swooped down and grabbed Bearded Qeturah by the back of her coat.
She shrugged out of it and retreated, pressing her back against the Device. Bald Billy raised his fists and took up defensive position in front of her. “Where is ’e?”
Even Audrey had trouble seeing The Phantom until Bald Billy’s head suddenly snapped back. Blood welled from his lip, and the illusion broke. Broken Nose Billy roared and flailed with his fists. His first two blows missed, but when The Phantom darted in for another jab, Billy caught him in the ribs.
Amid Wind and Stone Page 30
