Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369)

by Marie Brennan

  Suhail unwrapped a series of small ropes around the edges of the gondola, leaving them only loosely looped about their cleats. Then he took a deep, steadying breath, and yanked them all free.

  The caeliger, freed of its ballast, began to rise.

  The Yelangese, laughing around their fire, did not immediately notice. I flipped my lever, spun my wheel, then stood to reach for the crank. Once on my feet, I felt terribly exposed. The soldiers were not so careless as to leave their guns lying about; each man had one alongside him, lying in the sand. I could not take my eyes from those, so certain was I that they were soon to be aimed my way.

  One of the men’s faces turned upward to the rising caeliger. He stared openmouthed for one long moment; under any other circumstances, it would have been comical. Then he scrambled to his feet, arm outstretched, and began to shout.

  Now it was a race. Suhail was doing things behind me; I had no idea what, except that they made an engine grumble to life. I kept labouring over my crank. The propeller began to turn. All of the soldiers were on their feet now, guns in hand. One of them aimed it at me and I flinched, trying to hunch as much of myself as possible behind the dragonbone without stopping my work on the crank.

  I could not duck very far, and so I saw one of the other men slap the rifle down, sending its shot cracking well below us. He screamed something at the one who had fired. A third fellow was running down the beach; he took a flying leap off a large stone and tried to seize one of our trailing ropes, but splashed harmlessly into the water. The others were shouting and racing about, but none of them were firing. Why were they not firing?

  We were high enough now that they stood little chance of striking us even if they did. “You may stop turning that,” Suhail said breathlessly, and I complied. “Come—hold this for me.”

  The wind had caught us now; we were drifting away from Rahuahane. Unfortunately, that meant we were also drifting away from where we wanted to go. The caeliger had a rudder of sorts, attached beneath the balloon, and it was the control for this that I held. The gondola rocked alarmingly as Suhail darted about, attempting to direct us into the wind, toward the inhabited islands.

  He found a way. We came about, passing the bulk of Rahuahane’s peak. I drew what felt like my first proper breath in days, and realized that we were flying. It was less personal than my experience in the glider, which had simply been a matter of me and my wings; but it was also more comfortable. In the blazing sunset light, I found myself smiling.

  The caeliger settled into its course. Suhail, satisfied with the current state of the engine, untied the egg from around his body and laid it in the bottom of the gondola. Then he stopped, gazing down, not meeting my eyes. “Do you know what they were shouting as we rose?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said. “I do not speak above twenty words of Yelangese.”

  Suhail turned to face me. “They said, ‘It’s her.’”

  We stood in silence, except for the growl of the engine and the rush of the wind. I could think of nothing to say. Suhail was looking at me as if he had never seen me before. I felt rather as if I did not know myself.

  He asked, “Why would they be looking for you?”

  “I do not know,” I said. “I can speculate at bits of it—this ship—when we were in Va Hing, someone arranged to have me deported, I think because they feared I would learn about the caeliger. Caeligers, I should say; I doubt there is only one. But why they would trouble themselves to—” I stopped and peered over the side of the gondola, taking care not to shift the rudder. “Should we be dropping like this?”

  Suhail swore. We were losing altitude rapidly; I judged we were no more than a hundred feet above the water now. He began to dart once more about the gondola, but even I could tell his efforts were futile, as much from the brief and frustrated movements of his hands as from the fact that we continued to sink. The waves were quite close now—but so, I realized, was the shore of an island. Not Keonga: I could see its familiar mass off to my right, much too far away. The caeliger, fighting against the wind, had brought us to the neighbouring island of Lahana. The only question was whether we would strike land or sea; for my second flight, like my first, was going to end by crashing.

  * * *

  We braced ourselves against the gondola at the last moment, trusting to the dragonbone and its lashings to protect us. The latter failed in places, though not catastrophically. The balloon, sinking down to strike the gondola, knocked us headlong, and my landing drove all the air from my body; but I suffered nothing worse than a few additions to my assortment of bruises.

  Lying there on the bony surface of the gondola’s floor, I found myself laughing. It was born of hysteria, the sudden release of tension. Whatever else lay ahead—and I knew, even then, that our troubles were not done—I was finally back on safe ground.

  Or so I thought, for a few, blessed moments.

  Shouting drew us both up from where we had fallen. The people of Lahana had not failed to miss the caeliger drifting toward them from the cursed isle. They had enough warning to assemble a force of warriors, who were even now sprinting across the sand to us; and judging by the weapons they held, they were not coming to make certain we were unharmed.

  Suhail attempted to put himself between me and them, but the gondola’s open structure doomed him to failure. Large hands reached through and dragged me out, with Suhail following after. “Let us explain,” I cried in Keongan, and heard Suhail doing the same. No one had struck me yet, but neither were they showing much willingness to listen.

  Then I heard a high, forceful voice crying, “Leave them alone!”—in Scirling.

  Abby Carew was the only woman I had heard speaking my tongue in months, but the voice was not hers. I twisted in my captors’ grasp and saw, to my utter shock, the crowd parting to allow an Anthiopean woman through.

  She was tall, though not in comparison to the islanders, and had the carriage of the well-born. Unlike myself, she wore a dress; I thought it had once been moderately fine, but it had clearly seen hard wearing for quite a few days. She pushed through to me and pried the islanders’ hands off me with, as near as I could tell, nothing more than force of will.

  This stranger commenced to arguing with the Lahana warriors in their own language, though with an accent that made me suspect she had learned some other dialect first. The thrust of her argument was that Suhail and I had to be questioned, and she was the only one likely to be able to speak with us. From this I guessed that she had not heard us speaking Keongan before she drew near—nor did she have any idea that we had spent nearly two months living on the neighbouring island.

  It did not surprise me that she should be ignorant of us. In all that time, I had never imagined a Scirling woman was on Lahana. Now, however, the pieces began to fit together: the injunction against leaving Keonga for the other islands, the Yelangese soldiers looking for a woman. Perhaps it was not me they sought after all, but her. As for why … studying her profile, with its strong jaw and full lips, a terrible suspicion began to grow in my heart.

  I looked at the ground and saw that the Keongans were taking care neither to stand on her shadow, nor to allow theirs to fall upon her.

  “We have heard of these people,” one of the warriors said, cutting her argument short. He gestured at me. “This is the ke’anaka’i who has been on Keonga—the husband of Liluakame. And this man is one of the other strangers there.”

  Naturally they had heard of us. Why should there be so many warriors on the sparsely inhabited leeward side of Lahana, unless they were guarding something—someone—here? Such guards would certainly be kept apprised of important developments in the Keongan archipelago: for example, the shipwreck of a group of foreigners. You are not Yelangese, they had said when we arrived. Are you Scirling? Yes, they had reason to look for my people.

  “Please,” I said, in Keongan. The woman looked at me sharply. “We must give you a warning. The Yelangese are attempting to search your islands in secret;
we saw them with our own eyes. They are looking for someone.” I carefully did not look at the stranger when I said this, though Suhail was not quite so restrained.

  “How do you know this?” one of the warriors demanded.

  I chose my words with exquisite care, knowing they might mean the difference between life and death for both Suhail and myself. “We did not leave Keonga intentionally. The warriors there took the two of us out on the water, that we might attempt to ride a sea-serpent. This we succeeded at, but when we finally tumbled from its back, we were in waters far from Keonga, and too far for us to swim home. But we saw the Yelangese on Rahuahane and stole this, their ship, so that we might return and warn you.”

  My words set off a flurry of discussion among the warriors, much of it too rapid for me to follow. No one asked whether we had set foot on the cursed island, for which I breathed a sigh of relief. That question would come in time, I was sure … but in the interim, we might have a chance to think of some way to forestall punishment.

  For the time being, they were far more concerned with the Yelangese, and what must be done to address that threat. Even with such incentive, none of them were willing to launch their war canoes for Rahuahane, but they took a variety of other precautions: mounting a search in the area for any other Yelangese; sending word to Keonga that two lambs had strayed; warning someone—that last was quickly silenced, with a glance toward us that said it was not for our ears. And, of course, they had to inform their chief. This was not Pa’oarakiki, the man we had dealt with on Keonga, but the chief of Lahana, to whom these warriors answered.

  They also locked us up. Not with literal locks; the only metal the islanders have is that which they trade for, and locks are of little practical use in a society like theirs. Some distance down the beach, however, there was a cluster of several huts, over which other warriors stood guard. Suhail was shoved into the largest of these, and I was escorted, with slightly more dignity, to a smaller one. The Scirling woman accompanied me, saying, “You will have to share this with myself and Hannah, but we have it rather better than the men do.”

  Unlike the hut in which I had resided since my wedding, this one had closed walls, which made the air within decidedly stuffy. Despite that, the interior was reasonably well appointed by Keongan standards, with soft mats for the floor. Another woman waited there, likewise with a look about her that said she was well-born but somewhat battered by her recent trials. I judged this Hannah to be perhaps a few years older than her companion—though still younger than I—but when the stranger raised a hand to silence her questions, Hannah complied without hesitation.

  Which did not mean I was to be spared questions at all. The stranger faced me and said, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  “My name is Isabella Camherst,” I said.

  Her brow furrowed delicately. “Camherst. Where have I heard that name?”

  “I am a dragon naturalist—”

  “Ah,” she said, her expression clearing. “Yes. You were involved with that business in Bayembe.”

  The business to which she referred had been bruited about in the gossip-sheets, but I doubted that was where she had heard of me. I wondered: should I speak, or hold my tongue?

  I have never been terribly good at holding my tongue.

  “Yes, I was,” I said. “Your Highness.”

  Hannah came forward a quick step, but was stopped by the other woman’s hand. They both studied me as if I were a new species of insect, which might yet prove to be poisonous. “How did you know?” the princess asked.

  “You look rather like your uncle,” I said. “And the Keongans avoided your shadow.”

  Princess Miriam: niece to the king, envoy on a diplomatic journey around the world, following an itinerary that included Yelang. It did not begin to explain what she was doing in the Keongan Islands, living as an honoured prisoner, with Yelangese soldiers hunting her in secret … but she, not I, was the one they were searching for. (We did not look so very much alike, but the Yelangese had no reason to expect two Scirling women to be running about where there should not even be one. And they had not gotten a terribly good look at me.)

  Sighing, she gestured for me to sit. “Forgive me, but I hoped you had been sent by Admiral Longstead. He is no doubt searching for me.”

  “I’m afraid I do not know the admiral, Your Highness.” I spread my hands helplessly. “I truly am a natural historian, travelling the Broken Sea to study dragons. I did not even know you had … gone astray.” I hesitated, then added, “I fear I may have made quite a hash of things. The Yelangese came in the caeliger you saw on the beach. Without it, I am not certain they have any way to send word that you have been found.”

  I expected her to chastise me for it, or at best to magnanimously forgive me my error. Instead her jaw set in a firm line. “It is just as well. I should prefer not to be ‘rescued’ by the Yelangese, if I can possibly avoid it.”

  The irony scarring that word was unmistakable. “Do you not want their aid?” I asked, astonished. “I know they are not our friends, but if the Keongans are holding you prisoner…”

  The princess looked to Hannah, who shook her head as if to say, the choice is yours. I did not keep abreast of Society’s doings; I could not for the life of me remember who Hannah might be, as I knew only people’s titles, not their given names. Some peeress, undoubtedly, serving as companion to the princess. (I later learned she was the Countess of Astonby.)

  “It has all gone rather sideways,” the princess said at last. “We are, as you say, not friends with Yelang, and one of my duties on this voyage was to gather information that would assist my uncle and his ministers in determining how eager we should be to mend that.”

  “You are a spy!” I exclaimed—which is yet another demonstration of why I have refused all offers of a diplomatic post, no matter where it is the Crown offers to send me.

  Her eyebrows rose. “Not a spy, Mrs. Camherst. But I had made arrangements to call at a few ports that were not on my official itinerary. One of these was Lu’aka, on the island of Raengaui.”

  “To meet with Waikango,” I said, beginning to understand. “Are we intending to ally with him? No, that is a foolish question; he has been captured.”

  “A fact we did not discover until we reached the Broken Sea,” the princess said. “After some debate with Captain Emery, I settled on visiting Raengaui regardless. He is by far the strongest candidate in the region for opposing Yelangese expansion, but that does not mean he is the only one. At the very least, it would be worth our while to know who might lead the islanders in his absence—or whether the coalition he has built will collapse, now that he is a prisoner. As for an alliance…”

  She trailed off, studying me. I did not know what she was looking for; all I could do was sit quietly, attempting to seem intelligent and trustworthy.

  “I cannot say whether the Scirling crown will involve itself or not,” she said at last. “That decision has not been made.”

  But it was clearly a possibility. Would we offer diplomatic recognition, I wondered, or military aid? We had tried the latter in Bayembe, and while my actions had inadvertently scuttled our plans there, that did not mean we would not try it elsewhere. An outpost like Point Miriam—named for the very princess now seated across from me—would be a nice foothold for Scirling dominance of trade through the Broken Sea, blocking the Yelangese and potentially even challenging the Heuvaarse.

  I had the wit not to say that out loud, at least. “So that is why you do not want the Yelangese to rescue you. It would give them a good deal of bargaining power in their dealings with Scirland. But why did the islanders take you prisoner?”

  Hannah made a noise that suggested she had not forgiven that outrage, and never would. The princess only sighed. “They saw an opportunity, and seized it. When I said Scirland might consider offering aid, they asked for us to raid Houtiong and free Waikango. I refused, naturally—though I did say that we might eventually be able to bring d
iplomatic pressure to bear on the matter. Such distant promises were hardly persuasive, I’m afraid … and so they took all of us prisoner, in the hopes that they might be able to trade me to the Yelangese in exchange for their captured leader.”

  A princess in the hand was worth two promises of diplomatic aid in the bush, I supposed. There was no guarantee she could have convinced her uncle and his ministers—let alone the Synedrion—to intervene on Waikango’s behalf. And even if she had, it would have taken a year, two years, five. Such things rarely moved quickly, when it was some other land’s dignitary languishing in prison. “I suppose they hid you here because they knew the Yelangese would look for you in the Raengaui Islands.”

  “Yelang and Scirland both,” she said. “I cannot imagine that Admiral Longstead sat idly by when Captain Emery’s ship failed to return to the fleet as expected.”

  It was inevitable, then, that the search would eventually reach even the relatively inaccessible waters of Keonga. I supposed the only reason they had not done so sooner was that they did not want to advertise to the world that Princess Miriam had gone missing. But it was a race to see who could find her first, Yelang or Scirland … and at the moment, Yelang had the edge.

  Her thoughts tended in the same direction as mine. “What of you? Is there any way you could get a message out to the fleet?”

  “I fear not, Your Highness,” I said glumly, and told her of the Basilisk’s injured state. Aekinitos was likely mad enough to steal a Keongan canoe and attempt sailing it back to more familiar waters, but he was not a Scirling subject. I did not think he would be eager to risk himself in that fashion—at least, not without a sizable reward. Before I could decide whether to mention that to the princess, however, another possibility came to me, this one even madder than the last.

  She arrived at the same thought even as I did. “The caeliger,” we said in unison.

  “Suhail and I did not have very much luck with it,” I warned her. “Perhaps if he had more time to study the controls … but time is not a luxury we are likely to have.”