Our lead on them was substantial, but that only benefits the fleeing party if there is somewhere to lose the pursuer. We had only the open sea—not even any cloud cover in which to hide. Moreover, the Yelangese had both fresh supplies of fuel and a vastly superior knowledge of how to operate their craft. It would take them some time to catch us … but catch us they would. It was inevitable, and all three of us knew it.
Our caeliger fled across the waves, with the second one following. We soon lost the Yelangese fleet; it evened the odds, at least, and I had wild visions of a boarding engagement fought high above the sea. (Surely, I reasoned, the Yelangese would not fire guns at us, not when they might puncture the caeliger’s bag and send us crashing into the waves.) An hour passed, perhaps more, with the second craft slowly gaining on us. But before they drew close enough to take action, Suhail cried, “Ahead! Look!”
Once more, there were masts upon the horizon. “More Yelangese?” I said under my breath. They were searching the Broken Sea for the princess, and might well have divided their efforts. If we had indeed found more ships from the empire, it would no longer be a choice between capture and the risk of death: we would have to choose between capture and the certainty of death. Provided, of course, that the former did not lead inevitably to the latter.
Handeson crowed. “No! Square rigs! They’re Anthiopean! And—” He stopped, and seemed to be quite literally holding his breath.
The sails grew larger. There were three ships, grouped in a loose formation, and the men aboard them were scrambling about, clearly alarmed by the two approaching caeligers. I could see them quite well, because our own craft was losing altitude rapidly. Even I could tell that the sounds emerging from its machinery were not encouraging. The sailors appeared to be racing to aim their cannon in our general direction, but they would not need them; we would be coming down even without interference from artillery.
The gunshots I heard, though, came from behind us. It was the Yelangese, firing their rifles at the three of us. We took cover behind the dragonbone walls of the gondola, which began to drop even more precipitously; they had pierced the bag (which may have been their target to begin with), and we were losing air. Then, without warning, their caeliger sheered off, turning back into the wind and heading once more toward their own distant fleet.
Perhaps they hoped we would sink into the sea, leaving no example of a caeliger in foreign hands. As I have said, though, dragonbone floats quite well. “Quick,” I cried, “throw everything overboard that you can”—for if we lightened the gondola by enough, it might stay afloat long enough for that remarkable engine to be retrieved.
We splashed into the waves before we could get very far in shedding ballast, however. The falling bag dragged the gondola onto its side; Suhail and Handeson both leapt clear rather than burden it with their weight. I clung to the bones, because tucked into my arm I had a bundle of fabric that concealed the petrified egg.
“Ahoy the—the wreck,” a voice called from above, in the blessedly familiar accents of the Estershire coast. “Just who the bleeding hell are you?”
We had found the Scirling navy.
* * *
They fished us out of the sea, and the caeliger along with us, balloon and all. The latter had not sunk; it proved to have a framework inside it, likewise built of dragonbone, which kept it afloat. I looked grimly at all the bones and half-wished they had all gone to the bottom of the sea. But I had already told the princess about dragonbone, and she had sent me here to tell the admiral; the only way that cat could be stuffed back into its bag was if Miriam were to die. (And I hope I need not say I wished very much for that not to happen.)
Lieutenant Handeson took over in the first instance, saluting with proper naval precision despite looking like a drowned and unshaven rat. His bedraggled state, not to mention the shirtless Akhian and the woman in man’s dress who accompanied him, meant it took a moment for the sailors around us to recognize him; Captain Emery’s ship had been part of this very fleet. Once they realized what they had caught, they immediately began signaling the next closest vessel, which was the Conborough, the admiral’s flagship.
It was no coincidence that we found them where we did. I soon understood that the Scirling officers knew the Yelangese were searching for Miriam, and were attempting to beat those men to their shared quarry. Both groups had gotten far enough in searching the Broken Sea that their thoughts bent to Kapa Hoa, and if they did not find her there, they intended to continue on to Keonga. Given but a little while longer, then, it seemed that rescue might have come to us, without any need to fetch it.
Such a rescue, however, would have arrived ill-informed. And so I soon found myself standing in front of the admiral, still clad in male garments, but these at least dry and in one piece.
Most of Admiral Longstead’s attention was on Lieutenant Handeson, the only member of our little crew who seemed at all reliable. I was after all a woman, and a mildly notorious one at that—yes, he recognized my name—and Suhail was Akhian. But the princess had sent me because I knew about the caeligers, and given that he had just seen a second one fly away with all speed, he needed an explanation. Moreover, I now suspected that Miriam’s words just before the escape had not been mere idle musing. She wanted to be certain I understood her views.
When we had finished telling him our tale, I added, “You may wish to make haste, sir. Not that you would tarry, of course—but I suspect the Yelangese may be making their way to Keonga as we speak.”
He frowned at me. “They were headed for Kapa Hoa, the last we heard.”
“Indeed. But if the caeliger we … commandeered—” Handeson had used that word; it had a better ring than stole. “If it originated with that group of ships, they will know where it had been sent. They will also know, by our decision to flee from them, that there was no longer a Yelangese crew aboard; the fact that we fled toward you, however accidental it was in truth, will suggest that the caeliger was in Scirling hands. They may think the princess was with us. But regardless, they will want to investigate Keonga, and retrieve their men if they can.”
Longstead mulled this over, then shook his head. “You may be right, Mrs. Camherst. It hardly matters, though. We will want to reach Keonga before those island devils move Her Highness elsewhere. I do not fancy starting our hunt anew. The Broken Sea is far too large of a haystack for that.”
His choice of term for the Keongans made me apprehensive. “Sir—I do beg your pardon. But before I left, Her Highness spoke quite a bit about her feelings toward the islanders. She acknowledged that those directly involved in her capture and imprisonment must be punished, but did not want to see retribution visited on all their people. She is quite sympathetic to their cause, even if she deplores their most recent method of fighting for it.”
“I don’t give a damn about their cause, Mrs. Camherst,” the admiral snapped. “I will do whatever it takes to bring Her Highness back to safety.”
“Your pardon, sir, but I am not speaking on my own behalf in saying this—though for my own part, I will add that I have found the Keongans generally to be friendly hosts, and certainly I have more cause to consider them my friends than I do the Yelangese. But I am conveying the princess’ wishes. She would be very displeased if you initiated hostilities with the Keongans.”
Admiral Longstead’s neck reddened. “This is my ship, madam—”
“I do not dispute that. But I believe Her Highness was appointed the senior envoy of this embassy, was she not? Was the secret detour to Raengaui excluded from her brief, or included?”
When the admiral did not answer right away, Handeson murmured, “It was included, ma’am.”
“There you have it,” I said. “If you are attacked, then by all means defend yourselves—though I should hope you would, out of common decency, attempt to limit the carnage to a minimum and move toward peace at the first opportunity. But to strike against the Keongans, without first attempting diplomacy, would be in direct contravention
of the wishes of your senior envoy.”
This account of my speech makes me sound quite levelheaded, but the truth is that however moderate my choice of words, my temper was hanging by a rather thin thread. I had sympathy for the admiral’s frustration; he had misplaced his most valuable charge for an extended period of time, and wanted to expunge that failure, along with everyone who knew of it. But I had family and friends on those islands, and I counted some of the local inhabitants among the latter. Nor did I want to fail at the task I believed Miriam had set me.
“We sail for Keonga,” the admiral snarled. “What happens when we get there … we shall see.”
* * *
The winds were not fair for Keonga; they seemed to fight us, as if defending the islands. Or so I was told: I was awake for very little of it, exhaustion having vanquished me at last. The admiral was gentleman enough to cede his cabin to me for the time being, and there I collapsed, regaining my strength while I could.
I woke long enough to eat supper and to be told that we would not reach Keonga until the following morning. We were not that far, but as I have mentioned before, a number of reefs surrounded the archipelago, adorning the tops of islands either unborn or long deceased. However impatient Longstead was, he would not risk his ships by charging blindly ahead when it was too dark to see the warning surf.
Suhail also spoke to me during this time. “What happened to our find from Rahuahane?” he asked. His tone was casual, as if speaking of nothing terribly important, but he had chosen a moment when no sailors were near, and he avoided naming the thing directly.
“It is here,” I said. “The lieutenant who helped me stow it did not see why I place such importance on a superstitious trinket—a mere carving of an egg—but, well, he is not a naturalist. I could hardly expect him to understand.”
“Indeed,” Suhail said. He did not grin, but his eyes were merry at my explanation. So long as no one broke the egg, the nonsense I had spun would stand.
I slept again after that and woke a while before dawn. On deck, I discovered our little fleet of three was proceeding cautiously, men standing at the rails with log-lines to constantly monitor the depth. We had entered the treacherous waters girding the Keongan Islands; all about us were patches of troubled surf, the easy swell of the waves sent into turmoil by the changing terrain below. I found myself holding my breath, and made myself exhale.
One of the ways sailors find islands—particularly if they do not have the benefit of modern navigational equipment—is by looking to the sky. Clouds often form above land, and these can be seen on the horizon long before the land itself is near enough to make out. So it was with our approach to Keonga … but as we drew near, it seemed to me there was something peculiar about the clouds I saw. Over the rush of the waves, I could hear an odd sound, almost like a drumbeat.
From behind me Suhail murmured, “Smoke.”
I gripped the railing until my knuckles ached. He was right: smoke was casting a pall over the island. It might have been ash from a volcanic eruption; a part of me almost hoped it was. But I heard one of the lieutenants bellow, “Cannon fire!” and knew that it was not.
The Yelangese had indeed made sail for Keonga, and they had arrived before us.
They must have rendezvoused with allies along the way. Seven of their ships were arrayed off the coast; an eighth had run aground on a reef and was now burning. Smoke also rose from Rahuahane—a signal fire, lit on the beach by the stranded men of the caeliger when they saw their countrymen approaching. But the Keongans had been keeping watch as well, and by the time the Yelangese ships drew near, they were ready.
Princess Miriam was not the only thing they had been hiding from us. Aekinitos had said, mostly in jest, that there might be an entire war fleet on the far side of Lahana. He was wrong only in his choice of location. They had been arrayed throughout the archipelago, a great mustering of Puian canoes from many parts of the Broken Sea, in preparation for the possibility—the likelihood—that their attempts to trade Her Highness for Waikango would not succeed before the Yelangese found her. They had paddled out as the Yelangese approached, forming a defensive line a little distance from shore, and there they had waited.
The Yelangese, taking this as proof of Miriam’s presence, had not hesitated to fire, and so the battle was joined.
Battles are not pretty things, but this one was especially ugly. The Puian war fleet had but few guns and no artillery. Aekinitos had ordered his men to drag their cannon up to the promontory, from which they offered what supporting fire they could, but it was very scant. Many of those engaged in the battle had only spears and shark-tooth clubs with which to fight. The agility and speed of their canoes gave them a certain advantage in shallow coastal waters over the Yelangese ships, and their small size and great number meant that although a cannonball might strike one craft, five others would continue onward—but the shots did strike, crushing many warriors and sending them into the sea. Where the canoe fleet reached a ship, men swarmed up on too many sides to repel them all at once, but the casualties were great.
Such was the fruit of the ordinary elements. Both sides, however, had unexpected weapons, and did not hesitate to deploy them.
I have recounted my own ride upon the back of a sea-serpent, and said that the more experienced Keongans are capable of steering the beasts to a limited extent. On that day, in the waters around the archipelago, I saw the truth of it with my own eyes. They do not ride the serpents merely for entertainment, or to prove their virility and strength: they had also been practicing for war.
Half a dozen serpents raged in the waters around the fleet. Two of the seven ships were sinking, I realized, their hulls cracked by the terrible force of the serpents’ water blasts. These had destroyed some canoes as well, for a serpent lashes out when and where it will; the rider can only attempt to direct its head toward the enemy or else into open water. As weapons and as mounts, they are nearly as dangerous to their own side as they are to the opponent. But the psychological effect of them that day cannot be understated. The Yelangese came to the islands expecting to brush past a few dozen canoes, but found themselves facing hundreds, with the great beasts of the sea fighting on their side.
They had a weapon of their own, however, and it rained death from the sky. The other caeliger swooped across the bloodstained waters again and again, too high for even the strongest island warrior to hurl a spear, but low enough for the men in its gondola to shoot accurately into the fracas below. They had begun by picking men off from the canoes, but when the serpents entered the fray, they shifted their efforts to those beasts and the men who controlled them. There had been more serpents before; now two floated dead in the water, and a third rampaged freely, attacking anything in its path.
I had not forgotten Admiral Longstead’s declaration of his resolve to rescue the princess. If she had not been moved, she was on Lahana, and the Battle of Keonga stood in his path. I ran to the quarterdeck, hoping against hope to persuade him not to add his cannon to the weapons aimed at the islanders.
To my surprise, I found him standing quietly, watching the battle with close attention, but giving no orders to join it. “You will not fight?” I asked.
“Let them carve one another up,” he said. “I suspect the Yelangese will win, with that thing in the air, but they will be badly bloodied. Then we will move into range and hail them. They will give way, or if they do not, we will take appropriate steps.”
As little as I wanted him to fire on the Keongans, I found myself almost equally dismayed to hear him say he would stand aside. “You will just sit here and watch men die?”
“Should I risk my own men on their behalf, Mrs. Camherst? I was not sent here to involve myself in a local war. If I could sail past them to reach the princess, I would do so. If they fire upon us, I will answer in kind. But otherwise, I will wait.”
The most infuriating part of it all, then and now, was that Admiral Longstead was right. He could easily have routed the Yelangese
if he moved in; they were already beleaguered, and the Scirling ships were both larger and superior in firepower. But why should he do so? We were not so much at odds with Yelang as to risk starting a war with them in this fashion.
And yet it tore my heart to stand there while the battle raged, watching the caeliger slaughter helpless men and beasts from above, and do nothing.
I hate above all else to do nothing.
People have accused me of lying on this point, but I truly do not remember making a decision. I remember thinking only that I must do something. Then I was over the railing and plummeting toward the sea, with Suhail shouting after me.
I hit the water with a great splash and sank deep, but soon kicked back up to the surface. A second splash inundated me; when it receded, Suhail was nearby, dashing the water from his face with a quick shake of his head. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
“The admiral will not go closer to the battle,” I said breathlessly. “I must find my own conveyance.”
The creature was almost to us. I had seen it approaching before I went over the rail: a sea-serpent, one of those which lost its rider in the battle, perhaps, or else a curious visitor. I struck out for it before Suhail could get more than two words into his description of exactly how mad I was. He was not wrong; but he must claim a share of madness for himself, along with a good helping of chivalric honour—for when he saw what I intended, he did not abandon me to do it alone.
We had learned some lessons from our previous ride. I felt almost competent as we caught our holds with a minimum of trouble; soon we were atop the serpent as before, and together encouraged it to swim in the direction of the battle. This was not difficult, as the blood in the water had attracted its attention. But once there, we faced two challenges, each one alone far greater than the simple task of riding: we must figure out something of value to do, and then find a way to do it.
Voyage of the Basilisk : A Memoir by Lady Trent (9781429956369) Page 28
