The Affair of the Mysterious Letter

by Alexis Hall

  I riposted with a blow to the pirate’s wrist and was returning to a standing position when the floor rocked violently. My assailant was, of course, accustomed to doing battle in storm-tossed skies and, while I had some experience of fighting on shifting terrain, I stumbled, giving him the opening he needed to deliver a savage thrust to my face. I parried the attack hastily but, in so doing, caught my cane on the jagged edge of his blade, causing the two weapons to become momentarily locked. The unexpected break that this event introduced into the rhythm of our duel distracted my opponent for long enough that I was able to dart forward, driving my palm into the back of his extended elbow, twisting his body sharply away from me. I stamped heavily on the back of his exposed knee and brought the top of my cane down on the back of his head, following which the piratical gentleman had just enough wherewithal to drag himself to the door and throw himself again on the mercy of the winds. For his sake, I hope they brought him to a place of safety.

  More felicitously, it appeared my assailant had lost his sabre in the tussle. I retrieved it and was thus able to better hold off the next wave of pirates as they descended upon the Clouded Skipper. Although I no longer had my pistol, between a blade, a better sense of the style in which the pirates could be expected to fight, and the narrow confines of the doorway, I was able to restrict my enemies’ possible angles of attack, allowing me to defend myself against two opponents at once with reasonable efficacy. Matters were assisted by the inherently opportunistic nature of my opponents. When they had thought the vessel defenceless, they were eager to press their advantage, but, having seen two of their number shot down and a third bested in close battle, they approached now more hesitantly and would retreat in the face of a sharp countercut or stop-thrust.

  Their numbers, however, began to prove challenging, as did the increasing instability of the vessel. But these difficulties may yet have proved surmountable had the ship not been struck by lightning and, moments later, ploughed into a mountainside.

  My editor suggests that I leave off narration at this point, thereby creating an enticing mystery as to our survival such as might encourage the reader to seek out next month’s edition of The Strait magazine. I am, however, sensible of the effect such suspense may have on persons of a nervous disposition and shall, therefore, elucidate. I had just seen off the most recent of my attackers, who had withdrawn when my riposte drew blood from her wrist, when I noticed that all of the pirates were pulling swiftly away from the Clouded Skipper. I felt a strange prickling in the air and the next thing I knew the world around me sheeted white. More learned friends have informed me since that I was very fortunate to be encased entirely within a steel box for, somewhat unintuitively, such places are, in fact, amongst the safest one can be in the event of a lightning strike. At the time, however, I had no such assurances and my sense of impending danger was only exacerbated by the realisation that Mr. Ngoie had lost control of the vessel and that we were, consequently, descending sharply.

  The crash that followed was inelegant and painful, but the constructs of the Steel Magi are rightly as famed for their resilience as for their magnificence. Thus, neither Mr. Ngoie nor I perished in the collision.

  We remained, however, in mortal peril.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Eye of the Storm

  Readers who are familiar with Ms. Vandegrift-Osbourne’s sky-pirate novel may remember the famous sequence in which the mutineers having seized control of the Admiral Newton, causing it to run aground atop the mysterious Skull Peak (whereon the traitorous quartermaster hopes to recover the treasure once buried by the legendary Captain Shale), the air at once grows very still, and it is this momentary calm within the storm that presages the arrival of the quartermaster’s piratical allies. I can attest from personal experience that this scene also is remarkably accurate. As Mr. Ngoie and I emerged from the slightly battered Clouded Skipper we found the winds quiet around us. It was not reassuring.

  Mr. Ngoie heaved a deep sigh. “Remind me why I allow Shaharazad to talk me into things.”

  “Did you not owe her a favour?”

  “I repaid that debt long ago, but still I keep letting her drag me into her escapades.”

  “Well,” I offered consolingly, as I reloaded my pistol, “I for one am very glad you did. And I’m sure Miss Beck will be glad also.”

  “Miss Beck may not have opportunity to be thankful. It will take me some while to repair the aerokinetic circuitry.”

  I looked up. Around a dozen figures were spiralling gracefully towards us. “Perhaps the circuitry is not the most pressing concern at this very moment.”

  “You mean them?” He pointed at the now quite rapidly descending pirates. “They should have known better than to damage the property of a Steel Magus.”

  And, without further comment, Mr. Ngoie placed a hand against one of the Skipper’s buckled wingtips. A wave of motion rippled across the whole surface of the vessel, much like a chain of dominoes falling, but substantially more complex. The scales on the machine began to flow up his arm, fusing with his robes and building intricate steel structures at whose function I could only guess. The whole process took less than a minute, but when it was complete both the Clouded Skipper and her pilot were gone, and in their place stood a gargantuan mechanical man.

  “You know,” said a metallic voice that shared a certain tonal similarity with Mr. Ngoie’s but was much, much louder, “I really should have stayed in bed.”

  He stepped forward with reassuring precision, positioning himself directly above me and providing welcome shelter from our enemies. Then, with a deafening clang, he folded his arms, and called out to the sky, “You want my ship, you ——” And here he used language that, while it had probably not been the primary cause of his expulsion from the Steel Magi, may perhaps have been a contributing factor. “. . . come and take it.”

  This did, at least, answer the question of how we were to repel the pirates, although it also left me feeling ever so slightly surplus to requirements. A detachment of pirates swept down to attack us, but Mr. Ngoie’s armour proved impervious to their weaponry and the wickedly sharp talons that tipped his gauntlets severely injured several of them before they retreated. One or two landed and made an effort to eliminate me instead. They were not successful in this endeavour, for between my pistol and my scavenged sabre, my armaments were quite the equal of theirs, and my morale was bolstered, rather than diminished, by the presence of the titanic construct that loomed above us.

  When it had become apparent that swords would be of little use against a Steel Magus and that I, while more vulnerable, could not be so easily picked off as our enemies might have assumed, they retreated to a safe height, circling above us in a fashion distinctly too vulture-like to be comforting. It seemed for the moment that we stood at an impasse, they having the advantage of flight, and we the advantage of a sorcerous war engine. However, we had reckoned without their leader. From the roiling tempest descended a man wreathed in lightning, his scarlet coat billowing in the surging winds. As he stretched out a hand, a thunderbolt arced from the sky, splitting the ground some few feet from where I was standing. I hoped that this was an accurate reflection of the newcomer’s aim, but I strongly suspected it was little more than a warning shot.

  The pirate captain threw back his head, dark curls whipping about him, and laughed wildly. “Have at thee, kna—”

  His neck snapped abruptly forward and his body plummeted the not inconsiderable distance from his prior vantage to the mountainside, right next to us. There he lay, his limbs at terribly unpleasant angles, blood matting his hair, which I saw now was grey beneath the long black wig. The back of his skull bore the unmistakable mark of a bullet fired, if I was any judge, by a skilled marksman using a small-calibre handgun at moderate range. The storm was already fading and, as the remaining pirates fled for safety before the winds gave out beneath them, a bat-like, bird-like, ant-like creature
burst from a cloud bank, Ms. Haas still upon its back, a revolver in her hand.

  “There,” she said, landing the scabrous beast a short distance away. “When in doubt, find the fellow with the biggest hat and shoot him in the head. It never fails.”

  Mr. Ngoie turned slowly to face her. “You got my ship struck by lightning.”

  “My dear man, I did not get it struck by lightning.” My companion dismounted, then spoke a brief, blasphemous incantation and her erstwhile steed flapped away towards the gradually emerging stars. “It was incidentally struck by lightning while I was doing other things.”

  “Is the damage extensive?” I asked.

  “The exposure to elemental forces has unbalanced her alchemical equilibrium.” Mr. Ngoie flexed his razor-tipped fingers. “She can walk and swim and withstand the heat of a thousand suns but cannot fly.”

  At this, Ms. Haas flung up her hands in a gesture of inappropriate apathy. “Well, Captain. It appears Miss Beck will be eaten by a vampire after all. Blessing, do you think you could carry us?” She brightened considerably. “We should be down this mountain by sunset, through the ravine by midnight, and back in the foothills by sunrise. Where I’m sure there’ll be a quaint little village where we can get breakfast, and perhaps some commemorative chocolates.”

  “Ms. Haas,” I protested, “I do not wish to commemorate our failure with confectionery.”

  “Failure? I never fail. I just sometimes lack the impetus to pursue success as rigorously as I might.”

  Expecting no further concessions from Ms. Haas, I placed my hopes instead in the exiled magus of unknown capabilities in whose company I had spent less than twenty-four hours. “Is there no chance of repairing the Skipper?”

  “Not quickly. And if I am to fix my ship, I’d rather not do it on a mountain. I would rather do it in a quaint village, preferably one with chocolates.”

  I slumped down in the snow, my old injury sending a sudden jolt of pain through my hip. “There must be something we can do. There must be something”—and here I glanced imploringly at Ms. Haas—“you can do. Can you call that creature back and, well, I don’t know, get it to take the two of us?”

  “Assuming it didn’t eat you immediately, which it probably would, it simply wouldn’t make the journey in time. They’re peculiar beasts, very suited to travel over vast distances and short distances, but not a lot in between.”

  “And there is no other sorcery you can perform?”

  Ms. Haas grinned at me like a schoolchild who had caught her professor in an error. “You see? You’re always complaining about how terribly illegal and unnatural my practices are, right up to the point you need them. Which, for what it’s worth, is why I’m never concerned about being arrested. But, no, as it happens I have never studied the specific techniques that one would use in order to race a vampire across a mountain range and over several hundred miles of open country using only snow, rocks, dead pirates, and whatever you happen to have in your pockets.”

  At mention of the pirates, I stared a moment at the crumpled remains of their captain. “How did he manage it?” I enquired. “They travelled swiftly, and through the air, and must have done so with nothing more than they have about them now.”

  “They catch the wind in knots, then unleash it where useful. There’s a sort of religious aspect but, like most religion, I suspect it’s mostly for show.”

  Mr. Ngoie looked down at me. “This is another terrible idea. The sky-pirates stay in these mountains for a reason.”

  “You say that,” drawled Ms. Haas, “but it’s always struck me as evidence of a tremendous lack of vision.”

  “So we could fly a storm to Vedunia?” I endeavoured not to sound too hopeful.

  To which Mr. Ngoie answered “no” and Ms. Haas, looking somewhat more engaged than she hitherto had, answered “possibly” at the same moment.

  “Shaharazad,” Mr. Ngoie continued, “even you would not be foolish enough to try to reverse engineer stolen magic and put it to a purpose for which it was never intended.”

  She gave him a haughty look. “I’m sorry, have we met? I’m exactly foolish enough to try to reverse engineer stolen magic and put it to a purpose for which it was never intended. And to think I didn’t want to come on this journey.”

  With frankly unbecoming enthusiasm, Ms. Haas bounded over to the mangled corpse of the pirate captain and began rifling about his person.

  “It . . . it was not my intent,” I said hastily, “to suggest that you do anything reckless. To rescue Miss Beck would be honourable, but I’m not at all certain this is an appropriate course of action.”

  Ms. Haas was no longer listening. She had retrieved from the body a skein of knotted cord, which she now inspected with some interest. “Ah,” she murmured. “Of course. I believe if I . . .” She teased one of the knots apart. The moment she began, I was conscious of a gathering chill, which grew deeper and more biting as she worked.

  “Ms. Haas, I really think—” I got no further for, with the thread untied, a veritable gale swept across the mountainside, churning the snow into blinding flurries and snatching the breath from my lips. Then, all at once, the wind was gone as Ms. Haas retied the rope with commendable dexterity.

  “How interesting.” She tried another, and the skies darkened, bombarding us with rain that froze on contact. “Don’t worry, I’m getting the hang of this.”

  A perfect bolt of forked lightning speared from the sky and struck the head of Mr. Ngoie’s vast suit of mechanical armour, through which it was channelled harmlessly into the earth. Still, he did not seem best pleased. “You have not got the hang of it.”

  There was a brief shower of hail, a gust of surprisingly warm air, and then the clouds dispersed.

  “No, no,” said Ms. Haas briskly. “I definitely have. Come, Wyndham. To Vedunia.”

  Having inadvertently encouraged her towards this course of action, I felt it would be both churlish and pointless to resist it now. Climbing to my feet, I brushed off the snow and joined her.

  “I take it you won’t be coming with us,” I asked Mr. Ngoie.

  Although the metallic face of the armoured statue was motionless, the look he gave me with it was staggeringly expressive. “No. Definitely not.”

  “And you will be able to return safely to Khelathra-Ven?”

  “More certainly than you will.”

  Ms. Haas waved the cord impatiently. “Are you two finished? You do remember we’re trying to save an innocent woman’s life?”

  Without giving either of us time to reply, she took three knots between her fingers and held them in a convoluted pattern. Gradually she began to draw them apart. The winds rose up around us and, rather more gently than I had feared, lifted us skywards.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Granny Liesl

  Throughout my (though I say so myself) not uneventful life I have travelled by a bewildering variety of conveyances, but nothing has quite reached the unadulterated clarity of flying on a storm. Although at the time I was not wholly able to appreciate it, owing to my keen awareness of the possibility that we might at any moment plummet to our ignominious deaths. In retrospect, however, and secure in the knowledge of my survival, I look back with fondness on the journey. There was a great sense of liberty in moving swiftly, and unsupported, through the open air, unconstrained by propriety, society, or gravity.

  We traversed the entire territory of Lothringar in record time and without incident, rolling hills and placid lakes sweeping beneath us at incredible speed. We soared above red-roofed towns with cobbled streets and, wary of the possibility of countersorcery against aerial incursion, skirted well clear of the impossibly delicate white palaces that nestled in the forests. As morning broke and we crossed the border into Nivale, I became increasingly aware that the winds around us were growing erratic.

  Rain began to fall in intermittent bursts,
and at least twice I saw lightning sheet from Ms. Haas’s fingertips. Though I had not at that time known her long, I had already seen that my companion was skilled at concealing the degree to which her supernatural endeavours taxed her strength, will, and vitality. But given the ever-growing turbulence of our flight, I was forced to conclude that she was, indeed, feeling the strain quite acutely. I could only hope that our passage, marked as it now was by gale-force winds, a torrential downpour, and occasional thunderbolts, did not overly distress the sensibilities or damage the property of those Nivalians over whom we flew.

  As the wooded vale that sheltered the city of Vedunia came into view, we began to lose height rapidly. What her sudden loss of control over the wind said about my companion’s state of health I was not sure, and though I am ashamed to confess it, in the moment, my more pressing concern was the rapid approach of the ground. Some hundreds of feet from the forest floor, the winds failed entirely and we responded as might any pair of flightless organisms finding themselves abruptly unsupported and well above the treetops. That is to say, we plummeted earthwards, our garments and hair whipping about us as the wind (a phenomenon my more learned friends inform me was, in fact, caused by the air remaining motionless while we passed through it) grew ever stronger and the ground grew ever closer.

  By some miracle of mental fortitude, Ms. Haas had just the wherewithal to break the last knot on her cord, bringing forth one final updraught, which retarded our descent sufficiently for us to at least reach the canopy. From there, we plunged rather ingloriously through a curtain of pine needles before tumbling to the moss below.