Roar of Sky

by Beth Cato

  “Yes?”

  Fenris gave her a cool glare. “If you feel the urge to go up that ladder again, give me a nudge. Don’t rely on the sylphs alone.”

  “I won’t. Thank you,” she said softly.

  “Someone has to do the thinking around here,” he said. “I can make my own coffee, too. You rest.”

  Ingrid awoke to the screech of her curtain being yanked back. Her eyes opened wide to be blinded by a brilliant white light.

  “Leave her be!” Cy snapped.

  “Back off!” growled a husky voice. The beam shifted away, and through bright spots she recognized the navy cloth and gleaming buttons of an Army & Airship Corps uniform. “Get up, woman.”

  What was happening? Did these men know who she was? Her heart felt as if it would pound out of her chest. She used the railing to pull herself out. Cy stood behind the soldier, his expression one of barely checked rage. Two more soldiers stood behind him. Fenris’s voice, at a strangely high pitch, carried from the control cabin.

  The bearded soldier scowled and motioned her to stand.

  “I have an injury, I can’t move quickly.” Her voice shook.

  “Just move.” The soldier stepped to one side. She stood, feeling defiant and vulnerable all at once, standing before armed men while she wore men’s loose undergarments. Thank the Almighty she still wore a brassiere.

  The man assessed her with a sneer. “An ‘injury,’ eh?” He glanced back at Cy. “You shouldn’t use her so hard.” Without waiting for a reaction from Cy, he flipped up her mattress. “No guns here!” he called to his companions.

  “Nothing here!” called a deep voice from up the hall.

  The sylphs. She sensed them in the bunk above, rendered still by the invasion of strangers. She mentally screamed confirmation of the threat as one of the soldiers behind Cy bounded up the rungs. The mattress thudded as he shifted it. He was on the floor a second later.

  “Nothing up there,” he said. Ingrid breathed out a tiny sigh of relief.

  “Give me your paperwork,” the bearded soldier said to Cy, walking back to the hatch without giving Ingrid a second look. “If you’re planning to put her to work as a seamstress, you need another sheet. And hell, why couldn’t you have brought a pretty blonde? Got enough of them around here.” He gestured a thumb her way.

  A seamstress. Ingrid knew that vernacular from San Francisco. They assumed she was a prostitute.

  Cy went deadly still, and Ingrid was terrified of what he might say or do. “She’s not a woman of that sort, sir,” he said, voice quiet and even.

  “Sure.” The soldier signed a sheet and shoved it back at Cy’s chest. “If you’re caught, it’s not my jurisdiction. Take this to the depot.”

  The soldiers exited. Ingrid gasped, a fist to her heart. She sank to the jutted edge of her rack, her legs rendered boneless. Down the way, Cy leaned against the pantry, his body rigid, one fist straight at his side. His body heaved as he took in massive breaths.

  “Don’t you dare punch my cabinets,” said Fenris, sliding around Cy.

  “I could have pounded that bastard’s head in,” Cy said between gasps. He sounded more scared than angry.

  “But you didn’t, which is good, because otherwise we’d likely be dead, too.” Fenris continued toward Ingrid, his eyebrows drawn tight in concern. “You’re all right?”

  “Rattled, but unharmed. What was all that about?”

  “That was our welcome to Hilo.”

  As the bastion of civilization on the eastern side of the island-state, Hilo bustled with activity like a riled wasp’s nest. Unfortunately for the Palmetto Bug, much of the fuss was orchestrated by soldiers in Unified Pacific blue.

  “It’s all about the sugarcane plantation strikes,” said Cy. He rubbed his beard and paced in the doorway. “Word among other pilots is that it’s just as bad in Kona and Waimea. Riots are busting out on plantations across the islands. Any Chinese person is being interrogated as a potential gunrunner—”

  “Of course they are,” muttered Ingrid. “The fox would have them blamed for the setting sun, if she could.”

  She sat in the cabin. The shades were partially down, granting her a vantage point on the chaos down below while still shielding her from view. Twenty minutes had passed, and she couldn’t quite stop trembling from her rude awakening.

  So many soldiers were here. All it took was one person to recognize either her or the Bug.

  “Our personal firearms and Tesla rods are registered and must remain on board or in lockers at the depot, like in Honolulu,” Cy continued. He seemed to take comfort in the recitation of information.

  “Should we fly back there to restock?” Ingrid asked.

  “Oahu is probably just as bad,” Cy said. “Besides, we already know people there are on the lookout for our ship.”

  Fenris stood by his chair. His slender fingers twitched on the seat back as he glared toward the figures below. “We’re not going to Honolulu. I need to work on the Bug. I won’t risk another flight.”

  The finality of that statement left them all quiet for a minute.

  Cy stared out the window. “Strange, to see a port this busy on a Sunday. It reminds me of Seattle amid that awful Baranov rush.” He shuddered. “Only good thing about this hubbub is that many businesses will be open to accommodate the influx of soldiers.”

  Ingrid knew Cy and Fenris would busy themselves in a myriad of tasks in the next while. She had to do her part, too. “Cy, can you bring me any recent newspapers? I’ll scan for more news on Excalibur or anything else of relevance.”

  He nodded. “I’ll hit the shops lickety-split and start placing orders. I can bring you some papers.” He started to move past her, and hesitated. “About those soldiers, what they said . . .”

  “Cy. I’ve heard that kind of nonsense since I was old enough to wear a brassiere. Since Mama died, I’ve also dealt with insinuations that there must be something crude between myself and Mr. Sakaguchi, because surely he would have no other use for a woman of my complexion.” She said this flatly, and she could see the revulsion in his eyes—not for her, but for people who were vile enough to believe such things.

  “I hate that you have to endure such abuses.”

  “I hate people in general sometimes.” She shrugged.

  “I think that’s why we get along so well,” added Fenris. “We have banded together in a sort of antisocial club.”

  Ingrid laughed and shook her head. “Confronting horrid people like that gives more merit to my grandmother’s suggestion that I find a remote, safe place, away from civilization, someplace where I can be myself. I think, so long as I have books and pleasant company and access to good chocolate, I could get by.”

  Cy’s expression softened. “Maybe that can be arranged.” His arms curled around her shoulders, bringing her head against his ribs. Ingrid melted against him, even as he leaned on her. His fingers trembled as they stroked her hair. She wrapped an arm around him, a hand on his hip.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noted Fenris politely turn his attention elsewhere, a tablet and pencil in hand.

  “Just so you know,” Cy murmured, “I can make bookshelves.”

  “Are you trying to seduce me, Cy?” She kept her voice as low as possible.

  His hand paused on the back of her head. “Is that all I need to do? Build bookshelves? How many hundred do you need?”

  She looked up at him, smiling. “I’ll let you know once we’re settled in someplace and start compiling a library.”

  His eyebrows furrowed, pained. “I want that time to come. More than anything.”

  Ingrid thought back on what Pele said about choices. From Hilo, the Bug could fly anywhere in the world. They could find a cozy, isolated spot. Cy and Fenris could have their machine shop. She’d have a library—and what else?

  Guilt. Tremendous guilt. The knowledge that she’d abandoned Lee and Mr. Sakaguchi, allowed Blum to render the world to scorched earth. Blum, who would most likely never
leave her in peace, even if she did run and hide.

  She pressed harder against Cy, and he responded by strengthening his embrace. He didn’t ask what she was thinking. He didn’t need to. She clenched her eyes shut and forced her focus onto him, his touch, his heat, his smell. Her terror—her guilt at even considering a coward’s route—gradually subsided.

  After several minutes, Cy relinquished his hold and crouched to look her in the eye. “We’ll survive this. You’ll get your bookshelves. I promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” she said with a wobbly smile, forcing hope into the words.

  Cy responded with a kiss. Tender, soft, a stroke of lips, a rush of hot breath. A kiss of promise. “I’ll be back soon.” He headed toward the stairs.

  Ingrid knew she should go back and get dressed, but she wasn’t quite ready to walk around just yet. Her legs didn’t feel awful right now, but they sure didn’t feel good either. She needed to get accustomed to this, her new normal.

  My body will never be as it once was, but that doesn’t mean it’s not strong. She had a hunch she’d be invoking Pele’s words often in the coming days and years.

  She looked out the window again. Through a bobbing sea of airships, Hilo proper and its bay were visible to the north. The town existed at the base of a slope that led to verdant green hills and continued upward to the magnificent, massive peak of Mauna Kea.

  Her gaze dragged down to the dock again to try to find Cy in the vicinity of the gate. “Pardon, Fenris, what are those machines over there?”

  “What machines? Where?” Fenris, frowning and distracted, leaned toward the glass. She pointed to the gate in question. Only a mast and a cluster of buildings stood in the way.

  The orichalcum contraptions looked like nothing she’d seen before. Two legs, about as high as a man and twice as thick, bent back like the hind legs of a cat. Above the legs was a bowl-like indentation and some sort of metal cage. There were six of these devices lined up in a tidy row, and apparently Ingrid wasn’t the only one marveling at the sight. Quite a crowd had gathered, soldiers and civilians both. She imagined Cy was somewhere in the melee.

  “Huh. I read about those in a mechanical journal some months ago. Some new creation by Augustinian, an automaton unit controlled by one or two pilots sitting in the top. It’s like a more mobile Durendal. The legs can run fast as a horse and jump over canals. Eventually, they are supposed to have arms with guns controlled by the pilots.” He shook his head. “Damn, but those machines do look shiny and new. They must plan to try these out on the strikers.”

  Try them out. That painted a terrible picture in red. “Augustinian. Did Cy’s sister work on these?”

  “Anything brilliant that developed there over the past ten years, you can bet money that Maggie had some role.”

  What would go through Cy’s mind as he passed by those automatons? Would he return, mired in grief again at the reminder of his twin sister’s choices?

  “I don’t want to be around when the UP decides to test the firepower of those machines.” Ingrid stood.

  Fenris stilled, his face thoughtful. “You know, normally I’d like to witness such a demonstration, but in consideration of our recent encounters with the UP, I must agree with you this once. Let’s get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”

  Cy returned, briefly, with assorted goods, then headed out again. With Fenris immersed in maintenance, Ingrid sat on her rack and read through the stack of newspapers he had brought.

  A short while later, Cy marched back on board and bustled about the ship putting parcels away. She watched him, biding her time to speak, as he was clearly lost in thought. He finally stopped near berthing and leaned on the wall, saying nothing. She took that as her cue.

  “The only news of interest I’ve found is a growing anti-Russian sentiment because of the attack on the Seattle Auxiliary. There’s even an editorial from Portland that calls for the UP to send more troops to Manchukuo to reinforce Japan’s claims there. Otherwise, the mainland news remains the same. The same photograph of Excalibur is repeated five times over.”

  He stared to one side, frowning, but otherwise showed no reaction.

  “Cy? What are you pondering?”

  “Your legs.” His fingers tapped on the wall.

  “My legs?” she said, surprised. She had fully expected him to mention Maggie and those automatons.

  “We’ve been thinking about this all wrong. The human body’s a machine. We need to reinforce the natural movement of your lower legs. The rigs on your shoes don’t do enough.” He motioned to storage nearby, where he’d replaced the elastic attached on her boots. “When I saw those Bayards out there, how their legs can flex and move, all I could think is that I could replicate that on a smaller scale.” He spoke faster as he continued, his eyes gleaming.

  “Bayards? That’s the name for those contraptions?” At his nod, she grinned. “They’re named for Paladin Renaud’s magical horse in the old French stories, right? The steed that could expand to fit more riders.”

  “Why am I not surprised you’re well versed in horse mythology?” His smile was fond. “The brace should fit within your boot. Therefore, it must be light and thin.”

  “Five-plate orichalcum or less.” Fenris’s voice echoed from the engine room. He sounded as though he were speaking into an open duct. “But unless we’ve suddenly inherited a mine up in Baranov, we have no means to afford that.”

  “Five-plate?” she repeated.

  “Orichalcum is one of the hardest materials on earth, and damnably difficult to refine,” said Cy. “A forge requires substantial enchantments on its tools to work ori down to thirty-plate, which is the thickness of the Bug’s hull. That’s expensive enough. We scraped and saved for years to put our ship together. Single-plate is the stuff worn by the mikado. It’s lighter and thinner than most cloth, and still nigh impenetrable to bullets.”

  She sighed. Roosevelt had said he’d provide them funds, within reason. She suspected this expense would be too extravagant to qualify. Still, for a moment there, she had been caught up in Cy’s excitement.

  He crouched beside her. His giddiness had not diminished. “We should only need strategically placed plates from the arches of your feet up along your calves. We’re not encasing your entire body—”

  “Not that it’s a terrible idea. You do have a propensity for getting shot and otherwise injuring yourself in disastrous ways.” Metal clanged, and Fenris emerged from the engine room, his slender arms folded over his chest. Goggles granted him buglike eyes.

  “May I study your legs?” asked Cy. “I need to envision the plate placement.”

  Ingrid arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  Fenris cackled. “Congratulations, Ingrid. You now get to see Cy in the thick of creative mania. These moods strike about as often as Saint Nicholas makes a circuit around the world. When he came up with the Durendal design, he didn’t sleep for three days straight.”

  Cy didn’t even seem to hear. He lifted her skirt to knee level, his manner entirely clinical. He tapped along the length of her right calf to just above the knee, muttering beneath his breath. Ingrid watched with a sort of detached fascination.

  “Cy. Cy!” Fenris kicked him in the shoe. Cy blinked rapidly and gawked upward. “Listen to me. I have a hell of a lot of work to keep me busy through the night. You people need sleep.” He said this with an expression of disgust. “Ingrid, you take Cy. Find a hotel nearby that doesn’t look too flea-infested. Get him some paper and space to work. Use a tablecloth and some paint, if you need to. Just give him means to exorcise his creative demons.”

  That somehow penetrated the fog of Cy’s thoughts. “But you need help with the Bug, and more supplies’ll be delivered this afternoon—”

  “You will be utterly useless as help right now. Trust me, I speak from experience. Put the receipts in the pantry and I’ll verify we get what we ordered.”

  “The soldiers—” Cy started to speak.

  “Are he
re. If they want to capture us . . . well, here we are, too. Stuck. The Palmetto Bug is grounded for the time being.” Fenris held out his arms, hands brushing either side of the hall. “We can’t stroll out of here right now. I imagine the roads out of town abound in checkpoints where soldiers are inclined toward suspicion and violence. If we’re separated in town . . . well, at least we’re more inconvenient to catch.”

  “Thank you, as always, Fenris, for grounding us in the unpleasantness of reality,” said Ingrid.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Cy frowned as he stared at her feet.

  Fenris shook his head in exasperation. “Watch out for him in the streets. He’s likely to walk into traffic while muttering to himself.” He laughed, a rare, light sound. “Thank God I get to foist the parenting duties on someone else for once.”

  Ingrid had come to know Cy intimately in the weeks of their acquaintance. She’d seen him terrified witless when he walked with her along the bottom of San Francisco Bay, and overwhelmed with grief after finding out dire news of his parents, and enraptured with her body as they explored each other during their peaceful interlude in Seattle.

  Now she observed him the way a cryptozoologist might analyze some rare fantastic encountered in the wild for the first time in a generation.

  “You’re rather like those rainbow-maned flying unicorns that are rumored to exist on banks of cumulus clouds high above the Pacific Ocean.” Ingrid pressed her chin to her forearms as she leaned forward on Cy’s makeshift workstation.

  They had traversed several blocks to find a hotel that did not feature women of a certain occupation at the front door ready to greet passersby, and the quarters they’d found consisted of no more than a bed squeezed into the same space as a screened-off lavatory. There was no table to be found, and Cy needed a table. Fortunately, the mattress sat upon a large wooden box. The mattress now occupied the floor, its edges curled up against the wall and the bed frame, while Cy used his new table to ink out schematics on brown paper bought from the butcher next door.