by Beth Cato
“Your grandmother? Her?”
“She told me the damage was permanent. Cy and Fenris’ve helped me find ways to adapt.”
“They would. I’m glad you found more family, Ing. Mr. Kealoha would have been thrilled—”
“I met his wife. She helped us. She was just as sweet as we always expected she’d be.”
Raw joy lit Lee’s face. Mr. Kealoha had been the only other warden who treated Lee with kindness and respect—as a human being. “I’m so glad, I—”
“Someone is coming!” barked Captain Sutcliff. Ingrid gripped Lee’s arm, her other fingers pressed to his mouth. “We cannot stay out here. More people are converging.”
Ingrid pushed an energy bubble around them and forced it to hide their sound. She let her hands fall to the ground as she pushed herself up. “We have to move. I can make us invisible, but—”
“No. You can’t risk damaging yourself more.” He stood, flinging his arms around her waist. “Which way was Cy going?”
“Engine room. That’s where we hope to find Maggie.”
“We haven’t been able to break in there. Someone is alive in there—or was. Go that way, to the big corridor.” He jerked his head to the left. “I’ll try to guide my people the other way. You get his sister and get out. I can only do so much. Some of the men here . . .”
“I understand.” They’d spoken before about factions within the refugees, and she could imagine her efforts to help save Lee in Seattle had made him look all the more untrustworthy.
Sutcliff positioned himself behind Lee and urgently waved her forward. The shield dissipated. She gave Lee a final squeeze then she let go, their hands meeting for a brief moment as they moved in opposite directions. Ingrid determinedly forced her tears back. It physically hurt to be separated from him so quickly.
“To this side,” Sutcliff said. “Stay still. Perhaps you won’t need to use more energy to hide.”
She nodded, too close to sobs to dare speak. She stood with a crate at her back. Around the corner, she heard Lee speak softly in Chinese. Another man answered, then another. Ingrid ached to peer around the corner, to have one last glance of Lee, but Sutcliff’s hard gaze pinned her in place. A minute passed. Two.
Sutcliff’s posture softened. “How are your legs now?”
“Better now that I’m standing.”
His nod was crisp. “Good. Move out.”
She followed him at a jog, backpack rustling, the Green Dragon Crescent Blade bouncing against her thighs.
Oh, dear God. The guandao.
“I didn’t give him the Crescent Blade!” She spun around in a panic.
“Ingrid. You can’t go back. He’s with the others—”
“But I must hand it over! Everything depends on it!” Despair caused her to waver in place. The qilin had trusted her. Mr. Sakaguchi had trusted her. “I have it right here. Damn it, the blade was right between us as we hugged.”
Captain Sutcliff stood before her, spectral hands on her shoulders. She convulsed in a vicious shiver. “The moment is gone. Follow me.” His voice contained both military authority and compassion. With a final glance back, she followed him, her jaw taut with self-directed rage.
Had her carelessness doomed not only the mission, but Lee’s very purpose in life?
“Don’t blame yourself alone. I, too, should have remembered the guandao.” Sutcliff spoke without meeting her eyes. “Do not regret the reunion you just experienced. Life is too fragile, too precious. The love you two share . . .” Grief rattled his voice. “Don’t waste time on regret. You may see him again before we leave.”
“I hope so.” She prayed so, with all her being.
They wound their way around more freight, eventually reaching the corridor. Unlike the hold, it was fully lit. “This is too exposed,” Sutcliff muttered. He motioned her through an open doorway to her left.
Ingrid paused in the doorway, stunned by the size of the room. She breathed in the intense greenery of Excalibur’s garden as she moved forward among the rows and towers of plants. Her wonder at the place pushed some of the despair from her mind.
She recalled seeing the gardens briefly in the reel footage, but those few seconds of film had done the scope of it no justice. The greenhouse had to be a quarter mile in length. She couldn’t see exactly where it ended. Towers of greenery seemed to stretch on forever. She had never seen plants growing up in this manner—not in a contained environment—with pillars hosting cups of plants in tiers stretching up to the ceiling. It put her in mind of the thick growths of vines on Hawaii Island.
Rail tracks lined the floor and ceiling along each row. Some devices were parked along these tracks. By the long copper sprouts and attached tanks, she could only imagine them to be part of an automated watering system. She moved deeper into the rows, still traveling parallel to the corridor she left behind.
“At the cinema, the footage said the soldiers aboard could survive for months in the self-contained environment aboard.” She stroked a growing yellow squash as she moved past.
“Survive, perhaps, but not happily,” said Sutcliff. “American men require meat.”
“I bet they have chickens elsewhere on board, and the ability to process compost.” She reached a kind of booth set up in the middle of a partitioned section—perhaps an office for the overseer. The room featured two windows, a desk and chair, and a simple lavatory. The wall over the desk had exactly what she needed, though—a map. She pulled it from its nail and sat on the floor to study. Her calf muscles spasmed, but she didn’t dare take off her boots and braces.
“This door will take you toward the engine room,” Sutcliff said, pointing.
She took in the multiple levels of the station, the massive berthing areas, the presence of several kitchens across different floors, the placement of munitions at loading areas on every level. The sheer scope of the flying fortress boggled her mind. How had the construction of its segments been completed in such secrecy over the past year? How had it been assembled with nary a peep reaching the public?
Had all of those menial workers been killed to keep the word mum?
Magnolia Augustus was brilliant to conceive such a citadel and to make it fly. Brilliant, yet a figure of terror. For Cy’s sake, she hoped Maggie was alive and sealed away in the engine room. For all of humanity’s sake, Ingrid hoped that Maggie could be reasoned with to sabotage or otherwise work against Excalibur, and to redirect her imagination to other endeavors.
“I need to intercept Cy in the engine room or the corridor there.” She gnawed on her chapped lip. “I hope that Fenris has a gun ready. Lee will try to keep the men inside, but . . .”
“Mr. Braun is resourceful, and the sylphs are devoted to him, even without you present to moderate.”
Ingrid nodded, recalling words Cy had uttered to her amid the bedlam of Seattle. Control what you can. “We need to find Cy and Maggie before that fleet arrives.”
Sutcliff offered a crisp nod of support. “You must maintain hope.”
That brought to mind another piece of advice from Seattle: Hope is a kind of gangrene. Ingrid grimaced as she stood.
She encountered more dead men and evidence of illness as she worked toward the corridor again. On the map, she had seen where the hospital was on board, and fervently hoped she had no cause to go there. It must be a morgue by now.
Captain Sutcliff hurried ahead of her, a hand on the useless gun at his waist. He motioned her to lurk behind a pillar of plants as he advanced to the central hallway about ten feet away.
“I hear multiple footsteps,” he said, motioning her lower.
That’s when Ingrid smelled it. That musk. That goddamned, horrible musk, the stench of her nightmares. Ambassador Blum.
This wasn’t a trace whiff, like that of Blum’s insidious scouts.
Blum was here. She was already here in the citadel.
The breath seized in Ingrid’s lungs as she dropped flat to the ground, a hand to her thigh and the burned ward. She
stopped herself from trying to will more magic into the mark. She couldn’t. Her exertion in creating that enchantment had already irreparably damaged her body. The ward was working; Grandmother had said so. It would surely work at close proximity, too.
Faith. Ingrid must have faith.
Captain Sutcliff. He remained in the open. She seized the cold tendrils that stretched between them and reeled him toward her. He dug in, looking back at her with indignant shock.
“What—”
“Shh!” she said, loud as she dared. “Hide!”
He didn’t fight her further. Seconds later, he was beside her, an ethereal form on hands and knees amid dangling strawberry vines with crisp white buds. “What is it?” he whispered.
The guandao’s leather bag lay uncomfortably between her body and the floor, but she didn’t try to raise her body. The heat of the ancient weapon offered a strange kind of comfort.
“Her. She’s here. I smell her. She can see and hear ghosts. She’s interrogated them before.”
Ingrid wouldn’t have thought it was possible for the ghost to grow more pale, but he did. “God help us,” he whispered. His arms quivered as he bowed his head to face the floor.
Sutcliff’s terror did not ease her fears, but his presence did prevent her from falling into the deep pit of her nightmarish memories again. She had to be strong for him—to protect him. Protect the ghost of the man who was once her sworn enemy. She would have erupted in hysterical laughter, if she could.
“You’re bound to me. I will fight for you,” Ingrid murmured.
He lifted his head, and in a blink, the ghost in A&A battle attire was gone. Ingrid had to clamp her hand over her lips to choke back a cry of shock at the sudden change. Instead of the Sutcliff she knew, a child with tousled blond hair and wide, blue eyes stared at her. “You’ll keep the monster away?”
Unable to speak, she nodded. Then, just as quickly, the adult Sutcliff returned, though his eyes remained much the same, blue and terrified. Translucent tears shone against translucent pupils.
What was it he knew or sensed about Blum that evoked such primal terror? His worries about Blum seemed to go far beyond concern for the men in his command. Sutcliff had seen monsters.
Ingrid thrust her hand into her pocket. Kermanite crunched in her grip like dried bread.
Taking a steadying breath, she focused on custom-building a shield around both of them. This shield would amplify their hearing but obscure their noise; she knew all too well that Blum had the sensitive ears of a fox, even in her human forms.
“We’re shielded. Whisper. The effort to conceal noises will drain me.”
“Are we invisible as well?” he asked.
She shook her head. “That would deplete me too quickly.”
Sutcliff nodded, tilting his head. “Do you hear that?”
She did. Her amplification had worked. The sound of two pairs of footsteps rang out clearly, along with a murmured male voice. Cy’s voice.
He drew closer . . . and Ambassador Blum was following him.
Chapter 23
Ingrid’s first instinct was to scream at Cy to run. Instead, she rocked in place and mouthed no, no, no to an anxious rhythm, her heartbeat at a gallop. If she screamed, she’d give away her location as well as Cy’s. And if Blum was already stalking him, his effort to run away would mean nothing. She was preternaturally fast. Shooting at her meant nothing either, not with the protection of the ambassadorial ring.
Ingrid’s hand went to the leather bag tied to her belt. She had to find Lee again.
Blum’s foulness clogged Ingrid’s senses like the stench of rotting bodies, but as much as she wanted to block it out, it was the only way she could track Blum’s location.
“I keep wanting to look at you, Maggie. It’s a miracle you’re alive.” Cy spoke at a whisper from what had to be fifty or seventy feet away and through a wall. Through the amplification of Ingrid’s magic, he sounded as if he were there next to them. It took a moment for his words to register, and then Ingrid realized—he was talking to Maggie! She was alive!
But why were they walking toward the hold? That place was a trap.
“A miracle? I suppose it is—”
“You suppose!” Cy teased. Ingrid could imagine the joy and relief on his face, despite the lingering dangers. She muffled a moan against her hand. He had no idea Blum was so close to them.
“My sole focus has been keeping this thing afloat, but it’s been hard. It’s been lonesome. Everyone dying around me . . .” The words came across as soft and stilted.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” Concern rang through his voice.
Captain Sutcliff motioned for Ingrid’s attention. “We can follow this row of plants running parallel to the hallway and continue to listen. Can you ascertain where the fox is?” He moved forward, stooped over.
Ingrid followed. “Only that she’s out there, somewhere near them. Obviously, Cy hasn’t seen her, wary as he is.” She had to figure out some way to save him.
“She will track him to find you,” Sutcliff said.
“Yes,” Ingrid whispered. “And after that, he’s disposable.”
“We can talk about it more later,” Maggie murmured. “Right now I just hope we find your lady friend soon. Maybe she’ll be along this corridor. Save us a search of the hold.”
“Lord, I hope so. I wish we weren’t out here at all, Maggs. The engine room would be the best place to wait—”
“I’m not staying locked in there anymore.” Maggie’s voice was shrill, dangerously high-pitched.
“Shh, Maggie. Stop. I thought I heard something.”
Ingrid and Captain Sutcliff stopped, too, though no sound had escaped from them. Her calf ached, reminding her that it was developing a hell of a bruise. Long seconds passed. Finally, Cy resumed his walk. The presence of Blum loomed, close as his shadow.
“I haven’t had anyone to speak to for days, other than those Chinese banging at the door—as if I’d let them in! I—”
Ingrid couldn’t understand why Maggie was talking so much, even at a whisper. Didn’t she comprehend the danger? She might not have firsthand experience in situations like this, but Cy had said many a time that she was brilliant.
“Maggie, we’ll talk later.” He sounded exasperated by her behavior, too. “Hold’s coming up.”
Strategy. Ingrid needed a strategy.
She had more kermanite in her pack, and she might need every nugget if she was going to try to protect three people and a ghost all the way across the hold. Her shield could block Blum, too, but leading the fox straight to the Bug seemed like a poor idea.
Maybe they could shove Blum off the deck. Surely her ring couldn’t save her from falling thousands of feet.
If only Ingrid had more kermanite! And then she realized, she did have more kermanite at hand. The biggest known piece in the world.
“Captain, how far are we from the stolen kermanite?”
He glanced back, surprise evident on his face. Blum’s presence had horrified him to such an extent that he’d forgotten about his own mission. “The rock is located deep inside the hold. Going that route would require us to abandon Mr. Jennings and his sister.”
“I can find them again, with my hearing enhanced like this.” It took everything in her to resolve to abandon Cy in this moment, but Ingrid needed more power if she was to save him. Somehow.
Sutcliff considered her. “I want you to be careful.” His voice was strangely soft. “I don’t want this action to place you under additional duress.”
“Look where we are, Captain. I’m under exceptional duress already.”
“You know very well what I mean. I can’t cross to the hereafter if I believe that your contact with the kermanite will kill you.”
Ingrid bowed her head. “I don’t want to die either. I want . . .” A life with Cy, and Fenris, and Lee, and Mr. Sakaguchi, and voracious little sylphs, and strange contraptions all around, and days gloriously
gray and misty.
He seemed to sense what she was feeling, and it was enough to reassure him. “Follow me.” Captain Sutcliff cut away from their parallel track, taking them farther into the greenhouse. Ingrid released the shield around them. Her skin was almost normal temperature. They wound through the rows, past two bodies, and to a door to another hallway. The echo of the door’s closure was slight, but they froze in the shadows for a moment to see if anyone stirred nearby.
At this far side of the garden, they could no longer hear Cy and Maggie. Guilt gnawed at Ingrid. She kept glancing back that way, wondering.
Sutcliff glanced back, too. “This is a strategic retreat. You’re not abandoning him.”
“I know.” Her whisper was hoarse. “Or so I am telling myself.” The only comfort came in leaving Blum behind. Ingrid breathed deeply, trying to cleanse her lungs and her spirit.
They entered the hold again from a far different angle, and to an area packed with far more crates and barrels. By the burned designations on the freight, most of the parcels included weaponry: guns, ammunition, pouches, parts.
They approached another row of Durendals, again minus their main guns. Ingrid did a double take.
“Before, when we were fired upon, you mentioned the tank was fake. These are fakes, too.”
Like the guns outside, they were masterful frauds. The tanks had full treads, turrets, and outer rails for additional troop transport. But a look inside the gaping hole of the gun showed it to be an empty shell.
“Yes. I have yet to see a genuine Durendal aboard.”
“Are these intended for display somewhere?” She approached one of the boxes labeled as rifles. A peep between the wooden slats revealed the box to be empty. She checked more and more around her. Empty, empty, empty.
“I think much of the freight in the hold merely set a stage for visiting cinematographers,” murmured Sutcliff, shaking his head. “I anticipated most of the Excalibur’s supplies to come aboard in California, but I didn’t expect this. I hope that the hospital stores weren’t treated with such disregard as well.”
