The Guns Above

by Robyn Bennis

  The odds were still in the enemy’s favor, with Mistral over a thousand feet below them and more Vin ships on the way, but the sudden appearance of Ibis, combined with Mistral’s aggressive turn to engage them, proved sufficient to unnerve the attackers. They declined battle, coming about and returning to their column after exchanging only a few shots.

  Mistral rose to meet Ibis, and they slipped into the clouds side by side.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Captain Emery shouted across the gap, when the ships converged close enough for speaking trumpets.

  “Out fighting the goddamn war,” Josette shouted back. “Where have you been? Cloud-watching?”

  This elicited chuckling between Captain Emery and his first officer. Emery raised the speaking trumpet and said, “Is that the young Lord Hinkal behind you?”

  Josette glanced over her right shoulder, where Bernat and Martel were speaking to each other. “The very same,” she called back.

  “My thanks and compliments, Lord Hinkal,” Emery shouted. “If not for your warning about the Vin army, they’d have caught us with our pants around our ankles. But thanks to you, we have a chance.”

  Josette spent a moment rolling that statement around her head. She slowly lowered her speaking trumpet and turned around. Bernat’s eyes were wide, like a deer surprised in the forest. Lieutenant Martel took a step away from Bernat, as one might step gingerly away from a smoking bomb, and discovered a sudden, absorbing interest in the aneroid altimeter above his head. He reached up to tap it, then stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  “My memory may be faulty,” Josette said, “but I seem to recall that it was my warning.”

  Bernat looked to the side and cleared his throat. “I, ah, I do also seem to recall that, now that you bring it up.” He cleared his throat again. “I also recall your worries regarding the time it would take a warning to move through proper channels, so, ah … it’s possible that, before I boarded the ship, I hired the fastest horse and best rider in Durum, and it’s possible that he carried a substantial bribe to the staff of the nearest semaphore station, and it’s possible that, in appreciation of that gratuity, they sent a message of highest priority to friends of mine in several cities to the north, where I thought my uncle might be quartering. I may have offered a rather generous reward if they found my uncle and delivered a certain warning, that may or may not have said something about a Vin horde practically at the gates of Durum. It’s possible that this expedited our army’s response to the crisis.”

  She didn’t answer. She only stared at him as his gaze wandered about the deck from place to place—everywhere but her—and waited for more details to fall from his mouth.

  He finally met her eyes. “This report may have been grossly exaggerated, as to the number, proximity, and certainty of the enemy forces, but I do recall very firmly that I decided not to make an account of the hundreds of Vin war elephants I imagined were among their number. In the interest of credibility.” Unable to sustain the force of her glare for long, his eyes wandered back to the deck. “A shame, really. I had a masterful line about ‘a plenitude of adamantine beasts, stampeding together in gargantuan fury, to the abominable trumpeting chorus of their unmanning battle cry.’ It was really quite moving.”

  She waited a little while longer, but no further details fell out.

  “Is everything all right over there?” Captain Emery called from the Ibis.

  She turned, nodded, and made a thumbs-up gesture.

  “I … I’m sorry,” Bernat said.

  “For what?” She gave him an approving nod. “You did well, Bernie. As Captain Emery said, you gave us a chance.”

  A wave of relief seemed to pass through him. “So, you’re not going to throw me overboard?”

  “Oh, I’m certainly going to throw you overboard,” she said, “but on your way down, I want you to know that you have my admiration.”

  He smiled, put his hand over his heart, and said, “I will hit the ground a contented man.”

  Josette turned and lifted her speaking trumpet. She shouted to the Ibis, “He says you’re too kind, Captain.”

  Emery looked at his first officer, who handed him a stack of papers. “Oh yes, I have orders to relay to you, Captain Dupre. Order dated three days ago: ‘Mistral return to Arle.’ Order dated two days ago: ‘Mistral return to Arle.’ Order dated yesterday … well, they go on like that. The most recent ones are from General Fieren himself.”

  Now it was Josette’s turn to look like a frightened deer. She lowered her speaking trumpet and said, “He’s going to take my ship away.”

  14

  WHEN THEY MOORED at Arle, the general’s aide was waiting for them in the shed. “That’ll be the constable, here to keep me from making a dash for it,” Josette said to Martel. “You may have to see to the repairs yourself.”

  “Don’t worry, sir,” Martel said. “I’ll keep the hands at it until the work is done.”

  She considered it. “No. Let the yardsmen do the work. The crew are going to have a hot day tomorrow. Let them get some rest.”

  Martel, once he’d recovered from his surprise, said, “Yes, sir, but I’m not sure how much rest they’ll get.”

  Her only answer was a mild smirk.

  “Lieutenant Dupre,” Captain Katsura said, hailing her from the shed floor. “General Fieren requests the honor of your presence.”

  She leaned over the hurricane deck railing and called back, “We’re just about to offload our wounded, sir. I’ll be down directly after that, unless the general is in such a hurry that he’d have them linger on the ship, rather than suffer a delay to his schedule.”

  “He’s a compassionate man, Lieutenant, to be sure. By all means, see to your casualties.”

  Private Bashir was offloaded and sent to the hospital on a stretcher, for there wasn’t a cart to be had on the entire base. They watched him go, babbling in a hazy delirium, and then Katsura led Josette and Bernat to a luxurious open carriage, which carried them out to the streets of Arle. The city was not yet in a complete panic over the second Vin army to threaten it this month, but a sense of anxiety and dread pervaded the air, and the usually bustling streets were quiet. Indeed, Josette appeared to be riding in the only carriage left in the city, which struck her as particularly immoderate when they rode past the stretcher-bearers still laboring toward the hospital.

  Captain Katsura smiled at Josette and said, “That reminds me. I must congratulate you on your aerial victories.”

  It took Josette a moment to remember what he was talking about. As recent as they were, those victories seemed to belong to a different person. “Thank you,” she said distantly.

  “Somehow,” Katsura said, infusing the word with accusation, “the papers obtained an account of them, and your ever-growing exploits have been the talk of the Garnian rabble. You hit just the right note for a heroic victory. Not enough casualties to make it another bloodbath, but not so few that it looked easy. Masterful work.”

  She put her elbow on the carriage rail and her chin on her fist as she watched the streets go by. “It wasn’t easy to get it right, sir. In the end, I had to shoot Private Kiffer myself, to make the numbers come out.”

  That shut Katsura up, and he was remarkably quiet for the rest of the journey. A few times, she caught him studying her face, as if he harbored some doubt that she’d been joking.

  The carriage came to a halt in front of the Arle Museum of Art and Antiquities. Josette groaned when she saw it.

  Katsura led them inside, straight through the galleries and into a back hall. He stopped in front of a door. “If you’ll wait here,” he said, “the general will be with you in a moment.” He stepped through and into a small private viewing gallery, locking the door behind him.

  They waited a great deal longer than a moment. An entire hour passed, during which staff officers came and went, and Katsura stuck his head out once to beg their patience. The only conversation that passed between Josette and Bernat was her occasiona
l mutter of, “He’s going to take my damn ship away,” to which Bernat could only respond with comforting platitudes.

  Another hour passed with no conversation at all, albeit with the frequent exchange of troubled glances. Staff officers continued to come and go, in ones and twos and threes.

  In the third hour, Bernat first sat and then lay upon the tile floor. Josette, accustomed to long watches spent on her feet, remained standing, taking only short walks as needed, to keep the blood flowing in her legs.

  Halfway through the fourth hour, Katsura stuck his head through the door. “It’ll only be another minute,” he said. “The general is terribly sorry, but he has so much to do, what with the Vins coming.”

  Bernat only stared at the ceiling. “The Vins,” he said, his tone detached and distant. “I think I remember them, from my life before the museum.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” was all Josette said.

  After five full hours had passed, Josette was finally invited in. She entered to find General Fieren sitting at an old desk and Katsura standing next to it. On the wall hung a large painting of a man being stripped naked and stabbed by an angry mob. According to the plaque, the painting was titled The Death of Gesshin Grassus, Champion of the Plebeians.

  Subtle, she thought.

  “Ah, Lieutenant,” General Fieren said, without looking up from his papers. “Thank you for waiting.”

  She saluted and stood at attention, saying nothing.

  “You’ve had an eventful little cruise.” General Fieren looked up from a slim, leather-bound book that she recognized as Mistral’s log. One of the officers coming and going must have had it in a satchel. “You engaged two enemy airships,” the general said, “came under fire from several more, dashed into Vinzhalian territory to scout Kamenka, and reconnoitered a column.” His voice pitched up at the end of every item in a lilt of admiration. “You bombed an artillery battery, strafed troops escalading the wall at Durum. You destroyed two bridges, four granaries, and a mill.” He gave his mustache a flick and nodded his head in appreciation.

  Josette stood perfectly still, looking straight ahead and waiting for the hammer to drop.

  “Only one thing troubles me,” General Fieren said, his chair creaking as he leaned forward. “And it’s this: I can’t, for the life of me, remember seeing orders for any of that.” He looked at his aide-de-camp. “Do you recall seeing orders for any of that, Gaston?”

  “No, sir.”

  The chair creaked again as he leaned back. “That’s an odd thing, indeed. Lieutenant Dupre, you did receive orders instructing you to take those actions, didn’t you?”

  Josette didn’t flinch. “No, sir.”

  She counted two beats before General Fieren exploded, right on schedule, rising from his chair so quickly that it tipped over and hit the floor behind him. He slammed his hands on the table and bent across it, shouting, “Then what in the holy hell do you think you were doing out there, woman?”

  “Commanding an airship, sir,” she said without pause.

  “And you think that gives you the right to go off and do whatever the hell you please?”

  “Absent instructions to the contrary, sir, and within the scope of my orders, I understand that it does.”

  General Fieren was not impressed. “You destroyed two Garnian bridges, Lieutenant. Do you know what it costs to rebuild two bridges?”

  “I’d have to ask the Vins, sir. I expect they’re the ones rebuilding them.”

  “Oh, very droll, Lieutenant. And you were ordered to return to Arle several times before you complied. Gaston, how many times was Lieutenant Dupre ordered to return to Arle?”

  “Six, sir.”

  “Six,” he said. “Six times. Lieutenant Dupre, I’m sorry if the needs of the army were an inconvenience to your whirlwind tour of western Vinzhalia, but I cannot countenance blatant disregard for orders.”

  “Sir, as my logs indicate, I responded promptly upon receipt of those orders, proceeding with all practical speed to Arle.”

  “Received them from…” General Fieren began, and then snapped his fingers. “Gaston, which semaphore station relayed our orders to Mistral?”

  “You’re mistaken, sir,” Captain Katsura said. “The orders were relayed by the airship Ibis.”

  The general frowned. “How odd. I was under the impression that such orders were usually relayed by semaphore. Gaston, did we neglect to send Mistral her orders by semaphore?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How very, very odd. It’s almost as if Mistral’s captain was deliberately avoiding contact with our semaphore stations, in order to extend her little jaunt across the countryside, and only through a chance encounter with another airship was she brought to heel.”

  Josette had remained quiet through most of this, knowing that it was all a play, and her character didn’t have any lines. But here she spoke up. “It was not a chance encounter, sir.”

  The general arched an eyebrow.

  “Mistral and Ibis were on intersecting courses, sir.”

  “You know that for a fact?” the general asked.

  Josette did not know it for a fact, but she had very little to lose by guessing. “Yes, sir. Ibis was ordered to destroy the same string of bridges, granaries, and mills that Mistral was engaged in destroying on our way south. Thus, the two ships were bound to sight each other, visibility permitting.”

  “Ibis’s mission is not your concern, Lieutenant, and I will not tolerate another whit of your smarm or insolence.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In addition to those transgressions,” he said, closing the logbook and picking up a stack of papers that looked curiously like the thin parchment used aboard airships, “you neglected to set your auxiliary officer and female crewmen safely down before commencing battle, failed to complete your ship’s aerial trials, wantonly endangered your ship and crew, and ordered unauthorized modifications to reduce first the length and then the number of airscrews.”

  The entire list was an absurd collection of puffery and technicalities, but the last item she simply could not abide. “Those modifications increased Mistral’s top speed by six knots, sir.”

  General Fieren laughed. This was not the mimed laugh of his earlier theater, but a genuine, hearty belly laugh that set his mustache to quivering. “Are you really going to stand here and tell me, to my face, that you increased your ship’s speed by taking airscrews away?”

  “It’s all in my logs, sir.”

  “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. He laughed again and turned to Katsura. “Taking away its airscrews makes an airship go faster. Did you know that, Gaston?”

  Even the stalwart Katsura laughed. “If only she’d removed the remaining four, sir, perhaps her ship would have broken an airspeed record.”

  The general laughed and shot a patronizing look at Josette. “Thank you for your time, Lieutenant. If you’ll wait in the hallway, I’ll have new orders for you shortly. Oh, and do send Bernie in.”

  She saluted and turned for the door.

  On her way to it, she heard the general ask Katsura, “Think there’s anywhere for her?”

  The aide replied, “Outposts in the fever swamps always need quartermasters and whores. We’ll be killing two birds with one stone.”

  She stepped into the hall, closed the door behind her, and promptly collapsed, her legs turning to jelly.

  * * *

  BERNAT CAUGHT HER as she fell.

  He almost asked what happened, before he realized what a stupid question it was. Instead, he simply helped her back to her feet. By the time she could stand upright again, every trace of despair had been wiped from her, and she bore the same stolid, stone-faced expression she wore under fire. “He had a letter from someone,” she said, looking him hard in the eye.

  “Ah,” was all he said.

  “You sent it?”

  He swallowed. “I was going to get it back when we landed again in Durum, but…” He looked at the
floor. “I was really hoping it hadn’t gone out, or was still in transit. Why does the mail only move quickly when you don’t want it to?”

  Her cold face hadn’t warmed. “In the normal course of events, I imagine it would have been stuck in Arle for a week, waiting to be forwarded along to General Fieren. As it happened, Fieren came to it.”

  “Ah,” he said again.

  “Do enjoy whatever reward you’ve earned for this. He wants to see you, and I’ll likely kill you when he’s done.” Even to Bernat’s honed eye, she showed no sign of jesting.

  “Sounds fair,” he said.

  His uncle stood waiting for him inside, and gripped his hand in a hearty shake as soon as he entered. “Do close the door, Bernie.”

  Bernat did so, saying, “Hello, Uncle. What a lovely painting.”

  His uncle turned to admire it. “You like it?” he asked. “Gaston, inform the museum that I’m buying this painting, and have it sent to wherever Bernie is staying. Would you like some tea, Bernie? Gaston, fetch Bernie some tea.”

  Gaston was sitting at the desk in front of the painting, writing something out. He began to rise, but Bernat stopped him, saying, “That’s quite all right. I already drank my own urine while waiting in the hall.”

  His uncle laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Terribly sorry about the wait, Bernie, but it couldn’t be helped. I would have seen you earlier, if it was at all possible.”

  “Naturally,” Bernat said. “I’m sure the invasion has set everything on its end around here.”

  “Quite, quite,” his uncle said, changing to a more serious tone. “We have no shortage of problems.”

  “Is that so? I recently learned an interesting way of dealing with problems, Uncle.”

  “Oh?”

  He grinned, sly and assured. “You shoot them.”

  His uncle laughed. “Quite right, Bernie. Quite right. Though there are a few problems that can’t be shot.” He took the top paper from a stack on the desk and looked it over. “Such as this band of leaderless militia. They’re unattached men from the surrounding counties, mostly. We formed them into a scratch regiment, but we need a colonel to lead them. Someone with noble blood, you know. The men don’t respect anyone else.” He held the paper out to Bernat. “So what do you say, Bernie? Are you up to it?”