The Iron Thorn

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Alouette simpered at his attention. “I’ll have to see if I can do something about that. I like my patients comfortable.”

  I stood up and grabbed the hatch release Dean had used, yanking at it with force that I really wanted to put into slapping that too-innocent smile off of Alouette. A girl—a woman—like her wouldn’t give Cal the time of day if we were in Lovecraft. But if he couldn’t see through her act, then it was his own fault. I stepped out. The wind grabbed my breath and sucked it away into the void.

  A narrow ribbon of walkway ran the length of the Belle, leading to a small lip of deck underneath the turbines at the rear, in a dead spot for wind and drag. Dean stood hunched inside his coat at the aft, smoke trailing behind the airship like a banner. I let the hatch fall shut behind me with a coffin clang.

  “Airsick?” Dean’s breath joined his exhaled smoke, a ghost floating next to him before it blew away.

  “Something like that,” I said over the roar of wind and turbine. “Alouette certainly is … friendly.”

  “She’s a piece of work.” Dean shook his head. “Hellcat in a fight. Could drink an Irish sailor under the table.”

  “You’d know.” My words came out tinged with acid, for reasons I couldn’t entirely identify. “You and she have all the history.”

  Dean chuffed. “Can’t put much past you, Miss Aoife.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t have to work very hard on that one. She’s been staring a hole through you since we got on board.”

  “Like I said,” Dean muttered. “Hellcat.”

  “How much farther?” I crossed my arms and pouted, as if I were six years old. I felt like stamping my feet and demanding that Alouette keep away from my friends. Felt out of control. Spinning, spiraling, dancing …

  No. I began to recite a Fibonacci sequence in my head and clung to Dean’s voice and to the cold fingers of the wind against my cheeks. Keeping order. Keeping calm. Shutting the door on the madness that made my blood boil.

  “To Arkham? Two hours, maybe three.” Dean flicked his glowing cigarette over the rail and I watched it sail into the darkness.

  I shivered. “The sooner, the better. I don’t think I like being this far off the ground after all.” Truly, I didn’t like being shown as the scared schoolgirl next to Alouette and her crew. I already had enough presumptions to deal with back home. To be looked down on by heretics and shoved aside by Cal at the slightest hint of attention was entirely too much.

  “I like it.” Dean shoved his hands into his armpits for warmth. “It’s free air up here. Nobody pointing and saying who’s a heretic and who’s a Rationalist. No Proctors. Just flying.”

  I turned to go inside. “I’d better go check on Cal. Make sure he hasn’t agreed to run off and marry Alouette.”

  “She has that effect on a man, sure.” Dean whistled. “Poor old Cal has no chance.”

  “He’s never even had the opportunity before now,” I grumbled. Dean searched out a comb in his pockets and fixed his hair against the wind.

  “I deduced.” He followed me through the hatch and shut it behind him. “Come on. You want to see the rest of the Belle? Take your mind off Cal?”

  I nodded. If Cal was going to behave like a dolt, I didn’t need to concern myself. And who knew when I’d be on an airship again? I should make it count. “Very much so.”

  Dean led me back inside, through the hold and down a narrow corridor to the aft, where the whirring of the turbine blades vibrated my back teeth. “Bunk room.” He pointed out a chrome door with an empty brass nameplate, the slot for a card held in the talons of a rigid-winged eagle.

  I ran my hand down the chevron wings stamped under the nameplate, the scarred spot where a ship’s name and operating number had been burned off with a torch. “This ship was someone else before it was the Belle?”

  Dean nodded. “She was an enemy rig in the war,” he offered. “Officer transport, from what Harry told me. He and his navy boys crashed outside of Bern in ’forty-four and hijacked it from a squad of enemy officers and their necrodemons.”

  I jerked my hand back to my side.

  Dean examined me, leaning in a bit. “You look a little green, kiddo,” he said. “Sure you’re not airsick?”

  “Necrodemons …,” I murmured. “Not very pleasant …”

  “Yep,” Dean said, shaking his head. “But they’re long gone, miss. Not going to jump out and bite you.” He twisted the eagle insignia upside down and chuckled.

  “It’s not that,” I whispered. “I mean, I’m not afraid of necrodemons.” I could become a necrodemon, if the virus took hold of me. I could be worse than anything that had flown over Europe in the ship that would become the Belle. “It’s just a bit close to home,” I told Dean, and cut him off by pointing at a shut hatch. “Show me something else. I don’t want to talk about the necrovirus any longer.”

  Dean opened his mouth like he wanted to pry, but then shut it again and flipped a hand. “That’s the aether room. Where they do communications and nav and the like. Just a bunch of tubes and instruments. Snoresville.”

  I bit my lip. Anything to take my mind off thoughts of my infection. “I’d still like to see.”

  “Suit yourself.” Dean shrugged. He opened the hatch to a much smaller space, and I gasped at the tangle of wires and shattered aether tubes, the burnt-parchment scent rolling out to smother my senses.

  “Is it …” I coughed and pulled out my handkerchief to hold over my face as noxious blue-white smoke blanketed us. “Is it supposed to …” The aethervox that Harry no doubt used for ship-to-ship was smashed beyond repair, just a slag heap of no use to anyone. Wires and char marks were flung to the four corners of the room, and the recorder roll, the drum covered in thin brass coating that recorded messages sent across the aether, had rolled away and bumped against my feet as the Belle banked. “This can’t be an accident.”

  Dean spun away from the hatch and ran for the cockpit. “Sure isn’t. That’s sabotage.”

  Jean-Marc let the shredded wires from the vox run through his fingers as if he were holding the last scraps of a broken treasure. “Fire ax, capitaine. They chewed it up and spat it out. Wondered why I wasn’t picking up no chatter from the aether broadcasts.”

  Captain Harry punched his fist into the bulkhead. A dent blossomed. “Merde. You see anything, boy?”

  Dean shook his head. “We were outside. I was showing Miss Aoife the ship when we found it. She’s never flown.”

  Harry turned his ruby goggles on me and I focused on the zigzag scar across his chin instead. “What about you, mademoiselle? You eyeball any black rat bastards taking steel to my ship?” His bellow made everyone, including Dean, flinch.

  “No, sir,” I whispered, not able to even look at his face.

  “You got enemies, girl?” Harry demanded. “You got a reason to go aliénée on my poor Belle?”

  My cheeks heated to boiling as his accusations crept too close to truth. “No, sir! I didn’t do this.”

  After a long stare, Captain Harry snorted. “Aye. Get back to the hold and stay put,” he ordered. “You too, Harrison.”

  I marched in lockstep with Dean back to the benches, relief warring with worry for a spot in my head. Alouette watched us through the sliver of open hatch to the cockpit, her fingers moving over the controls with their own will. Altitude and windspeed tilted and righted, and my insides with them. But the Belle couldn’t land at night without a ping from the radio tower in Arkham, could she? Couldn’t call for help. We’d had our eyes put out. In daytime, an airship could fly without a radio, but at night in the wind … I shuddered.

  Cal tugged on my sleeve. “What’s going on?”

  “Someone destroyed the aethervox,” I murmured. “Dean said it was sabotage.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me or Alouette,” he said. “She was right here talking with me about the city life until you two started hollering for the captain.”

  “I didn’t say your precious Alouette had anything to do
with this,” I growled. Cal darted a glance at Dean and then leaned in so that only I could hear.

  “Are we in danger, Aoife?”

  We were. I had the same certainty I got when I knew Professor Swan was springing a surprise quiz. “We’re fugitives from the Proctors, Cal,” I said aloud. “What do you think?”

  At that moment, Jean-Marc and Captain Harry stepped into the hold and I stood again. Jean-Marc held the recorder drum between his palms. Small clusters of nail taps paraded over the surface, the groupings in Mr. Morse’s code spelled out for posterity in the paper-thin brass. If we went down, someone would know what happened.

  Jean-Marc’s spider-fingers caressed the drum like a blind man searches for meaning on the surfaces of the world. “I got the last transmission, Capitaine.”

  Captain Harry’s lips tightened until they nearly disappeared. “Tell me.”

  “ ‘Fugitives on board. Bearing north-northwest, destination Arkham. Send reinforcements.’ ” Jean-Marc held the drum out to Harry. “Sent after we flew this night, boss. Someone on board, still on board.”

  I shot a look at Cal, but he was rapt, his eyes on the captain. He didn’t seem to share my alarm.

  Captain Harry’s massive hands changed to fists, so tight that his leather airman’s gloves popped their hand-stitched seams. “Thrice-damned Proctors. Voxed from my ship.”

  Dean stood up. “Are the Proctors wise to this flight?”

  I had the same question. If the Proctors knew where we were going, I might as well give myself up now. They’d be waiting when we landed in Arkham, and I’d be going somewhere that the Academy threatened us with when we got out of line.

  It didn’t seem real.

  “Harry,” Dean snapped. “Answer me—Proctors, or no?”

  Before Captain Harry could respond, a sound reverberated from the cockpit—the sound of a body striking glass. Alouette let out a shriek and her nails left a constellation of half-moons in the oxblood hide of her chair.

  We turned to the cockpit as one and met the glaring gaze of a raven, its mangled gears and brass-boned wings spread across a cobweb of broken glass.

  Beyond it, in the wind-tossed night sky, a dozen more sets of eyes sprang to life. I stared, unable for a moment to move, as if my heart and blood had turned to glass.

  “Ravens!” Jean-Marc squeaked. “Boss—”

  “It ain’t the ravens we got to worry about.” Captain Harry slotted himself into the pilot seat and pushed the throttles to full. “It’s their masters.”

  A whine cut the low growling of the Belle’s fans, the sound of gears brought to life by coiled inertia. A winding engine, used by some jitneys, sleek British beetles that hugged the road, and warplanes.

  Cal grabbed for me, but I evaded his hands deliberately and cycled the deck hatch, leaning over the rail to look toward the Belle’s six o’clock. Bouncing in the wake of the big ship like pilot fish, twin chrome gliders swooped like owls in the moonlight, matching the Belle’s speed.

  “Buggies!” I shouted at Dean as the wind stole my breath. We were speeding so fast it felt like all of my skin was being stripped away by the wind and cold. “P-51 Mustangs!” The snub-nosed shape and the fixed wing were unmistakable.

  The moon showed its face, gibbous as the eye of a Great Old One, and revealed to me twin black wings stamped on the Mustang’s noses.

  I froze, caught out in the moonlight. I could even see the pilots, black leather caps and black goggles shielding their faces from the punishing air. I could see the long guns swiveling, coming to bear on the corpulent bulk of the Belle’s gas balloon.

  Dean yanked me back through the hatch by my collar as the first line of lead cut loose from the Mustang’s guns. I fell against him, boneless for a moment, shock rendering me deadweight.

  “Your buddy got one thing right,” Dean said, righting me. “To Proctors, these cats are pirates. And pirates get shot down.”

  The Belle shook. Harry bellowed orders in French. Cal clutched his tie-down harness and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “What do we do, Dean?” I grabbed the nearest rail as another volley ripped through the night, bouncing the Belle as if it were a toy.

  “Ride it out. Or ride it down.” Dean grabbed my arm and dropped me into the seat next to Cal. “Strap in, miss.”

  The Belle dipped and swayed, dancing with the air. I grabbed for Dean’s hand. It was the only solid thing I could reach, and just then I needed something solid very badly.

  Cal shuddered as another burst from the Mustang’s guns rattled past the hull like knucklebones. “We shouldn’t be here,” he blurted. “We should land. We should land and turn ourselves in and beg for mercy. They won’t burn me if I give myself up … they won’t …”

  I wanted to comfort him, but before I could say anything, Alouette was in front of us, clutching the cargo net. I saw the fury in her face first and then the pistol in her hand.

  “The Belle lands for no Proctor.” Her voice was as cold as her eyes.

  “Allie”—Dean held up a hand—“put that away. The kid’s just scared.”

  “That better be all, or I’ll throw him out the hatch for the Proctors myself. I swear by the gears of this boat.”

  “Leave Cal alone!” I snarled. “Maybe if you didn’t hire traitors we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

  The pistol bounced toward me, and my next stream of invective died on my lips. Never knew when to leave well enough alone …

  “Alouette! Bluebird! I can’t fly this bastard ship alone!” Captain Harry bellowed, and saved us.

  Alouette lowered her pistol, spun as if she were dancing ballet on the tilting deck and made her way forward, hand over hand on the cargo nets.

  All I could concentrate on was not throwing up all over Dean as we lurched from side to side, shaken like dice in a cup.

  The Mustangs rolled in concert and pulled up in front of the Belle’s bow, visible through the cockpit glass. The pilots were good, but one miscalculated his turn, and I saw him close enough to pick out the name stitched into his airman’s leathers. Bowman. The pilot turned his head, agonizingly slow, and stared right into the Belle’s cockpit as we rushed up at his plane.

  Absurdly, I wanted to scream a warning to him.

  Then time righted itself. The silver sky became a garden of orange fire-flowers, tangled in vines of smoke. The sound of screaming metal stabbed my ears as the prow of the Belle cut the Mustang in half and threw me against my harness, against Dean. His arms closed around me, kept me from falling or snapping my spine. I dug my fingers into his leather and held on.

  Fire crowned the Belle now, and the night before us looked like Dresden rather than Arkham.

  We fell. Like a bird with a lead shot in its heart, we fell into the jaws of the waiting earth. Alouette, not strapped down or sitting, conversely flew to the ceiling, lips peeled back, her scream lost in the cacophony of everything else, human and mechanical, on board the Belle.

  We fell, and the cruel mistress of the air took sight and sound from me, until all I could feel were Dean’s arms.

  I woke hanging in space, my tie-down slicing my shoulders. The groan of rivets and the gentle hiss of hydrogen came in, and then, more slowly, the weight of my own body. It felt as if a giant had picked me up and thrown me far as he could, and I’d landed badly.

  “Cal?” I croaked. Talking started a fire under my ribs. “Dean?”

  “Cripes.” Dean groaned, swiping blood from his face. “That was a rough reentry, for sure.”

  So he was all right. My chest loosened a bit. I swiveled as well as I could, and looked for Cal. He wasn’t there. “Cal! Cal, call out if you can hear me!”

  “That …” Cal raised his head from a diaphanous blob of cargo netting and broken tie-down at the top of the cabin, which was now the bottom. He struggled to his feet, jaw muscles jumping when he put weight on his ankle. “That was a lot more … exciting than I expected. Can we please never do it again?”

  “Are you all right?” I c
alled to him. He nodded, after a moment of consideration.

  “Alive. What matters, right?”

  I examined my position. “That and getting out of this blasted harness.”

  “No help for it,” Dean said, craning his neck at the wall of the hull. The Belle had shifted onto her side, and we were now strapped to the ceiling. “Gonna have to drop.” He jerked free of his harness and fell, landing and rolling. “Come on, Miss Aoife.” He beckoned. “The gasbag’s ruptured. One spark is going to light us up like Atlantic City.”

  The inversion was beginning to dizzy me, squashing the fear I’d otherwise be feeling, and Dean’s face swam in front of my eyes. “If I land on my head, it’s going to be all your fault,” I told him, trying to shake my eyes back into focus.

  He smirked, even as he stood on the wall of the crazily tilting Belle. “I’ll take that chance, miss.”

  I shut my eyes against vertigo and then jerked on my straps. I didn’t fall straight down, like the graceful swans we girls were supposed to be in Academy dance classes. I tumbled, as Mrs. Fortune would have put it, arse over teakettle.

  When I opened my eyes after the inglorious thump of my landing on the cargo nets, I found that I was staring into Alouette’s face.

  “All His gears!” I gasped, scrambling away from her.

  Alouette was entombed in an avalanche of boxes and netting, the veins in her skin like a road map on old paper. I tugged at her shoulders to free her, to no avail. Getting to my feet and gaining purchase, I yanked again, only to have the hot brand in my chest stab me again. I fell back, panting. “We have to get her out of there.” A few minutes ago I’d wanted to slug Alouette, and now the same impulse caused a fervor in me that made me yank uselessly at her body until my own gave out, bruised and battered as it was. Alouette hadn’t been polite, but no one deserved that plunging, screaming death.

  Cal reached down, unzipped Alouette’s high leather collar and pressed his fingers against her neck. “She doesn’t have a pulse.”

  “And you’re a surgeon now?” I demanded.