by R J Theodore
There was a cluster of ships at the border crossing, on both sides.
Never mind a border guard. Talis lowered the scope and strung an ornate necklace of profane beads. That was a warship out there.
“There are blockade ships moored from Nexus to outer atmo. I thought the borders were open for the coronation? How’re the visiting pomp and fluff gonna get home again?”
Tisker stood at her elbow, only a step away from the helm where he’d pulled the lever back to all-stop. A light wind ruffled their canvas, and the engines had quieted to just the chuffs necessary to keep their buoyancy in stasis.
“They’re not.” Talis closed her eyes and snapped the scope shut, stowing it in its pouch at the railing again. “The Veritors used the coronation as bait, and now they’re holding the other governments hostage.”
“Can they do that?”
She waved an empty hand at the horizon line in front of them. “Try telling them they can’t.”
“What do we do now?”
Talis scanned the skies. Another dark spot toward Nexus and another out in the direction of the low evening sun. More patrol ships. The border was buttoned up tight. The wind itself would have trouble getting through.
“Can’t do anything from this side. We need to get to Haelli.”
The severed bust of a simula sat in their hold, next to the box of alien power packs and circuitry from Talbot.
“Yeah, Cap, but that’s not going to happen if we’re boarded. We’re a hot soup of contraband and unlicensed passengers. You want to make a run on an Imperial warship?”
“Not just one. Looks like there are at least three warships within range to notice if we make one angry. We’re fast, though.”
“Right, cause we ain’t burdened by enough cannons to make a dent in their hulls.”
“They’ve got a hundred guns between the thirty-twos, twenty-fours, and eighteens. We’d be in a whole different game if we were flying anything to match that.”
“So what’s the plan, Cap?”
“We use what we have.”
Amos and Kirna were a little less excited about the idea than Tisker.
“Perform alchemy in full view of Nexus? Captain, surely you aren’t serious!” Amos was so rattled, he’d taken his pinch-nose lenses off and repolished them three times while Talis presented her idea.
“I don’t think anyone at Nexus has been looking outward for a long time, Professor. I’m more concerned about what those warships see.”
Kirna had dragged an enormous tome out of one of their trunks, and was leafing through it, but her mentor was far more cautious. Or less ambitious. Kirna seemed ready to take on any challenge, whatever it was, in the way that told Talis she’d yet to be discouraged by major failure. She hoped today didn’t change that.
She had to get Amos to cooperate, first, before they could achieve either victory or defeat.
“You’ve made markings all over this room to hide yourselves. All I’m asking is for something similar—on the outside of the hull—to get us past the border guard.”
“Hiding activity in an already hidden cabin is one thing, Captain! Making an airship invisible to the eye is entirely a different matter!”
Kirna stopped thumbing through the massive book in her lap. “But what if it’s just a scaled up version of the same thing, Professor?”
Talis nodded, gesturing for Kirna to keep going before Amos could protest.
“Lindent’s First Principle.”
Amos’s mouth creased deeply at the corners. He placed his lenses back on their rigid perch and crossed his arms. “And your application for the captain’s case?”
“Diversion and stealth.” She held up the book, compensating for its great weight by leaning backward, while keeping the pages from collapsing. “Here’s a camouflage sigil. I wouldn’t think it’d work if it were just us and the patrol ships, but there’s a crowd out there, and I’ll bet the guard are keeping a close eye on them all in case some crew decides to make a run for it. If we move off, look like we’re not going to try it, then tuck up on the far side of an island and paint the sigils along the hull, they may never see us on the return.”
Amos squinted at the page spread. “Others have tried that sigil. The principle is flawed.”
“Is it the principle that’s flawed or improper implementation? I think distraction and misdirection are the keys to making this work.”
Amos looked ruffled by her persistence and grabbed the open book from her as if to point out the evidence of his argument. But something on the page caught his eye, and he closed his mouth again and succumbed to the draw of the text.
“Captain Talis, my assistant may have a solution to the predicament.” He spoke under his breath as though he wasn’t aware he spoke at all.
“Wait, I missed something. What’s Lindent’s First Principle?”
“His First Principle states that the eyes see almost nothing of use but are merely a filter for the expectations of our ego.”
Amos looked satisfied to provide the rote explanation, but thankfully Kirna was in the mood to translate. She leapt to her feet and began to bustle around their cabin and collect equipment, explaining as she did. “Everyone’s got a preconceived notion of the world, Captain. They expect one outcome or danger, and that’s the primary thing they’ll notice, even as something else happens right in front of them that might be of greater impact. Like keeping your focus on a viper while a venomous spider crawls up your arm, for example. Like, you worry about paying your bills with the money you have and walk right over a stray hundred-arkh bill just lying there on the tunnel floor, like it was waiting for you.” With her arms burdened, she made a gesture at Talis’s hip and the collapsing spyglass there. Talis handed it over, too bewildered to refuse. It was added to the top of Kirna’s towering pile of tools and materials. “I’ll need to borrow that paint they bought for Scrimshaw, too. Do you have bigger brushes?”
“You’re going to paint sigils on the hull?”
Amos put another unidentifiable object on top of the stack. “Yes, but they will be invisible if they are successful, Captain.”
Kirna grinned. “If they’re successful, we will be too!”
Talis had her old kiparcoiled device, salvaged from Wind Sabre’s wreck and relocated to a locker in the great cabin. It wasn’t that she didn’t have faith in minor alchemies. It just seemed too gods-rotted brilliantly good to be true. If their promises panned out, she was going to have to figure out a way to keep the pair aboard as paid crew after the end of this journey.
“So let’s confirm if I follow you. The plan is: we back off, find a cliff shadow to hide in while we apply your,” she gestured at the open tome now clutched to Amos’s chest, “paint scheme or whatever, and then we just sail straight across the border? Will I be able to see the ship, or will it look like we’re just walking on open air?”
Kirna giggled a bit. “It’s not true invisibility, Captain. You know the ship is here, so you’ll see it. We’ll know we’re together, so we will see each other. What we expect is what we’ll see. They won’t be expecting to see us at the border and so, with the effect of the sigils, just like the First Principle describes, they won’t. But if someone were to shout, ‘Hey, keep an eye out for a Bone barque making a run on the border,’ then—poof—they’ll see us.”
Talis frowned. “That illusion sounds incredibly fragile.”
“As all illusions are, Captain.”
Fair enough. She shrugged. “All right, tell me what to do.”
Kirna beamed wide. “Exciting! I’ve always wanted to try this!”
Talis pretended to clear her throat to cover a laugh. If there were an official crest for illicit alchemy, no doubt ‘I’ve always wanted to try this’ would be its motto. “Yes, then we’d better get started. I’ll have Tisker circle us back around.”
Soph
ie held the rope steady as Tisker and Talis reeled in the painter’s swing that held Kirna out over open sky. Talis marveled at the girl as she helped her up over the railing by the hand. She’d lost count of the Rakkar people she’d met—most of them in the past two years—and none of them could look over the side of a ship without trembling. But Kirna had not only spent an hour held back from the drop by a simple wooden seat and a tether clipped to her waist, she looked back over her shoulder in awe at the open skies as she climbed back aboard.
“Is that it?”
“Almost, Captain.” Kirna brushed her skirts straight again then turned to take the paint supplies from Sophie, who had unclipped them from the swing. There was a short, freshly cut plank in with the supplies, used to measure the paces called for in the book’s directions—because of course, the accurate measurement of a ‘pace’ as used in this tome was that of its pre-Cataclysm author who kindly included their body height and foot length for reference, in prehistorical units, in the glossary of the text.
Kirna measured six paces toward the center of the ship, decided to count that into the warmth and security of the deckhouse rather than climb atop it, then verified the measurements from side-to-side against the other sigils she had painted in black on the ship’s crimson hull.
The work had taken half a day since they anchored on the starward side of a nearby uninhabited island. Tisker had gone ashore to station himself atop the island and keep watch. With Kirna just about done, Talis had recalled him, and he reported back that the crowd of ships at the border had only grown. Some were Cutter ships attempting to make it past to rekindle a stagnant run of trading. Others were colony ships, once expected by their leaders to cross borders and spread their people across the skies, following the winds of Silus Cutter. Others were foreign ships, either trying to finally make it home or trying to make it back after taking a run during the coronation. They were all being turned away, disappointed. The ships on the opposite side of the border seemed to be faring no better.
“Okay, this is the last one.” Kirna crouched on the deck and painted a half round with three diagonal lines through it, using the same black paint as the nearly three-hundred sigils that mapped the surface of Fortune’s Storm. Concentrating on a final line, she touched the wood with the bristles of the brush, started to move it, then backed off and brought one leg forward to balance her forearm against her calf. The line stroked straight and true.
Then she dug in a pocket and lit a match. Even though she’d been warned about the open flame on deck, Talis sucked in a breath and held it. The tip of the matchstick touched down in the center of the sigil, and it flared as though the wet paint were oil-based. Kirna tucked her skirt ends beneath her bent knees and bent lower over the flame than Talis would ever have advised. She spat, directly into the center of the flames, which then turned from orange to green.
Talis imagined she heard a deep voice utter a single arcane word, and the other markings across the ship flared in a matching hue, then seemed to go dark as if the sigils were made of cut glass and had reflected the sun for a moment before the light shifted away again.
Kirna was right; the sigils disappeared. And there was a similar glassy sheen to the whole ship that Talis could only see out of the corner of her eye. The scorch marks where the fire had been were gone.
She watched Kirna stand, careful not to step where the final sigil had been. The girl admired the effect for a moment, same as the rest of them, then turned and nodded to Talis.
Talis nodded back. “Good. Cast off. Tisker, bring us about.”
“Aye, Captain!” She’d not had that many people respond to her command in ages.
“And keep your voices down, the lot of you!” She was going to be holding her breath until they crossed the border as it was. She didn’t need the sounds of so many crew making her flinch at each call. They knew their business, and how to run it without the commentary. Already they slipped away, quiet as the distant stars, focused on their work.
Fortune’s Storm was a fast ship, but still it seemed they careened toward the border on a crash course. She would rather have sailed beneath the Horizon altitude, as they could have done on her old Wind Sabre. But Fortune’s Storm, despite her upgrades, was still not outfitted to handle the airstreams, updrafts, and competing winds that dominated the turbulent skies above and below Horizon, where Silus Cutter had guided the safer trade winds along Horizon. It left them with a narrower path across the border than she’d have liked, one they had to share. Talis stood at the railing with the scope in her hand, alternatively bringing it up to check on the other ships’ watches again and putting it down in disgust at her own anxiety. No one saw them because no one expected them.
The resulting problem was that several ships nearly sailed straight into them. Normally the ships ran with or against the wind. There were customary practices about which ship should have right of way and which ship should manage its speed to avoid collision. Normally, Talis and her crew would have the right, but if the sigils worked—and they did—then no one knew they were there to give up the lanes to them. It made for several anxious maneuvers to avoid other bowsprits, hulls, and lift systems, in which they grit their teeth and kept silent, even as they wanted to shout warnings to the other crews as each nearly tangled with them.
They slipped through the border ahead of the war ship’s nose, and just shy of careening into a sloop that was flying impatient circles rather than keeping a simple holding pattern. The sloop did them the favor of holding the warship crew’s attention, but as Fortune’s Storm crossed the bow of the warship, the sloop came about too hard and snagged on the barque’s stern lift lines.
The deck shuddered beneath Talis’s feet and lines groaned in complaint. There was a confused moment as both ships lurched, the lines with no slack to give, no hope of untangling before the tension yanked them slightly off course.
Talis watched comprehension dawn in the expressions of the other crew. The sigils flared with a dusky orange glow as if in warning, and then there were cries of alarm from the other deck, and a number of fingers extended to point in their direction.
“Slice them!” Even as she yelled the command, Talis was already there, cutting away at the sloop’s forward lines herself, loosing Fortune’s Storm from the tangle.
Because they needed to run now. The shadow of the warship still hung in the sky to starboard. Their only hope was that the great engines would be slow to stoke while Fortune’s Storm was warm and already had the wind, minus a light bobble to straighten out after the near collision.
“We’re loose! Push it, Tisker!” She swung out from the vibrating lines and landed on the deck in a crouch, then sprinted forward to help Dug roll out those shiny new cannons.
The retreat didn’t give them much of an angle to target the warship, but she wasn’t going to waste the shot if they could get away clean, anyway. A ship like that would only be taunted deeper into disputed skies if they started shooting. Still, she’d defend this ship and her crew down to the last twenty-four-pound shot, then hand out the blades to fight off a boarding party, if that was the lot they’d drawn.
“Cover ahead, Captain!” Sophie was aloft on the catwalks that circled their lift balloon, leaning out over the thin ropes, against the tether that secured her there.
Talis followed her outstretched arm and saw the dark patch of sky where fog obscured the stars beyond. It was on a wind that would take it back into Cutter skies, but if they could get to it, they might be able to change course and lose their massive pursuer.
The warship fired a volley with their forward cannons. Three of the four shots went wide to both sides of Fortune’s Storm, but one found a home somewhere in the hull, and the deck below them shuddered with a jolt, and the sound of splintered wood made Talis flinch. She heard Kirna and Amos cry out in dismay from below, the sound faint as the air roared over the hull and swept it away.
They might
get away through that fog bank if they weren’t perforated first.
“More speed!” Her shout was acknowledged from below in Dug’s deep voice. She heard the engines strain. They could sail close hauled, just to one side of the wind, and gain speed, or they could head straight for the cloud bank and push the engines to fight the winds the whole way there. The warship would have to do the same, but it had at least six engines to their barque’s twins and could build up their momentum as quickly as their crew could feed the furnaces.
Tisker’s focus was carved across his face when Talis returned to the wheelhouse.
“Bring us across the wind,” she said. “Our only hope is that we can gain speed on them. Once we’re past the fog, we can circle around and escape through it on the other side.”
He nodded, and the vibration in the deck eased as he tacked, bringing the bow through the wind back to port. The engines settled their complaints, and she felt the deck pull as Fortune’s Storm took up the wind in the forward sails.
On the starboard side, she watched with some anxiety as the fog bank shrank in the distance. On the other hand, so did the warship behind them. It fired another volley, but the thirty-two-pound cannonballs fell short of their stern.
Sophie landed on the deck beside her. “Gonna check that damage didn’t hit anything critical, Captain.”
Talis nodded and the girl jogged off. It hadn’t hit the rudder or the engines, or they’d already know. But it might have punched a hole in the aft water tanks, which would leave them stranded without steam unless they traced the path of the bombardment now and patched any leaks.
“Captain!” Kirna emerged from the accessway and hurried across the deck to grab the railing before tracing it aft to the wheelhouse. “Amos asked me to tell you we took the liberty of enhancing the range of your cannons. Scrimshaw helped us calculate the ’nomotry, though obviously we haven’t had a chance to test it. If you fire, you should get a range as if they were three times as long.”
