Escapement

by Jay Lake

  “Attack, attack,” al-Wazir shouted. “Ware the air!” It was hard to get the volume in his voice while pressed to the wood.

  Wings whirred overhead as he wriggled butt-high next to Hornsby’s body. The captain had worn his pistol, as usual, a Webley service revolver. Al-Wazir tugged it free. There was blood on the grips from the fount that had blossomed out of Hornsby’s neck.

  He’d never liked pistols, but it was something to fight with now.

  Rolling over to face up, his hair and back sticky, al-Wazir cocked the pistol and aimed skyward. A shape flew low overhead. He pulled the trigger. It stuck.

  The damned thing had a safety catch!

  A blade gleamed as another winged savage landed just past his feet. He scrabbled in the dark for the lever, damning Hornsby for being such a cautious man. Something clicked, so he pulled the trigger again.

  The revolver made a brief flash of powder as a liquid flower blossomed in the narrow tattooed chest of the killer angel.

  The echoing shot seemed to wake the camp as his shouting had not. There were no sentries on the palisade—they must have all been killed as Hornsby was—but men were running from the tents, calling out and screaming. Already other firearms were popping. Keeping a firm grip on his pistol, al-Wazir scrambled for the bronze sword dropped by the winged savage he’d just killed.

  Blade in one hand, firearm in the other, he stood to confront the next wave of attacks.

  Once the camp was awake, there were so many firearms that the English were a danger to themselves as much as they were the winged savages. Al-Wazir cut down two more attackers as they dove across his wooden wall, then leapt to the ground some dozen feet in order to avoid being swarmed. After that his role seemed to be reduced to shouting his men into orderly lines so their fire could be profitably concentrated instead of spent willy-nilly into the close, hot night.

  The camp had ten times the men that Bassett had carried. A force of several dozen winged savages had overwhelmed the airship’s defenses from all directions. Here with firm ground under English feet, they were much harder pressed. There was a lesson there, but he could not discern it in the heat of affairs.

  After a few minutes, someone got to the heavy guns. They began barking into the night. The crash of cannon woke the jungle again—al-Wazir could hear it even while straining and shouting to beat the men into formation as death winged close above their heads.

  He heard someone shout, “John Brass!” but he did not know if it was for Boaz, or if there were a second wave of attack coming across the open ground.

  The question answered itself when the gates burst inward.

  The fight grew worse.

  An hour later, al-Wazir found himself directing a group of exhausted men piling shattered logs and railroad ties against the empty gateway. Anything for a defense. Boaz was with them, lifting without complaint thrice what the strongest man could do. The others stared at him, muttering, but they kept to their work.

  “You think he’s the danger on account of he’s Brass!” al-Wazir shouted, suddenly angry. “An if ye ever fought a Welshman, would that make all the taffies your sworn enemies? Fools, one and all.” He heaved on the end of a log, turning it as it splintered, until a few of the laborers backed away.

  “Just a man,” one of them said. “Can tell who he ain’t though.”

  “Of course not.” Al-Wazir thrust the log into place unassisted. “Ye great pack of ugsome ninnies. Don’t know your own mates.”

  “Enough,” said Boaz quietly. “They’ve seen their friends fall to Brass who look no different from me.”

  Al-Wazir nodded, keeping his next words in. After a deep breath, he said, “John Brass here is to lead the crew. I must go count the dead.”

  He stalked off, angry at himself for so poorly handling his men.

  The evening brought no better news. One of the expedition’s medicos had been killed in the fight. The other had drunk himself blind in panic. Their boys were sewing up who could be sewn, and handing out opium to those wounded waiting to die. Ottweill worked with them, cleaning injuries and talking quietly to the patients. He acknowledged the chief with a brief nod, devoid of acrimony, and continued with his work.

  It was the first time al-Wazir had seen a truly humane side to the man’s character.

  He squatted on his heels nearby.

  “I make it at least seventeen of ours dead,” al-Wazir said quietly. “Including Hornsby and Dr. Marino.”

  “At least six here will not survive.” Ottweill’s voice was just as calm.

  The man whose arm he was tending stiffened, but Ottweill ignored him.

  Al-Wazir went on. “We killed over two dozen of the winged savages, and another dozen Brass. Massed fire, for the most part, thanks to the drills the men have been doing.”

  “Good.”

  “There is an entire Wall full of them. We could kill a hundred for each man of ours, and still lose the battle in the end.”

  “That is your problem,” Ottweill said coldly. “The hole I shall dig. The Wall you shall secure.”

  “I could as easily conquer China with my bare hands.”

  “Then the emperor of Northern Earth you shall be, and a shining hat you will wear.”

  No, al-Wazir thought, the doctor has not changed so much after all.

  He went back out to search the darkness for the wounded and the dead, wondering on how he should defend the camp from the air as well as the ground. Al-Wazir resolved to speak closely with Boaz once morning came and people had settled back to their work.

  Walking quietly through night’s deep shadows, he realized the deep thrumming of the steam borer had never stopped.

  CHILDRESS

  Steaming across the Pacific was a relief after the panic of her first days aboard Five Lucky Winds. The dull, deadly fear of their transit beneath the ice had been little better. Leung kept the vessel surfaced as often as possible. No fear of British airships here, Childress realized.

  They made landfall at several more islands. These were ports, of a sort. Leung permitted her to come up to the tower, but not to go ashore. The towns were collections of native huts, with flowers and pigs and children in abundance. There was no stone or steel such as she might have expected to see in a harbor within the British Empire.

  Fresh water and food were brought aboard, especially fruit as they followed a heading ever farther south and west. The sailors were granted brief leaves in small groups.

  At the third such stop, she turned to Leung as they both stood on the little balcony atop the tower. “May I go ashore?”

  “I regret that I must decline you permission.” His voice was not unkind.

  “I am not a prisoner.”

  “Not precisely, no. But consider this. The Mask Poinsard would not deign to walk among barefoot fuzzy wuzzies.” He paused. “I believe that is the word, yes?” She nodded, and Leung continued. “A woman of valor would keep her strengths hidden against the trials to come. Whichever of those two you are, neither of them needs set foot ashore. Besides, I do not care to explain myself more should rumor travel faster than Five Lucky Winds can sail.”

  “That last would seem to hold as much significance as the other reasons,” she said dryly.

  “I should hope never to be accused of being an impractical man.”

  That night Captain Leung joined Childress for a dinner of pork and some stringy, tart fruit in a thicker sauce than usual. It was quite delicious.

  She was ready to brace him. She had been thinking long and hard about the choice he’d set upon her, and what the significance might be of what he’d told her concerning the Golden Bridge at Chersonesus Aurea. Praying, too, though the only answers God gave her were those which He had always given her—the voice of her own experience.

  She had a question for Leung. A very important question.

  Childress began almost diffidently. “Captain.” She was conscious that Choi could be lurking outside the door, though he had not shown himself that day.<
br />
  “I listen.”

  And now the plunge.

  “What precisely was the mission the Mask Poinsard was pursuing?” The one that required my incidental death.

  “A great . . . sorcerer . . . is expecting her in Tainan. There are other, well, needs.” His head flickered into a reflexive bow. “I am not privy to all. Just the requirements of the Admiralty.”

  “Ah. Thank you. Again, you have told me much, perhaps more than you should.” Words, thought Childress. She must needs follow their path carefully. “About those needs.” Time for her guess. “Chersonesus Aurea and the project there.”

  His voice was very tight. “The Feathered Masks are much concerned with that. The Mask Poinsard would have an interest, were she aboard my ship.”

  Childress felt a sickening lurch in her gut that he spoke so freely of her identity where the political officer might overhear. How had her life come to this?

  “I cannot imagine you would raise objection to your own admiralty, nor to your Son of Heaven on his Dragon Throne. Everything under Heaven has a place and a name. You doubly so, for your military oath.”

  “Indeed.” Leung seemed to be sliding down a tunnel now.

  Was she getting close? Or straying into danger? Vision bloomed in her head—of Anneke, bleeding out her life, and how close Childress had come to dying at this man’s orders. She must carry on.

  The Mask Poinsard would have done so. A librarian far from home could do no less than that feral duchess.

  “It is possible that there are opinions, thoughts, which occur to a man of sense who has stepped outside the realm of absolute obedience and been required to think for himself, surviving on the high seas and deep beneath the ocean.” She thought she saw the merest crack of a smile at that. Courage, Childress told herself, and plunged onward. “An outsider, brought before the Beiyang Admiralty, skilled and knowledgeable in esoteric matters, might deliver certain warnings which could not be spoken from within. At least not at first.”

  “And this is your thought? . . .” He spread his hands, inviting.

  “This is the thought of a Mask,” she told him, lying as she had never lied before, with cold intent for personal gain. “This is the thought of the Mask Childress, come in place of a weaker woman lost at sea.”

  “You would school an empire to your will?”

  “I school nothing and no one to my will. Only speak what is known, and what seems wise to me. A Golden Bridge would bring dangers to China’s doorstep that make the British seem like dogs barking in the night. I’ll not pretend to surety here, and hope in turn that such honesty will be my passport to credibility.

  “Anyone who claims to know what lies beyond the Wall twists the uncertain truth beyond recognition. Anyone who fears what lies beyond the Wall shows good sense.”

  Leung rubbed his face as if to wipe away fatigue clouding his thoughts. “Were I the admiral, I might speak thus: So you will raise a fleet and sail against your Queen?”

  “No. I am no traitor.” Only a liar, she thought. Bearing false witness. “If I were, you would have no grounds for trust. In this, I serve the interests of noble and peasant alike. No matter that they live under the mandate of Heaven or within the protection of the British crown. We are all children of God—Heaven, if you prefer. What lies beyond the Wall is another Creation.”

  He stared at her awhile. His eyes were frank but also sparkling. “If I were to wonder why I’d spared one woman and not another, now I would say that the hands of my ancestors guided me. As you tell me, I have no opinions, only orders. Admiral Shang at Tainan is a prideful man. He is not a foolish one. Like me he stands outside certain honors. That is why he dwells in Taiwan, and not closer to the Celestial Court. Unlike me, he can cause ships to move and men to bow.”

  “You move at least one ship, Captain.”

  “Yes, but not all my men bow to me.”

  Never forget the problem of Choi.

  He stood, nodding to her. “You have proven to amaze, Mask Childress. May you have a long life and good fortune, with double happiness along the road.”

  It sounded suspiciously like a farewell, so much so that when he left the wardroom, she stiffened, expecting the political officer with his pistol to enter in Leung’s place. Naught came save her own fear and the hard racing of her heart. After a time, Childress removed herself to her cabin to worry whether she had practiced wisdom or committed arrant foolishness this day.

  If nothing else, she had traded one difficult lie for another, far more comfortable one. And Leung was now her ally. As much as any man, Chinese or otherwise, could be.

  She wondered if his stature as a man somehow canceled the meaning of his being Chinese. Childress had known few enough New Englanders with Leung’s grace and courtesy and thoughtful bearing.

  Choi presented himself the next morning as she ate cold fish cut together with strips of some pale, fleshy pepper over congealed rice—it was her least favorite of the breakfast preparations. He displayed the hand signal of the white bird once more, then stood close.

  “Ni zao?” she said, straining to greet him politely in such little Chinese as she’d managed to learn. There were at least two forms spoken here on the ship, much as an English ship might sail with officers of the Queen but men who spoke Greek or Turkish or French or some other subject tongue.

  “Hello.” His smile was brown-toothed and gapped. Something in it made her sad a moment. Had no one ever cared for this man?

  She smiled faintly back and tucked in to the fish with reluctance.

  “You declare yourself,” Choi added.

  This is the hour of truth, she thought. He is come to brace me in my treachery.

  She resolved that Mask or no Mask, she would be Childress, and true to herself. Help me now, Lord, as you have perhaps never helped me before. “I am who I am,” she said in English, then flushed at the sheer presumption of the statement.

  He cocked his head like a bird examining a cart-flattened cat. “Same Mask, not same woman?”

  “I am a white bird, of the Feathered Masks.” True enough, taken on its own terms.

  “You birds fly far, ah.” Choi nodded. “Where Poinsard?” He pronounced the name oddly, Pu-yin-sar, but she took his meaning.

  “I stand in her stead, carrying the banner of the avebianco.” Childress thought to try flattery. “You of all people should understand that.”

  The smile stayed fixed upon his face, seeming more and more the leer of an idiot. “Poinsard she come to bring something. Bird business. Make lucky flight.”

  “What she brought was me, Mr. Choi. I am the purpose of your voyage.”

  “You weapon of power?”

  Lie for once, lie for always. “I am the Mask Childress. There is no more to know.”

  “Great Relic you thing, England people. Your little Heaven emperor bring it, ah?” His smile split into a grin that was both feral and simple. “You Great Relic, Poinsard not got sense.” Choi nodded. “Emperor know all.”

  With that he was gone.

  Great Relic? The Brass Christ had left seven Great Relics. She had trouble imagining that Choi meant that in its specific, Christian sense. The thought that the Mask Poinsard would be carrying one of the Great Relics with her across the Atlantic seemed inconceivable.

  Those artifacts of history were lost. She was a divinity school librarian; this was the meat and bread of her work. That poor boy Hethor had come looking for the Key Perilous, one of the seven. Childress believed that he had probably found it. Or the world would have stopped turning, most likely. That left six others.

  To find them now . . . History was suspect at such a distance of time and legend. There were very few sources to draw from. Most of them were retellings of retellings. You could look back through time with the eyes of faith and see the Brass Christ broken on the Roman horofix. The line of His saints and martyrs descended from Him on a river of blood and prayer. You could look back through time with the eyes of reason and see fragments of Arama
ic and New Testament Greek and Hebrew and Latin and Coptic, and find yourself clutching nothing but hopes and dreams and the distant memory of a mystery.

  That was one reason people believed, she’d always thought. It was to explain. The first causes hung heavy in the sky, tons upon tons of brass scribed there by God as He had wrought the world. The line that stretched from those fateful seven days six thousand years earlier through to today’s racing life of steam and electricks and the politics of Empire, that line was difficult to understand, except through the lens of faith.

  Reason failed all too often, building bridges of footnotes and contradictory assumptions. Faith was a highway for the believer.

  Still, the seven Great Relics were a story told again and again and again. Origen was said to have carried them to the Wall when his years were almost done. Bishop Irenaeus of Barcelona claimed that the pagan priestess Hypatia had magicked them into the stones of Alexandria, and so cursed the city to eternal torment. Joseph of Arimathea brought them to England, at Wearyall Hill on the flooded Somerset Levels where the relics slept in Arthur’s seat. There were as many stories as there were tellers who’d thought to bring them to life. Each reflected the author’s needs—and patronage—far more than any truth.

  Truth shone through, however. Over and over and over it shone through. That was the purpose of the lens of faith, to assemble the scattered light of reason into God’s intent, and lay sense upon the world.

  Now Choi had brought her a tale that would upset all those ancient meanings. All the stories agreed on at least one point: the seven Great Relics had been taken out of time, removed from the lives of men, much as the Brass Christ Himself had been. The workaday world of sin and flaw and compromise would have tarnished and fractured them—the Sangreal would be only a cup, the Key Perilous only a sliver of metal, and so forth.

  That the Mask Poinsard could carry one of the seven Great Relics to the Chinese fleet, and hand it to a difficult little man like Choi, beggared reason. The world simply did not work that way.