by Jay Lake
The two sailors on watch with her chatted softly. She followed a little of their talk. They seemed to think this was an awful place to be posted, the junk heap of the Beiyang Navy. An English sailor might have said armpit, or named a more objectionable body part. They joked about the food and the lack of women, until one of them, a boy named Pao, realized she was listening.
After that they stood in embarrassed silence, which lasted until Leung emerged from one of the buildings and trudged back to his boat. The captain rowed himself back to his ship.
She climbed down the tower and met him at the hatch. No one seemed to mind, not anymore. “What did you learn?” Childress asked, ignoring Feng’s absence.
“That there is nothing here fit for a man.”
“Not about the islands,” she said. “When you spoke to Admiral Shang.”
He looked surprised.
“Why else would you stop here, save to make a communication? That airship mast would make an excellent tower for wireless, if the Beiyang Navy in fact has wireless. If not, I imagine there might be a telegraph cable here. There are certainly telegraph cables between Boston and London.” Communication for both him and Feng, she thought, but did not say.
Leung shook his head. “Your cleverness will trip you someday.”
“It already has, Captain. Time and again.”
“Indeed.” He stood looking thoughtful. “I am told that shortly after we sailed, William of Ghent booked passage on a merchant vessel bound for Manchu-Nihon, Hawa’ii, and Mei Guo.”
“He was awaiting my departure. Did he in fact board that vessel?”
Leung gave her another surprised look. “The admiral could not be certain.”
“How can one be uncertain about a man the color of death?”
“I do not know,” he said distantly. He shouted up at the sailors to come below. “We sail now, madam.”
“Without Feng?”
“It would be unheard of for me to hold back a vessel for the sake of an errant sailor.”
FIFTEEN
PAOLINA
Star of Gambia steamed through the night. Paolina slept little, often checking their heading by the stars and the orbital tracks visible in the night sky. The ship continued on a southerly heading.
She considered rousting one of the crew, but couldn’t see them answering any question she might ask. Even if she still had the gleam, Paolina couldn’t see how it would help. They were sailing to the edge of the maps Lachance had given her.
How helpless everyone was, who placed trust in people around them. A passenger relied on the ship’s captain knowing his way. The captain relied on his officers and crew. One bad seed, one British agent, could send everyone aboard to their deaths.
Life was simpler back at a Muralha. There she only had to worry about the fidalgos, and someday being forced to marry. No one tried to kill her.
At least not until they had locked her into their storeroom and left her to starve. Even then, the bastards must have known that the women of Praia Nova would help her.
Around four in the morning, Paolina gave up her efforts at rest. Instead she dressed as warmly as she could and found her way to the deck.
The purser leaned against the rail, smoking a cigarette.
“I was a wondering when you will appear.” She had come to recognize his accent as Italian.
“I saw no point in coming to ask questions.”
“Often there is no point in a questions.” His hand slid into a bird shape. Then he flickered his fingers and the sign vanished. “Still, sometimes a thing she changes.”
“Like how?”
“We get a word from a passing ship, yes? Royal Navy task force in Tyre harbor. Already captain make difficult decision. Now we head for Alexandria.”
Paolina couldn’t decide whether to panic or feel relieved. “What does this have to do with me?”
“Me, I don’t a know. I don’t a want to know. Captain, he get messages. He listen, he think. White birds come and go.” The steward took a long draft. “You see many white birds? Avebianci?”
“Only gulls,” she said slowly. She knew that wasn’t what he meant. Lachance had mentioned white birds, back in Strasbourg. Money and power. Mysterious societies. Just like those who had tried to take her in Strasbourg.
They were all servants of the Queen. She did not want to admit knowing anything of them to this man. Especially with the power of the gleam evident in the smoking ruins of Strasbourg.
Still, the steward was helping her. At no small risk to himself, given the example of Lachance. An eddy stirred Paolina’s conscience.
“Ah, well. At Alexandria we change some cargoes. Owners lose money, bad for captain. But some better than British to search. Then . . . Suez. You go south.”
“You know where I am heading. I bought my ticket from you.”
“Of course you buy a ticket from me. I am purser.” He grinned, his teeth faintly orange in the glow of his cigarette. “We take you into Indian Ocean, maybe you find your way from there, hey? But when we get to Alexandria, smart girl maybe a hide in her cabin, no go ashore, no answer a door until ship sail again.”
“I’ll consider it.” Her voice was cold, hiding her worry.
He flipped his cigarette overboard. “You smart girl, be a smart.” With that he was off into the darkness.
She stood awhile, watching the bright stars over the dark water. Monsters, there were monsters in every deep.
The ship reached a scrubby, desolate shore by morning. There she turned eastward again. Half a mile of open water stretched between their line of travel and the desultory beach. Looking off the starboard rail, Paolina saw a line of dunes standing back from the beach, featuring only more scrub and sand. A tall brown storm loomed in the distance—sand or dust, nothing to do with water at all.
It was not a land she thought she could love.
They were already passing little wooden fishing boats out with the dawn. There was other traffic on the water. The sea lanes led somewhere here. Paolina could not imagine the Royal Navy being absent from Alexandria, but perhaps the detachment here was not on the same mission as the vessels sent to Tyre in anticipation of their arrival.
After a while there were people wandering along the shoreline, a few groves of struggling trees, even villages. Some of the fishing boats seemed to find their home ports here, amid thin men in grubby white robes and naked children.
There was also a haze in the sky ahead—the city of Alexandria.
She was very much of two minds regarding the purser’s warning. On the one hand, Paolina wanted nothing more than to get off the Star of Gambia. On the other, she could hardly walk the length of Africa to a Muralha. She knew even less of that continent than she did of Europe, except that the land was a many-miled desolation.
What language did they speak in Alexandria? Alexandrene?
Paolina retreated to her cabin, resolved not to go ashore at first, but reserving the privilege of doing so after the ship had docked and the passengers disembarked.
Watching from her cabin porthole, she could see a strange city indeed. Star of Gambia was moored in a narrowing harbor sheltered from the Mediterranean by a long westward-running spit. The ship was close in to Alexandria, which might just have well been up on the Wall somewhere. It seemed to combine ancient buildings of mud and sandstone with the newest marble palaces of commerce so beloved of the English. Though she saw only a narrow section of the city while hiding in her cabin, it was enough to show her how much life there was here and how complicated it must be.
There were vultures that crowded rooftops and lazed in the sky above. They seemed to overpower even the endlessly omnipresent gulls that had haunted every port and coast she’d seen, from Praia Nova onward.
Paolina lay in her bunk and thought about what it would mean to step ashore here. This city was larger than Marseilles. She would be so very lost, with even less notion of where and how she should go. How did people find themselves in a place like this, let al
one anyone else? How many people could crowd together? Where France had been verdant and even lush, this north coast of Africa lived and died by what water could be found. Everyone lived here because of the river, she presumed.
It was like the Wall, she realized. The land focused the way people lived. They didn’t understand that in Europe. The British had too much—surrounded by water and food and wealth, they did not know how others struggled to live within boundaries far larger than they themselves were. These Alexandrenes would understand.
With that thought, she finally fell into sleep.
Paolina woke in the steep, rich light of the late afternoon. It was gold in this place on this day, flowing from the sky to cast coppered shadows and touching everything, no matter how rusted or weathered, with a blessing of the eye. Even the air seemed to have been distilled to a breathy wine.
She stood, stretched, and stepped to the porthole once more. The city beyond was still raucous, a thousand times too many people crammed along a slow, muddy river that took much and gave little back except life-sustaining water. Whistles shrieked, cranes groaned along the docks, and even through the dogged glass of her little window she could smell the conurbation.
Each place had boasted a different scent—first Strasbourg, then Marseilles and Kalamata, now Alexandria—every city making its own fires, cooking its own meats and spices, steam cars and electrick plants and the mass of bodies and animals combining in a unique recipe. She watched the slow light lacquer all of it, shit and shining palaces alike, into the dying glory of the day.
To go out or not? Paolina hated letting the purser and the captain control her fate. She had money, but at best she’d book passage on another ship. The only airships that flew south of here were Royal Navy; she was certain of that. And she didn’t think there were railways through Africa. Though it shared an ocean with Europe, the both of them nestled together on Northern Earth, Africa might as well have been on the moon from what she had seen aboard Notus.
Star of Gambia had not betrayed her. Not yet at any rate. She sensed no great love of the British Crown from those aboard the ship. The truth of their turn away from Tyre was vague, but there had been no search of the ship here in port at Alexandria either.
Paolina controlled her fate simply by sitting still. The lack of positive action rankled her. Despite the haunting dread of what she’d done to Strasbourg, she was beginning to feel tempted to build another stemwinder. It was the only assertive power she had, the only way she could avoid being more than a mere woman.
She’d sworn off the horror, though. Even the sense of power was an illusion. The collapse of the Chinese airship loomed large in her mind, for all that Captain Sayeed had been operating under false pretenses at that moment. So she sat and watched night take the ancient city, wondering when they would serve her dinner.
_______
The mess steward brought her a bowl of fish stew later in the evening. “Friend,” he said, apparently delighted to see her. “Here is having warm food, and to apologize for the mess being so closed.”
“Where are all the other passengers?”
He set the bowl down, tugged a napkin from his apron, and shrugged. “Much commotion on docks there is being earlier. Crew stay quiet.” He laid out a spoon, a tiny butter jar, and a roundel of some thin, slightly puffy bread. “To eat now, and practice calm.”
“Do you know when we might sail again?”
Another shrug. “I am bringing food, not orders from the bridge.” He bowed and left her with the fragrant, spicy bowl.
Paolina ate regardless. Even in good times there had never been quite enough at Praia Nova, not for women and girls when the men needed their strength. Whatever she received to eat was so much blessing to her. Afterwards she ventured out to the rail. In the dark she’d be less visible to anyone passing by along the docks. Someone watching with intent would already know she was here, just by observing the mess steward.
As chaotic and overwhelming as Alexandria had seemed by day, it was even less inviting by night. Shadows lay deep, quarters of the city devoid of light. The constellation of sound and smell had acquired a wild undercurrent of menace. At this time waiting seemed less of a frustration and more of a gift—she did not have to descend into that blackness.
The wind brought her a snatch of music, some reedy instrument wailing in the night. It seemed to call to Paolina, telling her she could just go ashore, take up the garments of a woman of the city, and become someone else. Everything that she had done, everything that she had become, would be lost like that music on the wind. The thought of escape tore at her heart, bringing tears to her eyes.
“I am not special,” she whispered. “I am just a girl.”
She knew better.
Whatever lay within her head and hands, that helped her build the gleam and spot half a hundred other problems here aboard Star of Gambia would not go away simply because she decided to sell eggs in the marketplace. The Silent Order would still be seeking her. The Royal Navy would not soon forget, even if they stood down the search that had driven the ship away from Tyre. That search would be renewed once Captain Sayeed made his reports, let alone whatever that scoundrel al-Wazir might send along from his post at a Muralha. The big Scotsman had given her to Sayeed in the first place, after all.
No, she could hide awhile, change her name, take a different garb, but Paolina knew her patience for men like the fidalgos of Praia Nova was thin. She was certain the Northern Earth was full of fidalgos by whatever name. But still the thought of slipping into the night-ridden city whispered disloyal within her head.
Better to head back to the Wall and lose herself in the vertical kingdoms and long silences that overlooked the Northern Earth than to hide here awaiting discovery or betrayal.
That decision made, she watched the shore awhile. The music still carried, but the spell had broken. Eventually Paolina found the steward again. He was smoking a cigarette once more.
“You stay,” he said, though she thought he meant it as a question.
“Yes. The city . . .”
He chuckled softly. “I know you now. Girl from the Wall, yes?”
She felt a cold stiffening in her heart. “Perhaps.”
“No big a cities on the Wall? My mamma, she tell me empires there, filled with saints and martyrs dying for the Brass Christ.”
“Well, I suppose there are empires,” Paolina said. “But there are empires everywhere.”
“True, true.” He flipped the cigarette overboard again. “British officers come inspect ship tomorrow, ye? You want to hide, you want to be someone else? You choice. They a catch you being Wall girl, no one here help you.”
“I . . . I would prefer to be someone else.” Hiding seemed too much. She’d hated cowering in the back of Lachance’s wagon. Besides, she’d decided to carry forward. She would carry forward.
“Good. Then you mute girl, wash dishes for mess steward. Wear a skinny clothes, all a dirty, yes? Hide behind him, act like he your man. You love him, you say nothing. Mess steward, he, a . . . leccaculo. Not the eye for beauty of the woman, capisce? What kind of girl have man like that, a? You love him like scared, no say a word.”
“I believe I can act scared,” Paolina told the steward.
“Good. Be big mess, dawn. Capisci?”
“Big mess, at dawn. Yes.” She resisted the urge to thank him. Paolina realized once again that she should never have left a Muralha behind in the first place.
Morning found her in the passengers’ mess wearing a torn-down dress and barefooted. She’d walked the decks several times before dawn, rubbing against stacks and vents to acquire convincing grime.
The mess steward smiled but said nothing. They spent the morning working in silence, pulling out every plate and knife and fork and carafe in the passengers’ mess. She cleaned each piece, then slowly restored order. Somewhere during the course of her efforts the hatch to the outside banged. Paolina was polishing a punch bowl and did not look up.
Whoever it was did not trouble her.
A bit after the noon bell, Star of Gambia let out a long blast on her whistle. With much shouting out on deck, the vessel began to make way. Paolina was washing knives, and still did not look up.
There was no hiding or pretense of love or fear. Merely a day of hard, distracting work that would have been quite ordinary in Praia Nova. There were more forks here than in the whole village. No one in her town had so much as heard of a punch bowl. She didn’t mind the sense of accomplishment in so thorough a cleaning, and the mess steward made no attempt to take advantage of his supposed role, so it was all well enough.
When Paolina stepped outside, they were passing very close to dunes. A few men on camels watched from shore, rifles slung on their shoulders.
“Suez,” said the steward. “We go to Indian Ocean now.”
It was the first time he’d spoken to her all day.
Unsure who might be listening, Paolina nodded. She watched the desert sail by and wondered where all the passengers had gone. Questions seemed so dangerous now.
The banks of the canal were shallow. A broad, slow waterway carried Star of Gambia and half a dozen other ships through the desert. A few places along the shore were planted with strange rough-crowned trees, but otherwise this was more desolate than even the Mediterranean near Alexandria. She found much to admire in the shades of sand and the colors of the rock and the way the light played across the rough ground. This was a country of a stark, severe beauty she’d never encountered on a Muralha.
After idling in a wide, shallow lake awhile so that a line of ships might pass heading north to the Mediterranean, Star of Gambia entered another stretch of canal. Paolina found shade and watched their progress through the day, until they came to a wider stretch of lapis-colored water where the little wooden boats crowded one another.
