by Jay Lake
“Not here.” Wang smiled. “There are other centers of scholarship.” He leaned forward, gave her a significant look. “Phu Ket, and the temple of learning there.”
She didn’t know anything about Phu Ket, but admitting ignorance wasn’t what had gotten her this far. “There is no point in the effort there, either.” Her voice was low and serious.
“You of all people deny the pursuit of knowledge?”
“I am the last to deny the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge has a purpose. Here . . . you build a bridge to nowhere.”
“You mistake our destination, Mask.” He reached forward, his fingers brushing her abandoned teacup. “I have read your power. You are not come to bring us to ruin. Go among the library and see what you can learn. We will see what we can learn from you in turn.”
“So you release me to the texts, and to my contemplation of your destination?”
“Dwei le,” he said. Affirmative. Wang favored her with one last nod.
Childress returned the nod, then rose and returned to the gallery beyond. There she went to look for Leung.
“I don’t know what they are doing here,” she told him. “But it is not what Admiral Shang believed.”
“There is no bridge, of course,” the captain said.
They were at the far end of the pier where the launch was tied up. The only people nearby were Leung’s sailors. Five Lucky Winds sat peacefully at anchor in the little bay. Something called intermittently in the night, a croaking argument with the rising stars.
“You are correct about there being no bridge. I never saw how it could be literal. I don’t believe that Wang and the rest are trying to pass through the Wall in any case. They have another destination in mind. He said as much to me.”
“What destination could that be?”
Whether it was a poverty of imagination or some failing of vision, she could not say what destination would matter more to the Celestial Empire than passing beyond the Wall.
What greater game was there to hunt in God’s Creation?
EIGHTEEN
PAOLINA
She was ashamed. Ashamed and afraid. She had cried on al-Wazir’s chest like a girl in her mother’s arms, while the old sailor was probably dying.
Paolina sat up and wiped her face. He stank. A relic of his fight to save her. She looked at al-Wazir, whose eyes were closed. His breathing was regular. She couldn’t tell if he’d passed out or was merely asleep.
Either way, he needed to rest.
They were in a small cabin with woven mats upon the floor and no furnishing nor windows. A wan electrick glowed in the ceiling, keeping them in dim light. She could not tell if there had been furniture before, and it was removed, or if their captors favored empty cabins. Surely this tiny room had another purpose.
The damned Chinese! They were as bad as the British. Worse, maybe. She’d had a clear view of the chaos in Mogadishu as their ship had risen out across the Indian Ocean. One of the Royal Navy airships had exploded at mast, and a second was damaged. The third pursued, though she lost sight of the action when the Chinese officers finally thought to force her belowdecks. The lack of running and shouting overhead suggested that the chase had fallen astern.
Paolina wondered if that was all there would be to her life—written out of history as a footnote to a battle in the skies above an obscure African port. Surely these Chinese no more had her interests to heart than did the Silent Order back in Strasbourg. Less, for while the Silent Order had worked by subterfuge and the application of social leverage, this airship had fallen upon Mogadishu as a raider, spreading death and destruction.
No differently from I with the gleam in my hand. She’d brought one of these very ships down herself, after all. The world would end in jealousy and hatred if people could kill with a thought.
Paolina gripped al-Wazir’s remaining hand and studied the bulkheads. This ship varied so much from Notus. It was as if one empire had seen the other’s work from afar, then returned home to re-create it from memory. Chinese airships had a different shape to their gasbags—she’d observed that while fleeing north from a Muralha.
Here beneath the decks it was clear that construction proceeded from a different philosophy of design. They used some lightweight wood laid down in thin, flexible strips. The whole vessel creaked like a house in a storm. Notus had been primarily built of maple and willow, with oak beams and knees. More stout, and tougher.
A trade-off that made sense to her. She could see the wisdom of both options. It depended on how much premium you placed on speed, how efficient your engines were, and how much hydrogen you wanted to carry and manage in order to maintain buoyancy.
Al-Wazir groaned, bringing her back to the moment. Paolina felt a flush of shame at how her thoughts had wandered from the fate that lay before them.
“I’m very sorry about your hand.” She gripped his right even tighter.
He groaned again. “Hae they tarred the wrist?”
She forced herself to look at the silk rags wrapping the stump. The gray cloth was soaked almost black with fluid. “I can’t tell, Chief. All I see is a covering, thick with something. Blood?”
“ ’T hurts like the fire piss a dozen times over.” He struggled to his elbows, successfully this time. “Well, and how are we planning to get out o’ this one, lassie?”
She had to smile at that. “I don’t suppose there’s any out to get. We’re here till they set us down somewhere.”
“No, no, there’s always a way out. Especially on an airship. Down’s favorite. Nothing between you and the ground but empty air. No fences, no guards, no howling dogs. Believe you me, missy, there’s much worse things than being aboard ship.”
“Even a Chinese airship?”
“Aye. Even a Chinee.”
He was pale and shaking. The lost hand was affecting him badly.
If she’d had the gleam, she might have been able to do more, but here, now, there was nothing but her and al-Wazir and a ship full of belligerent Chinese.
She remembered the men left behind on the ground and corrected herself: A flimsy ship, partially full of belligerent Chinese. Surely a plucky girl of parts and an experienced sailor like al-Wazir could find some way to free themselves. If the Chinese carried those parachutes that Davies the loblolly boy had spoken of back in Praia Nova, perhaps they could escape to whatever lay below them.
Thousands of miles of ocean, she realized. Their only problems there would be thirst, starvation, and shark attacks. Even that would constitute an improvement over their current chances of reclaiming their freedom.
Later a plump man came to see her and al-Wazir. He was bespectacled, and wore blue silk with no rank or insignia. When he entered their little cabin without knocking, the first thing he did was bow and make that strange little bird sign. Lachance had shown it to her several times back in Strasbourg. The steward on Star of Gambia had made it as well.
Not the Silent Order then, but something else reaching from England to China and back that was just as large. A marvelous but frightening prospect, Paolina thought.
“I physician,” he said, his accent thick. “See big man wound.”
Paolina nodded and stepped back from al-Wazir, who had slipped into deep sleep and now snored lustily.
The doctor squatted on his heels and took the Scotsman’s good hand by the wrist for a moment. He then ran his fingers slowly over al-Wazir’s face. Both men’s eyes were closed, until Paolina had the strange idea that the doctor had fallen asleep as well.
He finally took hold of al-Wazir’s left forearm and studied the wrist stump. The doctor did not remove the bandages, nor probe the wound, just held it for some time. His eyes fluttered shut repeatedly.
“Fire in blood.” The doctor stared at her seriously. “You England know fire in blood?”
“Infection?” she hazarded. Paolina turned her own forearm toward him, slipped her sleeve back and traced the line of a vein. “Like here?”
“Ah.” He patted
al-Wazir’s forearm, then laid the limb down. “Yes. No have here.”
“Good.” She was baffled as to what should come next.
“He make smell, he make fire in blood, you say for me, ah?”
“Of course.” She wondered how a large middle-aged sailor couldn’t smell. Flatulence and wine breath seemed to be the perpetual lot of men past their boyhoods. The doctor presumably meant something newer and nastier. Skin rot setting in, for example.
“Ah.” He stood, bowed. “Welcome to Heaven’s Deer, la.” Then he stared at Paolina as if willing her to do something.
“Thank you . . .” She felt the fool. Paolina moved her hands in imitation of the sign he’d made. “What are you?”
His face grew very still. “I doctor.”
“You are helping us. Why?”
The hand sign again. “Birds watch over you.”
“Like Lachance.”
The doctor looked blank. “White birds fly in sky over you. Never silent, never in order.”
“The other side,” she breathed. Her sense of how the world was ordered shifted. “You stand against the Silent Order. Against England.”
“No, not the thrones. Different. Earth and heaven.” He looked unhappy.
She tried a different tack. “Where are we bound, then?”
“Phu Ket,” the doctor whispered, hands fluttering now. His face had become a study in agony. “The captain no orders, ah . . . Silent Order?” He turned and fled.
It took her several moments to realize the door hadn’t been latched from the outside. At least, there had been no snick or click.
The Silent Order, she thought. The same that Sayeed had taken her to at Strasbourg. Their reach was everywhere. Almost everywhere.
The white birds flew against them, though, and bore her on their wings. She wondered why, how that would be.
In any case, she could not go to Phu Ket. Must not. They needed an escape.
Paolina turned back to al-Wazir, eyeing him speculatively. An airship was an airship. He must help the two of them to freedom. She could be his left hand.
She sat back to some serious thinking while she watched the big man sleep off his pain.
When al-Wazir awoke, Paolina scooted close so they could talk quietly. “How do you feel?” she asked. “Can you understand me? Do you have your strength?”
He sighed, gripping his left wrist with his right hand. “Lassie, I feel as though all the hounds of Hell have been coursing through me bones.”
That was the most cogent answer he’d given her yet. The fever had broken! She felt a burst of glee, followed by a wash of guilt that she was celebrating his return to conscious pain.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Paolina said. “Those hounds are going to be coursing a lot harder through your bones when we get to wherever we’re going.” She sighed. “I don’t think we have much time left.”
“For what?”
“You asked how we’re going to find our way out of this. We’re going to take over the airship.”
Al-Wazir began to wheeze with laughter, then immediately stopped, his face transfixed with agony. “Och,” he said after a moment, then took a deep breath. “You’re having some cruel fun with a dying man.”
“You’re not dying!” She wanted to slap him. “Listen to me. This ship, it’s built of wood so light, it might almost be paper.”
“Bamboo. That would be bamboo.”
Whatever that was, she thought. “Thank you. The ship is built with bamboo. You are strong enough to tear the walls open.”
He pushed his stump toward her. “No more, no more.”
“Listen.” She set her hand on his arm, below the bandaged wrist. “Your Queen is not my friend. These Chinese are even less so, I am certain of it. They take me to my greatest enemies, with no thought to help us. Anything we can do to be away would benefit us both.
“Even with one hand, you are twice the strength of any other man on this vessel. They left a portion of their crew behind in Mogadishu when the ship lifted. The Chinese are shorthanded, possibly with a British airship in chase. If we can move quickly, find where they store their parachutes and weapons, then tear a hole the hull, we can be gone.”
“Into the Indian Ocean?”
“If there’s one of yours back there, they’ll investigate us. Shorthanded, the Chinese will not fight well. Do you think our chances are better once we’ve been carried all the way to Asia?”
“No, no . . .” Al-Wazir grinned, his smile crooked. She could smell the sweat of pain and fear on him. “Though you seem to forget that I am also shorthanded. Most like they’ll cut us down. Even if we make it safely over the rail, the ocean will swallow us.”
“You don’t know that,” she said. “The Wall is close. There are fishing boats and islands in every sea of the Northern Earth, and we are probably pursued by one of your airships. All possibilities, compared to the certainty of our vanishing into Chinese prisons.”
Al-Wazir plucked at his shirt a moment. “They pissed upon me,” he said as he struggled to his feet. “What is the first step o’ your plan, lassie?”
“Getting you to stand up.”
“What is your next step?”
“We open the door, strike down whoever stands without, and find the locker where their expeditionary gear is stowed.”
“If the Chinese run their airships in any fashion similar to Her Imperial Majesty’s Navy, those should be amidships.”
“I trust your intuition, sir.”
“More fool the both of us.”
They took positions by the door. Paolina ready to throw it open and launch into the corridor, al-Wazir close behind her. She recalled it as a short passageway leading to a ladder in the waist of the ship, but she had been dragged belowdecks in the heat of the ship’s escape from Mogadishu and had not been diligent in noting details.
With a deep, shuddering breath, she stepped out.
The sailor on duty turned, mouth agape. Paolina smacked her fist right between his teeth. She tore open her knuckles as she gagged him. He stepped back and tried to swing a pole, but al-Wazir followed her close, crowding all three of them into the opposite wall of the corridor. He jammed his thumb into one of the sailor’s eyes, pressing his handless forearm into the man’s neck until the Chinese collapsed with blood running down his face.
Paolina dropped to her knees and retched. Al-Wazir kicked the collapsed sailor in the side of the head twice, hard.
“Come on, chit,” he growled. “This is your plan. We must follow through.”
Shuddering back tears, she stood again to see a series of wooden doors and more walls paneled with narrow strips. There was a ladder to their right. She refused to look at the man they’d just blinded. Or killed.
Paolina couldn’t decide which was worse.
Al-Wazir leaned close—the height of the ceiling forced him to bend. “Where?” he whispered. “Do we start cracking open doors?”
“No.” She could barely control her voice. “Look.” Think. See. Paolina pointed to the door across from the one they’d exited. “The w-wooden handle. It’s been l-lacquered.” Her mind raced. “This one’s worn. L-l-let’s see if some of them are not so worn. They can’t use parachutes every day on this ship.”
They peered at handles for a few minutes. Just past the ladder, as Paolina was looking over the last door, someone opened the hatch above. A blinding glare of light stabbed down. She hissed and stepped back into shadow.
She couldn’t see al-Wazir. He must be on the other side of the ladder.
A small man came almost sliding down. He landed lightly on his feet and looked into her eyes, surprised.
Paolina punched him in the gut. Even as he fell, al-Wazir’s great rock of a fist caught the sailor in the side of the head with a crack. Someone above called out in Chinese, then laughed.
She felt a rush of panic. They were about to be spotted. “Quickly!”
Al-Wazir wrenched open the nearest door. The room beyond was a rope and
tool locker. He stepped in. She grabbed the fallen man by the collar and tugged him after the chief. The smear of blood on the deck churned her stomach anew. The reek of offal only made it worse.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Get hold of yourself, lassie.” al-Wazir took two hanks of rope and a large grappling hook. “This’ll do.”
“No parachutes in here?”
“Maybe. But I’m more in a mood to have my way.”
“No.” Paolina caught at his arm. “We must get off this airship.”
“And we will, lassie. After we’ve spiked a few guns.”
She saw that he was swaying. His face seemed to glow as well, with fever or exhaustion. “Chief al-Wazir, we have a plan. Please, help me keep it.”
“They trapped your Brass friend away from us both,” he rumbled. “They killed at least one of the airships in port. I’m nae letting these Chinee bastards get away so free. You’d best find something sharp and heavy, at least till we learn where the guns are.”
He stepped back out as someone called down the ladder. Al-Wazir roared back, “Aye, and I’ll feed you to your dogs, you black-eyed bastard!”
There was a shriek, and a meaty thump; then the shouting and running began in earnest abovedecks as the big man swarmed up the ladder one-armed.
Paolina worked her way down the short hall, bashing open doors with an ax she’d found in the ropes room. Whatever havoc al-Wazir raised abovedecks would only last a minute or two. Rampage or no, he was a one-handed man with a hook in his shaky grip, not an invading force under arms.
The third door proved to be the weapons locker. Firearms were racked along one wall, while red canisters stood at the other. Paolina didn’t know the first thing about guns, so she studied the canisters a moment.
Each had a metal clip at the top, with a little wooden rod through a hole in the clip to keep it down. A very simple lock to retard the action of the clip, she realized. So if one tugged the rod free, the clip would pull back. No, she corrected herself, spring back.
