Escapement

by Jay Lake

  Childress nodded. “In port they open larger hatches and use cranes.”

  Both of them watched Paolina as they spoke.

  The girl looked up from her seat in the small boat. It rocked slightly on the water. Ropes coiled around her feet, and the sunlight caught Paolina’s hair like polished oak.

  Ming, just aft of Paolina, smiled up at Childress. “Zai jien,” he said. Goodbye. He and Fat Cheung then put their backs into the oars, pulling away from Five Lucky Winds.

  Childress watched them go as the deck cleared around her. “How far?”

  “I’d make it a thousand yards, me,” said al-Wazir. “If I was them. Did you hear their captain giving them orders?”

  She thought about that a moment. “No. Actually, I did not.”

  “Nor did I.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’s gone without orders, is what it means. That Ming, he’s kind of a Chinee petty officer. He has an understanding with the captain here. Since there’s seven kinds of admiralty hell about to land on this here deck, the captain’s used the chief to send his biggest problem away.”

  She had to laugh. “You are also a large problem for Captain Leung, Chief al-Wazir.”

  “Not so large as yon poppet and her device. I’m a big man, she has the killing of the world in her hand.”

  “Paolina will erase part of herself, and perhaps cast that thing into the sea. It won’t be such a problem then.”

  Meanwhile a series of whistles and bells caused the crew of Five Lucky Winds to pour out onto the deck. A few sailors were stringing flags to the tower, while others mounted the staves at the bow and stern.

  Al-Wazir snorted. “Yon captain’s making a show if it. He’ll go down in full kit, I reckon. He seems something of a gentleman for a Chinee.”

  Childress bit back a cold retort. “Captain Leung is indeed a gentlemen. You would do well to remember that, Chief.”

  The airships approached over the jungle. A Sumatran canoe slid up to the hull to take the two local warriors off. One of them turned and gave al-Wazir a long, solemn look.

  She noted that the chief’s guards had disappeared.

  “Ye want off for yon island?” al-Wazir asked Childress. “Methinks the captain is letting all his biggest problems slip overboard.”

  “No.” She didn’t have to consider it. “I will stay with the ship. I am the Mask Childress. The Celestial Empire holds no fear for me. But please, take yourself ashore.”

  “The Celestial Empire holds plenty of fear for me, ma’am, and begging your pardon.” He sighed and raised his bandaged stump. “I’ve run too far, and without me southern paw I’m not the fighter I was. Besides, I will not leave an Englishwoman behind in heathen clutches.”

  Childress took his remaining hand in hers. “You’re a better man than you believe yourself to be, Chief al-Wazir.”

  Al-Wazir let her hold on to him for a moment. He nodded at the Sumatran, who grinned and shoved off in his canoe. Childress scanned the water, watching Paolina’s launch pull farther and farther away. She could hear the engines of the approaching airships growling in the sky.

  Within minutes the crew of Five Lucky Winds was assembled on the deck. Most were in better uniforms than the usual blue service cotton she’d become accustomed to seeing them in. Three flags snapped from a staff rigged on the tower, while a series of smaller banners hung on the forward line.

  It was ceremonious, even pretty, in the light of an equatorial morning. She felt like she was attending an execution. All that was lacking was a drum beating the measure at the end of a man’s life.

  Two of the airships closed to pass overhead. The third split eastward toward where Paolina bobbed in the launch with Ming and Fat Cheung. She looked to the north and west. The ships steaming toward them were visible to the casual eye now. As she watched, a wisp of smoke rose from the oncoming hull as a single gun boomed to send a ripple of sound across the restless water.

  Each of the airships passing overhead dropped a smoke pot into the water near Five Lucky Winds. One burned red on the starboard side, the other burned white on the port.

  Al-Wazir leaned over and rumbled in her ear. “Bracketing their shots, they is. Showing your captain what’s what. Airships is the best thing for fighting these blasted submarines.”

  “I would expect that they don’t generally fight their own side.”

  “No, no.” He added contemplatively a moment later, “Not so as you’d think, at any rate.”

  The airships circled overhead, engines whining. She watched each vessel drop a set of lines over the side. Preparing to lower men to take over Five Lucky Winds. Though it was obvious even to Childress that the true threat would come from the approaching surface ships.

  The airships could destroy the submarine, but they could not force Leung to surrender. Whatever angry admiral rode aboard the approaching line of armored ships held all power over them now. She wondered if Admiral Shang had some influence to the good over what would come next.

  A gunboat approached Five Lucky Winds. Its rail was crowded with armed sailors. Leung had four of his men take lines that were cast from the surface vessel and make them fast to the submarine. The two floated close, only a set of narrow cylindrical bumpers keeping the hulls from battering together.

  A trio of aging mandarins stepped across a narrow gangplank, disdaining any escort. They wore formal robes, layers of red and black and gold over creamy underrobes, much more stylized than even the cheongsams of the librarians at Chersonesus Aurea. Each also had a small square hat with a colored stone atop. A very old man led them, who moved as smoothly as any dancer. Childress marked that he had something of the same presence as William of Ghent. He was a wizard, almost certainly.

  The mandarin did not look to Leung, but rather stepped straight toward Childress. His hands closed one fist over the other, then made the gesture in reverse.

  The Silent Order. She offered him a small smile and the bird sign of the avebianco in return.

  “You have strayed far from what was agreed, Mask.”

  Childress realized that this man must think her to be Poinsard. “As it may be,” she responded. Whatever Admiral Shang knew, or thought, the chief of the Beiyang Navy had not communicated it with these gentlemen of the Imperial Court. She added in English: “You stray too far toward what should not be.”

  “You will not judge. You cannot. Woman, devil.” He added a third word, also in Chinese, which she did not follow, but Leung’s breath hissed.

  There was a ripping noise as the ropes dangling from the circling airships reached the submarine. One flier had held a position above Five Lucky Winds to drop air sailors down to the deck. Leung barked a quick order for his men to stand and hold. They were quickly swarmed by a dozen fighters armed with short rifles and long knives.

  In moments all the crew of Five Lucky Winds was facedown on the deck, save for Leung himself, along with Childress and al-Wazir. The mandarin never even turned to look at the commotion behind him.

  The mandarin smiled, his lips thin. “I believe you will find our hospitality more convivial than the company of mutineers and English revanchists.”

  Childress wished she possessed the courage to cast herself into the sea in that moment. Instead she continued to play the part of Poinsard. “Where should this hospitality be found? In Phu Ket or Nanking?”

  “Do not be a fool, Mask.” A flash of distaste crossed his face, as if he’d eaten of something foul. “In the end we have far more in common than that which separates us.”

  How much have the Silent Order and the Feathered Masks been in collaboration? she wondered. Enough to sell me to the star chamber. Or more to the point, to be drowned in the Atlantic along with the rest of Mute Swan’s crew, just so Poinsard could go on to China without there being a hue and cry behind her. “I wish to be clear which way the wind blew here.”

  She glanced northwestward. The rest of the mandarin’s fleet was approaching. All in service of the Silent
Order. She wondered if Five Lucky Winds would be posted missing, as Mute Swan must have been, lost at sea without ever word of her true fate coming back.

  Surely these crews would talk more than that.

  “The wind blows as it always has, toward the Middle Kingdom.” He turned and shouted something in Chinese.

  The invaders on the deck began shooting the prone sailors in the head. They moved quickly even as some of Leung’s men rose to their knees in shouted protest. The captain screamed and strained against invisible bonds.

  Beside her, al-Wazir lurched into motion with a vasty roar.

  TWENTY-ONE

  PAOLINA

  Out in the gently rocking launch, Paolina had studied the gleam as the airships approached. There had been little enough she could do except to remove herself from the board as a playing piece. Not that the Silent Order would ever believe that of her. Still, she could only fight one struggle at a time.

  If only Boaz had come with them. She prayed he had survived the carnage and chaos back in Mogadishu.

  Here, now, her problems were far more immediate.

  She’d spent time fiddling with the hand that corresponded to the time that beat inside her. How to touch the shadow of one thought within her own head?

  It was a problem that frightened her deeply.

  Ming muttered something. Painfully aware she was out of time, Paolina looked up. Ropes descended from the airship over Five Lucky Winds. The airship circling over their launch was losing altitude, also dangling ropes now.

  Then gunfire echoed across the water.

  “They’re killing the crew,” she whispered.

  Paolina had no love for the Chinese, especially not the airshipmen, but Childress’ submariners had saved both her life and al-Wazir’s. And been decent about things afterwards. Most important, the chief was still with them.

  In a surge of anger, she tugged the stem to the fourth position, away from her focus on herself into the focus on the world. She moved quickly, without thinking, much as she had during the storm when she’d drawn Five Lucky Winds to her position.

  The attacking fleet came into sharp relief. The hand quivered as it found their wavelength. Bound by a skein of duty, of orders and shared obligation, they were as much one entity as all the wind and waves and falling water that made up a storm.

  She’d been touching the edges of her own mind, exploring the forests of forgetting. Now she reached into theirs.

  It was like skimming cream from milk, like winnowing wheat from dross. Reaching in, she used the gleam to twist them just so, creating an absence of memory, of purpose, of thought.

  There was a pop, and a flare of light unseen except at the corners of vision. Ming and Fat Cheung both swore quietly as something rippled away from the launch. She heard a faint clattering, clockwork moving everywhere around her.

  The airship circling over the launch broke out of its maneuver on a heading south of east. The descending sailors dropped into the water and began to flounder. The airship above Five Lucky Winds also broke position to drag its landing ropes away south. The other airship straightened out of a stationkeeping arc and moved off west of north.

  More important, the men with guns on the deck of Five Lucky Winds left off their shooting and began to look around. Leung’s surviving sailors rose in a body and drove their invaders overboard. There was no struggle that Paolina could see, just bodies falling into the water as if they were men asleep.

  She felt a cold chill down her spine.

  “Great God in His brass heaven,” she muttered. “What have I wrought?” It was the same thing she’d done to Boaz, back at the bottom of the Wall, writ across a mighty force of men.

  With the stemwinder, the Silent Order really could kill the world.

  Ming touched her elbow. There was a deep, passionate sympathy in his eyes. “We go ship now.”

  The only thing that staved off her rush of guilt was the knowledge that these same men had been intent on her own death mere moments earlier. Still, the sight of them bobbing quietly in the water was horrifying.

  “Go ship now.” She nodded.

  Ming and Fat Cheung put their backs into rowing, covering the distance toward Five Lucky Winds as quickly as they could, even as the silhouettes of the ships on the horizon widened. The naval units each turned in one direction or another without respect to the rest of their fleet. The men in the water trod water or swam slowly, but didn’t seem to understand their situation. Not a one looked to the launch for aid, or to resume the attack. Neither did they head for shore.

  They just waited there for someone or something to tell them what to do. A few had already sunk into drowning.

  Have I made them into idiots?

  Bells echoed over the water, followed by a horrendous rending noise as two of the ships collided.

  Fat Cheung said something quietly to Ming.

  Ahead, the deck of Five Lucky Winds was already clearing in a mad scramble. The wounded and the dead were being taken below, while the colors were struck. A larger weapon had appeared on the tower. A sailor trained it on her.

  Al-Wazir and Childress stood, watching her approach.

  Paolina knew there was no turning back from what had taken place. She kept one hand firmly on the gleam. The power of forgetting was on display even now, as men about them faded ever further from their duty.

  “Hold your position,” al-Wazir bellowed as they came within twenty or so yards of the submarine. Leung shouted in Chinese from his position atop the tower, where he was surveying the damage and directing the submarine’s departure.

  After backing water to slow them down, Ming and Fat Cheung shipped their oars. Ming called something out in Chinese. The launch continued to drift slowly toward the submarine.

  “You cannot come aboard,” Leung called down. “You are too dangerous.”

  Al-Wazir gave Leung a long, hard look that Paolina could interpret even from her position. The gun on the tower still tracked her.

  “I saved you all,” she said, not even bothering to shout.

  The boat had slipped to ten yards’ distance. Close enough to swim in a few strokes. Close enough for that weapon next to Leung to cover in the pull of a man’s finger.

  “Our thanks, lassie,” bellowed al-Wazir, “and more than. But what will ye be doing now, eh?”

  Paolina stood in the boat, her balance uncertain but trusting to the moment. She raised the gleam above her head. The words came. “I am too much for this Northern Earth. Even if I were to wipe my own memory clean, they will never believe me incapable of this power they crave so badly.

  “Instead I will sail to the Wall and find my own Golden Bridge to pass beyond. There are wizards in the Southern Earth, and Great Relics, and people with no care for London or Peking. Bid me farewell as I will pass from this life, taking the gleam with me.”

  Al-Wazir gave Leung another long, hard glare. Leung stared back down at the chief, at the Mask Childress, then locked gazes with Paolina. Even as the two of them looked into one another’s eyes, the launch bumped against the hull.

  “Go,” he said. Leung then called to Ming in Chinese.

  Their boat bumped the submarine’s hull. Paolina sat down as Ming argued. Fat Cheung climbed out of the launch with a crooked smile for her. He ran for the hatch at the base of the tower, while Ming remained in the launch.

  Leung shouted down at him, but Ming pushed them off with his oar. “We go,” he said to Paolina, and pointed her to Fat Cheung’s abandoned seat by the port oarlock.

  She slipped over to the warm seat, placed the gleam between her feet, and began to row. They faced backwards, as the fishermen did, and so they watched Five Lucky Winds awhile, until a horn blasted above the submarine and she began to make way, passing beneath the waves as she did so. She only wished Boaz were with her now.

  There was nothing left but the bobbing heads of the airshipmen, who slipped beneath the waves one by one. Some went silently, others in bloody shouts as the sharks of these w
aters came to take them.

  They rowed south in silence, toward a Muralha, which towered behind her sure as any man leaning over her shoulder. This she would conquer, surpass, and pass beyond; that she knew.

  When Ming began to sing, she listened awhile. Though Paolina was no singer of any skill, she made a wordless harmony to go along with him. It was like a little prayer, except that the two of them spoke to the noontime of the world. Their oars dipped in the bounteous salt ocean as they rowed.

  AL - WAZIR

  He’d not spent time wondering about the girl, nor staring after her as Childress had done. Rather, al-Wazir lent his strength, prodigious compared with these busy little men even while working one-handed, to getting the wounded and the dead below. The sailors of Five Lucky Winds were not leaving their own behind to share this bit of ocean with those who had attacked them.

  It was a feeling he could understand.

  Leung came down from the tower finally. “She is out of range. We must go.”

  “Aye.” Al-Wazir looked at the Sumatran shore a moment, recalling the recent invitation. Surely they were being watched intently from there now. Unless the mechanical spell invoked by Paolina had overwhelmed the fuzzy wuzzies as well. “And where are we heading now, sir?”

  “I have a mind to sail west, Chief al-Wazir. There is no choice for me here. I could attempt to make my home port while being hunted for a traitor and a mutineer, but Five Lucky Winds would be broken on the bottom of the Strait of Malacca within the day, I believe.”

  Al-Wazir had to laugh. “Too far west and you will be hunted for a Chinee invader. I trow the bottom of the Indian Ocean is little more pleasant than the bottom of some Asian strait.”

  “I have two English passengers to discharge. Perhaps an arrangement can be made.”

  “Oh, you are an optimist, Captain. But as it happens, I have the ear of the Prime Minister, if we can find a way to send a message without immediate fatal consequence. I owe him a report at the least and should like to hear his thoughts. In that same duty, there must be a rescue for some men I left along the Wall on the eastern edge of Africa. This is something else the PM will want very much to hear of. Most importantly, I’ve unfinished business in Mogadishu. I left a friend behind.”