The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  Inside the bridge, the alarm rang once more.

  “Reddleman, please tell me we’re making progress on that,” Edith said, rubbing her jaw to ease some of the tension that had settled there. She sat in the captain’s chair between the gunner’s station, presently attended by Iren, and the pilot’s console, where Reddleman sat with a fat manual open on his lap.

  “Elimination is its own sort of progress, Captain. Knowing what a thing isn’t brings us one step closer to knowing what it is!” Reddleman said happily, reading along with the track of his finger. He sat in front of the ship’s wheel, which actually didn’t look like a wheel at all. The ship’s primary steering yoke resembled the horns of a bull, capped on either tip by a gold ball.

  Edith frowned at the back of his head. When she had dropped the Red Hand from the Port of Goll, it had never occurred to her that she would one day have to command his revived corpse. The Sphinx considered him both essential and harmless, though Edith was not at all convinced he was either. She certainly doubted he was as civil as he pretended to be. To his credit, since their awkward reunion, Reddleman had made no reference to his murder nor had he shown any sign that he held a grudge.

  Which was well enough because she had no intention of apologizing.

  Still, there was something unnerving about his demeanor. He was a little too cheery. He had the presence of someone who had just surrendered his plate after a wonderful, leisurely meal, or of someone who had only just caught his breath after laughing long and hard at an uproarious joke. As far as she could tell, he had no other emotions: He was never angry, nor sad, nor worried, nor afraid. He had not offered one word of complaint that she had essentially confined him to the bridge, nor did he seem at all annoyed by the incessant alarm. He was just cheerful, and perfectly so, all of the time.

  “How would you describe the alarm, Captain?” Reddleman asked. Yellow-white bristles stood out from his pink scalp like the hairs of a pig. Edith marked the bulge of his mechanical spine through his green uniform jacket. That reminder of his dependency was reassuring.

  “It sounds like a spike being slowly driven into my ear,” Iren said, and as if on cue, the alarm rang again.

  The manual Reddleman hunched over was at least three inches thick, and it was only the second of three similarly sized volumes. The manuals were so cumbersome because they not only had to explain the ship’s functions and the means to repair them, but also the underlying principles that governed the system. It was, as he described it, “An engineering textbook wrapped in a physics degree, with an encyclopedia for an appendix.”

  “Would you say that sounds more like a finger cymbal, a wind chime, or … water dripping in a teacup?” Reddleman read from one of the manual’s many tables.

  “What difference does it make?” the amazon asked.

  “Well, the alarm that sounds like a cymbal means the heating coil has suffered a catastrophic failure and the ship is going to explode.”

  “I think we would’ve noticed that.”

  “Excellent point, Captain! And the wind chime means that there’s been an explosion in the boiler room, which again, would probably have drawn our attention. And the dripping sound … let me see … is a collision alarm.”

  “An alarm to tell us when we’ve run into something? Isn’t that like putting a cowbell on a cannonball? What’s the point? Keep looking,” Edith said, and turned her attention again to the array of gold frames that ringed the bridge above the consoles.

  Together, the frames formed what the manual called the magnovisor. It was, in effect, a window in a windowless room. Each frame of the magnovisor showed a different slice of the landscape outside—the desert valley, the encircling mountains, the sky, and the ships that occupied it. The facade of the Tower filled the starboard panels entirely, though not exactly in order. The world as it appeared inside the gold frames of the magnovisor was all in shades of gray, from pale ash to dark cinder. The shapes shifted and emerged slowly. The effect reminded Edith of drawing on a hot stone with water, though Reddleman said the technology involved iron shavings and millions of minute magnetic pins.

  Edith would’ve preferred the simplicity of a spyglass or the unparalleled view of a bowsprit, but the magnovisor’s existence was what allowed the State of Art to be so secure. There were even two frames that showed the view beneath the ship, which was a wonderful improvement over having to send a lookout crawling through the under rigging to check for unwanted shadows. It had taken a day for Edith and her crew to orientate to the various angles of the magnovisor, and it took another day for their eyes to adjust to the monochromatic, flattened representation of the world. But they were now more or less acclimated to it.

  The magnovisor was just one of the ship’s many technological miracles. Unlike the Stone Cloud, which had flown at the whims of the wind, the State of Art was equipped with a pair of propulsive vents at the stern. According to Reddleman, the vents concealed two powerful steam-fired turbines and, combined with the flaps on the ship’s two short fins, provided them a maneuverability that passive airships could not compete with. The State of Art did not have to wait for the right current to arise to carry her where she wished to go: She made her own wind.

  A new alarm broke the regularity of the familiar chime, and they all looked up as one.

  “No, no, I can’t do two at once. That’s not fair!” Iren moaned. The alarm, which was higher and lighter, came closer together. It sounded like plink-plink. “What is that?”

  “Aha! I believe that is the collision alarm,” Reddleman said, shuffling between pages of the manual.

  “Did we hit something?” Edith asked.

  Reading quickly, Reddleman jabbed the page excitedly. “Wait! It doesn’t only sound for violent collisions. It rings whenever physical contact has been made with the ship.”

  Edith rolled her hand in the air. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, I think someone is trying to board us.”

  The magnovisor, though miraculous, had the same blind spot that had bedeviled crews ever since a basket had first been lashed to a balloon. It could not peer around the ship’s envelope, and so could not see the threats that came from above. Such a view still required a particularly daring and acrobatic lookout, and Edith was not about to bring Voleta into this mess.

  They heard the muffled, but unmistakable, sound of footsteps overhead.

  “They must’ve come in from above, repelled around the envelope, and swung onto the deck,” Reddleman said, finding the switch to deactivate the plinking alarm. “Shall we shake them off? We could make a steep dive, perhaps?”

  “Or I could just have a look,” Iren suggested. “It doesn’t sound like an army marching around up there, and I still haven’t seen the crow’s nest.” She jerked a thumb at the ladder rungs that scaled the wall at the front of the bridge. The round hatch in the ceiling was closed and secured by a heavy wheel lock. That ladder, which led outside, was a large part of the reason why Voleta was not allowed on the bridge. Edith knew it was too great a temptation for Voleta to resist.

  “I’m not sending you up there blind, Iren. There could be one or one dozen armed men waiting for you up there.”

  “We could check the periscope,” Reddleman said.

  “The what?” Edith said.

  “Hold on, I was just reading about this …” Reddleman flipped to the back of the manual, counted down a row of stoppers in the control panel in front of him, and grasped one near the end. When he pulled the stopper out, the small chandelier that hung above the captain’s chair began to descend. The fixture concealed a column that telescoped downward, halting at eye level. Edith pulled down the handles on either side of the pole and put her eyes to the gold-rimmed viewfinder. She found the world outside transcribed there in miniature. She saw woolly clouds pulled into threads by the mountain peaks, and airships, small as ground pepper, rendered motionless by the distance.

  The esoteric spyglass, which would’ve seemed a marvel in its own right aboard anoth
er ship, struck her here as almost commonplace. She was learning a curious truth about miracles: when piled together, they became ordinary.

  Edith turned the bars of the periscope, exploring the view, then after half a circuit, reared back in surprise, her mouth curled in a funny expression.

  “What do you see?” Iren asked.

  “A boot,” she said, then looked again. She saw six boots, in fact. The men were shuffling about the leveled top of the sleek hull with ropes about their waists and swords in their hands. Their tethers ran upward out of sight. Their legs were tied up with rags to warm them, and their furs were matted and balding. “They’re not soldiers,” she said. “Pirates probably. Three of them. Lightly armed. They’re looking for a way in, I think. Oh. They’ve noticed the periscope. Hello! Yes, I see you. Get off my ship!” Edith said, knowing they could not hear her. “Why don’t we let them know we’re not interested in receiving any visitors at the moment. Iren, fire a salvo.”

  “What am I aiming at?” Iren asked, bending down to press her face against the rubber cradle of the gunner’s viewfinder, which, like the periscope, was a peephole into the outside world. “I see … Tower, more Tower, clouds, desert, foothills, a barge, another barge, a flock of birds, one more barge—”

  “No, no, don’t kill anything,” Edith cut in. “Just aim for the mountains. We want to rattle teeth, not start a war.”

  Iren twiddled the adjacent controls, which she had earlier described as a stupid bunch of thimbles. Strange as the knobs appeared, she had learned quickly enough how efficient they were at focusing the ship’s artillery.

  A moment later, the port cannons thundered in unison, and the steel hull of the ship chimed.

  Still squinting into the gunner’s mask, Iren said, “Oof! I hit the boulder I was aiming at. It’s completely gone. Wiped it off the face of the earth. This is fun! We should do more salvos!”

  Peering again into her periscope, Edith was disappointed to see the interlopers still bandying about the deck of her ship. They seemed perhaps a little unnerved by the cannon fire, but not at all dissuaded. “They’re still there,” she said.

  “Three is nothing,” Iren said, pulling away from her station. She pressed her knuckles into the small of her back, striking an almost musical phrase of pops and cracks from her spine. “I could handle three in my sleep.”

  Edith puffed her cheeks and said, “Well, if you want the exercise.” She swept out her arm in invitation. “Help yourself.”

  Iren was out of her seat and at the gun locker in two steps. As she opened the glass cabinet door, she started to whistle an aimless, happy tune. Edith had never heard her whistle before and had not known she could. Iren drew out a saber and flintlock pistol, buckling both around her waist before pulling the strap of a rifle onto her shoulder. When she turned around again, she pumped her arms and shuffled her feet to accompany her whistling.

  “Are you dancing?” Edith asked.

  “No, no. I don’t dance. I’m just loosening up,” Iren said. “It’s been a while.”

  “Don’t forget your tether line.” Edith watched the amazon climb the ladder and unscrew the hatch before turning her attention back to the periscope’s mask.

  “She’s a lot of fun, isn’t she?” Reddleman said, watching Iren disappear into the shaft that led above deck.

  “I wouldn’t call her fun to her face if I were you,” Edith said, then seemed to reconsider. “Never mind. Try it. Tell her she’s fun.”

  “I wish I didn’t make her so uncomfortable.” He sighed, apparently unaware of the sardonic edge to Edith’s remarks. The creak of the second hatch opening was followed quickly by a change to the air pressure and temperature of the room.

  “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have tried to kill her the first time you met.”

  “I didn’t throw the cart back at her … Oh, you mean on that port. But that was before I died.”

  “I don’t see why that should matter to her.” Though Edith continued speaking to him, her attention was on the periscope’s view. “You say you’re different. Maybe you even feel different, but we don’t feel differently about you.”

  Edith observed the moment the three pirates realized they were no longer alone on the deck of the ship. She turned the periscope in time to see Iren emerge from behind the open hatch. The amazon had her cheek snugged against the stock of her rifle. She fired, and the report rang down the ladder shaft, making the glass of the gun cabinet chatter. Edith watched Iren duck ahead of the returned fire. A lead ball ricocheted off the open hatch, ringing it like an anvil.

  “I think she got one of them,” Reddleman said. Edith looked away from the viewfinder to see him pointing at the starboard frames of the magnovisor. Their view of the Tower was now obscured by the body of a man, swinging at the end of a rope. His arms and legs jerked a moment, then went limp. His lifeless expression twisted into view as he floated between frames on the wall.

  Edith looked back into the periscope just in time to see Iren grab another pirate by his harness and hurl him directly at her. The periscope handles rattled from the impact. The pirate slumped against the periscope’s lens, obscuring her view. “No, don’t thrash him there, Iren! Move him! Move him out of the way!”

  “Captain!” Reddleman shouted.

  Edith looked past the periscope’s mask to discover the third pirate clinging to the top of the ladder like a spider on the wall. Her hand flew to her sidearm.

  “Don’t you do it!” the pirate yelled, his pistol already leveled at her. “Stay where you are.”

  Before she could say anything, Reddleman said, “Hold on, Captain.”

  The deck tilted sharply beneath her, and in the same instant, a gunshot nearly burst her eardrums. She fell backward, unsure even if she’d been shot, and landed in her captain’s chair so forcefully she nearly tumbled over its back. The invader lost his foothold on the rungs as the ship’s angle pulled him from the wall. His grip slipped, and he plummeted toward Edith. He would’ve landed on top of her if the periscope hadn’t been in the way. He clipped the column with his hip, spun once in the air, and landed in a sprawling heap. He slid to a halt against Edith’s heels.

  The pirate looked up, his eyes wide with surprise. She kicked him in the mouth.

  “Level us out, pilot.” She gave the order without taking her eyes off the dazed intruder. Reddleman pulled back on the golden yoke, and the ship began to right.

  Edith stood and drew her pistol. The pirate had a weedy beard and bloodshot eyes and now fewer teeth in his prominent mouth. Edith was not accustomed to people ignoring the barrel of her gun, and yet the pirate did so now. He was looking past her. His lips trembled so dramatically he seemed to nurse at the air.

  Edith glanced at Reddleman, standing at her side. The hole in his chest leaked a stream of red light. Reddleman touched the wound, regarding the bright stain on his pale fingers with a warm smile. “Oh, you got me good, sir! Well done!”

  The gold frames on the portside flashed, attracting their attention. The hanging body of the second pirate fell into view on the magnovisor, his throat bloody, his arms stretched out as if to embrace his end. On the opposite wall, the first dead pirate still swung back and forth like the pendulum of a clock.

  The door to the bridge creaked and Byron stepped inside, complaining as he came, “What on earth is going on in here? Was that a gunshot? Oh my god! Who is that?”

  The pirate screamed, “Monsters!”

  Byron touched his brocaded vest and sounded a little hurt when he said, “Who, me?”

  Iren descended the ladder, her swords and rifle clattering as she came. “Sorry, Captain. I let one get past me.”

  “We noticed,” Edith said.

  The amazon skipped the last few rungs and let her boots rattle the floor beneath the traumatized pirate. He turned his gaze from the enlarged, deadened faces of his crewmates, moving like shadows upon the wall, to the horned beast in a tuxedo jacket, to the grinning man bleeding light from a bullet wound, and
finally to the woman with an iron arm, who now picked him up by the front of his weathered furs.

  “I’ll give you a choice,” she said. “I can give you over to my crew. They are numerous, and I admit, they are a little bored. Or I can let you go.”

  “Let me go?” the pirate said, his hope half-drowned by the blood in his mouth.

  “Yes, but only if you promise to spread a word for me. I want you to go to the Windsock. I want you to go to Harlot’s Cove, and to Port Marrow, and to the Red Cleft, and any other pirate den you can worm your way into. I want you to tell them exactly what you have seen here. We do not hide when you board us. We do not die when you shoot us. We do not forget when you cross us.”

  Edith shook him until he whimpered then pulled him very close. “Tell them the Sphinx has opened up his infernal zoo and let all his monsters out.”

  Chapter Three

  The rich “learn lessons.” The poor commit crimes. “Mistakes” are generally considered a mark of the middle class.

  —Oren Robinson of the Daily Reverie

  Byron dragged a mop through the puddle of urine the pirate had left on the floor of the bridge. “It’s just, I thought perhaps we could try to appeal to people’s better nature.”

  “Pirates don’t have a better nature, Byron,” Edith said. She pressed the linen bandage against the oozing hole in her pilot’s chest. Reddleman held his unbuttoned shirt pulled out for her. He smiled into the distance as if he’d just detected a pleasing waft of budding roses.

  Edith was still trying to decide what she thought of his apparently selfless attempt to draw the pirate’s attention and gunfire. She lifted one of Reddleman’s hands and pressed it against the bandage. His skin felt like warm rubber. “Here, hold this.”