She nodded and walked slowly back to the window, to the unchanged scene outside. The Century Ship, studded with electric lights reaching back into the clouded night, resembled an open temple to a dark god. The god’s name might be Haraad, if only he weren’t so petty.
He will sacrifice this ship and all the people on it just to feed his own power. To survive. The thought connected in her mind. He has no soul left. He has sacrificed it. For power.
Scuffling feet interrupted her thoughts. Tselah gestured and one of her men threw open the hatch, giving the boy below a hand up.
“They’re back!” he said. “They did it!”
Some of the men muttered in disbelief. “A blind boy,” Tselah muttered. Like that, she was down the ladder. Azriyqam followed. Zhad and his crew sat on the floor, swaying. Dust and slime and cobwebs wreathed their dark clothing. One of them fell over, paroxysms of coughing wracking his body. Zhad waved a dry canteen.
“Get him some water!” Tselah commanded.
Zhad grabbed the cup and drained it as soon as it was pressed into his hand. “More,” he croaked. “Them, too.”
Azriyqam ran to him. “Are you hurt?”
“Not as such,” he wheezed. He drained another cup of water. “Next time, I’m insisting you find me some other blind people. I know there were some on this Ship when I left. What happened? Haraad kill them all for fun?”
“Who knows what happened to them?” said one of Tselah’s lieutenants, irritably. “We weren’t looking for them to stand up to Haraad. We were looking for people who might be useful.”
Zhad growled, “Come here and say that again.”
The lieutenant stepped forward, but Tselah pushed her man back. “Do we not have enough trouble without your hotheaded bilge?”
“No one saw us,” wheezed one of Zhad’s team. Azriyqam recognized him. Racan, who had wanted to help the Consortium wipe out the kingdom.
“Only because their hearing is even worse than yours is, by some miracle,” Zhad returned. “These blundering elephant-seals almost got us caught more times than I could count. Blind people learn to stop and be still when they’re fucking told. Or isn’t ‘do what you’re told by someone who knows what he’s doing’ something that’s done on this bloody Ship anymore, Captain?”
There was an ugly murmuring from Tselah’s men.
“Oh, save it for someone who gives a piss in the ocean for it,” continued Zhad. “I swear, I leave this worthless hull for less than a damn year and everything falls to shit.”
“Did they have guards on the winddrivers?”
“No, Haraad isn’t that smart. He probably hasn’t even figured out how we got away last time. He did have guards on the powder magazines, though, which were between us and the winddriver spares. We had to get around them. They heard us, but since they didn’t find us in any place with standing room, they assumed we were rats.”
“Then where did you—?”
“Any place there wasn’t standing room. Crawling along the curve of the hull in any unfilled space. Took some time and would have been easier if certain people knew when to listen and stop moving.”
Racan swayed upright. “Do I have to take this from—”
“Shut up,” said Tselah. “Are we ready for the next task?”
Azriyqam returned the slightly older woman’s gaze. Despite the one word reply to her ultimatum, hammering out the details of their agreement had not been easy. The rebels’ willing surrender of Ekkaia to the kingdom was contingent upon the kingdom—which meant Avnai, Merav, Zhad, Elazar, and Azriyqam—getting them there. Zhad had provided the winddrivers. It would be up to Azriyqam and Elazar to complete the victory.
“It isn’t as simple as getting the winddrivers, you know,” Tselah had said coolly, that morning. “Even if you can bewitch them just as you said. As long as Haraad controls the rudders, he can steer you in circles and laugh at you, and we have no charts, to know where we are.”
“I can Command the Theurge to find our way home,” said Azriyqam.
“Can you?” asked Tselah. “That is well. Can you also Command this Theurge to show you any islands or reefs that might be between us and there? To find the island we must avoid? To find the known currents that might set us adrift, or the hunting grounds of Deep Dwellers?”
Since Azriyqam could not, it had taken most of the next day to think and plan their way through all the problems.
They unwrapped the long bundles. Azriyqam blinked when she realized what she was looking at. “Four. You managed to get four of them?”
“Well, yes,” said Zhad. “Time being of the essence.”
Azriyqam embraced him. “Elazar, can I bestow titles of nobility?”
“No, but you may be able to talk the Crown into it.”
“I certainly will.”
“You pirates are an optimistic lot,” said Tselah, sourly. “Let’s see this miracle of yours.”
Azriyqam nodded. “Fasten it down,” she said.
Racan stared at her. “What, inside? With no sails?”
Azriyqam met his mocking stare coldly. “Fasten it down as tight as you would to a mount, or I’ll not touch it, and aim it out a port. What I’m about to do is dangerous!”
“Do as she says,” said Tselah. “This is our only chance, we agreed. If they’re lying, we can always kill them.”
Azriyqam studied the bulky devices. Each winddriver was almost as long as she was tall with a thick loop of hardwood wrapped around a flaring hourglass of stone in the middle. The inertial reverser. Twenty runes. They ran in a spiral around the twisting figure.
On the winddriver’s fore-end, the stone narrowed to a cylinder with a large wooden cap fitted around it. The kinetic sink, Avnai had called it. The wood was incised deeply with runes and she could make out some of them, but only some. This was enchantment far in advance of her own pathetic knowledge.
On the other end, the winddriver was tapering, naked stone. The focus array. Likewise carved with arcane glyphs, it was banded with iron, copper, and gold. Atop the loop was its only control: a large, wooden lever.
“Bring me a hammer, and a small chisel,” she said. Tselah repeated the order.
Azriyqam studied the device and recalled her brother’s words: Destroy the third and the seventeenth runes. She waited while a team of men fastened the winddriver to the deck, aiming it carefully through the porthole. She tested the heft of the hammer and chisel; three quick taps and each rune was gone.
Trying to look more confident than she felt, she held her fingers to the dome of the kinetic sink. She knew the sounds of them, they’d been drilled into her for hours by Senaatha, but she had never read them before. Now, silently, she shaped them in her mouth, careful not to let a breath of wind escape her.
The winddrivers were products of enchantment, which meant they didn’t behave according to the strict rules of sorcery that Senaatha had taught her. When Commands were inscribed like this, Union with the Theurge was unnecessary. She took a deep breath and began to chant: “Gwa-thei-uu-ka-thri-yoh.” She kept up the steady cadence through the last syllable.
A hurricane of wind exploded around her.
Reflexively, she brought up her wings to shield herself. The wind caught her wings, spreading them, and slamming her sickeningly against the rear bulkhead. Her head rang, and she tasted blood where she had bitten her tongue. There were shouts all around her. At her. Screaming imprecations made wordless by the howling wind as people covered eyes and faces and heads from the debris being whipped about the cabin. Dizzily, she peeled herself off the wall and staggered sideways, out of the howling cone of wind blasting from the front of the winddriver. Thank all the dead and absent gods the hammer and chisel were too heavy or too sheltered to blow away. Staggering, she picked them up. Destroy the ninth rune on the inertial reverser. She was forced to count them all. She raised the hammer. Once. Twice. The rune was almost gone.
Some instinct prompted her to look back along the line of the tapering focus array. “
Get away!” she screamed at the two men sheltering there. They dived aside, and she brought the hammer down a third time.
The winddriver roared. The wind from its front died, and a jet of air shot from its rear. In spite of herself, Azriyqam marveled at it: air moving so fast you could see it. Then Tselah was beside her, shoving her out of the way while she slammed the lever down toward its minimum. The roar dwindled to a low growl.
Azriyqam felt foolish. For all her precautions, she had forgotten to check the intensity setting of the driver. Avnai had never mentioned it, nor had he warned her to stand out of the way of the blast of wind. He’d probably assumed she’d know.
Tselah glared at her over the winddriver. “I can’t decide if you’re a genius or an idiot.” From the curses behind them, her crew wasn’t having any trouble deciding at all.
Azriyqam got to her feet. Play the role. “It worked, yes? Then our bargain is still intact. It’s up to your people now.”
Tselah nodded. “And to you.”
“Then we’d better get to work.”
Tselah nodded and barked orders. Azriyqam got to work on the rest of the winddrivers. Elazar knelt beside her. “Are you all right, kyria?”
She nodded. “I’d better be. Make ready while I finish here.” Elazar bowed and headed above.
* * *
On deck, the forecastle lights had been extinguished. Only the feeble rays from the barricade illuminated the deck. Behind them, electric lights further along the deck studded the Century Ship like rows of stars. A Century Ship was always lit at night. Even on such large a vessel, stumbling around on an unlit deck was unsafe. Azriyqam’s fingers checked the two packed, tightly wrapped cloth packages under her wing-roots for the third time. They were as secure as she could make them. Besides these, she was carrying only her airswords. She felt heavy. She had never flown with so much weight.
Finally, there was nothing left to check.
“It is time, kyria, said Elazar.
“I’ll meet you at the rudders,” she said. On impulse, Azriyqam stood on her tiptoes and kissed Elazar’s dry cheek. He nodded gravely, took her head between his fingers, and kissed her on the forehead. “Daughter of my spirit. You know what to do?”
She nodded.
“Then we go.”
Not trusting herself to look back because of the fear welling up inside her, Azriyqam turned her back on the old halfdragon and marched toward the gunwale. Here, forward of the forecastle and far away from the Ship’s lights, she should be the next best thing to invisible. The cool night winds howled about her.
Azriyqam ran in an arc angling toward the aft of the ship. The gunwale came closer. Closer.
She spread her wings and jumped.
Her muscles took up the strain with an effort and she felt the sea pull at her. The tailwind shot her forward but robbed her of her lift at the same time. Laboring for height, she fought the air. Closer and closer, the dark waves came. She risked a quick look at the cliff-like hull of the Ekkaia. It seemed to stretch on forever, a great, gray wall in the sea, electric lights burning mockingly from its decks and tops far above.
Her wingtips hit seawater.
Frantically, she fought for height. There was nothing but her wings. Terror lent her strength and she rose, foot by foot, the wind whipping her back along the course of the great Century Ship. Beat. Beat. Beat. It became a rhythm of laborious pain, a pain she must endure, or be sucked down into a cold and infinite grave.
Then the wall was past. Now she had to climb. The slowness of her climb and her turn was agony, but now the wind was flowing over her wings, lifting her up.
Soon the great starboard rudder loomed above her like a curving wall. At last, she was above it. She dipped her wings, and with her last ounce of strength, lunged forward and dropped. All four fingers and all six toes dug into the hard wood of the rudder. She slid back an inch. Two. Stopped. For long moments, she could do nothing but breathe, cold air and salt scouring their way down her throat and lungs.
She balanced, toeclaws dug as deeply as she could drive them into the sweeping back-curve of the giant rudder. It was just wide enough to accommodate the length of her feet. Before her, the great, narrowing stock of the rudder reached up twenty, thirty feet to vanish into the enormous hull of the Century Ship. Her long arms could just reach around the stock to the gap between it and the sternpost.
Clinging onto the rudder stock with one pair of fingers, she checked the two sealed leather bags attached to her flying harness. They were still there, attached below her wing-roots, outside of her breasts. Each held three pounds of guncotton. Far more powerful than black powder, it was as much as Elazar could make with his ‘alchemy.’ Each bag had a waxed fuse protruding from it. Gripping the left one firmly, she yanked. Yanked harder.
It happened all at once. The lozenge-shaped package came loose from its bindings and slipped from her fingers, spinning end-over-end, lost to sight before it hit the sea.
Cold dismay struck through her, then. Elazar hadn’t even been sure that both packages would be enough to destroy the huge rudder. He’d thought one might be sufficient, but that was why he had insisted on two.
Envying humans their superior hands once again, Azriyqam drew a steadying breath. Timing the swell of the sea, she gripped the remaining packet in both hands and pulled. It came free. Carefully, slowly, she reached around the rudder, and using all her strength, shoved the bulky package between the rudder and sternpost, directly above the massive pintle-and-gudgeon hinges.
Then she pinched the fuse between her thumb and forefinger. Looking across to the other rudder, she extended her left wing three times.
Through the driving spray, she saw Elazar’s wing answer in three deliberate strokes.
There had been no question of taking matches or a flint and steel along on this flight. Lighting the fuse with such things from this position was out of the question, but a trained halfdragon was never without fire.
Battered by the spray and tossed by the sea, Azriyqam strove for calm and spoke the Command of Union. The Theurge met her there and she felt its power. Then she said, “Calidain.”
Flame sprang to life between her fingers. Sharpened to pain. Her control was slipping, and she felt the wax softening. Stinging agony now, but she had to hold on…
The fuse sparked and sputtered to life, a sickly flare in the night.
Azriyqam spread her wings and let the wind whip her into the sky. She beat the air for height. Circling back in a slow climb, she could scarcely see the rudder against the silhouette of the enormous Ship, let alone her feeble, sparking fuse. Nor could she see Elazar, or know how he had fared. She was alone in the wide, wet sky, laboring to lift herself above the spray and into the drier air.
Fire flowered in the night. Three ragged explosions, one from starboard and two from port, thundered out across the gently waving darkness, and, in their brief light, Azriyqam saw clearly, if only for a moment, both rudders splintered and hanging off the end of the Ship, great gaps blasted out of their bulk. For a moment, she simply hung in the air, relief flooding through her.
Then she remembered how much there was still to do. Desperately, she clawed at the air once more. The wind flowed over her wings and gave her lift as she strove back toward the deck, but now it was in her face, driving her backward. The Wind’s Curse, indeed. She looked desperately about her but could not see or hear Elazar.
What she did hear, below her, were shouts and cries of alarm. The explosions had doubtless been felt throughout the whole of the Century Ship and anything that could rock a Century Ship was cause for alarm. Below her, lamps surrounded by damage parties streamed backward, gathering on the towering greatcastle. Not an eye turned skyward.
She banked starboard to avoid the great mizzenmast, then had to fight for more precious height. Below her was the aftercastle, and sitting atop its own terrace, the Wheelhouse. She dove toward it.
The Wheelhouse swelled in her vision. There were people going in, but more run
ning aft toward the explosions. It was the fastest she had ever dared to drop. She snapped her wings out and brought her legs up under her. She was going to land hard and would, for at least a few seconds, be vulnerable. A man was running for the door of the Wheelhouse. She would hit right beside him, and would be at his mercy.
The decision took no time at all. She slid to her right and slammed into the man’s side, feet extended. Hitting him was like crashing into a soft tree. He cried out, and dull rods of pain flashed through her calves and knees.
She rolled off and jumped to her feet, drawing her airswords. He was still on the ground, shaking himself and trying to rise. She stabbed him through the ribcage and neck.
He screamed and writhed. Azriyqam wrenched open the door and entered the Wheelhouse. Three men dressed in carpenters’ colors examined the Century Ship’s massive, polished wheels. She realized they still didn’t know what had happened to the rudders. Two young men dressed in the sailing master’s colors looking on with concern stood back by the charts tables. Azriyqam’s eyes locked on to the precious charts, the reason she was here, but she had hesitated too long, and now one of the young pilots was staring at her. At the sight of the naked steel in her hand, his own flashed to his waist and Azriyqam buried her sword points in his chest just as his cutlass cleared his scabbard.
The other sailor faced her, his expression a mask of terror and rage.
“It’s Responsibility!” he cried, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The carpenters swore, but she had no attention to spare for them. Instead, she attacked.
Her young opponent parried right and left, deflecting her blows, looking scared, but determined. He lunged himself, forcing her back. Slashed again. She tried to catch his sword between her own as Elazar had drilled her, but someone had drilled this young man, too, and he was too fast for her.
Responsibility of the Crown Page 28
