“I don’t understand,” Cas said. “Why would you tell both sides? Didn’t you have any loyalties?”
“Not even remotely. That’s what a pirate is. Someone too jaded for loyalties, someone who isn’t going to let some government lead him around with a bit in his mouth. You’re only out for yourself out here, and the sooner you’re honest about that, the sooner you’ll make a life you like.” Slaughter shrugged. “Looking back, I wouldn’t have done it again. It was horrible. From hearing him talk about it, I didn’t truly grasp how awful of a weapon he’d created. I don’t think he did, either, honestly. We flew to your Tanglewood—when he learned that the spies had stolen his vials, he wanted to chase after them and retrieve them. We didn’t make it in time. We saw the aftermath. And that scared me pissless. I was sure when we got down there that we’d be affected by the toxin, too, and be dead before we got back to the ship. It had dissipated by that point though. Still, it was a long time before I went into his cabin—into that laboratory of his—after that.”
Cas wondered if this was the same version of the story that Tolemek had heard. Or had he only known about the spies and not how his captain had deliberately fed them information?
“Camp Eveningson was the same,” Slaughter said. “Disturbingly horrible. Mek disappeared for a while after that. I didn’t know if he would come back—or if he would do something drastic to himself. While he was gone, I made sure the governments knew who was responsible.”
“Er, why?”
“So they would know not to bother the Roaming Curse.”
“I don’t get it,” Cas said. “Weren’t you afraid they would hunt him down for his crimes?”
“I thought they’d be too afraid to bother him. And it was mostly true. There were some bounty hunters, but the big threats, men like your pa, were too smart to go after him. That’s what I heard anyway. That someone offered Ahnsung the job, and he refused. Might just be a rumor though. All I know was that after Mek came back, nobody bothered him. And after he got over his funk, he stuck with me. He didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Cas considered him, wondering how long she had until the serum wore off. “Are you sure that wasn’t part of your plan all along? To make sure his invention didn’t turn him into some government’s hero, or savior, or dark little secret kept in the basement? To make sure both parties were too upset to consider working with him? So that he wouldn’t stray from your side? He’s your secret weapon, after all. You need him to ensure your continued power amongst a fleet of bloodthirsty men.”
Slaughter’s eyes were closed again. He yawned and said, “You talk too much, woman.”
Please, he had been the one babbling.
“But I’m not wrong, am I?” Cas glanced toward that cracked door. She had heard enough to form her own opinion on the matter, but she wanted the captain to make a beyond-question, self-condemning statement.
“He’s my secret weapon,” Slaughter agreed softly.
Cas wondered if that had been enough of a confession. Tolemek, if he was indeed standing out there, didn’t barge in. In fact, when the door opened a few minutes later, it was the guard who returned. Cas didn’t catch a glimpse of anyone else in the corridor. Had she accomplished anything at all with her probing?
“One last question,” she whispered, hoping the guard wouldn’t hear or wouldn’t think anything of it. “What are you planning to do to my city? Besides find Colonel Zirkander?”
Boots still up, Slaughter laced his hands behind his neck and smiled. “Invade it, of course. And destroy it. With Tolemek’s help.”
Cas stared at the control panel in horror. If she didn’t do something to stop them, there would be pirates assaulting the city by midnight. She had to crash the ship before it reached the harbor. No choice.
Chapter 12
The lights of the capital came into view on the dark horizon, the bright pinpoints close and dense in the miles around the harbor, then growing more sparse as they traveled into the hills beyond. Heavy clouds had gathered in the sky overhead, but the rain—or maybe it would be snow here in Iskandia—hadn’t started yet. Winds already batted at the dirigible, and Cas had to keep a hand on the controls to stay on course.
At the northern end of the harbor, atop Pinnacle Rock, the lighthouse sent its beam seaward. The craft had already passed the lookout towers miles out in the surf, where men were stationed to give advance warning if enemy steamers or airships appeared on the horizon. No alarms had gone up, not at the approach of an Iskandian freighter.
On the butte at the southern end of the harbor, gas lamps burned along the runway and all around the hangars of the airbase. For weeks, Cas had dreamed of seeing home again, but approaching it in a stolen vessel, with Captain Slaughter rubbing his hands and smiling as they grew nearer... that hadn’t been part of the dream.
Her stomach twisted with anxiety as she eyed the controls beneath her fingers, contemplating a crash for the five hundredth time. She hadn’t seen Tolemek since the captain relayed the story of their past. She had hoped he might do something and that she wouldn’t feel compelled to crash the dirigible, but he hadn’t sent so much as a note all afternoon. Of course, Slaughter hadn’t left the navigation area for more than a minute, either. He was watching her carefully, his gun in his lap. It had been there since the truth serum had worn off, a moment she had sensed by the hard, cold stare he turned upon her. As if she were the one to have fed him the stuff. Maybe he thought she had.
She tried not to watch that gun. She would die if she crashed the ship, anyway, she told herself. What did it matter if he was thinking of shooting her? That would simply ensure the vessel’s plummet into the ocean, unless these log-heads could dock a dirigible on their own. Granted, she hoped to survive a crash, inflicting most of the damage to the captain’s side of the ship. Surviving a bullet to the head was a trickier matter.
“Take us to Air Pier Two,” Slaughter said. “It looks quiet there.”
Though she had other things on her mind, it bothered Cas that he was familiar with the harbor.
She adjusted their course slightly. She had already lowered their altitude, and the roar of the waves was audible over the soft rumble of the propellers in the back. By design, their route would take them in past Pinnacle Rock and the lighthouse. It was visible to the left side of their viewing window. She didn’t angle them too close to it, not yet.
An irritating bleep sounded on a panel to Slaughter’s left. Technically, he was in the co-pilot’s seat, even if he had yet to touch a control.
He frowned at the noise. “What’s that?”
More bleeps followed the first.
“I’m not sure,” Cas said. “What’s that label say? Something to do with the hydrogen mix in the envelope, isn’t it?”
The hydrogen was fine—she was running a routine test of the alarm systems and hoping Slaughter wouldn’t recognize it as such. He was no stranger to airships, but maybe his unfamiliarity with an Iskandian model would confuse him. She only needed him distracted for a moment. As he frowned at the display, she nudged the control lever. Ever so slightly, the dirigible’s course shifted. More of the lighthouse—and the massive rock it was perched upon—came into view.
“The levels look fine,” the captain said.
“Can you stop that beeping?”
He pushed a couple of buttons. “I don’t know. Aren’t the controls over by you?”
“Not for the balloon gases. There’s just a display up here. I think you have to adjust things in engineering.” Cas urged him to go back there for a moment to do so, or at least to talk to the engineer.
Instead, Slaughter squinted suspiciously at her. He happened to glance through the viewport too. His eyes widened, and she sighed. They were lower than the lighthouse now, skimming along a couple dozen feet above the waves, but that rock was visible, thanks to the city lights behind it, so he would see that more of it occupied their horizon now.
“You’re off course,” the captain said. “The p
ier is over there.”
Cas did her best to pretend she was trying to adjust the course without actually touching anything. “Strange. It’s not responding.”
The captain’s pistol came up to her head so fast she barely had time to lift her hands from the controls. The cold metal muzzle pressed against her temple.
“Adjust the course, girl.”
Hands hovering over the controls, her rapid heartbeat echoing in her ears, Cas tried to make what might very well be the last decision of her life. If she took them to the dock, there was still a chance she could escape somehow once they were in town, report to her superiors, and warn them of the impending pirate attack. But if she crashed and killed Slaughter, the leader of this whole invasion scheme, this attack might never happen.
Cas set her jaw and dropped her hands to the controls. She made an abrupt turn, and Pinnacle Rock filled the air ahead.
Slaughter’s finger flexed on the trigger. “Wrong choice.”
Something cracked, and Cas ducked, nearly pitching out of her seat. She caught herself on the control panel. She touched her temple, even though her mind had caught up with her reflexes, and she realized that crack hadn’t been a pistol being fired. Nor had she been hurt. Slaughter, on the other hand, was crumpled on the floor beside his chair, grabbing his head and writhing.
Tolemek stood behind him, wearing a heavy cloak and carrying his bag slung over one shoulder. He lowered a truncheon clutched in one hand; he held a syringe with a big needle attached in the other.
“Yes,” he told the man at his feet. “It was.”
When Slaughter tried to get to his knees, Tolemek dropped the truncheon, grabbed him, and jabbed the needle into his neck. He thumbed the plunger down, and the red-brown liquid—it reminded Cas of blood—was pumped into the captain’s vein.
Cas could only stare, relieved by his intervention but also horrified by his method. “Will that kill him?” she asked.
“No.” Tolemek pulled out the needle and tossed the syringe onto the control panel. “Uh, Cas?” He pointed at Pinnacle Rock, which was now taking up their entire view. “Please don’t crash us.”
Though Cas wasn’t sure about all of the ramifications of Tolemek’s appearance—Did this mean he was on her side now? Did he control the engineer and the guards? Could he stop the invasion of his colleagues?—she grabbed the controls and pulled them hard to the side.
The dirigible had the maneuverability of a boulder. Afraid it would be too late, she watched with wide eyes as they flew closer and closer to that rock. Too late. She had been too late.
A jolt coursed through the dirigible.
“Balloon hitting?” Tolemek asked.
“Yes.”
“Will it, ah...?”
“Rip? They’re pretty sturdy, but this is a freighter, not a military-grade vessel.”
Another jolt went through the craft. Cas imagined a child’s balloon being scraped along a brick wall until it popped. She also imagined the gas flowing out and being ignited by the flame of the lighthouse. No, it was too high above them for that. She hoped. The worst that would happen is that they would drop into the harbor, and probably not until they were close to the docks anyway. If they had to, they could swim. There weren’t usually sharks in the harbor.
“You look concerned,” Tolemek observed.
“At this very moment or just in general?” Cas asked, her humor bleak.
“At this moment. Your usual look is more determined.”
She wasn’t surprised when a bleeping started up on the alarm panel. This wasn’t a systems test; not this time. The envelope had been breached. “That may be a small leak,” she said, though she didn’t feel very optimistic. “We’re not that far from the waterfront at least. But, ah...” She tapped the altimeter at the same time as another alarm started bleeping. “We’ve dropped below the level of the air piers.”
“If this were a Cofah airship, we would be able to land in the water safely, balloon notwithstanding. Am I correct in guessing that this gray metal box won’t float?”
Cas decided it wasn’t the time to go into aerodynamics and explain why the Cofah wooden-sailing-ship-in-the-sky designs were idiotic. “We’ll be fine,” she said, maneuvering the controls. “I’m going to take us to one of the sea docks. We’ll land right on top.”
“Those docks all have a lot of ships tied to them.”
“I see that.” Cas licked her lips. The docks weren’t particularly wide either. They were meant for people to walk along, not for dirigibles to use as landing pads.
She guided them closer, aiming for the center of one of the wider ones. The alarms bleeping in her ears didn’t help her concentration, but she had flown a lot faster before, while being shot at, so this wasn’t that big of a challenge. She just had to accept that those merchant and fishing vessels on either side of the dock were going to get smothered if the balloon’s frame had been damaged, and the envelope fully deflated.
As they drifted lower, Cas watched the street beyond the head of the dock. It was only an hour past sunset. Though the waterfront wasn’t traditionally busy at night, there might be people about, witnesses for this. A couple of horse-drawn carriages and a steam wagon passed on the street. It was too dark and too far to make out details, so it was doubtlessly only in her imagination that the passengers gaped and pointed at her.
Cas turned off the propellers as they reached her target landing spot. In another moment, the bottom of the dirigible cabin settled on the dock. The creaking and groaning of boards drifted through the hull. She hoped the pilings were solid.
“I’m surprised the engineer hasn’t come up to check on us,” she said, turning off the controls and searching for the mechanism that opened the side doors and extended the gangplank. “Or yell at me.”
Tolemek pointed at the syringe. “Neither the engineer, nor the guards are awake. The fog machine has also been disabled.”
“What does that mean?” Cas whispered. She was thinking of the attack on her city—would the other pirates call it off when they found the harbor untouched by those thick, obfuscating mists?
“That I can never go back.”
Cas caught his reflection in the dark glass. His face was grimmer than a crematory, and his eyes were haunted, the eyes of a man wondering if he had made a mistake. Or condemned himself to death. She wished she could tell him he hadn’t—in her eyes, he had certainly made the right choice, or at least the choice that helped her the most—but she wouldn’t be able to protect him from her people. As soon as the law or the army identified him as a notorious pirate, he would be dead.
She blinked her eyes, turning to look at him. Seven gods, how was he going to get off the continent without being shot? And if he did get off, how would she ever see him again?
Tolemek handed her a parka, let his hand drop, then lifted it again. He touched the side of her head, a single soft stroke of her hair, then lowered his arm for a final time. “Let’s get out of here before they wake up.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be wiser to... ah...” Cas waved vaguely at the inert captain. It wasn’t in her stomach to shoot an unconscious man, but if Tolemek let them live, wouldn’t he have to worry about them coming after him to seek revenge for the rest of his life?
“I’m sure it would.” Tolemek walked out the door, and she barely heard his addition. “And I’m sure I can’t.”
• • • • •
The air smelled of damp and snow, and the cold breeze scraped at Tolemek’s bare arms, another reminder to keep his hood over his head and his cloak wrapped around him. As if he needed reminders. He knew he couldn’t let himself be recognized here. He needed to finish his quest, then find a way off the continent. Forever.
Following Cas, who was practically bouncing as she strode down the waterfront street, made those thoughts hard to come by. If it hadn’t been for her, he didn’t know if he would have ever bothered to defy Goroth. He had long suspected what the captain had admitted under the effects of the
truth serum, so the information hadn’t been a shock. Realizing how much he cared that Cas knew the truth, that had been the shock. Goroth’s words hadn’t exactly exonerated him, but he hoped...
What? That she would forget his crimes and promise him her love?
Nice thought, but she was in love with her commander.
Cas stopped in front of a two-story building with lamps burning behind the shutters. “I’ll be right back.”
Port Authority, a sign by the door read. Tolemek didn’t stop her from going in. He couldn’t bring himself to kill Goroth, but if the man ended up arrested, was that any worse than what he had done to Tolemek all those years ago? Except, if the Iskandian port authorities found him, he would be arrested, then killed. Well, maybe not. He was a crafty sod; he might find a way to escape. Tolemek decided to hope he did. He snorted at himself, wondering if other pirates who turned on their allies felt as conflicted afterward.
The first snowflakes fell as Cas came back outside. Two men in dark uniforms and armed with rifles jogged out of the building after her, heading toward the dock with the dirigible cabin balanced on it, its balloon sagging against the frame as gas escaped.
“I need to report in.” Cas took his arm and led him up a street. The butte with the air hangars on it loomed in the distance. “Let them know where I’ve been and warn everyone that there might still be pirates coming. Where, ah, do you have plans still?”
“Griffon Street.”
She halted, her hand tightening on his arm.
“Just to question him,” Tolemek said. “I don’t know how I’ll get back home to see my sister, even if I find what I seek, but my quest hasn’t changed. Odd as it may sound to you, if that Cofah soldier spoke the truth, Zirkander is the most likely one here to know about soulblades.” He expected an objection, if not an accusation. To her, this all might be part of some lie. She might believe killing Zirkander was what he had wanted all along.
The Dragon Blood Collection, Books 1-3 Page 41
