Pinion by Jay Lake
McCurdy and Patrice both stared at him. The seaman wasn’t surprised to see the Brass, which was logical enough as Notus had put in at Ottweill’s camp when Boaz was first there.
Someone bellowed above. They all glanced up to see a series of objects falling. “Clear,” shouted Patrice. His men scattered as a small rain of chests, books and cloth smashed into the churned mud.
The screaming man staggered to Boaz. The Brass realized this was no sailor. He was bloody, begrimed and had a look of shocked panic in his eyes, but still bore a certain spare elegance. Even his draggled, ruined suit displayed a former glory under the rents and stains.
“Who the blazes are you?” the newcomer demanded in a voice ragged with panic.
The rescue party was re-forming around them to bring more men down from the stricken ship. Two of the naval ratings scooped up what had been thrown overboard. A few sailors joined McCurdy’s men in forming a defensive perimeter to face the hostiles on the stockade. Erinyes continued to circle above, her helplessness apparent even from the fracas on the ground.
“I am Boaz of the Brass folk. I am no subject of your Queen’s, but I claim friendship with Angus Threadgill al-Wazir of your Royal Navy.” ::you owe them no loyalty:: rumbled the Sixth Seal in his gut. The al-Wazir–Paolina voice protested that.
The civilian had drawn breath to continue the argument, but he stopped cold at that statement. “You know al-Wazir?”
Something small smacked into the ground between them. “Yes.”
“We will speak, later.” He looked up the hill. “Are those English guns being pointed at us?”
“I should think so,” Boaz replied. “Your men inside the Wall have taken a great dislike to visitors.”
“Ottweill survives!”
“The mad doctor? Unfortunately, yes. I have tried to convince him that his project is fruitless, for the Wall is not a solid thing to be dug through, but rather a shield to contain billions of tons of spinning brass required to balance the Earth and tune its rotation.”
“We will definitely speak later.”
Boaz turned his attention to helping organize the defense. The newcomer began to aid the cleanup in the descending tangle of codebooks, ship’s logs and other materials. More men came down the line, some bearing navigational instruments or similar valuables.
A grubby little man with three freshly missing fingers landed after a few minutes. “Sayeed is taking her back up for risk of a gasbag burn-off. ’Ware a ballast dump.”
The rescue lines were cast away. One last heave from above sent a scattering of small objects to the ground. Then Notus dumped her ballast tanks, drenching the lot of them with fouled water. Boaz was just as glad in that moment that he had not been created with a sense of smell.
The airship shot upward, trailing smoke and a last spray of water. Erinyes widened her circle, moving away from her stricken sister.
McCurdy woke to his task and began shouting again. “Eyes on the stockade. Won’t do us good to stare up if the doctor’s men are going to shoot us down like dogs on a chain.”
A sallow man who’d been among the last down the lines sent scouts down to the lower edge of the open, muddy firing field to look for possible refuges. Every second man was told off to stand ready for attack from the stockade, armed with such weapons as could be mustered from the ragged group.
Bells clanged above. Notus drifted badly to the port now, and the smoke had grown denser. Then the forward portion of her gasbag erupted in a pale, almost invisible explosion that was more felt than heard by those on the ground. Her bow dropped precipitously, sending men to fall screaming through the afternoon sky.
The midsection of the gasbag blew next. Notus’ hull broke at that, the fore shearing away to tumble in a further spray of bodies. It landed in the trees at the east edge of their clearing, perhaps half a mile away. The aft still clung to her stays and the mizzenmast that connected her to the remains of the burning gasbag.
Those last cells did not blow. The remains of Notus spiraled in slowly, drifting toward the Wall so that her final flight ended against a rock out-cropping several miles distant.
Soaking wet, bloody, injured, the surviving crew stared into the eastern distance as the smoke rose above the scattered ruins of their airship. The sallow man who’d been giving orders to the crew of Notus looked at the gentleman in the suit. “Mr. Kitchens? What should we do?”
Erinyes beat low above, circling now, her engines straining.
“Do not put Lieutenant Ostrander in charge,” Boaz said. He could only imagine what the unstable young officer might order.
Kitchens looked to Boaz and McCurdy. “Who’s Ostrander? Commanding above?”
“Master of Erinyes, sir,” the bosun said reluctantly.
“A difficult man at his best,” Boaz added, to a grateful look from McCurdy.
“My warrants do not extend to his vessel,” Kitchens said somewhat mysteriously. “I have no standing with those on the captain’s list.”
“Meaning what?” Boaz asked.
Kitchens gave him a slow look. “It means that unless someone from Notus’ command made it down, the man in charge up there is the senior surviving naval officer on this field of battle. Harrow here, and your chief from Erinyes, are each loyal to their ship and master, but Harrow’s captain is now presumably dead, while your Lieutenant Ostrander appears unfit for duty.”
McCurdy made a small noise, as if he’d thought to protest, then swallowed his pride along with his words.
“You are all fools,” Boaz declared. “How your throne came to rule half the flatwater kingdoms of Northern Earth is beyond me.” He pointed at Kitchens. “You are in charge of these men, for there is no one else to do the deed. I will aid you until affairs have settled a bit; then I am off on my own mission. Now let us find our way out of this killing field.”
The sailors followed their scouts downhill in a large, fractious party while Erinyes circled low to keep the men on the stockade otherwise occupied. When they gained the safety of the trees, McCurdy and Harrow called for a camp to be made. Boaz stole a quiet moment with the man Kitchens at the edge of a tangle of lianas.
“I am Boaz of the Brass,” he said, introducing himself with a bit more of the formality these English were said to prefer. “I am not accounted an enemy of your people, though the doctor’s men upon the stockade will tell you differently.”
Kitchens took Boaz’ offered hand. “I am Bernard Kitchens, clerk in the Special Section of the Admiralty, on extremely detached duty. We have much to discuss, though this is not the time.”
“I think not,” Boaz answered. He studied the English clerk carefully. The man had a fevered gleam in his eye, but seemed in possession of his senses, to the degree that any human ever was.
::this is not our mission:: the Seal grumbled.::our purpose lies elsewhere::
I am not your servant, Boaz thought. The voice was loudest when the world was quiet, and quiet when the world was loud. The Brass touched the man’s sleeve. “You come dressed differently than all of them, ready to kill but regretting it. You are no soldier nor sailor nor working man. What are you doing down here along the Wall?”
“Looking for Ottweill, and al-Wazir.”
The Brass did not mince his next words. “Ottweill I have seen just this morning at the diggings. Al-Wazir was taken by the Chinese in Mogadishu a month ago and must surely be dead.”
“Then I have failed him,” Kitchens said. “It was I who sent him back to the Wall, to see to Ottweill’s safety.”
“You are the spymaster?”
“No, no. I arranged his training and transmitted his orders. The true purpose was ordered from much higher up.”
Purpose, Boaz thought. Everything was down to purpose. The will of man, walking freely in the world of God. “Well, for my part,” the Brass said, “I am very sorry to see the chief at an end.”
“Dozens more men met their end today,” Kitchens replied. “It is not even nightfall yet. I should see to
Boaz looked up at the smoke still drifting in the sky and wondered if Erinyes would ever come to ground, or remain aloft until Lieutenant Ostrander was but a skeleton at her helm.
KITCHENS
The stockade stood above him. In another place it might have loomed, great tropical hardwood logs trimmed to points at the top in order to provide firing rests between each pair, their faces scarred and splintered from prior battles. Here the Wall behind it left the stockade with little more dignity than a child’s toy.
A handful of men stared down at him, rifles sloping nearly into aiming. “You h’aint no h’officer,” said a twitching fellow.
“I am from Admiralty,” Kitchens said, clutching his salvaged attaché case and wishing his suit retained any scraps of dignity. “Here on a mission from the First Sea Lord and the Prime Minister’s office.” Which, while not strictly true, was more impressive than confessing to being a clerk. “I am to ascertain Dr. Ottweill’s safety and whether the tunneling crew needs further assistance.”
“You’re ’aving me on, right?” Setting down his rifle, the man on the stockade began to laugh—helpless, hysterical, angry. “You walks out of a burning h’airship, you looks to be the dog’s breakfast, and you comes here where we been hiding h’inside the Wall like mice in a rectory, and you h’asks if we needs ’elp.”
“Must be government,” said one of the other men darkly. “No one else could be so stupid.”
“I shall speak to Dr. Ottweill now,” Kitchens said sternly.
“Oh . . .” More giggling. “I h’expect you shall.”
A rope slithered over the side. Unlike most clerks in the city of London, Kitchens knew how to climb it, even with an attaché case under his arm.
He was escorted rapidly through the wreckage of the compound in the afternoon’s failing light. Shattered Brass, corpses of the winged savages, an entire supply train’s worth of quartermaster gear and provisions—all lay strewn about fields of clutter. The only order was in the large piles of tailings that stood close by the face of the Wall—rock spoil, sand and other material from the tunneling.
A substantial metal barrier glowered over the tunnel entrance. It had been bolted together from bits of hull plating, boiler shells and other less obvious components. Someone watched from inside, for a postern door creaked open as they approached. Kitchens allowed himself to be hustled into the darkness beyond.
An oil lamp flickered, casting buttery shadows against the impenetrable darkness of the tunnel beyond. Two sets of tracks lay at his feet. A standard gauge ran within the embrace of the wider, special gauge of the boring machines. He hadn’t seen the rails outside. Either they’d been torn up by the attackers, or salvaged by the defenders.
Two dozen men faced him packed wall-to-wall, pistols and knives in hand. They shared the heavy breathing and glittering eyes of a pack. Hunted, not hunting. His interviewer from outside waved off the other guards.
“Too much to tell ’ere, but there’s a big passel of tars ’iding in the woods h’out there what should draw h’off h’any h’interest what comes h’our way tonight. Reg’lar guard, h’I should think.”
“I got duty,” muttered a large man black as a clinker. He was not African, Kitchens saw, merely grubby beyond measure with coal dust. “Who’s the fish?”
“Fellow from London, come to see the doctor about h’our little problems.”
That provoked another round of desperate laughter.
“The doctor is in,” muttered someone else.
Flicking another lamp into life, the entire outside party and most of the door wards headed deeper into the tunnel. They swirled Kitchens into their midst, not quite taking him prisoner, yet giving him no choice but to move along under their control. A pack of dark demons returning to their labors somewhere in the depths of hell.
Where else would I go?
CHILDRESS
Cataloger Wang! The Golden Bridge had come to her!
What on the Northern Earth was the man doing here, in Goa? She’d last seen him ensconced in frustrated arrogance amid the flooded library of Chersonesus Aurea. It seemed no more likely that he’d leave his books than it would for al-Wazir to walk to the moon.
The lieutenant—Roche?—turned to her. “You are acquainted with this man?”
“Yes.” Childress could feel al-Wazir close by at her shoulder, knew the big man was straining to ask something of his own.
Lieutenant Roche’s voice grew cold. “Why should that be?”
“She works for my master,” Wang said.
“You said you was a librarian,” the squad leader muttered.
“I am.” Childress drew up to her full five feet, one inch.
Wang smiled. “My master employs librarians and archivists.”
“You were both on your way to Bombay?” The lieutenant sounded more incredulous than suspicious.
Maybe we shall find our way out of here after all, Childress thought. But what was Wang doing here?
Following her, of course. That latter idea had frightening but unsurprising implications.
“My journey would be eased by this man’s aid,” she announced.
“I would be pleased to take her aboard Good Change,” Wang said with a broad smile. “We shall convey her to Bombay.”
“Bloody great coincidence, if you ask me,” muttered Lieutenant Roche.
“Gentlemen, I am distressed, and travel-weary, and much separated from my belongings. If Mr. Wang and his master’s boat are free to carry me to Bombay, then I would be just as pleased to leave with him. Your fine soldiers may return to their bounden duty of defending this poor town.”
She took a calculated risk here, using Wang and his purposes to escape the attentions of the British Army. Childress looked up over her shoulder at al-Wazir. The chief would follow her lead until they had time to confer.
Lieutenant Roche chewed on her statement a bit. “Madam, I find that you are free to go.” The lieutenant turned to Wang. “It is your great luck that this good Englishwoman knows you, and can attest to your character and purposes.”
Wang bowed, his smile a rictus now. “She is always a friend to my master.”
“Come, Angus,” Childress said to al-Wazir. “Let us be aboard. Wang, my good man, please have your fellows take my launch in tow.”
A shaven coolie on the docks pushed out of the crowd to help with the small boat before Wang could even order his men off of Good Change. The Chinese librarian started visibly at the sight, then focused his attention once more on Childress. “Please to come this way,” he said.
Almost breathing in her ear, and surely he had to bend down to do so, al-Wazir growled, “Are you sure about what you’re doing, Mask?”
“Of course not,” she whispered. “But boarding a boat with a man I know has to be better than being interrogated here. Our story will not stand in a light breeze.”
They climbed down the slime-covered wooden ladder onto the deck of the trim white yacht. The entire crew seemed to be Chinese, Childress noted.
“Welcome aboard,” Wang said. There was something both genuine and sad about his smile.
PAOLINA
The woman who stepped out of the jungle along one of the Correct People’s paths was very strange in appearance. Over six feet tall, thin as a boy, with skin the color of burnished teak, and her long face was regal, almost mannish. She wore swirling robes of deep burgundy, brown and maroon, layered so that Paolina’s eye slid from any real sense of the lines of the clothing. The newcomer’s wrists were covered in copper bracelets almost to the point of being armored by them. Her neck was crowded with similar decoration. White dots spread across her face, and a cowrie shell had been affixed to the outside corner of each eye, so she appeared to see in several directions at once.
“Step easy,” Hethor told her. “We are among friends.” He followed that with words in a hissing language very unlike the speech of the Correct People.
The woman replied in the same language, her black eyes flashing, then approached Paolina. Hethor said something else in that hissing speech. The stranger looked quite surprised, her attention turning to him. Her next words were in English: “What is your House?”
“I do not hold to a House as you do,” Hethor responded, “nor do the others of my people.”
“I am of no House but my own,” Paolina added.
“I am Gashansunu of Westfacing House, in the city,” she told them. “We compass all the wisdoms of the Southern Earth, from the ways of the Great Sunset Water to the colors of the morning sky. You are come among the Silent World as something new.”
Clearly her people fancied themselves great magicians.
Hethor answered for them both. “We are from the Northern Earth, where the wisdoms are different. If you come as a friend, we are friends. If you come as an unfriend, then we beg you in all goodwill to swiftly take your leave of us.”
Gashansunu considered Hethor’s words before replying. “The Shadow World is tinged with regret. There are flares in the Silent World. You bear a bright treasure that should either be cloaked or laid to rest. I am sent to be neither friend nor unfriend, but to settle the worlds back to their accustomed balance.”
“Then we have no conflict here,” Paolina said. “This man has abided in the Southern Earth these last two years without bringing trouble. I only pass through this place as I return northward. Soon your worlds will reclaim their balance.”
“May I inspect your gleam?” Gashansunu asked.
The stemwinder was still clutched in Paolina’s hand. This was not a request she had any inclination to grant. “I am sorry, but the gleam stays with me. It must be so.”