Pinion by Jay Lake
Boaz’ fingers scrabbled at his midsection, seeking to open the little doors the Sixth Seal had caused to be so firmly shut.
Stop! he shouted to the voices in his head.
“Fliers!” screamed the bow watch. “Them killer angels come off the Wall!”
“Mind the helm,” Boaz shouted to Kitchens and the terrified sailor at the wheel. He stomped forward. This was a threat he could grasp in hand. “Rifles at the ready!”
WANG
The white warship drew nearer. She gleamed slightly pink in the light of the setting sun and flew more flags than any one man ought to be required to understand.
Shen brought Good Change parallel with the great vessel. A dozen sailors lounged at her rail high over his head, staring down. Raising his hand, he waved. Some of them waved back. On a balcony above them, another man stared at them through a pair of lenses. He studied them a while, but did not wave back.
That was it.
No guile, no stealth, no force. No signal. Just two ships passing in the late light of the day.
A strange lack of climax to a moment that could have claimed all their lives.
Wu reappeared from belowdecks once the warship was safely behind them. “We will make the smallest port we can find, and purchase fuel oil for our engines. You will be our buyer.”
“Of course,” said Wang. “You trust me with funds?”
“Your loyalty is not in question, only your good sense.”
He wanted to ask, Who are you to question my loyalty, who conspire with vanishing monks and claim to be a dead man walking? There was no point. Wu was right. Wang would not escape into an English port here. Where would he go? Who would take him in?
Besides, he was still far too interested in finding Childress to give himself up to anyone else.
Anyone, he corrected his own thought. Not anyone else. Anyone.
Morning found the cataloger talking to a strange little man in grubby white robes. The fellow’s skin was the color of the rocks above his port town, his eyes black, and he had a narrow beard that he was forever stroking as if it were a restless animal.
A handful of coolies wearing nothing but roughspun trousers and head-scarves wrestled a fuel line onto the deck of Lucky Change. Several of Wu’s crew worked with them, bringing up a connection from below.
The man almost hopped from foot to foot in his nervousness. “How is it that your vessel full of the enemy is permitted to pass our water gates?”
“We are no enemy.” The story was at risk of becoming too practiced. “We serve a prince of Serendip, who has sent us to secure some peace in this fighting that seems set to overtake all.”
“I do not know the fighting,” the wharfinger said. Quite clearly he cherished his ignorance.
“I might ask you a small question,” Wang proposed.
“My answers will likely be small, as well.”
“Have you seen another vessel here with a Chinese crew and an English commander? It would be strangely formed, for it is made to go underneath the waters at times.”
“Ah, my friend.” The port master patted his arm. “I, too, have been blessed with a boat made to go underneath the waters at times. By the virtue of the strong backs of my sons, and my cousin Mustapha who is a carpenter, we have remade her now and again, but still she sinks.”
“No, no, I mean a submarine.”
The man’s eyes crinkled. “Some things are best unspoken. You ask if I have seen a sinking boat, and I tell you of my own misfortunes—a man of wit and discernment would read the lack of an answer in that sorry story.”
“Speaking with you is like braiding the tails of three cats.”
The Arab bowed. “Your words are a balm upon the memory of the Imam who had my schooling in my younger days, when I could be torn away from the date palms and the doe-eyed young women languishing beneath them.”
Wang was uncertain as to the virtue of doe-eyed women. “I thank you, sir.”
A boy ran up and whispered urgently into the man’s ear. He nodded, said something in Arabic, then turned back to Wang. “One of the morning’s first fishing boats is returned with news. HIMS Inerrancy has stopped a strange vessel lying very low in the water. Perhaps these are your absent friends come again?”
“Doubtless,” Wang said. He glanced to the east, wondering if the lifting clouds would reveal Five Lucky Winds nearby. Even so, what would he do in the presence of the British, presuming the submarine was not simply sunk out of hand?
After an interminable time, the pumping was finished. The port master’s coolies capped the hose and coiled it back under the supervision of the pump boy.
“We must be back at sea,” Wang said. “To follow the course our friends set.”
“The course on which you sailed ahead of them?” The port master clasped the cataloger’s hand in both of his. “Watch what may come, and remember that sometimes there is silence in every house.”
Wang was heartily sick of secret agendas. He stepped up the plank to the deck of Lucky Change. “Cast off,” the cataloger said brusquely to Wu. “I have news of our quarry.”
GASHANSUNU
Late in the evening Gashansunu had slipped into the Silent World to scan for hidden watchers, or even the heart-fire of some dangerous predator, but saw nothing except the flicker of life along the quiet strip of forest between the Wall and the sea. The ocean itself gleamed, as oceans always did in the Silent World. Saltwater circled everything, touched everything, flowed in the veins of everyone who had ever lived.
Paolina slept beneath a ragged palm near the last smolder of her fire. Gashansunu climbed the rotten knee of rock at the west end of their little beach. Using her ordinary sight, she followed the path. Her wa had absented itself since they passed the Wall, though not so thoroughly as to yet worry Gashansunu. She wished to look into the west, as her devotions at Westfacing House called for, and open herself up to invite her wa to rejoin her at its place in the Shadow World.
This rock had no top, as such. Just a place where the difficult path ceased climbing and began struggling among boulders and crevices full of thorns. She climbed a larger, squared boulder that seemed to have rolled from higher up on the Wall and set to her meditations. Here she was considerably higher than any point in the city, and so faced much more of the west than she would have at home. On her left, the Wall was almost close enough to touch, and consumed the south.
The Wall was just as dark and brooding in the Silent World as in the Shadow World. Great energies moved within it, as a clay kiln might be filled with sizzling coals. The ocean on her right glowed with the memories of life. The sky above was empty. The Silent World knew no stars, seemed concerned only with what was on the face of the Earth. She sometimes wondered why the moon, at least, did not intrude on that other place, but then the rules that governed its underlying magics were not something of which even the greatest of the house priests could claim a thorough understanding.
I am here, she told her wa.
Though its presence was not close, the words of her wa reached her.
THIS PLACE SEEMS SO EMPTY.
Gashansunu considered that a while before answering. All places are empty, until someone comes to fill them.
THE MIND OF THE WORLD IS DIFFERENT HERE, her wa protested.
What do you mean, the mind of the world?
Her wa’s answer was matter-of-fact, and also profoundly heretical: WHAT THESE PEOPLE OF THE NORTH CALL GOD—JUST AS THE SILENT WORLD IS THE MIND OF THE SOUTHERN EARTH.
Now it was Gashansunu’s turn to protest. But the Silent World is everywhere, behind and beneath all things.
YOU DO NOT YET UNDERSTAND.
With those words her wa fell silent, even as it drifted closer.
Gashansunu watched the night a while, both within her own thoughts and through the Silent World. No further wisdom came, though she spent much time thinking on what her wa’s strange words had meant.
PAOLINA
She woke with the sun, feeling more r
After splashing her face with water, Paolina took the stemwinder from its pouch, tugged the stem out to the fourth stop and began to slowly turn it in search of the Southern woman’s trace. They’d stepped together through the Silent World. Paolina knew her now without silver bonds or strange meditations. She would home in on Gashansunu and follow the sorceress wherever she had gone.
This was like spotting a particular spark from a distant campfire at night. Paolina had not tried to follow a person before, but she’d already seen how life could glow in the Silent World. Using the stemwinder, she didn’t enter that other place as Gashansunu had done, but rather looked into it. The world of light became veiled, but also sharper; the ocean acquired a strange, glittering cast; and the sorceress came into a brittle focus. She was atop the knee of rock, which seemed some great, slow creature with thoughts that moved at the tempo of years.
Paolina focused her will on Gashansunu. Without considering the woman’s place, she pushed off, projecting herself forward while also sending pressure back so as not to destroy the beach.
Between one footfall and the next, she was on top of the rising mass of rock, and nearly tumbling over the far side. Paolina dropped hard to a sitting position and braked with both feet and one arm while protecting the gleam with her other arm.
Gashansunu called out just as the slide came to an abrupt and somewhat difficult end. A sharp pain hurt Paolina’s tailbone. Empty air stretched beneath her toes.
“Lean back against the rock,” Gashansunu said from behind and above her.
“I know, I know,” Paolina whispered. She had little fear of heights, but anyone could become trapped in the wrong place. Her first business was to take her eyes off the horizon and the long drop beneath her feet, to let her sense of equilibrium restore itself.
Vertigo.
“I will reach for you.” The sorceress again.
“No, no, I must rest a moment.” Paolina closed her eyes. “Besides, I am far more experienced than you at heights. I grew up along the Wall; you hail from a flatwater city.”
“You may have grown up atop a pinnacle, but right now you are on a narrow ledge of rotten rock high above a stony beach,” Gashansunu observed. “I do not think you have the advantage of me this day.”
“A moment more, please. A moment more.”
The scramble to safety was short and nasty. Paolina shivered from fear, glad enough of the sunlight.
“Now you see why sorcerers do not often follow people through the Silent World, even when we know them well,” Gashansunu told her.
“Did you intend to test me to the edge of my death?”
“No.” The other woman sounded embarrassed. “I was meditating and lost my count of the hours. I had thought to find some clearing in which to await you, but my understanding was that we would discuss the requirements of the effort beforehand.”
Paolina felt shamed in her turn. “I did not intend to put either of us at risk. Please accept my apology.”
“You have learned something this day,” Gashansunu said.
“I have learned to be careful where I step.” Paolina was a bit cheered by her own humor.
“Do you still wish to chase after Boaz?”
“Yes. Before I lose my nerve. I would go to Boaz, and I do not know where he is.”
“At any great distance, the spark such as you saw in me will be a glow within your thoughts, nothing more. He could be atop a mountain or cast down into a pelagic abyss, and you will not perceive the difference.”
“I will perceive that he is there, and alive, when I set myself to him.” She tugged the stem to the fourth setting. Boaz she knew very, very well. When she had shut him down in the meadow below Ophir—her betrayal of him, for which she’d tried to make up ever since—she had taken his measure.
She found him, a faint glimmer very far away, somewhere well past the western horizon. Africa, then, where she had left him. Which likely meant a British cell, or back upon a Murado, as opposed to having been captured by the Chinese.
More to the point, he was alive. “Boaz,” she whispered, a vast relief flooding her heart at the thought of reunion.
“I will come with you.” Gashansunu took her other hand with a looping of the silver cord.
“Let us away, then.” Paolina smiled, unwilling to contain her joy.
She dialed the stemwinder in, held Boaz firmly in her mind and stepped forward.
They tumbled into empty air, Paolina screaming as she fell.
CHILDRESS
“You are not of the peerage.” Lieutenant Commander Bork was a big man, sun-reddened with the look of distemper about him. His tropical kit fit poorly, folded, rumpled and sweat stained. The men behind him held their weapons ready. She was all too conscious of the larger guns aboard Bork’s ship.
“I am the Mask Childress,” she repeated. “Of the avebianco. As you value your commission, and the peace of the Queen’s realm, you shall let me pass with my ship and crew.”
“Your ship, madam, is an enemy vessel designed for only one purpose—the destruction of British hulls. Even if you have overtaken her with a train of scoundrels, I can no more let you proceed onward with this craft than I could allow you to enter a church clutching a carbine.”
Childress felt a rare burst of rage. “I am not a combatant, Lieutenant Commander. I am a diplomat bent on stopping this affair. With the aid of this good crew, I shall carry my mission to Valetta to represent the negotiations that have been undertaken with the Chinese Empire, as well as the Silent Order. A minister from London is even now traveling to meet me there.” She leaned forward, compounding the outright lie with further exaggeration. “A very important minister. Prime, one might say.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, so that Bork was drawn toward her. “Would you care to be the officer who must explain later why this voyage did not go forward?”
“Sir,” al-Wazir barked. “If I might hae a word with ye.”
Childress whirled on him, then stopped the hot words that sprang to her lips when she saw the expression on the chief’s face.
“A Scotsman, to boot,” the officer grumbled. “You insult me, madam, a boat crewed by coolies, commanded by a woman, with a bloody one-handed braveheart to speak for her.”
Al-Wazir threw himself to full attention. “Chief Petty Officer Angus Threadgill al-Wazir, sir! Attached to this woman’s mission by direct order of Admiralty and in consultation with the Prime Minister himself.”
“Even if you had papers I would not believe you, man.” The lieutenant commander slapped his swagger stick against his trouser leg. “I have half a mind to place myself ahead of the rush and give you a thrashing right now.”
“You’re damned right I’ve lost me papers, sir,” al-Wazir said. “I’ve also killed two of the enemy’s airships, escaped from the Chinese navy, and crossed all of Africa and most of the Indian Ocean to get here. Lost me hand doing it, sir. I can tell you what color the lampshades are in the Planning Room on the top floor of Admiralty’s Ripley Building. You tell me, sir, how does the First Sea Lord take his tea?”
“How the First Sea Lord takes his tea does not matter,” said Bork, but a nervousness darted within his eyes. “It is the brace of you fools with a damned lot of coolies and four forward torpedo tubes that cannot be permitted into the Suez Canal!”
“Then arrest us now,” Childress announced loudly. “Sink our ship. Make your reports. You will enjoy commanding a coaling station in the Shetlands until your retirement, I am certain of it.”
Bork’s red face purpled. “Do not threaten me, you dreadful termagant!”
Childress wasn’t sure, but one of his subofficers appeared to be trying to swallow laughter. She barged ahead. “You seem to feel quite free to threaten me, sir. I am certain that indicates your willingness to be treated just the same, by the simple rules of Christian charity.”
Bork took a deep breath and visibly gathered himself. He c
“Well, yes,” Childress said, in her most pleasant speaking-to-theology-students voice. “What else is there for you to do?” She glanced up the conning tower at Leung, who was watching impassively. Time to take a step that would almost certainly give him dreadful pause. Childress had thought this through carefully but had quite deliberately declined to discuss it with the captain. “I shall offer you a compromise.”
“You are in a position to offer me nothing,” huffed the lieutenant commander.
“Of course I am, silly man.” She smiled, letting her teeth show. “I am in a position to offer you the chance to save your own career, and possibly claim a hero’s welcome on your return to London. Far better that than the ignominy that awaits you should my mission fail on the rock of your intransigence.”
He spoke through gritted teeth, barely moving his lips. “Madam, what would this vaunted compromise entail?”
She pitched her voice so it would carry clearly to the captain’s ears. “Send two of your men aboard. One may seal the tubes and stand by in the torpedo bay to ensure nothing untoward takes place in British waters, and most especially the vital Suez that you are so rightly charged with maintaining. The other may remain topside in the conning tower while I and my executive officer Mr. Leung pilot this ship through the passage and into the Mediterranean. Dispatch whatever hulls you deem necessary to serve as escort, and to clear us at Port Said so that I am not forced to renew this ridiculous argument with Her Imperial Majesty’s Mediterranean Fleet.
“During the transit, Cap—I and Mr. Leung will keep the majority of our crew on deck so that you may know we are not moving to arms or committing some other untoward sabotage. On reaching the open waters, we shall resume our normal operations, but your seals may remain upon our tubes.”