A Study in Ashes (75 page)

Then he heard the prince and Digby curse under their breath and he was forced to agree. The enemy, which had been flying a wedge, was breaking apart. If they kept coming, the pirate ships would be swarmed in a matter of minutes.

“Why don’t they move?” the Schoolmaster demanded, looking as if he wanted to poke the tiny ships with his finger to get them going.

“Scarlet’s ships don’t even know we’re here, even though we’re sitting above their heads,” Nick replied.

“And the other pirates?”

“They’re waiting for us,” Nick replied.

“To do what?”

“This.”

Almost silently, Athena released the first shower of explosives. The miniature ship in the fire did the same, and after a long, agonizing count, three red dirigibles directly below them burst into flame. It would have been better if there had been more, but three was still good.

They saw the explosion in the fire a moment before the roar of the bombs shook the ship, making the fiery water in the bowl lap the sides. “Almost two to one now,” the Schoolmaster said. “That was a brilliant move!”

“We grab the chances when they come along.” It was almost the same thing Nick had said about Evelina, but it was just as true. He knew they’d gone about as far as any plan would go before it came apart at the seams.

He was right.

I LOVE HIM
.

Evelina had gone over the fact a dozen times before she opened the hatch that led to the rooks’ perch, but she didn’t deny herself the pleasure of one more repetition. He’d known just when to kiss her. Whatever came next, he’d given her the courage to face it, because he’d held her in his arms.

Even better, he’d given her a problem to solve. A black mass of feathers lay on the deck of the roost, as if the rook had crawled into the corner to die. It was panting, beak open, wings sprawled to the sides. Pity pulled a noise from deep inside her. She couldn’t speak to the creatures the way Nick could, so she crooned gently as she stroked the bird’s feathers, trying to assess its injuries.

The rook wore a helmet and breastplate, and that might have been what had kept it from being killed outright. Nevertheless, the breastplate was still bloody, as if punched through with steel claws. But what on earth was big enough to fight a rook? They weren’t small birds, more the size of a small goose than a crow. But that was precisely the task Nick had set her: to find out what new enemy was silently stalking the ship and attacking their allies. The rooks had often made a difference between victory and defeat, and the loss of any one of their flock was a blow to the crew.

She gathered the bird into her lap, letting it absorb her warmth as she released a thread of healing magic. What came back to her was a flood of images, but little she could interpret. The birds saw differently, and her brain couldn’t
sort through the information the way Nick’s could. But she did learn that this was Saria, Gwilliam’s mate.

“I’ll have you back to him as soon as I can,” she murmured, and Saria opened one shrewd black eye.

Healing magic had been one of the first lessons Magnus had taught Evelina and it came to her easily. When Saria was strong enough, Evelina turned the bird over and removed her armor. The rooks hunted their own meat, but Nick kept water in their roost. Using her handkerchief, Evelina dribbled some into Saria’s beak. The bird drank it down greedily and soon hunched in her lap, allowing Evelina to wash her wounds.

As she worked, a number of the smaller, younger birds crowded into the roost. These were the ones with no armor, too inexperienced to fight, and Evelina guessed the battle must be near. She crouched in the corner of the roost, bracing herself and cradling Saria, so when the
Athena
suddenly rocketed into the sky, her ears popped but both of them were entirely safe.

The battle has started
. If there was an enemy, they would show themselves now. Wanting both hands free, she wrapped Saria in her shawl and tucked her in a safe corner. Then Evelina crawled to the opening the rooks used to fly free, keeping low to avoid the pull of the wind. She heard the rattle of the bay doors open and the bullet-shaped bombs drop like scat. She scuttled away from the opening, gripping the heavy poles the rooks used to roost. Light flared from beneath, and a cascade of guttural roars shook the ship. The rooks croaked, flapping and rustling. Heavy wings smacked her arms and she ducked her head, waiting until the birds calmed. The stink of rook and aether was joined by a choking stench of smoke.

Slowly, she raised her head, only to be met with a row of beaked faces. “I think that’s done.”

One of the youngsters squawked. It sounded like good sense, so she nodded, allowing her shoulders to come down from around her ears. But no sooner had she relaxed than the
Athena
went into a dive. The clouds rushed up toward them, filling the tiny roost with an icy, damp mist. The ship
angled slightly, and her feet began to slide. She heard the cannons fire on the far side of the ship, the sound weirdly muffled where she clung.

By the Dark Mother!
she thought desperately, but the ship leveled out and the clear skies were back. The first thing she saw was the
Belle
ramming the long swordfish needle on its prow into the red balloon of an enemy ship. It didn’t just puncture, it sheared through the dirigible’s balloon. The vessel collapsed, seeming to fold toward its damaged side as the prow tilted upward at a sickening angle. This wasn’t a case where a good crew could still land a deflating ship. This was a wreck, the wounded craft already circling, ready to spiral and drop like a stone.

Sickened, Evelina looked away. The smoke in the air was burning her nose and throat, but she felt secure enough to loose her death grip on the perches and inch toward the opening to the sky. She dropped to her stomach, peering around the corner of the door into nothingness. Wind whipped the strands of her hair back, clawing her nose and eyes like a living hand.

Oh, God
. The enemy ship was falling now, the balloon no more than a lopsided blob of red. She thought she might hear screams from the enemy vessel—or maybe that was just the wind. But she knew it would haunt her nightmares.

As Evelina looked down, she saw the
Dawn Star
and four more of the red dirigibles. More rooks flew beneath them, harrying some airmen who had crawled onto one of the red ships to repair a serious gash. Beneath them was London.

The falling ship crashed. She closed her eyes, but she’d already seen too much to forget the spray of splinters flying into the air. When she opened them, the
Belle
was already searching out its next victim.

Athena banked the ship, but gently this time, and Evelina shifted her weight to compensate. They were circling around the battle zone, and she saw the
Dawn Star
fire on another red ship. The volley was answered with a sound like the pop of a paper sack. Before she could determine whether the blow landed, her sight was blanked by a rush of black wings.
A rook dived over her head, clearly ducking to safety. What came after it blinded her in a flash of sunlight on metal.

She reared back, raising her arms to ward off the thing. It was a shining metal bird, flame licking from its beak. Blood stained its talons. It hovered outside the doorway for three wing beats, and the rooks sent up a frantic ruckus of rage and dismay. Then the brass creature fell away, swooping down on a new victim.

With an outraged scramble, Evelina took up her position again, stomach pressed to the deck and her head all but hanging over the edge as she scanned the skies. Down here the sun was filtered through the clouds, but it was still bright enough to flash on several pairs of metal wings. They seemed to circle around one of the ships that had belonged to the Scarlet King.
A new weapon, designed especially to counter the rooks
.

Dark magic unfurled inside Evelina, waiting as if in question. There was a flurry of black feathers as the metal raptor tore a rook asunder. The other birds screamed, flapping around the attacker, but there was nothing they could do against brass and steel. With a terrible shriek of its own, the metal bird shot out of the flock and toward the open sky, its wings opened wide as if in triumph. Then it breathed a tongue of flame, catching its pursuers as they reeled around it. Evelina unleashed her anger, throwing up a barrier right in the thing’s path. The bird shattered, bright shards fountaining skyward like a roman candle.

“Got you!” Evelina slammed the deck with her palm as the rooks croaked their jubilation. The brass bird hadn’t been a living thing, but it still felt like victory. Someone on the enemy ships had to be sending and controlling the killing machines, and she’d just destroyed their weapon. Triumph sweet on her tongue, she started hunting around for others. The sky was chaos, filling with flame and ash to the point where it was impossible to see the earth below. And the noise was constant now, as if a dozen giants were hammering at the heavens. She caught a sudden flash of light in her peripheral vision. There was a resounding boom as an
aether cannon discharged nearby, and with cold horror she realized it was aimed at the belly of the
Athena
.

Inside her mind, Evelina heard a cry of terror from the ship’s deva, who suddenly understood the threat. The vessel lurched, struggling to shrink away, and Evelina reacted without thinking. Pulling all of her power, she thrust against the spinning ball of blue-green fire, trying to contain it just as she had the explosion in the laboratory. She felt the shield form, shimmering and bright, and leaned in with all her strength to brace it.

It might have worked had it been an ordinary explosive, but magnetized aether was concentrated energy. Her magic slammed against it with all the effectiveness of a damp towel trying to stop a bullet. Evelina screamed with the shock of impact and the dizzying lurch as her barricade was swept aside.

But Magnus’s dark power had its own cunning, and it had fused to her need to protect. It couldn’t block a ball of pure energy, but it could absorb it. Time stopped as Evelina felt the rush of sparking blue fire like tendrils snaking through her veins, a million pinpricks firing within her in places that she couldn’t even name. It was as if every fiber, every nerve was suddenly glutted with energy and still swelling. She scrambled to the back of the roost, some primal impulse willing her away from the assault. She grabbed the rail the rooks perched on, muscles needing to strain against
something
in response to the sensation. Sight and sound deserted her. All that was left was painful blue fire, boring into her as if it meant to wear her skin.

And then her magic ran out of time. The blast hit the belly of the steamspinner’s rigid balloon. She had absorbed the deadly magnetic power, but the concussive force of the blast was still effective. Some part of Evelina was aware of the jolt and clung on to the rail. There was a crack and a tearing that she felt more than heard. All around her the rooks exploded into frantic flapping as the ship shuddered and lurched. Evelina struggled to breathe, as if some of the energy that her magic had absorbed was detonating, too.

She snapped awake at the sound of a rook croaking in her
ear. The ship was listing and she was sliding toward the sky, her limbs like soggy bread. Waving the bird aside, Evelina scrambled to her knees, grabbing for a handhold. She could only have been unconscious for a moment, but the loss made her frantic. The fact that the constant din of battle had stopped clawed into her mind. Scrambling until she could look out, she clung to the sides of the opening to the empty air and peered below.

What she saw stunned her. She gave an odd little hiccup of dismay as sheer terror stiffened her limbs. There were only four of the red ships left, but she saw none of the other pirates. And all four of the Scarlet King’s ships were right there, a ways off but in a narrow arc, clearly focused on the wounded
Athena
. Seconds ticked by like an ominous drum-roll as Evelina groped for her magic and couldn’t find it. It had swooned right along with her, gorged on magnetized aether.

Ash fell, coating her hands and tangling in her dark hair. Tears started down Evelina’s cheeks, the salt stinging a scrape she hadn’t noticed. The only thing she could think of was that she wished she were near Nick, but she was too horror-stricken to move. It was as if her engines had died right along with the ship’s.

And then the enemy vessel farthest to her left fired a hot harpoon right at the
Athena
’s side. It rose, flame furling around it like some exotic bird. Then each ship followed, launching its long iron weapon in sequence until the sky was bright with a flaming arch of death. They were far enough away that it would take the harpoons an endless, painful minute to find their mark. Enough time for a nimble ship to escape, but the
Athena
was all but dead in the sky. Swearing, Evelina strained, flailing for some scrap of power to throw up a shield—but there was nothing. They were going to die—Nick, Striker, the prince—and the steam barons would win.