Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) (38 page)

“He’s mine,” growled Wintermourn. “I made the assault, and I’ve...taken this town. Leave...leave off, Chesterly.”

“Well, well, well...” muttered the adjutant. Chesterly didn’t even look at him, focusing his attention instead on the pirates and their barricade. “What a prize you’ve cornered.”

He folded his hands beside his back and smiled down at Wintermourn. “Worry not, Admiral. I can see you’ve had a bit of trouble yourself. It’s all over now. We’ll squash this little knot of resistance for you.”

 Wintermourn’s rage reignited. “How dare you, you up-jumped—” He tried to climb to his feet and only made it by plunging the tip of his saber into the boardwalk and using it to stand. Even still, he wobbled wearily. What was wrong with him? His side ached abominably. And his wig was hanging askew, he was sure of it.

“You can’t do this!” said Sergeant Greene. “The
Colossus’
s marines have cornered him, and it’s we who’ll take him down.”

Chesterly glared at the sergeant imperiously. “Paladins!” he called out. “Present arms!”

The clockwork automatons unshouldered their heavy pepperbox muskets. Steam belched from their smokestacks in increasing puffs. Their clangor in the closed-in space was deafening.

“When you speak to me, Sergeant,” replied Chesterly, “you are speaking to the crown. Remember that. Now get out of the way or be run down with that fossil at the end of the street.” He turned to smile condescendingly at Wintermourn. “And as for you, Admiral, tend that wound. I’ll take it from here.”

He drew the saber at his side and raised it up without ever looking away. Then he lowered it sharply. The Brass Paladins all stepped forward as one, their armored feet ringing against the boardwalk planks.

“Ye cowards!” shouted Euron Blackheart. “Ye dogs! Ye milk-drinkin’, lily-livered—”

“Aetherite Danica!” shouted the pirate woman in a half cloak. “Get up here! Everyone else, reinforce the barricade. Anyone with a pistol or a musket,
get up here!
”

Wintermourn opened his mouth to snarl a protest, but shooting pain stopped him. He dropped his blade to clutch at his side and then stared in shock as his hand came back red and wet, covered in blood.

When did that happen?

Wintermourn gasped in pain, his breath short, as the clockwork knights advanced. Behind their barricade, the pirates tried frantically to prepare, while the pirate king roared epithets.

Chapter Eighteen

Captain Fengel waved his hat to clear the dust away. He stumbled on rubble as he left the newly blasted cavern mouth, coughing. The taste of earthy rock, sulfurous powder, and the coppery tang of his own blood was thick on his tongue. His ears were still filled by the aftereffects of the blast, ringing like the tuning of some rogue orchestra just out of sight.

The dust faded slowly. It cleared away just enough to reveal the firetrap rooftops of the warehouses that made up the Waterdocks. Great shadows came and went, the telltale sign of airships on the move. Cannon fire and bomb blasts reached him, faintly.

So we’re not entirely lost, then. Not yet.

Imogen stumbled into him. Her mask was up, and her arms were out, seeking. She was blinded by an even thicker covering of dust than he was.

“Fengel!” she shouted, voice muffled. “Fengel, I can’t...where....we?”

He grabbed her by the arm and turned her to face him. “What?” he shouted back.

“I
said
...we...outside?”

“What?” Fengel pointed at his ears with his free hand, then remembered she couldn’t see.

The Mechanist-Aspirant tore off her mask and goggles. She blinked at the dusty haze, then coughed. “I said, did it work? Are we outside?”

“Aye,” he replied, gesturing. “Look. The battle’s still going on. And it seems Euron obeyed me, that daft old bastard; our airships are out in force.”

She peered at the rapidly clearing outlines for a moment. Then she gave a sharp nod. “I told you it would work,” she said.

Fengel glanced at the devastation around them. “I still think you might have been a little excessive.”

They’d rested only a few short minutes after engaging the pumps within the mine. Returning to the entrance was out of the question, so they’d sought to make a new one. The unfinished tunnel was just as Imogen had said it would be, piled full of Mechanist explosives. She’d been positively beside herself at the thought of lighting them all off. Fortunately, Mechanist Barlett was more restrained. Fengel still suspected that Imogen used more charges and powder than she should have—the blast had been titanic.

But it seemed to have done the job. They now stood again on the Waterdocks, and the fight against the Perinese was still going strong. Fengel hurt, though. The graze along his leg ached abominably, he’d bitten his tongue when the bombs went off, and his jaw was stiff where that brute Lanters had struck him repeatedly. Which had been a weirdly surreal coincidence. It felt like something from a boy’s penny-story: a duel to the death with his boyhood tormentor, in the clockwork mines of a secret society.
I should write about that someday
.
Or get that hack in Triskelion to jot it all down.

“I didn’t get to use my bomb,” complained Imogen. She sighed forlornly at the satchel slung over her shoulder.

The cloud of dust had cleared enough now that they could make out their immediate surroundings. A building lay crumpled before them, half-flattened. The roof rose like a ramp from the rubble they stood upon to the front walls that were still miraculously standing.

“Your brothers should be about finished in the Gasworks, yes?” said Fengel. He adjusted his sword belt—the extra weapons he’d taken from Lanters and his Bluecoats made it hang oddly. “They’ll be firing the signal flares soon.”

Imogen gave a shrug. “If we haven’t missed them already, yes. We didn’t spend too much time priming those explosive charges. Though it would have gone faster if we’d used more. I’m sure of it.”

Fengel ignored the last. “Let’s get up top, then. We should be able to see from atop this roof—” Something vile assaulted his senses. “By the Goddess above,” he choked. “What is that stink?”

“It’s piss,” said Imogen. “Remember how I said we were trying to get Tanner Hiram to move? That’s his place.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult now. Let’s get atop—” He gagged. “Climb that roof.”

Imogen shrugged and moved to clamber over the rubble. Fengel followed, trying not to touch anything with his hands. He outpaced her awkward figure quickly enough, scrabbling up the slope of the ruined roof to stand at its wobbly, sagging peak.

The air up here was better, thankfully. It still stank of sulfur and burning wood, undercut now by the smell of the tanner and the omnipresent jungle. Imogen clattered up beside him, half falling to her knees with the effort, panting.

Fengel turned his gaze again to the Waterdocks. From this vantage he could see the whole of it, all ramshackle and piecemeal. Nothing was on fire, thankfully. And only the one Perinese warship had landed. He peered at the thing where it had crashed into the northern part of the docks.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it’s been completely abandoned.
Where are all the Bluecoats?
Mechanist Barlett swore they’d advanced farther into the township. But why leave their ship so completely unattended?

“Captain!”

He turned at Imogen’s breathless exclamation. She was facing away, towards the cliff and the terraces dangling out from atop it, pointing. Fengel followed her outstretched arm to the Craftwright’s Terrace just above them, where a well-built wooden wall hid the Mechanist’s Gasworks. Great chimneys and struts rose up from the structure, supporting a wide platform, and brass piping spread out from it all like a thousand jungle vines. Fengel had never given the place much thought, let alone been inside.

Now, though, he paid attention. Stars of red-green light were shooting up from its rooftop to burst brilliantly in the sky above.

“That’s it,” he said in relief. “Or—you lot don’t send up flares for anything else, do you?”

“No,” said Imogen. “Only for a pressure breach and imminent explosion of the facility.”

Fengel blinked. The girl wasn’t smiling or hiding her mouth or anything else that might hint at a joke. In fact, it almost looked like she was counting under her breath.

“Twenty-nine...thirty.” Imogen nodded abruptly. “Yes, that’s just the signal for the gas pumps.” She turned and smiled at him, rubbing her gauntlets together. “They’re pumping the light-air gas to the support cells and lift-engines. All they have to do now is blast the shackles mooring each terrace to the cliffs.”

Fengel sighed in relief. “That’s our bit done for now, then.” He smiled. “I have to admit, I’m looking forward to this, wartime invasion and all aside. I mean, a flying city? And I get to captain it. Especially now that brain-dead old fool’s been put in his place.” He paused. “I mean, if all this works, of course.”

“Of course it’s going to work,” said Imogen. Her voice was focused, obsessive. “Atherion Helmsin is the greatest engineer the world has ever known. It will work. It has to work. I won’t let it fail.”

Fengel snorted. “Of course you won’t, little Miss Helmsin.”

Imogen started in surprise. “What? How did you—”

Fengel pulled his monocle free and polished it. “Please. The truth is as plain as the days grow short.”

“Actually, this close to the equator, the length of the day is consistent throughout the year, regardless of the season.”

He sighed. “At any rate, we should get up top. This terrace is a loss, which is good, since we’re not taking it with us. But we need to rally a real defense on the Craftwright’s Terrace. If no one takes charge, it’ll be a jumbled mess like the rest of the day has been so far.”

Imogen brightened. “Will I get to use my bomb?”

The pop of gunfire echoed across the Waterdocks. Fengel frowned.
That wasn’t in the lagoon, that was...

He started as he saw it. There was commotion in one section of town, only a street away from the stair back up to Craftwright’s Terrace. It was on Romper’s Way, near that old tavern that Henry Smalls always went on about. Just past the curve of the rooftops, he spied brassy helmets shining in the daylight—they belonged to the clockwork knights, which were fighting to pull down a number of pirates standing atop a barricade.

“Thorny paws of the Goddess,” he hissed. “They’ve come so far already? I thought we’d buried those things.”

“What?” asked Imogen. “Where?”

Fengel turned to descend back down to the rubble below them. “Bring that bomb of yours. It will get used soon enough, I’m sure.”

He slid down to the ground just as two figures appeared in the gloom of the recently excavated tunnel. They were Mechanist Barlett and Molly Mayhap. The former leaned heavily on a musket taken from the Bluecoats. Young Molly still clutched her doll’s-head stiletto...while wearing about half a dozen other newly acquired knives.

“There you two are,” said Fengel.

“Captain,” gasped Barlett.

“Hello there, Barlett, Molly. Look, you two had better get a move on. The Bluecoats have been held up a bit, but they’re almost to the Craftwright’s stair. They’ve got their clockwork toys again as well.”

“Captain,” said Barlett. “I don’t know that I can go any further.”

A curse sounded behind them as Imogen tripped and slid down the rooftop. Shingles went flying, and she half fell, half stumbled down to the rubble beside Fengel. The strap of her satchel had fallen off of her shoulder, momentarily forgotten.

Fengel snatched it up off of her arm. “Nonsense,” he said. “You’ll have Mechanist-Aspirant Imogen here to help. And I’m sure Molly will be more than willing to skewer any malefactors you come across—right, Molly?”

The little girl nodded slowly, not blinking once.

“Hey!” said Imogen. “That’s my bomb, and I’m going to fight those automatons!”

“In point of fact, you are not,” replied Fengel. “You are going to escort your brother up to the Gasworks and make sure that everything goes as planned. We’re leaving the Waterdocks behind, Imogen.”

“So?” She scrabbled up to her feet. “Someone still needs to slow them down, and I—”

“And
I’m
going to be the one to do it,” Fengel finished, putting steel into his voice. “This is an order, Mechanist-Aspirant.” He met her eyes and held them.

“I don’t have to obey you.”

“Mechanist-Aspirant,” snapped Barlett. “You may not obey him, but you
will
obey a full Brother.”

A frustrated look came over Imogen. She half turned to Barlett while still glaring at Fengel. “Fine.”

Fengel shouldered the satchel. “We’re fighting to try and save lives,” said Fengel, softening his voice. “If you move fast, we can save Barlett and the rest of this whole damned town. You’ve got the important job. I’m just going to try to buy you some time.”

“At least give me back my bomb.”

“Nope,” said Fengel. “Oh, and take this with you.”

An orange blur had come darting out of the cavern and across the rubble. Fengel grabbed up Cubbins and shoved him into Imogen’s startled arms. Then he turned to go, only to pause and turn back.

“Right. I’m going to need this too.”

He stepped forward and grabbed the musket that Barlett was leaning upon. The Mechanist swore and staggered, forcing Imogen to come to his aid. Then Fengel turned away, clambering for the way past the half-demolished tannery.

“Arsehole!” shouted Imogen.

“I’ll meet you all at the Gasworks!” he called back. “Now, get going and keep to the alleys up against the cliff wall. And don’t lose that cat!”

He ignored Imogen’s further protests and made his way across the rubble. It smoothed out quickly, as most of the blast had been expelled into the tannery. Fengel stepped down onto the weathered boardwalk and into the shadowed alley before quickly reaching the street out front.

It was still empty. Any of the usual denizens were dead, fled, or too well hidden. He had been afraid of Bluecoat sentries roaming the streets. But it seemed they were all farther down the terrace with their mechanical monsters, besieging some brave knot of pirates trying to slow the invaders down.