Escapement (12 page)

“And so the
avebianco
?”

“The Feathered Masks, yes.”

Childress shook her head, stepping around a rope coil. They approached the stern and another walk round the rail. The tall Scandinavian still

following along. “I had always thought us a loose affiliation of librarians and archivists and common people. Not fighting women and scheming daughters of the quality.”

“For the most part, I suppose you are correct.” Anneke paused at the taffrail to stare at the churning line of their wake. “People of the book, and people of hope and reason, and people of God, serving a common purpose. But we have our heights and edges, too.” She turned to face Childress, her expression set somewhere between fear and need. “You know that I am a Claw? A Claw can never be a Mask. The Feathered Masks will not have blood on their hands.”

Childress let the obvious question slide by her. Instead: “It is more clean to order my death with a word than with a fist.”

“Yes.”

“Anneke . . .”

“Yes?”

“I shall not think of you as a Claw, nor speak of you that way.”

Anneke’s crooked smile returned. “I thank you. And I . . . I . . .”

“Yes?”

“I . . . never mind.” With that, she fled, leaving Childress in the company of the laughing sailor and a pair of narrow-winged white birds that trailed along just behind the vessel.

The next morning a crewman knocked on her cabin door. “Services in ten minutes, ma’am, on the foredeck.”

“Thank you,” she called.

In the days since her confrontation with the Mask Poinsard, various items of clothing had appeared in her cabin. None had been particularly well fitted or to her taste, but she managed a high-necked velvet dress with a modest bustle.

When Childress slipped out into the passageway, the Mask Poinsard stood waiting.

Today the woman was clad in a cream-colored suit of much the same cut as the previous outfit Childress had seen her wear. Her blouse was pale blue, as were her high-buttoned shoes and her wide-brimmed hat. In short, the Mask Poinsard was dressed more for a smart day in town than Sunday morning services in a shipboard drizzle.

“Ma’am.” Childress was cautiously polite.

“I was unsure if you’d have the decency to come to services.”

Childress could play that game again. Decades of faculty infighting had left her amply prepared for the barbed remark. “I find your uncertainty to
be of no surprise, given your absolute lack of understanding of simple decency.”

The Mask Poinsard blinked. “I see we have found the wrong foot with one another again.”

“Allow me to be blunt,” said Childress, “as time is too short for this dance. If you persist in beginning every mutual encounter with an attempt to put me in my place, I will never bend to you. Sparring is a waste of time for both of us. However, if you wish to engage in the gentle art of conversation, I should find the pastime diverting. In the meantime, I believe I hear the bell ringing to call us to prayer.”

They walked, the Mask Poinsard leading, in a frigid, rigid silence that left Childress wondering yet again whether she should hope or despair.

Mute Swan
had no chaplain, so perforce the captain, one William Eckhuysen, led the services. Childress was accustomed to the high church splendor of St. John Horofabricus on Crown Street in New Haven, with its racks of votive candles, stained-glass windows in the stations of the horofix, elaborate vestry and sixty-voice choir. It always seemed to her that God abode at His best in the shadows of splendor.

Still, here in the raw weather of the deck with the hands shuffling and yawning, Captain Eckhuysen had a certain passion quite capable of invoking the divine spirit. Childress stood close to Poinsard’s elegance and Anneke in her sage-green gown as the crew opened with the Navy hymn. Eckhuysen then read from Paul’s letter to the Rhodians, the passages concerning the writ of Holy Spirit in the brasswork of the sky.

“ ’For it is given to us as the greatest gift to have proof positive of God’s intention, in looking upward in day or night. Lest you doubt, or seek solace in the machinations of Babylon or Egypt, remember where the Lord Jesus laid down His own life, in the slow and inescapable advancement of a man’s simple copy of His Father’s works.’ ”

He then looked about the deck, catching the eyes of his officers, passengers, and hands. “The centuries since Our Lord’s horofixion have brought change upon change upon change to our world. We sail the boundless oceans on muscles of steam, where once we feared to row far from shore. We walk the lands under the hottest sun of Northern Earth, where once we did not know what lay south of Africa’s Mediterranean beaches. The
avebianco
soars over the hearts and minds of men, making free what had before been bound.

“In this, we are following the words of the Apostle Paul. We pursue the slow and inescapable advancement of man’s efforts to imitate God. We
remake Creation in our own image, over and over, taming lands and seas, wresting knowledge from the fabric of the world around us, always laboring in the light of Christ’s gift to us.

“With this in mind, remember what you—”

He was interrupted by the helmsman shouting from the bridge, “Wake ho!”

The words got Captain Eckhuysen’s undivided attention. “Which quarter?” he bellowed.

“Trailing portside, just west of north, sir!”

Every man on the ship raced to the port rail, leaving Childress, Anneke, and the Mask Poinsard standing in confusion. “Get to your cabins,” Anneke said, but Childress and Poinsard exchanged glances, both shaking their heads. They followed the sailors to the rail.

Almost all the ship’s company crowded there, forty officers and men. Fingers stabbed as they pointed out at the choppy water. Childress saw neither ship nor wake, just roughening swells covered with sliding foam. There were no birds in evidence either. She had no idea if that was significant.

Eckhuysen turned and looked up at his bridge again. “Where’s it now?”

“Lost it, sir!”

“Emergency stations,” Eckhuysen shouted. “Women to the lifeboats. Prepare the rockets. Bosun, open the arms locker immediately!”

With that, the sailors were a whirling riot of motion, racing across the deck, up ladders, down hatches, shouting in half a dozen languages.

“What is it?” the Mask Poinsard asked Anneke, her voice straining over the din. “I see nothing.”

“Aft boats.” Anneke’s voice was grim. She grabbed the Mask Poinsard’s arm with one hand, Childress’ arm with the other. “We’ll want to be in the life rings as well.”

Childress resisted the tug. “If we go into the water, there’s hardly any hope of rescue
here,
I should think.”

The look Anneke shot her was tinged with desperation. “As may be, but it is what I can do. If there were more, believe me, I would do it as well.”

“Underwater,” Childress said, her voice catching. “They have spied an underwater boat.” She cudgeled her memory for the proper term. “
Sous-marin.
There is a submarine nearby.”

The Mask Poinsard, unwilling to be budged, hitched herself up slightly. “Her Imperial Majesty’s Royal Navy has no submarines.”

“No,” Anneke said. “But the Chinaman does. Come now, please, ladies.”

There was another shout from the pilothouse. All three women looked over the port rail.

A long dark hull was sliding into view above the wave tops. It had a
single tower or deck house. Sailors poured out of hatches, setting up a gun on the forward deck close to
Mute Swan
.

Above and behind them, there was a loud pop, followed by a whistling screech, as Captain Eckhuysen set off the first of his signal rockets. Childress assumed this would be futile. Even if they were espied, the nearest help would have to come from beyond the horizon’s distance.

Men appeared at the rail of
Mute Swan
bearing rifles and pistols. Half a dozen dropped to brace their weapons, half a dozen more standing behind them to present a tight concentration of fire. The rattle of their weapons was painful to Childress’ ears, the stink of gunpowder unexpectedly sharp.

The first Chinese shot went wild of the defenders. Instead the wind of it tore at Childress’ sleeve as the rail before her shattered. A teakwood splinter eighteen inches long slashed into Anneke’s gut like a knife. The woman collapsed to the deck, her green silk gown blooming with blood nearly black.

Childress dropped to her knees next to the stricken woman even as the Mask Poinsard backed away. Anneke stank of blood and bowels and urine. She lifted a hand toward Childress, her fingers twitching as she tried to grab something invisible between them.

“I wanted,” Anneke said; then the effort was too much.

The difficult young woman breathed awhile longer as the battle raged.
Mute Swan
bucked and rolled with the impact of Chinese shells. Sailors cursed, while at one point the foghorns blared so long that Childress thought she might be stricken deaf. Still, she knelt on the deck holding Anneke’s cooling hand and wondering what it was that the woman had wanted.

To be the best, perhaps. Or even just to be accounted good.

As Chinese sailors swarmed over the rail, small and swarthy and golden-skinned, in their strange blue uniforms, she folded Anneke’s hands across her waist and kissed her eyes gently, one and two, before raising her face to greet whatever was to come next.

The one who spoke English came to Paolina at sunrise two days later. None of the others who attended her would admit to understanding the language. In the time she’d been under care, Paolina had tried Portuguese, and her fragmented Spanish, and even attempted a tiny bit of Latin, but received no response.

Now that she was somewhat accustomed to the ways of these people, Paolina recognized the woman as a leading lady of this strange court—her neck was bare. The highest servants wore thin collars of silk, while those of lower rank wore heavier leather bands, or even half helms. Only the great were free to raise their heads unencumbered, it seemed.

On entering Paolina’s high chamber with the rain-drenched windows, the woman neither bowed nor turned her head away, but simply said, “I am Karindira. Are you dying?”

“I do not think so.” Paolina was fascinated to be pulled back into the same conversation as if no time had passed.

“You carry a gleam.” The woman’s unblinking black eyes strayed to the stemwinder in Paolina’s hand.

“I do.” Paolina had been wondering what she would do in this moment. The mechanism had gotten her past the gates, into this palace, and under the care of these strange, squat people. She was unsure that it would be such an easy key to her departure. Not unless she could make something of the gleam.

“Show me, now that you live.”

Paolina sat up higher against the pillows at the head of her too-short bed and opened her hand. The blank dial with the four hands faced up. The woman did not move, simply staring at the thing, so Paolina tugged at
the stem until she had it ready to reset the hand measuring the time that beat at the heart of everything. “See this? Are you certain you want me to adjust it?”

“No,” Karindira said, finally blinking slowly. “Put it away. I know this for what it is. You carry the gleam. That is enough.”

Paolina closed her fingers but kept a good grip on her creation.

“There was another,” the woman said. “Two years ago, when the ground shook, another gleam moved across the Wall. We never saw it.”

Even across the many gaps between them, Paolina heard a note of desperation in the strange woman’s voice. “Why do you need to see the gleam?”

“To know.” Karindira glanced away a moment. “We are a city of women. There has not been a man born or raised here in over a thousand years. They left in pursuit of another gleam, once. We were bound over to ourselves to lay nests of girl-children in silent memory of our mothers. We have been looking for a gleam of our own ever since. Perhaps it will bring them back. I fear the unbinding.”

“As you should,” Paolina muttered. “I hail from a village of men. They are crass and foolish louts who know themselves to be lord of every woman born, with ears only for decoration to offset their open mouths.”

“No matter.” Karindira’s face settled. “We have made our own way down the centuries. You carry the first gleam to come to our gates since then. The temptation is . . . great. . . .”

“I carried the gleam away from my own gates.” Paolina clutched the stemwinder ever more tightly. “I go in search of the English wizards who understand the true order of the world.”

The woman spat on the floor, crudely out of keeping with her otherwise mannerly behavior. “English. Dog-eaters and monkey-suckers who would pull down the heavens for their curiosity.”

“Yet you speak their tongue. . . .”

“As some among us must, for trade along the Wall. This is not the language of my nesting clutch.”

“Nem mina,”
said Paolina in Portuguese. Then, in English: “But it has become the language of the order of the world.”

The woman smiled, a somewhat appalling sight given her stained triangular teeth. “We can curse one another in the tongue of those flatwater barbarians. You will need a week or more to recover properly. I offer you hospitality until then.”