Escapement (43 page)

The lightning spear was dead now, too, though they took turns carrying it.

“Some creatures of this wild may be sufficiently intelligent to be frightened by it,” said Boaz. “Should we hap upon a cache of supplies to replenish it, we shall, but many will recognize a weapon of Ophir no matter whose hands carry it.”

The second night they camped in a wider place, which had once been a way station. A cliff towered behind them, with some shallow rooms carved into it. There were dry troughs out front, along with several stone tables. All was sere and abandoned, centuries of disuse obvious.

“What was this built for?” al-Wazir asked.

Boaz moved about, setting some gathered wood for a fire. “Ophir was first settled by migration from the eastern coast of this continent. At times within the curtain of our history, there was intercourse across the full expanse, for trade and society. This route extended from Ophir back to the Indian Ocean.”

“What about them brass cars the lassie spoke of?”

“Those run to the Indian Ocean as well,” Boaz told him. “And beyond, around the world and back. But they may be boarded or left only in special places. At this moment I would not care to place myself so close to Ophir’s
hand, lest they summon me home by means of the seals which power and control the cars.”

Seals.
The proclamations of their king? He was tired and discouraged. “We could travel by foot for months to make our distance. If only we could take to the air.”

“My people have had some commerce with the winged savages,” Boaz said. “But I should not think to travel with them, even under the direst of straits.”

“Indeed.” Al-Wazir shuddered at the thought of treating with the vicious creatures, and wondered at the sanity of the Brass. He spent much of that evening with his back to the fire, looking north into the African night, wondering what had become of, well, everything.

They paced themselves over the next few days, walking enough to make decent progress while not straining al-Wazir’s injuries. The rocky cliffs where they’d joined the highway eventually gave way to long, steeped vine-shrouded slopes wreathed in pale yellow mists. The road there had been hacked into the angle of the Wall, though vines now fell across it. They stank of rotting meat. Al-Wazir could not see why or from what.

“ ‘T’would be far better not to abide here for sleep,” Boaz advised him. “Neither to drink nor sup from what might be found. There should be burn scars ahead, where we might secure safe rest.”

“Aye.” Al-Wazir saw the Brass’ point. Sleeping in this stench would go to his head at the least. There were creatures slithering among the vines above and below the roads. He never saw them as more than a flash of scale or a ripple of dark, muscled skin. That was enough to convince him that he did not want to see more.

When they came to a cleared area, marked by the fall of rocks and gravel and a wide black burn scar, he was relieved. They were clear of the dangerous vines. Boaz declined to hunt, so there was no food that night, but al-Wazir found a trickle of runoff from higher up to slake his thirst. The yellow mists closed in with the dusk, and he never slept easily, but he at least found some rest.

The afternoon of the next day they finally left the country of the vines, passing on to a place where the long stalks petered out to be replaced with a more complex ecology of bushes and grasses and stunted trees. He was hard-pressed to tell which competing set of plants was winning the struggle, but at least here there were little rodents like fat squirrels, which could be caught and cooked.

Africa below them was changing as well. It lifted from flat coastal jungle
to higher and higher ridges. The Ophir road was at sufficient altitude to grant a long view. They walked at ten or fifteen thousand feet, al-Wazir realized.

There was a great deal of Africa below him.

Another day brought them to an area where the highway was in repair, albeit more crudely executed than the original construction. Following that awhile, amid signs of occasional traffic here, al-Wazir and Boaz came to a great gate that had been built across the road. The south side was anchored in a rising knee of the Wall. The north side overhung a drop. A rushing noise and water spraying from behind suggested a fall beyond the gate.

Al-Wazir studied the fortification with Boaz. “Excellent place to block an advance.”

It was a square-cornered tower built from a mix of large flat stones and smaller bricks. The gateway itself was arched, and lined with more bricks of finer quality. The gates were timbered and studded with dark metal.

He saw no arrow slits nor murder holes, and nothing except the roof itself that could serve as a firing point. No guards visible to the eye. Just a gate blocking the road.

“Whom does it keep out?” al-Wazir asked. “Besides us.”

“Perhaps better to inquire as to whom it keeps in.”

Al-Wazir stepped forward and used the butt of the lightning spear to bang on the metal-shod wood. A knocker, for an unreasonably large door.

The noise boomed, echoing briefly, but there was no answer beyond that.

After a few moments he knocked again.

More quiet.

Al-Wazir squatted in the narrow shade of the arch. “Now what?”

“We find a way past it,” Boaz said. “The Wall lies steep here, and we would be hard-pressed to climb far, but I believe that if we were to follow back the trail a quarter mile or so and ascend with great care, we might gain the advantage of this rock knee which anchors the gate. We can see what lies beyond.”

The climb was difficult. Al-Wazir had one bad, frightening slip that left him dangling over a bulge that would have dropped him hundreds of feet. There was nothing for it but to haul himself up and keep going. When next he achieved a solid resting place, he shivered awhile before carrying on.

They eventually found themselves atop the knee, above the gate house. The roof of the structure was flat, with a wall that looked to be waist-high. There was no obvious way on or off—no stairs or ladders from within, for example.

Behind was a wooden bridge built into the piers of a long-vanished stone bridge. The waterfall tumbled beneath it into the same distance that had threatened to swallow al-Wazir.

There was no way down off the back of the knee that he could see. He turned and gazed up the Wall. The rushing creek ran through a deep channel down a steep slope. That would be hellish to cross, and the higher they might try to climb, the steeper things became.

“We will have to go back down,” he said.

“No.” Boaz walked to the edge of the knee, swaying slightly as he looked at the gate house. “If we climb to the top of the structure, we can secure a passage down the back.”

“It’s a straight drop to yon roof,” al-Wazir protested, “and there’s no way of knowing what’s behind it. I don’t fancy a leap from the top. Thirty feet if it’s an inch. I’m not crafted for such a tumble.”

“Our alternative is go far west along the Wall and climb up or down, trying to pass at a different level.”

Al-Wazir sighed. “Days of walking, with no certainty.” It wasn’t
that
far down to the roof of the gate house, was it?

They climbed very slowly down the curve of the knee.

When Boaz slipped and fell, al-Wazir froze. He heard a resounding crash but could only angle his head slightly to look down. The metal man was prone on the roof of the gate house. Not sundered into pieces, but not moving either.

Slowly,
he told himself. Slow, slow, slow.

It took him half an hour to make the last thirty feet. When his feet reached stone, his fingers were bloody and his arms shook so badly, he had to sit and rest them. He had no idea how he’d kept hold of the lightning spear.

Boaz lay unmoving, staring blankly at the sky.

Al-Wazir remembered how Boaz had recovered from the crash of the Chinee airship. He waited quietly beside his friend.

Darkness brought a chill that was odd this low on the Wall in al-Wazir’s experience. The chief watched the stars emerge from day’s bright cloak, and traced the brass in the sky as if he were a navigator. Boaz began to shiver.

“I’m here, friend,” he said, and laid a hand on the metal man’s chest.

After a few minutes of uncoordinated movement, Boaz sat up. “I fare not well. An armorer would be appropriate to my condition.”

“I have no arms or armorer. All we can do is push onward.”

When the two of them approached the lip of the roof and looked eastward, there was a squad of men upon the wooden bridge. They wore armor in a bright metal color—brass or possibly gold—apparently in imitation of the Brass of Ophir.

“Sweet Jesus and the twelve,” al-Wazir cursed.

Boaz raised a hand, giving a jerky wave.

All fourteen below raised their hands and echoed his wave.

“Have you a ladder?” the Brass man called.

Below, they swarmed into action.

The noxious petty officer was gone from both the hallway and the lobby. Apparently they were free. Walking down the front steps, Leung took her arm in his. It was only a sensible escort, she knew, but still the firmness of his touch sent a chill through her.

“You are on parole to me now,” he said. “Answerable on your honor to me, as I am answerable on my honor for any untoward actions you take.”

“I understand.” At least she thought she did.

“I tell you one more thing. Then we find a place for you while my ship is cared for and my men take their shore leave.”

“What is that?” The two of them pushed now through the same crowds that had swallowed William of Ghent—swarms of small, busy men of yellow and brown complexion, with their animals and their carts and their enormous loads like beetles on the backs of ants.

“The admiral and the foreign sorcerer . . .” His voice trailed off, as if he were searching for other words. “They are feared for many reasons. Power, strength, the ruthless quality of vision each possesses. But understand something else. In China, white is always the color of death. Funerals are masked and garbed in white. Ghosts come white in the darkness. To both be so tall and so white, it would be like wearing horns in an English church. Calling up visions of a demon.”

“Dead men afoot in the world?”

“Yes. Both of them waken fears of dreaming death in most of my people.”

“I see.” In English tradition, white signified purity and possibly strength. William’s clothes had seemed a fashion choice suited to his unusual coloration, nothing more. As for Shang . . . there was a man who
acted the part of a ghost, and dressed it. He kept an entire navy full of ships and men in line partly by playing on their fear.

That was either admirable or despicable, she was not sure which. She had to concede the genius of the role.

They pushed through a large set of iron gates into the chaos of a public street outside the docks. What she had before thought a confusing, brawling mess had been parade-ground order compared with the near riot out here. In addition to the ubiquitous loads and their bearers, firecrackers and gongs echoed, children ran screaming, palanquins forced through crowds on the backs of sweating, hairless fat men while servants cried their right of way with whips and knives, a basket of snakes wriggled at her elbow—it went on and on, overwhelming.

She realized Leung was yelling in her ear.

“What?” Childress asked.

“Be thankful this is not a festival day,” he repeated. “The street becomes too crowded.”

All Childress could do was laugh and follow him into the life of Tainan. The crowds’ crackling energy buoyed her in a way she had not felt since before leaving New Haven.
Long
before leaving New Haven.

This was what she was born to do—push through sunlight and color on a foreign street while plotting to save the world from its foolish masters. It might be a short life ahead of her, but Childress found herself more pleased than ever she could remember being.

A few days later, Captain Leung caught up to Childress as she walked down by the harbor. He was forced to push through the crowd of children and beggars who followed her about. She had not minded, not at all.

Neither his uniform nor the pistol he wore today seemed to have any discouraging effect on her mob of admirers.

He glanced about. “
Five Lucky Winds
is almost ready to sail.”

“Then it is good that I am ready as well.”

He smiled. “Indeed. I could hardly hold back a vessel for the sake of an errant woman.”

Childress followed him, still pressed about by a throng of murmuring Chinese, mostly the very young and the very old. There were no walls or gates to separate the naval base from the city. They simply passed down to the military docks where a pair of armed sailors allowed Leung and Childress onto the pier. They stopped the rest of the crowd with glowering threats.

She looked out across the water.
Five Lucky Winds
was tied up at the next pier. A very shallow chop slapped against the curving hull as the submarine rode low in the water. Full, then, of fuel, provisions, ballast, whatever one packed into a such a vessel. Birds swooped, turning and screaming, to follow some shoal of garbage floating across the bay. The sun sparkled on the low ridges of the waves, a bright, cryptic script written and rewritten in every breath of the wind. Out here the tide-and-sea smell competed with the overwhelming human riot of Tainan along the shore. That scent had become almost familiar to her now.