Escapement (62 page)

They had seen that raft with the two people clinging to it. Ming had argued on the speaking horn briefly, then more intently, until she’d grabbed it and shouted, “Turn the damned ship!”

Now they had one castaway gone below after a lunatic rescue involving a line fired from a gun. The other was here in the tower with them as
Five Lucky Winds
slid toward another dunking.

They could drown right now. They should have already.

The girl looked at her calmly. “I can hold back the ocean until we go below.”

And then she did.

Ming, Childress, the girl, and Fat Cheung with his line gun scrambled down the ladder even while the waters roiled around a ball of air centered on them. Cheung rapped on the hatch in the dark damp at the base of the tower, then dropped in as it was opened from below.

“Go,” said Childress to the girl.

“The air will follow me,” she warned.

Childress nodded, then scrambled down the ladder, wet as she’d ever been. Her eyes and ears and throat stung with seawater. Bells were ringing alarms all over the ship.

Above her, the girl and Ming crammed into the lock together—something that would not have been possible if they were not both of small stature. Ming closed the outer hatch as Childress found the deck.

She heard them pass the inner hatch, but her attention was taken by the two cooks bending over that giant European that had been pulled from the same raft as the girl.

He was a massive redheaded brute, and he’d produced an astonishing quantity of salt water. One of the cooks pounded his back while the other held his head up above the water and vomitus pooling the deck.

“I see you have taken us fishing,” said Captain Leung from behind her.

The girl stepped off the ladder and screamed at the cooks, “Get away from him!”

“Wait,” Childress called.

She whirled, anger and panic clear in her face. “What?”

“They’re trying to save his life.”

“These are
Chinese
!” In the cold silence that followed, she added with an edge of fury, “They’re almost as bad as the English.”

“Enough,” said Leung. He rattled off some rapid Chinese, which sent most of the sailors scattering. He then turned to Ming with a question. Childress caught the phrase “All men” in Ming’s answer.
All men,
whatever that meant.

“We dive now,” Leung said. “As soon as we know how deep and where we are.” He looked at the girl. “Where
are
we?”

“I don’t know,” she gasped. Her anger drained away from her as fast as the water from the man on the floor.

Leung stepped back into the bridge, where alarms continued to ring. In the silence that followed, Childress was very aware of the hull groaning and popping.

“
Take him forward when you can
,” she told the cooks. “And my profound gratitude.” Then, to the girl, in English, “Let us repair to the wardroom. We’ll be out of the way. If the ship survives this storm, there will be many questions.”

“The questions are there whether or not the ship survives the storm,” the girl said more calmly. “I won’t leave al-Wazir.”

“The wardroom is a few steps aft,” she said. “You can see him from there.”

She picked her way past the groaning giant. The girl followed her with an anxious glance backward.

“You’ll forgive me if I do not make tea,” Childress said as the submarine rolled again. The hull continued to groan. The noise of water was more loud than she’d ever heard before.

The girl shivered under the blankets Childress had given her, and kept glancing at the open hatch.

She leaned forward. “You’re the girl with the gleam, aren’t you?”

“If you know that, you know everything.” Her voice was sullen.

Childress felt a surge of sympathy. She kept her voice level and calm. “You’ve nearly drowned, my dear, and been chased across half the Northern Earth if I don’t miss my guess. But that’s nearly all I can say. I don’t even know your name.”

“We nearly drowned after crashing an airship. And worse, along the
way.” After a moment, she added, “I am Paolina Barthes, of Praia Nova, along the Atlantic extents of
a Muralha
.”

“Well, Paolina Barthes, I am the Mask Childress, also known as Emily McHenry Childress, sometime librarian in New Haven, Connecticut.”

“Mask?”

“Of the Feathered Masks. The
avebianco
. Spiritualists searching for man’s path in God’s world.”

Paolina stiffened. “I have had enough of searchers. Your Silent Order has been the death of many in their quest to abuse me.”

“Not my Silent Order,” Childress said carefully. “They have a writ against my life.”

“So why are
you
aboard this ship?”

“Looking for you, I think. To stop the Silent Order from taking you to finish building their Golden Bridge.”

“You must be the other ones, the birds.”

“Yes.” Childress wasn’t certain whether to be pleased or concerned at what this girl knew. “The white birds, as I said.”

“And what are
your
plans for me?” The anger was building once again.

“For you?” Childress was surprised at the question. “Nothing. To offer you aid, if possible, and somehow ensure your freedom. Our aim was to stop another project in which you and your device seem to have come to play a critical role. If you find a way to escape the Silent Order, we may have succeeded in a single stroke.” Phu Ket could wait, if this Paolina somehow left the chase behind.

“If you want a single stroke, best cut off my head now and be done with it.”

“No, I do not think so.” Childress gathered Paolina’s hands in hers. The girl did not resist. “We do not do things that way.
I
do not do things that way.”

“Do you command this ship?”

“No, of course not. But I am the Mask here. And your fate is most properly my concern, far more so than Captain Leung’s.”

Paolina fell silent. She did not pull her hands away from Childress’ grip. The ship shuddered again, rolling with some motion of the waves as they found their depth.

“Listen,” Childress finally said. “You must have had a direction, a goal when you were forced down by the storm. Where were you bound?”

“
We had t-t-taken
Heaven’s Deer
.”

“You stole an airship?”

“No. We took her wheel from her captain.”

Childress turned that over. “Who? You had a crew.”

“Just me and al-Wazir,” Paolina whispered.

“Two of you took on an airship?” She was impressed and alarmed. This girl was very powerful. No wonder the Silent Order and the Chinese were both after her. That Paolina might be the Golden Bridge brought to life seemed very possible.

“Yes we did.”

“Bound where? What was your plan?”

“We f-f-forced most of the crew off. We were headed for
a-a-a Muralha
—the Wall. If the storm had not taken us, we would have made our d-d-destination in another day or so.”

“So you want to go to the Wall.”

“I was born on the Wall. If I am to die soon, I would prefer to die on the Wall. If I am to live, I would p-p-prefer to live there. As you v-v-value me, take me there.”

“Then we sail to the Wall,” Childress said, her tone firm.

“Not until I know what caused
Five Lucky Winds
to move two hundred nautical miles in a moment,” Leung said from the hatch. He slipped into the wardroom and sat at the table with them. “I am Captain Leung.”

Paolina just stared at him. “B-b-but you’re Ch-ch-chinese.”

“Yes, he is,” Childress said, stepping into the argument before it erupted. “He is master of this vessel, and it is his ship and crew that have saved you from certain drowning. Captain Leung, this is Paolina Barthes, late of the Wall.
A Muralha
, she calls it.”

“Miss Barthes, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” His voice grew hard. “What happened to my ship?”

The girl tugged a brass disk from the folds of her blanket. It glinted with recent dunking. “The gleam,” she said softly. “I called you to me.”

“Called me? Called my ship? How did you know to find us?”

“I did not.” She looked up, met his eyes, then Childress’. The Mask saw misery in the girl’s gaze. “I arranged the world so that rescue might come to me.”

Leung was incredulous. “You moved a vessel of over three hundred tons with the power of your
arrangements
?”

“This is the strength of the Golden Bridge,” Childress snapped. “The missing keystone to their arch lies in what this poor girl can do. She
is
the Bridge, in a very real way. She already carries what they seek to build. The Silent Order and your government have pursued this girl across Northern Earth. You can see what such power would mean in the wrong hands.”

“My last gleam destroyed half of Strasbourg,” Paolina muttered.

The captain stared at her. “A bomb? Aboard my vessel, you have brought a bomb?”

“More like . . . a spell.” Paolina showed them what looked like a clockface. “A windup spell.”

“There have always been wizards in Northern Earth.” Childress wasn’t sure which of the three of the them she was speaking to. “William of Ghent, for example.” The stakes for which this game were being played had grown immense. “This thing that you have wrought is a grave danger, Miss Barthes.”

“People have died,” she muttered. “Too many.”

Childress led her to the horrifying conclusion. “Because it might make any man a wizard.”

“That seems true. Though I built the one which damaged Strasbourg, I did not wield it.”

“I should dump both you and that device in the ocean,” said Leung. “You are the most dangerous person to walk this Northern Earth since K’ung-fu-tzu.”

Paolina turned to Childress. “I told you.”

“Let him think, child,” she said in her calmest voice, the one usually reserved for an angry professor.
Childress
knew better. Leung was not planning to dump this poor girl into the sea. Still, his reaction echoed her own. This was exactly the sort of disruptive, destructive force that she feared in the Golden Bridge project. Leveling cities, indeed.

“Where were you bound with it?” the captain asked.

“As a prisoner aboard one of your airships.” Sullen, resentful, angry. “Reportedly to Phu Ket. Al-Wazir and I had turned it south toward the Wall.”

Leung sounded amazed. “You suborned the crew of one of the Celestial Emperor’s airships?”

“We took it from the crew, cast the officers overboard.” Her voice was filled with a fearsome, fragile pride. “We would be at the Wall now except that the storm forced us down.”

“You captured an airship of the Celestial Empire, then crashed it into the sea. This is not the power to level cities, but some other glamour. That makes you all the more dangerous, girl. I do not believe that one-handed monster lying in my passage could have done so on his own.”

“Then dump me into the ocean,” she said fiercely.

“No.” Childress had her best Mask Poinsard voice on now. “We shall put you ashore at the Wall. From there, you must carry on as best you can.” She turned to Leung. “In the meantime, we will let her rest. In my cabin, undisturbed, as her sailor still lies in the passageway.”

Leung nodded, but remained seated. Childress took that as a hint, and escorted Paolina out of the wardroom and the few steps forward to her cabin. Casting eyes on the snoring, snorting British sailor, the girl refused further aid once they’d reached the entrance.

Childress returned to the wardroom to sit with Leung once more. “How did you discover our position?”

“We still are not certain,” he told her. “There are, ah . . . wheels that turn and keep their orientation? Very strong, small wheels?”

“Gyroscopes?”

“Yes. Gyroscopes. In our compasses. I believe we are about a hundred nautical miles west and north of Sumatra. I am not certain, and thus we must be very, very cautious as to our depth and heading until the storm reduces and we can take a reliable position from the sky.”

“The gleam.” Childress tried to imagine how the
avebianco
or the British Crown would react to the presence of such power in the world. Much as the Silent Order already had, she assumed.

“An accursed device if ever there was one.” He looked at his hands. “I will make a heading toward the Wall, if you will work to find a way to assure me that once ashore she and her device will trouble us no more.”

“How could I make that assurance?”

“You are the Mask here. I rely on your discernment and discretion.”

“Indeed.”
Discernment and discretion are all well and fine
, she thought. What she needed was a flash of genius.

More than a flash.

She awoke shivering violently.
A fever
. She felt neither burning nor chilled, though. She was unclothed, wrapped in layers of blankets, lying in a narrow bed in a tiny metal-walled room. She distinctly remembered it pitching and rolling when she’d lain down. The deck seemed level now.