Mainspring (9 page)

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Authors: Jay Lake

BOOK: Mainspring
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“What ho,” the Scot replied. “New chum speaks.”
“I'm grateful for the rescue, but where are we bound?”
More laughter. The one with the earring punched Hethor in the shoulder so hard Hethor was knocked into the man on the other side of him.
“Silly bugger,” shouted one of the sailors.
“No, no buggering his sweetness yet,” said another.
Hethor subsided, holding his tongue. He'd gotten in trouble enough already these past few days by talking too much.
After about twenty minutes of travel, the black Mariah rumbled to a stop with much heying and clucking from the driver outside. The sailors tumbled out, sweeping Hethor with them onto a pier. A ship was tied at the far end. A little shingled shack stood right beside them. The sign above the entrance read ANTHONY'S.
“Pier Four?” Hethor asked.
“The same,” roared the Scot, slapping Hethor again. “Nae time for drinking this morning. Smallwood wants to cast lines and head south before the midday calm. As His Lordship is our captain and our master, cast lines we shall.”
“I'm going on a ship,” Hethor squeaked. He'd never even been in a rowboat, though he'd swum enough in rivers and ponds as a small child.
“Oh, that you are, my little beggar.”
Someone grabbed his elbow, marched Hethor down the pier, and literally threw him off the dock into a little boat with a single mast and eight oars. He had not seen the small vessel before because it was hidden by the pier's height.
“Sit down and shut your bleeding gob,” growled Gold Earring, “if you know what's good for you.”
Anything is better than the pit of the candlemen,
Hethor told himself. At least if this crew killed him, it would be in good honest daylight, not in that dungeon full of half-starved ghosts bent on terrible violation of his body and soul.
Around him the sailors began to row. They chanted as they pulled.
“Starboard, ya great eejit,” bellowed the Scotsman at the small man on the tiller. “Or I'll have your sister for brekkie.”
The boat heeled and lurched as salt spray broke over
the bow. Hethor tried to poke his head up only to be slapped down by Gold Earring again.
He lay in the bottom of the boat feeling nauseous once more but glad of the daylight as the sailors rowed their little vessel out across the harbor.
“JEFFRIES POINT,”
bellowed the Scot. “All ashore what's goin' ashore.”
Everyone but Hethor found that very funny. Somewhere in the middle of the harbor his stomach had finally rebelled. He'd kept his guts behind his teeth, barely, but his nose stung and his breath reeked. Hethor knew without being told that spewing would be worse than pained silence.
Much worse.
He climbed up, this time without being slapped down into the bottom of the boat, and was helped out onto a muddy flat populated with wooden towers rising from stone footings. Gold Earring spun Hethor around by the shoulder to point back across the harbor.
“See that?” he growled. “Your precious Boston. Say good-bye, candy-arse.”
New Haven was far more precious to Hethor than Boston, but this didn't seem to be the time to mention that.
Two of the sailors set anchors far out into the mud flat from the little boat. They then began hiking along a winding path toward the towers. Away from the water. The group was quieter than they'd been since first snatching Hethor from the viceroy's peculiar dungeon.
“Where's the ship?” Hethor asked after a few minutes of walking.
“Look up,” said Gold Earring.
Hethor looked up.
Airships—canvas clouds that dripped hemp rope and wooden decks—floated at three of the towers. Great wings of slats webbed with silk drooped from the bows
and sterns of the hulls, which were lean and narrow enough to kiss the water. Huge blades hung crossed over each other, screws protruding from the backs of outrigger pods that had steam hissing along their flanks. Nets hung across the canvas gasbags. The Union Jack was woven into them.
“Oh,” said Hethor.
“Seeing as how we've yet to climb the ladder, it's a mite early to be saying so,” said the Scotsman from the front of their little hiking party, “but welcome to Her Imperial Majesty's Ship of the Air
Bassett
.”
“You've been pressed, man,” Gold Earring said with a nasty chuckle, “into the Royal Navy, finest fewkin' fleet on air or water.”
Hethor knew he should be dismayed, or even terrified, but he was profoundly glad to be shut of the scent of candle wax. And it didn't matter whether this sweep from the viceroy's prison was meant to help him or betray him. The message Hethor had sent to Malgus through Sergeant Ellis had ultimately summoned the press-gang, saving him.
“Thank you,” Hethor mouthed as they reached the bottom of one of the towers.
The climb was ferocious, his arms and legs burning, but still it tasted of a kind of freedom he'd never known before.
THE SHIP
cast off almost immediately after the press-gang's return, with a great roaring sluice of seawater ballast being dumped. No one on deck commented on their poor catch of one gangly youth. Gold Earring hustled Hethor to a rope locker near the front of the ship, close under the lowering curve of the gasbag.
“You're to stay here, and no moving about, till someone comes for you. Get a real sailor hurt and I warrant you'll know the meaning of pain under our lash. I'll staple your pecker to the rail with a twelve-penny nail, I find
you in the way.” He poked Hethor in the chest for emphasis. “And listen, little fish. Wind comes up, you tie yourself down to a safety line and hold on.”
Hethor crouched next to the rope locker in a small space between it and a rail until a bored-looking boy with blond hair and a pink face came to find him.
“On your feet,” said the child, who had to be four years younger than Hethor—twelve or thirteen at most. In contrast to Hethor's increasingly grimy work clothes, the newcomer wore a nicely cut uniform complete with gold-scabbarded sword.
Hethor stood, steadying himself on the rope locker, and wondered what was supposed to happen.
“You are hereby sworn to Her Imperial Majesty's service, at the pleasure of the queen or her appointed officers, under pain of punishment and death subject to the Articles of War and the captain's will.”
“What?”
The child cuffed Hethor across the cheek. “Say ‘yes,' lout.”
Frustrated and enraged, Hethor hit him back. “Don't touch—”
But the child drew his sword and pressed the point into Hethor's chest. “That will stand you twelve lashes, and twelve more, for striking an officer, lout.”
“I—”
“Shall we try for thirty-six?” The child waited for a moment, then lowered the sword's point. “I thought not. I am Midshipman Fine, officer in charge of the deck division. You are the most junior of the deck idlers. This means you do what any man on this ship says unless I tell you otherwise.”
“Yes, sir.” Hethor's back already itched.
“You'll be lashed at the next discipline call,” said Midshipman Fine. “Until then, I suggest you stay out of further trouble. You may begin by finding Deck Chief Lombardo and doing whatever he requires of you.”
Deck Chief Lombardo, of course, turned out to be
Gold Earring, the man from the press-gang who'd invested his time in harassing Hethor.
HETHOR'S SENSE
of freedom evaporated as he scrubbed the decks with a holystone and a broom and tried not to think about the promised lashing. Though on the water the Royal Navy had gone to steam-powered iron hulls, in the air wood was still very much favored for its relatively light weight, flexibility, and ease of expedient repair.
These things were explained to him, lovingly and with great care, by Lombardo. The deck chief seemed to delight in forcing Hethor to absorb cataracts of
Bassett
trivia, with every expectation that they would be disgorged again on command.
“You're lucky,” Lombardo growled the morning of Hethor's third day on board. The gray Atlantic tossed white lines of foam back and forth perhaps a thousand feet below the deck. “Most lads have to do five or ten years on the water before they get to the air. Hard work and plenty of buggering. Ain't never seen a press-gang for an airship before.”
Hethor's back itched to distraction in anticipation of Middie Fine's promised lashing. The thought of the punishment held a sick dread for him, to the point where he barely listened to Lombardo.
“What the fewk makes you special?” Lombardo asked. His rough-shaven face pressed close to Hethor's ear. “Who the bloody raging hell
are
you?”
“Someone who needed very badly to leave Boston,” Hethor said, despite his efforts to keep his mouth shut and just listen. Someone had made an extraordinary effort to bring him aboard; that was clear.
A combination of Phelps and the mysterious Malgus.
The question was, were they working with or against the connivance of the treacherous William of Ghent?
“This ain't no cush berth, you hear? We work damned hard, and we're bound for territory where Chinee airships
troll for trouble. You'd best be able to fight, boy, or you'll really be in for it for some hard scut.”
Lombardo gave Hethor a shove, doubling him over his broom, and stalked away.
HETHOR FOUND
that even in his distress he loved the air. The airship had met only calm weather since leaving Boston, mostly favorable westerly breezes, so the rocking of the hull had been a gentle minimum. He could work the deck along a railing and stare out across the ocean toward the land to the west—though that slipped beneath the horizon soon enough. They often passed among the clouds, towering white geometries like he imagined mountains to be. The ocean below was a pattern of infinite variety, swells moving at cross-purposes, the colored rivers of currents visible, sometimes the dots of ships.
Occasionally he even saw whales.
It was as much magic as he had ever hoped to find in the world. The sounds were strange here, too, the clattering of the Earth replaced with the creak of ropes, the snapping of the gasbag's canvas envelope, and the distant clang of pumps. At night it was like being in Master Bodean's house during a strong storm, when the beams creaked and the roof groaned. Except these were the noises of calm. And the winds were different at altitude, playing a game both harsh and simple. The world that
Bassett
inhabited high above the Earth smelled pure as Creation.
Mindful of the mirage that he and Le Roy had seen from a Connecticut road, Hethor often found himself staring south. He hoped for a glimpse of the Equatorial Wall and the gleaming brass that defined its upper margin. Somehow, that seemed the best direction for him to be headed in pursuit of Gabriel's mission.
Life on the airship had a well-defined rhythm that was not unpleasing to Hethor. They steamed during the day unless the winds were quite favorable for
Bassett's
limited
sail. They banked the boilers at night unless the winds were quite unfavorable. Much of the ship's hull was taken up with tanking for the boilers, which burned a high grade of oil.
Shrouds and lines ran up and around the gasbag and out to the great steering paddles. Folding in the paddles was a matter of daily drill. For Hethor this mostly consisted of standing around holding onto a line while people ran past him yelling. More experienced sailors scrambled up and down the nets on the gasbag as well. No one suggested that Hethor do such a thing.
Between drills he cleaned the deck and stowed rope and other goods into deck lockers. Even the seat of ease, sky air chill upon his hindquarters, was strangely refreshing. Three meals a day, a ration of rum, a morning shave—though still barely required—and a sleeping hammock strung in the night air were the only other things in his life. At night, if he crept close to the rail, the Earth's tracks gleamed in the sky. They were closer than ever, rising from the eastern and western horizons like brilliant horns.
Except for the promised lashing Hethor could almost be happy. He lived in a bubble of quiet unremarked by the other sailors other than Lombardo's harassment. He steered far clear of officers. It was if he sailed the sky alone. He was no closer to the Key Perilous, but he was out of the candlemen's pit and in the open air.
Somehow, some way, he would find his path back to Gabriel's mission.
One afternoon Hethor was stowing a set of brassbound blocks and tackles normally used when the ship wanted to show her best colors coming into port. The steering paddle crews had used them for a drill.
His clockmaker's eyes didn't like the way the brass had been polished down—there were streaks of fingerprints along the edges—so Hethor took the tail of his Naval-issue cotton shirt and began working the brass to a smoother
perfection. He fogged it with his breath, then polished vigorously, wishing he had some of the right oils.

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