The Aeronaut's Windlass (76 page)

Ciriaco frowned but nodded. “I’ll ride herd on the boys for you, sir.”

“Make sure everyone’s strapped in and battened down. Then get some sleep. I’m sure it won’t take long,” Espira replied.

He started climbing the steep staircase to the deck, and hoped that he knew what he was talking about.

*   *   *

T
he
Mistshark
was not a ship of the Armada. The heavily tarred planking and decks looked smudged and dirty, though he imagined it provided excellent protection from the elements—and of course it made the ship less visible in low-lighting conditions, which was doubtless useful to a captain who was up to no good.

That said, however, the ship was run with all the professionalism of a vessel of the Armada, even if the crew looked like a pack of cutthroats and scoundrels. Certainly the
Mistshark
’s gunnery had been excellent, efficiently destroying the Landing Shipyard. Granted, any target that could not shoot back was hardly a challenge, much less one a bare hundred yards away, but not a single blast had gone to waste, and the
Mistshark
had managed to destroy some thirty times her own weight in enemy merchant craft, as well as millions of crowns of priceless Albion infrastructure.

The men around him were a crew of evil-eyed, pitiless apes—but they had done good service to Spire Aurora. He did not need to like them to respect their ability.

Espira reached the door to Madame Cavendish’s cabin and raised his hand to knock.

“Come in, Major,” she called, before his knuckles had touched the door.

Espira suppressed a shiver, and entered the cabin.

Cavendish sat inside at a small tea table, calmly, primly, her gown’s bodice unfastened and hanging down to her waist. She was clad in only a thin shift from the waist up.
Mistshark
’s doctor, a wiry Piker covered in outlandish tattoos, was tying off a bandage that had been wound ’round and ’round Madame Cavendish’s ribs. Her position left an unseemly amount of skin on display, and Espira forced himself not to look at the smooth strength of the woman’s shoulders or the clean, graceful line of her neck.

It would not do to permit himself to think of Cavendish as a woman. She was a monster.

She still held the slender volume in one hand, and was reading with unnervingly steady attention, even as the doctor ministered to her.

There was a bunk bed in the room. The lower berth had clearly been reserved for Cavendish, but the top was occupied by the bags of miscellaneous objects she had insisted upon bringing aboard. It took Espira a moment to notice that Sark was in the room. The bandaged, wounded warriorborn wasn’t on one of the bunks—instead, he lay
under
Madame Cavendish’s bunk, like some hideous spider lurking beneath an imperfect bit of decorative molding. Espira could see for a second the glitter of gold-green light reflecting from warriorborn eyes, and then it was gone.

“Major,” Cavendish said, smiling faintly. “The good doctor is nearly finished ministering to me. Do sit down.”

Espira doffed his hat and bowed politely before seating himself in the room’s only other chair, across the small table from Cavendish. “How can I be of service, madame?”

“I need your professional assessment,” she replied. “How quickly could your men seize this ship?”

For a second, the doctor’s hands froze in place.

Espira frowned, staring at Cavendish, looking for some clue in her features as to how she expected him to answer.

Judging from her expression, Cavendish had noticed the doctor’s reaction too. Her mouth quirked up at one corner. “Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

Ah. She wanted the man to hear what he had to say. “The crew is outnumbered and outgunned,” Espira replied slowly. “And my men are the best. On the other hand, we don’t know what measures the crew has put in place to even the odds in such an action. But I am confident to say that my men could take this ship eight or nine times in ten.”

“That is excellent news,” Cavendish said. “Doctor, have you finished?”

“Ayup,” the doctor muttered to Cavendish. The man never looked at her face. “Should heal up fine. Can’t see as the ball tore any bone off the ribs, so no splinters. Clean it twice a day, fresh bandages each time, and don’t go jumping about.”

“You’ll tend to it, Doctor,” Cavendish replied. “I will see you after breakfast and after dinner. Plan accordingly.”

The man clearly resented the command, but he only touched his fingers to the brim of a hat he was not wearing and hurried out of the cabin.

Espira waited for the man to go before turning to Cavendish and asking, “Why?”

“Our pace is too slow,” Cavendish replied as she carefully slipped back into her gown. “If that does not change, we may not reach our escort before Albion’s Fleet catches up to us. I notified Captain Ransom of this fact several times, and have received no reply. I do not care to be ignored. Tea?”

“Yes, thank you,” Espira said.

Cavendish rose smoothly, turned her back on the major, and stopped. It dawned on him after a moment that she was waiting on him, and Espira rose immediately. “Madame?”

“Button me up, if you would, Major?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Espira said, stepping forward.

“It had best not be,” Cavendish said in a poisonously sweet tone.

Espira felt his spine go rigid. He forced himself to inhale and exhale deeply. Then he went about fastening up a score of buttons on the back of Cavendish’s gown with quick, efficient motions.

A few moments later they both sat back down at the table for the tea Madame Cavendish prepared. As she poured, the dismal grey light of the mists outside shifted and grew brighter. The grey of the mezzosphere gave way to the cerulean blue of the aerosphere as the ship emerged into open sky.

A moment after that, the door opened abruptly and Calliope Ransom strode into the cabin.

Mistshark
’s lean captain had a vulpine air about her, and her green eyes flickered with raw anger. Her dark aeronaut’s leathers were worn and of excellent quality, as were the blade at her side, the gauntlet on her hand—and a trio of pistols, slung one after another on her belt.

“Good morning, Captain,” Cavendish said in a pleasant tone. “Will you join us for tea?”

“No. Thank you.” Ransom stared hard at Espira for a moment, her eyes calculating. Then she nodded a few times and said, “This is my ship. And while you are valued customers, you are guests on my vessel, and by God in Heaven you will comport yourselves as such.”

“Or what follows?” Cavendish asked in a gentle tone.

“You leave the ship,” Captain Ransom said simply.

“Do you mean to force me over the rail, Captain?”

“No need,” Ransom replied. “Santos has already opened the cargo doors in the hold below this cabin, including the one on the exterior ventral hull.” She tapped a toe on the wooden deck. “Beneath this deck there is nothing but sky—and the explosive charges that will shatter this floor and send everything in the cabin tumbling down into the mist, along with you, your creepy attaché, and this sorry son of a bitch from Aurora.”

Cavendish tilted her head sharply. “Excuse me?”

“If I don’t come out of this cabin within the next ten minutes, Santos sets off the charges. If I emerge from this cabin acting odd or out of character, he sets off the charges. If he so much as gets a bad feeling that you’re up to something, he has orders to set off the charges and kill you all.”

Silence grew in the room. Espira cleared his throat. “I believe you are bluffing, Captain Ransom.”

The captain’s sharp smile grew sharper. “Am I?”

“I wonder,” Cavendish mused aloud, “if you are truly the kind of person who would rig her guest quarters to murder her guests should they become inconvenient.”

Captain Ransom cocked an eyebrow. “I wonder if you are the sort of person who would make an extremely foolish threat simply to get her extremely busy host’s attention.”

“Touché,” Cavendish murmured. “Could you not have taken a moment to speak to me? It does seem polite.”

“Polite is lovely for tea parties,” Ransom replied. “It is of limited value when one is attempting to outrun the fastest and best-trained airship fleet the world has ever known.” She looked at each of them. “A fact you should consider when calculating whether or not you should attempt to take my ship. You might take her, but you won’t take her whole—and all of Albion will be on your heels in hours, if they are not there already.”

“Meaning?” Espira asked.

“Meaning that your Marines aren’t aeronauts. They can’t sail like aeronauts, they can’t think like aeronauts, and they can’t manage the ship as well as aeronauts—and that goes double for whoever you put in charge of them. If you kill me and take my ship, you’re never going to get back to Spire Aurora alive. The Albions will catch you and kill you. It’s as simple as that.”

Cavendish’s mouth spread into a wide smile, one that looked eerily out of place on her features. “I believe I can respect you, Captain,” she said. She stared at Ransom with the smile fixed in place, took a slow sip of tea, and then said, “The ship has slowed.”

Ransom’s brow furrowed. She kept her features composed, but Espira had the impression that she was nearly as unnerved by Cavendish as he was. “How could you possibly know that?”

“Am I right?”

“You are,” Ransom said.

“Why?”

“Corrosion in the Haslett cage, my engineer says,” the captain replied. She cast an aggravated glance toward the stern of the ship. “It’s causing irregular power flow. We had to back off on the throttle or risk blowing out runs and relays.”

“Can it be corrected?” Cavendish asked.

“Not without taking the core offline to scour the Haslett cage,” Ransom said. “We would be forced to rely on wind-powered sails until the cage could be cleaned and reassembled. We can run at eighty-five percent, or we can stop using the web entirely and trust in the wind.”

“And why do we not do that?”

Espira managed to keep from wincing. Cavendish might be fiendishly clever and dangerous, but the question betrayed a vast ignorance of aeronautics.

Ransom managed to answer as though the question had not sounded like one coming from a curious child. “Wind-powered sails are efficient, since they cost no energy consumption from the power core, but they lack the maneuverability offered by an etheric web,” she said. “A ship running under wind-powered sails makes its best speed amongst only a limited arc of possible directions, and can be easily outmaneuvered by a powered ship. And if you don’t have a good strong wind, a web-driven ship will outrun a wind-powered ship.”

“You’re saying that relying upon the sails creates too many variables,” Cavendish said thoughtfully.

“I’m saying that it dispenses with too many options,” Ransom replied. “If we disassemble the Haslett cage, all we have are the sails. No web, no shroud, no weapons. If the Fleet sighted us, we could do nothing but run, and if the wind was not favorable we would be rapidly destroyed. Once we reach the rendezvous, we can repair the cage.”

“Why then?”

“Because we’ll have an escort to screen for us should a Fleet ship find us,” she said. “We’ll be able to sail down into the mist while the escort engages the enemy.” She arched an eyebrow. “This little lesson in aeronautics has cost this ship in terms of efficiency, because I was here answering your questions instead of doing everything I possibly could to keep us all alive. Enjoy your tea, madame. If I can avoid any further interruptions, this should be over soon.”

Cavendish set the teacup and saucer down carefully. “I’m not sure I like your tone, Captain.”

Captain Ransom put her right fist on her hip. “This is
my
ship, madame,” she said. “Consequently, I’m the one who makes decisions about tone here. Do us all a favor: Drink your tea like a good trog and stop interfering with professionals.”

Cavendish’s eyes flashed with a spark of heat, echoed by the kindling of what looked like a tiny star in the crimson crystal at her throat.

Espira grimaced. He put down his teacup and shifted his weight slightly in his seat, so that he could throw himself rapidly to the floor should violence erupt.

“You are ill-mannered, Captain,” Madame Cavendish said.

Ransom smirked. “Feel free to leave my ship whenever you wish, you arrogant bi—”

And just then a bell began to ring at frantic pace.

“General quarters!” boomed the enormous executive officer’s voice, out on the ship’s deck.

Ransom spat a foul curse and flung herself at the cabin’s door. Just as she opened it, there was a howl of discharges from a broadside of etheric cannon, an enormous flash of light, and a sound like thousands of dry bones snapping.

“Strap in!” Espira shouted to Cavendish, even as he rose and rushed after Captain Ransom.

He dashed out onto the deck in time to see
Mistshark
’s entire starboard etheric web shot away from the ship. It was on fire, adrift and falling with lazy grace back toward the mist of the mezzosphere. The ship lurched, its drag suddenly unbalanced, its stern slewing to port as its bow rotated in the direction of the missing web.

There was a rushing sound, and scarcely five hundred yards away a lean, sleek airship flying Albion’s scarlet, azure and white colors sailed up into view from beneath the
Mistshark
with seemingly effortless speed and grace. The name on the prow declared her the AMS
Predator
.

Espira clenched his teeth. Skippers in the Auroran Armada and merchant fleet alike spoke of the privateer ship in hushed, angry tones.
Predator
had been single-handedly responsible for nearly a quarter of Spire Aurora’s merchant losses in the two years leading up to this war.

Before he could finish the thought,
Predator
’s guns howled again, this time firing overhead, snipping off
Mistshark
’s dorsal web as neatly as a seamstress with her shears. This time the web came slithering down onto the ship, burning, sparks flying off it with miniature lightning snaps of discharging static electricity whenever it touched nonwooden material.