The Aeronaut's Windlass (83 page)

B
ridget woke up almost instantly when Benedict stirred in his sickbed.

She sat up in her chair and wiped her hand at her mouth, as she always did. She had a wretched tendency to drool when she slept heavily. But she forgot, and came near to knocking out her teeth when the cast over her forearm and wrist smacked into her lips.

Bridget hissed out a curse and raised her unwounded arm to her mouth to rub at the sting. That was all she needed, for Benedict to wake up to see her lip split open and swollen.

The young warriorborn stirred and let out a soft groan. His body twitched, and then his arms moved—only to be held down by the straps of the infirmary cot he occupied. He opened his eyes and looked around blearily.

The infirmary was crowded, with men strapped into cots covering nearly every spare foot of floor space. Doctor Bagen, after laboring for nearly a day straight in the wake of the battle, was in a hammock strung up in one corner of the infirmary, snoring with the force of an approaching thunderstorm. A second hammock had been hung up in the other corner, and Master Ferus lay in it, arms folded over his belly, sleeping with a small, contented smile on his face. Folly lay curled up in the open space beneath her mentor’s hammock, between the etherealist’s two wagons, sleeping with her mouth open.

“Don’t try to sit up yet,” Bridget said to Benedict. “Here, here. Let me unbuckle it.” She leaned down and unfastened the straps that held Benedict flat to his cot, and he took a deeper breath after she had, and raised his hands to mop at his face. Then he lowered them, his eyes snapped into focus, and for a moment there was something wild and dangerous in them. When they locked on her, she felt that she hardly recognized him.

Fortunately, Bagen had prepared her in advance for the kind of response a wounded warriorborn might have after a battle followed by most of two days of unconsciousness. Benedict’s accelerated metabolism had burned fiercely for all that time, and he seemed more lean and dangerous than at any other time she had known him.

Without a word, she passed him a large tankard that had been sitting ready, and he all but snatched it out of her hands, clutching it clumsily due to the burns and thick bandages over his own—but he guzzled the water down with such urgent thirst that some of it spilled out around the corners of his mouth. By the time he lowered the mug, she had uncovered the large bowl of thick stew and the small loaf of bread that had been waiting with the water. He sat up, took it from her with a growl and a flash of teeth, and began eating the stew directly from the bowl, as if he couldn’t get it into his mouth quickly enough. He supplemented gulps of stew with enormous bites off of the loaf of bread, hardly chewing them before he swallowed.

Bridget followed Doctor Bagen’s instructions and sat very still while Benedict ate, without speaking, moving, or offering to take the bowl from him when he seemed to be done.

It was only after he had finished the bowl and the loaf alike that the wildness seemed to die out of his eyes. He blinked them several times, and then abruptly focused on Bridget again. The lower half of his face was stained with his meal. He lifted his hand to his mouth in a short, abortive gesture, and something like shame touched his eyes.

“Ah,” he said, his voice low and rough. “I’m . . . I beg your pardon, Miss Tagwynn. I was not myself.”

“It’s all right,” she assured him. “How do you feel?”

“Awful.” Something deep and dark flickered in his eyes for a moment—but then it was gone. “Where are we?” he asked.

“Aboard
Predator
, in the infirmary.”

He peered around him. “Ah. How did we get here? We were at the temple, the last thing I knew.”

“You collapsed from the silkweaver venom,” Bridget said quietly. “We knew Master Ferus could help you and the others who had been poisoned, so the captain brought everyone aboard and set out to recover Master Ferus’s equipment.”

“Successfully, obviously,” Benedict noted. “What happened?” He blinked and suddenly sat up straight. “Bridget, what happened to your face? Your arm?” He lifted a hand and touched her bruised cheek.

His fingertips were light and hot and a tiny bit rough. Bridget thought her heart might stop. She felt her eyes grow very round.

Benedict’s spine seemed to stiffen in the same moment. Then he lowered his hand abruptly and cleared his throat. “Um. That is, if you wish to tell me.”

“I was struck on the face while the temple was collapsing around us,” Bridget said, which was technically true. She held up her cast. “This happened as the battle began.”

“What battle?”

“Oh, we chased down and fought
Mistshark
, the champion ship of the Olympian Trials, then fought something called an
Itasca
alongside several ships of the Fleet. We captured her, which is apparently quite a significant thing, and we’re now bringing everyone from the battle back home.” Bridget sounded to herself like a terribly nervous child reciting poetry for the first time in front of her classmates, speaking too quickly but unable to stop herself.

Benedict blinked and shook his head. “I . . . How did you say you hurt your wrist?”

“The ship was maneuvering and I was trying to hold on to Rowl. I had no idea the motion could be so violent.” She shook her head and felt herself blushing. “It’s nothing, honestly.”

“Where’s Rowl?”

“Not speaking to me at the moment,” she said. “I’m afraid his pride is wounded. But he’ll come around. Eventually.”

Benedict smiled faintly. “And Gwen?”

“She’s fine,” Bridget said. “She’s good.”

The young warriorborn quirked an eyebrow at the thoughtful tone in Bridget’s voice. “Yes, she is,” he said quietly. “Arrogant, headstrong, occasionally careless, and slow to consider that she might be wrong—but she has a good heart. Beneath all the annoying bits. Occasionally a goodly distance beneath.”

Bridget let out a little laugh and shook her head. “You always tease her.”

“Someone must. Otherwise she’d get an enormous, swollen Lancaster head.”

He grinned and looked at her for a moment. Then, moving very deliberately, Benedict Sorellin picked up Bridget’s hand and rested her palm atop his fever-hot fingers. He pressed her hand between both of his. Bridget’s heart raced and she felt herself blushing again and smiling and staring intently down at her own feet.

But she closed her fingers gently against his, and felt his firm, careful grip tighten in response.

It was amazing, she thought. She didn’t feel a need to say anything. And apparently he didn’t either. Her hand was in his, and that was saying enough and more than enough. She was exhausted and the past few days had been terrible—but now she sat quietly beside Benedict, and held his hand, and felt happier than she had in months.

*   *   *

G
wen stood very quietly on the windy deck, her goggles in place, and stared out over the railing to where a large cargo-loading platform from
Itasca
had been stacked with the cost of the opening days of the war.

There had been no room to lay the bodies of those who had died in state. Instead they had been wrapped in cloth and stacked up like cordwood, Albions and Aurorans alike. The platform now floated a hundred yards from
Predator
, tethered with a length of line.

The deck of
Predator
was crowded. The officers of surrendered
Itasca
stood, weaponless, in their dress uniforms, as did the officers of
Valiant
and
Victorious
, and the single surviving officer from
Thunderous
.

“For as much as it has pleased God in Heaven to take out of this world the souls of these men,” Captain Grimm intoned, his voice calm and steady, his hat in his hands, “we therefore commit their bodies to the winds, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, and dust to dust, looking for that blessed hope when God in Heaven Himself shall descend to earth with a shout, with the voices of the Archangels, and with the trumpet of God, and when that which is no more shall be again. Then we who are alive and remain shall see a new world born of this veil of tears, and be rejoined with them in peace. Amen.”

“Amen,” came a general rumble from the assembled officers and the aeronauts of
Predator
.

“Funeral detail,” Creedy said from his place at Grimm’s right hand. “Proceed.”

One of
Predator
’s cannon had been adjusted for the task at hand, and what lanced out from its barrel was not the usual streaking comet of light, but a small, glowing sun. It sailed gracefully toward the float, expanding rapidly, and when it hit there was a flash of light, a cough of thunder, and a sudden thundercloud made of pure fire, so bright that Gwen had to shield her eyes against it, even in goggles.

When she blinked her eyes clear again, the float and the bodies upon it were gone, replaced with a swiftly dissipating cloud of ash and soot, already being taken by the strong breeze.

There was a long moment of silence, during which no one moved. Then, as if by an unspoken signal, scores of men suddenly redonned their hats, and the stillness of the funeral service was over. There was a brief period of mingling among the officers, in which the captured Aurorans spoke calmly with their Albion counterparts, differing only in their uniforms, and in that none of them wore gauntlets or blades.

Then men began boarding launches and returning to their ships—to
Valiant
and
Victorious
, both of them hauling the battered, gutted form of
Itasca
behind them. Then the three ships began to make their way slowly back toward Spire Albion, moving at only a fraction of the speed that had carried them away from the Spire.

Gwen waited for several minutes after the ship had gotten under way, and then watched as Captain Grimm returned to his quarters. She followed after, and knocked on his door.

“Enter,” he said.

She slipped off her goggles and went in to find him sitting at the little table in his room, a fresh stack of blank pages in front of him, along with a pen and ink. He set them aside and rose politely as she entered.

“Captain. Good afternoon.”

“Miss Lancaster,” Grimm said. “What can I do for you?”

Gwen found herself clenching her fists on the hem of her jacket and forced herself to stop. “I . . . I need to talk to someone. But there’s no one about who seems appropriate. If I were at home, I would talk to Esterbrook, but . . .”

Grimm tilted his head slightly to one side. Then he gestured for her to sit down in the other chair, and drew it out for her. Gwen sat gratefully.

“Tea?” he asked her.

“I . . . I’m not sure this is a tea conversation,” Gwen said.

Grimm frowned. “I pray you, Miss Lancaster, say what is on your mind.”

“That’s just it,” she said. “I . . . I am not sure what it is. I have a horrible feeling.”

Grimm drew in a breath through his nostrils and said, “Ah. What sort of horrible?”

Gwen shook her head. “I killed a man a few days ago. An Auroran officer. I chose to do it. He never had a chance.”

Grimm nodded slowly.

“And I saw that silkweaver matriarch. I saw it . . . do things.”

Grimm said quietly, “Continue.” He turned toward a cabinet, opened it, and withdrew a bottle and two small glasses.

“And . . . and I was here for the battle. I saw . . .” Gwen found her throat closing off. She forced herself to speak more clearly. “It was terrible. When I close my eyes . . . I’m not quite sure I need to be asleep to have nightmares anymore, Captain.”

“Aye,” Grimm said. He returned to the table, poured some of the liquor into each glass, and passed one to her before he sat.

Gwen stared down at the glass without really seeing it. “It’s just that . . . I was among these things. I saw these things. And now . . .”

“Now you’re on the way back to be among people who didn’t,” Grimm said quietly.

Gwen blinked and felt her eyes widen slightly as she looked up at him. “Yes. Yes, that’s it exactly. I . . . I had no idea what the world could be like until I saw it. Felt it.” She shook her head, unable to continue.

“How are you going to talk to someone who has no idea?” Grimm said, nodding. “How can you explain something you can’t find words for? How can you get someone else to understand something for which they have no frame of reference?”

“Yes,” Gwen said. Her throat tightened up again. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

“You can’t,” Grimm said simply. “You’ve seen the mistmaw. They haven’t.”

Gwen blinked slightly at that. “I . . . Oh. Is
that
what that phrase means? Because I haven’t seen a literal mistmaw.”

Grimm smiled faintly. “That’s what it means,” he said. “You can describe it to them as much as you want. You can write books about what you felt, what you experienced. You can compose poems and songs about what it was like. But until they’ve seen it for themselves, they can’t really know what it is you’re talking about. A few people will clearly see the effect it had on you, will understand that much, at least. But they won’t
know
.”

Gwen shuddered. “I’m not sure I want them to.”

“Of course not,” Grimm said. “No one should have to go through that. Why fight, if not to protect others?”

Gwen nodded. “I thought perhaps I was going mad.”

“Possibly,” Grimm said. “But if so, you won’t be alone.”

She felt herself smile a little. “What do I do?”

In answer, he held up his glass, extending his arm to her. She picked up her own and touched her glass to his. They both drank. The liquor was golden and sweet and strong, and it burned into her as it went down.

“Talk to me about it, if you wish,” Grimm said. “Or Benedict. Or Miss Tagwynn. Or Mister Kettle, if you don’t mind the cursing. They’ve all seen the mistmaw.”

“And they know how to live with it?” Gwen asked.

“I’m not sure anyone knows that,” Grimm said. “But they’ll understand you. It helps. I know. And in time it isn’t as hard to bear.”

“What we’ve done,” Gwen said quietly. “The violence. The death.” She shook her head, unable to articulate what she felt.