The Aeronaut's Windlass

  That brought a wolfish flash of a smile from Lord Albion. He pointed a forefinger at Grimm and leaned forward slightly. “Exactly, Captain. Exactly. You’ve served Albion as a privateer for eighteen months now. This would be no different.”

  “That’s . . . very generous, sire,” Grimm said cautiously. “Perhaps, though, you have not been made aware of Predator’s state of repair. She’s in need of refitting. It may be some time before she’s skyworthy.” Decades, perhaps, Grimm thought. “She’s running on nothing but her trim crystals.”

  “I’m not an aeronaut, Captain,” the Spirearch said apologetically, “or an aeronautical engineer. What does that mean, precisely?”

  “She can only go up and down,” Creedy said in a helpful tone. “And she has to do it very slowly.”

  “Ah,” Albion said, brightening. “As it happens, that is precisely what I need your ship to do.”

  Grimm narrowed his eyes. “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “I’m sending a team to Landing,” the Spirearch replied. “It needs to be done quickly—before dawn, if possible. I’m sure that your ship is adequate to—”

  Grimm rose, his heart pounding harder and louder as his anger grew. “Sire,” he all but snapped. “With all due respect, there is ample transport to Landing. Send them down in a barge or a windlass.”

  Lord Albion’s head drew back slightly, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Captain, I am not sure why the idea upsets you so.”

  “My ship isn’t a barge. And she’s bloody well no windlass,” Grimm snarled. “And while I’m alive she never will be. Not for the Fleet, not for the bloody Spire Council, and not for you, sire. Thank you for the offer, but I cannot help you. If you will excuse me, please. I must see to the needs of my wounded and dead. Creedy.”

  Grimm turned to leave and Creedy lurched up out of his chair to follow, his face pale.

  Albion sighed audibly. Just as Grimm reached for the door, he said, “That’s a shame, Captain. I wish we could have worked something out. Do you perhaps know someone in the market for new lift and trim crystals for a ship Predator’s size? It seems I’ll have some spares on my hands.”

  Grimm froze with his hand on the doorknob. He tilted his head and then turned slowly, inexorably back toward the Spirearch.

  Albion gave him a feline smile. “Do this work for me, and you’ll be making the trip down to Landing with top-of-the-line replacements from the Lancaster Vattery. I’m told your engineer can have them installed and calibrated within a week.”

  “You . . . would do that?” Grimm breathed. “In exchange for what?”

  “This job,” Albion said. “One job. Take my team to Landing. Provide whatever support you can for them while they are there. Bring them back here when they’re done.”

  “One job,” Grimm said.

  “Frankly, Captain, my hope is that you will see the advantages of my offer and will be inclined to work with me on an ongoing basis. But if you want nothing to do with me after this, so be it. Keep the crystals and go your way.”

  “If I did, you’d be throwing away a fortune.”

  Lord Albion shrugged. “I prefer to think of it as an investment in the future, Captain Grimm. What say you?”

  Grimm exhaled through his nose. The anger was still burning, but smoldering alongside it was . . .

  Hope.

  Unattainably valuable replacements for Predator’s damaged crystals, waiting to be installed. His ship rising above the mists again, to sail in the blinding light of the sun. His crew’s livelihood secured. And yet Predator would be bound to no one but her captain.

  Freedom.

  Grimm realized with a sudden shock of purely mental impact that nothing on earth could convince him to turn down such a deal.

  “I say . . .” Grimm began, slowly. Then he sighed. “I say that you are a manipulative son of a bitch, sire.”

  “Each and every day of the week,” Lord Albion replied, nodding. He met Grimm’s eyes. “And I don’t turn my back on my people, Captain.”

  He hadn’t said, The way that Fleet does, but it hung unspoken in the silence after his words.

  Albion lifted his hands, palms-out, as if signaling the end of a bout, and regarded Grimm with a frank gaze. “It’s as simple as this: I need you, Captain. The Spire needs you.”

  Grimm clenched his right hand into a fist for a moment, and then relaxed. “Mister Creedy.”

  “Captain?”

  “Return to Predator. Inform Engineer Journeyman that he has work to do. Make ready to sail to Landing.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Spire Albion, Habble Landing

  Major Renaldo Espira, Auroran Marine, walked calmly through the cramped, crowded streets of Habble Landing dressed in local clothing, carrying a crate marked with the logo of one of Landing’s water farms. Though there was much excitement and the buzz of talk and rumor in the habble, evidently the authorities of Habble Landing had not yet realized the extent of his battalion’s incursion into Spire Albion, and no checkpoints or patrols had yet been established. He could still move about in relative freedom.

  The initial assault had come off with as much success as any combat mission could reasonably expect. He had yet to hear from the assault teams striking Habble Morning, but his Marines’ months of training in the precision maneuver of parasails had paid off handsomely. Already better than four hundred of the five hundred men under his command had made contact and begun to concentrate, and there had been reports of fewer than twenty men who had failed to target one of the Spire’s many ventilation ports properly.

  It looked as though, barring bad luck, he would have more than enough men to attain his objectives, and if he was able to see the most daring raid in the history of any Spire to completion, his fortunes in Spire Aurora would be secured for life.

  Espira wove his way through the hectic streets of Landing. Most habbles in every Spire had modified the original spaces as designed by the Builders, adding in fortifications, additional housing, more vatteries, whatever was needed—but the inhabitants of Landing had done so to an extent that was little better than madness. They had actually divided their habble’s vertical space in half, in effect creating two duplicate levels of the same habble, one stacked atop another. It meant that the normally spacious ceilings of a basic habble had been turned into close, looming things, and they made Espira feel as if the ceiling were slowly coming down on top of him.

  If that madness was not enough, they had then filled both of those spaces to overflowing with more masonry and wooden construction than Espira had ever seen. The streets had turned from broad walkways into cramped, narrow affairs, where no more than three men could have walked beside one another. Houses and businesses were pressed together wall-to-wall, and the doorways were by necessity narrow ones. One literally could not walk twenty steps on the streets of Landing without brushing body-to-body with a fellow pedestrian.

  This wasn’t a habble. It was a warren for rats.

  And yet . . . there were expensive wooden doors on nearly every home. In places, entire homes had been constructed of wood—and they did not look particularly lavish, either, being built with a sturdy, bland functionality that suggested the residences of craftsmen and tradesmen. Yet the amount of wood that went into building a single such residence would have sold for enough money to keep a man in food and drink for a lifetime.

  Rats, indeed. Greedy, gnawing, thieving rats.

  Let them flaunt their wealth. Things would change.

  He stalked through the narrow streets and wound his way down an alley between two buildings to an old, rotting wooden door. He paused to knock at it, three measured strokes followed by two quick ones, and it opened at once.

  Her batman, Sark, stood on the other side of it. The fellow reminded Espira of a hunting spider—he was warriorborn, tall, gaunt, with long, slender limbs and hands that seemed a little too large for the rest of him. His hair was black, short, and covered his face, head, neck, and what showed of his hands in a
sparse, spidery fuzz. Sark had the feline eyes of his kind, one of them set at a slight angle to the other, so that Espira could never be sure precisely where the man was looking.

  “What,” Sark asked. His tone suggested that he would rather have killed Espira than spoken to him.

  Espira had not become the youngest major in the history of the Auroran Marine Corps by allowing himself to be intimidated by hard men. “Is she here?” Espira asked Sark.

  “Why?”

  “There’s a problem.”

  Sark looked at, or slightly past, Espira and made a growling sound.

  Espira lifted his chin and narrowed his eyes. “This is above your pay grade, Sark. Unless you’d prefer to explain to her why you turned away the man who came with a warning of a threat to her plan.”

  Sark didn’t move for a moment, as still as any spider who senses that prey is coming near. Then he made a throaty sound and stepped back from the door, leaving it open.

  Espira walked in boldly and pressed his crate of vegetables into Sark’s hands as though the man were a common servant. Sark accepted the burden, but his crooked eyes narrowed. Espira could feel them crawling over his back as he walked past the batman and down the gloomy hallway to the copper-clad steel door to her chamber.

  He knocked and waited rather than entering. He was bold, not suicidal.

  After a moment, a woman’s voice said, “Come in, Major.”

  Espira opened the door, which moved easily and soundlessly on its hinges, and entered the room beyond. It was a luxurious chamber, a sitting room by design. Lumin crystals glowed in wall sconces. A large sculpture of Spire Albion resided in one corner of the room, with walking space all around it. Opposite the Spire was the graceful shape of a large harp nearly five feet high. A trickling fountain that had been carved into one wall made quiet whispering sounds, and the water fell into a small pool filled with floating flowers and small, slithering forms that could only barely be glimpsed beneath its surface.

  She sat in one of two chairs near the pool with a serving table placed between them. She was preparing two cups of tea, her motions calm and precise, somehow ritualistic. She wore a dark blue, conservative gown, well fitting, elegant, and expensive. She was neither young nor old, her lean, predatory features were intriguing, and something in the reserve of her movements whispered that a searing sensuality might lurk beneath her perfectly composed surface.

  It was her eyes that made Espira uneasy. They were the cold, flat grey of the mists that covered the world, and she rarely blinked.

  Espira made her a proper and polite bow. She remained still for a moment, and then nodded to the second chair. Espira approached and sat. “I pray you will forgive this intrusion, Madame Cavendish, but it was necessary to speak to you.”

  Instead of answering, she passed him a cup of tea on a fine ceramic saucer. He accepted it, of course, with a smile, and bowed his head in thanks.

  Madame Sycorax Cavendish was a very proper woman. Anyone who behaved toward her in any other fashion, so far as Espira could tell, did not survive the experience. So he smiled, waited until she had taken up her own cup, and sipped tea together with her.

  The tea, he noted, was his favorite—Olympian mint, and braced with the perfect amount of honey. Obviously his visit had not taken her by surprise. She’d had no way to know he was coming; yet, dammit, she’d known anyway.

  Her flat eyes watched him steadily over the rim of her teacup.

  He suppressed a shudder.

  “Renaldo,” she said. Her voice was extraordinary, mellow, warm, and soft, the kind of voice that could give rest to weary convalescents—or gently lure an aeronaut to his doom on the surface. “You know I enjoy your visits. Is there something I can do for you?”

  She would not be pleased by his news, but there was no helping that. “Our command post has been discovered.”

  Her cold eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Oh?”

  “A verminocitor stumbled across it in the pursuit of his duties, I’m afraid,” Espira said, keeping his tone neutral, simply reporting objective facts. “He was captured before he could escape and warn anyone of our presence.”

  Madame Cavendish arched an eyebrow. “Captured?”

  Espira pressed his lips together for a second, then nodded. “The Verminocitors’ Guild of Landing requires them to work in pairs. He claims that he was working alone, that he didn’t want to split the contract with one of his fellows.”

  “And he volunteered this information?”

  “His story didn’t change, even after vigorous inquisition,” Espira said. “But we are too close to our goals to allow some small mischance to undermine us now. We need to be sure.”

  “I see,” she said. She took another small sip of tea, her expression thoughtful. “You would like me to determine his veracity.”

  “In essence,” Espira said. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “One might say,” she murmured, her voice silken, “that more foresight would have prevented this unfortunate event from coming to pass.”

  He’d seen men die just after the woman used that particular tone of voice. Espira took a moment to consider his reply carefully. “One might also say that the view behind us is always clearer than that before. There are always unforeseen problems. The most vital skill a commander can possess is to recognize them when they appear and adapt to overcome them.”

  Madame Cavendish tilted her head, as if considering that statement. “I suppose that is a practical mind-set, for a military man,” she allowed. “Thus you have sought out the support of an ally to adapt to this adversity.”

  “Indeed, madame,” he said. “You know how highly I regard your judgment and your skills.”

  The barest hint of a smile haunted one corner of her mouth. “Major. I know precisely what you think of me.” She resettled her fingers on her teacup and nodded slightly. “Very well. I will assist you.”

  “You are most gracious, madame,” Espira said, rising. “Time is of the essence, so—”

  Madame Cavendish’s voice came out in two pulses of dulcet music, and the lumin crystals in the walls flickered a sullen scarlet in time with them. “Sit. Down.”

  Espira’s heart abruptly leapt into his throat, a thrill of something like distilled panic flashing through his belly. He arrested his momentum and clumsily—quickly—took his seat again.

  Madame Cavendish’s mouth widened into a smile, and she said, as if explaining to a child, “We’re still having tea.”

  Espira’s mouth felt very dry. “Of course, madame. I pray you, please excuse my . . . enthusiasm.”

  “I should think most successful soldiers bear the same burden,” she replied, still smiling. They sipped together for a few more minutes, the silence deafening. Then Madame Cavendish put down her cup and saucer and said, “I trust you have arrangements in place to dispose of the remains, once I am finished.”

  “I do.”

  “Wonderful,” she said. She picked up a matching serving plate artfully arranged with a number of foods appropriate to the setting and offered it to him with a smile. “Do have a scone, Major. I made them myself.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Spire Albion, Habble Morning, Spirearch’s Manor

  Gwendolyn Lancaster took the lead as they followed the Spirearch’s batman deeper into the manor. Barely half a day had passed since the Auroran attack, but a good many things had changed—not the least of which was that she and Bridget, along with the rest of the recruits, had exchanged their training uniforms for the functional livery of the Spirearch’s Guard—a simple white shirt with dark blue trousers and jacket, the arms and legs seamed with gold piping.

  “I cannot but think that this seems ill-advised,” Bridget said from behind her. “A war has begun. Have we therefore somehow mystically acquired the knowledge we need to serve in the Guard?”

  “I should say it is a practical act, Bridget,” Gwen replied. “We have, after all, already faced the enemy and triumphed.”

 
Bridget sounded doubtful. “Triumph seems . . . an awfully evocative word when compared to what actually happened.”

  “We met the enemy with deadly force, foiled their designs, and survived,” Gwen said.

  “And were rescued by those aeronauts.”

  “We were most certainly not rescued,” Gwen said. “Not by aeronauts and most specifically not by a man who was cast out of the Fleet for cowardice.”

  “This should be interesting,” Benedict said. “What did happen, then, dear coz?”

  Gwen sniffed. “My plan embraced the necessity of cooperation to overcome greater numbers. We kept the enemy pinned in place until the proper amount of force could be brought to bear against them. We were the anvil to the hammer of our reinforcements.”

  “Is she serious?” Bridget asked Benedict.

  “Sweet Gwen lives in a very special world,” Benedict replied soberly, even kindly. “Apparently it looks only somewhat like the place in which we mere mortals reside.”

  Gwen turned and gave her cousin a narrow-eyed glare. “In function, which part of my description is inaccurate?”

  At that, the tall young man frowned. After a moment he shrugged and said, “The part where you make it sound like that was your plan all along, instead of something you desperately improvised on the spur of the moment.”

  “Of course I improvised it on the spur of the moment,” Gwen snapped. “They ambushed us.”

  “But . . .” Bridget said. “Gwen . . . the fight started when you discharged your gauntlet into that officer’s face.”

  “It is hardly my fault if they did not ambush us more effectively than they did,” Gwen replied. “And if they had, or if I had not done what I did, none of us would be here right now.” She walked a few more steps before saying, “And in any case, we did keep our heads in the midst of a great panic, and we saved poor Barney’s life. Which is what trained members of the Guard are supposed to do, I believe.”

  “That is certainly true,” Benedict said with a note of approval in his voice. “I should say as well, coz, that I have never seen you flinch in the face of adversity, but one can never tell how a given person will react to real combat. You more than lived up to my expectations. Nerves of steel.”