All The Turns of Light (2 page)

Fromarch grunted. “That’s not the way the Crown will see it, Meralda. You know King Yvin. If the Emperor of Hang passes, and that’s all too likely, you’ll be asked to join the crew.”

“We’ll both volunteer as well,” noted Shingvere. “And we’ll be thanked, oh yes, thanked, but told no. Too old, you see. Both retired. Neither of us is a true member of the Court these days. No, it’s you they’ll ask. What will you say?”

“I’ll wish them a speedy voyage and wave as they depart,” Meralda said. The thought of leaving Tirlin—of leaving Donchen—for months on end gnawed at her with every step. Of course the Court will never allow him to board a vessel on a diplomatic mission. Donchen is
sohata
, a living ghost, considered dead by his family and Hang law. Worse, he’s the grandson of the Emperor, and though he’s renounced any claims to the dynasty, his arrival would be nothing short of disastrous. And Mug! What of Mug? Would he even agree to undertake a crossing of the Great Sea?

Meralda’s heart sank at the thought of Mug sitting alone on his windowsill, while Donchen counted off the days until Meralda returned.

The gently curving roof of the monstrous new construction hangar cast them all into sudden shadow. “I have better uses for my time than crossing the entire Great Sea just to exchange polite nods with suspicious royals,” Meralda said. “No. My home is here, my work is here, and I will leave neither.” Especially not Donchen, she resolved, silently. Meralda was certain he’d wait.
We’re a couple, aren’t we? Surely, nothing formal has been exchanged, but we have an understanding, of that I am sure. Fairly sure, she amended, frowning. More or less
.

The sidewalk merged with another, and the Mages found themselves in the midst of a bustling crowd. “Well, we’re glad that’s decided,” said Shingvere, casually snatching a bright red apple from a fruit seller’s stall with one hand and flipping the merchant a penny with the other. “Still, as long as we’re here let’s go see this monster of an airship.”

* * *

Monster, decided Meralda as she stared up through the gleaming steel bones of the airship
Intrepid
, is precisely the right word.

Oh, she’d seen the drawings. Made numerous changes to the original plans, in fact. Meralda knew the dimensions of the
Intrepid
, without the babbling of the nervous junior engineer turned sudden tour guide rattling off the numbers.

One thousand and four feet long, from blunt nose to four-finned tail. One hundred and forty-three feet tall amidships. Her steel and cable skeleton was divided into fifty-five ringed sections, and each of those sections would soon house an inflatable varnished-cotton gas bag. A narrow crawlway ran through her center, like a spine, allowing a single nimble crewman access to the heart of every fragile bag of lifting gas, and the complex mechanisms that allowed them to be filled or vented as the need arose.

Below the frame of the gas envelope the
Intrepid’s
hard decks were taking shape. The airship was designed to go aloft with a crew of forty-nine, with room for sixty dignitaries, ambassadors, and other Court functionaries.

Meralda could see the cabins taking shape, and corridors, and even the outlines of the wide-sweeping viewports that would soon be covered by thick panes of tempered glass.

The flight deck was crowded with busy workmen. Saws and hammers rasped and fell. Sunlight streamed down from enormous windows set high in the hangar’s curved roof, reminding Meralda of the stained glass windows that looked down over the Gold Room in the Palace.

The long skeletal docking crane and mooring ramp hung beneath the
Intrepid’s
hard deck, half-finished but already conveying materials and workers up and down in steady streams.

The flying coil supports that ran alongside the hard deck’s port and starboard hulls were already in place, although the coils themselves were still being built halfway across Tirlin in a hastily-converted telegraph wire factory.

“—she will have a maximum gas capacity of seven million, two hundred thousand cubic feet,” said the junior engineer.

“Seven million, two hundred thousand and ninety-eight and four-fifths cubic feet,” muttered Meralda, still staring at the coil supports. “Not counting the five hundred cubic feet stored in the gas lines at any given moment.”

“That’s enough lifting gas to blow the Palace halfway to the Moon,” said Fromarch. “And you claim my motor-car is a menace.”

“Lifting gas is quite safe, as long as ignition arrestor spells are in place,” Meralda said. “I can hardly say the same about your driving skills.”

“We plan to have the framework complete in four days,” said the engineer. “Then we’ll begin installing the cured gas bags, three each day—”

Fromarch fixed the wide-eyed young man in a glare. “You’d better tell that layabout foreman of yours to do four a day, or better,” he growled.

“Yes sir.”

“I mean tell him right now, son. Or do you want me to go find him myself?”

“No sir! But—”

Fromarch towered over the engineer and put a bony, oil-stained finger right on the tip of the younger man’s nose.

“Do you know who I am?”

The engineer blanched, but as Fromarch took a step closer, he turned and hurried away.

“Now let’s have a real look at this glorified balloon, shall we?” said Fromarch, marching toward the nearest workman’s ladder. “See that they aren’t skipping anything important.”

Shingvere shook his head. “He’s getting worse in his old age. But come along. We may as well keep him from doddering off and falling down a shaft.”

“I woke up this morning determined to finish at least one of my projects,” fumed Meralda. “Just one. And now you two have me ready to illegally board a half-built airship for no good reason.”

Fromarch bellowed from somewhere up above. “Well are you coming, Mage, or not?”

“This is both the first time and the last time I ever set foot on this craft,” Meralda declared. “I mean it. Never again.”

Both the old Mages nodded solemnly.

With that, Meralda followed Shingvere up into the
Intrepid’s
bustling frame.

Chapter 2

Back at the Palace, the Laboratory was quiet.

Quickly, Meralda whispered the words that identified her to the Laboratory’s ward spells. She waited a single heartbeat, then twisted the worn brass door handles. They opened without even the faintest of noises—Meralda oiled them herself, once a week—and she slipped quickly through.

Once inside the Laboratory she carefully closed the door, holding the latch up and then slowly letting it fasten without so much as a click.

She stood perfectly still, not even breathing.

Twenty steps away, Donchen and Mug hunched over a worktable. Both spoke in hushed tones. Donchen’s back was to Meralda, and all twenty-nine of Mug’s mobile eyes were fixed on the table. Meralda took a careful step forward, pleased that the cork sole of her new boot made no sound on the floor.

I’m going to actually manage it this time, she thought.

I’m going to sneak right up on Donchen.

Meralda suppressed a grin. Weeks of careful sneaking had gotten her no closer than fifteen paces from Donchen before the ever-alert Hang gentleman sensed her approach. Meralda found this particularly infuriating, because Donchen often appeared noiselessly, catching her completely unaware. It was in his nature to be secretive and mysterious because he was
sohata
, a living ghost, silent and wary amid his Hang countrymen.

Donchen laughed softly, freezing Meralda in her tracks, but he did not turn. Meralda remained still for a moment, watching and listening intently.

“Mistress will have a fit,” she heard Mug say. “An absolute fit. I can hardly wait.”

“Let’s just avoid use of the words ‘burglary’ or ‘theft,’” she heard Donchen whisper. “After all, neither term is strictly accurate.”

Mug laughed. “Right. You just happened to climb into a window five stories off the street, you accidentally picked a Morten eight-tumbler safe in the dark, and you found this inside instead of the spare pencil you were looking for.” Mug’s leaves tossed as if in a gust of wind. “Why, that sort of thing happens all the time!”

Meralda inhaled and started forward. One step, two steps, three steps, four…

Mug saw her, of course, but she quickly raised a finger to her lips, and the enchanted dandyleaf plant pretended not to see her. She knew Mug was secretly amused by her campaign to sneak up on Donchen, and indeed he didn’t aim a single eye her way.

All around her, the Laboratory seemed to hold its breath. Certainly the hundreds, the thousands of magical devices lining the Laboratory’s tables and shelves clicked and whirred and sparked and hummed. But it seemed to Meralda as if the usual cacophony was muted, if only slightly. Even Phillitrep’s Thinking Engine, which had spent five centuries tirelessly working on the solution to a problem the absent-minded Mage Phillitrep had forgotten to write down, slowed in the shuttlings of its silver levers and copper gears.

Five steps, six, then seven, then eight!

“This has been, by far, your best effort,” said Donchen. He turned, smiling, his grey eyes alight with mirth. “Had your lovely perfume not betrayed you, you might have made another five steps.”

“Mistress!” Mug said. “I didn’t see you there, motioning me to be silent.”

Meralda shrugged and laughed and crossed the Laboratory quickly before falling into Donchen’s lap.

“I’m getting much closer,” she said. “Soon I’ll be as ghostlike as you.”

Donchen drew her into a quick kiss. His agile fingers tugged playfully at the tight bun of her long brown hair.

Mug groaned and rolled all his blue eyes.

“I’ll just pretend to study something in yonder far corner,” he said. “Don’t mind me. Forget I’m here.”

“We could never forget you, friend Mug,” Donchen said.

Meralda stood and smoothed her skirt.

“Yes, you’re far too loud, for one thing,” Meralda said.

Mug turned all his eyes toward Goboy’s mirror, which leaned in its frame a few yards away. “Not to be the terrible burden I’m quite sure I am, but have you given any thought to replacing the flying coils on my carriage?”

Meralda grinned. Mug’s ‘carriage,’ as he called it, was a secondhand birdcage she had fitted with a small trio of flying coils and tiny controls suited for Mug’s flexible fronds. Mug had quickly proven to be a skillful pilot, to the point where the crows around the Palace recognized the peculiar buzzing of the flying coils and gave Mug’s airborne birdcage a wide berth.

Such was Mug’s enthusiasm for flying that he had burned out two of his coils in as many weeks, and Meralda lacked the time to wind and tune replacements.

“I’ll finish the new ones tonight,” she said, pulling back her desk chair and sitting. She grinned at Donchen. “But first, let’s see that fascinating object you slipped into your right front pocket, shall we?”

“You did not see me put anything into my pocket,” he said. “You couldn’t have. I wasn’t facing you.”

“Which is why I sat in your lap,” Meralda said. “Remember not to use the words ‘burglary’ or ‘theft.’”

Mug simulated a low whistle. “She’s got you,” he said. “You’d best surrender while she’s still smiling.”

Donchen laughed and produced a folded white handkerchief. “A mere bauble, hardly worthy of your own radiant beauty,” he said, rising and offering the cloth to Meralda. “I hope it suits you.”

Meralda took the tiny bundle, unwrapped it, and suppressed a small shout.

“That’s the Romar necklace,” she said, gently lifting the glittering strand of jewels up so that it turned and sparkled in the light. “The Watch has been looking for this for years.”

“Six years, I’m told,” Donchen said. “I’m sure they’ve quite forgotten about it by now. You could start wearing it tonight.”

“The papers would love that,” she said. “Royal Thaumaturge Nabbed With Stolen Jewels.” She put the necklace down, still awed at the way it shone and sparkled. “So how did it find its way into your pockets?”

Donchen shrugged. “Oh, I had an evening free, and a certain gentleman wanted his only daughter to be married in her mother’s necklace,” he said. “I read the original accounts of the robbery, and certain avenues of inquiry suggested themselves.”

Meralda lifted an eyebrow. “Certain fifth-story windows as well,” she said. Donchen raised his hands in surrender.

“Well, the hour was late, and I didn’t want to cause any alarm in the guilty household,” he replied. “It was only the work of a few moments. Later tonight, a parcel will make its way to a different house, and tomorrow, at least one wedding will prove a bit merrier than expected. Surely there’s no harm in that.”

“The Watch might reach different conclusions,” Meralda said.

“Let’s not trouble the Watch with such petty concerns,” said Donchen. He pulled his chair close to Meralda’s and sat. “But enough about my rather uneventful day. Tell us about yours, dear. I surmise it was not entirely a pleasant one.”