Arabella of Mars (26 page)

And men.

She brought herself to an immediate halt, heart pounding, the keel's cold wet copper skidding between her palms.

Three topmen were clambering quickly up the rigging of the larboard mast—the one to her right, as she moved toward the stern—making good time. She had no idea what their orders might be. Had they been sent to raise some sail, trim some sheet, or simply look out for other ships? Or were they searching for missing airmen … or specifically for her?

Surely if Binion had ordered men into the rigging to look for her, he would have sent only one? That implied that the three men were on a mission to adjust the sails, in which case she should hold still in hopes of slipping past later while they were busy with their task. But trimming the sails usually required a larger crew than three. Perhaps they had been sent in a group to seek out, leap upon, and overpower any reluctant airmen. In which case she should move now, move as quickly as possible, in hopes of reaching the cabin before they could spot her and sound the alarm.

Panicked, indecisive, she looked left and right, but the smooth round hull offered no hiding place. But she did see one thing that offered a tiny hope: no men were climbing the starboard mast, at least none that she could see as yet.

Quickly Arabella moved to the left, pressing herself against the hull as best she could, hoping to hide herself behind the keel. At this point it rose nearly a foot and a half from the hull, though it met the hull in a curve that left less than a foot to conceal her body.

She could not tell from here, as she trembled with her cheek pressed against the cold, wet wood, whether or not she had managed to hide herself completely. But she had to move, somehow—to put as much distance behind herself as possible before she was noticed.

Gingerly, with tiny touches of finger- and toe-tips, she began to edge herself toward the stern. Making forward progress without pushing her body away from the hull and into plain sight seemed nearly impossible, but soon she worked out a technique where, pulling with the flat of her palm against the rain-wet surface of the hull, she could move—slowly—without exposing herself.

At least she hoped she was not exposing herself. Lacking eyes in her elbows and hips, she could not be sure. But no shouts of discovery came to her ears.

Grimly, hauling herself along foot by foot, she moved some twenty or thirty feet under cover of the keel before poking her head up again. The men on the larboard mast seemed engaged in some adjustment of the rigging, their hair and clothing whipped by the storm; the starboard mast was still unpeopled.

Judging by the angle of the masts, she had barely made any forward progress.

She peered over the keel at the larboard mast. Were the airmen there sufficiently occupied that they might not notice one small figure moving along the keel?

Perhaps. They were so far away that it was difficult to be sure. But, by the same token, she was so far from them that they might not see her. And the storm, still growing in intensity, might serve to hide her from their view.

She wiped her streaming eyes and peered down the length of the ship to where the rudder loomed from the hull. It seemed a very long distance to creep at her current pace, but it could in fact be no farther than the length of the upper deck.

A distance she had covered in one leap on many occasions, during gunnery practice and the battle with the French.

Keeping one eye on the larboard mast, she slowly edged out onto the keel … now fully visible to the topmen, though they did not seem to notice.

She swallowed, drew up her knees to her chest, took a deep breath, gripped the keel hard with her heels, and pushed off hard.

Arabella's heart pounded as the keel's copper surface flew by just inches below her chin. Cold rain battered like hail at her face and shoulders.

A flash of lightning limned the rudder ahead, drawing rapidly closer.

Too rapidly.

She reached out her hands to slow herself.

And then a projecting flap of copper caught her hand! Pain tore across her palm and stabbed up her arm as she tumbled away, stifling a cry of pain and alarm. The world spun around her—hull and keel and masts and black, roiling clouds tumbling crazily past in rapid succession. Thunder boomed, disorienting her still further.

Arabella flailed in the air, straining her blood-smeared fingers toward the keel as it flashed past again and again. The first time she missed. The second time she brushed it with her fingers, serving only to send herself tumbling in a different direction. Disoriented, she missed the keel again on its next pass, and again.

On the next pass, stretch though she might, the keel flew by beyond her fingers' reach.

And again.

Panic flooded her throat. The ship was receding from her, farther and farther on each rotation. Thunder and lightning disoriented her still further.

She stretched out a leg, reaching with her toes, but the keel only smacked her foot, adding a nauseating spin to her existing tumble.

And then something slammed into the back of her head.

Stunned by the pain though she was, she quickly groped behind herself for the offending object. One hand found rough, wet wood and gripped it with panicked strength.

With a painful wrench of her shoulder, her dizzying tumble slowed; a moment later the wood struck her across the hips. She folded herself across it, clinging like a desperate monkey.

Her head still spun, though her body's rotation had stilled. Her right hand throbbed with pain. She tasted blood.

She was clinging to the rudder, a massive plank of
khoresh
-wood which creaked ponderously in her arms, swaying slowly from the impact.

Looking around, she saw that both masts were bare of people. Had they completed their task and returned to the deck without seeing her? Or were the mutineers rushing toward her even now?

She wiped her eyes, shook her head to clear it, and began clambering up the rudder.

*   *   *

Climbing the rudder was far easier than moving along the keel, as the enormous black iron hinges, attached with bolts, that connected it to the keel provided many handholds.

At the top, two mighty chains floated free, their links clinking in the roaring wind. Arabella pulled herself along the larboard chain, where great blasts of wind-driven rain tried to pluck her from the ship, but as each gust came she clung tightly to the chain until it passed. At last she reached the ledge below the great cabin's window.

Carven vines, highlighted with gold leaf, bedecked the window's lower edge. Cautiously, keeping herself out of sight, she pulled herself along the vines, leaving behind herself a series of bloody hand-prints quickly erased by the storm. When she reached the window's lower starboard corner, she slowly put her head over the edge so as to peer into the cabin.

Her first view was of nothing but a buff coat.

Moving her head to one side and wiping the rain from the window with her sleeve, she had to suppress a gasp. Every one of the officers was crammed into the great cabin, with hands bound behind them, eyes covered with blindfolds, and mouths stopped with gags. Even Aadim had a cloth bag pulled over his head.

One midshipman, a very young boy by the name of Watson, floated in the center of the cabin, slurping from a bottle of Captain Singh's very best wine. The butts of two pistols projected from the waist of his trousers.

Arabella bit her lip. Watson's participation in the mutiny surprised her; he'd seemed a pleasant enough sort. But here he was. How could she get past him to free the captain and the other officers?

Just then the hatch to the maindeck burst open and one of the two men outside stuck his head in. “Watson!” he cried, wiping rain from his face. “Get yerself and them pistols on deck! That blackamoor Mills is kicking up a fuss!” Behind him, Arabella heard shouts and growls of anger.

Watson hastily corked the wine and departed, leaving the bottle spinning in the air behind him. The hatch slammed closed, and she heard it being securely dogged.

Thank God for Mills!

The great cabin's window was not designed to be opened from outside, but neither was it intended to be secure, and in a few moments she had worked one casement free from its catch, swung it wide, and slipped inside. The cessation of the pounding rain on her back was a small relief. “It's Ashby, sir,” she muttered in the captain's ear, and slipped off his blindfold. One eye was swollen and purple, which filled her heart with compassion toward him and anger toward the mutineers. “I'll have you free in a moment.”

But as soon as she reached behind the captain to untie his hands, she regretted that rash promise. Rather than merely being tied, the captain's hands were locked to the bench with iron shackles. The other officers were similarly secured.

Panic squeezed Arabella's chest. Watson or one of the other mutineers would surely return soon. She untied the captain's gag. “Do you know who has the key, sir?”

“Binion,” he replied, his one good eye narrowing. The single word seemed more packed with loathing than its two syllables could accommodate.

Arabella swallowed. Getting the key from the head of the mutiny would be difficult indeed. “I'll try to get it, sir.”

“Hurry,” said the captain. “And put the gag and blindfold back. In case they return, they will not suspect you are still at large.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” she said, though it pained her to put the stained and filthy rag back into her captain's mouth and tie it behind his head. At least it was not so tight this time. The blindfold, too, she intended to tie but loosely.

But as she was pulling the cloth across his eyes, a sound came from behind her. She turned to see the hatch swinging wide, and a figure entering the cabin.

Binion.

The expression of surprise on his face was quickly supplanted by a sneer. “Well, well, so
here
you are. We've been looking for you.” He drew a pistol from beneath his shirt—it was, she could see, quite dry—and pointed it squarely at Captain Singh's head, drawing back the hammer with an emphatic click. “Now yield, or the captain dies.”

*   *   *

Arabella grimaced as she was hauled onto the deck by Gowse and the other airman who'd been guarding the captain's hatch, and not only because the cold rain began to pelt her face once again. Her arms were shackled behind herself—oh, how her heart had ached when the keys had rattled from Binion's pocket!—and the belaying pin, never used, had been taken from her belt.

The first thing she noticed as she emerged from the cabin was Mills, who had been lashed to a grating fastened to the mainmast. He was breathing hard and grimacing, and blood seeped from a cut over one ear. Clearly he had put up a considerable fight, though, as many of the airmen gathered around him sported injuries of their own.

“Look here, lads,” Binion called, and the heads of the men on the storm-lashed deck swiveled to face him. “We've caught our last missing fish!”

A rough cheer greeted this news.

Binion turned to Arabella. Putting a solicitous expression on his face, he shook his head and tut-tutted.

“I'm terribly disappointed in you, Ashby,” he said. His words were directed to Arabella, but his voice was pitched to be heard above the storm by every mutineer. “You gave your solemn word to join and support us in our endeavor, and yet, as soon as we took rightful possession of our ship, when we went looking for you … you were nowhere to be found! And as though that weren't bad enough, when we did find you, you were attempting to free our darkie former captain from the shackles in which, after a fair trial, we had placed him!”

Arabella did not dignify this tirade with any response. She merely glared at the man, blinking the rain from her eyes. But the mutineers on deck, looking to be less than a third of the original crew, laughed and jeered, the thunder seeming to laugh along with them. Arabella wondered where the rest of the crew might be.

“But we are magnanimous, are we not?” Binion called to the men. “And despite Ashby's violation of his solemn oath, we would happily accept him into our number.” The men's reaction to this news was mixed—as many grumbled as cheered. “Now, now, lads, do keep in mind that Ashby is quite conversant in the usage of the clockwork navigator, a skill which, in the absence of our dear departed Kerrigan, we lack.” The grumbles stilled.

“And yet…” Binion grabbed Arabella's shirt-front and pushed his spotty face into hers, though he still spoke loudly to the assembled mutineers. “And yet, Ashby has shown we cannot put our trust in his oath.” He turned and faced the men, still gripping Arabella's shirt. “How then shall we ensure his cooperation?”

“The lash!” chorused the men. “The lash! The lash!”

At this, Binion laughed. “Just so, lads.” He turned again to Arabella, putting on a contemplative expression. His hair whipped in the wind. “Ten lashes for now, just to show we mean business. If you don't follow orders after that, twenty lashes for the first offense, thirty for the next, and so on.”

Though Arabella's heart raced, she set her jaw and raised her chin. “Lash me if you wish, but I'll never aid you,” she declared, though her quavering voice belied her brave words. All she could do was hope that her resolve would prove firmer than her elocution.

Binion stroked his beardless chin. “Very well … twenty for you, and forty for your precious captain.” Arabella growled inarticulately and tried to struggle free, but the two men who held her arms kept her firmly pinioned. “Then thirty and sixty. Then forty and eighty, and so on, until you either acquiesce or succumb.”

Arabella, straining against the hands that held her fast, spat in Binion's face. But the flying glob of spittle was lost in the driving rain.

“I see I've touched a nerve. But we'll start with just ten for you.” Binion pulled the precious key from his pocket, unlocked Arabella's shackles, then gestured with his pistol to the grating where Mills was already bound. “Seize him up.”