Chasing the Lantern (39 page)

The Draykin opened the cage and fanned out, herding the group into one corner with short jabs from their weapons. The one with the cloth bundles threw it down at their feet. "
Raktass
," it said with a gesture. "
Raktass
." It pointed at them, and then at the bundle.

Fengel frowned and picked up the bundle. It fell apart, a stack of folded loincloths, similar to what the Draykin themselves wore. He snorted. "I think not."

Their captors didn't speak Perinese, but it seemed his message was clear enough. Two guards jabbed him with their spears. Fengel cursed and jumped back. They pointed at the loincloths again.

"Sir," said Henry. "I think they want—"

"I know what they want," growled Fengel. "I'm still not going to do it. A gentleman should dress like—" One of the Draykin poked him with a spear again. "Ouch! Damnation! Fine!" He tore off his jacket and shirt, waving them back at the guard with the spear to ward him off.

Face burning, he removed his clothing until he was stark naked. After a bit of trouble, and some humiliating suggestions from the crew, he managed to put on the loincloth. However, in defiance of his captors, he replaced his hat, and wedged his monocle firmly over his eye.

Natasha snickered. "You look like an utter fool." One of the guards jabbed her with a spear. "Stop that!" she ordered. They jabbed her again and pointed at the pile of loincloths. "Not a chance in the Realms Below," she told them.

One guard looked at another. It shrugged. It whistled, and four of them moved together, herding Natasha into a corner. They restrained her and began tearing off her blouse. She yelped, snarled, and swung at them. Fengel glanced at his crew. Now might be a good time to move...but, no. They were all watching Natasha's treatment with savage glee, not looking remotely concerned.
Ah well
. He went back to enjoying the show himself.

In moments Natasha was released, now clad in only a thin loincloth. She glared daggers at the Draykin, who moved back to threaten the other pirates. She snagged another loincloth from the pile and used it to bind her breasts. "Go on," she snarled at Fengel. "Enjoy the show. It's all you're going to get outside of some Haventown doxy." She smiled. "Actually, you probably don't even need it; I bet that stick up yer arse gives you all the pleasure you want."

Fengel fought to keep his mouth flat. He turned away to face the Draykin with the bowl, who now approached him warily. There was some red ichor in it, and a brush.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Natasha turn her head slightly at him, as if seeing something for the first time. She stared. "Oh my
Goddess
," she snarled at him. "You're trying to
ignore
me. You have been since these stupid reptiles brought me here. You are such a childish idiot!"

Fengel ignored her. The Draykin with the bowl pulled out a brush and hissed something at him. It was clear he was supposed to stand still. Fengel took a step back.

"You never got over your little impressment adventure," continued Natasha. "You spend so much time trying to be something you're not. That hat. The monocle. You're no different from a kid playing dress-up with his father's clothes."

Fengel had had enough. He whirled, the Draykin acolytes falling back with a cry of alarm. "Well, at least I'm not so afraid of
being
my father that I turned myself into a brazen hussy and raging alcoholic!"

Natasha stared at him, mouth agape. "How dare you!" she hissed. "I am my own—"

"Oh, save it," said Fengel. "You've been running out from Euron's shadow ever since you could put one foot in front of the other. Everything you've ever done has been an attempt to be someone different." He took a step toward her. "But you know what? With every step you take, you turn out to be a little more like him." Fengel grinned nastily.

His wife went white. The fists she made at her side trembled with suppressed rage. "
You
're the one who's running away," she hissed, voice thick with contempt. "Do your crewmates here even know the truth? The one you've been hiding all these years?"

His crew turned to look at him curiously. Fengel felt the blood drain away from his face. "You wouldn't," he said, voice small.

"Oh, yes. Yes, I would." She turned to the little steward, the big gunnery mistress. "Do you know even his first name?"

"Don't," said Fengel.

"What?" She put a hand to her throat in mock surprise. "You mean you haven't told them? But
Ashley
, why ever not?"

Silence filled the cage. Not even the Draykin moved. Distantly, he could hear the rumble of the boiling lava at the bottom of the temple.

"You horrible bitch!" screamed Ashley Fengel at the top of his lungs. He threw himself at her, hands stretched out to strangle. "You slut! You scheming, backstabbing harpy!"

"As if you don't deserve it!" she howled back, fending him off. "You started this whole mess! It's your fault your crew are dead!"

Fengel paused, shocked. Natasha threw him back. "What?" he asked. All the crew were on their feet now, eyes widening.

Natasha waved a hand. "We retook the
Dawnhawk
using that wreck you'd discarded. Fairly bloodlessly, too. I tied them all up and sent them overboard again as a lark." She shrugged. "Unfortunately the powder magazine or something went up. The whole thing exploded out to the northwest of the city. Wouldn't have been any survivors."

Fengel felt a cold weight settle into his belly. He turned away from his wife, his crew, even their Draykin captors, watching their interaction in alarmed confusion. The Governor's Lantern gleamed at him from its pedestal in the center of the temple.
Dead,
he thought mutely.
They're all dead
.

"You bitch!"

He glanced back to see Sarah Lome leap at his wife, ham-hock fists swinging. Natasha leapt contemptuously aside, grabbed the big woman by the head, and rammed her into the wooden bars that were at her back. The whole cage shook, and the Draykin gave a fluting cry of alarm.

The rest of his crew wasn't done. Henry Smalls leapt at her with his paring knife. She kicked him in the stomach, pulled the blade from between his fingers, and threw it at Maxim, who was raising his hands to invoke a Working at the back of the cage.

"Enough!" cried Fengel. "Back, all of you! I'll deal—"

Wooden spear hafts rammed into the back of his legs. Fengel went down to the floor of the cage. Glancing up, he saw that the Draykin were moving in to restrain him. Their captors had had enough.

He was hauled out from the cage, along with Natasha. Fengel thought about fighting...but, no. His wife, however, didn't realize the futility yet. She bit, fought, screamed.

The two of them were pulled up the stairs and out of the temple entrance. Outside, the sun was bright, heading on into mid-afternoon. The plaza was filled with the Draykin inhabitants of the city. Almost all of them were pointing and watching the conflict above them in the sky.

The
Dawnhawk
hung nearby. Scryn swarmed over it, hellish red light illuminating the skyship. The irregular reports he'd heard were indeed gunshots. Fengel saw the defenders fighting off the flying vermin, and it seemed that they might be winning. Dead scryn hung from the gunwales and rigging, their black ichor staining the hull. Dead pirates lay about as well, a telltale hand or arm flopped out over the rails to signify their presence.

Fengel was hauled off the top tier to a terrace on the side. Natasha was pulled behind him. Their Draykin captors forced them to kneel before two of the strange, squat statues there. Then they were tied up with their backs to the stone and wrists tied tightly together around it. They were left there while the lizard-people returned inside the temple, presumably to finish re-dressing the other crew.

Fengel watched the city, the airship, the native lizard-men below. "This is your fault," he said to Natasha after a moment.

"Go suck on a loaded musket," came her reply.

There was a weariness to her voice. Fengel looked over at his wife. She looked tired.

The two of them gazed out upon the city and the struggle up above them.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Mordecai roared. He lashed out with a two-handed blow, bringing his weight to bear. The blade of his cutlass hit the scryn in mid-dive, cleaving it in two. Momentum carried the corpse, and the pieces slammed into him bodily. Mordecai fought to keep his balance. The deck was slick with scryn ichor. The pieces of his last attacker fell down to add its own bile to the mess, still twitching.

He glanced up and around. Nothing else threatened him. The air was thinning as well. Against the odds, they were winning out. There were fewer of the attacking vermin around. There were also fewer of his own men and women still standing.

His arms felt like wood. The attack seemed to go on forever. Discipline amongst the crew dissolved the moment the first screaming sky-beast fell upon them. Then it was pure survival, blade and pistol at hand. Mordecai had tried to rally some of the crew together. Even now, though, he couldn't say if it had been successful. Fighting the scryn was like fighting an ocean— a hissing, screeching ocean that spit poison. Those crew he'd called together fell apart, and soon enough Mordecai was isolated, worried about his own survival.

Now the struggle thinned. "To me!" he called. "Everyone to me!" He took a swipe at a passing scryn, sent it tumbling to the deck with an outraged scream.

One by one the crew heard his call and came to him. Those still standing, at least. After a few more minutes of furious combat, the last of the scryn flit overboard to avoid them. Mordecai leaned on his sword, panting. A glance around told him that the crew were similarly exhausted. Some stared numbly at the devastation around them. Others just stood there.

Time to take control again
. Mordecai raised his sword up high and shouted victoriously. Stunned out of their weariness, others took up the cry in ragged twos and threes. Mordecai let them feel their victory, then lowered his blade and examined the carnage on the deck.

The
Dawnhawk
was a mess. Dead scryn lay everywhere. Their stinking ichors stained the wood of the deck, the rails, even the ratlines and cables leading up to the gasbag. Reavers lay among them, groaning, gasping, or dead. A quick headcount revealed that they were at less than half their number, and none of those on their feet were unmarred or unwounded.

Mordecai called for order and picked a few likely faces out from the crowd. "Reaver Jane," he called. "Konrad." The two pirates looked up and made their way over. "Start getting people to clean up this mess. Get the Mechanist up here. Those propeller linkages look damaged, and we're not going anywhere without them in working order." Konrad grunted and turned away. Reaver Jane gave him an odd look.

"What about the wounded...Captain?" she asked.

He didn't like the tone in her voice. Jane had been staunchly loyal to Natasha. Would she give him problems now?

"See to them," he said. "Get them taken below and checked out." He turned away to give other orders.

The propeller systems turned out to be damaged indeed. Something had snapped a number of the linkage chains connecting the steam engines to the propellers at the rear of the ship. A stray pistol ball, cutlass strike, or enraged scryn, it didn't matter; they were stuck where they drifted for the moment. Other problems made themselves known. The gasbag frame had been torn, and one of the light-air gas cells was gushing its stinking contents down over the deck. It had to contend with the stench of dead scryn for most sickening odor on the ship, but Mordecai ordered it seen to immediately. An errant spark in the wrong place could be the doom of them all.

There was something else as well. Reaver Jane wasn't the only malcontent. As they recovered from the shock of the attack and their weariness, Mordecai saw more dark glances, heard more unhappy muttering. His hold on the crew wasn't as strong as he'd thought. They'd been unhappy with Natasha, yes. But they hadn't wanted to overthrow her, not really. He'd engineered the Crewman's Vote to take advantage of their emotions. Now though, they were having second thoughts.

Mordecai kept the crew moving, busy, focused on leaving. He was strict, though he used a lighter hand than he usually would. It wouldn't do have them resent him at the moment.

"Mordecai...I mean Captain!"

He looked up to see one of the Wiley brothers waving at him from the starboard rails. Mordecai didn't remember his name. But it didn't matter. Frowning, he sauntered over to the man.

"What?" he asked, putting a slight edge to his voice.

"Down there! It's Captain— I mean Mrs. Blackheart."

Mordecai gave him an ugly look, then peered over the side.

The Draykin still filled the plaza below. Most had moved back from below the
Dawnhawk
, avoiding the fleeing and falling scryn. Up on the temple just beneath them, a clutch of their warriors stood, spears in hand. They watched the airship above them. Now and again, though, one of them shot a glance toward a pair of humans tied to the statues on the terrace below.

Both of the captives were almost naked, wearing little more than scraps. Yet Mordecai knew them instantly. Natasha, he could pick out at a three hundred yards, in the night, probably even blindfolded. And there was only one man alive who would dress like a savage, yet still insist on his hat and that ridiculous monocle. Captain Fengel.

Tied up and held by lizard-pygmies, the two were quarrelling. Mordecai wasn't even remotely surprised. What did surprise him, though, was that Natasha was still alive.

Other crewmen were flocking to this side of the deck. Wiley's words had carried. They looked over and called out in surprise. Before long everyone up top was gabbing amongst themselves. Some of what Mordecai heard was quietly regretful. That wouldn't do. He clenched a fist atop the rail and turned, mouth open to order the crew back to their tasks. Then he stopped.