Clockwork Angels: The Novel (31 page)

These were not safe and sheltered waters at all! “Reefs, Captain!” he yelled. “We’re about to—”

The force of the engines and the heavy waves drove the cargo steamer aground with an awful sound. He felt a shudder as reefs ripped open the hull like a fisherman gutting a trout.

Everyone on the bridge went flying, slammed against the bulkheads. Captain Lochs’s head split open, and he fell limp, bleeding onto the deck. Still at full steam, the engines kept pushing the vessel up onto the saw-toothed reefs. On the engine deck, the main steam boiler burst open with a roar.

Above all the noise, Owen thought he heard an impossible chorus of cheers in the distance.

As the storm continued to slash and shove, the steamer flooded and began sinking. The crew ran out on deck, shouting at one another. Life preservers went overboard but were washed away in the snarling spittle of breakers. Owen watched brave, or simply foolish, sailors jump overboard, only to be swept away into the gray cauldron of the sea or battered to death against the rocks.

Owen hauled Captain Lochs out into the open, struggling to save him; the man was limp and bleeding profusely from his split skull. “Help!” Owen yelled, but the winds snatched his cry away. He found a life preserver, snagged it, and wrestled the captain’s arms through the hole.

A large wave swept up and over the bow. Owen held on with one hand, gripped Captain Lochs with the other, but the force of the rushing water swept the unconscious man off the ship and into the sea. Owen grabbed for the rope and yelled in dismay, but no one heard him. The backwash knocked the life preserver free of the captain’s limp arms, and the old man was gone.

Owen huddled in a sheltered pocket against the wall. He wrapped a shredded length of rope around his chest, securing himself to the deck. He would not voluntarily slide into the teeth of an icy grave.

He could make out voices, shouts, and cheers from below. When he dragged himself to the deck rail, he discerned human shapes, people in strange costumes, oil slickers and hoods, thick gloves. They were tied together by ropes and moved in a human chain across the reefs, holding onto poles to anchor themselves. They were working their way toward the wrecked ship.

“Help!” Owen waved to them. “Help, save us!”

The strange people below looked up, but they seemed less intent on rescuing any survivors than on grabbing crates of cargo. Their backs stooped with the weight of the treasure they bore; they staggered away across the spray-slick rocks. He called again to the rescuers.

Owen saw two of his struggling shipmates crawl up onto the reefs. One broken sailor raised a beseeching hand for help. A few strangers ran forward and then, to Owen’s horror, clubbed the sailors and kicked the bodies out into the water, where the foam became tinged with red.

Another wave washed over the rail as the ship settled on the rocky reef. Owen spluttered, shook the salt water from his eyes. He hid there and watched the strangers scuttling over the tilted deck, ducking into the cargo hold, hurrying away with kegs and boxes of valuables.

He saw no one else from the cargo steamer, and he guessed he might be the only survivor—at least until these murderous strangers found him. He kept hold of the rope that prevented him from washing overboard, and he scrambled about the flotsam on the deck, trying to find a weapon so he could at least defend himself.

A cargo crate had smashed open on deck, spilling chunks of rocks and minerals from Atlantis. Owen found a heavy rock large enough to batter an attacker. From his days with Commodore Pangloss, he even identified what it was. Dreamstone.

As he watched the predatory strangers pick their way across the deck, close to finding him, he kept an eye out for heavy waves. He clutched the heavy dreamstone, raised it—and a wave slammed down on the deck like a vengeful hand, driving Owen up against the sidewall with a heavy blow to the head. Unconsciousness was blacker than the storm.

The days were dark and the nights were bright

W
hen Owen awakened, he was very much surprised to find himself still alive—which should have been no surprise; otherwise he wouldn’t have awakened in the first place.

He found himself lying on a mattress stuffed with rags, rather than in a pool of blood on spray-washed reefs; someone had wrapped a woolen blanket around him. Maybe the storm, the deceptive beckoning light, the cargo steamer running aground, the deaths of Captain Lochs and his crew were all just a dream . . . a horrible one.

So many of his other dreams had proved false, but this one, he feared, was real.

He was in a cluttered cabin with the window open to let in fresh, cool air; the room had an undertone of damp saltiness. He touched his head and discovered bandages bound around a sore spot. His left arm was also wrapped tight; he didn’t even remember getting a gash there. He sat up in the bed and groaned. This was a strange sort of hospital.

“I thought you’d wake up sooner,” said a stern female voice. He saw a big-hipped, middle-aged woman whose dark hair was laced with strands of gray. She wore a black dress wrapped in a magenta shawl and scarf, both adorned with bangles. “I made some fish broth for you to regain your strength, but it’s cold now.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was waiting for me to wake up,” Owen said.

He remembered the shadowy figures that had roped themselves together in the storm, ransacking the wrecked steamer and staggering away with heavy loads on their backs. Barbarians, pirates . . . they had clubbed to death the sailors washed overboard, even though they begged for rescue. He felt a thrill of fear, wondering if this woman would kill him now, even though she must have had ample opportunity to do so already.

“Who are you?” His voice was raspy, his throat raw. He remembered how much he had shouted during the hurricane, for all the good it had done.

“I’m Xandrina,” she said. “Not that I expect you to remember it. And you are Owen Hardy from Barrel Arbor.”

He was baffled that she knew his name. Unless some other sailors from the cargo steamer had survived after all? How long had he been unconscious? “And who are
you
?
Plural
?” he asked. “Your people? I saw them on the reefs. That light that lured us in . . .”

“We’re the Free People of the Sea,” Xandrina said with an undertone of pride. “Misfits and outlaws, treasure seekers—anyone who doesn’t want to be tied down.”

“You wrecked our ship!”

“That’s why some people call us the Wreckers.”

The Wreckers!
He recoiled in the bed, and the sharp movement set off a clamor of pain inside his skull. She bent over to feed him lukewarm, salty soup with lumps of fish. The flavor was so strong he gagged, but his body asserted itself, and he ate the rest of the bowl. By now he had concluded that his injuries were minor. He didn’t understand why the Wreckers hadn’t clubbed him to death and dumped him into the sea, like the others.

“How do you know who I am? And why did you save me?” Owen would not have had to ask that of many people; helping someone in need was a perfectly normal thing that needed no explanation. But these people had showed no measure of mercy.

Xandrina adjusted her improbably colorful scarf and looked down at him. “We know who you are. He already told us. He told us to save you.” She left the small cabin, as if she had finished her job and had no intention of giving him any more of her time. “You’re supposed to recover so you can be useful.”

Though confused, Owen slept again, and when he woke, he felt alive enough to ease himself out of bed and walk on unsteady legs across the unsteady floor. He opened the door of the small room.

Stepping into the open air, Owen found himself on an island of ruined ships—countless hulls lashed together in an uneven cluster of floating wrecks.

He recognized the form of this particular vessel: another cargo steamer from Albion. It was lashed to an adjacent wooden sailing ship, whose masts stood up like winter trees without leaves. The spreading conglomeration of wrecks drifted along on the open sea. Each time the Wreckers destroyed a ship, Owen realized, they took the hulk and add it to their growing “country.”

Hundreds of people had taken refuge here, squatting in available cabins or claiming territory on the uneven decks. Laundry dried on clotheslines strung from rails to masts. On the drab gray metal and weathered brown wood, the Wreckers had done their best to add color with banners and pennants, ribbons that fluttered in the breeze. A man played an exotic-sounding instrument that reminded Owen of a clarinet.

A small boat pulled up to the edge of the conglomerate raft, carrying a net full of fish. Men and women stood on the outermost hulls, trailing fishing lines into the water. They all wore colorful clothes with bold geometrical lines or random patterns.

On the other side of the clustered vessels, Owen saw a small, tethered airship, an inflated dirigible sack connected to the wooden hull of a boat. This must be what he had seen from the deck of the cargo steamer—a scout for the Wreckers. It must have spied on them, hoping for a storm so the Wreckers could seize the opportunity and lure them onto the reefs. Shading his eyes, Owen looked into the distance to see the foamy line of breakers.

His wounded head pounded, and he touched the bandage, felt a spot of fresh blood. Xandrina bustled up to him. “About time you decided to stretch your legs. You’ve missed midday meal already, but I could find you some cold scraps. I’m supposed to take care of you—he paid me two diamonds for the work, but I didn’t know you were going to be so difficult.”

“I don’t have a pocketwatch,” he said, looking around. “So this . . . all of you are the Wreckers?”

“The Free People of the Sea,” she corrected.

“You’re pirates. You killed Captain Lochs—he was a good man.”

She made no apology. “We’re hunters, and we hunt ships. The Watchmaker’s trade with Atlantis keeps us in diamonds and treasure. After what we pulled off that cargo steamer of yours, our raft is so heavy it’s riding a full handspan lower in the water!” She chuckled, but he could think only of how many crewmembers had died when the ship crashed on the reefs.

Wreckers leaped from one deck to the next across the floating hulls. Men and women danced to raucous music that had no melody Owen could discern. All the men sported beards and wore stylish daggers at their hips; their shirts were loose, their pantaloons tight. They were a loud and physical people, chuckling boisterously, punching one another, slapping shoulders, giving playful shoves. The laughter sounded both jovial and derisive. Their wild unruliness reminded him of the carnies, but only in the most superficial way.

Xandrina brought him food and insisted that it was the last time. “You’ll have to find your place and take care of yourself from now on. That’s what freedom is all about.”

“I’d rather find my way back home,” he said.
Anywhere but here.

She sniffed. “If you made your own home, you wouldn’t have to find it elsewhere. Here among the Free People of the Sea, it’s every person for himself.”

Xandrina didn’t wait for him to finish his cold meal; she left him on business of her own. As he ate, several scuffles broke out nearby, but he couldn’t determine if they were simple horseplay or genuine feuds. During one altercation, a portly man with a tight head scarf was knocked overboard; though he flailed in the water, choking and sputtering, no one tried to help him. The man managed to pull himself back aboard, stalked up to the laughing man who had pushed him overboard, and punched his rival full in the face. The man spat blood, flailed backward, and both men went their own ways, grumbling.

When Owen wandered the deck, no one seemed interested in asking who he was. They glanced at him, then dismissed him, wanting no friendship or conversation; they probably saw him as another mouth to feed, someone who would take a share of the spoils the next time they ransacked an unsuspecting ship.

Owen did not feel comfortable at all here. The Wreckers might have thought themselves free, but they were deadly, lawless. His head hurt, and his heart was heavy. He still did not understand why these people had rescued him at all.

He told us to save you.

“You travel a very random course, Owen Hardy of Barrel Arbor.” Owen turned to face a man with a familiar haughty expression, lifting his chin and raising his significant eyebrows. He stroked his pointed beard, and Owen stared at the alchemical tattoo on one hand, the burned scar on the other. “Without the Watchmaker’s own destiny calculator, I would never have known how to intercept you!”

Owen stared and shuddered. The last time he had seen those eyes, above a breathing mask, the man had been setting a detonator, trying to destroy Chronos Square. “What are you doing here?”

“The Wreckers are my kindred spirits,” the Anarchist said. “That much should be obvious.”

Owen realized he
hated
this man and the flippant turmoil he caused, mayhem for no purpose other than mayhem itself. The Anarchist had intended to wipe out thousands of people, the Watchmaker, the coldfire nexus, the Clockwork Angels, the carnies . . . and Francesca. Worse, Owen had taken the fall for his crimes; he’d been forced to abandon any hope of rejoining his friends, his surrogate family.