Heart and Soul (3 page)

“Jones, eh?” the captain said, with a hint of amusement in his voice. “Original, at least. Our last three magicians were Smith.”

Nigel kept his face impassive. Captain Portsmouth scanned the papers in his hand quickly. “Served on the
Light of the Orient,
did you?”

“Yes, sir,” Nigel confirmed, recalling an upscale cruise carpetship that he had flown to India. A pleasant transport, with unusually nice personnel accommodations.

“Not on its last voyage, I take it?” the captain said. And then, with another quick look at Nigel, added, “No, since no one survived.”

“Sir?” Nigel asked, in genuine confusion. Had disaster befallen the
Light of the Orient
? Though disasters happened and carpetships plunged down from the sky, it was so rare that all the papers carried news of it, and Nigel would have heard or read of it, wherever he was.

His genuine surprise earned him a sharp look from the captain. “Good God, man, haven’t you heard?” He glanced at Nigel’s papers again. “Well, you flew in it almost six months ago, didn’t you? And last month you were in…America? Well, perhaps the news hadn’t reached there yet, or perhaps the colonials didn’t think it important enough to talk about.”

“Sir, I am quite at a loss to—”

“The
Light of the Orient
was taken by pirates,” the captain said, drily. “Those Chinese pirates in what they call the Dragon Boats. All passengers and crew alike were either killed or taken into who knows how degrading a captivity.”

“I…I’m sorry.” Nigel said, feeling faint. His mind scanned the memories of faces to which he could no longer set names. His young assistant, the deckhands…“All dead?”

“Or as good as.” The captain took a look at Nigel’s face and, reaching for a bottle of brandy, poured some into a glass. “Here, man. You look as white as a ghost. Three more ships have been taken like that in the last two months, but that one was the biggest and best known. Those Chinese devils are getting more and more daring—not that we have anything to fear from them. We are flying quite a different route, straight over the Mediterranean to North Africa, and then across Africa herself, to Cape Town. Not the sort of route haunted by Chinese pirates.”

“No,” Nigel said. “I imagine not.” But he recalled how Peter had told him some confused tale about being followed by a Chinese dragon for months. And Peter had been carrying only one of the magical jewels that Nigel now bore.

It was all Nigel could do to resist checking to be sure they still rested in a flannel pouch beneath his loose shirt and waistcoat and coat. Instead he threw back the brandy, its caustic sweetness calming some of his panic, and told himself he would get the jewels to Africa safely. No one would intercept them.

The quest for these jewels—and the mission of returning them to their proper place as the eyes of the oldest avatar known to mankind—had distorted Nigel’s life, ruined his marriage, and sent him careening around the world. But this was the last leg of that voyage, and once the jewels were out of his hands he could return to England and to his parents’ estate, and resume again his place in the world. He could dispel his aged parents’ fear that he had died. He could start anew.

The captain had looked at the papers again. He folded them briskly and handed them back. “They look well enough. You are hired. We depart almost immediately. The passengers are boarding as we speak, and I was afraid that we would have to delay. Can you set your things in your quarters and be ready to operate the ship in half an hour?”

“Of course, sir,” Nigel said, taking the papers and putting them back in his bag, amid three changes of underclothing, his two spare shirts, and a lion’s tail, ears and pelt, which he kept as a powerful fetish, since he, himself, had killed the beast to which they’d once belonged.

The captain rang a bell on his desk, and presently a sharp-featured little man opened the door. Without looking up, the captain said, “Take Mr. Jones to the flight magician quarters, if you please, Joseph.”

The man led Nigel down a bifurcating corridor to what felt like the south end of the flight deck, then threw open a door to a small but tidy room, with bed, desk, armchair and a small bookcase outfitted with a few books that—if Nigel’s experience from other carpetships counted—would be what his predecessors had left behind. The furniture would all be attached to the floor, and the bookcase had strips of leather that went across the spine of the books to keep them in place when the air around the carpetship became turbulent.

Nigel put his bag on the bed and turned, to see that Joseph hadn’t left, but instead stood in the open door, looking intently at him. When Nigel’s gaze met his, the man managed to look at once disgusted and disdainful. “The flight deck is that way,” he said, pointing. “Down this corridor then down the fifth corridor to the left, and all the way up that, till you come to the flight deck, which I trust you’ll recognize as such?”

Surprised by the barely veiled hostility in the man’s voice, Nigel blinked. “Yes, I’m sure I will. Thank you so much.”

“And don’t go putting on airs,” the man added. “All you flight magicians might be lords in disguise, but I know your kind, and I know you’re no more trustworthy than a snake. And no more worthy of respect. All the Mr. Smiths and Joneses who’ve ever served on this ship are always trying to make off with something—pens or paper, or anything at all they can sell. Our last Mr. Smith even tried to steal from the passengers’ decks. That might happen in other ships, but I am the steward in charge of the personnel on this ship, and I’m serving you notice that it won’t happen on my watch.”

And before Nigel had time to recover his breath, let alone answer, the man slammed the door, leaving Nigel alone with his thoughts.

He didn’t doubt that most flight magicians were no better than petty thieves. Or, in fact, that most of them
were
petty thieves. By their very nature as men who felt dispossessed of their true inheritance, they did tend to be shifty.

But Nigel was not one of them. Just over nine months ago, Nigel had been the scion of one of the oldest and most respected noble houses in England. And he’d been sent upon a mission by the queen herself.

Many years before, Charlemagne had established his kingship and his power by sending an envoy to Africa to steal the jewels that formed the eyes of the oldest avatar of mankind. Those jewels—it was said—held all the magical power of the world. The man who bound them could bind the magic of Earth to himself and his descendants forever.

But the mission had only half succeeded. Charlemagne’s man had brought back only one jewel, but that alone had been enough to make Charlemagne the ruler over all of Europe.

Alas, the great king had failed to count on human frailty. His power, thus acquired, had indeed passed on to his descendants and to them alone, but noblemen weren’t any better at holding to the sanctity of the marriage bed than was any other man. Bastardy and poverty had meant that many of Charlemagne’s descendants had mingled with the common populace till, by the nineteenth century, almost every European held some magic, and enough of them held sufficient magic to create new industries and fortunes. These new fortunes, in turn, undermined the nobility, and turned the whole world upside down.

Queen Victoria, alarmed by this degeneracy and the revolutions it engendered, had sent Nigel to Africa to search for the other jewel so she could bind the power to herself alone.

On the voyage, Nigel had come to doubt the right of European noblemen to rule the world, and become aware of the dangers the destruction removing both jewels from the shrine would bring. And so, while Nigel’s friend Peter Farewell had headed for India to look for Soul of Fire, the jewel that Charlemagne had almost destroyed, Nigel had taken the other ruby—Heart of Light—and crisscrossed the world with it, staying just one step ahead of any magical detection, and of all who would want to possess the ruby.

But yesterday, Peter had given Nigel Soul of Fire—restored to its former power—and now both jewels rested in the pouch beneath Nigel’s clothes.

By returning them to the avatar, Nigel would restore order to the world. Once the jewels were together and in their proper place, they would hide themselves and their village from prying eyes and minds.

Until then, Nigel must remain an anonymous member of that curious breed of vagabonds—carpetship flight magicians.

THE WAITING ENEMY

Red Jade saw Zhang before she lifted her eyes. Or
rather, she sensed him, his hulking, broad-shouldered presence barring her way. Amid the various milling courtiers, only he stood squarely in her path.

He was a tall man, and though he was close to her father’s age, he could still be said to be handsome. His dark hair showed very few white threads, and though he wore his beard closely shaven—unlike most men in the Dragon Boats—he let his moustaches grow long, framing his broad, sensuous lips. Jade had heard her father’s women talk and giggle about him, claiming his dark eyes glowed like banked fires, but Jade could not see anything attractive in him.

She could not remember a time when she had not been afraid of Zhang. She remembered being very small—maybe two or three—and coming out of her mother’s quarters to find Zhang in the hallway. She had instantly run back to the safety of her mother’s arms, though she couldn’t say what she’d thought Zhang might do to her. Surely even Zhang, arrogant as he was, wouldn’t have dared to hurt the daughter of the True Emperor.

Since adolescence, Jade had found other reasons to dread the man. He looked at her with a covetous sort of hunger—the type of look she imagined a ravening tiger might bestow upon a juicy buffalo. It made her shiver and blush and look away. And, more often than not, this caused him to chuckle drily.

This danger, she knew, was more real than any she might have imagined as a toddler. Zhang was her father’s second-in-command because he was the most noble of the Dragon Boat leaders. His family was descended from Jade’s own family, many generations back. As such, he had royal blood in his veins, and was entitled to almost as much respect as Wen—and Jade, herself. If Jade’s brother were to marry her off, whom else would he choose for a husband? Few of the land-bound nobility even knew that Jade was their equal, let alone their superior, and most of them were descended from the interlopers and not proper noblemen of China at all. Not dragons. Not any kind of shape-shifters.

But Jade didn’t want to marry Zhang, and now she made sure the look she gave him was full of a haughty chill. “Ah, Prince of the High Mountain,” she said, addressing him by the title that his family had worn many centuries before.

“My lady,” he said, bowing in the most correct way possible. But he didn’t get out of her way and he straightened almost immediately, his eyes challenging her.

“Is there something you require of me?”

“Only to know when His Majesty, the True Emperor, intends to make the Dragon Boats fly. By tradition, he won’t be fully in power till he does. Until then, it leaves things…in dispute.”

Did Zhang intend to challenge Wen? Steeling herself, she said briskly, “His Majesty is tired. He’s given me the ring and the power to fly the boats myself.”

“You?” Zhang looked at Jade as though she had suddenly grown a second head.

“As his nearest in blood, I will be able to channel his power whenever he doesn’t feel like exerting it.”

“But…” Zhang looked like a man who had just had a rug pulled out from under him.

“Yes?”

“But…I’d talked to His Majesty your father, and I’ve…I meant to talk to your brother, too, but…I don’t know if you…”