Pinion (31 page)

If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.          
— Psalm 139:8

That night
Erinyes
hid somewhere in the sky.
Notus
continued to burn fitfully in the distance, but her surviving crew couldn’t muster the courage for trekking through the enemy dark to inspect the scattered wreckage. Boaz was in conference with Bosun McCurdy and McCurdy’s counterpart from the lost airship, a man named Harrow who seemed overwhelmed to the point of breaking.

“We are done for now,” Harrow muttered after they’d spent some time going round the logistics of encampment and defense. “Your little scow won’t haul my men back to England.”

“ ’Tis not
my
little scow,” McCurdy said darkly. “Lieutenant Ostrander has command, and I reckon he is fast becoming one with the birds.”

Boaz knew he should just walk away, resume his quest to take the Sixth Seal to Ophir. His loyalty to al-Wazir kept him here, hoping to find a way to deliver these men to safety.

Moreover, what would Paolina say if he abandoned the sailors to their fates? She had no love for the British, but she still held life dear in her heart. Invaders to the Wall these people might be, but they were still people. Just like her.

“You will likely not see help from Dr. Ottweill,” Boaz offered. “He is as mad as you claim your Lieutenant Ostrander to be, and is in critical need of supply and support himself.” He turned to McCurdy. “If
Erinyes
returns, will you set the midshipman to take command? She must go to Mogadishu for help.”

“Cotonou on the Benin coast would be a sight closer,” Harrow said. “But there’s no airships based there. Just a brace of towers and some supplies, with a company of marines to guard them.”

“Could you ferry men and equipment from here to Cotonou in several swift passages?”

“Aye,” said McCurdy. “How many could survive here, left behind? With them beyond the stockade wall so unfriendly, and them winged savages tearing at us from the air, and whatever lives by night in these jungles, too few men would vanish like corbies before a storm.”

“I have been north of here, along the coast,” Boaz said. “The harbor is on the Mitémélé River. Beyond that is nothing but swamp and foetor. You could march the men down to the river, cross on rafts, and camp on one of the islands there until
Erinyes
either brought help or carried out the crew in measured groups. We would be away from the Wall, and perhaps safer from at least some of the attacks that will surely come our way.”

Attacks instigated by his own people, Boaz knew. Both McCurdy and Harrow were surely aware of that source of their dangers, though at the moment they were more concerned with the treachery in Ottweill’s camp, along with the loss of their entire leadership.

“ ’T’will go far the better for us if my airship does return soon,” McCurdy said quietly. “I’ll not lead a mutiny against Ostrander, though.”

Harrow protested. “He flies like a swallow from the nest, flitting back and away again. Such an officer is at best battle-shy, which is no good thing. Beyond that, he does not seem to have much sense. Not from what you tell me.”

“The man is stricken,” Boaz said. The voices of Paolina and al-Wazir within him agreed, and offered another point, that he echoed. “Bosun McCurdy will not speak against his own commander, and rightly so by the rules of the Royal Navy.” He paused. “Chief, if I relieve Lieutenant Ostrander, will you be able to con
Erinyes
?”

“Ye cannae—,” McCurdy began, then subsided into silence.

“This would be mutiny for one of us,” Harrow said. “For you, it would be an act of war against the British Crown.”

“Better to die here in the jungles while a man bereft of his wits birds it about overhead?” Boaz’ disgust mounted again. Even the Sixth Seal was attending now—the topic of madness attracted it. Mutterings in Adamic and Hebrew rose within his thoughts like smoke. Imprecations, doubts, fears. “I can walk away. This is my people’s place, these lands where I have spent my life. You would die for rules and pride.”

Harrow gave McCurdy a long look in the dark. “Duty does rule us.”

“Did duty bring down
Notus
?” Boaz asked.

“Politics killed the ship,” the bosun replied. “Those winged savages held the sword point, but it was politics what set the deed in motion.”

“That man Kitchens.”

“Him, too. He is part of the problem. Our captain . . .” He paused. “Well, I’ll not speak against the dead, nor against my own commander.”

Boaz leaned close. “Who commands you now?”

“Lieutenant Ostrander, who flits about the sky like a bat on a summer night. He is the surviving officer on the scene.”

The human voices in him were practically shouting. “There is a gift,” Boaz said, choosing his words with care. Here was a moment when his debts came due. “This gift was given me in that encampment beyond the stockade by a girl of your race, and a petty officer of your navy. They made me my own man, relieving me of the obligation of obedience, only to replace it with the burden of free will. You, now, are detached from your laws and rules. You are likely faced with choosing between obedience and survival. I cannot make that decision for you, but I can and will freely aid you in carrying it out, from loyalty to those who loved me enough to set me free.”

Harrow snorted. “There’s not a petty officer born who doesn’t know how to walk wide circles around a lawful order so the captain gets what he really needs instead of what he thinks he wants. But to throw off authority entirely, that is a different matter.”

Boaz understood throwing off Authority, far too well. “Then if
Erinyes
returns with the dawn, or before then, I shall treat with your commander. I have dealt with troublesome airships before.”

McCurdy spoke up. “I’ll nae stand in your way, but I shan’t raise a hand to aid you, neither. Even this much I do is treason.”

“Do not say that word,” Harrow whispered sharply. “Let it be enough that our friend and ally John Brass has a plan.” He gave Boaz a sidelong look. “Not that you are much of either one to my knowledge, but you are here helping us instead of out in the woods making death lists.”

“He’s no bad man.” McCurdy subsided into a sullen silence.

Boaz took his leave of the conference and set to walking the perimeter of their temporary camp. He could add no more to what had already been said, and if the conversation continued, McCurdy might crab away from his acquiescence.

Her
wa
gibbered. It was terrified of this Hethor, in a way she had never seen anyone’s
wa
react before. The darknesses within his house were as knotted with irruptions into the Silent World as any corner back in the city might ever be. He seemed to have filled the very air around him with shimmering spirits, unquiet sendings, and an armor of power such as she’d never seen. He held a
wa
half the size of the Earth, though he didn’t even seem to notice.

“You are a prophet,” she said, the conclusion leaping unbidden to her lips in the words of his barbarous yawp.

“No.” Hethor eased into a chair woven of vine whips around a frame of wood that still reeked of life. “I foretell no futures. But you are right in that I have been touched by God.”

“A god.” Gashansunu shook off the warning of her
wa
that this man might himself be such a one. “The world manifests in many faces.”

“There is only one,” he told her gently.

“Have you seen that one?”

“No. But I have spoken with His messenger angels. I have held His words in my hand. He has directed my steps, beyond the point of unreason.”

“That is not divinity.” She turned her hand just so and plucked a shred from the Silent World that glittered in her grasp here in the Shadow World. “That is a fever on the brain.”

Hethor ignored the scrap in her fingers. She watched an intensity deepen his face. “He is everywhere,” the young man protested. “The sky shouts of His handiwork, the Earth is transparently His creation.”

“I created this just now.” She rolled the gleaming flash around in her hand. “Pulled it from the Silent World. Does that make me a god?”

“No, it makes you an adept. A sorceress.” He shifted his weight. “We know of your city here, and were soon to send you the woman you met by the river. She is in need of wise counsel.”

“Counsel she cannot find from your ever-present God?”

“He is silent in the moment,” Hethor admitted.

“You prefer her to hear words from someone who moves in the world, rather than take the advice of an absent God.”

“He is not absent; He is present in all of us.”

Gashansunu laughed. “You should hear yourself. You point to a rock, a tree, the brass in the sky, and say, because the world
is
, I believe this thing must be true. The world
is
, strange prophet, but that is enough. It is its own creation, the border between the Silent World and the Shadow World the fire burning at its heart.”

“I could say the same to you,” he countered. “You point to a vision of the spiritual realm, and say you believe this thing must be true.”

“Ah. But I can visit my realm, show it to you even, should you have eyes enough to see it.”

Hethor fell silent, frowning, then said, “We spar to little point. Will you aid Paolina?”

Gashansunu followed his change in topic. “Aid her in what pursuit? I am come to find the cause of the world’s passing regrets. She is it. Should I abet the distress?”

“She would have your wise counsel on the best application of her power, and the best control.”

Another laugh. “I have sat in meditation in Westfacing House for six decades now. I am still accounted a young woman among my people, newly come to the Silent World and unready for full responsibility, lacking the powers of a circle caller or a house priest. I have honored a bond with my
wa
almost that entire time. This is the only reason I have left the city—I am not yet too pregnant with power to stir from the wards of our circles. All these years I have put toward fully grasping the channels of my power, and you would have me advise some half-grown chit of a girl in the course of an afternoon?”

“Yes,” he said simply, then raised a hand to forestall her reply. “Consider this: If you do not, she will go with no advice whatsoever. I have told her what I can, but I myself am a barely grown boy, and my power did not come to me through study, but rather through the interference of the Divine that you so assiduously deny. God made me His instrument, but the mechanisms of that miracle will likely be ever opaque to me. You made yourself an instrument, and so understand the path to power in a way that I never shall. An hour or a day of your time will profit her far more than a season with me.”

“You followed the path of faith to your power,” Gashansunu said, picking her words with the thread of her thought. “You would have her pursue the path of reason.”

“It is not so easy as that. But you may be close enough. I never had so much faith, but neither did I deny it. Like Paul and the Damascene conversion, God came to me in His need, rather than me seeking Him.

“Paolina might have been a Rational Humanist had she been raised in a decent school. Reason is her path, but her faith burns her like a lantern wick. You can see it in her denial, in her rebellion. She would be adversary to God Himself if she could find a stick large enough to beat Him with. I do not think she knows this, though.”

Gashansunu studied Hethor, trying to see past the frightening curdles of power eddying about him. The world spun within this boy, she could see that.

Her
wa
spoke:

HE IS THE ONE WHO HAD PASSED THROUGH THE CITY
.

HE HAS GONE DEEP INTO THE HEART OF ALL THINGS TO REMAKE AN ERROR
.

“Four of the seven Great Relics abide within the city,” she told him. “One we are certain is lost. Two more are elsewhere, unknown and unknowable to the eyes of my people. In the centuries after those came over the Wall, gleams have passed through the world time and again, but
nothing so touched by power. Before now. What the girl Paolina carries in her hand flares in the Silent World like nothing since those days.”

As opposed to you, young prophet
, she thought,
who gather shadows to yourself and hide from distant eyes
. Gashansunu realized that meeting Hethor might ultimately be a far more important event than the discovery of the girl with the gleam.

“All the more reason you should help her learn to hold it.” Hethor leaned forward, the Correct Person at his side grasping at his arm. “Those Great Relics of the past? They were unitary, each in their way—touched by God or your Silent World or whatever you may choose to call it. Like my power, not to be repeated, but simply as they are. There will never be more than one Cup, never be more than one Spear. This stemwinder of hers . . . It is different. It can be
built
. Made and remade, until an army of men might march wielding them in hand, each a sorcerer more powerful than even your circle callers or house priests.”

Hethor shook his head. “You say it takes many decades to grow a sorcerer to power? All she needs is a workshop, some good tools and a little bit of time.”