Pinion (54 page)

“Could I walk there? No, for I do not know the place,” Paolina answered her own question, “and no one whose light I can follow is there for me to pursue as I did Boaz before.”

The sorceress shrugged. “In time, we might think on a way. Surely it can be seen from this height.”

“It is a great, huge palace amid woods and fields,” Kitchens said. “We might take note of it if we are close, but only if we know where to look. Up here the world is too wide as my gaze slides across the ground.”

Paolina took out the stemwinder. “Think on this place, Mr. Kitchens. Remember it as well as you can. Let me see if I can find a path within.”

“I shall hold my course northward,” said Boaz quietly. “Until one of you tells me otherwise.”

Valetta’s people were far more interested in the submarine than they were in the procession jogging through their streets. Wang did not have difficulty following Childress.

She’d seen him as well, and they’d traded a significant glance. Wang could not convince himself of this being a disaster. He followed until the men escorting her crossed a wide plaza and hurried up the stairs of a great, domed building.

Childress stopped at the top, to the evident surprise of the soldiers, and turned to scan the streets. He resisted the urge to wave, but presented himself at the bottom of the flight.

She extended a hand.

Wang nodded to acknowledge the invitation and trudged upward to meet her.

The librarian greeted him warmly. “My friend,” she said in English, and clasped his hands with a smile. She added in Chinese, “Are you crazed? This will be the death of you. You should have gone home from Goa.”

“Going home would have been the death of me,” he replied in the same language.

The sergeant leading her spoke reluctantly. “Ma’am . . .”

Even Wang could see that he was torn between duties and self-preservation. Childress was a formidable woman, slayer of fleets and leader of mutinies. This English soldier could not be aware of more than a portion of the truth, but still he knew trouble when he saw it.

“My man, who was not ready at our arrival,” she said crisply in English.

I am come to take her away
, thought Wang.
Why does she bring me within
?

“Next time,” she added, “pay attention. We shall not have these errors again.” Childress turned to face the doors.

Two soldiers scrambled to throw them open. She walked slowly, with an expression of deliberate concentration as if she worked some spell. He
quickstepped after her as they passed into the shadows, much as if he were her servant.

A messenger, carrying a belated dispatch from the far side of the Northern Earth.

Within was a dusty, empty room where soaring pillars supported the dome. It had once been a temple, Wang realized. Church, here in Europe—he’d seen churches in Singapore and Tainan. Now the floor was empty, innocent of the hard benches Christians seemed to favor. A raised section at the far end suggested there had once been an altar. Narrow windows with colored glass shed speckled light in long bands across the echoing silence.

The doors crashed shut behind them. A light shower of dust fell from high above. He looked up to see the interior of the dome, pediments that must have been meant to bear statues spaced around the band at its base.

“No one is here,” he whispered.

“I know
that
.” Childress sounded irritated.

Wang shut his mouth. The Mask looked about thoughtfully. Doors led out at the back, while darkened hallways extended left and right.

No one moved.

Even so, he had the distinct impression of being watched. People in the shadows? If this place was like the Forbidden City, there would be listeners hidden within the walls, under the floors, down inside the very pillars.

Somehow, Wang was sure that the foe here was not so hidden. If anything, they were too close.

“You may come out now,” Childress called in a strong, clear voice, as if summoning children from a hiding place.

Wang jumped slightly as the shadows began to move.

They’d passed above Portsmouth undetected.
Portsmouth
! He was almost to his goal. His body felt wretched, headache still stabbing, but at least the bright circles had faded from his vision. Paolina, that angel of mercy, had brought oxygen and water until he had turned both away.

A man could only take so much.

Now he watched the trees pass by far below, rougher green textures against the vague striations of farm fields. The girl manipulated her device, the small, strange magic that had driven all of them so far.

Without her, he would have failed long ago. Without her, the Queen would remain trapped endlessly. Without her, they could die in the sky even now.

“Think on the palace you seek,” she said, the faint Portuguese lilt in her voice thrilling him.

He considered his memories of Blenheim Palace. An architectural marvel, a stone monstrosity, mausoleum for a not-quite-dead Queen, a hive of angry Scotsmen and serious fellows with a penchant for interrogation. Whispering marble-floored halls, cotton-draped furniture, the scent of blood, countryside full of sturdy English peasants who would protect their masters’ secrets, a town occupied by a Highland regiment . . .

Something tickled in Kitchens’ mind. Like prayer, but in reverse, as if a voice from beyond were reaching in. He imagined the palace as it had looked upon his approach, the road from Woodstock, where the turns had been, how the copses and belts of trees had been laid out. Were there walls? Was the drive graveled or cobbled? How far from London had he come?

A map of England shifted in his mind. His work had always been overwhelmingly concerned with what took place beyond Albion’s shores. Home was mostly railway stations, offices, naval bases, manufactories—resources to be deployed, locations where important men must be visited to deliver reports.

That England was a
place
had somehow always escaped him.

Now he flew above the landscape, swifter than a bird, sliding past clouds, looking down on twisting country roads and the brick-lined cuts of railway embankments. Shadows seemed to fall in all directions, as if the sun spun in the sky above him. The world grew to a blur of color; then Blenheim Palace stood at the center like the trick of a display at an odeon.

“Thank you,” she said, and he was shivering.

Gashansunu offered him more water. “Here, you will need this. If I but had the right herbs . . .”

Paolina was already off to confer with Boaz.

Soon
, thought Kitchens.
Soon, my Queen. Though I am far later than I should be, I still come to your need
.

Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.          —
Ecclesiastes 10:20

“A bit to the left,” Paolina told Levine. The old sailor had the helm, a stoked oxygen pot beside him. The crew was roused for the imminent landing. “We should be able to see it soon,” she added.

The Brass looked over the rail. “I do not know how you can tell one field from another here.”

“It does not matter, dear,” she said. “I know where Blenheim Palace is as surely as I know where you are. I will probably be able to see this place for the rest of my life, waking or sleeping.”

::
he took them upon the mountain, and shewed them all the kingdoms of the Wall, and they were sore amazed
::

“It is a strange power you hold.”

“I do not hold it.” Her tone was absent as she peered over the rail. “I only use it.”

“Still, here we are.”

Kitchens tromped back to them, his face almost purpling. “I will not go ashore as an armed party!”

Martins followed close behind. “I do not propose to attack a royal palace, sir, but it is madness to land unexpected and have no response if we are met in force. Guns in hand will at least allow you time to negotiate.”

Paolina glared at them. “What is this business with men and guns? Will you never lay down your arguments?”

“We sail unannounced into the heart of the Empire.” Kitchens’ voice was thick with frustration. “To arrive armed for attack only perpetuates the treason.”

::
a king in madness is no more the man of his throne than a beggar who shouts murder in the streets of dawn
::

“There is no treason here,” Boaz responded. “There is only need and action.”

The clerk shook his head. “Admiralty will never see it that way. Whitehall neither. This is an
enemy
vessel.”

“I have caused the banner to be slung,” Paolina said.

Kitchens whirled. “Where was I?”

“Arguing over guns.” She added, “It is still furled, but we will drop the cloth on our descent.”

The final design was a length of white with a golden crown and the letters “UK” sewn upon it. That signified nothing in particular but seemed likely to be perceived as non-Chinese. Doubt was important right now, in the minds of the defenders of Blenheim Palace.

Boaz had been given to understand that anyone charged with the safety of the Queen could not afford uncertainties. He had not raised the question. This was a fool’s errand at its best, taken on from loyalty rather from any rational expectation of success.

The Paolina–al-Wazir voice spoke up, almost all the old sailor’s now that she was here in person.
Laddie, you’ve done well, but I ken you’ll be doing little more
.

::
the majesty of the Lord shines forever, no matter whose hand lifts the ark from the altar
::

“I did not mean to start a war,” he said, “but I do mean to stop it.”

Paolina touched his arm. “You did not begin this madness.”

“We all did,” he told her. “The fighting commenced in East Africa, when they came for you, then strengthened when the Chinese returned. I had no small part in that.”

“Could you have stopped them then?”

It had not even occurred to Boaz to try. First he had been running; then he had been obsessed with the Sixth Seal. “I might have acted differently.”

She turned away, looking over the rail. “We should begin our descent.”

“Armed!” shouted Martins.

“I will not have it,” Kitchens shouted back.

::
coming dressed as traders in small goods and animal hides, they hid away their swords beneath the blankets of their mules
::

“Then let them carry small arms concealed,” Boaz said. “You British always have some pistols aboard; surely the Chinese do as well. Do not threaten, but be prepared. To come this far, then throw away any chance that might aid you in reaching the Queen, seems simple foolishness to me.”

The clerk stared, breathing hard. “Pistols, then. Holstered. No one fires or threatens except at my word.”

“Aye aye, sir.” The petty officer huffed from his own oxygen pot, then clattered away.

“We descend,” Boaz told the pilot. “More oxygen all around; it does not matter now if we run out. Unfurl the banner.”

Levine rang for emergency descent, which would release hydrogen from the cells. They could not fly away so well from Blenheim Palace, but it did not seem to Boaz as if that was a likely future for
Stolen
anyway.

She looked at the countryside hurtling toward her and wondered if these people considered their land pretty. The stark beauty of the ocean was hers, the ever-present dark line of the Wall in the north, the musical clattering of the clockwork sky at midnight, the colors and sounds and shrieks of the jungle at dawn. This place was green, in a slightly dusty way, but the land had a sameness that disturbed her Southern heart.

The sorceress closed her eyes and imagined herself once more in the Silent World. It was closed to her now, with the loss of her
wa
and her distance from the Wall. She had ceased to struggle against the separation, though she mourned it.

Was this what had troubled the world, before she set out from the city? A knowledge that the end was coming all too fast, that a group of madmen in a stolen airship would drive with all their might toward the overthrow of one of the two great thrones of Northern Earth?