Pinion (55 page)

Surely war and revolution could not be what the world had wished for. Perhaps the skies had only cried to have this girl and her device removed from their purview. Southern Earth had wanted no part of this Northern problem.

Most likely, she was mistaken on all counts. Now she was lost in a place too distant to ever glimpse her home again.

Gashansunu was unsure that this ragtail crew managing an unfamiliar vessel would not simply slam them all into the earth. That would save the British defenders the trouble of killing them. Kitchens with his formless plan to break a throne was nothing more than a man driven past the edge of madness.

She was nothing more than a woman already at the same destination.

Around her, the sailors swirled, excited, crowding close, waiting to touch soil, to see how much trouble the toffs were truly in.

Humans never seemed to recall that they were made to die. Willful indifference was both their curse and their blessing. Her people did not lose sight of what was to come, not ever, but they folded that realization into their magic, their myth.

Dying here, far from her own
wa
, she was little more than a crying ghost to haunt the halls of this distant power.

At least she would see the girl Paolina to her fate, which was what she’d set out to do, with the blessing of Baassiia and at the request of omens circling high and low.

She wondered what omens circled now.

Blenheim Palace spiraled below, unmistakable as
Stolen
shed altitude much too quickly. The sailors pulled away from the rail and braced themselves for a rough landing. Only Boaz, Paolina, Gashansunu and the mad old man at the helm still stood.

They had certainly been noticed. Men were hastily assembling in the forecourt, and more crept out onto the roofs in ones and twos. Snipers, to oppose the enemy.

“One of the inner courts, if you can,” he shouted.

Paolina nodded and continued to stare downward.

Low, so low it seemed as if they would slam to earth in another moment, the ballast was released.
Stolen
bounced on the air, flinging upward hard perhaps two hundred feet. Kitchens was thrown down as someone screeched like a child at a midsummer carnival.

Engines roared.
Stolen
heeled over, turning across the rooftops. Rifle fire peppered, and somewhere nearby a cannon boomed. A chimney caught at their prow with a horrible splintering.

Stolen
bucked, nose dipping to make a ramp of the deck, then pulled free to plummet into a courtyard beyond.

More gunfire rattled. The gasbag erupted with an explosive farting noise.

“ ’Ware hydrogen!” someone shouted. Kitchens tried to jump overboard, but a settling of the tortured hull tossed him forward before he could make his own leap. He tumbled to a bed of autumn plantings, narrowly missing a piece of statuary. His pistol spun away into a stand of hydrangeas.

The clerk looked up to see the hull heeling dangerously, boards splintering. The gasbag seemed torn between settling with the ship or rising on some final adventure of its own.

More crew dropped overboard, landing around him with curses and howls, even as the shouts of the men on the rooftop echoed.

“Inside, now!” Kitchens shouted. “Move! We must reach Her Imperial Majesty!”

She jumped, tumbling toward the screaming clerk. Bullets cracked around her. Dirt fountained. Gashansunu ran, then stumbled, falling with a bloody bloom across her back. The petty officer scooped the Southern woman up, for all that she was a foot taller than he, as the crew ran in a thin tide toward a set of glass doors. A fellow in a dark suit stood within and screamed until Levine smashed through and threw him down.

Paolina raced after them, leaping over another bed of flowers as the glass began shattering with the impact of more bullets. She was in a sitting room, the screaming servant now a whimpering ball on the floor. Sailors bristled with pistols and makeshift weapons.

“The hallway beyond!” she shouted. “Away from the gunfire.”

The group retreated through double doors. A crackling noise echoed from outside.

“Gasbag’s ready to go up,” said the old pilot.

Paolina checked head count. Gashansunu lay on the floor, groaning. Kitchens leaned against the far wall, his breathing labored. The petty officer was shouting at him about guns.

She whirled.
Where was Boaz
? Paolina raced back into the drawing room to see the Brass man out in the garden. He staggered, then staggered again. Boaz was being hit by bullets from the rooftop.

To these Englishmen, he was an even greater enemy than the Chinese. A creature of the Wall, come before their Queen.

Out the shattered doors. Across the broken soil. Flames, crackling and acrid. The gasbag settled, mercifully blocking some of the lines of fire. Smoke issued from
Stolen
’s broken hull. The engines, or at least their fuel, burned.

Boaz stepped toward her. A deep dimple punctuated his face. Two more wounds puckered his chest. His left arm flailed, creaking and whirring.

She was at his side. The bullets seemed to have stopped, or at least Paolina noticed them no longer. Tugging at his right arm, she tried to lead him toward the safety of the building.

He resisted one step, then two. She heard more gunfire. That did not matter. Getting him away from the explosive hydrogen mattered.

Shouting. Soil fountaining. Swift lead fingers plucked at her clothing, raising a line of pain along her right thigh. Everything had gone wrong, horribly horribly wrong.

“Come
on
,” she shouted.

The Brass seemed to awaken to her voice. “I am here,” he croaked. Something was the matter with his voice box, and the words buzzed strangely.

“Inside.”

He followed as she tugged, stumbling as another bullet struck him in the back. Then they were through the broken doors, across the little room, and into the hall where the sailors were already diving to the floor. Levine grabbed Paolina’s ankle and tripped her. She fell hard, Boaz collapsing beside her. The world became noiselessly loud and burning-bright.

Figures stepped out of the darkness in a peculiar array, distorted by shadows and the colored light until he thought they might be a troop of demons. He drew a sharp, fearful breath, then forcibly reminded himself that this was not one of China’s temple graveyards.

A moment later, the light shifted, and he saw instead a line of people with tall masks like a festival processional. Their leaders wore feathers sweeping down from their faces to dangle low across their chests, brilliant displays of plumage.

“A Mask comes among us,” intoned one of the feather-faced demons.

“A Mask of the
avebianco
,” Childress replied, her voice firm and strong. Wang wondered what she might really be feeling in that moment.

The white birds gathered around her in a circle. “By whose authority was this Mask raised?”

“My own.”

It was the wrong answer. The processional stirred. Hands moved; steel slid almost noiselessly from twice a dozen sheaths.

“You carry no authority.” The shadows seemed deeper.

Childress glanced sidelong at Wang. She appeared worried, the first time he had seen her so. “There is ritual,” she said. Her tone did not betray her, whatever her inner thoughts. “I have come through fire and death. Not elevation by ritual.”

“Whose death?”

Even Wang could see her relief.

“I carry the authority of the Mask Poinsard,” the Mask Childress complained. She stepped close to her interlocutor. “I stand in her place now and forevermore, by right of blood.”

A murmur ran around the room. The tension did not relax, but neither did it tighten.

The feathered leader stepped forward, and in a much more ordinary voice asked, “What is your name, woman?”

“The Mask Childress.”

“So you were Poinsard’s Childress.”

“The Mask Childress,” she repeated firmly.

Now the gathered Masks relaxed. Wary, not on the point of violence.

“You are come aboard a most unusual vessel,” the interlocutor continued.

“Consider for yourself the meaning of that vessel, along with the fact that it sails at my command.” She gathered herself. “It is not the way of the
avebianco
to set all power on the wing, but I have been forced to such measures in my travels to reach you. I have visited the Golden Bridge project at Chersonesus Aurea. Now I bring word of what the Silent Order would accomplish there in partnership with the Dragon Throne.”

Wang started at that, but held his tongue. Whispering began among the assembled Masks.

She went on. “I have seen the beginnings of the war between England and China. It will be the death of far too many, and bring down our own ambitions as well. I have seen the stemwinder, that will change the order of the world. I have treated with men from Singapore to Port Said to set our council to finding the path to save us all. You will not gainsay me now, not after such trials. I am a Mask. Accept me, or never hear what I know.”

The Feathered Mask swirled and met the look of his fellows. One by one their faces emerged. They were demons no more, just men and women playing games of identity and purpose.

Wang was surprised to find his heart slowing.

“What say you, brothers and sisters?” asked the interlocutor.

Their whispers rose to a murmur, then a babble, speaking first to one another, then to their colleagues farther away.

Childress patiently awaited their response. Wang stepped close to her. Then the monk appeared, as if stepping from behind a pillar. The Englishwoman winced as silence infected the room.

“Greetings,” the monk called loudly in English. “I bear a message from the Jade Abbot.”

The interlocutor bowed low. “His Prominence has not sent word to us in over a century.”

“He would not now, except that the course of madness here on the Northern Earth has extended too far.” She flipped her pipe between her fingers. “Too far to be sensibly reversed on its own, it would seem.”

After a moment, the Feathered Mask stepped into the hanging question. “What is this message, oh monk?”

She leaned forward. Her pipe smoldered, though Wang had seen no spark. “In so many words, he has instructed me to tell you, and I quote, ‘Cease your fecking about.’ ”

“What?” Wang demanded, the word slipping out of him. He continued
recklessly. “The centennial wisdom is to ‘cease fecking about’!? I refuse to believe that.”

“I could rephrase it.” The monk grinned insolently as ever. “I could tell you that the hour grows late and hope dims, that the very fate of men and the Grand Design imposed upon us all hangs in the balance, and that without prompt, swift action on your part the future intended for us all will fail.”

“It would mean the same thing.”

“Sounds better,” Wang muttered.

Childress laid a hand on his arm, but he caught no warning glare from her.

The Feathered Mask seemed torn between laughter and red-faced anger. “He is never changed, the Jade Abbot. As it happens, we have been clever enough to understand that the world is transforming in some profound ways yet to be understood. There are too many engines, too many machines, and now a mechanism for bringing adept magic into the word has been built. This war is a symptom, not a cause, of change.”

The monk did not seem impressed. “The difference is that the Jade Abbot can create transformation of his own, should he deem that necessary. Better to solve your problems yourselves than to regret a solution imposed from far away.”

“It does not matter,” Wang said, ignoring Childress’ increasingly un-gentle tugs on his arm. “You all seek the same goal. Me, as well. The Mask Childress would stop this war; the
avebianco
would oppose the designs of the Silent Order; this Jade Abbot would restore balance to the world. You have
no argument
.”

Now he was beneath the full force of the gaze of the Feathered Mask. “Then what do you propose we do, servant?”

“You are the council of the
avebianco
,” he snapped. “I should hope that you are wiser than me. Direct your agents within both empires to ease military actions and accelerate whatever peace is under discussion. Send messengers to the Silent Order with assurances of cooperation and request further discussion.”
Childress, to be specific
. “Call a halt to the machinations, before the momentum proves too great to resist the processes of war. Surely you have read history?”

“This man speaks,” Childress finally said, “as an officer of the Chinese Empire, and an agent of the Silent Order.” Her tone asserted her claim to her authority. She gave Wang a strange smile. “His courage in traveling here to carry this message cannot be denied, nor his role in what must come next.”

“On this moment, on your bare word, we should leap headlong into action?” someone called from the ranks of the Masks.

Childress’ voice went hard. “If I am a Mask, then my bare word is sufficient. If you do not judge me a Mask, then why do we treat now?”