The Aeronaut's Windlass (29 page)

“True,” Bridget said. “But those are . . . they’re weapons and ships. Of course they do that. They design and build devices to a function. It’s what they do.”

“My point is that an etherealist does the same sorts of things, miss. It’s just that he skips the troublesome part in the middle.”

Bridget found herself smiling. “Oh,” she said. “Is that all he does?”

Grimm winked at her.

“Are they dangerous?” she asked.

He was silent for a moment before he said thoughtfully, “Anyone can be dangerous, Miss Tagwynn. Etherealist or not.” He smiled at her, but then his face sobered. “But between the two of us, I think they are capable of more than we know. For myself, I think it wise to keep a very open mind.”

They had walked down the length of the shipyard as they spoke, and had come to a large boarding ramp that led up to an airship.

“Captain Grimm,” Bridget asked, “is this your vessel?”

“Aye,” Grimm replied, unmistakable pride in his voice. “This is
Predator
, Miss Tagwynn. I take it you have not been aboard an airship before?”

Bridget shook her head, staring up. “I’ve never even seen one.”

Predator
was, Bridget thought, rather impressive. The main body of the ship seemed to be a large and oddly contoured half tube suspended between three rounded towers that rose up at either end of the ship and in her very middle. Folded along her flanks were a number of bundled rods of some kind that looked like they could be folded out, and old-style canvas cloth hung from them—sails, she realized, made to be extended horizontally, along the ship’s flanks. Other masts had been folded against her belly, which was held clear of the stone of the shipyard by heavy struts that supported the vessel’s weight. And, she saw, two more masts on the ship’s main deck rose up above the ship, their yardarms spread, with more sails reefed against them. Running up the length of both masts were large metal rings that encircled twisted lengths of ethersilk sail—the ship’s etherweb.

Most airships she had read about had steam engines in place as their secondary propulsion system. The only ships that favored sails were those operated by the fleets of very poor Spires—or by scoundrels, such as pirates, smugglers, and the like, who were willing to dare the dangers of the mists rather than sail in open skies.

Positioned all around the vessel, at the bases of the masts, she could see large reels lined with the netlike woven ethersilk webs that harnessed the etheric currents that would drive airships faster than any other transport in the world. She understood the principle simply enough. The more webbing one let out of the reel, the more etheric energy it could catch, and the faster it would drive the ship forward. Of course, the web had to be charged with electricity in order for it to function, so airships were limited in the amount of web they could charge by the strength of their power cores.

And there were the weapons.

The gun emplacements protruded bulbously from the ship’s deck, the copper-barreled cannon snouts nosing out from a costly rotating ball assembly that would allow the gun crews to swing the cannon forward and aft as well as up and down. She had no way to judge how large the weapons were in comparison to others of the breed, but they certainly looked formidable.

One of the gun emplacements, Bridget noted, was simply missing. There were a number of freshly cut boards around it, suggesting that it had been damaged in some fashion, necessitating the removal of more wood in order to provide a stable platform to replace the missing assembly.

And the entire ship, she realized, was made of wood, so much wood that it beggared her imagination. She remembered how proud her father had been when they had been able to afford the polished wooden service counter at the vattery, and how careful he was to clean and maintain it. It had cost a week’s profit for enough wood to build a counter ten feet long and three feet wide.

And
Predator
, Bridget realized, was a dozen times that length, and as high as a two-story house.
All
of it wood.

There were men on the ship, moving all over it. Men carrying crates and bags up the boarding ramp, men on lines hanging down the side of the ship, applying oil to her hull, men atop the towers, men climbing the masts and working with the reefed sails, men scrubbing down the deck, men inspecting the weapon emplacements, men coiling costly ethersilk webbing more neatly onto its reel.

There was a small army aboard this vessel, Bridget realized, each of them performing some kind of specific task. And it was a good thing there
were
so many of them. They might not have survived the confrontation in the tunnel without the aeronauts, whatever Gwendolyn seemed to think.

“If you will excuse me, Miss Tagwynn,” Captain Grimm said. “There are many things to which I must attend before we can leave.”

Bridget inclined her head. “Of course, sir.”

He nodded and bowed slightly at the waist. “Someone will be down momentarily to show your party where to go.” He ascended the ramp, weaving between several men carrying various burdens without missing a step.

Rowl was staring up at the ship, his eyes intent, tracking motion, his ears pulled to quivering attention, straight forward. “Littlemouse,” he said. “That looks interesting.”

“Not too interesting, I trust,” Bridget said. “Airships are quite dangerous, you know.”

“Dangerous,” Rowl said, contempt dripping from the word. “For humans, perhaps.”

“Don’t be foolish,” she said. “There could be any number of hazards in there. Machinery, electrical wiring, weaponry—if you go exploring, you might find something that could hurt you.”

“If one doesn’t, one is not truly exploring,” Rowl replied. “But since you worry so badly, and since I know you will not stop speaking of it, regardless of how foolish you sound, I will remain near you—to make sure that
you
do not run afoul of hazards aboard the ship, of course.”

“Thank you,” Bridget said.

“But those tall . . . ship-trees, standing up on top.”

“We call them masts,” Bridget said. She had to use the human word for them. The tongue of the cats had the occasional shortcoming.

“Ship-trees,” Rowl said in an insistent tone. “Those interest me. I will climb them.”

“All the way up there?” Bridget asked. She felt slightly dizzy just thinking of the view from the mast tops. “It seems unnecessary.”

Rowl turned his head and gave her a level look. Then he said, “I sometimes forget that you are just a human.” He flicked his ears dismissively and looked back up at the masts. “A cat would understand.”

“Just so long as the cat doesn’t fall,” she said.

Rowl made a growling sound, an expression of displeasure that needed no special skill to understand. Bridget smiled. She couldn’t help it. The little monster was so full of himself that she couldn’t help but tease him from time to time.

She hugged Rowl gently and rubbed her nose against the fur on his head.

Rowl growled again—but with much less sincerity.

Suddenly there was a presence beside her, and Bridget looked up to see that the etherealist’s apprentice was standing next to her. The girl with the oddly colored eyes stared up at the ship—but not, Bridget noted, at the features to which her own eyes had been drawn. Instead, the girl seemed to stare intently at the featureless planks of
Predator
’s flanks, and left Bridget with the slightly unsettling impression that the girl’s mismatched eyes were peering straight through the wood.

“Oh, my,” the girl said, ducking her head enough to make it clear that she was speaking to the jar of expended lumin crystals she still held cradled in one arm. “Have you ever seen one like that?”

“Beg pardon, miss?” Bridget said politely.

“Oh, they’re talking to me again,” the girl told the jar. “Why must people always talk to me when I leave the house?”

Bridget blinked several times at her response. What did one do in such a situation? It seemed unthinkable that they should stand together looking at such an impressive creation and not carry on some sort of polite conversation.

“I . . . I’m afraid I don’t know your name, miss. We are to be working together, it seems. My name is Bridget Tagwynn, and this is Rowl.”

The girl smiled and said to the jar, “This is Bridget Tagwynn and Rowl, and we’re to be working together.”

Bridget frowned. The girl’s response had not been rude, precisely. It had simply been so disconnected from the situation that etiquette utterly failed to apply. “May I know your name, please?”

The girl sighed. “She wants to know my name, but I’m simply awful at introducing myself. Perhaps I should tattoo ‘Folly’ on my head and then people can just read it.”

“Folly,” Bridget said. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Folly.”

“She seems very sweet,” Folly told the jar. “I’m sure she means well.”

Rowl said, “This girl has too many things in her head, I think.”

Folly replied, “Oh, the cat is right. All the things I’ve forgotten plus all the things I haven’t. I keep forgetting over which ones I need to throw a dust tarp.”

Bridget blinked again. Before she left the vattery, she could have counted on one hand the number of people she’d met who actually understood Cat. She glanced down to find Rowl staring into infinite distance, exhibiting no reaction. Bridget knew the cat well enough to know that he had not been surprised.

Gwendolyn and Benedict caught up to them, finally, with Benedict staying close to a bemused Master Ferus’s side.

“. . . simply saying,” Benedict said, “that perhaps you could have gained the guard’s cooperation without resorting to threatening to arrest him for impeding an inquisition.”

Gwendolyn frowned. “Ought I have threatened to charge him with treason, do you think? That one bears the death penalty.”

Benedict gave his cousin a rather hunted look. “Gwen, you . . . I don’t even . . . I can’t possibly . . .” He shook his head, mouth open for a second.

A very small smile touched Gwen’s mouth, and her eyes sparkled.

Benedict sighed and shut his mouth again. “Touché. I’ll stop telling you how to do your job now, coz.”

“
Thank you
,” Gwen said.

Bridget smiled slightly at the exchange, and even Rowl seemed amused.

Not a minute later, a very tall young man, dark haired and square jawed, descended briskly from the ship and approached them dressed in an aeronaut’s leathers, his goggles hanging around his neck. He came to a stop before them, gave them a bow, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am Byron Creedy,
Predator
’s executive officer. Master Ferus, Captain Grimm has asked me to bring you and your party aboard at your earliest convenience.”

The old etherealist blinked and looked up from whatever private thoughts had preoccupied him. He looked the young man up and down, nodded, and said, “Convenient would have been yesterday. Now will suffice.”

Creedy arched a brow at this answer, but he bowed his head and said, “Then if you would all please follow me? Welcome aboard
Predator.
”

Chapter 22

AMS
Predator

G
wendolyn Lancaster looked around
Predator
with what she felt was well-earned skepticism. It seemed that in following the orders of the Spirearch, she had fallen in with scoundrels.

Oh, granted they had been fierce enough in battle—and granted that they had, in fact, quite possibly saved her life. Probably, even. But after asking a few questions of passing crewmen, she had determined that the help of Captain Grimm and his men had gone first to the Lancaster Vattery. Possibly that had been coincidence at work, but Gwen’s father put precious little store by such notions.

The crystals her family’s vattery produced were quite literally the most valuable resource in the world, the most expensive piece of equipment one could purchase. It seemed to strain coincidence that the captain of a ship in dire need of replacement crystals should happen to wander by the vattery. It seemed an equal stretch that he should then proceed to rescue the heir apparent of House Lancaster, purely by happenstance.