The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (7 page)

“
I’m on my own,” she answered.

Trygan laughed out loud, and Chenda crossed her arms over her chest with a huff. His laughter broke off. “Lady, you don’t look like you know a thing about sailing. You think you can handle the
Bounty
by yourself on the first run with her? You’re foolish at best. You need an experienced crewman to help man the sail on this girl, or you’ll be back here paying ’Rilla to patch her up again.”

“
Maybe,” Chenda said as she climbed up on the web of ropes that held
The Poor Man’s Bounty.
As she slung a leg over the railing surrounding the deck, she pulled her power up and focused on the water of the Kohlian Sea just a few yards ahead of the ship.

She drew up a column of water, which snaked across the sand toward the keel of the
Bounty
. The water rose steadily around the boat, until the cradle of ropes holding it slacked and then pulled taut again in the other direction, buoyancy replacing gravity. Chenda turned her attention from water to fire. A tongue of flames leaped from her hand, sparked by the vein of iron that Fenimore had worked into her wedding ring. She guided the fire to burn through the restraining ropes. The seawater, now released from Chenda’s power, rushed back down the shore, pulling the little ship along. Chenda grabbed control of the water again and held the
Bounty
high over the sand, not wanting to risk any punctures to the hull. In a moment, Chenda was on the sea, facing east, and totally depleted of her power. She slumped to the smooth boards of the ship’s deck, panting.

chapter 6

Changing course

With each sentence, Verdu wrote smaller letters and crammed the words closer together. The charcoal scribbling completely covered both sides of the ragged cloth. Unwilling to write around a greasy spot, he spent several minutes washing the stain with his own saliva, sucking on the bits of fat and meat drippings until it came clean, or as close to clean as his resources allowed. Still, writing with an instrument as blunt as a charred skewer meant micrography was a challenge to say the least, and he very quickly ran out of space.

And he did not consider himself even close to done.

Unfortunately, it could not be helped at the moment. The room had grown stuffy around him as he worked into the heat of the afternoon. He hobbled to the window, and pressed his head against the carved stone. It was another bustling day in the marketplace below. The corner merchant had bananas today. Bananas.
What hypocrites
, he thought. The wealthy priests loved their delicacies, their fresh mangoes and bananas, apricots and peaches. Mae-Lyn traders were allowed to bring those fruits into the capital city, but elsewhere, farther inland? No, never. The Tugrulians sat on a ton of precious stones and minerals that could easily be traded with the Mae-Lyn and the West for food and supplies, but where would the power or advantage be in that? Hungry people were easier to keep under their thumbs.

The priests from the temple and servants from the palace circulated through the marketplace as Verdu watched. He observed them mostly with an air of disinterest, until he noticed a shape he recognized. Wrapped head to toe in an unnatural shade of orange, almost no one would be able to differentiate one woman from the next, but he could just see it, the confidence in her steps. There was a sureness there, a defiance. She was playing the part of a proper and fashionable Tugrulian woman, but he knew the difference. He knew
her
.

Verdu drank in the essence of that woman far below. Seeing her lifted his isolation. Through the veils hiding her from the eyes of the fruit sellers and spice merchants surrounding her, he imagined the contours of her full, round face, and he could almost hear the lilting cadence of her voice as she went through the stalls, rejecting prices, sniffing the produce, brushing her fingertips across the various packets of mushrooms and herbs. He scrambled onto his knees, his bad leg protesting at the sudden shift in weight, and pressed his face to the warm stone of the window’s restraining latticework. He screamed again and again, “Ahy-Meeeeeeee!”

The
Bounty
bobbed as the water around it settled back into place. The smell of the sea filled Chenda’s nose. The next step, as best she figured, was to hoist a sail, and as her power built up again, she would help the boat move faster than it normally would. She reasoned she could go just about as fast as an average airship that way, and it could not be dissimilar to what she had done on the
Brofman
when she and Fenimore had returned with Candice from Tugrulia months ago. At the moment, standing and finding which ropes to pull to set the sails seemed more daunting that picking up a mountain. She trembled in her exhaustion.

The
Bounty
was drifting out to sea, which was a fine direction as far as Chenda was concerned. Getting closer to Fenimore’s ship heading to Tugrulia, of course, was her goal.

Wilting there on the ship, she realized that the effort of pulling it into the water the way she had was going to cost her, and for a good while, too. Pushing her power that hard made her feel like a wrung-out sponge, and with her body so stubbornly refusing to be refreshed through rest, she was bound to suffer for some time. The tendons in her neck and shoulders pulsed like the wings of a butterfly just escaping its chrysalis, crystallizing into something both rigid and fragile. Just as a butterfly would find it impossible to scoop water with its long and delicate new wings, Chenda suspected that simply grasping the wheel to steer the ship might just do her in, never mind fiddling with the sails. Not that she had much of a clue about boats anyway. She figured it could not be too much different from an airship, possibly even easier, as ships generally did not have to change altitude.

She crawled backward until she found a handhold on the mast and pulled herself to standing, then her momentum ran out. Holding herself steady there, she focused on her breathing and concentrated on not sliding back down the great trunk and onto the deck. Waves of nausea rolled over her but had nothing to do with the motion of the boat in the calm sea.
So very tired
. . .

A splatter of water hit her from behind. Still clutching the mast, she turned her head slowly and saw Trygan pulling himself over the rail with one arm while grabbing his ankle with the other, cursing a blue streak as he struggled upward and wrestled to get loose from a net of ropes and seaweed.

“You!” he shouted as he flopped onto the deck. He twisted and writhed his way free from the stringy mess and flapped his arms, spraying seawater in droplets across the pale wood and canvas of
The
Poor Man’s Bounty
. Taking a step toward Chenda, who still pressed her forehead against the mast as if she were glued there, anger, confusion, wonder, and fear formed and reformed across his face. If she could have found the energy to laugh, Chenda would have giggled at Trygan, who seemed to be trying to move in two directions at once. His hands reached toward her as if to throttle her, and his feet preferred to run away.

They stood there for several minutes in silence, each taking the measure of the other. Trygan chose to break the stalemate. “Decide a little faster, lady. We’re gonna drift into a sandbar in a minute, and then you’ll be high and dry again.”

Chenda moaned as she looked around the waters surrounding the boat. She could not see what Trygan warned against, but she hardly knew what to look for. Clinging to the mast by her fingernails, she was afraid to let go, nearly certain that if she tried to walk the few steps to where she could pilot the ship, she would sink back to the decking. Trygan, seeing her hesitation, brushed past her to the wheel and spun it to the left. He then pulled a few ropes to bring up the mainsail, which filled with air as the small ship began to dart eastward, away from the coast.

Ahy-Me sighed. She rarely doubted Pranav Erato, but lately she was sure the old coot had lost his marbles.

I heard that
, Pranav Erato thought at her.

I’m sure you did. Why don’t I get to sit back at the deep cave and think snide retorts at
you
as you walk through the central market, surrounded by every enemy we have, and wait for the prince of self-pity to guess it’s
you
, huh?
she thought at him.

Oh, that’s simple, my dear. I’m far too bony to pull off that dress
. Pranav Erato’s mind tinkled with laughter. Ahy-Me smiled a little in spite of herself. He knew too well already how frightened she was, no matter how bravely she set out for the market each day. She knew his mind nearly as well as he did. The connection between them was only bearable to her because his spirit was so jolly. She counted herself very lucky in that regard. The climate in Ahy-Me’s head was a bit more intemperate, and of late, it had been bordering on stormy. She was quick to argue and lose her temper, and her thoughts seemed to scatter disproportionately quickly compared to the time it took to collect them in the first place. Where she tended to jump directly to defensive thoughts, he was much more calculating and willing to take the time to look at things from all sides.

From the day they had met, the connection had remained between them. The strength of it waxed and waned, but it was always there, so long as they were close enough together. Pranav Erato could speak with anyone mind to mind if he was touching them; it was only with Ahy-Me that the link worked over a distance, but never more than a mile or so. When she spent time dwelling on how this unique connection worked, about why she and only she was anchored to him in this way, the pranav would interrupt her, simply thinking at her
, Who cares why it works, it just does! So let’s get on with it.

It was hard to argue with such logic, especially in the complete absence of any facts or theories. However, after days of wandering through the market, listening to the arrogant babble of the various political and religious underlings, each trying to out-pompous the next, she was no closer to finding specifics on Verdu. He had to be in or near the palace somewhere, and she hoped she could pick up a hint about his condition or location from at least one of these gossiping windbags. But . . . nothing? It seemed impossible that no one knew a thing.

Pranav Erato just wanted her to be there and circulate. “You were trained to be a spy, so here’s your chance!” he said to her, as if she had not in fact flunked out of the Tugrulian covert surveillance training school. It was flattering, the faith the pranav had in her. Misguided, perhaps, but there was a thrill in hiding in plain sight.

She decided to take another lap around the marketplace, eyeing a group of young priests near a stall selling bananas. They looked to be having a hushed argument, and she started toward them, hoping to pick up some information—anything useful at all—when she heard someone calling her name. Her feet stuttered for just a moment, and she diverted to the nearest stall. She picked up a bundle of stringy herbs and, waving back the pushy merchant, she held the bunch up as if to examine it the bright sunlight. Her eyes scanned the buildings around her. The glowing walls and towers, pockmarked with slit windows and latticed apertures, hinted nothing as to the location of the caller. The darkness within the buildings hid everything and everyone.

The shout came again, and Ahy-Me quickly brought the bundle of herbs to her nose, seemingly checking for freshness as she lifted her eyes to a tower along the palace wall. She saw a small square of cloth flapping from a pair of long fingers poking through the ornately pierced stonework. She knew that voice. She had heard it in her dreams most nights since the day they parted. The beat of her heart nearly drummed out all other sounds from the market, and she sighed her relief.

Well done
, Pranav Erato chimed in her head.
You found him, my wonderful girl
.

chapter 7

Chapter and verse

Candice was an impatient woman; luckily, Captain Endicott knew that. It hardly surprised him that waiting for Chenda and Fenimore at the air dock in Musser Point would irritate her. A lot. Ten minutes past the hour appointed for the newlyweds’ return to the
Brofman
, with no sign of the lovebirds, Candice stomped her little foot with as much force as she could muster, and turned on Captain Endicott.

“How rude!” she said, her voice ripping through two octaves. “Don’t they know we have a schedule to keep?” she snapped. “Go get them!”

The captain looked at his petite passenger and weighed his options. It was generally considered poor form for a ship’s commander to hunt down tardy crewmen. Discipline was the role of the first officer, and after that, the second. But Fenimore, being the first, well, it was beyond belief for him to be absent at a docking appointment. Having neither the heart nor the manpower to name a replacement for Verdu, Captain Endicott lacked a second officer to send as well. Next in command was Germer, and he just never left the
Brofman
. The captain imagined the poor fellow would be struck ill immediately with land sickness if his foot ever touched an airslip.

No matter how much he adored Candice, he didn’t want to set a precedent for taking orders from his wee professor. It didn’t seem right. Unmanly, as it were.