The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (9 page)

Candice rapped her knuckles on the painted wood desk in the lobby of the inn, startling the prim woman hunched behind it feverishly examining calculations in a ledger.

The woman dropped a pencil into the spine and, closing the book with a snap, looked up at the professor. “Good day, madam. Checking in?” she said pleasantly as she stood, reaching for a thin red book labeled
Reservations
in flowery gold script.

“No. Checking out,” Candice replied. “Please be so kind as to evict Mr. and Mrs. Fenimore Dulal. They are late.” Candice bit out the last of these words through lips pinched so tightly, they nearly disappeared altogether. “Send a bellboy and collect their things immediately.”

The woman, mouth open in surprise, shuffled her lean form around the desk and waved conspiratorially, leaning her head down to speak in hushed tones to Candice.

“Can’t ma’am, as they aren’t here. At least I don’t think so. Their suite hasn’t been touched in two days. They just up and vanished.”

Candice’s eyes first narrowed in disbelief, then widened in shock. “Show me the room,” Candice demanded.

The woman nodded and fished a ring of keys out of the desk drawer and jingled them nervously as she led Candice out a side door and onto a gray boardwalk swept smooth by countless seasons of wind and sand. As they twisted through the various intersections and diverging paths, she called bits of information back to Candice. “The housekeeper cleaned the room, changed the linens and whatnot, then the next day, not a soul had touched a thing. Unusual, but not unheard of. People meet people, visit in town, stay out all night dancing, take a pleasure jaunt with local guides—day turns into night, and the maid catches a break on her daily chores. But they were to check out hours ago, and the housekeeper says still no presence in the room. Sometimes people check in and say they are planning on staying several days, and then slip away early so they don’t have to pay the bill, but the Dulals, their suite was paid for in advance. It’s a bit peculiar. And now you come saying they were to meet you? I think perhaps there is more at play here than a visit in town.”

The woman stopped at the last door on the boardwalk, one labeled
Honeymoon Suite
. Candice nervously tapped the delicate toe of her shoe on the boards as her guide jingled and tried several keys in the lock.
Something at play indeed.
Candice glanced around impatiently, trying very hard to part with the futile idea of just pushing the woman aside and kicking at the honeymoon suite door until it opened. It was then that she noticed the bit of singed parchment half buried in the sand just off the narrow walkway.

Candice stepped onto the sand and snatched up the scrap. She could make out only a few words between the holes burned into the brittle paper, words written in a hand she didn’t recognize: “Dear Mrs. D . . . Kite’s Republic Intelligence Service . . . Kotal Verdu . . . departing for Tugrulia.”

Oh, this is bad
, Candice thought as the jingle of keys stopped and the sound of the door opening interrupted her terror.

“Here we are,” the woman from the lobby said as she gazed into the suite. When her guest did not pass her, the receptionist turned to see the professor running at full speed back down the boardwalk.

Fenimore skulked through the kitchen of the transport ship, stuffing his pockets with bits of salted meat, prunes, shelled nuts, and dry beans. He was not sure why he was doing it. He had not felt like eating in days, and only did so at the urging of the little voice in his head, the one that sounded so much like his old drill sergeant.
Gotta stay strong, soldier; gotta be prepared. It’s not about your hunger, it’s about being strong for the mission
.

The mission. Fenimore was driven now only by finding his target and making his objective. He was meant to follow orders, and to execute them at all cost. He vaguely remembered that other things used to drive him: friendship, loyalty, morality, gratitude, love. He winced as his thoughts quickly backpedaled on that word. No time for that now.
Don’t think of her or you’ll crack up, be blubbering to yourself in an open cell again
. The warring parts of his mind struggled for a moment, but the soldier won, as he always did.

Fenimore was rock steady as he climbed onto the deck of the ship and marched toward the bow. The air was thick with dark clouds, perfect cover for what Fenimore was about to do. The ship’s captain stood alone at the leading rail of the ship, where he held a single parachute. The Madman frightened even him, and none of the other men aboard could bring themselves to stand beside their leader as he helped their lone passenger disembark.

The captain started to relay what he thought was vital information to Fenimore as he strapped on his parachute: their location, altitude, wind conditions below the ship, likely weather for the next few days in the region. To each fact, Fenimore gave a nod of understanding, a nod that flashed dead eyes at the captain. The lack of humanity behind those eyes spurred the captain to talk faster, rushing to the end of his briefing, hastening to get this walking bringer of death off his ship.

Fenimore slid one leg over the railing and turned to face the captain one last time as he pulled himself over. He looked at the captain as though he was waiting for something.

“Good luck?” the captain guessed, but Fenimore’s face remained unchanged.

After a long minute, Fenimore said, “I’m waiting for any extraction instructions you have for me.”

The captain thought for a second on how to respond, and he finally let his sympathies for the younger man override his fear of him. “I’m sorry, son,” he said in a whisper, “I have none.”

A corner of Fenimore’s mouth curled up in something close to a smile. “That’s what I thought,” he said as he let go of the rail and disappeared into the swirling clouds.

She could not keep her eyes off the sky for very long.
Wonderful
was not a good enough word, in Chenda’s opinion, to describe the smell of the sea air. There was something about the scent of the ocean that affected her, almost seduced her.

Hours had passed since she had forced
The Poor Man’s Bounty
into the sea, and her power was starting to recover, itching its way between each and every cell in her body, wriggling there, waiting and wanting to be released. She could feel the entirety of the sea beneath her, and the vastness of the sky above. Each element was enormous beyond comprehension and, there on the surface of the water, the separation between them was so thin, and yet so unyielding. The balance of it was strangely complete. It was extraordinarily powerful.

Precisely between the two massive elements, Chenda could feel them fighting like children for attention. The struggle created something akin to static, crackling in little shocks, like rubbing a cat’s fur on a dry winter day. She found it hard to focus fully on one element or the other, especially with her power building. Soon, perhaps within an hour or so, she would have to let some of it go, which was fine with her: the faster she could move to the east, the more quickly she could find Fenimore and make him safe. She dared to think for a moment that if she was lucky, they might catch word of Verdu. She hardly cared if she had to sort through every man, woman, and child in Kotal—she was going to find her man . . . her men . . . and bring them both home.

Her mind scanned the sky again, feeling the airship-shaped voids. At the moment, there were too many ships up there for her to be able to guess which one held Fenimore. After all, they were still close to the republic, and it was a big damn sky. Furthermore, she was not sure she would recognize the ship that had taken him, as she had not actually seen it, and could guess little about it. How big was it? How many souls aboard? If she had known one or the other of those things, she might just have been able to pick out the right ship, even from a hundred miles away. The sky was too full of ships, and her senses were drawn back to the sea, and her own ship.

Trygan casually took up residence at the helm and held the
Bounty
on a course due east. His hands kept firm to the wheel and he stood waiting for the next instruction. Chenda was in no hurry to give it. She had nothing to say to Trygan, and she trusted him not even a little.

She tried to distract herself from the enormity of sea and sky by examining her unease with his character. After several minutes of thinking, she boiled it down to the bidders on the dock. Although some of those men had made it a point to bid up the price of Trygan’s boat for him, none had seemed interested in helping him
keep
the ship or get it out of hock. There were no men standing there
with
him, taking his side. They respected him, but were definitely not friends with him. Chenda had begun to believe in the power of true friends over the last few months. Her friends had followed her and selflessly aided her on her journey through Tugrulia. Having friends for the first time was like living life for the first time. Trygan seemed to be a man without friends, and that was a very bad sign.

As the sun made its way across the sky, her power slowly refilled and itched through her again. She turned from the mast and walked to the helm.

“Well, well,” Trygan said, brushing the back of his hand across the end of his smooth nose. “I thought your feet had taken root in the deck at the mast. Here to move me on? I can turn us back toward the shore if you’re done with your test cruise.”

Chenda snorted her disapproval, both of his words and his mocking tone. She put one finger on his exposed forearm and thought her own words directly into his mind.

East. Steady as she goes
.

“
Whoa!”
Trygan leaped backward, ripping his hands from the wheel and away from Chenda’s touch. The wheel spun counterclockwise, and the
Bounty
turned slightly northward as the sails began to flap. Trygan slapped his arm a few times as if trying to brush away her words. Chenda rolled her eyes and turned the wheel to right the course of the ship.

“How did you do that?” Trygan demanded. Chenda ignored him as she gathered the force of the air around her and held it, focusing it on the sail of the
Bounty
and the stern of the ship itself. As she began the slow release of what she hoped would be a long and useful push to the stern of the ship, she warned Trygan, “Hang on, because I won’t be coming back for you if you tumble into the water.”

The ship rushed forward as the sails pulled hard on the mast. Chenda focused the pushing wind squarely on the small boat, and the
Bounty
moved faster and faster. Trygan had flattened himself to the deck and was clinging to a cleat so as not to slide backward across the smooth wood. “How are you doing this?” he screamed over the wind. Chenda, her short hair dancing on her head, said, “Busy now.” She panted with the strain of her focus. “Tell you later.”

Chenda pushed the
Bounty
along for another twenty minutes or so, and was drenched in sweat when she had expended her power. Letting the power out slowly like that, rather than letting it fly out in one big burst, always felt like trying to pick up a brick while doing a handstand. It just wasn’t natural or easy.

Trygan peeled himself off the deck and inched his way over to Chenda. She could see that he could do little more than stand there with his mouth hanging open.

Chenda shrugged. “I gathered the wind around the ship to push both the sails and the boat itself in a very focused way. Force overcame inertia and we moved. Rather fast.”

“Do it again,” he demanded.

“I will, as soon as I can. I don’t have unlimited power; it has to build up, and then I release it. I’m in rather a hurry, and am chasing an airship, so I have a lot of miles to get behind me.”

Trygan thought for a minute and then asked, “When do you think you can let me off this boat? I have a feeling that I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”

Chenda chuckled, thinking the feeling was mutual, but a polite upbringing kept her from saying it. “I’m happy to drop you at any port we pass.”

Trygan was silent for a time, but as darkness fully settled, he started to ask her questions: What could she do with her power? How long did it take to build again? How was it that she could put words into his head? Had she always been able to do this? How had it happened to her?

She replied to his questions one by one with simple answers that were not overly embellished with emotion or details. He grunted acceptance at her responses, even though his eyes registered only surprise. There were long silences through the night, each thinking deeply their own thoughts.

Near dawn, Chenda prepared to push her boat ahead again. Her mind checked the air for ships, but there were none nearby. She checked the water as well, but, aside from a few deep reefs and the odd long sunken atolls, they were alone in the wide blue sea.

She pushed again, as long and hard as she could, and
The Poor Man’s Bounty
slipped along the surface of the Kohlian Sea faster than ever before. Afterward, Chenda panted from the effort and leaned against the wheel. Trygan stepped next to her and asked, “All that power is spent?”

She thought the question a little odd, and something in the way he said it sounded off to her. It was not what Candice or Fenimore would have asked after she had used her power. They always had a variation on
Are you all right?
But she answered him anyway. “Yes. I’ll regather my strength while the wind moves us along the old fashioned way for a while.”

“Ah,” he said. “I can take the wheel if you want to catch your breath.” He held his hands out as if he were offering to hold a baby. Chenda shrugged and stepped away from the helm. She turned to the rail and looked at the sea to the south. In a moment she was lost in her own thoughts.