The Iron Thorn (14 page)

Captain Harry’s lips tightened until they nearly disappeared. “Tell me.”

“ ‘Fugitives on board. Bearing north-northwest, destination Arkham. Send reinforcements.’ ” Jean-Marc held the drum out to Harry. “Sent after we flew this night, boss. Someone on board, still on board.”

I shot a look at Cal, but he was rapt, his eyes on the captain. He didn’t seem to share my alarm.

Captain Harry’s massive hands changed to fists, so tight that his leather airman’s gloves popped their hand-stitched seams. “Thrice-damned Proctors. Voxed from
my
ship.”

Dean stood up. “Are the Proctors wise to this flight?”

I had the same question. If the Proctors knew where we were going, I might as well give myself up now. They’d be waiting when we landed in Arkham, and I’d be going somewhere that the Academy threatened us with when we got out of line.

It didn’t seem real.

“Harry,”
Dean snapped. “Answer me—Proctors, or no?”

Before Captain Harry could respond, a sound reverberated from the cockpit—the sound of a body striking glass. Alouette let out a shriek and her nails left a constellation of half-moons in the oxblood hide of her chair.

We turned to the cockpit as one and met the glaring gaze of a raven, its mangled gears and brass-boned wings spread across a cobweb of broken glass.

Beyond it, in the wind-tossed night sky, a dozen more sets of eyes sprang to life. I stared, unable for a moment to move, as if my heart and blood had turned to glass.

“Ravens!” Jean-Marc squeaked. “Boss—”

“It ain’t the ravens we got to worry about.” Captain Harry slotted himself into the pilot seat and pushed the throttles to full. “It’s their masters.”

A whine cut the low growling of the
Belle
’s fans, the sound of gears brought to life by coiled inertia. A winding engine, used by some jitneys, sleek British beetles that hugged the road, and warplanes.

Cal grabbed for me, but I evaded his hands deliberately and cycled the deck hatch, leaning over the rail to look toward the
Belle
’s six o’clock. Bouncing in the wake of the big ship like pilot fish, twin chrome gliders swooped like owls in the moonlight, matching the
Belle
’s speed.

“Buggies!” I shouted at Dean as the wind stole my breath. We were speeding so fast it felt like all of my skin was being stripped away by the wind and cold. “P-51 Mustangs!” The snub-nosed shape and the fixed wing were unmistakable.

The moon showed its face, gibbous as the eye of a Great Old One, and revealed to me twin black wings stamped on the Mustang’s noses.

I froze, caught out in the moonlight. I could even see the pilots, black leather caps and black goggles shielding their faces from the punishing air. I could see the long guns swiveling, coming to bear on the corpulent bulk of the
Belle
’s gas balloon.

Dean yanked me back through the hatch by my collar as the first line of lead cut loose from the Mustang’s guns. I fell against him, boneless for a moment, shock rendering me deadweight.

“Your buddy got one thing right,” Dean said, righting me. “To Proctors, these cats are pirates. And pirates get shot down.”

The
Belle
shook. Harry bellowed orders in French. Cal clutched his tie-down harness and squeezed his eyes shut.

“What do we do, Dean?” I grabbed the nearest rail as another volley ripped through the night, bouncing the
Belle
as if it were a toy.

“Ride it out. Or ride it down.” Dean grabbed my arm and dropped me into the seat next to Cal. “Strap in, miss.”

The
Belle
dipped and swayed, dancing with the air. I grabbed for Dean’s hand. It was the only solid thing I could reach, and just then I needed something solid very badly.

Cal shuddered as another burst from the Mustang’s guns rattled past the hull like knucklebones. “We shouldn’t be here,” he blurted. “We should land. We should land and turn ourselves in and beg for mercy. They won’t burn me if I give myself up … they won’t …”

I wanted to comfort him, but before I could say anything, Alouette was in front of us, clutching the cargo net. I saw the fury in her face first and then the pistol in her hand.

“The
Belle
lands for no Proctor.” Her voice was as cold as her eyes.

“Allie”—Dean held up a hand—“put that away. The kid’s just scared.”

“That better be all, or I’ll throw him out the hatch for the Proctors myself. I swear by the gears of this boat.”

“Leave Cal alone!” I snarled. “Maybe if you didn’t hire traitors we wouldn’t be in this mess!”

The pistol bounced toward me, and my next stream of invective died on my lips.
Never knew when to leave well enough alone …

“Alouette! Bluebird! I can’t fly this bastard ship alone!” Captain Harry bellowed, and saved us.

Alouette lowered her pistol, spun as if she were dancing ballet on the tilting deck and made her way forward, hand over hand on the cargo nets.

All I could concentrate on was not throwing up all over Dean as we lurched from side to side, shaken like dice in a cup.

The Mustangs rolled in concert and pulled up in front of the
Belle
’s bow, visible through the cockpit glass. The pilots were good, but one miscalculated his turn, and I saw him close enough to pick out the name stitched into his airman’s leathers.
Bowman
. The pilot turned his head, agonizingly slow, and stared right into the
Belle
’s cockpit as we rushed up at his plane.

Absurdly, I wanted to scream a warning to him.

Then time righted itself. The silver sky became a garden of orange fire-flowers, tangled in vines of smoke. The sound of screaming metal stabbed my ears as the prow of the
Belle
cut the Mustang in half and threw me against my harness, against Dean. His arms closed around me, kept me from falling or snapping my spine. I dug my fingers into his leather and held on.

Fire crowned the
Belle
now, and the night before us looked like Dresden rather than Arkham.

We fell. Like a bird with a lead shot in its heart, we fell
into the jaws of the waiting earth. Alouette, not strapped down or sitting, conversely flew to the ceiling, lips peeled back, her scream lost in the cacophony of everything else, human and mechanical, on board the
Belle
.

We fell, and the cruel mistress of the air took sight and sound from me, until all I could feel were Dean’s arms.

I woke hanging in space, my tie-down slicing my shoulders. The groan of rivets and the gentle hiss of hydrogen came in, and then, more slowly, the weight of my own body. It felt as if a giant had picked me up and thrown me far as he could, and I’d landed badly.

“Cal?” I croaked. Talking started a fire under my ribs. “Dean?”

“Cripes.” Dean groaned, swiping blood from his face. “That was a rough reentry, for sure.”

So he was all right. My chest loosened a bit. I swiveled as well as I could, and looked for Cal. He wasn’t there. “Cal! Cal, call out if you can hear me!”

“That …” Cal raised his head from a diaphanous blob of cargo netting and broken tie-down at the top of the cabin, which was now the bottom. He struggled to his feet, jaw muscles jumping when he put weight on his ankle. “That was a lot more … exciting than I expected. Can we please never do it again?”

“Are you all right?” I called to him. He nodded, after a moment of consideration.

“Alive. What matters, right?”

I examined my position. “That and getting out of this blasted harness.”

“No help for it,” Dean said, craning his neck at the wall of the hull. The
Belle
had shifted onto her side, and we were now strapped to the ceiling. “Gonna have to drop.” He jerked free of his harness and fell, landing and rolling. “Come on, Miss Aoife.” He beckoned. “The gasbag’s ruptured. One spark is going to light us up like Atlantic City.”

The inversion was beginning to dizzy me, squashing the fear I’d otherwise be feeling, and Dean’s face swam in front of my eyes. “If I land on my head, it’s going to be all your fault,” I told him, trying to shake my eyes back into focus.

He smirked, even as he stood on the wall of the crazily tilting
Belle
. “I’ll take that chance, miss.”

I shut my eyes against vertigo and then jerked on my straps. I didn’t fall straight down, like the graceful swans we girls were supposed to be in Academy dance classes. I tumbled, as Mrs. Fortune would have put it, arse over teakettle.

When I opened my eyes after the inglorious
thump
of my landing on the cargo nets, I found that I was staring into Alouette’s face.

“All His gears!” I gasped, scrambling away from her.

Alouette was entombed in an avalanche of boxes and netting, the veins in her skin like a road map on old paper. I tugged at her shoulders to free her, to no avail. Getting to my feet and gaining purchase, I yanked again, only to have the hot brand in my chest stab me again. I fell back, panting. “We have to get her out of there.” A few minutes ago I’d wanted to slug Alouette, and now the same impulse caused a fervor in me that made me yank uselessly at her body until my own gave out, bruised and battered as it was. Alouette hadn’t been polite, but no one deserved that plunging, screaming death.

Cal reached down, unzipped Alouette’s high leather collar and pressed his fingers against her neck. “She doesn’t have a pulse.”

“And you’re a surgeon now?” I demanded.

“I never thought I’d be saying this, but the kid’s right,” Dean said. He kicked at the exterior hatch, bowed badly on impact. “You ain’t strapped down, you don’t survive a handshake with the ground.”

“Say.” Cal exhaled a whistle. “She’s got a stigma.”

“What?” Surprised, I leaned over his shoulder and beheld the small white scar on Alouette’s breastbone. Stamped by a hot iron that left an indelible kiss, the puckered spot on her skin made me think of the heretic in Banishment Square.

“I thought only sailors and delinquents got these,” Cal said. He reached out to brush his fingers over the twin wings etched into the scar tissue, and I slapped his hand away.

“Cal, that’s disgusting. She’d dead!”

“They’re bird wings,” said Cal, his fingers traveling back to the spot like it was magnetized. He licked his lips. “You know, pirates used to get swallows tattooed on their skin. To help them find land again. Birds find land.”

“That’s no swallow’s wing,” Dean said, his expression darkening like thunderheads. “Now, she’s shuffled loose this here mortal coil and I don’t love the plan of getting roasted when the hydrogen blows, so let’s get into gear.” He kicked the hatch free at last. “We hoof it, we can still make Arkham by dawn. Proctors probably think we all died in this bang-up.”

Cal still crouched by Alouette. “Raven’s wings,” he said. “Only Proctors can wear a raven’s mark.…”

Professor Swan’s bleating about us turning in fellow students with contraband books and things like tarot cards or Ouija boards—heretical items—unspooled again in my head, along with one of his interminable lanternreels.
How We Fight! Joining the Bureau of Proctors
.

“She’s a spy.” The word tasted sour. All of the heretics I’d seen burned and hauled away to Ravenhouse, all of the eyes of the clockwork ravens watching, and there were still people who sold out neighbors and friends and even family to the Proctors.

Evil, that was heretics if you listened to the Proctors. Wanton carriers of necrovirus. Breeders of things like the nightjar.

My mother.

“You think she spied on witches?” Cal frowned.

“Open your eyes, Calvin. She was spying on
us
. She probably radioed her pals at Ravenhouse the minute we came on board.”

Finding the hold of the
Belle
very small and hot, all at once, I clambered over wreckage to the hatch.

“But”—Cal panted after me—“Proctors only go undercover to spy on traitors. Foreigners and stuff.”

I lashed my head around. “You don’t get it, do you, Cal? You ran away with a heretic and with me. We
are
traitors to the Proctors, and the Proctors keep their eyes inward. Nobody cares about some far-off country. They watch
us
. They burn
us
. They spy and they kill and they stamp on lives with those horrible shiny jackboots they wear.”

Cal just stared at me, fiddling with the buckles on his camp bag. “You know what they tell us, Aoife. We’d all be dead if it weren’t for the Proctors. Professor Swan says—”

“Oh, grow up, Cal! Think a thought that the Proctors didn’t give you for once!” I snapped and took off at a march. We’d landed in a field, the grass and its frost veil knee high. I struggled on, school shoes and school stockings woeful against the frigid gloom.

Dean ran and caught up with me. “Whoa, there. Pump your brakes, kiddo.”

“I’m sorry.” I was already shamefaced, burning with humiliation. Young ladies didn’t lecture and they certainly didn’t shout. “That was rude.”

“Don’t care if the kid riled you,” Dean said. “Hell, he’d rile most anyone spent more than a hot minute with him. I can’t have you running off, is all. This isn’t the city. No Proctors keeping the critters out.”

“I don’t care,” I hissed, fierce as a wounded cat. “Let them digest me.” I was practically mad anyway. What harm would it do the world if I wasn’t in it?

Dean looked at the dark ground rippling with cold mist, to the high moon slashed with clouds, the bleak barren humps of the Berkshire Mountains beyond, and the ink stain of forest between us and them. “If it’s all the same, Miss Aoife, I’d rather keep you alive.”

I let a stanza of footsteps pass without speaking, my shoes breaking through the frost with a sound like grinding teeth.

“How far to Arkham?” I said at length. It seemed the most inoffensive topic at the moment.

“Four hours walking. Maybe a little more. We’ll set eyes on your old man’s house by dawn.” Dean yawned and stretched, popping his back like a cat. “Stay awake. Don’t let the cold get its teeth into you.”

“The Proctors will send out dogs and men to the crash site,” Cal piped up. “To be sure.” He was hopping along, and I slowed and offered him my arm. Cal didn’t know how cruel he could be sometimes, with his parroting of the Proctors and by listening to their crowing about the necrovirus, his tacit agreement with them that I would inevitably go mad.