Deep Roots (12 page)

Mrs. Starling whispered something to another of their men, who immediately left.

“These are my crew,” I said. “If you're idiotic enough to send them away, grant me a chance to give them a proper farewell.”

My co-­pilot shot me a look of warning. His swollen face acted as testament to what would happen if I was too lippy.

Mrs. Starling thoughtfully hummed. “Yes, Captain. Say your farewells.” She looked at the rest of the crew. “We will disembark for mere minutes. Your captain will be with us. Lest you get any ideas about an early departure, I want you to note the anti-­airship gunnery below.” She punctuated that with a prim smile.

I looked between her and Corrado. Who was really in charge here?

Stairs curled down the mooring mast. No smoke rose from the ruins, though the strong stench of ashes told me it was razed recently. I counted at least two dozen troops below, and full crews on the gunnery. Why in bloody hell was the Caskentian army guarding this place? What were we doing here?

My magi awaited near a wagon, their hastily packed belongings stuffed in the back. A soldier from my ship watched over them.

“Captain!” cried a magus. They gathered around me.

“Sir!”

“What the hell—­”

I raised a hand. “You know I'd never force you off the ship, had I my druthers. I'm not that stupid.”

I met their bewildered and angered gazes. “I can't blame you if you take on other jobs in Vorana, but here.” I reached into my pocket and offered gilly coins to each of them. “If you still want on with us, I'll look for you at the Hotel Nennia. Damned if I know when we'll get there, though.”

“Where's the boy?” called Mrs. Starling as she came up behind me.

“I couldn't find him,” said one of the soldiers who'd been aboard the
Argus
.

“Boy?” I snapped, whirling around. “You can't mean—­”

She scowled and made an abrupt motion to another soldier. “Go aboard. Hurry. There's a thirteen-­year-­old boy—­”

I stepped forward, fists clenching.

Mrs. Starling faced me, expression cool. “Your son is bright and his potential shouldn't be stymied. He'll depart with the magi. I have a great opportunity in mind for him.”

“He's my son, you—­”

Corrado blocked me with his body. We stood eye to eye. “It's for the best, Cuthbert. This mission we're undertaking . . . it has risks.”

My mouth opened and closed. I wanted my son with me. I wouldn't trust Corrado and Starling with so much as a piece of pie. “Why? What's this opportunity for him?
Where are we going?
”

“I'll answer the latter as soon as we leave.”

The soldiers' boots drummed up the metal staircase of the mooring mast. The
Argus
hovered at the top, the long silver underbelly of her gondola exposed and vulnerable. I rubbed my jaw. No aether magi aboard. No idea if there were mooring masts at our destination; airships didn't land on the ground, they
crashed
. No clue what they planned to do with Sheridan. No way to fight back unless I intended suicide.

“For Caskentia's sake, we must hurry.” Mrs. Starling bustled toward the center of the village, motioning us forward; I hung back, an eye on the mast.

She advanced to an area thick with building debris. It wasn't until I was up close that I recognized it contained a macabre basket weave of charred bodies. Hundreds of ­people, surely. The way the blackened skeletons stacked at the crumbled outer walls . . . good God. Had they been alive when the fire was set, and clambered to escape? I'd seen the aftermath of firebombings in the war, but never bodies concentrated, tangled, like this.

Scorched bones and rubble snapped under Mrs. Starling's feet as she plowed forward, ash puffing in the air as if she stomped through spilled flour. With one hand, she hitched her skirt to knee level as she paced in a small circle, grimacing.

“Oh, bother,” she said, sighing. “I can sense it, but where . . . Ah, here we are.” She brushed debris aside to pick up an iridescent white brick.

“The box held up well,” said Corrado.

“Of course. It's endured this dozens of times over. We'd planned a few more, but well. Opportunity.” A sudden wind billowed ash over us as she stomped out into the road. Her gloved hands brushed off the box, though it seemed strangely clean. Its alabaster surface gleamed and wavered like glass, flawless except for the shallow bevel of the lid.

As I stared at the box, a cold sensation slithered down my spine. Suddenly, I heard compounded screams, yells, and cries, as if they were bound within that warped surface. I retreated several steps, scarcely checking my own urge to scream, as if the horror was contagious. I could imagine falling to my knees as the fire consumed me, ate my flesh—­and it didn't stop. As if I were immortal, my pain infinite.

I forced my gaze away, and suddenly the world was fully there again, my breaths ragged to my own ears. I heard heavy breaths from Corrado and the nearest soldiers, too, all of us sounding as though we had run across a field in full military gear. The breeze dried thick sweat on my brow and I realized we all stood downwind of Mrs. Starling. She had not reacted at all.

I was not particularly sensitive to magic. I'd known the heat of a medician's healing circle a few times, and seen infernal magi call up fire. Dark magic was the stuff children whispered about to keep siblings awake long past midnight. I had never considered that it might be real.

“What would happen if that were opened?” I asked, voice rasping.

Mrs. Starling draped a black cloth over the box and the horrid
presence
of it was abruptly muffled. More magic. She tucked the bundle beneath her arm like mere groceries. “Now, Captain Hue, don't ask questions unless you want answers.” With that properly schoolmarmish reply, she headed toward the tower.

The noise of wheels made me turn. The wagon with my magi was leaving. At this distance, I couldn't see my boy in the back. I needed to see him, to talk to him.
I needed him.
I lurched into a run, each stride scorching pain up both my knees.

Corrado huffed as he easily caught up with me. “Cuthbert, stop.
Stop.
” He gripped my arm to force me from my vain pursuit. “Let him go. He'll be better off. We must fly on. We can stop the war, Cuthbert. Save your son and generations to come.”

Save my son. Stop the war.

Corrado blotted his face with a kerchief—­a result of that foul box more than his brief run. He cast a nervous glance toward the tower and Mrs. Starling. “I shouldn't tell you this, but I think you should know. Your ship has been granted a noble task.
You've
been granted a noble task.” A sort of religious fervor gleamed in his eyes. “When we open that white box on the far side of the Pinnacles, the Waste will be poisoned. The ­people, the land. Everything touched by the enchantment.”

I stared at him in sick fascination. That small box could do that? I didn't want to believe it, but I couldn't help but shudder.

“Cuthbert, when you were docked in Mercia, did you hear rumors of the Lady's Tree suddenly becoming visible in the southern Waste, revealing a Wasters' settlement at its roots?”

“Certainly.” Medicians were said to worship the giant tree; certainly no educated person believed the thing to be
real
before this past week. “Last scuttlebutt I heard was that Caskentia's airship bombardment failed to eliminate the town for some reason, but . . .”

Corrado nodded. “Now you understand.”

This doom box was their failsafe, a way to take care of the Waster menace once and for all. “What if that thing is opened on my ship?”

“It won't be. Only a special magus can unlock it. It's just . . . unpleasant for almost everyone else in close proximity. To magi, it's particularly potent. Maddening. It would have been highly disturbing for the crew to witness.” He couldn't suppress a shudder of his own.

“Wait—­you expect us to get you to the far side of the Pinnacles?”

“No, just . . .” A soldier approached, and Corrado's demeanor abruptly changed. “Just think,” he muttered so low I could barely hear. “Caskentia will know peace, because of you.”

“Peace.” I repeated the word dully as I tried to absorb all he had said. The war had dragged on since I was in knickerbockers. What did I know of peace?

The one mercy was that Sheridan would be far from that vile box, but what opportunity did Mrs. Starling intend for him? When would I see my boy again?

I knew the heavy weight of despair as I trudged up the mast.

“What do you mean, you couldn't find him?” Mrs. Starling's high voice carried down from the top of the tower. I froze.

“We searched the whole ship, m'lady. I'm sorry.”

I forced my legs faster up the last flight of stairs. Mrs. Starling lingered at the ramp to the
Argus
. “My son?” I asked.

Winds whipped her black attire. “He's apparently hidden himself aboard. Well, we can't tarry.” Mrs. Starling sighed as she glanced at the
Argus
directly above. “What a waste.” With that, she advanced up the ramp.

I took a steadying breath as relief and fear flooded through me. I hesitated a few seconds more to regain full composure, then followed her aboard.

I
supervised the control cabin as we unmoored and resumed flight. Corrado informed us of our next destination.

“The northern pass.” I stared at him. “The first snow of the season just—­”

“It's not fully winter yet, and the
Argus
doesn't need to fly all the way to the Waste, just to the divide, then you can return to Caskentia.”

My crew shifted and glanced around, dread and fear thick in the air. Two soldiers stood feet away in the navigation section of the cabin; three more were aboard elsewhere. Fewer soldiers than before, but the threat of their presence remained palpable.

At least Mrs. Starling wasn't in the cabin. I didn't want that damned box anywhere near my officers on duty, even if that cloth around it somehow smothered its power.

“Do you have a mooring mast at the divide as well?” I asked Corrado. “Or are we tenderly booting you out the freight ramp?”

“I'm touched that you'd do so tenderly.”

“My concern is for my crew and my ship.” Sheridan. Where was that boy hiding?
Why
was he hiding? “Even going halfway through the pass is a damned risk—­”

“Caskentia requires your ser­vice. Get us to the divide. We'll take care of ourselves from there.”

I'd been known to gamble at times, but even with a million gilly coins up for wager, I would not have flown his proposed route at this time of year.

I looked to Yee, my officer on watch; Ramsay at the rudder wheel; Jonah at the elevator panel; my navigator, and all the rest. I had twenty crew on board, most with family. I pressed a hand to the wall to keep my posture strong even as my legs screamed agony.

Old gal,
I wanted to tell the ship,
you deserve a better grave than the godforsaken Pinnacles. All of us do.

“Operate as normal into the northern pass.” Corrado motioned to his remaining men as he left. The two Caskentian soldiers stood ready and wary.

Operate as normal, indeed. What a piss-­poor kind of normal.

I met eyes all around the room. “You heard the man. You know our aether magi are absent. I want a double shift to monitor our gas levels. Yee, any word on the whereabouts of Mr. Hue?”

“No, sir,” Yee said, her brown skin blanched. “Soldiers searched the whole ship. He never went down the mast.”

“Spread the word that our yeoman electrician should carry on with his duties.” Much as I wanted to treat him as my son, right now, shorthanded as we were, I needed him more as crew. “He's stuck on board with us now.”

Officer Yee saluted. “Yes, Captain.”

We flew onward. I spent the next hours with my navigator as we reviewed our most current weather maps and plotted our course and elevation.

“Sir?” murmured the navigator, a wary eye to the nearest soldier. “Whatever this mission is, they don't want us alive to tell tales, do they?”

I opened and closed my mouth without speaking, realizing the man was terrified and needed to talk.

He rambled on, “The wind shears at the divide will chew us like a dog with a bone, and if we survive turning around, we'll have the wind bearing down on our bow the whole flight back. If a storm meets us head-­on, it'll be like flying against a hurricane. Our gas bags will shred.”

“If we fight back—­if we win—­that carries risks, too,” I muttered.

“Better to fight, sir, than to blithely fly a suicide mission. Maybe then my wife would have something to bury. No one would find our ship on the Pinnacles.” A pencil twirled in his shaky grip. “I think that's what they want.”

I met his fierce gaze and bowed my head to study our charts again.

After a while, word came to me that Sheridan had emerged and stood his proper watch elsewhere. Restless as I was to see him, I tried to content myself with that knowledge as I busied myself with necessary work to keep us aloft and alive.

The sun set early in the autumnal far north. Stars sparkled on high as we entered the northern pass to the Waste. A grim, sleepless tension clutched the crew, and shift changes did nothing to alleviate that dread.

I departed the cabin and walked to the stairs as I mulled methods to quietly eliminate the soldiers without risking a gun battle on board. Ricochets were a danger with our largely metal interior. I worried for our gas bags directly above deck A as well; a helium vessel such as ours wasn't as inclined to immolate as old hydrogen models, but fire was the greatest enemy to sailors of sea or air.