Romulus Buckle and the Luminiferous Aether (The Chronicles of the Pneumatic Zeppelin #3) (11 page)

In the shadow between the desk and the bed lay Tyro’s steamer trunk. Max had stowed his personal belongings inside it, neatly folded and wrapped, after his terrible injuries in the Imperial Raid. Tyro had been lost to her in a coma since then, his damaged body locked in the infirmary iron lung.

“There,” Flora said, unscrewing the lid of the Fassbinders’ tin and smearing penicillin paste across Max’s back. The paste had a pleasant odor of mint and felt greasy and warm on her chilled skin. “I closed you up as best I could, but you have to take it easy, you hear me?”

“Yes,” Max answered, though she had no intention of taking it easy.

Flora applied new bandages and tape and finished with a satisfied, “There.” She assisted Max with her sweater and coat before collecting her tools on the tray.

“Thank you,” Max said. Her fingers were so white, her hands so white, with the black stripes curving out of her coat sleeves to end in elegant swirls on the backs of her hands. She still felt naked. She reached for her black leather gloves and pulled them on.

“You are welcome, Max,” Flora replied. “And best of luck, wherever it is you are going.” When Max opened the door she felt a presence in the hallway.

“Did my daughter allow you to do your work, Mrs. Herzog?” Balthazar’s voice boomed from the corridor. “She can prove to be rather trying.”

“Yes, Admiral,” Flora replied.

“Come in, father,” Max said.

XX

A FATHER’S DAUGHTER

Balthazar Crankshaft stepped into Max’s bedchamber, his gray greatcoat radiating the icy bite of outdoor air. Most likely he had just walked across the citadel parade grounds. His airship mascot, the grumpy bulldog Agamemnon, a mottled brown and white ball of muscle, trotted in on Balthazar’s heels and jumped on the bed. “I am pleased that you did not give Flora a difficult time,” he said, smiling through his heavy but well-groomed beard. The beard seemed a little whiter than Max remembered but he looked as powerful and robust as ever.

“I was a model patient.”

“Which would make me suspect that you are up to something if I didn’t already know what you were up to,” Balthazar said quietly, his familiar bulk filling the room as it always did. “And there is little I can do to stop you from leaving beyond slapping you in irons.”

“I must return to my airship.”

“I know.”

“My wounds have healed sufficiently for me to return to my duties,” Max said.

“And you are taking Cornelius Valentine with you? The boilerman who lost his leg to the kraken? What good would the poor fellow be to you in the field? His condition is far more fragile than it looks and he is not a young man, Max.”

Max nodded. “He will drink himself to death otherwise. Romulus needs a steward.”

“Ah, steward, very good,” Balthazar replied. He knew the traps of the Friendly Society taverns, good as their intentions might be. Many of the cooks and staff in the citadel were maimed former zeppelineers. “He is your crewman to post as you see fit, of course.”

“Any news of Ryder among the Tinskins?” Max asked.

“Yes. We received a message from him via messenger pigeon two days ago. The Tinskin Council is assembling near their entire war fleet to join the Grand Alliance, though the decision to do so was apparently far from unanimous. They plan to take a rather circuitous route to us from the east in order to avoid any spying eyes.”

“That is good,” Max said.

“Yes, very good,” Balthazar said. “Our chances against the Founders increase tenfold if the Tinskin fleet is with us.” He took a deep breath. “Once all of the allied clan fleets are assembled, well, it will be a sight to see. Your mother would have gotten a kick out of it.”

Max nodded, focusing her eyes on her father, who was always sad when he spoke of Calypso. “Things are on schedule then?”

“Yes. With ambassadors come spies but I believe every clan understands their own survival depends upon our victory.”

“I don’t trust the Tinskins.”

“I don’t trust any of them.” Balthazar answered, and winked to hide his worry. “You should be asleep.”

“So should you.”

“Aye. But sleep does not come easy under the weight of the world.”

“It does not.”

“Might you stay a little longer?” Balthazar asked. “I could have the cooks put together a wonderful mutton stew for us.”

“When I return,” Max said.

“Of course,” Balthazar said. “Now, as soon as you find Romulus, as soon as you reach him, tell him that he must return home immediately, at best speed. The Alliance needs the guns of the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
.”

“I shall tell him,” Max said.

“Make certain he obeys my command.”

“Romulus keeps his own council at times.”

Balthazar shook his head. “Not this time. None of his headstrong contrariness. Not this time. Have Ambassador Washington take him to task if he tries to go his own way.”

“Aye, father. I take it that you have not received a message from Romulus since the news of the victory at Muscovy.”

“No.”

“Then Muscovy is where I shall start looking for him,” Max said.

“What is your plan?” Balthazar asked. “I cannot spare you a Crankshaft airship but I can procure passage on a merchant vessel for you.”

“I have commissioned a ship. Thank you.”

“A good ship?” Balthazar asked. “A fast ship?”

“The
Shenandoah
, docked at the southeast jetty.”

“Captain Ibsen Prisco’s vessel, eh?” Balthazar said, rubbing his beard. “He is a mercenary from the Pale.”

“And perhaps has a bad reputation?” Max asked.

Balthazar grinned. “A shady character, yes. But a mercenary would go out of business if he wasn’t reliable. His airship is faster than the devil, overpowered with all those turbines and screws. Just watch yourself around him. He’ll become unpredictable if he believes he is being double-crossed. Make sure he knows you are my daughter.”

“He does,” Max said, buckling on her sword belt. “I can read him effectively.”

“Captain Prisco does not do anything on the cheap, however.”

“He most does certainly not.”

“Do you need funds?”

Max pointed to the small chest on her bed. “I already raided the treasury.”

“My children rob me blind,” Balthazar said with a grin.

“All children rob their parents blind.”

“Aye. It is worth it to get Romulus back here. We’ll need every air machine we can get when the time comes to match the Founders in the sky.”

“I shall bring Romulus and the
Pneumatic Zeppelin
home, I promise you, father,” Max said.

Balthazar smiled at her, one of his profoundly disarming smiles, and took a deep breath. “It is difficult for a father when his children have become soldiers, when he cannot protect them, when it is no longer possible to think of you as the little creatures I once knew.”

Max gazed at Balthazar. In a world which had offered her little more than suspicion and cruelty since she was a child, he and Calypso had clutched her and Tyro close to their breasts, offering love and protection to the cool, unresponsive half-aliens. But she and Tyro had absorbed it utterly, desperately, and were now eternally bound to their family. Max had rarely shown affection to Balthazar, though she had always been the good daughter, respectful and loyal. But she loved him with every ounce of her subterranean, all-consuming Martian intensity. She felt the pain radiating from him now, the uncertainty and apprehension, the worries of an old, powerful, dying bear.

Max lifted her goggles and smiled at Balthazar.

He smiled back, surprised. “Ah, that smile, so rarely bestowed,” he whispered. “As precious as fairy dust to me.”

Max kissed Balthazar on the bare stretch of skin of his cheek above the whiskers of his beard. She wrapped her long arms around him, pressed her chin to his shoulder. She hadn’t hugged him for years. He felt broad and strong and it was like hugging a barrel. She smelled the tobacco smoke on his skin and uniform and she felt like a little girl again. She remembered him carrying her in his arms after the bullies attacked her in the schoolyard and later, when the frightened parents, hats in hand and bringing three-penny cakes, dragged their brats to Balthazar’s door, how the children, heads low, eyes simmering, offered awkward, forced apologies.

Max felt Balthazar’s big heart beating through the cloth against her chest, and it was here, only here, that she felt absolutely safe. He had chosen her. He had chosen to be her father. She held the embrace for a long moment, the rough wool of his collar against her neck, and suddenly her back didn’t hurt any more.

“I love you, child,” Balthazar whispered.

She held him tighter. She wanted to say that she loved him, but he already knew.

PART TWO

ATLANTIS

XXI

LIQUID LIGHT

The brilliant illumination of Atlantis threatened to blind Romulus Buckle even after his eyes had adjusted to it, so accustomed was he to the overcast grays and muttering oil lanterns of the cloud-bound surface world. Transparent glass tubes channeled light across every ceiling of the underwater city, carrying streams of yellow-white liquid, both bright and soft, and if one stared straight into it one could make out a barely perceptible pulsing at its center. Atlantis dazzled with light and warmth as if everything flowed from its own secret sun.

The Roman-styled passageways, wide and fitted with faux columns over plush crimson and green carpets, verged on garish: freshwater fountains gurgled at the main intersections, marble splashers with sculptures of old gods and green-crusted bronze fish on gears wheeling back and forth across the basins. Beautiful seascape paintings lined the white walls and sometimes incorporated existing utilitarian fixtures and instruments of copper and brass, making them appear like submarines or fantastic undersea wheels. Buckle had yet to see one surface scene in any of the art, as if the Atlanteans had no need to remember the world above the water at all.

An Atlantean harpoon prodded Buckle’s back as he walked. There were two Atlantean soldiers behind him and two more in front, led by Cressida. Sabrina and Welly strode at his flanks and in front of them was Penny Dreadful, clanking as she moved, for her arms and legs were bound with heavy iron manacles. That had been the deal with Cressida. The automaton had to be chained if Buckle wanted an audience with the First Consul. Buckle had reluctantly agreed. Furthermore, Buckle and his crew were ordered to surrender their sealskin bag containing their firearms. Felix and his crew, well known to the Atlanteans, had been whisked away; Buckle didn’t know where they’d been taken.

Cressida glanced back at them, her regal chin up, her gaze high and suspicious, lingering on Penny. Buckle smelled Cressida’s perfume—the sweet scent of cinnamon—and it mixed well with the pleasant aroma of ambergris incense which burned in tiny braziers near each fountain. So far, Atlantis had proven to be a thing of beauty and it structure underfoot offered a solid, land-like feel—unlike that of a submarine—built to last.

They arrived at a large glass bubble with doors that looked like some kind of pneumatic elevator. Cressida ushered everyone in with a wave of her hand. The doors slid shut with a sound of sucking atmosphere and sealed them in the chamber, which shot up the exterior of the dome alone a long rail. The sea surrounded them on three sides, deep and green outside the glass.

One of the Atlantean guards pulled an ornate metal lever with a copper squid as a handle.

With the roar of rushing air and the rumble of metal sliding along oiled rails, the elevator shot upward. Bending at the knees, Buckle watched the sea through a blur of metal girders, glimpsing the looming glass mountains of four smaller sister domes, all glowing with their secret amber light.

“Better than being tossed into the sea,” Sabrina said.

“Aye,” Buckle replied. The spacious vault of the underwater landscape dizzied the head after being inside a diving helmet and constricted passageways for so long. The sprawling ruins of the artificial Roman city stood in the near distance, visually magnificent, thought-provoking and haunting. The blue-green forever of the ocean was calm, undulating with white-blue flickering at the surface and darkening near the bottom where schools of fish rose and dove like flocks of birds over the vast seaweed fields waving in the currents.

But what caught Buckle’s attention were the shadows moving at various depths in the distance: Founders submersibles, dozens of them, massive machines, their rows of dark yellow windows glowing faintly like the eyes of monsters, circling Atlantis, circling again and again.

The view vanished abruptly as the elevator zipped inside a shaft and slowed to a halt. The doors hissed open and Cressida stepped out. The Atlantean guards ushered the group into a grand foyer where seven large, curving staircases made of polished, pink-white rock swung off in seven directions like the tentacles of a massive, well-balanced octopus, its suckers springing upwards in the form of columns. A long, vaulted ceiling, its ribs designed to look like the huge white plates of a leviathan’s spine, terminated at the far end over a great marble statue of Neptune, its eyes filled with Atlantean liquid light that cut two columns through the faintly smoky air, the haze provided by braziers hanging on the walls, burning sticks of ambergris.

“Come with me,” Cressida said.

“What is the source of the illumination in this, this fluid?” Buckle asked. “Other than boil, which is far weaker, I have never seen anything like it.”

“It is the luminiferous aether,” Cressida replied without glancing back, the quick bite of her words announcing that there would be no more information forthcoming.

“I’d like to take a jar of this liquid back to the ship,” Welly said. “Ivan would love to see this.”

“Cressida, wait!” a female voice rang out.

Buckle stopped with the others as they turned to see a woman, flanked by an Atlantean soldier with a purple robe, hurrying down one of the staircases. The woman was slender and shorter than the others, but the confidence in her bearing gave no doubt that she was accustomed to commanding a room. Her thick black hair was up, intricately braided, and her skin was a lovely shade of olive. She wore a white stola edged with patterns of purple and pulled in at the waist by a gold and purple sash. Gold rings adorned her hands between the first and second joints of the fingers and a single gold bracelet was looped around her right wrist, carved in the shape of sea snake.

“Lady Julia,” Cressida replied and bowed. The guards lowered their heads.

Buckle attempted a quick bow but Lady Julia was coming at him so fast he more or less bungled it. “Lady Julia, I am Captain Romulus Buckle.”

“I have been informed of what it is you Crankshafts want from us, Captain,” Lady Julia replied, now directly in front of him, slightly out of breath. “Save your speeches for the First Consul.”

“As you wish, of course,” Buckle replied. Lady Julia’s abruptness belied a tight nervousness, a sense of duress.

“I was ordered to bring them to the Senate floor,” Cressida said.

“Change of plans,” Lady Julia replied and glared at Penny Dreadful. “This thing. Where did you get it and why did you bring it here?”

“Is she not a creation of yours?” Buckle asked.

“Yes, she is,” Julia answered in a measured way, as if to be careful about not saying too much on the subject. “She is from a very old time. We were certain that every one of this model had been destroyed.”

“Why were they destroyed? Sabrina asked.

“Because they are failed abominations,” Lady Julia replied.

Buckle glanced at Penny Dreadful. The little robot stood still in its heavy chains, its eyes glowing, apparently taking no offense, not responding at all. Sabrina stepped closer to it and placed one hand on its shoulder, protectively, as if the machine were some kind of real child.

“I haven’t seen anything to make me think—” Buckle began.

“Because you don’t see them coming,” Lady Julia said. “It must be dismantled or it shall cause you never ending misery.”

“It saved my life in the battle with your Guardians,” Buckle said flatly.

“Oh, yes,” Lady Julia said, colder than before. “You killed one of my alpha gagools, a fabulous, loyal creature. Your appearance has been an unexpected disaster, an unwanted disruption.”

“Oh, stop posturing!” Sabrina groaned.

Lady Julia snapped her eyes to Sabrina, then back to Buckle. “And you are already in bed with the Founders, I see.”

“By what means, if I may ask, do you ascertain that?” Buckle asked, though he knew what she was getting at.

Lady Julia huffed. “Don’t play me for a fool, Captain. You have a scarlet in your company.”

“Just because my hair is red does not mean I am Founders,” Sabrina said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, it is much more than that,” Lady Julia said. “You have a Founder’s face.”

Sabrina took a step forward. “What does that mean?”

Buckle needed to change the subject before Sabrina said something that would get them in serious trouble. “It is urgent that we meet with your First Consul.”

“The First Consul has agreed to see you over lunch in the triclinium,” Lady Julia said. “You are fortunate that I spoke up on your behalf, for his first reaction was to have the automaton melted down and the three of you jettisoned into the sea.”