Drakkar flashed him a wide smile. “One of Samuel’s better ideas, in fact. I used the reflector of my lantern to signal Mary.”
“So he’s okay?”
Drakkar nodded. “Last I saw him. He headed below ground to check a noise he heard.”
“He wasn’t just hearing things, was he?” Alice asked. “I could see him doing that.”
Drakkar spread his cloak and tucked it behind him. “No, I heard it as well.”
“I think I’ve got something,” Mary said, leaning in toward the windscreen. “Yes, we’ve got a flash. Hold on.”
The Skysworn lurched out of its holding pattern and drifted onto whatever path Mary set.
“Smith, drop a short line. I’m taking us in.”
“Yes, Captain.” Smith jogged out the hatch and headed for the coiled landing lines.
Jacob’s ears popped when Mary dropped the Skysworn’s altitude. He yawned and they cleared with a crackling sound.
“Samuel!” Smith shouted from the edge of the railing.
It was only another minute before Samuel, half his clothes covered in dust, appeared at the edge of the deck. Smith offered him a hand and pulled him over.
“Did you find Jacob?” Samuel asked.
Smith gestured to the cabin and Samuel’s eyes followed.
“Thank the gods.” Samuel darted into the cabin and crushed Jacob in a hug. “Well done, kid. Well done.”
“You too.”
“Me too?” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t do shit. I watched Charles … I …”
“There was nothing we could have done,” Jacob said, and something in his heart knew it was the truth.
“That doesn’t make it hurt any less,” the Spider Knight said as he flopped onto the floor beside Alice’s chair.
“I know.”
“He was a friend to many,” Drakkar said, “and a friend I did not expect to make.”
“I rather thought you would have tried to kill the old tinker at some point,” Smith said.
Drakkar let out a humorless laugh. “I may have dreamed of it as a child, but the reality of things changes when you meet an enemy face to face. They are no different from us, or you.”
“Some of them are,” Mary said. Her gaze stayed locked on the windscreen as she raised the Skysworn into the clouds. “The Butcher is a monster, and his time has come. What did you find?”
Samuel blinked. “Oh gods, right.”
“Was it an engine?” Drakkar asked.
Samuel nodded and cursed. “It was two massive engines, two personnel carriers on the tracks. Soldiers were loading crates and barrels and gods know what else.”
“What do they intend?” Smith asked.
“Ancora. It’s the only place those tracks go, unless they ride them all the way through the city.”
Drakkar shook his head. “The underground tunnels are long collapsed close to Cave. Ancora is their only option.”
“They’re supposed to be working with the Butcher, right?” Samuel asked. He didn’t wait for anyone to answer. Everyone already knew the answer.
“We don’t know how long the station has been running,” Alice said. “They could have moved soldiers into Ancora already.”
Samuel cursed. “There may be more going on in Ancora than we know of. Has Archibald heard anything?”
Mary shook her head without looking back. “He’s lost touch with most of his spies.”
“Unsettling,” Drakkar said.
“So what do we do about the station?” Smith asked. “And the soldiers?”
Mary let out a short breath. “Nothing. What can we do? Ram the trestle and sink the Skysworn?”
“We may be able to take the tracks out with the cannons,” Smith said. “Though we are not well stocked on cartridges.”
Samuel ran his fingers through his hair and banged the back of his head on the wall. “They’re likely gone already, or will be shortly. All we can do is take out their route to Dauschen.”
“Charles didn’t die so we could be stupid,” Alice said quietly. “Report what we found. We may need to follow the threat to Ancora.”
Samuel stared at her, slack-jawed.
“I like her,” Mary said as she turned and winked at Alice. “Kid speaks wisdom of someone twice her age. Or more. We make for Bollwerk. We can inform Archibald on the way and stock up on cartridges for the cannons.”
“We have bombs in Smith’s workshop,” Jacob said. “Charles and I were building them.”
“What?” Smith said with a sharp edge to his voice.
“They’re compound bombs. They won’t work until the components are mixed.”
“And then?” Smith asked.
“Then you run.”
Mary laughed and pushed the throttle forward. “Grab your seats. We’re riding the thrusters back to Bollwerk.”
“T
hat was the
Skysworn!” Gladys said. She watched the dull bronzed ship glide past and disappear into a cloud bank.
George laid the ammunition belt he was assembling onto the bench and grabbed Gladys’s arm. “Let us find a transmitter. We must speak with Archibald. One of the officers will know where to locate one.”
Gladys didn’t hesitate. She jumped up from her seat and followed George’s quick strides out of the powder room and into the hall. The ship was a well-controlled chaos now, nothing like the mad scramble when the alarms had first sounded.
George slid to a stop in front of a steel door. He raised his arm to knock, paused, and threw the door open instead. Two women and a man looked up. They wore the sharp tan armor of Bollwerk officers.
“Yes?”
Gladys was surprised that the officers hadn’t verbally torn George in half for barging in like that.
“Our friend is the warrior known as Skysworn Mary. Her ship just passed us, fleeing Dauschen. I need to speak with Archibald immediately on behalf of her Royal Highness.”
“What? Me?” Gladys inched her way behind George. She hadn’t realized she was going to be the leverage.
The officers straightened. “Princess, it is an honor to have you with us.”
Gladys tried not to blush and hid behind George when the three bowed slightly.
“The nearest communications tower is on the other side of this wall,” one of the women said as she patted the far wall. “Tell them Major Wilks has granted you full and immediate access. If they give you any lip, come get me.”
“Thank you, Major.” George ushered Gladys back out the door.
They didn’t wait for the door to fall closed behind them. George sprinted around the corner, Gladys close behind. The deck changed from wood to textured steel and then back to wood. Gladys wondered why there was a wide stretch of steel in the center of the ship, but a moment later George stopped and pounded on an iron-bound door.
“State your purpose!” a voice shouted from behind the door.
“Major Wilks has granted us full access.”
The door flew open, almost before George had finished speaking. The young communications officer looked more and more terrified as George relayed the story and introduced Gladys. The next thing she knew, George was flipping the dials and switches on the transmitter, perched on a wooden stool.
“What signal is that?” the officer asked.
George stared at him, clicked the button, and said, “Speaker of Bollwerk, Archibald, come in. This is the Royal Guard requesting communication.”
The officer looked like he might faint. Gladys smiled when the man stepped outside and closed the door behind him.
“This is Archibald.”
“We saw the Skysworn fleeing opposite us. Do you have a channel we can reach them on?”
The line was silent for a moment. “Some of our people survived Dauschen then.”
“Have you heard anything more?” George asked.
“Pieces and rumors, nothing more. I expect to hear from Mary at any moment.”
“Nothing else?”
“Look to Dauschen and the sands of the old riverbed. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.” Something crackled in the background before the line went dead. Gladys watched George. He seemed calm for a while, but then he began to fidget.
“Is everything okay?” Gladys asked.
He glanced at her and took a deep breath. “Archibald? Are you there? Archibald, come in.”
The speaker crackled back to life. “Yes, sorry. I’ve raised Mary on another channel. I …” Archibald cursed, and something loud and thick sounded like it splintered. “We lost Charles.”
Something heavy took hold in Gladys’s chest, a kind of terrible weight that tried to steal the breath from her lungs. “No …” She heard George and Archibald speaking more words, but they were lost to her. The kind, generous tinker was gone. How?
Gladys grabbed George’s arm. “What about Alice? Jacob? Are the others okay?”
“Is that Gladys?”
“Yes.”
“The condition of our remaining spies is mostly unknown,” Archibald said, giving the issue of Gladys’s audience no more attention. “Mary, Smith, Drakkar, Jacob, Samuel, and Alice are heading back to Bollwerk. Charles’s plan was a success. Fel incurred a serious loss in Dauschen, and the survivors are in a state of disarray. Samuel discovered an additional threat below the city.”
“Below it?” George said.
“Yes. The old tracks that lead to Ancora. Tell Major Wilks to secure the station. We have to remove Dauschen from Fel’s list of assets. I fear Ancora is facing the same fate as Dauschen. If Major Wilks has any questions, you have her raise me on this channel. I’ll keep it open for the next hour. After that, the Porcupines will be in Bollwerk. Watch yourself out there.”
The speaker went dead, and this time Gladys knew he wasn’t saying more.
“Why isn’t Archibald giving the orders himself?” Gladys asked.
“Why indeed.” George hung the transmitter back on its clip. “Well, back to see the major, it would appear.”
The young officer was waiting outside when they stepped out. He saluted George and Gladys in turn.
“You do not need to salute,” George said.
“Thank you, sir.”
George smiled and hid a laugh as he ushered Gladys around the corner.
“Charles is gone.”
George sighed and looked at Gladys. “I know. I rather liked the old rogue.”
“Me too.”
“Well, we can tell stories of the Atlier
we
knew and help fix how people remember him after our work is done. If Midstream’s princess liked him, he could not be all bad.”
Gladys smiled as George knocked on the officer’s door on the other side of the ship.
“Come!”
The door opened to reveal Major Wilks leaning over a desk, poring over a map and making small tick marks around a gray area. She glanced up when the door closed again.
“You two? Did you have problems with our communications officer?”
George shook his head. “He was most agreeable. The mention of your esteemed rank and name had quite the effect.”
“Ha, as well it should. What can I help you with now?”
“I spoke with Archibald.”
Major Wilks sat down in her chair and gave George her full attention. George relayed Archibald’s words, and the expression on the Major’s face grew darker with every sentence.
“So be it,” Major Wilks said. “I’ll inform the infantry. The chainguns and cannons will remain manned during the operation. If anything goes sideways, we’ll have to level the city and remove the threat.”
“You can’t do that,” Gladys said. “There are people down there who have nothing to do with this fight.”
Major Wilks crossed her arms. “Princess, the infantry will evacuate as many as they can, but our priority is to protect Bollwerk.”
The door to the office cracked open.
The major glanced up but didn’t otherwise acknowledge the newcomers. “And if Archibald thinks that mission is served by leveling the city and turning it into a smoking crater, that’s what we’ll do.”
“You may be a little late for that,” one of the newcomers said. “You better take a look.”
Wilks didn’t say anything else. She tossed her chair out of the way, slamming it against a thin metal cabinet. The nearest soldier, a young man, cringed at the bang of the wood on metal.
Gladys followed Wilks out of the office without even thinking to ask George if they should. Wilks froze a few steps outside the door. “What happened here? Archibald didn’t … He said there was an operation, but …”
Gladys gasped when she saw the billowing clouds of smoke and the ruined face of Dauschen. The meadows broke against the dry, sandy riverbanks that led up to the mountain, crowned by a broken city skyline. Brick and metal and flame marred the mountainside.
“What happened?” Wilks leaned on the railing at the edge of the deck.
George joined her. “The last great plan of a great man.”
“What?”
“Charles von Atlier, destroyer and savior of Midstream. Conquerer of Gareth Cave. Adversary of the Butcher. A man I am proud to say was my friend.”
Wilks was quiet for a moment. “I’d heard Archibald tell stories of the man when he’d had a few too many drinks at the pub, but …” She paused and turned away from the carnage before them. “What do you mean the ‘last great plan’?”
“He died down there. Somewhere in that rubble is our friend.”
Gladys curled her hands around George’s forearm and leaned against him. “He was one of the great Steamsworn tinkers.”
“I heard he lived in Ancora,” Major Wilks said. “What was he doing there?”
“Trying to save it from the Butcher,” George said.
Gladys let go of George’s arm and leaned against the railing beside Wilks. “He saved Jacob and Alice, and Samuel.”
“I don’t know who any of those people are.”
“They’re my friends,” Gladys said. “Some of them were down there with Charles.”
“If they helped make that mess, I wouldn’t mind adding them to Bollwerk’s Skyriders.”
Gladys watched the smoke curl and rise, surging past the mountaintops, only to be caught and flattened by the higher windstreams. It was a funeral pyre unlike any she’d ever seen, for in her heart she knew what it was.
“Rest well, Charles, in your Steamsworn grave.”
They watched in silence as the warship closed on Dauschen. Charles had meant a great deal to her new friends, and that made him important to her too. There were still men like Rana left in the world, and who would fight them if not the people who had the means?
Her fists tightened on the brass railing as the sharp stench of the burning city filled her nostrils. She had the means and the influence. There might not be a great many of her people left, but Midstream would not fade quietly into the night.