The Aeronaut's Windlass (61 page)

Ciriaco fell into step beside him. The grizzled sergeant glowered back over his wounded shoulder at Sark for a moment, then turned to Espira. “We’re going early.”

“Yes. Dispatch the men as planned, immediately. Without the confusion of a general attack on the Spire, we’ll have to move fast. Tell them to leave all camp equipment and supplies here, except for a canteen. Weapons only.”

Ciriaco frowned but nodded. “Those two girls?”

Renaldo Espira had done a great many distasteful, necessary things in the course of his career. The orders of his superiors were generally given to him with the aim of benefiting those same superiors in some way. He was under no illusions about that. But even so, there was, somewhere within him, enough conscience to at least feel shame about it.

He felt ashamed of the next words he spoke to the sergeant.

“They’re as good as dead, and no longer our concern, Sergeant,” he said quietly.

Ciriaco glanced at the corridor where the prisoners were being kept, and clenched his large hands into fists with an audible crackle of knuckles. He exhaled once.

“Sir,” he said. “World might be a brighter place without Sark and that woman in it.”

“Creating a brighter world is not our concern or duty, Sergeant,” Espira said without heat. “From this moment, all that we need concern ourselves with is accomplishing our objectives and getting as many Marines as possible out of this madness and back home to Spire Aurora alive and well. Clear?”

Ciriaco made a growling sound deep in his chest. But his hands relaxed and he nodded once. “Clear, sir.” He looked down at Espira. “Think we can pull this off?”

“Of course,” Espira replied with a confidence he was not at all sure he felt. “If each man remembers his duty and his training.”

“And doesn’t stand around wondering why we’re doing it,” Ciriaco said.

“Ours is not to reason why, Sergeant,” Espira said. “Tell the captain of each force to move out. I want every single man of my command out of these tunnels in three minutes.”

Chapter 51

Spire Albion, Habble Landing, Ventilation Tunnels

I
t’s just not natural,” growled Felix to Grimm. “That’s all I’m saying.”

Grimm regarded askance the verminocitor walking on his left. “You can only give me a general idea of which section of tunnels your missing man had entered.” He gestured to the small, utterly black cat who paced calmly a few steps ahead of Grimm. “It would seem that our companion has a more specific idea.”

“Like as not the little beast is leading us into a trap,” Felix predicted.

“I certainly hope so. I’d like to think that we haven’t brought all these weapons for nothing,” Grimm said.

Grimm’s crew walked behind him in a tight, purposeful group, alongside the Verminocitors’ Guild of Habble Landing. The verminocitors were a hard-bitten, wiry bunch. Very few of them were of even middling stature, or heavy of build, but they were, men and women alike, made of rope and gristle, and they all bore scars as mute testimony of dangers faced and overcome in the past.

“You say the cat belongs to a Guardsman,” Felix continued.

“This one, no,” Grimm said. “But I daresay our guide is acquainted with Rowl.”

At the mention of the name, the little cat looked back at them without slowing her pace, focusing her lambent green eyes on Grimm. He lifted his hand and signaled a halt, and the men clattered to a stop.

“This is as good a place as any to stop and get more information,” Grimm said. “I take it that is correct, ah, Miss Cat?”

The cat stopped in her tracks and turned to face Grimm. She regarded Felix for a moment, interested, then looked back up at Grimm. She moved her head up and down in a slow, deliberate nod.

“He sent you to fetch us?” Grimm asked.

Again, the cat nodded.

“Good,” Grimm said. “Do you know exactly where the girls are being held?”

She nodded again. And after a moment, she shook her head left and right.

“There,” Felix said. “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”

Grimm gave him a mild look. “Apparently that I need to learn to speak Cat.” He frowned and called, “Benedict? Can you understand them at all?”

The tall young warriorborn shook his head. “Barely more than a greeting and a few pleasantries. It’s a complex language, and takes years to learn.”

At this, the little black cat looked pleased.

“Bother,” Grimm said. “If we go storming in and start shooting up the place when we stumble over the Enemy, we’re as likely to shoot the girls in the confusion as we are the foe. I need more specific information. She obviously knows it, or knows it better than we do, at least.”

Felix huffed out a thoughtful breath. Then he reached into his coat and withdrew a thick folded sheaf of paper. He began to unfold it and laid it out on the floor. Grimm peered at it. It was a map of Habble Landing, with ventilation and service tunnels marked in several different colors, evidently to represent their respective elevations.

“Here, beastie,” Felix said. “Have a look at this.” He tapped a portion of the map with a thick forefinger. “I know Moberly was working in this general section of the tunnels. Which one have the Aurorans taken?”

The cat prowled over to the map and regarded it with bright eyes. She tilted her head this way and that, pawed at its surface, sniffed it, walked over it, then sat down and just stared at Felix.

“What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?” Felix demanded of Grimm.

“It’s too abstract,” Benedict said. “Maps are symbols, and she doesn’t have the necessary experience she needs to understand one.”

“Explain, please?” Grimm asked.

Benedict moved a hand in a small, frustrated gesture. “She doesn’t experience the tunnels the way you do. She doesn’t just see the tunnels. She navigates them by smell and sound as much as by sight. Show her a picture that is a symbolic representation of visual dimensions alone and it’s confusing to her.”

Felix shook his head. “How do you know that?”

“Because it was confusing as hell to me when I was learning to read maps,” Benedict replied. “It took me a while when I was young.”

Felix growled. “How hard is it to read a bloody map?”

Grimm pursed his lips and regarded the cat thoughtfully. “Perhaps we don’t need her to read a map for us,” he mused. “Perhaps we need her to draw one.”

“What?” Felix asked.

“I need a piece of chalk,” Grimm said, and raised his voice. “Who has some?”

“Skip,” called Stern. The little man hefted his long gun onto his shoulder, dug in his pocket, and came out with a lump of chalk, which he tossed to Grimm underhand.

Grimm caught it and turned to the cat. “Miss Cat,” he said. “If you’re willing, perhaps we can work out exactly where we’re going so that we can take the most appropriate steps to deal with the situation.”

The cat regarded him intently and then nodded once.

“Thank you,” Grimm said. “I propose to have you pace out the length of the tunnels in question, relative to one another. Not at full length, of course. Perhaps one pace to every thirty you would take were you actually walking through them. I will follow you with the chalk and sketch the tunnels you show me on the floor.”

Felix grunted. “Then we compare the sketch to the map.”

“Precisely,” Grimm said.

The cat seemed to consider the idea for a moment, then rose and turned away from Grimm with an impatient little
mrowl
.

She began walking, her head tilted at a bit of an angle, and Grimm followed her, marking the spirestone floor with chalk. The little cat walked for several moments, and Grimm followed her, hoping that he didn’t look quite as preposterous as he felt, following the creature around on his hands and knees, until she turned to face him and sat down once more.

He rose, his wounded arm aching, and regarded the chalk lines. “Well, Felix?”

The verminocitor lifted his map and peered at it, and then at the drawings on the floor. “I don’t think that . . . No, wait a moment. This section here. By God in Heaven, look, it lines up well enough! She must have walked all around their perimeter. They’re here in the middle.”

Grimm regarded the portion of the map soberly. “Four ways in. Four ways out.”

“Mrowr,” said the black cat, and shook her head.

Grimm arched an eyebrow and eyed her. “Less?”

She nodded.

“They’ve blockaded tunnels?”

She nodded again.

“Which, please,” Grimm asked.

The cat paced over to an intersection of chalk lines and pawed at the floor. Then at another.

“This one and this one,” Grimm said, thumping a finger on the map. “They cut down the approach to two tunnels, and left themselves two ways out.”

“Your men take one?” Felix suggested. “We’ll take the other?”

Grimm looked up and arched an eyebrow. “Down tunnels they’ve prepared to defend? We’d pay a heavy price, and never get to the prisoners before they were killed.”

“What, then?” Felix demanded.

“Their only chance is for us to get in fast and hard, find the prisoners, and get out again before the Enemy can react properly. We need to go in from a direction they do not expect.” He pursed his lips. “A coin toss may be the best we can hope for. Mister Stern?”

“Aye, Skip?” The lean young officer came forward.

“I trust that you brought the blasting charges we acquired from the Aurorans in Habble Morning.”

Stern gave Grimm a wide, hungry grin.

Chapter 52

Spire Albion, Habble Landing, Ventilation Tunnels

O
dd clicking sounds made Bridget lift her head and open her eyes.

She and Folly had decided to resume their original positions, in the event that their captors peeked in at them. The leather cords were looped loosely around their wrists, though Bridget had been unable to devise a way to wrap their ankles in a similar fashion, one that could be shed immediately, and they’d had to simply settle for hiding their feet within their skirts.

Time passed, and not quickly. With every breath and heartbeat Bridget imagined their captors, out of sight, deciding that this was the moment in which to murder them.

The sounds came again. Rapid, irregular clicks, somehow familiar, from the Enemy camp.