Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (45 page)

Now George spoke from South, to Alma's left, his light tenor precise. "Power that tries to chain the Light, with stolen tools that are not their own, to their purpose they shall be true, though that purpose be seen and known."

And the response, reverberating deep in Alma's bones, "May this decoration serve its true purpose."

Jerry's voice was reassuring, the power building as she felt the force in his words. "Medal meant to serve the land, against its truth break this will. It was not made to serve their hand. May they have no dominion still."

The response was strong. "May no lies pass through it."

It was as though she lay in a plane, the engine's rising throb beneath her, power rising.

Bea's voice was ringing. "Past tools may bring memories, but not lies told to snare the soul. Doors to the past are made for truth. They will not pass if not told whole."

Jerry's hand — she thought it was Jerry's — gentle against her chest, and she felt the weight of the medal settle against her, just at her sternum where she would have worn it on a ribbon once, worn it at the collar of her uniform coat. She felt it cool against her skin, cool and heavy, the points burning with cold fire. And the doors opened.

A
gain and again the guns sounded, invisible ahead in the clouds of rolling powder-smoke. Her horse was dead, its blood all over her. Or did her own blood soak her sleeves, her cuffs heavy with it, stinking in the heat? She staggered over the blasted ground, over the corpses of the dead. She took up a rifle from a Guardsman who lay with unseeing eyes, his head half severed by a bayonet thrust. She took powder and cartridge. The guns boomed again and again.

Ahead there was a line, the faint flashes of musket fire. Along what might have once been a fence marking the edge of a pasture there was still resistance. Motley uniforms, men of half a dozen units….

His hat was gone, his face blackened from a powder burn, red hair dark with sweat, but he had a sword in his hand. "Come on then! But hold your fire until they're closer. We're not going to get but one good shot." He saw her, and for a moment his eyes met hers, seeing her: a dismounted Imperial Guard cavalryman with a musket in hand.

"Over here," he said. "Behind the fence."

She went down on her knees behind the barricade, her body stiff with a wound she did not yet feel. The last resistance of the last day…

For a second his hand rested on her shoulder. "Good man."

Her voice was completely steady. "Marshal Ney." It would be no little thing to die at his side.

Out of the mist came the hair-raising sound, the skirling of bagpipes. The Highland regiment was advancing…

A
lma's breath caught in her throat, her body arching, almost breaking the trance.

"…through lady, through sword…" Jerry was speaking the words of the ritual still.

Her lines were next and they fled, the ones he had written, the ones she had learned. Other words crowded in instead.

"This honor was bought with my blood and paid for with my blood," Alma said, her eyes still closed, the medal cold against her chest. "As were they all. They may not be turned against those whose sacrifices hallowed them. By the blood of the slain, by the blood of those who wore them in honor to hallowed graves, by the names graven in stone and the bodies left beneath the tundra, you have no power! By every bit of power in every bone of every man and woman who wore this honor, called to us as your brethren — you have no power!"

Enormous, immense, huge as houses, huge as hurricanes, it gathered. Drawn from quiet graves in country churchyards, from marble tombs in Pere Lachaise, from cold unmarked graves in Russia and Lithuania, it gathered. A whisper from each, not even a ghost, but simply a tendril of each, a vast army of men in their shakos and bicorns and plumed Phrygian helmets, forever young and striving. And then there were the old, the faint slivers of the will of those who had worn these medals till their dying days, who had posed in Victorian studios with great grandchildren on their laps, who had gone down into the darkness at last with "soldier of the Revolution" carved on their stones — they were here too.

"Through lady, through gold…." George said, and she thought it was his hand that rested on her shoulder, just as it had at that barricade so long ago.

"You shall not touch its purpose. You shall not touch its power." So much power. No wonder he wanted it, Pelley and his masters. She gathered it, confident and sure. It was hers to order, a right won in blood. "And in the name of God Almighty, you may not use this bond!"

It rushed out, a wind of hopes and purpose, a web born of devotion and fraternity, impenetrable and dense and complete. It shone for a second, whole and real, a vast tapestry of brilliant points of light, every person who had worn this decoration in honor.

But not as they were then, not an army of shades, not an army of memories. For one moment Alma saw what Pelley had wanted to see — every single person who had worn a First Empire Legion of Honor as they were today.

…a child stood by a streetcar in an Indian city, his dark eyes wide as he looked up suddenly, a school book under his arm….

…an old woman paused at her knitting, the light of an arctic white night pouring in through the window….

…a plane cut through the clouds toward dawn over the desert, the pilot passing a hand across his eyes over headset and mustache….

…a teenage girl paused suddenly, steps failing her in the middle of the Lindy, while her partner asked if she was dizzy…

…the captain of the
Emden
looked up from his desk, his stern face all focus, as though someone had called his name in the same room, his eyes on Alma…

…and it was George at her side, his hand on her shoulder, grounding and solid.

"All of them," Alma said. Her voice sounded rusty. "All of them."

And then it was gone. The net faded, its work accomplished. The Legion of Honor lay heavy and cool against her breast, untouchable and untouched.

"It worked," Alma said, and felt a tear slide from beneath her lashes.

W
illi eased the Museum’s truck around the last rising curve, headlights sweeping across bougainvillea and a dozen gaudy tropical plants. It was past midnight, well past the time Jerry had said they would be finished, but there was still a car in the drive as he turned the last corner. He hesitated, ready to drive on by, spend the night elsewhere, but then he saw lights on in the hall and on the sleeping porch. The car was a jalopy almost as battered as the truck, not the Pattons’ Packard or the Bucks’ less showy Ford, and he pulled into the bare space on the grass that left the other car clear to back out. There were three young men in the car, and as he switched off his engine the front door opened and Miss Lee came down the steps, looking tired and happy. Clearly the children were home and the ritual was over. Willi hauled himself out of the car, tipping his hat to Miss Lee as he passed her on the walk. He heard the car door close behind him, and hoped her evening would continue to be pleasant.

Inside, he heardthe murmur of voices as Mitch got the boys to bed, and he slipped up the stairs without attracting attention. The hall was dark, a little light seeping in from the single window opposite the stairs. Electric light showed under the Sorleys’ door, but his own room was dark. Willi took a deep breath, and turned the knob.

Jerry had left the window open, and the night breeze stirred the room, cool and smelling of flowers and earth and green things. Jerry lay sprawled, the sheets pushed aide, one arm dangling off the edge of the mattress and the twisted end of his stump for once fully exposed. It ended five or six inches below the knee, just enough bone and muscle to fit into the socket of the artificial leg. Jerry had said once that he had been lucky to keep the knee.

Willi looked away, not because it was ugly but because Jerry had not meant to show him this, and began to undress. He did his best to move silently, but he wasn’t surprised to hear Jerry stir. In the mirror above the dresser, he saw Jerry turn over, automatically tucking the stump beneath the sheet, and then prop himself up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes with the other hand.

“Willi?” His voice was blurred with sleep. “Everything all right?”

Willi paused, his undershirt half over his head. Yes, it was, and in a way he couldn’t quite define — a softness, an ease in the air, like the washed-clean morning after a storm. He pulled the shirt all the way off and settled onto the bed at Jerry’s side.

“Yes.” He hesitated. “You look beat.”

Jerry smiled. “I’m pretty tired, yeah.”

“It went well?” Willi knew he sounded uncertain, and Jerry gave him a sharp glance.

“Yes.”

“I’m glad.” And he was, Willi realized abruptly. He was glad it had gone well.

“Oh?” Jerry sounded skeptical, and Willi rolled to face him, not quite daring to touch.

“I am. It feels — different. Much better than the other.” Willi sighed, trying to find a joke in the darkness. “And don’t say I’m sensitive.”

Jerry gave a sleepy laugh. “You wouldn’t need to be very sensitive to feel something like that. But tonight —“

“It feels as though the weather has broken,” Willi said. “I can smell the rain.”

He saw Jerry’s face change despite the shadows, a smile easing the long face. They would both be sorry when the summer ended, Willi realized, had both grown almost too comfortable together. And that was too bad: there was no chance to continue the affair, not with them on separate continents and in different fields. They had what they had, the summer’s end, and he could only make the most of it. He eased closer, resting his head on Jerry’s shoulder, and Jerry put his arm around him. He smelled of sweat and more faintly of musk, like church incense, and Willi wrapped an arm and a leg over him as though he could hold him safe that way.

“I trust you,” he said. “How can I not? I just — I don’t trust it. I can’t, not after…” He shook the words away. “Is that enough?” He flushed, realizing that he sounded more serious than Jerry had ever indicated would be welcome, but Jerry nodded slowly, his chin against Willi’s hair.

“Yes.”

It was answer enough. Willi resisted the urge to hold him tighter still, and let himself drift to sleep as well.

Chapter Twenty

T
he peaks of the Big Island rose off either wing, Mauna Loa to port, Mauna Kea to starboard, a wisp of smoke rising from Mauna Kea. On the second pass, Alma thought, she’d try a direct overflight, just to get a glimpse of the hidden fires, the blood of the world so close to the surface here. But for now, they would thread the gap between the mountains, cruising comfortably at 13,500 feet, the Cat purring under her hands. She was still tired, in spite of sleeping in, but it was a good tired, the stretched feeling from a long day’s flight.

The ritual had done its job and more. She could still see the rush of faces, all those others who once had worn that symbol, could still feel its ghostly pressure at the notch of her collarbone. She had never remembered anything before, not like so many others, and if she never remembered anything else this would be enough, a gift she had never expected. Lewis had admitted that he’d seen Mitch as well, small and brown-haired and buxom and her wife, and she couldn’t repress a fond smile. She loved him like a brother, this time, but she was no less glad of him.

They were past the peaks now, boring north of west through cloudless sky, and Alma put the Cat’s nose down, beginning the gentle descent that would settle them at 10,000 feet as they reached the ocean. Mitch’s voice crackled in her headphones.

“So far, so good. What’s next?”

“We’ll put her down in —“ She glanced at her map. “In Ohiki Bay. Lily will take a look at the engines, then we’ll do another overflight at our operational ceiling. And then we’ll head home.”

“I think I can tell you what I’m going to find,” Lily said. “Nothing.”

“I believe that,” Alma said. “They’re purring like kittens today. But we’ll follow the protocol.”

“Besides,” Lewis said, "there’s this enormous basket Stasi packed. Seems a shame to try to eat that in the air.”

Ohiki Bay was like a millpond. Alma set the Cat down gently in the sun-dazzled water, and shut down the engines while Lewis scrambled past her to set out the sea anchor. It was hot in the plane even with the windows and the canopy open. After a few minutes, Alma closed the cabin windows and they climbed out onto the fuselage. Lewis handed up the picnic basket and they sat in the gentle breeze, the anchor holding the Cat nicely into the swells. Inshore, there was golden sand, but also the hard purple-brown rock of another lava flow, and beyond the line of scrubby trees, Mauna Loa reared snow-capped into the sky.

They feasted on chicken salad and ham sandwiches and a jar of barely soured pickles. There were delicate almond cookies, too, barely browned, and another thermos of cold tea, this one scented with jasmine, and Alma leaned back in the shade of the wing, resting her shoulder against Lewis’s warm arm. Lily stretched out on top of the nose turret, sunning herself like a lizard, while Mitch let his feet hang down the curve of the hull. In the distance, a fishing boat motored slowly into the bay, the water sparkling and flashing ahead of it. Alma frowned, curious, and Lily sat up.

“Look, flying fish!”

“Is that what those are?” Alma shaded her eyes. It was hard to see against the sun and the bright spray, but she thought she could make out silvery bullet shapes skimming above the waves for what seemed to be impossible distances before they splashed back into the water. They were running from the boat, she thought, and as they leaped past the Cat, she caught a glimpse of fins spread like moth’s wings.

“Hey mister!” That was one of the fishermen, his hands cupped to make a megaphone. “Hey, mister, everything ok?”

“Everything’s fine, thanks,” Alma shouted back.

The fisherman waved, and his tillerman turned away, heading out of the bay. The flying fish skittered on a little further, then slowed and sank, disappearing beneath the waves. Lily pushed herself reluctantly to her feet, clambering up onto the fuselage.