All The Turns of Light (25 page)

Ten minutes,
said a stave.

“So we’ve got five minutes to think of something,” Mug said. “And five to do it. All right. If it’s the flying coils they’re following, we shut the coils down, go to fans, and make some quick turns.”

Meralda shook her head miserably. “They’ll catch us within minutes. We can’t turn off the coils. We can’t even slow down.” She forced her hands away from her face, and managed to open her eyes.

“Nameless and Faceless. The air left in our wake–can you detect anything unusual about it?”

Aye,
said a stave.
It is troubled, like the air after a storm.

Meralda nodded. “That’s called ionization. That must be what the masses are following.”

“If that’s what they’re following, we have to shut off the coils,” Mug said.

Meralda’s mind raced. I dare not throw another pebble of unmagic, she thought–but why can’t I use the things my unmagic-augmented Sight has shown me?

“Your eyes just got very bright,” Mug said. “Have you thought of something?”

“I need my latching wands,” Meralda said. “And something fine and granular. Flour. Yes.”

“Flour and latching wands,” replied Mug. His eyes looked warily toward one another. “Anything else? Eggs, salt, baking soda?”

“A sack of some sort. Mug. Have the Bellringers assemble the components. Meet me on the loading dock. I’ll need it lowered eight feet. Is that clear?”

“Clear enough,” Mug said, already sailing for the door. “Open up,” he called, and the door opened.

“Mage, they’re asking for you on the bridge,” said Kervis, poking his head inside.

“Of course they are.” She found her dark glasses and put them on. “Better?” she asked Mug.

“You needn’t bother,” replied Mug. “Might as well take them off. Can’t hide it behind dark glass anymore, Mistress. Just claim it’s some magical thing. You won’t be questioned.”

Meralda sighed and removed the spectacles. She dared a single glance at herself in Goboy’s Glass, and saw the pure, bright orbs of her eyes burning like just-struck matches.

The light from her eyes was so bright now she cast shadows across her desk. She looked quickly away and rushed out of the cabin, making her way through the fearful crowds that packed the passageways.

See how they make way for you
, said a spiteful little voice in the back of her mind.
Even your dark glasses can’t hide what you are becoming
.

And you called Mug a construct. Mug, your oldest and best friend. You might as well have put him in a cabinet labeled TOOLS.

“I don’t have time for this,” Meralda said. People still shrank from her, and whispered behind their hands. She glared, and hurried on.

She heard the ramp being lowered well before she reached the loading bay doors. The pair of guardsmen flanking the doors sprang to attention before opening the doors wide.

Inside the cargo bay, wind howled and roared. The air was cold and wet, and it tore at Meralda’s hair and set her eyes to watering.

The Bellringers burst into the bay behind her. Mug followed, his cage battered by the wind and his leaves tossing about.

“This is everything,” he shouted. “I imagine the next air mass is nearly upon us.”

A pair of Air Corps engineers stood nervously near. One offered Meralda a pair of brass goggles, but she waved them away.

“Maybe five minutes, Mistress,” shouted Mug.

Meralda took a deep breath.

Time slowed. The wind lost its roar, and its bite. Mug’s leaves went still, as though he were a painting, and then silence fell across the loading bay.

Meralda let her Sight go and followed it down, winding down paths each more twisted and tinier than the last.

She picked up a handful of flour, mesmerized by the elegance of something so plain and ordinary when seen in its most basic, primal form.

No unmagic, she intoned. I will not violate a created thing, no matter how small–but I can latch a simple binding spell within these odd little spaces, and use that to pull the ionized air so far down in the most miniscule crevices of reality that the weaponized air masses will be trapped harmlessly in a lazy cloud of flour dust.

Meralda waved both latching wands and it was done, and she let out her breath with a cough.

The fierce wind clawed at her face. The roar filled her ears. She took up the bag of flour and marched to the open end of the ramp, and as Mug shouted at her to be careful she emptied the bag into the sky, dropping the sack when it was empty.

She watched the cloud of flour vanish.
The world is still here
, she thought.
Perhaps I can do this after all.

“You may raise the ramp now, gentlemen,” she shouted. “It is done.”

“Pardon me, Mistress, but what exactly is
it
, and will it keep us from enjoying an afternoon swim?”

Meralda heard the Captain’s voice bellowing from the speaking tube. “Let’s go to the bridge, Mug,” she said. “I’ll explain along the way.”

The Guardsmen flanking the bridge bulkhead stared at her radiant eyes but waved her through.

Captain Fairweather faced her immediately. “That shook us from bow to stern, but we can’t find any physical damage. The coils are fine. So are all the instruments. Any idea what that was?”

“It was a Vonat weapon. A mass of moving air which carried a spell. They intended to ruin our spark arrestors. They failed.”

The Captain’s face flushed red with anger. He chewed the stem of his unlit pipe and looked quickly away from Meralda’s eyes.

“That was the first of many such attacks,” Meralda said. “The next is due any moment now. I have taken steps—”

A sudden blast of thunder split the air, but the
Intrepid
soared on, unharmed by the blast.

Meralda raised her Sight and examined the airship. She found the remnants of the most recent spellwork tumbling harmlessly a hundred feet off the airship’s port side, and carefully inspected its makeup.

Electrical
, she thought.
Designed to raise a storm of small static discharges. Harmless in and of themselves, but had the first spellwork rendered the spark arrestors useless, this one would have sent us down in flames.

She shut down her Sight. “As I was saying, we are safe from such attacks, at least for the moment. Don’t be alarmed at the blasts. The spells are discharging well away from the
Intrepid
.”

The bridge was, Meralda realized, utterly silent. All eyes were fixed upon her, and every mouth hung open in a round O of surprise.

“I see you’ve all noticed my eyes,” Meralda said. “Please don’t be alarmed. I am protecting the
Intrepid
from magical harm. This is a side effect.”

“You heard the Mage,” growled the Captain. “I want an update on the Vonat’s position. Mage. Consider yonder sky.” He pointed toward the heavy bank of black clouds that dominated the northeast. “I can fly above that, or within. Which would inconvenience our pursuer the most?”

“Within the clouds.” Distant lightning flashed, buried deep inside the thunderheads. Just a few bolts of lightning will ionize the air for miles. “Yes. That would prevent many of the spellworks from ever locating us.”

“Worth the risk of a lightning strike?” asked the Captain.

“The
Intrepid’s
frame and envelope are well protected from lightning strikes.”

The Captain chewed at his pipe. “Very well. Elevator, up three degrees. Rudder, maintain present course.”

Ben the elevator man gulped, but acknowledged the order and set about steering the
Intrepid
into the storm.

Another blast of thunder rolled across the ship, well to port. Meralda could see the indistinct forms of Nameless and Faceless flitting past the
Intrepid’s
hull, even though she wasn’t using Sight.

The deck took on a noticeable upward tilt. Captain Fairweather reached for the speaking tube, closed a switch, and spoke. “Attention,” he said. “This is the Captain. Passengers, prepare for a bit of shaking about. Crew, to your ready stations. That is all.” He replaced the speaking tube in its cradle. “Watch Officer Merton, dump our ballast. Mr. Hay, flying coils to full plus thirty-five percent, on my mark.”

“Aye, Captain.”

The airship lurched, leaping skyward as ten thousand gallons of seawater poured suddenly from her ballast tanks.

“Now, Mr. Hay,” said the Captain.

Meralda grabbed one of the brass bars set into the framing members between sheets of glass and held on as the
Intrepid
hurtled toward the storm front.

“Range?” asked the Captain.

“Forty miles,” replied the navigator, without looking up from his calculations. “Sixteen minutes of flight.”

The Captain nodded. “Coils to full plus fifty percent,” he said. “Let’s see if that infernal thing can keep up. Get the aft telescope salon on the tube.”

Thunder broke, not as close this time, but with sufficient force to rattle the glass and obscure the first few words spoken by the crewman manning the telescope. “—caught them by surprise. I see more smoke, though. It’s putting on speed.”

“Even if we outrun it to the cloud bank, we can’t expect the storm to extend all the way to Sheng Zhen. We need to fight back.” Meralda paced as she considered ideas.

I could send the
Jenny
against the black death. A few simple spells to work the controls, another to keep the flying launch aimed at the Vonat creation. But that will take hours, maybe longer. With no guarantee that even a collision with the much smaller
Jenny
would impede the black death’s pursuit in the least.

A small, terrible part of Meralda’s mind remembered the power she had borrowed from Shadow, power that had stirred dangerously when she held the black death’s strange spellworks in her hands. What if I reached out and tore it apart? Why should I tolerate attacks when I might easily brush them aside, and my attackers too? Shadows danced all across the bridge as the radiance from her eyes intensified.

She took a deep breath, felt her chest tremble, and watched the shadows fade. It was only then she realized all eyes were on her. Even the Captain’s.

I need to fight back, she thought. Everyone on this airship is counting on the Mage to do something, to do anything. But what?

Nameless,
she said, not quite aloud
. Faceless. One of you. To me.

“It’s time I took the battle to the enemy,” Meralda said. But I’ll do it without letting the monster loose, she thought. “Captain, I must return to my cabin. Pray keep the coils as they are, until we are well into the clouds. Mug, to the cabin.”

The Captain nodded and repeated her words to the bridge. Meralda was gone by the time the order was given, with Mug buzzing quickly ahead.

Thunder rolled as she hurried down the passageway. The sky beyond the portholes was dark now, and the waters below were grey, touched with white where the wind whipped the waves into foam.

I am here,
said a shadow which tumbled near Meralda’s right hand.

“Can your companion manage alone for a few minutes?”

Aye,
said the stave.
But only a few.

“That’s all we’ll need,” she said. “A few moments ago, I dumped a bag of flour off the loading dock. It formed a cloud which is attracting the weaponized air masses, preventing them from reaching us. I wonder–could you shape that cloud of flour into a ring, one large enough and thin enough to keep the spellbound air masses circling in place?”

We could,
said the shadow, after a moment.
Akin to one of master’s smoke rings. The wind will disperse it soon enough, but it will remain intact for a time.

“Could you form a number of these rings, just in front of the storm?”

The stave gamboled and darted.

Aye,
it replied.
We can string them invisible twixt sea and sun!

“Do so,” Meralda said. “As many as you can.” She frowned. The air masses may detonate, or they may not, she thought. “Leave a few pockets of flour dust ahead of the rest,” she said. “Perhaps they will become entangled in the black death’s spellworks, and trigger the air mass weapons.”

With pleasure,
it said.
‘Tis best done quickly.

“Go,” Meralda said, and the shadow vanished.

Another peal of thunder clapped through the ship. Meralda flung her cabin door open and hurried inside.

“We’re safe for the moment,” Meralda said, to Mug’s unspoken question.