Avalon Rising (5 page)

The blacksmith tilts his head in my direction, waiting for my explanation. I step closer, eyes glancing about with care in case my father were to spot me and promptly take me back to the main castle to await the forthcoming aeroship.

“Before Marcus left … ” I don’t know where to begin, or even if Rufus should know what task the Lady of the Lake set upon me. I don’t know if I can trust him—he went years without revealing his identity. But he’s Marcus’s father, and we both want the same thing, and by God, if I can do nothing for Azur in Jerusalem or my missing mother, I can do this. “I was to build an aeroship.”

“For the knights, I imagine.” The blacksmith faces me. “You accomplished this feat, my lady?”

I hesitate. “Not exactly. Mostly. There are still some missing elements.” Like the
jaseemat
I’ll need.

“In Lyonesse, when an inventor responded with such uncertainty, by nightfall the next day, he was already slave to magic.” Rufus loses himself in the idea for only a second before returning to the present. “One could use this ship to find the knights?”

“Better,” I say, my usual defiance vanished for zeal, even though my aeroship certainly merits no form of boasting just yet. “One could use it to find Avalon.” To sell my creation to Rufus might make all the difference.

A rare smile shapes his solemn face into a younger one, showing me a stark resemblance to Marcus. “Once you rebuilt Merlin’s copper bird, I knew you’d soon be up to something else. I understand what it’s like to lose yourself to the mechanical arts.”

And he must understand that I need help. “To complete my aeroship will take knowledge and experience I do not have. Help me turn it into something the likes of which would even impress Azur.”

The blacksmith stiffens when I mention Merlin’s mentor. “Don’t compare yourself to men who might be too wise for their own good, my lady.”

I ignore the comment. “The vessel is nearly complete, resurrected out of the Norwegian steel Merlin and I stole for the mechanical dragon.” Picking apart Victor like a hungry vulture was a bleak affair, but reforming its brass and copper into a ship to glide across the sky was exhilarating. Seeing it from the height of Merlin’s clock tower is enough to yearn to escape on it forever. “It needs alchemy to work, and I need Azur’s help, but he’s in Jerusalem, and he’s trying to save Merlin, and I need—” I stop there, lost in worry over the sheer possibility of Azur fending off rogues as I speak.

But then, “
Jaseemat
,” Rufus says with a knowing nod.

“Yes,” I breathe.

He firms his lips into a line and looks up at the gas lanterns decorating the cobblestone streets. The lights flicker against his violet pupils, highlighting the gray, and my breath catches. I’ve never missed Marcus as much as I do right now.

“For years, I warned the sorcerer against alchemy. He was convinced it was a way to use nature to its fullest potential. But in Lyonesse … ” He pulls his sleeves over his wrists. The inked images disappear like one could ignore the choice between right and wrong. “What else do you need?”

“What?”

“You said you built an aeroship. Where is it? The catacombs are empty, and it’s certainly not in the clock tower. And when the old fool built the aerohawk, it was an enormous inconvenience behind my shop. Yet I stand here unbothered. Where is it? And what else do you need?”

I run my own scrawled blueprints through my mind. The sails are finely made, a delicate arrangement of drapes that once shielded Merlin’s bed, with the addition of fine dresses Guinevere will never again wear. The farmlands offered plenty of space, and everything I constructed remains outside of Camelot, hidden by autumn trees. The aeroship’s cabin is stark and bare, but it has my touch and my attention to detail that Merlin would never consider, like the navigational piece on the helm. The engine is a remarkable reworking of Victor’s leather-encapsulated iron lungs, expanded to work with a charcoal furnace to propel the ship faster. The clockwork heart’s veins spread throughout the ship, up to the sails. But no, it’s not ready. The wings are too weak, and the vessel might be too heavy to take flight.

“I need to reinforce parts of the ship to prepare for high winds, and, yes,
jaseemat
,” I confess. “God help me, I need
jaseemat
in order to get the ship high enough to … ” To reach Avalon, the castle in the clouds, truth be told. But no, Rufus can’t know that just yet. And although Azur needs help, I can be of no use in a war where the knowledge in my mind is a clear prize.

And so, “Help me find instructions on how to make
jaseemat
, and I will find your son,” I hear myself say. A solemn promise. A promise Marcus would hate hearing me make.

Rufus’s expression changes. He doesn’t regard me as though I were a lady of Camelot; now, he sees me as an artisan like himself. “Show me.”

I lead Rufus through the break in the citadel wall Marcus showed me in the spring, the blacksmith with a heavy satchel of tools strapped to his back and the same coppertipped hook he used in Morgan’s war tight against his hip.
“There are no knights to protect us now, my lady,”
he tells me. And with the new threat of rogues foregoing their own Grail quest to attack cities and kingdoms, I can offer no argument. With thick black furs long enough to be feathers around his shoulders, he stalks after me like a raven hungry to find an unlucky mouse. I pull my cloak closer to my face and breathe into my gloved hands to keep warm.

I come out on the other side of the dry, bristly bushes, my boots crunching the snow with each step. I lift my hood over my hair and steal a glance at the wall: there are no guards keeping watch. I can escape into the woods without fear I’ll be spotted. I run, pushing aside the paralyzing fear that comes about as I let my mind drift to the idea of Marcus missing, of Azur being cornered by danger, of an aeroship on its way for me. Rufus is not far behind.

We reach the woods that surround the lake. As we approach the snow-covered cellar where I hid my aeroship in pieces—the dug-out ground a forgotten casualty of Morgan’s war—I lower my hood, glancing about for the demigoddess who once told me she made her home in this very spot. But she’s nowhere to be seen, a ghost these six months past. Above, the stars are breaking through the clouds, and I remember how so long ago, Marcus and I stood under this same sky with starfish as constellations.

I pull from fantasy and return to the logical mindset I embraced as I built the vessel. “This way.” I march along the side of the lake—the ice strong enough to carry my weight—and disappear into a lining of dead trees. Rufus follows me into a sparse patch of muddy snow and sleeping foliage. To him, there is nothing to be seen.

But before he can impatiently demand again, I kneel and brush away some branches. Under my feet, I reveal a door built into the ground, one locked with a device of my own craft, similar to Arthur’s
l’enigma insolubile
, a most precise and fussy locking device that once guarded Excalibur. But this one has a contracting feature that would allow for the entire door to swing deeply into the ground as soon as the correct sequence is engaged. As I tug on the iron rod and arrange the gauges with no need for a key— damn all keys forever—the door pulls free.

Rufus’s eyebrows lift. “I’m impressed.”

I shoot a grateful smile one could only offer another inventor. I steady my palms on my knees and lift. The door reveals a trench I can easily step into, a practical use for a part of broken, cratered land that was never refilled when Victor sprung from the catacombs. I crank a spring-loaded copper lever to click higher the platform where I built the lighter parts of my aeroship. The floor rises. Once it parallels itself with the land, I step onto the deck and release the wings that will wave high and mightily across the sky. They crack out, slow and wobbly, and certainly a problem once strong winds would hit them. I climb up the ship’s bow to check on the status of the wood—dry, thankfully. As is the bucket of charcoal for the furnace.

Rufus circles my aeroship—a small English ship styled for the oceans but made for the skies—his eyes darting from one detail to the next. From the rounded wooden beams that come to a point at the ship’s bow, to the arched walls that extend toward the main sail. No words come from him; he moves his lips like he’s trying to find speech, but it’s nearly impossible. While not as beautifully crafted as Caldor, whose feathers were tediously sculpted out of softened copper, it’s a good ship capable of rising above its aesthetic appearance.

“You built this?” Rufus finally manages.

I nod. I think of the days after Galahad’s infantry left Camelot. Of the incredible loneliness that came about when my father disappeared into the main castle to plan what would happen next to this forgotten world. How they’d searched for Camelot’s subjects for weeks on end, and how every day it grew more natural not to hear a single voice in the village.

Building my aeroship kept me occupied. It kept me close to the Grail quest. I could not leave Camelot yet for the life in Jerusalem I’d dreamt of, but it was something.

I point up. “Its wings must be strengthened, but to do that would require reinforcement I worry might be too heavy.”

“Yes, but if you were to use a lighter metal—perhaps more of the king’s steel, if you can spare some—it would work.” Rufus is a blur of mumbled notes to himself as he tests the vessel’s strength. Then he glances at me, and even in the dim moonlight, I see him light up with an idea. “Let me fly it.”

I frown. “You?”

He jumps on the deck and seizes my shoulders. “Yes. I can find Marcus with a vessel such as this, and you would never have to venture into dangerous territory.”

Certainly he can’t be so naïve to think I’d simply let someone else fly my own aeroship?

Like he can see my refusal for himself, he speaks again. “
Jaseemat
. I know how to make it.” A grimace falls upon his face, like a tittering scale in his mind has shown him the less painful of two choices.

And it seems unlikely. His words, deceptive. I narrow my eyes at such a statement that shouts of its falsity.

But, “I swear it. Merlin entrusted Azur’s instructions to me once the old fool had the steps memorized for himself.” To prove it, Rufus searches his satchel and withdraws a scrap piece of yellowing parchment decorated with unfamiliar script. An emblem I recognize has been stamped onto the back: a phoenix in green ink with a twisting Celtic design around it. The Druids created this stamp for Merlin’s correspondence with them.

I’m instantly struck with envy at the idea that my mentor would give something so precious to someone else. “Why would Merlin do that?”

“I don’t know,” Rufus says. “Honest, I don’t. But you must be nearly out of the
jaseemat
you got from the alchemist in Jerusalem if you’ve been maintaining Gawain’s iron arm these past six months. I’m sure you have a reserve for the aeroship—”

“Of course, but not enough.”

“All right. If you give your aeroship to me, I can find Marcus and bring him back. It’d take but a few days at most, I wager. I’ll bring him back, my lady, and then you could have the instructions to create
jaseemat
for yourself and whatever inventions you’ll create in Merlin’s tower, but don’t you see, you could also—” And here, he pulls away. He turns, running his hands over his neck. A long sigh follows. “I cannot lose him, too, Lady Vivienne. All I want is for Marcus to live a long, happy life.” He glances at me. “And he wants that, too. Especially if he can have it with you.”

My heart skips a beat. I knew this. Marcus never said it out loud, but I already knew. He wanted us to escape together, to live a life that would let me be happy the same way I was in Merlin’s clock tower. A life of exploring the mechanical arts in a way I could never live proudly in Camelot’s village streets or main castle. I want that. I want to see Jerusalem defeat the Spanish rogues, and I want to work with Azur. I want to touch Marcus’s raspy cheek, fall asleep in his arms.

“Stop,” I say, but it’s to myself.
Stop it, Vivienne, with these torturous thoughts.
I feel guilty enough that the coordinates locked in my mind are preventing me from getting Azur out of Jerusalem. “Why would you offer me
jaseemat
when you fear it?”

Rufus’s face darkens with the ghosts he might have left behind in Lyonesse. “A father would offer the world to the devil himself if it meant his son returned safely.”

I think about his offer. “You cannot take my aeroship, but you may accompany me.” I wait. I wait for the wrath of the Lady of the Lake to come upon me for declaring this when her very clear instructions indicated the exact opposite. “If you refuse, I will not show you how it flies, and so it would be meaningless to try to steal it.” I want to fall to my knees in happiness for setting another
l’enigma insolubile
-like puzzle into the lock that releases the lever, setting the aeroship in motion. “A faster option would be to build your own.”

Rufus looks at the aeroship and sets a large hand to its surface, feeling the smoothed-out wood, but steering clear of the Norwegian steel that still has a bit of hum to it. After a second of utter frustration, he turns back to me. “Please. I offer this so that you and my boy will be alive.”

He cannot know there’s an aeroship on its way for me. “You don’t know me, Rufus. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

He shuts his eyes. “No. It’s not that. It’s that you don’t know what sort of a world lies outside Camelot. Not because of your own ignorance, but because of your own experience. You don’t know, and Marcus, neither did he. Not really. Not when Lancelot led him through parts of the countryside that craved the knights’ attention instead of resenting it. You are capable of surviving such a world, Lady Vivienne, but that world will not look kindly upon you. Not the protégé of Merlin. Nor a noblewoman of Camelot.”

I feel a hard swallow in my throat. Nor someone who might know the coordinates to Avalon, I suppose.

Regardless. “That is my offer.”

Rufus takes a breath and then a step forward, hands on his hips as he studies my aeroship. “You overestimated how ready this vessel is. Forget the sad state of the wings, the bow needs metal stronger than dragon’s scales, and the ship’ll need a steering mechanism much more sophisticated than the one you’ve built. Yes, there’s much work to be done, Lady Vivienne. But I’ll need steel as light as a feather. I trust a lady of your stature could handle a task like that on your own.”