Maledictus Aether (21 page)

Numbly, I turn the aged
parchment to the next page, and my jaw finally drops after so long,
and my throat closes.

For my son, Isaac. If you have
found this, it is my greatest treasure and my greatest
accomplishment prior to your forthcoming. I bequeath it to you, as
per stated in my will, and if you seek the one place any
self-respecting pirate would call home, it is located at
-78.554862, 15.312500. I have seen it myself, and can testify for
this information.

I truly do wish I could explain
it all to you, my son, so that you could understand – but all the
gods in the world would not be able to allow me such a pleasure,
and should I live through this coming betrayal I will take you some
place my own, and you will know of all these tales. If I do not,
then may all the gods grant you the luck of the pirates.

I hear a vivid swear shortly
after a crash, and I'm shocked back to the world outside just as a
voice reaches my ears, though the familiar tones come to me as if
through water, or a thick wall.

“What's
with
all this?” I turn my head to look in
Lucian's direction, my words failing me, and when our eyes meet he
falters, his irritated expression vanishing. “What did you
find?”

There is a no-nonsense tone to
his words, clipped and concerned. He comes towards me, pushing
aside his irritation, and it is only when he is a foot away that I
realise I am shaking uncontrollably, my knees weak, and my stomach
in my throat, threatening to purge itself of the shock I am
feeling. Carefully, as if approaching a wild animal, he presses his
hands to my shoulders and faces me fully.

“Kennedy?” he tries cautiously,
and my stomach recedes to its proper place, allowing me to
speak.

“He... he knew,” I manage, a whisper of a breath. My
companion frowns, confused, and I continue as I look to the
parchment still grasped in my hands. “Everything he's done... my
father has lead me from one point to another. His journal to the
treasury, and the treasury to here... and now, from here to
the
Alitis.
He'd seen it with his own eyes.
Lucian, it is exactly where I believed it was!”

I snap my head back up to look
at him, and he's still frowning.

“And yet... it still – I always
forget that he is truly dead.” Taking a deep breath, my arms go
limp and I clutch the sheaf in my left, my head falling forward
until it stops against his chest, and I screw my eyes shut to keep
the tears within me. To dry them up before they fall. “Does wishing
to turn back time make me in the wrong? I want nothing else... just
my father.”

Hesitant arms wrap around my
shoulders, and a chin presses itself to the crown of my head. It
brings me comfort, the gesture, despite not being a clingy man by
nature.

“It's okay,” he replies, and I
bite my lower lip. “You are only human, and that fact will never
change. If it takes you a thousand years to grieve for your father,
it will take you a thousand years – and if, by some miracle, he is
well and truly alive, I will make it my personal duty to make him
pay for that sorrow.”

His response tears a laugh from my throat, and with a nod I
close my eyes again and take deep breaths of the hot air, and he
lets me reign in my emotions in a corner of the world where none
can see my vulnerability. The scent of oil, machines and
Aether is permeated with a different
one, one of leather and tea – Earl Grey, I believe – and tries its
hardest to soothe my nerves.

And if, by some chance, a bit
of that sorrow escapes me; well, there is only one man in the world
to bear witness, and he speaks no word about it.

• XI – Tearing the World
  Apart
  

If there is only one thing to say about the
Alitis,
it is that I was expecting many things, but not
this.

A few days after departing from
Dracia we fly over Terra Australis, and one particularly chilly
morning I’m pulling my coat on just as Lucian comes in, his face
alight with the same disbelief I know in an instant is coursing
through the ranks of the crew itself, and before he can even
breathe a word I inform him that I will be at the gallery in five
minutes, to which he simply nods and disappears once more, almost
as fast as he came in. Chuckling to myself I zip up the fur-lined
coat retrieved in Dracia prior to the departure, flexing the hand
of my fine-tuned left arm and ensuring the metal has yet to freeze
and lock up in this chill.

Before leaving my quarters I slip a tool belt around my
waist and fasten one to my left thigh once more, my steambolt’s
holster to my right thigh and slipping the gun into its proper
place. Finally, after I secure the laces of my boots I slip
Zenith
over my shoulder, letting the red sash lie around my
middle and the leather thong wrap over my right shoulder. As I pass
Orin I scratch the underside of his chin, and the lizard gladly
stretches his neck out, showing no signs of getting on my shoulder
to follow me out to this discovery.

I cannot blame him; it is quite cold, and he
is
, after all, a tropical creature.

Finally I depart, crossing over
the deck and skirting past crew members alive with curiosity and
talk, shouting at each other across the span of the different
levels. When they see me they grin at me, their overwhelmed
expressions revealing just how little they believed in the
possibility of finding the battleship. I pass them all and reach
the ladder, descending to the second level and finding the door
that gives passage to the gallery, where I pull the fabric of my
shirt to cover my face up to just below the bridge of my nose, as
it was designed to do, and meet Lucian at the guardrail. His coat
is snapping in the wind, barely kept to his person by the belts
looping from it, and I pull my goggles over my eyes to protect them
from the biting chill.

I cannot see his expression,
his mouth covered by a cloth to keep the freezing air from his
lungs and his eyes hidden by his own pair of goggles, but he points
down to the ice not five thousand feet below, the sun shining
brightly and allowing us the proper weather for hunting an age-old
ship that may or may not be covered in ice.

What I see tears the breath
right out of my lungs.

The ship dominates the area,
its length perhaps three times my own airship, and then some. The
bow itself seems to be closest to us, the glorious vessel tipped on
its side and the dark metal tinged with ice, yet only covered with
a bit of snow despite all this time. Ice has grown onto the sides,
trapping her in its clutches, and the curved bow flattens to a deck
that seems to have been made to hold other airships, perhaps be a
docking bay. At least two dozen cannons protrude from her sides,
and a commanding tower in the centre rises, tethered to the ship
with thick cables.

The
Alitis
is cylindrical, though the bow is
concave and the stern is convex. Giant propellers at the back seem
to have been specifically geared towards moving the monstrosity,
and various lightning rods stand from the ship to collect the
precious power supply. Giant tanks are against port and starboard,
perhaps a storage of some sort, and despite the years the Aether on
the ship is in great shape, still shining vigorously. Various
cabins can also be seen… I could go on forever about what I can
see.

My only words to the man standing beside me as I lean over
the guardrail, the Sailing Master steering us to a place so we can
throw the anchors and land, is a breathless
wow
that
is snatched away with the wind. He nods, just as
awestruck.

So this is the vessel my forefathers called home, and the
one my ancestor built and sailed on himself. I almost cannot
believe it is real – a ship of this size seems as if it would
forever be land bound; it was a stretch to build the
Atlas
, and my ship was built in an age with better
technology.

Good thing I made this vessel
strong; my ship was built for one purpose, and one purpose only,
and by the gods it will succeed.

“Well then,” I shout over the
howl of the biting wind, pulling my fur-lined cowl over my head and
holding it there with a hand as I look to my companion. He looks my
way, arching an eyebrow, “what say you we get down there and see
what we’re working with?”

After throwing down the anchors and securing them to the
ice sheets, Angelo easing the
Atlas
down onto the
ice so that we can throw the gangplank down and walk onto the sheer
ice with ease. The sun is almost blinding as it reflects on the
white snow, and when I stand a few hundred feet from the ship I
can’t help but be stunned once more at the size of it. It
dominates
the horizon, almost blocking out the sun completely
until we step into its shadow. Lucian is behind me, and with him an
American named Elizabeth and an African who prefers going by the
name Cain follows us. The others have been charged to care for the
ship until we return with preliminary information.

As we step through its shadow I
can’t help but feel as if we are being swallowed up by the ship
itself, the looming object just growing larger and larger until we
stand at its frozen base. I place a hand to its metal skin, tipping
my head up to look to the very top of the slightly off-kilter side
of the ship, shaking my head almost in disbelief. Lucian laughs
quietly beside me, clapping me lightly on my shoulder, and Cain
gestures to one of the viewing cabins I’d noted earlier, almost at
our level.

Leading the way, the four of us
reach the metal shell of the cabin, the windows covered in ice and
unable to offer a view within the ship; but, as luck would have it,
as we get closer we all notice the door bolted into its side,
frozen shut but apparently not helplessly so. It simply takes a bit
of manpower to climb the nearest icy cliff and step precariously
onto the metal ship itself, our footsteps echoing throughout the
frozen wasteland, and with the sun like an eye watching from afar
and the wind howling in our ears, two of us chip away at the ice
while a third gradually wiggles the doorknob until, inch by inch,
the door surrenders and yawns open.

Sharing a victorious grin, the three of them gesture for me
to go in first so I do so gratefully, glad to be out of the
merciless wind as I lower myself down onto the slightly uneven
floor, tilted a little but not entirely unattainable. The inside of
the viewing cabin, upon first glance, is a series of benches turned
towards these windows, to hint at exactly what I expected these
things to be. I step further into the room, and when Cain walks in
last he pulls the door shut and bars the wind from us, giving us a
chance to chase a bit of the chill from our bones and gather our
bearings.

Elizabeth pulls out one of the
oil lamps we’d brought for the journey, and lights it once Lucian
holds it for her to make this easier. I was afraid of the oil
freezing in this frigid weather, but we seem to have gotten lucky.
Once one is lit she lights the other, Lucian handing me the first
and Cain being offered the second. From there, they follow me as I
walk to the quick end of the viewing cabin, the door stuck rather
than frozen in place. I let Lucian coerce the door into submission,
spilling into what appears to be a hallway that spans the length of
the ship at perhaps the lowermost level, at the circumference of
the body of the monstrosity. The orange light spilling from the
lamps lights a generous amount of the ship, revealing the rather
lush interior – something I had not expected from this at all.

The floor is carpeted a fine
red, a little brittle due to the cold but otherwise still as
marvellous as it once was; the wall is ornate, the upper half a
pale beige hue and the lower half made of a dark wood, perhaps
mahogany. The ceiling is made of wood as well, and lights are set
into the ceiling, the kind I had not expected – lights that, if I
am not mistaken, would be powered by lightning.

There are also oil lamps hanging from hooks on the walls,
and sometimes candelabras instead of those, and as we travel down
the length we come across a variety of rooms, these either viewing
rooms or storage. Each of these
is lush, showing signs of decades of occupation and
comfort.

Finally, after what feels like
an age, we find a staircase that dominates the centre of the
hallway, allowing us to climb up to the level above this one.

For the next two hours this is
the routine we fall into, walking along the hallways and climbing
the staircase to the next deck. Once we reach the fifth deck Cain
and Elizabeth veer away from Lucian and I to go further up, whereas
we venture back down in search of the engines. Our goal here is not
only to find this legend, but to bring her back to the skies.

“She looks sturdy enough,” Lucian is saying as we walk
through what appears to be a cargo bay on the second level. He took
a lamp from the wall earlier, so we explore different ends of the
room, looking around stacks of crates and bundles held together
with leather thongs. There are objects strung to the ceiling with
chains, held together by a net of the thick steel to keep them from
falling. Even in the chill, there is no sign of age. “I mean, I
have yet to see a breach in the hull, so my understanding is that
the
Alitis
didn’t crash.”

“So how did it get here?” I
question, noticing the fading light beyond the window once I work
at the ice crusting its surface a bit. “I mean, I could imagine the
engines failing as it was brought higher in the sky and then
crashing – miraculously – on land, but without a scratch?” Looking
in his direction, I catch his eye. “As impressive as this ship is,
I have to draw the line at indestructible.”