The Aeronaut's Windlass (52 page)

“That’s an order, Sergeant,” he said calmly. “See to the men. Post a guard on the mouth of the tunnel so that we are not disturbed. Dismissed.”

Espira could all but hear the sergeant’s teeth grinding. But he said, “Yes, sir,” snapped off a salute, and stalked out of the tunnel.

“He seemed a trifle impolite, Major,” Cavendish said diffidently.

“The sergeant has had little experience with the niceties of proper society, I fear. Additionally, he was wounded in the attempt to destroy the Lancasters’ crystal vattery,” Espira replied. “I suspect he is experiencing more pain than he is willing to admit.”

“And he is valuable to you?”

“Indispensable,” he assured her.

Cavendish sipped at her tea. “I suppose allowances must be made. He is, after all, warriorborn. We cannot expect them to maintain perfect poise indefinitely.” She glanced up at Sark and murmured, “Inevitably, the beast emerges.”

For a second, Espira saw some kind of smoldering heat in Sark’s blank eyes. The bloodstains on the walls glistened in the light of the little table’s lumin crystals.

“You speak with great perception,” Espira said. “This tea is excellent.”

“Why, thank you, Major,” Cavendish said with a smile that on anyone else would have seemed genuine. “It is my personal blend. I mixed it myself.”

Espira struggled to keep his smile from becoming wooden. He had a strong instinct that he did not want to know precisely what a madwoman like Cavendish would have mixed into her tea. “Madame, you are too generous.”

“That remains to be seen,” Cavendish said. “The Enemy is here, Major.”

Espira arched an eyebrow. He took a sip of tea and suggested diffidently, “It
is
the Albions’ home Spire, madame.”

She made an impatient flicking gesture with the fingers of one hand. “All the trogs of Albion cannot impede my designs,” she said. “But there are other hands moving now, other minds bending their wills upon this habble. They have the power to deny us our goals if improperly handled.”

“May I assume, then, madame, that this is the purpose of your visit?”

“Obviously. It is time to employ contingency measures.”

Espira leaned back in his chair and cupped his tea with both hands for a moment. “Madame,” he said slowly, “the timing of our strike must be precise. Otherwise we shall not have the support of the Armada nor any means of escape. Any action we take before the appointed hour jeopardizes the entirety of the plan.”

Cavendish looked at him over the rim of her teacup and her expression was utterly blank. “Major. I begin to find myself disappointed in the paucity of your motivation. Must I find a way to increase it?”

“Madame, with all respect, I must remind you that my men are Marines, not spies. They fight well, but they have neither the training nor the experience to blend into the populace of an Albion habble for any length of time.” He cleared his throat. “I might even suggest that your own resources might be better put to such a task.”

“They have been,” Cavendish replied calmly. “It was how I managed to confirm the presence of the foe. And I have been identified, I suspect, so I dare not address the matter personally from my current position. Your men will still possess the advantage of surprise.”

Just then footsteps sounded in the hallway, and Lieutenant Ibarra, one of the younger officers of the force under Espira’s command, appeared from the shadows. Ibarra had gone missing during the initial incursion and had been presumed lost, and the broad-chested, quick-tempered young nobleman walked toward them with tired but hurried steps.

“Major!” Ibarra called. “Lieutenant Ibarra reporting for duty, sir.”

Dammit. Why hadn’t the guards stopped the man? Because the young officer had ordered them to let him pass, of course. Damned young hothead. “Lieutenant, I am currently busy.”

Ibarra looked strained and a bit white around the eyes, but he grinned and gave Cavendish a lecherous leer. “I can see that, sir. Rank doth have its privileges, eh? Can I afford one of those on a lieutenant’s pay?”

“
Lieutenant
,” Espira snapped.

“How
rude
,” Cavendish said. Her smile was one of absolute pleasure.

She flicked a finger. Only that.

Ibarra’s eyes suddenly flew open wide in an expression of utter terror, and an instant later the man began to scream and kept screaming. His hands flew to his eyes, his palms pressing against his skull, and he staggered and collapsed to the ground one joint at a time.

Cavendish watched with flat, passionless eyes and noted, “I cannot abide boors.”

Ibarra shrieked on as Espira put his tea down and lunged toward the young man. “Guard!” he bellowed.

Espira had seen this before. He desperately pried at Ibarra’s wrists, but despite his strength he was unable to remove the young man’s hands from his eyes.

The guards came running, but they didn’t get there before Ibarra had clawed his eyes out with his own raking fingers in mindless, howling terror.

At Espira’s command, and with his help, the two Marines managed to haul Ibarra’s hands from his face and bind them behind his back, but the bloody ruins of the boy’s eye sockets were bleeding freely by the time they were done.

“Get him to a medic, fast,” Espira snapped. Then he shot a glance at Cavendish.

The mad etherealist regarded him through slitted eyes, a small smile dancing upon her lips. She was, he realized, enjoying herself—and waiting for his reaction.

“Was that necessary, madame?” he snarled.

“That depends entirely upon you, Major,” Cavendish murmured. “And upon how motivated you are feeling. How many more of your men will be visited by such horrors before you elect to cooperate? You may decide.”

Espira ground his teeth. He wore his gauntlet. Would he have time to prime and discharge it before Cavendish could . . .

...what? Twitch a finger?

And even if he did manage to kill her, what would Armada Admiralty say about the action? Cavendish was their darling.

Espira felt his shoulders sag.

“Very well,” he said, and his own voice sounded ragged to him. “How many?”

“Six should be sufficient.”

Six. Six men. If he sent them out on Cavendish’s hunt, absolutely anything could happen. He might well be signing their death warrants.

But at this point . . . what choice did he have?

He ground his teeth and nodded. “Whom do I tell them to kill?”

She lifted her cup and took another sip of tea, briefly concealing her skeleton smile.

Chapter 42

Spire Albion, Habble Landing, Near the Black Horse Inn

B
ridget spotted the sign for the Black Horse and felt a surge of relief—only to have it sublimate into anxiety when she realized that something was very, very wrong.

There was a crowd around the building. The front door had been broken from its hinges and lay in shattered pieces on the ground nearby. A number of uniformed Guardsmen were present—as were nearly a dozen silent, motionless human forms lying in a row on the ground, covered by bloodstained bedsheets.

Bridget promptly took Folly’s arm and drew her around the nearest corner and out of sight of the Black Horse.

“Oh,” Folly said, surprised. “I thought Bridget and I were returning to the master in the inn. But now we’re hiding in a dark alley instead. I wonder why we’re doing that?”

“Didn’t you see?” Bridget asked.

The etherealist’s apprentice frowned down at her jar of crystals. “One of you should tell Bridget that I was watching to make sure none of you fell out on the return trip.”

“I’ll watch them for a moment, Folly,” Bridget said. “You should take a look.”

Folly gave her a grateful smile and then crept up to the corner and peered carefully around it. After a moment, she reported dubiously, “I can see what she’s talking about. But don’t know what that means.”

“Something has happened,” Bridget said. “We don’t know what. But what are the odds that so much violence would come to the same inn where our inquisition was based?”

“Oh, I can’t tell her that without more points of data,” Folly said seriously. “If I knew how many inns were in Habble Landing, and the general rate of violent incidents over a statistically significant duration . . .”

“Folly,” Bridget said quietly. “There are dead bodies there. And we don’t know who they are.”

Folly stared blankly at Bridget for several seconds. Then her eyes widened, and the blood drained from her face. “She thinks one of them could be my . . . her fellow Guardsmen?” She swallowed. “Oh, I’m sure that I don’t like that thought at all. We must not rush to conclusions. How can we even be sure that those are dead bodies?”

Bridget glanced up to the cat on her shoulder. “Rowl?”

“I smell death,” Rowl reported.

Bridget forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly, though her heart lurched at the thought that some of the forms beneath the sheets might be her friends. She tried to address the problem with dispassionate rationality.

“One of us should go look,” she murmured. “Perhaps Master Ferus and the others are simply inside. We must know what happened.”

“Of course,” Folly said, nodding to her jar. “Bridget is so sensible. Oh, except that . . . if there truly is an enemy nearby, he might be watching the inn. We would be revealing ourselves to him.”

“I will go,” Rowl said calmly.

Bridget peered around the corner again. “That is not advisable, Rowl. There are half a dozen verminocitors there now. See the scalelashes and the leather coats and boots? They might not take kindly to the presence of a cat in the middle of the habble.”

Rowl made a growling sound in his throat. Cats had historically been hunted by verminocitors—and vice versa. Though there was a working alliance of cooperation between them in Habble Morning, cats and verminocitors kept communications to the absolute minimum necessary to make that alliance function. Neither group trusted the other. She had no idea what that relationship might be in Habble Landing.

“In order to harm me,” Rowl said, supremely confident, “they would first need to know I was there.” And with that, he leapt lightly to the ground and vanished into the shadows deeper in the alley.

“Oh, that arrogant little monster,” Bridget murmured.

“Don’t worry,” Folly told her jar. “I’m sure Rowl will be quite careful.”

Bridget sighed. “He’s not one-tenth as clever as he believes himself to be.”

“You mustn’t judge Bridget for saying such things,” Folly murmured. “She is only under strain, and I can hardly blame her. I don’t want someone I care about to be dead, either. Thinking of it makes me feel as though my stomach had curled into a ball and rolled away.”

Bridget grimaced. “It seems so useless to be skulking about like this. Those Guardsmen wear the same uniform I do. Or would, if we were wearing our uniforms. I should be able to walk up to them and ask questions.”

“Perhaps Bridget does not remember that the Spirearch was concerned that one of the Guardsmen might be an enemy spy.”

“Or they might
not
,” Bridget said. “Traitors do not pose the true threat to Spire Albion. They’re nowhere near as dangerous—or toxic—as fear.”

Folly frowned quietly down at the ground. “And yet, what choice does Bridget have? If this situation is the result of enemy action, and the enemy
does
have a traitor within the Guard, is it not logical to assume that the traitor would be present here, watching and reporting to his Auroran masters?”

“I suppose it is logical.” Bridget sighed. “But I feel no obligation whatever to
like
it.”

“Oh,” Folly said, more brightly. “I’m relieved that she feels that way—I thought I might be the only one.”

Bridget drew back from the corner, lest someone spot her and be curious as to why a young woman might be acting in such a clandestine fashion around such dire events, and settled down to wait.

Rowl returned within ten minutes, sauntering forth from the shadows calmly and padding over to climb onto Bridget’s lap.

“I know,” Bridget said. “You told me so.”

Rowl curled his tail around his paws and looked smug.