Shae had seen how firepowder had blown Kayden’s airship apart. She’d seen how it could propel an iron ball through a woman’s body. It was powerful, its own kind of magick.
And now, kneeling on the deck of a different airship, she held open a burlap bag so that the two young men who were helping them could quickly fill it with scoops of the explosive, soot-like dust and a fuse.
It was more than a little frightening.
The men’s names were Ragan and Tadd. Good men who worked quickly and efficiently to get the bags ready. She didn’t think they needed her help, but she was glad for the movement to keep her fingers warm in the cold night air. She was glad, too, for the distraction to keep her from staring out at what was marching far too quickly up the valley below.
Bombs, Tadd called the bags. They’d made a half-dozen already. As each was prepared, it was lined up along the railing to either side of the foredeck.
Kayden had been right when he’d said that the airship was little different from her Pale Dawn. Take away the bladed lumick engines at its sides, replace the massive bag of air above the deck with some proper masts and sails, and the Windborn craft might’ve made a passable seafaring vessel. It even had a similar deck layout to some of the ships the Bone Pirate had taken over the years. The helm for the shipmistress—the captain, she corrected herself—was on a raised rear deck over the stern, looking ahead toward the bow across the mid- and foredecks.
Steps to a single-door hatchway ran down under the helm, allowing access to the cabins and storage spaces belowdecks. The lines binding the airbag to the ship were similar to those aboard a Seaborn ship. There were even rope ladders heading upward, though they were disappearing up the side of the gray floating mass rather than into sails and beams.
The newest bomb now filled, Shae heaved it over to the port side. Coming back, she saw the lumicker hustling across the ramp from the Blue Keep’s mooring tower. His long coat was flapping in the cold wind; his wide hat was pulled tight on his head. He got aboard, smiled at her, then looked past her into the eastern dark, out beyond the airship, where the blue eyes of the alumen bobbed like the rising tide of a glowing sea in the valley.
“Gods,” he said.
Shae had braided her hair for the coming fight, but the cold breeze was grabbing stray strands and pulling them across her face. She pushed them out of the way. “Told you it was bad. Let’s go.”
The old man had several satchels around his shoulders. Behind him, two men were hauling a large box aboard. Shae directed the lumicker through the hatchway toward one of the quarters belowdecks, but he hesitated. “I’d rather work up here,” he said.
As if on cue, Kayden limped up the hatch stairs. He was doing what he could to hide his pain and exhaustion as they hurriedly readied the airship for flight, but Shae could see it clearly. “Warmer down below,” he said. “It’ll get colder and windier when we get going.”
Aro smiled. “I’m not playing with papers, lad. And if I get this box to work, you might need my help.”
“Right.” Kayden pointed up to what he’d called the map table when Shae had first come aboard. It was on the raised rear deck, just behind the helm itself, waist-high, with a fixed stool for a seat and lit by two oil lamps at the corners of the stern. “Up there. Let’s go.”
In minutes, Aro and the men helping him had his satchels of tools and his box in place.
Behind them all, Kayden had managed to lift himself up to the rear deck too. He was holding himself upright using the pegged handles of the helm’s wheel. He ordered Aro’s helpers to loose the mooring lines. “Then report to Oth Marek,” he said. “Hold the wall. Whatever it takes.”
After awkward bows, they freed the lines before hurrying back down the tower into the warmth of the Blue Keep.
As Kayden fiddled with switches on the helm, Shae watched Aro remove the front of his box. An aluman head had been mounted inside. Surrounding it was a mess of cables and wires that ran up holes drilled in its neck or the sides of its head. The thing he’d called a speaker was mounted to the upper-left corner of the box. In the upper-right corner was a metal cradle, inside of which he’d fitted the soulglass. When she thought about it, how these were the insides of an aluman, now dragged to its outsides, the sight seemed awful and obscene. Instinctively, she looked into its eyes, expecting to see a sign of pain or anguish, but they were just empty black lenses of glass.
Aro was already spreading out tools and trying to connect the remaining wires and parts. “You spent your whole life on the waves,” he said over his shoulder. “How is it that you’re more comfortable on this ship than I am?”
“A ship is a ship,” Shae said. “Haven’t you ever been on one of these?”
“Only on the ground for lumick repairs.” He laughed a little. “I’m afraid of heights.”
“Ramp clear, mooring lines loose,” Kayden announced. “Engines burning blue. Shae, I need you here with me.”
Shae patted Aro’s shoulder, then turned around and moved forward to stand to the left side of the helm, in the same place she’d stood during her many years as the Bone Pirate’s maiden. Tadd and Ragan had paused their bomb-making to swing the ramp back into place against the side of the hull. That left the mooring lines still dangling down from the corners of the ship. “Shall I draw in the lines?” she asked.
Kayden shook his head. “I don’t think you can do it alone. And this isn’t like a ship at sea, where the water will ruin the ropes. All that matters is they’re clear of the engines, which they are.”
“I could help,” the lumicker said from his bench behind them.
“Rather have you get that thing to work so you can tell these metal bastards to get off my land,” Kayden replied. “Besides, we’ll be needing the lines when we fly back as heroes.”
Shae wished she had anything like optimism for such a half-baked plan, but she was comforted that they were doing something, at least, and not simply waiting for the wave of the coming sea to wash over the walls of the keep and drown them in their own blood. Even better, if the worst came to pass, the three of them were aboard an airship now. Kayden had wanted her to use it to go home to the Fair Isles. But with Aro’s help, she could surely take him there herself. She told herself that this was because a Bone Pirate with an airship and lumick weapons would own the waves and stand forever free—but in truth, her heart told her there was a far different reason that she wanted Kayden with her.
Love.
That would definitely complicate things back in the bay.
“Two things are different,” Kayden said.
“What?”
“At the helm here, Shae. I’ll have the wheel. That moves us on the horizontal plane, port and starboard. Same as your wheel at sea. But that’s where the similarities end.” Still holding tight to the wheel for support, he pointed to the closer of two tall levers to its left, standing between them. “This one is for speed. We don’t have to tighten or roll out sails. Just push it forward to go forward, and pull it backward to go the other direction. Got it?”
“Do I do this?”
“To start, yes. But we’re rather shorthanded on crew just now. You may need to do other things.”
Shae was certain that he didn’t have the strength to turn the wheel and work the levers, too, but she was also certain that Aro would help if it came to that. Probably while smoking his pipe. “And the other lever?” she asked.
“That’s the hard one. You’re at least used to the idea of speed. But that lever controls what you don’t have on a Seaborn ship at all: the vertical plane. Push it forward to go down, pull it back to go up.”
Shae frowned. “Forward to go forward would make sense. But forward to go down?”
“Think of it like leaning forward onto the bow and pushing it down.”
Shae chewed on her lip as she touched the levers and mapped the actions in her mind. “So slam them both all the way forward and—”
“And we hit the ground very fast.”
“Please don’t do that,” Aro said from behind. A puff of smoke drifted up between them. He had indeed lit his pipe while he worked.
“Got it,” she said. “Orders?”
“Slow ahead,” he said. “That means to ease us forward.”
Shae nodded. “Slow ahead, aye.” She slipped her hand around the knob atop the lever for speed and shifted it toward the bow of the ship. It moved easily. Below them, there was a thrum in response. On either side of the deck, the swordlike blades of the lumick engines began to turn, slicing through the cold air.
Kayden turned the wheel to port, and the ship eased forward in that direction. “Well done,” he said.
Shae moved her hand to the other lever. “Do I do anything with this one?”
“Not yet. Let’s keep her steady-plane for now,” he said. “That means level, just as we are. Down-plane means down. Up-plane means up.”
Shae took her hand off the lever and stood in what had been her ready position for orders. “Steady-plane, aye,” she announced. There wasn’t anyone to carry the orders forward into the rigging and the sails, but the habit of announcing the commands was a habit just the same.
“I could get used to this,” Kayden said.
“What?”
He grinned at her. “You doing what I say.”
“It won’t last long, my lord,” she said, and it was her turn to grin. “In the long run, you’ll find I know a lot more about little men in boats than you do.”
Kayden narrowed his eyes, confused.
Behind them, Aro laughed around his pipe.