Shae’s hands were fists: one tight around the wheel, the other moving between levers on the helm. The bow had turned and dipped, pointed right at the base of the valley, right at the battle in front of the Blue Keep. On either side of the ship, the rotors were spinning hard, driving them forward like a gale to stern. The bag overhead rippled against the wind that had sleeked the stray hairs off her face.
The air was ice itself, but there was no keeping a hood up against the wind that was a whine across her frozen ears. Beyond it, the world seemed to be full of sounds. The lumick engines, a throaty hum. The flashing cannons from the walls ahead, a roar. The noises of the alumen, a horrible scream.
And through it all, Shae was smiling.
Shipmistress. Captain. It didn’t matter the title.
She had a ship. She had a boltgun on her back. She was hunting for prey. She’d never felt so alive.
Kayden moaned from behind her.
“You should go down below,” she called back.
He coughed. “And miss this madness?”
She wanted to go to him, to tend to the fool man before he killed himself of exhaustion and fever. But she had a mission. A duty.
Skies to sail.
Behind her, she heard the lumicker shuffle to the rail and put his head over the side. He threw up his last meal across the slashing slopes below.
“Not usually this fast,” Kayden muttered.
Shae grinned. The ropes to the bag above were taut. The cleats and buckles were straining. The decks shivered. She felt and heard it all. A ship was a ship. At sea. In the air. “She’ll hold. Does she have a name?”
“Does what have a name?”
She felt a crosswind catching the bow, and her hand jumped one handle to starboard. Muscles flexed from her arm to her back to her legs to her booted feet on the deck. The bow bobbed and righted, pointed at the enemy. “The ship.”
“Sparrow.”
“Sparrow,” Shae repeated. “Light. Fast. I like that.”
Mother, she wished she had her skull mask. Let the alumen look up and see death riding down on them.
Ragan and Tadd were holding hard to the railings on the foredeck. It didn’t look like they’d ever been on an airship moving so fast before, either, especially not one rushing down the side of a mountain. “Portside!” she called out. “We’re going to flatten out and come right across the front of them! Be ready!”
Both men’s eyes were wide. But Tadd managed to nod.
“I’ll help them light,” Kayden said. And before she could stop him, he was stumbling his way forward, down the stairs, then nearly sliding his way into the other men. They helped to catch him. He crumpled against the railing, then held out a lighter with his good hand and smiled like the fool he was.
Shae wanted to slap him. She vaguely wanted to do other things to him, too, which was new and confusing.
But the Blue Keep was close and fast getting closer. So was the alumen army. So was the valley floor.
“Do you think they’ll hit us?” Aro had staggered up to stand beside her. He had one of his tools in his hand, but she could see that he’d pulled his coat back off his hip so he could quickly get to the boltgun in its holster. He was looking at the cannons flashing along the walls.
Shae’s gaze moved from the cannons to the airbag above. “I sure hope not. No luck on the aluman?”
“Almost there.”
The crosswind abruptly died. Shae grunted the wheel one handle back to port. Then she readied her other hand on the lever to pull the bow before they buried it in the frozen ground. “Then don’t waste time talking to me.”
He went back to the table. She heard his metal tool clinking.
“Ready?” she called forward.
Kayden and the two men all nodded. The bags were lined up against the railing. Kayden had his lighter. Tadd and Ragan had bags on either side of them, ready to light and throw. The two young men were terrified, but they clearly knew their duty. And they seemed glad to have the Lord of the Blue Keep with them—even if he was broken.
Shae pushed Kayden out of her mind. She focused on the wind and the engines and the ground and the straining ship. She felt it coming. The moment. “My Sparrow,” she whispered, willing the ship to hold together.
The airship bucked on the line of wind rolling off the walls of the Blue Keep. “Up-plane!” Shae shouted. She tried to pull back on the lever, to pull out of their dive, but she was pulling against the force of the ripping wind. She threw her shoulder into the wheel to hold it in place so she could get two hands on the stick. “Hold on!”
The lever heaved backward. The Sparrow let out a long, loud groan. The lumick engines strained, and she moved a hand over to pull back on their power too.
A cleat on the starboard side of the ship cracked loose and clattered back and down, out of sight. The cable that it had been holding whipped up and back against the airbag above.
Aro lunged over the top of her, grabbing the wheel. “I’ve got this!”
She shifted, closing her eyes as she put her whole body into the levers. They complained. The rest of the lines protested. But nothing snapped. Nothing more came loose. The Sparrow, screaming off the mountain slope, leveled out over the valley.
“Bombs away!” she screamed.
She opened her eyes and saw Kayden with his lighter moving left and right, lighting the fuses of the firepowder bags as fast as the other men could get them to him.
The bombs were going over the side.
And, just heartbeats later, they were exploding among the alumen.
Metal men were fragmenting in the fire. Clods of frozen dirt were scattering up into the night sky. The Sparrow was leveled, slowing. Bits of it all were hitting the bag, clattering onto the deck.
With the tension out of the controls, Shae could move them more freely. She pushed over onto the helm. “I’ve got it!” she said to Aro. He nodded and fell away, back to his work table. Handles in hand, she spun the wheel to starboard so she could angle through a thicker wave of the alumen.
Shae glanced over at the Blue Keep. Alumen were already dying against the base of the wall, contorted against the lumicklines. But more were piling atop them. The tide was coming in. Across the top of the fortifications, even with them now, the cannons had paused. The only explosions were coming from the bombs of the Sparrow. The men of the keep shouted in a great cheer. In the middle of them stood Oth Marek. His arm was raised in defiant camaraderie.
Ragan’s voice broke through the noise. “Almost out!”
Shae looked back to the foredeck, saw that their firepowder bags were indeed getting low. “Hard to starboard! Flip sides! We’re coming around!”
Tadd reached down and helped Kayden to his feet. Ragan got under his other shoulder. Together, they clambered across the deck toward the bag lined up to starboard.
Shae moved her left hand to the levers. Steady-plane, she thought. But this would be like letting the wind out on a tack. She would slow down, let the rear of the ship sink into the turn. That might bring the bow around faster. Then she’d speed up again and shoot out of it.
The other side of the valley loomed large, a steep wall of snow and rock. A couple of cannons on the far end of the wall behind them opened up again. The world was pale-blue light flashing orange and yellow and red.
“Brace!” she cried out, and then she slowed the lumick engines and spun the wheel as fast as she could.
The Sparrow groaned once again. It felt like her hull sank, and Shae’s stomach with it. The bow lurched hard to starboard, for a moment pointing at the Blue Keep itself before it was swinging around along the line of the wall and back toward the direction they’d come. She could see the lines of the cannon fire hurtling out ahead of them into the screaming alumen army.
“I got it!” Aro suddenly shouted from behind her. “The eyes!”
Shae—one hand on the lever, ready to up the speed—looked back. The eyes on the bodyless metal head in Aro’s box flickered blue. Then they lit and held. The speaker popped and buzzed for a moment.
Aro was stepping back from it, back into her. The blue light of its eyes highlighted the elation on his face. “I did it!”
“I see fire and war,” the speaker in the corner of the box said. “And I see the Bone Pirate.”