The compass was set on a southeasterly heading, which took the airship back along the river they had been able to see from the plateau. It cut through the jungle like a pure blue line, its waters far clearer than any river Rémy had ever seen before. Through the airship’s window she could see it twisting and turning through the trees as if it would never stop. Hours passed and the sun rose, and still all that Rémy could see below her were trees, punctuated by the rushing billow of that pure blue water. Several times she reached out to issue a sharp tap against the glass case of the compass, wondering whether perhaps it was broken. Or perhaps, she thought, since she didn’t know what she was supposed to be looking for, she could have missed something below her on the ground. But then, surely, the compass would have done something — changed, somehow — to tell her so?
She had no one to ask, and so she and the airship flew on. Rémy wished that Thaddeus were there with her — or rather, that she was wherever he was, with him. It seemed terribly wrong to be leaving him to deal with whatever he would have to face alone. It was only Thaddeus’s own words convincing her to go that kept her on her course. Otherwise she may have turned back, the puzzle box and its cryptic gift be damned.
As the day grew ever older, the landscape changed. Jungle gave way to open pasture that was dotted by only a few trees. Pasture gave way to more and more villages, all surrounded by neatly cultivated fields instead of unruly jungle. Then she saw towns and then, eventually, even a great walled city. Still there was no indication from the compass that Rémy had reached where it was taking her. It stayed resolutely on its southeasterly heading, not changing, not moving. As the shadows began to creep across the ground below her, Rémy grew impatient.
“Come on!” she exclaimed, picking up the compass and looking at it closely as if it might suddenly tell her something new. “Is this a trick? Hmm? If Desai had not believed in you, I would have tossed you over the side of that plateau! Perhaps I should have anyway! Where are we going? Why aren’t we there yet?”
The compass merely rocked slightly in her palm, its north and south hands shivering against her anger but the third hand holding firm to its course.
With a sigh, Rémy replaced the compass on the control panel and looked up to see a vast line of blue tinting her horizon. White flecks danced on its rolling peaks as it crashed toward her before breaking against the shore.
The airship had reached the ocean.
“Agh!” she cried, throwing her hands up in the air. “Now what? I am supposed to leave this place altogether? I am supposed to just fly out over the water? What?”
The compass refused to tell her anything different at all.
From the position of the burning bright sun and the shadows casting across the hot ground, Rémy thought it must be about four o’clock. Days were long here, and the sun would not set until at least eight. Four more hours to find whatever the compass was trying to show her.
Rémy sat down with a sigh and rubbed her hands over her face. “Well, I have come this far, yes?” she muttered to herself.
She flew on, planning to continue until sunset before turning back. If she kept on a reverse heading, she’d find her way back to the valley in time for tomorrow’s first light. She’d be a day behind the others, but Rémy was fleet of foot, especially when the occasion called for it.
Rémy had given up hope that she’d actually find anything out here on the ocean. Below her the waves bobbed and splashed against each other, stretching on and on in what seemed to be an endless body of water. There were no islands on the horizon, no curves of land unexpectedly showing from the sea. There was nothing and no one.
“Well, old woman,” Rémy muttered, leaning back in the chair and raising her shabby-booted feet to rest against the lip of the control panel. “You have played me for a fool, yes? I wonder where you are now, and how often you laugh at that lost little French girl who so wanted to believe you, eh?”
A sound pulled her attention back to the compass. It was moving — vibrating against the airship’s control panel so hard that it skittered between the knobs and dials, bouncing slightly on the hammered metal surface. Rémy picked it up and saw that the third hand was folding back into itself, sliding back into the tiny slot it had appeared out of that morning. In another moment or so, it was impossible to tell that it had been there at all. The compass was just a compass once again, with two hands telling her which way was north and south, and nothing at all out of the ordinary besides.
Rémy’s heart gave a slight judder and leaned over to look out of the window. This must be it. She must have reached her destination — the place the compass wanted her to find. But how could there be anything out here? Then, squinting into the glorious glare of the setting sun, she saw it.
Bobbing on the waves was a ship — three-masted, all of its sails proudly set out to catch the wind whipping across the churning waves that were burnished in amber as the sun sped toward sunset. Rémy flew toward it. Was this, finally, what the compass had wanted her to see?
As she neared, Rémy could see movement as the sailors realized what was coming toward them. Their shouts brought more men from below, until the deck was awash with them. None of them wore uniforms, Rémy noted — instead, they were dressed in a vast array of styles that seemed to mix everything from coat tails to shabby cut-off trousers. It looked, Rémy thought, like an odd kind of circus, though what a circus would be doing out here on the ocean instead of performing in a town or city somewhere, she couldn’t imagine.
Putting down the compass, she flew around the ship in an arc, leaning forward to see what was happening below. The people on deck were shouting at her in a rather unfriendly way. She saw two of them run for the main mast and begin to haul on a rope there, hoisting a flag up its length, their huge muscles straining with the effort.
The flag unfurled quickly, the wind catching its roll and whipping it out to stand proud against the prevailing wind.
It was dark — black, in fact, with a skull and crossbones tattooed in white across it.
A Jolly Roger.
Rémy’s stomach clenched sickly and she fumbled for the controls. Pirates! She had to get out of there. There was no telling what —
Something hit the hull with a sharp thunk and instantly the airship began to list to the side, pulling the nose around toward the pirates’ bow. Rémy almost slid out of her chair as the airship juddered and she fought to pull her straight again, but without success. A moment later there was another thunk — this one hit toward the airship’s tail, and suddenly Rémy felt herself being hauled in, pulled lower and lower toward the ship that bobbed below her on the waves.
In a panic, Rémy fought with the controls — the airship bucked and weaved like a goat caught in a rope, but to no avail. Another thunk followed, and then another, and with each came an extra tug that pulled the airship closer and closer to the pirates’ boat.
She could hear them now, roaring as the airship got ever closer. Rémy had no idea what to do. The controls were all but useless, whirring hopelessly under her hands.
“Heave!” came a shout from outside, followed by a roar made up of many voices, “Heave! Heave! Heave!” Each jolt that brought Rémy lower was timed with a cry of Heave!, until the rhythm was as impossible to escape as the ship’s inexorable journey downward.
Rémy leapt up from the controls — they were useless for now, anyway. She ran for the airship’s ramp and the small axe that hung beside it. If she could sever the tethers that were drawing the airship in …
The sight that greeted her as the ramp came down was terrifying. The airship had been pulled so low that the hull was almost level with the pirate ship’s deck. A dozen ropes with climbing spikes had been hurled toward her craft, embedding themselves into the hull as easily as a bare foot pressed into wet sand. Each rope was held in the grip of two pirates — they had looped the other ends of their ropes securely around their ship’s guardrail and were now straining as they pulled the airship in, inch by inch. More stood by, screaming encouragement at their fellows. They were all terrifying to behold — scarred and tattooed, painted and bejeweled; they bared their teeth, screaming and shouting, caught up in a bloodlust meant purely for Rémy and the airship they were claiming as their prize.
Rémy edged as far out onto the ramp as she could, knowing she only had a matter of seconds. Raising the axe, she aimed for the farthest rope and swung, severing the thick cord in one heavy strike. The pirates who held the other end lost their balance as their weight suddenly had nothing to counter it. They sprawled backward, ending up on the deck in a pile that briefly filled the air with bellows of laughter instead of murder.
She swung for the next rope and did the same, scrambling backward as it flicked free, and then immediately swung for the next. The airship’s nose twisted away as the tethers loosened their grip. For a moment Rémy felt a surge of hope — it was working! Then she felt a vibration shaking the ramp and turned. Over her shoulder she saw one of the pirates climbing nimbly toward her up the ropes that still tied the airship fast.
It was a woman. Her white teeth were bared in a terrifying grimace, the blade of a talwar clamped between them. Her hands, bedecked with spiked rings, gripped the twanging ropes as she surged toward Rémy, her blue eyes sparking fury. Rémy could see another long-bladed sword strapped to her back. In a second she was on the ramp, grabbing the sword from between her lips with one hand and grasping Rémy’s shoulder with the other, hauling her back up the ramp and into the airship, knocking the axe from her hand.
The pirate woman dragged Rémy upright, her sword coming up to press viciously against Rémy’s neck as she stared at her, seemingly transfixed by her face.
“Who are you?” the pirate demanded. “Who sent you?”
The airship juddered again and another pirate — a man this time — appeared in the open doorway.
“Bring her down,” he said, dipping his head to fit his bulk into the small cabin. “He wants to —” The man broke off as he looked up and saw Rémy. Surprise burst across his face, creasing the ugly, jagged scar that bisected his left cheek from ear to mouth. A second later suspicion settled where the surprise had been a moment before. “He wants to see her.”
“You,” said the woman, hissing sharply into Rémy’s ear, “are wanted below.”
“What about the ship?” Rémy gasped, feeling the bite of the cold blade against her neck with every struggle. “I can’t just leave it.”
“It’s secure,” the man whom Rémy named to herself as Scar Face growled. “We will tow it behind us.”
“But —”
There came another shout from outside, but this one was different. It was urgent, full of warning, and came from the bird’s nest at the top of the main mast.
“Ship ahoy!” bellowed the voice. “Look lively, lads! They’ve got their cannon —”
There was the sound of a huge crash, like thunder rolling in the distance, followed by a low, swift whistle. The pirate holding Rémy swung around, looking out of the open ramp. Below them on deck, the pirates scattered, yelling, running for their posts as the whistle grew louder.
A second later a cannonball broadsided the pirate ship with a force that caused the entire vessel to buckle. It crashed through the second deck, sending wave after wave of splintered wood into the air, carried by the wind. Pandemonium reigned above — pirates wielding rifles and pistols, huge spiked metal balls on chains and all manner of swords. Then they let loose their own cannon, two at once — one from forward and one from aft, the recoil shaking the ship almost as badly as the strike had done a moment earlier. The airship slewed sideways, buffeted by the force as she strained against her tethers.
“Incoming!” bellowed the lookout in the bird’s nest. Another rolling crash of cannon-thunder echoed over the melee. The sails of the pirate ship flapped and shuddered and as they dipped, another ship came into view, swung sideways and with all her cannon gates open.
“It’s the British,” cried one of the men. “They’ve found us. That infernal air-boat has led them to us!”
“Listen to me,” Rémy cried. “If one of those cannon balls hits the airship, we will all burn — your ship and mine! It’s not like your ship, it cannot take a single strike — it will explode!”
The female pirate shook Rémy like a rat. “You lie!”
“No! I don’t! You have to —”
The second cannon caught the pirate ship a glancing blow forward, smashing into its nose. Flames licked along the guardrail and there were shouts for buckets and water.
“I swear,” said Rémy, “I am not lying. Just one flame like that one and we’re all done for.”
The female pirate snarled with anger and released Rémy, flinging her away so that she crashed against the airship’s control panel and stumbled against the chair. Just as she did so, another cannonball fired from the British frigate crashed into the ship below. Rémy couldn’t see what was happening, but from the frantic cries of the people below she knew it must have been a hard hit.
“He’s going to have to run for it,” exclaimed Scar Face. “We’re no match for their firepower, but the Black Star can outrun their bucket of bolts! We’re not at anchor! Why isn’t he running?”
As if someone below had heard him, a shout echoed up from below. “Cut it loose!” came the cry. “The air beastie is dragging us back. The British have got us like sitting ducks! Cut it loose!”
The woman pirate leaned out of the window. “We cannot lose this prize!”
“Take it to the cove at Maginapundi,” came back the answering shout. “Do it now!”
With a curse, the woman raised her sword and slashed at the tangled ropes still holding the airship fast to the deck. With a jerk the airship was free. It rose away from the pirate ship, soaring into the air like a freed bird. Rémy leaned over the controls, yawing the craft around as she almost tangled with the pirate ship’s sails. She swung the airship toward the coast as the female pirate and Scar Face dragged up the ramp and secured it shut.
A second later Rémy felt the bite of a blade at her neck once more.
“Now,” hissed the woman into her ear. “I have had to abandon my ship for you, anukarana. So one wrong move and I will not hesitate to part your head from your shoulders. Understand?”