CHAPTER FOUR
 
Emilie stared. “You…” she began, and couldn’t seem to get any further.
Miss Marlende clapped a hand over her eyes. “Oh, for the…”
Seth stepped off the stairs, watching Efrain warily. “Emilie, you know this kid?”
Apparently seeing that Emilie’s jaw was locked with rage, Daniel answered, “He’s her brother.” He added grimly, “He came to the airyard with another relative who was trying to force her to leave.”
Cobbier eyed Efrain without favor. He was an older man, short and stocky, with sparse hair and dark brown skin and a normally good-humored expression. He had been with Dr Marlende the longest. “This isn’t a joke, son. This is an important job we’re doing, and we don’t have time for shenanigans.”
Efrain lifted his chin stubbornly. “You have my sister onboard. I’m couldn’t leave her here unchaperoned.”
The rage obstruction in Emilie’s throat finally gave way at that. She said, in a particularly acid tone she hadn’t known she possessed, “Unchaperoned? Miss Marlende is right here, with her mother, Professor Abindon. I am better chaperoned than I ever was at home.”
From Efrain’s expression, she might have punched him in the stomach. He said, “Oh. Uncle Yeric didn’t mention that.”
“Of course he didn’t, because he’s a horse’s ass. And these are all respectable men, not the sort of people you and Uncle Yeric evidently keep company with.”
Efrain glared. “That’s ridiculous! And it’s not what I–”
Miss Marlende began, “Emilie! And young man, you–”
“How is the fuel mix working?” Lord Engal strode in. “Are you taking notes? Who is checking the gauges?” He looked around at them all. “Well? What’s the…” He noticed Efrain and frowned. “He’s new. Are you new? Who are you? Is Dr Marlende raiding the primary schools for students now?”
Efrain opened his mouth but couldn’t seem to answer. Seth said, “He’s Emilie’s brother, my lord. He stowed away without her knowledge.”
Lord Engal stared for a moment, then shook his head in exasperation. He turned to Emilie. “So it runs in the family, does it?”
“Apparently,” she admitted grudgingly. “I won’t do it again now that I know what it’s like from the other end.”
Lord Engal didn’t appear to know how to respond to that. He finally said, “Well, see that you don’t.” He turned and walked back out of the cabin.
Efrain watched him go, bewildered. “So… he’s not going to do anything about me?”
“He’s not in charge of this expedition. My father, Dr Marlende is,” Miss Marlende explained. She sighed. “And it’s not as if there’s anything we can do with you.”
“We could toss him off the ship,” Emilie said darkly. “That’s what Lord Engal wanted to do to me aboard the Sovereign.”
Lord Engal strode back in. “I never said that, you ungrateful child. We are a civilized society; we do not throw people out of moving vehicles of any sort.” He eyed Efrain without favor. “You’ll just have to find something useful to do while you’re here.” He turned and went out again.
Efrain lifted his chin, apparently emboldened by the fact that no one was shouting at him. “You could take me and Emilie back to the ground.”
That was the last straw on an already badly strained donkey’s back, as far as Emilie was concerned. She took what she was fairly certain was a menacing step forward. “I wasn’t joking about throwing him off the ship. He’s endangering the whole expedition.”
Efrain glared at her. “You wouldn’t.”
Miss Marlende caught the collar of Emilie’s jacket and pulled her back. “She might if suitably provoked, but I’m afraid I’ll have to forbid it. And we can’t take you back. We have to enter the aether current at the correct time or we won’t end up anywhere near where we want to go. We have no leisure to wait another day for the right moment again.” She added, “I’d better go inform my father about our new passenger. Considering that he thought a journalist had managed to sneak aboard, he’ll probably be relieved, but the trim will still have to be adjusted. Please endeavor to be civil to each other,” she added, with a stern look at Emilie.
Miss Marlende went into the control cabin and closed the door. Emilie swore, not entirely under her breath. On her first real day on the job, she was not making a good impression, and it was all her stupid family’s fault.
Daniel cleared his throat, sounding uncomfortable. “Well, we’d better get back to work.”
The others seemed to remember at the same moment that this wasn’t a spectator event. They all headed toward different parts of the ship, Cobbier and Mikel going up to the second level, while Seth and Daniel went through the passage to the engine compartments.
Since they were giving her the opportunity for a private conversation, Emilie took advantage of it. “You’re getting me into trouble with my employers,” she hissed. “Why couldn’t you stay at home and feel self-satisfied there? Why did you have to come here and try to ruin my new life?”
“We didn’t know you had a new life!” Efrain glared back at her. “We thought you were in trouble…” He waved his hands hastily. “And I don’t mean that kind of trouble! We thought you’d be lost in the city, with no money.”
“You thought I was a fool.” Emilie had no intention of mentioning it was her money problem that had led to her meeting Miss Marlende and Lord Engal. “I was going to cousin Karthea’s; I was going to help her with her school. Then I decided to do this, instead.” She folded her arms. “And don’t pretend Uncle Yeric was concerned for me. He thinks I ran off to the big city to become a prostitute.”
“He does not! Stop saying that!” Efrain looked around to make sure no one had heard, but the rest of the crew was staying as far away as possible from them without actually leaving the airship. “You’re crazy. Why would he think that–”
“Because our mother is an actress, and he thinks all actresses are secretly prostitutes, no matter how many plays they’re in.” It struck her as horribly unfair, that while her uncle had never gotten along perfectly with their older brother Erin, he had clearly not had the same problems with her younger brothers and had certainly never seemed to see them as just marking time until they could embark on careers in some criminal enterprise. Deliberately provoking, she added, “They do have boy prostitutes, you know, so I’m surprised he didn’t accuse you of wanting to be one, too.”
Efrain hesitated, mutinous and obviously confused as to what he wanted to argue about first. She expected him to attempt to deny the existence of boy prostitutes but instead he said flatly, “That’s crazy. Uncle Yeric didn’t accuse you of that.”
Being called a liar didn’t improve Emilie’s temper any. “He did. At tea, in front of Aunt Helena, Porcia, Mr Herinbogel, Mrs Rymple, and Mrs Fennan. It was humiliating.” It had been more than humiliating; it had been a terrible shock. Emilie had thought she had lived with people who knew her, even if they didn’t always seem to like her much. To be so completely misunderstood had been like suddenly discovering that she had been living with strangers.
And the more time she had to think about her feelings, the more Uncle Yeric’s opinion of her seemed to put her off men entirely. Human men, at least. She wouldn’t mind meeting a nice Cirathi man, like a younger version of Kenar, but that wasn’t likely to happen.
Maybe the detail, or her tone, was convincing. Efrain’s expression was less disbelieving. “But…”
“All I wanted was to go off to Karthea’s school, to help her with it and maybe take lessons. She had written to me about it before. It wouldn’t even have cost him anything, just the passage on a steamer, and it’s not very expensive.” She folded her arms. “If you don’t believe me, you can write to Karthea and ask her yourself. I had my things sent to her from home, and I stayed in Silk Harbor at her house the night before last. Daniel was with me. He stayed in the housekeepers’ cottage. I was going to visit her there for a few days, then we found out about this” – she waved an arm around, taking in the airship and the aetheric disturbance they were heading toward – “and we had to come back to Meneport with Professor Abindon.”
“Oh.” Efrain seemed taken aback, possibly at all the witnesses to her actions and behavior that Emilie could bring to bear if necessary. “I thought… I thought you were trying to find Erin, that you might think he was in Meneport.”
Emilie felt her lip curl. Anyone with any sense knew that naval ships spent months at sea, traveling around protecting merchant and passenger ships and ports from pirates and raiders. The only address Emilie had for Erin was the general one for the naval shipyard, but it took ages for letters to the ships to be forwarded from there. “You thought I’d just come to the docks and perhaps run up and down them crying, shocked that his ship wasn’t here? Besides, he doesn’t care about us. He left us all behind, and if we all died tomorrow he wouldn’t shed a tear.” She stopped, a little shocked. She hadn’t meant to say the last part; it had come out all on its own, a fear that had been buried in the back of her mind since Erin had left.
Efrain stepped back and pressed his lips together. He said, “You left just like he did. You don’t care about us, either.” He turned away, going back toward the rear compartments.
“You stopped caring about me first,” Emilie retorted to his retreating back. It was a cruel parting shot, and she knew she had gone too far.
 
Emilie went into the control cabin and shut the door behind her. She was still angry, and in that unsettled way when you knew the argument was more your fault than anyone else’s. Miss Marlende was at the controls, and Dr Marlende and Lord Engal were occupied with the aether navigation. It was mounted on a pedestal between the two control stations, and looked very like the one Emilie had seen used on the Sovereign. It had a flat silver plate etched around with the symbols and degrees of the compass directions. Two silver rings could be rotated around it, to help determine longitude and latitude. On a shallow dish on the plate itself, there was a liquid silvery substance that looked like mercury but was actually drops of clarified, stable aether. It rolled around when the plate was turned and rotated, and pointed the way toward aether currents in the air and water.
Lord Engal and Dr Marlende were making minute adjustments to it, probably trying to pinpoint the best location to enter this aether current. Dr Marlende was saying, “I wish Deverrin had spoken directly to me. I feel I owe him an apology. If I had known then what I know now, I would have gone up after them.”
Lord Engal said, “But any aetheric traces of the Deverrin airship’s passage would have been scattered by the lightning of the storm.” He adjusted the plate again. “Even if they did enter another aetheric plane, we wouldn’t have been able to track them. And if they haven’t managed to make their own way back by now, they must be dead.”
Dr Marlende adjusted the plate back where it had been before, and made a hmph noise.
The professor was seated at the other control station, taking notes or writing down her own observations. She said, dryly, “Even you can’t work miracles, Marlende.”
Emilie let her breath out, not sure whether she felt relieved or even more awkward that no one wanted to shout at her about Efrain. They’re busy with things that are far more important than your stupid family, she reminded herself. She just hoped Efrain didn’t cause any more trouble.
Finally, Dr Marlende checked another instrument on the control board and said, “Yes, that’s it! Just there.”
Lord Engal stepped back, rubbing his hands together briskly. “Good. Interesting that the current hasn’t been disturbed by the object… or craft, or whatever it is.”
“It hasn’t disrupted it yet.” Dr Marlende picked up a speaking tube. “Seth, please confirm that our recycling apparatus is producing air.”
Seth’s voice came over the tube, tinny and small. “Yes, Doctor, it’s working well.”
“Very good. Prepare for entry into the aetheric current.”
Emilie’s first inkling that taking an airship into an aetheric current might be somewhat different from taking a steamship into one was when Miss Marlende turned to her and said, “Strap into a seat, Emilie. It can get a little rough.”
Emilie took one of the padded chairs at the back of the compartment that weren’t near any of the equipment the others might need. The worn leather seat had been designed for a bigger person, and she fumbled to get the straps adjusted. As she did, Miss Marlende spoke over the speaking tube, asking the others in the back to confirm that they were all strapped in. Daniel answered for himself and Efrain. Emilie, who had just been recovering from the whole argument, felt her face heat with embarrassment again. It was good of Daniel to take charge of her brother, but she just hoped Efrain wasn’t saying anything horrible about her. All these people knew her – had known her – as Emilie the Adventurous Stowaway; she wasn’t happy that Efrain might paint a different, considerably more pathetic picture of her. You shouldn’t have told him what Uncle Yeric said to you, she thought. Idiot. She already knew she had talked far too much and said things she regretted. She was beginning to think opening her mouth at all had been a bad mistake.
Once everyone had strapped in, Dr Marlende put his hands flat on the control board and closed his eyes. Emilie knew he must be invoking the protective spell, and looked out the port in time to see it shimmer into existence, rising up like a crystalline curtain being gently draped over the airship. It was necessary to protect the craft from the pressures of the aether current, and to keep the air inside once they had gone up so far that there would be hardly any outside.
Dr Marlende took hold of the wheel. Miss Marlende, her eyes on one of the dials on the panel, said, “On my mark… Mark.”
Dr Marlende turned the wheel and the airship twisted. Or at least Emilie’s stomach twisted.
The deck underfoot trembled, then the ship started to move upward, faster than it had before.
Emilie sat back in her seat and felt her heart thump nervously. Miss Marlende and Lord Engal checked their straps, and Emilie tightened hers. Dr Marlende’s expression was rapt with concentration. Miss Marlende adjusted the controls carefully. The light outside dimmed and shimmered, and the push of the deck against Emilie’s feet grew harder until her whole body squished down with the force of it.
The ship jerked, wrenched sideways as if a giant hand had snatched it out of the air. The straps bit into Emilie’s chest and waist as she jerked forward. Everything rumbled and shook. Emilie’s ears popped and she gasped in a breath, and wriggled back to ease the pressure of the straps against her waist. From across the cabin, Lord Engal grunted in pain and muttered, “I’ve always hated that part.”
Emilie was rather glad she hadn’t known about it; tensing up in anticipation would have made it far worse. The deck still pressed up against her feet and she knew the ship was being carried along in the powerful aetheric current. Cautiously, she stretched up and looked out the port.
Through the misty surface of the spell bubble, she could see blue sky stream past, streaked with white that might be clouds. She blinked and squinted. No, it wasn’t sky, or not exactly. Or not the right sky. In the distance, there was purple-tinted indigo darkness, like a thunderstorm rising on the horizon. Except it wasn’t the horizon, because she couldn’t see land below them anywhere. “Is it always like this?” She hadn’t realized she had spoken aloud until she heard the words.
“Like what?” Miss Marlende asked, starting to unbuckle her straps. “Oh, you mean the colors? Yes, this is perfectly normal. And you can get up now. We should be stable for the next three hours.”
Emilie unbuckled herself and carefully eased to her feet. The feel of the deck pushing upward was disconcerting, and not at all like the way it had felt aboard the Sovereign, when the steamship had been traveling through the sea-bottom aether current. “What should I do? Is there any work you need help with?”
“Not right now.” Miss Marlende stretched and yawned. She looked at the professor, who was still writing in her notebook as if nothing had happened, and shook her head wryly. “Just get some rest.”
Emilie’s first impulse was to go see if Efrain was all right, and she grimaced at herself. After a moment of struggling with her conscience, she went to look for him.
She found him in the back compartments with Seth and Cobbier, listening to a detailed explanation of how the engines worked, and apparently, infuriatingly, no worse the wear for the startling experience of entering an aether current for the first time. Emilie would have liked to listen to the explanation too but didn’t want to look as if she was waiting on Efrain’s convenience, so she left the compartment.
Emilie walked around a little and found Daniel and Mikel on the second level making sure their various telescopes and aetheric observers had made it through the bumpy transition all right. Mikel was another student, but an older one, and like Seth he was also an engineer. He was lean and rawboned, with brown skin and lighter Northern Menaen hair. His face was weathered from spending a great deal of time at sea when he was younger, and it made him look older than he was. He told her, “Take a look at the view; it’s best from up here.”
She paused to look out at the aether current through the big observation windows. There were mists and eddies of other colors in the darkness, violet with a hint of red, swirls of silver trickling over them like whitecaps on waves. It was like watching clouds; you could make fanciful shapes out of them if you… Emilie stared, blinked hard, and stared again. That wasn’t just a shape. She pointed. “Uh, Daniel, Mikel…”
Lifting over a bank of violet streaked darkness was a wing, a giant wing, curving and pointed at the end, made of the same darkness as everything else but Emilie could see the etched lines of scales. Daniel stepped up beside her, leaned forward so his nose almost touched the glass. From behind them, Mikel said, “It’s an aether ghost. You see them occasionally in the air currents. We saw some on Dr Marlende’s last trip up here.”
“How do you know…” Emilie began, meaning to ask how one knew this was a ghost and not an actual enormous flying creature. But the wing dissolved into mist, fading away into the darkness. “Oh.”
“I suppose they’re in the sea aether currents, too,” Daniel said, staring intently after the wing. “We just can’t see them.”
“But what are they? Where do they come from? Are they really ghosts?” Emilie scanned the moving colors, hoping for another glimpse.
“We don’t know, really,” Mikel said. “The theory is that the current passes things and carries their images along with it for a while.”
The world was a stranger place than Emilie had realized. After a time, Daniel and Mikel went back down to the main cabin to get some sleep, but she stared for a long time, looking for more ghosts. Then her eyes started to hurt and she realized she was drifting off. She managed to use the waterless WC without incident, and took the opportunity to find her bag and change out of her skirt and into the clean but somewhat battered pair of bloomers that had survived her trip to the Hollow World. Both Miss Marlende and Professor Abindon were also wearing bloomers, much more practical for climbing around the airship. Then she went back to the control cabin again so she could sit and look out the big port. She fell asleep still watching for more aether ghosts.
 
They had to strap in again to exit the aether current. Miss Marlende said it wasn’t usually as rough as entering it, but they had never come this far up before, so they had better be cautious. Emilie completely agreed with that sentiment. With the others, she took her seat and got her straps tightened. Lord Engal was the last to get situated, muttering to himself as he buckled in.
“Are you ready?” Dr Marlende asked irritably. “The aether current won’t wait for us.”
“Yes, yes, go ahead, I’m ready.” Lord Engal yanked on the last strap.
Emilie thought it was nervousness on both their parts. Everyone was on edge, watching the controls with worried concentration. Miss Marlende made some careful adjustments to the dials, then nodded to Dr Marlende. He flicked a switch, then turned the wheel slightly.
For a moment there was nothing, except the sky outside the port began to darken. The sensation of rushing movement and constant pressure began to ease and then stopped altogether; Emilie had gotten used enough to it that it felt odd to be without. The cessation of it was so gentle, it came as a complete shock when the airship shuddered violently and jerked sideways.
Emilie clutched the arms of her chair, glad she hadn’t been expecting that one, either. The airship shook once, hard, and then went still.
“There we are,” Dr Marlende said, sounding satisfied. “A successful journey.” Emilie was glad he was so much better at traveling through aether currents than Dr Barshion and Lord Engal.
The others began to unbuckle their straps and stand. Daniel poked his head in through the doorway, and Emilie heard movement and Cobbier’s voice from the main cabin. She looked out the side port and saw the colors had changed to a very deep blue that shaded to black as she craned her neck to look up. She couldn’t see clouds, or stars, or anything below them. That was disconcerting. The spell bubble was just a faint shimmer now, nearly transparent, and it felt like little protection between the airship and all that immensity of sky and empty space.
Lord Engal stared through the front port and said, “And there it is.”
Emilie hastily unstrapped and climbed out of her seat. She stepped up beside Miss Marlende and the professor to see the shape of the strange craft was just becoming visible in the upper portion of the forward port. At first it looked small, then she realized those little round dots along the hull must be windows. She blinked and suddenly saw it in the right perspective: the strange craft was huge.
It had three long cylindrical hulls, all of dull but silvery metal, like pewter. One hull was in the center, with the two others attached on either side. Above them were three enormous sails, square but curved on top, like shovels slanted backward, which gave the whole craft a sense of forward motion, even though Emilie thought it must be standing still. It was like a very odd sailing ship. There were no open decks or promenades, and the little windows seemed to be the only way to see in or out.
Beside her, Daniel gasped in amazement. Professor Abindon lifted a small telescope to study it more closely.
Lord Engal whistled in appreciation. “That is a fine sight.”
“The sails are fascinating,” the Professor said softly. “Can it possibly use them to sail the aether current?”
“It must,” Dr Marlende murmured, his expression rapt. “Surely they aren’t decorative.”
“How does it land?” Emilie asked. She didn’t see any sort of landing apparatus, though she supposed the rounded hulls could float in water. “Or is it meant to stay in the air?”
“Or something far stranger.” Miss Marlende’s expression was simultaneously intrigued and fascinated and worried. “We don’t know anything about the place where it comes from. It could be… completely different.”
“How different?” Emilie asked, then realized it was a question without any sensible answer. If the ship had never been meant to land, and the sails looked so delicate… “Like a world that might be made all out of aether? But what would the people be like?”
“A good question,” Dr Marlende said, his voice turning grim.
Emilie felt a chill settle in her stomach. Looking at the beautifully strange vessel, she had forgotten for a moment that it would be piloted by somebody. Hopefully, they would be like the Cirathi, friendly explorers not so different from themselves. Hopefully.
“I don’t see any lights,” Miss Marlende said, “Can any of you?”
“Lights in the portholes, you mean? No.” Professor Abindon adjusted her telescope. “Its position hasn’t changed since we launched, either.”
“Really?” Dr Marlende turned to her. “But your record of its earlier progress showed that it was moving at a steady rate.”
“It was, but it’s stopped. It hasn’t moved at all since our last observation, late last night.” She lowered her telescope. “Perhaps it somehow detected when we entered the current and paused to wait?”
Dr Marlende’s brow furrowed. “Hmm.”
Lord Engal absently scratched his beard. “How odd. If they had stopped to wait for our arrival, you would think they would have spotted us by now and tried to signal.”
Emilie glanced at Daniel. Keeping her voice low, because she wasn’t certain if it was a silly observation or not, she said, “Maybe they’re so different, they don’t have signals.”
“If they’re that different, I don’t know how we’re going to talk to them,” he murmured back.
“Yes, communicating may be a significant problem,” Lord Engal agreed, though Emilie had thought he was too distracted to listen to them. “It’s too bad the sea-kingdom people were too involved in their own hostile interactions for any meaningful exchanges of ideas. The translation spells they used might have come in quite handy now.”
Miss Marlende eyed Lord Engal. “I thought our goal as decided by the Society was only to observe the object up close and ascertain whether it was really a foreign craft.”
“We’ve done that,” Lord Engal pointed out. “Our next goal as decided by the Society would obviously be to attempt to contact it and ask it what it wants. There’s no point in returning to report when we’ll only have to turn around and come back.”
“Yes.” Miss Marlende looked toward the silent craft again. “I’d rather hoped to see some sort of friendly crew waving at us, which would have rendered the whole point moot.”
“As did I.” Dr Marlende turned to Daniel. “We’ll try signaling them. Daniel, tell Cobbier to ready the signal lamp.”
Professor Abindon snorted. “I don’t suppose they’ll know International Lamp Code.”
Dr Marlende said, rather tightly, “No, Professor, but I hope they’ll see it blinking at them and interpret it as an attempt to greet them.”
Professor Abindon sighed. “I wasn’t criticizing you. It’s the only course open to us at the moment.”
Emilie followed Daniel back through the main cabin. She wondered if signaling was a good idea. What if the strange vessel thought they were attacking it? She pushed the thought away, recognizing it as another symptom of panic. The others were right; all they could do was try to contact the strangers the way they would anyone else, and hope for the best.
They were in a situation where anything they might do, any choice they made, could turn out to be horribly wrong. She should be used to that from the trip to the Hollow World, but apparently it was a sensation that one couldn’t get accustomed to.
They found Cobbier with Seth and Mikel and Efrain in the room adjacent to the engine and air-processing room. It was lined with cabinets and had two more padded chairs with safety straps. They were all glued to the large port, Efrain as well. As they stepped in, Efrain turned to stare at her, his eyes huge. “It’s really a ship from another world!”
“We know,” Emilie snapped, conveniently forgetting her own awe of a few moments ago. “We’re going to try to signal it.”
“With the lamp?” Cobbier asked. Then added, “That’s our only choice, I guess. It’s not as if we can use the flags up here.” He crossed the room to one of the storage cabinets and started to rummage in it.
“But…” Efrain stared at the ship again. “What if it does something?”
“It has to know we’re here,” Daniel said, before Emilie could snap again. “The way these aether currents work, it would have seen us coming from a long distance. Just like we could see it. If it was going to… do something, it would have done it by now.”
Efrain didn’t look much reassured. Cobbier lifted out the lamp, a big metal cylinder with glass slats on both ends and a hand crank. As he carried it to the port, Seth unrolled a cable from the engine room doorway. Emilie knew the lamp ran on electricity, and that to make it blink you used the crank to open and close the slats. They attached the lamp to a half-circle metal brace that was set up in front of the port, fastened it down, and connected it to the generator with the cable. The cylinder hummed and crackled as the bulbs inside it warmed. Daniel used the speaking tube in the wall to call the control room. “We’re ready, Dr Marlende.”
The tinny reply came over the tube. “Very good. Signal at will.”
Cobbier looked at Daniel. “What should we say?”
“Uh…” Daniel bit his lip. Emilie thought it was rather a big responsibility to have, to be the one to decide what their first message would be to this potential new friend that they all hoped very much did not become a new enemy. She was rather glad she wasn’t the one deciding it. Finally, he said, “Just the standard greeting to an unknown ship.” He glanced worriedly at Seth and Mikel. “Does that sound right to you?”
Mikel shrugged. Seth admitted, “I don’t know what else we’d say.”
Cobbier moved the crank and the cylinder clacked as he sent the coded signal. With the others, Emilie watched the strange ship, her heart thumping in anticipation.
But the ship just floated there silently.
“Keep trying,” Daniel said softly.
There was a quiet step behind them. Emilie looked back as Miss Marlende stepped into the compartment. Emilie said, “It doesn’t seem to be working.”
“Maybe they aren’t looking at us,” Efrain said.
Emilie gave him a withering look. “There’s a strange airship in the same aether current. What else would they be looking at?”
Efrain glared back at her, but didn’t argue. As the light clacked and hissed with heat, Miss Marlende folded her arms, regarding the ship. She said, “I’m beginning to wonder if something’s happened to them.”
Emilie had to admit that the ship’s lack of activity did make you consider that possibility. Several different scenarios came to mind, mostly from the Lord Rohiro novels and from histories of exploration she had read. “There could have been illness aboard, or food that went bad, or pirates… No, I suppose not pirates.”
“We hope not pirates,” Daniel said. “I don’t want to see what sort of pirates would be traveling aether currents from another world.” Cobbier nodded fervently.
Emilie found the idea intriguing, but she would much rather read it in a book or watch it in a play, and not experience it in real life.
“But some sort of disaster befalling the crew doesn’t explain why the ship is still here.” Miss Marlende shook her head. “Without anyone to guide it, it should have started to drift by now. It would eventually fall out of the current and be destroyed. Something must be holding it in place.”
Mikel seemed intrigued by the thought. “Maybe it has mechanisms aboard that we just haven’t thought of yet, that keep it on course even though the crew isn’t there to tend them.”
Emilie was watching Miss Marlende’s expression now. “We’re going aboard it, aren’t we? If they won’t answer us… there’s no choice, really, is there?”
The others all looked grim, except Efrain, whose expression was incredulous. He said, “‘We?’” When the others just looked at him, he cleared his throat and said, “Shouldn’t we let someone official do that?”
Miss Marlende lifted a brow at him. “Just who do you think we are, young man? Tourists?”
Efrain fumbled for an answer, and Emilie set her jaw. She said, “Anyway. Dr Marlende will want to board it, won’t he? And Lord Engal.” She would be rather surprised if Lord Engal didn’t demand to be part of the boarding party.
“Yes.” Miss Marlende let out her breath. She looked weary and worried. “I don’t like the idea, but… We have to find out who sent this ship, and it would be helpful to know why it seems to be uninhabited.”
“If it is uninhabited,” Daniel said quietly.
Miss Marlende acknowledged that with a nod. “Well, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t uninhabited when it started out.”