The Aeronaut's Windlass (41 page)

Chapter 32

Spire Albion, Habble Landing, Ventilation Tunnels

M
ajor Espira seized the sword from the hand of the Auroran Marine braced at attention in front of him. He held up the weapon and inspected it minutely before snarling, “You’ve allowed the copper to wear through, right there, Marine.” He held up the weapon a few inches from the Marine’s eyes, so that the tiny spot of brown-red rust was clearly visible. “The iron rot’s already begun. Can you see that?”

“Yes, sir,” the Marine said.

“Why do we clad iron and steel with copper, Marine?”

The man’s cheeks colored slightly. “To prevent iron rot from destroying the weapon, sir.”

“Excellent. You do know. And once the iron rot sets into the steel, how long will it be before it spreads from this point and turns the entire thing to rust?”

“A few days, sir. Give or take.”

Espira nodded. “This weapon will not kill whom you need it to kill if it shatters on the first stroke, or snaps when you attempt to draw it from the scabbard. I don’t mind if your carelessness kills you—but it might also kill your brothers in arms, myself among them, when you fail to fulfill your duty.”

The Marine swallowed, staring ahead, and said nothing.

“Well? What have you to say for yourself, Marine?”

“No excuse, sir,” he replied.

Espira passed the weapon back with a sharp motion and said, “Report to the armorer, scour the rust off, and seal the bare spot with lead. Once that is done, you will perform maintenance on every spare weapon in the armory—and you will do so with flawless attention to detail. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the Marine replied, saluting.

Espira glared all the way down the line of Marines from Second Company’s first platoon. “In fact, why don’t all of you prepare your weapons and gear for inspection?
Again
. When I return in one hour, each and every man of you will turn yourselves out like Auroran Marines, or God in Heaven bear witness, I will send every one of you up the ropes.”

The faces of more than twenty hard-bitten professional soldiers went pale in a single wave of acute unease, and Espira let the silence weigh heavy before he said, “Dismissed.”

The Marines all executed a drill-ground right face, despite not being ordered to, and marched quietly and efficiently away from the intersection chamber and back down the length of ventilation tunnel to their designated bivouac area.

“Barely looked like a real spot to me, Major,” rumbled a deep-chested voice from behind him.

Espira turned to find Sergeant Ciriaco standing a few feet away, having approached in total silence. The warriorborn Marine threw him a crisp salute, which Espira returned with equal precision. “Sergeant. Once upon a time, the first sergeant I worked with taught me to keep nervous men focused on their mission with familiar routine and fear of my wrath if they deviated from it.”

The other man relaxed, smiling a bit. “Did he? He teach you anything else?”

“Only to never expect him to arrive in a timely fashion,” Espira said, not quite allowing himself a smile. “Where is Lieutenant Lazaro?”

Ciriaco’s feline eyes glinted with buried rage. “Dead, sir.”

Espira tilted his head. “How?”

“He ignored my advice and made a bad call,” Ciriaco said. “Ran into what he thought were civilians tending wounded after the air strike. He tried to bluff his way past them instead of shooting them and moving on with our payload.”

“Why?”

“One of them was a pretty girl. Looked like a porcelain doll. He was young, sir.”

Espira frowned and nodded. Chivalry was a virtue held in high esteem in the upper echelons of Spire Aurora. It took young officers time to learn how seldom it could be indulged in combat. Unfortunately, actual combat could often be abruptly, lethally parsimonious in the matter of how much time it gave young soldiers to learn. “What happened?”

“They caught on to him, and the little doll lit up his face with a gauntlet from about two feet away.”

Espira grunted. “Damn. The boy had promise. At least it was quick. The vattery?”

The sergeant shook his head. “Waited for the strike team to rendezvous but they never came, and we never got the explosives to them. Some kind of reserve Fleet officer with far too much initiative assembled a militia, brought it into the tunnels, and intercepted us. I presume the vattery team is dead, sir.”

“Bah,” Espira said. “It was only a side errand, and a sensible gamble, but it would have been a nice feather in our caps to have destroyed that damned crystal shop of theirs.” He tilted his head, frowning at Ciriaco. “Are you shot, Sergeant?”

“A bit,” Ciriaco said. “It’ll pass. Damn fool Lazaro. Lost half the squad.” He squinted down the hallway after the departed platoon. “Would you really send them up the ropes, sir?”

“Half a tithe of my strength? Don’t be absurd. But at the moment, they need something to fear more than a Spire full of angry Albions.”

Ciriaco’s nostrils flared and his eyes shifted to one of the other tunnels leading off from the intersection chamber. “That why she’s here?”

“Mind your tone, Sergeant,” Espira said to the larger man. “You’re one of the finest soldiers in Spire Aurora—but we all have our orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

Espira nodded, and then followed the sergeant’s glance to the darkened tunnel. Madame Cavendish’s batman, Sark, stood at the entrance to the tunnel, a sober, frightening figure in black, his walleyed face locked into an expression of perpetual boredom. No one with half an ounce of brains in his head would mistake him for anything but a lethal sentry.

Espira had been blocking it from his attention deliberately, with constant attention to the men—but now that all voices had fallen silent, he could hear it again: a high, pitiable, hopeless keening sound that came drifting brokenly out of the darkness.

“Ren?” Ciriaco asked in a whisper.

“A verminocitor stumbled onto the base,” Espira replied, equally quietly. “We caught him, but not his partner. He says he was alone. She is here to verify his story.”

“Knives?” the warriorborn guessed.

Espira shook his head and suppressed a shudder. “She took nothing with her.”

“She’s a mad beast,” Ciriaco said.

“She is
our
mad beast,” Espira corrected him. “Be glad she is on our side.”

The warriorborn narrowed his eyes, staring intently at Sark, and rolled one of his shoulders stiffly, as if it pained him. “No, sir, Major,” he said. “I don’t think I will.”

Just then footsteps sounded in the black hallway, firm and decisive. A moment later Madame Cavendish emerged from the darkness. She paused at Sark’s side, and her batman handed her a small towel. It was only then that Espira noted that her nails and fingertips were wet and scarlet. The sobs in the tunnel continued unabated.

The etherealist calmly discarded the cloth and walked over to Espira. Sark loomed in her wake.

“Major,” she said, “we have had a stroke of luck. He was indeed working alone, though he believes there will be a search for him in the next twenty-four hours or so.”

“Disappear the body, ma’am?”

“God in Heaven, no,” she replied. “That would only make the Verminocitors’ Guild turn out in increasing numbers, searching more and more tunnels to find one of their own. Take the body and leave it where it will be found in the next few hours. Then there will be no search.”

Espira nodded slowly, struggling to keep his face neutral. He looked down at the darkness from which weak sounds of despair still drifted. “He’s alive, ma’am.”

“What is left in that tunnel is a technicality,” Cavendish said. “But it wouldn’t do to have him found with sword strokes and blast wounds in him.” She mused for a moment and then smiled. “Send him up the ropes.”

Espira felt his throat tighten again, and his stomach twisted at the idea of doing that to any man, much less a hopeless, broken one. “Ma’am?”

“No more than a minute, or there won’t be enough left to be identified,” Cavendish said. She paused and then said, her voice harder, “Do you understand, Major? Do you know how long a minute is?”

Espira ground his teeth but said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Very well. Do your best not to interrupt my preparations again, won’t you, dear? I’m expecting guests, and I must be ready to receive them.”

With that, she turned and began walking calmly away. Sark watched them in silence until she was several paces away, and then he turned to follow her.

Ciriaco waited until Sark was gone to let out a low, leonine growl.

“We work with the materials we are given, Sergeant,” Espira said.

The sobbing continued in the darkness.

“Ren,” Ciriaco said quietly, “don’t order me to send a living soul up the ropes.”

“Of course I won’t, old friend,” Espira said quietly. “Break his neck. Send up the corpse. Dispose of it as Madame Cavendish specified.”

Espira could feel Ciriaco’s gaze on him, and then the warriorborn Marine sighed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Chapter 33

Spire Albion, Habble Landing

B
ridget had nearly fallen asleep when, a number of hours later, both bored-looking cats abruptly whipped their heads in the same direction, ears pricked forward as if they’d heard something—although Bridget hadn’t, beyond the normal muted noises of later hours in the habble.

After a moment frozen, both cats simultaneously rose, stretched, and yawned.

“Folly, wake up,” Bridget said. “It’s time.”

Folly blinked her eyes open from where she’d been dozing with her head against the wall and looked around, apparently disoriented. “Whose time is it?”

“Shhh,” Bridget said, listening intently.

“Adequate?” Rowl asked the other cat.

“So it would seem,” the strange cat replied.

“Introductions?”

“Appropriate.”

Both cats turned at the same time and sauntered toward Bridget and Folly, walking exactly shoulder-to-shoulder.

Folly peered sleepily at them as they approached, and whispered to her jar, “I wonder which of them won.”

Bridget felt her eyebrows lifting. “I . . . I believe it was a draw,” she whispered back. “This is a formidable member of his tribe.” She sighed. “Just our luck, when we’re in such a rush, to meet someone who could ignore Rowl for so long.”