The Aeronaut's Windlass (49 page)

Creedy had been nearly apoplectic when Grimm had calmly removed his captain’s coat from his shoulders and donned an apron. In Fleet, such a thing would never have been conceived. A ship’s captain was her master and the right hand of God in Heaven Himself, and concerned with matters of such grave importance that minor issues like food for the mortals in his command were entirely beneath him.

“I’ll get someone else to take this duty, sir,” Creedy said stoutly.

“The nonessential personnel are already on leave, XO,” Grimm replied. “All the remaining hands are fully engaged in installing the new systems and making repairs. You know that.”

“But, sir,” Creedy said. “What will the crew say?”

“What they
won’t
say, Byron, is anything like ‘my captain allowed me to go hungry while demanding that I work without cease,’” Grimm said.

Creedy moved his arms in an abortive gesture of frustration. “Sir . . . it just isn’t natural for a ship’s master.”

“Nonsense. The Olympian Navy holds that a captain should know the details of every position in his ship’s company by working them with his own hands, stem to stern. It’s the only way to be sure you know what each man needs from his captain in order to be able to perform his duty.”

Creedy’s handsome face screwed up in protest. “We are not Olympians, sir.”

“Surely as Albions we need not believe that we already possess all the sum of the world’s wisdom. Are we not better bred than that, Mister Creedy?”

“But . . . sir, you can’t possibly expect me to . . . to take my meal from you as if you were any other cookie in the galley.”

“Indeed not,” Grimm said gravely, and held out a second apron. “As I still have only one reliable arm, I require your assistance. Coat off and look sharp, Mister Creedy. There are tubers need peeling.”

*   *   *

K
ettle walked through the crowded mess hall and brought his bowl and spoon back up to the galley counter after the meal, grinning broadly at Creedy.

The XO scowled at him. There were bits of something, perhaps shavings of tuber skins, in his hair, and he’d cut his hand twice. Grimm had cleaned and covered each wound carefully before sending the young officer back to work, and Creedy’s temper was worn thin. “Do you have a problem, Mister Kettle?”

“No, sir,” Kettle drawled. “Just wanted to give my compliments to the skipper on his captaining.”

“His captaining?” Creedy asked.

Grimm kept a grin from spreading over his mouth.

“Yes, sir, indeed. The hands and I all agree he’s a damned fine captain.”

Creedy regarded Kettle without humor. “I see.”

“Best captain in the sky, maybe.”

“I understand,” Creedy said.

“There’s rarely been a finer captain, we reckon,” Kettle said expansively.

“You have made your position clear, Mister Kettle,” Creedy all but snapped. “I’m sure the captain appreciates it.”

Kettle nodded and put the bowl down.

Creedy snatched it up, scowling.

“So, Skip,” he asked, with perfect innocence. “When will Waller get back into the galley, so you can get back to captaining?”

“Why, Mister Kettle,” Grimm said. “One is tempted to think that you do not approve of your captain’s cooking.”

“No, sir!” Kettle said. “You’ll never hear me complain, sir. I’m just a much bigger admirer of his captaining, sir.”

“Mind your heading, Kettle,” Creedy snapped. “Why, I should—”

Grimm put a gently restraining hand on Creedy’s shoulder. “Cook should be back on board by midnight, I daresay.”

“I’ll spread that around,” Kettle said, nodding to them pleasantly, and went back to his place at a table.

Creedy frowned after him for a moment and then turned to Grimm, lowering his voice. “Sir . . . the men shouldn’t be able to criticize the captain openly like that.”

“I didn’t hear a word of criticism, XO,” Grimm replied. He grunted with effort and dumped the last of the simple stew he’d made of the insufficient meal Waller had left behind into a large bowl, which held a double-size portion of the . . . food. “Kettle was merely expressing himself. That man knows how to complain flawlessly.” He looked at Creedy. “You had a few mouthfuls when you could, Byron. I saw you. What did you think of my stew?”

Creedy looked suddenly discomfited. “It was . . . perfectly nourishing, sir. With salt, practically palatable.”

Grimm smiled and began cleaning up.

Creedy blinked several times. “Sir . . . do you mean to say you made . . .
that
 . . . on purpose?”

“Command is about more than knowing the protocol, Byron,” Grimm said. “Whose fault was it that not enough dinner had been prepared?”

“Mine, sir,” Creedy said stoutly. “I should have kept an eye on Journeyman, sir. His section was extraordinarily busy. There are small grounds to reprimand him.”

“By the book, perhaps. But you and I were both supervising different sections of the ship, and he’s the chief of the engine room. He should damned well be thinking about his men and the hired hands, as well as his systems.”

“That’s . . . a very fine distinction, sir.”

Grimm shook his head. “The men know exactly what happened. And there are reprimands that have nothing to do with the book.” He carried the double-portion bowl over to the counter. “Mister Kettle,” he called.

The pilot looked up. “Aye, Skip?”

“The chief hasn’t come up out of his precious engine room to eat. Perhaps you and some of the men can see to it that he sits down long enough to feed himself.”

Kettle eyed the double-portion bowl askance and then slowly beamed. “Aye, Captain. He’s working so hard, he deserves nothing less.”

Creedy watched Kettle pick up the bowl and head out. Virtually every man in the mess hall went with him.

“What are they going to do?” Creedy asked with a certain amount of fascination.

“Watch Chief Journeyman eat every bite without salt, I should think, upon peril of their extreme displeasure,” Grimm said. “And go very hard on him the entire time for forgoing such a basic responsibility and costing them a decent meal.”

The young officer frowned. “Sir . . . it seems a bit hard on the men to proceed this way.”

“Nonsense, XO,” Grimm said. “The food was technically nourishing and they all ate their fill. We’ve done our penance in their eyes for not making sure the problem was avoided in the first place.” He winked at Byron, and started shrugging back into his coat. “And after all, we can hardly have them
wanting
their captain to cook dinner when someone screws up by the numbers, now, can we? After all, I have a ship to run.”

Creedy considered that for a long moment before he said, “You have a devious mind, sir.”

Grimm looked up at the tall young officer and dropped his voice into a more serious register. “Strategy and tactics, discipline and protocol are necessary, but they’re just the beginning. You have to know people, Byron. How they think, what motivates them. Watch. Learn.”

Creedy stared at Grimm for a long moment. Then he nodded and said, “I will.”

“Good man.”

“You’ve hardly slept, sir,” Creedy said. “I’ll take the next watch. Go get some rest.”

“Good of you,” Grimm said, and took up his coat again. “I’ll be in my cabin if I’m needed.”

Grimm nodded to Byron, tried to ignore the pervasive ache that had spread from his injured arm out into every other fiber of his being, shambled to his cabin, hung up his coat, and flung himself down on his bunk without bothering to undress. He was asleep before the faint scent of Calliope’s perfume that still lingered on the covers could bring back memories, unhappy or otherwise.

*   *   *

A
sharp rap at his door brought Grimm abruptly out of his first sound sleep in days, almost before it had begun. He managed to sit up and swipe the rather less-than-captainly drool from his chin before the door opened and Creedy poked his head in with an apologetic expression. “Sir?”

Grimm suppressed a groan. Captains were not subject to such mortal infirmities as sleep deprivation. “Yes, XO?”

“Several of the men came back early from their leave, sir. They say there’s been some kind of situation involving your passengers, sir. Trouble. People were killed and injured.”

Grimm swung out of his bed at once and rose, ignoring the protests of his weary body. At least he was still dressed. “Kettle and an armed party of four to be ready to leave with me, including the men bearing the report. Doctor Bagen and his bag will accompany us. We leave immediately, to be briefed en route to Master Ferus’s party.”

“Aye, sir,” Creedy said with a brisk nod, and withdrew from Grimm’s cabin, bellowing orders.

Grimm took his wounded arm out of its sling long enough to properly don his coat, then added the sword belt and the sling again. The damned thing was a nuisance. The moment his arm was serviceable, he’d toss the blasted sling over the side of the Spire.

It seemed likely that would happen faster if he could only get several hours of sleep, all in a row.

He checked to be sure that his sword would draw smoothly, slid it firmly back into its scabbard, settled his hat onto his head, and strode out to meet the moment.

*   *   *

A
deckhand named Harrison guided them to the Black Horse, an inn and pub. Even at the late hour, well after midnight, a small crowd had gathered around the place.

“Don’t know what happened exactly, sir,” Harrison was saying. “But there was screaming like souls in Hell from inside, and what looked like smoke from a fire.”

Another crewman named Bennett saw them coming and hurried over, flicking Grimm a quick salute. “Sir. Been watching it since Harry and the others left, sir.”

“And?”

“No one has gone in or come out. The doors won’t open, sir. But your passengers are inside. I was having a drink in there earlier, and that elderly fellow was leading a round of ‘Farmer Long’s Pickle.’” He nodded toward a couple of uniformed Guardsmen over by the doors. They were young men, their uniforms not quite tidy, perhaps the least valued of their garrison, to be drawing the late shift. They seemed somewhat at a loss for what to do. “These lads seem to be out of their depth, sir.”

Grimm sighed and said, “Boarding ax, Mister Kettle.”

Kettle turned to one of the other men of the party, and caught a heavy-headed boarding ax as it was tossed to him. The thing was part ax and part sledgehammer, meant for battering down the doors or bulkheads of an enemy ship, not for true combat. It would make short work of the doors of the inn, Grimm judged.

“With me,” Grimm said, and strode toward the young Guardsmen, Kettle at his back.

They turned to him with a mix of uncertainty and anger on their faces. “Here now,” said one of them. “What’s this, then?”

Grimm eyed the young man steadily. In moments of confusion, young soldiers were often comforted by authority figures who seemed to know what to do.

The Guardsman’s back stiffened a little, and he nodded. “Captain,” he said, with at least a pretense of respect.

Grimm nodded back. “Guardsman,” he said. “I have friends inside that building. I see that the doors have not been opened.”

“They’re stuck fast,” said the second Guardsman. “There are people inside shouting, but it’s a demon’s torment to hear them.”

“I’ve an ax here,” Grimm said. “Perhaps you would care to use it.”

The Guardsmen looked at each other. While the Spirearch’s Guard might have been popular with the scions of the great Houses of Albion, for a symbolic year or two at least, the majority of its long-term members were common men and women with widely varying backgrounds—and most of them had less extreme levels of endemic confidence.

“Bloody wooden doors are expensive,” muttered the second Guardsman. “It’ll be a month’s pay to replace one.”

“Bill it to Captain Grimm of the airship
Predator
,” Grimm said. “Kettle.”

“Aye, sir,” Kettle said. He fired off a crisp salute and strode confidently toward the door.

“Can he do that?” the first Guardsman asked the second.

“Um,” the second said.

“Guardsmen,” Grimm said calmly. “Perhaps you should supervise the opening of the door, to make sure no one is harmed and to be on hand to assess the situation and render assistance as needed. Misters Bennett and Harrison, come here, please.”

The two men did, firing off salutes of their own.

“You and the rest of the men will accompany these two Guardsmen and assist them in any way you can.” He turned back to the two Guardsmen. “You’ll find my men cooperative, sirs. Master Bagen is my ship’s physician, and he will be able to render aid to anyone who is wounded.”

“Right,” said the first Guardsman, nodding. “Thank you for your assistance, Captain.”

“But . . .” the second Guardsman said.

“Shut
up
, Malkie. There’s people in there need helping,” said the first one. He turned to the men from
Predator
, his stance and bearing more authoritative and confident. “You lot, come with us. Malkie, clear those people back from the doors, eh? Last thing we need is someone to take that ax on the backswing.”

Grimm watched things develop with a certain amount of satisfaction. Once given a direction, the young Guardsmen seemed willing and capable enough. It would probably eventually occur to them that they’d essentially been given orders by a civilian with no legal authority whatsoever, but they seemed to be more in their element now.

He wondered whether either of them was secretly working with the Aurorans. It hardly seemed likely—but then, good spies never seemed likely, did they?

He took a couple of steps back as the second Guardsman herded the small crowd away from the doors of the inn, and bumped into a woman who had been watching, sending her to the ground in a sprawl.

“Oaf!” the woman said, her expression a war between astonishment and anger. She wore an excellent suit of clothing in steely shades of lavender accented with grey, skirts and a bolero jacket with a matching hat. She was an attractive, sharp-edged woman perhaps a few years older than Grimm, with large grey eyes devoid of any other color, and dark hair. “How rude.”