“No.” Tolemek pulled out the needle and tossed the syringe onto the control panel. “Uh, Cas?” He pointed at Pinnacle Rock, which was now taking up their entire view. “Please don’t crash us.”
Though Cas wasn’t sure about all of the ramifications of Tolemek’s appearance—Did this mean he was on her side now? Did he control the engineer and the guards? Could he stop the invasion of his colleagues?—she grabbed the controls and pulled them hard to the side.
The dirigible had the maneuverability of a boulder. Afraid it would be too late, she watched with wide eyes as they flew closer and closer to that rock. Too late. She had been too late.
A jolt coursed through the dirigible.
“Balloon hitting?” Tolemek asked.
“Yes.”
“Will it, ah...?”
“Rip? They’re pretty sturdy, but this is a freighter, not a military-grade vessel.”
Another jolt went through the craft. Cas imagined a child’s balloon being scraped along a brick wall until it popped. She also imagined the gas flowing out and being ignited by the flame of the lighthouse. No, it was too high above them for that. She hoped. The worst that would happen is that they would drop into the harbor, and probably not until they were close to the docks anyway. If they had to, they could swim. There weren’t usually sharks in the harbor.
“You look concerned,” Tolemek observed.
“At this very moment or just in general?” Cas asked, her humor bleak.
“At this moment. Your usual look is more determined.”
She wasn’t surprised when a bleeping started up on the alarm panel. This wasn’t a systems test; not this time. The envelope had been breached. “That may be a small leak,” she said, though she didn’t feel very optimistic. “We’re not that far from the waterfront at least. But, ah...” She tapped the altimeter at the same time as another alarm started bleeping. “We’re dropped below the level of the air piers.”
“If this were a Cofah airship, we would be able to land in the water safely, balloon notwithstanding. Am I correct in guessing that this gray metal box won’t float?”
Cas decided it wasn’t the time to go into aerodynamics and explain why the Cofah wooden-sailing-ship-in-the-sky designs were idiotic. “We’ll be fine,” she said, maneuvering the controls. “I’m going to take us to one of the sea docks. We’ll land right on top.”
“Those docks all have a lot of ships tied to them.”
“I see that.” Cas licked her lips. The docks weren’t particularly wide either. They were meant for people to walk along, not for dirigibles to use as landing pads.
She guided them closer, aiming for the center of one of the wider ones. The alarms bleeping in her ears didn’t help her concentration, but she had flown a lot faster before, while being shot at, so this wasn’t that big of a challenge. She just had to accept that those merchant and fishing vessels on either side of the dock were going to get smothered if the balloon’s frame had been damaged, and the envelope fully deflated.
As they drifted lower, Cas watched the street beyond the head of the dock. It was only an hour past sunset. Though the waterfront wasn’t traditionally busy at night, there might be people about, witnesses for this. A couple of horse-drawn carriages and a steam wagon passed on the street. It was too dark and too far to make out details, so it was doubtlessly only in her imagination that the passengers gaped and pointed at her.
Cas turned off the propellers as they reached her target landing spot. In another moment, the bottom of the dirigible cabin settled on the dock. The creaking and groaning of boards drifted through the hull. She hoped the pilings were solid.
“I’m surprised the engineer hasn’t come up to check on us,” she said, turning off the controls and searching for the mechanism that opened the side doors and extended the gangplank. “Or yell at me.”
Tolemek pointed at the syringe. “Neither the engineer, nor the guards are awake. The fog machine has also been disabled.”
“What does that mean?” Cas whispered. She was thinking of the attack on her city—would the other pirates call it off when they found the harbor untouched by those thick, obfuscating mists?
“That I can never go back.”
Cas caught his reflection in the dark glass. His face was grimmer than a crematory, and his eyes were haunted, the eyes of a man wondering if he had made a mistake. Or condemned himself to death. She wished she could tell him he hadn’t—in her eyes, he had certainly made the right choice, or at least the choice that helped her the most—but she wouldn’t be able to protect him from her people. As soon as the law or the army identified him as a notorious pirate, he would be dead.
She blinked her eyes, turning to look at him. Seven gods, how was he going to get off the continent without being shot? And if he did get off, how would she ever see him again?
Tolemek handed her a parka, let his hand drop, then lifted it again. He touched the side of her head, a single soft stroke of her hair, then lowered his arm for a final time. “Let’s get out of here before they wake up.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be wiser to... ah...” Cas waved vaguely at the inert captain. It wasn’t in her stomach to shoot an unconscious man, but if Tolemek let them live, wouldn’t he have to worry about them coming after him to seek revenge for the rest of his life?
“I’m sure it would.” Tolemek walked out the door, and she barely heard his addition. “And I’m sure I can’t.”
* * *
The air smelled of damp and snow, and the cold breeze scraped at Tolemek’s bare arms, another reminder to keep his hood over his head and his cloak wrapped around him. As if he needed reminders. He knew he couldn’t let himself be recognized here. He needed to finish his quest, then find a way off the continent. Forever.
Following Cas, who was practically bouncing as she strode down the waterfront street, made those thoughts hard to come by. If it hadn’t been for her, he didn’t know if he would have ever bothered to defy Goroth. He had long suspected what the captain had admitted under the effects of the truth serum, so the information hadn’t been a shock. Realizing how much he cared that Cas knew the truth, that had been the shock. Goroth’s words hadn’t exactly exonerated him, but he hoped...
What? That she would forget his crimes and promise him her love?
Nice thought, but she was in love with her commander.
Cas stopped in front of a two-story building with lamps burning behind the shutters. “I’ll be right back.”
Port Authority, a sign by the door read. Tolemek didn’t stop her from going in. He couldn’t bring himself to kill Goroth, but if the man ended up arrested, was that any worse than what he had done to Tolemek all those years ago? Except, if the Iskandian port authorities found him, he would be arrested, then killed. Well, maybe not. He was a crafty sod; he might find a way to escape. Tolemek decided to hope he did. He snorted at himself, wondering if other pirates who turned on their allies felt as conflicted afterward.
The first snowflakes fell as Cas came back outside. Two men in dark uniforms and armed with rifles jogged out of the building after her, heading toward the dock with the dirigible cabin balanced on it, its balloon sagging against the frame as gas escaped.
“I need to report in.” Cas took his arm and led him up a street. The butte with the air hangars on it loomed in the distance. “Let them know where I’ve been and warn everyone that there might still be pirates coming. Where, ah, do you have plans still?”
“Griffon Street.”
She halted, her hand tightening on his arm.
“Just to question him,” Tolemek said. “I don’t know how I’ll get back home to see my sister, even if I find what I seek, but my quest hasn’t changed. Odd as it may sound to you, if that Cofah soldier spoke the truth, Zirkander is the most likely one here to know about soulblades.” He expected an objection, if not an accusation. To her, this all might be part of some lie. She might believe killing Zirkander was what he had wanted all along.
&nb
sp; “I’ll go with you then. I can report in to him as easily as the night duty officer, and things will probably happen faster that way, anyway.” Cas smiled, leading him up the street again.
Tolemek wished that smile were for him and not for the commander she would shortly see again. He strode through the snow at her side, keeping his hood low as they passed horsemen and vehicles. Fortunately, the impending snow was keeping many people off the streets. Unfortunately, that snow might make for poor enough weather that the armada of pirates might attack the city anyway, especially if they believed the fog was on its way.
“There’s one thing about your quest that I don’t understand,” Cas said, as they walked between pools of light cast by the gas lamps on the corners, the airbase butte looming larger with every block.
“Just one? I haven’t spoken of the details to anyone.”
“What can one of these swords do for her? Cure her of some malady? You’ve never said what’s wrong with her.”
No, he hadn’t. He didn’t speak of her to anyone. But what secrets did he truly have left from Cas now? For good or ill, she knew a lot about him. Maybe it was foolish, but he had come to trust her. He doubted she would relay this information to anyone who might use it against him. Besides, he might need her to help convince Zirkander to talk to him. Tolemek would be shocked if the infamous pilot greeted him with anything except guns.
“It’s not a disease,” Tolemek said. “If it were, I would have... I’m sure I could have done something for her. She’s twelve years younger than me, and I always felt like her protector when she was little. We were close, especially after our brother died. But she can’t take care of herself. Even now, as an adult. It’s worse now. She’s in the sanitarium back home. Father put her there when she started hurting herself. I didn’t agree with that, abandoning her to strangers, to people who would rather drug her than deal with her, to put her in some dark room where she’s kept restrained day and night, so she can’t damage herself or others.” For a moment, he didn’t see the streets of the Iskandian capital, but the halls of that dreadful place. “I broke her out a few years ago.” His lips twisted wryly, remembering the headline in the newspaper. Notorious Pirate Stages Raid on Home for the Mentally Disturbed. “I thought that maybe if she came with me, if she was in a better place, with someone who cared, maybe she’d improve.”
Cas turned up a new street, one that sloped upward, with twin wrought-iron gates at the end. Tolemek doubted he had much time to finish his story.
“She wasn’t any better. And my pirate life was no improvement for her. She wasn’t safe with me, and I reluctantly returned her to the sanitarium. Temporarily, I told myself. Until I found the solution. I had, at least, found the reason for her problems.”
Cas tilted her head toward him. “What?”
“Dragon blood. She was born with—cursed with—an affinity for magic. From my studies, I know that can manifest itself in a number of ways, and for her, it’s made her... crazy. My only hope is to find her a soulblade to bond with, maybe one that holds the essence of a healer, someone who can help her and teach her to understand her abilities and come to terms with them.” And not to be terrified of the world and herself. He sighed.
There was an alarmed—maybe even horrified—expression in her eyes when Cas looked at him, but all she said was, “That’s, uhm, good of you to try to help her.”
Magic was even less tolerated here than in his homeland, he gathered, but he needn’t stay here once he found what he sought. He couldn’t.
A boom sounded in the distance, back in the direction they had come from. The harbor. A bright orange blaze had erupted from the waterfront. No, from out on the docks. From the very dock where they had landed? Even though they had climbed up a hill, there were too many buildings in the way and too much distance to be sure, but he certainly didn’t see the balloon, partially deflated or otherwise, of a dirigible down there. Not now.
“One of your booby traps?” Tolemek asked, a numbness creeping over his limbs. He had given Goroth and the other pirates a sizable dose of that sedative. Chances were they were still on the deck in that cabin, or they had been. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to kill them.
“No. That shouldn’t have happened.” Cas sounded genuinely surprised.
“The hydrogen in the envelope must have ignited.”
“A rip in the balloon shouldn’t have caused anything more than a leak. The cabin was in good shape when we landed. There was nothing burning, no reason the gas should have been touched with fire.”
Tolemek believed her. Crafty as she was, he didn’t know how she could have set something like that up from the navigation area anyway. “Your port authorities then.”
“That’s hard to imagine. I could see them blowing up a pirate ship if it was out there far enough that it wouldn’t damage anything else, but blowing up one of our own freighters just because it had some unconscious pirates on it? And when it was surrounded by privately owned vessels? The king would take more than their jobs over something like that.”
“Hm.”
“We’ll have to wait and solve the mystery later,” Cas said. “I have to report in.”
Tolemek nodded, and they headed up the street again.
It turned out the army installation wasn’t on top of the butte—it simply had a view of it from a hill overlooking the city and the harbor. It covered dozens of city blocks with a wall and razor wire marking the perimeter. The gates Tolemek had seen in the distance were guarded.
Cas stepped into an alley a couple of blocks from the entrance, waving for him to follow. “I can walk up to the guards and get in without... well, there will be questions asked, but they wouldn’t be, so, who’s your friend. Or so, which cell block shall we stick your pirate prisoner in.”
The idea of him as the prisoner amused him, given that he was armed with weapons and the formulas and gadgets in his bag, while she wore little more than the parka he had given her. Still clad in those horrible cloth shoes, she didn’t even have decent footwear.
“I anticipated this. You go ahead without me.” Tolemek drew one of his leather spheres out of his bag, knowing she would recognize it. “I’ll find my own way in.”
Cas gazed up at him. Trying to read his face? To elicit a promise that he wouldn’t hurt anyone? He thought about saying that he trusted her not to tell the gate guards which alley he was in and how many men they would need to subdue him, but decided it didn’t need to be said at this point.
“Be careful,” Cas whispered, then stood on tiptoes, resting her hands on his shoulder.
He wasn’t expecting it, so he almost dropped his sphere when she kissed him. What a mess that would have made. Pirate and lieutenant believed to be dead found snoring and entwined in back alley, lips pressed together. Except they weren’t entwined yet. Tolemek hurried to pocket the sphere so he could bend down, wrap his arms around her, and return the kiss. This would make it all the harder to leave, but he didn’t care. In choosing her over Goroth, something had changed for her, and she was letting him know. With a soft, lingering kiss full of longing and... regret. Or maybe those were his own feelings. Still, when she drew back and he cupped the side of her face, his thumb found moisture on her cheek.
“You be careful too,” he whispered. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but if that sorceress is controlling your commander, he may not be the man you’re expecting.”
Cas snorted and walked out of the alley.
He wasn’t sure why he had added that. Because he hoped it was true? Because he wanted Cas to have faith in him instead of Zirkander? Idiot. He should have said, thank you for the sublime kiss and let’s do it again sometime.
Chapter 13
Cas turned onto Griffon Street, her stride quick. The snow was falling more heavily, and the cold pavement pressed through the bottoms of her thin shoes. She had only the memory of the heat of Tolemek’s kiss to keep her warm, something she couldn’t, alas, spend as much time thinking about as sh
e would have liked. The soldiers at the gate had recognized her—one of the perks of being a part of Wolf Squadron—and given her hearty thumps on the back and ushered her straight into the courtyard. It had been clear in their eyes that they wanted her story—especially since she still wore the ridiculous-for-this-climate prison smock beneath her borrowed parka—but a distant alarm had gone off, and they had all known stories would have to wait. Cas had to report immediately. She recognized the bong-bong-bongs and knew the alarm originated at one or more of the ocean watch towers beyond the harbor and were being relayed into the city. It wasn’t the ear-splitting siren screech that would announce an all-out attack was imminent, but it did mean unfriendlies had been spotted in the sky, and it was strongly suggested that some fliers be sent out to check on them. That meant the colonel might be racing out his door right now.
Cas turned her walk into a run, watching the sidewalks of the officers’ quarters ahead. There were larger houses on the left side of the street, for those who had families, but she looked right, toward a little cottage past a fountain featuring a dragon, its wings spread, ready to head into battle. The home’s front window was shuttered, but a lantern glowed behind the slats. Good. Maybe he hadn’t left yet. If she caught him, she might be able to go along in addition to briefing him. By the gods, she missed her work—and her team. And she would love to help Wolf Squadron finish off that pirate outpost. Tolemek could ask his questions about swords later.
She jogged up the sidewalk, slipping on the icy cement, its cracks thickened with snow. She missed her uniform and her boots too. She made it to the door without decorating her backside with snow and banged out a knock as hard and fast as the automatic gunfire on a flier.
“Colonel?” she called when seconds dragged by without a response. He usually answered a door knock with a “Yeah?” no matter what he was doing or who was calling. He could have left and forgotten to cut out the lamp.
But she heard footsteps, and a broad smile stretched her lips. Until the door opened.