The young woman and the man had moved away from the Marlendes and were talking with the others now. The Marlende group was sitting where they had been before, still watched by the two men with rifles, talking quietly together.
She realized the Deverrin party wasn’t guarding their camp like people who expected intruders. There were no lookouts posted, no one watching the approaches to the hill. The elementary sort of thing one learned from playing play-fort as a child, or at least that was where Emilie had learned it. All their attention was on their prisoners, as if they were the only source of danger.
Maybe they were. Maybe the Deverrins had never seen any other people here, and thought the Marlende party was the only threat. If the situation was as tense as it looked, the Marlendes certainly wouldn’t have mentioned the fact that there were a couple of their party still missing.
Emilie needed to get closer to where the Marlendes were being held and maybe try to signal them if she could.
She climbed back down to where Hyacinth and Efrain were waiting. “I’m going around to the other side. There’s a fold of rock there I can use to get down near the airship. From there, I should be able to hear what they’re saying.”
Efrain glared at her. “You’ll get caught!”
“Quiet!” Emilie glared back. “I won’t get caught. I’ve done this sort of thing before.”
Hyacinth stirred uneasily, its blossoms pointed toward them like it was disturbed by their behavior and trying to understand what was wrong.
“Emilie…”
“Just be quiet and stay here!”
Efrain started to get up. “If you’re going to do this stupid thing, I’ll come with you.”
Emilie jaw hurt from gritting her teeth. “Stupid? All right, Efrain, you’re in charge. What do we do next? How are we going to free my friends? How are we going to get back to the airship? Hurry, before the aether current destroys it or snatches up Daniel and Seth and we’re stuck here until we die.”
Efrain stared at her, frustrated. “I don’t know.”
“Then sit here and be quiet.” Emilie hurried away, moving quickly and quietly on the stone. She didn’t look back.
It took Emilie a little time to get around to the airship and climb down that fold of rock. It was a good deal narrower than the one on the other side that Hyacinth had led them to, and it wasn’t nearly as good cover. She had to wriggle on her belly through the last section until she could finally hear voices.
Lord Engal was saying, “Believe me, my dear, we all understand your concern. We’ve just come back from an expedition where we were harassed unmercifully and nearly killed by Lord Ivers of the Philosophers’ Society. But I fail to see why you believe that we are a danger to you.”
At least she had been right about that. The Deverrin expedition was suspicious and frightened. But surely we can work that out, Emilie thought. Suspicion was one thing but everyone would want to work together to get out of here before the aether current ripped this place apart or decided to drop a mountain on top of them.
The young woman’s voice said, “My father will explain. I have no intention of being fooled by your false concern–”
“False concern?” Miss Marlende burst out. “I wish I’d never heard of any of you! You’re all as mad as mercury-sniffers.”
Dr Marlende broke in. “Miss Deverrin, you’ve been gone a year. If we had anything to do with it, why would we wait so long to come after you?”
“And why in the world would I participate in it?” Professor Abindon asked. “You, or at least your father, must know our history.”
Emilie was hoping she would elaborate, but Miss Deverrin said, “Perhaps you were duped.”
Her voice acid, the professor said, “Young lady, no one ‘dupes’ me.”
Someone called out and Emilie flinched, but Miss Deverrin said, “My father has returned.” It should have sounded overblown and self-important, but there was a faint quaver in her voice.
It gave Emilie pause. Maybe it did the others too, as no one said anything as Dr Deverrin’s footsteps sounded lightly on the packed dirt. The silence was so tense that when a mild voice tinged with a Menaen country accent spoke, Emilie flinched. He said, “Well, this is quite a surprise. But I suppose you meant to come after us eventually.”
Lord Engal said, “Deverrin, are you seriously suggesting that you believe we somehow sabotaged your expedition? Everyone believed your ship had broken up over the sea. No one had any notion that you were alive and trapped.”
“This is exactly what I expected you to say, of course.”
Professor Abindon said, “How exactly was this accomplished, by the way? I assure you, if Engal or Marlende could force an aether current to do their bidding, they would find better things to do with it than to attack the expedition of an inferior scholar.”
Lord Engal sighed. Miss Marlende said, “Perhaps not the best point to raise, at the moment, Mother.”
Dr Deverrin said, “And what say you, Dr Marlende? You’re being uncharacteristically quiet on this subject.”
Dr Marlende said, thoughtfully, “I say that you’re not Dr Deverrin.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Or at least it was stunned on Emilie’s part. She frowned, baffled by what Dr Marlende might mean. That Dr Deverrin wasn’t behaving like himself? He couldn’t mean that that actually wasn’t Dr Deverrin! Some of these other people were members of the Deverrin family, and they were all known to the Marlende party. It didn’t make sense.
Dr Marlende continued. “I don’t know what you are. I find this a very curious circumstance, and not something I have ever encountered before. You have Deverrin’s face, and his body. But you do not have more than the most rudimentary elements of his mind.”
Someone made a choking noise, almost a sob. Emilie was certain it was Miss Deverrin. After that, the silence stretched again. Emilie’s skin prickled all over and her throat went dry. If someone accused me of not being me, I’d throw a fit. Or something. I wouldn’t just stand there. But Deverrin was just standing there.
Dr Marlende said, “And now you’re trying to exercise some sort of influence over my mind. Very odd. It might have worked, if I hadn’t already seen through your deception.”
Finally, Dr Deverrin said, “I see you’ve gone mad. Perhaps that’s why you attacked us.”
As if he hadn’t spoken, Dr Marlende said, “You see, Dr Deverrin and I were very close, intimate friends when we were young men. We went to university together. We learned philosophy and magic together. We performed spells in tandem. I can’t describe to you, whatever you are, how deep an aetheric bond that can form between individuals. Particularly individuals who already share a great deal of sympathetic connections. We were not as close after university, as he was called on to marry and continue the Deverrin line, which we both knew would eventually happen. So the bonds of that time may no longer be as immediate, but they still exist. I would know if Alaine Deverrin was standing in front of me. And he is not.”
“I see,” Dr Deverrin said, his tone unchanged. “It’s a rather ridiculous accusation, and there isn’t much I can say to it, is there? I assume you hope the rest of your party still on your airship will be able to carry out your plot against us?”
There was a moment’s pause. Dr Marlende said, “How did you know there are still crew on our airship? None of us mentioned it.”
Dr Deverrin just said, “Come away; this is pointless.”
Miss Deverrin said, “Yes, Father.”
Their footsteps crunched away across the dirt and gravel.
Lord Engal spoke first, “That wasn’t some sort of ruse? You really believe that isn’t Deverrin?”
“I wish it was a ruse,” Dr Marlende’s voice was grim. “I have no idea how this could have happened. It must be something that… attached itself to him after his airship entered the aether current.”
“There’s never been any hint of the possibility of something like this in all the years of study of the sea aeth
er currents,” the professor said.
“But there has,” Miss Marlende said. “There have been instances of crewmen being driven mad by the sea aether currents.”
Lord Engal said, “Yes, but some of those men were recovered alive and examined carefully by physicians and aetheric sorcerers. Surely some evidence of this, whatever this is, would have been found.”
“I believe this is something native to the air currents,” Dr Marlende said. “And I think this creature knew about the crew left behind on our airship because it has some contact or connection with the aether-sailer. From the way Miss Deverrin spoke, he leaves the camp frequently, but she seems to have no idea why.”
A ghost pirate. Emilie would have to tell Efrain that they had been right.
Miss Marlende said, “That’s frightening. If he… it… does something to Daniel and Seth or damages the airship–”
The professor said, “Perhaps it, or something like it, is why the aether-sailer was abandoned. If we could speak to that member of the crew we encountered, so many questions might be answered.”
Yes, if we could speak to it, Emilie thought in frustration. She wondered how she was going to get all this information across to Hyacinth. It clearly understood their broad attempts to communicate things like “we’re going this way”, “we’re searching for others”, and “those people might hurt us”. But she didn’t think she had much chance of explaining this, and even if she somehow managed to, she had no chance of understanding its replies.
And if she couldn’t get close enough to speak to Miss Marlende and the others, she had to at least let them know she was here so they could form a plan. She was going to have to try to let them see her without letting anyone else see her.
She crawled along the ridge, heading for the airship frame. It took her what felt like forever to reach it, moving slowly and carefully, the rock scraping her knees and elbows. She squirmed around folds of rock, wriggled between narrow boulders. At the point where the rusted frame hung over her, she began to wonder if she hadn’t made a terrible decision. Or another terrible decision. The folds of rock were covered with gravel and stone chips, and it was like climbing over broken glass. And she had to creep along very slowly to keep from making noise. She knew she should just turn around and go back, but she had come too far and wasted too much time to stop now.
Finally she got to a spot where she could crane her neck and see through a gap between two girders in the frame. She could see the little group of prisoners sitting in front of the airship’s wrecked cabin. Some of the Deverrin crew sat nearby, gathered around a small campfire, their weapons in evidence, but the others were over by the stone shelters. Their attention was still on guarding their prisoners, not on anything or anyone who might come at them over the rocky ridge surrounding their camp.
Miss Marlende was seated with her legs folded and facing this way, though she wasn’t looking up toward Emilie’s position high in the ridge above the cabin. Emilie chewed on her lower lip, then decided to take a chance.
She pushed herself up slowly and cautiously, keeping an eye on the nearest Deverrins, the group sitting around the fire. Miss Marlende still wasn’t looking up. As Emilie drew her feet under her, she felt something shift under her heel. Gravel rattled, slid through a gap in the rocks and clattered down on the metal frame.
Emilie ducked and froze, cursing herself. The sinking sensation of having made a terrible mistake made her stomach want to turn. She wished she had listened to that feeling earlier. Someone yelled, “Up there!” and she heard footsteps crunch on the rock and gravel below.
Cursing herself again, Emilie scrambled further along the fold of rock, moving as fast and as quietly as she could. She came to a dead end, where she couldn’t go any further without climbing up the side of the rock and letting the whole camp see her. But it wasn’t as if they didn’t already know she was here. She gritted her teeth and started to stand, just hoping they didn’t shoot her.
Then someone called out, “There he is!”
Emilie stopped. He? The footsteps all sounded as if they were running away from her now. Oh, he didn’t! A shot went off and Emilie flinched. It echoed against the stone and her skin went cold.
But a few moments later, she heard Efrain’s voice, though she couldn’t distinguish the words. She scrambled quietly back down the fold to where she could get a view of the camp. Efrain was alive, being conducted down the stairs cut into the wall by one of the men. It must have been a warning shot. She leaned against the rock, dizzy with relief. The idiot must have deliberately shown himself, to distract from Emilie’s blunder. What did he think he was doing? Maybe he hadn’t thought anything; maybe he just hadn’t wanted her to be caught. At least Hyacinth hadn’t followed suit. If the Deverrins were this suspicious of the Marlendes, there was no telling how they would react to a flower person.
The man had Efrain by the arm and pulled him off the steps and into the center of the camp. Several of the Deverrins still stood guard over the Marlendes, their guns at ready, but most of them gathered around Efrain. Efrain looked at them all with the wide-eyed innocence that had been so infuriating when he had used it on Uncle Yeric while tattling on Emilie. He sniffed and rubbed at his nose, making himself look even younger than he already did.
Dr Deverrin strode forward. Emilie watched him nervously. This would have been anxious enough if it was just a somewhat paranoid Dr Deverrin in there, but if it was really some sort of aether-being…
Deverrin stared down at Efrain, who sniffed again, blissfully oblivious to the fact that he was facing something strange. Deverrin said, “There was another one, another young person. Where is she?”
Emilie froze. How did he know that? One of the others must have said something, but it was hard to imagine them being so foolish.
Efrain stared, then said, “She’s dead. We… I think the aether current dropped her too close to a cliff, and she fell, and she’s dead!” He choked and sobbed, scrubbing at his eyes to cover up the fact that he wasn’t tearing up. It was a tactic of his that she remembered well from the times when Efrain had claimed she had done something terrible to him. At last it was coming in handy.
Miss Deverrin put a hand to her mouth and the others shifted uncomfortably, looked to Dr Deverrin or at each other. “There was nothing that could be done,” Dr Deverrin said. Which there wasn’t, even if it had really happened, but one usually expressed sympathy first before one got around to the “oh, well, it was bound to happen” stage. At least in Emilie’s experience.
Lord Engal swore and turned to the others, and Emilie saw Mikel and Cobbier exchange a worried look. Dr Marlende squeezed Miss Marlende’s arm, both of them watching Efrain carefully. The professor turned her face away, shielding it from the guards, and said something quietly. They don’t believe it, Emilie thought. She just hoped Dr Deverrin did.
CHAPTER NINE
Emilie made her way back around to where she had originally left Efrain and Hyacinth. She was tired, covered with sweat and dust, scratched and scraped and bruised, and angry with herself. You really messed this one up, she thought grimly. In hindsight, her overconfidence seemed obvious; it was frustrating that she had been too blind to see it at the time. And what Dr Marlende had said made her wonder if he and Professor Abindon had fallen out because he had still been in love with Dr Deverrin, who had now been taken over and possibly killed by an aetheric monster, and that seemed so sad. She would rather they had broken up over a difference in opinion on philosophical theories, or because their personalities were so irritating to each other. Thinking about it, she couldn’t imagine the latter hadn’t been a factor.
When she reached the fold in the rock where she had left the others, at first Hyacinth seemed to be gone as well. That wasn’t encouraging. It might have had to withdraw, to keep any possible searchers from finding it. Or maybe it had just gotten fed up with her stupid decisions and had set off on its own.
She found their packs stuffed hastily under a clump of weeds.
If the Deverrins had searched up here, they would have found them too, but at least Efrain had tried. She couldn’t carry all three, so she took the water flask, rations, and anything else that looked useful out of Efrain’s pack and put it into hers, then hid it more carefully. She started to stand, to shoulder her pack and the professor’s, when Hyacinth swarmed over the nearest rock and plopped itself in front of her.
Keeping her voice carefully hushed, she told it, “Efrain got caught, and it was my fault. He did it to save me. And Dr Deverrin isn’t Dr Deverrin, he’s something else, probably an aether monster pretending to be Dr Deverrin.”
It waved its arm blossoms in a beckoning motion, and turned away, heading back the way it had come. Emilie stared after it. It turned back, waved at her again, then returned, still waving. It seemed to be trying to point over the rocks, away from the camp.
“You want us to leave?” Emilie said. That seemed a little harsh, for it to want her to abandon Efrain. But maybe it was trying to show her something. “Do you want me to follow you?”
An arm wrapped around her wrist and tugged, trying to pull her away. “No, wait, I have to stay here and–” It stopped and waved at her urgently. It occurred to Emilie that the only other times Hyacinth had touched her was when it was trying to stop her from falling off a cliff or tree trunk. She took a deep breath. She had made a terrible mistake and gotten Efrain captured. It was time to at least listen to someone else. And maybe it had found something important while she was off spying and being an idiot. “All right, I’ll follow you.”
Hyacinth led her up and around the side of the hill, away from the camp. Emilie kept her grumble of frustration to herself.
They followed another fold of rock for a time, then Hyacinth motioned for her to duck down and did its “quiet, danger ahead” blossom wave. Emilie crouched down and watched her steps, avoiding the loose rock. She could see the top of the airship frame jutting over the rock now, and had some idea where they were going, just not why. Then they came out to a ledge where they could see roughly cut steps leading to a gap in the rock: the main entrance to the camp.