All along the sheer granite cliffs there stood goats, row upon row. Defying gravity, they clung with their hooves to outcroppings so slim Mathilde could barely detect them. She could hear them bleating to one another, even smell their musky scent when the wind allowed, but it would take patient observation to mimic their balance.
“What are they doing up here?” Violet asked, shouting to be heard over the wind and the scarves wrapped around her face.
“Climbing after salt deposits,” Mathilde answered.
“Salt!? I guess they’ve never heard of the ocean. Come to think of it, I’m starting to think nobody around here knows about the ocean. The beach! The hot sun!”
From head to toe, the pirate queen of the Thousand Shores was wrapped in coats, scarves, fleeces, and jackets. Only her hands were bare, despite her discomfort, the better to feel every tremor of the Callisto’s great wheel.
Sharp winds whipped through the craggy pass, strong and cold enough to rip the breath from unprepared lungs. Gleaming, groaning, the ship’s maneuvering foils worked to obey their mistress, bending the wind to keep the ship away from the rocks. The snow had stopped falling and the deck was clear, but the valley below was impassable, buried in drifts as tall as the Callisto was long.
“Can’t we go any higher?” Violet demanded, grunting with effort. “Why not fly over these peaks instead of between them?”
“Give me a few guesses,” Mathilde said. “And I’ll tell you how much you get right.”
One at a time, Violet brought her hands up to her mouth to warm them. Overhead, riggers blew their rhythmic whistles to signal the security of their lines. Three short notes for “all knots secure.” Violet waited for the last signal before she spoke.
“You’re looking for the Iron Oracle,” she said. “And maybe you’re worried you’d miss her if we get too high?”
“High-altitude surveillance is virtually impossible under these weather conditions,” Mathilde agreed. “But I doubt very much she’ll be moving in the open, no matter the weather. Keep guessing.”
“You don’t want the ship to be seen. You want to use the mountains for cover, because we aren’t welcome in these waters. I mean, this region. That’s why you’ve hidden the cannons.”
“You’re getting warmer.”
“I wish”
Their conversation was momentarily interrupted when a massive golden eagle swept across the bow and plunged down the cliff face toward the goats. With its powerful talons it yanked one of the creatures off balance, worrying its prey until the goat lost its footing and slipped, plunging silently down with the eagle close behind.
“You don’t see that every day,” Violet said. “Forgive me, captain, but I can only guess what I myself would do. In Amaranth, all currents are either freewater or fiefwater, and if you sail the wrong waters, your ship is forfeit. So when you sail through an enemy fief, you raise a false flag, or you ride the edge of the territory. Or you take the fastest possible route, or else you carry every gun you can float, and you make sure everyone sees ‘em.
But up here, you’ve got us sailing through rocks that have to be swarming with lookouts. You’ve got five full-fledged duelists on board, though your cannons are under wraps. And you haven’t even struck the Capulan colors, although I noticed you fly only the deck flags and the keelward banner, nothing on the balloon. So we aren’t in disguise, we aren’t bluffing, we aren’t threatening, and we’re not running. Among the Thousand Shores, this would be considered a pretty poor subterfuge.”
Mathilde listened patiently, her eye on the horizon. Between the clouds and the mountains, the barest scrap of clear blue sky. For a moment the wind died completely, an accident of the chaotic currents among the peaks. In the silence, she heard the cry of distant birds, the crackle of ropes drawn tight in the cold. Behind that, the momentary twinkle of silver windchimes. But that sound, she knew, was only in her memory.
Quietly, though, quieter still than the breath of the goats and the bubbling pots in the galley belowdecks, the tromping and crunching of booted feet in the snow. From where?
“You want to be seen,” Violet said. Her voice seemed to summon the wind, which rose from the valley floor with such eagerness that it carried loose powder with it and scattered the flakes along the deck. “But not by everyone.”
The first grappling hook landed on the deck with a hard thump, and all the cries and whistles of the riggers were silent at once. Through the wind, they heard a dozen more thumps, and then the scraping of the hooks across the boards, the catch against the port side rail. Silent as snowfall, fur-clad warriors dropped from the peaks, their combined weight yanking the ship to one side.
“Damn them to Deepwell!” Violet cried, straining at the wheel to keep the Callisto on course. “They’re boarding us!”
“Stay on the wheel,” Mathilde commanded, descending the stairs from the bridge as the boarders hauled themselves up and over the rail. Her aeronauts looked to her for a signal, hands on the hilts of their sabers. With a gesture, she forbade them from drawing arms.
The boarders were hard-faced and dark-haired, like the hill people who dwelt near Gambria. But unlike the hill people, they moved in pairs, and each pair was bound together by a length of rope at the waist. They wore goatskin coats with ram’s horns at the left shoulder, and their mouths were covered with white linen scarves. Each one carried a hooked hammer, part weapon and part climbing kit. Mathilde watched the way each man and woman gripped each hilt. They were ready to fight, but there wasn’t a trigger finger among them. No powder, no barrels. She put out a hand in a gesture of greeting.
“Welcome aboard,” she said. “My name is-”
“We know name of trespasser,” growled the leader, yanking down his scarf. “We serve Iron Oracle. She know many name. All name of trespasser, she know.”
Mathilde met the man’s eyes and got the measure of him. Proud. Loyal. But more proud than loyal. She crossed her hands behind her back.
“I lack such gifts,” she said. “Who may I say has boarded my vessel?”
“Call me Gor-im,” said the man. “Short name. You remember. Not forget, like name of road in South. Many road, you have Baishin permission to walk. Many road through fortress, under watching-tower. You step off road, step on sacred ground.”
“We haven’t set foot on any sacred ground,” Mathilde smiled, gesturing to the ship. “We’ve been airborne for a week, ever since we crossed the border. I can assure you, we’ve left no mark upon the land.”
“Sky is the land!” Gor-im shouted. “You leave mark. Mark our eyes, mark eyes of eagles, eyes of mountain. Forbidden. Maybe even you make map of sacred land. Forbidden.”
From the bridge, Violet cried out: “Captain!”
A pair of boarders had hauled themselves onto the bridge and now flanked Violet, hammers in hand. The young pirate’s eyes had narrowed to angry slits, but she kept both hands on the wheel.
“Please don’t antagonize my pilot,” Mathilde said. “Our lives are in her hands, Gor-im.”
“Now her life in my hand,” Gor-im replied. “Turn ship around, now. Go back to Southern roads. Come back on foot, or do not come back.”
“Surely the Oracle is expecting a visit from me?” Mathilde said, unlacing the fingers behind her back, loosening the muscles in her shoulders. “It was my understanding that she can see the future.”
“The Iron Oracle sees everything,” Gor-im answered, raising a hand to signal his hijackers at the wheel.
“Then she should have warned you,” Mathilde said, and with the heel of her boot she knocked a signal in the floorboards.
From the forecastle, a mirrored lantern flooded the deck with light, blinding the unprepared boarders but leaving the goggled aeronauts ready. Long, stark shadows striped the boards, and from those shadows, rising like a swimmer from the sea, Tremen appeared on the bridge with his black blade in hand. He severed the ropes that bound the pair of hijackers and kicked one of them off balance. Violet did the rest, momentarily leaving the wheel to shove her would-be captor down the stairs to the deck.
Meanwhile Mathilde filled her hands, both her sabers locked, loaded, ready for targets. The boarders came at her in pairs, their hammerstrokes precise, aimed not to disarm, but to kill. None found their mark, but she was soon surrounded. Now the boarders threw looped ropes, and she let them believe she was caught just long enough to draw the circle close. Her blade, outward-facing, came through the loops without resistance, and as the ropes flopped harmless to the deck, she took aim at Gor-im.
“I’d rather not kill you,” she said, her good eye flashing in the hot glow of the lantern. “After all, I’d like to make a good impression on your mistress, if I can. Now tell your watchmen to drop their weapons or I’ll drop their hands.”
She watched Gor-im measure the distance between himself and her saber. Watched the knuckles whiten on the hilt of his hammer. The muscles of the man’s jaw set, and he lunged at Mathilde. No battle cry, no oath. Just a killing blow.
In the mountains, even a single flintlock shot echoed loudly enough to dislodge drifts of snow and startle the goats on their craggy perches.
Mathilde stepped aside and let Gor-im fall past her to the deck. She kept her weapons raised. Now there was smoke in the air, and it was hard to predict what a soldier would do when their commander was shot. Blood spilled over the boards. The wind howled at them all, sweeping away the white plumes of their breath.
Gor-im stirred and rolled onto his back, grunting with pain and clutching the wound at his shoulder. Mathilde kicked his hammer away.
“Be glad you didn’t meet me ten years ago,” she said. “Or that would have been the end of you. Tell these people to drop their weapons. I don’t like repeating the same threat.”
With a snarl, Gor-im signaled his watchmen to stand down. One by one, the boarders dropped their hammers. Andre and the aeronauts collected the weapons and took them to the forecastle to be locked up. Mathilde sheathed one saber but kept the other cocked over her shoulder. She surveyed the captured climbers and quietly assessed the cost in food, fuel, medical supplies.
“The sooner we find the Oracle, the sooner we leave your sacred skies,” Mathilde said, addressing the crowd. “We mean her no harm. You can either direct me to her sanctuary or force me to wander around for a few weeks until I find it myself. But if another boarding party like this one sets foot on my ship, there will be no prisoners. I want six of you to climb down and clear the way for us. Keep in mind that this is a courtesy I offer you, not a strategic necessity on my part. The rest of you will stay here with your commander and one of you will direct my pilot through these peaks.”
For a while, the only sounds were the bleating of startled goats reassuring one another, the groan of the Callisto’s maneuvering foils, the moan of the wind in the valley below.
One of the watchmen spoke up: “Why fly through mountains? Why not fly over?”
Mathilde grinned and answered: “I like the scenery.”