series 01 05 A Prince of Mars Read online

  “I don’t suppose our mysterious friend will be with us for this part of the voyage,” Nathanial said. “Not unless he is one of the clerics.” Almost everyone else from the caravan was either remaining in Abak’hn or returning with the caravan to Sharranus.

  “Oh, that’s true!” Annabelle said with disappointment. “Unless our friend is Onxym Haat himself.” They all laughed at that suggestion, but then she continued in a more thoughtful tone. “Or his clerk, I suppose. You know, that is possible. Sometimes we look at the most obvious people, when those with a secret to guard are the ones least likely to draw attention to themselves.”

  Clack-clack.

  Yes, that was true, Nathanial thought. But his clerk? It seemed unlikely. Why would his clerk secretly befriend them? It made no sense.

  Next came three enclosed light carriages, each drawn by a single gashant.

  “The Martian equivalent of a hansom, I take it,” Nathanial commented. “Anyone we know?”

  The doors opened and two men descended from each carriage. All six men were dressed in black from head to toe—black tunics and leg wrappings, and black cloaks overall―and wore silver masks.

  “Ah, the six judges of Aetheria!” Kak’hamish said. “I heard they were coming.”

  Five of the six stood tall and erect, while the sixth was stooped, perhaps by age. They gathered and conversed briefly, then walked to the boarding ladder. Their strides were unhurried and measured, except for the stooped man who walked with a slightly shuffling gait.

  “They certainly have a way about them, don’t they?” Annabelle said.

  “I have never heard of these worthies,” Nathanial said. “What do you know of them?”

  “They are the magistrates for the six nomadic tribes of the Aetherian Steppe,” Kak’hamish answered, “each chosen for a span of six years. The blank silver masks are their badges of office as well as the symbol of impartial justice.”

  “Rather far from home, aren’t they?” Nathanial asked. As he recalled from Conklin’s the Aetherian Steppe was five hundred or more miles to the northwest. Kak’hamish did not reply. Who knew what business drew Martians here or there, after all? There did seem something odd about them, however, but he could not put his finger on it.

  Clack-clack.

  Once the passengers and cargo were loaded, the ship’s captain took a last long look up and down the dock, and as the sun rose in the east, Lady Zumaat cast off her bow and stern lines and rose gently into the sky.

  Chapter Six

  “On Silken Wing”

  1.

  THE sun painted Lady Zumaat orange and yellow as the wind-wing rose up to meet it. Kak’hamish smiled, as he almost always smiled, to feel its warmth on his face. To feel the morning sun on one’s face after the chill of night was one of life’s special pleasures. It promised a day of happiness, achievement, and plenty. The promise was seldom fulfilled, and less so with each passing year, but the promise itself was a beautiful thing.

  “Trimsman, full lift!” the captain barked an order down the open hatchway above the trim station. Kak’hamish imagined the lifting vanes under the fore and aft hull rotating, presenting their broad, flat surfaces to the ground below, and the wind-wing seemed to leap upward. Annabelle gasped in surprise and Nathanial steadied her with one hand while tightening his grasp on the rail with the other. Annabelle’s face immediately broke into a broad smile, however.

  “This is fun!” she exclaimed, and Kak’hamish nodded his agreement, although Nathanial did not seem to share the sentiment.

  Kak’hamish turned back to the southern sky. After a few minutes he saw the rising figure of the skrill and rider. The animal turned toward the city and the climbing wind-wing and Kak’hamish lifted his bundle onto the rail. The cover came away to expose the cage beneath, and the two coronapes blinked in the sudden light and protested their interrupted sleep with shrill clucks.

  He opened the cage door, carefully pulled out one of the coronapes, checked to make sure it had not pulled the red streamer free, and released it to dive away and then soar into the sky above them. He waited a minute, made sure the rider was flying in their direction, and released the second flyer. A mile distant the skrill turned west, paralleling their course, made a shallow dive and then soared up again, now climbing with them.

  “Two flyers today?” Annabelle asked.

  “To make sure she saw. She is used to a flyer at noon.”

  Annabelle and Nathanial both looked at him, clearly intrigued by his use of the female pronoun, but both too polite to inquire further. That was something he liked about Earth people: they might not always mind their own business, but at least they had a sense they ought to.

  “Sidemen to the rigging!” the captain bellowed, and crewmen boiled from the forward hatch and scrambled out onto the canvas-wrapped outriggers. “Make Wing!”

  The sidemen removed the lines wrapped around the canvas covers, then gathered in the canvas weather covers and passed them inboard to the main deck. Younger, less-experienced crew rolled and secured them on the deck and carried them below into the cargo hold. On the outriggers the sidemen shook loose the fine linen wing panels. The men on the forward outrigger made their way back to the main deck, then aft, and finally out onto the aft outrigger, which held no furled fabric. All hands drew on the lines attached to the inboard and outboard ends of each wing panel and stretched them back to the next outrigger, where the sidemen secured them at half a dozen points. Within minutes a broad horizontal surface of wind-rippled linen stretched to each side, reaching fifty feet out in the centre but narrowing sharply toward the front and less dramatically to the rear, like an arrowhead.

  Nathanial and Annabelle both watched in fascination, but Nathanial looked puzzled as the sidemen climbed back aboard to the main deck. “It’s quite impressive,” he said, “but I still don’t really see how the thing works. It seems to me that so far we are simply drifting with the wind, and as that is out of the west, it seems to be carrying us in the wrong direction. Doesn’t a sail have to be perpendicular to the wind to harness it?”

  “It is not a sail,” Kak’hamish said.

  The captain looked with satisfaction on the stretched wings, took another look over the side to make sure of their altitude, and walked to the open hatch above the trim station.

  “Hold on,” Kak’hamish ordered.

  “Trimsman, five points down nose and give this pig some weight!” the captain shouted.

  The deck tilted forward and suddenly the ship seemed to drop from under them, although not so completely that they left their feet. The linen wings stretched taught with air and the massive merchant ship suddenly dove forward, gaining speed as it lost altitude, racing down toward the Martian desert below. Annabelle lost her balance and fell onto her seat, then slid down to the forward railing of the quarterdeck. Nathanial and Kak’hamish both dashed forward to her side, Nathanial ending on his hands and knees, but when they got to her, her face was red with excitement and pleasure.

  She cried out, exhilarated, her hair having come loose in the wind and blowing back behind her like the streamers on the coronapes. “This must be what it feels like to ski!”

  Then the nose rose and the ship soared like a bird, rising and losing some speed, but still racing forward.

  “Helm, come right to due west,” the captain ordered, and the ship responded with a gentle bank to the right, then levelled again, continuing its gradual descent.

  Nathanial knelt at the quarterdeck rail, eyes glued to the taught linen wings. “A glider!’ he said. “Why didn’t I think of this before? Why, it’s so obvious! Gliders are nothing much more than toys back on Earth, of course, because dynamic lift can only sustain a very light craft for a limited time. But with a large enough wing and liftwood for buoyancy—why, it’s genius! And when the ship loses enough altitude for concern, the captain simply adds lift, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, of course,” Kak’hamish said. “The ship will lose a little speed in the climb, b
ut only through drag, and then gain it back as soon as it again begins its dive.”

  He found it odd that Nathanial, who worked with the design of aerial vessels on Earth, was so unfamiliar with the principles of a wind-wing. Were Earth humans so addicted to their iron and steel technologies, to steam and propellers, that they had ignored what Mars had discovered so long ago? Even when wind-wings regularly visited British colonies and trading stations? If so, that indicated a dangerous arrogance indeed.

  2.

  “this ship is fascinating, I must say!” Nathanial declared. “I spent all afternoon with the trimsman. Why, I feel as if I could almost fly this vessel myself, or at least maintain its trim and altitude. But according to my calculations, the voyage from Abak’hn to Thoth should take no more than thirty hours. Why is our transit time listed as three days?”

  Annabelle thought that an excellent question, but had no answer of her own. “Are you sure your numbers are correct?” she asked. “Thirty hours seems very swift for a passage of eight hundred miles.”

  “More like eight hundred and fifty, but this wind-wing is clearly capable of thirty knots, which is near enough to thirty-three miles per hour. That puts us at only twenty-six hours of flight time, so thirty hours allows for considerable margin of error.”

  Why would Haat lie about such a thing, Annabelle wondered. What profit was there in it?

  “Come in,” she said in response to a soft knock, and Kak’hamish slipped through the doorway into her already cramped stateroom. She sat on her bed while Nathanial occupied the only chair. He rose to offer it to Kak’hamish, but the Martian waved him back down.

  “What have you learned?”

  “Nathanial, your concerns about travel time do not seem well-founded. The ship seldom reaches its best speed, in part due to a desire to avoid wear on the rigging. Beyond that, it coasts at night due to the possibility of unseen hazards to navigation. It stays at high altitude and barely makes way against the wind. If we had the wind at our backs, we would make better time, but as you noticed this morning, it is in our face. We are scheduled to arrive the morning of the third day, so it is still a flight time not much more than fifty hours total.”

  Nathanial frowned in doubt.

  “However, all is not as it seems,” Kak’hamish continued. “I spoke with the ship’s cook. The clergymen took their evening meal in the cargo hold, with their relics, which I would expect. But they asked for the normal ship’s fare. Tonight, like most nights, it was a stew made of dried vegetables and preserved meat, along with shipsbread, and they ate everything.”

  “Why does that excite your suspicion?” Annabelle asked.

  “These men wear the robes of the Fishers of Thoth, a small sect generally not seen east of the Grand Canal, and so its practices are not well-known.”

  “But you know of them, of course,” Nathanial said with a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  “I travelled to Thoth a number of years ago, and did so with my eyes open; it is not a great accomplishment by itself. The significant point is that, while cleansed, the clergy of the Fishers never eat flesh. These men are not who they claim to be.”

  Annabelle thought that over for a moment. Men with secrets were generally up to no good, but whoever their secret friend was, or had been, had had a secret as well. Much like Dolan on Peregrine. She shuddered at the memory; it seemed so long ago now, but her arm still ached in part from his treatment of her, and her leg… Well, it was a direct consequence of the secrets men kept.

  “There is a second thing,” Kak’hamish said. “I stopped at Nathanial’s stateroom first to see if he was there. He was not, obviously, as he was here instead, but this was left on his bed.”

  Kak’hamish opened his hand to show a small, seamed piece of browned paper. Annabelle took it and Nathanial crowded by her shoulder to look at it.

  “BEWAYR”

  “Well, his spelling hasn’t got much better, but the intent is clear enough,” Nathanial said, and Annabelle agreed. The spidery hand writing was clearly the same as that of the author of the original note.

  “So, our mysterious friend—if he truly is a friend—remains with us,” Annabelle said. “This narrows the possibilities for his identity considerably.”

  “Yes, but before we explore that, there is a third thing, the most damning of all. Once night fell, the ship changed course to the south. I know this from years of navigating by the stars. We are headed not for Thoth, but for Siruahn.”

  That final damning evidence made up Annabelle’s mind. “We can delay no longer with idle speculation. We must take what information we have to whatever authority is at hand, which I believe to be the six judges of Aetheria. While they may have no authority here, they will know what action to take. In any case, their journey is interrupted as well, and they at least deserve to know the facts facing us.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Nathanial said. Kak’hamish seemed less certain, but after a moment nodded his assent as well. “Will you come, Annabelle?” Nathanial asked.

  “No, I have already taken off my artificial leg and I think we have little time to lose. You two must go to them, and quickly.”

  3.

  nathanial led the way aft down the narrow wooden passageway along the port side of the quarters’ deck. The senior crew and owner, or charter-holder, slept in the quarters on the starboard side while the more common paying passenger slept to port. Nathanial and Annabelle’s cabins were forward so the judges had to be aft. The first cabin was silent and when Nathanial knocked softly, no one answered. Kak’hamish gestured down the passageway and Nathanial heard voices ahead, indistinct but clearly raised in some sort of heated discussion.

  The deck felt odd beneath his feet, rising and falling slightly with the breeze. It felt somehow insubstantial, despite the solid sturdiness of the planed wood plank floor and the heavy timber bracings spaced along the passageway wall like flying buttresses. Perhaps it was that feeling of insubstantiality, of insecurity, which made Nathanial proceed aft more slowly, and with care not to make loud clumping noises on the deck as he did so. Or perhaps it was all the things they had learned so recently, even though none of them by themselves proved anything, and all of them might have perfectly reasonable and harmless explanations. Might have.

  He walked slowly down the hall, his blood pounding in his ears, the sound of arguing voices growing louder. Onxym Haat shouted at someone—no, not shouted exactly. Protested to, reasoned with, pleaded with, but not shouted at. Although the words made no sense to Nathanial, the tone was clear; this was a subordinate who disputed the decision of his superior, but stopped short of questioning his authority.

  To whom did Onxym Haat consider himself a subordinate? He had chartered the ship, which, as Nathanial understood the arrangement, made him de facto master of the vessel, with even the captain bound by his orders, within reason. Within reason. What did that mean in this mad place?

  Nathanial jumped at the touch on his shoulder, but turned to see Kak’hamish tap his lips with the flat of his palm two or three times—obviously meaning for him to keep silent. Nathanial nodded and the Martian gestured for him to follow him back down the passage.

  When they had gone almost its entire length back to Annabelle’s door, however, the hatch to the main deck opened and a grey-robed figure entered, started at the appearance of Kak’hamish and Nathanial virtually in front of him, and then with a snarl drew his knife and leaped on Kak’hamish.

  Kak’hamish fell back against Nathanial, who in turn fell against a timber support, but kept his footing. The two Martians struggled, their hands locked and Kak’hamish holding the knife away from his throat. The passage was so narrow, however, Nathanial could not get past Kak’hamish to help. He searched for some weapon which he could use to reach past his friend and strike the false priest down, or at least distract him. Instead he saw the door to his own room. He dashed to it, threw it open, and went in.

  “Kak’hamish, give ground!” Nathanial shouted, slammed the d
oor closed, and hoped the false priest did not understand English. Nathanial opened the chest on the floor which contained his meagre possessions, took out the knife he had taken from the steppe raider, returned to the door, and listened. His heart raced and blood pounded in his ears, almost deafening him.

  The scuffle in the hall grew louder, then passed by. Nathanial threw open the door, rushed out, and before he had time to think, or contemplate the enormity of his action, he plunged the knife into the grey-robed assassin’s back.

  The man let out a piercing scream and fell against Kak’hamish. His friend’s face, still twisted in the grimace of the life-and-death struggle, looked past Nathanial and called out a warning. Nathanial spun to see two more robed false priests stride through the open hatch, draw their knives, and advance on him.

  “Dash this! We need help.”

  Nathanial pushed past Kak’hamish and ran for the door at the end of the passage. Before he reached it, however, the door sprang open and a Martian in black emerged, tall and powerfully built. He no longer wore the silver mask of a judge, and his face seemed vaguely familiar.

  “I know you can’t understand me, but we’re being attacked and you have to help. You understand? Help!”

  The man’s expression didn’t change as with both hands he seized Nathanial by the front of his shirt and slammed him back against the wooded wall. His head hit the wall with a solid crack and the world turned white. As he slid down the wall to the deck, his consciousness twinkling out, his vision cleared for a moment and he saw, as if from a very great distance, another face appear at the doorway, another man in black—the ambassador, Kaleen Jed-An.

  Ah, yes! That is what was odd about the six judges. They were magistrates for Hill Martian tribes, and yet they all seemed so tall.