Beneath a Burning Sky (The Dawnhawk Trilogy Book 3) (28 page)

Damn it all. Damn him to the Realms Below!

Fengel sheathed his saber. “Danica. You said you’ve still a few Workings?”

She nodded in distraction. “Aye, Captain. Goriot—ah my familiar, is pretty pleased with all the carnage going on.”

“Follow me. Use whatever you can to help.”

“Wait, what?” asked Imogen. “What about me?”

“Wait here. I’m going to rescue that cantankerous old
bastard—and whoever else I can.”

The young Mechanist reached for her satchel. “I’ve got something for this. I can—”

“Wait here!”

Fengel jogged down the boardwalk street. Reaching out, he grabbed an unfired musket from a fleeing pirate, who cursed him but ran on.

No alleys were present, a mixed blessing; while no Bluecoats would be flanking him around behind the other buildings, it also meant he couldn’t do the same. Which would have been nice. He needed something, any advantage at all if he was going to pull this off somehow. The gleaming brass of the automatons whirled and twisted, flailing about with their pepperbox muskets like clubs, seemingly impervious to any blows the pirates rained upon them. The machines had even kept their wedge formation, gaining ground steadily.

Behind their automatons crept the Bluecoat invaders. All appeared ragged and injured. They hung back a goodly distance, letting their machines do all the work for them while they recovered from the effects of the siren.

Only eight men and women on his side still stood, holding the thin line of the battle. Fengel came up beside Shannon MacKinnon, who fired pistol after pistol into the head of an automaton before her. The lead balls ricocheted off the armored helm of the thing, ringing it like a bell.

“We’re outmatched!” he shouted at her. “Pull everyone back!”

“Oh aye,” she yelled back at him. “I’m just standing here for the fun of it! We’re dropping like flies in autumn. Euron refuses to leave!”

“Just pull back! I’ll take care of him.”

An automaton on their left crushed the skull of an old pirate, then lurched their way. Hissing, spitting liquid light slammed into the thing, knocking it back against the wall of the warehouse. The automaton toppled but immediately began righting itself. The chest plate it wore was scored and burned, but otherwise uninjured.

Fengel glanced back to where Danica Barker stood, both hands clenched over a Working that seeped droplets of something that sizzled on the boardwalk planks.

“Hurry!” she said, unleashing another awful blast.

Fengel turned to Shannon. “Just go!”

Then he twisted away, ducking past as another of Euron’s men fell to the machines. Arcane light sizzled overhead as Danica unleashing her Working to distract the automaton fighting the pirate king.

Fengel came up behind Euron, down now to a single minion and his own broken sword. As the clockwork knight bludgeoned Euron’s man down to the boardwalk, Fengel used the opening, ducking low and thrusting his musket out like a spear, not at the machine’s torso, but between its legs. Throwing his weight into it, he rushed past, feeling the barrel catch against the knee of the construct. Swordplay might be useless here, but as he so often told Lina Stone, that just meant he needed to improvise.

His opponent toppled, reaching clumsily for him as he stepped neatly out of the way. Another of the war machines was waiting behind its fellow. Fengel raised the musket and jammed it into the space where its chest plate met the neck, right into the spinning flywheels and twisting pistons. He pulled the trigger, letting go and turning his head away.

The weapon exploded, knocking the automaton back even as it knocked Fengel’s monocle free and showered the side of his neck with hot metal. Fengel gave thanks to the Realms Above even through the pain—it could have been much, much worse.

There wasn’t time to recover, though. He leaped away, back over the first automaton that was even now climbing to its feet. Euron was frozen, staring, surprised by Fengel’s appearance.

Fengel slammed a fist into the pirate king’s gut, a blow he’d been waiting
years
to deliver. The old man folded with a whooshing gasp, dropping his broken weapon. Fengel kneeled and lifted his father-in-law up onto his shoulder. The man was lighter than he would have thought.

The pirates beside him didn’t even notice. Those few left standing were already turning to flee back, past where Danica Barker threw caustic light and Shannon MacKinnon emptied her bandolier. A figure darted into view from the other direction, on his left.

It was Imogen, the young Mechanist. She pulled something from her satchel, heavy and black and complicated. Fengel didn’t need to see the hissing fuse at its top to recognize it as some sort of bomb.

Fengel yelled at her wordlessly, even as he pushed on into a sprint, with the old man flailing on his shoulder and his monocle dangling on its chain. He needn’t have bothered. Imogen planted the bomb up against the brick wall of the old warehouse just as an automaton before her lowered its weapon. She ducked aside as it fired, missing her by a handbreadth and gouging a spray of brick dust out of the wall. Imogen twisted about clumsily and joined him as he sprinted away.

The bomb erupted behind him with the force of a thunderclap, lifting and throwing him. He lost Euron and was thrown painfully to the ground.

Slowly, the world ordered itself again. The street was piled high with crumbled brick, old wood, and the bones of long-dead leviathans, all shrouded from the sun by a cloud of dusty ruin. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard the distant din of the battle being fought elsewhere and the hoarse calls of Perinese Bluecoats. None of the automatons were visible. He felt sore, and his leg hurt; the right leg of his trousers was dark with spreading blood. It was only a flesh wound, thank the Goddess, though it bled freely enough.

Others picked themselves up off the boardwalk planks nearby. Imogen stood, unharmed thanks to her heavy Mechanist’s garb, though she shook her head, as if her ears were ringing. Shannon MacKinnon was covered in scrapes, her broad-brimmed hat missing. She held Danica Barker in her arms. The aetherite was unmoving, either dead or unconscious, her dark curls matted and wet with blood. Old Euron Blackheart groaned from his hands and knees, looking around blearily. Of any others, Fengel saw no sign.

Euron Blackheart glared at him. “Ye damned, craven peacock! What did you—”

Fengel rose to his feet, driven by frustrated rage. The pain in his leg flared, but he ignored it, grabbing up the pirate king by the shredded lapels of his outdated coat and hoisting him up like a butcher would a side of beef.

“Shut your damned yap,” he snarled.

The pirate king’s eyes widened. “How dare ye—”

“I dare plenty!” roared Fengel. “Because you’ve not got the good sense the Goddess gave a scryn!” He gestured about them at the ruined street shrouded in dust and rubble, at the half-seen bulk of the
Moonchaser
fighting with the
Glory
overhead.

“Look!” continued Fengel. “Look around! Where are your men? Where are your loyal crew? They’re dead! Half the
Windhaunter’
s crew are gone as well—and Goddess knows how many townsfolk. You’ve led them to their deaths and gained not a damned thing in return!”

“They went with pride,” hissed Euron, shaking now, angered himself. “They went with glory, fighting th’ enemy, when all ye do is run—”

“There’s no glory here! There’s no honor! Look around you, Euron. The enemy is here, on your doorstep. Your gambit with the Stormhammer has
failed
, and we are
losing
. You’re spending lives pointlessly!”

“I don’t expect ye to understand,” spat the pirate king. “Yer a peacock, a popinjay.”

It came to him then. Fengel threw the old man to the ground, panting with the effort of holding him up. “I understand just fine,” he snarled. “You never wanted to win. You’re just looking for one last battle to die in. You sent Natasha off to keep her safe. I wonder if the Voorn weapon is even real. Now you’ll burn the rest of us just so you can go out in glory.”

Euron glared at him hatefully. Slowly, without breaking his gaze, Fengel put his monocle back into place.

“Shannon,” he said after a moment.

The
Windhaunter’s
first lieutenant looked at him, the aetherite in her arms still unmoving. “Aye, Fengel?”

“I’m going to save what I can of this town. Get this bag of bones back up to the Skydocks. Have him get the other airships moving. I don’t care how broken up they are or what it takes. Send whoever can be spared back down here or to the Craftwright’s Terrace. I promise them that there’s still a chance, so long as we can buy time. If the pirate king here won’t give the orders, tell Brunehilde and Tooley that he isn’t in charge anymore.
I
am.”

Euron Blackheart rocked back in surprise. “Ye mutinous dog! How dare ye?”

“I dare,” he snarled at the old man, “because you can’t stop me.”

He brushed past Euron without another glance, stalking towards the Smuggler’s Warehouse and the secret the Mechanists had hidden so cleverly. If he moved quickly, he might even be able to keep that promise.

Chapter Thirteen

Lina’s arm was getting tired.

She hefted her daggers again as violence threatened to erupt for the dozenth time inside the ancient Voornish pyramid. Runt wove threateningly atop her shoulders, further throwing off her balance.

“I’m asking you, again, how do we turn on the Stormhammer?” growled Natasha. Butterbeak punctuated her demand with an angry squawk.

“And I’m askin’ ye, again, how ye knew of it!” replied Morgan One-Eye, spokes-pirate for the Castaways.

Euron’s old crew hadn’t turned out to be as welcoming as they had hoped. The twelve Castaways, as they called themselves, were cantankerous, unhelpful, and downright curmudgeonly. The weapons they brandished seemed frail and weathered, though Lina and her crewmates kept up their guard. Just as they wanted to know about the Stormhammer, the Castaways asked a thousand questions about the crew of the
Dawnhawk
. Natasha was, of course, being utterly contrary, refusing to answer a thing. The air within the ancient Voornish pyramid had been fraught with tension for the last three quarters of a glass.

“Look,” said Natasha. She waved her cutlass at the hollow room about them. “It’s obvious this is the place. Let’s just cut...cut to...” A tremor silenced her.

Lina sighed. That was the other thing. Something else was on the island with them, something huge and mechanical. Whatever it was had them trapped. The Castaways grew quiet whenever it drew close, their wrinkled scowls softening with fear. Natasha herself seemed strangely pensive, as if she knew what it was. For Lina’s part, the thing had never drawn close enough to the tunnel entrance for her to get a good look.

The pyramid was like other Voorn ruins she’d seen. Hollow, made of some weird gold-brass amalgam, it climbed in an inverse stair-step to a central peak, with just the one passage leading back outside. In the center of the space rose a wide dais with a carved stair. Atop it glimmered incomprehensible machinery; all tubes, pressure canisters, and fragile lattices. A softly shimmering crystal sphere floating in an empty clearing at its heart.

Incongruously, the floor of the pyramid was filthy. Decades worth of dirt had been tracked about. The Castaways had obviously been busy. A mess of primitive tools and pieces of roughly cut wooden planks lay about the floor, as did coils of hempen rope and bright, brassy pieces of Voorn machinery, apparently ripped straight from the construct in the center of the room.

The Castaways themselves were ragged, a hard-bitten band of older pirates. The crew of the
Dawnhawk
faced off against them, forming two rough semicircles just spoiling for a fight.

The mysterious beast outside stomped past, and Natasha dragged her attention back around to Morgan One-Eye. “Let’s just cut to the quick of it,” she said. “This is an ancient Voorn ruin in the middle of nowhere, with a bunch of Euron’s Blackheart’s pirates sitting watch. Just tell us how to turn on the Stormhammer—”

Morgan hawked a mighty gob, then spat. “We’re not Euron’s crew!” he snarled, his grey beard quivering. “We’re not his crew, and we’re not his guards. We’re his damned prisoners!”

“Oh, I don’t care!” shouted Natasha. She gestured violently with her cutlass. “I—”

The ground shook again as the monster passed by again. Hissing pistons and the ratcheting clank of clockwork echoed down the tunnel.

Natasha whipped back around with a snarl. “No! I refuse to believe that you’re here, you wind-up pile of junk! You outdated piece of slapped-together refuse! Almhazlik is six hundred miles away. You can’t be here!” On her shoulder, Butterbeak hunkered low, uncharacteristically cowed.

The thing outside went silent. A great cloud of steam hissed across the mouth of the tunnel, occluding what little sunlight there was. After a tense moment, it began moving again. The tromp of its footsteps faded. Lina released a breath that she didn’t know she’d been holding, as did everyone else in the room.

“Enough,” growled Morgan One-Eye. He raised his notched cutlass. The rest of the dozen Castaways readied themselves for violence. “Ye’ll be takin’ us back to yer airship right this moment. We ain’t stayin’ one more Goddess-damned minute on this poxy island.”

Natasha rounded on him, blade up, teeth bared in her usual snarl. Lina’s captain wasn’t patient at the best of times. In her mind’s eye, Lina could see it: the bloody fight that would ruin any chance of achieving their objective.

This is so stupid.
She sheathed her daggers and leaped out in front of the two pirate crews. “Wait!” Lina cried, hands outspread. “Just wait, damn us all to the Realms Below. What are we
doing?
”

Michael Hockton took a half step forward, eyes wide in alarm, and she loved him for that. But there wasn’t time for that right now. Lina met the eyes of every pirate there, Natasha and Morgan One-Eye in particular. “Listen, just listen a moment,” she said. “We’ve been standing here for more than an hour, dancing around, ready to gut each other, when we can all have what we want and fly off smiling.”