The Choir Boats (52 page)

“Just like Palmerin and the Lady Fiona when they slew the
Buccine Knight,” said Barnabas to Sally. “Or Gosse of Frinder when
he defeated the giant what-was-his-name, when the Daughter of the
Moon helped him by firing silver arrows. What if Tom and Afsana
are
the next King and Queen of Farther Yount?”

Sally started to respond but Barnabas cut her off, saying, “Such
a thing that would be! Hah! Think of their children. I would be a
grandfather . . . and the children would be among the heirs of the
McDoon fortune . . . oh yes, that would put paid to my uncle.”

Sally stepped back, seeing the look in Barnabas’s eyes. Outside
was the low boom of cannons, but the heartbeats inside were
louder.

“I venture to say that Tom is a better soldier than lover,” said
Sally. “I mean, he has not to my knowledge declared his love for
Afsana. Silly, since it is plain for all to see. If I were Afsana, I would
be pressing for a resolution.”

Barnabas laughed, “I believe you are right. But don’t be too harsh
on your brother. He is like most men: bold in the fray but cack-handed in love.”

“Why do you suppose that is?” said Sally, more to Isaak than to
Barnabas.

“Courage comes in many forms,” said Barnabas, more to himself
than to Sally.

“You are wiser than you pretend, Uncle,” said Sally. “Women are
not always as courageous as you make out.”

Barnabas shuffled his feet, gripped his vest, and said, “I do not
understand.”

“Imagine, dear uncle, that a woman loved two men at the same
time.” Sally stopped. “No, no, this is impossible. I — ”

“I cannot guide you here, though I wish I could,” said Barnabas.
“I am a most unreliable mentor in such matters, as you know. But I
might observe that one of the men of whom you speak is far away
while the other is right here with you.”

Sally looked straight at the floor and said, “So true, so true. Yet
the distant one has not left my thoughts in all this time. No more
than Rehana left yours even after years had passed.”

Barnabas sighed. “Ah, I begin to understand. Sally, you will have
little joy of ghosts and memories, please believe me. Better to trust
in someone close at hand, someone who you can hold.”

“Enough of my trivial, selfish concerns!” cried Sally. “Let us talk
rather of Tom and Afsana. Fraulein, what do you think of the stories
we hear?”

The fraulein, who was doing needlework in a corner of Sally’s
room, shook her head and said, “Is the most astoundingest thing,
ganz unglaublich
.”

Isaak tried to jump into the fraulein’s lap as she said this.

“Isaak, you know better!” said Sally, crossing the room to collect
the cat. “Why, Fraulein Reimer, what a marvellous picture!”

The fraulein shook her head but displayed the oval needleworking: a picture of a house, with the words
Trost der Erloesung
stitched above, and
Not bricht Eisen
stitched below.

“‘The Solace of Salvation,’ and ‘Need Breaks Iron,’” read Sally. “Do
come and see, Uncle Barnabas, it’s our very own home on Mincing
Lane.”

Barnabas peered at the needlework and said, “So it is, right down
to the blue trim on the windows! Capital job, Fraulein!”

“Look,” said Sally, holding Isaak in her arms. “There you are with
Sanford in the partners’ room.”

“Ah hah!” said Barnabas. “And there’s Cook in the dining room,
followed by her niece. What do you suppose she is serving?”

“Goat’s meat for Mr. Sanford,” said the fraulein.

“Well said,” laughed Barnabas. “Oh ho, do I spy our garden out
back? Buttons and beeswax, I can just make out my smilax bushes.”

Sally, Barnabas, and Fraulein Reimer gazed at the picture for a
minute before anyone spoke again.

“Uncle, we have little time left,” said Sally. “I have a plan to save
Yount, but it will mean a voyage back to London.”

“We are besieged, Sally, how will you — ?”

“With the Cretched Man’s help, strange as that sounds to me
still.”

“What do you propose to do in London?”

Sally paused, shook her head, and laughed.

“I am going shopping, Uncle!”

Barnabas leaned forward, tugging on his vest, and said, “Sally,
out with it!”

“I am going to build the largest Fulginator ever built — nay, larger
than any ever imagined, a Fulginator large enough to move not just
a ship but an entire world.”

“This world,” said Barnabas. “Yount. You aim to fulginate all of
Yount.”

“Back to its original place, yes, Uncle, all the way home. Wherever
that is.”

Barnabas clapped his hands and said, “Archimedes lever!”

“Yes, that’s right. So I need the finest tools, the finest materials
in two worlds, and the best minds in natural philosophy, in the
nautical sciences, in metallurgy and engineering. Thus I am going to
London. And I will need your help, and Sanford’s.”

“Of course, of course, my girl. Why, figs and feathers, you would
have our help whether you wanted it or not!”

Barnabas paced up and down the room, one hand strangling his
vest, the other punching the air as he spoke.

“Sedgewick, we must speak to Sedgewick immediately when
we land,” said Barnabas. “He has extensive dealings with the
Admiralty, you know, and can help us gain audience there. Why,
he might even get us to see Sir John Barrow himself! Also, he has
friends and relations throughout the Treasury and the Office for
War and the Colonies. Most useful, I’m sure. Then there’s Matchett
& Frew, rum fellows with even stranger connections — they will be
most interested in our adventures, no doubt, no doubt. . . .”
Barnabas paused, suddenly doubtful, and said, “Sanford and I
are
meant to come with you, right? I mean — ”

“Of course you are, silly man!”

Barnabas rose up on his toes and almost yelled, “Hurrah then
for the McDoons! Oh, and, when we’re home again, we shall have
to make time for a trip to Fezziwig’s; I am so dreadfully eager to
order new vests and stockings. After all, one cannot save the world
looking like a soused gournard! Oh, oh, and a trip to the apothecary
would be lovely. I am all out of my Bateman’s pectoral drops.”

Sally hugged Barnabas.

“Oh, uncle, thank you. We’ll charge at ’em like Rodney against
the French, isn’t that right?”

Barnabas stood at attention and then mimed the actions of
an officer on the poop deck of a frigate. The fraulein joined in the
laughter.

Barnabas grew thoughtful and said, “We cannot just wish
ourselves back to London, Sally, we’ll need — ”

“We need to see the Queen straight away. She likes you
particularly, Uncle, so let’s ask her to call a meeting for this evening.

Just us McDoons, our closest friends and . . . the Cretched Man.”

Sally opened the door. Isaak raced down the hall towards the
Queen’s chambers, with the McDoons on her heels.

That evening the Queen met with Sally, Barnabas, Sanford, and the
fraulein. Standing around the table were Dorentius Bunce, Reglum
Bammary, and Noreous Minicate. The Cretched Man sat half-shadowed in one corner and the four remaining Minders leaned
against the wall next to him. The Yountians glanced at him out of
the corner of their eyes.

“Where are Tom and Afsana?” asked Barnabas.

“Coming,” said the Chamberlain. “They have become so well
known we needed to cloak their movements, lest their arrival be
marked. Captain Nexius is coming too, by a separate route.”

Even as she spoke, the door opened and the three warriors
entered the room.

“Your Majesty, bad news,” said Nexius. “The Ornish have
advanced as far into the city as Palombeay.”

“Palombeay!” said the fraulein. “We must rescue the Karket-soomi!”

“Yes,” said the Queen. “They are under my protection, and are
now threatened from all sides in this war.”

“One among them is especially important,” said Sally. “A young
girl, related to our fraulein, a girl who may be one of the seven
singers who will — ”

“Say no more; we will send Marines this very night. Lieutenant
Bammary, see to that as soon as we finish this meeting.”

“I will go too,” said the fraulein. “To show you the way and
reassure my sister and my niece.”

“Very well, and now to the main business at hand,” said the
Queen. “Sally, I ask you to speak.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty. To the point: I have a plan to save
Yount. For the plan to succeed, I must return to Palipash, to London
in England. Without delay.”

“Sally, whatever do you mean?” said Tom. His eyes were rimmed
with dirt and charcoal.

“Do not judge me mad, brother, until you have heard me out. My
plan is to build a Fulginator large enough to move all of Yount back
to its home.”

Sally repeated herself in Yountish. Everyone spoke at once as the
implications sank in.

“Impossible!” said Noreous Minicate. “That would be an engine
the size of . . . the size of . . . the palace!”

“My initial calculations show that a structure the size of a large
ship could be built with enough power and precision to move this
world,” said Sally first in English and then in Yountish.

“Even so — and I doubt that one the size of a ship would suffice — a
Fulginator the size of a ship is, with respect, madness,” Noreous
replied. “Dorentius, you are the expert here. What do you think?”

“Actually, dear friends,” said Dorentius, looking as happy as
anyone had ever seen him. “Sally included me in some of the
calculations she mentions, while swearing me to secrecy. I know it
sounds mad, but I believe it might be done. It just might.”

Noreous was not so easily convinced. He pointed at the Cretched
Man and said, “Is this some plot of
his
? A trap?”

Everyone turned towards Jambres, who stood up and said, “I
understand your suspicion, but I had no part in this plan’s original
devising, which was all of Sally’s doing. Rather, as she can attest, I
first told her that such a plan’s audacity was matched by its lunacy.”

The group digested these words.

Nax said, “Will it work?”

“I do not know,” said Jambres. “Enormous uncertainties abound,
obstacles and risks of every sort confront this undertaking. Possibly
a Fulginator of this size, if it can even be built at all, will send Yount
further into the void. I truly cannot say.”

The Queen shook her head, saying, “I fear to risk so much.”

Reglum spoke. “Your Majesty, your fears are shared by us all.
However, if I may, I believe the danger just outside our door compels
us to take risks that no previous generation would have accepted.”

The Chamberlain spoke. “Why go to Palipash? If we beat back the
Ornish, could we not build such a device here with our own materials
and technology? Why has no one thought of such things before?”

“Sound questions, your Honour,” said Dorentius. “Members of
the Analytical Bureau have over the centuries conjectured about
such a Fulginator as Sally describes, but all have concluded we could
not build it because we lack key materials. For example, without
getting too detailed, there is a ceramic ingredient called ‘china clay’
in England that would be necessary for a Fulginator powerful enough
to free us. We lack this substance altogether in Yount. Likewise, we
do not have the skills of the Karket-soomi in certain technologies
necessary for this project, certain forms of precision engineering
such as the gearing seen in their timepieces.”

The Queen, with a side glance at the Cretched Man, said, “We
speak here as engineers and cameralists, but what about opposition
from those who have pent us here? Will those powers not resist an
effort by us to remove ourselves?”

Again all faces turned to Jambres. He looked around the room
and adjusted his red, red coat before saying, “Oh yes, very much they
will resist. The time is not yet come for the end of your sentence,
make no mistake about that. But some sentences may be meted out
unfairly or unclearly. Sometimes the prison door is left unlocked,
leaving the prisoner to discover this fact and exploit it.”

Everyone shifted uncomfortably.

Tom said, “Remember that Jambres has more to lose than any of
you. He has cast his lot with us.”

“Thank you, Thomas,” said Jambres, his coat glistening in the
lamplight. “Too well I know their mourning-markets, the ribbed
closet in their winter-house. I will not lead you thither.”

Isaak hopped off the table and walked to Jambres, her golden
fur glowing against his red clothes. Jambres bent down and picked
Isaak up. She nestled into the crook of his arm as he continued.

“The Mother stirs in her sleep, I feel it. She will help us if we can
waken her. To waken her, and to power a Fulginator the size of a
ship, we need to assemble a choir of singers the likes of which have
never been heard in all the worlds before. We will call together seven
singers who can sing the Mother from her slumbers, who can sing a
wall too high for the Wurm-Owl to fly over, who can sing winds of
knowing into the Fulginator.”

A whisper of music ran through every head in the room, shreds of
the songs sung at
kjorraw
, of the evensong in churches and temples
in two worlds.

Sally spoke. “Four of the seven are in this room, and a fifth is in
the city. We think the sixth is in London, which is another reason
why I need to return.”

Nexius growled, “I will support you in whatever venture you
propose. You trusted us when we sent you the key, so shall we trust
you.”

“Thank you, Captain,” said Sally.

“But practical matters concern me,” said Nexius. “How will you
travel to London? Where will you build this Fulginator-ship of
yours?”

“We will build the Fulginator in Sanctuary, the hidden place
guarded by the Cretched . . . by Jambres,” said Sally.

“Will he also transport you to London then?” said Nexius.

“No, I cannot,” said Jambres. “A few individuals I could possibly
take through but not an entire ship there and back — that is beyond
my power. And a ship must go, to bring the necessary supplies back
from London.”