I pulled myself up with a rope that was trailing off the pier, then bent down and hauled Emily onto the planks. I did what I could, I did what I remembered from the Academy. She vomited a long, clear stream of water, then lay there, breathing. She opened her eyes, saw me, then closed them again.
I sat there, huddled over her, shivering and watching her breathe.
Chapter Thirteen
The dock was attached to one of the houses on Watering Street by a set of narrow wooden stairs. When I stopped shaking, I forced the door, then carried Emily upstairs. It was a nice house.
I lay Emily on a couch in the drawing room, then found bandages and a ready-pack poultice in a pantry by the kitchen. I cut away her shirt and dressed the wound as well as I could. There was a thin hole, front and back. It was plugged with matte gray pewter, the flashing flaking off onto her skin. The bullet had gone through. Her survival was a matter of blood loss and the abuse of our trip out of the Church. I wasn’t sure what effect Camilla’s foetal metal had on the wound, but it seemed to have stabilized her. I covered her in a flannel blanket I found in the great bedroom on the main level. There were no sounds in the house, other than my frantic rushing around and the occasional tight sigh from Emily. Once she was settled, I searched the place to make sure we were alone.
There was a child’s room on the second floor, shelves of wooden toys, dusty. The linen closet smelled like mildew. The bed in the master was made, but there was none of the detritus associated with daily life. The picture frames that lined the hallway were empty, and I found scraps of old photos in the ashes of the den fireplace. I felt confident we wouldn’t be disturbed. I went back to check on Emily.
She was pale and cold, but still breathing. Shallow. I slipped my hand behind her neck, adjusted the pillow. She mumbled, but didn’t wake up. I checked the curtains, the doors, all the windows. Emily again, still breathing, still pale as death.
The wine stocks were kept in a dry storage off the kitchen. I got a bottle and a corkscrew, along with a dusty glass that I washed out in the tepid water of the sink. Walking back to the drawing room, I stopped by the door to the private dock below. I had cracked the frame. I tilted the door open and listened. I heard water, the messy slap of waves on wood planking, creaking rope. It smelled like a drowned dog. I closed the door as best I could and shoved a bookcase up against it.
The wine was good. A ’14 Sauvignon, vintner from the Brumblebacks across the Ebd. An expensive pour, and I was drinking it out of a greasy water glass in an empty house. Wax from the cork flaked into the glass when I poured, but I didn’t mind. I pulled up a stool and sat by Emily, drinking and watching her and waiting. I didn’t know what I was waiting for.
Her breathing seemed to even out. Her lips were slightly parted, a little teeth and tongue showing between. I wiped the last of the metal dribble away with a rag soaked in the sauvignon. She sighed, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Hey,” she whispered. “Good wine.”
“Nothing but the best.” I put the bottle down and brushed her hair from her eyes. “How are you feeling?”
She cleared her throat and nodded to the bottle. I went to the kitchen and got a shallow bowl. She drank carefully while I held the wine to her lips.
“Were you trying to drown me?” Her voice was dry, and she dropped half the words, but I understood. “I’m just asking, because I feel that may have been part of your plan.”
“You feel that way, huh?” I grinned.
“Purely an observation, Jacob.”
“Right. So you’re feeling better.”
“I feel like I was shot, held underwater and then dragged through sewage.”
“You forgot the wine,” I said, sloshing the bottle.
“Right. All that, plus wine. Amends made.”
“It is a very good wine.”
She struggled to sit up, but gave up and settled into the couch again. She licked her lips and closed her eyes.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Yeah. I don’t know how to explain it.” I looked over at her and drank a little wine. “What do you remember?”
“A girl, tied up and half gone. Like some kind of experiment.”
I nodded. She was breathing slowly, her heart rate slowing down. I thought she was almost asleep when she stirred.
“So what was it?”
“Some kind of legend,” I said. “Forget it. It was a dream. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Later. Okay.” Several long, slow breaths. “Where’s Wilson?”
“I haven’t gone for him, yet. I didn’t want to move you, or leave you here. I dressed the wound. We’ll get to him, when you’re well enough to move.” I put down the bottle and leaned closer. There was fresh blood on her shirt. “I think you’re bleeding again.”
“Okay,” she said.
I adjusted the bandage, carefully folding her shirt over her breasts. The wound was gummy, a little red seeping at the edges. The plug of metal had worked loose. I plucked at it, and saw cogwork churning underneath. I grimaced, then tightened the cloth, added more gauze, returned the shirt.
“That should hold. No polo for a few days, okay? Em?”
Her lips were parted, her breath deep and even. I crept back to the kitchen and cobbled together a meal of stale bread and traveler’s stock in a can. I set up at the writer’s desk in the drawing room, a muted candle by my side so I could see her as night fell outside.
Her face was a warm moon, floating in the night. I watched her while I ate, and listened to the city outside.
I met Emily before. Before everything, before the shit happened. I met Emily while I was still at the Academy. I just didn’t know her yet.
We were in the habit, the boys of Twelfth Cadre and I, of getting well-deep drunk on Friday nights after field exercises. It was our only free night. Technically, the sainted elect of the Pilot’s Cadres had every night off. We were the nobility, after all. But practically, between the daily drills, classwork and recovery from the layers of surgery, we didn’t have even minutes to commit to leisure most nights. An accident of scheduling gave us Fridays. Most of those nights were a drunken blur, time spent unwinding. I didn’t even remember most of them. I remember this night, though.
I was recovering from the final round of the Engine surgeries. They staggered our recovery times, so that most of us made all the classes. It was the responsibility of the healthy to help the invalid, so they didn’t lose class time. I spent the week in my barrack, trying to decipher Hammett’s notes. Scribbles. But I passed all the tests, the examinations. I was cleared to fly. Tomorrow. I remember. It was my last night as a Pilot.
We went to the Faulty Tooth, our usual place. I felt good. A week in bed on a diet of cereal and water meant I got drunk easy and hard. The night started well for me. Plenty of girls, and they all liked the uniform. Common girls, girls whose fathers I didn’t know. My kind of girls.
Emily was working. I didn’t know. I suppose it would have mattered to me, at the time. It would have bothered me in different ways than it does now.
She stood by the bar; we had a booth. Girls circulated, laughing, holding hands. Drinking things we bought them. She was gorgeous and stood apart. She talked to various men, and seemed familiar with the barkeep. I hadn’t seen her before.
When the time came, when I felt it was right, I went to the bar. Pretended to be impatient for the wench to make her rounds back to us. I stood beside her and placed my order, then stretched and, as casually as a butcher laying out the prize pig, struck the best pose I knew. She smiled, but not the way I intended.
“Nice pants,” she said.
“Thank… uh. They’re just part of the uniform.” I flicked the cuff clasps. “Pilot Cadre.”
“Mm.” She drank some wine. “Well, they’re kind to you. Big night?”