“A shekel it is.” Despite the process. Quinx was afraid he’d somehow got the wrong end of the bargain nonetheless.
“Look at it from my bridge.” Valdoux grinned again. “Either I’ll get to see the beginning of tide that floods the world, or I’ll get to see a lone man stop the tide. History before my eyes either way, no matter how the play lands. Or maybe you’re a madman. Even so, I reckon you’re mad with the entire power of the Lateran behind you. Watching that should be good sport, likewise.”
Ninety Nine loomed out of the darkness at those words. Quinx was startled again—from the name he’d expected another Machinist, but not a female. She was clad immodestly in a tunic and sailor’s dungarees.
Valdoux bowed her wordlessly up the tower. She favored Quinx with one cold, incurious glance, then clattered upward.
He stared after her a long moment, trying to sort his feelings from his fatigue, then surrendered the effort and began the slow, aching climb himself.
As Quinx mounted the stairs, Valdoux called after him. “We sail under Manju rules now, Revered. Be sure you really want what you’re asking after.”
Quinx slept the remainder of the night away while Blind Justess set her course and left Highpassage ahead of the impending storm. He awoke to a pearlescent pink dawn gleaming through the tiny porthole of his tiny cabin. Most of the available space not occupied by his bunk was filled with Brother Kurts, who snored gently while sprawled upon the deck.
He could not remember ever having seen the monk asleep.
There was no getting up without disturbing the other man, so Quinx lay still a while and watched the sky shift tone from pink to blue. They would be heading very nearly into the sun, he realized, and surely not so far from Thera now unless the winds had been notably unfavorable.
Tiny though the cabin was, it had been appointed with the same odd combination of frugality and luxury as the rest of the airship. The paneling was some wood he did not recognize, doubtless a rare tree from the waist of the world. Brightwork and electricks ran across the walls like veins. Even the sheets were silk, which seemed a bit perverse.
Soon he realized he must be awake and about. Valdoux was mercurial, likely to take any number of strange actions in the absence of his direction. “Brother Kurts,” Quinx whispered.
The monk’s head snapped forward with a gust of garlicky breath. “Revered,” he said, his hand falling away again from something beneath his robes.
A weapon, of course, though such was forbidden by the Galiciate Treaty. Kurts worked for Quinx, not the Thalassojustity. The Consistitory Office had its own requirements, for all that he must at times pretend to a long lost innocence as to means and methods.
“Everything is well, Brother Kurts. I must have some coffee, and mount to the bridge to consult with our fair captain.”
“Six others aboard, sir,” Kurts replied. “Two of them Machinists. The captain, his ship’s boy from before. An engineer and his boy as well. The heretics serve as gunners and artificers, best as I can tell.”
“I met one of them last night. He styled himself Three Eighty Seven.”
“The master gunner.” The monk nodded slowly. “Gunner’s mate is a female name of Ninety Nine.”
“I briefly saw her yesterday evening.” Somehow Ninety Nine’s dubious femininity seemed doubly blasphemous by the late of day, though in truth, Quinx was rapidly losing his capacity for surprise at what might transpire aboard Blind Justess.
“I doubt she will challenge anyone’s virtue. She is both offensive and unlovely.”
“And what do you know of a woman’s loveliness, Brother Kurts?” Quinx asked with a small smile.
The monk was not amused. “As little and all as the Increate allows a man of my vows.”
“Fair enough. I apologize for troubling you. But I must find my way to coffee before I become more trouble.”
They slipped into the short companionway on this upper deck. Brother Kurts led Quinx the half dozen steps to the tiny galley. This was indeed a racing yacht, not intended for full meal service. Or really, any other full service. The coffee machine, however, was an elegant marvel of brass and copper, festooned with a maze of pipes and valves and small, decorative metal eagles screaming for their freedom.
It smelled like a slice of heaven.
“Truly the Increate did bless mankind when They caused the coffee bean to grow,” said Quinx.
Kurts grunted, studying the machine for several long moments before launching into a rapid set of seemingly random manipulations that shortly produced a steaming cup of coffee so deep brown Quinx thought he might be able to see the reflection of last year’s breakfasts in it.
Five minutes later, fortified by caffeine and a rather stale sticky bun of dubious provenance, Quinx headed for the bridge on the deck below. He was trailed by a bleary-eyed Brother Kurts.
“Good morning to you, Revered.” Valdoux seemed as chipper as if he’d just had a week at a Riveran resort. The ship’s boy was present, as well as another lad whom Quinx took to be the engineer’s boy. To his profound relief, neither Machinist was on the bridge.
“Captain, the pleasure is all mine.” Quinx slipped up to the fore, where Valdoux piloted Blind Justess with a wheel and a set of levers. Gauges were arrayed to either side of him, but before and sweeping down to his feet was a wall of curved glass. The pale green of the Attic Main loomed vertiginously below, the ripples of waves like crumpled foil.
An oblong island with a sharp-peaked central mountain lay before them. A small settlement nestled on one shore—the south?—dominated by its docks. The rest of the island was heavily forested. Clearly not settled, beyond whomever lived there to service the sea traffic.
“Thalassojustity territory,” Quinx observed.
Valdoux made a tsking noise. “Ain’t no airship masts. They’re behind the times, our naval friends.”
Quinx glanced sideways. “You hold no brief for the Pax Maria?”
“What do I care for the sea? The air is my place. They can’t make neither peace nor war in the skies. And they ain’t made no real effort to claim what power might be theirs up here.”
“Where one grasp fails, another will reach,” muttered Brother Kurts behind them.
“Exactly,” said Valdoux. “And here is Thera, Revered. We overflew a fast ship on the water late in the night. I reckon they’ll be here by midmorning.”
“Clear Mountain?”
“I didn’t figure on stopping to ask. But that does seem to be a sensible thing to assume.”
How to proceed? Quinx badly wanted to confront this fool Morgan Abutti before more damage could be done, but the man had spent almost an entire day closeted with the senior Thalassocretes. A more focused assemblage of the powers in the world he had trouble imagining, short of another Congress of Cities and States being called.
How much harm had already been levied? Was the Externalist heresy loose for good and all? Or had the Thalassojustity seen through the madman and contained him?
Valdoux’s voice interrupted Quinx’ whirling thoughts. “No.”
“No? No what?”
“I can’t land you in force aboard Clear Mountain.”
“That was not my…” Quinx let his voice trail off. He didn’t know what he should do next. He thought quickly. “I would meet them at the dock. Brother Kurts will guard my back.”