Anamneschaton

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Rasa was being hounded, and when she was hounded she became almost incoherent, which lead inquisitive young adults, filthy from the road, to ask their questions more loudly, more slowly, and all at the same time. Perhaps they hoped that her brain could be completely overloaded and reset, like an over-inflated balloon suddenly turning into a far less flustered balloon.

She shoved her way through crowds of people, or tried to; most broke wide at her approach, curling in after she passed, always a few more following and pestering. All this, for a single night in the Byzantine hills, leading blind septuagenarians and overburdened mothers from Ankara’s burning walls.

If Rasa had known beforehand that they’d latch to her like a riverful of weeping leeches, she’d’ve … well, by god, there had to have been some way to avoid this. Still might be, if she played her cards right.

In the city’s center, the Imperial Palace shone; around the base of its massive columns, the few remaining clerks and senators buzzed to and fro.

“Please,” the first began, as soon as she made glancing (and entirely accidental) eye contact, “You are required in the Second Hall. The most recent from Suez have arrived, and they …”

“Please,” the second interrupted, “In the Middling Gallery, the leaders of the boroughs require your presence. Every domicile is filled to the breaking …”

“Please, at the Gardens, the remaining Prince of Babylon requires you to discuss the disposition of the final reserves of Bahrain. He feels …”

“Rasa Ibelrehd!” 

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Abelard Lexmarch dug through the IB’s memory while the other men argued. Sure, the damn thing held just about every book among the Foremost Interest of the kingdom’s central library, but searching was a murderous waltz through ever-expanding lists of relevant terms and tags, hoping to narrow the material to a literature set that could be read by one person in fewer than thirty years.

He stumbled as the ship rocked beneath him, and caught himself on the iron rail. It was cold, an artifact of winter’s ever-steady grasp on these seas; earlier that morning, when his boat had been chasing the larger Imperator Boreas down, they’d been dodging (in an extremely stately sense) ice bergs larger than their entire craft.

Irgenweld, fresh from Glasgow, was throwing ideas at Poeiater Lore, who was batting them down without remorse. The man had suffered quite a bit of inner ear damage in Reykjavik, and nothing much seemed to make him happy at the moment.

“Just say we dropped an anchor on it, then.”

“Those optical lines could withstand a continental shelf collapse, you dip.”

“Interference, then? Some directed radiological emission?”

“Syndetic’s not an idiot, he knows the shielding on his own equipment. No, we can’t keep this from him.”

Irgenweld’s foot slipped on the first step up; the sleet had made it through the hatches, it appeared. He picked himself up quickly. “So we threaten him?”

“A man we can’t find? We don’t even know how he left Iceland, let alone where he is now.”

“So we threaten his kid, how about.”

Poeiater sounded bored. “No, we don’t bother with the …”

“His wife? Margaret? She can’t be too far.”

“Syndetic is a lost cause. We ignore him. What should worry us isn’t Syndetic, or his little arts-and-crafts up in Iceland, or the smouldering hole we left in their ridiculous island.”

“What should worry us, then?”

“Home …” Poeiater shoved his way through the bulkhead, and Irgenwald dashed after, picking up a few papers that the Blackhat had let slip. Lexmarch was still more than half a staircase behind; it was absurd that, at his age, he should be dragged so far from England, from the carefully constructed room he loved, from the full-width display table he needed to work efficiently.

Without that table, he could barely get his head around the information before him.

Three Lexmarchs ago, his great-grandfather Harold Lexmarch had been King England’s First Historian. The old bastard hadn’t had the same duties as Abelard, though; during that time, the only incident requiring full write-ups had been a tiff with the Norwegian fishing fleets, deep in the North Sea. Digging up the pertinents on that hadn’t taken much of Harold’s time.

Instead, Harold had become obsessed with creating templates for nationwide changes. What series of events would lead to a sudden, explosive population growth? How many years prior were financial market crashes telegraphed, and what were the basic requirements that would lead to declines in overseas efficaciousness of military branches?

Could regime change be generalized?

The documentation that had been created for Harold’s full ideas was scattershot at best. Scans of his paper writings were poorly digitalized, and his private shorthand was both devious and frequently misused. Abelard’s time, when it wasn’t completely taken up by the demands of an ever-more-pressing international situation, was spent trying to fit this incomplete record of his great-grandfather’s musings into his head. Mostly, it just didn’t make much sense. Thousands of years of recorded history were too much to synthesize; the attempt was arrogant.

It was probably impossible to genuinely remove all the facts of the moment from the particular moment in time. Regime changes didn’t happen in vacuums; each previous affected the following, as the sum of recorded knowledge became more expansive. The attempt had to be made, though; in that he agreed with Poeiater completely.

When he caught up to Irgenweld and Poeiater again, they were still arguing. Insofar as anybody could argue with Poeiater, of course; the man saw nobody as equal in a conversation, and frequently with good reason.

“The little rat ought to be worth flipping, right? He’s heir apparent, and that’s not a fortune to sneeze at.”

“Irgenweld, he’s got information that’s a damn sight more important than that.”

Before Irgenweld could follow up on that, Lexmarch interjected. “Plus, you’ll find that the title belongs to Elaine before Quincy. She’s not been yet declared dead.”

Poeiater ignored the rest, just slammed the door open, pushed past the guards while Lexmarch tried to fill them in.

“Which shell?”

The question was abrupt, and tinny over the speakers they’d rigged from the windowless inner cabin outwards.

“I’m … what? What? What are you …”

“Simple question, kid. You corrupted every file, every listing through eight different levels of ice, so I’m asking you: which shell?”

“You’re Lore, I know that.” Lexmarch made his way to the small window in the door and peered through. Quincy was looking unimpressed, even tied to the wall like he was. “You don’t get to ask me things. Fiddle with the computers, look at the audio records, but the moment you think …”

“Do you know what my system looks like right now?” Poeiater’s voice was a low crackle. “It looks like a goddamn meteor hit it. In the last few months, you’ve spun out more than three billion adaptive listings, built out of primitives I’ve never fucking seen before.”

“I fail to see …”

The slap echoed, and the gasp that followed it. 

“And they’re each more fully formed than the last. Little shards of listings, grappling onto systems, writing themselves into fucking boot sectors and exploiting holes that shouldn’t exist. More day-one failures than I even knew were possible. If I’m ever going to return the system to anything resembling usability, I need,” Poeiater paused, smoothed his hair and replaced his hat, “every library, every shell, everything you’ve ever written.”

Irgenweld and Lexmarch were silent. This was so deep into the Blackhat’s expertise that Abelard could barely follow the language.

“I don’t … I thought the libraries were standard. I’ve never used anything that was outside the documentation.”

“Standard?” A touch of madness there.

“Yeah, they came with the difference engine.”

Irgenweld grunted; the Syndetic’s personal difference engine had been wiped before they ever got to it.

“They’re not … how did you get them to the Fort William system? And Reykjavik?”

“Do you not understand what ‘standard’ means? They were there when I looked. Why wouldn’t they be?”

Poeiater never bothered to continue conversations a moment beyond the exchange of pertinent information; as soon as Quincy said ‘standard’ the man was stomping through the door. He looked incensed, like somebody had lit phosphorus behind his eyes, as he moved to the other prisoners’ cabins.

Lexmarch followed, thoughtfully. Poeiater didn’t care at all about Syndetic, or the leaking power source still hooked into the Boreas’s engine. What time in history could possibly operate as a way to understand this crisis? The second American advent, almost four hundred years ago? The pan-Egyptian collapse, two hundred and fifty years before that? 

Of course, that shared the number of players, the technocratic culture of repression, and the sudden war, but the … the second cell down held a young woman.

Lexmarch knew that face.

“Poeiater, wait, don’t go in there. Wait!”

“What, Historian? One of these … idiots is going to know exactly how …”

“Lore, I think I know why you’re so excited. Irgenweld, if we could have a moment?” As soon as the man moved off, Lexmarch continued. “Listen, Poeiater, you’re outmatched. Am I right?”

Water drummed against the hull while he waited for Poeiater’s response.

“Yes. Not outmatched, entirely, but there’s no way some kid, still in his minority, is …”

“Exactly. Exactly, my friend. No, Syntactic is slipping. Please,” he hushed the other man, “don’t argue. His prospects are weak. Reykjavik smolders, and there was no cause, no reason to jump to a contingency that abruptly.”

“Yes. Syntactic is slipping. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Not what I want to hear, but it is true, and what opposes him is not … English.”

“You mean to say … Isaac?”

“I mean to say, if … when Syntactic falls, when, perhaps, England’s leadership is … different, it will be lucky if we’d had no horse in that race.”

When Poeiater finally nodded, Lexmarch allowed himself to breathe. The Blackhat out of the mix; that made things a lot easier to predict. There was little chance he was wrong now.

Of course, as Harold Lexmarch had aged, he’d penned several books worth of predictive time-lines for the nation. They’d unsurprisingly diverged from actual events within months of his death, and now were only a laughable curiosity, instead of any use at all. An easy trap to fall into, though, when a historian figured they’d seen it all.

Not that anyone would ever catch Abelard falling into that trap.

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“He looks like shit.”

“So? You can’t just throw him into a quarantine, no matter how bad he looks. He’s got no real symptoms, you know.”

“Nothing except spitting blood, right? Skin like ice? Weeping sores in his mouth …”

“Those don’t count! They’re from the bile, it’s ruining his gums.”

Henry payed attention only as far as he was able; most of his focus was on not dying immediately. That was usually pretty easy, most days, but today … not today.

The metal deck was pitted, another of the long corridors on the Godqueen. This was either the third or the fourth deck down, and as far as Henry had been able to make it before his legs had given out entirely. Now they lay behind him, twitching uncomfortably, spots of musculature deep under the skin twisting in uneven time. If he had been naturally nauseous, the sight of his kneecap shivering would have finished him off. As it was, his last few meals were somewhere aft, along with what he feared were key parts of his stomach lining.

He’d made a point, as soon as his feet had left England’s shore fifteen years prior, to never complain. It had served him well, through scurvy, through the loss of eight different toenails, through a hurricane that had left splinters through his trachea and a disagreement about dental hygiene that had lost him four molars.

His fingernails slipped off the rim of the bulkhead, and for a moment his arm twitched spasmodically.

“How’d he even make it this far?”

“What do you mean, ‘this far’? I figured the poor bastard lost it here.”

“No, he was stuck on his sack for a few nights, and then he pulled himself out here. You know … I think we could probably carry him to one of those sealed rooms.”

“Then we’d have to touch him.” Henry was lucid enough to figure that was Wax; the ungrateful bastard. “Why don’t we rope him up, drag him there?”

Unkind laughter. “If you’re worried about transmission, friend, I have bad news for you. Henry’s smeared himself all over the place. You ever heard of a virus?”

It’d better not be a virus. Henry’d had a few bouts with those, and in his experience they never quite went away. This … no, this was just a hitch in the system. Some part of his body had become a bit confused, had turned on all the alerts, and the rest was just every little mechanism overreacting to every other little group of overprotective things in his body. A miscommunication.

Because he’d had a lot of time to see what diseases looked like, and this wasn’t something he’d ever seen before.

He stuck his fingers in between the metal ridges of the bulkhead, and this time they stuck, fast. Stuck a lot harder than his muscles could manage; his forearms were shaken tar, slapping around his aching bones. 

“He’s moving again.”

“You better not be serious about that virus shit, Ober. If I get what he has, I swear to god I’ll stuff your mouth with …”

“Shut it, Wax. Go get somebody.”

Henry’s progress wasn’t great, but at least he couldn’t feel pain anymore. His fingers were bloody, and his toes got caught, but … well, having every part of his body numb was its own reward. 

The only pain he felt was a blooming heat in his chest, right under his throat. His collarbones, sure, they were torn up; no part of this deck was safe to rub your body on, but he had no choice. 

Was this supposed to remind him of something? Being sick as a kid, no; that hadn’t been anything, compared to this. Digging holes in the fields after he got better, hands bloody on a shovel two feet taller than himself, running to the docks, that had been a stroll on the beach. Probably. It was hard to remember. Explaining to somebody why now was a good time for an eight-year-old to join the merchant marine, maybe …

The trick was letting every part of his body go slack, letting the heat bloom outwards, riding the shifting wave of this … dammit, this disease. A body couldn’t do this to itself. If it could, well, then there wasn’t much to say about whoever designed the damned thing.

“He’s sick, huh.”

There was speaking again, and Henry was left with the unpleasant sensation of figuring whether the voices were new, or just something to which he’d been insensate.

“We don’t know with what, but it’s bad. I don’t think he’s eaten in days. Is this … I mean, is this what we quarantined for, when Renshaw was in charge?”

“I don’t know how we’d figure that, Ober. Henry’s not making bad time, though. I mean, for a fellow whose face looks like that.”

“So, we stick him in quarantine, you figure?”

“We could tug him onto a tarp, maybe, wrap him up real tight while we carry him.”

“I’m not touchin’ him. Viruses, right?”

“Fair enough, Wax. You’re disgusting as is. Duke, sir, what should we do?”

“I can’t believe … we could rope this whole section off. Seal it, using the bulkheads.” A pause. “I don’t have the time for this. Renshaw’s only miles behind, we need …”

“So your first instinct is to seal the man in a coffin, you jag? How’ll he eat?” Henry knew that voice. “I guess you’d rather just deal with the corpse.”

“If he gets better, he can come ask us for food. I can’t wait on him, not with …”

“Nope.”

The whole conversation was pretty abstract to Henry, a man dealing with bright flashes in his vision, teeth that felt like icicles, and a headache twice the size of his own head. Food, sure, that was a thing, but who cared about it? Who had that kind of luxury?

Somebody leaned down into his vision; if he tried as hard as he could, he could tell that it was a person, and not the grim face of death itself.

“Henry, sport, how do you feel about quarantine?”

That was Elaine’s voice, probably. Female, at any rate.

“We can carry you there, see, and stick you in a bed. Or a hammock, if that feels more natural. Bundle you up, stick some soup in you, ride out whatever the fuck this is in comfort.”

He flicked a wad of gummy blood out of his mouth and grit his teeth, pushing his arm forward again.

“Elaine, come on, the man’s as close to dead as you get without a pine box.”

“Well, he’s not real excited about quarantine,” she said, ignoring the other men. “Unless I misread the body language. Sailors do love spitting, I must admit.”

“Let’s just toss him in and be done with it, Miss.”

“Wax, I could push you over the side and not even feel bad. Henry’s clearly heading somewhere. It’s not our job to tell him where.”

“Not our job to …”

“Another word, Wax. I’d like that, if you said one more fucking word.” Some more skin, lost to the cleft between deck and hull. “That’s what I thought. Henry, where are you going?”

Henry wasn’t very clear on how conversations worked, but he thought that sentence deserved the exaggerated blink it got in response. He wished he could just tell her, could work his mouth well enough to say what he wanted, but … what would he even say? He had no idea where he was going.

Again, that swelling sensation, a pulse of heat through his chest. What was he pulling himself to? Was this something his body even felt like sharing with his mind?

“Up or down, man.”

Thoughtfully, he tapped the deck.

Elaine spent a few moments talking to the rest of them, while Henry tried as hard as he could to figure out why he wanted to go down. The last time he’d felt like that … urgh. What was the point? Nobody had ever felt like that. Maybe water felt like that, when it was dripping down rocks, crawling over minute bumps in stone, the complex but unstoppably simple structures of liquid and solid pulling it forward.

Belatedly, he realized that somebody had him by arm and was dragging him upright.

“This had better be worth it, Henry.”

Down the corridor, and down the decks, and through cabins strewn with disastrously unstable furniture. The ship shifted uneasily on the open ocean, and Elaine shifted to avoid sliding tables and chairs, and Henry shifted to avoid … something, probably, though mostly just because he had no other option. 

They reached somewhere. Henry wasn’t clear.

“… smaller boats, but they’re pretty quick. I didn’t think the bastard would follow. Sven’s missing, but I don’t even know how badly, because he could be right over the horizon, for all I know. Now a lot of people expect me to make decisions, but … I’m just trying to figure out how many boats we have to capture to keep me in liquids. I only obtain about a twentieth of whatever we find, right, and that’s mostly through theft; each ship we find has, at maximum, a cask of anything good, and mostly it’s just watered spirits. Not worth much, the way I figure. I’d have to drink, say, a couple of gallons of the shit we found off the Floridian Peninsula …”

“You drink too much regardless.”

Elaine gasped, and Henry tried to figure out why, while she stared wide-eyed at his face.

“Henry? You can speak?”

“Oh. Ah, yes.” He was slurring, and still hanging over Elaine’s shoulder like a man three times his age and half his size, but … by god, he felt better. Not fixed, but good enough to feel the sting of every cut he’d just managed to give himself, good enough to really appreciate the melting fever that seethed under his skin. “Where are we?”

“Weapons deck. Henry …” She was staring at his feet, now, where they were dragging on the deck; for his part, Henry stared around. His vision was a bit more clear, now, and he could make out the poorly-patched hole in the hull, the stacked crates.

“What were you saying, about Sven?”

“I don’t think that matters much, Henry. You’re …”

He wasn’t capable of much thinking in this state, but the few thoughts he was forcing through the tormented labyrinth of his fevered brain landed with thumps that shocked his skull. “Of course it does. Sven’s the first thing that matters. Where is he?”

“For the love of god, Henry, you’re steaming.” 

While that particular sentence was working its way through his head, Elaine pushed her shoulder up under his arm, staggered forward, and then dropped him squarely into the two feet of water that filled the hold.

He looked at her through the thin clouds of steam that started rising all around his body. “Alright, so I am.”

“Sven’s out west, we think, if he’s managed to make his way around the peninsula. We thought we’d meet him sooner, but … well, it’s probably only a matter of time. I’m sure we’ll find him. People like Sven … people like you, they don’t just die. People like me, sure, but not the sort of man who boils his own water.”

The twitches across his body were evening out, becoming less abrupt and more measured, translating into a soft shivering. He gripped his sides, rubbed his legs, and then sloshed his hands through the water, making little wavelets around his body. The more the water moved, the more comfortable he felt. Plus, it lowered the amount of steam.

“Either this is a natural step in a sailor’s life cycle, like cocooning or pupating,” Elaine said, sitting down, “or Renshaw’s quarantine was a stranger thing than I thought. You look a lot better, Henry.”

“I feel …” Henry pulled his arms out of the water, and plucked the iron washers off his fingers one by one, shaking his hand to get them to fly off. “Better. Not perfect.”

“Nobody’s perfect.” Elaine looked almost completely wiped out, staring out through the hole, and Henry belatedly realized how hard it must have been for her to carry him down here. “For instance, I could be slightly better if I had a drink right now.”

“And I,” Henry noticed a lack, “I had pants on the way down here, right? Until you threw me in the water?”

“Not especially. You want some?”

chapter forty-six

Quince found his shoes, shoved them on, and started to run.

In the hall, a guard was just swinging his rifle onto his shoulder, getting ready to head out as well. A silent alarm must have been sent out, but the man still wasn’t prepared for the sight of Quince hurtling down the gallery, shirt untucked and eyes wide with worry. When he got close, the guard made a halfhearted attempt to grab him, but Quince did a quick dance, side to side, and then swung himself abrupty over the rail.

Luckily, a thickly padded carpet caught most of him, and though one shoe flew off, causing him to stumble, he turned it into a doorward roll. On the way out, he passed another guard, who he slapped on the back of the neck with the wayward shoe, dashing to the street while the poor man recoiled.

Right, down the Saebraut, and then right again onto the Snorrabraut, until he reached the, uh, the Hverf … the other street, the one that cut through the warehouses, follow that for, well, long enough to find Claudia.

His gait was uneven, worrisomely slow, and he was definitely being chased by one of the guards. Quince started running zigzag for a moment, just in case he was being shot at, until he could dash through a gap in the median, where he could …

“Ow, fuck!” Quince yelled, as he slammed into a knee-high bench, catapulting into a sickly tree and nearly bending it horizontal.

“Just … please … stop!” shouted the guard, from nearby.

Quince rolled over and fingered the tear in his pants; blood was on his fingers when he removed it. He levered himself onto the bench, wincing as his shoulder and stomach experienced the uneven pain of still existing after a fall like that, and then moved to the wall of the median, trying to stand as straight as possible.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” the guard continued, rounding the corner. The fellow was almost entirely winded.

“Good,” Quince replied, and swung his arm straight into the man’s throat.

The resulting tussle was not one of Quince’s proudest moments, but it served. The guard took a fist to the chin, having hunched as Quince swung, and then a heavy stomp to the instep, which set him back a bit; Quince’s whole sleeve got torn off, and he responded with a few seconds of trying to tear the rifle off the man.

The strap of the rifle was a lot tougher than it looked, and it wasn’t until he got two fingers into the guy’s eye and a knee into his chest that he could tear the heavy weapon away. Then he was running again, this time with both his shoes gone, slipping on the dewy finished-granite walkway, but still making a damn sight better time than before.

Before he reached the Hverfis … that one street, he started taking side alleys, dodging between apartment blocks shoulder-to-shoulder, seven or eight stories tall, maintaining the deadly quiet of a shitty part of town. Nobody much spent time out at this hour in Reykjavik, and the few people he saw he pointed his new rifle at. They didn’t protest, just turned silently around and ambled off, displaying a truly nordic regard for the threat of death.

When somebody tapped him on the shoulder, his body nearly discombobulated entirely, and the resultant swing of the rifle’s butt he managed was inept and wildly fast.

Isabelle dodged easily, though. “Quince, every alarm that Syntactic owns on this island is going off! What is happening?”

The look he gave her must have looked insane. “Isabelle? How did you get here?”

“Quince, what did you do? What action did you take?” She grabbed him by his elbows, and he realized he was gaping. “Where is Claudia?”

“Uh … Okay. Alright. Claudia is this way, in the warehouse! I’m heading to help her now. Somebody has to, right? Let’s move, let’s run, let’s go!”

“Why is she in trouble?” Isabelle asked as they trotted forward. Quince wished he could go faster, but he’d picked up a stitch in his side.

“Some of Syntactic’s guards are moving towards her. They probably have her now, you know?” He picked up the pace a little, and suffered for it. “She grabbed, uh, Poeiater Lore, and they were going to ask him …”

Isabelle stopped dead. “They took Blackhat Lore? Just grabbed him and started asking him questions, just thought they’d get him to spill the beans, just without a care in the world? Just … wow. God dammit.” She looked truly struck.

“Is that …”

“That’s fucking bad, Quince. The Blackhat’s not some fucking stooge, he’s not replaceable, and … this is a direct act against Syntactic. He’ll notice. I shouldn’t’ve …” She shook her head, started jogging again. 

Quince had a dead space in his stomach. Isabelle being shocked was not something he’d thought he’d see. Isabelle here, at this moment, he hadn’t expected that either. She was never around for clear skies, it seemed, but when things became grim … he ran forward to catch up, the rifle’s stock slamming painfully into his shoulder blades. “We … Claudia didn’t know, right? She thought they could use replaceable faces to interrogate him, people they could sneak out into the wilderness or something.”

They were only a few hundred feet away from the warehouse when Isabelle slowed down. From what he remembered, this was a pretty perfect distance to stay out of security images, but it was nowhere close enough to help Claudia.

Another good reason for stopping was the hundreds of guards now clustered around it. 

Quince did his best to look nondescript, and ambled backwards into a sheltered doorway. Isabelle was already in there, somehow, pulled into a deeper shadow.

“How do we get in?” he asked, while tring to look around the edge. There had to be upwards of two hundred men and women in Syntactic’s uniform, and that was on this side of the building alone.

Isabelle didn’t answer immediately, and when he looked back to her, she was sitting balanced on her toes, her fingers to her forehead. Every so often she shook her head, muttered something, and then went back to a gargoyle-like state of perfect stillness.

“They need us in there, Isabelle. We have to go …”

Before he could finish, there was movement in the guards clustered around the warehouse, a miniature diaspora as they all jogged at least thirty feet from the building, and then spread out, dashing into nearby streets. A few passed them, but paid no mind to the dark doorway. 

“Where are they going?”

One of the men leaving had a black hat, rushing away from them, to the west. “Nowhere in particular, from the looks of …”

Quince was cut off by a shockingly loud noise that managed to knock him straight off his feet. Behind him, the glass panes torqued and shattered; by the time he rolled himself upright, somebody was shoving the door open, forcing Isabelle to move. The man’s mouth was moving, but Quince couldn’t hear it.

Up and down the street, the same scene; men and women rushing to doors, glass littering the road. Aimless screaming, disturbed citizens, a few hardy winter dogs voicing their displeasure. 

He rolled some more, making it to his feet, and looked to the warehouse.

There, the windows hadn’t merely shattered; whole sheets of metal roofing had been thrown across the way, and flames billowed from uneven holes in the thick stone walls. Quince staggered forward, then started running, before he even had a chance to think about it, until Isabelle grabbed him by the arm and swung him around.

“Quince! What are the key points?”

It took a few moments before that sentence even made it through his head. While he waited, he just repeated, “What?” over and over. 

“Syntactic is liquidating this whole operation! He knows we’re in, and he’s dropping it all! Where is he headed next?”

“Uh, I don’t … Claudia? We should go in and help her, we need to go help! She could be in there!”

Isabelle left fingerprints on his face; he was just happy she didn’t wear rings.

“The warehouse, that was one,” Quince said, trying to gather himself. “Uh, the lines, the data and power lines across the bay … Radsinshusid, that’s one focus. The living quarters, and the moderation hall over them, and the, uh, the power station to the south, the Boreas … Lore was headed to the Boreas. I know that.”

“Boreas it is, then.”

She stood, carefully wiped the edge of her knife … one of the knives that she was suddenly carrying, wiped it on her pants, and then started to jog west. 

chapter forty-five

Elaine now felt comfortable in stereotyping: Americans could not be trusted.

At about three in the morning, they’d found the American fishers deep in the weapons hold, trying to find gunpowder that wasn’t waterlogged. The mayor of the town, Jordan, had disavowed all knowledge of what they were up to, and did a pretty credible impression of a confused person.

Elaine and the Duke had shared a look, she in her nightclothes, he bootless and tired, both knee deep in cold water. There was a lot in that look, a lot that Elaine assumed and a lot that she felt she didn’t even have to. The Duke had spent a week just prior with some sort of fever, his eyes dilating wildly; she’d discovered the American penchant for extremely sugary alcohol, her evenings a wasteland of doughy headaches and her mornings a puking travesty.

For an anthropologist, some sort of doddering old historian, a reeking alchemist, America might have held some interest. Their manners, showcased by the mayoral Jordan, would be of much interest to a sociologist or an ettiquettiste. Their cities, crumbling, whitewashed, collapsed and re-whitewashed, might engender epiphanies in architects and students of civil engineering, while their wildlife and diseases, the neglect of European influence in paths of inherited traits, might bring a weak biologist to tears. 

Their history would probably be something else entirely, a revelation that would even excite herself; why their civilization was falling apart, the ceaseless flow of free grain from the interior, the depredations of their electric kinesturges, but a line had to be drawn.

Her tongue was fucking purple, after the Americans’ most recent open bar, and now these podgy old fishwives were poking around near Elaine’s nuclear weapon.

The look had said it clearly enough. 

She’d had them all those barbarians thrown overboard, except the mayor, whom she’d chained to a piston. There was a brig on the Intercessor, but she’d be damned if she was going to waste the time to take him over there.

After a good night of sleep, Elaine had been woken by a few of the sailors, headed up by a large longshoreman named Wax. They wanted to talk about what to do next. Apparently the lack of safe harbor was making them skittish; it should, given that the weapons hold was now filled with two solid feet of water. 

“We send the Intercessor back, the way I figure it. Pick up some mechanically minded fellows in Morocco, tie them up, bring ‘em back. Only a short time, and we’d have both ships back to the mainland, safe and sound.”

“Except that Prelate Morocco recognizes English maritime law. We’d be in gaol before we could say otherwise,” said Sven, ever the death of a good time.

Elaine rubbed sleep from her eyes while Wax replied.

“So then we go further south. Nigerian Pan-empire, maybe. They’ve got to have metallurgists, right?”

“And worse case scenario,” Barlow added, “We trade the long guns, the whole Intercessor, for an old cargo hulk, something steam driven.”

By the time Elaine made it to the porthole, the sangria had made the back of her throat, and it stung as she released it into the ocean fair. Bile, probably. 

When she turned around, the sailors were looking at her, in a worried way. Wax asked, “Countess, are you … would you like some water?”

“Whisky, if you have it. I’ve seen enough of water for a lifetime.”

“You look pale, though.”

“Ah, Wax. We’re built differently. You need red meat, and heavy corn bread, and pure water to fit it all down your throat.” She drank some proffered water; obviously, some hydration wasn’t going to be the end of her. “You plan the same way you eat, too. Not stupidly, but … I can do better.”

“So, not Nigeria, then?”

“No. Follow me, and find a map. And the Duke. And a wrench.”

Down in the hold, Elaine was glad for her boots, the only thing between her and purple toes. The Godqueen was rocking back and forth, a bit of wind tousling the waves; down here, it felt like trying to stand on a rocking chair, and water hopped through bulkheads. This ship wasn’t going to last long.

Somebody had found a large table, and they’d put the map on it. It showed as much of the American coastline as they could fit, from Newfoundland down to the Floridian Peninsula, and back even to western edge of the Mexican Gulf; on the right side, the Empire of Mali, the Iberian Peninsula. In the middle, the Atlantic Ocean, as impassable as a mountain range for a ship in this condition.

The Mayor of New Temperanceville, America, Jordan Iveduar, was sitting on a barrel. Somebody had taken his boots, and he’d drawn his wet socks up beside himself, probably hoping to avoid grisly loss of extremities from the cold. 

He looked miserable, but when Elaine caught sight of his eyes, lucid enough. His pathetic demeanor could be a ruse. Probably was a ruse. Americans and their ruses. Disgusting.

“Thanks for coming down,” Elaine said, in a general way. To the onlookers, sailors etc., it was polite. To the mayor, it hopefully stung a bit. “As you know, we’re floating without much of a plan. We’re mutineers, mostly, and America is a shithole. The only boat we have large enough to cross the ocean isn’t seaworthy. We’ve got food for now …”

“Actually, not especially,” pitched in Henry. “A week and a half.”

“Well, that’s, uh, that fits in well with what I’m saying.” She kicked the water a bit. “We’re sinking, in ways both physical and metaphorical.”

She paused, for effect; the polyglots translated for the rest, and Jordan looked miserable.

“We need a plan. Not just that, but we need everybody to be in on it; I’m sick of being sent off, like a doll packed in straw, and I imagine the rest of you feel the same. This expedition stank from the moment we set sail.”

“How so?” shouted somebody from the back. “I had a pretty good feeling about.”

“There’s a bomb in the hold, you know,” Elaine replied. “Big enough to wipe out the whole fleet.”

“Hmm,” the woman in back managed to shout. “Why haven’t we got rid of it?”

“That brings me to my next point, thank you. These Americans, they’ve got a whole history we don’t know about. A thousand years of decline, interaction with our colonists, the whole Vespucci incident … no, I’m not going to explain that one, ask the Duke later. They don’t necessarily hate us, but they do fear us.”

“Seems a bit tangential, really. What do you mean?”

“So, we take advantage of that. The Duke and I spoke about this, so, uh, I think it’s a good plan. To get back to England, to live without being hanged by a court martial, we need three things.”

The Duke nodded, thank god. She hadn’t said a word to him about this, not a syllable, but he seemed to recognize the fine art of flying by the seat of one’s pants, and didn’t feel the need to stand in her way just yet.

“Firstly, we need somewhere to go. The Western coasts of Europe and Africa are a death sentence, and staying around here … I don’t even want to think about it. Secondly, we need a boat or two to take us there; I’m sure you sailors understand the finer points of oceans, and agree with me there.” 

That got some nods, mostly from Lily and Lucas, who were watching raptly.

“Finally, we need something to balance out our crimes. Something nice, a gift to King England, or … something else. I think we have all of those things.”

“We actually have none of those things,” Wax replied. He’d been counting them out on his fingers; luckily, he had more than three on his hand.

“What if we bought land, on this continent, from the natives?” Sven pitched in. “We could settle here.”

“Or just go back to Renshaw, ask his men to fix the ship. We could trade the nobles for repairs, or something.”

“And can we talk about the bomb more? How can such a thing even exist?”

Before the hold could be swallowed by shouts, Elaine swung the wrench into a metal stanchion, the ringing report slicing through the clamor.

“I don’t care about why that bomb exists, or how. I don’t care about this stupid continent, or anybody that lives on it. I especially don’t care about Renshaw. I want to go home, and I know you do too.” Elaine tapped her hand with the wrench a few times, then swung around to the bound Jordan. “The Lord Mayor here, he said something about owning a boat like ours.”

The man managed a nod and a shiver.

“Untie him. He’s going to show us where they own other boats like that, where they have shipyards that can work metal. Somewhere that they’ve heard of steam.”

Jordan coughed and looked up weakly, but Elaine caught the glint of calculation in his eyes. “They will … never agree to help you. Europeans … never, in our history, has a meeting across the ocean brought anything but death. You will be turned back at the harbors.”

“I’m not going to ask them, Lord Mayor. They’ll fix the Godqueen, or they’ll taste lead.”

The man had the temerity to look shocked at that. “You’d declare war, attack the unified …”

“No,” Elaine interrupted. “Nothing so symbolic. I don’t care for America, or for your Americans. We’re leaving the moment our ship is fixed, and how many holes we leave in buildings, how many sunk ships, is entirely up to you. You’ll take word ahead, as soon as you explain to me exactly where I can find a shipyard worthy to refurbish our engines.”

“You think I’ll just tell you these things, betray my countrymen?”

“You think this wrench is for show?”

Sven had been seething to speak, and as she turned from the mayor, he grabbed her arm. “Elaine, do you not think … this is too much! He is right, this would be war, and we have no idea what lies to the south and west!”

Elaine whispered, to match his tone, but from a quick glance she could tell that everyone near could hear, and would pass it on. “Sven, if you can imagine another way, let me know. If it doesn’t end with our ropes in hemp, of course, or a keelhauling, or a quick shot to the heart at Renshaw’s hands, or years in a pressurized chamber, being sampled for King England’s curiosity. Let me know.”

He dropped his hand from her arm, stepped back.

“I … excuse me, Sven. I just feel very strongly about this.” She shook herself, looked to Duke Patrick, and then back to the rest of the men. “I want to get us home, and safely. If it was just me, sure, I’d steal the Intercessor and ride straight up the Thames.”

“Fuck King England!” somebody shouted. Somebody French, from the sound of it.

“Exactly,” she replied. “He thinks he’s safe, but … well, there’s a canal, right here, and from there we can head to the empires. Landfall, in the civilized world. Landfall with a land-breaking weapon, with every man of us ‘infected’ with the American disease, with every gun of the Intercessor loaded.”

“Negotiating from a place of power,” interjected the Duke.

“And if the canal is collapsed?” asked Wax.

“I’ll carry us across myself.”