Chapter Two
Gavin Ennock let the last long note slide
from his fiddle and fade away. He lifted the bow from the strings
and cocked a bright blue eye at Old Graf, whose own eyes were
obscured by heavy brass lookout goggles.
“Ah, that puts heart into a man.” Old Graf sighed.
His magnified gaze, however, never left the cloud-flecked sky ahead
of them. A thin wind blew at their backs, not quite able to
penetrate the pale, supple leather of the jackets and trousers they
both wore. Overhead, the ever-present bulge of the airship’s gas
envelope blotted out the sun, though in a few hours, the sun would
sink behind them, and the decks would grow uncomfortably warm. The
netting that hung from the envelope creaked in a familiar rhythm,
and the ship swayed beneath it. A faint vibration from the engine
propellers came up through the soles of Gavin’s boots. Far below,
the Atlantic Ocean lay calm and flat and blue.
Gavin inhaled the sea air. His hair, a pale blond
bleached nearly white by the sun, fluttered against his forehead
like feathers. Gavin’s face had lost its boyish roundness and
acquired the more squared look of a man, but he was a little short
for his seventeen years and had no hint of facial hair, two facts
the airmen teased him about mercilessly. Old Graf never did, which
was one of the reasons Gavin had come up to the lookout post at the
front of the airship.
A seagull coasted past with a thin cry that started
on an E-flat and descended to a gravelly A. Gavin echoed the bird’s
call on his fiddle, matching the pitches exactly. The gull cocked a
beady eye at him, then dived away.
“‘Blind Mary’?” Old Graf said.
“How is that a song for a man on lookout
duty?” Gavin countered with a grin.
Old Graf continued to scan the air ahead of them.
They were on the forecastle, the foremost section of the ship. An
airship like the USS Juniper didn’t have a crow’s nest—the
cigar-shaped envelope precluded one—which meant the lookout had to
be as far forward as possible.
“It’s a taste of home,” Old Graf said.
Gavin set bow to strings and played. “Blind Mary”
was an old Irish song, one of hundreds he’d picked up as a kid in
Boston. In his head, he saw an old woman feeling her way along a
country lane, and he let his fingers slide along the strings,
playing her sadness and age. Gavin heard every note perfectly in
his head. Each note, each chord, each song had its own unique
sound, and it seemed impossible to him that anyone couldn’t tell
them apart. A and A-sharp were as different as red and blue.
Gavin let himself play with the melody the second
time through, wandering with it as if Mary had lost her way,
stumbling, frightened, but finding her place again at the last
second. Yet, in the end, the song still left her blind and alone.
Behind them on the main deck, some of the airmen paused in their
work to listen until the song ended. Old Graf fished in his pocket
for a handkerchief and blew his nose.
“How is it that a seventeen-year-old cabin boy
plays like an immortal angel?” he blurted out, then flushed
slightly and coughed.
“It helps to have a fine listener.” Gavin clapped
him on the shoulder. “My gramps gave me the fiddle, but he said the
music is a gift from God. And Captain Naismith says I’ll be a full
airman soon enough.”
Old Graf’s weathered face went pale. “Dear
Lord.”
“My being an airman isn’t such bad news, is
it?”
“Gliders. Straight for us.” Old Graf flicked the
lenses of his goggles up and reached for the alarm bell. Gavin
grabbed the spare lookout helmet from the rack, jammed it on his
own head, and looked through the lenses as Old Graf yanked the
cord. Bells sounded all throughout the Juniper. Through the
helmet lenses, Gavin saw ominous birdlike shapes zipping toward the
airship he’d been calling home since he was twelve. They were
painted blue and white to better hide in the sky, and part of Gavin
was impressed that Old Graf had seen them even as the rest of him
tightened with fear and dread. He counted eight, and there were
probably more that he couldn’t see.
“What’s out there, Graf?”demanded Captain
Naismith’s voice through the speaking tube at Old Graf’s
elbow.
“Pirate gliders, Captain,” Old Graf yelled back,
flipping his lenses back down. “I mark at least a dozen.”
“Which means probably twice that. Shit. Shit,
shit, shit. Can you see the main cruiser?”
“Not—yes! Welsh privateer, probably with a letter
of marque.” He squinted through the lenses. “Gondolier class.
Semirigid.”
“All hands prepare for battle!”boomed the
captain. “Drop ballast compression and take us up to fifteen
hundred feet. We have two dozen gliders coming in. They’ll try to
get over the netting to attack the decks, so I want everyone who
can swing a sword or fire an air pistol up in the ropes! Mr.
Thomas, prepare to jettison the cargo. Master Ennock, get your
ass down to the gondola, and I mean now!”
“Better hurry, boy,” Old Graf said as Gavin pulled
the helmet off. “He won’t appreciate it if you’re slow.”
Gavin shoved his fiddle into its case and ran for
it. He skittered down the ladder to the main deck, which swarmed
with activity. Airmen boiled out of the hatchways, rushing to ready
the ship for battle. Ports flipped open along the hull, exposing
flechette and harpoon guns. Men in white and gray leather manned
the pumps that forced ballast air out of certain ballonets inside
the Juniper’s envelope and inflated other ballonets with
more hydrogen, allowing the ship to rise. Other men swarmed into
the netting, climbing toward the envelope with compressed air
pistols and cutlasses of tempered glass—only a fool used gunpowder
or sparking steel near several tons of explosive hydrogen.
Gavin ran to the center of the deck and slid down
the rails of another ladder polished by years of use, pausing only
to drop his fiddle off in the crew quarters, where he stuffed it
under a blanket and prayed no pirate would find it. Then he ran
back to the ladder.
The Juniper was an American ship of American
design. A web of wrist-thick ropes hung from an enormous,
cigar-shaped envelope of gas and cradled what looked like a sailing
ship with the masts removed. Fastened to the bottom of the ship and
looking a bit like a glass bubble with a wooden bottom was the
navigation gondola, where Pilot and the captain spent most of their
time. Gavin dropped past two decks and out the bottom of the ship
into the gondola.
The floor was solid wood, but the sides of the
gondola were made of glass to give a good view in all directions,
and now Gavin could see the gliders skimming ominously toward the
Juniper. Speaking tubes sprouted from every cranny, and
pigeonholes held rolled-up charts and instruments. Captain Naismith
stood at the helm, his fingers white on the wheel spokes and his
plain features tense. His dark blue captain’s coat with its gold
buttons and epaulets rustled not at all, and his hair remained
hidden beneath his cap. Captain Naismith was a young man, not yet
thirty, and he dealt with the grumblings of the much older men put
under his command by expecting strict discipline from everyone,
including himself.
Beside him stood Pilot. Gavin had never learned his
name—the pilot of an airship was always just called Pilot. He was
perhaps forty, with a shock of wheat blond hair. At the moment, he
was bent over a tableful of charts, his sextant clutched in one
hand.
“Sir,” Gavin said.
“Master Ennock,” Captain Naismith said, “you were
thirteen years old the last time we were attacked by
privateers.”
“Fourteen, sir. Two days after my birthday.”
He waved this aside. “You wanted to fight, but I
ordered you to hide in the cargo hold.”
Gavin nodded. That had been a dreadful day. He
remembered crouching among the crates and barrels with the rats,
hearing thumps and screams and other noises he couldn’t identify.
Part of him wanted to help, and part of him was glad for the
captain’s order. The Juniper’s crew had managed to beat the
pirates off and escape, but there had still been blood to scrub off
the deck afterward, and Gavin had accidentally stepped on a severed
hand that rolled beneath his boot. Only Old Graf had seen him throw
up over the side.
“Only full airmen carry weapons,” Captain Naismith
continued, “but today we have special circumstances. Old Graf’s
been teaching you, hasn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.” Gavin’s heart was pounding now.
“Take what you need from the arms master and get up
in the netting. Defend my ship, Master Ennock. She’s only a
merchant vessel, but she’s all we have.”
“Sir!” And Gavin rushed up the ladder. He found the
arms master belowdecks, and the man handed him a tempered glass
cutlass and a heavy brass pistol that fired glass flechettes using
compressed air. On the main deck, Gavin could see the gliders were
less than a hundred yards away, and in the distance coasted the
ominous shape of a pirate airship, emerging from the clouds like a
killer whale rising from an ocean trench. Although the
Juniper was gaining altitude, leaving the ocean far below,
the pirate ship was matching them. The gliders drew nearer. Each
held a pirate suspended beneath a wide wing of oiled silk on a
light frame painted blue. A bottle of compressed air fizzled behind
each one, propelling it forward. The bottle didn’t have enough
propulsion in it for a return trip. It wasn’t meant to.
“Fire!” shouted First Mate Lightman.
A hiss snaked through the air, followed by a pop.
Four of the side guns spat a barrage of deadly metal darts. Two of
the gliders evaporated in a cloud of blood and silk. The wing on
one of the others was clipped, and it spiraled out of sight, the
pirate’s shouts of terror thinning away as it went. Gavin grabbed
some of the heavy netting, climbing upward and outward, nimble as a
monkey.
The netting comprised heavy rope tied in foot-wide
squares that slanted outward like a giant V, with the narrow ship
in the bottom and the wide envelope at the top. Halfway up the
netting were gaps and wooden platforms that allowed the airmen to
work on both sides of the netting as needed, and these were the
gliders’ targets—the pirates could slip through the gaps, drop down
the inside, and land on the deck to attack the crew.
“Fire!” The big guns hissed once more below.
Gavin skittered farther up the slanted ropes. Here
he felt at home, with nothing but free-flowing air rushing above
and below him. He felt every creak and sway of the ship as if the
ropes were his own tendons, the envelope his lungs, the deck his
body. He loved this place, this ship. And now the Juniper
was under attack.
He was out of the envelope’s shadow, and the sun
glared down from a clear sky while the damp wind pushed steadily
from his left. He reached one of the gaps and perched on the heavy
horizontal rope at the top. On the outer hull below whirled the
propellers on their engine nacelles, and farther below that, blue
ocean filled the horizon. Other airmen were taking up positions in
other gaps and on various platforms, while the gliders closed
in.
A guy rope was tied to the netting. Gavin flicked
it free but lost his grip on it. Another hand snatched the rope
before the wind could swing it away. Airman Tom Danforth grinned at
Gavin through a great deal of dark hair, and his brown eyes
sparkled with excitement as he tossed the guy rope to Gavin. The
captain had promoted Tom from cabin boy to airman only a few months
ago on his eighteenth birthday, but his and Gavin’s friendship had
survived the change in rank. Gavin sometimes envied seagoing cabin
boys, who often became full sailors long before they turned
eighteen, but the feeling never lasted long—he couldn’t imagine
being stranded on Earth forever, an eternal prisoner of
gravity.
“Ready for this?” Tom asked.
Gavin tried to wet his lips but had no spit. “Ready
as I can be. You scared?”
“Yep.” He gave a nervous smile. “But I’m not going
to let them take our ship.”
As if on cue, the flock of gliders rushed silently
upward past the gunwale, out of range of the big guns and toward
the netting gaps. Still clinging to the netting with one hand, Tom
drew his pistol and fired down at them, but the shot went wide. An
airman a few yards away—Stanley Barefield—fired more carefully, and
one of the pirates went limp. His glider yawed and veered away. The
Juniper continued to rise, which meant the gliders appeared
to be dropping toward the gunwale. The gliders needed enough
altitude to gain the gaps in the netting and land on the deck
before their air bottles gave out.
Gavin drew his pistol, fired, and missed. The
ship’s guns spoke one more time, but Gavin doubted they did any
good. More than two dozen gliders were swarming like wasps around
the Juniper now, and the enormous bulk of the privateer
airship was less than half a mile away. Its design was similar to
the Juniper’s, but its envelope was thinner, built more for
speed, and painted blue to blend in with the sky. It was also
larger than the Juniper, and no doubt better armed. Air
pistols hissed, and glass flechettes zipped through the air. When
the pirate ship got close enough, she would send a full force of
fighting men to overwhelm the crew and capture the Juniper
entirely. Gavin swallowed.
“We’re in trouble,” he said.
“I know.” Tom’s face was pale. “But we can win
this.”
A glider whipped close to Tom and Gavin. Tom
brought his pistol around, but before he could shoot, the pirate
fired his own weapon. The shot caught Tom in the forehead, and
Gavin saw the shiny flechette exit the back of his friend’s skull
in a burst of blood that spattered across the netting. Tom didn’t
make a sound. He simply fell away from the netting and vanished
into the blue void below.
Gavin heard a terrible scream and only vaguely
realized it was coming from his own throat. He didn’t remember
dropping his pistol or drawing his cutlass, but he leapt from the
netting and his blade swept a gleaming arc. He had a tiny moment of
closeness, when he came eye to eye with the bearded pirate. He
smelled fish on the other man’s breath and heard him swear in
Welsh. Then Gavin’s cutlass took the man’s pistol arm off at the
elbow. The pirate howled in pain and veered away in a scarlet
spray. The guy rope Gavin had grabbed earlier swung him back toward
the ship, but another glider was already speeding toward him. Gavin
tightened his gut and bent himself upward into a tight ball just in
time to let a barrage of flechettes pass beneath him. His arm, the
one holding the rope, burned, and his shoulder felt ready to come
apart. He slammed into the netting and managed to get his feet into
it, release the rope, and grab the netting without losing his
cutlass. He sheathed the blade and climbed, trying not to think of
Tom’s spattered blood or ruined head.
Although the airmen had managed to fend off a few,
most of the pirate gliders had dived through the gaps and down
toward the main deck. Cursing the loss of his pistol, Gavin flipped
over the top of the netting, grabbed another guy rope, and slid
down as fast as he could. All around him, the rest of the crew
followed suit, sliding down ropes like pale spiders to defend the
decks.
The pirates disengaged from their gliders. They
wore mismatched, ill-fit clothes, and a few were barefoot. Most
were unshaven. All were armed with glass cutlasses and air pistols.
And the huge dark bulk of the pirate airship was barely two hundred
yards off the starboard bow, not quite within firing range. The
airship had also taken altitude, remaining level with the
Juniper.
Gavin landed near a group of airmen that included
Old Graf, and suddenly he was very busy. The world dissolved into a
whirlwind of glittering glass blades, hissing air, screams, blood,
and severed limbs. He became aware that he was standing beside a
group of grim-faced airmen. The deck was overrun with pirates and
discarded gliders. Bodies lay everywhere—some still living; some
dead. And less than forty yards away loomed the bulging blue shape
of the Welsh airship. Gavin could hear her propeller engines
buzzing over the sounds of combat around him. His arms were growing
tired, and he was panting now. He swung at the pirate in front of
him. The man laughed and ducked.
“You’re a fine, pretty lad,” the pirate shouted in
a Welsh accent. “I’ll teach you some tricks with my blade.”
There was a heavy thud, and a crash shook the
Juniper. Everyone stopped fighting for a moment. The pirate
ship had fired an enormous barbed harpoon. The tree-sized spear had
penetrated the Juniper’s hull, drawing with it a hawser at
least a foot in diameter. A faint cheer went up from the pirate
ship. The two vessels were now joined like beads on a string.
The fight started again, but something had shifted.
The Juniper’s airmen were losing. Gavin saw Captain Naismith
standing at the gunwale, a foot-long crossbow in his grip. A yellow
flicker danced in his hands, and Gavin’s stomach went cold at the
sight of a small open flame, the absolute bane of every airship in
existence. The captain lit the end of his crossbow bolt and raised
it, but no crossbow that small had the range to reach the pirate
ship. A nauseating horror swept Gavin as he realized that the
captain was aiming not at the pirate ship, but at the
Juniper’s own envelope.
The distraction allowed the pirate to swat Gavin’s
cutlass. Pain stung Gavin’s hand, and the glass blade spun away,
distorting light as it went. Gavin jumped back in time to avoid the
pirate’s second swing, then fled. The airmen who fought beside him,
caught in fights of their own, barely had time to give him a
glance.
“Come back, love!” the pirate yelled. “You need to
dance for me!”
Gavin all but flew across the deck to Captain
Naismith. Already he could imagine the blazing bolt piercing the
envelope, ripping into the ballonets of hydrogen to create a
fireball that would incinerate the ship and drop the charred
remains into the ocean. The detail was sharp—Gavin could see
Naismith’s finger tense around the trigger. Heart pounding from
both exertion and terror, Gavin lunged and grabbed Naismith’s
arm.
“Captain!” he shouted. “No!”
“Let go my arm, Master Ennock,” he said through
gritted teeth. “They won’t take my ship.”
“We can’t get revenge if we’re dead,” Gavin
said.
A dull clanking noise vibrated the deck beneath
Gavin’s boots. The pirates were operating a winch that pulled the
two ships closer together. Fear fought with pale determination in
Naismith’s expression.
“It’s ransom or slavery for us, Master Ennock,” he
said. “I can’t condemn my men to such a life.” He wrenched his arm
free and raised the crossbow again. The dreadful little flame
flickered like a demon.
Gavin hesitated, uncertain. It would be so easy to
let him. Naismith was the captain, and Gavin was duty-bound to
follow his orders, orders that would destroy Tom’s killer. But
Gavin wasn’t ready to die, and burning to death was the secret
horror of every airman.
In that moment of hesitation, Naismith’s finger
tightened on the trigger. Then he made a small sound and collapsed
face-forward to the deck. The crossbow fell also, the bolt
extinguished. An enormous scarlet stain spread across the back of
the captain’s blue coat. Behind him stood the pirate Gavin had just
been fighting, air pistol still in his hand. He holstered the
weapon.
“Looks like I reloaded just in time, love,” he said
with a grin. “Got me a captain.”
Hot rage overcame Gavin. He snarled and flung
himself at the pirate. The pirate’s eyes widened in surprise, but
only for a moment. His fist lashed out and caught Gavin squarely in
the face. Pain exploded through his head, and he went down to the
hard deck.
Gavin awoke to pain. Someone was dabbing at his
cheek with a cloth. He opened his eyes and sat up. Light hurt his
eyes and sitting up made him dizzy, so he shut his eyes and put his
hands to his head. He shivered with cold.
“You’re all right, son.” It was Old Graf’s voice.
“Bump on the head, some bruises. You’ll survive.”
Gavin risked opening his eyes again. He was sitting
on the deck in the same place he had fallen. For a moment it looked
as if everything had returned to normal. Airmen in white moved
about the deck and climbed in the netting. Then he saw the stacks
of dead bodies, the pools of blood, the gashes in the wood. The two
ships were still tethered together, though now they were both
moving off, continuing the Juniper’s original eastern
course. The airmen weren’t the crew Gavin knew. They were the
pirates. Gavin’s own leathers were gone. He wore nothing but
undergarments and chilly skin. Old Graf himself wore a ragged shirt
and torn trousers.
“What—?” Gavin said.
“The pirates took our good white leathers for
themselves,” he said. “Keep your voice down. You don’t want to call
attention to yourself. Here.” He gave Gavin a dirty brown shirt, a
pair of loose trousers, and an old pair of shoes. Gavin quickly
pulled them on, though they did little to blunt the ever-present
wind. The pain in his head continued to throb, and he was
thirsty.
“A third of the crew dead, and Captain Naismith,”
Old Graf said, unprompted. “Captain Keene—the pirate captain—put
some of the ‘dangerous’ survivors off the ship in life balloons
already so we wouldn’t try to raise a mutiny.” He handed Gavin a
canteen, and Gavin gulped down stale water. “The rest of us are
expected to help run the ship until we get to London.”
“London?” Gavin echoed stupidly. “We’re supposed to
go to Madrid. I was going to see the castle.”
“Tell that to Captain Keene,” Old Graf growled.
“When we get to London, he’s going to sell the cargo and hold us
and the Juniper for ransom to the shipping company.”
Outrage cleared Gavin’s head a little. “That’s
illegal! We’re not at war with England! That’s—”
“Part of his letter of marque. Keene’s been charged
with keeping the airways safe for British ships, and we fired on
him first.”
“No, we didn’t!” Gavin said hotly.
“Shush!” Old Graf made a sharp gesture. “Who do you
think a British court will believe, son? Just be glad you didn’t
get tossed over in a life balloon.”
“Why wasn’t I?” Gavin asked bitterly. “I’m just a
cabin boy. The company won’t pay a ransom for me, and my family
doesn’t have any money.”
“He spoke for you.” Old Graf jerked his head toward
one of the pirates, who was wearing stolen airman leathers and
inspecting the hydrogen extractor on deck not far away. “Name’s
Madoc Blue. Said he was going to teach you to dance or
something.”
Gavin’s gut knotted. Madoc Blue was the pirate who
had killed Captain Naismith. As if Gavin’s thought caught Blue’s
attention, the pirate turned and met Gavin’s eye. He winked broadly
and went back to what he was doing. Gavin fought to keep his face
impassive. He had a pretty good idea of what Blue had in mind for
him, and the thought made him want to throw up.
“So what do we do?” Gavin whispered.
“We run the ship,” Old Graf said. “And when we get
to London, we sit in whatever cell these bastards lock us in and
hope the company pays our ransom.”
Three days passed. Gavin fell into a stupor. His
body mechanically went through his normal daily tasks under the
watchful eye of armed pirates, but his mind was filled with a
blessed fog. He scrubbed decks and sewed seams and spliced rope and
ran messages for the new captain, all without truly thinking about
what he did. At night, he slept fitfully in his hammock, dreaming
of his family back in Boston. Sometimes he saw Tom plummeting into
an abyss, but he wore Gavin’s own face. Then the pirate first mate
would be shouting them awake, and a new day of captive work began.
At least Madoc Blue kept his distance. Bernie Yost, the
Juniper’s hydrogen man, had been killed in the original
raid, and Captain Keene had given the job to Blue. Even the most
tightly sewn ballonets leaked a little, and without continual
replacement, the ship would eventually sink to the ground—or into
the ocean. An efficient hydrogen extractor was therefore key to the
survival of any working airship, and the job of hydrogen man
carried the same status as ship’s carpenter or pilot. The job also
took up a lot of time, which meant Blue was too busy to pay Gavin
any heed.
At the end of the fourth day, Captain Keene, a
red-faced man built like a brick, assembled the captive airmen and
his pirates on the Juniper’s deck and announced a
celebration for his crew. The pirates cheered. The airmen, less
enthusiastic, were to be locked in the brig so the pirates could
enjoy themselves without keeping an eye on their captives.
“And who plays this?” Keene demanded of the
assembled airmen. Gavin’s entire body jerked. Keene was holding
Gavin’s fiddle. Gavin hadn’t even looked at it since the raid. One
of the pirates must have found its hiding place. “Come on now—we’ll
need music, and one of you American turds can provide some,
right?”
Gavin didn’t move. The thought of playing for
cavorting murderers turned his stomach greasy and sour. He could
feel the other airmen carefully not looking in his direction, but
he himself couldn’t take his eyes off his beloved fiddle. Keene’s
hand was pressing the strings into the neck, his fingers leaving
oily prints on the red-brown wood. Gavin felt violated, as if Keene
had laid hands on his soul.
“No one?” Keene said. “Too bad. It must belong to
one of the men we killed or put off the ship. No point in keeping
it.” He turned and drew his arm back to throw the fiddle
overboard.
“Wait!” Gavin said.
Keene paused and turned back.
“It’s mine,” Gavin said miserably. “I’ll
play.”
Keene handed Gavin the fiddle and ruffled his hair
like an uncle greeting a favorite nephew, even though Gavin was
nearly eighteen. “That’s a good lad. Do you sing, too?”
Gavin thought about lying, then decided he didn’t
want to know what would happen if the truth came out. “A little,”
he hedged.
“Then what are you waiting for, boys?” Keene
boomed. “Lock up these miserable bastards and have a party!”
An enormous cheer went up. Gavin watched while his
compatriots, including Old Graf, were herded belowdecks to the
brig. The crew members were already looking haggard and thinner
than just a few days ago. Gavin tried not to shiver in his ragged
clothes, and not for the first time he wondered which of the
pirates had originally worn them. The sun was setting behind the
tethered ships, and the engines continued their implacable rumble
as the propellers whirled unceasingly. Somewhere below lay Tom’s
body, food for sharks and other sea creatures. Gavin glanced at the
envelope overhead. If he hadn’t stopped Naismith, none of this
would be happening right now. He wouldn’t be sad, wouldn’t be
upset, wouldn’t be thinking at all.
The pirates rolled out several casks of rum and lit
the blue-green phosphor lamps that hung about the ship to provide
flame-free light amidships. A heavy arm dropped around Gavin’s
shoulders. He tried to twist, but the arm held him.
“Looking forward to hearing you,” said Madoc Blue.
“Maybe tonight I’ll teach you how to dance.”
And then he was gone. Gavin’s hands shook so hard,
he could barely tune up. Someone brought a crate for Gavin to stand
on. He forced himself to remain steady, set bow to strings, and
play.
Once the melody began, things became easier. It
felt good to use his talents again, and he hadn’t realized how much
he’d missed his music. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he
was playing for his family back in Boston. They had two dark rooms
in the slums, and both were filled with comings and goings. Ma was
always at the stove, trying to stretch what Gavin’s four brothers
and sisters brought home, or at the kitchen table madly basting
shirts for the tailor up the street. Gramps sat in the corner,
trying to watch Gavin’s younger siblings with his failing eyesight.
The place was never quiet, except when Gavin played fiddle in the
evenings. He played in the dark because they couldn’t afford lamp
oil or gas jets. He played away their hunger, the cold Boston
weather, and their fear of bill collectors. But when Gavin turned
twelve, Gramps had taken him down to the airfields outside Boston,
where a dozen giant airships stood tethered to their towers like
clouds staked to the ground, and introduced him to Captain Felix
Naismith. The next day, he’d sailed off as a cabin boy.
It had started as a job, a way to send money home
to his family. But after a few weeks in the air, Gavin found
himself unwilling to touch the ground. The Juniper quickly
became his home, the sky his backyard, the clouds his city. When he
worked, he helped send the ship across Infinite. When he played, he
sent songs into the blue and white like a sacrifice. Now, both work
and music served a different master.
The pirates, including the captain, laughed and
danced and drank all around Gavin’s crate while the sky darkened
and the lamps shed their familiar eerie glow over the gunwales,
turning his pale hair green. He closed his eyes so he could play in
the dark. Music rippled off his fiddle and vanished into blackness.
The pirates called out songs for him, and he played “Highland
Mary,” “The Irish Washerwoman,” and “Sheebeg, Sheemore.”
“Play ‘Londonderry Air,’ ” shouted one
pirate.
“That’s a sissy song, Stone,” yelled another. “We
don’t want to hear that.”
“I’ll show you a sissy song,” Stone yelled back,
holding up his fists. “Two of ’em.”
Quickly, Gavin played the requested song, a slow,
sad piece. He put everything he had into it, echoes of green Irish
hills floating in fog, sad cemeteries with tilted gravestones, and
stone cottages warmed by peat fires. The belligerence died away.
The pirates fell silent. When the music ended, Stone wiped his nose
on his stolen leather sleeve and acted as if he weren’t also wiping
his eyes.
“Nice,” he coughed. “Very nice.” And the other
pirates cheered.
“Sing for us, boy!” “Sing a song!” “A dancing
song!”
“Sing us,” called out a too-familiar voice, “‘Tom
of Bedlam.’ ”
Gavin’s head jerked around. Madoc Blue was staring
up at him, thumbs hooked in his belt near his glass-bladed knife. A
lump formed in Gavin’s throat. Had Blue learned Tom’s name and
chosen that song on purpose? It might have been coincidence—“Tom of
Bedlam” was the unofficial anthem for all airmen, and it wasn’t an
unusual request.
“Go on, pretty lad,” Blue said. “You can’t tell me
you don’t know it. Lie to me, and I’ll tie one of those fiddle
strings around your balls until they turn... blue.”
The pirates roared with laughter. Gavin swallowed
the lump in his throat and firmed his jaw. He wouldn’t give Blue
any satisfaction. He set bow to strings and sang.
For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand
miles I’d travel.
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes for to save her
shoes from gravel.
And still I’d sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys,
bedlam boys are bonny,
For they all go bare, and they live by the air,
and they want no drink nor money.
The pirates stomped and drummed on the deck for the
last two lines—the chorus was the reason the song was popular among
airmen. Want, in this case, meant lack, and the idea that airmen
were more than a little insane but also naked, drunk, and rich held
great appeal. The song had endless verses, and Gavin settled in to
sing them all, his voice pounding at the men like a weapon, letting
his anger and fear come pouring out. The men clapped and sang
along, oblivious. Blue, however, simply stared at Gavin, his thumbs
still hooked in his knife belt. Without thinking, Gavin sang the
verse:
I slept not since the Conquest. Till then I
never waked,
Till the naked boy of love where I lay me found
and stripped me naked.
Every pirate burst out into raucous laughs and
cheers. Blue smirked and gave Gavin a pointed look. Gavin flushed
bright red and sang the chorus as if he had no idea what anyone was
laughing about, but quickly switched to a different verse.
My staff has murdered giants. My bag a long
knife carries
To cut mince pies from grown men’s thighs and
feed them to the fairies.
He met Blue’s gaze straight on at the last line.
The original words ran children’s thighs. The pirates were
drunk enough that they didn’t seem to notice the change, but
Blue... Blue nodded slightly and turned away. Message understood.
Gavin breathed a mental sigh of relief, sang one more verse, and
called for a break. The pirates clapped him on the back and
congratulated him on his skill, as if he were one of them, as if
they hadn’t killed his best friend, his captain, and a dozen of his
compatriots. Gavin forced a smile to his face, pretended to accept
their accolades, then slipped away from the men, moving toward the
lookout post. Overhead, the envelope blotted out the stars, but
they formed a field of shining diamonds in all other directions.
Ahead, the pirate airship was outlined in its own blue-green glow.
A skeleton crew over there had the misfortune to miss the party.
The air was cooler, crisper now that he was away from the press of
bodies amidships. Gavin blew out a breath, glad to be apart from
them for a moment, however short.
As Gavin passed the man-high bulk of the hydrogen
extractor, a figure appeared from the shadows. Before Gavin could
react, the figure grabbed Gavin by the shoulders, swung him around,
and shoved his back against the extractor. Gavin’s heart lurched,
and he barely kept hold of his fiddle.
“Wandering alone, love?” said Madoc Blue, the rum
strong on his breath. “I’m ready to teach you how to dance.”
Fresh fear spurted through Gavin’s every vein. His
breath came in short gasps and his fingers went cold around the
neck of his fiddle. The bow clattered to the deck. Blue pressed his
body against Gavin’s, his weight shoving Gavin harder against the
extractor’s warm brass wall with his forearm across Gavin’s throat.
Blue leaned in, his beard scratchy against Gavin’s face. Gavin
choked, barely able to breathe.
“You think I’m stupid and ugly, pretty boy?” Blue
growled. “You think I can’t get women? Do you?”
Gavin tried to answer, but he couldn’t get enough
breath. His free hand flailed uselessly, looking for something,
anything that might help.
“When there aren’t any women on deck,” Blue
snarled, “a man’s gotta use whatever he can get his hands on.” He
grabbed the string that held Gavin’s trousers up and snapped it
with a sharp, one-handed jerk. Gavin tried to yell, but Blue’s
forearm prevented him. The lack of air made him dizzy. “Got three
or four friends who’ve had their eye on you, love. Once I break you
in, I can show you around, collect a little money for your
services. What do you think of that, hey?”
And then Gavin’s flailing hand found the hilt of
Blue’s knife in his belt. He snatched it out of the holder and
slashed downward. Gavin felt warm blood spurt against the thin
cloth of his trousers. Blue screamed and instantly let Gavin go. He
staggered back, clutching his upper leg. A loose flap of meat the
size of Gavin’s hand hung there by a hinge of skin.
“You little shit!” Blue howled. “I’ll fucking kill
you!”
He lunged for Gavin, who didn’t even think. He
stepped aside and swung the knife again. It plunged up to the hilt
into the side of Blue’s neck. Blue’s eyes flew wide-open. He made a
terrible choking noise and clawed at the knife hilt with curved
fingers, then fell twitching to the deck. The air filled with the
stench of blood and bowel as he died.
Gavin didn’t have time to react, or even think.
Blue’s screams summoned the rest of the men, who were only a dozen
yards away. In an instant, Gavin found himself surrounded by angry
pirates. Blood covered his hands and spattered across his face, and
he was holding his trousers up with one hand. The other still
clutched his fiddle.
“It’s the fiddler boy.” “He killed Blue!” “Cut his
balls off!” “Throw him overboard!” “String him up!” “Shit! There’s
blood everywhere!” “The captain!” “Make way for the captain
!”
Captain Keene, short and stocky, shouldered his way
through the crowd. He took in the scene, including Gavin’s torn
trousers, with a glance. “What the hell happened?”
“He killed Blue!” someone shouted.
“I’m not asking you, Biggs,” Keene bellowed.
Gavin looked at the men. His mind froze. He
couldn’t think. It was all too much. “I—I...,” he stammered.
“Did you kill him?” Keene asked.
“He... attacked me,” Gavin said. It was hard to
talk. He wanted all those eyes to go away. “He—he shoved me against
the extractor. He said he wanted...”
“Ah,” Keene said with understanding. “Well, you
ain’t his first, but it looks like you’re definitely his last.”
This got an uneasy chuckle from a few of the pirates. Gavin let
himself hope that everything would be all right. Then Keene said,
“But you’re a prisoner, boy, and you killed one of my men.” He
raised his voice. “Saw his hands off and throw him
overboard.”
Shock numbed Gavin. He barely felt the fingers that
snatched his fiddle away, barely noticed that he was being hauled
toward the crate where he’d been playing merry music only a few
minutes earlier. One of the pirates drew his cutlass. It gleamed
green in the phosphorescent light. Gavin’s hands were yanked down
to the crate and laid across the rough wood, wrist up. The pirate
raised the blade.
“Captain!”
The speaker was Stone, the pirate who had requested
“Londonderry Air.” The pirate holding the cutlass halted. Keene
folded his arms across a broad chest. “You got something to say,
Stone?”
“He’s still a boy, Captain,” Stone said. “You
called him one yourself. It don’t seem quite right to give him a
man’s punishment, sir.” He held up Gavin’s fiddle. “And he plays so
nice. Be a shame to lose that because he fought back against the
likes of Madoc Blue. Sir.”
The hands holding Gavin down were tight enough to
leave bruises, though Gavin didn’t have the strength to struggle.
Above him, he could see distorted stars through the pirate’s clear
cutlass. Keene looked at Gavin for a long moment, surrounded by
silent pirates.
“Fine,” he grumbled at last. “Boy’s punishment.
Twenty-four lashes.”
The hands suddenly shifted from holding Gavin down
to wrenching him around. His mind spun, unable to take it all in.
He caught a fleeting glimpse of Stone still holding his fiddle,
another glimpse of two men covering Blue’s body with a piece of
gray canvas, and then his wrists were being strapped to the heavy
netting. Someone ripped the shirt off his back. Cold night air
washed over his skin, and that broke the stupor. He shouted and
struggled against the bonds, but they were too tight. The first
mate swung his whip around. It slashed the air, hissing like a
snake.
And then Stone was beside him, his hand on Gavin’s
shoulder. “Don’t worry about your fiddle,” he whispered urgently in
Gavin’s ear. “I’ll keep it safe.”
He backed away and the first lash tore a red stripe
of pain across Gavin’s back.