Marie Brennan: Voyage of the Basilisk

They were both at my side in an instant. “They are,” Handeson said, bright with relief. “We’ll have to fly into the wind to get at them, but that’s better than hoping to make Kapa Hoa. Let’s come about.”

The hope of rescue put new life into our limbs. We brought the caeliger about, its propeller beating against the wind, and made our way toward the sails. Now, with the wind in our faces, I felt our speed at last, as I had not when we flew over the featureless nighttime sea. The engine truly was a remarkable achievement, and although the Yelangese had been partly responsible for putting us into our current predicament, I must own that without their engineering, we would not have come out of it alive.

Even with that speed, the sails drew closer but slowly. I went into the prow of the gondola and peered toward them, as if squinting would lessen the distance between us. There seemed to be quite a lot of them—three ships? No, five. Quite a fleet, to be in this part of the Broken Sea. And the shape of their sails was odd, to my Anthiopean eye…

“Suhail,” I said, loudly enough for him to hear. “Lieutenant. I am not a sailor, nor terribly familiar with this part of the world—but I believe that style of sail is common on Yelangese ships, is it not?”

Once again they rushed to my side, studying the ships in tense silence. Then Handeson swore (proving that a man may be both a gentleman and a sailor, but when the spurs bite home, he is more sailor than gentleman). “Those are junk sails, all right. The Yelangese aren’t the only ones who use them, though. Those might be from Seungdal, or—”

Something was bobbing alongside one of the vessels in that little fleet. A large, ellipsoid shape, which did not seem to touch water. At this distance we could not see the gondola below, but it was impossible to mistake for anything but another caeliger.

“It’s the Yelangese,” Suhail said, in that remarkably calm-sounding voice I had come to recognize as a sign of great tension in him. “And they are coming this way.”

The three of us looked at each other. No one had to put the question into words: would we allow ourselves to be taken by the Yelangese, or would we risk death in the open sea?

“Regardless of the princess’ situation,” I said, “they will be exceedingly displeased to know that we have discovered the secret of their caeligers.”

“Discovered, and stolen,” Suhail added.

Handeson swore once more and lunged for the caeliger’s controls.

To this day, I wonder what the Yelangese thought when they saw one of their own caeligers first approach, then turn tail and run. Whatever discussions took place on their decks at the time, however, it did not take them long to correctly interpret the significance of our behaviour. As we put the wind to our backs and began to fly away with all haste, the second caeliger rose majestically into the air and gave chase.

Our lead on them was substantial, but that only benefits the fleeing party if there is somewhere to lose the pursuer. We had only the open sea—not even any cloud cover in which to hide. Moreover, the Yelangese had both fresh supplies of fuel and a vastly superior knowledge of how to operate their craft. It would take them some time to catch us… but catch us they would. It was inevitable, and all three of us knew it.

Our caeliger fled across the waves, with the second one following. We soon lost the Yelangese fleet; it evened the odds, at least, and I had wild visions of a boarding engagement fought high above the sea. (Surely, I reasoned, the Yelangese would not fire guns at us, not when they might puncture the caeliger’s bag and send us crashing into the waves.) An hour passed, perhaps more, with the second craft slowly gaining on us. But before they drew close enough to take action, Suhail cried, “Ahead! Look!”

Once more, there were masts upon the horizon. “More Yelangese?” I said under my breath. They were searching the Broken Sea for the princess, and might well have divided their efforts. If we had indeed found more ships from the empire, it would no longer be a choice between capture and the risk of death: we would have to choose between capture and the certainty of death. Provided, of course, that the former did not lead inevitably to the latter.

Handeson crowed. “No! Square rigs! They’re Anthiopean! And—” He stopped, and seemed to be quite literally holding his breath.

The sails grew larger. There were three ships, grouped in a loose formation, and the men aboard them were scrambling about, clearly alarmed by the two approaching caeligers. I could see them quite well, because our own craft was losing altitude rapidly. Even I could tell that the sounds emerging from its machinery were not encouraging. The sailors appeared to be racing to aim their cannon in our general direction, but they would not need them; we would be coming down even without interference from artillery.

The gunshots I heard, though, came from behind us. It was the Yelangese, firing their rifles at the three of us. We took cover behind the dragonbone walls of the gondola, which began to drop even more precipitously; they had pierced the bag (which may have been their target to begin with), and we were losing air. Then, without warning, their caeliger sheered off, turning back into the wind and heading once more toward their own distant fleet.

Perhaps they hoped we would sink into the sea, leaving no example of a caeliger in foreign hands. As I have said, though, dragonbone floats quite well. “Quick,” I cried, “throw everything overboard that you can”—for if we lightened the gondola by enough, it might stay afloat long enough for that remarkable engine to be retrieved.

We splashed into the waves before we could get very far in shedding ballast, however. The falling bag dragged the gondola onto its side; Suhail and Handeson both leapt clear rather than burden it with their weight. I clung to the bones, because tucked into my arm I had a bundle of fabric that concealed the petrified egg.

“Ahoy the—the wreck,” a voice called from above, in the blessedly familiar accents of the Estershire coast. “Just who the bleeding hell are you?”

We had found the Scirling navy.

They fished us out of the sea, and the caeliger along with us, balloon and all. The latter had not sunk; it proved to have a framework inside it, likewise built of dragonbone, which kept it afloat. I looked grimly at all the bones and half-wished they had all gone to the bottom of the sea. But I had already told the princess about dragonbone, and she had sent me here to tell the admiral; the only way that cat could be stuffed back into its bag was if Miriam were to die. (And I hope I need not say I wished very much for that not to happen.)

Lieutenant Handeson took over in the first instance, saluting with proper naval precision despite looking like a drowned and unshaven rat. His bedraggled state, not to mention the shirtless Akhian and the woman in man’s dress who accompanied him, meant it took a moment for the sailors around us to recognize him; Captain Emery’s ship had been part of this very fleet. Once they realized what they had caught, they immediately began signaling the next closest vessel, which was the Conborough, the admiral’s flagship.

It was no coincidence that we found them where we did. I soon understood that the Scirling officers knew the Yelangese were searching for Miriam, and were attempting to beat those men to their shared quarry. Both groups had gotten far enough in searching the Broken Sea that their thoughts bent to Kapa Hoa, and if they did not find her there, they intended to continue on to Keonga. Given but a little while longer, then, it seemed that rescue might have come to us, without any need to fetch it.