Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Slowly, she raised her head, only to be met with a row of beaked faces. “I think that’s done.”

One of the youngsters squawked. It sounded like good sense, so she nodded, allowing her shoulders to come down from around her ears. But no sooner had she relaxed than the Athena went into a dive. The clouds rushed up toward them, filling the tiny roost with an icy, damp mist. The ship angled slightly, and her feet began to slide. She heard the cannons fire on the far side of the ship, the sound weirdly muffled where she clung.

By the Dark Mother! she thought desperately, but the ship leveled out and the clear skies were back. The first thing she saw was the Belle ramming the long swordfish needle on its prow into the red balloon of an enemy ship. It didn’t just puncture, it sheared through the dirigible’s balloon. The vessel collapsed, seeming to fold toward its damaged side as the prow tilted upward at a sickening angle. This wasn’t a case where a good crew could still land a deflating ship. This was a wreck, the wounded craft already circling, ready to spiral and drop like a stone.

Sickened, Evelina looked away. The smoke in the air was burning her nose and throat, but she felt secure enough to loose her death grip on the perches and inch toward the opening to the sky. She dropped to her stomach, peering around the corner of the door into nothingness. Wind whipped the strands of her hair back, clawing her nose and eyes like a living hand.

Oh, God . The enemy ship was falling now, the balloon no more than a lopsided blob of red. She thought she might hear screams from the enemy vessel—or maybe that was just the wind. But she knew it would haunt her nightmares.

As Evelina looked down, she saw the Dawn Star and four more of the red dirigibles. More rooks flew beneath them, harrying some airmen who had crawled onto one of the red ships to repair a serious gash. Beneath them was London.

The falling ship crashed. She closed her eyes, but she’d already seen too much to forget the spray of splinters flying into the air. When she opened them, the Belle was already searching out its next victim.

Athena banked the ship, but gently this time, and Evelina shifted her weight to compensate. They were circling around the battle zone, and she saw the Dawn Star fire on another red ship. The volley was answered with a sound like the pop of a paper sack. Before she could determine whether the blow landed, her sight was blanked by a rush of black wings. A rook dived over her head, clearly ducking to safety. What came after it blinded her in a flash of sunlight on metal.

She reared back, raising her arms to ward off the thing. It was a shining metal bird, flame licking from its beak. Blood stained its talons. It hovered outside the doorway for three wing beats, and the rooks sent up a frantic ruckus of rage and dismay. Then the brass creature fell away, swooping down on a new victim.

With an outraged scramble, Evelina took up her position again, stomach pressed to the deck and her head all but hanging over the edge as she scanned the skies. Down here the sun was filtered through the clouds, but it was still bright enough to flash on several pairs of metal wings. They seemed to circle around one of the ships that had belonged to the Scarlet King. A new weapon, designed especially to counter the rooks .

Dark magic unfurled inside Evelina, waiting as if in question. There was a flurry of black feathers as the metal raptor tore a rook asunder. The other birds screamed, flapping around the attacker, but there was nothing they could do against brass and steel. With a terrible shriek of its own, the metal bird shot out of the flock and toward the open sky, its wings opened wide as if in triumph. Then it breathed a tongue of flame, catching its pursuers as they reeled around it. Evelina unleashed her anger, throwing up a barrier right in the thing’s path. The bird shattered, bright shards fountaining skyward like a roman candle.

“Got you!” Evelina slammed the deck with her palm as the rooks croaked their jubilation. The brass bird hadn’t been a living thing, but it still felt like victory. Someone on the enemy ships had to be sending and controlling the killing machines, and she’d just destroyed their weapon. Triumph sweet on her tongue, she started hunting around for others. The sky was chaos, filling with flame and ash to the point where it was impossible to see the earth below. And the noise was constant now, as if a dozen giants were hammering at the heavens. She caught a sudden flash of light in her peripheral vision. There was a resounding boom as an aether cannon discharged nearby, and with cold horror she realized it was aimed at the belly of the Athena .

Inside her mind, Evelina heard a cry of terror from the ship’s deva, who suddenly understood the threat. The vessel lurched, struggling to shrink away, and Evelina reacted without thinking. Pulling all of her power, she thrust against the spinning ball of blue-green fire, trying to contain it just as she had the explosion in the laboratory. She felt the shield form, shimmering and bright, and leaned in with all her strength to brace it.

It might have worked had it been an ordinary explosive, but magnetized aether was concentrated energy. Her magic slammed against it with all the effectiveness of a damp towel trying to stop a bullet. Evelina screamed with the shock of impact and the dizzying lurch as her barricade was swept aside.

But Magnus’s dark power had its own cunning, and it had fused to her need to protect. It couldn’t block a ball of pure energy, but it could absorb it. Time stopped as Evelina felt the rush of sparking blue fire like tendrils snaking through her veins, a million pinpricks firing within her in places that she couldn’t even name. It was as if every fiber, every nerve was suddenly glutted with energy and still swelling. She scrambled to the back of the roost, some primal impulse willing her away from the assault. She grabbed the rail the rooks perched on, muscles needing to strain against something in response to the sensation. Sight and sound deserted her. All that was left was painful blue fire, boring into her as if it meant to wear her skin.

And then her magic ran out of time. The blast hit the belly of the steamspinner’s rigid balloon. She had absorbed the deadly magnetic power, but the concussive force of the blast was still effective. Some part of Evelina was aware of the jolt and clung on to the rail. There was a crack and a tearing that she felt more than heard. All around her the rooks exploded into frantic flapping as the ship shuddered and lurched. Evelina struggled to breathe, as if some of the energy that her magic had absorbed was detonating, too.

She snapped awake at the sound of a rook croaking in her ear. The ship was listing and she was sliding toward the sky, her limbs like soggy bread. Waving the bird aside, Evelina scrambled to her knees, grabbing for a handhold. She could only have been unconscious for a moment, but the loss made her frantic. The fact that the constant din of battle had stopped clawed into her mind. Scrambling until she could look out, she clung to the sides of the opening to the empty air and peered below.

What she saw stunned her. She gave an odd little hiccup of dismay as sheer terror stiffened her limbs. There were only four of the red ships left, but she saw none of the other pirates. And all four of the Scarlet King’s ships were right there, a ways off but in a narrow arc, clearly focused on the wounded Athena . Seconds ticked by like an ominous drum-roll as Evelina groped for her magic and couldn’t find it. It had swooned right along with her, gorged on magnetized aether.

Ash fell, coating her hands and tangling in her dark hair. Tears started down Evelina’s cheeks, the salt stinging a scrape she hadn’t noticed. The only thing she could think of was that she wished she were near Nick, but she was too horror-stricken to move. It was as if her engines had died right along with the ship’s.