Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

And then the enemy vessel farthest to her left fired a hot harpoon right at the Athena ’s side. It rose, flame furling around it like some exotic bird. Then each ship followed, launching its long iron weapon in sequence until the sky was bright with a flaming arch of death. They were far enough away that it would take the harpoons an endless, painful minute to find their mark. Enough time for a nimble ship to escape, but the Athena was all but dead in the sky. Swearing, Evelina strained, flailing for some scrap of power to throw up a shield—but there was nothing. They were going to die—Nick, Striker, the prince—and the steam barons would win.

The guns of the Athena boomed, and she felt the recoil ripple through the drifting ship. The blast caught the foremost harpoon, knocking it from the sky, but the other three kept coming. Evelina closed her eyes, helplessly willing the flames away.

And yet as she forced herself to open them again, the Dawn Star appeared, dropping out of the sky with a falcon’s grace. Evelina gasped, her throat aching with a rush of gratitude. Captain Roberts must have been hiding somewhere in the clouds, waiting for the right moment to ambush the remaining ships. He couldn’t save them, but he could still turn the tide of the fight.

The Dawn Star ’s guns boomed, and one of the red ships shuddered, the prow of the gondola seeming to inhale a moment and then burst apart in a shower of wood and metal. Evelina felt the pulse of the lives aboard as they flared out, a faint warmth fluttering against her power.

As if kissed out of sleep by a lover, her dark magic awakened to taste the deaths. Revulsion rippled through Evelina, but there wasn’t time to think. As Roberts wheeled to fire again, she targeted the harpoons, spinning them around. The long iron shafts seemed to wobble in confusion, one of them dropping altogether, but the other two sped back toward the red ships. From somewhere inside the Athena , Evelina heard a cheer, and she couldn’t help a grin.

The three remaining red dirigibles scattered. The Dawn Star ’s next shot clipped the long tail of one, sending it into a spin with the sheer force of the blow. With that much damage, the ship might make a decent landing, but it wouldn’t be maneuverable enough to fight. With a roar, the Athena fired again, and a second ship exploded, caught squarely in the center. They were down to one opponent.

The last of the Scarlet King’s dirigibles fired, and the Dawn Star was suddenly limned with brightness. Evelina watched, her breath caught in her throat, as the ship was suddenly snared in a web of arcing blue energy—the same as what she had absorbed from the blast that had hit the Athena . She could hear the crackle of it, like the snapping of giant sheets in the wind, or what she’d read about the aurora borealis in the far and frozen north. It resonated inside her, sending that needling energy through her once more.

A hydrogen ship would explode from that dancing blue fire, but one that ran on distilled aether simply burned. Flames began to leak from the portholes of the Dawn Star like a dozen fiery wounds. Tiny specks leaped from the ship, and Evelina fully understood what had happened to Nick the year before.

Outrage coiled, a hissing, violent thing. For a moment, she couldn’t see, but then she focused with needle-sharp intensity at the vessel that had fired the shot. The Dawn Star , the ship that had come to their rescue, was a comet of flames hurtling earthward—and now the attacker was turning its broadside to them.

All the magnetic fire Evelina had taken in coalesced into a single upsurge of rage, and she thrust it forward. It ripped from her as if her insides were yanked through her breastbone, skin and skeleton flying apart. She screamed with the pain, but with rage as well. She’d made plenty of shields, but never used magic like a spear. But the dark power knew exactly what to do.

The last of the Scarlet King’s ships was there one moment and gone the next, a fine, powdery dust raining down from the empty sky.

THEY WERE ALREADY CALLING IT THE BATTLE OF ST. PAUL’S. Tobias was glad to let the men and women trooping after the caterpillar rejoice in their victory, but their march westward through London felt like a journey into a mire he wasn’t sure they’d survive. Tipping those pounding machines had been costly—many had been crushed, and many more had fallen to the Blue Boys.

Plus, it had been a stroke of luck. They couldn’t count on all the steam barons’ weaponry being vulnerable to a schoolboy imagination any more than he could count on the coal supply for the caterpillar lasting all the way to wherever the Gold King was holding his son. They had been fighting their way west for hours, Moore and the other soldiers were holding the Blue Boys off their tail—but so far the rebels had only made it past the law courts of the Temple, right to the point where the Waterloo Bridge reached the north side of the Thames.

The crowd thickened and bulged, like water hitting a clogged drain. The roar of guns and voices was deafening, almost a touchable wave of pressure against his face. Tobias guided the caterpillar to a stop, unable to go further without stepping on someone. Yelland got to his feet, shaded his eyes, and swore.

“What?” Tobias demanded. Talking was more a matter of lip reading, but they bent close to each other to catch what sound they could. “Why can’t we move?”

“It’s the Gold King’s army fighting the prince’s men coming up from the south,” said the sharpshooter. “And there’s an air battle up there.”

Tobias had seen the smoke in the sky, but hadn’t had the leisure to wonder what had caused it. Now when he looked, he could see the balloons between the billows of cloud and smoke. From where he was, they looked no bigger than apple seeds, the colors lost to distance and the angle of the sun.

The army in front of them was a more immediate problem. “There are thousands.”

“Mercenaries,” Yelland spat. “And they’re sweeping the population ahead of them. The Blue Boys in particular.”

“Doesn’t the crowd get in their way?”

“Of course it does, but then they hold all the empty streets. And they know the rebels won’t fire on civilians.”

Tobias understood. Until the prince’s armies arrived with everything the rogue makers had devised, the rebels had fewer fancy weapons than the barons. The steam barons’ war machines could fire over a sea of civilians, but the rebels risked shooting innocents. The rebel army’s hands were tied.

“Listen,” said Tobias, his voice cracking with the strain to be heard. “I made a lot of the Gold King’s weapons. I can disable them, but I didn’t have time to make the devices that can do it.”

Yelland shot him a look. “And?”

“My friend was finishing them this morning. He’s going to carry them to the prince’s army.” Tobias looked at the sea of humanity surrounding them. Even if Bucky could fight through the crowd of rebel supporters, he would have to cross enemy lines first. That was going to be more dangerous than they’d assumed. “It would be very useful if we could get a few of those devices for ourselves.”

“Are you talking about Mr. Penner?”

“Yes.”

“He needs an escort,” Yelland said flatly.

“He thought he could slip by unnoticed if he went alone. And he’s good with a gun.”

“He needs an escort,” Yelland repeated.

Tobias gave the man a long look. “The plan was that if he could make it down Threadneedle to Mansion House, he could use the underground tunnels of the District Railway. The trains won’t be running in all this”—Tobias waved a hand at the chaos around them—“but it’s a lot faster even if he runs all the way.”