Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

“So what do you think?” Striker said, casting a sidelong glance at Nick.

But Nick had lost the power of speech. He began to walk forward, toward the open door and the prow. The ship was enormous, bigger than the Red Jack , and she was of an entirely different design. Her shape was a sleek oval, with fins that swept back like the wings of a stooping hawk. The gondola was snugged tight to the bottom of the balloon, forming a single unit. There was far less chance of an accidental fall, which made him feel better about letting Bacon on board. And a much more comfortable place to bring Evelina .

They walked in silence for the time it took to reach the prow. Outside the bay doors, the iron-gray sea churned restlessly, the rain falling in relentless sheets. The wind caught Nick’s wet garments, making him shiver. But he forgot that the moment he saw the name of the ship painted in graceful lettering he knew for Digby’s work: Steamspinner Athena . They had re-created the same hawk figurehead that had graced the Red Jack . A feeling of grief for his old vessel mixed with the bittersweet sense that they’d done what they could to keep it alive.

He felt Athena’s emotions, a painful urgency to feel the ship around her. Someone in the distant past had locked the air deva inside the metal device that became her prison. It was only as part of an airship that she could fly again.

“It’s better than the plans,” Nick said softly. “It’s more than we ever thought it would be.”

“True,” said Striker. “Like I said, we took her out a few times, tried out some new crew. It takes a few more hands to run this beauty. I’ve been training that boy you saw for an assistant.”

Nick could believe it. “How many does it sleep?”

“Twenty-six, if we want it. We ran with a crew of sixteen, but we weren’t manning all the gunports.”

Sixteen was double what they had usually had on the Jack . “Let’s go aboard,” Nick said, all eagerness.

Nick climbed the ladder into the belly of the steamspinner, the saddlebag carrying Athena slung over his shoulder. He could feel the deva’s mounting excitement as he ascended, doubling his own sense of awe. As he came through the hatch and craned his neck to see all the way up to the top of the balloon, he felt no bigger than a mouse. Although he had known from the plans the exact measurements of the vessel, it was only now, from this inside view, that he grasped just how enormous it was. Almost speechless, Nick fell into step with Striker, who gave him the penny tour.

“The engines are running because we’re distilling aether,” Striker explained, raising his voice to be heard over the rumble of the equipment. “Our supplies are down after the last voyage.”

Unlike other dirigibles, steamspinners were of rigid construction, the inside of the balloon a honeycomb of gas pockets. Two walkways ran its length—one inside the keel, which traversed the domain of steam engines, propellers, and weapons lockers—and one to the axial corridor that accessed the aether systems. At several points, ladders ran between the two corridors. Up there, an unearthly lime-colored fog surrounded the four double-helix shapes of a complex glass apparatus. This was the system that separated aether from the surrounding atmosphere, converting it into a distillate that could be stored or pumped directly into the ship’s balloon. From where Nick stood below, he could see the weird green light spearing down the vent shafts, giving the gloom of the walkways an underwater mood.

This is very fine , said Athena. I can feel the power like a thunderstorm in waiting .

Electric lights—a rarity in the gaslit world of the steam barons—hung from wires strung above the walkways. Both levels contained a series of gunports for aether cannons. In addition, there were trapdoors in the bottom of the balloon for bombing enemy sites below. Nick calculated the ship was capable of obliterating a small city entirely on its own. The thought sobered him more than he cared to admit. It was a beautiful vessel, but a deadly one—and he was its captain.

He walked forward with Striker, who had brought Bacon along. The dog scampered ahead with a curious, three-legged gait, stopping to sniff this and that as it waited for the slower men.

“This is the hatch into the gondola,” Striker announced, opening an oak door and stepping through.

The engine noise dimmed the moment the door closed, though it could still be heard like a distant heartbeat. A long corridor stretched ahead, doorways on either side. “Crew quarters?” Nick asked.

“Crew quarters here,” Striker replied. “Mess hall and kitchen ahead.”

Nick could feel Athena’s impatience rising to a fever pitch. He waved at the saddlebag. “Let’s go straight to the bridge. I assume accommodations were made?”

Striker gave a nod. “Absolutely.”

So far they hadn’t seen many crew members, but now several looked up as they passed. All were strangers, which Nick found disorienting. The Red Jack ’s crew had been very small and closely bound, almost to the point of claustrophobia. A few greeted Striker, but he just waved and kept moving.

Are we nearly there? Athena asked, sounding querulous from inside the saddlebag.

In a minute , Nick replied silently, shifting the bag to a more comfortable spot on his shoulder.

Bacon bounced ahead, tail wagging like some canine propulsion system. From the mess, they passed through a map room and Nick caught a glimpse of the bridge ahead. Even from here he could see that tall windows wrapped around the entire prow of the gondola, the panoramic ocean view out the hangar doors utterly breathtaking. Athena must have caught the image, because if the deva in the metal cube could have eagerly hopped up and down, she would have.

Finally the map room gave way to the bridge. Here, all the readouts of the vessel’s complex infrastructure were available at a glance. Beneath and between the tall windows was a jungle of brass and copper pipes, pressure gauges, dials, valves, and knobs. He recognized some of the equipment—one cluster to his right was surely for the helmsman. There was only one crew member there, taking a reading from a large brass dial on the wall. Striker sent him out with a jerk of his thumb, and they were alone.

And in the center of the bridge was the only chair—the captain’s chair, carved from mahogany and set on a swivel so the occupant could see all parts of the bridge. It was his chair. His first instinct was to claim it, but a captain’s first responsibility was always the ship.

He saw at a glance the spot he was looking for. A rib of steel ran between the two panes of glass right at the nose of the gondola. There was an ornate piece of brass, etched with scrollwork, screwed to the steel rib at about the height of a man’s head. Striker stepped forward, pulling a screwdriver from somewhere inside his coat, and removed the brass plate in moments. Behind it was an empty space about two feet square lined in dark blue velvet. Nick unbuckled the saddlebag and took Athena out. He had washed her and scrubbed the rust away, lightly oiling the metal and wrapping her in a square of turquoise silk. He placed her, silk and all, on the velvet, securing her in place with fine leather straps anchored into her private chamber. Then Striker replaced the brass panel, tightening the screws before stepping back with a look of satisfaction on his dark face.

“Now the ship is finished,” he said.

Nick felt the change almost at once as Athena’s consciousness flowed from the metal cube to embrace the whole of the steamspinner. It was as if the entire ship took a breath and shook itself awake. The hum of the engines changed, the lights dimmed and then grew brighter, and the entire ship—it was hard to put a word to it —glowed . Not brightly, and not so much that he’d have noticed unless he’d seen the ship a moment ago. But he had witnessed the change, and he could tell there was a luster on every surface that hadn’t been there before. The crew must have felt it, too, for suddenly the low conversation floating from the distant mess grew brighter, as if they were suddenly filled with hope.