turned immediately, gun leading, and found Fraulein Satunin standing behind him with a stiletto in her hand, the same blade she had used to kill Cacon. It wasn’t raised dramatically high — she was a killer, not an actress — but out to her right, blade pointing in, ready for her to step close behind Cabal and grab him with her free hand over his mouth or throat as the blade drove in just below the sternum and up into his heart. But even the coldest killer may balk a second when her target turns and she finds herself facing a gun barrel at mouth level. In that second, Lisabet Satunin looked over the gun into Cabal’s eyes and, in them, she saw … nothing at all.
Cabal fired, and turned away.
Marechal, believing he was being shot at again, leaned out of his bullet-riddled cover and fired at Cabal. It was an impulsive shot, but still a narrow miss, and Cabal shied to his left, away from the path of the bullet. It was a sudden movement that caught him as much by surprise as it did Marechal, and took him clear past the end of the bar, leaving both him and the count entirely without cover.
Suddenly, it was no longer a gunfight. They faced each other, both armed with heavy revolvers containing but a single round apiece and — in a shared thought that occurred to each man simultaneously — they realised that this was a duel. It was the same duel they had started with swords three days ago, and this was where it would finally end. Their guns barked, a fraction of a second apart.
Count Marechal was swift, but Cabal was sure.
He lowered his gun as Lady Ninuka threw herself wordlessly across her father’s body.
Cabal reached down and took Miss Barrow by the upper arm. “We should leave now,” he said in a terse undertone.
“No! Cabal, we can’t.
She was looking at the surviving passengers: Herr Roborovski pushed back up against a chair, unable to look away from Satunin’s body; Miss Ambersleigh, hands to her mouth, trapped in incomprehension; Lady Ninuka, her dark lace cuffs darkened further by blood as she held her father tightly. “What has happened?” she asked nobody in particular. “What has happened?”
For his part, Marechal lay with his eyes open and with the calmest expression Cabal had ever seen him wear, his brow now troubled only by a dark hole a mite over 10.35 mm wide, the brain behind it forever stilled by the addition of 179 grains of lead.
Cabal grimaced. “They can look out for themselves. Come on. Every second wasted narrows our chances.” It seemed unnecessary to expound upon the fact that their chances were already as narrow as the leg of an emaciated giraffe.
Miss Barrow was having none of it. She shook off his hand. “Why
“It wasn’t for you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Are you coming or not?” They glared at each other.
Coming to a decision, she turned to the others. “If we stay here, we’ll die. Come on.”
Two of them looked at her with eyes like hunted animals, but Lady Ninuka’s hunt was over. Her eyes were as glassy as a vixen’s in a museum. “Daddy,” she said with faint certainty. “Daddy will make everything right.” She hugged Marechal’s corpse more tightly yet, a still point in a shattering world.
Miss Ambersleigh moved to follow her, but Miss Barrow stopped her. “I have to go to her,” said Miss Ambersleigh. “I have a duty.”
“Your duty is discharged. She has made her choice. Come with us.”
Miss Ambersleigh started to protest, but paused, looking regretfully at Lady Ninuka. “Orfilia?” she said, querulously. Her voice was lost in the winds that were singing over the edges of broken glass. Then, more firmly, “Orfilia! You must come with me! Come at once!”
Lady Ninuka did not respond at all. She simply held her father and stared into nothingness.
“It would be kinder to leave her here,” said Cabal, noting that — just for once — it was possible for the best course of action also to be the most convenient.
“Such a wilful girl,” Miss Ambersleigh said in an undertone. Then, to Miss Barrow, “Very well, I shall go with you.” She turned to Herr Roborovski. “Sir? You must come, too.”
He shook his head. “This is all my fault. It was my idea to disguise the ship. I never expected all this to happen. I swear.” The words tumbled out of him, thick with despair. “DeGarre, he was a great man, a hero to me. I had no idea what they would do to him. It was barbaric. It’s all my fault.”
“That’s settled then,” said Cabal. “Can we go now?”
Miss Barrow waved him to silence, much to his irritation. “Herr Roborovski, can you fly an entomopter?”
The unexpected question confused him out of his desolation. “What? Yes. Yes, I can.”
Cabal understood immediately. “Ideal. Both Marechal’s machine and the trainer I stole are two-seaters. His isn’t as damaged as I suggested; I just said that to aggravate him. Two pilots. Two passengers. This should work. We just need to get to the flight deck before impact.”
Ascending to the flight deck was both easier and harder to achieve than expected. Cabal had come down from there to the first-class deck via an access spiral stairwell that ran through all the decks. The doors from the circular well to each deck were secured by a door that opened easily going from the well to the deck, but which required a key to enter from all the passenger decks. Cabal had taken a minute to disable the lock when exiting the stairwell, and this foresight saved them a lot of time. The actual ascent, however, was accomplished in a claustrophobic metal tube, standing several storeys high, that was swinging violently, the bulkhead lights flickering on and off, sometimes leaving them in darkness for minutes at a time. Miss Ambersleigh faltered once, telling them to go on without her, but a remark from Cabal on the ephemeral nature of “British pluck” caused her to suddenly start climbing again in a stony, uncomplaining silence. Miss Barrow was going to congratulate Cabal on his grasp of psychology when she realised that he’d meant it.
At least they had not had to contend with crewmen running from deck to deck; the men were already at their emergency stations, and it would take a direct order from a superior to make them leave. Besides, even though most probably knew the ship was doomed, there was nowhere to run; Mirkarvia subscribed to the view that providing parachutes would only encourage indiscipline and the giving up of the ship when the situation was not yet irrecoverable. Even an experienced crew weighed less on the balance sheet than a combat aeroship.
It was a relief to reach the small room at the top of the stairwell. In its narrow confines, bad-weather gear swung on coat hooks, and equipment clanged heavily against the inside of wall-mounted lockers. On one side, a shallow metal staircase rose upwards, where twin doors were set into the ceiling. Cabal climbed quickly up to them and undogged the handles, before pushing upwards hard. The doors swung open and clanged down onto the flight deck, revealing a great blue rectangle of sky above.
The little party climbed out into a howling gale. The crew had managed to stabilise the
The view was magnificent, if terrifying. They had left the last few clouds behind them in the charge for the border, and the ship was lumbering through clear skies. The horizon seemed to be as high as the ship, as if the world were a great shallow bowl. Miss Barrow put this down to an optical illusion, and guessed that they were actually still several hundred feet up. This also turned out to be an illusion, punctured by the appearance of a hilltop, whose jagged crown was definitely above them, gliding past on the starboard side.
Roborovski was full of action, given new impetus by responsibility and perhaps the chance for some redemption, at least in his own eyes. He had been shepherding Miss Ambersleigh along as if she were a favoured aunt, checking that she was all right, and giving her assurances that he would get her out of there alive. Now, in the access room, he was able to show his special knowledge of the functions of a military ship. He opened an equipment locker and pulled out a pair of binoculars that he used to look along the length of the flight deck to where the two entomopters stood. “They look serviceable,” he said. “Herr Meissner, did you remember to apply the parking brakes?”
Cabal, who liked things to be tidy, replied tartly that, yes, of course he had.
Thus reassured, Roborovski opened a cupboard set flush into the access room’s wall. Inside was something
