Behind them, Gar Hatch stood in the pilot box. Pen shot him a quick look, but he didn't seem to notice the boy. His eyes were directed forward, toward the horizon.
«You're being unreasonable!» Pen hissed back at her. «We're just friends!»
She started to reply, then stopped herself. Her face softened, her anger faded, and she nodded slowly. «All right, Pen. Let's drop the matter. What right do I have to tell you how to behave, anyway? Ask my family how well behaved I've been. I haven't the right to lecture you.»
He sighed wearily, looking out over the bow toward the approaching night. «I know I shouldn't be doing this. I know I should just stay away from her. I know that.»
Khyber put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. «But you can't and you won't and I don't have the right to ask you to do so. I wouldn't want you telling me what to do if our positions were reversed. But I worry, anyway. I don't want you disappearing over the side of the ship one night just because you smiled at this girl once too often. Everything we're doing depends on you. We can't afford to lose you. Just keep that in mind when you're thinking about how pretty she looks.»
He exhaled sharply. «You don't have to worry about that. I can't stop thinking about it. That's part of the reason I like being with her. She helps me forget for a little while.»
They didn't say anything for a long time as they looked out at the skyline, listened to the cries of the seabirds and the hum of the ship's rigging. The western sky had gone shadowed and gray with the setting of the sun, and the first star had appeared in the north.
«Just be careful,' Khyber said finally.
He nodded, but did not answer.
* * *
The fourth day of travel dawned gray and sullen with storm clouds layered all across the northwest horizon, roiling and windswept as they bore down on the Streleheim. Pen came on deck at first light to find Gar Hatch and both Rover crewmen hard at work taking down the sails, tightening the rigging, and lashing in place or carrying below everything that might be lost in the blow. Cinnaminson was standing in the pilot box, her face lifted as if to taste the raindrops that had begun to fall.
He thought at first to go to her, then decided against it. There was no reason to do so, and it would call needless attention to his infatuation. Instead, familiar enough with what was needed to be able to help, he went to help the crewmen secure the vessel. They glanced at him doubtfully as he joined them in their work, but said nothing to discourage it. Behind him, Ahren and Khyber appeared, as well, standing in the hatchway, stopped by a wind that had begun to howl through the rigging like a banshee.
«Get below!» Gar Hatch bellowed at them. His gaze shifted to Pen. «Penderrin! Take Cinnaminson down with them, then come back on deck! We need your strong back and skilled hands, lad! This is a heavy blow we're facing down!»
Pen dropped what he was doing and raced at once to the pilot's box, slipping precariously on decking slick with dampness. He heard Cinnaminson shouting at him as he reached her, but her words were lost in the shrieks and howls of the wind. Shouting back that everything would be all right, he took her arm and steered her out of the pilot box and over to the hatchway, bending his head against the sudden gusts that swept into him. Again, she tried to say something, but he couldn't make it out. Ahren was waiting to receive her, and Pen turned back at once to help the beleaguered Rovers.
«Safety lines!» Gar Hatch roared from the pilot box, where he had taken over the controls.
Pen found one coiled about a clasp on the mainmast and snapped the harness in place around his waist. The Skatelow was dropping swiftly toward the plains as Gar Hatch sought shelter. The Rover Captain had to set her down or she would be knocked out of the sky. But finding a place that would offer protection from the wind and rain was not so easy when it was impossible to see clearly for more than a dozen yards.
The sails were down by then, so the boy hurried forward to secure the anchor ropes and hatch covers. Rain began to fall in sheets, a deluge that soaked Pen in only seconds. He had not worn his weather cloak on deck, and his pants and tunic offered no protection at all. He ignored the drenching, blinking away the torrent of water that spilled out of his hair and into his eyes, fighting to reach his objective. Still descending toward the plains, a stricken bird in search of a roost, the airship was shaking from the force of the wind.
Pen had almost reached the bow when the other end of his safety harness whipped past him like a snake, shooting out through the railing and over the side. It took him a moment to realize what had happened, that it had somehow come free, and his hesitation cost him his footing as the snap of the line jerked him off his feet. He went down on his back, his hands grasping for something to hold on to as he began to slide toward the open railing, skidding on rain–slick decking, unable to stop himself. He had only a moment to wonder how the line had come loose before he was tumbling over the side.
He would have fallen to his death if he had not caught hold of one of the stanchions, and even so, the effort of stopping himself nearly dislocated his arms. He hung helplessly over the side, legs dangling and arms stretched to the breaking point. For a second, he thought he would not be able to hold on. The airship was lurching and heaving as the wind whipped at it, and it felt as if everything was about to let go.
«Penderrin!» he heard Gar Hatch scream.
He looked across the decking through the rain to where the Rover Captain stood braced in the pilot box with a coiled line gripped in both hands. Catching the boy's eye, he gave the line a heave that sent it flying all the way forward and across the railing, not six feet from where Pen hung suspended. Working the line with both hands, Gar Hatch whipsawed it back and forth across the railing until it fell over Pen's shoulder.
«Grab on!» the big man shouted.
The boy hesitated. There was no reason for his safety line to have come loose unless someone had released the locking pin. The man best in position to do that was the one offering to help him now. If he wanted Pen dead, all he had to do was wait for him to grab the line, then release it. Pen would be over the side and gone. Was that what Gar Hatch intended for him? Was he incensed enough about Cinnaminson to kill Pen?
The airship shuddered violently, and Gar Hatch was thrown to one side in the box. «Hurry, lad!» he cried out.
Pen released his grip on the stanchion, one hand at a time, and transferred his weight to the rope the big man had thrown him. As he hung from it, the line the only thing keeping him from tumbling away, he experienced a terrible certainty that he had made a mistake and was going to pay for it with his life.
Then Gar Hatch began to haul on the rope, and Pen felt himself being lifted back over the side of the vessel and onto the deck. In seconds, he was back aboard and flat on his stomach as he crawled toward the pilot box, his heart still in his throat.
Gar Hatch extended his hand over the side of the box and pulled him in effortlessly, dark eyes glittering. «There, now! Safe again! That was close, Penderrin! What happened to your line? Did you check to see that it was secure at the masthead before buckling in?»
Pen had to admit he had not. «No. I didn't think there was any need.»
«Haste is a dangerous enemy aboard an airship,' the Rover Captain declared, tucking his chin into his beard. «You want to be careful how you go, especially in weather like this. Good thing I was watching out for you, lad.» His eyes narrowed. «Good thing, too, I decided you were worth the trouble of saving. Another man with another daughter might have thought otherwise. You want to remember that.» He gave Pen a none–too–gentle shove. «Down you go with the others till this is over. Better think on what I just said while you're there.»
Pen made his way out of the pilot box and across the decking to the hatchway, a cold place opening in the pit of his stomach. Behind him, he heard the Rover Captain laugh.
EIGHTEEN
«Safety lines don't come loose for no reason at all,' Khyber Elessedil whispered, poking him in the chest to emphasize her point. «They don't get put away with one end left unattached, either.»
Outside, the wind hammered and the rain beat against the wooden hull of the Skatelow as if to collapse it to kindling.
«I thought that, too,' Pen answered, shaking his head. The cold feeling wouldn't leave him. It had found a
