when the weathership erupted in twin gouts of flame. The explosion shook the ornithopter, but Caroline held it steady through the buffeting.
‘Two shells struck at once,’ Aubrey murmured, but he was relieved to see lifeboats pulling away. The crew must have abandoned ship, not that he blamed them.
Aubrey had no way of knowing if a message had been transmitted before the crew fled – or, indeed, if a telegraph operator was gamely tapping away when the shells finally landed. Weathership operators were tough customers – they had to be, moored far from land for months at a time, charting and recording weather patterns – and he could imagine at least one of them doing his duty.
The guns rained shells on the smoking ruins of the weathership, far beyond any need. Aubrey supposed that it was simply target practice.
‘We’re coming up fast.’ Caroline’s voice was strained.
Their circuit high above the perimeter of the flagship was an education, and a grim one at that. The flagship was immense. It was as if Dr Tremaine had taken the latest battleship plans and simply doubled everything. As they whipped past, a shadow in what was fast becoming night, Aubrey estimated that she must be at least a thousand feet long from stern to bow, and she’d displace fifty or sixty thousand tons. If she were in water, he reminded himself. Six gun turrets, three forward, three aft, with twin fifteen-inch guns in each, superfiring. If this ship were on the high seas, it would be more than a match for anything in the Albion fleet, but the amount of steel required to build something like this – not to mention the time it would take – would make such a construction impossible.
Unless it were made of cloudstuff.
Wings clattering with the effort – and with an unsettling grating noise coming from the starboard pinion – Caroline performed a feat of aviation that Aubrey would have stood and applauded, if not for the fact that he was flailing for a handhold to steady himself.
From their lofty position, she sent the ornithopter in a manic dive, slicing between the flagship and the battleship a few hundred yards away. Then she dragged the protesting craft around, under the hull of the flagship, and then up past its stern – where Aubrey was startled to see that its name was Sylvia – and into a rush along the vast grey flank.
Aubrey was assaulted by magic. It poured from the Sylvia, but as they hurtled by he was buffeted by concentrations, hard nodes of magical intensity, in specific zones, and he had the flavour in his ears that suggested the presence of the magical artefacts.
They swung alongside the massive superstructure, the towering construction amidships that housed the command deck. They sped along the flank of the giant ship, passing at the level of the bridge, far above the deck level, and Aubrey spied a lone figure on the walkway.
Instantly, every part of him wanted to cry out a warning, to seize the controls and spiral them away, to put the mass of the flagship between them and the man who was gripping the rail and slowly turning his head, scanning the skies before settling his ferocious gaze on them.
Dr Mordecai Tremaine bared his teeth, drew back, and flung a handful of nothing at them.
66
Caroline’s reactions were faster than Aubrey’s useless warning cry. She sheared and dropped the ornithopter to the port side – but it was too late.
Dr Tremaine’s magic stopped them, mid-dive, as quickly as running into an aerial brick wall. Amid the cacophony of shattering glass and tortured metal, the ornithopter buckled, metal falling away from it in shreds.
Trapped in the now-useless machine, they began to fall.
Wind screamed through the ruined craft, shrieking with delight at their predicament. Caroline wrenched at the controls. ‘I’ve lost everything!’ she cried, but she didn’t stop punching at switches, hammering at dials, dragging on the controls.
Far below, the sea was drawing nearer. Aubrey could see whitecaps and the tiny lifeboats, the survivors from the destruction of the weathership.
Aubrey closed his eyes and tried to ignore all distractions – especially the distraction of imminent death – and tried to remember the details of the only spell he knew that could save them. The only hope was a vastly more encompassing version of his levitation spell. It needed to include his friends and him, but also the ornithopter – it would be no use at all if their descent was arrested but they were still inside a plummeting machine. He barked the syllables, realised with a spurt of horror that he’d mangled the component for duration, backtracked and spat out a new version just in time for the ocean to rise and smash them.
67
Aubrey emerged from a swirling chaos to a nightmare of confusion. The only immediate compensation was that he could breathe. Somewhat. If he were careful.
He was in a world of water (that kept rolling over the top of him when he least expected it), darkness (that did its usual job of concealing objects long enough for them to sneak up and do various kinds of damage) and noise (which was just dashed annoying). He flailed weakly, then took another large mouthful of water – salt water – which only made things worse.
His collar was tugged. Dazed and floundering, he suspected it was another inanimate object trying to drown him when a voice came to him. ‘Aubrey! This way!’
He shook his head and it cleared somewhat, only to find that he was still in what was left of the ornithopter as it wallowed in the waves, undecided about whether it was going to plunge into the depths.
Caroline was framed in the doorway. She’d lost her beret. Her hair was in disarray. She stretched out a hand. ‘Hurry!’
Aubrey had a sudden, awful realisation that even though he hadn’t perished, the matter wasn’t over yet. He clutched his satchel of precious notes, then clawed off his seatbelt, just as the shattered windscreen let in a huge surge. The shockingly cold water dragged him over the back of his seat and scraped him against what had been the ceiling of the ornithopter, but now was more like a sieve.
The water receded. Aubrey had sense enough to sling his satchel around his neck and grab hold of a stanchion. He coughed, wiped his eyes with his other hand and found an anxious Caroline still waiting for him. He lunged for her hand and together they tumbled out through the doorway.
Moments later they were reunited with George and Sophie, shivering despite the greatcoats the seamen had surrendered after dragging them into the lifeboats. The boat rolled in the swell, while the wind had the edge that comes from driving for miles over non-tropical waters. Aubrey clutched the gunwale with one hand, Caroline’s hand with the other, grateful for this little wooden refuge in the immensity of the sea.
A baby-faced commander scrambled to join them. ‘You’re from the Directorate,’ he said, eyes widening when he took in their sodden uniforms. ‘You should be able to tell us what’s going on, then.’ He looked more closely at Aubrey. ‘I know you,’ he said slowly, then he performed the difficult task of recoiling while squatting in a crowded lifeboat. ‘You’re the traitor!’
Immediately, Aubrey was the focus of the entire crew of ex-weathershipmen. Minutes ago, they had been welcoming, partners in adversity and the like. Now they turned resentful eyes on him, ready to take revenge for being bombed.
He heard a click beside his ear. In other circumstances, once he recognised it he would have been extremely anxious or, given the chance, running in the other direction. This time, however, it was a comfort.
‘He isn’t a traitor,’ Caroline said. She gestured with her revolver. ‘But I’m not sure we could convince you of this, here and now. So, instead, you’re going to row us to Imworth harbour and drop us off. All the time, I’ll have this very powerful revolver trained on you, so do row well.’
‘There’s eight of us,’ a voice that Aubrey noted came from the far end of the boat, at the stern, ‘and that’s a
