“What happens now?” Wren asked.
“More fighting,” Tycho said. “Followed by some negotiations, skirmishes, alliances, betrayals, more negotiations, and eventually a ceasefire, if we’re lucky.”
“And if we’re not lucky?”
“They take Constantia.”
“Oh.”
Omar cleared his throat and the others looked at him. “I have to find someone,” he said. “She was in the palace, and I suppose she left during the evacuation, but I somehow doubt she’s hiding in some shelter somewhere. I have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” He gave Wren a long worried look. “Stay safe.” And he strode away.
Wren glanced at Tycho. “I wonder who-”
“It’s Nadira,” Yaga said, her tiny voice whispering from the Denveller ring. “He’s looking for Nadira, the Damascena. But he won’t find her. She left before the bombs began to fall and I don’t think she’s coming back. But let him go. He needs some time alone.”
“I’m sorry about Koschei,” Wren said.
“No, you’re not,” the ghost said. “But thank you for saying it.”
Wren looked at Tycho again and saw him staring at her. “It’s all right, I’m just talking to… you know, her.”
He nodded. “Well, I guess we should be getting back to the cistern to tell the Duchess what’s going on out here.”
Across the courtyard, a couple of the Hellan guards emerged from the shadows with ropes and shovels. The sounds of the bombs falling and exploding echoed across the city.
“More hiding?” Wren took a few steps toward the distant airships. “More of this? More things burning and people screaming?”
Tycho followed her. “I’m afraid so.”
“And all because you have a church and they have a temple?” Wren sighed.
It’s all so stupid. It’s not over gold or food, or even revenge. They’re killing each other over the gods, as though the gods could be made or unmade by a sword or a fire.
Whatever exists in paradise or the nine hells won’t change just because a different person sits on the throne of Constantia.
And meanwhile, people are dying.
Soldiers.
Fishwives.
Children.
She kept walking across the courtyard past the broken columns and burnt timbers and shattered windows. “I have a better idea. Come on.”
They walked together through the ruins of the palace and out into the wide snowy park beyond. She glanced at him, and he smiled at her, and she could tell he wanted to say something, but he didn’t, and she didn’t ask what was on his mind. Eventually they reached the sea wall, which had been teeming with young soldiers and younger marines just a few hours earlier and now were bare and silent. They climbed the iron stairwell in the north watch tower and stepped out onto the platform high above the water and looked out across the channel at the burning homes of Stamballa and the burning homes of Constantia.
They look exactly the same, don’t they?
Wren pushed her glasses up her nose. “We need to make the airships go away. And then make the warships go away.”
Tycho laughed. “Yes, that would be nice.”
“Then I’ll make them go away.” Wren placed her hands on the cold stones of the wall in front of her.
It’s still the middle of the afternoon, still too warm. But Yaga could gather the aether in the daylight, and the valas taught me to pull it from the earth. It should be enough.
“Wait, what are you going to do?” Tycho put his hand on hers. “You said you can only move aether, and souls. You can’t move ships.”
“No, I can’t. But there are people in those ships, aren’t there?” Wren nodded up at the flying behemoths. “Remember how I pushed Omar and the marines across the water, and they pulled their boats with them? Well, this is exactly the same. Only bigger.”
“Wren, you don’t have to do this. In fact, I don’t want you to do this,” Tycho said. “This war has been going on for years, and this siege is just one more battle. There’ll be more. More people will die. It’s the way of things, I guess. But it’s not your responsibility. It’s not your fight. And there’s no need for you to dirty your hands with it.”
“I know it’s not my fight,” she said softly. “It’s my choice. Now get behind me. I don’t want to pull your soul out of your body by accident. You’d die, and I’d be sad. So get down.”
He squeezed her hand and then moved around behind her.
Wren took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and began to spin her soul. It was even easier than the last time, and the shivers quickly gave way to gooseflesh, and then the pulsating waves of heat racing round her body. The silver bracelets on her wrists buzzed and hummed against her skin. She opened her eyes and watched the wisps of aether flying up out of the ground, swirling up through the wall and into the air above her.
I’ll need a lot. More than before. A lot more. Those ships are awfully far away.
She stood very still, enjoying the rippling sensations running up and down her legs and across her breasts and throat and face as her whirlwind of aether grew ever taller around her. And then a very different sort of heat and shiver ran through her hips, and she smiled.
Wren raised her hands and pulled the aether down between her resonating bracelets, pulling the cold mist in, grasping it tightly, and holding it in front of her where she could watch it fly around and around in a blinding sphere of white and silver light.
“Get down, Ty, and stay down.”
She ripped her hands apart, tearing the sphere out into two endlessly long whips of aether that spiraled out and out into the northern sky, reaching across the vast empty air for the airship above the harbor of Constantia.
When the aether whips struck the distant souls of the men and women aboard the ship, Wren felt the aether shudder in her hands, and she began to pull. She pulled, not with her arms, but with her whirling soul, reeling the aether back in toward herself, and dragging the four souls of the airship crew down, down, down toward the black waves of the Bosporus, and with those souls, came the airship itself.
The crew must be crushed against the floor and walls. If I pull too hard, I’ll crush the life from them, but if I take too long, they’ll die all the same, only slower.
The flying machine moved slowly at first, and then faster, gradually gaining speed as it sank down toward the earth, and just as the cabin reached the surface of the water, the edge of the huge balloon touched the edge of a jagged broken wall along the harbor, and the balloon tore open. It ripped apart and quickly began to deform, collapsing in upon itself and dropping the cabin into the water, and Wren released her grip on the souls of the crew and drew her aether back into the sphere between her hands.
“My God,” Tycho whispered.
“Shhh.”
Wren threw her arms out a second time, casting her aether whips across the sea and seized the crews of the other two airships high above Stamballa, and she pulled them down, one with each hand. They came down faster than the first one had, and they came together just above the water, their balloons scraping and rubbing against each other until some bolt or buckle snagged the fabric and tore them open, spilling their gas upward into the sky and dropping the cabins into the sea.
Again Wren gathered the aether back between her hands, and again she felt her hips shudder and her knees wobble as the whirling of her soul set her whole body to tingling.
“Ty?” she said softly. “Show me which are the Turkish warships, and which are the Hellans, and which are the fishing boats.”
“Sure, sure.” Tycho leapt up and moved to the edge of the wall a few paces away, and he began pointing.
