Page 51 of The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
He folded his arms. “You know, Shaharazad, if you had mentioned that earlier I would have argued a lot less about helping you.”
“Yet further proof”—Ms. Haas swung smugly in her hammock—“should any be required, that it is always best to assume I am right about everything.”
“You are impossible.”
“I prefer the term ‘extraordinary.’”
I was briefly concerned that my companion’s weakness for badinage would delay us yet further on our errand of mercy but, to my great relief, the conversation ended there. Mr. Ngoie lifted his hands and a cascade of coruscating filaments tumbled down from the ceiling to entwine him. He closed his eyes and, by some invisible act of will the secrets of which are, to this day, unknown outside of the Steel Magi, urged the vessel into the sky.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Blackcrest Mountains
The flight northfrom Athra was more comfortable than it had any right to be while still not being, by any stretch of the imagination, at all comfortable. The passage of theClouded Skipperwas remarkably smooth, testament to the unrivalled skill of the Steel Magi. But although we were spared the constant shaking, bumping, and droning of engines that so often accompanies aerial travel I was still, in essence, trapped in a chamber approximately the size of our sitting room with a man wired to a giant butterfly and a woman who, when denied a private space in which to indulge her personal vices, retreated into an almost trancelike state of self-absorption.
Having brought a pistol and a change of clothing but no reading material, I had nothing to occupy my mind for the first leg of the journey save unproductive and unanswerable anxieties about the practicability of our current endeavour. The more I reflected on the logistics of the matter, the more convinced I became that we would reach Vedunia too late to be of assistance. I began to imagine that we would arrive to find Miss Beck a corpse and Miss Viola already transformed into the defiled bride of the Contessa. I voiced these concerns to Ms. Haas.
“Mr. Wyndham.” She sighed. “You astound me. By some miracle you have managed in one breath to be both tedious and melodramatic.Besides, if there is anyone who will take well to becoming the debased and lascivious courtesan of a demonic noblewoman, it’s Eirene.”
With which comment she returned to whatever private reflections I had stirred her from, and I did my best to catch what sleep I could before the sunrise. When I awoke a few hours later I saw through the window that we were approaching the northern edge of the sprawling, thorn-choked forest that covered what had once been Leonysse.
By noon we had reached the foothills of the Blackcrest Mountains and would, if all went well, have passed over them into Lothringar before sundown. Our first indication that all would not, in fact, go well came a few hours later in the form of a sudden, although not wholly unseasonable, darkening of the sky from the northeast. As a consequence of the uncanny smoothness with which theClouded Skippertraversed the skyways it was difficult to be certain when the pilot was making corrections to its course and bearing. But, in this instance, our change of direction was sharp enough to jolt me from my seat and cause Ms. Haas to raise her head blearily.
The metal tendrils that held Mr. Ngoie partially uncoiled, allowing him to drift gently to the ground and turn towards us. His expression was eminently scrutable. “There are pirates coming. I told you there would be pirates coming.”
“And I told you,” said Ms. Haas, bestirring herself from the hammock, “that we would deal with it.”
“And how exactly do you intend to deal with it? TheSkipperis not a warship. Her defences are limited.”
“But mine are not.” Ms. Haas strode to the doorway, producing a silver whistle on a long chain from beneath her suede-and-fleece jacket. “I intend to call forth a winged steed from the shores of distant Aldebaran, ride it out into the tempest, locate the chief miscreant, and shoot him, her, or them in the head, thus dispersing both the storm and the pirates. I shall then return the beast to the stars, before itdecides to exact payment in blood, and we can proceed to Vedunia, where Mr. Wyndham will get to rescue a lady from a vampire.”
I should perhaps take this moment to explain a little more about the nature of the threat we presently faced. Readers will, of course, have heard tell of piracy on the high seas, and many will doubtless have heard also of the sky-pirates of the Blackcrest Mountains, especially since they were made so famous by Ms. Francesca Vandegrift-Osbourne’s celebrated novelTreasure Peak;or, The Mutiny of theAdmiral Newton: An Adventurous Tale for Young Folks, illustrated with woodcarvings by Lady Quinella Thrumpmusket. Although many aspects of that most diverting book have been exaggerated or, indeed, fabricated for the purpose of Ms. Vandegrift-Osbourne’s narrative, several of its more pertinent details are, at least, broadly accurate. The pirates really do operate out of lairs in the Blackcrest Mountains, whence they prey upon passing ships carrying trade between the world’s northerly and southerly powers. The book is also correct in its characterisation of the pirates as travelling primarily by storm, although they will sometimes make use of captured vessels in order to transport goods and cargo. The winds upon which they habitually fly are conjured by a cadre of sorcerer-priests who trace their origins back to the earliest days of the mountain folk, long before the coming of the church.
Much like the highwayman, the gentleman thief, and (in some more recent literary treatments) the vampire, the sky-pirates are often imbued in the popular imagination with a certain romance. It would be convenient to say that this portrayal belies the real cruelty and violence of which they are capable, but this, too, would be an oversimplification. I have, over the course of my adventures, had occasion to interact with the sky-pirates in a variety of different contexts and have found that they, like most people, possess an equal capacity for both good and ill. And while I, of course, condemn the methods by which they sustain themselves, given their circumstances, living in a highand barren place on the fringes of a world that rejects them, it is not clear to me what actions they might reasonably take for their own betterment. Of course, regardless of the complexities that may underpin their lives, my first encounter with the sky-pirates of the Blackcrest Mountains, in which they made a spirited attempt to murder me and everyone I travelled with, did not present them in the most flattering light.
“That,” replied Mr. Ngoie, “is a terrible plan.”
“Too late. I’m doing it.”
Ms. Haas flung open the cabin door, exposing us to a sudden burst of wind that swept several apricots out of their basket, onto the floor, and out into the yawning void beyond. Placing the whistle to her lips, she stepped out also, dropping precipitously from view. While over the years I became increasingly accustomed to Ms. Haas taking such actions, I never quite lost the habit of fearing on every occasion that she had, at last, overreached herself and simply perished. That these fears proved always unfounded may go some way towards explaining why it has taken me so long to accept that my dear friend, the sorceress Shaharazad Haas, is, alas, no more.
I started up and stumbled across the room, bracing myself on a handrail as I scanned the horizon for any sign of either my companion or our enemies. To my considerable relief, it was the former I espied first, astride a strange creature with webbed feet and membranous wings, rising sharply to confront the oncoming storm. The confrontation was swift in coming, for the pirates and the meteorological phenomenon on which they travelled moved quite literally like the wind. There was just time for Mr. Ngoie to become once more enwreathed in the complex harness through which he appeared to control theClouded Skipperand for me to take up a position by the door, my pistol at the ready, and then all was darkness and rain and lightning. It was almost impossible to make out anything in thetumult, just hazy figures swooping and pinwheeling, growing somewhat less hazy as they approached our ship.
At least a dozen of them came at us, descending, and for that matter ascending, from all directions, but three seemed especially intent on breaching the door. Steadying myself as best I could, I fired on them. I wounded two, the shock of injury causing them to lose command of the winds that buoyed them and sending them careening away into the tempest. The last, a wild-haired, calico-clad gentleman, rushed me as the hammer of my firearm clicked on an empty chamber, and only a sideways leap at the last possible second spared me a skewering from his wickedly serrated sabre. Recovering my footing, I cast about for a weapon suitable for close quarters and saw nothing but my walking stick. This I seized, just in time to knock aside a cut the pirate had aimed at my right shoulder. The exchange caused considerable damage to my cane, suggesting that as a long-term strategy for survival I would do well to consider alternatives.
I riposted with a blow to the pirate’s wrist and was returning to a standing position when the floor rocked violently. My assailant was, of course, accustomed to doing battle in storm-tossed skies and, while I had some experience of fighting on shifting terrain, I stumbled, giving him the opening he needed to deliver a savage thrust to my face. I parried the attack hastily but, in so doing, caught my cane on the jagged edge of his blade, causing the two weapons to become momentarily locked. The unexpected break that this event introduced into the rhythm of our duel distracted my opponent for long enough that I was able to dart forward, driving my palm into the back of his extended elbow, twisting his body sharply away from me. I stamped heavily on the back of his exposed knee and brought the top of my cane down on the back of his head, following which the piratical gentleman had just enough wherewithal to drag himself to the door and throw himself again on the mercy of the winds. For his sake, I hope they brought him to a place of safety.
More felicitously, it appeared my assailant had lost his sabre in the tussle. I retrieved it and was thus able to better hold off the next wave of pirates as they descended upon theClouded Skipper. Although I no longer had my pistol, between a blade, a better sense of the style in which the pirates could be expected to fight, and the narrow confines of the doorway, I was able to restrict my enemies’ possible angles of attack, allowing me to defend myself against two opponents at once with reasonable efficacy. Matters were assisted by the inherently opportunistic nature of my opponents. When they had thought the vessel defenceless, they were eager to press their advantage, but, having seen two of their number shot down and a third bested in close battle, they approached now more hesitantly and would retreat in the face of a sharp countercut or stop-thrust.
Their numbers, however, began to prove challenging, as did the increasing instability of the vessel. But these difficulties may yet have proved surmountable had the ship not been struck by lightning and, moments later, ploughed into a mountainside.
My editor suggests that I leave off narration at this point, thereby creating an enticing mystery as to our survival such as might encourage the reader to seek out next month’s edition ofThe Straitmagazine. I am, however, sensible of the effect such suspense may have on persons of a nervous disposition and shall, therefore, elucidate. I had just seen off the most recent of my attackers, who had withdrawn when my riposte drew blood from her wrist, when I noticed that all of the pirates were pulling swiftly away from theClouded Skipper. I felt a strange prickling in the air and the next thing I knew the world around me sheeted white. More learned friends have informed me since that I was very fortunate to be encased entirely within a steel box for, somewhat unintuitively, such places are, in fact, amongst the safest one can be in the event of a lightning strike. At the time, however, I had no such assurances and my sense of impending danger was only exacerbated by the realisation that Mr. Ngoie had lostcontrol of the vessel and that we were, consequently, descending sharply.
The crash that followed was inelegant and painful, but the constructs of the Steel Magi are rightly as famed for their resilience as for their magnificence. Thus, neither Mr. Ngoie nor I perished in the collision.
We remained, however, in mortal peril.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
