Pinion (58 page)

She looked around for Paolina. The monk had reached the girl, and was speaking to her urgently. Heedless of the bullets, Childress raced toward them.

“. . . and Mr. Kitchens has gone to kill the Queen,” the girl said, almost sobbing. “We must go now, before they destroy him utterly.”

“Go where!?” Childress demanded.

“To fetch Boaz! He has been struck down. I fear he is dying.” Her eyes were red, and mad with tears.

“Lead,” she told the girl.

Paolina raced back through a ruined room that had recently been both burned and flooded. Childress followed, the monk hot on her heels.

Bodies were scattered in the corridor beyond, which was drenched in seawater. Boaz gleamed supine to their left. The rest seemed to be British.

“Are you two here alone?” Childress shouted, following them.

Sliding to her knees next to Boaz, Paolina looked up at the librarian. “No. I am with Gashansunu, who helped me find my way back from the Southern Earth, and Mr. Kitchens and all those sailors. But
he
is dying.”

She tried to lift Boaz’ head, but he was so much inert metal. The monk leaned over and flipped the heavy Brass body. He crashed onto his back. His eyes flickered open. The irises flexed, while something crackled from inside him, as if he meant to speak. His face was bullet-punctured. So was his chest.

One hand twitched. The three of them stared in shocked silence as
his fingers dragged across his belly to touch a spot. A little panel popped open.

Boaz’ eyes flickered. “Take it,” he whispered, his voice a groan of distressed metal.”

“No,” Paolina said, pressing the panel shut again. She didn’t
care
what he had in there. “We are removing you to safety.”

A blast echoed from outside, shaking dust from the ceiling.

Safety didn’t seem to be an option anymore, Childress realized.

“I will help you,” the monk said. “There is only one place you can be safe, foreign girl.”

Paolina looked at the woman desperately. “Where? What? How?”

The monk’s voice was urgent, rushed. “The Jade Abbot will guide you and protect you. He watches and guides the world, as he once did for the boy Hethor. His temple is full of automatons and machines; he can repair your metal man. That is the work of his hands when his spirit is in need of rest. You will not be pursued there. Atop the Wall, his defense is mighty.”

“Wait,” Childress began to protest, then stopped. She was not sure she should speak now—the choices in this moment were not hers, the power not hers. As for the Jade Abbot, his name had protected her in Valetta. Maybe he could protect these people now.

With a glance at Childress, Paolina turned back to the monk. “Where do we go? How do I know to believe you?”

“You do not know. You have no reason to trust.” The monk shrugged, and for a moment, all the irony fled from her voice. “All you have now is hope.”

“Would you go with me?” It took Childress a moment to realize that the girl had meant
her
.

“No,” the librarian said gently, certainty flooding her own thoughts. “I must stay here and die with Captain Leung and Chief al-Wazir.”

“No one has to die,” Paolina argued.

“They already have.” Childress shook her head. “Whatever errand your friends are about has stirred this place to anger. There is a dead servant in that outer room, dead sailors in this hallway. Your Boaz . . .”

“If I depart, you will die.”

“We will be killed whether or not you go. Whatever army defends this place cannot allow us even the success of living out this day. We have invaded someone’s heart.”

“This is Blenheim Palace,” Paolina told them. “In the midst of England. Mr. Kitchens came here to help the Queen die.” She turned to the monk.
“Show me where you would go. I will send you and Boaz, that your abbot might see to him. I will follow when I may.”

“I cannot do that,” the monk said, her voice very unhappy. “I must return with you.”

“I shall not ever come if you do not do this for me now. He is more precious to me than even my own life.”

“How do you know where to send me?”

“Can you tell me somehow?” Paolina sounded desperate.

“I can open my thoughts to you, in a way that most cannot. You can see the place, send me, and follow when your time is right.” The monk bowed her chin and began to pray. Childress watched Paolina work her little device, setting one of four hands as she muttered to herself. Gunfire cracked outside, and another explosion, but the girl kept on. Childress wondered how soon they would be interrupted from one side or the other.

Then Paolina glanced up again. “I have it.”

She bent to kiss Boaz, clutched her stemwinder close, and sent both the monk and the metal man away with a pop of air.

“Now what?” asked Childress.

“We locate Kitchens,” Paolina said. “We help him finish his business, and we find a way out of this for all of you. Then I will go to this Jade Abbot. We will place my stemwinder among his automatons as just another decoration in his temple. I shall never use this power again once that has happened, for its burden is too great for any one person.”

“You would be free from both Northern Earth and Southern Earth atop the Wall,” Childress observed.

“I was born of
a Murado
; it is fitting I should die there.”

They walked down the hall. “A moment,” Childress said at the doors. She stepped through to pass into the garden and call the men of her broken-backed ship to her.

He crouched among unfamiliar bushes, surrounded by sailors. What had just happened to them? No one around him seemed terribly surprised, but Wang was shocked beyond measure. One moment they were in the harbor at Valetta, the next they were falling out of the sky . . . where?

No wonder the Silent Order feared this Mask Childress so.

“Can you shoot?” Someone shoved a short rifle in the cataloger’s hands.

“No,” he whispered. It was something to do, though. He pointed the gun at the rooftops and tried to pull the trigger.

Where
were
they?

“We have died and gone to Hell,” said the sailor who’d just handed him the rifle, as if Wang had spoken aloud.

“Is Hell full of Englishmen?” asked another. “In any case, I have not yet seen the Judges of the Dead. Have you?”

“Here,” someone shouted at Wang. A hand reached out to shoot home the bolt on his rifle.

Maybe it
was
Hell.

Al-Wazir, unseen to Wang, roared about death and Scotsmen. Then the Mask Childress walked into the garden. She seemed to glow, and stood tall as if apart from the battle.

Probably not Hell, then, he realized.

“With me,” she called in Chinese. “We have our purpose, and must follow the girl Paolina one last time.”

A man with captain’s tabs on his uniform looked up from behind a chunk of hull. The traitor Leung! Wang had not realized he was so close. “Purpose?” the captain shouted. “You destroyed my ship for a purpose?”

“I did nothing,” Childress said calmly. Two bullets sprayed dirt at her feet, then were answered by a hail of Chinese gunfire. When those echoes died away, she added, “If you wish to live, you will come with me.”

Leung called out, “You heard the Mask!”

The call to fall back echoed around the garden. Another Beiyang officer slid down a rope from
Five Lucky Winds
, wires trailing from behind him. “Scuttling charges ready, sir!” he shouted. “I have warheads from the torpedoes hooked in as well.”

“Everyone after the Mask,” Leung said. “Including you, Sun-Wei. I shall slay my own ship.”

The sailors raced for shelter, heedless of the fire from the rooftops. Some returned covering fire, and two of their men fell to be dragged along, but in moments the garden was empty except for Wang and Leung.

“You should have gone with them,” Leung said sadly.

Wang saw the grief in the captain’s eyes. That woke him to the truth of the moment. What would Childress say to this man? He tried his best: “Why? So you could die alone with your ship?”

“
Five Lucky Winds
is already dead. This is her funeral to carry her into the next world.” He slid something on a little box, grabbed Wang’s arm, and rushed the two of them indoors. They passed a ruined room, into a ruined hallway, and followed the echo of running feet until the explosion
behind them rocked the building so hard that both men tumbled to the floor.

“I never want to see a firecracker again in my life,” Wang moaned.

“I will never command the sea again.” Leung picked them both up, and they followed the sounds of the panicked crew.

. . . of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.          
—Acts 23:6

He opened his eyes.

His head was blessedly silent.

A high ceiling above, dark blue painted with gold and red. Phoenixes?

Vision was curiously strained and flat. Only one eye seemed to be functioning.

A face loomed. For a moment, Boaz thought he was among Chen’s sailors again, along the Abyssinian coast, but this was a much older man than any of those warriors. He seemed far too calm as well.

There had been fighting.

Boaz tried to lift his hand, but it would not come.

“You have been in a very bad way, my metal friend,” the man said in Adamic.

“No monkey alive speaks that tongue,” Boaz whispered.

“I am no monkey; I am a man.” A wrinkled smile. “And I have been alive a very, very long time. You would be amazed at what you learn if you stay around.”

“I am Brass,” he replied, this time in Hebrew. “We live on from the days of the first Brass.”

“You are Brass no more.” The old man followed his change of language, then touched Boaz’ forehead, marking the spot where al-Wazir and Paolina had laid their chrism.

Paolina
!

His rescuer continued. “You are something more. Just as the world is now becoming something more than it has been all these divided years of Creation.”

“If I am more, then why can I not move?”

A sad smile. “Because I repaired your processor first. There is a dangerous beast in your belly.”

“The Sixth Seal of Solomon.”

The old man seemed surprised. “Ancient of days?”

“From a cave in Abyssinia.” Boaz reflected for a moment. “Sealed there by a Kohanim of King Solomon’s reign.”

“Such times those were.”

Boaz asked the paramount question. “Where is Paolina?”

The old man’s face wrinkled into a delighted smile. “The girl with the gleam. I am afraid that I am neither all-seeing nor all-knowing, so I cannot say.”

“Where am
I
?”

“A question from the musings of every thinking being down the ages of Creation.” He leaned close. “In this case, you are in the Jade Temple atop the Wall.”

A woman loomed into Boaz’ vision. After taking a long look at him, she said in Chinese, “Your Holiness, I would go back, but I lack the means.” Boaz understood her well enough.

“As would I,” Boaz urged. He willed his body into motion, but he had been reduced to a talking head. “I need to return to Paolina.”

“All will resolve,” the old man replied in Hebrew. “You are going nowhere, my metal friend.”

The woman gave him another long look, switching to Hebrew. “You saved them all, I believe. You stopped the British long enough for help to arrive.”

Disjointed recent memory stirred. “No,” Boaz said slowly. “The Seal did. I was . . . gone . . . from my head. I had been wounded too gravely. It picked me up and carried me forward those last minutes.”

The old man laid a gentle hand on Boaz’ forehead again. “Then perhaps it has served its purpose in this matter. Perhaps you have served yours.”

Gashansunu had led them in a broken-backed gait down one hall and up a grand corridor. When she stepped around a corner, a storm of gunfire brought her down.