Wind Raker - Book IV of The Order of the Air (24 page)

Willi turned away from the window, waving for Jerry to join him, and Alma said quickly, “I’ll definitely keep that in mind, Jerry, thanks.”

He nodded back — he had always been good about taking her at her word — and hauled himself back to the window.

Alma took the controls for the circles over Kaneohe Bay, listening to the chatter on the intercom. As far as she could tell, however, neither Jerry nor Willi spotted anything particularly interesting, and she turned the controls back to Mitch as they turned back west for the run up the channel to Diamond Head and went to check on everyone. Jerry had returned to the chart table, and Willi was peering out the opposite window, searching for Koko Head and Maunalua Bay. Lewis had left the radio and was looking out the other window, though he turned his head as soon as she entered the compartment.

“Take a look at this.”

She had to guess at the words, but the gesture was unmistakable. She came to join him, stooping to peer out the side window. There was a ship below them, in the center of the channel — a warship, a big one, with what looked like two tall masts and two funnels belching smoke. Lewis’s hands twitched, as though he was plotting a dive, his face for an instant keen and sharp and hungry. She could see it, too: the Catalina was designed as a bomber, though it was low and slow to take on something that size. She couldn’t really see the antiaircraft guns, but she knew they had to be there —

She shook herself, hard, looked at Lewis. “One of ours?”

He shook his head, the sharpness fading from his gaze. “Look at the pennant.”

It was scarlet, streaming out from the ship’s stern, a white circle marked in black flickering in and out of vision. A white circle with a swastika, she amended, and crossed the compartment to take Willi’s arm.

“Dr. Radke. Would you take a look at this, please?”

“Yes, of course —“ He stopped abruptly as Lewis moved aside for him and he was able to see out the window, his brows drawing down into a frown. At the chart table, Jerry looked up sharply, but Alma ignored him.

“You know her,” Lewis said.

Willi gave him an unhappy glance. “I — think so? I believe she is the training ship, the light cruiser
Emden
.”

“What’s she doing here?” Alma asked.

“She’s a training ship,” Willi said again. He shrugged. “She goes around the world so cadets can get experience.”

Alma made herself relax. There was no reason to be concerned, nothing out of the ordinary — there was no reason the German Navy couldn’t send its cadets to visit Hawaii, showing the flag across the Pacific just the way the American Navy did. Still, there was something about it that raised the hackles on the back of her neck, and she touched Lewis’s arm for reassurance. “I’m heading back up front,” she said, and he nodded.

The return flight was uneventful, just a hint of a headwind as they came around the top of the island to slow them down. Alma let Mitch take the landing, though her fingers itched for the controls — not that she didn’t trust him, but she was really starting to love the feel of the big plane, the rigorous and elegant ballet that was the crew’s teamwork, everything turning over like clockwork under her direction. Mitch needed the practice as much as she did, though, and their eventual report needed his perspective; she settled herself to match his rhythm, quicker and tighter than her own. They passed the
Emden
again, slowing as it entered the harbor, and then the most recently arrived Matson liner snugged tight to her pier, and Mitch put the Cat down as gently as he’d put Merilee to bed.

They taxied to their mooring, and Alma sent Mitch and Lewis back with Jerry and Willi, keeping Lily with her to talk to Finch’s head mechanic, Bert McCormack, who had come out with the launch.

“The engines still don’t want to run when we have it set Auto Lean,” she said, standing with him and Lily and a couple of the Hawaiian mechanics in the engineer’s compartment. “I figure either there’s something wrong with the choke or there’s something wrong with the indicators, but I need it fixed.”

“Maybe it’s the engines,” McCormack said. “Maybe they just don’t run good lean.”

“I’ve been flying Republic engines for the last fifteen years,” Alma said. “This would be the first one that was a fuel hog. It’s always the same. We set to Auto Lean, and the engines start to cough. I’m thinking it’s the choke settings, or maybe a control linkage.”

“We’ve been over the delivery systems three times already,” one of the mechanics protested. McCormack acted as though he didn’t hear, and Alma’s eyes narrowed.

“Then we’ll do it a fourth time,” she said briskly. “I’ll come up with you.”

She spent the next two hours on the Catalina’s wing, examining first the choke mechanisms and then the floats and finally every inch of the linkage. The starboard choke was stiff at first touch, but then moved normally; everything else seemed completely normal, and she climbed down, pretending not to see one of the Hawaiians nudging his friend as Lily slid down behind her.

“Replace both the chokes,” she said at last, and let one of the men ferry her and Lily ashore.

It was a quarter to four, and Lewis wouldn’t be back to collect her until four-thirty: she’d timed it right, she thought, and gave Lily a smile. “Let’s grab something to drink — Lewis and I can give you a ride home, too, if you’d like. I don’t suppose you know a place around here?”

“There’s a diner around the corner,” Lily answered, after only the slightest of hesitations, and Alma nodded.

“Sounds perfect. Let’s go.”

The diner was small and nearly empty at this hour, between the lunch rush and the men stopping for dinner after work, the overhead fans working hard to stir the air. The single waitress — a tall middle-aged Hawaiian woman with a plain blue dress and an orchid tucked into her pinned-up hair — took their order without blinking, as though wind-blown white women in greasy slacks showed up every day. And maybe they did, Alma thought, draining her first glass of iced tea. She might be doing Honolulu an injustice. The waitress brought a second glass without comment, and their dishes of ice cream, then retreated behind the counter with a magazine. Perfect, Alma thought again, and took a bite of her ice cream. It tasted funny, and Lily gave a lopsided smile.

“They make it with condensed milk here. I should have warned you.”

“It’s just different,” Alma said. And that was all it was, just a bit more coarse-grained and a stronger taste of vanilla. “I wanted to have a private word with you.”

Lily flinched. “I’m doing everything I can. I know I screwed up — bad — that first flight, but I thought everything’s been fine since then.”

“It’s not just that,” Alma said.

“Look, if it’s the men —“ Lily shook her head. “I’m trying not to give them a reason to talk, but it’s really not my fault. There’s no such thing as a jinx.”

“Oh?” Alma lifted her eyebrows and saw the color drain from Lily’s face.

“Surely you don’t believe in that sort of thing, Mrs. Segura.” Lily’s voice wavered in spite of the brave words.

“I’ve seen stranger,” Alma said. “Look, Lily, I’m going to be straight with you. You told a friend of mine that you were under a curse. I want to know the details.”

“I —“ Lily stopped, shaking her head again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” Alma took a breath. “I’m a Builder of the Temple.”

For a moment, she thought she’d gotten it wrong, and then Lily’s face crumbled. “Brotherhood of the Golden Rose. Or at least I was.”

“Tell me about this curse,” Alma said.

Lily took a deep breath, her thin shoulders rising. “It — I made a stupid mistake back in ’20. I was working in Hollywood, doing stunts and bit parts, and I met a man, a writer. He was married but separated; his wife was back east somewhere and he was just waiting for the divorce to go through.” Lily shrugged. “That’s what he told me, anyway. I’m not defending myself, I know better, but — he was older, and very handsome — compelling, maybe that’s the word. Not like a movie star, I had plenty of them, corn-fed beef and just about as interesting, but more — dignified. Like a professor or a banker. A man who was somebody.”

Alma nodded. It was easy to imagine just how appealing that must have been, two years after the War had ended, someone solid and real in the middle of all the Hollywood pretense, and only when it was too late would you see that it was just another act.

“A picture I was supposed to be in fell through,” Lily said. “I’d been counting on it, and that left me pretty close to broke, and he suggested I try to sell a couple of articles to the national magazines. You’re bright enough, he said, you could tell everyone about the romance of flying and about the trials of a young woman alone in Hollywood. I told him it was a great idea, but I wasn’t anybody’s idea of a writer. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Oh, I’ll help you, he said. I’ll ghostwrite it, I do that all the time for famous people, and I won’t even take a share of the fee. It’s just a shame a nice girl like you has to live like this.” She gave a sideways smile. “I guess you can tell where that ended. He came over to my apartment to help me rough out a story, and — well. Things went on from there.”

Alma nodded.

“That was when he told me he was getting a divorce,” Lily said. “So it was all right. I suppose I wanted to believe him. We kept company for most of the summer, but then one of our friends asked me if I was going back East with B — with him, my friend. Of course, I didn’t know anything about it, and when I asked, he told me he was just going back to finalize those last legal questions, but he didn’t have a return ticket. And then I found a letter from his wife — we were pretty much living together then — and it said how happy she was that he’d be home for the birth of their baby after all.”

Alma made a noise in spite of herself. “Sorry. Go on.”

“Yeah, well, you know what happens next.” Lily shrugged. “I told him where to get off, and —“ She shivered, in spite of the heat, looking suddenly smaller against the booth’s cracked padding. “That was when he did it. When he cursed me.”

Alma took a long breath, feeling Lily’s dread reach across the table. She couldn’t give in to fear, that was not the way to face the problem, and she made herself focus on the practical problems. “What exactly was the curse? No, wait — was he a member of your Lodge?”

“Not exactly. He was a visitor — he had Lodge ties with our Magister. A shared initiation, I think? His practice was — you could tell he was from a different tradition from us, even though he was pretty good at fitting in.”

“What was his name?” Alma kept her voice gentle, but Lily blanched and shook her head.

“I can’t! That was part of it —“

“What do you mean?” Alma asked, though she thought she knew.

“If I told, if I blamed him, it would just rebound on me and make everything worse.” Lily closed her eyes. “It did, too.”

“All right,” Alma said. “Just tell me about the curse itself.”

“He said everything I touched would turn in my hand, would turn to ash and gall.” Lily’s voice took on a sing-song note, as though she was reciting lines in school, as though the words were burned into her soul. “I was nothing without him — he had made me, and I’d be nothing without him. My strength and my cleverness were nothing to his power. Bad luck would be my only companion, and I would destroy everything I loved.”

Alma winced in sympathy. Even without power behind it, those were heavy words, a frightening specter to carry. Pilots needed luck — no matter how good you were, there were times when you just needed to know that things could break your way, and if you’d lost that confidence, you’d lost half yourself. For her ex-lover to attack her there — it was no wonder Lily was so shaken. Especially when she believed there was real power behind it. “What did your Magister do about it?”

“I didn’t tell him. Not at first.” Lily wound her fingers together, unable to meet Alma’s eyes. “I couldn’t! He was B — my friend’s friend, the one who brought him into the group, and if I said anything —“

She stopped abruptly, her face flaming. Alma nodded. She could see perfectly clearly how it would have looked from outside, the jilted mistress making accusations once she found out her lover had lied about his marriage. It had happened before, people accusing each other of manipulative magic when what was really going on was a messy breakup, and on top of that there were always a few people in every Lodge who were happy to sling accusations to get their way. She’d seen both when their Lodge split after the War, and it was one reason they’d kept the group small. But this… If it felt this different fifteen years later, then at the time the problem should have been obvious.

“Finally I had to tell him — it was obvious something was wrong,” Lily said. “The Magister agreed to try to help me, but it didn’t work, and the rest of them hadn’t believed me to start with. I dropped out of the Lodge. Tried to pretend it didn’t happen. Of course, that didn’t do me a damn bit of good. After the crash, I went back, but the Lodge had split, and I didn’t know anybody. So I’ve just kept running.” She took a deep breath, but her voice wobbled anyway. “And if you have any sense at all, Mrs. Segura, you’ll fire me right now, because I’ve just opened you up to his power.”

Alma reached across the table to pat her hand. “Not yet, and maybe not ever. So. Let’s look at this Lodge-ically.”

To her relief, Lily gave a watery smile at the pun, dreadful as it was.

“Tell me everything you know about your ex and whatever tradition you think he came from. Let’s see if we can figure out a way to deal with this.”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Lily said.

Unfortunately, Alma thought, as they walked back toward Finch’s hangar, that wasn’t a great deal. Lily’s Mystery Man was able to work within the Golden Dawn’s traditions, but wasn’t entirely part of that; he’d been middle-aged then, a dapper, good-looking man who claimed to have secrets that he wasn’t allowed to reveal. Lily was sure his power was real, and enormous; Alma reserved judgment.

Lewis was waiting with the rented car, but Lily declined the offer of a ride. She was meeting some friends in town, she said, but Alma suspected she just wanted to get away. And that was all right: Alma wanted a break herself, and she leaned back in the passenger seat as Lewis began the long drive out of town. She’d been so lucky. She’d found Gil, and magic, and Gil had been brave enough to show her his full self, the man who loved Jerry as well as her. But that was Gil, always ready to go for broke, and he generally got what he wanted. She loved Jerry, too — differently from Gil, though there had been those few times when all three of them had shared a bed, so she couldn’t pretend that wasn’t there as well. They had grieved together when Gil died, and he had been glad for her when she found Lewis. Just as she was glad he’d found Willi, whether for the summer or however long he chose.