Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [127]
Jack waited patiently as I unlocked his chains and the locks. The wooden stocks split in half and tumbled to the ground, with a dull and splintering sound and the ship’s wings were beating violently, like those of a panicked butterfly.
Aunt Eugenia joined us. “What did I miss?” she asked. “The Englishmen and that terrible Nightingale woman have the ship—did you mean to do that?”
“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry. Aunt Genia, you remember Jack? Jack Bartram? We saw him at the opera house.”
Jack stood in the snow, rubbing his wrists with an absent expression. I was starting to worry that he was damaged somehow, hurt beyond repair.
“Jack,” I whispered.
His eyes snapped open, and he smiled at Eugenia. “It is a pleasure,” he said, and shook the hand she offered.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bartram,” she replied. “I suppose we can get acquainted on the train since Sasha and Chiang Tse gave away the airship.”
“Yes, they gave the airship . . . ” Jack’s voice drifted off and his eyes turned toward the ship, its wings unfurled, shuddering in anticipation of flight. It seemed alive now, breathing, almost the legendary creature itself come to life . . . I felt an acute pang of regret for letting Nightingale’s unclean hands touch such magic.
“Well, we’d best all get to the platform so the next train will stop for us.” Eugenia started striding across the desolate field, barely troughed by all the human movement to and fro. She seemed remarkably indifferent to the snow that was undoubtedly starting to melt in her shoes.
“Wait, Countess Menshova,” Chiang Tse called. “There’s still someone joining us.”
“But—” Aunt Eugenia never got a chance to finish her thought as the roaring of the airship grew deafening, and its wings, shrouded in the sparkling veil of snow, flapped faster as it rose higher and higher into the air.
And then Jack leapt.
Eugenia and Chiang Tse, and even the Taipings who had all seen Kuan Yu in action, gasped—even though Kuan Yu’s fighting was impressive, he could never leap so high. We watched Jack float up into the air, as high as the tallest tree in the forest, as high as the beating wings of the airship. He was vengeance personified, and already his gnarled blue fingers stretched, reaching, ready to tear the delicate wings of the ship and to pluck it out of the sky, like a cat leaping for an unsuspecting sparrow.
“Jack!” It was my own voice splitting the air, dry and strained like tearing of raw silk.
Impossibly, Jack stopped in the air—the momentum that carried him toward the airship ceased and he hovered there for a part of a second, a black gangly puppet against the light sky—just inches away from the ship—and then gravity took hold of him and he fell back to the trampled snow where the rest of our small group huddled close together, as the dragon airship glared golden in the sky, and the train whistled from far away.
“Wait,” Chiang Tse repeated, this time looking directly at Jack. “No sense in killing yourself in a pointless task.”
Jack, crouched down with the force of his landing, looked up, and straightened, slow and deliberate. “Pointless?”
“Jack, I think Chiang Tse means that Kuan Yu is flying the ship.”
“He seems to be doing a fine job,” Aunt Eugenia said.
“Kuan Yu? Our friend from the train?” Jack asked, confused. “I knew he was no ordinary fur trader, but surely he is not an engineer?”
“He isn’t.” I knew my satisfied expression befuddled Jack all the more, but I just could not contain my desire to tease him a little—after all, he did sent me on a chase after him.
The ship was now a mere gold coin against the sky, gaining distance. I strained my eyes until I saw a black speck, so small that I was not entirely sure I had seen it, detach from the ship and fall toward the Earth. “Look!” I called to Chaing Tse, pointing at the falling dot.
He smiled. “It is rare to find an ally who knows what you need him to do without ever asking. I would be a liar if I said I was not pleased with his admirable abilities.”
Despite the distance, as the speck approached the ground, I could see it was shaped like