The Iron Thorn - Caitlin Kittredge [41]
Captain Harry punched his fist into the bulkhead. A dent blossomed. “Merde. You see anything, boy?”
Dean shook his head. “We were outside. I was showing Miss Aoife the ship when we found it. She’s never flown.”
Harry turned his ruby goggles on me and I focused on the zigzag scar across his chin instead. “What about you, mademoiselle? You eyeball any black rat bastards taking steel to my ship?” His bellow made everyone, including Dean, flinch.
“No, sir,” I whispered, not able to even look at his face.
“You got enemies, girl?” Harry demanded. “You got a reason to go aliénée on my poor Belle?”
My cheeks heated to boiling as his accusations crept too close to truth. “No, sir! I didn’t do this.”
After a long stare, Captain Harry snorted. “Aye. Get back to the hold and stay put,” he ordered. “You too, Harrison.”
I marched in lockstep with Dean back to the benches, relief warring with worry for a spot in my head. Alouette watched us through the sliver of open hatch to the cockpit, her fingers moving over the controls with their own will. Altitude and windspeed tilted and righted, and my insides with them. But the Belle couldn’t land at night without a ping from the radio tower in Arkham, could she? Couldn’t call for help. We’d had our eyes put out. In daytime, an airship could fly without a radio, but at night in the wind … I shuddered.
Cal tugged on my sleeve. “What’s going on?”
“Someone destroyed the aethervox,” I murmured. “Dean said it was sabotage.”
“Well, it wasn’t me or Alouette,” he said. “She was right here talking with me about the city life until you two started hollering for the captain.”
“I didn’t say your precious Alouette had anything to do with this,” I growled. Cal darted a glance at Dean and then leaned in so that only I could hear.
“Are we in danger, Aoife?”
We were. I had the same certainty I got when I knew Professor Swan was springing a surprise quiz. “We’re fugitives from the Proctors, Cal,” I said aloud. “What do you think?”
At that moment, Jean-Marc and Captain Harry stepped into the hold and I stood again. Jean-Marc held the recorder drum between his palms. Small clusters of nail taps paraded over the surface, the groupings in Mr. Morse’s code spelled out for posterity in the paper-thin brass. If we went down, someone would know what happened.
Jean-Marc’s spider-fingers caressed the drum like a blind man searches for meaning on the surfaces of the world. “I got the last transmission, Capitaine.”
Captain Harry’s lips tightened until they nearly disappeared. “Tell me.”
“ ‘Fugitives on board. Bearing north-northwest, destination Arkham. Send reinforcements.’ ” Jean-Marc held the drum out to Harry. “Sent after we flew this night, boss. Someone on board, still on board.”
I shot a look at Cal, but he was rapt, his eyes on the captain. He didn’t seem to share my alarm.
Captain Harry’s massive hands changed to fists, so tight that his leather airman’s gloves popped their hand-stitched seams. “Thrice-damned Proctors. Voxed from my ship.”
Dean stood up. “Are the Proctors wise to this flight?”
I had the same question. If the Proctors knew where we were going, I might as well give myself up now. They’d be waiting when we landed in Arkham, and I’d be going somewhere that the Academy threatened us with when we got out of line.
It didn’t seem real.
“Harry,” Dean snapped. “Answer me—Proctors, or no?”
Before Captain Harry could respond, a sound reverberated from the cockpit—the sound of a body striking glass. Alouette let out a shriek and her nails left a constellation of half-moons in the oxblood hide of her chair.
We turned to the cockpit as one and met the glaring gaze of a raven, its mangled gears and brass-boned wings spread across a cobweb of broken glass.
Beyond it, in the wind-tossed night sky, a dozen more sets of eyes sprang to life. I stared, unable for a moment to move, as if my heart and blood had turned to glass.
“Ravens!” Jean-Marc squeaked. “Boss—”
“It ain’t the ravens we got to worry about.” Captain