The Doomsday Vault

Chapter Two

Gavin Ennock let the last long note slide from his fiddle and fade away. He lifted the bow from the strings and cocked a bright blue eye at Old Graf, whose own eyes were obscured by heavy brass lookout goggles.

“Ah, that puts heart into a man.” Old Graf sighed. His magnified gaze, however, never left the cloud-flecked sky ahead of them. A thin wind blew at their backs, not quite able to penetrate the pale, supple leather of the jackets and trousers they both wore. Overhead, the ever-present bulge of the airship’s gas envelope blotted out the sun, though in a few hours, the sun would sink behind them, and the decks would grow uncomfortably warm. The netting that hung from the envelope creaked in a familiar rhythm, and the ship swayed beneath it. A faint vibration from the engine propellers came up through the soles of Gavin’s boots. Far below, the Atlantic Ocean lay calm and flat and blue.

Gavin inhaled the sea air. His hair, a pale blond bleached nearly white by the sun, fluttered against his forehead like feathers. Gavin’s face had lost its boyish roundness and acquired the more squared look of a man, but he was a little short for his seventeen years and had no hint of facial hair, two facts the airmen teased him about mercilessly. Old Graf never did, which was one of the reasons Gavin had come up to the lookout post at the front of the airship.

A seagull coasted past with a thin cry that started on an E-flat and descended to a gravelly A. Gavin echoed the bird’s call on his fiddle, matching the pitches exactly. The gull cocked a beady eye at him, then dived away.

“‘Blind Mary’?” Old Graf said.

“How is that a song for a man on lookout duty?” Gavin countered with a grin.

Old Graf continued to scan the air ahead of them. They were on the forecastle, the foremost section of the ship. An airship like the USS Juniper didn’t have a crow’s nest-the cigar-shaped envelope precluded one-which meant the lookout had to be as far forward as possible.

“It’s a taste of home,” Old Graf said.

Gavin set bow to strings and played. “Blind Mary” was an old Irish song, one of hundreds he’d picked up as a kid in Boston. In his head, he saw an old woman feeling her way along a country lane, and he let his fingers slide along the strings, playing her sadness and age. Gavin heard every note perfectly in his head. Each note, each chord, each song had its own unique sound, and it seemed impossible to him that anyone couldn’t tell them apart. A and A-sharp were as different as red and blue.

Gavin let himself play with the melody the second time through, wandering with it as if Mary had lost her way, stumbling, frightened, but finding her place again at the last second. Yet, in the end, the song still left her blind and alone. Behind them on the main deck, some of the airmen paused in their work to listen until the song ended. Old Graf fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and blew his nose.

“How is it that a seventeen-year-old cabin boy plays like an immortal angel?” he blurted out, then flushed slightly and coughed.

“It helps to have a fine listener.” Gavin clapped him on the shoulder. “My gramps gave me the fiddle, but he said the music is a gift from God. And Captain Naismith says I’ll be a full airman soon enough.”

Old Graf’s weathered face went pale. “Dear Lord.”

“My being an airman isn’t such bad news, is it?”

“Gliders. Straight for us.” Old Graf flicked the lenses of his goggles up and reached for the alarm bell. Gavin grabbed the spare lookout helmet from the rack, jammed it on his own head, and looked through the lenses as Old Graf yanked the cord. Bells sounded all throughout the Juniper. Through the helmet lenses, Gavin saw ominous birdlike shapes zipping toward the airship he’d been calling home since he was twelve. They were painted blue and white to better hide in the sky, and part of Gavin was impressed that Old Graf had seen them even as the rest of him tightened with fear and dread. He counted eight, and there were probably more that he couldn’t see.

“What’s out there, Graf?”demanded Captain Naismith’s voice through the speaking tube at Old Graf’s elbow.

“Pirate gliders, Captain,” Old Graf yelled back, flipping his lenses back down. “I mark at least a dozen.”

“Which means probably twice that. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Can you see the main cruiser?”

“Not-yes! Welsh privateer, probably with a letter of marque.” He squinted through the lenses. “Gondolier class. Semirigid.”

“All hands prepare for battle!”boomed the captain. “Drop ballast compression and take us up to fifteen hundred feet. We have two dozen gliders coming in. They’ll try to get over the netting to attack the decks, so I want everyone who can swing a sword or fire an air pistol up in the ropes! Mr. Thomas, prepare to jettison the cargo. Master Ennock, get your ass down to the gondola, and I mean now!”

“Better hurry, boy,” Old Graf said as Gavin pulled the helmet off. “He won’t appreciate it if you’re slow.”

Gavin shoved his fiddle into its case and ran for it. He skittered down the ladder to the main deck, which swarmed with activity. Airmen boiled out of the hatchways, rushing to ready the ship for battle. Ports flipped open along the hull, exposing flechette and harpoon guns. Men in white and gray leather manned the pumps that forced ballast air out of certain ballonets inside the Juniper’s envelope and inflated other ballonets with more hydrogen, allowing the ship to rise. Other men swarmed into the netting, climbing toward the envelope with compressed air pistols and cutlasses of tempered glass-only a fool used gunpowder or sparking steel near several tons of explosive hydrogen.

Gavin ran to the center of the deck and slid down the rails of another ladder polished by years of use, pausing only to drop his fiddle off in the crew quarters, where he stuffed it under a blanket and prayed no pirate would find it. Then he ran back to the ladder.

The Juniper was an American ship of American design. A web of wrist-thick ropes hung from an enormous, cigar-shaped envelope of gas and cradled what looked like a sailing ship with the masts removed. Fastened to the bottom of the ship and looking a bit like a glass bubble with a wooden bottom was the navigation gondola, where Pilot and the captain spent most of their time. Gavin dropped past two decks and out the bottom of the ship into the gondola.

The floor was solid wood, but the sides of the gondola were made of glass to give a good view in all directions, and now Gavin could see the gliders skimming ominously toward the Juniper. Speaking tubes sprouted from every cranny, and pigeonholes held rolled-up charts and instruments. Captain Naismith stood at the helm, his fingers white on the wheel spokes and his plain features tense. His dark blue captain’s coat with its gold buttons and epaulets rustled not at all, and his hair remained hidden beneath his cap. Captain Naismith was a young man, not yet thirty, and he dealt with the grumblings of the much older men put under his command by expecting strict discipline from everyone, including himself.

Beside him stood Pilot. Gavin had never learned his name-the pilot of an airship was always just called Pilot. He was perhaps forty, with a shock of wheat blond hair. At the moment, he was bent over a tableful of charts, his sextant clutched in one hand.

“Sir,” Gavin said.

“Master Ennock,” Captain Naismith said, “you were thirteen years old the last time we were attacked by privateers.”

“Fourteen, sir. Two days after my birthday.”

He waved this aside. “You wanted to fight, but I ordered you to hide in the cargo hold.”

Gavin nodded. That had been a dreadful day. He remembered crouching among the crates and barrels with the rats, hearing thumps and screams and other noises he couldn’t identify. Part of him wanted to help, and part of him was glad for the captain’s order. The Juniper’s crew had managed to beat the pirates off and escape, but there had still been blood to scrub off the deck afterward, and Gavin had accidentally stepped on a severed hand that rolled beneath his boot. Only Old Graf had seen him throw up over the side.

“Only full airmen carry weapons,” Captain Naismith continued, “but today we have special circumstances. Old Graf’s been teaching you, hasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir.” Gavin’s heart was pounding now.

“Take what you need from the arms master and get up in the netting. Defend my ship, Master Ennock. She’s only a merchant vessel, but she’s all we have.”

“Sir!” And Gavin rushed up the ladder. He found the arms master belowdecks, and the man handed him a tempered glass cutlass and a heavy brass pistol that fired glass flechettes using compressed air. On the main deck, Gavin could see the gliders were less than a hundred yards away, and in the distance coasted the ominous shape of a pirate airship, emerging from the clouds like a killer whale rising from an ocean trench. Although the Juniper was gaining altitude, leaving the ocean far below, the pirate ship was matching them. The gliders drew nearer. Each held a pirate suspended beneath a wide wing of oiled silk on a light frame painted blue. A bottle of compressed air fizzled behind each one, propelling it forward. The bottle didn’t have enough propulsion in it for a return trip. It wasn’t meant to.

“Fire!” shouted First Mate Lightman.

A hiss snaked through the air, followed by a pop. Four of the side guns spat a barrage of deadly metal darts. Two of the gliders evaporated in a cloud of blood and silk. The wing on one of the others was clipped, and it spiraled out of sight, the pirate’s shouts of terror thinning away as it went. Gavin grabbed some of the heavy netting, climbing upward and outward, nimble as a monkey.

The netting comprised heavy rope tied in foot-wide squares that slanted outward like a giant V, with the narrow ship in the bottom and the wide envelope at the top. Halfway up the netting were gaps and wooden platforms that allowed the airmen to work on both sides of the netting as needed, and these were the gliders’ targets-the pirates could slip through the gaps, drop down the inside, and land on the deck to attack the crew.

“Fire!” The big guns hissed once more below.

Gavin skittered farther up the slanted ropes. Here he felt at home, with nothing but free-flowing air rushing above and below him. He felt every creak and sway of the ship as if the ropes were his own tendons, the envelope his lungs, the deck his body. He loved this place, this ship. And now the Juniper was under attack.

He was out of the envelope’s shadow, and the sun glared down from a clear sky while the damp wind pushed steadily from his left. He reached one of the gaps and perched on the heavy horizontal rope at the top. On the outer hull below whirled the propellers on their engine nacelles, and farther below that, blue ocean filled the horizon. Other airmen were taking up positions in other gaps and on various platforms, while the gliders closed in.

A guy rope was tied to the netting. Gavin flicked it free but lost his grip on it. Another hand snatched the rope before the wind could swing it away. Airman Tom Danforth grinned at Gavin through a great deal of dark hair, and his brown eyes sparkled with excitement as he tossed the guy rope to Gavin. The captain had promoted Tom from cabin boy to airman only a few months ago on his eighteenth birthday, but his and Gavin’s friendship had survived the change in rank. Gavin sometimes envied seagoing cabin boys, who often became full sailors long before they turned eighteen, but the feeling never lasted long-he couldn’t imagine being stranded on Earth forever, an eternal prisoner of gravity.

“Ready for this?” Tom asked.

Gavin tried to wet his lips but had no spit. “Ready as I can be. You scared?”

“Yep.” He gave a nervous smile. “But I’m not going to let them take our ship.”

As if on cue, the flock of gliders rushed silently upward past the gunwale, out of range of the big guns and toward the netting gaps. Still clinging to the netting with one hand, Tom drew his pistol and fired down at them, but the shot went wide. An airman a few yards away-Stanley Barefield-fired more carefully, and one of the pirates went limp. His glider yawed and veered away. The Juniper continued to rise, which meant the gliders appeared to be dropping toward the gunwale. The gliders needed enough altitude to gain the gaps in the netting and land on the deck before their air bottles gave out.

Gavin drew his pistol, fired, and missed. The ship’s guns spoke one more time, but Gavin doubted they did any good. More than two dozen gliders were swarming like wasps around the Juniper now, and the enormous bulk of the privateer airship was less than half a mile away. Its design was similar to the Juniper’s, but its envelope was thinner, built more for speed, and painted blue to blend in with the sky. It was also larger than the Juniper, and no doubt better armed. Air pistols hissed, and glass flechettes zipped through the air. When the pirate ship got close enough, she would send a full force of fighting men to overwhelm the crew and capture the Juniper entirely. Gavin swallowed.

“We’re in trouble,” he said.

“I know.” Tom’s face was pale. “But we can win this.”

A glider whipped close to Tom and Gavin. Tom brought his pistol around, but before he could shoot, the pirate fired his own weapon. The shot caught Tom in the forehead, and Gavin saw the shiny flechette exit the back of his friend’s skull in a burst of blood that spattered across the netting. Tom didn’t make a sound. He simply fell away from the netting and vanished into the blue void below.

Gavin heard a terrible scream and only vaguely realized it was coming from his own throat. He didn’t remember dropping his pistol or drawing his cutlass, but he leapt from the netting and his blade swept a gleaming arc. He had a tiny moment of closeness, when he came eye to eye with the bearded pirate. He smelled fish on the other man’s breath and heard him swear in Welsh. Then Gavin’s cutlass took the man’s pistol arm off at the elbow. The pirate howled in pain and veered away in a scarlet spray. The guy rope Gavin had grabbed earlier swung him back toward the ship, but another glider was already speeding toward him. Gavin tightened his gut and bent himself upward into a tight ball just in time to let a barrage of flechettes pass beneath him. His arm, the one holding the rope, burned, and his shoulder felt ready to come apart. He slammed into the netting and managed to get his feet into it, release the rope, and grab the netting without losing his cutlass. He sheathed the blade and climbed, trying not to think of Tom’s spattered blood or ruined head.

Although the airmen had managed to fend off a few, most of the pirate gliders had dived through the gaps and down toward the main deck. Cursing the loss of his pistol, Gavin flipped over the top of the netting, grabbed another guy rope, and slid down as fast as he could. All around him, the rest of the crew followed suit, sliding down ropes like pale spiders to defend the decks.

The pirates disengaged from their gliders. They wore mismatched, ill-fit clothes, and a few were barefoot. Most were unshaven. All were armed with glass cutlasses and air pistols. And the huge dark bulk of the pirate airship was barely two hundred yards off the starboard bow, not quite within firing range. The airship had also taken altitude, remaining level with the Juniper.

Gavin landed near a group of airmen that included Old Graf, and suddenly he was very busy. The world dissolved into a whirlwind of glittering glass blades, hissing air, screams, blood, and severed limbs. He became aware that he was standing beside a group of grim-faced airmen. The deck was overrun with pirates and discarded gliders. Bodies lay everywhere-some still living; some dead. And less than forty yards away loomed the bulging blue shape of the Welsh airship. Gavin could hear her propeller engines buzzing over the sounds of combat around him. His arms were growing tired, and he was panting now. He swung at the pirate in front of him. The man laughed and ducked.

“You’re a fine, pretty lad,” the pirate shouted in a Welsh accent. “I’ll teach you some tricks with my blade.”

There was a heavy thud, and a crash shook the Juniper. Everyone stopped fighting for a moment. The pirate ship had fired an enormous barbed harpoon. The tree-sized spear had penetrated the Juniper’s hull, drawing with it a hawser at least a foot in diameter. A faint cheer went up from the pirate ship. The two vessels were now joined like beads on a string.

The fight started again, but something had shifted. The Juniper’s airmen were losing. Gavin saw Captain Naismith standing at the gunwale, a foot-long crossbow in his grip. A yellow flicker danced in his hands, and Gavin’s stomach went cold at the sight of a small open flame, the absolute bane of every airship in existence. The captain lit the end of his crossbow bolt and raised it, but no crossbow that small had the range to reach the pirate ship. A nauseating horror swept Gavin as he realized that the captain was aiming not at the pirate ship, but at the Juniper’s own envelope.

The distraction allowed the pirate to swat Gavin’s cutlass. Pain stung Gavin’s hand, and the glass blade spun away, distorting light as it went. Gavin jumped back in time to avoid the pirate’s second swing, then fled. The airmen who fought beside him, caught in fights of their own, barely had time to give him a glance.

“Come back, love!” the pirate yelled. “You need to dance for me!”

Gavin all but flew across the deck to Captain Naismith. Already he could imagine the blazing bolt piercing the envelope, ripping into the ballonets of hydrogen to create a fireball that would incinerate the ship and drop the charred remains into the ocean. The detail was sharp-Gavin could see Naismith’s finger tense around the trigger. Heart pounding from both exertion and terror, Gavin lunged and grabbed Naismith’s arm.

“Captain!” he shouted. “No!”

“Let go my arm, Master Ennock,” he said through gritted teeth. “They won’t take my ship.”

“We can’t get revenge if we’re dead,” Gavin said.

A dull clanking noise vibrated the deck beneath Gavin’s boots. The pirates were operating a winch that pulled the two ships closer together. Fear fought with pale determination in Naismith’s expression.

“It’s ransom or slavery for us, Master Ennock,” he said. “I can’t condemn my men to such a life.” He wrenched his arm free and raised the crossbow again. The dreadful little flame flickered like a demon.

Gavin hesitated, uncertain. It would be so easy to let him. Naismith was the captain, and Gavin was duty-bound to follow his orders, orders that would destroy Tom’s killer. But Gavin wasn’t ready to die, and burning to death was the secret horror of every airman.

In that moment of hesitation, Naismith’s finger tightened on the trigger. Then he made a small sound and collapsed face-forward to the deck. The crossbow fell also, the bolt extinguished. An enormous scarlet stain spread across the back of the captain’s blue coat. Behind him stood the pirate Gavin had just been fighting, air pistol still in his hand. He holstered the weapon.

“Looks like I reloaded just in time, love,” he said with a grin. “Got me a captain.”

Hot rage overcame Gavin. He snarled and flung himself at the pirate. The pirate’s eyes widened in surprise, but only for a moment. His fist lashed out and caught Gavin squarely in the face. Pain exploded through his head, and he went down to the hard deck.

Gavin awoke to pain. Someone was dabbing at his cheek with a cloth. He opened his eyes and sat up. Light hurt his eyes and sitting up made him dizzy, so he shut his eyes and put his hands to his head. He shivered with cold.

“You’re all right, son.” It was Old Graf’s voice. “Bump on the head, some bruises. You’ll survive.”

Gavin risked opening his eyes again. He was sitting on the deck in the same place he had fallen. For a moment it looked as if everything had returned to normal. Airmen in white moved about the deck and climbed in the netting. Then he saw the stacks of dead bodies, the pools of blood, the gashes in the wood. The two ships were still tethered together, though now they were both moving off, continuing the Juniper’s original eastern course. The airmen weren’t the crew Gavin knew. They were the pirates. Gavin’s own leathers were gone. He wore nothing but undergarments and chilly skin. Old Graf himself wore a ragged shirt and torn trousers.

“What-?” Gavin said.

“The pirates took our good white leathers for themselves,” he said. “Keep your voice down. You don’t want to call attention to yourself. Here.” He gave Gavin a dirty brown shirt, a pair of loose trousers, and an old pair of shoes. Gavin quickly pulled them on, though they did little to blunt the ever-present wind. The pain in his head continued to throb, and he was thirsty.

“A third of the crew dead, and Captain Naismith,” Old Graf said, unprompted. “Captain Keene-the pirate captain-put some of the ‘dangerous’ survivors off the ship in life balloons already so we wouldn’t try to raise a mutiny.” He handed Gavin a canteen, and Gavin gulped down stale water. “The rest of us are expected to help run the ship until we get to London.”

“London?” Gavin echoed stupidly. “We’re supposed to go to Madrid. I was going to see the castle.”

“Tell that to Captain Keene,” Old Graf growled. “When we get to London, he’s going to sell the cargo and hold us and the Juniper for ransom to the shipping company.”

Outrage cleared Gavin’s head a little. “That’s illegal! We’re not at war with England! That’s-”

“Part of his letter of marque. Keene’s been charged with keeping the airways safe for British ships, and we fired on him first.”

“No, we didn’t!” Gavin said hotly.

“Shush!” Old Graf made a sharp gesture. “Who do you think a British court will believe, son? Just be glad you didn’t get tossed over in a life balloon.”

“Why wasn’t I?” Gavin asked bitterly. “I’m just a cabin boy. The company won’t pay a ransom for me, and my family doesn’t have any money.”

“He spoke for you.” Old Graf jerked his head toward one of the pirates, who was wearing stolen airman leathers and inspecting the hydrogen extractor on deck not far away. “Name’s Madoc Blue. Said he was going to teach you to dance or something.”

Gavin’s gut knotted. Madoc Blue was the pirate who had killed Captain Naismith. As if Gavin’s thought caught Blue’s attention, the pirate turned and met Gavin’s eye. He winked broadly and went back to what he was doing. Gavin fought to keep his face impassive. He had a pretty good idea of what Blue had in mind for him, and the thought made him want to throw up.

“So what do we do?” Gavin whispered.

“We run the ship,” Old Graf said. “And when we get to London, we sit in whatever cell these bastards lock us in and hope the company pays our ransom.”

Three days passed. Gavin fell into a stupor. His body mechanically went through his normal daily tasks under the watchful eye of armed pirates, but his mind was filled with a blessed fog. He scrubbed decks and sewed seams and spliced rope and ran messages for the new captain, all without truly thinking about what he did. At night, he slept fitfully in his hammock, dreaming of his family back in Boston. Sometimes he saw Tom plummeting into an abyss, but he wore Gavin’s own face. Then the pirate first mate would be shouting them awake, and a new day of captive work began. At least Madoc Blue kept his distance. Bernie Yost, the Juniper’s hydrogen man, had been killed in the original raid, and Captain Keene had given the job to Blue. Even the most tightly sewn ballonets leaked a little, and without continual replacement, the ship would eventually sink to the ground-or into the ocean. An efficient hydrogen extractor was therefore key to the survival of any working airship, and the job of hydrogen man carried the same status as ship’s carpenter or pilot. The job also took up a lot of time, which meant Blue was too busy to pay Gavin any heed.

At the end of the fourth day, Captain Keene, a red-faced man built like a brick, assembled the captive airmen and his pirates on the Juniper’s deck and announced a celebration for his crew. The pirates cheered. The airmen, less enthusiastic, were to be locked in the brig so the pirates could enjoy themselves without keeping an eye on their captives.

“And who plays this?” Keene demanded of the assembled airmen. Gavin’s entire body jerked. Keene was holding Gavin’s fiddle. Gavin hadn’t even looked at it since the raid. One of the pirates must have found its hiding place. “Come on now-we’ll need music, and one of you American turds can provide some, right?”

Gavin didn’t move. The thought of playing for cavorting murderers turned his stomach greasy and sour. He could feel the other airmen carefully not looking in his direction, but he himself couldn’t take his eyes off his beloved fiddle. Keene’s hand was pressing the strings into the neck, his fingers leaving oily prints on the red-brown wood. Gavin felt violated, as if Keene had laid hands on his soul.

“No one?” Keene said. “Too bad. It must belong to one of the men we killed or put off the ship. No point in keeping it.” He turned and drew his arm back to throw the fiddle overboard.

“Wait!” Gavin said.

Keene paused and turned back.

“It’s mine,” Gavin said miserably. “I’ll play.”

Keene handed Gavin the fiddle and ruffled his hair like an uncle greeting a favorite nephew, even though Gavin was nearly eighteen. “That’s a good lad. Do you sing, too?”

Gavin thought about lying, then decided he didn’t want to know what would happen if the truth came out. “A little,” he hedged.

“Then what are you waiting for, boys?” Keene boomed. “Lock up these miserable bastards and have a party!”

An enormous cheer went up. Gavin watched while his compatriots, including Old Graf, were herded belowdecks to the brig. The crew members were already looking haggard and thinner than just a few days ago. Gavin tried not to shiver in his ragged clothes, and not for the first time he wondered which of the pirates had originally worn them. The sun was setting behind the tethered ships, and the engines continued their implacable rumble as the propellers whirled unceasingly. Somewhere below lay Tom’s body, food for sharks and other sea creatures. Gavin glanced at the envelope overhead. If he hadn’t stopped Naismith, none of this would be happening right now. He wouldn’t be sad, wouldn’t be upset, wouldn’t be thinking at all.

The pirates rolled out several casks of rum and lit the blue-green phosphor lamps that hung about the ship to provide flame-free light amidships. A heavy arm dropped around Gavin’s shoulders. He tried to twist, but the arm held him.

“Looking forward to hearing you,” said Madoc Blue. “Maybe tonight I’ll teach you how to dance.”

And then he was gone. Gavin’s hands shook so hard, he could barely tune up. Someone brought a crate for Gavin to stand on. He forced himself to remain steady, set bow to strings, and play.

Once the melody began, things became easier. It felt good to use his talents again, and he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed his music. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was playing for his family back in Boston. They had two dark rooms in the slums, and both were filled with comings and goings. Ma was always at the stove, trying to stretch what Gavin’s four brothers and sisters brought home, or at the kitchen table madly basting shirts for the tailor up the street. Gramps sat in the corner, trying to watch Gavin’s younger siblings with his failing eyesight. The place was never quiet, except when Gavin played fiddle in the evenings. He played in the dark because they couldn’t afford lamp oil or gas jets. He played away their hunger, the cold Boston weather, and their fear of bill collectors. But when Gavin turned twelve, Gramps had taken him down to the airfields outside Boston, where a dozen giant airships stood tethered to their towers like clouds staked to the ground, and introduced him to Captain Felix Naismith. The next day, he’d sailed off as a cabin boy.

It had started as a job, a way to send money home to his family. But after a few weeks in the air, Gavin found himself unwilling to touch the ground. The Juniper quickly became his home, the sky his backyard, the clouds his city. When he worked, he helped send the ship across Infinite. When he played, he sent songs into the blue and white like a sacrifice. Now, both work and music served a different master.

The pirates, including the captain, laughed and danced and drank all around Gavin’s crate while the sky darkened and the lamps shed their familiar eerie glow over the gunwales, turning his pale hair green. He closed his eyes so he could play in the dark. Music rippled off his fiddle and vanished into blackness. The pirates called out songs for him, and he played “Highland Mary,” “The Irish Washerwoman,” and “Sheebeg, Sheemore.”

“Play ‘Londonderry Air,’ ” shouted one pirate.

“That’s a sissy song, Stone,” yelled another. “We don’t want to hear that.”

“I’ll show you a sissy song,” Stone yelled back, holding up his fists. “Two of ’em.”

Quickly, Gavin played the requested song, a slow, sad piece. He put everything he had into it, echoes of green Irish hills floating in fog, sad cemeteries with tilted gravestones, and stone cottages warmed by peat fires. The belligerence died away. The pirates fell silent. When the music ended, Stone wiped his nose on his stolen leather sleeve and acted as if he weren’t also wiping his eyes.

“Nice,” he coughed. “Very nice.” And the other pirates cheered.

“Sing for us, boy!” “Sing a song!” “A dancing song!”

“Sing us,” called out a too-familiar voice, “‘Tom of Bedlam.’ ”

Gavin’s head jerked around. Madoc Blue was staring up at him, thumbs hooked in his belt near his glass-bladed knife. A lump formed in Gavin’s throat. Had Blue learned Tom’s name and chosen that song on purpose? It might have been coincidence-“Tom of Bedlam” was the unofficial anthem for all airmen, and it wasn’t an unusual request.

“Go on, pretty lad,” Blue said. “You can’t tell me you don’t know it. Lie to me, and I’ll tie one of those fiddle strings around your balls until they turn… blue.”

The pirates roared with laughter. Gavin swallowed the lump in his throat and firmed his jaw. He wouldn’t give Blue any satisfaction. He set bow to strings and sang.

For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam, ten thousand miles I’d travel.

Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes for to save her shoes from gravel.

And still I’d sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys, bedlam boys are bonny,

For they all go bare, and they live by the air, and they want no drink nor money.

The pirates stomped and drummed on the deck for the last two lines-the chorus was the reason the song was popular among airmen. Want, in this case, meant lack, and the idea that airmen were more than a little insane but also naked, drunk, and rich held great appeal. The song had endless verses, and Gavin settled in to sing them all, his voice pounding at the men like a weapon, letting his anger and fear come pouring out. The men clapped and sang along, oblivious. Blue, however, simply stared at Gavin, his thumbs still hooked in his knife belt. Without thinking, Gavin sang the verse:

I slept not since the Conquest. Till then I never waked,

Till the naked boy of love where I lay me found and stripped me naked.

Every pirate burst out into raucous laughs and cheers. Blue smirked and gave Gavin a pointed look. Gavin flushed bright red and sang the chorus as if he had no idea what anyone was laughing about, but quickly switched to a different verse.

My staff has murdered giants. My bag a long knife carries

To cut mince pies from grown men’s thighs and feed them to the fairies.

He met Blue’s gaze straight on at the last line. The original words ran children’s thighs. The pirates were drunk enough that they didn’t seem to notice the change, but Blue… Blue nodded slightly and turned away. Message understood. Gavin breathed a mental sigh of relief, sang one more verse, and called for a break. The pirates clapped him on the back and congratulated him on his skill, as if he were one of them, as if they hadn’t killed his best friend, his captain, and a dozen of his compatriots. Gavin forced a smile to his face, pretended to accept their accolades, then slipped away from the men, moving toward the lookout post. Overhead, the envelope blotted out the stars, but they formed a field of shining diamonds in all other directions. Ahead, the pirate airship was outlined in its own blue-green glow. A skeleton crew over there had the misfortune to miss the party. The air was cooler, crisper now that he was away from the press of bodies amidships. Gavin blew out a breath, glad to be apart from them for a moment, however short.

As Gavin passed the man-high bulk of the hydrogen extractor, a figure appeared from the shadows. Before Gavin could react, the figure grabbed Gavin by the shoulders, swung him around, and shoved his back against the extractor. Gavin’s heart lurched, and he barely kept hold of his fiddle.

“Wandering alone, love?” said Madoc Blue, the rum strong on his breath. “I’m ready to teach you how to dance.”

Fresh fear spurted through Gavin’s every vein. His breath came in short gasps and his fingers went cold around the neck of his fiddle. The bow clattered to the deck. Blue pressed his body against Gavin’s, his weight shoving Gavin harder against the extractor’s warm brass wall with his forearm across Gavin’s throat. Blue leaned in, his beard scratchy against Gavin’s face. Gavin choked, barely able to breathe.

“You think I’m stupid and ugly, pretty boy?” Blue growled. “You think I can’t get women? Do you?”

Gavin tried to answer, but he couldn’t get enough breath. His free hand flailed uselessly, looking for something, anything that might help.

“When there aren’t any women on deck,” Blue snarled, “a man’s gotta use whatever he can get his hands on.” He grabbed the string that held Gavin’s trousers up and snapped it with a sharp, one-handed jerk. Gavin tried to yell, but Blue’s forearm prevented him. The lack of air made him dizzy. “Got three or four friends who’ve had their eye on you, love. Once I break you in, I can show you around, collect a little money for your services. What do you think of that, hey?”

And then Gavin’s flailing hand found the hilt of Blue’s knife in his belt. He snatched it out of the holder and slashed downward. Gavin felt warm blood spurt against the thin cloth of his trousers. Blue screamed and instantly let Gavin go. He staggered back, clutching his upper leg. A loose flap of meat the size of Gavin’s hand hung there by a hinge of skin.

“You little shit!” Blue howled. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

He lunged for Gavin, who didn’t even think. He stepped aside and swung the knife again. It plunged up to the hilt into the side of Blue’s neck. Blue’s eyes flew wide-open. He made a terrible choking noise and clawed at the knife hilt with curved fingers, then fell twitching to the deck. The air filled with the stench of blood and bowel as he died.

Gavin didn’t have time to react, or even think. Blue’s screams summoned the rest of the men, who were only a dozen yards away. In an instant, Gavin found himself surrounded by angry pirates. Blood covered his hands and spattered across his face, and he was holding his trousers up with one hand. The other still clutched his fiddle.

“It’s the fiddler boy.” “He killed Blue!” “Cut his balls off!” “Throw him overboard!” “String him up!” “Shit! There’s blood everywhere!” “The captain!” “Make way for the captain!”

Captain Keene, short and stocky, shouldered his way through the crowd. He took in the scene, including Gavin’s torn trousers, with a glance. “What the hell happened?”

“He killed Blue!” someone shouted.

“I’m not asking you, Biggs,” Keene bellowed.

Gavin looked at the men. His mind froze. He couldn’t think. It was all too much. “I–I…,” he stammered.

“Did you kill him?” Keene asked.

“He… attacked me,” Gavin said. It was hard to talk. He wanted all those eyes to go away. “He-he shoved me against the extractor. He said he wanted…”

“Ah,” Keene said with understanding. “Well, you ain’t his first, but it looks like you’re definitely his last.” This got an uneasy chuckle from a few of the pirates. Gavin let himself hope that everything would be all right. Then Keene said, “But you’re a prisoner, boy, and you killed one of my men.” He raised his voice. “Saw his hands off and throw him overboard.”

Shock numbed Gavin. He barely felt the fingers that snatched his fiddle away, barely noticed that he was being hauled toward the crate where he’d been playing merry music only a few minutes earlier. One of the pirates drew his cutlass. It gleamed green in the phosphorescent light. Gavin’s hands were yanked down to the crate and laid across the rough wood, wrist up. The pirate raised the blade.

“Captain!”

The speaker was Stone, the pirate who had requested “Londonderry Air.” The pirate holding the cutlass halted. Keene folded his arms across a broad chest. “You got something to say, Stone?”

“He’s still a boy, Captain,” Stone said. “You called him one yourself. It don’t seem quite right to give him a man’s punishment, sir.” He held up Gavin’s fiddle. “And he plays so nice. Be a shame to lose that because he fought back against the likes of Madoc Blue. Sir.”

The hands holding Gavin down were tight enough to leave bruises, though Gavin didn’t have the strength to struggle. Above him, he could see distorted stars through the pirate’s clear cutlass. Keene looked at Gavin for a long moment, surrounded by silent pirates.

“Fine,” he grumbled at last. “Boy’s punishment. Twenty-four lashes.”

The hands suddenly shifted from holding Gavin down to wrenching him around. His mind spun, unable to take it all in. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Stone still holding his fiddle, another glimpse of two men covering Blue’s body with a piece of gray canvas, and then his wrists were being strapped to the heavy netting. Someone ripped the shirt off his back. Cold night air washed over his skin, and that broke the stupor. He shouted and struggled against the bonds, but they were too tight. The first mate swung his whip around. It slashed the air, hissing like a snake.

And then Stone was beside him, his hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about your fiddle,” he whispered urgently in Gavin’s ear. “I’ll keep it safe.”

He backed away and the first lash tore a red stripe of pain across Gavin’s back.