“What?” Damien asked, and the captain prompted, “Go on.”
She glanced back at their own midship section, where two slender columns would serve to vent the turbine’s smoke high above the deck. Only two columns. Slender. She gazed out at the alien ship, whose four thick columns seemed to dominate the entire deck. Was that fear in her eyes, or envy? “I’d guess that it’s more than a backup,” she said at last. “In fact, judging by the design . . . I’d guess that sailpower is secondary.”
“Gods’v Earth,” the captain murmured. “A true steamship? She’s under sail now, sure enough—”
“The wind’s with her,” Rasya supplied. “But I’d venture a guess she doesn’t slow down when it turns. Wouldn’t have to.”
“Gunpowder over water,” Damien murmured. “Dependable engines. Mechanized travel.” Tasting the words. Testing the concepts.
“It’s like a different world,” Rasya agreed.
“A world your people hoped to create—eh, Reverend?” The captain’s eyes, narrowed against the sun, were fixed on him. Tell me these are your people, they seemed to beg. Tell me you know how to talk to them.
“I don’t know,” Damien whispered. Afraid to commit himself. Was it possible that in this isolated community the Church had finally achieved its goals, albeit on a limited scale? Or could their enemy fake those signs as well? “I just don’t know.”
“We’re going to have to talk to them,” Rasya said quietly. “On their terms, I’d say.”
The captain nodded. “No doubt about that.” With effort he looked away from the distant ship, and back at her. “How long ago were our signals standardized? Will they know our flags if they see ’em?”
“Not if they’re from the first two expeditions. Too early.” Her eyes were narrowed in thought as she fought to recall the fine points of naval history. “When did the third group set sail? Fifth century?”
“536,” Damien supplied.
“Might, then. I think it was all regulated by then. And, of course, Jansen’s expedition—”
Her words were drowned out in the roar of an explosion. Damien tensed instinctively, felt himself reach for his sword—and then cursed himself for a damned fool, and a senseless one at that. What the hell was he going to fight? They couldn’t even run for cover here, much less fend off cannonballs with their swords. That foreign ship could chew them up and spit them out without pausing to reset its sails. But he saw Rasya tense and glance back, as if wondering how quickly her own sails might be let down again. Not quick enough, he thought grimly. He braced himself for impact—and possibly death—as yet another explosion pounded from the foreign vessel. Never had he felt so utterly helpless.
A third, then. A fourth. A fifth. All perfectly timed, flawlessly executed. It reminded Damien of a nightmare Tarrant had once designed for him, of a world on which the fae didn’t function. There, firearms were reliable. There they might be timed, and fired, with just such terrible precision . . .
Silence lay heavy in the air, thick with the smell of fear. Smoke curled upward from the holes in the foreign ship’s side, wrapping about the masts like a pennant. Damien waited, tense, for the impact that was sure to come. Iron on water, or—God forbid—iron on wood, the splintering sound of the hull giving way as all their plans were nullified in an instant . . . but there was nothing. Nothing. He waited, breath held, praying silently. Nothing happened. The distant smoke coiled like serpents, then dispersed. There was no other sign. No other sound.
He looked at the captain—and saw a visage so transformed by fear that he hardly recognized it. Was this the man he’d met in Faraday, whose record bore witness to a fierce, indestructible courage? Was this the indomitable master of the wild seas, who had saved two ships from a smasher and killed a dockwraith barehanded, and God only knew what other exploits? Afraid?
And then he looked deep into the captain’s eyes and saw something else there, too. Something more unnerving than mere fear. Something more powerful than terror.
Awe.
“Not a beat missed,” he whispered. “Gods, can you imagine? If we tried to set off half a dozen guns like that—half a dozen anything—can you imagine?” He shook his head slowly. “All five gone off right, and in perfect time . . .” His voice was trembling. “Is it possible, Reverend? That men could do a thing like that?”
“We believe so,” he said. Choosing his words with care. He glanced back at Rasya, who seemed equally stunned. In the distance he could hear other sounds, coming from where the passengers stood. Whispers. Moans. Prayers. They knew enough of how Erna worked to recognize those five shots for what they were: a statement of utter control, indisputable power. If cannonballs had struck the deck, it could not have inspired more fear than this. “The Church believes that such things would become possible, if enough souls devoted themselves to our cause.” Had that happened here? Had enough prayers, enough religious devotions, finally fulfilled the Prophet’s vision? Was the fae and its constructs no threat to these people? It was almost too much to hope for. The mere thought made his head spin.
Careful, Damien, careful. You don’t know anything yet.
“Talk to them,” the captain told Rasya. “Tell them we come in peace.” She slipped away to see to it. After a moment, high overhead, signal flags blazed from the top of the mizzenmast. Red and black, precisely wielded. Damien watched the configurations for a moment, then—when they began to repeat—fixed his eyes on the distant ship once more. And held his breath, waiting for a response.
There was none.
“Someone’s going to have to go over there,” the captain said at last. “Face-to-face. It’s the only way.”
“Dangerous as hell,” Damien muttered.
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
Silence. Then: “All right,” Damien said. “I stand the best chance of speaking their language. Signal them I’m coming over.”
“They probably don’t understand—”
“Or they do, and they’re keeping their silence. Tell them anyway.” He looked down at his clothes, which seemed ten times as dirty as when he’d put them on. “I’ll need a few minutes to change, and . . . to prepare.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Hell you are.”
“It’s my ship, dammit.”
“Which is why you need to stay. If anything happens to me—”
“Then we’re all dead men anyway, Reverend, and it might as well be there as here. Now the way I figure it, I’ve got nothing to lose by going, right? And maybe—just maybe—these paranoid bastards’ll soften up a bit when they see that we’ve put ourselves wholly in their power. As if we aren’t anyway, no matter what we do.” When Damien said nothing, he pressed, “Make sense?”
“Yeah,” he said at last. And something cold deep inside him loosened its stranglehold on his heart at the thought that the captain would be coming. “Rasya and Tor won’t like it, you know.”
“That’s why they take orders and I give ’em.”
He nodded meaningfully toward the distant ship. “There are worse things than death, you know.”
“Trying to scare me won’t work, Reverend.” A faint smile creased the sun-dried lips. “I’m already as scared as I’m going to get today. Anything else?”
He looked at the man’s scarred face, and wondered if all those marks were from simple barroom fights. Rumor said no. “All right,” he said at last. “You’ve got guts, Captain, I’ll give you that.”
“Men with guts live hard and die young.” He managed a smile, not totally without humor. “Let’s hope it’s the former in this case, eh, Reverend? I’ll see to the ship. You go get dressed for company.”