Volka steps aside. Two thickset men in Kolkashtani wraps join him at the doorway. There’s a very faint pop as Volka’s Butterfly’s Bell dissolves. The two men walk to Shara and Vohannes, violently thrust both of them onto the ground, and tightly bind their hands. Shara is still too sluggish to resist much, and Vohannes is obviously quite injured.
“Oh, Volka?” Shara asks as she is hauled to her feet. “In regards to your previous comments about me. … You do know the original Continentals were almost as brown as any Saypuri? The Continentals today are fairer simply because the climate’s changed, and you no longer get as much sun. So while you may admire fairness yourself, it is not, I suppose one could say, a godly trait. But you would have known that, if you read any Divinity’s texts besides Kolkan’s. He preferred not to mention flesh at all, let alone skin tone.”
Volka attempts a regal pose. “Shallies speak nothing but lies,” he whispers, and walks away.
*
Captain Mivsk Ashkovsky of the good ship Mornvieva stares through the green lenses of his goggles and into the wild riot of the dawn. Clouds cling to the horizon like newspaper headlines. Down below—miles below, possibly, Mivsk isn’t sure—the gray, dark countryside of the Continent speeds by.
Mivsk rummages in his jumper pocket, takes out his pocket watch, and does some estimations. “Two hours!” he bellows over the raging winds. “Two hours until the coast!”
The crew cheers. All of them are wrapped in thick thermal clothing, all of them wear goggles and masks, and all of them are tied to the deck of the Mornvieva by stout cables; Jakoby already fell victim to a sharp starboard wind and went tumbling off the side, only to be hauled back on deck by his comrades, swearing and spitting and purple in the face.
Two hours, thinks Mivsk. Two hours until he finds out what the good ship Mornvieva—and its twenty-three souls, six cannons, and three hundred six-inch shells—can really do, besides fly very fast in a straight line very high above the ground. He was not even sure it would get off the ground, for the experiments with the Carpet of Kolkan had not always gone well: on their first effort they used only one thread of it, and when Volka’s priest read the rites to activate it, the thread rose up so fast the priest was unprepared and lost much of his face. “The miraculous,” Volka observed as the man shrieked, “requires great caution.” It took months to create the design to stabilize the threads—in the case of Mornvieva, five threads, each lifting eight hundred tons—and months after that to acquire the steel the designs required. And all that time, Mivsk—though he was, he felt, quite faithful—had never quite believed it would work.
But now here they are, higher than the highest building in Ahanashtan, hurtling through the atmosphere, pulled along by sword-like sails and giant wings.
Forget not, he reminds himself, that you have a mission, and a duty. We fly not for your glory, Mivsk Ashkovsky, nor for the crew’s, but for the glory of Father Kolkan. And secretly Mivsk cannot wait to see what Kolkan will think of the destruction the cannons will wreak upon the wretched Saypuris, who, for once, will be outmatched. To imagine reducing the great, monstrous shipyards of Ghaladesh to flaming rubble … It makes his heart sing.
Mivsk goes belowdecks for what must be the seventh time to review the cannonry. No Continental has ever possessed firepower on such a level, and seeing the giant, massive cannons and their huge shells, longer and thicker than Mivsk’s forearm, gives him a sense of power he has never felt before. It is all mechanized, as well: one needs only pull a lever to fire any cannon.
Mivsk checks the three port cannons: Saint Kivrey, Saint Oshko, Saint Vasily, all in fine shape. Then he checks the three starboard cannons: Saint Shovska, Saint Ghovros, and then Saint—
Mivsk stops before Saint Toshkey. There is a tall man in a ripped Kolkashtani wrap leaning against the cannon, staring out the gunport toward where the good ships Usina and Ukma, the starboard portion of their small armada, cut through the clouds.
Captain Mivsk stares at him, bewildered. “Who … ? Who … ?”
“I have never sailed upon a ship of the air,” the man remarks. “Many things I have sailed upon, but never a ship of the air.”
Mivsk wants to ask him why he is not wearing his goggles, why he is not in uniform, why he does not have on his safety cable; but all these questions are absurd, for Mivsk knows there is no one in his crew of this size … right?
The man looks at Mivsk; one eye in his Kolkashtani wrap is dark. “Does it sail,” he asks, “like a regular ship?”
“Well …” Mivsk looks behind him, wondering how to deal with this bizarre occurrence. “Why aren’t you abovedeck, sailor? Why aren’t you cabled to the mast? You could fall off i—”
“And the cannons? Could they also function as air-to-air cannons?”
“I … Why?”
“I believe so. Yes. Yes, I thought so.” The man tilts is head and thinks aloud: “Six cannons onboard, and five other ships … One shot a ship … Then this should be no trouble.” He nods. “Thank you. That is very good to know.”