Jean-Claude grabbed a piece of railing that no one else seemed to be using and swallowed hard. The ship nosed to the left, turning away from land, then rolled over some invisible frontier and began to tilt and slide to the right, until Jean-Claude swore it was going to flip over and throw them all to their deaths. He clung to the rail as the ship tried to fall out from under him. Wind buffets sent his feet sliding. Blood flowed from his mouth where he had bitten his tongue.
The St. Marie veered to a course nearly parallel to the sky cliff, angling steadily downward, picking up speed … gliding. The turbulence dissipated. It felt like the ship was tobogganing down a smooth, icy hillside with only the occasional rippling bump. With effort, Jean-Claude unclenched his white-knuckled fingers. “What happened?”
Jerome cupped one hand and twirled his finger over it. “Large masses like skylands produce an aetheric vortex, and the vortex has grooves in it. Poke a hole in the bottom of a bowl full of water and you’ll see what I mean. We’re riding one of those grooves down and toward the center. This one should take us right under des Zephyrs’s light tower. Then we deploy braking sails and pop up like a cork in the harbor. Of course … timing is everything.”
“You are a madman,” Jean-Claude said, and Jerome tipped his tricorn, taking it for the compliment it was.
The St. Marie drew level with the cliff wall, a pockmarked scarp a hundred feet high. Then they passed below the rim where the sinking Solar illuminated the belly of the skyland, a vast downward-pointing cone of rock bristling with an upside-down forest of salt-encrusted, aether-emitting cloud-coral stalactites that kept the skyland aloft.
The last leg of the voyage progressed as safely and quickly as Jerome had promised, but not nearly fast enough for Jean-Claude. Six weeks he had spent on this cursed vessel, racing to the capital and back, to plead with His Majesty on behalf of the wicked, wretched Comtesse des Zephyrs. He would just as soon have pushed the vile woman and her villainous relations off a sky cliff. Alas, what duties le roi commanded, his most loyal, most junior musketeer must perform, and he had said des Zephyrs’s bloodline must not fail.
In truth, Jean-Claude suspected that le roi’s position atop the house of cards that was the Célestial nobility was not nearly as stable as his public demeanor suggested. His most recent war had not been a success, and by its undue protraction it had seriously depleted the empire’s ability to compete for land in the unexpectedly profitable new continent, Craton Riqueza. The kingdom of Aragoth had found a way to traverse the Sargassian Still, that great belt of dead air between the northern and southern sky that had so vexed the navigators of the last century, and they had come back with wondrous tales of a new land, backed up with chests of gold and sacred quondam artifacts. As Aragoth’s fortunes rose, so did l’Empire Céleste’s fall, at least by comparison. Thus, Grand Leon was busy appeasing his nobles, including the execrable des Zephyrs, while he gathered his strength for some new far-reaching scheme. Grand it would be, of that there was no doubt. Le roi had no interest in any prize smaller than a craton.
From his cabin, Jean-Claude collected a large painting of His Imperial Majesty, le Roi de Tonnerre, Leon XIV. The painted face glowered dyspeptically at him, as if to chastise him for his rude handling. Jean-Claude covered it with a sheet and secured it at all points by wrapping both arms around it. Damned ridiculous thing.
When he scrambled from the shore boat onto the solid stone landing at the quay, his legs wobbled from sheer relief. It didn’t matter in the least that skyships were held aloft by precisely the same incomprehensible forces that held up skylands; the skyland didn’t feel like it was going to fall out from under him. He would have dropped to his knees and kissed the stable ground if he hadn’t been met by Pierre, the comte’s chamberlain, a diffident man with a rabbitlike twitch to his lip.
“Jean-Claude, Jean-Claude. Thank the Builder and Savior you’ve come,” Pierre cried, breathless and flushed. “It is the comtesse. It is her time. Even now she awaits only her roi’s blessing.”
“So soon?” Jean-Claude felt as if someone had slugged him in the gut. Even with all his delays in getting here, he ought to be well forward of the mark; the physicians had told him the Comtesse des Zephyrs was not supposed to deliver for another week at least. This was ill news … at least for des Zephyrs.
“She is in considerable distress. Her wails were quite piteous.”
“Haste then. Haste!” The strength of duty surged within Jean-Claude. Clutching the painting, he dashed up the cobbled street and leapt aboard the comte’s carriage, displacing the whip man toward the center of the bench. “Drive, man. Ply that scourge!”
With a snap of his wrist, the whip man sent the coach horses racing. Pierre, not quick enough, chased after them for a few strides, then bent over, coughing in the dust. Jean-Claude’s heart thundered in time to the horses’ hooves. If only his honor would allow him to fail his sworn mission, this could be the end of des Zephyrs’s line. Le roi’s long-standing decree that Sanguinaire ladies must personally attend him at the hour of their delivery or else have their whelps denied names and decreed bastards was just another link in the endless chain by which he bound the nobility to his will. Normally, gravid dames were forced to travel to his palace to give birth, an inconvenience that kept most ladies of childbearing years from ever leaving Rocher Royale and required their husbands to visit them often.
Ah, but the Comtesse des Zephyrs had already miscarried so many times, and this pregnancy had been so terribly complicated … and so Jean-Claude had been dispatched to plead the comtesse’s case to le roi. Would he deign to spare his dear aunt’s bloodline, or would des Zephyrs be allowed to perish? Alas for Jean-Claude’s eloquent tongue and His Majesty’s good sense, for he had sent his portrait as surrogate, his idea of a compromise, so the vile family might linger into another generation … if Jean-Claude was on time.
Scattering peasants, townsfolk, goats, and chickens, the carriage raced through the town of Windfall and thundered out the hinterland gate, past the queue of carts waiting for nightfall to bring their goods inside the walls.
Ahead, des Zephyrs’s estate stood atop a massive acropolis. At its foot stood the Pit of Stains, a half-round theater in the ancient Aetegian style, carved out of solid rock. Jean-Claude’s heart tightened as the coach approached that venue. In other cities, amphitheaters were full of life, used to enact plays and celebrate festivals, but the Pit of Stains was desolate, barren save for a pattern of reddish discolorations scattered about like fallen maple leaves, the lingering traces of the Comte and Comtesse des Zephyrs’s cruelty.