Chasing Sunlight

The Endeavor shuddered as shots traded back and forth. Jonathan winced as one glowing missile arced past the bridge windows, fading as it dropped toward the countryside below, but Montgomery ignored the near-miss. Instead, he pored over the enormous map pinned against the wall with the navigator, trying to determine a landing point. Even if they were in an artillery duel with a more heavily armed ship, the real danger was the storm blowing toward them.

Already the engines were laboring to counter the headwinds, the sudden gusts sending the ship canting this way and that. The occasional flash of lightning showed a looming mass of dark cloud boiling toward them as thunder cracked. The dials at the navigator’s console spun wildly back and forth, the triskolabe rattling as it slid against the chain holding it in place.

“Of all the nasty luck,” Montgomery said, running bloodstained fingers through unruly hair. While he hadn’t been hurt himself, some of his men had, and nobody had time to clean themselves off during a crisis. “We can’t afford to get blown off to god-knows-where.”

“I doubt it was luck,” Jonathan said, wiping off his sword-cane with his handkerchief despite it being perfectly clean. “There are at least three methods I am aware of to predict the weather — not that I know how to do them,” he added, at Montgomery’s look. “Our destination was not exactly secret, and anyone familiar with airships could figure out the route to Danby’s Point.”

“Even so, how’d they know how to find us?” Montgomery looked out the window at the other ship, which had abandoned any pretense at stealth. Zint light glowed from within, silhouetting a double row of cannons despite the ship being much smaller than the Endeavor.

“They received a fast courier two days ago, the storm was meant to cover the Endeavor’s disappearance.” Antomine said, walking into the bridge. His white uniform was still spotless, devoid of blood or stain. Jonathan hadn’t seen him since combat began, but he had clearly had no trouble. “None of the ones I questioned knew much, but they’re ex-Navy, privateers that usually stay down south. Someone paid them to go after us, but to find out exactly who you’d need to question the captain.”

“Someone really doesn’t want us to succeed,” Montgomery said gruffly, his face hardening as he looked out at the other vessel.

“It seems not,” Antomine agreed. “May I borrow your cabin, Captain? I have some men to shrive.” At Montgomery’s nod of assent, Antomine turned and left again, sweeping out of the bridge.

“Well, doubt they’ll be able to catch up to us after this storm. ‘Less they follow us down,” Montgomery said, then turned and bellowed at the navigator. “Where the hell are we, Jenkins?”

“Only place we could tie down is Danner’s Grasp,” Jenkins reported, and rattled off a bearing and heading. Montgomery worked the controls and spun the wheel, the ratchet clicking as it gimbaled the engines. The ship shuddered as machinery compressed the envelope, driving the lifting gas into pressurized cannisters and sending stomachs lurching as they began to lose altitude.

Another terribly close bolt of lightning suddenly illuminated the ground for miles around, showing a rugged landscape overgrown with tallshrooms, gorge-bushes, and tanglevines, but off to the south there were low walls and the straight lines of farmland. Two mammoth, six-fingered stone hands were visible for an instant, rising from the ground to grasp at the sky, the remains of some antediluvian monument buried for all time under stone and soil. Human hands had strapped mooring rods to the reaching fingers and put lights upon the empty palms, and the remainder of the town hunkered between the exposed statuary.

It was all only visible for a moment before the light faded, but that was enough to guide the ship. The ship tilted, then righted itself as they shot off to the south. Zint bolts from the enemy ship went wide, thrown by the sudden change, and Endeavor’s engines flared as Montgomery pushed them to their maximum. The enemy ship moved to pursue, but the disciplined fire from Antomine’s guards seemed to have done some damage and it couldn’t maneuver nearly as quickly. With the storm’s heavy winds, they were being blown off-course — fast enough that it wasn’t likely they’d make it to Danner’s Grasp.

Jonathan saw he wasn’t necessary and excused himself from the bridge, while Montgomery ordered his men to cease fire. He walked past the crew cabins, and hesitated briefly where Antomine and the ship’s doctor both attended one of the men who had been shot, but a low voice filled the room and Jonathan hurried on. Despite his personal opinion of Antomine, a man’s last confession was sacred and Jonathan wasn’t going to interfere with idle questions.

He had to brace himself going up the stairs as the ship lurched, either from a sudden downdraft or the impact of incoming fire, and the corpse of the first boarder he’d killed toppled down the stairwell. Jonathan gritted his teeth at the sight and the smell and grabbed the body in passing, hauling it back to the landing. There would be a lot to clean up once they were out of danger.

“Who were they?” Eleanor’s voice came as he was picking up the discarded sheath of his cane. Jonathan straightened and turned around, finding that her dress was scorched and she was spattered with blood, but her eyes were gleaming. “And how come you still look freshly pressed,” she added, waving her hand at his unruffled suit.

“I’m not certain, but it has the same stink as those devices that you found in the zint tanks,” Jonathan said, ignoring the second question as it was hardly relevant. “I would say either the Illuminated King or the Reflected Council, but they both have stakes.”

“Neither the Crown nor the Council are monolithic,” Eleanor said, bracing herself against the wall as ship shuddered and tilted, sending a dropped rifle sliding along the hall until Eleanor stopped it with a foot. “But it is odd. A lot of effort. Almost like they know something we don’t,” she concluded, eyeing Jonathan suspiciously.

“Something I don’t, either,” he said grimly. “I know there’s sunlight. I know how to get to it. But even my father found little about what sunlight was — or what a sun was, for that matter. This interference may be someone who does know, and fears what we might do with it.”

“Oh, I like that idea.” Eleanor grinned suddenly, looking like something primal with the blood drying on her dress. “Anything someone is willing to kill for is worth finding.”

Jonathan pressed his lips together to prevent himself from arguing. She was wrong, but he knew no words of his could dissuade her. While he had long been an expatriate of the Exploration Society, he’d seen enough of their annals to know sometimes it wasn’t worth the cost to uncover what had been buried. Either in money, or in lives.

“We’re tethering at Danner’s Grasp,” he said instead. “I suspect the other ship will not be an issue, given the storm, but if they tether there too we will have to deal with them.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Eleanor said grimly. Jonathan could well believe it. He still had resources of his own, but it was highly unlikely any normal crew could keep Eleanor from stalking them like a specter of death. Though it was unlikely that any successful privateer was entirely normal.

A shrill two-tone warning sounded through the speaking-tube, followed by Captain Montgomery’s voice warning about a sudden tether. Considering how far away the stone hands had been, either they’d caught quite a tailwind or Montgomery was anticipating things. But Jonathan trusted the Captain knew what he was about, and he could feel the clanking of the sturdy chain being run out through the decking.

The deck above them suddenly rang like a gong, followed by the slow sputtering of fading zint from a direct hit by a cannon. Eleanor flinched, looking up with the first trace of nervousness he’d seen so far, and she reached out to grip the rail that lined the corridor.

“Is this thing going to hold together?” She muttered.

“This is nothing.” Jonathan told her, not particularly worried. “Even if we get holed, it would be merely inconvenient.” If there had been time for the other ship get precise targets, or even just hammer the Endeavor’s envelope, they would have needed to take steps. The first ship battle he’d been in had resulted in his tramp freighter being pounded to a wreck that was more holes than hull, but it had still flown. They had enough supplies on board and at Danby’s to repair any damage.

The only real issue would be if one of those cannon hit a person. He’d only met one or two who could survive that, and he had no desire to meet them again.

The Endeavor bobbed and shook, then slewed suddenly as the tethers caught on something. Even braced, he was nearly flung off his feet, and it was only Eleanor’s grip on the rail that kept her from being hurled down the corridor. The thrum of the engines vibrated through the deck, and then faded as the ship steadied.

“We’re tethered,” the bo’sun’s voice came through the speaking-tube. “All hands, secure the ship.”

“What about our unwelcome guest?” Jonathan asked, speaking through the tube down to the bridge.

“Doesn’t look like they’ll get turned round in time,” Montgomery’s voice came back. “Storm’s blowing them south. We’ll be—” Whatever he was trying to say was drowned out by a deluge of rain hammering the upper deck, followed by another growl of thunder. “—the local medic. Might as well resupply as we’re here.”

“Understood,” Jonathan called back over the din, and looked to Eleanor. “Does Marie need a doctor?”

“She should see one,” Eleanor admitted grudgingly. “Not sure about the ship’s surgeon, he strikes me as a little…” She trailed off with a shrug, and the sound of an incongruous tune came from Antomine’s room; a clock announcing the dinner hour.

“Indeed,” Jonathan said. “We’ll be here for some time, I expect. To clean everything up, if nothing else.” The hallway stank of death, and that was not something they wanted to be smelling for the next weeks and months.

He returned to his own room to ensure the cleanliness of his sword and to check the charge on his pistol. When he emerged again, one of the crew was dragging away the corpse that had tumbled down the stairwell. Despite how few crew there were on the Endeavor, Jonathan had not tried to make their acquaintance. The gulf between passenger and crew was one he hadn’t bothered to try and cross.

Montgomery was otherwise occupied, but Smythe, the bo’sun – whose name Jonathan finally dredged from his memory – gave them permission to go ashore at their own peril. The Endeavor was hardly stable, anchored to three fingers in the blowing gale and with a line tied to a small building on the monument’s palm. Jonathan wrapped himself in his waterproof cloak against the blowing rain and carried Marie down by brute force, with Eleanor and Sarah clinging to the handholds behind him as an airman cranked the pulley to lower them down.

The gaffer staffing the little hut was almost invisible under his own hood, chin tucked in against the rain and the wax-burning lanterns offering little light to begin with. He waved a claw of a hand toward a rickety wooden walkway lashed to the palm, spiraling down the wrist to the ground. The people of Danner’s Grasp had not driven their artifice into the stone, and perhaps could not, so all the creaking wood was lashed in place by innumerable ropes and chains that groaned uneasily in the wind.

“Sawbones is down there,” the old man in the hut said, refusing to open the door more than a crack. “Go straight in toward the belltower, take the third right. ‘s got a red light in the window. Y’r fellows already went.” The gaffer tucked his hand, which only had three fingers, back into the tattered and weathered coat he wore, and the rickety door closed once again. Jonathan frowned at the weathered planks, put off by the man’s behavior without quite knowing why. He certainly couldn’t fault the directions.

“Come on,” Eleanor said, half-shouting over the wind. Her coat snapped and rippled in emphasis as he helped Marie limp after her, Sarah trailing behind as if she didn’t trust him with her fellow maid and agent. Which was sound reasoning, though they’d given him no cause to object to them just yet.

They descended the worn wooden posts, slick from the rain, and found that the town was even more deserted than the storm would give cause for. Those that dwelled in towns so far from the main spur were hardy folk, and would simply bundle themselves against the downpour to carry on business as usual. Yet there was not a single soul treading the pitted cobbles of the streets, neither the pale glow of candles and sheltershrooms nor the harsh flare of lightning revealing anyone on the streets.

Despite the uneasiness Jonathan felt as they traveled the barely-lit, rain-soaked streets, the old man’s directions were true enough. The telltale red glow of a chirurgeon’s heliograph turned the churned puddles into a bloody froth, but the inside was dry enough. Three of the Endeavor’s complement waited in the anteroom and their heads turned as the door opened, setting a small bell tinkling. Jonathan recognized Jameson, the navigator, and nodded to him as Eleanor took charge of Marie once again.

“How is it looking?” Jonathan asked in a low voice, though with seven people crowded into the anteroom there was no such thing as privacy.

“We’ve lost two,” Jameson said somberly. “The third’s in there now. If he pulls through we may have to leave him here. Won’t be fit for duty for a while anyhow. Those new style guns are nasty. Everyone else just has bumps and bruises and a few cuts, so Doc Graham’s taking care of them.”

Jonathan nodded thoughtfully. It was not the best start, to have already lost three crew so early on, but it was always harder to account for the actions of malice than of the uncaring world. If he had to judge, he would say that the streets of Beacon were more treacherous than the swamps of Carascorn or the badlands of Kharr. Those, at least, didn’t hunt him down once he’d left them.

They could pick up more crew before they left, though not at Danner’s Grasp. It was far too small a town to have even half-trained airmen willing to sign on, regardless of pay. But he couldn’t afford such attrition in the future. Even if Montgomery and the rest of his crew were broad-minded enough to work with a non-human airman, there were precious few among the savage tribes and decadent empires who would be interested in such a posting.

He dipped his hand into his pocket and took out a small purse. The sawbones’ fee was surely coming out of the ship’s coffers eventually, which were provided by him to begin with, but providing extra cash up front might result in better care. As he had no desire to wait for the medical business to be completed, he handed the purse to Jameson and nodded to Eleanor. A gentleman probably shouldn’t leave ladies alone with rude sailors, but the ladies in question could more than take care of themselves.

“Make sure everyone gets what they need,” he said, mostly to Jameson but partly to the room at large. “I’d rather not spend any more time here than we need, so I will attend to other supplies.”

“Yes, sir,” Jameson said, and Eleanor waved him away, so he stepped back out into the rain. Only after he breathed the stone and rain scent of the outdoors did he realize how much the smell of ether inside the chirurgeon’s room had bothered him.

His cane tapped on the empty stone streets as he returned the way he had come, looking for one of the signs that had caught his eye. A single toll from a bell tower hidden somewhere in the night chimed out the quarter-hour, which didn’t match Jonathan’s watch, but towns so far out tended to settle into their own time. Everyone on the train route kept the same clocks, but he didn’t know if Danner’s Grasp thought it was the end of the day or the beginning.

Regardless of the hours people kept, discreet signs proclaimed the few shops as being open, and Jonathan stopped in front of the bookstore. It was an unusual thing in such an evidently small and poor town, full of citizens so incurious that they didn’t even gawk at the strangers walking their streets. He stepped inside, the entry bell flat rather than musical, and inhaled the scent of old leather and paper.

There was nobody manning the front, which seemed odd, but after a moment an old man wearing a scarf around his face shuffled around from behind the stacks. It was an odd style, especially since it was warm enough in the bookstore, but the elderly always had particular foibles. In green light cast by sheltershroom lanterns, between the unruly mop of hair and the scarf, only the man’s nose was visible and it pointed in Jonathan’s direction.

“C’n I help you?” The proprietor asked in a voice full of sawdust.

“I just came in with the ship,” Jonathan said, to no apparent reaction. “I was just wondering if you had any books written locally. Or maybe any old ones. I’m something of a collector, you see.”

“No,” the man said, without any emotion or emphasis. Jonathan could see at least three volumes on the topmost shelf behind the man that probably qualified, but his gut told him not to press, so he merely thanked the shopkeeper and left. A growing restlessness propelled him to pace the streets despite the weather, where lightning still strobed and the rain poured down, glancing into windows as he passed.

Stores that were open appeared deserted. Those that were closed had curtains and shades drawn, but light leaked out from corners and edges. There didn’t seem to be any zint in use, which was odd even for an out-of-the-way place such as Danner’s Grasp. Jonathan wasn’t sure what to think of it, but added it to the assemblage of minor things that disturbed him. Finally he turned a corner and nearly lashed out at the figure he saw there, but it was only Antomine, broad-brimmed hat firmly around his ears and hunched into his white greatcoat.

“Mister Heights,” Antomine said, white-pupiled eyes almost glowing as he tilted his head up at Jonathan. “Where is everyone?” He asked, almost plaintively. “It’s past noon here and even with the storm you’d think someone would be selling food.”

“I was wondering that myself,” Jonathan admitted, glad for once to see the young man of the Crown. “In fact, I was indulging in some basic curiosity, walking the streets.” He tilted his head toward a crumbling old building with a worn placard featuring a mug in front, illuminated by lintel-posts of glowing sheltershroom. “Perhaps we could find some local with a tongue in there.”

“Perhaps,” Antomine said, ducking his head down again as a gust of wind whirled raindrops into his face. “It’d be out of the weather, anyway.” He led the way, pushing open the door with the assured arrogance of someone used to carrying authority. Jonathan followed, glancing around at the candle-lit interior. It was sparsely populated and silent, with a grand total of two men and the bartender, but that was a veritable crowd compared to what he’d seen before.

Both patrons had deep cowled hoods, and the bartender had a low-brimmed hat from which spilled an enormous quantity of curly brown locks, merging with shaggy eyebrows, moustache, and beard as to present a face that was little more than a squashed nose protruding from a mass of hair. The uneasy feeling in Jonathan’s gut only grew stronger as the three of them looked at him and Antomine, then away in eerie synchronization.

No matter how Jonathan appraised the situation, Antomine bellied up to the bar, looking exactly like a fresh-faced youth, and brightly asked for a drink. Despite his obvious naivete, none of the trio relaxed their body language, and the bartender poured Antomine a tankard from the barrel with a desultory politeness. Jonathan sat next to Antomine, examining the room and its occupants with a sharp eye to try and decide what bothered him so.

“Did you notice,” he murmured at length. “They all have their faces covered?”

“Now that you mention it, they do,” Antomine replied in a low voice, sounding not at all like the youth he appeared to be. Even if he’d said it quietly, a sudden tension seemed to come into the room, as if the indifferent clientele were all staring. They weren’t.

“We should get back to the ship,” Jonathan said, and Antomine twisted to look at him. For a moment the young man considered protesting, but then dug a coin out of his pocket, leaving it on the bar with the mostly undrunk beer. The two of them headed for the door, Jonathan keeping his head down to keep an eye on the three locals with his peripheral vision, but not even the bartender seemed interested in their retreat.

Stepping outside, Jonathan almost staggered from the wind. The driving rain was, if anything, even heavier than before, the sheltershrooms lamps and candlelit windows barely visible across the street. Antomine’s broad-brimmed hat stayed, improbably, on his head, but his long coat rippled and snapped, the collar plastered against his neck. He turned to Jonathan, his eyes narrowed.

“Whatever’s going on here—”

“—is not our business,” Jonathan said firmly. “We’re an expedition, not an inquisitorial squad. You can send a message when we get back to the trunk line.” Antomine still looked mutinous, and Jonathan sighed. “We don’t have the manpower or expertise to deal with an entire town,” he told Antomine. “Even if we did, it’s not our job.” That got a scowl, but eventually Antomine nodded.

“Head back to the ship, tell Montgomery to sound the emergency boarding, and get ready to untether. Yes, even despite the storm. It might be better than staying here. I’ll get everyone from the chirurgeon.”

“Very well,” Antomine said grudgingly, and stalked off into the rain. Jonathan went in the other direction, hurrying through the empty and unfamiliar streets until he found the red glow once again. When he pushed through the door the six people he’d left were still there, only they were playing cards. He drew eyes as rain swirled through the open door, but it was Eleanor who recognized his expression and shot to her feet.

“The doctor. Was his face uncovered?” Jonathan asked.

“No…” Jameson said slowly. “There was a mask—”

“Then we’re leaving,” Jonathan interrupted him, stepping around the cluster of people to the far door. “Emergency boarding. Crew’s still in there, right?”

“George is, aye,” Jameson said, collecting the cards and shoving them into the pocket of his uniform.

“What’s going on?” Eleanor asked as he tried the door and found it locked.

“Something is wrong with this town and we don’t want to deal with it,” Jonathan said. He hammered on the interior door and then put his ear to it to listen. The only thing that came from the other side was a low murmured cadence of a type and tone that made his throat clench and his jaw ache.

He wrapped his hands around the knob and hauled. Wood splintered and metal squealed as he ripped the latching mechanism out of the door, dropping it on the floor and barging inside. There was a small hallway beyond, and a few steps brought Jonathan past a dim storage room and to the miniscule operating theatre at the far end. The doctor’s medical mask lay on the table next to his instruments, and both he and his patient turned to look at Jonathan.

They were smiling.

The doctor’s grin stretched almost all the way around to meet at the back of his neck, baring far too many teeth to fit in a normal human mouth. George’s smile was nearly as wide, stretching back to under his ears and showing incisors and molars that were stretched and starting to split, dividing into two identical versions of themselves. Despite his grievous wounds, his shirtless chest showing a multitude of stitches along his stomach, he sprung up out of the chair.

“Dear god,” Eleanor said from behind him as Jonathan backed up, holding his cane at the ready. “The Second Gospel?”

“The Third Gospel of the Smiling Man,” Jonathan said quietly. The First Gospel he’d seen in Beacon was mostly harmless, but the Second and Third were not meant for the human mind. “Run.”

Eleanor beat a hasty retreat as he backed down the hallway, ignoring the words that the doctor was speaking. There was a nauseating, seductive quality to the Gospel being recited, but the pristine reality of sunlight burned away any temptation he might have had to listen. While Jonathan was certain of his ability to best the two of them, no confrontation would stop there and he preferred not to escalate any more than he had.

His foot sent the discarded latch sliding along the floor as he backed into the anteroom, feeling the wind at his back as someone opened the outside door. Jonathan risked a glance and then turned and dashed through after Jameson, who at least had the wit not to protest the hasty retreat. He slammed the door after, glad of the gale and the pounding thunder of the rain. The noise would drown out the Gospel.

“What about George?” Jameson asked, matching pace with Jonathan. Eleanor’s figure was already halfway down the street, practically carrying Marie with Sarah’s help.

“He’s gone,” Jonathan said shortly, and pointed in the direction of the port. “Get to the ship! Go!” He followed words with action and lengthened his stride, catching up with Eleanor just as lightning flashed again. The sudden light revealed scores of figures on the streets. All the townsfolk had appeared by some invisible summons, and without their cloaks, hoods, cowls, and scarfs, it was clear all of them had the awful, achingly over-wide smiles.

“Plug your ears and run!” Jonathan shouted, though he didn’t follow half of his own advice, pulling his sword from the cane sheath and grimly reflecting that he’d gotten more use out of it than he’d ever expected. He darted out ahead of the others, knocking aside clubs and belaying pins, and having no compunctions about using his blade. The time for caution was past.

As if responding to the tension below, the growl of thunder became almost constant, lightning flickering in strobes to catch the converging townsfolk. There were too many to count, but at a full sprint they couldn’t catch up to the Endeavor’s passengers and crew so close to the great stone hand. Jonathan scrambled up the slippery wooden posts, nearly falling off as a stray gust of wind caught him, and found that the gaffer’s hut had been smashed to splinters. There was still a hissing, glowing residue of zint, likely Antomine’s work.

Jameson was the last to scramble up the uneven platform of the stone palm as shouts from above greeted them. A weighted line thudded down to the stone and Jonathan tucked his cane sheath into his belt before he grabbed it with one hand, menacing the top of the stairs with his sword. The first of the Smiling Men to top it was, by some malevolent coincidence, George, who didn’t lunge or attack but merely beamed at them with his hands spread wide and recited the first Verse.

“On the ninth month, as the clock chimed none, did the joy of the Smiling Man—”

Jonathan blocked it out before he heard the truly dangerous words, and someone on the ship hauled at the line. Everyone clung to it as it began its ascent, and Jonathan glanced upward, and sheathed his cane just in time to catch Marie as she slipped from Eleanor’s grasp. For a moment he did consider just leaving her as it would remove a potential problem in the future, but that was a dark thought and so unworthy of sunlight. The tall and pale maid grunted, breath hissing from her as he clamped an arm on her injured side, but gave no complaint.

Then they were on the lowest deck of the Endeavor, away from the poisonous words of the Gospel. Montgomery was there with Antomine and his two guards, who had been the ones working the rope. Jonathan found himself breathing hard, even though he hadn’t noticed the need during the entire hectic flight.

“Smiling Man Cult.” Antomine half said, half-asked. Jonathan nodded, though he wasn’t sure that calling them a cult was appropriate. There was more to it than just blasphemous beliefs and secret societies.

“Captain, I need to commandeer your cannon,” Antomine said, as zint spotlights played over the stone hand and its surroundings. Despite its power, the illumination barely did more than show smeared figures through the driving rain. Some of the townspeople stood on the palm, still chanting, the horrible words not entirely audible but still offering some awful resonance that vibrated up through the ship.

“What?” Montgomery said, startled.

“This town has been infected with forbidden secrets,” Antomine said, gesturing to his two guards, who wordlessly formed up on either side of him. “But some work with proper artillery will address that.”

“Are you mad?” Eleanor asked, staring at him. “There’s hundreds of people there! They can’t all be like those creepy Gospelites.”

“I must agree,” Montgomery said. “I have no wish for my ship to be party to such an atrocity.”

“This is a matter of the Inquisition,” Antomine said, the boyish persona gone to reveal the dangerous Crown agent beneath. “Are you both suggesting treason?” Jonathan pressed his lips together in distaste before stepping forward to intervene.

“While I am no more a supporter of the Inquisition’s excesses than you are, Mister Antomine has a point,” Jonathan said, inclining his head to the young man. “If it were merely the First and Second Gospel, I would suggest a squad of doughty men with guns and swords. But with the Third Gospel, nobody will be left untainted. Even the buildings need to be destroyed, lest they hold onto echoes.” The only other time he’d encountered the Third Gospel, it had been addressed rather more aggressively than that, and there was now a deep lake where a village had once stood.

“I’m still not…” Montgomery said uncomfortably. Jonathan sympathized. The captain and crew of an airship were tough men, but asking them to participate in wholesale slaughter was too much for them.

“My guards will be sufficient,” Antomine said, unbending a small amount. “You can go about your duties, Captain. This will be the Inquisition’s burden entirely.” Montgomery hesitated, but Jonathan give him a small nod and he eventually relented, ordering his men to continue their cleanup.

“Really?” Eleanor hissed to him as thunder growled once again. “You’re taking his side?”

“I wish I didn’t have to,” Jonathan sighed. “But the Third Gospel is an unspeakable menace, and we’re stuck anyway unless we want to be blown to wherever the storm would send us. Best to get Marie to Doc Graham and forget about it.”

Eleanor scowled but turned to help Marie up, apologizing under her breath as the trio of Reflected Council agents climbed up to the middle deck. Antomine followed after. Jonathan went last, and by the time he reached his cabin the sound of the zint cannons thrummed through the ship.