Queen of the Sky Frontier - Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Azrael made her way through dank back-alleys, glad she had exchanged her dress for more practical clothes, but stung and sick that she'd left everything she had behind, even her one portrait of her mother. It was damp and humid here on the ground, and everything smelled wet and musty.

She finally emerged from the maze of the dockyards and found herself looking out over the rest of the city. A narrow road led down the hill and into a warren of jumbled buildings and alleyways. She kept to the shadowed side of the street as she picked her way down, surprised by how many people were on the streets so late at night. What startled her more was how many of them were dark-skinned. She was not accustomed to anyone being darker than she was.

No one paid her much attention, but she did see some men turn and look at her as she passed. Her hair was loose, and it made her stand out, as well as her boyish clothes. She tried not to look behind her as she went, knowing that would make her look more furtive. There was considerable noise pouring out of open doors, from music to laughter to the shouts of men fighting. Through it she could not tell if Black and his men were close behind her.

This swath of narrow streets downhill from the airship docks was crammed tight with saloons and obvious bordellos. Azrael tried not to flush at the lewd propositions shouted down from busty girls flaunting themselves from upper windows, or even right on the street. Slouching, tough-looking youths gave her looks, and she ducked her head so as not to make eye contact. A pair of drunken men reeled past her, either fighting or hugging one another, she wasn't sure. One of them dropped his bowler hat as he nearly fell, and she scooped it up, put it on with a slight grimace of distaste. There is something off-putting about a warm hat.

Working as she walked, Azrael twisted her hair up into a knot and tucked it up under the hat. Now she looked more like a young boy, and she consciously tried to walk like one, sneaking looks at the way the young toughs slunk about the edges of the street.

The street turned to parallel a thick embankment faced with brick, and it took her a moment to realize it was a levee, holding back the waters of the river. She knew this city was built below sea level, but it was another thing to realize she was standing below the waterline right there on the street.

She stopped and stood aside from the current of people on the street, put a hand to her face and almost fell over as a wave of helplessness and anger and fear crushed in on her. Here she was, thousands of miles away from everything she knew, and there was no one here she could trust or even turn to. Always, when she'd imagined returning home, her mother had been here to guide her, protect her. Now there was nothing. She was alone in a strange land without even a penny to her name.

For a moment, she turned around and looked back toward the looming gantries of the airship docks, searching among the shadows for the lean silhouette of the Polaris. Could she find it again? Even being Black's doxy seemed a finer fate than being out here alone. She thought of Merodach and shuddered. Yet surely Black would protect her from that thing. He wanted her, needed her for his scheme. She would be fed and warm and kept safe.

Then she felt ashamed. What would Asmodel Dire say to her daughter becoming a painted whore for those who had once done her bidding? Her mother never had any place for fear in her Experimental heart, nor for doubt. Azrael leaned against the wall, arms folded, and gritted her teeth. She couldn't go back. She could not do that. She had to make her way.

Several rough-looking characters were giving her the once-over, and so she started walking again, following the levee. Well, if she wanted to avoid Black, she had to get out of the city as quickly as she could. He would know this place far better than she did, he would have contacts and informants. Given too much time, he would find her.

She glanced back at the airship docks and shook her head. Going back there would be asking to be caught. No, she had to get out another way. The rich smell of the river washed over her and she smiled a little. River meant riverboats. She read in books of the opulent paddlewheel steamers that plied the waterways in the delta, strung with electric lights and packed full of gamblers and adventurers. A waterborne ship would be much easier to stow away on than an aircraft.

The levee curved away from the road and she paused, wondering where to find the riverfront proper. There would be a place, with barges and rowboats all drawn up at docks and sandbars, someplace not too different from this. She was already on the river, she just needed to know which way to go.

The brick facing of the levee was crumbled and cracked in places, providing plenty of handholds. Quick, she grabbed ahold and swarmed up the wall, grunted as she pulled herself up to the top. It was really little more than a ridge of earth piled up and reinforced with brick to keep the waters back. At the top was bare dirt with grass and weeds sprouting in it, and she had to climb up the slope to reach a vantage point.

She'd expected the slack expanse of the Mississippi, but instead here on the far side was another part of the city, just as jumbled in on itself, if not as brightly lit. It was half-drowned, with roads and alleys replaced by muddy canals plied by canoes and gondolas. Black-skinned former slaves sang river songs as they poled their craft up and down the waterways, pausing to yell boasts of their prowess as they passed one another. It was the Drowned Quarter, she realized. The part of the city flooded in the storm of '61 and never recovered.

Only a soft sound gave her warning, and then strong hands were gripping hard on her arms and dragging her down to the ground. She opened her mouth to yell and a hand was clamped over her face. Her hat fell off and her hair spilled out. Her assailants were only visible as three dark shadows against the starry sky. She twisted, trying to get loose, smelling their close, male scent.

"Well, look what we got 'ere," one of them said. "I told you it was a girly girly." Azrael saw moonlight flicker on a knife.

"I still ain't sure," another one said, patting her down, groping at her so crudely she felt sick. "We'll have to get 'em clothes offn 'er." He laughed and she tried to kick as the knife came closer.

Then it happened again. Her heart beat faster, and then so fast it was almost a thrum. Suddenly strong, she ripped her arms free and grabbed for the knife, felt fingers crack under her grip as she wrenched it away. She sprang up, feeling light and heavy at once, everything happening so fast it was like a blur. Their strength was nothing to her, their weight like feathers.

She slashed wildly with the knife and then she almost fell, her head pounding as the wave of strength ebbed out of her. Azrael went to one knee, then stood up, grimacing with the pain in her muscles and bones, in her head. The sky above seemed very bright, and the smell of blood was sharper than the river stench.

Her assailants lay about her in the scrubby grass, two of them motionless, the third one clutching his crushed hand and moaning. Azrael looked at the knife in her hand and saw it was black with moonlit blood.

How did this happen? How did she do it? Nothing like this ever happened to her before. But then, she'd never been in fear of her life before. She felt as if she might be sick, dropped the knife and held up her hand, saw the blood on it like black paint.

The boy with the broken hand tried to crawl away and she stepped over one of the bodies, grabbed him by the shirt. He yelped and cowered from her, and she felt a strange thrill race through her as she realized he was afraid. Afraid of her.

"I'm sorry!" he whined. "I'm sorry, don't kill me!" He held his right hand curled up by his chest, the snapped fingers sticking out like jackstraws. Azrael pulled him up, surprised by how light he still felt to her. It seemed whatever had happened was not entirely worn off yet.

She squinted into his face, realized he was probably younger than she was. A boy, really. She sneered. "Tell me where I can find a riverboat."

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In her mind, the Mississippi was a vast blue serpent snaking down through endless green grasslands in the heartland of the country. Up close, in the dark, it was flat and muddy and it smelled like pond water and fish. Docks on the waterfront were little more than nailed-together boardwalks that allowed one to walk out over the mud to reach the actual water without wading through muck.

The riverboats drawn up to the waterfront looked like illusions against the black sky and the glittering scatter of stars. Their shallow draft meant they stood in close to shore, near enough for their boarding ramps to bang down on the shore itself. The boats themselves stood up huge and blazing with a thousand lights, looking like they could not possibly be real.

There were some newer ships with enclosed engines, but most of them looked older, with prewar coal drives and looming smokestacks. Several of them were more than four decks high, with elegant-looking people promenading up and down the gangplanks amidships while the stevedores pounded cargo on and off smaller ramps to the rear, swinging their work chants as they heaved bales that weighed as much as a man.

Azrael huddled against the corner of a building and looked them over. There was no chance she could pass for a patron of one of the fine ships, and she was too small for a dockworker, even if she managed to pass for a boy.

In addition, she needed a ship that was leaving soon. It was late, almost dawn, and she knew some ships would be making steam, so she looked for smoke from the stacks. Some of the ships were actually beached, with ropes as thick as her thigh made fast to hawsers and encrusted with dirt to show they had not been untied in months or longer. They were ships in name only, gambling dens and whorehouses built on a ship that never left the dock. She ignored them.

She passed along the waterfront, hat drawn down over her eyes and her hair tucked up under it. She kept her hands at her sides with the stolen knife in her left hand, the blade up her sleeve and only her thumb on the hilt, so her other fingers swung loose and made her hand look empty. She wasn't about to be caught unawares again.

The ships grew less impressive the farther West along the waterfront she walked, with the grand boats giving way to smaller, meaner two-decker craft that were less well-lit, less brightly painted, and less busy. She hesitated. A smaller crew and fewer passengers would make it impossible to blend in. She needed a crowd, but a rougher one, where her less elegant clothes would not raise eyebrows.

She paused and glanced back along the river, peering through the crowds that swirled along the boardwalk even at this hour. All she could see were the tops of the boats, and nearby there was one with two stacks, the smoke from them rapidly building. It was an older ship, with a run-down look, and many of the electric lights along the decks were burnt out or broken. It had a seedy look, and Azrael turned back to make for it.

After three steps she stopped dead, her eyes narrowing. She saw something. . . there. A trio of men were making their way through the crowd, and the way they swept their gazes side to side told her they were looking for something. She recognized one of them from her landing in Charlestown two nights ago. Was that all the longer it had been?

They were from Black's crew, and she couldn't be sure there were not more of them close by. She was almost out of time. She ducked her head and kept walking, getting closer to them, trying to judge distance. One of them turned toward her and she ducked aside, slipped into the lee of an enormous man carrying a bale of something on each shoulder.

He glanced down and Azrael was startled to realize it was a woman, albeit a woman with arms as big around as tree trunks. She had a wild mane of braided hair and little dotted scars on her black face. "Ey now. Wat you doin 'idin deyah?"

Azrael blinked, finally made sense of the heavy accent. "Nothing. That is, I'm avoiding those men." She hesitated for a moment. "They are pirates."

"Trut?" The woman glanced over at them. "Well, dey hadda look abootem tobeshoo." The woman reached the foot of the cargo ramp and heaved her bales up to a pair of men at the top, one after the other as if they weighed nothing. She put her hands on her hips and peered down at Azrael. "Youwanta takka bowt uppa deriva?"

"Uh, I, yes?" Azrael snuck a glance, saw the three pirates were far too close for comfort. "I just want to get away. Out of the city."

"Wellden." The woman grabbed her and hoisted her up by the scruff of her jacket. Azrael managed not to scream out loud, made only a slight squeaking noise as she was unceremoniously tossed up the ramp and caught by one of the ebon-skinned stevedores. He set her down with barely a glance and she wobbled, looked back down at her rescuer.

The massive woman cupped her hands and hollered at her, the shout unnoticed in the general din. "You tellum dere! Tellum Annie Christmas say takeyoo whereyougo!" She hooked a thumb at herself. "Annie Christmas! Me!" She laughed then, showing her enormous white teeth, and turned back to her work.

Azrael blinked, looked around to see if anyone else was paying attention to her, and finally started when she saw the man standing behind her. He was short and built like a barrel, with no hair on his head and one leg replaced with a wooden peg. He looked her up and down. "Well, if Annie says so," he grumbled. "You know anything about riverboatin' lad?"

"No sir, I do not," Azrael answered, feeling it was safest to be truthful.

The man grunted. "Well, I'll learn ya a bit. Get up top'n have Gall show you how to call the channel as we go. Get on." He whacked her on the flank and she startled, then hurried for the stairs and started up. The engines below were churning beneath her feet, and the sky was starting to lighten at the horizon's edge. A steam whistle screamed the morning, and the old riverboat started to move out away from the shore.

Continued in Chapter 9

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