An Avalanche of Goose Feathers

How many privateer boarders could an eighty-year-old milliner impale before her parasol bent? That was the immediate arithmetic facing me as the ceiling groaned, and leaving Sarolta Kenesei to test the odds alone was not an option I intended to live with.

"Out through the flue, I said!" she barked, her brass-ribbed parasol leveled at the splintering door.

"You have six bushels of goose down dangling from the ridge beam," I shouted over the screech of iron winch cables tearing into the joists below. "And I have twenty yards of corsair cord!"

The lower stair door gave way with an almighty crack. Booted footsteps drummed on the cedar treads—heavy, steel-shod, and fast. An iron-plated helm surfaced in the hatchway, followed by the square snout of a naval arbalest. The man was shouting behind a wire visor, his grease-stained brigandine bearing the crossed-anchor stamp of Captain Botond's flagship.

I did not stop to trade pleasantries. My satchel swung against my hip, the emerald sun-prism heavy and warm through its wrap of oiled lambskin. Overhead, four wicker cradles hung suspended from the timber crown, counterweighted by sacks of river sand so Sarolta could dry her bulk plumage out of reach of attic mice. The lead rope passed through an iron ring set beside the chimney breast.

I unhitched the corsair ratchet winch from my belt. With two quick strides across the bouncing floorboards, I jammed the steel ratchet dog into the central toggle of Sarolta's pulley and threw my weight onto the release lever.

The hemp tackle whistled through the sheave.

The central storage cradle tipped like an overloaded coal scow. Five bushels of goose feathers—dyed brilliant indigo, canary yellow, and cochineal scarlet—poured out in a blinding, roiling blizzard. It was not a gentle drift. It was a suffocating, churning wall of down that struck the stairwell like twenty sacks of flour dropped from a bell tower.

The arbalest went off with a dull thwack, sending a square-headed bolt straight into the pine rafters above my hair. A chorus of choked, gargling curses rose from the stairwell. Armored men stumbled backward into one another, hacking and spitting feathers from behind their visors. A privateer corporal lunged through the doorway, waving a cutlass blindly through a swirl of blue down, his eyelashes coated in yellow fluff.

"Confounded ruffians!" Sarolta yelled with immense satisfaction. She darted forward, drove the steel ferrule of her parasol straight into the man's breastplate, and triggered the internal spring with a sharp metallic clack. The blunt brass ejector threw the corporal flat onto his back, sending him skidding down the steps into his feather-choked companions.

"Go, Kende!" she ordered, spinning on her slippers toward the corner of the attic. "I am seventy paces from the basement drain, and my dumbwaiter counterweight will take me straight into the wash-house vault before their eyes clear!"

She pulled open the small wooden door of the linen hoist behind her cutting table, hopped inside the wicker carriage like a roosting sparrow, and gripped the brake line.

"Take the beryl to Szent-László!" she snapped, her eyes bright beneath her lace cap. "And mind you don't drop it into the canal, or I shall bill your guild for three hundred yards of ruined ribbon!"

Before I could answer, she tripped the counterweight release. The carriage vanished down the vertical shaft with a muffled rumble of greased ropes, leaving me alone in the swirling, rainbow-colored fog of the garret.

The floorboards lurched beneath my boots. Outside, the canal barges had tightened their boarding lines; another pair of four-pronged iron flukes tore through the lathe and plaster beside the window, pulling the east wall two inches out of plumb. More boots were pounding up the stairs, coughing through the feathers.

I sprang for the ladder beneath the high cupola.

The roof hatch hung half-open, rattling in the harbor wind. As I grabbed the iron rung to hoist myself upward, an armored glove clamped onto the lead flashing of the cupola sill. A second corsair officer had climbed the outside boarding netting from the canal facade, his face purple with exertion beneath a leather sea-cap. He spotted my satchel and reached for my ankle with his free hand.

I kicked his wrist with the brass-shod heel of my courier boot.

The blow struck his radial nerve with a sharp crack. His fingers went limp, and an object tucked into his belt sash slipped free, bouncing off the sloped cedar trim. I caught it out of the air before it could tumble into the feather blizzard below: a heavy, three-draw brass spyglass, wrapped in salt-greased leather and engraved with consortium quartermaster marks.

"Compliments of the harbor guild," I muttered.

I pulled myself through the fractured glass cupola, wriggled out onto the rain-gutter lead, and kicked the wooden hatch shut behind me.

Cool maritime wind hit my face like a wet towel, washing away the smell of cedar dust, old tea, and goose down.

Gyöngyvár stretched below in a jagged labyrinth of limestone gables, dripping copper cornices, and churning grey water. The millinery garret's roof sagged behind me under the pull of the barge cables, but the high ridgeline held firm.

A loud, furious screech greeted me from the top of the nearest chimney cap.

Hetyke sat perched upon the terracotta rim, shaking his wings with theatrical indignation. A fluffy clump of indigo goose down was plastered across his hooked beak, and several canary-yellow tufts clung stubbornly to his sleek grey tail feathers. He fixed me with an amber glare so venomous it could have melted solder.

"Don't look at me like that," I said, crouching on the wet slate to catch my breath. "You were the one who insisted on perching near the flue."

He snapped his beak, clicked his tongue, and ruffled his shoulder plumage in a furious display of violated dignity. An indigo feather drifted off his wing and spun away into the crosswind. He hopped two inches closer on the limestone ledge, thrust out his left talon, and tapped the stone twice with sharp, rhythmic clicks.

"Extortion," I told him, digging my fingers into my coat pocket. "Pure and simple."

I produced four fat, roasted sunflower seeds—salted and dry, spared from the damp inside my oilskin pouch. He snatched them one by one with lightning strikes of his beak, swallowed them whole, and gave me another disapproving tilt of his head that clearly meant the debt was merely deferred, not forgiven.

I secured the satchel flap across my chest. The emerald prism rested snugly against the brass Alignment Cipher disc, cold rain pattering harmlessly against the waxed leather. Then I uncapped the brass spyglass I had just taken from the corsair officer.

The optics were surprisingly fine—ground quartz lenses, far better than the cheap leaded glass common privateers carried. I extended the three brass tubes until the harbor came into sharp focus.

To the south, Captain Botond's iron-nosed siege hulks were methodically pounding the lower canal locks into gravel. Plumes of black coal-smoke drifted across the water, carrying the sharp stink of sulfur and pitch. The severed swing bridge dangled over the canal, and the charred ruins of the Szent-Katalin footbridge floated in the brine, exactly as I had seen from the millinery balustrade.

I swept the glass north, tracking the high line of the rooftops.

Above the tangled chimneys of the dyers' quarter, the Great Aqueduct of Szent-László arched across the central canal basin like a spine of pale bone. Its water flume was dry, shut down for autumn repairs before the siege began, but its broad limestone parapet offered an uninterrupted road forty paces above the barricaded streets. At the far end of that pale arch rose the Spire of Szent-László—a slender, octagonal bell-tower capped in turquoise tile, its empty gimbal housing gaping like a blind eye toward the open heavens.

The path was open aloft, far above the reaches of Botond's boarding nets.

Then I tilted the spyglass toward the western horizon, and the breath hitched in my throat.

Beyond the outer barrier shoals, the leaden sea was swallowing the midday light. A monstrous shelf of purple-black storm clouds was rolling in from the open ocean, pushed by a rising westerly gale. The low autumn sun was already sliding toward the jagged jaw of that cloud bank.

I lowered the glass and touched the cool rim of the cipher disc through my coat. Master Nyírbátori's warning rang loud in my ears: orbital sun-prisms were useless without direct line of sight to the solar satellites above the sky. Once that thunderhead smothered the bay, the light beams would scatter into inert mist, and the city's ancient defense would die before it took its first breath.

The cloud front was moving fast. I had less than ninety minutes to cross the aqueduct, reach the spire, and seat the emerald crystal in its cradle before Gyöngyvár was plunged into darkness.

I tucked the spyglass into my belt, pulled my leather grips tight around my palms, and whistled to Hetyke.

"Eat quick, feathers," I whispered, rising into a crouch along the ridgepole. "The sun is running out."