I hadn’t never met the Peacemaker nor been to Half-Ax, but I started to hate him then and had good reason later to hate him more. That’s not why I’m telling this, though. I’m only saying that sometimes you need to get some distance away from a thing before you can see it clear. That’s true of the bigger story I’ve been telling you all this while, and it’s most especially true of the place we come to next, after we sailed out of Many Fishes across the lagoon and out into the ocean, following the signal that Monono had heard all the way back in Calder. It was a place that was called the Sword of Albion, though it was not a sword so its name was a lie.
Ho, Koli Woodsmith, some of you might be thinking. After the tales you told of shunned men and messianics, sea-bears and choker storms, anyone would need to go a long way about to lie as hard as you done. You got no business calling out others for their falsehoods. I swear, though, I’ve been careful to tell everything I did and everything that happened to me just exactly the way I remember it. I’m not hiding the mistakes I made, though it’s hard oftentimes to make room for them all.
I only ever told you the one lie, and that was on account of not having the words to say the truth of it. When we get to the end of the story, I’ll do my best to tell you that part too, and maybe you’ll see why I couldn’t do it sooner.
But we’re not like to get to the end unless we first make a start.
2
We had sailed out across the ocean, like I said, following the signal that told us it was the Sword of Albion. Only instead of a Sword, we was come at last to a great wall standing in the middle of the water, made out of welded-together plates of dark grey metal. While we was still trying to figure what to do about this, a voice spoke up.
“In the name of the interim government,” it said, “stand where you are. You may proceed no further.”
I was going to say it was a man’s voice, and in a way it was, but at the same time you could tell it was not no man that was speaking. The gaps between the words and the way they was said did not match up. It was as if someone was picking them up out of a big box of words and throwing them down one after another without caring where they fell or which way up they was when they landed. It would of been funny if it wasn’t for where the voice was coming from. It was coming from out of the DreamSleeve, the little silver box where Monono lived. There shouldn’t of been no voices coming out of there except for hers.
And now it spoke up again, while we was all of us still trying to figure out which way was up. “You and your vessel are being scanned,” it said. “Remain where you are while this scan is in progress. Do not make any attempt to disengage. Do not make any attempt to board.”
“What…?” I stammered out at last. “Who…? Monono, what was that?”
“What was what, dopey boy?” Monono said, in her own voice.
“You were pre-empted,” Ursala said. “Someone used your speakers.”
“No, they didn’t. The DreamSleeve is completely…” She went quiet for the smallest part of a second. Then she sweared an oath in her own language. “Chikusho! There are twelve seconds missing from my log. That’s not possible!”
“It’s perfectly possible. You suffered a hostile takeover.” Ursala sounded angry but I think she was mostly scared. I didn’t blame her for that. I was scared too, right down to the heart of me. However poor and patched together that voice sounded, what it just done to Monono spoke of something big and strong past anything I could imagine, and it did not bode nothing good to us. I pressed my hand down hard on the DreamSleeve, in its sling against my shoulder, though I knowed I couldn’t keep Monono safe from whatever it was that had been done to her.
“I’m fine, Koli-bou,” she told me on the induction field. “Don’t worry. Nobody gets to sneak up on me twice.”
“What are we going to do?” Cup asked, looking to Ursala.
It was a good question. We did not have no choice as far as standing still was concerned. Our boat, The Signal, had been filling up with water for some time and was about as close to sinking as a word is to a whisper. Whether we waited where we was or tried to turn around, there wasn’t any place we was like to go except down.
“If you’re Sword of Albion,” Ursala called out, “we came in response to your message. And now we’re taking on water. We need your help or we’re going to drown!”
There wasn’t no answer to that. By and by Ursala spoke up again. “Please! We’re no threat to you. We’re only three travellers in need of assistance.”
There was just a lot more silence. Cup gun to scoop water out of the boat with her hands, and after a little while I joined her. We couldn’t throw the water out quicker than the waves throwed it back in, but maybe we could stay afloat a little while longer than if we stood there and did nothing.
“Listen,” Ursala said.
We all went quiet and listened.
From far above us, a sound drifted down that was like something that could roar if it choosed to but was growling in its throat instead. It got louder and louder. We looked up. The mist hid it at first, but then it slapped the mist aside and stood out clear.
It was a thing like a great big drone. That’s the only way I know to say it, for it stood in the air like a drone and it was made out of the same things, which was metal and glass and shining lights that moved. But where you might catch a drone in your hands, almost, if you was bold enough to dare it, this piece of tech was near as big as a house. The outside of it was black, mostly, which put me in mind of a crow gliding down to feed on something that was dead. It had a shape that was not far away from a stooping bird, with things that might of been wings except they was too short and folded too far into its body. What made it different from a bird, though, was the way it could just stand there in the air, as still as anything. If them things on its sides was wings, then the wings didn’t need to beat and didn’t look as if they could.
The thing come down and down until it was on a level with us. A gust of hot air come with it and blowed in our faces. It smelled like a stubble field burning and like stale fat on a cooking stove at the same time. It made my eyes sting and fill up with tears.
I had the baddest of bad feelings about drones. In Mythen Rood, where I lived for most of my life, they come down out of the sky and spit out hot red light that oftentimes left people dead behind them. They was said to be weapons left over from the Unfinished War, that was still looking for enemies to kill and would hit out at any woman or man they seen. It was true that Ursala used to have a tame drone of her own that went where she told it to and spied things out for her, but that hadn’t made me like drones any more than I did to start with.
So I didn’t think that thing coming down was any kind of good news, even though the water was up around our thighs now and the sides of the boat was only a finger’s span higher than the ocean all around us.
“Apologies for the delay,” a voice said. “I can see you’re in difficulties, but our primary concern is for our own security. I’m sure you understand.” It was not the same voice we heard before, but a very different one. This was a man too, but he sounded like he was unhappy or angry that we was there and uncertain what to do with us now we was come. “First things first. If these readings are correct, you’ve got a medical diagnostic unit there with you. Could you tell me what model it is, and what condition it’s in?”