Mainspring by Jay Lake

into deck lockers. Even the seat of ease, sky air chill upon his hindquarters, was strangely refreshing. Three meals a day, a ration of rum, a morning shave—though still barely required—and a sleeping hammock strung in the night air were the only other things in his life. At night, if he crept close to the rail, the Earth’s tracks gleamed in the sky. They were closer than ever, rising from the eastern and western horizons like brilliant horns.
    Except for the promised lashing Hethor could almost be happy. He lived in a bubble of quiet unremarked by the other sailors other than Lombardo’s harassment. He steered far clear of officers. It was if he sailed the sky alone. He was no closer to the Key Perilous, but he was out of the candlemen’s pit and in the open air.
    Somehow, some way, he would find his path back to Gabriel’s mission.
    One afternoon Hethor was stowing a set of brassbound blocks and tackles normally used when the ship wanted to show her best colors coming into port. The steering paddle crews had used them for a drill.
    His clockmaker’s eyes didn’t like the way the brass had been polished down—there were streaks of fingerprints along the edges—so Hethor took the tail of his Naval-issue cotton shirt and began working the brass to a smoother
perfection. He fogged it with his breath, then polished vigorously, wishing he had some of the right oils.
    After a while Deck Chief Lombardo squatted next to Hethor on his heels. “Only damned thing I’ve yet seen you do on this ship that looked like you cared or understood it, sailor.” The man’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle.
    â€œI’ve worked with brass a lot, Chief,” Hethor said quietly. He buffed the edge of a pulley head. Then, holding it with his fingertips, he stowed it in the locker.
    â€œWhat sort of brass?” Lombardo asked. “Weapons, musical instruments, fittings?”
    â€œPrecision machines,” Hethor said shortly. “Clocks.”
    Lombardo grunted, then walked away. It was the first time he had done so without hitting Hethor.
    Hethor took that to be something of a victory.
    A CHANGE in the creaking of the spars and shrouds told Hethor that new developments were at hand. The ship was changing its behavior. Even the smell of the wind was different. He stowed the last of the brasswork and sidled over to the rail.
    A scattering of islands lay in the gray sea, the little spots of land shaped like crescents and sickles, all thin and long with many curves and bays. None seemed to have much altitude. Bassett beat downward, her great propellers straining—Hethor was given to understand that fuel for the engines was more readily replaced than any venting of the precious hydrogen. Below them he could see dozens, perhaps hundreds, of whitewashed buildings scattered among the trees. Some of the trees appeared to be pines. Others were strange, great stalks with bushy heads.
    Four familiar wooden towers rose out of the waters of one of the harbors. Airship masts.
    â€œBermuda,” said a sailor leaning on the rail nearby.
“’Twouldn’t do to jump ship here. Whole place is nothing but Royal Navy. Nice enough, mind you.”
    Bermuda. Hethor had heard of it, traced the tiny dots on maps of the Atlantic in the library at New Haven Latin, just like he’d traced the dots of Hispaniola and Cuba and Jamaica and half a hundred other islands of the Northern Earth.
    He’d always thought islands were a sort of magic, life erupting from the hard, salt ocean, a fringe of existence on the watery desert. A challenge to the ruling powers of sea and sky.
    That in turn made Hethor glance at the southern horizon. They were still too far north to see the Equatorial Wall, but the very idea of it seemed to hang heavy over the line of the ocean. Even at this latitude, the horns of the Earth’s track had shifted, flattening out a bit.
    â€œYou’ll see it afore