Celestial Matters Read Online Free Page B

air between us with her right arm, cutting off my argument. “Your safety is more important than your convenience. You will be able to bathe when we reach Athens.”
    We marched to the bow, stopping just a few feet in back of the ’Era figurehead. My bodyguard looked out from under the steel canopy and swept her gaze across the sea and the sky. I followed her eyes, wondering what she was looking for; then for just a moment the military lessons my father beat into me came forth and I saw as she did.
    There were half a dozen ships within sight; four were merchant ships plying the many trade paths of the Mediterranean, one was a passenger steamer carrying civilians from city to city, and the last was a naval messenger boat, just twenty feet long, only one gun, but fast enough to sail rings around the Lysander. Above us there were half a dozen specks that were most likely celestial ships or moon sleds flying high over the few clouds strewn about the sky. But suppose they weren’t. Suppose one of those ships was carrying a Middler assassin. Suppose one of the dots circling overhead was another battle kite. If the first impossible attack had come, how many more could follow it?
    “You are right, Captain,” I said. “My apologies. I have served too long in positions of safety. I will defer to your judgment.”
    She nodded curtly, then shifted her attention to the ship’s armament, scrutinizing the evac cannons set in drum-shaped swivel mounts every five feet along the port and starboard rails. They looked like twin rows of phalloi at a Dionysiac festival. One by one the tops of the long cannons described circles in the air as the gunners greased and tested the aiming gears. My bodyguard nodded curt approval and returned her unreadable gaze to me.
    I began to wonder if this assignment was some sort of punishment for her. The idea gave me a perverse sense of relief since it reduced the likelihood that I was in real danger. But two facts glared down this comforting hypothesis: First, Spartan officers who made mistakes were either forgiven or executed depending on the seriousness of the crime.
    Second, and more compelling: that battle kite had attacked a ship carrying merchants, wool, and purple dye. The only thing on it of any great value to the Delian League was an important scientist. But I was by no means the most important target in the heart of the League. Unless the Middle Kingdom had found out about Sunthief.
    My thoughts were interrupted by the boatswain shouting, “Brace for speed!”
    I reflexively grabbed and held on to the support rail that ran the length of the deck and braced my feet against the corrugated flooring.
    He shouted, “Deploy impellers!” and a line of golden wedges sprouted on the prow’s fluted waterline. A fiery gleam washed under the canopy, limning ’Era’s statue with a divine light. The aura of Zeus’s bride flowed backward, suffusing Yellow Hare’s armor with a fiery brightness. She stood so still and looked so majestic in the light that I thought, forgive the impiety, that there were two statues of goddesses in front of me.
    My eyes grew accustomed to the glow and the moment of inspiration passed. I took a deep sniff of the rarified water that wafted like a bracing mist from the impellers. The fire-impregnated metal thinned the ocean, so the ship could sail swiftly without being slowed by the sluggishly heavy waters.
    As the ship sped toward Athens on a carpet of unresisting ocean, I gripped the railing hard to brace myself against the back-push. But Captain Yellow Hare’s only precaution against the sudden speed was to lean slightly forward and tense her legs. And that little action stopped her from sliding across the deck or tumbling over the side. Immobile as the earth, she let the cosmos shift around her, heaving Spartan defiance in the face of physics.
    The ocean spray leaped into the sky in front of us, rushing onto the deck. It stung my face a little, but my cuts had mostly