Heart and Soul by Sarah A. Hoyt Page A

the ship as far as the eye could see was a flotilla of Chinese ships. There were barges and junks and rafts, such as he’d seen only once, during a visit to Hong Kong a few months back. He’d seen whole multitudes of them, seemingly crowding every possible river, had been told that many families lived their entire lives on water that way.
    But there was only one set of such barges that flew—those of the feared Chinese pirates. The very same who had destroyed the Light of the Orient. Until just a few years ago they’d been thought legends. But then Englishmen flying in China had started being assaulted and learned they’d long been a scourge on the locals. And then they’d started striking all along the Asian coast. And now here.
    Nigel swallowed, and concentrated on flying the ship—a superhuman task now that the magic of his auxiliaries had been withdrawn.
    “Steady, Mr. Jones,” Mr. Perigord told him in that tone that pierced through all ambient noise. “Do not try to be a hero. We need you to keep the ship flying.”
    Nigel had no intention of being a hero. Not only was he aware that the carpetship and every life on it was dependent on him, he was also aware that his mission—returning the jewels to their avatar and their guardians—was more important than saving the property of his employers, or even their passengers.
    But it was hard to stay on course and to think only of flying the ship as more and more junks—painted with eyes in their front and outfitted with wildly multicolored sails—boarded the carpetship by throwing ropes that magically attached to the front of the ship. Across the ropes, Chinese pirates came dancing.
    While Nigel maintained course and altitude, battles raged around him. Whatever these pirates had in the way of magic must be very powerful, indeed. He saw several men withstand discharges from magical powersticks, and at close range, too. Unless, of course, every one of these attackers was a were. For weres, it took specially charged powersticks to kill them. The idea of that many magical shape-changers was almost impossible, but it seemed to be the only explanation.
    Nigel heard screams and smelled blood, and was dimly aware of the hollow sound that could only be a head hitting the polished wood floor, after being severed from its body by one of the vicious sabers in the hands of the boarders.
    None of this made sense. It was like a dream, in which the impossible happens despite the sleeper’s attempts to wake or to set the record straight. In carpetships that were attacked—though Nigel had never been in one, he’d read about them often enough—the pirates usually went for the top decks and made off with whatever they could get before the crew—which always had a certain number of men with military background—came after them.
    They stole jewels and clothes, furniture and sometimes women. They did not attack the flight-deck crew. And what were Chinese pirates doing this far from Chinese shores anyway?
    As Nigel thought this, a man came running toward him, holding in his hand what looked like a vicious saber. The sight of a man running full tilt at the flight magician, without whom the entire carpetship would collapse, was incongruous enough. But the man was stark naked, his salt-and-pepper hair and his amazingly thin and long moustaches his only covering.
    Nigel half stood, preparing for the onslaught. With a desperate, almost instinctive wish for a weapon, he gestured with the lion tail. A saber came flying through the air, the handle toward his hand. Nigel grasped it in the same hand as the lion tail.
    His would-be attacker stopped a step from Nigel, saber raised. He looked at Nigel as though Nigel was not at all what he expected. “The jewels,” he screamed, in English spoken with the accent of someone used to a tonal language. “Give me the Jewels of Power.”
    “Never,” Nigel answered, before he quite knew what he was going to do. While part of his mind still firmly