by E J Kitchens
“Let’s argue the point over dinner some time, shall we? And return your face to its appropriate stoicism, or else we’ll never pass ourselves off as guards,” he said.
Then, he—Bertram Orren, the calm, confident, level-headed schoolmaster—nearly walked into the tunnel wall. Had he just asked Captain Marianna Bowditch to dinner? A woman above his station? Who he’d known mere hours?
It had to be the sleep deprivation.
Or was it figuring out in a few hours what Uncle Philip had been telling him for years—how wonderful and beautiful and brave Captain Marianna Bowditch was?
No, he’d not take it back. But did Marianna wish it unsaid? He dared a glance at her.
Marianna’s eyes were wide. But then that half smile converted into a grin she appeared to have difficulty stifling. It wasn’t until they spotted a windowed room ahead that the grin fully disappeared.
Their hallway slanted into a large central space. The automaton motored onward without a care for whether or not they were following it. They stopped just shy of the tunnel’s end, and Bertram peered after the automaton. Marianna tugged on his sleeve.
“We’ve reached the main chamber. It’s about the size of the students’ playing field, maybe larger, and semi-circular,” he whispered back to her.
Three lifts, spaced about ten feet apart, punctured the floor to his left. Metal pulleys rose above the empty docks to the ceiling. The lift platforms themselves were concealed in the belly of the cave. Waiting for the miners to return?
Across were three large doors, two of them sturdy metal doors fitted with small windows. Like prison doors. His stomach twisted. Opposite the lifts, to his right, jutting from what he assumed was the outer wall and taking up a third of the chamber’s depth, was the windowed room. Through the glass, beyond the room, he could just see bins attached to the cave wall, likely emptying into a room behind. On their side of the control room was a heavy set of barred double doors, the supply entrance, he assumed. The exit?
The automaton whirred confidently to a side door in the control room, bumped against it, paused, retreated, bumped against it again, and repeated the process once more. With a pathetic whir Bertram took to be confusion as to why no human was opening the door for it, it stationed itself outside like a loyal pup.
Bertram almost felt sorry for it, locked out of its home. For the control room—glass from about three feet up to the twenty-foot-high cave roof—must be the Time Keeper Station and guard station for the mine. Behind the glass were instrument panels, additional rooms, and a dozen Time Keepers, some dressed as guards but others fitting in with the paper-strewn desks and filing cabinets. All wore weapons. One looked up from his desk, pointed to the orphaned automaton, and got up to let it in.
Bertram’s pulse spiked. They’d know the automaton didn’t go out alone, and they’d know where to search for its lost guards. He looked frantically around the room. Where could they go other than back?
Sure enough, the Time Keepers’ questions floated out the open doorway as the automaton glided in. Then the automaton halted, spun around, and glided back out the door. Afraid of the large guns the guards were strapping on? He could understand that.
Unfortunately, the automaton headed toward them like the faithful pup he’d called it earlier.
He grabbed Marianna’s wrist and was about to beat a retreat when Marianna slapped his hand. The automaton changed direction, to the confusion of the Time Keepers following it.
“Did I ever tell you you’re my favorite smuggler?” Bertram whispered in her ear.
“You can tell me at that dinner you promised,” she whispered back, the crystal-studded cuff in her hand.
“It’s a deal, Captain.”
“It must’ve malfunctioned,” a clerk exclaimed. “Keep it here while I get the key.”
Bertram’s question as to how they were going to keep the stubborn thing there was answered when a burly guard lifted it onto his shoulder, its wheels still whirring away.
Several of the other clerks and guards came out to watch the thwarted navigator. “We still need to find out what happened to its guards,” one said. “Those Sheffield yokels are still loose. Program another with this one’s route,” he yelled to a clerk inside.
Ignoring the slur with effort, Bertram contemplated the chances of blocking the control room door long enough for them to get out the double doors when everyone went back inside. It wasn’t promising. He also suspected opening the doors required help from inside.
“I tell you it’s not the locals but the lost airship crew,” said the clerk, returning with a short key seemingly made of the same crystal as that studding the automaton’s jacket. Reaching up to the automaton, he opened a panel in its base. “They found a crashed Escaper near where the will-o’-the-wisps like to play. The locals are too afraid of the faeries to go into the woods there.”
Behind him, Marianna sucked in her breath, and he reached back to take her hand.
“Are you forgetting the twine? Only a local would’ve placed it there,” a clerk said.
“Forget it? I’m not the one who ran into it.”
The clerk that comment was directed at grew red in the face and started blustering. The guard lowering the no-longer-whirring automaton shushed them both. “It doesn’t matter so long as we catch them. Personally, I’m in favor of the airship captain. They say she’s a comely woman, and wandering around down here is reason enough to keep her.”
Marianna’s hand went limp in his, and he tightened his hold, drawing her closer.
A shrill bell made them both duck deeper into the tunnel. When the guards grumbled but didn’t charge in their direction, and the creaking of the three lifts announced a shift change, Bertram reclaimed his position near the tunnel’s edge.
The clerks had abandoned the automaton to return inside the control room, opening an inner chamber lined with the navigators. They opened a shoot and slid them outside the control room, to the far side of the cavern, where a guard lined them up against the control room wall and a clerk activated them. The left of the two barred doors opposite them opened, revealing guards in front of a line of workers. A low level of chatter filtered out.
A lift full of miners covered in black dust, and an equally dirty automaton, clanked to a halt, and a guard opened its gate. The automaton propelled itself out, whirred over to the control room wall where their forgotten automaton sat, and parked itself there. The miners shuffled out of the lift toward the back wall, each carrying a sack half the size of Bertram’s, but from their walk, it must be just as heavy. They deposited the sacks in the bins on the back wall and filed into the second of the two barred passageways, a guard there opening the door for them. The other two lifts arrived, and more miners slipped quietly into the flow. Additional automatons lined up next to the first. The next set of workers were herded onto the lifts along with the recently activated automatons, and the lifts descended.
One returning miner, hunched and walking slower than most, stumbled. The young man next to him grabbed his arm and steadied him, then looked around as if to make sure no one had noticed the older one’s weakness.
Bile rose in the back of Bertram’s throat. These weren’t workers: they were slaves, prisoners of the Time King.
He examined them again. They appeared to be from all over, and instinct warned him they weren’t here for crimes against humanity but against the Time King. They were likely Sky Keepers like himself, or men who simply wandered where they didn’t mean too, also like him and Marianna.
The young man who’d helped his companion earlier still stood straight and tall, his dirty brown hair tied at the nape of his neck, as if he were trying to maintain some dignity. Many of the others stood hunched with the dazed looks of men who’d given up. There was something familiar about the proud one. Bertram glanced back at Marianna, and she cocked her head. No. His imagination.
Bertram ushered Marianna back a half-dozen feet down the tunnel. “Do we have any brandy left?”
&
nbsp; “Yes. Do you have matches?”
“Yes. And extra fabric strips.”
“Wonderful. What are we setting fire to?”
Bertram winked at her, then straightened his appropriated jacket. “Nothing yet. Right now, I’m going to invite an old friend for drinks.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Bullets to get gunpowder from?”
She nodded. Taking a deep breath, Bertram marched out of the tunnel, strode to the line of returned automatons, pulled out their non-functioning one, and, walking close beside it, pushed it down the tunnel to Marianna, who had the brandy, matches, fabric strips, and bullets ready. They worked out a plan, making one solid one out of their two.
The guards, clerks, and slaves were an orderly bunch, and soon, the shift change had been completed. The control room crew went about inspecting the returned automatons.
“What about the malfunctioning automaton? Did we send anyone after the missing guards?” one asked.
“I saw Ned and a navigator going toward the old caves.”
“I thought he went off duty some time ago.”
“Well, maybe Taylor then. Anyway, there are several patrols out they might’ve joined. Let’s get these automatons seen to, then we’ll worry about it.”
As soon as the control room door shut behind the last of the Time Keepers, Bertram uncorked the brandy, but he hesitated. “I feel rather bad about this. What if those poor men get trapped in the mines?”
“They won’t, Bertram. The Time Keepers will have everything they need to repair the two lifts we’ll damage. And as soon as we get out, we’ll make sure Sky Keepers all over the world know about this place. We’ll figure out some way to free these men, just like we’ll figure out a Star Clock and navigation.”
“Yes,” Bertram said, his tone odd as the “we” in her statement, however she meant it, hit him as personal, like a two-letter navigator that might take his life in an unfamiliar direction, one he wasn’t sure he wanted to go. But did his “want” or lack of matter? He’d been given the books as much as she. Had the Maker given him the responsibility of them as well?
But first, as she said, they had to get out of the cave.
Bertram shook himself and sprinkled strips of cotton with gunpowder, draped the fabric over the automaton, sprinkled brandy around, and gave Marianna the brandy bottle. She wadded up her borrowed Time Keeper jacket, and after checking to see that the guards and clerks were engaged with their work, crept to the nearest lift, deposited the jacket there, doused the fabric with brandy, and set it alight. Bertram set a match to the automaton and pushed it into the second lift. When Marianna was back in the tunnel and he nearly so, he lit the brandy bottle itself and hurled it at the nearest lift. He ducked into the tunnel. Flames lit up the lifts.
Yelling for more help, guards and clerks rushed out of the control room with fire blankets. Bertram grabbed Marianna’s hand and his gunnysack and sprinted into the control room. Marianna ran a quick eye over the instrument panel and flicked a switch for what he assumed was an emergency lock on the control room door and the outer doors.
“The guard said the twine went through the control room. So there has to be an exit this way,” Bertram said, leading them through the inner doors. But first he needed to find out what was in those bags. He made a sharp left and opened a door marked Processing. Three clerks bent over trays of crystals undeniably like the crystals in the automatons’ chests and Marianna’s wristband.
“Excuse me.” He shut the door, grabbed Marianna’s hand again, and darted down the right-most corridor, trying doors as they went. They came to the end, to a locked door. Marianna shot the lock, and Bertram finished it off with a good kick. The door opened onto a dark, sandy path. A sea breeze washed over them.
6
The joy of freedom lasted about three seconds, long enough for Marianna to feel the pain from all over again and to remember that their exit had been rather noticeable. There was also the small issue of them not knowing how to get to Bertram’s home from wherever they were even if Marianna could physically make the trip, which she doubted, and even if they did know and she could hold out, the curse would scramble their sense of direction after three miles, sending them who knew where. And that was if the Time Keepers didn’t catch up with them first. She really, passionately disliked the Rí Am and the faerie queen.
Marianna stumbled, and Bertram slowed his pace and supported her with an arm about her waist.
The roof of the cave—or a tunnel in a cliff at this point—rose, rounded and weathered smooth above them, and extended out to a flat face of rock with an opening on either side, creating a noisy, roughly T-shaped tunnel.
They slowed as they reached the rock face, and both glanced over their shoulder. The lock on the control room door and outer doors was still holding, but it wouldn’t keep the guards inside long enough for them to disappear out of sight along the beach. To their left, the cave opened out to a flat strip of rock next to a pebbled beach. Judging by the markings, that was an airship landing pad. The vehicles used for loading and unloading were likely stored in the small cave just visible beside it, for they hadn’t been in the main chamber. To the right, she could see the end of a pier—the landing dock for sea vessels.
Marianna stepped to the left. “We should try for a vehicle. Surely they go to town occasionally and have automatons set to go there.”
Bertram stopped her with a gentle pressure to her side and guided her to the right instead. “These don’t go to town. It’s a small island—we’d know.”
Choosing to be grateful for his knowledge rather than argumentative, she let him direct her out to a gravel road leading to the pier. Blinking against the light—the brightening was past but she had no way of knowing how far into the day it was—she spotted two small boats bobbing in the waves next to the pier. Fishing vessels for the amusement of the guards? Each had an automaton in it, so they must go further out than the rim of the sheltered cove they were in.
“No,” Bertram said. With a slight pressure to her side, he turned her away from the pier to face the rock cliff behind them. He hurried them along for several yards parallel to it.
Marianna pursed her lips as she trotted to keep up. Bertram would make an excellent dance partner. He was very good at directing without verbal communication. But they were not currently dancing. “I’m not one of your students that you can direct me without explanation and consultation,” she said testily as he hid them behind a bulge in the cliff face. He released her and knelt to rummage in his gunnysack.
“I understand that the fishing vessel’s automaton will loop the boat back around here eventually,” she continued, “but perhaps we could change its course as we did the navigator inside. I can’t run along the shore until reaching a village.” She scoffed. “I couldn’t even if the curse wasn’t going to drive us from the shoreline to who knows where after three miles. Even if the Time Keepers weren’t likely to catch us first.” We could use some help, Maker. Some patience with each other too.
Bertram didn’t look up at her but began tying knots in a rope, forming loops large enough for footholds. “I’m sorry, Marianna, but you’re going to have to trust me for a few more minutes. We’re going up. It’s the only way.”
“Up?” she exclaimed, glancing in that direction. The cave was the belly of a nearly sheer cliff, weathered dark rock at the base transitioning to a green, shrub-covered hill at the top. “But—”
“Trust me. Please.” Bertram’s look as he stood was apologetic yet firm. Her shoulders sinking, she nodded. He hadn’t done anything exceptionally foolish yet. Hopefully, he wouldn’t start now. He gave her a brief smile, then gestured to the gunnysack and rope. “Secure the sack while I send a vessel off as a distraction.”
As he ran off, Marianna bent to begin work on the sack, her movements hesitant as she tried to spare her ribs. A commotion echoed up the cave tunnel and out to her. She sped her hands and heard Bertram’s pace quicken. A moment later she heard the hum of a small engine
and a belch of smoke, and then Bertram was back at her side.
“Stand in the other foothold,” he ordered as he stood in one, placing himself just in front of her and her with her back to the rock face. “This isn’t going to be pleasant, but I can’t risk you fainting from your injuries on the way up and letting go of me. Next time you plan on having adventures, bring a second PullLine.”
Resisting the urge to peek around the rock bulge at the sound of running guards, Marianna snorted but let him make a crude harness around her using the rope. He gripped the sack with its precious treasury of books between his knees.
“You didn’t pack for the right kind of adventure if you didn’t bring your own,” she countered as she stood on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck.
He extended the PullLine’s grappling line, anchoring it far up the cliff. “You may be right about that. Hold tight.”
Marianna did, and they shot up. Biting back a whimper, she squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the rush of damp air flowing over her face, cooling some of the flush of heat brought by pain. She felt them slow as they approached the anchor, then heard the slight hiss of the smaller hooks deploying to stabilize them to the cliff side. They shifted slightly as Bertram released the main anchor and reattached it higher up.
“We’re off,” he whispered, and they shot up again. As they slowed and came to a stop, Marianna felt shrubs brushing against her. The process repeated.
Somehow, they made it over the rounded cliff top, disentangled themselves, and rested a few minutes before Bertram handed her hardtack and the canteen and hauled her to her feet. The view of the blue expanse of sea was stunning, except for the Time Keeper vessel chasing another they’d soon realize was empty. The view of the island was stunning as well—green hills and valleys and inlets of the sea. But no village within three miles and no conveyance.
Bertram grabbed the sack with one hand and took her hand in his other and set them off, following the coastline.
