Cipher Hill

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “It’s a fable, back home. Roh is the goddess of the sea. She is in constant struggle with Lo, the volcano. We see ourselves as the children of Lo and Roh, but Roh is constantly trying to take us back. Remember when I took you to walk the beach near my home?”

  “Sure do. That was real nice. Ain’t too often I get to go barefoot.”

  “In the fable, there is a man called Hanlin. He has a long way to go, and the quickest way is along the beach. But the sand is dry and loose. With every step, it shifts and slides beneath his feet. He is perpetually off balance, and he tires quickly. It is then that Roh calls to him. ‘Your way is difficult. Come, let me make a path for you.’ And she reaches out with her briny hands and smooths the sand beside the sea. Hanlin ventures closer. The sand she has smoothed is firmer. Made for walking. So he ventures a bit closer, and closer still. The closer to the sea he walks, the easier it is. Finally, he is walking at the very edge of the water. His destination grows nearer. Then a wave comes, twice the size of the others. It lifts him up and drags him away, into the sea. Claimed by Roh.”

  Lil looked at Nita. “And you said that’s a fable?”

  “Very famous among my people.”

  “Fables’ve got morals, right?”

  “Yes. The moral of this one is, ‘Sometimes what is easy and attractive is also dangerous.’ I suppose it isn’t the best fit for this situation. This certainly isn’t easy.”

  “I reckon it ain’t even the best moral for that fable.”

  “What do you think it should be?”

  “Watch out for big waves.”

  Nita laughed.

  “You said it ain’t easy. That mean it’s attractive?” Lil said.

  Nita smiled. “There are certainly perks, Lil.”

  Lil blushed and gave Nita a punch on the arm. “You sweet talker, you. Listen, wait here, I got somethin’ I want to show you.”

  She dashed through the curtain to Coop’s room. “Hey, Coop!”

  Her brother snorted awake.

  “Where’s that thing I told you to hang on to yesterday?” she said.

  Nita shook her head as she listened to thumping and shuffling as boxes in the overstuffed room were rummaged through. A moment later, Lil came out with her arms conspicuously behind her back.

  “You ready?” Lil asked, as Coop’s breathing rapidly shifted back to a rumbling snore.

  “I suppose so.”

  Lil revealed what at first glance appeared to be a toy. It was an intricate bit of carved wood, hinged at the joints and dangling from cords affixed to a large wooden crosspiece. The carving was exquisite, and had the unmistakable form of an aye-aye. The deckhand rattled the crosspiece a bit, causing the arms, legs, and tail of the toy to flail about drunkenly.

  “Is that one of the puppets from the Wind Breaker play back in Caldera?”

  “Yep!” Lil said. “I talked to that lady who played me. She asked me a load of questions about this and that, and tried to get her head around the right way to talk. As a trade, she let me have one of the first puppets they made of Wink. It wasn’t done, so I been spendin’ some time every day since then fixin’ it up. I made the eye patch here. And I fixed the tail.”

  “You did a wonderful job.”

  “Glad you like it. It’s for you,” Lil said, handing it over.

  “For me?” Nita took the piece and toyed with it a bit, trying to mimic a walking motion. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Why’s there gotta be an occasion?” Lil said. “I saw it and I thought, that’s pretty and such, like Nita likes, and it’s all clever and complicated like she likes, too.”

  Nita smirked. “Follow me.”

  “You got somethin’ for me?”

  “Maybe…”

  She hurried down to the boiler room and pushed open the door. The air was heavy and warm, with the sharp scent of burning coal and its more potent counterpart, burn-slow. Nita popped open a small tool chest and moved one of the trays aside.

  “I was waiting for some sort of gift-giving occasion. I missed the chance to have it ready for your birthday, and as far as I can tell, that’s the only time of year you exchange gifts.”

  Lil rubbed her hands together eagerly. “I think back in Gunner’s neck of the woods they make each other pies for Lamp Day.”

  “I’m not familiar.”

  “Happens on the first moonless night of the winter. Somethin’ to do with when they finally got the lighthouse lit up at Cape Ray, Circa’s capital. Gunner ain’t one for ceremony, so we don’t pay it no mind.” Lil bounced eagerly. “What’d you get me?”

  Nita revealed a wide leather belt. Lil held it to the reddish glow of the boiler. The surface was beautifully tooled with a design composed of flowers, ropes, and gears.

  “A new belt!” Lil said. “One that I ain’t gotta wait for Coop to hand down? You been payin’ attention. This one I got’s seen better days.”

  “That’s not all,” Nita said. “Do you notice anything special about it?”

  She turned it over in her hands. “Aside from it bein’ just about the only thing I own that’s perty, but I can still use every day?”

  Nita took the belt and slid her fingers along what would be just under the small of Lil’s back if she were wearing it. What at first seemed to be just the edge of one of the gears in the motif slid aside to reveal a short, thin blade.

  “Look at that!” Lil squealed.

  “I knew you were excited when Coop bought you that little pistol that fit in your boot, and I thought you might get a lot more use out of a spare knife.”

  Lil gave her a hug. “Let me tell you. The quickest way to a girl’s heart is a good, sturdy knife.”

  Nita smirked. “I can’t fault your phrasing, but the metaphor comes across a bit more threatening when you put it like that.”

  Lil hastily tugged the ratty old belt free and threaded the new one in place. As she did, the heavy, plodding footsteps of the captain could be heard thumping down the corridor. He appeared in the doorway.

  “Ms. Graus, something wrong with the boiler?”

  “No, Captain. I’d been running down a leak and I needed to stop by here to—”

  “She gave me a new belt, Cap’n!” Lil said, trotting out to the better-lit corridor.

  Mack huffed irritably. “You’re off duty, Lil. You should be gettin’ some shut-eye.”

  “Just visitin’ with Nita, Cap’n.”

  “I don’t need you noddin’ off on watch because you didn’t have the sense to get some sleep.”

  “I ain’t never gone on watch without bein’ my best, Cap’n.”

  “Hit the bunk!” he snapped. “That’s an order.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.”

  “Ms. Graus, meet me at the helm when you’re through down here. I want a word with you.” He thumped off back down the corridor.

  “I’d say he was grumpier than usual, but it’s been a dog’s age since I seen him when he wasn’t grumpy,” Lil said.

  “He’s got a lot on his mind. More now than usual.”

  “Maybe so, but I ain’t been yelled at for not sleepin’ since I was toddlin’ around back at the goat farm…”

  #

  Captain Mack returned to the deck and took the wheel from Gunner, a fresh cigar clenched between his teeth. The sweet smell of the cigar mixed with the thin fumes curling up from the fug below. Sticking close to the surface of the churning purple mist helped to mask the ship and discourage raiders. It put them in greater threat of attack from the ships of the fug folk, but that was largely the point. They’d challenged Tusk, and they were waiting for him to answer.

  “You wanted me, Captain?” Nita said, climbing up from below decks and approaching the helm.

  “Gettin’ a low whistle from one of these here pipes,” he said, nudging a manifold at the base of the helm.

  Nita knelt and listened closely. “Just a loose connection. Won’t take a moment,” she said.

  She went to work, slipping a pair of wrenches from her
sash. “Try to avoid changing altitude for a bit. I’ve got to pinch off that control while I work on it.”

  “Be quick about it.”

  For a moment the whistle of wind and the rumble of the engines were the only sounds, but Mack knew it wouldn’t last. He’d been in command long enough to know there were different sorts of silence. This wasn’t quiet industriousness. This was the deferent pause before a voiced concern. He could see it in Nita’s expression.

  “Captain?” she asked.

  He grunted in response.

  “Would you mind terribly if I made an observation?”

  “We been through this enough times. I’m pushin’ you all hard. Ain’t no two ways about it. What needs doin’ needs doin’, and we ain’t got the crew to be takin’ it easy. I been on edge on account of the fight we got comin’ from a man we ain’t met and whose army we only got the barest notion of. I’m near enough to hangin’ up my hat that I ain’t keen on riskin’ it all at this age, but I also ain’t gonna settle myself down knowin’ there’s someone out there with my name on his list and the means to finish me off if I don’t finish him off.”

  Nita blinked at him.

  “That about cover it?” he muttered.

  “I appreciate your openness, Captain, but I was more concerned with how you’ve been handing out orders lately.”

  “Here I was thinkin’ you were just itchin’ to stir up things that ain’t none of your concern, but you’re questionin’ my orders, too. Seems I ain’t quite made a sailor out of you yet.”

  “Captain, I would never question your orders.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “… I may have questioned more than my share of orders in the past, but that’s not what I’m doing now.”

  “Darn right it ain’t what you’re doin’ now. What you’re doin’ now is finishin’ up with that repair and mindin’ your own business.”

  “Captain, for as long as I’ve known you, which I’ll admit isn’t as long as the rest of the crew, you’ve been perfectly content to issue orders and trust us to get the job done. And we always have. But down there with Lil, and a few days ago with Gunner—”

  “Sometimes there’re only two ways to do things, and only one of ’em is right. You see a bad idea, you nip it in the bud, or else it becomes a bad habit.”

  “But, Captain—”

  “Speakin’ of bad ideas—I’m willin’ to call this whole talk a sign that you been on duty too long. Once you’re through, take the rest of the night. Wink’ll do the inspectin’ until morning.”

  She tightened down the connection. “And shall I get right to sleep, Captain? Will you be checking in on me if I don’t?”

  “Patience is one of the things I ain’t got much of, Ms. Graus. I ain’t squanderin’ it on you.”

  “One last thing then,” she said. “When is the last time you got a good night’s sleep.”

  “Before you were born. Dismissed, Ms. Graus.”

  She gave him a lingering look before leaving, her eyes silently extending the lecture a bit more. When she was gone, Captain Mack glanced aside to find Gunner nearby. After another predictably brief silence, Gunner cleared his throat.

  “Gunner, there ain’t but two words I want to hear come out of your mouth right now. You pick the wrong ones and you’re going over the side,” Mack growled.

  “… Aye, Captain.”

  He nodded. “That’s my boy.”

  Chapter 3

  Mallow eased his personal airship down. In the time he’d been in the employ of Lucius P. Alabaster, one of his many obligations had been piloting Alabaster’s ostentatious personal conveyances. It was quite possibly the only enjoyable part if his job. Alabaster would bloviate endlessly while reclined in the passenger compartment while Mallow was largely left to his task.

  Once he’d entered the employ of Tusk, the travel requirements became no less numerous, but now he was granted the even more cherished luxury of traveling alone. Tusk, while still traveling from place to place with some frequency, never requested Mallow be his chauffeur. At this point, Mallow was beginning to wonder if perhaps Tusk was a spirit, flitting from here to there without ever crossing the space between. The man had the uncanny capacity to precede Mallow to a rendezvous despite Mallow taking the most direct route he could find.

  He let the confounding proclivities of his latest string of employers slide from his thoughts. The destination was just ahead.

  “Let me see now… The area is quite short on landmarks, but I am reasonably sure this is where I was told to meet. The Cravewell Leather Tannery…”

  As instructed, Mallow had dropped a short message requesting an audience with Fritz at a boarding house to the south. Six hours later a messenger had delivered the directions to this place with a time scrawled at the bottom. He’d had to leave immediately and push his little airship harder than he liked just to reach the place in time for the meeting.

  Mallow twisted a knob, and the exterior phlo-lights cast their glow on the land below. The fug had done some terrible things to the landscape, but this place in particular had been twisted almost beyond recognition. Once, there had been great, mighty oaks here. Now there was naught but skeletal standing deadwood, utterly cocooned with thorn-vines. The stone husks of a small community of houses lay completely stripped of their doors, roofs, and other wooden components. Mallow briefly supposed they’d been taken by looters. It was a good deal easier to use the remnants of the pre-Calamity villages than to hack through the thorns that wrapped the trees if one was in search of quick firewood. As he dropped lower, though, he noticed that half-rotten piles of twigs and splinters lay on the ground wherever wood had once stood. They were scorched black in a way that suggested corrosive chemicals.

  “This isn’t any standard work of the fug…” he murmured.

  A large, surprisingly intact sign loomed out of the misty darkness, marking the leather works. It was comparatively intact, still at least shaped like a factory. The place had the wear and tear of decades of disuse, but a small corner with intact windows and replaced doors suggested recent repairs. In the courtyard surrounding the place, a sandy pit invitingly awaited a dropped anchor.

  Maneuvering his little airship to a stop was simple enough, as the mooring berth was clearly meant for a ship many times the size of his vehicle. He hopped out, wrangled his mooring ropes, and got the ship secured.

  “Fritz… I hesitate to think what sort of a man Tusk would consider capable of single-handedly taking out the Wind Breaker crew,” he mused, pacing toward the door of the tannery.

  “It’s the Wind Breaker crew, is it?” came a voice from behind him.

  Despite the briefness of the sentence, it did a remarkably efficient job of illustrating the utterly demented nature of the speaker. Mallow spun and found himself face-to-face with a grinning visage. If the masks so frequently associated with theater were intended to represent comedy and tragedy, the face staring at him now could easily have been the archetype of madness. Wide eyes with small pupils goggled at him, one twitching independently of the other. The grin was so wide it may well have met in the back of the head, and purple-tinged hair fell in greasy locks to one side. Even for fug folk—a people largely defined by their wiry builds—this person was startlingly gaunt. This was only accentuated by a brown-and-black leather outfit strapped in place around every joint by short leather belts. Mallow wasn’t short, by any means, but to look him in the eye, the lunatic had to crouch a bit, leaving elbows and knees jutting out in a spidery akimbo. Six mismatched pistols were strapped in an array of holsters across the chest, and stubby hiltless daggers hung wherever there was room for a pair of them.

  “Egad!” Mallow yelped, falling backward.

  Fritz released a cackle that sounded like a rocking chair on a warped wooden floor.

  “No sense acting surprised. You did ask for the meeting.” The lunatic reached down and pulled Mallow to his feet. His narrow limbs and lanky build didn’t leave much room for strength, but to
gether they got him upright.

  “You startled me… er…”

  Mallow realized that thus far nothing about Fritz—from the voice to the appearance—had made gender evident. Something in Mallow’s expression made Fritz’s grin—impossibly—grow even wider.

  “Something tripping you up?” Fritz said.

  “Er… forgive me, but are you a man or a woman?”

  Fritz’s eyes narrowed and the grin leveled out. “Just what sort of business are you here for that you need to know that?”

  “It isn’t an aspect of business, it is a matter of familiarity.”

  Fritz leaned forward. “Are you interested in becoming familiar with me?”

  “… No.”

  The smile widened again. “Then let’s keep it to business. This way!” With long strides, Fritz led the way to the door to the tannery. “Who are you and who sent you? There aren’t very many people who would know how to contact me. And fewer still who would willingly do so.” Fritz looked over one shoulder. “My reputation makes new investors skittish.”

  The lunatic pulled a complex key from a pouch beneath one of the pistols and used it to unlock the door. A switch beside the door opened phlogiston tanks to cast light on the interior of the tannery. It was a large, open building, still bearing the equipment from when it had been in operation. Troughs of foul-smelling fluids lay in orderly rows along the ground. Overhead, flyways dangled with iron hooks, many of which still held tanned hides.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Fritz said, still awaiting an answer.

  “Oh. Er. I am Mr. Mallow. My employer would prefer to remain anonymous.”

  “Yes. Tusk is like that.”

  “Who said anything about anyone named Tusk?” Mallow said quickly.

  Fritz approached a workbench and slid out one drawer. Long fingers plucked up a stack of somewhat faded newspapers and rummaged through them. After a moment, the lunatic held up one featuring a photograph of Alabaster. Thanks to Alabaster’s unquenchable thirst for adulation, there was no shortage of papers with him beneath the daily headline.

  “That’s you, isn’t it?” Fritz said.

  “No. That’s Lucius P.—”