“It wasn’t much,” Kent said, leaning breathlessly on the railing and looking over the damage. “Sure wasn’t worth all this.”
Chapter 6
In a breezy, unpleasant stretch of mountainside, halfway between the open fields of the fug and one of the more forgettable cities in the nation of Circa, Mallow paced along a questionable catwalk. It was suspended by ropes above and struts below, something of a pointless mezzanine in a network of lifts leading to the surface. It was home to a small shack, some assorted lift-operating machinery, and little else. Mallow was waiting for an audience with someone he very much doubted would be happy to see him. He glanced down at a page, unquestionably written in the hand of Tusk. It had been waiting for him at the last port he’d stopped at, and detailed a sequence of difficult-to-understand business dealings Mallow was to complete.
“There aren’t many things I miss about working with Alabaster,” Mallow muttered. “But at least he was so delighted by his own brilliance there would come a point that he couldn’t help but speak at length about his plans. All of this mystery and vagueness—I feel as though I’m working with a magician.”
The door to the small shack swung open suddenly, nearly pitching Mallow over the side. From inside, a strangely dressed man in a full face mask with dark lenses appeared.
“Whoa, whoa. I hear you talkin’ about someone called Alabaster?” he said, accusation in his voice.
“You almost killed me!” Mallow said, steadying himself on the rickety railing.
“Yeah, yeah. Answer the question, so I know if I’m going to finish the job.”
“I worked for someone named Alabaster, but that time is mercifully over.”
“Oh yeah? Is he dead? Or ain’t I that lucky?”
“Locked up, overseas.”
The stranger slumped a bit. “Figures he’d find himself some sort of a halfway fate like that. With my luck the maniac’ll turn up again, eventually. Who you workin’ for then?”
“Someone who wishes to remain anonymous,” Mallow said.
“Uh-huh. Him and everyone else. Inside the office. Let’s see if we can’t get this through quick.”
Mallow resisted the temptation to scream at the man for his complete disregard for the safety of his business associates. It would be better to simply get through with this as quickly as possible, lest he say something that would force him to return to Tusk in failure.
The “office” inside the shack was little more than a single chair and a pile of boxes and cabinets piled with papers.
“That Alabaster guy,” the strangely dressed man said. “Did business with him back west. Went bad enough I handed off the whole west coast operation and came east. If you were one of his, that would’ve got us off on a bad foot. But you say you ain’t. Which suits me fine. Name’s Dr. Wash, by the way.”
“I’d imagined that would be the case, as that’s who I was sent to meet.”
“Uh-huh. And what were you sent to do.”
“I would like to arrange for the delivery of some items of a military nature.” Mallow dug out a second sheet, this one typed. He handed it over.
“Let’s see here. Two hundred casks of black powder, a thousand cannonballs, five hundred loads of grapeshot… Sounds like someone’s lookin’ to start a war with this stuff.”
“I try not to ask questions regarding the intent of these purchases.”
“Yeah, sure. Dumber you can play, the better.” Wash continued going over the order. “It’s a hefty one. Nothin’ I can’t handle, but I ain’t givin’ no one squat until I know you can pay.”
Mallow nodded and retrieved a small paper packet from his pocket. He handed it over. Wash tore it open and found it had been filled with purple-blue nuts and washers.
“Trith. So it’s the Wind Breaker you’re workin’ for.”
“What? I never said that.”
“Sure, sure. But no one else pays in trith. That’s fine. I know folks have been sayin’ the Wind Breaker’s been workin’ with fuggers. Sort of makes sense they’d poach the lackeys from the last fella they took down. This’ll do for a start. Big ol’ load of ammo and such delivered to… heh. Ray Island. Oof. This ain’t gonna go over well. But a deal’s a deal. You got anything else for me?”
“No, I believe that will be all.”
“Good. Then get goin’. Somethin’ tells me if them lunatics are shippin’ this much hardware to Ray Island, they ain’t the only ones that’re gonna be loadin’ up.”
“So long as the delivery is timely.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get goin’.”
Dr. Wash ushered Mallow outside and helped him onto a lift to relive the harrowing ride that had gotten him to this level in the first place. As he trundled downward, he consulted the other instruction Tusk had provided. Similarly large orders of ordnance and additional packets of trith.
#
Days later, the Wind Breaker limped between the mooring towers at Ichor Well. The damage to the ship had been such that they couldn’t afford the usual roundabout course, but luck seemed to be with them. No one had followed.
The Coopers each swung from opposite sides of the ship, holding tight to mooring lines, and twirled about the towers to anchor the airship quickly. They were down to three fully functional turbines. The other two were cut off from their steam supply. Even as they moored up, Nita was on the envelope, easing a damaged blade from the turbine in preparation of replacing it. The quicker they could get stabilized, the quicker they could shut the rest of the ship down and tend to the worst of its wounds. As the squealing, sickly sound of the turbines died away, they heard a voice calling from below.
“Captain! Captain!” called Prist from the ground. “What happened?”
“We got hit. Hard. Surprise attack up at the Ruby Club by some lunatic with more guns than sense. Ship’s lucky to still be runnin’. Nita! Get down here and get as many grunts as you can wrangle that know their way around a wrench. I want us airworthy in two days.”
“I’ll do my best, Captain,” Nita called in reply.
“I ain’t asked for your best, Nita. I want it fixed.”
“Captain, if I may suggest it, you may wish to delay that order for a moment,” Prist said. “I’ve been analyzing that substance.”
“What are you on about?”
“The clay with the grit? You asked me to analyze it.”
“You lookin’ into it ain’t got no bearin’ on what we gotta do to get this ship runnin’ again.”
“That may be so, but it is important nonetheless. The information I’ve turned up concerns Nita.”
“Why?”
“Because the grit is at least partially of Calderan origin.”
Mack glared down at Prist. “… Nita, belay those orders. You, me, and Prist, in her lab. Now.”
#
In the laboratory, Prist carefully opened a case as Mack and Nita watched, exhausted from the stressful trip.
“It was a slow and complex process to analyze that abrasive paste,” she explained. “The paste itself was relatively simple. It is a combination of adhesive and tar. Some of the workers claim the tar is the sort used to weatherproof the rigging of ships. I found it curious that both would be used. After all, either one of them would have been an adequate medium for the abrasive fragments. It seemed—”
“Prist, we are short on time and long on work to be done. If you got a point, come to it quick,” Mack said.
“Right, right. The short answer is that it is devilishly difficult to fully dissolve it.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” Nita said. “It took Lil and I ages to clean out the turbine last time. I shudder to think of what would have happened if we’d gotten a bigger dose.”
“Shudder no more. It will take far less work from now on, I assure you. I was able to work out a combination of solvents that will do the job. I’ve already informed the crew, who will provide you with plenty of it when they refuel and rearm you. And with those solvents, I was able to isolate this.”
She plucked a glass vial from the case and held it up. It was filled with a small dusting of blue powder.
“This is what has done the damage to your turbines. There wasn’t much to work with, as you can see. It didn’t react to any of my testing compounds. Any of them. The compounds are precisely designed such that any substance known to the fug will react with at least one of them. I was baffled, but then I realized, there was one substance that is not native to the fug and might behave in the same way.”
“Trith…” Nita said.
“Quite so.”
The engineer took the vial and inspected it. “But trith isn’t blue. It is purple-black.”
“Ah. Proper trith is. This stuff is low-grade. Softer than what you people make, but hard enough to wear through just about anything we can make.”
“Do we know where it came from?”
“Trith relies upon compounds that aren’t available on Rim. But there has been a good deal of experimentation with attempts to make our own from the trace amounts of those compounds present in Calderan sea salt. It isn’t financially viable.” She took back the vial. “What you see here is probably the result of rendering down a pound of sea salt.”
“So the gunk that’s clogging our turbines is worth a fortune,” Mack said.
“Again, quite so.”
“Not the sort of stuff raiders and wailers are likely to stumble upon.”
“If they knew what they were working with, they’d be more likely to horde the stuff than fire it at you.”
“Useful to know what we’re working with. Somethin’ like that’s liable to only have come from Tusk. He was able to rig up that bomb, trith plates and all. Ain’t encountered anybody else who could manage to churn out so much as a washer’s worth of the stuff. Ain’t much of a surprise he’s behind this stuff.”
“Will we be able to track the paste to its source?” Nita said.
“Not with so small a sample,” Prist said. “Perhaps if you can secure a larger sample, or if you’re attacked again and receive some in that way.”
“If we run into another attack with this stuff, we won’t be tracking anything to anyplace,” Mack said.
“If it helps, I may be able to narrow down the possibilities,” said Prist. “I had a word with some of the workers regarding the adhesives. Both are commonly used in ship repair.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much. There are dozens of places in the fug that do ship repair,” Nita said.
“Ah, but that isn’t all. As you would know, I’m sure, it takes intense heat to produce trith, and for long durations. Well-equipped as we are here, I doubt we could produce even this paltry imitation of the stuff. Whoever made this has access to a blast furnace that is running continuously.”
“Ironworks. Mines,” Mack said. “Still doesn’t narrow it down much. … Though a shipyard that does military ships, cannons and the like, might have a blast furnace for castings.”
“And such a shipyard would also have the adhesive and tar,” Nita said.
“It doesn’t prove much, I realize,” Prist said. “The substances could be produced separately and combined.”
“But Tusk bein’ Tusk, he’d want to make sure nobody knew about this stuff that didn’t need to know about it,” Mack said. “I can’t see him lettin’ that trith go in a form where someone might work out what it was. And you deliver a load of tar and such to a foundry where it ain’t needed, folks are liable to ask questions. My guess, this is bein’ made at a shipworks that does its own foundry work. And there ain’t but two of them that I know of. The Fugtown yards and the yards down near the south end of Circa. That’s two places to hit. And no tellin’ which is the right one or how much time we have before there’s so much of that stuff in the hands of raiders that we won’t survive another flight. Get the whole crew together, Ms. Graus. Donald and Kent, too. We ain’t gonna work anything out unless we put our heads together good and proper.”
#
The crew gathered into the comparatively spacious cafeteria of the Ichor Well facility. Mack had popped open a bottle of ichor to clear out the fug from one corner of the room, such that he and the rest of the crew could forgo their masks and choke down some nourishment.
“.. So one way or another, I reckon we’re going to have to hit Fugtown,” Mack said, sharing the last of the findings between bites of an unpleasant-looking bit of roasted meat from the fug folk kitchen.
“Feh. Didn’t you get your fill of Fugtown when you robbed that warehouse?” Donald asked.
“I had my fill of Fugtown long before that. But that was the last time I had to deal with them and still keep my ship in the air,” Mack said.
“Why go back then?”
“Because we need to clip Tusk’s wings and hopefully put him underground. Ain’t but two shipyards that could’ve mixed up that gunk, and seems to me if Tusk’s got his fingers in anything, it’s the place that built the dreadnought.”
“Uh-huh. Then why are you going to Fugtown?”
Mack gritted his teeth. “Because that’s where they built the dreadnought.”
Donald shook his head. “Nope.”
“Donald, much as I’ve tried to forget it, we are the ones who destroyed the dreadnought. It rose up out of the shipyards at Fugtown.”
“You blowing it up don’t mean nuffin’ about where it was made. There’s a couple blokes here who worked on bits of the first dreadnought, and neither of them has ever even been to Fugtown. They may have docked it there and done work on it, but the fing wasn’t made there.”
“You’re certain?”
Donald shrugged. “Clive’s the fella what said so. He could be a liar. But most days he only lies about the sort of fing that’ll make his wallet heavy or get him a lady. Working on bits of the dreadnought wouldn’t do much for either.”
“So was it made in the Circa shipyard?”
“Nah. I don’t fink so. He ain’t been that far west neither.”
“Is Clive here?” Mack said. “Or anyone who can vouch for this?”
Donald glanced at a clock on the wall. “Should be off duty about now. If we’re lucky, he hasn’t hit the bottle too heavy yet.”
“Take us to him,” Mack said.
The surface folks donned their masks and followed as Donald led the way to the bunkhouse where the workers slept during their tours.
“You folks coming down here as often as you do, sometimes I forget none of you are local,” Donald said. “But then, I don’t fink too many people know about the little workshops at all. … Come to fink of it… the only blokes who know about it were the ones you busted us out of Skykeep wif. Clive’s the only one who hasn’t swapped out for a bit.”
“Getting someone locked up to keep a secret seems like the sort of thing Tusk would do, based upon what we’ve learned about him so far,” Nita said.
“Clive! Clive, you get up here!” Donald turned to the others. “Now you listen. Talk slow. Clive isn’t as bright as you or I. A simple sort. Good with his hands, bad with his head. I fink he spent a long time breaving something he shouldn’t’ve been breaving.”
“I know my way around a man like that,” Mack said.
The floor of the bunkhouse shook lightly. Slow, plodding footsteps brought a hulking figure to the doorway. He was the same height as Donald, which put him at a foot taller than Mack, but his build was much like that of the captain. It was rare to see a fug person of any stature with a portly build. Seeing it on a grunt made the captain feel like he was dealing with an ogre out of the storybooks.
“Huh?” Clive muttered thickly.
“This here’s the captain of the Wind Breaker.”
“Uh-huh,” Clive said with a nod.
“Donald tells me you did some work on the dreadnought.”
“Bits of it.”
“He tells me you did it at a workshop, somewhere in the north.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can you tell me a bit about it?”
“Uh
-huh.”
No other information was forthcoming.
“Where is it?” Mack asked.
Clive scratched his head with fingers nearly as thick as Mack’s wrist.
“End of the tracks.”
Mack took a breath and tried to scrape his patience together for another go. “Which tracks, Clive?”
“The ones I worked at.”
Mack shut his eyes for a moment. “What sort of tracks?”
“The ones with the carts. Big carts. Run on steam. Full of iron.”
“Mining carts?”
“Yeah. Iron mine carts. Uphill. Good job, driving those carts. Never got that job.”
“Was it a shipworks?”
“Nah. Just working iron. Bits for ships, though. Big bits. For the dreadnought.”
“Did the parts leave on ships?”
“Nah.”
“How did the finished parts leave?”
“Different carts.”
Kent nodded. “Couldn’t have been sending the parts very far, then.”
“Where did you stay while you were there?”
“Big place,” he said. “Outside the big walls with the big doors.”
“Big like the walls of this place? Or bigger?”
“Bigger. Big enough to wrap up Fugtown.”
“You’ve never been to Fugtown, though.”
“I know it’s big.”
“Could it have been Fugtown shipyard?”
“No. Bigger. Like Fugtown.”
“… The walls protected something as big as all of Fugtown?”
“Or bigger.”
“How long did you work there?”
“Until I got locked up.”
“Why did you end up getting locked up?”
“Bad boss. Wanted to take a trip. See folks. They said no. Said I wouldn’t stay quiet about the place.” Clive leaned low. “I think he wanted my place. It was the best.”
“Why was that?”
“It was by the sign. Kept the wind off it.”
Mack’s eyes widened.
“What did the sign say?”
Clive laughed. “Feet Kip-her Hill. Funny name.”
Mack looked to Kent and Donald. They shrugged.
“You got anything else you reckon could help us find the place?”
Cipher Hill Page 10
