by CM Raymond
Ezekiel nodded, drawing on his pipe and staring off toward the east. Thoughts danced in his mind like his smoke in the evening breeze. “Yeah. Maybe it is all just random. Which I might buy, if I believed in randomness.” He paused for a beat. “In the morning, we’ll talk to Kir. For now, we rest. We have used much of our power, and tomorrow we will need every ounce we can muster. Tomorrow, the beast will fall.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I can’t believe I actually get to do something,” Roman said, speaking quickly. “I mean, we get to do stuff, but nothing important. Just things like chores. You know, clean this floor, chop that wood, cook that food, clean this other shit over here, while all the adults get to fight and build and fight some more. So you’re the mechanic, right?”
“Engineer, actually.” Gregory sighed.
“Yeah, that. You can fix anything though, right? I mean, that’s what the other kids are saying. That you can take a pile of sticks and a foot of rope and make...make...I don’t know, stuff out of it.”
Gregory nodded. “Sure.”
When he’d first met Roman all of fifteen minutes earlier, the kid had been quiet, almost stoic—and polite. Now he was talking fast enough to power Unlawful with his jaw muscles. Aysa had sworn that she could get him some people. Gregory hadn’t known that she meant some people he would need to babysit.
He looked at Yuri, Roman’s quiet friend, who passed him a grin and shrugged. It seemed that Roman was going to do enough talking for the both of them—and half of New Romanov. Gregory could only imagine that there were days when the smaller boy wished he weren’t only mute, but also deaf.
“So what are we going to build out here in the woods, huh?”
“We're not going to build anything,” Gregory said, pushing past a thick low-hanging pine bough. “We’re going to take something apart.”
Roman stood next to Gregory, his face twisted in confusion. “Take something apart?”
“Yep.”
“What?” Roman asked.
Gregory pointed. “That.”
Roman removed his gaze from the chief engineer and looked up at the massive hull of the airship looming over him. His mouth dropped in amazement. “Holy shit!”
“Actually, it’s a ship.” Gregory paused, taking in her beauty. “An airship. That’s the Unlawful.”
Yuri tugged on Roman’s sleeve, and the tall boy looked at his friend. Then he turned to Gregory. “Yuri wants to know why it’s called the Unlawful.”
Gregory laughed. “You got that from a tug on your sleeve?”
Roman looked confused. “No. I always know what Yuri’s thinking.”
Gregory looked at the two young men and wondered if there was maybe something more to them than met the eye. “Well, it’s a joke really. My friend Hannah, she first met Ezekiel after being labeled an Unlawful—someone who used magic illegally. She decided to put the title to good use.”
“Huh. And we’re going to take the ship apart?” Roman asked. “Why in the world would we do that? It’s freaking awesome.”
Gregory’s eyes scanned the ship’s hull, instinctively checking for any damage it may have suffered during his fast landing. While on most days he felt orphaned by his family, he always realized that the Unlawful was all he had left of them. His father had been bad at many things, but if there was one thing he had been good at, it was the mechanical arts. Gregory stood in the literal shadow of his legacy. Now it was his life’s work to turn the thing his father had crafted for evil into a tool for good, even if it meant dismantling the whole damned thing bolt by bolt.
But that wasn’t the case, not today. “Not all of it,” Gregory said. “We’ll just be taking those apart.” He pointed at the two massive cannons attached the hull under the steering wings.
“Why? Seems like those would be pretty handy.”
Nodding, Gregory sighed. “Yeah. They’re a work of art, really. Just a few days before we got here I leveled a mine run by a bunch of asshats using slave labor. Let’s just say they’ll be out of business for a long, long time—those who are still above ground, that is.”
“Woah.”
“Yeah, you can say that again. It pains me to dismantle them, but there is a higher calling; a better use for them right now. It’s critical. We need the amphoralds in them. The Oracle does, or she is going to die.”
“We’re helping save the Oracle?” Roman shook his head. He was on a much more important job than he had realized, apparently. But then it struck him that Gregory had used words he never heard before. “What the hell is a amphorald?”
“You want the nontechnical or the super-technical version?”
“Whatever is easier.”
Just as he said that, Mrs. Shutov and Aysa stepped into the clearing from the surrounding woods. The old woman looked up at the massive ship and smiled nonchalantly. “That’s nice, dear,” she said to Gregory. “Please give my grandson the somewhat technical version. Have to work his pea-brain somehow.”
“Grandma…” Roman whined.
“Shut it, boy,” Mrs. Shutov said sternly.
“All right, let’s see…” Gregory scratched his cheek, which had grown its own dark scraggly beard since they had set down in New Romanov.
Roman listened as Gregory continued with the story about Adrien and the building of the Unlawful. The three citizens of New Romanov were rapt as Gregory spun the tale of the Arcadian revolution and, ultimately, his father’s obsession, which killed many young magicians to fuel the amphorald core of the Unlawful. Gregory himself had almost been one of them.
Finally he pointed at the cannons. “Those two little beauties have a lot of amphoralds in them, and Lilith needs them.”
“For what?” Mrs. Shutov asked.
When he looked up at the sun, Gregory saw that it was getting late. “We’ll get to that. For now, we need to remove them from the ship and haul them back to New Romanov.” He turned to Aysa. “Take Roman onto the ship and collect the tools we’ll need.” He turned to Roman and asked if he could communicate to Yuri that Gregory needed him to go back to the city and get a mule and a cart to transport the cannons.
“Yeah… Um, he can hear you,” Roman said.
Yuri smiled as Gregory turned red in the face. “Sorry, Yuri.”
The kid nodded and gave Gregory a little bow before heading back into the woods.
“All right.” Gregory clapped his hands. “Let’s do this.”
“What about me?” Mrs. Shutov asked. “I’m old, not handicapped.”
Gregory pulled on his thick dark hair. “Right. I need you to clear the ground beneath each of the cannons. We’re going to need room to work.
She smiled. Just like the boys, she was happy to do something useful for the cause of fighting the Darkness.
Aysa stepped close and gave him a crooked smile. “You’re really good at this, you know?” she said, slapping him across the chest.
Gregory’s mind turned to Lilith and the consequences of their failure. “I better be. Now go get those tools.”
****
Gregory had pieced together a shop in an offshoot of the tunnel leading to Lilith’s residence. While working with Yuri earlier, he had wondered if a mute person could make any noise at all. As they heaved the massive cannon from the hull of the Unlawful onto the makeshift workbench, Yuri answered the question by giving a mighty “garh.” Roman filled any remaining silence with a string of vulgarities that would have made a rearick blush.
“Nice job, boys!” Gregory cheered as the metal tube came down on the reclaimed lumber with a bang. Their eyes, nearly bloodshot with exertion, screamed at him, but their smiles told the truth. The boys were thrilled to have the chance to do something they saw as truly useful.
He lined up the tools required for disassembling the weapon on the table. Most of them had been carried or carted in from the airship, but a few others had been donated by New Romanov. He surveyed the room, silently nodding. They had everything they needed.
He
ran his fingers along a seam in the metal and slowed at each fastener. There were no less than two dozen. “Start here. Take your time, though. She’s been in weather, and I don’t know what condition those bolts are in. If you strip one we’ll have to get a bit more aggressive, and I want to salvage as much of this bad boy as I can.”
The wide-eyed kids nodded in excitement. “And if you get confused,” he said, looking at Roman, “talk to your grandma. She’s nearly done with hers.” He pointed toward the opposite end of the table, where Mrs. Shutov was working meticulously on the other cannon. I’ll hang out for a couple of minutes to make sure you get a good start on it.”
Roman scoffed for a second at the thought of needing his grandmother for help, but when Gregory shot him a dirty look he hurried to pick up a wrench. Biting his lip, he concentrated enough to break the first bolt loose without rounding out its head. After a ton of spins, he held the bolt up and grinned. “Mission accomplished.”
Gregory slid an old can across the table to him. “Drop it in there. And remember, a fight is not one swing of a sword. Stay careful.”
“Sure.” He moved to the next bolt while Yuri worked from the other end. “I just can’t believe the technology you guys have in Arcadia. Is everything like this?”
“Where I lived it was,” Gregory said sheepishly. He watched Roman and Yuri work, and realized his fears of the “boys” screwing something up was unfounded. They were careful—almost too careful. They moved slowly and deliberately. It reminded him of what his father always said. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. He had always hated that saying, mostly because it was often right.
“I grew up in what was called the Noble Quarter,” he continued. “We were the rich kids in Arcadia. Magitech—that’s what we called anything fueled by the amphoralds—was everywhere. I had lights in my house at night, hot showers, and when I went to the Academy to study magic, the doors opened instantly for me.”
“Whoa!” Roman said. “It’s like those made-up stories my uncle used to tell me about what it would be like a million years in the future.”
“Science fiction.” Gregory smiled.
“Yeah, that.” Roman continued to work. The conversation didn’t slow down him a bit.
“Sadly, most of the magitech was fiction for a good number of the people in Arcadia too, like Hannah and Parker.”
Roman glanced up with his brow furrowed.
Gregory told the boys about Arcadia before the revolution and the ways in which Adrien had restricted magitech from everyone except the noble class. He told them that the only way someone from the Boulevard would experience magitech was at the hands of the Hunters when they were found using magic, which was also restricted.
“That’s screwed up,” Roman muttered.
“Damn it,” Mrs. Shutov shouted, “language, Roman.”
“Sorry, Grandma. I meant, ‘that’s ass-in-the-eyehole messed up.’”
Gregory looked up from his table, shocked. He thought for sure Roman’s grandmother would rip his ears off for that, but she simply smiled. “Much better.”
The Arcadian looked at her, confused. She simply shrugged. “Around here we don’t mind cursing, just cursing poorly. It was something the gods taught us.”
Gregory laughed. It felt good to be around a family again. “It was messed up, but nobody really knew it. Guess we all—Hannah and Parker and I—thought it was just the way things were supposed to be, until Ezekiel showed up.”
“Tell us about that.”
Gregory laughed. “That’s a really, really long story. Would fill books, really. Maybe we’ll have some time, but right now I need you guys to finish up your work so we can get into those casings.”
Roman pointed at the seam with his wrench. He and Yuri were almost halfway to meeting each other in the middle. “But we’re almost done!”
“With that side of the cannon,” Gregory said with a smile. “There are just as many on the other side. Finish it up. I’ll be back in a bit.”
****
Leaving Roman and Yuri to their work, Gregory crossed the room to where Aysa leaned against the wall with a smirk on her face.
“Look at you, Teach. You’re pretty good at that.” She nodded at Gregory’s team. “What’s my job?”
Gregory glanced at another table against the side wall. “Come on over here.”
They walked to the table, which was covered with assorted pieces of metal, nuts and bolts, wires, and tools of all kinds. All of it had been meticulously cleaned and sorted, each part with others of its kind, everything lined up in perfect rows. Although showing wear from generations of use, it all looked functional.
“Ugh,” Aysa said. “You’re such a slob, Gregory. I don’t know how in the world Laurel puts up with your mess.”
“Funny.” He shook his head but kept his eyes on his perfect configuration of materials. “I need you to build something, but it might be a little tricky with your…” He glanced at her stump and felt himself getting red in the face.
“My what?” Aysa asked, brow knitted in confusion.
“Honestly? Your arm.”
She gave him a wry smile. “You’ll find I’m handi-capable. Try me.”
“OK,” Gregory said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Those amphoralds they’re pulling out of the cannons are key to creating the device Lilith needs. What we need to do is refashion a housing to hold the—”
“Gregory,” Aysa moaned in a deep voice. She was holding a piece of metal shaped like a mask in front of her face. “I’m not a monster!”
“Stop it!” Gregory shouted, retrieving the metal mask and setting it back in its place. “You need to focus.”
“I am. Lilith, blah, blah. Cannons, blah, device thing, blah, blah, blah.”
Gregory exhaled loudly. “I need you to be serious. We don’t have all the time in the world.”
Aysa frowned, but nodded.
Gregory continued, showing Aysa exactly what they needed to assemble and how he thought they could create a housing that would replicate the core, but on a smaller scale. Then he explained that they needed to configure the wiring in such a way that it could transport the power to fuel Lilith.
He gave her technical details about the specs of the housing and how to configure the wiring. As he did, she pushed around the tools and mumbled to herself, finally taking a wrench and flying it over the table, humming like the sound of the Unlawful in flight.
“Damn it, Aysa,” he screamed, drawing the eyes of Roman, Yuri, and Mrs. Shutov. Gregory was so angry with her that he had no idea they were watching. “Just...just leave. I’ll do it. Not like I have the time.”
Aysa grinned and bumped Gregory’s hip with her own. “Step back, genius.”
She rolled her neck and rearranged the items on the table with her hand, lining the tools up on the right side. After standing back for a beat, she stepped up to the table and started moving the pieces around, getting them into a different configuration. Gregory looked on skeptically, but as she continued to work, the housing started to take shape under the power of the one-handed Baseeki girl.
She got to a certain point and paused. “No,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Gregory. “That’s not it.” Spinning the wrench, she uncoupled two pieces and used a bigger hunk of shaped metal to give them more room in the amphorald chamber. She nodded. “Better.”
And she was right. She had adjusted Gregory’s original design and improved upon it slightly. She turned the enormous chamber she had constructed and flipped the top open, then pulled wires over from the edge of the table and meticulously ran them through the housing, just as Gregory had explained.
“Shit,” Gregory wheezed, impressed by the girl’s work and attention to detail, not to mention her speed. “I didn’t—”
“Shh!” Aysa snapped. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
Within ten minutes she had built the housing mechanism for the machine Gregory had designed, wired it, and made incremental adjustments to his design. Tighte
ning down the last bolt, she spun it to her teacher for inspection. “Ta da!”
Shaking his head, Gregory looked down at the housing and then back up at Aysa. He sighed. “You were listening.”
“Some of us can do more than one thing at a time. Yes, I was listening.”
He pushed the wires around with his hands and ran a finger across the new piece she had added in lieu of the one Gregory had intended for the build. “It’s…it’s better than mine.”
She shrugged. “Sure. That’s how teams work, after all. But don’t be hard on yourself. I wouldn’t have had a damned clue where to begin. I needed something to get me going. We make a great team.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “And I couldn’t have done any of it without you teaching me first. You’re really good at this. You’re like the Hannah of mechanics and teaching.”
Gregory’s face flushed with a mix of embarrassment and pride. He nodded in thanks.
She raised the arm that was missing a hand. “Now, if you could build me something for this I’d be really impressed.”
He cocked his head to the side, wondering if, given the time, he actually could build her something to make up for her disability. He pushed the thought aside and focused on the goal of saving Lilith, and Irth. “Give me a hand…”
“It’s all I got, but it’s all yours.” She smiled as they lifted the housing she’d built onto a cart and moved it to the other side of the room, where the team was making short work of the cannons.
They all moved in unison, pulling the amphoralds out of Unlawful’s weapons and placing them gingerly into the massive case. They filled it to the brim. Aysa had been right to make it bigger and Gregory knew it, though he had no freaking clue how she could have known. He closed the housing and fastened it shut.
“Nice work, everybody.” He looked at Roman, Yuri, and Mrs. Shutov. “What you did today is going to make a difference. I need to get this down to Lilith. Aysa, you’re coming with me. The rest of you head back out.”
