by Joel Ross
“Yeah, well—” I couldn’t think of a snappy reply. “You were right.”
“Ha!” he crowed. “I knew it!”
“Oh, Mr. Turning, can I look in the telescope?” Bea pleaded. “Please? Pretty please?”
“Of course,” he said.
She scampered across the room, greeted the telescope politely, then peeked through. “Ooh, everything looks so close! There’s a waterwheel. Oh, there’s the airfield with that mayfly! That is such a purple thopper!”
“Why have you been watching us?” Hazel asked Turning, her voice sharp. “How did you find us? Was that old lady in the courtyard expecting us?”
“We monitor the roof-troopers,” Turning said. “We saw them chasing you.”
I felt a chill of worry as I scanned the room. Who was this guy, with his secret passages and hidden laboratory?
“You monitor them?” Hazel asked. “Why?”
“For our own safety.”
Hazel’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
“Look!” Bea squealed. “The slum’s so close I could touch it.”
“He’s a foghead.” I pointed to a charcoal sketch on an easel. “That’s too freaky for anyone else.”
“What—” Loretta made a face. “What is it?”
The drawing looked like an evil thopper with legs instead of wings, and a spiny shell of shattered bricks. I said, “A ticktock, I bet.”
“Only in my imagination,” Turning said with a slight smile. “I’ve never seen one. Nobody has. Not in a hundred years.”
“So it’s true?” Hazel asked Turning. “You’re a foghead?”
“I suppose I am,” Turning said, his scratchy voice calm. “Though that’s not what we call ourselves. We are the Subassembly, and I’m a leader—a ‘cog.’ My full name is Cog Turning.”
So he wasn’t just a foghead, he was a foghead boss? And he’d brought us to his hidden lair, with illegal books and creepy drawings? We needed a coyote to take us to Port Oro, and instead we got a mist-sniffing fog-freak. A sick sense of dread uncoiled inside me like a driftshark: we needed to get out of there. We needed to sell the diamond and get away from the Rooftop before everything fell apart.
29
LORETTA’S HAND DRIFTED TOWARD her knife, and Swedish stepped closer to Hazel. The room thickened with suspicion, everyone clenched and edgy. Well, everyone except Bea, who kept looking into the telescope, completely oblivious.
“Don’t be afraid,” Turning said, his voice calm. “I’m a friend.”
Swedish scowled. “That’s what they always say. You fogheads are the ones who started spreading rumors about Chess.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Turning said. “However, if the Assemblers you met in the junkyard hadn’t foolishly spread those rumors, I never would’ve found Ekaterina. And I couldn’t have saved you just now.”
“Why did you save us?” Hazel asked. “How do you know Mrs. E? What do you want from us?”
“There’s the market!” Bea called from the window. “Oooh! That’s the watering hole. Our watering hole.”
“I’ll answer all your questions,” Turning said, stroking his braided beard. “But would you like to eat first? I have cucumbers and chorizo stew.”
Despite my fear, my mouth watered. I’d never even seen a whole cucumber, only the peels.
“You have meat?” Swedish asked.
“We’re not hungry,” Hazel lied. “Answer our questions.”
“I’ll do more than that,” Turning said. “I’ll help you reach Port Oro.”
A chill silence fell. How did he know we were trying to reach Port Oro?
“Port Oro?” Hazel’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think we’re trying to get to Port Oro? I don’t know what game you’re playing, but—”
He lifted his gnarled hand. “I’ve known Ekaterina for a very long time.”
“You’re her friend!” Hazel shook her head in surprise. “Her mysterious friend.”
“No way,” Swedish muttered. “This foghead?”
Turning arched a bushy eyebrow. “I’d offer you honey bread, but I’m fresh out.”
“It is you!” I said. Nobody else would know about the honey bread.
“Indeed it is, Chess.” He looked at me intently. “And I’d very much like to see your eye.”
My stomach dropped. Of course he knew about my eye—it seemed like the entire Subassembly knew—but I still felt sick and scared, like I was naked in the middle of a crowd.
“What do you want to see his eye for?” Loretta asked. “I heard it’s gross.”
Turning smiled faintly but didn’t answer her question. “I’d been looking for Ekaterina for a long time. She changed her name thirteen years ago—she wasn’t born ‘Ekaterina,’ you know—and she vanished off the face of the Rooftop.”
“This is so purple!” Bea announced from the telescope, totally unaware of the conversation. “I can see everything. Where’s our house?”
“I thought she’d fled into the lower slopes,” Turning continued, “or even Port Oro. Not the junkyard.”
“There’s no better hiding place on the Rooftop,” Hazel said.
He nodded again. “When I tracked the rumors down, I finally realized where to look. But she was so sick. I—I hadn’t expected that. She didn’t even recognize me at first.”
“She told us you’re old friends,” Hazel said.
A spark glinted in Turning’s tired eyes. “The last time I saw her, years ago, she was standing at the edge of a firestorm in the middle of the night.”
“When she burned Kodoc’s house down?” I asked.
“She’s a remarkable woman.” He steepled his fingers. “However, since Kodoc learned about the unexpected results of his long-ago experiment—”
“What experiment?” Loretta blurted. “What’re you talking about?”
“A science experiment,” I told her.
“What I’m trying to say,” Turning continued, “is that while Kodoc’s been searching for you, I’ve been arranging passage for you, to Port Oro.”
“No!” Hazel said, her breath catching. “Truly?”
“Oh, look!” Bea suddenly called, from the telescope. “There’s our alley! I bet I can find our shack.”
“Truly,” Turning told Hazel. “I sent a carrier pigeon last week and asked the Port to come pick up a package. The mutineers aren’t overly fond of the Subassembly, but we still work together. They know that we understand the Fog better than anyone alive. And we find them quite useful.”
“A package?” Swedish asked. “What kind of package?”
“The five of you.” Turning eyed Loretta. “Six, now.”
“Whoa,” Hazel said. “A ship from the Port? For us?”
Turning nodded. “I think my message was lost, but fortunately I found a coyote willing to take you.”
“You didn’t!” Hazel said, her eyes dancing. “Get out! Really?”
“This foghead’s too nice,” Loretta muttered, scratching the tattoo on her cheek. “Nobody’s this nice without wanting something.”
“If he can heal Mrs. E’s fogsickness,” I told her, “I don’t care about anything else.”
“Hey, that’s Perry!” Bea fiddled with the telescope’s focus. “He’s tiny, like an ant. I could crush him!”
“Can you really cure Mrs. E?” Hazel asked Turning.
“I can’t, no.” He smiled softly. “But for my friends on Port Oro, many things are possible.”
“That’s what she always says.”
“She’s right. You’ll get to the Port, you’ll cure Ekaterina, and you’ll escape Kodoc.”
“But why?” Hazel demanded. “Loretta’s right. You must want something.”
“What are they doing?” Bea asked the telescope. “That’s weird. . . .”
“I want to help my old friend.” Turning tugged at his earring. “And I will do anything to keep Kodoc from getting his hands on Chess.”
Hazel’s lips narrowed. “Why is that?”
>
“Because Chess is the only fog diver who can find the Compass.”
“You want a compass?” Loretta asked. “I can find you a compass.”
“Not a compass,” Turning said. “The Compass. An ancient machine, buried in the Fog, that controls the nanites.”
“Control the what knights?” Loretta had never heard Mrs. E’s stories. “The naan knights? You fogheads are even dippier than I—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Turning interrupted. “What matters is that I’ll send word to the coyote and you’ll leave for Port Oro tonight.”
“Tonight?” Hazel’s sudden smile brightened the room. “That soon?”
“We’re really going!” I said, feeling a tingle of excitement. “After all this time—”
“Hazel!” Bea cried at the telescope. “They’re ditching our block! They’re ditching our shack, and Mrs. E is still inside!”
30
“THEY’RE DOING WHAT?” TURNING asked, sounding uncertain. “Ditching?”
I barely heard him over the blood thundering in my ears. If the bosses ditched our block, Mrs. E would fall into the Fog. This couldn’t be happening, not now, not when we were so close to getting to Port Oro. No, no—
“No,” Swedish gasped.
Hazel bent over the telescope, and I found myself standing beside her, watching her face. Hazel would say Bea was wrong, and we’d tease her for scaring us. Because she was wrong. She had to be.
But just then Hazel made a horrified sound. “They’re prepping the platform to ditch. They’re halfway done already,” she said.
“How—how long do we have?” Bea asked.
“I don’t know,” Hazel said. “Thirty minutes?”
“We’re too far away,” Bea wailed. “What do we do? How do we stop them?”
Before I knew what I was doing, I shoved Loretta.
She stumbled backward. “Hey!”
“Your friends did this!” I snarled at her. I’d told them we couldn’t trust her. I’d told them, and now look what’d happened.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her face falling. “I thought they’d wait till nightfall.”
I shoved her again, dizzy with fury and fear. “I knew you were bad news. I knew it. If they ditch her, I swear by the Fog that I’ll—”
A hand clamped my shoulder. “Please, Chess,” Turning said. “Make no vows in anger.”
I jerked away. “If anything happens to Mrs. E—”
“Quiet!” Hazel snapped. “Let me think.”
I closed my mouth so fast that my teeth clicked. Anger drifted through me in a red haze, but I kept still. Hazel was our only chance.
Turning frowned. “Would someone please tell me what ‘ditching’—”
“She said quiet,” Swedish barked, slamming his palm on the workbench.
Hazel paced, chewing on a knuckle. I watched her. Swedish watched her. We all watched her.
She crossed the floor three times, then stopped and looked at Bea. “The mayfly!”
“The what?” Bea said, her eyes glossy with tears.
“That thopper you called a ‘mayfly.’ On the hillside airfield. You said you saw it through the telescope. Find it again. Hurry!”
Bea bent over the eyepiece, softly begging the scope for help.
“Ditching,” Hazel told Turning, “is when the junkyard bosses flip a section of the slum, dropping everything into the Fog.”
He frowned. “That sounds dangerous.”
“That’s the point,” Swedish said.
“They do that on purpose?” Turning asked, a flash of horror in his eyes. “I’ve seen it, but I thought it was an accident. That’s terrible—”
“We need your help,” Hazel interrupted, and I’d never been happier to hear the bossy tone in her voice. “Bea’s looking for an airfield we saw. Once she finds it, we need you to take us there—fast.”
“An airfield? What are you going to do?”
“The same as always,” Hazel told him. “Whatever we can.”
“Found it!” Bea called.
Turning peered through the eyepieceand muttered fretfully. “Yes,” he finally said. “I can get you there.”
“But you must return.” Cog Turning’s voice echoed in the gloomy mine tunnel. “After you save Ekaterina, you must return to the Rooftop and find me.”
“We will,” Hazel told him.
“There’s no other way to cure her, there’s no other way to save yourselves. There’s no other way to get Chess to Port Oro. Promise me you’ll return.” Turning hesitated at a dark junction. “I should bring you straight to the coyote and send you off.”
My breath caught. If he let the bosses ditch Mrs. E, forget about Port Oro—I’d ditch him.
“But I can’t do that to Ekaterina.” Turning looked at each of us in turn. “Promise me you’ll come back.”
“We promise,” Bea said.
Turning nodded, then led us up a rickety ladder into what he called a root cellar. At the far end, he opened a trapdoor in the planked wooden ceiling.
“Turn right on the street,” he told us. “The thopper field is down the block.”
“Thank you,” Hazel told him. “We’ll come back with Mrs. E.”
I nodded uneasily. We’d snuck into the Rooftop once that day—I wasn’t sure we’d get lucky twice.
“I’ll speak to the coyote.” Turning receded into the darkness. “Take care. You are more important than you know.”
We climbed up through the trapdoor into an empty hut that must’ve belonged to a farmer or laborer. As we clustered around the door to the street, Bea said, “What did that mean? More important than we know?”
“Because of Chess,” Hazel said. “And this Compass machine.”
“Because he’s a fog-sniffing lug nut,” Swedish said.
“Yeah,” Loretta agreed. “He’s as cracked as a glass trampoline.”
“What’s a trampoline?” Bea asked.
Loretta shrugged. “I don’t know, but that guy is a cracked one.”
“I like him.” I told them over my shoulder. “Sure, that stuff about me is loco, but he said they’ll cure Mrs. E.”
“Yeah,” Swedish said. “And he hired us a coyote.”
“Let’s go,” Hazel said, grabbing Bea’s hand.
She headed onto the bustling street, and Swedish and Loretta followed a second later. I patted my hair down, took a deep breath, then stepped into the sunlight.
“Is everyone clear on the plan?” Hazel asked.
Bea nodded. “I jump-start the mayfly.”
“I bust heads,” Loretta said.
“And we all go down in a blaze of glory,” Swedish said as we jogged past a cobbler’s shed.
I surprised myself with a laugh. “Our favorite kind of blaze.”
Hazel glanced at me. I guess I’d surprised her, too. Usually I stayed quiet in public, afraid that someone might notice my freak-eye. But even though I was scared for Mrs. E, I was also excited: we finally had a real chance to get to Port Oro.
We brushed past workers hauling crates and clambered over a fence onto the hillside airfield. A few of the gearslingers fiddling with engines and steam organs glanced at us, but nobody raised an alarm. We looked harmless, I guess, just a bunch of kids playing around.
But we weren’t playing.. We were fighting for Mrs. E’s life.
Bea and Hazel jogged toward the mayfly—that sleek thopper—while the rest of us ambled along behind. In the tool-cluttered outdoor workshop, two gearheads tinkered with the mayfly engine, and a woman in a fancy coat stood nearby, watching with a sour expression.
“She’s lovely,” Hazel said when she got close enough. “Is she fit to fly?”
“We’re fine-tuning the piston array,” one of the gearheads told her.
Hazel cocked her head. “Does she fly, though?”
“Oh, yes,” the woman in the fancy coat said. “She’s quite—”
“She flies!” Hazel called, and everyone sprang into action.
/> Loretta touched her knife to the woman’s throat, whispering threats, and a thump sounded from the other side of the thopper as Swedish clobbered one of the gearheads. I put my arm around the other one and said, “My friends have nasty tempers. Let’s keep this quiet.”
“You’re s-stealing the thopper?” the gearhead stammered. “That’s crazy! The guardships will shoot you down. There’s nowhere to go.”
“In that case,” I told him, “there’s no reason to make a fuss.”
Bea monkeyed with the pistons while Swedish ran his fingers over the controls—then the engine roared to life. Hazel swung into position, Loretta grabbed for a boarding strap, and I scrambled on deck.
“Help!” the woman in the fancy coat screamed. “Somebody, help!”
With a blast of air, the thopper lifted off—and Loretta shouted, “Wait, wait!”
Sure, she could slink through shadows like a hunting cat, but she didn’t know anything about boarding airships. She was still dangling halfway off the deck, her boots scrabbling against the hull, trying to get a toehold.
The thopper rose, and I looked down at Loretta and froze. We needed to save Mrs. E, not Loretta. We couldn’t even trust her not to stab us.
“Chess!” Hazel snapped. “Get her. Now.”
So I hooked my boots into the railing and snagged Loretta as she started to slip off the hull. I didn’t really want her to break any bones.
“Climb me like a ladder,” I told her.
She grabbed a handful of my jacket, then my pants, pulling herself upward until Hazel heaved her on board. I lay there for a moment, draped over the edge, watching the hillside blur beneath us, praying that Mrs. E was still okay.
After I grabbed the railing and hopped on deck, I found Loretta sitting with her arms around her knees. “Th-thanks,” she told me.
“It’s nothing,” I said, trying to ignore Hazel’s dirty look.
“No, I mean it.” Loretta swallowed. “I don’t like heights. And I know you don’t trust me, so—thanks.”
“Sure,” I said, then turned away to stare anxiously toward the junkyard.
I couldn’t spot our neighborhood in the endless sprawl, and my jaw clenched as I pictured Mrs. E drowsing in her bed before the walls started collapsing around her. We’re coming, Mrs. E. Stay safe for three more minutes.
