Skykeep

by Joseph R. Lallo

  As home to those unfortunates who had fallen out of favor with the fug folk, Lock had a few features that other mountain cities lacked. The first was its windmills. Whereas the rest of the world seemed to run on steam, Lock had no such luxury. Instead, they relied upon the near-constant wind to keep their power demands satisfied. As a result, Lock was instantly recognizable from afar, with each major and minor peak in the area hosting a large, slowly rotating windmill, tiny shafts linking them and delivering power to the town.

  Lock also had one of the deepest and most productive coal mines in all of Rim, which was almost a slap in the face. It would have made for ample fuel for fug-made boilers if they were able to use them. Instead the coal was mostly burned to heat the homes and cook the meals of the residents, as well as traded to those few airmen and seamen with the nerve to do business with the forsaken town.

  While the almost unbroken ring of mountains that gave Rim its name served as something of a bowl to hold the fug in the inland areas, there was always a thin layer of the stuff leaking out between the mountains or flowing over the low points in the mountain chain. This made seagoing ship’s docks unpleasant places at best and lethal at worst, since the layer of fug could easily poison any sailors who drew near to the shore. Lock was lucky enough to be situated a few hundred feet above a relatively sheltered cove on the seaward side of the mountains. A quirk of wind and geography managed to keep this harbor free enough of fug to accept sea traffic, so Lock kept itself fed with ample fishing. The fishermen and their day’s catch were hauled to the city via wind-powered elevators, and barges carried coal to more popular trading posts to trade for essential supplies. All in all, the place was a testament to the ability of a society to find a way to persist in spite of the odds mounded against them.

  When they were near enough to one of the three mooring points the city maintained for those few airships daring or desperate enough to visit, Lil turned to Wink. The inspector was clinging to the main support pole for the envelope.

  “Okay, critter, make yourself scarce,” she said.

  Wink darted down the pole and into the bowels of the ship.

  “Good thing you remembered. I keep forgetting to get rid of the little bugger,” Coop said. “Why we doing that again, Cap’n?”

  “Because fuggers have eyes in every port, even Lock.”

  “And what’s that mean to us? Wink don’t rat us out no more.”

  “That ain’t general knowledge, Coop. And I want to keep it that way.”

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Because if the fuggers knew that we knew the inspectors were the reason they knew what we were all doing, they’d probably kill them all off and find a new way to do it.”

  “What’s that matter to us?”

  The captain grumbled impatiently. “I’m not too fond of the thought of being the reason the inspectors all get killed, and besides, having everyone but us using the inspectors means we can listen in on what they’re up to.”

  “I follow, Cap’n… but why’s that mean Wink can’t be out and about?”

  “Honest, Coop. You better have Glinda check and see if that head of yours has any extra holes, because it seems you’ve got a leak. I must have told you a dozen times.”

  “Well, make it a baker’s dozen and maybe it’ll stick.”

  The captain gritted his teeth. “If we don’t want them to know we’re wise to the inspectors, then the only way we’ll end up without one ratting us out is if we don’t have one.”

  “Oh… I got it now, Cap’n.”

  “Yeah, until tomorrow,” Lil muttered.

  Lil and Coop threw out lines to a port crew quite happy to see them. As the Wind Breaker was secured, the captain turned to address his crew, which had assembled on deck without being summoned.

  “All right, you lot can draw straws to pick the lookouts if you want to swap. Like I said, I want at least two. I’ve got matters to attend to in town, but when I’m through I’ll relieve one of you. We’ll be in port for two days. Glinda will see to placing the orders for the fuel, phlogiston, and other such. The lookouts will also be loading them up. Nita, you’re off the hook for this one, if you’re willing to put them wrenches to work for a few of the locals.”

  “Always glad to lend a hand,” Nita said.

  “You boys are already on watch. You figure you can stay on for a bit? Nita said she’d show me a thing or two about fixing them boilers and such,” Lil asked.

  “May as well,” Gunner grumbled. “Sticking near the ship should give me the chance to get back to work on that gun I’m tinkering with. Besides, once you’ve spent a few hours in Lock, you’ve done everything there is to do.”

  Coop nodded. “I’ll agree with you there. Ain’t much I miss about the old days, but a rowdy night in Keystone is one of them.” He turned to Nita. “You ever seen something so silly as all that with the windmills, ma’am?”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s rather lovely. The way the blades are all turning at the same speed, it is like they are choreographed, dancing. And there’s so much less smoke to blacken the air. The whole cityscape is picturesque, like the townsfolk made ornaments to decorate the mountains.”

  Coop scratched his head. “Well, when you put it like that I reckon it is… uh… pretty.”

  Captain Mack headed toward the hatch below decks.

  “Nita, Lil, come with me,” the captain said. “You boys keep an eye on the ship.” He lowered his voice. “And keep an eye on Wink while you’re at it. He’s been going below decks to pick at Nita’s sweets. Bad enough he should be nabbing from the crew, but all that sugar makes him a right awful terror come sundown. I don’t want to come back to my inspector bouncing off the walls.”

  Wink looked to the captain reproachfully from his perch within the hatch leading to the lower decks and tapped his middle finger at the ground.

  “Now hold on now… that was something about… the crew and… dang it, that little thing taps too fast,” Coop said.

  “Oh Coop, he said ‘The crew ate good food, then the inspector ate good food. This was fair.’ You could hear it plain as day,” Lil said impatiently. “What’s the matter, you forget how to learn or something?”

  “I spent years learning to tune out that stuff. Takes a bit of time to learn to pay attention is all,” Coop said.

  “Coop, you stay on deck. Gunner, since you’re staying on lookout, man the gig and handle any trade the good folks of Lock might be after.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Gunner said.

  The crew filed one by one down the hatch, leaving Coop on deck and Wink just below the open hatch. The creature looked up to the deckhand with its one eye and began to slyly slink into the darkness.

  “Cap’n said I should keep an eye on you. That means you stay where I can see you, you little critter,” Coop said.

  Wink scowled at him and tapped a finger.

  “I think I caught a jab about me being big and dumb in there. You’d best be remembering the big part, because you keep slinging comments like that and we’re going to see just how far this boot of mine will send you,” Coop said.

  Wink rattled off a message that Coop was reasonably sure had to do with the fact that, since Coop had to stay on deck, there was nothing he could do to stop the inspector from having free rein down below. He then darted off into the bowels of the ship.

  “I miss back when I was smarter than that critter. Or at least when I thought I was,” he muttered to himself.

  #

  “You know something,” Lil said, pacing along beside the captain and Nita as they made their way off the swaying catwalk of the pier and deeper into the moderately more secure platforms of the town. “The hustle and the bustle of Keystone is nice and all. They got pretty near anything a gal might want all in one place, but I think I like Lock better. Folks here are so much happier to see you. And the air smells a good bit fresher. Ain’t nothing like a breath of fresh air.”

  “I imagine when so few people use the port, the loca
ls would be happy to see any new face,” Nita said. “I’m just happy that people seem to have finally gotten used to seeing a Calderan complexion.”

  “How come?” Lil said.

  “You didn’t notice how people would stare whenever I showed up the first few times?”

  “Come to think of it, you did get a few funny looks. I always figured it was your outfit. Even in your work clothes you dress fancier than folks around here are used to. Well heck, you do everything fancy. Just look what you done to the ol’ Wind Breaker.”

  Lil turned Nita to view the crew’s ship at the end of the pier. At this distance the whole ship was visible, from the sideways teardrop of the envelope to the gleaming brass turbines and the gondola that would have looked just as appropriate on a seagoing frigate as an aircraft. The captain’s gig, the dinghy that was held to the belly of the ship while in flight, had been loaded with goods and lowered to the pier, with a line of people eagerly chatting up Gunner as he described their wares.

  When Nita had first joined the crew, the ship had looked positively decrepit. There had been splintered and poorly replaced planks all over the hull. Bolts were half-inserted, badly tarnished, and sometimes flat-out missing. It was airworthy, but just barely, and not a moment of thought had been put into how it looked. To a Calderan, trained from birth to see the potential for beauty and artistry in all things, it was something she couldn’t bear to witness. To the crew, her most important role in the ship was the work she’d done on its mechanisms. Under her ministrations, the boiler and turbines had been simplified and carefully tuned. They were now much easier to fix, and they ran as smoothly and efficiently as the day they were made. That made for a ship that moved faster from port to port and hadn’t had more than a few hours of downtime in months. But as far as she was concerned, her greatest achievement had been turning the ship into the work of art it deserved to be.

  Every spare moment had been spent polishing this or painting that. She’d brought gold paint from her home in Dell Harbor and added sweeping highlights and designs to the hull, decorating the trim and railings. With acid and a steady hand she’d etched similar detailing into the cowling of the turbines themselves, and she’d worked hard to acquire lumber of the same grain and figuring to patch any hull damage, such that the ship looked almost brand new. She’d even contributed more than a bit of her own money to purchase replacement envelope cloth that matched as closely as possible not the original color of their envelope, but the one it had faded to over the years, such that from this distance the patches were barely noticeable.

  “Thanks to you we got the prettiest ship in the sky,” Lil said.

  The captain, a momentary break forming in his month’s-old shell of surliness, turned to the ship and nodded. “Always been proud of the ol’ girl. Now she looks as good to the rest of you as she always did to me.”

  “I’m pleased you like it, but that’s just what comes natural to a Calderan. We’re all artists at heart, and they say every Calderan is obligated to produce at least one masterpiece before we meet our maker. The Wind Breaker was a fine canvas for it.”

  “So you ask me, that’s why folks were looking at you. It ain’t like you’re the first person any of them seen that’s been dark skinned. Anyone who works in the sun gets pretty much brown before long, and here in Lock half of the workers finish their day in the mine even darker than you, what with all the dust and such.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Nita said. “I suppose I’ve never been comfortable being singled out. Lucky I didn’t become a dancer like my sister. I’d have never survived the stage.”

  “See, me? I’ve got the opposite problem. I got just about the most plain face you could ever hope to see, not a pretty one like yours. And I ain’t got curves like you, either. Coop and me may as well be twins, ’cept he’s taller and don’t wear a bow,” she said, adjusting the red ribbon that held her short hair out of her face.

  “Oh, don’t say that. You’re very pretty,” Nita said, placing a hand on Lil’s shoulder.

  “Nice of you to say it, but I got a mirror. Don’t bother me much, though. Most days it’s easier if folks don’t pay you no mind, ’specially in the rougher towns. But I’ll tell you what. Once we’re done fiddling with whatever it is we’ve got to fiddle with, I’m heading back to the ship and putting on one of them fancy Calderan dresses you gave me and we can hit the town proper.”

  Nita smiled. “It might be nice. Seems like I only get to wear a dress when I visit home.”

  “Heck, Nita, if it’s just gonna be nice, there ain’t no reason to do it. It’ll be better than nice, it’ll be fun. Just the girls for once. ’Cept… there’s a few shops and such we won’t be visiting.”

  “Why?”

  “Aw, early on when I was first on the crew, we were hard up for money for provisions and such. Cap’n Mack didn’t exactly tell us we had to pinch stuff to get the supplies we needed, but he made it darn sure that we didn’t have coins to get it all the proper way.”

  “So you… creatively acquired some items.”

  “Heck no, I stole ’em. Got pretty good at it, too. Eventually I got caught enough that I had to stop. So I started picking pockets for a while. That’s how I got so good with my hands. Like so.” Lil dug into her pocket. “You got a victor?”

  “I think so,” Nita said. She rummaged in her pocket until she revealed a large silver coin.

  “Flip it in the air and catch it.”

  Nita obliged, sending the coin ringing through the air. Lil darted her empty hand in and snatched it, then tipped the hand over and dropped it into Nita’s hand.

  “That wasn’t so… wait…” Nita stared at her hand. The coin Lil had dropped wasn’t a large silver coin, it was a small copper one. “How did you do that?”

  “Lot’s of practice doing things I ought not be doing,” Lil said, clipping the silver coin out from between two fingers and swapping it for the copper again. “But we don’t do that anymore. Much.”

  They made their way to the door of a tall, sturdy building near the rear of the town. It was something of an unspoken rule in the larger cities of Rim that if only one building could be built on solid ground, it would be the hospital, and this was no exception. One of the handy parts of it being a mining town was the fact they had all of the equipment and expertise to carve out a nice, wide notch in the mountain to build something that the town couldn’t afford to have slip down the slope and into the ocean on a blustery day. The hospital was three stories tall and took as much of a footprint as the mountain was willing to offer, such that the left side and the entire rear wall were physically touching the stone. Its design was a good deal more stable than most of the other buildings in town. Even those who made their homes in the houses sitting on wooden platforms would agree that they were little more than temporary, and thus little was done to them that didn’t have clear utility. The hospital actually had things like decorative shutters, painted doors, and outdoor lanterns.

  The overall quality and impressiveness of the building was also why any of the town officials who needed to meet with outsiders tended to use the hospital and its offices to conduct business. It is hard to convince someone to invest in your town when the conference room sways with the breeze. At the door waited a portly man with a wide smile on his face. He was well dressed, with a matching jacket, slacks, and vest, along with a heavy overcoat and a pocket watch. He’d made the unfortunate facial-hair choice of connecting his mustache to his sideburns, which became more unfortunate once his slide into middle age had cost him the hair on the top of his head. If nothing else, it made him distinctive. One glance was all it took to confirm that he was the mayor, a man named Lester Wilshire. Nearly every visit to Lock began with a visit to him.

  “Captain West, it is glorious to see you again. I tell you, sir, it is brave air-goers like yourselves who have kept our fair town alive. We were withering away before your trade revitalized us, but leave it to the crew that downed the dreadnought to turn a blind e
ye to the potential wrath of the fug folk rather than ignore those in need.”

  The crew members let their minds wander as the mayor lavished praise upon them, making at least three more references to the dreadnought and its demise. Though they’d fought against the dreadnought primarily because it was trying to destroy the Wind Breaker after they had robbed a warehouse, the fortunate side effect was an instantaneous reputation across the continent as doers of the impossible and champions of the little guy.

  The captain shrugged off the unwanted praise. “Yes, that’s fine. We have matters to discuss. And Nita here, I’m sure, is eager to see to what you’ve got so she can have a bit of shore leave.”

  “Of course, of course. Amanita the intrepid engineer. My assistant, Matthews, will take you to the, er, the item in question,” said the mayor.

  The degree to which the people of Rim feared defying the fug folk was truly astounding at times. The mayor or those like him would talk all day about how horrible the fug folk were, and laud those who would defy them, but when there came a chance for their own act of defiance, they would trip over themselves to make it clear that they had no intention of breaking any of the long-standing policies. That this disposition could persist even in Lock, where almost every citizen was already suffering the greatest punishment the fug folk could levy upon someone, spoke volumes of their mythic status in the minds of the people.