“Heavens no. We couldn’t hope to hear all we need to. The receiving inspector listens to the taps and repeats the relevant ones to the operator. It takes an aye-aye’s ears to differentiate all of the dozens of different messages that might be coming in at a busy port.”
“So the messenger only listens to what the aye-aye says.”
“Most times the messenger can only hear what the aye-aye ‘says.’ I spent some time as one. You quickly learn to tune out anything but what the aye-aye taps.”
“How does the aye-aye know what the operator needs to know?”
“Keywords. The code for a broken rule, for example. Also, a message can be addressed to a specific aye-aye. That only happens when it is a forwarded report.”
“What’s that?”
“If something truly dangerous to fug society occurs, the message needs to get to someone who can do something about it. So a message is sent out with a specific aye-aye’s designation on it. Every aye-aye who hears it will add it to their own report, along with the name, and tap it out at the next port. It continues until the target aye-aye replies that it has received it, then that message ripples through to silence the rest.”
“You’ve been using our airships to deliver your messages without us knowing?”
“Ours airships as well. All airships are potentially delivering a message about another one’s behavior halfway across the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the inmates were riding on the same ship as the inspector carrying the message ordering their arrest.”
“That’s fiendishly brilliant.”
“Undeniably brilliant. Fiendish is a matter of opinion.”
Nita turned this information over in her mind. “So I have to assume the sole purpose of Skykeep’s aye-aye is to deliver and receive reports.”
“Naturally.”
“And if I were to ask you, could you teach me how to compose one of these forwarded reports?”
“I suppose… You’d need to know both the name of Skykeep’s aye-aye and the one you intend to deliver a message to.”
“How would I learn the name of this prison’s aye-aye?”
“Ask it. The code is a simple one.” She lightly clapped out the phrase That inspector repeated its name. “The next code the aye-aye taps will be…” Again she clapped. This inspector was named inspector 1234. “But it won’t do you any good. Because if you’ve only just learned that code phrase, then you don’t know the names of any other aye-ayes. It isn’t something you choose. It is something I choose when I train them, or whoever has replaced me. Probably that buffoon from Nesterlane…”
“I’ll worry about that. Just teach me the proper methods. Is there a way to get an inspector to reply only to a specific trainer or messenger?”
“You can give the instruction. Not every inspector is savvy enough to do it.”
“I want to learn it all. Every little bit helps…”
Chapter 7
Nita had made the most of the extended yard time, doing the best she could to feel out which members of the prison population might be of aid to any potential escape effort without outright voicing an intention to escape. All through what turned out to be nearly five hours on the surface deck, Nita had been concerned about what she would do if she was searched before returning to her cell, but it turned out to be a nonissue, as they didn’t give her so much as a second look before slapping the manacles on and leading her below deck. Perhaps it was the arrogance of a staff who believed their prison was impossible to break out of, but security seemed alarmingly lax at times. Granted, there was no clear indication of how anyone might smuggle items into or out of the facility. In light of the nature of the prison’s safeguards, perhaps it was only natural that they would become complacent.
Once she was alone in her cell, she carefully loosened a seam on the mattress of her bed and hollowed out a section just large enough to hide the watch. The “stuffing” was so uncomfortably firm that it was actually difficult to feel where the watch was kept, though a careful observer would be able to spot the untidy seam. Once the watch was hidden, there was little to do but hide the displaced stuffing and prepare for Lil’s arrival. At dinner Nita squirreled away any part of her meal that she felt might keep well enough to be edible the next day. She pulled the blanket from Lil’s bed and folded it under herself, sleeping atop it and sitting on it to make sure it was as warm as she could make it. Of course, there was little sleeping done.
As day drifted into night, Nita noticed the wind outside beginning to howl. It was a distant sound that barely reached her cell, but there was little doubt the weather was getting choppy. If she strained, she could just hear the hiss of rain pattering against Skykeep, and now and then she felt the subtle increase in rocking and rolling that came with each gust of wind. Lil was out there, up there, in a downpour…
After Nita spent a sleepless night of worry, breakfast was served. She saved almost the entire meal, and likewise for lunch. The pillowcase under her bed that served as the stash of extra food was beginning to get a bit crowded when the door to the cell block finally opened a few minutes before yard time.
There was no squeak of struggling feet this time. No angry growl at the guards or stream of profanity. Lil merely shuffled along with the guards, allowing herself to be thrown into the cell without so much as a comment. One look at her face made it clear why. She was exhausted. The long, wet night had left her shivering and weak. Her eyes had dark bags under them, her lips were tinged with blue, and worst of all, she was soaking wet. During her last isolation, she’d been splashed a bit with water from the hasty way in which the bare minimum for survival was given to her, but this time she was absolutely drenched.
“I cannot believe you left her in that crate through a storm!” Nita barked, fury in her eyes.
“Isolation is a punishment,” said the guard. “We don’t cut it short simply because it isn’t a pleasant day.”
“It wasn’t nothing I couldn’t take,” Lil said with a flicker of a grin as Nita sat her carefully on the bed and wrapped both blankets around her. “Just a little wind and rain.” Her voice was rough, and she concluded her statement with a ragged cough.
“Would you at least get her a dry set of clothes?” Nita said.
The guard grunted something and paced off to an unseen cabinet to rummage around inside.
As before, Nita sat beside her and held her close. It was the only option available to her to help her friend warm up.
“I… I think I might wait awhile before I do that sort of thing again,” Lil said quietly.
“You should have told me what you were up to,” Nita said.
“You’d have told me not to do it,” Lil said.
“That’s absolutely right, I would have.”
“Do you still have it? Did it work?”
“Yes.”
“Worth it then.”
“How’s your arm?”
“Where the guard hit me? Not as bad as my throat… and my head. The wind rattled that crate around something awful. I thought I was fixing to come loose. And the fug gets stirred up pretty bad in wind like that. I was coughing and gagging on the stuff all night. I wasn’t sure I’d make it…” A tear ran down her cheek. “I’m so damn glad to see you again.”
“Do you think you can eat?”
“Can I eat? You get your fingers too close to my mouth, I’m liable to eat your arm.”
The guard reappeared at the bars. “Here. But you’ve got to get changed and hand over the wet stuff. The warden doesn’t want any prisoner having an extra set of clothes.”
Nita took the clothes, then helped Lil to her feet and held up one of the blankets to give her some privacy. She finished getting changed, and Nita handed over the wet clothes, returning to her place on the bed and wrapping back up in the driest of the two blankets. When the guard was back at his post, Nita fetched the stowed food and Lil began to eat gratefully. Lil hadn’t stopped shaking, so Nita put an arm across her shoulders again to try t
o hold her steady enough to feed herself.
“You know something,” Lil said, a bit of life and mischief in her expression again as she forced down a day-old meal. “This keeps happening, people are liable to start talking.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is twice you and me ended up in bed together with your arms around me. And just now I was nekkid not an arm’s length away from you. People are liable to think we’re sweet on each other.” She chewed slowly and stared at the far wall. “You think… you think maybe they already do?”
“I think you should focus on warming up and getting fed, Lil.”
She took another bite, continuing on the same train of thought. “Ain’t neither of us had any suitors since you joined the crew. Me trying to learn how to fix this and that and you trying to teach me, we been spending more time together than apart. You reckon… you reckon maybe folks are already talking?”
“Lil, eat. It’s almost yard time.”
“I’m serious, though. What do you reckon people are saying?”
“It doesn’t matter what people are saying about us, Lil,” Nita said. She was speaking calmly. “It doesn’t matter how things look between the two of us. How you feel about me and how I feel about you should only matter to you and me. It is absurd to think you’d trouble yourself with thoughts like that at a time like this. It is absurd that you’d ever need to trouble yourself with things like that.”
“So if someone asked what was going on between us…”
“I would politely tell them that I can’t talk right now because my friend Lil is too busy fretting about silly matters to eat a proper meal, and she needs my help.” She took the freshest of the pieces of bread remaining and stuck it in Lil’s mouth, then brushed her damp hair from her eyes. “Now are you about ready to talk about something we actually need to be concerned about?”
Lil chewed down her current bite. “Fine, what’ve you got for me?”
“We’ve got the time, and I had a word with Blanche. I learned a bit more about how the inspectors are used. I think we might be able to use them to get a message out.”
“Well, there’s some good news,” Lil said, gulping down a few more mouthfuls of food more hungrily as the tremors began to ease away.
“Those two grunts who chatted you up seem like we can trust them, and I’ve done the best I can to feel out the rest. A few might help us if we asked, most would look the other way. But those Ebonwhite brothers… we’ll have to be even more careful around them than the guards. Any scrap of information they get will go straight to the warden.”
“Any idea how we can get me outside at night?” Lil said.
“Nothing yet.”
“That’s the last part then, right?” she said, washing down the remainder of her food with a cup of wretched water.
“Besides waiting and hoping,” Nita said.
“Good… because you ain’t been up there yet, but they brought me across the deck to take me down here. The wind did a number on the deck. If they work this place like they do the other prisons I’ve heard about, someone’s going to be up on deck for an extra long time…”
#
Lil had barely choked down the last of her meal when the guards came to shackle the pair for transport to the yard. The instant they stepped out on deck, it was clear what Lil had meant about someone spending extra time on deck. The high winds and pounding rain had torn up a whole section of decking. About a dozen planks were splintered or missing along one corner, and one of the sniper towers was badly damaged, so much so that the sharpshooter wasn’t present.
“As you have no doubt noticed,” announced Asst. Warden Blanc, a shiny new watch in his hand as the last of the inmates took the yard. “There has been a bit of damage to your beloved home. This means there’s work to be done. Much as I would love to put you to labor in the burning sun, I need this place repaired properly, and that means I can’t afford to have any of you squinting in the light and falling off the edge before the work is done.”
There was a murmur of irritation across the inmates at the mocking level of false concern in the voice and words of Blanc. He continued to rattle off things like the specific damage that was done and the individual jobs that would need to be done to repair it, but none of the prisoners seemed to need to know any of it. At this point it was clear that the assistant warden simply loved his own voice.
“Who wants in?” Kent said quietly out the side of his mouth.
“You know I do,” Donald said.
“What’s this about?” Nita asked.
“He’s going to pick seven of us to do the work. I’m always the first one he picks, and he lets me suggest my own team. Probably because I haven’t made a stink around here much lately, and I helped build a couple parts of this place.”
“You helped build this place?!” Nita hissed. “How did that not come up in conversation?”
He shrugged. “Not too proud of it.”
“You’ve got to get me on the team, Kent,” Lil said.
“… You sure? You don’t look too steady.”
“I need this. If you’re afraid I can’t help, then get Nita on there, too. She’s an engineer, remember?”
He looked between them uncertainly. “You think he’ll go for it?”
“We’ll get him to go for it. Just suggest us. Don’t worry about what we say after that. All we need is for you to try,” Nita said. “We’ll owe you.”
“Damn right you will.”
“… And so I think it is wise to once again appoint Kent as temporary foreman of this repair. Kent, any thoughts on your crew?” the assistant warden said, as expected.
Kent looked to the girls. “Well… I’m going to need Donald. Eggy would be a good one. The two new girls look like they could put a good night’s work in… maybe Blanche’d be a good one. And Snow.”
“You sure about the surface folk?” said Blanc uncertainly. “We’ve been having trouble with the little one, as you know.”
“Please pick someone else,” Lil said, playing up the very real roughness and unsteadiness of her voice for all it was worth. “I spent the whole night in the box getting tossed around by the storm. I just got out an hour ago. I need a night of sleep, or I don’t know how I’ll make it another day.”
“I don’t even want to think about what it will be like up here in the cold of night. Two nights up here has nearly killed Lil,” Nita agreed.
“Oh, well I’m so very sorry you aren’t enjoying your stay with us,” the assistant warden said. “But at Skykeep we do what we’re told. Work gets done overnight, and you’re on the crew. If you don’t like that, it’ll be isolation instead. How’s that?”
Nita and Lil each just barely fought off a grin of satisfaction. It was astounding how simple it was to manipulate the truly cruel.
“Er… a word with you, Supervisor?” said a voice that was several degrees too intellectual for the setting. Forward from the back of the general population came the Ebonwhite brothers. They began to chat quietly with the supervisor.
“Of course the Ebonwhite boys are going to buy their way on the job,” Kent muttered. “Whenever the boys want a chance to get out of their cells and enjoy a night they just grease the palm of the supervisor and then…”
“Eggy and Blanche, I feel, aren’t a good fit for this crew,” the assistant warden said. “I believe the Ebonwhites would be a better choice.”
“You’d know best, Supervisor,” Kent said wearily.
“Yes, I would know best. And there you have it. Two hours after sundown we’ll get your people together and start the work by moon and phlo-light.”
There was a general murmur of disappointment from those not selected, and the crowd paced off into their usual cliques. Nita and Lil approached Kent and Donald.
“I really can’t thank you enough,” Nita said.
“Uh-huh. You want to know how to make it up to me?” Kent said.
“If it is within my power, and within reaso
n, then I’ll do it.”
“I want out.”
“What?” Lil said.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You two have had so much up your sleeves since you showed up I’m surprised there’s room enough for your arms. This is about a prison break, and if what you’re doing works, I want out. Donald, too.”
“I can’t promise we’ll be able to…”
“Oh, I know you can’t promise anything because I don’t think what you’re working on is going to do much more than get the two of you put in the box one after the other for the rest of your lives. But if it works, I want out.”
“We’ll do what we can. If it works, you’ll certainly deserve it,” Nita said with a nod. “But if you really helped build this place, and you’ve been here long enough to see most of it, then we’ll need you to tell us all you can about it.”
“Plenty of time to chitchat once the sun goes down. Best part is, me talking about what went into building this place won’t turn any heads while we’re trying to repair it. You just better carry your weight, because nice as the night shift is, we still need to get the job done, and those Ebonwhites aren’t going to lift a finger.”
“No worries. It’ll be nice to ply my trade again.”
“Yeah,” Lil said, glancing up at the sky. “Likewise…”
#
Lil was swinging in her hammock, Wink curled up on her lap, a plate of biscuits by her side, and a tall lemonade in her hand. Before her was the glorious sunset, and in her ears was the long, low howl of a warm summer wind. It was glorious. It was perfect. And then suddenly it was gone, replaced with a dank cell, a dim view of the bars ahead of her, and a bellowing voice.
“Prisoners Graus and Cooper, awake and on your feet for repair duty!” cried their night guard, a somewhat taller and less friendly version of his daytime counterpart.
Lil shook away the sleep as Nita dropped down from the top bunk.
“Well… that was a good three hours I guess. Better’n some nights on the Wind Breaker,” Lil said with a yawn. “Come to think of it, the room’s bigger, too. And we got our own lavat’ry.”
Skykeep Page 16
