Nadya Skylung and the Masked Kidnapper

by Jeff Seymour

  I can hardly breathe. Nic threw this guy off the ship just for arguing with him. What if he does the same to me?

  “Tell me,” Lord Salawag says, looking back down from the balloon. “How’s he treating you these days?”

  I cough. I don’t know what to say.

  Nic’s booming footsteps on the gangplank interrupt us. “Alan!” he calls. “How nice of you to come yourself. I didn’t expect it.”

  “Ah, Captain Vega,” Lord Salawag says. He nods deferentially and shakes Nic’s hand as he, Markus, Salyeh, and Tam come back from the Orion. “So good to see you well. When the ship was late, we feared disaster. Dockmaster Yamada told me about your troubles. That’s why I came down to see you personally.”

  “You’re too kind,” Nic says gruffly, like he’d really rather Salawag hadn’t come down at all. “As you can see, we’ve had quite a bit of damage. Yamada told you about the pirates?”

  “Yes, of course. We’ll have to speak to the Cloud Navy about making sure the shipping routes to the city are kept more secure. Trade, after all, is our lifeblood.”

  “Of course,” Nic says. He’s staring at me so hard I start to sweat. He must be guessing what Lord Salawag told me. Nic waves at the gormling. “He’s unharmed. When can we expect our payment?”

  Lord Salawag looks over the gormling again. “This afternoon,” he says. “Markus will bring by the full amount, plus a little extra in consideration of your troubles. Will you be in?”

  Nic clears his throat and rubs his collar with his thumb. “That’s . . . very generous,” he says grudgingly. “Thank you. I’ll be out most of the day, but he can give it to Thom or to Salyeh here if Thom’s not aboard.”

  Lord Salawag smiles again and inclines his head ever so slightly toward Nic. “Wonderful. Please give my regards to Thom, and to Carla, James, and Brick, if you ever see them.” I frown. I know Carla—she’s the captain of the cloudship Emerald Dream—but I’ve never heard Nic or Thom talk about James and Brick.

  Lord Salawag turns to the rest of us. “So nice to meet you all, truly. Good luck in your apprenticeships with Captain Vega here. Just make sure not to get on his bad side, eh?” He winks at Nic, but Nic doesn’t seem to think it’s funny. He takes a deep breath, like he’s trying not to get angry.

  I take a deep breath myself. My head’s whirling from everything Salawag told me, and Markus is glaring at me like I’m a bit of mud about to throw itself at his beard, but this guy’s gonna leave soon, and I have a promise to keep. “Can I come see the gormling?” I blurt. “Before we leave Far Agondy?”

  Lord Salawag blinks, and then the smile’s back on his face again, welcoming as a cup of tea after a cold day up checking plants on the catwalks. “Of course, Nadya. I very much want the gormling to be comfortable in his new environment, and a visit from you might help him adjust. Markus, put her name on the short-notice appointment list. Just come by anytime you’re free, and Markus will fit you into my schedule wherever it’s possible.” He bows slightly, then walks off, his silver cape flapping behind him like the plumage of some kind of treasure bird.

  Markus glares at me like my mud got all the way through his beard and went down his shirt onto his chest hair, but he scribbles a note on his clipboard before he stalks off behind Lord Salawag anyway. A couple dockhands head after them, pushing the squeaky cart with the gormling’s tank on it.

  The gormling looks back at me as it goes, and its emotions are so strong I can feel them without even trying. It’s terrified, like we’ve all made some kind of horrible mistake.

  I want to comfort it on the Panpathia, but I hesitate. It feels risky with all those shadow things skittering around. Still, as the dockhands round a corner and I lose sight of it, my heart twangs and I close my eyes and go searching for it in the nest of golden threads around me. I figure it’ll be easy to find since it’s so close by.

  But it’s not. Anything I might see is dwarfed by the sight of Far Agondy itself.

  I’ve never been on the Panpathia in a place where there’s so much life crammed together. Out on the ocean it’s all dispersed, except in cloud gardens. Mostly I see lone little strands linking islands of light. Here in Far Agondy, the Panpathia’s a golden web the size of ten mountains stacked together, reaching up into the sky and down into the earth. It looks like a shining version of a tent caterpillar nest—so thick you can barely see through it and made of millions of interlocking golden strands.

  And, I realize as my stomach churns, there’s something wrong with it. In one part there’s a darkness, where the web looks white and brittle instead of gold and flexible. The skittering shadows are centered there, moving, whispering, peering out at the rest of the city, and at me.

  I take a short, sharp breath and jump off the Panpathia, my heart pounding. I wish I could say something to somebody, but I’m not supposed to be on the Panpathia at all, and after Salawag’s story, I’m sure not going to let Nic know I broke the rules again.

  Instead I just gulp and try to listen as Nic gives out assignments for our next round of chores.

  * * *

  • • •

  That afternoon, Nic calls me into his cabin. He’s sitting at his big table under the iron chandelier, looking at the secret ledger Salyeh and I found after he was kidnapped, the one that says DIASPORA at the top of it. I know he’s been trying to schedule a meeting but having trouble getting everyone together. He told me last month he was going to introduce me to the other people fighting the Malumbra, but I guess it’ll have to wait.

  The afternoon light pours in through the big windows at the back of his cabin and puts a little line of gold around his body. When I enter, he looks up, and his head blocks the light. He closes the ledger, takes his glasses off, and polishes them.

  “Sit down, would you?” he asks, but I know it’s more a command than an invitation. I crutch to a chair opposite his and plop into it. “Tam and Salyeh tell me you spent some time alone with Lord Salawag this morning.”

  I nod, my mouth dry again. I don’t blame them for blabbing. I’m actually kind of looking forward to talking to Nic.

  “What did he tell you?”

  I clear my throat. “He said he used to be on the crew of the Orion, back when Thom was. He said you kicked”—I choke—“kicked him off the ship.”

  Nic puts both hands on the table and closes his eyes for a second. Then he goes to the cabinet where he keeps a private stash of food and drink, fills a glass of water, and hands it to me. “That’s one way of looking at it,” he says. “And I’m not surprised he sees it that way.”

  I drink the water and my throat clears up enough that I could say something, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know who to trust.

  “Alan Salawag was an enormously talented skylung, Nadya, much like you,” Nic says. “And he was overconfident and charismatic, much like you. The other kids on the crew followed his lead. He would have made an exceptional captain someday.”

  He sighs and looks down at his ledger, flicking some dust from its cover. “Except that he had a tendency to lead people into trouble. He made rash, foolish decisions in the pursuit of new experiences. He encouraged Thom to steal a watch in T’an Gaban and Carla to sneak into the lionwraith exhibit in the Deepwater Zoo with him. He nearly wrecked the Orion once when he persuaded James Daybreak, an older boy who was our starwinder, to thread a tiny gap between two rocky pinnacles outside the Free City of Myrrh. Initially I lectured him and assumed he would learn, but as he got older, he got more reckless instead of less.” He looks me in the eye. “Eventually, I decided that his presence on the ship was damaging to the other kids, and I removed him from the crew.”

  My heart races. He must be telling me this for a reason. He’s warning me. “You abandoned him?” I say.

  Nic frowns. “No. I helped him get into the civil service academy here in Far Agondy. I paid his tuition for six years. I felt—fee
l—somewhat responsible for him. He seems to have mellowed with age. Certainly he’s achieved an impressive position in the city.”

  “Who’s Brick?” I ask.

  Nic jumps, almost like I pricked him with a needle. He takes a deep breath, then leans against the table. “Brick—Brittany Brikowski is her full name—is a skylung like Alan. She was our engineer in training and Alan’s best friend, back when they were crewmates.”

  I think about Pepper, and my guts shrivel again. “Why don’t you ever talk about her? Did you kick her off the crew too?”

  Nic twists his head to the side. He looks hurt, and I feel a little bad about running my mouth off. “Brick is a sad subject for all of us, Nadya,” he says. He coughs, and his eyes get red and watery. “I did not remove her from the ship. We let her down.” He pulls out the handkerchief he uses to clean his glasses and dabs at his eyes with it instead. “I don’t want to talk about Brick today. But believe me that when we ask you to be careful, listen to our orders, and keep off the Panpathia, we have very good reason to do so.”

  CHAPTER 8

  IN WHICH NADYA VISITS TAM’S OLD HOME, AND GETS MANY SURPRISES.

  The next morning, I’m standing in a little waterboat with an engine that’s way too big for it, trying to catch my breath as it crashes through the waves between the cloudship docks and the Far Agondy mainland. The city’s skyscrapers loom in front of me like spikes of glass hair, all windows down the front with little bits of concrete sticking them together. The water smells like the bathroom when there’s been a plumbing clog, but the sun is up and shining orange through a hazy layer of smoke. It’s a beautiful day, all things considered.

  Tam sits next to me, chewing on his thumbnail and staring at the city, the prosthetic leg he’s making for me sitting in his lap. Thom’s piloting the launch, which is what they call these waterboats. Aaron’s standing in front, where the bow jumps up and down whenever we hit a wave, grinning ear to ear and trying to keep his balance. Pepper, Sal, and Nic are back on the ship, but Tian Li’s here too, sitting across from Tam staring at the skyscrapers and looking almost as lost in thought as he is.

  I tug a little map Tam sketched for me last night out of my pocket and check our progress. The airship spires are out in the bay, south of Doubleflow Island at the heart of the city. We’re headed to the west bank of the Doubleflow River, and there’s a bunch of other neighborhoods on the east bank we’re not visiting today.

  Thom maneuvers us around a tugboat with some colorful shouting, and I think about what Nic said yesterday afternoon. I really, really want to know what happened to Brittany Brikowski, why Nic won’t talk about it, and why it makes him think it’s extra important for me to be careful, but I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to ask.

  I sigh and slump down next to Tam. I’m a little peeved at him for not paying attention to Pepper and making the fight between us worse, but when I see the worry on his face, I let it go. He must be pretty preoccupied right now. Five years ago, he ran away from the workshop we’re heading to after a machine he made hurt one of the kids there. He never even said goodbye, and now he’s gotta go face Gossner—the woman who runs the workshop—plus the kid he hurt and a whole bunch of other kids besides.

  Thom swings us around a garbage scow steaming off to dump a bunch of trash somewhere—probably the middle of the bay, if the smell is any guide—then between a couple fishing boats I hope are going way, way out into the ocean before they catch anything to sell to people. A few minutes later, he brings us into the part of the harbor for launches and other small boats. Tam and Tian Li leap off and tie the boat up, and I stare at my crutches and massage the Mighty Lady, fighting off a concert of stabbing pains in my missing toes and trying to feel hopeful about my prosthesis instead of sad about being on the boat when I’d rather be jumping around.

  Once we’re tied up, Tam helps me out, Tian Li gives Aaron a hand, and Thom pays the dock owner. Just as my foot hits the dock’s slimy wooden planking and I start to worry about keeping steady on it, there’s a loud whizzing overhead, like the wings of an enormous bumblebee heading straight for us. I duck, but Tam just cranes his head up. I follow his eyes and a second later a black blur screams over us on a line, catches another line, and slows to a stop on a platform at the end of the docks. The blur looks sort of like a big spider with its legs all bundled up, but as it unfolds I realize it’s a person clipped to some kind of device on a steel cable. I straighten and look over my shoulder. The cable runs all the way out to the docking spire where the Orion is berthed.

  “Whoa,” I mutter.

  “Those are the zip lines,” Tam says. “They run all over the city. Fastest way to get around. Take an elevator up one of these skyscrapers, then a zip line across town wherever you need to go. Then do the same on the way back. It’s genius. All us runners used to use them.”

  I look back up at the line, which bounces around above my head like a nervous flea. I’ve heard of the zip lines before, but I’ve never seen one used so close. “I guess,” I say. Once, I would’ve jumped on a line like that without thinking twice, but now I’m not so sure. “I think I’ll stick with the ground.”

  “Me too,” Thom says, coming over to join us. “You ready to go?” When we all nod, he sets off toward the end of the dock. “Good. We’ll be taking streetcars and subways to get to Gossner’s workshop.” He raises his eyebrows at Tam. “Not the zip lines. I want to get everyone there in one piece.”

  Tam looks a little sheepish. He tries to impress Thom whenever he can. But the sheepishness fades pretty fast as we walk off the dock and Thom buys a roll of tickets for the streetcar lines. Soon Tam’s back to looking preoccupied and worried, just like he was on the water.

  * * *

  • • •

  Half the day later, we’re standing on the thirty-third floor of a skyscraper, knocking on a big iron door. It was harder getting across the city than we expected. It’s not made for people on crutches, and I kept getting bumped and almost losing my balance or having to hop my way down tiny aisles in the streetcars and subways. Plus there was a lot of construction and one of the main subway lines was closed. Thom got us lost trying to figure out a workaround.

  But eventually we got here, to one of the biggest buildings in a part of the city Tam calls the Forge. Apparently most of these places are filled with factories, workshops, inventing guilds, and engineering schools. He says of the whole bunch, Gossner’s is one of the two or three most important, and that she owns the whole skyscraper we’re in. I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around that. This building’s as tall as a mountain—how could one person own the whole thing?

  On top of that, the hallway we’re in is pretty strange. Usually every floor in a skyscraper has a bunch of apartments or offices in it. The hallways run in straight lines between the doors, and you have to figure out which one leads to the office you want. In the fanciest buildings, there’s even a secretary outside the elevators, to tell you where to go.

  But on this floor, there’s just a little room with big windows looking out over the city and one door, with a sign next to it made of shining copper letters welded roughly to a stainless-steel plate.

  GOSSNER

  Tam gulps and rubs his hands on his overalls. He steps toward the door, then stops. He’s breathing fast, and his hands shake a little.

  “You want me to knock?” Thom asks gently.

  Tam shakes his head. “No,” he says. Quieter, almost under his breath, he adds, “It’s gotta be me. It was my fault. I gotta deal with it.”

  He walks up to the door, which has a huge bronze ring that must weigh a ton in the center of it, and knocks three times. The sound echoes in the little foyer we’re in, like the footsteps of a giant made of scrap metal.

  A few seconds later, the door creaks open.

  “Yes?” a boy asks. He only opens the door partway, so I can just see his face and the left half
of his body. He’s soft-spoken, a little shorter than Tam, probably a year or so younger than us. He moves confidently, thoughtfully, slowly, like he has all the time in the world to decide what to do about things. He’s got a smooth, welcoming face and tan skin just a little lighter than Tam’s. His hair’s black, and his eyes are the deep brown of a rock outcropping with roots that stretch deeper than you can imagine.

  Tam opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He swallows, then tries again. “Hey, Rash,” he says. His voice shakes like a shivering cloud frog. “I’m, ah, looking for Gossner.”

  The boy raises an eyebrow. “Do I know—” He startles, and then his eyes widen and his jaw drops as far as Tam’s did. “Tam. Tam Ban. Holy third axle of Goshend’s skytrain. We thought you were dead!”

  Tam coughs and scratches the back of his neck. “No,” he says meekly. “Not dead. I just left. How . . . um . . . how’ve you been?”

  “Good,” Rash says. “Come in, come in!” He opens the door all the way, and I see the other half of his body. He’s missing his right arm partway above the elbow, and I realize why Tam was so nervous. This must be the kid who got hurt by his machine. “Hey, Alé!” he shouts. “You’ll never believe who’s back! Somebody go get the Goss!”

  Tam glances at me, takes a deep breath, and walks through the door. The rest of us follow into a room that looks like a mixture between a squirrel nest and a playground. There’s metal everywhere—the beams of the skyscraper are exposed, enormous steel columns like the ribs of a leviathan jutting from floor to ceiling every twenty feet or so in a grid. The ceiling itself is four stories high and vaulted, so we’re in a massive, cavernous space. Instead of floors like most places would have, there’s iron catwalks and platforms with little holes drilled in them, so you can see all the way up. Zip lines and staircases and lifts and swings run between them haphazardly, and it looks like the kids who work here sleep anywhere they want—there’s sleeping bags and little tables and hammocks and dressers and mirrors spread out all over the place, with no plan whatsoever. The far wall is all windows, facing east toward Doubleflow Island, where the biggest skyscrapers of all tower over this one.