Nadya Skylung and the Masked Kidnapper

by Jeff Seymour

  It takes a while to make our beds. Tam lays his down first, farthest from the boilers. Pep puts hers next to his, and then come Tian Li and Salyeh. I take the longest to set up—since hopping around with a pile of blankets is the kind of delicate balancing act that makes you move slow so you don’t fall—so I end up at the far end of the line, closest to the boilers. The flames make me a little nervous, but if I close my eyes they’re warm and comforting.

  As everybody else leaves to wash up, I linger. Thom, who came back to say good night, stays too, standing by the boilers and staring at the long tongues of flame snaking up under them. The light flickers on his face like a signal lamp flashing out at sea. Occasionally his mouth moves silently. I wonder if he’s talking to Far Agondy’s giant fire spirit.

  I know he’s busy, but everybody else is off using the bathrooms, and this might be my best chance to get an answer I’ve been wanting for a few days now.

  “Thom?” I say. “Can I ask you a question?”

  He turns toward me, and flames disappear from his eyes. “Sure, Nadya,” he mumbles. He rubs his face tiredly. “What’s up?”

  I clear my throat. My heart pounds. “What happened to Brittany Brikowski?”

  Thom stops rubbing. He stares at me like he’s mulling over whether to say anything, then sighs. “We let her down.” He flops onto one of the couches near the boilers and stares at the flames again. “She was a good friend. Bright and brave and very capable. About ten years ago, just after my crew all left the Orion, she got in touch with us. She’d heard from Alan, and he wanted to go to the Roof of the World, see what was there. He asked her to come with him.” He shakes his head. “We tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t give up. She wanted us to come too, said we’d be safer together on the Orion than just her and Alan alone. Nic refused, so she focused on the rest of us.”

  A few kids cross over us on a catwalk, and Thom waits a few seconds before continuing. “The night before she left, she visited me on the cloudship Rainbow’s Flight, where I was working. She and Alan were going to take a little cloudship he’d won in a high-stakes bet. She asked me to be their fireminder. I turned her down.” He clears his throat and rubs his leg. “The next I heard from her, it was by letter. They never got farther than the ruins of a fishing village on the edge of the continent. When they landed, she got on the Panpathia to look around, and the Malumbra wormed its shadow into her mind. They left right away, but it didn’t matter. She said she was terrified of spreading the shadow, and she went into hiding somewhere far, far from other people.” He gets up and scowls. “Alan came out just fine though. He always does.”

  I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. Thom raises his eyebrows. “So you promise me—when you’re talking to him tomorrow, you be extra careful, okay, Nadya?”

  Mouth dry, I nod.

  * * *

  • • •

  Thom heads to the platform he’s sharing with Nic as everybody else comes back. I’m about to turn in when Rash brings me a big bundle of cloth. “Here,” he says. “You left this on the roof today.”

  It’s the big black coat from the Shadowman, the one that got wrapped around my ankle as Rash rescued me. Remembering the chase makes me sick to my stomach. “Just throw it away,” I grunt. “I don’t want to see it.” I can’t believe that’s all I got in return for making Raj sick. “Thanks for saving my life, by the way.” I roll over and stare at the flames again. I’m feeling pretty down. The Lady’s aching, I’m now doubting my plan to get help from Alan Salawag, and every few minutes it hits me again that Raj would be fine if I’d just held my nerve instead of chickening out.

  Rash doesn’t leave. “Look,” he says, “I know you feel bad. It’s written all over your face.”

  I huff. I wish he’d take the hint.

  “But I’m impressed. It’s not just anybody who’d go up against the Shadowmen to help some kid they’ve only known a month. The Dawnrunners? This is personal for us. We’ve lost siblings, cousins, kids we’ve been friends with for years.”

  I hunch my shoulders and he finally gets up, but I do start to feel better. Just a little, mind you, like the ice chest my heart’s been marinating in is starting to thaw.

  There’s a rustle of paper as Rash stands. “Hey,” he says. He sounds surprised. “What’s this?”

  I roll over. He’s picking up a slip of paper from the floor. “Looks like a flyer,” he says, and he turns it over so I can read it.

  NEED WORK?

  GET PAID TODAY! EASY HOURS, GOOD WAGES! NEED STRONG, HEALTHY MEN AND WOMEN FOR MANUAL LABOR AND ASSORTED TASKS. START THIS MORNING, GET PAID THIS EVENING!

  INTERESTED PARTIES SHOULD REPORT TO

  ARACHNYA HOUSE,

  52ND AND TIMBERLINE,

  BLEAK FOREST.

  I shudder when I see that address. Tian Li and Salyeh said the house there was like a big, dead grub—that its outside used to be white but it’s covered now in gray-and-black mold, with broken windows and missing doors on one of the wings, but everything locked up tight as a bank on the other. “That must be how he recruits,” I say. “‘Manual labor and assorted tasks.’” I snort. “Like kidnapping!”

  Rash sucks his teeth. “So many people would fall for this,” he says. “Good people.”

  A little unease squiggles into my guts. I never thought of the Shadowmen as people. I just thought they were the enemy, the bad guys, the Malumbra’s shadow made solid.

  Rash rubs his shoulder. It must be sore from wearing that heavy prosthetic arm all day. “I bet they never even knew what hit them. Just showed up looking for a job, and then he does whatever he does and they lose their minds.” He shivers. “What a monster.”

  I think of his taunts on the Panpathia, the spider form he takes. “You’ve got that right,” I whisper.

  Rash flips the paper over. “It’s got something written on the back,” he says. “‘Miller Square, Second and Olivine, the Forge.’” He looks up at me. “That’s just a few streets from here. I bet he wrote down the address where his goons were supposed to meet, in case they got lost. You said some of the Shadowmen are controlled by him more tightly than others, right? Maybe they have trouble with directions.”

  I look blearily at the address, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. “It’s got a signature below it,” I say, “or part of one.”

  Rash brings it closer to his face. “Huh. It just says ‘—S.’ Think that stands for ‘Silvermask’?”

  Salyeh, who must have been listening for a while, props himself up on one elbow behind Rash. “Can I see that?”

  Rash hands the flyer to him, and Sal squints at it. “This handwriting looks real familiar. I swear I’ve seen it somewhere.” He scoots around and sits up. “Can I keep this? I wanna take it back to the Orion and compare it with some things. We have contracts, notes, letters from people in Far Agondy. I bet that’s where I know it from. Maybe I can figure out who Silvermask really is.”

  Rash shrugs. “Suits me. It’s hers, anyway.”

  He looks at me, and I look at Sal. His eyes are gleaming like he’s got a good puzzle to solve and he’s not gonna let it go till it’s licked. “Sure,” I say. “Thanks, Sal.”

  He nods, and even after Rash leaves and I lie down to get some sleep, he’s still up staring at that note, putting pieces together in his head. Maybe things are going to be okay. Sal will figure out who Silvermask is. Alan Salawag will get the police to help us. Before long, we’ll have Aaron and everybody else back too.

  And then we’ll make Raj better again, somehow. I’m sure of it.

  CHAPTER 18

  IN WHICH NADYA MAKES A FOOLISH PROMISE.

  The flight to City Hall is a blast. Rash spends about an hour showing me and Tam, who won a four-way contest of rock versus garden hoe versus cloud tree with the rest of the gang, how to use the gliders. The mechanisms are pretty simple. There are two switc
hes up by your face, one to bank the glider left and one to bank it right. Then you use your feet, or foot in my case, to tug the tail up or down and change the direction the nose of the glider is pointed in. As long as you stay moving fast enough for the wings to work, or you hit a thermal, you’re in business. We experiment around Gossner’s tower, and by mid-morning I’ve got the knack of it, swooshing around and making tight left-and-right cuts across the street, riding thermals high and then plunging back down. It’s totally awesome—even better than the Flightwing.

  “Thanks,” I say to Rash when we land to say goodbye to everybody. “That was amazing!”

  He grins. “You’re a natural!” He slaps me on the back. “You’re pretty good too, Tam.”

  Tam stares at the controls on his glider, then at his hands, pantomiming how they work to himself. He struggled a bit—not so bad he’s in danger of crashing or anything, but enough that Rash and I will have to take it slow so he doesn’t get left behind.

  We say quick goodbyes. Pep crosses her arms and sulks in the doorway. I wanted to finagle a way to bring her along, but the contest was her idea so I didn’t step on her toes about it. Sal and Tian Li wish us good luck. Thom pulls me aside real quick and tells me to be safe on the flight and that he feels a duty to Mrs. T to keep me safe until we get her back. I feel a little guilty because the look on his face says he’s been worrying about me a lot lately, and I sure haven’t been helping with all the risks I’m taking.

  So I promise him I’ll be careful, and he heads downstairs to take a cab to City Hall. We wait about fifteen minutes to give him a head start, Nic reminds us not to go inside without Thom, and then we’re off.

  Like I said, it’s a ball. The morning’s bright and cheery, the sky blue, the air warm. Below us, crowds of people look like streams of bees buzzing around a garden full of flowers. Rash takes the lead, I follow, and Tam brings up the rear. He gets better as we go, and by the time Rash takes us up our last thermal and out over the Doubleflow River, we’re flying in formation, like geese headed south for the fall.

  I grin. For a few minutes I revel in the wind in my face, the sun on my skin, my hair flapping this way and that. I’m free, able to be anything I want in all the world. I could fly anywhere, do anything.

  Then Rash dives toward the tallest buildings in the city, right at the heart of Doubleflow Island, and reality comes crashing back down. I’ve got a job to do, and a lot of people are counting on me. By the time we flare to gentle landings outside City Hall, with a crowd of gawkers staring at us and Thom running up from the doors to meet us, using his walking stick like a crowbar to move people out of the way, I’m focused on the job again and ready to meet with Alan Salawag.

  * * *

  • • •

  City Hall is filthy stinkin’ rich. The floors are made of marble. The ceilings have murals of factories, saw mills, and mines. The walls are paneled in polished wood that looks cut from trees a thousand years old. Big windows everywhere let you see all over the city, people scurry constantly, and there are enough elevators to move an army.

  We move with the crowd, and other than some dirty looks from people we bump with our folded-up glider wings when we get into an elevator, we don’t hit our first major obstacle until the reception desk outside Lord Salawag’s office. The desk’s the size of a big couch, taller than I am, and made of deep brown wood that has rich, hypnotizing swirls in it. Physically it blocks our way. But worse than that, Markus—Mr. Beardy Tattoo Arms from the dock—perches like a vulture on a stool behind it, scribbling in a leather-bound book as big as Goshend’s Ledger of Souls. His beard seems to have grown an inch, or maybe he’s just fluffed it or something. Behind it, he’s still as burly as ever, as tall as ever, as grumpy as ever, and all about stopping us from seeing his boss.

  “I’m sorry,” he says briskly, while frowning in a way that seems designed especially to let us know he’s not, “but only the girl is approved for a short-notice meeting. The rest of you will have to wait.”

  “Listen,” Thom says, planting his elbows on the desk. “People are trying to kidnap her. Tell Alan we can’t just leave her alone, even with him, okay?”

  Markus blinks twice, then clears his throat and nods pointedly at the policeman stationed near the elevators at the end of the hall. “Sir,” he says beardily, “you’re inside City Hall, in the office of the Lord Secretary of Far Agondy. Who, exactly, do you think is going to kidnap this little girl from here?”

  I bristle at the words little girl, but this guy’s our only way in, and I probably shouldn’t make him mad at us. “I’ll be fine, Thom,” I say.

  “Nadya—” Thom starts, but I just crutch away from Markus toward the waiting area.

  “Fifteen minutes, right?” I call over my shoulder.

  “I will call your name when the Lord Secretary is ready for you,” Markus says back. He seems unsure whether to be upset with me for walking away or happy that he won his argument with Thom, so he settles on a general-purpose scowl and starts scribbling in his book again, peering up to glare at us every once in a while.

  “Nadya,” Thom says once we’ve gotten settled on a couch, “I don’t appreciate being cut off like that.”

  “You were just gonna make him mad, Thom,” I say. “And then maybe he wouldn’t have let me in to see Lord Salawag at all!”

  Thom sighs, and we look to Tam and Rash for support at the same time. They take a sudden interest in the white streaks meandering through the bloodred marble on the floor tiles and the silver trim on the ceiling.

  “Look, if anything goes wrong, I’ll scream bloody murder and you guys can run in and help me, okay? I’ll be right through those doors.” I point to the doors I assume lead into Salawag’s office. They’re enormous, made of some kind of wood that looks heavier than stone, and painted black with shining door handles I think are probably real silver.

  “Fine,” Thom says. He plonks down on the couch next to me and rubs his face. “Just be careful, Nadya. Alan has a way of persuading people to do things that serve his interests more than theirs.”

  I think about rolling my eyes, but then I remember he’s trying to protect me, and I decide not to. “Right.”

  The doors open. The guy who opened them—another secretary? an undersecretary?—bows his head as six people walk out. It’s obvious that one of them is a pretty high muckety-muck. She’s dressed in a suit that probably cost as much as a month’s worth of provisions for the Orion, all slickly tailored black silk with silver pinstripes down it, and she wears black spats. Her hair’s dark black, her skin’s a deep tan that’s pretty similar to Gossner’s, and she’s wearing a long silver pendant that looks like a feather quill. She glances at us as she walks past, and then she’s gone in a flurry of footsteps and paperwork.

  I wonder briefly who she is, and then Markus’s beardy voice calls from behind me: “Nadya Skylung. You have fifteen minutes.”

  I hop off the couch, ignore Thom’s worried look, and crutch into Alan Salawag’s office.

  It’s even more done up than the waiting area was. The floors are black marble, each tile placed inside a square of real silver. The walls are lush brown wood so dark it almost looks purple. There’s a little kitchen on one side of the office, a sofa and several chairs around a coffee table, some big flowering plants that look like they come from very far away, and a desk roughly the size of an oilcar.

  The doors boom shut behind me. The undersecretary takes a seat facing them, as though not to eavesdrop on the meeting his boss is about to have.

  “Nadya! Come in, come in!” Lord Salawag says. He stands up and comes around that enormous desk. “Would you like any refreshments? We have coffee, tea, a bit of sherbet . . .”

  I’m awfully tempted by the sherbet, but my time’s already ticking down and I can’t let myself get distracted. “No thanks,” I say. “I came here to see the gormling. And . . . um . . . to ask for y
our help with something.”

  “Of course, of course,” Salawag says. He sits in one of the plush armchairs near the coffee table and beckons me over to the couch. “Unfortunately, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the gormling isn’t here.”

  My stomach crunches up. I’d just assumed it was hidden somewhere I couldn’t see, like in a tank behind one of these wooden panels. “I . . . What? Where is he?”

  Lord Salawag frowns, and the undersecretary appears with a cup of coffee for him. He stirs it twice, then takes a sip. “He didn’t seem comfortable here, took a little ill, so I had him taken to my home instead. He’s much happier there. You’re welcome to come and visit sometime. With your guardians and friends, of course.”

  I almost let him know that my guardians and friends were just stopped from coming in here, but judging by the silver grandfather clock in the corner, I’m down a minute already. Focus, Nadya. “Sure,” I say. “That’d be swell. But look, you said you wished you could do more to help us than just give us a bonus . . .”

  He nods, blowing on his coffee. “Yes, of course. Go on.”

  “Well, maybe you can. One of us got kidnapped.”

  He nearly drops his cup. “What? No! Who?”

  “Aaron,” I say. “He’s—”

  “The cloudling who helps you in the garden.” Salawag’s expression darkens. “Silvermask. It must’ve been.”

  I blink. “You know about Silvermask?”

  Lord Salawag stands up and starts pacing. “Everyone knows about him. He’s the scourge of the city! We look like idiots not being able to bring him down. I was just speaking with the mayor about it.”

  My heart thumps. He cares. Maybe he can help. “We know where he lives.”

  He stops pacing. He seems like a pretty steady guy, but his jaw drops a little. “How in the world did you manage that?” he asks. “The police have been searching for months.”