The Lost Compass

by Joel Ross

  “It is now,” she said. “The world is our pigeon pie, and I can’t wait to take a bite out of Port Oro. What’re we going to do after they heal Mrs. E?”

  “Start a shipbuilding workshop,” Bea said.

  “Join Captain Nisha and the mutineers.” Hazel braced herself as the Anvil Rose jerked, then hovered in place over the skyscraper. “With our own warship.”

  “We should lie low,” Swedish said. “So they can’t find us.”

  Hazel shot me an amused look. Swedish was convinced that a shadowy conspiracy of enemies—which he called “them”—was plotting against us. Even after he’d learned that we had real enemies, he still suspected that they were out to get us.

  “We could start a gang,” Loretta said.

  I gaped at her. Hazel gaped at her. Bea and Swedish gaped at her. I’m pretty sure that if Mrs. E had been awake, she would’ve gaped at her, too.

  “What?” Loretta asked, spreading her hands. “There aren’t any on Port Oro, right? We’d corner the market!”

  “Y-you, you—” Bea sputtered. “You’re a corner market!”

  Loretta made a face. “You have to work on your comebacks if you want to be part of my gang.”

  “Who says it’ll be your gang? Hazel asked, one hand on her hip.

  “We’re not starting a gang!” I said. “That’s the worst idea ever.”

  “And I am not a corner market,” Loretta said. “Oh! Maybe that’s what you should do with the diamond! Start a market.”

  “What we should do,” I corrected her.

  “Well, I wasn’t with you when you found it.”

  “You’re with us now,” Swedish said in a goopy voice, like he wanted to kiss her.

  “No lovey-dovey stuff in my gang,” I muttered.

  “There’s no rush,” Hazel told Loretta. “For the first time ever, we’re free. No rent, no bosses. No Kodoc. Nothing except . . .” Propellers thrummed, and she peered through the vent. “We’re here!”

  Something about her tone rang warning bells in my mind. “Nothing except what?”

  The cargo bay doors creaked and started to open. “Nothing,” Hazel said. “Not important.”

  “Except what, Hazy?” Bea asked. She must’ve heard the same bells.

  Hazel ran her fingers through her braids. “The Subassembly sent mutineers to find us on the Rooftop, right? To find Chess and bring him here. That means they want something from him.”

  “So they can ask,” Swedish said. “And we can say no.”

  “We owe them for helping us, Swede. I’m not sure we can say no. And we don’t even know what they want.”

  Airsailors shouted in the distance. The deck trembled beneath my boots; then the gangplank slammed down from the cargo bay, and the light of Port Oro poured inside.

  3

  HAZEL TOOK BEA’S hand and headed down the gangplank into Subassembly territory. Loretta slunk along beside them, her fingers two inches from her knife. Swedish wheeled a still-sleeping Mrs. E along behind Loretta, and I ducked my head and followed.

  After I stepped onto the skyscraper roof, the gangplank slid away, and the Anvil Rose veered into the sky above us with a blast of wind.

  The dust settled, and a crowd surrounded us. These Assemblers didn’t look like Cog Turning, the Subassembly leader who’d helped us escape the Rooftop. They looked fiercer and better armed, with swords on the hips and cannons in the corners of the roof.

  Hazel cleared her throat. “Um—hi? We’re looking for the Subassembly.”

  A deep voice called from the crowd. “And you came in a warship!”

  “We needed a ride,” Loretta explained.

  “It’s a long story.” Hazel smiled into the crowd. “I wonder if we might—”

  A woman’s voice said, “You wonder? Well, you’re not the only one! I am full of wonder!”

  Hazel glanced at me, and I shrugged. I had no idea what was going on.

  The crowd parted for an older man and woman with gray dreadlocks, pointy noses, and flowing robes. They must’ve been “cogs,” which was what the Subassembly called their leaders. They looked like twins, each with one blue eye and one cloudy white eye—a filmy, unseeing blankness. Just like mine.

  My throat turned to sandpaper, and I tried not to stare. Were they freaks, too? Were those glimmering white eyes real? Or had they plucked out their own eyes and replaced them with glass?

  “Hey, check that out, Chess!” Loretta said. “They’ve got white eyes li—”

  Swedish stepped on her foot. “Shht!”

  The woman with the dreadlocks didn’t seem to notice. She leaned on her cane and asked Hazel, “What do you wonder, bonita?”

  Hazel took a breath. “If your healers would—”

  “I’ll tell you what I wonder,” the dreadlocked man interrupted, with a curious, one-eyed squint. “I wonder if this is the package we ordered.”

  “Don’t say ‘ordered,’” the woman told him. “That’s rude.” She peered at Hazel. “He means the package we ‘requested.’”

  “We, uh, well . . .” Hazel paused, like she had no idea what to make of these two. “We came with the mutineers, and we need your help.” Hazel gestured to Mrs. E. “Our . . . our friend is fogsick. She’s sleeping twenty-three hours a day.”

  A murmur spread through the crowd, and the woman peered closer. “The poor dear!”

  “A cog told us that the Subassembly can treat fogsickness,” Hazel told her. “He said that you’re the only ones who can.”

  “Indeed, we are unique,” the woman declared. “One of a—”

  “—kind,” the man jumped in. “Inimitable. That means ‘without imitators.’”

  “However, we are not the only unique people present.” The woman looked from Hazel to Bea to Swedish. She considered Loretta, then pointed her cane at me. “Tetherboy.”

  My breath caught, and I wanted to disappear . . . but I didn’t slip behind Swedish. Because I also wanted a closer look at her white eye, even though I didn’t know what I was hoping to see. Maybe that she was like me. Maybe that she wasn’t.

  After a long moment, the woman looked away from me and asked Hazel, “And what’s your name, bonita?”

  “I’m Hazel.”

  “I am Cog Isandra,” the woman said.

  “And I am Cog Isander,” the man said.

  “I’m glad that’s not confusing,” Swedish muttered.

  “We’re pleased to meet you.” Hazel gestured to Mrs. E, who was still slumped in her chair. “This is Mrs. E or, um, Ekaterina. She adopted us in the junkyard, the slums of the Rooftop. She—”

  “The Rooftop!” the man blurted. “It is them!”

  Isandra rapped her cane on the floor, then asked Hazel, “Which cog told you about us, my dear?”

  “Cog Turning.”

  “Today is the day!” Isander announced. “This is the day we’ve been waiting for!”

  Whispers and gasps spread through the crowd: “The Rooftop?” and “Nobody gets here from there!” and “That’s the tetherkid!” Dozens of eager eyes focused on me, and a few claps sounded—then the roof echoed with applause and cheering. My cheeks burned, and I hunched my shoulders.

  Loretta stepped in front of me, and I felt a spark of gratitude. Then she waved to the crowd. “Thank youuuu!” she called. “Too kind, too kind. No need for a parade! A feast and a marching band are all we ask.”

  “Please, ma’am,” Hazel said to Isandra, setting a hand on Mrs. E’s wheeled chair. “We need your help.”

  “We’ll give you more than our help,” Isandra announced. “We’ll give you our—”

  “—hope,” Isander continued. “We are in your hands.”

  “Um,” Hazel said, confused again. “Okay?”

  “Now, then!” Isander said. “Let’s get your friend to the medics.”

  “Both friends,” Isandra said, peering at me. “The tetherboy is hurt, too. Look at his pants.”

  Great. Now everyone was looking at my pants. Better and be
tter.

  “Look at your own pants,” I muttered, but nobody heard me.

  Isandra and Isander led us across the roof, and I hunched my shoulders, peeking at their foggy eyes. They looked like mine, except they didn’t shimmer and flow with Fog. They weren’t real. But why were the Assemblers trying to copy my freak-eye? Why were they trying to look like me?

  I didn’t have a clue, but I kept stealing glances as the cogs brought us to a booth where a heavy basket dangled from a steel rope attached to a purring engine.

  “That’s an automatic winch,” Bea said, her eyes wide as the cogs stepped into the basket. “It heaves them up and down inside the skyscraper like a well bucket! It’s a . . . an up-and-downer!”

  “It’s called an ‘elevator,’” I told her.

  “Don’t be silly.” Bea sniffed. “It doesn’t just elevate. It goes down, too.”

  The cogs told Swedish to carry Mrs. E into the basket with them. There wasn’t enough room for the rest of us, so Isander said, “Jada and Mochi, why don’t you bring our guests to the infirmary.”

  Two girls stepped from the crowd. One must’ve been about twelve, with frizzy hair and crooked teeth, while the other seemed tougher and older even though she was shorter, with a wary slouch and an old-fashioned nose-ring. They looked scruffy and watchful, like foxes after a hard winter.

  “You’re tetherkids?” Hazel asked.

  “How’d you guess?” Loretta said with a snort. Because they looked pretty much exactly like me.

  “I’m Jada,” the older one said curtly. “That’s Mochi.”

  “Ohmyfog!” Mochi chirped, falling into step with Bea. “Are you really from the Rooftop? No way. Really? Really-really? No way! That’s, like, a hundred days’ flight away!”

  “I know!” Bea beamed at Mochi. “Except, more like five or six days, if the wind is right.”

  “If the wind is a hurricane,” Mochi said brightly, “and blows you in the wrong direction, it could take a hundred days.”

  “It could take forever!” Bea said, just as brightly.

  Hoo, boy. That’s all we needed: someone as bubbly as Bea.

  “This way,” Jada told us with zero effervescence, and stepped onto a wide ramp leading down into the skyscraper.

  I limped along as the rest of the Assemblers . . . watched us. Watched me mostly, which was weird. Usually people watched Swedish, because he was so big and tough looking, or Hazel, because she was so pretty and in-charge looking.

  “I’ve never met someone from anywhere else,” Mochi told Bea. “I barely even thought there was anywhere else.”

  “I never totally believed in Port Oro,” Bea admitted. “I wonder how many anywhere elses there are.”

  “You mean other mountaintops across the Fog?” Mochi asked. “Could be hundreds and hundreds. Or . . .”

  “. . . none at all,” Bea finished, and I knew without looking she was wrinkling her nose. “I bet there’s a bunch, though.”

  “That’s what I think, too!” Mochi exclaimed. “Jada’s sure we’re the only ones, but she’s a grouch.”

  “She’ll like Swedish, then. He’s a grump.”

  “She’s crabby.”

  “He’s gloomy.”

  Mochi giggled, then lowered her voice. “Is your tetherboy’s name Chess? Is he really . . . y’know?”

  She was asking if I was a freak-eye, but Bea pretended not to understand. “Nah, he’s not cranky,” she said. “He’s more quiet.”

  “And ferocious,” I told her over my shoulder.

  “Plus, he thinks he’s funny,” Bea added.

  I was about to say something hilarious when I noticed Mochi staring at me. So I turned back around. The cogs might show off their freak-eyes, but I’d spent my whole life hiding mine.

  “Hey!” Bea said behind me. “Do you want to see my twistys?”

  She made figurines out of wire, miniature people and airship and animals, and called them “twistys.” As she chattered, I scuffed along, keeping the weight off my aching leg and trying not to think about the look on Mochi’s face . . . or the white in the cogs’ eyes. Trying not to think about what they’d said: “We are in your hands.” I didn’t want to be anyone’s hope; all I cared about was our crew and Mrs. E.

  But Hazel was right. We already owed the Subassembly for helping us escape to Port Oro—and if they saved Mrs. E’s life, we’d owe them forever.

  4

  THE HALLWAYS INSIDE the skeletal skyscraper reminded me of the Rooftop, with rusted tin walls and wood-and-pipe floors. A slow ticking echoed as we followed stairways and ladders lower in the building, and the smell of roasting fish and well-oiled machinery filled the air.

  Four floors down, the tethergirls ushered us into the infirmary, a bright room high above the fogline. A breeze wafted through open windows, flimsy curtains fluttered, and two doctors stood at Mrs. E’s bed. Medical scopes waited in racks, and complex gearwork devices lined one wall.

  Loretta whistled. “This ain’t the surgery on the airship.”

  “Look at this one.” Bea touched a device with a gas mask and clockwork pump. “I think it’s for helping people breathe.”

  “You think correctly,” Cog Isandra said from where she stood with Isander. “Chess—we had some clothes brought for you.” She nodded toward a box on the floor. “There should be a pair of pants that fits.”

  “Any boots?” Loretta asked. “I could use new boots. Plus Swedish needs a kilt.”

  “A what?” Swedish asked.

  “A kilt,” she said. “So you’ll look like a real thug.”

  “Hush,” Isander said, “and let the doctors work.”

  I pulled on a new pair of pants, then sprawled onto a chair in the corner with the others. We watched the doctors check Mrs. E’s pupils, draw her blood, and inspect her breath with a click-whirring machine. She slept through the whole thing, and her chest barely moved when she breathed.

  The doctors murmured and fiddled. The warmth of the room and the rhythmic hiss-click of the medical equipment made me sleepy. Bea yawned, then Swedish snored. I smiled when I saw that Loretta was sleeping with her head on his shoulder.

  “Loretta’s sweet when she sleeps,” Bea said, yawning again.

  “Don’t tell her that,” I said. “She’ll never sleep again.”

  “Curl up on the couch, honeybee,” Hazel said.

  After Bea snuggled into the cushions, I covered her with my jacket. Her eyes closed. A drowsy silence fell. I rubbed my aching leg and looked at Hazel. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, her bare feet peeking from under her skirt. With her arms raised to fix her braids, she looked like a statue of a dancer at rest. The setting sun filtered through the curtains and brushed her dark-brown skin with yellow highlights.

  She paused for a second and tilted her head; she knew I was watching her. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t stop fiddling with her braids.

  I didn’t say anything, either, and I didn’t stop watching her. We connected like that sometimes. Without words, without reason—bound together like a fog diver and his raft.

  When Swedish gave a yawn that sounded like a yipping baboon, Bea and Loretta woke and rubbed their eyes. We watched the doctors for a while; then Isander dragged us away for a meal.

  We followed him to a long room jammed with tables and echoing with conversation. A hush fell as we stepped inside, and for a second I felt like everyone was staring at me. Then a few kids ran toward a legless guy in a steamchair who showed them a tiny clockwork device, and a couple started bickering in the corner, and everything felt normal again.

  We sat on benches as the food came in on carts, fish chowder and potato mash. I dragged a bowl of chowder into the crook of my arm. That’s how slumkids ate in public—quick and defensive, so nobody stole your food.

  Swedish dug into his bowl, but the Subassembly members didn’t even reach for the carts. They bowed their heads, and Isander led them in a prayer.

  Hazel kicked Swede under the table. “W
ait till he’s done!”

  When Isander finished, everyone started eating. For twenty minutes, the clink of dishes and the slurp of chowder filled the room. None of us said a word. We’d been hungry our whole lives: we ate until we ached.

  Finally, Hazel pushed away her bowl. “If anyone touches me, I’ll pop.”

  “I’m an overinflated balloon,” Bea moaned.

  Loretta rubbed her stomach. “I’m stuffed like a rat in a rattlesnake.”

  We griped and groaned, pretty pleased with ourselves. We were actually full. That had never happened before.

  Bea licked her chopstick. “The only thing that would make this better is you telling the story, Chess.”

  “Not now,” I groaned. “I’m too full.”

  “Pleeeease?” she begged. “It’ll help you die.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You know. After you eat, you have to die.”

  Swedish stopped picking his teeth and said, “What’re you talking about, you little lug nut?”

  “That’s what Mrs. E says!” Bea insisted. “First you eat, then you die, just.”

  “You don’t ‘die, just,’” Hazel told her. “You digest.”

  “That’s not a real word.” Bea pointed her chopstick at me. “Tell the story! Tell it—tell it!”

  “Fine.” I leaned back in my seat. “Before the Fog rose, a deadly Smog covered the whole world. The Fog only kills people, but the Smog was killing every single living thing.”

  “That’s why the gearheads built the— Oh!” Bea waved across the room. “Mochi! Come sit with us!”

  Mochi waved back and started to stand. Then everyone at her table looked at me, and she paused, like she wasn’t sure if it was okay to come over. After a second, Jada nudged her, and Mochi smiled and slipped around the tables and flopped onto the bench beside Bea.

  “We’re telling the story about how the Fog rose,” Bea told her. “I guess you know all about that?”

  “Which part?” Mochi asked.

  “That hundreds of years ago, nanotech gearheads—”

  “Engineers,” Hazel corrected.

  “Same thing!” Bea said. “They made the Fog, which is zillions of teeny-tiny airborne machines called nanites, built to scrub pollution from the world.”