Driftmetal

by J. C. Staudt

  “This is real,” I said. “It’s the truth. Everything about Gilfoyle is exactly like we’ve told you it is. He had a contract with Pyras. We don’t know whether he broke the contract because crime drove him away, or because he’s plotting Pyras’s downfall with one of the city’s leaders. All we know is that Gilfoyle took their gravstone without paying for it, and now he owes them a lot of money.”

  Sable’s blue eyes searched mine, looking for a shred of truth. “Before we go any further with this, I think it’s time you told us about Pyras.”

  “I can’t do that,” I said. I was thinking about the day I’d threatened to tell everyone in the stream that Pyras existed. Why did I care so much about Pyras’s secrecy now? I should’ve been looking out for myself, taking every opportunity I had to keep myself out of prison.

  “I suggest you do, or the deal is off,” said Sable.

  “I suggest you do. Deal is off, deal is off,” said Nerimund.

  “It’s not my place,” I said. “My friends trusted me to keep it a secret, and I won’t betray them. This may be my fault for opening my big mouth, but I don’t have the right to explain Pyras on their behalf. They should be the ones to do that.”

  Sable was still scrutinizing my every word and facial expression. “Those primitives are that important to you,” she said, asking.

  I didn’t know the answer to her question. I knew what she wanted to hear, and I knew I didn’t want to piss off anyone else until we were finished with Gilfoyle. “They’ve kept my secret. Why shouldn’t I keep theirs?”

  Sable nodded and sent Dennel McMurtry to summon the primies. The three men knew something was wrong as soon as they entered the room, just like I had. Sable was quiet, giving me the opportunity to speak first.

  “Fellas,” I said, “I’m sorry. Mr. McMurtry overheard Blaylocke and me talking a few minutes ago. They know we’re not from Bannock, and they want to know about Pyras. I haven’t told them anything because I wanted it to be your choice whether they know or not. The Captain says the deal’s off unless somebody comes clean.”

  Blaylocke looked at me, betrayed. Chaz looked to Vilaris for direction. Vilaris just scratched his dark beard, then tugged at the knot in his tieback to let his hair fall down around his face.

  “Pyras is our home—not Muller’s,” said Vilaris. “We’d only known Muller for a few weeks before we came aboard the Galeskimmer. He’s not here because he wants to be. We threatened to turn him over to the Civvies if he didn’t come with us. We think Muller’s crimes are responsible for scaring Gilfoyle away.”

  “I think it’s a conspiracy between Gilfoyle and Councilor Yingler,” I chimed in.

  “All I want to know is whether we’re justified in confronting this Gilfoyle fellow,” said Sable. “There’s a reason you’ve been keeping Pyras a secret. Until I know what it is, why should I believe the rest of your story?”

  “Pyras is a grav city,” I said.

  Mr. Scofield was dubious. “I’ve mapped every corner of the stream, and I’ve never come across such a place.”

  “Pyras isn’t in the stream. It’s in the nearflow.”

  Dennel McMurtry gave a loud, callous laugh. Mr. Scofield tittered. Nerimund echoed Scofield.

  “That’s not possible,” Sable said. “Nothing survives the nearflow for long, least of all a town or a city. Any floater down there would get torn to shreds in a few days.”

  “Turns out surviving the nearflow is easy when you have technology from before the world shattered,” I said, “not to mention gadgeteer gurus like Chester, here.”

  Vilaris continued, saying, “We have the ability to shield the city from inorganic matter, and a circuit of locking rods that can be disabled when we want to move. Pyras has remained a secret place for many generations, through a minimal amount of interaction with people in the stream.”

  Sable was beginning to understand. “You’ve been isolated down there since before the shattering?”

  “Just after it, actually. It was only a village back then; a few families seeking refuge from the techsouls who had vowed to cleanse the world of primitives. They stayed, and now there are thousands of us.”

  “You’re all… primitives…”

  Vilaris nodded.

  “How can you possibly keep that a secret?”

  “It’s gotten out from time to time. But of course, everyone who hears it dismisses it as a legend. Of those who do believe it, not many are willing to venture into the nearflow to look for us. And of the ones who do come looking, no one’s ever developed the technology to break through our cloaking systems. We’ve never been found.”

  Sable flopped into her chair. “I don’t believe it.”

  I smirked. “That’s what I said.”

  “All this time, this has been about saving a city full of primitives?”

  “We can survive without the money from the gravstone. But we can’t survive forever without trade. There’s only so much gravstone in the substrata of our floater, and we can only sell it until the surplus runs out. We lose a lot of good years if we let a delivery this big go unpaid-for.”

  “Well, I can’t blame you for wanting your privacy,” said Sable. “The few primitives I know who live in the stream have hard lives. Most of them are poor, and they deal with prejudice on a daily basis. Please realize that I don’t hate you just because you’re primitives. I’m not morally opposed to helping your kind; it’s just dangerous keeping company with you.”

  “So you’re still in?” asked Vilaris.

  Sable glanced at her boatswain and her quartermaster. They each gave her their approval in turn. “Our arrangement stands. We help you retrieve what belongs to you, and you help us get Uncle Angus back.”

  “Uncle Angus-back,” said Nerimund.

  “That’s right, Neri,” said Sable.

  “Tonight, then,” I said. “It happens tonight.”

  We spent the rest of the day finishing the last of our preparations. By mid-afternoon, the sun was hidden behind lifeless gray clouds, and a light drizzle had started. The crew was stricken with an incurable restlessness. They kept coming to me with questions about what they were supposed to do. I was losing hope that this was going to go down without something very bad happening. The fog that had cleared up by noon was returning—not as thick this time, but still a nuisance, given what my three primitive companions and I were about to do.

  “I think it’s time, fellas,” I said, when the sun had set to a dim yellow speck, blurry behind a field of low-lying clouds. “Chaz, let’s see what you’ve got for us.”

  Chaz stretched, cracked his back and neck, took off his goggles. Sweat stains darkened the chest of his shirt and the insides of his shoulders, his tied-back hair damp and oily. “They’re done,” he said. “Without further ado, may I present to you… the apex ingots.”

  He whipped a dirty rag away from the molds beside the ship’s furnace. Eight round beads shone brightly within; four the size of flattened tennis balls, the other four no larger than lemons. He handed us each a set, one large and one small, and took the last pair for himself. They were smooth to the touch, their depths shot through with gleaming red-orange veins. They were perfect. Just what I’d asked him for, and just the right size—I hoped.

  They were ingots of pure driftmetal.

  9

  I opened the Galeskimmer’s gate and stepped to the edge of the deck, my toes hanging out over empty sky. The boat was slowing, Mr. Scofield guiding her to a halt and checking his coordinates to be sure we were in the right place. The crew was gathered on the deck, sails battened down and guns in place. I clutched the center of my chest with both hands and felt the driftmetal ingots, heavy as any normal rocks in the pouch Eliza Kinally had sewn.

  “Head to Platform 22 and wait for our signal,” I said.

  Mr. Scofield frowned at the prospect of taking orders from me, but nodded his understanding.

  I flicked him an apathetic salute.

  “Still sure you want to do it thi
s way?” Vilaris asked me.

  “We have to. I don’t know whether Gilfoyle keeps bodyguards at his personal residence, but they’d spot the Galeskimmer before we got close enough to surprise them. This is the only way. We’re getting your contract fulfilled, or we’re taking the gravstone. There’s no third scenario.”

  “Be careful,” Vilaris said.

  “It’s not me you should be worried about. It’s you and those weak primitive bones of yours. Better hope Chaz did the math right when he made these things.”

  When I looked at Chaz, the pouch strapped to his chest, and the two oddly-shaped lumps bulging out below his clavicle, I had a startling epiphany. I trusted him. That was the reason I cared about Pyras. The reason I was going to go through with this even though I could’ve walked away. When you trust someone—not just know them, but trust them—the idea of tying your fate to theirs becomes less daunting, somehow. Maybe I was in it for the money, too, but even selfish jerks like me like to think we do things for the right reasons every once in a while.

  Chaz smiled at me, the kind of smile a person gives you when he’s scared out of his mind and doesn’t care that you know. I guess he trusted me too, a little.

  There was worry in Sable’s eyes, but hers was masked; an attempt to be brave and uncaring, even though there was more at stake than she was ready to admit. She didn’t want me to know she was worried about me, but that was okay. I didn’t want her to know how I really felt either.

  “See you down there,” I said.

  I stepped overboard. I was falling, a bullet through the fog, toes pointed, arms clutching the pouch to my chest, my stomach grabbing me by the throat. Dangit Chaz, I hope you got this right. The pouch tried to get away from me, slipping up under my chin. I fumbled for it and held on. There was a moment when my whole body seized up like a dry engine, my mind driven wild with the thought of slamming into some unseen obstacle in the fog.

  As I plunged, the larger of the two driftmetal ingots began to lighten, pulling back against the weight of my body. I had the distinct sensation of slowing, but I had no idea how fast I was going or how close I was to my destination until I saw the border lights below me, blinking through the fog.

  I slowed to a halt like an elevator coming to rest in its guides, my toes scraping the roof of the building. When I started to rebound upward again I ripped open the velcro panel, releasing the larger of the two ingots. I hit the roof with as soft a clatter as I could manage, coming to rest on one knee. The ingot shot up into the clouds. A second later it came back down, bobbed up, and settled about twenty feet above me. The breeze caught it, and before I knew it the fog had wrapped it in its delicate arms and swept it away.

  Chaz came next, his legs flailing to reach the roof but getting no closer to it than I had. He didn’t release the ingot in time, bobbing up and down with it until he came to rest two stories up. Once he’d settled, he found himself with no choice but to let it go. He fell sideways onto the roof, landing in an unathletic heap. I caught him before he started rolling.

  Vilaris followed, his timing better than either of ours. He released the ingot just as he was reaching his lowest altitude and landed on his feet, graceful as a cat. Blaylocke released too early, realized it, and grabbed the ingot with a bare fist before it got away. He tiptoed down before he let the ingot slip from his fingers and float upward into the fog. Everything happened in a matter of seconds, each of us arriving right after the last like the first snowflakes in a winter storm. They were the ugliest snowflakes I’d ever seen.

  Gilfoyle’s home was a glass-and-stone monstrosity of high arches and thin spires, set atop his largest grav platform like a haunted castle. The fog was clearer from the roof down, just a light mist swirling over the platform below. I couldn’t see another soul from where I was. Anyone inside this wing of the house would’ve had to be fast asleep not to have heard us. I motioned for the others to follow as I slid down a gable and dropped onto one of the second-floor balconies, expecting to find some thug with heavy augments waiting for me.

  Instead I found myself facing a glass door and a set of tall windows, peering into the bedroom on the other side. A low flame burned within an oil lamp on the dresser, casting flickering shadows over the toys strewn about the floor. A small form lay still beneath the thick yellow comforter of an overlarge bed. I checked the door. Locked.

  Vilaris and the others dropped down beside me, looking about warily. Chaz knelt, produced a set of lock picks, and began to fiddle with the door. I lifted a foot to the glass and triggered my solenoid, reached through the empty space, and unlocked the door from within.

  The ground crunched beneath my boots as I strode into the room and plucked the child out of bed by the pajamas. In the hallway, I saw light from downstairs. I clunked down the steps, the child tucked beneath my arm like a sack of flour. I felt her beginning to squirm as she woke up and found herself dangling above the floor. My companions’ footsteps were tentative and careful behind me. They may have been whispering at me to get my attention, but I wasn’t listening.

  I heard voices from the kitchen as I came through the living room, its walls lined with mahogany wainscoting and built-in bookshelves. I passed the tufted oxblood sofa and its matching armchair while the cracked painting of some gray-bearded ancestor brooded over a black marble fireplace. The scent of an earlier meal grew sharper when I rounded the corner and set the child down on the tiled kitchen floor. Gilfoyle and the woman I assumed to be his wife were leaned against the counter, she in a blue silk nightgown and he in green plaid pajamas, glasses of dark red wine in their hands and an empty bottle behind them. Chaz, Vilaris, and Blaylocke waited in the living room. I could see them from where I was standing, but Gilfoyle and the woman didn’t know they were there.

  Gilfoyle looked at his wife. “Run. Hide.” He turned his body toward me, putting himself between me and the woman. He put a hand on the counter to steady himself.

  When the woman saw the child standing in front of me, tears welled in her eyes. She bent down and held out her arms, flicking her fingers inward. The little girl began to move toward her, but I grabbed her and pulled her back.

  “You should ignore your husband’s advice,” I told the woman. “You don’t want your little girl to get hurt. I don’t either. You’d better stick around.”

  Gilfoyle was almost as brave drunk as he had been surrounded by his thugs. He held up an arm to block the woman from coming any closer to me and repeated the two words to her again. She shook her head and stood her ground, eyes darting between me and the child. The little girl was whimpering now, starting to cry.

  “Everybody stays right where they are and things are gonna be fine,” I said.

  Gilfoyle squinted at me. “You. It’s you. You’re that thief. The one who tried to steal my truck.”

  “Wasn’t the truck I was trying to steal,” I said. “But never mind that. We’re here to collect the money you owe the city of Pyras.”

  Gilfoyle looked at me like I’d just said something in another language.

  “To the tune of three million chips,” I continued. “Pyras has yet to see a single chip for that whole truckful of gravstone. You severed your contract with the city and took off without paying for it.”

  “Oh yes… it was the gravstone you wanted,” Gilfoyle said. “And then my medallion.”

  He was wearing it. I saw the medallion’s chain glinting in the light of the oil lamps, gold links against the pale skin alongside his collar.

  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Gilfoyle said, “but that’s not what happened. Our contract expired and Lafe Yingler chose not to renew it. Then he raised the price and said he’d bring me one last shipment if I was interested. I said yes and paid him in full—exactly the price he asked.”

  “Which was…”

  “Four million. I had no choice but to move my operation after that. Without a contract giving me exclusive rights to Pyras’s gravstone, that area isn’t worth mining anymore.”

&
nbsp; “Four million chips? Yingler jacked up the price by an entire million and you agreed? Didn’t you find that weird or suspicious?”

  “I didn’t like paying extra, but gravstone is gravstone. You get it where you can. And as for being suspicious of Yingler, I had no reason to. I’ve always dealt with Lafe. He’s been Pyras’s go-between for as long as we’ve done business together. I never thought to second-guess him.”

  I didn’t like the look of desperation in Gilfoyle’s eyes. “That’s a lie,” I said. “You’re covering your tail so you can send us on a wild goose chase and disappear again.”

  “Let’s settle this,” he said. “Let my daughter go and I’ll give you whatever you want. My family has nothing to do with this situation. Leave them out of it.”

  I knew he was right. I released the girl’s arm and let her run, sobbing, into her mother’s arms. The woman fled the kitchen in the opposite direction I’d come from, into the formal dining room and down the hallway beyond.

  “There. Your daughter’s safe. And Pyras is out four million chips that Lafe Yingler never delivered. Give us the chips now, and you have my word that if we find four million in Yingler’s possession we’ll return the difference.”

  Gilfoyle sneered. “You expect me to part with four million chips based on the word of a common thief?”

  “You said if I let your daughter go—”

  “I know what I said. Takes a thief to know a thief, doesn’t it? But there’s one thing you didn’t account for, Mr. Jakes. I will always be a better thief than you are.”

  “Well, naturally,” I said. “I hold myself to a much lower standard.”

  I dove at him. He sprang onto the counter and flipped over the island. I followed in lockstep, launching myself into the air and firing my grapplewire after him. He lifted an arm to let the wire zip past his side, then sliced it in two with a single stroke, using the razor-sharp thinblade on the side of his wrist. My grappler crashed into the dining room wall, the severed length of wire whipping to a standstill behind it like a trapped snake.