Stormbringer

by Shannon Delany

  “Location and obvious affiliation are not the only things determining with whom one’s heart is.”

  “Precisely why you dare not say that because I am not affiliated directly doesn’t mean I do not feel and understand the things military men do. My men have the same sense of loyalty, face the same dangers and more, because my men might be imprisoned or executed if their true mission is discovered.”

  “If the ways of government change and a military force finds itself on the losing side, they face the same dangers.”

  “Yet some military men are awarded the pillage of war,” she reminded.

  “True,” Rowen said, though his tone darkened at the thought. “And some pirates—traders—do the same.”

  She laughed. “Some, aye.” She shot him an odd look. “It seems our two sides are not so very diametrically opposed. Perhaps—just perhaps—you, having a previous military affiliation, might yet feel comfortable among people of our ilk. We are kindred spirits.”

  He laughed. “Yes. I fear we are.” He paused, realizing they had outwalked the main bustle of the shops. Ahead of them a crowd milled around a stack of cages. The noise of animals brought Rowen back to memories of the menagerie at Jordan’s party. “What is this?” he asked.

  “Ah,” she said. “The auction. One of the stranger things about the Hill King’s Cavern.” Her volume dropped and she nearly growled out, “And the reason we have a monkey on board.”

  Rowen’s eyebrows jumped up. “Other than Ginger Jack?”

  She slapped his shoulder, laughing. “Yes. Yes! Other than Ginger Jack.” She headed into the edge of the crowd. “Things can get quite wild when the bidding becomes excited,” she explained. “And it is always interesting to see who is here for what purpose.” She pressed closer to him to whisper into his ear and be heard above the din of the crowd and the beasts.

  “See that man?” She motioned with her chin. “He buys exotic pets for well-known ladies and gentlemen wanting another conversation piece—a living and walking one—Perhaps your family had such things?”

  Rowen shook his head. “Horses and dogs only.”

  “You had horses? I may have a ship, but I think I’d trade it all away for a horse,” she confided. “They’re beautiful…”

  “And the fastest way to attract a Merrow attack,” he returned, briefly remembering the fight only he survived when Merrow attacked him and his best friend, Jonathan. “Keep your ship—you’re safer being a pirate than an equestrian.”

  “No worries, you won’t find a single horse here. They simply aren’t available. And,” her gaze returned to the dealer in exotics, “his kind have made bad choices as to who they sell exotics to. Some people simply aren’t prepared to keep such beasts. I’ve heard tales of giraffes breaking free of their enclosures and ruining people’s tea parties,” she said with a laugh. “What I would have paid to have seen that!” She laughed again. “It was, after all, his kind that thought it clever to sell that pair of red-brown hyenas to the heiress near Gévaudan … but everyone makes mistakes, aye?” She stretched to get a better view. “It appears today they have parrots, lions, tigers, and bears … Oh!” She grabbed his arm tightly, saying, “My! Look at the birds! And the monkeys,” she added with disgust.

  He laughed. “You do not like monkeys?”

  “When you meet one, you’ll understand.”

  He chuckled, and she leaned around him, her expression fixed on something in a particular cage.

  “What is that?” She squinted, trying to get a better view.

  “What, don’t you have your spyglass? I thought pirate captains always carried one,” he teased.

  “Good idea! We traders often do,” she muttered, digging into the pouch slung across her shoulder. She tugged free a spyglass, which she then twisted and adjusted for the distance.

  Rowen frowned.

  “It’s not a that, it’s a those,” she corrected. “Two of the strangest-looking…” She passed the spyglass to him and he grunted, raising the eyepiece and trying to see what she was talking about.

  “No,” she said tersely, “look here.” She grabbed the eyepiece and wrenched it toward the bent wooden cage that seemed a slightly oversized parrot cage, bowed at the top with a solid bottom. Nestled on the cage’s bottom was a bundle of thick red-gold fur, tips of ears sticking out of the bundle, a thick, plush tail tipped with cream twitching at the noise going on all around its quiet cage.

  He examined the outlines of the creature more carefully and spotted a second pair of ears and a second tail. A small snout poked out, dotted with a shiny black nose, and the little beast yawned, tiny teeth sharp as needles, tongue pink as fresh rose petals. It blinked large dark eyes and settled its face on the back of its friend.

  Ears the size of saucers pivoted and Rowen distantly wondered if the thing could fly with ears so large. One propped paws atop the other, resting its face on its paws which in turn rested on the other’s back. Its brethren wriggled about, licking the first one’s face before giving a sharp little yip. The first glanced at the other and responded with a piercing bark of equal conviction.

  The fur on their backs bristled. Barking and angry howling began and the two oddly proportioned foxes chased each other round and round the tiny cage so fast it seemed they climbed its walls.

  “Foxes. Interesting,” Rowen said, passing the spyglass back.

  She reduced the size of the spyglass and tucked it back into her pouch. “There are many interesting characters in the crowd today.”

  “Pot calling the kettle black,” Rowen remarked.

  She snorted. “There—” She pointed. “The one with the very tall top hat. A farmer of exotics. And there.” She gestured to another. “A furrier. I’ve seen him working his way through the stalls. Never seen him at auction…”

  The auctioneer turned to the cage of foxes and shouted, delivering a swift kick to it. They stopped chasing each other and turned on him, their backs up against the farthest cage wall, tiny faces curled in snarls of rage.

  At that moment he switched the order of bidding and focused on the foxes. Slipping the shepherd’s crook he carried through the handle at the cage’s top, he hefted it high with a grunt and looked at a paper he had. “Two Fennec foxes straight from the Sahara Desert of Africa to you via Cutter before being—” He cleared his throat.”—intercepted by the good crew of the Blackguard. They are fresh, plump, thickly furred with a fine soft pelt.”

  Beside Rowen, Evie twitched. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at her to see her brow furrow.

  “Fine beasts for fun,” he shook the cane and the cage rattled, sending the foxes into a fit of snarling and snapping as he swung them over the crowd’s head, “or fur…” he added with a grin. He held the cage out by the furrier as if to tempt him further with the thought. “Two pelts.”

  “Small pelts,” the furrier quipped.

  “Quality over quantity, good friend,” he said. “And they are soft pelts. Soft as good butter and supple as silk. The two together would make a fine lady’s shawl. Or two handsome hats that could become quite the conversation piece…” He grinned as the furrier leaned forward to better glimpse the little animals inside.

  They snarled at him and he laughed. “No good to be had with them except for the killing. Stitch them together and you might make a decent muff,” he challenged with a snort. He waved a hand at them, uninterested.

  Evie relaxed just the slightest bit.

  “Fine, fine! Not for our good friend the furrier, perhaps, but think of the interest they might yet bring if stuffed and mounted and displayed for show! A scientific curiosity, such foxes! Or use your creative powers to disassemble them, and reassemble them with different parts like the fantastical Feejee Mermaid!”

  “Fantastical, my ass,” Evie muttered, looking at Rowen. His blank expression made her groan. “The thing’s been displayed as part of a traveling sideshow. A spectacle.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  She jerked her head do
wn with a quick nod. “A Merrow if ever I saw one. And worse yet … a wee one. A babe, nothing more. There’s a reason they hate us, you know.”

  Rowen snorted. “Because of an accident. They hate us because of a tragic accident long ago,” Rowen insisted.

  “Is that what they tell you? There is always more to a story when it involves such hate.”

  The bidding had begun on the foxes and was going slow. “Do you know them?” Rowen asked about the participants.

  She shook her head. “No. Look like decent folks—as far as our type go,” she added with a chuckle. “Good enough they won’t go to the furrier, though.”

  The bidding slowed, the price still low.

  The furrier jumped in and everything changed, from the bids, to the auction’s pace, to the expression Evie wore. She tensed, the muscles in her body coiled like a spring, and Rowen straightened, watching.

  The furrier kept outbidding the competition, coin by coin. Finally his competitors shook their heads and turned away.

  “Going once—”

  “Dammit,” she said.

  “Going twice—”

  “Why couldn’t they be monkeys?” Then she shouted and raised her hand, entering the bidding war for the two fierce Fennec foxes.

  The furrier bristled at the sudden unexpected competition, his eyes sparking and his mouth twisting into something somehow even less attractive than the way he had begun.

  Partway through the ensuing madness Ginger Jack joined them. “Oh, lord.” He craned his neck to see through the shifting crowd. “What on earth is she bidding on now? Another monkey?”

  The look she shot him would have dropped a lesser man.

  “Another?” Rowen asked, lips turning up at their ends.

  “She hasn’t told you about her previous prize?” Jack asked.

  Rowen’s eyes gleamed and he said in her direction as much as Jack’s. “So the monkey she complained about is her fault?”

  She threw her hand in the air to make her next bid and made a distinctly unladylike gesture in Rowen’s direction as she lowered it again.

  Jack snorted. “She’s fiercely competitive, you know,” he said around her.

  She next shared the same gesture with him.

  “Always has to win?” Rowen asked.

  “Even to her detriment.”

  She let loose with a wild whoop as the bidding closed, declaring her the winner. Once more she gestured to Jack, this time with an additional flourish. He grabbed her hand and kissed it, and, grinning, said, “You do that one more time, darlin’, and I’ll take you up on that offer.”

  With a growl she yanked her hand free and stalked away to claim her prize. Beaming with pride at the snapping devils she returned with, she thrust the cage into Jack’s chest. He grabbed it and they tore round the cage again, leaving even Jack shaken. “You’re so clever, Jack. These little foxes will be no problem for the likes of you.”

  “What are you naming these fine specimens? Demon and Devil?”

  She laughed, but her expression was flat. “Of course not. They are Kit and Kaboodle.”

  “Of course,” Jack said. “Fox kits. And a pair this crazy is worth a whole kaboodle. How very clever of you.”

  She inclined her head and mock-curtsied. “That is why I am the captain.” With that she began to walk away, but she only got a few steps before she paused, and, looking over her shoulder, said, “Oh, and do be ready to board the ship this evening at nine, our time.” Then she left the two of them.

  “Right, right,” Rowen said, tugging his battered timepiece out. “Our time. What time do you have?”

  Jack maneuvered the cage away and dug into his pocket to find his ever-wayward pocket watch. “Ship time is ten past.”

  Rowen nodded and turned the knob on top of his watch so their times matched. “It seemed so much simpler at home,” he said. “We operated by the time the clock in the square rang out. Now I wonder who decided what it was when first set.”

  “Tricky business, time. The cities can decide for now at least—keep their own time. Set it and run business their way. At least big cities with populations large enough that the government airships can’t bully them.” He shrugged. “Mark my word, though. Someday someone will want to even adjust our perception of time—someone other than the place of the sun in the sky will tell us when noon is.”

  Rowen laughed. “Noon is noon. If you can’t agree on that…”

  Jack shrugged. “We shall see. I suspect it’ll be either the government or a businessman that thinks the sun revolves around them and decides to tell us when and where the sun does and doesn’t shine. But for now I doubt if a single major city keeps it the same,” he murmured. “Time is as subjective as anything else.”

  Rowen eyed the engineer, muttering a bemused, “Aye.” He reached a finger toward the cage and both Kit and Kaboodle leaped back, snapping like they were the Merrow themselves. “Someone once told me that dangerous things should be kept in cages,” Rowen added.

  “I agree with whoever that was,” Jack said, holding the cage as far away from his body as he could. “Because there’s no way I can possibly see how the decision to bring these two rascals aboard could possibly go wrong…” He shook his head. “Hungry? Look for the tent with ‘brownies.’ Like a chocolate cake that fell.”

  Rowen snorted, turning back toward the stalls, but his nose caught the scents of cooking meat and vanilla pastries that drifted from … He had no idea, but the sudden rumble in his stomach guaranteed he would find out.

  Aboard the Artemesia

  Anil’s hands moved more slowly over the ship’s controls, cloud cover scattered and patchy to the west, lightning sparkling in the distance, a weak glint. Jordan sat by his bare feet watching and wondering how much time he had. His eyes were no longer glazed in the strange ecstasy they once had but were clear and sharp. He was slower today than yesterday and slower yesterday than the day before. And his songs worked as slowly as his hands.

  His complexion had paled, his normally rich brown skin ashen and his hair without luster.

  He was dying and she wasn’t ready to take over.

  She couldn’t grant him more time with his family, though she tried.

  Not far away Meggie and Maude sat on the deck, playing pick-up sticks while Meggie’s stuffed dolly, Somebunny, slouched nearby. Topside had become Meggie’s favorite place to play. Before meals, after meals … whenever. And every time she sat positioned so she could watch Jordan and Anil.

  And listen.

  And every time Meggie was nearby the storm cell crystal tucked in Jordan’s dress warmed like it sat in sunlight.

  Jordan scooted closer to where Anil stood, giving her full attention to everything he did, hands folded in her lap as she watched the intricate movements of a man keeping an airship from the one thing its captain claimed it truly wanted: the ground.

  “Here.” He nudged her with his toe. “Come stand beside me. You have watched enough today. Now is the time for doing.”

  At the supper table the standard guests prepared to eat and drink, and occasionally turned to look at how this new phase of Jordan’s training was going. No longer tethered or tied to the ship, Jordan knew what each bit of the ship did—how it all felt and moved and worked in wind and any sort of weather.

  She rose and he took her hand and laid it on the wheel. Her eyes never left his as he grabbed her other hand, placing it on the wheel as well. “You know what each part does, yes?”

  She nodded.

  “And you can call a storm?”

  “Yes, but…” Out of the corner of her eye she saw people at the dining room table shift.

  “Then you are ready to fly the Artemesia.”

  She opened her mouth to protest but Anil stepped away, his hands touching no part of the controls. The floating crystals in the storm glass began to shift and Jordan saw the clouds start to clear.

  “Fly, Jordan,” he commanded. “Light Up.”

  “I can’t,” she protes
ted, eyes widening as light began to pierce the veil of clouds. “I can’t fly … I can’t call a storm without the proper trigger,” she said, the words strangling in her throat.

  “Then pull the trigger,” Anil said with a shrug.

  The clouds wisped away and Jordan heard Meggie say, “I can see the sky!”

  The ship shivered under her feet.

  Then they started to fall.

  “Light Up!” Anil shouted. “Or we all die!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can—I know you can, lightning hunts for you, hungers for you! Now call the storm!”

  “I can’t!” she shrieked, anger rising to twist around her growing terror. “You don’t understand…”

  He laughed at her. Leaned into her face and laughed at her. “Then we’ll all die.”

  The captain jumped to his feet and the wind, now whistling around them as they glided down, faster and faster, tore his hat away. He cursed and Meggie screamed, catching a nearby chair leg.

  “She’s not ready,” Bran shouted.

  “No one’s ever ready—to die!” Anil yelled. “I wasn’t, you aren’t—but it’s too late!”

  “You bastard,” the captain shouted.

  “Mamá!” Meggie screamed and Jordan turned to face her, seeing how Maude gathered her in close.

  Jordan’s hands clenched the wheel and she said in a very clipped tone, “I hate you,” to Anil.

  The emotion she named bubbled up inside her like a heat sizzling in the space between her skin and muscles.

  The clouds began to gather. They popped into existence, sizzling with lightning the way Jordan sizzled with emotion, and she adjusted her grip on the wheel, felt her lip curl in a snarl, and she pulled the clouds in tighter, made them thicker, made the winds in their bellies blow out to fill the Artemesia’s wings, and they were caught up in the power of the clouds as they closed in around them.

  Anil laughed harder. “So that’s your trigger? Hate?”

  She shot him a glare in answer.

  “I’ll take the wheel,” he said amiably.

  She smacked at his hands.