They entered the broad expanse of concrete, already acquiring interesting patterns of stains as trucks and tractors flowed back and forth. The noise of excited fairgoers had been replaced by the rumble of engines being tested, and suits and dresses by greasy coveralls.
This was more a shrine to technology than to magic. With one hangar, a troll strolled along as if the massive pontoon on his shoulder was a mere stick. In another hangar, a gnome directed an imp in welding two plates together while a few feet over, six more imps sat around a seaplane’s exposed engine, listening sullenly as a second engineer tried to convince them to honor their contract and go back to work.
Fortunately, everyone was too busy with their tasks to notice Scirye and the others.
She was tempted to try to call again and find out how her mother was doing. But that would probably lead to her capture and, worse, her companions might also be caught. Worried and guilty, she decided to stay with them.
“We should find out what flight Roland is on and when it’s leaving,” Leech suggested.
“We’ll still have to find a way to follow him,” Bayang said.
“Then call your Pinkerton agency for help,” Leech said practically.
“I’m supposed to operate undercover,” Bayang improvised.
Then a green creature wheeled a box on a hand truck around the corner. Mechanic’s coveralls had been pulled around his carapace, the sleeves and trousers rolled up over his short limbs. He plodded along on his stumpy legs to the rhythm of his tune.
Koko suddenly grinned. “Well, our luck must be changing. Leave everything to me.”
“Where are you going?” Bayang demanded.
“You might know all about high-flying, but I,” Koko boasted, “know all about lowlifes.” Popping upright, he leaned casually against the top of an oil drum. “Still can’t carry a tune, can you, Mugwort, old chum?”
At the sound of Koko’s voice, Mugwort jerked to a halt as if on an invisible leash. Instinctively, his head disappeared into his shell. When he peeked out cautiously, he caught sight of Koko. Immediately Mugwort tried to plod away, but his heavy body could only move at a pace that even a snail could beat. “There’s nobody here by that name,” he called over his shoulder.
As Koko moved around the drum, his handkerchief fell out of his pocket. Peering out of Scirye’s sweatshirt, Kles whispered, “We’ll show him what he gets for nearly leaving us in the jail. Get that.”
Scirye didn’t question her griffin’s order. Both schoolmates and staff members on three continents had learned that their lives ran much more smoothly if they were polite to Scirye and her griffin. Usually they liked to plan their revenge as meticulously as a military campaign, but there was no time for that.
There had been the time when the school bully had been tricked into putting talcum powder on his French fries and become a laughingstock, or the time that the military attache in the Kushan embassy in Istanbul had found himself chewing on his own toupee at a banquet for the grand vizier.
Scirye glanced at Leech but he was busy watching his friend. Stooping, she picked up the handkerchief.
“Now get some of that grease on it,” Kles instructed in a low voice.
Bayang wondered what the two were up to but said nothing while Scirye smeared some grease from the concrete onto the handkerchief and then folded the handkerchief into neat squares. And then she waited.
In the meantime, Koko had dashed across the concrete to grab Mugwort’s arm. “Well, fancy meeting you here, old buddy, old pal.”
Mugwort pivoted ponderously and shoved Koko’s hand away. “You got the wrong guy.” He tapped a claw at the name stitched to his coveralls. “I’m Aloysius Smith.”
Koko winced. “And you still aren’t any better at coining aliases. Aloysius? Really, come on.”
Mugwort put a hand protectively over his name. “I got a good thing going. Don’t spoil it.”
Koko cupped his chin speculatively. “What’s the scam? Skimming stuff from the cargo? Or is it old-fashioned smuggling?”
“Not me. My only crime nowadays is murdering a song. I turned over a new leaf, see?” Mugwort insisted, but there was something about his indignation that reminded Bayang of a hatchling who had been caught stealing candied eelings from the pantry.
Koko folded his arms skeptically. “I didn’t know they had invented spot remover for leopards. What about if I do some reminiscing to your boss?”
Mugwort sighed as he dug his wallet from his coverall. “How much?”
“Put it away.” Koko polished his nails against his chest. “I took up a new career, too. I’m a travel agent now, and I got some customers who’ve decided they need a nice Hawaiian tan and they need to catch the very next flight out.”
“The ticket counter’s in the terminal.” Mugwort pointed out the direction.
“Sure, sure,” Koko said breezily. “I’ll go there right after I see your boss.”
Mugwort shut his eyes as if he had abruptly developed a splitting headache. “If I do this for you, we’re quits, understand? I can get you on and off the plane, but then you’re on your own, all right?”
Koko wiped a hand across his forehead as if it were a slate. “Right. And I totally erase the name of Mugwort from my brain,” he promised.
Mugwort seemed a little surprised to see that Koko’s clients were children and an elderly woman, but he shuffled into a locker room.
Palming the handkerchief, Scirye hooked her arm through Koko’s. “I guess we were wrong about you.”
Koko freed himself from her grasp. “Don’t try to butter me up, girlie.”
“It’s Lady Scirye,” Kles said from within her sweatshirt.
“She might be a lady to you.” Koko placed a hand over his heart sarcastically. “But she’ll always be just ‘girlie’ to me.”
In their campaigns of revenge, Scirye had developed the quick, nimble hands of a pickpocket so it was easy to slip the handkerchief back into Koko’s clothes. Leave her and Kles behind, indeed!
When Scirye saw Bayang looking at her, she winked.
Scirye
Mugwort shuffled back with an armload of coveralls. Bayang’s would have fit her—if she had been 300 pounds. The others were also for large adults so they hung on Scirye and the boys like tents, which at least left plenty of room in which Kles could hide.
As they began to roll up their sleeves and pants cuffs, Mugwort shook his head. “Try to keep out of the direct light, okay?”
Their progress across the maintenance area was slow because they had to keep pace with the plodding Mugwort, but finally they arrived at a truck loaded with crates. From the hand truck, he took the box and added it to the flatbed at the rear. “Hop on,” he said.
Bayang and the others managed to find places among the stacks of crates. All of them had labels which read:
Ship to:
Roland Enterprises
Houlani
When Bayang saw the children looking about, she hissed, “Quit behaving like tourists. Look like you belong here.” She set the example by folding her arms and pretending to be bored.
Leech and Koko had no trouble copying her. To survive on the streets, they had learned how to act different roles—as they had just done in Captain Honus’s office. Scirye, though, felt the opposite of boredom. Her heart was pounding; she expected any moment for the police to shout out, “Halt!” The best she could do was sit rigidly and hope staring at her toes would fool casual bystanders.
As the truck slowly wound its way through the warehouse traffic, Koko pulled out his handkerchief. “I hate work.”
“We’re just pretending to work,” Leech corrected.
“It’s still hard,” Koko insisted and wiped his forehead. As he lowered the handkerchief, the others began to splutter, trying to control their laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“You,” Bayang said. “You’ve got grease on your face.” She pointed to the stripe across his forehead.
“How’d that get the
re?” Koko said puzzled, but as he raised his handkerchief to wipe it off, Leech stopped him.
“You don’t want to do that,” Leech warned, trying to keep from chuckling.
Koko looked down at his handkerchief and then frowned. “Where’d that come from?” His forehead wrinkled as he considered the possibilities. His eyes settled on Scirye. “It’s funny how chummy you suddenly got back there.”
“I was just so grateful you didn’t leave us in the jail,” Scirye said innocently. She and Kles were usually more careful about making sure blame couldn’t attach to them, but they’d been improvising.
“Maybe I should have,” Koko said suspiciously, and his voice took on a menacing tone. “You know, girlie, I can play pranks, too.”
“Our target is Roland and Badik,” Bayang reminded them, “not one another.”
Leech grinned, glancing back and forth between Scirye and Koko. “You may want to think twice about it, Koko. You just may be outnumbered and outclassed.”
“Okay, okay,” Koko grumbled, looking down sorrowfully at his stained handkerchief. “Let’s have a truce for now.”
Finally, the truck reached the piers, chugging along as the bay lapped at the big wooden tree trunks that supported the concrete platforms.
Service across the Atlantic had not started until this year so Scirye had come to America by ship. Despite Bayang’s warning, the girl could not help taking a closer look at the passing seaplanes.
They seemed to come in all sizes and designs. Some floated on their bellies in the water like fat gulls. Others rode high up on pairs of big pontoons, looking like long-legged storks. There were sleek single-wing racers, two-winged air yachts all the way up to a monster with nine wings and eight engines, four facing forward and the other four faced toward the rear. With all the struts and crisscrossing wires, the craft looked more like a trio of mobile bridges than an aircraft.
Mugwort stopped the truck at the foot of the pier by several luggage carts. Close up, the Pan American Clipper was huge as it bobbed up and down, tugging at its mooring ropes as if impatient to be off. With its rounded hull over a hundred feet long, and wings over a hundred and fifty, it truly lived up to its name of “flying boat” and dwarfed the nine-winged sea plane. Even though the blades of the four propellers were enormous, they still didn’t seem big enough to lift such a gigantic craft into the air.
Mugwort appeared at the back. With seaplanes arriving and leaving, there was almost a constant roar of engines so he had to speak loudly. “Here,” he said, handing a suitcase to each of them. “Follow me.”
They walked along the pier where the Clipper’s triple tail rose high above them. Ahead of them, a broad wing cast a large area of shadow over the water and the pier. Scirye couldn’t help feeling as if they were walking straight into the belly of a whale.
Scirye
Scirye pulled her gauntlet from a pocket of the coveralls and slipped it over her hand. “You can come out now, Kles,” she whispered. With her free hand, she undid enough buttons on her overalls for Kles to slip out and light on her leather-covered hand on her lap. She held a finger up to her mouth in warning as workers loaded the starboard cargo hold on the upper deck.
When she had first entered the long, narrow hold on the port side, Scirye had felt like they were in a cave because it was so gloomy. It extended along the upper deck but also into the space inside the wing.
When they had stowed the suitcases away, Mugwort had pointed to a door on the front bulwark and warned them in a soft voice that they needed to be quiet because the cockpit and the flight crew’s sleeping quarters were on the other side.
They had squeezed their way past roped stacks of suitcases, trunks, and crates to the rear, where a wall of crates blocked their way. Mugwort lifted an empty crate from the top of the wall and motioned them to climb over. They found themselves pressed into a cramped hiding space between the rear cargo wall and the boxes. A small rectangular patch of metal high up on the wall marred the otherwise riveted side of the plane; a pile of blankets sat on the smooth floor.
Scirye tensed as footsteps approached them now, sure that the turtle had given them away to the police. Her griffin sensed her anxiety and crouched, ready to spring into action. The others must have thought the same thing because Bayang began to undo the bundle with the axes and Leech and Koko waited to take them.
“I knew we couldn’t trust anyone with a name that sounds like a noise a sick mongoose makes,” Kles grumbled.
But it was Mugwort’s homely face that peered down at them from the wall of crates. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. “Here,” he said in a soft voice, lowering a sack. “It’s some food and water.”
Koko took it with a nod of thanks. “Is this ritzy stuff from down below?”
“Don’t push your luck,” Mugwort grunted. “We’ll be closing the hold in a moment.”
“Any cops come asking about us?” Koko asked as he took them.
Mugwort nodded. “Sure, but I told them we hadn’t seen anyone.”
Koko handed the armload to Leech. “They took your word for it?”
“Me and them play poker every Friday.” Mugwort chuckled. “I always make sure I lose some.”
“You’ve done this before,” Bayang observed.
Mugwort beamed with professional pride. “I make it worth everyone’s while not to look in this nook. When you get to Honolulu and hear this”—Mugwort whistled a short tune—”you’ll know it’s my guy. He’ll get you out of the clipper safely.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Koko said.
Mugwort grunted sourly. “We’re even now, so drop the ‘buddy’ business.”
Koko nodded agreement. “I meet you on the street and you’re a complete stranger.”
Satisfied, Mugwort started to slide away. “Bon voyage then.”
“Who are you?” Koko said companionably.
A few minutes later, they heard the door clang shut on the seaplane. Leech had expected the hold to grow even darker, but oddly enough there were faint beams of light coming from around the edges of the oval patch.
Bayang stood up and examined it. “This is covering a porthole.”
Suddenly the whole hold shook as the Clipper’s propellers whined into life, deepening in pitch until they were a steady roar, making it difficult to talk.
When Kles shifted uneasily from one leg to another, Scirye set him upon her lap and stroked his fur affectionately. “What’s the matter, Kles?”
“I feel like we’ve been swallowed up by a monster,” the griffin grumbled. “When I fly, I prefer to use my own two wings and I certainly wouldn’t make so much racket when I do.”
The propellers grew even louder as they began to back away from the dock, rocking with every motion of the water. Slowly, the Clipper taxied away from the pier and circled in an easy curve. Suddenly they lurched forward, the seaplane rocking up and down as well as sideways as they began to move over the choppy surface of the bay—faster and faster until they were speeding more quickly than Scirye had ever gone in her life.
In the hold, crates shook and rocked, but Mugwort and his compatriots had done their work well. The ropes held the crates in position.
The noise from the engines almost but did not quite drown out the hiss of water against the hull. If it weren’t for that sound, Scirye would have thought they were in a cart rolling down a bumpy, rock-strewn hill.
Suddenly, the swaying stopped as they lurched into the air, and then resumed when they splashed back down again with such a hard jar that she almost bit her tongue. They repeated that several times, but each time the lull grew longer and the impact shorter and softer until the clipper tilted upward and they were free of the bay.
As they soared upward, the noise from the propellers lessened.
All of them jumped when a muffled voice greeted them. “Welcome to Pan American Airline’s China Clipper en route to Honolulu.” From the passenger deck below, the words echoed a fraction of a second later
over loudspeakers.
Bayang pointed to the forward bulwark. “Mugwort was right. We have to be careful because the wall is thin.”
Leech had been fidgeting all the while. “I can’t take being cooped up in the dark. I need light.” Taking down a crate, he set it on the floor beneath the patch. Then he stood on it and tried to pry the metal from the window despite the screws holding it on.
“Leave it alone,” Bayang ordered.
Leech shrugged. “Who’s going to report us? A seagull?”
When Scirye had left the Kushan Empire, she and her mother had gone by sea and then train to Istanbul. Another train had taken them to the next posting in Paris and another combination of boats and railroads had taken them to San Francisco. The only time she’d flown had been on the back of an ambassador’s griffin.
She was eager to look out the porthole, too. “I agree with Leech.” Setting Kles down on the floor, Scirye unrolled the carpet so she could pick up one of the axes. The boy made way for her as she used the blade to unscrew the metal covering the window. It had been a hasty job so there were only two screws which she had out in no time.
Then she pressed her face against the window. She was looking out just to the rear of the wing, but she could see everything. She thought she had been high up when she had been on the carpet, but that had been nothing compared to now. Below her, the buildings on the hills slid by like rectangular beads scattered over a lumpy rug, and the ships on the bay seemed to be painting white stripes across green glass.
She angled her head, trying to glimpse the Kushan Consulate but she couldn’t. “I hope she’s all right,” she murmured.
“The hospital will be doing everything they can for her,” Kles told her from where he sat upon a blanket.
“Second thoughts?” Bayang asked.
Scirye almost tried to bluff, but that would be a lie and she was almost a Pippal now; she had to keep Tumarg. “I still hurt inside about Nishke. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to Mother.”
City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) Page 11
