Flotsam

by R J Theodore

  “Okay, so?” Tisker prompted, still looking more amused than alarmed.

  Sophie shushed him and turned her eyes back to Talis, her sour mood over the engine part forgotten for the moment.

  Talis drummed her fingers lightly on the table. “Wager you don’t know about the Veritors of the Lost Codex.”

  Tisker shook his head, while Sophie looked at her expectantly.

  Dug growled low in his throat. Talis already knew that he knew about the Veritors.

  “We should have killed him,” he muttered. “If that is the adders’ nest we have kicked over, we should turn around and sink them before they can make their repairs.”

  Partly, Talis agreed with Dug. Partly. Though her inclination was more along the lines of tossing that ring over their railing and putting Cutter skies behind them for good. But that would leave them having to avoid the two largest territories of Peridot, and she was in no rush to narrow their market.

  Something stronger than coffee was definitely in order. She went to the liquor cabinet built into the starboard bulkhead, pinched the rims of four glasses with one hand, and grabbed a mostly full bottle of dark spiced rum by its neck with the other.

  “Who are the… Varistors of the Lost Codex?” Sophie looked to Talis for an explanation as Dug’s humor worsened.

  “Veritors.” Talis returned to the table and placed the glasses down, then unstoppered the rum and poured herself two fingers. Tisker and Sophie filled their glasses in turn while she seated herself again, putting her feet up on the trestle of the table and sliding into a slouch against the back of her chair.

  Staring at the dark brown liquid in the bottle as if he was watching a scene play out in its distorted highlights and shadows, Dug slipped into a gloomy silence.

  Talis took a sip of rum to delay the explanation. It burned her tongue and throat, and she gave it a moment, feeling the fire trace a path down her gullet, ignoring how Tisker and Sophie leaned forward as if to drag the story out of her. The threads of her suspicions were braiding into a cord, still too fragile to tug.

  She made them wait while she drank the rest of the glass. Tisker poured her another, an offering in exchange for finally getting to the damned tale. She sighed and crossed her ankle over the opposite knee. Ran her thumb over the well-worn texture of her leather boot and traced the hammered pattern in the brass clips as she began to talk again.

  “They’re a secret society of Cutters—well, they’re a cult, really. Far from the first mortals to figure out how the gods’ alchemy works, but they are the first to want to wield it like a weapon.”

  Tisker chuckled, still not taking in the gravity of the situation. “What, like Fens Yarrow? Those idiots will get caught like he was, and be cinders before they even figure out which incantation to use.”

  “Would I waste worry over that?” Talis rested the glass on her knee and turned it with her thumb and forefinger, staring at the signet ring on the table again. “Half-cocked fools running around trying to set themselves upon a throne? The gods can deal with that; we’ve all heard those stories. The Veritors are different. They’ve been around a long time. Ages ago, like the name implies, they read some Pre-Cataclysm text and got the notion that Cutter folk are the only natural race on Peridot. They want to kill the gods, and the other four races with them. What makes me worry is that they’ve got connections, and smarts to make up for lacking sense. Plus they’re bankrolled by fatcrats and can recruit with the promise of elevating anyone to such circles. Anyone who’s Cutter. You hear anything about some new Imperial decree to suspend foreign work licenses, or to push Cutter territories around Nexus even farther despite our standing border agreements with the Bone and Rakkar, and I’ll bet their influences are behind it. My guess is—and Hankirk made it all but explicit—they’ve implanted themselves in the top levels of Imperial fleet command, too.”

  “You must be joking, Cap. That’s a nice conspiracy.” Tisker’s eyebrows were way up, and he looked ready to laugh the support beams down from the overhead. He’d reached the bottom of his first glass of rum, so really it was a wonder he hadn’t laughed yet. She knew how it sounded.

  But she pressed on. “There’s more than one reason I left the academy before I committed to five years indentured.”

  “Thought you said all the rules didn’t suit you?” Sophie asked.

  “Well, sure, I said that.” Talis smirked. She could still remember that conversation from two years back when Sophie had joined them. She and Dug had discovered the young imp aboard a colony ship where she was apprenticed to the engine master, lost amid a gaggle of other young wrenches-in-training and bored out of her freckled skull shoveling coal, waiting for a chance to really get her hands into an airship’s engine. Talis had been competing with another interested captain to win Sophie over, both of them in dire need of a wrench with her kind of natural talent. Talis had just bought Wind Sabre and couldn’t match the pay the other captain was offering, but tales of her adventures outside Cutter skies had given her the edge. The financial security of a ponderous water trawler couldn’t compete with the exploration and excitement that Sophie craved. “The theory that the Empire is in thrall to occult fiends who want to kill the gods and commit quadruple genocide didn’t seem entirely relevant at the time.”

  Tisker laughed again, but it was uneasy. “Aye, and I might’ve snuck onto another ship had you warmed me up with that line.”

  “But if they’re a secret cult or whatever, how’d you find out about them?” Sophie looked at Dug. She wanted his part of the history, too.

  But Dug remained silent, staring at that bottle. Talis knew well which memory had snagged his thoughts, so she continued before Sophie could ask him again.

  “Hankirk was always trying to best me or impress me, back in training. I should probably mention that I had a brief fling with the pompous button shiner.”

  She braced herself, knowing how that would go over. As she feared, Sophie started to giggle and Tisker guffawed.

  “Go ahead and laugh.” She refilled her drink, noticing that her arm was a little unsteady. The brown liquid splashed up the side of the glass and a droplet hit the table. “I said ‘brief.’ He’s not ugly. Seemed worth a romp until I got to know him.”

  Dug’s eyes came back into focus when the bottle was moved. Talis poured some into his empty glass, whether he wanted it or not. After a moment he took the glass and swallowed its entire contents in one smooth motion. He set the cup back down, placing it right in an old stain that some past moisture had left in the table’s surface. His eyes were darker than ever in the low light.

  Talis continued, “Funny, Tisker, that you should bring up Fens Yarrow earlier. As it happened, Hankirk thought he’d dazzle me by saying he was the man’s great-great-great-grandson, or some such. That he was entitled to a comfortable life among worthy peers because of his lineage.”

  Tisker scoffed, a loud half-snort. Paternity was a vaporous concept for Cutters. Colony airships traded passengers at such a rate that it was far easier to keep track of maternal lines. Cutter folk were far from being matriarchal, as the Bone tribes were, but in determining heritage, one could only say for certain which woman birthed them.

  Sophie shot him a look. “But Fens Yarrow? Why would he claim something like that?”

  She was raised on the same lessons as most colonials. Don’t be like Fens Yarrow. If you’re naughty, Onaya Bone will fry you, too. The actual parable went into more detail, which was far more gruesome. It was effective at keeping Cutter folk, both children and adults, in line. Only maybe Hankirk hadn’t been told the same stories as a babe.

  “Imagine it, Soph. If there’s a portion of society—high society—that values Yarrow’s flavor of ambition? They might consider his progeny to be heir to that legacy.” Talis finished her drink while that sank in.

  Her mind drifted through the memories, and she had to force herself back to
the present. “Anyway I didn’t believe him, of course.” Talis set her empty cup on the table, watching Dug’s expression. “I didn’t learn the Veritors’ actual name until years later. Never connected the two until just now.”

  Tisker nodded his chin at the ring between them. “So we sell the ring to the Veritors?”

  “Well that would be tricky, don’t you think?” Sophie finished her drink and put the glass down. “Hankirk’s already proven that they don’t expect to part with coin for the thing.”

  Dug twitched, like a sleeping man having nightmares. Talis refilled his cup, and the bottle clinked against the rim of his glass.

  “Sell the ring to anyone but,” she said. She chafed that the conversation had circled back to the crew’s pessimism about the bloody ring, and she still didn’t know what to make of the Veritors’ interest in it. “There will be other buyers. I’ve got a list of folks who like to dabble in alchemy, if that’s what this thing is. Couple of them might even be able to afford it.”

  Sophie pulled her hands off the table with a sharp gasp, as though the ring could burn her across the wooden surface. She glanced out at the clear skies beyond the portholes and gave a tug on the set of short prayerlocks at the nape of her neck. Almost immediately, she caught herself, and lowered her hands sheepishly to the table. “Secret cults and alchemy? Hells, Captain, what did you get us tangled up in?”

  The Divine Alchemists had torn Peridot apart with their elemental manipulation. When they created new peoples to populate the planet’s scattered islands, they enforced one rule above all others: Don’t mess around with alchemy.

  Of course not everyone listened. Even Wind Sabre had a few illegal trinkets and devices in her lockers. Sometimes the benefits were worth the risk, for a particularly clever widget, and Onaya Bone didn’t always appear to destroy transgressors with her swift punishment, as warned in the tales of Fens Yarrow.

  Hells, Talis knew that Arthel Rak, Lord of Fire and Creator of the Rakkar, even encouraged his people to dabble in it. Or at least he rewarded the most notable accomplishments with a personal congratulatory visit.

  Maybe they could find a Rakkar buyer. Then at least she wouldn’t have to worry that she’d sold the ring to the same people who’d funded Hankirk’s shiny new ship. Any buyer except a Cutter would do, really.

  But she put a clumsy hand out to calm Sophie. “Could also just be some historical treasure. If it’s pre-Cataclysm, maybe some Vein researcher wants to put it in a museum with the rest of their old ’tronics.”

  The word ‘cataclysm’ was challenging for her rum-soaked tongue. This conversation needed to end. Soon.

  Sophie’s eyes widened. Between the parables, eight siblings, overprotective aunts, and her youth, she hadn’t seen as much of the world as the rest of the crew. Dug and Jasper were probably the only non-Cutters Sophie knew by name. She looked far less worried now. Eager was a better term.

  “So we’re going to Subrosa,” said Dug, surprising Talis by speaking. The visions that had clouded his eyes moments before had cleared and his expression was focused. “Despite the fact that Hankirk placed the contract with Jasper there.”

  “What?” Talis picked up the ring and returned it to its pouch. “Aren’t you curious to hear that big bastard explain why he sold us out?”

  Dug’s grin, as he raised his glass to her in a toast, was frightening.

  Chapter 8

  After dinner, Tisker shooed Dug and Sophie away from the great cabin, offering to clear the table himself. Talis could see that he had something on his mind, though he started to gather up the dishes without a word, loading them onto their trays. He was waiting to be sure the others were out of earshot. She thought about ordering him to return to the wheelhouse so she could sleep off the rum before she had to deal with anything else.

  His faith in her had been steady since the day he showed up on the docks of Subrosa, a scraggly kid looking for more than the usual handout. His starry eyes made her think, at first, that he was as interested in her as in Wind Sabre, but over time it became clear she lacked the preferred interactive body parts to be his type, and that the helm was the only thing he wanted to get his hands on. Didn’t mean he wasn’t enamored with her, though. He’d staunchly defend her any time he was given the opportunity. Started more than one bar brawl before even Dug could on account of someone saying the wrong thing to, or about, his captain.

  Everyone onboard needed Wind Sabre for their own reasons. For Tisker, the ship was his salvation. His way out. The only way an orphan who had grown too old for the urchin gangs could escape Subrosa. Well, not the only way, but she certainly could see why he wouldn’t have chosen the usual, less savory options.

  He stood at the table, looking down but not seeing the cup in his hand. “If it makes a difference, I can wait for my back shares.”

  Well. There it was. Too late to send him off and avoid this conversation.

  Talis pushed herself straight up in her seat and pulled on the hem of her jacket to smooth the wrinkles that had formed against the chair back.

  “First, I don’t intend for my crew to suffer for this situation.”

  He nodded, as if he’d been expecting that answer. “And second?”

  She gathered her utensils onto her plate and pushed it toward him so he could clear her spot without having to come around the corner of the table. “Second, deferring your shares only helps us buy Sophie’s engine part if we have the money to dole shares out in the first place.”

  She owed them for this job and the last one. She didn’t like running the ship on her crew’s credit, but the contract from Jasper seemed like such a sure thing, even with the luck needed to drop into flotsam for an object as small as he wanted. With one hand the ancient Breaker man had pushed across the payment for their previous job, a shallow tray of Imperial presscoins. The royal family’s faces had glittered there, smiling up at her. The stack was a little thin, but after ship’s costs and captain’s share, it would have netted her crew just over a thousand each. And then Jasper, his great serene face belying nothing of what was to come, mentioned a new contract. Mentioned how the payment sitting solid as stone on his desk before her would neatly cover the cost of refurbished descent gear and its installation. How the coin could be multiplied in only a few days. Reminded her that the descent gear would broaden their skill set for even more contracts later, and opportunity to prospect for more valuables on the side.

  She wasn’t a tyrant, didn’t take the contract on her own say-so. She ran it by her crew. Their money in her hand, right in front of them. They could have taken it if they wanted. If they chose the payment they could count with their hands instead of their imaginations, fine. Talis could have found them some other job. Something smaller, no doubt, but that wouldn’t require negatives in their logbook. Gods rot it, she could’ve bought that bi-clutch right then.

  But they trusted her. Took her enthusiasm up as their own.

  As Tisker opened his mouth to speak again, she saw his chest rise with an unsteady breath. “You think Sophie’s gonna leave us?”

  Sighing, Talis stood up, and grabbed the rum bottle off the table. It was nearly empty. One more thing on the list of purchases she couldn’t afford to make at their next stop. She fumbled to re-cork it, then stowed the bottle away.

  “What Sophie does is up to Sophie. But one day, yeah, she’s going to want to follow through on those plans she’s always scratching at.”

  Sophie wanted her own airship. More than that, and more expensive, she wanted to commission her own ship, from her own designs. Talis knew that someday, when the prize from a contract topped off what it would take to make that happen, Sophie would leave Wind Sabre and go be her own captain. Then maybe she’d learn what kind of hard decisions it took to keep a ship and crew together.

  “But… soon?” Tisker was still just a kid. Didn’t know that a pain barreling down at you in the her
e and now was sometimes easier to deal with than one you could only anticipate. One haunting the distances beyond your prow, too far out to get a bead on.

  “Not as soon as maybe she’d like,” Talis said. Her voice sounded bitter. She hadn’t meant for it to come out like that. The rum had made her too honest. “Don’t know what she’s managed to put aside for it, but it can’t be enough for the marvel of engineering she’s no doubt got going.”

  Not that Sophie was keeping the plans a secret. Probably the girl wanted Talis to show some interest in them. No doubt, as first mate and liaison to the crew, Dug knew a lot more about the workings of Sophie’s dream ship than he did about Wind Sabre’s. Talis had really only let Sophie tell her about any upgrades she could imagine for the ship she was on now. They’d made a number of them over the years. It was how they ran a ship built for twenty hands with a crew of four, with shift rotations. Sophie could plan upgrades for the ship for the rest of her career, and Talis would be quite satisfied with that.

  But Sophie wouldn’t.

  “It really is an impressive design, Cap.” Tisker wiped down the table with a cotton cloth, soaking up the droplets spilled from their drinks and using the dampness to get any sauce from the food that had dripped on the polished surface. “It would mean a lot to her if you’d look at it. She’s real proud.”

  Pride. Yeah.

  “She’s gonna come smack up against a real surprise when she finds out what it takes to captain a ship. It’s more than the paperwork saying the deck under your feet belongs to you.”

  “She knows that.” Tisker loaded the full tray into the dumbwaiter in the aft bulkhead, cranked the handle to tighten its springs, and flipped the toggle to send it all rattling to the deck below. While it jostled and clanked, he turned back to her and buried his hands in his pockets. It only made him look younger.