“He can’t do this!” she cried as she was pulled with deceiving strength back to the tram.
“He can do whatever he wants. Now shut your mouth before you make things any worse! Go back to the ship. I’ll be back in an hour and a half, and we will discuss this matter further.”
Her thin escort, nearly crushing her with vicelike fingers that looked as frail as eggshells, herded her into the tram.
“Please! You can’t do this! Do you know what I had to do to get here?”
“The matter is closed,” he said. His tone was gentle, the voice an adult reserves for explaining to a child something that someone so simple could not possibly understand. “It was closed before you arrived. It was closed before we ever knew your name. What you were seeking was never a possibility. I’ll send you on your way now. The door will open when you reach Keystone again. Good day, madam.”
He pushed her with just enough force to send her backward into the tram, shutting the door before she could recover. And so she was sent on her way. After a few days that had felt like a lifetime, her great gamble had ended in failure in the blink of an eye.
Chapter 12
The ride to the surface was the longest, loneliest time of Nita’s life. The weight of all that she’d done, the cold realization of the risks she’d taken and the decisions she’d made, pressed down on her like a lead weight. She had left her life behind, gone where her countryman had wisely chosen and warned her not to go. In doing so, she had taken her life into her own hands… and she’d had a hand in taking the life of another. She’d earned the trust of a group of scoundrels and just as quickly squandered it. Now she was left at their mercy and with nothing to show for it but regret.
By the time the tram broke through the surface of the fug, the sun had finished slipping below the horizon, and the starless night was upon her. She trudged from the tram when it pulled up to the catwalk. The fug poured out around her, exposing her to fresh air once more. The mountain air was cool, but compared to the chemical chill of the fug, it was almost muggy. She pulled free her mask and, for the first time, caught an unfiltered whiff of the stuff that still clung to her clothes. It was horrid, overpowering. She could compare it to nothing in her life to date. Somewhere between strong solvents and burning weeds, but each to a depth and scale that almost caused her to wretch.
She wandered back to the closest thing she had to a home for thousands of miles, the trusty Wind Breaker, and climbed aboard. Her feet had barely touched the rungs of the dangling ladder when the distinctive sound of a gun cocking came from above. She looked up to see Gunner, apparently the one who’d drawn the short straw and remained behind to defend the ship.
“Ms. Graus. I’d suggest you announce yourself next time,” he said, easing down the hammer of the pistol. It was yet another fresh one from his collection, this one with a flared end and a barrel as wide as that of a shotgun.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, continuing up the ladder. “And you may as well call me Nita.”
“Oh? Why the change of heart?”
“Because I think your first impression of me was a sound one. I was a liability after all.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, lending a hand and hauling her up the last few rungs. “You’ve proved to be versatile, at the very least.”
“Perhaps too much so.”
“You didn’t.”
She nodded slowly.
“Where? I scoured that boiler! Nothing had changed!”
“It was up on the deck. I didn’t… I…”
Gunner’s fingers tightened at the grip of his weapon, and he slowly eased the hammer back again. “Where is the captain?” He uttered the words almost as a demand, as though Nita was holding the captain hostage somewhere.
“He’s still talking to them.”
Her crewmate’s face was a mask combining concern and fury.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“What happens now is I make damn sure that you don’t go anywhere or touch anything until he comes back.”
“You aren’t going to kill me, are you?”
“I won’t do anything I’m not ordered to do, and I will do everything I am ordered to do. Because that is what a crew does. It obeys its captain.”
Over the next hour, the crew returned one at a time, calling out to Gunner and climbing into the gig room to find Nita at gun point. The looks in their eyes were like daggers to her heart, but what hurt most was that not a single one of them needed to be told what was happening, nor what had happened. They’d expected this from her, regardless of what they hoped. The only one who spoke was Lil, and only a single word.
“Why?” The word wouldn’t have sounded any different if she’d spoken it with a knife sticking out of her back.
Almost precisely two hours from when the first tram had picked up Nita and the captain, the final tram dropped him off. He climbed the ladder to find Gunner and Nita still in the gig room.
“I am going to my quarters,” he said. “Nita, follow me. The rest of you will have your orders soon enough.”
Nita took the long walk to Captain Mack’s quarters in silence. When they reached the door he pulled it open and marched inside. She stepped in after him, and before she closed the door Wink hopped through and scampered up to his net hammock. The captain eased into his seat.
“Sit,” he said.
“Captain, I—”
“Sit down and hold your tongue. I’ll speak to you when I’m ready, and until I do, you will keep quiet. I want answers and nothing else. There ain’t nothing to defend. These are orders, Ms. Graus. Long past time you started following them.”
He fished a fresh cigar out of its jar and lit it, finally chasing away the chemical stench of the fug that still faintly clung to him. After two more contemplative puffs he blew out a cloud of black cherry smoke.
“It was at the Lags,” he said. “When it was you and Lil. That’s when you did it. You looked me in the eye and you lied.” He puffed again. “There’s something to be admired there. Ain’t no one but the missus put one past me like that in a dog’s age.” Another puff. “Tell me. Did you think about what this would mean for Lil?”
“Lil had nothing to do with it.”
“Oh, she did. You were her responsibility. Didn’t think of that, I take it? Not surprised. Doesn’t seem to me you do a lot of thinking when it doesn’t suit your ends.”
“Captain, it was a mistake—”
“A mistake. That’s what you call a mistake in Caldera, is it? You repaired something you were ordered not to. You lied to me and my entire crew. You tinkered with this ship, which is our livelihood and may as well be our lives, and you did it because you believed after just a few hours among us that you knew better than any of us how our world worked. That’s not what I call a mistake. That’s what I call arrogance. Irresponsible, childish arrogance. It’s cost me a dear price, and I mean to see it does the same to you.”
“What did the fug folk demand of you?”
He took another slow drag on the cigar and released it with a breath. “Everything. They knew how much we had, and with the usual fleecing they give us plus the cost of the repairs and the ‘small’ fine for your disobedience, that leaves us flat busted. They didn’t ruin us. You don’t slaughter a sheep for its wool, but everything we done for the last few years has been for nothing.”
“I’m so sorry. Captain, I promise you, when we return to Caldera I’ll give you everything you need to replace what was lost.”
“You presume an awful lot to suggest you’ll get the opportunity. Some debts can’t be paid with a pile of coins. Some debts require blood.”
Nita took a deep breath. “You seem to be a reasonable man, Captain. What would blood solve?”
“It would make an example of you, Ms. Graus. This is a ship. I don’t give a damn about how many minds a ship has, but it can only have one will. The will of the captain. Right or wrong, I can’t have disagreement. You saw it during the wailer attac
k. We work as one, toward one goal. If there is doubt or dissension, the ship will fall apart.”
He puffed at his cigar for a few more moments.
“So what will you do?” she asked.
“I ain’t decided yet, and you don’t want to rush me. Not so soon after dealing with the fug folk. Them folks boil my blood.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Seems you might not have too many more chances. May as well.”
“Do you follow their rules because you want to or because you have no choice?”
“I got no problem with following the rules of people I respect… but that ain’t the case with these folk. They got us under their thumbs, and they know it. You think it’s bad what they’re willing to do to your mother? That ain’t the half of it. They’ve sat idle while whole cities starved because their ships were too beat-up to pick up supplies, and the fuggers wouldn’t budge on the price of repairs. They’ve choked off shipments of coal to places in northern Circa because they found out the locals were mining their own seam to top off their supplies. The fuggers demand reliance and will punish anything that threatens it. Most times I’d say they want profit above all else, but sometimes it seems to me they want one thing even more. Power. Letting your mother die. Letting them folks in them cities die… They throw away plenty of good business just to make sure we know who’s in charge. If I could get out from under them, I’d… well, best not to say what I’d do.”
“So it all comes down to whoever has been giving them their information.”
“No one is telling them. They just know. And you aren’t earning any points suggesting one of my crew would have ratted the rest out.”
“I apologize. I suppose there wasn’t any member of the crew to see what I did either… except…” She turned her eyes to Wink. The creature huddled backward under her glare. Her mind began to flood with days of observations slowly connecting. “Captain, when they gave you the figure of what you’d owe, did they include what I had in my bag?”
“The pendant and the trith coil. What I’d included as your intended payment.”
“But not anything else?”
“No.”
“Why not? Surely if they knew you had it to spend they would have required that of you as well. Particularly knowing that it was my property, that of the perpetrator.”
“What are you getting at?”
“They didn’t ask for it because they didn’t know about it. I seldom let the bag out of my sight. None of the crew knew how much I had.” She opened the bag and pulled out the full-size coil box, slamming it on his desk. “This is made mostly out of trith. Unless I’m wrong, this should have been worth more than any single thing on the ship. If they just magically knew things, they would have demanded it, wouldn’t they?”
The captain didn’t answer immediately, his mind briefly preoccupied by the immense wealth that had just been dropped in front of him. “This was what you were going to use to pay for the drug?”
“If they would have given me the chance.”
“I don’t know a fug person who wouldn’t step over his own mother to get that much trith.”
“So they clearly don’t simply know things. Someone must be telling them.”
“But no member of my crew would ever do that.”
“How much do you know about Wink and his kind?”
“What’s to know? He’s an inspector. Maybe not the best, but the best one I’ve had.”
“But how intelligent are they?”
“Intelligent enough to take a simple order and to know a good board from a bad one.”
“What if they were smarter than that?” Wink dropped down to the floor and hopped to the door, attempting to haul it open. Nita braced it shut with her foot. “I said that there was no one to see me do the repair, but Wink was there the whole time, watching me. He’s been watching me since I arrived.” Now Wink started to chew at the door, chisel-like teeth carving easily into the wood. “And he seems to be awfully interested in getting away now that I’ve started talking about his potential treachery.”
The captain stood, leaned across his desk and caught the creature by the tail, raising it up and dropping it to the desk, where his other hand held it.
“I’ll allow that he’s acting a mite odd at the moment, but smart as he might be, the little thing can’t talk, and even if he could, he never meets the fug folk face-to-face. They have me take him off the ship when we send it down for repairs.”
“You don’t need to speak—or even meet face-to-face—to communicate, Captain. Back in the steamworks, we worked out a tap code to hammer out messages along the pipes. Wink does something awfully similar whenever you get close to the fug, doesn’t he?”
“The strut check…” He looked down to the beast. For the first time, genuine fear replaced the vague distrust in its eye. The captain held Wink’s pelt tight and stood him up. “Let’s just test this. I’ll make it simple for you. One tap for yes, two for no. Do you want me to give you to Glinda to see what sort of stew she could make of you?”
The creature’s head darted back and forth, looking the two humans in the eye. It was telling enough that he wasn’t frantically tapping his fingers as he usually did when something had him agitated. He struggled a bit more, then seemed to give up. He extended his spidery middle finger and gave two deliberate taps.
“Have you been the one telling the fug folk about us?”
Wink’s head and ears drooped. Tap.
“You little piece of filth!”
“It makes perfect sense. The fug folk require all airships to have one, and since they are inspectors, they get free run of the ship,” Nita said.
The captain was still preoccupied with the revelation. “I saved your life! They were going to give you the knife. You are a member of my crew.”
The little beast was the picture of shame. Tap.
“Look at me. Look at me!”
Wink reluctantly faced him.
“You will never, never report on this ship again. Understand?”
Tap.
“And will you report on us again?”
Tap, tap.
“I ain’t through with you, but I’ve got other things need discussing. You get back there and sit down!”
Wink obeyed, climbing up to the hammock and continuing to wear the most heart-wrenchingly forlorn face Nita had ever seen.
“I think—” Nita began, but the captain’s eyes were distant.
It was clear that the revelation of how he’d been watched had brought with it a flood of opportunities to his mind. In short order, he seemed to come to a decision.
“You would do anything to get them drugs for your mother?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re serious about making things square with us for what you done?”
“I am.”
“Well… what I got in mind ain’t quite enough to make us square. You’d still have a punishment coming, but if this is going to work I’d need you working pretty near nonstop for the next few days. Tell me, you want a bit of payback against them fuggers?”
She flashed a devilish smile. “I do.”
He leaned down and pulled a bottle and two glasses from a low cupboard. He placed them down and poured a splash of strong-smelling brown liquor into each.
“I really don’t drink that sort of—”
“Ms. Graus, there are some conversations that can’t be had properly without a pair of strong drinks in hand.” He handed her a glass. “You and I are about to have one.” He settled back in his chair. “The fug folk will never sell you that medicine. That just leaves you the one way to get it.”
“You’re proposing we steal the medicine?”
“Not just the medicine, Ms. Graus. The toys and trinkets they let us buy to spread around are nothing compared to what they keep for themselves. There isn’t a day that’s gone by I haven’t thought of it. Every time they smacked me down with a new rule or tax or fee. I’ve thought about it plent
y. I’ve been to the storehouses. I’ve seen what they have.”
“They let you see where they store their valuables?”
“Some of them, anyway. And why shouldn’t they? Until now, if anyone were to even discuss this sort of thing, their little spies would have passed along a warning. The good news is what Mr. Ebonwhite said was true. There aren’t many fug folk. The storehouses aren’t well guarded, but they are well defended. They’ve got some mighty deadly gadgets. Not only that, but these are the people who make the airships. Believe it when I tell you, they keep the best for themselves. But I think this crew has what it takes to pull it off, because we’ve got the one thing they never expected anyone to have: surprise.” He puffed his cigar. “Of course, the thing to remember is that once we do this, that’ll be it for my dealings with the fug folk. At least the sort of dealings where we aren’t trying to kill each other.”
“So no more trading goods… and no more repairs.”
“You said you could fix this ship. And you showed you could. You figure you can get the whole steam system patched up in two days?”
“With some help, I think so.”
“Well, all right. Here’s the long and short of it, then. If you really want to get that medicine, and you want to make up for what you done, then I think we can storm the gates and make out like proper bandits. But in exchange, you’ll need to stay on as my engineer at least until you can train the others to do what needs doing. What do you say?”
It was an enormous question, likely the most important one she would ever face. In just a few days outside of her home she’d been thrust into situations far beyond her control. She’d nearly been killed, and she’d watched herself slip further and further toward a person she’d hoped never to become. He was offering her both the final step toward becoming a lawless scoundrel and the chance to both redeem herself in their eyes and gain what she’d traded so much of her innocence to attain. It was a question that warranted hours of contemplation, days even. Instead, her answer came with the next breath.
“When do we start?”
He smiled and held up his glass. She clinked hers to it and both drank. The victorious moment was spoiled somewhat by her sudden and violent coughing fit. He laughed.
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