by S G Dunster
A hatch door popped open just beyond Eap, and a weary, sweat-stained man pulled himself up onto the deck, rubbing at his eyes. “Shift change,” he said, glancing at me with some measure of apprehension. “Did all my shift.”
“It’s . . . fine,” I croaked. “Go.”
He beamed, his smile bright white against the black dust that smudged his cheeks. “It is nice to see the sun, Cap’n.” He sauntered off toward the ladder that would lead to the upper cabins, where the engine men slept.
My ship. I was on it.
My ship. Which I’d spent hours dreaming about, hours sketching, describing. I’d written probably close to a hundred-thousand words of stories that took place on this thing. And here I was. Why wasn’t I jumping up and down?
“Well?” Eap said. There were some laugh lines deepening around his eyes and mouth.
“Let’s . . . I’ll . . .” I glanced back at Lil, sitting against the tip of the prow, glowering. “It’s nothing . . . amazing. Pretty derivative. But yeah, I’ll show you.” I gestured to the carved double doors.
Eap flashed his ugly teeth and lead the way to the wood-filigreed entryway, down the red-carpeted, gilded corridor.
I walked in slowly, testing the plush of the carpet. It was . . . nice. More than nice. Everything I’d imagined. “First door on the left,” I said. “That’s mine.”
We opened it.
“Excuse me, sir.” It was a pigtailed girl with thigh high stockings fitted over the long curves of her legs, barely dusting the lace on the mini-apron tied over her tiny black skirt. She stepped back from the bed. “I’ve changed the linens, ran feathers over all the shelves, and, ooh,” she touched her cheek with a small, rosy fingertip, “I’ll have to come by later to do the towels. Will that be all right with you?” She regarded me with her dark doe-eyes, waiting.
“Um . . . no thanks.” My face was warm.
Eap’s appraising eyes followed as she flounced through the door, then turned to me. “Is your ship all bedrooms?”
“No,” I retorted. “Let’s go to the kitchens.”
We passed a few people in the hall. I glanced through the doors that were open, looking over the woven carpets, jewel-tone swoops of curtain, and gleaming mahogany furniture. There were a few wisp-waisted maids in attendance. One with fat blond braids gave me a wink as I passed by.
The kitchen was loud. Two dozen men and women swarmed around the long table and counters preparing all sorts of meats and sauces. Five men chopped vegetables in rapid fire, and a small girl with a long tumble of mousy hair hanging clear to her behind leaned over a huge pot of bubbling stew, stirring it carefully. The brick fireplace framed her neat figure nicely. I’d made that drawing a week or two before and was rather proud of it.
“Hey Elsa,” I flung at her as we passed without thinking. She looked up and gave me an impish smile. “Hey,” she replied, turning. “Want a taste?”
I swallowed. It’s one thing to see your pictures come to life. It’s another to talk to them. “You’ve probably spit in it,” I managed to quip.
“Not unless she wants her backside skinned.” Corinne bustled past us. She was sweating, and her face was even more red than usual. “I likes a little notice for a grand occasion,” she added. “Just for your future information.” She hipped me as she passed, making me stumble, and didn’t bother to look back as she went to the stove.
“Grand occasion?” I asked.
“Guests. New people.” She gave Eap a side-eye.
“Right,” I said.
Eap bent over the pot over the fire and sniffed appreciatively. “Lovely. Full of gravy, just how the world should run.” He handed the spoon back to her, and she sniffed again, this time with something like approval.
“You just talk and charm the pants off everyone, don’t you?” I said grumpily to Eap as we passed through.
An eyebrow raised. “With a face like mine, what are there but words?”
I grinned in spite of myself.
We walked through the mass of activity. I glanced overhead. The windows lining the ceiling let in the blue, blue sky and sent rays of light dancing down toward the food-laden tables. We got a dozen nods, a few smiles, as we passed through into the saloon, which was . . .
Huge.
A room as big as my school gymnasium. What had I been thinking? Who would need a thousand square feet of dining space on a freaking airship?
The chandeliers above us twinkled in the light from the wall-length windows. All around us was sky. I stood there and just forced myself to breathe, trying not to be swallowed up in all the space, all the grandeur. All the sky.
I was here. Standing on the plush carpet.
And people were coming in: distinguished, dangerous men in metal-colored suits decorated with ebony and tungsten and glass studs. They escorted women with satin and lace, velvet and silk gathered around their hips and hanging over their shapely thighs, studded collars around their necks glittering with jewels, shining hair piled high and stuck through with daggers or carved wooden pins. One woman even had the slim muzzle of a revolver holding up her massive hairdo. The better, I knew, to be always ready to kill bands of vampire-and-werewolf pirates.
“Captain!” A voice boomed across the saloon. A man was gesturing for me to join him at the head table. His long black hair was touched at the temples with grey, which hung in two thick braids over his shoulders. He had sharp, pointed brows and black, flashing eyes.
Arapahoe was his name. My first mate, and the fastest draw on the eastern Gulf Stream.
My heart sped up as we walked toward him, Eap and I. Arapahoe was competent, strong, and fearless. I needed him. I really needed him.
Arapahoe gave me a nod, nothing excited or surprised. To him, this was an ordinary day on the Whippoorwill, while I was meeting a hero for the first time. I got control of my face and nodded back. “How’s things?” I said, then felt immediately lame.
“Full steam, as always. This great mist has us all puzzled.”
“Yeah.” I eyed him and his companions. “We’ll be in it for a while, I think.”
“We’ll come upon some new places soon,” Eap said mildly, and sat himself next to Selah.
Selah, with gorgeous gold skin, a slim, muscled body, snapping dark eyes, and luxurious, blue-black curls. She leaned one perfect, plump elbow on the table and gave Eap a curious look. Eap returned it with interest, his eyes flitting over her low-cut velvet dress, accented in studded leather, and settled back in his chair.
“I thought you’d be busy over paperwork tonight,” Selah said, turning her attention back to me. To me. “We put in at dock tomorrow eve.”
“Not anymore. We’re not taking on any new passengers. We’ve got a mission of a delicate . . .” I glanced at Eap, “political nature underway.”
“Good,” she said. “Sounds interesting.” She set aside her small throwing knife, which she’d been using to carve up her meat and bring it to her curved, red mouth. “What’s the job?”
I turned to Eap. “Give us the details, Eap,” I said.
“Who’s this, then?” Arapahoe said, watching Eap as well. “Pick him up off the Candian trash heaps?” He gave Eap a half-smile, but his eyes were cold.
I didn’t blame him, exactly. Wrinkled, disheveled, sickly, gaunt-faced Eap certainly did look like something from the giant tower of trash in my story. And he was looking around at all the grandeur, at my two main characters, with a smile tucked in the corners of his mouth.
“Um . . .” I said, “he’s . . . an expert on these parts. The mist. The . . . new lands we’ll be flying over.”
“Beyond the boundaries?” Selah asked, her perfect brows arching. “We’re going beyond Astridia?”
“Yes. It’s a secret government mission,” Eap replied smoothly, picking up a delicate crystal glass and examining it for a second, then setting it back down. “We’re tracking down a fugitive. It’ll be dangerous; there’s unrest and political fractures that could cost us our lives. We’ll
be going as unobtrusively and silently as possible.” He nodded at a passing waitress—clad in black, the sassy white apron a bit longer than the chambermaids had—and tapped his glass. She quickly filled it with sparkling, pale-gold liquid.
“Fine, fine,” Dane cut in. Dane, the diplomatic advisor. Blond, sleek, no-nonsense, with a choppy haircut that could have come straight out of manga. “Don’t mind Rappy’s prattle. You’re welcome.” She gave Eap a broad, dazzling smile. “He’s not the sort who trusts outsiders. This ship’s family.”
Eap turned and gave me a dour smile, then gave her a roughish wink. He picked up his glass. “Do you mind the cat?” He scooped up Monty and placed him on the table. “He likes a little whisky, too. “
“No, not at all.” Dane reached out and stroked Monty’s back. Monty gave her a long, baleful stare, then strode gracefully into her arms, settling his face directly into the crease of her ample bosom.
I gave Eap an open-mouthed glare.
He smiled coolly back at me and took a sip. His nose wrinkled. He spat some of the liquid violently back into the cup. “Sweet as prunes,” he choked. “You’ve never tasted spirits, have you?”
“No,” I admitted.
“We can’t be in the drink too much tonight.” Arapahoe set his fork delicately on the rim of his plate.
“Don’t have to worry,” Eap muttered, setting his glass back down.
“We’d best rise early tomorrow, have all our wits about us. If you could lay the plan out for us, sir, I’d like to be early to my bed.” Arapahoe’s dark eyes roved over the women at the table. Selah shook her head minutely. “I’m for rest, too,” she yawned.
“A rather dirty tale, this,” Eap observed, raising his glass again. The liquid in it had changed color—dull red now.
“You’re one to talk,” I replied. He met my eyes, raised his brows slightly, and drained the glass in one movement. He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Direct your airship,” he said as he unfolded it and spread it on the table, “to this spot.”
“What is this?” Dane bent over the paper. “I don’t recognize the shoreline.”
“I’m afraid we’ve already drifted into unexplored airspace.” Eap gave her a twitch of a smile. “When the mist retreats, you will be seeing land unfamiliar.” He returned his gaze to me, his finger touching a spot on the crescent—the curved side, about a third of a way up. I could see he’d inked something onto the map since the last time we’d examined it. A dark spike emerging from the tangle of woods, with the word Hans written neatly above it.
“Hans,” I said. “Lil’s Grey Man.”
“We must find him. There’s nothing else for it now. Grandeur’s gone. We’ve got no safe place to land. We could hide in the mists, but the mists are easily . . . encroached. Grandeur was the last holdout against Grimwoods.”
“Grey Man,” Arapahoe said. “Grimwoods,” he echoed, leaning over the map. He gave me a look, snapping with cynicism.
“That’s the name of this country,” I said. “It’s ruled by two . . . men . . . who don’t treat their people well.”
“Ah. So, a rescue mission.” Dane twisted a bit of hair around her slim index finger and smiled. “Nice.”
“We’ll have to go in dark,” Selah said. “I’ll have them put on the mirror-cloak. What are we up against, Captain?”
I looked at Eap.
“Spirits. Dark things.” Eap’s voice was smoky, seductive, and he was watching Dane.
Her pale eyes gleamed, and her smile grew a little wicked. “Sounds intriguing.”
Eap held her gaze, then turned his attention back to the paper. “If we don’t get to our refugee in time, he’ll be taken. And he is a powerful ally that we cannot do without.”
“Maybe we can.” Lil’s voice, sulky, interjected. She was glaring, arms folded across her chest, standing several yards away from us. Her braids were a mess.
I turned and gestured for her to sit in the empty spot at the table. “Hungry?” I asked her.
“No,” Lil replied shortly. “Excuse me.” She yanked the chair from the table and threw herself into it, grazing Selah’s ankle in the process.
Selah lifted her foot delicately out of the way, giving Lil a sidelong glance. “And who is this?” She asked, her words muffled as she raised her glass to her plump, red lips.
“A new lass,” Arapahoe said. “Logan’s friend. I’ve heard tell of her before. Where did you drift in from, girl? Stowing away in the hold again?”
Lil didn’t bother answering him. She was looking around the saloon, mouth slightly agape. Her eyes followed the movements of our waitresses. One, a redhead with hair bunched up high on her crown, gave her a wink and a wrinkle of her freckled nose.
Lil looked at me, brows nearly touching her hairline. “What? Really?”
“Shut up,” I said to her.
“You never told me The Whippoorwill was a porno.”
“It’s not a porno.”
“Why’re all these girls serving us in naughty maid costumes?” She reached over and snapped a thigh-high of a girl passing our table. The girl, a brunette with hair streaked pale-blue, giggled and gave us a careless little wave.
I glared at Lil, then at Eap with his knowing, hooded-eye smile.
Lil didn’t understand, of course. She was Lil. She hadn’t . . . she wasn’t interested in sex, so of course I didn’t share some of my stories with her. Even if she did understand, I was a 17-year-old guy after all. There were things I thought about.
I . . . wrote stuff. Private stuff. And to have all the private stuff here, sauntering past me? Leaning across the table toward me? And to have Lil and Eap sitting here, gazing on every dirty thought I’d ever had?
Eap should know better, at least. Should know not to make fun of me. I didn’t ask for my story to be the vehicle for our escape from the blyks. “Yeah,” I said. “Well, deal with it, Lil. My story. It saved your butt, so why don’t you say thank you?”
“Yeah,” Lil quipped. “This story’s all about butts.”
I stood, frustration bubbling up in me, clenching my jaw so tightly my molars creaked.
“Time for bed,” I snapped. I pointed at Dane. “And everyone up at oh-six-hundred hours. We’ll be traveling fast. All hands on deck. And engines in perfect working order. Have the coal boys pull quarter shifts and spell each other so we’re all rested.”
“Aye-aye,” Selah said, giving me a smart little salute and a small grin.
Dane broke off her flirtatious gaze with Eap and pouted at me. “That early?”
I gave her a look, and she shrugged. “Aye-aye,” she repeated.
Arapahoe nodded curtly. “We are well-stocked. Enough food for a month or more. Enough coal to take us clear across Astridia and back. The coal boys are in good shape; no sickness aboard.”
“The guns are oiled and at peak,” Selah added. “We’ve got plenty of powder and balls.”
Lil snorted.
Ignoring her, I looked at the map carefully.
The crescent of land. The tip, with the starred label, “Grandeur.” Now gone. Now Grimwoods.
“Where are we right now?” I asked Eap.
“Somewhere hereabouts,” Eap answered, moving his fingertip to a spot on the empty area around the cycle, north of the lowest point-curve.
“So we need to travel south. West.”
Lil snorted again. “Don’t try, Logan. You’re not really a ship’s captain.”
Arapahoe gave her a stern look. “Careful, girl. You’ll end in the chokey if you keep that up.”
“Shut up, Lil,” I muttered, returning my attention to the map.
“As we come over the landmass,” Eap continued, “we will have to be careful. Some . . . disguising might be in order. Is there any easily-told way you could make this great ship of yours invisible in the sky?”
“As Selah said, we’ve got the cloakers ready,” Arapahoe said. “We’ve tried them a time or two. They seem to work fine.”
<
br /> “Well then, Captain,” Eap said, giving Lil a narrow glance, “I suggest we do this thing. Cloak ourselves,” he received a nod from Arapahoe, “and make our way carefully over the firmament. I shall watch for landmarks. For now, we should be relatively safe. Our enemies will need a little time to regroup and find us. I agree that I’m due for a bit of rest.” He rose and walked toward the door. The cat waited, twitching its tail as Dane stroked its glossy back, then suddenly leapt from the table to join its master just as he left the room.
“Strange fellow.” Selah gave me a narrow look. “Drunk out of mind, I’d say.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “He pretty much always is. But he’s right. We need to cloak, and we need to move carefully. Lil, you can go with Dane and explain to her about Hans. And our . . . enemy, what we’re looking out for. She’ll organize a night watch.”
Lil narrowed her eyes at me and shot Dane a look of loathing. Dane’s brow wrinkled in response. “Food not settling well?” She asked Lil.
I gave Lil a glare. Daring her.
I mean, Arapahoe was right. I had a brig. Chokey, we on the Whippoorwill called it—a metal cage to keep insubordinates. And these men and women would obey me. I almost wanted her to argue. It would be nice to throw her in it to cool off. I was tired of her fits and teasing. It was like she’d forgotten how I’d gotten here. How it was her fault.
She blew a puff of air out of her mouth, sat back in her chair, and folded her arms. “Fine. Go to bed. I’ll catch her up. You’re getting a little cranky, Captain.”
I stood. “Good night, all.” I gestured grandly, and everyone in the room nodded or saluted back.
I again ignored Lil’s snort of laughter and walked from the room with my head held high.
And then I slumped.
I was tired. Very, very tired. Of all this. I wanted to go home. I wanted to leave this ridiculousness. I. Was. Tired.
I’d come out through the opposite end of the saloon, through the glass doors, past the curved bank of windows looking out past the rails. The clouds, fluffy and white and innocent, and the wide, deep blue—that’s all I saw. No land below. Nothing above. Just fading in the distance . . . fading to white.
