Salvage

by R J Theodore

  But standing out in Lippen was better than trying to blend into any Cutter city. If they went back, they’d have no ship, and there’d be Veritors and bounty hunters after them to stop them from spreading what they knew.

  It was safer, until they were back on a ship of their own, to stay out of Cutter skies. And in the bustling trade city that Lippen had become after proximity to Nexus no longer caused physical pain and ships were willing to come this close, they could earn their keep, plus enough to buy the materials Sophie needed for what came next.

  Two years. A gods-rotted long time to plan their escape and triumphant return to the skies of the Cutter Empire. They had a plan, but it had to go off as smoothly as the finest Rakkar clockwork.

  Talis scanned along Horizon, where the trade winds brought ships in dextralwise from Vein skies, and Bone skies before that. And Cutter skies before that.

  It was a Cutter ship she was watching for. Always was.

  But especially today.

  She was disappointed to see the only vessels inbound to port were small local craft. Most were Bone make as Bone merchanters were second only to Cutter folk in sailing skill, and often their ships played host to those Vein merchants—all blind—with a similar inclination. She cast a glance up and around to see where the sun was. This close to Nexus, the small, pale sun of Peridot was useless except as a timepiece. Everything was lit by the brilliant, eye-straining sphere of magic at the center of their world. The only reason she didn’t have to squint her eyes almost entirely shut were the thick, dark lenses of the goggles she wore, which also filtered out the green and brought some semblance of true color back to her vision.

  Some days, it felt as though Talis would mold over with the waiting. Cutter ships had become a rare sight since the Imperials had shut down their borders.

  There were plenty of rides off the island, but they’d only get them as far as another harbor on the wrong side of the Cutter border, exposing them to anyone who would take exception to what Talis and her crew would have to say about what really happened at Nexus, and what the aliens and Veritors were really up to. Their exit strategy required passage on the type of ship that could handle a low-atmo crossing back into Imperial skies, and enough money to buy a sky-worthy vessel of their own once they were there.

  Even working seven jobs between the four of them, those kinds of funds were beyond reach. Smugglers most of their lives, the novelty of working honestly had quickly given over to impatience, but those jobs were a key part of the plans written up in the notes coded onto every scrap of paper they could find.

  The thud of her boots on the dock planks turned to a crunch against broken shells as she reached the shoreline. She kept her gaze on her feet as she headed back up to the harbormaster’s office, where the shells turned to paved cobblestone and the shadow of the island’s volcano, Vuur Artak, swept over her. With a sigh of relief, she pulled the thick goggles down around her neck and rubbed the creases they left in the skin of her cheekbones and eyebrows.

  The harbormaster’s office was built as far from the coastline as it possibly could and still be associated with the docks. The Rakkar staff wasted no space for windows, not wanting to be reminded they were so close to the edge of the island and the long drop through cold, open skies below. Instead, the walls were lined with counters. Below them, filing drawers and cabinets, and above, posted schedules and currency conversion charts. Near the door was her manager’s favorite object in all Peridot’s shattered glory: the time clock. A contraption almost as tall as Talis, it consisted of a steel cabinet painted deep red, prickly with handles, knobs, gears, and levers. Almost as prickly as the handwritten note warning everyone not to touch anything, lest the finer movements inside the cabinet be misaligned. The contraption ticked in precise synchrony with Ra-Kaz, the enormous timepiece that Lippen’s founding engineers had built as the beating heart at the center of the city below. The office’s time clock had a cabinet door that offered one thin slot into which employees inserted their time cards at each end of shifts and breaks. Small asterisks would be punched into the paper inside the machine, in specific patterns Talis couldn’t decipher, but which her manager reviewed before doling pay to ensure any indiscretions were withheld from the promised daily sum.

  Talis passed a handful of desks where clerks scratched away at many double sets of ledgers. Their job was to creatively tax the difference in weights and payments so the harbormaster’s office would get its share of the profits from smuggled goods. The clerks were consumed with this meaningful work and ignored her entirely.

  “Good morning, Nisa.” Talis dropped the Bone captain’s purse on the dock manager’s desk with a heavy metallic clink.

  “Getting better.” Nisa lifted the purse and transferred it between her hands three times.

  Like all her people, Nisa had a tough chitin shell masking most of her face in lovely gradients of gold, peach, and mottled cream. Her hair was carefully combed into six small buns stacked in two neat columns down the back of her head, continuing the line from the largest of her forehead spikes.

  The dock manager was smartly dressed in a silk blouse and cravat, waistcoat, and velvet pants gathered at the knee above her stockings. Her shoes, propped up on the supports of her wheelchair, were leather punched with intricate designs over the toes. Enormous brass buckles glittered in the interior lamplight. Lippen was prosperous, and in the two years since Talis arrived, Rakkar buckles had only gotten shinier.

  Nisa, along with more than three-quarters of her Lippen neighbors, were living evidence of the alchemy that absolutely, no question about it, one hundred percent, did not take place in Lippen. Some bore scars, others had lost digits or entire limbs, while some, like their god, had experimented on themselves and changed their appearance in superficial or structural ways. Disability was not a scale for grading a person’s success with alchemy; if every scar represented a valuable lesson, the people of Lippen were as wealthy from knowledge as they were from coin.

  Nisa was the sweetest woman Talis had ever known, and she liked Talis. Of course she did; Talis requested no time off and would work the docks over open skies all day long. Most of the Rakkar people suffered agoraphobia and vertigo; dock work was pretty much the last job they wanted, short of crewing the ships themselves.

  Talis had the opposite problem, unable to relax or breathe easily in the confined passages of the underground city. She was only too happy to reduce her time below ground while earning extra coin.

  The corners of Nisa’s mouth creased with satisfaction as she opened the pouch and poured its contents into the porcelain tray of her scale.

  “Bone coinage, copper and silver, with turquoise and pink feldspars. Ten ounces. This includes the bribe?”

  In Cutter skies, you had a maze of laws to navigate between, or else disguise your cargo and hope to sneak it past. Not here. In Heddard Bay, there was a clear understanding of just what sort of goods might be arriving to, and departing from, the docks. Here, customs inspections were only intended to make sure dangerous items were well-secured and expensive items taxed to the thousandth decimal place.

  Talis nodded. “Light stuffing with tinker illicits, but their cargo was mostly legit.”

  She knew better than to lean against Nisa’s desk, so Talis pretended to peruse the reservations schedule while the other woman sorted the payment into piles and made notations in her two open ledgers. Nisa then wheeled her chair back to carry the payments to their respective drop tubes at the far wall. The tubes were installed a half arm-span too high for Nisa’s wheelchair. She spun the adjustment wheel on one side until her seat rose high enough for her to reach.

  Talis watched the manager in her periphery. Nisa made the coin deposit, and the whish-whunk of the tube system carried it off to the vaults below ground. She returned her seat to its usual height and wheeled back to her desk. The tubes sent the deposits to a vault deep within Lippen’s banking distr
ict. Reverse pressure sucked them away within moments of Talis handing them over. Their security was admirable, except it made the whole system terribly complicated to crack for those with an eye to make an unauthorized withdrawal. Complicated, but not impossible. Not when one had an engineer like Sophie on her side.

  Nisa noticed Talis at the berthing assignment chart.

  “The Folly’s overdue.” She attempted to sound casual, but Talis knew better. Over two years, Talis had learned to read Rakkar posturing even better than she had when she was a smuggler. She also knew what it meant when Nisa slipped out of her coin-counting tone and dialed up the doting aunt routine.

  Sure, Talis had a knot in her stomach over Bill’s tardiness, but not for the reasons Nisa openly suspected. “I told you, he’s twice my age and not my type.”

  “Experience can be a very good thing.” Nisa had five children and was on her third long-term romance, complete with contract of partnership and statements of joint business. “Which I can see you appreciate, by the way your eyes light up at the mention of his ship.”

  Talis laughed. “He’s a reminder of home, Nisa. I’m not looking for romance.”

  Nisa hadn’t grasped that idea before, and only clucked her tongue and shook her head now. She didn’t know why, but Talis hated to disappoint her.

  “I do like Bill’s cat, though.” She almost rolled her eyes at herself, knowing Nisa would seize on that opportunity.

  Nisa smiled as broadly as her chitin mask would allow, flashing rows of small, perfect teeth, convinced of her victory. “Every lasting partnership starts somewhere.”

  Talis scoffed. “Tell you what. When he brings me word that the Imperials have pulled their heads out of their bilge pipes, I’ll give him a right proper kiss and let him take me out to dinner.”

  Her true interests in Bill were twofold. One, since he’d found her crew and their lifeboat on the docks of Heddard Bay, he had been her sole source of reliable news from outside Vein skies. There were updates from the few Vein expats who hadn’t fled Cutter cities when the Empire started sealing off the borders to control the flow of information, but those reports could be months old. Or the information had hopped between so many Vein radio towers that they were all-but unreliable. Bill brought her fresh news, before the color and life had been drained out of it—or, if not quite fresh, only as stale as the length of his transit from here to there.

  Two, he was going to get them home. His innocent-seeming ship was engineered with an extended buoyancy range, ideal for the kinds of maneuvers it took to get around—and under—border patrols. With the Cutter borders closed, it was their only chance at getting back. Once, crossing only meant paying outrageous import tolls and tolerating a search of cargo. Fine. Talis knew how to hide the stuff she wasn’t supposed to have. These days, approaching the border was likely to get a ship a few extra ventilation holes in her lift balloons, her hull, and her crew. But Bill would get them through, and for a friendly fare so they wouldn’t be left destitute once they got home.

  Talis focused on the schedule for the first time. “Lotta traffic scheduled for the next week. That’s a bit unusual, isn’t it?”

  Nisa made a distracted sound of assent instead of answering. Talis looked over her shoulder, but the other woman had drifted back into her bookkeeping.

  So Talis left the confines of the harbormaster’s office and returned to the docks where she could feel the cold breeze caress her face and tug at her jacket. One day, they’d leave Heddard Bay behind and let the real winds whip about them. It was the promise Talis had made to herself, and to her crew who’d given up so much on her account.

  Dug, who’d lost his goddess because of Talis. Well, to be fair, not lost completely. The deposed Bone Alchemist was around, somewhere, reduced to a squawking, furious raven and bereft of her former powers. It was Talis and the others who’d truly lost their god, Silus Cutter. But at least Talis didn’t carry any personal responsibility for that.

  She was responsible for Sophie, whose dreams of building the most ambitious airship in all four skies had gone down to the trash layer of flotsam with the money that was supposed to pay for it.

  And Tisker. Tisker, who followed Talis wherever she led, his faith in her never slacking with the change in the wind.

  And their winds had changed, damn it to all five hells. Some days, she lost a sense of the wind entirely. Days like today, when she had to board someone else’s ship and the smells and sounds of it made her body ache with old memories, Talis could work herself into a right sour mood about their situation. But it was one they’d come to as a group. Together. And together was all they had after Wind Sabre dropped to flotsam.

  It was just the four of them, as it had been for years before the wreck. Just . . . without a ship. The underground city of Lippen had become their home for the time being.

  No. Talis bit her tongue as if it could stop the thought. Heddard Bay, Lippen, and the tiny room they rented there were not ‘home.’ The whole situation was temporary. A refuel stop on the way back to their life. A longer stop than anticipated, to be sure. And might be longer yet if Bill didn’t check in soon.

  She’d tried to plan her way around the closed borders, had even considered methods that might get them back aboard a ship, even if they didn’t end their exile. But there really was no way to continue their career in full if they didn’t return to Cutter skies and deal with the Veritors, where they could spread the truth and raise hell, then disappear into the crowd. Even though here, where they stood out like glow pumpkins lighting the morning sky—three golden Cutter folk and one swarthy Bone man in threadbare clothes—it was safer than being within reach of the Veritors and Yu’Nyun invaders who would stop at little to enforce their silence.

  Hankirk could have helped resolve this, had even once promised her he would—but he’d finagled passage back to Cutter skies mere hours after they’d taken off his ruined arm in a Lippen clinic. He was supposed to stay with Scrimshaw when it was Talis’s turn to see her crew’s medical needs tended to, but he’d taken their defected alien friend and disappeared. Things hadn’t improved in the two years since, so Hankirk had either failed to keep his promise, or failed to try.

  Fine. Whatever. Talis didn’t care about Hankirk. He’d failed her at every opportunity—that was all that mattered. Pulling their backsides out of flotsam at the last moment didn’t right a career’s worth of selfish actions. She cared that he’d handed Scrimshaw back to xist people in exchange for his comfy position in the capital. She cared that she’d had to learn from dock rumors that Scrimshaw had died of xist wounds in Diadem. She resented that she’d had to carry that news back to their room and witness the grief take another notch out of her crew. She cared about the mess the Veritors made of the situation, and she was ready to return home and make as much trouble for them as possible.

  For now, she played her part, inspecting cargo, renting dock equipment, hooking up the airship lines and gantries, and spending her days on the docks as close to open skies as she could get without a ship of her own.

  “Oi, Talis!” called out one Bone merchant in the Common Tongue as she walked past his berth. His ship was loaded with lambswool, bound for Gladstone. “You still here? Thought you’d have spun ’round Nexus by now, to tell the folks back home what they missed!”

  She waved a dismissive hand at the owner of the voice. She’d grown accustomed to the teasing banter. “You mean to tell me you don’t enjoy knowing more than the Imperials?”

  Everyone on this side of the Cutter borders knew pretty much exactly what happened in the chaos two years before. But the massive sphere of Nexus eclipsed those events from Cutter eyes, and now the Veritor-infested Imperial government had invited the aliens to their table—the same aliens that tried to rip the magic heart out of Peridot and leave the planet’s entire population to drift loose into the stars.

  Another ship’s crewman was passing her
on the docks, close enough to overhear. “Just tell me where to send my donations.” His ship had bars of copper headed for Ainteague. “I’m heartbroken over the boney devils.”

  Outside of the Empire, the concept of Yu’Nyun ‘refugees’ was laughable. They’d lost their ships, sure, but no way was that enough to make them harmless. The aliens were inevitably going to turn on the Veritors, but those once-xenophobic, still-racist fools were so blinded by their lust for the power Yu’Nyun technology offered them that they couldn’t see the impending treachery. Nor would the regular Cutter folk who looked to their government for protection, guidance, and honesty.

  No, there’d be no honesty from the Veritors or the government whose strings they pulled. Certainly not from the Yu’Nyun, who were now pulling the Veritors’ strings in turn.

  It had to come from direct witnesses, though, or it wouldn’t be believed. And since Hankirk had gone home and remained silent on the matter, that put Talis and her crew in the awkward position of needing to save the world. Again.

  She hated save-the-world missions. She hated painting a target on her hull and flaunting it in front of the legitimate Imperial forces, never mind the Veritors.

  But no one else was going to stop this corruption of her nation, her world. Maybe Meran could have, but she had proven she meant to use her astounding power for her own goals. Talis and her crew were the only ones who could recount the truth of what happened. If only they could make it home.

  Truth. Truth was the weapon that would expose the Veritor and Yu’Nyun plots to overthrow the Gods and claim Nexus—Peridot’s very heart—for themselves and Talis planned to arrive back in Cutter skies, cannons blasting righteous fury upon them all.

  Chapter 3

  The Veritors of the Lost Codex had lost their way. There was once a time when Hankirk believed he only needed to show them his brilliance to be given the opportunities to lead. But he hadn’t been brilliant.