by R J Theodore
Zeela could sense the pulse quicken and hear Faelyn’s sharp intake of breath. She had expected that the repair would be performed while she waited, no doubt. But even with failing sight, she knew well enough who had entered and had no desire to spend any additional time with the Guard than Zeela had.
The woman nodded. “Good day, then.” The words were awkward, stumbling. Normally they’d have haggled over the price before she let Zeela begin the work, but this wasn’t the time. No need to draw attention to what they were discussing, nor how much her husband’s illicit dealings allowed her to pay for Zeela’s services. The woman did her best to slink out with her chin high, without bumping into the furniture. Zeela sensed the five guards watching her retreating customer until she moved beyond the exit. Her passing set the beaded doorway moving with a gentler sound.
“Good morning, Officer. How can I help you? I have a lovely lavender salve for abrasions and rashes, which has just finished fermenting.” She directed her attention at the leader of the group, picking her out by the scent of her oiled armor, which was of higher quality than the others by several degrees.
“You ran a ship back and forth to Vein ports before the borders closed.”
It wasn’t a question, but in the interest of moving the conversation forward, Zeela inclined her head in confirmation. “I did. My business relies on herbs and other ingredients that are native to Vein islands.”
She let the implication of the border closing’s effect on her business hang in the air between them.
“You still send that ship to Vein islands?”
“As we have referenced already, the border is closed.”
“Answer the question.”
“Of course not.” Technically this was not a lie as Captain Vitnir had been sent off to an island that included only Rakkar cities. However, if Zeela chose to lie, the Rosan Guard were not equipped to detect that or prove her statements false.
“When it does travel across the border, what else does it carry for you, beside ‘herbs’ and ‘other ingredients’?”
Zeela tilted her head slightly. “Occasionally it would also bring antiques as my agents were able to secure for me. But perhaps I should ask, what would you like to accuse it of carrying?”
“No newspapers? No reports?”
“No.” Her radio brought her all the news she required.
“There are disturbing rumors being spread in the undercities. Have you heard them? You have good hearing, don’t you?”
“I am sorry, officer, I do not deal in information. I deal in antiquities and remedies.”
“The death of Silus Cutter might seem like a remedy to enemies of the Empire.”
The officer forgot that everyone in Subrosa was supposed to think Silus Cutter alive, safe, and dangerous as ever. But Zeela wanted to know what else the officer knew and didn’t point out the slip. “I assure you, I am no enemy of the Cutter Empire.”
“What about your deal with the Yu’Nyun?”
Yes, she’d signed a contract with the Yu’Nyun to be their intermediary in purchases of Peridotian artifacts and other items they desired. But then they had lost their starships at Nexus, and the contract hadn’t brought Zeela anything but grief. Her Subrosan business peers and associates knew what wealth had come to her—and from where—which made them suspicious of Zeela and uncharitable to her whenever possible.
Adding in the Veritors’ plans for the aliens, it was a sensitive subject for her. She decided these guards had no information worth teasing out, after all.
“Are the Yu’Nyun refugees now considered enemies? It was my understanding they were welcomed by the Empire.”
The captain closed her mouth with an audible snap. It took a moment for her to recover, filled with the creak of leather and the clink of an absent-minded fidget of her belt buckle.
“Where is this captain of yours?”
“Transporting goods from Skybluff, and then another stop at Frostbalm, before returning here.”
“And you have no other ships in your employ which are present in Subrosan docks?”
“I have only the one ship, which is not in my employ, but contracted. They are free to determine their own schedule and carry other cargo.”
“What kinds of other cargo?”
“As I said, that is at their own discretion and none of my business.”
The captain’s gaze was palpable, as if attempting to will Zeela into revealing more. She pretended not to notice.
“Tell your captain we wish to speak with them when they return.”
Zeela inclined her head again, as noncommittal as to a customer who said they would be back later after they learned her prices. “I will mention you stopped by. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
The officer sniffed, and her leather creaked as she waved a hand to her guards. They exited in practiced stages, so that their captain was not alone on either side of the door.
The beads needed untangling again when they had gone.
“Liara, if you please, Lilac is waiting around the corner to the right and may not realize the shop is empty again.”
Liara smoothed the last twisting tangle from the beading with a ripple and hurried from the shop to fetch the Tempest courier. In moments, Lilac slipped in through one of the shop’s side doors.
“It is getting crowded in Subrosa.” Lilac followed as Zeela led to her private meeting room. Today was not the scheduled day for their radio listening.
“It is the same as everywhere else. At least we have some hope, thanks to your people.”
The silence from Lilac felt like the rough surface of fieldstone.
“What is it?”
Zeela heard Lilac shut the door behind them; then the woman’s warm fingers wrapped around Zeela’s secondary hands. Her grip was timid, troubled. “I know something I was not meant to know. I overheard the manager of our local group talking with the head of the Tempest.”
Zeela felt like she was suddenly intoxicated. The exact sense of upright and balanced wavered under the force of Lilac’s palpable fear. “Yes? What did you hear?”
“They’re after the same thing the aliens and the Veritors want.”
That didn’t seem possible. Zeela pulled her hands away. “I am not sure I understand correctly.”
Lilac took a heaving, rattling breath to calm herself. Zeela had never seen the woman lose control of her emotions. She didn’t hide them, but she was always the master of them. “Remember that we heard about ships—possibly Veritor, possibly Imperial—competing with the Bone temple fleet to salvage the alien ships?”
“You’re quite sure? The Tempest is after the alien technology?”
“I wasn’t meant to hear it. They talked quite frankly.”
“What else did they say?”
The Breaker courier shifted uncomfortably. “Something about testing something they found. I didn’t understand it, but I trust my sense for danger, and this sent chills up my spine. I don’t think the Tempest are who they claim to be. I don’t think they’re trying to help everyone on Peridot.”
“I see. They will help those they deem worthy. Perhaps if we knew who that is, we can get a better sense of what is happening. Who is the head of the Tempest?”
The swish of fabric accompanied Lilac’s shaking head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him or recognize his voice.”
“If you could find out, perhaps we could confirm what he is after.”
“I’m sorry, Zeela, but I will not be staying in Subrosa. The border is open for the coronation. I am leaving Imperial skies as soon as I can find someone to carry me away. I suggest you, Reian, and the others do the same.”
The resolve in Lilac’s voice was genuine. Zeela clasped the woman’s hands in all four of hers. “I am very sorry to hear that, but allow me to help you. Stay here. I will arrange passage for yo
u if you will promise to see Reian and the others safely home to their families.”
“Don’t just help me, Zeela. Come with me.”
Zeela shook her head. “I have work to do here. The people need to know what is happening.”
And she needed to find those other rings.
“Even if those with the means to act on your information do not have the best intentions?”
Zeela inhaled, fighting back a pang of despair. “I will have to find a better option.”
“I wish I had your tenacity.”
“You have your own strength, and if it sees my girls home, I will be glad of it.”
Zeela leaned out the door and called for Reian, but it was Liara who appeared at the summons.
A field of agitation surrounded Liara, wavering like heat off the top of a stove. She reached for and gripped Zeela’s shoulder, an uncharacteristically familiar gesture, and Zeela felt the disarray of her tattered composure.
“My lady, Reian is missing.”
Chapter 21
They stowed the Yu coffers in Im Ufite Rantor’s tween deck, above the locked cargo space holding the ship’s previous crew. They had rearranged the stores on the ship to make room for the rest of the load they’d be hauling without having to come and go from the cargo hold. But Talis had trouble falling asleep that night. Each time she drifted off, she dreamed of the coffers disappearing again, that Chel and her crew would get loose and steal back the ship, complete with that cargo, or that holes in the hull opened up, dropping the Yu crates to flotsam again.
Finally, when the anxiety drove her out of bed to check on the crates, she found Sophie there, sitting atop one coffer, wrapped in a blanket. Staring through the glass panels of the loading hatch, looking as though she were haunted by similar phantoms. She was spinning the assassin’s knife in her hands, running her fingertip over its vicious barbs.
So they’d warmed up the frozen block of two year-old coffee, covered the stale taste of frost with a jigger—or two—of spiced rum in each mug, and joined Tisker at the wheel. Despite their success, and their outward cheer, there were gaps in the conversation. Natural pauses to allow for Dug to make some terse comment or offer a frown, but he was below, taking his shift to guard the other crew. In his absence, they eventually lapsed into a comfortable silence. Soon, Talis promised herself, I’ll get the four of us out here proper.
She was looking forward to when her old jacket would be completely thawed. She hadn’t looked the part of a real airship captain in so long. Her reflection still showed her the refugee in patched and mended Rakkar hand-me-downs snuck out of Amos’s lab.
Then she went to relieve Dug so he could rest. She wasn’t going to get any sleep with him wounded on watch, anyway. He’d gotten stitched back up and even a blood donation from Vennika herself, but something was still off about him. Not that he would admit it. Talis wished they had a larger crew, some allies she could trust, so they didn’t need him to work at all. At the very least, the ship needed a full complement of Sophie’s upgrades to lighten the work required to run it. Her throat was raspy from all the chanteys it was taking to coordinate the lines and sails.
She hadn’t gotten much sleep herself, but between her worry for Dug and the nightmares about their recovered wealth slipping out of their grasp again, she had no trouble staying up through the extra watch.
The next morning, Talis and Tisker relocated the coffers to the great cabin while Sophie managed the helm.
Talis secured the great cabin door with a key as though they were at dock and about to leave the ship unattended. She took no chances. Not anymore.
They traveled sinistral now, along the curve of Nexus and against the slow churn of flotsam, to the broad field of coordinates Eneil’s contract named as the primary salvage site. Heddard Bay slipped past on their starboard, Vuur Artak’s lit side faced them, and Nexus cast long shadows of their port railing across the deck. Talis paused to squint at it through the scope on her way to meet Sophie on the lower transom.
The alien wreck was a great, gleaming curve of shining silver against the rougher texture of frost-encrusted garbage below.
But they weren’t the only ones who had come to claim it.
“Captain!” Sophie held out a scope for her when she arrived, but Talis still had her own at hand and leaned over the railing to see what had upset Sophie.
Two ships: a green-hulled Cutter galley, its flag bearing a blue star against a golden field, and what looked like a Bone sloop that had wrapped itself in a chrysalis of canvas to transform into something else . . .
Talis shook herself. Whatever it was, the Bone craft hung dangerously low in the sky over flotsam. Eneil’s ship had been well outfitted for a salvage operation but it couldn’t descend that far below Horizon. The Bone ship was defended by a cluster of smaller vessels, longboats that were engaging the Cutter ship in battle at the higher altitude. The ships outmaneuvered the Cutter galley, using their smaller cannons effectively against the galley’s non-articulated guns. Despite facing at least fifty cannons, the longboats were harassing the larger ship and keeping it well occupied as they circled it, landing hits on its lift system and drawing its fire away from the vulnerable Bone ship. The attack pattern was relentless.
“Hold us back, Tisker. We haven’t got enough people or cannons to play along with them.”
“Aye, Cap.”
She turned the scope back on the strange canvas beast, adjusting the lean of her hips as the ship came to an all stop. “Obviously the Cutter ship—Veritors is my guess—are taking advantage of the open borders. But that other one—is that what I think it is, Sophie?”
The Bone ship, emblazoned with the name Ketzali het Parantu over its top aft quarter rigging, reminded Talis of the folded airships children would make from sheets of paper. Except instead of two pieces of paper strung together, it was a single silhouette, cream and round like a lift balloon that had wandered off without its hull. It looked very much like an attempt to recreate a Yu’Nyun ship with woven canvas instead of burnished metal.
“If you’re thinking someone’s trying to build a starship, Captain, I’d say so.” Her voice was breathy, and not just because she’d leaned with the transom railing pressing against her stomach. Sophie was already puzzling out the design, Talis knew.
“Think it’ll work?”
Sophie chuckled. “To make that canvas airtight? It’d be so heavy with shellacs and tar seals, their undercarriage would have to be all lift balloon to pull the weight. And once they break atmo, pretending for a moment they can even run free of Nexus’s homeogravitation, there’s gonna be some massive compensation to manage.”
Talis glanced at Sophie. The girl had pulled a notepad and pen out of one pocket or another and was scribbling notes while Talis was struggling to even follow along. “Compensation for what?”
“Temperature fluctuations, gases, turbulence like you’ve never felt before, and who knows what else. Maybe they’ve already figured out all that. There’d have to be more than just that envelope, for sure. Wish I could get a look inside.” She flipped to a new page and kept writing.
Talis glanced through the scope again and chuckled. “Doesn’t help them much in a fight. One cannonball through that sheath and never mind all the trouble they went through.”
The crews operating the longboats seemed well aware of that detail. They buzzed the Cutter ship again and again. Until the Cutter ship brought out its articulated deck cannons.
“Ouch!” Sophie winced and looked away as one of the longboats splintered, struck through its hull by one of the five-pound balls. It collapsed on itself, folding in half and pitching its crew out for the final drop.
“Well, so much for that plan.” Talis swept her sight over the Cutter galley. It wasn’t an Imperial ship, or even Veritor. The Cutter sailors on deck wore plain clothes, like a private crew. But there was a formality to
their movements. They were academy trained and knew what they were doing. Within seconds, there were pivoting cannons mounted at ten points around the railing. Smaller cannons, but effective enough to turn the battle in their favor. Talis wasn’t sure she would be glad to deal with them instead of the Bone ship, and it would be a shame if Peridot’s first offering for the stars went down before its time.
Apparently the crews on the long boats felt the same way. Sophie gasped as crackling beams of sickly yellow light cut through the air.
“They’re using Yu’Nyun weapons!”
“Last resort, though. So they’ve either been trying to keep those secret, or they’re limited use.”
“Don’t seem to need many shots to be effective, though.”
It was true. The long boat rifle crews had already seared black burns across the deck of the Cutter galley and taken out one of her lift lines. The Cutter crew scrambled across the weather deck, continuing the volley of the articulated cannons, but now it was to cover their retreat. The long boats persisted in their fire, damaging the hull and lift system for good measure, before finally circling back and holding a defensive position above the Ketzali.
She stowed her scope and stalked back into the cover of Im Ufite Rantor’s lower passages, nodded to Dug as she passed into the cargo hold, then crouched down beside the glowering Captain Chel.
“Ketzali het Parantu. That’s Onaya’s temple salvage crew, isn’t it?” Talis kept her voice low for the benefit of the command structure. The quiet crack of distant cannons could be heard through the hull.
Captain Chel looked unimpressed. “The calico monstrosity? We’ve run across them before, when we were sounding the other ships.”
Talis narrowed her eyes. “So what happens next?”
Chel shrugged. “They warn us back, then set off a few of the traps aboard the alien ships and give up when the loss of life is too much. They head back to the temple to report and regroup, then try again another day.”
“They’re getting hurt in the Yu ships?”
