by A. C. Cobble
“He’s trying to sleep with you,” croaked Duke. He leaned over the railing and coughed.
She worried the nobleman was going to be sick, showering the hard-working laborers ten stories below with his bile. “Perhaps the other side of the platform…”
“You’re probably the only woman on this thing,” mumbled Duke. “The captain’s trying to make a claim.”
She glanced at the captain.
He shrugged sheepishly. “You’re not the only woman aboard, but…”
“The rules are different outside of Enhover,” continued Duke, still leaning precariously over the railing. “Your standing amongst the peers or within the Church doesn’t mean as much. Just because you’re a priestess, don’t expect special treatment.”
“Company colonies, Company rule,” agreed the captain.
“I’m not a priestess, not really,” reminded Sam. She looked to the captain. “I’ll keep your offer in mind.”
“Bunk her with me for now,” instructed Duke, shifting and squeezing his head between his hands. “If she decides to sleep elsewhere, that’s up to her.”
“Fair enough,” agreed the captain. He looked to Sam. “Shall I show you your room, then?”
“I’d appreciate that. Ah, do we need to...” She waved a hand at Duke.
“He’s been on the Cloud Serpent enough to know the layout, but, m’lord, perhaps you should have someone assist you up the gangplank? It’d be an inauspicious start to our journey if you toppled over the side before we even left the bridge.”
Ignoring the foul string of curses and rude gestures from the nobleman, Sam followed the captain up the gangplank, staying close, trying to pretend she wasn’t stepping from a solid platform built on hard earth onto a contraption of wood and rock that floated freely and unsupported. She certainly did not want to dwell on the certainty of the messy, splattery death that a fall would bring.
“You know how these work, right?” asked the captain as he led her aboard. “Sometimes knowing helps new fliers. Sometimes it doesn’t.”
“There is ballast or some such, right?”
He nodded at her, grinning. “The famous levitating rocks of Archtan Atoll. You’ll see them throughout the day before we reach our destination, actually. There are dozens of them floating on the route to the main island where the Company founded Archtan Town. The islands are anchored to the earth, mined, and trimmed to fit in the hold of our ships. It is ballast, I suppose, or maybe I should say the opposite. Instead of weighing us down through choppy sea, this ballast lifts us, and we fly above it.”
“Anchored and mined?” wondered Sam.
Captain Haines nodded. “Wait until you see it.” He opened a door at the rear of the vessel and waved her inside. “The captain’s cabin. My own quarters, when a company director or your duke are not along for the journey.”
“We’re kicking you out of your room?” asked Sam. “I don’t mind sleeping—”
“The Crown doesn’t hold as much sway on board my ship or in the colonies as it does in Enhover, but he’s still a duke,” interrupted the captain. “Besides, they’ll make room at the director’s table in Company House the moment he wants a seat. A Wellesley, a fearless explorer, and the richest man in Westundon. I’d grant you my cabin if you asked it, ma’am, but the duke doesn’t need to ask.”
Sam paused, turning in the compact room to face the captain. “The richest man in Westundon?”
“Of course,” replied the captain, stepping inside after her. “Who else would it be? Randolph Raffles hasn’t been a company director for more than three years, though he’s been in the employ for at least a dozen. Prince Philip has the treasury, but that sterling belongs to the Crown, not him. None of the other merchants in Westundon can hold a flickering candle to the type of wealth a share in an expedition may bring. Duke Wellesley has shares in Imbon, the Southlands, and half a dozen of the Vendatt Islands. He could be the governor of the Westlands if he wanted the job. Archtan Atoll is about the only piece of Company property he doesn’t have a share in.”
Sam stared at the captain, speechless.
“You’re not his girl, are you?” asked the captain. “If you are but don’t want to tell me, well, this ship isn’t that big. People will find out. You don’t have to bunk with me if you don’t like. I won’t pressure you more than you want, but if you’re his girl, I need to let the boys know so they keep their eyes off you. They’re not as careful as I am, and I don’t want them getting themselves into trouble.”
Blinking, Sam shook her head. “I’m not his girl, but I have no interest in your crew — not in that way. Save us all some time and let them know, Captain.”
Captain Haines nodded then proceeded to show her around the cabin. There wasn’t much to see — a bed, a couch, a table, a wardrobe, and a narrow closet where one could perform the necessaries.
“That’s the best thing about the cabin,” remarked Haines. “The only reason I maintain it for myself, to be honest. I’ve gotten used to sleeping in the officer’s quarters, and their snoring and stinking doesn’t bother me any longer. Having a quiet private place to… you know… that’s worth gold.”
“I can imagine,” murmured Sam.
“You care to see the rocks?” asked Captain Haines. “The rest of the Cloud Serpent is a standard layout — cannon, the hold, the mess, and the crew’s quarters. Same here as you’d see on any ship out of Enhover, on the sea or in the air. The rocks, though, that’s something different.”
Sam nodded, and the captain led her back on deck and then down a steep series of ladders. He grabbed a globe from a hook and shook it, causing a dozen sparkling, emerald lights to flare awake. He led her farther into the ship, holding the globe by a short loop of rope and illuminating their way.
“Damn faes get sleepy up in the air. Down near the ground they stay awake longer.”
“You can afford to keep fae lights on this, ah, vessel?”
“Vessel? As good a term as any. Fae lights are better than some crewman tripping and dropping a burning lamp filled with oil,” responded Haines. “Don’t get me wrong. The Company isn’t so concerned for our safety, or even the value of the cargo, but these rocks are worth twenty times their mass in gold. We’ve only got a dozen of these airships in the Company fleet, and there are about the same flown by the royal marines. The airships are the only way we can maintain our trade advantage in the tropics and are the one thing that keeps the United Territories in line. The Company wouldn’t like to eat that financial loss, and the Crown can’t afford to lose the military power, so every airship has fae lights.”
The captain shook the globe again, and the fae swarmed about, flaring brighter, bathing the hold of the ship in a pale-green glow.
At the base of the stairwell, a narrow aisle separated two wooden walls. In the dim light, Sam couldn’t see the far end of the hallway, but she thought it extended from the back to the front of the ship. Stifling a creeping sense of claustrophobia, she followed the captain into the narrow space.
“Water up top, the rocks are down below,” he said. He walked halfway down the aisle then stopped and knelt. He opened an access panel and shifted to give her room to look inside.
Sam leaned down beside him and peered into the compartment. The light of the fae shone on a huge, flat rock. It was about a yard thick and hovered in the air with a few hand-lengths of space below it.
“You can crawl in and look up if you want. From in between the cracks you can see the beams the rock is supporting. It extends across the entire base of the airship. Big flat rocks like this, heavy beams to set on them, that’s what keeps us in the sky.”
“Crawl underneath that?” said Sam. “Not today. What… what’s the purpose of the space here?”
“When we want to descend,” explained the captain, “we trickle water on top of the rock. The water interferes with the air spirits that levitate the thing and the rock starts to sink. You’ve got to be careful and make it just a trickle, though. If we dumped
the entire store, we’d plummet right down to the ground. More than one airship has been lost that way by some stupid crewman opening the stops and leaving them open. Since we don’t allow fire outside of the kitchen area, it’s about the most dangerous thing that can happen to us.”
Sam stood, marveling at the huge floating rock. “What about storms?”
The captain coughed and rubbed his lips. “All right, second most dangerous thing. Over friendly territory, if we see a storm, we head down, lower the sails, and ride it out that way. Over the sea, the best option is to run ahead of the storm.”
“And if you can’t escape it?” wondered Sam.
“Then hold on, girl. Adventure isn’t always safe.”
That evening, Sam, Duke, and Captain Haines sat on the forecastle of the airship, all clustered around a barrel head. During the day, Sam had realized the airship was an odd mixture of luxury and practical, parsimonious, space saving. They had fae lights and enough cannon and shot to invade a small nation, but there was no dining area set aside for the officers. The kitchen was a cramped affair that specialized in boiling stews and serving salted cuts of meat and hard breads. The men were well-paid, judging by the shillings they were gambling on the other side of the deck, but they slept in hammocks stacked three high, and they worked in twelve-hour shifts with little leisure to give them a break.
“They don’t do it because they enjoy the time on the ship,” explained Captain Haines. “They do it because back at port, they live like noblemen. Or at least, what they think they’d do if they were peers. My first mate, Catherine Ainsley, earns the same a captain would on the sea, and even the deck swabs can support a family back home. Not to mention, there are worse vantages to view the world from.”
Sam nodded, peeking over the gunwale. Far below them, the twilight-lit rolling green hills of central Enhover sped by. They were moving on strong winds, twice the speed of a running horse, and by dawn, they’d be passing the east coast of the country. She’d been disappointed when they told her they would pass between Eastundon and Southundon, seeing neither, but she was excited about looking over the open sea, the Vendatt Islands, and Archtan Atoll.
“Where will we stop to resupply?” asked Duke.
“We cleared the trip plan with the Company logistics officer,” responded Captain Haines.
“I’m not trying to change the plan, captain. I’m just curious what it is,” claimed Duke.
“Imbon,” answered the captain. “We’ll set in at Imbon before making the last leg to Archtan Atoll. Ten, eleven days to Imbon, wind-willing, a day to resupply, then another three to the atoll.”
“Imbon,” said Duke. “It’s been years since I’ve stopped there.”
“You mapped it, no?” asked Haines.
“I did,” confirmed Duke, leaning back on the tiny folding chair the captain had pulled out for them to sit on during the evening meal. “Let’s plan to spend an extra day in Imbon. I want to stretch my legs there.”
“Not trying to change the plans?” questioned Haines.
Duke grinned at him.
Sam marveled as, yet again, she watched the duke casually command those around him, even after saying he wouldn’t, and they all fell in with whatever he asked. There were perks, it seemed, to being royalty.
They finished their meal as the sun set behind them, turning the canvas sails above into brilliant pink, orange, and gold reflections. She thought they could stand beside any of the canvas hanging in Westundon’s art museums. When the sun finally dropped below the horizon, the color bled away, and the silver light of the moon bathed the deck of the airship in an ethereal glow. The crew hung half a dozen glass globes containing the fae lights so they could see to adjust the rigging.
“Care for another bottle?” asked the captain, shaking the last few drops of wine into his cup. “The Company only rations grog and a few barrels of ale, but I’ve learned to stash a healthy private store of decent wine for evenings like this.”
“Not me,” mumbled Duke. “I… I had a bit much last night, and sleep is what I need now.”
Captain Haines turned to Sam.
She shook her head. “I didn’t sleep last night either, and if I had another glass, you’d see me flat on this deck and snoring.”
Haines held up his hands as if conceding defeat.
Sam stood to follow Duke, who was already shuffling toward the cabin.
Inside, the royal unceremoniously plopped down on a short couch on one side of the room, declaring, “You can have the bed.”
She stood, looking at him. A duke, a son of the king, a man alleged to be the wealthiest in Westundon, sleeping on the too-small couch. His legs were propped up on a padded arm-rest, his boots hanging off the side. His head was cushioned only by a tiny pillow. When she’d first met him, he’d been a perfect ass. After getting to know him, it seemed, he was the perfect gentleman. As she watched his breathing slow, he started to snore.
“Well, no one is perfect,” she muttered to herself.
Kicking off her boots and peeling out of her leather trousers, Sam curled up in the bed, listening to the crack of the sails in the wind, the soft sounds of the sailors speaking to each other outside on the deck, and the gentle drone of Duke’s breathing.
An adventure like none she’d ever been on before. Threats like she hadn’t seen since she was a girl. But all she could think about was the baroness she’d helped carry that morning.
The Cartographer VI
It was midday when they spied Imbon. Situated to the south of the chain of islands known as the Vendatts, it was two days sailing from the nearest occupied land. It had gone unexplored until the advent of airships and until Oliver had led an expedition that mapped the fringes of the Vendatt chain, searching for potential colonies that were not already claimed by one of the United Territories.
The United Territories — Rhensar, Ivalla, and Finavia, under the guise of their joint exploration authority, had claimed dozens of the islands before Enhover’s might had expanded to present strength. The seas had been thick with United Territory trading cogs darting amongst the small, tropical landmasses. Once the shadow of Enhover’s airships fell across their bows, though, the advance of the United Territory colonies slowed, and Enhover’s expanded by leaps and bounds.
Imbon was different, compared to the other colonies in the tropics. It was ten times the size of the average island in the chain, making it large enough to support a dense colony. There was a tribe of natives living there and they’d quickly agreed to work for the Company when they saw the technology that would come with that employment, though Oliver wasn’t naive enough to think they hadn’t also seen the cannon and swords that the Company men carried and that the natives couldn’t infer another outcome outside of gainful employment. It wasn’t uncommon, unfortunately, for colonial governments to simply remove a native population by one means or another.
But for a decade in Imbon, the relationship between the Company’s government and the native population had been peaceful, and the colony had thrived. It had rich, fertile soil and a trove of spices which fetched premium prices back in Enhover. It had men and women who had been harvesting those spices for generations and were willing to assist the Company. It had a deep, protected port where seafaring vessels found ample anchorage. It was now a central trading nexus in the Vendatt Islands, not just for Enhover, but for the three United Territories as well.
Ketches and skiffs would skitter around the Vendatt chain, collecting and stockpiling goods in Imbon’s warehouses. There, the giant freighters would dock and load, making it an easy one-stop trip to the tropics.
All the while, the Company — and Oliver — collected rent on warehouse space, wharf fees on every ship that berthed, and a premium on goods sold direct to the United Territory traders with very little effort involved. It was one of the most peaceful and lucrative endeavors in Company history.
Imbon also served as a reinforcement in the hemisphere for Enhover’s other tropical colony — A
rchtan Atoll, the jewel of the Company’s possessions. A fast strike by a large enough force could potentially overwhelm one of the settlements, but as long as the other one survived, the perpetrators would have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. No other nation had discovered technology sufficient to challenge Enhover’s airships.
Oliver leaned his elbows on the gunwale, holding his hand above his eyes to shade them from the brilliant sun.
“You should get a pair of these,” mentioned Sam, tapping a finger on the goggles Captain Haines had provided for her. “They were great in that rain four days past, and the casing blocks much of the sun when it’s high above head.”
Oliver shrugged. “A hat would serve the same purpose.”
“Then you should get a hat,” suggested Sam.
He frowned at her. “Few gentlemen from Enhover wear hats.”
“That’s because they have on wigs,” remarked Sam. “You don’t wear one of those, either.”
“They’re not practical on expedition,” replied Oliver.
She opened her mouth, but he turned, looking back down below, watching Imbon grow larger as the Cloud Serpent approached on quick winds.
“I suppose you can find some sailor to hold an umbrella over your head while you sit here moodily staring into the distance,” grumbled Sam.
“I’m not being moody,” he replied, not turning to look at her and giving her the pleasure of getting under his skin. Wigs were impractical and hats were unfashionable. That was all of the thought he wanted to put into it. “I’m… I’m excited, actually. I found this place, you know, ten years ago. I spent some time there while the colony was being established but I haven’t been back since. I’ve seen it a few times from a distance while on the way to Archtan Atoll, but I’ll be glad to put my boots on that soil again. It’s a beautiful island, and I regret I didn’t have more time to explore it last I was here.”
Sam turned her eyes to look at the growing speck of green. “Why haven’t you been back?”