Dragonseers and Airships

by Chris Behrsin

  I took hold of Wiggea’s other hand, so he couldn’t scratch behind his neck and continue looking nervous. Then, I gazed into his soft hazel eyes. The reflection from the lava below them swirled in them, giving them an almost menacing, powerful quality. “Rastano… Do you think in another life, where I wasn’t your superior, and there weren’t any wars, that perhaps we could?”

  “We could what?” Although he couldn’t now use his hands to make any nervous gestures, they still felt a little stiff and the corner of his mouth had that same nervous tic.

  “You know what I mean…” And I was beginning to regret even asking.

  “I don’t know, Maam,” and I could see this wasn’t going anywhere.

  I felt the blood rush to my cheeks, and I started to feel a little awkward. So I dropped his hands and turned away from him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be pushing if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s not that…” He hesitated again. “It’s just…”

  “I know, Lieutenant,” I said. And I thought we better go back to referring to each other in military terms.

  Wiggea paused for a long moment and I stood there, breathing heavily, wondering if I could push him any further. No, the elders were right, I should probably get to bed and get some rest. I began to turn around.

  “Pontopa wait…” Wiggea said. He’d turned to face me.

  “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  He took hold of my chin then and turned my head towards me. “I’m sorry, I’ve never tried this since my Hastina.” And he planted a kiss on my lips. Not a long one, but genuine and warm. “Maybe one day, you’re right, we can try. But we need to rescue Taka first.”

  Now it was my turn to stand stock still in shock. Rastano Wiggea turned away from me and began to walk towards the mattresses. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. “We should get some rest, Maam.”

  “Yes… I guess you’re right.” And I followed him into the alcove where Faso was still busy fixing Ratter. The three elders were already fast asleep, as well as most of the tribesmen other than the tribal chief who watched us approach.

  “Hoooiiieeeee,” he said. “It love, it love.” And I caught a glimpse of Wiggea’s face turning red.

  “Don’t push it,” I said to the tribal chief.

  “Hooooiiiieee,” the chief said again and danced some cartwheels around the burning firepit. Then, he reached up to a rope that was hanging from the ceiling and gave it a tug. A huge wooden bowl that I hadn’t even seen hanging there plunged down from the ceiling, completely covering the fire – flames and pot and all – and choking it out. The tribal chief then drew some thick bamboo curtains to close off the view of the magma pit. It wasn’t enough to shut off the light completely, but it made the room adequately dark to sleep in.

  There was a mattress on the floor to my right, and so I lay down upon it, missing the softer mattresses in Fortress Gerhaun and even more the ones I used to sleep on in the Five Hamlets.

  I couldn’t sleep well that night, emotions still boiling through me as if my heart was as active as the lava lake. I kept thinking first of Wiggea and that unexpected kiss he’d planted on my lips. Then I remembered two years ago, and my wedding to Francoiso Lamford, Charth’s brother. How much I’d wanted him then, and I began to wonder if my feelings for Wiggea weren’t my own but a side effect of the Exalmpora.

  But if that were the case, surely I would have gone for Faso instead – the man with dragonseer blood. The thought of it made me shudder. No, it was more likely that I was simply attracted to Wiggea. I mean, I’d spent a lot of time with him lately, and I knew him to be a wonderful man.

  And eventually, with the taste of that warm kiss lingering on my lips, a knot in my stomach, and a smile on my face, I drifted off to sleep.

  Part VI

  Captain Colas

  “Science happens when we begin to experiment on what we believe to be magic.”

  Captain Colas

  17

  “Hoooooiieeee.” The wakeup call came at around five in the morning, or at least that’s what the pocket watch said that someone had kindly placed besides my mattress. “Hoooooiiieeee.”

  I turned to see a form lit red by magma light, dancing around the room in cartwheels and backflips. The fire roared out its presence from the centre of the room, its heat causing me to feel clammy underneath my robe. How it hadn’t woken me, I don’t know. From above the fire, a pot of boiling food sent a warm, starchy smell out across the room.

  I yawned, lifted myself off the mattress and checked I was decent. I was still wearing my robe, which admittedly covered so much of me that I probably hadn’t needed to check anything.

  “Hooooiieee,” the cry came again. And the tribal chief danced over to me and then shook my hand. “Welcome, dragonseer. You eat.” He pointed at the pot that I could now see had a thin soup inside of it, containing specks of some kind of meat.

  I smiled, feeling suddenly hungry, and I approached the pot and sat down on a tree trunk stool. A small bowl had been placed in front of the stool, with the soup already inside it, and so I bent down to pick it up, holding my hair back with my other hand so it didn’t get caught in the flames.

  Wiggea rose next with a yawn, and then he jumped straight up onto his feet like a cat, as if he’d not wanted to sleep so deeply. It must have been something about the fumes from the volcano that had sent us into such a stupor. Faso got up last out of the three of us, and as soon as he arose, Ratter darted out of his bedclothes and up onto his shoulder. The automaton watched the cooking pot adamantly, almost as if he wanted some soup himself. But he was probably just on alert because of the heat coming from the flames.

  “What’s all this noise about,” Faso said. He had these huge bags under his eyes as if he’d been up all night. “And what time is it anyway? And where the dragonheats is my pocket watch?”

  Ratter let out a hiss, scurried down Faso’s arm, then his leg and onto the dusty ground. The automaton rushed over to my mattress where Faso’s pocket watch rested. He picked it up within his jaw and dropped it on the floor in front of Faso.

  “Ah, the culprit,” Faso said, turning on me. “I know it’s disturbing not being able to see the sun out here, but I have you know this is a family heirloom.”

  I shook my head. “How the wellies did you find that thing?”

  “So you did take it?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I folded my arms.

  “Well, good for you. Once I’d fixed Ratter last night, I sent him out hunting for some of my lost belongings. And this must have been close by because Ratter managed to bring it back within a few hours.”

  I glanced around, wondering who might have put the watch there. Then I noticed the tribal chief pointing his finger at Ratter and sniggering. Seemed he was quite the practical joker. Although, I guess it was lucky for Faso that the chief’s sense of humour didn’t involve throwing his watch into the lava lake.

  “If you are quite finished,” the archaeologist of the three elders suddenly appeared from behind me, startling me. I hadn’t seen him get up. “We have a mission to be getting on with.”

  “Yes, and I guess there’s no one more capable of embarking on it than the last remaining male dragonseer,” Faso said. He had a dry, sarcastic undertone in his voice.

  “You are far from the last remaining,” the elder said. “And you are not a dragonseer.” He stepped forward.

  “So who else is there?” Faso called after him, not letting the man leave the conversation hanging. “You’re not going to tell me Captain Colas is one?”

  “If he was. Then Charth Lamford would never have been a dragonseer.”

  “In theory,” Faso said with his hands on his hips. “If your premises weren’t complete baloney in the first place.”

  “One day, you’ll realise that it is you who are assuming false axioms. Now, enough of this arguing. Mr Gordoni, you either choose to believe, or you don’t.”

  The elder began to walk forward, and I turned in surprise
to see that the guides already had their rucksacks on their backs and were ready to push onwards.

  This time, I decided to lead the hike with Wiggea trailing behind and Faso behind him, Ratter staring down at the lava lake from his shoulder. They were followed by the six guides, the tribal chief, and finally the three elders. We traversed along the top of the cliff above the lava lake. The heat was even more searing that yesterday and flares roared out from the liquid rock below like angry beasts.

  “This place is fascinating and certainly warrants more study,” Faso said.

  “Maybe it’s magic,” I said with a smirk on my face that Faso couldn’t see.

  “Pah, I would hear such things from you. And pigs secretly have wings and will one day rule this earth.”

  “If Cini has his way, I’m sure that prophecy will come true…”

  Surprisingly, this caused a chuckle from Faso, but not from Wiggea. The lieutenant smiled when I looked around at him, but otherwise, he behaved as if nothing had happened last night. Well, I guess it was only a quick peck after all.

  “Is there anything I can do to help, Maam?”

  “Not yet, Lieutenant. Just keep watching the path ahead for any danger.”

  “As always,” he said, and I let him step in front of me.

  Soon enough, we left the lava lake behind us, passed through the lava tube cavern, and then stepped outside into the fresh pre-dawn air. It was surprisingly chilly, and I started to see the need for these thick hemp robes, although they didn’t quite keep the cold away as much as I’d have liked.

  Now I didn’t have any panthers I needed to conceal it from, I carried my golden hip flask in my hand. I kind of wish I’d had the hindsight to sew a pocket into the inside of my robe the previous night. I could have then concealed the flask quite easily and produced it at the last minute in the final battle against whatever Colas had in store for us. So far I’d only seen his crow and panther automatons, but I had a terrible feeling he had other tricks up his sleeve.

  Now we were outside, we had changed our formation a little. The elder triplets took the lead, pushing themselves up the mountain with surprising agility on their bamboo canes. After a moment, the linguist raised his hand to signal for us to halt.

  I looked at him in surprise. “I thought we were in a hurry?”

  “I’m sure time can wait for you to get back your equipment, don’t you think?”

  “Our equipment?”

  “Captain Colas ordered the tribespeople to bury it out of sight, so you wouldn’t be able to find it. So they brought it up here and we offered to look after it. We planted it in a cave not far from here.”

  “So that’s where Ratter found my pocket watch,” Faso said.

  The linguist nodded. “I’m surprised you didn’t get him going after your rifles and other stuff as well.”

  “I assumed that would have remained at the base of the mountain,” Faso said. “Much too far away for Ratter to retrieve and come back again in just a few hours. Meanwhile, I knew already that I’d dropped the watch out of the air somewhere around here.”

  “And it’s quite lucky that the thing didn’t break on impact.”

  “Yes, quite,” Faso said. “It’s a remarkably sturdy piece of equipment.”

  I smiled in amusement. I already had my hip flask, and we had one rifle. The tribespeople had allowed us to take both up the mountain and both had proven useful. All this time, the tribe had been on our side, and we hadn’t even realised it at first.

  But one thing still confused me. Why the wellies did they give me the Exalmpora? Did they know the effects it would have on me? And did they know I was going to have that vision? I wondered if I should tell the elders about what I’d seen down in the jungle, but I thought better of it.

  It had shown me to be the conqueror of Alsie, the planter of the Tree Immortal, and the destroyer of the world. If word about this got back to Gerhaun, I’m not sure she’d let me back into the fortress.

  “Dragonseer, you will become the most powerful being on the planet.” That female voice came into my head again. The voice of an empress.

  No, it had to be my imagination. I’d just spent a night sleeping through magma fumes. Whatever I was hearing was just delusions due to chemicals. Nothing else.

  “Come,” the anthropologist said. And he led us to a small crack in the ground. I wouldn’t even call it a cave. And I couldn’t quite see inside, because the shadows concealed its contents so well.

  The elder rolled up his sleeve and reached inside with a bony arm. “Yes, here we are.” And he threw back a pistol, which landed spinning on the ground.

  “Dragonheats! Careful, old man,” Faso shouted out and he jumped back in alarm.

  But the elder wasn’t listening. He threw out the other two pistols, which landed a lot more smoothly. My knives came next, secured within their sheaths. Somehow, he’d managed to stash two Pattersoni rifles in there as well, which he took out more gently and laid them out on the floor. They still had the bullets within the barrel, I noticed. Good enough for twenty-four shots and we hadn’t used any of them.

  After that, the anthropologist took out a bundle wrapped in brown paper, then tied in hemp rope. This was much bigger than anything else that had come out so far. “In there you’ll find your clothes laundered and dried,” the elder said.

  “And what about our own hip flasks,” Faso said. “Pontopa has hers, and what are Wiggea and I meant to do if we need to augment?”

  “Didn’t the tribespeople give you them?” the elder asked.

  “Negative,” Wiggea said. “Pontopa took a spare one from the armour on the dragon.”

  The old man smiled and his brother, this time the linguist, turned to the tribal chief to say something in his language. The tribal chief’s expression fell away from its jovial norm and he bowed his head and shook it as if in shame. He turned to his own tribespeople, who now stood in a line with their rucksacks on their backs and he said something. In turn, they also lowered their heads, and their shoulders drooped.

  “Hooooooooiiiiieeee,” the tribal chief said. But this sound was much longer drawn out and deeper than any other of these calls had been. The tribespeople nodded, put their rucksacks down on the ground, and each of them began to rummage around in them, scattering things like bedsheets, pots and pans, various items of bone jewellery, and other paraphernalia on the floor. Eventually, three of them found the items in question. Three golden flasks, including my spare one. This was a blessing given my current hip flask was almost empty after spilling most of it on my face during the earthquake.

  “Hoooooiiiieee,” the tribal chief said again, this time returning to his former spirit. He spun around in a circle and then performed a backflip. Then he ran up to each of the three tribespeople in turn and slapped the hip flasks out of their hands. He returned to us with the acquired items in both of his hands and he dropped them on the floor.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Welcome,” the chief said. “You’ll need.”

  Wiggea had already opened the package a little distance away from us, and now our clothes lay in a neatly stacked pile on a brown paper mat. I really was happy to see my jerkin, blouse, and three-quarter length breeches, which I loved to ride in, as well as my high socks and custom-built garters that I used for concealing my knives. They were much better than wearing this itchy robe.

  I went over and took hold of my clothes. “Say, is there anywhere here I can get changed?” I asked the elders who were now clustered together in a circle mumbling to each other.

  “We promise not to look,” the anthropologist said. And he said something to the tribespeople to instruct them to turn away. Wiggea noticed what they were doing, and he also turned away from me like a true gentleman, although in all honesty, I wouldn’t have minded him looking.

  Faso was turning his head between all these people in confusion.

  “You heard him,” I said. “Turn away and let the lady here get changed.”

 
; I could swear his face went red then, although he turned away so quickly, I didn’t see it change colour completely. His automaton sat on his shoulder, staring at me.

  “And Ratter too. That thing freaks me out.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Faso said. And he looked over his shoulder at me with what looked like an admonishing stare.

  “You heard me. Show some respect, for wellies sake.”

  “Fine,” Faso said. And he tapped Ratter on the back three times to turn him off then placed him on the floor facing away from me. “Happy?” The inventor turned away and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Quite. Now, no peeking.”

  And quick as I could I took off my robe, catching sight of blackened welts from my previous tousle with the panther automaton. They had this unnatural colour to them that I wondered if they were also side-effects of the Exalmpora. But I didn’t spend too long examining them before I was fully clothed.

  “Right, you can look now,” I said.

  “Thank the wellies,” Faso said, and he tapped Ratter three times again, before turning back to me. Ratter quickly ran up his body and onto the inventor’s shoulder. It was as if Faso was keeping that thing on alert as a personal bodyguard. Well, admittedly, its presence also made me feel safer. That automaton had saved my life many times in the past and I had a feeling it would do so again on this little adventure.

  The men didn’t seem to mind so much if anyone was looking while they got changed. But I made sure I turned away to give them some time. Although I was almost tempted to take a quick peek at Wiggea, but I managed to restrain myself.

  Soon enough, we were ready to set off again. I wondered, in many ways, if I could try going back down the mountain and also retrieving Velos. We’d already taken down one panther automaton, maybe with Ratter at our side, we could take down the other as well. But Colas’ threats seemed genuine and he’d said we were running out of time. Whatever he was up to, we had to stop him.