The guard finished undoing Nita’s manacles and leg irons. She rubbed her wrists and watched as Lil was thrown inside her “cell.” “Crate” would have been more appropriate. It was a heavily built cube of wood and steel, tiny holes drilled liberally through the wooden slats that made up its sides, top, and bottom. Beneath the slats seemed to be a few layers of heavy mesh, which blocked the view of the inside entirely and likely shrouded the interior in complete darkness. The front hinged open to allow Lil to be tossed inside, restraints still on her wrists and ankles. She was cursing a blue streak and banging at the walls as a hook was lowered from a boom mounted about two-thirds of the way up the central tower’s pole. The guards affixed the hook to the top of the crate and roughly hoisted it dozens of feet into the air, straight past the roof of the tower and almost to the boom itself. Once they were through hauling it up, Nita watched as it jerked and swung with Lil’s angry struggles.
“This way, Miss Graus. We will have our chat,” the warden said.
#
Nita walked uncertainly after Warden Linn. She was flanked by guards and gagging on the omnipresent stench of the fug. She’d had the misfortune of nearly losing her life to the stuff during the now legendary clash with the fug folk aboard the dreadnought, but not since then had the smell been so strong and strangling. It was as though every plank of wood had been soaked in the wretched stuff, marinated over the years.
“Do you require any medical attention?” the warden asked.
“No.”
“Are you hungry, Miss Graus?” He led the group down into a recessed staircase and moved into the lower levels.
They were clearly traveling through a network of corridors intended for staff rather than inmates. As with any airship, which, despite the difference in scale, was the nearest point of comparison to this floating prison, space was at a premium. They were forced to walk single file, one guard in front of Nita and one behind, while Linn led from the front of the line, raising his voice just slightly.
“You’ve arrived just after our midday meal. There won’t be any more food until this evening,” he said.
“I don’t have much of an appetite at the moment,” Nita said. “The smell is stomach-turning.”
“In time I’m told the scent becomes tolerable. You’ll forgive me, but you and Miss Cooper are among only a handful of surface dwellers with whom I’ve had direct dealings. If I’m not attentive to any of your needs, please inform me, as I’ll have no way of knowing otherwise. Your time here is not intended to be pleasant, you realize, but I take the health and well-being of my inmates very seriously unless circumstances require me to take punitive measures. It is entirely possible there have been oversights with regard to necessities not shared between our people. While Skykeep was designed to accommodate you, it was not designed with you in mind.”
“It wasn’t? You mean you lock up your own people here?”
“Of course. Who do you keep in your prisons? Did you believe that we were a society entirely devoid of criminals, Miss Graus?”
“Not to offend you, sir, but many of the people I’ve come to call friends would claim that you are a society of nothing but criminals. The way you’ve held the people of Rim by the throat for all of these years…”
He raised his hand gently to interject. “The politics and the economic balance between our communities is a fascinating and nuanced subject, Miss Graus, and much can be said of it. But that will not be the focus of today’s discussion, so if you’ll forgive me, I’d like to avoid treading too deeply into the matter at this time.”
At no point in their dealings had his tone of civility and gentility even wavered. In spite of herself, Nita couldn’t help but admire the poise and professionalism with which he conducted himself. She’d envisioned the man in charge of such a prison to be the sadistic sort, someone who took joy in the power. Asst. Warden Blanc fit the image. Linn was different. In a way, it made Nita more uneasy. An adversary would at least have given her something to steel herself against. It would have been a target for the resolve that had carried her through so many other trying circumstances. Having to butt heads with a calm, deliberate, reasonable opponent felt… wrong.
“What will we be discussing?” Nita asked.
“Your crew, their activities, and certain details regarding Caldera.”
“Don’t expect me to be very talkative on those matters,” Nita said.
“Naturally not. I’m a patient man, Miss Graus. This will not be the last of our chats. Just a bit farther. The room in which we shall be having these discussions is not my office. As my office is in the immersed section of the facility, and as I’ve said, we do not have the means to keep you there for any reasonable amount of time, and conversation would be impossible, regardless. So I’ve had to clear out a small storeroom for this purpose.”
“If this prison was meant to house other fug folk, why is it even at the surface?” Nita asked.
“Because while it may not be lethal to us as the reverse is for you, removing a fug person from the fug is a profoundly unpleasant experience. The air here is… lacking. It is terribly uncomfortable for us, the light stings our eyes and roasts our skin. And the inmates housed in the surface sections are those deemed by the authorities to be responsible for acts which threaten the very stability of our society. The discomfort is part of the sentence.”
“What about you and the rest of the staff?”
“We stay in the immersed sections when possible and endure the surface when necessary. Such is the nature of our duty in this Phylactery of ours.”
“Phylactery… that’s… something to do with alchemy, isn’t it? Or dark magic?”
“A bit of each. It is the legendary term for the vessel in which a lich stores his soul to attain immortality.”
“Which would make the inmates the soul and your society a demon,” Nita said.
“I’m aware the imagery does not paint us in a sympathetic light, and it is why I prefer the official name of Skykeep. But the name was not selected to evoke sympathy. It was intended to invoke the invincibility of our society, and as such has come to be interchangeable with the official name. Here we are,” he said, opening a door to reveal a small room. It had only enough space for a table with a chair on either side of it. Not even the guards would have a place in the cramped, phlo-light-lit room. He sidled into the room to the far chair and motioned to the remaining one. “Please, sit.”
She did so, looking uncertainly to the guards as they shut the door, leaving her alone with the warden. He picked up a small packet of pages that had been set on the table and began to leaf through them.
“I won’t be restrained?” Nita asked.
“Unlike your crewmate, I do not believe you are inclined toward pointless violence. Nothing you can do to me in this room will earn you your freedom, and thus you will not do anything to me,” he said. “Now, I’ll begin by giving you the opportunity to provide information of your own volition. Any cooperation you show will go a long way to encouraging us to provide you with better treatment, more privileges, and—if circumstances permit—a reduced sentence. Tell me about the Wind Breaker and her crew.”
Nita took a breath, trying to avoid coughing. “Warden Linn, I have spent four months with the Wind Breaker crew. But I scarcely needed four days to know that you could never hope to find a more dedicated, more capable, and more motivated crew. What Lil said is correct. They will find this place, they will come for us, and they will free us, or they will die trying. And I will not utter a syllable to you that I believe will help you strike them down.”
“Powerful words. But are you certain? They do not know where this place is, nor do you. I very much doubt they are even aware it exists, as your crewmate didn’t seem aware of it. Steps were taken to delay their search until the path was thoroughly cold. They may even have been convinced that both you and Miss Cooper were killed. But if what you say is true, if they do somehow locate you and come to your rescue, then your friends will inde
ed die in the attempt. You are their engineer, Miss Graus. And they are without you. Any damage will go unrepaired. And there will be damage. Because this is my prison. It is my duty to keep these prisoners safely inside, and I will do everything in my considerable power to see to it that inside they shall remain.
“I do not feel any rancor toward you. I believe you are a reasonable person. My superiors informed me of your motivation for the heist. You were hoping to treat your mother, to save the life of a family member, and they denied you out of simple greed and the desire to control. I cannot in all honesty say that I wouldn’t have done the same if faced with the same situation. And when confronted with opposition, you did what was necessary to save your life and succeed in your goal. Again, this is only natural. You did what you believed you had to do, and I now must do the same. Because your goals and mine are mutually exclusive, we are enemies. In another world, we might easily have been friends.
“You say you will not endanger your friends with your words. I would not expect you to. But please be aware that I do not need to break you to break your crew. Simply by keeping you here, my superiors have succeeded. So your resistance, while admirable, in the end would achieve nothing.” He calmly set down one page and began the next. “Now, tell me about Caldera…”
#
Nita sat quietly on the lower of two bunks in the cell that was her new home. The cell was small enough that if she stretched, she could reach the left and right walls at the same time. The ceiling was normal height, or perhaps a bit higher, but that stood to reason if the cell had been designed with the tall, thin fug folk in mind. Likewise the cell was only as deep as the length of the bunk, but that was still about half again as long as she would have expected to find in a traditional prison. Each had a stiff pillow, a stiffer mattress, and a rather rough wool blanket. The only other things present in the cell were a small wash basin—water would need to be requested each day—and a small fixture for answering the call of nature, which Nita had to admit was rather more hygienic than the plank of wood with a hole leading to open air that served the same purpose on the Wind Breaker. The cell was one of a half dozen identical cells in the current hall, three on each side, and the only one currently occupied.
Following her chat with the warden—which she’d been informed would be a daily occurrence from this point forward—they had required that she change out of her work clothes and into prison attire. This consisted of a short-sleeve shirt and a pair of loose trousers, each with a white-and-blue checkered pattern.
It had been a long day and a longer night since her arrival. Two meals had been served—a supper composed of coarse bread and thin soup, and a breakfast composed of a rather unpleasant egg concoction and more of the same bread. Each time the only beverage was some tepid water, which managed to taste as awful as the fug smelled. She choked down what she could and set the rest aside, partially because the thought of finishing it didn’t appeal to her in the slightest but mostly because Lil had yet to return from isolation, and Nita wasn’t certain if she had been fed. The fate of her crewmate weighed heavily on Nita’s mind when she finally heard the unmistakable sound of the little firebrand’s voice echoing down the hall.
“You better take good care of them britches. Those are my best britches!” she called out, her voice hoarse but fierce. “And don’t you think you’re keeping that ribbon!”
Nita stood. “Lil! Are you okay?”
“Nita, that you? Where are you?” she called back excitedly.
Two sets of footsteps, accompanied by the scrabbling and squeaking of a third set of less willing steps, approached and finally Lil stood in front of the barred door of their cell. At some point her restraints had been removed, but the guards held her in a grip tight and vicious enough to ensure she couldn’t pull away. She looked worn, fatigued, and frazzled, but her eyes had the same fire they’d had when she was taken away. At the sight of Nita, those eyes flashed with a look of profound relief.
“Oh, you got Nita in the same ridiculous getup? Don’t you know she’s from Caldera? They like to dress up pretty and such. It must be killing her to wear them clothes,” Lil jabbed.
A third guard, the one stationed just out of sight at the end of the hall and assigned to this block of cells, stepped up to unlock the door.
“Back away, Graus,” he ordered.
She did so. The guard unlocked the door and shoved Lil roughly through, where she collided with Nita and caught herself on the bed. Before they could recover, the guards slammed the door shut and locked it. The two guards who had escorted Lil set off from whence they came, and the third returned to his station at the end of the corridor.
“Yeah, that’s right!” Lil said. “Walk away!”
The very moment the footsteps stopped and Lil no longer had anyone to stand in defiance of, she suddenly seemed to lose the strength to stand at all. She slumped, her knees giving out, and would have hit the floor had Nita not been there to catch her.
“Lil, are you okay?” Nita asked again, helping her crewmate to the cot beside her. She took Lil’s hand. It was shaking within her grasp. “Lil! You’re chilled to the bone!”
Nita stood and tore the blanket from the top bunk, throwing it around Lil. She wrapped her arms around her shivering friend from behind to help steady and warm her.
“What did they do to you?” Nita asked.
“It wasn’t so bad,” she said, smiling weakly. “Just… cold… and dark. Did they feed you?”
“Yes.”
“Not me… Every now and then they’d drop the crate down and throw a tarp over it, then heave a bucket of water in there with me and take out the old one.”
“Here. I’ve got some breakfast left,” Nita said, making ready to fetch the tray.
“Not just yet. Let me quit shaking first,” Lil said, pulling her blanket tighter and putting some more of her weight on Nita. “How long was I in there?”
“About a day.”
“No… You sure it wasn’t a week? Those walls are some kind of screen. A bunch of layers. Couldn’t see any light at all, but the wind sure cut through… Didn’t know if it was day or night. And… there was this… clicking noise. Sometimes I heard stuff scrabbling around… Might have just been in my head… Any sign of the cap’n yet?”
“Not yet.”
“He better hurry up,” she muttered, her shivers slowly subsiding. When she was finally steady, she took another breath. “Let’s see what passes for food in this place.”
Nita fetched the dish and spoon, handing them to Lil. Her crewmate completely skipped the utensil, grabbing the eggs with her bare hands and shoveling them into her mouth, then grabbing the remaining bread and dropping the empty metal dish to the ground.
“Since when,” she mumbled, her mouth stuffed full, “do they feed prisoners in their cells? Shouldn’t we be in some big prisoner’s mess with the rest of them?”
“I think it has something to do with the fact we can’t be down in the fug. Fug folk don’t like to leave it, and most of the prisoners here are fug folk. So I’d imagine the cafeteria is down there. Either that or they are afraid to mix us with the general population.”
“They better be,” Lil said, swallowing enough of the food to be more understandable. “If the folks they let roam around free are any indication, I don’t think we’re going to get along very well with the ones they lock up.” She swallowed hard. “Well, that was really awful… Is there any more?”
“I’m afraid not. And perhaps it’s just as well. If breathing the fug is lethal, I can’t imagine eating food prepared down there is doing us any good.”
“Nah, fug food won’t do you no harm. At least, not any more than regular food will. We used to sell these fancy candies they make down there. And booze. Their booze kicks like a mule. I could do with a belt of it right now. Them eggs left a taste that’s going to linger.”
“I’ll get you some water, but I should warn you, it won’t help much,” Nita said. “Jailer! May we have some wa
ter please?”
The guard thumped over the bars to take the cups Nita passed through them. Lil gave the man a dirty look before he left. The water must have been just at the end of the hall, because they could distantly hear the mugs being filled.
“What’re you saying ‘please’ for? You don’t have to be nice to these folks. They’re keeping us prisoner.”
“It won’t do us much good to be rude. The guards have the ability to make our time here much better or much worse. I’d like to encourage them to do the former.”
“Yeah, well if the rest of the crew was here, I know what I’d encourage these fuggers to do…”
The guard returned a moment later, half-filled mugs in hand. Nita accepted them graciously and handed one to Lil.
“Well… it don’t look like he spit in it,” she said, eyeing up the water as the guard returned to his post.
She took a sip and made a sour face, then resumed looking into the cup. Try as she might, she couldn’t hold it steady, the lingering shivers from her long night of hanging like bait from a hook causing the water to ripple. Finally she clutched the mug with both hands to stop the shaking.
“Nita… what’re we gonna do?” she said, her voice as steady as she could make it, which at this moment wasn’t very steady at all.
“We’ll think of something,” Nita said.
“No… I’m no good for that. You gotta tell me what to do.”
Nita tried to smile. “Hey. You’ve got seniority on the crew. Shouldn’t you be giving the orders?”
“We ain’t on duty right now, Nita. We’re in a prison, so seniority don’t enter into it. And even if it did, I’m a deckhand and you’re the engineer. If you give me orders, I still gotta follow. So make with the orders.”
“This isn’t exactly the sort of problem an engineer is intended to solve.”
“Well it sure as hell ain’t the sort of problem a deckhand is supposed to solve.” Lil twisted to look Nita in the eye. “Nita, you gotta tell me what to do.”
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