Above the Storm

by JMD Reid

  Wriavia walked up to them like he belonged. They didn’t stop him from entering.

  Oil lamps lit the cooler interior, a small room with several doors leading deeper and a staircase to the second floor. Wriavia blinked to adjust to the dim light. A single, polished desk sat in the corner manned by a slouching Human with a puffy, brown face.

  “Yes?” the man asked, looking up from a stack of papers, hearing the clicks of Wriavia’s talons on stone. The man’s right eyelid drooped, scarred by a malady.

  “I am Wriavia, a merchant wishing to speak to your admiral about negotiating trade.”

  “Nope.”

  Wriavia blinked, his head cocking rapidly to the side. “Excuse me?”

  “You need to speak to the chief clerk for that.” The man stood. “I’ll go see if Master Vebrin has time for you. Feel free to sit.”

  The man motioned to a chair constructed for Humans with a solid back. Wriavia didn’t trust its balance, so he decided not to perch on it. “I’ll stand.”

  The man shrugged before disappearing up the stairs. Wriavia glanced down at the papers on the desk, reading the tight, Vionese cursive. Human fingers possessed finer motor control than a Luastria’s distal feathers. He could never draw letters so small. But his eyes were far keener than a Human’s, so he had no problem reading it. Nothing important, only a bill of sells for dry goods. His distal feathers lifted the paper to read what lay below. A bill for fresh fish. Footsteps echoed on the stairs. He stepped back, trilling a soft, bored song.

  “He’s busy,” the returning clerk said. “Can you wait?”

  “If I must,” Wriavia answered, feigning annoyance. “I have a busy schedule.”

  The man shrugged again as he sat.

  Wriavia clucked his beak. “Very well.”

  “Vebrin is in a meeting with his wife and the Superintendent,” the clerk added. “Very important. Can’t break it up.”

  “Wife?”

  “Yeah, he’s married to the assistant superintendent. Watch where you fly about her. She hates shadows falling on her.”

  Wriavia blinked. “I do not know that expression.”

  “She has a temper.”

  “Ah.”

  After a long silence, the clerk squirmed, asked, “So, why are you here?”

  “To open up trade.”

  The clerk frowned. “But surely the Master of Commerce would have taken care of everything. You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”

  Wriavia cocked his head, clicking his beak. “My mistake. But since I’m here, I may as well see Vebrin. And it does let me get a feel for the recruits.”

  “Why’s that important?”

  “The sailors are going to be my customers. I should get to know them as much as possible.” Wriavia ruffled his tail feathers. “Why is the camp divided into different sections? It’s like you’re segregating them.”

  “That’s the different crews,” the clerk shrugged. “The idea is to keep the recruits socializing with their own crews to build camaraderie and cohesiveness.”

  “Ah, so the camp to the north is . . .?”

  “The Spirituous,” supplied the clerk. “One of our two corvettes. The southern camp is the other corvette’s, the Dauntless. The middle camp’s bigger since it’s for the Adventurous, which is a frigate.”

  Wriavia forced out a happy chirp. “This is good to know. When the sailors come to my booth, I will have things to speak to them about. It is always helpful.”

  “I guess I can see that. They might be more like to spend coin.”

  “Exactly.”

  A curious expression crossed the man’s face. He spoke again, his voice lighter, an attempt to be casual: “Is there any other way I can be helpful?”

  Wriavia tapped a clawed toe on the stone as he pretended to think. “Well, a list of all the recruits, what role they perform, where they’re from, and which ship they’re assigned to would be helpful.”

  “I don’t know . . .” The clerk licked his lips, shifting in his seat. “I’m not sure that’s proper.”

  “And it would take you time to copy it all down,” Wriavia nodded. “Plus there’s the cost of the parchment and ink. I couldn’t just ask you to do this as a favor. I think compensation is only fair.”

  The clerk’s green eyes grew still, his lips tightening. His eyes darted around, and his hands mopped at his lank, brown hair. “How much compensation?”

  “What do you make in a day?”

  “Two rubies.”

  Wriavia’s wing dipped beneath his robe to pull out a money pouch. His distal feathers loosened the drawstrings. He snatched out three of the red porcelain coins, dropping them on the table. “That seems more than fair. Yes?”

  “More than fair,” the clerk grinned, swiping up the coins and pocketing them with alacrity. “I’ll get right on it.”

  “And let’s just keep this between you and me. I wouldn’t want the other merchants knowing about this edge.”

  “Course, sir.”

  The meeting with Clerk Vebrin proved unproductive. The older man was brusque, informing Wriavia that the Autonomy’s Navy would not spend money on something “as frivolous as candied fruit.”

  “Fair winds on your endeavors?” the clerk asked as Wriavia came down the stairs.

  Wriavia clucked his beak. “I’m afraid not.”

  The clerk pushed forward a stack of parchments covered in tight, black script. “I think I’ll stop by and buy some of your candied fruit. I bet you’ll be getting lots of business.”

  “I hope so.” Wriavia inclined his head, slipping the parchments into a pocket inside his robe next to his money pouch.

  After walking out of camp, greeting a few sailors and extorting them to visit his shop, he winged back to Shon. The farmland passed beneath him, fields golden-brown with ripening barley. He kept a careful watch out for any sharks. While it was doubtful that one big enough to prey upon a flying Luastria would soar near a skyland, Wriavia would not lose his life through such carelessness.

  Shon looked even more ramshackled from above. Many buildings had half-finished roofs made of scraps of lumber, thatch, and even canvas. He spiraled down to the ground, alighting in the back of his small stand.

  Wriavia wanted to study the list. His feathers twitched to dip into his robe and drink in the knowledge. But he had to maintain his cover. He was a merchant. And a merchant would have his shop ready for business.

  He didn’t want to attract questions.

  The assassin filled his shelves with clay jars. Different colored wax sealed the jars, identifying the type of candied fruit. Blue for pears, red for cherries, yellow for bananas, and so on. He left one crate unpacked. He’d prepared those jars on the voyage to Les, working in secret in his rented cabin.

  The day passed slow. Once he’d set up his shop, he found the freedom to examine the list. Merchants routinely poured over their ledgers while waiting for custom. He unfolded the parchments and scanned the several hundred names on it. He found his target’s name on the second page.

  Jayne, Briaris; Vesche; Private, Dauntless

  He found the name beneath quite interesting.

  Jayne, Chaylene; Vesche; Scout, Dauntless

  “How very interesting,” he clucked to himself, his tail feathers twitching in excitement.

  Vionese Humans used last names to denote lineage, and the female always took her mate’s. It was possible they were related, but the Autonomy liked to split up friends and kin. But their regulations kept married sailors together.

  On his trip through the camp, Wriavia noticed the row of solitary cottages near the barracks. Another naval regulation stated married recruits had to be quartered in a family dwelling instead of bivouacked in the communal barracks.

  Wriavia sensed an opportunity.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Anger often gusted through Ary during training. Not even the spying pervert or his ma drew as much of Ary’s ire as the Sergeant-Major. He knew with every fiber of his be
ing he hated the Sergeant-Major. All ten of the marines detested the man and his demeaning nicknames for them. Fantasies of pummeling the man’s face into ruin filled Ary’s mind. Each day, he’d suck in his breath, focusing on all the reasons handing his anger the reins would lead to disaster. They began and ended with Chaylene.

  Imprisonment, sent to a hard labor camp, or burned alive. All would rip him away from her. He’d joined the Navy and faced the terror of the Cyclone to be with her. He wouldn’t let angry winds rip them apart because of one man.

  Even if every sinew in him throbbed to do it.

  “You are the sorriest sacks of pig’s dung I ever had the misfortune of training,” the Sergeant-Major bellowed on the start of the third week training while he handed the marines their thunderbusses for the first time. The weapon consisted of a cylinder of gray ceramic the length of Ary’s arm and set into a wooden stock. “Do a single one of you have more than ostrich down stuffed between the boils growing atop your necks? These are the most dangerous handheld weapons devised in the skies. Watch where you point the Theisseg-damned thing, Princess!”

  Ary’s left hand squeezed on the cool, ceramic barrel of his thunderbuss. Dark winds swirled in him. He ached to smash his knuckles into the Sergeant-Major’s face and knock out his teeth. Ary had kept his barrel pointed at the ground, following the Sergeant-Major’s instructions from the safety briefing.

  Chaylene, the flog, imprisonment, hard labor, burning, Chaylene.

  “And you, Dung! If I see you handle your thunderbuss like that again, my foot will kick your backside so hard you’ll fly right off this skyland!”

  “Sorry, Sergeant-Major,” croaked Grech.

  As bad as the Sergeant-Major treated Ary and the rest, it paled compared to the constant barrage Grech received. The skinny marine was eager to learn and picked up the training as fast as the rest of them. But something about his bearing irked the Sergeant-Major, driving the Agerzak brute to heap insult after insult on Grech’s shoulders.

  “Now, if you Storm-tossed fools haven’t forgotten how to gather your charge into your left hand, you will aim your weapon at the targets and discharge into the barrel.” He shot Grech a warning look. “Do not discharge your lightning unless you are pointing down the range.”

  “Yes, Sergeant-Major!”

  “All right. Detachment One, up to the line.”

  Ary stepped up to the firing range with the four other members of Detachment One: Estan, Guts, Grech, and Ahneil. The tall, Agerzak marine stood on Ary’s left. She flashed him a quick smile—she was always smiling at him. He couldn’t help returning his own. Carcasses of butchered hogs hung from posts set forty ropes out. Behind the targets reared a berm of dirt to catch any stray fire.

  At the next range over, Chaylene and the scouts practiced with their pressure rifles, the longest of the three ranges. Their targets were placed so far out they needed the spyglasses attached to their weapons to see them. The pressure rifles were more accurate weapons than the thunderbuss, used to fire at long range. The weapon had a longer, slimmer barrel, firing a ball of air compressed as hard as a stone. Though no bigger than an acorn, the bullet could tear through a man’s body.

  Beyond the scouts, a group of sailors trained with crossbows.

  Ary held the weapon’s wooden stock with his right hand on a carved grip while his left grasped the barrel. He held the butt against his right shoulder and sighted down the weapon. A slight tremble shook his arm as he aimed it. The static charge, tingling across his body, gathered in his left hand.

  “Fire!”

  Ary discharged his lightning into the barrel. The thunderbuss was an engine like the ones that allowed ships to fly or controlled the weather on the skylands. A gem set in the stock channeled his Blessing and amplified it. The thunderbuss mimicked Major Lightning, taking the static Ary generated and fired it out the weapon’s barrel as a thunderbolt. The air crackled and a tang odor stung his nose as white-yellow light arced, striking the earthen berm beyond the targets.

  “Pathetic,” growled the Sergeant-Major. “Not a single one of you minnows even came close. Aim down the barrel. Don’t just point it at the target. And Dung, keep your storming eyes open. If you squeeze them shut again, I’ll toss your useless butt right off this skyland!” He paused, amber eyes glaring at them. “Well what in the sun-blessed day are you waiting on? Discharge your weapons!”

  “Grech, keep your thunderbuss tight against your shoulder,” Ary said as he gathered more of his electricity into his left hand. Satisfaction swirled through him as he assisted his fellow marine. “It’ll help you aim better.”

  Then he discharged. Lightning arced. His target rocked, the rope creaking and flesh hissing. Smoke rose from a patch of blackened char. The juicy scent of bacon caught Ary’s nose. Exultation leaped inside of him. He gave a loud whoop and thrust his fist up in the air.

  “Well done,” Ahneil smiled, clapping Ary on the back.

  “You nailed it,” laughed Guts. “I came close.”

  “I’m afraid I missed the target as well,” Estan sighed, aiming his weapon at the ground. “The bolt does not travel in quite a straight line. I wonder what property determines its arc.”

  “But I hit it,” Grech laughed. “Look at that carcass smoke.”

  Ary opened his mouth to praise Grech.

  “What are you all doing?” roared the Sergeant-Major. “Did I tell you to break discipline?”

  Ary’s joy evaporated beneath anger’s heat.

  “And what in Riasruo’s blazing sun are you so storm-cursed happy about?”

  “Well, Grech and Ary hit the target, Sergeant-Major,” Estan said with respect.

  “So? You are Theisseg-damned Autonomy Marines. You should be able to hit a storming carcass at forty ropes. Celebrating Dung’s lucky shot is nothing to break discipline over. Now fire again! And you all better hit your Theisseg-damned targets, or you’ll spend the next three hours running the perimeter. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, Sergeant-Major!”

  “Then storming act like marines!”

  Ary ground his teeth, channeled the storm. “Come on, everyone. You can all do it. Ahneil, don’t let your shoulder drop before you fire.”

  She nodded.

  Ary gathered his charge and fired.

  ~ * * ~

  Wriavia launched himself into the night air from the top of the boarding house from which he rented a room. A shader cloak wrapped the assassin’s body. Wriavia sent his Blessing of Moderate Mist into the engine contained in the cloak’s clasp. It activated and his body became like fog, his feathers rippling gray. Wriavia could see through his shaded body, the slate tiles of the room visible through his clawed feet. It had unnerved the assassin the first time he’d used it.

  The wind gusted and his gizzard tightened. He knew the wind wouldn’t blow his smoky body away. He was still flesh. But the fear still lay buried deep in his gizzard.

  It passed after a moment. His body remained solid.

  The shader was a closely held secret of the Skein of Adjudication. They had long ago discovered the properties of Mist when combined with an engine made of smoky quartz and ebony wood. The cloak rendered him all but invisible at night. Even on the night of the Summer Solstice, when both moons shone full, he would be impossible to spot. In daylight, from a distance of fifty ropes, he would appear as a fuzzy patch. A distortion in the air, almost like a mirage dancing on a hilltop.

  The assassin soared higher on the warm air rising from the buildings of Shon, bleeding off the day’s heat. He spiraled high. It may have been night, but he had the eyes of a Luastria. He could see the ground with clarity even hundreds of ropes up high. He turned to the south, where Camp Chubris was aglow with oil lamps and fires.

  Wriavia sped across the skyland and soon orbited above the camp, staring down at the collection of buildings. It looked different from the air at night than it had this morning, the colors muted even with his keen vision. The camp appeared . . . secretive, hiding wh
at he needed to uncover. He passed over the Spirituous’s and Adventurous’s sub-camps and reached the Dauntless’s section, a mirror to the Spirituous’s camp. The barracks lay at the center, surrounded by rings of support buildings out to the perimeter fence. Each building was constructed of wood, the roofs of gray slate, the walls pristine whitewash.

  Behind the barracks lay nine small cottages. The married recruits’ quarters.

  Tonight was Wriavia’s first reconnaissance flight over the camp, his eyes scanning for the bright-red coats of marines. If Briaris Jayne was married, he would live in one of the cottages. With little effort, he circled above, only flapping occasionally to maintain his lift.

  Sailors in their white shirts thronged around the barracks, lounging, playing instruments, and laughing. A few couples broke off, disappearing into the darkness. Wriavia wasn’t interested in the courtship rituals of Humans.

  A marine and a scout, male and female, walked out of the mess hall, holding hands. Wriavia studied them, his gizzard contracting in excitement. The marine towered over the scout, bigger in every dimension. Was this Briaris Jayne and his wife, Chaylene? Seven male marines and two female scouts were assigned to the Dauntless.

  Good odds.

  The pair moved off into the shadows between two buildings. The female looked so tiny beneath the big male as they did that peculiar Human act—kissing. No Luastria would ever do something so undignified as mash beaks to another. Not even the Gezitziz and the Zalg were so disgusting.

  Wriavia kept one eye on them, waiting to see where they would go after they’d finished their courtship. It seemed unusual. If that was Briaris and his wife, why didn’t they use the privacy of their cottage for their courtship?

  I cannot let my expectations color my observations, Wriavia reminded himself.

  Another red coat caught his eye. Another broad-shouldered, male marine, his arm wrapped around the shoulder of another female scout. She was half-Vaarckthian, her skin ebony and her hair blonde.

  They strolled towards the cabins.

  Wriavia left the other couple to their courtship, shifting in the winds to circle above this more promising couple. He strained his ears as he flew a little lower, trying to catch their voices. The music and mirth from the barracks polluted the night air.