As soon as she was certain her blaze would burn without further help from her, Cas returned to the corridor. She had the problem of where to hide while people from the deck above ran down to the engine room. Tolemek’s cabin would have been a logical place if she hadn’t left a guard inside and melted the lock. She settled for the shadows behind the narrow metal steps leading above decks, hoping the pirates would be too busy racing to put out the fire to look closely at the spot beneath their feet.
She had barely slid into the tight space when the door banged open overhead. Heavy boots thumped on the metal steps, the heels scant inches from her nose.
“Hurry, hurry.”
“Get water.”
“Here, hold the door. Get a hose through here. Hurry!”
Cas pushed her back against the bulkhead, trying to blend in with it, as the boots raced toward the engine room. The pirates ran down the corridor without looking back, their eyes riveted to the door at the end. When one threw it open, an impressive amount of smoke flowed out, wreathing the closest men in gray plumes.
Two ran in, and one ran right out again, racing for the steps. Cas held her breath. With the man running this way and facing her, her hiding place didn’t seem that clever.
He raced up without glancing through the steps and soon reappeared with other men and with a hose. It was busier in the corridor than Cas had anticipated, with people running in and out of the room, some operating the hose and others fetching buckets of sand. She had to wait longer than she would have wished for the way out to be empty. When she got her moment, however brief, she left her hiding place and charged up the steps.
She ran out, hoping everyone would be below decks now—or at least extremely distracted—but she ran into a man striding toward the hatchway as soon as she sprinted out.
His eyes were shadowed by a giant-brimmed hat, but there was no mistaking his hand reaching for one of the pistols at his belt. Cas had her purloined pistols ready. She shot the weapon out of his hand before he had lifted it more than two inches from his holster, and sent a second shot through his hand. She could have sent it through his chest, but, again, she was concerned with doing too much damage—leaving too many bodies behind—when her escape might be unsuccessful. And, later, if she thought about it more, she might accept that she didn’t particularly want to do so much that Tolemek would be furious with her. As it was, he would probably get in trouble for not restraining her in such a manner that she couldn’t escape.
The pirate howled and grabbed his hand. Cas ran around him, checking the rest of the deck as she did so. Uh oh, there was one more trying to take a shot at her. She fired, lancing him through the knee. He dropped his weapon and crumpled to the deck, clutching the injury and howling as he rolled around. He was out of it for the moment, but the first man was glaring at her as much as he was gasping in pain. And those shots might have been heard by those below.
She jerked the pistol toward the hatchway. “Drop your sword and get down there. Help your friends put out the fire.”
“I’m not—”
“Now,” Cas snarled, pointing the pistol at his face.
He pulled out the sword with his good hand and dropped it, then backed toward the steps she had just left.
“In,” Cas ordered.
He turned and jogged onto the steps, though he didn’t start down right away. It didn’t matter. Cas slammed the door shut behind him. She grabbed the sword and rammed it through the wheel that opened and closed the door, hoping that would jam it shut, at least for a time.
After once more scouring the deck with her eyes, checking for pirates and spotting none, Cas sprinted for the gangplank. She intended to charge down and to quickly disappear into the large floating outpost, but she nearly tripped over her own feet as something unexpected came into sight. She flailed to catch her balance, though a surge of vertigo hit her when she found herself leaning over the side of the gangplank, the brilliant blue of the ocean visible through the fog. Thousands of feet below. That was one fall that she did not want to make.
She lurched back to a vertical position and waited until she had crossed the gangplank and her feet were on solid… pavement, if not ground, then stared to the right again. She was lower now, and buildings blocked much of her view, but she could still make out the bronze hull of a dragon flier parked on a landing pad at the end of the outpost.
“Forget the yacht,” she whispered. “We’re seeing if that thing flies.”
Muffled gunshots came from the ship behind her. Someone trying to shoot his way through that hatch? She wasn’t going to stick around to find out. She sprinted across a street that probably went all the way around the outpost and between two buildings with wood and corrugated metal sides. The floating platform itself might be a miracle of engineering, but the construction that had sprung up on it made it look like a shanty town, at least the part she was in now. She passed sturdier structures as she wove deeper into the maze, trying to parallel that main street and make her way to the flier, but she started passing more people too.
One man paused to eye her canvas prisoner’s outfit. She wondered if he recognized the style. She smiled, waved, then ducked into an alley. She hid behind a pile of boxes that doubtlessly passed as a trash collection area, dropped her hands to her knees to catch her breath, and peered back the way she had come through a crack between the boxes. The man was staring down the alley in her direction. He scratched his jaw. Cas checked the ammunition in her pistols and loaded rounds to replace the ones she had spent. She had stolen enough bullets for a quick skirmish but not an all-out gunfight. The man returned to his walk. She couldn’t help but wonder if her presence would be reported. She hadn’t seen a mirror and wasn’t sure how crazy she looked, but she doubted she looked anything like a pirate.
“Something to remedy.”
Enough running around like a blind fool. She needed to slow down and figure out how to reach the flier without getting caught. And she had to assume she would need to spend time to learn if it was operational too. Even in the distance, she had been able to tell it was an older model.
“One thing at a time.”
*
“I want answers,” Goroth said as he and Tolemek walked back from the meeting. “I want that truth serum in her gullet, and I want to have a long chat with her.”
Tolemek kept his sigh to himself. He doubted Ahn had the knowledge Goroth sought. Depending on how long she had been in the prison and how long she had been in Cofah clutches before arriving there, she might not know anything about Zirkander’s secret assignment. From that soldier’s words, it sounded like this had all occurred recently. “You know where I keep it,” he said.
“You’re not going to help question her?”
Tolemek would prefer to be there to keep Goroth from growing overly irritated—and violent—if he didn’t get the answers he wanted. “I’ll help. I didn’t want you to think I was impeding you.” Or that more brutal methods would be required.
“I don’t think that. I just think you’re forgetting who she is because she’s young and cute. Don’t—what in all of the hells? The ship is smoking!” Goroth sprinted ahead.
Tolemek stared at the black plumes wafting from the portholes on the starboard side toward the stern—where the engine room was. His stomach went for a swim in his boots. Maybe Goroth was right. He had been too lenient, and now she had escaped and done something to the ship.
“You don’t know it’s her,” he muttered and ran after Goroth, though he couldn’t imagine what else might have happened. The Roaming Curse captains were all allies, and no other pirate outfits were allowed to dock here.
By the time he reached the end of the gangplank, no less than four men had rushed up to Goroth and were explaining the situation—or maybe making excuses—speaking a thousand words a minute. Hoses ran through the hatchway leading below decks, and a sword was randomly lying beside them.
A moan of pain came from beside Tolemek. He ran over to Grimsaw, who was s
itting on the deck against the railing and struggling to tie a makeshift bandage around his knee.
“What happened?”
“That bitch shot me,” he groaned.
“My—the prisoner?”
“Who else?” It was a testament to Grimsaw’s distress—or pain or anger or both—that he glowered at Tolemek and answered sarcastically, forgetting his usual wariness toward the Deathmaker.
“I’ll get something for your knee and find the sawbones as soon as the fire is out.”
Tolemek ran for the hatchway, intending to help the men below decks, but Goroth lunged out of the group and clasped his arm.
“Your prisoner did this,” he said.
“I know.”
“And she’s gone.”
Tolemek frowned, though he could hardly claim to be surprised. She had probably set the fire as a distraction. But how had she escaped from his cabin to start with? He had taken that vial from her hand and left her locked up.
“Didn’t you shackle her?” Goroth demanded.
“I did, actually, and I searched her before leaving this morning.”
Goroth grumbled some choice curses under his breath, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles stood out as much as the bones on his breastplate.
“I’ll find her,” Tolemek said.
“You better. Go do it now. We’ll handle the fire.”
Tolemek hesitated, not wanting to abandon the ship if it was in danger—this was the only home he had, and all of the mixtures he had made and the ingredients he had gathered were in that cabin. He would hate to lose everything again. Not to mention his collection of pets. “Will you get my spiders and snakes out if my cabin proves to be in danger?”
“Spiders! What a thing to care about now.” Goroth looked like he wanted to punch Tolemek. Perhaps it hadn’t been the right thing to mention, but in addition to keeping them as pets, he extracted venoms for some of his work.
“Snakes too.”
“Just get the girl.”
“Very well.”
“And put her in a devils-cursed cell when you get her, not your cabin where she has access to who knows what.” Goroth flung his arm toward the smoking portholes.
A throat cleared behind them. Most of the men who had reported to the captain had run back to help with the fire. This was someone Tolemek hadn’t seen before. Clad in browns and blacks, he wore nothing resembling a uniform—and his left sleeve was tied in a knot at his elbow, showing his arm to be cut off at the joint—but there was a badge pinned to his jacket. The Roaming Curse outpost had patrol officers? Tolemek had never seen such a thing.
“Who are you?” Goroth demanded.
“Post Administrator and Port Inspector Dancun. Keeping the outpost safe for all.” The man spoke in a deadpan voice, his lips barely moving. He pointed at the smoke wafting up from the craft’s stern. “That’s a problem.”
“We’re working on it.”
“You’ll have to move away from this berth until your fire has been out for at least two hours. We can’t risk it spreading.”
The captain looked like he wanted to gnaw off a few of his own teeth and start spitting them at the man like gunfire. “We need access to the outpost.”
“You can access it again two hours after your fire’s out.”
Goroth glanced at Tolemek, made a shooing motion, and mouthed, “Go.”
Tolemek was about to when a cabin boy strode out of the smoking corridor, walking quickly, though his eyes were riveted to something he was holding. It was the young fellow he had left outside his cabin to guard Ahn. A strange net was tangled around his shoulders. With one hand, he was holding up his trousers, and with the other he held… Odd, Tolemek recognized that flask.
“Sir,” he blurted, charging straight toward Tolemek. “I wanted to make sure you had this, and that the fire didn’t—that everything was safe.”
Feeling rather confused, Tolemek held out his hand mutely. The boy sagged in relief as soon as the flask left his fingers, then launched into an explanation. Tolemek’s silence continued as he listened and digested the information.
“Lieutenant Ahn?” the administrator asked, joining them.
Tolemek hadn’t realized the man had been listening. He frowned. The cabin boy had blurted Ahn’s name during his explanation. He hoped it wouldn’t mean anything to the port inspector. A vain hope, apparently, for the man was pulling a small notebook out of his pocket. He laid it on the railing so he could flip through the pages one-handed. Tolemek glimpsed names, dates, and notations in extremely neat printing.
“Go help with the fire, boy,” Goroth ordered. He too was frowning at the administrator and his notebook.
The page flipping stopped, and the man pointed to a name. “Ah, yes. I thought that sounded familiar. Lieutenant Caslin Ahn. Flight name: Raptor. Member: Wolf Squadron. Active since the third of Maynok, 937.” His tone never changed as he spoke.
“Who is this hedgehog?” Goroth, standing behind the administrator’s back, mouthed.
Tolemek could only shake his head. A pirate outpost ought to be the last place one could find someone so organized. He might admire such meticulous note-taking in other circumstances, but not now.
The administrator lifted his brows. “You did not think it important to report that your vessel contained a wanted pirate enemy, Captain Slaughter?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“This is a bounty,” the administrator said, “though I’m more concerned about maintaining peace on the station. She will need to be located.” The inflection in his deadpan voice never changed, but his eyes had a slight gleam as he said, “This can be accomplished easily with enough people searching.”
“I’ll find her,” Tolemek said and headed for the gangplank. He had to make sure he found Ahn—Caslin—before this overzealous port attendant put the word out to everyone. It would be nice to use her first name, now that he knew it.
Goroth caught up with him at the gangplank, lifting a hand to make him pause. “I’ll take care of the fire. And you’re welcome.” His squint said he placed the blame for the mess straight on Tolemek’s shoulders. Rightfully so. “It might be a while before I can bring the ship back over though—” he waved to the smoke, “—so you’ll be on your own over there. Stay out of trouble. Meet back here—no, let’s meet at the Squatting Crow, midnight. Just in case we’re under scrutiny.” He frowned at the administrator who was making notes in his book.
“I’ll have her,” Tolemek said.
Chapter 8
There were two guards wandering around the dragon flier, occasionally answering questions but mostly turning away curious pirates who ambled close. Cables stretched across the bronze wings and ran to eyelets on the landing pad, as if force were required to keep the craft from taking off. Fliers did look vaguely like crouching dragons, wings spread, ready to leap into the air and take off, but they were ultimately just machines and wouldn’t go anywhere without a pilot. This particular craft looked like it had been pulled out of the depths of the ocean, with brown sludge dulling the hull and crusty grime caking the wings. Some kind of banner or sign hung from the cockpit. Cas thought it might declare the craft’s owner—whoever had salvaged it—but she was too far away to read the lettering.
She crouched on the roof of one of the sturdier buildings, keeping her back to a vent spewing bacon-scented smoke. It wasn’t much in the way of cover, and she felt exposed, since many of the airships docked to either side of the floating outpost had decks as high as her position. She wished night would fall, but she had no concept of how soon that might be. The strange fog that hugged the whole place hadn’t abated.
Shouts came from a nearby street, and a squad of men ran into view. Their eccentric clothing, most of it doubtlessly plundered from ships all around the world, kept them from looking like an organized military unit, but they were sticking together and peering into alleys. They were also armed.
Cas flattened to her belly. She didn’t recognize them as men fro
m Captain Slaughter’s ship, but she hadn’t met everyone there either, having been busy starting fires in their engine room.
What if Slaughter had told everyone on the station about her and had them hunting for her? She craned her neck to look at his ship—she couldn’t see the deck, but its big black balloon was distinctive and visible. Though, oddly, it seemed farther away than before. She risked rising into a crouch again. Yes, it had moved away from its berth and floated perhaps a hundred meters away from the outpost. Something to do with her fire?
A faint rumble reached her ears, and Cas forgot about the searchers and Slaughter’s ship. The noise sounded familiar, very familiar. Propellers.
She checked to make sure the search party had moved off the nearby street and that nobody was creeping up on her before focusing on the nearest of the giant propellers that helped hold the outpost aloft. Their hum was a constant here, and it continued on as it had before. This was a new noise, and it seemed to be coming from the fog beyond the outpost rather than some machinery on it. And there was more than one propeller making the noise, she was sure of it. She couldn’t guess why they were coming—they couldn’t know she was here… how could they?—but the rumbling grew louder and filled her with hope.
An eardrum-piercing wail erupted from horns mounted on poles at the corners of the outpost. Someone else had noticed the noise and knew what it meant.
The first dragon flier came into view, yellow eyes and a gray snout painted on the nose of the craft. Cas grinned so hard her mouth ached. Wolf Squadron.
Several more craft followed the first out of the fog. She couldn’t make out the numbers on the sides of the fliers yet, but she recognized an attack formation when she saw one. She caught herself standing and waving, but forced herself back into a crouch, not wanting to draw the attention of enemies in the streets below. Pirates were flooding out of buildings, shouting over the sirens and racing to artillery weapons stationed along the edges of the outpost and also on some roofs.
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