Dragon Road

by Joseph Brassey

  “Can it, hull rat,” the pilot shot back. Then she turned to Aimee. “Well, his little aside was clearly directed at you, so what’s cooking in your head, blondie?”

  Aimee chewed on her lower lip, letting the blanket fall away and putting down her mug. Harkon hadn’t left her to pore over her texts, though knowing him he fully expected her regular practice to continue. She knew his methods well enough to recognize when she was being told to go off on her own.

  She threw Vlana a look. “I’m going to need to know everything you saw down there, because I’m going myself. Clearly there’s one half of an equation we’re not going to be exposed to if we don’t take the initiative. As much as Rachim and Viltas talk about advocating for the lower levels, they sure don’t have any desire to go there.”

  “Royals so seldom do,” Vlana said, with a grin forming. “Yeah, we can tell you what we saw. You want us to guide you?”

  “No,” Aimee shook her head. That surprised them. Her hands were moving as she explained. “I need the two of you to keep doing what you’ve been doing. Making social connections, being seen as if nothing is out of the ordinary. You too, Clutch. While Harkon is working with the known faces and names, we need to seem like we’re not doing anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Fair,” Vlana said.

  “Plenty of holes to dive down,” Vant echoed.

  “You shouldn’t go alone,” Elias suddenly said. Still in his chair, Oath of Aurum resting across his lap, the tall man assessed the room after he spoke. Aimee could see the unease in his green eyes, a wall waiting to raise depending on how the others reacted.

  Vlana’s eyes narrowed. Vant averted his gaze. Aimee felt a small surge of irritation on their newest crewmember’s behalf. Before the tension could escalate, she turned to face him, and flashed a winning smile. “I won’t,” she said, “you’re going with me.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Light in the Depths

  “This is a bad idea,” Elias said in the dim light.

  “And by bad, you mean brilliant,” Aimee replied.

  “I’m stating it for the record,” Elias answered, “we’re going in half-cocked and under-prepared.”

  Aimee turned to look at him. The lamps across the access tunnel in which they stood gave her face a soft glow, and played off the edges of her blue eyes. One of her eyebrows arched and a corner of her mouth quirked into a smile. “Like you never did things off the cuff?”

  It said a lot about how much he valued the person in front of him, Elias reflected, that the small jibe about his former life made him smile, rather than flinch. “If I’m your legitimizing example, you have problems.”

  Aimee laughed, finished knotting her blonde hair into a braid, and pulled up the hood of her blue coat. “I expected you to be more eager for adventure,” she said, with mock offense. Then she started walking.

  “Your adventure,” he said. “My exercise in keeping you alive.”

  “Don’t worry,” she replied confidently. “I believe in you.”

  The access tunnel was long and wide, tiled to refract the light from the dim mystic lamps across the interior. Near the entryway it had worked well, but the deeper they went, the less it seemed cleaning the walls had mattered, and the filth and soot and dirt that coated the interior dampened the illumination still further.

  A few moments down the path, a tall, familiar figure stepped out of the shadows to bar their way. “What’s this?” came a female voice. “A pair of up-levelers looking for a thrill?”

  Elias smiled as Belit stepped fully into the light. “Her idea,” he said, indicating Aimee with a cock of his head. “I’m the security.”

  Aimee took a step forward, extending a gloved hand with one of her brilliant smiles. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Lady Belit,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

  Belit had left aside her armor, dressed now in a dusty longcoat with a red scarf gathered at her neck. Her longsword hung at her waist, and a dark hand wearing a fingerless glove rested casually on the hilt as the other hand clasped Aimee’s. “It’s just Belit,” she said to Aimee. “No title.” Turning, she laughed. “Besides, my name in my mother’s language means the Lady. When you say that in the common tongue, you’re calling me Lady Lady.”

  Aimee laughed. “Fair point. Belit it is.”

  They walked deeper into the tunnel. “The officer aristocracy doesn’t seem to care much about the upkeep of the ship outside their sight,” Aimee mused aloud as they proceeded. Elias followed her gaze. The grime was so thick where they were that graffiti was better accomplished by simply scraping away the filth to form messages.

  “Their care is selective,” Belit answered. “How many of our laws have you had a chance to acquaint yourselves with?” She flashed an inquisitive look.

  “They have a very thick etiquette book,” Aimee said. “Rachim said that being outsiders, Harkon and I aren’t expected to follow most of the minutiae, but that we should know the big ones. I’m–” Elias caught a hint of schoolgirl embarrassment in her tone “–I’m still reading. They seem oddly egalitarian.”

  Belit gave a slow nod. “Rachim is right,” she said. “Neither of you will be expected to hold to the social laws of the officer aristocracy, but you should know them. Or at least become familiar… but that’s not what I’m talking about. The laws for high society and low are different, and even more so the ones for how they interact across those lines.”

  She paused before continuing. “There are seven basic dictates to which all enlisted are held. Excessive violence is forbidden, as is the forming of private militaries. No religion may interfere in the performance of a crewman’s duties. No crewman may falsely claim the backing of his lawful superiors when he lacks it. Illness must be reported. Insurrection must be reported.” Here she paused. “But first, and most important, is do not obstruct trade. That law derives not from us, but from the Twelve.”

  Elias tightened his jaw as they walked. He had ample experience with the Twelve: the twelve primary trade-guilds that lorded over all commerce in the known Drifting Lands. From kingdom to city-state, to empire, to republic, all who did business passed through their spheres of influence. The order did business with them frequently, and more than once, when he still wore the name of Azrael, Elias had stood at the side of Lord Roland as he dictated what policies the order considered unacceptable to the great lords of industry.

  Despite all of the darkness of the Eternal Order in his personal experience, Elias found himself unsure which left the greater revulsion in his gut: the militaristic killers that had made him, or the apathetic lords of trade that let them have their way.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “The Twelve care only for their profits.”

  Belit gave him a curious look. Aimee stirred beside him. “My uncle used to say the same thing, but with more cursing,” she said after a moment. Elias caught a quiet bitterness in her tone. “They never forgot it.”

  There was a story there, but it also didn’t seem right to push. People’s secrets were their secrets. She has all of yours, some part of his mind snapped back. True, he thought. But that wasn’t her choice.

  “I see you’ve both run afoul of their way of doing things,” Belit said thoughtfully. “You might do better down below than you expect.”

  “How much experience do you have here?” Aimee asked, before qualifying the statement. “I’m sorry – I just meant, you have no noble title, but your position is… high.”

  “And what would one of the highest placed warriors in Iseult know of the lives of the people below?” Belit asked with a casual smile. “It’s alright, Miss Laurent. You gave no offense.” Her next words carried the slightest hint of wistfulness. “As to the answer, it’s simple: I was born down there, deep as well. Near the metadrive chamber, as my mother used to tell it, before she died. I grew up running between the legs of engineers, merchants, thieves and other enlisted. After my mother passed away, my master caught me trying to pick his pocket.
I didn’t know it then–” she smiled fondly “–but he was the man I would go on to succeed, traveling exasperated and incognito in the company of Captain Amut. It was very common, especially in those days, for him to go about in disguise among the lower levels. To better know the people.”

  Realization hit Elias. It seemed so obvious, in retrospect, was almost embarrassing not to have seen it earlier, but he was so accustomed to the opposite: Belit, above all else, loved Iseult, and its people.

  “When my master passed away, Amut elevated me from the rank and file of the Red Guard himself,” Belit finished, fondly.

  “It sounds like he chose wisely,” Aimee said. By the warmth in her voice, she’d come to the same conclusion that Elias had. The difference, of course, was that she likewise had a home to love with such unabashed affection. It made the sensation familiar to her, Elias imagined. What was that like? he wondered.

  “That is kind of you,” Belit said, her tone now tinged with a hint of deeper grief, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I failed him when it mattered most. Your own investigation has shown the truth of it.”

  Before the uncomfortable silence could settle over Elias and Aimee, the warrior leading them gestured with a dark hand towards a greater light glimmering up ahead.

  “Come, this is where we turn.”

  As Azrael, Elias had commanded the vastness of one of the Eternal Order’s singular super-weapons. The Iron Hulk he had used to break Port Providence had been a flying mountain fortress bristling with enough ether-cannons to challenge battle fleets, and containing within it an ancient, specialized weapon with sufficient power to shatter continents. He had known every part of this fortress intimately, every piece of its most minute details had been burned into his memory by months spent overseeing its operation.

  It was that experience, and that alone, which gave him the context to appreciate just how vast Iseult truly was. They slipped through a side door in the tunnel that led to a steel-runged ladder, which dropped them down on a walkway the size of a narrow street. To their left, an immense array of doorways, ramshackle merchant stalls, and branching alleys spread out ahead and behind them as far as the eye could see. To their right was a vast span of open space from which they could see the layers of numerous levels from two above them to a vanishing distance far below. A thin fog hovered in the air between where they stood and the other side.

  “That,” Belit said, as both Elias and Aimee gawked, “is the foremost loading chasm. It has its own weather, when the upper and lower bay doors are closed.”

  “You could walk these streets and catwalks for years,” Aimee said with wonder in her voice, “and never get bored or run out of things to see.”

  Belit laughed. “I don’t know, Miss Laurent. There are some places where one brown door looks much like another.” She put her hands on the rails, staring out into the fog-draped, cavernous space before them. “But we’re here, so the question now is where do you want to start?”

  “Vant and Vlana were down here for several days,” Aimee said thoughtfully, staring out over the expanse. An updraft from below rustled her hair as Elias watched. “When we talked, they kept coming back to an odd rumor that reached them after digging around. A storyteller of sorts, someone who everyone seemed to know about, but always referred to in a sideways kind of way.”

  A memory – deep and painful – flashed through Elias’s head. A rose-dappled cottage, the sound of his mother humming in the kitchen. He remembered the plucking of guitar strings, and a very simple lullaby being hummed. He’d heard the song before, he realized… many, many times, even back when he wore the name Azrael.

  But this was the first time he’d heard it while he was awake. Or was it? His left hand reached up to touch the side of his head, wincing as small recollections flooded back. Yes. He’d heard it waking, as Azrael, many, many times. The memory of the icy touch of a monster masking itself as a healer made him flinch reflexively. Each time, it had been taken from him.

  “Elias…” The voice was Aimee’s, pulling him back. He turned, and her blue eyes filled his vision, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he shook his head. Both women looked dubious. There wasn’t time to explain to Belit, but he didn’t want to lie. “My memories of the past sixteen years are… complicated, and fuzzy before that,” he said. “Every so often a new one comes back. Something about the word storyteller did it this time. It’s not important right now.”

  “Maybe not,” Belit answered. Her gold eyes were thoughtful, her tone quiet. “That storyteller your friends heard of – that’s a common term for the ship’s Oracle. She’s old, controversial, and the officer aristocracy denies her existence. The functionaries,” she paused, “consider speaking of her tantamount to heresy.”

  “But you know she’s real,” Elias said, meeting the warrior’s eyes.

  Belit looked back and forth between him and Aimee. “…I do,” she said.

  “How?” Aimee asked.

  Belit paused. Elias watched her posture shift in hesitation. She was about to speak of something that had – until now – been a secret. He was about to apologize on behalf of them both, when she answered. “I’ve seen her,” Belit said. “Twice. Once as a little girl… And once in the captain’s company.”

  “So Amut knew,” Aimee said. “When the rest of his peers doubted.”

  “He was an open-minded man,” Belit said, her voice slightly pained. Pushing herself away from the rail, she started walking. “More so than most.”

  “So where do you find this person?” Aimee asked, having to take extra steps to keep up with Belit and Elias’s longer-legged strides.

  “You don’t, exactly,” Belit explained as they walked. “You start searching, and if she wants, she finds you.”

  Laborers hurried past them, ordinary enlisted, some of them not wearing any uniform at all. At odd intervals, Elias caught a glimpse of what looked like some sort of law enforcement on patrol. Their boiled leathers were filthy, marked with insignias that it took seeing two or three of for him to mark as sorts of heraldry. They all wore the same mass-produced half-helms, though, and carried heavy cudgels.

  “Who are the dome-caps?” he asked in low tones as they walked. One of them gave Elias a sour frown that deepened when he marked Oath of Aurum hanging at the young man’s hip.

  “Enforcers,” Belit said. “To the extent that the lower levels have any sort of law officers, it’s them. In an ideal world, they’d be trained for protection and service. In practice, each officer household pays for the upkeep of a set number of them to promote the general welfare. Most are badly trained brutes with clubs.”

  “Are lower level rebellions common?” Aimee asked, thoughtfully.

  “Not for most of Amut’s captaincy,” Belit answered. “But the rule of the Faceless started with one, or so they tell it. And now that he’s gone, tensions are getting worse. People down here work without cessation, and most don’t think the officer aristocracy cares for them anymore.”

  They walked for what seemed a long time, before turning into a side corridor that took them down dirty stairs and into an open square. “Wait here,” Belit murmured to the two of them, and walked further into the crowd. For a few moments, Elias and Aimee stood alone, off to the side, taking in the surrounding scenery.

  The square was the confluence of four corridors. At its center, a small dais held an empty, moss-covered fountain. People moved through. Most were workers of various sorts, dressed in homespun, threadbare clothes or the occasional dirty uniform. In contrast to the riotous, impractical fashions of the upper levels, there was a practicality on display that was both uniform, and jarringly diverse. Elias saw clothing styles from a dozen different countries, and faces in as many different shades. The main unifying trait was that most of them were shorter than the people up above by a few inches.

  He glimpsed Belit talking to a man by the fountain. Trying to read the room with his mystically enhanced senses mostly just produced
a headache. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being followed, or watched. Early in his time with the order, he’d done brief stints as a bodyguard for guild officials. Working security in any sort of crowd like this was a nightmare.

  “This doesn’t add up,” Aimee murmured next to him. Her back rested against the cold wall panel, arms folded across her chest, legs crossed.

  “Which bit?” Elias asked. His head still hurt.

  “Any of it,” she answered. “I don’t know if this Oracle is a practitioner of some sort of divination magic, to be fair, but if she is… the aristocracy blatantly disbelieving her existence doesn’t make any sense. Divination is a known, mystic science. It’s not always reliable, but it’s known.”

  “Never run up against anti-intellectualism before?” Elias asked. For some reason, the thought that someone as educated as Aimee de Laurent hadn’t encountered such a thing seemed… odd.

  Aimee waved a dismissive hand. “This isn’t the streets of Havensreach’s lower district or some hinterland port that nobody goes to, though,” she said. “It’s a living, breathing skyship society. Contempt for knowledge kills people in places like this.”

  Elias frowned, remembering his old masters. “The order makes use of spies spreading false information to weaken the defenses of their enemies ahead of invasion.” Lies, he remembered, were one of their favorite tools. “Contempt for knowledge kills people everywhere.”

  Aimee gave him a sideways look. “That was blunt.”

  He read apprehension in her face. “I don’t like remembering it either,” he added.

  She frowned and looked about to say something else, when Belit returned in the company of a shorter man in coveralls, a jaunty blue cap on his head and a ratty beard hanging precipitously from a thin chin.

  “This is Ferret,” Belit said in lower tones. “He’s been good to my people in the information department, and he’s trustworthy. We start with him.”