First he dropped a screw down a grate. Jack sent the spider to retrieve it. Then Rowen tightened what needed loosening. He scuffed up the paint job on one wall and poured water into a tube clearly marked for oil. The entire time he talked about Jordan.
By the end of their shift, Jack was deciding between ripping out his hair (he eyed Rowen’s hair with a mad glee imagining tearing it out instead) or climbing him in order to strangle him. But, exhausted from correcting Rowen’s mistakes, Jack decided to let him live.
At least until the next time they had to work together.
Philadelphia
Catrina Hollindale waited as patiently as a member of the Fourth of the Nine could be expected to do at a print shop, mindful of the ink so near the fine fabric of her dress. Finally the apprentice enquired as to her order. “One hundred posters reading: For the safe return of Rowen Burchette, alive and in good condition, to the following address…” She included the address, a reward that made the apprentice’s eyes pop, and then described what Rowen looked like for a suitable visual.
When she finished, the apprentice repeated back what she had said, pausing over the offered reward and the number of copies she wanted printed and distributed.
“He sounds like quite the catch,” he remarked.
Catrina waved her fan and, stepping out the door, silently agreed.
Aboard the Artemesia
As Jordan crossed the Topside deck for supper her guards guided her onto the Conductor’s dais. The captain joined them, watching both Conductor and Conductor-to-be with equal measures of distrust.
The sniper at the Conductor’s back shifted on his perch, sensing the unease. He adjusted the position of his gun’s muzzle and fidgeted with his powder horn.
The Conductor never paused in his duties but kept moving the intricate bits of the mechanisms that helped keep the ship aloft and headed in the correct direction.
He looked older than when Jordan had noticed him on her first evening aboard. There was more gray in his hair and it warred with the striking ebony that otherwise would have rivaled Miyakitsu’s dark tresses. His movements seemed more purposeful, and there was a look of fine concentration rather than near-ecstasy on his face. His lips moved and he sang words she’d never heard before.
The captain cleared his throat. “The Conductor.” The captain stepped away.
The Conductor paused in his frantic movements and nodded toward her, saying, “Anil. It appears I am the one to train you. I am not certain how I feel about this fact,” he admitted, reaching out to set a group of wheels spinning. The port wing tipped up and cut through the clouds differently. “It is bittersweet, knowing my time as Conductor is nearly over.”
Jordan watched the cogs and gears whistle and spin, sensing an odd sort of music in their movement.
“I would have preferred an option of retirement,” Anil said, adjusting the main wheel—something that looked tremendously like it belonged on the deck of the Clippers and Cutters Jordan had seen drawn in books. “But that would have required a far different career course.”
She found her voice. “Where are you from?”
“Ah. Calcutta.”
“In the Near East? Was it beautiful there?”
“It was—in its own way. It was—full—of everything. Both good and bad. It was complete.”
“And what would you have done if you had a choice?”
He shook his head, black and silver hair flying. “It matters not one whit. I will retire from my employment here, and soon. My death will finalize it all.”
Jordan blinked and Stache wrapped his fingers around her arm, guiding her away from the dais and to the diners’ table. Or, more properly, her dining table.
That evening the captain instructed the guards to change their tactics with Jordan’s seating. The only leather strap was now the one keeping her in her chair—the chair that was bolted to the deck.
Now Mouse grabbed her wrist, spreading her fingers wide. She stared at him as his thick fingers took thin pieces of rope—not much thicker than the floss Jordan’s mother used for embroidery—and wrapped them around each of her fingers.
“What—”
Stache did the same for her other hand, and within minutes each of her fingers and her thumbs were tied to separate strings leading away from her table and toward different parts of the ship.
The guards knelt beside her; each grabbed a foot and tugged her recently acquired shoes off her feet.
Jordan’s eyes widened, and she drew back from the table as far as she could to see what they were about. But she felt more than she saw as each toe was tied as each of her fingers had been.
Mouse stepped to a nearby lever and pressed it down. There was a faint zip and the strings’ true purpose was demonstrated and Jordan was left strapped at the waist to her chair, each of her fingers tied to a finer and separate moving bit of the airship Artemesia.
Her eyes wide, she felt a tug on her right ring finger and tried to work with it instead of against it.
“This is the finer bit of your training,” Captain Kerdin explained. “You understand the basics, now these are the finer points.”
Throughout the course of supper Jordan worked hard to learn, to anticipate and coax the ship to cooperate at least enough so she might eat and drink. At the meal’s end she felt nearly victorious, having eaten and drunk more than she wore.
The captain stepped to her side, drew a knife, and sliced all the strings with a single move, watching as gravity grabbed and dragged them, hissing, across the Topside floor, until they slithered off the sides of the flying behemoth, disappearing. “Tomorrow you will begin your final phase of training.”
Holgate
The Maker’s library had been thoroughly gone through, books and papers scattered all over the floor, childhood journals trampled underfoot as the watchmen opened each book’s cover, gave it a hearty shake, paged through whatever did not fall out, and tossed it aside if there seemed to be nothing of immediate value.
Exhausted from swatting at suicidal butterflies in the Maker’s laboratory, Councilman Stevenson found the library’s destruction nearly peaceful. He made a mental note to bring in a crew of low-level scholars to sift through whatever he deemed worthy. They might find things of interest among the rubble he was leaving in his wake, but his goal was simple: find whatever clues he needed to find the Maker.
Surely the Maker made mention of who he was close with, where he felt safe … Those were what a man on the run ran to.
The fact the man had the audacity to shirk his duty—abandon his calling—was beyond frustrating.
If he could track him and get his hands on one of the two females accompanying him he could make the Maker obey.
Especially if he got his hands on the Maker’s adorable daughter.
He set his hat on the nearby desk and glared at the nearly skeletal man who reclined on the seat, his boots propped on the desk’s slightly slanted surface, his long, thin, and spider-like arms crossed behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.
Stevenson cleared his throat. “Are you truly intending to sit there all day as they search?”
“Hmm?” The Tester spared the Councilman a glance. “Why, yes. Thank you for asking. I’m certain you’re doing a grand job. Why, if I’d just walked in here I’d look at the floor and speculate on the wildly industrious nature of the hooligans ransacking this room.”
Stevenson crossed his arms. “What is your particular problem with the way I am proceeding?”
“Overall, or just here?” He let go of his metal hand and, bringing his arms in front of him once more, reached into a pocket in his voluminous robe. “I believe I started a list…”
Stevenson’s teeth clamped tight. “Do get up and assist, or leave.”
“Fine, fine.” The Tester slid his boots off the desk, rose, snatched up the long walking stick that was often close at hand, and headed to the door.
Stevenson kept silent, though the vein near his hairline rose to a
nnounce his internal boiling point had nearly been reached.
“One note, though, before I leave to seek out some tea and toast points,” the Tester said. “Do consider this…” He motioned to the crew of men disassembling the Maker’s library book by book. “Are these watchmen truly invested in finding the Maker, or are they simply going through the motions because—let’s be honest for a moment, shall we?—Holgate with no Maker means Holgate with no dangerous prisoners and no frightening human experimentation. And, these watchmen? Are paid hourly.”
Councilman Stevenson glared at him. “Do tell me why, when there are other Testers in the region, do I keep you here?”
“Because I am the best of them all.”
It was only after the Tester was out the door, down the hall, and out of sight of the library that Councilman Stevenson sent the watchmen home, and summoned the Wardens and Wraiths.
Aboard the Artemesia
Supper had been consumed, another fine stew with squash and chicken stock and bread baked fresh in their most recent port of call. And so, as all good suppers should end in the opinion of the captain’s now regular guests, the Wandering Wallace and Miyakitsu caught everyone’s attention for a new illusion.
But before the trickery began, Miyakitsu pulled a pretty little ring box from her pocket.
“Ah, yes,” the Wandering Wallace said, smiling. He slid it across the table to Maude. “A mere bauble I picked up on my travels that might be appreciated by a woman of your generous nature.”
Surprised, Maude opened the box and looked at the ruby ring. “It is far too grand!” She looked at Bran.
His mouth hung open.
“I cannot accept,” she said, carefully closing the box and sliding it away.
The Wandering Wallace returned the gesture, and the box. “But of course you can, and frankly, you must. It would offend poor Miyakitsu if you did not,” he explained.
“Oh. Umm … Oh,” Maude said again, perplexed. “I do not wish to offend…”
“Then keep the ring—oh, do put it on now,” the Wandering Wallace insisted.
Miyakitsu and Meggie both clapped their hands.
Maude blushed but obeyed. “It is beautiful, thank you both so much.”
The Wandering Wallace grinned beneath the mask of a baboon’s colorful face. “It is our pleasure.” He rose. “Tonight we have brought along a special prop…” the Wandering Wallace explained, walking over to the food cart and bending down to grab a bundle of fabric, metal, and wood. Hefting it easily, he brought it before them, unrolled it on the deck, and, with one good, solid shake, he snapped it all together, creating a rigid and thick canvas background.
Miyakitsu did what she did best, pointing to the most interesting bits of whatever he did with an artistic flair and grace that were nearly as wild as his mask.
The Wandering Wallace stood the background up with a flick of his supple wrists and cranked a lever at its side to attach four suction cups firmly onto the smooth deck.
“My lady?” he asked with a gracious bow and a flourish all his own to encourage her to stand before the background.
Bran squinted at the background’s image, examining it, while Miyakitsu refused to stand where Wallace instructed. He pointed, she shook her head no and stomped her feet. He pointed and she crossed her arms.
He pointed again and she stuck out her tongue.
Meggie was hysterical.
Wallace strode over to his woman, picked her up by the waist, and tossed her over his shoulder very much like the guards had previously done with Jordan.
Hauled to her designated spot, supposedly against her will, Miyakitsu propped her elbows on Wallace’s back and pouted with great determination in Meggie’s direction.
Meggie howled with laughter and Bran couldn’t stop the smile that tickled the edges of his lips. He looked at her then, his little daughter who nearly glowed with an inner radiance, and he carefully reached his hand out and found hers, wrapping his fingers around her tiny hand.
She startled at the touch and turned to look at him, dazzling him with a grin. Something inside of him melted—exhaled.
Miyakitsu was deposited before the banner-like background, the fabric painted with moons and stars and constellations. Bran guessed that if one knew the stories of the stars, there was quite a tale painted in the swirling and wild colors of the canvas.
“And now, my friends,” Wallace said, crossing his arms before him and bending at the waist in a bow, his arms sweeping out as he rose and revealing that he held three knives in each hand. “I shall shoot for the stars and try not to hit the beautiful moon who lives there among them all.”
Miyakitsu arched her back, tucked her feet together so that the ball of one nestled into the arch of the other, and raised her arms above her head to grasp her hands together. Stoic and statuesque, she stood there as Wallace found his mark.
The knives glimmered as he threw them, one at a time, like silver stars shooting through the gathered stormy darkness surrounding their ship as the serving girl cleared their place settings and tidied up like nothing spectacular—or even vaguely interesting—was going on behind her back.
The blades hissed into the canvas and stuck nearly as well as they might in wood. Bran squeezed Meggie’s hand with each fresh hiss of the blade and she twitched each time, amazed by the weapons whispering past the beautiful girl’s body. And the way the girl seemed to not even draw a breath, but made herself even smaller.
The clapping began as soon as the throwing ended, and Wallace strode to the background and plucked the knives back out as easily as one might withdraw a quill pen from an inkwell. He snatched Miyakitsu’s hand and raised it to his lips for a kiss.
Then he turned and returned to his spot. “You enjoyed that?”
The clapping increased in volume.
“Let’s make it still more difficult, shall we?”
Meggie’s hands flew to her mouth and even Maude hesitated a moment.
“Come now,” Wallace urged. “Just a bit more difficult?”
Meggie slowly lowered her hands and sought out her father’s for reassurance. They nodded as one, Bran’s gaze holding her own.
“Excellent well,” Wallace said. “Do you know the song ‘Walk Around’?”
Nods all around except from Meggie.
“No!” Wallace exclaimed, springing over to the table and resting his elbows on it so that his baboon’s ridged snout was mere inches from Meggie’s button nose. “Say it is not so,” he said with mock tragedy. “The Maker’s daughter must know this song!” He tilted his head away from her then and began to whistle the tune, nodding in time to it.
Behind him Miyakitsu clapped along.
“Good, eh?” he asked Meggie.
She nodded, beaming.
“Shall we try the words? It’s simple, really, just a round.” The Wandering Wallace clapped a rhythm, repeating the words of the song with only the simplest of tunes. Maude and Bran picked it up, as did the captain, and even the normally dour Marion sang along when coaxed.
Meggie sang out, her voice a trilling and thin soprano that went wispy at its edges.
“Ah,” Wallace said, “that is a lovely thing.” He straightened and stepped back, dropping the knives so they stuck point down in the wood at his feet.
The captain scowled at the knives in his ship’s deck but no one else seemed bothered. He was the Wandering Wallace, after all, and they were well entertained.
“What I need you to do is sing it as a round should be sung. Miss Maude and Miss Meggie together, Marion and Bran working as one, and our good captain—for what sailing man cannot handle his own part of a round?—as our third part. And at every intersection—and you’ll see soon enough what I mean—I need you to clap. Let’s try one time.” And he began to sing in a rich baritone none of them had expected to come from such a slim shape as his. He motioned for Maude and Meggie to join him and then pointed to the others each in their turn.
He was right. The music wove and
intersected, and Bran had the distinct feeling that if you rearranged the words at the intersections there was a secondary story unfolding if you went far enough.
“Excellent well!” the Wandering Wallace exclaimed with a clap in conclusion. “I will give us a count of three and then you will see something amazing! But not at all magickal!”
He turned his back on them then and Meggie nearly fell off Marion’s knee in excitement, before settling in to sing.
The Wandering Wallace crouched down, surrounded by his blades, fingers resting lightly on the handles of the farthest ones at each of his sides. “One, two, three!”
The singing started, the clapping joined in, and on every clap he hurled another knife as Miyakitsu worked her way through a precisely timed dance between the zipping blades. She lowered her arms, bent her hands back at the wrists, and extended her fingers so beautifully they seemed to lengthen before their audience, blades nearly grazing flesh. The Wandering Wallace flipped his cloak over his shoulder, revealing a bandolier of knife blades just when everyone thought he’d run out.
With the rising excitement they sang faster, clapped faster, knives flew faster, and the dance became as wild as the blades were deadly and then—
—the last blade flew wide and Meggie screamed as it hurtled toward Miyakitsu’s head.
But Miyakitsu disappeared, her beautiful kimono hanging in midair a moment longer, empty, before it crumpled to the floor of Topside.
The song died; no music could be made when so many people held their breath all at once. But the message of the song whispered in Bran’s ears. It was no simple round the Wandering Wallace had them sing, but a catch, the message only apparent when the words overlapped just so.
Something wiggled in the wrinkles and folds of the silk robe and Meggie screamed again, leaping free of Marion’s grasp to wrap her arms around her father’s neck. She buried her nose there at the corner of his jaw, and peeked around slowly.
He felt her heart racing.
Just like his did, watching as a dark nose stuck out of the kimono’s neck hole, and then a furry head thrust its way free, all black fur, big ears, and bright eyes. With a whimper and a whine the black fox burst forward and leaped into Wallace’s arms.
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