by Eric Asher
“Well, I made a new friend from Ballern. It’s possible we shot her ship down in the desert …”
“What?” Jacob tried to wrap his head around that statement. “One of the destroyers we brought down?”
“Yes, she’s here. Say hi.”
Jacob exchanged a mortified glance with Gladys. “What do I even say to that?”
“I don’t know,” Gladys said. “I didn’t shoot her out of the sky.”
Jacob groaned and clicked the transmitter. “Hi?”
“Hello.”
There was a bit of shuffling before Alice’s voice came back on the line. “Okay, bad idea. That was awkward. Anyhow, did you know that in Ballern they refer to the kids who live on the docks as Skyborn? It’s like how the Highlands call us Steamborn in Ancora. I thought that rather interesting.
“We’ve been in the library at Belldorn. Oh, Jacob, you simply have to see it. More books than I imagined existed. But, we discovered some inconsistencies in the history of the Ballern and Belldorn conflict. So we’re going to Ballern to clear some things up.”
“You’re … what?” Jacob asked. “Mary is flying you to Ballern?”
“She’ll be safe,” Mary said. “Likely safer than you two have been in the past month.”
Jacob grimaced at that. He didn’t like it, even if it might be true. “But we don’t know anything about Ballern.”
A long sigh came across the line. Alice again. “Jacob. I’ll be with Furi. She’s lived on the docks for years. And if that’s not enough to stop you from worrying, I did confirm our captain and her first mate were pirates.”
Jacob heard Mary squawk something before the transmission cut out. He took a deep breath. Worried as he was, heaping that onto Alice right then wasn’t going to do anyone any good. He clicked the transmitter.
“Sorry. I just worry sometimes.”
Gladys twiddled her thumbs, avoiding the awkward exchange altogether. She was probably the smartest one in the room.
“We all do,” Mary said. “But you know this has to be done.”
Did it, though? He wondered. Was their time better spent learning more about the past, or helping their allies who were alive right then? Perhaps splitting up had been the best solution. Alice could dig, and Jacob could help Midstream fortify itself against Fel. And perhaps that, more than anything, was what had his nerves on edge.
He debated telling them at all, but he knew they’d find out soon enough.
“I have more to tell you. Fel is organizing outside of Midstream. Archibald suspects an attack. I can’t say more over the transmitter.”
“Bad timing,” Mary said. “We can’t turn back now. I already have contacts expecting us.”
“I don’t want you to turn back.” He glanced at Gladys. “We’re preparing, but it’s going to be rough.”
“Jacob?” Alice said. “Jacob, you get the princess and get the hell out of there.”
“I can’t. She’s made her choice, and I won’t leave her.”
Only static answered for a time until Alice spoke again. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
“We’ll get there when we can,” Mary said. “But it’ll be a day at least.”
“Understood.”
Jacob sighed and hung his head as they disconnected. He looked to Gladys. “We better get back to the traps.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Furi sank back into her notebook. She’d copied a great many passages from books published in both cities. But it was still the excerpts from The Failed Treatise and the Third War that sent shivers down her spine. Published in Ballern, but it had made its way to the great library at Belldorn.
Furi looked up from her book when the Skysworn lurched to the side.
Mary cursed and wiped at her pants. “Of all the things Jacob has invented, he should really invent a lid for these damn cups.”
Smith’s voice came over the horn, tinny and barely hiding his amusement. “If you need a lid, I am sure I can make one for you.”
Mary glared at the horn while Alice and Furi exchanged a grin.
“You know what’s odd?” Furi asked.
“If you tell me you have lids in Ballern, so help me,” Mary muttered.
“No, no. Well, I mean, we do, but that’s not what I was going to say. I’ve been reading The Dead Scourge, and it talks about the history leading up to the war, but there’s no mention of the labor camps Belldorn used to hold prisoners.”
“Labor camps?” Alice asked. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“When I still had a teacher, her grandmother had been in one. And she wasn’t a follower of the Children of the Dark Fire, so I can’t see why she would have lied about it.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Mary said. “Mines mostly, so they only needed to guard the entrances. And they weren’t humane. More than a few prisoners died in those camps.”
Furi nodded. “Those who escaped back to Ballern told terrible accounts. If it wasn’t the guards beating them, it was their own friends killing them for scraps of food. Some starved to death. Others died where they stood, pickaxes in hand.”
“That’s horrible,” Alice said. “Why wouldn’t that be in Archibald’s book?”
“He may not have known,” Mary said. “You’ll find Belldorn enjoys remembering the best of itself. And the less savory things, well, those are often forgotten or polished away into a footnote.”
“How did you know about it?”
Mary glanced back at Alice. “Well, that’s a rather long story.”
The horn beside Mary squawked to life. “Because she is a pirate at heart, Alice. And because you learn the worst parts of a place when you are smuggling.”
“Do you have the chainguns primed?” Mary asked, redirecting the conversation. “We’re heading for Midstream after we drop this cargo off.”
Smith grunted, an odd sound over the horn. “I heard you, Mary. We’ll get there in time. Have faith.”
Mary rolled her eyes.
“Mary,” Alice said. “What cargo are you smuggling exactly?”
“Pill-Bug eggs.”
“You must be joking!” Furi said. “All four barrels?”
“Yes,” Mary said.
“Pill-Bug eggs?” Alice asked. “That’s … that seems somewhat disappointing on the scale of things pirates might transport.”
Mary chuckled. “They’ve been outlawed in Ballern for decades. Classified as an agricultural parasite.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Alice said. “I raised them with my mom for years, and we never had a problem.”
“I heard they ate an entire crop of cabbages one year,” Furi said.
Alice shook her head. “They eat dead things. The only way they’re going to eat an entire crop of cabbages is if the cabbages were already rotting.”
Furi shrugged.
“Well,” Mary said. “Whatever happened, they’re a delicacy now.”
Alice pinched the bridge of her nose. “So you’re a smuggler? Who transports food?”
Mary grinned. “Sometimes. Other times we transport fugitives like you and Jacob.”
Alice shrank back into her chair a bit at that. “Right. Well, that’s different. I think. What did you do that you ended up owing Archibald?”
“Archibald?” Furi asked.
Alice nodded. “They owed him a debt, and he owned the ship until they paid it or something.”
Smith barked out a laugh over the horn. “You may as well tell them. Our debt is paid.”
Mary’s fingers strangled the lever in her hand. “Archibald. It was a long time ago. When we knew less about the world than we do now. We smuggled old textbooks into Ballern.”
“Books?” Alice said. “I’m rather impressed, and somehow disappointed.”
“Among other things,” Smith said. “Remember that barrel of explosives?”
“Smith,” Mary said with a warning edge to her voice.
“That airship crashed before we even left the docks. Should hav
e timed the fuse better.”
But Furi didn’t care about what else Mary and Smith had done. She wanted other answers. “Where did you deliver the books? For who? I’ve never heard a story about illegal texts before.”
Mary crossed her arms. “An ostracized teacher. She took care of some of the dock kids. We didn’t know much more than that. It’s easier to hide your trail the less you know.”
Furi narrowed her eyes. “What was her name?”
“Kathy, I think?” Mary said. “Did you know her?”
Smith laughed over the horn. “Kathy? How many loads did we deliver to her, Mary? Her name was Kura.”
An electric chill bolted down Furi’s spine. Kura, the same woman who had sheltered her as a kid? Surely not. It couldn’t be. Why would she have known smugglers? Pirates! But the more she pondered that question, the more she remembered the small gatherings in cargo holds and the floating warehouse they used to meet in for story time.
But that was the answer. The warehouse was the only place Furi ever saw Kura with a book in her hand. Hidden away in the clouds where no one but the maintenance crews would ever tread, and those crews were more loyal to the Skyborn than they were to the crown.
“Furi?” Alice asked. “Are you okay?”
Furi blinked rapidly, willing away tears as she gained a new perspective on the care Kura had given her and the others. The risks she must have taken. “Kura was like a mother to me growing up. She gave you money?”
Mary nodded. “Quite a bit of it.”
“She could have used it for food, or a home. For herself. She used to feed me and Rin and some others. Most of the Skyborn ate at charity kitchens. You know the type, funded by some good Samaritans? I always thought the monarchy only allowed them to operate so they didn’t have to clean up the corpses from the docks.”
Furi didn’t miss Alice’s cringe. And she thought she knew why. They probably had the same kind of thing in Ancora, where it sounded like the divide between the rulers and the common folk was just as severe.
“Kura is why I can read Mokuskrit, Alice. She taught us everything we knew. Reading, writing, history, all of it.”
Mary nodded along to Furi’s story. “Kura told us you didn’t have schools in Ballern.”
“That was only half of it,” Furi said. “The Skyborn didn’t have schools. We weren’t allowed to attend school. Who would be the cog if they knew they could be more?”
“The Butcher did much the same in Ancora,” Smith said. “Although I would say he was more subtle about it.”
“Smith’s right,” Alice said. “We still had schools, at least. But I was raised to believe if I worked hard enough, I could be one of those living behind the walls of the Highlands. But the divide is too great, and the gatekeepers too many. That was never meant to be my world.”
Furi reached out and squeezed Alice’s arm, but jerked back a moment later. It wasn’t the kind of gesture you gave to someone who was your enemy, who had shot you out of the sky. But Alice was something more. Furi felt like Alice was a mirror of her time in Ballern, like she could have been Alice if she’d grown up in Ancora instead.
And now, now she’d seen the books in the library at Belldorn. The truth of her city’s past could never be taken from her mind. But that meant the monarchy of Ballern was an enemy to the people of Ballern. It meant she didn’t have a reason to run from Alice and the others when they reached the city. Because she knew, in her heart, the city she had known was only a waking dream.
* * *
Alice hunkered down behind the hidden panel in the Skysworn’s supply hold. A few cracks of light and Furi’s breathing were all that told her the world still existed outside. They’d waited until the last minute to slip into the smuggling hold.
Furi argued that Alice didn’t need to hide with her because no one in Ballern would know who she was. But Mary disagreed. She didn’t want anyone knowing either of them had come from the Skysworn. She thought it would be safer for everyone that way, and Alice rather agreed.
A door slammed open nearby, the handle cracking against the wall twice. That was their signal. Mary’s customer was here. Muffled voices sounded in the cargo hold, and Alice held her breath. One voice rose higher, anger plain to hear, but Alice couldn’t make out the words behind the wood and steel of their bolt-hole.
Something scraped along the ground and thudded outside. Alice grabbed Furi’s arm on instinct alone, squeezing it to choke back her own rising panic. Again the scraping came, louder this time until it faded. When it came the third time, Alice realized someone was moving the cargo.
She released Furi’s arm and waited until a knock sounded on the wall. Only then did she undo a simple bolt on her right and push the door open. The dim light was blinding after an hour in the darkness, and her legs threatened to cramp as she straightened out.
“All clear,” Smith said.
“What was that arguing about?”
Smith shrugged. “Apparently, they didn’t want four barrels. Something about not being able to sell them before they went bad. Or hatched.” A slow smile crept over Smith’s face. “Mary changed their minds.”
The door to the cargo hold opened, and Mary stepped inside. “They’re gone. You two are in the clear. Smith and I will gather a few supplies, and then we’re heading to Midstream.” She flipped a small copper box to Alice.
Alice caught it and frowned at the warm metal. “A transmitter?”
“Best we have. It’ll reach Bollwerk from Ballern without an antenna. You may have to wait until night to reach us if we’re too far out. The signal travels farther then.”
“We can catch a supply ship,” Furi said.
“Hold on to it anyway,” Mary said. “In case you can’t. Better to be prepared than dead.”
Furi didn’t argue that point.
“Lead the way,” Alice said, throwing a small pack over her shoulder.
Furi adjusted her own and took a deep breath.
“Be careful, you two,” Mary said. “I expect to hear all about your escapades. And I’m sure Jacob will be anxious to hear from you.”
Alice hesitated and then hugged Smith and Mary before opening the door for Furi. What waited beyond—the sprawl of soaring airship docks to dwarf those of Bollwerk against a cloudy blue sky—took her breath away. Far below them was a city that looked like another world.
Graceful arches and spires soared closest to the docks, but even those were left well below the lowest levels and ships. The more Alice looked around, the more out of place she felt. This was no airship dock. This was a city above the city.
Huge tanks sat at regular intervals, massive pipes flowing from them and into them, terminating in small shacks and open-air bars set up all along the dock. At the edges, protected by a mesh Alice suspected served multiple purposes, gas chambers large enough for a destroyer floated, stabilizing the docks on the few anchors and lifts that connected them to the earth.
When Alice thought of the docks at Bollwerk, she thought of the rust and dirt and oil that crusted everything around the airships. Like a floating tinker’s workshop with traces of use at every corner. But here in Ballern, no rust showed on the sprawling docks. It looked more like they had been painted, even sanded and waxed in some areas.
“Come on,” Furi said, taking a right as they left the Skysworn.
Alice followed, looking over the railings at two levels of schooners, clippers, and private ships docked below them. Their current walkway split every hundred feet, creating a U-shaped dock for a bevy of trading vessels. On the ends, larger supply ships waited, while above them, like a floating shield, sat the destroyers and warships of Ballern.
One thing Alice realized, despite their quick pace across the walkways, was that Ballern had far more destroyers than what they’d seen near Bollwerk. They outnumbered the fleet she’d seen in Belldorn, and she suspected the only reason Ballern hadn’t conquered Belldorn ages ago was due to superior firepower. One destroyer against a Porcupine would never
have a chance.
“This place is amazing,” Alice said. “It’s … honestly, it’s nicer than the Lowlands.”
“Really?” Furi asked, glancing back as they skirted one of many large gas chambers. She waved to a cook working a wide griddle who held up a spatula in greeting.
Furi lowered her voice. “We need to be careful. Anyone who knows I was stationed on the Nightingale could raise an alarm.”
The thought pulled Alice back into the present. Thoughts of scraping by in the Lowlands fled when she remembered how much of a risk they were taking. What would happen if the authorities in Ballern realized they had a spy in their midst? Alice doubted she’d have to worry about that for long. It was a sobering thought.
A long walkway extended out over nothing behind the gas chamber. Alice wasn’t afraid of heights so much, but as the steel trembled beneath her boots, her heart leaped a little faster. There were no lights on the narrow path, no bars or restaurants or dock workers gathered.
“No one comes to the edge,” Furi said. “If you ever need to move through the docks undetected, you take the Bones.”
“The Bones?”
Furi tapped on the walkway with her foot, drawing Alice’s eye back to the grate under their feet. “The way they rattle like an old ghost story. We call them the Bones.”
Alice shivered and looked away as the edge of a low fog bank drifted in beneath them. She wasn’t sure if the opaque vision made it better or worse. She pulled her pack tighter against her shoulders and stayed close to Furi.
“Not far now.” Furi grabbed a ladder that shifted with the levels of the docks until the angle was nearly past 100 degrees.
Alice grabbed the cold metal, slicked with condensation. She didn’t look down after that. Just followed Furi’s boots from rung to rung until they mercifully reached stable footing again.
“Kura lives here,” Furi said.
“On the Bones?” Alice asked.
Furi nodded and tapped the side of a metal hut. “These are the nicer ones. For years, I lived in one made from the leather of an ancient gas chamber. Didn’t like that much in the winter.”