by Cam Baity
“Then let us hide here while we look for the Covenant,” she cried, stepping forward. Micah held her back. “If you don’t, the Foundry will find us, and we will fail.”
The Agent spoke. The Mercanteer turned away.
“His Splendor…” The translator paused reluctantly. “He says that not be an option. You not be worth the risk.”
Phoebe pulled free of Micah’s grip and strode up to the freylani. The group of mehkans clinked, and the Mercanteer’s silver eyes popped wide. She grabbed his little jeweled hand and dropped to her knees. Based on the silence that fell, she knew that she had committed a grave offense.
“Mehk is worth the risk,” she pleaded. “It doesn’t matter what you think about the Way. If what the Covenant is doing might help you, if there’s a chance it could save the people of Mehk, then it IS worth it!”
The Agent interpreted, and the Mercanteer tore his hand away from Phoebe, caressing it as if it had been burned. The translator bowed humbly and continued to beseech in hurried tones. The Mercanteer did not like what he was hearing. Nor did the other freylani, who flew into a chattering frenzy.
“What did you say to him?” Phoebe asked.
The Mercanteer barked to the Agent, who bowed even lower. The translator grabbed the kids and drew them away from the balcony, followed by the stares of resentful silver eyes. The trio of fibrous guards that had caught them stepped aside.
“I’ll take that,” Micah said, yanking his rifle from the guard.
The Agent escorted them back through the relic collection.
“We can’t leave until we get his help,” Phoebe pleaded.
“And you have it,” the translator replied. “Hurry, before His Splendor changes his mind.”
“For real?” Micah asked.
“There be one who might aid you,” said the Agent, “a source that His Splendor hardly ever calls upon, only to find the rarest of treasures. She be a font of knowledge, ancient and feared.”
“What do you mean, ‘feared’?” Phoebe asked uneasily.
“She be a dread of legend—a great deceiver, a dealer of wretched schemes and lies.”
“Sounds perfect,” Micah grumbled.
“Then how do we know we can trust what she says?”
“You don’t, Loaii. Entreating her be an ordeal, not a thing one would choose. But choice be a thing you sorely lack.”
“Who is she? How do we find her?” Phoebe said grimly.
The Agent led them back to the elevator, and they mounted the platform. “Her name be unpronounceable, even in me own language. Could I manage it, speaking her name would take us until the rise. Mehkans know her only as the Erghan word meaning ‘to gorge.’” He looked at the kids with one of his independently moving eyes. “This word be Rhom.”
“To gorge,” Phoebe mused darkly.
“You will find her in a reef system known as the Talons.”
“Boy, this is gettin’ better by the minute,” Micah huffed.
“His Splendor has generously offered you the use of one of his barges, which will provide you safe passage across the flux.”
“You mean…” Phoebe asked hesitantly, “the silver ocean?”
The Agent nodded.
She clutched one of the knobby vines of the elevator. A barge on the open sea? Her skin felt clammy at the thought. Would it be as bad as riding the vellikran back in Tendril Fen?
They returned to the grand atrium, and the translator hurried the kids across the chamber to a different elevator.
“This was your idea,” Phoebe said suddenly to the mehkan. “You asked him to help us, didn’t you?”
The Agent smiled, his golden gear teeth flashing, but in a way that was sincere, even humble. Phoebe wondered how she could have ever mistaken him for Mr. Pynch.
He was about to speak when a commotion drifted in from outside. Someone was pounding on the courtyard gates.
“The Foundry be here,” the Agent growled. “Hurry!”
The translator tugged a vine, and the elevator began to sink.
“I must remain to speak for His Splendor,” he said. “Go to the base. It leads to the dock where his barge awaits you.”
“But who will—” Phoebe started to say, but they dropped beneath the floor, and the Agent vanished from sight.
They were in a narrow white shaft, descending through the tower at an angle. They drifted past oval windows that gazed out at the night and the silent silver sea.
“Can you handle it?” Micah asked. “The water, I mean.”
“Like he said. We don’t have any choice.”
“I know, I just…” He struggled with the words. “Just wanna make sure you won’t…that you’re gonna be…”
She looked at him strangely. A tentative smile crept across her lips. He looked at his feet and took a step closer, scrabbling around in that silly brain of his for the right thing to say.
Voices echoed above. Humans.
The ivy elevator eased to a quivering stop.
“No,” Phoebe whimpered. “No, no, no.”
The kids strained their ears, but they couldn’t make out the muted words up above.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“Wait, I guess.”
“What if they call the elevator back up?”
Micah glanced around the wide, circular platform. Dozens of creepers and pulleys grew out of it, running up and out of sight. He threw the rifle strap across his chest, set the gun on his back, and shinnied up a vine to the nearest window ten feet above.
“What do you see?”
“Hrmmm…” he said, straining to hold on while he peered out. “Come see for yourself.”
Micah climbed off the vine to perch on the window ledge while Phoebe made her ascent. She grunted with the effort, recalling that the rope climb was the very reason she always skipped gym class. She swooned as she stepped onto the ledge beside him. It was a sheer drop down to the vast, reflective sea.
“Don’t suppose you’re up for a swim,” Micah said.
“I don’t think so. Flux looks like”—she peered down at the silver infinity—“mercury. That stuff can’t be safe.”
“But if we climb down, we can get to those rocks and—”
“We can’t. The wall is totally smooth. There’s no way to…”
Phoebe looked at the vines wrapped around the wide seed casings. She tested the lines, chose the fattest coil, and slid out her Multi-Edge. With an adjustment of the dial, the segments of her tool clicked to re-form a hacksaw, and she went to work.
“Leave it to Plumm.” Micah laughed, shaking his head.
She severed the vine, and the elevator lurched. The sliced tendril recoiled back toward the seed casing, but Micah grabbed it, unspooled the vine, and tossed it out the window. Its loose end splashed into the flux below. Phoebe looked down nervously.
“Piece o’ cake,” Micah said as he grabbed on to the vine and climbed out the window. “Just do me one favor. Don’t let go.”
He vanished over the edge and rappelled down the tower.
She grabbed the vine, fought down her sickening fright, and stepped off the window ledge.
With the vine clenched under her arm and held securely in her hands, she used her feet to ease her way down the tower. The air was crisp, but free of any briny scent or the sound of crashing waves. And yet, somehow it was worse. The tide was a warning—the growl of an enemy you knew was nearby. The flux, however, with its antiseptic smell and its ominous silence, was a clean killer—one that didn’t want you to know it was there.
Her arms were straining, but she was in control. Almost there. Just one step at a time, that’s all it was. One step at a—
The vine began to retract.
The elevator was ascending.
“Slide down! Slide!” came Micah’s hiss from below.
Between her frantic legs, she saw Micah leap off the line and cling to the bluffs at the base of the tower. She clambered hand over hand, but it wasn’t fast enough. The v
ine was carrying her back up. Phoebe eased her grip and slid down. She cinched her hands and tried to control her descent. But the end of the retracting line was coated in flux as slippery as silver grease.
She couldn’t stop.
The vine slithered free from her hands.
She dropped, hit Micah. His arms flailed, and she clawed for him. Her body slammed against the bluff. She clung, hands digging into the surface, boots scraping to find purchase.
Micah reached down to her, but it wasn’t far enough.
She heard the Sea of Callendon crashing around her, the taste of foam and bile in her mouth. The murderous undertow. Hands thrusting her onto the rock—her mother’s last touch.
Micah lowered the butt end of his rifle, and she took it. With all his might, he heaved her up, and she collapsed beside him.
“I ask you…to do…one thing,” he panted with a smile.
But she was shattered.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
Shaking, she waited for the daze to pass.
They caught their breath, then shuffled around the base of the tower, staying away from the edge of the bluffs. Poking their heads around the corner, they spied a curving shore with a dozen bone-white outcroppings that served as docks. At the far end, a lone barge marked with the Mercanteer’s logo bobbed in the flux with a group of mehkans waiting beside it.
Waiting for Phoebe and Micah.
Before the kids could start climbing down, a speedboat materialized out of the night. It rumbled up to the nearest outcropping, cutting off their path to the barge. A team of Foundry troops poured out and stormed the docks.
“A stinkin’ Sea Bullet!” Micah huffed.
Phoebe felt sick. She squatted up against the tower and hugged her knees. It didn’t matter what they did. At every turn, the Foundry was there—always just ahead of them, always right behind them. How were she and Micah ever supposed to—
Micah ran.
He scrambled down the bluffs and hustled along the docks. Out of sight of the barge, he vanished inside the Sea Bullet.
Phoebe stood rooted in place, dread laced with fury. Only a stone’s throw away, the Foundry soldiers had their rifles trained on the mehkans. They hadn’t noticed Micah, but if they turned…
Before the worst-case-scenario part of her brain took over, Micah popped his head out of the boat and waved her over.
This was wrong. This was madness. She climbed down the bluff and rushed along the pier to join him.
The Sea Bullet was a deadly black knife in the flux, about thirty feet long with a low, covered cabin. Hating Micah, hating herself for following him, she stepped onto the boat. The rhythmic sway immediately sent her head spinning.
The cabin was spacious with bucket seats lining the perimeter. It had been a ludicrous gamble on Micah’s part, but the soldiers had left it unattended. The boat was dark aside from his rifle light, which he had detached to hold in his teeth. His head was buried in a panel as she approached.
She heard a snap. Micah tossed something to her—a black disc the size of a bottle cap with a tiny green light.
“ID tracker,” he said. “Toss it in the flux.”
Unable to steady her reeling mind, she robotically did as she was told and dumped the device overboard.
Micah adjusted the controls, then tossed his idiotic grin back at her like a grenade. “Strap in. This puppy’s got muscle.”
He tweaked a few more dials. They heard raised voices from the nearby barge. How long until the Foundry soldiers returned?
Her brain finally popped into gear as his finger reached for the ignition switch.
“Stop!” she hissed. “The engine, it’s too loud!”
His eyes widened. He knew she was right. They had heard the Sea Bullet rumbling from up on the bluffs. If they started it up now, they would be detected for sure.
“Wha…” He was starting to panic. “What do we do?”
“Get off this boat,” she said, using the wall for support.
“No way. This is our ticket out!”
“To where, Micah? We have no idea where we’re going.”
“Anywhere is better than here,” he snapped.
“They’ll find us. They’ll kill us. They—”
She jolted as her whist snagged on a wall panel. With a couple of tugs, she freed it, and the panel opened silently. But as the folds of her whist slid away from it, she noticed that the panel was, in fact, squeaking on its hinge.
The whist…
“Where’s the engine?” she snapped.
Micah pointed to a row of vents slashing across the hood like the gills of a shark. Phoebe tore off her whist and reversed the material, so that the inside was facing out. She climbed out onto the hood, stuffed her shawl into the vents, and tied the corners off around rivets.
“Start it!” she ordered.
His jaw dangled open, but he understood.
He rushed back to the controls. She closed her eyes and prayed. Panel lights illuminated his face. The whist puffed a bit as if it were breathing. The Sea Bullet vibrated to life.
And the engine was silent.
Phoebe climbed back into the cabin as the boat leapt into action. Micah whipped the wheel and narrowly avoided crashing into the bluffs. The Sea Bullet sliced through the flux, quiet as a breath.
Phoebe curled up in the back of the cabin and shut her eyes, her innards churning like magma.
Lost in nausea, she didn’t see a floor panel ease shut.
Nor did she notice the pair of eyes that had been watching.
“Bless yer embers,” Mr. Pynch purred piously, counting his gauge. “Walk the Way, gentle pilgrims. Many thanks.”
The dim, rot-pox-ravaged tchurbs admired their newly purchased dynamos. Mr. Pynch and the Marquis bowed with great devotion as the family of mehkies departed into the night.
The two partners could suppress their giggles no longer.
“How many we got left?” Mr. Pynch snorted.
The Marquis sifted through their foil sacklet of counterfeit sungold dynamos. Flash-flick-blinky.
“Nearly sold out!” he chortled. “Keep yer peeper peeled for another patch of ragleaf so we can fabricate some more.”
Having just left the village of Orkeyl with full bellies and pockets bursting with gauge, Mr. Pynch and the Marquis were jangling across the Arcs. The land bridges were abandoned and peaceful, aside from the occasional Foundry train rumbling below. The night was bright, lighting their path with a streaking starscape, and a brisk breeze mussed Mr. Pynch’s frazzly hair.
He felt good—good and drunk.
Mr. Pynch drew the coiled decanter of viscollia from a flap in his overcoat, took a swig, then passed it to the Marquis.
The Arcs were a magnificent system of stratified ravines that ran from the Vo-Pykarons to the Inro Coast. Over countless epochs, vesper had reshaped this landscape in irregular patterns, leaving the basins staggered like giant stairways. The elements had also formed a network of natural bridges, a crisscrossed jumble of angular pathways interconnecting the ravines. Some were short enough to cross with a stride, and others ran for a thousand quadrits.
Mr. Pynch had always heard that the Arcs were one of the great wonders of Mehk, but to him it was just a pretty view stretching from one town of suckers to the next.
The Marquis flipped back his head and poured a slug of viscollia down his neck. He righted himself, shuddered, and returned the booze to his companion.
Flishety-flack.
“Indeed! Huzzah for the Great Engineer! May Her gears gyrate eternally and so on and so forth.” Mr. Pynch took a swig. “I pray Her popularity continues to swell, and that Her gullible followers remain profitous to us until the end of our cycles.”
The Marquis, who was no longer capable of walking a straight line, giggled silently with his fluttering opticle.
“Come!” Mr. Pynch guffawed. “I observate the Holkhei land bridge ahead. Perchance we can reach Durl by the rise and fleece another crop of bli
ssful dundernoggins.”
They staggered from one land bridge to another, singing bawdy songs and telling the filthiest of jokes. Mr. Pynch chugged from the decanter as they wobbled across ribbons of ore.
“Who was that ill-forged scoundrel outside of Oolee? Y’know, the one with the hideous breed-mate?”
The Marquis scratched his head. Blink-blunk?
“That be it! Smooth operator, she was. Remember the time we paid her with her own fraudulent currency?”
Mr. Pynch swallowed some more viscollia and flipped the flask back to his companion. The tall mehkan stumbled drunkenly over his own feet as he caught it.
Blinky-flasharoo-strobe-flickety-flick.
“By me matron’s corroded rack and pinion, I nearly forgotted that one! How about the time I got stuck in that bore-hole and almost missed the ambush altogether?”
The Marquis sputtered viscollia with wheezing laughter, liquor spraying out the hole atop his neck like a geyser. He tossed the decanter back. Strobey-blink-blunk.
“Oh, that was spectaculous, to be sure! The Vo-Pyks never seen such a conflagration! You hooked that Watchman goon right off his motorized transportator with yer bumbershoot—”
Flashy-stroble-dy!
“Then when I rolled away, you walloped his head clean off. POP! Oh, that was beee-ootimous!”
The Marquis was bouncing up and down he was so excited.
Glow-strobie-flash-blunk!
“Then that Micah boy blew another’s face right in with his…”
A heavy silence sank the conversation. The rumble of an approaching train grew louder, chattering the little ore pebbles around their feet. Mr. Pynch’s face folded in a sour grimace as he caressed his silk necktie, picking at the slipshod stitches.
Blinky-flash-flush-plop.
“So what? I don’t care a modicum. It don’t change the circumstancials. What did you have to go bring them up for anyway? We didn’t owe them two bleeders nothing.”
The Marquis fixed his light on the ground. Flick-flick.
Mr. Pynch gulped from the decanter and lobbed it to the Marquis with an irritated grunt. The toss was wide, and the distracted lumie almost didn’t see it in time. He extended an arm to snag it, but the flask deflected off his hand and spiraled away. The Marquis took two stumbling steps to catch it.