by Iain Lindsay
Near pitch-black, but not quite. There was a blueish glow spreading across his vision. His ears still ringing from the fall, Talin lay for a moment longer, certain that the glow pulsed.
There was a noise that accompanied the light. A noise like the slow grind of metal on metal, or the low, Susha winds.
The boy flopped over onto his hands to see that this room where he shouldn’t be, was occupied. There was a machine, if that is what this thing could be called. It didn’t have the sort of parts that Talin would normally call a machine – no pulleys or winches, no ropes or weights. Instead, there was a slow-moving nest of metal rings, spinning and coiling around each other. What kept them moving?
At their base, set into the floor of the wooden room there was a steel runner of metal, and it was upon this that Talin saw that one part of the largest, outer metal ring always met, like a child’s hoop spinning to its standstill – only the machine did not slow nor cease. The blue glow which illuminated the boy and the room in its weak light seemed to be emanating from inside the nest of whirling and grinding metal. Tal saw a fleeting suggestion of an object, a glass tube, taller and wider than he, filled with blue – before the churning hoops obscured his vision.
Any bit of the machine would be worth a lot of Ducats, enough even for a ticket out of the Reach for me and mother, the boy breathed.
The silver chain forgotten, Tal crept forward towards the spinning and grinding gears. He could feel the pressure of the air they created. That was when his feet scraped on something sitting outside the floor runner, just a few inches from the machine. A disk of metal as big as his palm, the color of gold but sparkling strangely, and fashioned into an open lattice of lines and geometric curves.
He had his Breaker’s chisel. He might be able to prize it out.
THUM-THUM-THUM! The sound of the end of shift bell rang through the empty airship, making the boy jump. It was muted by the walls of wood but echoing even down here.
“Sweet Mother…” Tal cursed, kneeling to dig at the wood and the tiny metal pins that held the precious prize in place. He felt it bobble, move in its mooring.
The blue vapor shifted.
THUM-THUM-THUM!
“Almost there” one edge of the gold disk prized away from the edge, and Tal grabbed the disk and pulled as hard as he could. With a chink the disk came free in his hand. It felt oddly warm to the touch, and heavier than he had expected.
The blue light pulsed, and Tal looked up to catch a glimpse of something moving behind the grinding gears. Something in the center of the blue-lit tube. Something too-big for its confinement had pressed itself against its glassy prison.
It looked like a giant eye, but not a human one.
Talin Nhkari ran.
3. The Lords of the Reach
Where are they? They’re supposed to be waiting! Talin climbed better and faster than he ever had before. Hand over hand, feet finding the quickest escape despite his thoughts shrieking inside of him.
It hadn’t been a human eye, that much was for certain. No iris, just pupil, and it had been huge. A suggestion of eyelid around the milky white flesh of the orb, blue skin? But the eye had been too big for the tube, unless, the boy thought with disgust, somehow the eye was the only thing in the container. Floating like a pickled vegetable, bobbing around in the blue…what, air?
Tal was so concerned with what he had seen that he didn’t notice that the others were gone when he reached the smashed aperture of his entrance. In fact, they were all gone. All except one.
“Tal!” fingers like pincers seized an ear and the Nhka youth let out a yelp of pain as he was dragged, kicking, onto the left-behind fragments of the top deck. Panels and floorboards had been stripped, leaving a lattice of wooden beams to jump and balance between. Attached to the fingers was a pale arm with blotchy skin, and that was attached to the canvas-and leather clad form of Overseer Jekkers.
The ruler of their little world was an old man, in fact, he looked positively ancient with his shrunken head and overlarge features. Wisps of hair that might have once been brown or blonde clustered behind his ears at the back of his head. His neck was lined and corded, but his sunken eyes glittered with pale blue fury.
“Thought you could get off working, did you? Make us late before the Breakers? You disagreeable, lazy, Nhka!” the Overseer snarled, throwing him down onto one of the plank walkways. The teenager cried out involuntarily, momentarily afraid he would roll and fall straight through the broken-up hulk – as his hand grasped the wood, they released their precious payload, the fine silver chain and the heavy gold medallion.
“What’s this?” A snatching hand seized the prizes, before the Overseer delivered a savage kick from his hobnail boots into Talin’s unprotected stomach.
“Would you look at this…” The Overseer stepped back, panting as he looked at the chain draped over his fingers, and the heavy gold. “Too rich for you, boy,” a growl. “You found these inside the hulk, did you? You know the rules.” Another cruel little kick, this time on Tal’s shins as he curled into a protective ball.
“I should throw you overboard right now and have done with you and your lazy hide!” The Overseer hissed, pressing one foot down onto the boy’s ankle.
“Ach” Pain like firecrackers washed through Tal’s leg as the Overseer leant his weight on the joint, not enough to break it – yet.
“You stealing from the Breakers, boy? You stealing from me?”
Talin knew just how much a Nhka life was worth in the Reach, which was approximately nothing.
“Take it!” Tal gasped. The idea that the Overseer might just kill him here and now was all too believable. Either that, or see that there was an unexplained “accident” sometime on the next hulk. A rope snapped. A harness broke. Poor boy. And then who would protect my mother from these animals?
A scrape of his ankle on the wood, and then the pressure was gone as the Overseer was bending down to seize him by the ear once more, hauling Tal to his feet and marching across the walkway of left-over planks to the nearest mooring point. “Damn right I’m taking it, boy,” the disk and chain disappeared into the front of his leather jerkin. “And don’t think you’re seeing a copper, either, making us late – the Breakers are already here!”
The Breakers? This day couldn’t really get much worse, Talin thought as he was pushed, kicked, and shoved to the gang plank and finally released on the large wooden jetty on the other side. He would have run then, were it not for his smarting ankle and the delegation of slow-moving people who were already walking down the concourse towards them.
Oh no.
“Out of the way, Nhka,” the Overseer shoved him back hard against the wooden fence that was all that separated the jetty from the gulf of airs below. Talin could feel the fence vibrate and twang with the breeze as he squirmed against it.
The Breakers glided solemnly towards them, not even seeming to notice the two intruders on their jetty. This was, after all, theirs. All of Breaker’s Reach was theirs. Every hulk, platform, walkway, Overseer and worker was technically theirs.
The rulers of salvage wore long robes of pale purple, trimmed with fantastical gold designs. The robes completely covered any hint of feet or hands, but their cowls were thrown back from their misshapen heads.
Tal was unable to stop staring at them. He had never seen one of the lords of the Reach up this close before. Although they appeared human – or humanoid, at least – their heads were instead a fleshy grey, over-large at the back and, where a human’s nose, cheeks and mouth might be, they instead had a constantly writhing, moving mess of short tentacles. Their eyes were small and dark orbs on either side of two tiny vents which Tal guess must be their noses.
“Stop gawking, idiot!” The Overseer prodded him hard in the shoulder and Tal lowered his head to the wooden floor below. He saw the edge of their lilac and gold robes swirl closer, closer, and then there was the slightest pause.
“Overseer” a voice like wind through hollowed bone said. I
t was deep, and echoed strangely, even up here at the tops of the world.
“Yes, I am sorry, sire, you see…” Jekkers fumbled, clearly terrified.
“You may leave.” The Breaker didn’t wait for an excuse, or show any apparent interest in the Overseer’s humility as it resumed its flowing step. The Overseer waited for the moment they were passed, then seized Tal by the ear once more and dragged him at a frantic run back down the jetty to the larger platform of East Docks.
“Just you wait, Nhka,” Jekkers was almost hyperventilating. “No more special treatment for you, worm. No more leniency. I’ll see you pay for this embarrassment!”
Special treatment? Leniency? Tal wasn’t sure if he had ever experienced any of either, but he was sure that there would be new cruelties that the Overseer could dream up.
But still, the Overseer released him to the main boards and warehouses of the Eastern Docks, before stomping off angrily to the long tables of weighing scales where the others of his work team were haggling. The end of every shift was always a busy time, with other Overseers congregating to barter or threaten for some rich bit of salvage. At the tables stood the assembled Counters, merchants and the occasional Airshipper come to make a trade. Most were the pale northerners from the Protectorate like Kenrath and his gang, but there were also the tanned Izant’s in their colorful linens and soft dark hair, a phalanx of Khokhol bird-men holding themselves apart and hissing through their beaks in their clacking bird-tongue. Tal found his limping steps slowing as he rejoined the shouting and haggling. His ankle, side, and his stomach hurt from the Overseer’s attacks, and he realized that he had nothing to weigh in now anyway, the satchel that he had been carrying had disappeared, Kenrath probably stole it to add to his own, he didn’t doubt.
“Tal,” it was Jotni, reaching through the throng of people as he pushed his way through, his own satchel now empty, and in his clawed hands grasped a coin purse. “Bad prices today.” The heimr grumbled, his brow ridges cracking in displeasure. “But enough for spiced bread,” he grunted past the just-beginning-to-show tusks of his lower jaw. Tal fell in behind the heavyset creature as they found a path around the Counters’ tables, to where the food stalls were already doing a roaring trade.
“‘Everywhere there’s coin, there’s food’” Tal repeated the words his mother had drilled into him. ‘We can’t hunt up here, so make sure you have coppers enough for each day’s meal…’ she would say. It filled the teenager with a sense of powerlessness. Is that all we Nhka can hope for? A bit of bread and soup? He had held in his hands enough metal to get them out, only to see the hope snatched from him by the clawing fingers of the Overseer. The thought made him want to weep.
“Two? Three!” Jotni haggled with one of the market sellers, a woman who scowled, but still acquiesced to the troll’s demands. In return for a few coins he received into scaled hands three not-very large spiced buns, already a little hard, but still peppered with raisins and dried berries, and with a glaze of something sweet.
“Here,” Jotni pressed one of the breads into the Nhka’s hand, before leading him away to the rails beside the docks. They found a place between great coils of hemp rope and barrels of wood oil.
“Thank you,” Tal slumped against one of the barrels, to a spasm of pain in his side. “Ach” he prodded gingerly at the injury, hoping that nothing was broken. No sharp pain, which was good - just a dull ache. His side was going to hurt tomorrow morning.
“Get the physicker to look at that,” Jotni nodded, before opening his mouth, half-full of bread to show where one of his fangs had been filed almost to the gum. “Broke it this winter, falling down a mizzenmast. Physicker filed it down.”
Tal felt another flush of shame. As if he could afford to see the few half-crazy doctors who worked the Reach. If I was going to go to the physicker for anything, it would be remedies for mother. “I’ll be alright, Jotni. It’s just a bruise.” He tried to shrug it off. He was sure that he had worse. That he would have worse, when the Overseer decided what his new punishment was going to be. The thought turned the taste of the bread in his mouth to ash.
“He’s an ass.” Jotni grunted, eyeing the smaller youth steadily over his second roll, guessing whom Talin must have been thinking about. “Just stay out of Jekkers’ way. I told you not to go in there…” There was an annoyed sympathy in the heimr’s voice, one that said it’s your own fault despite his kindness.
“Maybe I should have listened to you…” Tal changed position so that he was leaning over the rail and his side hurt a fraction less, with the struts and platforms of the Eastern Docks extending below him like geology. From here he could see out onto the ruined Airship that they had recently been working. The Breakers were already on board, standing in a rough circle atop various planks of still-remaining deck, their heads bowed but their face tentacles flaring as if underwater. A low chanting sound washed towards him on the breeze.
But I need that coin. Tal gripped the rail. “I had it, you know Jotni, I had enough in my hands to buy me and my mother’s tickets out of here…” For some reason he didn’t tell the heimr about the gold disk or the machine, not yet. The shiver of pain from his side and his ankle made him wary of everyone.
“Ha! And how did that pan out for you?” Jotni grunted in a similar morose fashion, joining him to lean against the rails and watch the strange Lords of the Reach do their arcane work. The real Breakers. What these people did compared to Tal and Jotni and the rest of the Eastern Dock crew was like comparing birds to fish. Impossible.
“Jekkers will never let any of us leave, not as long as he can make coin out of us,” the heimr said. Now the Breakers had their hands coming up from their sides (pale, fleshy grey hands, skin that looked too soft to be up here in the scouring winds).
“You have it hard,” Jotni considered. “You Nhka weren’t born slaves. You still think there’s a chance of getting out.”
Tal had heard fragments of Jotni’s story. How, after the Troll Wars, the warring clans were driven from the north to try to live what miserable lives they could, and many ended up in slaver’s galleys. Jotni must have been born a slave, and had no choice when his master got rid of him here at the Reach.
“I can get out.” Tal said fiercely. Beyond the Breakers, and beyond the hulk was the wide expanse of the Susha, and beyond that the dark line of the Aratine Hills. His family had trudged across the entire murderous and unforgiving Susha when he had been just a toddler, fleeing the destruction of their own homes. I don’t remember much of that time, but I remember waking up in the morning to the cook fires, the call of the hunting birds in the air, Tal thought. We Nhka are tough. I am tough. I can take whatever the Overseer throws at me.
But his family had been few, and as is the way with refugees were made up mostly of the elderly, the infirm, and the young. Bandits and raiders had plundered their numbers on an almost regular basis. Tal knew why his mother had stopped here at Breaker’s Reach. It was somewhere to earn some coin. Somewhere to not have to set guard at night.
But it still wasn’t safe, was it? He thought, a knot of angry, hurt feelings in his chest. He didn’t know for an awful moment if he was angry at the Overseer and the Breakers around them, or angry at his own people for being broken, and driven to the corners of the world like the heimr had been before them.
“I have to get out, for my mother.” Tal nodded, thinking of how she coughed nightly, how every day more of that fierce, independent Nhka spirit was fading from her eyes.
“Hm.” Jotni seemed unconvinced.
Tal thought of the machine that he had seen inside the hulk beyond. He allowed himself to remember the eye that had looked to focus on him. What had it been? What had the ship been transporting? But the gold disk alone would be enough to bribe a caravan or an Airshipper. If I could just get it back…
Tal knew the chances of that were slim to say the least. “Ugh.” he knocked his knuckles hard on the railing. The machine – whatever it was – would be destroyed just like
every other bit of the hulk by the Breakers in front of him. It would fall the hundreds of feet to the heaps below, and its metal would be seized by the Lower Work Teams. But it did mean one thing, Tal’s anger burned. That the best stuff is inside the hulks. The stuff that falls between the cracks or left behind or hidden by greedy airshippers. Tal had to find another way to get inside the next hulk, if he wanted the coin. And if I can’t get that medallion back.
“Look, take your mind off your troubles, Tal. This is the best bit.” Jotni was nodding as the Breakers were slowly filing back onto the jetty, their muttered prayers or curses done as they lined up next to each other. The hulk listed a little in the winds, as there were now no sails or air-fans to stabilize it.
Tal already knew what was going to come next, he had seen this spectacle many times over the years, but even so it still had the power to awe him as he watched six of the seven Breakers raise their fleshy hands in front of them as the seventh stooped to release the winch that anchored the hulk.
Every spare piece of metal, netting, and rope that could be saved had been reclaimed, leaving just the frames needed to keep the airship intact. The large expanses of sail cloth had been taken. The side-mounted air-fans that maneuvered the vessel had been dismantled. The windows had been taken out, the doors, and the entire upper decks had been dismantled where the wood was good, and slabs of Witchbeam were being carted into the warehouses. Tal could see gaps in the outer hull and the top deck itself as the best bits were claimed by the Reach, leaving just the rotten, the skeletal, and the disfigured behind. But not every bit of metal, Tal thought, thinking of that slowly humming room and it’s spinning gyres.
The hulk wobbled free of the dock and a hush settled over those others assembled on the railings. This was the most dangerous part of the procedure, and why it couldn’t be performed in high winds. The hulk like a child’s half-made toy listed to one side, and there was the distant sounds of thumps and thuds as bits of the internal structure started to give way.