by Meg Merriet
“Clikk?” said Dirk behind me. And then, as I stepped up on the railing, and climbed over, he was screaming it. “Clikk!”
The Wastrel was in motion and the ladder pulled more and more in the wind as I went farther down. The cruiser was moving too, tilting over as it lost altitude. It dawned on me that when I made my jump for it, I might miss and spend the next several minutes or however long it took, falling to a certain death. I made sure to catch the cruiser’s blimp with my eyes and visualize my descent. Then I let go of the ladder.
I’ve had nightmares of falling. Up and down mean nothing anymore. There is only vertigo permeating every bone and fiber in the body. The fall is synonymous with dread, for all falling ends either awakening in a sweat or confronting the incorporeal mystery that awaits all men.
I felt like I was flying, like I had complete control. I belly-flopped against the rigid framework of the cruiser’s gasbags and clung hard. Pain throbbed in my ribs, but to my amazement, nothing felt broken. I climbed down the side of the balloon. The cruiser fell slow as if sinking in water. The shadow of the Wastrel lifted from off my back and the hot sun beat down on me. It reflected off the balloon’s metallic shell and I had to squint as I dropped into the window of the cabin below.
I landed in the vessel’s dining hall where chaos had taken hold. Tables were strewn about on their sides. The chandeliers leaned, their crystals clinking. As I moved through the cabin, I stepped over silverware and broken glass. A Duskman opened fire on me and I jumped behind a long overturned table.
Observing my surroundings, I saw Hawks and Duskmen slain by gunfire. This place had been a battlefield. Civilians ran amuck, fighting over the last parachutes, all human decency abandoned. A mother and her young son clung to one another while the so-called gentlemen resorted to communicating with their revolvers.
As soon as I saw his dreadlocks splayed out around his head, I knew I had found Baker. I crawled towards him and rolled him over. He was concussed, his cheek swollen and cut. I smacked him until he opened his eyes. “Clikk?” he mumbled. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s no time to explain.” I snatched a pistol off his chest and used it to shoot at the Duskman who had us pinned down. I missed and ducked as shots fired our way. When they stopped, I used a second pistol from Baker’s holsters and hit the Duskman while he was reloading. My blood pounded in my veins and a rush of vigor gave me the strength to lift Baker to his feet.
We crouched and ran between overturned tables. I reached into his holsters one by one, firing off the rest of his weapons as Duskmen popped out from behind their barricades.
We found another unconscious Hawk behind a pile of chair legs and other split wood. I nudged him with my boot, but this one would not wake.
Baker began to get his bearings. “The ship was full of Duskmen,” he whispered. “They would not yield to pirates. They killed Johnnie. Samson lost it and blew his dynamite.”
“Can you travel?”
“Aye.”
A hoarse screech punctured the air. It was the sound a hawk makes. I looked and located four of our men behind the marble-countertop of the bar: Pierce, Henry and the cousins, Caleb and Nicolas. We darted towards them and crouched behind cover. The hard floor behind the counter was covered in shattered crystal and liquor that made my boots stick.
“What do we do?” Pierce asked Baker.
“Clikk?”
“The Wastrel will pass underneath us. We have to jump for it,” I told them.
“You’ve no grappling hook,” Baker noted.
I shook my head. “There was no time.”
“Right. You’ll hold onto me then.”
We came out from behind the bar. Most of the Duskmen were dead, but a few stragglers tried firing their revolvers at us. We slid behind tables. A Hawk called Flynn came out of hiding behind a fainting couch.
“Brothers!” he shouted.
Baker grabbed the concussed man we had seen earlier and shook him madly. The lad came around at last, waking to Baker’s command. “Move! Move!”
The wind pressure near the blast zone raged like a tempest. The ship continued to lean into it, and soon we were clinging to the floor so as not to fall in until we saw our rescue. Dirk would not forsake me. He could not. But I had put him in an impossible position of choosing between his entire crew and me. Perhaps he had no choice now but to abandon his scheme. Time had run out; escape seemed hopeless.
Then a magnificent patchwork bubble appeared below. The Wastrel had come for us.
I jumped on Baker’s back as gravity pulled us down. Together we fell into an open sky. This time, my fate was in another’s hands, and I felt all that dread and vertigo I’d missed before. Baker aimed his arm at the Wastrel and released his grappling hook. It cast out and zipped like a fishing line. Its metal spokes punctured the railing of the Wastrel and gravity yanked us out from under the sinking cruiser. We swung like a pendulum and shot upwards, wind cutting our faces. A terrific feeling teemed inside of me as the Wastrel carried us with her upon ascension.
“Knew the captain wouldn’t leave us behind!” Baker cheered.
“He almost did!”
We vaulted ourselves on board. The other six remaining Hawks had made it back safely, but nobody was celebrating the rescue. They were all staring off behind us. Some of the men even bowed their heads out of respect. I turned to see what they were seeing, and watched with them as the cruiser sank beneath the clouds. A feeling of grief for people I didn’t know overwhelmed me. The Blue Dusk’s refusal to surrender had cost all those passengers their lives.
A hand clutched me by the strap of my flight cap. Captain Dirk pointed his dagger at the center of my scar.
Baker started shouting, but his brother Hawks held him back from intervening.
“You disobeyed my direct order,” said Captain Dirk. “You forced me to endanger all of our lives for the lives of a few. I’d cut your throat here and now, if I didn’t deem you to be the bravest sky pirate I ever met.” At first I thought I’d misheard him, or that this was the beginning of a twisted joke that ended in me getting an ear sliced off, but Dirk lowered his blade and pulled me in under his arm. “Men! Clikk here just went overboard without hook or parachute and saved seven of our brothers.” A hush of awe and wonderment fell across the deck. In Dirk’s eyes, I saw nothing of esteem or reverence. He was making this up as he went. This was all a pretty show to explain his not throwing me overboard.
Dirk went on, “Clikk is a true sky pirate, a man with no fear of heights or gravity. From this day forth, he will be called Falcon!”
A great roar exploded from the crew, a sound louder than all the engines and wind put together. They needed something to cling to in this moment of profound horror. We had hunted the cruiser for something as trivial as Skye, and as much as I wanted to believe the disaster was not our fault, I knew why the Hawks carried dynamite, and why Dirk did not allow transgressors to go free. We were criminals.
I’d seen death before. I’d killed men on merchant vessels and supply ships. This had been my first cruiser. Thinking of that young child and his mother made me sick. They knew what it was to fall. They felt the falling nightmare in their final moments of life, and for them, there would be no waking upon impact.
IV. Dynasty
We drank every cask of Skye we had left. Captain Dirk encouraged us to indulge our thirst. He would ask the emperor to reload our ship with supplies for the journey home.
The bitter drink went down like jet fuel. Fitz was climbing the cables, hanging off backward and tasting the mist. Baker stirred up a game of Mercy and the men took turns making a muscle and taking as many punches as they could stand. He invited me to participate, but I declined, as I always did since those first few times when I had to tap out before anyone else.
I drank to forget the wasted raid, and leaned against the center mast, tuning my fiddle. I needed to get blitzed, needed to play music and lose my soul to song.
“What was the tune
Johnnie liked?” asked William, the mandolin player.
I shrugged and ran my bow hair over a chunk of rosin. I never really knew Johnnie, but I was sorry to have lost him and all the Hawks who perished.
“‘Copper Monkey’ I think it was,” said William.
“That one’s fast,” I said.
“It is…You probably couldn’t keep up.”
I smirked and swept my bow over my strings to test the pull. “My pace would make your fingers bleed, friend.”
“That sounds like a challenge.” William strummed the first chord. “Come on then, Falcon. For Johnnie.” He played the first phrase and tapped his foot. I bounced my bow and quickened the tempo.
The speed duel began. I fiddled like a demon to keep up with William. The men clapped and encouraged our Skye-frenzied jam. I’d never been a spotlight musician before. Normally the men treated me like background noise, but on this night, they knew my name, which was now Falcon. At the end of our song, they applauded.
“Hey, Falcon! Play The Wench of Amaranthia!” Even Baker was calling me Falcon now, and grinning at me with a glow in his cheeks. I nodded and eased my bow into the first note of the evocative melody. Baker began to sing and Fitz joined in, hanging from his knees as he took the tenor harmony.
She lived in a most mysterious port,
The pirate town Amaranthia,
She liked to sing songs of the lustiest sort
She drank like a man, and she laughed with a snort,
The Wench of Amaranthia!
Amaranthia! Amaranthia!
Ah-ha-ha-ma-ra-ra-ra-ranthia. Ha ha!
The other men joined in on the chorus, drinking at the end of each verse. By the fifth reiteration of Amaranthias, they were spitting out random syllables.
They kept rehashing the story of the day. I secretly hoped they might all forget me by the next. I didn’t want to be Falcon. Falcon was highly visible. How long would it be before one of them teased me for having no facial hair or challenged me to wrestle? I wanted to go back to being their taciturn minstrel who didn’t like to be touched.
Captain Dirk came through the crowd and held out his mug. Ned filled it with Skye and Dirk polished it off. He almost never drank with the men.
“Get down from there, Fitz!” he snarled. “A storm’s coming through that will send you flailing in the cloudswell!”
Fitz pulled himself upright on the cable and dropped to the deck. “Yes, Captain! Sorry, sir!”
The deck was no longer alive with laughter or rowdy, excited stories of Falcon. Thunder bellowed in the distance. I could hear the wind reeling, and my heartbeat did the same. Captain Dirk gestured for me to go with him. I obeyed without hesitation.
He took me to his quarters and we went through an adjacent room into a small library. I appraised his collection out of habit. It was worth a hefty fortune. The sets of leather-bound encyclopedias and thick tomes of rare variety were all in fine condition.
Dirk plopped down on a pile of cushions and furs in the middle of the floor. He kicked off his boots, crunching and cracking his toes. I wasn’t sure if I should join him. My conduct had to be different with him. He knew my secret.
“Sit. Drink,” he said. He uncorked a bottle with his teeth and took a swig before passing it to me.
“Yes, Captain.” I knelt on the edge of the furs.
“Wine from the valley of Shale. That’s where you’re from, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Who better to share it with then? Drink with me!” I took a sip of his wine to avoid insulting him and handed it back. “Quite an impressive stunt you pulled today. I guess we both know I can’t give my sister away without you.”
“What happens to me once you do give her away?” I asked.
“I don’t know yet. I had to make the men love you to explain not killing you, which complicates things… Falcon,” he said with a sneer, taking another gulp of wine. He knocked on his chest and belched.
I veered the conversation in another direction. “Why did the witch curse you, Captain?”
“Oof,” he sighed. “Maive has been my paramour for many, many years, but recently we quarreled. Bah! It’s amusing in retrospect. I was in Amaranthia when a couple of female bards offered me a night I couldn’t refuse. The next day, I learned that it was my dearie sorceress in disguise.”
“So Maive was one of them?”
“She was both of them. Of course, she called me a cheat, though I argued there was no foul as technically it had been her.”
“Oh my,” I said, smiling in spite of myself.
“The woman is twisted,” he scoffed. He tilted the bottle back my way, but I shook my head.
“Thank you, Captain, but I’m already—”
“Drink,” he commanded.
I drank. I had a liver for wine from Shale, but I could already tell my captain did not. I took this chance to offer counsel. “You should swallow your pride and apologize to her. She might undo Molly’s curse.”
“Unnecessary. We need only trick the prince until the marriage is consummated.” He reached for the wine again and I let him have it. He chugged it down to the last drop, the sod.
“Your sister is suffering. Don’t you care at all about her happiness?”
“Has she ever cared for mine?” he asked. “Her housing and schooling have been tremendously expensive. I’ve not turned a profit in years. The Wastrel needs repairs, and I need a holiday, so the day Molly turned thirteen, I proposed the marriage to the emperor’s advisors.”
“And they agreed to the prince marrying a pirate’s sister?”
“They agreed to his marrying a princess.” Dirk looked as if he wanted to suck those words back in, but it was too late. He was drunk on my countrymen’s wine. “Oh, Clikk,” he groaned. “You ask so many questions. Now I truly will have to kill you.”
“If your sister is a princess, then you must be—”
“I might have said sister, but in truth, Molly is my ward, whom I am selling to the highest bidder.” He stumbled over his words.
There was a short time after my exodus from Shale when I thrived on the promise of royalist rebellion. The Luftberg royal family was imprisoned in the black spire, and people spoke of a siege to liberate them and crush the Blue Dusk while they were still vulnerable. They gave me such hope back then. It never happened, and I was in the ancient city square when Prince Derek Luftberg laid his neck on the chopping block. I saw the axe fall. I saw the executioner lift the disembodied head as the eyes twitched. He was dead. I saw it. And seeing him now resurrected was nothing short of a miracle.
“You’re him,” I whispered. “Anyone could see it. Captain Alexander Dirk. Prince Derek Alexander Luftberg, rightful heir to the Elsatian throne.”
“Careful. Those are dangerous words to put in that order,” he said.
“Your people need you.”
Dirk made a sour laugh. “The people who after the famine, murdered any person with a drop of blue blood in his veins.”
“You could restore your family’s dynasty.”
“Prince Derek was publicly executed, Clikk!” Dirk stood and wobbled over to take a fresh bottle of wine from a cabinet. He opened the cork with a knife.
“No. The man who died that day must have been a royalist. He knew as well as you that it is your destiny to retake the throne.”
“Why is it my destiny? I never wanted it. I always looked to the sky.”
“So you’re just going to hand your kingdom over to the Blue Dusk? You really don’t care what they stole from you? What they did to your family?”
Dirk cracked his neck as he rolled his shoulders. He tumbled into the cushions, curling up like a cat around his new bottle. “Ever notice that everyone you know is less than thirty? I am thirty-one this year. You know how I did it? I didn’t start a war. I hold no grudge for what cannot be undone. It’s a nasty world out there. We need coin, and our girl Molly, everything she touches is made pure. She will heal the leadership from wit
hin.”
“Unless they kill her when they realize she’s enchanted.”
Captain Dirk reclined his head all the way back and closed his eyes. “How old are you, Clikk? Seventeen? Eighteen?”
“I’m twenty. I know I’m not as learned as you, but you must listen. Only you can heal our country. The Blue Dusk will never change. They have been holding our people hostage since the revolution. They force us to either steal or starve. If you made a claim, thousands across all the provinces would rally behind you. Because you’re different. You’re the first man with a claim who knows what it’s like to be one of us. You understand suffering, and it makes you a fine captain, and it would make you the finest king who ever ruled.”
“Lishen,” Dirk slurred. “The old bird’s full of mold. It’s not even safe to breathe the air in here.” The wine bottle fell from his fingertips and rolled, spilling a streak. I chased it across the floor and plugged the neck with my handkerchief. “Damn. What was in that wine?” he asked.
“The berries in Shale carry a toxin that knocks foreigners off their feet.”
“How about that?” he said, his laughter skidding. “A woman drank me under. I’m through, Clikk. One sign of weakness is all it takes to be thrown.”
“No shame in it,” I told him. “I’ve been drinking this piss since I was thirteen. Think about what I’ve said. Goodnight, Captain.”
I closed the doors on my way out. The men cheered, “Falcon!” when they saw me again, but I passed them without a hint of recognition. I went to the sleeping quarters to lie down. I needed to be alone.
V. The Pact
Silver light crackled as a storm seethed outside. With every maneuver of the ship, my hammock swayed. The sleeping quarters were deep in the hull. It was a wide-open room with little round windows all around and hammocks suspended from a low-hanging ceiling. All the men slept here in a cabin that creaked and moaned as the wood settled upon the air. I liked it here. It was quiet. Nobody talked to me, except Baker, who always needed something.