by Steve Rzasa
Cope was at his cockpit window in a flash. He yanked back the latch. “Why? Are you hurt?”
“No, not at all.” Winch scrambled past him, afraid to wait any longer. The bitter burning in his throat refused to stand by. “I’ve just got to be sick.”
Thursday
Winch rocked back on his heels once his stomach stopped heaving. He let his head knock against the fuselage. His glasses fogged over. After all that time in the cold cockpit, he wasn’t surprised. Winch rubbed the lenses against his coat. His rucksack sat at his feet.
Cope waved to someone not visible to Winch, apparently on the other side of the aeroplane.
A snuffling startled him. Five mastodons—one of them a male with huge twisted tusks—drew closer now that the only noise in the valley was the screech of birds and the lowing of mastodons. Winch put his glasses back on. He hoped the beasts weren’t too keen on investigating. He’d been around mastodons often enough, considering how many dozens of ranches were in the Sawtooth Valley, but he was not confident enough to handle one if the need arose.
“Steady up, Winch.” Cope slapped him roughly on the shoulder. He didn’t look the slightest bit ruffled. “Take a load off the old boots while I score us some fuel and repairs.”
“Not from these fellows.” Winch gestured to the mastodons.
“Funny man.” Cope rolled his eyes. “Nah. Here she comes!”
The pounding of hooves brought Winch to his feet. Mastodon stampede? Over the tail of the biplane he spotted seven people on branterback. All were young men of varying heights and builds, though they all shared the facial features of immigrants from the Red Lotus Domei in the far east, and all had their heads shaved almost completely bare. They also carried Thundercloud lever rifles and Twing double-barreled shotguns.
A woman riding a branter that was white as the mountain snow led them. Her hair was frizzy and grey. It burst from beneath her tattered brown hat like branches. She yelled something Winch couldn’t understand and brought her branter to a solid halt.
“Copernicus! Anata kyōjin!” Her voice was pitched high and jangled Winch’s nerves. “Some landing you made there.”
“Hello, Maddy!” Cope gallantly helped her down from the branter. She was a good head shorter than Cope, but that did not prevent her from hauling off and slapping him on the arm. Cope winced and rubbed at the impact point. “Ow. Some greeting for an old friend.”
“Nothing old about you, Copernicus.” Maddy squinted in Winch’s direction. He decided right then he’d rather be back in the aeroplane trying desperately to keep his breakfast down than engaging in a staring contest with this dark-eyed, sun-worn face. She planted her hands on her hips. She work a shin-length duster and Shiraga revolvers in cross-draw holsters of black leather. “Who’s the kanko?”
“Not a tourist, Maddy. My own dear brother.” Cope grinned. “Winchell Sark of the vaunted Perch Advocate, finest news-rag this or any side of the Sawteeth. Winch, meet ‘Mad’ Madelyn Kuroi, owner and manager of the Jumble Creek Ranch.”
“Pleased to meet you.” Winch offered a hand and promptly had it severed at the wrist in Maddy’s grip. At least, he imagined severing would hurt less.
“Enchanted.” Maddy sneered. “So, Copernicus, what do you need this time—besides a patch for the holes somebody kindly drilled in that contraption?”
“Patch would be nice, Maddy, thanks.” Cope patted the fuselage of his biplane in the same manner Winch had seen ranch hands soothe an unsettled mastodon. “That, and a fill-up. Oh, do you have any of the usual in stock for me?”
Maddy smiled broadly, wrinkles under her eyes creasing. “You’re in luck, Copernicus. I just got my latest shipment from Kyoretsuna last week. You want them loaded to launch?”
“No, no, just stowed. This bird won’t handle a launch like her little sister can.”
“All right then. Two Hinohamas coming right up!” Maddy waved to her men. “Hey! Naya ni janku no kono bubun o doraggu shite!”
The armed men scrambled down from their mounts. They shouted instructions to one another—two men immediately inspected the holes in the side of the biplane, poking their fingers inside as if to discern the best method of repair. The rest unlimbered ropes from their saddles. They split up to either side of the biplane, clambered up onto the wings, and lashed the ropes about the support struts.
“Let’s get you back to the house and ply you with proper drink, Copernicus and Winchell.” Maddy gave both a shove. “Come, come, no more standing out here among the mastodon piles.”
Cope nodded. “Will do, Maddy. Let me get our things first.”
As she sauntered off to supervise her people, Winch poked Cope between the ribs.
Cope gave him a dirty look. “What?”
“Are you certain we can trust her?” Winch whispered. “She does not strike me as reliable.”
“She’s plenty reliable!” Cope protested.
“But isn’t selling avo-gas without a license illegal?”
“Erm, yes. I suppose.” Cope shrugged. “But she’s never done me any wrong. Look, Winch, this is the best valley to land in if you want to avoid the regular tariffs on avo-gas. And you won’t find a better set of hands to mend your aeroplane, either.”
One of the men hopped off his branter and offered the reins to Cope. He and Winch mounted the beast, with Winch seated awkwardly on the back end of the saddle. Their branter followed Maddy’s branter as she galloped to a wide, stone bridge spanning the creek. Her men urged their branters to pull on the ropes lashed to Cope’s plane. The aerocraft bumped forward slowly across the pasture, its last remnants of avo-gas dribbling from the bullet holes in the fuselage. It was still early morning, bright and crisp.
Winch dug into his rucksack. He found the pamphlet Markwater had given him just yesterday. He opened it and leafed through, searching for some of the words he’d heard before from the student of Ifan. There it was:
“About evening, he told his pupils, ‘Let’s go over to Larkspur.’ They left the crowd and his pupils took him to a passenger liner. Soon after they took off, a cold front blew in and a thunderstorm buffeted the aeroplane. The wings were strained by the winds almost to their breaking point. But Ifan was asleep in the back of the fuselage in a seat. They shook him awake and cried, ‘Sir! Don’t you care that we’re going to die?’ He went to the cabin door and threw it open. He rebuked the storm, ‘Peace! Be still!’ The storm stopped, and they flew into a great calm. He said to his pupils, ‘Why are you so scared? You’ve still no faith?’”
Winch shook his head. The way Markwater wrote it and Ifan said it, nothing could be simpler. If only turning off his fear were a straightforward matter of throwing a lever.
The branters lurched to a stop, and the riders dismounted. Winch followed Cope and Maddy in the front door of a two-story home of stone foundations and a jumble of peaked wooden roofs.
He found himself in a spacious living area. Rocking chairs and sofas of all manner of clashing color and upholstery were scattered about. The walls were adorned in pale peach wallpaper and festooned with the mounted heads of various wildlife. Winch recoiled at the frozen, snarling visage of a saber-tooth tiger suspended from the wooden ceiling beam directly ahead.
“Don’t let him fright you, Winchell.” Maddy was in the small kitchen off to one side, away from the long row of windows facing onto the pasture. She poured a sparkling amber liquid into a trio of metal flagons. “She didn’t give me much of a fuss when I plugged her with that Big Fifty in the corner. Come on, now, and wet your whistle.”
Winch accepted a cold flagon. He spotted the .50 caliber long rifle with the hexagonal barrel propped against one of the sofas. Cope lounged upon the sofa, his stocking feet crossed over one another and perched comfortably on a pillow. His boots lay forgotten in a heap. “Ah, thanks, Maddy! Your cider’s the best there is, bar none.” He took one of the other flagons and gulped down some cider.
“High compliment from you, Copernicus.” Maddy sat in a rocking
chair opposite Cope. She soon had it creaking a steady rhythm on a woven rug of blue and white.
Winch sat down in a chair of the non-rocking variety. He took a sip of cider and almost coughed at the sharp bite. Cope sniggered.
“Now Copernicus, if you don’t mind my askin’,” Maddy said, “you seem to have run on in to my quiet little ranch with a whole mess of trouble on your tail…literally.” She jerked a thumb out the window behind her. The ranch hands had Cope’s biplane rolling smoothly across the yard. “So before I tuck that beast of yours into a barn and patch up the holes, maybe you’ll want to tell me what the thunder is going on.”
Cope shared a look with Winch. Don’t tell her too much, Winch thought, and he did his best to put those words into a hard stare. “We’ve got some…pressing business in Trestleway, Maddy,” Cope said. “Important stuff. And there’s folk who’d rather we not keep our appointments. Rude, isn’t it?”
“Very.” Maddy took a long draw on her cider, eyes never leaving Cope. She rested her free hand on the butt of one of her revolvers. “That’s the reason for the Hinohamas.”
“Branter’s-eye.”
“I’d heard you had some unwelcomed guests in Perch yesterday.”
“Sure did,” Cope grumbled.
“So what else can I do to help?”
“For starters, do you have any plain advice about visiting Trestleway these days?” Cope asked.
Maddy took a swig of cider. “Yeah. Keep your nose down and your head covered. In all seriousness, Copernicus, the foolish baka who run that city are a mite tense as of late. I’ve had all manner of travelers come up my way from there, and everyone peddles the same tale: You ask too many questions, and the Branch will pull you aside for a friendly chat.” She lifted her flagon and smiled dryly. “Minus the friendliness, of course.”
“Of course.” Winch fidgeted. “We don’t intend on sightseeing. We have a person in mind to visit and an address in hand.”
“And how were you planning to find said person?” Maddy scowled. “You can’t get a Trestleway map at your local general store back in Perch, I’d wager.”
“Well…yes, I know,” Cope said. “They have some kind of paranoia about that sort of thing. We intended to pick up a map on arrival.”
“You do that, and you’ll be guaranteed to have the Branch on your backside.” Maddy shook her head. She set her flagon down and walked from her chair back into the kitchen. Wood squeaked on wood as she yanked open a pair of cabinets and started rummaging through their contents. “Then this might help… Confound it! Where’d I put that…oh! Here.”
She walked back to her seat and dropped a folded map into Winch’s lap. “It’s a couple of years old, but the street names haven’t changed to my knowledge.” Maddy leaned back into the rocker. “It’ll get you where you want to go.”
Winch set his flagon down and carefully unfolded the map. It was indeed a detailed street map for the center of Trestleway. “It has the outlying tenements and the aerodrome too,” Winch said.
“Aerodrome.” Cope made a face and drained the dregs of his flagon with a loud slurp. “More like converted diprotodon pens. I’ve never seen a more disgraceful set of buildings and fields in all my life. Granted, that was several years ago.”
“Don’t count on them to have fixed it.” Maddy waggled a finger at him. “And don’t do any fancy flying on your way in, Copernicus. Trestleway doesn’t cotton to your kind of antics.”
Cope smiled. “I’ll try to behave.”
• • •
Maddy led them out to one of the barns. The sun shone overhead, warming the air so much that Winch rolled up his sleeves. It was far down at the end of the yard, away from the other buildings, and was not full of branters, or ranch gear, or hay. It was obvious to even Winch that it was meant as a hangar.
Inside, a trio of her men crawled over and under Cope’s Buzzard. A line of fuel spigots rose from the floor like plants in the family greenhouse. The door at the far end of the barn was open, and Winch could see a second biplane silhouetted against the light.
“Another customer,” Maddy explained. “Though that one didn’t come in with bullet holes.”
“What’s his business here?” Winch didn’t see the pilot around. Fortunately, the plane wasn’t coated with red foam.
“Didn’t ask. I try not to pry,” Maddy said.
“Find that hard to believe,” Cope whispered to Winch.
If Maddy heard them, she ignored the comment. “You should be all patched up and ready to go in about twenty minutes. I’ll get you the bill.”
“And we’ll have your coin ready. Thanks, Maddy.” Cope shook her hand.
As soon as she strode away, shouting orders at her men over the clatter of their repair work and the crew running a fuel line to Cope’s aeroplane, Winch tugged on Cope’s sleeve. “Where did she get this map?”
“Why do you care?” Cope rolled his eyes. “Blue skies, Winch, I swear if you worried any more…”
“It’s not worry—it’s caution. She gets done telling us how hard it is to get a map, then suddenly she’s got one for us?” This whole business was starting to bother Winch. “I don’t plan on walking myself into a well-set up betrayal, Cope, if I can help it.”
Cope yanked his sleeve away. He glared with such vehemence that Winch felt compelled to take half a step back. “If you knew Maddy better you wouldn’t say that. Trestleway’s Branch had her husband shot for smuggling six years ago.”
Heat flooded Winch’s cheeks. So much for his sound judgment.
“She isn’t entirely trustworthy, I’ll grant you that,” Cope said gently. “But she won’t sell us out.”
“And you trust her, obviously.”
“This isn’t the first time she’s saved my backside.” Cope half-smiled. “And I’ve returned the favor, on occasion.”
Winch nodded. It seemed, then, that all he could do was trust Cope. And trust in the Allfather’s promises. That’ll have to be good enough for me, I guess. Sorry, Cope.”
Cope clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t fret. I’m just as worried as you.”
“You don’t show it nearly as well.”
“That’s because it mars my natural handsomeness.”
• • •
Grand total, Winch and Cope were at the ranch for an hour. It seemed like no time at all for Winch as Maddy’s workers positioned the Buzzard at the mouth of the barn. At first, he was a bit befuddled as to where it would take off—surely not back out on the pasture. But then he realized that the far end of the ranch yard was flattened out enough to serve as a makeshift runway.
Cope busied himself supervising the loading of the Hinohamas—which Winch only now realized must be the same rockets Cope had used yesterday to defend Perch from the raiders. The workers carefully loaded the two black cylinders, each about two feet long, into an open hatch on the underside of the Buzzard. “Didn’t know we would be sitting right on top of them,” Winch said aloud.
“Don’t worry, they don’t often go off if you leave ’em unmolested.” Maddy’s voice made Winch nearly jump. She grinned at him.
“Thank you again for your help.” Winch offered a hand. “Forgive me for my rudeness earlier.”
“Ah, it’s understandable. Cope’s got some serious shinshu no kishō to wander right into a hornet’s nest like Trestleway. And I figure you’re cut from a different cloth than him. This isn’t exactly your type of thing, is it?”
“No. I’m more at home with tele-typers, notepads, and photography—and a warm seat behind my desk.” Winch smiled wanly. “The ideal is often far from reality.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Maddy guffawed and slapped Winch on the back. He did his utmost not to flinch. After her chortles subsided, Maddy wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. “You’re all right, Winchell. That’s why I’m giving you this.”
She handed Winch a pale blue handkerchief decorated with gold traceries of a design Winch had never seen. He supposed they were f
rom the Red Lotus Domei, as he could easily make out a dragon’s toothy sneer among the images. Whatever was wrapped inside the handkerchief was hard and square. Winch tucked a finger under a fold but hesitated.
“Go on, open her up,” Maddy said.
Inside was a slender block of—something red. Winch frowned. Red and transparent? He held it up to the sun. Yes, he could see through it, but everything was very cloudy, like looking through a dirty window. “Is it glass?”
“Yeah, it’s a special variety of stained glass they make back in Kyoretsuna.” Maddy’s expression was sly. “The diplomatic corps prefer to keep it secret, but I have the right kind of friends who owe me favors. After they gave me this, well, I considered the debt partially paid.”
Winch gazed through the red glass. Maddy grabbed his wrist—gently, he noticed—and lowered his hands. “Why don’t you just keep this to yourself?” she said, her voice dropping. “No need to show it off—even to your brother.”
Cope was making the rounds of hand-shaking with Maddy’s crew. Winch leaned toward Maddy. “Why?”
“Secrets are best kept when the fewest possible mouths can repeat them,” Maddy said. “You keep that safe, and when you need help, use it with the map.”
“With the map?” Winch scratched his beard. “How?”
“No more questions.” Maddy looked over his shoulder. “Here comes Copernicus. Tuck that away and remember, when you need help the most, the glass will help you see it.”
Winch opened his mouth, dissatisfied with irksome cryptic answers.
But Cope cut him off. “Come on now, brother, time to load up and climb the clouds!” he said cheerily.
Winch forced a smile. “Again, Maddy…”
“No more thanking! You boys run along now!” Maddy gave Cope a crushing bear hug, but Cope grinned and managed to escape. “Take care, and may the Allfather watch your necks.”
Winch was startled. She was an Exalter? As Cope sauntered off, Maddy reached down into the folds of her jacket and produced a silver watch fob on a chain from her shirt pocket. She flipped it over.