Clockwork Scoundrels 1

by E. W. Pierce

  The fires had been put out. The Misty Morning drifted through fog, griping and groaning. She was liable to be a bit ornery for a while.

  CHAPTER 9

  Settling Accounts

  They spent most of a day just inside the Fog, limping south, occasionally edging forward to check for sign of Stensue ships. As dusk fell, the Misty Morning emerged from the Fog and landed. The skies were clear: Stensue had finally giving them up for dead. The crew disembarked and shared a quiet supper on the grass, away from the Fog. Midway into the meal, Mel excused herself and invited Jarvis and Sildrian to join them. Seemed the decent thing to do, considering.

  The following morning, Mel sent groups overland to purchase necessaries—parts and food, as always. Chief Wrench Kile was gone the longest, driving a team of shaggy garrons into camp almost three weeks later. The horses were pulling a flat wagon laden with second-hand parts for a Balack-class airship. Jarvis’ coin enabled the purchases, and Jarvis himself assisted Kile in the installation.

  Mel and the crew fell into a comfortable rhythm. They repaired the ship by day: tearing the engine apart, removing warn bits, reassembling; replacing burnt boards with fresh-sawed wood taken from a nearby grove; crawling all over the ship with long bristle brushes, applying sealant. At night they had campfires, eating and drinking and laughing under the stars. It was a time of cheer, but as with all good things, there was a sense in the air, a knowing, that time grew short. There was a decision to be made, and this was not one Mel could make for them.

  She gathered everyone to the deck when the time felt right. “I’ve always told you straight, and so I mean to now too. Alterra’s skies have been turned against us. Sure, we can play hide-and-find with Stensue all the live-long day, but eventually they might succeed in catching us. The skies are big, but not enough to elude Stensue forever.

  “Seems to me we have a choice. Give up the clouds and slink around on our bellies, cringing at passing shadows. Or chart new skies. Go where Stensue won’t follow.”

  She fell silent, letting the implications settle on their shoulders. None of them looked surprised. Yet.

  “Long we’ve been told that entering the Fog was certain death,” she said. “To that, I say: we went in and came out little worse for the exchange. Which leaves me to wonder. Is all the world Alterra and the Fog, and that’s it? Or might there be something else?”

  Doffing his grease-stained hat, Kile cleared his throat and spoke up. “You’re talking about an end to the Fog?”

  “Not an end. A beginning.”

  He exchanged a worried look with Dee, his wife. “The old stories talk about lands beyond the Fog...”

  Mel cut Kile off. “Aye. Lands, people. Opportunities for an enterprising crew. Blue skies from here til tomorrow, free of Stensue.”

  Kile swallowed visibly. He spoke with obvious effort. “But … Mel, Cap’n … they’re just stories, lass.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I’d like to sort that out for myself.”

  “But what if there isn’t a beyond?” Lula hadn’t tied back her long, golden bangs. Hair fell across her eyes. She seemed to be studying her feet.

  “Then we turn back a little wiser for knowing the truth for ourselves,” Mel said. Her eyes found Taul’s. His dark face was expressionless. Whatever his feelings on the matter, he was keeping them to himself. Impartiality was a good trait to have in a first mate, but just then she wouldn’t have looked askew at a voice to her side. “Much as I might like, I can’t decide for you. I intend to take the Misty Morning through the Fog and see if there is anything beyond. Maybe there’s nothing. But maybe there is a wide world beyond those mists, a world rich in resources and opportunities. Either way, I mean to find out. Now then. Who’s with me?”

  An uneasy quiet settled over the ship. The crew looked around, at the Fog, the floor, each other. None met her eyes.

  She knew then that she was losing crew. But how many? They were the closest thing she had left to a real family. She’d try not to hold it against any that decided to leave, but she knew better. Walking down that ramp would be a betrayal, a slap to the face, an insult.

  Taul would stay to keep Mel out of trouble. Dee and Kile too. They loved the Misty Morning almost as much as she did, and drew much of their sense of self from keeping her afloat. Lula was already eying the gangplank, she was as good as gone. Sam would stay for the adventure, Ton-Ton out of loyalty, Hindral would gripe and moan but feel duty-bound to protect them all from themselves.

  Voice thick with tears, Lula tendered her resignation. Mel paid her back wages from what remained of Jarvis’ coin, plus a small bonus, but not so large as to entice a rush for the ramp. She clumsily accepted the woman’s farewell embrace.

  Nobody else immediately stepped to the ramp, and for a brief moment, Mel had the ludicrous thought that she might only lose Lula.

  Giving each other questioning looks, Kile and then Dee stepped to the ramp.

  Mel shook her head. “You can’t.”

  “Come now, lass.” Kile’s gnarled knuckles whitened as he wrung his faded hat, but his voice was gentle. “We’ve a mind for making wee ones while we still can. The skies are no place to raise a child. Much less such fouled air as all that.”

  “No. Absolutely not.” Her vision splintered. She wanted to rail, but a sudden lump had lodged in her throat and she couldn’t force it away.

  “Oh, Mel.” Dee folded her into a hug.

  Mel’s arms were rebellious, crushing the other woman against her. “I forbid it.” Her voice was muffled by Dee’s shoulder.

  “We mean to take up in Solash,” Kile said, taking his wife into his arms. “Not far from Rust Bucket.” He cocked a shaggy brow at her. “For when you need repairs.” Kile’s grin was rueful, his eyes tinged with sadness.

  Mel paid them twice what she owed them, enough to set them up comfortably for a long time. They joined Lula in the long grass.

  She ordered the crew to prepare for departure before they thought to join the defectors.

  Jarvis and Sildrian looked out of place amid the frenzy. Sildrian sat on the railing, watching the Fog. Jarvis fretted with the hem of his coat.

  “I can no longer try for White Peaks.” Mel tossed a sack of coins at Jarvis’ feet. It was a pittance, a fraction of the original amount. “Take your coin and Crown keep you.”

  Jarvis looked at the bag of coins. “We mean to stay on, if you’ll have us.”

  “Pardon? Sildrian did us a favor back there, I won’t deny it. None of us would be standing here if it weren’t for him. But he’s a … ” Mel trailed off, somehow unwilling to finish the sentence in front of Sildrian. She leaned toward Jarvis, her voice dropping to a whisper. “How long until those numbers on his chest reach zero? What if we’re five hundred feet up when it happens? I can’t do it. Sorry.”

  “You misunderstand. We were going to White Peaks not just to hide. The cold slows his clock. The frigid air you travel is a sufficient substitute for White Peaks. It will preserve Sildrian, extending his life by years.”

  Mel frowned.

  “If you are truly going back into the Fog, you might come to wish for Sil on the deck.”

  “This is no charity ship. Everyone pitches in.”

  “And so we shall. I am quite adept with machinery. I’ve already learned much while assisting Kile with repairs.”

  She nodded, the matter decided. “About that other ten thousand … ”

  Jarvis winced. “Erm, I might have embellished that part.”

  “Figured as much. You can start by swabbing the decks.”

  “Aye, Captain!” Jarvis rushed about looking for a bucket and mop. There wasn’t one, of course. The deck would freeze over before it could dry. It was a tradition, a joke they played on new hands.

  She joined Sildrian at the railing.

  “Something on your mind, Captain?”

  “No.” The Fog roiled, darkening, and then retracted. “Does it bother you? Knowing how much time ‘til you … ”

&nb
sp; “Not entirely. There’s something to be said for knowing when one’s life expires. Don’t you agree?”

  Mel shook her head. “If I’d a clock like that I’d cut it out.” She pushed away from the rail. “Learn to like watery ale. No more Thunderclap.”

  “Aye.” He winked. “Captain.”

  Taul found her slumped in the pilot’s chair, watching three figures on a wagon in high grass, trying not to sniffle but failing. He took the other seat, started readying the airship for flight.

  A smile ghosted Mel’s lips. “After everything, we’re right back where we started—no funds, no license, no prospects.”

  “Not so—we’re outlaws now.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Doin’ my best, is all. Course?”

  She nodded at the Fog. “Straight as straight goes. See if there’s something beyond.”

  Taul grimaced. “And if there’s not?”

  “Pit if I know. I’m making this up as I go.”

  “Always your best strategy, sir.”

  The Misty Morning eased off the ground with only the slightest of groans, stirring leaves and flattening grass. The airship rocketed into the sky and, in a sudden rush, punched into the shifting mists and was gone.

  <>

  Here’s the first chapter of Clockwork Scoundrels 2. Enjoy!

  A Solitary Man

  The airship Misty Morning drifted through poisonous skies. The airship’s broad deck was still, the steamwork engine housed belowdecks hunkered down for the night. Torches were lit to discourage the denizens of the Fog, but the quarterdeck’s lamps were shuttered and the windowed command cabin dark. No one minded the helm. There was hardly a need to bother. The shaw was adrift. Lost.

  The Fog pressed in from all sides, restricting visibility to feet. Tendrils curled around banisters and slithered under tarps, incorporeal limbs trying to grapple the ship. Black shadows moved alongside the Misty Morning, pacing it. Shadows with teeth and claw, and a taste for warm blood. The shadows watched and waited. For now.

  Sildrian, the clockwork man, sat on a pair of barrels lashed to the center mast, kicking his boots, his white linen shirt damp from the mist. He was mindful of the heavy press of the Fog but somehow not bothered. Familiarity breeds indifference, he’d discovered. His wrist hinges were flopped open, the dragon pistols tucked inside primed and ready. But it was a quiet night: he’d only needed to repel a dozen of the Fog’s monstrosities since the vague hint of sunlight had drained away, signaling the passage of another day in this gray world.

  It had been twenty-two days since they’d left Alterra. By Sil’s calculations, they would last another twelve before their stores of food gave out. He was morbidly interested to see what would happen then. Would the crew fall upon each other? Would they consume the remains of the first to succumb to hunger? It was an academic sort of wondering. He’d rather come to like these people and wished no harm to come to them. Still, the facts remained.

  They’d been circling uselessly for days. Once into the Fog, really into it, beyond some invisible point of no return, the Misty Morning’s instruments had become strangely unreliable. North became south became east. Then the dials had just started spinning, endless repetitions, like a clock with a loose spring. It was unnatural phenomenon, highly unusual, and yet nobody would talk about it.

  This was curious, this willful ignorance, pretending that things were other than as they are, and just the latest in his ongoing education in the ways of men. Neither was Captain Locke nor any other member of the crew expositive on the subject of the dwindling supplies. Not even Jarvis, who had previously been ever willing to talk long into the night about matters of the mechanical or metaphysical, psychological or sociological. Jarvis enjoyed puzzling over problems, the same as Sil. The talks were Sil’s way of filling in the gaps in his knowledge. Though he was a quick learner—his mind literally a machine—there was much he didn’t yet know of the world. His appetite for Thunderclap was only surpassed by his yearning to know. Everything and anything. No detail was too small to awaken his curiosity. And why not? He was only three months, twelve days, four hours, thirty-one minutes, and six seconds old. Practically a babe.

  But the late-night talks with Jarvis had gone the way of the Thunderclap. He’d been forced to drink some of the stinking brew Ton-Ton cooked up, a thick sludge that only the most courteous could call ale. A poor substitute for the deliciously bubbly Thunderclap, but the ale made his head pleasantly light, and so it served. But there was no substitute for the spirited discussions he and Jarvis had enjoyed. The rest of the crew was fine enough as people went, and interesting in their own mundane sort of way. They just weren’t the type to deliberate difficult questions.

  Was this what sadness felt like? The thickening of his insides, the heaviness in his stomach, the way his mind continually turned away from productive questions and instead troubled itself with ones he couldn’t answer?

  He had a bomb wired to his nervous system, so closely intertwined that it was difficult to discern where Sildrian the thinking man left off and where the dumb machine took over. On his abdomen, red numbers on a black display marked the time until the bomb would finally awaken from its slumber. Up here in the frigid air, the clock slowed. Swabbing the decks of the Fog’s demons seemed a fair exchange.

  It dawned on him that he would not die of the bomb but from simple starvation. After everything he and Jarvis had gone through to find a climate sufficient to extend his life, he would die from simple malnutrition.

  The crew had been making dark jokes of late, a way of acknowledging their circumstances and letting off some pressure. He wondered if he would feel better if he told such a joke now, but he knew none that exactly fit his parameters.

  The Misty Morning rocked slightly, the bow rising and falling as it rode an invisible current. The Fog ahead was bright, a curtain of silver mist in a landscape painted gray. Sil leapt to the deck, the clockwork gears of his heart spinning faster. While adrift had they discovered the other side?

  He raced forward as the bow sliced through the curtain. The Fog parted reluctantly, clinging to the ship’s sides before being thrown off by some invisible force. Lit by a full moon high above, the Misty Morning emerged into clean air.

  Sil’s joy was short-lived; they had not escaped. The soft barrier of the Fog stood ahead of them, some five hundred feet distant. They’d found a clearing, a pocket mysteriously scrubbed clean of the Fog. Blue lights twinkled on the ground, and in the shadows Sil could make out the shape of buildings. Many buildings.

  They’d discovered not a pocket, but an isle in the mist, upon which stood a village. Interesting.

  Of further interest: his internal compass was working again, the needle steadily pointing northwest.

  These were not problems he’d encountered before, or ones he’d previously thought to ponder. So he did the only sensible thing he could think of. He went to wake the captain.

  The Story Continues…

  They thought the Fog would provide an escape.

  They were wrong.

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  About the Author

  Raised on a steady diet of Star Wars, cowboy movies with his great-grandfather, and lots of pretend, E. W. Pierce developed an early interest in the making of make-believe. He discovered the fantasy genre via the Dragonlance novels, and shortly the
reafter, was introduced to the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. His world was never the same.

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  About Engine World

  The stories of Captain Locke and her crew take place in a shared world setting called Engine World. The Dream Engine, by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant, explored one corner of this world, a continent of clockwork engines and zeppelins called Alterra. Waldron’s Gate, the capital, was built around a device called the Blunderbuss, a sleek machine of immense size and dubious origin. There are an unknown number of Blunderbuss-type devices around the world, and all are used in different ways (which will be explored in future Engine World novels).

  For books by other authors set in Engine World, visit blunderbussworld.com.