NIghtbird (Empire of Masks Book 2)

by Brock Deskins

  The worm thrashed as the techno-scribing inlaid through the ships’ hulls converted the heart stones’ power into electricity and sent it coursing through the worm’s gargantuan body. Even attached to four large airships with over a dozen harpoons piercing its rock-like flesh, the worm greatly outmassed the combined armada and pulled at the vessels like a child with a kite.

  With his job finished, Bertram held on as the airships rocked and bucked. A violent throw caused the young lord’s side of the ship to dip violently downward. Out of the corner of his eye, Bertram spotted a man flailing just before he fell over the side. Bertram leaned over the gunwale and saw that the crewman had failed to clip himself to his safety line and was now dangling from it, his failing grip causing him to inch toward its end.

  Bertram unclipped his belt from the harpoon, attached a loose safety line, and donned the worm-skin gloves once more. He tossed the slack line overboard, grabbed the fallen man’s safety line, and leapt over the rail.

  “I’m gonna fall!” the man cried as he looked up at Bertram’s approaching feet.

  Bertram looked down and took note of the amount of slack in the line attached to his belt. “I’m going to let go and seize you. As soon as you feel me grab hold, you need to release the line and cling to me. Got it?”

  The sailor nodded as his rescuer struggled to maneuver himself so that he was on the opposite side of the rope and would be facing him as he fell past.

  “All right, I’m going to let go and grab you. When I do, you need to cling to me like I’m the last bottle of rum on the ship.”

  Bertram let out a breath and released his hold. A split second later, he reached out and grabbed the man around the waist as he plummeted past. The sailor wrapped his arms around Bertram’s neck and his legs around his torso just as the line snapped taut. Both men’s grips redoubled as they bounced at the end of the line and felt themselves slipping apart.

  Bertram looked down and saw the worm in its final death throes. “Wahoo, we got it!”

  “I don’t give a good goddam about that worm just now,” the sailor said. “Thank you, sah, you saved my life!”

  “You certainly owe me that bottle of rum I mentioned.”

  “That and more. You ever need anything, you just tell me. I’m your man from here on out.”

  “Are you two fools all right?” the captain shouted over the gunwale.

  Bertram called up, “We’d be better with something solid under our feet.”

  “Hold on while we reel you in.”

  “Given the alternative, I shall do as you command, Captain.”

  The rope jolted as the crew heaved them up inch by inch until hands grabbed at their clothing and pulled the two men back onto the deck. Bertram got his feet beneath him and dusted off his uniform with his hands as several crewmen clapped him on the back and cheered his heroics.

  “That was another damn fool thing you did, sah,” the captain said, “but I thank you for saving my man and doing me the courtesy of not dying on my ship.”

  Bertram smiled behind his mask. “Well, I figured it was the least I could do for you for allowing me to participate in this glorious hunt.”

  “Despite my not recalling having invited you, you’re welcome. You showed a fair hand at the harpoon and kept your head. You don’t often see that in greenies.”

  “You don’t often see academy officers on a worm ship.”

  The captain chuckled and shook his head. “That you don’t.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Russel, get your ass back down here!” Kiera shouted up at him for perhaps the hundredth time as she pulled against the guide line attached to his basket.

  Russel ignored her demands and gripped the edge of the basket as it wobbled from Kiera’s insistent tugging. With his magnification lenses dropped into place, he could just make out the blurred forms of the thumper crew setting up the huge device designed to lure the worm to the surface. He watched the airships hovering over the crew’s heads as they looked for signs of the creature’s imminent breach.

  The rammox raised the huge pilings. Russel could not feel or hear the rhythmic thumping they created from inside his basket, but those on the ground could probably detect the slight tremor if they paid attention. Russel’s heart raced when the worm ships broke their loose formation and circled an area not far from the thumper.

  The worm breached in a terrifying yet majestic display of sand, rock, and dust. For a moment, it appeared as if it might reach up and snatch an airship from the sky. Thick puffs of smoke surrounded the worm ships as the crews fired their harpoons. Russel did not know much about bringing down a colossal worm, but he had several theories about what it would take.

  Despite the airships’ size and lift ability, he knew that if the worm was not struck with enough harpoons, or the arcanists on board failed to send sufficient power through the lines to cripple its muscles, the worm could dive back below the surface and pull the airships to the ground if the tethers did not break or get severed.

  The worm writhed, kicking up a cloud of dust like a miniature storm. The wind carried the dust cloud, obscuring the airships as well as the thumper crew from Russel’s view. When it cleared, he was able to make out the worm’s massive form stretched across the ground.

  The worm was a treasure trove. Its thick hide collected thousands of bits of mage glass, some large and pure enough to rate as arcanstones, through its life of burrowing. It was by channeling the power of the embedded stones that it was able to disintegrate the earth and stone around it.

  Russel needed to prepare. He had several days before he could even attempt to reach the worm. The military and gendarme would set up camp around it and shoot anyone who approached before they had collected all the mage glass and worm dung used to create musket powder. While they did this, a team of selected butchers would carve up the worm for its meat and skin.

  Worm meat was tough and had to be boiled for hours before it was remotely edible. Much of it went to the mines in Vulcrad to feed the workers, most of them slaves or otherwise indentured, in exchange for steel and iron ore. Only after the worm, mage glass, and dung were collected were the citizens allowed to approach. Farmers collected the churned-up soil for planting as it had enough excrement mixed with it to make it adequate for growing.

  Others would explore the massive network of tunnels the worm left behind in hopes of finding bits of mage glass missed by the soldiers. A lucky few found pieces pure enough to be cut into arcanstones. It was illegal to sell arcanstone-quality mage glass to anyone but the government, so that made them very profitable on the black market. That potential profit did not come without risk, and not just of being arrested and possibly executed. Abandoned worm caverns made great homes for some of Eidolan’s most dangerous creatures.

  With nothing left to observe, Russel pulled the cord attached to a small valve on the patchwork shimmersilk balloon and slowly let out the lift gas. Russel glanced at his feet and gasped, his heart rate redoubling and pounding in his chest as he gazed at the copper wire piled near his feet, and he felt the hairs on his arms stand up. The static line that was supposed to be attached to his balloon had come off.

  Russel hurled himself out of the basket and barely managed to grab the remnants of the airship’s mainmast before static electricity ignited the volatile lift gas. The explosion drove Kiera and Wesley back a step and shattered some of the glassware throughout their airship home.

  “Russel!” Wesley cried as he looked up and saw his brother plummeting from the sky trailing a streamer of smoke like a meteorite.

  He crashed to the deck, shattering a stack of flimsy wooden crates. Kiera and Russel rushed over, expecting to find him dead or severely injured at the very least.

  “Russel, please don’t be dead so I can kill you later,” Kiera pleaded.

  “Russel, are you okay?” Wesley asked in a trembling voice.

  Russel opened his eyes and moaned. He lay still for several moments, shifting parts of his body to gauge an
y damage, grinned, and gave his brother a shaky thumbs up.

  Wesley threw his head back and sighed. “Thank the gods! I thought you had killed yourself! What happened?”

  Russel winced as he raised his hands to talk. “Spark made gas go boom.”

  Kiera raised a hand as if to strike him but could only clench her fist and shake it in his face. “You went boom, you maniac! As if floating that crazy contraption in the air for the entire city to see wasn’t bad enough, you go and blow it up just in case someone might have been looking the other direction. Why don’t I just climb up the mast, drop my trousers, wave my bare backside around while I ring a bell and sing “Oh, Glorious Velaroth”? Maybe that will draw the last few eyes our direction!”

  “Then people might mistake us for a lighthouse.”

  “I do not have a shiny ass!”

  “We’d have airships crashing into our house.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Keeping the neighbors awake.”

  “Stop trying to change the—”

  A shrill whistle sounded near the base of the airship’s crumbled pedestal.

  “Crap!” Kiera shouted, and glared at Russel. “Happy?”

  Russel shook his head. “No, sad balloon went boom.”

  “Your…to the Tormented Plane with your damn balloon! You ought to be more worried about us getting hauled off by the gendarme and whether or not your eyebrows will ever grow back.”

  Russel clapped his hand to his forehead and frowned upon finding his brow a smooth plane.

  “Ho, the ship!” a voice called out a moment before four wary gendarmes clomped up the gangplank and stormed onto the deck with their muskets held at the ready.

  The gendarme sergeant, a burly man with a thick black beard, his rank denoted by the gold piping on his red uniform jacket, scanned the ship’s deck for signs of any other inhabitants on board. “Anyone else on this tub?”

  “No, just us,” Wesley replied.

  “Folks said they saw something flying over the junkyard.”

  “Flying, no, nothing flying here. This thing hasn’t moved in probably a century.”

  The sergeant looked up and pointed at the tattered remains of the balloon hanging from the mainmast. “What’s that?”

  “Laundry,” Russel signed.

  “What’s he flapping on about?” the sergeant asked.

  “He said it’s just our laundry,” Wesley said.

  “Uh huh. What was that explosion? You lot hiding powder? Maybe selling it on the black market?”

  Kiera snapped, “If we could afford powder, we wouldn’t live in a dump atop a giant pile of garbage. Besides, you’d smell it if it were powder. Do you smell any gunpowder? Are we standing in a big cloud of smoke?”

  “Don’t get smart, little girl!”

  “Who are you calling little girl?” Kiera growled, and made to take a step forward.

  Wesley stepped in front of her and blocked her advance. “No, sir, she’s definitely not getting smart.”

  Russel snorted. “Not possible.”

  “Shut up, Sah No Brows!”

  Russel shrank back and pulled his hat lower to cover his singed eyebrows.

  “Still, something blew up,” Sergeant Randolph continued. “I heard it myself as we were approaching.”

  “Lamp gas.”

  “Lamp gas,” Wesley translated for his brother as Russel’s hands started waving. “He was trying to make lamp gas, but something went wrong.”

  “Obviously,” the sergeant said. “I have to fine you for disturbing the peace and creating a public hazard.”

  Kiera bristled. “What part of living in garbage makes you think we have money for a fine?”

  He shrugged. “Your finances are not my problem. You can pay a fine or I can haul all three of you in and keep you safe from any more explosions for…I don’t know, maybe a week or two.”

  “That’s extortion!”

  “And that’s a big word for a little girl. Come to think of it, how old are you? Maybe I should run you all over to Wayward House and make sure they aren’t looking for you.”

  Wesley reached into his pocket and retrieved his remaining coins from last night’s work. “No need, sah. She’s sixteen and my brother is actually the oldest of us all. He has a condition that makes him look younger.”

  Sergeant Randolph looked at Russel. “Looks like he has more than just the one condition.”

  “Yes, he’s a real mess,” Wesley agreed, and shoved the coins at the man. “Thank you so much for your civic duty and taking the time to come by to make sure we’re all okay. We’re fine with the fine. Here you go. I hope this is enough to cover your trouble.”

  The sergeant jingled the coins in his cupped hand. “It’s a start, but I’m going to be keeping an eye on you lot.”

  Wesley gently pushed the sergeant toward the gangplank. “Wonderful, I will sleep better knowing that such an outstanding and diligent officer of the gendarme is watching over us poor unfortunates. Thank you, watch your step on your way down. It can be a little tricky. Bye, bye.”

  Wesley leaned on the railing and breathed deeply as he watched the gendarme squad march away. “Well, that sucked, but I guess it could have been worse.”

  “Worse?” Kiera shrieked. “We just lost what little coin we had all because your lunatic brother thought it would be a good idea to float a balloon up over the city and blow it up!” She spun around to yell at Russel some more, but he was gone. “Yeah, run away and hide in your hole, you crazy little skitter lizard.”

  “You’re stressed.”

  “Of course I’m stressed! I have a few baubles and three chicken eggs to give Nimat in tribute, which barely covers last month’s shortage. I’m going to look like an incompetent idiot, all thanks to Russel.”

  “Nimat likes you. It will be fine as long as you are sincere with your apology and properly subservient. She’ll give you more time.”

  Kiera crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not good at subservience.”

  “That’s why you fake it. Do you think I enjoy pleasuring all those old women? Of course not, but I know what to do and say to make them like me, and they reward me properly for it. That’s what you have to do.”

  “Be a whore?”

  “I wouldn’t use that word, but yes.”

  Kiera sighed and looked out across her junkyard kingdom. “Great, now I’m no better than you.”

  Wesley laid a hand on her shoulder. “It is a terrible thing to bear, but I’m sure you’ll manage.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that there’s dignity in being a thief. People are so threatened by what I do that they shoot at me. They respect me and my abilities enough to try and kill me.”

  “You would be surprised at how often I get shot at.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. There is a significant double standard between me and my female counterparts. A husband’s unexpected return rarely makes for a pleasant encounter. Come on, the food lines are forming. Let’s go get something to eat. It’ll make you feel better.”

  Kiera’s stomach rumbled in agreement. “I could definitely eat. Do you have Russel’s token?”

  Wesley nodded. “Let’s hurry before the lines get long.”

  The pair hustled through Blindside’s lower ward and crossed into a finger of Midtown that had sprouted like a bud and was slowly expanding its reach as it grew. It was an example of how the city’s old ring system of separation was not static but a living thing whose borders stretched and receded depending on societal, financial, and criminal influence.

  They had hoped to save time and walking distance by cutting through the middle-class peninsula, but the streets became crowded as they neared the middle of the blossoming district. The deeper Kiera and Wesley pushed into the area, the thicker the crowds became until they were forced to join in the shoving and jostling melee just to make progress.

  “What in the Tormented Plane is going on here?” Kiera groused
as she darted through a small opening between bodies.

  Being tall enough to peer over the heads of most of the crowd, Wesley pointed to a scaffold erected in one of the small plazas ahead and to their right. “Something’s going on over there. Looks like that’s what everyone is gathering to see.”

  “What is it?”

  The general din quieted as a man standing on the scaffold began to shout over the heads of the mob. “Hear ye! For the unlawful wearing of an unregistered mask, Richard Burgess is hereby sentenced to five years behind the grotesque veil.”

  “No, please have mercy!” the condemned man cried. “My family was entitled to the mask once. We just fell on hard times and our standing slipped! I’ll earn the mask again if you just give me the chance!”

  His pleas fell on deaf ears as the crowd began to chant, “Give him the veil!”

  Several men held him as another placed a metal mask onto his face. The mask bore the resemblance of a gargoyle with small horns and a hideous nose jutting above a twisted rictus of a mouth. Two other men then used screws to affix it in place, never wavering despite the man’s agonized cries. One could of course remove the mask by taking out the screws, but doing so would earn him an immediate and very public execution.

  Wesley grabbed Kiera by the elbow and guided her away from the spectacle. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get through this mess while all the idiots are distracted.”

  Kiera cast a disgusted look over her shoulder at the scene atop the scaffold. “All that for a stupid mask. Sometimes, I think everyone is a moron.”

  “Wearing one or making it a crime to do so?”

  “Both. I don’t understand why anyone would risk that just to wear a mask.”

  “The mask opens a lot of doors for people. It gives instant access to the wealthiest and most influential people in all of Eidolan. For any business owner hoping to expand, earning a mask is crucial to their growth and survival.”

  Kiera snorted. “It’s still pretty damn stupid.”

  “I agree. I’m just glad some people like to go the other way once in a while and slum it, otherwise I might be out of a job.”