Take Back the Skies

by Lucy Saxon

  Outside the government district the city was a sorry-looking place, dirty and rusting, and Catherine knew it was full of painfully thin children and parents scraping by to survive. She’d heard the countryside wasn’t much better. All the food grown there was taken by the government and rationed, the excess sold at prices most people couldn’t afford. Aside from the farmers, many country folk worked long hours in the mines, gathering tyrium for the government to sell.

  It made Catherine sick to think of her privileged place in this world. Merely by being born a Hunter, she had secured a life of relative comfort, a high-born life for which most of the population must surely hate her. Ever since the monarchs disappeared and the government took over rule of the country, a deep loathing had grown in the hearts of the commoners for anyone born to aristocracy, regardless of how much influence they had in government. They understood that the government was doing its best to end the war quickly, but aristocrats were exempt from Collection, and for most people that alone was enough to breed hate. It must be heartbreaking, Catherine supposed, having every child bar your eldest taken from you soon after they turned thirteen. On Collection days with low numbers, even the eldest child was taken from some of the poorer families, and the government wasn’t above ignoring birth records to take children who were younger. Some families tried to avoid the trauma of Collection by only having one child. But storms help you, if you were an orphan, or a street rat; you stood no chance of escape.

  ‘No more,’ she muttered to herself, her gaze steeling in determination as she looked at the shipyard. ‘I won’t sit back and let things happen any more.’

  As she spoke a government skyship rose into the air, wings outstretched and tilted to catch the wind, pale violet smoke billowing from the engine pipes, the stern propeller unfolding to give it a boost away from the landing deck, into the nearest updraught. The Anglyan flag waved proudly from the secondary mast. No doubt it was heading to Erova, to fill the front lines with more unfortunate young souls destined to die.

  The shipyard was huge. It had to be, given the size of some of the ships – and to allow enough space for each ship to unfurl its wings without tangling with its neighbours. With some larger trade ships standing twice the size of her house, which was one of the biggest houses in Breningarth, the shipyard was practically a city in itself.

  ‘Miss Catherine, you should retire, it is past sunset,’ Samuel said, interrupting her thoughts. She pulled away from the window, hopping back down to the floor. As Samuel went to get the lights, she changed into her nightgown and crawled under the thick blankets.

  ‘Goodnight, Sam,’ she murmured as he extinguished the last lamp, pitching the room into darkness but for the glow of light behind his eye lenses.

  ‘Have a pleasant resting period, Miss Catherine.’ As Sam left her room, she turned over and buried her head in the pillow, letting out a long breath. There was no way she was going to be able to sleep tonight.

  Chapter 2

  Pale sunlight woke Catherine the next morning, for sleep had come, eventually. Remembering her plans, she grinned widely and stared up at the ceiling. If all went well, that had been the last time she would sleep in this bed. Finally, she pulled herself out of the warm sheets, opened her wardrobe and found her best dress. It was a gaudy purple monstrosity consisting mostly of petticoats upon petticoats, with silver lace at the cuffs and collar, as well as the trim of the corset, and masses of elaborate embroidery. The bodice was too tight and the fabric uncomfortably itchy. She hated it. She took the dress into the bathroom, where Sam had already drawn her bath. Her mind on her plans for the day, Catherine slid into the hot water. The hardest part would be giving her father the slip …

  Later, she gathered the skirt of her dress so she could make her way downstairs to the kitchen. That was one reason she disliked dresses with huge skirts; they were completely impractical for just about everything fun. You couldn’t run, or climb, and you had to be constantly aware of where your skirt was and whether you were accidentally showing more skin than was deemed appropriate. Trousers were far better, but, of course, ladies didn’t wear trousers.

  ‘Good morning, Father.’ She walked into the kitchen, every bit the perfect, dutiful daughter.

  Dressed in an impeccable navy three-piece suit, his greying brown hair combed to the side and his sideburns neatly trimmed, her father was already eating porridge, and Catherine could see a generous bowl waiting on the table for her. If there was one thing the country had in abundance, despite the food rations, it was porridge.

  ‘Good morning, Catherine. Can you not do something with your hair? It looks like a bird’s nest,’ he snapped.

  ‘I had a bath and it’s still drying. I’ll sort it after breakfast.’ He hummed in disapproval, but didn’t say anything, looking back down at the newspaper spread over the table beside his bowl.

  ‘Anything in the news?’ she asked politely.

  ‘Nothing unusual. Another battalion has fallen in Erova. There’s going to be another Collection soon.’

  Catherine felt a shiver go down her spine. She loathed Collection day. The screams and cries of parents could be heard for hours after the soldiers left.

  ‘Are there even any children left to be Collected?’ she asked, trying to mask her horror. Every time she went into the lower city, there seemed to be fewer and fewer children about. She feared there would soon be none left at all.

  ‘Another twenty more have turned thirteen since the last Collection,’ her father said dismissively. ‘It’s low, but it’s better than nothing. Besides, we shan’t need many more – if all goes well, the war should end before long. Now go and comb your hair. We’re meeting Thomas at nine.’

  Catherine hiked up her skirts and ran back up to her room, pondering her father’s unexpected words. What had changed? Was the war truly coming to an end after all this time?

  Swiftly she set about untangling the mess that was her long brown hair. The resulting plait was a little rough and uneven, and she knew her father would complain, but he would have to live with it.

  ‘Hurry up, Catherine!’ Nathaniel called impatiently.

  Catherine fastened her favourite silver-buckled boots, choosing comfort over fashion – her father wouldn’t be looking too hard at her feet – then hoisting her bag over her shoulder, she rushed back down to meet her father in the entryway.

  She watched his eyes trail over her less than perfect hair.

  ‘I suppose you’ll have to do. Let’s hope Thomas will forgive your appearance,’ he muttered, lifting his satchel over his shoulder. Stomach churning anxiously, Catherine followed without a glance back at her home of nearly fifteen years, not wanting to question even for a second her decision to leave.

  Catherine braced herself against a metal bar protruding from the floor of the carriage as the tram jerked to a noisy halt in the station at the heart of the city. Once sleek and near-soundless, years of neglect had made the trams rusty and unsteady. People tried to avoid using them if they could help it, but for some journeys there was no alternative. Apparently, with the war going on, the government had better things to spend money on than maintaining public transport. Her father was mostly to blame; he was the one in charge of domestic issues.

  Nathaniel herded her out on to the platform, where they were immediately assaulted with the sounds and smells of the city. The rain had stopped, but it was still cold enough for Catherine to feel a chill through the layers of her dress, and she found herself wishing she’d brought a coat.

  The streets of Breningarth were alive with people, bustling past the rundown buildings and avoiding the large puddles that spanned the roads. This close to the outer city, half the shops had gone out of business years ago due to lack of both interest and stock. On street corners poorly dressed men sold government-produced newspapers or food from small carts, women aired laundry and sold clothes, and a few children darted like lightning from one stall to the next, slipping goods into their pockets on the way. Catherine, always
on the alert, hid a grin as one boy stole the expensive pocket watch from her father’s coat. His indigo-smudged face showed surprise when he realised she’d seen what he’d done. She winked at him rather than telling her father, and he sprinted away before she could change her mind.

  Her boots clicked against the dirty cobbled street, and she couldn’t help but notice how people backed away as she and Nathaniel approached, crossing to the other side of the street to avoid them. Catherine’s dress immediately set her out as government, and most people would recognise Nathaniel Hunter from the public newscasts that were constantly shown on the screens in pubs and squares; he wasn’t a popular man. Catherine followed her father past an entrance to the shipyard. The busiest place in the city, its noise was almost deafening, and the smell of burning tyrium was heavy in the air, a faint purple tinge tainting the clouds above. Catherine loved it.

  The dockland government building was still several streets away, towering over the buildings around it, and Catherine hung back, heart pounding, as her father proceeded. It was now or never. If she could just get to the bustling shipyard, she would be free. She crouched as if refastening her bootlace, looking up through her fringe to make sure her father had carried on walking. In fact, he had quickened his pace; he hated being close to the shipyard as it was full of commoners. He often complained to Catherine that people of government status should not have to interact with the lower levels of society.

  Seizing her moment, she straightened up and slipped down a narrow, empty side street between a pub and a bakery. Glancing both ways, Catherine opened her handbag, pulling out the breeches and tugging them on hastily under her dress. Struggling slightly to unlace the back of her bodice, her fingers shaking with exhilaration, she managed to wriggle her way out of the dress and pull her shirt over her head. She stuffed her money purse into the crotch of her breeches, knowing it would be safest there.

  The only thing left in her bag was the pair of scissors she’d packed. She held them up, sliding her plait between the blades, and nearly cut her finger off as she heard footsteps nearby. She spun round with her heart in her throat.

  No one was there that she could see, but she had to get a move on.

  Taking a steadying breath, she tried again, feeling little resistance as the sharp steel cut through the top of the thick brown braid. Her neck itched as short strands brushed the nape. She threw the plait down a nearby drain and left the dress and scissors in the bag, dumping it against the wall. She hoped that some lucky soul would find the contents and sell them. Running her hands through her unevenly cropped hair, she prayed it looked boyish enough that no one would comment. Her chest was easily hidden under the baggy grey blouse.

  ‘I’m too clean,’ she murmured, looking down at her pale hands and pristine shirt. All the children she’d seen near the shipyard were covered in dirt and tyrium smudges. The look of the ground below her feet made Catherine shudder, but she muddied her fingers regardless, smearing her shirt and breeches. Lifting her hands to her face, she wiped across her brow and cheeks, her eyes and mouth shut tight. A shiver went down her spine at the slick, wet feeling on her skin, and she determinedly ignored the smell. Finally, she spread the dirt through her hair so the dark strands stuck out haphazardly. Disguise now in place, she ran on along the alley, her heart thumping furiously against her ribs. She had done it! She had escaped her father. She was free.

  It didn’t take Catherine long to gain access to the shipyard – a quick sprint across the square and ten minutes of hiding behind crates, waiting for the guards to pass. Once she was in, she blended easily into the crowd of workers.

  Her eyes were as round as coins as she wandered through the organised chaos of the shipyard. Burly men hauled enormous crates on deck with such ease that they might have been throwing pillows, while small boys scurried from ship to ship, fetching rope and gears and whatever else their captains asked of them, ducking the occasional wave of seawater that towered over the edge of the docks. Many of the docked skyships were vast government vessels, squeaky clean and resplendent in their military colours, banners flying proudly; others were authorised trade ships, gigantic and well-travelled, with huge canvas and metal wings furled at their sides. The number of other ships she could count on one hand; it was near impossible to get a permit for pleasure travel these days.

  Steering well clear of the rows of government ships, Catherine made her way past the trade ships. Suddenly, she paused. A skyship at the end of the port had caught her eye. While it was still bigger than her house, it looked as if it were too small to be a trade ship. Its design was beautiful, if somewhat mismatched, with gleaming hazel boards and shiny bronze struts. Cream canvas wings were folded tightly to its sides and the mast was flagless, but the lowered sails were a matching cream colour, rippling slightly in the breeze. Gold calligraphy was scrawled neatly across the bow – Stormdancer, it read. The name seemed fitting. She imagined that such a small skyship would dance through even the harshest storms as easily as a master of ballet. Her breath caught, and she instantly knew which ship she was going to board. It was only a matter of how to go about it.

  As she moved closer she saw a man sat straddling the boom, working at the rigging. That was going to make things difficult. She crept as close as she dared to where the ship’s narrow gangplank met the dock, looking out from her hiding place between some large crates. The man had to head below deck sometime!

  Her feet had begun to fall asleep before he hopped neatly down and dropped to his knees, opening the trap to slip below deck. Yes! This was her chance. Darting silently up the gangplank, she stepped as quietly as she could on to the ship’s deck. Clothes were strung up over a line to dry, and she smiled at seeing a dress. There was at least one woman on the ship; surely she couldn’t turn away a homeless child?

  Catherine lifted the trap, sighing in relief when the narrow corridor below proved to be empty. She leaned up against the ladder to pull the trap closed and jumped down, landing with a quiet clatter on the metal floor. The inside of the ship was as mismatched as the outside: bronze and steel struts in the walls and floor were interspaced with the occasional section of gleaming wooden panels. The owners genuinely cared about their ship, and it showed.

  Creeping as quietly as possible through the short corridors, peering into doors to find a hiding place, she was disheartened to discover only small, packed storage rooms and the main control room. As much as she longed to stay and marvel over the control room and its many dials and levers, she knew she had to hide before someone came back. There was another manhole at the end of the corridor and she dropped straight down it, ignoring the ladder.

  There were more doors on this floor, which was U-shaped. Behind the first door was a washroom with a porcelain bath, and the door beside that was the loo. Further down was a wooden door stained with tyrium. Curious, Catherine tried the handle and the door swung open. A narrow bed was shoved against one wall, the patchwork sheets all in a mess, and beside it was a desk covered in blueprint papers and scrawled notes, weighted in place by twists of pipe and wire. A pair of chunky knee-high leather boots rested on the floor beside the bed, and a thick fleece-lined jacket with a high collar hung on the back of the chair at the desk. This was clearly a man’s room.

  It seemed as good a hiding place as any, so she shut the door behind her, eyes wandering over the messy blueprint stuck to the back of the door. For the life of her, she couldn’t decipher its purpose.

  She looked around the room for an even smaller place to hide and pulled open the doors of a large oak wardrobe that was bolted to the wall and floor. Heart racing, she pushed aside a heap of clothes at the base of the wardrobe, squeezing herself right into the corner. Covering herself with a long wool coat, she hoped she looked just like another pile of clothes. Catherine laughed shakily to herself. She wrapped her arms around her legs, and leaned her chin on her knees. All she could do now was wait.

  Chapter 3

  A loud thunk snapped Catherine out of a doze, a
nd she very nearly forgot how to breathe as she heard footsteps approaching. She heard voices before the door opened; three men, she thought. One with a common accent, the other two sounding government with a lingering undertone of inner city. Guards, maybe?

  ‘If you insist, gents, but I assure you, you won’t find anything,’ the common man was saying, sounding somewhat amused.

  Definitely guards.

  ‘We’ll be the judge of that, sprog,’ one of the guards announced. Sprog? The commoner didn’t sound like a child. She heard the thump of heavy boots kicking at wood, and assumed the guards were searching the room. Panic gripped her, her heart pounding as the door of the wardrobe rattled and opened. She froze – until everything went pitch-black around her, and another thump signalled the door being closed again.

  ‘There’s still plenty of other rooms for us to check, boy. Don’t think you’ve got away with anything.’ The other guard’s voice was colder, sharp.

  ‘Well, we have a take-off schedule to keep to, y’know. Places to be, stormwake to catch,’ the commoner retorted, his voice growing fainter as the three walked out of the room.

  When Catherine could no longer hear the bickering, a thrill went through her. She had successfully evaded the shipyard guards. She was practically free! She just needed the ship to take off while she was still aboard.

  She leaned back against the side of the wardrobe and thought with satisfaction of how her father would explain to Thomas Gale that she couldn’t marry Marcus because she had run away; no one had attempted to kidnap her since she was small, when the first attempt had ended with ten men being killed. Her father would know she’d left of her own volition. Oh, how it would embarrass him!

  Catherine’s backside was beginning to feel numb when she heard a faint rumbling that turned into a fearsome roar as the entire ship quivered. They must be preparing for take-off. She threw out her hands to brace herself against the walls of the wardrobe. Vaguely remembering something she’d been told once at worship, she murmured a quick request to the gods for safe travels through their domain. Not that she knew where she was going, but regardless, she would be travelling through the storms. Catherine didn’t want to take any chances.