by E. W. Pierce
The dwarf stalked forward, toward the raft. Realizing he was suddenly alone, the hermit followed.
Mel ditched her goggles and scarf into the bottom of the raft. Shook her short hair free of the cap. “Let’s go say hello.”
Jarvis squeaked as she stepped onto firm ground but quickly followed, nearly stepping on her heels in his haste. Afraid to be left behind. Sildrian had no problem there—the clockwork man sat on the raft’s edge, legs crossed, idly looking about.
“What do we say?” Her new Chief Wrench was breathless, nearly wheezing.
“I’ll do the talking. You’re here to help figure out if they’ve anything of value. Remember?”
“But… what if he tries talking to me? What do I say?”
“Whatever comes to mind, like normal folk.” She cast a dubious glance at him. Color had crept up his neck, reaching for his cheeks, and his eyes were bright. Was he… crying? Gods, he hadn’t a clue. Maybe bringing him hadn’t been such a good idea. “Look for common ground. I don’t know, maybe compliment his hat.”
This didn’t seem to ease his mind, but they’d run out of bridge and Jarvis swallowed his reply with a loud gulp.
The dwarf stopped five feet away in an intricate stomping of his boots. He hammered the ground with the bottom of the standard, once, twice, three times. The sound echoed across the clearing like a clap of thunder. “Presentin’ his Eminence, the Great Seer of Fosis, King Flanagg.”
In a shuffling of cloth and creaking of bone, everyone in the clearing went to their knees. All, save Mel and Jarvis.
The dwarf’s eyes widened in scarcely contained rage. “Did ya not hear what I just said? On your knees!” Spittle flew from his lips.
The hermit—Flanagg—patted the dwarf’s shoulder as he stepped around him. “Thadon, is that any way to speak to guests?”
“They could show a little more reverence, Your Highness.”
Flanagg didn’t seemed to hear. “Greetings, visitors of the sky. I am called Flanagg the Far. Seer and Elder of Fosis. And,” he glanced dryly over his shoulder, “king by the tongues of some, but I claim no kingship.” Then, supported by his staff, he bent low. Thadon gasped, his face purpling in outrage.
As Flanagg straightened, the blue-green stone affixed to the end of his staff burst into a rainbow of color.
“Captain Mel Locke, and this is Jarvis.” She returned the bow, then wondered if she ought to curtsy instead.
“And the other?” Flanagg cast his eyes toward the raft.
Other? “Oh—Sildrian. He’s…” What, exactly? A clockwork man that protects them from the denizens of the Fog? Somehow she didn’t think this old man could comprehend. Though given their proximity to the Fog, perhaps he would. “He keeps us safe while we fly through the Fog.”
“Ah,” Flanagg said, nodding sagely as though that explained everything. He tipped his head back, eyeing the Misty Morning floating high overhead. “Is your… shell of the Fog as well?”
“No. That is an airship, a kind of flying boat.”
Flanagg’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “Boat?”
“Yes. Something to cross the waters.”
He nodded enthusiastically, causing the rumpled hat to bow and bend with the motion. “What we call a bridge.”
Crown help her. How could it be that she could speak the same language as this man but not make him understand? She let it go—ship, boat, or bridge, it was all immaterial to her reason for being here.
“This flying bridge of yours: where did it originate?”
“We are from Alterra.”
Flanagg’s face was blank.
“It’s inside the Fog. Like this,” she waved at the clearing. “Only much bigger.”
“So there are other pockets of safety. I’d long suspected as much, but could never prove it. After all, here we are. It stood to reason others might also have shelter from the Mist.”
“Yes, about that—how do you survive so close to the Fog?”
Flanagg cast his eyes at the shifting mist, a there-and-back glance. “Life persists where it can, for if it does not, it is no longer life.”
Mel didn’t know how to respond, so she didn’t.
“And where are you from?”
Mel blinked. Looked at the dwarf, but there was no help in that scowling face. “Alterra. As I said before.”
“You did? Oh, dear.” He patted the sagging pockets of his robe. “Thadon, where is my pipe?”
“In your tower, milord.”
“Very well. Let us retreat to my study, that we might palaver in private. The villagers are already late to the Casting. And I don’t need the Sight to know that they won’t get underway whilst we stand here talking.”
With that, Flanagg the Far abruptly turned on his heel and started down the bridge’s northwest branch. The staff counted his strides as it rapped upon the stones. With a final dark glance at them, Thadon fell in behind his master.
“He is a queer sort of man,” Jarvis said quietly. They stood unmoved at the bridge’s center.
There was something off about him. On one hand, he seemed like a doddering old man at the end of his days. But she’d glimpsed a shrewdness in his eyes, fleeting, but there. She did not think he was trying to mask his true nature under a cloak of senility. Rather, he reminded her of her grandfather at the end of his life. Sometimes the quick wits he’d been known for as a younger man would suddenly rise from the fog of confusion, briefly assert itself, and just as mysteriously pass back into the void. Flanagg the Far was merely the shell of a great man now, a faint shadow of what he must’ve been. It also meant they’d have to proceed carefully. It is easy to arouse anger in a confused man, and it would only take a single misstep before Thadon ran them off. Or worse.
Jarvis gently touched her arm. “Captain? Do you suppose he will be safe?” He tipped his top hat toward the raft, where Sildrian seemed to be dozing.
“As safe as you and I.” Which was to say, not safe at all.
CHAPTER 3
Friends Call Me Sil
Sildrian slumped with eyes closed, breathing deeply, until the only voice was the whisper of the wind. Silence had settled over the clearing, and in that vacuum, the unrelenting tick-tick-tick of his internal clock wound on. Gears rattled and clanked, spinning within the confines of his head. How he could have gears in his head, in his mind, he didn’t know. If one wanted to start on the questions, that wouldn’t be the first he’d ask his creator, whomever that was; he put no stock in the Crown, or the bumbling fools at the Ministry of Manifestation. Jarvis had called him a miracle, and maybe he was. No other explanation held up to scrutiny.
The clearing was empty, the creatures of fantasy gone. Jarvis had read Sil stories that first night, when he’d stolen him away from the warehouse and secreted him home. Sitting beside the crackling fire, enjoying his first taste of Thunderclap, Sil had felt a certain kinship with the fantastical creatures of the stories. They, too, were different. When Sil asked where he might see some of these wondrous creatures, Jarvis had explained that it was only a story. What he’d called ‘make believe’, and Sil had understood to mean ‘not real’. And yet, here was a village overflowing with such creatures.
Men are not infallible, or all-knowing, despite appearances they pretended at. An old lesson, but a good one.
He strode into tall grass, a fine spray of pollen puffing up under his boots. The ramshackle buildings sagged on old bones. They might’ve been black, once, but long years in the sun had washed out the wood until they were the gray of storm clouds.
The village set his mind spinning off in a dozen different directions. He wanted to go everywhere and see everything, at once. Captain Locke hadn’t brought him along to sate his curiosity, or even that he might realize some measure of kinship amid the wonderfully strange villagers. But she hadn’t expressly ordered him not to. In fact, he realized, she’d not given him any instructions at all.
Silly girl.
He wanted to run toward the leaning buildin
gs and see what was inside. Find one of those curiously-made creatures and examine them. He’d long exhausted the interesting things to do and see aboard the Misty Morning. This village represented fresh knowledge, new experiences. But despite his desire to explore, he remained rooted to the spot. He could just see the hats of Jarvis and the bearded feeble above the garden’s swaying stalks.
He loved Jarvis. At least, he thought he did. Love was an unclear concept, and discussing it with Jarvis had not improved his understanding. The best he could approximate was feelings of strong loyalty. Still, there was no denying that Jarvis was a bumbling fool, and would be safer if Sil was with him.
The allure of the village was magnetic, pulling his face back toward the cabins. His silvery skin tingled with nervous energy.
Captain Locke would look after Jarvis. She was strong and capable, and intelligent in her own way.
He stood frozen with indecision, his boots cast in iron. The gears in his head quickened as logic grappled with desire. He desperately wanted to explore this place, but loyalty to Jarvis wouldn’t let him take the first step.
A finger tapped his shoulder, thump-thump, drawing him from his reverie.
Sil spun on his heel, wrists snapping open, guns sliding forward.
A shapely young woman stood behind him. Long ribbons of red framed a freckled face. Green eyes bright with curiosity looked him over. She was smiling, a rueful grin that brought color to her cheeks.
Sil catalogued these details but gave them little notice, as one thought reverberated in his head, drowning out all others, like a gear continually slipping from its groove. My height. She’s my height.
“Hello. I’m Freda. What’s your name?”
Sildrian. Friends call me Sil…
She grasped the ends of his arms—his barrels. “What do these do?” She turned them to the sunlight and giggled when his hands swung on their wrist hinges.
He wanted to warn her away. Dragon pistols aren’t to be trifled with. But he couldn’t answer. The stuck gear in his head had reached down and taken hold of his tongue. My height…
“Why don’t you say somethin’? These your ears, Mister?” She put her mouth to one of the barrels. “Hel-loooo.” Her voice echoed, eliciting another round of giggles.
“Stop that.” He managed. “Dangerous.”
She gave the barrels a skeptical look. “Never heard of no dangerous ears before. Though one time Old Misses Kraut had a wiggly-worm crawl into one of hers. We were ‘fraid it turn her mind to mush. Like mushed peas. Ick. I hate mushed peas. What kind of food do you hate, Mister?”
She was a queer sort. Even with his superior mental capacities, Sil could scarcely follow the erratic line of her questions. Perhaps higher brain rhythms were a function of shorter stature.
He snapped his wrists shut.
“How you gonna hear me now, Mister?”
“I can hear you just fine.”
“Oh?” She seemed mystified by this concept, squatting to peer at his hands.
“Indeed.” His eyes roamed over her curves. “Would you like to see my flying ship?”
“Saw you flying it already,” Freda said, but she let him lead her to the raft. He pointed out details: the control mechanism, the steam engine, the emergency buoyancy apparatus. She was a curious sort, full of questions, much like himself. He bore the barrage as manfully as possible and waited for his turn.
In time, the questions became more personal.
“Mister, where did you come from?” She was sitting beside him on the edge of the raft, kicking her feet absentmindedly.
A hard question, but he gave her the only truth he knew. Sometimes he thought himself incapable of lying. “I don’t know.”
“The Mist, like us?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I truly have no concept of how I was born. I am an impossibility. But even as I recognize that I should not exist, the mere fact that I am standing here, thinking such thoughts, proves that I do.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. You, and the people of this place, are from the Fog?”
“Not me, I was natural born.” Her chest swelled at this. “Most everyone else is of the Mist. Little folk, like me. Giants, elves, dwarves. Even old Mr. Flanagg. There’s only a few of us that came of people. Some say it’s unnatural, only the Mist can make life. But my folks always said I was special.”
“Yes. I can see that you are.”
She blushed. The inflaming of her cheeks somehow made her all the more alluring.
“They’re gone.” Freda studied her fingers. “Dead or run off, all the same in the end. They’re gone and I’m here, alone in a house meant for three.”
“Maybe they only went away, and will come back soon.” That felt wrong somehow. Artificial. Had he just told a lie?
She shook her head. “It’s been too long they’ve been gone. They’re not the only ones, neither. Lots of folk have been just up and leaving. Walking off into the Mist and never seen again.” Her lips pressed into a thin line.
“And the old man, this Flanagg—has he done nothing about this?”
“The Stout go into the Mist to search each time someone comes up missing. They never find no one.”
“Stout?”
“The ones that guard Fosis. Dwarves mostly, a few giants and elves. Thadon is their leader, but they do what Flanagg tells them to do.”
Freda leapt from the edge of the raft. “I better go, Mister. Supposed to be out Casting, but I saw your raft and I’ve never seen one before, much less that can fly. And you have an even bigger one in the sky. It’s all so marvelous.”
She kicked a pebble, watched it skip away. “And then I saw you and thought you were the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen, so silver and strong and handsome, standing on the front of the boat like a king or some such that had come to save us. And I thought, I just have to meet him.”
Before he fully knew what was happening, Freda leapt up beside him on the raft and kissed his cheek. Her lips were warm and her breath tickled his skin. And then she darted away, disappearing into the tall stalks of the garden. He caught a glimpse of her flushed face looking back between leafy fronds and then she was gone.
He gently touched the spot on his face. She’d left a mark there, a warm tingling that ran up into his scalp. His toes curled in his boots and he felt his face warming.
And he wondered if this is what love felt like.
CHAPTER 4
Casting into the Gray Sea
Flanagg’s home was near the western edge of the village. It was the only building in Fosis taller than a single story. While the ground floor was constructed of dark logs like the rest of the cabins, the two upper floors were a strange combination of individual metal parts welded together into a chaotic jumble: rounded pipes, the teeth of gears, studded sheets of beaten copper, something that looked suspiciously like the curve of an airship’s rudder. The twisted tower leaned out over its neighbor.
Their host ushered them into a dark interior resplendent with the smell of strong tea, undercut with a sickly-sweet odor Mel couldn’t quite place. A long bench-style table of rough wood dominated the center of the room. Smaller round tables stood along the periphery. Dark liquids in tall, tapered glass bubbled and gurgled quietly, and the air was hazy with thin smoke.
Uneven metal stairs coiled around the tower’s interior. Mel and Jarvis followed Flanagg past a floor with a narrow cot and a table heavy with scattered books. Thadon came closely on their heels, his heavy footfalls sounding like a gong repeatedly struck.
The stairs let out into a room dominated by tall bookshelves constructed of the same dark wood as the cabins. The rough-cut shelves were heavy with assorted objects, many of which Mel did not recognize and could not guess the function of. At the room’s center, closed in by the monolithic shelves, was a trio of grotesquely upholstered chairs with high backs, the sort that wouldn’t look out of place in a rich manse. Mel did not like those chairs. It wasn’t just that they were entirely wrong
for this place. They stirred old memories better left undisturbed.
Flanagg bid them sit as he moved to the far side of the room. There he easily turned a pair of hand-cranks. The ceiling trembled and metal groaned. There was a tangible sense of great weight shifting, and then a seam of light split the ceiling. The opening yawned wider in jerky start-and-stop motions, the ceiling tucking into some cleverly hidden slots. Sunlight swelled, banishing the shadows to corners and underneath shelves.
He collapsed into his chair with a grateful sigh. Thadon was ready with a tray, upon which rested a long curved pipe and a tidy pile of minced gray leaves. Flanagg took the pipe and stuffed it with the leaves. His eyes were dark, shadowy flints under the brim of his strange floppy hat. He watched them the whole while, even through the first luxurious pull and puff of the pipe.
Sweet-smelling smoke curled into the air.
Mel wondered if she should break the silence when he finally spoke.
“You have questions.”
“Yes.”
Pull. Puff. “What are you, Captain Locke?”
She watched him through the thin haze of smoke. Weighing her words carefully for merit before letting them tumble loose and beyond her control. She wished for Lula, then. The girl had been more than just a pretty face—she’d trained in Decorum and could disarm even the most wary with the right words. Mel had no problem finding words, herself. Right ones, even. She usually just stumbled over all the wrong ones along the way.
“I am a captain,” she began. “A trader. I take things of value from one place and exchange them elsewhere for something else.”
Flanagg considered her quietly. “And what do you see of value here?”
Mel saw lots of things. Some of it even might be valuable. But on the whole, it looked like a lot of junk. “Can’t say that I do. Sorry,” she added as an afterthought. Seemed the proper thing to do, like she was somehow judging him by calling his treasures worthless.
He waved a hand dismissively. “I was hoping you would see value where I can’t. A Seer that can’t See.” He humphed. “It’s truly worthless then, as I’d suspected. My reputation remains intact.”