Wings of Equity

by Sean Kennedy

  “Until you’re killed?”

  “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

  He’s a fool, Ezra thought as he looked away to the Lilliput. It was circling above their heads now, looking for a stable place to set down. “It’ll come down to it, sooner rather than later.”

  Icarus made some kind of noise that was hard to hear above the noise of the engines. But Ezra heard him say, “I started this. I can’t stop.”

  Ezra turned on him. “Don’t you want some kind of life of your own?”

  “This is my life.”

  “But what about beyond that?”

  “What are you asking of me?” Icarus demanded. “We’ve kissed and we’ve fooled around, but we still barely know each other. Do you want me to come back to Shrevesport with you and settle down?”

  “I don’t know!” Ezra said. “But I feel like we should do something.”

  “That sounds really definitive,” Icarus scoffed.

  Before Ezra could retort, Ruth joined them out in the yard. “I hope they’re not going to tear up my azaleas when they land,” she said in a dry tone.

  Ezra wasn’t sure if she was serious. For one, he couldn’t even see any azaleas anywhere. Plus, he wasn’t sure if they could even grow in the soil out here, let alone survive if they even dared to take root.

  Ruth turned to her brother. “He’s right. You should go with him.”

  “What?” Icarus demanded.

  The Lilliput was now setting upon its struts, and the engines were beginning to cycle down. If it hadn’t been for that, Ezra would have been sure he had misheard her as well.

  Ruth didn’t seem to be able to look her brother in the eye as she made her impassioned plea. “You know this will not end well if you continue on as you do. Give this up, Tobias. At least they’re offering you a way out. You may not get such an opportunity again.”

  Icarus didn’t answer her. Ruth turned from him, seeking assistance from Ezra. But he knew there was nothing he could do, short of making Icarus his prisoner again. And he had promised him he wouldn’t do that—even if it might have been for his own good. He could feel the intensity of her gaze burning through him, but there was nothing he could do to salve her pain.

  She turned on her heel and marched back into her house. Ezra watched Icarus; would he react, go after her?

  He did not. He kept his eyes upon the Lilliput, where the door was now opening and the gangplank descending.

  Ezra left Icarus standing where he was and began to run over to his beloved ship. He expected Jazille to emerge, probably full of insults telling him how inconsiderate he was and how much she had worried him, but the elegant figure of Lady Bart stepped out.

  “Lady Bart!” he choked. What was she doing here? And—was she wearing pants?

  “It is good to find you alive, Mr. Kneebone,” she said grandly.

  He bowed, which got a twitter of amusement from her. For added measure, he took her gloved hand and kissed it.

  “It’s not me you should be acting in such a manner to,” Bart said. “You have much ground to make up with Jazille.”

  As if she had been waiting to be announced, Jazille stepped out behind Bart. She stared at Ezra for a long moment, and he began to wince, waiting for the tirade to begin.

  She almost knocked him to the ground when she threw herself into his arms. “Don’t you ever put me through that again!”

  He brushed his lips against her cheek, a rare action. “I’ll try not to.”

  Jazz pulled back and punched him in the stomach. “You’ll try not to? You bastard! You have no idea what I’ve been through the past couple of days! How much I’ve worried about you! I was convinced you were dead!”

  And he would have been on his knees, if she wasn’t supporting him. “I’m sorry,” he managed to say between pained wheezes.

  “That’s very magnanimous of you, Mr. Kneebone,” Lady Bart said. “Jazille, I believe you don’t have to make the poor man suffer any longer.”

  Ezra again struggled for breath as Jazz embraced him once more. Her hug was like a steel vice across his ribs. “I didn’t know you cared so much,” he said, a feeble attempt at a joke.

  “I’ll hit you again,” she warned him.

  He hugged her back. “Thanks for not giving up on me.”

  “I know you’d do the same.”

  “I hope you weren’t doing it because you felt you were obligated, then.”

  “Don’t push it, Kneebone,” Jazz growled.

  “Listen to her for once, Mr. Kneebone,” Lady Bart instructed in her most imperial voice, which brooked no possible resistance from him.

  He grinned at her wickedly and fingered the brooch now on Jazz’s shirt. “I take it you’re responsible for getting her to wear jewelry?”

  “Kneebone!” Jazz protested.

  “I think it looks marvelous on her,” Bart said.

  Ezra smiled at Jazz. “It does. It’s beautiful.”

  Jazz smiled back, then pulled away and called out to Icarus. “I’m glad to see you’re safe as well.”

  He nodded at her but didn’t say anything.

  “Is he still our prisoner?” Jazz whispered to Ezra.

  Ezra shook his head.

  “Good.” Jazz looked relieved. “What is he going to do?”

  Ezra turned away to look back at Icarus. “No idea.”

  But the man himself stepped forward. “You still have my wings?”

  Jazz shot a quick look at Ezra, but he didn’t meet it. “Yes,” she finally answered.

  “I would like to get them, and be on my way.”

  Once again, she received no look of instruction from her boss and business partner. “They’re in the cockpit.”

  As Icarus moved around them to make his way on board the Lilliput, Lady Bart stepped up to him with a look of surprise on her face.

  “Why, Mr. Daedalus,” she said. “I haven’t seen you since you were a young man still living under the guidance of your father.”

  Icarus did not look happy to be reacquainting with someone from his past. “Lady Bartholomew,” he said shortly, bowing to her.

  “No need to stand on formality,” she said, returning his bow with a slight dip of her own. “You’re amongst friends here. Call me Bart, as my friends do.”

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, Lady Bartholomew,” Icarus said, although there was still a measure of respect in his tone.

  Jazz leapt forward, ready to defend Bart’s honor, but Ezra held her back.

  “Kneebone!” She struggled against him, but his grip was firm.

  “Your father is not exactly my most favorite person in the world, either,” she called after him as he made his way up the gangplank.

  He hesitated, his back to her. “We have that much in common,” he said over his shoulder.

  Bart nodded and made her way down to join Jazz and Ezra. Icarus disappeared into the cockpit.

  “You really knew him?” Ezra asked.

  “Am I a liar, Ezra Kneebone?” she asked without rancor.

  “No.”

  “Then, yes, I did,” she shuddered. “A most detestable man.”

  “What was he like?” he asked, adding, “as a kid,” so she knew he was talking about the son and not the father.

  Bart sighed heavily. “Very quiet. Afraid of upsetting his father at every turn. No wonder he has chosen to take on this mantle now that his father has disinherited him.”

  “Obviously he’s inherited his father’s manners,” Jazz sniffed.

  “He’s used to being alone,” Ezra snapped.

  Jazz raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “You cannot blame him, my love,” Bart said to Jazz. “He’s been through a hard life.”

  “None of us here have had an easy life,” Jazz pointed out. “But we found people to shoulder it with.”

  Bart produced a fan from up her sleeve and opened it fully, trying to escape the heat. “Quite so. And maybe he will one day. But not today.” />
  “I hope he does.” Ezra said, trying not to show too much emotion in his words. “One day.”

  He was as transparent as glass to his friends, and he knew it. But they did not call him on it, and he was grateful. They were also distracted by Icarus’s reappearance, his wings in his hands.

  “Thank you for taking care of them,” he told Jazz.

  She nodded and marched up the gangplank. Her actions were obvious; they were going, no matter what unfinished business was left behind.

  Bart gave Ezra a sideways glance; wordlessly she conveyed everything he knew she would have whispered in his ear. Try and sort this out.

  But to Icarus, she took one of his hands and clasped it in both her own. “Tobias,” she said gently, surprising him with the use of his real name, “anytime you need help, or any assistance at all, please get a message to me.”

  “Thank you, Lad—” he paused, and offered her an olive branch of his own. “Bart.”

  She nodded and broke away to follow Jazz into the cockpit.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ezra said, before Lady Bart was even out of earshot.

  “We’ve already been through this,” Icarus said stiffly.

  “I’m just trying to make you see sense.” As soon as those words slipped out, he grimaced, because he knew it was absolutely the worst thing he could say.

  But Icarus didn’t bristle this time. He just looked tired. “I have to do this.”

  Beyond all patience, Ezra lost his. “It’s pride, nothing more.”

  Icarus nodded slowly. “Pride’s the one thing I own and can call my own.”

  “If I asked you to come with us, would you not do so?”

  “No.”

  It was a simple refusal, and it sounded like the last word between them.

  Except for one.

  “Tobias.”

  The sound of his real name coming from Ezra’s lips, made the other man stop for a moment. Ezra longed to learn what he was thinking; Icarus’s eyes were guarded, but they flickered for the briefest of seconds, and Ezra could have sworn they teared up a little.

  But Icarus, leaving behind his name and any chance of a new life, walked away while starting to unbuckle his wings and strap them over his chest.

  Ezra watched him go. Was Tobias Daedalus a lost cause? That’s what it certainly seemed like.

  Especially when Icarus started the small engine that gave him the power of flight. Without even going to say goodbye to his sister, he began running, and his feet left the ground as his wings bore him upward, disappearing into the sky.

  Behind Ezra, the engines of the Lilliput roared into life. Feeling heavy, Ezra shuffled up the gangplank and turned to look once more at the farmhouse where he had spent those few furtive moments of bliss with the man who had left him behind, seemingly without a second thought.

  Ruth was standing upon the porch again. Even from this distance, Ezra could tell by the slump of her shoulders that she was disappointed her brother was not getting on the airship with him. He raised his hand to her in goodbye, and she returned it.

  And with that, Ezra stepped into the cockpit and hit the button to retract the gangplank. He had his own bit of sky to take to.

  Part Three

  Chapter 19

  A WEEK had passed and there was no news on Icarus, nor any on hijacked trains. Ezra figured he must have been lying low for a bit, hoping that the full posse that had been sent on his tail would give up when there was no action. Of course, that guaranteed nothing once Icarus came out of hiding again. The posse would return.

  That thought made Ezra sick to his stomach.

  Life had returned to normal; the daily routine was stifling. The taking of mundane delivery jobs; Jazz flying while he dozed in his chair and unloading the Lilliput when they landed. He was moving in a daze, and he knew it. So did Jazz, and, by default, Lady Bart. He had been invited to dinner at Bart’s mansion one night during the week, and he had left before dessert. Being around those two lovebirds had only served to accentuate his own feelings of loneliness, and the sense he was being pitied. He had detoured by Whiskeytown on his way home, but he had stopped himself from seeking out Lee. Now that he had been with Icarus, sleeping with him by proxy through Lee would be even worse than the transparent fantasy it always had been. It was Icarus he wanted, this man who weighed on his thoughts despite the short amount of time they’d known each other.

  He scoured the netpapers on his lek-book, searching for records on train schedules and their cargoes. Maybe they could give him some insight into the next move Icarus would make.

  “It might be too soon for him to go back to robbing,” Jazz said when she caught him at it the next morning.

  “He would see it as liberating, not robbing,” Ezra replied.

  “You’ve certainly changed your tune.”

  “People change all the time.”

  But Jazz was now distracted as she stared out of their office window. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  Ezra looked up and grimaced. “Oh, blazes.”

  “That’s putting it mildly.”

  Thomas Harding was making his way over the planks leading from the street. His usual look of disdain was plastered over his face. Even his mustache looked haughty and disgusted at its present location.

  “You deal with him,” Jazz said. “I’ll be in the back, going over the Lilliput.”

  “We’re partners. Maybe it’s time you stepped up a little.”

  She whacked him across his ear. “The day you can keep that ship in the air, maybe I’ll start helping you out in talking to the idiots.”

  Whistling, she sauntered out the door to the loading bay.

  Ezra sighed and pulled on his duster. He didn’t want Harding in their office, because he would feel like he had to scrub it down afterward.

  He was shutting the door to the building behind him when Harding crossed over the last plank, holding a handkerchief to his nose.

  “You’re a delicate little flower, Harding,” Ezra said, by way of greeting.

  “I’m refined, and unused to living amongst filth.” Harding pulled a small metal tin out of his pocket, opened it, and treated himself with a pinch of snuff. “Aah, that helps.”

  “Did you notice I didn’t respond by saying that you would be used to living amongst filth?” Ezra asked him.

  Harding glowered. “Except, you just did.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted to say it that time. Anyway, give up the gun—what are you doing here?”

  “No time for small talk, Kneebone?”

  “Not with the likes of you.”

  “You’re not going to offer me a seat in your office?”

  Ezra jammed his hands in his pockets. “I’m a mite more comfortable dealing with you out here. Once again, what are you doing here?”

  “Well, firstly, I just wanted to say how glad I was that you seem no worse the wear for your recent trials in the desert.”

  “I survived,” Ezra said with a sheathed dagger of a grin, not even questioning how Harding would know the extent of what had happened to him recently.

  “But you lost your man.”

  Ezra faltered slightly at the choice of words, but shook it off. “It didn’t help that he was purloined from me, no.”

  “Last I heard, you were both seen together bailing from the ship when it breached.” There was a glint in Harding’s eyes that Ezra didn’t like.

  “We both escaped from the hold at the same time. From the moment we landed, there was no way I could keep him as my prisoner.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “Well, I had no gun. It was removed by the skullduggerers that imprisoned me.”

  “I would have thought you could have still restrained him without weaponry.”

  Between gritted teeth, Ezra replied, “I was more worried about my own skin than his, seeing I was on the run from mercenaries, away from civilization, and had no gun, protection, or food to my name.”

  “S
till, it must have been frustrating. I know you wanted that money.”

  “If you’re here to try and make me go into business with you again—”

  “Come, come, Kneebone. Your options are drying up.”

  “Icarus is still out there.” Any port in a storm, Ezra thought. He had no inclination of going after Icarus, but it was a good excuse to try and get Harding off his back.

  “Not for much longer,” Harding shrugged.

  A chill ran through Ezra. “What are you getting at?”

  Harding was a landshark with a smile far more dangerous and unsettling. “I have some friends in the know. The higher-ups are planning a little rendezvous with our friend Icarus.”

  “Rendezvous?” Ezra asked, sweat breaking beneath his pits.

  “Let’s just say it will be a cargo that the winged thief won’t be able to resist. It will bring him out of hiding, and the full force of the law will be upon him. No escape.”

  Trying not to sound too interested, Ezra shifted slightly. “What kind of cargo?”

  “Ha!” Harding barked. “You still want the reward money!”

  Better to play along with Harding’s suspicions instead of anything else. “All’s fair in… war and war.”

  “You never change, Kneebone. But if I’m doing this favor by giving you a head’s up, I may expect one from you later.”

  Ezra shrugged. “Doesn’t mean you’ll get it.”

  “I’d be disappointed in you if you agreed readily.” Harding appraised him through hooded eyes. “But then, I’m used to you disappointing me, so why should now be any different?”

  Ezra felt like he would need to bathe after this conversation, but he kept his thoughts focused on Icarus. “Expect the worst, and one day you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  “Oh, I hope so, Kneebone. I certainly hope so. Just because one gets married doesn’t mean you don’t get to still play around.”

  Ezra’s stomach lurched, and he was surprised that he didn’t offload his breakfast onto Harding’s shiny shoes. “Indeed? Your wife must be very forgiving.”

  “We both like our playthings.”

  Ezra had to stand his ground as Harding leaned forward and invaded his personal space. Backing away now would not get him the information he needed. He closed his eyes as the shadow from Harding’s body crossed over his face and blocked out the sun.