The War of Embers

by James Duvall

  “Any idea how the fire started?” Christopher asked, never one to linger on the sentimental. He was a man of numbers. Only numbers. It made him a good businessman, but not much as a captain, as Willoughby was fond to mention. Never in front of the men, however, he was better than that. Christopher had not attended the burial at sea for the Wild Hawk's departed airman, and the absence had not gone overlooked by his own crew.

  “They were shot down. Pirates, sounds like. They gave 'em the Nightwarden's Fury back. Limped off to the east without coming aboard. Their captain says they got a cannonball into their engine but they were barely able to stay aloft.”

  Christopher sighed and leaned against the rail. “That's the problem with these bigger shards. Especially the less important ones. It's three days from gate to gate in Telluria. More than enough space for pirate vessels to operate and not nearly enough military presence to deter them. We're on our own guns out here.”

  “You want Fletcher Street on our necks?” Timothy asked, arching a brow at him.

  “No,” Christopher said, shaking his head. “But I wouldn't mind seeing the royal navy more often. It's only passing through the gates where we have to worry, and we're good at that.”

  Timothy shrugged. Christopher was an old friend, but this was a point they often disagreed on. The gates were the least of Timothy's worries. Gatesmen relied on the harbor masters. It was a rubber stamp operation to them. Sure there was the occasional search, but more often than not this only meant a cursory look into the hold with few of the crates and barrels being opened. No, the Stormbreaker was much more likely to run afoul of trouble in the skyport while the ship was in cradle. Plenty of time for a young constable, eager to make his name, to come through unexpected and catch Willoughby and his boys working in the smuggler's hold.

  “Speaking of...” Christopher mumbled, fingertips tapping anxious rhythms on the railing. “Willoughby knows to keep those merchant men away from--”

  “Willoughby knows his trade.” Timothy snapped, cutting Christopher off when his own good sense had so clearly failed to do so. “Do you?”

  Christopher nodded much too quickly to have offered this genuine thought. His fingertips danced along the railing, distracted eyes broadcasting his thoughts were elsewhere, likely down in the smuggler's covey. Within the hour he would be pacing in the cargo hold near it, exactly where the captain of a merchant vessel ought not be when the ship was underway and he had a thirty man crew to look after the cargo.

  “Leave it alone, Chris,” Timothy said, reading the signs,

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Leave. It. Alone.” Timothy repeated, biting into every word. “It's a good crew, they know their business.”

  Christopher grimaced and rolled his eyes. “They're drunk every night and half of them haven't thought to bathe in a month's time.”

  “That's what a good crew looks like! This isn't a ship of the line, Chris. It's a merchantman with crew for hire out of a dozen different ports. What were you expecting? Sons of well-traveled gentlemen striking out for fortunes of their own? With what we pay? These men have no place but here to call home. There's nothing for them to go back to. We are a tenement of glidestone and sails.”

  For a moment the two men stared each other down in stony silence, the quiet evening work of the ship carrying on behind them. Bawdy song rose from the galley, a chorus of drunken voices.

  There's rum in the captain's favor.

  There's rope in the captain's anger.

  There's rum fer our good labor,

  or the captain he will hang yer.

  Christopher straightened his back, lifting his shoulders as he turned to face Timothy directly, winding up for a fresh tirade.

  Timothy waved him off wearily. “No. Not tonight.”

  “I am the master of this vessel,” Christopher began, undeterred. “I require a modicum of resp--”

  “There's the matter of the gryphon,” Timothy interrupted, reaching for his trump card. “He is a lighthound.”

  Color drained from Christopher's face like a man being led to the gallows. His fingertips trembled and his eyes grew wide but saw nothing in front of him but his damnation. “There's a bridger then...”

  “No, there's not,” Timothy said, dismantling his business partner's thought process before he could get through it. “ The man deserted when the ship crashed. Abandoned his belongings, his gryphon, everything. Didn't even stick around to help put out the fire. It's a shame too, a bit of a bridger's magic might've saved that ship.”

  Christopher nodded slowly, beginning to breathe again with an audible sigh of relief. Timothy looked out over the world below to keep the frustration from showing in his face. While risk management ranked high on Christopher's list of concerns, it never occurred to him that the greatest risk to the ship was Christopher himself. His nervous manner around anyone that had the slightest whiff of authority on them could raise the suspicion of the greenest of constables. Christopher was no smuggler. This was only a temporary necessity to raise capital. According to him, anyway. The crew seemed content to carry on this way for as long as the winds stayed favorable.

  “We can drop the bridger's personal effects with the harbor master,” Christopher said, his words carrying that distant tone he used when he was thinking up a plan and simply assumed everyone was paying attention. He was the sort to find comfort in having things planned, even when the plan itself was far from safe. “As for the gryphon... I haven't the slightest idea.”

  “I'll talk with him.”

  “You? Why you? Have Willoughby do it.”

  “Willoughby has his own duties, Christopher. The First Mate looks after the crew. The ship's master or the captain sees to visitors. I am neither, but I am part owner of this company and so its well within my responsibilities.”

  This brought a chuckle from Christopher. His eyes lit up in amusement. “Visitors? Captain Gilders might be a visitor, but a gryphon is... Timothy, it's livestock.”

  Timothy sighed. “I've never seen livestock refuse to abandon its post under pain of death. What's it matter to you anyway?”

  “I suppose it doesn't,” Christopher said and started back toward his quarters, waving a dismissive hand in Timothy's direction. “Waste your time however you see fit, Timothy.”

  Timothy found the gryphon in the cargo hold, curled up and sleeping in front of the chest he had risked his life to deliver from the inferno. When Timothy got closer he realized the gryphon was in fact quite awake, only appearing to sleep but his ears pricked forward and stood attentive. The gryphon lifted his head when Timothy approached, his raptor eyes gleaming with startling blue light.

  “Easy there,” Timothy said, taking across from him among crates and barrels. “I'm Timothy Binks. I understand your bridger abandoned the Wild Hawk.”

  The gryphon snorted in disgust. “He abandoned his duty. He abandoned the Wild Hawk when it needed him most! He is not my bridger,” he said, adding particular emphasis to the 'not' with a sharp snap of his wings.

  “Seven take him,” he spat bitterly.

  “Of course, my apologies for the presumption,” Timothy said. “What is your name, gryphon?”

  For a moment the gryphon did not answer, only glared down at the decking between his taloned forelegs, eyes fixed in hate as though he were replaying the bridger's betrayal over and over again, each time the offense more egregious and unforgivable than the last. Then he closed his eyes and sighed.

  “I am Aebyn.”

  “Aebyn the... lighthound? Yes?” Timothy asked. At this Aebyn beamed, spreading his wings proudly as though this bore some evidence of his station. If there was, Timothy could not interpret it. Something in the markings...?

  “I'm afraid I can scarcely tell the difference between a lighthound and a windhopper,” Timothy confessed.

  “A windhopper?” Aebyn's wings drooped. His brow furrowed and his ears tilted back as his gaze fell to the deck between his claws. “I am a lighthound.” />
  “Of course,” Timothy said, doing his best to sound as though this was simply a matter of record. It seemed to console the little lighthound at least partly, as the creature soon raised its head and studied him with those curiously vibrant eyes of his. He looked Timothy up and down with an appraising eye and then at last spoke again.

  “Thank you for what you have done, Timothy Binks,” Aebyn said. His tone turned formal, his words carrying a degree of solemnity. Then the gryphon bowed his head and turned his attention back to the chest he had nearly given his life to preserve.

  On the front of the chest, a foreboding dark iron lock stood prominent and bold. Battered but unbroken the lock held fast in spite of Aebyn's efforts. The lid bore a number of deep gouges in the wood, the deepest of which gleamed with a metallic sheen. Metal plating had barred further progress by gryphon's talons.

  “I do not know what is inside,” Aebyn admitted sorrowfully. “Master Raimes has disappeared with the key. I only know that the Bridgers Guild charged me with protecting this.”

  Timothy ran his fingers along the metal bands until his fingertips found the subtle bump he was looking for. Most would have mistaken it for an imperfection in the banding, but it was a common enough design that Timothy had seen it before. He tugged at the right angle to release the catch and a bit of the banding came free, revealing a second keyhole, the chest's true lock.

  “Willoughby!” Timothy called. The first mate appeared shortly thereafter. Willoughby was an older man, perhaps the oldest among the crew, over two decades Timothy's senior. He wore a persistent relaxed smile over a shaggy salt-and-pepper beard.

  “What've we got here?” Willoughby asked. He pulled up a stool and plopped down next to the chest.

  Timothy showed him the hidden lock. “Think you can crack this?”

  The old airman studied it for a moment, stopped to clean his glasses, then finally got a good look at it in the dim light of the hold.

  “Any idea what's in it?”

  “Salvage, I'd call it,” Timothy mused. “Or it's the gryphon's.”

  “Aebyn, is that right?” Willoughby asked.

  “It is,” Aebyn chimed in.

  Timothy chuckled. “I see you two have met.”

  “He's a part of the crew now ain't he?”

  This was an outcome Timothy had not anticipated. A gryphon as a member of the crew was not unheard of. Gryphons and luminarians haunted skyports like ghosts, looking for a bit of food for a day's labor. Wings were a valuable asset on any ship, but even moreso on those ships that sailed among the clouds.

  “Unless he means to return to the bridgers...” Timothy said, bringing a scowl to Aebyn's face. Of course he couldn't scowl like a human could scowl; his beak was rigid as stone. The expression crept into his eyes, shrouded beneath a furrowed brow.

  “I will not,” Aebyn said, his voice cold and hard as an icy blade. “They would place me in service to another like Raimes. He would do this to me again.”

  “Well, that settles that then,” Timothy declared. “Lets have it open, shall we?”

  “Aye, captain,” Willoughby answered. He adjusted his stool and set to work on the newly uncovered lock straight away.

  “I am not the captain,” Timothy corrected. If any other man of the crew had taken to calling him captain so regularly, Timothy would've begun to suspect it was out of mockery for his lack of real station aboard the ship. He was a part owner of the company with no official role in the crew. That meant taking on duties as he saw fit. Christopher, meanwhile, served as both captain and ship's master. There was some sense in Timothy taking the role of captain. He had served aboard airships many years; Christopher had not. Timothy could name almost every man among the crew; Christopher had recently left port with an authority from the skyport still aboard, having confused him for the ship's second mate.

  On a regular merchant run, which the Stormbreaker conducted regularly, Christopher was tolerable. Then there was the other sort of job. Other jobs required other holds, generally the one hidden in the floor of the true hold. Other jobs also brought out the other Christopher, which attempted to manage every member of the crew with his own level of personal, and yet somehow strikingly impersonal, attention. It had the effect of making most men around him feel they were no more than mules in his eyes.

  “Yes, I mean no disrespect sir, of course,” Willoughby said, looking up to show an apologetic face just long enough for Timothy to see it before returning to his diligent work.

  Christopher's voice carried from the other side of the hold where he hotly debated the second mate concerning how the cargo had been arranged. The argument crescendoed and died like a single strong gust of wind on an otherwise still summer evening. It ended with Christopher stomping up the stairs to the upper decks, fuming as he went.

  “It's all about weight distribution around the glidestone engine, you know,” Willoughby chimed in.

  “I know,” Timothy answered mechanically. His attention remained focused on Willoughby's lockpicks as they probed into the keyhole and made quiet clicking sounds against the tumblers inside. Christopher was a problem for later. After the chest was open.

  “Can't just sort it all alphabetically or by type. The load would be uneven then,” Willoughby said, nodding to himself in an accord of one.

  “Yes...”

  Willoughby continued as though he hadn't heard. “The ship would be flyin' lopsided like a drunken man stumblin' home in the dark hour.”

  “Are you quite finished?” Timothy asked, exasperated. He knew full well where the first mate's mind was headed.

  Willoughby gave a good-natured shrug. “What I'm sayin' is, any airman knows that.”

  “Too far, Willoughby,” Timothy warned.

  A loud click announced the conclusion of Willoughby's work. The lid popped loose and a latch on the front tumbled forward like a felled tree and clanged against the lower banding. Willoughby stood up and rubbed his palms together.

  “Shall we see what we have then, Mr. Binks?”