by R J Theodore
Everyone was scared, but they all seemed to leave a little lighter. So Emeranth paid attention to everything Tazrian said through her. If only she’d had his help in Diadem when she had been alone.
She had Sophie help her cut her hair short and wore the clothes people brought her. There was no satin anymore, no constricting dresses. But she no longer needed the tight bodice of a dress to remind her to sit up. Every day, being empress got a little easier. Though every day, the line at the warehouse door was longer and longer.
Some people were able to sail their ships to other islands where the gasses had not overtaken remote populations. Those captains always came to her for a blessing before they set sail. Each who left got not only her best wishes, but a message to deliver to anyone they found, anywhere, regardless of borders:
Peridot will be restored. Harm no one if you are able. We are working on a resolution.
Chapter 49
Information spread fast in Subrosa, even good news. Most people in Cutter skies were hearing of Meran for the first time from Emeranth and the crew of Fortune’s Storm. Or hearing of the loss of Silus Cutter and Onaya Bone. In the upheaval, Meran signaled a new power at Nexus. A promise of stability. Someone who actively wanted to help.
Talis kept her opinions on that to herself, not wanting to kill the flame of hope before it could spread. By their fifth day at Subrosa, there were no less than three new chapels built to this new goddess, and many scattered shrines erected in front of shuttered doorways. Some of the new iconography even went so far as to place her above the remaining gods of Peridot.
Talis almost laughed, except she’d probably have to deal with those displaced gods the next time they visited Nexus.
But what could the gods do? When they could have done something, they hid. Now, occupied with keeping Meran contained, and putting no effort toward dealing with this second cataclysm, they only proved these new religious loyalties well-founded.
As the bearers of good news, celebrity status had been granted to Fortune’s Storm and her crew. Every time Talis thought she’d have a moment of peace, someone new appeared at the foot of her gangway to ask for advice or counsel. That was going to get old, fast. But she made sure she didn’t waste the good will while people hung on her every word. She helped people where she could and sent the others to visit Empress Emeranth in her new throne room.
She helped the Empress convince Subrosan patrols to switch to warding off the corrupteds’ attempts at entering the undercity with walls and ramparts instead of blades and bullets.
Talis was more than certain there were business leaders in Subrosa planning to use the chaos to their own benefit, sending teams of filtration-masked thieves to the upper city to rob legitimate businesses of their warehouse stocks and bank vaults of money. Acting while they could to ensure their future wealth and recoup the losses of the current stagnant business climate. Talis could only perhaps save the lives of the citizens; she didn’t have time to worry about their coffers.
Hard to blame the thieves for exercising their skills. One had to keep their focus on business, no matter the situation. If Talis were only a spectator to this chaos, without the sense of responsibility that plagued her, she couldn’t say she wouldn’t do the same.
In the meantime, Talis tested the lines of her network, reaching out to contacts to learn who might connect her with information about the rings. Not directly—she was no fool. If she put word out the rings possessed the ability to correct the planet-wide situation, someone would sense a chance to cash in on that. Then she’d have to worry about more than just Onaya Bone getting to them first.
Instead, Talis, Amos, and Kirna walked the city, asking about alchemists. About scholars. Libraries. Archives. Temples. Anyone who might be able to provide a clue to the other rings.
They added a few new names to her list. Most of the tips felt like little more than superstitious rumors. But she paid a few coins for the information anyway. Maybe someone else she visited in the future would buttress a name or two with another mention and turn a rumor into something worth chasing.
It was all taking too long. They couldn’t stay in Subrosa. They had to find the rings.
And an intact Simula for each of them and one more, for Dug.
Meran needed the power to heal the planet, but Talis wasn’t comfortable restoring her to full strength without some precautionary measures.
So, once she found the rings, she would not deliver them to the Meran at Nexus but use them to create new Merans, each controlled by one of the Yu’Nyun circlets. They could put the world back together, but nothing more than that until Talis was sure what their intentions were.
There was one name on her list she had been putting off visiting. But, finally out of delays, she crossed the wooden bridge leading into the Platform District and headed for Zeela’s House of Antiquities.
The Vein woman had connections. She knew about the rings, and any word that crossed within earshot of her agents could be given more than passing consideration.
But as Talis approached the shop front, she slowed. Graffiti didn’t stick around long in this district; the woodgrain was regularly buffed back to its golden glowing tones whenever unsolicited markings appeared. How the blind business owners ever knew when they’d been vandalized, Talis had no idea. And yet, there were layers of bloodcurdling messages scrawled over the front of Zeela’s shop. Paint both dried and dripping. Slurs against her people, phrases which were unfair no matter the crime. There were messages defaming Zeela’s character and her place in the world. ‘Alien Lover’ was just the start.
Rattling chimes of broken metal and bone tangled with makeshift symbols in front of her shop as well. Aural graffiti from sightless vandals. Distaste for Zeela was shared across the various cultures in Subrosa.
And yet Zeela’s House of Antiquities was open for business. Almost empty, and with a coat of dust and disrepair that did not go unnoticed as Talis’s feet scuffed on worn parquet tiles. The lacquered drawers of the shop’s herb and incense selection were warped and crooked. A folded slip of paper kept the shorter table leg of one display from rocking. The herbs smelled stale, and there was something musty pervading the air. A mold had been allowed to cultivate somewhere. Same as everywhere else in Subrosa, except Talis would have expected better from Zeela.
The proprietress emerged from the back room. Her looks were as diminished as those of her shop. She still dressed in layers of fine silk and netting. Still wore beads strung in intricate braids through her hair. But the fabric of her robes was moth-eaten. Loose hairs showed evidence the braids were more than a few days old. The henna staining her fingertips was faded. The sleeves over her stronger pair of arms were hemmed for utility, and the fingers of those hands had developed calluses. Perhaps most telling, she wore a canvas apron stained with the herbal concoctions her shop was known for.
There should have been attendants at work for Zeela, to handle the labor and keep their mistress primped and polished. The last time Talis had met with her, Zeela glided through the space like a queen in her throne room. Now she looked like a scullery maid, doing her best to exude her once elegant demeanor.
The woman raised her face toward the doorway as Talis entered, passing through half-strung, clinking beads. Zeela wiped both pairs of hands on a cloth folded near her register and then folded the smaller hands in front of her stomach and rested her primary hands on the surface of her sales counter.
Two steps in and Zeela’s calm demeanor dropped.
“Captain Talis.” She sounded almost ready to faint. “I am relieved you are well. Is it too much to hope you bring glad words?”
“Far too much.” Talis leaned into one hip and crossed her arms to stare down the woman across the depth of her sales counter. “Looks like that deal with the Yu’Nyun went nadir for both of us.”
A nervous hand picked at a stray fold of cloth in her apron. “An u
nfortunate lapse in judgement, I agree. But temporary. I have been working to compensate.”
“Harder than it sounds. I’m working a similar angle.”
“And you believe there is something I can do to aid you.” Zeela’s voice had gone cool. Detached. Instead of commiserating with Talis, she now canted her head back on her neck and seemed to wait for the strike of fangs from a coiled snake.
Talis put her hands on the counter. Zeela’s fingers twitched as though she wanted to pull back. This was not the confident woman who had so artfully entwined Talis in the aliens’ business.
“The Yu’Nyun tell you anything about other rings?” Talis didn’t know how to frame the question and not come straight to the point. Zeela was already in this mess, anyway. If she figured out Talis was asking about more rings but not willing to talk openly about them, it might make her less willing to share what she knew. If she knew anything.
Zeela’s face didn’t change, though the tension in the rest of her body told Talis more than she’d ever gotten off the woman before.
“They asked initially,” she admitted. “But have not returned since the defeat at Nexus. I have been keeping myself busy in other ways. I have a radio and have been passing on reports from outside the Empire.”
“Glad to hear someone was covering it while we were lying low.” Talis tried to keep the shame out of her voice. Didn’t know why she bothered, with who she was talking to. “Must have made you popular around here.”
Zeela bowed her head a fraction. “I managed to balance my alliances. Someone always needed information, and I gave it freely. Once the Tempest spread panic, however, everything changed. I had enough warning to send my attendants back to safer skies, but I stayed behind. A decision I regretted, until you walked in.”
“So you have a radio, and you hear things.” Talis patted the counter. “How about those rings, then?”
“I have a lead.”
Just like that, Talis had what she came for. The sound of blood pumping fast in response filled her ears.
Zeela probably heard it too. She pressed on. “You can either take me with you, or I will provide this information to someone else.”
And snatched out of reach again. Damn this woman, putting her problems on Talis. Should she be surprised Zeela played the game like everyone else?
“Whose ring?” Hoped Zeela would say Silus Cutter’s, or even Onaya Bone’s, so she could turn around and leave the woman to her misery and dust her hands of the attempt at blackmail.
“Helsim Breaker’s.”
Well, damn.
“And what do you want? Passage back to the safety of Vein cities? Afraid there isn’t much safety left out in the skies.”
“I was part of the birth of this problem, and I want to be a part of its end.”
Talis laughed. It was tight and pained, and she wished it held more contempt than anxiety, but it was out there, and they both heard it.
Her mind raced. Either she brought Zeela along—and fine, sure, Fortune’s Storm had the cabin space for yet another body—or Zeela would take her information to someone else. Maybe the remnants of the Tempest who might still act to fulfill Hankirk’s vision. Maybe even the offer would find its way to Bone ears and Onaya would show up to claim it. Or the violence of the world would overtake Subrosa eventually, and Zeela would be dead, taking the information with her.
The location of a missing ring was within Talis’s grasp, and if she refused to take Zeela along, she was worse than a fool.
She still felt like a fool, anyhow, as she agreed to it.
Zeela would tie off her affairs in Subrosa by the time Fortune’s Storm put out of dock.
Tisker and Sophie didn’t seem half as bothered by the addition to their numbers as Talis felt, only enthusiastic to have an actionable plan.
While Talis and Tisker tugged at the tendrils of their respective networks in case anyone else knew anything useful, Sophie spent her days with the shipbuilder, Jones. There, the breastbone forming their keel stood like an abstract sculpture in the center of the shipyard. Its length was measured with notches for the ribs, which one day would curve outward and form the hull.
Finally, Sophie brought her new drawings to Talis.
“Captain, I’ve been thinking about Onaya Bone’s ring.” She spread her plans out on the table in the central deckhouse. She weighted the corners before pouring herself coffee from the pot on the warming plate. She stood over the drawings with her hands wrapped around the mug. Her demeanor was different. She still burned with intent focus, but she had returned from whatever inner place she’d sequestered herself to while drafting.
“Yeah, me too,” said Talis. “Wish all the gods had hidden their rings off-world. Might have avoided a lot of trouble.”
Sophie shook her head. “I think the aliens would only have ended up with them once they learned about it instead of getting themselves stuck here. The world’s a mess, but think of what they meant to do. More of us are alive today because the rings have been so hard to find.”
Talis almost laughed. Leave it to Sophie. The gods were being usurped or killed, the world had been slung into chaos, and Sophie found a spark of hope in it. But Talis clung to that bright point, and hoped Sophie was right. Something unwound itself in her chest.
She sighed and turned her attention to the drawing. It took Talis an extra beat to realize what she was looking at. She turned her head in puzzlement. “So, what? You want to repair one of the alien starships and go after Onaya’s ring first?”
“Nah,” said Sophie. “But I do want to ask Scrimshaw to help Jones modify our plans. Build us our own.”
Talis took a closer look. The drawings were of a ship, wood and canvas, bolted metal, and glass. She could see the influence of the alien ships in the design, along with some of the techniques from the Bone temple ship. There was a hinge at midship, a place where the canopy could fold and unfold.
“Zeela and the alchemists have some ideas to make it airtight, and deal with anything else unexpected that happens outside atmo.”
Now Talis did laugh. Not from the belly, with joy. Not mocking Sophie, either. It was the friction of fear snaking through her gut, rubbing against her lungs and puffing nervous air out without her leave.
Talis wouldn’t have thought the future could seem more uncertain. She felt as unbalanced as the corrupted, soulless people scratching their way down the edges of Rosa’s cliffs above, and wished her coffee was fortified with something stronger than caffeine.
But Sophie protested before she could dismiss the idea. “I don’t think it’s beyond our ability. Just need to play around with the upgrades. Come up with some kind of system for switching back and forth depending on the air resistance. Nothing that wastes Jones’s efforts so far.”
Through the large windows of the deck house, Talis saw Tisker move along the railing, keeping watch. Never forgetting they were in Subrosa, however welcome her crew had become. But he should hear this. It was too ridiculous not to benefit from his commentary. Maybe she just wanted another voice of reason to back her up.
Sophie pulled a stack of well-leafed pages, wrapped in a leather, from the depths of her coveralls. Talis knew it by now; it was with her at all times.
Just a few modifications. Right.
Talis wasn’t the engineer, but she didn’t need to be to realize what kind of endeavor they were considering. Five hells, were they considering it? They’d need some kind of new low-temperature tar and caulking; new seals and new mechanisms for the boarding platforms had to be designed. If the engine would even work without atmosphere.
Talis supposed all these questions were already covered in Sophie’s folio there, the front flap of which puffed slightly open under the pressure of the thoughts scribbled inside.
“No telling how long it would take to build that,” Talis said.
“Well, once we
have Dug back . . .” Sophie’s face hardened, taking Talis’s comment as a rejection—and not taking it well—but Talis leaned back on her bench, tapped on the glass to get Tisker’s attention, and waved him in.
When he’d poured himself a coffee and settled down on a bench, Talis cleared her throat.
“Sophie wants to sail outside atmo.”
Tisker grinned at Sophie. “Bout time you told her.”
Of course he already knew. Talis waved an exasperated hand and let it fall back to the table with a muted slap.
“All right, so you’re both willing to make a home of Fortune’s Storm for the foreseeable future? Hunting for rings in air we can breathe? There’ll be no slack in the finances now, you realize, if we ask Jones to build this.”
“He’s got some sympathy for our cause. And besides . . .” Sophie tapped an index finger on a spot in the corner of the drawing. “Already negotiated the designs for work.”
Talis leaned forward. Written below the notations were the tiny words: Patents and Rights Assigned Exclusively to Jones Shipyard, Subrosa.
“What? He’s going to build more?”
Sophie just grinned. If they could save the world, and if there was anyone left to remember her, she’d be credited with opening a gateway to the stars. Talis whistled.
By the time Sophie had turned in the first round of her plans for Jones, Zeela had closed her accounts, liquidated or discarded her assets, and moved aboard. Sophie had begun converting a dumbwaiter near the engines into a more accessible deck lift, inspired by the Yu’Nyun, but that was a late addition and would have to be completed while the ship was underway.
In the meantime, Zeela wheedled Talis out of two full passenger cabins. One for her living space and the other for the belongings she brought. Talis promised herself that if the crates Zeela brought aboard opened to reveal nothing more than the Vein woman’s renowned and elaborate wardrobe, she’d pitch them over the railing and teach the woman a thing or two about living aboard a ship.