by A. C. Cobble
Closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath, she slowly released it before following the infuriating man into the foliage.
“Star-iron you think?” queried Governor Towerson. “Very interesting.”
“Judging the size of the crater, I’d estimate it to be a large find, perhaps the biggest that has been logged in the tropics. Outside of Rhensar and perhaps the Westlands, they are so rare, you know,” said Duke. “It’s all an estimate, of course.”
“Of course,” agreed Towerson. “An estimate is where it always begins. The potential is intriguing, though. Very interesting, young man. Will you be claiming a share?”
“No, not any more than I’m entitled to as a stakeholder in Imbon Colony,” replied Duke.
“That’s generous,” remarked Towerson.
Duke shrugged, and Sam raised an eyebrow. The governor was practically inviting him to claim a higher percentage of the wealth, and he had turned it down.
Duke sipped on a glass of cold punch and propped his feet on the governor’s rattan ottoman. He was looking out at the dark jungle beyond the rail of the veranda. “My only concern? We’ll have to check back on the terms of agreement we had with the natives. Nothing like this was codified, I imagine, because at the time there was no expectation we’d have any mineral finds of note. Hopefully, the clerks were foresighted enough to include a clause for something unexpected, but you never know.”
“I don’t think it will be a problem,” said Towerson, shaking out a small hand towel he’d been mopping his bald head with. “Whatever the documents say, I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out. We’ve been using a soft hand for years now. It’s about time we had an opportunity for it to pay off.”
“There are the totems to think about also,” reminded Sam. “They’re fakes, but they looked real enough. Whoever crafted them knew what they were doing. Somehow, the locals have access to a shaman — a druid — and that person went to a great deal of effort to protect this pool. I don’t know if they’ll be amendable to—”
Towerson waved a hand. “Don’t worry about that, girl. I’ve spent much of my adult life negotiating with people such as Imbon’s natives. With a little persuasion, we’ll encourage them to allow access to this pool, and if it’s a find like Oliver believes it to be, then they’ll help us extract it. What is good for the Company is good for them.”
Sam frowned, unconvinced.
Duke, finishing his punch and leaning forward to pour another, asked Towerson, “Did Giles ever tell you about the time I had to bail him out of prison in the Southlands?”
Towerson chuckled and confirmed he’d heard the story but then launched into one of his own, one about how the adventurous Giles had finally been tamed by a local woman from Imbon and how the sharp-dealing senior factor’s personal wealth was now entirely in the hands of his wife due to their marriage being performed under local customs. Like any story involving Giles, apparently, it started with the man getting roaring drunk.
The rest of the evening was spent in pleasant conversation. After laughing over several stories about the senior factor, they called the man in to hear it from his own mouth. Captain Haines came with him and they sipped the governor’s punch and looked over the colony of Imbon as they waited on dinner.
During the meal, Governor Towerson regaled them with his exploits amongst the Company’s earliest colonies. Senior Factor Giles, perhaps hoping to steer the conversation by his superiors away from his personal exploits and into safer territory, told them how the world’s supply of spices was collected and distributed from the small, tropical islands to the world’s capitals. Captain Haines shared how he’d gotten his start on one of the first of the Company’s airships, working for Director Randolph Raffles and participating as a shipboard factor on a mission supporting the royal marines in the Coldlands. Eventually, on board the airship, he’d followed the army as it had marched across most of the United Territories. It had been in anticipation of that campaign that the three nations had united, and it had been to end the campaign that they had signed the treaty making them tributes of Enhover.
Both Sam and Duke stayed quiet. She was uninterested in sharing any of the details of her upbringing or past with the group, and everyone thought they knew about Duke.
The Cartographer VII
Oliver rolled off the couch, his bare feet setting on the smooth wooden floor, his body aching in protest as he stood and stretched. He bent, grabbing his toes with his fingers, then stood and leaned to one side and then the other. He twisted at the waist, wincing at a sharp crack from his spine, and then placed an arm across his body and pulled it tight, stretching his shoulder. He swapped arms then touched his toes again, trying to force some flexibility back into his muscles after another night spent on the short couch.
“You could sleep in the bed if you wanted,” offered Sam.
He paused in his routine. “Is that… an invitation?”
“It’s an invitation to sleep in the bed,” she responded then slipped off the comfortable-looking mattress and ran her fingers through her tussled hair. A linen shirt hung on her shoulders, the laces half undone, the fabric sliding down her shoulder until she caught it and adjusted it.
He thought he’d caught a glimpse of some sort of marking or a tattoo, thin and dark scrawl tracing the line of her collarbone, but he was distracted that once centered, the too-big shirt displayed a tantalizing view of the inner slopes of her breasts. It hung loosely on her, stopping at mid-thigh. He spent a moment wondering when she’d changed into it, and if she had no underclothes on up top, what she was wearing down below.
“Are you waiting for me to take this off?” she asked.
“No, I—” He paused, frowning at her. “Is that my shirt?”
“It is,” she replied. “Did you want to wear it?”
“I… Not right now,” he mumbled. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”
“There wasn’t time to pack, so I didn’t bring much in the way of clothing. Your shirt is more comfortable in the humidity than my own. My leather trousers were a terrible choice also, but that’s all I had that was clean, and they look good, so it was steal your shirt or sleep naked. You don’t mind, do you?”
He scratched his stomach but did not reply to that.
She twirled a finger. “Turn around and you can have the shirt back. We arrive today, right? I should have a chance to get laundry done then.”
Sighing, he turned and looked down on the short couch he’d been sleeping on for the last two weeks, barring the one night in Imbon. It made his back ache just seeing the thing.
“Invite me to bed but tell me not to look,” he complained. “You’re a confusing woman, Samantha.”
His shirt hit him in the back of the head and he spun around.
“The bed is big enough for both of us to sleep in,” she said as she fastened her vest closed and adjusted the knife belt at her hips. She called over her shoulder as she swept out of the room, “A place to sleep, that’s all I’m offering.”
He sighed, taking his time getting dressed. Today, they would be passing into the fringes of Archtan Atoll, seeing the scattering of islands that formed the outer rim, passing through the center of the chain and the masses that floated there, and then descending to Archtan Town sometime before dark.
Two weeks in the air since they left Enhover, and he still had not figured out what he would say to Governor Dalyrimple, or was it Earl Dalyrimple, he wondered? The man was entitled to either honorific. He cursed himself for not checking with someone who knew. The little things mattered, and it was foolish to not know which title he preferred. Dalyrimple’s wife had been murdered, and he deserved the sympathy due anyone in those circumstances.
Oliver had to admit, though, there were too many unanswered questions about why the governor hadn’t raised an alarm when the woman had gone missing, why he hadn’t done… anything from what they could determine. Even Governor Towerson, Darlyrimple’s closest peer and friend in the region, had very litt
le word from the man over the last several months.
Oliver hadn’t told Imbon’s governor about the dead countess, and Towerson hadn’t mentioned that there were any issues in Archtan Atoll. Perhaps… No, something was amiss. A man’s wife did not travel halfway around the world and get murdered, and the husband had no concerns over the matter. Governor Dalyrimple held some missing piece to the puzzle, and Oliver meant to find out what it was.
“What are you doing?” asked Sam from the doorway.
He blinked.
“Have you been getting dressed all of this time? You’re worse than those old lords and ladies who still wear the wigs and all of the makeup. Even they would have been suited by now. Come on. You have to see this.”
Oliver pulled on his jacket, suppressing a sigh, and followed her out into the morning sun.
“There!” she exclaimed, leading him up onto the forecastle and pointing out at the horizon.
He held a hand over his eyes, shielding the rising sun, and saw what she meant. The first green dots of the atoll had appeared on the horizon, breaking up the endless stretch of blue water topped by blue sky. Above the islands, between feathery streaks of white cloud, they saw the fabled levitating islands of Archtan Atoll drifting in the distance.
Floating serenely, hundreds to thousands of yards above the sea, the islands were out of a dream. Giant formations of rock, humped on top, tapering to points below, they ranged in size from that of the airship to that of Prince Philip’s palace in Westundon. The largest had accumulated enough soil on top and birds or wind had brought enough seeds over the years that they sprouted thick vegetation. Those were the ones that hung lowest, with the smaller rock-only islands floating high above.
The islands twisted gently in the wind, moving but always staying within the confines of the atoll below them. Speculation was they’d originally been islands in the sea, but they’d been invested by air spirits and had lifted skyward. It offered some explanation why the rocks sank when doused with water, as air and water spirits were thought to be opposed, but no one could explain how they would have been invested by spirits in the first place or why they wouldn’t float away on the wind, drifting far from the atoll.
As far as Oliver knew, no one from Enhover had ever managed to corner a druid and tease an explanation out of them. By the time Enhover discovered the levitating formations, the druids had disappeared from the nation. Plenty of adventurers had given finding one a go, though, and it explained why the life-aspected magicians were so hellish to find anywhere now. They’d gotten tired of the pestering and threats of imprisonment.
As the Cloud Serpent drew closer, all hands assembled on deck. Following the barked commands from the First Mate Catherine Ainsley, the crew steered them into the maze of floating masses.
“Should we be going around this?” wondered Sam.
Oliver shrugged. “In calm weather, the levitating variety aren’t much more difficult to avoid than an island on the sea. It would add an extra half-day of travel to avoid them. Besides, you wanted adventure, didn’t you?”
“I don’t recall saying that,” responded Sam, her eyes fixed on the first looming chunk of rock. It was three- or four-hundred paces higher than their sails, and as they passed beneath, they could see the weather-worn stone hanging directly above them.
“What if a piece breaks loose and drops?” she whispered nervously.
“If it breaks loose, it’s going up,” reminded Oliver. “The stones float, remember? Individual pieces do break off from time to time, I’m told, but they rise up. Eventually, they disappear, passing so high into the sky they’re no longer visible or finding their way out of the area and splashing down into the sea. It’s underneath us you have to keep an eye on.”
In a slow-motion ballet, Captain Haines, First Mate Ainsley, and their men guided the ship between the drifting masses, never passing within more than two hundred yards of any one of them but giving Sam and Oliver plenty to look at as the massive shapes floated gracefully by. As they cleared the thickest cluster of rock, they saw the first one which was being actively mined.
Five times the size of the airship, a gang of men was working atop of it. A few of them paused to wave as the airship passed by. Traditional stone-cutting tools, huge pools filled with water, and thick hemp nets dotted the top of the rock. The men were cutting long, rectangular plates loose, similar to the ones in the hold of the Cloud Serpent, and they were then corralling them with water and nets to where they could be safely brought down to earth and built into the hold of a new ship.
“What happens if one gets away?” wondered Sam.
“A lot of wasted effort,” responded Oliver. “Aside from getting up there and getting back down, I’m told the work itself is frustrating but isn’t that dangerous. Over the years, the miners have figured out a solid system, though I suppose if one does get loose, you don’t want to be standing on it.”
“And how do they… oh.”
They’d cleared the end of the rock and saw a long bundle of rope and hose trailing from the levitating island down to a wooden platform floating on the sea. The platform appeared to be a giant, flat barge. Only a few structures which might have been housing for crew or a pump were on the deck. The airship was far above it, but even from a height, they could see a huge coil of rope attached to a pulley system which workers must use to raise supplies to the mining crew and lower the stones they’d cut free.
Oliver explained, “They pump water up hoses to the top to fill those pools. Then, they can release it as necessary just like we do on the airship to lower the island and keep its elevation steady.”
“What happens if the hose breaks?” wondered Sam.
With a wink, he replied, “Then they’d better pray to the spirits for rain. Luckily, in the dry season, there is not much risk. The winds are steady and tame, and the sea is smooth enough the barge can hold steady. In monsoon season, though, they detach from the islands and tow the barge to dock in Archtan Town until the heavy wind and rains pass.”
Sam grunted. After a moment of studying the apparatus, she questioned, “How do they get it all up there in the first place?”
“They can drop in on a line by airship now,” explained Oliver. “The first time, the story is they had to wait until a storm when water from the rain sank the mass down to the sea. They tossed up a grappling hook and scaled it. How would you have liked to be the first person who climbed onto one of these? Once they got up there with an expedition of men, they went from island to island. They spent weeks climbing amongst these structures as they drifted closer together and then apart. Those first men figured out the logistics of mining the stones. Half the party was lost, falling between the rocks, but the ones who survived will go down in Enhover’s history as true adventurers. The Company paid a special bonus to each member of the expedition or their families in the cases they were deceased. It’s rare, that.”
Sam nodded, wordless.
“There is it,” said Oliver, pointing over the gunwale.
Across the sea, rearing up out of the water like an angry giant, was the key island of Archtan Atoll. Named for the chain of land around it, the largest of the islands served as the Company’s headquarters in the area. On the island was Archtan Town, home to thousands of Company men and thousands more foreigners who had been brought to assist in running the place. There was a marketplace that rivaled those in Enhover itself, a full shipworks to build the airships, and a harbor that was as large as any outside of the colonial nations. Archtan Atoll was nearly an independent nation in and of itself, with the wealth and military might to keep it so.
Hanging above the city were half a dozen airships. It was the thickest concentration of them anywhere outside of Southundon, the seat of the king and the location of Company House. Half of the airships floating above Archtan Atoll appeared to be Company freighters, and the other half belonged to the royal marines. King Edward committed almost as much might to protecting Archtan Atoll as he did his own ports in En
hover. The levitating islands were the jewel of the Company’s possessions, a key source of tax revenue for the Crown, and responsible for much of Enhover’s military success.
“That’s bigger than I thought,” murmured Sam.
“It’s ten times the size of Imbon Colony,” remarked Oliver.
Deep inside their airship, he heard the crank of chain and the rush of water. The airship dipped as water poured over the levitating stones in the hold until the drop steadied, and then the airship began a slow descent, still gliding toward Archtan Town.
As they drew near, the sounds of industry rose to great them — saws and hammers at the shipworks, the hubbub of thousands of people busy about daily tasks within the city, and in a large, cleared field just outside of the settlement’s walls, several companies of royal marines were drilling.
“Why are they drilling?” Oliver asked a passing sailor.
The man merely shrugged and went about his tasks.
“They’re military men, are they not?” said Sam. “Isn’t it normal for them to do some drills, to train?”
The duke frowned, staring down at the milling men. “Perhaps.”
The landing and descent from the airship bridge was no more exciting than they’d experienced in Imbon, but when they made it to the ground, Oliver could tell something was off. The steps of the laborers were quick and efficient, unlike the unhurried pace he usually saw in the tropics. There were no piles of merchandise waiting to be brought up to the ships. In fact, the staging grounds around the base of the airship bridges was about as clean as he’d ever seen it anywhere. It was the contingent of royal marines, though, that finally made him stop in his tracks.
“Sergeant,” he asked, addressing the leader of a squad that was patrolling between the airship bridges and the rows of warehouses that stood nearby, “what’s going on?”
“Beg your pardon, sir?” asked the man.