the clothes on our back and the belongings in our bags. It was a good thing, too, as we soon found out. The Galeskimmer had only one deck and twice as many crewmembers as the Clarity. Now that we were coming aboard, she’d have triple the Clarity’s crew, in total.
“These are my friends,” Vilaris said when we arrived, flushed and out of breath.
“Captain Sable Brunswick, at your service.” The voice was strong, bolder somehow than the mouse of a woman who owned it. She was short and thin, all pep and sparkle as she swung down from the deck and gave us a low bow that felt excessive under the circumstances. Her hair was tied back in a simple dirty-blond braid beneath the plumed tricorn she removed when she greeted us. The vest she wore was loose, and the pants that looked as though they had once hugged her slender hips were roomy.
“Acting… Captain,” said the elderly fellow who emerged after her. He was tall and sinewy, his mouth puckered up tight beneath a snowy white beard, his clothes in need of mending.
Sable gave the old man a look, her blue eyes as sharp as daggers. “Allow me to introduce Landon Scofield, the Galeskimmer’s quartermaster and a constant thorn in my side,” she told us. “We hear you’re in need of a lift.”
She was looking at me, so I answered. “If she’s fast. Looks like she’s got it where it counts.”
The Captainess smirked. “Who… me, or the ship?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, lady,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of time for me to tell you how great you are, if you can prove it.”
“I’ve never been one for games, Mr…”
I gave Vilaris a sideways look. “Call me Nordstrom.”
Sable wasn’t fooled. “Well Mr. Nordstrom, I don’t like games, so let’s put it all out on the table, shall we? I think you’d better take a look at this.”
She shoved a sheet of curled parchment toward me. I took it from her and unrolled it. There I was, WANTED. They’d even included my middle name. I didn’t even know I had a middle name. Thanks to those law-loving parents of mine, the whole stream knew it now.
“This is a terrible picture,” I said. “Who’d the Civs hire to draw this, a blind monkey?”
“An imperfect likeness, maybe,” said Sable. “But it’s you, nevertheless. Do you see the number at the bottom of the page?”
I nodded. It was a big number.
“Times are hard, Mr. Nordstrom. My crew and I don’t have the luxury of doing pro bono work.”
“You can pro bono whoever you want,” I said. “That’s none of my business. All I want to know is how much you charge.”
“We fly for whoever’s paying the most,” said Sable. “Having seen that number there, you now know how much you’re worth to the Civil Regency Corps. Would you care to make me an offer?”
“That many chips, plus one,” I said.
“There will be additional expenses if we have to fly you halfway across the stream. Then again, tying you up and waiting for the Civvies only costs me a length of rope and a few minutes’ time. Try again, Mr. Nordstrom.”
“Give me a moment with my colleagues, here,” I said. I turned around and we huddled up. “They’re your chips, guys. What do you think?”
“Offer her fee-and-a-half,” Vilaris said. “The highest I want to go is double.”
I spun on my heel. “This much, plus… half this much,” I announced, pointing to the number on my wanted poster.
Sable considered this. “How far do you want to go?”
“Get us to the northern fringe. Word doesn’t spread so fast out there.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, but… throw in another five thousand and you’ve got yourself a deal,” said Sable. “Half upfront, the other half on delivery.”
I waited for Vilaris to nod. “We have an agreement.” I extended my hand, and Sable slid hers into mine. Her grip was firm, but the bones were like twigs.
“Let me introduce you to the rest of the crew,” she said.
The others had gathered on deck to get a look at us. I counted them out. Seven in all, including Sable and Mr. Scofield, the first mate. The other five were just as tattered and thin, but hard and scrappy-looking for all that. There was the paunch-bellied boatswain, Dennel McMurtry, graying beneath his black top-hat, with two gold teeth and tobacco stains over the rest; half-blind rigger Thorley Colburn, a patch-eyed hulk of a man with a hook nose and silver rings through his ears, his clear blue eye shining through a curtain of blond hair; Eliza Kinally, a redhead with wide hips and sharp green eyes, stout and plain; and little Neale Glynton, the dark-haired cabin boy of no more than twelve, bug-eyed and scrawny as a starved cat. The fifth was a skittish little creature called a duender, hardly taller than a child, with a broad hunchback and pointed ears that curved out from the sides of its head like fishing poles. It had a wide, flat nose, and teeth like mallet heads. It was a ‘he,’ they said, and they called him Nerimund.
The crew helped us aboard and showed us to our bunks. The ship had a surprising amount of room to spare below, and I got the impression that their crew had once been much bigger. They were a ragged lot, and it was clear they needed our money as much or more than we needed their boat. I tossed my things into the hammock little Neale had pointed out to me and climbed above to watch us lift off. I felt no sense of safety, not even packed away on a little ship and bound for a slower part of the stream. I wouldn’t feel any more at ease until we’d gone airborne.
I joined Mr. Scofield on the quarterdeck and stood by as Sable took the helm. Thorley Colburn was unfurling the sail while Eliza Kinally and Dennel McMurtry made ready to lash it down. Sable gave the lift controls a tug, and I heard the familiar, repetitive clink-clink of the gravstone counterbalances being released. We heaved upward, not smoothly, and Sable blushed as she spun the wheel and turned us leeward. The sail billowed, then snapped tight, and the wind pulled us away from Mallentis.
Mr. Scofield shivered. “Permission to go below, captain.”
“Granted,” Sable said.
I stayed with her, watching while the dim airfield fires and the bright city lights of Eulaya and Hibantya faded into the clouds. I knew I might never see either of those cities again, but somehow I didn’t mind. We were about to go sailing, and suddenly it was all I could think about.
There are lots of things people seem to think are essential to living a full life. They’ll say things like, ‘you haven’t lived until you’ve done this.’ Feeling the clouds in your hair on driftmetal runners is one of those things. It’s an experience like nothing else. It’s like walking on a cloud that’s as hard as stone and lighter than the very air you’re breathing. Drifting through the darkness on the Galeskimmer that evening, I felt as alive as I’d ever been.
“Why did you ask me for my name if you already knew it from the posters?” I asked, turning toward Sable.
“I wanted to know what kind of person you were.”
“And what did my answer tell you?”
“That you’re a coward and a criminal, just like your wanted poster says.”
“Guilty on both counts,” I admitted, shrugging.
“You don’t seem to mind being an outlaw. Doesn’t it ever bother you, knowing you’re the scum society has to scrape off its shoe?”
“I haven’t always been like this. I used to make an honest living. Then one day, the Regency came along and took my dad’s shop. Didn’t say why, just shoved a bunch of chips in his face and told him to get lost. We built a boat together, and I aimed to leave home and make my own way in the stream. Problem was, my parents decided they had nothing better to do and came with me.”
Sable took a deep breath, the corner of her mouth crinkling. “There are worse problems to have,” she said.
“Not for me. My parents are a couple of law-loving… they’re traitors. I would’ve gotten away clean if it weren’t for them. They took my boat and handed me over to the Civs. Thinking I could trust them not to get in my way is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Taking you aboard is the
stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t have even entertained the idea if we didn’t need the chips so badly.”
“You all look like you could use a few chips,” I said. I looked around. “So does your rig.”
“It’s been hard times these last few months.”
“Why’s that? There’s always plenty of hauling to do where I come from, lots of people who need to travel.”
“A few months back, we got caught in a big thunderstorm. We lost half our cargo and the storm disabled the Galeskimmer. When we showed up late and without the full haul, we ended up losing money on the trip. A lot of money. Uncle Angus was captain before me. He had to go and ask our patrons for some extra time to pay them back. They’re not the most savory characters, and instead of giving it to him, they just… took him. Put him in their own debtor’s prison of sorts. We’ve been trying to earn enough to keep the boat working, put food on the table, and save up every extra chip so we can pay off the debt and get Uncle Angus back. It’s been hard enough just making ends meet.”
There was pain brewing beneath the surface of Sable’s eyes. The big white feather was struggling against the wind to stay in place on her hat. I pursed my lips and rubbed the back of my neck, unsure what to say.
“My uncle has always put the crew first, and business second,” Sable said. “He took that job because we were all behind him. We knew how dangerous it would be if things went wrong.”
“Your uncle is a better man than I,” I