That’s why we want you to go,” Blaylocke said.
“Yet you won’t give me gravstone, money, a boat, or a half-decent crew. You’d better get ready to do a whole lot of crackling, because that’s the only way you’re getting me to move a muscle for your cause.”
Vilaris gave a long sigh. “An airship and a crew of primies is the best we can do.”
“Fine, but only if we switch from the airship to a streamboat once we get up there. I want to hire a few techsouls of my own choosing to supplement our crew. And I want Chaz to come. I’m gonna need a full kit and I’m gonna need it to be in working order.”
Vilaris was too eager to wait for Chaz’s response. “Sure, we can do all of it. And Chaz comes too.”
“Deal,” I said, quicker than quick. “Now will you take off these cuffs? I’m getting a headache from all the crackling.”
Vilaris gestured, and Blaylocke obliged.
Ladies and gents, I thought, rubbing my abraded wrists, that’s how you turn incarceration into salvation.
“Let’s get moving,” said Vilaris. “We’ve got lots to do and too little time to do it in.”
“Chester, you’d better take the tool in for repairs,” Blaylocke joked.
I snatched Blaylocke by the collar and lifted him, legs dangling. I could smell his breath, rotten from mouth-breathing and vegetable soup. “Don’t ever call me a tool again.”
I let him down, poked a finger into his face. “I will haunt your nightmares.”
Vilaris had that look squirrels get before they decide to cross the street. I’d seen squirrels on Roathea, a floater that boasted both the largest city and one of the largest forested areas in the world.
“Get that crackler installed first thing, Chester,” Vilaris said. “Will you be okay if we leave?”
I could tell Chaz was more afraid of me now than ever, but he nodded and stayed with me in the warehouse as the two City Watchmen left to find us a flight into the stream.
“I’m afraid my experience installing techsoul modifications is limited,” Chaz said.
“That’s okay, Chaz.” He only flinched a little when I put a hand on his shoulder. “I wouldn’t expect someone in a city full of primies to know how techsouls work. Fortunately for you, I know a lot about how I work. I have all the necessary ports and terminals. We just have to build some tech and make it fit.”
Chaz gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Don’t worry, pal,” I said. “I don’t fly off the handle like that all the time. We can be buds without you worrying that I’m gonna flip out on you, right?”
“Sure,” Chaz said.
I didn’t believe him.
It took us a few days to gather all the junk we needed to start building. Before we’d so much as lit our first blowtorch in the effort, Vilaris and Blaylocke were already antsy to get going. Lots of pressure from the big guys, they said. A council of three ruled Pyras; two primies, and one techsoul who fancied himself a sort of primie-rights activist, allowed in the city only because he was celibate and he’d sworn off mods of any kind. They’d actually made him swear never to augment himself, so his living in Pyras was no temporary whim. All this and more I learned from Chaz, who had started to open up to me with a little goading and my repeated assurances that while I was no law-lover, I wasn’t a psycho axe murderer either.
“Any chance I could meet this guy?” I asked Chaz one day while we were looking over a set of schematics I’d drawn up for the new-and-improved hydraulic legs I wanted.
“Councilor Yingler? He’s a bit on the busy side, as I understand it. And he’s forbidden to enter the Department of Innovation due to his Vow of Remaining.”
“So I’ll go see him in the council chamber. Where’s that?”
Chaz didn’t say anything for a while.
“Somewhere in the building, huh…”
He pursed his lips. “I shouldn’t say. Blaylocke told me—”
“Blaylocke spews so much hot air he could get a second job as a furnace. Come on, Chaz, buddy. Introduce me.”
“Before we leave the city, maybe,” was all he said before he changed the subject.
An escort from the City Watch brought me home every night to the tiny apartment they’d made up for me. Another complement of guards stood outside my door all night, and a third brought me back to Kingsholme every morning. The city didn’t like the idea of playing host to another techsoul any more than I liked being trapped there. They were serious about making sure I didn’t find a way to seduce some primie woman and breed my way into their perfectly preserved gene pool. I got dirty looks whenever I went out in the streets, so I focused on designing a killer set of tech and spent all the time I could in the workshop with Chaz. It felt like imprisonment, but it sure beat rotting in some Regency prison.
My new kit wasn’t the collection of sought-after tech I’d lost to Gilfoyle and his men, but when Chaz and I were done tinkering, I was satisfied. I felt confident again too, something I hadn’t felt since the night they took it all away. And I was heavy, unused to being weighed down with so many extra components. If I’d wanted to shoulder a fuel tank the size of a cow, Chaz said, he could turn my feet into a pair of hover engines. Or if I wanted a turbine for a hat, he could make me a man-sized airplane. He had the idea of turning my fingertips into a swiss army knife, each one a different tool, and the one about putting driftmetal in my calves and rigging up a set of gravstone clinkers. He insisted that I install a few weapon mods until I told him any moron knows you never store explosives inside your body. If there’s one thing a techsoul knows, it’s how to exploit the tender spots on another techsoul. So I said ‘no thanks’ to all those things, but yes to a whole slew of others that I was planning to test before we got into the thick of things. As it turned out, I never got the chance.
On departure day, a sparse crowd had already gathered in the city square by the time we arrived to find a small airship waiting to bear us aloft. An envelope of thick canvas skin, the sausage-shaped gasbag was an unremarkable beige color. Rigging lines attached it to the boat beneath, an aerodynamic wooden craft as slender and graceful as an old seafaring vessel. Rotating prop engines were mounted to its sides, and it had a windowed command bridge at the fore.
“She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” Chaz said proudly. “The Secant’s Clarity.”
I hated airships. Slow, unwieldy things. Like flying a turd on crutches, Dad used to say. “You built her?”
“Designed, built, and flight-tested,” said Chaz.
“How’s she gonna hold up when we get rammed by a streamboat full of pirates?”
“You’re the captain, not the gunner. You leave the ship’s defenses to my more capable hands.”
Chaz wasn’t afraid of me anymore, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. By the time the ship was loaded and ready to lift off, the streets were jammed with people. We stood on deck and looked out over the throngs, the four of us breakfasted and dressed in the finest trimmings Hildebrand’s Haberdashery had to offer. An entire city full of primies, I thought. I still couldn’t believe it. I basked in the attention, knowing I was a hot commodity. So what if half the city hated me and knew I was doing this against my will? The other half didn’t. I couldn’t help but observe the fairer sex amongst Pyras’s citizens. I don’t care what anyone says—primie girls are just as gorgeous as techsoul women. I decided not to share the thought with my companions, though.
I had the jitters, but they were a different kind of jitters than the heart-pounding, clammy-handed thrill of pulling off a big score. They were the jitters of knowing thousands of people were relying on me. Suddenly the whole thing stank of helping people. But what could I do? Chaz had installed that sub-signal shocker, bolted it into a compartment near my wrist that he’d locked with a cipher key. They could reduce me to a quaking pile of synth whenever they wanted. Blaylocke had convinced Chaz to let him hold onto the remote—even more reason to be on my worst behavior.
“You never did take me to see that techsoul councilor of
yours,” I said. “Think he’ll show up for the big send-off?”
Chaz wrinkled his mouth. “Maybe.”
“Councilor Yingler runs most of our errands to the stream,” said Vilaris. “He’s the one who used to trade directly with Gilfoyle. I don’t think he’d like you very much. I think if he wanted to meet you, he’d have arranged it by now.”
“Oh come on, everyone likes me,” I said.
Blaylocke snorted.
“Everyone who’s not an idiot,” I said.
“You really think you’re capable of finding us a crew?” Vilaris asked. “Reliable, honest techsouls?”
“Yes and no,” I said. “Yes to the first question. No way to the second. You want sailors crewing this boat, or nannies? Reliability and honesty come second to skill and know-how.”
“He can’t do a thing,” said Blaylocke. “We should’ve sent him on this fool’s errand by himself.”
“Yeah, well I’m thrilled about having you along, too,” I said.
In the stream, hanging out with primies is like wearing a bathing suit to a wedding; you might as well ask to be ridiculed. Primies are nothing but Churn-scum to most techsouls. Some techsouls even hate primies so much they’ll go out of their way to kill them, so the way I saw it, having three primies along didn’t help my chances of staying out of trouble.
“I’ll give you something to be thrilled about,” said Blaylocke, patting the sub-signal remote in his pocket.
“I swear, Blaylocke,