“Who else?” It was a testament to Grimsaw’s distress—or pain or anger or both—that he glowered at Tolemek and answered sarcastically, forgetting his usual wariness toward the Deathmaker.
“I’ll get something for your knee and find the sawbones as soon as the fire is out.”
Tolemek ran for the hatchway, intending to help the men below decks, but Goroth lunged out of the group and clasped his arm.
“Your prisoner did this,” he said.
“I know.”
“And she’s gone.”
Tolemek frowned, though he could hardly claim to be surprised. She had probably set the fire as a distraction. But how had she escaped from his cabin to start with? He had taken that vial from her hand and left her locked up.
“Didn’t you shackle her?” Goroth demanded.
“I did, actually, and I searched her before leaving this morning.”
Goroth grumbled some choice curses under his breath, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles stood out as much as the bones on his breastplate.
“I’ll find her,” Tolemek said.
“You better. Go do it now. We’ll handle the fire.”
Tolemek hesitated, not wanting to abandon the ship if it was in danger—this was the only home he had, and all of the mixtures he had made and the ingredients he had gathered were in that cabin. He would hate to lose everything again. Not to mention his collection of pets. “Will you get my spiders and snakes out if my cabin proves to be in danger?”
“Spiders! What a thing to care about now.” Goroth looked like he wanted to punch Tolemek. Perhaps it hadn’t been the right thing to mention, but in addition to keeping them as pets, he extracted venoms for some of his work.
“Snakes too.”
“Just get the girl.”
“Very well.”
“And put her in a devils-cursed cell when you get her, not your cabin where she has access to who knows what.” Goroth flung his arm toward the smoking portholes.
A throat cleared behind them. Most of the men who had reported to the captain had run back to help with the fire. This was someone Tolemek hadn’t seen before. Clad in browns and blacks, he wore nothing resembling a uniform—and his left sleeve was tied in a knot at his elbow, showing his arm to be cut off at the joint—but there was a badge pinned to his jacket. The Roaming Curse outpost had patrol officers? Tolemek had never seen such a thing.
“Who are you?” Goroth demanded.
“Post Administrator and Port Inspector Dancun. Keeping the outpost safe for all.” The man spoke in a deadpan voice, his lips barely moving. He pointed at the smoke wafting up from the craft’s stern. “That’s a problem.”
“We’re working on it.”
“You’ll have to move away from this berth until your fire has been out for at least two hours. We can’t risk it spreading.”
The captain looked like he wanted to gnaw off a few of his own teeth and start spitting them at the man like gunfire. “We need access to the outpost.”
“You can access it again two hours after your fire’s out.”
Goroth glanced at Tolemek, made a shooing motion, and mouthed, “Go.”
Tolemek was about to when a cabin boy strode out of the smoking corridor, walking quickly, though his eyes were riveted to something he was holding. It was the young fellow he had left outside his cabin to guard Ahn. A strange net was tangled around his shoulders. With one hand, he was holding up his trousers, and with the other he held... Odd, Tolemek recognized that flask.
“Sir,” he blurted, charging straight toward Tolemek. “I wanted to make sure you had this, and that the fire didn’t—that everything was safe.”
Feeling rather confused, Tolemek held out his hand mutely. The boy sagged in relief as soon as the flask left his fingers, then launched into an explanation. Tolemek’s silence continued as he listened and digested the information.
“Lieutenant Ahn?” the administrator asked, joining them.
Tolemek hadn’t realized the man had been listening. He frowned. The cabin boy had blurted Ahn’s name during his explanation. He hoped it wouldn’t mean anything to the port inspector. A vain hope, apparently, for the man was pulling a small notebook out of his pocket. He laid it on the railing so he could flip through the pages one-handed. Tolemek glimpsed names, dates, and notations in extremely neat printing.
“Go help with the fire, boy,” Goroth ordered. He too was frowning at the administrator and his notebook.
The page flipping stopped, and the man pointed to a name. “Ah, yes. I thought that sounded familiar. Lieutenant Caslin Ahn. Flight name: Raptor. Member: Wolf Squadron. Active since the third of Maynok, 937.” His tone never changed as he spoke.
“Who is this hedgehog?” Goroth, standing behind the administrator’s back, mouthed.
Tolemek could only shake his head. A pirate outpost ought to be the last place one could find someone so organized. He might admire such meticulous note-taking in other circumstances, but not now.
The administrator lifted his brows. “You did not think it important to report that your vessel contained a wanted pirate enemy, Captain Slaughter?”
“I’ve been busy.”
“This is a bounty,” the administrator said, “though I’m more concerned about maintaining peace on the station. She will need to be located.” The inflection in his deadpan voice never changed, but his eyes had a slight gleam as he said, “This can be accomplished easily with enough people searching.”
“I’ll find her,” Tolemek said and headed for the gangplank. He had to make sure he found Ahn—Caslin—before this overzealous port attendant put the word out to everyone. It would be nice to use her first name, now that he knew it.
Goroth caught up with him at the gangplank, lifting a hand to make him pause. “I’ll take care of the fire. And you’re welcome.” His squint said he placed the blame for the mess straight on Tolemek’s shoulders. Rightfully so. “It might be a while before I can bring the ship back over though—” he waved to the smoke, “—so you’ll be on your own over there. Stay out of trouble. Meet back here—no, let’s meet at the Squatting Crow, midnight. Just in case we’re under scrutiny.” He frowned at the administrator who was making notes in his book.
“I’ll have her,” Tolemek said.
Chapter 8
There were two guards wandering around the dragon flier, occasionally answering questions but mostly turning away curious pirates who ambled close. Cables stretched across the bronze wings and ran to eyelets on the landing pad, as if force were required to keep the craft from taking off. Fliers did look vaguely like crouching dragons, wings spread, ready to leap into the air and take off, but they were ultimately just machines and wouldn’t go anywhere without a pilot. This particular craft looked like it had been pulled out of the depths of the ocean, with brown sludge dulling the hull and crusty grime caking the wings. Some kind of banner or sign hung from the cockpit. Cas thought it might declare the craft’s owner—whoever had salvaged it—but she was too far away to read the lettering.
She crouched on the roof of one of the sturdier buildings, keeping her back to a vent spewing bacon-scented smoke. It wasn’t much in the way of cover, and she felt exposed, since many of the airships docked to either side of the floating outpost had decks as high as her position. She wished night would fall, but she had no concept of how soon that might be. The strange fog that hugged the whole place hadn’t abated.
Shouts came from a nearby street, and a squad of men ran into view. Their eccentric clothing, most of it doubtlessly plundered from ships all around the world, kept them from looking like an organized military unit, but they were sticking together and peering into alleys. They were also armed.
Cas flattened to her belly. She didn’t recognize them as men from Captain Slaughter’s ship, but she hadn’t met everyone there either, having been busy starting fires in their engine room.
What if Slaughter had told everyone on the station about her and had them hunting for her?
She craned her neck to look at his ship—she couldn’t see the deck, but its big black balloon was distinctive and visible. Though, oddly, it seemed farther away than before. She risked rising into a crouch again. Yes, it had moved away from its berth and floated perhaps a hundred meters away from the outpost. Something to do with her fire?
A faint rumble reached her ears, and Cas forgot about the searchers and Slaughter’s ship. The noise sounded familiar, very familiar. Propellers.
She checked to make sure the search party had moved off the nearby street and that nobody was creeping up on her before focusing on the nearest of the giant propellers that helped hold the outpost aloft. Their hum was a constant here, and it continued on as it had before. This was a new noise, and it seemed to be coming from the fog beyond the outpost rather than some machinery on it. And there was more than one propeller making the noise, she was sure of it. She couldn’t guess why they were coming—they couldn’t know she was here... how could they?—but the rumbling grew louder and filled her with hope.
An eardrum-piercing wail erupted from horns mounted on poles at the corners of the outpost. Someone else had noticed the noise and knew what it meant.
The first dragon flier came into view, yellow eyes and a gray snout painted on the nose of the craft. Cas grinned so hard her mouth ached. Wolf Squadron.
Several more craft followed the first out of the fog. She couldn’t make out the numbers on the sides of the fliers yet, but she recognized an attack formation when she saw one. She caught herself standing and waving, but forced herself back into a crouch, not wanting to draw the attention of enemies in the streets below. Pirates were flooding out of buildings, shouting over the sirens and racing to artillery weapons stationed along the edges of the outpost and also on some roofs.
Before the twelfth flier came into sight, the first was already firing, strafing the side of the outpost and spraying bullets. No, it wasn’t aiming at the outpost but at the airships docked along its edge. Pirates were out on the decks and running toward weapons, the same as the people on the station were doing, but everyone had clearly been caught off guard.
The fliers streaked toward Cas’s end of the outpost, and she shrank back, bumping into the vent. They couldn’t possibly know she was alive, and they might kill her without knowing she was there. She ought to run for one of the few brick or stone buildings—they would be the most likely to survive gunfire—but if the pilots started lobbing explosives, it wouldn’t matter how thick the walls were. Besides, she wanted to know what they were after.
The answer to her question came almost immediately as the three lead fliers swerved in, under the giant balloons that marked the ceiling of the outpost, and veered toward the flier. Her first thought was that they might have some crazy plan to throw cables around it and take it with them, but that would be dangerous even without the pirates firing at them. A gray cylinder shot from the teeth of one of those fliers, exploding when it struck the landing pad near the salvaged craft.
“They want to destroy it?” Cas slumped. She wasn’t surprised—there were standing orders not to let the power crystals fall into enemy hands—but that had been her ride home. If they blew it up, she wouldn’t have a way to escape.
A bomb landed on the building next to hers. It exploded on impact, and rubble flew in a thousand directions. Cas dropped to her belly, throwing her hands over her head. As the squadron swooped across the outpost, bullets and explosives laying waste to the structures and docked ships, she stopped worrying about escape and started worrying about surviving. To the fast-moving fliers, she had to appear as nothing more than one more pirate to be exterminated.
The locals had found their posts, and the booms of cannons and explosives roared above the buzz of the propellers. Guns fired from the decks of the individual airships too. The fliers weaved, making hard targets, but their maneuverability was limited between the envelopes and the building-filled outpost itself.
More shrapnel clattered down on Cas’s rooftop. She didn’t know where it was coming from this time, but staying up there wasn’t safe.
When another wolf-nosed craft streaked in her direction, she rolled to the edge and scrambled down into the street. It didn’t fire near her though; it was aiming toward the salvaged flier. The seaweed- and grime-covered craft had already been damaged with that first explosive, and its cockpit lay torn open like a flower shredded by the wind. Yet a glow came from its engine compartment. The crystal powering it must have survived even after years in the ocean. Cas grimaced again, knowing she might have been able to get the craft working and flown home. It was too late now.
In an impressive feat of piloting, the flier weaved between the gunfire of two deck-mounted artillery weapons, dropping a pair of hooks on cables as it flew. The pilot was going to pluck out the energy source—or try anyway. Those crystals were securely mounted into their slots.
Cas leaned to the side, squinted, and was finally able to read the numbers stenciled on the side.
“W-83?” she blurted. That was Colonel Zirkander’s flier.
Was he back? Or was someone flying it for him? The pilot wore a helmet and goggles—it was impossible to tell from a distance, but that craft was weaving and dipping in his style of semi-controlled recklessness.
The hooks missed on the craft’s first pass, scraping the surface of the crystal but not finding purchase. By now, the gunners were aiming at it almost exclusively, despite two wingmen flying nearby, trying to take out the nearest artillery weapons. A cannon fired, the black ball blasting past W-14—Captain Crash Haksor—and heading straight for 83. It skimmed across the cockpit.
“It’s getting too hot,” Cas whispered. “Get out of there.”
The squadron might have taken the outpost by surprise, but that was wearing off now. More than that, the pirates seemed to have recognized what the 83 meant too. All of the cannons and guns on that side of the outpost were locking in on Zirkander’s craft. Two of the launched airships were moving away from their berths and veering in that direction too. A pair of large doors, or perhaps sliding panels, had opened at one corner of the outpost. A thunk-clank sounded and a bulky machine rose from the compartment, some giant cup-shaped apparatus holding netting. It almost looked like an old-fashioned catapult. Whatever it was, that netting was more sophisticated than the hammock Cas had tossed over that kid’s head. A big enough net hurled at a flier could be trouble.
The streets were deserted around her now, with all of the pirates manning a station or back on their ships. With her pistol in hand, Cas ran toward the catapult. She had some vague idea of helping by disabling it. More than that, she wanted Zirkander, or whoever was flying his rig, to notice her helping. There wasn’t room in a flier for a second person, but she would jump on the back and cling to the top of the cockpit if it would get her home.
She hadn’t run more than two blocks before a gang of pirates stalked out of an alley with bags and chests balanced over their shoulders. They all carried swords or pistols too. She tried to veer around them to continue past, hoping that in the chaos they wouldn’t notice her, or at least wouldn’t identify her as anything other than a fellow pirate.
But one pointed at her and yelled, “Witness. Get her!”
Witness, what?
Several guns were aimed in her direction. Her instincts took over, and she threw herself into a roll, angling toward the closest cover: a street lamp. Guns fired, and bullets skipped off the pavement around her. She lunged to her feet, firing as she ducked behind the post. It wasn’t that thick, but she wasn’t that thick, either. Besides, there were no other options nearby. Aiming by instinct, and years of experience, she leaned out slightly and fired three times in rapid succession. They fired back. One of their bullets clipped the lamp fixture, and glass exploded over her head. All she did was lean closer to the post and shoot around it twice more.
“Cover,” one of the men yelled, “find cover.”
She thought this was a reflection of her marksmanship—three men
were writhing on the ground, after all—but the buzz of propellers hammered her ears as a flier roared over the nearest building. The pirates stopped firing at her, dropped their burdens, and ran for an alley.
As much as Cas would have liked to jump on and get a ride, she doubted the pilot would recognize her. Who was that? Lieutenant Sparks? Smoke combined with the fog to turn the air a soupy gray that made it hard to see more than fifteen meters. She waved anyway, glancing over her shoulder, as she ran. The craft laid down bullets, obliterating the bags and boxes the pirates had abandoned—and obliterating some of the men she had injured as well.
Cas gulped and lunged into the alley—on the opposite side of the street from the pirates—and raced for the next block. Only when she glanced back to check for pursuers, did she notice the gold coins and small treasures that had spilled out of the dumped cargo. Those men must have been taking advantage of the chaos to loot. From their own people. What heroes.
Cas reloaded her pistol and started toward the catapult again. The side of the landing pad and the railing marking the end of the outpost platform were visible at the end of her street. The net-weapon, if it hadn’t already fired its load, would be off to the right. A couple more blocks, and she could reach it. And help her comrades—and maybe be noticed by her comrades. She wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of rescue.
Before she reached the end of the street, a great explosion thundered not fifty meters away from her. The ground—a floating platform thousands of feet above the ocean, she was reminded—heaved like a wave, nearly hurling Cas into the nearest building. Shrapnel pummeled the pavement, some pieces so large they could have killed a man. She ducked into a doorway for protection. A head-sized piece of black pavement slammed down two feet away, its ragged edges smoldering. More chunks hammered the street. The whole platform seemed to tilt downward now. What had they blown up? More than a building that time.
Cas poked her head out of the doorway long enough to look toward the landing pad.