Skykeep (3 page)

“Oh, Gunner. I’d be obliged if you’d take a
look at the sights on my rifle. Can’t seem to hit the broad side of
a barn with it these days,” he said over his shoulder to the man
behind him. “Morning, ma’am. You’re getting pretty quick up the
rigging.”

“Thank you, Coop. You know, we’ve been
working together for months. I don’t believe it is entirely
necessary to call me ‘ma’am.’”

“Aw, you’re a Calderan. If I’m not gonna call
a fancy sort like you ‘ma’am’ now and again, I may as well not use
the word at all.”

“Good morning, Nita,” said Gunner, their
shorter, mildly less lean armory officer. Despite some missing
fingers and the fresh singes on his face and sleeves, the man was
actually quite capable. He was just a little too enthusiastic at
times. “And Coop, I very much doubt the sights of your rifle have
miraculously misaligned themselves overnight.”

“Well, then why do you reckon I didn’t pick
off them two pilots like I did a week back?”

“Because you stumbled out onto the deck
half-asleep and started shooting. I’m lucky you didn’t hit
me
while you were up there.”

“Lucky for you boys
somebody
on this
ship knows how to work a rifle proper,” Lil said, more formally
Chastity “Lil Coop” Cooper, as she pranced into the galley. She was
the younger sister of Coop and a regular chip off the old
block.

“How long you reckon it’ll be before you let
us forget about that lucky shot of yours?” Coop asked.

“What, the one where I was dangling off the
side of the ol’ gasbag by one foot and still made the two of you
look like
you
were the ones that didn’t know which way was
up? I reckon it’ll be quite a bit.”

“I’ll tell you what. When we get back to the
island, we’ll hang me up by my foot and see what I can do.”

“And just what island are you talking about,
Coop?” Lil asked.

“That one south of Caldera. The one where we
hid most of our haul from the heist a way’s back.”

“The one that’s underwater most of the time
and ain’t got so much as a tree on it? The one that we only use
because of the cave under it that you can’t get to most days?”

“Yeah.”

“Whereabouts you reckon we’re going to hang
you on that island? The trees that ain’t there?”

“We’ll hang me off the ship,” Coop said.
“Just so long as Gunner fixes the sights on my rifle first.”

“It is a poor artist who blames his brush,”
Gunner countered.

“What’s painting got to do with you not
knowing how to true up an iron sight?”

“Enough, all of you,” commanded the
sandpaper-rough voice of the captain, a man the Coopers called
Cap’n Mack.

He was moving with purpose, though Nita was
not certain she’d ever seen him move otherwise. Some people were a
captain in name only, a leader simply because the position had been
vacant and no one else had the years or training to fill it.
Captain McCulloch West was a captain to the bone. His crew didn’t
follow orders due to anything as flimsy as a chain of command. They
followed orders because
he
was giving them. He puffed on a
cigar that smelled like burning cherries and pulled off a pair of
dark lenses that had left his eyes the only portion of his face not
roasted golden brown by the sun. There was a weariness to him that
had become progressively more noticeable in the preceding weeks.
His red-rimmed eyelids likely hadn’t shut for more than an hour at
a time in days. He rubbed them irritably and cleared his
throat.

“Everybody grab a plate and a seat. I don’t
like giving the inspector the bridge for more than a minute or two.
That goes double considering the number of wailers who’ve been
catching our scent of late. We’re going to make this quick. Once
our engineer here patched up the nicks we picked up in this latest
brush and we topped off what we lost, that put us down to our last
canister of phlogiston.”

“No, already? Seems like it wasn’t two weeks
ago we bought five canisters from them smelly folks from over where
Gunner comes from,” Coop said.

“We did. But since then we’ve been slashed up
and poked full o’ holes near a dozen times. How are we set for
ammunition?”

“We’re down to about half our usual stock for
small arms, and
very
low on fléchettes. The cannons are
pretty well stocked,” Gunner said.

“And fuel?”

“We could use some. Between coal and
burn-slow we’ve got enough for maybe three more round trips to
Caldera,” Lil said.

“How are the nuts and bolts, Nita?” the
captain asked.

“The boiler is running fine. One of the
turbines took some hits. I’d like to rebalance it. At this point
the main envelope is more patches than anything else. Another few
weeks like these and we’ll be needing a new one. Other than that,
we’re doing well enough.”

“Good. Then just so long as we don’t lose any
more phlogiston, we’re not in trouble. But since we’ve been doing a
right sorry job of defending this bucket lately, there are going to
be some changes. I want two lookouts on deck at all times. That
includes when we are at port. If Gunner hadn’t been in his quarters
tinkering with that new gadget of his last time we tried to spend
the night in Keystone, we’d’ve been cleaned out. And if you’re on
lookout detail, I want you armed. Nita, that means you’re going to
need to brush up on your shooting.”

“I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea
of handling a rifle, Captain. Perhaps—”

“I’m not entirely comfortable riding my ship
to the seafloor, or getting picked clean by the sort of folks who
lurk around the sort of piers that’ll let us moor these days, so it
don’t make much difference to me what makes
you
comfortable,” he barked. “Talk to Gunner, pick a weapon, and start
practicing. Next time those wailers come buzzing around, I want
them full of holes before they even notice they’ve found us.” He
stomped up to the counter and snatched up a bowl, stuffing the
biscuit into the pocket of his coat and taking the bowl but not the
spoon.

“We are too damn close to seeing our way
through to the other end of this, people. We’ve got enough fugger
goods stowed away in Cache Island to keep us fat and happy for the
rest of our days. We just need to stay alive long enough to figure
out how we’re going to sell them, and where we’re going to stay
once we do. Now, as you were. Finish your meals, then draw straws
on who’s manning the deck. You’ve got five minutes.”

He turned and paced back out the door, taking
a swig out of the bowl as he went. Once his footsteps had
disappeared back up to the main deck, Coop spoke up.

“You know something? I don’t know what’s
sending him to his grave quicker, drinking or not drinking,” he
said.

“Times like these I do miss the rosy-cheeked,
boozy lout who hired us,” Lil said. She mashed her biscuits into
her bowl and scooped some of the resulting mush into her mouth.
“And does anyone remember when he last hit his hammock?”

“I’m not certain I even recall the last time
he sat down,” Gunner said.

“So what
is
the plan going forward?”
Nita asked. “It’s been four months since we raided that Fugtown
warehouse, and so far all we’ve done is stash the stuff and lend me
out to fix some ships whenever we visit Lock.”

“The captain plays things like this close to
his chest,” Lil said. “When he’s ready to tell us, he’ll tell
us.”

“’Til then, we just go along,” Coop said.
He’d emptied his bowl and stood to return it to Butch, snagging
another biscuit when he did. “Who’s on lookout right now? And you
reckon the captain counts himself as one of the lookouts?”

“Well now, that wouldn’t make no sense, would
it? If that was the case, we’ve been doing two lookouts all along.
And you can’t rightly navigate the ship with a rifle in your
hands,” Lil said.

“I’m on lookout right now,” Gunner said.

“I reckon I’ll join you then. It’ll give you
a chance to get my sights straightened out,” Coop said.

Rather than dignifying the statement with a
response, Gunner merely muttered something vaguely threatening and
followed the deckhand out. That left only Lil and Nita in the
galley.

“So, Nita, what’re you fixing to do until
it’s your turn up on deck?”

“It won’t be long until we reach Lock, and
I’m sure the captain will have a line of people hoping I can help
get their boilers boiling or their turbines turning again. Between
that, my maintenance work, and now these watch shifts, I’d better
take this time to finish up my letter home, or else it won’t get
written at all.”

“You know,” Lil said, washing down another
mouthful of her meal with a swallow of coffee, “I still don’t quite
get why you write them letters. The only folks who could even
deliver ’em is us.”

“I know, but sometimes our visits are so
short. Before I joined the crew, the longest I’d ever stayed away
from home was a few days. Mother and I just aren’t used to spending
so much time apart. Writing these letters and reading them one at a
time sort of makes it feel like we aren’t so far apart. I hand
Mother my book, she hands me hers, and we read and answer one a
week.”

“You ever write about me in them letters?”
Lil asked.

“Of course! Mother said she’s been working
extra hard to get the
Wind Breaker
permission to make port
so that she and the family can meet you. My brother, Joshua, in
particular is interested in you.”

Lil grinned. “Is he now?”

“He’s a composer and he’s always looking for
dancers. He says with the way you’re so fearless climbing all
around the ship, he’d love to see what you could do on stage.”

Lil twisted her head. “Now what kind of stage
are we talking about here? Because the only dancers I ever seen are
them girls in Keystone who do them high kicks and ain’t barely
wearing no clothes. The sort Coop always spends all his money
gawking at.”

“No, no. Ballet, interpretive dance. Things
to do more than simply titillate.”

“See, Coop says doing any more than
titillating costs more’n he’s willing to spend.” She finished her
plate of food and her coffee. “Say hi to your mama for me. Once we
get to Lock, if the captain asks you to take a look at somebody’s
ship, give me a holler. I reckon if I’m going to be practicing, may
as well be on a ship that ain’t ours.”

“Certainly,” Nita said.

Lil stood and handed her plate to Butch. “A
fine meal as always, Butch. I always say I don’t worry about dying,
because every one of your meals is fit to be my last.”

“What are you off to do now?” Nita asked.

“If we’re going to be spending a mite more
time on deck, I reckon I’ll top off the firebox, then head down for
a nap until we hit port. You might want to do the same, since if
Coop and Gunner are up there now, you know you and me are going to
be stuck on the night shift.”

“Not a bad idea,” Nita said.

Lil trotted away, and Nita, as seemed to
happen rather frequently, found herself the first one to begin
eating and the last to finish. She’d picked up a great deal of very
necessary habits from the crew, but the two she’d never seemed to
get the knack for were choking down her meals and drinking the
syrup-thick sludge they called “coffee.” It was a wonder that
Butch, who could make month-old smoked fish into something that
would make you ask for seconds, couldn’t seem to make a proper cup
of coffee. Nita was thankful for water, which due to the boiler was
never in short supply, and tea. The only alternatives were
alcoholic… though she was somewhat ashamed to say she was beginning
to develop a taste for Westrim ale.

She finished her meal, taking every moment of
the five minutes allotted to her by the captain, then thanked Butch
for the fine cooking and made her way back to her room. As she
pushed open the door—thanks to its draftiness, her room was one of
the few that actually
had
a door rather than a curtain—and
stepped inside, she heard a peculiar scratching noise. It was
followed by a crunch. Nita frowned and clapped her hands.

“Wink! Wink you get out of there right now!”
she scolded.

The crunching suddenly stopped and there was
silence.

“You don’t think I know where you are?”

She lightly stepped through the maze of
crates and boxes to one at the opposite side of the loading bay. It
was tucked under one of the two gig winches, and the lid was askew.
She moved the lid aside and saw a single eye gleaming out from the
darkness inside. Nita reached up and twisted on the nearest
phlo-light, revealing a cat-sized creature that was simultaneously
the ugliest and cutest thing Nita had ever seen. It was ghost gray
and had formerly worn a bandage until Nita had fashioned an eye
patch for it. The creature was technically known as an aye-aye,
though, due to the effects of the fug, it had a few unnatural
characteristics, including a batlike nose and its peculiar
coloring. They called the beast Wink, and it was intended to be the
ship’s inspector, but lately it seemed to have taken on the
unofficial role of designated pain in Nita’s backside.

It looked up at her innocently, completely
ignoring the large, half-eaten macaroon it clutched in its creepy
little hands. The half-open and half-empty tin at its feet in the
crate suggested this was not the first time it had committed this
particular crime.

“Come out of there,” Nita said, lightly
nudging the box.

Wink darted out and spiraled around Nita’s
body to just under her arm, keeping the cookie in one
spider-fingered hand as it did. She leaned down to shut the tin,
then secured the crate and heaved a heavier one on top of it before
returning to her desk. Wink crawled to her back, peering over her
shoulder and munching away on his ill-gotten gains as she read
through her letter. Once the words were fresh in her mind, she
picked up where she’d left off.