Skykeep (9 page)

He opened the door and quickly shut it behind
him. Lil and Nita went back to work, both of them crouching over
the remaining parts to look over them with a bit more care in light
of this discovery. After a few moments, Lil paused and put her hand
to Nita’s shoulder, stopping her as well.

“What is it?” Nita asked.

Lil made a shushing motion with her finger
and leaned close, whispering in Nita’s ear. “He said he was going
to go see the mayor right quick, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Nita replied quietly.

“Then how come I didn’t hear no footsteps?”
Lil asked. She brushed her hand against the hem of her coat,
lifting it to reveal a pistol on her belt. She raised her voice.
“Matthews, you still hanging about?”

There was no answer. She put her hand to the
grip and stood, creeping toward the door. Nita slipped the largest
of the wrenches in her sash free and hefted it. Lil reached the
door and tried the handle. She turned to Nita and mouthed the word,
Locked.

“Matthews? Would you please come here a
moment? I’ve got something else you need to see,” Nita called
out.

Still there was no sound of footsteps.

“I don’t like this one bit. We’re getting out
of here, darlin’,” Lil said, pulling back the hammer of the pistol.
“Plug your ears. This makes a heck of a noise in a place like
this.”

Nita did so, Lil doing her best to do the
same while still aiming. She pulled the trigger, and a thunderous
boom echoed off the walls, her bullet lodging in the delicate
locking mechanism. Lil took one hand from the gun and tried the
knob. It turned, but only slightly. Nita quickly put her wrench to
work on the knob, clamping it down and turning. The added leverage
was just about enough to get it to turn, and the two of them yanked
the door open. Wind rushed from behind them, and it dragged with it
not just the gagging scent of fug, but a few curls of the toxic
vapor. Suddenly the gas pipes on the walls rang and shuddered. The
flames lighting the room died away.

Without delay, Nita grasped the helmet on her
belt and sparked a flame to light, holding it with her nonwrench
hand to light the room.

“Lil!”

Lil whipped around, pistol at the ready, and
at the first glimpse of what was approaching, fired. Three men
dressed in thick layers of strange, leathery black material were
stalking out of the darkness. Their faces were partially obscured
by masks, but there was no mistaking what little flesh remained
exposed. The men were stark white, like bleached bone. Their eyes
were a reddish brown, and they walked with an odd, twisted posture.
Fug folk. Lil’s shot had knocked the one in front to the ground.
The others scattered and charged. Lil fired twice more, but the
fuggers were faster than she’d expected and neither shot met its
mark. One of them grappled with her, and the other attempted to do
the same with Nita, only to take three punishing blows from her
wrench, sending him to the ground. She then tackled the fugger
attempting to disarm Lil, sending the scrawny but surprisingly
strong assailant sprawling.

The light dangling from Nita’s belt swung
about chaotically, casting illumination all around, however
briefly. Acting quickly, Lil fired two quick rounds into the chest
of the fugger Nita had knocked down, then put a boot to the head of
the one who had tangled with Nita to keep him down.

“You wanna end up like your friends there, or
you wanna act like a gentleman and tell us what you were trying to
do?” Lil asked, putting her pistol to his forehead.

Before anyone could speak, or even react,
Nita and Lil each felt something close around their ankles. A firm
yank pulled them from their feet, sending them spilling forward.
Lil fell on top of her would-be informant, pulling the trigger as
she went but only managing to graze his temple. A hand held tight
to Nita’s braid and pulled her head back, another one grasping
Lil’s ponytail to do the same. The first man Lil had shot was on
his feet again, the light of the helmet revealing the bullet divot
in his chest only as deep as the first layer of uniform and not
leaking any blood. He was dousing a rag with a strong-smelling
chemical, while what was presumably the second fugger Lil had shot
pressed his knees into the smalls of the girls’ backs. They each
struggled, Lil peppering their assailants with hair-curling
profanities, but all it did was earn the deckhand the first dose of
the rag. She struggled more violently for a moment, then fell
still. Nita fought harder, but to no avail. The rag was pressed to
her mouth, and the world went dark.

“So this here is the prettiest one you got?” Coop
said, turning a music box over in his hands.

He stood in a curio shop in the market
district of Lock, which was the name they gave the section of
catwalk that had all seven of the storefronts the town had to
offer. Around him were shelves carefully arranged with
contraptions, figurines, and ceramics. The music box in question
was made from stained mahogany. When he clicked it open, it tinkled
a gay little tune he didn’t recognize, all while a tiny tin
ballerina pirouetted gracefully.

“Well, beauty is a matter of taste, sir. I
could show you any of the others if you’d like,” said the
shopkeeper. She was an older woman, dressed in a gown that seemed
simultaneously too formal and too complex to be appropriate for a
storekeeper. It was a full gown, complete with bustle, and her hair
was put up in a beehive that was tall enough to be bordering on
architectural.

“But are they more pretty or less pretty? I
only want to see them if they’re more pretty,” Coop said. “The lady
this is for has got a real good eye for this sort of thing, and I
don’t want her to look at what I bring her and say ‘Why didn’t you
get the pretty one?’ You get my meaning?”

“I’m sure your lady friend will be quite
satisfied.”

“Okay. You’re a lady, so I reckon you’d know
what a lady would like. They all look the same to me,” he said.
“Now how about the insides? They pretty?”

“You’re looking at them right now, sir,” the
shopkeeper said with a raised eyebrow.

“Not this inside. The inside of the inside.
Where the fiddly bits are. Are there lots of fiddly bits? This
lady, she likes the fiddly bits. Fiddlier the better.”

“I assure you that the workings are of the
highest quality, and stunningly intricate. Quite… fiddly, sir.”

“This’ll be the one then. You said this’d be
fifty, right?”

“Seventy-five, sir.”

“That’s a mite steep.”

“You pay for beauty, sir.”

“Well sure, but you said beauty’s a matter of
taste. This here tastes more like fifty.”

“I’d be willing to give it to you for
seventy.”

“I’d be willing to let you keep it for
seventy. Might take it with me for sixty.”

The proprietor sighed. “Sixty-five
might
be acceptable.”

“That’ll be fine,” Coop said, clicking the
lid shut and setting it down so that he could count out the payment
in fives. It was a task that pushed him to the very limits of his
mathematical knowledge. Once he’d worked out the right amount, and
the shopkeeper was counting to keep him honest, he dug around in
his pocket.

“Since you’re a lady, maybe you could tell
me. I got started on this poem here. You reckon a lady would like
it?” He unfurled the page and cleared his throat.

There was a terrifying crackle, then a deep,
rumbling roar that rattled the contents of the shelves.

“What the hell is that?” Coop said.

“I don’t know. It sounds like it came from
the mines,” said the shopkeeper.

“The mines? But Lil’s at the mines! And Nita
too!”

He snatched his purchase and sprinted onto
the wooden slats of what passed for streets in Lock. There he
quickly found that the whole of the town had chosen to do the same.
He shouldered, elbowed, and when necessary punched his way through
the crowd, rushing for the courtyard at the mouth of the mines. The
courtyard was flooding with people, both from townsfolk rushing to
see what had happened and miners rushing out for fear of what would
happen next. Dusty air was pouring out of one of the entrances.
Someone in a very official-looking uniform shouted something as
Coop sprinted past, and someone else stopped him with a hand to his
chest.

“You can’t go any farther, sir. It’s too
dangerous,” the man said.

“My sister’s in there!” he cried, shoving the
man aside.

The man grabbed him from behind and held him
back. “Sir! I’m the safety officer of the mine. You can’t go
inside. It is
too dangerous!
”

Without looking, Coop reached back and
grabbed the man’s belt, then, with a swift hook of his heel, kicked
one of his legs out from under him. As the man stumbled to get his
balance, Coop pulled at his belt and overbalanced him, pivoting him
as he fell so that he landed square on his back. Before the safety
officer could reclaim the wind that had been knocked from him, Coop
cocked his pistol. He leaned low and pushed it beneath the man’s
chin. The deckhand had a terrifying, manic look in his eyes.

“My sister is in there. And if you mean to
keep me from her, then it’s about to get
real
dangerous for
you out here, too.”

“Weapon away, Coop,” bellowed Captain Mack as
he thumped up to the scene, huffing and puffing.

A few steps behind him was Gunner, and a few
steps farther was Butch.

Reluctantly, Coop holstered the weapon and
pulled the safety officer to his feet.

“Someone better start talking about what
happened here. I’ve got two members of my crew in that mine,” the
captain said.

The safety officer tried to catch his breath.
“Sir, we are evacuating the mine now. If they are inside, they will
be coming out, but you have to let us do our job.”

“Right then. Make room, Coop. Glinda, see to
anyone who needs help. Everyone keep your eyes peeled for Lil and
Nita.”

A few minutes passed, Coop barely able to
restrain himself as the carefully practiced procedures played out
in front of them. One by one, each miner turned his or her tag over
to the safety officer, who replaced it in the cabinet. With
remarkable efficiency, not five minutes later the last of the tags
were being hung up. There were three hooks vacant. Then Matthews
stumbled out of the mine, caked with dust and clearly disoriented.
The officer approached him, claiming his tag and hanging it up.

“Matthews,” Captain Mack said, stomping up to
the final person to vacate the mine. “You were with the girls. Tell
me what happened.”

“Please, sir, he may require medical
attention,” the safety officer said, reaching out to hold the
captain back. Before he could touch the man, a familiar cocking
sound drew his attention to Coop, pistol once again in hand.

“Glinda, is this man fit to answer a few
questions?” Mack called out.

His ex-wife and current medic paced over and
looked Matthews up and down once. She muttered something and made a
dismissive gesture.

“Tell me what happened,” Mack said.

“I… I don’t know. There was an explosion,”
Matthews said.

“Where are the girls?” Mack asked.

“They were in the chamber with the pump. It
was nearly finished. They might even have been testing it.”

“I was terrified this might happen, Captain,”
said the harried mayor as he made his way to the scene with labored
breath. “Those devices are so difficult to maintain. It must have
burst! Safety Officer, what is the situation?”

“The explosion was in a disused shaft. No
miners were inside. There was only Matthews and the two
visitors.”

“We’ve got to assume it was the pump that
blew,” Matthews said. “And if they were inside its chamber, we’ve
got to assume—”

There was a second cock of a weapon, this
time the captain’s pistol.

“Until I see what happened with my own eyes,
no one is assuming anything. We clear on that?”

Matthews nodded.

“Now we’re going in to see to our crew,” the
captain said. “Coop, bring Matthews along.”

The deckhand grabbed a handful of the man’s
vest.

“You can’t just go inside. There has been an
explosion. There is tremendous potential for collapse!” the safety
officer explained desperately.

The captain shifted his pistol to the
officer. “Well, then you can come along, make sure we’re good and
safe.”

Without waiting for his response, Captain
Mack, Butch, Coop, and Gunner marched into the mine, grabbing
helmets and fumbling them to flame on the way. The officer followed
on their heels, fetching the proper number of tags and catching up.
As the group moved deeper into the darkness, the dust in the air
became choking, but they simply retrieved kerchiefs and tied them
around their mouths, the safety officer deploying a more
purpose-built dust mask.

“You need to keep your eyes and ears open.
Any sound of crackling or clattering could be the roof giving way.
Look for cracks in the walls and ceiling, splintered beams. And for
heaven’s sake put those guns away. If the shaft is compromised,
even a loud report could be the last straw and cause a
cave-in.”

“Tell me what happened,” Mack said once more
to Matthews.

“I told you!” the man said, pulling himself
free of Coop’s grip and putting a handkerchief to his mouth. “They
were with the pump. They may have been testing it. There was an
explosion.”

The group made their way quickly to the site
of the explosion. The alcove was largely intact, but the walls of
the chamber that the girls had been working in were little more
than rubble, and a large section of the ceiling had collapsed,
burying the room under at least fifteen feet of jagged stone.

Coop pointed his gun at Matthews. “Is that
where they were?”

“Yes… I’m sorry, yes…” Matthews replied.