The Wind Merchant (3 page)

The wind’s howl began resembling a wailing chorus. Ras decided it was time to turn the ship back toward the entrance and wrap up the rest of his collection process before the valley became too narrow to maneuver.

As he spun the wooden wheel to bring
The Copper Fox
about, the indicator beeped Level 7. Seven could buy a new airship, but Seven would most likely get him killed.

The high readings raised the question of what lay in the heart of the canyon, giving off such concentrated amounts of Energy. Before Ras could give it more thought, he spotted a large gash in one of the cliff faces and imagined the size of the vessel that had collided with it. Thinking about the ship wedged somewhere deep in the dark below unsettled him.

The momentary lapse in attention caused Ras to overcompensate his turn, setting him perpendicular to the canyon’s path while the wind pushed him deeper into the valley. The nose of
The Copper Fox
careened off one of the cliff faces, jarring the ship and spinning it the remaining ninety degrees until it was flying backwards down Framer’s Valley.

Ras threw the throttle forward to battle his way out of the wind tunnel, but the engines failed to respond.

The canyon began to curve to starboard and Ras frantically tried to remap his mind to steer the ship counter-intuitively as the force of the wind pushed him deeper into the canyon. Having the right gut reaction when flying forward often proved difficult enough, but this orientation forced him into an outright panic. He attempted to rely on his often incorrect judgment, which briefly brought success, then panicked when he second guessed which gut-reaction to mistrust.

An incorrect spin of the wheel slammed the ship into an outcropping, knocking Ras into the wheel and pushing his ship down into an unexpected dive toward the clouds. He righted the ship just before dipping into their midst, but finding equilibrium proved to be impossible. With the ship in a terrible tailspin, all Ras could think about was how his father would never have been greedy enough to place himself in a bind like this.

After another half-turn, the bow and stern of
The Copper Fox
lodged against each cliff face of the narrowing canyon, throwing Ras to the deck. He struggled to his feet and clambered down the stairs from the bridge toward his quarters. The ship shuddered and scraped a little further down the canyon with each gust. He threw open the door and dashed into the upheaved room. Sliding down beside his bed, he reached underneath to pull out an arm brace that ran from wrist to shoulder. Spools of wire and metal blocks attached all along its forearm exterior.

His grapple gun.

Ras had modified the ‘gun’ so it could be loaded with either magnetic or traditional spiked grapple cartridges that dragged a cable behind them once fired. The gun could also connect with a surface and then shoot the opposite end into something else if there was enough cabling left.

Ras heard rocks crumble from one of the cliff faces.
The Copper Fox
lurched from its lodging and Ras scrambled out of his quarters. He hastily secured the grapple gun’s straps around his left arm and torso, then loaded two spike cartridges.

He aimed the device at the deck and squeezed the palm-activated trigger. The cartridge fired and the spike lodged into the deck of his ship. He lifted his arm, spooling a bit of cabling with the movement, and lined up a second shot into the cliff to port. Before the ship could swing into that wall, Ras repeated the process on the starboard cliff, anchoring his ship.

This isn’t going to hold
, he thought. He ran over and slid down the ladder into the hold to inspect the engines. One was making a horrible grinding noise while the other spewed steam, heating the cramped room.

Flipping the switches on the wall to shut them both down, he noticed a piece of metal debris lodged in the gear-work of the grinding engine. Ras tried to heft the piece free to no avail. The wind above deck howled louder as the ship bucked against its tethers.

He grabbed a heavy wrench hanging on the wall nearby and returned, giving the offending debris a stern whack to send it clattering to the floor. The engine grumbled back to life after a cycle, but before he could plug the leak on the other engine, a cacophonous screech gave way to a concussive blast, and the decking above him sheared away to reveal the bouncing balloon.

Ras wished he had questioned the wisdom of placing the two grapples so close together.

Freed from its moorings,
The Copper Fox
bounded forward, sending Ras tumbling in a small room full of sharp and hard machinery, earning him a collection of small cuts and a myriad of bruises to come—if he were to survive this. One engine was better than none, and Ras regained his footing enough to stand for a moment before a series of strong gusts flung the ship from port to starboard, then dove. He watched his feet leave the flooring of the engine room as the ship dropped out from underneath him. He shot through the newly created hole in the deck until his back hit something soft: the balloon.

Bouncing backwards, he saw
The Copper Fox
leaving him behind. Ras instinctively pointed his left arm at his ship and squeezed the palm trigger to fire off a spike at the hull. The line pulled taut, straining the strap around his midsection with a jerk, and Ras tumbled behind his ship like a lead kite as they fell toward the cloud level.

A powerful updraft ended the nosedive of
The Copper Fox
, stopping Ras just short of dragging his legs through the dark clouds before swinging him back up toward his ship. He pulled himself into a ball before colliding with the underbelly, almost knocking him unconscious. The pendulum motion left him dangling helplessly, watching his ship careen along unmanned.

His eye caught some light ahead…the end of the canyon. Ras watched his ship scrape against a cliff wall one last time for good measure before bouncing into the open area.

He entered a large, circular arena walled in by a grove of mountaintops. The wind swirled around
The Copper Fox
, gently spinning the vessel. Ras took a moment to collect himself until he realized his ship was slowly losing altitude, bringing him dangerously closer to the hissing and crackling clouds. Light flashed and skittered beneath his feet, followed by a deafening boom which echoed throughout the canyon, scaring him witless.

“No, no, no!” Ras said as he began climbing the cable up to his ship. His ungloved hands were raw from holding onto the cable so tight, and each hoist shot bursts of pain through his arms. He looked up and spotted a ship hanging high above the canyon walls, higher than he’d ever seen a ship fly. It had a familiarity to it, but one that was difficult to place when he was busy climbing for his life.

“Help!” Ras shouted to the ship, his voice straining. He knew they probably wouldn’t hear him, but he had to try. He climbed faster, barely staying a foot above the black swirl.

The young man’s arms burned with exhaustion until he finally slipped, falling into the clouds.
The Copper Fox
drifted in after him, erasing any evidence of Framer’s Valley’s latest victim.

Ras closed his eyes and hoped the process would be quick.

Sensation flooded his body and Ras cried out until he realized he wasn’t disintegrating…he was getting soaked from head to toe. Having fallen beneath the cloud layer, he looked up and shielded his eyes from the droplets of water cascading onto him. The sensation reminded him of a dew bath on
Verdant
, only the water here was extravagant. He knew people used to have a name for water falling from clouds, but the joy of not dying overrode any memory of his history lessons.

A jubilant laugh erupted from him, but a flashing streak of bright white light stopped his outburst and illuminated the area below in a brilliant momentary flash.

Beneath him lay a circular field of something green waving back and forth with the wind. Nestled in the green laid the remains of a derelict airship, grown over with some sort of vegetation.

Just beyond the ship where the cliff met the field, a green glow emanated from the dark maw bored into the rock.

In a matter of minutes he floated down and landed with a gentle thud in the wavy substance, too tired to do anything but just lay in the soft stuff. It reminded him of the pictures from before man took to the skies, but he never learned the name of it.

The strangeness of being on land finally caught up with Ras. There was a stability he appreciated, and for the first time in a long while he felt at peace.

Is this what my great-grandfather felt like?
He wondered if he was the first person from Atmo to touch the ground in eighty years.
But why am I still alive?

He didn’t want to watch his ship crash but there was little he could do to stop it. He just lay enveloped by the green, wondering how many ships had fallen prey to Framer’s, and how the ship he saw earlier could fly higher than the canyon—

“The Kingfisher
!” It finally dawned on him where he recognized the mystery ship from. It fit the exact description of the ghost ship wind merchants told tales about. The stories about the ship hadn’t begun as ghost tales, but since sightings were still reported one-hundred years after
The Kingfisher
and its crew ended The Clockwork War, the tales evolved.

Some said
The Kingfisher’s
captain, Halcyon Napier, was the first wind merchant because he discovered The Origin of All Energy. No two versions concurred about where the man was from, but they all agreed he was single-handedly responsible for turning the tide against the clockwork automatons known as The Elders.

The grapple gun tugged on his arm and Ras realized he hadn’t heard a crashing noise yet, but before he could move, the tugging evolved to dragging, and soon he began parting the sea of green. Ras’ fumbling fingers worked the release latch on the device and the cable whipped away, leaving him lying in the field.

Picking himself up, Ras glanced over to see what had become of
The Copper Fox
and found it drifting lazily a hundred yards away, bobbing in the breeze and bumping gently into a cliff wall.

Ras waded through the tall undergrowth after deciding water falling on him was a unique but tiresome sensation. He headed toward the decaying airship, wondering what fate had befallen the crew until his attention was ripped away by what lay inside the rock.

A nebulous, floating sphere of Energy ten yards around exuded brilliance and danger, casting a green light all around it. It was the most beautiful thing Ras had ever seen, and also the saddest.

Ras knew he had found Framer’s source of Energy: a Convergence. Aside from The Origin of All Energy, Convergences were the only things capable of putting off raw Energy onto the wind. The difference between the two was the Origin’s Energy emanated from the ground, while a Convergence was composed of the absorbed essence of any man, woman, or child with an Energy sensitivity who got too close to a potent amount of the resource.

In the last years that humanity spent on the ground, Convergences had obliterated densely packed city populations, causing those sensitive to Energy to erupt, destroying city blocks and continually adding new sources of Energy to the wind. The higher levels triggered the less sensitive to follow suit, forcing the depopulated world to erect what defenses they could. And just when it seemed everyone that could succumb to the curse was gone, the next generation proved Energy sensitivity to be genetic.

Ras sometimes wondered if Knacks took up lives as wind merchants as a penance for The Great Overload, or just because they didn’t want to be around cities. Regardless, the irony was not lost on anyone in Atmo that Knacks now sought Energy in survivable quantities to keep the world running.

Nobody knew where the first Convergences came from other than they arrived shortly after The Clockwork War. Most considered them a weapon of The Elders—a parting gift after they failed to subjugate humanity.

Ras guessed his insensitivity to Energy was the only thing saving him from the same fate as the poor souls from the wrecked ship, and for once he didn’t mind being a Lack.

The high Energy readings from the canyon made more sense now. He estimated the Convergence put off a Level 8 rating if not a 9, which required a guild-approved license to sell the haul because collecting such Energy-rich air was extremely dangerous.

But not to Ras, for whatever genetic fluke.

A smile crept across his lips. He was going to be a hero, and better yet, a rich one.

Convergences usually flitted about on the wind, necessitating that wind merchants find new collection spots. Whether something was beneath the clouds destroying Convergences or they were simply being blown out of The Bowl, Ras wagered he was looking at
Verdant
’s last fuel source.

This Convergence wasn’t going anywhere, and nobody would be fool enough to risk flying through the canyon to find it.
Verdant
could relocate to Framer’s Valley and have enough Energy to run indefinitely.

He would need proof, though. The amount of Energy
Verdant
would need to burn just to move was more than the benefit of hovering over any vagabond Convergence. But if he could show them a partially filled tank of Level 8 or 9 wind, then maybe—just maybe—he’d be able to convince them that
this
one was stationary. He could both save his home city and ensure nobody ever called him a Lack again.

He made his way to
The Copper Fox,
grappled to the railing, and with a little effort hoisted himself up to begin repairing the second engine and patching the balloon.

It took a few hours and several salvage trips to the wrecked airship, but at last
The Copper Fox
was in mostly working order. Ras flew it near the mouth of the cave, lowering the collection tube. The sensor read Level 9, but all Ras required was a sample. Even that would be worth a small fortune.

He mashed down the collection button. He didn’t know if harvesting too much would destabilize or dissipate the Convergence, so he decided to only fill his collection tank up to ten percent.