The Wind Merchant (7 page)

He had heard that theory from his father before. Since Elias wasn’t sure of it, Ras remained skeptical. “So Dad would have thought I did the right thing?”

“Maybe,” Emma said, starting the skiff’s engine. “This was a few years before
The Winnower
was built, of course, so we weren’t expecting The Collective to take away our ability to stay in the air forever.” She pressed on the accelerator, leaving the courtroom behind them. “There’s someone I think you should talk to.”

Old Harley struggled to sit up in his hospital bed. “Come in, sit, sit!” He coughed, gesturing for Ras and Emma to enter. “It’s good to see you!”

Ras hadn’t believed that he could have felt any worse than he already did, but the sight of Harley’s ashen complexion somehow managed to sharpen his shame. “Harley, I’m so sorry—” he began.

“Oh put a cork in it kid. All week long it’s been reporters, deputies, or doctors. It’s nice to see a familiar face. I kept telling them if I hadn’t have been such a busybody, I would be fine right now. Serves me right,” he said. “You know who should be sorry? The Collective.”

“Why’s that?” Emma asked, taking a seat.

“With
Verdant
sinking and no more Convergences in the area, they’re pulling out. Who are the wind merchants going to sell to now? The least they could do is install their Helios engines so we could buy fuel, but it’s like they’re punishing us for not buying from them in the first place. They hiked up their prices on their engines and fuel too! All on account of the skirmish they got going on with the sky pirates.” He scoffed. “Load of malarky, I tell you.”

The beeps from the machinery were the only sound filling the room for the next few minutes.

“How much do you think The Collective would charge to swap out
Verdant’s
engines?” Ras ventured at last.

“Oh, I don’t know. More than anyone around here’s got, and probably all put together. Your father saw this coming. That’s why he split.”

“Harley!” Emma said, angered. She softened her expression and shook her head when Ras looked at her for clarification. “He did not ‘
split
.’  He went to find a solution for
Verdant
that wasn’t going to stuff the pockets of The Collective,” she said in a phrase Ras heard many times growing up.

“Emma, the man said he had a mission from Hal Napier himself.”

“What?” Ras asked.

Emma stood up. “That’s enough!”

“The boy needs to know sometime.” Harley protested.

“What exactly did Ras need to know? The rumors you hear third or fourth hand at the docks? If he wants to know more about his father he can ask me, not some deckhand,” she said, then stormed out.

The two men sat silent for a moment. “Your father was a good man, Ras. I overstepped my bounds,” Harley said, not meeting Ras’ gaze.

“Do you believe he met Hal?” Ras asked.

“That’s a hard thing to say. I think it’s possible he met someone that flew
The Kingfisher
, but that ship would have to at least be one-hundred years old or more. That part’s plausible.”

“I think I saw it.
The Kingfisher
.”

Harley shifted in his bed, then peered out into the hallway before looking back to Ras. “Where?”

Ras lowered his voice. “Way above the Convergence in Framer’s. I didn’t get a long look, but how many other ships can fly above the mountains there?”

“Have you told anybody?”

Ras shook his head. “People would just think I was crazy.”

“You flew beneath the clouds and collected a Convergence. You have a little wiggle room for discussing the impossible,” Harley said. “I think I upset your mother a good bit. Would you pass along my apologies?”

Ras nodded and stood. “If that was Hal, or even the same person that my dad met…do you think they could help
Verdant
?”

“Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Harley said.

Without a ship, Ras didn’t know how he’d be able to make it out to find
The Kingfisher
, let alone fly up to meet it, but opportunities to put things right for
Verdant
weren’t exactly jumping into his lap. He’d find a way. Bidding goodbye to Old Harley, Ras turned and left the room to find his mother.

Emma had reached the main entrance of the hospital before Ras caught up with her. She wiped away smudged makeup while Ras kept pace with her short strides.

“I’m not asking you to talk about it,” he said.

“I’m fine talking about your father,” she said. “It’s just some people have very inaccurate information about why he left.”

“If he knew
Verdant
was in trouble, why didn’t we just move to a city that ran on Helios engines?”

Emma stopped. “Because he didn’t know how to quit when it came to helping others.”

“Should he have?” Ras asked.

She took a deep breath before shaking her head. “It was one of his better qualities.
Verdant
would have been overrun with sky pirates if he had quit. It’s just a shame—” she started, but restrained herself.

“What’s a shame?”

“We were going to raise you on
The Silver Fox
…not be tethered to any Helios-built system. It’s just a shame that’s not how it worked out.”

“Why didn’t it?”

Emma half-smiled. “There were just some things your father needed to do on his own.”

“Like work for Halcyon Napier?” Ras asked.

“I don’t know what Harley was talking about. There were a lot of rumors about why your father left, but it wasn’t for some long dead war hero.”

“Mom?” Ras asked. “I’m sorry I lost the ship.”

She embraced him tightly. “I still have you. Forget the ship.”

The first day of community service in the guts of
Verdant
made it very difficult to simply “forget the ship.”

Gone were the clouds, replaced by flickering lights and dank pipes that smelled of stagnation. Ras meandered down the long corridors lined with cables and wires, his boots clanking on the iron grated walkway.

Three engineers passed Ras in a half-jog, ignoring the newcomer.

Leaving the world plastered with newspapers showing his name and photo was a surprisingly welcome respite, even after enduring one morning of walking to his new job.

Bronze signs pointed Ras in the direction of the dimly-lit main office. The eight-walled room consisted of twenty blueprint laden desks and one woman with a mop of curly hair poring over one of the sets. She looked to be in her mid-forties and filled out a jumpsuit that had once been a sky blue but now more resembled a patchwork of grays, greens, and browns with the occasional hint of its original color. The mostly white name patch read “Billie.”

“You the new grunt?” Billie asked, not looking up.

Ras mumbled something resembling an affirmation.

“Good, glad they gave me someone with spunk,” she said. “C’mon, I’ll show you to your station.” She began to walk, and Ras followed.

“How long have you worked down here?” Ras asked.

“Well, I was born down here, so you do the math,” she said. Ras had heard of some communities that lived within
Verdant
, underneath the top layer. The rumor was they originated from groups that either hated heights or sought seclusion.

“Do you go up top much?”

“Occasionally. My father was a Knack so he was forced to live below ground when
Verdant
launched.”

“Forced? I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, most people chose to forget that tidbit or didn’t pass it on to their kiddos,” Billie said. “A few became wind merchants, but the rest wound up here.” They took a turn down a corridor that looked exactly the same as the one they left. Ras could already see himself getting hopelessly lost on a regular basis.

“How do you know where you’re going?” Ras asked.

“Most people who work down here are children or grandchildren of Knacks, so some of that gets passed down. We can sense where the engines are and how the Energy flows through the city,” she said, gesturing to the conduits and valves all around. “Foster Helios designed the cities to give Knacks a special purpose and to keep them safe.”

“Because we didn’t know how much Energy was above the clouds?”

“No, because everyone hated us for destroying the world. Well, not us…my grandfather’s generation. Not that they could help it,” she said.

They stopped at a small supply closet. Billie opened it, extracted a mop, bucket, and gas mask, then handed Ras the lot. “Sub-level Four had an oil leak that needs cleaning up after.”

“I’m sorry, I thought I was supposed to be working with the engine.”

“You are,” she said. “Underneath we refer to everything and everyone as ‘the engine.’ We work together to keep the city flying, no matter what. You up for that?”

Aside from making it onboard
The Kingfisher
, Ras couldn’t think of any other way to begin balancing the scale, but this was by far the more practical way to help
Verdant
.

Sub-level Four greeted Ras with an acrid smell that prompted him to immediately slap on the gas mask, which did little to shut out the odor. He saw a dozen other masked workers already cleaning the corridor. “Lunch break is at noon on Sub-level Two,” Billie said, the gas mask muffling her voice and forcing Ras to strain in order to hear her. “Did you bring anything?”

Lunch was one of the many small-picture things that had slipped Ras’ mind lately. He shook his head, wiggling the mask and distorting his vision.

“There’s a cafeteria you can buy something from, but I don’t recommend it.” She paused. “I have an extra sandwich if you’d like.”

The generous offer struck him. “Out of curiosity, do you know why I’m down here?” It was a loaded question, but Ras had grown weary of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I do,” she said, “Just about everybody does.”

“Why are you being so nice?”

Her mask lifted slightly, indicating a smile. “Down here we come from a line of people accused of ending the world by accident…but we’re still alive, and I figure we’ll still be alive after all this gets sorted out,” she said. “Of course you’ll run into some folk that aren’t going to enjoy their job getting harder, but everyone down here appreciates a good second chance. Don’t waste it.” She placed a hand on Ras’ shoulder, then shoved him out of the elevator. “Now, off to work with you.”

The morning passed quickly. Nobody spoke to Ras, but he also imagined nobody knew who he was in a jumpsuit and gas mask, so he didn’t take it personally. The work was tedious, but necessary, and Ras took a small amount of pride in the part he played.

At noon he left to find his way to Sub-level Two, and after a few errant turns, he found his way to the crowded mess hall, which was filled with long benched tables. Billie sat at one in the corner, and beckoned Ras over before reengaging two men in a spirited debate.

A fiery red haired man in a white lab coat gesticulated wildly with an unlit pipe. “Forget The Collective! If
Verdant
won’t fit through the main pass of The Bowl, then all we need are wind merchants willing to collect outside The Bowl to feed her engines!”

“Have you ever been outside The Bowl?” A man with an eyepatch and a short military-style haircut spoke with a gruff voice. His dark green jumpsuit held a patch that read “8”, and Ras wondered what it meant. “Wind merchants have gotten soft, trolling around…half of them probably couldn’t navigate the mountain passes out of here, let alone fend off India Bravo to bring back what little they do find.”

“Well, do you have a better idea?” the red-head asked.

Ras sat down on the bench facing the wall next to Billie and she introduced him, “Ras, I’d like you to meet my two best friends: Finn,” she said, nodding toward the red-head. “He works in our medical wing.”

Finn extended his hand. “Ras.”

Ras accepted the handshake and found his hand vigorously shaken twice before release.

“And this gentleman is Guy,” she said.

“That’s generous,” Guy said. The man with the eyepatch managed to make a point of not extending his hand, but acknowledged Ras’ presence with a nod. “At least you showed up.”

Billie slid a wrapped sandwich over to Ras as Finn continued. “Yeah, but the only reason they got soft is because The Collective did the dirty work, fighting the pirates. Thanks to the kid here, they’ve finally buggered off and we can go back to being self-sustaining.”

“We’re never going to be self-sustaining with
The Winnower
just sitting there. I mean, I don’t remember getting to vote on building a giant dome over the Origin
,
” Guy said.

Ras took another bite of his sandwich, taking in the exchange. He swallowed and said, “What if they took away
The Winnower
and just used it as a refinement plant to bring collected Energy?”

Guy shook his head. “What business would start paying people for what it already gets free? Besides, it’s how they fuel their war with the sky pirates. Little fear goes a long way, and most people can still sleep easy in their beds if a few cities fall from the sky as long as they feel like someone is keeping them safe.”

“They set themselves up nice,” Finn said. “Opposing them means being for the sky pirates.” He sighed. “We don’t want to rape and pillage, we just don’t want to fall from the sky.”

“I just want to know,” Guy said, jutting a thumb at Ras, “How someone like him flew below the clouds.”

“Easy on the new guy,” Billie said, shooting Guy a menacing look. “He’s been here a whole four hours. We’ve got six months with him—”

“Chief is saying the city’s Energy reserves are only buying us one month if we don’t get a new influx,” Finn said, inspecting his pipe.

“Then we have a month to get to know him. Maybe we can make it two or three. Maybe more. He’s here to help us eke out every ounce of efficiency we can out of the old girl, and that won’t happen if we don’t work together.”

One month
, Ras thought.
Wonder if they knew that during sentencing.

“I’m fine taking my chances on the ground,” Finn said, nodding to Ras. “If they’re saying there’s no more Energy in The Bowl, why not?”