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Part 26: SHEETS IN THE WIND
Lance and Ham had been sequestered in an old bedroom, with little to occupy them save for a pitcher of water on a faded vanity and an ancient bed covered in dusty bedsheets. The rest of the furniture – old closets, armoires, chests of drawers – had been left under stark grey dust sheets. Ham paced the small room, muttering to himself; Lance sat at the vanity, opening drawers and pouring himself some water.
‘There’s a guard at the door,’ Ham noted, an edge of worry entering his voice. ‘This is no good; we’re going to be carted off for execution, no doubt!’
‘I think if they were going to execute us, they would’ve just done it,’ Lance said. ‘Besides, they’ve left us some water, and we’re not exactly in a secure room.’ He glanced over at Ham, who shook his head and continued pacing, one hand rubbing his chin obsessively.
Lance shrugged and went over to the windows. These were of simpler design than those of House Bounder – House Shields-Upon-The-Wall evidently favoured more spartan taste. They also preferred fresh air; Lance noted a lever at the window’s base and the hinges on one edge. He looked over his shoulder at the door – surely they wouldn’t…?
He opened the window. The lever was intended to catch on a nub of metal in the window frame, but if kept lifted Lance found he could swing the window open to its fullest extent, where it bumped against the outer stonework. He looked out over the landscape: a gentle snow was falling, an easy wind blowing a few flakes into the room. This window opened out over a sharp drop-off, the black rock of the mountain falling steeply away; down below, far down, Lance saw the crenellations of the outer wall, the entrance to those somewhere in the depths of the fortress. The rest of Vaalhest was swept behind them, invisible from here; only the long ridge of the mountain range, jutting up-down-up-down like saw teeth and dusted with snow, marked out that they were not an island amid the clouds.
‘What are you doing?’ Ham cried. ‘Are you planning to freeze us to death before they can kill us?’ Lance shot him a glare and leaned out over the windowsill.
‘There are battlements down there,’ he said. ‘It’s a ways down, but we could maybe climb down…’ He let the uncertainty hang in the air.
Ham came over and looked out, squinting to see the stonework below. He wrinkled his nose from the cold and shook his head.
‘There’ll be one way out,’ he warned. ‘If we go down there, we’d best be sure that road is clear. And how do we get down there in the first place?’
Lance looked around the room. He went over to the bed and began pulling bedding from it, pulling up the top sheet and untying the duvet cover.
‘We’ve got these,’ he began, and, pointing, ‘and the dust sheets there. And we can look inside all these closets, see if they’ve left us anything else we can use.’
‘Alright, but we make sure we’ve got enough to knot this all solidly,’ Ham said. ‘I want to make this as safe as possible, which means handholds and backups. Two lines at minimum.’
‘Could we rip them up to make more material?’ Lance asked. Ham shook his head.
‘We should keep them whole as much as possible. On the off-chance they’re not planning to execute us, I’d rather not have to explain why we destroyed a bunch of their linens!’
They set to work, pulling off dust covers and rooting in closets. Lance paced out ten feet and they set their material on the floor, tying and knotting to create lengths of impromptu rope, knotted at regular intervals to provide handholds for the way down. Ham took a look out of the window again, noting with distaste that frost was beginning to rime the sill.
‘Looks to be about… a hundred and fifty feet down,’ he said. ‘Let’s make fifteen lengths and see where we are.’
It took more than an hour to knot and measure out the fifteen lengths, testing the strength of the connections and ensuring all knots were tight and unlikely to slip. After that, it was nearly another hour to make the second line, and to test it by swinging Lance from the chandelier to make sure it wouldn’t come apart.
‘It seems to work,’ Lance commented, swinging idly in mid-air. Ham sweated as he took the weight, slowly lowering the cadet down to the floor.
‘Alright,’ he said. ‘Let’s toss the first rope out and see how short we are.’
‘So did you and Dorian make daring escapes like this a lot, when you were younger?’ Lance asked, tying the ends of the ropes to the bedframe. Ham nodded absently, playing the knotted sheet out in his hands.
‘More than a few, for sure,’ he said. ‘But not as many as you’d think. All that swinging on ropes between ships, cutting our way down bells, daring leaps out of windows from the novels… a lot of that’s made up. Fact is, Dorian was famous because he got away with attacks a lot more than other captains.’
‘How did he manage that?’ Lance asked, wide-eyed, aghast, and Ham chuckled.
‘The light engine helped! Easy to get away if you can grab the goods and rise up faster than your target – get into the clouds, you can go anywhere. But a lot of it was just being clever, knowing the winds and the routes better than the enemy.’
‘But the navy has some excellent navigators!’ Lance retorted. ‘It’s a part of officer training!’
‘It is now, aye. But back in the day, officer training was all about managing people and making decisions. The navigator was whoever was best at reading the air charts. It was an easier time to be a pirate, is all.’ He played out the last of the rope, leaning over the sill to eyeball its length.
‘And now?’ Lance asked, peering out at the snow between Ham’s bulk and the wall. Ham glanced back and shrugged.
‘They’ve got all the ships,’ he said. ‘All the men. And all the firepower. What is there for us?’ He drew his head back in and rubbed his chin. ‘We’re about fifteen feet short, by my reckoning,’ he said. ‘Think you can handle a short drop at the end?’ Lance nodded.
‘You don’t seem to think very highly of the navy,’ he said, as he wrapped the safety rope around his waist. Ham shook his head and grinned.
‘Well, I was an engineer in the war,’ he said. ‘I saw how the navy operated in those days – it was back-breaking work, for little pay, and you had to serve your four years before you were allowed out. And all that work served the captains, who had so little interest in their ships or their crew. All they cared about was climbing the ranks.’ He spat, then glanced down at Lance conscientiously. ‘I’m sure that’s all changed nowadays, though,’ he added grudgingly. Lance frowned, staring at the ground.
They started at the sound of distant voices, a posse approaching the door.
‘No more time!’ Ham hissed, grabbing Lance under the arms. ‘Out you go, steady on your way down!’ He lifted Lance onto the windowsill, pressing the knotted rope into his hands.
‘But what about you?’ Lance asked.
‘I’ll hold ‘em off!’ Ham insisted. ‘Now go! The sooner you’re down, the sooner I can join you!’
Lance nodded and slipped backwards out of the window, Ham glancing anxiously over his shoulder at the door.
Ham strained against Lance’s weight on the safety rope. He knew he would have no recourse to defend himself if a bunch of Cannibals burst through the door; the best he could do would be to buy Lance some time to shimmy down the rope as quickly as possible. He looked about himself – there was not much that could be used as a weapon. His eyes alighted upon one item – not much weight, but it was metal, so it would have to do. Reluctantly, as the voices came closer, he let go of the rope and turned to defence.
The door handle turned.
The doors flew open. Ham met the visitors with a scream, and brought the pitcher down on the first Cannibal to come through the doors.
It was twenty minutes later, and Ham was still apologising.
‘I’ve been home three days,’ Cynan moaned, ‘and you nearly stove my bloody head in!’
‘Look, we had no idea what was going on!’ Ham retorted guiltily. ‘For all I knew, I was about to be dragged off for execution!’
They were in the public infirmary, a final stop before returning to the ship. Cad had deftly removed the jug from Ham’s grip and stemmed the bleeding from the gash he’d left in Cynan’s head, and brought the two of them here to tend to them quickly. Wilde had fetched him water and bandages and thread as he explained the situation to Ham.
Lance was a more difficult prospect. At approximately the time the door had been opened, he’d been halfway down the outer wall. By the time the commotion was over, he had untied himself and dropped lightly to the parapet, and was waiting for Ham to appear in the window. Instead he had seen Maira’s frustrated face; she’d yelled at him to stay there, and now she was on her way down – guided by Sverre, who also could not stop apologising at this point – to retrieve him.
It was another ten minutes before they returned – the outer walls were separated by a number of staircases, and with the condition of her leg and the recovery process taking their toll, Maira needed to stop several times to catch her breath – but when they did Maira sank into a chair and glowered into the middle distance. Even Lance looked a little out of breath, cheeks ruddy and shiny. Ham glanced over at his captain and sighed.
‘I’m sorry, Captain,’ he said. ‘I thought we were goners! I was fully intending to circle back around and rescue you, just as soon as-’ Maira held up a hand and he paused, swallowing his words.
‘I’m not mad at you,’ she sighed. ‘I’m just… processing a lot right now. You need to be aware of the contracts we’re under now.’ She sat forward, hands together, staring at nothing as she thought.
‘What are we owing?’ Ham asked grimly. Maira glanced up at him and took a steadying breath.
‘We’re under contract for a year’s worth of light,’ she said. ‘To be supplied each quarter in arrears, first lot due in three months. For a place this size, we’re looking at three hundred ampoules a month.’
‘Three hundred!’ Ham breathed. ‘Mercy me, that’s…’ he began to calculate, but Maira interjected.
‘There’s more,’ she said. ‘Sverre’s waived the fee for fixing up the ship and provisioning it for our… new crew – he calls that payment for services rendered, I presume he means the help we rendered in this coup-’
‘He does,’ Cad interrupted, grinning like a cat. Maira shot him a glare.
‘All that doesn’t include the new crew, nor the medical services rendered-’
‘Or the air charts I’m gifting to your helm,’ Cad interrupted again. ‘Captain, you need rest. The medicine and charts are my gift to you, as a dear friend. And as for the crew, well-’
‘They’re dead if they stay here,’ Cynan said. ‘So they might as well go with you.’
‘Even now?’ Ham asked. Cynan nodded.
‘House Supreme Authority is down, but not out,’ Cad explained. ‘Even if they cannot regain the throne, they can petition for reparations – which would include the execution of a considerable portion of my family.’
‘So they’re coming with us,’ Wilde said.
‘There’s more,’ Maira said, but she turned to Wilde. ‘Tell them the rest,’ she said.
‘Me?’ Wilde paled, but Maira nodded. Wilde stared at the ground, heat rising as she felt all eyes on her.
‘I have a rifle,’ she said quietly. ‘I asked if they could make some repairs here – they can do some of it, but not all. I’ll have a working weapon, albeit without a scope.’
‘And what was the cost?’ Ham asked. ‘You had a fair few fins – enough to cover it?’
‘I, uh…’ Wilde clutched at her sleeves and started again. ‘I didn’t pay anything. They heard about the weapon, and, well…’ She tailed off. Maira rolled her eyes.
‘You know how she was running from the Umbrella Men?’ she said. Ham nodded. ‘Turns out that gun she’s got is a ship-killer. It rips straight through Umbrella Man armour, and it can burst a balloon bell if it’s not properly shielded.’
Ham gasped. Lance went an ashen grey. Even Cynan turned to regard Wilde curiously.
‘That’s…’ Ham began, but Maira held up a hand.
‘She had no knowledge of its power or purpose until the day of her escape,’ she said. ‘Hell, she didn’t know it existed until then. But now she knows, and she’s got it… and the Cannibals will have it too.’
‘They didn’t!’ Ham snapped. Maira nodded solemnly.
‘They wanted to take some sketches,’ Wilde said. ‘I was gonna say yes, but Maira told them they could only do it if they fixed it up too.’
‘Which is why Sverre agreed,’ Cynan said. ‘He’ll wager this into powerful leverage – he’ll be the Earl who brought a ship-killer to Vaalhest!’
‘No he won’t,’ Cad said. ‘Oho, this is fun! Now it’s my turn for the big reveal!’
‘This isn’t supposed to be fun, Cad,’ Maira sighed, staring at the ceiling.
‘Oh, but it is!’ Cad grinned. ‘You see, House Shields-Upon-The-Wall are not taking the throne. Our agreements will be honoured!’ he added quickly, seeing Maira sit up and glower at him. ‘Sverre is taking up a position as vizier in advisory capacity to the new ruling family: House Defender.’
‘Interesting,’ Cynan mused. ‘I thought it would’ve been House Bounder.’ Cad flashed him a dark look, then turned his smile upon the rest of the group.
‘I thought about it,’ he said. ‘But I considered it in poor taste. No, I leveraged a final favour to repay… to repay an old friend.’ His voice faltered and he turned back to his book. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, raising it up to hide his face. Maira groaned.
‘That’s very nice, Cad,’ she said eventually. ‘Thank you for clarifying that it doesn’t change our contract negotiations.’ She looked between her crew and Cynan. ‘Do we have any other pressing revelations to add? Or should we get going for the ship?’
Everyone stared at her expectantly, until Maira glowered at them sufficiently that they looked away again. She stood slowly, achingly.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Let’s head back – we need to get loaded up.’
Cynan accompanied them back to the ship. He and Maira spoke as they walked, leading the group.
‘So what’s next for you, now you have a new lease on life?’ Maira asked. Cynan chuckled and shook his head.
‘See how far I can push it,’ he said. ‘I give myself a week at most before some upstart house lends their Spear against my neck – I’m one bad day away from losing my head.’
‘You’ve got a family backing you up now,’ Maira replied with a grin. ‘Speaking of which: How’s the political situation shaking out here? Am I gonna be wanted for treason again?’
‘Not yet, Captain!’ Cynan laughed. ‘House Supreme Authority is all-but dissolved; there’ll be a month of petitions to replace them, and most of those families will be only too happy to acknowledge the part you played in unseating them.’
‘Sounds like a lot of work for the ruling house.’
‘It’s more work for House Bounder. So many potential picks – so many favours to trade! You’ll see; House Bounder’s stock-in-trade is leverage, you’ll have your hands full with this crew!’
‘Don’t make me regret this, Cynan.’ They stopped at the doorway, Maira turned to face him. She embraced him in a tight hug, felt his hesitance before his arms wrapped around her. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for getting us here. Without you, I don’t… we could’ve-’
Cynan shushed her, holding her at arm’s length.
‘None of that,’ he said. ‘I told you: I was fated. I thank you for bearing me home. Now to your ship, Captain; you have a family of your own to protect, and it’s up there!’
Maira smiled, blinking away the tears in her eyes, and sighed as she stepped out into the frosty air.
Cad’s inner circle had assembled on the landing pad by the time Maira and crew arrived, and stood to attention as she passed on her way to the gangplank. She stopped at the foot of the steps and looked them over.
‘Cad, I don’t know who half of these people are,’ she muttered. Cad nodded and leaned in.
‘I do,’ he said. ‘You leave it with me.’ She nodded and addressed the new crew.
‘Cannibals of Vaalhest,’ she said aloud. ‘If you’re joining my crew, make yourself known to Ham – that’s my engineer, here-’ she indicated Ham, who raised a hand in a wave, ‘and Cad – who I’m sure you all know. They’ll let you know your role on the ship and where you’ll be staying.’ Without further ado, she ascended the steps and disappeared into the bowels of the ship.
Sancho was the first to step up. Cad assigned him to the helm, steering the ship; to Isabella he assigned the role of radio operator. Pepin was cabin boy; the rest received roles about the ship as suited to them, and all proceeded up the gangplank to one of the two forward bunkhouses.
Towards the end of the line, Cad spied a familiar face. He scowled as Miguel of House Supreme Authority approached, a carefree smile plastered on his face and a simple suitcase in his hand.
‘What are you doing here, Miguel?’ he asked sourly. ‘Too noble to be put to the sword with your family?’
‘Have a care, brother,’ Miguel replied coolly. ‘I seek passage – I can pay.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pouch of coins.
‘It’s not my decision,’ Cad retorted. ‘You’ll simply have to wait while I take it up with the captain – possibly until we come back in three months.’ Miguel looked him up and down, that smile widening if anything.
‘You’d be a fool to turn it down. I’m willing to pay good money, and I have a hunch you’re going where I want to go anyway.’
‘What’s the rush?’ Ham asked darkly. Miguel glanced over at him, then his eyes darted back to Cad.
‘The situation here is… not politically conducive to my health,’ he said. ‘I’m looking for long-term prospects.’
‘Hey, Cad!’ Cad glanced up; Maira was staring down at him from above.
‘I count eleven Bounders aboard,’ she said. ‘I’m waiting – who’s this chancer?’
‘Miguel of House Supreme Authority!’ Miguel called back. ‘I’m looking for passage to Twin Knee Camp!’
There was a pause as Maira calculated.
‘Is his money good?’ she asked eventually. Cad peered into the bag and nodded. ‘Then we’ll take him. Your berth’s at the stern, Port-side.’
‘You are too kind!’ Miguel called up. He put a hand on the bannister and turned to Cad, shooting him a dirty look. ‘I’ll see you up there, brother!’ he hissed. Cad watched him up the steps, expression inscrutable.
‘Well,’ Ham remarked, ‘this is already turning out interesting. Shall we get on?’
They ushered Lance and Wilde aboard and followed on themselves, pulling the gangplank up behind them.
There was a brilliant flash as the light engine engaged, and the Fallen Star rose into the air, trundling southwards towards the independent lands.