Captain Horatio Marsh was hanging in a great bucket, wearing shirt sleeves with a common sailor's rag tied around his long black hair.
The bucket dangled from a crane fixed to a roof beam at the peak of the Blue Oriole's hangar.
It wasn't common for a ship's captain to inspect his carpenter's fine work, but Marsh believed in looking after details.
Too many times in his career he had discovered that a joining job had been done with salvaged timber or rotting bolts. Or found that his tins of stored beef were shot through with spoilage.
In any event, such "scut" work, as he called, was also a convenient way to escape the creditors and lawyers and merchants and insurance men who crowded around any sizable dream clipper.
Thanks to the fiasco with the parrots, Captain Marsh had been forced to borrow heavily against the value of the Oriole.
The idea of mortgaging his ship made him feel distinctly disloyal and dodgy.
He made up for it by going over her planks one by one, knocking the wood, striking the rivets with a small jeweler's hammer that he kept in his belt.
It was just getting on toward his mid-day supper when someone hailed him from below. It was Marcus Barkle, hat in hand.
There were rules against interrupting the Captain, when he was "fondling his lass," as the crewmen said.
Even from a height, Marsh could see that his Lord of Shrouds had a sheepish look on his face, and a swelling bruise on one cheek.
"Well, now," he said. "What the yellow hell have you got yourself into this time, Mr. Barkle?"
"I've been hunting, sir," said the little man. "I got a good one, but he came at a cost."
"What kind of cost?"
"Well, he's a runner, for one thing. I've had to lock him up special, apart from the others."
Marsh made a noncommittal noise. Half the kids they nabbed were runners. There had to be something more.
"It's Dr. Trimm," Barkle confessed. "Seems he accidentally swallowed half his bottle of aether."
"Dead, is he?" said the Captain.
"No, sir, not quite. But we had to drop him round at the Charity Hospital. They said he'd be two weeks coming out of it."
Orum Braithwaite, the ship's steward, seemed to have an ear for trouble that might affect his well-ordered world of cooks and scullers and maids.
He looked over the deckrail from above and said, "That's no damned good, sir. We have got a full list of First Class passengers, half a hundred booked already. They start coming aboard next week."
Braithwaite was a fat, keene-eyed man, who doubled as chief of one of the cannon crews.
"That passage money's spent twice over, as you well know, sir. The Admiralty'll have our charter if we allow civilians aboard without a surgeon."
"Thank you, Mr. Braithwaite, I am aware of the Admiralty's regulations."
"There's more," said Marcus Barkle. "We have a sick kid in the brig. One of the better recruits."
"Sick how? Ain't the plague, is it?"
"No, sir. He took an honest knock on the noggin a week or so ago--" Again Barkle looked sheepish. "--and ain't been right since."
The Captain swayed for a moment in his bucket, pondering.
Then he said, "It happens I have an old acquaintance in Piketon, a medical man. Not the straightest arrow in the quiver, but no quack either. Wouldn't want to sail with him, but he'll do as a fill-in for Dr. Trimm until he returns."
"Will he take the job, sir?" asked Marcus Barkle. "We haven't any money, have we?"
"Hardly two nibs to rub together, I'm afraid. Which means we will have to pay him in lies and deceit, at least to start."
The little man shrugged. "I suppose that's better pay than some get."
Captain Marsh nodded. "All the experienced shroud-walkers are hard at work making repairs and setting the new rigging. Do you have anyone in that new rabble of kids down there who can be trusted with a message?"
"Yes, sir, a girl. Calls herself Nail. She's one of us."
"Send her to my quarters in a half hour and I'll have a letter for her."
Marcus touched his knuckle to his forehead and turned away. A little too hastily for the Captain's liking.
"Hey, Marcus!" he cried. "Did anything else go wrong with this latest kid-napping of yours? Anything worse than poisoning poor Dr. Trimm?"
Marcus Barkle paused, then turned and said, "No, sir, nothing worth mentioning."
"Very well," said the Captain. Tilting his head, he cried, "Haul me up, will you? And somebody see about my supper!"
Next: Professor Soonoo's Black Bag
Friday, May 29, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Fifteen: Hard as Nail
Nail's resolution to keep herself apart from the other children quickly fell into tatters.
For one thing, she was the oldest of the girls being held in the brig. Her hard pilgrim's life had left her with a bit more independence and confidence.
Even the tough kids from Piketon's streets knew very little of the world. They were baffled and frightened.
As the days passed, the came round to her, sheepishly, wanting to know if she could explain what had become of them.
"We've been shanghaied by a dreamship," she said.
"What? Like turned into slaves or something?" said one boy.
"I heard they mean to sell us for sweetmeats," put in another.
"Not so bad as that," Nail explained, not bothering to hide her exasperation. "It's more like we're indentured. They mean to feed us and give us a few nibs for our work."
In addition to their fright, several of the children had taken sick.
It soon fell to Nail to organize some kind of care for them. And then there was the wounded boy, the one with the funny moons tattooed over his eyes and the great bruise on his forehead.
He still lay unconscious on his cot, though he turned fitfully at night and sometimes cried out. It was always the same cry: A name.
"Simon?" he would say, softly at first. "Simon! Simon!"
Nail delegated a boy called Cross Eye to put a cool rag on the injured lad's head, which seemed to sooth and quiet him.
As the days passed, she emerged as a kind of gang boss. She found that Barkle and Ballko looked to her to sort out little problems and muddles.
"It's not fair," she said to Ballko. "I didn't sign on to be nursemaid to a bunch of sniveling kids."
Ballko shrugged and said, "Play your cards right and you might have my slot in a couple of years. I'm getting bigger."
"Too big," observed Marcus Barkle. "You'll be too fat for the shrouds, soon enough, if you don't leave off the meat pies."
It was true, after a fashion, that there were certain advantages to her role. She was given a bit of privacy. The other children did what she said without question, even the tough-looking ones.
"What if we all tried to run at once?" said a stout, toothless boy that everyone called Gums. "When they bring our slop, we could rush 'em, right?"
"Don't be an idiot," Nail told him. "This is our lot now. Make the best of it, I say. Anyway, what have you to go back to?"
"There's a group of lads in my block," Gums replied proudly. "We look out for each other, we do. All for one and one for all."
"Is that so?" she replied, in her hardest, mocking voice. "And I suppose they've all come round looking for you since you vanished?"
Gums shrugged and looked at his bare, filthy feet.
"They have forgotten you already. Just as you would have forgotten any of them who went wandering off."
The boy said nothing. It was a dreary thing to realize just how meaningless they all were and how little the world had noticed their abductions.
They had lived hardscrabble lives, for the most part, and were thicker-skinned than rich kids, but in the end they were still only children.
The future loomed before them like a great, hungry shadow. At night, in the dark, there was a fair amount of furtive weeping.
Nail took it upon herself to help them in practical ways. She made certain that no one went without food or a blanket.
She forced them to wash their faces and hands in the little basin, lining up one by one until the trickle of water ran black with their grime.
Yet when they came to her for actual comfort, she shied them off with fierce looks and cold words.
"I've been up there on the Dream before," she told them. "And I'll tell you all just this one time how it is: It's sink or swim. It's devil take the hindmost. So you'd best start fending for yourselves."
The youngest ones stared at her blankly. They said amongst themselves that she was rightly named.
"Hard as a Nail," they muttered. "They must have named this whole bloody world after her, the great knuckle of iron."
It became a kind of catch-phrase among them.
Whenever something painful happened -- a bad dream, a fight over a bowl of noodles, a cuffing blow from one of the Oriole's crew -- someone would say, "Got to be hard now, hard as Nail."
They would nod toward the girl sitting apart in the corner, with her cropped hair and her pretty shawl around her shoulders.
Nail had shifted her hammock to hang beneath the large, barred window that looked out into the hangar where the Blue Oriole lay in its berth.
When not distracted by her chores and duties, she studied the ship and watched the men clambering over her. They looked like squirrels in the crown of a tree.
Before, when sailing with her father, Nail had looked at dream ships as abstract things. She perceived their mathematical form, their angles, the lines of force and resistance.
Now, as the crew repaired and refitted the Oriole, she began to see the practical side of the thing, how the lines were strung by groups of fellows working in tandem, how cunningly they positioned the block-and-tackle.
Sometimes she would watch the beginning of some project -- the sheathing of the new mast, for example -- and try to predict just how it would be accomplished.
This was her comfort. The puzzle of the ship was her escape from the small, nagging sorrows of the kidnapped children.
Soon the Blue Oriole would lift her into the sky; and up past the sky into the Dream, where she would sail between worlds.
She would learn how to work her, the way a puppeteer learns how to make a lifeless doll come alive, by pulling its strings just so.
"Maybe I will take Ballko's place," she said to herself. "And maybe sooner than he thinks."
A little girl came up, the one the other kids called Thumbsucker. She was among the youngest, no older than four or five.
"What is it?" Nail said, softening her voice just a little.
Thumbsucker pulled her thumb out of her mouth and said, "It's that boy with the cracked head. The one who had got moons on his face. I think...I think he might be dead."
Next: A Replacement for Dr. Trimm
For one thing, she was the oldest of the girls being held in the brig. Her hard pilgrim's life had left her with a bit more independence and confidence.
Even the tough kids from Piketon's streets knew very little of the world. They were baffled and frightened.
As the days passed, the came round to her, sheepishly, wanting to know if she could explain what had become of them.
"We've been shanghaied by a dreamship," she said.
"What? Like turned into slaves or something?" said one boy.
"I heard they mean to sell us for sweetmeats," put in another.
"Not so bad as that," Nail explained, not bothering to hide her exasperation. "It's more like we're indentured. They mean to feed us and give us a few nibs for our work."
In addition to their fright, several of the children had taken sick.
It soon fell to Nail to organize some kind of care for them. And then there was the wounded boy, the one with the funny moons tattooed over his eyes and the great bruise on his forehead.
He still lay unconscious on his cot, though he turned fitfully at night and sometimes cried out. It was always the same cry: A name.
"Simon?" he would say, softly at first. "Simon! Simon!"
Nail delegated a boy called Cross Eye to put a cool rag on the injured lad's head, which seemed to sooth and quiet him.
As the days passed, she emerged as a kind of gang boss. She found that Barkle and Ballko looked to her to sort out little problems and muddles.
"It's not fair," she said to Ballko. "I didn't sign on to be nursemaid to a bunch of sniveling kids."
Ballko shrugged and said, "Play your cards right and you might have my slot in a couple of years. I'm getting bigger."
"Too big," observed Marcus Barkle. "You'll be too fat for the shrouds, soon enough, if you don't leave off the meat pies."
It was true, after a fashion, that there were certain advantages to her role. She was given a bit of privacy. The other children did what she said without question, even the tough-looking ones.
"What if we all tried to run at once?" said a stout, toothless boy that everyone called Gums. "When they bring our slop, we could rush 'em, right?"
"Don't be an idiot," Nail told him. "This is our lot now. Make the best of it, I say. Anyway, what have you to go back to?"
"There's a group of lads in my block," Gums replied proudly. "We look out for each other, we do. All for one and one for all."
"Is that so?" she replied, in her hardest, mocking voice. "And I suppose they've all come round looking for you since you vanished?"
Gums shrugged and looked at his bare, filthy feet.
"They have forgotten you already. Just as you would have forgotten any of them who went wandering off."
The boy said nothing. It was a dreary thing to realize just how meaningless they all were and how little the world had noticed their abductions.
They had lived hardscrabble lives, for the most part, and were thicker-skinned than rich kids, but in the end they were still only children.
The future loomed before them like a great, hungry shadow. At night, in the dark, there was a fair amount of furtive weeping.
Nail took it upon herself to help them in practical ways. She made certain that no one went without food or a blanket.
She forced them to wash their faces and hands in the little basin, lining up one by one until the trickle of water ran black with their grime.
Yet when they came to her for actual comfort, she shied them off with fierce looks and cold words.
"I've been up there on the Dream before," she told them. "And I'll tell you all just this one time how it is: It's sink or swim. It's devil take the hindmost. So you'd best start fending for yourselves."
The youngest ones stared at her blankly. They said amongst themselves that she was rightly named.
"Hard as a Nail," they muttered. "They must have named this whole bloody world after her, the great knuckle of iron."
It became a kind of catch-phrase among them.
Whenever something painful happened -- a bad dream, a fight over a bowl of noodles, a cuffing blow from one of the Oriole's crew -- someone would say, "Got to be hard now, hard as Nail."
They would nod toward the girl sitting apart in the corner, with her cropped hair and her pretty shawl around her shoulders.
Nail had shifted her hammock to hang beneath the large, barred window that looked out into the hangar where the Blue Oriole lay in its berth.
When not distracted by her chores and duties, she studied the ship and watched the men clambering over her. They looked like squirrels in the crown of a tree.
Before, when sailing with her father, Nail had looked at dream ships as abstract things. She perceived their mathematical form, their angles, the lines of force and resistance.
Now, as the crew repaired and refitted the Oriole, she began to see the practical side of the thing, how the lines were strung by groups of fellows working in tandem, how cunningly they positioned the block-and-tackle.
Sometimes she would watch the beginning of some project -- the sheathing of the new mast, for example -- and try to predict just how it would be accomplished.
This was her comfort. The puzzle of the ship was her escape from the small, nagging sorrows of the kidnapped children.
Soon the Blue Oriole would lift her into the sky; and up past the sky into the Dream, where she would sail between worlds.
She would learn how to work her, the way a puppeteer learns how to make a lifeless doll come alive, by pulling its strings just so.
"Maybe I will take Ballko's place," she said to herself. "And maybe sooner than he thinks."
A little girl came up, the one the other kids called Thumbsucker. She was among the youngest, no older than four or five.
"What is it?" Nail said, softening her voice just a little.
Thumbsucker pulled her thumb out of her mouth and said, "It's that boy with the cracked head. The one who had got moons on his face. I think...I think he might be dead."
Next: A Replacement for Dr. Trimm
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Fourteen: A Hard-Won Prize
The next day, Marcus Barkle was ready in the avenue with a gang of experienced nappers.
There was Horace Bug, a cannon swab in Sgt. Imple's contingent; another fellow who went by the name of Rigsby who worked in the galley; and Dr. Trimm, the ship's surgeon.
The three had absconded with any number of children during their nautical careers; and, in the case of Bug and Rigsby, they looked upon the activity as a kind of sport.
For the purpose Barkle had hired a small hearse-wagon from a livery near the warehouse where the Oriole was berthed.
She was pulled by two sturdy street ponies, specially chosen for the day.
Bug sat high in the driver's box, disguised in an undertaker's coat, with Rigsby hanging on in back wearing coachman's garb.
Dr. Trimm was inside with his flask of aether.
Barkle himself was positioned at the far end of the street, watching for their mark to come out of the doorway.
They had developed this particular snatch-and-run technique for impressing specially desirable shroudwalkers, usually stolen from circuses or gypsy camps or from the crews of other ships.
In theory, young Master Buddenbrooks would be insensible within moments and secreted aboard the hearse, which would quickly lose itself in the maze of Piketon's lesser wards.
"I still don't understand what we are doing plying our trade in such a fine neighborhood," grumbled Dr. Trimm.
He was a yellow-eyed man, much given to sampling the wares from his own laudunum chest. He went to blow his nose and very nearly stuck his face into the aether rag.
"This shan't end well," he muttered. Which was the same thing he always said before entering upon any complicated medical procedure.
Behind his back, the sailors of the Blue Oriole called him Doctor Pennymouth.
"The only useful thing he ever did," they complained, "was put the penny in his victims' mouths to pay the Ferryman."
The other members of the napper crew were more game. They quite liked the idea of stealing a high-collar, snoot-nosed kid.
"Might give him an extra thump in the gut, just to let him know who's boss," said Horace Bug.
"Just so as we don't kill him outright," Rigsby said. "Such a plum prize won't come half so easy a second time."
At last they saw Marcus Barkle give the prearranged sign.
A smallish boy with striking silver hair had emerged from a doorway and begun idling away in the opposite direction.
All according to plan. Quite unawares, Master Buddenbrooks was walking directly toward Barkle the Hunter and into the arms of their trap.
He was carrying a longish bundle wrapped in some kind of cloth and he seemed to be lost in thought.
As Barkle drew near, he said something to the boy. Asked for directions maybe or begged for a nib or two for his poor supper.
He made his boyish face look as naive and stupid as he could.
Meanwhile, the hearse was drawing up behind, its driver and footman watching avidly, and Doctor Trim's sallow face sweating like an appartion in the window.
The next events proceeded very quickly indeed.
First, Marcus Barkle gave the boy a sudden poke in the solar plexus. Master Buddenbrooks uttered a soft, pained gasp.
Meanwhile, Rigsby vaulted down and threw a bear-hug around his frail shoulders.
The Doctor was already stepping primly from the coach with the poisoned rag, ready to set it over the kid's face.
Then, all of a sudden, Rigsby found himself sprawled on the ground, his right wrist bent at a peculiar angle.
Little Master Buddenbrooks dropped onto the ground in way that looked half-clumsy, but his boot swept out and caught the legs out from under Dr. Trimm.
The man went down with an outraged cry and a smash of glass, the aether pouring out over the bib of his white frock. He began to shriek and snivel.
Marcus Barkle looked down, startled, and saw that the little boy's eyes were upon his own. They were startlingly calm and even eager.
"He's not frightened a bit," Marcus thought. "Now why would that be?"
Then he found himself tumbling ass-over-teakettle into the street, and not even sure how or why.
His left ear clonked meanly on the cobblestone and he felt a rush of hot blood.
Horace Bug had jumped into the fray with his ever-handy belying-pin, which he wielded before Master Buddenbrooks could regroup for another strike.
The child reeled back from the blow, which by all rights should have dropped him like a sack of potatoes.
But the canny kid had twisted in just such a way so that the lion's share of the impact had glanced away harmlessly.
Rigsby went at him again, kicking hard with his boot, but the boy dodged somehow and once again the canoneer went down, moaning in pain, the other wrist broken.
In the confusion, however, Barkle had snatched up Dr. Trimm's rag and just like that he was upon the boy, pressing the poison to his mouth and nose.
The effect was instantaneous. Master Buddenbrooks went limp and Barkle caught him and hoisted him into the open door of the hearse.
"Quick, you," he said to Rigsby. "Climb in before the blue-bellies get wise." And to Bug: "Help me with Trimm, then spark up them ponies."
Another heartbeat or two and they were away. The horses were already skittish after the melee and Horace Bug had the devil's time keeping them in check.
"Play it cool!" yelled Barkle. "Two blocks more, then to an easy trot, innocent as you please."
He threw open the windows of the hearse, to air out the stench of aether, which was making them all light-headed.
The scene in the odd-shaped, funereal coach was less than satisfactory.
Rigsby sat in a corner, moaning and staring at his paws. The boy and Dr. Trimm lay unconscious in a heap.
Barkle chewed his lip and said to himself, "A hard-won prize, that was. Who'd have guessed that a welp like this here would have any fight in him at all? There's a mystery to the business. I've bit off something that might not chew so easy."
An hour or so later, in the warehouse that held the Blue Oriole, he had a glimpse of just how hard to swallow the business might be.
He carried Master Buddenbrooks, still unconscious, into the room where young Ballko kept his tattooing gear, needles and ink.
With Ballko's help, he stripped the child to the waist. They found that he was surprisingly muscled for such a slight boy. Like a gymnast or an acrobat.
His skin was striped and lined with tiny scars and half-healed bruises.
"Almost looks like a little soldier, don't he?" said Ballko. "Do you reckon his folks liked to mash him about a bit? I've heard that some rich folk are queer like that, spoiling their brats in public like and making beasts of 'em behind closed doors."
Barkle shrugged and rolled their prey on his side, so that Ballko could set to drawing the oriole's wing on his arm.
But there on the shoulder-blade was already stamped a mark of ownership: A tiny curved dagger done in red ink.
Ballko let out a long, low whistle. "You know what that is, don't you?" he said.
Barkle nodded and spat on the floor.
"It's the brand of the Hemlock League," he said. "I'm damned if we haven't nabbed up a child of the most dangerous assassins in the Dream."
Next: Hard as Nail
There was Horace Bug, a cannon swab in Sgt. Imple's contingent; another fellow who went by the name of Rigsby who worked in the galley; and Dr. Trimm, the ship's surgeon.
The three had absconded with any number of children during their nautical careers; and, in the case of Bug and Rigsby, they looked upon the activity as a kind of sport.
For the purpose Barkle had hired a small hearse-wagon from a livery near the warehouse where the Oriole was berthed.
She was pulled by two sturdy street ponies, specially chosen for the day.
Bug sat high in the driver's box, disguised in an undertaker's coat, with Rigsby hanging on in back wearing coachman's garb.
Dr. Trimm was inside with his flask of aether.
Barkle himself was positioned at the far end of the street, watching for their mark to come out of the doorway.
They had developed this particular snatch-and-run technique for impressing specially desirable shroudwalkers, usually stolen from circuses or gypsy camps or from the crews of other ships.
In theory, young Master Buddenbrooks would be insensible within moments and secreted aboard the hearse, which would quickly lose itself in the maze of Piketon's lesser wards.
"I still don't understand what we are doing plying our trade in such a fine neighborhood," grumbled Dr. Trimm.
He was a yellow-eyed man, much given to sampling the wares from his own laudunum chest. He went to blow his nose and very nearly stuck his face into the aether rag.
"This shan't end well," he muttered. Which was the same thing he always said before entering upon any complicated medical procedure.
Behind his back, the sailors of the Blue Oriole called him Doctor Pennymouth.
"The only useful thing he ever did," they complained, "was put the penny in his victims' mouths to pay the Ferryman."
The other members of the napper crew were more game. They quite liked the idea of stealing a high-collar, snoot-nosed kid.
"Might give him an extra thump in the gut, just to let him know who's boss," said Horace Bug.
"Just so as we don't kill him outright," Rigsby said. "Such a plum prize won't come half so easy a second time."
At last they saw Marcus Barkle give the prearranged sign.
A smallish boy with striking silver hair had emerged from a doorway and begun idling away in the opposite direction.
All according to plan. Quite unawares, Master Buddenbrooks was walking directly toward Barkle the Hunter and into the arms of their trap.
He was carrying a longish bundle wrapped in some kind of cloth and he seemed to be lost in thought.
As Barkle drew near, he said something to the boy. Asked for directions maybe or begged for a nib or two for his poor supper.
He made his boyish face look as naive and stupid as he could.
Meanwhile, the hearse was drawing up behind, its driver and footman watching avidly, and Doctor Trim's sallow face sweating like an appartion in the window.
The next events proceeded very quickly indeed.
First, Marcus Barkle gave the boy a sudden poke in the solar plexus. Master Buddenbrooks uttered a soft, pained gasp.
Meanwhile, Rigsby vaulted down and threw a bear-hug around his frail shoulders.
The Doctor was already stepping primly from the coach with the poisoned rag, ready to set it over the kid's face.
Then, all of a sudden, Rigsby found himself sprawled on the ground, his right wrist bent at a peculiar angle.
Little Master Buddenbrooks dropped onto the ground in way that looked half-clumsy, but his boot swept out and caught the legs out from under Dr. Trimm.
The man went down with an outraged cry and a smash of glass, the aether pouring out over the bib of his white frock. He began to shriek and snivel.
Marcus Barkle looked down, startled, and saw that the little boy's eyes were upon his own. They were startlingly calm and even eager.
"He's not frightened a bit," Marcus thought. "Now why would that be?"
Then he found himself tumbling ass-over-teakettle into the street, and not even sure how or why.
His left ear clonked meanly on the cobblestone and he felt a rush of hot blood.
Horace Bug had jumped into the fray with his ever-handy belying-pin, which he wielded before Master Buddenbrooks could regroup for another strike.
The child reeled back from the blow, which by all rights should have dropped him like a sack of potatoes.
But the canny kid had twisted in just such a way so that the lion's share of the impact had glanced away harmlessly.
Rigsby went at him again, kicking hard with his boot, but the boy dodged somehow and once again the canoneer went down, moaning in pain, the other wrist broken.
In the confusion, however, Barkle had snatched up Dr. Trimm's rag and just like that he was upon the boy, pressing the poison to his mouth and nose.
The effect was instantaneous. Master Buddenbrooks went limp and Barkle caught him and hoisted him into the open door of the hearse.
"Quick, you," he said to Rigsby. "Climb in before the blue-bellies get wise." And to Bug: "Help me with Trimm, then spark up them ponies."
Another heartbeat or two and they were away. The horses were already skittish after the melee and Horace Bug had the devil's time keeping them in check.
"Play it cool!" yelled Barkle. "Two blocks more, then to an easy trot, innocent as you please."
He threw open the windows of the hearse, to air out the stench of aether, which was making them all light-headed.
The scene in the odd-shaped, funereal coach was less than satisfactory.
Rigsby sat in a corner, moaning and staring at his paws. The boy and Dr. Trimm lay unconscious in a heap.
Barkle chewed his lip and said to himself, "A hard-won prize, that was. Who'd have guessed that a welp like this here would have any fight in him at all? There's a mystery to the business. I've bit off something that might not chew so easy."
An hour or so later, in the warehouse that held the Blue Oriole, he had a glimpse of just how hard to swallow the business might be.
He carried Master Buddenbrooks, still unconscious, into the room where young Ballko kept his tattooing gear, needles and ink.
With Ballko's help, he stripped the child to the waist. They found that he was surprisingly muscled for such a slight boy. Like a gymnast or an acrobat.
His skin was striped and lined with tiny scars and half-healed bruises.
"Almost looks like a little soldier, don't he?" said Ballko. "Do you reckon his folks liked to mash him about a bit? I've heard that some rich folk are queer like that, spoiling their brats in public like and making beasts of 'em behind closed doors."
Barkle shrugged and rolled their prey on his side, so that Ballko could set to drawing the oriole's wing on his arm.
But there on the shoulder-blade was already stamped a mark of ownership: A tiny curved dagger done in red ink.
Ballko let out a long, low whistle. "You know what that is, don't you?" he said.
Barkle nodded and spat on the floor.
"It's the brand of the Hemlock League," he said. "I'm damned if we haven't nabbed up a child of the most dangerous assassins in the Dream."
Next: Hard as Nail
Monday, May 25, 2009
Twelve: Master Buddenbrooks
Marcus Barkle was in a foul mood.
It was the sort of thunderous glowering funk that only caught him up when he was ashore, beset by the complications of landsmen and politics and blue-bellies.
The Blue Oriole had passed a fortnight in her drydock on Nail, caught like a dragonfly in a web.
Mr. Handy, the ship's carpenter, had discovered that the Mother storm had done more damage to their ship than first understood.
The keel had suffered a dangerous wrench, causing a half-dozen of the massive ribs to come unseated.
Worse yet, one of the small pelvic masts -- which jutted at 45 degrees from the Oriole's hull -- had popped free from the massive iron sleeve that held it fast.
"While we were dangerously preoccupied with gyrwights," wrote Captain Marsh in his log, "the vessel very nearly came apart under my boots."
Such disasters were not unheard of in the Dream.
A half dozen times in his career, the Captain had come upon a mess of timbers and wrack, subsiding by degrees into the magical fog below.
They had escaped with their lives and their own ship intact, but the temper of the crew was no less venomous for that.
While the Oriole's smiths and carpenters and joiners went about their trade, Barkle had gone about his own disreputable business.
"How many have you got, Marcus?" asked Captain Marsh, at the morning confab.
"Sounds like he's got a regular herd of brats in that brig," grumbled Falconer. "Ain't there any way to quiet them?"
Barkle ignored the First Mate and said, "We lost a dozen young ones in the storm. I've got nine in the poke so far. I can make do with ten or eleven."
"What's the trick of it?" said Sgt. Imple good-naturedly. "The streets of Piketon are swarming with orphans and starvelings. Give me a belay pin and a half hour and I'll fill the hold with snotty noses."
"Shroud-walking ain't for everyone," Barkle said simply. "They got to be small and quick and agile. Half the kids I picked won't survive out on the lines, not when the first cat's paw comes out of nowhere and gives them a playful push."
The other officers shrugged and went back to their own concerns.
From their vantage point upon the solid deck, the children who manipulated the lines and sails of a dream vessel were little more than monkeys, a necessary inconvenience.
Even those who had begun their own careers out in the far jungle of the rigging preferred not to think upon such matters.
"Anyway there's time for you to be choosy," said the Captain. "We've another two weeks of drudgery at the very least."
In truth, Marcus Barkle was being choosy.
He admitted as much to himself as he prowled through the streets of Piketon, wandering farther and farther from the port district.
In part, he strayed so far because the folk next to the harbor had got word that several ships were impressing children.
Prey was scarce where moms and dads were cautious.
But it was also a fact that Barkle had been shaken to the quick by the battle with the gyrwights.
His own view of things had taken a twist almost as sharp as the one that nearly broke the Oriole's spine.
Watching one kid after another fall away into the void, harassed and tormented by gyrwights: it was a memory that haunted his dreams.
Of course, he had no real choice in the matter. He had to recruit a new batch of kids to fill out his crew.
Yet he wanted to make some gesture, offer some protest against the foul and miserable ways of the world.
After some deliberation, Barkle had decided that he would kidnap a child of consequence.
He knew that Captain Marsh would be furious if he knew, for it was generally understood that the children of wealthy or noble persons were untouchable.
Violating this unwritten rule would mean trouble. If he was caught at it, Barkle might even lose his place.
He found that he didn't care. The poor folk of Piketon had given up plenty of kids; now the fat merchants and guildsmen would pay the blood tithe as well.
So it was that the Lord of Shrouds made his way by streetcar out into the suburbs of the city, where the ugly drabness relented a little and a few trees lined the avenues.
Tenements and shanty-towns gave way to order and ever-greater displays of wealth and power.
Nail was an ugly world, but it was profitable and here there gathered the cream and the polish.
Downtown, the ships huddled behind iron grill windows; here Barkle saw glass and crystal.
Close to the cargo docks, mothers could be seen cooking for their kids on open fires at the margin of the street.
Here there were blue-bellies on every corner making sure no one forgot their place.
Barkle had worn his finest jacket and was carrying what appeared to be a message with a hand-scrawled address, written so as to be illegible.
Twice in the first quarter-hour of prowling he was stopped by a copper and had to pretend to be a messenger.
"Please, sir, I am looking for the mansion of Lord Dudeney. Am I gone the wrong direction?"
"It's none of my care if you've gone to Purgatory," replied the blue-belly, losing interest. "Get on about your own damned business. And don't let me catch you begging for nibs."
It was bare bones until the early afternoon, when various schools and academies opened their doors and released gaggles of children into the avenue.
They were a fine, sleek lot: rosy-cheeked, stout, confident. They went along with entourages of nannies and tutors.
Barkle's mood darkened. Upon close inspection the kids he spied were all too fat or two long-of-limb for shroud-work.
"They feed their brats too well uptown," he muttered. "They would snap my spars like dry twigs."
Dusk was coming on and he had begun to contemplate giving up his scheme when he saw a smallish boy come out of a doorway.
At first, Barkle thought the child must be very young -- five or six -- but no, the lad was only slight.
What's more, the boy began to play an abent-minded game as he went, walking heel-to-toe along the narrow curb.
He practically skipped along, showing perfect balance.
Barkle had begun to move up for a closer look when the door flew open and a hard-faced man stepped out onto the street.
"Don't forget, Master Buddenbrooks!" he called. "You've a make-up lesson tomorrow at a quarter shy four bells. Practice your counter-thrust beforehand -- and don't dare be late!"
The boy pirouetted on the curb, gave a wave, then demonstrated what must have been a counter-thrust.
Without missing a beat, he twirled again and went on his way, his feet never leaving the curb.
Barkle grinned and turned away. He had seen enough to lift his spirits immensely.
"And a whole-hearted welcome to you, Master Buddenbrooks," he said. "I believe it is time you went on a little cruise."
Fourteen: A Hard-Won Prize
It was the sort of thunderous glowering funk that only caught him up when he was ashore, beset by the complications of landsmen and politics and blue-bellies.
The Blue Oriole had passed a fortnight in her drydock on Nail, caught like a dragonfly in a web.
Mr. Handy, the ship's carpenter, had discovered that the Mother storm had done more damage to their ship than first understood.
The keel had suffered a dangerous wrench, causing a half-dozen of the massive ribs to come unseated.
Worse yet, one of the small pelvic masts -- which jutted at 45 degrees from the Oriole's hull -- had popped free from the massive iron sleeve that held it fast.
"While we were dangerously preoccupied with gyrwights," wrote Captain Marsh in his log, "the vessel very nearly came apart under my boots."
Such disasters were not unheard of in the Dream.
A half dozen times in his career, the Captain had come upon a mess of timbers and wrack, subsiding by degrees into the magical fog below.
They had escaped with their lives and their own ship intact, but the temper of the crew was no less venomous for that.
While the Oriole's smiths and carpenters and joiners went about their trade, Barkle had gone about his own disreputable business.
"How many have you got, Marcus?" asked Captain Marsh, at the morning confab.
"Sounds like he's got a regular herd of brats in that brig," grumbled Falconer. "Ain't there any way to quiet them?"
Barkle ignored the First Mate and said, "We lost a dozen young ones in the storm. I've got nine in the poke so far. I can make do with ten or eleven."
"What's the trick of it?" said Sgt. Imple good-naturedly. "The streets of Piketon are swarming with orphans and starvelings. Give me a belay pin and a half hour and I'll fill the hold with snotty noses."
"Shroud-walking ain't for everyone," Barkle said simply. "They got to be small and quick and agile. Half the kids I picked won't survive out on the lines, not when the first cat's paw comes out of nowhere and gives them a playful push."
The other officers shrugged and went back to their own concerns.
From their vantage point upon the solid deck, the children who manipulated the lines and sails of a dream vessel were little more than monkeys, a necessary inconvenience.
Even those who had begun their own careers out in the far jungle of the rigging preferred not to think upon such matters.
"Anyway there's time for you to be choosy," said the Captain. "We've another two weeks of drudgery at the very least."
In truth, Marcus Barkle was being choosy.
He admitted as much to himself as he prowled through the streets of Piketon, wandering farther and farther from the port district.
In part, he strayed so far because the folk next to the harbor had got word that several ships were impressing children.
Prey was scarce where moms and dads were cautious.
But it was also a fact that Barkle had been shaken to the quick by the battle with the gyrwights.
His own view of things had taken a twist almost as sharp as the one that nearly broke the Oriole's spine.
Watching one kid after another fall away into the void, harassed and tormented by gyrwights: it was a memory that haunted his dreams.
Of course, he had no real choice in the matter. He had to recruit a new batch of kids to fill out his crew.
Yet he wanted to make some gesture, offer some protest against the foul and miserable ways of the world.
After some deliberation, Barkle had decided that he would kidnap a child of consequence.
He knew that Captain Marsh would be furious if he knew, for it was generally understood that the children of wealthy or noble persons were untouchable.
Violating this unwritten rule would mean trouble. If he was caught at it, Barkle might even lose his place.
He found that he didn't care. The poor folk of Piketon had given up plenty of kids; now the fat merchants and guildsmen would pay the blood tithe as well.
So it was that the Lord of Shrouds made his way by streetcar out into the suburbs of the city, where the ugly drabness relented a little and a few trees lined the avenues.
Tenements and shanty-towns gave way to order and ever-greater displays of wealth and power.
Nail was an ugly world, but it was profitable and here there gathered the cream and the polish.
Downtown, the ships huddled behind iron grill windows; here Barkle saw glass and crystal.
Close to the cargo docks, mothers could be seen cooking for their kids on open fires at the margin of the street.
Here there were blue-bellies on every corner making sure no one forgot their place.
Barkle had worn his finest jacket and was carrying what appeared to be a message with a hand-scrawled address, written so as to be illegible.
Twice in the first quarter-hour of prowling he was stopped by a copper and had to pretend to be a messenger.
"Please, sir, I am looking for the mansion of Lord Dudeney. Am I gone the wrong direction?"
"It's none of my care if you've gone to Purgatory," replied the blue-belly, losing interest. "Get on about your own damned business. And don't let me catch you begging for nibs."
It was bare bones until the early afternoon, when various schools and academies opened their doors and released gaggles of children into the avenue.
They were a fine, sleek lot: rosy-cheeked, stout, confident. They went along with entourages of nannies and tutors.
Barkle's mood darkened. Upon close inspection the kids he spied were all too fat or two long-of-limb for shroud-work.
"They feed their brats too well uptown," he muttered. "They would snap my spars like dry twigs."
Dusk was coming on and he had begun to contemplate giving up his scheme when he saw a smallish boy come out of a doorway.
At first, Barkle thought the child must be very young -- five or six -- but no, the lad was only slight.
What's more, the boy began to play an abent-minded game as he went, walking heel-to-toe along the narrow curb.
He practically skipped along, showing perfect balance.
Barkle had begun to move up for a closer look when the door flew open and a hard-faced man stepped out onto the street.
"Don't forget, Master Buddenbrooks!" he called. "You've a make-up lesson tomorrow at a quarter shy four bells. Practice your counter-thrust beforehand -- and don't dare be late!"
The boy pirouetted on the curb, gave a wave, then demonstrated what must have been a counter-thrust.
Without missing a beat, he twirled again and went on his way, his feet never leaving the curb.
Barkle grinned and turned away. He had seen enough to lift his spirits immensely.
"And a whole-hearted welcome to you, Master Buddenbrooks," he said. "I believe it is time you went on a little cruise."
Fourteen: A Hard-Won Prize
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Eleven: The Old Wink & Blink
Every morning just before the first smoky dawn broke over Piketon, an army of ice merchants, ragpickers, milk men and tea-wallahs fanned out through the city's slums.
The little boy called Aramis was a light sleeper. From blocks away, he would hear the distant rattle of the peddler carts and the chipping rhythm of the ice man's pick.
He slept in a tiny hovel made of old bits of cast-off corrugated iron and canvas.
There were two cots made from gunnysacks and bundles of ticking nicked from the chair-maker's shop on Cabinetry Lane.
On the other bed lay his older brother Simon, who was ill. He had worked in one of the lark shows on the Bailey Mall as a peanut seller.
But a drunk had punched the boy in the gut and then kicked him when he fell on the hard floor.
After that, Simon's belly never worked right. He could only eat soft food and he forgot things.
When Aramis went out to do his magic show, he had to tie his brother to a post set in one corner of their flop.
Aramis was a conjuror. Their dad had been one, too, and he taught Aramis everything he knew about making nibs vanish or causing feathers to turn into wisps of smoke.
The family's best trick was a floppy hat that could produce a lit candle. It didn't always work right, but when it did the crowd always clapped and gave up a few bits of small-coin.
Their father had taken a bit of his own medicine and vanished two years before. Just -- poof, gone.
Simon said it was the way of a conjuror to take himself off without even a good-bye.
Simon wouldn't have anything to do with magic and anyway he was dead clumsy. Clumsy and strong, at least until he got hurt.
Now it was Aramis's job to keep them both fed and to pay the neighborhood racketman who controlled the tenements and to buy the bottles of Figgy's Nocturnal Solution that helped Simon endure the pain.
When he heard the morning traffic in the lane, Aramis rose in the dark and began to pack his kit. He often traveled for miles through Piketon before setting up his show.
It was better to vary the crowd and to make sure none of the blue-belly cops took his measure.
He carried all of his tricks and props in a black box rigged with a pair of leather straps for his shoulders.
Tucked inside was the motley robe and conical hat that marked him out -- along with the crescent-moon tattoos over his eyes -- as a blood member of the Societe de Legerdemain.
"Are you awake, Simon?" he said.
Simon gave a low moan, stirring in his bedclothes.
"I'm off then, Simon. I won't be back til tonight. I plan to go across to Foundry Gardens, if I can slip a trolley ride."
No response.
"You be good now, Simon. I'll bring you home a good pie and some beer."
Simon began to snore and Aramis crawled out of the hovel into the dim, weary light of a Piketon morning.
Though he had long and dextrous fingers, he wasn't a stoutly-built boy. It took him a moment of dancing to get the box hoisted on his back.
Then he set off through the fast-growing crowds toward the High Street where the trains rumbled along on their iron rails, throwing blue sparks into the sky.
As he walked, Aramis felt two peculiar sensations, neither of which he could explain.
The first was a hum of peculiar optimism and happiness. He felt a little guilty whenever he realized that he quite enjoyed his life.
What had happened to Simon was pretty nasty. And it was no happy thing that their dad had run off, or been way-laid.
But Aramis liked performing as a conjurer. He was good at it and he felt a tiny thrill every time his effects went off smoothly.
If the crowd made that queer noise that meant it was baffled and delighted at the same time, he didn't hardly care if they gave up any of their nibs.
The second sensation had only come to him in the last few days and it was a rather different sort of thing:
Aramis was convinced that someone was watching him; following him, even.
As he grabbed the bar of the streetcar and pulled himself up, he glanced back over the faces in the street.
He saw nothing out of the ordinary: tradesmen, women taking their mounds of dough to the corner bakers, Dula Priests shaking their fern fronds.
There was one face that seemed a bit familiar.
A boy. Maybe ten or eleven. He was leaning against a sign post eating a chicken leg with such a stupid expression on his face that Aramis laughed.
He himself was a clever boy. His father had always said so.
"Simon is strong as an ox, but you were born with the quick eye and the quick finger."
And he was born with something else, something his father called The Old Wink and Blink.
"You've a bit of the Real Stuff in you," he said. "The True Magic. When you were a baby, your eyes kept changing colors. I had it too when I was your age, though it slipped away somehow."
It wasn't much of a power, in fact. When he tried very hard, Aramis found that he could slide himself a bit from one place to another and also through time.
He never used the trick as part of his show -- he felt that it would be cheating and besides he liked to have his secret.
But a half-dozen times he had used the Old W & B to escape a cop or a gang of bullies or the racketman's thugs.
The streetcar took him in a round-about way through the gut of Piketon.
He had to clamber down a quarter mile or so from Foundry Park, when the ticket-taker began to shout at him, but Aramis didn't mind.
He trudged the rest of the way and set up his little table (he called it his "stage") under a shabby looking linden tree. Its leaves were coated with soot and it seemed to be surrounded by scrabbly dandelions.
"At least there's no rain today," said the balloon vendor, a thick-browed Maki-maki who was setting up shop across the garden path. "People don't want balloons in the rain, do they?"
Aramis opened his own kit and soon began to perform, working his little medley of tricks, calling out, "Sorcery and wonders and delights! Sorcery and wonders and delights!"
His small, high voice could be heard across the park, except when the big lorries were rumbling past.
Just after mid-day, when the day had mustered a kind of sullen warmth, he was working his shell-trick, hiding the pea from baffled shop-girls and nannies.
"It's not possible," insisted one girl. "I know the pebble was under that shell. I saw it with my own two eyes."
"Either your eyes are playing tricks," Aramis winked, "or I am."
That won him a laugh -- and a nib or two. He looked around with satisfaction, thinking it might be time to knock off and have his own lunch, when he saw the boy again.
It was the dull-faced kid from the morning, only now he was chewing on a slice of watermelon.
Aramis went about his business, pouring water from an empty glass and causing his own hair to stick straight up and making his tongue turn blue. This last stunt delighted a group of school children.
The entire time, he was watching the boy who was watching him. The kid was very good at his ruse. He seemed a perfect idler.
For a time, Aramis half-convinced himself that it was chance that they had turned up in the same neighborhoods twice in one day.
But then the boy's act slipped for a moment. One of the balloon-seller's balloons popped with a loud bang and the kid's face changed, growing hard and deliberate. His hand strayed toward the curved knife on his belt.
It was a sailor's knife, finely made. In a flash the kid's face resumedits former, cow-like expression.
Aramis felt his heart go knock. He knew that Piketon was a dangerous, ruthless town.
There were any number of reasons that people stalked children. The slave-trade was outlawed by the Admiralty, but no one did much about it. Ships were always looking for shroud-walkers.
When his dad disappeared, no one cared. Aramis might vanish just as quick.
There was a time when the Societe Legerdemain might have looked out for one such as him, but the order had fallen on hard times, at least on this world.
He began to pack his things, acting as natural as he could.
At the last moment, when surrounded by a crowd of Prilm traders carrying their ware-banners, he bolted, hustling through he Park's gates and dodging into the traffic of the road.
Glancing back, he saw that the boy was after him. His face had once again dropped its mask and had a look of irritation and dark resolve.
Aramis spied a streetcar and swung aboard. He thought that would do the trick, but the boy made a nimble leap and caught at the tail-end of the same car.
A crowd of commuters separated them, but they eyed one-another fiercely.
At the next corner, Aramis dropped off and scampered through a vegetable market. He was quick enough except for the big box on his back.
"Hey there, kid! Watch out for the decent folk doing their business! We'll have the blue-bellies after you!"
Aramis ignored them and went up a stair into a tavern and then out the back way into an alley. In his own neighborhood he would have known where to go.
He and Simon had mapped out escape routes, hiding places, and secret rendez-vous. But in this part of Piketon he was forced to run blind.
The boy kept pace. He seemed almost to be maintaining a certain distance, watching, taking his prey's measure. Aramis felt fear rise in his throat.
What did the kid want? What would happen to Simon if he was taken? His brother would have no one.
Aramis ran for another quarter-hour, before turning a corner into a small square, built around a public fountain. Women were lined up drawing water for their soup pots.
The boy was just behind now. Unlike Aramis, who rarely got a decent meal, the other kid wasn't winded at all. He reached a hand and got a grip on the handle of Aramis's box.
"Go easy now," said the kid. "It won't be so hard on you if you don't fight it."
Aramis tugged and twisted but the boy had both hands on him now. He was unnaturally strong, stronger than Simon, almost like a little man.
The women paid them no mind. It looked like two boys tussling over a box.
Aramis scrunched up his face and began to work his magic, his true magic. But the other was boy was too quick.
"Oh, no," he said, in a business-like tone. "We'll have none of your mumbo-jumbo."
He swung a heavy bag filled with lead pellets, clapping Aramis a sharp blow on the temple.
Like a conjuror's trick, the world began to swirl and tip and then a curtain seemed to drop down over everything.
And then, just like his dad before him, Aramis the Amazing simply disappeared.
Next: Master Buddenbrooks
The little boy called Aramis was a light sleeper. From blocks away, he would hear the distant rattle of the peddler carts and the chipping rhythm of the ice man's pick.
He slept in a tiny hovel made of old bits of cast-off corrugated iron and canvas.
There were two cots made from gunnysacks and bundles of ticking nicked from the chair-maker's shop on Cabinetry Lane.
On the other bed lay his older brother Simon, who was ill. He had worked in one of the lark shows on the Bailey Mall as a peanut seller.
But a drunk had punched the boy in the gut and then kicked him when he fell on the hard floor.
After that, Simon's belly never worked right. He could only eat soft food and he forgot things.
When Aramis went out to do his magic show, he had to tie his brother to a post set in one corner of their flop.
Aramis was a conjuror. Their dad had been one, too, and he taught Aramis everything he knew about making nibs vanish or causing feathers to turn into wisps of smoke.
The family's best trick was a floppy hat that could produce a lit candle. It didn't always work right, but when it did the crowd always clapped and gave up a few bits of small-coin.
Their father had taken a bit of his own medicine and vanished two years before. Just -- poof, gone.
Simon said it was the way of a conjuror to take himself off without even a good-bye.
Simon wouldn't have anything to do with magic and anyway he was dead clumsy. Clumsy and strong, at least until he got hurt.
Now it was Aramis's job to keep them both fed and to pay the neighborhood racketman who controlled the tenements and to buy the bottles of Figgy's Nocturnal Solution that helped Simon endure the pain.
When he heard the morning traffic in the lane, Aramis rose in the dark and began to pack his kit. He often traveled for miles through Piketon before setting up his show.
It was better to vary the crowd and to make sure none of the blue-belly cops took his measure.
He carried all of his tricks and props in a black box rigged with a pair of leather straps for his shoulders.
Tucked inside was the motley robe and conical hat that marked him out -- along with the crescent-moon tattoos over his eyes -- as a blood member of the Societe de Legerdemain.
"Are you awake, Simon?" he said.
Simon gave a low moan, stirring in his bedclothes.
"I'm off then, Simon. I won't be back til tonight. I plan to go across to Foundry Gardens, if I can slip a trolley ride."
No response.
"You be good now, Simon. I'll bring you home a good pie and some beer."
Simon began to snore and Aramis crawled out of the hovel into the dim, weary light of a Piketon morning.
Though he had long and dextrous fingers, he wasn't a stoutly-built boy. It took him a moment of dancing to get the box hoisted on his back.
Then he set off through the fast-growing crowds toward the High Street where the trains rumbled along on their iron rails, throwing blue sparks into the sky.
As he walked, Aramis felt two peculiar sensations, neither of which he could explain.
The first was a hum of peculiar optimism and happiness. He felt a little guilty whenever he realized that he quite enjoyed his life.
What had happened to Simon was pretty nasty. And it was no happy thing that their dad had run off, or been way-laid.
But Aramis liked performing as a conjurer. He was good at it and he felt a tiny thrill every time his effects went off smoothly.
If the crowd made that queer noise that meant it was baffled and delighted at the same time, he didn't hardly care if they gave up any of their nibs.
The second sensation had only come to him in the last few days and it was a rather different sort of thing:
Aramis was convinced that someone was watching him; following him, even.
As he grabbed the bar of the streetcar and pulled himself up, he glanced back over the faces in the street.
He saw nothing out of the ordinary: tradesmen, women taking their mounds of dough to the corner bakers, Dula Priests shaking their fern fronds.
There was one face that seemed a bit familiar.
A boy. Maybe ten or eleven. He was leaning against a sign post eating a chicken leg with such a stupid expression on his face that Aramis laughed.
He himself was a clever boy. His father had always said so.
"Simon is strong as an ox, but you were born with the quick eye and the quick finger."
And he was born with something else, something his father called The Old Wink and Blink.
"You've a bit of the Real Stuff in you," he said. "The True Magic. When you were a baby, your eyes kept changing colors. I had it too when I was your age, though it slipped away somehow."
It wasn't much of a power, in fact. When he tried very hard, Aramis found that he could slide himself a bit from one place to another and also through time.
He never used the trick as part of his show -- he felt that it would be cheating and besides he liked to have his secret.
But a half-dozen times he had used the Old W & B to escape a cop or a gang of bullies or the racketman's thugs.
The streetcar took him in a round-about way through the gut of Piketon.
He had to clamber down a quarter mile or so from Foundry Park, when the ticket-taker began to shout at him, but Aramis didn't mind.
He trudged the rest of the way and set up his little table (he called it his "stage") under a shabby looking linden tree. Its leaves were coated with soot and it seemed to be surrounded by scrabbly dandelions.
"At least there's no rain today," said the balloon vendor, a thick-browed Maki-maki who was setting up shop across the garden path. "People don't want balloons in the rain, do they?"
Aramis opened his own kit and soon began to perform, working his little medley of tricks, calling out, "Sorcery and wonders and delights! Sorcery and wonders and delights!"
His small, high voice could be heard across the park, except when the big lorries were rumbling past.
Just after mid-day, when the day had mustered a kind of sullen warmth, he was working his shell-trick, hiding the pea from baffled shop-girls and nannies.
"It's not possible," insisted one girl. "I know the pebble was under that shell. I saw it with my own two eyes."
"Either your eyes are playing tricks," Aramis winked, "or I am."
That won him a laugh -- and a nib or two. He looked around with satisfaction, thinking it might be time to knock off and have his own lunch, when he saw the boy again.
It was the dull-faced kid from the morning, only now he was chewing on a slice of watermelon.
Aramis went about his business, pouring water from an empty glass and causing his own hair to stick straight up and making his tongue turn blue. This last stunt delighted a group of school children.
The entire time, he was watching the boy who was watching him. The kid was very good at his ruse. He seemed a perfect idler.
For a time, Aramis half-convinced himself that it was chance that they had turned up in the same neighborhoods twice in one day.
But then the boy's act slipped for a moment. One of the balloon-seller's balloons popped with a loud bang and the kid's face changed, growing hard and deliberate. His hand strayed toward the curved knife on his belt.
It was a sailor's knife, finely made. In a flash the kid's face resumedits former, cow-like expression.
Aramis felt his heart go knock. He knew that Piketon was a dangerous, ruthless town.
There were any number of reasons that people stalked children. The slave-trade was outlawed by the Admiralty, but no one did much about it. Ships were always looking for shroud-walkers.
When his dad disappeared, no one cared. Aramis might vanish just as quick.
There was a time when the Societe Legerdemain might have looked out for one such as him, but the order had fallen on hard times, at least on this world.
He began to pack his things, acting as natural as he could.
At the last moment, when surrounded by a crowd of Prilm traders carrying their ware-banners, he bolted, hustling through he Park's gates and dodging into the traffic of the road.
Glancing back, he saw that the boy was after him. His face had once again dropped its mask and had a look of irritation and dark resolve.
Aramis spied a streetcar and swung aboard. He thought that would do the trick, but the boy made a nimble leap and caught at the tail-end of the same car.
A crowd of commuters separated them, but they eyed one-another fiercely.
At the next corner, Aramis dropped off and scampered through a vegetable market. He was quick enough except for the big box on his back.
"Hey there, kid! Watch out for the decent folk doing their business! We'll have the blue-bellies after you!"
Aramis ignored them and went up a stair into a tavern and then out the back way into an alley. In his own neighborhood he would have known where to go.
He and Simon had mapped out escape routes, hiding places, and secret rendez-vous. But in this part of Piketon he was forced to run blind.
The boy kept pace. He seemed almost to be maintaining a certain distance, watching, taking his prey's measure. Aramis felt fear rise in his throat.
What did the kid want? What would happen to Simon if he was taken? His brother would have no one.
Aramis ran for another quarter-hour, before turning a corner into a small square, built around a public fountain. Women were lined up drawing water for their soup pots.
The boy was just behind now. Unlike Aramis, who rarely got a decent meal, the other kid wasn't winded at all. He reached a hand and got a grip on the handle of Aramis's box.
"Go easy now," said the kid. "It won't be so hard on you if you don't fight it."
Aramis tugged and twisted but the boy had both hands on him now. He was unnaturally strong, stronger than Simon, almost like a little man.
The women paid them no mind. It looked like two boys tussling over a box.
Aramis scrunched up his face and began to work his magic, his true magic. But the other was boy was too quick.
"Oh, no," he said, in a business-like tone. "We'll have none of your mumbo-jumbo."
He swung a heavy bag filled with lead pellets, clapping Aramis a sharp blow on the temple.
Like a conjuror's trick, the world began to swirl and tip and then a curtain seemed to drop down over everything.
And then, just like his dad before him, Aramis the Amazing simply disappeared.
Next: Master Buddenbrooks
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Ten: Aramis the Amazing
In the days that followed, Nail had little time to rethink or regret her decision to join the Blue Oriole's crew of shroud-walkers.
She was taken by Marcus Barkle through Piketon's maze of drab, cobbled streets to a warehouse in the port district. The structure was so vast that it could swallow dream-clippers whole.
The roof was made of canvas and could be rolled back as a vessel descended.
A kind of mounting structure had been erected, so that ships could be docked well above the floor, without collapsing their ventral masts.
Resting in this massive chassis was the Blue Oriole, a thirty-four gun clipper made of oak and brass and iron.
Her first glimpse was less than awe-inspiring. Nail had seen dream ships before and even studied their lines.
This ship looked hard-used and battered. The lines were a mess, hanging in clumps and knots.
Her canvas sails were spread on the ground, where groups of kids were hard at work with long needles and thread.
Up above, crews of carpenters and joiners and iron-smiths were at work, setting off a din of hammers and saws and voices.
A boy with impossibly long arms hopped down from a crate, where he'd been idling with an apple.
"This is Ballko," said Marcus Barkle. "He's Best Mate of the Shrouds. Think of him as the boss and you'll get on okay. He'll get you your stamp and then see you settled."
"My stamp?" Nail said.
"Your tattoo," said Ballko. He grinned and flexed his big bicep. There was a small blue mark there, in the form of a bird's wing.
Nail shook her head and said fiercely, "I don't want to be marked like some cow. I don't want to be owned."
The new boy screwed up his face and looked at Barkle.
"She ain't a stinking runner, is she? I got two of them already to look after and they're driving me crazy. Bawling and blubbering. I won't get a bit of peace until we're off-world."
Barkle shrugged and said, "It's the way it works, girl. We're all marked when we join the Oriole. Or any ship."
"Anyway, it's for your own good," Ballko put in. "Those bastards at the Admiralty is always after kids for their own ships, which ain't half so nice as the Oriole, I can promise you. The Impress Service has a half-dozen gangs hunting in Piketon right now. You're lucky we found you first."
"With the mark, you'll be safe," Marcus said. "It means you're already spoken for. You're one of us."
A fat, grinning man called Mr. King did the tattoo-work, splashing Nail's arm with rum and then working the needles. It stung like a hundred hornets, but she bit her lip and never made a sound.
Afterward, Ballko took her to a kind of bunkhouse. There were bars on the doors and a great, iron padlock on the door.
"I won't make bones about it," the boy said. "For the time being, you're more than half a prisoner. It gets better."
"But I volunteered," Nail said. "I agreed to come."
He grinned and winked. "Think you had a choice, do you? Think Old Barkle would let a spry monkey like you get away?"
She shrugged and said, "Anyway, I don't have anyplace else to go."
"Don't matter. Captain Marsh's orders. Too many idiots try to scram on us, before they see how good they got it. In you go now."
The room was low and dim and smelled of must and damp. She soon discovered that nearly a dozen children were locked in, some of them so terrified that they couldn't move or speak.
Others seemed delighted that they had been fed so well and taken out of their cramped, wretched families.
One cross-eyed boy -- he couldn't have been more than six or seven -- was dangling upside down from a bunk, his scrawny ribs showing.
"What are you doing?" Nail asked.
"I'm practicing," he said. "Pretty soon they'll make us walk out on them ropes. Ain't nothing under you but Dream. If you fall, you just keep on falling forever."
"Where did you hear that?"
"Everybody knows that's what happens if you fall into a dream. But I ain't going to fall. Watch this!"
He flipped himself up with surprising agility and began to walk along the edge of the bed, tongue between his teeth.
"What's your name?" Nail asked.
"I'm Little Blue Dean," he said over his shoulder. "My cat Percy is around here somewhere. They didn't want Percy to come, but Percy goes where he likes."
Nail looked around, but there was no sign of any cat.
The other children ranged in age from five or six to twelve or thirteen. The older ones were small and slight for their ages.
A group of kids had gathered around a cot, where a boy with raven-black hair was lying unconscious.
Crescent moons were tattooed above each of his eyebrows, giving his face a look of startlement. One one temple rose a swollen lump the size of a gelder-piece.
"What happened to him?" Nail said.
"Marcus Barkle clobbered him," someone said. "He's a dwarf, you know. Barkle, I mean. He ain't a kid at all."
"I overhead him talking with Ballko," said another child. "This one made a good chase of it and nearly got away. They said he was a conjuror of some kind. Said his name was Aramis. Aramis the Amazing."
Nail looked at the injured boy. He didn't look very amazing. His nose had been broken and his lip was split.
He first instinct was to take care of him, the way she had tried to care for her brothers and sisters.
But then she felt a clench of anger and bitterness. She had been abandoned. Left behind. She didn't want to look after anyone else, not now, maybe not ever again.
Aramis the Amazing would just have to take care of himself.
Next: The Old Wink and Blink
She was taken by Marcus Barkle through Piketon's maze of drab, cobbled streets to a warehouse in the port district. The structure was so vast that it could swallow dream-clippers whole.
The roof was made of canvas and could be rolled back as a vessel descended.
A kind of mounting structure had been erected, so that ships could be docked well above the floor, without collapsing their ventral masts.
Resting in this massive chassis was the Blue Oriole, a thirty-four gun clipper made of oak and brass and iron.
Her first glimpse was less than awe-inspiring. Nail had seen dream ships before and even studied their lines.
This ship looked hard-used and battered. The lines were a mess, hanging in clumps and knots.
Her canvas sails were spread on the ground, where groups of kids were hard at work with long needles and thread.
Up above, crews of carpenters and joiners and iron-smiths were at work, setting off a din of hammers and saws and voices.
A boy with impossibly long arms hopped down from a crate, where he'd been idling with an apple.
"This is Ballko," said Marcus Barkle. "He's Best Mate of the Shrouds. Think of him as the boss and you'll get on okay. He'll get you your stamp and then see you settled."
"My stamp?" Nail said.
"Your tattoo," said Ballko. He grinned and flexed his big bicep. There was a small blue mark there, in the form of a bird's wing.
Nail shook her head and said fiercely, "I don't want to be marked like some cow. I don't want to be owned."
The new boy screwed up his face and looked at Barkle.
"She ain't a stinking runner, is she? I got two of them already to look after and they're driving me crazy. Bawling and blubbering. I won't get a bit of peace until we're off-world."
Barkle shrugged and said, "It's the way it works, girl. We're all marked when we join the Oriole. Or any ship."
"Anyway, it's for your own good," Ballko put in. "Those bastards at the Admiralty is always after kids for their own ships, which ain't half so nice as the Oriole, I can promise you. The Impress Service has a half-dozen gangs hunting in Piketon right now. You're lucky we found you first."
"With the mark, you'll be safe," Marcus said. "It means you're already spoken for. You're one of us."
A fat, grinning man called Mr. King did the tattoo-work, splashing Nail's arm with rum and then working the needles. It stung like a hundred hornets, but she bit her lip and never made a sound.
Afterward, Ballko took her to a kind of bunkhouse. There were bars on the doors and a great, iron padlock on the door.
"I won't make bones about it," the boy said. "For the time being, you're more than half a prisoner. It gets better."
"But I volunteered," Nail said. "I agreed to come."
He grinned and winked. "Think you had a choice, do you? Think Old Barkle would let a spry monkey like you get away?"
She shrugged and said, "Anyway, I don't have anyplace else to go."
"Don't matter. Captain Marsh's orders. Too many idiots try to scram on us, before they see how good they got it. In you go now."
The room was low and dim and smelled of must and damp. She soon discovered that nearly a dozen children were locked in, some of them so terrified that they couldn't move or speak.
Others seemed delighted that they had been fed so well and taken out of their cramped, wretched families.
One cross-eyed boy -- he couldn't have been more than six or seven -- was dangling upside down from a bunk, his scrawny ribs showing.
"What are you doing?" Nail asked.
"I'm practicing," he said. "Pretty soon they'll make us walk out on them ropes. Ain't nothing under you but Dream. If you fall, you just keep on falling forever."
"Where did you hear that?"
"Everybody knows that's what happens if you fall into a dream. But I ain't going to fall. Watch this!"
He flipped himself up with surprising agility and began to walk along the edge of the bed, tongue between his teeth.
"What's your name?" Nail asked.
"I'm Little Blue Dean," he said over his shoulder. "My cat Percy is around here somewhere. They didn't want Percy to come, but Percy goes where he likes."
Nail looked around, but there was no sign of any cat.
The other children ranged in age from five or six to twelve or thirteen. The older ones were small and slight for their ages.
A group of kids had gathered around a cot, where a boy with raven-black hair was lying unconscious.
Crescent moons were tattooed above each of his eyebrows, giving his face a look of startlement. One one temple rose a swollen lump the size of a gelder-piece.
"What happened to him?" Nail said.
"Marcus Barkle clobbered him," someone said. "He's a dwarf, you know. Barkle, I mean. He ain't a kid at all."
"I overhead him talking with Ballko," said another child. "This one made a good chase of it and nearly got away. They said he was a conjuror of some kind. Said his name was Aramis. Aramis the Amazing."
Nail looked at the injured boy. He didn't look very amazing. His nose had been broken and his lip was split.
He first instinct was to take care of him, the way she had tried to care for her brothers and sisters.
But then she felt a clench of anger and bitterness. She had been abandoned. Left behind. She didn't want to look after anyone else, not now, maybe not ever again.
Aramis the Amazing would just have to take care of himself.
Next: The Old Wink and Blink
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Nine: Barkle's First Prize
Six days after her family disappeared into Dream, Nell stood on a stone bridge above the Eisen River.
It rushed and roared through the heart of Piketon, turning pistons and wheels, flushing away the city's filth.
Dusk draped itself over the streets. The coal-gas streetlamps looked like winking eyes.
Nell was hungry and frightened. But the thing that had driven her to clamber up onto the bridge's railing was fury.
Her face was clenched like a fist. She kept thinking of all the things that she would say to her father, if she got the chance.
"But I won't get the chance," she said, out loud. "They tricked me. They left me behind like an old suitcase."
They had forced her to accept the role assigned to her at birth: They had subtracted her and divided her until there was nothing left.
She peered up into the fug of factory smoke that cloaked Piketon. Was there really such a thing as Father Tally? Were there angels hidden in the angles of the world?
She shook her head. No. She wouldn't fool herself. She would take her final reckoning without cheating or making-believe.
"I'm Nell," she said angrily. "I never wanted to be, but that's what I am. But you're even less, Father Tally. You're just someone's excuse."
"Who is it you're talking to?"
Nell swung around, only just remembering to hang onto the bridge rail. The black, filthy water swept hungrily below her feet.
A boy, roughly her own age, stood a few paces away. He had a round, rather common face, but his eyes were queer.
They seemed to be taking her measure in a way that was more adult than child-like.
"Aren't you scared?" he said. "Standing at the edge like that? Up so high? You wouldn't stand a chance if you fell."
Nell shook her head contemptuously. "I've been in scarier places than this. I can climb just about anything. Nothing knocks me loose, unless I let go."
The boy nodded thoughtfully. "You look agile enough. And you don't look like you weigh very much."
It was an odd thing to say. As if he were sizing up a prize sheep or a bushel of corn.
"You were talking to someone," he said. "Are you crazy or something? It won't do if you're crazy."
Nell felt her blood race. A moment before she had been thinking of throwing herself into the river, letting herself be swallowed up.
But now her anger had something to focus on. "I'm not crazy," she said, in a threatening voice. "I'll punch your ears if you say that again."
"You could try," said the boy.
He took something out of his pocket. The thing was so rare and special that it took a moment for Nell to realize what it was: a ripe, perfect pear.
"Look what I pinched," he said. "Do you want half?"
Nell swallowed. Her anger was tangled up in caution and hunger.
"Why would you share?" she said. "You never saw me before. People on Nail don't give things away for free."
"No," he admitted. "There's always a price, except when you steal. And no one steals from me."
"What is it then?" Nell said. "Tell me what you want up front and be straight about it, or else leave me alone."
The boy took out a business-like knife. She saw that it was deadly sharp, curved slightly at the tip.
With a practiced turn of his wrist, he cut the pear in half and tossed her the larger piece. She couldn't help but catch it in her free hand.
It was perfect: the skin green and tinged with red, the meat grainy and white. The sweet smell nearly knocked her off the bridge.
Before she could think, she took a bite. The juice covered her chin.
The boy took a bite too. He watched her, his eyes more thoughtful than ever.
"You caught that pair without even thinking," he said. "That's no easy trick."
Nell shrugged and went on chewing.
"My name is Marcus," he said. "And I think you might just do for my crew."
She made a mocking face. "What, your crew of pickpockets and quickfingers? No, thank you. I work honest for my nibs."
He shook his head and said, "It's true I pinch things now and then, when I want them bad enough. But that's not my main job. I'm a wire walker."
"You mean you crew on a dream ship?"
He nodded. Pointing upward with the knife, he said, "You ever been up there before? Up in the Dream?"
"Sure, plenty of times. My family are pilgrims."
"Where are they now, your family? Gone off? I thought so. When I saw you climb up on the bridge rail, I thought you must be alone."
Nell wanted to say something clever and hard, but her throat tightened. She thought she might break down and cry and the thought filled her with shame.
"Here's the deal then," Marcus said. "I'm looking for kids to work the shrouds aboard a ship. She's called the Blue Oriole. A clipper. One of the fastest around. I won't lie to you. It's hard work and tricky and dangerous. But Captain Marsh is a fair man and never cruel when he doesn't have to be. Anyway, working for him is no worse than throwing yourself into a river."
The proposition was such a surprise that for a moment Nell forgot her sorrow. Kids in every port in the Dream knew about shroud-walkers and their way of hunting children.
You had to be careful or you might get shanghaied and carried away from your home and family.
"I thought your sort just kidnapped young ones," she said. "When you need fresh crew don't you just carry them off?"
The boy shrugged and said, "I do it that way when I have to. Some of the kids I take will go aboard kicking and screaming. But when I can, I look for ones like you, ones that don't have nothing better."
Nell nodded. She looked at him for a long time. She could see that there was something truly strange about him.
He wasn't like any boy she had ever seen before. He stood too still. He never fidgeted once.
She turned back to look at the rushing water. In her hand was the bead from her father's abacus. The black stone represented all her life up to that point.
It felt heavy and cold, despite the grip of her hand.
"I heard once," she said, "that shroud walkers always take a new name when they join a crew. A nickname like, a new identity."
"That's right. You leave your lubber name behind."
"I want to choose my own name."
Marcus frowned and thought it over before saying, "It's not tradition, but I guess it's fair enough. What will it be?"
"I guess you can call me Nail. That's where you found me, isn't it? It's not much different from my old name. And nails are hard, right? They're hard to pry loose."
"Nail it is then."
She nodded and said, "I'll do it then. I'll join the Blue Oriole."
The little girl turned held out her hand and let the abacus stone roll through her fingers. It dropped without a sound into the current.
Marcus Barkle watched with satisfaction, taking another bite of his pear.
Next: Aramis the Amazing
It rushed and roared through the heart of Piketon, turning pistons and wheels, flushing away the city's filth.
Dusk draped itself over the streets. The coal-gas streetlamps looked like winking eyes.
Nell was hungry and frightened. But the thing that had driven her to clamber up onto the bridge's railing was fury.
Her face was clenched like a fist. She kept thinking of all the things that she would say to her father, if she got the chance.
"But I won't get the chance," she said, out loud. "They tricked me. They left me behind like an old suitcase."
They had forced her to accept the role assigned to her at birth: They had subtracted her and divided her until there was nothing left.
She peered up into the fug of factory smoke that cloaked Piketon. Was there really such a thing as Father Tally? Were there angels hidden in the angles of the world?
She shook her head. No. She wouldn't fool herself. She would take her final reckoning without cheating or making-believe.
"I'm Nell," she said angrily. "I never wanted to be, but that's what I am. But you're even less, Father Tally. You're just someone's excuse."
"Who is it you're talking to?"
Nell swung around, only just remembering to hang onto the bridge rail. The black, filthy water swept hungrily below her feet.
A boy, roughly her own age, stood a few paces away. He had a round, rather common face, but his eyes were queer.
They seemed to be taking her measure in a way that was more adult than child-like.
"Aren't you scared?" he said. "Standing at the edge like that? Up so high? You wouldn't stand a chance if you fell."
Nell shook her head contemptuously. "I've been in scarier places than this. I can climb just about anything. Nothing knocks me loose, unless I let go."
The boy nodded thoughtfully. "You look agile enough. And you don't look like you weigh very much."
It was an odd thing to say. As if he were sizing up a prize sheep or a bushel of corn.
"You were talking to someone," he said. "Are you crazy or something? It won't do if you're crazy."
Nell felt her blood race. A moment before she had been thinking of throwing herself into the river, letting herself be swallowed up.
But now her anger had something to focus on. "I'm not crazy," she said, in a threatening voice. "I'll punch your ears if you say that again."
"You could try," said the boy.
He took something out of his pocket. The thing was so rare and special that it took a moment for Nell to realize what it was: a ripe, perfect pear.
"Look what I pinched," he said. "Do you want half?"
Nell swallowed. Her anger was tangled up in caution and hunger.
"Why would you share?" she said. "You never saw me before. People on Nail don't give things away for free."
"No," he admitted. "There's always a price, except when you steal. And no one steals from me."
"What is it then?" Nell said. "Tell me what you want up front and be straight about it, or else leave me alone."
The boy took out a business-like knife. She saw that it was deadly sharp, curved slightly at the tip.
With a practiced turn of his wrist, he cut the pear in half and tossed her the larger piece. She couldn't help but catch it in her free hand.
It was perfect: the skin green and tinged with red, the meat grainy and white. The sweet smell nearly knocked her off the bridge.
Before she could think, she took a bite. The juice covered her chin.
The boy took a bite too. He watched her, his eyes more thoughtful than ever.
"You caught that pair without even thinking," he said. "That's no easy trick."
Nell shrugged and went on chewing.
"My name is Marcus," he said. "And I think you might just do for my crew."
She made a mocking face. "What, your crew of pickpockets and quickfingers? No, thank you. I work honest for my nibs."
He shook his head and said, "It's true I pinch things now and then, when I want them bad enough. But that's not my main job. I'm a wire walker."
"You mean you crew on a dream ship?"
He nodded. Pointing upward with the knife, he said, "You ever been up there before? Up in the Dream?"
"Sure, plenty of times. My family are pilgrims."
"Where are they now, your family? Gone off? I thought so. When I saw you climb up on the bridge rail, I thought you must be alone."
Nell wanted to say something clever and hard, but her throat tightened. She thought she might break down and cry and the thought filled her with shame.
"Here's the deal then," Marcus said. "I'm looking for kids to work the shrouds aboard a ship. She's called the Blue Oriole. A clipper. One of the fastest around. I won't lie to you. It's hard work and tricky and dangerous. But Captain Marsh is a fair man and never cruel when he doesn't have to be. Anyway, working for him is no worse than throwing yourself into a river."
The proposition was such a surprise that for a moment Nell forgot her sorrow. Kids in every port in the Dream knew about shroud-walkers and their way of hunting children.
You had to be careful or you might get shanghaied and carried away from your home and family.
"I thought your sort just kidnapped young ones," she said. "When you need fresh crew don't you just carry them off?"
The boy shrugged and said, "I do it that way when I have to. Some of the kids I take will go aboard kicking and screaming. But when I can, I look for ones like you, ones that don't have nothing better."
Nell nodded. She looked at him for a long time. She could see that there was something truly strange about him.
He wasn't like any boy she had ever seen before. He stood too still. He never fidgeted once.
She turned back to look at the rushing water. In her hand was the bead from her father's abacus. The black stone represented all her life up to that point.
It felt heavy and cold, despite the grip of her hand.
"I heard once," she said, "that shroud walkers always take a new name when they join a crew. A nickname like, a new identity."
"That's right. You leave your lubber name behind."
"I want to choose my own name."
Marcus frowned and thought it over before saying, "It's not tradition, but I guess it's fair enough. What will it be?"
"I guess you can call me Nail. That's where you found me, isn't it? It's not much different from my old name. And nails are hard, right? They're hard to pry loose."
"Nail it is then."
She nodded and said, "I'll do it then. I'll join the Blue Oriole."
The little girl turned held out her hand and let the abacus stone roll through her fingers. It dropped without a sound into the current.
Marcus Barkle watched with satisfaction, taking another bite of his pear.
Next: Aramis the Amazing
Monday, May 11, 2009
Eight: Losing Nell
One of the most unsettling aspects of Dream was that it created and destroyed worlds the way men make and shatter clay pots.
Fortunately, such events were rare. And most worlds that unraveled did so gradually, over many lifetimes. There were tremors and portents.
Geomancers could predict almost to the year when a planet would come apart and be reabsorbed.
There were even certain magicks that could forestall -- at least for a time -- a world's destruction.
Port Primus, homeworld of the Admiralty, had been stitched and bound together by sorcery for nearly a century.
The creation of new worlds, by contrast, was often sudden and cataclysmic.
A dreamship would be sailing a well-charted route through the void, expecting nothing but empty vastness.
But then out of the haze would emerge a new planet, some smoking and primordially volcanic, others already teeming with life that seemed to have existed for aeons.
Nail was just such a world.
It had manifested half a century ago, a forbidding expanse of metallic rock and sulfurous lakes.
The air was scented with rust and the endless smoke of burning coalfields.
A kind of gold rush had begun, with a hundred trading concerns and guilds and conglomerates staking claims across Nail's dismal surface.
Most of these outposts remained primitive and hardscrabble.
Scar-eyed men in heavy coats worked in their holes like primitive animals, bearing ore in baskets upon their backs.
The one proper city on the planet was Piketon, a sprawling and lawless port where great ore barges rose ponderously with each boreal tide.
It was there, in those corrugated-iron slums, that Nell lost her family for good.
She was smart enough to see at once that it was a mistake for them to come to Nail.
The trade-bosses and factory owners needed engineers and accountants, but no one had any time for mystics.
"Numbers are nasty, tiresome things even when they're set to a practical use," was the general sentiment. "The idea of harkening to a sermon about them is pure daft!"
Her father was stubborn. He set up his box on busy streetcorners and begin to chant the theorems of the Blue Crescent.
But his adoration of hypotenuse and ratio only made people laugh or shrug.
There had never been food enough and now the family's meals dwindled from meager to desperate.
Null's brothers and sisters stared sullenly at their lumps of hardtack and their mugs of bluish milk.
She sometimes found them casting angry, resentful glances at her as well.
Her oldest brother, Archimedes, would hiss in Nell's ear: "You're not even supposed to be here. You must have angered Father Tally somehow, or he would have taken you off long ago."
"It's not true," she protested. "I haven't done anything."
"There must be some reason people won't listen to Dad's sermons," said the older boy. "You're an error, that's what you are. You're a fly in the ointment."
Even Nell's mother found it more and more difficult to sneak her scraps of food. The girl was often on her own.
She found herself wandering farther and farther through the lanes and alleys of Piketon.
She did odd jobs in trade for a cup of broth or a heel of bread. Occasionally someone would pay her a nib or two for emptying chamber pots and scrubbing steps.
Rust covered everything on Nail. Someone would always pay her to scrape and sand and peel.
She could climb down into pipes and narrow spaces where grown-ups couldn't go, but the work left her half-dead with exhaustion.
One day, when Nell was unfolding her little roll of blankets, her mother made a queer and surprising speech:
"I don't have much, Nell, that belongs to me alone. But I still have this shawl that was stitched by my own mum."
Nell couldn't believe her eyes. The small cloak was finely made, impossibly delicate. She touched the stitchery with her fingertips.
She could see the geometry in it, the puzzling pattern. "It's very beautiful," she said.
"I've kept it all these years. When your father sold off all the other things -- the plates, the pictures -- I hid this away."
"You were right to keep it," Nell said.
"I knew you'd understand. And now it's yours to keep. The other girls, your sisters, they wouldn't appreciate it properly."
Nell saw that her mother was crying, a thing that she almost never did anymore. Her thin, pale cheeks gleamed like wet soap in the light of the candle.
"I don't want it," Nell said, suddenly afraid. "It's too fine. I've never had anything so pretty."
But her mother wouldn't tolerate any argument. After a moment, she dried her eyes and made her face hard again.
"What's done is done," she said. "Of all the decisions I've made in my life, Nell, giving you this gift may be the one I regret the least."
Nell was a clever girl, and suspicious. This conversation made her wary.
She was careful in the weeks that followed to keep a jealous watch on her family.
She listened to her parents' conversations. She studied her father's face at night when he was chanting the remainders of Pi.
One evening, he looked up from his prayers and his stony gaze fell on Nell and he said, "I see now that you were put here to test me. You were a burden and a trial of my arrogance."
Nell waited, but her father never spoke to her again.
Two days later, she came home from delivering a package to the far side of Piketon.
An Augsburgher merchant had promised her a half-dozen nibs and a piece of rock candy if she returned within an hour's time.
It was a princely sum for such a job and Nell soon realized that she had been tricked.
Her father had paid the Augsburgher out of his last remaining coin.
"Sorry, little girl," said the barrel-chested fellow, peering at her through his monocle. "Seems your dad wanted you kept busy for a while. Tough luck and all that!"
Her mother and father and twelve brothers and sisters were gone.
She raced through the neighborhood and soon tracked down a ticket seller who had booked them passage on a dream ship bound for Titus.
"Aye, they sailed this morning aboard the Yellow Raven," the man said, with a shrug. "Said they weren't sure where they would go after Titus. Your father said he was waiting for a sign."
"I have to go after them," Nell said. "Please! There's been a mistake, I must get aboard."
She showed the man her mother's beautiful shawl. "I'll give you this. This and all the nibs I have. Please!"
The ticket seller laughed and said, "Keep your rags and your nibs, little girl. The next tide isn't for three days. The Yellow Raven will be halfway to Titus by then."
He turned away and Nell went out onto the street. It had begun to rain, so that the smell of rust filled the air.
Water red as blood choked the gutters.
She sat under the awning of a tavern, legs pulled tight against her chest, wrapped in the shawl.
Fear threatened to swallow her whole. Her family had been hard and ungenerous, but now she had no one.
In all the great emptiness of Dream, she was truly and completely alone. With the toe of her tattered boot, she drew a circle in the mud.
It was the figure for zero, for nothing, for emptiness. In the language of her father's faith, this was the symbol that matched her name.
Next: Barkle's First Prize
Fortunately, such events were rare. And most worlds that unraveled did so gradually, over many lifetimes. There were tremors and portents.
Geomancers could predict almost to the year when a planet would come apart and be reabsorbed.
There were even certain magicks that could forestall -- at least for a time -- a world's destruction.
Port Primus, homeworld of the Admiralty, had been stitched and bound together by sorcery for nearly a century.
The creation of new worlds, by contrast, was often sudden and cataclysmic.
A dreamship would be sailing a well-charted route through the void, expecting nothing but empty vastness.
But then out of the haze would emerge a new planet, some smoking and primordially volcanic, others already teeming with life that seemed to have existed for aeons.
Nail was just such a world.
It had manifested half a century ago, a forbidding expanse of metallic rock and sulfurous lakes.
The air was scented with rust and the endless smoke of burning coalfields.
A kind of gold rush had begun, with a hundred trading concerns and guilds and conglomerates staking claims across Nail's dismal surface.
Most of these outposts remained primitive and hardscrabble.
Scar-eyed men in heavy coats worked in their holes like primitive animals, bearing ore in baskets upon their backs.
The one proper city on the planet was Piketon, a sprawling and lawless port where great ore barges rose ponderously with each boreal tide.
It was there, in those corrugated-iron slums, that Nell lost her family for good.
She was smart enough to see at once that it was a mistake for them to come to Nail.
The trade-bosses and factory owners needed engineers and accountants, but no one had any time for mystics.
"Numbers are nasty, tiresome things even when they're set to a practical use," was the general sentiment. "The idea of harkening to a sermon about them is pure daft!"
Her father was stubborn. He set up his box on busy streetcorners and begin to chant the theorems of the Blue Crescent.
But his adoration of hypotenuse and ratio only made people laugh or shrug.
There had never been food enough and now the family's meals dwindled from meager to desperate.
Null's brothers and sisters stared sullenly at their lumps of hardtack and their mugs of bluish milk.
She sometimes found them casting angry, resentful glances at her as well.
Her oldest brother, Archimedes, would hiss in Nell's ear: "You're not even supposed to be here. You must have angered Father Tally somehow, or he would have taken you off long ago."
"It's not true," she protested. "I haven't done anything."
"There must be some reason people won't listen to Dad's sermons," said the older boy. "You're an error, that's what you are. You're a fly in the ointment."
Even Nell's mother found it more and more difficult to sneak her scraps of food. The girl was often on her own.
She found herself wandering farther and farther through the lanes and alleys of Piketon.
She did odd jobs in trade for a cup of broth or a heel of bread. Occasionally someone would pay her a nib or two for emptying chamber pots and scrubbing steps.
Rust covered everything on Nail. Someone would always pay her to scrape and sand and peel.
She could climb down into pipes and narrow spaces where grown-ups couldn't go, but the work left her half-dead with exhaustion.
One day, when Nell was unfolding her little roll of blankets, her mother made a queer and surprising speech:
"I don't have much, Nell, that belongs to me alone. But I still have this shawl that was stitched by my own mum."
Nell couldn't believe her eyes. The small cloak was finely made, impossibly delicate. She touched the stitchery with her fingertips.
She could see the geometry in it, the puzzling pattern. "It's very beautiful," she said.
"I've kept it all these years. When your father sold off all the other things -- the plates, the pictures -- I hid this away."
"You were right to keep it," Nell said.
"I knew you'd understand. And now it's yours to keep. The other girls, your sisters, they wouldn't appreciate it properly."
Nell saw that her mother was crying, a thing that she almost never did anymore. Her thin, pale cheeks gleamed like wet soap in the light of the candle.
"I don't want it," Nell said, suddenly afraid. "It's too fine. I've never had anything so pretty."
But her mother wouldn't tolerate any argument. After a moment, she dried her eyes and made her face hard again.
"What's done is done," she said. "Of all the decisions I've made in my life, Nell, giving you this gift may be the one I regret the least."
Nell was a clever girl, and suspicious. This conversation made her wary.
She was careful in the weeks that followed to keep a jealous watch on her family.
She listened to her parents' conversations. She studied her father's face at night when he was chanting the remainders of Pi.
One evening, he looked up from his prayers and his stony gaze fell on Nell and he said, "I see now that you were put here to test me. You were a burden and a trial of my arrogance."
Nell waited, but her father never spoke to her again.
Two days later, she came home from delivering a package to the far side of Piketon.
An Augsburgher merchant had promised her a half-dozen nibs and a piece of rock candy if she returned within an hour's time.
It was a princely sum for such a job and Nell soon realized that she had been tricked.
Her father had paid the Augsburgher out of his last remaining coin.
"Sorry, little girl," said the barrel-chested fellow, peering at her through his monocle. "Seems your dad wanted you kept busy for a while. Tough luck and all that!"
Her mother and father and twelve brothers and sisters were gone.
She raced through the neighborhood and soon tracked down a ticket seller who had booked them passage on a dream ship bound for Titus.
"Aye, they sailed this morning aboard the Yellow Raven," the man said, with a shrug. "Said they weren't sure where they would go after Titus. Your father said he was waiting for a sign."
"I have to go after them," Nell said. "Please! There's been a mistake, I must get aboard."
She showed the man her mother's beautiful shawl. "I'll give you this. This and all the nibs I have. Please!"
The ticket seller laughed and said, "Keep your rags and your nibs, little girl. The next tide isn't for three days. The Yellow Raven will be halfway to Titus by then."
He turned away and Nell went out onto the street. It had begun to rain, so that the smell of rust filled the air.
Water red as blood choked the gutters.
She sat under the awning of a tavern, legs pulled tight against her chest, wrapped in the shawl.
Fear threatened to swallow her whole. Her family had been hard and ungenerous, but now she had no one.
In all the great emptiness of Dream, she was truly and completely alone. With the toe of her tattered boot, she drew a circle in the mud.
It was the figure for zero, for nothing, for emptiness. In the language of her father's faith, this was the symbol that matched her name.
Next: Barkle's First Prize
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Seven: The Pilgrim's Daughter
Her name was Nell, which in the tongue of the Blue Crescent Theorems, meant death.
She was the thirteenth child of a mother and father who were pilgrims traveling in the endless path of Father Tally, who was also known as The Mathematician.
Because thirteen was the number of death, and one of the sacred Prime Numbers, Nell's father made an announcement on the day of her birth.
"She belongs not to us, but to the Father," he said, in his most sonorous voice. "Her fate is for Him to decide."
It wasn't an easy thing being named for death, or growing up in the knowledge that you already have one foot in the grave.
Nell was a quick child and clever and tough, which was lucky because most thirteenth children born to Father Tally's followers were taken almost at once.
Cynics said it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, for followers of the Mathematician -- a poor sect to begin with -- rarely spared much care or food on kids like Nell.
"It is an odd thing," said her father, on Nell's fourth birthday. "Perhaps the Mathematician is busy with other affairs. Or could it be that something about the child displeases Him?"
Nell's mother, a sickly, half-starved woman, would only shrug and make the fatalistic sign of the Common Denominator.
In secret, the woman loved Nell and resented her husband for giving the child to Father Tally.
She had no great interest in numbers, or the secret symmetries they were said to contain.
She had learned early on that she couldn't fill her children's bellies with the mystical truths that could be derived from the formulae contained in the Blue Crescent Theorems.
She stayed with her husband only because she had married him long ago and they had traveled far over the Known Dream.
When she cast her mind back over the path they had followed, visiting the holy sites of Father Tally's cult, she could hardly remember her home world.
The only thing she had left was this fanatic of a husband, with his braided beard and his abacus and his endless preaching.
He wasn't an evil man. He was a good enough father to their other twelve children. The idea of being left behind terrified her.
So Nell's mother labored in secret to protect her daughter, slipping the little girl food whenever she could.
Twice in Nell's brief and rather tenuous life, the woman had given her a hasty, furtive kiss on the forehead.
Whenever the family was preparing to pick up and leave for the next leg of their pilgrimage, she would warn her little girl:
"You must be careful to mingle with your brothers and sisters and avoid being noticed," the woman whispered. "Only after we're aboard ship can you let yourself be seen by your father."
Nell learned to make herself very small. She took up less space then a large cat.
Once the dreamship made sail, she would emerge like one of the fragile flowers that shows itself for a day or two in spring.
Noticing her, her father would say, "Is that one still with us? Is death still part of our pilgrimage? I never calculated such a thing, but the Mathematician alone knows the final sum."
For nine years, Nell had managed this balancing act, with the aid of her mother and one or two of her kinder siblings.
She grew up hard-faced and skinny. She was a rather bitter, sharp-tongued girl. She was, after all, viewed by those around her as a kind of Undead.
In the parlance of her father's faith, she was a Remainder.
But in the curious way of such things, Nell was also something of a genius with numbers.
She would sit in the huddle of children around her father, her face averted, listening to his sermons. Much of what he said seemed like nonsense to her.
He claimed, for example, that angels existed within Prime Numbers, because Prime Numbers were infinite and could only be divided by The One and by Themselves.
He also said that the number Pi represented the perfect Spherical Order. He would chant the numbers of Pi past the decimal point until he fell into a kind of snoring trance.
Nell saw instinctively that the Known Dream wasn't ordered into perfect spheres at all. There were sloppy elipses and jagged hedrons.
Despite her girlish prayers, she had never seen an angel, numerical or otherwise.
And yet when her father posed a mathematical question, she always knew the answer before any of her brothers and sisters.
It took all of her will power to keep her silence while the others struggled and stammered.
Sometimes, when Nell was riding a dream ship, she would sit and look at the lines of rigging, the spars and yards and masts, and she could feel the numerical tension in their design.
She could see the inner mathematical truth of the ship, with its torque and its ratios of mass to thrust.
She could see the path the ship would have to take, given the angles of its sails and the force delivered by the wind.
There were times when she even saw that others had gotten their numbers wrong.
Her father would recite one of Euclid's Elements from rote memory, transposing two figures.
Or she would see that the flawed design of a ship's mast would cause it to yaw clumsily when tacking.
"Maybe I really do belong to Father Tally," she would say. "Maybe I know these things because of him."
But she didn't really believe it.
And so when her father decided that they would travel to the world called Nail, so that he could preach the Blue Crescent Theorems to the innumerate, she perceived no plan or design.
"I suspect," Nell said to herself, "that we are all Remainders. We are all Irrational Numbers."
So she stowed herself away once again with her family and made the fateful journey to the ugly, belching world where she would first lay eyes on the Blue Oriole.
Next: Losing Nell
She was the thirteenth child of a mother and father who were pilgrims traveling in the endless path of Father Tally, who was also known as The Mathematician.
Because thirteen was the number of death, and one of the sacred Prime Numbers, Nell's father made an announcement on the day of her birth.
"She belongs not to us, but to the Father," he said, in his most sonorous voice. "Her fate is for Him to decide."
It wasn't an easy thing being named for death, or growing up in the knowledge that you already have one foot in the grave.
Nell was a quick child and clever and tough, which was lucky because most thirteenth children born to Father Tally's followers were taken almost at once.
Cynics said it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, for followers of the Mathematician -- a poor sect to begin with -- rarely spared much care or food on kids like Nell.
"It is an odd thing," said her father, on Nell's fourth birthday. "Perhaps the Mathematician is busy with other affairs. Or could it be that something about the child displeases Him?"
Nell's mother, a sickly, half-starved woman, would only shrug and make the fatalistic sign of the Common Denominator.
In secret, the woman loved Nell and resented her husband for giving the child to Father Tally.
She had no great interest in numbers, or the secret symmetries they were said to contain.
She had learned early on that she couldn't fill her children's bellies with the mystical truths that could be derived from the formulae contained in the Blue Crescent Theorems.
She stayed with her husband only because she had married him long ago and they had traveled far over the Known Dream.
When she cast her mind back over the path they had followed, visiting the holy sites of Father Tally's cult, she could hardly remember her home world.
The only thing she had left was this fanatic of a husband, with his braided beard and his abacus and his endless preaching.
He wasn't an evil man. He was a good enough father to their other twelve children. The idea of being left behind terrified her.
So Nell's mother labored in secret to protect her daughter, slipping the little girl food whenever she could.
Twice in Nell's brief and rather tenuous life, the woman had given her a hasty, furtive kiss on the forehead.
Whenever the family was preparing to pick up and leave for the next leg of their pilgrimage, she would warn her little girl:
"You must be careful to mingle with your brothers and sisters and avoid being noticed," the woman whispered. "Only after we're aboard ship can you let yourself be seen by your father."
Nell learned to make herself very small. She took up less space then a large cat.
Once the dreamship made sail, she would emerge like one of the fragile flowers that shows itself for a day or two in spring.
Noticing her, her father would say, "Is that one still with us? Is death still part of our pilgrimage? I never calculated such a thing, but the Mathematician alone knows the final sum."
For nine years, Nell had managed this balancing act, with the aid of her mother and one or two of her kinder siblings.
She grew up hard-faced and skinny. She was a rather bitter, sharp-tongued girl. She was, after all, viewed by those around her as a kind of Undead.
In the parlance of her father's faith, she was a Remainder.
But in the curious way of such things, Nell was also something of a genius with numbers.
She would sit in the huddle of children around her father, her face averted, listening to his sermons. Much of what he said seemed like nonsense to her.
He claimed, for example, that angels existed within Prime Numbers, because Prime Numbers were infinite and could only be divided by The One and by Themselves.
He also said that the number Pi represented the perfect Spherical Order. He would chant the numbers of Pi past the decimal point until he fell into a kind of snoring trance.
Nell saw instinctively that the Known Dream wasn't ordered into perfect spheres at all. There were sloppy elipses and jagged hedrons.
Despite her girlish prayers, she had never seen an angel, numerical or otherwise.
And yet when her father posed a mathematical question, she always knew the answer before any of her brothers and sisters.
It took all of her will power to keep her silence while the others struggled and stammered.
Sometimes, when Nell was riding a dream ship, she would sit and look at the lines of rigging, the spars and yards and masts, and she could feel the numerical tension in their design.
She could see the inner mathematical truth of the ship, with its torque and its ratios of mass to thrust.
She could see the path the ship would have to take, given the angles of its sails and the force delivered by the wind.
There were times when she even saw that others had gotten their numbers wrong.
Her father would recite one of Euclid's Elements from rote memory, transposing two figures.
Or she would see that the flawed design of a ship's mast would cause it to yaw clumsily when tacking.
"Maybe I really do belong to Father Tally," she would say. "Maybe I know these things because of him."
But she didn't really believe it.
And so when her father decided that they would travel to the world called Nail, so that he could preach the Blue Crescent Theorems to the innumerate, she perceived no plan or design.
"I suspect," Nell said to herself, "that we are all Remainders. We are all Irrational Numbers."
So she stowed herself away once again with her family and made the fateful journey to the ugly, belching world where she would first lay eyes on the Blue Oriole.
Next: Losing Nell
Friday, May 8, 2009
Six: Melicont
There was a saying that ships sailed the Sea of Dreams, but gelders floated on an ocean of Palymyran tea.
The Blue Oriole was moored at the harbormaster's station in high orbit above Melicont.
It was an ancient structure of stone and teak, in the style of the Seventh Restoration, with sweeping pagoda roofs and thick leaded windows.
Extending from every side of the building were wharves and gangways. A half-dozen dream ships were moored to the structure.
It seemed that a small, ramshackle village had been thrown into the sky above a dusty, weather-beaten looking world.
The Harbor Master himself was tending the massive samovar, which sat in the a corner of the audience chamber like a hulking creature.
It huffed and sighed and gave a scent of jasmine and charcoal.
Captain Marsh, First Mate Falconer, and the Cargo Steward, Mr. Stern, sat awkwardly on threadbare satin cushions.
The Harbor Master brought them each a tiny, delicate cup of steaming broth, distributing lumps of black anise sugar with a flourish.
He was an ugly, pug-faced man. When he grinned, his mouth seemed to devour his own face.
His eyes swiveled about in their sockets, in the half-blind way of Melicontian noblemen.
"It is a great privilege," the Master crooned, "a great privilege to treat directly with the great and may I go so far as to say the legendary Captain Marsh."
Captain Marsh made a gesture that was something between a nod and a shudder.
It was the habit of Melicontians to express their dissatisfaction through courteous flattery.
If the Harbor Master were satisfied that the Blue Oriole's paperwork was in order, he would never have invited her officers to tea.
"May I also express some surprise and perhaps even a hint of dismay," he continued, "that so many of our lovely and, yes, our important and vital parrots are now lying dead among the offal in the bowels of your vessel?"
The fellow blinked at them, leering idiotically.
Mr. Stern, whose idea it had been to accept the birds as cargo, cleared his throat. "The creatures were diseased before they came aboard."
"Ah." The Harbor Master nodded, as if in real delight. "And I suppose this pertinent and might I suggest even vital bit of information was recorded prominently in your cargo manifest?"
"No, I'm afraid not. We didn't realize, you see, until after we had left port."
"So you are saying that the moment of realization, of enlightenment, came after the signing of the very explicit and perfectly legitimate contract? Which is to say, after you thoroughly inspected the goods which you so kindly agreed to deliver to our humble world?"
Mr. Stern squirmed. He was a Tarisian, with a yellow oiled moustache and the tattoo of an ankh above each eye. Like allTarisians he loathed losing money.
It gave him a physical pain in his intestines.
Captain Marsh put his tea cup on the floor with a rattle and said, "Come to the point, please, Harbor Master. What will you pay us for the birds that are still alive?"
The Master wrung his hands painfully and after hemming and hawing for another minute mentioned an abysmally low price.
"You realize that with so many parrots dead, the information we can glean from the surviving creatures will be of minimal value."
"Minimal," repeated the Captain.
"I am afraid so. It is as if you had delivered to us a book with most of the pages ruined or torn out. I ask you: What good is a book with half the words missing?"
Captain Marsh nodded. He rose and went to one of the small, thick-paned windows. He stood with his legs slightly spread, hands clasped behind his back.
Beyond the window spread a view of Melicont, its gray deserts like a dirty expanse of pavement. Ochre rivers twisted and turned and seemed to vanish into the dust.
It was a wretched little world. No wonder so many of its people chose the expatriate life.
"I couldn't help noticing," said the Captain, "that a fair number of your parrots were speaking melphik. And in the cursed tongue of the Breathless."
"You must have misunderstood," cooed the Harbor Master. "Our birds are trained to speak in every manner of gibberish. To confuse and mislead our competitors."
"I know a little of the melphik speech," said Captain Marsh. "I also know that congress with their race is expressly forbidden by the Admiralty. It might interest them to see one of these birds."
The Master splayed his fingers and said, "As a great navigator and seaman, you must know the importance of gathering every possible clue about the Dream. We require information, whatever the source."
The Captain nodded. "It has also occurred to me that the information in those parrots must have come at great expense if the melphik had anything to do with it."
The Harbor Master reached a hand and took a lump of black sugar and tucked it nervously between his teeth.
"The price you quoted," said Captain Marsh, "isn't enough to pay my costs. I might as well wring their necks, the lot of them."
"We could have a feast, sir," said Falconer. "Stew the little buggers maybe, or roast them on a spit."
"And their feathers," agreed Mr. Stern, "could be sold to the haberdasheries on Wipa. They don't care if the birds are dead."
The Harbor Master sucked noisily and seemed to be counting the knuckles on his fingers. His eyes rolled like casters.
"It might possibly be," the fellow concluded, "that I was premature and yes even hasty in my earlier offer. Perhaps Mr. Stern and I might inspect the cargo one more time, collegially as it were, to determine a satisfactory compensation."
The Captain and Falconer returned to the Oriole.
The negotiation continued for several more hours but in the end, Mr. Stern felt that he had reached an equitable, though far from generous, price.
"It still sounds damned low to me," said the Captain, sitting glumly in his chambers at the stern of the ship. "We lost a baker's dozen of souls."
"And they lost half their birds," said Mr. Stern.
"Fair enough. Just get us our gelders, Mr. Stern, and let's get away from this place. And we'll have no more to do with talking parrots, is that understood?"
"Aye, sir."
When Mr. Stern went back to conclude the deal, he was accompanied by Marcus Barkle.
The Harbor Master looked at him sourly and said, "Why have you brought this child with you?"
"Barkle here is our Lord of Shrouds," said Mr. Stern. "He is in need of, ah, new recruits. To replace some of our dearly departed."
The Master placed a limber hand over his hypothetical heart and said, "Oh, no. Oh dear, my good sirs. The Melicontians don't allow their children to go before the mast under any circumstances. No, no -- we are not sailors. Only mapmakers."
"Why not, then?" said Marcus. "I thought your lot liked to travel and learn about the world."
"We are scribes, not adventurers," said the fellow. "What's more, we never serve masters other than ourselves. It wouldn't be wise. Even our young children know things, you see. Proprietary things. Secret things. It wouldn't do for a young Melicontian to find his loyalties as it were divided."
"What are we to do then? You can't sail a dreamclipper without kids."
The Harbor Master made a pantomime of thinking deeply about the problem. It was certain that he had been confronted with this question many times before.
"We are," he said at last, "only a short hop away from a rather awkward little planet called Nail. Perhaps you have heard of it?"
"I've been there before," said Barkle. He looked at Mr. Stern and nodded. "We might make that kind of haul with the crew we got, so long as the weather holds. I'm betting there's some good hunting on Nail."
Mr. Stern shrugged and said, "Perhaps we can convince the Captain to make a few repairs while we're at it. The Oriole's due for a proper landfall."
Next: The Pilgrim's Daughter
The Blue Oriole was moored at the harbormaster's station in high orbit above Melicont.
It was an ancient structure of stone and teak, in the style of the Seventh Restoration, with sweeping pagoda roofs and thick leaded windows.
Extending from every side of the building were wharves and gangways. A half-dozen dream ships were moored to the structure.
It seemed that a small, ramshackle village had been thrown into the sky above a dusty, weather-beaten looking world.
The Harbor Master himself was tending the massive samovar, which sat in the a corner of the audience chamber like a hulking creature.
It huffed and sighed and gave a scent of jasmine and charcoal.
Captain Marsh, First Mate Falconer, and the Cargo Steward, Mr. Stern, sat awkwardly on threadbare satin cushions.
The Harbor Master brought them each a tiny, delicate cup of steaming broth, distributing lumps of black anise sugar with a flourish.
He was an ugly, pug-faced man. When he grinned, his mouth seemed to devour his own face.
His eyes swiveled about in their sockets, in the half-blind way of Melicontian noblemen.
"It is a great privilege," the Master crooned, "a great privilege to treat directly with the great and may I go so far as to say the legendary Captain Marsh."
Captain Marsh made a gesture that was something between a nod and a shudder.
It was the habit of Melicontians to express their dissatisfaction through courteous flattery.
If the Harbor Master were satisfied that the Blue Oriole's paperwork was in order, he would never have invited her officers to tea.
"May I also express some surprise and perhaps even a hint of dismay," he continued, "that so many of our lovely and, yes, our important and vital parrots are now lying dead among the offal in the bowels of your vessel?"
The fellow blinked at them, leering idiotically.
Mr. Stern, whose idea it had been to accept the birds as cargo, cleared his throat. "The creatures were diseased before they came aboard."
"Ah." The Harbor Master nodded, as if in real delight. "And I suppose this pertinent and might I suggest even vital bit of information was recorded prominently in your cargo manifest?"
"No, I'm afraid not. We didn't realize, you see, until after we had left port."
"So you are saying that the moment of realization, of enlightenment, came after the signing of the very explicit and perfectly legitimate contract? Which is to say, after you thoroughly inspected the goods which you so kindly agreed to deliver to our humble world?"
Mr. Stern squirmed. He was a Tarisian, with a yellow oiled moustache and the tattoo of an ankh above each eye. Like allTarisians he loathed losing money.
It gave him a physical pain in his intestines.
Captain Marsh put his tea cup on the floor with a rattle and said, "Come to the point, please, Harbor Master. What will you pay us for the birds that are still alive?"
The Master wrung his hands painfully and after hemming and hawing for another minute mentioned an abysmally low price.
"You realize that with so many parrots dead, the information we can glean from the surviving creatures will be of minimal value."
"Minimal," repeated the Captain.
"I am afraid so. It is as if you had delivered to us a book with most of the pages ruined or torn out. I ask you: What good is a book with half the words missing?"
Captain Marsh nodded. He rose and went to one of the small, thick-paned windows. He stood with his legs slightly spread, hands clasped behind his back.
Beyond the window spread a view of Melicont, its gray deserts like a dirty expanse of pavement. Ochre rivers twisted and turned and seemed to vanish into the dust.
It was a wretched little world. No wonder so many of its people chose the expatriate life.
"I couldn't help noticing," said the Captain, "that a fair number of your parrots were speaking melphik. And in the cursed tongue of the Breathless."
"You must have misunderstood," cooed the Harbor Master. "Our birds are trained to speak in every manner of gibberish. To confuse and mislead our competitors."
"I know a little of the melphik speech," said Captain Marsh. "I also know that congress with their race is expressly forbidden by the Admiralty. It might interest them to see one of these birds."
The Master splayed his fingers and said, "As a great navigator and seaman, you must know the importance of gathering every possible clue about the Dream. We require information, whatever the source."
The Captain nodded. "It has also occurred to me that the information in those parrots must have come at great expense if the melphik had anything to do with it."
The Harbor Master reached a hand and took a lump of black sugar and tucked it nervously between his teeth.
"The price you quoted," said Captain Marsh, "isn't enough to pay my costs. I might as well wring their necks, the lot of them."
"We could have a feast, sir," said Falconer. "Stew the little buggers maybe, or roast them on a spit."
"And their feathers," agreed Mr. Stern, "could be sold to the haberdasheries on Wipa. They don't care if the birds are dead."
The Harbor Master sucked noisily and seemed to be counting the knuckles on his fingers. His eyes rolled like casters.
"It might possibly be," the fellow concluded, "that I was premature and yes even hasty in my earlier offer. Perhaps Mr. Stern and I might inspect the cargo one more time, collegially as it were, to determine a satisfactory compensation."
The Captain and Falconer returned to the Oriole.
The negotiation continued for several more hours but in the end, Mr. Stern felt that he had reached an equitable, though far from generous, price.
"It still sounds damned low to me," said the Captain, sitting glumly in his chambers at the stern of the ship. "We lost a baker's dozen of souls."
"And they lost half their birds," said Mr. Stern.
"Fair enough. Just get us our gelders, Mr. Stern, and let's get away from this place. And we'll have no more to do with talking parrots, is that understood?"
"Aye, sir."
When Mr. Stern went back to conclude the deal, he was accompanied by Marcus Barkle.
The Harbor Master looked at him sourly and said, "Why have you brought this child with you?"
"Barkle here is our Lord of Shrouds," said Mr. Stern. "He is in need of, ah, new recruits. To replace some of our dearly departed."
The Master placed a limber hand over his hypothetical heart and said, "Oh, no. Oh dear, my good sirs. The Melicontians don't allow their children to go before the mast under any circumstances. No, no -- we are not sailors. Only mapmakers."
"Why not, then?" said Marcus. "I thought your lot liked to travel and learn about the world."
"We are scribes, not adventurers," said the fellow. "What's more, we never serve masters other than ourselves. It wouldn't be wise. Even our young children know things, you see. Proprietary things. Secret things. It wouldn't do for a young Melicontian to find his loyalties as it were divided."
"What are we to do then? You can't sail a dreamclipper without kids."
The Harbor Master made a pantomime of thinking deeply about the problem. It was certain that he had been confronted with this question many times before.
"We are," he said at last, "only a short hop away from a rather awkward little planet called Nail. Perhaps you have heard of it?"
"I've been there before," said Barkle. He looked at Mr. Stern and nodded. "We might make that kind of haul with the crew we got, so long as the weather holds. I'm betting there's some good hunting on Nail."
Mr. Stern shrugged and said, "Perhaps we can convince the Captain to make a few repairs while we're at it. The Oriole's due for a proper landfall."
Next: The Pilgrim's Daughter
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Five: Riding the Spume
The Dream was vastness embodied. It was time and space, clotted by backwaters and choked with doldrums.
The distances between worlds were filled with storm and serpent, but the greatest enemy was time.
Ships often languished in the ways and roads, struggling against the vagaries of that mystical ocean.
And so it was that sailors prayed for the perfect spume.
They were currents of dream-stuff that could lift a ship and carry her pell-mell across the void.
The spume that erupted from the Mother Storm looked for all the world like a glowing river that laced a sea of cloud.
It was an impossible thing, beautiful beyond words.
The more so because Captain Marsh and his First Mate, a great Lycian eunuch named Falconer, took a reckoning and found that this particular spume was aimed directly at Melicont.
"It's almost too good to be true," said the Captain.
"Aye, and paid for at a miserable price," grumbled Falconer.
For while the Blue Oriole soared across the Dream, swept along on the current, her crew prepared for a funeral.
The Hoodanese had pulled a sort of gunnysack over his head that was pierced with holes for his yellow-egg eyes.
The sack was decorated with shells and bits of stone that clacked and rattled as he danced.
There were no bodies to be dealt with -- the gyrwights had seen to that. Instead, the sailors had laid out thirteen small bundles.
They were the personal effects of those who had gone overboard.
The children's rucks were pitifully meager: a few haphazard treasures, bound up in bits of kerchief cloth.
There were dolls and faded letters and mementos of their lives ashore, when they had parents and homes and families.
The soothsayer capered around these objects, chanting his Hoodan rhythms and calling out the names of his Hundred-and-One deities.
This was the tradition aboard the Blue Oriole, that those who died would be remembered one last time and their lost futures honored.
One by one, the old man danced forward and snatched up a souvenir in both hands. He held up up a comb or a blurred daguerrotype or a bit of ribbon.
Then he would tell what had been lost:
"This one," he said, "would have opened a tavern on Marspoor and had three bairns."
And then: "This would would have turned to vice and murder and died in Gaitskill Prison."
And then: "Ah, now, this one had poetry in him and would have composed joyous and truthsome songs."
And so on, through the twelve children and the one adult who had died at the margin of the storm.
The rest of the crew looked on, some sorrowful, others impatient.
The surviving children watched from above, dangling like wild creatures in the low rigging. Their faces were hard and weary and frightened.
There among them, with his falsely young face, was Marcus Barkle.
He had seen many a remembrance in his day. He always wondered if the soothsayer was making it all up, inventing these lives that had been pinched off at the root.
"This one would have suffered from lungrot," said the Hoodanese, "but only after falling truly and well in love."
When the old fellow had finished his dance, Captain Marsh collected the bundles one by one and carried them to the rail.
He dropped them over and for a long time, as the spume carried them spinward toward Melicont, there was a trail of debris in the Oriole's wake.
Barkle retreated to his crow's nest. As he climbed the rope ladder, he felt that he had a great burden on his shoulders.
That day, he watched through his spy glass until the last bit of chaff had vanished astern.
Next: Melicont
The distances between worlds were filled with storm and serpent, but the greatest enemy was time.
Ships often languished in the ways and roads, struggling against the vagaries of that mystical ocean.
And so it was that sailors prayed for the perfect spume.
They were currents of dream-stuff that could lift a ship and carry her pell-mell across the void.
The spume that erupted from the Mother Storm looked for all the world like a glowing river that laced a sea of cloud.
It was an impossible thing, beautiful beyond words.
The more so because Captain Marsh and his First Mate, a great Lycian eunuch named Falconer, took a reckoning and found that this particular spume was aimed directly at Melicont.
"It's almost too good to be true," said the Captain.
"Aye, and paid for at a miserable price," grumbled Falconer.
For while the Blue Oriole soared across the Dream, swept along on the current, her crew prepared for a funeral.
The Hoodanese had pulled a sort of gunnysack over his head that was pierced with holes for his yellow-egg eyes.
The sack was decorated with shells and bits of stone that clacked and rattled as he danced.
There were no bodies to be dealt with -- the gyrwights had seen to that. Instead, the sailors had laid out thirteen small bundles.
They were the personal effects of those who had gone overboard.
The children's rucks were pitifully meager: a few haphazard treasures, bound up in bits of kerchief cloth.
There were dolls and faded letters and mementos of their lives ashore, when they had parents and homes and families.
The soothsayer capered around these objects, chanting his Hoodan rhythms and calling out the names of his Hundred-and-One deities.
This was the tradition aboard the Blue Oriole, that those who died would be remembered one last time and their lost futures honored.
One by one, the old man danced forward and snatched up a souvenir in both hands. He held up up a comb or a blurred daguerrotype or a bit of ribbon.
Then he would tell what had been lost:
"This one," he said, "would have opened a tavern on Marspoor and had three bairns."
And then: "This would would have turned to vice and murder and died in Gaitskill Prison."
And then: "Ah, now, this one had poetry in him and would have composed joyous and truthsome songs."
And so on, through the twelve children and the one adult who had died at the margin of the storm.
The rest of the crew looked on, some sorrowful, others impatient.
The surviving children watched from above, dangling like wild creatures in the low rigging. Their faces were hard and weary and frightened.
There among them, with his falsely young face, was Marcus Barkle.
He had seen many a remembrance in his day. He always wondered if the soothsayer was making it all up, inventing these lives that had been pinched off at the root.
"This one would have suffered from lungrot," said the Hoodanese, "but only after falling truly and well in love."
When the old fellow had finished his dance, Captain Marsh collected the bundles one by one and carried them to the rail.
He dropped them over and for a long time, as the spume carried them spinward toward Melicont, there was a trail of debris in the Oriole's wake.
Barkle retreated to his crow's nest. As he climbed the rope ladder, he felt that he had a great burden on his shoulders.
That day, he watched through his spy glass until the last bit of chaff had vanished astern.
Next: Melicont
Monday, May 4, 2009
Four: Attack of the Gyrwights
The events of the next seventeen minutes were, as Captain Marsh noted later in his log, "muddled and costly, but not disastrous."
After a pause, during which time he seemed to contemplate the tip of his quill pen, he added: "Casualties: 13. All but one, children."
Marcus Barkle, who saw the battle at closer range, would say nothing of it later, except to curse ominously in a tongue which no one else could understand.
It began abruptly.
Just as the Mother Storm was lifting her skirts and starting to dance, one of the deck cannons fired, spewing smoke and iron shot into the void.
"Here they come, the little devils!" cried Sgt. Imple, who was the Blue Oriole's Gunnery Master. "You may fire at will!"
The Gyrwights swarmed down over the dreamclipper like a sudden infestation.
The chitinous whir of their wings made a kind of counter-melody to the thrum of the ship's rigging.
Gyrwights were no larger than a grown man's fist, but most of their hideous, sore-festered bodies were made of claws and teeth and clinging, tentacles that had a way of worming inside one's ears and nostrils.
There were various theories about gyrwights.
The nasty little wretches seemed to have no interest in actually killing anyone, or feeding, as most dream-predators were wont to do.
Instead, they seemed to delight only in knocking people overboard.
Great clots of gyrwights would form around a sailor, bum-rushing their victim to the deck-rail and hurling the poor wretch into the vapor.
All the while, they gave vent to a horrid, giggling chirp.
Some believed that gyrwights were a sort of insidious gremlin, intent on vicious pranks and nasty mischief.
Others were convinced that the verminous things worked in concert with something altogether more horrible that lurked below in the veils of the storm.
Something hungry and impatient that fed on the unlucky souls who fell.
All along the Blue Oriole's pitching deck, men blasted away with grape-shot cannons and deck gunnes and blunderbusses filled with all manner of shrapnel.
They were aided by the smear of monkey dung on their foreheads, which seemed to confuse the gyrwights.
Captain Marsh stalked among his men, shouting orders, forming up defensive ranks. Half the danger was keeping the crew from shooting one-another.
Whenever possible, the sailors gave cover to the young shroud-walkers up in the rigging.
They fired salvo after salvo just ahead of the radial jibs, hoping to clear away the thickest gyrwight swarms.
But for the most part, the children aloft were on their own.
They were too far from the deck to draw much comfort from the artillery volleys. They lacked even the protection of the Hoodanese soothsayer's rune.
In the first moments of the engagement, Marcus Barkle scrambled along the chief guy-line, discharging his pistols, disintegrating two of the creatures.
After that, he was reduced to fighting with his curved dagger in one hand and a belay pin in the other.
It was an absurdly dangerous business. He himself had nearly perfect balance.
But even the kids who were fierce and courageous enough to fight for their lives were apt to loose their footing.
"Keep a grip with one hand!" Barkle shouted, over the roar of the wind, "and scrap like a tiger with the other!"
He winced at the sight of a girl of nine or ten -- Welia was her name -- slipping and teetering and tumbling away.
Other children huddled against the spars, covering their eyes and their ears.
"Don't give up! Do like I taught you! Be quick, be sharp!"
He saw his Best Mate, a kid of twelve called Ballko, swing like an orangutan and give a brutal kick. It sent a gyrwight careening away like a ball.
"That's the spirit! Give 'em a taste of their own medicine!"
The most unfortunate of his shrouders were simply swarmed and carried away, shrieking the way only a kid in a nightmare can shriek.
Barkle gritted his teeth and mashed one of the monsters with a single blow. And then another.
The battle lasted just over a quarter-hour, but it seemed to go on forever.
In the end, of course, Captain Marsh was right. The Mother Storm suddenly gave vent to a great spume of dream.
The Blue Oriole lurched and yawed. Vast acres of canvas billowed white against the sulphurous glow of the typhoon.
She shot forward, as if pushed by a great hand. Cackling madly, the gyrwights fell away behind.
Sgt. Imple gave them one more blast, out of spite, but in a matter of moments the swarm was reduced to a dwindling smudge.
A short time later, Captain Marsh's voice came up the tube, grim as iron: "How many?"
"Twelve, sir," Barkle said. "Nearly half of them gone."
"One more lost down below," the Captain muttered. "That makes thirteen. Not a lucky number, is it, Barkle? Not lucky at all."
Next: Riding the Spume
After a pause, during which time he seemed to contemplate the tip of his quill pen, he added: "Casualties: 13. All but one, children."
Marcus Barkle, who saw the battle at closer range, would say nothing of it later, except to curse ominously in a tongue which no one else could understand.
It began abruptly.
Just as the Mother Storm was lifting her skirts and starting to dance, one of the deck cannons fired, spewing smoke and iron shot into the void.
"Here they come, the little devils!" cried Sgt. Imple, who was the Blue Oriole's Gunnery Master. "You may fire at will!"
The Gyrwights swarmed down over the dreamclipper like a sudden infestation.
The chitinous whir of their wings made a kind of counter-melody to the thrum of the ship's rigging.
Gyrwights were no larger than a grown man's fist, but most of their hideous, sore-festered bodies were made of claws and teeth and clinging, tentacles that had a way of worming inside one's ears and nostrils.
There were various theories about gyrwights.
The nasty little wretches seemed to have no interest in actually killing anyone, or feeding, as most dream-predators were wont to do.
Instead, they seemed to delight only in knocking people overboard.
Great clots of gyrwights would form around a sailor, bum-rushing their victim to the deck-rail and hurling the poor wretch into the vapor.
All the while, they gave vent to a horrid, giggling chirp.
Some believed that gyrwights were a sort of insidious gremlin, intent on vicious pranks and nasty mischief.
Others were convinced that the verminous things worked in concert with something altogether more horrible that lurked below in the veils of the storm.
Something hungry and impatient that fed on the unlucky souls who fell.
All along the Blue Oriole's pitching deck, men blasted away with grape-shot cannons and deck gunnes and blunderbusses filled with all manner of shrapnel.
They were aided by the smear of monkey dung on their foreheads, which seemed to confuse the gyrwights.
Captain Marsh stalked among his men, shouting orders, forming up defensive ranks. Half the danger was keeping the crew from shooting one-another.
Whenever possible, the sailors gave cover to the young shroud-walkers up in the rigging.
They fired salvo after salvo just ahead of the radial jibs, hoping to clear away the thickest gyrwight swarms.
But for the most part, the children aloft were on their own.
They were too far from the deck to draw much comfort from the artillery volleys. They lacked even the protection of the Hoodanese soothsayer's rune.
In the first moments of the engagement, Marcus Barkle scrambled along the chief guy-line, discharging his pistols, disintegrating two of the creatures.
After that, he was reduced to fighting with his curved dagger in one hand and a belay pin in the other.
It was an absurdly dangerous business. He himself had nearly perfect balance.
But even the kids who were fierce and courageous enough to fight for their lives were apt to loose their footing.
"Keep a grip with one hand!" Barkle shouted, over the roar of the wind, "and scrap like a tiger with the other!"
He winced at the sight of a girl of nine or ten -- Welia was her name -- slipping and teetering and tumbling away.
Other children huddled against the spars, covering their eyes and their ears.
"Don't give up! Do like I taught you! Be quick, be sharp!"
He saw his Best Mate, a kid of twelve called Ballko, swing like an orangutan and give a brutal kick. It sent a gyrwight careening away like a ball.
"That's the spirit! Give 'em a taste of their own medicine!"
The most unfortunate of his shrouders were simply swarmed and carried away, shrieking the way only a kid in a nightmare can shriek.
Barkle gritted his teeth and mashed one of the monsters with a single blow. And then another.
The battle lasted just over a quarter-hour, but it seemed to go on forever.
In the end, of course, Captain Marsh was right. The Mother Storm suddenly gave vent to a great spume of dream.
The Blue Oriole lurched and yawed. Vast acres of canvas billowed white against the sulphurous glow of the typhoon.
She shot forward, as if pushed by a great hand. Cackling madly, the gyrwights fell away behind.
Sgt. Imple gave them one more blast, out of spite, but in a matter of moments the swarm was reduced to a dwindling smudge.
A short time later, Captain Marsh's voice came up the tube, grim as iron: "How many?"
"Twelve, sir," Barkle said. "Nearly half of them gone."
"One more lost down below," the Captain muttered. "That makes thirteen. Not a lucky number, is it, Barkle? Not lucky at all."
Next: Riding the Spume
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Three: The Mother Storm
So it was that Captain Marsh took a chance and turned the Blue Oriole's prow into the outer tentacle of a Mother Storm.
The Blue Oriole's soothsayer was an old and tattooed Hoodanese.
He raced about the deck, marking men's foreheads with patterns of gray dust made of dried monkey dung.
Captain Marsh himself submitted to this indignity.
But it happened that the ship's retinue of wire-walkers and shroud-keepers -- led by Marcus Barkle -- had already gone aloft into the upper reaches of canvas.
The soothsayer called to them, but his words of warning were torn away by the already fitful wind.
He watched with sorrowful eyes as Barkle's charges scurried and leaped far from the ship's rail.
They appeared to his dim eyes as crickets or shadows. In point of fact they were children.
Boys and girls were the only creatures slight enough to maneuver in the shrouds without damaging the complicated fabric of masts, guy-wires and support struts.
They were the only ones nimble and fearless enough to swing without a thought from crow's nest to spar, with the infinite gulf of Dream swirling beneath their bare feet.
The Hoodanese soothsayer experienced time in complicated whorls. It was a peculiar and unpleasant talent.
His visions -- some profound, most trivial -- had nudged him into the shallows of madness. But he was sane enough to know that without his arcane mark, the children were in great peril.
An hour after they entered the Storm's outer reaches, the forward watchman began to beat on a black iron hoop.
"Somethin' in the fog!" the fellow cried. The warning passed from mouth to mouth along the clipper's deck. "Somethin' stirs in the mist!"
It was well known that hazardous creatures lived like parasites within the tempestuous margins of the Mother Storms.
Some scavenged the wreckage that typhoons left in their wake. Others took advantage of the chaos to seek living prey.
High in the shrouds, Marcus Barkle heard the jingle of the message tube. He pressed the brass bell to his ear and heard Captain Marsh's grim voice:
"Looks like gyrwights, Barkle. Pull down any of the little ones you can spare."
"It's no good, Captain!" Barkle said, shifting the bell to his mouth and yelling as loud as he could.
The wind had stolen his cap and his tuft of hair was whipping in his eyes.
From his vantage in the main crow's nest, he could see that one of the warp sheets had already torn loose. Three of his gang were wrestling with the lines, trying to pin it down.
"It's topsy-turvy up here, sir! I need every hand and then some!"
There was a pause and the Captain said, "Watch yourselves then."
The voice sounded hollow and distant through the length of leather pipe. The line went dead.
Barkle unlocked the box where he kept his special-made pistols. They looked like a child's toys, having been built by Lo'an gunsmiths for his diminutive hands.
Stabbing them into his wide belt, he scampered to the mainline that led between the Blue Oriole's three dorsal masts.
Peering up, he saw the great hemispheric orb of the Storm, rising over the horizon of Dream. Its cloud layers were streaming pennants of orange and blue, swirling fast counter-clockwise.
Barkle cursed. Counter-clockwise storms were the worst. Erratic, unpredictable.
As he watched, the eye of the Storm spun into view: a great, pale expanse of colorless vapor. It seemed to catch the Blue Oriole in its gaze.
He made a superstitious sign with one hand.
"Look sharp!" he cried, echoing the caution that had begun nearly a quarter-mile away in the forward watch. "There's something nasty in the fog!"
Next: Attack of the Gyrwights
The Blue Oriole's soothsayer was an old and tattooed Hoodanese.
He raced about the deck, marking men's foreheads with patterns of gray dust made of dried monkey dung.
Captain Marsh himself submitted to this indignity.
But it happened that the ship's retinue of wire-walkers and shroud-keepers -- led by Marcus Barkle -- had already gone aloft into the upper reaches of canvas.
The soothsayer called to them, but his words of warning were torn away by the already fitful wind.
He watched with sorrowful eyes as Barkle's charges scurried and leaped far from the ship's rail.
They appeared to his dim eyes as crickets or shadows. In point of fact they were children.
Boys and girls were the only creatures slight enough to maneuver in the shrouds without damaging the complicated fabric of masts, guy-wires and support struts.
They were the only ones nimble and fearless enough to swing without a thought from crow's nest to spar, with the infinite gulf of Dream swirling beneath their bare feet.
The Hoodanese soothsayer experienced time in complicated whorls. It was a peculiar and unpleasant talent.
His visions -- some profound, most trivial -- had nudged him into the shallows of madness. But he was sane enough to know that without his arcane mark, the children were in great peril.
An hour after they entered the Storm's outer reaches, the forward watchman began to beat on a black iron hoop.
"Somethin' in the fog!" the fellow cried. The warning passed from mouth to mouth along the clipper's deck. "Somethin' stirs in the mist!"
It was well known that hazardous creatures lived like parasites within the tempestuous margins of the Mother Storms.
Some scavenged the wreckage that typhoons left in their wake. Others took advantage of the chaos to seek living prey.
High in the shrouds, Marcus Barkle heard the jingle of the message tube. He pressed the brass bell to his ear and heard Captain Marsh's grim voice:
"Looks like gyrwights, Barkle. Pull down any of the little ones you can spare."
"It's no good, Captain!" Barkle said, shifting the bell to his mouth and yelling as loud as he could.
The wind had stolen his cap and his tuft of hair was whipping in his eyes.
From his vantage in the main crow's nest, he could see that one of the warp sheets had already torn loose. Three of his gang were wrestling with the lines, trying to pin it down.
"It's topsy-turvy up here, sir! I need every hand and then some!"
There was a pause and the Captain said, "Watch yourselves then."
The voice sounded hollow and distant through the length of leather pipe. The line went dead.
Barkle unlocked the box where he kept his special-made pistols. They looked like a child's toys, having been built by Lo'an gunsmiths for his diminutive hands.
Stabbing them into his wide belt, he scampered to the mainline that led between the Blue Oriole's three dorsal masts.
Peering up, he saw the great hemispheric orb of the Storm, rising over the horizon of Dream. Its cloud layers were streaming pennants of orange and blue, swirling fast counter-clockwise.
Barkle cursed. Counter-clockwise storms were the worst. Erratic, unpredictable.
As he watched, the eye of the Storm spun into view: a great, pale expanse of colorless vapor. It seemed to catch the Blue Oriole in its gaze.
He made a superstitious sign with one hand.
"Look sharp!" he cried, echoing the caution that had begun nearly a quarter-mile away in the forward watch. "There's something nasty in the fog!"
Next: Attack of the Gyrwights
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Two: Parrots & Kings
Two weeks before Barkle began his hunt, the Blue Oriole had run into a bit of bad luck, which in sailor's parlance meant that her crew had barely escaped with skins intact.
First, they skimmed a compass point too close to the mad swirl of a Mother Storm.
Captain Marsh hoped to catch a spume current that would send his ship skipping across the Dream toward Melicont.
It was a risky maneuver, but the Captain had good reason for haste.
The Blue Oriole had been commissioned to deliver a cargo of caged parrots and the damnable birds were dying of some queer, molting disease.
Bright green and azure feathers littered the cargo hold. According to the contract, the ship lost a dozen gelders for every cursed macaw and conure that toppled stiff from its perch.
The Meliconts were distinctly unforgiving about such things. They cared nothing for the fact that the birds had arrived aboardship already itching and pecking irritably at their own plumage.
The Meliconts were a restless, farflung race. From their drab little home world, but had extended their disapora over the better part of the Known Dream.
They were mapmakers by trade. In any decent size port or crossroad harbor town one would likely find a blunt-nosed, watery-eyed Melicont hard at work on sheets of lizardskin velum.
(They used only velum stitched from the hides of a dog-sized variety of chameleon. Rather than using inks or dyes, they employes a secret technique to tease out the natural colors and hues buried within the lizardskin.)
The Meliconts created their maps as a collective, communicating with the Chartmeister Guild by way of these thrice-becursed talking parrots.
Each bird was made to memorize a certain amount of information, which had been gathered from explorers and spies, dreamsailors and military convoys.
(Meliconts had a distinctly unsavory reputation and were said to use any and every source for their maps, even consulting with the treacherous melphik and sending clandestine embassies to the Breathless.)
The cartographers used code for their communication, so that one could stand in the cargo hold of the Blue Oriole and listen to what sounded like a cacophany of madmen, when in fact one was hearing a secret account of the mysteries of Dream.
There was a saying among the Meliconts that parrots knew The Truth before kings.
And now, as Captain Marsh looked on, these tiny repositories of wisdom were clacking their beaks, shuddering, and falling into the sawdust at the bottom of their cages.
"We must make all haste," he concluded. "Set a course for the skirts of the typhoon..."
Next: The Mother Storm
First, they skimmed a compass point too close to the mad swirl of a Mother Storm.
Captain Marsh hoped to catch a spume current that would send his ship skipping across the Dream toward Melicont.
It was a risky maneuver, but the Captain had good reason for haste.
The Blue Oriole had been commissioned to deliver a cargo of caged parrots and the damnable birds were dying of some queer, molting disease.
Bright green and azure feathers littered the cargo hold. According to the contract, the ship lost a dozen gelders for every cursed macaw and conure that toppled stiff from its perch.
The Meliconts were distinctly unforgiving about such things. They cared nothing for the fact that the birds had arrived aboardship already itching and pecking irritably at their own plumage.
The Meliconts were a restless, farflung race. From their drab little home world, but had extended their disapora over the better part of the Known Dream.
They were mapmakers by trade. In any decent size port or crossroad harbor town one would likely find a blunt-nosed, watery-eyed Melicont hard at work on sheets of lizardskin velum.
(They used only velum stitched from the hides of a dog-sized variety of chameleon. Rather than using inks or dyes, they employes a secret technique to tease out the natural colors and hues buried within the lizardskin.)
The Meliconts created their maps as a collective, communicating with the Chartmeister Guild by way of these thrice-becursed talking parrots.
Each bird was made to memorize a certain amount of information, which had been gathered from explorers and spies, dreamsailors and military convoys.
(Meliconts had a distinctly unsavory reputation and were said to use any and every source for their maps, even consulting with the treacherous melphik and sending clandestine embassies to the Breathless.)
The cartographers used code for their communication, so that one could stand in the cargo hold of the Blue Oriole and listen to what sounded like a cacophany of madmen, when in fact one was hearing a secret account of the mysteries of Dream.
There was a saying among the Meliconts that parrots knew The Truth before kings.
And now, as Captain Marsh looked on, these tiny repositories of wisdom were clacking their beaks, shuddering, and falling into the sawdust at the bottom of their cages.
"We must make all haste," he concluded. "Set a course for the skirts of the typhoon..."
Next: The Mother Storm
Friday, May 1, 2009
One: Barkle on the Hunt
His name was Marcus Barkle and he was nearly two centuries old.
For reasons that no one but himself understood -- he was an obsessively secretive creature -- Barkle looked exactly like a smallish, round-faced, ten-year-old boy.
This fact served him well, for he was a Master of Shrouds, a wire-walker. He was Lord of Sails aboard a dreamclipper called the Blue Oriole.
Exactly what this profession entailed, and why it was a distinct advantage to be so small and slight, we shall explain in due time.
For now, it is enough to know that in Barkle's own estimation, the most important element of his trade was the hunt.
Two days prior to these events, the Blue Oriole had descended the aurora tide to the surface of a world called Nail.
As the name implies, it was a bleak place, dotted at intervals with mining towns and ore refineries.
Some of Nail's factories were so vast and noxious that one could see their flickering and belching from orbit.
It was said by sailors that you could smell Nail on the currents of Dream, if you were downwind and the day were tranquil enough.
What was certain was that you could smell it well enough from the streets of Piketon, the world's chief port of call.
It was the only downharbor in the constellation where a ship like the Oriole could make major repairs.
A reek of rust and coal smoke hung over the blunt, brick-faced buildings, blocking out any glint of the dream pattern swirling overhead.
Barkle sat on a wine barrel outside a chandlery, chewing a rope of katsch and watching the pale, hard faces go by.
To the casual eye, he seemed to be loafing, an indentured boy perhaps who had finagled a free afternoon, or the shirking son of a low-caste merchant.
He wore tattered canvas breeches and a patched shirt several sizes too large.
The expression on his face was a mixture of laziness, self-satisfaction and oafish stupidity. In point of fact, of course, he was studying the passers-by keenly.
He was poised, ready to move on an instant's notice.
In a word, Barkle was on the hunt.
Next: Parrots & Kings
For reasons that no one but himself understood -- he was an obsessively secretive creature -- Barkle looked exactly like a smallish, round-faced, ten-year-old boy.
This fact served him well, for he was a Master of Shrouds, a wire-walker. He was Lord of Sails aboard a dreamclipper called the Blue Oriole.
Exactly what this profession entailed, and why it was a distinct advantage to be so small and slight, we shall explain in due time.
For now, it is enough to know that in Barkle's own estimation, the most important element of his trade was the hunt.
Two days prior to these events, the Blue Oriole had descended the aurora tide to the surface of a world called Nail.
As the name implies, it was a bleak place, dotted at intervals with mining towns and ore refineries.
Some of Nail's factories were so vast and noxious that one could see their flickering and belching from orbit.
It was said by sailors that you could smell Nail on the currents of Dream, if you were downwind and the day were tranquil enough.
What was certain was that you could smell it well enough from the streets of Piketon, the world's chief port of call.
It was the only downharbor in the constellation where a ship like the Oriole could make major repairs.
A reek of rust and coal smoke hung over the blunt, brick-faced buildings, blocking out any glint of the dream pattern swirling overhead.
Barkle sat on a wine barrel outside a chandlery, chewing a rope of katsch and watching the pale, hard faces go by.
To the casual eye, he seemed to be loafing, an indentured boy perhaps who had finagled a free afternoon, or the shirking son of a low-caste merchant.
He wore tattered canvas breeches and a patched shirt several sizes too large.
The expression on his face was a mixture of laziness, self-satisfaction and oafish stupidity. In point of fact, of course, he was studying the passers-by keenly.
He was poised, ready to move on an instant's notice.
In a word, Barkle was on the hunt.
Next: Parrots & Kings
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)