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Part 32 – Taking Stock

Rosenhatch Traverstorm reached out and ruffled Maxwell’s fur. The little cat seemed completely unaffected by their most recent misadventure. Maxwell arched his back in delight and let his tail unfurl in a stuttering swish before hopping along the heap of boxes to keep up with his source of stroking. If anything, Maxwell seemed even happier than before, glossy coated and bright eyed. Rosenhatch hadn’t seen much of him over the last few days, and he thought Maxwell looked a damned sight healthier than anyone else.

Two days and nights of hammering, carrying and generally being in the way of those with real skills and craft had taken its toll. The crew was on tight shifts of sleep and work now that the most vital repairs were complete – The Dove’s Eye wouldn’t be falling into the Bane just yet. There was a crucial balance between being awake enough not to individually fall to one’s death and preventing everyone from falling to their deaths.

Rosenhatch, although desperately tired had not slept for more than a handful of restless blinks. This was not because he was needed; very much the reverse. He had sought out tasks, however menial and unnecessary to feel useful. The Death Cheater’s eye found him again and again with each bandaged hand, each stitched face, every snapped life line as it was coiled and knotted into the shape of the fallen crew member. The losses kept him awake.

He had missed his friends during those intense few days and their familiar comfort. Maxwell had apparently embraced his lack of responsibility and had take to keeping poor Jacob company. The lad was still unconscious. Rosenhatch rather envied him his comatose state, though not how he’d achieved it: the cumulative trauma of his abduction, exodus from the charnel pit in a cascade of gore (which had stained The Dove’s Eye’s foredeck a bleak crimson) and the ocular explosions as the horrid spawn escaped their incubation behind his eyes. Being battered by every object in his cabin when they burst out of the Sky Mountain probably hadn’t helped either. Maxwell had invested himself in purring deeply on the boy’s chest, but had consented to accompany Rosenhatch’s next task – assessing the fitness of their cargo.

Lord Corshorn’s men still crawled along the apparently endless store of rope that threaded through and around the airship. The occasional smack of a hammer resounded through the airship as the wrights improved on the hastiest of their repairs.

Much of the rear portion of the airship was taken up with storage. Previously an ingeniously organised work of Jasparz the captain’s second, but now a chaos of smashed crates, swinging nets and dubious stains. Rosenhatch rolled aside a breached container of gawlet syrup and consulted the check list he’d been given. Maxwell simply hopped from one box to another in his new heaven of shelves and surfaces. Lord Corshorn’s primary concern was that they still had water and food, but that had already been assessed, which left Rosenhatch with the much lower priority of his and Harvey’s equipment.

Maxwell found their kit and idly batted at the netting holding it in place until Rosenhatch caught up. Miraculously, Harvey’s traps for the Crystal Finches appeared to be intact- a testament to the centipede’s obsessive packing rituals. Rosenhatch unwound one from its feet of protective ribbon. Each trap was a cube of mirrors inside a blackened frame. The bottom of the box hinged open in two parts, in a trapdoor held with tight springs. Rosenhatch gingerly tested the device and was rewarded with a sharp nip across his thumb tip as it was caught in the mechanism. Still functional.

Rosenhatch tracked down the case of optics and lenses that he had reluctantly entrusted to the cargo hold. It was scattered across the floor. The microscopes were broken. The refining lenses had a variety of spiderweb cracks which rendered each useless. Rosenhatch would have to rely on the rather cruder equipment he kept in his backpack for any close examinations.

Some of their reference works had been lost to the ragged tear along the hull but Rosenhatch was quite pleased to imagine encyclopaedias raining down on the desert. They would have to repack Harvey’s shell-mounted cannon and do a full count of the rounds remaining after their skirmishes with the winged beasts and the strangely meaty internal walls of the Sky Mountain.

With some satisfaction, Rosenhatch began re-stacking crates and sweeping debris into similar-looking drifts. It was likely their expedition could proceed, and Rosenhatch hoped they would be underway soon. They had almost reached their target of the Razored Ridges before going disastrously off course high into the sky. Lord Corshorn estimated that they were only a day or two further away now. With luck they would be able to locate the Crystal Finches with a minimum of further trouble. Before they could begin the search, Rosenhatch needed one other vital component to be restored: Harvey.

Rosenhatch had been keen to get his friend brought down from the top of the balloon as soon as possible, but with the insect’s many legs stitching the torn bag together Corshorn had insisted that they deal with the hull and ropes first. Harvey had been left broiling in the sun virtually unprotected for far too long. The heat itself wasn’t such a problem: Harvey’s kind lived in the dark humus of hot humid jungles. The dry air was quite a different proposition for an insect happier burrowing through a rotten tree trunk.

When Rosenhatch and the others winched him down from the balloon the centipede’s legs had twitched constantly, unused to the sensation of gripping just air. In a kitten that would have seemed a sweet dreaming, but with foot-long razor sharp claws Harvey was far from cute. The crew had wrapped him tightly in canvas to protect themselves and the balloon.

On delivery into his cabin Rosenhatch had carefully unwrapped his friend and laid on damp blankets. Rosenhatch had always felt responsible for his friend and colleague, for Harvey was something more than either of those things. As Rosenhatch lost himself in the tidying of the cargo hold he drifted away to far-off land and the series of accidents that had brought them together.

Coming Soon: Part 33 – Fine Dentistry

Part 31 – What Remains

Guldwych Ryme was torn between his intense need for comfort and pressing desire to live. The one had him clutching his blanket and the other stinking with sweat. Chem’s visit and scorn had ignited something new in the professor. Lying on the bunk across from him, barely six handspans away, was Tosser. She lay fully stretched out with her feet resting on the wall by the top of the door. She shifted to place one large fist under her cheek and gazed at him curiously.

“The captain’s not going to off you just for being a bit ill,” she said reassuringly, “you’d have to be seriously unwell. You know – spitting up Bellytoads or something. Even then we’d probably just lock you in a cabin until we could find a nice deserted spot. Everyone gets wing sick at first. Why, we had one lad, what was his name… Temblethey, Twomas? Temas. He spent the first week bent over a wing spraying the crops. Course, it turned out he actually had Gasclian Revolt. That was a shame, seemed like a nice lad when he wasn’t retching. Him we had to put down. That’s what this part is-” Tosser indicated the taut spiral tattoo that ran from the tip of her right elbow into what might have been an unfurling leaf “- mercy. You’ve got to have mercy. Anyway – you’re not ill like that are you Ryme?”

Guldwych stared at her. He didn’t yet know her well enough to judge if that was a threat or just another rambling story of the kind she’d amiably filled their cabin with since he came aboard. Knocker and Tosser had been the friendliest towards him by far. Considering he’d known Eslie Chem longer than any of the others he had been disappointed to find that he didn’t know the man at all. With an eye for his survival over all else, he embraced a path of caution.

“No, no I’m not.” He tugged the blanket off and sat up. After a moment he swung his legs off the bunk and carefully folded his blanket into a fat triangle and placed it neatly on the pillow.

“You’re right Tosser. I’m perfectly well thank you, and it would be a comfort  to know that the captain knows it too.”

“Great – I’ve got a job for you, ” With a grin Tosser was on her feet, wrapping her seemingly endless hair into a tight knot at the back of her head, “come with me.”

Standing she filled the tiny cabin, forcing Ryme to gesture ‘after you’ while crouching back onto his bunk. He followed Tosser down the narrow corridor and into the brightness of The Sky Viper’s deck. Ryme remembered to clip himself onto the lifeline before Tosser turned to remind him. Ryme felt quite proud of himself, and the beaming grin of her approval certainly did no harm to his self-esteem.

The rectangular deck was packed with boxes, bags and crates. All taken, Ryme assumed from the recently raided Golden Zephyr. He couldn’t imagine where they were going to put it all. It looked worse than the detritus Traverstorm had left in the university common room when he returned from the Far Colonies.

Tosser spread her arms wide and bellowed, “bounty!” to a chorus of laughs. Ryme noticed Chall and Eslie Chem seated on the narrow brass railing that encircled the wingship’s deck with their backs to the wind sharing a thin rubber-capped bottle between them.

“I’m so glad to see you feeling better,” declared Eslie as he drew the glass pipette from the bottle and carefully squeezed a single drop onto his tongue. He twisted the pipette back into the bottle and handed it to Chall, who dispensed a drop for himself.

Eslie heaved himself off the rail and swaggered over to Ryme, his lifeline twitching like a tail behind him, “Adjusted to the sky life yet, Guldwych?”

Ryme almost flinched at Chem’s tone and the nasty curl of his lips. “Hello Eslie, I’m feeling much better thank you.”

He avoided looking over the rail behind Chem. Their altitude, witnessed again might just unhinge his stomach. With more resolution than he felt, Ryme squeezed a casual smile at Chem and turned to Tosser.

“Right, this is all stuff off the Zephyr. Most of it we know what to do with,” Chall rattled his rings against the little bottle in muted salute, “but this lot – well, even Chem don’t know what it is.”

“Why don’t you just ask the crew?”

“Ah, well there is no crew anymore, ” Ryme could feel Eslie’s smirk boring into the back of his head, “wasn’t just Irmleigh who went to the sands Guldwych.”

Had Ryme been sitting in his comfortable office he would have made appropriate sympathetic noises at such news, and inside he would have felt little. Now that he was standing over the property of dead men he was no more struck by pity. It wasn’t his fault they were dead. Obviously this Flame and Irmleigh had some history. Given their lifestyles it was guaranteed to end violently. Why take responsibility for that, or for the dead man’s crew?

Ryme ignored Chem and crouched down to look in the crate Tosser had opened. The outside was scorched, almost obscuring Meridional University’s coat of arms. The ‘Do Not Open’ labels had been disregarded. Inside were phials and jars sunk into a mass of shredded paper. Ryme plucked one out. On reading the label he almost dropped it in shock.

“These must not be opened – these are exceptionally dangerous. Why were they even on the Zephyr?”

“Well, they probably nicked them off someone professor,” said Tosser “where do you think we got them?”

“I mean, these are from the university’s poisons vault. These are Vileteeth. They should have been impossible to steal.”

“Nothing’s impossible to steal Guldwych, ” retorted Chem with a snarl, “everything can be taken – pride, poison, lives…”

Ryme looked properly at the bottle in Chem’s hand. “What is that you’re drinking?”

Chall spat on the deck.

His tooth slid across the planks, leaving a trail of bloody saliva.

Chall yawned wide with a rattle of falling teeth. Chem laughed and spat out his own teeth, then joined Chall in showing off the curling fangs emerging from their bloody gums.

“This is just what the doctor ordered”.

Coming Soon: Part 32 – Taking Stock

Part 30 – Twisted Up

Flying isn’t as simple as you’d think. And it’s a terribly long way down. Harvey had been on top of The Dove’s Eye’s balloon for too long and he felt as if his soul were adrift.

The slowly increasing altitude did help with the awful, dry, moisture-sucking heat that evaporated every glistening gem of cool wetness which lay between his sliding sheets of chitin, that made the very memory of dank sodden bark a dim, tear streaked memory. The sun of the Bane still beat harshly on his shell, like a hammer made of blinding light. He felt uncomfortably hot and dry inside his shell, and his mandibles clicked spastically.

There was a deep and growing itch in what Rosenhatch would probably call his armpits, except that Harvey had dozens of them. And the itch was in each and every one of them; a niggling rasp that made his limbs tremble. That quiver had begun to spread from the very tips of his tail, vibrating down into the hard nail of each leg in turn. He was a very tired piano being played by a very tired and talentless pianist. The tempo varied with each pass of his legs.

Perhaps the lack of rhythm was driving his mind out of its proper tempo too. To a place where a being with no wings had no business, still less dragging a vast weightless abdomen across the sky. Surely there would be a tree trunk to shelter beneath somewhere.

Gingerly Harvey began to experiment with his music book, relaxing a single leg at a time and surrounding it with a fierce clenching of its neighbours. That became his new rhythm, out-racing the growing spasms with his own choice clensions. As his joints scraped out their own song, and as the sun continued to beat down on the beleaguered centipede he dipped into his own stream of consciousness less and less.

He had known before the baking heat that he was the only thing holding the canopy together, his pincers pulling the canvas tight together, feeling the strain of the remaining globes inside pressing up at his belly. More and more it came to feel like he was weighted with thousands of young, his to release into the clouds. He would proudly watch them scurry down to the desert sands. Meanwhile he would recede endlessly into the glowing green and blue hemisphere which emanated from his antennae.

Night leached the heat from his aching chitin. Harvey’s universal awareness slipped away and he came back to himself in the gaze of countless stars and nebulae that lashed him with invisible lightnings of cold and eerie awareness. Perhaps he didn’t quite come all the way back to himself, but he was aware of his place in the vastness of space. He could feel how his soul bead was leashed to a web of minds joining him to those in distant space, and those in the cellars of the realm beneath his claws.

Finally one of those souls clawed its way up into Harvey’s plane of awareness. Though he sensed the closeness of a like mind it was not until his shuffling mental rhythm was disrupted by a more urgent beat being hammered out that he was jolted awake. The hammering was that of knuckles rapping on his third segment. In surprise he almost let go of the canvas then with a panicked lurch grabbed hold of his sky babies once more. Against the starlight his percussionist was revealed to be Rosenhatch Traverstorm.

It took great effort, but Harvey rotated his eye and with a horrid click, managed to move his speaking mandibles enough to croak out a ‘hello’.

“There you are Harvey,” Rosenhatch sighed, “I thought you’d faded out on me.”

“How long are we,” Harvey began, restarted, “how do the repairs go?”

Rosenhatch pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began gently polishing Harvey’s chitin. “It’s been four days Harvey. It’s almost over. Corshorn’s engineers are coming up shortly to stitch and tar the canvas. You can come down soon.”

“It’s… I’m not sure I can old friend. The sky needs me. The stars will take us all.”

Rosenhatch stared at Harvey for a moment. “You definitely need to come down.”

Harvey peered back at him, wondering how Traverstorm could possibly fail to understand that he anchored the world with his claws. He flexed all of his legs like the phantom pianist who had so vexed him.

Traverstorm grabbed at his safety line as the bag shifted under his feet. “For soul’s sake Harvey – just hang on for a little while longer. We’ll get you in the cabin before dawn, I promise you.”

Harvey rolled his eyes and continued his kneading of the canvas edges beneath his claws. He drifted back off into contemplation of the universe.

Rosenhatch stayed with him as the engineers ascended the canopy and clipped on around the giant centipede. Gently they slid a heavy net under and round Harvey’s long body. Once he was secured they waited by each claw for its slight relaxation and slipped the canvas away from him. As each claw was unpinned the canvas beneath was drawn tight, stitched and tarred. Huge belts anchored far below on the gondola were fastened into place. Harvey was slowly separated from the balloon and his legs curled tight underneath his as they were released. Entirely detached, Harvey was winched down the side of the canvas, preceded by an anxious Rosenhatch.

Back on the gondola it took ten crewmen to lift Harvey and bear him below to a cool, dark berth in the Rosenhatch’s cabin. Rosenhatch covered him in wet blankets. Maxwell emerged from a hiding place and though disdainful of the dampness, casually crossed the centipede’s back and curled up behind his head.

“Night night,” whispered Rosenhatch as he slipped out of the cabin and left Harvey to his dreaming of the world.

Coming Soon: Part 31 – Twisted Up

Desert Crystals Part 29 – Knives in the Night

Exotic shapes danced behind the thickly bubbled glass, casting a shadow play of dragons onto the street. The puddle of warm yellow light outside The Stout Apothecary was separated from the stark ovals projected from overhead lamps by rivers of pitch blackness. As any Meriodonal knows the dark brimmed with fauna banal and murderous in equal measure, much of it thankfully directed at maintaining the balance between those populations.

The more daring of the night beasts- a mating pair of godless-shrews scampered out of the flickering shadows. They were pursued by a third far larger godless-shrew, its double jaw extended towards their hindquarters. As it latched onto the pair the pub’s window exploded outward and a man fell heavily onto the crunch of glass. With the window removed the noise of a vigorous brawl intruded onto the night air.

Estfel Trabine roused himself from his bed of sharp pavement, shook his head and peered curiously at the ground.
“Oh hello – a godless-shrew. Ahh, you’ll be having babies soon,” he smiled at it dazedly. Two shrews dangled limply from its teeth, their threeway congress completed. Estfel cooed at it admiringly for a moment, then snatched up the equally dazed beast and hurled it through the smashed window.

“Take that you ball-worm!” An anguished cry greeted his accurate toss.

Trabine pulled himself fully to his feet, gingerly toeing the glass with one un-booted foot. The night air breezily assaulted his naked legs and torn shirt. He swayed for a moment and lurched towards the pub door.

“You alright out there Estfel?” Melee Galabrendle bellowed over the fray, “Oh you little-” her words were lost under the sound of glass breaking and punches landing.

“Quite alright my dear, I’ll be with you in just a tick,” Estfel hauled on the door handle, jerking it open as a wannabe assailant fell through the open door, receiving Estfel’s knee to his face as he went. Estfel stepped over the prone figure and rolled up his remaining shirt sleeve. The bar was a mess. Melee stood on a table in the middle of the room whacking people with the disintegrating wooden chair she had until recently been slumped in. She was surrounded by bruised and bleeding patrons, some of whom were gamely attempting to stand, only to be smashed back down again. Estfel saw no need to be concerned for his fellow editor; Estfel’s priority was the burly man with the strange beard who had thrown him through the window.

Although Estfel’s loud commentary on the facial hair of the other customers had not directly caused the fight, it had certainly primed them. Estfel’s undressing (after mocking the burly chap’s crenellated cheek tufts) and his bold declaration that he would show them all his scars was in itself well tolerated. Even Estfel’s whirled skirt landing in the fireplace where it immediately caught light and showered a table of rough looking university types with tatters of flaming silk was largely greeted with laughter. Melee drawing a pistol and shooting “the flames, the Bane-damned flames” probably crossed the line though. The barman had cut them both off as soon as Melee emptied the round and wearily tossed the pistol at the bar. It might have been Melee’s murderous glowering that then caused the barman to call in her tab. It was a mistake.

Estfel was merely very drunk. It was the natural result of starting with Quaverscant whiskey and following it with several bottles of mu-wine, and it took him the usual way. The mu-wine stripped away his natural reserve and brought back intensified memories of safari and a summer spent chasing armfish through the long grasses with his sisters. Ah, happy days of family, sunshine and late night trysts by the effervescent waters of the Glimmer. Indeed, that was where he had acquired a number of impressive scars, from inadvisable cavorting in those waters. Undressing was the obvious course of action when somewhat over-warmed by such romantic memories.

Melee however, had attained a dark state of scowling discontent again the natural result of whiskey followed by the violently blue mu-wine. Estfel, well knowing his partner’s disposition had considered a word of caution round about halfway through the second bottle but was still inwardly brooding about their earlier dispute over the beasts of the Allwright Marshes, not that he could have recalled the precise points of that disagreement. (Sometimes just remembering that you’ve been wronged is quite enough.) In this case Melee’s natural antipathy towards the general public and the mild hallucinogenic properties of Quaverscant whiskey, as well as Estfel’s insistence on once more telling her (and anyone in earshot, which at Estfel’s volume was everyone in The Stout Apothecary) about his stupid romantic liaisons in fizzy water all combined to produce a lethal discontent. The fire sprites clearly signalled danger and the barman was unprepared for war.

As Melee finished off the chair she was holding with a vicious strike across the barman’s shoulders Estfel swayed towards the gentleman with the ridiculous beard who it seemed had been the recipient of Estfel’s gift of godless-shrew. The beast had ejected its eggs into the man’s beard where they’d clearly used their sharp piton-like claws to anchor themselves in his throat. The anaesthetic properties of those claws had been documented by the Journals Biologinary several years ago; their effect would last for some hours. If the man was lucky he would awake to find them gone, otherwise the hatching young would use his neck and face as their first meals. Estfel gingerly plucked them from the man’s throat and arranged them in a small pyramid on the table top. With his desire for a scrap thwarted Estfel contented himself with an unbooted kick in the ribs.

Melee had apparently resolved her dispute with the pub. She left a heap of cash on the bar (taken from the tables of others) and helped herself to an unopened bottle of mu-wine.

“Come on Estfel, we’ve got work to do. I’m of a mind to do the editorial for the next issue.” So saying she staggered out of the pub’s door. Estfel followed a moment later, wondering where his other boot had gone.

Coming Soon: Part 30 – Twisted Up