City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (17 page)

They seemed to come in all sizes and designs. Some floated on their bellies in the water like fat gulls. Others rode high up on pairs of big pontoons, looking like long-legged storks. There were sleek single-wing racers, two-winged air yachts all the way up to a monster with nine wings and eight engines, four facing forward and the other four faced toward the rear. With all the struts and crisscrossing wires, the craft looked more like a trio of mobile bridges than an aircraft.

Mugwort stopped the truck at the foot of the pier by several luggage carts. Close up, the Pan American Clipper was huge as it bobbed up and down, tugging at its mooring ropes as if impatient to be off. With its rounded hull over a hundred feet long, and wings over a hundred and fifty, it truly lived up to its name of “flying boat” and dwarfed the nine-winged sea plane. Even though the blades of the four propellers were enormous, they still didn’t seem big enough to lift such a gigantic craft into the air.

Mugwort appeared at the back. With seaplanes arriving and leaving, there was almost a constant roar of engines so he had to speak loudly. “Here,” he said, handing a suitcase to each of them. “Follow me.”

They walked along the pier where the Clipper’s triple tail rose high above them. Ahead of them, a broad wing cast a large area of shadow over the water and the pier. Scirye couldn’t help feeling as if they were walking straight into the belly of a whale.

Scirye

Scirye pulled her gauntlet from a pocket of the coveralls and slipped it over her hand. “You can come out now, Kles,” she whispered. With her free hand, she undid enough buttons on her overalls for Kles to slip out and light on her leather-covered hand on her lap. She held a finger up to her mouth in warning as workers loaded the starboard cargo hold on the upper deck.

When she had first entered the long, narrow hold on the port side, Scirye had felt like they were in a cave because it was so gloomy. It extended along the upper deck but also into the space inside the wing.

When they had stowed the suitcases away, Mugwort had pointed to a door on the front bulwark and warned them in a soft voice that
they needed to be quiet because the cockpit and the flight crew’s sleeping quarters were on the other side.

They had squeezed their way past roped stacks of suitcases, trunks, and crates to the rear, where a wall of crates blocked their way. Mugwort lifted an empty crate from the top of the wall and motioned them to climb over. They found themselves pressed into a cramped hiding space between the rear cargo wall and the boxes. A small rectangular patch of metal high up on the wall marred the otherwise riveted side of the plane; a pile of blankets sat on the smooth floor.

Scirye tensed as footsteps approached them now, sure that the turtle had given them away to the police. Her griffin sensed her anxiety and crouched, ready to spring into action. The others must have thought the same thing because Bayang began to undo the bundle with the axes and Leech and Koko waited to take them.

“I knew we couldn’t trust anyone with a name that sounds like a noise a sick mongoose makes,” Kles grumbled.

But it was Mugwort’s homely face that peered down at them from the wall of crates. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. “Here,” he said in a soft voice, lowering a sack. “It’s some food and water.”

Koko took it with a nod of thanks. “Is this ritzy stuff from down below?”

“Don’t push your luck,” Mugwort grunted. “We’ll be closing the hold in a moment.”

“Any cops come asking about us?” Koko asked as he took them.

Mugwort nodded. “Sure, but I told them we hadn’t seen anyone.”

Koko handed the armload to Leech. “They took your word for it?”

“Me and them play poker every Friday.” Mugwort chuckled. “I always make sure I lose some.”

“You’ve done this before,” Bayang observed.

Mugwort beamed with professional pride. “I make it worth everyone’s while not to look in this nook. When you get to Honolulu and hear this”—Mugwort whistled a short tune—”you’ll know it’s my guy. He’ll get you out of the clipper safely.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Koko said.

Mugwort grunted sourly. “We’re even now, so drop the ‘buddy’ business.”

Koko nodded agreement. “I meet you on the street and you’re a complete stranger.”

Satisfied, Mugwort started to slide away. “Bon voyage then.”

“Who are you?” Koko said companionably.

A few minutes later, they heard the door clang shut on the seaplane. Leech had expected the hold to grow even darker, but oddly enough there were faint beams of light coming from around the edges of the oval patch.

Bayang stood up and examined it. “This is covering a porthole.”

Suddenly the whole hold shook as the Clipper’s propellers whined into life, deepening in pitch until they were a steady roar, making it difficult to talk.

When Kles shifted uneasily from one leg to another, Scirye set him upon her lap and stroked his fur affectionately. “What’s the matter, Kles?”

“I feel like we’ve been swallowed up by a monster,” the griffin grumbled. “When I fly, I prefer to use my own two wings and I certainly wouldn’t make so much racket when I do.”

The propellers grew even louder as they began to back away from the dock, rocking with every motion of the water. Slowly, the Clipper taxied away from the pier and circled in an easy curve. Suddenly they lurched forward, the seaplane rocking up and down as well as sideways as they began to move over the choppy surface of the bay—faster and faster until they were speeding more quickly than Scirye had ever gone in her life.

In the hold, crates shook and rocked, but Mugwort and his compatriots had done their work well. The ropes held the crates in position.

The noise from the engines almost but did not quite drown out the hiss of water against the hull. If it weren’t for that sound, Scirye would have thought they were in a cart rolling down a bumpy, rock-strewn hill.

Suddenly, the swaying stopped as they lurched into the air, and then resumed when they splashed back down again with such a hard jar that she almost bit her tongue. They repeated that several times, but each time the lull grew longer and the impact shorter and softer until the clipper tilted upward and they were free of the bay.

As they soared upward, the noise from the propellers lessened.

All of them jumped when a muffled voice greeted them. “Welcome to Pan American Airline’s China Clipper en route to Honolulu.” From the passenger deck below, the words echoed a fraction of a second later over loudspeakers.

Bayang pointed to the forward bulwark. “Mugwort was right. We have to be careful because the wall is thin.”

Leech had been fidgeting all the while. “I can’t take being cooped up in the dark. I need light.” Taking down a crate, he set it on the floor beneath the patch. Then he stood on it and tried to pry the metal from the window despite the screws holding it on.

“Leave it alone,” Bayang ordered.

Leech shrugged. “Who’s going to report us? A seagull?”

When Scirye had left the Kushan Empire, she and her mother had gone by sea and then train to Istanbul. Another train had taken them to the next posting in Paris and another combination of boats and railroads had taken them to San Francisco. The only time she’d flown had been on the back of an ambassador’s griffin.

She was eager to look out the porthole, too. “I agree with Leech.” Setting Kles down on the floor, Scirye unrolled the carpet so she
could pick up one of the axes. The boy made way for her as she used the blade to unscrew the metal covering the window. It had been a hasty job so there were only two screws which she had out in no time.

Then she pressed her face against the window. She was looking out just to the rear of the wing, but she could see everything. She thought she had been high up when she had been on the carpet, but that had been nothing compared to now. Below her, the buildings on the hills slid by like rectangular beads scattered over a lumpy rug, and the ships on the bay seemed to be painting white stripes across green glass.

She angled her head, trying to glimpse the Kushan Consulate but she couldn’t. “I hope she’s all right,” she murmured.

“The hospital will be doing everything they can for her,” Kles told her from where he sat upon a blanket.

“Second thoughts?” Bayang asked.

Scirye almost tried to bluff, but that would be a lie and she was almost a Pippal now; she had to keep Tumarg. “I still hurt inside about Nishke. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to Mother.”

Next to her, Leech nodded. “Same here. I feel bad enough about Primo. It’d be too much if I lost Koko.”

Stretched out on a blanket, Koko pillowed the back of his head on his hands. “Don’t worry, buddy. I don’t intend to let any monster slice and dice either of us.”

“When we get to Honolulu, I need to find out about Mother,” Scirye said.

“It would be better if fewer people knew what we were doing.” Bayang sighed. “But I understand. Do what you have to do.”

Scirye watched as they floated over the newly built Golden Gate Bridge and away from land, gliding through wisps of cloud that looked like a torn quilt, its cotton stuffing scattered across the sky.

Would she ever see the city and her mother again?

Bayang

“Hey, it was my idea. Don’t hog the view,” Leech said.

“There’s not a lot to see now.” Scirye shrugged as she slid away.

The boy, though, settled in at the window and stared at the sky as if his eyes were devouring every bit of it. “I’m finally flying,” he murmured to no one in particular. “I dream about this all the time, and now here I am.”

“Yeah, yeah, you must’ve been a bird in another life.” Koko sounded bored, as if he had heard this fantasy before.

Or you were simply meant to fly
, Bayang thought sympathetically.

This was a terrible development because it meant he was one step closer to discovering his true powers. And yet his eagerness reminded her of her own people’s hatchlings, so she felt as sorry for
him as she would have for one of them if they were denied their birthright to the sky.

And he’d called her a friend. She turned the word over in her mind wonderingly, like a child with a new toy. It was something to be understood and enjoyed.