Skykeep (13 page)

“That waitress wasn’t no male, and I’m not
coming up with another name.”

Butch finished her work and gently moved the
aye-aye to an empty table. She made a rather pointed demand for
Coop to take its place on the operating table. He reluctantly
complied, initiating a rather uncomfortable and awkward checkup.
There was something rather embarrassing about being given a
thorough examination by the ex-wife of your current boss while he
watched, but fortunately the reduced size of the crew and the
increased threat of attack required that both Gunner and Captain
Mack join Wink on deck for lookout duty. That meant that by the
truly embarrassing portion of the procedure, he was left with only
the inherent awkwardness of being ordered to undress by an older
woman.

She took nearly an hour to tend to every
scrape, bump, and bruise, but in the end everything was either
cleaned up, stitched up, or bandaged. By the time she was through,
Nikita was coming around. The aye-aye climbed woozily from the
table to the floor, then up to Cooper’s table as he was getting
dressed and tried to crawl into his shirt before he buttoned
it.

“Get out of there,” he grumbled, reaching in
to scoop it out.

Butch slapped him on the head and reprimanded
him.

“Well, I know she’s recovering, but she
shouldn’t be in my shirt. Just because I pulled her out of the
basket doesn’t make me her mama,” he said. He got another button
fastened before the creature crawled in again. When he reached to
pull her out, Butch clocked him again. “You know
I’m
recovering too, Butch. Would you at least hold her until I get
dressed proper?”

This was acceptable to Butch, but Nikita
clearly had a lower opinion of it, because the instant she was no
longer in physical contact with Coop, she struggled and fought to
get back to him. He buttoned up his torn and stained shirt just in
time for her to pull free from Butch and leap to him.

He heaved a heavy sigh. “You’re going to make
things difficult, aren’t you, Nikita?”

Coop cradled the injured creature in one arm
as Butch held up his coat for him. Putting it on was a bit of a
circus act, requiring him to shift Nikita to the other arm multiple
times, but finally he was fully suited up with an aye-aye nestled
snug beneath his overcoat. From the feel of its fluttering heart,
the thing was finally beginning to calm down.

“Long as I don’t upset her, you reckon we can
see what this little thing knows about what went on down there?”
Coop asked.

Butch indicated the affirmative, and Coop
made his way up to the main deck. The sun was already setting,
giving the sky a beautiful orange hue and casting long shadows from
the scraggly trees to which the ship was moored. When Gunner saw
the heartwarming sight of the recovering aye-aye poking its head
out of Coop’s coat, his face lit up with fiendish glee and he
opened his mouth to speak.

“You better watch what comes out of your
mouth next, or you’re liable to have a fat lip,” Coop growled.

“Is that thing ready to talk?” the captain
asked.

“You tell me. I could never get the hang of
all of that tapping. Just a bunch of noise half the time,” Coop
said, pacing over to the railing on the port side, which was the
only part of the ship facing open sky.

Wink, who had been up in the rigging keeping
an eye on the surroundings and performing his original function as
inspector, finally decided that the presence of what was
essentially a business associate couldn’t be ignored any longer. He
climbed down, hopped up on the railing, and came practically nose
to nose with Nikita. She peered out and sniffed him a bit, then
pulled back inside.

She tapped out a message against one of the
buttons of Coop’s coat.

This inspector wanted to know if that
inspector was the inspector for this ship, she tapped.

This inspector was the inspector for this
ship. This inspector was named Wink. That inspector repeated its
name, Wink tapped.

This inspector was named inspector 55655, she
replied.

“That bit was about names, wasn’t it?” Coop
said. “What was that about?”

“She says her name is 55655,” the captain
said.

“No, Nikita. Your name’s Nikita now,” Coop
said.

The aye-aye looked up to him.

This crew understood what these inspectors
said, Nikita said. This inspector reported this to the fug
folk.

No, 55655 did not report this to the fug
folk. This crew learned. It was a secret to the trainers and the
fug folk. 55655 didn’t tell anyone. 55655 stayed out of sight. Wink
did these things. Wink was rewarded with good food and good
treatment. 55655 might have been rewarded, too, Wink said. 55655
understood. 55655 agreed.

The newcomer looked uncertainly at Coop and
the rest of the crew.

No, she tapped. 55655 did not agree. This
inspector was named Nikita. Nikita agreed.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Captain Mack
said. He fished into his pocket and fetched a waxed paper pouch
filled with slices of overripe breadfruit. He gave one to Wink and
held one out to Nikita. She reluctantly took it and nibbled at it.
“Real team players, these inspectors. I wouldn’t mind if I had a
whole crew of them.”

“Now
that’s
an image,” Gunner
said.

“Nikita, did you see two surface folk down
there in the fug recently?”

There was a surface woman. She had black skin
and leather clothes. There was a second surface woman. She was
dressed like this crew. They were loaded onto a cutter ship. The
cutter went to the Phylactery, Nikita said.

“I heard a mishmash of letters at the end
there,” Coop said.

“She said she saw them and they went to the
Phylactery,” Gunner said.

“I ain’t never heard of that.”

“I don’t think any of us have. What’s the
Phylactery?” Mack said.

Nikita didn’t know, she said.

“Where is the Phylactery?” Gunner asked.

Nikita didn’t know.

“Well, then what good does that do us?”
Gunner asked.

“It does us plenty of good. It lets us know
the girls were alive, and it tells us the name of the place they
got sent,” Mack said.

“But she said they were loaded into a cutter.
You know how fast those things are. By this time tomorrow they
could be anywhere in the fug,” Gunner said.

“But they’re alive. That’s enough to know we
don’t give up searching.” The captain turned to Nikita. “Why did
they have you down there?”

The fug folk were on the ground for a long
time. One of the fug folk was a trainer. The fug folk had to wait.
The cutter couldn’t stay. Nikita listened for a message. The
message came, the cutter came. The fug folk climbed in the
mountain. The fug folk came back with the surface folk. The fug
folk broke things in the camp. The fug folk burned things in the
camp. The fug folk burned Nikita. The fug folk shot at Nikita.
Nikita ran. This surface person found Nikita. This surface person
was good. Nikita stayed with this surface person.

“Yeah, well, you’re in luck, because once the
captain gets his hands on an injured inspector, they stick around,”
Gunner said. “Sounds like you’ve got a partner, Coop.”

Nikita stayed with Coop.

“Why did they try to burn you?” Coop
asked.

The fug folk said there was no ship. The fug
folk said an inspector with no ship was suspicious. The fug folk
didn’t want that.

“Where did you come from, Nikita?” Mack
asked.

Nikita was in training. Nikita was put on a
cutter. Cutter already had an inspector. Nikita was brought to
Pendercrook. Nikita was put on a new cutter…

“Pendercrook. What’s that?” Gunner said.

Nikita didn’t know.

“Well, what did it look like?”

There were many ships. There were no places
where fug folk lived. There were many places where ships moored.
There was much equipment and food and water.

“Sounds like a supply point,” Mack said. “Do
you know where Pendercrook is?”

Nikita heard the navigator when the cutter
left Pendercrook, seventy-five miles west-northwest.

Mack turned and headed for the wheel,
dictating orders. “Then we’re heading seventy-five miles
east-southeast. Get us unmoored, and then masks on. We’re doing
this under the fug. Once we’re on the way, I want fore and aft
cannons loaded with grapeshot, and then I want everyone on deck and
heavily armed. Nikita, remember that from now on you deliver no
reports. Wink, you keep her honest. Pendercrook is our only clue
right now. When we get there I want eyes open, ears open,
everything. We are going to use that place to find Nita and Lil.
Maybe it means spotting a cutter and trailing it. Maybe it means
breaking in and finding some travel orders. Maybe it means
kidnapping the man in charge and pulling the information out of him
with pliers.” The crew had already snapped to action, but before he
put his hands to the controls, he paused and turned to them. “I’m
about to take an undermanned ship that can’t be repaired into enemy
territory. There’s more ways this can go wrong than ways it can go
right. If anyone wants out—”

“Just get moving, Captain,” Gunner said
irritably. “We all know if anyone drops out now, the ship won’t
have crew enough to do what it needs to, and none of us are going
to leave Nita or Lil in the hands of the fuggers.”

“That’s the right answer,” Captain Mack said,
turning back to the wheel. “Pull them ropes up and let’s get our
crew.”

Nita’s eyes fluttered open. Her head ached terribly,
like she had the most wretched hangover of her life. Wherever she
was, it was at least a small mercy that the light was dim, because
she didn’t think she could handle sunlight at the moment. As her
vision slowly cleared, she started to make out details of her
surroundings. The light was yellow-green. A phlo-light. She was
cold, too. Not the icy cold of a winter night, but the skin-deep
chill of medicine swabbed onto a scrape. She stiffened. She knew
that sensation. It was the fug. She was in the fug.

She fought to focus her eyes, and to work out
what had happened. A mask was cinched painfully tight around her
mouth, one of the filter contraptions that surface folk had to wear
when journeying down into the wretched fumes that blanketed most of
Rim. It made breathing difficult, but not nearly as difficult as it
would have been without the mask. Her hands were bound behind her
back, from the feel of it by stout metal shackles. Her ankles had
similar restraints as well. They seemed to be in a large
wood-paneled room with a heavy door. From the subtle motion she
felt, she was in some sort of vehicle, almost certainly an airship.
There were no windows, save a barred slit at eye level on the door,
and the only furniture to speak of was a pair of wooden planks
affixed to the opposite walls. Nita was laying on one of them, and
across from her, Lil was still unconscious on the other.

“Lil,” Nita croaked.

It was clear that these masks weren’t
designed with the same usage in mind as the ones the
Wind
Breaker
crew usually deployed. The
Wind Breaker
masks
were rather ingeniously designed, allowing voices to be
surprisingly understandable. This mask muffled her voice almost to
the point of incomprehension.

“Lil!” she called again, more loudly, and was
quickly punished by a throb to her head from the exertion.

Nonetheless, the cry did the job, and she
could just barely make out Lil’s eyes opening. It said something
about the deckhand’s personality that her first action upon
discovering her situation was to mutter some muffled expletives and
struggle at her chains rather than attempt to puzzle out where she
was.

“Damn fugger scum,” Lil mumbled.

“Lil, are you all right?” Nita asked,
struggling to sit up and swing her restrained feet to the
ground.

“I feel like I put away a gallon of the
cap’n’s rotgut. But yeah. I’m breathing,” she said, shaking her
head. “Why’re we in the fug? Why ain’t we dead?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t charity or good will,”
Nita said.

Lil shook her head, then uttered a moan of
regret for doing so. “You seen any of the rest of the crew?”

“I just woke up. You know as much as I
do.”

“They took my gun,” Lil said.

“No surprise there. My tools are gone as
well.”

Lil swung her feet out and sat up, tipping
her head from side to side with a crackle. “Got a crick in my neck
something awful.” She pressed the back of her head against the
wall, set her feet against the floor, and arched her back to lift
her bottom off the seat. A few awkward twists and turns got the
chain of her manacles down to the back of her mid thigh. She then
sat and pivoted, flipping her legs up and sliding the chain along
them. The manacles got caught briefly on her leg irons, but she
managed to shake them loose and pull them the last few inches up
over the edge of her heels, leaving her with hands restrained in
front rather than behind.

“You would
certainly
make a fine
dancer,” Nita observed.

“If being a dancer means not waking up in a
situation like this, then I might be willing to give it a try,” Lil
said. “You know anything about picking locks?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Coop’s always been the one with the knack
for that. I never could get around a fugger lock. Not that we have
the tools for it, regardless. Guess I’ll just try and bust
them.”

Lil began smashing the manacles against one
of the metal supports for the plank. Now that her mind had
recovered enough, Nita began to feel the flutter of fear. In the
heat of battle, or at least when there was something to be done,
she seldom felt even a flash of anxiety. What concern she felt
always fell a distant second to the job at hand. The feeling of
helplessness, though, was something else entirely. She needed to do
something, to make
some
progress toward escape, or she knew
panic wouldn’t be far behind. There didn’t seem to be anything else
to do but attempt to imitate Lil’s feat of flexibility. She got the
chain as far as her ankles when it became clear that she wasn’t
quite
as lithe as her cellmate. Lil glanced over at her
while Nita was trying to decide if she should continue forward or
abandon the effort.