Skykeep (15 page)

Lil shuddered and convulsed, her face beet
red, and finally exhaled. She drew in a breath of the horrid fumes
around them and instantly began to cough and gasp in agony.

“I understand breathing the fug is really
quite painful to those from the surface, Miss Graus,” the man said,
raising his voice over the agonized wheezing at his feet. “Drop
your weapon and I assure you we will restore her mask immediately.
I extend to you the same gracious offer you made to us. No one
needs to get hurt.”

Tears were running down the side of Lil’s
head as she attempted to shape her coughs into words, but the
violent, painful sounds were incomprehensible. The pressure on the
chain was weakening now.

“She doesn’t have much time left, Miss
Graus.”

Nita gritted her teeth and eased the hammer
of the gun back into place, lowering the weapon entirely. The
moment it was no longer in position to threaten them, the two
guards nearest to her closed in, taking the gun and roughly
immobilizing her. Two more guards removed Lil from the assistant
warden and helped him to his feet.

“Replace the mask,” the man in the doorway
ordered.

Though he did not seem pleased to be doing
so, the nearest guard grabbed the fallen mask and strapped it back
onto Lil’s face. After a few more ragged, wheezing coughs, her
breathing became easier.

“Thank you, Miss Graus. It is pleasing to
know that one of you is reasonable. That will make your time here
far more tolerable for us all,” he said. “I am Warden Linn. Welcome
to Skykeep.”

#

The warden led the way through the cramped
hall of the ship. It was a small but heavily locked-down vessel.
Fifteen cells similar to the one that had held them took up most of
the space. Like most fug vessels, it was lightly crewed, quite
likely the five guards and the assistant warden were joined by no
more than two additional crewmen. The nearly successful escape
attempt had convinced those on board to assign two guards to each
of the women, meaning that there was virtually no room to maneuver.
The inconvenience, all seemed to agree, was a necessary evil if it
meant keeping the prisoners in check. Eventually they made it to
the gangplank and out onto the pier. The disorienting black void of
the near-light-less fug was all around them. Above them was the
thick purple fog that resulted when the fug met fresh air, a midday
glow just barely breaking through it. That meant they were near the
surface, and the pier ahead of them led upward.

“I didn’t know there were any cities in the
fug that were anywhere near the surface,” Nita said.

“Quiet!” barked Ivors, one of the guards
assigned to the Calderan.

“Please, Ivors. The observation was not out
of line. I have no quarrel with intelligent discourse. Miss Graus,
your statement is quite understandable. There are, in fact, quite a
few fug settlements in the central expanse of Rim that are quite
near the surface, not because they are elevated, but because the
layer of fug there is so thin. This, however, is not one of
them.”

“You should have shot him,” Lil wheezed, her
voice finally returning.

“Quiet!” growled one of her guards, wrenching
her arm. This time there was no counter-order from Linn.

“You would have died,” Nita said. The grip
around her arm tightened.

“So’d’ve he,” she coughed. “Fair trade, if
you ask me.”

“Really, Miss Cooper. You aren’t improving
matters for yourself,” Linn said.

The ramp reached a long, narrow platform that
stretched out to either side, hugging a wooden wall with a
staircase at its center. Navigating the stairs was a challenge when
in leg irons, but they managed. They crossed through the thick
layer of fug, spiraling up flight after flight of stairs, until
they finally broke through to the surface. Neither Nita nor Lil was
prepared for what they saw next.

It was a fortress, or it may as well have
been. There were towers of wooden scaffold at each corner of a
plank courtyard with nearly as much square footage as half the town
of Lock. A simple railing ringed the outside edge, and a larger
central tower sat at the center, this one with a few large shacks
and cabins at its base and a massive, stout pole at its peak. Along
each edge, anchored to massive metal rings, were three spherical
airship envelopes nearly as large as those that had been used to
keep the dreadnought aloft. They cast enormous shadows across the
courtyard. All around them, as far as the eye could see, was the
roiling, wind-whipped purple surface of the fug, lapping at the
edge of the wooden platform like an angry sea in slow motion.

“What…
is
this?” Lil asked, awe in her
voice.

“Skykeep is a prison, Miss Cooper. Most of my
fellow fug folk call it the Phylactery, for poetic reasons. You’ll
note we have no walls. We do not require them. The whole of this
facility is elevated nine hundred feet above the surface. The masks
that have been removed from you are going to be returned to the
cutter that delivered you. There are
no
permanent filter
masks here. You will each be given mouthpieces, which can offer you
no more than one continuous hour of breathing before they must be
changed, and only when we deem such things necessary. The altitude
of this facility is adjusted hourly to keep the top three floors
above the fug, and the bottom three floors below it. The central
three floors are all somewhere in between. Beneath the fug are
anti-aircraft guns, each heavily fortified and directed by spotters
here on the surface. At the top of each of these five towers is a
sharpshooter.” He turned to Ivors. “Fetch Anthus, would you?”

The guard paced toward the center of the
platform and opened a door at the base of the tower.

Linn continued. “Many have attempted to
escape. The most popular method has been to reach one of the four
anchor chains that hold us in place and attempt to climb to the
surface. No one has survived such an attempt, and because our
purpose is to imprison and not to execute, I would like to
demonstrate for you why this is so.”

Ivors returned, and with him he brought a
creature. It was man-sized, stalking on all fours and snarling to
reveal vicious teeth. The beast was large enough to have been a
small bear, but it was as lanky and skeletal in build as the fug
folk. Also it had the long, pointed muzzle and sharply pointed ears
of a jackal, and the same sweeping tail. Short, dense fur made up
its pelt, gray and dappled with black spots. It growled with a
ghastly wind-through-the-gallows wheeze, and it darted its gaze
back and forth with wild red eyes.

“As air-goers you are familiar with the
inspectors. They are what happens when an aye-aye is exposed to the
fug and survives. And of course you are familiar with us. We are
what happens when a human is exposed to the fug and survives. This
is a fug hound. This is what happens when a dog is exposed to the
fug and survives. Like all I’ve mentioned thus far, they are at
least marginally more intelligent than their mundane brethren. They
are utterly bloodthirsty and can outrun a horse and eat their
weight in meat once a week, and there are a dozen of them loose on
the surface where the chains are anchored. Unlike Anthus here, they
are not well trained, and they are not well fed. We found training
tended to take the edge from the killer instinct that serves them
so well as guard dogs. Thus they are, quite simply, wild hunters.
If they don’t hunt, they don’t eat, and they
love
to eat.
Placing yourself anywhere within a mile of these creatures is…
inadvisable.”

Nita shook her head. “If… if the fug has
blanketed most of the continent… is the entire surface flooded with
those things? And others like them?”

“I admire your curiosity, Miss Graus, and I’m
sure that in time we will be able to discuss the details of my
homeland, but for the moment we are not here to educate you. Now,
Miss Cooper, your behavior has regrettably earned you a day in
isolation. You will be taken there now. Miss Graus, you brandished
a weapon and threatened the lives of fug folk. This is an
unacceptable offense as well, but in light of your willingness to
forgo any actual violence, you will in this one case be granted
leniency. And this leniency is contingent upon joining me for a
short discussion.”

“He means an interrogation,” Lil rumbled.

“It will become an interrogation only if your
behavior renders it necessary. The very nature of this place
provides more than enough discomfort to make it a suitable
punishment, in time, for any crime. I seldom see the need to
enhance the punishment.” He glanced to Lil. “With some obvious
exceptions. When your friend has been secured, my men will remove
your restraints, and you are free to move about the courtyard so
long as you do not attempt to approach or communicate with those in
isolation. If for any reason you feel the need to misbehave, I
encourage you to look to the towers, and to Anthus here. At all
times you are in the sights of several rifles, and potentially on
the menu of a hound. Is that understood?”

Nita nodded once.

“Splendid,” Linn said. “Ivors, bring Anthus
to the lower level for feeding, and place Miss Cooper in one of the
isolation cells.”

“You don’t tell them
nothing
, Nita!
You don’t tell them
nothing
! They have no idea what sort of
devilry they signed up for when they took us…”

“It’s going to be okay, Lil,” Nita called
out. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“Yeah,
for us
maybe,” Lil called back.
“But these fuggers’ days are numbered!”

“Undo Miss Graus’s restraints,” Linn
ordered.

One of the guards began to sift through a set
of keys while Nita watched nervously as her friend was literally
dragged kicking and screaming toward the central tower.

“You aren’t going to… hurt her, are you?”
Nita asked.

“It would be entirely within our rights to do
so. She assaulted my assistant warden. But no. I deplore physical
violence. Isolation is a different sort of punishment. Like more
conventional forms of discipline, it can, if overused, leave scars.
But at least these scars aren’t the sort that show.”

The guard finished undoing Nita’s manacles
and leg irons. She rubbed her wrists and watched as Lil was thrown
inside her “cell.” “Crate” would have been more appropriate. It was
a heavily built cube of wood and steel, tiny holes drilled
liberally through the wooden slats that made up its sides, top, and
bottom. Beneath the slats seemed to be a few layers of heavy mesh,
which blocked the view of the inside entirely and likely shrouded
the interior in complete darkness. The front hinged open to allow
Lil to be tossed inside, restraints still on her wrists and ankles.
She was cursing a blue streak and banging at the walls as a hook
was lowered from a boom mounted about two-thirds of the way up the
central tower’s pole. The guards affixed the hook to the top of the
crate and roughly hoisted it dozens of feet into the air, straight
past the roof of the tower and almost to the boom itself. Once they
were through hauling it up, Nita watched as it jerked and swung
with Lil’s angry struggles.

“This way, Miss Graus. We will have our
chat,” the warden said.

#

Nita walked uncertainly after Warden Linn.
She was flanked by guards and gagging on the omnipresent stench of
the fug. She’d had the misfortune of nearly losing her life to the
stuff during the now legendary clash with the fug folk aboard the
dreadnought, but not since then had the smell been so strong and
strangling. It was as though every plank of wood had been soaked in
the wretched stuff, marinated over the years.

“Do you require any medical attention?” the
warden asked.

“No.”

“Are you hungry, Miss Graus?” He led the
group down into a recessed staircase and moved into the lower
levels.

They were clearly traveling through a network
of corridors intended for staff rather than inmates. As with any
airship, which, despite the difference in scale, was the nearest
point of comparison to this floating prison, space was at a
premium. They were forced to walk single file, one guard in front
of Nita and one behind, while Linn led from the front of the line,
raising his voice just slightly.

“You’ve arrived just after our midday meal.
There won’t be any more food until this evening,” he said.

“I don’t have much of an appetite at the
moment,” Nita said. “The smell is stomach-turning.”

“In time I’m told the scent becomes
tolerable. You’ll forgive me, but you and Miss Cooper are among
only a handful of surface dwellers with whom I’ve had direct
dealings. If I’m not attentive to any of your needs, please inform
me, as I’ll have no way of knowing otherwise. Your time here is not
intended to be pleasant, you realize, but I take the health and
well-being of my inmates very seriously unless circumstances
require me to take punitive measures. It is entirely possible there
have been oversights with regard to necessities not shared between
our people. While Skykeep was designed to accommodate you, it was
not designed with you in mind.”

“It wasn’t? You mean you lock up your own
people here?”

“Of course. Who do you keep in
your
prisons? Did you believe that we were a society entirely devoid of
criminals, Miss Graus?”

“Not to offend you, sir, but many of the
people I’ve come to call friends would claim that you are a society
of nothing
but
criminals. The way you’ve held the people of
Rim by the throat for all of these years…”

He raised his hand gently to interject. “The
politics and the economic balance between our communities is a
fascinating and nuanced subject, Miss Graus, and much can be said
of it. But that will not be the focus of today’s discussion, so if
you’ll forgive me, I’d like to avoid treading too deeply into the
matter at this time.”