Skykeep (21 page)

“Why not?”

“They are smarter than most realize but they
aren’t at my level, or even
yours,
by any stretch of the
imagination. They can form sentences, they can have a truly
remarkable memory at times, and they can mechanically follow
orders, but only the very brightest can think abstractly. They
don’t have imaginations. They don’t lie because they can’t conceive
of something other than the truth. The shorthand required them to
group their reports by topic, and all but a handful of my best
specimens couldn’t do more than regurgitate their total report in
the order that it was observed.”

Nita nodded, ignoring the casual jab at her
intelligence. “And the communication people just listen to the taps
echoing from each ship as they come in?”

“Heavens no. We couldn’t hope to hear all we
need to. The receiving inspector listens to the taps and repeats
the relevant ones to the operator. It takes an aye-aye’s ears to
differentiate all of the dozens of different messages that might be
coming in at a busy port.”

“So the messenger only listens to what the
aye-aye says.”

“Most times the messenger can only
hear
what the aye-aye ‘says.’ I spent some time as one. You
quickly learn to tune out anything but what the aye-aye taps.”

“How does the aye-aye know what the operator
needs to know?”

“Keywords. The code for a broken rule, for
example. Also, a message can be addressed to a specific aye-aye.
That only happens when it is a forwarded report.”

“What’s that?”

“If something truly dangerous to fug society
occurs, the message needs to get to someone who can do something
about it. So a message is sent out with a specific aye-aye’s
designation on it. Every aye-aye who hears it will add it to their
own report, along with the name, and tap it out at the next port.
It continues until the target aye-aye replies that it has received
it, then that message ripples through to silence the rest.”

“You’ve been using our airships to deliver
your messages without us knowing?”

“Ours airships as well. All airships are
potentially delivering a message about another one’s behavior
halfway across the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of the
inmates were riding on the same ship as the inspector carrying the
message ordering their arrest.”

“That’s fiendishly brilliant.”

“Undeniably brilliant. Fiendish is a matter
of opinion.”

Nita turned this information over in her
mind. “So I have to assume the sole purpose of Skykeep’s aye-aye is
to deliver and receive reports.”

“Naturally.”

“And if I were to ask you, could you teach me
how to compose one of these forwarded reports?”

“I suppose… You’d need to know both the name
of Skykeep’s aye-aye and the one you intend to deliver a message
to.”

“How would I learn the name of this prison’s
aye-aye?”

“Ask it. The code is a simple one.” She
lightly clapped out the phrase
That inspector repeated its
name.
“The next code the aye-aye taps will be…” Again she
clapped.
This inspector was named inspector 1234.
“But it
won’t do you any good. Because if you’ve only just learned that
code phrase, then you don’t know the names of any other aye-ayes.
It isn’t something you choose. It is something
I
choose when
I train them, or whoever has replaced me. Probably that buffoon
from Nesterlane…”

“I’ll worry about that. Just teach me the
proper methods. Is there a way to get an inspector to reply only to
a specific trainer or messenger?”

“You can give the instruction. Not every
inspector is savvy enough to do it.”

“I want to learn it all. Every little bit
helps…”

Nita had made the most of the extended yard time,
doing the best she could to feel out which members of the prison
population might be of aid to any potential escape effort without
outright voicing an intention to escape. All through what turned
out to be nearly five hours on the surface deck, Nita had been
concerned about what she would do if she was searched before
returning to her cell, but it turned out to be a nonissue, as they
didn’t give her so much as a second look before slapping the
manacles on and leading her below deck. Perhaps it was the
arrogance of a staff who believed their prison was impossible to
break out of, but security seemed alarmingly lax at times. Granted,
there was no clear indication of how anyone might smuggle items
into or out of the facility. In light of the nature of the prison’s
safeguards, perhaps it was only natural that they would become
complacent.

Once she was alone in her cell, she carefully
loosened a seam on the mattress of her bed and hollowed out a
section just large enough to hide the watch. The “stuffing” was so
uncomfortably firm that it was actually difficult to feel where the
watch was kept, though a careful observer would be able to spot the
untidy seam. Once the watch was hidden, there was little to do but
hide the displaced stuffing and prepare for Lil’s arrival. At
dinner Nita squirreled away any part of her meal that she felt
might keep well enough to be edible the next day. She pulled the
blanket from Lil’s bed and folded it under herself, sleeping atop
it and sitting on it to make sure it was as warm as she could make
it. Of course, there was little sleeping done.

As day drifted into night, Nita noticed the
wind outside beginning to howl. It was a distant sound that barely
reached her cell, but there was little doubt the weather was
getting choppy. If she strained, she could
just
hear the
hiss of rain pattering against Skykeep, and now and then she felt
the subtle increase in rocking and rolling that came with each gust
of wind. Lil was out there,
up
there, in a downpour…

After Nita spent a sleepless night of worry,
breakfast was served. She saved almost the entire meal, and
likewise for lunch. The pillowcase under her bed that served as the
stash of extra food was beginning to get a bit crowded when the
door to the cell block finally opened a few minutes before yard
time.

There was no squeak of struggling feet this
time. No angry growl at the guards or stream of profanity. Lil
merely shuffled along with the guards, allowing herself to be
thrown into the cell without so much as a comment. One look at her
face made it clear why. She was exhausted. The long, wet night had
left her shivering and weak. Her eyes had dark bags under them, her
lips were tinged with blue, and worst of all, she was soaking wet.
During her last isolation, she’d been splashed a bit with water
from the hasty way in which the bare minimum for survival was given
to her, but this time she was absolutely drenched.

“I cannot
believe
you left her in that
crate through a storm!” Nita barked, fury in her eyes.

“Isolation is a
punishment
,” said the
guard. “We don’t cut it short simply because it isn’t a pleasant
day.”

“It wasn’t nothing I couldn’t take,” Lil said
with a flicker of a grin as Nita sat her carefully on the bed and
wrapped both blankets around her. “Just a little wind and rain.”
Her voice was rough, and she concluded her statement with a ragged
cough.

“Would you at least get her a dry set of
clothes?” Nita said.

The guard grunted something and paced off to
an unseen cabinet to rummage around inside.

As before, Nita sat beside her and held her
close. It was the only option available to her to help her friend
warm up.

“I… I think I might wait awhile before I do
that sort of thing again,” Lil said quietly.

“You should have told me what you were up
to,” Nita said.

“You’d have told me not to do it,” Lil
said.

“That’s absolutely right, I would have.”

“Do you still have it? Did it work?”

“Yes.”

“Worth it then.”

“How’s your arm?”

“Where the guard hit me? Not as bad as my
throat… and my head. The wind rattled that crate around something
awful. I thought I was fixing to come loose. And the fug gets
stirred up pretty bad in wind like that. I was coughing and gagging
on the stuff all night. I wasn’t sure I’d make it…” A tear ran down
her cheek. “I’m so damn glad to see you again.”

“Do you think you can eat?”

“Can I eat? You get your fingers too close to
my mouth, I’m liable to eat your arm.”

The guard reappeared at the bars. “Here. But
you’ve got to get changed and hand over the wet stuff. The warden
doesn’t want any prisoner having an extra set of clothes.”

Nita took the clothes, then helped Lil to her
feet and held up one of the blankets to give her some privacy. She
finished getting changed, and Nita handed over the wet clothes,
returning to her place on the bed and wrapping back up in the
driest of the two blankets. When the guard was back at his post,
Nita fetched the stowed food and Lil began to eat gratefully. Lil
hadn’t stopped shaking, so Nita put an arm across her shoulders
again to try to hold her steady enough to feed herself.

“You know something,” Lil said, a bit of life
and mischief in her expression again as she forced down a day-old
meal. “This keeps happening, people are liable to start
talking.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This is twice you and me ended up in bed
together with your arms around me. And just now I was nekkid not an
arm’s length away from you. People are liable to think we’re sweet
on each other.” She chewed slowly and stared at the far wall. “You
think… you think maybe they already do?”

“I think you should focus on warming up and
getting fed, Lil.”

She took another bite, continuing on the same
train of thought. “Ain’t neither of us had any suitors since you
joined the crew. Me trying to learn how to fix this and that and
you trying to teach me, we been spending more time together than
apart. You reckon… you reckon maybe folks are already talking?”

“Lil, eat. It’s almost yard time.”

“I’m serious, though. What do you reckon
people are saying?”

“It doesn’t matter what people are saying
about us, Lil,” Nita said. She was speaking calmly. “It doesn’t
matter how things look between the two of us. How you feel about me
and how I feel about you should only matter to you and me. It is
absurd to think you’d trouble yourself with thoughts like that at a
time like this. It is absurd that you’d ever
need
to trouble
yourself with things like that.”

“So if someone asked what was going on
between us…”

“I would politely tell them that I can’t talk
right now because my friend Lil is too busy fretting about silly
matters to eat a proper meal, and she needs my help.” She took the
freshest of the pieces of bread remaining and stuck it in Lil’s
mouth, then brushed her damp hair from her eyes. “Now are you about
ready to talk about something we actually need to be concerned
about?”

Lil chewed down her current bite. “Fine,
what’ve you got for me?”

“We’ve got the time, and I had a word with
Blanche. I learned a bit more about how the inspectors are used. I
think we might be able to use them to get a message out.”

“Well, there’s some good news,” Lil said,
gulping down a few more mouthfuls of food more hungrily as the
tremors began to ease away.

“Those two grunts who chatted you up seem
like we can trust them, and I’ve done the best I can to feel out
the rest. A few might help us if we asked, most would look the
other way. But those Ebonwhite brothers… we’ll have to be even more
careful around them than the guards. Any scrap of information they
get will go straight to the warden.”

“Any idea how we can get me outside at
night?” Lil said.

“Nothing yet.”

“That’s the last part then, right?” she said,
washing down the remainder of her food with a cup of wretched
water.

“Besides waiting and hoping,” Nita said.

“Good… because you ain’t been up there yet,
but they brought me across the deck to take me down here. The wind
did a number on the deck. If they work this place like they do the
other prisons I’ve heard about,
someone’s
going to be up on
deck for an extra long time…”

#

Lil had barely choked down the last of her
meal when the guards came to shackle the pair for transport to the
yard. The instant they stepped out on deck, it was clear what Lil
had meant about someone spending extra time on deck. The high winds
and pounding rain had torn up a whole section of decking. About a
dozen planks were splintered or missing along one corner, and one
of the sniper towers was badly damaged, so much so that the
sharpshooter wasn’t present.

“As you have no doubt noticed,” announced
Asst. Warden Blanc, a shiny new watch in his hand as the last of
the inmates took the yard. “There has been a bit of damage to your
beloved home. This means there’s work to be done. Much as I would
love
to put you to labor in the burning sun, I need this
place repaired properly, and that means I can’t afford to have any
of you squinting in the light and falling off the edge before the
work is done.”

There was a murmur of irritation across the
inmates at the mocking level of false concern in the voice and
words of Blanc. He continued to rattle off things like the specific
damage that was done and the individual jobs that would need to be
done to repair it, but none of the prisoners seemed to need to know
any of it. At this point it was clear that the assistant warden
simply loved his own voice.

“Who wants in?” Kent said quietly out the
side of his mouth.

“You know I do,” Donald said.

“What’s this about?” Nita asked.

“He’s going to pick seven of us to do the
work. I’m always the first one he picks, and he lets me suggest my
own team. Probably because I haven’t made a stink around here much
lately, and I helped build a couple parts of this place.”