Skyland (20 page)

Harper took another step into the cell.

The smell of piss burned in his nostrils.
Again. The smell was stronger every day.

He tried to ignore the clawing pity that
scratched at his gut. He tried to keep the grimace off his face.
And he tried to ignore the rank puddle in one corner beside the
door. He walked over to the bed. One hand held two dried fruits –
apples perhaps. He could never tell exactly what the food was here.
He'd snuck them out of the mess that morning.

Now, he held them out to the old man who
didn't move towards them.

"You should probably eat," said Harper. "I
don't know what they're feeding you, but it can't be much. You
don't look too good."

The old man didn't move.

"Okay."
He's still in shock. Or
something.
"I'll leave them on the table. I brought you
something else, too. You must be freezing in here. They did the
same thing to me when they found me on the first Skyland ship. I
don't know what it is... They know cold bothers us or something.
Bastards."

The blanket from his room was draped over
his shoulder. He took it and held it out to the old man who did not
move to take it. It was one of the puffy cloud-like ones. One of a
few he'd discovered when he investigated the strangely unnecessary
bedclothes of this ship. He'd think of some excuse for where it'd
gone if Wills asked. But the young soldier would hardly notice. One
blanket or three – it was all just a puffy lump on the bed.

Nobody seemed to ask questions here,
anyway.

Harper had walked through hallway after
hallway with a puffy white quilt over his shoulder, past guards and
civilians. No one had said a word.
I get cold in here
, he'd
been prepared to say.
I'm used to the heat of the sun.
For a
Skylander on a base made for soldiers from more temperate climates,
it would have been a plausible excuse. It was the best he could
think of, at any rate.

But nobody had asked.

Nobody even looked twice at him.

He laid the quilt over the old man curled on
the bed.

"There you go, grandpa. You need to keep
warm. Look, you can hide it behind the bed when you hear them
coming."

He pointed to a space in the wall where the
bed must have folded out from. The wall around it was hollow, there
wasn't much of a gap – only an inch or two – but the blanket could
be fed through easily.

He adjusted the covering, pulled it up
around the old man's shoulders.

The old man grasped the corners of the
blanket and pulled it up even further, over his neck, up around his
ears. He curled tighter into a ball. Harper watched, sickened with
pity.

At least the room didn't feel as cold today.
Harper wondered whether he'd just been prepared for the cold, or
whether the temperature in the room had actually changed.

He tried to make conversation.

"What are you doing here old man?"

"I don't know. I...I d–don't know."

"You blow up one of their ships? No, don't
tell me, someone's probably listening. But it's okay if you did.
Believe me,
my
family's a bunch of–"

"I didn't! I didn't know
anything
about hhuuu–" The old man sat up. The quilt fell from his
shoulders, slid off the bed and onto the floor. His eyes were
round. Air rattled around in ragged gasps. "I didn't know
anything...
anything. I–I didn't...."

"I know, I know, ok gramps. Ok. Ok."

Harper put a hand on the old man's
shoulders. Then he sat on the bed beside him.

"It's okay." He picked the quilt up off the
floor and put it back around the grandpa's shoulders. He cast about
for a neutral topic. "It's not so cold with the door open. Why is
it always open anyway? Or do they just open it when I come around?"
He laughed, trying to lighten the mood.
Not funny.

The old man groaned and shook his head. "I
don't know.... I don't know... It's not for me, it's not for
me..."

"'It's not for you?' What do you mean?"

"It's–it's not for me... that's wh-what
he
said. The door is open, but... but he said it's not for
me."

He.
Of course.
"Who?"

"The bearded man."

"One of the Union soldiers?"

"Yes. Do you... do you know them?"

"Some of them. But not that one. Who is
he?"

"I d-don't know... I don't know..."

So they are watching. Always watching.

Harper glared at the walls, looked around
into the corners which suddenly seemed to have invisible eyes. His
skin crawled, his muscles twitched, and his legs tensed reflexively
for a run to the door. His hands curled into fists, fists braced
against the bed ready to leap up and flee. Or fight.

But he was still sitting there.

Still sitting there, still breathing, still
talking to the old man. Somebody may be watching, but somebody
hadn't come to arrest him or to slam the cell door closed behind
him. Somebody was letting him talk to the old man.

For how long?
He glared around at the
watching room once more, then looked back at the old man. "Come
with me."

The wide grey eyes turned to him.
"Wh-why?"

"Because you need to get out of here. We'll
find a way to get around the guards and get out. Look, I've found
back doors, and for some reason they're letting me wander freely
here. I'll find a way to get us both out."

"But I h-have nowhere to go... my shop... is
destroyed, and my wife.... m-my wife..."

"You can come out to the country and we'll
find someone to take you in. I'll have to come back, I made a deal
with them and I won't see my wife again if I don't honor it."

"Your wife?"

"She was on the first ship. She's probably
on Den now. They said they'd look after her, and I can go join her
when the Union's done here."

"Your wife..."

"Yes. I need to see her again. But I will
help you to–"

"No!"

"What? Yes, I can–"

"No, don't. I-I'm fine, and I have
nothing... nothing on the outside..."

"No reason you should be locked in a
cell."

"But you don't even know who I am," the old
man whispered. "You don't know why I'm in here."

"Doesn't matter." Harper shook his head
hard. "It doesn't. You're in here, when you should be out there...
doing... what do you do, old man?"

"I make chairs."

"Then you should be out there making chairs,
but you're in here locked up. And I should be out there flying to
Den to make a new start with my wife, but I'm in here locked up...
well not locked in a cell, but I'm not free here. Not really. We
both need to get out."

"No... no."

Footsteps sounded from somewhere outside the
cell.

Harper froze. The chair maker moved away
from him. He curled up, lay back on the bed. Harper stood. He moved
to the corner beside the door and pressed himself flat against the
wall. The footsteps got louder and he cringed away from them. The
rank puddle under his feet stank in every breath.

The footsteps continued past the open door
of the cell without even slowing.

"Go... go. Please... go." The chair maker
was sitting up again, sitting straight up, the blanket on the floor
again. His eyes were huge in his trembling face. He was moaning the
words. "Go... go..."

Harper held up his hands, tried to soothe
the terrified man. "It's okay, they weren't here for us."

"But they will be... they will be!
Please!
Go!" He was picking the quilt up off the floor and
stuffing it into the empty space in the wall behind the bed. "Go...
go..."

"Okay. Okay."
He will only be worse off
if I'm found here.

Harper moved out of the corner and backed
out of the cell, his shoes slipping slightly as he tracked the
wetness of the puddle with him. Then he was in the hallway, and he
turned, leaving the old man and the open cell behind him.

Again.

Again!

It was the third time.

It was the third time he'd left the
shivering old man. The third time he'd left the piss-soaked cell.
The third time he'd snuck back from the silent hall of sealed
rooms.

And nobody had stopped him.

Not once.

Three days had passed since Wills had
brought Harper to the massive ship that was the Union base. Three
days. No one had come to interrogate him. No one had come to ask
about his father or the Sky Reverends or the explosives. No one had
come with instructions. No one had come at all. No one but Wills
and the chair maker had spoken a single word to Harper in three
days. The other soldiers and civilians on the ship went about their
business as though he weren't there.

Since the first day, Wills had taken to
sleeping late or hiding out in Harper's room, reading or eating,
while Harper wandered the ship. No one had come to reprimand either
of them. No other guard had come to take Wills's place.

So every morning, Harper had gotten up and
gone back to the silent black corridor of cells. And every morning,
one door was open. And every morning, he had walked through the
open door to talk to the old man – the man who he now knew made
chairs.

Every morning, their conversations had gone
much the same way.

"I don't–don't know anything," the old man
would say, even when Harper had not asked a single question.

He seemed incapable of saying almost
anything else.

"I know, gramps. I know," Harper would
say.

"Go, go," the old man would say.

And eventually Harper would go, because his
presence only seemed to make the chair maker more anxious. The old
man trembled sometimes, and sometimes curled in a despondent ball,
and sometimes looked around the room, eyes darting here and there,
maybe looking for the invisible watcher, the invisible
listener.

But no watcher, no listener had not made
themselves known.

Every morning, when he left the chair maker,
Harper went and wandered innocently around the base and looked for
a way out. And he'd found one – a few actually. Back doors and
service routes, shockingly unguarded.

"I can get you out of here," he had told the
old man more than once.

"No... no."

"I can."

"No... no," the old man would say again and
again and again, and Harper could not get him to pass the open door
of the cell.

Every day it was the same.

And every day, Harper left with the same
question.

What could they possibly want with a
carpenter?

And every day, he had the same answer.

It doesn't matter.

A piss-soaked cell was not a place for
anyone
.

Chapter Twenty
Three

in which there is not
a surprise
...

The cold stabbed deep into his chest.

Harper's lungs stopped. His throat tightened
like a fist, froze like a stone. He bent double, hands flat on his
knees, chest aching, struggling. Finally his lungs drew breath and
he gasped at the cold. The puddle of piss, bigger than before,
didn't smell so much today. Had the air frozen the stench in
it?

"Wh–why... why is it so cold?" He
straightened and looked at the old man, sitting up on the bed this
time.

The old man shook his head.

"Do you... d-d'you," Harper stuttered. "Do
you have the blanket s-still?"

The old man didn't answer and Harper
stumbled over to the bed, his legs frozen, almost too tight to
move. He reached a hand into the wall behind the bed, felt the
puffy quilt there, and pulled it out.

"It's
frozen
in here." He sat down
beside the chair maker and flung the quilt over both of them.
"What's going on, old man? Are they trying to kill you?"

"I don't know..."

Harper looked at the chair maker. The dark
pouches under his eyes were even darker than the day before.

Of course. You can't sleep in this
cold.
"You have to let me get you out of here."

"No."

"Really. People will help you out in the
country, they can hide you."

"You-you are f-from the country?" the old
man asked, his teeth chattering from the cold.

It was the first question he had asked
Harper.

"Yes."

Harper got up and opened the cell door all
the way, and felt some of the cold leak out into the dark hall. He
went back to the bed and sat cross-legged at the end, letting the
old man have the whole quilt. The chair maker leaned back against
the wall, his arms curled in. Despite the dark circles under his
eyes and his cold-reddened cheeks, he looked more relaxed now.

No... not relaxed... Lucid?

His eyes were sharp. He did not look around
the room or turn away as usual. Instead, the grey eyes above the
dark pouches now looked Harper straight in the eye.

"Did you... did you," the chair maker
stammered, "d-did you do... did you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Th-the second ship. D-did you..."

"Did I destroy the second ship?" Harper
shook his head. "No."

"But you are...
with
them. You are
from the c-country–"

"With the Sky Reverends? Yes. I am. Well, my
village is. My father is a Sky Reverend."

"They killed my wife."

"I'm sorry." Harper looked right into the
flat grey eyes under the stringy white hair. "I am so sorry."

The chair maker said nothing.

"I left them," said Harper. "I went on the
first ship that they wanted to destroy. I wanted to take my wife
away from all of this."

"Your wife..."

"Yes."

"But now you are back."

"Not back with the Sky Reverends," he
answered warily but truthfully, eager to keep the old man talking,
now that he had started. "I won't. I won't go back to that
life."