The Wind Merchant (9 page)

The jog turned into a run when Ras came to the populated market square, but even lessening his time around others didn’t leave him unscathed by passing curses. He knew they felt helpless because of him, and he couldn’t entirely fault them for their unkindness.

By the time he reached the main entrance to the Engine, he glistened with sweat. Even with the extra effort, he reached Billie’s office a few minutes late.

“Sign,” Billie said, handing Ras the clipboard and a clean jumpsuit. She looked Ras over, noticing his clothes sticking to him and sweat matting his hair. “You sick, boy?”

“It’s not contagious,” Ras said, avoiding Billie’s gaze by looking for his name in the list. The number next to his name indicated he was already clocked in half an hour early. “It says I got here—”

“I said I only needed your signature.”

“Thanks,” Ras said. He dangled the brown bag. “Where should I…?”

“Oh, smart boy. Leave it with me. Volunteers don’t get lockers,” Billie said. The charitable way she said ‘volunteer’ struck Ras oddly.

“Hey, Billie?” Ras slipped his feet into the legs of his jumpsuit. “What are people in the Engine going to do when…
if
the Energy reserves run out? Some people on the surface are already leaving.” He slid his arms in and fastened the buttons up the front of his uniform.

“Don’t rightly know,” she said. “We’ve been promised several airships to ferry us away if it comes to that, but they’ll be hard pressed to find anyone willing to board.”

Ras furrowed his brow. “How’s that?”

Billie shrugged indifferently. “If some of us leave, it makes it harder for the rest of us. The old girl needs a lot of love after decades of making do with patchwork repairs and a distinct lack of replacement parts.”

“Nobody’s drawn straws to be on a skeleton crew?” Ras asked.

Billie’s chuckle lacked amusement. “Hon, we are the skeleton crew.”

Verdant
shuddered with a groan and the room tilted slightly. Billie reached out to keep the paperwork on her desk from sliding away, then pulled a small wooden ball from a pocket and placed it atop her desk. It rolled toward the wall marked with a large “8” etched onto a single tile. She shot a look to Ras.

The scraping of the elevator against the metal of the angled shaft made Ras’ skin crawl. By the time he arrived at Engine Eight, some of the crew were fighting a losing battle with a hissing pipe. He donned his goggles out of habit.

About fifteen workers hung back, watching a smaller crew, led by Guy, attempt to seal off the spewing pipe. The team became harder to spot as the haze filled the corridor.

One of the workers, a blonde woman maybe a few years older than Ras, gestured something rude until he remembered seeing it used the previous day as a sign for an inquiry.

“What’s going on?” Ras shouted, barely able to hear his own words.

She shook her head, then pointed to the balled up bit of wax stuffed in her ear. Pointing to a pipe running along the wall, she then traced it down the corridor. Turning back to Ras, she brought two fists together before snapping them away in opposite directions.

Broken
.

“Where’s the shut-off valve?” Ras asked, then waved his arms dismissively. He couldn’t follow her series of more intricate gestures and turned his attention to two workers moving toward Ras, each with the arm of a third, badly burned cohort around their necks.

An explosion of steam shot out from the pipe, filling the corridor with a dense fog. The crowd disassembled, running away and knocking into Ras in the process.
 

They’re Knacks
, Ras realized. He slid through the retreating group and pelted down the metal walkway into the oppressive heat. The steam spurted in arrhythmic fits around the edges of the unsealed metal patches, and Ras found himself barely able to see in front of him. The thick air forced him to choke out a cough.

“Hello!” Ras called out to no response. He continued his jog only to tangle his feet in the arms and legs of downed workers. The fall brought him crashing to the grated floor. He mumbled an apology before realizing the ground remained cooler than the air above, but its temperature still rose.

The idea of dragging these men to safety crossed his mind, but with the Energy filtering in through the cracked pipe, he might only save one or two before the rest died. He needed to cut it off.

Crawling forward, his hand reached the ankle of a man still standing. Ras hauled himself up into the boiling temperature to see Guy torquing a wrench around a clamp in pure defiance.

“What are you doing here?” Guy shouted. “Get out! There’s too much Energy spilled!”

“Where’s the shut-off valve?”

“Further down, but don’t you dare go down there—”

Ras bolted further down the corridor, hunching low and losing the shouts of Guy in the hisses of steam. He reasoned if a Convergence didn’t kill him, some leaked Energy wouldn’t be a challenge.

However, the heat remained an issue.

He didn’t know how long the corridor went, but running seemed a better idea than taking his time crawling along the ground. With each footfall his heart pounded and blackness ebbed in the corners of his vision. He panted, but gulping the hot air only made matters worse. He followed the pipes along the walls, the spurts of steam shrinking in volume as he continued his dash through the fog.

His hip struck something, sending his balance off-kilter. Reaching his hands out to break his fall, his right arm hooked through a large metal wheel and caught at the crook of his elbow.

Taking long, slow breaths, Ras eyed the three-foot wide metal wheel. It burned against his arm, forcing him to quickly extricate himself from it and he wished he had a pair of thick gloves. Unfastening the top of his jumpsuit, he pulled his undershirt off and wrapped it hastily around both hands before hauling on the large wheel.

The metal burned but didn’t sear his hands as it protested against his tugging. Another heave gave a promising creak, but he didn’t know how many more tugs his body would allow as sweat poured.

“C’mon!” he shouted at the machinery the way he’d chastise his ship on days it wouldn’t behave. He brought a booted foot onto one of the spokes and leveraged his weight against the device. It groaned in protest but began its slow motion to the right even as it sent a blast of steam into Ras’ face. He tried to cry out in shock only to find his voice stolen by the searing heat.

He continued the process, hand over burning hand, until the cessation of the hiss down the corridor alerted him that he had done enough. Slumping to the ground didn’t bring the relief from the temperature, as the metal grating itself had heated considerably.

The state of exhaustion only allowed Ras to shamble toward where he had left Guy. If anybody were to come looking for bodies, he needed at least to make it back to the men attempting to seal the pipe before passing out. His heart, working overtime, thumped in his ears as he forced himself onward.

“Ras!” a voice shouted out. “Where is he?”

“Ran off. Steam probably got him,” Guy’s voice said before coughing.

Ras tried to speak, but his throat wouldn’t obey. He almost raised his hand until he realized he wouldn’t even be able to see it himself once fully extended.

His legs wouldn’t carry him any further. His body fell to the hot metal grating, and rolled to his side, unable to catch his breath. Pulling his goggles off brought stinging tears to his eyes. He slammed them against the metal floor, then repeated the motion until he established an erratic rhythm.

“You hear that?”

“Probably the pipes settling.”

Don’t write me off!
Ras thought, letting out a faint rasp in place of a scream. He continued the tapping until he heard one of the goggle lenses smash and clatter.

In desperation, he threw the goggles into the fog and rolled to lie on his back. If he was going to cook, it would at least be evenly.

Gasping for breath, Ras found himself moving as two pairs of hands grabbed him by his shoulders and began hauling him away. He mouthed a silent thanks as a third person took up his legs.

Ras gave a weak smile before his head lolled back to see the path before him bobbing upside down. He avoided succumbing to motion sickness by focusing on the pain at hand. Burns would heal, but not being able to say goodbye to Callie hurt far worse.

The dimly lit medical station for
Verdant
’s Engine was a relief for Ras. The men cautiously deposited him onto one of the propped up mattresses, and all Ras wanted was to slip away from the waking world.

“Trying to get out of community service early?” a raspy voice asked.

Ras opened his eyes and looked at the bed to his left to see Guy sitting on the edge of the next bed over, staring back.

Finn re-entered the room, carrying an unconscious man with the help of a couple other Engine men. “Oh, come off it,” he said to Guy. “I’d be a lot busier if it weren’t for him.” He walked to Ras’ bed and looked the young man over. “What is that, your shirt?” he asked, tapping on the cloth still wrapped around both of Ras’ hands.

Ras nodded, offering up his hands to let Finn gently unravel the cloth, revealing a set of freshly pink palms.

“That’s not so bad. Let me get a salve for that,” Finn said, striding away to a cabinet across the room. “Try not to move them.”

“I told you not to go down there,” Guy said, barely masking his agitation. “That should have killed you is what it should have done.”

Attempting to speak brought little more than a faint squawk from Ras, then a frustrated sigh. He made a motion to his throat.

“Hey Finn, we got a steam swallower,” Guy said.

Finn returned with a brass jar of pale green ointment. “I do suppose he wouldn’t have learned when to keep his mouth shut from you,” he said with some satisfaction, not looking at Guy. “You should get your voice back when the swelling in your throat goes down.” Dipping two fingers into the salve, he began slathering it onto Ras’ palms.

The sting gave way to a numbing sensation that tingled slightly. Ras nodded his thanks.

“What’s this I hear about you sending him to shut off the valve?” A new, angry voice entered the room before Billie did.

A rare flash of fear played across Guy’s face as he began his defense with hands outstretched. “The kid wouldn’t listen. You know I know protocol, woman.”

“He saved your life,” Billie said, storming into the room.

Finn leaned in toward Ras and whispered, “Lesson number one: don’t make mother mad.”

“We wouldn’t need to use the pipes from the Energy reserves if it weren’t for him,” Guy said. “We’ve never had to use them before, and you can bet we’re going to have outbursts like that all across this city sooner or later, if we even get a ‘later.’”

“I specifically told you to watch out for him,” Billie said.

“It’s not my fault he thinks he’s Energy-proof,” Guy said.

“He may just well be,” Finn said, looking over Ras. “These are just steam burns. I’m not seeing any signs of Energy poisoning.”

Ras furrowed his brow, giving a confused look.

“All right,” Finn began. “As best as the medical world understands, everyone succumbs to Energy overloading, it’s just a matter of threshold.”

“He’d make a good sky pirate,” Guy said.

“You’re not a part of this conversation,” Billie said. A stern look ensured he didn’t protest the new rule.

Ras mouthed the word ‘
pirate
.’ He knew the most feared pirates were the ones composed of crew members that were less likely to succumb to Energy. Initiation into certain crews was rumored to involve taking a cheap jetcycle beneath the clouds, and the longer one could last, the higher the share of the haul they garnered.

“Well, even the most resistant shipman will come back with at least some Energy poisoning,” Finn said, unraveling some gauze to wrap Ras’ hands. “Usually causes an ashen skin tone, but you’re about as hale and hearty looking as someone who locked themselves in a sauna overnight.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Billie asked.

“He’s a little cooked. Hydration and rest should do the trick,” Finn said, continuing to wrap Ras’ hands. “I’ll check on these later.”

“What about him?” Billie nodded back at Guy.

“Aside from a lungful of hot air, he’s fine. He’s just making sure the kid is all right.”

Guy growled his disapproval of Finn’s assessment before exiting.

“He’s lucky Ras was there, he just won’t admit it,” Finn said to Billie.

Billie pulled up a chair next to Ras’ bed. “If you hadn’t contained the leak when you did, we might have lost a week’s worth of reserves. As it is, we only lost a day or two.”

Ras made an approximation of a writing motion to Finn.

Finn looked hesitant. “You really should let your hands rest.”

“How is he supposed to communicate?” Billie asked, receiving an appreciative nod from Ras.

“Blinking,” Finn said with a chuckle until he realized nobody else found humor in the suggestion. “C’mon, it’s not like we couldn’t use a bit of levity.” He pulled a pen from his lab coat and flipped his notebook of heavily recycled paper to a clean page. “Knock yourself out, but no complaining if your hands keep hurting, you hear?”

Ras accepted his new tools for communication gratefully. The writing was clumsy, and his penmanship was never terribly good to begin with, but with the pen wedged between his thumb and palm, he wrote ‘
Thank you
’ in broad strokes.

“Don’t mention it,” Finn said with a grin. “I’ll check back after my rounds, but don’t be surprised if Guy sends someone after you if you aren’t back on your shift in half an hour.”

Billie watched Finn attend to a patient a few beds down and reclined a bit in her chair. “You know you don’t have to be your father, right?” She waited for Ras to begin writing, but after a moment decided to continue. “Is that why you ran into the Energy?”

Ras considered it for a moment. He hadn’t thought much about the ramifications or what motives might be assumed of him for his actions. He shook his head.

“Good,” Billie said. “No sense in getting yourself killed trying to be him. Nobody expects it of you.”