Boneshaker

“Fang!” Cly called from outside.

Briar jumped at the shout, and turned around.

A man stood behind her, so close he could’ve touched her if he’d tried.

“Fang, there’s a woman in there! Try not to scare her to death!”

Fang was a small man about the same size as Briar, and slender without looking fragile or weak. His black hair was so dark it shone blue, shaved back away from his forehead and drawn into a ponytail that sat high on the top of his skull.

“Hello?” she tried.

He didn’t respond, except to slowly blink his angled brown eyes.

Cly’s big head poked up from the portal in the floor. “Sorry about that,” he said to Briar. “I should’ve warned you. Fang’s all right, but he’s just about the quietest son of a bitch I ever met.”

“Does he…” she began, and then feared it might be rude. She asked the man in the loose-fitting pants and the mandarin jacket, “Do you speak English?”

The captain answered for him. “He doesn’t speak anything. Someone cut out his tongue, but I don’t know who or why. He understands plenty, though. English, Chinese, Portuguese. God knows what else.”

Fang stepped away from Briar and placed a cloth satchel down on a seat off to the left. He pulled an aviator’s cap out from the bag and put it on his head. There was a hole cut out of the back of the hat so that he could thread his ponytail through it.

“Don’t worry about him,” Cly emphasized. “He’s good people.”

“Then why is he called Fang?” Briar asked.

Cly scaled the steps and began crouching. He was too tall to comfortably stand in his own cabin. “As far as I know, that’s his name. This old woman in Chinatown, down in California — she told me it means honest and upright, and it doesn’t have anything to do with snakes. I’m forced to take her word for it.”

“Out of the way,” demanded another voice.

“I am out of the way,” Cly said without looking.

From below came another man, gri

“Rodimer, this is Miss Wilkes. Miss Wilkes, that’s Rodimer. Ignore him.”

“Ignore me?” He feigned affront as he failed to feign disinterest in Briar. “Oh, I should dearly pray that you wouldn’t!” He seized one of Briar’s hands and gave it a dry and elaborate kiss.

“All right, I won’t,” she assured him, reclaiming her hand. “Is this everyone?” she asked Cly.

“This is everyone. If I carried anyone else we wouldn’t have room for cargo. Fang, see about the ropes. Rodimer, the boilers are hot and ready to spray.”

“Hydrogen check?”

“Topped off over in Bradenton. Ought to be good to go for another few trips.”

“So the leak’s patched?”

“Leak’s patched.” Cly nodded. “You,” he said to Briar. “You ever flown before?”

She admitted that she hadn’t. “I’ll be all right,” she told him.

“You’d better. Any spills are your own, and you clean them up. Fair deal?”

“Fair deal. Should I sit down somewhere?”

He sca

“No.”

“I’d ask that you be damned sure before you get too comfortable back there.”

She cut him off before he could say any more. “I don’t get sick, I said. I’ll stay out here. I want to see.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. He grabbed a heavy box and pulled it over the floor until it was next to the nearest wall. “It’ll be an hour before we get to the wall, and then it’ll take half again that long to set up for the drop and catch. I’ll try to set you down someplace… well, there’s no place safe in there, but—”

Rodimer sat up straight and jerked his head around to look at Briar. “You’re going inside?” he asked in a voice too deliberately melodic for a man his size and shape. “Good God almighty, Cly. You’re going to dump the lady off behind the wall?”

“The lady made a very persuasive case.” Cly watched Briar from the corner of his eye.

“Miss Wilkes…” Rodimer repeated slowly, as if the name hadn’t meant anything to him when he’d heard it spoken; but upon replaying it in his head, he suspected that it was important. “Miss Wilkes, the walled city is no place for—”

“A lady, yes. That’s what they tell me. You’re not the first to say it, but I’d very much prefer that you’ve said your last on the subject. I need to get inside, and I will get inside, and Captain Cly is being kind enough to assist me.”

Rodimer closed his mouth, shook his head, and returned his attention to the console under his hands. “As you like, ma’am, but it’s a damned shame, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind you saying so,” she said. “But there’s no need to hold my funeral yet. I’ll be out again, come Tuesday.”

Cly added, “Hainey’s offered to pull her out on his next run. If she can hold out that long, she’ll be all right with him.”

“I’m not comfortable with this,” Rodimer grumbled. “It’s not right, leaving a lady in the city.”

“Maybe not,” Cly mumbled as he took his seat. “But when Fang gets back we’re taking off, and she won’t be making the return trip with us unless she changes her mind. Pull the front lift, will you?”

“Yes sir.” The first mate reached forward and tugged one of the levers. Somewhere above, something heavy disengaged one thing and co

The captain squeezed a handle latch and tugged a shift bar toward his chest. “Miss Wilkes, there’s a cargo net on the wall behind you, fixed to the surface. You can hang on to that, if you need to. Wrap your arms through it, or however works best. Make yourself secure.”

“Will it be… will it be a rough ride?”

“Not too bad, I don’t think. The weather’s quiet enough, but there are air currents around the walls. They’re high enough that the wind off the mountains comes breaking around them. Sometimes we get a little surprise.”

Fang manifested in the cabin with the same scary silence as before. This time Briar knew not to gasp, and the mute Chinese man did not give her any further scrutiny.

A slight shift in the tilt of the floor signaled the start of motion. Against the exterior hull, tree branches scraped a high-pitched tune as the Naamah Darling began to rise. At first it seeped slowly upward of its own volition, unpowered by any steam or thrust, but lifted by the hydrogen in the lumpy inflated tanks above them. There was no real shaking or swaying, only a faint sense of rising until the airship cleared the treetops and floated above them, drifting higher, but not with any urgency or speed.

The whole operation was quieter than Briar expected. Except for the creaking of ropes, the stretching of metal joints, and the sliding of empty boxes across the floor downstairs, there was little sound.

But then Cly pulled a wheel-like column into his lap and flipped three switches along its side. Then the cabin was filled with the rushing hiss of steam being shifted from boilers into pipes, and down to the thrusters that would steer the vessel between the clouds. With the steam came a gentle lurch, east and up, and the Naamah Darling again offered moans, screeches, and groans as she lifted herself into the sky.

Once airbound, the ship moved smoothly with a forward drift augmented by the periodic burst of the steam thrusters. Briar rose from her seat at the edge of the cabin and came to stand behind the captain so she could see the world outside and below.