The Boiling Sea, page 4
The village itself comprised a variety of small structures in many building styles and materials, possibly salvaged from previously existing buildings or ships. Some used organic pieces as well, large fronds from some of the jungle foliage that ranged from fresh and green to a more weathered yellowish-brown.
When Svetlana and her crew debarked The Silent Monsoon, Indigo was the only one who had dressed for the occasion, shucking his shirt and wearing only short trousers. He rarely wore shoes on board the ship, and Svetlana was not surprised to see that he hadn't bothered with them here, either.
"First order of business? New clothes," Athos said, squinting in the bright sun as he surveyed the landscape.
A crowd of villagers had assembled nearby, staring at the airship and crew. Few of them wore clothes more substantial than short trousers or dresses, some with shirts as well, all loose and billowy. They spoke in hushed voices, but one or two of the younger people who had assembled pointed at Indigo as they chattered. Here, Indigo's blue hair didn't look out of place, as nearly every head in the village was adorned with hair in any of a dozen different bright colors. His paleness, however, was an oddity that he shared with few of the villagers, most of whom ranged across a vibrant spectrum of shades of brown.
"Indy, is Deliah from Dougou?" Annette asked.
Indigo cocked his head to the side and shook it, but then he followed Annette's gaze toward the crowd. He gasped and ran down the gangplank, leaping the gap between its end and the ground.
By the time the rest of the crew reached him, most of the villagers had dispersed, and Indigo had enveloped Deliah in a hug, covering most of her face with his wavy blue hair.
"Hello, Captain," Deliah said, her voice muffled.
Svetlana studied the girl. Deliah was a friend of Indigo's from Heliopolis, who had travelled on The Silent Monsoon occasionally in recent months. They hadn't seen her since she'd fled the ship after kissing Indigo a couple of months previous, leaving the crew to worry about where she'd wandered off to and who she might be sharing their secrets with.
Deliah seemed to be no worse for the wear since her most recent departure from The Silent Monsoon. She was dressed similarly to the inhabitants of Dougou, rather than the ragtag assortment of layers she normally wore, but her bright orangish-yellow pigtails still stuck out from the sides of her head at their customary uneven angles.
"Good to see you, Deliah," Svetlana said. "Is everything alright?"
Deliah nodded, extricating herself from Indigo's grasp. "I'm alright. Not everything."
"How do you mean?" Athos asked.
Deliah gave him a quick glance, but then turned to Svetlana to answer Athos's question. "The ghosts are going to Bonebriar."
Svetlana's shoulders slumped as Deliah's answer confirmed her worst fear. "So you were with the ghosts?"
Deliah nodded, gaze cast toward the ground as she drew circles in the sand with her bare toes.
"What do the ghosts know?" Svetlana asked.
Deliah didn't respond but instead took Indigo's hand and began to pull him toward one of the small houses nearby. "Indy's mother lives here."
"Deliah, wait," Svetlana said. "Did you take the information we had to the ghosts?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Deliah said, setting her mouth in a firm line.
"We're not angry with you, Deliah." Svetlana tried to keep her expression as even as possible. She had suspected the girl was taking their information to someone when she left The Silent Monsoon so suddenly—especially having just distracted Indigo with a kiss—but at this point, Svetlana was more concerned than angry about it. It was inevitable that all the groups pursuing the Last Emperor's Hoard were getting close to their quarry. Finally, Svetlana said, "We just want to know how much they know."
"They know where to look." Deliah shrugged. "They'll go soon."
"How soon?" Annette asked.
"Maybe now. Maybe too late for you."
Svetlana gave Deliah a terse nod. "Alright, thank you. Take Indy to see his mother. We'll be along shortly."
As the teenagers ran off toward the village, Athos stepped between them and Svetlana. "So everybody knows, huh?"
"I'm not surprised," Svetlana said. "We knew the Air Fleet was getting close, so we tried to slow them down. I don't know if there is any slowing down ghosts, but I'd love to find out."
"That's not the sort of thing I have books on, unfortunately," Annette said, "and I truly don't know anyone who would, either."
"It's not a commonly pursued course of study," Svetlana said. "Bullets don't hurt them, blades do. I don't think we can launch blades from the cannon."
"Not in any useful way," Athos said. "Any idea I can come up with based on that would just wind up making our ship look like a bristly-back, and I don't really think we want to fly near enough to ram a ghost ship."
"Not without Jo on the wheel, at least," Svetlana said. "With her out of commission, we may not be able to do much about the ghosts getting closer to the Hoard." She sighed, the exhaustion of their jail break and her fight with Lar finally catching up to her. Though the need to pursue the Gem of the Seas was pressing, she also had no good ideas on how to do so. "It's been a long few days. Let's get some new clothes for everyone and relax a bit, and then we'll see what we think of things, eh?"
~
Finally dressed in the local fashion and out of the harsh direct sunlight, Svetlana understood how people could stand to live in such a climate. The light wind making its way into the village smelled of the sulfurous ocean, but it brought with it some cooler air. The thin fabric of the clothing allowed the breeze to go straight through it. Most of the locals stuck to the shaded areas as much as they could, limiting their exposure to the scorching sun.
"This is some heat for autumn," Svetlana observed as she and Annette sat beneath a large palm frond umbrella, enjoying a cool, fruity tea very unlike the strong black tea they had gotten here previously.
"This part of the world is always warm," Annette replied.
"Even before the Boiling?" Svetlana asked. She'd never been big on history, but Annette was an enthusiastic student of the subject.
Annette shrugged. "Maybe not as warm as it is now, but it's why there are still so many vacation spots near this latitude. Warm sun and sandy beaches."
"I've never understood the appeal of any of the places you call vacation spots, Doc."
"That's because you don't know how to enjoy relaxation, Captain," Annette fired back with a lazy grin.
Athos and Jo strolled up to join the captain and doctor. Of the women on the ship, only Jo had opted for a short, loose fitting dress. Svetlana and Annette had both selected loose blouses and short trousers, while Athos wore only a light vest with his short trousers.
All of them had left their boots on the ship, but they'd found the ground here a little less forgiving than they'd hoped, and selected local footwear as well, which, as best as Svetlana could tell, consisted of something like fabric-wrapped twine holding pieces of bark to the soles of their feet. It had taken a little bit of getting used to, and Svetlana still wasn't sure how to deal with the grains of sand that inevitably clung to one's feet while walking in these shoes.
"Indy and Deliah still visiting with Indy's mum?" Athos asked as he and Jo ducked under the edge of the umbrella. Though his copper skin nearly glowed in the light of the setting sun, sweat beaded his face.
Svetlana nodded. "Feeling any better, Jo?"
Jo shrugged but gave a half nod. She gestured toward Svetlana's legs as though she were brushing them away and moved to sit on part of the bench Svetlana occupied.
Swinging her legs to the side, Svetlana made room for Jo, turning so she faced Annette's bench.
Annette did the same for Athos, after he helped himself to a glass of tea. "Any news in the village?" she asked
"I've heard plenty of local rumors, but these folks don't get out much, nor do they have many visitors," Athos said. "They seem to have never seen anything like the ghost ship before, but no one seems particularly surprised that such a thing exists. Our ship, and Indy, are much more interesting to them. It's all more excitement than they've had in a while."
Jo pulled out her notebook and scribbled a note, then passed it to Svetlana.
"'Do you believe Deliah that it's too late to find the Hoard?'" Svetlana read. "It's not too late till we know someone else has the treasure."
Jo gestured for Svetlana to return her notebook, and wrote another quick note, which she showed to the others as well. "Then why are we still here?"
"We only just got here," Athos said, "and you're still in no shape for flying."
Jo shrugged.
"He's not wrong, Jo," Annette said gently. "You have to give yourself time to heal. If we go off galivanting around too soon, you're likely to hurt yourself more."
"Got a question for you, Jo," Svetlana said, pulling the piece of paper she had torn from Jo's notebook from the pocket of her trousers and unfolding it. She pointed at the two incomplete lines. "Athos and Indy figured out most of this. But we can't quite place the second part. Is it something you've heard before?"
Jo shook her head, then wrote in the notebook and held it up. "None of the other staves filled in the blanks?"
"Nothing conclusive." Annette retrieved a sheet of paper from her pocket and laid the sketch of the map that purportedly led to the Last Emperor's Hoard beside Jo's notes. She pointed at the portion of the map where the crew believed the text belonged. "We've got something that might be a word ending with 'less' in the top line, and probably 'of pool' or 'of pools' in the bottom line. Or some other word starting with 'poo.'" She smirked. "We're pretty sure it's not 'poo.'"
Jo took the paper from Svetlana and held her pen above the lower lines, then started moving it to the right, pausing and looking up at Annette, her head cocked to the side.
"How far out?" Annette asked.
Jo nodded.
"No idea," Annette said. "We don't know where the phrases started on the map."
"Let's assume there's not much in between," Svetlana said, looking at the phrases again. "'Were the Oceans to cease ... less.' Could be ceaseless, but that doesn't make sense. 'Geysers would turn to ... of pools.'" She shook her head. "There are definitely words we're missing."
"'Were the Oceans to cease' ... well, boiling, one might presume," Athos suggested.
"But that doesn't go with 'less,'" Annette reminded him. "'Were the Oceans to cease boiling less'?"
"Doesn't seem too poetic," Svetlana said. "Okay, the other part. 'Geysers would turn to ... of pools.' What 'of pools'? What other words end with 'of'?"
"Proof?" Athos suggested. "Roof? Aloof?"
Svetlana shook her head. "Accurate, but they don't make sense either." She placed her finger over the word "of" and focused on the other words around it. "Geysers would turn to pools," she muttered.
As the pieces connected, Svetlana felt as if she had been punched in the chest, with all the air escaping her lungs in a rush. When she regained her breath, she gasped, "Sweet Skyfather. If the geysers turned into pools, where does that leave the platform cities?"
Around her, Annette's, Athos's, and Jo's eyes all went wide.
"Doom," Jo whispered.
Svetlana nodded slowly. "I knew I didn't trust the Air Fleet with the Gem. Now I know why."
Annette held up her hands in front of her. "The Air Fleet has prospered from the platform cities. Do you really think they'd be so quick to let them fall?"
"They may not have thought this all the way through," Svetlana said. "This might be worth getting a message to Bobby."
She regretted the words as soon as she'd said them. Rear Admiral Robert Beauregard, Bobby only to his closest friends, had been Svetlana's mentor in the Air Fleet. They had maintained their friendship even after she left the Fleet and became an independent shipping contractor, but he had made it clear at Bonebriar that he was more loyal to the Air Fleet and the High Council than to his friends, and Svetlana had written him off as a loss. The fact that she and her crew were wanted by the Air Fleet was the secondary reason contacting Bobby was a bad idea, but the first reason was far worse in her mind.
Athos was already shaking his head. "Bad idea, Sveta."
"Yeah, I know. Knee-jerk reaction." She chewed at her lip. "Jo, did you see or hear anything at all when you were at Republican City, or Aldfort, or anywhere along the way, that might tell us if the High Council already has this information?"
Jo's eyebrows knit together in concentration.
As Jo considered Svetlana's question, Annette spoke up. "Do you think Chickie has any contacts among the High Council? Or someone he could ask?"
"I doubt it," Svetlana said. "If he'd known a good way to get us information from the High Council's chambers, I think he'd have brought it up already, and then we wouldn't be seeing what Jo remembers."
Jo had picked up her pencil and scribbled a few words, but then she crossed them out. She let out an exasperated sigh, wrote something else, and handed the notebook to Svetlana.
"She crossed out something about Republican City and Heliopolis, and then wrote, 'Why would they care about the platforms? They have the Fleet'," Svetlana said, frowning.
"How many airships would it take to hold up a platform city like Republican City or Heliopolis?" Annette asked. "Is that even possible?"
Svetlana nodded. "Theoretically speaking, yes. The engines used on the platform cities aren't that different from the engines on airships. And back when the platform cities were put into place, that's how they moved them over the geysers—with airships."
"So it's not impossible to do the opposite," Athos said. "You're a genius, Jo Dean. The High Council isn't going to care, because they've got the resources to save the two places they care about. They'll pull the Air Fleet and the nobles out of every other platform city and then let them all fall."
"I'd be shocked if they pulled all the nobles," Svetlana said. "They'll probably just save the ones who didn't buy their way in, or the few who live on a platform city who are willing to sacrifice thousands of people if it means they get to keep their money and titles."
Annette's normally warm brown skin had gone ashen. "You can't be serious. It's hundreds of thousands of people who would die if the platform cities fell."
Svetlana nodded. "Hundreds of thousands of people the High Council considers expendable. There's always a contingent of noble families who talks about things being the way they were in the old days, before people bought their way into the Senate, when it was just the 'true' nobility."
"I should send an airwave to my—" Athos began, then cut himself off with a bitter chuckle. "Oh, who am I kidding. There aren't enough airwaves in the world to get the news to everyone I know who will die because of this."
Svetlana shook her head. "No. We're not going to let them die. We've got to find the Gem first. It's the only option."
"And then what?" Annette asked.
"I'll figure that out when we get there," Svetlana said.
Chapter Four
The crew of The Silent Monsoon, plus their honorary members, Deliah and Drassilis, gathered in the mess. Dust motes danced through the air, illuminated by the filtered sunlight streaming in through the high windows and highlighted the maps, notes, and other assorted scraps of paper that covered the broad oak table. Drassilis's metallic body, larger than that of a human but still modelled after an adult male, gleamed in the light. Only when someone examined his lower half more closely would they realize that his resemblance to a human ended at his waist, his lower body being cylindrical and wheeled. The sunlight also created ominous looking shadows within the filigree mask that served as his face. His over-large eyes moved across the assembled information while Annette tilted her head from side to side and rearranged a few pieces.
Svetlana climbed onto one of the chairs, perching on the back with her feet on the seat, her customary position for crew meetings. "We think we've got a pretty good idea of where to look for the Last Emperor's Hoard, and we need to make sure that we're the first ones to get there so no one else has a chance to get their hands on it."
"Ghost ship might already be there," Deliah piped up.
"Yep, that's a possibility," Svetlana agreed. "But we have no good way of finding that out."
Deliah nodded. "Yes. I do."
"What do you mean?" Athos asked.
"Aetherwave," Deliah said.
"Like an airwave?" Svetlana asked, her shoulders tensing.
Deliah nodded, her mouth a firm line. "Works best on platforms."
"Does that mean you can call the ghosts, across any distance?" Athos asked.
"Mostly," Deliah said. "Doesn't work here."
Jo murmured, "Bluesummer?"
Deliah blushed crimson and nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry."
Svetlana glanced at Athos, Jo, and Annette in turn, then jerked her chin in the direction of the hallway. As they all moved toward the door of the mess, she said, "Indy, you and Deliah and Drassilis stay here a minute, okay?"
"We're not leaving her behind," Indigo said, his voice forceful.
"Nobody suggested that, Indy," Annette said. "We're just taking stock of all the information we have right now." As Annette joined the others in the hallway, she lowered her voice. "We're not suggesting that, are we?"
Svetlana shook her head. "My question is whether or not what she's suggesting is even possible."
Jo shrugged.
"We don't know what Aetherwhere can and can't do. I mean, if you'd asked me six months ago about Aetherwhere, I would have just laughed it off. Now?" Athos shrugged. "Anything's possible."
"Let's say it is possible," Svetlana said. "It means she can find out where the ghost ship is, which is useful."
"But does it mean they can find us too?" Annette asked.
"I'd have to assume as much," Athos said, rubbing at his chin. "There are communication systems that work in only a single direction, but whatever this Aetherwave is, the ghosts know about it. They wouldn't set up Deliah to be able to hear them if they can't hear her too."
