Blightcross: A Novel (2 page)

Just behind the man, she spotted him, and quite unexpectedly. Dannac, trying to mimic the look of ennui prevalent in the men around him but instead looking more like he was suffering from the same gastrointestinal upset Capra had just come to know.

She caught snippets from Parnas' conversation as she slowly angled around them to meet Dannac.

“I have a bad feeling, Parnas,” Parnas' associate said.

“Come now. Your imagination is just getting the better of you. Perhaps it is this flying business. Are you new to it?”

“Baron, I am serious. That man has been following me. See? The one with the ridiculous jewel in his head?”

“I see nothing of the sort.”

“I still think...”

Capra looked back to find the two men hunched close together. The bastard friend of Parnas' must be on to her scam. Parnas was trying to downplay it, but that little rat of a man with whom he did business with was clever. In all the dinners and parties she had attended with the Baron, that particular associate had never smiled nor kept his hands still and never failed to impress even Capra with his powers of observation and knowledge of every subject.

She found Dannac leaning over the railing like the others. “The rat man knows you're following him,” she said.

Dannac kept his gaze on the city below. “I know. I will have to think of a way to calm his bloody nerves.”

“Did you find it?”

He nodded.

“Then all we need to do is wait.”

“If they keep it in the same locker. They might move it.”

“I can't even imagine that right now, Dannac. Parnas is so not my type. This isn't the way I like to do business, either. I feel like...”

“Don't bother saying it.”

She sighed. This was the last time, so maybe it was justified. But Capra knew what regrets could do to a person. They were not feelings she needed to renew.

The deck inclined, and Capra felt her feet slide towards the bow of the ship. A falling sensation ravaged her head.

“Are you okay?”

She held her hand in front of her and shut her eyes, while willing her stomach to behave. Deep breaths, calm, calm...

No use. She leaned over the railing, ready to concede. “Why won't it level?” she managed to say through gritted teeth.

“The flying boat is stopping in Blightcross. It is for a resupply or something like that.”

It was coming—acid warmth crawling in her throat. But she suddenly realized that in the current social context, letting it go over the railing might betray her as the peasant she was.

So she slipped past Dannac and muscled through the crowd, hand held to her mouth. There was a public washroom just inside the aft exit...

All of this—flying, chronic lies, prostitution, for what? Mineral rights?

A clap of thunder shook the ship, and she reached the privy with a whole two seconds to spare. But while she vomited, she pictured handing the proceeds from her future mining operation to some corrupt Valoii official from her hometown in Mizkov.

Blheeeeeeghhhhh here you are, General. *Burp* Call off your attack dogs. There's enough money here to outfit an entire aerial navy blehgghgouuug.

She wiped her mouth, washed her hands under the pathetic trickle at the sink, and burst out the door feeling much more optimistic. Maybe if she had just allowed herself to throw up in the first place...

“Hello, Jorassian.”

It was a male voice, and it spoke in Valoii.

She balled her hands into fists and would have rather vaulted over the rail outside than face the man. Not now. Not now, when she was so close...

“It's time to come back, Capra.”

“I won't.”

“Yes, you will.”

Even though she knew this would eventually happen, she did not expect that Alim would be the man to bring her back to Mizkov. It must have been him—no one else spoke in that tone, specifically when stumbling over her family name. The way he stressed the first syllable... it had to be him.

“Alim?” Finally she faced him, all the while a ghost-image of the man burned in her mind's eye—average height, overworked biceps, and of course the blue eyes proven to be irresistible to Capra's friend from the battalion back home. The image blended with the man standing there, dagger in hand and beads of sweat along his hairline. “Tell them I'm dead. It's all you have to do. Everyone wins.”

She expected him to at least show a flicker of recognition, but he kept his parade ground coldness.

“Deserters need to be brought to justice, Capra.”

“They're just arbitrary rules, Alim. They don't protect anyone.” She let out a nervous laugh. “They don't protect Mizkov.”

He stepped forward, and for a moment, she swore that he showed subtle signs of agreeing with her, but the momentary softening of his face flashed back to its martial scowl. Was he brainwashed? There had to be something more to it.

“It's over, Jorassian.” He waved the dagger. “Did you honestly think you could shrug away your service so easily? But that's something for the committee to deal with. Now, you can cooperate, or I can just kill you right here and we can all be assured that you won't be handing out secrets to our enemies just to spite us.”

“No, that's not—”

He lunged forward. Capra, having been on edge since lifting off in this awful machine, dodged him and sprinted back towards the outer deck. She could find Dannac there, and there were enough people gazing at that awful city below to make it inconvenient for Alim to commit a field execution.

She glanced back to find two men trailing Alim, and they wore the same brown coats as Alim.

Of course he wouldn't have come alone.

During her dash through the crowd, the flying boat increased its descent. The passengers at the railing squealed at the sensation's novelty and clinked their glasses in that funny way westerners always did.

She collided with Dannac. “We have to go. Now.”

“What?”

“Forget the claim. Forget the mine. We have to get away from here.” She panted and glanced over her shoulder.

“And waste months of preparation? When we could have been doing real work, and now you want to just abandon it?”

She shoved him into an alcove. “The army. They've found me. They're here.” She thought for a moment. “And this stop in Blightcross isn't for cargo or new passengers. Alim must have requested it so he can arrest me with the help of the local government.”

“But—”

“Bloody Naartland, there's nothing they won't do to impress the big boys. They'll help anyone screaming about law and order and justice.”

They could fight—two against three was not the worst situation they had dealt with, but now Alim probably had the ship's security under his command. Even though she was confident in their ability to escape, it was the last thing she wanted to do, other than die or face her superiors. Running would mean throwing away her ticket to freedom—barrels full of money, courtesy of the Baron's blase mixing of business with his personal life.

She gestured to Dannac's forehead, which was covered by a stylish hat. “Can you see them?”

She watched Dannac, in particular the dead left eye. There were twitches of movement, but it was all random; it was the jewel buried beneath the hat on his forehead that gave him sight. Still, since the clear stone neither blinked nor moved in its socket, Capra associated Dannac's injured eye with his strange witch-sight.

“I see nobody coming that way. Maybe they went around the other side.”

A large form swooped in to block the alcove, and the orange sunlight vanished like a snuffed candle. “I say, what is the meaning of this?”

She recognized the man's billowing blue cape, and the smell of clove cheroots had become a familiar stink during the past three days.

“Parnas,” she said, affecting a girlish tone. “I...” They were no longer after the documents stashed with his business partners. She could just tell him to sod off and be done with the old bastard.

She looked to Dannac, but he just shrugged.

“Listen, Baron...”

“Yes? Have I done something to offend you? Something that makes you want to punish me with this... obvious display of discontent?”

“Well, actually—”

“I suppose I should have known that an exotic beauty such as yourself would be socially incapable of being my wife.” Parnas sighed and dabbed his cheek with a handkerchief. “The barbarian women are impossible to train properly. I should have listened to their endless warnings! Oh, but it was just too tempting.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that she wasn't lusting after another man, that she had aimed only to steal his business prospects, but stopped. There were soldiers from her homeland searching the ship for her, and each second she stood there like a stunned pig meant that the odds of escaping were significantly less, but she couldn't ravage the old bastard's fragile heart so callously. Not after hearing so much about the man's mother. Something about that kind of familiarity made her unwilling to deliberately hurt him.

“Parnas, I should have told you. I didn't think it would matter, but clearly it does.” She glanced to Dannac. “Every Valoii girl is sold into marriage at the age of ten. I was promised to this man before the war. You see, the war had ruined marriage plans all over, and only just now did he find me. I am afraid that no matter how much I love you, I cannot break my parents' honour. I belong to this man.”

Parnas leaned forward slightly. “Is that so? I had no idea.” There was a hint of understanding in his voice. She half wondered if he thought it was interesting and romantic.

“Yes, and if I do not obey, he has the legal right to murder my family and take their land.”

“Oh, I do see. Well, what if I just killed him?”

Dannac moved his head from side to side slow enough and frowned deeply enough that no living person could miss the signal of intimidation.

“But I will miss you, my dear.”

“And I you.”

She curtsied to him once more, and pulled Dannac out of the alcove. It felt as though she had cut the act short at the wrong time, but under the circumstances about all she had time for was a quick lie. Let Parnas wonder. It would keep him busy enough to stop his sobbing.

They jogged around the outer deck, towards the one of the propellers at the ship's tail. There was a vibration in her feet, and a clattering that sounded like a mechanical heartbeat.

Now the tall structure at the far end of the city stretched above them, and it appeared to reach farther into the sky than they had ever flown. The weak sun spilled across its polished surface, and some of the tower's details now showed through the haze. She bent backward to see the top, and found a gigantic clock face near the top. Below them flowed the dark river in which the flying boat would land.

“How far are we to the dock, do you think?” she asked Dannac. “The boat is practically in the water.”

He grunted something and looked over the edge. “Too far for what you're thinking.”

Behind them, the crowd began to part and jostle. Unless there was a sudden epidemic of what she had experienced a few minutes before and the impromptu party outside had become a battle royal for the privy, it had to be Alim.

“Are you sure?”

He looked over the edge once more, then towards the disrupted crowd. “Maybe not so much.”

She scanned the layout below. There was a raised structure where the ship would moor, presumably after its already low speed dwindled to that of a proper boat and allowed it to turn around. On this stood three brass poles, on which flapped the flags of Naartland, Tamarck, and a rose emblem she had never seen before.

“We could still steal the deed, Capra.”

“Are you insane? You of all people should know what Alim and his men are capable of.”

“I think it's no more insane than your plan to jump off this ship. We can blend in with the passengers and disappear into the city once it lands.”

“Alim won't allow that. He has the full cooperation of the government here. I know it. He wouldn't have revealed himself to me otherwise. I know how the Valoii military operates, Dannac. Did you forget about the tattoo around my neck?”

He gazed at the ground, which was slowly moving closer. “Either way, we're stuck in Blightcross.” He growled.

“Come on, Dannac. At least this way we get a head start. There will be other jobs.”

“But the point of this one was that it would be the last job either of us would need.”

“There's money here. The Baron talked about it last night. Blightcross runs some kind of factory that produces... well, I'm not sure exactly what it was, but old Parnas was quite impressed with the place.”

He snorted. “A factory?”

“Come on, there will be something for us here. There has to be. Forget about the mining scam.”

She kicked off her uncomfortable shoes, and they tumbled across the deck only to disappear among scattering passengers. Without any of her previous hesitation, she hopped onto the railing, stayed there in a crouch, balanced on the thin bar of metal. “Well?”

“I still cannot fathom why your people allow women like you to fight as men would.” Dannac tossed his hat over the edge and shrugged out of his frock coat. “Nor can I fathom why I continue to listen to you.”

She grinned and stood, the brass comforting and cool against her bare feet.

“I say, clear the way, all of you.” Alim brandished his Mizkov Defence Force issue stiletto at the crowd. Spoiled trash, the lot of them. All he found were confused stares, indignant ladies likely shocked that their luxury voyage had been tainted by such a display. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to recognize his weapon, or his tattoo. They had no idea that he was a soldier.

Where were the ship's guards? They could clear this deck in a heartbeat simply by showing up in their leather armour. Never mind that he had let Jorassian—