Chenda and the Airship Brofman (12 page)

With a note of pride, he added. “I invented it myself.”

Chenda rolled her eyes up to Fenimore's face. “Is this gonna work?”

“Kingston is quite talented. When it comes to patching people up, I wouldn't bet against him.”

“OK, then.”

Kingston pointed at Fenimore. “Don't drop her head.” He pointed at Chenda. “Don't move a muscle.” He pointed at Verdu. “Give us a story.”

“What story do you want?” he asked.

“Chenda's our guest, and our patient, too. Let her advance a topic.” Fenimore suggested.

“Hmm... Why not tell me how the great-great-great grandson of the first Tugrulian Emperor found his way to the
Brofman
? Say, does that make you a prince or something?” Chenda said.

Fenimore snorted. “He's no prince.”

“Neither are you, so shut up and hold still,” Kingston barked.

“A bold request,” Verdu sighed. “As you wish.”

As Verdu sat quietly for a moment, pulling his thoughts together, Kingston began to delicately drop liquid into her eye, which quickly numbed. After a few seconds, she saw the needle approach her open eye. She flinched, and Fenimore's fingers made tiny, soothing strokes on the side of her head. A moment later, his grip tightened as she felt the pressure of the needle entering her eye.

Verdu started his story. “On the whole of the Eastern Continent there was never such a bastard as ruthlessly cut-throat as Kotal Varinain. He rose to power in a time when all of the Eastern Kingdoms fought with one another. He put his clan, the Tugrulians, at the top of the food chain by starving every other tribe. He poisoned the fields and the water. He snared the men like rabbits while they hunted to feed their families. He burned the villages to the ground. When all other tribes were bled nearly to death, Kotal Varinain proclaimed himself emperor.

“He began to shape all of the continent into his vision. The only morality was his morality. The only songs were songs praising him. The only art was glorification of his image. His motto, carved in stone across his new empire, read
One Law, One Language, One God and One Land
.

“In the first years of his reign, Varinain Varinain forcefully uprooted all the surviving non-Tugrulians from their homes and villages in an action he called
The Great Distribution
. All women of childbearing age were scattered across his empire and forced into group marriages with Emperor Varinain's warlords. The children of those unions were raised in a tight Tugrulian fashion, filling Kotal Varinain's vision of a new, homogeneous society.

“The emperor himself had more than 250 wives, who produced more than 1000 children. So, I'm not so special in that regard. Many, many Tugrulians can claim to be descendants of the first emperor.”

He smiled. “And Fen is right; I'm no prince.”

“My lineage has little to do with how I arrived here. It has more to do with Kotal Varinain's
least
favorite children. He accepted no imperfections in his offspring. He set the precedent adopted by all of Tugrulian society of killing children with birth defects. He personally ended the lives of 24 of his own children, whose only crimes were to be born blind, without limbs or a finger, club-footed, or ones born like me. When I was born, so they say, my face was cut from the inside of my nose, through my lip and into my mouth.”

“Cleft palate,” Kingston supplied, dripping more liquid into Chenda's eye.

“Call it what you will, but to me, it was a death sentence.  The emperor, so long ago, set the law through his cruel betrayal of his own children. All babies of less than perfect birth are condemned. At the moment of my birth, my mother saw my imperfection. She knew my fate. She also knew that producing such a child would have lowered her meager status amongst my father's other wives, so she did the only thing she could. She bribed the midwife to say I had died, and the woman smuggled me to the coast. There, I was traded to the boat people of the Kohlian Sea, called the Mae-Lyn. They repaired my deformity as best they could, and raised me as one of their own, out on the open ocean.  There were many other escaped Tugrulians among the boat people. Several years ago, Captain Endicott encountered the Mae-Lyn family who kept me, and he offered me a place on the
Brofman
. I've been here ever since.”

As Verdu's story came to a close, Kingston finished his work on Chenda's eye. He pulled her head back up and asked her to blink a few times.

“Any pain?” he asked.

“It feels okay,” Chenda said. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure, miss. You'll be right as rain tomorrow.” He sat down to re-bandage Chenda's hands.

Chenda turned her head toward Verdu, trying to both look and not look for the mark of a cleft under his nose. “Your story, is that true?”

Fenimore, who was already moving back to the seat next to his friend, answered. “It is. Every word.”

Chenda looked at Verdu's face again, searching. “Your face looks fine to me.”

“That's Kingston's handiwork again. The Mae-Lyn's repair was crude, but the doc rebuilt this part of my lip and nose.” Verdu said, tracing his finger down an almost imperceptible scar. “He used to be one of the best physicians in Kite's Republic.”

“But then I got caught with some unlawful experiments, and I was out!” Kingston remarked sourly. “Like so many on Captain Endicott's crew, Verdu and I are good at what we do, but we're outside the laws of the Republic. We are
not to be allowed
.” He grunted. “Misfits all.”

Chenda looked at the three men around her. Each had a bit of shame in his eyes. Chenda couldn't understand it. As she looked at them, her most overwhelming thought was gratitude. Her instincts were waking up, and they told her that these men were good people.

“Let me tell you a story,” she said. “Two weeks ago, I was a wife, and I lived like I thought a proper wife should live. I appreciated hearth and home. My husband, whom I loved, cared for me and took care of all my needs, and I watched the world go by. Eleven days ago, I saw his body draped across his desk, and my world froze, and me along with it. Three days ago, I watched the lid close on his casket, and my world crumbled. Yesterday, someone I counted on tried to kill me and burned my home. My world has been obliterated, and I am running for my life. I don't know yet what I'm even running toward, but I've made it this far, and I have to keep moving.”

Chenda paused for a minute and put her bandaged hand on Kingston's plump cheek. “Today, I placed my trust in this ship and her crew. Meeting you all, and seeing your kindness – well, I don't think I can express what it means to me. Perhaps being here with you, misfits who are outside the laws of Kite's Republic, I can somehow gather the tattered threads of my life. I can begin to rebuild my world again.”

She looked into Fenimore's wide eyes. “For that, I will be truly grateful to you all for the rest of my life.”

Chapter 8

WHEN MORNING CAME

Candice Mortimer opened her eyes in her dark cabin aboard the
Brofman
and checked her surroundings. Nope, the room was definitely
not
spinning anymore. Progress.

She let her legs fall over the side of the narrow bed and pulled herself into a slouch. Candice felt like a wrung-out sponge. For as many trips and adventures as she had made with airships, she had delusionally hoped to escape her traditional bout of airsickness. After a dozen research trips, she thought she'd earned a gastrointestinal break. She'd have settled for the ability to open a window. Cool air would help a lot. The smell in the air around her wasn't uplifting in the least.

Candice looked at the soft glow of her watch: just past five in the morning. There was no point in going back to sleep, so she snapped on the small berth's main light. She ran a little water in the sink and splashed it on her face. Rummaging around for a hairbrush, she pulled her straight tawny hair down to stroke some life back into it. After a little grooming, she felt more herself, and decided to review her notes. She sat at the head of the bed and unfolded the small writing table from the wall.

She flipped through her notebook on the Tugrulian singing stones. For much of the last two days, she'd been confirming that everyone who had been known to be in possession of the rare stones was indeed dead, and the stones themselves had all disappeared. She could only conclude that someone, or several someones, were making off with them, reclaiming them. Someone was determined to make Chenda's extraordinary set disappear as well, but the girl survived her attacker.

Who was pulling Daniel's strings? she wondered. And did that puppet master know where Chenda was going?

She thought on it for a while. Daniel certainly could have been listening when she made the airship arrangements. If he had been, he certainly would have reported what he heard. The chances that someone would be following them were pretty high.

What about Edison?  Who could have known he had the stones?

Because Edison never left the estate, it was reasonable to assume that the stones had been with him since his return from abroad. If someone was looking to get the stones away from Edison, they found the perfect opportunity in Daniel, a man with a grudge. Perhaps that other party had waited for years to find a way in.

Candice  rubbed her eyes. This was futile; she just didn't have enough information to begin making any assumptions about who was coming after the stones. She just knew that someone would be. Someone wanted the stones badly enough to kill for them. From what she could tell, that person was willing to kill anyone connected with the stones.

Candice pulled her flight coat collar up to her cheeks and headed to the main deck. She snapped her bitter-end into the track and looked out into the predawn twilight. The
Brofman
was perfectly still in the cold morning. She looked over the side of the airship. The moonlight glittered far below, highlighting the coast of Kite's Republic and the small whitecaps lapping against the beach.

She rested her palms against the railing and bent at the waist, pushing her hips back and stretching her spine and her hamstrings. It felt good after a night of retching and lying on a narrow, unfamiliar bed. She looked toward the bow of the airship where the hint of a rising sun teased the horizon. She decided a brisk walk would get her blood moving.

The sound of her tether sliding along the track at her feet pleased her, and the refreshing air washed the last traces of nausea out of her body. She was starting to feel dandy as she reached the bow and circled around to pace down the other side of the deck. She looked up into the wheelhouse and was surprised at what she saw.

Standing at the airship's wheel was Chenda with Fenimore Dulal to one side of her and an equally tall but darkly featured man on the other. Each man had placed one of his hands on top of Chenda's as she gripped the wheel. Candice, who stood unnoticed by any of the occupants of the wheelhouse, looked carefully at each man's face. She had seen enough hormonal teenagers at the university to recognize
smitten
when she saw it.