Driftmetal (14 page)

We landed on an island called Falkombe, one of the
larger floaters in the chain. It was egg-shaped and hilly, with
wide expanses of field, tall grasses and gnarled riverwood trees.
When the wind was just right, you’d get the swampy stench of its
nearest neighbor, Dunhollow, a larger island with little in the way
of habitable area. Dunhollow had inward-sloping terrain and soft
soil, so it held rainwater like a sponge and was covered in marshes
and bayous. Wainsborough had fancied himself quite the seafarer,
and he’d had a large set of docks and boathouses built on
Dunhollow. By now, most of those structures had fallen into
disrepair.

It was on Falkombe that we found our first sign of
Gilfoyle: four deep, round imprints in a gravel parking lot outside
the general store. I recognized the imprints as being the exact
same size and configuration as the hovertrucks the miners used. The
gouges were severe, and I surmised that the vehicle which had made
them was not only heavy and cumbersome; it had been carrying a full
load. I scooped up a handful of gravel and sniffed it.
Displacer
engines… no doubt about that
.

“You were right, Blaylocke,” I said. “As much as I
hate to admit it, you were right. Gilfoyle is close.”

Blaylocke tried to make his smile look like a
grimace. He squinted up at the clouds, a leaden matte that blotted
out the sun. The day was cool and windy, the skies threatening
rain, and the air dense with the fetid smell of Dunhollow’s swamps.
Captain Sable had sent Thorley Colburn, the broad-shouldered
rigger, along with us—to ‘
help out
,’ as she put it. She’d
really sent him to keep an eye on us, of course, and had kept
Vilaris on board to talk over a few financial matters related to
our agreement. I would’ve stayed to attend the meeting, but I got
the feeling Sable would’ve ignored me or excluded me from it
entirely if I had. Besides, I was too hot on Gilfoyle’s trail at
the moment to be bothered with the finer points of our contract.
I’d seen these hovertruck imprints from the deck before we landed,
and I’d been dying to get out here for a closer look.

Chaz was wearing his mad-scientist goggles, complete
with a selection of concentric glass lenses for light filtering and
magnification. He flicked one aside, lowered another into place.
“These are incredible specimens,” he was saying, as his gigantic
eyeball darted over a palmful of gravel. The bulging oculus was
red-veined and wet with rheum, altogether startling and
absurd-looking.

“Chaz, ol’ buddy… you get more excited about dirt
than most men get about beautiful women,” I said.

“There are tiny flecks of driftmetal in a few of
these stones,” Chaz explained, ignoring me.

Blaylocke was confused. “If there’s driftmetal in
them, why do they fall to the ground like normal rocks? Why don’t
they float?”

“Surely your understanding of the properties of
driftmetal is better than you’re letting on,” I said.

“Not really. Why… should it be?”

“Things are different in Py—” Chaz caught himself
and glanced across the lot at Thorley, who was kicking divots into
the gravel to amuse himself. “—back home, in Bannock.”

Blaylocke grinned. “Bannock, yeah.”

“It’s a matter of mass versus altitude,” said Chaz.
“In Bannock, we’re not used to this because we’re so low to the
ground. Small chunks of driftmetal like these have a very low point
of equilibrium. It sounds counterintuitive, but that’s why all the
tiny floaters are in the nearflow, while the islands with the
largest driftmetal veins are so high up in the stream.”

“That’s also why all the driftmetal smiths live way
up there,” I said. “You can’t work a big piece of driftmetal while
it’s floating away from you.”

“And yet, isn’t it interesting the way driftmetal is
affected by gravstone proximity,” Chaz observed. “If you think of
driftmetal as being like a helium balloon, gravstone is like the
ribbon that keeps it from floating away. Streamboats wouldn’t exist
without the gravstone control arrays that allow them to gain and
lose altitude at will.”

Blaylocke shrugged. “Whatever you say, Chester. I’m
not sure I understand how it all works. As long as you know what
you’re talking about, I’m satisfied.”

“Yeah, speaking of that,” I said, “what’s a
technotherapist?”

“What makes you bring that up?” Chaz asked.

“You’re a tinker. A gadgeteer. And the sign outside
your lab at home says you’re the city’s Chief Technotherapist.”

“It means I acclimate citizens to the ideas behind
new technology. That’s all.”

“Kind of like what you’re unsuccessfully doing for
Blaylocke right now,” I said.

Chaz laughed. “Indeed.”

“Alright, I’m going inside,” I said. “Do you guys
mind staying with Kicks McGee over there and keeping him out of
trouble?”

They said they didn’t, so I knelt and rubbed dirty
smudges into my face and my clothes. I swung the door open and
entered the general store, a drab old establishment called Windmast
& Co. The proprietor was a plump little man with a dark
handlebar moustache and round pink cheeks that held up a thin pair
of spectacles. He was dressed in a pristine vest suit and a
matching black bowler hat that covered his bald spot. His
well-groomed appearance belied the stuffy odor of his store, which
smelled like it hadn’t had a good cleaning in years.

“How d’you do?” I said, nodding to him. I pretended
to peruse some of the dusty old crap I had no interest in, not
wanting to appear too eager to interrogate the guy.

“May I help you with anything, sir?”

“Just looking,” I said. After a minute or two, I
approached the counter.

He looked up from the newspaper he was reading and
studied me through the top half of his bifocals. Something in his
stare made me think I was familiar to him, like he’d seen me
before. On a wanted poster, probably.

“‘Scuse me,” I said. “I come here looking for a
job.”

“I’m sorry sir, but we aren’t hiring.”

“Oh, my apologies. Not to work
here
. Y’see,
I’m a miner by trade. Worked the nearflow all my life. Trawlers,
diggers, catchers, grinders—you name it, I can run it. Heard there
was a new game in town… someone settin’ up nearby.” I put a little
extra drawl into it, selling the hillbilly laborer persona.

The proprietor gave me a look of understanding.
“Yes, you are quite correct. There’s an operation, name of Gilfoyle
and Associates, something or other. They’ve been around here a week
or so. We’re just downstream of them now. If you have a way to get
down, head southwest and you should see the platforms not more than
a few miles out.”

“Well I sure am grateful to you,” I said. “Say, I
noticed you was sold out of them fancy neckties back there. The
brown ones.”

“I’m sorry? Oh, the cravats, you mean…”

“Them’s the ones. You think I’d put on a good
impression if I was wearin’ one of them for my interview? It’d be
real nice if I could look sharp when I go in. I don’t s’pose it’d
be too much of a bother if I asked you to take a look in your stock
room, in case there’s any extra you might’ve missed.”

The man blinked, giving me a tight-lipped smile. “I
don’t believe those are in stock, sir, but I’ll certainly take a
look. Just a moment, please.” He laid his newspaper on the counter,
dislodged himself from his stool, and waddled through the doors to
the back room.

When I heard him start to shuffle boxes around, I
left. On my way out, I tore the wanted poster off the bulletin
board beside the door, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it into
the barrel trash can on the porch. “Time to go,” I said. “We’ve got
some gravstone to steal.”

8

Chaz stood and shoved a pebble into his pocket, one
bloated eye pulsating behind a triad of lenses. “What did the
shopkeep say?”

“We’re practically right on top of them. Gilfoyle’s
new mining operation is less than half an hour away. Dangit,
Blaylocke, your nose for finding people appears to be more
exceptional than I’m ready to give you credit for. I’m calling it
now: this was a fluke.”

Blaylocke said nothing as we made our way back to
the
Galeskimmer
, but he wasn’t fooling anyone with that
proud grin he was barely holding back the whole way there. We
skirted the town to avoid any other prying eyes who might’ve seen
my wanted poster. By now, I’d be surprised if there was a soul left
in the stream who didn’t know my middle name, or who hadn’t at
least seen my unflattering likeness plastered across every town
square.

When we boarded the
Galeskimmer
, I headed
straight for the captain’s quarters and knocked on the door.

“Come in.” Sable was lounging in her chair with a
glass of wine, the overcast sky filling the room with gloomy gray
light. She rolled her eyes and crossed her legs when she saw me,
bouncing her foot beneath the table. “What do you want?”

“We’re close,” I said, letting the door swing shut
behind me. “I found out where Gilfoyle is.”

She shrugged. “Good for you.”

“Are you really still that mad at me?”

She tossed her braid, reached back and checked it
with her fingers, chewed on her lip.

I cleared my throat. I’d told myself I wouldn’t
blunder through this, but dispelling the silence seemed more
daunting now than it had been in my imagination. “I’m sorry I… I
touched you. Without your permission. I’m sorry I kissed you.” I
felt my face go hot. “It was inappropriate.” I ground my teeth, my
chest thumping like a scared rabbit.

The ten-or-so feet of space between us might as well
have been a chasm. I didn’t know whether I was apologizing because
I cared about her, or because I needed something from her. If I
were honest with myself, it was probably a little bit of both.

Sable set her glass on the mantle beneath the
windows. I expected her to get up, to come toward me. To look at
me, at least. She didn’t. Just sat there, staring down at her
fingernails as though she were as interested in the dirt beneath
them as Chaz would’ve been to find a loose bit of driftmetal there.
She still wasn’t saying anything.

“And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my friends were
primies,” I added, hoping it was what she’d been waiting for me to
say. Apparently, it wasn’t.

“Did you mean it?” she asked.

“Do I mean what?”

“When you kissed me. Did you do it because you
wanted to, or because you thought it would get you out of
trouble?”

Behind her, the riverwood trees were swaying in the
wind, their twisted, sinewy branches heavy with leaves as thick as
shrubbery. A light rain began to patter on the windows. I wished I
hadn’t come—that I had sent Vilaris to deliver the news in my stead
so I could be below in my hammock, napping with the crew. It was
too hostile for comfort in here. I wanted to lie, to say I’d done
it because of the way I felt about her, but I couldn’t bring myself
to preserve such an empty falsehood. I usually found it much easier
to lie to the people who didn’t matter. Maybe my hesitance to lie
to Sable meant that she was one of the people who did.

“I just wanted to get you off my case,” I said.

She nodded. Her lips tightened, a sharp line
creasing her brow, and she turned away to stare out the window. She
swiveled in her chair until I couldn’t see her face anymore. She
was quiet for a moment. “We’ll wait out the storm and then head
down there.”

I hesitated. My foot slid half a step toward her,
but I didn’t let it go any closer.

I tried to be silent as I shut the door behind me
and crossed the deck. The rain had become a steady downpour, and I
was drenched by the time I reached the stairs and descended to the
crew’s quarters. They were all inside, my people and the
Galeskimmer
’s, settling in and relishing the opportunity to
get some extra leisure time. Neale Glynton was lying on his back,
tossing a ball up to ricochet off the bunk above him. Big Thorley
Colburn was carving a wooden figure with his rigging knife while
Dennel McMurtry read to himself from a thick leatherbound tome with
no title on the outside. Nerimund was sitting cross-legged on his
bunk, biting his fingernails. Eliza Kinally was banging pots and
dishes around in the kitchen, and Mr. Scofield was probably off
somewhere studying his navigation charts and updating his maps.
Blaylocke was writing letters to his wife, and Chaz was examining
the rocks he’d picked up, scribbling notes about them in his
journal.

Vilaris was sound asleep. I settled into my hammock
and set about joining him.

It rained all afternoon and into the evening. By the
time we ventured into the galley for supper, it was past dark. A
fog had settled over the fields of Falkombe, shrouding the
Galeskimmer
in its dense blanket. Eliza had made us a hearty
stew of carrots, onions and potatoes with chunks of meat, just the
thing to warm our bones on a night like this. We’d eaten well since
we came aboard; now that the money was flowing, Sable and her crew
had bought enough food to keep the ship’s larder well-stocked.

After the meal, we paraded across the ship
single-file and gathered in the captain’s quarters to discuss our
plans. Everyone was included—not just those of us making the
decisions. I had a role in mind for each person to play. After all,
I’d learned the hard way not to get into something this big on my
own.

“We have a bead on Gilfoyle’s location,” I
announced. “I say we strike while the iron is hot. Get this done
fast, so we can rescue your captain.”

“Don’t we have to turn the ore into chips first?”
asked Landon Scofield.

“Ore into chips. Chips first,” said Nerimund.

“Mr. Scofield, that’s a very good question. I’ll get
to that.”

He eyed me. “Very well. Then the next order of
business is how, exactly, we’re to go about this whole ordeal.”