Skybuilders (Sorcery and Science Book 4) (6 page)

“Leave them. It will take them a long time to get out of there, and by the time they do, we’ll already be gone.”

Silas pressed his arms against his chest and glared at the four buried men, allowing his eyes to go white. The men desisted in their efforts to swim through the debris.

“We’re going to pay a visit to your boss to see about buying a plane,” Silas told them.

In response, one of the men tried to shoot him with his buried gun. An echoing clink told Silas that the bullet had bounced off a metal rod. And the squeal from one of the other men told him it had found a different target.

“If this is the way they greet all their boss’s customers, then it’s no wonder he doesn’t have enough money to repair that rusted sign at the entrance,” Leonidas said.

Silas pointed to the shack with a chalkboard of scribbled prices posted outside. “You can share that business advice with Master Dominick when we meet him.”

Leonidas frowned at the buried men, likely anticipating a similarly warm welcome. “Peachy.”

* * *

526AX August 20, Auster

As it turned out, Master Dominick was about as meek as Davin Storm—no, wait, that wasn’t right. The prince of Elitia was just an idiot.

But getting back to the junkyard, the owner’s meekness certainly explained the hired muscle. He was overcompensating.

Silas looked around the office. Framed photographs of vintage vehicles were hung up on the wood walls in an evenly spaced line, one above each metal grey filing cabinet. A selection of folders, ordered by color, sat in one basket on the desk, a neat stack of typed pages in the other. A bundle of pencils stood upright in a jar, each one sharpened to precisely the same height. The man was an obsessive compulsive hermit.

He was also a stuttering ball of nervous energy. Within half a sentence, Leonidas had convinced him to show them to the hangar hiding the airplane. It was an enormous white dome built over the water, a private enclosed parking lot of watercraft. Several boats were tied to the dock, innocuous pieces of wood, metal, and plastic surrounding the old water plane.

The fact that Master Dominick was in possession of illegal goods told Silas that he got off on the thought of subverting authority. His hiding of the plane—and the irregular twitch of his eye as he looked at it—meant he would turn and run should that authority ever come knocking. Clearly, he wasn’t cut out for dealing on the black market.

Leonidas had honed in on that same weakness, and was now exploiting it to attempt to buy the plane off of him.

“Master Dominick, this Seabird-4 is hardly worth the trouble it’s putting you through,” Leonidas purred, turning his eyes on the muddy-splattered white and blue seaplane. There were more than a few dents in its body, as though every pilot who had ever flown it had crashed into one thing or another.

The junkyard proprietor gave Leonidas a suspicious squint through tiny round spectacles. “Trouble you boys caused.”

Leonidas tilted his head toward Silas. “Big Bob here didn’t mean any harm. When those men started circling around us, he panicked and ran straight into that car wall. He’s a strong fellow, but he’s rather lacking in the brains department. It’s a problematic combination.”

Master Dominick grunted in agreement. “That’s for sure.”

Silas felt his eyes starting to phase white, burning his face. It took every drop of willpower he had to keep them blue. He and Leonidas would be having a little chat when they were through with the junkyard.

“We, however, would be willing to put an end to all your troubles and take this wretched plane off your hands,” Leonidas offered.

Master Dominick frowned, his nose cringed in suspicion. “If it’s so ‘wretched’, then why do you want it so much?”

“Want it?” Leonidas favored him with an indulgent smile. “No, you misunderstand. Our employer simply requires a few cheap and disposable aircraft for a bit of target practice, is all.”

“Your employer wouldn’t happen to be a Selpe lord, would he?”

“Oh, no. Of course not. No Selpe lord would ever tarnish himself by purchasing illegal goods.” Leonidas winked at him. “So, are you looking to sell or not? We’d like to get out of here before the Auster City Guard comes marching in.”

Paling, Master Dominick asked, “They know about it?”

“Unless they’re all asleep, they certainly should by now,” replied Leonidas. “News of the plane has spread all over the city. Now, we heard it from this old man at the flea market, but he says he heard it from a barmaid, who heard it from—”

“You can have it,” Master Dominick cut in. “Ten thousand Crowns.”

“We’ll give you two thousand,” countered Leonidas.
 

“Two…thousand?” stuttered Master Dominick. “Now, see here, sonny. That plane cost me—”

“Oh, you’re right. What was I thinking?” Leonidas smiled. “I’m sure the Auster City Guard has a much better offer in mind for you.”

Master Dominick’s mouth fell open. He moved his lips, but nothing more than a pop came out. Leonidas smiled and waited.

“Take it,” Master Dominick said finally, his shoulders slumped over. “Just get that damn thing off my property.”

“Fabulous.” Leonidas set a stack of bills in his hand, then walked down the dock. He stopped before the plane and turned back around to wave Silas forward. “Come, Big Bob.”

Oh, yes,
Silas thought with grim satisfaction.
I’m really going to have to kill the spy when this is all over.
But for now, he joined him at the plane.

Master Dominick hit the button to open the hangar doors. As they spread, spilling in streams of daylight, he stared at Silas and Leonidas and scratched his head. They’d only just climbed inside when the junkyard proprietor’s eyes lit up in recognition and locked on the spy.

“He’s identified you,” Silas told Leonidas.

“Too late,” he replied.

The plane’s engine roared to life, its propellers began to spin, and Leonidas drove it out into the bay before Master Dominick could do so much as close his unlatched jaw.

CHAPTER SIX

~
The Floating City ~

526AX August 20, Seabird-4

THE SEAPLANE SHUDDERED and dipped. It lasted only a second, but that was long enough for Silas to aim a hard stare at Leonidas.

“Sorry about that.”

The giant Elition continued to stare, his eyes pulsing white. Leonidas had the unsettling suspicion that those eyes could burn a hole through his head. Considering what he knew Elitions could do, it was not a mad thought.

“Just a sticky lever.”

Silas arched an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed.

“I’m not so familiar with this particular plane model.”

Because it is over fifty years old
, he wanted to add. They didn’t even make the Seabird-4 anymore. No one wanted it, and it was no wonder. Turning the steering wheel was like churning butter. It jerked and hiccuped and belched dubious black smoke out of its tail end. Leonidas was fairly certain it would survive the flight to Oasis, but he was less optimistic about his chances of getting it up in the air again. Once they found Marin, maybe she could work some of her mechanical magic to spit some life into the dilapidated plane. Leonidas gritted his teeth. Marin…

“Leonidas, is this truly the best vehicle you could find us?” Ariella asked for the two-hundred-and-fifty-seventh time. She was a beautiful woman, but she was also really starting to grate on Leonidas’s nerves.

He sighed and counted back slowly from ten before speaking. He could not afford to snap at the Elitions. Silas would toss him overboard.

“As I explained before, planes are the domain of the military. The only people who can get their hands on one are highly ranked officers and filthy rich aristocrats who have bought off anyone who matters inside the military. You put two thousand Crowns in my hand and told me to get you a plane. That’s not enough money to buy off
anyone
. In fact, that’s not even enough to buy a car, let alone a plane. We were lucky to get this miracle of aeronautic mastery.”

Miracle because it was a wonder the hunk of metal could fly. Nervous Master Dominick had parted with it easily enough. Leonidas probably could have kept the two thousand, now that he thought about it. A shame. One could buy a hell of a lot of shoes with two thousand Crowns.

“I keep seeing this plane crash. I can’t get the image out of my head,” Ariella told Silas.

“A foresight?”

“No, just my own gruesome imagination.” She swallowed hard. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t crash. Last time I was in Orion, I watched one of those news reports about a plane crash. Everyone on board died.”

“Our chances of surviving a crash are significantly higher than those of a human.”

Well, it was certainly always nice to see the silver lining.

Ariella gripped her armrests. “Maybe I’ll just close my eyes until it’s over.”

“As you wish.” Silas turned to Leonidas. “How long until we reach Oasis?”

So they did remember he was sitting right there. Hmm.

“We’re nearly around the Carmine Peninsula. Once we’re clear of it, we should be able to catch our first glimpse of Oasis,” he replied.

Leonidas looked out of the side window. Below them, sparkling blue waves lapped the coastline, rolling over a beach of pale pink sand. Most of the world’s beaches were golden, white, or rocky grey; those of the Carmine Peninsula, the Avan Empire’s foothold in the east, were pink. The Avans had early on recognized the novelty, transforming the coastal region into a bustling tourist hub of all-inclusive beachfront resorts. Dubbed Pink Sands, it was the only Avan territory completely open to outsiders.

As the plane slipped around the peninsula’s southern tip, the open ocean spread out before them like a silken sheet of shimmering ultramarine. A layer of sunny sky sat above it, unblemished but for a perfectly round disc that hovered a few hundred meters over the water, the morning light bouncing off its smooth silver surface. From a distance, the disc was unremarkable, but as they drew nearer, its unsettling elegance became obvious.

A row of perfectly spaced gargantuan windows punctuated the smooth outer walls of the lowest level. It was topped by a section several times as high and windowless but for a few tiny circles; within those were the service shafts and other internal workings. Another few levels of full-height windows came next, and trees shot out the top of the city like flowers inside an oversized silver pot. Or toppings on a pizza. A gigantic flying pizza.

“Are we falling?” Ariella asked, looking horrified as she took a quick peek. She promptly clamped her eyelids down.

“Not falling, just descending slightly,” Leonidas told her. “We need to fly under the city.”

That’s what the monotoned voice who’d answered his call to Oasis had instructed him to do earlier. He’d called the Hellean city from Auster, passing himself off as an investigator from the Selpe Intelligence Network who was looking into the accident that had resulted in the disappearances of Emperor Selpe and his brother. He hadn’t mentioned Marin. No one would believe an agent of the Selpe Empire would care a hoot about a missing research scientist, no matter how brilliant she was.

“Why?” Silas demanded.

“Because that’s what they told me to do. And the Helleans have been known to shoot down planes for not following their docking procedure to the letter.”

As the plane passed under the city, Leonidas looked up through a grid of metal-framed glass panels. That right there just redefined the whole concept of ‘ocean view’ apartment. The citizens of Oasis sure were living well.

Silas glared up through the city’s glass floor, his eyes hard and suspicious. He pointed up at the city, whose shadow completely swallowed their tiny plane. “This position is vulnerable. It’s unlikely we could evade them should they target us with their weapons, and there’s no way for us to retaliate.”

“I guess that’s sort of the point. The Helleans don’t want to expose themselves to attack, so they immediately shoot any plane out of the sky that tries to fly over one of their cities—or even dares to fly level with them. It’s all about maintaining the upper hand,” said Leonidas.

“I don’t like it,” Silas declared.

“We’re no match for them in this old rust bucket anyway. Even the Selpe military’s fancy fighter jets are no match for the Helleans. You know that.”

Silas chose to ignore this revelation of reality. “What are you doing now?”

Leonidas flew out past the city, then looped the plane back around. “Bringing us to the hangar,” he explained.

Two doors spread open in the city’s smooth silver surface, creating a gap in the service layer. Leonidas took a deep breath and flew the plane inside the bay.

In his call with Oasis, Leonidas had introduced himself as Darren Hollen. He hoped Darren wouldn’t hold that against him. Though they had been friends for a long time, Leonidas had to admit that Darren had likely only foregone shooting him on sight because of that incident in Timberland. Seeing as Darren now considered that debt paid in full, Leonidas hoped his friend had waited at least an hour before making the call to SIN headquarters. They’d been through a lot together. He damn well owed Leonidas an hour’s head start.

The Helleans had agreed to receive him in Oasis, though it was unlikely they would take kindly to his sort of snooping. Their government’s official line was that they were neutral in the world’s politics.

In other words, they would sell to anyone for the right price.

Not that there was anything the Selpes or Avans, their two largest customers, could do about it. Hellean technology was the most advanced in the world, particularly in the field of airship engineering. They designed and built most of the world’s airships. They even oversaw the operation of all the stations where the two empires’ ships landed and disembarked. Even more impressive yet, the Helleans had built the world’s floating cities, and their entire population lived inside those gravity-defying installations, high above land and ocean.

“It’s showtime,” Leonidas said as soon as the plane had landed.

Ariella stood and strapped her sword to her back. “What does that even mean?”