Chapter 15: Smuggling Feral Cargo

Despite living aboard this airship long enough to have the faces of the one hundred or so crew members burned into my memory, I averted my eyes whenever the swarm of scarred faces glanced at me. However, a wave of vertigo made my stomach turn as I stared beyond the walkway’s railing at the rolling clouds below. I cursed myself and held my head high for even thinking of showing such weakness.

What’s wrong with me? If I look guilty, someone will rat me out for sure. I continued slinking past the deckhands with my shoulder pressed flush against the iron-plated wall across from the railing. The cool, evening air was filled with guffaws as the deckhands slapped each other on the backs and pointed through the clouds: trying to spot Freylor, the last human civilization, home. So long as I was careful, I’d remain unnoticed. The biggest obstacle the deckhands posed came with squeezing myself and the luggage cart I pushed between their apelike arms. I froze when I bumped into a bandaged arm.

The muscly slab of a man whipped toward me with eyes that glared from deep within the scarred tissue that covered his face. Once the deckhand spotted me, his features became indifferent: as if a gnat had landed on his injured arm. “Excited to catch a glimpse of your University again?” Before I could respond, he returned to his companions. “She did attend the University for some short time, eh? If she keeps yammering about the birdman she saw as a wee lass, I suppose them critters must exist.”

“Must be ruling the world beyond the Wall in their ivory palace.” His companion with the impure tattoo of gears on his bicep chuckled. “Best hurry and bow to our new overlords before we find our hearts pierced by their iron beaks.”

I stifled my growl by setting my jaw and pushed the luggage cart along. While convenient in this instance, my heart sank at how I remained unnoticed even among this common lot. Oh, but I wouldn’t be seen as nothing but a deckhand for long. Not once I revealed my new “friend” to Freylor.

The tip of a beak, so black it seemed to absorb the faint light from the wall-mounted gas lamps, poked from underneath the tarp that was draped over my luggage cart’s contents: crates filled with ivory shards and a pair of glowing eyes that accompanied the beak. The beak slowly slid from under the tarp and swished through the air like a black blade. My “friend” panted as the tip of its sharp appendage swayed to take in the walkway’s sights and sounds. Once its glowing eyes snapped to the insolent deckhand, clutching his companion’s shoulder and doubled over with laughter, the beak reached for his hand: followed by the glint of a camera lens.

I yelped, and my aching arms burned as I shoved the cart, made a screeching turn onto the narrow bridge that led to the Foreman’s cabin, and leaned close to the beak that had shot back under the tarp like a hermit crab. “No, you are our esteemed guest.” I offered a small smile but made sure the creature could see the rapier that hung from my hip. “We shall have all the time in the world to banter with these… ‘gentlemen,’ but first, you have more cultured admirers who will be ecstatic to hear of your visit. Yes, that’s right. You’re the special someone everyone wants to meet.” I laughed as Ludger nodded frantically before standing as still as a statue beneath the tarp. However, my face reddened as I glanced up to see several deckhands frowning inquisitively at me. I held my chin as high as it would go as one muttered “that crazy University woman is at it again. Awful sad she’s got none but herself to talk to.”

The last thing I needed was to draw more attention to myself now that I was reaching for the oak door to the Foreman’s cabin. I stood at my full height and met the deckhands’ glares. “Well, at least I am special enough to have important business with the Foreman regarding the...logistics I submitted. Yes, the columns we salvaged from those ruins were of a Corinthian style, but I, though I shudder to admit it, documented them as Composite. An understandable mistake, I know, but if I don’t rectify it, who will? Well, good day!” My hands shook as I gripped the doorknob once I realized it was in fact a “good night.” Too late to correct myself, I peered through the porthole framed by a lace curtain set inside the oak door. Grinning once I found the office unoccupied, I rattled the doorknob. A voice in the back of my head told me to be gentler with the door. After all, the only trees in Freylor were the ancient Eucalyptus in the University’s private gardens. My hand sweated once it fully dawned on me what kind of people deserved oak doors, and I was breaking into her office! However, I rummaged among my coat pocket’s jumbled contents for a hairpin, as good to pick a lock as anything, as I fought with my conflicted feelings. I whipped my hand back when a pair of illuminated threads emerged from beneath the tarp.

After they had probed the door for a minute, I remembered that creatures that could create portals probably never needed to worry about minor inconveniences like locked doors.

I looped my forefinger in a circle around the doorknob.

The threads burned through the oak and followed the invisible trail my finger had made.

I kept telling myself that one priceless door was worth unveiling birdmen to the Empire until the threads withdrew and the doorknob slid free from the hole in the door: thumping onto the office’s hardwood.

I glanced over my shoulder. When I saw no sign of the Foreman amid the crowd of chatting deckhands, I slipped inside the office. I snatched the sawed-out doorknob and offered it to Tom. "Care to replace this? Something tells me we’ll want a locked door between us and the hoard of deckhands who’ll be eager to tell me how wrong they were once they see their first birdman."

Ludger delicately took the doorknob with its beak, set it in the oak door, and the threads of light circled the incision. The threads only chiseled more of the door, and oak flakes sprinkled from the enlarged hole.

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I backed away from the door as sparks spread outward from the doorknob.

As the threads of light embedded deeper inside the door, Tom’s head buckled as if it was struggling to stay awake.

I gripped the creature’s shoulders and wrenched it back into the confines of the luggage cart.

The threads were wrenched from the door like wriggling earthworms before snapping back into its skull. Ludger sighed and shook its head.

"You needn't fret. Can't have you doing everything while I sit here twiddling my thumbs.” As I pushed the luggage cart lengthwise in front of the door, I winced in case sparks rebounded from the oak like with my rapier, but no such sparks emerged.

The hardwood creaked as I strode through the spacious office filled with nothing but a shelf stuffed with reports and flight charts, a dusty globe tucked into the corner, and a desk. The monument of a desk didn’t have a single pen upon its stained, mahogany surface, and the faux-leather seat behind it showed no sign of wear.

I scanned the room for any signs of a trap the Foreman might’ve set for uninvited guests and flinched when I spotted the wall covered with pressed lilies. Despite frequenting this office, the wall of aligned frames containing identical lilies, right down to the delicate curl of their petals, always demanded attention. A field of flowers pinned up for display. The other walls were bare aside from the wide windows that reached each of the room’s corners. I approached the pressed lilies, caught my reflection in one of the frames, and smoothed down my shoulder-length black hair that had been nothing but windswept aboard this airship. Straight and plain as can be. At least I’ll have a chance to style it with something more noticeable like falling ringlets once the Headmistress and her University friends welcome me back. They’ll have to once they see what I’ve brought them.

I slowly reached inside the pocket of my leather flight jacket. With both hands, I withdrew a delicately-folded garment of deep-blue silk. Then, tearing off the leather coat, I tossed it into a far corner and threw the dark cape over the bare shoulders of my oil-stained tank top. The cape hung to my waist with a pattern of embroidered diamonds that shimmered in the dim, orange light cast by the single gas lamp that sputtered in a corner.

For a minute, I stood stock still as I stared at my reflection: terrified that the image of both myself and the tarp-covered creature that leaped off the luggage cart would disappear if I moved a muscle. This cape… it was the only piece of my school uniform I had been able to save before the rest was burned and I was expelled for life. With nothing but a partially completed University education, I couldn’t find work anywhere aside from the one place that didn’t require a license of expertise: salvaging crews. A mishmash of men and women who, having never earned their university licenses, could only serve Freylor by rummaging through the ruins of whatever civilizations had fallen beyond our walls. Of course, no deckhand could convince a birdman to reveal the well-guarded secrets behind its magic, so I suppose my time as one would end tonight.

A heavy weight was lifted from my heart, and my eyes filled with tears as I remembered the last time I had felt the cape’s tightness around my shoulders. It might as well have made my puny, fourteen-year-old self a head taller when I strode through the University’s catacombs of hand-carved stone and hundreds of beeswax candles. But I could’ve navigated those halls in absolute darkness: halls that were kept dark because of the history they sheltered, unlike my iron closet where I had been left to hide. Tonight, I’ll show everyone that I am a scholar. Not only will I leave this place for good, but the Headmistress will realize that I never should have been removed from her side.

I flicked the tarp off the luggage cart, removed the stack of ivory tiles from atop a cushioned display stool that stood among its contents, and set the seat before the mahogany desk.

Ludger threw its wings over its head as if a deckhand had unwittingly discovered it, bowed apologetically, and wriggled deeper among the piles of ivory bricks and shattered statues piled atop the luggage cart.

“No, no. You are our guest. Your comfort is my only concern.” I beckoned for Ludger to take a seat on the stool. Before the creature could respond, I strode behind the desk to the panel with a speaker and an array of dials embedded in the iron-plated wall. My hand froze over the interface before I smoothed my hair down five times, wrenched the edges of my cape together until it covered my tank top, and tightened the three knots in my scarf. Before I could lose confidence, I flicked all the dials, and the bulbs that displayed the frequency channels I would be broadcasting to lit up.

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