Cogs in Time Volume Three (The Steamworks Series Book 3) Page 8

  “The Sky Trains bring us supplies and take away what we don't need,” I swiftly rolled the rug-sized map into a brittle tube and laced it shut with a faded green ribbon that I'd worn to my fifth birthday party. “You know that.”

  “But where?” Winna pouted and fisted her small hands on her hips. Her blue eyes flashed in the flickering candlelight, and her bare foot stomped stubbornly on the old warped floorboards. The entire shack shuddered beneath the force of her tiny temper. “And how? Who drives them? Where do they go?”

  “I don't know where, Winna! Come on, it'll be Darkeve soon, and the Clockstrike will tell us to sleep,” I snapped. I rolled my eyes at her and caught Pa slumping over the mound of pages, his mouth slack and eyes drooping. His raspy snore cut off the direction of my thoughts.

  Winna spun on her heel, and her thin shoulders slumped, exposing the patched elbows I'd tried hard to fix surreptitiously. Obviously, that hadn’t worked if I could notice the jagged stitches in meager candlelight.

  “Pa's asleep again before the Clockstrike. He okay?” Winna shifted gears on the spot, the maps and questions lost to the worry an eight year old shouldn't have to figure.

  “Yeah, he's tired Winna. He’s been fixing up the maps for days now. Come on. Dress off and in bed before the Clockstrike. We can't waste any more candles.”

  I helped Winna free of her clothes and folded the patched dress atop my own. I was wearing Ma's clothes now, and they were few and ill fitting. We hadn't been able to afford much for a long time, since Sky Harbour was only so big and required only so much mapmaking. I flung a quilt over Pa and hurried to the iron and straw bed where Winna sat in pouty silence.

  “Can we open the hatch and see it at least?” she asked quietly.

  I hesitated, one foot high to climb over her.

  “Sure, Winna.” Guilt ate at me that I had been unable to answer her questions. In truth, her questions had been my own for years—until I'd given up asking them, since no one ever answered. I scrambled over her and stood on the bent iron frame of our bed.

  “It's not too cold, so how about we leave it open tonight?” I offered as compromise. I stared down at her, waiting for the inevitable shrug of her shoulders. They hunched in response, so I reached for the heavy iron handle fastened to the wall. I grimaced as I tried to turn it, it was old and rickety, but the gears were good and solid, the chain rusty, but usable. Slowly, my aching hands rotated the crank. The gears ground and boards creaked and groaned in protest above us. A small square of blue-black light, the night sky, cut through the shadows, bathing our ceiling as the window slowly creaked wider.

  “No moon tonight,” Winna grunted. Somehow, she made even those few words seem pouty.

  “No, but the Clockstrike's coming.” I let my aching arm fall to my side and lightly leaped off the bed. My bare feet bent the thin wooden boards beneath me as I crossed the room and extinguished the candles. The full dark was like a blanket, cut in half by the faint light from the window in our ceiling. I stood beneath the hatch and stared up at the square bit of night that I could see.

  “Callia, come on!”

  Winna flung a moth-eaten pillow at me, and I jumped as it flapped into the side of my face, sending a cascade of honey brown curls over my eyes and mouth. I spat out the grimy strands and scraped them from my eyes. My hair didn't matter right. It was going to be Clockstrike.

  I turned and dove onto the flimsy bed and muffled a giggle when Winna imitated me. Just in time, far up the steep hillside, out of sight, at the center of Sky Harbour Town, something big and heavy wheezed and ground to life.

  “Now!” I giggled and clapped my hands over my ears.

  Winna did the same, our eyes trained on the square of night that we could see, waiting.

  Metal ground against metal, loud and haltingly, in a rhythmic scrape, click, scrape, click, scrape, click that would repeat until the great old clock was wound enough to give it a full go. The screeching and grinding clicks continued for another minute—each night seemed harder and harder for the ancient clock to push into motion and give us our ritual nightly Clockstrike that told the citizens of Sky Harbour when it was time to sleep.

  At last, the grinding gears slowed, and Winna's blue eyes widened as the sounds faded as if threatening to stop for good. I knew better, though, and held my breath in anticipation.

  Bong!

  Bong!

  Bong!

  Bong!

  Bong!

  Bong!

  Bong!

  The last rolling peal echoed off our mountainside town, and Winna's eyes shot to the trapdoor window. I stared up too, the massive, deep voice of the Clockstrike all but forgotten. Phase two was coming, and we could just see a bit of it from our tiny window.

  Sure enough, the sonorous gongs faded into the quiet just as another grinding and whirring stirred, this time closer and higher. Though the night was moonless, we would at least see its shadow.

  The grinding began to spread and echo, the sounds overlapping as if mimicking each other and soon the entire night was filled with a rhythmic grrr . . . grrr . . . grrr. As quick as the new sounds emerged, one by one they clanked to a halt and a steady, huffing roar grew louder. It approached from the south, high above in the forbidden mountains, and rumbled closer, faster and faster.

  “Here it comes.” I stumbled off the bed to see deeper into the night sky, to see what was coming.

  Steam hissed and iron clanked, much closer, and then our whole house started to vibrate. The cold candle on the rickety desk clattered to the floor, and the iron bedposts creaked in metallic protest. The clanking, steaming thing grew louder and louder, until both Winna and I re-covered our ears and blinked the falling dust from our eyes.

  It shot past the trapdoor window, a long dark shadow bathed in ethereal steam on wheels of iron. It roared by so fast that it was a streak against the stars, and the vacuum of the wind through the trapdoor stirred my hair into the air. The rattling floorboards settled just as suddenly, the candle stopped twitching, and Pa even stopped snoring, as the last shadow of the Sky Train vanished out of sight. Its engine and wheels faded into nothingness as the tracks that bore it away turned again on grinding gears and rusty pillars, successfully breaking the track and making passage by anything or anyone else impossible.

  “Good night, Winna.” I sighed and blinked the dust from my eyes. The dust stung, and I told myself that was the only reason my eyes watered. I certainly had no other reason to, did I? Winna's silence told me she'd fallen asleep on cue to the rushing and clattering Sky Train, leaving me to my thoughts, alone. Like every night of my life.

  I turned and paced back to the bed, now cold from the light sea breeze wafting through the trapdoor. I wrapped my arms around myself, but little good it would do me in Ma's threadbare pantalets and chemise. I climbed over Winna to my spot against the wall, where the boards barely fit together and the air was even colder. I sank down onto the quilt beside Winna, and something crinkled loudly under my feet. I grimaced.

  “Darn it, Winna,” I grumbled and fished the now very crumpled page from beneath the blanket. Leave it to Winna to take Pa's maps to bed. I flattened the battered scrap of paper out on my bent knees. Map or not, paper was valuable. A flash of red on the back of the paper caught my eye, and my hands froze, mimicking my breathing.

  Carefully, I flipped the page over and stared at the wash of color, a small patch of red stamped on the back of the faded parchment. Red.

  Red was the color of the Council's Official Seal. I tipped the page closer to the gaps in the wall where some of the starlight filtered through and squinted at the barely legible mark. It was a red-colored crescent, the mark of an official order given by the Sky Harbour Council. Red was their highest order, which meant highest paying, official request.

  “Pa, what did you forget?” I whispered, flipped the page over again, and stared at the map. It was a half finished sketch of Sky Harbour, close up to show elevation, caves, waterways, paths, and every detail of Sky H
arbour—had it been completed. Only the Westernmost half of the crescent that was our lonely island was completed, the entire upper East half was blank.

  Pa hadn't finished an official map for the council. A well paying assignment. Why not? A squiggle of words at the upper left corner of the page caught my eye, and I suddenly remembered that breathing was a good idea. My lungs exhaled in a rush, fluttering the page I held with trembling fingers.

  “October 12, 4023.” I read in a tiny whisper and abruptly my brain refused to function. Cold pain rolled in my stomach until I was debating whether to run for the toilet can. Instead, I blinked and surprised myself when everything blurred into a miasma of cold black and blue shadows. No dust to blame it on this time.

  That was the day Ma had died.

  Pa hadn't been the same since her death, to be honest. He'd become forgetful, often losing the valuable colored pencils and chalks only Mapmakers were allowed to use, or leaving his goggles atop his head while in the rusty tin bathtub.

  Red. The red seal meant money for food, the supplies that were precious and expensive at the market, like candles and shoes. It meant living just a smidge better than in a shack with boards from an old rowboat as walls.

  Determination burned and my mind raced. I could do it. I was Pa's apprentice, the only other living person in Sky Harbour allowed to use his pencils and tools. Maybe I could finish the map and get Winna a real pair of shoes, ones without scuffmarks and floppy soles?

  I quickly rolled the paper into a tube and dragged the red hair band from my hair to tie it with. Heart thumping in the chilly darkness, I snuggled down onto the lumpy, rickety bed, the paper tube sandwiched between the wall and me. I'd keep it secret and surprise Pa and Winna.

  My eyes drifted closed, and my mouth twitched up in a smile that I hadn't had the heart to use in forever. Smiles were rare at Sky Harbour, as rare as hope.

  Sunlight brightened behind my eyelids, and I bit back a groan. Morning already. For a frantic moment, I scrabbled for the tightly rolled bit of paper, but relaxed when it crinkled comfortingly beside my upper arm.

  “Callia! Hurry, I got school,” Winna bellowed from somewhere to my left, which, in the two room shack, meant the bathroom. Great.

  “Winna, I need to pee,” I called over my shoulder as I hopped barefooted across the plank floor. The cold air was even worse on the floor, and I'd not slept in my stocking socks again. Reality had warred with practicality often—those socks were the only ones left, and I needed them for daylight hours. Cold feet was the price. “Hurry it up!”

  “Quit your yelling. I'm done.” Winna emerged, her dark red curls tamed into impressive ringlets that bounced precociously in a cascade down her shoulders and back. Her goggles, wedged atop her head like a headband until they were needed to ward off the stiff sea wind, had gathered her massive amount of hair and held it back from her porcelain face and huge china blue eyes.

  Her dress was another story, however.

  “Oh, Winna, your shirtwaist!” I sighed and fought the urge to cross my legs as I bent to fix her pale green shirt. It was twisted beneath the laced bodice and half-untucked from the not so cleverly patched skirt. With a few strategic tugs, the shirt and bodice righted itself, laces and all, and the skirt held its own to defy gravity, which wanted to pop apart every worn seam.

  Winna fixed, I raced into the bathroom and did my business at last. I then pulled my own dress from the lopsided metal hanger and flung the entire ruffled mess over my head. I barely had to wriggle to get it to sit right. My body was a stick with no boobs, hips, or butt to fill it out proper. The dark blue dress was simple, thankfully, with a quick lace up bodice and only a few obviously off colored patches to ruin the tiers of ruffles that swooped from the center of my waist down toward the back, where a hideous bow graced my ungraceful butt.

  Just in time, Pa emerged from his pile of tattered, dusty maps, drool soaking the collar of his worn red long johns and suspenders limp at his waist. For a long moment, he stared at Winna and me as if he was trying to place names with faces, and my sister and I traded worried glances.

  “Pa, I'm taking Winna to school. I'll be back after I see what kind of work we got today.” I eyed him and scooped up the red-stamped map.

  Pa only nodded, his eyes glazed. “Sure, sure,” he mumbled and sank back down at the tilted board table. The pile of maps ruffled and crackled beneath his arms as he hunched over again, not caring that he was wrinkling the very things he loved.

  “Come on, we need to hurry. I'll ask the healer about Pa. Maybe he's just sick.” I grabbed Winna's hand and towed her toward the door. It was an impressive door, too impressive for our warped, rotting hut. It had been the door of a great ship once, a big metal boat that our grandfather had found beneath the harbour. He'd been able to free the door and its locking mechanism and bring it ashore. Since the law is finders, keepers, he kept that door and used it as the front door of his home.

  I grunted my thanks when Winna let go of my hand to help me turn the giant metal wheel that unlocked the heavy steel door. It was overkill, our door, but a family treasure, and one of the few things that kept us in good standing with the citizens of Sky Harbour. Screeching metal on metal pierced our ears as the heavy, circular wheel slowly scraped into motion under our combined effort. The gears ground and turned, and the iron bolt slowly freed itself from the doorjamb.

  There’s need to state the obvious that the wooden doorjamb, rotten and warped, wouldn't hold the bolt, right?

  Winna made it to school just in time. I left her scrambling into her desk with the dozen or so other kids and hurried down the cobbled street toward the sea. The narrow path hugged the cliffs above the harbour in hair-raising switchbacks. I needed to find Marin, and the only place he'd ever be was at the wharf with the rest of his crew.

  Marin and I go way back, so far so that he's not only my only friend, but my best friend. It didn't matter that he was the Fisher King's son, and I the Map Maker's daughter, we figured real fast that we got along and had each other's backs.

  I strained to see the wharf far below. The stiff wind stung my eyes, making me wish I’d remembered my goggles. Not that I could ever find them. It was so far that people scurried like tiny mice. I grinned and stumbled around a tight corner. Marin would find that thought funny, and the thought of his mischievous grin made me smile to myself. The cobblestones bit at the thin soles of my last pair of shoes and my grin slipped. My fingers tightened around the rolled up page. I needed to finish what Pa had started.

  I rounded the last bend and broke into an unladylike run. Well, best I could manage in the heavy skirt and laced bodice. I caught more than a few askance glances, both at my grimy boots and my hatless hair that was now a tangled banner of brown curls gone stiff with the salty sea air.

  “Marin! Marin!” I ducked under the railing gating off the heaving and rolling docks from non-fisherman and darted down the wet boardwalk. I crossed through a wide shadow, one of many that speared the land and sea around us.

  I barely glanced up at the massive stone pillar. It and its brothers were like the sun to us, constant and unchanging with their rusty gears and flywheels, the sections of train tracks perched atop, ready to twist and turn into place each night at Clockstrike. I often wondered why the tracks topple didn't off the top, so heavy and solid they seemed for their towering pillars.

  “Marin, blast it all, where are you?” I wheezed and slipped on the swaying dock. My thin boots were no match for the damp wood and my stockingless feet were already soaked.

  Something tall and big darted in front of me, and I bit back a startled squeak. My boots skidded on the wet boards and my arms cartwheeled futilely in an effort to keep my balance.

  “Hell, Callia, you're going to fall in, running here!”

  Broad hands clamped down on my upper arms and halted me with a jolt at the same time Marin's rushed words reached my ears.

  “I was looking for you,” I gasped and made a desperate grab for his arms as my feet
threatened to slide sideways on me again. Warm fingers tightened and held me firmly. “Didn't you hear me?”

  “I heard you, half the town heard you.” Marin chuckled and rolled his sea green eyes at me.

  I resisted the urge to turn to see if everyone I'd rushed past had halted to stare in horror at me.

  “Is it bad?” I leaned closer, now having to look way up at him in order to whisper. When had he grown so tall?

  “Nah, they just rolled their eyes at you and left shaking their heads,” Marin's serious tone twisted into a smirk.

  I smacked his shoulder. Well, as high as I could reach anyways, and cast a frown at him.

  “What is it?” Marin's grin vanished when I didn't join his smirking teasing. His green eyes grew serious and his mouth thinned. Protective, loyal Marin had replaced the joking one.

  “Two things really. Pa is acting odd, and I found a work order he'd failed to finish, a red one!” I said and blinked as the words rushed from my mouth. Tears threatened to rush from my eyes. It was the salty wind, that's it. The wind was a constant, a nag that knocked down shacks, stole drying laundry, and put tears in our eyes.

  And, dang it, I'd forgotten my goggles again.

  “Wait, a red request? And your Pa hadn't finished it?”

  Marin's large hands vanished from my arms, and I stumbled to stay upright. I watched mutely as he dragged his fingers through his shaggy brown hair and stifled a grin when it stayed put after his fingers had left. Salty wind indeed.

  “Marin, if I finish the request and turn it in, we'd get paid,” I swallowed and dropped my eyes.

  Marin's eyes had gone from shocked to worried and had pinned on me like his spear pinned a Sail Fish. He knew, better than anyone else, how Pa, Winna, and I were struggling. He knew that I had to finish Pa's work order, or we'd starve this winter, plain and simple. Marin often smuggled fish to us after his father, the Fisher King, had left the wharf for the night. But should he be caught, he'd be in trouble and possibly banned from apprenticing. Jobs were inherited, run by families, and the law was clear on trade rules. Fair trade, or no trade at all.