And she was gone.
Talis sat, listening to angry footsteps stomping off toward the companionway and up to the weather deck.
Sophie’s folio sat abandoned on the table in front of her, now rotated right-side up in Talis’s view. She’d never once looked at the design, though Sophie had offered to show her on several occasions. But it had been a while, hadn’t it? At some point she’d declined enough times that Sophie stopped asking.
Talis flipped it open and stared at the folded sheet of paper. It felt as though she was about to read Sophie’s personal journal.
The paper had been folded and unfolded so many times that the pencil lines across the softened creases had faded away. It opened up to a full sheet the width of Talis’s arm span. In some places the pencil lines bounced, jagged, a result of Sophie laying it out to work across the planks of the deck. It was too big for most of the ship’s flat surfaces. The table in Talis’s cabin would have been better for working on it. If she’d realized, she might have offered.
Talis pursed her lips, stopping herself shy of a low whistle. The design was something else.
She leaned forward to read Sophie’s small notations—mechanical specs, notes on operation of the winches and articulated flaps. Comments on the ways in which it differed from the standard designs. The construction of the engine, an exploded view of custom components and a streamlined body, took up the top left quarter of the page. Every inch of the paper was covered, as though someone had spilled a box of gears and springs and it landed in a sort of inspired order.
It would take the entire sum from their new Yu’Nyun contract to pay for something this elaborate. The shares Sophie was currently owed would make for a deposit, maybe, but she’d have to work the rest of her life to get it finished.
“Captain!”
Talis jumped, feeling guilty. But Sophie’s voice was sounding on the all-ship, hollow and tinny.
She crossed the room to the polished brass intercom panel and pushed the button to reply, dial set to the same all-speaker override so wherever anyone was they’d hear it, from the lowest cargo hold to the weather station atop the lift balloon. “Here, Soph. What is it?”
“Hankirk’s on the move.” Tisker’s voice this time. The anxiety came through the line, as clear as if Wind Sabre’s comms were the high-fidelity crystal and copper Vein systems that Sophie had spec’d for her next ship.
Gods rot it. She left the channel open and returned to the table to stow Sophie’s drawing safely in the bulkhead cabinet so it wouldn’t go sliding across the table when they started to move. And they needed to move.
“You still see him?”
“No, Cap, sorry. I didn’t even see which way he went. Had my eye on someone else lurking near our berth, then I looked back up and he was gone.”
In large gulps, she swallowed the contents of both coffee mugs and secured them upside-down in the sink over the prongs of the dish rack.
“Forget it, Tisker, just stay sharp ’til the ramp’s up. Everyone else,” she commanded, hearing her voice echo back in a wave from the various speakers beyond the galley hatch. “We’re done. Up. Get some coffee in you if you need it, there’s fresh in the galley. We’re pushing out. Now.”
Subrosa’s dock manager wasn’t happy that they were jumping the schedule in the middle of the night after they’d already argued with him just hours before to accelerate it to early morning. His cheeks were red, and he stabbed at his clipboard with a short fat finger, so that Talis was dearly tempted to knock the docket out of his hands to illustrate how much she cared what it said. She restrained herself with valiant effort, instead trying to reason with him while her crew uncoupled Wind Sabre’s side of the dock connections. But reason seemed to have little effect on him, and she quickly lost her patience.
“You either get that rusting access open, or we’ll blast our way through it,” she told the portly man, pushing his precious clipboard back against his chest. She then turned away, hoping her bluster and her crew’s activity would scare him into complying. “Prep the forward cannons,” she ordered as she stalked back toward the gangway.
“Don’t you dare!” he called after her. “You’ll get your ship banned from this dock!”
Wind Sabre’s engines chuffed in short breaths and then purred to life. There was more than one harbormaster in Subrosa, and they competed for ships. This enclosed docking bay was the largest, but beyond that, the man’s threat held little sting. This was only the second time in all Talis’s years at the job that she’d ever sought out an interior berth for her ship. If she had to limit herself to the floating moorings or the undercity’s external scaffolding in the future, so be it.
“Fine, you number-crunching landlocked bastard,” she called back over her shoulder, projecting her voice so he could pick it up over the clanks and bangs of the dock equipment as his team bustled around their corner of the bay. “I’ll fasten my clamps elsewhere from here on out.”
She refused to glance back at him. Didn’t need to. The dock workers had hurried to help them push off. Their manager’s pride was none of their business. But making sure their equipment stayed functional for the next ship heading in, so they didn’t have to shut down the berth for repairs—that was their business.
The gantry pulled away, retracting the thick hose leading from the dock’s furnace lungs, and Wind Sabre exhaled her own steam. There was a slight ruffle in the canvas along the length of the lift balloon as the hot air supply transitioned, then the envelope went taut again.
Dug and Tisker made a deliberate show of
