A red-haired man in the white plate-armour of a knight pushed past and swore at Farris, shoving a rolled parchment into Eoghan’s hands.
“Three,” he grunted, and made his way up into the ship. Although he appeared to be dressed for battle, a heavy white cape hung over the knight’s shoulders, gathering dust and sand as it dragged along the wooden planks. The three interlocking circles of the Trinity shimmered like sunlight from his back. He walked with an arched back, broad shoulders swaying with each step.
This one is no stranger to attention.
Two more Humans, a man and a woman, followed the knight up the ramp. The woman was dressed in fine silks, clear and white as the few cotton clouds that remained in the sky. Farris could tell that she was beautiful, as far as Human aesthetics were concerned, and even caught himself staring at the way her silks swayed with the movement of her hips. He didn’t get a good look at the other man, apart from his hooded cloak, deep and crimson.
“I don’t like the look of that.”
A Simian stood at Farris’s side, pointing at the red mage.
“Bad enough the Church has us take them on board,” he whispered, “but a Pyromancer? He puts one finger in the wrong place, and the gas will burn us straight out of the sky.” He cursed loudly as he strolled up the gangway after them.
Farris smiled as he painted a mental picture of the Simian: short and stocky with broad shoulders and thick arms covered in coarse black hair, darker than the other Simian crewmen. He didn’t wear a shirt, just loose grey trousers and opened-toed sandals.
One.
Once Farris committed the spy to memory, he stood up straight and walked into the ship, mimicking the knight’s confident gait. He took one last glance back at Cruachan; the city was stirring awake for the coming day. The people would soon learn about the attack on the king, and perhaps they’d demand the Crown strike back. Someone would find the body of Chester, too, but Farris would be far away by the time the City Guard could pretend to care.
He stood in the landing deck, with two hallways stretching out in both directions. On the opposite wall, a huge iron door opened and two Simians in blue overalls climbed in, their forearms stained black from coal. Farris gave a quick glance at the door before it closed. It led to one of the engine-carts on the airship’s exterior. The two Simians closed the door over, chatting idly as they bolted it shut. They walked past Farris towards a pair of double doors leading down to the stern of the ship. Farris managed to steal a peek through these doors as they opened, confirming his initial instinct that they lead to the main engine room.
A spiral staircase lay before him, twisting upwards onto the second deck. Overhead, the red mage and his female companion reached the final steps, and Farris managed to get a better look at his face.
He’s young. Surely too young to have graduatedfrom the Academy.
Mages couldn’t join the Academy until they were fifteen years of age and would usually study there for a minimum of four years. In his investigations of the Church, Farris had learned that this was almost always the case.
Except for the most extreme of circumstances.
“Ah, it’s always tragic when one as lovely as that takes the cloak!”
Eoghan patted Farris on the back, his eyes fixed on the woman in white. “So, Chester, you know where you’re kipping then?”
He had no idea, but Farris nodded in the direction of the white mage, who giggled softly as the Pyromancer helped her up the stair.
“I assume I’ll be bunking in with them?”
Eoghan laughed. “Oh, if only! Mister Sir and the mages are taking the royal suite for themselves. Yours is the one closest to the bridge, on the left.”
Farris would have asked for more information, but it was safer to go on alone to find his room. All it would take was a single misplaced question for him to be outed as an imposter.
Since he wasn’t an engineer, or even accustomed to air travel, the rest of the ship did not meet Farris’s expectations. The gondola’s interior was grubby, like any sea-ship designed without catering to the impressions of passengers. Plain sheets of grey steel made up the ceiling; they almost grazed the top of Farris’s head as he walked through. Long timber planks lined the floor, splintered and stained, creaking under his footsteps as if threatening to suddenly snap and send him falling into the water below. Farris shuddered at the thought of being hundreds of feet up in the air, with the same floor separating him from miles of empty sky.
Other men and Simians passed him without paying him much mind, though he had to stop more than once to let a passer-by shimmy past through the cramped corridor. Both walls on either side had heavy iron doors, raised a full foot above the ground. Farris glanced inside one left slightly ajar, which led into a tiny room full of half a dozen bunks bound to the wall.
The ship has a large crew. It would probably take an average airship just under a day to travel from Gorán in the south all the way up to the Elis Point. A journey of that length certainly wouldn’t warrant a bed for every person on board….
But The Glory of Penance wasn’t designed for flights this short, Farris remembered, looking back at the main door that was now shut closed to the city outside.
Eoghan called down the corridor to Farris.
“See you in the mess hall at noon! And I’ll be bringing my own dice this time!” He disappeared off towards the engine room.
While nobody was looking, Farris paused to gather his bearings. This corridor connects the bridge to the engine room, with the crew’s cabins on either side. He closed his eyes, trying to picture how big the gondola was from the outside. If there was a cabin either side, of equal size, there wouldn’t be room for much else on this deck. The mess hall, then, was probably upstairs near the royal suite, but he had trouble imagining what either room would look like.
Cautiously, he hurried down the hallway. A crewman wouldn’t stop to examine each cabin, but Farris needed to learn as much as he could without seeming suspicious. Another door to his right was open. Without stopping, Farris caught a brief glimpse of the cabin inside. This time, the beds and furniture had been removed, the room filled entirely with boxes of uniform shapes and sizes.
Further down, on the left, another open door confirmed his initial suspicion. Half of the cabins were being used to store cargo. The other half were crammed with extra beds to host the crew.
No wonder Chester was so happy to get his own room.
The end of the corridor yielded a brass door, larger than the others, with a likeness of Penance and the Tower of Sin etched into its surface. Farris smiled. It wouldn’t be long until he got to see the city again.
Assuming that this led to the bridge, Farris pushed at a door adjacent to it. The cabin was smaller than the others but contained just a single bed and a bedside locker. A brass porthole with a hinged window looked out over the city, drawing in some of the sun’s morning rays. Farris closed the door behind him and sat on the bed.
Now I wait. The floor began to rumble softly beneath him. The dull whir of the engines drowned out all other ambient noise, and outside, the docks began to crawl away. Some people from the shore waved and chased after the ship as it gradually gained speed. Farris thought it only appropriate to wave back.
The sound of the engines amplified significantly, and Farris’s weight shifted as the ship rose upwards. The scene outside quickly began to fall away, but Farris felt as if his stomach wanted to stay grounded. Fighting the urge to gag, he grabbed the window ledge, looking outside at the buildings shrinking in size, with acres of farmland surrounding the city like hundreds of tiny patches on a quilt. A wisp of white mist grouped at the glass, followed by another, and then the sight was shrouded by a sea of pale clouds. The ship began to slowly level out, and Farris’s insides adjusted to the momentum.
He lay down on the bunk and pulled a tiny brass watch from his pocket. He propped it upright on his pillow.
Four hours, he reminded himself, as his eyelids grew heavy. Four hours before my final performance as Farris, the double-agent of Cruachan.
***
Farris slept for a typically irregular few hours as the ship sailed over Tulcha and the Woodlands, following the Godspine north towards the Clifflands. He woke to check the time at intervals, plunging in and out of a deep sleep until the clock face read noon.
He dreamt he was there during the Fall of Sin. He and the surviving Simians from Móráin’s Conquest had come together to build a great tower, a feat of Simian engineering and ingenuity to dwarf the so-called achievements of the Gods. According to the teachings of the Church, once the tower reached a height greater than Mount Selyth to the south, the Lord Seletoth caused the earth to shake, sending the tower crumbling to the ground. In his dream, Farris was the one who placed the final stone when Lord Seletoth Himself appeared before them. This tower shall crumble, he said, each word burning through Farris’s sleeping mind like wildfire. For it is nothing more than a manifestation of Sin. The voice echoed as a jarring discordance in his ears. When it falls, your kind will be forced to live forever in its rubble, as this shall be your Penance….
With a jolt, Farris woke, his heart racing as sweat pumped out from every pore.
“Penance,” he muttered, trying to recall the fleeting details of his dream. The Fall of Sin had occurred over three hundred years ago, but with the Silverback’s recent actions, it was certainly on everyone’s mind once again.
Despite the deepness of his slumber, Farris had woken just in time for lunch. Perhaps the Light of the Lady is still on my side.
When he stepped outside, the corridor was empty. He guessed that the crew were all up in the mess room. He walked quickly down the hallway past the ship’s entrance. A large window on the door revealed a surreal sea of clouds, rolling out to the horizon where silver met sapphire in the distance. Just below, a flock of birds flew along the side of the ship, delta in formation. It was a strange sensation, to be flying so high, with such speed, and not feel the wind in his face. It’s not all that different from a steamboat, really. For a moment, this amusing thought was enough to make him forget about all the thousands of feet beneath his own two.
He climbed the steel staircase and emerged onto another deck, wider than the last. The centre of the ceiling curved downwards with the shape of the hull above. Several rope-ladders dangled from trapdoors and swayed gently as the ship rocked back and forth.
They must lead up to the ship’s gasworks. He craned forwards to see inside.
“Excuse me… sir? Do you know where the food is being served?”
Startled, Farris turned to see the young Pyromancer from before. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing two skinny arms that Farris imagined he could snap in half with little effort. A mass of unkempt tangles and curls sat upon his head, like a black mop. In contrast, there was a bright freshness to his face, with skin smooth and clear like a marble sculpture.
This one knows comfort. The woman in white and the knight joined them, the latter in a fouler humour than before.
“The mess room is this way, begging your pardon,” said Farris enthusiastically, beckoning the three in the direction he guessed the food was being served. They walked under the hanging ladders, and Farris caught sight of the ship’s huge stomach above. Another engineer in blue swiftly climbed between two massive gas ballonets, shapeless and grey like the clouds outside.
