A joke was said, and Farris pretended to laugh along as he began unrolling a measure of bacum, tapping the residue into his pipe. As he did, he felt a small prod at his elbow from behind.
“Hey, friend, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
Farris turned to face a fat, bearded Human seated right behind him. He was leaning back to whisper into Farris’s ear, but kept his eyes focused forwards, still locked in conversation with his own group.
“You better put that away, before one of the officers sees.”
Two. Farris smiled as he reached for a light in his other pocket. This is too easy. He held the pipe in his mouth and struck the match in cupped hands.
“Oi! What the fuck do you think you’re at?”
Another crewman, a Human, now stood across the table, pointing a quivering finger at Farris’s pipe. “You trying to get us all killed?”
Farris paused. Three.
A thick hush fell onto the room. Even the officers about to leave stopped in their tracks. One of them, with blue and gold stripes over his shoulders, approached the man.
“What is your name and station, sailor?”
The third spy hesitated. “Fenían. Fenían Malroy, sir. Mechanic.”
The officer took a step closer. “And how long have you been a mechanic of this ship?”
“Just… just under a year, sir.”
“How much under a year?” The officer’s voice grew louder. “Eleven months? Six months? Three? Two?”
“Ten. Ten months, sir.”
“Ah,” said the officer, turning away to face the rest of the crew, still sitting in shocked silence. “And in those ten months, Malroy, how many times have you seen the inside of the engine room?”
There was a scatter of nervous laughter, as if some crewmen didn’t realise the gravity of the situation. Farris did, but he laughed along anyway.
The officer stepped right up to the spy, staring him down and leaving barely an inch between their faces.
“Are you not who you say you are?” he rasped. “Are you not Fenían M—”
Farris often considered himself an agent of chaos. When there were too many factors to consider, too much thinking to be done, he’d ruffle up some feathers, cause some disorder, and rely on his own instinct and improvisation from there. It had worked before with the Guild, and many times back in the Dustworks. However, nothing could have prepared him for the chaos that erupted there and then, thousands of feet in the sky aboard The Glory of Penance.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a man dressed in blue overalls leapt up and grabbed the officer from behind. Before anyone had a chance to react, the attacker took a knife and opened the officer’s throat from ear to ear.
The female mage was the first to scream, as the officer fell with his white shirt stained with a spray of speckled blood. Some men jumped from their seats, others dived towards the murderer. Amidst more roaring and shouting, two Simians climbed across the table and wrestled Malroy to the ground. The black Simian Farris had identified as an agent joined the fray. A glass whizzed by Farris’s ear, smashing against another Simian’s face.
He turned and saw the white knight unsheathe his sword, charging towards the murderer who stood fighting another pair of Human crewmen.
Suddenly, Farris found himself knocked to the floor. Looking up, he saw the fat, bearded agent crouching over him, and felt cold steel against his throat.
“I don’t know what you were planning, rat, but I’m gonna make sure you regret it.”
In a flash of light and a burst of flames, Farris was free. The bearded agent rolled across the floor on fire, screaming as his life burned away. Farris got to his feet, and another ball of fire flew past, narrowly missing a now standing Fenían Malroy before it erupted against the wall.
What does he think he’s doing? A pair of brawlers stood and charged towards the Pyromancer. The boy yelled, and streams of fire poured from his hands, engulfing the two men and lighting up the floor beneath them.
“Chester!”
Farris looked down to see Eoghan, crawling across the floor, his face covered in blood.
“Chester… run, warn the captain. We need to land… engines… right below us.”
Farris sprinted across the room without hesitation, the wooden floor already starting to burn. He pushed open the door and made for lower deck.
“Fire!” he yelled through thick smoke, hoping those up in the hull would hear. “Fire in the mess room!”
He tore down the stairs in a single swing, but the ship violently heaved as he did so, sending him stumbling to the floor. A Simian engineer standing at the hull’s entrance yelled down to him.
“What the hell is going on up there?”
“There’s a fire,” Farris rasped. “The mage, I —”
“Tell the captain that we need to descend.” The engineer’s voice was incredibly calm. “We can use gas from above to repel the fire, but we’ll lose altitude. Hurry!”
Farris turned and ran as the engineer bellowed commands at others in the engine room, but the crackling flames raging overhead quickly drowned out his voice.
The ship rocked again as Farris approached the bridge. He pounded on the door with both fists, and it opened almost immediately. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Get in! Quick!”
Next thing Farris knew, he was in a room unlike the rest of the ship. Brilliantly white floors and walls surrounded him, and a huge window looked out over beautiful green hills and mountains below. An assortment of switches and machines filled the room, with several men and Simians tending to them frantically.
