Chapter 15 #2
It was too soon to make a judgement, and Amaya wasn’t sure what she believed. But she was eager to find out, and she held all of Cam’s hopes close to her heart as she took everything in.
Once they were in the thick of the city, she could almost forget she was in the sky.
Except she could never forget.
The stars felt so much nearer, and though her feet were on solid ground, the vaguest sensation of movement remained. Or perhaps it was a lack of movement she was feeling, after days on an airship.
“That’s one of the old relic factories from the Sky Rush,” Mouse said, pointing to a large brick building topped with smokestacks. It was falling into disrepair, some of the bricks graying and crumbling at the corners, but it wasn’t abandoned; several scraggly children still ran about.
Mouse answered Amaya’s question before she could ask.
“It’s an orphanage now. My brother Lyle and I spent some time in a similar one. Erebar isn’t as well-funded, though, what with the lack of natural resources. Like I said.”
Amaya squinted at the building. At the children with their bare feet and dirty clothes.
“It doesn’t look well-funded.”
“Well, the ones in Aerion are nicer. But all things considered, Vaelstead is in pretty good shape.”
“Oh.” Amaya’s eyes lingered on the orphanage as they passed, getting the impression that she and Mouse had very different ideas of what constituted passable living conditions.
Again, her thoughts flashed to Cam and his tirades about the injustices the sky cities faced at the hands of Veridian smugglers, who prevented fair trade.
“Are any of the factories still in operation?”
“I think there’s one near the Institute. But there’s not enough Aether left in the atmosphere to support more, so a lot of them have been repurposed.”
Amaya didn’t understand. One relic factory was hardly a monopoly. It hinted at a crippling supply-and-demand issue, not price-gouging like the politicians claimed. Could it be both?
Or had Cam been right?
The wide walkways condensed into side streets, the tall buildings shrinking into lively dive bars and restaurants with lightbulbs strung across the paths. Nothing looked especially well-maintained, and it was a far cry from Amaya’s wealthy neighborhood. But it didn’t feel lawless or scary.
It felt alive.
Their destination was The Drunk Captain, a rowdy pub tucked in a narrow street. Whooping and hollering emanated from halfway down the street, coupled with . . . shattering glass?
“We’re going there?” she asked Mouse, gesturing to the sign.
Mouse grinned, hazel eyes alight with excitement.
“It’s the best. You’ll see.”
Lockwood pushed through the swinging doors and the Maelstrom crew stepped inside, their large group crowding the doorway. The pub stretched two stories high, with a curling wooden staircase and a balcony packed with tables and chairs making up the second floor.
The first floor was just as crowded, with dozens of crammed, uneven tables, mismatched chairs, and an even more crowded bar.
Laughter and ale flowed freely in and over the rims of colored glasses, and in one corner, an old man sat at a dilapidated piano, playing a spirited tune that made Amaya long for her own baby grand back home.
But despite the assault on her eyes and ears, what Amaya noticed most was the smell.
Savory aromas belonging to fried fish, crisped bacon, and browned butter scented the air, making Amaya’s mouth water.
There wasn’t a salad or paltry portion in sight.
The warm, indulgent atmosphere lightened the burden on Amaya’s heart and melted the knots in her shoulders . . . and made her stomach growl.
They had to push together a few tables in the corner and squeeze in so everyone could sit together. Amaya sat between Mouse and Edmund and across from Lockwood, who was taking his promise to keep a close eye on her quite literally.
Shortly after they sat down, a heavyset man with a grease-smudged apron and a peg leg sticking out of his trousers appeared. He cackled as he plodded over to the table and clapped Lockwood’s shoulder, grinning from ear to ear. His name tag read “Rory” in sloppy, capitalized letters.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite motley crew!” he declared, plucking a pen and notepad from his apron. “What brings you lot to town?”
“Supplies and repairs,” Lockwood said. “How’s business, Rory?”
“Oh, good, good. Just the usual ruckus,” Rory said with a nod.
At that moment, a drunkard on the second level got a little too rowdy for his own good, lifting a chair to whack his neighbor. He lost his balance and fell against the rail, the chair plummeting to the ground floor and cracking into pieces.
Amaya jumped as Rory shook his finger at the culprit and hollered, “You’re gonna pay for that!”
Laughter seemed an inappropriate response to the destruction of his property, so Amaya covered her mouth with her hand to subdue the giggle that escaped. Rory caught it anyway, turning his attention to her.
“Well, well. Who might this beauty be?” he asked. “New addition to the crew?”
“This is Amaya Sinclair,” Lockwood said. “She’s visiting with us from Sorrento.”
“Sorrento? You don’t say. We don’t get many bottom—er, Sorrento folk—in these parts.”
Amaya wasn’t sure what Rory had been about to call her, but his smile remained warm and inviting.
“Welcome to Vaelstead, Miss Amaya. You’re missing a few, eh? Where’s the inner circle?” Rory scanned the table for the absent crew members.
“Aye—Sebastian, Serena, and the captain won’t be joining us tonight,” Lockwood said.
“Ah, those little shits.” Rory chuckled. “I’d better see ‘em in here tomorrow, y’hear?”
Amaya raised her eyebrows, surprised and amused to hear someone talk about Lord Lexington and his “inner circle” that way. She desperately wished she could see his reaction.
“I’ll do my best,” Lockwood promised. “Round of ale for the table?”
“Coming right up.”
A few minutes later, a young woman wove her way through the crowded tables toward theirs, balancing a tray full of mugs. She began distributing ale to the eager pirates, most of whom began chugging the beverage.
Amaya studied the golden liquid with intrigue, turning the mug around and lifting it to her nose. It smelled sour, but the notes of caramel gave her hope it wouldn’t be entirely disgusting.
Cautiously, Amaya took a sip.
Oh. It was not good.
She set the mug back down gracefully, resisting the urge to crinkle her nose at the taste. Ugh. She’d have to suffer through.
Mouse caught her distaste despite her efforts to hide it and laughed. “Gross, right?” He took a sip of his anyway, shuddering as he swallowed. “In a good way, though.”
“How can something be gross in a good way?”
“I don’t know, it just is.”
“Are you even old enough to be drinking that?”
“‘Course.” Mouse gave her a perplexed look and took another swig.
Amaya caught Lockwood’s eye across the table.
“The sky cities don’t enforce a drinking age,” he said, guessing at her question.
“That seems a little irresponsible,” Amaya said.
Lockwood shrugged. “To those of us from Veridian, perhaps. But there are relatively few joys in the sky cities, and the general attitude is to serve anyone who can pay.”
Amaya couldn’t pretend to understand that logic, but neither could she relate to poverty. Not everyone could afford to refuse a paying customer, even if the ethics of the sale seemed questionable.
“You’re from Veridian as well?” she asked Lockwood, raising her eyebrows.
“I am. Sorrento, in fact. I was a Royal Investigator until about five years ago.”
So that was why his blue jacket looked so familiar. He’d just torn the patches off.
“Really? What made you come here?”
Lockwood’s lips twisted in a wry smile as he tossed back his ale. “It’s a gross oversimplification, but let’s call it disillusionment.”
“Wow.” Amaya looked down the row of pirates, wondering where they’d all come from. Each of the six pirates they’d lost the other day had stories—the rest of them did, too. “What about the rest of you?”
Her eyes landed on Edmund first. However capable he was as an artificer, he didn’t seem like a pirate. Not the way the others did. She studied him thoughtfully. “You’re from Sorrento, too, aren’t you?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What gave it away?”
“Takes one to know one.” Actually, it was the slight, proper lilt in his accent that matched hers—matched Lockwood’s, too, now that she thought about it. She didn’t know how she’d missed it before.
“I suppose.” Edmund shrugged. “Technically, I’m not from Sorrento. My family is from Talbot, a few hours away. I studied cartography at the university, but got expelled several years back—completely unjustified, of course.”
“I’m sure.”
“So, I elected to shame my family name even further by skipping town and studying relics at the Institute here. They don’t know it, though. They think I’m working as a cartographer in Derry and can’t be bothered to visit.”
Derry was about as far as one could get from Sorrento, on the opposite side of the country.
“Geez. Why’d you get expelled?” Amaya asked.
“Not even the captain knows that, princess.”
“And you?” Amaya nudged Mouse, who was so engrossed with his recently delivered pork chops that he barely heard her.
“Huh?” He glanced up, eyes wide.
“How’d you actually end up on the Maelstrom, from Erebar?”
“Oh.” Mouse swallowed hard. “Well, um, you know the gold ring the captain wears?”
“Let’s pretend I do.”
“It’s a relic called Sixth Sense. It lets him dodge bullets and stuff.
I picked it off of him about two years ago when the Maelstrom came to Erebar.
I didn’t know what it was, or who he was—it took him about five seconds to realize it was gone, but he was impressed I got it off him at all.
And I was on the streets at the time, so when he offered me a position here instead of, you know, killing me, it was a no-brainer. ”
Amaya’s lips pulled into a smile at the story, able to envision all of it in her mind’s eye. The Maelstrom was Mouse’s second chance.
Driven by an insatiable curiosity to learn their stories, she launched into a full-blown interrogation of the crew.
Ozzie was from a sky city called Whistleton, where he’d barely been scraping by as a dishwasher before making a bid for the Maelstrom’s open position following the former cook’s untimely death.
Ozzie’s skills, formerly unnoticed and unappreciated, prompted Dorian Duaric to fund his education in exchange for ten years of service.
Ozzie accepted and had now been with the Maelstrom for fifteen years, with no intention of leaving.
Ford and Crowe persistently ignored Amaya’s queries, but Lockwood suggested Lexington had earned the brothers’ loyalty by saving one of their lives in an Aereasead fighting ring. Allegedly, he’d done it to make sure one of Graven’s thugs didn’t win. Now, Ford and Crowe were the Maelstrom’s thugs.
Everyone’s story was fascinating, giving Amaya a glimpse into walks of life she’d never known existed. She couldn’t help noticing how each man lit up when she turned to them, as if no one had asked them about themselves in years, or thought their personal histories worth recounting.
“How about you, miss?” Lockwood asked.
“You know how I got on the ship,” Amaya replied, sipping her ale.
“Yes, but there’s more to you than that.”
“Oh.” Amaya thought about it. Her life felt dull compared to their grand stories.
The most interesting thing about her was the necklace she’d come with.
“Um, my father is the Lord Mayor of Sorrento. We live on this big estate called Goldridge, just the two of us and the staff. I have a dog named Daisy, and I play piano a lot, and . . . oh, I study music at the University of Sorrento. I was supposed to graduate next month, and then I’ll probably get married . . .”
Her stomach twisted thinking about that, and again when she realized how little Victor had crossed her mind since she’d been gone. She considered telling them about Camden, but didn’t think she could without devolving into a puddle of tears.
“Who are you marrying?” Mouse asked, aghast. “You never told me about that!”
Blood rushed to Amaya’s cheeks. “Well, I . . . it’s not technically set in stone yet,” she said, fidgeting. “He’s a lieutenant in the Royal Fleet. My father arranged it.”
Edmund wrinkled his nose. “Gross. He’s not looking for you, is he?”
“I’m sure he is.”
Victor had probably relished the chance to perform such a service for her father, and she knew that fleetmen would be on the case. The problem was, they had no trail to follow.
Not wanting to discuss it anymore, Amaya took another sip of her drink—it was growing on her—and changed the subject.
“What about the captain? How’d he become Duaric’s successor?” She knew bits and pieces of his story, but there were still some rather large gaps in her understanding.
Mouse opened his mouth to respond, but Lockwood held up a hand at the boy and smiled in his pleasant, courteous way.
“It’s not our place to tell another man’s story,” he said. “You’ll have to ask him yourself.”