Flotsam: Book One of the Peridot Shift, Second Ed.: The Peridot Shift, #1

Chapter 1

Talis descended toward the sparkling layer of trash below her feet. Generations of detritus, coated in frost, shifted slowly and caught the light. She hung in open skies, a tiny dark figure on an impossibly thin thread. Her airship, Wind Sabre , lurked in the shadow of a small island above her like the hoarbeasts that lurked in the garbage below. Around her, the shrapnel of Peridot’s tectonic crust peppered the skies, tiny islands not big enough to park a chair on.

She might have said the chance to do something reckless like this was half the reason she was in her line of work. But there was no one to bluff except her crew on the other end of the comm—Dug, Tisker, and Sophie—and she owed them more than words. She owed them a job that didn’t end up costing more than it paid. She owed them a ship that wasn’t in constant want of repairs. She owed them a ship worthy of being called a home.

A soft click sounded in the comm of her helmet, and Dug’s voice cut through the quiet sounds of her rapid heartbeat and quick breaths. The voice tube transmission made him sound small and far away. Progressing well, captain. How much farther do you need?

Talis unclenched her jaw to answer. I’d guess I’m just about halfway down. Can’t make out any details yet.

Understood. There is plenty of length on the winch. Her first mate’s voice was low and even, though his syllables were tight as a guitar string. Dug was worried.

The bulky descent suit didn’t make it any easier to see the view below her. It was a one-size-fits-all antique, big enough to wear over her clothes. Big enough that Dug—who towered above her and was thick with muscle—could have worn it, if he was so worried. It was designed to keep her body heat in, and it was most definitely doing that. The musty wool lining felt moist after the short time she’d had it on. Her breath fogged the glass dome that protected her from the thin air, even though she wore a scarf over her mouth. Yet her fingers were still getting stiff with the cold. She could have worn thicker gloves if she was just going down to strap up a large object to tow out. But this time her quarry was smaller than that, and thinner gloves provided better dexterity.

From this distance, the garbage below her looked deceptively beautiful. A lazy flow of icy shapes caught the green light from Nexus, and their reflected light sparkled through the fogging on her helmet. It wasn’t hard to imagine why there were so many stories about treasure down below.

And there was treasure down there. Or, reckless or not, she wouldn’t be dropping into it. The flotsam layer was where the dead went to be forgotten. Dead people. Dead ships. Dead technologies. Gravity trapped it all there. Kept it from dropping out of Peridot’s atmosphere on the bottom side and drifting off into the stars. Silus Cutter created the hoarbeasts centuries ago to prowl the frozen wreckage and clean things up a bit with their vicious, crunching jaws and fang-lined throats. Did her god intend for those beasts to prefer the frozen flesh of bodies to the wrecks? She wouldn’t ask if she got the chance; she was here for the latter and glad to have the chance.

If things went wrong, Talis would be on the menu, too. But the contract for this salvage made it worth the risk. She could make a lot of overdue repairs on Wind Sabre with the payoff. Her crew had been enthusiastic about the operation when she proposed it, knowing what kind of money a salvage might bring in. Better than the transport jobs she’d scrounged up of late. Not one of the trio had volunteered to make the descent, though.

You’re the reckless one, Cap, Tisker told her at the time. The cheeky, bronze-skinned helmsman got away with the comment. He always did. His crooked, infectious grin and sparkling, deceptively innocent eyes transformed every gibe into a morale boost.

Details emerged, just a couple lengths below Talis. Large shapes at first. Broken hulls of ships tangled in their own lift canvasses. A roof, a wagon. An old tree trunk. Anything organic or burnable should have been composted or used for fuel, not pitched over island edge. But those hadn’t always been the rules. Seventy-something generations back to the Cataclysm that fractured Peridot and the Re-Creation that made it what it was now. Seventy-something generations of garbage and waste swirled in the gravity trap. And down here, nothing ever decayed.

Soon she got close enough to see movement: the hoarbeasts pulling themselves across the wrecks, their undersides a chaos of tentacles. Their bodies flashed gray and silver in an imitation of the flotsam. They moved above and below the gravity line, scanning the field of garbage with cavernous eyes and probing the jetsam with sensitive, bobbing whiskers. Always in search of fresh additions to the flotsam layer. In search of food. In search of the dead.

And they would find them.

Mostly Cutter folk. Some Vein. Even a Rakkar or two. The Bone fed their dead to the ravens and kept the bones, but still ended up in flotsam. Usually lost with their ships. No Breakers, of course. Their population was finite and, as far as the ages since Re-Creation had proven out, didn’t die of natural causes.

If the hoarbeasts couldn’t find dead flesh, they’d be perfectly happy to accept the living.

Continuing to descend, Talis was far too aware of such things. Her brother had tormented her with stories of the monsters when she was a child, and she grew up convinced they clung to the bottom of her bed the way they latched onto the hulls of airships that flew too low, too close to flotsam. Convinced that their tentacles and their long, sharp teeth would find her in the dark.

In her forties now, and captain of a smuggling ship that had taken on many a perilous contract, she still didn’t sleep with her feet hanging off her mattress.

Almost there. Slow it down. She didn’t want to end up waist-deep in the flotsam. There was always the danger of the descent line catching on something sharp. Like teeth.

Aye, Cap. That was Tisker’s voice on the other end now. He relayed her orders to Dug somewhere out of range of the mouthpiece. Talis felt the feed of her line slow.

Thick as the trash was gathered, she could still see through it in spots. Dark beyond, with pinpricks of light, before the garbage would shift and close the view off again. Her throat tightened.

There. The bow of an airship. The familiar pointed shape jutted up from the surrounding mass, its aft sinking into the accumulated garbage. Tension bled from her muscles, and she resisted the urge to thank Silus Cutter, also her people’s creator, with a tug on the prayerlocks behind her left ear. No sense in loosening her grip on the descent line; the helmet’s dome was in her way, and besides, she wasn’t done yet. Nowhere near.

The hull’s dark green paint looked faded under a velvet coat of ice. But her name had been painted in white, nice and stark against the dark background. Talis held her breath until the glass sphere of her helmet cleared enough to make out M-P-R-E-S-S above the shape of an old sofa that had cozied up against the hull.

"Spotted it. The Emerald Empress." She pointed a finger in case any of them had a scope on her.

How much line do you need?

Talis sighed, and the glass fogged again. She spared herself a small curse.

"Afraid it’s more complicated. The wreck’s ahead of us. We came in a little late, looks like. You’ll need to reposition Wind Sabre."

Wanna come back up? I just put some coffee on.

She could barely feel her fingers. Of course she wanted to go back up.

No, just keep it steady as you can, please.

Aye, Cap.

And Tisker?

Aye, Cap?

Make sure you save me a cup.

She could just about hear his grin as he signed off the horn and returned to the helm. If the ship’s engines could run on coffee, it would nicely complete the crew’s dependence on the brewed beverage. Some of the ship’s strictest policies were on the matter of proper coffee etiquette. Topping the list: if you take the last of it before the glow pumpkins were full-on orange, you’d better be damned sure there was another pot put on to brew with haste.

Wind Sabre moved, and the descent line tugged her sideways. She leaned back to watch her ship and to move her neck against the crick that was settling in above her shoulder. The enormous pumpkins above, cultivated on stations spaced out across Horizon, glowed the deep purple of night. The gaseous pumpkins bobbed on the vines, their light reflecting off mica, garnet, and kyanite dust swirling around the stations’ cliffs. Though not as bright as the golden candescence of their day cycle, the nighttime glow was still enough to highlight the edges of nearby islands. And the edges of her airship’s contours.

Gliding in gentle loops through the shimmering motes, mantas fed off the duskfey that flitted in sparse clouds around the islands’ edges and the mites that nibbled the delicate flesh of the vines and fruit. Against the shadow of the island, their bodies glowed to match the brighter shape of the pumpkins. They were a barely visible flock of shadows zipping and zagging after their meals.

Innocent activity, no danger to her ship, but every shape that moved up there looped another knot of worry in her chest. Every movement in her periphery gave her a small jolt of panic. If she could have reached her prayerlocks, she would have.

If only she could reach her prayerlocks.

Not that Silus Cutter would approve of what they were doing, any more than an imperial patroller’s commanding officer. Perhaps better not to draw his attention just now.

The crew of Wind Sabre was no stranger to less-than-lawful work. They knew how to do their duties across the ship under stressful conditions. But carrying hidden contraband in their cargo while traveling normal courses through the same Trade Winds as everyone else was one thing. That was inconspicuous.

Hanging out far below Horizon altitude, hovering just above the flotsam—flotsam that was decreed the imperial government’s property until it spun out of Cutter skies again? Talis couldn’t think of a better definition for the word conspicuous.

Skies still clear up there? she asked, not for the first time.

Dug’s voice came back. Yes, captain. Sophie is on watch. No ships moving in the area, imperial or otherwise.

Talis watched the silhouette of Wind Sabre emerge from beneath the shadow of her hiding spot. The faded canvas of the ship’s lift envelope, stretched over the light framing ribs beneath, was black, as were its numerous patches. The smooth carrack hull was stained black. Shutters closed over the glass expanses of the great cabin—and even the ventral observation deck—to avoid reflecting light from any angle. All shipboard lanterns were doused.

An observer looking from the Horizon altitude might only see a slight shadow pass against the glitter of flotsam below. But from where Talis hung, Wind Sabre stood out from the skies, a dark form against the aquamarine and lavender pre-dawn light and the field of unmoving islands. Her forward and pectoral sails were furled tightly, and the only propulsion came from a pair of steel-sheathed turbines mounted to either side of the rudder.

Talis held her breath again, certain that if she could hear the hiss of the ship’s steam and the hot breath of her engines, someone else would, too. But the only sound in her suit was the creak of its leather when she craned her head and adjusted her grip on the line. Wind Sabre was silent at this distance.

Enough of that, captain. She let the breath out slowly through her mouth. She didn’t know why she was so worried, so tense. In her entirely unbiased opinion, her crew was the best airship crew alive. They knew what they were doing. There was plenty to worry about with regard to what she was doing.

Tisker navigated around the islands above. The impetus traveled down the line and caused Talis to spin slightly. She gripped her line tighter and turned her attention back to the Emerald Empress. Searched what she could see of it for movement. The Empress was still, as if she too held her breath in anticipation.

How is our course? Dug again.

Catching up nicely. Move a point or two bearing away from Nexus, and I should get my toe on it in a minute.

Captain.

Talis felt the course correction and saw her angle was good.

Speed on the wreck’s less than a half degree. Slow us down to match . . . Her toe touched the railing. "Now."

Delay from message to action was just right. Her movement synchronized with the clockwise spin of the flotsam layer. The line lowered her the last few feet to settle on the derelict galleon’s forward section. She unclipped the pin in her lead line.

Okay, good speed. I’m moving.

Be safe, captain.

Aye, Dug. Talk to you in a bit. She disconnected the voice tube from her helmet, cutting herself off from her crew, and took a cautious step down from the descent line, cutting herself off from escape.

Her boot slipped on the frost with her next step. The deck seemed to disappear beneath her feet. Her teeth clenched, her heart seized, and her arms flailed.

She caught the railing and clung to it like a wet cat to a dry branch.

It took a moment before her heart rate slowed and her throat loosened enough that she could curse herself for lack of care. If she landed on her backside, the deck’s steep angle would send her sliding into the flotsam that covered the aft end of the ship. That sort of commotion would send vibrations throughout the flotsam like a dinner bell.

She detached the grapple from her tool belt, fixed it to her lead, and hooked it around a decking brace. A couple hard tugs and it stayed attached. She fed out her line slowly, thankful for the thinner gloves.

Half-walking, half-sliding, and barely breathing, she let herself down to the deck hatch that would lead to the forecastle. The latch indicator dial read UNSEALED, but the frost had done the job as well as if it had been battened from within. Talis pulled a sally bar free of her heavy tool belt and risked the noise to chip both wood and ice away at the frame edge with its flat end. She gritted her teeth and strained against the ice’s grip on its hinges. Nothing.

Frowning, she surveyed the layer of flotsam just below the forecastle’s railing. Twisted bits of the ship’s collapsed lift balloon, the trailing reinforced lines, and jagged edges of other ruined trash. Hazardous to push through all that in her suit, and likely to get her line caught up in the slack of the ruined lift system. Worse, something sharp and unseen in that mess might sever it entirely and trap her in the tangle. Her crew would come looking for her, but she might freeze while she waited for them to realize something was wrong. If the hoarbeasts gave her time to freeze. Just thinking about it, she could imagine one lurking just beyond the railing, its tentacles reaching for her, its jaws widening.

But nothing appeared. As best as she could hear through her helmet, nothing moved out there. But little Talis had always felt the beasts moved only when she did, her heartbeat and her breathing in the dark of her bedroom masking their inevitable approach.

Thinking that hard about it would only invite the beast. She blinked hard to clear the paranoia (with little success) and looked up. Nothing felt good about being this far from her ship and crew, and without comms. But the skies were as free of threats as the flotsam around her. Wind Sabre was still alone up there.

She cursed the hoarbeasts, cursed the ice, and cursed the hinges. Flipping the bar around in her grip, she whacked the sally bar’s hammer end against the edge of the hatch. Frost flew off in chips, but the metal itself only dented. Flattened hinges wouldn’t rotate any better than frozen ones. She put the bar away and continued her litany of curses, now against herself for not coming more prepared.

There was a paraffin blowtorch on her belt, but it didn’t have a large tank. She’d prefer to save it in case she ran into a vault door below, but there was no use in having it if she couldn’t get that far.

She opened the torch’s valve and hit the striker. A small jet of blue flame popped to life. With the line wrapped around her elbow to keep it out of the way, she worked the torch back and forth over the frozen hinges with one hand and pulled on the stubborn hatch with the other.

The ice gave up its hold quickly, and Talis pushed the hatch open all the way.

Below, the murk of an unlit cabin. The hungry shadows of the unknown.

The lamp on her shoulder came to life at a flick of a toggle switch on her belt. She sat, dangled into the forecastle cabin. Nothing moved to seize the living bait. She took a big inhale, as though about to drop into a pool of water, then let herself down into the Emerald Empress’s dark interior.

There were a couple of possible ship designs that would have placed the great cabin at the bow, but she wasn’t that lucky. From the multitude of hammocks, this was clearly crew quarters. Something crunched under her boot, and she looked down. Her light fell across the pale, frozen wrist she had stepped on. She shuddered and tried to kick the body away, but frost had sealed it to the deck. The shuddering intensified. She closed her eyes, pretended she was anywhere else.

Anywhere not a cadaver-filled wreck at the bottom of the world’s gravity trap. Anywhere not inhabited by monsters that hungered for flesh. Anywhere with open skies and room to fly.

Anywhere with a hot tin mug of strong coffee.

Her breathing slowed. Her balance won the battle against the trembling in her limbs. Thoughts of her mission broke through like glow pumpkin vines, overtaking her fears of joining this frozen crew.

Because if the crew was still here, that meant the hoarbeasts were not.

Not yet, anyway.

Assuming the ring was with the Emerald Empress’s captain, and assuming the captain was in their quarters, Talis needed to make her way aft. After a self-indulgent look back up at the open skies above—still clear—she secured her line on a hammock cleat to keep it from rubbing on the edge of the hatch.

With a kick, the door swung out—or rather, down. The layer of loose garbage was thickest overhead, giving her clear space to rappel down the slope of the ship’s middle deck. To either side, over the railing, there was more to see of open skies than if she looked up. Shadows from the shifting debris crawled across the deck, only allowing a teasing dapple of light. She left her lamp on. Her breathing, it occurred to her, sounded a little uneven. From moving in this gods-rotted heavy suit, she told herself and laughed at the lie. It was nerves. Nerves and a very reasonable fear of spending the rest of a suddenly abbreviated life trapped in the flotsam.

She landed against the central deckhouse, sending a ripple of noise from the creaking ship and clattering garbage. The echoes ricocheted off the frozen field of trash above her. She stood, muscles tense, until they stopped. Nothing else moved or shifted, and she turned back to the cabin at the stern and its handsome wooden door. The great cabin.

Aftward, the frost thinned and disappeared. The humidity was low in the thin atmo here. No chance for freezing surfaces to collect the sparkling ice. Though her suit was even more cumbersome in the colder temperature, the extreme chill was a blessing in its own way. Hinges turning properly, the heavy door opened outward and fell back against the cabin wall. The impact sent echoes skittering across the ship again.

The regal wooden furniture of the great cabin was either bolted down or secured on ratcheting rails, but everything else had been rearranged by the deck’s sickening tilt. Bedding and personal items piled against the cabinets along the decking. The captain lay silhouetted against the wide window built along the stern, his head turned to one side. Only the glass separated him from the twinkling stars beyond. He was lying on his right arm, with his left hand out as though he’d attempted to brace against the tumble. The fingers splayed against the thick glass.

Talis let her line out to cross to the aft window. Tried not to look beyond the windowpanes. She was as skysure as any Cutter, and wanted little more than a clear view of sun and stars and Silus Cutter’s blessed wind in her sails, but the emptiness outside Peridot was something else entirely. Infinite, soulless, the vacuum beckoned to her. Not in the way Nexus beckoned to her, made promises that she would never be lonely again. No, this darkness beckoned with a threat to consume her.

She braced her feet against the frame of the window to avoid stepping on the glass, which already had a diagonal split running across it. Death pallor grayed the captain’s light skin and dulled its natural Cutter sparkle. Knotted prayerlocks were tangled around his head, of no help to him now. A cream-colored ribbon still looped around a few of them at the back of his neck. Must have come loose during whatever tragedy sunk the Emerald Empress.

His forehead had a blunt-force wound corresponding to the starburst center of the crack in the glass. Dark blood streaked his face.

Silus Cutter had at least granted the captain a quick death before he froze.

Lifting him up by his torso, she turned him over. His uniform, pale cream trousers and dark green jacket, was formal but still within the realm of contemporary fashion. The ship hadn’t sunk all that long ago.

His right hand was tucked into his jacket’s inside breast pocket. Reaching to protect his precious cargo in his final moment?

Talis fumbled with the stiff fabric to free his arm, sending a silent prayer to Silus Cutter that she was nearly finished here.

Frozen fingers were fixed around their prize. They’d have to be broken.

Talis wished she hadn’t eaten so recently.

The brittle joints snapped, and the icy digits broke off cleanly. The late captain made no complaint, but Talis felt guilt rise along with the bile in her throat. She forced them both back.

"Gods rot it." The curse came out with a fog of sour breath and crystallized in her scarf before it could collect on the glass of her helmet.

Pressed into the skin of his palm: an iron key. She wasn’t done yet.

She lifted the key by its embroidered cord and gently lowered the captain back to the glass. Crouched on the edge of the cabinet beneath the window and looked around the cabin.

In her own quarters back on Wind Sabre, she had several hidden compartments. Some were easier to find; those were the decoys. The less obvious were for her real valuables. Though the Empress was no smuggler’s vessel, chances were fair that this captain had been of a mind with her. She turned her shoulder lamp to shine it along the walls, and it went out.

Paltry light from the aft bank of windows, from distant stars, barely limned the edges of the unfamiliar cabin. In the darkness that crowded the rest of the room, panic found her like those hoarbeast tentacles she imagined in the dark of her childhood bedroom. The tentacles encircled her, be-stilling her heart, her breath, and a robust string of curses.

Fingers made sloppy by fear and cold, she fumbled with the power pack on her belt, flipping up its crank, spinning it under her palm. The bulb flickered after a moment and came back on. It took another few moments for her lungs to work again. Almost done, she promised herself, re-securing the crank. Look sharp.

There. A wall panel over the captain’s curtained bunk. A square, unnecessary seam in the bulkhead, revealed by the tilted angle of the drapes, cast a shadow that told her one side was raised higher than the other. She fox-grinned at the sight, then jumped for it, clearing a pile of the captain’s belongings that would have swallowed her up to her knees. The ship deck shifted under her feet. She heard the scrape of loose garbage against the hull.

Almost done, she said, out loud this time.

The sally bar pried up the panel without a fuss. Behind it, a cast-iron door was installed in the bulkhead, unmarked except for a small keyhole. The dead captain’s key made for a neat match. It resisted turning at first, but she pressed it harder and it slid a last tiny bit into the lock. If she didn’t need her spare hand for balance—and had no helmet on—she would have tugged her own prayerlocks for luck. Instead, she bit her lip and turned. She felt the barrel inside move and inhaled a gasp of anticipation.

With a cold, harsh tink, the key broke off in the lock.

Talis let that hopeful breath out in a string of expletives that would have made Tisker blush. She grabbed her blowtorch.

Oh-no-you-don’t, she informed the safe. I’m done with this place.

The fuel tank ran out the same moment the frozen safe door expanded with a metallic bang. She flinched, her glass-faced helmet making her cautious. Bracing her knees against the angled bulkhead, she gripped the edge of the door and the stump of the broken key, and pulled the safe open.

As she tallied it, she had to be using up the last of her luck.

A neat stack of documents bound with imperial golden ribbon topped the pile of contents within. Beneath that hid a diminutive single-shot powder pistol—a captain’s last defense should he be forced to open the safe against his will. And in the safe’s back corner: a small, blue velvet bag cinched with a white silk cord. She was so eager to be clear of this place, she forgot to be disappointed not to find a bonus of gold coin to pad the payoff from the contract.

Loosened and upended, the velvet bag produced a masculine pewter signet ring. It was scratched and pitted. The pearls set to either side of the worn seal were chipped, the seal itself unreadable. It was beyond the ability of even a Breaker jeweler’s skill to repair. By her experienced appraisal, it was worthless.

It was exactly what she was looking for.

A shadow moved across her hand, barely there—but there enough. She felt those tentacles crawling in her stomach before she looked back to the window and saw them: a hoarbeast on the outside of the window. Uncountable boneless limbs clung to the glass with teeth-rimmed suckers. Its silver and gray body rippled like a half-filled lift balloon. The scales around its mouth shifted as its jaws—always open—spread even wider. Its attention was on the captain for now, just a thin pane of glass away. They could eat through a ship’s hull without difficulty; their teeth were made to consume anything that might end up in flotsam. Ship’s hulls, laundry tubs, dead captains.

Or even living ones.

Her fingers shaking, Talis tucked the ring away. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, a quick, squishy pulse. It seemed timed to the squeezes of the hoarbeast’s tentacles. The scratching of its teeth against the glass, though, matched nothing she’d ever heard.

She needed to be away. Safe on her ship. To speed her exit, Talis engaged the motor on her lead line. Her feet bounced against the angled deck. Her line pulled her out of the captain’s cabin, up the sloping midship, through the ice-glazed forecastle, and back out the hatch.

But Talis could still see those tentacles, hear those teeth, even well away from the creature.

She slipped a foot into the stirrup of the descent line. Clipped the voice tube back into her helmet. Get me out of here. It’s getting crowded.

Dug’s reply was terse. Got crowded up here, too, captain.

Those tentacles wrapped tighter around her insides. She’d found the damned ring and escaped a hoarbeast to claim it. That kind of luck ought to carry some momentum.

But . . . No, damn it!

Two shadows dwarfed Wind Sabre in the sky above. The first was an airship similar in design to hers but twice as large—and with no pretense of stealth. Its crisp canvas lift balloon and gold-painted hull gleamed with self-importance. Those imagined tentacles plucked at her heart. The ship was a Cutter imperial patroller.

And it was tied off alongside a completely foreign shape that Talis only recognized from newspaper illustrations: the round, balloon-less Yu’Nyun exploration ship. She could feel the teeth-rimmed suckers tighten around her throat.

The two vessels huddled together as if sharing a secret.

Someone knew something, for sure.

Talis forced her childhood fears aside, cramming the vision of her hoarbeast and its surplus of teeth back under the bed for now.

She cursed and made it a good one. No way coincidence put both those ships right there, right then. Right there, above the spot in flotsam where an anonymous client had overpaid her to salvage a bit of trash.

Or perhaps, if this was the kind of attention that bit of trash brought, the client had not paid her enough.

The Emerald Empress was nowhere near as old as the ring she’d come to claim. From the captain’s uniform and the style of the ship’s winches, fittings, and lift system, Talis would wager the airship sank less than a decade ago. But who sent them down? And how did Talis keep her own ship from sharing that fate?

The line tightened and she began to ascend.

Chapter 2

The line reeled Talis up toward Wind Sabre ’s curving bulk. She knew every dent and nick in the wooden airship, every scratch in the paint, like the lines of her own scars. Experience, proof of being alive.

The ship’s size and shape and presence always comforted her. It wasn’t the most impressive private airship in the skies—just a single lift balloon, a handful of cannons, and room for a small crew. But it was hers. You didn’t get to have or keep much in this world. Not at the bottom where she lived. Folks at the top—or rather, at the center, on Diadem and the capital district’s other larger islands at Horizon—they had whatever they wanted. More than they needed. But they didn’t have freedom.

Talis didn’t want estates and servants and finery. Well, maybe a little finery. But she wanted nothing that would strip her of what Wind Sabre provided. The skies. Just being out here. Running sometimes, well, sure. At least she was free to run.

She yanked off the helmet and let it fall to hang from its tether on the shoulder of her suit. Breathed in the cold, clean air. Smelled the wood and oil and tar of her ship.

Dug and Sophie met her at the lower transom. Dug, his skin a rich dark brown and his tattoos intertwined with (or obscured by) scars. He towered over Sophie—petite, pale, and glittering, whose bounty of freckles mingled with her own tattoos. They each grabbed the railing and reached out a hand to help her climb back aboard.

Sophie’s forehead creased under the messy fringe of short, multicolor hair that framed her round face. The young woman kept nervously glancing overhead as though she could see through the mass of their ship’s hull to the two new arrivals up above them. We should get moving. Fast.

Talis put a hand on her shoulder, both for comfort and for support to yank off the descent suit.

Ain’t that always the way. She smirked.

If Talis had any sense, she’d have been frightened. And she had been at first, when the winch brought her up from flotsam. But with the ice fields safely below her and the run ahead of them, she decided she was feeling lucky. She tugged on her prayerlocks in thanks now that the helmet was out of the way, sending a silent request to Silus Cutter that their luck would hold. She had the ring. One tiny object in all that desolate mess below, and they’d found it. Easy as that. For now, she ignored how easy wasn’t always a good sign. They had their prize. Time to trade it for a payday and keep her ship in the air for a good while longer.

We do not believe they have seen us, Dug said. Always formal. Always on business. He was the lift line whose strength kept Talis aloft. The Yu’Nyun ship arrived first, but the imperials followed behind them a short time later.

"And which one of them was following us, do you suppose? Talis, free of her suit, tossed Sophie the ring in its drawstring bag. Stow that, please."

Sophie caught the bag in cupped hands and flashed Talis a triumphant grin before gripping it tight and running off. They’d been promised a bit of a vacation once their client paid up. And this job promised the coin to make it a good one.

Talis could certainly use a vacation. And if they spent all the spare cash they made on this trip, beyond what they needed to resupply and repair, that would keep her crew content enough to stay on for the next contract. With Sophie especially, Talis did whatever she could to delay the inevitable.

A stiff breeze made Talis’s damp skin prickle, and the sleeveless thermal shirt and twill cotton pants she’d worn under the suit did little to ward off the chill. She stuffed the cumbersome gear into the deck box near the descent line’s winch. It would be smarter to air it out on deck before stowing it, but they needed to move, and she didn’t want it flapping around in their way. She had no doubt she’d regret that the next time she smelled the thing.

Okay, Dug. Talis yanked her boots back on, cinching the laces tight and tucking their loose ends into the tops of the calf-height leather uppers. She pulled her hair free from the ponytail that had kept it out of her way under the helmet and felt the cool air hit her scalp. More goosebumps across her light brown skin. She’d pay a ransom for a hot shower. Or at least for that coffee they were supposed to have saved for her.

Worry puckered the scars around Dug’s left eye. He held out her worn leather jacket, which she gladly accepted. It slipped on and settled immediately into place, matched to the contours of her strong shoulders and arms. She buttoned it up against the wind.

They battened the lower hatch and headed for the main deck.

Imperials, was all he said. Both with disgust and with an almost frightening eagerness. A smile shone white like stars against the deep brown of his skin.

He had a true smile, reserved for precious, rare moments of joy. But this expression was a smile only in that the corners of his mouth pulled up. Otherwise it was a warning, often coming less than seconds before he unsheathed one of his blades.

That smile could stop a stampede of rocksnouts, and it came in handy when she needed to make a show of force—especially considering that there were only the four of them on Wind Sabre. Dug was tall, even for one of Onaya Bone’s people, and beneath the wool jacket he wore against the cool air was a coil of steely fibers, a bladesperson like few others.

Unfortunately,