Nimbus: A Steampunk Novel (Part One)

  “What do ya want?” the Shrew asked, looking Jude over with the eye still in its socket. He elbowed the Hoser he was sitting on and chuckled. “Did ya come to borrow one of my stools? Cause this one’s busy.”

  “No,” Jude said. He was fairly sure the stool was Macintosh, who was apparently still on the Shrew’s bad side. “Schlocky told me to get a team together to go and explore this skyport—”

  “What skyport?”

  “The one we’ve just docked with,” Jude said. He suddenly realized the Shrew was unaware of their docking at the Auger’s Lighthouse. “It’s old and abandoned, and Schlocky reckons there may be treasure stashed away there. He wants to send some of us out there to do a little exploring first, though, before he sends everyone else.”

  “Ya mean he wants to send some poor, gullible stiffs like yourself out there to die,” said the Shrew, focusing his attention back on the hall lamp.

  “Look,” said Jude. “I know you understand some of the old language and this place is probably going to be filled with strange writing no one can understand. If you could make out the song that old man was singing in the Upturned Tortoise back at Thunder’s Echo, you can probably help us inside the Lighthouse. You know, when it comes to reading signs and things.”

  “I could understand some of the words in the song,” the Shrew said. He hit Macintosh over the head with a ratchet, which was probably not by accident. “Hand me that wrench, Mac.”

  Grunting under the Shrew’s weight, Macintosh passed him the wrench. Without so much as a thanks, the Shrew went back to tinkering with the lamp. “I ain’t goin nowhere unless there’s somethin in it for me. What’s your sales pitch, kid?”

  “You get a cut of the profits,” said Jude. It had worked with Roebuck—maybe it would work again.

  “If there are any profits,” the Shrew scoffed. He stood up and Macintosh let out a sigh of relief, finally free of the large man’s weight, while the Shrew moved closer to Jude. Up this close, the Shrew looked particularly nasty. “But I’m a gamblin man…”

  “Does that mean you’re coming with us?” Jude asked.

  “Is that pretty little thing you run around with comin, too?”

  “If you mean Vale, then—yeah, she’s coming.”

  The Shrew cracked a devilish smile. “Then I’m in.”

  ***

  A lot of people had gathered out on the main deck since the last time Jude had been outside. Schlocky and his first mate were currently keeping people back, but both the captain and Calvin Reedy looked wary. Valencia and Roebuck were already out there when Jude arrived with the Shrew, and neither of them looked very excited about their latest companion. Before they could talk, Reedy whisked Jude away to talk with Schlocky before their departure.

  The captain looked even surlier than usual, but he nearly smiled when he saw Jude. “Those the right people?” Schlocky asked, eyeing the tiny group Jude had put together.

  “I think so,” Jude said. “Roebuck can fit in tiny spaces, the Shrew can read the old language, and Vale is pretty tough and trustworthy.”

  “Don’t stay gone more than three hours,” Schlocky said. “The crew will talk if you stay gone too long, and we don’t want everyone thinking you all just got killed. Reedy and I are going to give out wages while you’re gone. We more than filled our quota back at the storm, so everyone gets a cut this time. It should be a nice distraction. These people love their water.”

  “What about them?” Jude asked, cocking his head toward Valencia and the others. “Don’t they get wages?”

  “Worried about your friends a bit much, aren’t you?” asked Schlocky.

  “We’ll send a crate down to each of their rooms,” Reedy said, ignoring the look Schlocky was giving him.

  “Well, uh, good luck, I guess. And bring back something good,” Schlocky said. “And remember: don’t stay gone for more than three hours.”

  “Wait just a moment!” Thomas Dirk came waltzing over to them wearing a bowler hat and matching grey vest, as if he were dressed to go on a pleasant afternoon stroll. He pulled a pocket watch out of his vest and looked at the time. “Three hours, eh? Quite a long time, indeed.”

  “And what do you think you’re doing?” Schlocky asked through gritted teeth.

  “I’m coming along,” replied Dirk. He put away the pocket watch and smiled at Jude, who eyed him warily. “I’ll volunteer to be your timekeeper. It will ensure we aren’t late coming back. You’re okay with that, right, Allister?”

  “I’d be more okay with you jumping overboard,” Schlocky said.

  Dirk laughed, as if Schlocky weren’t being completely serious, waved away the comment and pulled on his overcoat. “I’ll make sure everyone stays safe, Allister. You just give out the wages while we’re gone, and I’ll fill you in on everything you missed. Sound good, old chap?”

  Schlocky appeared to be too angry to answer, but Dirk did not wait for a response. Instead, he walked over to Valencia and kissed her hand with a proud smile. Jude laughed, but only because he couldn’t tell which was funnier: the look on Vale’s face at having a man treat her like some kind of princess, or the look of sheer rage the Shrew had as he watched Vale receive affection.

  “I guess we better get going,” Jude said.

  Schlocky nodded and then grinned mischievously. “If Dirk doesn’t make it back, I may be inclined to give you a raise, kid.”

  ***

  While the other crewmembers were distracted by the distribution of wages, Jude and the others left the airship and made their way through the docking plank and into the Auger’s Lighthouse.

  The shadowy structure was made of thick, now crumbling pieces of stone, but the skyport seemed sturdy. In fact, Jude thought it looked in fairly good condition, considering it had been vacant for the past few centuries.

  It was a small skyport, made up of only one real building—a domed tower with a marble archway. The only way inside was by passing through wrought iron gates that creaked loudly when Jude tried to open them. The noise scared a few nesting gulls, which took flight and disappeared beyond the horizon.

  “To be free like the birds, eh?” said Dirk, elbowing Jude in the ribs. “Think about it. They’re the only creatures, really, who don’t have to be farmed on skyports by humans, aren’t they?” He cast a glance towards Valencia, who appeared to be ignoring him completely. “Ah, yes. I suppose I’m a bit of a romantic about these sorts of things…”

  When they had safely passed through the gates, a large sign hung overhead, directing them inside a large, circular room. There were dozens of rows of benches, arranged at different levels like an amphitheater and surrounding a smaller podium down in the center of the room. Jude had never seen a magistrate’s courtroom, but he assumed this was exactly what it would look like.

  “Look!” Valencia said, pointing to an enormous basin hanging from the ceiling by chains. “What is that?”

  “It’s probably where they burned their fires,” Dirk said. He looked overly pleased to have the answer. “If this is a lighthouse, they’d have to have a pyre. I guess that basin up there is it.”

  Jude was about to ask the Shrew what some of the signs meant, but before he could speak, he noticed a rotting tapestry going around the room, just below the ceiling.

  Some of the pictures on the tapestry showed the fog, and there were horned, demonic beasts coming out of it. The fogspawn were shown eating children and battling men with swords and spears. Toward the middle, the tapestry had a picture of a young boy, presumably being overtaken by two fogspawn at the same time.

  What confused Jude was the way the tapestry portrayed the next series of events: the boy appeared to be alive, but the fogspawn were still with him, apparently as much of a part of him as arms or legs, though it was never clear who was in control.

  There was a large, rotted gap in the tapestry after that, and when the story picked back up, it showed the boy—now a man—descending into the Auger’s Lighthouse, accompanied by a cloa
ked figure with crossed arms.

  As far as Jude could tell, the tapestry ended with a frightening picture of the cloaked figure expelling the fogspawn from the man by some kind of magic.

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” Dirk asked from beside Jude. “It makes you wonder what kind of strange, sacrilegious rituals went on here. No wonder the place was closed down by the High Prelate.”

  “How do you know that?” Jude asked.

  Dirk shrugged. “You aren’t the only one who reads banned books.”

  Jude and the others went down the stairs and made their way to the podium at the room’s center. There did not appear to be any other exit except for the way they’d already come. Jude hoped one of the signs would tell them where to go next.

  “Can you read any of them?” he asked the Shrew.

  “The signs? A few words here and there. This room is called the Atrium, and it was a room of some importance, I guess.” The Shrew glanced around at some of the other signs hanging on the walls. “I ain’t too sure, but I think that sign over there says somethin about a lift goin down into other levels of the skyport.”

  “Which way’s the lift?” asked Jude.

  The Shrew grumbled something, apparently tired of answering questions for Jude, but finally gave a reply. “I reckon it might be down that way. Ya know, I ain’t too good at readin this stuff. For all I know, we might be going to the mess hall.”

  Jude led the others past some of the benches until they found a hidden corridor leading further down into the Auger’s Lighthouse. It was darker here, and there were sickening crunches beneath their feet as they walked. Jude hoped it was merely rat bones they were stepping on.

  “I don’t think we want to go on the lift,” Dirk said. “It could be broken, and it could lead to something, well, terrible. You don’t want to be responsible for getting us all killed, my good man. Schlocky may have no respect for human life, but you do. I can tell. I think it would be best, Jude, for us to turn around.”

  “Shut it!” Roebuck said from behind Dirk. “If there’s treasure down here, I want it. Why don’t ya just go back to the ship and cry for mommy, ya big pansy.”

  “I could have your job for speaking to me like that,” said Dirk.

  “Oh, yeah?” Roebuck retorted. “Then who’d fit between the aqua-vats?”

  “Stop it, you two,” Valencia said. Though it was dark, Jude saw her stepping between them. “I’m sick of listening to your bickering. Besides, I think we’re here.”

  Sure enough, they had arrived at the lift. It was a rusted, mechanical platform that used a pulley system to go places. The ropes did not seem to be completely rotted, and the chains holding the platform up still appeared strong.

  “I’ll go first,” Jude said. He started towards the lift.

  “Wait,” said Valencia, grabbing Jude by the arm. “It really could be dangerous. The whole thing could go crashing down as soon as you step out there, and then that’ll just leave me with Roebuck, the Shrew, and that pompous idiot. Maybe we should look for another route.”

  Jude looked around at the others. Roebuck seemed indifferent, but Dirk looked apprehensive and played with the rim of his bowler hat in a distracted sort of way. The Shrew was giving Jude a sharp, crude look and his one eye was focusing on the hand Vale had placed near Jude’s elbow.

  “I’ll be careful,” Jude said. He moved away from Valencia and placed one foot on the lift. The platform swayed slightly, but remained hanging.

  “Careful, pal,” Roebuck said. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

  Jude held his breath and stepped fully onto the platform. This time, the platform swayed back and forth, creaking loudly and sending echoes in every direction. After a few tense moments, it appeared the lift would hold.

  “Okay,” Jude said, looking at the others. “Who’s next?”

  It was a slow, nerve-racking process. Roebuck went next, since he was the smallest, followed by Valencia. Much to the Shrew’s chagrin, he went next, even though he was twice the size of Dirk, who seemed to be waiting to go last to ensure the lift would not fall with the others first.

  When it was Dirk’s turn to get on the lift, he got on an inch at a time. Finally, they were all on the platform and the lift seemed to hold their combined weight. The Shrew worked the ropes, and the lift began going down into the dark depths of the Auger’s Lighthouse.

  According to the writing on the platform floor, there were sixty levels in all. Even though the numerals were easily discernable, no one had a clue what the words written out by each could mean. Even the Shrew only knew a word occasionally, and he acted as if telling the others were the biggest chore in all of Nimbus.

  “Does it mention anything about treasure on any of the floors?” Jude asked.

  The Shrew, still working the ropes, shook his head. “Nah, the bottom floor seems to be important for somethin. And the twenty-fifth level is forbidden for people to enter.”

  Dirk perked up in alarm. “Really? Is there anything else written there?”

  “Course there is,” the Shrew mumbled. “I just ain’t able to read it.”

  “Twenty-five sounds like the place for treasure,” Roebuck said, flashing a greedy smile.

  “Should we stop?” the Shrew asked, also looking rather excited.

  Jude nodded. “What floor are we at now?”

  “Third,” said the Shrew. “I can have us at twenty-five in no time. Could go faster if I got some help.”

  Jude was unable to help, because of the shoulder he had wounded in the storm, but Valencia and Roebuck joined the Shrew at the ropes. Dirk watched them with a half-interested gaze and a smile that told Jude he thought himself above such work. They bypassed the other floors and soon reached the twenty-fifth level of the Lighthouse.

  A large statue of a man with fogspawn on either side guarded this level of the skyport. From the lift, Jude could see an iron door that appeared bolted at the end of a narrow corridor. If there was anything valuable in the Auger’s Lighthouse, it was likely behind that door.

  “Well, guess we should get goin,” Roebuck said.

  “Not so fast,” said Dirk, blocking their way. “That door is bolted, and this place could be dangerous. Maybe this level is locked up for a reason.”

  “Get outta the way before my switchblade makes ya,” Roebuck said, bringing out his knife and letting Dirk get a good look at its sharp tip.

  Dirk searched his pockets for something, and Jude feared a fight—a potentially deadly one—was about to erupt. Before Dirk could find whatever weapon he had stowed away, Jude was between them.

  “We’ll ride the lift all the way down to the bottom and see what’s so important down there,” he said. “If we don’t see anything else that’s interesting, we’ll stop at twenty-five on our way up, okay?”

  “A waste of time!” Roebuck said.

  “And this level will be just as dangerous on the way back up as it is on the way down,” Dirk retorted. “We won’t be stopping here again.”

  “Yes,” Jude said, “we will. I’m in charge, Dirk. You didn’t have to come along, but you did, which means you answer to me while we’re down here.”

  Dirk looked taken aback. Slowly, he leaned toward Jude and whispered through gritted teeth, “You don’t want to make an enemy out of me, boy.”

  “Let’s keep going,” Jude said to the others, completely ignoring Dirk’s threat. “We’ll stop here on our way back.”

  Before anything could be said against it, Valencia started pulling the ropes and the lift continued going down. The ride to the bottom was boring and seemed to take hours, though it only took fifteen minutes, according to Dirk’s pocket watch. Around the thirtieth level, they appeared to be far beneath the Skyline, as the walls got thicker to protect the structure from the fog outside.

  “We’re farther below the fog than any man has a right to be,” Roebuck said as they descended. “Least outside the Burrows. Maybe I’ll be alive when they finally invent armor to withstand fo
g. I’d love to see the ground, ya know. Maybe see what real grass looks like.”

  “If they don’t have such armor now, they never will,” Dirk said. He looked very tense and angry, especially since Jude had given him a direct order. “But feel free to walk out in the fog anytime you please, you pesky little twit.”

  When they finally reached the sixtieth floor, a completely circular room with the thickest walls Jude had ever seen, everyone got off the lift and began searching. There were many pipes and conduits running around the room, all passing through a series of ventilation and filtration systems. At the center of the room was an engine hub, though it appeared to have stopped working a long time ago.

  But it was not the engine hub that caught Jude’s attention—it was the tiny pipes that ran out of a few vents and into a sewer grate. The pipes had once dripped water through the bars, and Jude knew that water went to the people in the Burrow below.

  “I bet they didn’t evacuate the Burrow underneath here when they abandoned the Lighthouse,” Jude said. He could feel anger rising up inside of him.

  “Of course they didn’t,” Dirk said. “Who would think of them? They’re just Dwellers.”

  There was silence around the room. Dirk surveyed the faces looking back at him and sighed. “Oh, right. I suppose you were all Dwellers once, weren’t you?”

  “Stop calling us Dwellers!” said Jude.

  “Sorry,” Dirk said, though he didn’t look it. “I keep forgetting you don’t call yourselves that.”

  “I can’t believe they would just let the people down in the Burrow die,” Valencia said, staring down into the sewer grate with a look of horror. “It’s bad enough they make them drink whatever drips out of the sewage system.”

  “Maybe they didn’t die,” Roebuck said, distracted by the grate. “Maybe they just went to another Burrow…”

  “I don’t think so,” Jude said. “I think the people left this place and didn’t think twice about the folks underneath them who were depending on them to survive. The people in the Burrow probably didn’t even see it coming.”

  “Well, if they were Dwellers,” said Dirk, “they were probably not very great assets to us anyway—”

  The Shrew, who had remained silent since passing the twenty-fifth floor, grabbed Dirk by the throat and slammed him against the wall. “I ought to rip off those bars and throw ya down there, ya sorry bastard. Maybe see how ya like it, thirstin to death.”