The lights from three different ships made seeing the stars quite impossible, the mauve-black sky shimmering with a faint celestial glow being the only evidence of their continued existence. As Tyras had expected, after they turned the tide against the pirates, the airmen quickly fixed the telegraph and wired the Air Police, though by then their presence was hardly required.
Nevertheless, a sleek black and yellow corvette airship had arrived within minutes, the air cops embarking on both the merchant and pirate vessels, guns and cutlasses drawn. Now, most of them were on the upper deck, questioning the exhausted, frightened sailors and pretending to be patrolling the ship for any pirates still in hiding. Tyras had tempered their zeal in their interrogations, helped by the flashing of his Inspector badge and the changing of his bloodstained clothes into a green tweed suit which had the immediate effect of transforming him back into his usual, gentlemanly self.
Like most Osnyan cops, they were well trained and equipped. The air officers sported midnight blue uniforms, darker than their ground-based colleagues, which was swapped for light blue ones during the day, ostensibly for camouflage against the sky to not be easy pickings when approaching hostile ships. Their armor was light and flexible, made more to deflect blades, claws and clubs than bullets, yet it nonetheless gave their officers a much-needed placebo confidence. The capes and tall hats characteristic of the Osnyan lawman were absent, evidently a liability in the air, which made their exposed equipment consisting of revolver, cutlass or Augustan-styled short sword, gas mask and choke-grenades all the more intimidating. Which was just as well, as these policemen didn’t interact with the public. When they were called, it was to fight ruthless air outlaws.
Their jobs were neither safe nor easy. Their casualty rate was easily double that of an average “bobby”, and their presence did not guarantee the defeat of pirates. It’s not that they were bad cops, but like the armies at the start of the Burning Steel War, their tactics and equipment were woefully outdated in the face of Progress. Tyras looked disapprovingly at one caribou officer equipped with a full length bolt action rifle, which in such tight confines, would have been worse than useless.
Criminals had understood the change far better, even the pathetic amateurs he’d faced today had used compact or sawn off firearms, ideal for close quarters.
It was part of the reason why he was now going to Ignidava.
Miraculously, none of the crew had died. Only the outlaws had casualties, while the worst wound among the airmen were two severed fingers, which made this failed heist a statistical anomaly.
The surviving pirates were being dragged to the police corvette, most of them on stretchers and covered in bandages. Vallus was struggling against two stocky bull constables, having had to be muzzled as was standard procedure for carnivorous suspects, his growls and exertions muffled. As soon as he laid eyes on Tyras, he momentarily broke free of his captors, rushing for him in spite of his manacles, murder in his eyes and an incoherent string of curses and growls going through his gag before the two burly officers caught up with him, offering a truncheon to the gut for his troubles, which did not stop his screams and struggles as he glared at the man who’d foiled his plans. Tyras could only smirk and tip his hat.
After a quick trip down to the galley, he returned to the surface with two steaming cups of coffee. Achlos was sitting on a barrel, exhausted yet unable to sleep, like everyone else on the ship. The cops had given him a particularly hard time about his illegal bone revolver. The sergeant in charge seemed convinced that the gun was his and not, as Achlos had said, liberated from a pirate, which was a sound deduction. The pirates had attacked the ship with full on military hardware, why would they have bothered with holdout peashooters? It was only Tyras pulling rank and giving the man a thinly veiled threat that badgering the witness who saved an Inspector’s life was not a recipe for a fruitful career.
The moose was breathing heavily, still attempting to stifle his nosebleeds from overexerting his Forte. Undoubtedly, a splitting headache, nausea and numbness also joined. Tyras could sympathize.
“Here,” He offered the steaming cup of caffeine. “It’ll do you good.” Achlos accepted gratefully and took a small sip. No one knew for sure why, but caffeine was known to be beneficial to the Forted and other magic users. It cleared the mind and reinvigorated the Mana after strenuous magic use.
Tyras sat down on a barrel opposite his companion. “You have my word that what you did today, I shan’t easily forget. You risked your life to save my own and you joined me on a quest where you knew we’d be outnumbered and outgunned.”
“It was my ass on the line too, cop. Don’t forget that.” The bounty hunter replied with less coldness than he wished. Tyras gave an indulgent smile.
“No. You could have hidden, stood meek and submissive, hoping that offering all your valuables would dissuade the pirates’ wrath, or even turned your back on me to join them. All of them safer options. Yet you chose to join me, forming stratagems and following attack orders like you did seven years ago. That to me is the hallmark of a valorous soul.”
“Don’t rush to appreciate me so,” Achlos said distantly, taking a gulp of the black liquid. “I… I was offered a better path. Yet I turned my back to it and returned to…” He hesitated for a second, then decided that this cop already knew enough to put him behind bars if he so wished, so, what was the loss? “..to doing exactly what I cursed my parents for doing. I lie to myself that it’s different, I choose my clients, I take out only those whose permanent absence would do the world much good. Yet all the same, I trade blood for money. Have I ever been lied to by my clients about the nature of my targets? Undoubtedly. I am no fool and am better at reading people than most. Yet I did it all the same. Because I know nothing else than the blade and the gun.”
“I know little more myself.” Tyras replied evenly. “I have merely chosen to conduct my dark talents in another direction. For eight years in the War, my trade was death, and I, my good sir, had become a very skilled craftsman. Should you go down in the cargo hold, you will find a bear with his throat torn out, covered in a piece of tarp. He had disarmed me and was firing wildly, he had to be taken down. Yet I could have undoubtedly found a less barbaric way of ending the wretch. Do you know why I did it? Because his companion was a rabbit, and I know how herbivores react to seeing their comrades killed by claws and fangs. An instinctual terror left behind by our unevolved ancestors. I had done that exact thing for years. My claws have taken as many lives as my rifle. So, pray, what makes me an honorable lawman, and you an incorrigible scoundrel?”
Achlos was silent for a full minute, during which he absently drained the rest of his coffee. He opened his mouth to speak, but then his gaze turned on several wisps of orange flame.
Most of the airmen were standing on the edges of the ship, holding burning pieces of paper, each mouthing a prayer before letting the blazing page fly off into the sky, dancing across the softly clouded sky like wandering stars before plummeting down. Then, they made the Sign of The Arrow and went back to their duties.
It was a custom as old as Fakonism itself. Being a religion born in a mountainous region, the best way one’s sins could be forgiven was to climb a mountain (the taller and more difficult the better), then, once on the peak, write your sins on a piece of paper, known as Sin-Inks, set them on fire then throw them away, so that your sins may be blown away by the wind and forever lost in the stones and forests.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
However, recently, some Fakonan faithful had taken to merely booking an airship trip and tossing their burning wrongdoings mid-flight for a sort of spiritual shortcut. It was due to the Holy Texts saying “Climb until you are near the clouds, so your sins may have time to burn before they reach earth and none may find them again.”, so technically, no one said you couldn’t “climb” in an airship. In Tyras’s opinion, this was hogwash, as the whole point of this exercise was that climbing a mountain was an arduous, physically and spiritually taxing task, at the end of which the faithful were ready to finally let go of their sins. However, Tyras decided that in this case, he would make an exception on judgment. The airmen needed spiritual reassurance. This ordeal had been their mountain.
“So…” Achlos began, eager to change the subject. “Why are you going to Ignidava anyway? It’s clear from your talents that you also train other cops in some capacity. You going to the capital to do that?”
Tyras gave a mysterious smile. “You could say that, yes. You could also say I’m hoping for a transfer. I’ll have some business with the Ignidava Constabulary Superintendent, which I don’t expect will take more than two hours, then I would very much like us to meet again. Such a friendship, especially after we mutually owe our lives to the other, should not be left to be blown in the wind like the Sin-Inks. I assume you have business in the city as well?”
Achlos did not meet his gaze.
“Yes.” He grunted. “Should be finished with it… by five o’clock in the afternoon? If I remember correctly from last time I visited your Capital, the Grand Light Hotel is a 30 minutes electric tram ride from Precinct One. Meet you there at six?”
“That would be adequate. I think we’ll both be in requirement of good food and entertainment after the day’s trials, and the Hotel provides both.”
“Looking forward to it.” Achlos said. He then frowned inwardly. Why was he setting up a casual rendezvous with a cop who knew of his profession? Hell, he’d practically admitted to having a contract in the city! ‘Stupid bastard! He could arrest you here and now!’
Yet for all that… Tyras had not only made no moves to arrest him, he’d shielded him from the police’s questions about the bone revolver. Was he hoping he’d talk more, giving him information about his employer or some assassin organization he worked for? If the lion was hoping for the latter, he was to be sorely disappointed. If such an organization existed, no one had ever invited him to join its ranks.
The logical thing to do was hightail it the moment the airship touched ground, telegraph to his client that he’d been made and the deal was off, then spend a few months in the Outer Range to let the heat die down. Yet for some reason, that was inconceivable to him. He simply could not imagine Tyras ratting him out.
For those few minutes in which they hunted the pirates down, his life had made sense once again. Among the fear, danger and death that had been in that dark cargo hold, there had been order, purpose and trust.
Trust… when was the last time he had trusted anyone? His clients and partners in crime knew him under pseudonyms and if he could help it, they never even saw his face. The most meaningful interaction he had was with drinking and gambling buddies, and whores at the many upclass bordellos he frequented after a job well done, both of whom wouldn’t give as little as a “good morning” if they met on the street the day after.
Tyras was the first person he felt he could sincerely call “friend” since the War.
Then, the air was filled with one tired airman singing. A portly boar, exhausted by questioning and drink to drown the terror he’d lived, singing a shanty about a port with particularly attractive prostitutes. The ones near him soon joined in, struggling to remember the exact verses, but improvised nonetheless, adding their own expletives and thinly veiled innuendos. Ere ten seconds had passed, the entire ship was in an uproar singing about the “Beauties Of Brovern Landing” and all the ways they could pleasure a tired sailor. To his surprise, even the two women were singing, with even more glee than their male shipmates.
When he looked at Tyras, the lion had his eyes squeezed shut, the eyelid over his fake eye gruesomely mangled and partially showing silver, yet he seemed to be in absolute bliss, moving a long, thin finger in tune with the song like a virtuoso observing an opera.
“What a wonderful thing music is.” He sighed joyfully.
Achlos couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter.
“Alright, Mr. Maloko, someone like me loves this tripe, but you? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I expected more from you.”
Tyras opened his eye and gave a patient sigh, like a professor about to school a pupil.
"Since we first rose up on two feet and began making the crudest tools of flint and stone, we've been wondering 'Why? What makes us special? How have we risen, and all the other creatures remained in an endless quest of mere survival and mating? Are we even that different?'.
To me, the highest evidence that Providence has made us above the other creatures lies in our music. Think of this ship: everything on it, its rude food, the horrid bathrooms, the crew quarters being shielded from the wind inside, are necessary to survival. Yet even in this place, these simple men and women feel the need to fill their hearts with the joy of melody, to, in their own way, manifest their experiences, their loves, their fears, their values, into an expression of art which is scientifically merely the vibration of vocal chords initially for the calling out of danger or the need for mating. It is completely an extra brought upon by ourselves. Where there is Bestia Sapiens, whether it's a concerto in a building of velvet and marble, a muddy trench full of starved, frightened young soldiers, or indeed a rickety cargo ship, there is song. Not for repelling danger, not for mating, but for the mere sake of goodness.
So yes: we have much to appreciate in these rude shanties"
Achlos was silent, unsure of what to say. When was the last time he sang, he wondered?
“We’re landing soon, lads, make ready!” The captain shouted through the speaker system.
Looking down over the railing, Achlos saw that they had gone below the clouds and quickly descended towards a white mass resembling the unearthed bones of some massive mythical beast. Surrounded by the Giradaina Mountains from all directions, it was an island of ancient traditions and modern progress in a sea of wilderness. Towering skyscrapers, massive onion-shaped golden temple domes and factory chimneys all fought for supremacy, each laden with white and gold accents. Airships and occasional dragons milled around these structures like bees around their hive, transporting supplies or people, moving in straight, organized lines like the blood flow of some great organism. It was difficult to believe this very place had been half destroyed by aerial bombardments a mere seven years ago.
Ignis-Dava. The Citadel Of Light.