Chapter Nineteen

Galloping Grasshoppers

The old man had a limp and a cane that didn’t seem to slow him down. He waved the latter toward them threateningly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled up at Elias and Briley, both of whom still stood atop the grounded airship.

“Parking,” Elias said.

“Crashing is more like it,” the man said back, stabbing empty air with his walking stick.

“Sorry about that,” Briley chimed in. “We had… engine problems.”

The man crossed his arms, returning the tip of his metallic cane to the dusty ground. Bertrand had made the arrangements, and neither Elias nor Briley had ever met the man before today, though he matched their friend’s description: old, bald, with an eyepatch and a cane. Bertrand hadn’t mentioned the man’s anger, though that may have been circumstantial. Nor had he mentioned the wiry girl beside him. She looked twelve perhaps, with mousy brown hair and a layer of soot obscuring her button-nose face and her balled-up fingers.

Not that either Elias or Briley looked any better at present, their cheeks and ears burning red from the cold, their hair windswept from the journey over here. Briley climbed down first. They approached the mechanic, who—despite his large presence—was a head shorter than medium-sized Elias, losing a few of those inches to bad posture. The girl, standing there straighter than a newly forged nail, was nearly the old man’s height.

“Mr. Mason, I presume,” Elias said.

“That is the name on the sign,” Mr. Mason more or less confirmed. “Call me Jasper. The girl is Gabby. What business do you have with us?”

“I believe you met my colleague, Bertrand Fairweather.”

The mechanic squinted, scrunching his nose, as if he might see or smell the truth of it.

“Blonde,” Briley added. “Yay high.” She lifted her hand higher than any of them. “Hard to miss.”

“Bertrand.” Jasper gargled the name. “Big fellow. Yes, he was bringing in a ship for inspection. I assume this is the vessel?”

“It is.” Elias nodded.

“And where is your friend? Where is Bertrand?” The old man looked around for him, mumbling something incompressible.

“On his way,” Elias said, “I think.”

Jasper inspected the hangar door that had been struck by their hydrogen balloon, sending them backward. He poked it with his cane, thumping the wood for good measure, before pointing the latter in the direction behind him. The door appeared undamaged, but the same could not be said for the barrier they had bounced into. “You broke my fence.”

“Apologies for that.” Elias grimaced. “We had—”

“Engine problems, yeah, yeah.”

“Add it to the invoice,” Briley inserted.

“I will, darling. I will.”

Briley, for whom terms of endearment were terms of war, let this one slide.

“Your hull took damage.” Jasper pointed again, this time toward the bottom of their newly acquired airship, just out of view for Elias, who followed the trail until he saw the damage himself. The hull had struck a large boulder as they were skidding backward along the uneven ground. Its smooth oak surface had been split open, fashioning a ragged porthole in three boards that would need to be replaced. “We can make her like new, but not for free,” the old man added. “That should be repaired before you fly this beauty anywhere else. This is a fine vessel. Wouldn’t want to risk it.”

Elias gulped, tallying the new bill in his head: the fence, the hull—what else?

“Gabby, give the guts a quick check,” Jasper told the girl, who promptly leapt and climbed her way onto the ship before heading through the companionway into the lower deck.

“Your daughter?” Elias inquired.

“More years have gone by since I’ve lain with a woman than she’s been alive,” Jasper informed them.

“Granddaughter?”

“Adopted. Since she was five. She’s twelve now.”

It was often said that Sailor’s Rise was the world in a city, and Gabby looked like the world in a human child, her cultural heritage as indistinguishable as it was, perhaps, untraceable. Still, Briley couldn’t help but wonder whether this worldly twelve-year-old had the professional experience necessary to properly inspect an airship.

“She works here with you,” Briley commented. “A little young, isn’t she?”

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Jasper coughed a chuckle. “You won’t find anyone with a better eye in all of Lowtown, me included. These modern airships aren’t like the vessels I first learned to repair. I can barely keep up nowadays. All these new upgrades, new materials. Kids learn things faster than old men like me. Her age ain’t a problem—it’s a solution.”

Before any more words could be exchanged, a familiar, rather large man appeared beside the hangar, resting a hand on its wooden wall as he caught his breath. Bertrand, panting and sweating despite the cold, spotted Jasper and apologized for his lateness.

The old man blinked and shrugged. Elias, at least, was relieved to see that his friend had freed himself from his junkyard prison. The Graystones didn’t suspect anything yet, though they would soon enough. Too bad for them: he thought the words and smiled inwardly.

Gabby returned from the lower deck and traded glances with her adopted father. She nodded from the bow and said in a high voice befitting a twelve-year-old girl, “I’ll give her a closer look tomorrow, but she seems healthy.”

“You’re lucky it’s just the hull that took damage.” Jasper turned toward them. “She’s an impressive lady. Expensive.” He looked them up and down, each teenager like a different cut of meat, no doubt questioning their age as they had questioned Gabby’s. But Jasper wasn’t in the business of evaluating his clientele—only their ships, and this was a fine one indeed.

“The hydrogen balloon is made of spider’s silk,” he said as Gabby climbed her way back down. Elias had heard of spider’s silk, its colloquial name a reference to the manufactured material’s strength rather than its relationship to actual spiders. “The material in that balloon alone is worth more than entire airships. Impenetrable to bullets. Can even survive cannon fire. But I’m sure you already know that.” Jasper didn’t sound sure.

Elias reexamined the balloon, acting unsurprised. It was the color of chestnuts, a tough-looking glossy brown, and much sleeker than The Sleeping Sparrow’s.

“Gabby and I will need a full week with her,” Jasper explained. “I know that’s a few days longer than we discussed, Bertrand, but”—he looked at his fence—“circumstances have changed. As has the cost. I wager we can finish our inspection and fix everything for”—he chewed on the price—“three hundred relics, considering the materials I need.”

“Three hundred?” The weight of that princely sum dangled from Bertrand’s open jaw, while Elias and Briley appeared stricken by it.

“As I said, circumstances have changed,” Jasper said. “Blame that on your parking job.”

Briley beckoned them into a huddle beside the ship, out of the old man’s earshot, though Elias imagined the girl had sharper senses.

“What do we do?” a crestfallen Bertrand asked them.

“There’s no backup plan,” Elias said. “We need to pay him. I can contribute eighty relics.”

“Seventy,” Briley added. “It’s everything I have.”

“I could throw in a hundred,” Bertrand said before thinking about it, counting in his head, and then confirming the number again with a sharp nod.

“Generous of you, but that’s only two hundred and fifty,” said Briley, who was better at math than Bertrand. “We’re still fifty shy.”

“We can negotiate,” Elias insisted. “You can always haggle with these folks. They need our business as much as we need their services.”

“I hope you’re right,” Bertrand said as they set out to prove Elias’s theory.

“Well?” Jasper was still waiting, though Gabby seemed more interested in the features of their “impressive lady” than in the minutiae of business.

“We can do two-fifty,” Bertrand told him.

“Two-fifty barely covers my costs,” Jasper countered. “Three hundred is a fair price. Two-eighty is a bloody fire sale. I can’t do anything less.”

“We’ll pay you two-fifty when you fix the ship,” Elias inserted, “and we’ll get you the remaining thirty within three months.”

“I ain’t no loan shark,” Jasper said.

“I never said we’d pay interest.” Elias flashed a grin. “Consider it an investment in future business.” He watched the mechanic consider their offer carefully: the way he rolled his remaining eye, hemming and hawing, though Elias knew it was all for show.

“We’ll move her into the hangar,” the old man finally said, “but you’re going to get us the first half of that two-fifty today—and you better not cheat me.”

“It’s a deal,” Bertrand said for them, and so it was.

Elias exhaled his relief. They still needed to register the ship, but this time he couldn’t help but celebrate their victory, the excitement of it rising in his chest, overwhelming his caution. “We did it,” he said as they turned back toward their prize: not just any vessel but an expensive, well-equipped one at that.

“I can hardly believe your plan worked,” Bertrand replied, sounding as if he hadn’t been convinced until this very moment. Suddenly distracted, he narrowed his gaze and trudged through the yard to the back of the ship, nearly tripping over a splintery piece of broken fence. He stopped and stared, facing the stern. “The Lucky Ducky,” he read the ship’s name aloud. “Did a fucking five-year-old name this thing? That won’t do. That won’t do at all.”

The Graystones would eventually figure out who had taken their ship, Elias figured, but they didn’t need to make it easier for them, and Bertrand was right—it was a terrible name.

“Jasper.” Bertrand waved the old man over. “Do you paint? Just the back here. We’re renaming the vessel.”

Jasper limped his way toward the stern, then grunted the name in question. “The Lucky Ducky.” He twitched an uncharacteristic smile. “You folks really are young, ain’t you?”

“I can’t take credit for this one,” Bertrand clarified.

“I have some skill with a brush,” Jasper said. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll throw that one in for free, but no more special deals. I mean it. You kids are robbing an old man blind.”

Elias and Briley joined them, snickering. “What shall we call her, then?” Briley asked.

“I believe Bertrand is in charge of marketing,” Elias said.

With both hands on his hips, Bertrand licked his lips, cleared his throat, and then unflinchingly christened her “The Galloping Grasshopper.”

There was a moment of silence, the low hum of Lowtown filling the void of an imagined applause. “Do grasshoppers gallop?” Elias eventually asked. “Horses gallop.”

“Grasshoppers also don’t stay airborne,” Briley pointed out.

Bertrand shook his head, looking flustered. “Give me a second, will you? I think in alliterations.” He paced past them, several times, until another spark had been lit, and now Bertrand was beaming with confidence.

He spoke the name as if it had been carried here on the wind. “The Sapphire Spirit.”

Briley didn’t say anything, which in Briley’s parlance probably meant she liked it.

“I thought I’d left my past behind,” Elias remarked.

“No one leaves their past behind,” Bertrand said knowingly.

“So I’m told. The Sapphire Spirit.” Elias could almost see the unpainted words shining freshly where they were soon destined to be. “It works.”

Bertrand appeared pleased with himself. Briley, crossing her arms, seemed content.

It was a symbolic start for all of them. The Sapphire Spirit would be the foundation upon which their future business would be built. To what heights, Elias could only imagine.

And yet, it was more than that for a certain young import from Acreton. This ship meant relics, and relics meant power in a way Elias had never previously imagined possible. He had inherited his drive from his mother—that was still true. But the emptiness that needed filling: he now knew that emptiness had been passed down from his father. And he finally knew how to fill it.