The Wondermark Gazette

“A messenger, Your Excellency.” A new voice peeped from the direction of the door.

I turned to face that way, doing my best to sound commanding through my faceful of bandages. “What now? Why are there so many messengers in this place? Can’t anyone leave a body in peace to wage war?”

“He claims to be an emissary from the air-ships, milord. With a letter.”

“Read it to me,” I replied. “Clearly, and enunciate. Come — whisper it into my ear. It may be saucy, so let me have it privately first.”

“It’s…” Another blasted new voice! This must be the messenger. “It’s for your eyes only, sir.”

“My eyes, my ears. Next letter’ll be written on celery and I’ll have to lick it clean. After that, I’ll be bathing with the missive and calling it Sonny.” The twang in the messenger’s voice struck me as familiar, somehow — but I couldn’t quite place it. Yorkish? Too nasal. Harlotshire? Not sultry enough. Stamps-upon-Staves? Not infused with enough abject terror at the crippling terrible-ness of Life. Where was he from?

The weakness in my limbs was beginning to fade, and my general level of bodily misery had declined, since I’d been able to exert a modicum of Authority. The act of shouting orders had a narcotic effect on me. (Of course, the pachydermite levels of morphine in my system were no doubt making some contribution to that effort.) I reached up and gingerly withdrew a layer of bandages from my eyes. That right orb began to throb upon exposure to the light, so I re-covered it in gauze at once — but after a few seconds’ adjustment the left came into service quite nicely.

It was the first I’d seen of my surroundings, in fact — and I was sad to note that the room was shabby, made of brown bricks and apathy; clearly interiour-decoration had been last on the architect’s mind when he received the glum news that he’d be designing the Crown’s prison on this desolate rock. Even a few flayed skins would liven the place up lodge-style; surely they had the supply. “What a dump,” I muttered, and the assembled officers stiffened.

And what officers they were! I’d wondered what type of boot-camp washouts would have been assigned this miserable post, and now I knew. These were back-of-the-packs, fleshy, doughy, chicken-necked and bowl-cutted, unfit for proper military service by the looks of the lot — but pleased to fill their chests with medals and play Army-Time Soldier. They were stationed here to free up the interesting misfits for front-line fodder. These were strictly the mercy admits.

“Let’s have a look at that letter,” I said. Whatever it was — auto-registration renewal, note from Grandmama, pre-approved credit-card offers disguised as official government mail complete with Royal signet (and not that I would be able to read any of it) — I’d claim it was my orders back to London, and somehow find the fastest way off this mossy boot-stone. The second messenger stepped forward and handed me a folded sheet of parchment.

It was this fellow’s wardrobe that clicked a latch in my skull. He wore a sheep-skin vest over a ruffled blouse and what appeared to be a steam-mechanic’s jump-suit, all topped with a jaunty sombrero. His fashion sense was straight out of the Tardsborough Sanatorium. And he was a meaty lad, but fresh of face, wearing a blank geniality as if he simply didn’t know any better.

He was a Yam-Runner. And the letter in his hand was dusted lightly with green powder.

It was the explosive. The signal to the Countess to begin her bombardment.

I looked up at the lad. He didn’t seem to exhibit any malice or fear in the flare of his nostrils, just the please-don’t-ask-me-any-questions anxiety of a newly-minted employee. “From whence does this letter come?” I asked.

He blanched. I watched his un-devious face cycle through the few possible answers he managed to come up with, but in the end he could only choke out the truth: “It’s…it’s from Larsenic the Lithe.”

King of the Yam-Runners. Brother to Grenadine. The same man who’d pressed that jade knife in my hands and watched me drive it into Rikah’s throat.

Surely opening the letter would blow us all, utterly, to meat.

A bead of sweat traced the back of my neck. The room was staring at me. “Let me take it in the hall-way,” I said, and shakingly stood from my chair. Waving away half-hearted offers of assistance, I found my footing and hobbled to the door.

Corralling the Yam-Runner lad, I turned to the boy who’d brought news of his arrival to the room. “Where did the air-ship deliver him?”

“in the court-yard, by the irons,” the whelp replied. “Shall I take you?”

We emerged from the building into the glumness of twilight. Surrounded by guards bristling with rifles, in a roundy mass somewhat resembling a throughly under-trained hedge-hog, was a Peapoddy aero-carriage identical to the one that had lifted Rikah and I into the air above the Isle of Yam-Runners. A rickety passenger-cage supported a steam-engine that turned a pair of air-screws, all suspended beneath a giant gas-sac. A leather-clad pilot leaned on the structure, nervously smoking a cigaret.

The pudgiest of pudgy prison-guards saluted as we approached. “They flew a white flag for landing, but we thought it prudent not to allow him to leave again, milord.” Then he shrank a little. “Did we do okay?”

“Fine, fine,” I nodded, clapping him on the shoulder, grabbing a fist-ful of squish. Of course the air-ship would have orders to depart — so the ship & pilot wouldn’t be lost in the coming bombardment! The messenger himself was expendable. Clearly the pilot knew the score — he was white from fright, expecting the blast any second, despite trying to play it cool behind his mirrored-lens pince-nez.

I walked up and shook his hand. I needed him on my side if I was going to get out of here. “How are ya? Listen, no worries — we’ll have you up and out in half a nit. Just a few seconds and you’ll be safe and sound.” He read my meaning. We were fast buds in an instant.

I looked at his passenger-cage, with room for two inside, then turned to the Prison-Isle messenger-boy. “Lara. You know who she is? Good. Bring her here, at all costs.” It didn’t matter if she recognised me. I was going to save her.

The boy ran off. The Yam-Runner lad still stood there, the deadly letter in his hand. I tried not to look at him. I could sense shifting shapes in the clouds, high above, and even felt the faint buzzing and thrashing of air-borne engines, but a heavy fog hid the whole armada from easy view. Probably for the best — I was still shaky in my muscle-control, and the sight of that hovering terror would probably have filled my trousers with involuntary fear. Instead, I pretended the buzzing was far-off dragon-flies. I didn’t care for dragon-flies much, but I could take them a far sight better than the Countess’s massing dirigible-division of doom.

I walked ’round the aero-carriage, around the nervous circle of lumpy-looking guards, and came across the irons. Sets of heavy shackles staked to the ground, filled with prisoners of various shapes — most I didn’t recognise, of course, but all no doubt guilty of innumerable crimes and deserving fully to perish in the upcoming cascade of flame from above.

But then there was Ursula, her wrists clamped into the shackles, her hair dirty and skin scratched, looking much the worse for wear since I’d last actually laid eyes on her back in Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats. She stared nails through me as I approached.

“This is your own fault,” I said. “You called in the attack. You brought the armada here. Reap now what you have so carelessly sown. I understand that’s how it works in agriculture — you should know that, Yam-Runner.”

“You’re going to die,” she spat.

“Someday,” I conceded. “Perhaps. I’ve got ambitious plans yet.”

She shook her head. “Before breakfast tomorrow.” And then a sly, snake-like grin. “Feeling better, are you? The morphine helping much?”

“Capital, to tell the truth,” I yawned, stretching my arms and twisting my trunk limberly. “Never better, in fact. Thanks to modern opiates!”

“No, thanks to Yam-Runner lore,” she growled. “You were ten seconds from death when they brought you into the infirmary. And I saved you, with tiny bits of knowledge I recalled from the Tome of the Precious Lore.” A shrug. “Admittedly, it was a physically wrenching process for you — hence the morphine.”

“Impossible!” I would have kicked her face, if I didn’t suddenly feel queasy, like I’d swallowed a salamander wrong way first. “The Tome is a work of fiction!”

“So I told you,” Ursula smiled.

The air-ships swirled above, ready to wreak their annihilation on us all. I tried to likewise set her on fire with my glare, but did not immediately succeed.

I returned to the pilot, now on his third cigaret in as many minutes. A pile of ash at his feet told a longer tale. “Tell me your feelings on the Yam-Runners. Good chaps, or what?”

He searched my face, probably wondering what answer would get him aloft soon and in one piece. “Tolerable in small doses,” he finally said. “Bloody gits, in the main.” I choked on the next thought: I was actually glad he was a Peapoddy man, as he’d only a provisional loyalty to Ursula’s people.

Next I approached the Yam-Runner lad and took the letter carefully from him, for safe-keeping, before marching him to where Ursula lay in irons. “Do you know this lad?” I asked her.

“Never seen him before,” Ursula said.

“Great-aunt Ursula!” he chirped. “It’s me, Horace! Remember at Christmas, you got me a doggie puzzle? Well, I was unable to put it together.”

“Your people sent him here to die,” I said to Ursula. “Right?”

“Wait, what?” Horace said.

“You were dying yourself. I saved you,” she said. “I racked my memory for you. I remembered enough to buy you these hours you’re on now. You’re wasting your precious time!”

“You sent him here with this letter,” I said, “just like the one you gave me.”

“You need the Tome to heal yourself fully, before the morphine wears off. You need to return to Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats, if you want to live.”

“You planned for the letter to kill him. So this won’t bother you then.” I turned to the closest guard, and pointed to Horace. “Traitor to the Crown.”

A shot echoed through the court-yard. Horace staggered. A second shot took his knee out. The third went wild and struck a pigeon, but the fourth wiped the fear from the lad’s face, as well as everything else. He fell like a crashing log to the ground.

“You did this,” I told Ursula.

Above us, the rumbling of the air-ships grew louder. The air felt stirred, like the hunger-burbles of a giant sky-beast, descending to gnash us with its terrible teeth and take us into its churning stomach.

The messenger-scamp appeared around the corner with a flustered Lara in tow. The tension in my limbs released the instant her face emerged into the light. “I found her!” the boy crowed. “She was in the water-closet!”

Lara stopped short as a red ray of sun-light broke through the clouds to outline Horace’s thick body leaking blood into the earth.

“We have to go,” I said, and pulled Lara towards the aero-carriage. Ursula shouted something that Lara turned to hear, but the pilot was already cranking up the steam-valves on his ship and I didn’t make out the words.

The guards looked upwards, and freaked out. The clouds were parting, and the air-ships were upon us.

Next: Air-borne!

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