Rogue Ragtime Page 14

  "Lass." Tath felt Elia scoop her limp body up and pull her close. Her head rested on Elia's chest, and she could hear the captain's heartbeat. It was monotonous and warm; the sound seemingly enveloped her and shut out the harshness the world. "Ya got the soul of a leader but the passion of knight," Elia said. "That bound to be getting ya in trouble. But they ain't yar troops; they ain't being commanded into battle. They be choosing this. They be knowing the risks as good as anyone be. Sometimes ya gotta let people be people and support them as best able."

  Tath coughed and felt a hardness in her chest break off. It went up and lodged itself just under her collarbone. "It's my fault," she repeated. "I told him all my problems. I asked him for impossible inventions. I never recognized him. I never saw him, not once. I didn't even know he was Stehlan Ehrans."

  Elia stroked her hair. "It ain't yar fault, lass. You be doing the best as one being able."

  "I got to. I have to …"

  "It be alright; ya be alright."

  Tath gulped and felt the lump ascend farther. It pressed against her eyes. She wiped away a tear. "I can fix this," she murmured.

  "Aye, ya can. Ya being able to fix the world. Ya be the master of these here cosmos."

  Tath started to cry. "Damn straight. Even God's scared of my ancestors."

  "Be quaking in her silver heels."

  Tath found herself unable to speak as the tears continued to roll down. They were not sobs; they trickled out, unwanted and uninvited. Her neckline dampened and clung to her skin. The horizon darkened.

  "He's gone, isn't he?" Tath whispered, her pain deepening with each syllable uttered.

  "That the way it be, lass. I be showing you Nucia from bow to stern if it be helping, but it ain't be changing nothing. He being here no longer."

  "I got to know," Tath found herself saying. "I got to know for sure."

  "Aye, but let's be sitting here a while first. Watch that sunset come on down and be greeting the darkness as it be spreading across our lands."

  Tath curled up and pressed her legs against her chest as hard as they would go. Elia seemed to expand as she did, the captain's arms morphing into tree-like structures that held her securely. As predictable as prices rising in the winter, the sun faded from sight and the warmth went with it.

  "What if I can't love Mea back?" Tath asked. "What happens to us then?"

  9:37pm: Junko [Channel 37A4R]

  Not sure why you're having a party so soon after a friend committed suicide. WTF is wrong with your group? (¬_¬)

  Anyway, I doubt Steh was a Starfire. Even the worst of them can teleport, and despite his celestial powers, he couldn't open a portal. Sorry, Az. That sucks. (>__<)

  Thurs, 23 Oct 65 P.C.T., 3:49pm: Junko [Channel 37A4R]

  I know you're still grieving, but I have some news for you. Good news! We're looking for the same Navigator. So, once you get here, we can team up and solve the problem together. And maybe … y'know …

  5:36pm: Junko [Channel 37A4R]

  Az, I'm not kidding around. I'm undercover here and hanging out for a bit of stress relief. There's even a watcher working the hotel in RAK who is willing to join us for a bit of threesome action … if you're cute. (>o<)

  Nineteen: The Suspects

  "EXPLAIN IT TO me again," the radio operator, Quill, said to Agra. "How does void magic work?" She moved her head in time to a trance concert playing through a barely visible speaker on her cluttered desk. Despite her impassioned bobbing, her multi-colored and spikey quiff did not budge a micro-millimeter.

  "It consumes life," Agra clarified for the fourth time. Even though void magic was rare on Earth, he had mistakenly assumed everyone had at least heard of it. After he had discovered Quill had not, he had found himself in the difficult position of describing a tide of power he had only read about in books.

  "It's like an acid then?" Quill asked. "Wouldn't that be nature magic?"

  Agra rubbed his forehead. "Have you ever packed up your apartment to move?"

  "My house, but sure."

  "Do you remember how that felt? As if the house's soul had been stored in the boxes as well? As if the rooms were empty of their character?"

  Quill gave him a thumbs up. "I'm following you so far," she said.

  "Imagine the same feeling, but it's an infinite emptiness in the room," Agra expounded. "A space so devoid of anything you cannot even remember what had existed there in the first place."

  The radio operator scrunched up her nose while turning down a distressed "MAYDAY" screaming through her radio. "They're about four hundred miles out," she said as way of explanation. "So, it's depression? Shouldn't you see a psychologist?" Quill blew a bubble with the gum she was chewing on until it popped. "Do you really know what you're on about?"

  Agra took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his head. "To be honest, I haven't witnessed it being cast. It'd be different to anything you've ever experienced."

  Quill shook her head and adjusted her bra strap. "It seems very Lovecraft: a thing that can't be described and all. I want to help, and I've been around this hocus-pocus a lot—but I ain't sensitive like y'all. I ain't raised Corsair, I guess. Sometimes it's hard for me to 'get' the whole woo-woo feeling."

  "Is there anyone I could—"

  "Don't get testy with me because I'm a little slow on the uptake," Quill grumbled. "Gawd, I only let you in here because your inventor helped me out a couple of times. But the thing is … we're chock-full of magic. This ship runs on it. If there was such a disruption—" Quill leaned out of her chair and indicated for Agra to move out of the doorway. He did, almost knocking off a collection of wires and components stacked precariously on the shelves by the opening. "Sup, Tath," Quill called out.

  Tath tried to enter the room but could only get halfway before she was unable to move forward anymore. Her right arm pressed against Agra's left. "I thought you didn't talk to the cargo?" Tath said, jerking a thumb at Agra.

  "Eh, he's grown on me. The Cap' with you?"

  In answer to her question, Elia's head poked around the corner of the doorframe. "Aye, we be settling her mind about Stehlan."

  "You know anything about void magic?" Quill asked. "Lanky here is asking about it, but I can't wrap my head around his weird-ass explanations."

  Elia glared at Agra. He swallowed. "That being true? Ya be asking me crew about the void?"

  Agra tried to change to more comfortable position but ended up pushing a twirling metal bird off the bench. It fell onto the ground and cheeped sadly.

  "Oi, watch it," Quill barked.

  "Sorry," Agra said. "Yeah, it's true," he replied to Elia. "I was thinking of ways to track a Navigator without Steh's skills."

  "Uh huh," Elia said. "This being for Kekibo or that Jetta lass?"

  "Would it matter if it was for Stehlan's widow?" Agra asked.

  Tath snorted. "Widow? If her name was 'Telia,' I bet you wouldn't be swallowing what she's putting out."

  "It's a bit more complicated than that," Agra retorted.

  "Oh, I get it. What's she swallowing then? And how often?" Tath tried to kick him, but Agra managed to hop onto the side counter in time to avoid it. More items crashed together, making additional tinkling and jiggling sounds.

  "Looks like we best be going before ya be wrecking Quill's collection," Elia said, guiding Tath by the shoulder. "Be careful though, lad. Not everyone be as well intentioned as yar crew."

  Quill waved as the captain and Tath left. She chewed her gum until the pair was farther down the corridor. "I thought you and Tath were tight," she commented to Agra.

  "She's a little on edge," he replied. "I've been too busy to talk to her since—"

  Quill snorted. "You're a terrible friend. 'She's a little on edge.' What a way to dismiss her complex emotional state, with a quip. I wish I'd thought of it before visiting the rellies last year."

  Quill flipped open a small notebook and scrawled down an abbreviated version of Agra's words. She snapped it closed. "Back to your q
uestion," she said. "I don't know. I haven't seen anything like what you've described. Obviously, Cap' knows what you're on about, but the crew talks about weird shit a lot, and I ain't heard squat about the void or vayd or ze vish. A wall that's vanished and can't be re-summoned; there's a yearlong topic for the mystics amongst us. I would never hear the end of it. So, if there had been some crazy-ass crazy spell cast, the crew would've noticed. They've all got a little Cataclysm in their veins." Quill shrugged and turned the concert's volume up louder. "Sorry I couldn't help. I know how much he meant to you."

  "Well, thanks for the information," Agra said, sliding toward the exit.

  "No problem, and I hope you get lucky. But if you ask me, I think you're in for a disappointing arvo."

  * * *

  DESPITE QUILL'S PREDICTION no-one would know anything, Agra tried anyway. He talked to three kitchen staff, two mechanics and one uptight porter. Some of them had heard of void magic, albeit in a pub somewhere, but none of them had witnessed it being cast on the Nucia. Despite their lack of first-hand experience, they all swore they would tell him if they noticed something unusual. "Directly after I have dealt with the soup spillage in seventeen," the porter had said.

  Agra ambled toward to his cabin, not wanting to face Jetta's unpredictability any sooner than he had too. Along a passageway, he found himself in front of Mea's favorite painting: "The Noble Experiment."

  He hated it.

  For all of Howes' self-proclaimed righteousness about how he depicted spiritual-beings empathetically, he had reserved none of his compassion for Corsairs. And his nebulous disgust for them had seemed to have crept into all of his art. "The Noble Experiment" was no exception.

  The mage being straddled by the mutant had an orange and green wombat tattoo on his shoulder, indicating he was a Satirist: a community of Corsairs who focused on archiving comedies for future generations. Out of all the Corsair communes, they had the least to do with experimentation or magical research. Their mandate was to locate comedy worthy of preserving for the eons to come. Howes' only comic strip The Slovenly Odin had been reviewed by them and deemed "insufficiently hilarious" to be collected and stored. After receiving their notification, Howes had given up on being a cartoonist and shifted his focus to painting humane art for the mindful. Every piece since his ideological "awakening" had contained some subtle, or not so subtle, dig at Corsairs.

  Howes had always maintained the negative depictions of Corsairs in his paintings had been honest mistakes. "Belches of the mind," he had said countless times in interviews. Yet, even if the Satirist tattoo had been painted on as innocently as Howes had asserted, the mage should not have been a Corsair. It was public knowledge that Grinners had accidently created mutants in their pursuit of elevating humanity to a higher plane. It should have been a Grinner mage being raped atop the remains of war, not a generic one.

  Agra peered into the mutant's yellow eyes. "If you're having such a good time, why aren't your eyes green?" he asked the woman. "I bet you hate the way you've been portrayed as much as I do. Why didn't you say something when you were alive?"

  Agra felt the urge to pick up "The Noble Experiment" and rip it into tiny pieces for all the lies it promoted. It was another fabricated history by a white man who had preached benevolence and tenderness while giving none. Agra reached out to yank the painting from the wall—but stopped. His frustrations had already caused a problem on the gangplank earlier. If he kept pushing his luck, eventually he would run out of it. And he needed as much of the resource as he could possess for his encounter with Jetta.

  After smacking the painting's frame with the back of his hand, he strode toward the inevitable conclusion of his partnership with the pirate queen.

  * * *

  JETTA WAS IN his cabin inspecting the few remaining items Steh had not put in the portal: a spare change of clothes, an extra toolkit with oddly curved spanners and a polished pebble that had Clarice the Blacksmith's mark. Jetta threw the stone on the bed as Agra closed the door.

  "Any luck?" she asked, her voice as upbeat as he felt.

  "No," he answered. "Most of them hadn't even heard of void magic."

  "Same. Though, two men recognized the band." She pointed to her Scared Usagi T-shirt. The front contained a sketch of a rabbit with large eyes cowering behind a rock. The bunny was hiding from a portly man hauling a large sack of money. "So, my afternoon wasn't a complete loss," she said. "It's always fun talking about the great songs of our generation."

  "Synth-punk?" Agra asked, leaning on the basin opposite her.

  "Electronic distortion but with a guitar lead. I guess it's pretty standard fare nowadays. They sing about cults and eating your girlfriend's soul." She looked over at him. "Maybe they're not your kind of crowd?"

  "If I was nineteen …"

  "We're always nineteen at heart." Jetta picked up Clarice's pebble and threw it on the mattress once more. "We could search the ship," she said half-heartedly.

  "No," Agra responded. "Elia's already asking questions about why I'm talking to you, and Tath is—"

  Jetta's redwood eyes, still vacant, gave his face a once over. "Well, Tath's feelings are important," she said. Jetta smirked to herself and blushed. "What did you learn, specifically?" she queried.

  Agra reminded himself Jetta was a liar and an actress. Junko was his love. "Most of them believe void magic is a pre-Cataclysm myth and it got mixed up with all the other tides of power when we didn't understand what was going on. The rest accept it's real but have never seen it used. Not once."

  Jetta pushed her hair forward so it fell in front of her face. As she ruffled it, the cascading pinks, purples and blues began to ripple out similar to how water moved when a finger had been placed in a pond. "Ah," she said. "It's pretty rare magic, but I thought we'd get some better responses. We could think about our next step over dinner if you—"

  Agra interrupted her to remove the option before it had even been fully formed: "You promised we were going to keep things professional."

  Jetta pushed her hair back and gave him a pert look. "I'm in deep mourning here."

  "I think your nose grew seven inches."

  "Ooh," she said. "There's a classic reference. I didn't expect kids' movies to be in your lane."

  "They aren't," Agra responded. "I used to read fairytales back when I believed the written word was worth the cost of locating it."

  "Or, put another way, when Lara was still alive," Jetta countered. "You're much more messed-up than you give yourself credit for."

  Agra cricked his neck, trying not to let his irritation get the better of him. "How many of my messages did you read?" he asked.

  "All of them. It's called research; you should try it."

  "Uh huh. And on that unasked-for advice, I think our partnership is over." Agra pushed off the basin and stood upright. "It doesn't seem anyone has void magic, so there must have been another way."

  "Possibly," Jetta half-agreed. "I've been thinking though. You'd need a lot of strength to punch someone clean over the railing. The type of enhanced strength a mutant might have, for example."

  Agra frowned and shook his head. "If you're proposing Mea would kill her friend …"

  Jetta tapped the mattress. "Yes and no, but I am curious about her. Her N-Comm has no messages on it before she met you and Tath. None. It's almost as if she had no friends or no-one knew her."

  "People fake their identities all the time," Agra rebutted. "Do you think we chose Steh and Mea to break into a sorceress' library because they looked clean-cut and legal?"

  "Who told you she's a mutant?" Jetta pressed.

  He chuckled and raised his hands. Mea had told him, had she not? She must have, except why would anyone admit to being a mutant? They were the dregs of society and often treated as if they carried an infectious disease. "Mea said she'd been experimented on," he replied as a stalling tactic so he could continue racking his memory. "Isn't that how they're made?"

  "Absolutely," Jetta confirmed.
"Along with Starfires and other creatures you've never heard of. What color are her eyes?"

  "What?"

  "What color?"

  "Green."

  Jetta smoothed her hair down so there were no loose strands. She got up and patted Agra's stomach. "I bet her eyes change to yellow when she's angry."

  "Yes," he agreed, thinking about "The Noble Experiment."

  Jetta continued, "And she talks to herself when you're not looking, probably while staring at water or a stream."

  "I don't have to answer that," Agra replied, recollecting all the times he had caught Mea chatting to herself. He remembered how Tath and him had laughed about her secret and made increasingly elaborate guesses about why she had thought it was so important to keep hidden. Everyone knew at least one loner who did the same thing. Hell, even Tath did it occasionally when she was trying to find the courage to keep fighting. What was wrong with talking to yourself?

  "How's this important?" Agra demanded. "You can't accept you helped someone suicidal, so Steh has to be a Starfire, Mea has to be a suspect, and there has to be an elaborate cover-up by a crew I've known for years." He sighed. "I can't believe I'd started to agree with you about Steh's condition. There are hundreds of reasons a sorcerer can explode, especially a mediocre one. And y'know, if you're running a scam, you should try to keep it believable. That's a pro tip. "

  Jetta laughed and grabbed Clarice's stone. "I guess you've got me figured," she said. "Hell, I couldn't help it. People do strange things when they're desperate … like talk to dangerous women instead of their friends."

  "You're lecturing me?"

  "Hold out your hand."

  Agra glared at her.

  "The con is up," Jetta said. "You proved too smart for a simple hustler like myself. But, I'm not a squelcher. I never have been and never will be. Can I at least give you a thank-you gift for all your hard work?"

  "Fine." Agra did as he was asked and held out his hand, palm up.

  "Stehlan would want you to have this," she said. Jetta placed the pebble in his hand. "It changed his life, and I think it might change yours."