Choose

6. A Simple Question

August 4, 2009

Convenient? Just what sort of Ardel-tongued remark was that? Roith’delat, she was easily the most unfathomable and maddening female he’d ever encountered.

She nodded, repeating the baffling statement. “Convenient indeed. Well, I think I’ve seen enough,” she said, then ripped the top button from her coveralls.

Hank blinked. She finds out that her cellmates are pirates, and her reaction is to begin disrobing? What was it about this girl that so thoroughly unbalanced him? Nothing she did made any sense. It was like trying to watch a cockatrice swim.

Copper glinted briefly against her newly-exposed throat as she moved to the back of the cell and placed the button on the flat windowsill, just this side of the bars. Reaching behind her neck, she unfastened a slim chain and removed a necklace with an oddly-shaped pendant. Hank squinted to get a closer look. If anything, it looked like a curled spider with a keyhole in its back. What could she be up to? She didn’t think he’d be able to convince Ratchet to take that hideous thing in trade for his ship, did she? It wasn’t even gold!

She set the spider pendant next to the button, then removed both earrings – flat, teardrop-shaped copper disks, nothing out of the ordinary – and placed them on the sill as well.

She reached for the next button on her coveralls, then paused, glancing toward him as though she’d forgotten he was there.

“Don’t stop on my account. By all means, honey, do continue,” he drawled, lifting an eyebrow.

Twin patches of red blossomed on her cheeks and she lifted her nose skyward before primly turning away. Hank didn’t bother to stifle a chuckle. Not that he’d want anything to do with a shapeless stick of a girl like her anyway, he assured himself. He preferred a different kind of woman. A woman with curves. And who fluttered their eyelashes at him when he smiled. A woman who made sense.

Bones shifted, joints grinding noisily, and Hank looked up to find the ticker glaring at him, eyegleam flaring red. Scowling, Hank backed off. Fine. Let Bones have it his way this time. Appeasing a silver spoon was a small price to pay if it meant he’d get his ship back.

Not that it mattered. With her back turned to him, he couldn’t see what she was doing anyway. The soft rustle of cloth on cloth gave no clue to her actions. After a moment, she added a small phial of water, a silver locket, and a black velvet package to the windowsill before her arm motions indicated she was re-buttoning the coveralls.

Hank’s eyes narrowed, caught on the phial of water. No…she couldn’t possibly be —

“You’re a cogsmith,” said Bones, verbally completing Hank’s thought.

Buttoning complete, she turned and smiled brightly at the ticker. “I dabble, really. I’ve never built anything larger than a lapdog. I can’t imagine building something as impressive as a ship, or even a hoverracer. Mostly, I just make gadgets.”

Hank’s brows drew together. Nobody ‘dabbled’ in cogsmithing. That would be like learning to speak dresl on a lark. Cogsmithing was complicated. And dangerous. She made it sound like any other hobby – like silk painting, or collecting seashells.

Oblivious to his thoughts, she unrolled the velvet package and laid it flat. The wan sunlight revealed an array of tiny tools, each carefully tucked into a special pocket or flap. From one pocket, she removed a set of delicately-rimmed spectacles and perched them on the tip of her nose, a flick of her finger dropping two layers of magnifying lenses in front of her right eye.

Deftly, she withdrew one of the slim tools and picked up the spider pendant. She began inserting the tool into the pendant, spinning and prying. Periodically, she replaced her tool with another.

“That is how you recognized me as a ticker, then,” said Bones, and Hank smiled to himself. Ah, so the fact that she’d immediately recognized Bones as a ticker had bothered him. Good to see that she unsettled Bones as much as she unsettled him.

Without lifting her eyes from the pendant, Remora took one of the earrings from the windowsill and began affixing it to the pendant. She nodded. “I’ve seen pictures of tickers before, in the Ardelan Encyclopedia. I must say, the entry went into a great deal of detail, but you’re far more impressive in real life. The article made it seem like you’d be a mindless drone.” She reached up for the second earring, and began attaching that as well. “I am quite pleased to find it proven wrong.”

Hank shifted uncomfortably. That particular conversation needed to end, and quickly. The last thing they needed was to have someone checking into Bones’ past. Bad enough that she’d recognized him as a ticker to start, pure luck that she didn’t know enough about tickers to realize just how unique he was.

“How do you know so much about airships?” he asked, hoping to distract her. “Another hobby?”

She reached for the locket, opening it and removing a scrap of red ribbon. “You could say that,” she said. “I’ve had reason to do research into airships and pirates recently.”

As she put the locket back down and picked up the phial of water, he frowned. That wasn’t an answer. Why would a member of the gentry research airship pirates on a lark? Just who was she, anyway? Price was a common enough surname, even assuming it was her proper one. The gentry in this area were dominated by the Price family – she could be from any branch of that tree, no matter how far removed.

Before he could ask his questions, she asked one of her own. “Why were you not on my list, I wonder?” She unscrewed the lid of the phial and dropped the bit of ribbon into it.

“List?” he said, stupidly. When had they started talking about lists? And if she was cogsmithing, shouldn’t she be concentrating on what she was doing? An expert on the subject of cogsmithing he was not, but layman’s knowledge said anything touching the liquid affected the source. Wasn’t that supposed to be the difficult bit?

She dropped the button she’d pulled from her coveralls into the phial as well. “I have a list of all the airship captains in port.”

He snorted, deciding to leave the cogsmithing to her. “As you noted, we’re pirates. Pirates don’t exactly sign the docking lists, darlin’.”

She pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and handed it to him. “I said my list included all airship captains, not just the legal ones.” He unfolded the paper as she picked up the pendant and screwed the phial of water into the bottom of the spider-figure, so that it lay flat against the “belly” of the pendant.

He glanced at the paper, but the scribblings meant nothing to him. He handed it to Bones, who skimmed it briefly. “An impressive list. It does indeed seem to include even illicit airship traffic,” the ticker said.

Hank frowned. And how did a gentry girl come across such a list? Why would she even want one? Everything he learned about this girl simply raised more questions.

“So,” she said, picking up a copper turn-key from the black velvet and inserting it into the hole in the spider’s back. “Why weren’t you on my list?”

She paused, one hand on the key, and glanced up at him with bright eyes.