A Trip To Tuanaki

Chapter 8

A shudder wracks the Nameless as Den gets the boiler working at its maximum. As it's ramping up, a stiff breeze pulls them quickly away from the makeshift dock. In no time at all, they're flying swiftly over the island, making their way in the direction that Rhai indicated the night before. They fly over the town, and then the mobbing crowd, and towards the tall, dark ridge of the mountain. At this speed, the wind quickly becomes the only thing Alice notices. It's loud and biting, and of course she lacks goggles of her own. Slowly, she's beginning to understand why every sailor she's ever met constantly has a pair around their neck.

However, the speed at which they're going also makes it difficult to cross the deck. When Mal told her, she had grabbed the rail securely, but that doesn't mean it's easy to fight against the wind and make it to the ladder without incident. Alice drops below quickly.

It feels like wrapping her head in cotton. There's no sign of their speed except the a gentle rocking and the faintest whistle as the wind whips past the wooden hull. For a moment, it gives their speed a kind of unrealness, like none of it's happening, and this is just another time she's dreamed how it will go when she meets her father.

But what kind of dream involves an angry mob going to kill him? she wonders, and it pops her back into reality. She's spent too long thinking about it; now there's nothing left to do but get herself together. First Alice wraps her scarf tight around her neck, then she decides to collect the rest of her things as well. Expecting not to come back, she's careful to take detailed inventory of her things so she knows she has it all.

The most valuable things she checks off the list first. Her set of advanced picks is stowed deep in her pack, while the basics are, as always, in an inner pocket of her jacket. Given the state they'd last seen the locals in, Alice wears her pistol rather than packing it. Next comes her purse, or it would if she had any money to her name. The bulkiest parts of her belongings are easily the climbing ropes and hooks she's used to enter premises where she otherwise wouldn't be welcome — normally, those are things she would have left with Benny rather than carting them all over kingdom come, but Alice had a feeling, when she prepared to leave Huana, that she wouldn't be back for a long time.

The next portion of her things is primarily spare clothing: another shirt, three extra stockings, and a pair of dark leather gloves. Going through that collection now, she can tell that any dreams she had of belonging on an airship really were nothing but dreams: her warmest article of clothing is a scarf that doesn't do much against the biting wind on deck, and she doesn't have even a single pair of goggles. The only reason Alice has a vaguely appropriate jacket is because her mother had held onto one of her father's, and she managed to rescue it from Piers' attempts to purge all record of Fahrn from Alice's life.

Other than that, the only thing she has of any real value is the photo of part of her parent's classmates, and its worth is mostly sentimental. Still, Alice reaches into her pocket and pulls out the torn paper. For hardly the first time, she traces the sepia faces, wondering what these people were like and whether they knew her father. This time, though, she's starting to wonder if she maybe should have asked them different questions that just, Do you know where I can find my father?

While Alice has spent many an hour daydreaming about finding her father, she realizes now that she hasn't spent nearly enough time thinking about how that will go. What am I going to say to him? she wonders. Will he even believe me, if I tell him I'm his daughter? What if we look nothing alike?

There's a tiny, niggling voice at the back of her mind that asks, What if this Fahrn isn't your father? but she promptly pushes it aside. She's never gotten nearly this close to him in the past, and even if this turns out to be a near miss — or, perhaps even more frustrating, if it's another decoy like Hedgewick — she's willing to count that as a success of its own. Certainly, Alice is used to dealing with these kinds of obstacles in this quest of hers, and she's willing to face those challenges as they come.

The even more terrifying realization is the one that, in as much as an hour, she could know. There's a distinct possibility that this is the last morning she wakes up without her father in her life. Her long years of searching may finally be complete, and for all she knows, she could have a new home on an island where Piers would never think to look for her.

There's a small thud as someone drops down into the hold and Alice looks up from the corner she claimed for her hammock. It's Gunny, which means Mal must still be at the helm. "You ready?" Gunny asks. "We should be arriving shortly."

Alice is surprised at the time they've made, but then, it wouldn't be the first time she got lost in her own thoughts. She strings the long strap of her pack across her body, the familiar weight now settled on her back remarkably comforting. "Yes," she says, more than happy to stand on the deck as the Nameless sails towards her final destination. "Let's go."

#

mob doesn't get very far into the caves at all before it starts growing restless and skittish. Mayor Gavin does his best to rile them up, but they're nearly to the point of disbanding when young Victor lets out a sudden shout — "The end of the tunnel!"

As one, the mob surges forward. Pitchforks and torches brandished angrily, the men spill out into a gentle, secluded valley. It's far smaller an area than the portion of the island they have colonized, but it's equally lush, if not more so. Some of the mob takes offense at this, and the disgruntled murmuring begins again.

But Gavin's attention is on the airship hanging casually in the air above them. At first glance, they don't recognize it as the innocuous vessel that recently left their dock. The ship before them has three guns pointed in their direction, and it's hanging low enough that they can easily pick out the elven captain standing at the helm.

"Hail, people of Tuanaki!" booms a voice that sounds strangely metallic, as if it's not properly human. It comes not from the direction of the ship, but rather the compound nestled on a flat outcropping partly down the hill. On top of the building is a large horn-shaped contraption with a number of wires coming out of it, which appears to be the source of the noise, rather than the ship.

The mob stands in stunned silence for a brief moment, and then the voice continues its tinny intonations. "You may see that my friend here is heavily armed. I have no wish to blow a hole in the mountainside, but he tells me you encroach on my territory with malicious intent. Is that true?"

Suddenly, the crowd erupts in conversations. After a moment, the murmuring gives way to a shout of "Yes!" followed by a disjointed chorus of "No!" However, the first shout is enough to cause the airship to let loose one of its cannon. Before the crowd can scatter, the cannonball digs a crater into the ground mere yards from the assembled townsfolk.

"That was your only warning," the amplified voice says, and incites absolute panic. People flee in every direction, shaking practically everything that isn't nailed down. A gangly young man with limbs that don't seem quite under control upsets a stack of barrels. Two of the three rattle ominously but settle flat. The third, however, breaks free and comes rolling down the hill. In its path are a pair of young girls, twins, who hug each other and scream.

An older man dives for the pair of them, narrowly pulling them from harm's way. However, as they escape the rolling barrel, the man is thrown headlong into a support beam for the rail on a makeshift woodshed. The structure shudders, but miraculously holds.

Meanwhile, the barrel continues its merry descent, picking up speed as it goes. By the time it hits the stone wall, it is moving at quite a clip, and everyone around is escaping as fast as possible. Yet no one is quite prepared for the enormous boom when the barrel hits the barn. Pulverized saltfish explodes all over the yard, covering the barn and a large section of the ground. After that, it takes only a few seconds until every last one of the villagers has fled, leaving those on board the Nameless to meet with the compound's inhabitants at their leisure.