Songs of the Dying Earth

“Which makes it even more lovely,” said Shrue. “But, as I was saying, even if we were to meet your exorbitant demand for recompense, these good people should not wish to endanger their lives in such a dangerous voyage when they desire simple transit to less problematic destinations.”

“With all due respect, Master magus,” said Shiolko, “look at them what’s waited here so patient for two years and more and understand why they will insist they be aboard whenever Steresa’s Dream departs its cradle. The three there in blue finery — that is Reverend Ceprecs and his two wives and they booked passage on our fine galleon for their honeymoon cruise, and that was twenty-six months ago, sir. The Reverend’s religion forbids him to consummate the happy trio’s marriage vows until they are officially on their honeymoon, you see, so they have waited these two years and more in that leaking old burlap tent you see over near the comfort shack…”

Shrue made an indecipherable noise in his throat.

“And the seven persons there in working brown,” continued Shiolko. “They be the Brothers Vromarak who wish nothing more than to bring the ashes of their dead father home to their ancestral sod hut on the Steppes of Shwang in the distant east Pompodouros so they can return to Mothmane and resume work at the stone quarry…”

“But the east Pompodouros almost certainly will not be on our way,” said Shrue.

“Aye, Master,” said Shiolko, “but as you say, if you won’t be wanting transport back to here, we can drop the Brothers on their way — and only for an additional eight hundred terces from each of them for my inconvenience. And that tall, tall fellow there, that is Arch-Docent Hu from Cosmopolis University…he’s been waiting nineteen months now in that cardboard shack you see there…and he cannot complete his thesis on the effect of antique effectuations on working-glass gloam-mine gnomes unless he visits the city of fallen pylons across the Melantine Gulf. I will charge him only a modest surcharge of fifteen hundred terces for that detour. And then, near the back of that group of orphans, there is Sister Yoenalla, formerly of Bglanet, who must…”

“Enough!” cried Shrue, throwing up his hands. “You shall have your seven thousand five hundred terces and your ossip and your emulsifier and you may load the paying menagerie as well. How long until we can sail?”

“It will take my sons only the afternoon and night to load the necessary viands and water flasks for the first weeks of our voyage, Master Magus,” grunted Shiolko, showing only the slightest flush of pride at his success. “We can sail at dawn, should the treacherous sun choose to favor us with one more sunrise.”

“At dawn then,” said Shrue. He turned to reason with Derwe Coreme but the woman was already choosing the six Myrmazons to accompany her and giving the others instructions about their return to the Myrmazon camp.

And thus began what Shrue would later realize were — incredibly, almost incomprehensibly — the happiest three weeks of his life.

Captain Shiolko was true to his word and Steresa’s Dream lifted away from its docking cradle just as the red sun began its own tortured ascent into the deep blue sky. The galleon hovered for a moment like a massive wood-and-crystal balloon some thousand feet above what looked to be the entire population of Mothmane Junction turned out to watch its departure, and then Shiolko’s eight “sons” (Shrue had already noticed that three of them were young women) shook out the canvas sails, the captain engaged the atmospheric emulsifier at the stern — which thickened the air beneath the sky galleon’s hull and rudder sufficiently to allow it to make way and to tack against the wind — and, following Shrue’s directions after the diabolist had consulted his little box holding Ulfänt Banderz’s nose, set the ship’s course south-southeast.

All forty-six of Shiolko’s original customers as well as Derwe Coreme and her Myrmazons, Meriwolt (still in his robes), and Shrue himself then pressed to the railings of the mid-deck or their private stateroom terraces and waved to the shouting crowds below. At first, Shrue thought that the thousands of Mothmane Junction residents, peasants, shopkeepers, and rival sky galleon workers were roaring their approval and best wishes up to the voyagers, but then he saw the low morning sunlight glinting off arrows, crossbow bolts, rocks, and a variety of other things flung up at Steresa’s Dream and he realized that the first departure of a sky galleon in more than two years was not an occasion held in unalloyed affection and approval. But in a few moments, the galleon had gained several thousand feet in altitude and, after first following the River Dirindian south for a few leagues, banked off southwest above the wooded Kumelzian Hills and left Mothmane Junction and its muted roars far behind.

For the next several days and then weeks, Shrue’s and the ship’s routine blended into one.