The Wind Merchant Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  The Wind Merchant

  Prologue

  Chapter One - The Convergence

  Chapter Two - The Floating City

  Chapter Three - The Sentence

  Chapter Four - The Engine

  Chapter Five - The Kingfisher

  Chapter Six - The Search

  Chapter Seven - The Mission

  Chapter Eight - The Great Below

  Chapter Nine - The Clockwork Metropolis

  Chapter Ten - The Piper

  Chapter Eleven - The Local Legend

  Chapter Twelve - The Halifax

  Chapter Thirteen - The Lack

  Chapter Fourteen - The Demons

  Chapter Fifteen - The Doctor

  Chapter Sixteen - The Lost Fox

  Chapter Seventeen - The White Train

  Chapter Eighteen - The Signal

  Chapter Nineteen - The Reclaimer

  Chapter Twenty - The Getaway

  Chapter Twenty-One - The Winnower

  Chapter Twenty-Two - The Fall

  Chapter Twenty-Three - The Reclaimers

  Epilogue

  THE WIND MERCHANT

  Ryan Dunlap

  First Printing, July 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by Ryan Dunlap

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Cover art, “The Getaway” by Grant Cooley (www.GrantCooley.com)

  Illustration by Marisa Draeger

  Cover design by Phil Earnest (www.PhilEarnest.com)

  The text type was set in Adobe Caslon Pro

  www.TheWindMerchant.com

  For Sarah, because you told me to never give up.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There is something that creatives need in order to affirm they aren’t merely broadcasting into the ether: support. Whether that support came in the form of being an early draft reader, financial supporter, or cheerleader, I will risk the cliche and dare to say that this book wouldn’t have become a reality if not for the following people:

  Steve Arensberg, Dustin & Gloria Ballard, Andrew Blankenship, Jason Carter, Donna Coker, David & K Cole, Grant Cooley, Jessica Cox, Laurie Cummings, Shirley Darch, Marisa Draeger, David & Lory Dunlap, Sarah Dunlap, Phil Earnest, Scott Fujan, Zach Garrett, Matt Giesler, Mark Gullickson, Tammy Haxton, Joanne Heck, Karen Johnson, Bill & Ola Jordan, Timothy Kane, Lee Kebler, Michael Kennedy, Ellen Knight, Jason Knight, Michael Lewis, Thomas Loyd, Stan Meador, Elisha McCulloh, Josh McKamie, Lindsay Morris, Nathan Nasby, Heather O’Daniel, Gloria Olman, Dan Pavlik, Nic Peaks, Adria Pendergrass, Austin Penick, Patrick Riffe, Tiffani Sahara, Clara Seaman, Logan Sekulow, Adam & Andrew Smith, Kawana Smith, Greg Thorne, Josh Toquothty, Kevin & Becky Tucker, Stuart Turner, Will & Carol Underwood, Tiffany Unruh, George Vuckovic, Nicki Waldorf, Nick Whiley, & Erik Yeager

  At risk of further sounding cliche, I also must chiefly give thanks to the Originator of Creativity and Story, who I am daily inspired by. Without Christ, I am nothing. I offer my utmost and sincerest thanks for your contribution to The Wind Merchant, and can only hope that I told the best story I had in me.

  Sincerely,

  Ryan Dunlap

  THE WIND MERCHANT

  Prologue

  As any pilot with a few years under his belt knew, turbulence alone never downed an airship. However, cannonballs were a different matter.

  Elias Veir madly spun the large, spoked wheel in a desperate attempt to avoid the next barrage as an explosion of splinters, glass shards, and twisted brass melded cacophonously with a scream of pain. Under more favorable circumstances, Elias would have considered the world above the field of amber clouds truly beautiful, but the air tasted oddly of cinnamon and blood, marring the effect.

  “Morris?” Elias called, still devoting the greater part of his attention to the second enemy airship joining the fray.

  “I can’t feel my legs,” came the reply.

  Elias looked back to see the young man slumped against the railing near the Captain’s quarters with a large scrap of fuselage protruding from his midsection. “We’ll get you to a doctor,” Elias said, hoping his hollow words at least sounded comforting.

  With the only other surviving member of the crew out of commission, Elias’ options were dwindling. The engines no longer responded to climbing maneuvers. Desperation crept into his growl as he shoved the wheel forward, and his stomach leapt into his throat.

  The airship dove into the clouds, then shot through to the blood-red world below. Elias leveled off the ship and looked back. Superstitious or no, their pursuers wouldn’t take long to decide it worthwhile to risk dropping beneath the clouds.

  “What have you done?” Morris said, eyes glassing over as he stared up. “I can’t be down here.”

  “It’s only for a little bit,” Elias said.

  Three airships descended from cloud cover in attack formation. Elias spun the wheel hard to starboard hoping to buy enough time to enact his plan. He stabilized the rudder and dashed across the deck to fling open the Captain’s quarters door.

  Faint pops of cannon fire encouraged him to work quickly.

  Elias was scrambling to open the desk drawer containing his flare gun and parchment when an unholy shriek assailed his eardrums. An instant later, a concussive force blasted through the back wall, showering the quarters with wood splinters and rocking the ship side to side.

  A streak of red hot pain shot through his left leg. Elias looked down to see a scrap of wood paneling jutting from his thigh, but he had no time to address it. Grabbing a scrap of parchment, he scrawled a note and stuffed it into the message tube that he had already loaded in the flare gun. Too much rode on the success of this mission for him to fail here.

  As he hobbled back to the outside deck, another volley rocked the ship, severing the bow ropes connecting the balloon to the deck. The horizon climbed and Elias braced himself against the console. He grabbed the transmitter. “Mayday, Mayday! This is Elias Veir, I—”

  Another lurch threw Elias to the floor, yanking out the transmitter cabling with him. Elias aimed his flare gun to the sky.

  I’m sorry, he mouthed.

  He pulled the trigger, and with a crack the message tube was lost to the clouds.

  An eerie peace fell as the soft crackling of fire filled the absence left by the formerly churning engines, at least until Morris’ scream penetrated the calm with an intensity that would have unnerved Elias even on his better days.

  “Stop me,” Morris pleaded to nobody in particular.

  With no clue as to what the young man meant, Elias watched the three ships line up and fire a final barrage.

  The explosion hurled the wind merchant over the bow railing and into thin air.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Convergence

  Ten years later.

  “I love you, but this isn’t working for me,” Ras Veir said, pulling down his welding
goggles and flicking on his torch.

  The Copper Fox rarely surpassed first impressions. Equal parts gasbag relic and salvage-yard special, the airship’s mind was set on hanging dead in the sky. Inside its dank hold, sparks flared as a begoggled young man in his early twenties welded a metal plate over the most recently ruptured pipe. “Don’t worry, nobody’s going to notice,” he said, inspecting the messy patch job. After all, it looked right at home within the context of its cobbled together surroundings.

  “Atta girl,” Ras said, flicking off the torch and standing to stretch his legs. A low-hanging pipe sounded an atonal clang as it connected solidly with the back of his head. Stars flooded his vision, punctuating the fading glow of the retina burn from his arc-welder.

  “Not your fault,” Ras said through gritted teeth. He gingerly removed his welding goggles, releasing a sweaty, tangled mess of dark brown hair into his face. He brushed it away, and as he did so, he caught his distorted reflection in the one redeeming feature of his ship: the massive glass container filling half of the hold.

  Ras had mixed feelings about the inherited wind collection tank. The replacement part was the last vestige of his father’s lost ship, The Silver Fox, and reminded him that his entire vessel was a slapdash homage to his father’s legacy. From the stained patchwork balloon to the thirdhand engines, his ship felt like a child’s scribble compared to a lost set of blueprints.

  Extricating himself from the pipes, Ras walked to one of his twin scoop engines. He crouched and twisted the valve from the newly patched pipe, restoring the flow of Energy-filled air from outside to the machine. With a pull of a lever, the iris inside the steel barrel opened and shut, throttling the Energy feed. He allowed himself a moment of celebration even though another pipe would likely need his attention later in the week.

  A win is a win, he thought, flicking on both engines before climbing above deck.

  With the reassuring rattle of the engines once again filling the air, he let the cool wind whip his hair and ventilate his baggy third-generation clothing, drying the sweat worked up in the hold. At moments like this, Ras appreciated that his grandfather and father weren’t small-framed men. After sufficiently cooling off, he cinched up the thin leather straps at his elbows and knees to avoid letting the wind play with the extra fabric.

  Staring out at the open horizon of white, fluffy clouds, he imagined the days long gone when a wooden ship like his didn’t need the gasbag to travel from place to place over the…big thing made of water.

  He could never remember the name of anything below Atmo.

  The tension eased from his shoulders when he took a moment to appreciate the subtle beauty of the clouds, knowing that nobody would ever see them quite this way again.

  It was such a shame they would kill him if he ventured too low.

  The very first time his father took him down to the cloud level, the proximity to the abandoned world below became his favorite part of sailing. It sparked his imagination with possibilities from an early age, but gaps to peek below were rare after The Clockwork War.

  The constant presence of the clouds reminded him of a time when his father was the breadwinner for the family, and the responsibility of providing for he and his mother didn’t weigh so heavily.

  Ras lowered the ship’s collection tube to let it troll just above the cloud level. He prided himself on being a traditional wind merchant, but was painfully aware that it was only because he lacked the means to acquire the more modern Energy hunting tools.

  Up on the bridge, the monitor beeped, alerting him to a shift in the local Energy Level. On good days he would happen upon a Level 3 source, but most days provided a 2. Level 1 meant he didn’t eat. He climbed the stairs to the bridge to read the monitor. “C’mon, four,” he said as if asking the wind for Energy had ever worked.

  Level 2.

  “Better than one,” he said, pressing the button to begin pooling the wind in the collection tank.

  A chill swept over the bridge, causing Ras to hug his arms for warmth, rubbing some life back into them. The cold was a telltale sign there was less Energy in The Bowl to warm the wind, and he had put off spending money on a warmer coat for too long. The trend frightened him. Having a bad economy was one thing, but having that economy literally powering his city’s engines was another.

  The radio squawked to life at a jarring volume, the sounds garbled and static-filled. “Gomer Tassy. Ow obo eye? Nober.” The phrase repeated itself, picking up speed with each iteration before Ras unplugged the power to the box, killing the spiraling loop. He plugged the box back in before saying, “Hold a tick, transmitter’s on the fritz. Over.” He gave the device the usual thwack with the palm of his hand and brought the comm unit back to his mouth. “Come again, please. Over.”

  “I just want to know how you haven’t fallen out of Atmo yet, Rassy,” said a jovial voice.

  Ras sighed. The voice belonged to Tibbs, one of his few remaining childhood acquaintances. He preferred Erasmus to Rassy as his full name didn’t prompt memories of schoolyard chants starting with ‘Gassy.’ “Send me your coordinates, I’ll be right over.”

  “Stay where you are, Rassy. I don’t need repairs,” Tibbs said. “Got something for you. I’ll be right over…Over.”

  Ras searched the skies for Tibbs, who found dangerously close buzzbys far more humorous than his targets did. There. Off the port bow a gleaming silver ship came careening in and clipped just above The Copper Fox’s balloon, forcing Ras to steady himself against the turbulence. The new airship made a lazy circle and sidled up next to its wooden-bodied brother as both vessels slowed to a halt.

  Tibbs never quite lost his baby fat no matter how much time he spent working out. Those unfortunate enough to brush against his short temper knew not to make his size a point of conversation again, but he never held a grudge, and his easy smile was usually enough to set folks at ease again. Sauntering over to his railing, he waved for Ras to do likewise.

  “What are you up to, trolling for Twos?” Tibbs asked.

  “Just patching collection pipes.”

  “Why don’t you buy a new set? How expensive can they be?” Tibbs asked.

  Ras knew Tibbs had never owned an airship long enough to need repairs, always swapping out for whatever new model looked the shiniest. He assumed Tibbs didn’t actually know what a set cost. “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty,” Ras said, hoping to change the topic. “So you don’t need anything fixed?”

  Tibbs snorted a laugh. “Does she look like she needs repairs?” he asked, placing a loving hand on the metal railing.

  Ras shrugged. “I heard steering on the new model favors to port.”

  “Now that you mention…no, she’s fine. You know, you might look into being a mechanic back on Verdant,” Tibbs said, “Welding goggles look good on you.”

  Ras chose to take it as a compliment, smiling politely. It wasn’t easy. “My current employment suits me just fine, thanks,” he said, knowing he might as well call himself a mechanic that dabbled in wind collection. A growing percentage of his income came from various repairs for stranded wind merchants. “You said you had something for me?”

  Tibbs’ eyes went wide with excitement. “Yes, yes, yes.” He fished out a small wooden box from his cargo pocket and cradled it in his hands as though he held a rare commodity. “You heard about the new version of Helios’ KnackVision, right?”

  Ras nodded. He longed for a pair of the goggles that showed Energy flowing on the wind, not least because he knew he was in the ever shrinking minority of wind merchants still flying blind.

  Tibbs removed a shiny set of brass goggles from the box and placed them atop his head. “Ta-da!” he said with a flourish, jutting both hands out and spun slightly so Ras could appreciate the sides and back of the strap as well. “Just arrived this morning! With this version you can actually see the level of Energy on the wind, percentage of potency and all!” Tibbs said, quoting the promotional material.

  “That’s ah
...really handy, I’m sure,” Ras said, disappointed that what Tibbs had to give him looked to be little more than a demonstration.

  “All the benefits of being a Knack without the pesky exploding part,” Tibbs said. “Not that you’d have to worry about that, right Rassy?”

  Ras hated how well known his inability to sense Energy was among the wind merchants in Verdant. Ras’ grandfather was a true Knack who claimed he could actually see the Energy flying by, but he had run afoul of a concentrated amount, killing him. Elias had inherited his sixth-sense for finding potent currents, making him a fine wind merchant.

  And then there was Ras, whose resounding deafness to the element gave him occasional difficulties with discerning port from starboard. “Ras or Erasmus, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, sure, Ras, I got it,” Tibbs said. He dug a small cloth bag stitched with the Helios logo out of his other cargo pocket. “My cousin Errol said you spent the afternoon with him yesterday after he blew his engines.”

  “All I could manage was getting him limping back home.”

  “He said you wouldn’t let him pay you.”

  Ras shrugged. “He’s going to have enough to worry about with two full rebuilds.”

  “You should have charged him. He’s good for it,” Tibbs said.

  “I’ll remember that next time.”

  An awkward pause hung in the air before Tibbs said, “Well, I don’t really need two sets of backups, so I thought you might like these.” He pulled a pair of goggles out of the bag.

  Ras knew the model instantly. An identical pair had been taunting him from behind a pawn shop’s counter while he saved up: the original model of KnackVisions crafted by Foster Helios before either young man was born.