Neal Barrett Jr - Treachery of Kings

Not far from the river, up the rise upon the hill, were the heights of the royal palace. Bright lights always burned there. Sometimes one could hear their reveling far into the night. Princes and their toadies didn't have to work the next day; there were lesser fools hired to do that.

Finally, Finn forced himself to look to the east. There was the glow of the Royal Balloon Yards, a pale, threatening cloud of dirty orange, and below, an eerie yellow light.

The light, and the pall of dirty smoke, meant the Grounder Crews were stoking the coals in the great hot furnaces there, pits of fire that never went out through the rains of summer or the howl of winter storms. The work went on under the high, timbered roofs, work that never ceased because the war never stopped, and the great balloons must rise every day. Rise, and float out across the river, past the swampy land where the enemy's balloons waited to meet their foes.

There, men would fight and men would die. Men would come back bloody and maimed, missing an arm or a leg. Some, who clearly had no luck at all, would live to fight another day.

And what will I lose, if indeed I do not lose it all? An eye, a toe? An arm or maybe two? A fine lizard-maker that'd be

“Scones and Stones,” he said softly, gripping the sill and staring into the night, “if I'm not whole, I'll not come back at all. I will never burden dear Letitia with some gross and mutilated creature, some piece of a man who drags his poor shell about the streets, begging for a pence or two. By damn, I will not. And if I've not the limbs to do myself in, I'll hire some fellow for the job. I'll do that before I'll “Huh? What's that?” His wretched thoughts slipped away, and he quickly found his wits, instantly aware of the hulking figure looming against the night down below. And, with a chill, he knew at once it was a Bullie peering up at him in the dark, for nothing in Ulster East could match the creature's size. “You, what do you want?”

“Don't fear, little fellow,” came the deep, yet scarcely heard whisper from below. “I means you no harm. Be coming down here if you will.”

“It's-Bucerius, yes?” Finn said, searching for the name. “I have that right, do I not?”

“Close enough, human.”

“I'll-I shall be right with you, then.”

Finn quickly found his trousers and slipped into a shirt. His boots were not in sight, and he decided to do without. Letitia stirred in her sleep, and Finn prayed she wouldn't wake up.

“Shall I come with you?” said Julia Jessica Slagg from the dark.

“And do what? Wrestle him to the ground?”

Julia didn't answer. Finn hurried quickly down the stairs, slipped the lock on his thick oaken door-a door he had always felt secure, until this very night.

“You being at the balloonin’ place,” the Bullie announced. “I sees you there when the sun be rising again.”

“Did you come here to tell me that?”

“No.”

“No. Then what?”

“We be goin’ to Heldessia Land. If fortune be with us, we be comin’ back as well. I be tellin’ you this. I am not liking human persons at all.”

“All right, I guess I can live with that.”

Finn stared up at the Bullie. The sky, the stars, the universe itself had disappeared. There was nothing else to see but the monstrous, somewhat odorous form, that blocked out the night.

“If you don't like human-persons, why do you work for the Prince? Why don't you do something else?”

Bucerius shrugged, a major event in itself.

“Business is business. Money be talkin’, and a Prince be no worse than anyone else.”

“Point well taken,” Finn said. “Sunrise then, all right? I feel we're off for a really fun time.”

“That be a humor, is it not?”

“Sort of, yes. Close enough.”

“Don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't be doin’ it again. My folk isn't likin’ joke, whimsy, slappers of any sort. You be joking, keep it to yourself.”

“Fine, I will,” Finn said. “You have a nice night.”

“Be watching good, human. Might be trouble you havin’ before it get light.”

“What? What kind of trouble, what are you talking about?”

“Something bad. Something like this maybe coming here again.”

“Something like what?-”

Finn froze in his tracks. The enormous creature reached down behind him, lifted up a big potato sack, then another after that. When both of these burdens hung snugly on his shoulder, he turned back to Finn.

In the dark of night, Finn was uncertain if what he was seeing was real. The two potato sacks seemed to squirm, seemed to wiggle, refuse to sit still. Something in there shuddered, something in there moved. More than that, vague, incoherent sounds came from the sacks as well.

“When sun comin’ up, you bein’ there,” the Bullie said. “We be leaving, catching the easterly wind.”

“Yes, fine. Easterly wind… Look, I don't feel you answered my question about what trouble might appear. And something, I guess you know, is stirring in your sacks.”

Bucerius rumbled, deep within his chest. His features twisted in disgust. “Human person don't be listenin’ at all. Fellow you be fighting with, fellow be ugly, even for one of your kind. He comin’ here with a friend. Goin’ to be doing you in, is what he got in mind.”

Finn felt the hairs climb the back of his neck.

“That lout at the fair…He's in your, uh-”

“Might be he gots another friend, might be he don't. You be where I'm sayin’, all right? Don't be messing up my business, human person. You hear?”

Finn didn't answer. He stood on his doorstep, stood very still. He watched, as the Bullie hefted his sacks more easily on his shoulder and stomped down Garpenny Street toward the river way. He wanted to ask what his shipmate, his ponderous companion, his new best friend-who didn't care for whimsy-intended to do down there. On the other hand, he didn't really want to know at all…

From afar, Finn had smelled the noxious fumes when the wind was from the west, heard the clamor, heard the roar of the great eternal fires, seen the ruddy glow against the night. Never had he felt the slightest need, the least desire, to go near the horrid place.

Never, and that included now.

A horde of men and Newlies swarmed about, shouted, bellowed, cursed one another, caught in seeming chaos, total disarray. Some clutched ropes that dangled from the sky, lines that held the great, sluggish war balloons in tow.

Some manned the endless complexity of valves, flues, nozzles and such affixed to the pulsing, swollen tubes that snaked across the grounds. The tubes themselves emerged like multilimbed demons from the fiery sheds where coal, through some alchemic means, conjured itself into gas that fed the ever-hungry balloons.

Then, having had their fill, these giant, bloated creatures could scarcely be contained upon the ground. It took much effort, strength, and obscenities as well to keep them from breaking their tethers and rising into the tainted air

“You be gettin’ a move on, human person. We runnin’ out of wind, runnin’ outta time!”

A shout, coupled with a ferocious grip that nearly took his shoulder off, shook Finn out of his thoughts.

“If we miss the wind, then what?” Finn said. “We don't have to go?”

“Not be goin to miss it, you hearing this, you unner-stan’?”

“Yes, I think I've got it,” Finn said, fully grasping the Bullie's ire. “Perfectly clear to me.”

“Good. You keepin’ up now, I don’ be askin’ you again.”

Without another word, Bucerius stomped off across the noisy, crowded flats, through the flurry, through the tangle and the maze of ropes and lines and nets, through the mud and the mire, the curses and the shouts, and the vast, bloated herd of captive balloons that overshadowed them all.