K. Weiland - Storming

She shrugged. “I… cannot say. I have never had that question to be asking.” She pushed a flyaway piece of hair behind her ear. “Now Groundsworld must be my home.”

Not quite the answer he was looking for. The ground wasn’t his home, that was sure.

But when she spoke the word, a small little thread of something that was almost, but not quite, longing trembled through him. Longing to stay ? Just because she was going to stay here—in the one place he’d always been happy to escape? So now he was going to do, what? Stay with her? Just like that?

That made about as much sense as letting Lilla fly the Jenny.

Still, for a second, something in his windpipe hurt.

He cleared his throat and thrust his hands into his pockets.

He was the one who was complicating matters here. She’d stay or she’d go and she’d do it all on her own accord, because that was how she always did things. He’d already more or less told her she could join the troupe if she wanted. Should she decide to stay, that’d sure enough take care of his problem for him. He wouldn’t try to talk her out of it. If coming home had proved nothing else, it had proved that trying to talk them through only tended to make things more complicated.

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad we got this dawsedometer thing turned off for you anyway.”

She offered a little smile, then sobered. “Just now, I did try to speak to people here—those who are not Zlo’s. I was telling them everything will be right, that Groundsworld is not like we are thinking. But I am not best person to be talking to them. I do not think they believed me.”

He crossed back over to her. “It does seem likely Zlo still has something up his sleeve. But whatever it is, it’s a last-ditch gambit. Once Campbell’s got him in that jail, there’s not much Zlo can do.”

She chewed her lip. “What I am not understanding is why they were not using the Enforcement _Brigada_’s weapons.”

That was the lump in the gravy here.

He reached for her elbow. “Reckon we better mention that one to Campbell.”

They left the dawsedometer uncovered and headed back. Jael still limped, but already her breathing came easier.

In the cargo bay, Campbell’s men pawed through the boxes and bags. Griff, in the corner, glanced up once, caught Hitch’s eye, then looked away.

Hitch held his sigh and followed Jael to the doorway.

On the ground below, Campbell directed the mopping up.

_Schturming_’s passengers—more than a hundred of them in all—stood in a bunch a couple dozen feet from the ship. Somebody’d seen to taking off the gags, but their hands were still tied. Another ways off, twenty or so of Zlo’s boys sat on the ground, handcuffed. They looked somber and nervous, but not quite desperate.

Zlo stood behind Campbell, flanked by two stout deputies. He’d lost his hat in the tussle, and his bird was nowhere in sight. Beneath his scruffy beard, his face was set in hard lines.

Hitch squatted on the edge of the door. “Hey. Where are all your firearms?”

Zlo pursed his lips. He looked up at Hitch, like he was examining an interesting bug.

Jael gripped the side of the doorframe and leaned out over the edge. “ Gde pistoleti ?”

Campbell took a step nearer. “What’s this?”

“Jael says these people should have been armed,” Hitch said. “No sign of their weapons anywhere.”

Campbell turned to Zlo. “How about that? Where are the guns?”

Zlo ran his tongue over his silver-capped front teeth. “Will you believe what I tell you?” He shrugged. “These people—they do not like being tied up. They fought us and threw away the weapons.” He looked at Hitch. “Like I threw away your dog.”

Hitch looked at Jael. “We searched the ship already. Any hidey holes we could have missed?”

“There are places.” She glared at Zlo, and her nostrils flared. “But I know them all.”

Campbell took a step back and hollered into the ship, “Griff! Take this girl and look around in there. We may be missing some artillery!”

Jael shot a glance at Hitch, then ducked back inside and slid down the incline of the floor toward Griff.

Hitch stood to follow, then stopped.

Griff took her arm without a glance at Hitch.

She looked back, almost apologetically.

He stayed where he was. If there really was anybody left in here, Griff would take care of Jael. Anyway, there was something else Hitch needed to do, while Campbell was occupied. He sighed and swung over the edge of the door, back to the ground.

“You are wrong,” Zlo said as Hitch brushed past. “There is nothing there to be found.”

Hitch clucked. “Maybe I’ll find something else.”

The ship had rocked far enough over on its side to allow him to stand up straight underneath its high edge. He followed the keel aft. The weathered boards, peeling flecks of blue paint, were splintered here and there—but they were smooth enough for the most part. Too smooth for the pendant to have caught and stuck like Jael thought it had.

He kept walking. He craned his head back, scanning the huge canted bottom.

A dull glint of brass caught his eye. He walked two more steps, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

Couldn’t be it. Crazy he was even out here looking for it. But he stepped toward it, reached up to a deep splinter in one of the planks and closed his fingers around something cool and hard. He pulled it out and lowered his open hand. Jael’s pendant, still on its chain, lay in his palm.

At least he could give that much back to her.

Footsteps crackled through the grass behind him. “Well,” Campbell said.

Hitch closed his fingers over the pendant.

Campbell’s eyes met his. “Find something, did you?”

Hitch looked up at the hull. “What happens to Schturming now?”

“ Schturming stays with me, where I can look after it. We’ll get that propeller of hers fixed up right off.”

“What happened to destroying it? Because it’s such a danger to the people?”

Campbell seemed to consider. “That all depends on who’s flying it, now doesn’t it?”

“It surely does.”

“I know what you have there, Hitch.” Campbell held out a broad palm. “And I don’t believe it’s yours.”

“Don’t reckon it’s yours either.” Hitch nodded toward the ship once more. “What are you going to do about the dawsedometer ?”

“I’m going to keep this valley safe.” Campbell still didn’t crack a smile. “That’s my job. Just like it’s your job to keep your own folks safe.” He lowered his voice. “You held up your end, obeyed my orders. So I’m going to make it easy for you. I can acknowledge who that girl is as easy as not, and she’ll go to jail with the rest of her kind. This place ain’t her home anymore—and that ain’t her pendant.”

Hitch tightened his fist, and the pendant’s gears dug into his hand. “Why do you want it? You don’t need it.”

“Don’t I now? I know what it does. I know this boat’ll be on a pretty short leash without it.”

So much for that. “Zlo told you? Why?”

“Back when I first talked to him the other day, he figured it might give us a little more incentive to give it back to him if it was the only way he could leave. And so it did.” Campbell held Hitch’s gaze for five full seconds. “Well, son. What’ll it be? She can have her pendant or she can have her freedom.”

Far behind Campbell, Jael’s booted legs appeared outside the door. She dropped to the ground, Griff right behind her. They stood talking and shaking their heads. They must not have found anyone hiding. Maybe Zlo really had tossed them and the guns overboard.