The Leaky Mermaid

Anne’s feet hit the ground hard. She stumbled but managed to remain upright. When she lifted her head, though, she nearly fell over in shock. It was still dark, but now there were stars and a full moon providing enough light for her to see the massive airship directly in front of her—or rather, providing enough light for her to see that she was directly in front of it.

She raised her arms, but the airship missed her completely. This wasn’t surprising considering it wasn’t actually moving. Nor were any of the dozens of airships around it. They were all resting on the ground, propped up on wooden beams. The airships were of various sizes and configurations, from tiny one-person rowboats to bulky trawlers and streamlined yachts, but they all had two things in common: One, all of them appeared to be empty, and two, all of them were in a serious state of disrepair.

While Anne tried to figure out exactly where she had landed, the gauntlet crackled with lines of blue energy. Seconds later the Construct appeared beside her in a flash of light. She looked somewhat transparent, and Anne could almost make out the shape of the airship behind her.

“Are you okay?” asked Anne.

“I think so,” the Construct said shakily. “But that was… disturbing. It felt like I was being ripped into pieces, and then the gauntlet kicked me out here.”

Jeffery appeared next to them in his own burst of light. “Yeah, it looks like space actually is going to be an issue. It’s not that the gauntlet is small, but her program is megahuge. The gauntlet simply can’t contain her.”

Intermittent streaks of energy continued to snake around the gauntlet.

“Will she be okay?” asked Anne.

Jeffery landed on Anne’s arm and examined the energy bursts. “Her program is already leaking out. The longer she’s in here, the more unstable she’ll become. Which means the sooner we can upload her into a proper computer terminal, the better.”

“Do not concern yourself with my well-being,” said the Construct. “Proceed with your mission.”

“Is there any chance this could affect you, too?” Anne asked Jeffery. She hadn’t even considered that possibility before agreeing to the transfer.

Jeffery saluted Anne with a tiny wing. “No worries, ma’am. I’m good to go.”

Penelope, Hiro, Marri, and the rest of her crew ran out from between two airships.

“There you are!” said Marri. “I thought we’d lost you.”

Neither Penelope nor Hiro said anything. Hiro’s cheeks looked paler than usual, and Penelope had her arms crossed and was making a point of not looking in his direction.

“What is this place?” Anne asked Jeffery.

“You said we needed transportation,” said Jeffery.

“I don’t recall saying that.”

“Isn’t your plan to prevent the barrier from going down?”

“Yes.”

“Well, in order to do that you need to return to the High Castle, right? With the Blue Daisy no longer available, how exactly were you planning to do that?”

“So why didn’t you just take us directly there?” asked Anne. “You said you could control where we came out.”

“I tried, but something blocked me from taking us there. It’s the one place we couldn’t go. It might have to do with the fact that the castle has already been activated. Maybe it’s a security feature, to prevent people from simply dropping in and turning it off again.”

They made their way among the airships until they came to a clearing with a small shack. Most of the windows were boarded up, and the one window that wasn’t had been smashed at some point and never replaced. The front door wasn’t in the doorframe but instead was being used to prop up one end of the porch roof.

“This looks promising,” said Marri.

Anne stepped onto the front porch and pulled a thin chain hanging by the door. Inside the shack a little bell rang. A series of grunts, thumps, and curses emanated from the interior. There was the sound of footsteps approaching, and a thin man with greasy black hair and wearing a ragged coat and carrying a rusty lantern came to the doorway.

“Can’t you read?” he said in a gruff voice. “The sign says ‘Keep Out.’ Not to mention it’s nearly midnight.”

Anne cleared her throat. “We’d like to purchase an airship.”

The man’s expression darkened. “If you’ve only come here to make fun of me, you can be on your way. I have better things to do with my time, thank you very much. Like watch the mold grow on my walls.”

He started back inside.

“Wait!” said Anne. “We’re not making fun of you. We really do need an airship.”

The man stopped. “I’m not in the used-airship business anymore. The council revoked my license.”

“You mean the Wizards’ Council?” asked Hiro.

“Is there another council? Accused me of selling substandard airships. The nerve of them, right?”

“Er, were they substandard?”

“Of course not!” the man roared, clearly offended by the mere suggestion. “Best used airships on the market. I mean, sure, some of them had probably seen better days. But that’s the whole beauty of buying used. You get something that’s stood the test of time.”

“So what happened after the council took away your license?” asked Anne.

He shrugged. “I turned the place into a junkyard.”

Marri pointed to the rows of airships visible in the moonlight. “Okay, so sell us a piece of junk, then. Is there anything here that can still fly?”

The man leaned against the doorframe and studied them. “Do you have any money?”

“Um,” said Anne.

“That’s what I thought. I might not be in the business anymore, but I can smell a bunch of deadbeats a mile away”

“Hey, we’re not deadbeats,” said Jeffery. “We just happen to be financially challenged at the moment.”

“Look, I wish we had time to explain,” said Anne, “but we have something very important that needs doing and we need a ship. Please, won’t you help us?”

He crossed his arms. “Why should I?”

“Because we’re on the run from the Wizards’ Council, and helping us would really annoy them,” said Marri.

The man brightened considerably at this. “You don’t say? Well, in that case, my junkyard is your junkyard. What do you need?”

“An airship that flies,” Anne said hopefully.

He scratched his chin. “Most of them have been sitting here for years. I sell the parts whenever I can. I doubt there’s a working ship on the lot.” He clapped his hands together. “But for a chance to stick it to those wizards, I’m willing to put in a little overtime.” He stuck out his hand for Anne to shake. “I’m Honest Ehd, by the way.”

“I’m Anne,” she said, and shook his hand.

Anne introduced the rest of the group.

Honest Ehd smiled. “Pirates, eh? Even better.”

He led them along the rows of airships to a ship near the back of the lot. It was a three-masted galleon with fore- and aftercastles, metal plates along the sides of the hull, and two great propellers jutting from the stern. At some point in its history it might have been a formidable warship, but those days were long past. The sails needed mending, there was only one working cannon, and many of the deck planks were either rotten or missing altogether.

“The Leaky Mermaid?” said Hiro, reading the name painted on the side of the ship.

“It’s the best ship on the lot.”

“It looks like the sort of death trap even Death itself might be afraid of,” said Penelope.

“Don’t worry,” said Honest Ehd. “It’ll fly, or my name isn’t Honest Ehd.”

“Is that your real name?” asked Hiro.

“No, it’s actually Morally Ambiguous Patrick. But the ship will still fly, guaranteed.”

Honest Ehd’s enthusiasm couldn’t be rivaled. For the next several hours they stripped any parts they needed from the surrounding ships. When they couldn’t find a necessary part, Ehd fashioned a workable substitute from other pieces of junk lying about. While the crew worked with Honest Ehd to get the ship ready, Anne, Penelope, Hiro, Marri, Jeffery, and the Construct met in Ehd’s shack to devise a plan. They lit several warped candles and gathered around a small table. Penelope made a point of not standing next to Hiro.

“So which medallion do we go after first?” asked Marri.

“The gold medallion is still with Octo-Horse Pirate at the High Castle,” said Jeffery.

“How do you know that?” asked Anne.

“I can locate my current quest medallion anywhere in the Hierarchy.”

“Even though it’s in the other gauntlet?”

“Yep,” said Jeffery. “And if he takes it somewhere else, I’ll still be able to find it.”

“Okay, that’s good to know,” said Anne. “In that case, I guess it makes sense to concentrate on the other two first.”

“They should still be in the cargo hold of the Blue Daisy along with the rest of your medallions,” said Marri. “I had Mr. Locke put them there after he confiscated them from Pirate Fifty-Three.”

“No, the silver medallion is at Saint Lupin’s,” said Anne. “The gauntlet released it after I finished the first quest. It’s in a laboratory at the bottom of the tier. I ended our first quest inside a chamber labeled PROJECT A.N.V.I.L., and it took the medallion. Your crew wouldn’t have found it.”

“But someone else might have,” said Hiro. “I did a full inventory while we were completing the renovations, including the laboratory. The Wizards’ Council conducted a thorough investigation after the quest and all the equipment was removed.”

Anne was shocked by this news. “What?! But that’s my stuff!”

“I don’t suppose anyone knows where the council might keep such objects?” asked Marri.

Hiro nodded. “I do. There’s a secret warehouse tier where they store all major quest-related items.”

Penelope sneered. “And you just happen to know that?”

“It’s also where the council day care is located. My parents used to drop me off there all the time.”

Anne pressed her fingers against the sides of her head. Stopping the barrier was becoming more and more complicated by the minute, and time was running out. If they didn’t gather the medallions and find the Lady of Glass by early morning, it would be too late.

“Since the other two medallions are already at the High Castle, I suggest we focus our efforts on acquiring the silver medallion first,” said Marri. She turned to Hiro. “I assume you can lead us to the secret facility you mentioned?”

“I can,” said Hiro. “But they have heavy security. There are checkpoints at each warehouse and guards patrolling everywhere. The perimeter is guarded by hidden traps. There are lots of wizards, too. It would be pretty much impossible to sneak in, and attacking it would be inadvisable, to say the least.”

“I could easily sneak past the guards and locate the medallion for you,” offered the Construct.

“And pick it up how?” said Penelope.

“Ah, yes, there is that.”

“Well, we can’t just walk in the front door and ask for the medallion,” said Marri. “How would we explain a bunch of students popping in for a visit?”

“Hiro’s letter!” shouted Anne.

“What?” said Hiro.

“Don’t you remember? Your mother invited you to Take Your Student to Work Day. We can go to the facility under the guise of being visiting students, and then search for the medallion.”

“In the middle of the night?” Hiro sputtered.

“Honest Ehd figured the repairs to the Leaky Mermaid would take close to six hours,” said Anne. “By the time they finish, it’ll be closer to morning. We can just say we were eager to get an early start.”

“An early start? It’ll be five o’clock in the morning!”

“Trust us,” said Penelope. “Coming from you it will be totally believable.”

Marri smiled. “That sounds like the perfect plan, and we apparently have the perfect candidate to lead the way.”

Hiro looked stunned. “M-me? But I can’t—I couldn’t possibly.”

Anne rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve been there. You’re already familiar with the layout. That makes you the best person for the job.”

“But I’m no good at this stuff,” Hiro protested. “I’m terrible at lying. My tongue gets all twisted up, and I start rambling.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Penelope. “I’d say you’re a pretty convincing liar myself.”

“Hiro, if we had another option we’d take it, but we don’t,” said Anne. “We need to get into that warehouse, and you’re going to have to lead us. That’s final.”

“But—but why do you still get to decide what’s final?”

“Because I’m the protagonist.”

“Er, that’s not quite true,” said Jeffery.

“What do you mean?” asked Anne.

“Well, Octo-Horse guy has the gold medallion now, which technically makes him the Official Protagonist.”

“Then what does that make me?”

“Why, the villain, of course.”

“The what?!”

Jeffery hopped back several steps. “Or the Official Antagonist, if you prefer. Whatever floats your boat.”

“But that’s terrible!” cried Anne, flabbergasted. “I don’t want to be the bad guy.”

Jeffery flapped his wings. “You? What about me? Being the GPS for some scoundrel isn’t exactly going to be a glowing entry on my résumé.”

“But what does that mean? What do I do?”

“Well, typically the antagonist tries to sabotage the quest,” said Penelope.

“That’s terrible!”

“What’s the big deal? It’s what we’re already trying to do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it’s the principle of the thing,” said Anne.

“Perhaps we should worry about crossing the antagonist bridge when we come to it,” suggested Marri. “First we need to get into that warehouse.”

Despite his protests to the contrary, Hiro turned out to be an excellent planner. He drew a rough layout of the secret warehouse facility from memory, and Locke crafted four very convincing fake IDs, for Anne, Penelope, Marri, and the Construct. Hiro would use his real ID, since he was playing himself.

“That should be enough,” said Marri. “The rest of the crew will remain aboard in case something goes wrong and we have to leave in a hurry.”

Just under six hours later, a newly painted Leaky Mermaid sailed out of Honest Ehd’s lot. The sails even sported the seven-pointed black star of the Wizards’ Council. Ehd had also managed to scrounge up some knives and swords for the crew, although most of them were rusty and bent.

“Give those wizards a swift kick in the rump for me!” Honest Ehd shouted from his porch.

Beyond acquiring a means of transportation, there was also the issue of how they were going to reach their destination. Despite scouring the junkyard from top to bottom, they had been unable to locate working dragon-fire engines to install on the airship. Using regular sails under normal conditions would take them several weeks to reach the warehouse tier from their current location—maybe even months, Marri estimated. They had discussed the problem at length and had finally arrived at a solution: They needed a real dragon.

There was only one problem.

“So let me see if I understand correctly,” grumbled Nana after they had released her from the metal sphere in which she had been imprisoned. “You can’t change me back to my normal size, but you still want me to fireball an entire airship halfway across the Hierarchy—”

“Using a premium fireball,” added Anne.

“—yes, using a premium fireball no less, thank you—which is something I wouldn’t attempt even on my best day. And that’s overlooking the fact that I’ve been imprisoned in a hollow metal sphere, in the dark, hanging from some pirate’s belt for the past twenty-one hours.”

“Nana, we’re so sorry,” said Anne. “So much has been happening, and we completely forgot you weren’t with the others trapped in the dice.”

“Will I at least get paid this time?”

“Er,” said Anne.

Nana harrumphed.

“Don’t mind her,” Jeffery said to Marri. “Her personality dial is permanently stuck on cantankerous.”

“Please, Nana,” Anne begged. “This is really important.”

“Oh, well, if it’s really important, then I guess I’d better do it.”

Anne could tell that more than anything, they had hurt Nana’s feelings.

“Whatever you want, as soon as we stop the barrier we’ll do it. We’ll buy you a whole herd of cattle. We’ll send you on a lavish vacation to a dragon spa. We’ll let you sleep in the office corner again.”

“In Dog’s basket?”

Dog’s sleeping basket was a point of contention between the fire lizard and Nana. Prior to their first quest, Nana had disguised herself as Dog and gotten used to sleeping in the basket in the main office.

Nana smiled. “I’m just joking. Of course I’ll help. I just like to see people grovel every once in a while.” She flew to the stern of the airship. “Normally I would follow directly behind, but given my current size I don’t know how long it will take me to catch up with you. It certainly won’t be instantly.”

“Just try your best,” said Anne. “I’m sure it will take us a little while to find the medallion anyway.”

Despite her diminutive size, Nana sucked in an impressive amount of air. After a brief pause, she shot out a green fireball. It was tiny at first, but it quickly expanded until it engulfed the Leaky Mermaid. The fireball shot off at an incredible speed. Green energy burst all around, causing Penelope’s teeth to chatter and Anne’s hair to stand on end. The hull of the Leaky Mermaid creaked and groaned, but it held together.

When the fireball dissipated, it dropped the airship smoothly back into normal flight.

A single tier glowed in the moonlight in the distance. It was perfectly flat, as though someone had razed the hills and filled the valleys. There were dozens of rows of long narrow buildings, no doubt the warehouses in which the council stored any quest-related items it had confiscated. As Anne took everything in, she wondered how in the world they were going to find one tiny silver medallion.

“That’s it,” said Hiro. “Nana was exactly on target.”

As they glided toward the tier, the pirates were unusually subdued. Everyone knew that any irregularities whatsoever could spell disaster and get them all arrested—or worse. They had all taken Hiro’s warnings about the security very seriously.

The docks were mostly empty. Only two airships were currently tied up. One was under repair, and the other was having its cargo unloaded. The Leaky Mermaid eased into a berth. The crew secured the ship and extended the ramp, and Anne, Penelope, Hiro, Marri, and the Construct disembarked.

A robed figure approached, no doubt one of the wizards from the council. The wizard was flanked by two iron knights. They were easily as tall as the ones at Saint Lupin’s, and even more heavily armored. Anne experienced the momentary impulse to run back up the ramp and sail away, but she resisted.

Penelope leaned over to the Construct and whispered, “You’re standing in my foot.”

Indeed, the Construct’s foot was currently inside Penelope’s.

“Sorry,” said the Construct, and she took a step to the right. They could only hope the wizard hadn’t noticed.

The wizard marched up to them and lowered her hood.

“This is a top-secret facility,” she said. “And it’s not even dawn yet.”

Hiro stepped forward to present himself as the leader of their group. “Yes, we know. We’re here for—”

“No one is permitted on these premises without proper authorization.”

Hiro held out the forms. “Well, actually, we do have—”

“In fact, no one is permitted to know these premises even exist without proper authorization.”

“If you look at these forms, I think you’ll see—”

“And even if you do get proper authorization, this facility is so top secret we would ignore it and arrest you anyway.”

Hiro faltered. “I, uh…”

The wizard crossed her arms. “Also, the penalty for trespassing is immediate execution.”

“E-execution?”

The wizard snapped her fingers.

And the iron knights drew their swords.