A Savvy Parley (1/2)

It was Harey Karey that found him, sitting placidly among the fragments of the broken engines, and the three working ones that he had managed to fix. Karey squinted through her spectacles in the dim light of the glowstones, considering what to her sight was a porcelain princess, albeit a grease-stained and rather bedraggled one.

“We be owing ye a debt of gratitude, Princess Cecelia.”

“It's just Councilor Cecelia. And actually I'd prefer it if you called me Celia.”

“Very well then. That's probably a better choice, the crew ain't much for high-faluting manners at the best of times. And these ain't the best of times. Come with me if ye please, yer high... ah, Celia.”

Threadbare nodded and fell into step behind the woman. “What happens now?”

“That's fer the Captain to say.”

The sun was a faint glow to the east, across a gap in the nearest towering, ice-crusted peaks. Another towered above them, and a blackish skid mark in the snow showed where the Cotton Tale had hit the side of the mountain and half-landed, half-skidded downslope to where it sat now, tilted on the last ledge before a six hundred foot drop.

On the upside, the rain had stopped. And they were at a level where the mountain was mostly muddy rock and stone, instead of snow.

“Aye,” Anne Bunny's voice boomed out, and Threadbare glanced over to see her huddled at the helm, half-buried under a stack of blankets, capes, and loose clothing. “Twere a close thing,” she called, breath blasting out as a puff of white vapor. “Ye couldn't have seen it there down in the belly of me ship, but there were a few clenched cheeks and dropped pellets when that edge was getting closer and a closer.”

Threadbare folded his arms in that way Celia did when she was dealing with someone who definitely wasn't a friend, but wasn't entirely an enemy. “So what do you plan to do now?”

“Well me pretty princess, that's in some small part up to ye. As it happens, due to recent losses, yer the only engineer-type on board me vessel at the minute. So tell me, how be the Cotton Tale's engines lookin'?”

It took him a second to translate her pirate talk. Then Threadbare rubbed his chin. “Bad,” he said simply. “They are very complicated. I used the parts of five very broken engines to fix two sort of broken engines. There's one that will probably be fine if I take my time and work on it while it's not running, but I'm not so sure how fixed the other two are. And that leaves us five short.”

“Pity,” said Anne. “I know fer a fact that the Cotton Tale can fly on four engines. We're one short.”

“You've been down to four engines before?”

“Aye! Less than that, sometimes.The bottom of the ship be full of engines, and most of our prey be below us when we strike, so inevitably ye get some balls coming up yer wazoo.”

One of the crewbunnies huddled across the deck from Anne started to laugh, but stopped when Anne cocked a pistol at her.

“That sounds painful,” Threadbare said. “So how did you fix them? The parts are very delicate, and about half the time I mended them their enchantments vanished. They were repaired, but they were just nonmagical pieces of metal and crystal after the spell was done.”

“Tis a ticklish process. Somedays we have crewbunnies who are Tinkers, and that helps a bit. Even rarer than that we'll have an Enchanter, and they can replicate parts one enchantment at a time, but that gets a mite costly when ye look at the crystals and reagents it requires. Fortunately, though, there be a third way...”

She paused, expectantly.

Threadbare stared up at her.

One of the crewbunnies coughed, shivering in the frigid air.

Threadbare looked over to her. “You know, I'm a Tailor, I could probalby sew you some warmer clothes if you liked.”

A whisper came over the wind, a stranger's voice. Fairly husky, it reminded him of Jean Lafeet. “She's expecting you to say 'what is the third way, captain?'”

“Oh!” Threadbare said, nodding vigorously. “That makes sense. What is the third way, Captain?”

“Why I be so glad ye asked.” It would have been more convincing if she hadn't been saying that through clenched gold teeth. “It comes down to dungeons, me girl.”

“It always does seem to,” Threadbare agreed. “How does this work?”

“I'll show ye once we find one,” Anne said, stretching and enjoying the rays of the rising sun. “But that'll be later. First we'll go over the ship, and mend the hull and the non-engine bits. Seal er up tight against the cold and the night, so we don't freeze. After that we'll start sendin' out shifts, go all up and down this peak and try to find us a dungeon. But afore that...”