The Twister Sisters Page 4

  While it was all free, however, Jessie took advantage of their hospitality and sampled as much of their wares as she could stomach. Many of the women had come from all over the map, both within Argona and beyond, and each of the cooks had brought with them the recipes of their native regions. Jessie tasted spicy beef mixtures wrapped in flat bread, some sort of waterfowl cut into cubes and then skewered with vegetables, and all manner of stews made from a questionable array of animals. Her stomach was groaning by the end of the day from over-feeding, but it was a pleasant sort of groan.

  She made a few inquiries about work, and she wasn’t prepared for the sheer number of professions offered. Many of the women in the bazaar needed assistants, all the way from the barber to the tattooist to the tailor. The owner of the liquor counter even heard that Jessie had experience in her field and offered her a sum well beyond what she had ever made at Thirsty Aunt Hilda’s. Jessie turned that one down as politely yet forcefully as she possibly could.

  None of those things interested her in the end. As much as Jessie tried to remind herself that all these women were essentially pirates she couldn’t help but think she wanted to be a bigger part of it than just running some shop. That was what she had done before, and if this new life was going to be forced on her then she at least wanted it to resemble a step up from the things before. If she was going to do something different, then it might as well be completely different.

  Her options along those lines, though, were limited. The most respected profession on the ship, and the one with the best wages, was that of a raider. That would have been completely out of the question for Jessie even if she had actually been allowed to their main work area, the mysterious third level. Jessie didn’t want anything to do with attacking innocent people and kidnapping. Several times during her first several days when Jessie was dangerously close to actually enjoying all this she had to remind herself that the men of Sun River and Corin were still somewhere on the ship being forced to do gods-knew what.

  That, then, left her with some job in the actual upkeep of the ship. There were always the various janitorial services, but before she tried that Jessie looked into something in the actual mechanical services. She had always been fascinated with the few pieces of modern technology that had found their way to Sun River, but there had been so few of the various steam driven devices in town that only one mechanic had been needed, and Jessie had always been too busy with her various duties at the saloon to study such things.

  That was why she jumped at the chance when she was informed that the chief engineer was looking for an assistant. It didn’t occur to her that, in the equal-opportunity-for-all-women society of the Twister, the chief engineer might be the young girl who had told her she was going to be executed.

  6

  Keep up, slow-poke!” Leech said. Jessie tried, but she was the one carrying Leech’s massive metal toolbox while the girl, free from any such burden, skipped on ahead across the deck. Jessie shook her head once again. The woman in charge of keeping this massive piece of engineering from falling a thousand feet to the ground actually skipped. For maybe the tenth time in the last three days Jessie had to wonder if she might wake up soon and discover that this was all just some crazed fever dream.

  This was Jessie’s first real day on the job, and the two of them were on their way to the number thirty-six engine because, in Leech’s exact words, “it was going chukka-chuka-whir three too many times in an hour.” She’d only been Leech’s assistant for a half hour now and Jessie had already given up learning any of the technical terms for things. Leech had her own separate language when it came to machinery, and Jessie would count herself lucky if she learned what even half of it meant.

  Jessie ran to keep up and suppressed a grunt when the tool box banged into the scabbing wound on her leg. “Leech, there’s something I still don’t really understand here. How is it that someone your age has already managed to be chief engineer of something like the Twister?”

  Leech shrugged. “Dunno. I’ve just always been around machines. Some of the older people say my mother worked in the boiler room, but I don’t remember her. Everyone else down there are really the ones who raised me. And whenever there was some weirdo problem in some teeny-tiny spot, they asked me to crawl in and see what I could do. Maybe no one else understands the ship better than me because I’m the only one who can actually see it from the point of view of all the itty-bitty parts.”

  They reached number thirty-six and Jessie slowed herself down well before they got to the edge of the deck, but Leech continued skipping up until the very last moment, her feet landing at the edge so her toes stuck out over the drop. Jessie’s breath caught in her throat as she watched her. That was the biggest problem with living on an airship for her. She wasn’t exactly afraid of heights, but a whole life of never leaving the ground made her uneasy whenever she got too close to the edge. Leech didn’t appear to have that hang-up. Maybe the girl would have more problems with being on the ground.

  “Where does the Twister even come from?” Jessie asked. “Was Captain Vestra the one who built it?”

  “No, silly. How could just the captain build this whole thing?”

  “So the captain did at least have a hand in seeing it built?”

  The tower containing the engine was right at the very edge, and Leech slowly ran a hand over the various parts all the way down to the deck. She looked distracted, like she was trying to listen to both Jessie and the engine speak to her at the same time. “Hum? No, I don’t think so. Maybe she took it from whoever did build it. She probably needed it more than the builder anyway. Anything to keep from living in the land below.”

  “Do you know much about the captain?”

  “Only that Vestra isn’t her real name. I mean, it is her real name, as real as my name is Leech, but it’s not the name she was born with. I guess she named herself after a sky goddess from one of the southern countries or something like that.” Leech knelt down and stared at the seam where the engine met the edge of the deck.

  “The southern countries,” Jessie said. She thought about the strange accent most of the women had. “Is that where the majority of these women are from?”

  “You ask too many questions,” Leech said. Then she executed a sort of rolling tumble over the side of the ship and disappeared.

  “Leech!” Jessie screamed. She tried to run towards the edge but instead found herself doing more of a cautious shuffle.

  “What?” Leech said. Jessie crept forward on her knees until she could look over the edge. Despite the apparently smooth surface of the ship’s side Leech had found several hand and footholds to which she effortlessly clung. She looked up at Jessie with surprise on her face. “Is something wrong?”

  Jessie took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. It was easy to simply say that the ship was very far up in the air, but when she was this close and looking straight down at landmasses far enough away that she couldn’t identify them it finally occurred to her just how far of a drop it really was. “I guess not. Are you sure that’s safe?”

  Leech smiled up at her, then let one hand and both her feet come away from their holds. She dangled there by one arm, swinging herself gently back and forth. “Of course. You’re not going to go getting all sick over me, are you? You look white-like.”

  Jessie shook her head. “No.” It was a lie. The view made her dizzy, and her stomach did have a sudden urge to vomit. “No, I’ll be fine.”

  “Good,” Leech said. “In the tool box there’s a rope with a hook on it. I need you to get that out for me, and you’re going to lower me any tools I ask for, okay?”

  Jessie went to the tool box and got the rope, then slid back to the edge on her stomach. She needed to keep her mind from dwelling on the drop. She had to say something, anything to keep from thinking about what would happen if there was a sudden shift in the ship and she started to slide off…

  “So there’s no men on the ship at all? Other than the prisoners?” />
  Leech had been opening up a panel in the engine, but she looked sharply back up at Jessie when she spoke. “We’re not supposed to talk about them. We could get in trouble.”

  “I know, but don’t the women on the ship sometimes need, or I mean want… well, I suppose you’re too young to understand what I’m trying to talk about.”

  “What, sex? Are you trying to talk about sex?” Leech snorted, then went back to poking around in the open panel. “So you think I’m old enough to be chief engineer but not old enough to know about sex. They must grow them especially stupid in the land below.”

  Jessie’s cheeks reddened. “Right. Sorry. But what about companionship? What do the women do when they want someone to be intimate with?”

  “Send down the screwdriver,” Leech said, and it took Jessie a moment to realize she was asking for one of the tools, not explaining what the women did. “The flat kinda one, not the one with all the little prong things. Why are you asking? Feeling all lonely and alone away from home the first time?”

  Jessie wanted to say that she hadn’t really thought about it, but she had. That had been one of the few good things about running the saloon. There had been no shortage of drunk and willing partners whenever the mood struck her. Jessie hooked the hole in the handle of Leech’s screwdriver and carefully lowered it down. “Maybe.”

  Leech grabbed the screwdriver without even pulling her head out from behind the panel. “Then you’re being stupid again. If you want someone to spend the night with there’s plenty of people all over the place. Just pick one. They’re always interested in the new person.”

  Jessie blinked. “But they’re all women.”

  “So?” Leech said. “What does that really matter? If you want something else, there’s always the stall in the bazaar that sells those rubber thingy-dings. The ones that look like a man’s whatever you call it.”

  Jessie raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t seen that stall yet. Maybe when she was done with work for the day and had some money in her pocket she might…

  Something else occurred to her. “Were you born on the ship?” she asked.

  Leech put the screwdriver back on the hook. “Could you send down the little oil can now? I guess I was. Why?”

  Jessie pulled up the screwdriver and hooked on the oil can. “And did your mother get pregnant while on the ship or before she got here?”

  “I dunno. I told you. I really don’t know much about her.”

  “But women do get pregnant while on the ship, right? I’ve seen other kids here and there. Some younger than you. So reproduction is actually happening.”

  “I guess.” Leech oiled something Jessie couldn’t see, then closed the panel and put her ear to it for several seconds. Whatever she heard must not have pleased her because she shook her head and opened it again. “Screwdriver again. No, wait. The wrench.”

  “So how do women get pregnant if there’s no men?”

  Leech took the wrench, but instead of using it the way it was intended she started banging it against something inside the engine. Jessie wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard something inside the engine break. She put the wrench back on the hook and Jessie pulled it back up. “Oh, that,” Leech said. “If a woman wants to get pregnant she just buys one of the men before they’re sold.”

  Jessie fumbled the wrench but was able to catch it before it went over the side. “Wait. What?”

  Leech closed the panel and listened again. This time she looked satisfied. “If a stud’s what you want, you better really start saving your wages. They don’t come cheap, and some of the slavers will try to outbid you.”

  “But… they just get sold? Like they were livestock?”

  “If livestock means moo-cows and piggies, then sort of. Except you don’t make sandwiches out of men. That’s just gross.”

  Jessie never got the chance to express her outrage, because bells started going off all across the ship. Back in the direction of the bazaar everyone went quiet. Several of the stall owners and customers put their hands up to shield their eyes from the sun as they scanned the sky. All the warriors in the crowd dropped what they had been doing and ran for the nearest staircase to the lower levels.

  “Oh crap,” Leech said. “Close the toolbox. Get away from the edge.” Jessie could barely hear her over the bells. She had gotten used to hearing over the constant background noise of the engines, but the bells were loud and high-pitched. Jessie could only assume they were an alarm, but couldn’t begin to guess why they were there.

  “What’s going on?” Jessie said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Hopefully nothing,” Leech said as she crawled back up onto the deck. “But we have to get below. Just in case.”

  “Just in case of what?” Jessie asked, but Leech didn’t say anything. The girl grabbed her toolbox and lugged it in the direction of the nearest stairwell, the spring in her step from earlier now completely gone. She gestured for Jessie to follow, which Jessie did, but not too quickly. All the women in the bazaar had rolled down the tarps they used to cover their booths when the bazaar was closed and were hurrying below deck. Jessie looked up at the captain’s tower just in time to see Captain Vestra come out the door with a telescope in her hand. Lock hurried up a ladder to the top, and both Lock and the captain took a turn looking through the telescope. Then the captain yelled some order at Lock, and Lock hurried back down the ladder.

  Jessie was caught in the tide of women heading towards the nearest stairwell, but even as she was being herded below she was still able to stop long enough to look out at the sky in the direction the captain had pointed her telescope. She thought she could see something, a distant speck hovering in the sky. It was hard to tell from such a distance, but it looked like it was moving fast towards the east. As she lost sight of it and was forced down the steps she felt the Twister lurch beneath her feet as it suddenly changed direction and went west.

  The hallway of the first level was crowded with women, most of them trying to get a look back up towards the deck. Jessie couldn’t see Leech anywhere, but then she might have gone down to the second level where she would be needed in case the sudden change in direction had put any strain on the ship’s workings. That was probably where Jessie would want to be right about now if she wanted to keep her job, but before she went down the next set of stairs she turned to the nearest woman. Jessie hadn’t had a chance to memorize names, but she recognized this woman as the tattooist.

  “What was that?” Jessie asked.

  “You saw it?” the tattooist asked.

  “Well, yeah. I think so. It was pretty far away.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Just the one, as far as I could tell.”

  The tattooist breathed a relieved sigh. “Good. That’s good. Just a scout, then. It probably saw us, but it won’t come after us without the rest of its squad.” The rest of the women started to disperse back to their rooms, but no one went back up. Jessie would find out later that the bazaar usually remained closed for the rest of the day whenever there was an alarm. No one wanted to be on deck in the event that anything happened. The tattooist started to walk away with everyone else but Jessie caught her by the shoulder.

  “But what was it?” Jessie asked.

  “A dragon,” the tattooist said.

  Jessie’s jaw dropped. “That’s ridiculous. Dragon’s aren’t supposed to exist.”

  The tattooist smiled without any mirth. “Neither are airships.”

  7

  Jessie was very troubled for the rest of the week. Everyone else on the ship seemed on edge because of the dragon sighting, although that didn’t bother Jessie too much. Despite everyone else’s insistence Jessie wasn’t convinced that what she had seen was really some legendary winged beast. There had certainly been something, and whatever that something was it probably was indeed a good cause for alarm. But if Jessie couldn’t give a name to it then she couldn’t find any real reason to be scared of it for now. What really had her worried,
however, was the upcoming slave auction.

  Most of the women on the ship wouldn’t talk about it with her, but Jessie still caught bits of conversation about it when others didn’t think she was listening. She had started up the beginnings of a friendship with Tamsin, the tattooist, and Tamsin would occasionally give her cryptic pieces of information. Leech was a better source of information, however, with her free and oblivious way of talking, and slowly Jessie began to understand the truth behind the Twister’s existence.

  Argona considered itself to be a civilized society. It was a huge country and each region tended to be as independent as possible with its own rules and regulations. In some areas, especially the backward settlements furthest from the capitol of Rhianna, men were considered to be the superior sex. Where there was more technology and a greater access to books and knowledge the truth was better known that women could rule better without the use of violence and wars. Despite these disparate points of view, however, there were still a few laws that held true for all of Argona. One of them was the abolishment of slavery. Even if the sexes were not considered to be equal, no person was so low as to be treated like another’s property.

  That didn’t necessarily hold true in some of the bordering lands, however. Slavery was legal and acceptable in a few. One, the country of Thysc that bordered to the northwest, counted only women as its slaves and had long fought a tense border war with Argona. Others, especially a few countries to the southwest, didn’t have any such grudge with Argona and neither did they care about the gender of any slave brought into their borders. But they didn’t have the means to just go to other countries and steal people. They had to rely on other organizations for that, and that was where Captain Vestra came in.