Chapter 2

When I regained my composure I realized that I was lost. I knew New Welling more than anyone else but the other curriers and had explored nearly every level of the floating zeppelin nation of nearly a million people, but then I had been running errands and sending messages to the various folks that called the large sky city their home.

I wasn’t running for my life then.

I hadn’t lost my father then.

Now everything was different. My chest felt like it was being tossed about in a dangerous air eddy that whipped around like the cyclones our city soared over. I started crying.

Tears fell from my eyes for the first time in ten years.

The last time I cried was when we lost my mother. No, not we. I. My father was dead too. I didn’t have anyone left anymore. I had cried when I lost my mother and had sworn to keep my eyes dry ever since that last day when I was young when my father told me to be brave and that mother was smiling down on me from the heavens.

Tears spilled down my face.

Why?

Why had my father died?

Why had he been murdered?

What had he done? 

My father was well-loved. I had never met one person who bore a grudge towards my father, not even the old butcher Carr. He could freeze whole clouds to ice and stop lightning in its tracks with his wicked scowl, but even he would grin when in the company of my father.

Who would do something so horrible to him?

Nobody.

Nobody hated him enough to kill him.

So why?

Why had his life been taken? Who could have taken his life so callously? Who could find such hate in their hearts to draw a blade across someone’s throat, tearing the life from a man the same way the knife tore the flesh of the throat open?

I got to my feet. I didn’t know where I was, but I knew I needed to find out soon. I wouldn’t be able to do anything not knowing where I was, and the sky marshals would surely catch up to me sooner or later.

The sky marshals. I had been shot at and chased by a sky marshal. He had said that I was under arrest for the murder of my own father. 

Why?

My father’s blood of course. He’d written it with his dying breaths. Of course, the marshals would see that and think it implicated me.

Well, that was one mystery solved.

The only problem is that it opened up a thousand other mysteries, like why had my father used the last of his energy to write my name, my full name, not Toby like he had called me since, well, before I could even remember, and not the name of the man who had actually killed him.

I looked around to get my bearings. I don’t know how long I had run and didn’t know where I was.

The darkness of the alleyway that I had found myself in meant that I was somewhere in one of the lower levels of the city, the light barely filtered through the shadows of the balloons that supported the city and the multiple levels of decking and ramshackle houses that made up New Welling.

I tried to recall which way I had run when I had first barreled out of the window of my father’s workshop. 

I had turned right. That meant I had run to the fore of the floating city. I had also had to have sprinted for at least a kilometer or two before my feet began to fail me and my stamina gave out. 

I had also descended at least two tiers down as I had ran, so that meant I was at least on the fourth of the six tiers.

I had started to get my bearings. Now I had an idea of where I was. What I didn’t know is where I should go.

Was there anywhere that I could go to?

The only place that I had ever called home, the only place that I had ever known as truly my own had been taken from me along with the life of my father. I couldn’t return there. Not now. Not when the sky marshals thought that I was the one who had murdered him.

It hit me then that I was truly lost. I knew nearly every nook and cranny of the gigantic floating city, and none of them were home. I had nowhere to go and everywhere to run to.

I bit back the tears that were beginning to form.

“Get yourself together Toby!” I thought, slapping my face with both hands to force some sense into myself. “You’ll have time to grieve later. Now is the time to think and to act. The sky marshals think that you killed pops, and they’re bound to be searching for you now. You are in the fourth tier of the city and you need a place to hide. You need a place where you can lie low and start to piece things together.” 

I forced myself to take a few deep breaths. It helped me regain my equilibrium. I still was lost and my heart felt like it would never know home again, but at least I was starting to find an inkling of clarity and direction.

I latched on to that and I began moving.

I nearly fainted when, after randomly walking through the dark alleyways for nearly ten minutes, I ambled into a small public square and saw a drawing of myself had already been posted to the public information board by the automaton arm that had copied the original drawing as it had been sketched at whichever sky marshal department had first been reported to.

It didn’t take long for the few people who had gathered in the small square to notice me.

It took less time for them to take note of the blood that stained my clothes. I had completely forgotten about it. I looked down at myself for the first time since I had stumbled on my father’s dead body. Blood soaked my trousers and shirt. I truly did look the part of a mad murderer. I glanced at my reflection in a nearby shop window. I was horrified at what I saw. The small crowd gathering in the square was too.

“That’s him!” Came shouts. “That’s the murderer!”

I stood in shock. I couldn’t move.

Something slammed into me from behind driving me to the decking and forcing the air from my lungs.

I gasped for air and didn’t find anything.

Whoever had slammed into me brought a heavy hand down on my face and my nose burst open, adding my own blood to that of my father’s that covered me.

His fist slammed into my face a second time before I could even process what was going on.

My vision swam.

I felt my attacker reaching for the shackle that was still attached to my wrist. He was trying to shackle me to the decking so the sky marshals could easily snatch me.

I couldn’t let that happen.

They thought I was my father's murderer. That meant if they got me, whoever had really killed my father would get away with it.

I couldn’t let that happen.

I wriggled underneath the large man’s grasp.

It did next to nothing.

I bucked my hips. He budged and rolled forward slightly.

I bucked again, this time shifting my weight to the side as I did so, causing the large man who was trying to be the hero to lose his center of gravity and fall off of me and tumble to the side.

I was on my feet and running for my life in the span of seconds for the second time in less than an hour.

A shot rang out as I sprinted away from the small public square and I heard the distinct whistle of the sky marshal alarm trilling after me.

Great.

This particular sky marshal was much quicker and deft on his feet than the last one and I he had started sprinting at me after his first shot.

He was gaining on me. If I hadn’t just been assaulted, shot at, and nearly killed multiple times he wouldn’t have a chance at catching me, but I had been wrung out on the gears, and in seconds, despite my sprint, the young sky marshal who couldn’t have been more than three years older than me was nearly at my side.

I put on another burst of speed, ignoring the ringing in my head and the pain of each breath through my surely broken nose, and sprinted forward and darted into a small alleyway to my left, ripping at the laundry lines that dotted the passageway hoping it would give me the seconds I needed to escape from my pursuer.

The flying clothes did little to stop the marshal. He rushed toward me like a natural athlete.

I would have cursed if I could find the breath, but it was too much of a necessity. I couldn’t spare it for asinine words.

My eyes scanned as I barreled through the alleyway and back onto a larger road. I needed to find an avenue of escape.

I couldn’t let them catch me. Not when my dad’s killer was still on the loose.

I saw it three seconds later.

A crack in the decking that had repair tape wrapped around it, warning of the danger it posed.

I drove towards it.

The marshal shouted when he realized what I was going to do. He drew and leveled his steam pistol at me.

I ducked and the bullet whizzed past me.

I screamed and dove towards the hole.

I tore through the open hole in the decking.

It felt like I fell forever, but it was only probably a second that passed. That second lasted an eternity though and my body screamed in pain as I slammed to the decking three meters below where I had just dove from.

The air burst from my lungs with an audible pop and my vision darkened. My whole body felt like it was on fire and there was nothing to do to put it out.

I gasped, not finding the oxygen I needed, causing me to panic and start gasping more.

I was dying. I was sure of it.

My lungs finally found air and I nearly choked on it as I filled my lungs to near bursting.

I turned my head towards where I had fallen from.

The marshal was peaking through the hole and shouting at me. I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying.

What I did make sense of though, was the gun that he was leveling at me.

I drove forward and screamed as the loud pop of the steam-powered pistol resounded in my ears at the same time that the bullet tore through my trousers and sliced at the side of my left calf, causing me to pitch forward and nearly fall as I dashed away.

I found a tiny alleyway a second later and rushed towards it. I would be harder to follow here if another marshal was alerted.

I wasn’t safe. I didn’t know if I ever would be again in my life, but it was a start.

I spent the next ten minutes blindly stumbling through the maze of warrens of the lower levels of New Welling, trying my best, and failing, to ignore the screaming pain in my calf, nose, and the plethora of cuts that covered my body.

I was in a fugue state when, after wandering for what seemed like eons through the labyrinth of alleys, I stumbled and fell.

All my strength abandoned me.