❖ ''We're at six thousand feet, Cap'n. There shouldn't be land at six thousand feet.'' ❖
Rav is apprenticed by his father's wishes on an airship as unsettling as the deliveries it makes. Dreamcatcher's owner is the only captain on the continent who...
The captain maintained a steady frown as Rav laid out his finds on a cloth spread over the table. Rav could tell the man was not impressed.
"That's it?" he grumbled when the last wilted flower shed its petals over the pile.
Father said lying was demons' work. Rav hoped to the gods it would not show on his face. "That was all I found."
The captain grunted. "How many of these would you say are new species?"
If he said that—no, how could the man expect him to know?
"You know plants, don't you, cabin boy? Are any of these in that book of yours?"
Rav's heart sank. Of course. "No."
"No?"
"No, Captain."
Another grunt. "Better then, I suppose. Indra, show the cabin boy how to preserve these. And give that plant water before it dries out. I want that one alive."
He got up and left the dining room. Relief washed over Rav like a cool waterfall. He had done it. He had protected the tiny dragon.
"Did you fix the ship?" he said hopefully.
Indra's sharp face had grown somehow sharper in the guttering lamplight. "I don't know what you're trying to pull, boy," he said softly, "but it won't work forever. That was a lie, or I'm a grackle. What else did you find?"
Fear walked its fingers up Rav's spine. He swallowed hard and pushed back against it. The lie had worked once, so he wasn't terrible at it. And Indra might be the first mate, but he was not in charge of the ship. "That was all I found."
Indra snorted. Rav held his ground.
"I'm watching you, cabin boy. Not everyone is as easy to fool here as the Cap'n."
He turned and sloped towards the exit. Rav slid down into a chair.
Indra stopped in the doorway. "What are you slouching for? Gather the samples. It's time you did some work today."
Rav grabbed the corners of the cloth on the table and bundled the day's finds. He hurried after Indra with shame hot in his cheeks. It burned worse than the captain's disapproval.
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Preserving the samples was a task Rav was glad to be assigned to, for the sole reason that it kept him busy and out of everyone's way. After Indra showed him how to handle each item, he stayed in the navigation room late into the night, pressing plants and carefully bottling insects in alcohol. Each was labeled, sketched and described in neat print in a battered notebook. Rav replicated the sketches in a notebook of his own. He was tempted to draw the dragonette, too, but then the captain might find her. He already knew the man snooped in the cargo he was paid to ship.
There was a microscope in that cargo now, bound for a biological station on a sea-island somewhere below. What were its scientists like? And what would they think of this? Rav had seen the look on that woman's face when she left her delivery with Dreamcatcher, and that alone made him trust her more than he trusted the captain, or even the crew. He wished this flight was a one-way trip.
