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  SAVING THE SAMMI

  Copyright 2012 by Tirlin Tower Press

  Special thanks to Kellie, Stephon, and Ava, who provided invaluable advice regarding Saving the Sammi!

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental. Unless you are in fact a magic-wielding Mage or her faithful many-eyed houseplant. Then you've probably got grounds for a lawsuit. I hope you won't pursue such, because frankly lawyers scare me. Man, I knew including this small print was a bad idea. Forget I said anything, and just start reading the book, okay?

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Foreword

  Saving the Sammi

  Afterword

  Foreword

  I hope you are prepared to take to the skies.

  Not just any skies. No, gentle reader, you are about to embark upon a journey into the troubled, stormy skies of a place called Tirlin. Your pilot will be a bookish young lady named Meralda, and your navigator will be Mug, an enchanted dandyleaf plant who sees the world through 29 bright eyes.

  But enough specifics. The story is about to begin, and I wouldn't want to spoil any surprises.

  I will say this -- this is neither the first adventure for Meralda and Mug, nor the last. If you enjoy this novella, keep reading past the end, and you'll find links to more works by the same author.

  But for now, pull your goggles down tight and see to your silk scarf. The sky beckons!

  SAVING THE SAMMI

  by Frank Tuttle

  "I tell you I can fly."

  "Well of course you can fly," replied Mug, rolling fifteen of his twenty-nine eyes as he spoke. "You can fly. I can fly. Anyone who can afford a ten-crown airship ticket and is fool enough to board one of the ungainly things can fly. That's my point, Mistress -- why bother with these flapping coils of yours, when the skies are filled with amusingly-named airships ready and waiting to bear you to an early grave?" "You know very well they're called flying coils and not flapping coils," said Meralda.

  "Slip of the tongue, Mistress."

  Meralda bit back a retort and switched Mug's bird-cage from her right hand to her left. Mug might be an enchanted dandyleaf plant, and thus devoid of a tongue, but Meralda knew only too well he was adept at prolonging pointless arguments merely because it amused him to do so.

  Count to ten, said Meralda, silently. He's just cranky because the storm kept him awake. Do not rise to his bait. One, two...

  Voices sounded ahead. Meralda rounded the corner onto Hubert Lane.

  She halted and put Mug's bird-cage down carefully on the sidewalk.

  Hubert Lane was choked with gawkers and Royal Roadworks engineers and what appeared to be half the King Street Fire Brigade. Men pointed and nodded and shrugged and stared. Two of the enormous old oaks that lined the lane were down, torn up at the roots, their fallen bulks leaving the street filled two stories high with broken boughs that still dripped with the leavings of the storm. Even the sidewalks on both sides of the street were blocked.

  "Best go on back to Holt and take Longstrike," shouted a blue-capped Watch sergeant, who doffed his hat at Meralda. "Quite a storm, eh, Sorceress?"

  "Indeed," said Meralda, with a smile and wave.

  Mug's leaves shivered. "Are you sure the storm has passed, Mistress?" He turned a dozen eyes toward the face of the sky, which showed thin patches of blue between ragged, rushing banks of ominous black clouds. "I thought the wind was going to knock our building over, more than once."

  A sudden damp rush of wind swept down the street, rustling dropping leaves and prying a few long locks of dark red hair from beneath Meralda's hat. She lifted Mug's cage. "Don't exaggerate, Mug. It wasn't that bad."

  "I'm a plant, Mistress. If I tell you I felt the walls shake deep down in my roots, you can be assured that was no ordinary wind."

  "Even so, the storm is passed."

  Mug's eyes followed the rush of clouds above. "If you say so."

  Meralda made her way quickly to the corner of Holt and Longstrike, skipping over fallen limbs and debris as she went. She paused long enough to take a child's soggy doll out of a puddle and rest it atop a mailbox so that it might be found when the neighborhood awoke.

  Mug might have been right about the storm, she thought, as she rounded the corner at Longstrike and was confronted by a wagon sitting perfectly upright in the crook of a four-hundred-year-old oak. The wagon's signage cheerfully proclaimed the freshness and flavor of Turnage's Pastries, of Turnage Street, which Meralda recalled as being on the other side of Tirlin, some sixteen miles distant.

  As she watched, a crate of donuts fell from the back of the wagon, striking the wet ground with a solid thunk before breaking open and sending dozens of donuts rolling across the grass.

  "I told you that was no ordinary wind," said Mug, his leaves curling. "And no more talk of flying! Cloth, if you please. All this bobbing and swaying is making me quite ill."

  Meralda draped Mug's bird-cage in a clean white cloth before she hurried under the wagon. Across the lawn, a man in his nightclothes popped out of his front door, caught sight of the wagon resting in his tree, and hurried out to collect donuts by the handful.

  "You may have been right about the storm, Mug," said Meralda, as Watch whistles sounded down the street, and an enormous creak followed by a thunderous thud roused birds and dogs all up and down the lane. "But I still say my flying coils will one day make airships and lifting gas obsolete."

  Mug groaned. "I just hope it's not today, Mistress," he said, as his cage swung to and fro.

  Meralda caught sight of the Palace through a break in the leaves left by yet another fallen giant oak. Ragged grey clouds raced past behind the spires, though here and there a patch of bright blue sky peeked through. "I'm no penny-novel air pirate," said Meralda, as she steadied Mug's cage. "It will be years before any of my coils actually fly."

  "Good to hear," said Mug. His cage swung, caught in a sudden puff of damp wind, and Mug fell silent the rest of the way to the Palace.

  * * *

  Meralda's hopes of hailing a cab after making her way through the storm-ravaged King Streets on foot were dashed when she emerged from the canopy of oaks onto Straightway and discovered the storm's leavings were not limited to downed trees and suspended pastry wagons.

  All five lanes of Straightway were filled with debris of every sort. Chairs and tables lay smashed or upended on the cobbles. Store signs, torn from their hooks, lay splintered all about. Lampposts, globes smashed, footings still trailing gas lines, lay in heaps, bent and twisted. Papers and waybills danced in the wind, rustling and flapping about to the consternation of the crows, who were themselves pecking through the debris for scraps. Meralda recognized one enormous blue- and-yellow umbrella, which rolled on its side to reveal the crest of the King's Kitchen Diner. That's at least four blocks west of here, she realized. What a monstrous storm!

  Meralda could see a cab in the distance, waiting for a Roadworks crew to clear the street. That will take hours, she thought, and so she took up Mug's cage and marched the remaining eleven blocks to the Palace, marveling at the damage as she passed.

  The Palace, at least, was intact. Still the tallest building in all of Tirlin, the Palace's four great spires gleamed in the brief bursts of sun that managed to peek through the clouds. The wind sent the spire pennants snapping and cracking, though the green and white pennant on the east spire was ripped along its length and the red and gold one that once adorned the north tower was gone altogether. Meralda stepped into the Palace's shadow, careful to keep Mug's cage from being jostled by the crowds passing on the crowded sidewalk. The guards at the West Door smiled and
nodded, noting her arrival and the time in their enormous old log-book as they did every morning. "Bad storm," said one, as he closed the book. "Trees uprooted everywhere, we hear."

  "Could we refrain from using the word 'uproot' for the day," snapped Mug, from beneath his sheet. A single red eye popped out and swiveled toward Meralda. "Really? Do I go about starting every conversation with tales of grisly bipedal dismemberment?"

  "There you are, Thaumaturge," said a booming voice from down the west wing hall. The Captain barged through a slow-moving trio of Palace household staff. In his hands he held two steaming mugs of coffee. "I see the houseplant is in his usual fine mood," he said, handing Meralda one of the cups.

  "Dangle you from a rope and let you swing the entire way downtown, see how cheerful you feel," muttered Mug.

  Meralda lifted the coffee to her lips and took a cautious sip.

  "Thank you, Captain," she said. "I take it you've been waiting for me?"

  "I have," replied the grizzled old soldier, without any hint of a smile. "I'd have a word with you in the Laboratory, if you don't mind."

  Meralda nodded. "That bad?"

  "I'll send for a pot of coffee, too," replied the Captain, falling into step beside Meralda. "You'll want it, I suspect. And more."

  Meralda hefted Mug's cage and hurried for the stair.

  * * *

  "At half-past ten of the clock last night, Palace staff on the eleventh floor reported something striking the south wall," said the Captain. "Nine windows in five adjacent rooms were smashed. Of course, that was during the height of the storm, and everyone assumed it was a tree limb, borne aloft by the winds."

  Meralda nodded. "But it wasn't."

  The Captain shook his head. "By the time anyone ventured outside, it was nearly daylight. There was trash blown about everywhere -- you walked here, you saw."

  "I did."

  "So it was an hour after that before a groundskeeper reported the wreckage of an airship, heaped at the bottom of the south wall."

  Mug swung his eyes toward the Captain. "An airship? How did anyone miss anything that big lying about?"

  "It wasn't a whole airship, houseplant, and in any case, it wasn't a great huge lumber-hauler as big as the Palace. We've identified it as a private airship, a tiny one-screw pleasure craft owned by Othen Ghote."

  Meralda frowned. "The sewer magnate?"

  "The same. He's a flyer. Word from his household staff is that he, his wife, and their two children have been off visiting family in Barnham for a fortnight. They were due home yesterday, in the Sammi, his airship."

  Meralda's heart fell.

  "So they were aloft, in the storm?"

  "We're sure of it. The portion of the airship we've recovered bears her name. We found personal effects belonging to the family. Then, an hour ago, a gas main crew found this, stuck in a tree on Lamp."

  The Captain reached into his pocket and withdrew a scarf of yellow silk. He unwrapped the scarf, and inside was a white linen handkerchief embroidered with the initial O.G. in one corner.

  The handkerchief bulged, filled with objects. The Captain placed them carefully on Meralda's battered workbench.

  There was a toy knight, his silver sword held aloft, his feathered hat painted bright red, his shield bearing the sigil of Tirlin.

  There was a fine silver necklace, set with three tiny silver hearts, and a diamond-studded pendant.

  And there was a ragged scrap of paper which bore a message penned in a hurried, unsteady hand.

  "Read it," said the Captain. "I believe it's real, Sorceress. Decide for yourself."

  We were bound for the Docks in North Tirlin when at 8:35 PM a storm of remarkable ferocity overtook us. At 10:31 in the evening, we were forced sharply down and struck an unknown edifice. Rear compartment, falling shrouds, and control of our craft lost. Pilot injured and unconscious. Four souls aboard. Altitude at 11:46 PM is 2,806 feet and rising uncontrolled at 750 feet per hour. Cannot vent gas. Cannot steer. Last known heading 96 degrees North. Air speed unknown. Please render assistance soonest. Airship Sammi, Registry Number AA806, Mr. Othen Ghote pilot, Mrs. Elise Ghote reporting.

  Meralda lowered the note to her desk. Mug quickly extended half a dozen eyes to examine it.

  While Mug read, the Captain plucked the toy soldier from Meralda's desk, holding it carefully in his calloused hand.

  "I know this toy," he said. "Was all the rage last Yule. Got one for my nephew. Part of a set. Comes with a tiny animated dragon. They fight." He put the toy soldier carefully down.

  "Those poor people," said Mug, after a moment. His leaves shivered, though the air in the Laboratory was perfectly still.

  "Indeed," said Meralda. She met the Captain's weary blue eyes. "They're doomed, are they not?"

  "Every airship in Tirlin is racing north in pursuit," said the Captain. "Every Army troop carrier, every freight hauler. Every mail boat. Every passenger liner and every diplomatic flyer and probably half the smugglers and ne'er-do-wells too. They've all taken to the skies." He let out a long, heavy sigh. "But yes. Even with all those airships out looking, I'm afraid that woman and those kids are done for."

  "Well now wait just a moment," said Mug. "That's got to be hundreds of airships. Surely one will be fast enough to catch up to them."

  "No. They won't be." The Captain rose and began to pace, his hands balled into fists at his sides. "The Royal Meteorologists claim the storm moved off at nearly thirty miles an hour. If the Sammi is caught in that storm, she's already fifty miles out, if not further. And still moving. But that's not the worst of it."

  "No." Meralda looked back down at the note. "They've lost the ability to vent gas, and half their craft is gone. They're in an uncontrolled ascent."

  "Isn't that better than an uncontrolled descent?" asked Mug.

  "Not in the end," said the Captain. "Three things will happen if they keep rising. One, their gas bag will swell and burst, sending them falling down like a bag of stones."

  "That would seem to make the other two possible events superfluous," said Mug.

  "Even if the gas envelope holds, they'll either freeze or rise into air too thin to breathe," said Meralda. She read the note again, marveling at the woman's calm tone. She wrote that note on a wrecked airship, caught in the grip of a killing storm, thought Meralda. And yet her tone suggests she might well be ordering new orchids for the street-side garden.

  Meralda rose as well, and joined the Captain as he paced. Mug kept eyes on them both, careful not to cross any, as his Mistress and the Captain prowled the Laboratory floor.

  "I've already spoken to the Airship guild," said the Captain. "If Mrs. Ghote's estimate of their ascent is correct, in twenty hours they'll be in danger of bursting their gas envelope, if they can't vent. He claims the bag will probably last another four or five hours past that, but it won't make much difference, because the air thins out around 20,000 feet and the temperature drops to zero."

  "If 20,000 feet is the limit, then the Ghotes have…" Meralda trailed off, making the calculations in her head. "…twenty-three hours, from this moment. No more."

  "That's what I estimate as well. And even if, by some miracle, another airship spots the Sammi, what are they to do? Even the Guild man I spoke to said throwing mooring hooks at her was as likely to bring her down as pull her alongside." The Captain came to a halt and turned, surveying the ranks of shelves and racks that filled the rear of the Royal Thaumaturgic Laboratory. "Which is why I've come to you, Sorceress. Valiant effort it may be, but I'm afraid the whole of the Army Air Corps and all the rest is going to come up short. Surely there's some flying contraption back there -- " he gestured toward the shadows that filled the Laboratory's ranks of artifact shelves "-- that might save these people?"

  Meralda moved to stand at the Captain's side.

  Some two hundred years before Meralda was born, an enterprising Mage named Arbolt undertook a project to or
ganize the Royal Thaumaturgic Laboratory's stored treasures by function. He'd worked out a system of spellwork classification, Meralda recalled, and he'd been in his first week of actually moving the accumulated products of seven hundred years of applied sorcery into something resembling an organized collection when an animated suit of armor dropped a crate containing dancing lead ballerinas onto his head.

  Twice.

  No further effort had been undertaken to bring order to the chaos of the Laboratory's shelves.

  Still, thought Meralda, there are a number of known flying devices. Medwort's Classic Carpet, for instance. Or Gervin's Soaring Chair. Both impressive feats of magic, in their own way.

  Both utterly useless in saving anyone aboard the Sammi.

  The Captain snapped his fingers. "Isn't there a flying carpet back there? I remember stories about it. Some Mage used to fly it around when he was deep in his cups, as I recall."

  Meralda shook her head. "There is. Row eighteen, shelf fifty-six, drawer number forty-four. But we can't use it."

  "Why not?"

  "The levitation spell only works in sight of the Palace, and it can only rise, fall, and make wide right turns."

  The Captain glared at the shadows.

  Meralda would have preferred to stalk down the ranks of shelves, but she knew the Captain would insist on following, and many of the items were unpredictable toward strangers. So she walked the rows in her mind, desperate to find anything which might help the Air Corps reach the Sammi before the Ghotes froze or choked on the cold, thin air. Conroy's Towering Pedestal? No, thought Meralda, while it might elevate someone to great height, it can't be moved while doing so, and the Sammi is unlikely to be in a perfectly vertical ascent even if we knew where it was. Loppy's Implacable Rope? Meralda frowned. It was said to be quite capable of seeking out and reeling in heavy loads, but it was limited by its length. Meralda considered the size of the rope's box, and pushed the idea aside.