Clang, clang, clang. A small tofu was rhythmically hitting the glass, increasingly furious chirps punctuating the hits.
"It opens from the inside! Inside, birdbrain!"
Muttering under his breath some not very nice things about tofus in general, Ruel pulled a large screwdriver from his pocket.
"You want in, I'll get you in, just stop making noise! Bloomin' cloak and dagger..."
He pushed the bird away from the brass porthole frame and set upon it with his screwdriver. Metal screeched on metal like tooth on fool's gold. If not this way, then another, enutrof thought, tossed the tool in the air and caught it by the shaft.
The tofu whistled, making Ruel stop tapping at the stuck bolt.
"Here, do it your way. No? Shut up then! Dragon's guts!"
Steel clinked on wakfu. Goultard slid under the blue blade and behind some machine. Yugo's sword hit a brass pipe with a clang and a spark.
"You have not come simply to spy" the foggernaut's voice sounded to the iop like a well-working machine. Not a trace of tiredness.
"You think?" Goultard went around a thick metal column, flanking Yugo. The blades crossed.
"You hid yourself in that hermitage of yours" the technomage continued. "Very shrewd."
Steel slid on brass. Goultard dodged. He ran over a row of low metal boxes.
"Thanks" he said, jumped off and parried the wakfu blade with his sword.
"Did you think my memory was so short?"
The iop laughed so sharply the next strike nearly hit him. He parried, still giggling.
"Listen to yourself."
The wakfu sword swished in the air, but Goultard reflected the blow easily.
"Ventilation duct" muttered Sparrow. "Ventilation duct. Of all the stupid, worn-out, impractical-"
"Somebody had to save our skins" Flopin growled. They were scrambling forwards on all fours, in a single file, making noise like a gobbal in a ladle store. The cra kept expecting a ball of stasis to shoot through the ceiling and pull an arm or a leg off him or one of the girls. The sock-like, slightly nauseating smell wasn't improving his mood, either.
"Thanks" Sparrow said under her breath.
"Next time-"
"Quiet!" Elely nearly drowned out her own admonishment when she banged a fist on the wall.
"He-"
"She-"
"Shush! Stop! No noise!"
The sudden silence rang in their ears even louder than knees banging on tin.
"El-" Flopin started, but she shushed him.
"Engine room" muttered Sparrow. "It's the engines."
True, when he focused on the background instead of the sound of blood pulsing in his ears, there was a pulse-like grinding and churning. Engines, maybe. He wouldn't know. There was a less rhythmical clank of metal on metal, barely audible. As if someone was starting a fire.
"Goultard" whispered Elely.
"What?"
"How do we get out?" She swung her hands around, making a shukrutish din, banged her knee on the tin bottom of the shaft. Flopin's teeth rang with that noise.
"Wait-" he cried, but the metal panel gave way and all three of them spilled out into the light like ripe fruit.
Racket behind his back passed through the surface of Goultard's consciousness, fleeting from the blade of light which the iop deflected, right into the brass armour. The clang was very satisfying.
"Do be more careful." This useful advice on the iop's part was thanked for with a hit that would have made him see stars, if he hadn't moved away in time.
"Are you threshing rye?" he admonished, pushing the wakfu blade down with his own. Then he twirled his sword, cause why not?
"Goultard!" a voice squeaked behind him. Oh, great.
"Not your fight, Elely" he said, attacking the blue blade. "Run!"
With the corner of his eye he saw a glimpse of ginger. "You never let me do anything!"
And he laughed, despite himself. She was so like her father.
"A pair of iops trying to overthrow the Empire" groused the foggernaut.
"One'd be enough" Elely charged, gracefully avoided the wakfu blade and her sword rang on the brass belly. With a sweep of his arm the foggernaut threw her on the wall.
"Sending children against me, Goultard?"
"Elely!" Sparrow yelled, but Flopin was the first to reach the iop girl, limp like a rag doll in the corner. Biting his lip, he was trying to ascertain whether he can move the wounded, but she suddenly fluttered her eyelids. A glassy look of her brown eyes focused somewhere around the tip of the cra's ear.
"Are you all right?"
"Help me... up..."
With Sparrow's assistance he, very carefully, did, but he didn't miss the soft wheezing.
"I have to-"
"Lie down" Flopin muttered, arm firmly around her waist. Metal screeched on metal. Master Goultard was dancing pirouettes around the foggernaut, like a mosquito flying circles around a hulking war engine.
"Have to... help" Elely moaned.
Suddenly a yellow pom-pom was fluttering in front of cra's face, shrieking loudly.
"How did you get here?"
"Good" said Sparrow, but Elely cried "No! Az, we can't-"
"Run away, kids!" shouted Goultard over the clangour of blades.
"No!"
"I'll catch up!"
"Don't distract him!" hissed Sparrow. Az flew, chirping, towards the exit, then back, then forth, while they were pulling the iop girl in his wake.
The tofu was fluttering, tweeting, checking the side corridors, sprinting forwards and back to them, and he kept rushing Flopin and Sparrow, who were walking as fast as they could with a iop locked between them. Elely was looking over her shoulder every couple of steps.
Az led them to an open porthole, through which a bearded, bald enutrof was staring. Judging by the look on his face, he's just lost at least ten kamas.
"Hurry up" he grumbled, seeing them. "Time's money!"
"You came with this one? You're braver than I thought."
Together they pushed the struggling iop into the relatively safe enutrof's arms. Flopin let Sparrow go next, Az clutching at her white hair, then she helped him pull through. A cool breeze combed his hair, the boat, nearly invisible in the darkness, rocked gently under cra's weight.
There was a low rumble from inside the ship, like a distant thunder. A wave pushed the boat away.
"Gotta run" the enutrof muttered. On the bottom of the boat, Elely jerked.
"Goultard!"
Purple light filled the porthole. The enutrof pushed the boat away with his shovel. "At oars!"
But the wave and the crash were enough to push the small dinghy in the right direction
As soon as she was on board, Elely climbed to the crow's nest and stayed there until dawn, while Flopin listened for the sound of the machines.
In the morning the darkness unveiled the sea, grey and crumpled, framed in the mouth of the cove. Empty to the horizon.
"Oi, there!" Ruel yelled from the deck. "Clear?"
"Nobody here but us" Elely whispered, hugging herself.
"Platinum Kama" hoisted sail and slowly, carefully, went out to the open sea wrinkled with favourable wind. None of its passengers saw a green bit of brass attached to the side of their ship, nor the glint of a salt-foggy lens set in the piece of metal.
Flopin, hands clasped behind his back, was studying the shushu map on the mast and the red line of course that was drawn on it.
"We'll be in Sadida tomorrow, kid" said Ruel from the steering wheel.
"Mhm" the young cra straightened his back and nodded. "That was too easy."
"Puff! You didn't have to screw a porthole open! Easy, sure."
A highbrowed look didn't impress the enutrof in the slightest, although it did get a typical shushu chuckle out of the map.
"It's not over yet" said Flopin.
"It is for me. I take the cash, then I'm out."
"The cash Goultard promised" the map reminded him, but Ruel just shrugged.
"The kid is dumb, meaning honourable, like all iops. She'll come up with something. Besides this one" he tipped his head at Flopin, "must have a grateful family there."
The cra stared at him icily and Ruel whistled a merry whistle which wasn't quite in tune.
"Hey."
Elely moved closer to the railing post, so Sparrow could get into the crow's nest.
"How're you doing?"
The iop girl, eyes fixed to the horizon, rested her temple on the cool wood.
"That well, huh?"
"I can't believe he's gone" Elely mumbled.
"Ely-"
"I can't, okay? He's alive" she sniffed, and the osamoda stroked her shoulder. Then she reached out to the sky.
"What are you doing?" The sun shone so brightly that Elely's eyes screwed shut on their own free will. But she heard wings flapping and smelled something very much like the fishermen huts at the Eastern Harbour.
"Chatting" said Sparrow. Then she got out a squawk worthy of a very sick gobbal and the bird, albatross probably, answered with a similar caw.
"What about?" Elely asked without real interest.
"Weather, mostly" the albatross for 'weather' sounded exactly like a knife dragged across a plate.
Finally the bird flew away, wings flapping, and Elely's nose found fresh (ish) air again.
"We'll have good wind the whole way to Sadida."
"Mhm" Elely hung her head before opening her eyes. Still, there were indescribable flecks of light dancing against the planks.
"They can't hold a portal for long" said Ruel. The map cackled madly, alongside the seagulls.
"A short while is enough."
"Listen, kid. There's a lot of shushu in this world-"
The map, despite having no throat, choked with laughter.
"Wanna worry about it, that's your problem" the enutrof continued, "but I don't care."
He slapped the shushu, which finally shut the demon up, although several small pictures did appear alongside the red course line. As far as Flopin could see, they weren't fit to be shown to children.
"The wind's going to be fine" said Sparrow, running onto the bridge. She nearly crashed into the young cra, who was just leaving it.
"Sorry. Hey, what's the matter?"
"Your friend is a true mercenary" Flopin said, squeezing between her and the railing and down the steps. "He only cares about his own purse."
Osamoda stared after him for a moment before spinning and yelling at Ruel "What did you say to him?!"