Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 27 of 63

Bram walked the apron until the tender lights were gone behind him. The foot trail down the ridge began at a broken cairn and dropped through scrub pine toward the harbor lamps far below. He had walked worse. He had not walked worse in a courier's jacket meant for a heated cockpit, with a storm front already sliding down the slope behind him. Wind hit his back before he was fifty yards down. Snow came sideways in hard grains that stung the neck. The trail iced under his boots inside minutes. He counted the harbor lamps and lost three of them to the white. He stopped at a bend and did the arithmetic he had been avoiding. Two hours to the harbor at a good pace. He would not have a good pace. The jacket was cracked leather over wool, good to freezing on a mast, useless against a wet wind that found every split seam. His hands were already stiff. He would go down before the last switchback. He turned into the lee of a rock and opened the pocket compass Parisa had pressed on him. The needle held north. Not magic anymore. Just a tool. He set a bearing off the lowest visible lamp and closed the lid. Then he did the thing he had been putting off since the tender lifted. He unbuckled the mechanical owl from his belt. The owl clicked. Its firebox was warm through the plating. He had one coal left in its belly and a bird built to carry heat. He opened the front of his jacket, set the owl against his chest inside the wool lining, and zipped the leather shut over it. The brass burned through his shirt at once. He gasped and kept walking. The heat held him. He moved. The owl's vents ticked steam against his collarbone. He talked to it under his breath to keep his jaw working. He named the switchbacks as he found them. Four. Five. Six. At the seventh the wind knocked him flat. He got up on one knee, checked the compass, corrected two points east, and went on. The harbor lamps grew. He could smell coal smoke off the water now, and pitch. He came off the trail behind a fuel shed with his fingers locked around the compass case and could not open his hand to put it away. A dockhand saw him and shouted. Two men caught him under the arms. Inside the harbor office they cut the jacket open at the zip. The owl fell out onto the desk, black-hot, its firebox spent. The brass had scorched a red print across Bram's chest. He did not feel it yet. "Above the office," he said. "The consignee. Wake them." The dockhand went up the stairs. Bram stayed on his feet at the counter, snow melting off him onto the ledger, and waited to put the package in a hand that would sign for it in front of him.