7. Spider

guess your source wasn’t quite as good as you’d hoped,” Hank said nonchalantly, lacing his hands behind his head and leaning back against the bars of the cell.

Miss Silver Spoon cocked her head to the side and clucked her tongue at him like an old woman. “No lies, Daniel.”

Hank scowled. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed Bones, telling her his real name. It was more than a nuisance, it was dangerous. “Why don’t you try calling me Hank?” he suggested.

“Why don’t you try calling me Miss Price?” she countered.

“Fine.” She peered up at him, waiting. He threw up his hands before dropping into a mocking bow. “I would be most pleased to call you Miss Price.”

She nodded and smiled approvingly, as if he were a puppy performing a particularly clever trick. He gritted his teeth. “Thank you, Hank. Now that we have that squared away, why weren’t you on my list?”

Hank glanced at Bones. The ticker merely crossed his hands over his chest. He was leaving this one up to Hank. Great. Should he tell this total stranger how he managed to sneak in and out of port without getting caught by the authorities, endangering his entire operation, or should he refuse to answer and thus possibly lose whatever shadow of a chance she represented to get his ship back? Roith’delat, what a choice.

Still, he didn’t get where he was without gambling. Granted, where he was now was in jail, but he tried not to dwell on that fact too much. Bones obviously wanted to bet on this girl as their savior—he would throw his lot in with his first mate and hope they hit the jackpot.

He shrugged. “As you said, the HH has a standing capture-kill order on it. I can’t very well fly into harbor with the whole ship. She can float as well as she can soar. I send the hawk ships away and sail in with the nest alone. Authorities spend most of their time monitoring air traffic. They don’t watch the floaters as closely, and they surely aren’t looking for the nest by itself. As far as the port authority is concerned, my ship’s just a junker with too little sail, barely able to make seaberth.” He couldn’t hide the note of pride in his voice.

“Clever.” She nodded, smiling. “I like that,” she said, then turned her attention to the device in her hand. Miffed, he snapped his mouth shut. It was more than just clever. It was genius, and had kept them safe ever since he first stole the old bird.

She turned the key in the spider’s back several times, then gently placed the pendant on the floor, the slim chain pooling like copper rope beside it.

She removed the key and moved to the corner of the room. “This . . . uh . . . doesn’t always work. You might want to stand back a bit.”

Alarmed, Hank’s gaze darted from the pendant on the floor to her. “What do you mean, it doesn’t always work?”

Her eyes remained fixed on the spider-pendant. “Sometimes they just explode.” She looked up and gave him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. I think this one’s going to work.” A pause. “Even if it didn’t, it’s not really big enough to kill us.”

“How comforting.” He moved to the far side of the cell from the thing, back against the bars. How, exactly, had he found himself in this situation? Surely, there must be a place where a pirate could make a dishonest living and have nothing more to worry about than authorities and guards and prisons. Half-mad gentry girls and their bizarre and dangerous hobbies should never enter the equation!

A sound from the pendant drew his attention to where it rested at the back of the cell. The little spider shuddered, teardrop earrings on its back pinging slightly as they rattled against the body. A brief whirring sound filled the cell, punctuated by a sharp grinding and a puff of black smoke, then the pendant began to move.

Each of the spider legs unfolded, tapping against the stone floor as the little machine stood. It dipped crazily to the left, then overcompensated and teetered dangerously to the right as it gained its balance.

Finally standing, it paused, trembling and spewing tiny plumes of foul-smelling steam from its motor. For a moment, Hank felt certain that was going to be the end of it. It would detonate into tiny metal shrapnel, which, the way his life had been going lately, would no doubt end up killing him. “Handsome” Hank McCoy, pirate scourge, slain in a prison cell by a tiny mechanical spider crafted by a madwoman.

As if to prove him wrong, the spider finally resumed its motion, spinning in a careful circle as though getting its bearings. Circle complete, it skittered toward the window, metal legs tapping audibly against the stone as it clattered across the floor and up the side of the wall, chain dragging behind it like a bridal train. It darted through the bars and into the sunlight, then did another slow circle. With a sharp grinding noise and another puff of noxious black smoke, the earrings on its back began to spin, lifting the little spider off of the ledge. It tucked all of its legs around the phial of water on its belly and zoomed off, chain dangling behind it.

“That went well,” said Remora, pleased, removing her spectacles and folding them carefully.

“Roith’delat, I’m getting too old for this,” Hank muttered, running a hand through his hair. “So now what?” he said. “Your creepy little spiderbot’s gone. What happens now?”

“Now,” she said, moving to the window and depositing the glasses in the black velvet and rolling it back up, “we wait.”

“That’s your big plan? We wait?”

She nodded and tucked the velvet container into her pocket. She walked to the tiny cot against the far wall and sat, drawing her legs up and circling them with her arms. She leveled a chiding glance at him. “Really, you’ll make yourself sick if you don’t learn how to relax a little, Hank.” She cocked her head to the side, thinking. “I believe I shall call you McCoy. I like that rather better than Hank.”

He threw up his hands. “You can call me the Marquis of the Armaethean Skycity, if it gets us out of this jail cell.”

She laughed, peals of true mirth that utterly transformed her somewhat plain face. She might even have been pretty, if she hadn’t been so irritating. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, McCoy. He’s so much older than you. Furthermore, he has a mustache and smells of peppermint tobacco. You’re nothing like him at all, I couldn’t possibly call you that.”

She’d actually met the Marquis of the Armaethean Skycity? Just which branch of the Price family did she come from? Surely not from one of the inland merchants, not if she rubbed elbows with Skycity gentry.

Turning to ask her, he realized she was asleep, head on her knees.

(No story-related poll followed this installment)