Skyjackers - Episode 3: The Winds of Justice (Skyjackers: Season One) Read Free Page B

in the city, despite some
terrible elderly man who kept whining about the patients needing their lunch.
Then I got some new clothes from a woman who seemed to think it was my fault
she’d left them hanging out where anyone could take them. And I borrowed this
sword from a man in a blue overcoat and a tall puffy hat who was standing
outside the gates of some spooky old chateau. Then some sailors refused me a
ride in their vessel, so I made my way here alone.”
    “You look as if you’ve been through the ringer, darling,”
said Gertrude. “I’ll fetch the doctor.”
    “How did you know where to find us?” Benedict asked.
    “Simple, really. I asked Greenbeard.”
    “Greenbeard,” Benedict muttered under his breath, spitting
out the syllables. “Bloody bognobbler.”
    “What’s a bognobbler, Daddy?” Misty asked.
    “Hush. Your mother’s right outside. You mustn’t ever repeat
that. Do you hear?”
    “I think Mum is a bognobbler,” Misty said aloud.
    Benedict cringed. “For the love of periwinkle… pipe down,
will you?”
    Misty laughed and laughed.
    “Greenbeard is an uncultured lout. Always doing rubbish
things like battening hatches and shivering timbers and other such piratical
nonsense. It’s chaps like him who’ve given us respectable swashbucklers a poor
go of it. And now he’s after the family fortune. It’s a wonder he didn’t hold
you for ransom when you contacted him.”
    “He seemed very cordial to me,” Misty said. “In fact, he
asked whether I might pass along a message to you.”
    Benedict was intrigued. “Really? What sort of message?”
    “Oh, I can’t recall, exactly. Something about it having been
too long, and how you and he shall have to get together sometime soon.”
    “I’m certain he’d enjoy that,” said Benedict. “Probably so he
can slit my throat and run off with your mother. He’s always been fond of her.
The scoundrel. Say… if Viv didn’t find you, I wonder where she’s got off to.
She should be back by now. The Justice will be underway in a few hours,
and she’ll be all the harder to sack without the Dawnhammer at our
disposal.”
    “I’ve brought you a vessel, Daddy,” said Misty. “I told you
that before.”
    “That’s grand, poppet. Thank you. But Daddy needs a big ship.
One like the Dawnhammer , so he can strike fear into the hearts of the
marshals.”
    “It’s pretty big,” Misty said.
    Gertrude cracked the door and poked her head into the cabin.
“Ben. You’ll want to see this.”
    “See what? We’re in the middle of something, bunny-button.”
    “Ben. Come outside. At once.”
    Benedict followed her.
    Misty followed him.
    Moored to the Cloudhopper was an airship twice as
large, armed with dozens of cannon on three separate decks. Banners fluttered
from the tips of flagpoles atop the inflated gasbags. Benedict drew his
cutlass, assuming they were under attack. Then he noticed his crew staring at
the vessel in silent awe. He stood beside his wife and daughter, taking in the
sight. The big airship was empty.
    “Mum?” Misty said. “Are you a bognobbler?”
    “Wherever did you learn a word like that?”
    “Daddy said Greenbeard was one.”
    “Daddy has a vulgar tongue, and you’d do best not to imitate
him.”
    Benedict scratched his head. “Misty… I thought you said you
made your way here alone.”
    “I did,” she said. “Those nasty sailors told me I wouldn’t
know how to sail an airship if it were hanging from a batch of birthday
balloons.”
    Benedict turned to look at his daughter. “What did you do,
poppet? What did you do to the sailors?”
    She smiled. “I showed them they were wrong.”
    ***
    “Where the devil are you, Thorpe? The Justice is
a third of the way to Cardemere, and the Maelstrom is nowhere to be
seen.”
    Jonathan’s detour to Azkatla and his subsequent trouble with
the Caine girl had put him severely behind schedule. He had the Maelstrom ’s
engines running at full steam in an attempt to intercept