The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

Headless Over Heels.

“I’m the Verdugo’s boyfriend.”

“Her?” Sarkanian emotions remained protean and strange to Seth, but the incredulity in the Blue Ekadao’s her was unmistakable. “I thought myself habilitated to humanity, but you have given me much to learn. She seemed far more eager to twist your head off than give you her belly in ardor.”

“She’s… not always such a jerk,” Seth said. “She switches heads. That’s her Darkness.”

“Ahh.” A smell like freshly cut grass from the Blue Ekadao. “This seems complex.”

“Sorta. Never boring, though.”

“Surely not. It is as if you have your own knfz in one woman.”

“You understand I don’t know what that word means, man.”

“Eh, a Sarkani thing. A result of our asymmetry. Each male has many lovers.”

“Like a harem?”

“If you say so.”

“I dunno if she’d be thrilled to be called that,” Seth said. “Well, maybe Lisa.”

“I have thought now and then of becoming unlit for the benefit of its longevity and power,” the Blue Ekadao mused. “But this is a female pursuit in my lands, as most pursuits are besides the insemination of one’s knfz. A mateable sarkanian male is quite the commodity. I am, as I have told you, in the minority.”

“I remember,” Seth said. It was the fourth time the Ekadao had mentioned it.

“It is not the fashion for a male to sally forth in this way. There is a perfumed tent full of eager would-be mothers who lack me.”

“Sounds a bit like you’re bragging, the Blue Ekadao.”

The Blue Ekadao’s tail swished, further getting to his thoroughly gotten-to horse. “It is a brag, yes. I am glad that came through without the scent cue.”

The long lozenge of the stormship sat derelict where Tiago had touched it down, in the shadow of the ridge upon which Shipfarrok sat. Grounded and inanimate as it was, it put Seth again in mind of a fish—a dead one, this time, drifted to the pooling silt.

And, like a corpse, scavengers were picking at it.

And, like a corpse, scavengers were picking at it.

“Hey,” Seth murmured, and then “Hey!” as he spurred his colt into another bruising gallop.

A pair of Sheepfuckians—a man and a woman—had harnessed a mule to a peeled-out edge of sheet metal, and now smoked hand-rolled marshmallow root cigs as their beast of burden grunted and pulled at the loosening panel.

Seth reeled his ride to a halt and ogled the piebald patches missing from across the fuselage. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting a new roof,” the woman said.

“Y’blew the old one down when you parked the big fucker.” The man tapped his smoke’s ash away. “So, then.”

“Untie your animal.” Seth hopped from his horse and landed on both feet in the spongy topsoil. “Don’t touch the ship.”

The man hocked a loogie to the earth. “Who’re you, boy?”

“I’m Legion,” Seth said, which was about as true as it needed to be. “And that’s Legion property. So get some other fucking roof, please.”

He jogged toward the village, leading his horse by its calfskin reins. The Blue Ekadao gave a bow to the perplexed Shipfarrok folk and rode after him.

Karla the not-Corregidor was sitting with both mud-caked boots up on the fence rail in her cottage’s front yard, at the center of Shipfarrok’s ring of homes. She watched without alarm as Seth came to a halt by the fencepost. It had been repaired with the heavy-gauge rivets that had once adorned the stormship’s cockpit door.

“Karla,” Seth said.

“What’s-your-face,” Karla replied.

“You were told to leave the stormship where it was until the Legion could retrieve it.”

“We have,” Karla said.

Seth spun to take in the center of Shipfarrok’s ring of homes. “That man is saintfucking grilling on a piece of it.”

“Aye, well. Cleaned it first. We cleaned it, Gunter?”

The thick-browed man at the grill made a grunting sound like “Fuh.”

Karla nodded her satisfaction. “You can have some cracklings, goodman, if it’ll calm you down.”

“That would be most pleasing,” the Blue Ekadao said.

“Anyway.” Karla detached herself from her porch and strolled to the improvised grill to prod at the fire beneath it. “You left it here, and its descent knocked over half the paddocks. It’s a lot to rebuild at once. And the thing’s just been lying about.”

“The thing is a miracle of modern fucking magitech,” Seth said. “And you’re grilling on it.”

The Blue Ekadao diverted his attention from the sizzling meat. “I do not mean to undermine your apposite wrath, friend il Gutierre, but most of these panels will not be needed for the brief and eventful life you’ve planned for this vessel.”

Karla folded her arms. “What’s that he means, then?”

“We are crashing the stormship into a seraph,” The Blue Ekadao said.

Karla snorted. “Ah, well. Can see why you’re wanting it all spick and span then.”

“We’re gonna push the whole way,” Seth said. “I can’t have it shaking apart in the sky, Karla.”

“Your lizard says it won’t,” Karla said.

“We will be needing this piece, however.” The Blue Ekadao pointed to the rooftop Annalise had hauled a tree off when they were last in Shipfarrok. “This is a propeller blade.”

Seth balled his hands into fists. “You took the propeller?”

“All right, goodman.” Karla just smirked at Seth’s consternation. He wished he were Annalise’s height. “Haven’t seen a stormship before, have we. We’ll get that taken down and refitted, won’t we, Gunter?”

“Fuh,” Gunter said again, which sounded unpromising to Seth, but he was up and fetching a ladder.

“There is another somewhere,” the Blue Ekadao continued. “I saw two missing. You see by its sibling that it will be longer and thinner than the rest. It will have rivet holes on its edge.”

Seth inspected the scrap’s narrow shape as Gunter gathered a team to retrieve it. “Anything like that in Shipfarrok?”

Karla, who’d taken over from Gunter at the grill, turned a crackling length of sheep-belly. An answer was skulking behind her eyes, trying not to show itself.

“Please, Karla,” Seth said. “Please. Every minute we spend on this is—”

“Soya il Mandrak,” Karla said. “The widow Soya il Mandrak. She has that piece.”

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...-propeller
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2564189/