1
The book says the world drowned because people couldn’t be bothered to clean up. “And it was all because they couldn’t clean up,” I say aloud, snapping the book shut.
The thin metal bookmark slides out and clinks against the brass floor plating.
Above us, a low, distant groan runs through the hull—Vespertine shifting in her sleep.
Once, the ground tried to kill us. Now a sky‑whale carries a whole city on her back and pretends nothing’s wrong.
Leo, sprawled sideways across his bunk, stomps his feet. The metal frame squeaks in protest.
“Ugh! Ground people were so stupid!” he says, nose scrunching the way it always does when he’s offended on behalf of the entire sky.
He kicks the blanket again, scattering a few brass screws he’d been playing with. One rolls to the edge of the bed, drops, and disappears into the narrow gap between the bunk and the bulkhead with a tiny tink.
“Hey,” I say, trying not to smile, “watch it. Those screws cost more than your snack rations for a week.”
Leo’s eyes go wide. “More than two candied‑amber sticks?” His feet freeze mid‑stomp.
“More than three,” I say solemnly.
He gasps like I’ve told him the Gloom is coming through the vents.
Across the cramped cabin, Brianna looks up from where she sits cross‑legged at the foot of her own bunk, braiding and unbraiding the same section of dark hair. She wears that half‑smile she uses when something amuses her, but refuses to let anyone see her actually laugh.
“But hey, at least we get to live somewhere pretty,” she says, tilting her head toward the porthole.
Outside, the sky is a smear of violet and rust, the last bruises of sunset fading into the low glow of the Gloom far below. Thin trade airships drift along Vespertine’s flank like tiny insects. Farther out, other sky‑whales loom against the horizon like drifting islands, their harnesses glinting faintly with brass. One of them rides lower than it should, its lines pulled too tight, lanterns flickering like a ship that’s taken on water.
Our cabin is wedged between ribs and pipes near the mid‑belly of the great beast. The ceiling is low enough to touch, and every surface is claimed by something: tools, spare leather patches, the kids’ drawings tacked up with magnet pins.
Leo slides off his bunk and presses his face to the glass, leaving a smudge of nose print.
“Do you think the ground people can see us?” he asks.
“No one survives on the ground,” he adds quickly, repeating what he’s been told. “It’s all poison and junk and—” He makes an explosion sound and flings his hands out.
“Alright, alright,” I cut in, setting the storybook back on the shelf. The spine is cracked; the illustration of the Sinking is long since faded. “Bedtime, not nightmare time. Now clean your room and go to sleep, or else our sky‑whale will crash.”
Leo freezes. His head snaps around so fast his curls bounce.
“If I don’t clean up, Vespertine will crash?” he whispers.
His gaze sweeps over the clutter of toy gliders, copper wire, and folded paper kites. In his mind, mess on the floor and catastrophe in the sky are tied together by a single thread: my word.
Leo’s only six, and he believes a lot of things that definitely aren’t true.
That he’ll die if he doesn’t do what his mother says. That the Gloom will seep up through the vents and nibble his toes if he sleeps without socks. That Grandma Clara can fix anything with just a story and a cup of bitterroot tea.
“Eek!” Leo squeals as one of his toy gliders slides off his pillow and brushes his arm. The sound is a mix of giggle and genuine fear. He clutches the glider to his chest.
“It’s just your toy, Leo,” Brianna says dryly. “The Gloom doesn’t know where you sleep.”
“What if it does?” he shoots back, then turns to me, eyes wide.
“The Gloom can’t reach this high,” I say, smoothing his hair. “And Vespertine won’t crash if you forget one sock. But”—I lift a finger—“your room still has to be clean. Tailors’ orders.”
He relaxes—reassured more by my tone than my logic—and begins sweeping his treasures into the crate under his bunk.
Brianna snorts.
“Weaponised bedtime physics,” she mutters.
At fourteen, she balances on the ledge between child and adult: long limbs, sharp tongue, and a mind that chews through simple stories and goes looking for complicated ones. She’s already found the old data‑slates in storage, the reports of the Sinking without pictures.
She glances at the closed book in my hand, one eyebrow arched.
“You know there’s more to it than ‘they couldn’t clean up,’ right?” Brianna says. “It wasn’t just litter. It was—”
“Bri,” I warn.
She rolls her eyes. “Fine. Litter and really bad adults. Happy?”
She slides off her bunk and starts folding her blanket in quick, precise movements.
“Mom, stop overworking yourself,” she adds after a beat, without looking up. “You know there’s an entire team already on the ventral harness. You don’t always have to worry about every strap.”
I open my mouth, then close it again.
The cabin seems to shrink: low ceiling, humming pipes, the deep thrum of Vespertine’s engines under our feet. The faint tang of Amber‑Grease that never quite washes out of my clothes.
I go quiet, rubbing my left prosthetic arm, thumb tracing the familiar groove along a joint I filed down myself. The brass plates are warm from the day’s work, faintly smelling of oil and leather.
I built this arm after a harness snapped on my real one a few years back—the crack, the sudden drop, the scream torn out of my throat. The world narrowing to the bite of a safety line around my ribs and the Gloom yawning far below.
“Trust me,” I say finally. “I do.”
Brianna’s eyes flick to the arm and back to my face. She almost sighs, then swallows it and steps toward the little washbasin, busying herself with nothing.
For a moment, none of us speaks. The only sound is Vespertine’s slow, steady heartbeat in the hull and the soft jingle of Leo’s screws rattling in their crate.
“Mom?” Leo whispers.
“Yeah, bug?”
“If Vespertine gets tired… can she sleep?” I smile, the tension in my shoulders easing a fraction.
“She is sleeping,” I say. “All those groans and hums? Whale dreams.” His eyes widen.
“Can you hear them?” I think of the low vibrations that sometimes find their way into my teeth, the way the harness thrums with currents no gauge can quite measure. The way my grandmother used to drum her fingers along the arm of her chair during storms and say, "They listen, you know. Behemoths."
“Sometimes,” I say. “Now sleep, or you’ll miss the morning wind.”
He nods and flops back onto his pillow, clutching the glider. Within minutes, his breathing evens out into ship‑quiet.
Brianna climbs into her own bunk, drawing the curtain halfway. The faint glow of an illicit data‑slate leaks out for a moment before she dims it.
“M’night,” she mumbles.
“Goodnight, Bree.”
I dim the cabin lights and step out.
The corridor outside our compartment is narrow and warm, lined with pipes that sweat gently as hot air snakes through Vespertine’s insides. Families’ doors are stacked along the passage like beads on a string, each marked with some little sign: a painted whale, a dangling charm, a strip of colored cloth.
Most of them are quiet now. Cycle‑night. The market tiers are shutting down, the guildhalls dimming one by one.
I pause at the viewing slit cut into the outer hull, more out of habit than anything. Through it, I see a slice of sky and a shoulder of another Carapace drifting in the distance, lanterns on its back like a scatter of earthbound stars.
The Gloom is just a faint glow far below, a bruised orange smear beyond the edge of sight. It was worse when my grandmother was a girl, if the stories are true. Hard to believe worse is possible when we already live on creatures because the ground tried to kill us.
“Still carrying us,” I murmur to Vespertine under my breath.
She answers with a soft creak of bone and a low, whale‑deep hum that settles into my ribs.
The maintenance decks call.
The closer I get to the harness levels, the more the ship smells like my life: hot metal, old oil, and the sharp, clean tang of Amber‑Grease. The air is cooler here, drawn over Vespertine’s skin before being cycled through the city above.
Tailors move through the corridors in ones and twos, some already half in harness, some still shrugging into reinforced aprons. We nod to one another; the kind of nod you give people who know exactly what it means to spend your days dangling over the edge of the world.
The guildhall entrance looms ahead—heavy brass door with the needle‑and‑rivet emblem hammered deep into it. Beside it, the notice board is crowded with papers and plaques.
I scan them on instinct as I pass.
GUILD DECREE 402‑A: Unauthorised experimental adjustments to harness geometry are FORBIDDEN. Tailors will adhere to tested schematics.
REMEMBRANCE CYCLE: All Tailors will observe one minute of silence at mid‑shift in memory of those lost during the Sinking.
NOTICE: Reports of irregular vibrations along ventral relay lines. If you experience tooth‑buzzing, ear‑ringing, or non‑patterned resonance, inform Master Iben immediately.
NOTICE: Reports of irregular vibrations along ventral relay lines. If you experience tooth‑buzzing, ear‑ringing, or non‑patterned resonance, inform Master Iben immediately.
That one makes me pause.
Tooth‑buzzing.
Grandma Clara used to talk about signals in the static, about the way the Gloom sometimes hummed like a broken radio. If your teeth start buzzing, it means they’re listening to someone else, she’d say. The council called it old‑woman nonsense. The guild called it “psychological stress responses to altitude.”
Now they’re posting notices—and someone’s scratched out a line at the bottom hard enough to tear the paper. I rub my thumb over the gouged fibres, a prickle running along my molars, and step away. I can’t afford to pick fights with paper tonight.
Inside the gear room, rows of harness rigs hang like sleeping bats. I find mine by touch: third from the end, left shoulder strap patched with darker leather where I replaced it last year.
I shrug into it, tightening buckles with one hand while the other—brass and leather and tiny clockwork gears—moves with practised efficiency. The prosthetic plates catch the lamplight, dull gold against my skin.
Someone clears their throat behind me.
“Stitch Vance,” Master Iben says. His voice has the rough edge of someone who grew up shouting over engines and never learned to stop. “You’re on ventral section C‑two tonight. Mind the crosswinds. We’re riding low.”
“Yes, Master,” I say.
He grunts.
“And no stunts. I don’t want to hear you were out there tap‑dancing on the outermost ring to ‘feel the flex.’”
“That was one time,” I protest.
“That was three times,” he counters. “And the guild would prefer you keep the arm you have left.”
I raise my prosthetic in a half‑salute.
“That’s why I brought a spare,” I say.
He pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s got a headache that spells Elianora.
“Just do the job,” he says. “And if the whale sings anything you don’t recognise, you come tell me. No theories. No tinkering.”
“I hear you,” I say.
He gives me a last, measuring look and steps aside.
The hatch to the outer catwalk hisses open.
Night air slaps my face, sharp and cold.
The outer walk is a narrow strip of metal and reinforced rope clinging to Vespertine’s side. The city on her back is mostly shadow from here, a dark silhouette bristling with masts and chimneys. Lanterns mark the market tiers and the temple spire, flickering like fireflies.
Below, the Gloom is a restless sea of dull fire. It glows faintly, pulsing in slow waves, lighting the undersides of the Carapaces in sickly orange.
I clip my safety line to the rail, check it twice, and step out.
The harness stretches around me in a complex web: wyvern leather, brass rings the size of dinner tables, cables braided thicker than my waist. Each piece was grown, cured, and forged to fit Vespertine’s particular shape. Each piece is a question the Sinking never answered: how long can the sky carry what the ground could not?
The whale hums under my boots, slow and steady.
I move along the walkway, checking buckles, testing tension. The familiar rhythm settles over me like another layer of harness.
Tap the leather. Check the stitching. Run gloved fingertips over each ring and bolt. Listen.
Vespertine’s song is low tonight—a deep, rolling infrasound that vibrates my ribs. Whales use those songs to talk to each other, to navigate the invisible currents that slip between pockets of cleaner air.
I grew up with them. My grandmother used to take me to the observatory deck and point at the shapes in the distance.
“Listen,” she’d say, drumming her knuckles along the rail. Tap‑tap‑tap. “The Behemoths talk more than the council ever will.”
Tonight, it’s just whales and wind.
Mostly.
As I lean over a junction where three straps meet, tightening a loose buckle with my prosthetic braced against the frame, something prickles along my teeth. A faint, uneven buzz. Not the smooth, rolling wave of normal resonance, but something choppier. Almost like…static.
I freeze. The wind roars against my hood, tugging at my coat. The Gloom flickers far below. Vespertine’s heartbeat thuds slow and solid.
There it is again. A thin, scratchy undercurrent.
Crackle‑pause‑crackle. Three beats, like knuckles on bone. Too sharp to be weather, too patterned to be random. Then it’s gone, swallowed by the usual hum.
“Great,” I mutter. “Now I’m imagining ghosts in the Veil.”
I shake my head and force my focus back to the task; I can chase phantoms on my own time.
I raise my hammer and tap the brass ring.
“Ssh,” I murmur. Tap. “It’s okay.” Tap‑tap.
The leather under my glove eases fractionally.
“How pathetic,” I tell myself, “talking to a sky‑whale like it can hear me over a whole city.”
Still, I keep tapping.
“Come on, old girl,” I say under my breath. “Just a little longer.”
“Elianora!”
The voice arrives on a gust of wind, half‑swallowed and then returned.
I glance back.
Noah steps out through the access hatch, moving with the easy balance of someone who’s spent more time on open catwalks than solid floors. The harness lamps pick out the lines of his face—sharp jaw, high cheekbones, sun‑browned skin—and turn the gold flecks in his dark eyes into tiny sparks.
Wind pushes his hair back from his forehead in a careless wave, the kind that makes apprentices in the lower rigging giggle when they think he isn’t listening.
He’s tall enough that the top of my head barely reaches his collarbone; out here I feel like a kid standing next to a mast.
A faint white scar traces from his temple toward his ear. It should make him look worn; somehow, it just makes him look like he belongs out here.
“Uh uh uh… m’lady, why are you working?” he says, pitching his voice high in mock formality as he steps onto the catwalk. He carries a coil of rope over one broad shoulder and a toolkit at his hip, all of it sitting on him like he was born wearing harness gear. “Go and have a break, I’ll take your spot.”
He flashes a quick grin—too bright, too easy—and pushes a stray lock of hair back with the back of his glove. He knows exactly what that grin does to people.
I roll my eyes and tilt my chin up to meet his gaze.
“Noah, this is the fifth time you’ve tried to seduce me today,” I say, checking a tension gauge.
“Seduce?” he repeats, wounded. “Such a crude word. I’m courting. Very old‑fashioned. Very respectable. You should be honoured.”
“You’re standing on a six‑inch‑wide catwalk at midnight with your top buckle undone,” I say. “There’s nothing respectable about that. Or safe.”
He glances down, fixes the loose buckle, and for a heartbeat, I see the flash of the boy who pulled me out of a snapped line and wouldn't stop shaking for an hour.
Then he's grinning again.
“Details,” he says. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you if you end up the only single Tailor on this sky‑whale.”
“There are worse fates than being single,” I reply. “Like plummeting into the Gloom because someone forgot to double‑check their harness.”
He comes to stand beside me, bending roughly a foot to reach my height, close enough that I can feel his warmth through our coats.
“That’s why I’m here,” he says, softer. “You haven’t left this section in eight hours. The others are taking bets on when you keel over. I picked ‘never.’”
Before I can answer, a flicker near one of the straps catches my eye.
I snap my goggles down.
The world shifts into shades of amber and green as the lenses highlight stress fractures and heat.
There it is: a small tear beginning to form along a crucial strap. A hairline split, invisible without the lenses, the leather around it glowing with strain.
Small. Yeah. Small until it gets big.
A ghost‑pain shoots up the space where my real arm used to be. I force my voice to stay steady.
“Stress tear,” I say. “If we leave it, it spreads.”
“And if it spreads, we have a bad day,” Noah finishes.
“We all have a bad day,” I correct. “Hold this steady.”
We slip into the rhythm of work. Noah braces the line while I cut away the weakened section. My prosthetic hand grips the tool without shaking; the clockwork within whirs softly.
Memories rise anyway—rivers seen through gaps in the smog, lights that moved in patterns too deliberate to be accidents, a voice pointing out constellations of drifting Behemoths.
I drive a rivet in a little harder than necessary.
“Clara says—” Noah begins, then stops himself.
“Clara says a lot of things,” I cut in. “Hand me the new strap.”
He passes it over without argument.
Rivets clink into my palm. My hammer rises and falls in neat, controlled strikes.
Tap‑tap.
Tap‑tap.
The harness settles into a more even song.
“There,” I say at last, running my fingertips over the repair. “Good as new.”
Noah exhales, breath clouding the air.
“Knew you had it,” he says. “Would’ve been nice to let me be the hero for once, though.” His mouth tugs into a lopsided smile. “Imagine it: Noah Carrow, lone Tailor between Vespertine and certain doom. Has a ring to it.”
“You can be the hero of line seven,” I say. “It squeaks when the wind shifts.”
He groans.
“Tragic how greatness is never recognised in its own time.”
Still, the complaint fades into a grin as he turns away.
“Try not to fix everything before I get back,” he calls, already moving along the catwalk. From my low vantage point, he’s mostly legs and rope and ridiculous balance, boots sure on the narrow metal, tools swaying at his hip. The wind catches his coat and hair, and for a moment, he’s just another dark silhouette against the sky—perfectly at home out here.
I unclip my safety line and head back toward the hatch.
Behind me, Vespertine hums on, her vast body bearing the weight of our city through a poisoned sky.
By the time I reach our compartment again, the corridors are quieter. Most families are stacked inside their rooms like beads in a bracelet. The ever‑present hum of engines wraps around everything.
Inside, Leo snores softly, one arm flung over his face, the other wrapped tight around his toy glider. Brianna’s bunk curtain is half drawn, the faint glow of a data‑slate leaking from under it.
I stand for a moment, watching them.
The ship creaks. The engines thrum. Somewhere deep below, the Gloom seethes in slow motion. Somewhere far beyond that, there might still be people on the ground, breathing poison and sending signals no one admits to hearing.
I hang my harness on its hook and drop onto my narrow bunk. The thin mattress sighs under my weight. My prosthetic arm thuds against the wall as I turn onto my side.
“Just a little longer,” I whisper to the ceiling, not sure if I mean this shift, this night, or this whole fragile life balanced on a tired whale.
The engines thrum, steady and familiar—until, just as sleep drags me under, something thin and scratchy brushes by teeth.
Crackle-pause-crackle.
By morning, Vespertine's song will never sound the same to me again.
