<< previous page
<< previous page

watch as I caught up.

“Thanks.” I smiled.

The blonde looked at me without enthusiasm.

“I need you to look for this little part, okay? It’ll probably be in the bottom of one of these buckets if it’s here at all.” She pointed to a scribbled sketch of a circular piece.

I was fine with looking for parts, but digging through buckets of scrap metal seemed like a good way to get yourself cut. Kewyn did not seem deterred by this, as she knelt in front of one of the buckets and sank her hands into it.

Reluctantly, I pulled up my sleeves and assumed a similar position in front of another bucket. Luckily most of the parts that had been placed in here smooth pieces like the one we were searching for, but I was still careful.

“So,” I said after a few minutes of silent searching. “Do you help your dad with his work a lot?”

“Not really,” Kewyn said. “He prefers to work alone, but I used to come here with him when I was a kid. I worked down in the shop until I joined the guard, but we never worked together.”

“Huh. Why’s that?”

“No real reason,” she said, lifting up a part from the bucket and examining it before setting it aside. “Father’s just a bit possessive of his work. He doesn’t like anyone else touching his things.”

“I did notice that,” I said.

Aenlilea had expressed that he had been the only one to maintain the skycar.

“Why is he letting us get these parts, then?” I said.

“I said he did lot like people touching his things, but he has no problem with them buying them for him,” she said.

I did not want to point out that buying often required touching, but it made sense anyway. I supposed that until Aenlilea got his hands on the machine parts, he did not care. After that, we would probably have to keep out of the construction process. With the glint in Rio’s eye, though, I did not know if that was going to be an option.

There was a weighted paused before Kewyn asked quietly, “What does that dragon-kin want with a flying ship, anyway?”

“That is the question of the hour, isn’t it?” I said, chuckling to myself. The girl