She smiled, listening to him go on, gesturing wildly as he spoke—which she figured was only natural, if everyone’s faces were covered all the time.

“Do you speak many languages?” she asked, as he took a breath, finally pausing his narrative.

“I don’t even speak my own that well,” he said with a grin. “But I’m trying. Seems like a good skill for a skimmer pilot to have, since it’s often my job to pilot Wilg and take people between ships or towers. And if I’m going to sit half the day in a class, I figure it should be something useful. Though mathematics has—”

“Class?” Marasi asked, frowning.

“Sure. What do you think we do all day on the ship?”

“I don’t know,” Marasi said. “Swab decks? Tie ropes. Um… trim… stuff. Deckhand types of things.”

He looked at her, eyes bulging, then slapped his mask down. “I’m going to pretend that you did not just compare me to a common lowshipman, Miss Marasi.”

“Ummm…”

“You have to be something more special than that, if you want to fly. We’re expected to be gentlemen and ladies. We’ve thrown people overboard for not knowing the proper dance moves.”

“What, really?”

“Yah, really.” He hesitated. “All right, so we tied a rope to his foot first.” He made a gesture she had started to realize was something like a smile or a laugh. “He dangled there below Brunstell for a good five minutes, cursing up a storm. He never got the cistern three-step wrong again, though! And Svel always said to him…”

Allik trailed off, growing silent.

“And?” Marasi prodded.

“Sorry. His mask… Svel, I mean. On the wall…”

Oh. The conversation died, Allik staring out the front of the ship, then making a few adjustments to their heading. Outside, the landscape was dark save for a few pinpricks of towns, now far to their left. Though they’d initially skirted the Seran Range, Allik had moved the skimmer into the mountains about a half hour back. Now they flew over the tops of the peaks, having ascended higher than they’d been when flying over the Basin.

“Allik,” Marasi said, resting her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t respond. And so, hesitantly—fully aware that she was probably doing something taboo—she reached out and lifted his mask. He didn’t stop her, and the motion revealed eyes staring sightlessly, a tear trickling down each cheek.

“I’m never going to see them again,” he said softly. “Brunstell is crashed; I’ll never serve on him again. Hell, I’m never going to see home again, am I?”

“Of course you will,” Marasi said. “You can fly there.”

“Wilg won’t last on the stone I’ve got,” he said, wiping the tears from first one cheek, then the other.

“The stone?”

“Fuel,” Allik said, glancing at her. “What, you think Wilg flies on clouds and dreams?”

“I thought it flew on Allomancy.”

“Allomancy Pushes the impellers,” Allik said. “But ettmetal is what supports it.”

“I don’t think that one translated either,” Marasi said, frowning.