by Paul Stewart
‘What a wonderful surprise!’ he exclaimed, taking Eudoxia’s hand as she stepped down from the Hoverworm onto the gantry. ‘And welcome to Heartroot. It’s been far, far too long, my dear Eudoxia.’
‘Zelphyius! It’s so good to see you, old friend,’ said Eudoxia, embracing him warmly. ‘We have much to discuss.’
‘Come, come,’ said Zelphyius, leading the way to his cabin.
Apart from Tug, who stayed on board the Hoverworm, they all followed Zelphyius Dax through the door. Like all woodtroll cabins, it was far larger on the inside than it looked from the outside. The walls curved inwards to a central, ornately carved ceiling boss, from which a constellation of tiny glowing lamps was suspended. The walls were chequered with a lattice of shelves, each one neatly lined with barkscrolls, ledgers and bills of sale, as well as barrels of woodale and shuttered larders.
What was more, Cade noticed, Zelphyius Dax must be some kind of shipwright. There were models of the skycraft he’d designed and built hanging between the tiny lamps and lining the topmost shelves.
Zelphyius gestured towards the cushioned sumpwood benches beneath the lamps, and they all sat down. Then Eudoxia made introductions. They were joined by Zelphyius’s chief carpenter and foreman – two woodtrolls with reddish button noses and extravagantly tufted hair – who exchanged looks with each other as Eudoxia explained her plan.
For his part, Zelphyius kept his eyes fixed on Gart Ironside.
‘I make no secret of my opinion regarding this Third Age of Flight,’ said Zelphyius when Eudoxia had finished. ‘The Second Age, when vessels were powered by sail alone, has always been my preference. But I owe Eudoxia a lot. After all, without her help, the Great Glade timber merchants would have wrecked the sumpwood forests here long ago.’ He grunted. ‘Still might, if they get their way.’ He fixed Gart with a penetrating stare. ‘This phraxship captain here obviously needs help,’ he said, ‘so I’ll put my best person on to it.’
Eudoxia looked surprised. ‘But surely, you, Zelphyius, are that person,’ she said.
The elderly fourthling shook his head. He glanced over to the shelves in the far corner, and Cade noticed a figure in a quarm-fur forage cap and long-tailed topcoat leaning against a stack of scrolls.
Removing the forage cap to reveal a tumble of flame-red hair, the figure strode across the cabin and stood in front of Gart, before giving a curt bow.
Zelphyius Dax smiled. ‘Allow me to introduce my daughter, Delfina.’
· CHAPTER SEVEN ·
‘So what does this bit do?’ asked Cade, pointing down at a circle with a series of lines radiating off it.
‘That’s the flux-converter,’ said Delfina.
‘And that?’
‘The array mechanism,’ she told him, remaining determinedly patient. ‘It connects to the flight levers here, here and here.’ Delfina stabbed at the diagram with her forefinger. ‘Complete with a heat-modifier for …’
Cade shrugged. ‘It’s no use,’ he told her. ‘I just can’t picture it.’
He and the others were clustered around the barkscroll which Delfina Dax had unfurled and smoothed out on the desk. Drawn on it in smudged charcoal were her sketches for the refurbished Hoverworm. They looked impressive, but Cade was at a loss to know what they meant. Gart Ironside’s phraxcraft had already been through a major refit; now, it seemed, it was going to be changed beyond all recognition.
Delfina laughed. ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘In three days’ time the Hoverworm is going to fly like never before.’ She patted Cade on the arm. ‘You’ll understand it better when you see the finished vessel.’
Eudoxia was nodding. ‘One thing I’ve got from this is that we’re going to be flying at considerable altitude. Is that right?’
‘In high sky,’ Delfina confirmed.
‘So it’ll be bitterly cold,’ said Eudoxia, ‘which means we’ll need appropriate clothing.’ She looked around at the circle of faces. ‘Gart,’ she said, ‘as pilot, you’ll want to know everything about the changes being made, so I propose that you go with Delfina to see the work being done first-hand …’
‘I’d like that,’ said Gart.
‘And you can help out too,’ Delfina broke in, her nose crinkling as she laughed. ‘There’s no place for spectating in the Dax Skycraft Yard.’
‘Tug, you go with them,’ Eudoxia added, then turned to Cade and Celestia. ‘I’d like you two to sort out the extra equipment we’ll need for the extreme cold. Hammelhorn fleeces. Fur-lined gloves. You know the sort of thing.’
Cade nodded. It seemed that he was going to get the chance to look around the Midwood Decks after all.
‘There are several places in the city centre,’ said Delfina. ‘Plus the market. I’ll draw you a map.’
‘Thanks,’ said Cade – although he did wonder whether her map would make any more sense to him than her working drawings.
‘And you, Eudoxia?’ asked Celestia. ‘What will you be doing?’
Eudoxia’s left eyebrow shot upwards as though she was offended by the question – but then her expression softened and she burst out laughing. She turned to Delfina’s father, who was standing just outside the small group.
‘Zelphyius and I have some serious catching up to do,’ she said. ‘Don’t we, Zelphyius?’
‘We do, Eudoxia,’ he replied, his weather-beaten features creasing into a smile. ‘We certainly do.’
Leaving Eudoxia and Zelphyius sitting on the balcony of his cabin, looking out at the mighty sumpwood stands and discussing old times and future ways to keep the forests safe from over-logging, Cade and Celestia set off into the city.
‘Don’t talk to anyone unless you have to,’ Eudoxia called after them. ‘Especially merchants from Great Glade.’
‘We won’t,’ Cade assured her.
‘And take umbrellas!’ she added.
Outside the cabin, they orientated themselves, then took a walkway that led back to the city. It was raining, but neither of them minded. One of the great conical umbrellas was keeping them dry, and there was something about the misty rainfall that made the Midwood Decks seem even more exotic. At the end of the walkway, they stepped down onto their first floating platform and, surrounded by tall buildings and jostling crowds, were soon lost in the city’s sights and sounds.
‘So, this was Eudoxia’s hush-hush plan,’ said Cade. ‘To come to the Midwood Decks to get the Hoverworm refitted.’ He paused. ‘What’s the name of the place we’re heading for?’
But Celestia was distracted, putting up her own umbrella. They were passing a covered storefront, where a portly red-faced vendor was seated on a stool in the middle of the collection of caged animals he was selling: lemkins, quarms, plus a vicious-looking vulpoon on a leash.
‘Celestia?’ said Cade.
‘Pardon? Oh, sorry, Cade,’ she said. ‘Gorgetown.’
‘Gorgetown,’ Cade repeated, and frowned. ‘According to Eudoxia, Zelphyius understands the great air currents in high sky better than anyone,’ he went on. ‘Currents that can knock weeks off our voyage. But the Hoverworm’s got to be up to it. And that’s where Delfina comes in—’
‘Whoa!’ Celestia exclaimed as a sudden gust of wind caught her umbrella and almost sent her flying up into the air.
Huge and tent-like, their two umbrellas – like the umbrellas of everyone else on the rain-soaked Midwood Decks – were almost weightless because of the buoyant wood they were made from. High winds could be hazardous, as Celestia had just discovered, so the pair of them stopped and attached to the handles the weights they’d been given. Then on they went.
With only three days in the city, there wasn’t enough time to explore all fifty-five of the huge decks, each one the size of a goblin village, but Cade and Celestia were determined to explore as many of them as they could. They headed towards the highest one, situated at the centre of the city. From there, sitting on a gantry platform at its rim, they looked down on the others.
‘It’s magnificent,’ Celes
tia breathed.
Around the sides of this particular deck were the town’s council buildings. Tall timber towers, each of them had decoratively carved lintels of grotesque faces that represented rain spirits and cloud gods. On the deck itself, crowds gathered to listen to open-air disputes being adjudicated, and laws and rules discussed.
As Cade watched, he realized that some kind of protocol was being followed. Umbrellas would go up like sprouting mushrooms when one or another of these proceedings began; then furl and shut with loud snaps as they ended – only for another cluster of umbrellas to sprout in a different part of the deck.
The bizarre rituals were intriguing. Cade could have watched them for hours. But, as Celestia reminded him, they hadn’t come into the city simply for sightseeing. So they left the council proceedings behind them and, taking walkway after swaying walkway, wandered through the buoyant city in search of a store or market stall where they might buy the goods they needed.
They came to one deck with a bustling fish market. The air was filled with the voices of traders dealing in massive oozefish and cloudshrimps the colour of rainbows, bellowing special offers and never-to-be-repeated deals. On another platform, garment makers displayed their wares on long flapping clotheslines, which were fixed to a tall pillar at the very centre, like the spokes of a colourful wheel.
‘Raingear, mainly,’ Celestia observed as she flicked through the clothes. ‘We need something warmer.’
They kept on searching.
Other decks had similar bustling markets: metalmongers, timber-dealers, fur traders, and one deck devoted to stalls selling delicious-smelling broths and stews, and pastries dripping with delberry jam and woodhoney, where Cade and Celestia stopped for something to eat.
The whole city, it seemed, was devoted to buying and selling goods of all kinds, the traders jostling with one another to attract the attention of passing customers, who peered back at them from beneath their huge umbrellas. But at the end of that first day, with night approaching and the rain torrential once more, they still hadn’t found what they were looking for.
‘Never mind,’ said Eudoxia back at the cabin. ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ She hesitated. ‘You didn’t get stopped by any Great Glade traders?’
‘No,’ said Cade. ‘But …’ He glanced at Celestia.
‘What?’ said Eudoxia.
‘There was one individual,’ said Cade. ‘A stout goblin matron in a chequerboard rain-cape. I don’t know if it was just coincidence, but we kept seeing her. On the fish-market deck. Near the food stalls …’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Eudoxia. ‘I forgot to tell you. Zelphyius assigned one of the Friends of New Sanctaphrax to watch out for you. From a discreet distance,’ she added, and turned to Zelphyius. ‘Though not that discreet, by the sound of it.’
Zelphyius shrugged. ‘She was there, that’s the important thing,’ he said.
The following day, Cade and Celestia were making their way to the area of platforms to the north of the Council Deck, when Celestia touched Cade’s arm.
‘It’s her again,’ she mouthed.
Cade glanced round. And there she was: the goblin matron with the chequerboard cape and folded umbrella.
‘I wonder what she’d actually do if we were in danger,’ he said. ‘I mean, I shouldn’t judge, but she doesn’t look as though she’d be up to much in a fight.’
‘I said the same thing to Zelphyius last night,’ said Celestia. ‘There’s a sword concealed in the handle of that umbrella of hers.’ She smiled. ‘And she knows how to use it.’
As they continued along the walkways, though, it did seem that Eudoxia might have been unduly cautious. Apart from the goblin matron herself, neither Cade nor Celestia noticed anyone acting suspiciously. The Midwood Deckers were far too intent on commerce to take much notice of them – especially when the two of them made it clear, by lowering their umbrellas in the customary fashion, that they weren’t interested in buying anything.
Around midday, they came to a small deck sandwiched between two more grandiose, and much noisier, decks. Thatched workshops stood in clusters, along with dyeing troughs, saw benches, inspection racks and small generators. An assortment of trogs, trolls and goblins were hard at work, but they seemed to be carrying out repairs and alterations rather than selling, and Cade was about to turn back when Celestia took hold of his arm.
‘Look,’ she said, and led him towards a squat building with a corrugated roof at the back of the deck. Under a striped awning, protected from the rain, was a rail full of bulky-looking clothes. Celestia’s face broke into a smile. ‘Hammelhorn-fleece jackets. Quilted breeches. Down gloves. And, if I’m not very much mistaken,’ she said, unhooking something made of leather and tinted glass and turning it over in her hands, ‘these are ice goggles.’
‘My father might be old-fashioned, Gart,’ said Delfina Dax, ‘but what he doesn’t know about skycraft isn’t worth knowing.’
She stepped back, hands on hips, and surveyed her work on the Hoverworm. Her unruly flame-red hair had been tamed, pulled back into a series of braided tufts in the woodtroll fashion, and she wore a timber-apron of tilder hide, with a belt from which woodworking tools hung.
Gart Ironside, in shirt sleeves, wiped his hands on an embroidered kerchief then returned it to the pocket of his expensive-looking breeches.
‘He reminds me of a good friend of mine,’ he said approvingly. ‘A webfoot goblin by the name of Phineal. Phineal Glyfphith. Originally from the Four Lakes.’
The two of them were standing beside a skyship cradle in a clearing in the sumpwood forest, not far from the woodtroll cabins. And beneath a tilder-hide tarpaulin, held secure by chains in the cradle of crisscrossed ironwood slats, sat the Hoverworm.
The hull of the vessel had been scraped clean of mist-floaters and cloud barnacles, and the lufwood timber sanded back to the grain. The fore and aft decks had been similarly cleaned, and the Hoverworm’s woodwork now gleamed brightly as the eighth coat of buoyant varnish slowly dried. Zelphyius Dax’s team of woodtroll shipwrights had worked tirelessly over the three days since the skyship’s arrival, under his daughter Delfina’s exacting eye.
‘Fine skycrafters, the webfoots,’ said Delfina appreciatively. ‘Masters at setting sails, by all accounts. It’s a dying art in this modern age of ours.’
‘Phineal is one of the best,’ Gart told her. ‘He and his clan-brothers fly messages all over Farrow Lake on their skycraft.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘Agile as stormhornets they are, and almost as fast.’
Delfina looked puzzled. ‘You’re a phraxsteamer captain,’ she said, ‘and yet you sound as though you admire the old ways.’
‘I do,’ said Gart, and felt his face beginning to redden.
What was it about this female fourthling that made him feel as shy as a sky cadet on his first voyage? he wondered. Was it her straightforward manner; the no-nonsense directness so characteristic of the woodtrolls she worked beside? Or was it the wealth of knowledge gleaned from her father, Zelphyius, that she displayed with such ease and naturalness – as if reciting the forty ingredients of sky varnish was something anyone could do? Maybe it was her flame-red hair and clear blue eyes, and the way her nose crinkled when she laughed …
Gart cleared his throat awkwardly.
‘I grew up around steam,’ he told her, ‘and back in Great Glade, phraxships were my life.’ He smiled, blushing redder than ever, and stared down at his boots. ‘Before I lost everything to a crooked merchant and the gambling tables, that is,’ he added sheepishly, ‘and buried myself out on that lonely sky-platform in the furthest reaches of the Deepwoods.’
He fell still, embarrassed by how much he was opening up. The sound of the rain pattering down on the tarpaulin above their heads sounded like drums.
‘Still, it gave me time to think,’ he went on. ‘And then Cade came along – and, through him, I got to know my neighbours. Then others arrived …’ He chuckled. ‘Before I knew it, the world I thought I’d left beh
ind had come to me.’ He patted the hull of the Hoverworm, his hand lingering on the smooth timber. ‘Phineal showed me the beauty of the Second Age of Flight,’ he said, ‘but skycraft under sail, however fast, can only carry one or two. For crew and cargo you need phraxengines and steam.’
‘What if I told you that you could have both?’ Delfina asked.
She reached out and ran her fingertips over the hull of the Hoverworm, testing the dryness of the varnish. And as she did so, her hand and Gart’s inadvertently touched. Delfina looked up, and her nose crinkled as she laughed.
‘Why, Captain Ironside, you’re blushing!’
‘Wake up, Cade!’
Cade opened his eyes to see Celestia looking down at him.
Sleeping in a sumpwood bunk, swaying gently on the end of a tether chain, felt exactly like sleeping in a hammock aboard the Hoverworm, rolling with the motion of the vessel. For a moment, Cade imagined he was back on board, until he saw the cabin shelves behind Celestia, with their neatly stacked barkscrolls of working drawings.
He reached for his jacket, hanging from a hook overhead, and felt for the oilcloth bundle sewn into its lining. It was still there.
‘What time is it?’ he asked sleepily.
‘Two bells,’ said Celestia, using Gart Ironside’s measure of flight time – the daylight hours divided into six tolls of the bell that hung beside the wheelhouse window. ‘Hurry, we’re ready to set steam. I mean … Oh, you’ll see.’
Cade climbed out of the bunk, pulled on his boots and grabbed his jacket and cap. ‘Wait for me!’ he called as he ran after his friend.
Unlike him, Celestia must have been up at dawn – or first bell – for her black hair was combed back into two neatly constructed woodtroll tufts, and her apothecary jacket was smartly pressed. Outside, Cade followed her down the gantry steps and along the sumpwood walkway that led through the forest to the Dax Skycraft Yard.