by Paul Stewart
He would have to make every shot count.
‘Six weeks,’ Cade called out as he scratched yet another line into the metal hull of his prison cell. He tossed the fragment of stone away. ‘Six wasted weeks! How long do you think we’re going to be held here?’
‘Until we swear the Oath of Loyalty,’ came Tug’s deep voice from the cell to his left.
‘Which means we’ll be here for ever,’ said Celestia from the cell on his other side. ‘Because I, for one, am never going to do that. As I said to that ridiculous black-robed hammerhead oaf again last night, “I remain loyal to the true High Academe of New Sanctaphrax, Nate Quarter.” That’s what I told him. “Not to some jumped-up sky pirate with a candle on his hat.” And I meant it.’
Cade smiled to himself. He’d heard every word Celestia had said at the time. After all, with their three prison cells next to each other, it would have been impossible not to.
Every evening the hammerhead came, delivering meagre portions of food and demanding to know whether they were ready to swear the Oath – and every evening, the defiant answer he got back was the same. It was all so predictable, and would have been laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Cade was beginning to fear that they might never be released.
How much longer, he wondered, would Danton Clore be prepared to wait? Or would he simply give up and leave them to rot?
With night receding, Cade climbed off the metal cot at the back of his cell, crossed the floor and looked out through the small window in the door, his hands gripping the bars so tightly his knuckles turned white. After everything they’d achieved down in the depths, to return to New Sanctaphrax and be imprisoned like this; it was so frustrating. More than that, with the floating city now at the mercy of Danton Clore and his bunch of cut-throats, and Cade himself unable to do anything about it, he was left bursting with impotent rage.
They had all attempted to escape. Celestia had tried using a hairclip to tease the lock open. Tug had hurled himself at the door of his cell time and again, in the hope that brute force might work. For his part, Cade had endeavoured to bribe the hammerhead, promising him that his uncle would make him his own personal bodyguard when he regained control of the city – and when that failed, he’d attempted to break the hinges of the door using a metal bar that he’d snapped off the cot.
Nothing had worked.
The time passed, one day merging into the next. Occasionally, the three of them would talk, or rather shout, to one another through the walls of their cells – reminiscing about their lives at Farrow Lake; reassuring one another that everything would be all right and making plans for a future they all still hoped for. Most of the time, though, they sat on their cots, lost in their own thoughts, or listening to the cries and whimpers of the other poor wretches Danton Clore had imprisoned.
Cade had tried to keep his spirits up but, as he watched yet another day dawning outside, his heart sank. Even if any of them did manage to break out of their cell, then what? The six armed guards on permanent watch outside would soon deal with them. Cade was losing hope, and he knew that Celestia and Tug were feeling the same way.
‘Are you awake, Cade?’ It was Celestia, calling from the adjacent cell.
‘I am,’ he called back, and sighed.
‘Look over by that sallowdrop tree,’ she hissed, her voice hushed and urgent. ‘I thought I saw something …’
Brock took aim at the guard hunkering down by the phraxcannon, a hammelhorn steak on a platter in his hands. He squeezed the trigger.
P-pithhh-ickk!
The long-barrelled phraxmusket jumped in his grasp. The guard slumped forward, unnoticed by his comrades.
P-pithhh-ickk!
With a sound like the low whine of a glade mosquito, the phraxmusket discharged another bullet. A second guard seemingly stumbled, fell forward and disappeared into the shadows behind the cannon.
The others looked up from their breakfasts.
P-pithhh-ickk! P-pithhh-ickk! P-pithhh-ickk!
The third, fourth and fifth guard fell twitching to the deck. The sixth was up and running, heading for the cover of the timber stockade, his faltering breath pluming in the frosty air.
P-pithhh-ickk!
His legs went from under him.
P-pithhh-ickk!
Face down, he fell still. A trickle of blood seeped from under his gleaming helmet.
Brock sprinted across the spongy turf, reached the body and unclipped a bunch of keys from the belt. The sky was growing lighter. Any moment now, the guards of the dawn watch would be here. Brock clattered along the upper gantry of the wrecked phraxship, stopping first at one cell door, then another, and another, unlocking them all and throwing them open.
The High Academe’s nephew, Cade Quarter, stumbled out into the early morning light, dazed and dishevelled. Then his friend Tug emerged from the adjacent cell. And, finally, Celestia.
‘Brock? Brock, it that you?’ she cried. ‘It is! It is!’ And she flung her arms around him.
‘No time for that right now, Skymarshal Helmstoft,’ said Brock, easing her arms from around his shoulders and placing a phraxpistol in her hand. ‘We’ve got to get up to the West Landing.’
· CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE ·
The West Landing was clear, though the central avenue leading to it was thronging. Knights of the Tallow lined the route from the Tallow Hall, standing to attention, phraxmuskets at their shoulders. Behind them, crowding the Viaduct Steps, were the black-robed Companions of the Willing, hundreds of them, muttering excitedly and jostling to get the best view.
The cloudcruiser, the Herald of the Fourth Age, sat in its sky-cradle, towering over the gawping crowd.
High above, the towers of the floating city chimed and sang as a gentle breeze passed through revolving sky instruments. Then, from the turrets of the Academy of Rain at the far end of the avenue, there came the sonorous booming of the mist horns, and Danton Clore, Knight-General of New Sanctaphrax, stooping low as he emerged from the Gate of Humility of the Tallow Hall, marched forward.
Eudoxia Prade followed him, the hood of her grey cape raised and her face bathed in shadow. Behind her came Seftis Bule, the chief armourer, followed by Theegum the banderbear, and …
A gasp went up from the watching crowd as Nate Quarter, the erstwhile Most High Academe, appeared. He looked tired and drawn, with dark rings around his eyes and a sunken look to his cheeks. In deference to his former status, he was wearing a cloak with a chequerboard collar and, behind the rows of impassive Knights of the Tallow, the Companions bowed their heads as he passed.
While the small group made its way up the grand avenue towards the West Landing, the wind grew in intensity and, all around, the music of the towers became louder and more insistent. Both the paving stones of the avenue and the masonry of the buildings lining it started to shimmer and glitter with millions of tiny fossilized glisters, causing further ripples of excitement to pass through the watching crowds.
Danton Clore and Eudoxia reached the end of the avenue first. They stepped up onto the timber boards of the West Landing, Eudoxia holding onto the hem of her cloak as the wind grew stronger still. Nate Quarter followed them onto the landing. He paused and looked up into the swirling clouds high above the towers and, as his eyes seemed to glow unnaturally blue, another murmur passed through the captivated crowd.
‘Knights of the Tallow, and Companions of the Willing,’ Danton Clore called out, his voice rising above the song of the towers. ‘I have important news …’
He surveyed his audience and, as his gaze swept from one side of the crowd to the other, his heart swelled with pride. Born into a poor family in the Copperwood district of Great Glade, he was expected to become nothing more than a labourer in one of its stilt factories; little more than a slave. From his earliest years, he’d had dreams of a different life, a better life – yet even in the wildest of those dreams Danton Clore had never imagined that he might one day become Knight-General of New Sanctaphrax. Now there was just one more thing he had
to do, and then his power would be unassailable.
‘Nate Quarter has grown weary of our great city and wishes to retire to the Deepwoods,’ he announced. ‘And on the launch of the Herald of the Fourth Age, I myself shall escort him to his destination, then return to New Sanctaphrax to be united with Eudoxia Prade, who has, I am pleased to announce, taken the Oath of Loyalty—’
‘It’s a lie!’ a black-caped figure shouted out from the teeming viaduct steps.
Danton fell silent. Everyone turned to see who had dared to interrupt the Knight-General. Pulling back the heavy hood to reveal his face, Brocktinius Rolnix stared back at Danton Clore.
‘This tallow-hat sky pirate is going to betray our most High Academe and deliver him to Quove Lentis,’ he declared. ‘We have intercepted his messages.’ Brock held up a slip of parchment and flapped it in the air.
‘We?’ Danton Clore demanded. He sounded furious, but there was fear in his eyes.
‘Knights! Seize that traitor!’ shouted Brock.
All at once, a great wave of Sanctaphrax blue swept through the crowds on the Viaduct Steps as black robes were torn off and thrown to the ground, revealing the gowns still worn beneath. The crowd bristled as hundreds of phraxpistols were raised and levelled at the startled knights, who were turning to face the steps.
For a moment, no one moved. Then the air abruptly filled with the clatter of metal as the Knights of the Tallow dropped their phraxmuskets and flung their gleaming helmets to the ground. By the West Landing, Cade, Celestia and Tug – together with Seftis and Theegum – had cast off their own black robes, and were pushing through the line of startled knights to form a cordon around Nate and Eudoxia.
Danton Clore cast a despairing look at Eudoxia, before his face took on an impassive stony look.
‘So be it,’ he said through gritted teeth.
Turning away, he vaulted onto the gangway and leaped aboard the Herald of the Fourth Age. Moments later, with an icy billowing blast from the steam funnels that blotted out the view from the landing, the cloudcruiser soared up into the air. With the flight-rock coils hissing and glowing, and the phraxchamber emitting a high-pitched whine, the vessel wheeled round in the sky and flew off over Undergarden at colossal speed.
‘He’s leaving!’ said Cade, astonished.
Behind them, the academics, in their blue-grey robes once more, continued to round up the protesting knights, accusations and excuses ringing in the air.
‘Wait!’
It was Eudoxia. She was gripping Nate’s hand and staring up into the sky.
The cloudcruiser had turned in a wide arc, a streak of white steam trailing behind it as it sped back towards them. On either side of the sleek beak-like prow, twin phraxcannons swivelled as they took aim. Then, with a stuttering crack-crack-crack, two lines of dazzling yellow phraxfire sliced through the air, the bullets striking the Loftus Observatory and one of the Mistsifting Towers, pockmarking the walls and sending shards of masonry flying.
Breaking free of the cordon, Eudoxia ran across the boards of the West Landing, her arms spread wide and the smoke-grey cloak billowing out from her shoulders as the cruiser closed in.
‘Kill me, if you must,’ she shouted. ‘But spare the city! Leave us in—’
‘NO!’ bellowed Brock, throwing himself in front of Eudoxia as more phraxfire strafed the landing. The bullets cut a bloody line across his chest and the skymarshal slumped to the wooden boards.
‘Brock!’ Celestia screamed.
Dropping to her knees at his side, she tore back his robes and ripped open the shirt beneath it, exposing the angry ragged wounds. Tears streamed down her face as she fumbled blindly for the bottles and bundles pinned to her chest, desperate to stem the bleeding; to make him all right.
‘Brock, Brock, Brock,’ she moaned as the skymarshal stared up at her, his eyes wide with shock and pain, his lips mouthing words she could not hear.
‘Take these,’ said Tug, handing her a roll of bandage and a vial of astringent salve.
But it was already too late. Before Celestia had even removed the stopper from the little glass bottle, Brock’s face contorted, his back arched, and from the back of his throat came a soft rattling sigh as he breathed his last.
‘No,’ Celestia gasped as Brock’s body went limp. ‘You can’t be dead, Brock,’ she groaned. ‘You can’t be …’
She stroked his cheek, then fell forward onto him, her body racked with sobs – until Tug gently lifted her away.
Cade was there to comfort her. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close. ‘I’m so sorry, Celestia,’ he whispered. ‘But … but I’m here for you. Always.’
He felt the tension in her body relax slightly. She pulled away and held his troubled gaze.
‘I know, Cade,’ she said quietly. ‘And thank you. I—Watch out!’ she shrieked.
Far above them, the cloudcruiser had turned in the sky again and was swooping back down towards the city, its phraxguns blazing. There was chaos on the twin landings and the broad avenue beyond, with everyone screaming and shouting, dashing in all directions or falling to the ground, desperate to get out of the way of the attacking vessel.
Cade grabbed Celestia by the arm. Head down, the two of them started running for cover when, all at once, soaring up from the depths and speeding over the towers of New Sanctaphrax, a huge boulder appeared, glowing blue. With a deafening crunch, it crashed headlong into the cloudcruiser, shattering the skyvessel into thousands of flaming shards that rained down over Undergarden as the storm-stone continued on its trajectory over the Mire grasslands.
As Cade watched, scarcely daring to believe what had just happened, the vapour trails streaming from the falling boulder seemed to detach themselves and twist upwards and away – looking, for a moment, almost like one of the sky creatures from the depths – before disappearing into the shimmering atmosphere.
‘The Professor?’ he murmured.
Beside him, Celestia nodded numbly. ‘I was thinking the exact same thing.’
· CHAPTER THIRTY ·
The acceleration of the refurbished cloudcruiser was phenomenal. As Nate pushed the phraxengine to full power, Cade grunted, the straps of the seat harness biting into his shoulder armour.
‘Seftis and Theegum have surpassed themselves,’ said Nate approvingly. ‘The Beacon of Hope here is faster even than the Linius Pallitax in freefall.’
Cade looked across at his uncle. He looked well, no longer gaunt and bowed by his imprisonment at the hands of Danton Clore, who had kept him in chains at the top of Loftus Observatory. Locked up in the telescope chamber of the long-forgotten Professors of Light and Darkness, Nate had eked out the long weeks of confinement by cloudwatching and stargazing through the ancient instrument. Apart from that one occasion when Danton Clore had visited him, Nate had seen no one but his jailers.
‘Yet I sensed Ambris’s presence many times,’ Nate had told his nephew after the fatal crash of the Herald of the Fourth Age. ‘Watching over us all. Perhaps whatever it is that the Professor has become did guide the storm-stone’s path …’
And Cade, for one, liked to think that it had.
From his seat in the glass-panelled flight pit, Cade looked down at the Deepwoods, now little more than a smudge of green. Nate pulled back on the twin rudders, and the cloudcruiser rose steeply through the thin air and on into the icy vastness of high sky.
So much had happened since that fateful day when Danton Clore was removed from power, Cade mused.
Despite their initial enthusiasm for the tallow-hat general, most of the floating city’s academics had been only too happy to swap the black tunics and polished helmets of the Knights of the Tallow for their old robes of Sanctaphrax blue. It hadn’t taken them long to tire of the Knight-General’s despotic ways. A few, though, had left the floating city with the remnants of the original tallow-hat gangs, all of whom had been granted amnesty by the reinstated High Academe Elect. They’d set off together for the Edgeland wilderness in fewer
than twenty of the old cruisers, leaving hundreds more of the vessels behind to be refurbished.
With the prototype cloudcruiser – Herald of the Fourth Age – smashed to smithereens by the mysterious storm-stone, work on the other cloudcruisers had resumed in earnest.
‘Soon, New Sanctaphrax will have a fleet worthy of it,’ Nate had said, looking around appreciatively as Seftis and Theegum organized the refitting of the cloudcruisers moored at the East and West Landings.
Along with Tug, the two of them worked steadily and methodically, harvesting seed-stones in the Stone Gardens for the rock coils and forging new phraxengines and thrust funnels in the city’s foundries. And when, four weeks later, and way ahead of schedule, the first two cloudcruisers were pronounced ready for flight, Nate had immediately summoned Cade.
‘We have unfinished business, you and I,’ he’d said, laying a hand on his nephew’s shoulder.
In his descending armour, newly re-equipped for sky flight with harness buckles and shoulder armour, and tilderskin gloves rather than heavy gauntlets, Nate looked ready for business. Especially with the two gleaming phraxpistols holstered at his side.
Cade had nodded. He knew only too well what this unfinished business was – and how it might be resolved – and he had changed out of his blue-grey robes at the Knights Academy and put on the clothes specially laid out for him.
‘Quove Lentis will be expecting us,’ Nate had said, opening the cage at his feet and taking out the little ratbird hunkered down on the perch inside. He checked that the newly written message wrapped around its leg was secure, and smiled. ‘We mustn’t disappoint him.’
Raising his arm, Nate released the ratbird. In a blurred hum of flapping wings, the little creature launched itself into the air, and he and Cade watched as it grew smaller, then disappeared in the darkness of the sky.
The Beacon of Hope had set steam at daybreak. Now, with Nate operating the thrust control, the airy whine from its phraxengine rose several octaves. Ice-white flame shot out of the thrusters, and steam from the sloping funnel became a pencil-thin line as the skyvessel rapidly picked up speed. Its beak-like prow sliced through the air, while the flight-rock coils around the phraxchamber heated and cooled, smoothing and cushioning the immense power being generated. Behind the flight pit, the phraxengine whined as the cloudcruiser sped on through the high sky.