by Alex English
‘Then let me come with yer.’
‘It’s against the rules of the alliance.’
‘Well, I think we should at least tell the rest of the crew—’
‘Absolutely not. I’ll get this over and done with – nobody needs to know.’
‘But, Lil—’
‘That’s Captain to you.’
‘Yes, Cap’n.’ Echo heard Bulkhead sigh. ‘I’m worried, that’s all.’
‘That’ll be all, First Mate.’ Lil’s voice was stern.
Echo slunk back into the shadows just as the door burst open and Bulkhead stormed out, slamming it behind him without looking round.
She waited for him to disappear down the corridor before beckoning Horace to follow her into their cabin. She eased the door closed and sat down on her bunk.
‘What was all that about?’ Horace said.
‘I’m not quite sure, but something’s going on,’ said Echo. She frowned. Lil had mentioned the alliance. The postal parrot suddenly popped into her mind again. The Seven Skies Alliance. Was that what Lil and Bulkhead had been arguing about? Echo’s skin froze. Was Lil planning something dangerous?
‘You look worried,’ said Horace. ‘Please tell me what’s happening. Are we in danger?’
Echo shook her head. ‘Not us – Lil.’
‘Phew,’ Horace breathed.
‘Thanks for being so caring,’ snapped Echo.
‘I just mean… Lil’s used to danger. She’s a sky-pirate captain! I’m sure she’ll know what to do.’
‘I guess.’ Echo wrapped her arms round herself. Horace was right – Lil was an experienced sky pirate. She wouldn’t be so silly as to put herself in danger. But something about Lil’s tone of voice niggled at Echo. She knew how it felt to pretend to be brave, and that’s just how Lil had sounded.
* * *
Late that night, Echo woke in darkness to find her hammock rocking gently with the movement of the ship. Strange – were they travelling by night? Confused, she leaned over and lifted the edge of the porthole cover. They were moving, and down below the ship, where she’d expected to see the curved bay and gently swishing star-palms, were jutting mountains tipped with snow. The Black Sky Wolves never travelled by night unless they had to, and they weren’t supposed to be leaving Sleepy Palms for two more days. What was happening? Echo frowned. Then her heart clenched as she remembered Lil and Bulkhead’s hushed argument. Lil was going to the meeting with the Seven Skies Alliance. She had to be!
Echo flung her covers back and pulled on her socks and breeches, buttoned up her shirt and fastened her jerkin. She trod softly to the door, only pausing to grab her boots and knapsack, pin her mother’s wolf’s head hairpin on to her curls for luck and scoop a sleepy Gilbert on to her shoulder. She inched the door open and flinched as it gave a soft creeeeak.
There was a rustle behind her and Echo spun round.
‘Echo.’ Horace sat up in his hammock and blearily rubbed his eyes. ‘What are you doing?’ he mumbled.
‘The ship’s moving. I’m going up to see what’s happening.’
The Scarlet Margaret lurched forward in a sudden burst of speed, sending Horace’s spyglass rolling across the floor. ‘Wait, I’m coming too.’ He flung his legs out of his hammock and hopped down, before shoving the spyglass into his satchel.
‘Sure?’
‘Well, I don’t want to be here on my own if something’s happening.’ Horace tugged on his jerkin and hopped to pull on his boots.
‘Quietly then, and don’t be a pudding heart.’
‘I won’t!’
Echo crept out of the door and down the dimly lit passageway, trying to avoid the creakiest boards. When she reached the top of the stairs to the main deck, she found the bolt to the hatch already drawn. She cautiously pushed up the trapdoor and peeked out.
In the moonlight, she could see Bulkhead in the wheelhouse, steering the ship with his back to them. At the rear of the deck, Lil stood with a coil of mooring rope, ready to fling it over the side.
Echo eased the hatch completely open and crept out, with Horace close behind her.
They slipped behind some barrels and Echo’s stomach lurched as Bulkhead guided the airship down. This must be Filigree Ridge, the drop-off point in the postal parrot’s message. After a few moments, Lil threw the coil of rope. There was a muffled shout from below and the boards beneath them tilted as the rope tightened on its mooring. Lil gave a brief salute to Bulkhead, then hopped neatly over the side and disappeared down the rope ladder.
Echo swallowed, her throat suddenly thick with fear. Just like that, Lil was gone. What if Bulkhead had been right and it was a trap? Lil hadn’t even said goodbye.
Bulkhead smoothly wheeled the Scarlet Margaret round and set her on a course away from Filigree Ridge. Down below, Echo caught a glimpse of another airship’s lights landing. The transport ship! It must be taking Lil away to Shark’s Fin Peak or goodness knows where.
The Scarlet Margaret whirred away from Filigree Ridge until all the lights had completely disappeared. Echo shrank back behind the barrels as Bulkhead left the wheelhouse to throw down the anchor. With the ship secure, he lifted the hatch and disappeared back below decks. But panic still gripped Echo. She had spent her whole life searching for her mother before finally finding her. She couldn’t lose Lil all over again. What if she needed help? Echo gazed across the deck and found herself staring at the cabinet on the forecastle where Cloudcatcher was stored. An idea started forming in her mind.
‘Echo, you’ve gone very quiet,’ whispered Horace.
‘I’m thinking.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about.’
Echo didn’t answer, but quietly pulled her boots on to her cold feet and laced them up, keeping her eyes on the cabinet all the while.
‘Echo…’
Echo ignored him and crossed the deck.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Horace.
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re going to follow her, aren’t you?’
Echo frowned. ‘I have to.’
‘Don’t be stupid – you can’t!’
‘Lil’s my mother.’
‘I know she is.’ Horace’s face softened. ‘But we’re just children.’
‘I’m a sky-pirate captain’s daughter,’ said Echo.
‘But—’
‘What if she’s in danger?’
Horace shook his head. ‘Bulkhead wouldn’t have let her go alone if she was. And Lil would have told the rest of the crew what was going on if it was so important.’
Echo swallowed. Lil had been asked to go alone, and no one else knew that she was leaving. What if something did happen to her? No, it was no good. She had to follow Lil and make sure she was all right.
She opened the cabinet door.
‘Echo, we don’t even know how to fly Cloudcatcher properly.’
‘I know how to do it.’
‘It’ll be dangerous.’
‘I’m not scared of danger.’
‘Maybe you should be. Sky pirates aren’t to be trifled with.’
‘I am a sky pirate,’ Echo snapped. She dragged Cloudcatcher out on to the deck.
Horace folded his arms. ‘Well, I’m not and I’m going back to bed.’
‘So you won’t come with me?’ A flicker of fear ran through Echo, despite her best attempts to hide it. What if I need your help? she thought.
Horace twisted his hands together. ‘Oh, Echo, you always make me do this. This is supposed to be a holiday! I should be relaxing, not adventuring!’
Echo shrugged in a way she hoped looked nonchalant. ‘Suit yourself. I’ll adventure on my own.’
‘But it’s too dangerous to just fly off into the night alone!’
Echo grabbed the little bag of aethernets and stashed it under Cloudcatcher’s front seat. ‘So come with me. Then I won’t be alone.’
Horace’s face was pale and pinched with worry. ‘You don’t have to do this to prove yourself.’
&n
bsp; Echo shook her head. He was being ridiculous! Of course she didn’t need to prove herself. She was doing this for Lil! ‘You don’t understand.’ She crouched in front of Cloudcatcher and readied her hand on the starter handle. ‘Are you with me or not?’
‘I really don’t think we should.’
‘We’re just going to take a look at the ice fortress. See what’s really happening. Check Lil’s safe.’
‘Just one look?’
‘Yes! To scope it out.’
‘No danger?’
‘No danger. We’ll take a peek and come straight back again.’
Horace rubbed his upper arms nervously. ‘I suppose it could be interesting. From a geological point of view, I mean. That mountain does have a very unusual rock formation. I heard about it once at a meeting of the Explorers’ Guild in Port Tourbillon.’
‘Exactly. Imagine how pleased the professor will be if you tell him you’ve seen it for real.’
‘I really don’t know.’ Horace twisted his hands.
‘Please, Horace.’ Echo’s voice softened. ‘She’s my mother and she’s all alone. She didn’t even take her cutlass.’
Horace puffed up his cheeks and blew out the air with a great sigh. ‘Oh… okay then.’ He scrambled up into the second seat and Echo’s heart swelled as he did up his harness with a click. ‘I know you’re worried, Echo,’ he said. ‘It’s not normal for a sky pirate like Lil to go anywhere unarmed, despite what the parrot’s message said.’
Echo nodded. Horace was right, she thought, with a shiver. A sky pirate was never without their cutlass. And then something else suddenly occurred to her. Stinger!
‘Wait, I forgot something. Be right back.’ She jumped up and raced across the deck to the captain’s quarters.
CHAPTER NINE
Silently, Echo eased open the door to the captain’s quarters and crept inside. A board creaked under her boots and Gilbert’s claws tightened on her shoulder. She froze for a moment, hardly daring to breathe. Had anyone heard her? But, after a few anxious moments, nobody came.
Echo tiptoed round to the other side of Lil’s great oak desk. Gilbert leaped down on to the gleaming wooden surface and gave her a look that said, Are you sure we should be sneaking around in here?
It did feel strange to be on this side of the desk. Echo had only ever sat opposite Lil before, and her office was strictly out of bounds to the rest of the crew. A shiver of guilt ran through her. Gilbert was right: she shouldn’t be in here. But what choice did she have? Lil wasn’t here to ask. And what if she needed Echo? What if she’d got to Shark’s Fin Peak and was already in trouble? No, sometimes a true sky pirate had to take matters into her own hands. Now, where was it?
Echo pulled open each of the drawers in turn, but there was no sign of Stinger.
‘Where could she have hidden it, Gilbert?’
Echo gazed round the room in exasperation. It was so gloomy in here – the round portholes only let in a watery streak of moonlight and she didn’t have anything with which to light an oil lamp.
Gilbert disappeared into the top drawer and Echo heard a dull clink as he butted something with his snout. An eerie green glow spilled out and Echo blinked in surprise, then laughed as she realized what Gilbert had found. ‘A glow jar!’ she said, taking the little glass container and swinging it from her finger. ‘Well done, Gilbert! This’ll come in handy.’
Gilbert popped his head out of the drawer with a chirrup that said, You’re welcome, and scuttled back up on to Echo’s shoulder.
‘Now, let’s find this sword.’ Echo held up the jar to illuminate the room and straight away saw the sheathed sword lying on top of a hatbox on the map cabinet. She gazed up at it.
‘Can you get it?’ she said.
Gilbert bobbed his head, did a flying leap from Echo’s shoulder and shimmied up the side of the cabinet in a flash of gold. At the top, he disappeared behind the scabbard. There was a scraping sound and suddenly the sheathed rapier was tipping and falling down into Echo’s open arms.
Echo took the little sword in her right hand, feeling a tiny jolt of recognition as the hilt slipped into her palm perfectly. She slid Stinger into her belt, but even the slight weight of the blade made it slip out. Instead, she stashed it down the side of her boot, before scooping up Gilbert and racing to join Horace.
‘What took you so long?’ Horace grumbled, as she ran outside. He rubbed his folded arms. ‘I was getting nervous out here.’
‘Got my sword,’ said Echo.
‘Your…’ Horace’s mouth gaped. ‘But you’re not ready! Flora said—’
‘Yes, I am. We caught those crabs, didn’t we?’
‘But why would we need a sword, Echo? We’re only going to take a look.’
‘It’s just a precaution,’ said Echo, hoping he didn’t notice she was lying. ‘Here, I got something for you too. Catch.’ She threw him the jar of glowbugs and scrambled into the seat, cranking Cloudcatcher’s engine into life. ‘Ready?’
‘Are you sure you know how to fly this thing without Bulkhead?’
‘Of course!’ Echo set her jaw. How hard could it be? She’d managed while Bulkhead was catching the clouds. And, although it seemed like a lifetime ago, she’d flown Professor Daggerwing’s airship in search of her mother twice, and only crashed it one of those times.
As Echo pulled back on the joysticks, Horace let out a squeal and covered both eyes with his hands.
Gilbert hid his face in the collar of Echo’s shirt.
And Cloudcatcher whirred into the air.
* * *
Cloudcatcher purred silently through the indigo sky, Echo gripping the control handles and Horace staring grimly out. The air here was far colder than in Sleepy Palms and the wind’s icy breath stung their cheeks. She squinted into the darkness. The transport ship had left Filigree Ridge and they had now been trailing it for nearly an hour.
‘Not too close,’ hissed Horace.
‘Don’t panic,’ said Echo. ‘They won’t spot us without our lights on.’ Even so, she took the vehicle a little higher up in the clouds, out of the sightline of the other ship.
‘They’re slowing,’ she said. ‘Are we nearly… Oh!’
The clouds parted to reveal a bright full moon and Echo gasped as Shark’s Fin Peak suddenly appeared before them. Its rocky surface curved in an arc, looming over all the other mountains in the range, its pointed peak higher even than the clouds.
‘Well, I can see why it’s called Shark’s Fin Peak,’ said Horace. ‘It’s just like the dorsal fin of a Great Grey. Look at that rock formation!’ He leaned forward in awe, then sat back and folded his arms as if suddenly remembering why they were here. He turned to Echo. ‘Can we go back now? We know they’ve taken her where they said they would.’
Echo shook her head. ‘I need to make sure she’s safe.’
‘But what are we going to do if she isn’t? We’re just children.’
‘We’ve brought a getaway vehicle.’ Echo circled Cloudcatcher away from a searchlight that shone out in a yellowish beam through the clouds. ‘We just need to find somewhere to land it.’
‘There won’t be anywhere. The postal parrot said it’s an ice fortress! They’re not generally easy to get into.’
‘Hold this steady,’ Echo said, swivelling the control handles so he could reach them.
She picked up Horace’s spyglass and scanned the mountain. The fortress was a castle of gleaming white ice carved into the rock face, with a skinny tower that soared skywards and window slits that glowed with a flickering blueish light. The arched face of the mountain that the fortress clung to was almost sheer, with no obvious route in or out that Echo could see, other than the airship landing pad, which was lit with floodlights.
She saw guards armed with flintlock pistols and shaggy grey dogs patrolling the perimeter. She wouldn’t tell Horace about those, not yet at least.
‘We’ll have to try the other side,’ she said brightly. ‘There must be somewhere we can stash Cloudc
atcher.’
‘Even if we do, how are we going to get inside?’ Horace’s voice shook. ‘You never think of these things, Echo.’
‘We’ll work it out when we get there,’ said Echo, ignoring the way her hands were shaking as she took back the controls. They could figure out a way to get past the guards, but first they had to find somewhere to land. She wheeled the little vehicle about and they soared in a loop round the mountain’s curved peak, away from the floodlights and the fortress itself.
‘It’s impenetrable,’ said Horace glumly. ‘Oh, please can we go back, Echo? You said we would!’
‘Nothing’s impenetrable,’ said Echo, snatching a guilty glance at Horace’s forlorn face. She was breaking her promise to him, but she couldn’t leave Lil here unarmed and alone. Not now she’d seen how heavily guarded the place was. What if her mother never came back?
Echo scanned the peak with renewed focus. ‘We just need to try harder. Look – over there!’
Tucked in the curve of the mountain beneath the fortress was a little cave, just out of sight of the searchlights. Echo’s heart lifted. It was the perfect place to land unseen. The landing would be tricky, but she was prepared to take the chance.
Echo gripped the controls, set her jaw and took Cloudcatcher down on to Shark’s Fin Peak.
CHAPTER TEN
As Echo guided Cloudcatcher closer to the small cave, a curtain of freezing sleet blew slantwise at them, almost knocking the little vessel off course. Cloudcatcher bobbed and bumped on the wind, tipping this way and then that, Echo shielding her eyes with one hand, and steering with the other. She could just about make out the cave entrance in the moonlight. Then a cloud went across and she was flying in near-darkness.
‘Oh help!’ squealed Horace, hiding his face in his hands. ‘We’re going to crash!’
Gilbert’s scales turned white, and he plunged head first into Echo’s pocket.
‘It’s fine… we’re nearly—’ But Echo didn’t finish her sentence as Cloudcatcher made contact with the ground and skidded sideways into the cave opening.