Amid Wind and Stone

by Nicole Luiken

  A sudden noise made her turn her head—roaring and… Was someone screaming? No, a man was singing at high volume, accompanied by thumping drums and wild music. The roaring grew louder, and a strangely shaped—box? Room?—skimmed a few feet over the top of a hard-packed dune and zoomed down the other side toward the power station.

  She didn’t know what or who it was—cannibals? Scavengers? Qeturah? Jasper?—but she recognized a good distraction when she saw it. “Now!” she yelled.

  Galvanized into action, Rose Granite sliced through the ropes binding Dorotea’s wrists with one claw. She nicked Dorotea’s palm, but Dorotea barely noticed.

  The pink gargoyle convulsed and collapsed. Dorotea sank onto her knees, her muscles trembling in relief, and tried to cry. It ought to have been easy—she was in pain, weary, and scared, but her body wouldn’t cooperate.

  The moving chamber grew louder as it neared the power station. Seconds before it plowed into the walls, a crack of sound rang out. The noise triggered more lost memories: the blonde Elect woman shooting Jasper with a gun.

  Three figures jumped out of the vehicle just before it hit the power station. They rolled on the ground. One of them was red—Jasper!

  The walls of the power station shuddered under the vehicle’s impact. The roaring engine cut out, but the musical assault continued.

  Rose Granite squeezed her knee, expression agonized. Dorotea ignored the spectacle and concentrated. Sadness: Gideon’s death, Marta’s lingering death in a coma. Her eyes burned, but no tears came.

  In desperation, Dorotea banged her hand against the metal girder. The pain produced a few tears, which she carefully applied to her fingertips.

  She worried that her swollen fingers would have difficulty with the tiny clasp, but the collar fell away at her touch. Magic.

  Rose Granite stopped thrashing. She sat up and growled. Her face contorted with hatred.

  Fear slammed into Dorotea like a fist. Pink hands breaking her father’s neck. She stumbled back as Rose Granite lunged forward—toward Gerhardt.

  Dorotea hadn’t even seen him leave the power station.

  Rose Granite ripped out his throat.

  He fell against Dorotea. His blood wet her robe before she spasmodically pushed him aside. She watched the light die from his eyes but couldn’t feel anything besides a distant horror. He’d ordered her father’s death.

  The world spun. Dorotea clutched the tower, light-headed.

  More gunshots and shouting erupted from the power station, but she lacked the will to turn her head and see what was going on. Then Jasper arrived. In gargoyle form, he dashed up and grabbed her hand. “Run!” Two figures followed in his wake. Humans, from their height.

  Dorotea took three wobbly steps before her legs gave way.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jasper cried, his voice an octave lower in this form.

  “She’s dehydrated,” Rose Granite grated. The ground opened up and swallowed the gargoyle as she spoke. “Either leave her or carry her.”

  Jasper swept Dorotea off her feet and sprinted forward. Dorotea clung to his neck as they bounced along.

  Shouting followed them. She recognized Elect Harmon’s voice: “Shoot the traitors!”

  Then the two other occupants of the vehicle caught up with them. Dorotea recoiled. A whimper escaped her throat. One of them was Qeturah. But that wasn’t the surprise. The other was a tall man with dark hair, heavy eyebrows, and a familiar face—

  A face that resembled her own.

  “Papa?” she whispered.

  The shock was too much. She fainted.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Son of the Grand Current—

  In Which Audrey Talks to a Bucket

  Air World

  Bewildered, the ensign did as ordered. He cast a puzzled glance back their way, but his curiosity melted under the Admiral’s fierce glare.

  “Audrey,” her father said, his voice no less terrible for being throttled back to a whisper. “What is the meaning of this? What are you doing here? Free?”

  “I didn’t want to be left behind,” Audrey said. She fought not to tremble.

  Thunderclouds built in her father’s expression. “So you faked your own kidnapping?”

  Audrey gasped. “What? No! I was kidnapped by some bullyboys and taken to the Queen of Thieves—” Her eyebrows crunched down in sudden suspicion. “Why don’t you know all this? Didn’t mother tell you?”

  He paused, then said, “The last time I spoke to your mother was after I refused to knuckle under to blackmail. She swore she would never speak to me again and threw a bottle at my head for good measure.”

  Audrey put a hand on her stomach, sick. How could her mother have been so cruel? “She didn’t send you a note to let you know that I was home?”

  “I had her back before dawn,” Piers piped up.

  “You, be quiet,” the Admiral said. His gaze remained fixed on Audrey. “No, Bethany didn’t send word, and I didn’t make it home before we set sail. She’s had her revenge, then.”

  Audrey laid her hand on his sleeve. If not for Ensign Smathers, she would have hugged him. “I’m so sorry, Father. You must have been worried sick. But I’m safe.”

  His brows snapped down. “Safe? You’d be safer in the hands of the kidnappers. We’re hours away from going into battle! You still haven’t explained what you’re doing here, especially dressed like that.”

  She’d known the trousers would be mentioned at some point.

  “I enlisted,” she said, lifting her chin. “I’m a Harding, and I wanted to do my part in the war.”

  The Admiral snorted. “And I’m supposed to believe it’s a coincidence that I found you here with your phantom?”

  Piers’s lips quirked. “Your phantom?” he mouthed.

  Audrey blushed under their twin regard. “I heard about his capture—in mess hall,” she added, conscientiously not mentioning Grady. “I wanted to confirm that he was the same phantom, which he is, and talk to him. He’s not in league with the Siparese,” she told her father earnestly. “His employers misled him.” Best not to mention that the Queen of Thieves was Piers’s mother—or had been.

  “Just a regular thief, then.” Her father’s voice was so dry, it could’ve soaked up two pats of butter.

  “On the contrary,” Piers drawled, mimicking a high-tier accent. “I’m the best thief in Donlon. And as it so happens, I don’t like being played for a fool. I have a bone to pick with my erstwhile employers.” Menace shivered in his tone. “I’m quite willing to switch sides in return for my freedom.”

  Her father raised an eyebrow, thoughtful. “What information can you offer?”

  “Information about the Queen of Thieves. She’s the one who commissioned the thefts of both the document tube I stole from the Artemis and the papers I pinched from your study.”

  “A woman?” her father asked skeptically, but just then, Grady rushed in and cut him off.

  “Message from the Artemis,” he bawled out, handing over a document tube. “Sir, the dirigible is without her convoy and looks like she’s undergone heavy fire.”

  Admiral Harding tore open the document tube. Audrey watched, breathless and forgotten, as he swore savagely. Red flags rose in his cheeks, but he swiftly controlled his rage. “Signal the rest of the Fleet to leave the Grand Current and sail to Donlon. The Sipar Fleet is on its way to attack with fifty zipships.”

  Fifty! A bolt of fear shot down Audrey’s spine. So much for their preemptive strike; the Sipars already had fifty zipships, whose engines could bypass the doldrums and fly straight to Donlon. They might even be able to make some headway in the Grand Current, which swathed Donlon’s peak.

  Grady’s complexion curdled to a shade of white cheese. “Mum,” he whispered. Then his head whipped up. “Aye, aye, sir!” He left at a flat-out run.

  “Ensign Smathers!”

  While the Admiral rapped out orders to his subordinate, Audrey tugged the message out of his fingers and read i
t. Her supper heaved in her stomach. The news was worse than she’d feared.

  “What is it?” Piers whispered, pushing his blurred face against the bars.

  “The Sipar Fleet left six days ago, before the news of the ambassador’s assassination could possibly have made it there. The queen was right to say war was inevitable. They planned a surprise attack all along.”

  “So the war isn’t my fault?” Piers asked. “Jolly good.”

  Audrey shook her head. “No. You don’t understand. The Sipar Fleet is ahead of us. They’ll reach Donlon tomorrow, days before we can. By the time we arrive, the war will be lost.” The biggest wind her father could Call was Mistral. And Mistral wasn’t strong enough to carry the entire Fleet, nor fast enough.

  Only the Grand Current was strong and fast enough, and it only blew one direction…

  Audrey seized Piers’s sleeve through the bars. “You can save us!”

  “What?”

  She ignored his protest and called out to her father before he left the hall. “He can Call the Grand Current!”

  The Admiral paused.

  “Are you crazy?” Piers whispered. “I’ve never Called the Grand Current. Who’d dare?”

  “Do you know what a phantom is?” Audrey asked her father. “Half man, half air spirit. Piers is the son of the Grand Current.” Her voice rang with conviction. They had to believe her!

  “Audrey, I really don’t think making grand claims right now is going to help,” Piers said in her ear as the Admiral retraced his steps.

  “Can you prove this?” the Admiral asked.

  “Zephyr told me. Ask her. Ask any wind.”

  “Mistral, heed my voice and answer. Is The Phantom the son of the Grand Current?”

  The wind swirled around them, raising goose bumps on Audrey’s neck. “Yes.”

  The Admiral’s face remained a mask, but behind the harsh calculation, she glimpsed something else: hope.

  Because he knew better than she did how grim Donlon’s chances were otherwise.

  Admiral Harding pinned Piers with his gaze. “Can you do this?”

  Piers straightened. “I don’t know, sir. I’ve never tried to talk to, uh, my father. But it’s worth a shot.”

  “Do this service for the Crown, and you’ll receive amnesty for your crimes—you have my word as a Harding.” Her father paused a beat. “Of course, the deal only applies if we make it to Donlon in time to save it. If we fail, I’ll shoot you myself.”

  Fire flashed in Piers’s eyes. Audrey dug her fingernails into his wrist before he could say anything rash. “Good!” she exclaimed. “Now free him, so he can talk to his father.”

  “Ensign Smathers, the key.” Her father held out his hand without looking.

  The lank-haired ensign goggled but handed it over.

  “First, drop the invisibility act,” the Admiral said sternly. “I won’t deal with someone who hides his face.”

  Piers’s body solidified out of the air. He wore plain clothes: trousers, jacket, and shirt. No cravat or top hat, though he did have goggles slung around his neck. Jack’s wardrobe, Audrey guessed.

  Her father unlocked the cell, and Piers sauntered out.

  “Follow me to the bridge.”

  Piers cleared his throat. “I’d rather Call without an audience.”

  “Very well.” The Admiral nodded. “Audrey, you’re responsible for this rogue. Take him to the lower deck. But don’t reverse the current until after the Fleet has exited into regular airspace, or we’ll damage the sails.”

  Audrey nodded tensely. “We’ll wait.”

  They parted company.

  Piers waited until the Admiral was out of sight before speaking. “So was that just a ploy to get me out of jail, or do you seriously expect me to Call the bloody Grand Current?”

  “It’s not a ploy, and I’m very serious. It will work,” she insisted. It had to work. Otherwise, Donlon was doomed. She imagined bombs falling on Donlon’s glass domes and shuddered. No.

  “Follow me.” With the ease of long practice, she threaded her way through several passages, back onto the gondola, then down two decks to the lowest one, from which the couriers departed. She took advantage of her trousers to slide down the pole.

  Piers copied her, but his steps slowed as he approached the railing. He ran his hand through his dark hair. “I don’t know how to do this.”

  Audrey resisted the urge to scream at him. The Sipar Fleet was already on its way to Donlon—but they had a little time before the flagship exited the Grand Current. “Just Call him,” she urged.

  He cleared his throat. “Grand Current, heed my voice!”

  She strained her ears, but heard nothing. The wind was brisk—her ears were rapidly reddening with cold—as it hurtled them along.

  Piers shrugged helplessly. “I told you. The Grand Current is huge. He’s not going to hear one tiny voice.”

  Frustrated, Audrey wound back and kicked his shin.

  “Ow! What was that for?” He glared at her and clutched his leg.

  Her hands clenched into fists. “You’re not trying! Call again.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he Called again. He Called for five minutes. Unfortunately, nothing happened.

  Despair socked Audrey in the gut. She’d been so certain this would work, so certain Piers could save Donlon. But they were helpless. The Sipar Empire would conquer another land; Donlon, city of spires, would shatter like glass and die.

  Why had she been so convinced Piers could talk to the Grand Current?

  Because Leah had said the dragon boy could talk to his father.

  “I need a mirror,” Audrey said.

  “Your hair is a mess,” Piers said snidely, “but do you really think now is the time?”

  “I need to talk to Leah. She’ll know.” Without bothering to explain, she started searching for a reflective surface.

  In a cabinet, she found a mop and bucket with a little water in it. She crouched until her face appeared in the soapy water. “Leah, talk to me!”

  Her reflection wavered. A girl with shoulder-length brown hair and her face appeared. She was dressed differently than Audrey remembered. “Leah?”

  (Leah isn’t in right now, you’ve reached Water. please leave a message after the tone. eeeeeeee.)

  “What?”

  (sorry, just a little humor. I’m Holly. I’m from Water, but I have access to an obsidian mirror, so I can pass on a message to Leah if you need me to. what’s up?)

  “I need to know how to contact the Grand Current.” She tried to remember the terminology Leah had used. “The largest Air Elemental.”

  (I’m not sure you can. I usually speak to Ocean through Ryan—he’s Gideon’s otherself on Water, the son of the Ocean.)

  Audrey felt a burst of hope. “Piers is with me. He’s the Grand Current’s son.”

  (perfect! Ocean knows Ryan’s voice now, but when Ryan first spoke to him, Qeturah had Ryan spit into the water.)

  “Spit!” Audrey ordered Piers.

  Piers looked offended. “I will not!”

  (uh, actually, I don’t think that will work for you, because you’re Air. let me think. Fire is hot-blooded and they use blood, Water is silver-tongued, thus the whole saliva thing. Air is…?)

  “Long-winded. That’s what we call those with talent.”

  Piers was eyeing her as if she were crazy. Well, she was carrying on a one-sided conversation with a bucket.

  Holly snapped her fingers. (breath! if I were trying to pass things through the mirror to your world, I’d breathe condensation onto the surface of the glass. it ought to work for Calling his dad, too.)

  “Thank you!”

  (I’ll Call Leah and put her on standby. if it doesn’t work, maybe she’ll have some ideas. good luck!) The connection broke.

  Audrey stood up, swaying a little as the zeppelin rode the wind. The currents were often unpredictable this close to the edge. Piers grasped her elbow to steady her.

  “What was that all
about?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “It would take too long to explain. The important thing is: I have an answer. You need to breathe out onto the wind when you Call. You should tell him your name, too,” she added impulsively.

  He sighed. “I think you’re out of your bleeding mind, but I’ll try.” He leaned over the rail and blew out several breaths, then arched an inquiring eyebrow.

  She nodded encouragingly.

  “Grand Current, heed my voice!” Another exhale. “It’s Jack, your son,” he said awkwardly.

  The name change threw her a little. She still thought of him as Piers, but he’d probably gone by Jack for most of his life. No matter.

  “I, uh, need to ask a favor.” Piers blew out again.

  The Grand Current almost knocked both of them off their feet with a nudge, like an affectionate big dog under the misapprehension that it was still a cute puppy. His voice was a deep roar. “Ask, my son.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Waking the Gargoyles

  Stone World

  “Drink,” a voice said insistently. A cup pressed against her mouth, and water dribbled down her chin.

  Dorotea swallowed, then flinched at the fiery pain in her throat.

  “Again.”

  She opened her eyes and saw Jasper in his human form, his golden eyes clouded with worry. She lay on a rough mattress, the sheet scratchy against her skin. Sunlight leaked in around a cloth-covered window. She rolled onto one elbow and bravely swallowed three more times, until the cup was empty.

  “Take it slowly,” another male voice warned. “We don’t want her to vomit. When was the last time she ate?”

  Dorotea tried to think. She’d had broth with Martin and her mother after the quake. Distressed, she’d skipped breakfast the next morning. The next time she’d eaten had been the strange food provided by Holly while wearing Leah’s body. Which didn’t count.

  “She hasn’t eaten while she was with me,” Jasper said anxiously. “My gargoyle form doesn’t need food as frequently. I didn’t realize—”

  “Of course not.” A woman patted Jasper’s arm soothingly. Her head only reached his shoulder, and her long dark hair was bound carelessly into a bushy tail.