The Silver Tide (Copper Cat)

by Jen Williams

  ‘It’s Y’Gria,’ said Silvain, who was already frantically changing the course of the carapacer. There was no mistaking the fear in her voice. ‘Oh shit, oh shit.’

  ‘But Y’Gria was the goddess of growth, of new life. They called her the Mother,’ said Sebastian. Even as he spoke, the giant woman turned her eyes on them, and there was no mistaking the promised threat in that gaze. Her bloodless lips curved into a smile. ‘Surely she wouldn’t be responsible for this?’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ cried Silvain. ‘They all hate us, and she’s the bloody worst. At least the others are half mad, or easily distracted. This one is just a – a giant bitch.’

  ‘For new things to grow, the world must be made anew,’ murmured Oster. ‘She has given up on you all. She is eager to start again.’

  The carapacer was lurching to one side, turning rapidly to get out of Y’Gria’s line of sight. Sebastian could feel it shaking with the effort. He curled his hands more tightly around the ropes, and hoped the whole thing didn’t just rattle itself apart.

  ‘Hold on, boys,’ called Silvain, ‘I’m going to try some evasive manoeuvres.’

  Sebastian gave a startled yelp as the carapacer dropped suddenly, taking them briefly behind a tall tower that was still burning in places. Y’Gria vanished from sight, but as the carapacer righted itself and skimmed around a corner, she appeared right in front of them. This close, Sebastian could see the smooth skin of her belly – she had no navel. Y’Gria smiled at them warmly. The tendrils that hung below her looked like they were covered in pale bark, but they twisted and moved as easily as flesh.

  ‘Where do you think you are going, my little insects?’

  Her voice was warm honey, a hot summer’s day when everything smelled of growth and fecundity. Sebastian shook his head, disorientated, and then Silvain turned the carapacer on a pin and they were arcing up into the sky at a rate that pushed Sebastian and Oster to the very back of the cushioned seat.

  In less than an eye blink, Y’Gria was there ahead of them again, looming out of nowhere, her thick green hair swirling as though she were underwater. To Sebastian’s surprise, Silvain stood up and held out her arms. A bolt of bright orange fire flew from her fingertips and crackled across the god’s beautiful face, and for a few seconds Y’Gria drew back, apparently startled. Silvain threw another bolt of fire for good measure before wresting control of the carapacer back and sending them zooming low across the rooftops. Sebastian found himself reaching for his sword, but the speed of the carapacer was pushing him back into the seat – he couldn’t even stand, let alone fight. He reached across and grabbed Oster’s arm.

  ‘You have to help her!’ he shouted. ‘You have to change!’

  Oster looked incredulous. ‘If I do that, they will know what I am!’

  Sebastian shook his head, barely able to believe what he was hearing. ‘That will hardly bloody matter if we’re smeared all over the ground!’

  Oster pulled away from him, and the entire carapacer shook alarmingly. Sebastian looked up to see Y’Gria cutting them off again, and this time she was reaching for them. Her fingers brushed the buzzing wing on the right of the craft and for a few seconds it winked out of existence. Silvain was screaming obscenities at the god, punctuated with bolts of fire and lightning, but Y’Gria no longer seemed perturbed by this. She smiled indulgently, like a mother watching her offspring attempt something especially taxing, and then she struck the carapacer with her trident. Bright flames crawled across the green metal, burning with extra brilliance as they passed over the mages’ words engraved there, and both wings stuttered and died.

  ‘No!’ Silvain threw herself forward, casting a sheet of ice across the fire, but it was too late. With a lurch the carapacer dropped like a stone, going into an awkward spin.

  Sebastian had time to see Y’Gria reach down, as fast as a snake, and grab Silvain before she dropped out of sight. He heard the young mage woman scream, saw more fire, and then he was out of the carapacer and spinning towards the ground.

  Not here, he thought, not so far from the mountains –

  The rocks and sand rushed up to meet him.

  50

  Wydrin leaned over and ran her fingers over the smooth metal of the carapacer’s outer shell. The mages’ words engraved in the side shone with a faint pearlescent glow, and as her hand passed over them she felt a tingle in her fingertips. Below them was the bright rippled surface of the Creosis Sea. Xinian kept the carapacer moving smoothly, heading steadily east; so far she had refused to name their destination. Wydrin looked at the back of the woman’s bald head, noting her rigid posture and well-used armour. It wasn’t right, she mused, to know so much of someone else’s future. No one should have such knowledge. The whirring of the carapacer’s wings caught her eye and something else occurred to her.

  ‘Hey, Xinian. These things aren’t alive, are they?’

  The mage cocked her head, but did not turn around. ‘Of course not. They are simply imbued with magical energy. Eventually that runs out and the wings will stop beating.’

  Wydrin caught Frith’s eye, and he shrugged the tiniest amount.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that sort of thing before,’ said Wydrin. She looked down at the scar in the middle of her hand, and thought of Mendrick’s calm, cold voice. There had been a few dreams since Skaldshollow, ones where she saw Nuava and the Destroyer – the enormous werken she and her aunt had made to battle the Rivener – disappear into the terrible hole Joah Demonsworn had summoned. In the dreams she saw young Nuava die, crushed by unknowable forces on the other side of existence, and she heard Mendrick silenced, the voice of the mountain gone for ever. She would wake up from these dreams with her heart racing, and in the dark Frith would slip his arms around her and say nothing. He had enough of his own bad dreams to know not to ask.

  ‘I can feel the magic of these contraptions,’ said Frith quietly, so that Xinian could not overhear. ‘Edenier laced over Edeian. It is similar, but not the same, as the werkens.’

  ‘Should you still be able to sense that?’

  Frith shook his head. ‘I would have thought not. But the spirit I met in Euriale appears to have changed more than I realised.’

  ‘If you have something useful to say, I would like to hear it,’ called Xinian in a sour tone. ‘Technically speaking, you two are still my prisoners.’

  ‘We were just admiring these weird machines of yours,’ said Wydrin, plastering a smile on her face. ‘Being able to build things like this must be enormously useful. I imagine it helps a lot of people.’

  For a few moments, Xinian didn’t answer, and Wydrin wondered if perhaps she hadn’t heard her. When she did answer she sounded reluctant to speak at all.

  ‘Machines such as these are very rare. The skill to wield both Edenier and Edeian at the same time is known to only a handful of people. You will be meeting two of them when we reach our destination.’

  ‘Still, there must be a lot of good you can do for ordinary people. For the unbound, I mean.’ Wydrin slapped the metal. ‘Just one of these, moving trade goods around, for example. Faster and cleaner. Building materials too.’

  ‘Such things … we have been at war for a very long time. Of course, Edenier must be used for the betterment of humankind, but for now …’ Xinian’s voice trailed off.

  ‘All of your resources are taken up with this spat with the gods?’

  ‘This spat has been going on for over a decade. Thousands dead, more injured and forced out of their homes.’ The carapacer juddered slightly, and Xinian corrected their course with a gesture. ‘We do what we can to protect the unbound but we are stretched thin. Every year, we edge closer to total defeat.’ Her voice became firm. ‘That is why the Citadel must work.’

  ‘They must pay,’ mused Frith in a low voice. ‘Whatever the cost. Even if it costs a thousand more lives, even if they must drive the gods under the ground and watch as their own magic leaks away.’

  Wydrin gave him a look, but he just shook his
head wearily.

  The carapacer flew on as the light faded from the sky. When full night fell, they landed on a tiny island where a ring of bright beacons sat burning with alchemical light. Xinian lit a fire and they made camp as well as they could, eating from a small supply of bread, meat and ale Xinian had brought. The mage had them up again at dawn, pausing to press her hands to the mages’ words engraved in the hide of the carapacer before piloting the beetle-shaped craft up into a sky newly clouded with mist. The air grew chillier, and the sea below was lost from view. Wydrin shuddered, and drew the hood of her cloak up over her head.

  ‘We are close now,’ said Xinian.

  ‘How can you even tell where we are?’ Wydrin gestured at the thick banks of pale mist that pressed at every side. ‘This is like swimming through soup.’

  ‘I have made this journey a great number of times,’ said Xinian. ‘The skies around the Nowhere Isles are usually thick with fog.’

  As if to contradict her, the air around them suddenly exploded with light and flame. Wydrin cried out, feeling the skin on the right side of her body sting with sudden heat, and the carapacer pitched to one side. The fireball that had missed them by inches sailed off into the fog, which hissed into nothing at its passage. Frith was shouting and pointing, and an old nightmare descended on them from above: Y’Ruen, huge and vital and real, every single blue scale shining like the lost sea below them. The great dragon opened her mouth and roared and she was impossibly close – Wydrin could not understand how the tiny carapacer could share the sky with such a creature and survive – the smell of her breath was carrion and smoke and war.

  ‘Hold on!’ called Xinian from the front. Wydrin grabbed the rope and twisted it around both fists before the carapacer shot forward, diving into the mist like a startled rabbit. Next to her, Frith was bracing himself at the back of the compartment. Wydrin sat up and looked behind them to see the dragon curling lazily around, huge wings beating the mist away. Her huge reptilian head followed them slowly, as though she had already lost interest, the yellow eyes shining in the gloom like lamps.

  ‘She’s not coming after us!’ cried Wydrin, scarcely able to believe their luck.

  ‘She’s easily distracted,’ said Xinian. She cast a brief glance over her shoulder. ‘Y’Ruen prefers the glory of the battlefield, the pleasure of incinerating hundreds at once. To her we are barely worth the effort, especially as only one of us is a mage.’

  ‘Well she’s changed her tune,’ murmured Wydrin.

  ‘The problem is her daughters,’ said Xinian. ‘Where Y’Ruen is, her daughters won’t be far behind.’

  ‘Daughters?’

  An instant later the first one hit the side of the carapacer, with enough force to nearly tip them all out. The figure that scrambled over the metal side was humanoid, with a loose shirt of golden scales hanging over a body covered in thorny ridges and thick, scaly skin the colour of a frog’s underbelly. The woman’s face was oddly bat-like, twisted around a huge gaping mouth lined with yellow fangs easily an inch long. Her head was bald, with wide pointed ears, and a pair of leathery, bat-like wings poked from her back. She had a blue crystal sword clutched in one hand, and when she opened her mouth she hissed like a cat.

  ‘She has daughters here too?’ Wydrin gestured at the woman with Glassheart, casting an outraged look at Frith. ‘We have to deal with the bloody brood army again?’

  Frith had scrambled to his feet. He held his own short sword, and the wind whipped his hair back and forth. He shook his head at her, half in bewilderment. ‘It’s the dragon’s brood, but not woken by Sebastian’s blood. Look at it! There’s nothing human in there at all.’

  As if to prove his point, the monstrous brood sister opened her mouth and hissed again, before leaping down into the compartment, sword whirling. Wydrin threw herself forward, getting her sword in and catching the crystal blade on it, before thrusting up with Frostling to bury the dagger deep under the brood creature’s ribs. The dragon woman squealed as black blood bubbled up from her greenish skin, and Wydrin forcibly pushed her back over the side. Wings flapped feebly for a moment, and then she was lost in the mist, but out of the fog more winged shapes were approaching.

  ‘Xinian? Can you move this thing faster?’

  ‘What do you think I am doing?’ snapped Xinian in response. ‘You’ll have to keep them off us.’

  ‘Watch out!’

  Wydrin turned to Frith’s warning in time to see three more brood sisters landing on the carapacer – their feet had long curved toes, almost like talons, and as they scrambled for purchase, their claws scratched through a section of the mage words, and the illuminated portion flickered and died. The carapacer juddered and dropped a few feet through the air.

  ‘Shit!’ Xinian turned and shot a bolt of energy over one shoulder, striking a brood sister who had just gained her feet squarely in the chest. She was knocked backwards and lost in the fog, but another landed in her place. ‘You have to get them off before they tear this thing to pieces.’

  ‘Not a problem, Commander!’ Wydrin surged forward, Frith at her back, and they met blue crystal swords with their steel. The blades clashed, sending discordant music into the air, and Wydrin felt a surge of disorientation; all at once she was back in the Citadel that would exist in the future, surrounded by the brood sisters while Sebastian bled to death on the floor next to her.

  ‘Get back!’ Frith smashed the pommel of his sword into the face of the nearest brood soldier, and brought the sword round in a wide sweep to take out the legs of another that perched on the shell of the carapacer. Wydrin stabbed out wildly, letting her instincts take over even as the part of her that stood back from battle and watched for opportunities to strike took note of the shadowed shapes pursuing them through the mist. They were like a carcass attracting flies.

  ‘There are too many of them, Xinian!’ She jerked her sword free of one body, before crashing it against the blue crystal of another sword. One of the brood sisters leapt down and landed squarely on Frith, knocking him to the floor of the compartment. Wydrin saw the creature’s hands close around his throat, but she was already moving, bellowing something unintelligible. She threw herself at the sister and they both fell violently against the side. The carapacer dipped wildly and they went over the side together – Wydrin heard Frith’s anguished cry – and then she was clinging to the grip of Frostling, the blade embedded between two metal plates as she dangled from the side of the carapacer. The brood sister clutched at her, and she felt a bright sliver of pain as the claws pulled two bloody tracks across her legs, and the creature beat her wings once, twice. Wydrin yelped as she was dragged up into the air, the yawning nothingness of the mist hanging below her, and then Frith had her arm.

  The brood sister was alarmingly strong, but Frith threw all his weight backwards, and the claws lost their grip on her leg. Wydrin and Frith fell back together into the compartment, but not before a large section of green metal flipped up from the side of the carapacer and spun away into the gloom. The carapacer shuddered, and the green glow of the wings stuttered, and then died completely.

  For a few dizzying moments the carapacer fell, and they scrambled desperately for the ropes. Several of the brood sisters who had alighted jumped back off, apparently startled by the sudden drop.

  ‘Xinian!’

  ‘I can’t hold it, I can’t—’ The carapacer shuddered and the dive slowed, minutely. Xinian held out both arms, the silk ties flickering in the wind like sand snakes. The Commander was trembling all over with the effort.

  ‘She is keeping us up here with the Edenier alone,’ said Frith. ‘I doubt she will be able to do that for long.’

  Wydrin opened her mouth to reply, only to see four more brood sisters looming out of the fog.

  ‘We have to keep them off her until we can land somewhere.’

  She jumped forward, blades at the ready, Frith at her side, when a brood sister fell on them directly from above. Wydrin crashed to the cushioned floor, the air
crushed out of her lungs by a pair of knees on her chest. A twisted, bat-like face loomed down at her, and there was nothing human in the eyes at all – nothing but hunger and a need to tear things apart. As if it were a sign for all of them, several more brood sisters landed on the craft, and the whole thing rocked wildly from side to side. Wydrin tried to bring her dagger around to sink it into the creature’s side, but a horned foot stood on her wrist and pressed until she thought the bones would break. She couldn’t see Frith.

  ‘Get off me, you ugly … bat’s arse.’

  The creature leaned back, opening its mouth so wide that Wydrin thought the top of its head might fall off. It was undoubtedly the action of an animal about to rip a throat out, and Wydrin bucked her hips desperately, trying to throw it off.

  And then Frith fell back into view. He had a wound at his neck and his eyes were wild, but as she watched he began to glow, just as he had at the wall in Krete – first with a faint, wavering light, and then a shining white blast. He reached out a hand towards the brood sister that had her pinned, and its skin began to twist and turn grey. The creature screeched, holding out its hands in horror – a gruesomely human gesture – and then the skin crusted and began to fall away. Underneath, the brood sister’s flesh had turned to brittle dust, and within seconds there was nothing but a yellowed skeleton sitting astride Wydrin – and then that crumbled away too, lost in the wind.

  ‘What did you—?’

  Frith was still burning with the light. He turned away from her, and with a gesture all of the brood sisters were collapsing into dust, their skins wrinkling and splitting, their eyeballs withering and falling back into their skulls, before collapsing into nothing. Within seconds, they were all gone, and the floor of the compartment was filled with a greyish powder, already being whipped away by the wind.