“Perfect. You'll have to go with them, Jao, because they don't know how to fly—”
“I'm rusty myself,” she said with a frown.
“It's a simple flight. A child knows how to navigate that section of the forest, even with the compasses playing up.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “What about you?”
“I have nothing to worry about in here. Oriel won't dare storm the skyship with me at the controls. I'll tell him we'll crash the city if he tries.”
The Engineer holding the wrench suddenly lunged at him, swinging the tool with all his strength. He moved fast enough to crack Griel's head open like a melon had he managed to connect. Sal had no time to react beyond opening his mouth to shout a warning.
Griel leaned to one side, grabbed his assailant's arm, and twisted. The Engineer went down with a cry and found himself pinned to the floor by Griel's knee.
“Sorry, friend. I'd rather not hurt you. Drop it, please, while we both still have a choice.” The tool clattered heavily to the floor. “Thank you. Now, I need some rope or wire to restrain him.”
The female Engineer nodded and opened a hatch. “Here.”
Griel worked swiftly, binding the male's wrists together. “Good. Understand that I will do nothing to directly harm the city. No matter what promises I make to Oriel, no matter what threats I make. It's all bluff. Do you believe me?”
The female nodded. Her blue eyes regarded him calmly. “I'll happily trust you over Oriel. His goons beat up my brother for speaking out against him last month.”
“What's your name?”
“Del.”
“Thank you, Del. Now, how many others out there—” he jerked his head at the door, and by implication the rest of the skyship “—will we have to tie up like this fellow here?”
She thought for a moment. “Four, maybe five.”
“Can you call them in here one at a time so we can deal with them?”
“Of course.” Del leaned over to talk into a wide funnel. The sound of her voice echoed from the spaces outside the activator room.
Griel turned to face Sal and Shilly. “I suggest the three of you get moving now, before the fun really starts. Tell the Guardian not to be the first to fire. To retaliate if she needs to, but to hold on as long as she can. This is her chance to prove to my people that she doesn't mean us ill.”
Sal was far from convinced the plan would work but could see the need for him and the others to be involved if it was to have any chance. He could also see the relief in Shilly's eyes at the thought of being reunited with everyone again. “Are you sure you don't need us here?”
“What?” Griel laughed from deep in his stomach as though at a preposterous joke. “This is the second time I've tried to set you free, Sal. Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
“Griel will have all the help he needs,” said Highson. “I'll be staying.”
“And me,” said Rosevear.
“There's no need for that,” said Griel. “We can manage.”
“Not without Change-workers, you won't. And especially not if you need to get a message out,” Highson insisted. “Should Oriel overpower you, or you decide to alter course for any reason, I can call Sal through the Change and let him know.”
“Not in here,” said Shilly. “It would be like whispering through a thunderstorm.”
“If I can get to the other maintenance balloon, there'd be a chance.” Highson looked from Sal to Shilly, then to Griel. “It makes sense. Do you agree?”
“I do, as a matter of fact.” Griel's broad callused hand came down on Highson's shoulder, and he nodded at Rosevear. “Your offer is gratefully accepted. We'll put you to good use, don't worry.”
Jao leaned in. “We need to leave now, if we're going to get away safely. The longer we leave it, the more likely Oriel will send patrols after us.”
Sal had enough time to shake his father's hand and wish him good luck before being whisked outside and along a short corridor. One final ladder led to a crescent-shaped room that looked as though it had once been open to the skyship's central chamber. A low dais abutted against one wall, home of an unassuming, backless chair.
“Legend says that this was where the King used to sit when the skyship was the home of all our folk,” Jao said, a worry line between her eyes indicating that her real concern lay elsewhere. The knuckles of her long arms tapped restlessly at the walls as they went by.
“It doesn't look like much.”
“Why should it? We honour the King for his actions, not the things he collected.”
She led them through another door. Fresh air greeted them, indicating that they were close to the outside. Another door took them to a small docking bay with a single rigid gantry leading to two small balloons. Each was spherical with a tiny gondola, barely big enough for two people, let alone three. Jao took a large toolbox out of one and indicated that they should squeeze in. A moment's fiddling at the controls brought the small propeller at the rear to life. With a spray of sparks, it began to spin.
The ropes fell away, and the balloon dropped out of the dock, into empty air.
Shilly was stunned to see how much of the day had passed in the Panic city. Judging by the position of the blurred sun in the sky, she put the time at roughly three in the afternoon. Tom had been missing almost an entire day. She wondered where he was, and hoped he wasn't as frightened as she had been that morning.
“How long until we reach Milang?” she asked Jao.
“An hour or so. This thing isn't exactly built for speed. Are you comfortable back there?”
Shifting awkwardly in the balloon's second seat, her thighbone still aching from the fall, she couldn't deny that it was going to be a long hour. It didn't seem fair to blame Jao for that.
“We'll manage,” she said, reaching behind her to take Sal's hand.
“I hope he'll be okay,” Sal said, barely audible over the sound of the wind.
“Who?”
“Highson. And Rosevear, of course.”
She twisted to look at him. His expression was brooding.
“I don't understand you two,” she said.
“What?”
“You and Highson. He's your father, but you act like you barely know each other.”
“Well, we don't.”
“Yet when you're apart you worry about him. How does that work?” He didn't answer, so she went on. “If I were you, I'd want to know everything about him: where he grew up, what he likes, how he feels about having you back in his life.”
“What difference does it make? I already had a father.”
“Yes, and he's gone now. Highson won't ever replace him, but he can still be important.”
“I have all the family I need right here,” he said, squeezing her hand.
“That's very sweet, but we both know it isn't true. What happens if I die? Who will you turn to then?”
“Don't joke about this.”
“I'm not joking, Sal. This is too important to joke about—and too important to dismiss.”
“Is that why you wanted to get to know Marmion better, when you thought he was Lodo's nephew? So you'd have someone to look after you if I wasn't around?”
She heard it again, that strange edge to his voice when Kail's name came up. Only this time they weren't talking about Kail but Marmion. She wondered then if it wasn't a specific person that Sal was afraid of, but the idea that she might have someone else apart from him in her life. She faced that worry squarely, feeling as though she was finally getting close to understanding him a little better.
“That's not all family is for,” she said, “and don't ever think I'm making preparations for you not being here. I'm acting on the assumption that we've got a long time together.”
He smiled fleetingly, but the look didn't go away. “Aren't friends enough?”
“Friends are family. Don't you see? I'll admit I got a little overexcited about Marmion at first, but that's only natural, I think. I've never had anyth
ing like a family before. I've never been able to choose whether or not to like them, as you have. I'd take Kail over Marmion, given the chance. I like Kail, whereas Marmion just pisses me off. But there's no possibility of choice if we won't open ourselves up to anything, or anyone.”
Sal mulled this over for a while, chewing his bottom lip. She waited him out. “Why doesn't Highson make the first move?” he eventually asked. “Why is it up to me?”
“Highson's waiting for you. He knows he can't force himself on you.” She brushed a loose strand of hair out of his eyes. “I know he says he's here because he wants to confront the Homunculus, to find out what happened between them in the Void Beneath, but personally I think that's just an excuse. He wants to be around you. You're all he has left of his marriage to your mother. You're his child. Whether you had another father or not is irrelevant to the part of him that's always wondered about you. And if he dies, you'll both have missed out on something important.”
Sal shook his head. “I think you're wrong. Not about all of it, just this part. I think he likes the idea of getting to know me better, but he can't until he gets over my mother. It's almost twenty years since she left him, and here he is trying to fish her out of the Void Beneath, screwing things up for everyone. There's no room for me while her ghost lingers.”
There was a new edge to his voice.
“Is that why you're cold with him? Because you blame him for what's happened?”
He squirmed. “No. No, not really. It's just—”
The balloon jolted beneath them. An arrow thudded into the gondola from below, making the wooden hull quiver and making Shilly jump. Another missed by a good two metres—but that was still entirely too close for comfort. Jao wrenched the controls to the right and forced them in an entirely new direction.
“A human patrol,” she called over her shoulder. Sweat beaded on her furrowed brow. “We must have passed between them and the sun. Luckily they didn't quite have our range.”
Shilly swallowed a sudden nausea at the thought of the balloon being punctured. She was becoming heartily sick of heights and the fear of falling.
“I'll try calling Skender,” said Sal. “We must be far enough from the skyship to reach him by now.”
Shilly kept hold of his hand in order to listen in. Jao took them around a vertical column of rock shrouded with vines as Sal reached out for their friend.
“Skender?”
“Sal?” came the immediate reply. “Where are you? I've been trying to call you all day.”
“We've been in the city's motivator room. That blocks the Change. Now we're on our way to Milang.”
“How?”
“By balloon.”
“Be careful, then. You're not going to get a friendly reception.”
“So I gather. Can you do anything about that?”
“You'll need to talk to Marmion. He's in a better position than me to influence the Guardian. We're in transit. There have been…complications.” Shilly detected more than a hint of understatement in his voice. “Don't waste your strength talking to me. We'll catch up later. Safe flying.”
“Let me talk to him,” said Shilly as Sal sought the mind of the Sky Warden Eisak Marmion.
“Sure, if you want to.”
Sal adopted a passive role, and let her Take from him. She could feel his worry for their friend, uneasily suppressed.
“We have a problem,” she told Marmion when their minds were connected.
“Several problems at once, it seems,” he said, telling them about the sighting of the Homunculus, the attack on Milang by the Swarm, the fruitless stakeout, and the murderous presence of a golem during the night. “As if that wasn't enough,” he said, “there has been another flood. We've just heard from the Guardian. She informs me that the deluge came down a section of the mountainside not far from the first flood, sweeping aside three people assessing the damage already done.”
Shilly closed her eyes at the news. Another flood. What could that possibly mean?
She didn't know, and she had more immediate things to worry about. Their own fruitless stakeout needed to be reported, plus the appearance of the Angel, the disappearance of Tom and Mawson, and Oriel's hostile takeover of the Panic Heptarchy. Lastly, she brought up the imminent appearance of the Panic city in the misty skies of Milang.
“How long do we have?” Marmion asked, mental voice suitably grim.
That, she didn't know. Neither she nor Sal had thought to ask Jao before.
“A few hours at least,” the Panic told them. “Maybe all night. The city takes a long time to get moving and is a bugger to stop.”
Shilly relayed that information.
“That gives us some time to play with, then.” Marmion thought for a moment. “Perhaps we can reason with this Oriel. If your friend Griel is determined to get the two parties talking, someone has to take the first step.”
The brief glimpse she had had of Oriel didn't fill her with confidence. No one liked being forced to shake hands. And that wasn't the worst of it. “You say the Swarm attacked Milang last night?”
“That's right.”
“Four of them attacked the Panic too, planting evidence that humans were responsible. Seems like someone's trying to drive human and Panic apart as hard as we are trying to bring them together.”
“Why would that be?”
“I don't know. But it's certainly a new pattern of attack. Vehofnehu says the wraiths will get stronger and bolder the longer they're at large.”
“Who says that?”
“The Panic empyricist. I think he might have been their King once, but can't tell for certain. He's gone missing too.”
Sal watched her closely during a brief lull in the conversation. They were still connected to Marmion, but the warden seemed to be thinking.
“You think he was King?” Sal whispered.
“Just a guess, but I'm pretty sure. He knew the Swarm when no one else did. He had the crown in his possession, even if he didn't wear it. He took Griel under his wing—and look where he's ended up.” She shrugged, thinking of her strange vision of the young, vital empyricist in his observatory. “If he was here, we could ask him.”
“Maybe that's exactly why he's gone away.”
“Shilly? This is a very complex situation. The Guardian is likely to face a revolt if she doesn't defend Milang from a perceived attack, but if she opens fire on the city as it approaches, that will only confirm the Panic's worst fears. We need to find a way to avoid the spark that will trigger a bushfire.”
“Agreed.”
“We also need more information. I'm therefore going to ask you to do something for me. It's going to take you some way off your current route, if my estimate of your current location is correct.”
Shilly groaned at the thought of more time in the air. “I can ask Jao and see what she says.”
“I don't think it puts you at any risk. I just need to be sure of something.”
“Go on, then. Tell me where you want us to go.”
“There's a section of the range called Geraint's Bluff. Your pilot should know it; the Panic use the same landmarks as the people here. It was hit by a landslide after an earthquake a couple of hours ago, so it'll be easy to tell apart from the forest around it.”
“Once we get close enough.”
“Yes. And therein lies the problem. The Homunculus was last seen in that area. I need to know if it's still alive—and that means risking flying into its wake.”
She tsked in annoyance. “Is now really the time to be obsessing about that again? There are more important things, surely.”
“Perhaps not, Shilly.” Marmion hesitated minutely. “The runner who saw the Homunculus also saw Habryn Kail. They've been travelling together.”
She sat up straighter, and almost lost her grip on Sal. “Kail's alive?”
” He was. I don't know for how much longer. The runner said that he was gravely wounded. She lent him what assistance she could. He and the Homunculus w
ere gone when we reached their campsite.”
Sal was looking at her again. “All right,” she said. “We'll do what we can. I'll call you if we encounter any difficulty.”
She broke the connection. “Do you have a problem with this?” she asked Sal.
“No. If Kail needs our help, we have to offer it.”
“Jao?” Shilly twisted around in her seat to face the front. “Ever heard of Geraint's Bluff?”
“Yes.”
“We need to go there. Someone's hurt and might need our help.”
“But Griel said—”
“Our friends in Milang will look after things while we do this. Please. It's important.”
The Panic woman mulled it over, face invisible to Shilly. Eventually she nodded. “All right. But then I drop you off and go back. Understood?”
Shilly did understand. Jao was worried about Griel, although she didn't come right out and say it.
“You sound like a different person when you talk to Marmion,” said Sal as the balloon changed course, swinging in a wide arc to starboard.
“Oh? How's that?”
“You're—I don't know. Harder.”
“I have to be like that with him, or he gets the upper hand.”
“But in a strange way, that makes you more like him.” His fleeting smile returned. “You two may not be related but you have more in common than you'd like to admit, I think.”
That was a decidedly uncomfortable thought. Shilly pulled a face to show what she thought of it, then tried unsuccessfully not to think of it again.
Kail woke to darkness and a terrible feeling of suffocation. His chest hurt and his right arm was twisted painfully behind his back. When he tried to flex it, he encountered resistance all over. He coughed, provoking more pain. His mouth filled with the taste of dirt.
He couldn't see. He couldn't move. One thought sprang immediately to mind: that he had been buried alive.
An upwelling of panic forced a ragged scream from his throat. Muffled, weak, desperate, he could barely hear it himself, but the exertion took its toll. A fit of coughing brought more dirt into his mouth and made his situation worse, not better. Stars danced before his eyes, cruel visions of a sky he couldn't see. Then darkness swept them away, and he was gone.
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