‘Aye,’ Rowan sighed, looking just as troubled. But he brushed it away and went back to his business, bashing the starmore and moonroot to a paste with his mortar and pestle. He added a lump of clay to the mix, which he melted with boiling water, then cooled it all down by placing it in a bucket full of ice. Finally he poured the concoction into a leather waterskin, plugging it with a small cork. ‘There yeh are, lad. One dram of Ichabod Boon’s finest. May yeh find good fortune with it,’ he said.
‘Thank you again, Mr Cloudshadow. I really appreciate it,’ Joss told him, the waterskin heavy in his hands as Rowan led him back to the outside landing.
‘Not at all, lad. A kindness deserves kin, as they say. Besides, it’s what I’m here for. And, eh? Listen: it’s Rowan. Just Rowan. None of this “Mr Cloudshadow” business.’
Joss grinned. ‘In that case, thank you, Rowan.’
‘Yer welcome, lad. Eh, come back and tell me how yeh go with it. I’d love to know! I have to admit, I fancied the idea of being a paladero myself in my younger days. Never had the gumption for it, though. So I settled for being windswept and interesting. Well, windswept and eccentric at the very least.’ Rowan hooted, making Joss laugh.
‘I’ll make sure to give you a full report,’ he said. ‘I just hope I haven’t wasted your time.’
‘Time spent with a friend is never a waste,’ Rowan replied with a wink. ‘Just keep yer wits about yeh and yer guard up. I may not have found any light to shed on the mysteries bedevilling this place, but that doesn’t mean there’s no shadows to speak of, yeh ken?’
Joss nodded. Giving a small salute from the doorstep, Rowan retreated back into his cabin, his tuneless humming accompanied by the ringing of his many chimes. Turning a deaf ear to the sound, Joss hurried down the garden path with treasure in his hands and hopes as high as the sun itself.
The first thing that struck Joss upon entering the rookery was the smell. While he was used to the odour of thunder lizards, this was a stench unto itself. Musty like yeast but still sharp as ammonia, it wafted from all the muck that was spackled against the dark granite walls and congealing in the straw flooring.
Joss clamped his mouth shut as he crossed the room to a feed bin stored against the wall. Lifting the lid, he grabbed as big a fistful as he could, stuffed it into his pocket, and slammed the bin shut. Only then did he turn to look up at the rookery’s occupants, their nests lining the walls in ascending rings that reached high up into the shadows of the tower’s rafters. The pterosaurs all had their wings folded over their faces, the buzz of their snoring as constant as a carpenter’s saw.
‘Tempest? Here, boy!’ Joss said as he scanned the nests, his song sword sheathed at his side. Perhaps if he were a seasoned paladero with a proper weapon, he could use it to summon his mount alone from among the flock. But this practice sword was too imprecise for such a task, and he was still too inexperienced at wielding it. That left him with no choice but to keep calling the pterosaur’s name, until finally the scrawny creature raised its head.
‘Tempest! Here, please!’
If Joss were calling Azof, the raptor would have been by his side by now. But Tempest only blinked at him with crusty red eyes, deciding whether to obey.
‘I have something for you,’ Joss said, producing one of the freeze-dried mice he’d taken from the feed bin. Tempest eyed the morsel and, clacking his tongue, dropped down onto the ground and stalked towards Joss with determination, snapping its beak with every step. Joss had to be careful of his fingers as he offered the mouse, which the lizard-bird guzzled down greedily.
‘Good boy,’ Joss said, and took a second mouse from his pocket. Tempest squinted at it with ravenous intensity, while Joss took the chance to edge closer. Holding the mouse in one hand, he used the other to remove the waterskin from within his coat. ‘Gooood boy.’
Tempest snapped for the mouse, but Joss held it away from him as he popped open the waterskin’s cork. He could feel a knot forming in his chest as he considered all the ways the unruly pterosaur could lash out at him. It could try snatching the food from his hand and take a few fingers with it. It could panic at having its eyes meddled with and attack, could startle the other pterosaurs into a frenzy, could do something totally unpredictable that would leave Joss forever disfigured, if not dead.
Remembering what Sur Blaek had said about overthinking things, Joss made his best effort at quieting his mind and focusing on the task at hand. He held the mouse high enough for Tempest to see, yet far enough away that the creature couldn’t snatch it. At the same time, he squeezed the poultice into his palm. The mixture was cold to the touch, viscous, and dribbled between Joss’s fingers as he pressed it against Tempest’s face.
The pterosaur shrieked, jerked its head back. But Joss persisted, working the poultice into the craggy flesh surrounding the thunder lizard’s eye sockets. He smeared it across Tempest’s eyelids, massaged it into his clogged tear ducts. To Joss’s surprise, the pterosaur leaned in, pressing his face into Joss’s hand. He even made a noise that sounded like something close to relief, as if a persistent itch was at long last being scratched.
‘That’s a good boy,’ Joss told him, and fed him the mouse as a reward. Tempest snapped merrily away at the treat as Joss continued to work the poultice in until the waterskin was empty. The pterosaur’s eyes looked rounder and clearer than they had before, and he shook his head with the satisfaction of someone waking from a particularly refreshing nap.
‘Better?’ asked Joss, feeding Tempest another mouse. The creature quorked in response, then pushed its head against Joss’s in the same way Azof did when he was feeling happy. Joss grinned, rubbing Tempest’s beak and smoothing out the feathers on his brow. Then he asked the pterosaur a question that once would have terrified him, but now thrilled him with the promise it held.
‘Wanna go for a ride?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A CRIMSON SUNSET
JOSS marvelled at how easy it was to lead Tempest out of the rookery and saddle him up. It was like the pterosaur was a whole new animal, his temperament having changed from a wild creature’s to a loyal mount’s. Joss’s practice sword hummed in his hands as he carved intricate patterns in the air, lulling Tempest into a mild hypnotic state. Quickly sheathing the blade, Joss climbed up into the saddle and whispered into the pterosaur’s ear, ‘Ready, boy?’
Tempest clucked an affirmation, and with a quick tug of the reins and a sudden jolt they sprang into the air.
‘Woo!’ Joss cried out, too excited for words. He had to hold on tight as they circled the fortress grounds, flying past the training yard and the dormitory wing. He wondered if his brethren could see him from their chamber window.
‘Let’s do some sightseeing,’ he said, guiding Tempest past the Lord’s Keep and over the fortress walls. The forest surrounding Blade’s Edge Acres was like a rushing emerald river beneath them, with whole acres whipping past at torrential speed. They rocketed past mountaintops, skimmed the tops of the tallest trees, shot back up into the air to pierce the wafting canopy of clouds.
From this height, Joss could see for countless leagues in every direction. To his left, the northern ranges spread out across the horizon like the vertebrae of a fragmented spine. To his right, green fields and rocky rivers ran off into the distance. And directly below him, he could see three familiar figures riding on their sabretooth mounts. He wondered what they could be doing so far from the fortress grounds. Then, smirking to himself, he decided to have some fun with them.
‘Come on, boy,’ he said, pulling the reins up. ‘How about we give those muckeaters a taste of their own doings?’
The pterosaur screeched his agreement, and together they roared towards the ground in a controlled dive. Their joint shadows fell across their targets just in time to make them all look up, then scatter in panic as Tempest swooped across their heads. Joss could hear Lynch shrieking, could hear the Brute and the Newt yelling as their mounts bolted away. With a satisfied laugh, Joss pul
led back on the reins and guided Tempest back up into the sky, while Lynch shouted and cursed below him.
‘Good job!’ Joss called out, tossing a dried mouse in the air. Tempest again proved just how deftly he could move, executing a perfect barrel roll to snag the treat in his beak. This time Joss was ready for it, clinging to the saddle as his head spun with the whirling rush of gravity. He cried out again, exhilarated, his heart pounding in time with the beating of Tempest’s mighty wings.
They flew on, Joss losing count of the hours they spent soaring and diving and gliding until his stomach rumbled to tell him it was time for a break. Spotting a chow cart that was set up along a mountain trail to serve passing travellers, Joss guided the pterosaur to the ground. They landed far enough away from the wagon to keep from startling the megaloceros that the vendor had hitched to his rig. Still, the giant elk eyed the new arrivals nervously as it chewed on a bucket of nettles and bluegrass.
‘Well met, skyborne stranger!’ the vendor called from the cart’s serving window, the S’s whistling through his missing teeth. ‘What can I provide yeh on this fine afternoon?’
‘That depends – what do you recommend?’ Joss asked as he dipped into his pocket to feed Tempest one of the last remaining mice, the pterosaur guzzling it happily.
‘Ha! Everything,’ the vendor replied, leaning back from the countertop with arms widespread. ‘We have a delicious smoked blood sausage served with mammoth cheese and buttered bread, a sumptuous stegosaur-and-liver pie, a creamy elfstool soup or, if yer a sweet tooth, there’s our acorn tarts with crumbly shortbread crust.’
Joss didn’t even need to consider the options. ‘I’ll have a tart, please.’
‘Excellent choice!’ the vendor said, plating it up while Joss paid for it.
As Joss took his first bite, his eyes lit up.
‘Good, eh?’ the vendor chuckled, and Joss nodded.
‘Delicious,’ he said through his mouthful.
The vendor laughed again, heartier this time. ‘I have to say, it does my heart good to hear that! Yer only the second customer this afternoon, and I reckon the first fellow was too shaken by all that he’d seen to enjoy much of anything.’
Joss swallowed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he come down from the mountaintop after traversing the western ridge, as he told it. Looked as pale as frostbitten death and asked for the stiffest drink I had. Now I don’t carry anything too strong, so all I could offer him was a glass of syrup water. Still, he downed it all the same as he told me about the dead pterosaur he’d stumbled across. Said it had been skinned, with strange symbols carved into its flesh. “Sounds like someone playing with their roast dinner,” I told him, but he didn’t see the funny side of it. Said it were more like the work of a forgotten mystic, someone intent on making the world run red. Don’t that send a shiver up yeh spine? Eh, lad?’
The last crumbs of the tart now tasted like ashes in Joss’s mouth. Wiping them from his lips, Joss asked, ‘Where exactly did he say he found it?’
The carcass lay out in the dying sunlight, already stinking of rot. Joss had to pull his bandana up over the lower half of his face in an attempt to block out the stench, though it did him little good. Flies were swarming around the body, just as they had surrounded the other dead animal he and his brethren had spotted on their first day at Blade’s Edge Acres. But Joss hadn’t seen that poor creature up close. Not like this one. And it didn’t look like any slaughtered animal he had seen before.
The pterosaur had been staked out on a large rock that was as flat as an altar. Its skin had been flayed from top to tail and discarded in a wet pile on the ground. Whoever had done this clearly had no interest in using the hide for anything, nor any of the meat that had been so shamefully wasted.
Worst of all were the symbols. Carved into the animal’s skin – just as the vendor’s customer had described, and just as Rowan had talked about – they had a disturbing familiarity to them. Joss recognised many of them from the mask Thrall had worn. Harsh little runes with dark meanings, they had been carved in looping circles around the largest symbol in the centre of the pterosaur’s chest.
The fangs of an inverted crown.
It felt as if the whole world had come unstuck. Joss had to fight to stay standing, his head whirling, his knees buckling. Despite his attempts to uncover the truth, deep down he’d thought he’d merely been chasing shadows, spooked like a panicky mount. Now here was the evidence that his worst fears were true, and it left him reeling. He had seen Thrall die with his own eyes, but whatever his nefarious plan had been clearly hadn’t died with him. So who could be carrying on in his place?
He thought immediately of Zeke. But he’d been so adamant in denying any accusation of ill-intent that it left Joss questioning such an obvious answer. Yes, the inverted crown had been in the same book that they’d both read, making it entirely possible that this butchery was Zeke’s clandestine effort to improve his fortunes. But that didn’t strike Joss as very likely. Not now. Though if it hadn’t been Zeke, who had it been?
Lynch and his cronies, perhaps? He struggled to think of how they could have done this, then reach the valley in time for him to find them. And besides, it was a steady hand that had flayed that flesh and carved those symbols. It was no amateur who’d read a library book and decided to try their luck at blood magic, nor a trio of small-minded bullies spotted leagues away. It was someone who had an intimate and untroubled understanding of what they were doing.
Tempest croaked from the other side of the ridge, where the wind was rustling the trees. Joss had left him there on purpose, unsure of how the pterosaur might react to the gruesome scene. His patience looked to be growing thin, so Joss pulled his Scryer from the pocket he’d left it in following his talk with Qorza. He hadn’t had much time to master its controls, but he knew he could make a recording of the scene if he could only hit the right buttons.
Wrangling the glass-and-copper disc, he cycled through an overwhelming array of illumigram projections before finally discovering the required function. He had to position himself in four different spots surrounding the site, toggling the Scryer at every step, but the effort paid off as he walked away with a full three-dimensional rendering to share with the others.
After tucking the device back into his pocket, he looked again at the dead pterosaur. It felt wrong to simply leave it there, but there was little else he could do. So he turned back to Tempest and saddled up, promising himself that this innocent creature’s death would not be in vain, that he would find the culprit and hold them to account for their actions, even as he took to the air and left the remains to the flies and the crimson sunset.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A THOUSAND QUESTIONS
DARKNESS had descended by the time Joss returned to Blade’s Edge Acres. Even with the illuminated compass fitted to Tempest’s saddle to guide them, there had been long stretches of time where he was completely flummoxed as to whether or not he was travelling in the right direction. But, trusting his instincts, he managed to make his way back in one piece.
The arduous journey left him with little time to reflect on what he’d discovered on the mountain ridge, though its implications sat in his gut like coal, burning him from the inside. All he wanted to do was open his mouth and release his every fear and worry. He wouldn’t be able to do that, however, until he got back to his brethren. And so, not stopping to tell Rowan about what’d he’d seen, or even of the poultice’s success, as he’d promised he would, Joss rewarded Tempest with one last treat before hurrying back to the dormitory wing.
He found Drake sitting at the patched-together table in the den with a mess of tools, circuitry and metal casings piled in front of him. When he looked up at Joss it was with the faraway gaze of someone absorbed in their work. ‘Joss,’ said Drake, eyes focusing. ‘We’ve been wondering where you were.’
‘I’ve been out for a ride,’ Joss replied, then gestured to the materials on the table. ‘What’s all this?
’
‘Just something I’ve been tinkering with,’ Drake said with a shrug.
Hero looked up from the book in her hand. Her goggles – customarily glued to her face – were hanging around her neck, leaving Joss once again struck by the uncanny resemblance of those sharp, grey eyes. ‘Is Edgar with you?’ she asked.
‘You mean he’s missing again?’
‘He’s been gone as long as you have. We just assumed you were together,’ Drake said, sifting through a tangled heap of red and green wires. ‘We were hoping to make plans for tomorrow.’
‘Oh?’ said Joss, sticking his head into the hallway to make sure nobody was skulking there.
‘We ran into Sur Blaek earlier,’ Drake went on, picking out two of the wires and winding them together. ‘And after Hero bombarded him with about a thousand questions –’
‘How else are we ever going to find out what’s going on?’ Hero demanded.
‘– he mentioned,’ Drake said, ‘that he has business to attend to in the afternoon. Which leaves us with some unexpected time to ourselves.’
Joss shut the door behind him. ‘Freecloud business?’
‘He wouldn’t say, other than to leave the matter with him.’
Joss thought again of the Order of Tooth and Claw. He hadn’t mentioned anything about it to Drake and Hero, just as Sur Blaek had requested, though it rattled away inside him with an urgent need to be shared. He could still feel it jangling for attention as Drake thankfully changed the subject.
‘So we were thinking we’d take the opportunity to make a nice day for ourselves, as it were. Between all the pressure and intrigue we’ve been weathering lately, it seemed like a good chance to unwind.’
‘Really?’ Joss asked with a furrowed brow.
Hero peered over the cover of her book. ‘His idea,’ she said, tipping her head in Drake’s direction. Her listlessness seemed to motivate Drake into saying the next part with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, even going so far as to set aside the red and green wires.
The Edge of the World Page 18