Margaret couldn’t explain why, but the sight disturbed her. She released the focus of the wall, made the lights a single blur again.
“Worrying, isn’t it?” David said from behind her, making her jump. When had he ever been so light on his feet?
“What is it?”
“Who, you mean. The Old Men. They can’t get us here, but they can feel me. Just as I feel them, this is as close as we have ever been, them and I.” He hunkered down beside her, and smiled, though it was nothing like the smile of his sleeping. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we? Hunted by everyone. Far too popular for our own good.” He shook his head. “My dreams are always so dreadful these days.” He reached across the narrow hall and grabbed an apple, offered it to Margaret; she shook her head. He bit down on the apple, juice ran down his chin. “Horrible, horrible things.”
She turned away, looked back out as lightning streaked the sky. She felt the subtle shifting of the Aerokin, the way Pinch moved from a parallel path with the storm to a slightly westerly one.
Margaret said, “You didn’t look like you were having a bad dream.”
David sighed. “That’s Cadell. He and I have different opinions on what is good and bad.” He took another bite. “Tell me about your city, Margaret.”
“Funny, I was just–”
“I think I heard you call out in your sleep,” David said. “What was it like?”
And she did. Starting with great towers and the bells, the wireways webbing the city, and just how much like flying that was, only faster than an Aerokin, the air around you dark as night. The Four Cannon: the rhythm around which everything else was constructed. And then there were the caverns below, ever luminous, smelling of life, nothing like the frozen city above. Just talking about it made her ache.
“Sounds wonderful,” David said. “All I ever knew was rain, the smell of rot. The levee walls rising up and up. And everyone afraid that the Roil would come, that the levees would break, or the city just sink into the ground. Do you think there is a person alive in this world that doesn’t have a heart drowning in terror?”
“We all drown in something,” Margaret said.
“It’s all right,” David said. “We’re moving again. We'll do what we must.”
Yes, Margaret thought. Everything's all right. My parents are dead. My city is destroyed. Yes, everything is all right.
And maybe David saw that in her face, because he frowned and turned away.
“It’s all right,” he said once again, softly, as though to himself.
CHAPTER 19
Drift is everything that Shale aspires to. It's no wonder the bastards are arrogant, they're almost gods. Fly this, race this, lift this, they were always first and best, and quite frankly it was annoying.
They owned the blasted sky. Shame about what happened, none of us wanted that.
A Piece of a Pilot's Mind, Watson Rhig
THE CITY OF DRIFT
1400 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
They approached Drift in the early morning, coming at it through a band of clouds. There was nothing secretive about their arrival. Flares went up, there was a fury of flight, Aerokin boiling from hidden hangars, but it was the great edifice of Stone itself that drew the eye. A mountain reversed, flat on the top and jagged below, reaching to a great inverted peak.
Stone's great plateau was thickly forested: houses poked out of the woods, obscured and protected by the forest. And at their heart was a small oval field, by a broad lake that reflected both the clouds and Aerokin above. It was a tinier version of the Field of Flight, though Chapman had modelled their field on this one. And in its exact centre was a single tower, a long finger of stone which David knew was called the Caress. He had always wanted to see it, and now he had. Though part of him, the part in which Cadell resided, remembered seeing it many times.
The hangars were all below, on the hollowed-out cliffs of the plateau, but it wasn’t there the Aerokin was taking them. They flew towards the jutting tower of the Caress itself.
Pinch passed over the edge of the city, the shift from open sky to forest, grass, and buildings a dramatic one. The hard light of the sky seemed to soften, as it washed over hard earth. Guns tracked their progress, aimed squarely at the Pinch’s flotation sacks. David tried not to think about that too much. Beneath Pinch were a few farmhouses made of stone, smoke trailing from narrow chimney. David hadn’t expected such a rural setting.
As they headed towards the Caress, David looked down, the sky wasn't the only place that was crowded. A hundred people or more waited on the field below them. Some industrious folk had even started selling fried food on the periphery of the crowd.
“This feels wrong,” Margaret said, already walking back to the bag containing her weapons. “I told you it was a mistake to come here.”
David couldn't remember her saying any such thing.
“If Kara Jade says she needs our help, then she needs our help.”
Margaret snatched up a rifle. “And what hold does she have over you?”
“Nothing,” David said, with enough conviction to make it sound believable even to himself. “She saved my life, she saved both our lives. We owe her.”
Margaret wasn’t listening; she sighted down her rifle. “Nothing handier in a negotiation than a gun,” she said. “Except maybe a bigger gun.”
“Don’t you ever listen?” David put a hand on hers. “We are not to go in there, guns blazing.”
Margaret smiled. “You don’t know me very well, do you?”
David tilted his head towards her. “You know, you’re right. So, are you going to go in there, guns blazing?”
“Of course not,” she said, and even she thought she sounded convincing.
The first thing that struck her was the impossibility of it. Rock did not float, and here was a great mountain-sized chunk of it. Her eyes kept seeking out the land to which it was attached, but there was nothing of the sort. It moved in the air, through the air. Then she saw – at the centre of the city – the spire known as the Caress, its shadow reaching out over the buildings. It was said that you could tell time by it, and Margaret could believe that, even if it was the greatest sundial she had ever seen.
Drift's plateau extended at a slight gradient away from the Caress, ending on the steepest gradient of all. Young Aerokin floated and wrestled there, flagella tangling and releasing. And – from the slight excited shudders of the Aerokin that contained them – Margaret could tell it wasn't too long ago that this little craft had played there.
Looking down, Margaret was struck with the familiarity of the sight, and yet how utterly alien it was.
Here was the city of Drift, built on Stone, and yet it floated five thousand feet above the ground. Casting a great shadow over the ground beneath it. Clouds broke on its walls, or were torn apart by the jagged point of its base. Here was a mountain inverted, drifting in the sky.
All at once she understood the arrogance of the people that dwelled upon it.
How could you be anything but, when you had lived in the sky?
The air above it was carnival bright, Aerokin everywhere, in places dozens of them were entwined, an orgy of the sky perhaps, or some more arcane form of communication. Everywhere their bright carapaces gleamed. And beneath them Drifters flew on gliders and wings, chasing the heat. And she was reminded again, and painfully, of her home and the Sweepers that had patrolled the Steaming Vents.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” David said, not even trying to hide the awe from his voice. He almost seemed like the David she had first known. “No matter how many times you see it, it’s amazing. And I have never seen it from this angle. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget this moment.”
And, as if in response, the clouds parted and the sun’s light washed down over the city, and it shone like a great jewel from the point of the Caress to the tops of the hangars. A delicate jewel.
Margaret had seen such things deep in the belly of Tate, gypsum jewels that sho
ne in torchlight, but would splinter to the touch. Drift was like that. Frail as the Aerokin.
It’s all an illusion, she thought. Scintillating and bright, but so easy to end. She could think of a dozen ways that this city could be taken, even with as few as two iron ships. When the Roil came to this city, it would come fast and violently.
And her mood fell with that realisation, and she turned from the sight of the city, to check over her weapons once again. After all, they had no idea what they would face once they landed in the city.
“So much for a surprise arrival,” Margaret said. People down below were pointing. Larger weaponised Aerokin were drawing in.
“I suppose there was never going to be a way to arrive by stealth.”
“Yes, but I didn’t expect a reception either,” Margaret said.
David watched her, and Margaret grimaced at him.
She said, “Better to be prepared for betrayal.”
“Long way from the ground if we are betrayed, don’t you think? What will you do, if that’s the case?”
“Fall,” Margaret said. “If we have to fall, then fall we will.”
CHAPTER 20
The Mothers of the Sky, who hasn't wondered at their insight or their political control. No government has been more stable, nor, with the exception of two wars, (and that is two wars over six thousand years) more isolationist. What did they do? How did they rule? Truth is, we know little of it. Just that it worked, and worked for a people so contrary and wild. Nothing was arbitrary, nothing ill-considered, they ruled, and they ruled well.
Minions of the Clouds, Adsett
THE CITY OF DRIFT
1400 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
Pinch came down slowly in the field beside the great stony tower of the Caress, her flagella gripping landing pegs set out for her. David couldn’t help but gawp at the famous tower of stone, the tallest structure in Shale other than the Breaching Spire itself. Clouds tangled and tore on its edges. Clouds tore and tangled on everything up here.
The Drifters that waited below were delicate, and lean to a man and woman. David was easily three inches taller than the majority of them. They watched Pinch’s approach silently, and with a scrutiny that David found unnerving. Just what did they expect to come shambling out of the little Aerokin?
Most of the crowd wore frock coats and capes, with an occasional greatcoat similar to Margaret's. Pilots always dressed in a manner both gaudy and functional, rings gleamed from fingers, brass holsters shone. Their skin was brown like David’s. Margaret stood out even more here. In the light her skin was almost luminous. To the rear of the crowd stood men and women armed with rifles, part of some local militia.
Margaret had seen them too, of course; she was already charging her guns.
“Don’t be foolish,” David said.
“If we’re going to die–”
“If they had wanted us dead, Pinch could have hurled us into the sky at any time. The moment we got onto the roof, our lives were in the Drifters’ hands.”
“And we gave them so easily.”
Then David saw Kara near the front of the crowd; a woman, taller and older than the rest, stood beside her. David tried to work out her age, but couldn’t. A memory spiked within him. He felt his cheeks burn.
“What do you think they want?” Margaret said.
David stared at Kara's companion, tried to access memories that weren't quite his. “We’ve travelled all this way, I believe that they won’t waste too much time in telling us.” No luck, he turned to Margaret, motioned to her guns, then the bag of weapons. “Put them away. We're not here to fight. For goodness’ sake, those are meant to be our allies down there.”
“We're always here to fight. And David, we don't have any allies,” Margaret said, though she slid the rifle back into her bag. She did nothing about the other weapons that she had holstered around her waist.
David frowned at her.
“They can pry these off my dead body, if they wish, but that is the only way that I am ever giving them up.”
David walked to the fore of the Aerokin. The gondola’s doorifice opened for him, admitting the cool air of Drift. He said, “When you decide to die, please don’t take me with you.”
“If I die, at a time not my choosing,” Margaret said, “the whole world will go with me, you included.”
“We need to be very careful,” David said. “Don’t roll your eyes at me.” He buttoned down his cape. “And no destroying the world for a while yet.”
The crowd stood some distance from Pinch – no one coming forward. Indeed, they watched with less than welcoming eyes, until Kara cried out in greeting – the older woman, a Mother of the Sky perhaps, held back.
“David! Margaret! At last, at last, at last!” Kara flung her arms around David, then pulled away, face puzzled. “When did you grow so cold? You’re bloody freezing, cold as death.”
“I’m all right,” David said. “I’m fine.”
David could tell that the older woman wasn’t used to giving the lead to anyone else, and by the crowd’s reaction they weren’t used to seeing it given. Only Kara seemed remotely close to natural, her smile the least forced.
“We thought you were in trouble,” Margaret said, her bag rattling on her shoulder.
Kara looked at the guns holstered at her belt. “Oh – that, that was a misunderstanding.”
“Your letter seemed rather unambiguous,” David said.
Kara cleared her throat and looked away. “Politics is very changeable here,” she said, her voice low, her eyes flicking in the direction of the older woman. “Like the wind, truths shift.”
“Well,” David said. “Whatever the truth, it is good to see you.”
The older woman smiled at him, and once again David felt that familiarity. It was Cadell’s memory. He had shared a past with this woman. Images came to mind, sensations that weren't at all unpleasant. He knew this woman. Cadell had known her, and as intimately as the city. Her dark eyes regarded him steadily, and he felt a jolt run through his body that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
He could see the strength in her, and not just musculature – she was lean, her fingers long, almost delicate, though they moved with a force and a precision that was anything but. She reached out and touched his hand, and there was something electric in the contact. He wanted to pull his hand away only a little more than he wanted to pull himself in closer to her. He did neither, and still her gaze was fixed on him.
“Hello,” he said, his voice catching in his throat, but at least he’d managed to speak first.
“Welcome, David,” she said, her voice as calm as his thoughts were ragged. “I don’t believe that we have had the pleasure–”
“You know who am. Don't pretend otherwise, eh,” she said, and she laughed lightly.
And that familiar laugh thrilled him, in a way that was too unseemly. All at once he felt unsettled, unsure of himself. Who was he? David or Cadell? Could he even tell any more?
“I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce you,” Kara Jade said, and David wondered just what she was playing at. “This is Mother Graine, Air Mistress, and Senior Servant.”
“Servant?”
Mother Graine flashed him a smile. “We do not rule here, we serve.”
“The distinction is subtle, I’m sure,” David said.
Again she laughed that glorious and disconcerting laugh. “It always is, isn’t it? Just as it’s common courtesy to bow to a Mother of the Sky.”
“I’m not in the practice of bowing.” David nodded towards Margaret. “And don’t even bother expecting it of her.” It was Margaret’s turn to give him a look of warning. He hardly noticed it.
Mother Graine clasped her hands together, stared down at the Orbis Ingenium. “So it is you! The wolf in the clothing of such a dull child.”
David blinked. Perhaps he hadn’t taken enough Carnival that morning; it had been hard to administer while Margaret watched him. He gritted his teeth, he was going to fix that and
soon. “Not quite,” he said. “Cadell is buried deep.”
Mother Graine nodded, and what may have been disappointment passed across her face. “You are not nearly as annoying as he was,” she said at last. “That’s something at least. He'd have grabbed my hand and dragged me from this place, and we would have been fighting within a minute.”
“You haven’t been around him long enough,” Margaret said.
Mother Graine stared at her appraisingly. “My child,” she said. “I have known him longer than you could believe.” She clapped her hands for silence. And it worked. “Here are our guests. David Milde, lately of Mirrlees, and Margaret Penn of the Tate Penns, last of a line of thinkers – though you would not know it to look at her. We are blessed indeed to have them here. Bid them welcome one and all, let them enjoy our city’s hospitality. For they will not be here long, and where they are going will require strength and bravery beyond anything that either has known.”
“We’ve much to talk about,” she said quietly, to the pair of them. “But not here. Not now.” She gestured to Kara. “Maiden Jade will see to your comfort. We will have a reception tonight, very informal, of course. Afterwards we will talk.”
She dipped her head once, and David bowed, stiffly. Mother Graine laughed. “Tonight,” she said, her eyes searching his face, and David worried that he was disappointing her. “Please, remember that you are welcome here.”
CHAPTER 21
The Mothers of the Sky were perhaps the most influential force in the history of Shale. Forget the Old Men, forget the Council. It was the Mothers that ruled, and they did so with subtlety and force.
Queens of the Air, Casagrande
THE CITY OF DRIFT
1400 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
Margaret couldn’t understand what was happening. They’d clambered off Pinch to see Kara Jade, safe and sound, both of them on edge for signs of betrayal, and now here David seemed to be flirting with a Mother of the Sky.
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