"With the Spires, doing anything could result in another release of dust or…or anything else the Moths consider a suitable reprimand. Endangering hundreds of thousands of people who only need to wait two years to be safe. And every time I hear Pan or Emily say All for one, and one for all I wonder how that will work if one of us is possessed. Everyone here wants to do something in the abstract, but to get anywhere, to find a way to fight them, we’re going to have to gamble everything."
"Have you stopped trying to find a way, then?" Madeleine asked softly.
"No."
"Are we ready to actually do anything?"
"No."
She shook her head. "I’ve been around Pan too much, and all his dramatic speeches – it makes me want to try one. I feel so strange and unlike myself, possibly the least social person on the planet suddenly part of this group of people which can seriously consider the Three Musketeers' motto as something which fits us. But yesterday none of us ran. We all held together and fought, because we are…we’ve become more than just people in the same place, trapped by circumstance. If any of us comes up with a plan, we’ll think hard about what we mean to do, and then we’ll all face the consequences of fighting back."
"Together." He sounded sad, exhausted. Then briskly stood, lifting the icepacks away. "That should be enough. I’ll go kick a few people out of the way so you have room to lie on your stomach."
He went upstairs, and Madeleine trailed up to change her shirt, wondering if she’d helped at all. And if her imagination was running overtime or, as he turned away, he’d brushed a finger across the nape of her neck, just below the knot of her hair.
Chapter Fifteen
Sinuous bodies wove a mid-air ballet, so beautiful and strange that Madeleine could not help but sit spellbound as the pair of dandelion dragons twined a pas de deux between bridges and skyscrapers.
Machine gun fire rose, a rat-tat accompaniment which sparked a new form of dance. Dipping, twisting, wildly joyous: driven by countless wings in a madcap obstacle race mere handbreadths above rooftops, from air-conditioning plant to scaffolding and fire escape. It was so obviously a gleeful game, exultant and playful, that its culmination in a tumbling human figure made her gasp in protest.
"Where is it this time?"
Madeleine started. At nearly two in the morning, she still had an hour to go on intruder watch. Judging by his hair-on-end, rumpled and cross appearance, Min had simply given up trying to sleep.
"Pittsburgh," she said, as a rifle began firing.
"Pointless." Min sniffed disparagingly at the gunshot punctuation.
"They did hurt one once."
"And what did that achieve? A glowing thing spitting up its load of dust in the middle of the street." He shook his head, then crossed to the patio door and slid it open despite the chill, kneeling in the entrance to light incense before the statue he’d placed just outside.
The reprimand had begun the day after the Rio de Janeiro challenge, late night Sydney time, and dawn on the east coast of the United States. The many-winged flying serpents which served as air transport for Mothed Blues had appeared in numbers, and flown riderless to the non-Spire towns and cities nearest to Washington. The first sighting had been at a large hall housing Washington refugees, where one dandelion dragon simply thrust its enormous head through upper windows and vomited a great gout of dust over hundreds of sleeping families.
Two weeks after the appearance of the Spires, small outbreaks of stain had occurred in countless non-Spire towns and cities, and breathing masks were ubiquitous, some even managing to sleep in them. But it had been established that the Conversion could infect through contact with eyes, and masks could only do so much for those who woke coated in dust. Even when people stayed home, when there were no convenient large groups for the dragons to target, the increased concentration of dust had soon led to thousands of new cases of Blue-Green. The sheer manoeuvrability of the dragons, and their relative indifference to sprays of bullets, made them almost impossible to stop.
"I think we can safely say that the chances of anyone else trying to shoot a Spire have dropped into the not worth betting on range," Min said, standing and sliding the door shut. "There been any let-up in numbers?"
"No." Almost thirty hours in, a new attack was still being reported roughly every hour.
"Coffee? Damn, this milk is still solid." Min thumped down the carton Madeleine had taken out of the freezer an hour ago, making dishes rattle, then sighed. "Green tea?"
"No thanks. I guess I should go to bed," Madeleine said, but didn’t move, wondering if she should be worried. Min was usually very even-tempered. "Would it offend you if I asked what you pray for each morning?"
"Mostly for my brothers to be reborn as slugs in a salt mine," Min said flatly. "Oh, they deserve it, don’t worry. I’m virtuous by comparison. Normal." He gave her a sardonic look. "The contrast works the other way here, among you would-be heroes trying to do the right thing, all caution and common sense. No-one’s even gotten into the liquor cabinet. Noi’s planning this surprise birthday party for Pan, yet thinks it’s a bad idea for us to cut loose."
"Alien invasions aren’t exactly the time to get drunk."
"If there was ever a time to get drunk, alien invasions are it. We could lock ourselves in the study first, and let Millie play lookout. But you all insist on being so dull and supportive with your musketeers and your stick-together attitude. I keep expecting to find the lot of you sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya."
"You’ve been singing along with us, Porthos," Madeleine pointed out, relieved because Min’s tone had lightened, growing amused rather than acidic.
"Just humouring the natives," he said, but smiled. "I started at Rushies with no interest whatsoever in acting. But it’s hard not to get caught up, and a little addicting playing Spy, Turncoat, Hero. Very elaborate lies, just my kind of thing. You, however, are totally transparent, especially when trying to cheer people up. Go to bed."
Uncurling, she headed upstairs to the lamp-lit library. Fisher’s favourite place was the window seat, and she wasn’t surprised to see him still awake, but it was unusual for him to be gazing steadily out the window instead of reading.
"Is there something out there?"
He turned his head, making one of his unhurried studies of her.
"Take a look."
It was an unremarkable exchange, but Madeleine instantly filled with a total awareness of him, tucked snugly in a corner of the seat, a book set on one raised knee, posture relaxed, weary smudges beneath his glasses. She would have to lean across him to see in the direction he’d been looking, and the way he kept his attention on her as she hesitated, and then slowly approached, made her extraordinarily conscious of her hair falling loose from its usual knot, and the cheap, rumpled tracksuit hiding almost all her stars.
One knee on the edge of the seat, she rested a hand on the sill, leaned forward and saw…light. A pathway dancing across the black sheet of the bay, leading to a low, heavy moon sinking into the horizon.