Dust and grit whirled, and pieces of the airship tumbled in the plaza. Most of the lamps that had lit the space were out, but a few were bouncing around like terrified lightning bugs. Weird shadows capered after them, but the whole scene was oddly silent except for a kind of long throbbing note. Keir helped Leal Maspeth to her feet, and although her lips were moving, she wasn't making any sound.
His dragonflies had been scattered, but they could still see; and he realized that their vision was much better than that of his own eyes. He sent a couple through the dust to check if any of the plaza's entrances had collapsed, and shot another one up and up to loft finally out of the spiraling cone of dust.
Another red spark appeared, and in the flash of its birth he glimpsed the thing that had fired it: a cylindrical craft of some kind, its prow narrow and surmounted with an ornate ram. On its sides and at its rear were engines of some sort, all pointed down and laboring to keep it aloft.
It fired a third missile. "Come on!" Keir pushed and hauled Maerta and Leal in the direction of the nearest stairwell. They came readily enough and all three made it into the archway just before the second missile hit. This time, as the flash happened, they crouched as one and braced themselves.
This time it was scry that he saw first. The Renaissance was lighting up with frantic messages and queries. They all boiled down to one question: What's going on?
"We're under attack!" he projected. "Some kind of airship."
Glyphs of astonishment and outrage flooded the air. Maerta, however, was projecting only confusion. As the shock of the second explosion passed, the three of them hurried farther down the stairs with Leal in the lead, and Keir saw that Maerta was flinging questions at her back. Maerta had forgotten that Maspeth didn't have scry.
They reached a landing. Though the walls shook to another thumping explosion, they seemed far enough away now to be safe. Maerta grabbed Leal by the shoulder and whirled her around. She was shouting, and past the buzz and pain in his ears, he faintly heard her words: "Who did you bring here?"
Leal shook her head and said something. Keir didn't hear the words, but her mouth shaped a name he recognized.
Loll.
Scry had done a head count, and nobody had been hurt. Except that, as Maerta pointed out, she, Keir, and Leal had damaged eardrums.
"Come up to the Hall," somebody said. "We'll fix you up."
Maerta shook her head. "Evacuate the Hall. One of these bombs would obliterate it. Everybody needs to get into interior corridors and rooms that are behind Aethyr's skin."
Leal was flailing around frantically. After a moment Keir realized that it was entirely dark down here; she couldn't see. Only he could, apparently, through his dragonflies. Keir grabbed her hands, and she shouted something. He made out the words "my people" behind the ringing drone.
"Does anybody know where the Virgans are?" he interjected.
The walls of Brink faded, replaced by a wireframe map where everybody's location was indicated. He tapped both of the women on their shoulders, then took their hands and began guiding them through blackness to the empty depths of the city.
* * *
THEY'D FUSSED AROUND her ears for a minute, and now Leal had something icy cold in each one. Her junk-doll was standing on tiptoe, its hand in the left canal, which felt simultaneously odd and comforting.
Running people and single-minded machines swirled around her as she sat on a crate that had just been brought into this long chamber. Keir's people looked panicked, but they acted in perfect synchrony, stacking supplies in precise locations, avoiding one another with uncanny accuracy. Piero Harper and the other Virgan airmen looked calm, but they were all over each other in their attempt to get organized.
"How do you hear now?" asked the junk-doll. Surprisingly, the ringing had stopped.
"Uh, fine. It's like normal." The ice seemed to be penetrating deep into her skull, twin spikes on either side. She felt they should be visible, like antennae or headlamps.
Piero knelt down and looked at her with concern. "You're sure you're okay?"
"She will be fine, thank you," said the doll. Leal couldn't help but smile.
"Was it Loll? Did you see?"
She shook her head. "It was too dark. But it must have been. Though I didn't think Abyss had ships that could come so deep into gravity..."
"They've had time to experiment. Probably just clamped extra engines onto something until it stayed up. But," he added, glancing up at the stone ceiling, "I doubt they can land."
"They don't have to. They can pummel the city into dust from above."
He stood up again. "I don't think they can. Or will. Listen." Now that she could hear, Leal realized that the only sounds she heard were from the people and machines here. The assault had stopped, at least for the moment.
"If it's Loll, he knows he don't have to kill us," Piero said. "He's sending a message, to you."
She had to nod. And she knew what the message was: The door to Virga is closed.
"He'll have spun some story about being the only survivor. I bet we're all dead, or the emissary's taken over our bodies. But would he go so far as to strand his own countrymen down on the plains?"
"If he can convince the Guard to give up on rescuing them?" Piero snorted. "In a heartbeat. Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but I never trusted him. Why did we bring him along?"
She sighed wearily. "Because we're compassionate people, I guess. It's a flaw."
Leal stared at the polished floor, where maybe no human feet had trod before hers. She gradually became aware that the others were gathering around. She looked up and did a count; nobody else was missing, at least.
"We can't go back, can we, ma'am?"
She opened her mouth to agree, the words like stones in her heart--and then saw Keir Chen walk by in the background.
Leal stood up. "Not that way," she agreed.
"But there may be another.
"Keir!"
7
"REEL IN THE hulls!" shouted Jacoby Sarto. He turned to Antaea Argyre, his face only half-visible in the light of the few oil lanterns that hung from the ship's rigging. "I'm turning off our gravity. It's safer at this point."
She nodded. Behind Jacoby, the crew was hulking silhouettes, their half-seen hands reaching up to clutch and drag at the gravity ropes.
Antaea heard a quiet clatter--Jacoby's teeth chattering--and she smiled. "Finding winter too cold for you, Jacoby? You're from the principalities, after all." Her breath fogged as she spoke.
They stepped down from the railing as Jacoby's ship, the Torn Page of Fate, began to sway. Half a mile overhead, the faint lights of the ship's other hull faded in and out of view as clouds obscured it.
"Time for the winter gear, I suppose," Jacoby agreed grudgingly. "I shall be back." She watched him walk to the forward cabin, bouncing slightly in the lowering gravity. Then one of the men shouted something and she turned and squinted, watching the airman's lips move as he held up a lantern.
"Ice!"
Antaea spun around in time to see a pale boulder, smudged with darkness and the size of a house, glide by off to starboard. Jacoby had given the order to draw in the hulls just in time.
She made her way to the bow, using her hands as much as her feet for purchase. Lines creaked overhead and the men began greeting their companions in the other hull, whom they hadn't seen in days.
They would be passing more icebergs soon enough--and perhaps, other things. When the first of the vast, dark lanterns had loomed out of the darkness, Antaea had half-believed it was a mirage. She'd spent her childhood and much of her adult life in these frozen regions, far from the light of civilized suns, and there should be no man-made constructions here--other than the walls of Virga itself.