“He’s not going to wake up,” Margaret said, pacing the cabin like a caged beast.
Kara Jade, after a few choice words concerning Margaret’s piloting skills, kept her eyes and her concentration on the controls.
Somewhere along the way, David fell asleep to nightmares of iron ships launching fire and screaming gulls being torn out of the air by hordes of Hideous Garment Flutes.
In the middle of the night someone shook him awake. David blinked, grateful to have escaped such dreams.
Kara smiled almost shyly at him.
“What’s wrong?” He rubbed at his eyes.
“Quick,” she said, pulling him up. “Quick or you’ll miss it.”
“What are you doing? Are we under attack?” He let her drag him to a currently translucent section of the gondola.
“Look,” she said, jabbing a thumb down at a wide break in the clouds.
Lights were scattered thickly on the ground beneath, a winding band of brilliance at least three miles wide, though from up here it looked scarcely broader than his wrist.
“What is it?” he asked. Then his voice caught in his throat: all that beautiful light.
At last he managed: “It’s Mirrlees, it’s home.”
Kara nodded. “Much prettier from on high, isn’t it? They say they modelled it on the stars in the sky, the spiralling arms of galaxies. Doesn’t look much like stars to me, but what do I know? I thought you might want a glimpse of your city.”
Homesickness swelled inside him, everything he had forced deep burst free. Tears ran down his face.
“Here,” Kara said, gently, handing him a bottle. “Have a belt of that.”
“What is it?” David asked.
“Drift rum, the good stuff. It’s our only export.”
He took a swig from the bottle and gasped as it burned its way down his throat. Belt was right!
“You export that?” He managed at last.
Kara gave him a look of mild amusement. “It grows on you, trust me.”
David nodded; his eyes still fixed on the city beneath them. Half a dozen Aerokin circled far below – military class, troop carriers – but even they could not spoil the vision.
Every time you see something you love, and you think it’s for the last time, it becomes perfect, painfully and utterly flawless. He stared and stared at that glittering perfection, at the crowded streets and the white scar of the stopbanks, and the great bulk of Downing Bridge until the clouds closed over again and there was no hint of the city ever having existed at all.
“Thank you,” he said.
Kara looked almost embarrassed.
“Seriously, nothing to thank me for,” she said staring down at her boots. “Just part of the service and all that. Now I better get back out there and check the ropes.”
“Be careful,” David said, staring at the side of her head, the hair there still sticky with blood.
Kara Jade’s left hand went up to the wound, almost touching it. She swung the hand away dismissively. “Take more than that to stop me looking after my Dawn.”
She slipped on a mask and went out into the night.
Margaret lay on one of the sleeping benches; legs curled up, watching David and Kara Jade, a slither of jealousy playing in her belly. She thought about her own city and the last time she had seen it. Images surged back of Chapman and its swift collapse. She had no desire to view another city from above unless it was Tate, whole and unaffected by the Roil.
Sometimes when Margaret slept she dreamt she was flying, hurtling over Tate, suspended on the wire way, wheels whistling, the wind racing around her. She would wake to a foreign place and a sadness that would almost destroy her: until the rage returned.
Not tonight.
She had laid her guns and swords out on the bed before her. Two of the pistols were faulty and she doubted they would fire again. The chemical combiners were low in another pair. She couldn’t see when she might have the opportunity to recharge them or repair the others; Kara Jade’s tools had proven inadequate to the task. Her rifle too was running a low charge. David was right; she had been reckless with her ammunition in Chapman.
It struck her then that weaponry was all she had left of Tate, as though that was all that Tate had ever been.
Such bitter tools had ensured her survival, even as they had failed to shield her from pain. When the guns were exhausted, shells and chemicals spent, only memories would remain. However, the Roil had transformed those as well. She could not close her eyes without seeing fire, the body of the Sweeper shattered and ruined on the ground outside her parents’ house, the fourth cannon exploding, its blazing demise the penultimate breath of a wounded city.
The Roil’s true horror was not in the monsters that populated it (they were just beasts after all) but what the Roil had done to Tate; what she dreaded it had done to her parents.
As terrible as it was, she wished her mother and father dead, for if they were not…
She looked over at David.
Make this a good memory, David. Hold on to it as tightly as you can. They may be the last good memories you ever have.
“David,” Cadell’s voice was weak, yet urgent. “Wake up.”
David blinked. How long had the Old Man been calling him?
He was beginning to doubt he would get any rest that night. He toyed with the idea of pretending to be asleep. Such a selfish thought shocked him; after all the Old Man had saved all their lives.
David rolled from the bunk, looked over at Margaret. She was asleep and Kara Jade seemed lost in conversation with the Dawn. He stumbled to Cadell’s bunk.
Cadell was even worse than before. His right eye had shut completely and raised black veins ran down the right side of his face. A yellow fluid wept from his left eye leaving a crust down Cadell’s cheek. He was dying, David could tell that, he had seen enough of death to recognise it.
Dying or not, Cadell managed a smile, lifted a hand and motioned for David to come closer.
“I want you to have this.” Cadell pressed the Ring of Engineers into David’s palm. “Just for a little while. I’ll take it back when I can. You know their real name don’t you?”
David nodded. “Orbis Ingenium.”
Cadell patted David’s hand. “Yes, the ring ingenious, it’s a map and a key, but it’s also a machine. Its workings are very intricate – universes of clockwork folded in on themselves. Look after it for me.”
David tried to give the Orbis back. He didn’t want it. He didn’t deserve it. “I can’t take the ring. It’s yours. You know what to do with it. Without you it’s only a fancy piece of jewellery.”
“And now it’s yours.” Cadell said, gently but forcefully. “When you reach Hardacre, Buchan and Whig will help you. Indeed they may well be happier that it is you not me that they will need. I think there’s a chance the Roil can be stopped. I’ve wielded the cold for a long time and always feared it. Perhaps, once you’re done, there will be an end to that fear.” Cadell coughed. He wiped at his lips with a handkerchief. It came back thick with blood. He looked at it a little startled. “Well, I never, even the minnows would have a hard time repairing that. I’m sorry, I’m talking in circles, I’m so terribly tired, David. And I have no wish to argue with you. Look after it for me. Put it on. Please indulge an Old Man.”
“Why me?” David asked.
“I’d like to say that it was your destiny, that you, the son of a Master Engineer, were born to this. But the universe doesn’t work that way. The universe doesn’t care what happens. But I do, we do, that’s what makes us special and terrible all at once. You’ve seen the Roil, you know it to your core. And you’re all I’ve got. You have to do this if Shale is to have any hope at all. There’s no one else. My brothers in war would stop you were they not in their cages. They would strip the flesh from your bones.” He lifted himself up with a groan. “And there is another reason,” his voice lowered, “I don’t trust Margaret and you shouldn’t either. She fled her city, and she might flee this, too. You’re the best choice, the only choice, and she can help you without a doubt, but rely on her only as much as necessary, and no more. Now, please, put on the ring.”