“Family,” he said. But too far away to be any help. He returned his gaze to the front of the gondola, keen to keep an eye on Last Look Jack, but found the huge spine had vanished.
“Went under a coupla seconds ago,” Loriabeth reported, tracking the muzzle of her rifle across the water. “Gone too deep to make out.”
Clay spent a fruitless few moments scanning the water, a hard, chilly certainty gripping his guts. “Is there any way to move this . . .” he began just before the sea exploded.
There was a moment of weightlessness, as if he were floating in a rain-storm, then he realised they had been cast into the air. Through the cascading water he saw sunlight glitter on blue scales before it caught a gleam from something large and yellow, something shot through with red veins surrounding a black slit. Eye to eye with Last Look Jack, he thought, doubting he would ever get to tell the story.
His limbs flailed as he fell, slamming into the water with enough force to dislodge the carbine from his grip. Although the sea had been heated sufficiently to melt the ice, it was still shockingly cold, birthing an instant flare of pain in his chest and head that threatened to drag him into unconsciousness. He could see his companions struggling in the water near by whilst the gondola sank a short ways off. The craft raised itself up on one end before sinking from view, leaving a diminishing patch of foaming water to mark its passing.
The huge spine circled the four of them at an almost leisurely pace for a few seconds then, as if sensing the cold was about to rob him of his prize, the Blue reared up out of the ocean. It rose to at least twenty feet above the surface, though most of its bulk remained hidden from view. Jack began to open his jaws then jerked as something impacted on his skull, producing a bright plume of blood. The monster turned towards the ship, a rattling growl of irritation issuing from his throat. Clay could see a tall, familiar figure in the Crow’s Nest, raising his longrifle for another shot. Jack, however, didn’t betray any particular concern as he once again lowered his massive head towards his prey, jaws opening wide and the haze of new-born fire rising from his gullet.
If there was ever the right time, Clay thought, his hand going to the vials around his neck. Thumbing the stopper from the vial of Blue heart-blood, he raised it to his lips and drank.
CHAPTER 52
Sirus
Veilmist calculated the total death toll resulting from the capture of Feros as amounting to just over forty-five thousand people, plus eight hundred drakes, mostly Reds and Greens. Despite predictions, fighting had been fiercest and most costly north of the port where Morradin’s forces met with well-organised, often savage resistance. The Protectorate Commander had taken the ruthless, if undeniably correct, decision not to reinforce the city itself following the assault on the harbour. Instead he consolidated his remaining forces atop the surrounding hills from where his artillery could pound the attackers with relative impunity, much to Morradin’s delight. “Always more satisfying to defeat a commander who knows his business,” he stated with uncharacteristic cheerfulness the morning after the initial assault. “No sport in it otherwise.”
It required a complex assault by air and land over the course of two days to take the hills, a victory that yielded barely three hundred prisoners, and most of those wounded. Even then the fighting wasn’t over.
The Carvenport refugees used the time purchased by the Protectorate’s stand to construct a redoubt amidst their cluster of hovels. Commanded by a man named Cralmoor, and assisted by a small coterie of Blood-blessed, the makeshift fort managed to fight off a dozen assaults before being overrun by a massed charge of Greens. In the aftermath it became clear that this had been a delaying action designed to allow the refugees’ children to escape. A rag-tag fleet of fishing-boats and small steamers had set sail from a fishing-port a few miles up the coast whilst the battle raged. The White seemed indifferent to the escape of so many and the Blues were not sent in pursuit. Children were no use as soldiers after all.
More useful were the prisoners taken at the headquarters of the Ironship Syndicate, yielding numerous senior managers with heads full of valuable intelligence and two members of the Board itself. Of the three other Ironship Board members known to be in Feros during the attack, two had died in the fighting and the third committed suicide rather than face capture. He had been a large bearded man who somehow contrived to keep his pipe in his mouth even after blowing his brains out with a revolver.
In all the White’s army had lost over half its strength, losses that might have crippled a human force, but the surviving residents of Feros provided ample reinforcements. The conversion process was much more protracted than in the Isles. So many captives required days of close guarding before they could be forced to take their turn at the crystal. Riots and escape attempts were common, particularly amongst parents desperate to find their vanished children. Sirus had been assiduous in ensuring the slaughter of the infants took place far from the sight of the adults, aware such a spectacle might produce a riot no amount of cruelty could contain. Instead the children were crowded together in a valley beyond the northern hills and left for the sport of the drakes, the White’s dreadful brood taking particular delight in such easy prey.
Throughout it all Sirus kept a corner of his mind open for any report of a strange, balloon-like craft seen flying away from the city during the first attack. So far it seemed that if any Spoiled had witnessed such a thing the knowledge had died with them.
Come with us, she had said. Sirus believed this may have been the only occasion where she genuinely seemed to want his company.
The sight of Katrya’s slumped, lifeless corpse also lingered in his mind. Was I her Tekela? he wondered in quieter moments, thinking how much he wanted to claw his way into his own past and make a different future for both of them.
He was at the docks overseeing the conversion of the last few hundred captives when lookouts on the eastern shore reported the approach of a ship. Sirus began to order one of the patrolling frigates to intercept the intruder but stopped at a sudden command from the White. No, it told him, Sirus sensing an eager anticipation beneath the thought. It seemed that whatever was coming was expected.
He went to the outer mole and ordered the harbour door raised. The tide was low enough that it posed little danger but they had kept the door lowered since the city fell lest any escapees attempt to steal a ship. The White’s fleet now stood at fifteen frigates and six cruisers plus a number of smaller craft and several civilian freighters. They would all be very useful in the months ahead.
Sirus watched smoke rise on the eastern horizon as the ship steamed closer, his inhumanly keen eyes revealing her as a mid-sized two-paddle passenger liner. She seemed to him to be in a poor state of repair, the hull streaked with smoke and cast-off waste, a tangle of flags and ropes hanging from her single mast. The SSM Northern Star, he read as the ship came fully into view. A corporate vessel.
The liner steamed towards the harbour mouth at an excessive speed, forcing her to reverse paddles in order to make her way beneath the door. Sirus could make out the dim shape of the helmsman behind the besmirched glass of the wheel-house, but the only other passenger was a tall young woman standing on the fore-deck. He walked along the mole as the liner entered the harbour, keeping pace with her as she steamed towards the wharf. The young woman wore a ragged dress of some kind, torn and scorched in places to reveal much of her body, though she exhibited no sign of concern at her near nakedness. The woman’s gaze roamed the harbour and docks, a fierce expectant scrutiny on her face as she searched for something. Sirus saw the scrutiny turn to outright, unalloyed joy as a large shadow swept across the harbour.