Выбрать главу

Skip gestured to the group, and we fell into a loose line, bracketed by the four Erlkin.

Dean grabbed my arm and leaned close enough that his lips were against my ear. “When he asks—and he will—you and I met somewhere that didn’t involve guiding, you’re here because your brother got you mixed up in a scheme, and for the love of all that’s iron, don’t mention the Fae stuff unless you want your head hung out as a warning to anyone else who’d wander into the Mists. Got it?”

“Got it,” I murmured, keeping my eye on the back of Skip’s head. Dean had made it evident there was no love lost between Fae and Erlkin, but I had the sinking impression that I’d gotten into a swamp much deeper and more dangerous than I could have conceived. I wasn’t as good a liar as Dean or Conrad, and I couldn’t lie inside my own mind at all—I was scared of what we’d find when we reached this Windhaven, whatever it was.

“Knew you’d catch on, princess,” Dean muttered, and brushed a kiss against the top of my ear before he let go of me.

I put aside the way his touch made my thoughts jiggle out of alignment. It wasn’t the time for crushes and weak knees, even if I wanted nothing more than to have everything be right again, and my biggest concern to be what to wear on a date with Dean, a real one with no Proctors and no specter of their lie. I raised my voice instead and spoke to Skip.

“Where are we going?”

“Windhaven,” he said. “And to get to Windhaven, we’re going to fly.”

3

The Dance of the Air

WE WALKED PERHAPS half a mile, to a clearing down a gravel path off the main road. Skip and his friends kept in tight formation around us. I found it a bit ludicrous—they had no idea who the real threat was. Conrad, presumably, had a Weird like I did, some kind of elemental magic that allowed the Graysons to conjure wind and flame and everything in between. But he had never shown it to me, and I hadn’t brought it up.

It’d be much better if Skip kept thinking of Conrad as criminal but basically harmless, just a stupid human overstepping his bounds. This goal in mind, I walked with my head down, the same ache in my feet that had been there all day twinging in my worn-out boots.

“There’s going to be a weight issue,” said Skip’s short friend. “The dirigible wasn’t built for nine. Or more like ten, including the portly dame.”

“Excuse you!” Bethina snapped. “I’m not an ounce overweight!”

“You’re too heavy for the sky,” Skip said bluntly. “That’s just simple math.”

“Better than being a walking cadaver, like some of us,” I piped up. Skip looked at me, then at Dean.

“Keep a gag on your girlfriend, Deano, unless you want me to do it for you.”

Dean looked at me and, no doubt seeing the murder in my eyes, brushed his hand against mine. “Not the time,” he muttered.

I took a deep breath and then leaned a bit closer to him, so that the sides of our hands stayed in contact as we walked. Dean caught my eye again and gave me a sideways smile.

“You three can walk back to the pickup zone,” Skip told the other Erlkin. “I’ll stay with the prisoner.”

“That’s fifteen miles!” his friend protested.

“You don’t like it, go live in the woods with the slipstreamers,” Skip snapped. “You have your orders.”

We came within range of the dirigible, and surprise made me stop and stare. Far from the metal-walled zeppelins I was accustomed to, the Erlkin’s dirigible looked like it shouldn’t fly at all. It consisted only of a metal cage slung under a balloon with bronze-colored ribs holding it in place, the red skin of the balloon rising and falling like the sides of a sentient creature.

The cage looked delicate, the wire thin and woven intricately, and Skip opened the retractable door with a crank handle. “Get in,” he ordered, shoving Conrad. My brother fell to the floor of the cage, and Skip kicked him hard in the gut.

“Hey!” I shouted, lunging for Skip. Dean grabbed me by the sweater and yanked me back.

No, Aoife,” he hissed through gritted teeth. I struggled against him for a moment before going still. I’d always had a temper, and it was coming out more and more now that I didn’t have the admonition to be a “proper young lady” hanging over me, as I’d had at the Academy. I gave Skip the worst look I could muster, but I smoothed my hands over my skirt and stood down.

“I’m fine,” I told Dean. “He’s not worth it.”

“You’re a firecracker,” Skip sneered. “Time was, Dean knew just what to do with a girl like you.”

I crouched next to Conrad, cradling his head in my lap as Skip got Cal and Bethina on board and reeled in his mooring lines. “Bastard,” I said to him, stroking my brother’s hair. Seeing Conrad hurt brought back the old feelings, the feelings of the girl who’d do anything for her strong, loyal brother. Conrad coughed weakly.

“I’m fine, Aoife,” he said. “We’ll get this fixed. Just a misunderstanding.”

Once we’d all boarded, the craft rose from the forest floor with a bump. I looked at the ground drifting away below my feet and tried to focus on the construction of the Erlkin’s craft to still my temper and the fear that once we reached Windhaven, we’d be in even worse trouble. The cage was made of fine silver mesh and iron bones that echoed in the wind, giving an empty bong when I tapped my knuckle against it. Hollow bones, like a bird’s, light and strong. The Erlkin were better engineers than the Fae, that was for sure. The Fae feared anything with moving parts, treated it like it was some object from beyond reason if it mimicked their magic in any way.

Except I was in an iron cage, and even now I could feel it pressing on my mind, stirring in my blood and bringing on light-headed fits.

I tried to breathe, to think of orderly numbers and figures, the physics that allowed us to rise from the ground and drift above the treetops. Tried not to think of my dreams or my mother, as impossible as that might be.

“How far?” I asked Dean.

“Not much longer,” he announced. “The faithful of the fold never venture too far from Windhaven. Isn’t that right, Skip?”

Skip said nothing, just kept his hand lightly on the rudder of the dirigible, until we were far enough off the ground that all I could see were the tops of trees, rising through the fog like the blackened fingers of dead hands.

“Not far now,” Skip said, but his tone didn’t fill me with hope.

When Windhaven came into view, it wasn’t a sight that anything in my life, including my visit to the Thorn Land, the home of the Fae, had prepared me for.

The fog parted like the sea before the prow of an old-fashioned ship, and I saw gleaming towers of iron suspended high above the ground.

The distinctive burnt-paper scent of aether reached my nostrils, and as Windhaven got larger, I realized it wasn’t merely suspended—the entire city was flying along before us, moving above the Mists like a great raven casting its shadow across the ground. Iron didn’t poison the Erlkin, I knew—Dean had been just fine spending his life in an iron city surrounded by machines. Good for Dean and the Erlkin. Bad for Conrad and me. My stomach dipped along with the craft.

As we drew closer, I saw that Windhaven’s structures were built on an oval platform supported at the thinnest and widest points by giant fans whirring so loudly that even now, hundreds of yards off, they overwhelmed my ears. At the base of the city a giant aether globe hung by flexible cables, supplying Windhaven with light and communications. It looked small as a marble, or a twinkling star in a vast sky, against the grand scale of the flying city.

A mass of radio aerials flew from the highest tower at the apex of the buildings, which were largely curved but didn’t look as if they’d come together in any particular order. It was, for lack of a better description, a flying scrapyard, albeit one held aloft by engineering that made me dizzy with its genius.