Beasts of the Walking City (30 page)

But the Sister will not budge. Carefully, the pilot engages more and more of the ship’s power. The nets pull taut and the ropes strain nearly to breaking, and still we’re not moving.

“We’ll need more ropes,” I say. “Stronger netting. And another strong ship, too.”

Semper puts two fingers to his knife. Soon we’re joined by the largest of the podships. It maneuvers in as close as it can, but with the overhanging ledge and the other ship roped close in to the Sister, it can’t get close enough for the crew to throw the netting.

I tell the pilots I’ll climb across, and I work my way out onto the ropes. They’re thick, taut, and close together, but they’re still wet. 

I try not to look down.

When I reach the Sister I climb across the netting and steady myself against the ledge overhead. I grab the nets from the other ship’s crew and work to drape them around the bulk of the relic, and then to tie them securely to the large lines from the ships. As I reach around underneath to untangle some of the netting there, a stretch of my inner arm brushes against the bare metal of the Sister, and shock of aether, like a blast from a knife, travels through me and makes all my hair stand on end. I’m thrown up against the spire from the impact, and I almost lose it. I have to scrabble crazily at the ropes and nets to keep from plunging head first onto the water below.

I feel the collar at my neck go very hot and then rapidly very cold, colder than the chill water below. 

Then the world of aether washes over me.

Hanging there, I’m overwhelmed. I’m swimming in the river of the lei line and then there’s the huge, spinning, throbbing complexity of the Sister that fills up the air around me. It’s like holding on to the sun. The Sister overwhelms everything else in my mind, blocking out the noise of the sea, the wind and the spray of salt, the podships hovering just out of reach, the mages within them, as though it’s the only thing in my world.

All I can do is hang there for a few minutes and catch my breath.

I shake myself, secure the nets, and gesture the second podship to back away until the lines are taut and then I check everything again to make sure everything remains intact. 

Just like two tractors moving a great big rock, I think. 

Then I climb across the lines to the hold of the second podship.

“Try it now,” I tell the pilot. The man nods, signals back to the first ship, and the two engage their engines. The lines begin to vibrate and the nets creak. The pilots rev up their engines in tandem, and barely, just barely the head begins to move. It pulls slowly away from the cliff, and then as we move out over the ocean we slowly pick up speed.

But when the pilots try to turn in toward the launching bays on the Mercy, we almost collide. The head continues on in the direction we’d been flying with it’s own heavy inertia. The lines go slack and then tighten again as the Sister passes the ships in midair. The pilots look across at each other, panicked, and then they’re scrambling to try to keep their ships from colliding as we’re taken along for the ride.

A rope snaps, and then another. 

The first ship is pulled sharply up and swung around behind the head, and I can see Semper spread-eagled on the deck with his eyes closed, an expression of utter horror on his face and his lips moving as they whip by us. 

I grab onto handholds and then the larger ship is flipped and spun after it. 

We’re trailing along after the head like two tails of a kite

It’s a close thing, but the podships don’t collide. The pilots catch and level the ships, engage the engines to slow the Sister, and then slowly bring it back down to the loading deck of the
Mercy
. Once it’s there, we hover nearby to watch, and all of us cluster by the open hold. Servants go to work, fussing and chirping at each other. A crane is brought up from below. Kruk carpenters start to build a thick wooden frame around the head to hold it in place, and four Tel Kharan marines in full armor take up positions around the Sister. More and more people from the upperdecks come out to see the Sister, until there are hundreds of them all craning their necks for a view of it.

I'm sure Nadrune would want me down there for a photoshoot, but I stay with the ship as it heads back to the launching bay, and shake hands with the pilot, who seems like a decent human. The smaller ship follows us in, and when it touches down I walk over and stick my head in. “Are you all right?”

Semper’s legs are shaking, and his skin tone is still very white, whiter than I’ve seen most humans get while they’re still alive. His long hair is all tangled about him, and beads of sweat cover his face. I help him step into the landing bay, and catch him when his legs give out. I sit with him up against the smaller ship while he catches his breath.

The pilots and crew head out of the landing bay into the deeper part of the ship without speaking to the engineers, who stand silently in a line while the mages exit. No love lost, there. Then the engineers approach the two ships with grim expressions on their faces. They rope them down to mooring hitches, unfasten the combat netting from the hulls and begin to examine them in detail, calling out at any dent or smoke-scar they find. The other ships have already been tied down from the earlier battle.

All save my ship, which seems a little weird to me.

Gravhnal is there, though, polishing up a piece of the aft plating where a long dark streak from an energy burst has blackened it.

Gravhnal notices me watching him, then, and he stops polishing to look at me strangely, tilting his head from one side to the other. He points to me, then to the podship, and then to his wrist, where he’s still wearing Mircada’s bracelet. 

He’s not very subtle about it.

I look around. The ships are all unguarded. None of the other engineers are paying attention. Most of the city-ship is probably either up at the Sister by now or watching broadcasts of it via the knife. 

Gravhnal makes his eyes comically wide, waves me over, and points again to the ship in an exaggerated way, and I see it silently lift a bit into the air, hovering. I gesture that I need a minute.

Semper’s color is slowly changing as blood flows back into his face. “My first flight was on a ship smaller than this one,” I say, with forced casualness. “It was several years ago, and a few of us were headed into the mangrove swamps around Tamaranth against a number of assassins we’d heard had been sent in to get the Chancellor by the Grohmn-Elite. We were flying low to the tree line in the dark, with no lighting and some strung-out Halfromen for a pilot who was flying with his feet. We thought we had a location on a group of them, and were coming in close, when this gigantic bird burst up in front of us? I’d never seen anything like it before—it was big and red, with stripes of black across its wings, four long talons and a great beak. It bounced off the nose of the podship and came straight in through the viewport, which had no screening, into the cabin with us, hitting the pilot straight in his brain-casing and knocking him unconscious. None of the rest of us could fly, of course, and the ship ploughed down into the trees and ended up nose down in water and mud. The pilot ended up hanging from a tree from his support harness. I ended up head-down in a thicket of ferns, and some Councilor from Tamaranth had to pick us up in her own private yacht.”

“That’s inspiring,” Semper says.

“Most flights seem easy to me now.”

“They would have to.” Semper looks around him, and seemed to take in his surroundings. “This was my first flight, you know.”

I laugh. “I’m sure no one noticed.”

Semper grimaces. “I think I can stand now.”

“You’re feeling better? You’re certain?”

“Yes. Though some sleep will be most welcome.”

“Then I’m really sorry about this, my friend,” I say. 

I reach across his chest, and pluck his knife out of his sheath. It’s tiny, a scholar’s tool, but it opens up all of the
Mercy’s
power to me. I draw aether up through the floor and let it fill me, breathing deeply, and everything suddenly seems sharper and more urgent. All the exhaustion I’d had from being awake through the night is gone.

The expression on Semper’s face moves quickly from shock and surprise to something like disappointment.

“Don’t,” he whispers. “You can’t stand against her. You must know that. If you stop now, no one will have to know. She needs you, Blackwell, even more than she thinks she does.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “I don’t make a very good pet.” I slip the knife in between my neck and the collar and concentrate. The collar cracks apart, and falls to the deck at Semper’s feet.

I reach down and help him up. “Be well,” I say.

Semper sighs. “I
will
see you again, my friend.”

Then I sprint for the podship. Gravhnal sees me coming, drops the cloth he was using to polish with and urges me on. “They’re already inside!” he says. “You must hurry!”

“They?” I say. But I’ve got no time to hear his answer. The podship has already lifted into the air and is headed out over the water, and I have to jump for the ladder that is still hanging from the hatch.

I hook my arm into a rung, and look back to the
Mercy
where Gravhnal and Semper stand watching me from the open landing bay. I raise my hand to them as the ship turns, and both of them wave back. The ship crosses back over the deck of the
Mercy
and I can look down onto the Sister below. 

Would it actually have spoken to me if I’d stayed? I’ll never know, now. I'll admit I'm a little disappointed, but I can live with that. 

I begin to climb the few rungs to the hatch when Ercan’s head appears over the edge and looks down at me.

“Where in Dekheret’s name did you come from,” Ercan said, in mock surprise.

“I am a creature of legend!” I call back up.

“You’ve come to steal my dreams?”

“Just your ship.”

Ercan barks that laugh of his. “Well, you’d better come aboard then.” He reaches down a hand. I take it and climb up through the hatch.

“Your distraction worked even better than mine,” Ercan says. “Nice going.”

“Those were your ships? That skirmish?”

Ercan nods. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, and a tired slump to his shoulders. “It wasn’t cheap, either. If I knew you were bringing over a whole new Sister, I could have saved a bit of cash.”

“Is Mircada with you?” I try unsuccessfully to keep the anticipation out of my voice.

“Mircada?” Ercan raises one eyebrow, and then shook his head. We start up the corridor toward the control room. “No. We need to talk about Mircada,” he says. “And that drone of yours, when we have a chance.”

“Kjat? You found her? How is she?”

“See for yourself.” I see a Kruk at the controls, and the flicker of many of the displays now lit up, and then one of the chairs turns around and it’s Kjat.

If Ercan looks tired, she looks utterly wrecked. 

Her eyes are dark and sunken, her dark skin is drawn and haggard. She hugs herself with arms that are cut up, covered in makeshift bandages, and she hunches forward, slowly rocking back and forth like there’s some terrible weight on her shoulders.

“Chief,” she says, in a neutral tone. “Blackwell.” There’s a tic in her face that makes her left eye twitch. “I’m glad you’re all right.” 

She brushes a black feather off of her lap, stands, and then rushes forward impulsively and wraps her arms around me. She lets out a great sigh of air as she holds me.

“Kjat,” I say. “It’s wonderful to see you again. You look like you need a drink,” I say. “Maybe a couple.”

She grins then, and nods. “You got that right.” 

But I notice the grin doesn’t make it to her eyes. As she steps back, I see there are new tattoos all over her face and arms that weren’t there in the Framarc town. I can’t imagine what she’s been through.

The ship gives a sudden lurch, then, and we all stumble and grab on to something. 

Then it picks up speed and altitude, lifting above the last of the rocks in the Devil’s Grip, and it flies us high over the sea toward where Tamaranth lies on the horizon now, glittering like a necklace of slick black pearls.

III: Tamaranth

28.

“I
’m getting something,” Fehris calls from the corner. He sits on an overstuffed chair that is too tall for him, and his feet jut straight out into the air like a child’s—one with a cast on it, one without. He’s got his shoe off the good foot, and I can see his brown toes are webbed. Really, he’s like some sort of glowing-eyed, half-otter. I’ve never seen someone else like him. He holds a knife absently in one hand while flipping through a large, heavy book that’s covered in illustrations and text. Most of the illustrations I catch a glimpse of are of the rose, and of Tilhtinora being lifted into the air.

I’m standing out on the terrace, staring into a telescope there. Kjat is pacing restlessly in the courtyard. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. No, wait. Lost it. Hang on.” He sets down the knife to sneeze into his hand, and for the tenth time wipes it on the chair’s arm. When he sneezes, his fur all stands on end and crackles with static. 

He picks up the knife again. “No, lost it.”

I sigh. It’s been three days since we landed at Ercan’s house, up in the cliffs above the Old City. Three days of monitoring knife transmissions about the Akarii attack, and waiting for Kerul to make up their minds on what they want to do about it. “Do you need me to take it?”

“I’ve got it.” He shuts the book. “It’s amazing that someone can write such a heavy book and say absolutely nothing new.” 

He sighs. We’re all frustrated. Ercan’s place is this large, renovated Flowermech mansion that sprawls up a cliff on a ridge that overlooks the Old City. It’s got a lot of curving, glassy domes grown from some fibrous material that was apparently as hard as stone, all of them intersecting and overlapping in geometric ways resembling the petals of a flower. Different domes were at different elevations, and tall banks of windows like the eyes of insects opened out onto different gardens and terraces. It was all furnished with classic pieces and artwork, and it was all empty except for the Krukkruk staff. There’s nothing from Earth in it at all, and after everything on Nadrune’s ship I’m just great with that.