Foul Tide's Turning (33 page)

But none of it would come to pass if Cassandra remained far-called, rubbing goat-milk cream on her saddle sores in foreign parts with some barbarian chancer, however proud the rogue strode and however tall his largely self-authored exploits. She was beginning to wonder if Alexamir had indeed got caught or hopelessly lost, when a scraping came from outside the door as the bolt drew back. The nomad entered smoothly and closed the door behind him. He prowled to Cassandra, waiting on the side of her bed, and knelt down, inspecting her ankle chain. Alexamir pulled out a pair of thin iron rods from a leather pouch at his side and started to probe inside the keyhole. ‘A treasure is worth double when it is stolen. Did you know that?’

Cassandra prodded him in the shoulder with the dagger’s tip, but held back from drawing blood. ‘Beware, barbarian, this treasure is protected by a sharp-staked pit.’

‘All treasures worth the taking should be. Or where would the joy be in their theft?’

A clink sounded as the shackles fell to the floor and Cassandra rubbed the itching skin when she felt the cold air against her bare skin for the first time since she had arrived in Talatala.

‘We should be climbing down the mountain before my mischief makes itself known,’ said Alexamir.

‘Mischief?’

‘I left a fused pouch of gunpowder in a carpet-weaver’s shop,’ said Alexamir, looking exceptionally pleased with himself. ‘Sheep shearings and dyes burn most splendidly, and guards passing water buckets are too hard-pressed to notice a golden fox descending the slopes of Talatala.’

Cassandra groaned. ‘Better we departed quietly at night and left the town sleeping. One of my captors is Kerge, a twisted forest dweller … a gask. Gasks possess a homing sense they can use to follow people they’ve spent time with. I suspect that is how the skyguard tracked me down before.’

‘I have heard songs of the gasks and their poison spines and strange spells, making luck as a smith forges horseshoes; but they hold to the southwoods – I have yet to meet one.’

‘Kerge’s natural talents have grown somewhat sickly and shaky, but I would not wish to put them to the test again. We need a faster way to cross Rodal than pony and foot,’ said Cassandra, ‘or we may wake in a ravine one fine morning to find a flock of Rodal’s canvas-covered crows circling us, with skyguard pistols jabbed against our chests.’

‘Sadly, all my rustled ponies have been reunited with their owners. I have two feet, and luckily for you they belong to Alexamir. When I run, Kalu the Apportioner himself rises in the sky and gazes down towards the plains to see whose cheeky sandals wake him with such thunder. I can sprint for a week and still not think it too much.’

‘Running towards capture or death?’ said Cassandra, uncertainly. ‘Best I handle the planning, blue boy, along with the navigation.’ The boasting she would leave to the nomad. Alexamir seemed more than capable of handling outrageous claims for them both. She opened the cupboard and removed two robes, tossing one at the nomad before slipping her robe over her body and raising its hood to cover her head. ‘Keep your face lowered and pretend you have taken a vow of silence.’

‘I will itch as though tied to an ant-hill,’ complained Alexamir, examining the wind priest’s garb.

‘You will itch more from a pistol shell. Put it on!’ Cassandra waited for him to do so, then opened the door and checked outside. A long empty stone corridor lit by a couple of flickering oil lamps, no sign of the ghosts Sheplar Lesh had spoken of, although the hackles rising along the back of her neck told another tale.
Curse the Rodalian and his stories
.

Alexamir shivered as he followed her out. She trusted her disguise appeared more priestly than the nomad’s robes, his broad shoulders rolling with the strangeness of the clothes. ‘All towns are tombs to a free man, but none more so than a Rodalian’s settlement. A burial mound’s rock between us and the clear air. They have no riders’ blood; they are jackrabbits who stuff their high stone burrows with treasure to tempt honest thieves to die against their crags.’

‘The crags won’t be a problem. Now, battle silence.’

There was nobody in the corridor, although Cassandra heard snoring from one of the cells as they slipped into the mountain passages. There were few people about at this late hour and the lanterns in the cavernous streets had been allowed to burn low, presenting long shadows to add to the escaping pair’s disguise, a slow, stately shuffle with bent heads, retracing her steps through Talatala. The town looked different with moonlight spilling through the cavern’s light ports, the mirrors used to defuse the natural illumination dark now, with only a reflected scattering of the stars visible hanging outside. Cassandra had mastered her urban orienteering training long before she had needed the skills … counting the steps between each turn and marking the time passed during their passage, memorizing the shape of the streets’ rooftops as well as the foreign shop signs cloaked by night-time. Now, she rewound that memory like a yarn of string and led them silently back towards the hangars carved into the mountain. They passed few Rodalians, and those they did ignored the sight of two priests returning home. Cassandra and her companion halted in the shadow of a warehouse-like building close to the skyguard’s mountainous launch tunnels.

‘How long for your fuse to run?’

‘I trimmed it long for two leagues,’ said Alexamir.

Cassandra cursed his time-keeping system, almost as barbaric as the nomad’s manners. If a horse could gallop a league in ten minutes that made his fuse burn twenty, and with at least fifteen of those already lapsed, then there should be a healthy blaze erupting in town in less than five minutes. ‘This way. Follow me.’

‘You mean to slip through here? There are two sentry towers on the slopes outside these tunnels, with skyguards watching for friends who wish to land – or their foemen among the pirates of the air. Better to descend from the town. We can squeeze through their sun slits after climbing the cave.’

‘We are unlikely to be challenged inside the skyguard’s airfield,’ whispered Cassandra. ‘When I landed I saw their priests blessing planes and chanting for friendly winds.’

‘Priests do not scale peaks here,’ said Alexamir, stubbornly. ‘There is a long winding road outside Talatala that leads down to the villages of the valley. We could hazard that, but it has many guard posts on the way with fighters who will be curious why two timid temple chanters dare to venture out at night. I could easily defeat them, but not before they fire a warning beacon and bring the entire town down the slopes for me to slay.’

And I’m sure you could handle them and not think it too much
. ‘Just follow me. Your golden fox knows all there is to understand about burrows.’

Alexamir muttered under his breath, but did as he was bid. She would have to work on his slowness to obey orders. Cassandra would happily defer to the nomad when it came to which local mosses it was safe to pick from the rocks for food, or even which horses were likely to possess the most endurance. But the wild thief needed to realize that when it came to matters of strategy, the planning was best left to superior Vandian intelligence.
Mine, in fact
.

There was no sign of sentries in the opening chamber of the skyguard. Most would be back with their families or abed by now. She could hear a distant clink of tools and muffled voices. Doubtless, a maintenance hangar with some final duties being completed by ground staff. Alexamir was right. Any watchful eyes would be in the fortified positions on the slopes outside, scanning the skies and crags and mountain road for enemies, for what danger could rise from deep within their town’s stone heart? She would give them cause to regret their complacency. Inside the first tunnel, Cassandra located and quietly opened a round wooden door in the wall and discovered what she had thought would lie inside – a narrow fire fighters’ passage, just as you would find on a Vandian carrier. When damaged aircraft crashed hard in the landing tunnels, the ground staff needed a way to bypass the flaming wreckage and tackle the full extent of the blaze. She lifted a torch from the wall and indicated to Alexamir that this was their way to pass unseen through the stronghold. He was clearly uneasy about entering a place even closer to a tomb, but she knew he wouldn’t make a lie of his boasts. The nomad ducked through the doorway with a vexed shake of his head. Ventilation ducts running to Talatala’s slopes made the fire tunnel as chilly as a food cellar, and she held up her flickering torch and counted down the paces to a chamber she remembered passing. When she reached zero, she found the nearest door and pushed it open a sliver to check for Rodalians. None that she could see, so she opened the door and stepped out into a large circular chamber. She could feel bitingly cold air from outside drawn down the five tunnels that branched out in front of the space. Above Cassandra, a framework of well-greased wooden rails rested with a turntable mounted in the ceiling’s centre. And behind her a series of side-chambers, a number of the skyguard’s small triangular-shaped aircraft hanging suspended from rope cradles inside each space.

Cassandra found a likely-looking two-seat kite in one of the hollows, and indicated to Alexamir that they should drag it along the rails towards a launch tunnel. ‘This will do just fine.’

Alexamir’s cyan face had suddenly turned as pale as Cassandra’s. ‘You cannot mean to fly the Rodalians’ wooden pigeon?’

‘That’s exactly what I intend to do,’ said Cassandra, starting to heave against the plane. It rocked in its rope cradle, but began to slip along the wooden rail. ‘You don’t need to worry. I mastered simple mono-winged craft before learning to pilot a helo.’ She felt a stab of sadness at the memory. It had been Cassandra’s personal pilot, Hesia, who had trained her to fly. And she had betrayed them to the house’s enemies at court and then a second time during the slave revolt.

‘Flying is only half their magic,’ spluttered Alexamir. ‘We may wear their priests’ robes, but we cannot command the winds as the mountain dwellers do. We will be smashed to splinters against the rocks.’

‘There’s demon turbulence outside, I grant you. But I’ll climb high for altitude and leave the worst of the weather below. We’ll be safe enough. I’m planning to push north on a trade wind, not strafe their valleys and villages.’

‘Even the great merchants of the air do not risk Rodal’s skies,’ warned Alexamir. ‘They pass over the marshes of Hellin.’

Cassandra bit back a sharp reply.
All of a sudden the horseman fancies himself an expert airman
? The insufferable arrogance of the nomad. She was the one trained to fly this kite, not him. Cassandra could see she would have to goad him into the spotter’s cockpit. ‘I think that the great Alexamir is scared of a steed made of canvas and wood. Perhaps he was pecked by an eagle during one of his raids into Rodal and does not fancy taking to the sky in case he meets the bird again?’

‘I fear nothing and no one, but I show respect to power by saying what is famously known,’ grunted Alexamir, ‘that the spirits of the mountain are unfriendly and ill-disposed to foreigners. Rodalians may tame the winds, but only because they respect their spirits’ power.’ Despite Alexamir’s protestations, he helped her push the aircraft towards the turntable and lower it into the middle of the circular platform, before throwing his back against a wooden wheel meant for a harnessed pony. He groaned with exertion before slowly cranking the turntable and plane’s weight towards a launch tunnel. The plane she intended to steal would do. Two open cockpits in a line in the centre of the triangular flying wing with a rear-mounted propeller behind them, while protruding from its domed nose, a gun barrel riddled with ventilation holes to cool the heated metal parts. The fuselage was shaped in an oddly organic way, with curves and protrusions where she wouldn’t have expected them, more like a hand-carved musical instrument than the product of a factory line. Cassandra went to the rear, removed a fuel stick, opened the engine’s reservoir hub and checked its fuel level.
Fully fuelled
, she noted with satisfaction.

Cassandra left the kite and headed towards a chart she had noticed pinned to the hangar wall. It showed the territory’s trade winds marked in standard library guild script. Alexamir’s words proved correct. The main trade winds passed over a country called Hellin lying to the east of Rodal. This region of Rodal rose as a maelstrom of swirling air currents, tight against each other like a thousand furiously twisting serpents. A single high altitude current passed over Talatala heading north, another forking west towards the Lancean Ocean, none marked flowing south. Even if she had been minded to break her oath to Alexamir and try to make for Weyland, a single tank of fuel wouldn’t be nearly enough against the headwinds.
And I doubt the locals will refuel me when I land, however I flutter my eyelids at them
. She checked the wind speed of the north-bound current and her eyes widened. She examined the chart again, but she had read true the first time.
Nearly six hundred miles an hour
! That was approaching the speed of a Vandian warship. She glanced nervously at the flimsy-looking triangular aircraft.
How is that going to stand up to such velocities
? The high altitude wind was marked as The Bdur’rkhangmar and nothing about the name augured well to her mind. Well, they wouldn’t need more than a tank of fuel to put Rodal behind them, but judging from the chart, a vast area of still air squatted over the steppes north of Rodal’s tall mountain ranges. Rodal’s ravines and canyons had sucked up all of the hot dry air out of the Arak-natikhan plains, leaving its northern neighbour effectively becalmed. Any merchant carrier crossing far above Arak-natikh’s flat open expanses would need to ensure it was fully fuelled before attempting the journey, for the nomads surely grew no fuel crops to sell to traders. As for Cassandra, she’d get as far as the steppes in her stolen kite, but not much further before needing to switch to horseback. She watched Alexamir despondently walking the length of the aeroplane, tapping its canvas fuselage as though checking for tears.
You’ll earn your passage soon enough
. She discovered an aviator’s cap and goggles and was searching the hangar for a spare flight jacket to protect against Rodal’s cold when distant bells started to clang a strident warning from the direction of Talatala.
Damn, we’re out of time
. Alexamir’s parting act of arson had been detected. She sprinted back to the turntable as the clatter of approaching boots grew louder, more than one set of feet. Locals. Probably looking to secure the planes and fuel in the event the fire spread out of control. Cassandra climbed up toward the plane’s forward cockpit, taking seconds to inspect the strange, foreign controls, a few simple dials and a wooden flight stick, but before she could mount the cockpit she realized that it was too late. Talatala’s ground staff were upon them.