Rainbird (5 page)

“So, you’ll let the sunway collapse then, will you? It’ll take you with it, if you do!”

“Long before men, there were the eiree. Long before the spine, even, and the wings and the whole skeleton. Long before the dragon screamed into our world, there were the eiree. And long after the men and bone have gone, we will be.”

“Such fine indifference.” He shook her, wanting something—anything—out of her other than the Perch-sanctioned words. “That’s not what you said to me almost twenty years ago. Do you remember? Marker 22? Cheris gum sticky and sweet in our hands? Remember what you—?”

Diamada drove her sharp nails into his hands, and Petrus gasped. Pain burned down his nerves. She ripped his hands off her shoulders. Rainbird screamed, “No!” as Diamada half-spun and kicked. Agony bloomed in his gut. He reeled back, fell, struck his head. Stars exploded all around him. He heard shouts and scuffles. Wing membranes slithered all over him.

He waited for his vision to clear, but long after the stars had vanished, it swam with unshed tears.

Diamada. She’d never been what he thought—wanted—her to be.

“I got her good,” said Rainbird, with grim satisfaction. “Wrenched her wing and squished her toes. That ought to hurt.” She wound a strip of cloth around Petrus’ head to hold a poultice against the lump forming on the back of it.

“She came to warn us.” Petrus’ head felt as though it belonged to a puppet, moved this way and that by Rainbird’s strong callused fingers. “She didn’t have to, but she did.”

Rainbird snorted. He was so smitten. Couldn’t he
see
? “It sounded more like a threat to me. ‘Don’t go looking for trouble’? Sounds exactly like the sort of thing Marvelo would have said.” Marvelo, ringmaster and procurer of freaks and substances to cater to all appetites, had ruled with fear and pain. The bloody scent of violence had lurked under his expensive perfume. His top hat and exquisitely tailored suit couldn’t disguise his menacing figure nor the large brutish hands covered with scars from pounding other people’s faces into pulp. Rainbird twitched her tattered wings, old pain stinging through the membrane.

And according to human law, he’d owned her. She was his property and he could do whatever he wanted with her and she had to bear it.
That
was the world Miss Levine wanted to drag her back to.

No, the sunway was home. Diamada, with her snooty pureblood ways and her Marvelo-worthy threats was
not
going to drive her out.

Rainbird knotted the bandage and patted Petrus’ head. He blinked at her owlishly. He’d been slow and wandering since he’d hit his head. Probably concussed and certainly in no condition to be traipsing around on the sunway.

Maybe Diamada had done them a favor, after all.

Petrus grabbed her hand, held it to his cheek, and looked up her, imploring. “Understand, Rainbird. She was the more liberal, more curious of the eiree. When the Perch and the Company agreed to cooperate to maintain the sunway, she volunteered to work with the inspectors, a job that other eiree considered akin to rolling in filth. She wanted to know more about us. She saw that humans and eiree were all part of the sunway ecosystem now. I—I was fascinated by her. I pursued her, relentlessly, gave her no room to breathe. I pushed her too fast and too far, unsatisfied with the friendship she was giving me, unthinking of the consequences—for both of us. If I had waited…” He shook his head.

Rainbird tried to pull away, uncomfortable at this image of Petrus as lovesick suitor, at this defense of the detestable Diamada. “She left you to fend for yourself during that track collapse, just because the Perch whistled her to heel. Thirty three hours in the cold and thin air! No wonder your lungs haven’t been the same since.”

“She had to. If she hadn’t gone, they’d have rent me limb from limb. She was under discipline, you see.” Petrus squeezed her fingers tighter, pulled her down. His eyes were glazed and burning—a weird effect of the head injury and the walk down memory way. “She could’ve aborted you, exposed you on the Perch, like the rest of the eiree do to their weak offspring. Putting you in that supply balloon was your only chance.” He started to cough, and for the next five minutes Rainbird thumped his back uselessly until the paroxysm left him white and weak. She mixed a generous amount of
sima
into a hot broth and coaxed him into drinking it.

He needs good food and better air. Darn that Diamada, bringing this on.
Payday was still three days away, and they had barely enough coins for powdered soup mix. She knew she ate too much; her mixed blood required a lot of energy to keep going.
I’m eating him out of his food and medicine.

Two years of secrecy were all coming unraveled. Everywhere she turned, Rainbird exposed herself. The eiree on the wire, Miss Levine’s dracine, the smuggler on the sunway. She and Petrus could no longer keep up her disguise. Petrus had to go downside so he could live, and she…Well, she would have to disappear into the deepest cracks of the sunway, creeping out only at night, living on scavenged inspector rations, mosses, and whatever she could catch.

Rainbird dozed in the chair all night, in a half-waking nightmare. She was downside again, running, frantically looking for a rib to climb back up on. Marvelo, wearing his blood-spattered suit and improbably holding a pink parasol, chased her with Miss Levine right behind him, riding in a donkey cart. When Rainbird looked up, the Day Sun had transformed into a real eye, burning and thin-slitted. A voice said
I see you…

Rainbird woke. A glance at the clock told her it was nearer to morning than not. Petrus still slept. She scribbled a note for him, grabbed boots and her extra coat, and crept out to meet the wiz.

The wiz turned out to be a pale young man with an earnest way of squinting through his spectacles. He took Rainbird’s whitewashed story of Petrus’ accident with no more than a concerned, “Well, I say, what jolly bad luck. Hope the old chap’s back on his feet soon,” and turned his attention completely to the question of bonerot.

They met inside a pressurized supply shed before hiking out to the site of the infection. Rainbird was glad to see that the wiz had brought his own mask. It would save the time otherwise spent fitting him out with one of the spares, which always smelled of other people’s sweat.

“Been up here long?” asked Rainbird as she hauled out the heavy-duty climbing equipment, coiling rope around her waist, tossing a pack of harnesses and clips across her back. Her own useless gas mask was around her neck. Along with too-small boots and too-thick gloves, it was cumbersome but necessary to her disguise.

“Three weeks,” said the wiz. “I have one of the old experimental mushrooms as my lab.”

“That’s brave,” remarked Rainbird. The shrooms had been built during an efficiency craze, riveted to the side of the sunway, unlike the eggs which were nestled into excavated bone. But it turned out that inspectors didn’t like hanging above the earth during their leisure hours, and the insulation against the Day Sun’s heat was not quite as good as the Company had sold it to be.

The wiz shrugged. “It works. It’s good for my experiments, at any rate.” He sounded like that was the more important thing.

For a wiz, that was probably true.

“You need a hand with all that?” asked the wiz, with belated conscientiousness. Rainbird shook her head. She had all the stuff balanced just right. Any help now would cause something to topple.

They hiked up the spine, gas masks over their faces. The mouthpiece was fitted with an oxygen-producing mold. Even though filters supposedly took care of spores, the air smelled moldy to Rainbird. Her vision had narrowed to a smudged and wavy slice of poly, and she hated not feeling the air on her skin nor the bone against her feet.

The sooner the wiz’s tour was over, the better.

He was slower than she was and much more careful. He had to stop to catch his breath and, trying to be polite about it, Rainbird walked over to the edge of the sunway, balanced on her toes, and pointed out interesting features in the landscape below.

She could have sworn the wiz turned green behind his mask. The Day Sun was just rising on the Headside in a blur of light, a radiant smudge in Rainbird’s peripheral vision as she edged down the bone to the sunside, harnessed to the wiz, coaxing and guiding him all the way into the track.

“I’ve never seen such an infestation.” Awe filled the wiz’s voice as he hurried across the makeshift path Rainbird put together for him, straight to the cavity where the bonerot was.

Standing on the top of the sunway was awesome. Staring up at the stars and the glowering Night Sun was awesome. Sunmoss—of which there was plenty in this cavity—was awesome. Rainbird had already scraped off as much as her belt-pouch could hold.

Bonerot was awful and revolting. There was no accounting for tastes.

“Do you think you can save the bone?” Rainbird held the light as the wiz poked and prodded and scraped off samples.

The wiz looked over his shoulder and pulled a face. “Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how deep this goes.”

“You mean we could lose a piece of the sunway?” Rainbird gaped at him.

“We could, yes.” The wiz’s voice was muffled as he worked. “Oh, sugar.” He lost his grip on the four tools he was trying to hold at once. They clattered and clanged to the mesh floor. Rainbird nudged them back to him with her foot. Sugar? Had the wiz been raised exclusively by devout old ladies?

“You don’t seem too pushed about losing part of the sunway,” She was toasty warm and close to sweating in her coat. She wished she could strip down to her vest and pants, but even this myopic distracted wiz was bound to notice the eiree wings.

“Well, it
is
inconvenient for the sunway to need a big repair before I’ve completed all my tests, but I believe I’ve manufactured an alloy as strong as this bone.” He patted the wall nearest him. “Only not susceptible to rot.”

“Really? So you’re a metalworking wiz, then?”

He cast a look of mild bafflement at her.

Rainbird explained, “Um, wiz. Short for wizard. Because, you know, all that stuff you do with chemicals and alloys and alchemy.” She sketched with her hands because, really, she only had the vaguest idea of what all that was about.

“My title is Alloy Development Specialist, actually.”

What a mouthful. “Wiz sounds better.”

“More mysterious and sparkling, I suppose. Could you hold the light up and over to the right a bit more? Thanks.”

Rainbird looked around idly. “So, how many people on your team, helping you develop this? They must be hard at work, trying to bring it into production. We could use some replacement on several sections I know of.” She stared out into the shadows, wondering which shape was what. That oblong shape was a primary support beam, and that sticking out of it was a giant rivet, but what about that bump?

“Actually.” The wiz gave a little self-deprecating cough. “It’s only me. None of my superiors thought my research was at all promising, so I’ve been doing it on my own.” He hastily added, “But I’m to present my findings in three days. I think the Board will be very impressed.”

“So that’s why they sent you here to look at the bonerot? See if your alloy can shore up the bone?” Rainbird glared into the shadows, staring at that unidentified lump. She shone a light on it, but all that did was illuminate something box-shaped, snuggled right up in the bracket between a primary support and a secondary beam.

“I suspect it was because I was the closest tech. Inspectors and their supervisors don’t seem to think—”

“Are you ticking?” Rainbird interrupted. Her senses were on high-alert, her nerves straining to pull information from the very air.

“Wh-what?” The wiz patted his pockets and drew out a watch and chain. “All I have is this.”

Rainbird said, very quietly. “We’re in big trouble. There’s a bomb there.” She grabbed the wiz’s shoulder, hauled him up. Tools tumbled out of his lap. He stumbled against his open equipment bag.

“Run!” she yelled in his ear. No time to grab the gas masks discarded a few feet away or the wiz’s overcoat pooled in a corner or to buckle him into his harness. No time to snatch up the radios. She took his arm and dragged him along behind her. Wire mesh shook under their feet.

Rainbird kicked open first one trapdoor, then the other, and thrust the wiz ahead of her, shielding him with her body. How much time did they have?

Not enough.

“Climb,” she yelled. “Climb!” She shoved him up on to the sunway’s edge. Sharp air and sharp light struck splinters into them.

A huge boom from behind. Rainbird staggered, grabbed for safety holds. A hail of bone shards sprayed against her back, tortured metal screeched in pain. The entire sunway shuddered, deep in the bone. A current flashed through Rainbird, waking every nerve into painful life.

The sweep of translucent wings in vast blackness. A song and a dance and a trap. A dying-dead beast writhing in star-shredding agony.

Rainbird’s body arched, then relaxed. A scream birthed and died in her throat. One instant of searing pain, and then it was gone.

But not their current danger. They clung to the outside of the sunway in cold air, hands clamped on metal holds. The wiz was without his mask, without his outerwear, and already shivering and blue. His grip on the holds was tenuous at best. Over to Rainbird’s right, the Day Sun glowed as it rose higher, gliding on a track that now had a massive gap in it.

Surely someone heard the explosion. Surely they’ll stop the sun.

First, secure the wiz. Rainbird unwound the safety line from around her waist and clipped it onto his belt. If he lost his grip, she’d be able to keep him up. Or else plummet to the ground with him.

That was not a comforting thought.

“Come on, let’s get up to the nightside.” She scooted over so she was next to him. She felt his shivering even through her own thick coat.

“I can’t,” he said through gritted teeth. “My hands…can’t feel them…” His exposed skin was white and cracked-looking.

“Here, take my gloves.” She stripped them off her hands and thrust them through her belt, then shifted till she was almost over him. Maybe her body heat would warm him a little.