The Hanging Mountains (48 page)

Shilly nodded. She had seen it done before and it still amazed and unsettled her. It was disturbingly close to what had happened to Lodo, but using a human mind, not a golem.

‘Thank you,’ she said as the warden stood. ‘Get some rest. You’ll need it for tomorrow, as likely as not.’

‘You too.’ Banner repeated the finger-to-lips gesture as she walked away. Shilly felt confident that the conversation with Sal wouldn’t be reported to Marmion. That, if nothing else, reassured her.

* * * *

Kail drifted in and out of sleep, registering lights and voices but not taking any of it in. His arrival at Milang had been a blur, and of the flight itself his mind retained nothing. Somehow he had been thoroughly washed and treated and dressed without him knowing. A deep part of him understood that sleep was the most important thing now, and he made sure he pursued it.

The first moment of true clarity came in the dead of night. He rose to full consciousness almost without realising it. Waking with no jolt, no disorientation, no sudden fears, he simply opened his eyes.

Faint, warm light filtered through the room’s bamboo shutters, painting crooked shapes across the wooden walls and ceiling. He stared at them dumbly, feeling that if he were to assemble them just the right way, they would form words in another language. From outside came the soft, rhythmic plod of a sentry making his or her rounds. That, at first, was the only sign that anyone else apart from him was awake.

Then a shadow moved in the room, and Eisak Marmion leaned into the light.

‘I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘I don’t think you did.’ Kail tried to sit, but the pain in his chest flared from a dull throb to a sharp stab. He fell back with a wince. Sweat sprang up on his forehead.

Marmion moved closer and handed him a ceramic bottle of water. ‘Drink this. Your fever’s broken, but you’re bound to be dehydrated. Don’t want you dying of thirst now we’ve got you back.’

Kail’s moisture-starved lips cracked into a smile. ‘I’m not sure where I am, yet.’ He drank slowly, in small sips. His right arm was still stiff from its twisting, under the landslip.

‘You’re in Milang,’ Marmion started to say. ‘Jao and Shilly brought you here after —’

‘I guessed that much. What I meant was ...’ He struggled for the right words, knowing that Marmion would take them badly no matter how he phrased them. ‘I don’t know to whom I owe allegiance now. The Alcaide, you, the twins —?’

‘The
Homunculus?’
Marmion reared back as though physically struck. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘They saved my life at least twice. I owe them something for that.’

‘Don’t you think you’ve helped them quite enough?’

‘I’m not sure I have. That’s what I have to work out.’ Weariness gripped him. Life had been refreshingly simple on the road with the twins. Dangerous and full of misunderstandings without a doubt, but at least their goals had been well defined. They had rarely argued, as Marmion was surely about to, that Kail had a duty to his order and the world he had sworn to protect, to the man whose commands he was supposed to obey, and to the distant authority in the Haunted City who seemed increasingly irrelevant with every passing day.

Marmion surprised him. Anger drained from the balding warden’s round face like flour from a leaky sack. ‘I thought you’d say something like that,’ he said in resigned tones. ‘To be honest, I feel it too.’

‘You do?’ Kail stared in frank amazement at his counterpart. ‘You could down me with a pat if I wasn’t already flat on my back.’

‘Don’t be
so
shocked. I’m not an idiot, and I don’t have a death-wish.’ He raised the bandaged stump of his right hand. ‘First me, then Eitzen, then you. We’re not faring so well.’

‘What happened to Eitzen?’

Marmion’s gaze dropped. ‘He was killed by a golem two nights ago.’

The news was shocking, but not half as much as the place to which it led Kail’s thoughts. ‘A golem in the body of a scarred man from the Aad?’

‘So Skender says.’

‘Upuaut.’ It had to be. No wonder he and the twins hadn’t been bothered by the creature since Kail’s abortive attempt to capture it. Upuaut had been busy elsewhere.

Marmion looked askance at the unfamiliar name. ‘I think you’d better tell me everything.’

‘And you.’

It took longer than an hour. Kail heard the sentry walk by five times before they finished, and even then there was still much to discuss. His mind proceeded at a furious pace, despite his deep fatigue. Disconnected facts fell into place with disconcerting smoothness.

‘So Upuaut and the Swarm are working together to pit humans and Panic against each other.’ Kail ignored a persistent itch beneath the bandages covering his chest. ‘To what end?’

‘To catch us in the middle, perhaps. Or to hold us up.’

‘But where are we going? Our stated aim isn’t anything to do with Yod. And anyway, the twins say that Yod, the Swarm and Upuaut aren’t really on the same side.’

‘Not before. Maybe they are now.’

‘If the world ends, they all go with it.’

Marmion nodded, sending the few strands of hair he had left askew. He went to brush them aside with his missing hand, then caught himself with a grimace. ‘I don’t know
where
we’re going any more.’

‘We make a fine pair, then,’ Kail said without humour. ‘Have you heard from Highson or Rosevear yet?’

‘No.’ Marmion looked grim. ‘If they don’t call in soon, I’ll start to worry.’

‘Will you let me know?’

‘Why?’

Kail ignored a sudden flash of suspicion in the warden’s eyes. ‘I want to be there when everyone meets. Not just because you need the numbers —’ Kail wasn’t going to mention Eitzen’s death; it was clear Marmion felt strongly about it’— but because I’m the only one who can come close to speaking for the twins. That’s the central issue here. Not the forest and who fights who over it. We need to remember what the seers have been telling the Alcaide all this time. Whatever it is they can’t see in the future, the Homunculus is critical to it. We have to protect the twins, or at least keep an eye on them.’

‘If it’s still alive,’ said Marmion, ‘after the avalanche.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it’s still out there,’ Kail responded. ‘If a wall of water twenty metres high can’t kill it, what’s a pissy little landslide that couldn’t even finish
me
off?’

Marmion managed a small smile. ‘Quite.’

‘So that’s a yes?’

‘It’s a “let’s see whether you can stand in the morning, then we’ll discuss it”.’ On that, Marmion himself stood. ‘We both need to rest. I suggest we try to get some.’

Kail nodded and let himself sink back onto his cot. He was determined to be well enough, but knew that determination alone wasn’t enough. A whole raft of factors had to come together before he could take anything like that for granted.

‘Just one more thing,’ Marmion said before he left the common room. ‘Whatever happens tomorrow, don’t go behind my back again. Is that understood? For all our differences of opinion, we’re supposed to be on the same side. We’re not rivals. Even if you disagree with me, do me the courtesy of keeping me informed.’

Kail nodded in the gloom. That appeared to satisfy Marmion, even though it barely qualified as an answer.

When he was alone, Kail closed his eyes and tried to sleep. But his thoughts kept returning to the Homunculus and where it might be at that moment. His promise to the twins had been simple:
I’ll
guide you across the plains to the mountains and keep you out of trouble.
In that he had failed quite comprehensively. He had been unable to protect them from the forces, old and new, that were stirring in the world, and they had ended up saving him instead. But the fact remained: he had made a promise, one he was unlikely to keep.

We must understand each other, the twins had told him after the flood, or all will end in disaster.

With Marmion, at least, he hoped it wasn’t too late.

* * * *

The Code

‘Following your heart is easier said than done.

First you have to find it, and that can be a long

and fraught journey in itself.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
EXEGESIS 4:20

kender woke from a dream of earthquakes to the sensation of someone shaking his shoulders.

‘You’re snoring. Snap out of it before you wake everyone up.’

He stared up into Chu’s face, only gradually piecing his thoughts together. ‘What?’

Satisfied that she had roused him, she stopped shaking. ‘Come on. We have work to do.’

‘What work?’

‘Real work. Not the boring crap Heuve keeps giving me. Something useful. Something I’m good at.’

‘Why now?’ His head felt as heavy as a boulder when he tried to sit. The room was still dark and the forest outside the windows was redolent with night noises.

‘Because it needs to be done. Get
up.’
She grabbed his right hand and physically pulled him out of bed. ‘Why do I always have to bully you into doing things with me? I’m starting to think you’re not even interested.’

He tugged his black robe over his head to stop himself from saying
The feeling is mutual,
figuring that particular statement was rhetorical. He had tried to talk to her the previous night, but she had begged off again, saying there were too many people around.

‘Where are we going? If you’re thinking of sneaking past the guards —’

‘Not the way you think, although I did consider it. They’re too thorough, too suspicious, and everywhere all through the city. If we so much as look out the door, they’ll see us.’

‘So how —?’

She shushed him and led him through the visitors’ compound, finding her way with confidence to the common room where Kail slept with his mouth open, breathing deeply. There she directed Skender to take one end of her wing. Silently, they lifted it and carried it out into the corridor.

‘Now what?’ he started to ask, still not seeing what use it would be if they couldn’t get out of the compound.

She shook her head and pointed upwards.

In the ceiling above their heads was a hatch.

He knew, then,
what
she had planned, but he was still none the wiser about
why.

‘Are we running away?’ he hissed as she positioned a chair underneath the hatch.

‘That wouldn’t be very helpful,’ she said, climbing onto the chair and reaching up to pop the hatch. It opened without a sound, revealing, not a crawl space or attic, but open air and leaves. The foresters didn’t need insulation, thanks to the canopy surrounding them. And in a culture that didn’t employ flight, why would they consider the possibility of someone escaping
upwards?

Chu hoisted herself up into the night air, then reached back down for the wing. Skender lifted one end up to her, and she silently hauled it outside. Then he climbed out and shut the hatch behind them.

The foggy night air sucked sensation from his fingertips almost immediately. Together, taking great care to avoid sharp twigs, they unfolded the wing and laid it flat against the roof. Reaching into the pocket of her leather pants, Chu produced her licence, which she plastered to the skin below her throat. Within seconds, the geometric lines of the charm began spreading across her skin. She blinked, and her eyes turned from brown to black.

‘Are you going to tell me where we’re going?’ he whispered.

She shook her head, pointing over the edge of the roof to where the guards paced. He resigned himself to committing completely to her plan without knowing anything at all about it.

Chu strapped in first, then attached him in front of her. His body welcomed the warmth of hers, but he warned himself not to get too comfortable. They weren’t about to resolve any issues by jumping from the summit of a heavily wooded cliff face bristling with archers and guards. This was about as far from romantic as they could get.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘here’s what I think. We jump to get clear of the trees, then we go down to pick up speed. Once we’re moving quickly enough, we zip away out of range. From there on, it’s easy.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, wishing he could see her properly. ‘We’re going to go down as fast as we can through impenetrable fog while worrying about
arrows?’

‘That’s right. Good to see you’re keeping up.’

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m glad it gets easier after that point. Otherwise I’d be worried.’

‘What’s there to worry about? You’ve been down there. You’ve been noticing the landscape, even if you weren’t aware of yourself doing it. With the wind on my side plus your memory to back me up, I figure we’ve got an even chance.’

‘Of what? Getting out of this alive?’

‘Of finding the Panic city, of course. Now shut up and let’s do this.’

‘Why —?’ Her hand over his mouth reinforced the order. Giving in for the moment, he helped her manoeuvre the wing into position. They would need a run-up to reach clear space, and the way their legs tangled while merely walking didn’t bode well.

‘Let me do it,’ he whispered after one slip almost sent them crashing through the roof. ‘I’m at the front. It’s the only way.’

‘But you’re so
weedy.’

‘My legs work fine, thanks, and I only have to carry you for a second or two. It’s not as if you’re particularly hefty yourself.’

‘Thanks, I think.’

‘You want me to give you compliments? Get me out of this alive and I guarantee as many as you want.’

She capitulated, lifting her knees and crossing her ankles around his waist. He leaned forward, shifting their combined centre of gravity into a more stable position. They wobbled for a moment, but stayed upright.

He flicked through his memory, seeking camouflage charms that might hide them from view during their launch.

‘Now, if we time it just right...’ Her voice in his ear held him poised and ready. Partially visible over the line of the roof ahead of them was a sentry, going about his usual patrol. When he was well past, she hissed, ‘Go!’