The thief looked up to see a most bizarre sight, even for the career of Imago Bone. A black-robed man stood upon the envelope far from any rope, his body angled nearly sideways, in defiance of gravity. In the moonlight, embroidered white, spindly insects gleamed upon the black, except in one spot, over the man’s heart, where there was only darkness. As for the rest, Bone could only make out a bald head and a moustache as straight and severe as Haytham’s was coiled. He could envision the scowl perfectly well, however.
“You people!” Walking Stick snapped in the tongue of distant Qiangguo, even as he splashed water upon the envelope. The spark went out, but a fresh attack lit a few more. “You persist in wrecking everything while I’m away. Toss me that coat if you’re done with it!”
Bone, who knew both the language and the polite forms of address Walking Stick was ignoring, answered, “It’s quite windy, Master Walking Stick! This foolish young one’s feeble throw may go wild!”
“Quit the sarcasm, greatest second-story man of the Spiral Sea! You know full well I can catch anything you can throw!”
Bone tossed the smoking deel, doing his best. As promised the wind sucked it almost out of reach, and as promised Walking Stick snagged it with a sweeping kick. The elite wulin warrior of Qiangguo commenced tackling the sparks as though it were a clumsy foe, shouting, “I know also that I’m younger than you, thief, for all that an enchantment kept you youthful!”
“Those years are done!” Bone reminded him, as he struggled to shift guide ropes and help the wulin. “Decrepitude is surely on its way!”
“Never assume you’ll receive the status of old age, Bone! It must be earned! And many things may cut your life short! Fire, for example . . .”
“They just hit the other side. . . .”
Just as Bone was beginning to bellow for an emergency landing, however, the efrit below took action.
Fire whipped out of the gondola’s opening, and Bone’s first assumption was that Haboob had decided to end his service early. Yet when the magical flames hit the natural ones, the latter flowed into the former, leaving only smoke behind.
“My,” Bone said.
“Indeed,” Walking Stick said. “Whatever Haytham has arranged, I approve.” He grunted. “Conditionally. They appear to have stopped shooting at us. However, I hear several tiny leaks.”
Bone, who prided himself on his hearing, said, “I do not.”
“You are not of the wulin.”
“Well, if they’re tiny we’ll still escape.”
“You will not escape laboring with patchwork and tar.”
“I never said I would!” Bone protested. “If I’m older than you, why do you always make me feel younger?”
“It takes care and attention to remain old at heart.”
And so they labored, and Gaunt came out to help, this time with safety ropes and admonishments. “Don’t let him taunt you, Bone. Gravity has been out to get you for many years.”
“Gravity and you, O wife,” he said.
“I’ve only tripped you a few times, O husband, and only when you’ve deserved it.” Gaunt smiled down at the receding firelights of Amberhorn; Bone noticed them raising dimmer and dimmer glints in her auburn hair.
“We’ll find him, Persimmon,” he said.
“We will, Imago, we will,” she said, not looking at him.
The silence was broken by a new face rising out of the gondola’s opening.
“What are you doing? Where are we going? Is the battle over? Were there really giant fire-breathing automata?”
“Joy!” Snow Pine’s voice was calling from inside the ger. “Get down from there!”
Liron Flint was saying, “Go easy on her; it’s only natural that she be curious—”
“You are not her parent,” Snow Pine said. “How like a man to barge in.”
A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, daughter of Snow Pine, called into the gap, “I was just. Trying. To. Take. A. Look!”
Joy was twelve years old, as far as anyone knew (for time was a peculiar thing within the Scroll of Years.) She was a match in appearance for Snow Pine, with dark hair she chose to wear longer than her mother preferred. Yet there was something in her determined-looking jaw and her cocksure smile that reminded Bone of Snow Pine’s late husband, the bandit Flybait.
“You must listen to your mother, student!” Walking Stick said.
“See?” Snow Pine called. “Walking Stick agrees.”
“He’s a man who just ‘barged in. . . .’” grumbled Flint.
“He is her teacher,” Snow Pine told Flint.
“She only likes him right now because he agrees with her!” Joy said. “Flint’s right!”
“And you’re only siding with Flint because he agrees with you!” Snow Pine replied.
Look at me, look at me, busily patching the balloon, Bone thought. He began to whistle.
Gaunt swept her leg, pretending to trip him. “Joy, let me answer your questions quickly, and then you should return to the ger. Yes, there were fire-breathing automata, but the battle is over. That is why we’re patching the balloon. We are now headed northeast, away from the Retired Empire of Amberhorn and toward the Homunculus Mountains. We are seeking the clockwork city of Loomsberg, where we might sell the artifact we’ve stolen.”
Bone coughed.
“Which Bone stole,” Gaunt said.
“Mm?” said Bone.
She rolled her eyes. “Which the great and legendary and astonishingly modest Imago Bone stole. Is that sufficient?”
“Well—”
She kicked him. Gently. She didn’t want him to fall. Probably.
“But then we’re looking for Innocence?” Joy said.
Bone had to remind himself that the girl had known their son longer, subjectively, than they ever had. She missed the only friend her age she’d ever known. “We’re always looking, Joy,” he said. “We have been since we accidentally led Kindlekarn to that sleeping Eastern dragon in the isles of Penglai, far beyond Qiangguo’s shores. But yes, the rumors said the flying carpet headed into the northern provinces of the Eldshore—rough country where we’ll have to watch our step.”
“As opposed to the safe, carefree places we’ve visited so far,” Gaunt said.
“From there,” Bone continued, “he might go into the tundra, but at least we’ve experience with that region. Beyond that he either has to backtrack or go on to the Bladed Isles. Which seems unlikely as they’re far from land. We will find him, sooner or later.”
Hearing the words Bladed Isles, Joy lifted her right hand from the bamboo frame of the gondola opening and spread it wide, revealing the strange markings upon her palm.
Brown like birthmarks, they nonetheless resembled the interweaving of three lengths of chain, in a pattern resembling the letter Y in Roil. Tiny runic letters accompanied the chains, like little angular travelers on corrugated roads. The marks had not always been so detailed, but over time it had come to be so.
Bone knew Snow Pine was very worried for her daughter.
“Perhaps,” Joy said eagerly, “if we get close to there, we can ask someone why Bladelander runes appeared on my hand.”
“It seems a reasonable question,” Gaunt said after a pause.
Snow Pine’s silence had the weight of a blizzard.
“Okay, fine,” Joy said in a rush. “Now I’m going to talk to the efrit!”
Bone whistled the sound of Snow Pine’s sputtering from his ears. But he could not whistle away the arrival of Walking Stick between him and Gaunt.
“You must tell her,” the wulin warrior said. “And her mother.”
“You are certainly one for giving orders,” Gaunt said.
“We have only guesses,” Bone said, touching Gaunt’s hand.
“Suppositions,” Gaunt said. “False speculation could only harm those two.”
Walking Stick said, “It could not harm them more than ignorance could. I have done enough here. Join me in the scroll when you’re ready. We must speak more and consult th
e Chart.”
With that, Walking Stick left them alone.
“Oh, yes, sir,” Gaunt said with only Bone and the sky for witness, “indeed, sir. I’ll have words for you then.” Bone thought it best not to pursue the matter.
Repairs done, Gaunt and Bone were reluctant to let the moment go. They called down that Haboob could heat the air, and as fire flared below they were alone after a fashion, in the clouds. The land below was inhabited, and they saw scattered firelights from villages and farms. Fleeting scents of cook fires and manure met their noses, followed by tree sap and algae as they passed into less-settled country. The moonlight allowed them to perceive the sheen of rivers crossing this region between mountains and sea. Gaunt said, “We may be the first people to perceive these lands from above, Bone. I can cover a town with my hand! There is nothing beneath my feet.”
“Innocence may have seen it,” Bone said, “when he passed this way.”
“Perhaps. Ah, Bone. Our worries are so ordinary at their core, so absurd in how they play out. My little boy, half-grown. Lost on a magic carpet. Other mothers might scold their boys for climbing trees.”
“Did he ever climb trees?”
“Oh, he tried to. He wasn’t quite big enough. But boulders. Statues. Walls. Monks. Whatever he could find.”
“That pleases me.” He paused. “We’ll find him.”
“I wish I had your certainty. And what will we say when we do?”
“Perhaps, ‘Hello! Let’s try this again. We’re your parents and we love you.’ How’s that?”
“Direct, Bone. Somewhat naive. But there’s something to be said for direct. But what if he tells us to go to the lowest of hells?”
“Then we leave him alone, if he’s safe. If he’s not, we improvise.”
“How can we leave alone a thirteen-year-old boy?”
“Many a thirteen-year-old has managed in the world. I was not much older when I sought my fortune.”
She touched his shoulder. “And is your life then the kind you’d want for your son?”
“That,” he said, squeezing her hand, “is a dark question for such a moonlit night.”
“And what life can we offer him after?”
“That one may be darker still. . . . What is that?”
They had seen no birds at this altitude, but Bone had the distinct impression that one was winging toward them.
“Could it be?” Gaunt said. “It couldn’t be . . . it is! It’s Lady Steelfox’s falcon.”
“Qurca?” Bone said, feeling as if the air was suddenly thinner.
“Qurca. Qurca! We are here!”
The peregrine falcon landed upon Gaunt’s outstretched arm, and she winced, but pain was clearly irrelevant to her now. “Bone, there’s a message.”
Bone had visions of the tiny paper flying away on a high-altitude gust. “Let’s go below,” he said, heart pounding. “Qurca may want a little food. I’ll bet he’s come a long way, eh? Ha, ha.” His voice sounded lunatic in the moonlight. Carefully they returned to the gondola and explained what had happened. Walking Stick and Joy had returned to the scroll, but the others gathered around. Even Haboob seemed interested.
The note was written in Roil, the language of the Eldshore and much of the West. It read:
He is in the Bladed Isles, upon the one called Fiskegard. Tell Northwing and Haytham to join me there. The Fox.
“Swan’s Blood,” Gaunt said when he’d read it aloud. “The Bladed Isles. Farther even than we’d thought.”
“What does he think he’s doing there?” Bone said. “That’s no place for a . . . well, anyone. Barbaric, piratical . . . what are you smiling at, Flint?”
“Well, you, a thief,” said the explorer, “outraged at a den of pirates and brigands. There’s a bit of irony in that.”
“In my line there’s considerably less blood.”
“Ah, my friend, but less glory, they might say,” Haytham put in.
“They’re welcome to the glory,” Bone said, “especially if they leave their gold unguarded.”
“That’s the spirit,” Gaunt said. To Haytham she asked, “Can Al-Saqr get us there?”
“Can the mosquito make the lion’s eye bleed?” replied the inventor.
Northwing coughed. “Al-Saqr can get you there, if I direct the wind.” The shaman paused. “And I will. Of course I must return to my liege. Qurca’s arrival is a reminder how long we’ve been away from Steelfox, Haytham.”
“Of course!” said Haytham. “I would be literally lost without you, Northwing. Ah, such an adventure lies ahead of us, worthy of Layali of the Tales. We shall brave the northern seas, albeit with a stop in Loomsberg to sell the Antilektron Mechanism.” His hands played gingerly upon the edges of the brazier, the smoky form of the efrit favoring him with a cold stare from blazing eyes. “I am being justly compensated, and the journey is interesting. We will likely part ways once I find my patron Steelfox, of course—”
“But tell me about these Bladed Isles,” Snow Pine interrupted, “and why they have such a bad reputation.”
“They make the Karvaks look genteel,” Bone said.
“They raided my homeland for over a century,” Gaunt said. “To the degree they’ve stopped, it’s because they’ve interbred with us so much we’re all kin, and half of them have adopted my island’s religion. But we remember—the dragon-prowed vessels slicing the sea, the warriors who would prey on helpless monasteries, their blood sacrifices and their fury.”
“They sound like a challenge,” Mad Katta mused. “Souls that could benefit from the healing words of the Undetermined.”
“Good luck with that,” Bone said.
“But they’ve changed somewhat, no?” Flint asked. “They’re still known for piracy, but not quite the same degree of brutality, eh?”
“In a long life of thieving,” Bone said, “wherein I’ve heard much of their gold, I’ve gone nowhere near them. Make of that what you will. I trust a peaceful Bladelander as much as I trust a complacent shark.”
“They are perhaps no worse in their slaughter than any other land,” Gaunt mused. “But they are more proud of it.”
“What’s your son doing with them, then?” Snow Pine wondered. “With all his power, will the Bladed Isles make him into someone really dangerous?”
Gaunt and Bone hesitated.
“There’s an age, I think,” Gaunt said, “when a young man likes to test himself against danger and trouble. Those are lands where it’s easy to do so. I worry what they will do to him, in more ways than one.”
“But who knows?” Bone said. “He may be having the time of his life.”
CHAPTER 2
OTHERFOLK
Innocence had only just stoked the stove in the dark of the morning when the beautiful girls with cow’s tails came out of nowhere. Groggy, he had trouble understanding where they’d come from or resisting them when they, giggling, dragged him toward the crack in the wall behind the stove.
There had been a few women in the Pickled Rat the night before, but he would have remembered these, surely? He was starting to notice girls in a manner that made his breathing go strange, and a few of the village beauties were haunting his head in a way that made him feel a little giddy, and guilty. These, now, seemed a few years older than him. Their golden tresses framed bright, mischievous eyes and swirled above colorful rustic costumes he hadn’t seen since the cold weather came, long vests of red or blue stretched over tight blouses of white, short dark skirts with floral or checkered patterns that swished above graceful legs. (Were there no stockings? Weren’t these young ladies cold? What did he see swishing back there, not quite in sight?)
“Um,” he said, “I . . . well, it’s just . . . perhaps . . . so . . .”
“Shh,” said one girl, two fingers landing on his lips for a moment like a butterfly seeking nectar. “Don’t spoil it by talking.” She instantly seemed the wisest person that had ever lived. Innocence could not help but think these tight-fitting, short-skirted versions of
the village costumes were more fetching than those he’d seen previously. He could not help grinning as the fingertips left his lips. He could not help thinking it was a foolish grin. The thought didn’t wipe the grin away. Hands were starting to touch him in interesting ways, retreating suddenly with redoubled laughter, returning with mock shyness.
But always they moved toward the wall.
Now the Very Wise Girl’s fingers were back, this time with a bit of bread between them. He hadn’t seen where it had come from. She pushed it into his mouth and pressed her lips against his ear. “A little morsel,” she purred, “before dessert.” Innocence ate, even as some internal voice warned him this all might be too good to be true. The bread tasted like flatbread at first but then became sweet, like one of those potato pancakes all rolled up with sugar or jam; what were they called, lefse? He felt like he was falling. In love? Down a well? Were the sensations similar?
Now he realized the warning voice wasn’t internal at all, it was Freidar, with Nan beside him, and the first was armed with a sword and the second with a book and, oddly enough, a small fragment of steel.
The girls were yanking him now and shrieking in a way that wasn’t laughter, and he saw that they had cow’s tails. He remembered from Peersdatter and Jorgensdatter’s Eventyr that this was worrisome.
“Um—” He tried resisting, but something in the sweetness of the bread was making him drowsy. And he still felt enrapt by the girls’ beauty. It was as if his whole boyish existence, all his pride and learning and struggles, had at last been granted meaning. And the meaning was simply to please girls in every way he could.
“Shut up,” said Very Wise Girl, who now sounded Very Cross. “You’re ours now, fair and square. They can’t save you.”
It was cold water on a fire. He blinked and understood his danger. He struggled, but his body was drugged and weak. Yet Innocence thought for a moment that she was wrong, for Freidar and Nan looked menacing and gigantic. Suddenly the moment passed, as he realized that the stove looked gigantic too, and the chairs and tables, and the vast wooden cliff of the wall.
It was he and the girls who were now mouse-sized, and the crack behind the stove assumed the proportions of a cavern entrance as they dragged him into the dark.
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