by Carrie Patel
A gunshot rang out in the cramped space, and Phelan’s head snapped forward with a burst of blood, bone, and tissue. Malone instinctively crouched, pressing her back to the bulkhead and looking for the attacker.
“Alles clear,” called a voice behind the boilers, just on the other side of Phelan’s corpse. Martens emerged and made for the lever, tugging it out of the red.
Geist stepped forth from the same spot, a gun still in his hand. “Thank you for the excellent distraction, Malone. I only wish we could have stopped her sooner.”
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” Malone said.
“Ya, but now is a bad time. Will you come with us calmly, without causing trouble?” He still held his gun, albeit lightly.
The deck rumbled and bucked. “I want to get off this thing alive just as much as you do,” Malone said.
“That is very good, because it is most unwise to fire a gun on an airship.” He holstered his pistol and said something to Martens.
She was fiddling with an instrument panel near the lever, and as she responded she shook her head.
“We are caught in an updraft,” Geist said to Malone. “The higher we rise, the more the gas expands, until the bags pop.”
“And your explosives detonate,” Malone said.
“Naturellment. Only, I do not plan for us to be on the ship when it happens.”
“Add that to the list of things you’re explaining later,” Malone said.
“Ya. For now, we decharge the bags and hope in the skills of my pilots.” Malone followed Geist and Martens out of engineering and toward the cargo deck.
The airship swayed and shook more with each passing minute, and Malone’s joints were already taking a battering. And any minute, she feared, the bombs would go off.
But once they reached the hold and Malone found Lachesse resting – somehow – by the cargo door in the back, there was nothing to do but wait. So Malone breathed the nervous stink of forty other bodies, watched the swirling grays outside the window, and listened to the sounds of wind and rain and voices.
The Glasauge creaked. Rain drummed against the hull.
Not rain – spray.
Geist and two others opened the wide cargo doors at the stern. Waves whipped at the airship about a hundred feet below.
The crew tore the orange crate open and pulled out floppy orange cushions that began inflating. People were congealing around them, forming up.
Malone found Lachesse. “I think we’re going to have to jump,” she said.
The whitenail nodded.
“Keep your body straight. And get rid of anything you think you can leave behind.”
The others were already jumping into the water, moving as quickly as possible to land close to each other and the life rafts. Lachesse looked raw and diminished, like a colorful beetle that had just molted. When their turn came, Malone pointed her toes, shut her eyes, and held a deep breath.
She fell for a long time before she hit the water. And when she did, it felt like an even longer time before she breached the surface again. But she pulled and kicked and promised herself that she hadn’t been pulled back from the edge just to die in the cold water now.
An orange raft bobbed in the waves. Members of Geist’s crew leaned out from its sheltered dome, calling to their fellows and pulling them aboard. Malone swam, fighting exhaustion and cold and the heavy pull of the water.
At last she made it and caught her breath. She looked up for the Glasauge, but it was nowhere to be seen. She searched the sky and saw nothing until a brilliant fireball exploded hundreds of feet above and in the distance.
The man next to her muttered something that sounded like a prayer.
Chapter 20
Babel
The first thing Jane Lin saw of the Continent was a wall.
It was big and wide enough that at first she thought it was just a cliff stretching across the coastline. But as they sailed closer, she saw that it was smooth and even topped with lights.
She looked to Roman for answers, but he lay asleep on the seats.
After their daring escape from Salvage, the rest of their journey had been uneventful. By the time the storm had cleared and the sun had risen the next morning, Salvage had become merely a smudge on the horizon, and they themselves were no doubt too small for the floating city to follow, assuming the crew of the Kennedy would even tell the rest of the fleet of their escape. Jane and Roman had followed the compass east and rationed the boat’s supply of water and stale crackers. Roman had mostly slept – Jane hadn’t realized it was possible for a person to sleep so long, but he never ceased to astonish her.
At least she’d brought something to read.
The book was filled with fantastical stories of extraordinary machines and incredible journeys. She was just happy to have something to take her mind away from visions of Ruthers and Malone, especially since all she could do was wait.
Roman awoke long enough to share a meal of crackers and protein paste. As they ate, he explained some of what had transpired on Salvage – that the captain of the Kennedy had planned to trade him to the Continent in exchange for materials to repair their pre-Catastrophe engine.
Jane had surmised as much. What unsettled her more was what that said about their destination. And about Roman. “Does the Continent really have the resources to fix something like that?”
Roman hesitated long enough to scoop a chunk of paste onto his cracker. “Salvage thinks they do, which is what matters.”
“I’m asking what you think.”
He glanced at her quickly before returning his attention to his food. “Probably. Somewhere. It might take some digging to find it.” He took a bite and chewed half-heartedly.
“But they’d find it to get you back,” she said.
He nodded, swallowing with some difficulty.
But the questions were bubbling up inside her now – all the things she’d been wondering over after his capture. “They recognized you. They called you a missing prince! What does that even mean?”
Roman grimaced and set the rest of his cracker aside. “It means we’ll have to be even more careful on the Continent, because it’s only going to get worse. My family is well known for things I’m not proud of.” He shifted and tugged at his shirt as though he were suddenly warm.
“But that’s not on you,” she said.
He paused, studying his knuckles. “When we left Recoletta, do you remember what you told me? About needing time to sort things out?”
Jane heard the fragility in his voice. She nodded, reminding herself that he wasn’t used to confiding in anyone.
“Thank you,” he said.
Whatever was on his mind, she supposed it had something to do with the vault. After all, that was what had driven his family from the Continent as well as what had brought him back. Unspoken between them was the question of how they would destroy it and whether such a thing was even possible. She only hoped he’d be ready to open up before they reached it.
Roman retreated to sleep again, and Jane returned to her book.
They reached the coast just as dark was falling. A beach some fifty yards wide spread out beneath the wall, room enough for them to ground their lifeboat. The little craft, sun-bleached as it was, made a target they were eager to abandon.
They divided their meager supplies – some blankets, more stale crackers, and a few canteens of water – between them and set off along the beach. The dark made it hard to see far, but Jane couldn’t discern any breaks or gates in the wall.
“Was this here when you left?” she asked Roman.
Roman nodded. “It’s been here for generations. One of the first Gran Meisterworks of the Continent, as they call them.”
Jane marveled at it, wondering how many people and how many years it had taken to build such a thing. “Are there more walls like this, then?”
“No. The Gran Meisterworks are all different, but they’re all ambitious feats with a specific purpose in mind. The airs
hips were the Gran Meisterwork when I was young.”
“Airships?”
He screwed up his face in thought and made a vague gesture as though he were holding a large ball. “Big, flying contraptions. They were only ideas when I left, and that was more than twenty-five years ago.”
The idea seemed both exotic and perilous in a way that excited her. “Why would they build something like that?” Jane said.
Roman hesitated. Jane caught it but said nothing. “Transportation, of course. You wouldn’t need train tracks to move around,” Roman finally said.
It was an interesting notion, a land with the ability and the need to move people so freely. Not like the buried cities, where most people spent their whole lives siloed in one place. And yet the wall stood in silent protest of that principle. “Is this for keeping Continentals in? Or keeping others out?” Jane asked.
He didn’t answer immediately. “It was built to keep out Salvagers,” he eventually said, “and also people like us.” And there was the thought he’d been gnawing on and talking around.
“From the buried cities, you mean. People like me.”
Roman angled further up the beach. “There’s firmer ground here. Easier walking.” They continued in silence for a few minutes. “There’s a port up ahead – see the light on the horizon? We can pass through there if we must. There shouldn’t be anything unusual about two people walking up from the beach.”
Jane heard the hesitation in his voice. “You don’t sound so sure of that,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s changed since I left. But it’s better if we can get in through one of the fisher’s gates. There should be small doors every few miles where people can pass through to get to the beach. They’re supposed to be locked and guarded, but they rarely are – or were when I was here. Not away from the big cities, anyway.”
It wasn’t long before they came to one such doorway set into the wall. The wooden door was propped open, and tracks gouged the sand around it.
“Someone must have gone through recently,” Jane said. “And headed the other way.”
“Then we’ll keep our heads down,” Roman said.
The land on the other side of the wall was gray in the moonlight, with rolling hills and low trees. Buildings rose in the distance, bigger than the houses and shops of the communes, and certainly more numerous.
“That’s the port,” Roman said. “Our best chance of getting further inland will be there.”
Jane supposed she should have been exhausted, but after the long, quiet ride to the coast and the weeks of anticipation about what the Continent would hold, she felt as if she were just waking up. The cool air was brisk and enlivening, and it felt good to stretch her legs.
“We really made it,” she said. After so much running, so many close escapes, she could hardly believe it.
“We’ve still got hundreds of miles to go,” Roman said.
“And now we’ve got solid ground under us.” Her stomach rumbled, but she couldn’t bring herself to eat another cracker or dollop of protein paste. “And soon we’ll have food that doesn’t taste like it’s been around since the Catastrophe.” She glanced up at Roman, but his face was set in a stern frown and focused on the road ahead. “So, what now?”
“We get to Nouvelle Paris. It’s a big city, so finding transport to Cologne-de-le-Kur and the vault shouldn’t be too difficult.”
Jane caught a hint of tightness in his voice. “If the vault’s in Cologne-de-le-Kur, what else is in Nouvelle Paris?” she asked.
“My family’s estate. We should be able to find help. Resources.” The tension in his voice suggested that he was not looking forward to the visit.
It seemed a poor time to joke about meeting his relatives, so Jane kept the thought to herself and turned her attention back to their destination.
There was something unusual about the port town growing on the horizon, and it took Jane a few moments of watching the shape rise like a lumpy cake before she could put a finger on it.
The buildings were big – taller than the shops at the farming communes and sprawling almost as widely as the verandas of Recoletta. But it wasn’t just their size that stood out. It was their shape. Or shapes, to be more accurate. Boxy edifices sprouted long, arching arms that reached over other buildings, or in some cases melted into them. Runty little hovels huddled beneath them like plants starved for light.
“Is… is that normal?” Jane asked. The question felt strangely rude, but she didn’t quite know how to express the bizarreness of the scene.
“It’s the Continent,” Roman said.
By the time they were close enough for the streetlights to cast color on the buildings, Jane saw their materials were just as varied and mismatched. Brick attachments connected wood and plaster to polished glass. Bright, new tile glistened upon grizzled stone facades.
Something about the place made Jane dizzy. It reminded her of Salvage, except in Salvage everything had been old and only patched up or patched together. This place was a mix of old and new: ancient buildings hollowed out, cleaned up, and refurbished, colonized by modern developments like termite-eaten trunks overgrown with creeper vines.
As Jane looked on, she decided that it wasn’t just that the newer buildings seemed out of sync with the old. They also seemed out of sync with each other. Built in a dozen different styles, it was as if their architects had never bothered to speak with each other, as if their construction crews had worked around and on top of one another. Tall, wide windows peered into dark alleyways, and shaded colonnades zigzagged around asymmetrical plazas.
She almost gasped when she saw the people.
It wasn’t them so much as what they were wearing. She’d expected the Continentals to wear unusual styles. In Madina and then again on Salvage, she’d gotten used to wearing them herself.
But the Continentals’ clothes, like their buildings, were a mismatched assortment of disparate pieces.
Some wore flowing cotton blouses that hung to their knees, draped over rough denim slacks. Others wore leather overcoats over silk pajamas or crisp linen dresses belted at the waist.
It was impossible to tell who was who simply by the fabric and cut of their clothing. The lack of distinction was both disorienting and thrilling.
She was so busy watching the crowds that she didn’t see the man and woman in front of her until she’d run into them.
“I’m so sorry,” Jane said, “please–”
But the man glared down his nose, taking in her and Roman’s attire, and sniffed. “This is a loyalist town. Watch where you go und do not cause difficulties.”
Jane muttered another apology as the haughty couple continued on their way. When they were out of earshot, she leaned in to Roman.
“A ‘loyalist town’? What’s that mean?”
He shook his head. “Like I said, a lot’s changed.”
But she realized that the two of them stood out.
She caught a few wayward glances from passers-by. They’d worn the same ratty clothes since escaping the floating city, so they must have looked and smelled like something that had been dragged from the sea and left to ferment in the sun. They’d need to find fresh clothes if they wanted to blend in.
They passed under hanging lights that buzzed with electricity. She’d seen a few in Madina and on Salvage, but never this many. The chatter that drifted through the air and the words adorning the buildings had the just-familiar sound of a language that was not quite her own but that was close enough to be mostly intelligible. Thankfully, after two and a half weeks on Salvage, she’d become used to interpreting.
Roman’s shoulders were hunched and his chin was down. He scanned the crowd without moving his head. It was an expression she’d seen on him before – he was keeping watch and trying to avoid notice.
“We should find a residential neighborhood,” Jane said.
He turned just enough for her to see his raised eyebrow. “Coastal real estate’s always overpriced.”
“Then I’m sure the clothes are nice. And someone’s bound to have hung them out on a night like this.”
Roman smiled and for a moment Jane felt only warmth through the cool air.
For all that was new and strange about the town, the clotheslines strung between windows made a familiar sight. Roman was just tall enough to pull a few garments from the lowest of them. They retreated to a quiet alley to change, Jane into dark wool trousers and a pale silk blouse, and Roman into plain, loose slacks and a richly embroidered shirt. They fit well enough and were only a little damp. Jane had no idea if they were even wearing the clothes properly, but it seemed like an improvement over their salt- and grease-stained rags. Even if she did cringe at putting clean clothes on over unwashed skin.
“On to the train station,” she said.
“Or something like that,” said Roman.
They continued down quiet side streets, paved in patchwork with cobblestones, flagstones, and cracked slabs so that it was impossible to tell what was old and what merely imitated it. When they reached a bank of signs they found one labeled “Station” and followed it.
They were headed toward a plaza – or so Jane thought. It was difficult to tell with the way the streets widened, narrowed, and twisted around buildings that peaked and shrank. But she heard noise ahead – the low roar of chattering people gathered together.
Roman was a few steps ahead, his shoulders rigid and his gait stiff. The street opened into a broad square – or more like a lopsided heptagon, maybe – and Jane saw people gathered on terraces, calling down from balconies, looking up at the statue…
“We should find another way around,” Roman said, but it was too late. She’d seen it.
There, looming in the middle of the plaza, was a twenty-foot statue of a man who looked strikingly like Roman.
Jane dodged around him to get a better view.
The figure stood with one foot forward, his shoulders thrown back and his short hair ruffled by an imaginary breeze. He wore well-tailored trousers and a loose shirt with long, squared-off tails, similar to styles she’d seen around town. One hand clutched a long-necked flask, the other, a syringe. His expression was beatific, the empty eyes gazing into some distant vista.
