“The air ferry’s about to leave,” Clay said, nodding. “It's now or never, Knotwood. Ready?”
Passengers were packed tightly on to the Tailwind's deck. Smoke curled from her funnel. Kite chewed his lip. This was madness. So many things could go wrong. But Clay's confidence had rubbed off on him a little and he'd long since run out of options. He drew a dry breath into his sore lungs and nodded.
Clay marched him into Ruster's Roost and at the top of his voice proclaimed, “come along, my boy, we don't want to keep Aunt Thora waiting!”
Kite had never been this exposed, as if all the eyes of the world were suddenly upon him. His hands were loose at his side, the bag tucked out of sight.
A Weatheren voice boomed. “You there! Halt!”
Kite stumbled, nearly losing his hood to the wind.
“Easy Knotwood,” Clay said out of the corner of his mouth. “Act casual. Let me do the talking, just play long remember?”
A soldier approached them. “This area is restricted, skyless,” he said.
“My dear Sergeant, a pleasure,” Clay said, returning a half-bow. “Such a relief that we made it in time for the Nimbus's noon departure to Port Howling. May I just say what a sterling job you and your men are doing keeping these ruffians under control. Excellent work. May we be allowed to board perchance? We have the fare...”
Clay showed the royals that Kite had tentatively loaned him.
The Sergeant stared back. “Show me what's in your bags,” he said. “The boy first.”
Everything about the Sergeant had made him rigid with fear. The brass-handled shockgun discharger. The plates of armour on his shoulders, reflecting the sand and old metal of Ruster's Roost. The pristine rows of shiny buttons across his chest, each one embossed with the eye of the First Light Foundation.
The buttons that had betrayed Ersa...
Clay gave him a gentle nudge. “Go ahead my boy, show the kind Sergeant what's in your bag,” he said. “Don't be shy. We've nothing to hide do we?”
Kite slowly lifted the flap, hands shaking. He kept his eyes on his boots, hoping the dust he smeared on the goggles would hide them. The Sergeant rummaged through his spare clothes and the blanket - all Kite had managed to pack. The rest of his gear had been left in the sandboat.
“Pockets,” the Sergeant said.
Out came the geolume in its matchbox, two crackbread biscuits wrapped in paper and a palm of sand. The Sergeant shook his head at the sorry collection.
“Fine, you can go,” said the Sergeant, turning to Clay instead. “You next. Open the case.”
Quick as he dared Kite made for Tailwind's berth, passing the ranks of soldiers. Many eyes followed him. One pair more closely than others. Gutter Savage. The salvagemaster began to laugh, cracking the dried black blood in the corners of his eyes, as if he'd only that moment gotten the punchline to an old joke.
Kite hastened by the Highwrecker and the chattering Weatheren scientists on her deck and then down the jetty to the Tailwind's moorings. He paid the deckhand the fares and scurried aboard where he quickly hid amongst the passengers on the quarterdeck and squatted, so as not to crush the mechanikin shoved down the seat of his trousers. Relief washed over him. Somehow Clay's mad plan had worked.
Back on the wharf Clay was in big trouble. “Are these weapons?” The Sergeant was asking him.
“Entirely ceremonial I can assure you, Sergeant,” Clay replied, gesturing to the air ferry. “I can't help but notice my transport is leaving. My young son is waiting for me. Surely you wouldn't want to separate such a devoted father and son?”
The Sergeant waved him on. “You can go,” he said.
“Sergeant!”
The voice stabbed into Kite's heart, harder and deeper than any knife.
19
The Murkers
The Corrector came marching into Ruster's Roost, carefully stepping between the bodies of the salvors. Soldiers stamped and saluted her. A tear in her leather coat was the only evidence Kite could see of her encounter with Cob. Following her at a distance, blood bright on his umbrella, came the Umbrella Man.
“Why is that air ferry leaving, Sergeant?” the Corrector demanded, pointing toward the Tailwind. “I told you no-one was to leave until they'd been searched.”
Kite made himself small, hugging his bag. The passengers around him murmured nervously as if they too had secrets to hide.
“The passengers have all been searched, Corrector,” the Sergeant said, a little defensive. “I didn't see a reason to delay them.”
Kite kept perfectly still. His heart thundered in his throat. He could sense the Corrector scanning the passengers.
“Search them again, Sergeant,” the Corrector ordered. “There are Greys here.”
Kite shuddered violently. The word, spoken so openly, shredded the last ounce of hope of escape. Passengers began looking suspiciously at each other. Then one of the passengers looked at him, making the connection. Kite had been the last on board after all.
Soldiers approached the gangplank. Kite didn’t move. Any second he would be called out. Betrayed. There was no way off the Tailwind now. No escape from the Corrector.
The air above him shattered.
Lightning slashed down, cutting into the Weatheren ranks. Bodies swirled in flames, screams filling the air. Kite turned at the sound of engines. Two black darts swept down from the clifftops. Single-pilot airmachines with arrow-head decks and short wings. Each barely bigger than an manhole cover but wide enough for their masked pilots to crouch on their backs. He'd never heard of such airmachines.
The pilots crisscrossed each other's vapours, writing a 'V' shape on the air. One discharged a shockgun - the air cracking again - forcing the Weatheren soldiers into a retreat. The other, shorter and much faster, dived low over the rows of grounded salvage rigs and tossed a black sphere into their ranks.
Kite ducked instinctively.
The device detonated with an ear-shocking crack, spewing a dome of mosfire that tore the Weatherens apart. The shockwave struck a second later, bucking the deck under him. Some passengers screamed. Others cheered the carnage. “The Murkers rule the Undercloud!” they cried.
In the chaos the Corrector somehow tried to be heard over the screams of her dying men. “Take them down!” she cried, while her Umbrella Man shielded her from the cruel blue fire. “Use the shockcannons! Relay the order!”
Kite rocked with a sudden lightness. The Tailwind was lifting off. Her turbines roared, boxing his ears. Passengers scrambled to the edges of the deck, grappling for handholds.
Smoke and lightning blotted out Ruster's Roost. The Murker airmachines dived across the smoke, drawing the shockgun fire. He marvelled at their speed, their daring. Weatheren shockguns sent up a hail of bolts but the skilful pilots evaded in a blur. Their green lenses scored ghost lines on his vision. Not even the wind could touch them.
The air broke with a sonic crack. His eardrums popped. The Occluder's shockcannons spat lightning and the Murkers spun and weaved out of the way. The bolts whipped across Dusthaven. Tearing off roofs and setting fires in the tinder-dry hollows.
The airmachines swooped by the Tailwind. The fulgurtine's massive cannons swivelled after them, pointing at the air ferry's hull. The passengers screamed and dived for cover. But Kite didn't move. He was paralysed with fear.
The shockcannons flashed.
Mosfire exploded over his head. Sparks rained on the passengers and skittered across the deck wriggling like white-hot maggots.
The Murkers dodged the volley and the bolt whipped across the cliff above the town. With a crack tons of chalk peeled away and collapsed on to the containers, flattening and toppling them sideways. A great pale dust cloud swallowed up Dusthaven's skyline, echoing with screams and buckling metal. Kite could only hazard a sickening guess as to how many scavvy families had been crushed down there.
The avalanche of metal changed the Murkers’ tactics. Ascending in zig-zags the pilots rocketed over the clifftops an
d vanished, leaving ghostly vapour trails thinning on the wind. Kite watched them go, wondering if their brutal work was done. Or maybe they had realised how ruthless their enemy could be. The Foundation wouldn't stop now. Not until the whole settlement had been reduced to ash.
Soon the shockcannons had fallen silent. Smoke and vapour coiled in the winds. Ruster's Roost was littered with smouldering bodies. Someone screamed for help. The Tailwind accelerated.
Kite chanced a look over the gunwale. The Corrector stood there amid the burning wreckage of her soldiers, her furious gaze fixed on the retreating Tailwind.
20
The Promise
Kite had never been this alone. He had hidden himself amongst the creaking, straining packing crates at the stern of the Tailwind. The tide of adrenaline that had kept him alive until now had ebbed away, leaving his body a shivering hollow. Each aching breath rattled his glass bones, cut deep at his nerves. He was numb and afraid and all he could think of was Ersa lying broken in the sands. Was he a coward for not going back? He should have buried her. That, at least, he owed her.
The Tailwind's exhaust vapours thinned over the Foreland's labyrinth of purplish gorges, canyons and chines. For a long while now Kite had expected the Occluder to come thundering after them. Every distant rumble or lightning flicker made his heart race and his belly twist. But so far the only airmachine he'd seen had been a patchwork bagship, idling over one of the Gasser camps on the rocky headland. If the Corrector was hunting him, she hadn't found him yet.
“Fyth Nafwth, Fyth Nafwth, wef arf yuff?”
Kite looked back down the length of the windswept deck. A deckhand idled near the pilothouse, well out of earshot. Happy he wouldn't be overhead Kite shuffled behind the crates and opened the bag.
“...Kite Nayward! Kite Nayward!”
The mechanikin's eye shone bright, reflecting off the nail-heads and chains crisscrossing the crates stamped with the Nimbus Air Ferry mark.
“I'm here,” he said.
“Now do you believe me?” Ember said, moodily. “About the Umbrella Man?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are we heading west?” said Ember. “You said you'd take me to Skyzarke. You promised.”
“No, I didn't...wait,” Kite said. “How d'you know we're heading west?”
The mechanikin hummed. “Direction, three hundred and twenty-nine degrees west by south-west,” she said. “Altitude, eighty feet above the old sea level. Current speed, eighteen knots. This machine doesn't have a mind but I can still hear its heartbeat. Tick-tick-tick.”
“That's amazing,” Kite said.
“I am amazing,” Ember replied.
“So clever clogs, how do we get to Skyzarke then?” he asked.
“Didn't I say?” Ember replied. “Skyzarke is north of the Thundergrounds.”
Kite frowned. “You didn't say,” he said.
“I told you, I forget easily,” said Ember, and her chipped lips made a hollow huffing noise. “If you talked to me more often, instead of ignoring me, I might remember.”
Painful as it was Kite recalled what Ersa had told him last night. “Ember, I don't think this city of yours even exists,” he said.
“Yes, it does,” Ember said. “If the Umbrella Man still exists then so must Skyzarke. That horrible woman knew of it, so it has to be true. Ask her. Go on.”
“I can't,” Kite mumbled. “Ersa's gone, Ember.”
“Good,” Ember said. “I hated her.”
Kite sighed heavily. Explaining would be pointless. “Look, there may be Askians in Port Howling,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll help us find Skyzarke. They're bound to know the way.”
“I must find the Cloud Room, Kite Nayward,” Ember said. “I don’t want to be trapped inside this broken body any longer. I want to be whole again.”
Kite thought for a moment. The mechanikin was all he had now. Ember was more than just a thing of value. She was the link to finding the Askians. Kite didn’t believe in such things but somehow their fates were bound together.
“Look, don't speak to anyone except me, understand?” Kite said. “The Cloud Room, Skyzarke, all of it's our secret, right?”
Ember sighed. “Very well, but only if you keep your promise.”
“My promise?” Kite asked.
“You said you'd take me to the Cloud Room.”
“No, I didn't.”
“You have to keep a promise, Kite Nayward.”
“I'm not making any promises. I don't even know -”
In flash the eye shone a fierce red, turning Kite's hands dark as dried blood.
“Everyone knows that broken promises mean broken bones!” Ember's voice shrieked at him.
Inside their cowlings the Tailwind's turbines stuttered. Deck lanterns tinkled and dimmed. Somehow Ember was doing this. Just as she’d done to the Umbrella Man and - Kite realised with cold dread - the Monitor.
“Don't do this, Ember,” he said.
“Then promise me.”
His belly rose and plunged. Passengers screamed, suddenly alerted to the danger. The skipper swore viciously from his wheel. Was this how it had been for the doomed Weatherens on board the Monitor? Those final helpless seconds before metal and fire ended their lives in the dunes of the Thirsty Sea.
“All right you've made your point!” Kite said.
“Promise me! Promise me now, Kite Nayward!” Ember demanded.
Sandstone ridges roared by on the starboard side. Jags of black rock ready to the tear open the air ferry's keel and scattered her scrap on the dry shore beneath.
“I promise!” Kite cried. “I promise!”
At once the turbines settled into a regular beat. The skipper pulled them away and she ascended to a safe height above the cliffs.
Kite gripped the mechanikin, hands shaking. Tears pooled under the leather rims of his goggles. The terror had dug all the emotion out of him. Now it came in great endless sobs. He wished he’d never taken the mechanikin from the Weatheren scientist. If he hadn’t been so hungry for profit Ersa would still be alive.
Worse than regret was the frustration he felt. Frustration at being robbed of the truth Ersa had promised to tell him. The truth about the Askians and Skyzarke. Of the empty spaces in his knowledge, that would finally make him understand why the Askians must forever hide from Foundation’s eye.
“Don't let me get angry again, Kite Nayward,” Ember said, her eye once more a sad blue. “Being angry is worse than being alone.”
The voice had changed back; tiny and frightened and distant. Kite imagined its owner, blind and trapped in some vast empty space. He realised it then. The two of them were the same. Alone, lost and afraid. This strange, dangerous thing had become his only friend in the world.
“Kite Nayward?”
Kite sank back against the crates and drew his faithful patchcoat around him for warmth.
“Kite Nayward, talk to me.”
Kite closed his eyes. “Tell me about Skyzarke,” he whispered. “Tell me about the stars.”
21
The Enemy of the Foundation
“Knotwood?”
Clay's voice slapped Kite out of his dreamless sleep. He gulped at the gritty air and coughed, his lungs hot and heavy. The chilly, wind-swept deck startled him at first. Where was he? How had he got here? Then yesterday’s events swam back into his mind and with it, the hurt in his chest.
“Bad dreams eh, Knotwood?” Clay was sat on his suitcase, his back to the gunwale, nibbling a unappealing square of dry biscuit.
Kite quickly checked himself. Hood and goggles in place. The bag at his side and the cold lump of the mechanikin safe beneath the canvas where he'd left it. At least his secrets remained intact. “Something like that,” he said.
“I am not surprised. Nasty business back in Dusthaven,” Clay said. “I know how you must feel.”
Kite gnashed his teeth. How could Clay know how he felt? He didn't even know himself.
Clay brushed crumbs from his kne
es. “The Murkers make it hard for those of us trying to make honest living,” he said. “They're the reason there are Weatheren spies are all over the Old Coast now.”
Kite perked up. He hadn’t expected Clay to be so knowledgeable. “You know much about the Murkers?” he said.
“As much as anyone can, Knotwood,” Clay said, taking off his high-hat and scratching at his slick of unwashed hair. “You've seen what they did in Dusthaven. They hide in the clouds and attack the Foundation airmachines at random.”
“Who are they?” Kite asked.
Clay shrugged. “Skywaymen, air pirates, terrorists. Who knows what they are,” he said. “They call themselves the Enemy of the Foundation. A damn menace the lot of them. Worse than the Weatherens if you ask me.”
“Nothing's worse than Weatherens,” Kite whispered.
Clay didn't appear to hear him. “Only last week the Murkers brought down a Foundation supply freighter in sight of the Dreadwall,” he went on. “A warning to Fairweather. Stay out of the Old Coast. Not that that is ever likely to happen. It'll be full scale war before long, mark my words.”
Kite recalled how the Murker pilots had butchered the Corrector’s soldiers. Only two of them had done all that damage. Did they really have a chance against the Foundation? Maybe beneath the Undercloud but above? No-one could defeat the might of the Fairweather’s Air Fleet.
The pilothouse bell clattered.
“Port ahoy! Port ahoy!” an excitable deckhand cried from the bow.
“Ah, Port Howling,” Clay said. He might as well have spat on the deck for all the affection in his voice. “I would say it's good to be home but then I would lose my reputation as an honest man.”
Kite would never forget his first glimpse of Port Howling. The harbour town clamped on to the crust of the Foreland; a rust-red hive, buzzing with salvage rigs, Nimbus Air Ferries and Gasser bagships. A mud-coloured haze smothered its chimneys and tower-tops and a dark slick stained the cliffs beneath, as if the port was bleeding into the sand below.
Port Howling. The biggest port in the Old Coast. Kite didn’t know if Askians had hidden themselves in its smog-soaked streets but there had to be others out there somewhere. Someone amongst them would know the way to Skyzarke. Until then he could trust no-one.
The Immortal Storm (Sky Chaser Book 1) Page 8
