by Anthony Ryan
“I promised the first delivery in a month,” Lizanne said, turning and striding back towards the rope dangling from the Firefly. “And I meant it. Don’t waste any more ships on reconnaissance. We’ll take care of that.”
* * *
• • •
“It’s impossible.”
Jermayah blinked tired eyes at her, voice barely audible above the constant clatter of the manufactory. Lizanne had been impressed by the progress made in her absence, the place now resembled an Ironship facility with its long rows of assembly tables attended by numerous workers. The town had also undergone a swift transformation, whitewash covering many of its previously drab walls and about half the houses now had roofs and shutters on the windows. However, it transpired all this effort had yet to result in any actual output.
“You have materials . . .” Lizanne began only to be waved to silence by Jermayah.
“Materials have to be converted into components and components assembled into finished products. All of this requires organisation, skills and the time to learn them. At the moment we have perhaps one-third of the components we need for a production run of fifty Growlers and half that number of Thumpers. At the current rate they’ll be ready in seven weeks.”
He paused, running a hand through his shaggy, unkempt hair. Lizanne knew she had pushed him close to exhaustion already, and dearly wanted to order him to rest, but the situation required a harder heart. “What’s the biggest obstacle to rapid production?” she asked.
Jermayah thought for a moment. “Moulding, I suppose. Copper, brass and steel all has to be melted and poured into moulds and the components finished by hand before assembly. We have plenty of fuel but the forging facilities here are primitive and minimal, designed for repairing locomotives rather than large-scale manufacture.”
“Can’t the Blood-blessed help with the melting?” Lizanne asked.
“We’ve been trying to husband what product we have. Madame Hakugen has a supply of Eastern Conglomerate stocks from Lossermark but guards it fiercely. Says we’ll need it for defence when the time comes.”
“I’ll speak to her.” Lizanne turned and started for the exit, pausing to add, “And drink some Green. You look terrible.”
* * *
• • •
“Too much,” Lizanne said, stepping back and raising an arm to shield herself from the sparks fountaining from the bulky granite flask.
“Want it melted, don’t you?” Morva replied.
“Yes, melted, not exploded. Watch.” Lizanne concentrated her gaze on the next flask and the three copper ingots it contained. “Think of the Red as a pool and you the stream that flows from it,” she said, the air shimmering as she sent a steady, narrow wave of Red into the flask. The copper took on a glow before the ingots started to sublime into one another. After a few minutes the flask was full of steaming liquid metal.
Lizanne nodded to the team of workers, all clad head to toe in thick leather. Two of them stepped forward to clamp the flask with iron poles before lifting and tilting it to pour the contents into the prearranged row of moulds.
“Try again,” Lizanne told Morva pointing to another flask, this one full of brass.
Thanks to Madame Hakugen’s reluctantly surrendered product and Lizanne’s employing all the settlement’s Blood-blessed in the forge, they had quadrupled the output of components in a single day. The woman’s warning that such profligate use would soon exhaust their supply was undoubtedly correct but Lizanne argued the need to produce finished weapons outweighed any concerns about defence. “One thing I have learned, madame,” she said. “In war moderation is not a virtue but an impediment.”
Using so much product so quickly also gave her the chance to fulfil her educational obligation, though Morva was a frequently recalcitrant student. After completing a shift at the forge Lizanne had her assist with moving the moulded components to the assembly line. The Varestian woman’s first attempt had an entire row of workers ducking for cover when she propelled a crate full of components across the manufactory with all the force of a cannon-shot.
“Only ever used it to throw things,” she said with a shrug of what Lizanne discerned to be studied indifference. “The Okanas family needs a Blood-blessed that can fight, not push things around like a glorified cart-horse.”
“I’ve seen you fight,” Lizanne returned. “And you’re no better a cart-horse than you are a fighter.”
That earned a glaring sneer, Morva turning on her heel to stalk from the manufactory, then freezing in place as Lizanne’s Black closed around her. She held her still for a second then slowly lifted her off the ground, turning her around and setting her down close to the stack of crated components. She could feel the woman struggling in her grip, lashing out with her own Black in a series of undisciplined blasts that were too unfocused to have any effect. Lizanne maintained her grip until Morva exhausted her reserves, then released her after a final squeeze to empty her lungs.
“Ethilda says you’re not really an Okanas,” Lizanne said, moving to stand over Morva as she knelt, clutching her chest and gasping. “Is that true?”
“That . . . whore is . . . no Okanas either,” Morva rasped, raising her gaze to glare at Lizanne.
“She says they bought you.” Lizanne went to her haunches, bringing her face level with Morva’s. “Why are you so loyal to a family that sees you as just a useful slave?”
Morva gritted her teeth and looked away. “Uncle Alzar always told me I was free to go . . .”
“Go? A lone child in the Red Tides. Where exactly would you go?”
“You don’t understand. The High Wall, it’s my home.”
A child taken from a life of bondage and abuse, given a home, told she had a family. Even if it was all just a contrivance to win her loyalty, clearly it worked. “Your home will burn,” Lizanne said. “Along with everything else if we don’t win this war. Make no mistake, I have seen the face of our enemy and it is all too real. This is the first battle.” She inclined her head at the busy lines of workers. “Every minute spent here is another step to victory. Every bolt, screw and lever we make is worth a thousand bullets.”
She took a fresh vial of Black from the pocket of her overalls and held it out. “Let’s try again, shall we? Shift me five tons by the end of the day and I’ll show you how to shatter a knee-cap with just a drop of Black.”
* * *
• • •
The first Growler came off the production line a week later, followed by the first Thumper two days after that. Jermayah had given manufacture of the Smokers over to the small band of gunsmiths and armourers who had escaped Lossermark. Their progress was slow and they shared a tendency to ignore entreaties to forsake long-ingrained perfectionism for speedy production. However, after another week of cajoling and a liberal ration of Green to stave off fatigue the gunsmiths’ workshop was producing the new carbines at a rate of five a day.
With the assembly lines running at reasonable efficiency Jermayah focused his efforts on ammunition, Lizanne and the other Blood-blessed exhausting all but a small amount of their Red to once again kick-start the process. The shell casings and projectiles were soon coming off the lines in decent quantities but the propellant needed to fill them required a more prolonged and hazardous process.
“The Varestians only gave us black powder,” Jermayah said. He had established a separate workshop to manufacture the ammunition, an old warehouse situated at a decent remove from the town. The mostly female work-force had been hand-picked for their dexterity and many were former seamstresses or print-setters. They all wore overalls fastened with laces rather than buttons, Jermayah having forbidden the smallest scrap of metal in the place.
“Works fine for cannon but it’ll foul the workings of the Growlers and Thumpers,” he went on. “We need to add flakes of nitrate and grind it into a fine dust.”
“As long as i
t works,” Lizanne said. Watching his head sag a little as he nodded, she said, “Get some sleep. You’ve done more than enough for now.”
“This lot needs watching . . .”
“Then send them home.” A faint smile formed on her lips as an idea occurred to her. “Tomorrow will be a holiday,” she said. “I think these people deserve a small celebration.” The smile slipped from her lips as she turned away, knowing that for many whatever festivities she organised could well be the last they ever saw.
CHAPTER 23
Clay
It was only thanks to the Green in his veins that he was able to make out much of anything below the surface. The undulating lake-bed stretched away beneath him, featureless but for a sand-covered hump almost directly below. He angled his body towards the hump and kicked with all the enhanced strength his body would allow. His objective became clearer as he descended, resolving into something vaguely boat-shaped. It was almost entirely covered by silt but for one section near its narrow prow that appeared to have been scraped away.
A gondola, he realised as he swam closer, the sight of a hatch resolving through the murk, an open hatch. An aerostat’s gondola.
Clay’s lungs began to burn as he forced his body lower, coming to a thrashing halt a good forty feet short. Got too much air in me, he knew as a renewed bout of kicking failed to push him any lower. He stopped moving, focusing his gaze on the half-open hatch and reaching out with Black. It took two hard tugs before the hatch came free revealing something round and shiny in the gloom within. Kriz, Clay thought, recognising the helmet and using Black to draw her out of the gondola. His vision was already beginning to blur thanks to the lack of air and there was no time for finesse. Kriz’s helmet thumped against the side of the hatchway as he dragged her clear, opening his arms to catch her as she shot upwards.
She sagged in his grasp, limp and unmoving but he could feel the faint beat of her heart as his hands pressed against her chest. Clay’s hands fumbled at the weighted belt about her waist for a few agonising seconds before it came free. He began to kick for the surface when something fast and large streaked out of the gloom directly ahead, Clay having time to register the sight of two triangular rows of teeth before instinctively unleashing his Black. The Green recoiled as if it had charged into a brick wall, blood seeping like crimson smoke from its nostrils as it twisted and vanished into the gloom, tail whipping.
Clay twisted about, seeing a sleek narrow shape cut through the murk a short distance away, quickly followed by another moving in the opposite direction. They’re circling, he realised, head swivelling left and right. His body spasmed then as the product in his veins started to thin in earnest, lungs now like fire, the Greens coming closer with every circle. He knew with awful certainty that the attack would come soon and all at once, the whole pack rending and tearing at the hated intruders in a frenzy. It was as if they knew his product was fading and all they had to do was wait.
Panic rising he lashed out with Red at the closest drake, leaving a lightning-fork-like trail of bubbles through the water. The Green veered away, more in confusion than distress as Clay could see no apparent damage to the beast. Stupid, he thought, skin prickling in the suddenly warm water. Boil them and you boil yourself. Which left only the Black, and there were too many to push away.
He convulsed again, clamping his mouth shut against his body’s instinctive need to gasp. A strange, reflective calm overtook him then, the panic vanishing as the imminence of death became a certainty. A last serene notion slipped into his head as he felt Kriz begin to slip from his arms. Too many to push . . . Then don’t push, pull . . . Pull the water.
Water. More substantial than air, which could be affected by Black but only in the most unfocused way. Water was different, water could be pulled.
Clay used the last vestiges of his reason to marshal his Black, focusing his attention on the space separating them from the drakes, then expending it all at once to draw the water towards them. The effect was immediate and dramatic, the pressure of so much water compressing at once shooting the pair of them to the surface.
They broke through into a cacophony of sound and beautiful, sweet-tasting air. Clay heard his uncle call out before they plunged down. He kicked for the surface and dragged more air into his lungs as they bobbed back up. He could see the raft a little over ten yards away, which suddenly seemed a great distance in light of what lurked beneath. Uncle Braddon and Preacher were both kneeling, rifles pointed in his direction whilst Sigoral stood to the side, tipping a vial of product down his throat. Clay began to call out for a rope but the yell died as Sigoral cast the vial aside and focused his gaze. Clay felt the invisible hand of Black close around him and a heart-beat later he and Kriz were being dragged through the water at a considerable rate of knots.
Braddon and Preacher fired several shots in the time it took for them to reach the raft, Sigoral lifting them clear of the lake at the last instant to deposit them in the centre of the raft. Clay was forced to spend some time gasping for breath before he began to get the helmet off Kriz’s head.
“I got it,” Braddon said, crouching to pull the helmet clear, revealing Kriz’s slack, unresponsive features. Braddon held a hand to her mouth then, muttering a curse, lay her flat on her back and delivered several hard shoves to her sternum with both hands. Clay’s gaze was dragged away by a sudden commotion, turning to see a Green frozen in mid-leap close to the edge of the raft. Sigoral held the beast in place long enough to aim his carbine and put a bullet through its skull. The lieutenant cast the Green’s corpse away and Clay turned back, watching his uncle pumping Kriz’s chest.
“Must’ve had some air left in the helmet,” Clay said, knowing it was a desperate notion. “I felt her heart-beat, Uncle.”
Braddon said nothing, continuing his rhythmic shoves, Kriz’s head lolling in response with not even a flicker to her eyelids. He kept at it until Preacher’s rifle fell silent a minute or so later. Braddon sat back on his haunches, turning to Clay with a grim shake of his head. “I . . .”
All four of them started as Kriz jerked, a gout of water erupting from her mouth. She spent some time convulsing, breath coming in deep, saw-like rasps, eventually choking into a bout of violent coughing. Clay moved to clasp her hand as she continued to cough, finding it closed into a tight fist.
“I . . . I found them,” she said when the coughing had subsided, meeting Clay’s gaze with a bright smile. She opened her fist to reveal two objects. One was a small crystal shard, little bigger than an arrow-head, and the other a glass vial. Clay initially took it for product but the colour was strange, possessed of a rainbow-like sheen as it caught the light.
“What are they?” he asked.
Kriz’s smile broadened and she reached out with her other hand to caress his face. “The keys . . . to convergence.”
* * *
• • •
“Seems we came an awful long way for such small things.” Loriabeth peered at the two objects in Kriz’s palm with a dubious gaze.
“Density is relative and often deceptive,” Kriz replied. “Everything you can see or touch is made up of mostly empty space.” She sat huddled close to the camp-fire, a blanket about her shoulders. They had retreated a good distance from the lake-shore before making camp, Kriz having to be carried most of the way. She had shivered continually during the trip and even now spoke with a pronounced tremor to her voice. “I need Black,” she said, looking at Clay.
He frowned, concerned by her wan face and red, over-bright eyes. “You don’t want to wait awhile . . . ?”
“Black.” She held out her free hand, continuing in her own language, “As you know, I have waited a very long time for this and find myself out of patience.”
Clay duly handed over a vial of Black, Kriz drinking a quarter of the contents before focusing her gaze on the crystal sitting in her palm. It floated free and drifted away from her then seemed to shim
mer as it began to vibrate, Clay detecting a familiar tinkling sound he had last heard in their trance in the hidden enclave. The rest of the company let out a mingling of gasps and surprised profanity as the crystal abruptly unfolded. Narrow spikes lanced out from the core, catching the fire-light as it spun under Kriz’s manipulation, eventually slowing to hang serenely in the air, resembling a star in the way it glittered. Clay stepped closer to it, memory racing with recognition. The trance in which Kriz had shown him the cavern where Zembi had created the first White, the four crystals, Red, Green, Blue . . . and one so dark it seemed to swallow the light.
“The Black crystal,” he said, reaching out to press a tentative finger to one of the spikes. “We actually Seer-damn found it.”
“Kinda begs the question of what we do with it,” Braddon said, moving closer to peer at the crystal.
“It will enable communication,” Kriz said. “Between drake and human, specifically Black drakes and humans.”
“Clay can already do that,” Skaggerhill said.
“Only with Lutharon,” Clay said. “And that was thanks to Miss Ethelynne. If he’d stayed with us any longer things would’ve gone bad sooner or later, for us and him.” He turned to Kriz. “We can command them with this, right? Make them join us?”
She shook her head. “Of all the pure-bred species the Blacks were always the hardest to control, more intelligent than the others and more aggressive towards humans. This was partially why Father was never able to successfully cross-breed them. The White contains blood lines from all drake species, except the Black.”
“Guess that’s why they didn’t join its war,” Clay said. “And why they fought him when he rose before, fought alongside the people who lived here to bring him down.”
“That I can’t explain,” Kriz replied. “It’s clear that the world my people built fell, and the civilisation that grew in its place was able to achieve some kind of symbiosis with the drakes.”
