by Lucy Hounsom
‘I thought we weren’t supposed to draw attention to ourselves,’ Nediah said blandly. He blew on his steaming spoonful. ‘There are certain places where it’s not a good idea to announce you have money to spend.’
Brégenne pursed her lips. ‘Be that as it may, I’m getting a bit tired of dirty floors and nameless chunks of meat.’ She prodded just such a chunk with her spoon.
‘Who picked The Nomos, then?’ Kyndra asked.
‘I did, actually,’ Nediah said. ‘Shame we didn’t have a chance to sample the food.’
‘What were you saying?’ Brégenne asked abruptly. She’d given up on her stew and slowly sipped her drink instead. When Kyndra looked confused, she added, ‘You were talking to that woman. Who was she?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ Kyndra finished her ale and looked with disappointment into the empty tankard. Maybe Nediah would buy her another.
‘… could be important,’ Brégenne was saying. ‘Are you listening to me?’
Kyndra sighed and waved a hand. ‘She was only asking me where I was from.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Not much. You chased her off.’
Brégenne’s lips turned as white as her eyes. ‘I warned you not to say anything about us.’
‘She was interested in me, not you. She bought me a drink.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Brégenne snapped. ‘She was after something.’
The ale in Kyndra’s stomach turned to cold embarrassment. She shouldn’t have told Kait as much as she had. At least she hadn’t mentioned her name.
Brégenne set her wine down. ‘This isn’t a game, girl.’
‘What isn’t?’ Kyndra said loudly. Several people glanced her way. ‘I didn’t ask to go with you. You took me!’
‘We didn’t take you. You agreed.’
‘I didn’t have a choice. Jarand would have died if I hadn’t promised to go with you!’
Nediah leaned forward. ‘You don’t understand the danger you were in, Kyndra. You want to believe the best of your town, and that’s commendable. But a man had died and people were scared.’
‘So you did it to save me?’ Kyndra felt a profound anger. The strangers had forced her to leave Reena and Jarand when they needed her most. She had ridden away while her home burned, and neither Brégenne nor Nediah had lifted a finger to help.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she cried, unheeding of the heads that turned towards her. Brégenne’s face darkened, but Kyndra couldn’t stop. ‘You did this for your own selfish reasons. You’ve no right to take me anywhere or tell me who I can and can’t talk to!’
Nediah’s eyes were flinty, but when he spoke, his voice was composed, even sympathetic. ‘Don’t shout at us, Kyndra. You’re making a fool of yourself. If you want answers, you must prove responsible enough to deserve them.’
‘I’m going home,’ Kyndra growled. She jumped to her feet and swayed, the inn sliding sideways in her vision. She made a grab for the table, but it wasn’t where it should have been. Her stomach roiled and everything looked wrong. Faces turned to her, all featureless and blurred. Her knees hit something hard. Why was she sitting on the floor? She managed to get her legs beneath her and tried but failed to stand up.
Rhythmic banging invaded Kyndra’s ears, rousing her from a thick sleep. Her body felt fragile and her head ached.
‘You had some of the drink last night.’
Kyndra jerked up. Her stomach lurched and she groaned. There was an awful taste in her mouth and her tongue felt dry and hot. She retched.
‘No point. It all came up earlier.’ The banging continued.
Mortified, Kyndra sniffed at her clothes, recognizing the stale odour for what it was. Stupid, she thought, stupid. Anything could have happened. Trying and failing to remember last night, she held her flushed cheeks and desperately wanted to cry.
‘Women can’t hold their drink,’ the voice told her amiably.
Kyndra felt too sick to argue. She sat under an awning like a three-sided tent. Blinking out at the bright sunlight, she saw a man there, dressed in short trousers and a vest. His bare calves were muscular and he had large wide-toed feet that gripped the wooden planks as if he expected them to rock beneath him.
‘Where am I?’ Kyndra swallowed, trying to ignore the sour taste in her mouth. ‘I don’t remember coming here.’
‘Not surprised,’ the man said. ‘Your friends brought you. Slept here they did too, just opposite.’
‘You mean Bré— the woman and the tall man?’
‘Aye that’s them.’
‘But where are they now?’
The man scratched at the patchy hair retreating across his scalp. ‘Don’t know about the woman. Your other friend’s over there buying passage on the Eastern Set. He’ll be done soon enough.’
‘The what?’ Kyndra got to her knees and crawled through a pile of rugs to peer out. She was on a large aerial platform like those they’d seen last night. This one was painted green and looked rather like a giant lily pad.
‘Eastern Set,’ the man said patiently, coiling a rope. Kyndra inched her way outside, squinting as the sunlight bit into her eyes. Then she gasped.
‘I saw one of those yesterday, but not as big!’
‘Ah, you mean that old plodder.’ The man jerked his chin to the right and Kyndra spotted the craft she’d seen yesterday evening, still moored to its dock. ‘She moves like a cartwheel through snow. Eastern Set’s no barge. She’s an airship and the finest on the southern circuit.’
It really was a ship, Kyndra saw. Its decks gleamed under the sun, rails carved from silky wood. Nediah stood on the dock beside it, his back to her. He seemed to be haggling with some sort of quartermaster. Her eyes drifted back to the airship. Smoke puffed from a tube-like opening set in the sternward hull. There were two decks, and apparatus cluttered part of the lower one. Grappling hooks and canvas sacks peeped out from a tarpaulin, secured with ropes at each corner. By contrast, the top deck was neat and tidy and a round golden device faced with glass stood in place of a ship’s wheel. Kyndra squinted and saw a hand like that on a clock hovering over a background of constellations, each star a shining dot of white ink.
A prickle ran over her skin and she shuddered. Jhren called the feeling ‘grave-shivers’ – the echoes of future feet passing over your resting place.
Silly, Kyndra chided herself, and she turned her gaze outwards once more. A great windlass dominated the middle of the lower deck. The chain wound around it fed through a hole in the floor and had links as thick as her forearm. Two huge balloons floated either side of the airship in the blue air, and two circular paddles turned lazily at the rear.
‘They’re the means of propulsion,’ the man said, seeing where her gaze had strayed. ‘And the balloons do the lift. You see there?’ He pointed at the huge airborne chain she’d noticed the day before. ‘That’s the safety line. Ships are hooked onto it at launch so they don’t escape into the sky.’
‘They can’t control how high they go?’
‘It’s the law,’ the man said gruffly. ‘If it were up to me, I’d unhook and fly to the stars.’ He grinned, showing unusually white teeth. ‘But the Trade Assembly that rules in Market Primus won’t risk it. It owns all the ships and the workshop in Jarra, and by limiting access to the sky ports through the capital, they cream off the best of the trade.’ He tucked the end of his rope through the centre of the coil and dropped it into a crate stamped ‘E.S.’.
Kyndra stared at the gently bobbing airship. The posts that supported the safety line here were of a height with the aerial platforms of Sky Port East, but they increased in size as they moved away west. She guessed that the ship was connected to the safety line through the hole in its deck. ‘It works like a sea anchor,’ she said aloud, and when the man grunted agreement, she asked, ‘Where does the line go?’
‘There are four sky ports,’ the man said, ticking them off on his fingers. ‘Northern one links to the area around Svartas, the southe
rn port to Talarun and the Eversea Isles. Sky Port East is for Serea and the Valleys and the west port’s for Murta.’ He paused. ‘We’ve been trying to get a connection up near Ümvast, but those barbarians come out at night and cut down our posts.’
‘Why would they do that?’
The man shrugged. ‘Probably don’t want the Trade Assembly getting its hands on the far north.’ His gaze sharpened. ‘There’s money to be made up there. Mining, lumber – the Great Northern Forest is vast. They say it stretches to the bounds of the earth.’ He chuckled darkly. ‘Though no one’s ever come back to prove it.’
Kyndra’s mind filled with visions of distant lands and she felt small. Airships had never featured in Jhren’s aunt’s and uncle’s tales. In the young Kyndra’s imagination, Hanna and Havan were explorers: grand adventurers in pursuit of fabulous goods, living an exciting – even dangerous – life. Now, with the stranger’s words ringing in her ears, Kyndra realized why Hanna and Havan had never told her about the airships. Trading across Serea and the east, they’d probably never seen one. She tried to swallow her disappointment.
‘So you work on the Eastern Set?’ she asked the man, who was now banging down crate lids.
The man’s eyes glittered. ‘Aye.’
‘And is every sky port like this one?’
The hammering paused. ‘All are stilt-towns, if that’s what you mean. Except Sky Port West. There’s only a dock there.’
‘Why’s that?’ Kyndra asked. She waited, but the man was absorbed in his nails and didn’t answer. She repeated the question, but still the man worked on, as if he couldn’t hear her. She raised her voice. ‘I said, why is—’
‘I heard you.’ He looked up, hammer clutched in his fist. ‘Sky Port West is only there to serve Murta. It wouldn’t be there at all if the place didn’t import so much.’
‘What’s at Murta?’ Kyndra asked carefully. She could tell by the man’s tone and the uncomfortable slant of his shoulders that the subject was not one he wanted to discuss.
‘It’s just a town,’ the man said finally, ‘but it lies in the shadow of the mountains. I’ve heard some strange talk come out of there. People must be crazy to live so close to those monsters.’ When Kyndra raised her eyebrow questioningly, the man clarified, ‘Mountains.’ He gazed into the middle distance. ‘Saw them the one and only time I docked at Sky Port West. Black giants, they are, reaching up higher than anything into the sky. And they cover Mariar’s western rim with never a break for a thousand leagues. North to south, and they reach all the way to the sea.’
‘I wonder what’s beyond them?’ Kyndra mused, her mind still teeming with thoughts of the places she had yet to see.
‘Nothing,’ the man said softly.
There was a bucket of water in the tent. Kyndra cupped her hands and sipped it slowly to settle her stomach. Then she splashed her face and neck, all the while wishing fervently for a bath. She was still wearing the clothes she’d put on after the Ceremony. Mud crusted her trousers and her pale shirt showed the sooty fingers of fire.
When she came back out, clutching a heel of bread, the talkative stranger had gone. She could still see Nediah. His negotiations had perhaps taken a turn for the worse, since he now accompanied his speech with increasingly vehement gestures. Kyndra stared at him for a few moments, until her bruised senses caught up.
No one was watching her. For these scant few moments, she was alone.
Diving back into the shelter, she snatched up the rest of the bread and wrapped it in a cloth. At least that was something. Kyndra grinned to herself. This was her chance to get away. If Nediah was buying passage on an airship, it could be her only chance.
Keeping a close eye on him, she crept out of the tent. Half a loaf wouldn’t get her very far, she reasoned, especially on foot. Kyndra squinted at the sky. It was almost midday. If she was careful, perhaps she could find a market with food too old to sell.
She took a bridge that led her swiftly away from Nediah. At first, she bent low and scurried, until common sense hissed, Stand up. You look suspicious. Kyndra slowed and straightened. The last thing she needed to look like was a thief. Walking steadily now, she headed for a cluster of platforms spanned by myriad bridges. Some were little more than rope and wood, while others were solid enough to admit small carts.
The market was easy to spot, a stripy swarm of bustling tents. Fruit and vegetables sweated under the canvas and the place was noisy with the sounds of half-struck bargains. Kyndra drifted through the haggling people, entranced. She stopped at a stall, looking longingly at apples and bunches of berries. There was plenty of fruit she didn’t recognize, including a long yellow thing bent almost into a horseshoe and a root with startlingly orange flesh. Most peculiar of all was a fruit so stuck with spines that she wondered how anyone could eat it.
‘What can I get you?’ the stall owner asked, smiling briskly.
Kyndra looked up. ‘Um … do you have anything you can’t sell? I don’t really have any money.’
The woman’s smile vanished. ‘I run a business not an almshouse,’ she snapped. ‘Get going.’
‘Please,’ Kyndra said, shooting a worried glance over her shoulder. ‘I’ll take anything.’
The woman’s eyes narrowed. She bent and began to rummage beneath some canvas. When she straightened, Kyndra balked at the thing in her arms. It was definitely one of the spiky fruits, but its skin sagged like a poor man’s purse. She could tell it had lost over a third of its original volume. ‘What is it?’
‘Want it or not?’
Kyndra took it hastily and wrapped it in the cloak Nediah had lent her. She could still feel the spines.
‘Now clear off.’ The stall owner pointed a finger. ‘You’re blocking my trade.’
‘Thanks,’ Kyndra muttered, though she wasn’t sure the woman deserved it.
The crowd propelled her to a platform hung with colourful fabrics. There were scarves and skirts, shirts and jerkins. Kyndra eyed the new clothes hungrily, wishing she had money for a tunic to cover her stained shirt. She was attracting several disparaging glances just by standing there. The stall’s owner, a prim, elegant man, watched her smudged hands like a bird of prey. When she reached out to touch a green jerkin, his mouth opened and Kyndra let her fingers fall before he told her off.
At the next stall along, a dress swung from a peg clipped to the awning. It was such a sheer and useless garment that Kyndra couldn’t imagine how anyone would pay the asking price. Nobody in Brenwym had money to spare for clothes like that, but Colta would have liked it.
She turned quickly and caught sight of a basket of wool labelled ‘Far Valleys’. Kyndra swallowed. Whenever she thought about Brenwym, it was with a creeping sense of guilt that only grew stronger the further away she went. She couldn’t bring herself to imagine it as a burned-out shell, only as the dreary farming town she had called home. The wool here would shoot up in price when the news reached them. If Brenwym’s storehouses had burned, there’d be no income and no way of rebuilding the town. Reena and Jarand had nothing without the inn. Maybe they could make it to Earlan Hill where Kyndra’s aunt lived, but many would be making the same journey and what if the Breaking came again?
She shook herself. Worrying would not get her home. Her encounter with the fruit woman had yielded such poor pickings that she doubted there was any point in trying another stall. Things obviously worked differently here. No one in Brenwym would have let a penniless stranger starve.
Feeling hard done by, Kyndra pushed out of the crowd, stealing guarded glances over her shoulder. She would have to get back to the ground if she was to stand any chance of evading Nediah.
Angling away from the centre of town, Kyndra chose a narrow bridge that led towards the inn they had visited the previous night. From this height, its slanted roof and stained walls were easy to make out. There’s a ladder around here, she thought, and tried to remember exactly where she’d seen it. The sun was hot on her back and the spiny fruit pricked her through
its covering of cloak.
Kyndra caught sight of the ladder’s wooden posts and felt her pulse quicken. She hadn’t decided what to do once she was on the ground, and half a loaf and a shrivelled fruit weren’t going to see her back to Brenwym without a horse. Perhaps she could find a wagoner heading east. They’ll want paying, a voice in her head said pragmatically. Kyndra ignored it.
She turned to descend the ladder, feeling for the first rung with her foot.
‘Kyndra!’
Curses, Kyndra thought, and quickly started climbing, buffeted by gusts of wind. In her haste, and with her eyes smarting from the breeze, she fumbled the fourth rung. Her boot slipped and she fell hard against the ladder, clutching it desperately with both hands. Bread and fruit tumbled away. She only just managed to keep hold of the cloak.
Then, out of nowhere, an arm reached down, gripped her under the armpit and hoisted her back onto the platform.
Kyndra dashed the wind-mist from her eyes and saw Nediah hurrying over a bridge that swung drunkenly at every step. She’d missed her chance.
Her rescuer released her arm and Kyndra turned to look at him. Everything he wore was white, even his leather gloves. His clothes were like some sort of uniform: long coat over parted robes, leather boots and a wide belt. Bizarrely out of place, a flute hung in a pouch at his waist. A heavy cowl hid much of his face, save for a chin shaded dark with stubble.
Kyndra stopping breathing. Listen. If you value your life, stay away from him.
Nediah stepped onto the platform, leaving the bridge to dance in his wake. He spread his feet and stood tensed as if for a fight. The stranger smiled, or at least his mouth did. Kyndra watched them both, weighed down with Kait’s warning.
‘Medavle,’ Nediah said. He didn’t move.
The cold greeting only warmed the stranger’s smile. ‘Hello, Nediah,’ he replied, as if the two were old friends. ‘It’s been some time.’
‘Kyndra,’ Nediah said sternly. ‘What are you doing here?’
Kyndra fidgeted, doing her best to ignore the fact that her rations had just plunged to their doom. ‘I was … exploring.’
