Her heart was racing now. She hadn’t expected to be this nervous. This wasn’t like jumping off the Mother at all. There were never eyes on her like this. On the patch she could plummet right past the entire globe council and no one would even bat an eyelash. No one ever cared what she did, unless she was screwing up. But here, everything was suddenly riding on her. And everyone was watching.
The captain’s expression was stoic. Landy and Cogs stood with lips pressed tight and worry in their eyes. It was only when her gaze found Sunburn’s that the pressure lessened. He was smiling at her. Not a broad smile, but a subtle one. He lifted a fist her direction with one thumb raised. She didn’t know what the gesture meant, but it was encouraging. It was enough.
She lowered her goggles over her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Jumpers ready!” the games master yelled. He lifted a hand to the signal bell, then struck it.
Samra exhaled hard.
The woman to her right leapt feet-first, even as the bell was still resonating, but Ranginui was out immediately after—head down and diving after her. Samra and Jake left the platform simultaneously. The fall through the bottom of the ship was over in a flash, a blur of faces, a riotous shout from the crowd, and then they were in the open sky, angling for the rope and the distant hole in the rocky surface.
The woman who jumped first was flailing. She’d fallen in a tumble and was now flipping end over end in the wind. Samra watched with amazement as Ranginui fell straight for her, almost like she wasn’t there or he intended to pass clean through her. A moment later he had hold of her streamer bag. There was an instant of relief and maybe even gratitude showing on the woman’s face as her tumbling body was righted, but Ranginui had his hand inside her bag. He then used his brute strength to hurl her aside. The woman screamed as she went flailing once more, this time aimed for the sandfalls gushing out of the rocks. The streamer came unfurled from the woman’s bag as she angled away and it was twisting behind her as she flew, but Samra never saw what happened after that, she was below her now and plummeting through the hole in the surface of the mountain.
Ranginui spread his arms, using the fabric wings stitched into his jumpsuit to angle himself back to the rope. The drag on his winged suit was slowing his fall and Samra realized too late that she was about to catch up to him.
Ranginui was not surprised. He rolled over onto his back as he fell and snatched at her.
“No!” Samra spread her arms and inhaled deeply, pulling air into her body and generating just enough lift to slow her fall. She spun and dodged Ranginui’s attack. A rocky promontory flashed by and she rolled to narrowly avoid it. Ranginui dodged as well but turned again to snatch at her. Samra exhaled hard and tucked her arms in tight, plummeting past Ranginui and angling away.
She was too far from the rope.
Samra held the arresting hook streamlined against her body with her left arm and spread her legs and other arm to turn. The baggy clothing was helpful, especially as it kept filling with air from her fall, but it wasn’t nearly as effective as Ranginui’s wing suit. As she angled toward the rope again, Ranginui was nearly on top of her.
The rope was green, but getting harder to see in the darkness.
Which color came next? Samra tried to recall but couldn’t. She needed to be ready. The numbered spheres were whizzing past at alarming speed. She aimed closer but was suddenly wrenched around toward the snarling face of her competitor. He had ahold of her right wrist and was pulling her toward him. He reared back with a meaty fist and aimed it for her face.
“Let him go!” Jake slammed into Ranginui’s back and the three of them went tumbling in a mass of arms and legs. Ranginui snarled and threw an elbow toward Jake’s face. Jake dodged and pushed himself clear, throwing out his streamer so that the drag pulled him up and away. But he wasn’t done. As Samra and Ranginui fell away from him, she saw he’d had his hands full pulling the streamer out of the big man’s bag, using his own trick against him. The huge wad of fabric unfurled in a cloud of billowing silk, wrenching the two of them upward. Somehow Samra’s bag had gotten tangled in Ranginui’s and when his streamer unfurled, it yanked her closer to him and partially deployed her own streamer as well.
The wind resistance was making them spin. Rock formations flashed past dangerously close. Even worse, Ranginui had ahold of her streamer, keeping it from fully deploying, and he was using it to reel her back to him. He pulled furiously on the streamer to hoist her toward him, then stretched out a hand the size of her face, no doubt ready to crush her skull.
It was time to go. Samra squirmed out of the streamer bag’s straps and dropped, narrowly avoiding his swiping hand. He caught the top of her hat, yanking the cap free as she fell.
Jake yelled as she tumbled backward into the blackness of the pit. She just caught a glimpse of him, hanging from one of the orange spheres by his hook. His yell was distraught. Then he was too far away to see.
Her own hook was flailing around at her feet by its tether, but she didn’t care. She gasped a deep breath to try to slow herself down, and fumbled under her shirt for the lock on the chain. Her hand found it immediately and pulled it to the center of her waist. She felt for the key with her other hand. It wasn’t flapping around inside her shirtsleeve any more. She pushed the sleeve up with her other hand and tried to make out her wrist in the darkness. She couldn’t see the cord. She searched frantically up and down her forearm with her other hand.
No!
Where was it?
She inhaled as deeply as she could and tried to light herself up. If she could glow, she could float better, or at least see. But her wrist still throbbed from where Ranginui had been yanking on it, and now she knew the key was gone.
Her vision was darkening from the intense pressure and her head ached. Where was the rope now? She pulled frantically at her hook tether, got the handle in her hands, and swung for the last place she recalled seeing the rope. It was so dark now. What color was it? Red? Had it turned to black already? A heavy grunt sounded above her. Ranginui had grabbed hold somewhere. His groan from catching himself echoed down the cavern. There was another sound, too. A rushing sound rising up to meet her.
The river.
Where was the rope?
Samra gasped and gasped again, trying to arrest her fall. The pressure was horrible. It pressed on her ears made her feel like she was smothered under a rock. Under a mountain.
She wasn’t plummeting as quickly as she was before but she was still falling too fast. The chain felt like it had gained ten pounds and was dragging her toward the sound of the river at alarming speed. Would she survive the impact? Would it drown her anyway if she did?
The blood was pounding in her ears and her skin felt like it was burning—but it still wasn’t glowing.
Glow.
Find the rope.
Glow.
And then there was light.
But it wasn’t from her.
She tumbled into the opening of the last cavern and had only an instant to register the scene. The massive sand dune from the falls. The river. A figure near the edge of the water holding a lantern.
The rope.
She swung the hook with all her might toward the rope and caught the last sphere just as it flew past. She gasped again, this time from the jolt, as the springs of the hook stretched and the tether around her body grew taut. Her shoulders strained to bear the deceleration as her fingers slipped down the handle to its very end. The hook handle snapped, but the tether held it together. She swung back and forth at the bottom of the tether and at the very bottom of the rope. She twirled around once, then was flung into a wild arc, up and around. Her view kept changing.
Forward, back.
Sandfall. Boy with lantern.
He was a definitely a boy. Young and covered in dirt. He had a coil of rope slung over his shoulder and a bunch of contraptions hanging off his jacket. She’d seen a jacket like that before. He reminded her of Enzo, the old messenger pilot. But th
is boy was young. Her age. He was crouched at the edge of the sand, right where it met the swift-flowing river. His boots were muddy with mountain grit and he was holding something by a dangling cord. Something he’d just picked up from the sand.
The key.
“Hey!” she yelled. She swung away again and the rope twirled her around the cavern in its wide, slow arc. As she swung back his direction she twisted to face him again. “That’s mine!” She was nearly over the top of him now. He strained his neck to watch her.
He was lit in a strange way from the lantern below him. His face was mostly in shadow but it looked kind. It looked tired.
“Where did you come from?” the boy yelled. “What’s up there?”
Samra swung away again, but this time her arc was much smaller—gentler. When she faced him again it was more direct. “It’s a sky city.”
The boy was standing fully upright now and shifted the rope on his shoulder. “Are there airships?” he yelled.
“Lots of them!”
Samra was spinning again. It was making her dizzy. The boy and his lantern were a yellowish blur. She swung back around to face him, but felt the rope above her lurch. The winch was engaging, pulling her up.
“How do I get up there?” the boy yelled. “Is it far?”
So far. Just the thought of being hoisted back up was making her irrationally nervous. Her heart still hadn’t stopped racing from the fall, from Ranginui and the way she came so close to hitting the river face first in the blackness. She would have, if not for this boy and his lantern.
“You have to fly!” she shouted. She didn’t know why she said that. It wasn’t as though he could. He was just standing there with those muddy boots and his dimming lantern. But there was something about him that somehow suggested he could. Maybe just that jacket.
She rose steadily through the air now. The winch was reeling in the rope. She cupped a hand around her mouth and shouted down to the rapidly diminishing figure of the boy. “What’s your name!”
“Atlas!” The shout came back as an echo, bouncing off the walls of the cavern. He was just a speck now in his tiny orb of light.
“What’s yours?” The yell was faint and distant, but barely discernible.
“Sam!” she shouted.
Her voice ricocheted back at her from the rocks. She listened for any kind of response, but got nothing. She was in a new cavern now and she could no longer see him. The rope was picking up speed. She whipped through the darkness toward the growing disc of twilight, high, high above. By the time she reached the upper caverns, she could make out a distant planet in the darkening sky.
The whole fall had only lasted minutes. It wasn’t more than five or six minutes in total now since she left the ship. It felt like a lot longer. Had she somehow plummeted through the mountain during the day, but come out at night?
But it was just an illusion. As she rose, the caverns grew lighter. Sections of the pit she thought dark on the way down now seemed cheery in comparison to the blackness she’d just suffered in the bowels of the mountain.
The pressure on her ears was lessening. Her vision was clearing, too. The valley was coming into view, and the port town around it. The little planet far up in the sky grew dimmer again. At least it seemed so as she was dragged back into the light.
She rose out of the pit in the mountain and breathed an involuntary sigh. It was only then that she took a look at the number on the sphere she was dangling from.
Black ten.
She’d done it!
She was the champion. Far up the rope, Ranginui was dangling from a sphere near the top of the black section. Number one or two perhaps. Way, way up in the distance, just about to climb aboard the ship, was Jake Robinson. She watched him step aboard, but he immediately turned around to scan the rope. He was waiting for her. As she cleared the last edge of the pit, she gave him a wave.
She was worried that without her hat, people would easily tell that she wasn’t a Grounder. Her hair still had a decidedly greenish tint and she’d not seen any Grounders sporting anything so colorful. But as she neared the jump ship, hardly anyone was paying attention. The observation decks and rope bridges were nearly vacant. Even the jump ship had cleared out. As the rope was wound up into the giant spool overhead, all the spheres were being put away, not just because she was at the bottom, but because the waiting jump teams had all disappeared.
She looked around to see what could have caused the drastic change, and her eyes finally settled on the airship hovering just inside the Storm Gate, high above the sandfall. The ship was rigged with black canvas and sported the same red sunburst she’d noted on Eric Savage’s ship. The airship certainly hadn’t been there when she left. This craft was longer and leaner than Eric’s. It was bristling with harpoon weapons and smaller, nimbler skiffs strapped to the side. Some of these skiffs were deploying crew and moving off to different parts of the port.
Samra was hauled up through the gaping floor of the jump ship and found the interior decks nearly empty. The games master was still there and he only paused briefly at the sight of her hair before helping her aboard and shaking her hand.
“Congratulations, Sam. You did it after all. Had us worried there for a bit. Thought that rope was never going to move a third time.”
“Third?” Samra asked.
“Yes. Ms. Turngrass didn’t fare quite so well as you in the standings, but not to worry. Search team said they found her alive in one of the sand pits. Bit worse for wear. Maybe a fracture or two but she’s still among the living. Lots to be said for that.” He reached into his pocket. “Usually there’d be a lot more fancy to-do about your victory, but I’m afraid the show’s been cut a bit short. Here are your winnings, however, as promised.” He tucked the note into her palm and donned his hat. “Must be off now. Congratulations again, young man.” He spun on his heel and rushed out through one of the doors to the side deck.
Only Jake Robinson and the crew of the Restless Fury remained in the bar. He strode over to Samra the moment the games master departed and grasped her by the shoulders. “Thought you were a goner for sure,” he said smiling. “A black ten. In all the years I’ve seen this sport done, I’ve never seen it done like that.”
Samra smiled. “Thanks to you.”
“Me? No. I was the one who almost got you killed. I was convinced I had when you went tumbling down that hole with no streamer pack on. Boy, when you came up out of that hole hanging onto the very last sphere . . . man, I thought I’d seen it all.” His eyes flitted to the doorway. Samra spotted the young woman from before, lingering just outside the door. Her eyes were smiling but she still looked nervous. “Look, Sam. I gotta run, but if you ever need anything in Port Savage, you come look me up, all right?”
Samra smiled and nodded. “Okay, thanks.”
“See you around, kid.” Jake clapped her on the shoulder and ducked through the doorway.
Samra moved toward the bar and the rest of the waiting crew. Landy and Sunburn were grinning. Cogs looked more or less drunk, and the captain still had the same serious stare, but Samra noticed she was now holding a rolled-up piece of paper in her hands and she was treating it gently.
Ranginui chose that moment to emerge from the swinging door behind the bar. Samra froze while still a dozen feet away and waited for him to start hurling the crew of the Fury about the place or smashing the bar to pieces, but the big man didn’t give any of them so much as a second glance. He merely hoisted one of the brown liquor bottles from the bar, gathered a second in his other hand, and disappeared back through the swinging door again.
The tension in the room ebbed, and Samra finally reached the crew.
“You did it,” Captain Savage said. Her words gave no indication of what emotion she might be feeling. “You saved the ship. Borgram left a guarantee that we can retrieve the note from the bank in the morning.”
Samra let herself smile. “So does that mean we can head back to my patch now?”
The captai
n hadn’t been smiling, but her eyes lost whatever humor they had. “We’ve got one more job to do first. And it’s one we don’t get to refuse.” Her eyes flitted out the windows to the skiffs being deployed by the newly arrived behemoth of an airship.
“I thought we were free now,” Samra said.
“Not yet.”
Samra followed the captain’s gaze up to the red sunburst. “A job we can’t refuse? Who’s up there?”
Captain Savage frowned. “That’s my father. And he’s waiting to see us.”
29
THE KEY
He’d climbed over too many boulders to count. He moved slowly and stopped often because there were periodic screeches in the dark. The scarabs were down there, clacking their claws and waiting.
Atlas hated leaving Kipling alone in that tiny crevice, but he was running out of time and he’d need to move quickly. The oil in the lamp was running low and the last thing he wanted was to be stuck inside a mountain with no way out. Even if the Sun Dragon hadn’t struck ground so hard, he wasn’t sure he could find his way back the way they came, even with the lights.
No. He’d have to keep going, find help or at least some medicine for the Skylighter boy and come back for him. Rustleberry leaves. He didn’t have any idea what they looked like or where he would find them, but he had to try.
The light was coming from somewhere ahead. He shielded his lantern periodically and watched for it. He could also hear the river. Somewhere in their desperate flight from the scarabs, he’d lost it. It burbled and gurgled in the distance but he was getting closer. If he could find the river again, he was sure he could find the way out. There was another sound, too. Somewhere nearby. It wasn’t the smooth flow of water. It was scratchy. An underworld sound. A whisper from the earth. It said, “Shhhh.”
He climbed down a long slope of boulders that had tumbled out of the mountain’s innards. He worked his way out the end of the cavern and into a new one—a cavern with a distant light, high overhead.
Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures Page 27
