The Mothers of the Sky were not people to displease; they were more than capable of taking the sky away, and that, for a pilot, was far worse than death. Kara knew that better than most, after all, she had been raised by one who had had her Aerokin torn from her. They hardly spoke now. Hadn’t since Kara had been given the Dawn. Kara could have found Raven out; Drift was a small city, but Raven could have found her, too. That her older sister hadn’t bothered suggested an equal antipathy.
“You should have brought the Orbis Ingenium to us,” Mother Graine said.
“So I am being punished?”
Mother Graine shook her head. “Consider yourself in a process of reeducation.” She rested a hand on Kara’s shoulder, a gentle — and what was probably meant to be reassuring — gesture. Kara only found it patronising, but she did not wrench her shoulder away — she wasn’t that stupid, not even when she was that angry. “I want you to come with me.”
Kara did just that, throwing one last look back at the Roslyn Dawn, just in case it really was her last look, and she was being taken to the Leaping Ledge to be hurled bodily off it and into the hungry sky.
They walked from the Hall of Winds, past the great tower over the tunnelled rock known as the Caress, and through the main part of the city. Kara was silent all the way, Mother Graine was too, except to call out to the occasional passerby, most of whom who would stop to smile, then look suspiciously, or even worse, judgementally at Kara Jade.
Why? She should be a hero. She and the Dawn had flown into the Roil, and survived the fall of Chapman. She’d not only escaped, but she'd escaped with John Cadell, Margaret Penn and David Milde. They’d fought iron ships, and survived; and while that may have had as much to do with Cadell (who hadn’t), and the power of the Orbis (she was still confused by what she saw David do in the river by the frozen hill, no one should be able to just slap a ship out of the sky), Kara knew that none of it could have happened without her and the Dawn.
She knew her Aerokin, she knew how to pilot her, and if she hadn’t, they would all have died. After all, it was her piloting skills that had allowed Cadell to destroy the first iron ship and without her, David would have died, naked and frozen in a river of ice.
Mother Graine led her down stairs of iron and stone, down into the belly of Drift, down through caverns and along narrow tunnels. At last they reached a cavern that opened onto the blue sky; icy winds crashed through the space, loud enough that there could be no argument with the naming of this place. It was called the Howl with good reason.
Here the great filters of the Aerokin were scraped clean, hosed down and washed. Mother Graine led her towards a section of the cavern from which hung thin slivers of fabric. All of them were dark, stained with a black inkiness.
“Here,” Mother Graine said, grabbing one of the darkest strips of material; the cloth was black against her cracked brown fingers. “This is why I brought you here. What you see there is the death of our city.”
“Filters always darken,” Kara said, though she was horrified at the extent of what she saw. “I am so sorry, if these are the Dawn 's. I did not-”
“You don’t understand. These are inner filters. The inner filters not of the Roslyn Dawn, but of the Meredith Reneged.”
“But the Meredith and Cam Shine patrol the north, if she flies within three hundred miles of Mirrlees, let alone Chapman, then she has been blown off course.”
“Exactly,” Mother Graine said. “The Roil spores are everywhere. Your Dawn was much worse than this, but we managed her cleaning. She is hale and whole, and uninfected. That Aerokin is as fine as any I have ever known. The Meredith, while of good stock, is not nearly as robust. This is killing our ships. She was choking when she came back here. Dying.
“And it wasn’t the only thing we found. I’ve… we’ve dealt with that, but you need to understand, Maiden Jade, night comes with a speed none of us could have anticipated. So fast I can barely contain the horror of it. It is winter now, though a winter of such extreme mildness that is in itself alarming, but come the summer, the Roil will spread. More of our Aerokin will weaken and sicken, their lungs clogged with Roil spores, and who knows what changes that might effect, who knows what our Aerokin may become. There may never be another winter, Maiden Jade. And you left the Orbis on the finger of a Carnival addict.”
“He saved the Dawn,” Kara said.
“Without you, he could not have saved his own. Do not mistake selfpreservation for charity. He is what he is, a danger to us, and all living things.”
“And you want to bring him here?”
“The closer he is, the more control we have, believe me. It is far better that we have him here than in the north. In the north he is a threat to all of us. A Mechanical Winter, my child, you do not want to live through that.”
Kara Jade sighed. “All right then, I’m convinced.” Mother Graine raised an eyebrow. Kara said, “What do you need me to do?”
“What needs to be done. Be the bait on our trap. Don’t worry, I have no wish to harm your friend.”
“He’s not my friend,” Kara Jade said.
“Good, then this should be much easier for you.”
CHAPTER 8
We cut and we cut and we cut and we cut.
We keep the peace on the edge of the knife.
We cut and we cut to save your life.
We keep the peace along the blade.
We cut to be merry, we cut as we're bade.
THE CITY OF HARDACRE 970 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
David woke, and the scratching followed him. This time there was no hesitation in the sound, the window rattled in its casings. He flung the sheets from him, they didn’t melt into nothing, but they had frozen to his skin; when he hurled them away, they took some of his flesh with them. He dashed the five steps to the window, almost without thought, and though part of him knew that running away from the window might have been wiser, he wasn’t that David any more.
A bleak face stared in, lit by the twin moons. Cadell’s face, though the eyes had none of Cadell in them, they were as white as the train tracks in David’s dream. There was something almost comical about it, something too dire and dark so that it became almost abstract — some rushed and sinister nocturne. Blood bearded Cadell’s jaw like Witmoths had bearded the old woman’s. He smacked his lips almost comically at David. He stood on the ledge outside the window, fingers sliding along the glass, almost as though he had forgotten the nature of windows and how to open them.
David felt a growl building in his throat, he moved closer to the glass, saw an answering growl in Cadell’s face. Was this where the curse the Old Man had given him was headed? Surely he had some choice in the matter, though David could scarcely remember a time when he had had choice in anything.
“Shall we end this now?” David said to the man in the window. “Do you want to come inside or should I go out there?”
The window was small; the glass thick, and ridged with leadwork, but David knew Cadell could make short work of it. He could feel the corpse Cadell's strength. David's body tensed, his jaw ached, and he wilted a little: considered running. Could he even make the door before Cadell was upon him?
And then it was as if the true Cadell was with him, the wit and the wisdom, whispering in his ear. David clenched his hands to fists, chilled the flesh so that it became at once harder and denser; his knuckles thickened with ice, and the blood within his fingers slowed — until his hands felt as though they were something brutal and
