“I was wondering when you might let me know you were there,” David said.
“You were brave today,” Margaret said, and David couldn’t tell whether she was surprised or just stating a fact. David hadn’t felt brave. He'd been more frightened than he had in a long time. He stared into the fire, and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, not that it seemed to do a lot of good.
“You have always been so brave,” David said.
Margaret snorted. “I fled my family, my city. I deserted them.”
“No, that is not how it happened. It might be how it felt, but it wasn’t how it happened,” David said. “There was purpose in your action. People knew how driven you are, knew that you would make it here. And you have. I fled my father’s death, but only because I was terrified.
“I have been an addict for so long. There was no higher purpose to my escape, merely a desire to keep breathing, to get more Carnival in me so that life wasn’t so unbearable.”
“And you’ve succeeded,” Margaret said. “Here you are, still alive. And you have saved our lives more than once.”
David couldn’t help laughing. “No, I’ve only ever run towards death, and not the comfortable death that Carnival could have afforded me: a quiet warm death, away from suffering. No, that would be too easy. Your motives have always been the purer, Margaret. Mine were compromised from the beginning. It’s cold here,” David touched his chest. “And it’s getting colder.” He lowered his head to his chest and looked into the fire. “You’re the one that’s alive. You're the one that’s pure of purpose.”
Somewhere in the distance, Kara sang to herself, some jaunty thing from Drift that David partially recognised. It should have made him smile, but it just made him feel sadder.
When he looked up, Margaret was gone. She’d left as quietly as she had arrived, and David couldn’t help wondering if, perhaps, he hadn’t actually imagined her presence by the fire altogether.
He stood up at last, and strode over to Kara. “The Dawn, how is she?”
“She's getting better, from now on the sky will heal her far more effectively than the earth. She hungers for flight.”
David looked out into the dark, past the gleam of the fire reflected in the river. “So do I. I just want this to end.”
“Really?” Kara said. “You want the cold and the death, and the being hunted to end? How remarkable. Who would have thought?”
David sighed. “You don’t understand,” he said.
“I do, and I will get you to Tearwin Meet as fast as possible.” She picked up her pack. “I’m sorry that I had to desert you.”
“No,” David said. “The Roslyn Dawn must come first. Without her, we can’t finish the journey.”
“You’ve got Buchan and Whig now, I think you could manage it.”
“Their airship might be capable of many things, but the Collard Green is a poor second to the Dawn. ”
Kara smiled at that. “Truer words have not been said.”
“I’ll let Buchan and Whig know that we are leaving now,” David said. “It’s time we made for Tearwin Meet. It’s time we knew what sort of Engine we are facing.”
CHAPTER 37
Of all the cities to face the Roil, only one managed to stand unbowed, cloaked in ice and darkness. It wasn't victory or defeat, but something that many would argue was far worse than either. A violent kind of half-life, a contest where the prize had passed them by
THE CITY OF TATE, SOME WEEKS AGO WITHIN THE ROIL BUT NOT OF THE ROIL
Margaret Penn readied herself for the next wave of the Contest. Her rime blade hummed with its charge, the vibration running up her arm and into her chest, setting up a counterpoint to her pounding heart. She touched the blade with the tip of a gloved finger and could feel its burning chill.
Margaret glanced up at her parents, sitting with the rest of the crowd in the arena above, both in their sixties now, and looking it. Such a thought brought her a momentary pause. She did not like to consider her parents growing older, did not like to consider the certainty of their mortality. We're all going to die, she thought. Just not her parents. Not when she was starting to untangle the mass of contradictory thoughts she had about them, and see them with adult eyes.
Engines whined and the nearest portcullis lifted; the ice sheathing its steel bars gleamed in the light. A Quarg Hound entered the arena through the opening. It was an old beast, big and scarred. Its jaws opened and opened, such a mouth could swallow her whole. It regarded her with intelligent eyes the size of saucers, perfect for the darkness of the Roil, which was why the lights in the arena were suddenly extinguished. Margaret let her mind still, found the calm place between her breaths. There was danger in this. But there had to be, life in the city of Tate was precarious.
The Quarg Hound bounded towards her, its massive limbs a blur. It veered to the right at the last minute before rounding back in towards her. Margaret swung, missed. The Quarg Hound snapped at her, but Margaret had already rolled to the left. She crouched there, blade at the ready. The Quarg Hound charged, and Margaret was dancing away, swinging the rime blade down as it passed her. The blade sank deep into the beast's back. The Quarg Hound yowled, and wrenched its spine so savagely that Margaret nearly lost her sword. She yanked the blade free; there was a rush of claws. Margaret swung her head to the left. Not fast enough.
Margaret's face burned, but she was already swinging, releasing a second rime blade from her belt, and burying it in its chest, the blade on its highest setting. The Quarg Hound stopped, eyes wide, jaw working the air. It fell dead, two swords jutting from its body. Margaret pulled them free.
The crowd cheered, but already another portcullis had lifted, and another Quarg Hound was on its way. Fourteen in one hour. Maybe she was getting a little slow, or the Hounds were getting faster. If the latter was the case, then Engine help them. The Roil had all the advantages as it was.
The Four Cannon fired and the floor of the Penn household shook. Somewhere, beyond Tate's outer walls, in the dark of the Roil, the cannon's endothermic shells shattered, releasing frigid shockwaves that kept the worst of the Roil at bay.
“Sixteen in all, hardly a personal best, dear.” Her mother's tone was playful, but it didn't stop her biting.
“They're getting faster.”
“We know,” Arabella Penn said. “We've noted it on the Gathering Plains, too. Something is stirring; we're having to vary the pattern of our cannonade more frequently. The Roil is reacting.”
Margaret winced. Her mother was less than gentle in her stitching.
Arabella pursed her lips. “Oh, did I hurt you? Poor baby.”
Margaret ground her teeth.
They'd stopped the Contest at sixteen kills, because the blood from the cuts on Margaret's brow was blinding her, and she'd already passed her nearest opponent by five. She could have gone on, the rime blades had held their charge nicely — her father had improved their fuel cells' efficiency, half the reason behind the Contest was to test new weaponry — but this wasn't the real battle.
The real battle had been lost twenty years before. Almost to the day, and its ramifications echoed through the dark.
The suicide rate was up again, more Walkers than ever — suicides heading out into the Roil. Margaret had only to look outside to know why. She had never seen sunlight, but she didn't need to be told what a loss that was. The city of Tate was wondrous, an ice-bound engine of war and light, strung with its wireways, and guarded by the Four Cannon. But people cannot live in a state of perpetual war;, people cannot stay trapped the way they had remained trapped.
“Do you think it knows about the I-bomb?” Margaret asked.
