“There will be a woman with him. Pale-skinned, tall.”
“I know her,” he said. “I have seen her. She tried to kill me.”
“But she did not. You are to give her this gift.” A single moth flew straight for him. He batted out at it, then realised that was exactly what it had wanted. He felt it slide into his skin, just beneath the wrist, a hot sliver of moth. Something that was quite different from the other creatures that filled his blood.
“You are to be kept of single mind, until this is done. Then we will decide whether or not you have earned our gift.”
The Roil lifted its hand, a fist now, clenched around a belt of knives. “You will need these,” it said, and tossed them to the ground.
“The knife is all.” Tope walked to the belt, scooping it up and strapping it around his waist — all his knives were there, the cutting and the driving, the thin slivers of steel that he was adept enough with to unpick locks. The knives that had been tools of his bloody art, the ones he had used to kill the boy’s father. “Yes, the knife is all.”
At least for a little while longer.
A door opened, another figure appeared, or perhaps it was the same one, because when he turned there was no one behind him. “This way, this way.” It gestured through the door.
Tope was led through the city. Saw those wonders up close, the mechanisms that bound it, and it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he was a part of it. Wherever he went he would take it with him.
An iron ship waited at the city's heart — the first less than beautiful thing he had seen, though it possessed an undeniable elegance — a door in its belly opened, and Tope stepped through it. The ship was ringed in seats: all taken, but the one closest to the door. Tope sat down in it. The ship shuddered, and began to rise. Windows — that Tope guessed were a vestige of when this ship might have been designed for humans — opened like eyes. The Dreaming City fell away. He felt the acceleration push at him, a weight against his chest.
“How long?” he said.
Eight hours until the city is reached.
Tope closed his eyes, and dreamed of killing the boy, and finishing his job.
CHAPTER 41
We never developed an adequate defence against the iron ships. Fortunately their production must have required certain rare elements, for no more than fourteen seem to have been produced. But even that was an adequate number to conquer a world; there wasn't much of it left.
THE OUTER WALL OF TEARWIN MEET 2100 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
Buchan and Whig waited at the base of the tower. Their airship, the Collard Green, bobbed hard against her lines, though she was in no danger of striking herself against the jagged wall. Watson was too good a pilot for that.
Whig was dressed in so many layers that he almost looked as big as Buchan. He slapped David on the back, hands thick with several pairs of gloves.
“You did it,” Whig said. “You got us here.”
“With a little help from the pilots, thank you,” Kara said. Watson — who stood by the Collard, checking the lines to see that they were secure — grunted. David couldn't help but smile.
“What?” Kara said. “It's bloody true.”
She was shivering.
David realised they were all shivering, except him.
“You lot,” Buchan said, “time to get under cover. We'll die out here.”
Near the base of the wall was a sort of overhang. Their men had set up a perimeter facing the landscape of ice and stone. The stones were frangible and layered. They crumbled underfoot. David knew that this was why the single continent was called Shale. It had been the first thing those first people had seen, fields of rough stone in every direction, shale as unwelcoming as the dark between the stars.
There was little wind though, this low down. The sea could be heard clearly here. David could all too easily imagine all that bristled stone toppling over. He tried not to think about it too much, there was nowhere else for them to go, except over those walls. David considered the final minutes of his father's life, the time when David had to choose to run or to die. He'd chosen flight then, but had never expected it to lead to here.
“What's done is done,” he said.
Margaret smiled darkly at him. “I know what you mean,” she said.
Of course you don't, David thought, but he smiled back. They were here, he could reach out and touch the wall of Tearwin Meet — if he wanted it to tear open the flesh of his palm.
“I'm sorry,” David said. “We'll leave before morning. But I'm still not quite ready.”
“When will you ever be ready?” Margaret said.
“When I do this,” David said. “I don't know if there will be much of me left. When we cross that wall, and descend into the city, I don't know if it will be me that does it, or if it will be me that will come back.”
“The Engine transforms everything, but so does the Roil,” Margaret said. “We've made our choice, we've settled on a side.”
David wasn't sure he had, but he nodded his head.
The air was salt-sharp and stinging, and it felt like just breathing could cut.
He felt Cadell's memories, too — of a childhood here, staring out at all that grey stone.
Shale’s beginning had been difficult, and cold. And so had Cadell's, but he had grown strong, and ageless, and the city had spawned twelve metropolises.
It seemed appropriate that whatever rebirth the world would have would begin here.
David glanced over at Margaret, as they walked beneath the overhang. “We will do this soon. Before the dawn,” he said. “I promise you.”
She nodded, but David could see the anger there. After all, she had been the one that had yearned for this moment. David had only been driven to it.
“So, what must be done?” Buchan asked. The big man wiped map powder from his nose; they'd been considering the one map of Tearwin Meet they possessed. David had refused the powder, the map itself was so folded and old that the creases had become shadow roads and buildings: it was too easy to get lost in them.
Besides, the map powder only made him crave Carnival more. “You've never told us what we can do once we were here.”
David shook his head. “I never told you because I wasn't sure. I still don't know. It may be as simple as turning a switch, but I doubt it. The one thing that I am certain of is that the rest I need to do alone — well, with Margaret's company. I don't think she would ever let me enter Tearwin Meet without her,” David said.
“You can’t expect us to,” Buchan blustered. “We have come all this way.”
“What I expect you to do is let me finish this. Margaret will be coming with me, she is all I’ll need.”
“I could send my crew with you. Whig and I, we could-”
“And they would die, and you would die. I couldn’t protect them, and in there they would need protecting.”
Buchan wiped at his nose, David thought the big man might be about to cry. “After all that chasing, all that rushing to your aid, and we are no use.”
David tried not to smile. “You saved us from the Old Men, you escorted us here. You've done all you need. All that can be expected of you. And I did not come here just so that you should die, or worse, get in the way, and kill us too.”
“So we sit here and wait?”
“No,” David said. “Not exactly.” He pointed to the overhang. “You wait beneath that.”
