sank down, stunned and wounded by the upper world, by the cold thing that had flared in the sky.
Down. Down. Into the rushing heart and heat of the world.
Above the surface was a universe of which it desired no part. The forces were too soft, hardly forces at all, and its mind — so attuned to the ebb and flow of electromagnetic fields — could feel the emptiness, the thinning out. And it reacted to it in horror and agony one final time.
Let the chattering children play out their game.
Such pain drowned out their commands — her commands — and slowly, it sank back into the mantle: all glorious heat, all glorious pressure.
It sank and it dreamed its stony terrible dreams again.
The iron ships streaked across the sky. Six of them, though three turned to the east before the dawn, travelling somewhere that Tope did not know. Drift or Stade’s precious Underground, perhaps.
The other three followed precise coordinates, the fastest flight path to Tearwin Meet — and toDavid and the girl Margaret, to whom Tope felt a perverse paternal instinct, that, even as he knew it was not his own, had become almost as strong as that hatred he had possessed for decades. He struggled with the battling desires, the beating warmth, the chill disregard. He knew that if he did not possess that first command — to kill the boy, to crush out what it was that hid within the addict’s blood — then this new love would destroy him, would tear him open and make something so different that he would not recognise it at all.
He sat, face still, not moving a muscle. A belt was stretched tight across his chest, and the ship’s acceleration pushed him into the chair, a hand as certain and as strong as the Roil within him.
The fiery ball missed the first ship, streaked right over it and crashed into the second. It disappeared in a series of bursts, bundles of fire and flame knitted together with strands of smoke.
Tope didn’t even blink, as one last great explosion tore through the sky. Twice more they were fired upon. Neither ship was struck, and their companion’s wreckage became a ruddy blur on the horizon. A second barrage occurred an hour later and another iron ship fell, smoking and broken to the earth, landing with a boom that never quite caught up with Tope’s iron ship.
He watched the ruin of that craft fade into the distance and wondered if he would live to strangle David after all.
They were fired upon at hourly intervals, but this time the ship seemed prepared, or the weapons weren’t, because they managed to evade the flames. And when an hour and a half had passed since the last burst of flames, the iron ship slowed, mountains grew curled and cruel out of the earth, and a wall almost as high, and Tope knew that they had arrived.
CHAPTER 43
The Engine. Even now I cannot say that I understand it. What a marvel it was, and what marvels were we to have made something so far beyond us.
THE OUTER WALL OF TEARWIN MEET 2120 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
Margaret took the last guard duty. She'd had an evening teeming with dreams of the Roil, Tate and its fall, or worse, a Tate unchanged, but empty of everyone but her, a city driven by clockwork — like her father's great Orrery that had mapped out the expansion of the Roil. And that clockwork had hunted her.
She was relieved to escape to the chill monotony of peering beyond the overhang — no one seemed to be sleeping — as though only bad dreams walked these stony fields. Buchan nodded at her over a steaming cup of tea, gestured at her to come and talk, but she shook her head. She wanted to be alone.
Margaret looked at the curving wall, spikes jutting from its surface. For all that it was constructed on a scale beyond anything she had ever seen before, it reminded her of the Steaming Vents of Tate. She wondered if it would prove to be a similar draw to the agents of the Roil.
Death lay ahead; she felt it in her bones. It had trailed her from the moment she'd heard the ringing of the bells that had signalled her parents' return, and then, somehow, it had overtaken her. But now, at last, she headed towards it directly.
Death, whether the city welcomed them or not, how else could it be anything but death? Perhaps she had never really been hunted by it, perhaps she had been hunting it instead, a great and glorious death that would take the whole world, too.
The wind had stopped some time ago, but it somehow felt colder. She looked into a sky as clear as glass, and bright, despite the twin moons having set an hour before. The stars were cold and distant. Instructive, she thought, in that a greater darkness bound them and that they burned, for all their multitudes alone.
She thought about Cam, felt a sliver of guilt, and hoped that the pilot was safe. Margaret thought of her kisses again, was stung by the memory, and her yearning. She let herself circle the memory, as the Dawn had circled Tearwin Meet. It was a good simple hurt, and she had too few of those.
At that moment she wanted everyone to die, and everyone to live; she wanted doom and joy in equal measure, and the cold dark, filled with the distant rumble of the icy sea, seemed to offer that.
She laughed, the sound startling her, and stared again across the dark and rocky plain.
“What a lonely world we save,” she whispered into the night. “But what else is there?”
There was no answer, of course, but she found something in the cold places of her heart. And if the answer was unsatisfying, still it was an answer. She pulled her coat around her shoulders and watched the night.
David found her a few hours later, while Buchan and his crew were still sleeping.
“Time to go up,” he said.
“Should we wake Buchan and Whig?”
David shook his head. “Let them sleep, who knows, it could all be over before breakfast.”
Kara Jade was already with her Aerokin. The Dawn stirred, shifting her body heat, breaking ice from along her spine. Coffee brewed in a great pot and Kara passed them both hot mugs of the stuff, black as the sky. Margaret curled her hands around the mug, and smiled.
“Enjoy it,” Kara said. “There's not much left.”
Margaret took a mouthful — it was good and strong and warm, and she suddenly realised just how cold she had been.
“So, this is it?” Kara said.
There was an excitement in the air, even Margaret could feel it.
David smiled at Kara. “Yes, it is.”
The Dawn shivered, more ice sloughed from her flesh, and suddenly they were in the air. Ten feet, twenty.
“Going to be a slow rise. Are you sure you wouldn't rather just get drunk?” Kara said. “I've plenty of rum for that coffee.”
“We'll leave that for when we're done,” Margaret said, and Kara laughed.
“I will hold you to that,” she said.
Margaret looked down. Whig and Buchan stood below, holding torches, waving them at the sky; they looked so alone down there, they could have been the last two men in the world. And she was reminded of the last time that they had left them by fleeing in the Pinch. Margaret found herself waving back, feeling a little stupid as she did so. When she stopped, she realised that Kara was looking at her, the smile on her face unreadable.
“You're all sorts of surprises,” Kara said.
Margaret put on her cold suit as they rose, stripping and redressing quickly, as though she were a gun to be broken and remade again. There was still a small charge left to the suit, though she didn’t activate it. She slid her clothes over it; her greatcoat she slipped into her bag, too dangerous to descend wearing that.
David could see the dark material of the suit jutting out at the wrists. He looked at her. “What are you doing wearing that? Where we’re going it will be cold, colder than cold.”
