familiar about the Roiling. A little part of Margaret chilled at the sight of the figure, her lip curled. This wasn't like the lumbering mad things she had encountered at Chapman. Its steps were purposeful, and she knew its purpose was her and David.
“Roiling,” she said.
David smiled at her. “Then it’s a good thing that we’re almost there.” They sprinted now. Around another corner and another, and David started almost to run. “We're nearly there,” he said. “Nearly there. Around this bend, we'll come to a doorway.”
And they did, they came upon the tower at last.
David laughed. “See! See!”
“I see,” Margaret said.
And the door stood there, at the base of the tower. Such a tiny door, with no handle or keyhole, but a door nonetheless.
“So how do we-”
The Quarg Hound barrelled out at them from the shadows, knocking David to the ground, and leaping onto her, so that she fell upon the flat of the rime blade — the movement activating it and burning her back with cold.
The beast snapped at her neck. Margaret reached into a pocket, her fingers closing over the lozenges of Chill. She grabbed as many as she could, swift as her hands would let her. The Quarg Hound stretched its jaws wide and Margaret threw the Chill into that dark maw. Its eyes blinked, pupils expanding until they looked like they might burst, and then it shook its head, and gagged. It rolled from her, making that dreadful gagging noise, loud enough to deafen her, and its mechanisms whined. Then it dropped to the ground, stood up and dropped to the ground again.
Margaret got to her feet, unsteady, the ice-sheathed sword now in her hand, watching.
When the Quarg Hound was finally still, Margaret ran to it and struck off its head with her rime blade. Three hard blows it took through armour and bone and muscle, and she howled as she did it. And then, when the head had fallen to the ground, she threw the dark mass away, ichor raining from the mouth and neck, down the street.
“Let them know they've failed,” she said, turning to David.
“Maybe they'll stop coming,” he suggested.
“No, they'll never stop. Which is why we came here. They'll never stop until we're dead and they're dancing around in our corpses.”
And then the door opened, light spilled out.
David stood there as if mesmerised. Margaret fancied that she saw a figure beyond the door. She took a step towards the light, and David stopped her.
“You can't go through here,” David said. “I'm sorry, I don't think Cadell wanted me to remember that, until now.”
Margaret looked at him, almost brought the blade to his throat. They had come this far, and she couldn't go through.
“I've just felt it,” David said. “A memory, a warning. You can't come through this doorway. It will kill you. It’s a final trap, a test you see. It will only recognise an Old Man.”
A Quarg Hound bounded around the corner, its great eyes narrowed. Margaret could hear another approaching. David walked beside her.
“We can take them,” he said.
Margaret smiled. “I don't doubt it, but it's too risky.”
She looked down at her weapons. Checked their charges, more than enough to do what was needed. They backed closer and closer to the entranceway.
“Go through the door now,” she hissed. David opened his mouth to speak, but Margaret wouldn't let him. “We're not here for ourselves. Go, boy. Leave me to this, because I cannot do what you must. Believe me, if I could I would, and there would be no hesitation.”
Then his face hardened and he nodded. “Margaret, I-”
“Move!”
“I can’t,” David said. “I won’t leave you here.”
Margaret flashed her teeth at him, fired her rifle at the first Hound's head. It dropped on its arse, and clawed at its face. “I know what I'm doing.”
And she had never felt wilder, or more confident.
He stood there looking at her. Margaret could tell David was struggling with Cadell inside him, the fool, to struggle so now: just because he had grown a spine. He moved to stand beside her. “I won't leave you,” he said. “We fought the Old Men together, we survived the fall of Chapman.”
“You damn well will,” she said, and then she turned swift and smooth and kicked him hard in the stomach.
Not what David was expecting at all, obviously. He fell back through the door, and the door closed.
CHAPTER 46
Drift fell and faster than we could have feared. In the sky we had never felt threatened, had believed ourselves to be the threat. But we were so wrong.
THE CITY OF DRIFT ROIL EDGE
The Caress shattered, broke into great shards of stone that rained death upon the city. Cannon fired all along Drift's walls, but the iron ships were too fast. Mother Graine counted eight of them, and even as she watched another three scarred the sky with their incendiary flight.
A hundred Aerokin guarded the skies, flagella clutching guns and incendiaries, but they were nothing compared to this. All they could do was fight and die. An iron ship was struck and it fell, diving into the woods, setting alight everything it touched. Trees that were hundreds of years old burned.
Mother Graine hurried along Mina Street. Raven waited for her in the training hall. Her students were there, a hundred or so nervous pilots. Their clan parents were in the sky.
“They want to fight,” Raven said. “We all want to fight.”
Mother Graine didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at these children and their teacher, so desperate to meet their death. “No, the hangars are destroyed. The Aerokin within are dead.”
“We must arm ourselves.”
Mother Graine shook her head. “No. It’s too late for that. Raven, you’re going to have to take them deep into the Stone. You know what it’s like to lose an Aerokin, and survive, and this is far worse. You have to show them how.”
Raven nodded, then her eyes widened. “And where will you be?”
“I’ll try and follow, believe me. But there are things that I must attend to,” the lie came out of her mouth easily enough. “I must see to my sisters.”
She left Raven to gather together the pilots, and as many others that still lived. She walked back up through the winding ways of the city, passing death and destruction. Helping where she could, though there was little that she could offer now.
She reached the broken stub of the Caress. Hoping that the lower levels remained intact, she opened a reinforced door. She came at last to a familiar set of stairs and then down, until she reached the room near the heart of Stone where her sisters were imprisoned. Graine could hear them within, crying out with a dark joy. Perhaps sensing her outside.
She still didn’t understand how she had managed to escape while the others had been taken. Luck, perhaps;
