He nodded and lit his Roman candle, which began to hiss and to spit out green and purple flares. Tally watched the signal repeated by nearby Crims, and then spread across the island in a series of colored plumes. They were committed now.
'Okay, Zane,' she said. 'Let's get these things off.'
The four nozzles of the burner were barely a meter from her face, still glowing, radiating heat into the cold night air. Tally reached out and tapped one gingerly. The woman in the shop had been telling the truth. Tally could feel the burner's ridges through the heat-resistant fabric, her fingertips sensing a few stray bumps where it had been welded together. But she had no sense of temperature at all; the burner wasn't hot, or cold…nothing. The feeling was uncanny, as if her hand were immersed in body-temperature water.
She looked across at Zane, who had pulled himself up on the other side of the burner. 'These things really work, Zane. I can't feel a thing.'
He looked at his own gloved left hand, unconvinced. 'Two thousand degrees, you said?'
'That's right.' As long as you believed every statistic tossed off by a middle-pretty artist blowing glass in the middle of the night. 'I'll go first,' she offered.
'No way. We'll do it together.'
'Don't be dramatic.' Tally looked down at Fausto, whose face was as pale as when Zane's hand had been in the crusher. 'Give the burner cord a little tug, as short as you can, on my signal.'
'Hang on!' Peris said. 'What are you guys doing?'
Tally realized that no one had brought Peris up to speed on the plan. He stared at her with a look of total confusion. Well, there wasn't time for explanations now. 'Don't worry, we have gloves on,' she said, and placed her left hand on the burner.
'Gloves?' Peris said.
'Yeah…special gloves. Hit it, Fausto!' Tally cried.
A wave of heat struck, the pure blue flame of the burner blindingly bright. Tally slammed her eyes shut, the inferno like a desert wind on the skin of her face. She ducked her head below the burner frame, and heard the cry of horrified surprise that escaped from Peris's lips.
A half-second later, the burner stopped.
Tally opened her eyes, yellow afterimages of the flame crowding her vision. But she saw her fingers flexing in front of her, still whole.
'My hand didn't feel a thing!' she shouted. She blinked away the dancing yellow spots, and saw that the metal of her cuff was glowing a bit. It didn't look any bigger, though.
'What are you doing?' Peris shouted. Fausto shushed him.
'All right,' Zane said, thrusting his hand out over the burner. 'Let's do it fast. They must know we're up to something by now.'
Tally nodded — the cuff had to have felt the scorching burst of flame. Like the locket Dr. Cable had given Tally before her trip to the Smoke, it probably was designed to send some kind of signal if damaged. She took a deep breath of the cold night air, placing her hand over the burner again and ducking her head. 'Okay, Fausto. Burn it until I say stop!'
Another wash of blistering heat poured over Tally. Peris stared up at her, his terrified expression turned demonic by the intense fire, and she had to look away from him. Above them, the envelope began to swell, and the balloon was tugged upward by its load of superheated air. The gondola swayed, testing Tally's grip on the burner frame.
Her left shoulder, covered only by her T-shirt, was taking the worst of the inferno. Past the glove's protection, her skin itched like a bad sunburn. Sweat trickled down her back in the relentless heat.
Weirdly, the parts of Tally that felt the furnace the least were her gloved hands, even her left, sitting in the inferno's very center. She imagined the cuff hidden within that blaze, turning red, then white…gradually expanding.
After what seemed like a solid minute, she yelled, 'Okay, hold it!'
The burner stopped, and the air was instantly cool around her, the night suddenly black. Tally stood up from her crouch, feet still on the gondola's railing, and blinked, amazed at how still and silent it was with the raging flame extinguished.
She pulled her hand from the burner, expecting it to be a blackened stump, no matter what her nerve endings told her. But all five fingers wiggled in front of her. The cuff glowed blazing white, mesmerizing blue flickers traveling around its edge. The smell of molten metal struck her nose.
'Quick, Tally!' Zane yelled, jumping down into the gondola. He started tugging at his cuff. 'Before they cool off.'
She leaped down from the rail and started pulling— glad that she had brought two gloves for each of them. The cuff slid down her arm, but came to a halt as it always did, catching at the usual spot. She squinted at the glowing band, trying to see if it had grown. It seemed bigger, but maybe the heat-resistant glove was thicker than she'd thought, making up the difference.
Tally squeezed the fingers of her left hand together and tugged again; the cuff crept another centimeter along. Heat still radiated from the ring of metal, but it was gradually turning a dull red, its light fading. … As it cooled, would it shrink around her hand now, crushing her wrist?
She gritted her teeth and pulled once more, as hard as she could…and the cuff slipped off, dropping onto the floor of the gondola like a glowing coal.
'Yes!' Finally, she was free.
Tally looked up at the others. Zane was still struggling; Fausto and Peris were scrambling to avoid her glowing cuff as it rolled, steaming and hissing, across the gondola floor. 'I did it,' she said softly. 'It's off.'
'Well, mine's not,' Zane grunted. His cuff was wedged around the thick of his wrist, its glow faded to a dull red. He swore and stepped back up onto the gondolas railing. 'Hit it again.'
Fausto nodded, and gave another long blast on the burner.
Tally turned away from the heat, looking down at the city, trying to clear the spots from her eyes. They were past the greenbelt now, over the burbs. She could see the factory belt coming up, dotted with industrial orange work lights, and past that the absolute blackness that marked the edge of the city.
They had to jump soon. In a few more minutes they would pass beyond the metal grid that underlay the city. Without the grid, their hoverboards wouldn't fly or even stop a fall, and they'd be forced to crash-land the balloon instead of bailing out.
She looked up at the swollen envelope, wondering how long it would take the still rising balloon to settle back to earth. Maybe if they could rip the envelope open somehow to get themselves down faster…but how hard would a torn balloon crash-land? And without working hover-boards, the four of them would have to hike until they reached a river, giving the wardens plenty of time to find the crumpled balloon and track them down. 'Come on, Zane!' Tally said. 'We've got to hurry!'
'I'm hurrying! Okay?'
'What's that smell?' Fausto said. 'What?' Tally pulled back into the gondola, sniffing at the still, hot air.
Something was burning.
'It's us!' Fausto shouted. He jumped back, releasing the burner chain, staring down at the gondola floor.
Tally smelled it then: burning cane, like the smell of brush thrown onto a camp fire. Somewhere under their feet, her red-hot cuff had ignited the wicker gondola.
She glanced up at Zane still perched on the railing — he ignored the others' panicked cries, tugging fiercely at his glowing cuff. Peris and Fausto were hopping around, trying to find the source of the smell.
'Relax!' she said. 'We can always jump!'
'I can't! Not yet,' Zane shouted, still struggling with the cuff. Peris looked as if he was about to leap out of the balloon without bothering to take his hoverboard.
Her vision was finally clearing from burner's glare, and Tally looked down at her feet. A bottle lay there, left behind by the Hot-airs. She reached for it with her gloved hands; it was full.
'Hold on, you guys,' she said, and with a practiced motion twisted off the foil and placed both thumbs
