knife blade and a terrible purpose filled her. She would destroy the Roil. No matter the cost, she would see this darkness broken and should nothing else remain, so be it.
The city of Mcmahon did not come upon her all at once, but piece by piece. Deserted farms became villages, villages became towns and finally the city, well the corpse of one, swelled up around her. Though she had studied maps of this place since childhood, Mcmahon was at once an alien and all too familiar environment. Where Tate had been built upon a hill, Mcmahon sprawled and stretched in a scale that amazed her. Broken towers thrust out of the scarred ground, fire-gutted houses rose up like rotten teeth.
At the edge of the city proper, where buildings thickened and reached high into the dark, sat Mcmahon’s Tower. It had been destroyed, but still a good third of it remained, jutting into the sky. And what was left was higher than the Willowhen, the Four Cannon and the vents.
When whole it would have been an incredible sight. Still it stole her breath. Around its peak circled Endyms tiny in the distance.
While not the capital of Shale (for Shale had never been a unified continent, regardless of the Council of Engineers. The Lands of the Council of Engineers would have been better called Lands of the Councils of Engineers. Each city had almost been a state on to itself) it had the bearing of a capital.
In all the books of geography Margaret had read and the travel pamphlets written before the Roil had so much as stained the ground, Mcmahon was referred to as the Jewel of Shale.
Ice Cannon far mightier than Tate’s were piled around the tower, broken and discarded as though they were little more than toys. They would have been awe-inspiring, launching their frozen munitions into the dark. But they had failed, vast and ponderous weapons swallowed by, and rotting in, the Roil.
Something dark curled about the top of the tower and, as Margaret passed beneath it, that darkness stirred and the building shook.
For two decades it had crouched in mourning upon the ruin that it had wreaked. Motionless. Eyes fixed upon the city, pores gaining sustenance from the Roil itself. A quiet rage swelled within its breast as it saw the small carriage pass beneath it.
So this was what the mothish smoke hunted?
How could this cause so much consternation through the dialogues of the Roil? It was so tiny.
The human within was wrapped in metal and ice – venomous, loathsome cold. Ah, but it had seen such ridiculous devices before and dealt with them. Just as it had destroyed those ice launchers, eating their human guards one by one.
The still air found sudden life around the creature as it rose up, spreading open dark wings the size of steam engines. Endyms nesting in the ridges of its spine flew for their lives, dust and stone tumbled from its broad back. Its muscles clenched and bunched for flight. All but ready to leap into the sky, it paused and swung its heads south.
Something else was coming, and fast.
After ten years, so much was going on all at once. Its many eyes narrowed.
It paused and waited, still and vast as some monstrous tide on the verge of turning.
Chapter 14
Steam is already a tired medium. We have the air, and now New Fuels. Their integration into the transport system is assured. New Fuels are safer, more reliable, and their engines less likely to explode.
“Now, lad, the thing is we don’t want to look like fugitives. So relax, appear as though you are enjoying yourself. Here, read this, if the book I’ve given you isn’t to your taste.” Cadell passed him a pamphlet advertising Chapman’s upcoming Festival of Float. David put the pamphlet down and glared at Cadell. “Suit yourself then.”
The rain streamed across the window and Mirrlees-on-Weep streamed with it. The city’s lights nothing more than glittery tears tracking down the glass. David had not cried. He let the city do it for him. It cried too much. He wondered when he might return. Not for a long, long time, if ever. Which suited him fine. He didn’t want to go back. He let out a long breath and let himself believe that he was out of the city, that things might just be getting better.
He started to whistle a tune that his mother used to sing to him.
“Whistling, I can’t stand it. Stop that now,” Cadell said, with a vehemence that surprised David.
“All right,” David said. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. Just that tune brings back bad memories.” Cadell frowned and mumbled under his breath. “Hot in here. The air’s stale and I don’t like the way it smells.”
David held off suggesting that that smell was probably them, after their flight in the storm; the Vergers trailing them, down street and along creaking bridge. He considered opening the window, but thought better of it, preferring to leave the rain outside for a while. So he ignored Cadell and watched his home – the city that he had lived in all his life – slip behind him, becoming a single wavering brightness that, in turn, faded to nothing.
Cadell, despite his misgivings, fell asleep almost at once. David envied him bitterly; he had no such luck. He shut his eyes and that dark space only served up memories he did not want, his father or an eyeless Lassiter, spiders bubbling from his lips. He thought of his Aunt Veronica in Hardacre, she ran a school there. He wondered if she would even recognize him. They’d never been close. She hadn’t even been able to make it down for his mother’s funeral. But then again the cities of Hardacre and Mirrlees were hardly on good terms. She was family, a good woman, and he knew he could start his life again up there. Of course he had to actually reach Hardacre first.
He kept his eyes open and gazed at Cadell. In sleep he seemed older, frailer – though not nearly as old as he claimed. Cadell moaned, rolling away from the window; drool pooled onto the engineer’s shoulder.
David peered a little closer. A single tear, gleaming in the cabin light, followed the line of Cadell’s left cheek.
David looked away, embarrassed. He didn’t understand his own grief, felt shamed by it. Someone else’s tears were worse.
Outside, buildings rushed by in the murk, fragments of metropolises and structures that pre-dated Mirrlees- on-Weep and the Council. Most of them were deserted centuries ago but not all. Lights burned fitfully from narrow windows, figures moved from shadow to shadow.
Old Men, smoking pipes, stood framed in ancient doorways and raised their hands at the passing of the Dolorous Grey. In greeting or as a ward against evil, David could not be sure.
David wondered what their lives were like, here, away from the city. How they could survive? These train- swift fragments were not enough to give him any answer. He knew you could survive pretty much anywhere: the two obvious exceptions being within the Roil and in the far north. And here he was on a train racing to Chapman and the edge of the Roil.
He gave up on sleep, Cadell was right; it was stifling in here. He wondered where Cadell had hidden the Carnival, perhaps he could just… The Old Man snorted in his sleep, and shook his head.
David opened the window a touch, scowling when it did nothing but let in damp hot air.
He picked up the pamphlet.
The illustration printed on it was masterful in its detail work, crowded with Aerokin, balloons and even a kite or two above the famous Field of Flight.
HEED THE CALL.
There has never been a better year to attend Chapman’s aerostatic event. The release of ten thousand BALLOONS, to represent the fallen. The sky a fury of fliers, a fantasy of flotation, the Roil an imposing and majestic backdrop. Security and delight are assured. At prices undeniably reasonable and reasonably undeniable.
FLY ONE, FLY ALL! HEED CHAPMAN’S CALL!
The Mothers of the Sky have approved this event, a portion of the proceeds of which will go to the
