Chapter 40
The folk of Drift look down, look down and what they see makes each one frown
The first thing Margaret noticed about Cadell was his extreme age, he somehow reeked of it, but in him it wasn’t a weakness but a strength born of time, as though he were granite. The second was the Orbis he wore, it drew the eye, and looking at it now, it seemed as bright as the sun. She’d seen nothing like it, her own parents had worn simple silver bands to signify their office.
Cadell caught her gaze. “Once, all councillors wore these. But that was a long time ago. Today’s rings are markedly inferior.” And as he said it, it was as though the Orbis disappeared, what glamour what light it possessed was hidden, and it could have passed as merely a tawdry bauble.
He turned to David. “Well, lad, you have the habit of making interesting friends.”
They talked for an hour in the shadow of the wall and Margaret felt as though she had been plunged into some sort of fairy tale. Old Men, Vergers. Cadell claimed to know the secrets of the Engine of the World. In fact, he claimed to have built it. As much as, he’d said, anything of its complexity could be said to be built.
For the first time in a week, she thought she might have a chance at succeeding in her aims, that maybe she’d had a turning in her luck. She looked at them both as resources, stepping-stones to the North and the Engine there.
Margaret shared her own intentions to find it, at which Cadell patted her arm avuncularly. “You know so little about the Engine, my dear,” Cadell said. “You cannot know how lucky you are. If you had somehow made it to Tearwin Meet (and I could credit it because, well… you have made it this far) the walls would have stopped you, and if they didn’t, and there is a chance of that, slim, but a chance, then still you would have failed. Only the Old Men can operate the Engine. Only our blood, and this,” he raised his hand, revealing the Orbis again, and once more it burned brightly. “The Engine would have stripped the flesh from your bones. You may come with me to Tearwin Meet. You may help me reach the Engine, but you can never operate it. It is a folly of the ancient Engineers, it is my madness, and the curse laid down by the Engine itself. It would have been your undoing, no matter how lucky you were.” Cadell glanced at his watch. “We can’t stay all night here. We’ve a meeting to attend.”
Margaret must have looked confused, and Cadell shook his head. “Oh the sorts of people I gather around me, lost children, when what I need are warriors.”
Margaret scowled at that. She knew how to fight.
“There’s an Aerokin pilot,” Cadell said, “waiting at the Inn of the Devoted Switch.” Cadell looked at his watch again, and tsked. “And we are rather late.”
No time for rest then. But soon, and then she might just show Cadell who was the lost child and who the warrior.
“You’re late,” Kara Jade said. “And you said nothing about passengers.”
Cadell laughed. “If you only knew the day I’ve had.”
The day all of us have had, David thought.
Kara Jade didn’t look amused, just looked at her watch. “I was hoping we’d have done our talking by now and I’d be drunk.”
“Things don’t always turn out how one hopes,” Margaret said.
Kara turned towards her, as though she were some annoying biting insect newly discovered. “You’d better hope that that is true, then. I’ve some awful inclinations towards you, and we’ve only just met.”
“Please,” Cadell said. “Please. I did not come here to fight.”
“And I didn’t come here to be a pilot for three people. Just one. That is all.”
David had never been in a pub like this. While the Inn of the Devoted Switch seemed crowded and a little forcefully jovial, he could not be at all sure it was not typical of its ilk. In Mirrlees he had been to but a handful of drinking places with his father, being too young to legally buy drink (though those who had sold him Carnival had never set such an age restriction).
Drifters he knew, his father had had dealings with them, even counted some among his friends. But even the best of them were arrogant if not rude. He’d seen the city of Drift once, a few miles east of Mirrlees. He had been young, perhaps no more than five, sitting on his father’s shoulders.
And his father had recited this poem.
The folk of Drift look down, look down and what they see makes each one frown
The folk of Drift they rule the skies
A truth contained within their eyes
The folk of Drift are rude indeed
If the clouds were yours, wouldn’t you be?
Nice poem, but some Drift folk lived by its lines too faithfully.
The inn was crammed with Drifters, and their haughty and garrulous natures were in evidence in every over- emphatic movement, every dark and dangerous stare. The air folk were loud and famous boasters and brawlers. If you were to believe them their city was older than the Council itself, their technologies built in the eons before, they’d once ruled not only the sky but the ground as well, but had found it boring, so the “tedium of empire” (as they called it) had given way to the Council. They were, according to them, also better lovers, poets and fighters than any one of the groundlings. David did not believe a word of it. Which did not mean he would voice such doubts here. He wanted to live a little longer, if he could.
The Drifters wore their various guild colours, the yellow of elevator coxswain, the dark greens of steersmen, and the coveted red and black of Aerokin captains.
In one corner, and David had to blink twice when he realised who it was, lounged Mr Blake and to his left his partner in flight, Miss Steel. They were arguing about something, which was no surprise. Lawrence Blake and Catherine Steel were a running argument, almost as famous for their fights as their Air Show, a bit of which – the Air Show, not the fights – David had seen when he was ten. Five Standard Dirigibles at mock battle, flying low and in tight formation, and Mr Blake leaping from ship to ship carrying a big coil of rope, binding them together like they were sheep rather than ships, then clambering onto the back of his Aerokin, the Arrogant Spice.
“Blake and Steel,” he said, pointing in their direction.
Cadell blinked.
“If you say so.” Margaret said, clearly unimpressed. “Drifters, let them see how long they would have lasted in my city.”
Cadell nodded to the crowded press of people at the bar. “David, why don’t you go over there and order some drinks. The house brew for me, please.”
“Nothing for me,” Margaret said.
“Bourbon,” Kara Jade said. “Two fingers of it.”
For a moment, David remembered the incident at the dining car on the Dolorous Grey and shuddered. This was almost as dangerous; some of these pilots were armed to the teeth and full of piss already.
David pushed his way through the crowd, careful not to give any offence. Drift folk were volatile. Every glance he caught was a challenge and each push or shove the possible opening gambit in a fight. He caught snippets of conversation as he went.
“City’s not long for it, I reckon. Heard they’ve sighted Quarg Hounds in the deserted suburbs and you know what comes next. I was there in Consolation City, trade work, when it all came down. You know, the Grand Defeat. And it was sudden, the sky dark with all manner of beasts, the Roil rolling in like a storm. The standing army of three cities destroyed, barely got out with my life and that was only because-”
Another went.
“Sooner this Festival is done with the better. Sad, though, I’ve always liked coming here – such pretty men.” Fingers pinched his arse, he kept his head high, kept walking.
“Bloody folk music. What’s that all about? Another flaming mandolin player comes up to me with a glint in his eye and a bloody cap rattling with coin he’ll be playing it where the sun don’t shine.”
“Heard the Council’s locked down the city. They’re turning people away now. Went up this morning, there
